Hello!

We’re sliding toward the end of Season 11, and we hope you’ve enjoyed our discussions about Big Ideas. Our summer break will arrive just in time to give you an opportunity to pick up any episodes you missed! We’re looking forward to some down time to refuel and plan our next moves. If you’re wondering whether there will be a Season 12 … the answer is yes! No precise date yet for when regular episodes resume, but watch this space for updates and bonuses over the summer.

In the meantime, here are a few items to keep in mind—

Upcoming:

6/2 Ep. 266: Big Ideas | Sabbath—No matter how you mark the day (or don’t), we hope you’ll enjoy exploring this concept with us!

6/4 Say More | Blakelee Edition

6/9 Ep. 267: What Do You Say | Listener Edition 4

6/11 Worthy Stuff | Susan Edition

6/12 Friday Live Chat | 10:00 am Mtn

6/16 Ep. 268: Season 11 Wrap | We’ll revisit a few of this season’s episodes and ideas … in conversation with some of you!

6/18 Say More: At Last She Writes It | 2

6/19 Friday Live Chat | 10:00 am Mtn

6/25 ALSSI News

Looking ahead:

7/10 Friday Live Chat | 10:00 Mtn

7/16 ALSRI Book Club, 7:00 pm Mtn

7/21 ALSSI Live Event, Salt Lake City 🥳

One more shout-out for our Substack Chat:

What’s our Substack chat? It’s a dedicated conversation space for paid subscribers—full of amazing ALSSIers—where we talk about everything. Our chat is available 24/7! We’d love to add you to the group—you can find info about subscribing here. (A paid subscription is also a great way to support the podcast!)

Two Fridays per month, we host a Live Chat on Zoom. We talk about episodes and/or other timely topics. These conversations are recorded for chat members to enjoy later if you’re unable to join us.

Questions?
Want the community, but can’t afford to subscribe?
Send us an email at atlastshesaidit@gmail.com and Katie will hook you up, no explanations required!

Now … about that Live Event—

This time we’re planning something a little different from our previous events—C & S will do some of the talking, but mostly we want everyone to come prepared for an evening of cake and conversation! There’ll be plenty of time for catching up with old friends and making new ones (hint: we’ll be playing What Do You Say).

Watch for registration info to hit your inbox about 2 weeks from now.

And what about At Last She Read It?

Our summer book club meeting will be here before you know it! Attendees voted at the last meeting, and Lilith, by Nikki Marmery, is our next selection for July’s discussion.

From Goodreads: “Lilith is the story of the first woman, who was expelled from Paradise for disobedience. In this retelling of the Hebrew myth that justified and explained woman’s subjection to man, Lilith will have her revenge—however long it takes. In the Garden of Eden, at the beginning of time, an outrageous lie is born: that women are inferior.”

Whether or not you get a chance to read the book, we hope you’ll plan to join us for the conversation!

Many thanks!

We asked for donations, and you came through! No surprise—this community rocks!—but as always we’re humbled by the generous response. A thousand thanks for every form of support you provide the ALSSI project. We hope we return the favor by providing something you need, whether through the podcast, the voices of Say More, or the online conversations.

Happy Summer!

Warmly—or hotly, depending on where this finds you, ☀️
Cynthia, Susan,
and the ALSSI Team

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Vocation at its deepest level is “something I can’t not do, for reasons I’m unable to explain to anyone else and don’t fully understand myself, but are nonetheless compelling.” This description from Parker Palmer frames the journey of chaplain Jenny Richards. She says, “If there is an openness to life, then I think vocation is where we meet our desires and our love of God. They meet, and if I think it’s something I can’t not do, that’s very compelling. And it’s terrifying.” In Episode 265, Jenny joins Cynthia and Susan for a conversation about the remarkable path she’s walking, and how she came to be on it.

Notes & Quotes:

Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) in Utah: https://www.ecsutah.org/aboutcpe
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, by Anne Lamott
Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, by Parker J. Palmer
This is Why I Find Pema Chodron So Essential, Pema Chodron with Ezra Klein, The Ezra Klein Show
Women’s Uncommon Prayers: Our Lives Revealed, Nurtured, Celebrated, by Elizabeth Geitz

"My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land, and in this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear.” —Anne Lamott

“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.” —Parker Palmer

Vocation at its deepest level is, "This is something I can't not do, for reasons I'm unable to explain to anyone else and don't fully understand myself but that are nonetheless compelling.” —Parker Palmer

Power
“When she learned that she
Didn’t have to plug into
Someone or something
Like a toaster into a wall

When she learned that she
Was a windmill and had only
To raise her arms
To catch the universal whisper
And turn
turn
turn

She moved.

Oh, she moved.
And her dance was a marvel.”
—Carol Lynn Pearson

For Women
Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver, Source of all that is and that shall be, Father and Mother of us all, Loving God, in whom is heaven: Awaken us with your Holy Spirit,
and preserve us from the temptation to stay comfortably asleep;
encourage us to proclaim our authenticity,
and preserve us from a false accommodation to the world;
breathe into us your breath of life, stir us up into activity,
and preserve us from the inertia that leads to complicity in our own
oppression;
open our eyes to the promises in creation, open our hearts to the love and example of Jesus, open our ears to the persistent whisperings of the Holy Spirit, and preserve us from a sense-deadened existence;
give us the confidence to engage technology
and preserve us from regarding it with fear or with too much trust;
remind us that we are made in your image, that we, too, are creators, lovers, decision makers;
instill in us the pride of our heritage,
and preserve us from excessive, crippling humility.
Above all, gracious God,
give us the grace to hear your word to us and the courage to claim and act on that inner authority; preserve us from the tyranny of the external authority that comes from the world.
Amen.
—The Reverend Margaret Cunningham (from A New Zealand prayer book)

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Many thanks to listener Annie Colón for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

Listen to Episode 265

JR: I also want to just include that when we spoke of the divine rescuer, I felt like I was hitting the limits of what was possible within our faith tradition. This call to chaplaincy has also opened this ability that is rare for a woman in the church to offer spiritual counsel to men. And as a chaplain, there is this sense of anonymity.

I’m not a therapist that’s going to follow up with further visits, and I’m not clergy, but I’m someone that can represent a spiritual authority and a space in which men and women have both confessed and had me hold space with them in their existential worries and fears. And LDS men, non-LDS men, men of no faith, I have encountered all of these types of individuals that need a spiritual authority to talk them through things.

And that’s a rare opportunity for an LDS woman.

SH: Hello, I’m Susan Hinkley.

CW: And I’m Cynthia Winward.

SH: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today’s episode is Let Your Life Speak, a conversation with Jenny Richards. Hello, Jenny.

JR: Hi, Susan and Cynthia.

CW: Welcome. We’re so glad to have you.

JR: Thank you.

SH: Yeah, we’re pretty excited for this conversation, and our listeners are soon going to understand why we are so excited because it’s gonna be awesome.

CW: Yes. Yes.

SH: But we want to start by letting you take a minute or two just to give us a little introduction, maybe something to give some context to why we’re having this conversation today and let our listeners know anything about yourself that you would like them to know.

JR: All right. Well, thank you for having me on. I have been an avid listener for all six years.

CW: Wow.

JR: And you’ve been companions along my own journey, which we’ll talk about a little bit today. So I am coming to you from the hub, Salt Lake City. And I am currently a hospital chaplain intern, and we’ll talk a little bit about the road that has led me there.

But I grew up right here in Salt Lake. My musical pursuits held me for my first half of life. I did an undergrad and a master’s at Juilliard in piano.

SH: Wow.

JR: I married my high school sweetheart, and we moved to New York to start our marriage, which is highly recommended. We have lived on the East Coast for about 13 years as he was doing medical school and residency, and I was keeping the lights on, teaching piano, and playing gigs.

We have four kids. We have two sons, two daughters, exceptional humans, all on their own journeys.

And I would say that there are moments in life that open you up to new understanding, new direction, and expansion of faith. And I’ve had several of those that we can talk about. But, I continue to pursue greater knowledge, greater understanding.

I went back to school and got a master’s in Theological Studies at the Franciscan School of Theology. and in a crazy pivot, I am about to start at Duke Divinity School this fall-

SH: Wow!

JR: for an M.Div. So, life is so weird. Maybe the last thing I’ll say in an introduction is I really have this obsession with inflatable dinosaur costumes.

And any chance, any chance I have to either wear one or encourage my loved ones to wear one, it is the ultimate source of joy in my life.

CW: This just gives me the best visual in my head right now of -

SH: That’s pretty good.

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Spiritual Blocks

by Mary Cox

the audio included with this piece is a direct audio recording from when the talk was given

The last time I spoke in church, I talked about how

I was rebuilding my spiritual tower. Some might call that deconstruction. Some might call that faith expansion. Some might call is a faith journey or a faith crisis. Whatever you want to call it is up to you. I call it my spiritual tower. Since then, I have been listening to my heart and depending not on certainty, but on agency and trust in my own relationship with my God Parents. I’ve had the gift of using doubt as a guide and defining faith as flexible. The process of rebuilding my spiritual tower is a journey that is messy, complicated, frustrating, but it’s also so, so beautiful. I want to talk about 4 of my 5 foundational blocks in my spiritual tower: mercy, grace, love, and Jesus. It’s all I really have, and it’s enough.

Because music means something to me and because it’s how I feel the God power inside of me, I’m going to use it today as I talk.

Bryan Stevenson, author of “Just Mercy” states that, “Mercy is not earned. Mercy is not passive. Mercy is necessary. Mercy begins with recognizing a shared humanity with every human on the earth.” That is the difficult part, isn’t it?

But mercy is only mercy without judgment attached to it in any way. As Bryan Stevenson says, “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” Let mercy guide us as we strive to be with our fellow humans in “our one wild and precious life.”

I think we often misunderstand grace. Some might not even really believe that grace has the power to heal, the power to save. Grace is so powerful. Grace is an amazing gift from our God Parents that to me says, “We love you. We know this is complicated. We trust your path.” Like the song says, Grace is amazing. It covers our self-inflicted pain, when others hurt us, when we are burdened, and when our patterns of behavior harm others. Grace will lead us to a place where we can find ourselves, settle into presence, and breathe knowing we can keep moving forward. Grace tells us we are enough.

I could sing a thousand songs about love, but instead, I used my voice to write a poem…

In Jesus’ own words: “Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart… AND Love your neighbor as yourself.”

This scripture really has three parts. The first is to love our God Parents—they don’t require our love to be ok—they don’t NEED us to do that. This makes it so much easier to practice love by loving them and it’s such a gift. Figure it out on us, they said—we can take the messiness and the complicated parts. We won’t be hurt by any love you can or can’t show. Try on love. Give love. Practice love. In my mind, the practice of this love is to teach us how to do the next part of the commandment—love your neighbor.

Honestly, we aren’t really doing this well as a whole of society. We just aren’t. I think it’s because we truly fail to SEE our neighbor. But if we, as members of this church, believe our own stuff, it shouldn’t be that tricky. It’s pretty clear, “ALL are alike unto God—black and white, bond and free, male and female; Jew and Gentile.” There is nothing I can say here today that can persuade you to look at that scripture, “ALL are alike unto God,” add the “love your neighbor” part, and simply—do better. Love for your neighbor, whomever that may be, has to come from YOUR soul, YOUR heart.

The third part is “as yourself.” We never talk about this part. We skip over it as though it’s not a vital part of the commandment. WHY? You matter to our God Parents. You need to matter to yourself. I have myself as part of the 5 blocks of my spiritual tower. How can we really build the types of relationships we need here on earth without first recognizing the importance of ourselves? I choose to love myself as messy, complicated, doubtful, uncertain, worthy, and enough. I believe it might be too difficult to love your God Parents and your neighbors if you don’t love yourself first.

