So many things have happened in just a few weeks.

My family finally listened to me. They didn't let me say anti, but they've allowed me self-expression from an emotional point of view. I'll take it. I've started sharing things confidently in front of tbms about what having a secular awakening from within the Mormon church feels like, and they're empathizing. I can just share things on my facebook wall in front of all the tbms I'm starting to reconnect with, and people I've known my whole life (they tend to be closer to my age) are reaching out and saying: wow, I love the way you put that, because that's how I've felt too.

With the excommunication of Netasha Helfer, I'm starting to openly talk about the sexual trauma stuff and what healthy male sexuality actually looks like. People are listening. People are reaching out and saying, "me too." So that's what that feels like, I guess. I had a discussion with two of my most conservative tbm aunts about how grace is supposed to work, and they agreed with me and were grateful for some of my scriptural insights. I told them that my atheism was large part because the gospel was not working for me, and I had to resort to secularism to find my self-love, and they were cool with that and wished me blessings. They testified of Christ, too, but I wasn't offended by that.

I don't know why everything is suddenly different. I guess we've all been through a lot in just five years. My anxiety is all but gone. I can express myself. People are affirming me. What is this? It's like cussing out my family in a text chat has yielded most of the fruit I ever wanted. I highly recommend my tactics if this is what it does.lol.

I had a phone call with my father, and we finally talked the talk I wanted to talk 6 years ago. No anti. Just how it felt, and what I wanted him to know about why atheism. His approach to suppressing male sexuality was not working for me. The gospel generally was not working for my mental health, and I explained how the premise of my secular faith, which is that I deserve to be happy and to know what it true, developed out of things I learned in the church's ARP program and out of things my counselors were teaching me. I was able to explain to him that my hostility is primarily because I feel like he has painted me into a corner where I either have to be Mormon or he gets to assume I'm a porn addict and there is no appeal. He understood.

He understood.

It has been so hard to get anything through to anyone with the Clown 45 making a circus out of everything in the background and feeding the conspiracy theorists red meat. But now that he's gone, a sanity has returned and it's like everyone is so relieved and happy to breathe that the slightest kindness is returned tenfold and people will listen as long as you come respectfully.

I'm able to explain on my facebook wall that the exmormon community would not exist if tbms didn't do things that traumatized their own people and/or drove them away, and tbms 'like' it. Because they like me still. I've been able to sort through a lot of my trauma in the last few weeks, and the anxiety is gone, and I've been able to de-compartmentalize a lot of my memories and stitch them back up into one story again. TBM relationships are mending, and a lot of people I grew up with are reaching out to me and thanking me for coming back to Facebook and confiding in me that they went through some of what I went through too.

Chief is thriving. He has a new job teaching special needs kids. He went with me to an old friend's house last week, and we drank beers and got all caught up. I'm his window into Mormonism, and he's my window into a nonmormon social life. My dad is bishop of the local YSA, and he's coming to me like he used to for insights and scriptures. Weed is legal in AZ too. It's like all these parts of my life that were disparate and self-contained are all blending together now, and it's fine. There's no need to dissociate or be anxious or be defensive anymore.

I mean, it's not all peachy, but this is joy. This is a fullness of joy right now. This is healing. This is peace. This is all the things that I wished the Atonement could do for me and yet it never could. This the feeling I wished I had found in the pages of the Book of Mormon, but didn't. I went and got it on my own, and also my social life didn't end the way I thought it would. Everyone's been through a lot, and optimism and kindness and the smallest bit of bipartisanship melts them. Family dinners are enjoyable. The company of my relatives isn't ash in my mouth. My mission memories don't torment me. And I'm a secular person and everyone knows it. The only thing I've had to do is back way off the Woke stuff. I'm not reverting to conservatism, but seeing the world through the beer goggles of social justice obviously isn't helping anyone come together.

One of my posts starts with the phrase, "everything the classical marxists say is true." It goes on to explain that this neomarxism divorces itself from economic class consciousness and turns the have/have-not struggle onto other things like race, gender, orientation, etc and etc. The thing the haves have then would be contained in the word "privilege,' and the have-nots still need to rise up and seize the means of power or whatever from the racial/gender/cis/het ruling class. I think neomarxism is driving conservative consciousness to the brink of insanity, and they don't deserve it. I explained how to use classical Marxism, or class consciousness, to help Boomers understand millennials. See, if you come to Mormons quoting the book of Mormon and respecting their core beliefs, they listen. Well, if you come to secular progressive millennials and are able to show them that you understand that their wages to the cost of living situation is worse than any generation since the great depression, they will listen to whatever you say next.

I've learned some things about human connection from having so many friends across the political and religious spectra. A lot of trial and error, but I'm starting to feel what works and what doesn't.

Thank God for this website and the people here. Keep doing what you're doing. I would have been a lost and confused person without you girls and guys to bounce ideas off of these many years. I'm gonna keep doing that for as long as you'll have me.

Thanks for giving us an update. Glad things are settling in and you feel heard. Glad you've found a way to communicate. Clearly there is a lot of love in your family.

I'm glad that things are going well for you, C-D.

Two things -- I would recommend not wearing out your FB friends. Keep a rein on your more serious posts, or your friends will start to tune you out (i.e. the 30 day break.)

The other thing is that I wouldn't be too hard on the Boomers. I was born at the tail end of the baby boom, and I've struggled financially for much of my adult life. It has only been in my early to mid-60s that I'm starting to get beyond just paying my bills.

Nice! Seems you’re negotiating this admirably.


(The thing about Marx is that he (and Engel) were astonishingly prescient in the diagnosis of Capitalism but their prescription misses the mark. In other words, no one reads Das Kapital because it’s long but everyone reads the Manifesto because it’s short.)