Let me explain. I have a teenage daughter. We talk about nipples a lot. Mostly because I spend an absurd amount of time trying to hide mine. She keeps telling me: “Nipples are in, Mom.” But are they?? I’ve had six babies attached to mine but no matter what I do, I still feel like their dangerous outline can be seen under every blouse, tank top, dress, and sports bra. These body parts literally scream lifegiving sustenance. And yet, I fear anyone should know that my body has a biological function beyond its social stigma. So, I spend time and money hunting for the perfect nipple cover1 so that the public won’t be disgusted or tempted to imagine that I might have nipples somewhere hiding beneath my clothes.

There’s a sense of shame and scandal when I feel like I’m showing too much of my humanity. When I ask if I look tacky or inappropriate in the body I was born into. When people might understand that I indeed have a female body and not the body of a plastic Barbie doll.

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And the shame starts at birth. Last week while on vacation, I was sitting on the beach in Malibu, California reading a book. I was enjoying the sand and the sun next to a French couple and their two little girls. The girls were both under four years old. They were adorable and were building a little drum set out of driftwood, rocks, and shells, tapping and singing carefree in the glorious weather. The youngest girl (around age two) was running back and forth from her parents to the surf, collecting items that the sea gladly deposited at her feet. None of this should have been significant, except that the youngest girl had on only a bikini bottom. She toddled around topless. And for a fleeting moment I felt uncomfortable, not because of her exposed body, but because of everything I was taught about mine.

And I wondered to myself at what point did her nipples and my own became scandalous and a threat to society? Heck, we can’t even show anatomically correct pictures of nipples so women can check their breasts for cancer, we have to use lemons.2

In my home state of Utah this little French girl may have been committing a crime. And while that seems absurd, under the state’s indecency statutes,3 the exposure of a female areola is criminal. The statute doesn’t specify at what age. Two? Twelve? Twenty? I imagine that if this little girl were sunning on the banks of Jordanelle in my home state, some well-meaning Utahn would have undoubtedly asked her parents to cover her. Yet, she was literally a toddler. I couldn’t stop thinking about what age a girl’s chest goes from harmless to criminal? Who decides when a body becomes a threat?

But wait, I know nipples aren’t completely illegal in Utah. Breastfeeding is legally protected and one of two exceptions, the other one we’ll talk about in a bit. The law says mothers may feed their babies anywhere they’re allowed to be. But the culture still sends the message to cover up anyway. Don’t risk offending someone. Don’t risk being reported. Don’t risk being seen. After all, those areolas are a crime before and after that baby latches. What a conundrum nursing moms face. Women are told they have “exemptions,” but fear still governs the behavior of everyone around them. What breastfeeding mom hasn’t been told she is disgusting, that she should cover herself, and that she should feed her baby somewhere else? It’s control without controlling. What a sad world we live in where we’d rather babies starve before we’d let nipples be exposed.

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This fear doesn’t just inconvenience women and babies, it endangers us. We don’t just support babies starving, we also support women dying unnecessarily. Studies show women receive less bystander CPR than men because people are afraid of touching or exposing their chests in public.4 The law says it’s allowed. Culture says it’s dangerous to expose a woman’s chest, even with a legal exception. So dangerous, that we will literally watch a woman die before we expose her nipples. This fear isn’t about impropriety, it’s about the belief that a woman’s chest is inherently sexual, even in a medical emergency. We risk resuscitating her and seeing her lie (gasp) alive AND topless.

This fear seems to have no end, it follows girls into adolescence and even into locker rooms. The same daughter who tells me: “Nipples are in, Mom” knows that hers can cost her a championship swim. The swimsuit and deck changing rules and interpretations in high school swimming have a history of excessively targeting female bodies.5 Some conclude that slipping off a bikini top from under a technical suit (while fully covered, mind you) is unsportsmanlike and deserves punishment. Utah’s swimsuit regulations literally ask officials to arbitrarily police girl’s bodies. Curvy girls get punished when they don’t fit a regulation suit in the way a middle aged male official deems “appropriate.”

The message: Be uncomfortable girls! Do it for us, do it for society, do it for sport!

But, this isn’t about sportsmanship. This isn’t about decency. It’s about control. It’s about the belief that girls’ bodies are dangerous even when fully clothed. That the mere possibility of female anatomy: unseen, unexposed, or even imagined, is a threat that must be regulated.

What are we so afraid of? The accidental exposure of a nipple, as a female athlete does what is necessary to relieve the pressure of a technical suit that digs into her chest and shoulders? Seeing a baby calm and nourished at its mother’s breast? Research showing that we value and strive to save human life equally?

We have several states that allow women to legally go topless, and guess what? They don’t. They can’t. Not because the law forbids it, but because the social consequences do. A topless woman becomes a spectacle, a target, a story. Her body stops belonging to her the moment it’s visible.

Meanwhile, guess who still hits the news regularly for voyeurism and indecent exposure, who just can’t stop exposing themselves? Men.

So, who is the problem here? My nipples, or the men who have sexualized my body to the point that every time I leave the house, I ask my daughter: “Can you see my nipples? Are my nipple covers doing their job?” I hear her voice several times a week saying: “Nipples are in, Mom.” However, we both know that this just isn’t true.

The female body is not obscene, but the way we treat it is.

Every boy, ages eleven and up, gets a title. There’s very little qualifying for this title, no extensive education or training. Maleness is generally enough to establish credibility and worthiness. Those initial Priesthood titles are perpetual. They never go away, no matter what the calling, no matter the assignment. There’s a baseline title that always remains, whether it be deacon, teacher, priest, elder, or high priest. It’s a credential to fall back on, to give boys and men a sense of entitlement and access to power, even when they don’t have an additional position of leadership.

If you are one of the lucky ones you may be entitled (no pun intended) to your title long after your release, with fellow members addressing you as President or Bishop, years after your tenure ends. You may even find yourself eulogized after death with a title you once held in your youthful glory days.

Titles are important to men and boys in the church. They’re a reminder that they deserve to be heard. They’re a reminder that God sees boys and men. It’s a reminder that titles can only increase and be added to men if they become more faithful and devoted to God. After all, even God carries a title of the “Most High God.” And I have thoughts about this, why does God need a title? Why does he need to be the “Most High?” Is this because if we ever reveal a Heavenly Mother, we will want to be sure that she isn’t mistakenly assumed to be in charge? And if that is the case, would she be the “Less High God?”

But I digress. The point is that even in the Godhood, the doctrine reinforces rank and order.

Girls and women in the church aren’t handed any titles. We have to be granted or given a title by a man with priesthood authority. If you are lucky enough to be granted a title, it is always temporary and fleeting. The title only lasts through the terms of the calling. Some in the church would argue that “Sister” is a woman’s title. It’s honorific. It’s meant to be respectful, but it’s also diminutive. It’s a veil that obscures. It carries no power.

In the past few years, I have gone back to school, earned an advanced degree, and found myself in a series of leadership positions. I have a voice, an authority, and a title that I have never had before in my life. I have a great salary, not too far behind my husband’s.

And it feels strangely good, but also uncomfortable. There is an inherited unworthiness that I feel when standing on equal footing with the men around me. A feeling that I’m trespassing in a space that wasn’t meant for me. I am often troubled by the underlying belief that authority only counts if men confer it upon me with God’s blessing. And God didn’t grant me the title and authority I hold today. Quite frankly, I didn’t seek his permission. So the discomfort comes in waves, familiar and persistent as they crash against old beliefs.

But beneath those waves, something stronger has surfaced: pride, strength, courage, and a fierce sense of advocacy. A clarity that my voice is mine to use whenever I see fit, not when a man authorizes me. To champion what’s best for myself, my students, my fellow nurses, my family, and for all women and girls. The church never taught me to advocate for myself. My role was silence, forgiveness, patience, long suffering. Advocacy was Christ’s domain. Everything I needed or desired had to be begged through Christ, as I was unworthy to stand before God and plead my own case. Even my salvation had to be vetted through several layers of men, including my own husband.

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A few months ago, I spent some time with my sister. She’s in a Sunday School Presidency now and was telling me all the ways she is trying to elevate women’s voices and subtly strive for equality while staying active in the church. I am so proud of her for what she is doing and how she is advocating in the spaces she occupies. However, she mentioned that people will listen to me in other spaces now because I have a title. She said I can write newspaper articles and essays because I have letters after my name that give me credibility.

As a stay-at-home mom for decades, a divorcee, a woman without a degree or expertise, she feels like the only opportunity she has for a title and to wield power is by staying within the church and helping women within the system be seen and heard. She knows the system is flawed and harmful. She despises patriarchy. But she also needs community and she has been given some power. In some ways, she said that might be why it was easier for me to step away from my church attendance, because I am able to access power and authority outside the church system. Power and credibility that she just doesn’t have at this point in her life.

And in some ways, she’s right, it was easier for me. Once I had a title outside the church, my title within the church mattered less. I didn’t care about becoming a President or a Counselor, when I saw how little power those titles really held for women. I didn’t lose power by stepping back, in some ways I gained power. Even if it was only the power to govern myself.

I can see how tricky it is for so many women within the church to lose their credibility and opportunity for even tiny bits of power if they leave the church. Their testimony means something within the church. It has power and sway. It’s praised and honored. And patriarchy institutes so many “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenarios that it can be paralyzing. Stay and have some voice, leave and have no voice.

At work a few weeks ago, we tried to institute a change in my department. I have discussed this issue at meetings multiple times and it has always been a hard: “No, we can’t do that.” It would smooth a problem we are dealing with, and similar institutions have already implemented this change, but it has been met with a huge amount of pushback. So, when my male boss said: “Let me try to fight this battle. I may be able to force some sway with my title, since it has more power than yours,” it stung. Not because he was wrong, but because he was right. It was the same doctrine, just in a different light.

Let’s just admit when our titles come in handy and can benefit us and those we represent. The person with the highest-ranking title makes the rules, and most often this is a man. Let’s not pretend we are equal when we are clearly not. I will say I was secretly a little glad when my boss came back a day later and received the same “No” I did. A reminder that even the highest titles can’t move a system built to resist change.

The church is a system that is resistant to change. Even when it has opportunities to heal, it often chooses to harm. And there is indeed harm in handing out titles and power to young boys who have neither earned it, nor learned to harness and mitigate power in general. Power given too early becomes entitlement. Power withheld too long becomes erasure. And somewhere between those two extremes, women are still trying to build a life with a voice that was never meant to be heard within patriarchal systems.

So, some of us step outside so we can hear ourselves speak over the noise, and some of us raise our voices louder from within, hoping that the deaf ears will finally hear. And our intentions are the same. We want what is best for our daughters and granddaughters down the road. So for now we travel the road the best way we know how, sometimes with titles and permission and sometimes without.

And every star was named. This seemed so impossible to a young girl who struggled to name all her stuffed animals. There were so many stars. But at that time, I was also learning in Sunday school that God had children as numerous as the sands of the sea. So, maybe naming each star wasn’t as monumental a task as it seemed.

