Episode 195 (Transcript): Embracing Your Journey | A Conversation with Candice Clark
Episode Transcript
Many thanks to listener Rebecca Graham for her help in editing the transcript for this episode!
[teaser] CC: I would say, learn how to make decisions for yourself, and be kind to yourself no matter what. Both parts of that are essential. You can’t have one without the other. Because not every decision is going to go well. You’re not necessarily going to be happy with it. But if you can be kind to yourself and not make that mean that you’re worthless, then that’s a fundamental skill. I mean, that really is what allows growth.
CW: Hello, I'm Cynthia Winward.
SH: And I'm Susan Hinckley.
CW: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things. And the title of this week's episode is “Embracing Your Journey, A Conversation with Candice Clark.” Welcome, Candice.
SH: Hi, Candice.
CC: Hi! Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited.
CW: We're excited to have you. I feel like we run in a lot of the same hallways. Is that right, Susan?
SH: Yes, I think so.
CW: We see Candice online and in different groups that we're in. You recently saw her, Susan, at an event that you were both at in the Midwest. So I'm excited, Candice, for us to finally get together and learn a little bit more about you as we put you in the hot seat today.
And our Embracing Your Journey episodes are some of our favorite episodes
SH: Absolutely.
CW: Because, right, Susan? I feel like we really get into the meat and potatoes of a woman's spiritual journey. And I always end up finding something resonant, something that makes me go, “Me too” or something that makes me go, “Wow, that's really interesting. I want to start whatever, maybe doing that or looking at things that way.”
So, these are our favorite conversations. And so we're so glad that we are going to get to know you a bit more today.
Before we jump in, can you, Candice, just kind of give us a quick snapshot? We'll get into details later, but just give our listeners anything you'd like them to know about you that will kind of give context to where we're headed today.
CC: Yeah, I have been a participating member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints my entire life. I grew up in Oregon and then went to high school in Utah. I’m the second of six children. My parents both grew up in Utah and now I live in Iowa and I have five adult children who are ages 19 to 31, and I was an at-home parent for a long time, and now I have a full-time job, and I also became a life coach for moms whose kids don't come to church, because I have five of those.
CW and SH: Mmm.
CC: And in that process, I started a podcast called “No Empty Chairs,” where I talk about things that have helped me. The gospel principles and ways of seeing the world and coaching tools that have helped me to really build better relationships with my kids and be respectful of their journeys.
SH: I have a feeling that there are a lot of women who just sat forward in their chairs and are thinking, “Aha! Another conversation with another mom whose children are no longer attending the church. And so I want to hear more.”
CW: And I can also imagine, I mean, for half a second there, I was thinking, that's a very specific focus, Candice, for a life coaching business.
And then I was like, no, it's not.
SH: Oh, so needed.
CW: Not in this space. Yeah. I mean, if we count up all our children right here, 9, 10, 11, between the three of us, we have 11 children and only one attends, it sounds like.
SH: That's amazing.
CW: Yeah, that's my son. So that's a pretty big hole you're probably trying to fill right now, Candice, with so many parents who just need a little extra help in figuring this out because we don't get a whole lot of help, I think, when we're attending church on Sundays with how to navigate these complicated family situations. So, wonderful.
CC: Yeah, the way the stories are told at church are sometimes painful and not hopeful. And I just have found that I have really had to shift my focus to my personal faith in the infinite atonement of Jesus Christ, because there's a lot of other stuff around it that doesn't match my story. And I just have to choose what I want to believe about. What God thinks of me and what God thinks of my kids.
SH: Well, and as hard as it was for me to get my head around the idea that I don't have to save myself, speaking of the atonement, it was really hard for me to also give away the idea that I'm responsible to save other people, like my children.
CC: Yeah.
SH: That had to save all of us through my hard work and my worthiness and all those things. So those are really pervasive ideas in our [00:05:00] culture and I feel like a lot of women end up in this space, in the “At Last She Said It” space, where they're maybe starting to question things, or, you know, something has launched them on a journey of some kind, and it very often involves something around their children or family members.
CC: Yeah.
SH: So, thank you for being a coach for the women in this space because so many of us need you.
CW: Yeah. Well, Susan's gonna lead our discussion today. She's going to kind of go through those same, I don't know, five questions, Susan, that we like to ask women on these episodes. So, take it away, Susan.
SH: Yeah, we always like to start these episodes with getting a snapshot of your LDS life. Candice, can you tell us a little bit about your experiences as a Latter-day Saint woman and sort of, how you got to where you are right now?
CC: Sure. Yeah. I was baptized at age eight in Oregon. And when I was 13, I moved to Provo, Utah. And that was a culture shock for me [laughing]. Because we had been in the mission field.
We don't talk about the mission field as much anymore, but when I was a kid living outside of Utah, we were in the mission field.
SH: Absolutely.
CC: And coming back to Utah and I had high expectations for what that was gonna be like and how great it was gonna be. And it was really hard.
CW: Well, I had that same culture shock at 18 when I moved to Provo, Candice, and I'm 50 and I still haven't gotten over it 'cause I'm still in Provo [laughing].
