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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Episode 259 (Transcript): What Do You Say? Three Conversations about Mysticism, Music, and Living in the Now

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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ALSSI doesn’t usually focus on church announcements or events, but our conversations about Big Ideas do exist within the current context of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In Episode 258, Susan and Cynthia take a beat to discuss a few recent headlines and explore some questions raised by these changes.

Notes & Quotes:

Find the Church Newsroom announcements here and here and here
Jaxon Washburn’s Fb post
Are you sure you know what ‘gaslighting’ is?, by Emma Bowman, All Things Considered, NPR, 3/25/2026
Lifted Up upon the Cross, by Jeffrey R. Holland, 10/2022
The Symbol of our Faith, by Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley, 04/2005
Banishing the Cross: The Emergence of a Mormon Taboo, by Michael G. Reed

“The First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles have determined that, effective immediately, the bishop may call a man or a woman to serve as ward Sunday School president. If a man is called as Sunday School president, he must hold the Melchizedek Priesthood, and his counselors and secretary must be male members of the ward. If a woman is called as Sunday School president, her counselors and secretary must be female members of the ward.” —First Presidency Letter

“There are many capable women and men who can help strengthen gospel instruction and foster spiritual growth.” —Paul V. Johnson, General Sunday School President

”Historically, Latter-day Saint women have prophesied and received revelation. They’ve witnessed angels and administered blessings by the laying on of hands. They have offered the Lord’s Supper as military chaplains. They act as priestesses in the temple. All of these are already performed through God’s power, which is priesthood power.
Ordination + comparably equal ecclesiastical, ceremonial, and social standings and opportunities as men are all fully theologically possible within a Restored Gospel framework.
The destiny of the Daughters of our Heavenly Parents is that of unmatched transcendent power, glory, and perfect unity with God while inheriting all of God’s same qualities, attributes, and creative abilities. I want the ecclesiastical, ceremonial, and social experience of Latter-day Saint women to better reflect that.” —Jaxon Washburn

"When you begin, over time, to accommodate to somebody else's reality and you're giving up pieces of yourself along the way, it can be what many people say is soul-destroying." —Robin Stern, author of The Gaslight Effect

”Lastly, we remind ourselves that President Gordon B. Hinckley once taught, ‘The lives of our people must [be] … the symbol of our [faith].’ These considerations—especially the latter—bring me to what may be the most important of all scriptural references to the cross. It has nothing to do with pendants or jewelry, with steeples or signposts. It has to do, rather, with the rock-ribbed integrity and stiff moral backbone that Christians should bring to the call Jesus has given to every one of His disciples. In every land and age, He has said to us all, ‘If any man [or woman] will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.’” —Jeffrey R. Holland

“I do not wish to give offense to any of my Christian colleagues who use the cross on the steeples of their cathedrals and at the altars of their chapels, who wear it on their vestments, and imprint it on their books and other literature. But for us, the cross is the symbol of the dying Christ, while our message is a declaration of the Living Christ.” —Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley

“Bruce R. McConkie was less tactful and more sensational than Hinckley in his influential book Mormon Doctrine. McConkie not only asserted that the cross was a pagan symbol introduced to Christianity via the Roman Emperor Constantine, but he also declared its sign to be the ‘mark of the beast.’ Under the entry ‘Catholicism’ McConkie’s book said ‘See Church of the Devil’.” —Michael G. Reed

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Many thanks to listener Lindsay Riggs 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 Here

SH: Like, if we’re gonna move into mainstream Christianity, I feel like a fellow Christian would need to be able to walk into any sacrament meeting and recognize Jesus Christ as the centerpiece of that worship service.

But instead, I feel like they are at least as likely, if not more likely, to get temples or something like tithing or word of wisdom.

Or I mean, like sometimes your pioneer stories, right? Or the importance of sustaining our leaders. Like the talks could be about anything that gets assigned that week, but it’s not, I’m not even sure that it’s most likely to be about Jesus Christ.

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 ragey things.

SH: It’s complicated, Cynthia.

CW: -complicated ragey things. And the title of today’s episode is Cynthia and Susan’s Rage Cast Potpourri.

SH: Yep. That’s the title. All right. Okay.

CW: That’s the title.

SH: To be fair, there were other possible subtitles in the running. Some of those- Including but not limited to-

It’s not gaslighting if God does it.

CW: That’s yours, Susan.

SH: Also, that’s how sacred women are.

CW: Oh gosh. More on that, Uhhuh

SH: more on that. Or also just pass the popcorn because Cynthia, this conversation is just gonna be about a whole bunch of stuff and in preparing for it, well, it came about because we were messaging each other back and forth all week about some ridiculous things and just wanting to grab a mic and talk about them. And in a season of big ideas, like I feel like, ah, we’ve done deep dives on big topics. We’re planning deep dives on future big topics, and it’s been a lot of work and it’s been awesome, but it’s also a lot to chew on. And so every now and then, it’s good to just grab the microphone and blow off steam, so,

If you’re a listener who, you know, loves the deep dives and exploring big ideas, don’t give up on us. Those are coming back. And if you’re a listener who doesn’t mind kicking around the church football every now and then then stick with us today ‘cause that’s exactly what we’re gonna do.

CW: Exactly. Everyone gets your favorite dirty soda and that popcorn. And join us, Susan. I’m wearing my womankind t-shirt even, you know?

SH: Perfect.

CW: We’re not talking about mankind today. We’re talking about womankind. So,

SH: I love it, Cynthia.

CW: Join me. Join me in my feminist rage right now.

SH: Okay. Well, where to start?

CW: Just the tone. Where to start? Exactly.

SH: We’re gonna start with women can now be Sunday school presidents.

CW: Yeah. Yeah

SH: I mean, as a Mormon feminist podcast, I think it’s only fair that we spend a minute talking about this, even though we’re not usually the, you know, respond to church headlines podcast. That’s not really what we are.

But I mean, this one, well, it feels big, or does it?

CW: Or does it?

SH: Is it the biggest crumb we’ve ever had? Or is it the crummiest crumb that we’ve ever had? I’m not,

CW: I keep hearing women talking about crumbs saying we don’t even have enough crumbs for a crouton. Well, well, they’re not wrong.

SH: That’s, yeah, I think that’s true.

A few things occurred to me when this announcement came out, so I guess I’m just gonna start there and we can talk about those.

CW: Okay.

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Eager to Hope

by Susan Hinckley

Last weekend I participated in our local protest,

because I think protests are public hope and I needed to both give and receive. Despite this being the reddest of small towns, there were hundreds of us—5x as many people as I expected. The crowd was anchored by a few full-size US flags, confidently riding the morning wind. Those flags understood the assignment; something in me quickened as I parked. A small marching band trumpeted hope up and down the sidewalk.

Environmentalist Bill McKibben was once asked, "What's the best thing I can do as an individual?" He said, "Stop being an individual.”1 I showed up needing to feel less alone, and got all the right medicine. Most of the passing drivers honked, waved, and gave us a thumbs-up.

Of course there were a few whose sneers and gestures made clear their contempt. As I stood fighting to keep my poster upright in the wind, a red car approached and slowed to a stop in front of me. The window slid down. A woman leaned out, looked right at me and said, “You know, he is YOUR president. He is the president of every single one of you.” She drove away.

As if that should end the protest. As if anyone could so smugly close the lid on hope.

I haven’t stopped thinking about the woman in the red car, and about all the things I didn’t say in response.

There are a few lessons I’ve always thought God made particularly obvious. Diversity is one—look around—and creativity is another. A third I see writ large in the natural world is hope. Morning was the first advertisement for this concept, but because it comes every day we tend to stop noticing. Maybe God knew we’d have a hard time paying attention to a thing that happened so often. Maybe that’s why they also came up with spring.

Of course God put winter first to really get our attention—to bring us right to the edge of giving up—before adding spring to the calendar. In ink. Not often enough that we’d quit noticing either, surprised by joy every time a weeping cherry drapes itself sky-to-ground in pink ribbons.

The thing about spring is, it always comes. It doesn’t matter how hard the winter is, or how evil the king. It doesn’t matter if there’s a huge snowstorm in April that pushes us to the brink of really not being okay. Spring prevails every time.

American theologian Walter Brueggemann said, “Hope arises from memory.”

Rebecca Solnit explains, “You can turn that inside out to say that despair arises from forgetting. If you forget that every good thing we have came about as the result of a heroic struggle, of course you will despair.” She says that optimism and pessimism “assume we know the future, and therefore nothing is required from us. I think the future is radically uncertain, and therefore much is required of us.”2

But is hope too much to expect in the face of radical uncertainty?

Well, what else is there? Gripping everything tighter isn’t going to give us any guarantees, but engaging with hope means we’re showing up for the future no matter what heroic struggle it brings, because there is no way to get where we want to go next except through whatever is happening now.

I remember exactly where I was sitting in an AP English classroom about 100 years ago when the teacher ridiculed a student for using the word anxious when they actually meant eager, and I realized for the first time with a spark that those words aren’t interchangeable. No matter how often they get swapped in casual speech, eager is about positive anticipation and anxious is about worry. As that came into focus for me, the very next second I thought, “Pretty sure Joseph Smith made a mistake.” In D&C 58, being “anxiously engaged in a good cause” was surely meant to be about eagerness to do good. I don’t think he meant to suggest we should feel nervous about the uncertainty of our actions or outcomes while we engage in that goodness.

But I’ve been anxiously engaged my whole life as a Latter-day Saint. I took the words to heart just the way Joseph wrote them.

I’m not sure exactly how this worked, but all that anxious engagement over many decades seems to have resulted in some serious hope muscle. As I enter my later years, I find my core is all made of hope. Maybe it came from so many years showing up and doing all the church things while thinking, “I’m really not very good at this. I’m not sure I’m doing it right. I have no idea whether it will be enough.” Maybe when you feel a little doomed from the start, but you press on anyway, you get in the habit of grasping anything you can find that might make up the difference. You hope.

And I don’t mean feeling hopeful. I don’t mean a grin that comes back no matter how often reality turns its power-washer on you. I mean hope as a verb. As a thing you decide to do. As a perspective you have, because you bring it. Hope is not something that arises spontaneously and promises to work everything out. Anxious or eager, the work is the same. But I’ve come to prefer eager: Hope is a way I can choose to engage.

I wish I’d known I didn’t need to feel so worried all those years. I wish I could go back and tell my young self, “See those flowers? They probably aren’t worried at all—yes, winter knocks ‘em out, in fact, it straight-up kills some. But there’s always spring, and flowers don’t have to earn it—all they have to do is wait for it.”

“Consider the lilies,” Jesus said. “They seem to remember something you don’t.”

Flipping from anxious to eager in my spiritual life has mostly been a function of embracing my own hope. “God is always present in reality as it is. Not as it should be,” says Richard Rohr.3 I think this is one of the reasons Jesus showed up on earth, getting everyone’s hopes up, but then surprised even the people closest to him by becoming victorious only after an unimaginable defeat. It was a lesson so bewildering, even people who desperately wanted the miracle had a hard time accepting the truth of what they were seeing in real time. How could something so awful be the doorway to lasting hope?