I felt strangely close to God in that darkened, domed theater. It was quiet and cold and peaceful. I sometimes felt emotional when the lights went out and the stars appeared. Maybe it was God. Maybe it was guilt. I always snuck one of my tiny matchbox dolls into my sweater pocket so that I could share the glory with her, despite my mom’s instructions to bring no toys. Somehow, I felt like God wanted my little doll there, there were things she needed to see and hear too. No one ever saw her emerge from my pocket when the room went black and that was thrilling for me. Maybe it was the beginning of my rebellion.

The other fascinating thing I learned about the night sky in my young years was that each named star, when grouped together, told a story. The Planetarium guide who told the stories had such a soothing voice as he guided us through the current night sky and seasonal shifts. Sometimes I imagined his voice was God’s and wondered which star was the one God lived on, the one we called Kolob. I hoped some day he would reveal it, but he never did.

I was mostly fascinated by the stories. They were so predictable, cyclical, and seasonal. They were sometimes tragic and sometimes inspiring. But they were always filled with adventure, love, and loss. They were certainly more intriguing than the stories I was learning from the Bible. Mythical characters and creatures appeared one by one as the narrator used his laser pointer to connect and weave the smaller stars into larger constellations.

The night sky felt like a giant dot to dot book, just waiting for the connections that would draw meaning to it. Pegasus, Leo, Taurus, Orion, and Scorpius each appeared before my eyes with a quick sweep of the laser pointer. But it was the women who held me: Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Virgo, the Pleiades.

Cassiopeia was said to be punished for her pride, condemned to an eternal throne in the sky. I never believed that. It always seemed to me that she and Andromeda had outsmarted Poseidon. I loved hearing how mother and daughter ruled together in quiet, high places. They were so close to God, and being close to God couldn’t be a punishment, could it?

Virgo, the goddess of the harvest, took up an enormous stretch of sky. More than any of the other Zodiac constellations. I loved that she didn’t shrink. She occupied every inch she needed, unapologetically.

And the seven sisters of the Pleiades? I was secretly thrilled they’d escaped Orion’s grasp for thousands of years. I always felt the urge to yell out: Keep running girls!

But one thing always troubled me and that was: if stories of women are told in the stars, why doesn’t God tell stories of women in the heavens? Certainly, the heavens lie somewhere among the stars, so why didn’t we hear of the women who reign and rule with God? How can a Celestial Kingdom be so very different from the Celestial sky?

A few months ago, I sat amidst the stars. I pondered the monthly trips to the planetarium I experienced in my youth. I thought about all the stories in the sky that I hadn’t thought about for years. I thought of the younger me and the little doll that pressed heavily as forbidden contraband in my pocket. I smiled when I remembered how good it felt to secretly share the wonder with another, even if she was just a doll. I tasted the after-show chocolate dipped ice cream cones from the Foster Freeze down the street. And I thought to myself, what if I just write my own stories in the sky, as the ancient peoples who came before me did when they looked at the stars? Is it wrong to give myself and my stories a spirit and a voice?

I don’t look for God in the heavens anymore, at least not the distant, silent God I once was taught to chase. Instead, I look for God between the dots, in the lines we draw when we choose each other and weave our individual lives into larger stories. I look for God in the constellations of people that shift and adjust as the seasons. In the sunrises that spotlight new beginnings and the sunsets that soften the close of each chapter.

More importantly, I now look for God within myself. On some level I always knew that God was never perched on some distant star or hidden in the clouds. God was always the quiet voice inside of me. The one that asked questions, rebelled, reached for connection, and kept looking for and naming the women in the sky when no one else did.

Damn.

I am an avid reader. I read to my children from the time they were babies. And I had a lot of babies, so I have quite a collection of children’s stories in my library and embedded in my mom brain. One such story that my mother read to me and I read to each of my six children was Mercer Mayer’s There’s a Nightmare in my Closet.1 If you aren’t familiar with There’s a Nightmare in my Closet, let me enlighten you. It’s a story about a young boy frightened by a nightmare (symbolized by an awkward looking monster) that emerges each night from his closet. He tries many things to try to defeat it, but at some point, he realizes the monster is just a frightened little creature like himself. He realizes they both want the same thing, to be tucked in bed warm, cozy and safe. So, one night he invites the nightmare into bed with him and conquers his fear, finally resting in peace. However, the final illustration has another nightmare quietly peeking out of his closet, another fear to conquer someday.

I have always found this story so intriguing and profound. On the surface it teaches children that they can overcome fears. However, somewhere along the way, I realized the monster in the closet wasn’t an imaginary creature in a book. It had been standing quietly inside the religion I trusted most. It was a representation of all the things I spent years repressing and erasing, too scared to let venture out into the light. And that is understandable when you learn I have many people in my life who believe that old adage about making your own bed and then lying in it. It’s funny because so many people wanted to pick the bed I slept in, but they never cared about my comfort. And they certainly never talked about all the nightmares that wanted to climb into that bed beside me, whether I made the bed myself or someone else made it for me.

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A few years ago, I had a realization that my church had made my bed and that I had been forced to lie amongst many things that I just accepted as truth and wisdom. Things that were meant to function as my security blanket, but often left me cold and numb, wanting for greater warmth. Meanwhile, I feared all the scary nightmares peeking out of my closet, trying to force their way into my thoughts and my life. I blocked the door and tried with all my strength to keep those bad boys in the closet where they belonged. After all, my religion told me that they would haunt me forever if I let them out.

The nightmares were so scary to me at the time. They consisted of all the things I was too scared to say, like questioning why I had to explain how I wore my underwear to a strange man behind a closed door. They were also all the things I was afraid to do, like driving to the beach in my bathing suit because I feared that God would punish me in a car accident. Then there were the forbidden questions that ruminated in my brain, like whether God hates women, and whether Jesus ever meant love to look like this. Top it off with all the things I thought that others were ruminating about me and my righteousness. Were they asking themselves: Is she wearing her garments? Why did one of her sons not go on a mission? Is she getting worldly with those ear piercings? These were the things my nightmares were made of.

And then one day, I unlocked the closet door and let all those nightmares into the light. I tackled them head on. I let them be seen. We spent time together getting to know each other more intimately. I mourned for the time we spent apart, the nights I lay sleeplessly in bed pushing away my own thoughts. And I began to slowly see that the nightmares weren’t monsters at all, but little pieces of me just waiting to be held. And I wanted to hold them close. I wanted to feel their coziness and familiarity that I had long missed.

But, I also knew I couldn’t tuck them into this bed I had been lying in for years. So, I remade my bed. I gathered fresh sheets and picked out a comforter chosen for warmth and not obedience. I gathered the courage to slip on a nightgown2 of my own choosing and snuggle between the crisp clean sheets. On that fateful night, I laid in a place of rest and peace that was finally my own. I welcomed the nightmares to climb in beside me, to witness my becoming. I promised I’d never keep them away again.

And now, each night, we sleep together without fear. Because warmth and safety don’t always mean pushing the nightmares aside, sometimes it’s the courage to let them lie beside you, without losing yourself.

Last year, I had a job interview for a job which I was highly qualified for both in education and in my nursing specialty. I flew through the first round of interviews beautifully with the three women who represented the office manager, human resources, and director of nursing. I was called back for a second interview where I would meet the surgeon I would be potentially working with. During the interview, he explained that the last person in the position had left because as she got older, she wanted to shift to work part time because the job is very demanding. He then said he wanted someone who would be around for a while and have the energy to grow with the business. He was young and early in his career and hinted he wanted someone with those same traits. He also said this was important because this position would be the face of his practice. Ouch! Despite my resume and education, my energy and ability to meet high demand, my age was my downfall. He only saw my gray hair. And gray hair is not what a young surgeon is looking for as the face of his practice, at least on a woman.

We all know that if I was a man, my gray hair would have made me distinguished, even given credibility to my wisdom. But women get no such consideration. It goes without saying that I did not get the job. A classic case of age discrimination. No perfect job could compensate for working for a man who only saw one small facet of the whole being that makes me who I am. A man who was conditioned to see women from the outside, as so many men are. A few months later, I interviewed for another job, maybe even more perfect than the one this surgeon was peddling. I got that job and I love it. In this space I am valued, seen, and heard. So, blessings to that young cocky surgeon who did me a huge favor last year, he’s going to need them.

But why does the world have to work this way? Why is my daughter already starting to learn these lessons as a teenager? That so many people in her life, even those she cares for and loves, will pick and choose what they see first when they look at her and many times it won’t be what is on the inside. She’s seen my gray hair negate my worth in society. Maybe that’s why she jokes with one of her best friends that they should join the Catholic nunnery because the idea of sisterhood and connection seems so enticing to them. And I get it, being in a space where you can have a deeper spiritual connection with each other and with a God that also sees you wholly is something I have always wanted too.

Being raised in a world and a religion that saw girls and women superficially and encouraged us to disconnect from ourselves and others was hard. Rarely in my lifetime have I been seen as whole. I was always seen in fragments, as puzzle pieces instead of a complete portrait of myself. From birth, I was treated less as a child and more as a future wife and mother. I sang songs about motherhood before I could form complex sentences.2 I don’t remember a childhood untouched by thoughts of the husband I’d someday marry or children I was expected to bear. Even as a little girl, I was taught to imagine myself as something I needed to become: a princess waiting for a prince, a young woman preparing for makeup, shaved legs, high heels, and pantyhose. By eleven, I already knew I would never be perfect enough for the world, and anorexia felt like the only way to control what little of myself I had left.

I don’t want my daughter to ever feel like she must be perfect or that she must conform to someone else’s idea of what she must be or look like to earn their love. I don’t want her to be starved physically or emotionally because she feels like that is what the world expects. Because I know that when she becomes a woman, it will be important for her to see herself as worthy and complete. I don’t want her to experience what I did when I became a woman, a wife, and a mother. And I don’t want her to spend so much time rushing into womanhood only to find that she is then infantilized and treated like a little girl.

So many of my life decisions were limited, approved, and sanctioned by men. I couldn’t even choose my own clothing or my own underwear for most of my life. All my sins and accountability were judged by men. I was given conflicting messages about career and education. I want my daughter to become what she chooses and not be forced to believe that career and education come second to marriage and children, that you must erase yourself to join with another, that equal partnership isn’t possible, and that you can’t dream and simply be.

When you become a grown woman like me and face the reality that babies grow up, teenagers head off to college, grown children get married and have families of their own, you’re left asking: What now? I’ve watched so many friends interject themselves into their adult children’s lives, calling and texting them daily, inserting themselves into relationships uninvited, and drifting painfully apart from their own spouses. They do this not because they are overbearing, but because they were raised with such a fragmented sense of self that once motherhood shifts, they can’t find where their identity begins. It’s difficult to spend a lifetime gathering pieces of yourself when they were scattered at birth and you were never shown the picture on the box.

In the church I was raised in, the idea that families are forever, temple attendance trumps everything, and missions are a symbol of parental success certainly contributes to this further fragmentation. We see through the lenses of return missionary, temple recommend holder, garment wearer, etc. But is this any different than that cocky young surgeon who just saw my graying hair?