CC: [laughing] Because you're still there. Yeah.
CW: I never ceased to be amazed.
CC: Yeah. It was a hard transition for me. I was very much a nerd. But I really did hang a lot of my identity on being a member of the church. So I was really excited to be around a lot of church members and that didn't really go exactly as I had hoped because everyone else was also a teenage girl.
SH: Right, right [laughing]
CC: It’s a tricky time. But I did find some really good friends starting about the middle of my junior year that I'm still friends with to this day. So I found my people eventually, but it took awhile and it was just a huge change. But I attended BYU after graduation, all of it seems to be a family requirement in my family that you attend BYU.
SH: Pretty sure you're not alone.
CC: Yeah. But I had a great experience at BYU. I loved it. I lived on campus my freshman year and taught Relief Society. Team-taught, which was the weirdest thing to try to teach a lesson with another person.
CW: Interesting.
CC: So I did that as a 17 year old. I was a little young when I graduated. I had just turned 17. I just, I loved BYU. But eventually, I met a returned missionary and got married at age 19, having completed three years of college.
SH: Wow.
CC: One other piece of BYU that was really important to me was going on study abroad. I had been on a road trip to Canada with my family. That was the extent of my international travel. And I went to Vienna for a six-month study abroad,
SH: Oh, wow.
CC: Which just blew my world open. And I really loved that. And so I felt like when I got married at age 19, I had had a lot of experiences that not every 19 year old has had. And then our first child was born the first day of my second semester as a graduate student, also at BYU.
SH: So you went straight on to graduate work after you graduated?
CC: I did, yes, in comparative literature. So part of my upbringing was that there wasn't a focus on having a career. And I actually have had conversations with my older sister about this and she felt very much like she should pursue a career. Because she got this message, she could do anything she wanted and I very much felt like I shouldn't because I got this message that the best and most important thing I could do is be a mom.
SH: Interesting.
CW: Yup.
CC: And so we have the same parents and we're only two and a half years apart. So, it's just been kind of interesting to have some of those conversations with my sister. Nevertheless, what I received and heard was not planning to provide for myself. And so I was just free to study comparative literature with no plans to become a comparative literature professor or anything, it's just something that I enjoy doing and I love school.
CW: So you're saying, even though you grew up in the same home with your sister, the same parents, probably had a lot of the same, obviously, the same bishops, but same mutual teachers and that kind of thing…You absorbed the idea that you didn't need to be marketable as an adult. And she said, “Well, no, of course I need to be marketable [00:10:00] and preparing for a career.”
CC: Yeah, and I think she actually felt some pressure to do that.
CW: Really!
SH: Interesting.
CC: Yeah, I'm not sure what to make of that. [laughing] This is a recent discovery that I've made with my sister and so I'm still kind of puzzling through it and I have other sisters that I need to have conversations with.
SH: It reminds me of you and your sister, Cynthia, who are so close in age or even in some of the same classes, but having radically different experiences in the church.
CW: Yes.
SH: And I always think it's so cool when that shows up in our conversations because I really think that it's hard for us to understand sometimes how the woman sitting in the chair next to us is not hearing or internalizing the messages at all in the same way that we are.
CC: And I think if I had internalized those messages differently, I might've paid more attention to the fact that I took AP calculus, you know, like I could have done any number of things. I also took AP English, but it's not like I didn't have skills outside of the liberal arts. But I just had no plans to do anything other than graduate from college.
CW: Mhmm.
CC: And then I was married when I graduated from college. And so I just liked to be in school. And so I kept going, because that was a great time for me. And I lived near family who could help me with childcare.
SH: Love it. I love the idea of a woman just studying what she wants to study because she wants to.
CC: It was a really good experience and I think it really formed who I am now. I don't know that I have any regrets about that, but I've sort of envisioned this parallel timeline where I also did something that paid well [laughing].
SH: Right. Or at all. [laughing]
CW: Paid at all.
CC: Yeah. So I followed my husband around for his career. He did medical school at the University of Utah. And then we moved to Iowa to continue his training. And so there were some moves within Iowa a little bit, but I've lived in Iowa ever since his training brought us out here. And then I've served in most ward callings.
When we moved to Iowa City, and that's where I live now, when we moved back to Iowa City this most recent time, which was 17 years ago, I was called to be in the Primary presidency. So I've had a lot of service opportunities to be in the Primary presidency and a Primary teacher. And I've served in the Young Women presidency and Relief Society, and most recently, I was just released a few weeks ago as our stake self reliance specialist and now I'm having so much fun with the new hymns as the ward music leader and I get to lead the hymns at the tempo I want to sing them.
CW: So important! [laughing]
SH: And that only works if you have an organist who will play at the tempo that you want them to play, but yes, I dream of such things. That's marvelous.
CW: That is God's work, Candice. Sing the hymns at the tempo they should be sung at. Ahh!
___
SH: Well, I'm hearing a lot of ways that your life and your, sort of, trajectory in the church fit the mold pretty well, I have to say, Candice. So congratulations on that. But how about if we talk about maybe some things that have not fit the mold so well?