Thomas had his doubts; unfortunately he’s remembered for them. But do you know what he did next? He took Christianity to India and beyond, converting many to the very idea he had such a hard time getting his head around. He may have needed to touch for himself, but that experience powered a lifetime of ministry. It’s fair to say reality transmuted the moment of doubt into something truly sustaining.

But God’s love was in the world before Jesus ever got here. “It is good, in fact, it is very good,” God says, the punchline of the whole opening monologue. A few minutes later, we find out “good” may be more complicated than we thought—no one was going to be allowed to stick around, basking in the very-good-ness of a garden. I think everything God says and does after that is trying to teach us about hope—even in the face of the bleakest reality—and I can see why the best object lesson to do that would probably be our own screw ups.

“We’ve met the enemy, and he is us,” says the famous Walt Kelly comic strip.4 The practice of hope must be a principle through which God thought humans could remind ourselves of divine love no matter what else is going on.

I’ve decided another idea articulated by Richard Rohr could be repurposed into a good definition of hope: “the ability to flourish inside of paradox.” We know what has happened, and we know what’s happening now, but I don’t think we can be at all certain what it means in real time, and we never know what’s going to happen next, even when we think we do. We can be sure it will be bad and good and then bad again and then sometimes better, but there’s no guarantee. A yes for every no, and a no for each yes. Life will be loss and abundance, joy and sorrow tossed together. “Reality’s conjunction is always and,” writes Christian Wiman.5

That’s where I think hope lives. Hope is in the and.

So what do we do when we’re really not feeling it? Hope, faith, and love show up together in the Bible. Sharon Salzberg teaches6 that the word translated there as faith is actually a verb—it’s not a thing we have so much as a thing we do. Hope and love already operate as verbs in modern English; moving faith into the verb column makes sense, if these foundational principles walk hand in hand. A quote from Rabbi Abraham Heschel says, “Faith is mostly faithfulness to the times when we had faith.”7 I understand this as, “Faith is a thing we keep doing because we once felt it.”

Anyone who’s been in a long term relationship knows love operates the same way. We fall in love with someone, then we keep loving them on the days it’s hard to do so, because love is no longer a feeling so much as an action.

The emotion of hope is also less useful than the action. When hope-the-noun becomes hope-the-verb, we go to the protest whether or not we think it will change anything. We’re eagerly engaged, smack in the middle of not knowing. We follow hope instinctively because it’s all there is to do in the face of such radical uncertainty. It’s the thing we can control.

The woman in the red car—and everyone else who flipped us off that day—thought she could impact my hope by insisting the situation was hopeless. She (and all the efforts I’ve seen since to minimize that hopeful act or dismiss it outright) is missing the point of hope. The only thing hope insists is that, eventually, things will change. That’s based in reality—a measure of calm certainty can reside in the uneasiness of it. Hope-seeds arrive buried in the same dirt we’re standing in. It’s because reality is often objectionable that I choose to orient myself this way. I engage eagerly because of what it does for me today, not because I think it will ensure any future outcome. Hope—and faith and love—don’t operate in the future. They’re how we survive the now.

Trying to stomp out a protest by throwing reality on it is a bit like telling me it’s winter, and I may as well accept that as final. But I spent many years living in the upper Midwest. I know a thing or two about winter. And I know a lot about hope.

Susan Hinckley

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Is there a richer text for Christians than the Beatitudes? Yet we don’t all think or teach about them the same way. Many Latter-day Saints talk and teach about them as a list of saint-like attributes to which we should aspire, traits that will bring us closer to God and eventual exaltation. But Nadia Bolz-Weber suggests, “What if the Beatitudes aren’t about a list of conditions we should try to meet to be blessed? What if they are not virtues we should aspire to? What if Jesus saying ‘blessed are the meek’ is not instructive but performative—that the pronouncement of blessing is actually what confers the blessing itself?’” In Episode 257, Cynthia and Susan ‘dance with the scriptures’ in an attempt to discover new ways of seeing and engaging with these familiar verses.

Notes & Quotes:

Jesus’ Alternative Plan: The Sermon on the Mount, by Richard Rohr
ALSSI Ep. 60, Ep. 106, Ep. 193: What About Blessings? Parts 1, 2, & 3
At Last She Said It: Honest Conversations About Faith, Church, and Everything In Between, by Susan Hinckley and Cynthia Winward
Blessed Are the Poor In Spirit, by Rob Bell
Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People, by Nadia Bolz-Weber
Always a Guest: Speaking of Faith Far From Home, by Barbara Brown Taylor
How Do We Interpret the Beatitudes?, by Julius-Kei Kato, The Bart Ehrman Blog, 6/04/2020
Gospel Medicine, by Barbara Brown Taylor
Q & R: Can You Explain the Beatitudes, by Brian McLaren, 11/25/2025
Feeling called to an LDS stronghold, Utah couple deliver grub and the gospel to the hungry, by Mark Eddington, The Salt Lake Tribune, 2/06/2026
Living the Sermon on the Mount: What Does It Mean to be Blessed?, Center for Action and Contemplation, 11/04/2025
On the Beatitudes—Sermon, Contemplative Pastor, 2/01/2011
Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go, by Richard Rohr
The Beatitudes and Our Perfection, by Elder Royden G. Derrick, 04/1977
Matthew 5: The Beatitudes, Church website video

“But if to be ‘blessed’ means to be ‘made holy,’ that’s entirely different from popular usage talking about things like good fortune, a desired outcome, or comfort. That simple little definition opened a crack of light for me into this whole complicated conversation. I could suddenly see that a blessing is not an event, nor something we receive in exchange for what we do. It’s independent of external circumstance, because blessing is an internal state.” —Susan Hinckley, p. 102

“The gospel is the announcement that in your pathetic, bedraggled, confused, morally ambiguous state in which there’s nothing good within you, God announces, ‘I’m on your side.’” —Rob Bell

“It can be easy to view the Beatitudes — the “blessed ares”... as Jesus’s command for us to try real hard to be meeker, poorer, and mourn-ier in order that we might be blessed in the eyes of  God….Plus, it can be easy to look at, say, Mother Teresa and think, Well, she is a saint because she was meek. So if  I, too, want to be blessed, I should try to be meek like her. (Don’t get me wrong, we could use a few more people trying to be like Mother Teresa. I just don’t think that her virtue of meekness is what made her considered blessed by Jesus.) But what if the Beatitudes aren’t about a list of conditions we should try to meet to be blessed? What if they are not virtues we should aspire to? What if  Jesus saying “blessed are the meek” is not instructive but performative — that the pronouncement of  blessing is actually what confers the blessing itself ?” —Nadia Bolz-Weber, pp. 183-4

“Stopping to remember just how many people are beloved of God: those we suspected and those we did not; those we can name and those we cannot; those who left their marks on this world and those who vanished without a trace…
“They don’t ask for much: spiritual poverty, mournfulness, meekness, mercy-mindedness, single-heartedness, unwillingness to fight, willingness to get beat up. [...] If you were to take a tour of the places where such blessed people have traditionally been found, you would visit a lot of jails, funeral homes, courthouses, cheap restaurants, and emergency rooms, as well as some nice homes in the suburbs and a palace or two. It’s a mixed crowd we belong to—” —Barbara Brown Taylor, Always a Guest, p. 234 (Kindle)

“The historical Jesus as well as the original audience to whom the Beatitudes were directed, were hoping for an imminent world-changing intervention of God (also known as ‘the coming of God’s reign’) into their historical world. That would then create a new world order where, the (really) poor, the (literally) hungry, the weeping ones would be the beneficiaries of this reversal of fortunes brought about by divine action and will be truly (and not only spiritually) ‘blessed,’ thus, truly worthy of being ‘congratulated.’” —Julius-Kei Kato

“If the only way to get to the 2nd half of the sentence is to go through the first, then who in their right mind wants to go? [...] Jesus is not telling anyone what to do. He is telling us how things really are. [...] Everything that follows is going to be based on the tipsy worldview of the Beatitudes. Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” —Barbara Brown Taylor

“The moment we look down on somebody because they aren’t disciplined, hardworking, upright, smart, responsible, moral, good looking, Bible believing, Jesus trusting, or as God fearing as we are because they’ve made idiotic, stupid, immoral choices again and again and again, at that moment we are rich in spirit and Jesus isn’t announcing anything to us.” —Rob Bell

“What was so shocking about Jesus’ list was not the form but the content. Blessed are the meek? The mournful? The poor in spirit? Who was he kidding? …. What was so happy about hungering and thirsting for righteousness, or about being reviled and persecuted?....No one with a lick of sense was going to vote for any of those definitions of the Good Life, but Jesus did not ask for anyone’s approval. He just redefined the Good Life in nine short sentences and held them out for everyone to see: nine portraits of kingdom people, previously known as victims, dreamers, pushovers, and fools.” —Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine, p. 160

“Here, I think, is the key to the beatitudes. Rather than interpreting them as ‘God blesses these people’ – Think: this is performative, like performing a wedding and saying, ‘I now pronounce you legally married,’ or ‘We pledge allegiance …’ The saying of the words performs the action. To bless is to speak highly of, to praise the goodness and value of. The point is … WE bless these people, here and now. We say they have worth and value. We say their lives matter. We say they count. We say they are important.” —Brian McLaren

“In the wake of the original apocalyptic context of the Beatitudes being unrealized, they should now be theologically interpreted through the lens of a realized, collaborative, incarnational eschatology by which the promised rewards of the Beatitudes no longer depend on an apocalyptic intervention of God but on the followers of Jesus (or practically anyone else [even agnostics/atheists] who think that Jesus was a great teacher) taking on a liberative praxis to create in some way and realize a new social order where the really poor, the truly hungry, the weeping and marginalized ones really come to experience now (not later in some heaven) some measure of the blessedness that God’s reign should bring with it.” —Julius-Kei Kato

“The first words out of Jesus’ mouth are not “Blessed shall be” but “Blessed are.” “Blessed are the poor in spirit”—not because of something that will happen to them later but because of what their poverty opens up in them right now. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”—not because God is going to fill them up later but because their appetites are so fine-tuned right now….” —Barbara Brown Taylor, Always a Guest, p. 202

“Notice how [Jesus] also uses present tense: ... the Reign of God isn’t later. It’s present tense: We are the free ones now, if we remain without anything to protect or anything we need to prove or defend. I know people who have left Christianity to become Buddhists precisely because of the doctrines of emptiness, simplicity, and nonviolence that they discovered in Buddhist teaching. If only they had been taught these same foundations in Jesus’ Beatitudes!” —Richard Rohr, Jesus’ Alternative Plan, p. 160

“It has been two thousands years and the poor are still with us. Those who hunger for justice are still hungry. The mournful are still blowing their noses, and the excluded are still waiting at the border. The Beatitudes may work for people who can wait until they die for their reward, but meanwhile there are other people who have lost faith in Jesus’ promises. They aren’t feeling the joy. They need heaven now.” —Barbara Brown Taylor, Always a Guest, p. 200

