Episode 224 (Transcript): Navigating Transitions | What Triggered Your Faith Journey?

Episode Transcript

Many thanks to listener, Sarah Thomas, 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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Hi, I'm Susan Hinkley. And I am Cynthia Winward, 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 Triggered Your Faith Journey? Pretty sure we've spent 220 episodes answering that question, Cynthia. So it's time for our listeners to have a chance to answer that question.

CW: Yes, it is. Meaning, this is a voicemail episode. 

SH: This is a voicemail episode, and we've been calling for these voicemails ever since we held a Friday chat where we used this as the topic. And it was just so amazing hearing all of these women's stories that we thought we wanted more of them and we want everyone to hear them.

I always think of the Maya Angelou quote that's so well known, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

And I think a lot of times when these things happen in women's lives where a faith shift starts, it can be a long time before they're able to say anything about what triggered it to anyone, or about the beginnings of it.

You know, they can carry it for years, sometimes decades, sometimes a lifetime. Before they start asking, where did the problems begin? And so, that's why we thought that it would work so well in our theme for season 10. Because this is an opportunity to see women navigating transition in real time.

And I think a lot of times when women land in the At Last She Said It space, they are in the middle of gnarly life transitions of some kind. And I guess you and I were when we started.

CW: Yeah. I think what amazes me the most is how many women are experiencing this for the very first time.

SH: Oh, so many. Yeah. 

CW: I guess I just assumed so many of our listeners are where you and I are, which is like a decade into this. So it actually touches my heart that for so many people, this is brand new, fresh. So I hope today is helpful for that reason. 

SH: Yeah, me too. And I've been amazed at how much these stories really prick my heart. There's just so much here that so many women are carrying. I was thinking about doing these episodes as I listened to the voicemails and they just felt kind of heavier and heavier to me, it just seemed like a lot. I thought, I can imagine that a lot of church members would start listening to an episode like this and they would say, “Why don't you just have women share faith promoting stories because then you could be helping lift each other.”

Does that sound true to you, that someone would say that? 

CW: Yes!

SH: But, you know, I was thinking about it, and church is mostly devoted to uplifting stories. I don't ever hear the kinds of stories that we're gonna hear today at church. And those inspiring parts of women's stories are only part of the truth of their lives.

I feel like sharing our whole stories can help us see whole people, which is, as you know, one of my big goals about space making at church. So we are going to share these stories for a lot of good reasons. I feel like there are too many misconceptions about how people end up in a transitional faith space.

CW: That's my number one reason I want to do it.

SH: We want to shed some light on some of the real reasons. There's also this thing that you and I have seen happen, really thousands of times now, where when women share their story  they figure out they're no longer alone. It worked that way for us. 

I feel like some changes in the church are only ever going to come as a result of change in the members. Empathy requires that we begin to see one another and I feel like we're not really used to seeing one another at church as anything other than other Latter-day Saints in our Sunday best. We wanna start to see whole people. 

I came across a quote by novelist Richard Powers, and I loved the idea behind it. He said, “The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” 

CW: I totally believe that.

SH: Totally [00:05:00] agree. That just had such a ring of truth to me from what I've seen being in this space over the past decade, talking to so many people. When I hear people's stories, there's no way to argue. You learn something from them, and you're forced to grapple with realities. Seeing people is everything. 

CW: I have also learned that facts and statistics don't change people's minds, but personal stories do.

You and I could just list all the reasons that we've heard over the years, what has triggered faith journeys for women. But hearing the context, the emotion, all the details of a woman's life as she shares this, that's a lot harder to deny or to demean, or whatever we do as humans to just dismiss people's stories. 

It's a lot harder to do when it's up close and personal. I kind of want to poke at that question that you said people pose, “Why don't you just have women share faith promoting stories that are inspiring.”

I think these stories are faith promoting and inspiring because you find out you're not alone.That  to me is the inspiring part, knowing you're not alone. Something can be faith promoting and not necessarily be “positive”. 

Just knowing how other people put their faith back together again. Even though there's a lot of pain in those stories, there's a lot of hope in those stories. 

SH: I feel like lift can come in a lot of different forms. There is something in listening to someone's story that shifts you into this space where you're sitting with them.

And I think anytime that you're engaged in any kind of ministering exercise—anytime that you get shifted into that space— that's inherently lifting for the person that you're sitting with. But also for the person who is offering their heart and their attention in that way. 

So, yeah, I'm with you. I would take issue with the idea that these are not faith promoting stories. 

CW: Well before we jump into our voicemails, I just want to say that this is going to be a running series for us during season 10. So if you hear voicemails today and you want to add your story to the ones that you hear, go ahead and go to our website @lastshesaidit.org. There's a tab on there that will allow you to leave a voicemail for us. 

Our hope is that we could do bonus Friday episodes throughout the season. So keep that in mind as we go throughout season 10. Anytime during those five months, please send us a voicemail about what triggered your faith journey, and we will just keep putting more and more women's stories out there.

Well, let's listen to our first one from Kate. 

Kate: Hi ladies. So my faith journey really started when a bishop denied releasing me from a calling. After I had explained that my personal revelation was that I needed to be released and I was struggling with a lot of mental health stuff, he refused.

It was a very uncomfortable situation that my husband ended up having to go in to protect me. And I was so grateful he did. But I was really upset that he had to. 