Sometimes I struggle with the superficiality of life. I want deeper connections. I want people to get to know and love me for the things they can’t see on the outside. I want them to trust that I would never turn my back on them or discredit them before I learned more about who they are and their motivations. I don’t want to judge or be judged. I want the community I once had in my religious fervor without the guilt, shame, and expectations. I want to be surrounded by strong women who support each other and aren’t afraid to use their voices.

But, more than that, I want my daughters to be seen for more than their age and their beauty. I want them to be seen for their kindness, their honesty, and their deep spirituality that isn’t necessarily tied to a sect or denomination. I want them to get that dream job, find that partner and friend that will love them just as they are, and grow and lead in a world that often tries to hold them back. I want them to be loved for the unique individuals they have always been, both as girls and as women.

And when it all boils down, isn’t this what we all want? Don’t we all just want to be loved by a Creator (whatever that might look like), by others, and most importantly by ourselves? Don’t we all just want to be embraced both in our youth and in our old age? Hoping and praying that our value never depreciates, our worth never diminishes, and our offerings are never refused?

Yes, I believe all women just want to be loved in the same way our bodies tell the story of our lives: fully, honestly, and without erasure.

But what does the covenant path represent anyway? To me it feels like nothing more than a path paved by patriarchy for it’s own benefit. And the more we cling to the path, both men and women, the more we cling to the patriarchy. It’s as if we are so afraid of feelings, emotions, and imperfection that we need something to distract us from being human, and the covenant path has become a replacement to truly feel and see each other as individuals. So, when people texted “I’m so sorry for the loss of the patriarch of your family” (true story) and people posted online lamentations for the loss of the patriarch of the church, there’s a constant reminder that patriarchy doesn’t end with the death of a patriarch. The covenant path’s whole purpose is to produce eternal patriarchs. So, while I mourn the loss of the patriarchs, both in my family and in the church, I also mourn the immortality of patriarchy.

Five of my six kids are drivers. I’ll admit my nerves are a little bit shot from teaching them the rules of the road. The struggle to teach them to get to their destinations safely in a vehicle that can both be a tool of transportation and convenience, but also a weapon of destruction is one of my least liked parenting duties. People will often say to young drivers “Keep your eyes on the road!” Its well-intentioned advice meant to protect them. And if they are reaching for a phone, the radio, or distracted with their passengers, keeping their eyes on the road can make the difference between life and death. But, if you are so hyper focused on the road right in front of you, you might also be harmed. You may miss the herd of deer on the side of the road that will soon cross your pass, the small child chasing his ball into the street, your exit, the car on your right trying to pass that you failed to glimpse in your side mirror, or that the small trailer you’re pulling behind you is on fire (another true story).

And so, it would seem we fall into the same traps with the covenant path. If we stay too laser focused on the path and keep our eyes only on it, we stop seeing people deeply. We stop connecting with them. We stop seeing the beauty and the dangers that border the covenant path. We miss the scenic byways, the overlooks, and the longer and slower paths that weave through canyons and traverse mountaintops. We keep our foot on the accelerator, when maybe a better choice would be to step on the brakes. We mistake covenant keeping with relationship building. We tell people who are struggling emotionally that getting back on the covenant path will fix them. We tell people already on the path that that the harder and faster they travel down the path, the more blessings they will receive. We express love and pride in terms of mile markers on the path. We develop blind obedience instead of character, discernment, and empathy. We use the covenant path to persuade, to convince, to encourage, but also to punish. It’s both a tool of comfort and a weapon. It’s the ultimate short answer to all of life’s difficulties in the church. Except when it’s not.

I see increasingly that the covenant path is used as a replacement for emotions and compassion. When someone is discouraged and depressed, encouraging them to get on the covenant path is not helpful. In fact, where one should sit and say: “Oh I bet that was difficult,” or “Those are hard emotions,” we tell them to take comfort in the covenant path. We tell people who mourn that they should be thankful for the covenant path, it will bring peace. The covenant path replaces a hug, a hand written card, an afternoon lunch date, a shared memory. If someone leaves the path, we judge them and coerce them to get back on the one true path. We withhold love and acceptance. There’s so much pressure to stay on the path because there is so much to lose if you leave it.

But the covenant path is a rocky one. Very rocky. And many of us aren’t given shoes to protect our feet. We are expected to grit and bear the pain as we walk the path with tender skin exposed. Patriarchy isn’t invested in fixing the many potholes along the covenant path. Patriarchy isn’t interested in making the path smooth. Patriarchy will never equip everyone equally with the tools to succeed down the path, a nice sturdy pair of shoes and a voice. And it won’t concede to let us pave our own paths, because patriarchs pave the covenant path and encourage us to stay on it from birth to death and beyond.

When we get so distracted by narrowly focusing on the path, we fail to see the suffering right in front of us. We fail to recognize that we are capable of leading ourselves. We forget that we can make sound decisions. We forget that we have agency. We forget that there is more to life than a path whose destination and prizes are only at it’s end, among the dead. We forget that there is more to see and do here and now among the living.

And so when men die, we take comfort in the fact that there will always be a new patriarch to rise from the ashes and lead us into immortality, even if we lose ourselves and our humanity in the process.

One day I woke up and found my story had an unreliable narrator. An omniscient voice that mapped out my character from birth to death and beyond. A voice that was distinctly male and never my own. A voice telling a story that belonged to me, while the creative license belonged to another. In some ways, it was never truly MY story. I never had the keys or authority of authorship.

And yet…

Once upon a time there was a little princess who was born the daughter of a King. The King had great plans for his daughter. She would grow beautiful and smart and fruitful. Her womb was the key to expanding the kingdom. She would be trained to become a good wife and mother. She would be God-fearing, even though she longed to be God-loving. She would shun ambition and drive out any thought that might be unbecoming of a princess. She would become the perfect trad wife, because tradition was her royal duty. She was obedient. She married young. She gave up career aspirations. She had children. Many children. She loved those children. And she made the King proud.

However, she wanted her own story, a story that existed beyond her progeny, homemade bread, and the ability to juggle and make sense of the chaos called family life. It was painful for her to keep contorting herself to fit the limited plotline she was given. To be the flat character that never fully developed in depth and dimension. She wanted to be free to turn her story into a “choose your own adventure” genre, instead of the moral object lesson her story had become. She wanted to be more than the daughter of a king, more than a wife and mother to a husband and children, more than merely a metaphor and an archetype. And as the children started to leave the nest, so did her identity. Her identity was in children. Their success was her salvation. She only saw their mother when she looked in the mirror.

And one day, she realized that the King also only saw her as her children’s mother, not the princess she thought would someday become a queen. Because sadly she realized there are no queens in the King’s realm, just like there are no queens in heaven. No God-Wife, no God-Mother, no God-Queen. Only princesses, young and fruitful, beautiful and fertile. What happens to a princess in God’s eyes when she grows old and gray? When she finally feels the courage to challenge and match his wisdom?

God writes her out of her own story.

After all, her story ended when her children were raised. Her purpose fulfilled. But, God isn’t that cruel, he promises queenhood and priestesshood in the next life (if they exist and aren’t just hopeful aspirations). After death, she will finally be seen again. In the afterlife, she’ll be crowned, her youth and womb restored, ready to bear Godly offspring to populate the eternities. Her happily ever would finally come… after his.

And that’s when she realized that God was an unreliable narrator. The plotline tainted through the lens of patriarchy. The story slowly twisting and morphing as it was handed down through generations of male prophets and apostles who added their own distinctive style, and tone. And the story they told was of a princess, and somehow along the way, I became entangled in her story… and it became our story. Her story braided so tightly into my own for so long, that I could no longer tell where her script ended and my story began.

And I wanted a story of my own. I wanted to disconnect myself from the perfect princess, the ideal wife, and the dutiful mother that God ordained. There were already so many parts of my story that were never mine to choose, already written and never to be erased. At times, I timidly scrawled footnotes in the margins, their outlines barely legible and never developed enough to altar the plotline. My “Once upon a time,” had been written long ago. But my “happily ever after” doesn’t have to be written in God’s handwriting. There are worthy authors that are not men and there can be authorship without obedience.

Which is why one day I picked up the forbidden pen and started writing my own story, uncensored and unabashed. That day I became more than the daughter of King. I became the queen of myself. A woman who chooses her own role and doesn’t wait to be cast in one. An author who owns her own pen and needs no editor. A narrator to be trusted because the stories truly belong to her. And those stories no longer start, “Once there was a daughter of King,” instead they begin with: “Once upon a time, there was a daughter of a queen…”

I lifted its gentle curves and ridges,

separating it from sand

that slowly sifted

through my calloused palms.

Baptized clean in the salty surf,

I laid it to dry in the fiery sun.

The haunting shadow of beauty,

long faded and bleached

from treacherous storms

and tumbling waves.

The hollow echo of an empty tomb,

long devoid of the creature

that clung from within.

A symbolic reminder of what was.

An emblem of what could never be.

The tragic leftovers of a woman’s life,

shaped in the shell of me.

I read this article a few days ago What Children Learn When Adults Aren't Around. It talks about how children need ample time to play without the influence of adults to grow and develop properly. The article suggests the many ways we undermine children’s development when we intervene or surveil them. The author states:

“We undermine children’s play when we intervene, no matter how well intended. The purpose of play is for children to practice independence, learn to solve their own problems, and learn from their own mistakes. In much of the rest of their daily lives, children are controlled by adults, but in play, they practice controlling themselves. In play, they are the adults. All that is lost when actual adults step in to correct them or solve their problems. Playworkers (professionals who facilitate play) in the U.K. have a great term for adult intervention in children’s play: the “adulteration” of play.”1

Was this not my experience with God as my parent? I had never been allowed the spiritual equivalent of unsupervised play. Never allowed to imagine or explore other interpretations, choose which stories I deemed metaphorical and which literal. God solved all my problems and had all the answers. He stepped in to relieve all doubt. In essence, like any other overbearing and controlling parent, He “adulterated” religion.

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Then I read this article on how schools are squelching kid’s curiosity because of how they reward compliance.

The Joy of Learning

Schools Don’t Just Fail to Develop Critical Thinkers. They Punish Them.

A researcher at Williams College set out to study variations in curiosity across elementary school classrooms. She had to abandon the study. The problem was not funding or methodology. As researcher Susan Engel later wrote, there was “such an astonishingly low rate of curiosity in any of the classrooms she visited that there was nothing to measure.” In …

Read more

4 months ago · 3870 likes · 401 comments · Katy Purviance

“Before starting school, children ask their parents an average of 100 questions per day (Warren Berger, A More Beautiful Question, 2014). In school, the rate drops to fewer than one question every two hours. When a teacher-librarian introduced open questioning exercises across grade levels, kindergartners generated questions so quickly they could not write them all down. By fifth grade, many students could not produce a single question to ask. Susan Engel documented a fifth-grade classroom where two full hours passed without one student asking anything at all. A mind that arrived overflowing with questions has learned, systematically, to keep them to itself.”2

I then thought about how my “spiritual school” squelched my curiosity and critical thinking about all things God and spirit. The church I was raised in taught a curriculum that had all the answers. It knew my worth and what I should become, what I had to become. I was taught that questions from within myself were just spiritual vomit that stunk up the whole room. So, I swallowed hard and sickened myself with questions I felt were wrong to ask. I kept all my curiosity and questioning to myself. God literally schooled me out of my own curiosity. The more my questions were punished, the more I mistook silence for righteousness and the less often I raised my hand to ask a question in the first place.