“Whatever you believe about [Jesus], believe this about you: the things that seem to be going most wrong for you may in fact be the things that are going most right. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to fix them. It just means they may need blessing as much as they need fixing, since the blessing is already right there.” —Barbara Brown Taylor, Always a Guest, p. 203

“Middle-class people can hear Matthew more quickly than they can hear Luke. Luke is talking to the poor in a way that will make them feel invited and accepted by God. Mark is doing the same thing for people with a little more security, it seems. This is a good example of how we should speak in a way that enables us to be heard.” —Richard Rohr, Jesus’ Alternative Plan, p. 104

“Much of the power of the Beatitudes depends on where you are sitting when you hear them. They sound different from on top than they do from underneath. They sound different up front than they do in the back. Up front with the religiously satisfied and self-assured, they sound pretty confrontational. Where is your hunger and thirst, you well-fed Christians? Where is your spiritual poverty? Where are the bones of your soul showing through your clothes, and why aren’t your handkerchiefs soaked with tears? But way in the back, with the victims, the dreamers, the pushovers, and the fools, the Beatitudes sound completely different. Shhh, they say, dry your tears, little ones. The whole earth belongs to you, though someone else still holds the keys. It won’t be long now. Heaven’s gates are opening wide for you, and the first face you shall see shall be the face of God.” —Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine, p. 162

“And so just as surely as Jesus was offering a word of hope to those downtrodden and hungry, he also, in a not too subtle way, was making a political statement about how different the nature of God’s kingdom is. In God’s reign the hungry will be fed, the last will be first, the poor will be wealthy, those picked last for the dodgeball team will be the captains. It is radically different from the realm in which those with power rule with an iron hand and …sneer at those whose voices cry out for justice.” —Blogger, The Contemplative Pastor

“Ever since the Sermon on the Mount, the Gospel and Western Civilization have been on a collision course. And the winner wasn’t Jesus, the winner was Western civilization. We’ve taken Jesus over and placed a crown on his head, not a crown of thorns but a royal crown, which he expressly rejected.” —Richard Rohr, Simplicity, p. 26, (Kindle)

“Each of the Beatitudes represents a specific step in our orderly progression towards perfection, and teaches us how to qualify ourselves for exaltation…. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” —Elder Royden G. Derrick

“But something happens to us as we grow older. Some are in their thirties or forties when the truth starts sinking in: Dying is a part of life. By fifty or sixty, we must learn that dying is not opposed to life; it’s a part of a greater mystery—and we are a part of that mystery. The older psyche is ready to hear such sober truth.” —Richard Rohr, Jesus’ Alternative Plan, p. 158

“When the heart is right, seeing will be right, Jesus says. He ties together heart and sight. Consider the saying, ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’ So is God. All we need to do is keep the lens clean.” —Richard Rohr, Jesus' Alternative Plan

“Maybe the Sermon on the Mount is all about Jesus’s lavish blessing of the people around him on that hillside, blessing all the accidental saints in this world, especially those who that world — like ours — didn’t seem to have much time for: people in pain, people who work for peace instead of profit, people who exercise mercy instead of vengeance. Maybe Jesus was simply blessing the ones around him that day who didn’t otherwise receive blessing, who had come to believe that, for them, blessings would never be in the cards. I mean, come on, doesn’t that just sound like something Jesus would do? Extravagantly throwing around blessings as though they grew on trees?” —Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints, p. 184

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Many thanks to listener Amanda Gunderson 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: And about that Barbara Brown Taylor, she said “It has been 2000 years and the poor are still with us. Those who hunger for justice are still hungry. The mournful are still blowing their noses and the excluded are still waiting at the border. The Beatitudes may work for people who can wait until they die for their reward, but meanwhile, there are other people who have lost faith in Jesus’ promises, they aren’t feeling the joy they need Heaven now.”

SH: Hello, I’m Susan Hinkley.

CW: And I am 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, the Beatitudes. Hello, Cynthia.

CW: Hello, Susan. Are you ready to have a big, big idea and maybe a big, big convo about it too.

SH: I mean, I gotta be honest, like, I am. Okay. I love this conversation and it’s because I’m hanging on by my fingernails in this one. This is, this just feels to me like slightly, like just enough, slightly above, my head that I have to run to keep up with this big idea.

CW: And oh, same.

SH: I love being in that situation. Yeah. So I’m excited to have it.

We have tons of stuff. Should we just dive in?

CW: Let’s just dive in. So, I’ve been wanting to have this episode for a year. I feel like I’ve mentioned it to you here and there probably ever since I read Richard Rohr’s book, Jesus’ Alternative Plan: The Sermon on the Mount, and he just had so many good ideas, that I was like, let’s do this episode. But, you know, because we have so many other ideas, not every episode gets to happen when we actually think about it, right? So, so I’ve had an extra long time to think about this, and after I read Richard Rohr’s book, I couldn’t help but remember, that the very first time I did a deep dive into the Beatitudes was when I was taking New Testament at BYU and some people who are my age might remember, there was like this really big orange manual, and I remember in that manual, under the Beatitudes, it talked about how the beatitudes are basically the list of an exalted person.

SH: Okay.

CW: I’m sorry, I’m already laughing because I know, huh? I know what you’re thinking, Susan. Like really exaltation, perfection.

I mean that is not what I would think of now when I think about the Beatitudes, but in the moment I was like, okay, this is what I’m being told we…

SH: I always thought of them as aspirational, like, I mean, I thought that was what I was supposed to be aiming for.

CW: Okay. Well, even aspirational, is better than exaltation and perfection. I don’t know. We just dial it up to 11.

SH: Always.

CW: In our church. Always. Right, right, right. Now also, I know we just had an episode on piety and in that episode we talked so much about focusing on our own holiness, spotlessness, cleanliness, all of the above. And then, you know, we had an episode earlier this season on purity culture. So just taking those two episodes, kind of bundling them with this one, I can’t help but think of, like a more insular take on the Beatitudes than to make it about perfection and exaltation. So that’s why we’re filing this under big ideas, because I wanna take a bigger take, Susan, and I want you to go on that journey with me. So let’s do this because after working on the notes for this episode, for days. I basically said to myself, why can’t we take the Sermon on the Mount, which is where the beatitudes are found. Why can’t we make that a more serious topic for us in the church? I mean, you know, every few years, in Come Follow Me, we study it for probably one lesson or something.

SH: Right. Right.

CW: But in preparing this episode, I, you know, I’m out on the worldwide web reading this, reading that, reading books from our favorite thinkers, and I read an article about a church that studied the Sermon on the Mount, so the entire sermon, not just the Beatitudes, for 18 weeks, Susan.

SH: Wow.

CW: 18, four months, over four months. And then Rob Bell, he did 22 sermons on them when he was at his church, Mars Hill in Michigan. 22 sermons straight on the Sermon on the Mount.

SH: They don’t have as many books of scripture to get through as we do, Cynthia.

CW: In our defense, that is true.

And also, come on.

SH: Yeah.

CW: I want to spend that kind of time on the Beatitudes. Today, we don’t have that kind of time. We’ll give it an hour and some change, but

SH: We did come up with 15 pages of notes though, so I feel like we’re taking a run at it.

CW: We are. [00:05:00] But I’m just glad that you and I get to sit down and kind of chew on this together because after all, speaking of other books of scripture, Susan, they are, the beatitudes are found, pretty much word for word in the Book of Mormon in 3rd Nephi. So come on, doctrinally important speaking. I know, doctrinally speaking we should, I feel like we should be taking them more seriously. If they’re found in more than one place. So let’s do that together. Why don’t we start out by actually reading the beatitudes and you’re gonna do that?

SH: Okay. I’m gonna read from Matthew chapter five verses one through 12, The NRSV,

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Hello!

Welcome to the official season of hope! We don’t know whether there are blossoms where you are in the world, but it’s spring in ours and it feels like good news arriving just in the nick of time. Saved by the sun again! Whew, that was close.

Before we begin the slide toward summer, here’s a quick heads-up about ALSSI coming attractions. Mark your calendars for anything you don’t want to miss!

Calendar—

03/31 Ep. 257: Big Ideas | The Beatitudes

04/02 Say More 1 | Susan Hinckley

04/07 Ep. 258: C&S’s Rage-cast Potpourri

04/09 April Worthy Stuff | Susan Edition

04/10 Friday Live Chat | 10:00 am Mtn

04/14 Ep. 259: What Do You Say | Listener Edition 2

04/16 Say More: At Last She Writes It 2

04/16 ALSRI Book Club | 7:00 pm Mtn

04/21 Ep. 260: Big Ideas | Letting Go

04/23 ALSSI News

04/24 Friday Live Chat | 10:00 am Mtn

04/28 Ep. 261 Ask Us Anything | Q & R w/ C & S

05/05 Ep. 262 Big Ideas | Confirmation Bias

A few calendar notes:

We hope you’re enjoying the ALSSI Season 11 episodes as much as we’re enjoying making them! Fyi, our current season will run through mid-July. (Pssssst! We’re talking about ending this season with a live event in SLC, so file that info in the back of your mind and stay tuned for details…🤞🤞🤞)

Watch for links for our Friday Live Chats in the regular Substack chat a few minutes before starting time. No need to pre-register! We’ll record the meeting so you can listen later if you’re unable to join us in real time.

Lastly, hard to believe, but it’s almost time for our 2nd ALSRI Book Club meeting of the year! If you haven’t started reading yet, don’t panic—these discussions are great whether you’ve read the book or not. At the end of the meeting, we’ll all vote on the selection for next time. We really hope you’ll join us!

Ordinary Mysticism: Your Life as Sacred Ground, by Mirabai Starr
April 16, 2026
7:00 pm Mountain
Register to receive Zoom link by clicking here

And now…we’re pleased to introduce the newest member of our team!

Sarah Morse

Sarah’s stepped into the role of creating our social media, and we couldn’t be happier. We’re loving her whole vibe! (We can’t thank anyone enough for stepping up when we ask for help, but today we’re feeling especially thankful for you, Sarah—it’s a big job, and we were thiiiis close to dropping every ball there is! At last we can breathe again.)

Here’s Sarah in her own words:

I'm a long time ALSSI listener, thrilled to work for one of my favorite podcasts. Even though I’ve lived in Austin for the last 22 years, I’m a Midwesterner at heart, since I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and still visit often. I’m turning 50 in a couple weeks, and I’m pretty excited about it. (I’m one step away from pulling on some high waisted pants and doing my best Sally O’Malley kicks.) I have a degree in political science, and I will happily talk about news and politics with anyone. My favorite thing to do is wander a thrift store and hunt for vintage housewares, some of which I keep, and some I re-sell. I’ve been married to Matt for 28 years, and we have three boys, ages 20, 18, and 12. At church, for the past several years I’ve been both a Relief Society teacher and the stake communication director, and I love both roles. You can find me on IG at @craftandopinion.

Call for Voicemails—Ask Us Anything!