For the first time ever, I just felt so out of control of my life. And I just realized— really it was like I was slapped in the face with the reality of the patriarchal system that exists all around us, especially in the church.

So after that, I pierced my own ears for a second piercing. I was trying to do everything I could to just feel in control of my own life, and it just kind of spiraled from there. I took off my garments and I was just trying to find a sense of self, of ownership of myself, and it's just been a journey ever since then.

I'm so grateful for it. It's just been really hard, but I'm really grateful for where I ended up. 

SH: Wow. I've been there. I've talked about it on the podcast. I know exactly that power differential that she is talking about. Remember I had my branch president who said to me, “I don't accept doctor's [00:10:00] notes, and I still need you to make a meaningful contribution.” 

And this was at the time when I had three little children and my husband was the Young Men's President and was so busy in the branch. So, a lot of times I do think women just are not listened to. And in my case, it did also take my husband going in and saying to him, “No, seriously, Susan can't have a calling right now”.

CW: Good grief. You know what I found really interesting about how Kate healed from this? She became very embodied—ears pierced, not wearing garments anymore. And I just think that's something we hear so often in this space when things begin to shift internally for women.

Part of the way they take control back is by doing something very embodied.  And that resonates with me. I don't know if that resonates with you, but there’s something about just taking control over the one thing in this world, you have control over— your body. 

SH: Yeah. The story doesn't have as happy an ending for me. I really wasn't in a position where it could trigger those kinds of good changes for me, but the thing that I love about this story is that it did for her. 

CW: Yeah. Let's hear from Anonymous. 

Anonymous: My backstory is that about a year and a half ago, my ex-husband started having an affair with a coworker who is also a member of the church. My ex-husband used my faith crisis as a reason to start having an affair because I was unrighteous and she was righteous, and it was okay in his mind to be having that affair with her.

When I figured out what was going on, I went to my bishop with tons of evidence of what was going on and what those two had been doing. The bishop dismissed me. Essentially what he said was, get the divorce. Forgive him. Shut up about it. Don't ask questions about it. Move on. 

I've never in my life felt more unheard, so much lack of empathy for my experience.

When I asked for a temple divorce, they wouldn't give it to me because they said I had to have the civil divorce first, and the idea of being sealed to an adulterer just turned my stomach. So with that and other things, I withdrew my membership from the church. It is not a safe place for women, especially women going through experiences like mine where we are told to sit down, shut up, don't talk about it. It doesn't happen. 

The church wants to protect its men. It wants to protect its image. And by exposing men like that, women like me are left in the dust. They don't want to hear what I have to say. 

CW: Wow. I kind of want to not say anything after that. I just want to sit in the sadness of that with her. I will say that as long as 50%— and I've said this time and time again—as long as 50% of the church make decisions on behalf of a hundred percent of the church, we're never going to be a hundred percent.

The male perspective is the default in advice that she was given. It was all from a male perspective and the advice he gave her, the councils, the policies that are doled out to women, it's all 100% through a male lens. And we shouldn't be surprised when it hurts women the way it hurt this woman. And I'm deeply sorry for what she went through. 

SH: Oh, same. This one pushed so many emotional buttons for me. There's sadness, but I also just feel deep rage on all kinds of levels for things in this message. And there are so many layers of it. It just starts right at the beginning where she talks about how her husband found a more righteous woman to have an affair with. There's a whole cultural thing behind that, that just kicked the rage into high gear for me right from the beginning, and then it kind of just gets worse from there. I'm just so sorry. 

CW: There really is nothing worse than a woman who changes her mind about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Even an affair isn't worse than that. 

SH: Exactly. That's where that message starts. [00:15:00] And just that. Wow. 

CW: Yeah. Let's listen to Mandy. 

Mandy: My faith deconstruction began after taking time to learn about our history and certain past and current policies. But ultimately, and surprisingly, having a child is what crumbled my shelf.

Before we knew the gender, I told my husband, if it's a girl, I don't know how I can raise her in this church. Imagine my relief when I found out it was a boy. Thank goodness, I thought. So many opportunities are available for my child now. I don't have to explain why he can't do something in our church because of his gender, maybe he won't even notice he has more authority than me when he turns 12.

Things can stay the same and I don't have to step away. I could continue hiding my disbelief, all because my body was growing a spiritually speaking, more convenient gender. I knew in my heart this truth would spoil in my stomach, and it did not take long.

When my son was about six months, I distinctly remember telling him, I don't care if you drink coffee. I don't care what undergarments you wear. I don't want your money. My love is greater than that and nothing will separate us. 

But isn't God supposed to love us more than we can even imagine? We can't even know the depths of his love. And yet, my love for my son seems stronger than Mormon God's love ever has.

In the days and months, the veil was supposed to be the thinnest, with this tiny, perfect human in my arms. In the moments where I thought I would feel so close to heaven, I hadn't ever felt more disconnected from it. Because if I love my son this much, no arbitrary rules would ever get in my way from being with him for eternities.

I am bigger than that, and God should be too. 

CW: Susan, what's your line? Or is it your husband Russ's line about “Give me a God…?

SH: Yeah. “I need a God who loves me at least as much as my own mother does.” 