So, since my previously forbidden curiosity got the best of me, I did a deeper dive and found an article from The Simon Frasier Institute about how happiness isn’t necessarily linked to how “good” we feel, but how “free” we feel. Hmmmmm. Read here: Feeling good, feeling free, autonomy the key to happiness

“Researchers found that while positive feelings and pleasure are important, autonomy and the freedom to make your own choices is a better gauge of happiness.

“People are not merely hedonists,” says Jason Payne, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology.

“When people step back and evaluate whether their life is going well, they consider more than their emotional balance sheet. They appear to ask themselves not just ‘do I feel good?’, but also ‘am I free?’””3

At some point in my late forties, I asked myself this same question: Am I free? And the answer was clearly NO. I didn’t even have the freedom as a grown woman to choose my own underwear, it was all decided for me.4 God laid out my persona on the nightstand each evening and I woke up each morning believing I was choosing the outfit He picked out for me. He designed every intricate costume meant to hide and disguise who I truly was, so that I would present to the world as He saw fit. God had not only “adulterated” my childhood, but He’d “adulterated” every ounce of my womanhood.

As a child of God, I never had my own identity. I was always my Father’s daughter. And while that brought some comfort, it also brought questions and longing. I was a child of a God who always had me under surveillance. A child given a set of unbendable rules. Never allowed to experiment with my own rules, or make my own games, or go on my own side quests (as my teenagers would say). I think of how much of my spiritual creativity and autonomy was curtailed because I was never allowed to explore without a Heavenly Father watching me. Never allowed to wander past the parameters He set or engage too deeply in my own thoughts.

He infantilized me, he kept me His little girl, instead of allowing me to become my own woman. Which looking back is not surprising. Afterall, He took away all evidence of a female God. He erased his own counterpart and absorbed Her into Him. So, it’s no surprise that He purposely stunted me. He wanted me stay compliant and committed to a cause that often didn’t have my best interests in mind. A cause He led me to believe I chose with my agency. A cause that would suit Him and erase me. A cause led by faith and obedience.

And it’s not just religion. Patriarchy in the world has also assigned me limitations, rules, and boundaries I must adhere to. It has created impossible rules for me to follow. It has set standards for my behavior and appearance beyond what is expected of men. It never intended me to grow up and find myself an autonomous woman, but wanted to keep me a perpetual young sexual object. Always under the watchful eye of…men.

And in some ways, I am no different than a stunted child. A child who was never given an opportunity to venture past her parent’s gaze. Afterall, I was never allowed to play outside God’s field of vision, that is until I aged, and was no longer desirable. He then discarded me with no tools to survive on my own. He pushed me from the nest without teaching me to fly. And it was years before I learned that he had sneakily clipped my wings, never intending for me to fly in the first place. He needed my dependence. And when I became more dependent on Him, He listened to me less. He saw me less. He ignored my pain. He ignored my needs. He promised He’d make it all better, in the afterlife.

But just like Eve who didn’t want to stay perpetually “happy” in a garden of no growth, I too want to follow her wisdom and use my agency to choose a path that God calls sin, but I call growing up. A place where autonomy and agency are my sacred rituals and choice itself becomes my holy sacrament. A sacred emblem of which I partake, drawing me closer to the forbidden God… of myself.

2

The Joy of Learning

Schools Don’t Just Fail to Develop Critical Thinkers. They Punish Them.

A researcher at Williams College set out to study variations in curiosity across elementary school classrooms. She had to abandon the study. The problem was not funding or methodology. As researcher Susan Engel later wrote, there was “such an astonishingly low rate of curiosity in any of the classrooms she visited that there was nothing to measure.” In …

Read more

4 months ago · 3870 likes · 401 comments · Katy Purviance

They called her vessel,

as if holiness needed to be received.

A womb to be filled by men.

A womb to be filled by God.

Mother Mary’s cup was filled,

and so was mine.

Six times.

I drank the sweetness

of newborn heads,

downy skin, and chubby folds.

Until the day.

That sacred pause,

when creation ceased.

My vessel vacant,

my womb turned tomb,

collapsed on a finish line

drawn by men.

Leaving me worthless,

and looking for breath

in that sacred pause.

Where I thirsted

and searched the empty shell

I called myself.

And beyond my womb,

I saw the holy vessels

hidden within.

Mind, heart, and soul

waiting for fullness.

And in that sacred pause

where new life could no longer beget,

there was resurrection.

Through birth of purpose,

and the filling of one’s own cup,

I found myself.

A vessel,

pregnant and full,

from which now I drink.

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Was it a young beauty with voluptuous curves, perky breasts, an adequate thigh gap, tiny hips that revealed no evidence of childbirth, and a waist that formed the neck of a proportionally crafted hourglass? Was it a face without a slightly crooked nose after being broken at the age of 45 in a women’s basketball league game, with no wrinkles or sunspots or thinning eyebrows? Was it a body with no stretch marks and cellulite? Was it a body with no gray hairs and certainly no “stray” hairs growing where they shouldn’t, like on my upper lip, or on my chin? Would the scar on my shoulder where I tripped on a hurdle in the 11th grade be gone? Would all the freckles from the sun that kissed my shoulders throughout the years be erased? Would my diastasis from growing and shrinking my abdomen six times to give other humans life, be healed and my stomach be flat and taut for the first time since my thirties? Would my body simply be a body with no trace of being lived in, no trace of ever being mine?

And if this is what God intends for me as a resurrected, perfected Stephenie, well then, I’m afraid it just wouldn’t be ME. Why would God believe that to perfect me, he would need to erase me? I spent a good portion of my life anticipating and working towards an eternal life that now, I am not sure I want. I am not sure that I want to erase all traces that I ever lived and loved in exchange for an ideal me, one that isn’t me at all.

I just want to be whole, doesn’t everyone?

This got me thinking about a book I loved to read to my kids when they were young by Shel Silverstein called The Missing Piece. It’s a story about a circle with a slice removed that spends a lifetime trying to find its “missing” piece. It finds several pieces on its journey, and each doesn’t fit quite right. Towards the end, it finds a piece that does fit perfectly. But, in completion, it loses its ability to enjoy some of the things it used to and it longs for what was. Ultimately, it “gently” lets the piece that “completed” itself go and embraces itself as it was originally created. This story has meant different things to me throughout my life stages, and like many of Shel Silverstein’s stories it has multiple layers. But today I see it as a representation of my religious and spiritual life journey.

I started life incomplete, or so I thought. Even though I wasn’t taught original sin, I was taught from birth to work toward becoming someone better than I was at present. Baptized at the tender age of eight and washed clean of all the things that made me human, but sold as sin. As I got older, I looked forward to the temple and becoming a part of God’s elite group that was privy to his secrets for happiness and eternal life. Eternal life was when I would finally experience perfection, if I was found worthy, of course. At times in my life, I was so obsessed with striving to complete the checklist that entitled me to perfection in the next life that I was kept from appreciating and loving myself and others in this life.

It didn’t help that men revised and updated the checklist so often that it was dizzying. But don’t worry, the church promised to provide all the “missing” pieces whether it be policies, doctrine, proclamations, a husband, children, or a level of righteousness that would deem me worthy of wholeness in the next life. They proclaimed this with truth and authority. Without the church, I would be incomplete and search fruitlessly in the wrong places for pieces that would never fit properly and possibly lead to my demise.

And they were sure to emphasize that I would never be enough. Never to be trusted with wholeness in this life because I needed guidance and protection from the evils of this world. Evils which looked just like my reflection in the mirror. Looking back, I realized that patriarchal religion seemed to equate women’s wholeness to haughtiness and disobedience. This explains the need for patriarchy to always make women feel less than, to keep them out of the limelight and to do this in the name of holiness. Convincing women that they were a threat to God if they were ever fully present in his presence. And that even the shrouding of a Heavenly Mother was for the preservation of her sanctity.

But preserving a Mother God’s sanctity, has cost women their sanity. Convinced that parts of them went “missing” when most of those parts were purposefully erased. Precisely so women would go looking to God and powerful men for the answers, completion, and wholeness. I am skeptical that patriarchal religion ever intended to make women whole, on earth or in the eternities. I believe it always intended to further erase women, because doing so brings men more power and glory.

I mean, look how easy it was to erase all traces of a Mother God. She was erased here on earth, so why would she magically appear in the afterlife?

Think of the philosophical debate about whether a belly button is necessary for “perfected” bodies in the heavens because it is a “scar,” an imperfection. But is the reminder of a connection that is now severed, that we once depended on and were nourished and carried solely by woman’s womb an imperfection? To a patriarchal God it would seem a threat to His power. I mean, how dare we have belly buttons that would turn our attention away from God? Embodied historical artifacts that imply God was not an all-powerful sole creator. It would make sense for patriarchy to make a last-ditch effort to cloak and erase any trace of motherhood’s power or lasting impact on the human body. Afterall, they are the ones who imagined an immaculate conception. So, why not an immaculate birth? No connection to a woman’s womb, only a Father’s controlling and all-powerful hand.

I’ve lost much of my hope of finding a Mother God in the afterlife. Any belief that she was merely kept from us on earth because she was too holy, vanishes when men start debating whether perfection means being motherless and belly buttonless. It tells me what I knew all along.

If God erases Her, he will erase me.

He will immortalize me and turn me into an idea of perfection that will serve him through the eternities. A woman with no bellybutton and no mouth, because women’s silence has always been God’s idea of perfection. He doesn’t want to hear our complaints. But I don’t intend to leave the empty tomb an empty version of myself. I struggle with a God who would assemble me incorrectly in the first place, if he only intended to disassemble and reassemble me in the afterlife. Can’t a God with a perfect plan get it right the first time?

Because God should know better in his age and wisdom. Throughout time, older patriarchs and prophets have imagined themselves in death surrounded by harems of young, perfected wives. It’s how many men imagine God himself rules and reigns. But I wonder why would God need to dial grown women back to a body that was less wise and less experienced in order to fulfill His heavenly fantasies. If my body is a record of my life, my personal scripture and history, why would I want to turn back any growth or passing of time? Aren’t my scars (including my navel) a reminder that I lived? That I had experiences. That my body sometimes betrayed me, but other times amazed me in all its cellulite and frizzy hair glory. That I was connected to others. That I grew from pain and discomfort. That I am an individual who has worth just as I am.

If progression and growth is so important to God, then heaven should be filled with wise and imperfect middle-aged women. And if God truly loves me, he should revel in what I’ve become, rather than wanting to immortalize me into something I never was… Perfect.