It’s been a long time since we had an episode where we responded to your questions. Is there something you’d like to hear us talk about? Anything you want us to take a stab at? We can’t guarantee “answers,” but we’d love to respond to your thoughts with some of ours! Leave us a voicemail here or send us an email at atlastshesaidit@gmail.com and we’ll tell you what we think. You have 90 seconds of recording time.

Thanks!

We continue to be grateful for all the support that comes our way, and also the many words of encouragement we see exchanged between members of this community. It’s the space it is because together we make it that way. Thanks for your contributions—the ones we know about, and the ones we don’t.

Thanks for your hope.

Warmly,

Susan, Cynthia
& the ALSSI Team 🌺

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Shadow Work is a phrase that gets a lot of airplay, but it can be hard to get your head around exactly what it means or how it can apply in your life. The “shadow” consists of unconscious, repressed, or hidden parts of our personality. So what might it mean to uncover, understand, and integrate our shadow self? How might this work affect our responses and relationships? “The human soul wants belonging, but the ego really doesn’t know how to give it to us. It just...helps us fit in. It helps us show up and be acceptable—and it thinks that hiding the shadow is the thing that’s going to do it,” explains Jana Spangler. In Episode 256, Susan and Cynthia are joined by Jana for a conversation about the potential benefits of bringing the shadow to light through this specific inner work.

Notes & Quotes:

Hear more from Jana on these ALSSI episodes:
Ep. 69: But She’s Got a Great Personality!
Ep. 135: What About Religious Trauma
Ep. 184: Am I Allowed to Change?
Find Jana on Instagram here and on Facebook here and professionally here
Shadow Work: An Idiot’s Guide, Rainn Wilson with Keila Shaheen, Soul Boom podcast Ep. 36
Find Byron Katie’s work here
Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path: The Dance of Darkness and Light in Our Search for Awakening, by Connie Zweig
Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature, by Connie Zweig

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Many thanks to listener Kim Kershaw 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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JS: And befriending our inner critic because we’ve built up such a shadow that every way that we naturally are is not okay. We’re supposed to fit this mold. And so it’s reclaiming parts of - That we’ve had to repress and push down for acceptability. So it’s bringing those up and looking at them and having a lot of that self-forgiveness you know, that Maya Angelou talks about. That when we know better, we do better and have lots of grace for yourself for doing what you did when you did it.

SH: Hello, I’m Susan Hinkley.

CW: And I am 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 Shadow Work, A conversation with Jana Spangler. Hello Jana.

JS: Hello ladies.

CW: Welcome!

SH: We are thrilled to have you back on the podcast. Our listeners might remember that we’ve had you on before. I’m gonna give a quick rundown of those episodes right now so that people can go back and find them when they hear this amazing conversation and want so much more from you, which is sure to happen. So we had you on Episode 184: Am I Allowed to Change. On episode 135 we talked about religious trauma and then the original on episode 69, we introduced the Enneagram in an episode called “But She’s Got A Great Personality” and I will link to all of those in the show notes.

JS: Awesome. Well, thank you for having me back. I love conversation with you two.

CW: Ahh. Same.

SH: Is there anything that you’d like to give the listeners by way of introduction of yourself? Maybe just something you haven’t said before or maybe just the same things you’ve always said before?

JS: Well, sure. Well, I’ll just start with people who don’t know me. I am an integral professional coach who specializes in faith transition and relationship, and I’ve been working in that field for over nine years now. I work with Symmetry Counseling and I just am passionate about wellness and helping people through things. I’m the epitome of the wounded healer. I’m, if you know that archetype I fall into it well. These days I’m just really passionate about healthy dialogue. I’m passionate about ways that we can understand each other better without perpetuating all of the yucky stuff we see going on in the public sphere around religion and politics and everything else. I just think the world’s really in need of it, so.

CW: You’re really good at that.

JS: Thank you. I try. But other than that, I’m a mom of three emerging adults. Can’t believe it. My baby’s about to graduate from high school.

SH: Oh.

JS: Like, I don’t know how I got here. But that’s me.

SH: I think Cynthia and I can both relate to that feeling. We’ve been there.

JS: Yeah.

CW: Sometimes I feel like an emerging adult. What’s going on there? That’s another conversation.

SH: You need to schedule a conversation with Jana about that Cynthia.

SH: Laughter

CW: Laughter

JS: Laughter

CW: Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh goodness.

SH: Well, that gives our listeners a great intro as to why we’re having this conversation with you. And today, Cynthia’s gonna lead us through the discussion. So I’m just gonna turn it over to Cynthia.

Read more

Something I see differently today than I did 10 years ago is the idea that a savior needed to die…and the whole concept of the atonement.

Ever since I became a parent, my perspective has gradually shifted. The idea of “I sent my son to die for you” feels very different to me now. It doesn’t align with what I would expect from a loving, all-knowing, supreme being.

As an imperfect human, I would never require one of my children to die for anyone else. And if I had created all of this, I wouldn’t make the people I love inherently unworthy in the first place.

Feels so strange to me now.
—Jamee Andelin

I have shifted the way I view trials. I no longer believe that “everything happens for a reason” and God had some master plan that involves giving me my trials. I currently view the hard times as just part of the condition of being mortal. Sometimes good can come from them. They’re not pointless. But God didn’t handpick them to prove me.
—Jessica Mitchell

How about in the last 6 months? I think about God differently. Instead of a God who is a gatekeeper, demanding, and to be feared and obeyed or else, I know believe He is ALL loving and no matter my choices or how I get things wrong I will always be loved and welcomed to live with Him and my loved ones.
—Kathy C.

That putting my family over policy is extremely important. To Think that I was trying to keep a family eternal with rules that strained relationships is now laughable. People come first now, and if that send me to hell, so be it.
—Jillian Tueller

Personal revelation over obedience to church leadership. Wow what a difference! I am using the gift of agency instead of blindly following man’s interpretation of God’s laws and it feels so good.
—Dee Adams

A couple of my favorites are that I am God and God is in me. There was never, and could never be, a separation. And, closely related, that we and all of God’s creations are connected. When one is harmed, we are all harmed. Conversely, when one is healed, we are all healed.
—Marley Orton

My connection to God has no gatekeepers.
—Leslie Boyce

I don’t believe in God anymore. But I am happy to see women reclaiming their power and autonomy when it comes to their religion.
—Erin Pfleger

I have claimed my spiritual authority, I don’t need a man of anybody else’s authority to have a relationship with God. I also believe in a God who is not legalistic, but is love.
—Gaynor-Marie Glass

Many things, but mostly how we have been saved by grace, and that we will all return to our Father in Heaven. I think our temple visits place us on perhaps a higher plane of righteousness when making promises to the Lord and showing our respect and submissiveness in following the gospel and doing His will, but I don’t know in my heart that some things performed in the temple will need to be done when we pass by the sentinels in Heaven.
—Holly Christensen

Mainly, my vision of eternity has transformed. I believe God is more than a body of flesh and blood. God is more that 3 degrees of glory and God is more than gender. My beliefs are so radically different they seem unrecognizable to some, but I think they fit seamlessly into what my heart and head have always felt. We are still an eternal family, each of us still aspires to become like God once was. Love is forever the foundation and being like Jesus means focusing on that love and helping people to grow. What’s really changed is I have lost fear. I follow myself and my inner soul. I can’t believe the relief I feel and I think my “fruits” speak for themselves. Less judgment and service that is heartfelt, not forced. I’m happier and more self confident. Losing myself really has led to finding myself. I found this podcast at the beginning of my journey and I feel like I have walked this path with many of your listeners. Thank you for allowing what I believe to be the echoes of eternity brought forth into light.
—Pamela Kennedy

My own personhood and autonomy. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but here goes: I was relieved when my husband chose me when I was 20 because it took the pressure off me having to make risky choices like trying to get into law school. This was the mid-80s, and my Mormon bubble didn’t have many examples of career women. Being someone’s wife was safe, known, preached from the pulpit. So I made the sacrifice, squelching any desire to develop myself and following the known quantity of temple marriage, stay-at-home motherhood, all with relief that “at least someone chose you!” I willingly, albeit blindly, chose not to develop a ME.
—Becca T.

I have 2: paying tithing on gross, off the top, for 30 years when I should have been putting that money in retirement. And also starting having babies at 20 and not finishing my education because I hadn’t self-actualized. I had so many interests but didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I tripped into SAHMhood.
—Brooke

Wearing garments for over 35 years. Being out of touch with my body. Disliking my body. Living with the fear that if I didn’t have them on, something bad would surely happen to me.
—Nancy

I sacrificed my dreams. LDS culture said “if you are a woman, your dream is motherhood, and that’s it.”

And I love being a mom, but I didn’t realize until much later that I hadn’t even allowed myself to have any other dreams.

Another one I regret less is that in high school I gave up a trip to Europe for Girls Camp. I had signed up to travel to Europe for two weeks with a group of high school musicians from all over the state. Since I had turned 12, Girls Camp had ALWAYS been the second week of July. I was scheduled to return from Europe at the end of the first week of July. We had already put down over $1000 towards the trip when the dates for Girls Camp that year were announced. It would be the first week of July. I was devastated. I loved camp and this was going to be my last year. After a few weeks of agonizing I decided to pull out of the Europe trip. We lost the $1000. Most expensive year of Camp ever. I’ve still never been to Europe.
—Zinah B.

Putting LITERALLY everyone else’s needs ahead of my own. Trying so hard to be that selfless woman that’s spouted about in church.

Thinking that the natural woman is an enemy to Godde. ( yes I changed it on purpose ).

Those beliefs led me down so many roads that led to intense personal decisions that impact me to this day.
—Genna

I can completely relate to the sacrifice of my true self, getting an education, having my own career, and the tithing.

Which brings me to the answer that came to my mind when I read the question. The biggest sacrifice I’ve made in my life was going to work (two jobs!) at age 45 when my youngest was six-years-old so we could avoid bankruptcy (mostly medical bills) because it was WRONG to go bankrupt if we could avoid it, and of course paying such a generous tithe guaranteed God would give me strength to work 50-60 hours a week (half of those just to pay the generous tithe). At a low-wage jobs because I had no education. But can I call it MY sacrifice if it was my children who suffered the most? Yes, it was rough on my brain and body for those eleven years and yes, it battered my marriage beyond repair, but my kids are the ones who paid the price of having an absent or cranky/exhausted mother. I can’t begin to express my anger and grief. How can we claim the family to be the most important unit when our teachings so often cause harm to families?
—Katy O’Barr Smith

Giving up on becoming a medical doctor because I thought having a family took priority. I did have the satisfaction of working in the medical field for 25 years after the youngest was in school, where I was able to make a difference for good. But I often wonder if there were greater opportunities to make a difference had I chosen differently. I don’t regret having 8 children. Not at all. They are wonderful people and each of them and theirs are making a difference for good in the world.
—Pat Catherall

I alienated my entire family because they were not members of the church and could not enter the temple for my wedding to my husband.

That was emotionally and spiritually devastating - but demanded [by a] religion that prizes obedience and worthiness above all else.