I think a lot of parents come to that realization. I know that I did. But it took me a long time to really process it — to put it in the bigger context: What does that really say to me about God, and how does that affect my beliefs? And not only that, how is it going to affect everything else in the giant domino line of my faith life?

And that's a pretty far reaching impact once you shift something that foundational, because that takes worthiness out of it. You came at this with the worthiness question. It's the same thing, really. You came to it through a different realization or different channel, but it touches everything in our church life.

I love the line that she said: A more convenient gender.  Oh gosh. I actually registered a little shock in my body when she said that because it's a laughable phrase and it just feels deeply true to me in our church. 

CW: Well, I mean, life is just easier for boys and men in the church.

And how many times have we shared stories of women where it's like: When I had a daughter, I realized I wasn't willing to put her on the back burner the way I had put myself. 

And so, here's a woman, Mandy, who had the reverse. It's like, oh, whew. A boy. Just a little bit easier for him.

SH: So we're three messages into this journey, and I'm to the, “I need to lie down” place already. I'll tell you why: There are little kernels in each of these women's stories that I feel on a bone level.

I have felt these things, I have carried these kinds of thoughts and pain that they're talking about. Our circumstances are different, but the thing behind the thing feels the same to me as a woman in the church. And so it's a lot. It hurts me in a really personal way to hear these stories.

And I can't really thank women enough for sharing them. Because not being alone is a really wonderful thing. Not being alone is also a really hard thing sometimes. And that's the experience that I have listening to these stories. I say, “Oh, okay. So there's a reason that I've struggled with so many things my whole life.”

CW: Let's listen to Shearston. 

Shearston: Hi, Susan and Cynthia. My name is Shearston and I'm calling in response to your request to share how our faith journeys began. In a nutshell, having kids—specifically daughters—started everything for me. I was 27 when my first daughter was born. Before she came into my life, I had never thought about or even noticed the inequality of men and women in the church.

Even when I went through the temple, I didn't notice the language and parts that would bother me so much [00:20:00] later on. Then this beautiful girl came into my life and I began to see things differently. I didn't know how to raise my daughter in a church that I was realizing didn't really value her. At the same time, we lived in the Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego, which is known for its vibrant LGBTQ+ community.

I was meeting and getting to know so many different types of people. Over the next few years, I became a staunch feminist and an ally of the queer community. It became difficult and uncomfortable for me to make church work while beginning to disagree with so much. I found myself thinking, “What if one of my children is queer?”

How could I explain to them why we are part of a church that did not truly accept them? I tried for 10 years, but bringing my now three daughters and son to church and then trying to unteach things at home became exhausting. I began to dread going to church, feeling my stress levels rise as each week came closer to Sunday.

Finally, three years ago, I gave myself permission to let go and walk away. 

CW: I guess that goes with our last message. That's why I probably put them together, it’s the daughter issue again. 

I always think it's really interesting if you have a favorite movie and you say “Oh, you’ve got to watch this movie with me.” You kind of watch the movie through the lens of your friend that's watching it with you, right? And so that's kind of what I hear in this voicemail is that she started looking at church through the lens of her daughter's eyes. And it exposed a whole part of her church experience that she hadn't really been aware of before.

And then that led to other things, right? She pulled on the thread and that led to the same thing for the LGBTQ+ community. So it’s really fascinating what triggered all that for her. 

SH: We've heard so many women over the years talk about their concern raising children in the church, but specifically raising daughters in the church. And that they don't really know how or if they can do that. 

And it just makes me wonder: Did our mothers ever have feelings about having daughters in the church? I mean, I'd love to know. I don't think women were talking a lot about it, the majority of them anyway. I would say women probably talk about those things more now than they did in my mother's generation.

But, did women carry those feelings silently? I would love to know, because I think being a woman in this church has come with a lot of fine print from almost the very beginning. 

CW: Yeah, good point. What's the scripture about Mary? She kept all these things in her heart.

SH: Yeah. I've always said, “To me, that's the truest line in the scriptures.” 

CW: Let's hear from Hailey. 

Hailey: Hello. I wanted to share my three big moments with my faith transition. The first one is when my second son was born; I was 25 and I was left permanently disabled as a result. And I had to then figure out a new future to fulfill me because I thought I would just be having kids for a long time. I thought I would just have so many babies and I thought that's what God wanted for me, and that was really confusing. 

The second was we moved to Utah as a family and we had a really hard time finding a place in our ward where we felt welcomed and we felt like people cared about us. And that eventually ended up with me being kicked out of the ministering program because I was the Compassionate Service Coordinator and it was too much at that time of life with a new disability and a new baby.

And I got asked to be released and my ministering sisters were taken away. And I even questioned, asked why, and was just told that's how it was supposed to be. 

And so I realized I had a codependency with the church and allowed myself to ask questions I hadn't before, including my last sticky thing.

Not last, but a big sticky thing right now for me is understanding how my dad has had big callings my whole life—Bishopric, Bishop, Stake Presidency, and now looking at putting in mission papers— and trying to figure out how a church that is all about families can remove my dad from my life for so much of my life.

CW: Have you ever heard that line before? When Hayley said, “I realized I had a codependency with the church”, that clicked something for me. Because how often do we rely on the church to meet all of our social and spiritual needs? Which is why when faith shifts begin to happen, they're like tectonic shifts, right?

SH: Oh yeah. Exactly. And every part of your life. 

