The Boy Who Walked Himself Home

A Memoir of Breaking, Becoming, and Remembering

By: Peter Michelsen, Michael Sandlin - editor

Narrated by: Peter Michelsen

Narrated by the author, Peter Michelsen.

At nineteen, Peter Michelsen lost everything in a single night.

Raised inside The Church at Carson City, a strict religious cult in rural Michigan, Peter was taught that obedience meant safety, love had to be earned, and anything outside the church could cost him his family—and his soul.

Then the church cast him out.

With one decision, the only world he had ever known disappeared. He lost his faith, his family, his identity, and the place he had been taught to call home. What followed was not a clean escape, but years of searching—for belonging, for love, and for someone who might finally choose him.

From Chicago and Houston to the Arizona desert, Peter tried to build a life as a gay man while carrying wounds he did not yet understand. Freedom brought adventure, sexuality, friendships, and love—but it also exposed the abandoned boy still living beneath the surface. When the end of a relationship pushed him to the edge, he was forced to confront a truth he had spent his entire life avoiding:

No one else could come back and save him. He would have to become the one who stayed.

Inside these pages:

• A childhood shaped by control, fear, and public shame inside The Church at Carson City
• The night Peter was excommunicated and separated from his family
• The complicated freedom of discovering life and sexuality outside the church
• Love, heartbreak, and the abandonment wounds that followed him into adulthood
• EMDR therapy, nature, and sacred medicine as paths toward healing
• The quiet transformation from waiting to be chosen to finally choosing himself

The Boy Who Walked Himself Home is a raw memoir of religious trauma, gay identity, heartbreak, healing, and the lifelong search for belonging.

It is not a story about having all the answers.

It is the story of a boy who spent years searching for home—only to discover that home had been waiting inside him all along.

©2025 Peter Michelsen (P)2025 Peter Michelsen

An amazing read that really hits you emotionally

This book is a great example of a true struggle and overcoming. It’s so honest and for me too hits home. It shows you can overcome, it shows healing. You can feel everything written within the pages. I’m so glad he shared his story!

An important work

While I had a different story and different struggles, much of what Peter experienced, his struggles to find both external and internal acceptance, and his feelings resonated with me as the gay son of a southern pastor.

I'd have liked to hear more about where he's at now with his relationship to religion, spirituality, and God; I sense a lot more there than is stated but maybe that's for another book.

Overall I think Peter's is an important story, and I feel like hearing it will help many other people begin or take the next step in their own journey.

Strength of spirit

His story is told with remarkable clarity and gentleness. There is a notable absence of bitterness which appears to reflect an inner strength and resolve. Well done