Putting the church’s demands over what my own conscience told me was wrong will be part of my deconstruction for the rest of my life. The harm from that one event has echoed through our relationships for years - and still does in the distance it caused in the lives of my children relative to their grandparents.
—Jessica Mertz

A mission, while the mission itself was a great experience, I felt very alone when I returned. As a person on a visa, I had to enroll in school full time a month after. I had no family close, very little money, ate little, it was winter and it was one of the hardest times in my life. I was very poor.
—Carolina Bell

One thing is serving a mission to Idaho. It was probably at least twenty years or a little more before I admit, it’s anyone publicly that I have been disappointed in that mission call. Even now, I did learn to love the people of Idaho, and I had tears when I left, i had wanted to go to either a Spanish- speaking mission or a welfare mission. I feel it is something that I do or rather did to show love for Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father.

Another one is perhaps not really a sacrifice, by just being single and not having children. I’m at a point in life for reviewing my life, and knowing those dreams and hopes will never ever happen. It is a devastating kind of feeling. And there’s a part of me that wonders what my life would have been like, perhaps without the influence of the church on dating and what type of people to look for.. For instance, I’m sure church culture and church teachings probably influence some guys to not like me.

Another one is unfortunately due to my job. I have a job that basically requires homework in terms of paperwork and such. So I have sacrificed personally due to the kind of job that can impact one’s life balance. I feel like i’ve given a lot to my job. Trying to help patients yet in hindsight, even though I did what needed to be done, I wish I had been better with boundaries than life balance in some aspects of my work.
—Nita

My personal autonomy. It was 2003 when I got married at age 20. I knew plenty of women that had an education/career, but no one, not even my parents, ever actually talked to me about having hobbies or interests, going to college, or any sort of personal development (except Personal Progress, of course. My mom once told me Satan had his hands on me because I didn’t want to do it.) So I never had any plans for life except get married. So now I’m an empty-nester at 43 and trying to figure out who I want to be and what I want to do.
—Kayla

No one “chose me” until it was too late for the motherhood part so I was left with education choices that put me near poverty because they were good degrees for a mom.
—Heather G.

Men’s opinions on women’s issues.
—Haley Mann

ANYTHING a man says. I’m serious. I was taught that anything and everything a man said was literally smarter and wiser than any woman, especially myself. No more. Done with that. That is not true in the slightest.
—Mary Cox

Every damn thing! Swearing, what I wear, what anyone says I’m supposed to believe or do, counsel from ward, stake, and SLC leaders, the Word of Wisdom, the importance of meetings, shopping on Sunday, the temple, the afterlife, and, again, SWEARING!
—Carol Colvin

My children’s salvation looking like church activity and a “covenant path” lifestyle. Now that I don’t take that seriously, I’m so happy, relaxed and can and enjoy my adult kids 100%!

Boy, do I ever love them.
—Nancy

The afterlife. I now choose to focus on finding joy in this life.
—Jodi Gale

As I recover and heal from scrupulosity, I've taken a break from attending my rather prescriptive LDS Ward. In so doing, I felt like Alice in Wonderland for a while last year. I didn't know which way was up, what was real or false, or right or wrong. Instead of enjoying the adventurous ride, I stressed and cried almost every day for months as my spiritual foundation crumbled.

After a few months, finding a bit of stability and soft landing in a local, progressive Methodist community, I found myself crying and stressing less. I still relapsed at times with tsunamis of guilt or shame. During one of these relapses, I distinctly heard in a loving, almost joking tone, "You've got to stop taking Me so seriously!"

I've been enjoying this spiritual adventure so much more since that moment.

So, long story short: GOD.

I’ve learned to take God less seriously, in all the good, wholesome, healing, playful ways that God wants for our relationship.
—Andrea Neahusan

The opinion of anyone regarding my “worthiness”.
—Laura Balmaceda

What we are “supposed to” do and feel and be.
—Joy Wil

Everything that is not about secure attachment. If it doesn’t affect secure attachment relationships, it’s not serious.
—Paula White

That 15 old white men were the mouthpieces for God and that their words were what should guide all my actions.
—Meadow Petersen

Sadly, the belief that I could bring about any kind of change in my ward.
—Rebecca Bigelow

A transactional God. I actually think that God CANT intervene in our lives. They are God in that they love and care for us and the ultimate form of worship is to have a relationship with them. That thought makes them seem more loving to me. Otherwise, it means that they pick and choose when and who and how to help...or not help. And that just doesn’t make sense to me.
—Tara Northcutt

That there were good reasons for all the things the church encourged or discouraged. Now I know that many of those reasons are just inherited cultural baggage.
—Laura Glasglow

I think patriarchy/hierarchy has been a hard but freeing belief to let go of. I still believe that some version of the gospel according to the LDS church is true. There are a lot of things where I’m like “yeah, maybe something kind of like that is true, but probably not in the way we’ve learned it.” But the whole idea of patriarchy, even though it’s so central to the way the church is run and supposedly continues into the eternities.... No. I can’t keep trying to believe that an oppressive system comes from God.
—Kristine Napper

I have let go of so many things but the biggest is that my religion (Jehovah’s Witness) is THE TRUTH.
—Melinda Kopilow

I’ve let go of believing the church has all the answers. And that what the church did was “God’s Will” and there must be a reason for the things that didn’t seem quite “right.” Like denying priesthood to groups of people. Or polygamy.
—Maria Krieser

The belief the Church has all the answers. They don’t and wanting them to was hurting me.
—M. Alva

Learning to let go of the Mormon “I have the answers to everything and I am right and you are wrong and ‘playing church’” (cough, cough Brad Wilcox) has been SO FREEING!! For a long time after deconstruction, I felt like my beliefs might be wrong or right, but it didn’t matter because I was learning, thinking, and growing! Now I realize I was close, but just barely missing the point = there IS NO RIGHT/WRONG in spiritual growth and learning!
—Sage

As an enneagram 8 - being wrong is one of my LEAST favorite things -- BUT - allowing the vulnerability of being wrong is also the gift of a healthy enneagram 8 (I’m not quite there yet, don’t fret) -- it’s where I learn about myself -- and that’s when the growth happens. I also think that the more I’m wrong about some of the little things, I trust myself to be RIGHT about the bigger things.
—Mary

I’m never comfortable with being wrong. But I’m also learning to lean into the discomfort for “productive discomfort”.

That said, there’s still plenty of times I don’t wanna lean in, but instead get unproductive discomfort and just be sassy or lean away/walk away from it to not be so uncomfortable.
—Nikki Nelson

I didn’t even know feeling comfort was a thing. Been feeling uncomfortable since birth. Adventures ahead.
—Evelyn Galbraith

I’m not comfortable with being wrong (mostly because I am a recovering perfectionist, considered the smart one in my family and was usually right) but I’m much more comfortable with not knowing all the answers. I’m okay with saying “I don’t know, but I’m sure everything will be fine.”
—Carol

What was a woman’s role at church and in heaven, other than supporting other people’s dreams and lives? Luckily I had faith that once I went to the temple, god’s true plan for women would be revealed. And…we all know how that turned out.
—Jodi Gale

I was taught “No necking and petting,” and no one could/would answer what that meant! I’m still not sure.
I think most of what I learned was ambiguously taught, hence still so much is ambiguous to me.
And - all those handshakes to determine evil spirits and resurrected spirits, etc. How on earth was I supposed to remember all of this? Still confounds me; I see no relevance.
—Ronda Weaver

How will we get to heaven? Like will it be on a rocket ship to Kolob? Or will we dematerializing into energy and transported like on Star Trek. I spent way too much time thinking about this. Not one Sunday school teacher had a satisfactory answer.
—Ginger Hanson

If EVERYONE gets a body, when does the Holy Ghost get a body? I assume he would be the last spirit to be born, so there is an end. Also, after he gets his body, does that mean we no longer have “The Gift of the Holy Ghost” here on Earth? How does that work? I did ask the question once. The poor Bishop had no idea how to answer. Or that it was even a possible question to have. I got some version of “God will work it out in the end” The greatest non-answer answer the church has.
—Christina Beal

Are women only there to raise boys who will go and do cool things and girls to raise more boys and so on down the line ...
—Amanda Funai

I remember the day I learned about Polygamy. 14 years old in Seminary, Church History year. I asked my mom about it after school that day and she confirmed what I’d heard. I sobbed in my room in utter disbelief and despair. The first jar on my shelf. I tucked it away because it physically hurt to think about. Honestly, it still does.
—Farrah Nordquist

The 3 degrees of glory: where is the “cutoff” line?

If God know what decisions we will make, why bother with a thousand years of peace and judgement day, etc.

Why cant I play with non-morons? When I moved to Utah this was the first thing they TRIED to instill in me. Segregation of Mormons from non.
—Ricci Giles

Two big questions for me in my teens:
1. Why would God disallow black men from receiving the priesthood (6th grade when that started)
2. Why was Emma not worshipped for all she did!! Members didn’t even want to talk about her when I was a youth.
—Janene Goubert


My mother joined the LDS church when I was 5, my father was already a member. She was raised as a devout Catholic, parochial school too. My maternal grandparents were my favorite people! They were kind, loving, loved Christ, served in their church and so much nicer than my paternal, LDS, grandparents. I am old enough to remember when the “Great and Abominable Church” was directly identified as the Catholic Church. That didn’t sir well with me. I always wondered if they got that wrong, what else did they get wrong??
—Theresa Nowling

When I got a little older I read the scriptures a lot. I was focused on the idea of univocality in the scriptures and thought that if I could just study hard enough I would be able to find the true answers to all my questions.
—Mara Haslam

I obviously didn’t get the repentance message prior to baptism and soon after got into a physical fight with a friend at school and thought I would go to hell. That worried me for a long time.
—Diana Kell

Sacred Space, Loud Mind: Creating Room for Neurodivergence in the Church

by Brittney Walker

In church, stillness is a virtue.

Fold your arms.

Close your eyes.

Sit quietly.

Reverence. It’s how we show respect and love for God in His house.

For many people, those instructions are simple. For some of us, they are an impossible puzzle.

We weren’t trying to be irreverent or disobedient. But our brains don’t experience stillness the same way.

ADHD doesn’t turn off when sacrament meeting begins. Thoughts still move quickly. Bodies still carry energy. Attention still searches for stimulation the way other people breathe.

And when a faith tradition teaches that spiritual sincerity looks like stillness, children who cannot sit quietly will start to assume something is wrong with them.

The girl trying to listen

Every few minutes I would snap back into focus.

Wait. What are they talking about?

I would sit up straighter and resolve to listen this time. Sometimes it worked for a few minutes. But then my mind would jump ahead to a scripture reference the speaker mentioned, or a question I wanted to ask, or the sudden realization that the woman in front of me had the exact same purse my mom owned in 1992.

Eventually I developed strategies.

I drew pictures in the margins of the sacrament program. I counted the ceiling lights. I peeled the foil off gum wrappers and pressed them onto the program. I split the ends of my hair and lined them up along the edge of the bench.

Sometimes my mom and I played the dot game on the program. We would draw a grid of dots and take turns connecting them, trying to capture squares and write our initials inside before the other person could block us.

Other weeks we played the “I love you” hand squeeze game during the talks.

