My whole family is deeply involved in the church. On my mother and father's side, one ancestor was an apostle under Brigham Young, another was part of the Martin Handcart Company, and another gave up the gold mines of California in the California gold rush to head back to Utah and continue building up Zion. Both sides of our extended family have most of the members we know in Utah, and so family reunions are always held there. My father's side tends to be humble, extremely dedicated to the church, fun-loving, and hard-working. My mother's side is full of lawyers, artists, and musicians, and tended to rub elbows with church elite like Spencer W. Kimball. I personally do not know any member of my extended family well who is not a dedicated member of the church, although I have heard of one relative and met him once, when we were both outside the temple for my brother's wedding. I was not endowed yet as a girl who didn't go on a mission, and he was unworthy (my mom said). I liked him a lot at the time though, and wondered why I hadn't met him before. I now regret how the family has treated him like such a black sheep and ostracized him for not meeting church standards. I'm pretty sure it's hurt his feelings a lot.

As a child and teenager, I was an idealistic imaginative type and loved to read. I loved reading church books like the Teachings of Joseph Smith, The Miracle of Forgiveness, and Jesus the Christ when I was 12-16 years old, and singing songs like "From Cumorah's Hill" (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke-DUSBtWQk) that I had on a collection of church music CDs. I was a real loner and I didn't like to be around people my own age much, but I loved studying religion and politics, looking up to great heros in the church and in American history. I liked to talk to older people in the church who knew a lot about church doctrine and life in general. I loved being involved in political events and trying to make a difference. I took church doctrine about morality etc. very very seriously, and so I knew next to nothing about sex all through high school and BYU. I never made it past dating stage with a boy, so I still knew nothing by the time I graduated with a B.S. and got my first real job and moved to another state far away from my parent's home.

Despite my patriarchal blessing saying that marriage and family would be a big part of my life, I didn't have much of a desire to do it, and I was never particularly good with attracting boys that I also was very attracted to. I guess I am a pretty enough girl, at least I've been told I am, but my social skills are somewhat lacking, and I never fit in with my peers. So I cut my losses and most of the time sjust focused on school first and then my first real job. A year into my job, and I was 25 wondering if since I hadn't gotten married I should go to the temple and get out my endowments.

Although I did reasonably ok getting myself to go to church through BYU, going to church and sitting there started to grate on me when I was on my own. Maybe it was something about the wards I was going to. In any case, I decided to go online and see if anyone else hated going to church. I found that there were definitely other people who did. This made me feel just a little distrustful of the church, and I decided if I was going to make sacred covenants in the temple, I shouldn't just take everyone's word that they would be all right for me. I decided to look up their wording to think about them in advance, so I wouldn't be surprised in the temple. Making promises I can keep is very important to me, and I didn't want to feel socially pressured inside the temple to make promises I didn't want to make or couldn't honestly keep. I'd been told before that people who have made endowment promises are held to a higher standard and get worse penalties should they ever fail at keeping a standard than people who never made any promises. I had taken two Temple Preparation classes at BYU and been told how sacred and important the promises were. I didn't want to make them lightly.

But as soon as I read the temple ceremony and saw pictures of the costumes people wear, I started laughing. It was like the "snapping" moment Steven Hassan described in a talk "Releasing the Bonds" about when he realized the Unification Church was a cult(see http://exmormonfoundation.org/audio2008.html). I was amazed my parents could belong to the church and do all this silly temple stuff without realizing how silly it was. After that, I read voraciously for a year. I read a lot of material from utlm.org, looked up sections of the Journal of Discourses and other source material, listened to most of exmormonfoundation.org conferences, listened to concernedchristian.org, read Steven Hassan's book Combatting Cult Mind Control and Releasing the Bond, and watched and listened to most of Shawn McCraney's archived shows from his tv show Heart of the the Matter. I probably read over a hundred ex-mormon biography stories and they helped a lot. It added up to a lot of sleepless nights for me. It all helped my mind come to understand how and why a cult like the Mormon church can exist and cause very good, devoted people to work so hard for it, even when it is hurting them and their family. I came to understand the psychological reasons for the way cult members can say hurtful things to their friends and family and do hurtful things, all in the name of working for God. The splinters in my mind and heart from something feeling wrong about the church all my life was finally gone. I know why it felt wrong now. Removing the splinters hurt, but it was so wonderful and freeing to have them gone.

However, though it makes sense to my mind and sense of reason, emotionally I still don't understand how Joseph Smith or the current leaders of the church could do something so cruel to so many people. My family gave so much to help the church, crossing the plains, working in callings, giving tithing, missionary work, and more. They couldn't even be honest with us about church history in return. I never knew about the extent of Joseph Smith's polygamy, or that his destruction of the printing press in Nauvoo to keep people from learning about polygamy may have been the biggest cause of his death, not the fact that he was a leader of a strange and quirky religion. America was reasonably tolerant of quirky religions. There were many others like the Quakers who were allowed to live in peace because they didn't break the law or entice people's daughters into polygamy. As I have read more about controlling organizations, such as religious cults and political dictatorships, they do many unethical things, but the biggest symptom of an unhealthy organization is constant lying and evasion of the truth. It creates a false reality, which then conflicts with reality in people's minds, causing mental instabilities as their rational minds try to find answers to resolve the conflict (cognitive dissonance). David Smith, Joseph Smith's son, was lied to and told his dad wasn't a polygamist, and went mad and spent the rest of his life in an insane asylum when he found out the truth. He is one example of the soul wrenching cruelty of lying to people from a position of trust, and the wasted years of life for no good reason.

I don't emotionally understand why my family wouldn't listen to me more when I tried to tell my parents and my brother about the truth about the church. I have read many stories of people who had similar problems with their family listening, but it still amazes me. I thought they would trust me enough to read the material at least, but it seems that even reading it is viewed as such a huge threat to their testimonies, and by extension, their souls. Over time, my parents have listened a little bit more, although they are still very hard core Mormon. My brother has been the worst, very judgmental, implying I'm a liar and hypocritical and on a dark path, and talking in a very arrogant priesthood way. I looked up to him and sought his approval all through my childhood, so this has been extremely hurtful to me. It has been three years since I left the church, and I still feel very hurt. I think it has something to do with my idealistic nature and how much I looked up to my heroes in the church and in my family.

What has been the most comforting thing though, is that it has allowed at me to look at people outside the church in an entirely different way. The outside world is a much friendlier place than I thought. Working a state away from home in the "real world" with "nonmembers" was easier and friendlier than going to church with the mostly snotty and shallow girls in my home ward when I was growing up. I have started to learn a lot more about basic street smarts, common courtesy, and real friendship by making friends with normal people outside the church. For the first time in my life, I don't feel like I am always a loner or want to be alone, because there are a lot more people I genuinely like to be with, who care about me even when I say the wrong thing or am not perfect.

Thanks for all the other stories that have been shared here. I truly appreciate it.