When I first left TC in 2008 remember reading posts here of people who had been out for decades and wondered what that would feel like.

I don't think of my time in TC very often anymore but every now and then something reminds me of it and I realize how far I've come and how proud I am of what I've gotten myself through.

I wanted to take a minute to recap the last 14 years and then share some encouragement with those of you just figuring it out.

I no longer have mormon friends. I tried to maintain some of those friendships, but the gulf just became too wide. The church and its dogma so saturate one's life that you are left without much that isn't church related to talk about. It's also hard for those still in to empathize with secular life struggles and they often fail to resist the temptation to counsel prayer as a remedy.

I also had to walk away from my extended family and their toxic interference with me and my kids. They no longer considered me a fit parent as an exmo and made it clear that any kind of support, even down to small things like birthday presents for my kids would no longer be given till I went back to the church. I haven't spoken to them since they called CPS on me in 2018 because my carpet had some stains on it. SMH.

So I worked to create a new tribe and my kids have little to no memory of their time inside. I am glad of that, especially since my eldest is gay, and they are all talented, artistic, and free-spirited. They are not afflicted with any of the self-loathing and fear I had instilled in me by TC at their age.

They have only a rudimentary understanding of the world, culture, and biological heritage they came from even though we are what I would call ethnically Mormon with DNA that goes back to the formation of the church in New York all the way to the intermountain west. While I'm glad they didn't grow up in TC, I do want them to understand church history and culture because it is their history and was their culture and tribe once. It's had the same inoculating effect as reading the bible as literature does, making it difficult to see it as anything other than fiction.

In 2014 I got divorced from my kids' dad who I was sealed to, and have been in a long-term relationship with an ex-Jehovah's Witness since.

He was on his way out of the JW's when we met and while I tried to explain to him that I understood what he was going through, he had a very hard time imagining me being so brainwashed.

I dug up journals that were saturated in mo-speak and still chuckle at the memory of his surprise. He couldn't picture his green-haired, tattooed love being that molly homemaker.

I am a metalsmith now. I went back to school and learned how to make the kind of jewelry I've always wanted to make. I'm still figuring out how to make a proper living at it, but it's mine and I am good at it.

I hope there is an afterlife of some kind, but I'm living as if there isn't because that is far more likely.

I do not have a belief in any god but I find a strange comfort in the idea of some eastern goddesses.

There was a point when I realized that I understood very little of the world outside TC as my entire historical, geographical, political, religious, and philosophical worldview was saturated with Mormonism.
I had to do the full Cartesian and strip away everything I thought I knew and build back from the ground up.
I watched, read, and listened to tv, books, articles, and podcasts on every subject I could think of to build a working knowledge of the real world so far.
I learned about my own biases and those held by the ones presenting the knowledge I was seeking and taught myself how to source reliable information and how to spot the sus. It felt like the first 30 yrs of my life were spent in a knowledgless desert and I had finally found a cool, endless fountain.

To date, have found peace and happiness in a self-determined life and the anger and betrayal I first felt when I discovered the truth about the church has cooled to minor annoyance and pity for those trapped in it. It got hard to maintain that anger when I could finally see just how incredibly insignificant the church and its members are.

There are many movies that one can cite when trying to explain what it's like to come out of such an intense paradigm, but the one I find most apt is Pleasantville. The world inside the church is like living in black and white where all is orderly and sanitized.
I was living on a favored and protected sphere in a structured and predictable universe with the promise of eternal salvation if I just did as I was told.
Now I live on a tiny, insignificant blue dot hurtling through a wild, perilous, cosmos filled with fascinating mysteries.
There is no longer anyone coming to save us and this one blip of consciousness is all we get and that makes our lives unimaginably precious.
This world and this life are full of colour, beauty, and uncertainty with so much left to discover and explore. I no longer fear learning things that conflict with my worldview because my worldview is no longer rigid and brittle, but can expand and evolve as I learn and grow.