It looked like fidgeting. But it was actually concentration. Keeping my hands busy was the only way to keep my mind in the room.

Eventually I learned an even better trick: taking notes. If my hand was moving, my brain stayed anchored.

The effort no one could see

From the outside, ADHD rarely looks dramatic. Especially in girls.

We are not usually the ones climbing the chapel furniture. We are the ones whispering.

A question about something the speaker said. A connection to a church magazine story. A thought that arrived so quickly it came out of our mouths before we had time to decide whether it should stay there.

Participation felt natural to me. Stillness did not.

The early lessons

Sometimes my parents had to take me out of the chapel. I remember sitting on a parent’s lap in the foyer, trying very hard to hold my body still long enough to prove I could go back inside.

As I got older, my job became escorting younger siblings out for water or bathroom breaks. Everyone knew that those trips often turned into a few minutes of running around the church building before returning reverently to the pew.

The sacrament itself was one of those moments. The moment the bread and water reached our row. The small sensory shift of participating.

Afterward, we unfolded the accordion-folded paper cups and formed them into flowers.

It wasn’t irreverence. It was stimulation in a room that offered very little.

When difference becomes shame

Many women with ADHD grow up believing their brain is a spiritual problem. Nobody says those words directly. But the traits that come with ADHD are easily and often interpreted through a moral lens.

For girls especially, the message often becomes: be quieter, calmer, smaller.

What belonging could look like

The hopeful part of this story is that inclusion doesn’t require sweeping changes to doctrine or worship. Often it simply requires widening our understanding of what spiritual engagement can look like.

A Primary teacher who welcomes questions instead of shutting them down. Even if the lesson veers around a bit.

A youth leader who understands that a girl whispering excitedly about a thought from the lesson is not being disrespectful. She is processing out loud. And when someone finally receives her that way, when a leader leans in instead of shushing her, something shifts. The story she tells herself changes. Not overnight, but it changes.

A calling where someone who struggles with administrative details receives structure and support instead of quiet frustration.

Small moments like these can change the story a child tells herself. Instead of I am bad at reverence, the story becomes my brain works differently. And that difference can belong.

A wider kind of reverence

Looking back now, I see that my ADHD didn’t separate me from spiritual life. If anything, it drew me toward it.

Curiosity made me ask questions.

Energy made me volunteer.

Intensity made me care deeply.

Some people experience God in stillness. Others encounter the sacred through curiosity, conversation, movement, and connection. Both can be forms of devotion.

The child whispering questions may be deeply engaged. The teenager who cannot sit still may be thinking harder than anyone in the room. The woman whose mind moves quickly may be offering gifts the community doesn’t yet know how to recognize.

Sacred space doesn’t always have to be silent. Sometimes it just has to be large enough for every kind of mind.

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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In Episode 255, Cynthia and Susan ask Aubrey Chaves, Debbie Squires-Coleman, and Darice Auston, “What Do You Say?" It's 3 wide-ranging conversations with wise Latter-day Saint women answering questions about their memories, insights, and beliefs through stories of their own lives and experiences.

Notes & Quotes:
Hear more from Aubrey in ALSSI Ep. 151
Hear more from Debbie in ALSSI Ep. 161
Hear more from Darice in ALSSI Ep. 206
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr
Church Participation of Individuals Who Identify as Transgender—Guiding Principles for Local Leaders (see also General Handbook 38.6.23)
Erosion: Essays of Undoing, by Terry Tempest Williams

"Spiritually speaking, there are no dead ends. God will use this too—somehow—and draw all of us toward the Great Life." —Richard Rohr

"My delight in being forgotten is rooted in the belief that I don’t matter in the larger scheme of things, only that I tried my best to be a good human, failing repeatedly, but trying again with the soul-settling knowledge that my body will return to the desert.” —Terry Tempest Williams

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Many thanks to listener Rachel Cousin 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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DA: I don’t grieve my child not being at church now. I wouldn’t wish her back at this point. Having a relationship with God, wonderful. Walking with Christ? Yes, please. Coming into an LDS church building and being subjected to what our trans and non-binary gender fluid, gender expansive members are being asked to do? No way.

SH: Hello, I’m Susan Hinckley.

CW: And I am 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, “What Do You Say: Three Conversations about Spiritual Seeking, Being Forgotten, and Chasing Equality.”

CW: Mmmm.

SH: So, you know, as soon as we started doing our Journey episodes, Cynthia, soon after that I started to have a hunch that we could have an interesting conversation with pretty much any LDS woman.

CW: Agreed.

SH: I really couldn’t always predict who was gonna be the most interesting of those conversations and some of my favorites are people that I really didn’t know anything about. And that’s why I thought it might be a good idea to add the cards to this season and see how many more women we could get on here. And so we’re starting with three conversations today. We’ve been batch recording these. It’s been really fun. Well, it’s been really fun for me.

CW: It has been fun.

SH: I’m not sure it has been really fun for all the women. In fact, I think one of them might tell us this is not fun.

CW: Yeah. She says it so lovingly in a British accent, so that makes it even better. So, teaser.

SH: Yeah. But I’ve had a great time with it. But I was thinking this week, knowing that we were preparing for this episode to come out - releasing the first one of these, I heard Krista Tippet say something that was so interesting to me the other day, and she was talking about why in the beginning of On Being, she decided to start every conversation by asking the guest about their origins, like their religious origins or spiritual origins. And she said the reason that I settled on that question was because I’d had an experience with some Benedictines, with whom I was close, who came at really big spiritual questions using this line. And the line was, “Answer the question through the story of your life.”

CW: Wow.

SH: Answer the question through the story of your life.

CW: Yeah.

SH: And I thought that is what we’ve been doing on At Last She Said It. And that’s really what the point of these What Do You Say episodes are - to give women an opportunity to talk about some of the issues, some of the topics, some of the big ideas that we talk about on this podcast through the story of their lives.

Because we can all answer these questions just based on our experiences. We’re not asking anything hard. We’re not asking for anything that requires any kind of book learning or theological expertise or anything else. It’s just like you and I - we wanna come at these topics just through our personal experiences. And so I’m really excited to have the opportunity to hear more women answering big questions through the story of their very regular Latter-Day Saint woman lives.

CW: I actually think that’s one reason our podcast has been so successful is -

SH: Totally agree.

CW: - you and I are not theologians or historians. We have no expertise other than our stories and the women that have come on over the last six years telling their stories.

SH: Right.

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My version of March Madness has never involved a basketball. This March it has involved (no surprise, given the state of the world) lots of cake, especially chocolate cake. For months now I have been baking this Matilda cake on repeat (seen in above pic, but with this frosting.) My other favorite this winter has been this single layer cake when I need cake now. I collect chocolate cake recipes like some women collect handbags.

As an empty nester who mostly is alone when I am in my kitchen, cooking has become a meditative practice for me. Sometimes I listen to music, or a podcast, but lately I’ve been doing it in complete silence, focusing on each task at hand with heightened awareness. Sift. Fold. Stir. Zest. Melt. Mince. Am I finding God in my kitchen? Yes, yes I am. It reminds of a fave quote from a fave writer—

“God can be found at the seashore, in a sunset, in the gardens we plant, at home, in the work we do, in the games we watch or play, in the stories that entertain us, in good food and good company, when we eat, drink, laugh, and even make love. People who identify as ‘spiritual but not religious’ or religiously unaffiliated use a vocabulary of theological intimacy, as do many who identify with more traditional faiths. Although some still worship a distant majesty and others deny divine existence, many millions of contemporary people experience God as far more personal and accessible than ever before.” —Diana Butler Buss Grounded: Finding God in the World-A Spiritual Revolution

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Does piety serve anything besides the ego? Is our piety an asset or a liability? And what are we—individually and collectively—getting from it? In Episode 254, Susan and Cynthia consider these questions and more in a conversation examining the piety that is a cultural hallmark of our church. For Latter-day Saints and other Christians, is a focus on outward appearances or superficial “churchiness” sometimes a stand-in for real inner transformation?

Notes & Quotes:

The MAP: Archetypes of the Major Arcana, by Dr. Aisling O’Donnell
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr
No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear, by Kate Bowler
Randy Woodley’s “Being Human” Facebook post
Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense, by Francis Spufford
The Power of Ideas: Words of Faith and Wisdom, by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening, by Diana Butler Bass
Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings, by Joanna Brooks, Rachel Hunt Steenblik, and Hannah Wheelwright
TADROSS: Women, Why Are We Hurting Each Other?, by Veronica Tadross, The Vanderbilt Hustler, 9/21/2022
But I Say to You, by Debie Thomas, Journey With Jesus, 2/9/2020
Gravity and Grace, Simone Weil, Gustave Thibon (Editor), Emma Crawford (Translator), Mario von der Ruhr (Translator)
Beware of Spiritual Bypass, by Ingrid Clayton PhD, Psychology Today, 10/2/2011
Mission and the Cultural Other: A Closer Look, by Randy Woodley

“Being pious is not the same as being true.” —Dr. Aisling O'Donnell

“You cannot avoid sin or mistakes anyway (see Romans 5:12), but if you try too fervently, it often creates even worse problems. Jesus loves to tell stories like those of the tax collector and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9–14) and the famous one about the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32), in which one character does life totally right and is, in fact, wrong, while the other, who does it totally wrong, ends up God’s beloved! Now deal with that!” —Richard Rohr

“For some reason, religious people tend to confuse the means with the actual goal. In the beginning, you tend to think that God really cares about your exact posture, the exact day of the week for public prayer, the authorship and wordings of your prayers, and other such things. Once your life has become a constant communion, you know that all the techniques, formulas, sacraments, and practices were just a dress rehearsal for the real thing—life itself—which can actually become a constant intentional prayer. Your conscious and loving existence gives glory to God.” —Richard Rohr

“I just saw so many people climbing the ladder of perfection, each defined differently, each person what perfection was, and of course, always failing at it, and then thinking there was something wrong with them, which I would call the way of ascent, climbing, to be more moral, more virtuous, more heroic. Those are desires of the ego. They're not desires of the soul. The soul knows that it has learned best in darkness, not in light.” —Richard Rohr

"People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall". —Thomas Merton

“We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right.” —Richard Rohr

“By denying their pain and avoiding the necessary falling, many have kept themselves from their own spiritual depths—and therefore have been kept from their own spiritual heights.” —Richard Rohr

“People like to be Godlike. I want to be humanlike, because that's who God made me to be, is a human.” —Randy Woodley

“Being human is the most natural and spiritual way we can be.” —Randy Woodley

“If Christianity is anything, it’s a refusal to see human behavior as ruled by the balance sheet. We’re not supposed to see the things we do as adding up into piles of good and evil we can subtract from each according to some kind of calculus to tell us how, on balance, we’re doing.” ―Francis Spufford

