No offense to the men that surrounded me my whole life or on television but they were all a bunch of jackasses and so i attributed their traits. Its hard to not be like them because i never had an example of a real man in my entire life besides sir david the bard but he seems alright and honest. I actually don't think i am a mean dude but i am a product of my surroundings for sure.

Badass, there’s no fuckin’ way you could become a Mormon jackass! See, Bro, one of the benefits of us being wankers is that we never have to take things too seriously. Rather than doing our home teaching, we’re in the bathroom. Rather than sitting in sacrament meeting, we’re at home sitting in a chair. Rather than being in the temple being dead-dunked, we’re in the shower :)

Long live Badasses and Boners!

Hahahahaha i love you boner. You are a hero among legends.

I grew up in a horrific household where my father was a raging homicidal maniac. My mother did her best to keep it together, which I spent many years blaming her for. I thought we'd be better off without him trying to kill us all the time.

I got away from them and went as far away as I could go. I wanted to have a life of peace that I constructed for myself. It was hard as I was very poor for many years and I had my first child at 16 and my fourth at 23. I kept my marriage together for 15 years and have a really good relationship with my children as well as an additional 3 I gained in my second marriage. We're now married 25 years and going strong.

I only bring this up because you have the ability to make your own adult life that has NOTHING to do with the life you had as a child which you had no control over. You control your life now. Do with it what you want.

When the odds are stacked against us for having grown up in a dysfunctional home, it is amazing to me that some of us were able to break out and escape from the chaos.

And yet we did it. It wasn't easy, but it was worth it.

As for the option, was it even an option? It was either sink or swim.

You chose to swim, not sink in the mire.

So did I.

I hope in breaking free from the dysfunction I endured as a child I've been able to spare my children from the inter-generational cycle.

"I hope in breaking free from the dysfunction I endured as a child I've been able to spare my children from the inter-generational cycle."

I know this to be true for my 7 children. They're free from the cult and free to make happy homes for themselves. I feel like my greatest gift to them was to show them what normal adult relationships look like.

It has been hard as hell to construct a new peaceful life once you feel that you have separated but it is not impossible it is just really hard to gain momentum and get real peace without thinking that some abusive and controlling person will try to show up and try to ruin what you have built. I am always afraid of someone ruining my efforts or myself self-sabotaging myself because i am afraid. I feel like the controllers hope i self-sabotage so they gain control over me. I have to re-teach myself that it is not normal to be controlled. But that is what the church is, it's just control.