Let me explain. As a child, we would go to restaurants quite often. My parents would always ask to be seated in the non-smoking section. Afterall, we were Mormon and we didn’t smoke. And yet, we did. Every restaurant, every bowling alley, every theater, even my first trip on an airplane was filled with the acrid smell and lingering haze of tobacco that coated my lungs and clung to my skin and clothes. The poison didn’t cease to enter my body just because I sat two seats away from the smoking section (just like that cockroach isn’t only contaminating the ice cream it directly touches).

Children like me raised in the 1970’s and 1980’s were not only exposed to cigarette smoke from a young age, but cigarettes were also marketed to us. The cigarette bubble gum that emitted a tiny puff of finely powdered sugar smoke before you took it out of its wrapper was intriguing and delightful (my best friend would sometimes sneak them to me). I remember secretly pretending to smoke after my parents put me to bed. The vending machines in all the grocery stores and eateries dispensed cigarettes like candy. They were brightly lit, with cartoon characters and bright colors, promising to improve life and bring excitement and happiness, while cunningly delivering a slow and painful death.

The tobacco industry profited greatly from harming others. Smoking was addictive and caused cancer. It killed. It still does. They realized this quickly. And it didn’t just harm and kill the smoker, it harmed those exposed to their secondhand smoke, most often the innocent children who lived under the same roof as a smoker. Plagued with asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis, and cancers that could have been prevented had we been more protective and aware. Tobacco companies strategically used doctors, dentists, and other prominent and trusted members of society to peddle their products, assuring their safety and health benefits. Trust us! When warning labels became mandatory, the companies grudgingly complied. But the manufactured consent of a warning label only quelled the conscience of the tobacco companies and shifted the burden to the customer who was now “choosing” their own death. A perverted Pontius Pilate scenario with tobacco companies washing their hands clean and claiming all those deaths were now not their problem.

And lately, I have realized how the LDS Church and Big Tobacco are more alike than different, one peddling patriarchy instead of cigarettes. A Gospel marketed as happiness and exaltation, but delivered as a slow poison, absorbed most deeply by those who aren’t given enough voice in the organization to truly attain the level of “moral” agency necessary for choice. Innocent bystanders, slowly inhaling the harm of patriarchy in every lesson, talk, and meeting like insidious secondhand smoke, which is present as a lingering haze for some of us, from the moment of birth.

The Church marketing uses “experts” dressed as male prophets and leaders to convince women that patriarchy is exactly what they need to placate them, protect them, and induce happiness. The church even recruits women themselves to help sell their plan, not unlike past tobacco company promotions to “help” women see that using their product will calm their nerves. Men in the Church oversee and manipulate all the messages that come through the Relief Society in the same way. Making sure that the women they entrust to lead other women always align their words and actions with the underlying patriarchal marketing plan.

It’s so confusing to many women that a Gospel that promises peace, causes such pain and discomfort. The supposed cure, being instead the cancer. Yet, I understand the comfort and allure that can come from being acclimated and steeped in something so harmful, especially when its colorful packaging promises eternal happiness. I failed to recognize early enough that eternal exaltation was something my existence provided for men, but wasn’t something I would necessarily receive myself. Afterall, I’d be too busy among my tasks of multiplying, replenishing, and serving men both now and in the afterlife. Would I be exalted or exhausted? Afterall, my purpose was made pretty clear.

But, then again nothing is clear when you are young and still learning. I never saw the harm in the smoke I took into my lungs as a child spending each weekend at my best friend’s house whose parents were both smokers. I only reveled in the good. Sometimes, even now, the smell of lingering tobacco smoke brings comfort and reminds me of childhood relationships that made a lasting impact on my life. So, I understand how so many of the dangerous teachings I was exposed to at Church could feel like comfort. I understand how easy it was to ignore the emotional and spiritual consequences of harmful teachings because I wanted to trust that those in power wanted what was best for me. I wanted to be loved and included. For a long time, I reveled in the compulsion and structure the Church created for me until I became so enmeshed and entangled in it that it seemed impossible to choose anything else. And I soooo desperately wanted to believe the Church had my best interests in mind. Because would God ordain men and adopt policies that would knowingly cause harm???

Yes. He would.1 Women and children are critical cogs in the Church’s marketing plan and necessary tools for increasing profit margins. A plan that misrepresents inequality as God’s plan of Happiness. But the plan only brings true happiness and increase to the ones with power. The plan silently erodes women’s self worth and autonomy in lieu of obedience and sacrifice. I spent years in meetings and interviews with the thick heavy smoke of patriarchy weighing heavily in the room. A vaporous veil that kept the men in the room from truly seeing and hearing me. Years absorbing patriarchy into my body and feeding its cancer, like a child unknowingly absorbing toxic second hand tobacco smoke.

And yet, the Church seems unconcerned that so many women feel trapped, addicted, and entangled in philosophies and teachings that limit their choices and foster inequality. They aren’t concerned that women are dying a slow spiritual death. The Church feels no need to apologize to those of us who gave up all our hopes and dreams to follow their admonitions that “stay at home mom” was the only worthy identity for women. Instead, they gaslight us and say: “Silly women, look at all these other women who didn’t follow our directions and were able to balance family and careers. We have now put them in Church leadership. You could have made this choice too back then. We were ok with this all along.” But it isn’t true. They just want to deflect the responsibility from men and push it onto women. Just like Big Tobacco saying: “Yes, we provided you with a product that we knew was harmful and addictive, but you could have put it down at any time, you didn’t have to inhale.”

Do we truly have the agency to choose cigarettes or eternal salvation when the underlying marketing plans are manipulating us to make decisions against our best interest and in the interest of others’ profit?

Do powerful men in business suits who blow smoke directly into the smiling faces of so many women and children really care about them?

Has the Church made any attempts to warn us that breathing in the second hand smoke of patriarchal teachings will limit us and potentially cause harm and/or leave us vulnerable to abuse and poverty? That it might not be in women’s best interests?

It’s hard to believe that the Church leaders don’t know that patriarchy stunts women’s growth and well-being and leads to their harm. There’s been proven research.2 But, for the most part, Big Church seems unconcerned with the research, with hearing women’s voices, with letting them lead and take charge of their own organizations, with shunning doctrine and policies that harm women (polygamy, anyone?), with letting them have more autonomy and choice (my God, can’t we choose our own underwear?), or in protecting women from relationships and situations that contribute to their marginalization and abuse.

Instead, they throw women small bones. Bones that are too small to gnaw on, but big enough to get caught in your throat. These bones are wrapped as “gifts” of revelation and enlightened policies. But these gifts are things that were stolen from women in the first place. How can women be grateful for stolen gifts that men decide we are finally worthy enough to receive back? Our shoulders (“open sleeve” garments anyone?) were never theirs to take. Even when women choose to step away, the noxious residue of patriarchy clings to them, the way secondhand smoke clings to your hair and clothes, long after the smoker has walked away.

Sometimes, I lament that there’s no Surgeon General at Church. Only Power, Profit, and Priesthood. Afterall is indoctrination any different than addiction?

I don’t want to require a warning label on the Church’s teachings (though I have ideas). Warning of harm isn’t the same as eliminating harm. Those who thrive on harm will only find new ways to profit from others pain, just as Big Tobacco did.3 Ideologies like patriarchy that are rooted in inequality, can only be rewritten and reinvented so many times before they necessitate abandonment. I want the church to have a conscience and to exercise its own “moral” agency that it so often preaches and uses to justify it’s own actions. I want the church to admit that inequality is not part of God’s plan, nor is it a recipe for eternal exaltation. It never will be, no matter how many rebrands, labeling, and marketing campaigns it undergoes.

And I ache for my sisters who still sit in the confusing haze. Who are told to smile and embrace the tears, despite the burning sting. I wish they could take a walk with me. To feel what it’s like to inhale without permission, without fear, without someone else’s doctrine burning in your lungs and suffocating your ideas and dreams. To know that the warm sun could have kissed those shoulders all along. Clean air and sun is not a luxury; it’s a birthright. And I wish that I could help the Church see that blowing smoke will never clear the air. I can’t pretend it’s incense. I can’t keep calling it holy. Because since I was a little girl, all I have ever wanted was to simply… breathe.

I have been thinking alot about this thought in terms of what “feed my sheep” in John 21:17 means to me and if I really ever felt “fed.” The concept of feeding sheep was always explained to me as Jesus wanting everyone to be spiritually “fed” the Gospel of Jesus Christ as presented by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It was a missionary metaphor. A one size fits all gospel diet designed for men and women at all life stages. Gauranteed to fill your spiritual belly and lead you unto eternal life. But any amateur sheep farmer knows you can’t feed all your sheep the same diet, especially not your ewes. Your female sheep need a diet that provides them with extra nutrients necessary for reproduction and lactation. And if female’s physical needs are quite distinct from males, I’d assume that the female sheep of this world also have very specific spiritual needs.

Jesus said “feed my sheep” but he also said: “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.”1 So, I interpret this as no one was meant to be locked into a specific pasture, grazing on only one spiritual food. Instead, I think Jesus implies that his sheep can go “in and out” the unlocked door, finding pasture and sustenance and still be saved. But that’s radical and it takes trusting your flock to seek what best nourishes them and others. It involves giving your flock choices and freedoms that often extend past the reach of the sheperd’s crook. For me, Jesus exemplified a pattern of loving and feeding others and then seemed to say: figure out how this works and looks for you and then go spread some love.

This is in stark contrast to what I was always told. I was told Jesus wanted us to stay in a specific pasture and to consume what we were fed there, never partaking of sustenance outside the pasture, as tempting as it might be. I was told to always keep my neck in reach of the sheperd’s crook, so he could reign me in, keep me close, and redirect my path. I was also told to convince as many people as possible to come join me in my pasture, to convince them that the grass was greener where I stood. That there was safety within the curve of the Sheperd’s crook. That priesthood men were given authority to use the Shepherd’s crook on God’s behalf. That when you acquiesce, it gets more comfortable and you almost don’t feel the crook tugging on your neck, keeping you on the covenant path.

I was also told that Jesus had a chosen pasture. However, when I grazed in that chosen pasture I didn’t always feel that my spiritual nutritional needs were being met, even though I followed the recipe to a tee. I measured. I judged. I strove for utter perfection. I consumed precisely what and how they told me to. The recipe I was given allowed for no subsitutions. It had been handed down from one patriarch to the next, the male version of Grandma’s secret pie recipe: Grandpa’s recipe for control and conformity. A diet of strictly prescribed sustenance that no longer appealed to me, but I ingested anyway for years. It felt polite, like when you take a bite of Grandma’s famous fruitcake and ache to spit it out, but instead just force yourself to swallow it with a smile and a quiet “mmmmm!”

Which brings me back to cheese. Ond day, I had an interesting conversation with my daughter about her friend’s favorite cheese. She told me the cheese her friend preferred, but then added this disclaimer: “but, she’ll eat anything we have.” And for some reason that stung. For 52 years I have been taught to be grateful for what I was served, even if it wasn’t what I would have chosen for myself, even if it wasn’t what I needed or wanted. I then also asked my daughter (who is wise beyond her years) why her friend often came to school with no lunch. My daughter told me she doesn’t ask, she just brings her home and feeds her. And so I told my daughter that we would start paying tithing in cheese. It was the least we could do.