CC: So, when my family moved back to Iowa City, I had five children. The youngest was not quite two years old. I think the oldest was 13, maybe, and it was a lot, and I got everybody situated and then I kind of fell apart a little bit [laughing] and so I spent some time beginning to learn how to take care of myself. Because no one had been doing that. I've come to believe that it was my job all along, but I thought my job was to take care of everybody else and then someone else was gonna take care of me, and that didn't go well for me. I just was kind of spent. So, I took a mindfulness-based stress reduction course. And I did a bunch of therapy and then eventually we landed in marriage therapy, and I did that for eight years.
SH: Wow.
CC: We had four different marriage therapists and it was just this, kind of long process of me taking more and more responsibility for my own experience and then realizing that that's what I got to choose, was what I did, and I didn't get to choose what someone else did, how they responded, how they chose to engage.
CW: Yeah.
CC: And it [00:15:00] just wasn't going well. And I really did invest a lot of effort into trying to make it go well. In the end, what happened was that I came to the place where I was willing to take responsibility for deciding that it was not a place I wanted to be. It was so painful. That was an interesting family reunion. [laughing] Yeah, we had this family reunion and then we had this parent segment of it that was overnight. And so at this adult segment, my husband was there with us for part of it, and then he left, and after he left, I shared with my family, my siblings and parents, who are all married except my brother who has Down syndrome, that I was probably going to file for divorce when I got home.
SH: Wow.
CC: But getting to that place required me to reframe my relationship with God and with my identity of my role because it was just gonna precipitate a lot of changes in my family. And most of those did not go how I expected them to go. And so being willing to accept responsibility for whatever was gonna come, even when I didn't know what that was, that was a big shift for me to feel like, “Okay, God is okay with me, whether or not I'm married.” Because I took my covenants really seriously and frankly, still do.
But a covenant is not a cage.
CW: Mmm.
CC: And I just decided that my wellbeing mattered enough to take it into my own hands. So, I did. It was really scary and it took me a long time to get there. I don't recommend a five-year treading water. But it's a tough road. And I think it actually was easier here, where I live now, than it would have been in Utah because I'm in less of a fishbowl in my ward.
SH: Right.
CC: And my ward was actually great. It was really helpful that my bishop was willing to have conversations and he was the most optimistic person I've ever met. But eventually, he was like, “Oh, okay. I see that you're making a decision here and there's stuff that I have not been privy to.” And I just felt supported and I feel like we managed it well.
I had this particular moment, I was talking to somebody after we'd been divorced a year or more, and she didn't know that we were divorced [laughing]. So I was like, “Okay, I guess we did all right in, you know, not making a public mess of that.”
SH: So did you stay in the same ward?
CC: Yes. Yes, we did. And we are still in the same ward.
SH: Oh, wow.
CC: Yep. Yeah, I did that on purpose. I bought a house in the same ward because that's where my people were and because I didn't want my children to have to deal with two sets of ward leaderships. So I did that on purpose.
CW: Okay.
CC: It was really hard for a while.
CW: I was going to say, that sounds hard.
CC: It's helpful that his work schedule means that he's only there about half the time. And so with our new schedule where it's every other week Relief Society or whatever, we're rarely required to be in the same room with each other. Maybe once a month, other than in sacrament meeting. So we just don't really interact, but it's been kind of a journey to calm my nervous system around that and to settle into that whole experience.
And it was a hard experience for my kids. I moved into a rental house very first when we separated and the two youngest kids had to go back and forth. But it was a hard experience for them. And over the succeeding months, it became more challenging, and at some point, it got to the point where they didn't really want to go back and forth and they didn't really enjoy interacting with me. And I don't really know what all that was about, but I just, and sort of leading up to saying that, I remember this one Sunday I was substituting at the last minute, the bishop, a different, subsequent bishop, asked me to lead the music for sacrament meeting. And we were singing “Families Can Be Together Forever.”
And so I'm standing up there, this divorced mom of five kids leading, “I have a family here on earth. They are so good to me.” And that's the part that was actually painful. It wasn't because I was divorced. It was because at that moment, my children weren't talking to me. [00:20:00] And so just having those relationships not be what I wanted them to be was really, really hard.
And feeling like, “I've messed up a lot of things.” And I recognize that I was under a lot of stress in the later years of my marriage. And as we worked through that divorce process, and so, of course, that impacted how I parented, but I'm not the worst parent ever.
SH: Right.
CC: And I have engaged in a lot of growth, intentionally. And it just felt so unfair
CW: Yeah.
CC: That at that particular moment, some of my children were not very good to me. And I was operating in a vacuum of information. Like, I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know what was going on in their minds that made this so that they…My fourth child turned 18, and then they and their younger sibling both stopped coming to my parenting time.
So they haven't spent any parenting time at my house since number four turned 18 and didn't have to anymore. And, I mean, I can kinda get that. I don't want to live in two houses either. But it was painful because I thought that I was their home and that they would pick me. And their dad is still in the marital home where the youngest had lived since age two.
CW: Yeah.
CC: So that did not go as I expected it to go at all.