CW: Every part of your life. And I don't necessarily think we do that on purpose. I just think the church is such a high-demand religion that so much of our time goes into it that, by default, it [00:25:00] ends up being the be-all and end-all for our social and spiritual needs, which is the definition of codependency.

You depend on this person for way too much in your life. It's too enmeshed. Anyway, thank you, Hailey. I had never thought about that before. 

SH: I'm wondering if that's getting better as a result of the church becoming a little bit less everything in people's lives? 

We've talked before about when I was a child growing up on the East Bench in Salt Lake City, church was the community, it was the neighborhood. Any activity going on was bound to be a church activity. Everyone who lived around me was in the ward, and all my friends were members. 

And I think for a lot of people now, that's not the case because the church doesn't operate all of those activities anymore. Also because people live in a lot of places besides Utah where they aren't surrounded by members in the same way.

I don't know how you would not be codependent on the church in Salt Lake City in the early 1970s of my childhood. I can't really see a way that you wouldn't be. And yet, I feel like because our church demands such—what's the right word—unquestioning loyalty from its members, we're still at risk for that codependency developing.  

There's a power differential in our relationship with the church. Not just with the people within it, but we have this parent/child kind of relationship going on for a lot of members with the church. And so I think that it's pretty easy to get funneled into an out of balance relationship like she describes. 

CW: I also think it's interesting she brought up her dad with busy callings, and how he's getting ready for a mission or something. I get that callings need to be done, obviously. But what I have seen is that we keep the busiest, the busiest.

And I just had an example of this in my life again, a couple Sundays ago. I was at church and my favorite part about church is after the sacrament meeting, visiting with all my friends because duh—It's my reward!

So I'm going around and I'm visiting with all my girlfriends, and the two women I was speaking with are very busy women who have very large families, like more than five children. And they were all talking about heading to Young Women's Camp the next day. 

And I thought: Isn't it fascinating that I, an empty nester, who maybe would have more time than these women who have five plus children in their homes—but I'm not asked to serve in time consuming callings anymore like that. I mean, I know they're many reasons— I'm poison now, you can't have a feminist going to Young Women's Camp— who knows what she could say?

And yet, I am completely able, and I am at a point in my life where I probably could give a little bit more time to the organization. That's kind of my beef, I feel like we keep the busiest, the busiest. 

SH: I don't think you're wrong. It happens for men too. There are so many times when a new bishop has been called, or a reorganization of the bishopric, where I've looked around and thought: Seriously, you're putting that guy in, with four little children sitting there with his wife?

There are all kinds of older men who could do that job. So I'm not totally sure why the choices always get made. I mean, part of it is just being practical because there are people who get things done. And so bishops rely heavily on those kinds of people.

There are workhorses in a ward. I think in any group of people. So I understand on a practical level why that sometimes happens, but I think it's wider than that in our church. I think it's bigger than that. I think we really do privilege younger people in busy callings and in our church. That very often means you're pulling someone away from their family.

CW: Let's hear from Joanna. 

Joanna: Hey Susan and Cynthia. I'm answering your question about when faith challenges started. For me, it is very easy to pinpoint. It was in the temple. I grew up in a very orthodox, black and white, normal Mormon family, and I never had any problems at all.

I got married when I was 19 and I didn't really digest what was in the temple for a few years because it was such an overwhelming and pretty uncomfortable experience for me, and I didn't attend too often. When I did, I was a little dissociated. But when I was 24, my husband and I were trying to make a [00:30:00] big decision that we disagreed on, we went to the temple for clarity. And that's when I really heard for the first time that I had covenanted to hearken to his council.

And that was the beginning of the end for me. I couldn't believe that could be right. I studied everything I could on lds.org about temples, the roles of men and women, marriage…I didn't like most of what I read, and I just disagreed with it. And I had a lot of guilt and shame about that. I didn't feel like I could talk to anyone about it.

If I did open up to people, they always had things that could explain it away that just didn't make sense to me. Then when they changed it in 2019, it comforted me for a little while and it validated me, but I just thought: Why? Why did so many women before me have to learn that? 

So yeah, it's never been the same since then.

CW: Okay. Joanna and I are the same when it comes to our temple experience. That was the exact trigger for me as well. That word hearken. Why? Why? 

SH: I mean, it could have been worse, Cynthia. 

CW: It was worse for you. It was obey! 

SH: It could have been obey, but hearken isn't that much better. 

CW: I was gonna say, it doesn't make me feel that much better, Susan.

SH: Any admonishment for a woman to listen to privilege someone else over her own authority is gonna chafe a little bit, right? I mean, that's it. And it should. I think a lot of us are pretty dissociated in our early temple experience. I know that I was, I can't remember much of anything from like my temple sealing, for instance. 

Who knows where my 18-year-old head was that day. It wasn't on religion. I know that it wasn't on eternal life. I didn't care about principalities, dominions, or anything else. I cared about what was gonna happen in the next 24 hours of my life. 

So, yeah, I can really relate to that, and I can also really relate to not processing that for some years after.

I racked up some really bad experiences really early on, but I didn't even really realize I had permission to “process” them (using air quotes). It wasn't even safe to try to start to unwrap that package. 

CW: Well, a lot is at stake.

SH: Right. Well, and the temple isn't given to you with the idea that, go ahead and try this and see how you feel about it.