Afterall, I spent a good chunk of my life “feasting” under the direction of a Shepherd. Grazing in pastures controlled by men. Eating the cheap cheese that was provided for me, when I ached for the good stuff. It was always confusing because I was told that the sustenance men provided would fill me up and make me whole, even if I felt starving2, even if the bitter aftertaste lingered on my tongue. I learned to recognize spiritual starvation as fulfillment. I was told it was precisely what I needed, even if I didn’t recognize it. I was stuck in a spiritual food pyramid created with God at the bottom and me the tiny tip at the very top who only indulged in her own thoughts, or expiremented with her own recipes on occasion.

There has always been a part of me that wanted to create my own pasture, my own recipes, to be my own Shepherdess. But, when have we ever imagined a Shepherdess???

These days I feel strongly that “feeding sheep” means feeding other people the things that they need and want at that moment. So, if that means buying my daughter’s friend’s favorite cheese and revelling at her joy when she opens my fridge several times a week, so be it. If that means leaving a $50 tip for the cleaning lady at the hotel last month because I spent years cleaning houses and offices to put myself through college and could relate, so be it. If it means popping out my airpods and walking with a friend on the track and just chatting and catching up, so be it. It’s not about converting souls, it’s about feeding souls. The older I get, the less I agree with feeding sheep a gospel poisoned by patriarchy, especially when it is soured by bitter herbs, instead of sweetened with the fruits of love.

And feeding the souls of sheep can look so different depending on what pasture you were raised in and which pasture you happen to land in today. It’s also dependent on which individual sheep you are feeding in that moment. I think Jesus would approve of me leaving my pasture in search of greater ones, ones that feel more open. Ones where I can graze and feel nourished. Ones where no Shepherd’s crook reaches out to reign me in. I think Jesus would approve of me getting to know every sheep I meet and tailoring a recipe to meet their hunger.

And feeding sheep and sharing love for me right now means paying my tithing in cheese. The end.

Dear Bishop-

When I came to you at seventeen, a few months after losing my virginity, my soul was wracked with guilt for the choice I made. My mouth vomited the details you asked for, leaving an acrid aftertaste. The places. The number of times. As if that made any difference. As if it determined the severity of my punishment or to what extent I had disappointed God. After the necessary confession and repentance, it would not jeopardize my entrance to Paradise and the Celestial Kingdom, or so you claimed. I mean this sin was next to murder. You didn’t press hard, but you pressed enough to make me feel the pressure. Pressure that always seemed to be exerting itself on my soul. Pressure that pushed me into a place where I was never enough.

Looking back, I wonder if I ever indeed had the freedom to make a choice that night my virginity was lost. Acquiescing to men’s hopes and desires for me was what I was trained to do. No one ever taught me to say “No.” I was only taught to say “Yes.” To covenant and never question. To be obedient. It seemed like it was all part of God’s plan. And to be frank, God always seemed to be more worried about my virginity being lost, rather than my heart and soul feeling lost. A part of me never felt truly whole, despite God’s admonition that He would fill me with His spirit. That a husband would fill the empty void in me, both literally and figuratively. Throughout my girlhood I found myself searching for pieces that would complete me, pieces that were essential for my salvation. Pieces in the shape of men.1

Wholeness always meant men. You taught me to worship a male God. To constantly strive for his love and attention. You taught me that I’d be complete when I bound myself to a man and became a wife. You taught me that Celestial glory was only mine through marriage. You taught me to repel men with my modesty but also attract men in a confusing game of God ordained cat and mouse. You taught me that my life centered on catering and pleasing men. My very salvation reliant on my unwavering faith in and obedience to men.

So, is it any wonder that in those tender teenage years, when I struggled with my identity, when I struggled with my body, when I ached for wholeness, I would turn to men? I knew no other solution. You had already stolen my Mother at birth and left me with no female deity. You left me in a motherless nest to fend for myself.2 You taught me to distrust my own thoughts and replace them with the philosophies of prophets mingled with scripture. You taught me to choke down my discomfort. To silence my voice. To ignore my own wisdom. To pretend that female wisdom was just too sacred to entertain. To disappear like a Heavenly Mother, acknowledged as an afterthought in the eternal pyramid scheme centered on men. And I often felt like God’s afterthought.

So, in some ways I wonder if my virginity was ever mine to lose? Afterall, female virginity is all part of God’s plan, owned and guided by Him. It always has been. Virgins sacrificed or given as prizes to faithful men who take what God rightfully allots them, both on earth and in the afterlife. My worth always fully dependent on what man claimed my womb as his own, because I would never own myself. And if I never owned myself, how could I ever have the agency God preached?

And so, I wonder about that evening I came in to ask you for forgiveness, Dear Bishop. Was it really me that needed to ask for forgiveness? To be cleansed of a decision that I was conditioned to make since birth? To beg for God’s mercy that someday a different man would still find me valuable and make me whole? To listen to your guidance that sex would only diminish my worth before marriage and then magically, after marriage, it would suddenly make me complete? It was all so confusing.

And so, after following all the guidance and direction that you and other men gave me: Following programs designed by men. Praying to a male God. Singing songs about following polygamous prophets. Aligning my whole existence and goals on a pattern designed by men. Longing for their acceptance. Jockeying for their gaze. Slapping their grabbing hands until I was exhausted. Playing their games, by their rules, in the hopes I would earn more power. After all of that, I wonder if it was really me that should have sat in that chair sobbing and ashamed that fateful night.

Because in many ways, I imagine it was YOU that should have asked ME for forgiveness that night. Your body wracked with guilt. Your soul coming face to face with the awful sins of the patriarchy. Your arms folded in prayer with hands desperately trying to scrub your skin clean of all it’s vile filthiness. Your voice proclaiming: “My God, what have we done?”

But instead, that fateful night, I heard my own voice lament what I had done. I had committed the sin. I was apologizing to you and to God. Me, a young teenage girl, a small and weak cog in the bigger and stronger patriarchal machine. A girl whom the system spent years grooming to say “yes,” but then was unfairly punished with exestential guilt and shame when she failed to say “no.”

Still struggling with wholeness-

Stephenie

I often think of what you felt when suddenly you found yourself “given” to a man almost three times your age. A man already married to your nineteen-year-old sister who had begun bearing his children. The record in FamilySearch says this:

“This writing was compiled in the mid 1900s and contains an actual journal entry of Jacob Wesley Norton talking to William Derby Johnson. Found on Ancestry. Jacob Wesley, called Wesley, married Mary Rosetta Hanchett about 1857. He was married to her for 9 years and she died. She had poor health and no children. Wesley was in the Black Hawk War. He was fighting alongside a friend named Albert Nathan Lewis. Lewis was killed by the Indians and before he died he begged Wesley to take care of his little wife. Lewis was from Manti, Utah. After the war, Wesley went to Manti and courted Lewis’ little wife, Celestia Ann Marble Lewis. She was the mother of two children. One had died at birth and the other, a boy, was about a year old. They were married and 2 years later went to the Endowment house in Salt Lake City . Evidently her parents, Samuel Harvey Marble and Celestina Rowley Marble, went along. Somehow their little daughter, Lucy Jane age 13, was given to him. He was a good man and Celestina respected him. Wesley was 38 years of age and Lucy always felt that her parents hadn’t treated her right in not giving her a choice to marry a younger man. Wesley and families lived in Nephi, Utah until about 1888, when, because of polygamy, he took Celestia and children to Amity, AZ. She had 6 children by him but 2 had died, so she took the 4 children and her son Albert Lewis.” (Family Search: A Brief Life History of Jacob Wesley Norton)

Somehow. Was that a word to soften the story, or a word meant to avoid disclosing the bitter truth? Just by saying Jacob was a good man, doesn’t mean he was. Good men don’t have sex with children, with someone’s “little daughter.” Yes, I will say that again: Good men do not have sex with children. I don’t care if he was my great great grandfather and your husband. He was not a “good man.” We excuse these men, we claim they were ignorant, that it was a different time. But, human nature hasn’t changed that much. There are no excuses for Jacob, except the ones he made for himself and the excuses other men made for him. Men with titles like prophet, apostle, etc. Men who commanded in the name of God for Jacob to take plural wives, including you. Men who were commanded to participate in polygamy sometimes balked at first, but most ultimately gave in. Some men were eager to make the sacrifice to honor and obey God and volunteered their sacrifice. Where was Jacob on this spectrum, we may never know. However, it really doesn’t matter once he made that choice.

The brief record included on Family Search includes a description of your disdain for your parents for allowing this marriage to happen. You had every right to be angry with them. In fact, I am angry with them. You had every right to never forgive. Afterall, they gave away your childhood, your agency, and your dignity. You would never get any of those back in your lifetime. Your parents led you like a lamb to the slaughter. They sacrificed you as Abraham would have if the angel hadn’t stepped in and saved Isaac. Did you ever wonder why an angel didn’t come rescue you?

The truth was you were still a “little daughter” when you had your first baby, 11 months after your marriage was solemnized in Salt Lake. You were fourteen. And I wonder, did Jacob Wesley Norton ever see you? Did he create children with you or from you? Because that matters. Were you ever more than a womb? Why did you have to atone for his sins when you saw the blood on the clean white sheets? I imagine you curled in the fetal position, broken and distraught after that ugly act of consummation. Did you curse God and your parents? And did you ever love him? Part of me hopes you never tried. He stained our joint history when he claimed his prize that fateful night and your innocent blood stained the sheets.

Lucy, you became a mother way too soon. I ache thinking about you burying all the tiny babies you lost. Your body too young and weak to grow them and yourself at the same time. Wrapping delicate bodies with translucent skin in handmade blankets you created yourself. Laying tiny bodies gently in small coffins and then covering them with Mother Earth and your tears. I think of all those babies named and added to the collection of lost life you could see over the hill from your bedroom window. I think of how violently you became accustomed to losing pieces of yourself and burying them in the dust.

I marvel that you became a midwife and helped birth hundreds of babies in the Colonias. Dedicating your life to women and children, ensuring their comfort and safe passage into this cruel and unkind world of plural marriage, while you navigated your own life and loss. You were loved and honored in your community, a savior among the women whom you guided through the treacherous throngs of childbirth. Can I call you a savior? Or, is that a title reserved only for men? The newspaper articles said you never had a baby you delivered under your care die. Hundreds of babies birthed by your saving hands. Isn’t that remarkable? But wasn’t that maddening that God didn’t love you enough to let more of your babies live? Wasn’t the blessing of polygamy to bring posterity to the world? How many times did you deliver another woman’s healthy baby and then go home and lose your own?

I wonder if my initial intention to become a midwife was because of your blood coursing through my veins. Or was it, because like you, I wanted to find a way to deliver women from the evil of this world? Was it all a metaphor? To soften the diffucult transitions. To make sense of the all the confusion. To carefully untangle the cords that tether us to a religion that requires our obedience and disappearance and tie ourselves to each other in womanhood instead? Was your calling to ease suffering because you experienced and saw so much yourself? Was it because it was the only piece of your life where you felt empowered?

