Odette Changuion is the founder of Unchurchme and a partner at Gods Workshop in South Africa. Her lived experience includes adolescence marked by family trauma, suicide exposure, teenage motherhood, sexual exploitation, domestic violence, and a subsequent mental health crisis. These events led her into rehabilitation, discipleship, and a long-term process of identity reconstruction grounded in faith, emotional literacy, and value alignment.
Odette’s background includes non-clinical recovery environments, spiritual formation, and trauma-aware support work. Today she co-stewards the mission of Gods Workshop with her husband, Rene Changuion, overseeing operations, digital platforms, and content development bringing a perspective shaped by deep personal experience with brokenness, grace and restoration.
Unchurchme is a listening-based qualitative research project Odette is developing to collect and analyze first-person narratives of spiritual harm. The work centers on careful listening, ethical story handling, and pattern recognition, with the long-term aim of contributing clearer language and insight to conversations around faith-related injury and recovery.
Her work emphasizes dignity, autonomy, and the belief that transformation often begins “after the label.”