I no longer live my life believing that it is all an ultimate test to receive the ultimate reward or avoid the ultimate punishment.

So if you are just waking up from a life spent in the church and you are feeling wholly unmoored, your compass of life is spinning wildly and you feel betrayed, abandoned, hurt, and angry, let me make you a promise: It gets so much better. It really does.

The feelings you are having now are completely normal. Even if you are oscillating between exhilaration and despair, that is normal. It will pass and you will find equilibrium and purpose again.

You will probably have a massive existential crisis and it might feel like you were halfway across a tightrope to suddenly realize that there is no safety net. I promise that you will find your balance and the strength to find your next step.

You will find a way to cultivate a sense of confidence in yourself and the ability to navigate this new paradigm. You will also falter and fail at times, but you will learn and improve. Your faith in yourself will grow every time you get back up.

You may also feel more alone than you ever have before. It's hard to be without a tribe, so you build a new one.

You will probably need to get to know yourself and find out who you really are and who you want to be, not unlike a second adolescence.

You will learn to give yourself the credit for your accomplishments and to take responsibility for your failures. They will no longer be blessings or tests.

And one day you will wake up and realize that you have not thought about anything church or religion-related in days, then weeks, then months. It will almost feel like another life or a bad dream.

There will be a kind of peace that you didn't know before, and there will be happiness and contentment that comes from having faith in yourself and mastery over your own destiny.

Your life will no longer be at the mercy of a capricious being that becomes insulted or sad that you didn't wear the correct underwear.

You may still choose to believe in a god, but even that relationship will change to something more reasonable.

And someday that will come far more quickly than you realize, you will be counseling or comforting another soul as they struggle to free themselves from the mire and you will tell them to hang in there and that it gets so much better.

Beautiful. Touched me where I really live.

Thanks for sharing that.

You definitively were not a good fit for Mormon conformity.

I enjoyed reading about your authentic life. When it comes to following your bliss, you get it. Your kids are lucky to have you as a mom!

Good luck with your jewelry business. Your family sounds creative and willing to live your best lives.

Thank you for that.

No, I was not a good fit at all though I about killed myself trying to be, as I'm sure many here can relate.

When, at age 30, I first asked the question "What if it's not true?" one of the first things I felt was an immense relief and a huge weight lifting. That feeling didn't last, unfortunately. Just too much to unpack from there.
But I do think I probably had an easier time of it than those who felt very comfortable within that paradigm or someone who only discovered the truth much later in life. My heart hurts for them.

I am often amazed at the profound changes that we exmo's go through as we evolve beyond the past. Your story is wonderful, and heart wrenching all at the same time. Going through a faith crisis really exposes our true friends... and enemies.


HH =)

it's unfortunate how often it's the people you should be able to rely on most that have the sharpest knives.

While all families have their own sort of mythology, it's mo families that seem to be the most devastatingly creative in inventing stories for their family members, especially the wayward ones.

It made it easier to let them go when I realized that they had no idea who I was and no desire to find out. They delighted in every difficulty and challenge because they thought it was the lord trying to get me and the kids back to the gospel. So of course they weren't going to raise a finger to help me through any of it.

Even my partner's JW family still talks to him and helps him from time to time despite the admonishments of their faith not to do so. As frustrating as he finds their religious counsel, I remind him that it could always be worse.

Beautiful post. It's really fitting for many people who have been raised in a church, and left it -- but especially so for a high-control church like the Mormon faith.

"The church and its dogma so saturate one's life that you are left without much that isn't church related to talk about."


We left the same year. And one year later, I went to stay for a couple of days with my favorite uncle and his wife. I was shocked how little they had to say. They didn't know that I wasn't mormon. And every conversation was about callings etc. My previous favorite uncle became just another boring humble bragger. Which of course, he must have always been. I just hadn't noticed.

I agree, life is so much better out!
And so much better being estranged from my family too.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/14/2022 09:46PM by DNA.