Hey there! If you need help finding anything on my blog, you’ll most likely find it organized here. You can also search the tags for specific things, I’ll do my best to keep that consistent as well.
About me
Table of Contents (complete list of my published work)
Where to Start:
Here’s a short list of primers if you’re curious about who I am and why I write this stuff; this selection is made up of pieces that I feel communicate best the overarching themes of this blog, or which I otherwise find to be exemplary of my writing. For a more complete list of my work, check out the link above!
Preface - introductory essay, I recommend reading this first.
Preface, 3 Years Later - an update on where I’m at now, as of Feb 2024.
Untitled Essay - an exploration of my disconnect from the church.
On the Usefulness of Words - how withholding knowledge/words does more harm than good.
Inequality - a refute to the claim by many a mormon that queer people are on equal footing with straight members in the church.
Self - my thoughts after discovering the concept of “engulfment”, and how that pertains to my perception of my identity.
Crocodile Tears - an essay I wrote after hearing Holland’s “musket fire” talk in September 2021.
6 Signs of Religious Trauma - something between a creative and poetic piece about my religious trauma.
Renegade - noun : someone who abandons religion; an apostate. Origins in the medieval latin word renegātus, to actively renounce or abandon (literally: "I deny").
An art piece dealing with some heavier feelings than the last; I worked on it a couple weeks back, so I'm doing better mentally since then! I like to think this helped me process those emotions a bit better as well...vent art is good for the soul, don't let anyone tell you it's cringe or bad to do!
Getting away from the mormon church sometimes feels like escaping a snare or some other gruesome trap to me - it hurts the whole time, and while sitting still might minimize the pain, I can only have the chance to fully heal by escaping, a process that will hurt a lot more for a short time.
Even if I get away, though, the scars are permanent, and there'll always be more traps to dodge. Much of my family remains in the church, and it was practically my whole world up until I left, so it'll always be in the background of my life and y'know, that honestly sucks. It's never a benign presence...it'll always try to lure me back in, always try to sell me on the stability and sense of belonging I desperately crave.
(The lyrics in the art are from Renegade by Paramore and Run, Rabbit, Run by the Hoosiers ;0)
I made good on my promise from my previous piece...she needed that love and support more than anything after what would become such a core memory from my childhood.
To be clear, I think my original Preface essay still serves its purpose quite well, and it's still recommended reading for understanding the gist of this blog, but I also believe a lot can happen in just a few years!
As of writing this, I've been out of college for 2 years and moved from Utah to Oregon 6 months ago. Many of my relationships and friendships with others have evolved and changed, come and gone.
I've also fully rescinded my self-identity as a member of the mormon church; that wasn't entirely on the table when I first began writing these essays and putting them out there. If you've already read through most of my stuff, that was probably apparent to you. Still, I think it bears repeating, just to make myself clear:
I no longer consider myself mormon, nor will I ever rejoin as a member.
My original stated goal with these essays was to find ways to process my experience and to find some form of reconciliation between these two disparate facets of my identity. Coming out the other end of that struggle, I've decided that trying to balance those two parts will never be worth it to me - to the mormon church, my queer identity will always be too much, no matter how much I compromise and tone myself down, no matter how many parts of myself I cut off to fit their mold.
Instead, I've decided to just be me and let myself exist, letting myself be this weird and messy and imperfect creature, because you know what? Fuck the church! Look at that, I can say 'fuck' now, too! Who cares?!
I'm still writing and thinking about all this though, because really, I don't think this kind of trauma just completely goes away. The journey to healing is a long, never-ending road, but goddammit I'm gonna make the best of it and smell the flowers on the way.
If you're going through something similar, please know that my hand is outstretched, and I hope I can make this path a little less lonely. I promise things are much better on the other side, and that those things the church tells you about leaving aren't even remotely true. It's not always easy, but it's worth it to live for yourself.
I finished today's therapy session and...fucking hell, something jumped out at me that I have never considered before, and it's left me in shambles.
I've often shared a personal anecdote with folks in my life in order to illustrate how mormonism instills its destructive values very early in its members, and I'm going to share it with you all now as well.
When I was around 6 or 7, I had a dress that I loved to wear. It was made of stretchy cotton like a t-shirt, meant to be played in, and it was pink with rainbow flowers that had little smiley faces. Its other notable trait is that it had elastic "spaghetti straps", because this was something you'd wear in the warmer months.
