Episode 212 (Transcript): Embracing Your Journey | A Conversation with Kathie Debanham

Episode Transcript

Many thanks to listener, Kathryn Lee, 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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TEASER INTRO

KD: I think fundamentally, it was probably in the home that it was just taught to me that you're a thinking human being, and you have ways that you can contribute to the world. And I think when you have that as a core value that you really did absorb, it helped me to realize that it's not an all-or-nothing proposition to join the church.

EPISODE

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 things. And the title of today's episode is Embracing Your Journey, A Conversation with Kathie Debenham. Welcome, Kathie. 

SH: Hi, Kathie. 

KD: Hi, it's nice to be here. 

CW: It's nice to have you here.

These are some of our favorite episodes, where we get behind the scenes of Latter-day Saint women's lives. We're super excited to talk with you today and learn more details about how you have journeyed with your faith in this sometimes complicated LDS space. So, please give us a quick intro and bio, who you are, where you live, and what brings you to this conversation.

KD: Sure. I was born and grew up on the peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area. I moved to Utah to come to school (I'll get to that), but my growing years were all in California. I did live on a street that had lots of kids, 73 kids from toddler to teenager. And we were pretty much free- range kids running all over the hills and fields where our houses were.

I grew up in a family that valued education highly and that also valued physical activity. And both of those things have deeply imprinted on me. My high school and college years were shadowed by the Vietnam War, which I think significantly influenced my, maybe my, sense of activism? And a sense that, I don't know, just kind of the justice gene. It kind of lit up the justice gene. 

CW: Nice. 

KD: And I had, where I lived, I was kind of triangulated between Stanford University, San Francisco State, where there was a lot of student protests, and UC Berkeley on the other side of the bay. And so I, and my friends, were pretty much immersed in this culture of questioning.

Which again, is something that I think influenced me deeply. And in that climate, I started school at UC Santa Barbara. And at the time – you're too young for this, Cynthia–but Susan would likely remember something about the students that burned the Bank of America in the student community where I lived.

And so I sat there in my apartment and watched the Bank of America burn. There were these dump trucks full of police from all over Southern California patrolling the neighborhoods of Goleta to settle the unrest there. And it was a wild time. Then I transferred to UC Berkeley, which is closer to home, and I happened to be there the semester the students were killed at Kent State.

CW: Really? Wow. I was going to ask. Okay. 

KD: And it just, the whole world was on fire for me. And I did go back down to UC Santa Barbara, but at that time I started noticing my older sister, who was at school safely ensconced at BYU, that her life was not crazy. And my life was on fire. And so, I came out to visit her and just kind of got a sense of what this was and who was here.

Then I went back to UC Santa Barbara and ended up starting to take a class at the Institute there to see if I could find a little bit more about it. So, I should also say that I grew up in a mixed-faith family. My dad's family is LDS, back-to-pioneer LDS, and my mom is the daughter of a Methodist minister who I found out much later in life.

I was young when he died, so I didn't really know him. She always chafed at his strictness. He was very, very strict and apparently had anger, and so I think my mom came to associate anger with religion. So she described herself as spiritual and not religious. 

KD: And so as kids, my parents thought it was important to have some religious upbringing, so my dad would take us to the Mormon church there in Redwood City, California.

I knew even as a young child that my [00:05:00] family was different than everybody else's family because I didn't have my whole family there. We did the occasional going to primary – weekday primary – but that was kind of my connection, and when I was 12, I chose to be a candy striper at the hospital and volunteer instead of going to church.

Because there was this kind of discomfort. You could tell who the families were in the ward that were recognized as being the solid families in the ward. And I wasn't one of them.