Episode 203 (Transcript): An Evolving Faith | A Conversation with Valerie Hamaker

Episode Transcript

Many thanks to listener, Kayla Howell, 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: Hi, 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 themes.

And the title of today's episode is: An Evolving Faith – A Conversation with Valerie Hamaker.

SH: I'm so excited to share this conversation, Cynthia.

CW: I'm really excited too. We pre recorded this combo with her a few weeks ago, so you and I are just kind of tacking on an intro here, which is kind of nice.

Cause now I feel like we can talk a little bit about what we loved about this episode. And I don't know if you remember too much when we recorded this, but what I remember coming away with, well, kind of what our little intro snippet was, just how good Valerie is and so many therapists in this space.

I always think about it when we speak with CA Larson as well. They're so good at helping people see that they are good and wonderful and whole and they have everything inside of them to make these new decisions about their whole life, not just their faith life, but they can do it. I feel like they're kind of the ultimate cheerleader.

You can do it. You've got this.

SH: I also think it's really valuable anytime that you hear a therapist talk about a position that they've been in themselves. And that's why I feel like when we have these women that are therapists on our program, it's like they really know what it is to be a woman in this space.

And so they're speaking to something that they’ve been through. I mean, it's not just ‘academically, this would be my advice to you,’ it's ‘I can back it up with my own experience and here's what my experience tells me.’ And so I love that we have therapists that are willing to come on. Jana Spangler also has been another woman with whom I have that experience.

CW: I love it too, because they, like you just said, can talk about it from both sides of the fence. They can talk about it from a personal point of view. They talk about it from a professional point of view and it's just beautiful. And I just remember loving this conversation with Valerie because that's exactly what she does, and then throws in amazing advice for people.

SH: Okay, I'm gonna admit she had some really amazing advice in this episode, some things that I'm gonna go back and listen to again and again because they were honestly things I'd never thought of. We got talking about fear in this episode, and you know that that's one of my red flag topics, and so she says some things that are so revolutionary for me in this conversation.

It's definitely going to have a bookmark for me to revisit often. So I hope that our listeners find it to be as illuminating as I did.

CW: Well, Valerie, thank you so much for being on At Last She Said It this week and we're so excited to have you, to learn more about you. We've all been kind of collaborating on all these questions that we want to talk about. There's no way we'll get to all of them, but I'm going to kind of turn the time over to Susan.

And Susan, what are the juicy questions here you want to make sure we get to talk about with Valerie?

SH: I'm sorry that I'm the one who has to choose what the juicy questions are, but hopefully I'll make good choices. Hi, Valerie.

VH: Hi, Susan and Cynthia.

SH: Thrilled to be talking to you today.

VH: I love talking to you too. Anytime, any chance I get is just a joy. So thanks for having me.

SH: Well, I'm pretty sure that all of our listeners, and I know that all of your listeners already know who you are, but could you give us the world's quickest snapshot of your journey as a Latter-day Saint woman?

VH: You realize you're asking a— that's a big ask to give me a quick snapshot, right?

SH: It's a huge question. Yeah, right, right.

VH: So let me give a—let's see how concise I can be—which is not one of my spiritual gifts. Okay, so, born and raised in Utah, born in Salt Lake City. I'm one of six children.

I left Utah after my husband and I got married. We met at BYU. No, no. We did not meet at BYU. We met as missionaries, which is always a fun story. So we were on the same mission.

CW: What mission was that?

VH: We were in the Oakland, California mission in the mid nineties. [00:05:00] And our first conversation was an argument, which was, forecast for a fun relationship to come.

I was pushing up against the patriarchy in the very first conversation that I had with my husband.

CW: Yes, Valerie!

VH: Yeah, right?

CW: We love you.

VH: So that, anyways, that's a whole other thing, which we don't have time for, but Nathan and I got married, moved to Texas for a few years while he went to medical school.

Then we've been in Kansas City for about 25 years, active in the church, temple married, BYU grad. Like all the things. We were sort of your traditional orthodox family, raised our children quite orthodox, until about, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, I went back to graduate school got a master's degree in counseling.

And that in some ways was sort of the beginning of my spiritual awakening experience, where I really think I started to experience more confidence to define myself as a spiritual being. And one thing led to another, and then I stumbled into this idea to do a podcast on this topic of psychology-meets-theology, and philosophy here in the Latter day Saint space because of so much faith crisis that I was seeing in my own counseling office.

And here we are. That brings us up to present in a fairly concise way.

SH: That's really concise actually. It really resonates with me. It sounds to me like we have this in common maybe, and maybe I didn't hear you right. But It wasn't so much that my faith changed, it was that I changed.

VH: Yeah. No, really.

SH: Therefore, how I related to everything in my faith life changed. Is the reason for that.

VH: I've thought a lot about this because there's a little piece of me that has a little bit of holy envy for little eight year old feminists that were always questioning. I wasn't one of those little girls.

And as I've reflected back, I think part of it was because in my childhood the church was such a force for good for me. It was a stability that I don't know that I really exactly had in all of the other realms of my life. And as the decades passed and I found more stability, and I was emerging into kind of my own free thinking self because I had a little bit more confidence in, I don't know, myself as a human being that could think complexly without the fear of what does this mean.

I just changed, and my brain became more capable of realizing, I don't know, how do I say this differently? It's almost like I wasn't somebody that pushed back too too much. I had a nice little shelf. And the church worked for me and it gave us stability in our home and family for quite a long time.

And then I think I just had the confidence to go, you know what, I think I'm going to look into that. And here we are, as I began to realize that the church— and I think that's why I've been able to, in some ways, hold space for the way that the church has been a force for good in my life, and also hold space for the reality that the most healthy humans and institutions are able to not only self reflect, but also embrace their shadows and look at it.

And so as I think I began to do that for myself, it seemed only logical that everything that was around me ought to be able to do that too.

SH: Yeah.

CW: I totally relate, Valerie, in that I wish I had been the eight year old budding feminist. Like Susan Hinckley, Susan tells the story about jumping up on a chair, saying she won't be a baby factory for eternity.

But I love that you used the word stability. I was reading something recently about people who convert not just to our religion, but to other religions, and there's something about— some converts, obviously not all, they move from a space of chaos in their life. And churches like ours have an attraction in that there is that stability, exactly what you're talking about.

And that kind of helped me understand converts a little bit more, like I said, not all converts, or even people who like, go inactive from our faith, leave for 20 or 30 years and then they come back and it's the greatest thing ever. And I think, well, okay, that makes a lot of sense. If you have a lot of disorder or chaos or whatever adjective people would use to describe, and then they move into this space where there is that stability you're talking about.

So I totally relate to that in my own life. And it makes sense, and it's helped me understand people who had a different path and who were attracted to the stability that our church offers very well. We are so good at the stability thing.

VH: Yeah. To respond to what you're just saying there, Cynthia. I love that because on a faith journey, I feel like the most important thing we can continue to— I check back in with myself is, am I truly embodying love? Is this what is showing up? And if it isn't, then I don't know that I'm really on what I would consider a productive faith journey. So if we're growing and becoming more capable of love, part of that for me at least is, can I have compassion on people that are in different places and recognize that each person's journey [00:10:00] is different.