SH: This is an incredible story to me as a Latter-day Saint woman, I think because the idea of, you know, the 19-year-old who gets married and then later realizes she hasn't prioritized herself in some ways that have been detrimental to her, and does something about that.
And it sounds like your relationship with God was tied into all of this also.
CC: Yeah.
SH: I mean, you had feelings about yourself, obviously, or knowledge about yourself, that you acted on. And I feel like there are probably a lot of women who would listen to this conversation and I'm not sure they would even know where to begin to access that kind of power over their own lives when they're in a situation like you were.
CW: Yeah.
CC: It was a line upon line thing for me to get to that place. But I will say that there were a couple of things that had an outsized impact. And one of those things is Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife's work. And just, learning how to take responsibility for my life and my choices and my experience.
And I will listen to anything she puts out because she has blessed my life so much. It was so challenging, but it's kind of like the pain of the solution became more attractive than the pain of the problem.
SH: Right.
CW: Yeah.
CC: Because it is really uncomfortable to grow and it's really uncomfortable to just make decisions by yourself.
SH: Mhmm.
CC: It was not an easy or a quick process, but it did kind of accelerate in that last year of my marriage. Another thing that happened is that the first summer after we were separated, my kids went on a vacation with me for three weeks, and then I had three weeks without them. This is the first time in my adult life [laughing] that I had–
SH: That you've been alone!
CC: –three weeks alone. So I decided to go to Austria, which is where I studied abroad.
CW: Wow.
CC: And so I spent two weeks in Austria by myself and my companion was Jody Moore's podcast, “Better Than Happy.” Like we walked all over Vienna and Salzburg together.
SH: Wow.
CC: Me and Jody. And it helped me so much. It really helped me. Again, they're very practical tools. It’s kind of, some more of the “how” that I was learning from Jennifer and it just was strengthening me and retraining my brain and my way of thinking that made me feel more confident in myself and that I actually am the person who should be making decisions for myself. I should not be sitting around waiting for someone else to make them for me.
___
SH: I'm sure there are challenges that come along with being a divorced woman in this church, but do you feel like there's been any kind of extra layer of difficulty to explain or get support from people for the way that this unfolded? Was that hard for you or, [00:25:00] like, within your family? Having to explain yourself, I can see how that might've been challenging. Am I thinking about that right? Or was that not your experience?
CC: It was very challenging. This family reunion I referenced, you know, I kind of waited ‘till we finished dinner and I'd given my one sibling a heads up [laughing]. We’re going to have this conversation. I'm going to tell everybody. My parents had no idea.
And most of my family lives in Utah and sees each other frequently, and I live far away, and they see us infrequently. And so they just didn't have a window on my actual life, and so they just very patiently listened. It was probably a couple hours where I just tried to explain to them [crying] what my life looked like and how hard it had been and how I'd come to this decision.
And I will say that I am really grateful for their, just, instant support. There wasn't any judgment. There wasn't any second-guessing about whether I should do this or not. They just expressed that they were there for me and, kind of as the intensity of the emotion was cresting and subsiding, my sister said, “Well, let's go bake these cookies.We need some chocolate.” It was like, the dementor emotional recovery plan.
And they have just been really an unflagging support for me in the ways that they can from far away, which is really challenging. And in my ward, again, I don't think there were a lot of people who had a really clear picture of what our family life looked like. There were people who thought they did.
SH: Right.
CW: Of course.
CC: A former bishop who wrote an affidavit for my husband and didn't realize that he was taking a side in a legal dispute [laughing], who had been our home teacher and thought that he had a picture of our lives.
CW: Wow.
CC: That was a hard thing, that particular thing, but for the most part, I just had a close-knit group of friends that I could count on who kind of carried me through.
And one in particular who had spent enough time with our family, because she has three kids my kids’ age, and she's also very astute [laughing], so she had picked up on signals that I think most people miss. And so I just feel like I did have what I needed and I had resources of therapy and at one point my stake president gave me a pass to attend whatever ward I wanted to attend and I'm like, well, that doesn't really help me because this is where my people are.
But thank you.
SH: Yeah.
CC: I mean, I sort of appreciated the gesture. He's like, this is one thing I can do for you, is for it to be okay for you to attend a different ward than your ex-husband. And it was kindly given, I just felt like people were willing to do what they were able to do. And I think what's challenging, still, is just being a single woman at church. I mean, I can count on one hand the number of men in my ward that I think would be comfortable having a conversation with me without their wife present.
CW: [whispering] Exactly.
CC: So it's just really challenging to have male friendships because we've trained in this discomfort.
CW: Mhmm.
CC: Because we're paranoid about inappropriate behavior, and I really just wanna have a conversation about things that I'm interested in, with a variety of people. And male energy is something that is not as present in my life as it used to be because I'm no longer married.
SH: Right.
CC: So that's been kind of a tricky thing to navigate. Well, I don't know that it's necessarily tricky. It's just been something that I notice. The male organist sits two chairs away from me on the stand and maybe that's because that's an easier spot for him to then walk down and sit with his family when the deacons go sit down.
SH: Right.
CC: Maybe that's not the only part of it, I don't know. And it's probably completely subconscious.
