I often wonder about people’s reactions when you suddenly make a change and start thinking on your own or just up and leave The church without a word. What was your defining moment and how bad was the fallout?
My mom started crying when she found out. The whole family still thinks I was excommunicated (I resigned). It is sad that they can't differentiate the two words. They literally can not say that I resigned. Since it has happened, they have pretty much stopped talking to me unless it is something important. Oh well I guess. It just goes to show that I will always be an apostate to them. I am 100% thrilled to be somewhat free of the church. Although not totally free since they are still holding my records hostage.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/10/2018 12:23PM by jettrink.
jettrink Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > My mom started crying when she found out. The > whole family still thinks I was excommunicated (I > resigned). It is sad that they can't > differentiate the two words. They literally can > not say that I resigned. Since it has happened, > they have pretty much stopped talking to me unless > it is something important. Oh well I guess. It > just goes to show that I will always be an > apostate to them. I am 100% thrilled to be > somewhat free of the church. Although not totally > free since they are still holding my records > hostage.
I don’t know why Mormons automatically turn to shunning and isolation as their form of retribution for leaving. I’m sorry that happened to you.
Oh yes. The bishop's wife showed up on my doorstep to tell me I had no right to withdraw my then minor daughter from the cult, when I left.
She physically assaulted me in my livingroom, while yelling in my face. With my children with me, it was terrifying.
I told her to leave, and not to return. I threatened her with calling the police if she refused to. The next day I mailed in my resignation letter to SLC.
She sent a letter apologizing saying she needed to up her anti-anxiety medication. Too little, too late. I was livid.
Before that happened, she and the YW president had been hiding my daughter's mail by having it sent to their homes instead of ours, so I wouldn't know that my daughter was going behind my back to apply to BYU. She was having some serious health issues, and with our health insurance and her trips to hospital, she needed to be closer to doctors. When I found out what they were doing was when we stopped going pretty much for good. They were so dishonest and deceptive leading up to that.
Several years after we resigned, the same bishop and his wife harbored my daughter in their home in secret from me for six months. While my daughter was preparing to move overseas. They were alienating my daughter from me well after we resigned from the cult. By then my daughter was in her 20's. While their 40 something divorced daughter was living at home with them. They were hiding my daughter from me in an effort to sever ties between us. They knew exactly what they were doing. As far as I'm concerned they drove the nails in the coffin on any goodwill I might have had for Mormonism. They killed it.
That happened since you have been posting here, right? I seem to recall a period, ages ago, when you weren't even sure where your daughter WAS - Israel, maybe.
That was a terribly cruel thing for that bishop to do.
She moved to Israel sometime around 2014, based on the information I have available (scanty at best.)
Daughter suffered an emotional breakdown while away at college. She is still struggling, despite relocating overseas. Former bishop and his wife exacerbated the problem by hiding her and helping her to run away from her life here. They didn't care they were dividing our family. I believe it gave them a perverse pleasure to come between us. My daughter is on disability now thousands of miles away.
There are no words for me to express the sorrow this has caused our family. The bishop didn't have a clue the harm he was causing to her and her situation. He and his wife were exacting their revenge on me for resigning those years before, as a form of punishment I believe the Mormon way.
They can rot in hell for all I care. If anyone needs proof that the Mormon church is a cult, I can vouch that it is based on personal experience!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/10/2018 10:28PM by Amyjo.
Your story is similar to what I went through as I helplessly Watched a bishop try to destroy our family unit. I left a Husband and the church and while both my husband and I were in the same ward the bishop and the ward gave him preferential Treatment without even finding out why I left.
Oh who am I kidding, they figured he was worth more in tithing Than I would ever be. LOL. Then after the dust settled he left the church as well.
I can’t get over your situation with your daughter and with the bishop’s wife coming into your home. Again your story makes my head scream BOUNDARIES.
Their goal is to isolate you and make you PAY for leaving.
That same bishop used to ogle my daughter while she was in high school, when we went to church services. He's old enough to be her grandpa, but that didn't deter him.
His wife aged very poorly, and looked 20-30 years older than her husband does/did. But that still didn't give him carte blanche to ogle our teenage daughters!
So you can imagine my horror when I learned they were harboring my daughter in secret from me for those six months. They were preparing to retire to Utah, while my daughter was planning her move to Israel unbeknownst to me. I can only imagine his sheer delight at having her under his roof for that many months.
Seriously, these older Mormon perverted males have it in their heads they can be sealed in eternity to young, beautiful, and virgin maidens. He coveted my daughter I firmly believe, and wanted her for himself.