“If faith in God means anything, it means humility toward oneself and love of neighbour and the stranger. Sadly, faith has not always led to these things. It can sometimes lead to self-righteousness and hatred of the stranger.” [...]
Faith is understood in the living and proved in the doing. We encounter the Divine presence in prayer and ritual, story and song. These lift us beyond ourselves toward the infinite Thou at the heart of being, who teaches us to see His trace in the face of the human other, leading us to acts of loving kindness that make gentle the life of this world. Faith is the bond of loyalty and listening that binds us to God and through Him to humanity. Faith is life lived in the light of love.” —Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

“The why for Christians is therefore deceptively simple: Christians do certain things seeking to imitate Jesus and Jesus’s followers who went before. This is not a set of rules, a prescribed piety, a list of dos and don’ts, or convention. Rather, following Jesus and our forebears involves encountering the same God they encountered through prayers, study, and worship; imitating Jesus and the saints means enacting God’s love in the world by feeding the hungry, comforting the sorrowful, standing for the oppressed, caring for the poor, healing the sick, and making peace. Jesus and the saints serve as models and mentors in the way of practice. Indeed, Jesus promised his friends that they would not only do the extraordinary things that he had done, but would do “greater works than these” (John 14:12). —Diana Butler Bass

“While the first generations of Mormon feminists developed analyses of power disparities between Mormon men and women, there is additional work to be done in analyzing modes of power that have been available to Mormon women, including the use of public piety, submission, ostracization, and other forms of microaggression to establish hierarchies among Mormon women and to manage our relationship with the non-Mormon world.” —Joanna Brooks

“Nadiah Kristensen, a research scientist in evolutionary modeling, uses the idea of the “patriarchal bargain” to explain that women criticizing fellow women is sometimes the only way to gain relative power in a system that disadvantages them….Women don’t tear each other down because they dislike each other, but because they need to do so to succeed in a male-dominated society. For women to change, the system needs to change.” —Veronica Tadross

“I wonder if the problem is in part a cultural one. As a 21st century Christian living in America, I am inclined to read Jesus’s sermon—or rather, I am inclined to read all of Scripture—through an individualistic lens. Whenever I see “you” in the text, I think: “Me. Me, Debie Thomas. This is a warning to and for me.”
But that is not an accurate reading. Jesus isn’t admonishing individuals in his Sermon on the Mount; he is calling forth a new community. A blessed community. A beloved community. A community meant to initiate a radical way of doing life on the earth. A community Jesus trusts will follow in his footsteps, and incarnate divine love to a world hungry for hope and healing.” —Debie Thomas

“Piety in regard to the dead: to do everything for what does not exist.” ―Simone Weil

“Spiritual bypass is a defense mechanism. Although the defense looks a lot prettier than other defenses, it serves the same purpose. Spiritual bypass shields us from the truth, it disconnects us from our feelings, and helps us avoid the big picture. It is more about checking out than checking in—and the difference is so subtle that we usually don't even know we are doing it.” —Ingrid Clayton

“Every tool for spiritual and psychological development has a purpose, and conversely, a place where it’s of no help whatsoever. Nothing is a panacea. We know that vitamins will not cure loneliness, but in other less obvious ways, we think that one pursuit will give us what we want in every area of life. We think that these practices should afford us freedom from the messiness of life, as though perfection is an attainable standard. We especially feel this way about spirituality.
...I am spreading the news about spiritual bypass as a reminder that we are not supposed to rise above it all. We can’t out-run our own feet. We can’t out-think our own brains. We can’t override this human operating system that we live and breathe in every hour of every day, freeing ourselves of pain and problems.
We need to remember that spiritual practice and emotional growth are not about achieving a particular quality of feeling (”good”). Being a human being on a spiritual journey isn’t about getting cash and prizes all the time. It is about being in the present moment, whatever it happens to look like. What are you experiencing right now? [...] There is something very necessary about being who and where you are.” —Ingrid Clayton

“Even the word humus, from which we derive human, is connected to the organic soil, animated by billions of living organisms.” —Randy Woodley

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Many thanks to listener Christine Fitz 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: We make good things happen in our lives. We make God bless us; we bind God. So yeah, I think piety gives us a false sense of control.

SH: Well, it certainly did me, and I didn’t only just think I could control myself, I thought I could control other people, too, through my goodness.

CW: Oh, for sure!

SH: My goodness was all about control, which was probably the most damaging thing about my goodness - reckoning with the idea that I have to give up control in order to actually have faith.

————————————————————

CW: Hello, I’m Cynthia Winward.

SH: And I’m Susan Hinkley.

CW: And this is At Last She Said It. We’re women of faith discussing complicated things. The title of today’s episode is “Big Ideas: Piety”.

SH: Piety, Cynthia! Why are we talking about piety?

CW: Oh my goodness. Why are we talking about piety? Because… I’m just gonna turn that over to you because you jumpstarted this episode with the notes. So why are we talking about piety?

SH: Well, it’s really interesting because when I started the notes… the first line on my notes is why are we… I remember this came up in a text convo, but what were we talking about? I don’t remember. But then since then, I have re-listened to our sin episode and realized that we had piety sprinkled all over in that conversation.

CW: Yeah, we did.

SH: And so I think that’s probably why it was front of mind for me whenever it came up next that made me sit down and start on these notes. So, the thing about the “big ideas” theme is that (and I’m already starting to see this) I think they’re all kind of related. It’s like one “big idea” leads to the next, if you see what I mean.

CW: Yes, that’s what I’ve noticed.

SH: They’re kindof connected in some way. So maybe all of them actually point to one really really “big idea”. I don’t know, but I felt like piety was a spoke in this wheel. And so when we started talking about belief and we started talking about sin, and I’m like, “You know what? I think piety has a place in this conversation.”

CW: A hundred percent.

SH: So that’s why we’re doing it. One of my more cynical observations that I have made in writing, and I think probably on this mic over the years - I think many Latter-day Saints are more interested in looking like good Latter-day Saints than they are in actually being good people, or at least as interested in that, you know?

And I’m not sure that it’s even a conscious thing. I think it’s sort of bred into us that it’s really really important to avoid the appearance of evil, right? We like to look like we’re doing Mormon-ing right.

CW: I mean, we kind of have a whole… Mormons have a whole look and people outside our religion know what that look is, right? People within know - you can spot the other Mormons at Disneyland, right?

SH: Right. Absolutely.

CW: And then the caricatures, the Saturday Night Live skits - I’ve seen all of them about Mormons and they all point to like our clean cut look, so I definitely think you’re right that we care about it as much as actually being good - looking pious. Looking good.

SH: Yep. I’m afraid that that is true. Okay, I have two really quick anecdotes to set up this conversation. And the first was when I was living in Seattle and I went out in my yard. I don’t even know why - maybe get my mail or something.

I just went out my front door, into my front yard. And a minute later, my next door neighbor (who was a member of the church) comes barreling out her front door, runs across the driveway to me, and she stopped and she said, “Oh, thank goodness! I thought you were smoking!” I had a lollipop in my mouth, Cynthia. I had a white like sucker stick in my mouth…

CW: Thank goodness! [laughter]

SH: …because I was sucking a lollipop, okay?

CW: Oh my goodness!

SH: It took her one second to land on my doorstep because she thought I was smoking. So I’m just gonna drop that one there first. That’s anecdote number one. Number two is that I had words with my mom at some point, and my mom and I like… we’re… my whole family, we’re not really fighting people. I can count on one hand the number of times that I’ve had fight-y conversations with my mom. In my whole life.

CW: Like, elevated volume?

SH: Not necessarily elevated volume, but like we were really arguing about something or angry about something.

So I don’t even remember what this was about. I was either late teens, I may already have been married (if I was, it was early on). But my mom said to me, “Well, you’re Miss Lily White and Pure!” And when she called me Miss Lily White and Pure, it just went straight somewhere so deep because [00:05:00] nobody knows… who knows your faults better than your own mom?

Like, nobody. My mom knows me, man. She knows all the dirt, she knows all of the… she knows who I am. And so to hear her say that, it was very clear that she also knew about me that it really mattered to me: looking good. I like to look good. I like to look lily, white, and pure. I like to always come out looking good in the conversation, in whatever.

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Along for the Ride

by Blakelee Ellis

From the time I started thinking about getting married,

I understood that there were complexities about joining two lives together. Gender, family dynamics, finances, personality differences, expectations were all complexities that I knew would have to be navigated. The complexity I didn’t anticipate was deciding how to raise kids. There are those famous movie moments when a couple of different faiths decides to get married or have kids and someone always asks them, “But how will you raise the children?” I naively assumed that was the major difference of opinion between adults raising children, and because we were both LDS, that wouldn’t be a problem for my husband and me. All of you who are reading this who are raising or have raised children are laughing hysterically. I am too. It’s quite the kick in the pants to glance back at our past selves, when we had so little experience or knowledge, and truly begin to understand how stupid we were.

My husband and I were raised very differently. Which might be hard to believe considering we were both raised by white, heterosexual, middleclass, LDS parents who were also born and raised in Utah. We both have so many privileges. So really, how different could our childhoods be? Perhaps you are laughing again. Because you know as well as I do now, that parenting can not be boiled down solely to race, sexuality, socioeconomic status or faith. Because the type of parents we become is shaped by the type of parents we come FROM. I’ve frequently said that there were things my parents did when I was growing up that I was NEVER going to do. And I stuck by that. The cruel irony I know now (I hear you laughing again) is that besides those very clear things I wanted to do differently from my parents, the rest of me continues to grow into them. We all become our parents. Don’t misunderstand me: I love my parents. I respect my parents, but I didn’t really want to morph into them. I’m exaggerating, of course, because I am still my own person with my unique personality and experiences. But much of who I have become and so much of how I raise my children is a result of how many parents raised me. Of course, the same is true with my husband. Trying to merge our personalities, our own backgrounds, our own opinions on how to raise our kids has been, for me, the most complicated part of our married life. I thought that BEFORE my faith shifted several years ago. Now, some days it seems nearly impossible to come to a unified decision about how to be a parent.

Without going into great detail of how we were both raised, I’ll just tell you that I am the “fun” parent and my husband is the “mean” parent. We each had different expectations placed on us as children and so, naturally, the expectations we have for our own kids are very different from each other. Parenting is an amalgamation of so many decisions; some important, but mostly little day to day decisions that eventually build up to make an entire picture of a life. Will I let the kids jump on the couch today? Do I have the energy to allow a giant crafting mess? Will I yell during my son’s temper tantrum or will I be the calm in the storm? Will I apologize for the mistake I just made? Will I make dinner or will we go out to eat? Will I make the kids get off screens and go play outside? Will I react with compassion when my daughter admits she lied? Will I make my son come hang up his backpack or hang it up for him? Will I make my kids eat the recommended serving of vegetables today? There is no way to list all the minute decisions we make during the day. But now, as my spiritual life is complicated, many of the decisions I make about my kids also become extremely complicated.