Lucy Jane Marble I want you to know that you’ve given me a legacy, but also a vendetta. To purge the protection of polygamy in any form. To teach my sons and daughters about its horrible history. To teach them that their great great grandfather had a choice and an opportunity to say no to polygamy, but he chose to say yes. I won’t excuse him anymore. I won’t say that people were different back then. I won’t tell them that we just don’t understand God’s reasoning for polygamy and offer platitudes. Platitudes don’t bring back childhood. No God or prophet took Jacob Wesley Norton by the hand and forced him into polygamy. He was a willing hand that always had the upper hand. You had only one choice, to aquiesce. And really is that even a choice?

That fatedul day a grown 38 year old man, who was my great great grandfather, took your dainty hand in his and called you wife, your world was changed, and so was mine. Rest in Peace Lucy Jane Marble, I’ve got your back.

I’m thirty-nine years old, sitting on a bench, nothing but a heavy white drape covering my naked, quivering body. I gave birth five weeks ago, but I had to come. I felt compelled to come. This, despite the fact that my body had not completely healed from childbirth. This, despite the fact that my breasts were swollen with life sustaining milk and aching as they hung heavy and full without support because I was forced to remove my bra. The ritual had to be done in discomfort. I was conditioned to the discomfort. Sometimes I even enjoyed the discomfort.

I knew my baby was safely cradled in my husband’s arms outside, walking around the serene temple grounds. I knew I would feel better when I could check off this box and relieve myself of the guilt of letting my God down. I wanted to make God proud. Was He proud of me for making the three hour round trip to the temple to worship him as I sat with milk awkwardly spilling from my breasts and my body crying out for my newborn? I wanted to retain the blessings of staying bound and sealed to my family with priesthood permission, even though God needed no permission to be bound to His creations and His family. But mothers need permission. I wondered when my Mother God would have permission from men to bind and seal herself to me? I was denied permission and access to my Mother God, she remained unseen. I asked myself why must I perform rituals designed by men that do not draw me closer to Her, but to Him? Will I ever find Her here in the Temple of Our God? Why must I perform rituals that do not mirror the rituals that my body guides me through each month and season of my life as a woman? Why do these rituals not check off the box?

I asked for permission a few weeks before this trip to the temple to be relieved of my callings and obligations at church to heal myself, my sacred temple, my body. My Bishop told me I could pump bottles for my baby to have at church (HIS wife did) and carry on. Everyone knows that male Bishops are experts on the female body and lactation. So, there was never an excuse good enough for rest and release. He did not grant me permission to listen to my body. He would not grant me permission, he knew better. But he did grant me guilt and shame. And so, I felt there was no way to justify missing my monthly trip to the temple and I did not disappoint. I hated to disappoint. I dragged my exhausted postpartum body into the car, packed up my baby, strapped the guilt and shame to my back, and drove an hour and a half to the temple, hoping to feel some peace.

But, instead of just peace, I felt a confusing mixture of guilt and shame, peace and power, anxiety and disempowerment, all wrapped up in one hormonal postpartum mother temple that I called my body. I felt guilty for leaving my baby. Guilty for missing a month of temple worship the previous month to give birth. Shame for the warm milk dripping down my body and soiling the drape. Shame that I could not make my body stop what God had created it to do. I sat desperately crossing my arms and applying pressure to stop the relentless gushing of milk that wanted to nourish and comfort my baby. I just wanted to get through the ritual, then everything would be better.

Monthly temple attendance was a measure of righteousness. It made everything better. It was what separated the wheat from the tares. It brought blessings. Lord knew I needed the blessings. I now had six children. I was indeed multiplying and replenishing the earth, just as Eve and I had been commanded to. However, the act of multiplying and replenishing the earth meant subtracting and diminishing myself. A little part of me disappearing with each baby, with each trip to the temple, and with each ritual. Nevertheless, I was compelled to attend. It was the only place I could partake of the essential rituals and ordinances that would save me and my family, or so I thought.

Because didn’t I just experience a ritual within my own self? If my body is a temple, isn’t the ritual of pregnancy and birth equally important to God? Isn’t motherhood itself a ritual? It certainly includes all the elements of sacrifice, selflessness, symbolism, and service that other rituals include. Was it not a ritual to bleed every month in sacrifice and preparation to create life? Was it not sacrifice and selflessness to bring another life into the world with my body bearing the brunt of the pain, discomfort, stretching, and pressure of pregnancy? Was I not washed when my water broke and my baby clean and new emerged baptized by the holy water of my womb? Was the blood I shed and the life-giving milk I created not a sacrament in its own right? Were my baby and I not anointed as the first drops of colostrum leaked from my breasts and touched my newborn’s tongue for the first time? Was my temple holy in those moments? I often wondered if the rituals in the temple designed by men were truly meant to help me as a woman. Did I need more rituals to draw me closer to God, especially if those rituals were designed by and for men? Afterall, I have rituals of my own that take place in my own mother temple. Rituals that feel holy. Rituals that are holy.

But I was never taught and conditioned to take care of my own temple or to be mindful and listen to the rituals my own body was guiding me through. I was not taught that I can create holy within myself. There was no time for that. I must always be striving to take care of and save others in God’s temple. I can find holy in the temple. I can be directed to holy by men. But, I had already experienced holy. Maybe if we found Mother in the temple, she could explain that we can connect to others in rituals that don’t involve qualifications, checklists, shame, and judgement. Maybe a Mother God would teach us that when a woman listens to her body, she can find peace and sanctity through her own distinct and cyclical rituals, without driving an hour and a half to get naked in front of strangers and complete rituals designed by men. Maybe a Mother God would help us recognize that holy isn’t just found in the temple of our God, a temple she herself is excluded from.

So, of course I did not find my Mother God in the temple that afternoon. Instead, I sat on the plush green velveteen bench, teary eyed, waiting for my turn to participate in the ritual. My nakedness covered by only an insufficient piece of scratchy white cloth with two giant wet spots on my chest, reminding me that someone else depended on my service today. My service that was never ending. My service that never received rest. My anxiety increased each minute I waited and was kept from my newborn. My baby would have to wait for God, His rituals came first.

I wondered if this temple ritual I waited for was even truly necessary, as I felt my own ritual rise within my mother temple. My breasts began to weep again for my child, my eyes began to weep for disappointing my God, and my heart and soul began to weep deep inside my body. Weeping for something found, weeping for something lost, weeping for the unseen Mother God, weeping for me.

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I remember the day after receiving my “gift” at the tender age of eight, wondering if the Holy Ghost was now haunting me. The only other ghost I knew of was Casper the Friendly Ghost of afterschool cartoons, so I didn’t have a whole lot to go on. I was told to always be on the lookout for this ghostly “gift” I had recently acquired. But I was also told I would only be privy to this “gift” if I remained completely obedient. A gift with lots of strings attached in my young mind and a lot of pressure to be worthy. I was told I would recognize his influence as “the spirit” which could manifest in many different ways: voices, dreams, burning bosoms, etc. All scary stuff for a young girl to figure out.

And I already grew up in Venice, California a moderately scary place to grow up in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Venice was a melting pot of people. The elementary school I went to, even more so, because of the mandatory LAUSD school desegregation and busing program. This brought gang turf wars and constant schoolyard fights. But, that is a story for another day. Because of the economic and social diversity in my elementary school, we were chosen to participate in an arts program that involved bringing dance and art into underpriveleged schools. The program also provided funding for all of the 5th and 6th graders to load buses and travel to the theater in downtown Los Angeles to watch a real live theater performance once a year. They were performances that are forever etched in my memory.

I remember my mom sewed me new outfits for these excursions. We were told to wear our Sunday best. I will never forget riding the school bus in my little green and red plaid skirt and matching vest to arrive and sit quietly among hundreds of other low income students for our first live theater performance. It was Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville. I was mezmerized, even though it was in Italian and I had no idea what was being sung. The next year we saw the Joffrey Ballet. I marveled at the dancers feet and how they balanced so perfectly and beautifully. My mom bought me a record of Tchaivosky’s Swan Lake to prepare and I twirled and danced in our living rooms for hours.

At the end of 6th grade my parent’s divorced. However, a few months before the divorce was final my Mom somehow secured tickets to Andrew Lloyd Weber's Cats at the Schubert theater. It was close to my birthday. Literally, we sat in the very last row in the corner. I could barely see the stage we were so far away. A kind patron next to us, let me borrow their theater glasses for a bit, so I could see the costumes better. It was glorious. And it made me feel something… the spirit?? I just didn’t know. But, when I’d plug the soundtrack into my tape player and hear Memory, I’d get the same feeling.

Then in 11th grade, I dated a boy whose family often attended the theater. They had tickets to see Phantom of the Opera that summer. My boyfriend who’d already seen the play once, would plug the soundtrack into the tape player of his Dad’s Corvette and we’d listen to it full volume with the top down. The music was fantastic and I learned to love it and envy his privelege. At the last minute, his Dad got stuck on a business trip and I was invited to come fill his seat. Of course I accepted. I hadn’t been to the theater since my parents divorced. I borrowed an evening dress from a friend and found myself in the fourth row of the orchestra front and center.

And then something happened. The curtains parted and I felt something. When the first chords started to belt on the organ and the chandelier rose up to the ceiling I started crying. And I was so embarrassed. Embarrassed that someone would see this poor teenage girl from a single parent home in a borrowed evening gown bawling her eyes out because she felt something so beautiful. Something she didn’t have a word for, but that felt more spiritual than she had ever felt before.

And years later, I convinced my husband to go to his first theater performance, The Phantom, of course. He had never been and he wasn’t convinced he would like it. I was worried he wouldn’t feel what I felt. But, when the lights dimmed and the chandelier rose to the ceiling with the organ belting out its glory, he was hooked. I should have known since he cried on one of our first dates at the end of the movie My Girl. We spent years attending live theater and orchestra as we could afford. As the kids increased and our budget decreased, it often meant local Community College orchestras, community plays, and dress rehearsals.

And I never cease to have that feeling, that one I can never quite define. That feeling that feels the same as the “spirit” or the Holy Ghost I had always sought. That feeling that brings me to tears. That feeling that makes me grateful for music, bodies, voices, and art, even if performed in the gym of a middle school. For me, that feeling feels like God, but it also feels uniquely feminine and most certainely mine. So, when I saw Phantom of the Opera for the third time a few weeks ago, my mind drifted to the first time I saw that chandelier rise to the ceiling thirty five years prior.

I envisioned my seventeen year old self trying to act like I fit into the crowd of people that obviously had more than I did. I saw myself wondering what to expect when the lights dimmed. I saw my mind spinning and worrying that I’d lost the Holy Ghost after just recently having sex with the boyfriend who sat by my side. I worried that everyone knew. I worried that an evening gown couldn’t hide my dirtiness. I worried I wasn’t worthy of the “spirit” and whoever or whatever it was. I worried my tears would stain the borrowed dress. But, I also thought of how all that was whisked away as the curtains parted and I got lost in the divine.