CW: No, it's presented to us as the end-all, be-all of our spiritual journey. The culmination of our covenant path. So yeah, it's easy to feel crazy when you do finally start to listen and go, “Wait, ahhhh! This doesn't feel like the ultimate spiritual experience like I've been told it would.”

So I really like her line. Why did so many women before have to do that? I mean, how many times have we talked on the podcast where we've used the line exactly like what Joanna was talking about when the changes happened in 2019. How many women were asking: Did it ever matter?

I just finished reading Second Class Saints by Matt Harris about the priesthood temple ban. And while the male leaders were all in the temple in June of 1978, when Kimball announced that the ban was being lifted, there were a lot more questions that were brought up by some of those leaders in the room. 

They were asking, “So what does this mean for the curse? Did African Saints never have the curse? Were they never fence sitters like we were told?” They just wanted to know, was that going to be addressed? 

As far as I know, none of that was ever addressed. And likewise, we've never addressed hearken or obey. 

SH: No. This is the way that change comes to us in the church so often. It's handed to us with no explanation or wider context given. Certainly not an apology, that's just crazy talk. But there are a lot of other things that they could talk about, and I think the Blacks and the priesthood is such a good story for that. 

I was thinking about when elected officials pass legislation, if it's not popular with the people who elected them, then they have to go back and sort of convince those people. They need to organize a narrative explaining why this was a good idea and why they voted the way they did, and why they believed what they did about it. 

And I just feel like our leaders never feel like they have any responsibility to go back to the people and explain. Why did we used to talk about a curse? Did it ever exist? And how do we think about this going forward? None of that work with the constituents actually ever happens in our [00:35:00] church.

CW: Well, wasn't it Dallin Oaks who said one time something like, “The church isn't a democracy”? 

SH: Well then, I guess that explains it. 

CW: We all know that. Like in other words, we don't answer to you. Okay, but people have agency and if they don't feel satisfied, they're gonna do something about that. Whatever ‘that’ could be. 

SH: The questions that you describe from Second Class Saints, that the leaders were asking are the natural questions that someone would ask.

And so you have to know that the members were also asking those questions. And what a place of privilege it would've been to be one of the men in the room who actually got to ask one of those questions. And talk about it with other people. And maybe get an answer or reach consensus or not. At least understand what the people making that decision were thinking. None of the members had that opportunity at all.

CW: The other question that was asked by the leaders when the ban was lifted was, “What about women? Are we gonna give full equality to women too?”

I mean, it's a logical question. I highly recommend the book, my friends. Second Class Saints, I even believe all the questions that surfaced when that ban was lifted, and rightfully so. 

SH: Well, I guess we know what the answer to that one was.

CW: Ow. We're laughing 'cause it's…wow.

Anonymous: My faith journey began in October of 2021. At the age of 33 when I was called as a Young Woman President. The Bishop sent me to go pray and receive revelation about who should be in my presidency. My list was easy, the revelation came to me quickly: within 24 hours, I had submitted it to him. And he immediately turned it down.

Tried again. Three other times, each of those were turned down 100%— each of the sisters that I suggested, that I had received revelation on. So instead, I prayed about the whole ward. All of the sisters. I created a list. He did not like my list of who I received revelation about as potential candidates to be part of my presidency.

This led me to question my ability to receive revelation, and if I even was at that time. 

SH: Okay. You were giggling a little. I was trying really hard not to growl as she's telling this story.

CW: I'm giggling because she just kept trying to play by the rules, submitting a few names, and then finally she's like, I just prayed about the whole ward and just gave him a long list. Oh my gosh. I love her so much.  She can't win for losing!

SH: Oh my gosh. The other thing I love in that story is that she starts out by saying, my faith journey started on and gives you the exact date because sometimes you really can pinpoint it. 

Something happens and you're just like, “Okay, I've lived with this stuff for a long time, but this crosses a line.” That is crazy making, Cynthia.

And at the end when she began to question her whole capability to even receive revelation. I feel like that articulates something that runs really deep. Well, first of all, that's spiritual damage that's occurring as she describes it. To me, that's spiritual damage— abuse that's being done to her and creating scars. 

But we've had so many women come to us over the years who feel like they don't know how to access their own spiritual authority. And I feel like it's probably a direct result of things like this in the church that have happened to them that have caused them to question, “Should I even trust myself on this stuff?”

CW: That's a really good point. Yeah. Wow. I need to sit with that one. 

SH: Got a couch right here for you, Cynthia. Lie down as needed. 

CW: I’ve reached the lie down moment. Yours was earlier in the episode

Let's listen to Stephanie.

Stephanie: Hi, it's Stephanie. In my mid to late forties, I was exhausted and feeling spent by all that the church required of me. I was feeling a lot like the tree in Shel Silverstein's classic children's [00:40:00] book, The Giving Tree. I had cut off all my branches and given away all the fruits of my labors, and my loins for that matter.

But the church kept asking for more and I gave them everything they asked, freely and happily, until I had nothing left to give and was left with only a stump of what was. And while I was told I should be happy, I just wasn't happy being the stump that the church sat on. So I quit my callings with much pushback and went back to school.