SH: Oh, but those ruts are deep, aren't they?
CC: Yeah.
SH: For all of us, I think.
CW: I don't even know if we're getting better in this area. What you're talking about, Candice; like, we see women as Jezebels and we see men as humans who can't control themselves. And even now in 2024, I feel like that's kind of still how we treat people, treat the opposite sex in church. You can't be alone together. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've talked to leaders. I've said, “Why can't a woman hold this calling?” “Well then, because then she would be alone in a room with a man.”
And I'm like, “Oh my gosh, you did not just say that to me.”
CC: Yeah. [00:30:00]
CW: Like, wow. There are so many layers to unpack to that kind of an answer that I don't see us getting better.
CC: I mean, I have some discomfort too. I, so my bishop used to be my ministering brother, my current bishop.
SH: Okay.
CC: And the other day I was standing up, putting up the music hymn numbers and he came over to ask me about something. Well, he was actually just so excited that I had scheduled one of the new hymns. And he, like, made to give me a hug because he is like my brother. Like, I would hug him like I would hug my brother, but we're standing up on the stand in front of the chapel. And I'm the one who turned and gave him a side hug, you know, because there's just this discomfort. About, I felt like I was in a fishbowl standing up there with him.
CW: Right. Of course.
CC: Whereas if we'd been standing on my front lawn, I would have just hugged him, you know, I'm all for using good judgment, but I just would like more people to chat with me on Sundays in the foyer.
SH: Right.
CW: Of course.
CC: Right. Because I have plenty of female friends. I have no shortage of women I can count on, but it just would be a better model of collaboration that I would like to see at church.
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SH: Well, let's zoom out for a minute to about 30,000 feet. We've talked about really specific things about your life, but I would love to know more about your life as a Latter-day Saint woman, what are some of the things in the church that really have worked well for you and some of the things that maybe are more frustrating for you.
CC: Yeah, I have just loved being part of Relief Society and I remember my mother trained me in this. I will give her credit. That when you're serving in Young Women and when you're serving in Primary, you're still in the Relief Society. And that connection of sisterhood has been a meaningful part of my life. And church and Relief Society has been a way that I have been able to meet women who then I'm like, “Ah, I want to get to know her.”
CW: Mhmm.
CC: Someone says something in Sunday School or Relief Society. And I'm like, “Oh yes, I want to be friends with her.”
SH: Yeah.
CC: And I have built those friendships over years and really invested in people who have also invested in me that have really been supportive. So I'm really grateful for that instant community because I do find it challenging to make new friends. And so when you move to a new place and you go to your ward, well, here's a smaller subset of the whole town. [laughing]
SH: Right, right.
CC: That you can see and connect with on some level. And I also appreciate that it has thrust me up with people that I wouldn't have chosen otherwise.
CW: Oh, for sure.
CC: If I was serving with them in a calling or ministering relationships or whatever. Because those have expanded my world and experience and helped me develop more compassion and those are just really lovely things that I appreciate about my experience at church. Oh, I have an example of this.
SH: Okay.
CC: So, my son got married a couple years ago and we had a zoom meeting with all the bridal party and the parents to plan and the maid of honor was in a little bit of a panic about how they were gonna get all of homemade lasagna; my daughter-in-law wanted her homemade lasagna recipe. So they were gonna make the lasagnas and freeze them, but they needed to bake them and have them hot for the reception. And there's only just the one standard oven at the venue. And this seemed like the biggest insurmountable problem they could imagine.
CW & SH: [laughing]
And I was like, “Oh no. You need people to heat food and drop it off at an appointed time? I have the people who know how to do this. Our ward actually, our stake participates in the free lunch program and when it's our ward's turn, we are often doing frozen lasagnas that we're baking and dropping off to the people who are going to serve those. And so I'm like, “I know I have a small army of people who are not only willing, but delighted to do this for my son's wedding.”
SH: That's so great.
CC: So, I just love that.
SH: That's a pretty great story.
CW: We can reheat lasagna, Costco hams, and funeral potatoes…
SH: …like there's no tomorrow.
CW: We know how long and at what temperature, and yeah, we've got that part.
SH: Yep.There are some things we're not quite so good at though, Candice. Tell us about a few of those things, maybe, that have been more challenging for you.
CC: When I first moved here [00:35:00] and I was called into the Primary presidency, we had Activity Days and Cub Scouts at the same time at two different buildings.
SH: Oh wow. How is that supposed to work?
CC: And then we had older classes. Well, because we were combining wards for activities.
SH: Okay.
CW: Got it.
CC: It was, you know, some subsets meeting at one building, some meeting at the other. And then the youth was at a second time, later, in two different places, I can't remember the exact breakdown of the groups, but we did have a family in our ward that had one kid in each of those things.
So getting them all to their activities was crazy. And they were very gracious about it and were like, “Well, it's Wednesday night. This is what we do.” And I'm looking at that going, “That is insane. Why are we doing this to families?” Because my husband's job made him not available very much. And it was really just me doing these things.
And so it was very scary for me to say, “My experience and my two year old's experience driving all over town all night matter to try to get that to change.” And it was not immediately well received, but eventually we ended up shifting when we were meeting and consolidated times.
