Posted by:
Breeze
(
)
Date: December 29, 2019 01:06PM
Congratulations to all who escaped!
Katherine, I like your idea, and think all of us should resign again, every year! Keep those church offices busy. If we could be baptized and do all those rituals for dead people over and over many times, we should take the privilege of resigning over and over!
Oh yeah--life has been so much better without the depressing shadow of the Mormon cult.
I resigned 15 years ago. I was a BIC, but have always had an inquisitive mind, which always questioned the lies and myths and false doctrines. I always felt it was my fault that I didn't have a testimony. I went to church for the socializing and activities, and did make lifetime friends--but many of those bonding interactions no longer exist in today's cult. Frankly, I wouldn't want to be friends with most of the Mormons I'm around today. I'm fine with being "shunned" by people who now seem to be from another planet. I'm talking "Twilight Zone" weird!
It did take a few years for me to get over the pain and anger, and to overcome the Mormon brainwashing. Even now, I have to quickly stop old Mormon rote-reactions, and remember that I'm a new person, and make the necessary corrections. I have to remind myself to "consider the source", and not care what crazy, jealous people think of me. Sometimes, it's hard to stay focused on all the positives, when we're surrounded by Mormons. Even in a neighborhood like ours, which is now mostly NON-Mormons, the Mormons are still the loudest and most aggressive. I don't want to move away from my friends and family, and I figure that other neighborhoods might have angry gangs, which might be worse.
Eric K and his DW are a good example of how satisfying it is to do REAL charity work, now! For example, we can give others hands-on, direct help, and see results, build real relationships, customize our helping to each individual problem. We can use our individual talents and skills (Eric's music and his wife's teaching). We can volunteer where our interests are such as in animal rescue or environmental causes. We now interact within society as NORMAL human beings. How gratifying! How loving! Contrast this to being threatened and manipulated into giving 10% of our earnings BLINDLY to a wealthy corporation, in which we are all nothing but dollar-signs and numbers and "new names". Contrast this into being pushed into "callings" which are really a waste of everyone's time, teach lies to children, don't facilitate real connections with others, and take us away from our family-time, and really don't help those in need, at all. Compare Mormon janitor work to what Eric and his wife and I are doing--no comparison! For me, the contrast between being a Mormon and not being a Mormon is stark as being unhappy and being happy.
My children and I have beautiful, loving relationships. When our TBM families and I were trying for force them to be Mormons, the church was our only source of family arguments. The cult was splitting us apart, but, instead, my kids and I resigned together. Since then, we have never fought about our various, changing, beliefs in God or Christ. We have never fought about how we spend our time or money, or how we live our lives, because we are good, honest, law-abiding citizens, and we give ourselves and others rights, and respect. My children taught me to give up my TBM racism and elitism. Embracing other races and cultures has made life so much fuller and more interesting! I mean, the whole world has opened up to me!
Love! Unconditional love!
Truth!
Restored self-esteem!
Confidence in my career, as a working mother!
Discovering that the world is not horrible
There is no such thing as "outer darkness"
"Heaven" is for all of us, if we want it!
Officially resigning was a very positive experience, for me and my children, and was about 80% effective in getting rid of the Mormon stalkers and their harassment. It was 100% effective in ending the Mormon abuse--it had to stop--and resigning was the only way to stop it!
Yes, I feel guilty for having been a Mormon, and forcing my children into harm's way, and even converting a few families (All have left!)
Though we left quietly (we were afraid of the Mormon abusers, for good reason) many of our Mormon supposed "friends and neighbors" harassed us, and were very nasty and threatening to me and my children. Soon they settled into shunning us. All of this hurt me at first, but nothing is worse than being in that awful cult. I have zero Mormon ward friends now--they won't even acknowledge me at the grocery store. The Mormon Royalty half of my extended family have no contact with me. Our extended family on my father's side are still close, and several of my cousins have left the cult, and the majority of their children have left. My parents died before we left. Also, I was divorced from my cheating TBM husband, before we left.
I think my TBM family and shunning situations are fairly typical.
Happily, I have kept the same "liberal Mormon" childhood friends from California. Six of them have ended up right here in Salt Lake City! We remained friends in college, and we were honest and of good character, unlike most of the Mormons I have known. Some of us were each other's bridesmaids. Three of them never married, half of us are divorced, and 4 of us have admittedly left Mormonism. We don't gossip or talk much about religion. We have more in common than just religion--children, music, skiing, hiking, boating, movies, books, going to lunch, current events, lots of humor and laughter, various projects and hobbies, volunteer work, yoga and whatever. We were/are all career women with fewer than 4 children, if any. We have travelled, have earned advanced degrees, married later in life (ages 25-29 is old-maid age for Mormon women), and our Mormon home ward members and BYU friends were constantly criticizing us for being "picky", and they were always setting us up on dates, and trying to "provoke us unto marriage". Now we understand that WE were the normal, happy ones, and the fanatical MORMONS were the miserable and peculiar people.