I just don’t think Jesus asks us to hustle for our worth or hustle for love. “Come unto me. Learn of me. Rest in me,” He said. That’s His request—without hustle. He also doesn’t require perfection of any sort, nor is there a demand to be happy. Weary, worn, and sad, it says—Jesus wants us that way too. It’s enough for Him.

Here are a couple of questions to ponder: Does your spiritual tower have enough blocks? What might be missing? Does your tower have too many blocks? Are there blocks that don’t really belong to you—that might have been borrowed from your childhood or a parent? What if you gave yourself permission to use your full agency and truly listen to your heart—could you remove a block or two that was no longer part of your belief system or might actually be harming you? If you looked at faith as flexible and at certainty as not necessary, could you move a few of the blocks around, rename a few, and rebuild a foundation that felt more sure and sturdy for you?

I believe that building your spiritual tower is not something that is ever a finished product. We don’t have that kind of control over our lives. And honestly, the gift of agency tells us that we will have the privilege of continuing to shift, change, and grow for eternity. Of course we will. Plants adapt to the weather. Animals rebuild homes in new habitats. Adult development in physical, psychological, and faith-based ways have stages that we will continue to move through for the rest of our lives. Change is natural. Growth is good.

I choose the block of mercy because mercy is how to truly see others. I choose to believe wholeheartedly in a grace that tells me I am enough. I choose love, because love is the answer. In love—I choose myself because I matter most. The block of Jesus is my example of how I actually do mercy, grace, and love in “my one wild and precious life.”**

**Editor’s note: Mary introduced us to her concept of a spiritual block tower in ALSSI Ep. 180, and those insightful words found their way into our permanent lexicon. If you missed this conversation, here’s a reminder to check it out. Thanks again, Mary! —S.

Different Paths

by Amy Call

Finding The Divine Outdoors in Nature

by Maddie Victoria

I had an experience on a trip to the Middle East

a few years ago. I often revisit that experience as I go through my faith journey and deconstruction. My experience is as follows.

I was in the Wadi Rum Desert in the country of Jordan with the warmth of the sun beating down on me, riding a camel as I was looking around and taking in the beauty of red sand and red peaks and cliffs that arose up around me. I felt that the same being that created these red rock cliffs, peaks and red sand is the same being that made me and took the time to provide me a world that I can explore and learn and grow in, and thrive in as the woman that I am. Even if it took me 20+ years to find myself as a woman. I learned that every experience, thought and question I have had shown me that I am enough and that I am worth it even if the world around me doesn’t think I am worth it because of who I am and the past life that I have lived.

Knowing that being in nature and outside is my sanctuary where I can commune with my Heavenly Mother and Heavenly Father is so healing to me. I see my Heavenly Parents more outside and in nature than I do in a brick-and-mortar building.

Nature and being outdoors ground me and connect me to the earth and the love that I have experienced time and time again as I open myself up to seek answers and guidance from my Heavenly Parents. They are patient with me when I don’t get it the first, second, third time, or however many times it takes me to realize what They are trying to tell me or show me. Sometimes all I need to do is look up and notice the beautiful world that is around me. Sometimes it is as simple as seeing the Northern Lights with my own eyes in the middle of the Salt Lake Valley.

Proverbs 3:5-6 is a verse of scripture that I hold near and dear to my heart:

I am more at peace with where I am as a person, and with my faith. I feel like my deconstruction from the Church will be an ongoing process since it is intertwined with me because of where I live in the world and that I was an all-in member for so long. It isn’t easy being a member of the church who is in a marginalized community. To be honest, it can be scary but all I have to do is look up and be willing to open myself to hear what I need to hear when I need to hear it.

Creativity and Worship—A Cancer Survivor’s Story

by Ruby Harris

When I was twelve, my parents woke me in the middle of the night

and told me through tears that my lab results were back: I had leukemia. We had to go to Primary Children’s hospital right away. My life turned upside down in an instant. My upcoming math test and band concert didn’t matter anymore. Now my only goal was to survive.

I was thrown into a world of procedures, pills, and waiting rooms. Chemotherapy was effective, but at a high cost. It took three years of my life and gave me a bone condition that made my ankle joints collapse. The year after I finished treatment I had four reparative ankle surgeries.

I’m 17 now and cancer free!! The effects of the chemo are long term, so I use a wheelchair when I’m out and about to minimize my chronic pain. I’m really happy with where I’m at now! I’m able to devote more energy to my art and spend more time with my loved ones, which has been a huge blessing. Over the years, I’ve turned to art again and again to find peace and healing from my struggles.

One of my spiritual gifts is visualization. In some of the darkest times in my life, comforting spiritual images came into my mind: me leaning on Christ to walk; Jesus washing my swollen scarred feet with His scarred hands. I treasured these revelations because they felt so personal and tailored to me. It was one of my favorite ways to “Hear Him.”

It wasn’t until this year that I understood them, however. I had just experienced some traumatic religious experiences and deep spiritual manipulation. The pain was excruciating and all consuming. I had numbed my spiritual intuition to “keep the peace” and I didn’t know how to get it back. I felt powerless and forgotten.

Then, I listened to a podcast episode about the Divine Feminine (by the In Her Image podcast, I highly recommend it). It changed my life. The world opened up to me and I finally felt free. Embracing Heavenly Mother helped me reclaim my agency. The day after I learned about Her, I started having beautiful images come to my mind multiple times a day, and they were all depicting Heavenly Mother. I realized that they weren’t how I “Hear Him” but actually how I “Hear Her.” I was so touched that even before I knew who She was, She was reaching out and comforting me. Now that I was aware of Her presence, I felt like She was calling me to create—so, I did.

It changed my life and how I worship. Art helped me to heal the deep spiritual wounds inflicted upon me. I drew Heavenly Mother’s comfort and support, and depicted Her in a variety of ways so that everyone could see themselves in Her. I try to push past beauty standards by showing the glory and divinity of an unfiltered body. Through this journey, I felt more of Her love and influence in my life. As I grow into a more independent phase of my life, I look forward to depicting that She is more than just someone to take care of children for eternity. She is a goddess.

Our Heavenly Parents are the ultimate creators. If we are truly to become like Them, then we must also learn to create. Parenthood is a beautiful way the gospel celebrates creation, but it can be so much broader than that. For those who aren’t in a parenting stage of their lives and for those who never will be, creation is still an option for them. I personally lean into this through painting, sketching, and singing, but there is no “right” way to be creative. You could garden, you could host events, you could write, you could fix cars, you could bake, you could sew, you could serve, you could connect, you could heal. Creativity is accessible to everyone. It is literally in our DNA.

I believe that all of those examples could bring someone closer to God. Intentionality in creation is what makes it a spiritual process, not the finished product. I incorporate this into my art practice through ritual. Every time I sit down to draw or paint something, I say a prayer that They will guide my hands. Then I put on my favorite lotion and my playlist of songs that remind me of the Divine Feminine. This has turned art-making into my favorite form of worship. Even the interests that we view as secular can be expanded and magnified if we invite God in.

I think that agency is a concept more similar to creativity than we realize. If we truly believe that our agency increases as we become more like our Heavenly Parents, then it has to be more than just choosing between the covenant path and the adversary. Creativity has been my favorite way to expand my agency. I get to make decisions that shape how my art comes into the world. It is incredibly empowering and has deepened confidence in myself and God.

Creativity is a beautiful form of expression, release, and growth. I know it can be intimidating at first, but I invite you to try out some form of spiritual creativity and just see how it goes. The quality of the finished product doesn’t matter nearly as much as how you feel making it. You could start out with coloring in a coloring book and your experience can be just as profound.

Heaven’s Lost and Found

by Carly Carter

The Powerful Influence of My Heavenly Mother

by Stephanie Snell Povey

One evening in the fall of 1996, I returned home

from the hospital having had another dilation and curettage (D&C) after losing my third baby in five years. Bravely I tried to resign myself to be happy and content with the two beautiful daughters my husband and I had been blessed with. Yet, I felt a constant sense there was one more child for us. Many doubts and negative thoughts ran through my mind during this period of time.

“I must not understand how to receive inspiration from God.”

“The spirit of my unborn child must not want to come to our family.”

And the most destructive of all,

“God is withholding this blessing because He doesn’t trust me with any more children!”

One particularly discouraging day after reading a conference talk about how Heavenly Father knows every burden and trial we will have to endure, I found myself saying right out loud, “How can Heavenly Father really understand what I’m going through? He is a man and has never gone through this!” My sharpness shocked me! Did those blasphemous words really come out of my mouth? I felt guilty about my thoughts and unworthy to pray.

A few days later a friend and her husband came to see me and bring a meal. We visited for a while, then as they prepared to leave, they asked if I would like a blessing?

I don’t recall everything that was said in that blessing, but a powerful promise was given that changed my life. “Rest assured your Heavenly Parents are aware of you and your Heavenly Mother understands what you are going through.” Immediately I knew this was exactly what I needed to hear, and the spirit witnessed to me, “I have a Heavenly Mother and I am created in Her image. She understands everything I will ever go through!”

The veil thinned that day and my mind expanded. “Could it be,” I pondered, “that throughout the course of my many life experiences—as a confused nine year old girl, a discouraged teenage young woman, a homesick sister missionary, and a sometimes overwhelmed wife and mother—that the strength, inspiration and comfort came from both of my Heavenly Parents?”

The answer is YES!

The fact that we do not pray to Mother in Heaven in no way discredits Her position. Just as adoring and appreciating Her is in no way diminishing the love and appreciation I feel for my Father in Heaven.

As I have studied and prayed, I can only conclude that God consists of an exalted man and an exalted woman.

We have learned things about God our Eternal Mother, but there is still so much to know.

Questions such as:

• Why don’t we hear more about Mother in Heaven from our current leaders?

• Am I alone in my yearning for more understanding of the Divine Feminine?

President Russell M. Nelson has stated that the restoration has only begun and that it is our responsibility to receive revelation and guidance for our lives. This leads me to believe that as we long to know more of our glorious Mother in Heaven, ancient knowledge will be returned and restored to us.

Great peace comes to me when I pray daily, always addressing God the Father, yet visualizing both of my Heavenly Parents listening to me as I kneel before Them and pour out my heart. These are among the most insightful conversations imaginable.

I must not let feelings of doubt, inferiority or inequality discourage me. Great hope and encouragement come when I remember who I am and where I came from. Heavenly Mother is a goddess and a priestess. She is a perfect, glorified being and I am Her apprentice. My greatest aspiration is to become like Her someday.

I was correct in sensing there was one more child to join our family. In 1999 in a miraculous way, I gave birth to our youngest daughter. My earthly parents were serving a mission in the Philippines at the time and were not able to be with me, but I felt the presence of my Heavenly Parents and especially my Mother in Heaven.

I know my Heavenly Mother lives. What comfort this knowledge gives.

Say More: At Last She Writes It is thrilled to continue a series called, “Faith in Focus: ADHD and the Mormon Mind,” by Brittney Walker.

This series explores how ADHD shapes the faith experience for women raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from the early moralization of difference, to the exhaustion of trying to measure up, to the courage of rebuilding identity after leaving. Each essay stands alone but together they trace the arc from misunderstanding to self-understanding.

The goal isn’t to critique the church, but to name what so many women feel but can’t articulate: that our struggles aren’t spiritual defects. They are neurological differences met with impossible expectations.

The following essay, “Rebuilding with a Different Brain” is the fourth and final installment of the series. Many thanks to Brittney for her time and generosity in allowing ALSSI to publish this series

Rebuilding with a Different Brain

by Brittney Walker

For a while, I was living two lives at the same time.

I wasn’t intending to deceive. I had started building a new life while the old life was still running in the background … fully operational, demanding everything it had always demanded. New job, new thinking, ideas I had been quietly circling for years. Coexisting with the old.