One of the biggest personal musings continues to be: how much do I share with my kids? How do I inform them, while allowing them to keep their hearts and minds open to the LDS church? How do I bring up my qualms, without overly influencing their decisions? How do I inform them, but allow them to experience things for themselves? I have a deep desire to help foster my kids’ relationships with the divine alongside an even deeper desire to raise critical thinkers. In a church system that doesn’t want us to put question marks after the words of a prophet, it seems nearly impossible to raise children who are “all in” but know how to challenge the injustices of the system. My conscience will not allow me to sit back and watch their spiritual growth dampen and take on LDS rhetoric. If there is anything I can do to prevent my children from going through a mid-life faith crisis, I’m determined to do it. I will not have them fall apart as an adult because their spiritual life no longer works for them. It’s too damn painful. So I ache and think and debrief and deconstruct and reconstruct with them as often as I can. I will walk that tightrope to save them future spiritual pain. I guess I’m the second side of the same coin—LDS mothers everywhere feel a deep responsibility to usher their children down the covenant path so that they have the best chance at eternal life. On the flip side—I feel it is my responsibility to usher my children down their own path to have the best chance at happiness. I trust them to make the best decisions for themselves.

I’m helping my son clean out his room and I notice a, “For the Strength of Youth,” in the garbage. I pull it out.

“You’re getting rid of this?,” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Oh. I don’t really care, but can I ask why?”

“The section on chastity says that marriage is only between a man and a woman. I don’t think that’s true. I’m pissed about it so I’m throwing it away.”

How do I keep him from throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Do I really care if he does?

“Are there other teachings in here that you feel might apply to your life? Do you want to keep it for other reasons? Or you still just want to throw it away?”

“Throw it away.”

So I do.

Several months ago, my son had an appointment to renew his temple recommend. My husband had made the appointment for him without consulting my son. In my husband’s world, you go get your temple recommend renewed regardless of what is happening in your life. To him, it is a commandment and if you truly love God, you obey commandments. Even if you don’t see the point, or don’t understand the need for the commandment. I completely understand his point of view because I used to think the same thing.

It’s a reality that we are inherently lazy creatures. That if given the option, we will all stay comfortable and content, never being pushed, never doing anything hard or uncomfortable. Especially as a kid. So much of what we do as parents is teaching our kids that hard things are not only necessary, but are good. That discomfort pushes you and boring, pointless things, actually have a purpose and can help mold you into the best version of yourself. Also, that those hard, boring things are a necessary part of life that will ALWAYS exist. Hard, boring things are never going away and you have to learn how to handle them.

Brushing your teeth, learning math, going to bed on time, showering, cleaning your room, being kind to rude people, tolerating your siblings, practicing physical skills, just to name a few. I know we as humans learn the value of doing hard, boring, things we initially dislike by being forced to do them. I can’t say I now love to pull weeds since I had to as a kid, but I know it’s something that has to be done to have a beautiful yard.

What I’m having a difficult time with is deciding how much of my children’s spiritual lives is a necessary evil they have to get through to see the value in later? Yes, church is boring and mundane and it takes a lot of work to get anything spiritual out of meetings. I no longer believe that my family’s salvation relies on us attending church every Sunday, but I do know that it’s where I first learned to have a relationship with God. But I now believe there are so many other ways and places to build a relationship with God. Church is not the only place to do it.

My son was getting ready for his appointment and asked which parent was taking him. I asked if he had a preference and he asked if I would take him. I said I would and was determined to do so without unloading all my thoughts about temple recommends and temple recommend interviews on my son. We got in the car and I just knew I was going to internally implode if I didn’t speak my mind about some things.

“Listen,” I said.

“You know one of the interview questions is about the law of chastity. Sometimes, bishops ask additional questions about masturbation and pornography use if they feel inclined. I don’t think that is any of the bishop’s business. I don’t think he has the right to ask you those questions, but I want you to be prepared if he does ask. Are you uncomfortable answering those questions in front of me? Because I am not sending you into that interview alone so if we need to have your dad go, instead of me, then dad can go with you.”

My son said he had no objection to me taking him.

I sat through the interview with my son and everything seemed fine. But then he surprised me as we pulled into the garage.

I asked, “Do you have any questions or concerns about the interview that you want to talk to me about?”

He yelled out, “It’s bullshit” and yes, he yelled.

I said, “What’s bullshit?”

“The fact that we believe that a prophet is so much better than anyone else and can hear God better than anyone else. He is just a man like anyone else. So why should he have all the answers? It’s bullshit.”

As I listened to him rant all I could think was, “I am so glad that I’ve deconstructed my faith because if I was still the person I used to be I would be FREAKING out at the things my son was saying. Instead, I can give him a safe place to question and think through things without thinking he is being led away by the devil.”

I’m not afraid of making mistakes like I used to be. I always knew I could repent, but I still felt like things were going on my permanent divine record. That ultimately, they would be held against me. Now, mistakes truly are just a learning process. My GPS never says, “made a mistake.” It just says, “recalculating route.” That’s life. If I make a mistake, oh well. I’ll course correct as necessary. And so if my kids make what turn out to be monumental spiritual mistakes, I hold no fear about their eternal salvation. It takes a lot of pressure off.

At the beginning of this year my husband approached me and shared his feeling that we need to make fasting each fast Sunday more of a priority for the family, including the kids. I bristled and there was no hiding my immediate trepidation from my husband. Such a seemingly simple request brings up so many problematic feelings for me and a barrage of questions.

Has God really COMMANDED us to fast?
What’s a commandment anyway?
Are modern day revelations from authority figures commandments? Or guidelines?
Why do we have to fast if there are other ways to build a relationship with God?
Does God truly care about how we connect with divinity? Or is the relationship enough?
Why do we have to force the kids to have a connection with divinity?
Is it not enough to demonstrate our own relationship with divinity to the kids?
What if they don’t want a relationship with God right now?

There are some youth that love going to church and find such belonging, fulfillment and spiritual connection there. But I feel confident in saying that the majority of children, mine absolutely included, would never choose to go to church if given the option.

Because my ideas about God, obedience and grace have all changed so much during my journey, it’s changed my parenting style in many ways. The spiritual “requirements” I used to expect of my kids are now basically non-existent. Kids don’t want to say nightly family prayers? Cool with me. Church feels like a drag? I agree, let’s skip it. You don’t want to waste time going to the temple? All your friends are going and that might have social consequences, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. You don’t want to read the scriptures? Okay, not everyone connects to God by reading their scriptures. Maybe you’ll find a different way. You don’t want to go to Young Men’s camp? I don’t care.
By having almost no spiritual expectations for my children, am I damaging them? Am I stunting their growth by never pushing them to do something difficult or boring or seemingly pointless or mundane?

We all start with a stage one faith (if you’ve never heard of stages of faith, here is a quick run down on one of the models).

If I never make them develop a stage one faith, can they even ever progress to later stages? Am I crippling their ability to differentiate because I’m not helping them build enough of a foundation?

How do I help my kids understand the potential for spiritual awakening when I no longer feel awakened there myself? How can I make them sit through two hours of church when I don’t want to go either? How can I make them fast when I hate fasting and don’t think God cares much? I think God is interested in a personal relationship with me, but how I best enter into that relationship is immaterial to God. God just wants to know me. And I believe I’m a better person when I daily come to know God. But if I never force my kids into situations with the potential to know God, how will they ever know if they themselves want to know God? How will they understand that the relationship can get them through hard times? How will they find a path that can lead them to existential love and generosity?

While expressing my heartaches of motherhood, some of my current struggles and loneliness, Susan sent me this message (yes, I’m so lucky that I get to have regular correspondence with Susan and Cynthia):

“Everyone can relate! I’ll admit, I’m laughing at the thought of you being able to ward off the dark night of the soul later for your kids by not indoctrinating them now. I don’t think the spiritual life works that way. One thing the Living School is teaching me is that this deconstruction stuff is really just doing the work of living well. Whether you’re religious or not, something is going to kick your ass good in this life, and you’ll be knocked to the ground by it. But the journey that sets you on is THE journey, so going through the hell is worthwhile. I didn’t say worth it, and absolutely no one would choose it, but it is the most worthwhile work I’ve done in my personal life, in my opinion. There’s my two-cents you didn’t ask for.”

My jaw dropped. Susan articulated in one sentence what my struggles really are all about: the need for control. It’s layered under love and good intentions, but it’s still there. The maternal need to protect my kids from pain and control how they move through this world. It’s parenting 101: you truly have no control over your children and the sooner you realize that, the happier you’ll be. I literally just said (in paragraph four to be exact) that I trust my kids to make the best decisions for themselves. I don’t intend for that to just be lip service, but rather a guiding force for how I parent. So in this moment I’m reminded that all I can do is offer love and support, but ultimately, just be along for the ride.

Blakelee Ellis

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When Latter-day Saints hear the phrase “Purity Culture,” they may associate it more with evangelical churches than with our own. LDS talks and lessons focus on words like virtue, modesty, morality, and chastity to describe our ideals. But regardless of the specific words used, the messages are the same. Therapist C.A. Larson points out, “Purity culture is a moral control system that ties worth to sexual behavior, especially for women. [...] Purity culture in the LDS Church is institutional, enforced through interviews, modesty rules, and silence around consent.” In Episode 253, Cynthia and Susan welcome C.A. back to ALSSI for a discussion about Purity Culture: what it is, its psychological and emotional impacts, and its systemic connection to sexual abuse. It’s a conversation that makes space for grief and anger, and identifies healing paths. C.A. explains, “Healing is not about becoming more sexual or less sexual. It is about embracing our agency...relearning consent, trusting bodily signals, separating worth from obedience, reclaiming choice, going slowly and allowing ambivalence. You don’t owe your body to doctrine, and you don’t owe your healing to anyone else’s timeline.”
CW: sexual abuse

Notes & Quotes:

From C.A.: Interested in joining a faith journey group? Please email me at calarsoncounseling@gmail.com
ALSSI Ep. 112: What About Purity Culture? | A Conversation with Colette Dalton
ALSSI Ep. 27: It’s Not About the Clothes | A Conversation with C.A. Larson
ALSSI Ep. 37: If It’s Not About the Clothes, What’s It About? | A Conversation with C.A. Larson
Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, by Linda Kay Klein
Shameless: A Case for Not Feeling Bad About Feeling Good, by Nadia Bolz-Weber
Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life, by Emily Nagoski

“Purity culture taught girls that their bodies were dangerous, sinful and a threat to men’s salvation.” —Linda Kay Klein

“Purity most often leads to pride or despair, not to holiness.” —Nadia Bolz-Weber

“Purity was sold as a commodity. And fear was the marketing strategy.” —Nadia Bolz-Weber

“Shame thrives in secrecy, silence, and judgment.” —Brené Brown

“Sexual shame is one of the most corrosive forms of shame. It isolates us from connection.” —Brené Brown

“Shame doesn’t come from God’s voice. It comes from voices that claim to speak for God.” —Nadia Bolz-Weber

“Sex is not just physical, and shame does not disappear with a wedding ring.” —Rachel Held Evans

“You cannot shame someone into a healthy sexuality.” —Jennifer Finlayson-Fife

“We were taught how not to sin, but not how to love.” —Nadia Bolz-Weber

“The opposite of purity culture isn’t promiscuity. It’s honesty.” —Nadia Bolz-Weber

“Grace doesn’t tell us to deny our humanity. Grace meets us in it.” —Nadia Bolz-Weber

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