And, like, we were thinking about serving the youth and meeting the needs of the youth and having them be together. And not thinking about the impact on families.
SH: Right.
CC: As President Packer would say, “Particularly the mother. When you schedule a family, particularly the mother.” And that was me. And I had five kids and I was like, “What are we doing? I don't know if I can do this.”
SH: Well, and I have to think that, the people sitting in those meetings making the decisions were not the mothers doing the driving, that would be my guess.
CC: And the default is, well, people can carpool. And so I looked, I'm like, “Who are the people and can they carpool?” Well, no, some of them are in Young Women callings and they're student families, they only have one car, like all of these logistics that you're like, “Oh it will work out.” I'm like, “This is not actually working very well.”
SH: I love that you were willing to speak up about that.
CW: Thank you.
CC: It was a transitional moment for me, like, I have this idea that I shouldn't complain because everybody's doing their best, right? And I think we confuse trying to make things better with complaining. Like, if it weren't working for the men, then we would address it.
SH: [laughing] We’d fix it, right.
CW: Hands down.
CC: If we need food for an event, the men, they're just gonna buy it. They're not going to make it all from scratch. Anyway, that's something that's frustrating for me.
And as I chose hymns for Mother's Day this year, I was like, there are not a lot of options. And then I chose hymns for Father's Day, and I'm like, I could choose
CW: The whole book!
CC: I could choose a hymn for Father's Day for the next 10 years because every hymn talks about Heavenly Father. So, it's really tricky, and, you know, a couple years ago, Elder Renlund spoke about Heavenly Mother.
SH: Oh, he did? [laughing]
CW: The talk heard ‘round the feminist world.
CC: Well, I love Elder Renlund. He was my stake president when I was the Relief Society president in my ward, when my husband was in medical school and Elder Renlund was our stake president. And I remember the ward council he came to and we sang the opening hymn, “How Firm a Foundation.”
And then he said, “If it's all right, I'd like to sing the rest of the verses”. And then he said to himself, “Of course it's alright. I'm presiding at this meeting.”
CW: What would that be like?
CC: Little training moment for the student leaders at that ward council. But, I love him, and I was really excited when he began this talk. It seemed pretty promising to me. But as he went on, I felt like what he ended up saying was that knowing more about Heavenly Mother was not important enough to pursue or didn't matter.
CW: Exactly.
CC: I actually pulled a little quote from it. He said, “Ever since God appointed prophets, they have been authorized to speak on his behalf, but they do not pronounce doctrines fabricated of their own mind or teach what has not been revealed.”
Sidebar, they have done that very thing [laughter]. Back to Elder Renlund, “Demanding revelation from God is both arrogant and unproductive. Instead, we wait on the Lord and his timetable to reveal his truth through the means that he has established.” And I felt like he was calling me arrogant and unproductive because I wanted to know more about Heavenly Mother.
CW: Uh-huh. Yes.
CC: And, in fact, I was hoping that he would be praying for [00:40:00] that very thing. And after he said that, I said to myself, “Well, I guess he's not the one.” If the apostles are not the means that God has established for receiving revelation for the church, then I just, I found it confusing and kind of crushing, actually, for a while.
Because I have been through periods of my life when I really mourned that absence of more information about Heavenly Mother. And I can't explain why it came on and why after a few months, it kind of subsided. Nothing was resolved, I just felt less intense grief about it. It just kind of felt like a kick in the teeth from someone that I knew and admired and appreciated. And it was hard.
CW: I have a question, Candice. So you said that crushed any hopes that he might be the apostle praying. Was that because you knew him previously, he had demonstrated to you in other experiences you had had with him as a state president that he might be someone who was willing to seek out a revelation? I'm just curious or are you just speaking about him as an apostle in general?
CC: I think him in particular.
CW: Okay.
CC: And it's nothing he ever said about Heavenly Mother, like I have no specific reason to hope that from him except that I did watch his interactions with his wife who actually rarely came to our ward because they had a teenager at home and felt like she needed to be in her home ward. And so they didn't drag her over to the campus ward, but Ruth came and taught Relief Society in my ward one Sunday. And I felt like I had a little bit of a sense for their relationship. And I'm aware that she's had a career and he has a daughter who is not married. And I just made a bunch of assumptions after that.
CW: Mhmm! I did too, Candice. I did too. I just had assumed that a man who had a wife who was a corporate attorney would maybe have a different perspective on things, so.
CC: And I don't know what precipitated this particular thing. I mean, I feel like he was probably talking about someone who is not me, who was actually being arrogant and unproductive, because
CW: That's generous.
CC: There are all people doing all kinds of behaviors
SH: Right.
CC: But I don't feel like he made space for me to have the desires that I have around Heavenly Mother and not be thrown in that category.
CW: Yeah, gotcha.
___
SH: Well Candice, because this is At Last She Said It, I always like to get some sense of how a woman's voice fits in with all of this. So maybe because I'm a person who has had such a difficult time learning to speak up in the church context. Can you tell us a little bit about how your voice fits your faith life? Is it something that comes easily to you? Is it something that you have developed over time? Tell us a little more about that.