I didn’t notice it at first. I was too busy. New versions of myself I was tentatively trying on. The way you try on something in a dressing room and keep the tags on, just in case.

But underneath all of that, I was aiming for Perfect Mormon Mother. Perfect Wife. Supportive Friend. Still showing up to every obligation. Managing every expectation. Performing every role that had been assigned to me before I ever asked myself whether I wanted any of it. Nobody asked me to keep doing it. I just kept doing it. Dropping it would mean something. If I couldn’t do it all, there was a ready explanation waiting. I didn’t have the Spirit anymore. I was being led away. I had turned my back on God. The dropped ball. The exhaustion. The dinner I failed to make. Those would be the evidence.

So I didn’t drop anything.

I just ran faster.

Always out of breath. Always behind. Standing in front of a wall of arrows pointing in every direction at once. Knowing I needed to move but unable to choose because I needed to do all of them simultaneously. I performed my way through the days and collapsed at night. Performed. Collapsed. Performed. Collapsed.

It took me a long time to understand what was actually happening. Not a faith crisis. Not even an ADHD crisis.

A cognitive load crisis.

Here is something nobody tells you when you start loosening your grip on belief, whether you leave the church entirely or simply begin doing the quiet internal work of separating what’s yours from what was handed to you:

The structure was doing more work than you knew.

Not just the Wednesday night activities, or the Sunday schedule. Or the calling that filled your calendar and gave you a clear answer for what a good person does with her time. All of that, yes. But also something more fundamental. Something that was running so deep you couldn’t see it until it started to disappear.

The church was running your executive function.

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) handles those when the church doesn’t. Decisions. Direction. Identity. It answers the questions that feel small but aren’t: what do I do next, what matters here, who am I in this moment, what does a good life look like. Every human gets a limited amount of juice to their PFC each day. We spend it and then it’s gone, and the next day we start again.

Inside a high-demand religious system, enormous amounts of that work are already done for you before you wake up. Your identity is handed to you. Your schedule. Your values have been ranked. Your future is mapped out. The decisions that remain are small, because the architecture of your life has already been decided.

This isn’t a small thing. It’s an enormous cognitive gift, even when it comes wrapped in control.

When that system loosens, when you start questioning, leaving, or simply deciding to take what works and release what doesn’t, all of that outsourced cognitive work suddenly comes home. The decisions that were already made are now unmade. The schedule that had a shape has to be rebuilt from scratch.

And most of us have no idea that this transfer is happening.

We just know we’re exhausted. Frozen. Unable to move forward in ways that feel disproportionate to what’s actually in front of us. We stare at an ordinary decision and feel paralyzed. We have more freedom than we’ve ever had and less ability to use it than we expected.

We think something is wrong with us.

Nothing is wrong with us.

We are simply running a cognitive load we were never trained to carry. For the first time. Without warning.

For those of us with ADHD, this hits harder.

ADHD is, at its core, an executive function condition. It affects initiation, prioritization, working memory, follow-through. All the systems that generate structure from the inside. The systems that build direction out of nothing. When you have ADHD and you also grew up inside a religious structure that was doing all of this work for you, you probably made it to adulthood without ever fully developing those muscles. The external structure compensated. You showed up. You performed. You even thrived. Because the scaffolding was already there.

And then the scaffolding was gone.

This is the part that goes unnamed in almost every conversation about leaving. The grief, yes. People talk about the grief. The community, the future you thought you were building. That loss is real and it deserves the space it takes up. But underneath it, quieter and more confusing, is this:

You’re the one running it now. You’ve never done it before.

And you don’t know how yet.

That’s not failure. It’s not evidence that leaving was wrong, or that you should go back. It’s a skills gap. A structural one. It has a name and it has a solution and it is not a reflection of your character or your potential.

The scaffolding can be rebuilt.

Not the old scaffolding. Not the borrowed structure that belonged to a system. The version of yourself you were handed before you knew you got a choice.

New scaffolding. Built around you.

When I started learning about this, really learning, not just trying harder, I understood for the first time why every productivity system I had ever tried eventually fell apart. The Franklin Covey binder. The hour-by-hour planner. The Notion dashboard I built with color-coded categories and sub-pages and a view for everything. I would set them up with enormous relief, that feeling of finally having it together, and then stop using them within two weeks (*ahem,* hours).

I thought the problem was discipline. It wasn’t.

The problem was that those systems were designed for a different nervous system. They assumed consistent energy. Linear motivation. The ability to hold a routine steady across days that don’t feel the same. Bodies that don’t feel the same. Circumstances that shift.

My brain doesn’t work that way. Maybe yours doesn’t either.

What actually works, what I have watched work in my own life and in the lives of people I work with, is scaffolding that starts with the body instead of the calendar. Small structures. Sensory cues. Short time containers that reduce ambiguity without requiring endurance. Environmental reminders instead of memory. Relational support instead of isolation and willpower.

The specifics matter less than the principle. Scaffolding is external support that carries cognitive load so your brain doesn’t have to. And this time, unlike the last time, you get to decide what it looks like.

You get to build it around the brain you actually have. The actual, specific brain that’s in your head. Not the one someone else says you should have.

There will be grief in this process. Sometimes people expect the practical part to feel purely practical, and then the grief shows up and it’s disorienting.

You are allowed to grieve the community. The version of yourself who knew who she was without having to figure it out. You are allowed to grieve the simplicity. Even when the simplicity was coercive. Both things are true simultaneously, the harm and the loss, and you don’t have to choose which one to feel.

But grief is not the end of the story.

After the grief, there is something most people didn’t expect: a life that actually fits. Relationships that don’t require you to be smaller. Time that belongs to you. A structure built around your actual values and your actual brain. Not inherited. Not imposed. Not conditional on whether you show up correctly.

That’s not nothing.

For a lot of us, it’s the first time.

Contributors:

Mary Cox

I wear so many hats! My favorite one is the Mary Hat where I get to spend my time relearning about my Self without the lens of systemic expectation and obligation warping my view. I am a musician. I love that my music can be a bridge builder between human souls. I am the mother of four queer children whom I wholly love and I have learned so much from them. I just completed a Bachelor degree in Behavioral Health Sciences at 56, and I am so proud of myself. I live in Mesa, AZ with my amazing husband who is learning and shifting alongside me.

Amy Call

Maddie Victoria

I am an amateur wildlife photographer and I love outdoor activities.

Ruby Harris

I am a Christian artist and cancer survivor.

Carly Carter

I am a paraeducator, mother, and writer who has spent years navigating the tension between deep love for my LDS faith and the feeling of not fully belonging within it. My writing explores faith, identity, longing, and the pull to remain connected even while wrestling with difficult questions.

Stephanie Snell Povey

I am a firm believer that women and girls, men and boys should, without ridicule and shame, have the same rights and opportunities to learn, expand their talents and follow their passions. My best friend and partner for 42 years is husband Reed. Together we have three incredible daughters that have taught us so many things and brought us great joy. I am a lover of many activities, mostly of the outdoor nature, that involve moving my body and enjoying the sun.

I am a retired educator and author of the book, “You Can’t Play, You’re a Girl.” A memoir of my younger years before the passing of Title IX in 1972.

Above all, I am trying my best to be a disciple of Jesus and an apprentice to Divine Parents whom I aspire to become like some day.

Brittney Walker

I am an ADHD coach and writer living in Arizona with my husband and a lively household including six sons, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson. I spent many years trying to be reverent, organized, and less distracting, and now I write about executive function, faith, deconstruction, and rebuilding identity with a different kind of brain. My work explores neurodivergence, belonging, and the slow process of learning to trust yourself. You can find more of my writing at exmoadhdcoach.substack.com

Isn’t this a great space? We hope you’ll share ALSSI with anyone you think might benefit from our community. More voices, please!

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What do you think of when you hear the word ‘myth?’ You might use it to describe the opposite of what is real or factual, maybe a widely held but false belief. However, sacred narratives are also called myths—traditional or symbolic stories explaining the origin of the world, natural phenomena, or cultural customs. Most societies have their own creation myths, for instance. Sound familiar...maybe even like scripture? Yet it would be a profound shift for many Latter-day Saints to consider approaching our scriptures through a mythic lens. In Episode 264, Cynthia and Susan discuss some benefits of changing the way we think about scripture and how it can function to teach spiritual truths and deepen understanding of our human experience.

Notes & Quotes:

ALSSI Ep. 84: Do I Literally Have to Believe That? | A Conversation with Kajsa Berlin-Kaufusi
Where Justice, Love, and Mercy Meet, by Jeffrey R. Holland, 04/2015
Come, Follow Me, by Pres. Russell M. Nelson, 04/2019
Faith After Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do about It, by Brian D. McLaren
After 18 years living with cancer, a poet offers ‘Fifty Entries Against Despair’, Terry Gross with Christian Wiman, Fresh Air, NPR, 12/13/2023
Comedy Sex God, by Pete Holmes
The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It, by Peter Enns
The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campbell & Bill Moyers (Collaborator)
The Body of Christ, by Adam Miller, Times and Seasons, 10/16/2014
The Challenge of Honesty: Essays for Latter-day Saints, by Frances Lee Menlove
The Great Search: Turning to Earth & Soul in the Quest for Healing & Home, by John Philip Newell
How the Bible Actually Works: In Which I Explain How An Ancient, Ambiguous, and Diverse Book Leads Us to Wisdom Rather Than Answers—and Why That’s Great News, by Peter Enns
Why Most People Never Question Their Faith, by Britt Hartley, No Nonsense Spirituality
Why Nephi Killed Laban: Reflections on the Truth of the Book of Mormon, by Eugene England, Dialogue Journal, Vol. 22 No. 3
Interpreting Scripture, Center for Action and Contemplation, 12/24/2015
Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again, by Rachel Held Evans

“...there was an actual Adam and Eve who fell from an actual Eden, with all the consequences that fall carried with it.” —Jeffrey R. Holland

“Adam and Eve, Noah and his wife, Abraham and Sarah, Lehi and Sariah, and all other devoted disciples of Jesus Christ—since the world was created—have made the same covenants with God. They have received the same ordinances that we as members of the Lord’s restored Church today have made: those covenants that we receive at baptism and in the temple.” —Russell M. Nelson

“I was a very loyal person, respectful of authority and always ready to give the benefit of the doubt to my tradition and its spokespeople. But over time, I not only lost confidence in many of the beliefs that gatekeepers required: I lost faith in the gatekeepers themselves and their whole system of using beliefs as markers of belonging. If I was going to be a person of faith, it couldn't be in a community that was obsessed with policing my beliefs. I needed a different understanding of faith entirely, as something beyond beliefs.” —Brian McLaren, (p. 123)

“Christianity has been afflicted with theology. It's a theological religion. And I think that's largely a mistake. I love theology, but I think most of what Christianity ought to be is a poetic religion. It teaches us a way and gives us models of experiencing the world and not directions for how to be in the world.” —Christian Wiman

“My whole religious life, if someone had told me the Bible was a myth, I would have wanted to punch him in the face … because myth had meant ‘not true.’ I think that’s still what it means to most of us.” —Pete Holmes, (p. 151)

“[Myth] is a perfectly fine word—as long as we remember ‘myth’ doesn’t mean ‘silly things we made up while on acid.’ Myths were stories that were part of ancient ways of describing ultimate reality, which is found not here and now but on a higher and more primal plane of existence.” —Peter Enns, (The Bible Tells Me So, p. 119)

“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.” ―Joseph Campbell

“Don’t ask the thin question: ‘Is the Church true?’ Ask the thick question: ‘Is this the body of Christ?’ Is Christ manifest here? Is this thing alive? Does it bleed? This is a load-bearing question. This is a question properly fitted, by Christ himself, to address the existential burn that compels its asking….If your life itself depends on the question, then ask a question that is rich enough to cover the whole rich span of that (messy, unfinished, broken, vulnerable) life.” —Adam Miller