The year I turned 8, my family moved back to Utah. I started 2nd grade there, and one day, I wore the dress to school, unaware of the taboo I was about to commit. I was a child, after all - I didn't know any better.
As soon as the teacher caught sight of me, I got sent to the front office to call my parents for a change of clothes and scolded for breaking school dress code. It was a big hassle, because my mom was a teacher herself at another school, and my dad was attending school an hour away from home. He had to turn around to come deliver the clothes to me.
I felt so ashamed, I never wore that dress again. I didn't even understand why what I'd done was wrong, only that the punishment was so terrifying that I never wanted to go through it again. The only clue I really got in order to avoid such a scenario, was that it was the straps - shoulders have to be covered.
~~~~~
The first thing that I think occurs to people I share this with is that I, as a 7 year old child, got dress-coded for having bare shoulders - in other words, I was sexualized as a child by my community and punished accordingly for it. That's pretty fucked up on its own.
Today, however, a new realization dawned on me. You see, when I've brought this story up again in the years following, my parents have both agreed that they also found the situation to be pretty fucked up. They've always been comparatively more progressive than fellow mormons I grew up around in our insular community, so this has always made sense to me.
They didn't agree with how I was treated...and yet, they allowed it to happen.
I don't recall either of them voicing these opinions to me at the time it happened, or addressing the situation to me afterwards in order to help me, a confused child, understand why I was treated this way. No one stood up to defend me or challenged the unfairness; what I observed was my parents' compliance with the rules, and I, in turn, learned that this was simply how things must be.
I'm torn, because I love my parents. What happened here, though? Was this a moment in which they had to weigh a choice, choosing community and belonging over their child's feelings? Were there just so many other things on their mind at that time, after the big move we made as a family, that they didn't stop to think about it for too long?
Now I'm here at 25, trying to comfort a child who was left behind so long ago, who needed an adult to kindly and gently explain why this unfairness happened to her, and that it wasn't her fault to begin with.
I want to tell her how lovely her flowery rainbow dress is.
I haven't really written/posted much new writing in the last while, compared to the rate I was writing things when I started this blog almost 3 years ago, and I thought that was because I was out of that phase of the healing process.
As my new therapist has put it, though, the healing journey is not linear - it is, in fact, more akin to a spiral. As you move along the spiral's line, you will frequently pass the same portion of your journey again, with a slightly different perspective.
I've experienced a lot of new things since moving to Portland this summer...you may recall a previous post I made sharing the sense of relief and freedom I felt being up here. That still holds true! I'm absolutely enamored with this city, and truly feel like I can belong up here.
Shortly after the move, however, I began to experience intense anxiety whenever mormonism or christianity was involved - fight or flight instincts in response to seeing a pair of missionaries on bikes and bible ads, very nearly having an anxiety attack while waiting for a flight to Provo to go visit family, because I was surrounded by mormons. I felt threatened.
I was kinda baffled initially, because I've never felt my experiences with mormonism were bad enough to warrant having repressed trauma, but y'know, here we are. I guess moving myself out of Utah meant my body finally felt safe enough to experience and process these emotions.
All of that to say, I'll probably pick up some essay writing again in the coming months as I sift through what I'm feeling. I might post art as well - despite how important art is to my life, and how I've always used it as a way to express myself, I don't know that I've really made any that deals with my religious trauma specifically. I'm not sure why, but I think it's another avenue I want to explore right now.
I just finished reading Camp Damascus tonight after starting it yesterday afternoon. It's been an absurdly long time since I've read anything, let alone a novel, so voraciously. A shorter novel, perhaps, but a novel nonetheless.
It's left me feeling a lot of different things, because fuck, it all hits so close to home. I felt seen, really seen. A queer, autistic protagonist, for whom her autism is actually what helps pull her out of the cult's indoctrination...like, I don't think I've ever seen this idea in motion outside of my own experience before this.
There's a chance I write out something more once I've sat and processed what it is I'm feeling...this is good, though. The experience has been cathartic, and given me new angles to consider.
I once spent a year writing a letter to my parents. It was roughly 7 pages long, divided into sections, and in painstaking detail described my mental anguish in response to a conversation we’d had at the very beginning of the year. Talking is hard, writing so much easier.
“Can’t we sit down and talk this out like adults?” I think to myself, and cringe because I’ve come to hate these “adult conversations”. So far, nothing good has come of it.