Halfway through my master's program, the bishop called me in and asked me to be Ward Librarian. I refused. I broke down and told him that I felt like I was living Satan's plan, that my whole life was planned out by the church, and I felt like I had no choices. Instead of having compassion and listening, he turned red in anger, kicked back his chair, and began to berate me.

It was terrifying. I told my stake president, but there was only excusing. Looking back on life, there were pricks and questions, but they were always pushed aside. The incident with the bishop a few years ago was the straw that broke the camel's back. I was filled with anger and disappointment. 

It confirmed for me that the church is run by imperfect men. And I thought to myself: I can choose to continue to listen to imperfect men who fail to protect and listen to me, or I can choose to listen to my own heart that wants me to grow and be safe. 

Spoiler: I started listening to my own heart and I couldn't feel happier or safer. 

The End. Or rather, The Beginning.

CW: I didn't mean to laugh when she was talking about something serious, but when she was saying, she explained to the bishop, “I feel like I'm living Satan's plan”…that is brilliant! 

But also when she said, “I felt like I was the stump that the church was sitting on” or something like that. What a metaphor! 

I guess this is my question: For how many women is exhaustion what triggers a big change for them? Just becoming a stump, and they're like, enough!

SH: Oh yeah. I'm absolutely sure that happens. I mean, she even describes her loins as being exhausted! I mean, she's given everything. 

CW: Yeah. Birthed babies, I'm guessing is what she's meaning. Give and give! 

Let's listen to Miranda. 

Miranda: I had a small faith crisis before the big one. During COVID, I had a wildly over controlling bishop who shut down all service and caregiving in our neighborhood, to the point where there was a woman having a baby with no family members to watch her other children. 

The women who helped her out had to hide it. Women were sneakily taking meals to those in need. For the first time in my life, I began to question the church's place and how much influence they should really have.

I definitely had a leadership crisis. We got new leadership. COVID ended. I went to therapy and I mostly stepped back into place, but I wasn't the same. Fast forward to a year later when my return missionary son came out as gay. I knew the church's stance, but it was with zero hesitation that I told him I in no way supported a life of loneliness and celibacy, and I expected him to find a fabulous husband and have a family of his own.

It was at this moment, I began to question everything about the church. The men in charge had said the most horrible things about my child. It took about a five minute Google dive to figure that out. It was awful. I had never felt so betrayed and hurt and stupid. How had I let these cruel words slide over me for all these years?

I only heard them when it was my child. I decided no more. I let my heart open to so many things, especially our LGBTQ community. I thought I was a loving person before, but I was shocked how much more room I had. Everything unraveled, painfully and quickly, and necessarily.

CW: I think it's human nature to not hear— or I guess comprehend maybe would be a better word—to not be able to comprehend things until they affect you.

But my question is always like, how do we change that? How can we get people to see that some policies and doctrine are just harmful to certain people? 

SH: Well, I feel like the only hope of that is exactly what we were talking about in the beginning, that hearing people's stories is really the only possible way of that happening, unless it's something that happens to us ourselves.

But there's no guarantee that's going to work for everyone. And also that's a pretty long, slow process and there's collateral damage in the meantime. 

CW: I also think about the irony that we raise kids in a family oriented church. We sing about families from the time we're in primary, but then we turn to an entire segment of our population— our LGBTQ kiddos—and we say, not for you.

Do we get the irony of that? Whether you believe gay marriage is okay in God's eyes or not. That's not even the question. We have to be able to see the unbearable burden that we place [00:45:00] on our children, our LGBTQ children when they've been told their entire life: Family, family, family, family.

SH: I think we don't see the irony and I say that because I'm someone who lived my whole life in the church with ‘Families Can be Together Forever’, floating around everywhere. And I didn't ever realize the conditional word in that sentence.

Families can be together. Right? Not necessarily. I remember the exact day that someone said that in a way that it finally registered for me, and I thought: How is this possibly good news? But then I was almost 60 years old when that happened. I was in my mid fifties for sure, when I had that realization, and I just have no idea how I missed it. So I think the irony is lost on us generally. 

CW: Well, and I was I don't know how many years old when I realized: Oh! The default is families are separated. 

Wait, what? What? Like our default is we're separated, but families can be together? 

SH: Even for church members, that's the default. 

CW: What do you mean? Like how, what do you mean? 

SH: Well, I mean, if your family's not, you know, checking every box and hitting every mark, it doesn't matter if you're a church member? There's no promise there, right? 

I can think of a few talks where general authorities said, well, don't worry if your children were born in the covenant. You know, it's all going to be okay. I don't know how that works. I think that kicks it into the ‘God Will Figure This Out’ category. 

But I feel like that's very cold comfort when then the prophet gives a sad heaven talk that makes it clear that you're gonna have empty chairs at your table. There's a very real possibility, even if you're listening to this conference address right now. 

It's all conditional.

CW: More to think on there. But yeah, it's hard stuff. Let's listen to Jamie. 

Jamie: My faith began unraveling on Easter Sunday, 2021. My gay teenage son was suicidal. I sat with him alone in a stark white hospital while he was being admitted. 

That day, something shattered in me. My son wasn't broken, he wasn't being tested by God. 

He was just a boy, a teen trying to survive in a world, in a church that told him love was for everyone else, but not for him. 

And what does a mother pray for in a moment like that? Not for doctrine, not for repentance or answers. I prayed he would stay with us, that he would live long enough to know love. 