“[Faith] means fidelity to God, faithfulness to God—not to statements about God. I was impressed by an answer given by Steven Shields at a recent Sunstone Symposium when he was asked if he believed in the Book of Mormon. His reply embodied faith as fidelitas: ‘I don’t believe in any book. I believe in the God to whom the Book of Mormon points.’”—Frances Lee Menlove

“Moses’s encounter with the burning bush is not about content. It is about presence. Moses doesn’t come away from the experience with statements about God or with a name for God or a definition of the divine. Nor does he come away with divine prescriptions such as ‘You must do this” or ‘You must believe that.’ ‘The guiding counsel of God,’ says Buber, ‘is simply the divine Presence communicating itself directly to the pure in heart.’ Revelation does not consist of the dispensing of religious commandments from above that are to be etched forever into stone and followed meticulously. Rather, revelation consists of encounter, and ‘the Presence itself,’ says Buber, ‘acts as counsel.’ —John Philip Newell, (p. 57)

“If to believe in God means to be able to talk about God in the third person…then I do not believe in God. But if to believe in God means to be able to talk to God, then I do believe in God.” —Martin Buber, (quoted by John Philip Newell, p. 59)

“I still understand that seeing the Bible this way [as a book of wisdom] might cause some a bit of concern. I get it. After all, if the Bible is God’s word to us but isn’t clear and direct, what good is it? If we see the Bible as a book of wisdom that makes us figure things out rather than dispensing unambiguous divine instruction shaped for our eyes and ears, it may seem like we’re caving in to a ‘less than’ view of the Bible that isn’t of much practical use for anyone—a Plan B because Plan A unraveled. But again, nothing could be farther from the truth. Wisdom is Plan A.” —Peter Enns, (How the Bible Actually Works, pp. 38-39)

“Mystics don't take their texts as if that they are literal. These are just playgrounds and mirrors with which to play. And that's when the world opened up for me again…I could let go of having to claim truth. I just get to explore.” —Britt Hartley

“Myths are messy.” —Carmen Acevedo Butcher, CAC

“When I looked at [the story of Noah] with fresh eyes I thought, ‘oh my… this is a story of genocide where the entire human race is wiped out indiscriminately.’ ….Noah gets off the boat, invents alcohol to get drunk and passes out because he has such unbelievable survivor's guilt and PTSD over the whole thing. And then even God looks at the situation and says, ‘oof, that was a really bad mistake. I'm not going to do that again.’ I had been taught all these theological conundrums like people saying, ‘Does God change God's mind or not?’ Instead of realizing, no, this is a cautionary tale. When people say, ‘Why doesn't God punish the bad people?’ Well, this is what that would look like and it's an unmitigated disaster.” —Mike Petrow, CAC

“These mythological stories can inspire us, but they also can warn us, and it creates this mechanism for social learning.…we can pass on collective societal learning through these stories.” —Jennifer Tompos, CAC

“Or could it be (and this is what, finally, I believe myself) …as others have suggested, God was both teaching and helping Nephi to develop, through this Abrahamic test, into a servant and leader who could be obedient — but that God was also teaching Nephi (and us) the costs and limits of such obedience?” —Eugene England

“The New Testament was written in Greek—a language which Jesus did not understand—and was composed thirty to seventy years after Jesus’ death. We can conclude that the exact words of Jesus were apparently not that important for the Holy Spirit or for us. We have only a few snippets of Jesus’ actual words in his native Aramaic. This should keep us all humble and searching for our own experience of the Risen Christ instead of arguing over Greek verbs and tenses. Literalism is invariably the lowest and least level of meaning.” —Richard Rohr

“It is no more beneath God to speak to us using poetry, proverb, letters, and legend than it is for a mother to read storybooks to her daughter at bedtime. This is who God is. This is what God does.” —Rachel Held Evans

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Many thanks to listener Tara Larson for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

Listen to Episode 264

SH: A myth is like the advice that your elders are giving you around the fire, right?

CW: Mm, Nice.

SH: Myth is a thing that lays out a problem or a life experience for us, and then asks us to assign meaning to the parts of it, or to decipher how the wisdom of the story might apply to us. And how do we do that? Well, we do that by looking at our own experience.

SH: Hello, I’m Susan Hinckley.

CW: And I’m Cynthia Winward.

SH: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today’s episode is Big Ideas: Myth.

CW: We’re going there, Susan.

SH: I know. I’m so excited for this conversation.

CW: What? Oh my gosh, okay, you’re excited and I’m just nervous, like–-

SH: No, it’s gonna be great.

CW: Like nervous laughter, but I can only blame myself because I started the notes today, so I don’t know. And here’s why I’m nervous is, I don’t know. Like so many topics, how long have we been wanting to have this conversation?

SH: Right.

CW: And how many times do we just keep kicking that can down the road? I mean, and we’ve danced around it. Like, let’s go four, four years ago with Kaisa Berlin Kalfusie, episode 84-

SH: Right, right.

CW: Do I Literally Have to Believe That? So we have talked about, you know, literal versus metaphorical, but somehow bringing in the word myth and really dissecting that, I feel like I’m really punching above my weight, and I could be punching into, like, really tender spots for people. So I just kinda need to, needed to have that disclaimer right here.

Okay, here we go.

SH: Okay, but, you’re like a business major.

CW: Yes.

SH: And I’m, like, an English major married to another English major. Like, sometimes my husband actually, like, when we talk about New Year’s resolutions, he’ll say, “I haven’t read my Greek mythology for a while. I think I need to reread Greek mythology.” I mean, this is the house that I have.

CW: I’m so jealous of you two. So jealous.

SH: So I’m just saying that, like, some of your feelings as you approach that word, that big, small word, that big, little word, might be just because you’re not as comfortable in that realm maybe-

CW: 100%.

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May is here! Spring! Heat! Flowers! Leafy trees…

…and also…Mother’s Day. I found myself last weekend explaining to my daughters and their partners why it’s such a fraught holiday. I said, “I am fine if you want to celebrate me as an individual, like a second birthday, but I don’t need my mothering celebrated.” So for the rest of the weekend they’d say, “…

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In Episode 263, Cynthia and Susan ask Stephenie, Blakelee, and Tedi, What Do You Say? It's the fourth installment of ALSSI's conversations-about-everything with wise women. Three randomly selected questions about their memories, insights, and beliefs, are answered through stories of their personal lives and experiences as Latter-day Saints.

Notes & Quotes:

I Want to Be a Mother, Songs for a Mormon Child, by Janeen Jacobs Brady
Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer, by Richard Rohr

“If the veil parts once and you know life is radically okay, then you are—to use the normal Christian language—a child of God. You are in union. There is nothing to prove. Nothing to attain. Everything is already there. It is simply a matter of recognizing and honoring and trusting.” —Richard Rohr, (p. 88 Kindle)

“I look for meaning, but as someone said, ‘If you understand it, things are just as they are. If you don’t understand it, things are just as they are.’ The mystery is to be ready to receive things just as they are and be ready to let them teach us.” —Richard Rohr, (p. 90 Kindle)

“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” —Pema Chodron

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Last fall two seemingly innocuous events occurred in my life.

The first was having my own DNA tested. The second was reading Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality by Matthew Harris. The entire priesthood and temple ban on those with African ancestry is a horrific part of Mormonism. To read in such detail about the racist teachings and policies crafted by LDS church leaders was enlightening and saddening, such as Brigham Young saying that any man who mingles with the ‘seed of Cain’ is “to come forward & have his head cut off & spill his Blood upon the ground”.1 Yikes!

One of those shocking bits of history talked about at great length in the book is the “one-drop rule.” The “one-drop rule” stipulated that any person with even a ‘drop’ of African blood was considered ‘negro’ and thus ineligible for priesthood ordination (if male) and temple rites (if female). I had known about the ‘one-drop rule’ before reading the book, but reading all the awful details about it broke my heart in ways I hadn’t expected.

While knee-deep in Second-Class Saints, I was thrilled to get my DNA results. I texted my kids the above graphic and said, “Look at me, I am a product of humanity!” I was so proud to learn that I am 20% Indigenous Mexican. (Thanks Mom!) I was equally proud to learn I was 26% Celtic/Gaelic (Thanks Dad!) Smaller parts of my DNA showed me to also be Spanish, Portuguese, Jewish, and African—4% African to be exact. Love it…thanks Mom!

Knowing that I had ‘four drops’ of African blood, I realized that my own parents’ temple marriage was against Church policy as my parents were married in 1971, seven years before the priesthood and temple ban ended.

Harris writes:

“But there was another fundamental flaw with the one-drop rule…you couldn’t tell whether someone had African ancestry simply by looking at them. In the nineteenth century, when Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders defined a “negro” as anyone having one drop of African lineage, there were no reliable ways to identify bloodlines. DNA tracing through the Human Genome Project was decades in the future, which made determining lineage imprecise and often wrong. All of this is to say that the one-drop rule underscored a brutal reality that neither Mormon leaders nor Americans in general could grasp. The racial boundaries they sought to enforce were built on fiction.”2

I had ‘four drops’ because my mother had ‘eight drops.’ Obviously my parents were married before DNA tests, but it left me wondering, would The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have scrapped the ‘one-drop rule’ had DNA tests been a possibility? Or would they have leaned harder into the rule had science made it easier to discriminate? So many questions!

At the time, some people (mainly in South Africa and Brazil) were required by the Church to trace their genealogy to prove they had no African ancestry. Or worse, some potential converts were assessed by a white missionary or other white church leader just by looking at them to see how dark they were. I have curly brown hair, brown eyes, and olive skin. But one of my sisters—sharing all the same DNA as my parents—has blonde hair, blue eyes, and light skin. I truly can’t imagine the humiliation of some white man staring at any of us to decide if we ‘pass’ as white.

Harris documents loads of stories about LDS members discovering they had African ancestry, but who ‘passed’ as white. Some looked like me, some like my sister. Sometimes church leaders looked the other way when they knew someone had African ancestry and sometimes they didn’t. Harris writes–

Over the years, [Church leaders] fielded numerous queries from Latter-day Saints who looked White but were classified as Black by the church….These sensitive cases always frustrated the Brethren because the individuals in question wanted to serve missions, marry in the temple, and hold the priesthood, but the church’s restrictive racial boundary made this difficult. The simplest answer was to get rid of the one-drop rule and cut through the bureaucratic gauze that prohibited full church participation. But the Brethren couldn’t see themselves changing decades of tradition. On at least three occasions in their council meetings the apostles discussed—and reaffirmed—that they would keep the one-drop rule.3

My mother and her family experienced plenty of racism as Mexican Latter-day Saints even though they were not required to prove their lineage upon baptism. In Mexico my family was specifically told by the missionaries that they were ‘Lamanite’, a group of people written about in the Book of Mormon, but also a cursed people according to scripture.

One of my mother’s sisters, Herlinda Briones Bowen, served a mission shortly after her baptism in the 1960s in western Mexico. She writes in her memoir about numerous racist experiences, things she overheard while working in the mission home in Hermosillo, Sonora. The mission president’s wife was having a conversation with a young male missionary who had finished his service and was going to be heading home to Arizona—

“While I was sorting some papers, the missionary casually stands by the Mission President’s wife seated at her desk, engaging her in lighthearted conversation. This being the last day of his mission, all smiles and cheerful demeanor, she turns towards him inquiring about his plans after completing such an important milestone in his life. Without preamble, the missionary launches on his number one goal…he intends to marry Sister T., a recently released Mexican lady missionary!...My emotional radar in full alert by now, I managed to keep my eyes on my work; the discussion was none of my concern and the conversation being in English, further removed me from any involvement. [Not everyone in the mission home knew Herlinda understood English]. Her smiling face and cheerful demeanor gone; the Mission President’s wife’s tone of voice changes accordingly in a mean-spirited lecture about the “disadvantages” of marrying a Mexican!” 4

The above encounter doesn’t even surprise me. I’ve heard and seen plenty of racism from Latter-day Saints towards Mexicans (and other Latinos) my entire life. In fact, I probably have witnessed more than my fair share because as a ‘white presenting’ woman (with an English last name, first Harrington, now Winward) other white Latter-day Saints feel safe in expressing their racist thoughts to me. Never having been one to stay silent, I always call them out on their racist comments and then witness a lot of back-peddling.