It’s about two days after Christmas, and almost a year since our last big dialogue. The three of us sit down in the living room after 10 pm, I on one couch facing them on the opposite side and a coffee table fills the divide, reminding me that we’re not so far apart after all. And yet, I’ve never felt more distant.
“So, the letter-” I begin, hands fidgeting, trying to strangle my fear. “-you read it. Was there anything you wanted to discuss about it?”
And so it begins again, this awkward back and forth. I am strapped to the examination table, I am cut open and bleeding and my heart’s exposed. I am pinned inside a glass box where everyone can see me, unable to squirm away.
Yet, I want to be studied, to be learned from, to be the perfect specimen. I think it’s why I took so well to therapy; it’s fascinating and cathartic to have someone else do the poking and prodding inside my head for once. My therapist always finds something I missed.
I tell them, “Please, I’d much rather try to answer your questions than leave you wondering.”
This “queer thing” is new to them, alien. I explain common courtesy around pronouns and that it’s okay to mess up, just correct yourself and move on. Neither party likes a scene. It’s a good start for what’s to come, I think.
I wait with bated breath to discuss my own gender (or lack thereof) with them. The question never comes, and we move on to the next topic. I let it go quietly; I am not seen or understood, even as my guts lay spilled across the table. I will remain a puzzle for years to come.
“You said that my relationship wasn’t real,” I continue, metered, controlled. Suffocating my raw emotions. “You told me I was mistaken, and that my partner faked it for attention.”
“That’s not exactly what we meant,” my dad responds, and he seems baffled. “We just wanted you to be careful.”
“And I was! Don’t you trust me?”
His frustration is palpable. “Was anything from our last conversation helpful at all?”
I’m quiet, because I know the answer will hurt. With nothing more that piques their interest, I am stitched back up, and we call it a night; I lie awake and hope the wound heals quicker this time around. It doesn’t.
because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.
you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.
you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.
don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.
if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.
you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:
how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!
I’ve been thinking about the sheer joy and relief I’ve felt since moving from Salt Lake City to Portland, Oregon. I’ve only been here for like a month, but it already feels so overwhelmingly like home and the place I want to belong, at least for this phase of my life.
Portland is undeniably weird, and diverse, and lived-in. This city belongs, for the most part, to the people who live within it. I walk outside, and I’m also this weird, messy critter of a person, but no one cares! There’s at least 100 more people who are stranger than I am in this city! I can exist in whatever shape I want!
For the first time, I’m independent and free. I don’t have the mormon church breathing down my neck, wishing I’d tone it down or disappear. I am surrounded by people and places who are just as vibrant as I am with all my colors flying!
If my hometown was a cage that I escaped, then SLC was just a step up - a zoo enclosure, a reserve with ample space, but still surrounded by a fence. Room to roam, but only just enough. Portland is the real deal; truly wild, truly free.
Growing up in Mormonism, there's a phrase you hear all the time. We are meant to be "in the world, but not of the world." Part of why Mormons love this phrase is that they feel that the "in the world" bit distinguishes them from their less popular, more compound-inclined offshoot. But the primary purpose of the phrase is to emphasize that latter half.
"The world," in Mormon teachings, is often used as a shorthand for the devil and his forces, along with all the tricks and trappings of popular culture that he uses to ensnare souls. Where I lived, it meant everything from queer people to religious diversity to James Cameron's Titanic. Mortal existence was split between the church and the world, the church was run by god and the world was run by the devil. A major goal of spiritual life was to avoid being an active participant in secular culture because secular culture existed only to destroy your soul. It would never be phrased that bluntly, and there were no hard and fast rules, but remaining untainted by the world was a virtue that got hammered home hard.
It's taken me nearly a decade to recognize and unpack the shit I was taught growing up, and I'm still working on it. This piece in particular didn't occur to me until tonight. I think this is why I love cities so much, particularly cultural celebrations like pride. Standing in a crowd, seeing the throng of humanity all living and loving and experiencing and creating, it makes me so fucking happy I could cry. In a very real way, it feels like discovering an alien civilization. There's a whole world of vibrant life out here that I was always taught to fear and deride in equal measure. Getting to discover that world piece by piece is a wonder.
So I watched Die Hard on Christmas. I took as many anthropology and linguistics classes as I could fit in my college schedule. I sing karaoke at gay bars. I stand in a crowd in London, or Seattle, or New York, and I just breathe in the everyday marvel of humanity. I'd been culturally starved before, and I don't think I'll ever get tired of making up for that lost time.