CC: Yeah. I think I've described a little bit how it really has developed over time. I dipped my toe in a little bit to talk about the crazy Wednesday night driving schedule. And then, it's just that one thing that impacts me, that I have a different view on than one I'm seeing represented and that it was okay that I said that even though it wasn't initially embraced, it was okay that I had brought it up. And I still struggle with confidence that it's going to be okay that I brought it up because I just somehow have built a sense that, I can think of the phrase, you shouldn't bother the bishop or, like, you shouldn't bother these people about these things because they have important work to do.
And, you know, I'm just recognizing that I have an increasing sense of my own importance and the importance of my view and the things that I can see that maybe not everyone else does. So it's been really hard, but I just, I cultivate that. And I try to follow Elizabeth Gilbert's advice from her book, “Big Magic,” where she talks about not letting fear drive. Fear, you can be here, but
you're going to not be in the driver's seat and we're just going to carry along. So, you know, I practice what I preach as a life coach that I cultivate thoughts that serve me. And I've got three of them up here on my wall, right above my head, where I record my podcast.
One of them says, “People want to hear what I have to say.” And I believe that more and more. And it's really helpful that this [00:45:00] week I got a message from someone actually who is in my stake, but she just found my podcast and she said, “I've listened to almost all of them and it's made me feel more hopeful and more connected.”
CW: Nice.
CC: And it was just really nice. I'm like, “Oh, she wanted to hear what I have to say.”
CW: That’s right.
SH: So good.
CC: So that's really validating, but I try to validate myself and remember that people want to hear what I have to say. Another one is “There is no right way.” And I have to tell you, Susan and Cynthia, your podcast gave me pause for a minute because there was a moment where I'm like, “Well, if I do a podcast, it's gotta be all of these things.”
And I just decided that there is no right way.
CW: That’s right!
CC: And I'm just going to do the podcast that I can and want to put out. And it doesn't have to be at At Last She Said It because you all are doing it At Last She Said It.
SH: I was going to say, please don't do our podcast. We're already doing it. Do your podcast. [laughter]
CC: Yes.
SH: We need both.
CC: But I thought I had to do my podcast topic in the way that you're doing your podcast.
SH: Sure.
CC: And so, even just within the last year before I started, that was a hurdle that I had to get myself over to start publishing my podcast. And one, I just ran across recently and added, it says, “Big voice, go ahead.”
This comes from a social media personality who's a former elementary school teacher. Her name is Mrs. Frazzled.
CW: So good.
CC: And she does these satirical little snippets where she gently parents people who are doing kind of obnoxious things. And so, in this one, she's kind of gently parenting a mansplainer who had interrupted a girl. And so she goes through all that process of talking to him about how he should do it differently and gently explaining all of that.
And then she turns her head back to the girl and says, “Big voice, go ahead.” And I thought, “Okay, that's what I need.”
CW: Yes.
CC: That's what I need to tell myself when I'm getting ready to say something.
SH: I love it. Yeah, that's amazing. Well, Candice, one of the reasons that we like to have these conversations with a variety of different women is that we hope that we can give other women who are maybe just starting on this path or not really comfortable yet or knowing where they're going, something that they can grab onto.
And we feel like if we come at it from a lot of different perspectives, there's bound to be something for someone listening. And so, do you have any advice that you would maybe give other women who are having a challenging time embracing their own individual faith journey?
CC: Yes. I would say learn how to make decisions for yourself. And then be kind to yourself, no matter what. Both parts of that are essential. You can't have one without the other. Because not every decision is going to go well. You're not necessarily going to be happy with it. But if you can be kind to yourself and not make that mean that you're worthless, then that's a fundamental skill. I mean, that really is what allows growth and repentance, which I just think is growth…is your ability to have kindness for the things that you may not be proud of and to move forward. It's just essential.
SH: Beautiful. I feel like if I embroidered that and put it on a throw pillow…It might help me, actually [laughter], so thank you for that.
CW: Alright, Candice, for our last couple of minutes here, can we ask you some fun Get-to-Know-You questions? What is a favorite book of yours?
CC: I recently read “At-One-Ment” by Thomas McConkie and just really loved it and did all his meditation practices.
I keep coming back to those audio recordings. I love that book.
SH: I was just going to say, I would want to listen to that book so I could hear it in his gorgeous voice, actually. That would be great. I hear it's a beautiful book. Now, thanks for reminding me.
CW: Yeah. Who's a woman that you look up to?
CC: Oh, I think I'm going to say Christy Gleason. She's a woman in my ward that has just, I couldn't even begin to describe the ways that she has been kind and supportive and an example of persisting in faith and yeah, she's blessed my life a lot.
SH: I love that.
CW: What's a favorite quote of yours? Something you keep above your computer like you were talking about or something on your [00:50:00] phone? What's something you come back to?
CC: Yeah, I think that the thing I'm coming back to from the most recent General Conference is Patrick Kearon saying, “God is in relentless pursuit of you.” I just love to remember that God is in relentless pursuit of me and of my children and there's no need to panic because God can consecrate anything to my gain God is in relentless pursuit of you
SH: So good.
