Good on ya for making your own choice. I know many people that blindly follow a religion only because their parents did and they got brainwashed into it at such a young age that they never had a chance to think for themselves or to form their own opinions. Now they just do it out of habit more than anything. I grew up with a mother that wanted me to go to church but she never forced me to. She wanted me to experience it and to learn what I can and to make my own decision on if it was something that I wanted to follow. Whatever my choice she she was ready to support me and never pressure me into what she believed.

It can be rather frustrating going to family events when most of your family is deeply religious. All you can do is try your best to avoid topics of conversation that can lead to talking about religion as it never leads anywhere good. Once I was old enough to realize this family gatherings got a lot less painful to be around.

I'd say welcome to reason. I cant imagine how hard that has been since I never was a believer. I have not been brought up by religious parents and there has never been a doubt in my mind that most if not all religions (I admit I dont know much about eastern religions past the Islam) are plain wrong and based on doctrins written by human beings in a time we had no explanation to nature and the universe besides some form of god.

I'd also say it speakt to your morality and the love to your mother that you worry about her. But in the end mothers are mothers. She will love you weather you are a person of faith or not. She will love you for who you are and not what you believe in. Treat her and her faith with respect and everything will be fine.

I finally told my mother that I no longer believe in God.

This may not seem like a big deal to a lot of you, but for me it was huge. My whole life I was brought up as a Muslim. My mother is extremely religious and my father is as well, but he didn't really ever teach me anything about it. Even though we moved from India to Norway almost 16 years ago, we always kept our Islamic traditions and tried to follow all the rules that we could.

A year and a half ago my older brother said to my mom that he is having doubts about his religion. A few months past and he eventually became an Atheist. This was a huge psychological blow to my mother who had always been such a religious women. I had honestly not thought much about my religion before this and just blindly did what my parents had taught me. After what my brother did I started thinking more and more about religion as well. I started having doubts. And while I still believe that Islam has taught me a lot of good things, I just could not believe in a lot of the things that it says. I told my mother this and said that the only reason I do anything religious is because I love her, not God or the religion. She told me that she didn't want me to do that for her, and said that I should just stop if that's the only reason I do anything related to Islam. And so I did.

I feel like I've done the right thing, but constant guilt I feel from seeing my mother in pain because of me is really tough. I love her and she's honestly the best mother I could ever ask for, but I just can't believe in a religion just because of her.

Most of you probably don't really care about this, but I just needed to write and share my thoughts. Has anyone else gone through something like this? If so, how did you handle the situation?