Posted by:
forestpal (lurking)
(
)
Date: October 14, 2019 03:48AM
LJ12 wrote:
>>>"I go back and forth from not caring anymore (there is more to life) to feeling very angry sometimes. I think it helps to focus on your own things, to have my own life and things I care about more."<<<
My wise daughter was giving my granddaughter advice on how to handle snarky clique-members in the seventh grade. My granddaughter's situation was almost identical to my own with the Mormons. She wasn't doing anything wrong or bad, but the girls were trying to make her feel bad about herself, and they deliberately shunned her at school, and didn't invite her to their party, like they usually do. A girl was spreading lies about my granddaughter around the school. In a few days, everything was fine again! It's all fairly normal, unfortunately, here in Utah, as pre-teens try to get a grasp on how social situations can and can not be manipulated, and how to handle power-plays, and what makes a good friend, and what makes an enemy.
The seventh grade clique behavior is almost identical to the behaviors of my 50+year-old Mormon so-called friends in our old ward! One piece of advice my daughter gave was, "Someone who is always making you feel bad, and misunderstanding you, and gossiping about you--is NOT your friend! Concentrate on your nice friends, cousins, and family, who are in your corner."
My granddaughter, and most of us ex-Mormons here on RFM, do have a life. We are busy. We work at whatever we do. Our family relationships are more important than the Mormon cult and those fake Mormon relationships. Church has zero priority with me. The worms living in my lawn are more important to me than the Mormons. The Mormons did nothing to help my grass or my children grow; in fact, they did their best to marginalize us and make us feel bad.
Probably admitting to ourselves that certain Mormons in our lives DESERVE a good railing, in and of itself, helps us recover. Yes, we have every right to fight back! They stole our money and our time, and gave us nothing but disrespect, threats, and doom in return. Knowing this, we can then take the high road and abstain from that Mormon behavior we loathe. I refuse to gossip (except here on RFM--LOL), or talk about religion at all. I don't bother to try to explain to, help, or change Mormons who aren't my immediate family. The truth is, I no longer care enough to step in. If a Mormon has questions, or needs help in leaving, fine, but mostly I just let them be. They are not allowed to cross the boundary of my doorstep, however.
When the adult Mormon leaders physically abused my children, I brought the police in on it, and put a stop to it, and took my children out of the cult. If it gets that bad, we need to protect our children.
I actually cried, the first time my Mormon ward friend across the street had a party, and didn't invite me (shades of junior high school). I was enjoying feeling sorry for myself a little bit; in fact, I was enjoying being alone, totally left alone, and I started working on one of my hobbies, and started to feel pretty darned good! I had the epiphany that it was probably another one of her Tupperware parties, and that I used to be so bored at those, and that I've always hated being hit-up for money. I honestly didn't want to go to another of those parties, for the rest of my life!
It's a waste of time and a waste of breath to rail at the Mormons. Do something else, instead, and anything else would be more worthwhile.