One last story from my family. In the late 1970s my dad was a deputy sheriff for San Bernardino county in California. He had an opportunity to work for the sheriff’s office in Springville, Utah. Before uprooting our family, my dad had the wherewithal to ask his future employer what the racism was like towards Latinos in a small town. The man was honest with my father and told him the racism would be significant in Utah. My dad, not wanting to subject his wife, my mother, to much more racism than she already had to bear, turned down the job and raised our family in southern California.

I grew up in the safety of that choice, ‘passing’ as white while the Church’s complicated racial past hummed quietly in my DNA. The history of racism—official and cultural—is a dark stain on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is a history that once relied on the fiction of racial purity to determine eternal blessings. Today, as I look at my DNA results and my family photos, I am struck by the irony that the very thing the prophets and apostles once feared—the ‘mingling of races’—is exactly what makes me, well, me.

The ‘bureaucratic gauze’ may be gone, but the social scars for so many still remain. Whether on this side of 1978 or the other, my ‘four drops’ of African blood never made me or my family second-class saints, but a beautiful product of humanity and a child of God.

Cynthia Winward

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We all know change can be hard, but what about changing our own thinking? Can the discomfort associated with conflicting ideas keep us from fully engaging with them, or prevent us from objectively weighing data? Why does ‘putting it on the shelf’ sometimes feel like our only option? The human tendency to seek validation for existing beliefs is called Confirmation Bias. Religions and politics both depend on it; by naturally pursuing evidence that supports our current position, people maintain the conviction that “My team is the best.” In Episode 262, Cynthia and Susan discuss confirmation bias, and some of the ways it may function among church members. As Brian McLaren explains, “People only change their minds when the pain of not changing surpasses the pain of changing.”

Notes & Quotes:

Recognizing Our Biases: The Power of Confirmation Bias, Center for Action and Contemplation, 11/19/2025
What Is Confirmation Bias? | Psychological Explanation & Examples, MindfulThinks
Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, by Brené Brown
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr
Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer, by Richard Rohr
A Mirrored Funhouse of Confirmation Bias: a sermon on Palm 27, by Nadia Bolz-Weber, The Corners, 3/17/2025
Why I Spent 90 Minutes Steaming an American Flag, by Nadia Bolz-Weber, The Corners, 4/13/2026
Coming Closer to Jesus Christ, by Dallin H. Oaks, BYU Speeches, 2/10/2026
Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith, by Sarah Bessey
Why Can’t We See?, Learning How to See with Brian McLaren podcast, Center for Action and Contemplation, 10/5/2020
Sermon on Seeing More Than Just What We Look For, by Nadia Bolz-Weber, Patheos, 1/16/2017

“You may have heard the old saying that people only change their minds when the pain of not changing surpasses the pain of changing. That old saying is all about confirmation bias.” —Brian McLaren

"We are willing to receive all truth, from whatever source it may come.” —Joseph F. Smith

“My brain has a lot going on, so it interprets hard work like this as pain….Wanting to save me from that extra reframing work, my brain presses a “reject” or “delete” button when a new idea presents itself. ‘I’ll stick with my current frame, thank you very much,’ it says. And it gives me a little jolt of pleasure to reward me for my efficiency.” —Brian McLaren

Confirmation bias is “a state of tension that occurs when a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent with each other.” —Brené Brown, (p. 81)

“When we’re faced with information that challenges what we believe, our first instinct is to make the discomfort, irritation, and vulnerability go away by resolving the dissonance. We might do this by rejecting the new information, decreasing its importance, or avoiding it altogether. The greater the magnitude of the dissonance, the greater is the pressure to reduce dissonance.” —Brené Brown

“There must be, and, if we are honest, there always will be at least one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand.” ―Richard Rohr

“Before the truth 'sets you free', it tends to make you miserable.” ―Richard Rohr

“What you decide to look at determines what you do not see.” —Richard Rohr, (Dancing Standing Still, p. 70)

”Not to put too fine a point on it, but it feels like the machinery of late stage capitalism coughed up the internet for us with its empty promises of connecting us all through social media – only to leave us in a mirrored fun house of confirmation bias.
“I feel so surrounded by it that it’s suffocating and I’m left wondering what is real….and what is true when there are such starkly different narratives out there about the world that are then custom delivered to our devices to assure us that we are right about everything.” —Nadia Bolz-Weber

“The biblical text, when treated as a Living Word and not simply a dead policy manual, allows meaning, comfort, and wisdom to unfold in both old and new ways for each community that studies it. It allows the Bible to surprise us, live in us, even interpret us.” —Nadia Bolz-Weber

“Remember, “to survive spiritually,” you will need the “constant influence of the Holy Ghost.” An abundance of speculation and false information in podcasts and on social media surrounds us. Some may protest or question the truth of Church doctrine without knowing or even understanding the fullness of that doctrine. Don’t be persuaded by false or inaccurate information. Discuss your concerns with faithful, well-informed friends and always take those concerns to the Lord.” —Pres. Dallin Oaks

“Sometimes one of the greatest gifts God gives to us is losing our religion. We have to be committed to unlearning the unhelpful, broken, false, or incomplete things if we want to have space to relearn the goodness, joy, and embrace of God. But it sure doesn’t feel like it at the time.” —Sarah Bessey, (p. 31)

“The third thing [the third choice] is our contemplative mind [which] helps us to step outside of that thought and embrace another. But because the God thing, right, the God thing, you and me and Richard as people of faith, we can project those stories, those biases onto God. God has ordained men to lead, women to be quiet. God has ordained white is right, white is powerful. God has ordained straight people....All of that stuff gets stuck in the religion story. So how do we push ourselves to a third space where there’s something else besides squeezing someone in the box.” She goes on to say, “When we quit squeezing people into boxes, we let God out of the box.” —Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis

“Part of what we are invited to learn out here in the wilderness is how to metabolize that loss into compassion rather than bitterness, into welcome rather than caution.” —Sarah Bessey, (p. 78)

“God of desert prophets and unlikely messiahs,
”Help us set aside our pride enough to see how little we really know. Humble us. And then raise us up as agents of your peace. Show us that there is more to see than what we look for. More possibility. More love. More forgiveness. When we look upon those we consider enemies, help us see them as your children loved madly by you. Help others who view us as their enemies to also see us as your beloved children. Heal this nation. Heal the people in this room, Lord. Restore our sight so that we may see you in each other.
”We’re not going to bother asking politely because we are basically out of other options. Show yourself, Lord. And if you are already doing that and we are too blind to see, then grant us even bad vision, since even that would be a vast improvement.
”We ask all of this and that for which we have no words in the name of Jesus Christ, friend of sinners of every variety, Amen.” —Nadia Bolz-Weber

Many thanks to listener Erica Larsen for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

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CW: Anything that doesn’t validate our existing beliefs, anything that doesn’t support our doctrine, anything that gives like a different slant to a story.

SH: Yeah.

CW: Is what I think we called Anti.

SH: Yes. Yes.

CW: I mean, we were specifically taught to only read and watch and listen to materials that support church teachings. I think that was explicit.

SH: Hello, I’m Susan Hinkley.

CW: I’m Cynthia Winward,

SH: And this is At Last She Said It. We are Women of Faith discussing complicated things. And the title of today’s episode is Big Ideas: Confirmation Bias.

Okay. But before we start, Cynthia, I’m going to… just... I’m just gonna do it. I’m gonna make a plea for donations right at the beginning of the show.

Okay. I mean, we appreciate everyone who supports At Last She Said It, whether that be through subscribing to our substack with a paid subscription, or whether that be just hitting the donate button, right, and making a donation. Or we have people who send us checks or Venmo, but we very often tout the benefits of being a paid substack subscriber. But today I’m just gonna ask for straight up donations.

So, great either way that you wanna support us, but

CW: Great either way.

SH: Yeah, we do have expenses. They continue six years in. I know that you know, we were novel a while ago and we’re not now. But our expenses remain the same, and so we could use some help.

CW: Our expenses have actually gone up because we’re tired and so we have brought on a few more people to help us.

SH: Right.

CW: And we have so many good people that say to us all the time, please don’t ever stop doing this. And it’s like, well, it’s also really hard to do a job for practically free, even if it is a labor of love.

SH: Correct.

CW: But you and I were recently looking into maybe commercials to kind of solve this problem.

SH: Right.

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Some things in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seem to be changing more regularly than they have in the past. Many members have lived through decades where it felt like almost nothing changed in our meetings, curriculum, and official messaging, so this evolution comes with a diversity of feelings. How might Church leadership help members move forward more easily? Could adjusting the way these inevitable shifts are introduced increase clarity, unity, hope, and even anticipation for what the future may bring? Episode 261 addresses this and other topics—including listener voicemails—in a conversation about a little of everything.

Notes & Quotes:

Church Facebook post about a husband supporting his wife’s career
BYU-I Instagram reel about a woman choosing a career
LDS Church President Dallin Oaks hopes lower missionary ages will lead to lower marriage ages, by Peggy Fletcher Stack & David Noyce, The Salt Lake Tribune, 1/12/2026
The Family-Centered Gospel of Jesus Christ, by Dallin H. Oaks, 10/2025
Parents and Children, Dallin H. Oaks, 10/2018
Unselfish Service, Dallin H. Oaks, 4/2009
Why Invoking Jesus in War Turns Christianity Into a Dangerous Weapon, Jane Clayson Johnson with Father James Martin, Deseret Voices podcast, Deseret News, 4/10/2026
Deseret News Facebook post
Why Social Change is Contagious, by Gregg Sparkman and Greg Walton, 6/3/2019

“Marriage is central to the purpose of mortal life and what follows,” Oaks said... “We are children of a loving Heavenly Father who created us with the capacity to follow his commandment to multiply and replenish the Earth.” —Pres. Dallin Oaks

“In the United States we are suffering from a deterioration in marriage and childbearing. For nearly a hundred years the proportion of households headed by married couples has declined, and so has the birthrate. The marriages and birthrates of our Church members are much more positive, but they have also declined significantly. It is vital that Latter-day Saints do not lose their understanding of the purpose of marriage and the value of children. That is the future for which we strive.”—Pres. Dallin Oaks

“The gap between those who are [parenting] and those who are not willing to do this is widening in today’s world. One of our family members recently overheard a young couple on an airline flight explaining that they chose to have a dog instead of children. ‘Dogs are less trouble,’ they declared. ‘Dogs don’t talk back, and we never have to ground them.’” —Dallin H. Oaks

“Children are our most precious gift from God—our eternal increase. Yet we live in a time when many women wish to have no part in the bearing and nurturing of children. Many young adults delay marriage until temporal needs are satisfied.” —Dallin H. Oaks

“Research, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, suggests that social change can self-propagate: simply witnessing other people change their behavior leads people to question fundamental beliefs that hold them back from changing themselves. Specifically, seeing change in others makes people think that change is possible for themselves, that it is important, and that it is compatible with who they are.” —Gregg Sparkman & Greg Walton

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Many thanks to listener Gretchen Blackburn for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

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SH: And I feel like you’re describing this kind of diversity of thought. I find it very hopeful that that’s even being allowed on Latter Day Saint platforms. This is hopeful that we can have James Martin on and he can say these things, it really is. But I feel like he still says them as an outsider. We’re thrilled that the diversity of thought is coming into the room. It’s fresh air coming into the room. But until the leaders or mainstream members, until it starts to come out of those mouths, then members who would express the same thoughts will continue to be ostracized. Exhibit A: Cynthia and Susan.

