About Me
Hi, I’m John.
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I’m a clinical psychologist, former Evangelical pastor, and the author of Straight to Hell—a memoir about what happens when the story you were handed no longer fits, and you finally decide to face the truth.
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For decades, I tried to live a life that looked right on the outside—while quietly falling apart on the inside. I lost a lot in the process. But I also found something deeper on the other side of that unraveling: the freedom to be honest, the courage to begin again, and the kind of healing that doesn’t erase the past—but transforms it.
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Today, I have the privilege of walking alongside others on their own journeys of becoming. As a psychologist, I work with adults navigating anxiety, depression, identity questions, religious trauma, and that quiet ache of not quite belonging. My approach is rooted in compassion, clinical experience, and the lived reality of finding my way through the dark, too.
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I live in Atlanta with my husband, Chris—we’ve been together 22 years. I’m a proud dad to two daughters and two stepdaughters, and “Poppa” to nine beautiful grandkids. I love making music, staying active, deep conversations, and anything that gets me outdoors.
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If my story resonates—or if you’re in a place where you could use support—I offer virtual therapy for adults across the U.S. You can learn more or reach out at www.DoctorJohnWilson.com.
About the book
John spent his life trying to outrun a truth he never chose.
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Raised in poverty and shaped by abuse, he found refuge in a Pentecostal church as a child. But when his sexual orientation surfaced at twelve, it set off a lifelong war between the faith he couldn't abandon and the truth he couldn't change.
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Believing God would heal him if he remained faithful, John married young, became a father, and rose to the pulpit—preaching a gospel that secretly condemned him. But everything unraveled after he removed his straight brother from life support so he could die of AIDS.
The carefully constructed life John built on denial collapsed overnight.​ The truth cost him his faith, his marriage, his family, and the only world he'd ever known. Exiled and consumed by shame, he fled and begged God to let him die.
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But death never came. What followed was slower, harder: the soul-wrenching work of unlearning, healing, and becoming.
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Straight to Hell is a memoir of collapse and reconstruction, shame and self-acceptance, exile and homecoming. It’s a reckoning with faith and identity, but also a love story—of a father reclaiming his daughters and a man learning to be loved without pretense.
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Harrowing and redemptive, this book is for anyone who’s had to lose their world to find themselves
(Links to my Amazon page)