And that week, I cried and grieved on the couch as everything I believed started to fall apart.

Buried memories came rushing back: being sent away for having sex with my boyfriend… while I was gone, he was baptized and celebrated… being disappointed by the temple with no Heavenly Mother… being a friend who left the church, but not being courageous enough to question those doubts I had… being Relief Society president and realizing my inspiration didn't matter if it didn't match the bishop’s… being blamed for something I didn't do while I was Relief Society President and losing my community… trying to make Easter meaningful at church, only to realize change wasn't welcome unless it came from the top. Even my garments—making my skin break out and wondering if any of this was really divine. 

My son's suffering cracked something open, and once I started seeing, I couldn't unsee.

CW: Wow. That's quite a list. Yeah, it sounds like she'd been putting a lot on the shelf for a long time, but then her sweet boy is what cracked something open. 

SH: And I think that's very often the case for women, when one thing happens it is very often the straw that breaks the camel's back.

You know, I don't think that she was consciously putting those things on a shelf. But yeah, once something cracked open in her, then she saw all of the things on that shelf and it was just too much to bear. 

CW: When we were listening to our last voicemail, you used the phrase collateral damage. And I have talked to so many LGBTQ families who also say, “My family is collateral damage”. 

I'm thinking of one friend specifically who has a trans child, and they're like, there literally is no place for my trans child in the [00:50:00] church. And so I actually looked up that phrase collateral damage, and it's a military term. 

Great, let's use military terms to describe what our experiences in the church are like. So harsh. Anyway, it refers to unintended harm or damage to objects or people not directly involved in a military operation. It specifically means harm to civilians or civilian infrastructure during a conflict.

So in other words, for the church to accomplish something that they see as good—preserving marriage as only between a man and a woman—they just accept that good families will be hurt? I know the church would never use the phrase collateral damage, but people get to define for themselves how policies affect them.

And for so many that's the phrase that they use. And that's what I heard in Jamie's voice as she was talking about her son. 

SH: Yeah. I don't think leaders would use that phrase, but I think they do very often use language of conflict, you know? That we're in a fight between good and evil.

And the evil is trying to disparage traditional marriage. And so I think they very much do set this up as a military metaphor in our church. So I think collateral damage is a very apt phrase to describe what is happening to some members and their families in our church.

CW: I hate to refer back to Second Class Saints again, but it's just so fresh on my mind right now because I thought I knew a lot about the Priesthood Temple ban. But reading that book drew so many parallels for me to our LGBTQ family and friends within the church. As I'm reading the book, I just keep thinking it's really obvious for me to look back and say, how could they not have seen that they were making families of African descent collateral damage?

Like, how could they not see that this is what they were doing? And I see this same thing now with LGBTQ issues. So I wonder: Is it gonna be another 50 years from now before we look back and go, what did we do? What did we do to fellow saints? 

SH: I hope that day comes. I hope that Day of Reckoning does come and I hope that it doesn't take 50 years. But from where we are right now, I have a hard time believing that it'll get here in 50 years, some days.

CW: Right. ‘Cause we're in a double down.

Let's listen to Susan. 

Susan: The origins of my faith journey began when I started studying evolutionary psychology in college. I was at a church school and the professor started the class in the death section of the topical guide, explaining that since we know that death did not enter the world until the fall of Adam, evolution simply can't be true given that it relies on death for speciation and adaptation.

He then said that since evolution is the best theory, we have to explain a bunch of things, we're going to use it throughout the class anyway. 

It was with this perspective that I went on to study evolution in grad school at Oxford, but as I studied there, my beliefs started to shift. How could so many different areas of science, from anthropology to biology and archeology to psychology all arrive at the same conclusion that evolutionary forces are what shaped life on earth?

That direct contradiction with scripture was the first real dissonance I felt, and it bothered me deeply. I read all the church material I could find on it and discussed it in depth with my bishop, but still felt unsatisfied. I went through years of trying to fit it into the gospel. Even as I became a professor and taught evolution myself, I came up with my own theories, like maybe evolution isn't as random as it seems, and that God knew how to guide it so that it produced humans in his exact image.

But none of these theories I read or could invent, made gospel sense and academic sense at the same time. So in the end, I learned to live with the dissonance. The scientific evidence for evolution was overwhelming, and the church's stance against it stood not on logic, but on outdated assertions by uninformed men.

So until my shelf broke for completely unrelated issues, I chose to believe that evolution was real. And we’ll learn more about how that fits into the gospel context one day. 

SH: Wow, this one was so fascinating to me. It brings up all kinds of things. I mean, the first for me is maybe we shouldn't have church schools if science professors are teaching from a literal Bible perspective.

CW: That's, that was my question. Yeah. 

SH: Really? I don't even know where to start with that. 

CW: Had you ever heard that line of thinking before, that evolution couldn't be true because there was no death before? 

SH: I know that there is pretty profound disagreement within the church that there are people who believe in evolution and people who don't believe in it because the earth is only so many years old, and the Adam and Eve story is literal, and all of those kinds of [00:55:00] things.

So, I know that exists, but I'm just shocked that someone who went and studied under professors in the anti-evolution camp, then went on to Oxford to do graduate work in evolution. I think that her story is just fascinating. 

CW: That is fascinating. 