CW: Hello, I’m Cynthia Winward.

SH: And I’m Susan Hinckley.

CW: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today’s episode is Susan and Cynthia’s Mailbag Mayhem. How’s that?

SH: Hello Cynthia.

CW: Okay, Susan. Mayhem? Really? Is that where we’re going today?

SH: I mean, people seem to like the Rage Cast, so let’s take it up a notch. Let’s go to full mayhem. Really it’s just that we have a smattering of different things that we wanna talk about.

CW: This episode did start out – I’m giving a teaser right here ‘cause we’re gonna talk about this halfway through – but this episode did start out with a specific topic with specific notes. And then it just kind of evolved into other stuff. So we’re front loading. We’re putting the mayhem at the beginning, and then we will get to some more structured stuff towards the end. Teaser.

SH: A little teaser. That sounds good. Well, I think it was in our Rage Cast episode where we had a little conversation about a church identity crisis. We were talking about, do I wanna cut my bangs? Right? About the church as an eighth grader. And ever since we had that conversation, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. And the church has helped me along by continuing to do stuff that makes me say, “Seriously, what are we even doing right now?” And so, I just want to talk about a couple of those things right upfront, if that’s okay.

CW: Yes.

SH: You and I have talked several times over the years about this thing going on where the church is calling women to leadership positions who have had careers.

CW: Big careers.

SH: Big careers in some cases, yes. Career women in leadership positions in the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which has spent literal decades telling women not to do this, right?

It’s interesting. So a couple of things happened on social media a week or so ago. One was a post that popped up about a man supporting his wife who was in medical school, maybe?

CW: Yes, that’s right.

SH: This came from the church. Of course, we’ll link to it. And it’s a lovely story. He’s decided to stay home with the kids and support her while she’s going to medical school. And this is a decision that they have made together as a couple, which is, let’s be clear right up front, the way obviously marriage should work, right? Isn’t this the way that these decisions should be being made?

CW: Imagine that.

SH: But the thing about the exchange that took place on social media with the church posting this—and then what happened after—is not that people took any issue with what the church posted necessarily; it’s what’s behind all of it.

CW: And that’s why we’re talking about this.

SH: And there is a lot of emotion. The comment section was pretty crazy with that post, right? And we’ve seen this happen before. I mean, Annette Dennis’s famous “Post turned ‘round the world” comes to mind immediately where someone says something that maybe shouldn’t be that big a deal, but then the members explode in the comments.

CW: The “What’s behind that?” exploded

SH: Exactly. And that’s what happened with this one. So I want to just give you a couple of comments from the comment section.

One that I feel like captures what a lot of people were thinking, including myself, which is why I chose it, says this: “This does feel like mixed messaging. The proclamation outlines fairly specific gender roles and has long been treated as doctrine. If the current emphasis is shifting toward personal revelation and individual family decisions, that’s a meaningful change. But it should be clearly acknowledged as such. When teachings carry [00:05:00] doctrinal weight, they shape real life decisions for decades. So it’s reasonable for members to ask whether the underlying stance is consistent or evolving. Clarity here would go a long way.”

And then someone else jumps on immediately and smacks back saying, “On the other hand, personal revelation isn’t a new doctrine.”

CW: Someone had to say it. They just couldn’t let that comment stand alone. They had to smack it down.

SH: Yeah. So we had that going on. Late the same week, or maybe the next week, we had a video that came out from BYU Idaho. This was a woman talking about how she examined her personal gift, her strengths, her needs, and her desires; and decided to pursue a career. They also have children, but she’s working and her husband’s also working, and she is finding enormous fulfillment through that choice.

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Hello!

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s ahead as we roll toward the home stretch of Season 11. It’s going so fast! Thanks for all the ways you’ve been contributing to the conversation. It feels like our social media has been in full bloom the past few weeks, and we just love it. The more voices and ideas, the better!

Poor Ellen!

Don’t miss out—make a note of upcoming attractions now! Remember that for our Friday Live Chat events, the Zoom link gets dropped in our regular Substack chat the morning of the meeting. No need to register. These discussions will be recorded so you can listen later if you’re unable to participate.**

ALSSI Calendar

4/24 Friday Live Chat | Letting Go, 10:00 am Mtn

4/28 Ep. 261: Susan & Cynthia’s Mailbag Mayhem

5/5 Ep. 262: Confirmation Bias

5/7 Say More | Cynthia Winward

5/12 Ep. 263: What Do You Say? | Listener Edition 3

5/14 Worthy Stuff | Cynthia Edition

5/15 Friday Live Chat | Confirmation Bias, 10:00 am Mtn

5/19 Ep. 264: Big Ideas | Myth

5/21 Say More: At Last She Writes It 2

5/22 Friday Live Chat | Myth**

5/26 Ep. 265 | Chaplaincy w/ Jenny Richards

5/28 ALSSI News

**What’s our Substack chat? It’s a dedicated conversation space for paid subscribers—full of amazing ALSSIers—where we talk about All. Of. It. all the time. (It’s also a great way to support the podcast.) We’d love you to join the convo! You can find info about subscribing here.

If you’d like to participate in one of our Friday Live Chat events to get a taste of what you’re missing, we’ll open our meeting on Friday, May 22 to everyone. No need to register, just click on this link at 10:00 am Mtn to join us!

Questions?
Want the community, but can’t afford to subscribe?
Send us an email at atlastshesaidit@gmail.com and Katie will help!

drumroll, please. . .

While you have your calendar out, save the date—here are a few preliminary details about our upcoming summer ALSSI Live Event!

Tuesday, July 21
Time: TBA (eve)
3301 E Louise Ave, Salt Lake City, UT

We’re planning an evening of fun with plenty of time for you to catch up with old friends and/or make new ones (hint: you’ll get a chance to answer some of this season’s What Do You Say questions!) Watch this space for registration info.

Of course there will be cake.

We love our donors!

Whether it’s by subscribing to our Substack, setting up a recurring donation, or simply throwing a few bucks our way once in a while, we can’t thank you enough for thinking of us when deciding where to donate your hard-earned dollars.

Our first loyalty will always be to producing a podcast with the best listening experience we can provide. Remember, it’s because of your financial support that we have been able to keep ALSSI ad-free. We hope to continue!

You can help support ALSSI anytime by clicking here.

Meanwhile …

It’s the First Anniversary of our book! 🎉🎉

Bunches of thanks to everyone who has supported us by purchasing a copy for yourself or to share.

If you’re feeling the pull to start a conversation with someone but haven’t known how to begin, we’ve heard from readers that this book can help open the door. (Looking at you, Mother’s Day!) In fact, if you have an online book group and want to discuss our book, we’d love to “attend” and take part in the discussion! We’re also willing to come in person if it’s super local to where we live. Just send us an email.

paperback $24.95 | ebook $9.99 | audiobook $19.95

Buy on Bookshop.org
Buy on Amazon
Buy at B&N

Speaking of books,

The next At Last She Read It book club is scheduled! The readers have spoken, and Lilith, by Nikki Marmery, was selected at the last meeting.

From Goodreads: “Lilith is the story of the first woman, who was expelled from Paradise for disobedience. In this retelling of the Hebrew myth that justified and explained woman's subjection to man, Lilith will have her revenge—however long it takes. In the Garden of Eden, at the beginning of time, an outrageous lie is born: that women are inferior.”

Please start reading now, and plan to join us!

ALSRI Book Club
Thursday, July 16
7:00 pm Mtn
register here to receive Zoom link via email

Thanks for reading/listening/being.

Our best,
Susan, Cynthia,
& the ALSSI Team

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“The spiritualities of all great world religions teach us letting go, or how to step aside,” writes Richard Rohr. Letting go is an intentional process. We may let go of our emotional attachments, limiting beliefs, or past events. We may give up control, the need to be successful, or the need to be right. It’s an ongoing process of surrendering to what is, and adjusting accordingly. In Episode 260, Susan and Cynthia take on this big idea, a central theme in spiritual practice.

Notes & Quotes:

ALSSI News, 5/11/2023
Crisis Contemplation, by Rev. Dr. Barbara A. Holmes
The Importance of Letting Go—But Not Right Away, by TyaCamellia Allred, LMFT, Roots Relational Therapy
Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go, by Richard Rohr
Apatheia, Wikipedia
An Early Resurrection: Life in Christ before You Die, by Adam S. Miller
Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi, by Richard Rohr
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr
Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, by Anne Lamott
At Last She Said It: Honest Conversations about Faith, Church, and Everything In Between, by Susan Hinckley and Cynthia Winward
Walking Away, by Dana Vanderlugt, Reformed Journal, 1/23/2025
Ch ch Changes, by Nadia Bolz-Weber, The Corners, 3/16/2026
Jesus’ Alternative Plan: The Sermon on the Mount, by Richard Rohr
Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship, by Gregory Boyle
Words of Good Hope: A Conversation with Nadia Bolz-Weber, Part II, by Jane Ratcliffe, 6/26/2024
Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics, by Mirabai Starr
Letting Go, by Jack Kornfield, 7/1/2022

“Life is such that everyone's life, sometimes, is almost more than you can bear.” —Jim Finley

“True liberation is letting go of our small self, letting go of our cultural biases, letting go of our fear of loss and death. Freedom is letting go of wanting more and better things, and it's letting go of our need to control and manipulate God and others. It's even letting go of our need to know and our need to be right, which we only discover with our maturity. We become free as we let go of our three primary energy centers…as described by Thomas Keating: a need for power, control; a need for safety, security; and our need for affection and esteem.” —Dr. Barbara Holmes

“Letting go and giving up are not the same thing. When we let go, we recognize our arrogance, our myths of control, and we realize that the only constants are God's love and God's promise that we will never be left alone.” —Dr. Barbara Holmes

“What can be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is?” —Eckhart Tolle

“Letting go is profoundly honest. It is grounded firmly in the truth of what is. That’s why it’s such a release.” —Sharon Salzberg

“Be with that shit
Deal with that shit
Heal from that shit
And then, when you’re ready—Let that shit go.” —TyaCamellia Allred

“Unless we learn to let go of our feelings, we don’t have the feelings, the feelings have us. [...] Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying that you should suppress and deny your feelings. I’m challenging you to name them, identify them, and observe them. But don’t fight them and don’t identify with them. [...] —Richard Rohr, Simplicity, (p. 44 Kindle)

“Love is hard because it’s a kind of death. To love, I have to be willing to die. I have to be willing to let go of my life and give myself to caring for the lives of others. And, then, to continually live in love, I have to be willing to die every day, every hour, in ways that are big and small, again and again. I yield on the freeway. I bite my tongue when I want to criticize. I put down what I’m doing and read to my kids. I stay up late and finish the dishes. I get up early and drive my daughter to seminary. I grade the next paper. I put on my running shoes. I exhale. I surrender my life. Crucified with Christ, I practice surrendering all day long until my days are filled with the rest of the Lord. I practice dying as a way of life. And I keep practicing until I find the kind of rest that comes only from living my life in the form of a thousand daily deaths.” —Adam Miller, Early Resurrection, (p. 44)

“If suffering is ‘whenever we are not in control’ (which is my definition), then you see why some form of suffering is absolutely necessary to teach us how to live beyond the illusion of control and to give that control back to God.” —Richard Rohr, Eager to Love

“We come to God not by addition, but by subtraction, letting go.” —Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

