Hello, New atheist having a meltdown

[Alan V]

I just came to this realization tonight, and I feel absolutely devastated and lost. I'm a 50-year-old woman who's spent her life making choices based on religion. There is no God to comfort me, guide me, protect me, or intervene in my life. There is no Heaven. I will never see my family, friends, or pets again once they/I die. My entire schema for living has fallen apart. I feel devastated and terrified.  

I was also 50 when my God-concept finally fell apart, and I became an atheist later that year after I read The God Delusion.  To tell you the truth, the end wasn't the hard part for me.  It was the prior seven years when I had become estranged from other people who held the same beliefs.  That was the difficult time for me.

Once I started reading books on atheism and posting at the Amazon atheist forum (which is now gone), the clouds cleared away.  After that, I never felt better.  Most of my fears and obsessions were left-overs from unreasonable religious ideas, which I quickly dropped.  It's like throwing away crutches which you really don't need anymore.