SH: Now I want part two of her story. If that wasn't enough to shake the shelf, I wanna know more about what happened to her. That's a fascinating story to me. 

I want to have a follow up conversation with pretty much all of the women who've shared with us today. I just feel like we've gotten the tip of the iceberg. There's so much realness in what has been shared with all of us in this episode, it just makes me want more realness, I guess. Yeah. Can you imagine sitting in your Relief Society and having this kind of conversation?

CW: Oh gosh. Jealousy. I'm guessing there probably aren't many wards where that type of Relief Society can exist.

SH: Certainly not that start with the conversation, “When did your faith crisis start?” I don't think I'm ever gonna hear that in a Relief Society, but I'll bet you there is someone in every Relief Society. 

No, I bet every woman in every Relief Society has some story or something going on in their head that they wouldn't feel like was faith promoting for them to share in that room.

CW: I do wanna say about this voicemail though. In defense of the church and evolution, I didn't “believe” in evolution until I came to BYU and I took biology 101. 

And then I did believe in it. Later on, I learned that it wasn't just my teacher going rogue and presenting evidence for evolution. I learned later on at BYU that it was a very concerted effort among the School of Sciences or whatever at BYU to teach specific curriculum. Mainly they wanted to get it across that the church takes no official stand on evolution.

And I remember being in a lecture one time, and on the left side of the board, they put up quotes from leaders who said, “Eh, this isn't real”. And then on the right side of the board, they put quotes from leaders who said, “Of course it's real. Duh.” And so I really appreciated that. 

First of all, I had never heard any of those quotes before, so I found it really fascinating. I mean—these were biology professors at BYU. Hello? Biology professors! Can you even be a biology professor and not believe in evolution? It felt like their way of saying, “Ding ding! This really is a thing.”

But to their credit, they presented all the evidence and then left it up to us to decide for ourselves.

SH: Interesting. And I'm okay with that approach. I'd love to know where she was and when—which church school was it and when she attended? I'm sure that the experiences are all over the map. It sounds like you had a much better one.

CW: Yeah, I did. So send us more info, Susan, we're curious! 

SH: Absolutely. We wanna know. 

CW: Well, Susan, we made it to the end here. We have a few more, but we'll just put 'em in a different episode because we ran out of time.

SH: And I hope we have a hundred more after this episode airs. So send us your voicemails, friends, we really do want to hear from as many women as we possibly can. 

CW: Can we close with a quote by Christian Wyman, one of your favorite thinkers? always 

SH: You can always quote Christian Wyman to me. Which one are we talking about? 

CW: Well, this is a quote that comes from his book, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer, and he said, “There is no way to ‘return to the faith of your childhood,’ not really, unless you've just woken from a decades-long and absolutely literal coma. Faith is not some half-remembered country into which you come like a long-exiled king, dispensing the old wisdom, casting out the radical, insurrectionist aspects of yourself by which you'd been betrayed. No. Life is not an error, even when it is. That is to say, whatever faith you emerge with at the end of your life is going to be not simply affected by that life but intimately dependent upon it, for faith in God is, in the deepest sense, faith in life--which means that even the staunchest life of faith is a life of great change. It follows that if you believe at fifty what you believed at fifteen, then you have not lived--or have denied the reality of your life.”

I wish every member of the church could read that quote and understand that change and navigating that change in our faith life is part of life. 

SH: It's part of faith. Change is part of faith. 

CW: Change is part of faith. There you go. 

SH: I told you I'm gonna be a warrior for change, Cynthia, and that includes in faith. [01:00:00] 

CW: I guess I am too. I guess that's why we've had this podcast five plus years now. There is so much we want to normalize, and change is at the top.

Thank you, Susan. 

SH: Thank you, my friend.

CW: Don't forget, we have a website at last she said it.org. That's where you can find all of our content. You can contact our team, send us a voicemail, find transcripts by our book, subscribe to our substack, or make a tax deductible donation paid subscribers, get extra stuff including access to our community chats, and also Zoom events with us.

Remember, your support keeps the podcast ad free. Thanks for listening.

POST PODCAST VOICE MAILS

Maryann: Hi, ladies. It's Maryann. No one was more surprised than me to find that the last straw with garment wearing for me were the results of the 2024 US presidential election. I had so much hope for female leadership, possibly because that's something I know I will never, ever see at church. And not just female leadership, but young female leadership.

The night of the election, the results started coming in. I was getting really sad. I went to bed really sad. The next morning when I woke up, my sadness had been replaced by a blinding rage. Everything is controlled by old white men. Everything even down to my underwear, my own underwear. 

I have been uncomfortable in my clothes for 22 years because of someone's 100-year-old grandpa in Salt Lake City. Enough, I have had enough.

Matt: Hi, this is Matt. I was listening to your flip the script regarding “Relief Society and Priesthood responsibilities”, and I think this also applies to men being the movers of the ward. I think that ought to be eliminated completely. But in the interim, wouldn't it be interesting to see if the flip the script worked on moving people in the ward? It would wake everybody up to the ridiculous things that we do. 

Also on the cleaning of the church: Cleaning of the church, I sorta get. But I also understand that when you're a busy parent with three or four activities on a Saturday to go clean the church is ridiculous. And my good friend offered to send his house cleaners to the church for two hours and put them to work.

And he was soundly rejected by those in charge of cleaning the church, which I found very funny.