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.
When you’re raised up on visions of the promised land, there are a couple of things you take for granted:
The promised land is a place that exists and you can get to; and
That you’ll know it when you arrive.
Leaving your childhood religion is an exercise in splitting. You want to smash the beliefs you once held dear; you need to keep them intact to hold on to a sense of self that’s no longer clear. You end up excising them from the body of your old belief system and grasping the quivering strands of what’s left. You relocate your vision of the promised land. You think it’s still there but you couldn’t find it on a map if you tried.
On Wednesdays, I take my daughter to choir practice. She’s in children’s choir at our church and they’re practicing for the annual Christmas pageant, which is in it’s 100th year. This week we are running late, so I pull up in front of the church and ask if she wants me to drop her off before looking for a place to park. She surprises me by saying yes. She’s never walked around the church by herself before. The staff has strict rules about parents signing their kids in and out of Sunday school and the building was locked down for the last year. I make her talk me through how she’ll get from the front door to the choir room and then let her go, watching from the car to make sure she doesn’t need help with the heavy hundred year old doors and, when she makes it inside, watching the top of her head through the window as she struggles with a second set of doors. She’s so big, I think. And she’s so little. With that, she opens the door to a new level of independence, for both of us.
I find a spot on the street, park the car, gather up my daughter’s hat and gloves, and make my way inside the church building. I offer a chipper hello to the gentleman who works the front desk during the week and he, per usual, buzzes me in without a word. I am still on the first floor when I hear the strains of Joy to the World floating down the stairs. I almost can’t believe it’s the children’s choir and not a recording of some different group altogether. They sound magnificent. And loud. The group doubled in size when we all came back after the pandemic and the kids are all almost two years older than the last time they sang together in person. The choir director is nothing short of a miracle worker. Last year, he stitched together a couple dozen videos to put together a surprisingly watchable virtual pageant. In person, he’s somehow coaxed them into not only singing all of the worlds but hitting most of the right notes.
I pick out my daughter’s voice as I make my way up the stairs and the tears come. I can’t believe we made it. I can’t believe we landed here. Nine years ago I was carrying her inside of me and coming to terms with the fact that I could not raise a daughter in the religion I grew up it, not as I knew it. Seven years ago I was driving my baby to churches all over the city wondering if we’d ever find one that worked for us. Six years ago I carried my toddler out of a chapel for what I swore was the last time. It was so scary. When I tried to picture life after Mormonism, I saw mists of darkness. I imagined my daughter lost and confused. I imagined myself miserable, knowing I’d made the worst mistake. I couldn’t imagine anything good or sweet. My imagination was lacking. The light was always waiting for us on the other side. I just needed to step into it.
These thoughts flash by in the time it takes to ascend two flights of stairs. The third floor is brightly lit against the early dusk outside. The choir lets loose with a series of glorious glorias. I duck my head into practice room to wave at my daughter and then I ease my body into a comfy chair in the room next door, where I will chat with the other choir parents. I think, after five years, I can call them friends.
I feel like I survived something. Like I fled a famished land, crossed a stormy sea, and abandoned a sinking ship to wash up here, in this ordinary life that feels extraordinary. I’ve been here for so long now, I can’t believe I didn’t see it. I’m already in the promised land.
I walk into an LDS meetinghouse for the first time in 5.5 years and the one woman in the ward I know well enough to know I respect is speaking at the pulpit. It is a farewell address. Her family is moving to the Bay Area this week. She thanks the ward for making room for her, for her family, for her faith and her doubts. She peppers her talk with calls for inclusion, beginning by greeting the women in the room first. “Good morning sisters and brothers.” This woman has daughters. She knows what’s happening to them here. She mentions girls’ camp fondly, and I remember my years camping with the young women in my childhood ward the same way. For a fleeting moment, I think: I could raise my daughter here, too.
Twenty minutes later, the deacons file into the aisles to administer the sacrament while the little girls all stay in their seats, and I think: Absolutely not. Never again.
This church needs to ordain women and marry gays or it needs to topple. There is no middle ground.
There may be a place here for me, but I will not subject my family to the psychological violence of being second class, of being taught bigotry dressed up as doctrine. There are other churches that will take us in, other hospitals where the wounds they treat are not of their own making.
I sit with a hymnal on my lap and sing the alto part to every song.
I am a pioneer, to be sure, but the trail I’m blazing is out of this church.
Sober Mormon 