Take your medicine because it’s good for you, not because it pleases a God.
Donate to a charity because it’s right to do, not because it pleases a God.
Help out one in need because it’s kind, not because it pleases a God.
Take time for yourself because it’s healthy, not because it pleases a God.
Support good causes because it helps others, not because it pleases a God.
Do good things, be a decent person, take your health seriously, help people who need it because it’s right/necessary/healthy, not because it pleases a God.
I get that some people need a reasoning or a push, that some get the sense of necessity from faith, but “being a good worshipper” is SUCH an unhealthy reason to take care of yourself and others.
When it comes to this, I don’t care how much something pleases a Deity. Maybe They don’t care, what then?
I care about how it makes you and others feel. Sometimes it’s not about being a good devotee.
I feel like we always see parents who are 100% super supportive allies, or parents who are horrible and cruel. At least in media or in the most popular stories. But I feel like that ignores just how many people have parents where you just have no idea? And even if you think they’ll accept you on a surface level, you don’t know if they have a breaking point. Especially if you need to go on hrt, or request they change the way they think about and refer to you. Sure they’re liberal and all, or centrists, or “tolerant”, but how far does that stretch?
I think most closeted LGBT+ kids live like this, wading around in the grey area. I’d like it of more of us knew that was normal, I’d like if we talked about it more.
We really, really don’t acknowledge the banal, disappointing reactions, and what those can do. When my husband came out to my MIL, her reaction was “Can I take some time to think about this?” and then she never, ever spoke about it again.
My MIL is not an awful person. She’s a loving mother who carries emotional scars from having been in an abusive relationship with her minister husband for a long time, which has left her with a disabling preoccupation with “What might the neighbours say” in her life, and that often means she makes poor choices without realising it. She loves my husband no less; she didn’t withdraw love and affection from him, didn’t cut him off.
But she chose to pretend it wasn’t happening, and that sent him into a hefty shame spiral we had to work through. A few months later, a stand up routine he did about being bisexual was doing the rounds on Facebook, and despite normally sharing every single routine of his, she rang him to tell him she wouldn’t be sharing that one because “Your brother’s wedding is coming up, and I don’t want it overshadowed by people talking about you and your news.”
And again, this is not because she rejects him. That’s an easy narrative, and certainly the one you’d assume from the outside. But that, in her own way, was her attempt to protect both her children from negative scrutiny - she truly thought that people would care, and would care enough to make a scene at the wedding, and that would hurt the two of them.
Everyone already knew. He’s a celebrity in his culture. No one cared. But, that was my MIL’s fear.
And the message it sent, intentionally or not, was “This is something shameful.”
She’s come to terms with it now. But she totally missed her “I love and support you no matter who you are” chance, and left him with a lingering issue. And that’s the sort of story we never see in queer media.
I could write a whole essay, a whole book about this experience in my family, but I won’t. It feels ungrateful to criticize the actions of people who still say they love you, and have never hurt you and will never hurt you in the big dramatic ways we see in the media. But in my case, and I think in many, it isn’t a clean, decisive cut.
It’s a love that feels lesser. An acceptance with strings attached. And that hurts in a quieter way, but it still leaves marks.
It’s interesting seeing others write about this because…yeah, in some ways, this is how it’s felt for me, and it stings despite it being gentler than outright rejection.
I love my parents a lot, and I know they love me. We’ve talked about a lot of difficult and confusing things since I first came out in 2019, and I know they’re trying their best to wrap their heads around my experience. I sincerely appreciate that, more than words alone can describe.
At the same time…there are some actions, and some conversations, that linger and leave a bad taste. Things that mean I’m not 100% comfortable sharing everything with them, and have retreated back into the closet a bit out of fear.
They were willing to accept that I was gay, and had a girlfriend, but hesitated when he later came out as trans. They stopped asking me about my relationship, and it made me scared to talk about future relationships or tell them that I myself was nonbinary.
When I did finally tell them, it was through a letter I wrote. I didn’t share much, asking that they talk to me more about it in person. The topic never came up, and that hurts.
And the thing is, I don’t think they’d turn me away if I was finally upfront about it all - changing my name and gender marker, using the correct pronouns, etc - but I think they’d be confused and distraught by it. And by god, I can’t stand making them feel that way, and I can’t stand the way it makes me feel: shameful.
I wish they could accept all of me, regardless of name, appearance, or gender, without the pain. It sucks feeling as though your very existence hurts the ones you love.
