Actually, yeah. This much is true. On my way out of religion, I had a friend offer to Sherpa for my first trip. I'm glad I took her up on it. She was compassionate, thoughtful, and very experienced. Definitely reacquainted me with some things I thought I'd buried, and I finally got to put them to bed for good.

I wouldn't recommend it for everybody, obviously. But for an extremely confusing and distressing period in my life, it probably saved me years and years of emotional agony.