The Stories We Tell

I thought my story was about meeting my star-crossed lover, falling in love young, and getting married against the odds.

I thought my story was about becoming a Mormon feminist, working inside the system, and being the change I wanted to see.

I thought my story was about being a working mom, defying expectations, and making an unjust world work for me.

I thought my story was leaving the Mormon church, breaking my own heart, and voting with my feet.

I thought my story was about getting sober, doing the unexpected and impossible-seeming thing, and getting free.

I thought my story was about getting mentally well, untangling myself from the narratives that I wove into the fabric of my life after other people handed them to me.

I thought my story was about losing God and finding God and losing God and finding God in the places I never expected God to be.

I’ve lived other stories that I knew, even as I was going through them, were not for me: self-harm; bad men; infertility; pain upon pain upon pain.

My story is all of these things but none of these stories are all of me.