Rick Gregory is a certified Spiritual Life Coach, former pastor, recovery mentor, writer, and host of The Awakened Collective podcast. His work is shaped not by theory, but by a life lived through faith, doubt, love, loss, and recovery.

After a profound spiritual experience at nineteen, Rick spent two decades immersed in biblical and religious study, eventually serving as a pastor. But he had known from an early age that he was gay, and for years he believed as he was taught; that God simply needed to "fix" him. Nearly twenty years and countless prayers later, he arrived at a different truth: that God loved him exactly as he was. That realization cost him his marriage and his pastorate, but it also ignited his transformational spiritual journey.

Rick later fell in love for the first time with his husband, Kevin — a joy that ended when Kevin died of an accidental overdose to prescribed pain medication. The grief that followed nearly destroyed Rick, deepening a drinking problem until he reached his own dark night of the soul. Getting sober became the doorway to a decade of deconstructing what he’d been conditioned to believe about himself and the world, rebuilding a faith rooted not in fear, but in unconditional, infinite love.

Today, alongside his loving husband Glen, Rick helps others navigating grief, shame, fear, recovery, and spiritual questioning, find their way back to a love that was never actually lost. His book, Finding Our Way Back to What We Are, is a yearlong journey of reflection, awareness and remembering. It is a gentle, invitational guide for anyone who suspects that healing isn’t about becoming someone new — but remembering who they’ve always been.