“Sometimes grace works like water wings when you feel you are sinking.” —Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually)

“In my opinion, there are 3 primary things that we have to let go of. First is the compulsion to be successful. Second is the compulsion to be right—even, and especially, to be theologically right. [...] Finally there is the compulsion to be powerful, to have everything under control.” —Richard Rohr, Simplicity, (p. 42 Kindle)

“There’s always a lot of anxiety and insecurity in letting go of your current images of yourselves and your images of God. Only God can lead you, and all you can do is let go. The spiritualities of all great world religions teach us letting go, or how to step aside.” —Richard Rohr, Simplicity, (p. 25 Kindle)

“I’ve heard it said that we can only know God through an open mind, just like we can only see the sky through a clear window. We won’t see the sky if we’ve covered the glass with blue paint. The idea of painting the sky on a window before we look out so it appears exactly the way we want it to, or think it should, or hope it will, sounds silly. Yet sometimes, when I’m sitting in church surrounded by what feels and sounds like certainty about ideas that for me only point to larger questions, I have the vague feeling I’m looking at a painted sky. It’s pretty, sunny, warm and reliable, but if I could somehow just scrape away the blue paint, I might get a glimpse of what the sky really looks like. And if I were to open the window and lean out, I might see even further.” —Susan Hinckley, At Last She Said It, (pg 52)

“The path of descent…is not necessarily a one-time event, but for some of us, it's a cyclical experience.” —Mike Petrow

“What if fear [...] was replaced with faith that God could be offering something better—even if it’s different from what I initially believed? So maybe I’ve not completely learned how to love the sound of my feet walking away, but I am finding grace in slowing down, grounding the humility of my limitations, and better listening to my footsteps whichever way they’re pointed. [...] Let me hear the beauty of walking away from not only that which is not meant for me but the joy of walking toward that which has been created for all of us.” —Dana VanderLugt

“In the early 90s when I got sober I very much needed to get clean but the idea of becoming someone else terrified me, so I tried desperately to live the exact same life, in the same places and with the same people just without the drugs and alcohol. Because when change feels scary, familiarity can feel like safety, even when it’s not. But trying to just impersonate a previous version of myself ends up being more painful than just accepting that I’ve changed.” —Nadia Bolz-Weber

“Faith for Jesus is the opposite of anxiety. If we are anxious, if we are trying to control everything, if we are worried about many things, we don’t have faith, according to Jesus. We do not trust that God is good and on our side. We are trying to do it all ourselves, lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
The giveaway is control. That’s a good litmus test of the quality of our faith. People of faith don’t have to control everything, nor do they have to change people. We have the wisdom to know the difference, as the Twelve Step people say, We cannot ‘fix’ the soul. Matt 6:34 says: ’So do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.” —Richard Rohr, Jesus’ Alternative Plan, (p. 27)

“Now you might ask: ‘What does this have to do with God? I thought prayer was supposed to be talking to God or searching for God. You seem to be saying that prayer is first of all about me and getting myself out of the way?’ That is exactly what I am saying. God is already present. God’s Spirit is dwelling within you. You cannot search for what you already have. You cannot talk God into ‘coming’ into you by longer and more urgent prayers. All you can do is become quieter, smaller, and less filled with your own self and its flurry of ideas and feelings. Then God will be obvious in the very now of things.” —Richard Rohr, Simplicity, (p. 44 Kindle)

“The discovery that awaits us is that paradise is contained in the here and now. We let go of the desire to expect anything beyond it. The awareness of this keeps us from the suffering generated by resisting life as it is.” —Gregory Boyle, Barking to the Choir, (p. 74)

“There have been times where I have fought, fought, fought because I was sure the story I was telling myself was right about myself and the world and other people. When everything collapses or something happens that was unexpected, I start thinking differently about it, I’ve got to let all of that stuff drop. And I can't even see the relief of it, because I'm so scared to let it go, because it's all I have.” —Nadia Bolz-Weber

“When religious ideologies and their associated spiritual practices begin to take us away from our lives instead of connecting us with the center of ourselves, we need to be willing to let them go. To not be in a hurry to replace them. Instead, we can shift our focus back to the ordinary and bless it with the gift of our full attention. Then watch in awe as it brims with holy light.” —Mirabai Starr, Wild Mercy

“Letting go is a central theme in spiritual practice, as we see the preciousness and brevity of life. When letting go is called for, if we have not learned to do so, we suffer greatly, and when we get to the end of our life, we may have what is called a crash course. Sooner or later we have to learn to let go and allow the changing mystery of life to move through us without our fearing it, without holding and grasping.” —Jack Kornfield

“Perhaps the single most courageous act of contemplation is to feel the grief of letting go—grief that is a fruit of loving—and to continue to have an open heart. Somehow, mystically, doing so opens a door.” —Center for Action and Contemplation

“Letting go and moving through life from one change to another brings the maturing of our spiritual being. In the end we discover that to love and let go can be the same thing. Both ways do not seek to possess. Both allow us to touch each moment of this changing life and allow us to be there fully for whatever arises next.” —Jack Kornfield

“Letting go is an inside job, something we can only do for ourselves.” —Sharon Salzberg

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Many thanks to listener Ginger Hyde for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

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CW: Who the heckity heck would ever use success in a religious context except prosperity gospel type American Christians? I don’t know.

SH: Right.

CW: I just think that more and more lately I’ve been asking myself how a religion of a God who is crucified, like a God who loses, how we morphed into a gospel of success and winning?

SH: Right. That’s the question I was asking early. What happened between the gospel of apatheia and where we are today? I’m not totally sure when or how that happened. It was probably a series of a thousand small adaptations and changes

CW: Over a thousand years.

SH: Over a thousand years. Exactly.

CW: Hello, I’m Cynthia Winward.

SH: And I’m Susan Hinkley.

CW: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today’s episode is Big Ideas: Letting Go.

SH: The biggest of all my big ideas!

CW: That’s why I’m laughing!

SH: Right before you hit start on this recording, you said to me, “We’re talking about all the things that we’re interested in. Is anyone else going to be interested in any of this?” And I said, “I don’t care.”

CW: No.

SH: So this is another Big Ideas episode, and here’s the thing I want to say about it. These episodes are, I mean, we have 10 pages of notes, so I’m going to try to talk really fast. These episodes are full to the brim with quotes from big thinkers.

And the vision that I had for this really was that we can do some of the legwork for people on this. Like if we take a deep dive on letting go, then our listeners can get the flavor of that big idea. And if they’re interested, we’ve given them a good starting place to maybe go into our show notes and follow some of those links and do a deep dive of their own. But even if they’re not that interested, they’ve gotten a lot of wise words from really smart people on a big topic. And so I feel like we’re doing a public service, Cynthia. That’s what we’re doing.

CW: It’s so funny because for listeners who don’t know—Susan, every Monday, loads everything into the syndicator for the podcast. She gets all the show notes ready. She does the writeup and she will often text me and say, “We are doing a public service right here!” Because it’s true, dear listeners. We put every quote on our website. We hyperlink everything. Susan, I should say Susan, not me. Susan does all of that and it takes her hours and hours.

So yes, this is quite, I think, a public service that not only do they get to hear all the quotes from the big thinkers, but then they can go back and either read the full transcript, or if they just want all the quotes, go there.

SH: Right.

CW: Yay us.

SH: Yay us. So we’re going to hear what smart people have said about letting go today. That’s a better title, and more honest title, of the episode.

CW: More honest.

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Last week, ALSSI released a “Ragecast Potpourri” episode covering a few recent headlines and explored some questions raised by recent changes. For fun, we challenged you all to share your best rage haiku with us. As always, we were BLOWN AWAY with the responses and just had to compile all the amazing poems in one place. This issue includes some of the haiku that were submitted on Facebook, Instagram and Substack. They have been grouped based on a loose theme to help fully absorb the impact of communal voices coming together to speak on one topic.

Haiku on The Nature of God

“The Lord loves effort!”
I’m confused because I thought
The Lord would love me.
Candice Clark Stevens

God was never small
only what you built around
I found Them outside
Kim G Bohne Landeen

The church claims Jesus.
Jesus claims no church on earth.
Who do they follow?
Valerie Atkinson

Is God asking us
To reach higher than a church
To really know Him?
Erin O’Dell Garrard

Please hear my prayers
I want answers to suff’ring
Not to find car keys
_louise_e

Do not blame Jesus,
Grasping tightly to dead things
And never growing
kjkj6363

Haiku on The Divine Feminine

I’ve needed so long
to know Her I can’t just stop
reaching for Her now
Mara Haslam

Dear Heav’nly Mother,
The boys are gaslighting us.
They need a time out.
Carol Colvin

I know no Goddess
Who claims my autonomy.
This reveals their lies.
Hannah H

“We need our Mother”
Jingle jangle go the keys
“You have a FATHER”
Shelli.Elle

Behind these shut doors,
I speak to Her as I please,
You can’t stop my prayers.
times.of.faith

Haiku on Purity Culture

“Modesty?” -humbug
avert your eyes if my thighs
offend your male gaze
Kajsa Kaufusi

Holy cloth clings tight
Texas sun turns faith to fire
I choose bare skin now
Julia Baldwin

Purity Culture
The seed of shame incarnate
Don’t yoke us with it.
Pat Catherall

They see us simply
Jezebels and Gilgolos
Unworthy of trust
Lisa Fluckiger

Storms rage in our hearts
One garment wedgie away
Mormon laundry sucks
Heidi C.

“Women are equal”
But men give us approval
On our worthiness
Laynie.markisich

You’d approach our girls
If a Prophet said to prey.
Blind trust is your God.
Annika Evelyn

Trans friends chaperoned
Sexual predators not
I’m out of here, Bye!
Sarah Porter Otter

Temple wedding day
Sorry you can’t come in
You did not comply
Kyra Dunshee

Purity, shame, guilt.
We cast our pearls before swine.
Not for God: for men.
Hannah H

Haiku on The Patriarchy

You win a crouton!
Oh, and YOU win a crouton!
Why aren’t you grateful?
Rebecca Bigelow

“Trust us, don’t murmur.”
Say, “All is well in Zion.”
Just bow and say, “Yes.”
Jessica Mitchell

For Eve’s transgression:
All women shall be punished
Ruled over by men
Nicole Slater

“Defend the BRETHREN.”
“What about the SISTREN, Jim?!”
Eyes flash. Heresy.
Kajsa Kaufusi

I am told to not
Get ahead of the brethren
But they do not move
Amy Sego Shumway

Leaders LOVE women
But we must scream to be heard
Silenced is not loved
Elizabeth Ludwig

A sister speaks up
Shhhh! Stop. The men are speaking.
We love the sisters!
Madwoman_c

“You don’t understand”
They tell me when I speak up.
They don’t understand
Elisabethbingham1

Trapped in spirit pris’n
Stunted in a male domain.
No progression here.
Mama_gale

By their fruits ye shall
Know them. Why are so many
Fruits then so rotten?
Eleanor Clark

“Stay off the damn stand”
“Not on the front row, either”
“Go make me donuts!”
Carol Colvin

Dear Patriarchy,
We have a Heavenly Mother
and no women leaders?
Nicci Cameron Lovell

Truth should not fear light
Questions were never the sin
Silence was the cost
Erica N.