CW: And lastly, what do you know? What's one thing that you know today?
CC: I know that what I want matters, and that is not something that I knew 15 years ago. As a Mormon mother raised in the church, I am really grateful to have finally learned that my desires matter.
CW: Yes.
CC: They don't matter any more than anyone else's desires, and they also don't matter less. It's good to know what I want whether or not I get it.
SH: Wow. Okay. I changed my mind. I'm going to embroider that on a pillow.
CC: You have a lot of embroidery ahead of you, Susan. [laughter]
SH: Well, you know what? You say a lot of smart things, Candice. So I'm going to blame you for that.
CC: And where can people find you?
CC: Yes. You can go to my website, CandiceClarkCoaching.com and find out about working with me there. You can also look for my podcast, wherever you find podcasts. It's called “No Empty Chairs.”
SH: Perfect. We'll have all of it in our show notes. Thank you so much for having this conversation with us.
CW: Thanks again.
CC: Oh, it's been my absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.
[End of EPISODE]
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VOICEMAIL 1: I was glad to hear a response in Episode 193 from a male because it shows men in the church are agreeing with and listening to the concerns of the women. I know this podcast focuses on women. We do not want men to shove women aside in yet another realm. Women need a space of their own. So I don't want At Last She Said It to become At Last He Said It. But I also know men listen to other men better than they do to women. We need men in the church to stand up for women, not because we can't stand up for ourselves, but because we need the messages heard.
As an example, suffragettes fought for and worked for a woman’s right to vote for decades. I believe around 70 years. It wasn't until men in positions of authority finally persuaded other men in positions of authority to accept women should have the right to vote. Then laws were finally changed and eventually became part of the U.S. Constitution. We, as women, can say and do many things to persuade men in authority of our value as women, actual equality, and importance in the church. Unfortunately, especially at the top of the church organization, men are from older generations and are super-conditioned to listen to other men rather than women.
We need enlightened men to continue the good work of educating and enlightening their peers, including older men, if possible, to help our messages be heard. We need to work together. Hang in there, ladies. Keep speaking truth with love, patience, and strength.
VOICEMAIL 2: Hi, Cynthia and Susan. The “What About Blessings” episode really spoke to my heart.
I, too, was a person who checked all the boxes my entire life, although I did let one box go unchecked and not renew my temple recommend for a couple of years. As my son was preparing to go to the temple for the first time before his mission, my husband and I made an appointment with the bishop to renew our recommends.
I thought this surely would be an easy process. We were doing all the things, paying tithing, obeying the law of chastity, and the Word of Wisdom, holding Family Home Evening, you name it. I was teaching Relief Society and my husband was the Cubmaster. We were shocked when the bishop denied us a recommend, stating he felt, “Now is not the time.”
When we asked to appeal his decision with the stake president, we were told the state president would support the bishop's inspiration. This broke my heart. Sitting outside the temple while my son received his endowment for no other reason than a bishop's judgment has been one of the most difficult experiences of my life.
My worthiness did not give me the blessing I thought I had earned. Through this experience, I have learned to rely on the Savior and have a deeper empathy for those that have been deeply hurt by church leadership.
VOICEMAIL 3: Hi Cynthia and Susan. In your recent episode about the parable of the talents, the theme of, “Does that scripture mean what you think it means?” brought to mind my studies this year of the Book of Mormon.
I was always taught a very binary interpretation of the story of Lehi and his family venturing into the wilderness. With easily-delineated lines between good and bad. But this year, as I have brought Bible scholars and wisdom teachers along on my journey through the Book of Mormon, I can't help but wonder if we've gotten this story all wrong. [00:55:00]
In my studies, I have learned that journeying into the wilderness was viewed symbolically as a journey away from God. I have learned that their hunting practices, illustrated by the broken bow story, were deviating from the religiously prescribed method of slaughtering animals in preparation of eating.
I have learned that by leaving Jerusalem, Lehi's family was leaving the center of their religious practice, along with those who have the authorized priesthood required for sacred ordinances. I have learned that the tree at the center of Lehi's vision, to many, likely represented the god Asherah, who through recent reforms in the temple, had been deemed an idolic god who should not be worshipped.
So much of what Lehi taught and did flew in the face of traditional beliefs of the time. I can't help but compare Lehi and Nephi. And those who are faithful to them, to those who have followed personal revelation that doesn't make sense to traditional believers, and “left the covenant path.” I can't help but compare Laman and Lemuel, less to a caricature of bad and faithless, but more to the traditional members of our time who don't understand those who choose to heed personal revelation and follow their own path, even if it doesn't include the traditions of our church.
For me, Lehi's family is now less a juxtaposition of good and evil, and more an invitation for us to seek our own path. What I originally saw as a faithful family with a few bad eggs, I now view as a family full of complicated humans who didn't know how to hold space for people of varying beliefs and perspectives. It highlights the consequences of allowing our certainty in the rightness and superiority of our beliefs to become a barrier to trusting the paths our loved ones are choosing, even if we don't understand those paths.
[CLOSING CREDITS]