Teri Hales is a certified life coach who specializes in religious transition and trauma recovery. She earned her certification from Life Purpose Institute in 2019. She graduated with a bachelors of science in Marriage, Family, and Human Development from Brigham Young University in 2002. 

Since graduating, she has spent the last 20 years studying literature and attending seminars about emotional and mental health with her husband (who is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Colorado) much to the chagrin of their two teenage sons who are often pulled into philosophical discussions about life, relationships, and ethics with them over the dinner table. 

Teri was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormonism) by a mother who converted to the faith from evangelical Christianity and a father who converted from Catholicism. After a lifetime of devoted membership, Teri and her husband left the church in May, 2017 after both she and Kevin independently realized that both the church culture and doctrine were emotionally and mentally unhealthy. Her parents were heartbroken while her extended Christian family was thrilled until Teri's journey led her to continue to question the psychological stress created by high demand religion in general, not just in Mormonism. 

Her own journey created a deep desire to help others recover their sense of personal authority over their lives by learning to identify emotional cues inside themselves and listen with curiosity and non-judgment for the needs those cues are delivering. She believes that the more we learn to hear, understand, and care for our own needs, the more we're able to create lives that are personally fulfilling as well as meet others in healthy interdependent relationships.  

To make the ideas and tools she continues to acquire more widely accessible, she began hosting the Emancipate Your Mind Podcast and developed the Emancipate Yourself App in 2021.