Extricating ourselves from the church, Amy Jo, is like peeling an onion; there is layer upon layer and the more you peel the harder you cry. My mother’s people were all converts and immigrants from Europe and Scandinavia and i’m Almost sure They were ignorant of a lot of things that the missionaries Conveniently forgot to mention such as polygamy.
Back in those days people learned to put up or shut up and say nothing. None of these people entered into polygamy. The difference between then and now, however, is family solidarity remained intact through thick and thin and people knew better Than your Bishop’s wife or the Bishop tobe messing with it.
Do something nice for yourself today. There’s nothing that Pisses them off more than you having a good day.
Another thing that must really irk some of the Lord's unanointed?
Posting about their shenanigans to RfM. And they cannot do a darn thing about it.
That is sweet serendipity. I want the world to know how they cheat us out of our family and loved ones. TSCC is one gigantic scam from start to finish.
Wish I'd learned that lesson sooner than I did. What took me so long is that I was more trusting of them than they deserved.
This was 20 years ago....I moved out (in effect breaking free of the cult simultaneously) when my parents weren't home. The fallout was biblical, to say the least.
I moved in with my boyfriend, so my parents tried to turn all of my siblings against me by constantly telling them that I was 'living in sin', and 'shacking up'. As soon as they got home and realized what I had done, I got the nastiest phone call of my life. My mother spewed so much vitriol at me. They were complete a$$holes to me for YEARS. Why did I deserve that? My parents still think that I should apologize for moving out while they were gone. Nope. I felt the need to escape. I'm not sorry about that. They aren't sorry for treating me like crap and brainwashing me as a child. But families are forever, right? *rolling my eyes*
Nary a one....but then both of my parents were dead, my brother could care less and I have almost no contact with most of my TBM cousins and those I've told were OK with it.
I keep thinking Mormonism won't affect me once my parents are gone. I have good relationships with my siblings (TBM or not...I have both), and I have little contact with the slew of TBM relatives in Utah. I see them all so infrequently that my religious status seems to be inconsequential.
It's my parents. The ones who brainwashed and indoctrinated me from birth that somehow think that I am their eternal property. No other relationship is like that, so for those who don't have to deal with parents over mormonism...consider yourselves lucky.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2018 12:59PM by bluebutterfly.
I don’t know how old your parents are but I can assure you that when they are gone the whole family dynamics changes and then it is totally up to you To make your life count. Give yourself a pat on the back for making it this far. Let your parents see you Happy and irregardless of how they treat you, maintain enough distrance between you that they can see you can manage fine without them.
Thanks...I think they see that I'm doing just fine in life and that not being part of Mormonism hasn't kept me from 'blessings'. But they will never give up on trying.
My husband's two daughters disowned him; however, they probably would have done that even if the church wasn't an issue. The church simply made it easier for their mother to justify her parental alienation campaign, especially since I was never a member myself and therefore didn't live to their "standards" (never mind that ex has been married three times and has five children between her three husbands).
One daughter has recently started talking to my husband again, but fears telling her mother because there will be "trouble". I think Mormonism attracts a lot of narcissistic kooks like Ex.
I really believe it is a plus when you leave TSCC and shunned. It's how you find out who your real friends really were. And I can tell you that after 17 years, the few mormon friends I still have contact with are TRUE friends and the best people ever. One of them has even left the church--probably the most shocked I ever was about someone leaving. In fact, I was kinda sad because she had been so involved in Young Women's and I was glad they had leaders like that and not some of the ones like I had at that age.
As far as family, the ones I care about are ok with me now. Any problems we have are not because of mormonism, they're just because of having a normal disfunctional family. So I'm not exactly close with anyone I'm related to other than my mom. I put my mom on a pedestal. Not just because of surviving 65 years of marriage to a controlling misogynist, but because I know how badly it hurt her when I left. But she never said anything ugly. And she would try to apologize for some of the ugly stuff my father would say.
She would call me a couple times a month and just say, "I just wanted to hear your voice and know you're ok." For years all we really could talk about was the weather or the kids. She would throw things into the conversation about people in my home ward or tell me some faith-promoting thing that would make me laugh because she tried so hard to sneak it into the conversation thinking it would be something other than comical to me. But she never asked what I thought or followed up on it. I took a road trip with her last Fall and loved talking about real things we had never talked about. I'm so glad I got that chance before her time is done.
kentish Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Only when I lost my very good job and confronted > my boss by telling him exactly what I thought. > Best therapy ever.
I still don't understand how people lose their job by leaving the cult.