Posted by:
Mother Who Knows
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Date: January 20, 2020 04:53AM
My experience was similar to subeamnotloggedin. I wonder if she is a divorced single mother, like I am.
What "support system" are you talking about? We never had any support or help from the Mormons. It was all taking away our time, our money, our family time together, making unreasonable demands, and always wanting more from us.
I felt sorry for my children being shunned, but we all agreed that it was better to be a shunned ex-Mormon than an abused Mormon. Our ward priesthood leaders bullied and physically abused other kids, not just mine. The bishop's son was a child molester, and my little girl was not his only victim. I still feel that getting my children out of harm's way, and resigning together was a good decision. My kids were happy to leave! They are happy, successful adults, now
My children had some good non-Mormon friends, and were popular at high school, so the shunning didn't bother them too much. WE were lucky that way. My parents had been dead for several years. I had no husband to worry about. My kids were strong in their convictions, and would not drink or party or take drugs, like the Mormon kids did--yes, the Mormon kids were the worst ones in jr. high school and high school. They harrasssed my children for not going to seminary. My kids did not want them as friends, anyway. In the end, I didn't want their parents as my friends, or in our life, at all.
The only reason the Mormons made such a huge effort to coerce me into staying, is that there was no other organist to take my place. Ha-ha. They even came to my house, after we officially resigned, and asked me to teach people in the ward how to play the organ. I said, "How much will you pay me?" They scowled at me.
No one believed me, about the shunning, and that was upsetting. One friend thought I was being paranoid, until she was shopping with me, and we ran into some of my former "good friends", and they looked past us like we didn't exist. My children and I have not changed our lifestyle at all, except we do more useful, fun, hands-on charity work, where it is needed more than at LD$, Inc.
We tried to resign as quickly and quietly as possible, but that didn't do us any good. After that, the bishopric and the stake presidency and our home teachers and some neighbor men from Scouts came over to our house, and threatened me with failure, threatened that my children would fail in life, financial failure if we didn't pay tithing, and the worsening of my chronic illness. The men insulted me in front of my children, to the point that we had to ask two of the men to leave our house, and we stopped answering the door to Mormons. My children witnessed all of this, and have never wanted to go back to church.
Still, all this post-Mormon pestering was better than the abuse we suffered while we were Mormons.
I have a few Mormon friends from home, that I have known since childhood, and we came to Utah to go to BYU and the U of U, and we ended up getting married to Utah men, and settling here. Some of us were each other's bridesmaids. We are still friends. Two left the cult in high school, I left when I was a divorced mother, one is still Mormon but is living with a man, two never married and are still Mormons, one is married to a GA, and three are Mormon SAHM's, and married to former stake presidents. We have other things in common besides church, such as book club, bicycling, hiking, music, symphony and opera, movies, etc. My children were always younger than theirs, and our get-togethers didn't include children, but were an escape for us. The single friends didn't have to put up with our kids at a restaurant, for example. These are the only friends I have in the world, except for work colleagues and some cool ex-Mormon cousins. My relatives on the GA side of the family have been shunning me for 10 years, now.
None of these people ever "reached out" to me when I resigned, except for my one very best friend. The rest of us don't discuss religion or politics at all, but just have fun doing whatever we are doing.
The Mormon shunning hurt terribly, and made me cry, at first, but RFM helped me put this in perspective. I had to realize that it was not my fault. I had to follow my heart. I had to leave for my children. After years of work, I trained myself to be less sensitive, Now, I don't care about those former fake friends. They are weird and rude. They are cult recruiters, who are living a lie, and who are stalking my grandchildren, now. We all still live in the same neighborhood, my children owning houses two blocks and 5 blocks away. In the last 15 years, our neighborhood has become one of the least Mormon-dominated in the valley, about 30% Mormons, and dwindling! Better people surround us, now.
Several of my Mormon ward former fake-friends have left the church, mostly because they have discovered the Truth. One couple's son came out gay. Another couple's son and daughter both married outside the church and outside their race, and these parents left because of Mormon prejudice and Mormon family fall-out. One neighbor and his wife dis-owned their son for not going on a mission, so the son investigated the church and discovered the truth, and four of his older brothes and sisters left the cult, too.
I have not reconnected with those who have left, because their friendship had been false in the first place, and I don't know them anymore, after 10 years of not speaking to them, They had tried to slander my good name, and friends don't do that. I don't feel bad about not reaching out to them. They don't need me.