I got onto this board to see what people said about the Mormon article on NPR's This American Life yesterday. I wanted to know if anyone heard it and what people thought of it. I'm disappointed to see that apparently no one mentioned it. Just a couple of weeks ago there was another episode of This American Life that included some stuff on some Mormon missionaries. The one yesterday was interesting because it was about a young woman whose mother died of cancer when she was 16. Before she passed away,she wrote 11 letters to her daughter. Ten of them were to be given to her once a year on her birthday, and one was to be given to her on her wedding day.

The letters started out all right for her, encouraging her to be educated and independent. In fact, the girl studied medicine and became a doctor. But a few letters later the mother got on her about being a good Mormon, marrying in the temple and all that. By that time she had already decided to leave the church, but the letters kept coming once each year, begging her to stay active, to marry in the temple. This caused serious guilt, and she began to dread the letter. When she got married, her father's secretary (the father was in charge of mailing out the letters) FedExed the letter meant for her when she got married. Fortunately for her, FedEx somehow lost it. She married in another church to a non-Mormon, and was glad not to have to read it. This whole time, her father was fine with her leaving Mormonism, incidentally.

The end commentary by both the girl and her father was that the letters did not allow her to move on with her life, and had not been a good thing, despite the intentions of the mother. They also started becoming manipulative and annoying in time. Weird stuff. Who knew that a person could be passive-aggressive from beyond the veil?

I'll have to get my podcast downloaded! Sounds like a very interesting, if sad, story.

Several months ago I found a letter I wrote at 16 to be opened on my 18th birthday. How embarrassing. It was the typical manipulative stuff congratulating my future self for staying true to the church and my values. I said how I was worried about myself and concerned I might make some bad choices, etc. I really wish I could remember just why it was I was so concerned. At that point, I was still believing it all pretty strongly. Maybe through revisionist history I can claim the true truth was working on me by then.