Posted by:
irishrose
(
)
Date: February 17, 2016 05:06PM
As some of you may remember, I wrote my first post out of the extreme frustration I felt after I received some bishop's response to my notice of resignation. Although a few people did not share the loathing I felt from the bishop's high handed response, I was greatly buoyed by the love and support I felt from the feelings shared in response to my post. As a Mormon woman, I have been on the receiving end of so much condescension that I have no truck with that particular mindfu**. For example, I remember when I was applying to law school, I had to deal with the Y again. When I graduated from the Y I received absolutely zero in the way of career counseling or encouragement for grad school. So a few years after graduation, I took the LSAT with the idea that I would fail wildly and put that old dream out of my head. As usual, my plan did not work; I scored in the 98th percentile. At that point, I had law schools asking me to apply. So I did. I asked the head of my department, a prof from whom I had taken many courses, to write a letter of recommendation; he graciously agreed. But he just had to be a bit of a Mormon jerk in the process. The patriarch in him couldn't write a straight forward statement as to whether I had the mental heft for grad school. No. In the formal recommendation, he wrote that aside from my calling of being a wife and a mother, I would make a fine attorney. And then in his cover letter to me, he had to question why I would want to attend a Jesuit law school rather than coming back to the Y. This same man knew I graduated in under three years because I hated BYU so much.
Suffice it to say, many long held resentments came rushing from my cerebellum when the local window washer/weekend clergy suggested that I needed his permission to resign. Bishop said what?
But apparently my reply to the bishop's nastygram had the desired effect. Upon my arrival home after a short trip to South Beach, I had a lovely confirmation of my resignation in the mailbox. And to my ever-living surprise, the note from SLC was pithy and gracious. All told, the process took approximately two weeks.
Thank you to the hosts, moderators and members of RfM. I had mentioned that when my Catholic mother passed away, I went to a therapist for some time to sort through my many experiences (like the fact that they gave my Catholic mother a Mormon funeral) and feelings (my father became an absolute jerk to me). I had a good childhood, not any of the extreme abuse that so many on this board have suffered. There was a lot of conflict because of coming from a mixed marriage (like when the church tried to get my father to divorce my mother), but it was.... wholesome. And then the therapist explained that I never felt loved. Oh did I protest! Of course I felt loved. They told me they loved me. They were generous with me. They didn't beat me. Of course, I was loved. But then he explained.
The beginning of love is understanding. We only feel love when it is predicated on being understood and then accepted. What the therapist said was true and resonated to my very core. I won't go into all the reasons, but they never understood me. Not even now. In fact maybe less now than ever. They loved me the best they could, but the foundation for feeling love was never there.
But it is here. This not so little cove, alee from the winds of conformity, is a respite of welcome. For the oddly cerebral. For the rejected. For the mislabeled. For the labeled. For the libeled. There is understanding here. Thank you for helping me feel not so alone in these murky waters of ex-mormondom.