Hello - I’m so glad you’re here

After leaving the mormon church I kept it secret.

I never told my friends or people in my life that that was how I was raised. I left it out among people I dated and when I was married for the first time (shortly after turning 19) I never told my own spouse and it more of came out later through my copy of the mormon scriptures I still held on to. I never sought out “anti-mormon” literature or videos. I felt so alone and isolated in who I was and what I felt - this unexplainable trauma that followed me. I had so many questions but refrained from saying them out loud, most likely due to years of being asked to suppress my questions to prove that I was faithful and a good person. A follow of Christ.

I often felt my experience similar to The Office quote by Ryan Howard  when he is a temp “If I had to, I could clean out my desk in 5 seconds, and nobody would ever know that I’d been here. And I’d forget too.” Except it was my entire childhood and adolescence. 

So many people in my life promising this close relationship and church family bond. They said that they valued who I was and cared but then would be forgetful of my name. I felt so invisible and when I become a teenager and started having more questions I was declared dangerous to the other “young men” and “young women”. I seemingly disappeared while sitting in the front row. Trying so desperately hard to believe and to have answers. I felt that if I could have answers to my questions I could do it. I could be the mormon girl, I could be the mormon wife, I could be the mormon mom, but no one ever answered, no one ever cared and no one ever listened. I was so forgettable and I was so temporary, no one paid me mind. I felt I was the sinful leper. I thought I was the only one in the whole world that felt as I did, until I heard the stories of other ex mormons. So many similar experiences broke my heart. We were all survivors of a cult while trying to be in denial about it, or by pretending it never happened.

Recently I’ve come to realize that I have been living with these strange emotional traumas that came from being mormon and being raised in the mormon church. In effort to get them out on paper so they don’t haunt me anymore, I figured I could share them here and maybe help others along the way. I’m super interested in hearing your story as well. I know this is just me shouting into the void but if you’re interested in my story please follow along.