Old men lead the way.
What will we do without them?
Shout hallelujah!
Pat Cathall

Waiting and hoping
Maybe things are improving?
Then disappointment
Whitney Webster Pack

Teach what men preach.
Personal revelation?
Keep it to yourself
Allison.deibel

I am not enough
To pass bread to the people
But twelve year olds can
Aerynnec

I am the witness!
But then a man from the back
Does my job for me
Ajsjonm4

Haiku on Feminism

“Feminist” was taught
To me as a bad word. Oops.
I’m one, anyway.
Kaylee.a.skinner

Perimenopause
Meets ongoing faith crisis
No wonder they’re scared
Jilleneladle

I am not enough?
I throw away the men’s words.
I find I am strong.
cristallharper

They buried our names—
wild seeds under heavy stone.
Still we rose up green.
Melanee Green Evans

I bent till I broke
now I rise without your name
whole, and not afraid
Kim G Bohne Landeen

Please, tell me again
what I can and cannot do.
I know my power.
Annisija Wallin Hunter

You shudder at my
“wokeness”, yet holy words call:
Awake and arise
Sarah Hale

Women, we breathe life
Heart listeners-who lead
With healing and hope.
Ananda Isaken

Coercive marriage
Taught to absorb all the harm
Rage feels like freedom
Unschmuck

Please less “explaining”
Just don’t care much anymore
Your view from up here
Christiehp

Notice me I said
I did everything right here
I want to be seen
Heathermimib

Haiku on Spiritual Autonomy

Words are powerful.
Screaming out in defiance.
No, no, no, no, NO!
Jessica Mitchell

Lie to me today
To gaslight me tomorrow
Watch me walk away
Stephanie G.

I don’t like meetings.
“Where will you go?” they ask
I go home and nap.
Su_lott

Not Naive, not blind.
Eyes clear, arms weak, willing heart.
I plant my feet here.
The.vision.beautiful

Smile, serve, and be still.
Questions bloom like contraband.
I walked out in bloom.
Becky Sanchez

Foundation anew,
I choose my own bricks this time:
Spiritual freedom!
Andrea Meecham Neahusan

I must leave to love
The tender heart who receives
Careless musket fire
Jenny Garrard

I bent till I broke
now I rise without your name
whole, and not afraid
Kim G Bohne Landeen

Don’t rush connection
Covenant path instruction
Can not satisfy
Brooke

I asked honest things
They called it a slippery slope
Yep. Slid on out
Erica N.

We take our lives back
Joyful, adventurous, and
Our own to direct
Lisa Fluckiger

I see the forest
And the trees. I know
I am not alone
Kcampbella

When Faith Loses Focus: For every woman whose questions were treated as a spiritual problem

by Brittney Walker

The night my brother came out to me, I got off the phone

and went straight to my knees.

I had questions and I knew where I’d been taught to take them.

I prayed for a long time. And what I felt was peace. Clearly, unmistakably, the way I had been taught to recognize revelation. Not the complicated kind. The simple kind. My brother was right just as he was. He didn’t need fixing.

I stood up from that prayer believing something true.

And then my brain, the one that has never once in its life left a loose thread alone, started pulling.

The thread you cannot stop pulling

If my brother was right, and the feeling was real, then the disconnect was somewhere else.

So I went looking for it.

I didn’t choose to go looking. I want to be clear about that. The search wasn’t an act of rebellion or spiritual carelessness. It was compulsion. My brain identified a problem it could not resolve and it went to work on it the way it always had—relentlessly, around the clock, whether I invited it to or not.

In the middle of sacrament meeting. At 2 a.m. On the drive to pick up kids from school. The questions kept arriving.

If the feeling was right, was the teaching wrong? If the teaching was wrong, who taught it? If he taught it, was he—the prophet—wrong? And if he could be wrong about this, what else? And if that, then what about …

The dominoes fell all the way down.

To the prophet. Then further. Then to God.

And then there was nothing left to land on.

What they called it

There is a word the Church uses for what I was experiencing: doubt. Sometimes faithlessness. The cure prescribed is almost always the same: pray more, study more, serve more, trust more. Do not let your intellect get ahead of your faith. So I did.

What no one told me was that I have a brain with a specific, documented, neurological inability to leave a question unresolved.

I have ADHD. I also have scrupulosity, an anxiety pattern that hijacks the religious framework and turns it into an engine of obsessive moral accounting. My brain doesn’t just notice inconsistency. It cannot rest until inconsistency is resolved. It needs certainty the way other people need sleep.

Put that brain inside a faith system that asks you to hold unanswered questions peacefully, to sit with not-knowing, to “doubt your doubts,” and you don’t get a crisis of faith.

You get a machine that cannot stop running.

I wasn’t falling away from God. My brain was doing exactly what it was built to do. It was following the evidence. It was refusing to look away. It was doing, in the language of faith, what it had always done in every other area of my life: working the problem until it either resolved or broke open entirely.

That’s not weakness. That’s not wickedness.

That is an ADHD brain, functioning precisely as designed, inside a system that had no category for it.

The year of falling

What followed was a solid year of grief.

The only image I have ever found that fits is this: falling through space. A bottomless black hole. Nothing to grab onto. Nowhere to land.

I had built my identity inside this structure. My calendar, my community, my sense of what I was for—all of it organized around something that was coming apart faster than I could process. And the falling felt endless because there was no floor. Every answer I found opened into another question. Every certainty I tested failed.

I want to say something to the women who are in that falling right now, or who have been, or who are watching someone they love go through it:

The falling was not a punishment. It was not evidence that I had been faithless or careless or spiritually reckless.

It was what happens when a brain built for pattern recognition finally finds a pattern it cannot reconcile.

The grief was real. The loss was real. I am not going to tell you it wasn’t.

But the falling was not my fault.

What the Church called sin

Here is what I have come to understand, years out from that night:

Every trait that made my deconstruction feel so total, so unstoppable, so consuming—the relentless question-following, the inability to unknow something once I knew it, the need for coherence, the refusal to hold contradiction in peaceful suspension—those are not spiritual defects.

They are ADHD.

The same brain that got sent into the hall for asking too many questions in Primary. The same brain that couldn’t stop mentally arguing with myself over what was said in sacrament meeting. The same brain that needed the pieces to fit, always, desperately, at the cost of everything.

That brain didn’t destroy my faith.

It followed my faith all the way to the edges and kept going when the edges ran out.

There is a version of my story the Church would tell where I was deceived, or weak, or led astray, or just didn’t try hard enough. In that version, the problem was always me.

But here is the version I know to be true:

I went to my knees the night my brother came out to me. I sought God in the way I had been taught. I received an answer that felt true and real and certain. And then my brain—my beautiful, relentless, impossible, truth-seeking brain—refused to stop at the edge of what that answer meant.

That is not a failure of faith.

That is faith, taken seriously by a mind that could not do it any other way.

What I wish someone had said

Your questions were not a spiritual problem.

Your inability to sit with uncertainty was not a character flaw.

Your brain’s relentless need for coherence was not the enemy of your faith.

It was just a mind doing what minds like ours do: following every thread, refusing to look away, insisting that the truth, whatever it turned out to be, was worth finding.

The Church didn’t have a category for that kind of mind.

But that doesn’t mean the mind was wrong.

Contributor

Brittney Walker

I am an ADHD coach and writer living in Arizona with my husband and a lively household including six sons, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson. I spent many years trying to be reverent, organized, and less distracting, and now I write about executive function, faith, deconstruction, and rebuilding identity with a different kind of brain. My work explores neurodivergence, belonging, and the slow process of learning to trust yourself. You can find more of my writing at exmoadhdcoach.substack.com

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In Episode 259, Susan and Cynthia ask Mer, Zinah, and Carol, What Do You Say? It's the second installment of ALSSI's wide-ranging conversations with wise Latter-day Saint women. Each guest answers randomly selected questions about their memories, insights, and beliefs through stories of their personal lives and experiences.

Notes & Quotes:
To hear more from Mer Monson, check out ALSSI Ep. 157
Motherhood is a Choice: Not Inevitable or an Obligation, by Fatimah Mohammed
Original Goodness: Made in the Divine Image, Center for Action and Contemplation, 10/27/2021
What Do We Do With Sin?: Collective Sin and Evil, Center for Action and Contemplation, 3/13/2026
Motto, by Bertolt Brecht
Into the Gray, Substack, Rev. Benjamin R. Cremer

“We were raised to see motherhood not just as an inevitability that would come at the right time—when we were married to an acceptable man—but also as a duty. A price we paid for being women. The thing we owed the world. [...] We were born girls, so they told us our very existence revolved around what our bodies could offer the world. To think otherwise wasn’t an option. Who are you to be born with a womb only to choose not to use it? Who do you think you are? How dare you? The very idea of it was inconceivable.” —Fatima Mohammed

“My deepest me is god.” —Catherine of Genoa

“In fact, evil is often culturally agreed-upon, admired, and deemed necessary, as is normally the case when a country goes to war, spends most of its budget on armaments, admires luxuries over necessities, entertains itself to death, or pollutes its own common water and air. Evil seems to be corporate, admired, and deemed necessary before it becomes personal and shameable.
Sin and evil must be more than personal or private matters. Convicting people of individual faults does not change the world. I believe the apostle Paul taught that both sin and salvation are, first of all, corporate realities. Yet, we largely missed that essential point, and thus found ourselves in the tight grip of monstrous evils in Christian nations, all the way down to the modern era.” —Richard Rohr

In the dark times, will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.
—Bertholt Brecht

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Many thanks to listener Rebecca Bigelow for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

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CC: I hadn’t based my foundation on the teachings of Christ, my foundation was on the words of the prophets, right? And the organization of the church. So if I hadn’t set it up that way, I wouldn’t have had such a hard fall.

CW: Hi, I am Cynthia Winward.

SH: And I’m Susan Hinckley.

CW: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today’s episode is, What Do You Say: Three Conversations about Mysticism, Music, and Living in the Now. Hello, Susan.

SH: Hello. I love these conversations. Let’s roll ‘em and then we’ll come back later and share some deep thoughts.

CW: Let’s do it,

SH: or maybe not so deep.

CW: Well, deepish.

Hello Mer Monson. Welcome back to At Last She Said It.

SH: Hi Mer.

MM: So good to be here.

CW: So good to have you. Okay, Mer, we can’t wait for your wisdom. And our first category is Memories. Would you like question one, two or three?

MM: I want three.

CW: What was a moment in your life when you could have chosen a different path?

MM: Shoot. Oh, how many answers do I get?

CW: Oh, I wanna hear ‘em all, but just one for now.

MM: So what comes to mind is my first pregnancy was horrific, like lost 25 pounds, couldn’t drink water without throwing up, totally incapacitated in bed. And I survived it, had my kid, had my beautiful son, and I could have chosen to like not do that ever again.

In fact, I did choose that for about four years. And then I didn’t, then I changed my mind and decided to go back into the depths of hell again. So, wow. Yeah. That’s what comes to mind.

CW: And was it because after four years you were like, oh, it wasn’t that bad, or,

MM: Nope, that wasn’t it. Who knows what preyed upon my- how old was I? 31-year-old mind?

CW: Yeah. Yeah.

MM: I wanted him to have a brother.

SH: Yeah.

MM: I thought I was supposed to. I thought I should.

CW: Yeah. Yeah.

MM: It was the right thing to do. You know, that’s your status, that’s your value in the Mormon world.

I thought, in fact, can I just, can I share one thing?

SH: Yes!

MM: I remember I was… So, I was pregnant with my third, uber sick playing the piano in primary, and the chorister leans over to me and she starts asking me about my kids and how many I have and blah, blah, blah. I was telling her I get really sick, and she’s like, oh, is that why you only had three kids?

SH: Wait, what?

MM: Yeah, that, wait, what? Like I don’t get any credit unless I can fill a minivan.

CW: Uhhuh.

SH: Wow.

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The other day Cynthia and I were texting about whatever the freshest-current-events-h*ll of the day was, and she said something like, “Make it stop! I really just need someone to hit pause right now!”

It’s always a pleasure when one of my old comics drops so seamlessly into a conversation without me needing to set it up myself.

Speaking of dropping in, I’m just here today with a short Worthy Stuff—a handful of ways I’ve been surviving lately.

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