Alex Bradley: Fallen Faith, a Final Goodbye, and the Walk to Remember
Watch the full interview with Alex here.
tl;dr
Alex is a former youth pastor who lost his faith, marriage, and best friend to suicide. He found healing through movement, breath, and raw human connection. He’s now walking 2,560 miles in honor of his best friend.
Background
Alex grew up in Muskogee, Oklahoma as the youngest of five. He was raised in a hyper-religious, high-accountability household where his mom was also his school principal. He was immersed in Southern Baptist culture and became a devout teen leader in church communities.
Rock Bottom
Alex walked away from church and marriage in his mid-20s amidst a lost a pregnancy and divorce. Hours after helping move his best friend’s belongings, received news of his suicide. He grieved without faith, without family support, and with no roadmap forward.
3 Healing Modalities
Movement - Functional fitness, Olympic lifting, long-distance walking.
Community - Deep vulnerability with friends, roommates, and gym family.
Breath - Rediscovering presence and the sacredness of simply being alive.
Lesson for Others
Don’t wait to be perfect. Healing is messy. Show up as you are, and take the next step. Sometimes that’s all it takes to stay. Breath by breath, step by step—you’re worth being here.
Alex’s Story
5 min read
The Making of a Youth Pastor
Alex Bradley grew up in Muskogee, Oklahoma, the youngest of five in a household run by structure, grit, and unwavering faith. His mom was both his principal and spiritual compass. His dad, a stoic constant, showed up no matter what. Between Sundays in a former shopping mall-turned-megachurch and daily prayers in the car, religion wasn’t just a belief system — it was the architecture of life.
“My dad is the most consistent person I’ve ever met. If Charles says he’ll be there, he’ll be there.”
By his teens, Alex was deep in the fold leading church camps, preaching, taking kids to youth group in his pickup. At 19, he was a football player and a youth pastor — exactly what a young southern gentleman should be. And for a while, it was beautiful. Purpose was clear. The path was straight.
Cracks in the Foundation
Over time, things started to feel less solid. Questions about doctrine crept in. Doubts about the limits of God’s love. The certainty that once felt like armor began to feel like a cage. When a young member of his youth group came out as gay, the church responded with a handbook. Alex responded with empathy and anger. The handbook went in the trash. The certainty went with it.
He stepped away from the pulpit, the community, and the God he thought he knew. It was a quiet implosion. No scandal. Just a man losing his anchor and watching his world unravel.
The House Comes Down
Without faith to stand on, other pillars started to fall. At 20, Alex had married a woman he’d known since high school. They loved each other. But when his faith crumbled, the foundation of their relationship shifted. At 25, they were divorcing. And just as they began to separate, they discovered they were pregnant.
The pregnancy didn’t survive. Neither did the marriage. In one of the most brutal, human scenes of his story, Alex sat beside his soon-to-be ex-wife as she passed the fetus in the bathtub. They cried. They held hands. They let go.
“Who wants to be alone in that moment? But who wants to go through that with someone who’s leaving?”
The Call That Changed Everything
Alex and his best friend, AJ.
In the middle of his personal collapse, Alex got a call. His best friend AJ — the kind of friend who lit up every room, who brought humor and depth and history — had taken his own life. The night before, they’d been together, moving boxes and talking about new beginnings. Six hours later, AJ was gone.
“I was the last person he talked to. And we talked about storage units. How is that fair?”
Alex dropped to his knees in a half-empty house. He screamed. He wept. He couldn’t believe it. Not AJ. Not like this. He didn’t know what to pray to anymore. But he did know what to do next.
AJ was gone. Just hours after they’d laughed, sweated, and moved boxes together, Alex was on the floor, phone in hand, unable to hold the weight of what he read. His best friend, the person who could make an entire room feel seen, had taken his own life.
Alex screamed. He collapsed. His world, already buckling under the loss of faith, love, and identity, finally shattered. There was no one to pray to. No structured theology to make sense of it. Just grief. Raw, feral, unrelenting grief.
Still, he moved.
Step by Step
The next day, he walked into the gym and grabbed a barbell. He lifted until he couldn’t. He maxed out his snatch at 250 pounds. It was his way of staying alive. When he couldn’t control anything else, he could move.
Movement became his medicine. He ran. He lifted. He did 21 Murphs in 21 days. Sometimes he just sat still and listened to birds or insects until his mind stopped racing. That too was progress.
The Power of Being Seen
Then came Onnit Gym.
What started as a warm place during a Texas ice storm became a turning point. He walked in, met a guy named John, and realized he could show up for one more conversation. He didn’t need to be perfect. He just had to be real.
He kept showing up. Slowly, people saw him. The more they saw him, the more he remembered who he was. Connection didn’t just save him. It brought him back to life.
A Walk to Remember
Years later, driving to treat patients at a nursing home, the grief returned. AJ’s memory, the ache, the quiet pull to move.
He had once planned to drive cross-country in AJ’s honor. But what if he walked?
2,560 miles. Oregon to Texas. One step at a time.
He named it The Next Step Movement. A pilgrimage of healing and remembrance. Along the way, others could join him. Share their own losses. Speak the names of the people they miss. Take steps together.
He didn’t have the answers. But he could take one more step. And then another.
The Shift
Somewhere in the rubble of his life, Alex heard birds singing outside his window. The pain hadn’t lifted. But something holy had broken through. The birds were still singing. And so was he.
Today, Alex won’t claim to know what God is. But he knows there’s sacredness in being alive. In being broken and loved anyway. In honoring a friend so deeply that it transforms your path forward.
He’d give anything to stand beside AJ on that ledge. But in the absence of that, he walks. Breath by breath. Step by step.
Because sometimes, the only way through the dark is forward.