And at fifty two years old, as I sat and watched the chandelier come to life once again and felt the organ pulse in my veins, I no longer felt ashamed of my unabashed tears. I no longer felt confused for feeling what I can’t describe as anything but spiritual. And I only wish that I could go back in time and tell my seventeen year old self that The Phantom of the Opera is indeed the Holy Ghost and so are you.

Flash forward to the recent General Conference address by Dallin H. Oaks Sunday morning, the only talk I listened to in its entirety as it played in the background of a family function. I only stopped to listen, because it started out with such a beautiful message of love that our world needs to hear right now. But, sadly as the story continued, I got angry because the story Oaks used to model and illustrate the principle of loving your adversary was dangerous and irresponsible. Here’s a summary of what he shared:

“President Oaks shared a story in which he witnessed the “uncommon loving of an adversary.”

At a stake conference several years ago, President Oaks felt impressed to call on a particular woman to give a short talk. This woman spoke of her experience as a nurse caring for a patient whom she described as “the most repulsive man” she had ever met, who did everything he could to make life miserable for the nurses.

One evening, after hearing a loud crash from this man’s room, she was shocked to find that he had fallen out of bed and was “thrashing about in a pool of broken glass, liquid and blood.”

“In that moment, a profound change came over her,” President Oaks recalled. “She felt an almost electric current of love from our Heavenly Father to this man. She saw him as a child of God. … She testified that being brought to see a despised enemy like this as a child of God was one of the great spiritual experiences of her life.”

President Oaks said this was a lesson he needed to learn about God’s love for all His children.”1

I believe it is important to love one another and to view every human as a valuable creation. I do. One hundred percent! I even concede that it’s important to love your enemies, especially if that means letting go of the hate in your heart and working toward peace. If it means not letting the harm someone else has inflicted upon you diminish your value and worth or keep you from doing the job you were hired to do (as this nurse did), then let the self love abound! The world needs more love, especially now. But I also believe in boundaries. I believe we can love our enemies without defining forgiveness as embracing them, inviting them into our homes, or accepting their abuse. I also believe we perpetuate abuse by inadvertently immortalizing stories like Oak’s shared in Conference. When an authority figure uses a fantastic story and romanticizes it to define love, lines get blurred.

I was deeply disturbed when Oaks chose to share this “uncommon” story of a nurse. And to be frank, we shouldn’t use “uncommon” stories such as these (especially when they are specific to a profession) as examples of righteousness and sainthood. It was reckless to simplify such a complex situation and present it as a simple choice that we can learn from. A nurse myself, I can testify of the truth that we absolutely DO NOT simply run in and comfort our violent, abusive patients in maximum security facilities without following proper policies that include security, restraints, training, and protocols. To do so would jeopardize our own lives.

Even with these multiple layers of policies, nurses are hurt and injured by violent patients daily.2 We have to make daily judgement calls to protect ourselves and not all situations turn out like Oak’s story. In fact, more often than not these stories end in someone getting hurt. Most assaults happen to RNs. Guess which gender dominates the RN occupation? Women, 88%.3 Violence pervades many occupations dominated by women and prophets are not the ones who should be sharing our stories as spiritual inspiration and prototypes of love and forgiveness, especially when they don’t provide the layers of protection that are necessary in these situations.

More importantly, stories like these aren’t relevant to the average church member, especially to children in the audience who will not comprehend the nuances present in this story. Children won’t be able to differentiate between a nurse’s patient and their neighbor’s dad. And fantastic stories like these are along the same ones I have I heard throughout my life. Stories that most of the time have women as victims praised for their example of ultimate love by forgiving abusers of their crimes, or reaching out in love to someone that has deeply harmed them, commonly, a man. What did Neil L. Andersons’s April 2025 talk cannonizing a wife raising her husband’s illegitimate child really teach women and men?4 Stories like these portray unrealistic selflessness and induce, guilt, shame, and self doubt in many of those who have been abused:

Many women and children hear stories like these and think:

Did I forgive enough?

Am I allowed to be angry?

What if I can’t just let it go?

I should love and comfort people who hurt me.

I should stay with an abusive spouse because he is a child of God.

I must forgive and love people who mistreat and abuse me.

My protection doesn’t matter.

I should set myself aside.

My needs don’t matter.

I don’t matter.

Here’s what abusers hear in these messages:

Women are expected to forgive me if I abuse.

God expects them to forgive me.

I can blame women for my actions if they choose not to forgive me.

Women are sinning if they don’t forgive me

Satan is at the root of an unforgiving heart.

I can inflict harm and expect my victims to forgive me.

Although the church has made lip service attempts to “not tolerate” abuse in recent years, it still falls way behind and contributes to the violence against women and children in many ways.5 Recent news stories corroborate this, and sadly too many stories to link here. Then there are stories like Oak’s and Anderson’s that have been shared over the pulpit and repeated in church that keep people, namely women, stuck in abusive situations. And this isn’t a new phenomenon, Richard G. Scott shared a story in 2008, counseling abusers to repent, but also using an example of a daughter who forgives and reunites with her “severly” abusive father as the whole family comes to him to help the father find forgiveness and peace.6 The whole hanging cloud of “severe” abuse simply ignored. The focus on the righteousness of this woman overcoming and embracing her abuser, highlighting the victim’s ability to forgive, rather than focusing on cutting through the insidious roots of abuse that continue to reach for their next victim is just wrong.

I believe when we focus so heavily on stories highlighting victim’s love and forgiveness of abusers and not on ways our policies and beliefs create abuse in the first place, we will continue to perpetuate harm against women and children.

I want to see men (prophets, fathers, brothers, husbands) who beg for forgiveness for the danger they’ve created in the world. Men who lay aside their power when they realize they have used it to harm. I want to see the men who have abused or failed to report abuse sharing with other men how they were misguided and are working to correct the harms and hurt they caused. Men acknowledging that there is a sick cycle of men in power abusing women and children with lesser power and that power imbalance IS harm. I want to see men teaching their sons to be kind, have empathy, and to have a conscience. I want to see men that are changing their attitudes and behaviors to follow the very creeds they created, which focus so heavily on being protectors. Let’s lay aside the preside, and for once in the history of the Church, be protectors of women and children and not protectors of the good ol’ boys.

We don’t need more stories of women who show love and compassion despite the abuse they are forced to experience at the hands of men. We don’t need more stories about how women supressed their natural instincts and protective intuition to follow a prophet or God. We don’t need messages that encourage women to disappear and shrink. We don’t need more token messages that state the Church won’t “tolerate”7 abuse while having policies that don’t align with those statements. We need leaders who actually give a damn.

I long for a day when a woman forgiving a father, a leader, a husband, or even a patient who has wronged her is not the story I hear over the pulpit. When men learn to love and set aside their pride and egos. When women can set boundaries and aren’t made to feel less than if they still carry deep wounds that won’t allow them to embrace their abusers. I long for a day when we tell stories of women saying “no” and praised for protecting themselves and their well being. Most of all, I long for a day when stories are told of men listening to “no.”

We need more stories about how women can love and forgive themselves, not those that hurt them. We need more stories that show women (not merely tell them) that their existence matters, that their harm matters, that they matter. We need more stories that help shape a community where women and children are safe and thrive. We can only do this if we become more cognizant of the subtle messages we are perpetuating over our pulpits, messages meant to heal, but more often causing harm. We can only do this if the organization commits to spend its resources protecting victims instead of perpetrators and themselves.

And most of all, we must demand that men, prophets, bishops, brothers, fathers, sons, and even God, love women enough to look in the mirror and realize that they are the problem.

However, I can’t help but wonder if all the goals and themes weren’t meant for my “personal” progress at all but to condition me to see “progress” in something that caused me to regress. Something that would bind me and my allegiance to a system that would ultimately rob me of my autonomy. I wonder sometimes if it was all a trap to mold me into something that God wanted me to become. But who is God anyway? And who gets to speak for him?

How are Sam Bateman’s wives who were instructed to write about how they loved Sam repeatedly in cheap notebooks, any different than young girls in church given notebooks filled with instructions and values approved by men and then instructed to write witnesses and testimonies of their truth? How is being instructed to recite a theme expressing love and allegiance to God not indoctrination? All the while every theme approved by men. Every program approved by men.

In my day, Boy Scouts was the program for Young Men. They had their own oath and law. However, they weren’t recited at church each Sunday. The boys could earn their Eagle Scout award. However, girls were encouraged to earn their eternal salvation, by preparing for wifehood and motherhood. How was this equivalent? I sometimes wonder if this was the intention from the beginning. Were the girl’s programs purposely designed to keep them compliant? To “Keep sweet, pray and obey” as Warren Jeffs might say? It’s disturbing to think about.

I didn’t earn my Personal Progress as a teen. I only earned it about ten years ago with my second daughter. When I dug the book out recently, I thought about throwing it away. But the relationships I built around the book were tender. Maybe that’s what makes transitions so hard, there are always good experiences that I look back upon with fondness. There were some practices that brought us closer to each other, and some that drove us apart. My two oldest daughters signed off all my goals over the course of the four years it took me to finish. It’s still sweet to see their handwritten initials approving each of my goals and random post its my toddlers stuck between the pages. We worked together and were accountable to each other. Some of the goals truly helped me progress and grow as an individual. However, it makes me sad to think that my and my girl’s personal growth probably was never the point.

My copy of Personal Progress published in 2009 reads:

“Personal Progress will help you strengthen your faith in and testimony of Jesus Christ as you learn His teachings and regularly apply them in your life. It will help you strengthen both your present family and your future family….”

Gut punch.

It was about molding me into a good wife and mother, preparing me for my future family, never for future ME. It was always about becoming what they envisioned for me and not what I envisioned for myself, or in the order I envisioned it.

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This week the LDS church released the new Young Women names, and I felt even more distress. To be frank, the names are weird. They are descriptive in a way that I find rather offensive. They seem like just another attempt to make sure that girls don’t stray too far from the duties and roles that patriarchy has in mind for them. I appreciate that the church did decide to give names back to the Young Women after largely erasing their identities in 2019. But the church still struggles to recognize girls and women as individuals worthy and equivalent to their male counterparts. I can’t call these new names a win. Deep down, girls and women still aren’t seen. We are either formally erased or subtly erased with prescriptive names and programs that limit our potential, all in the name of progress. These new names aren’t names, but affirmations for girls to write in their notebooks until they become precisely what God or a prophet wants them to become: Builders of Faith, Messengers of Hope, and Gatherers of Light. They will be eternally laboring for God and men their entire lives and into eternity, and it will all be sanctioned by a prophet.

And I just keep hearing my voice repeat these words over in my mind:

“We are daughters of a Heavenly Father who loves us and we love Him. We will stand as witnesses of God at all times, and in all things, and in all places as we strive to live the Young Women values…”

And in my mind I see Sam Bateman’s wives writing these words in their notebooks, just as I did in mine.

And I can’t forget them. I repeated them for years. “At all times, and in all things, and in all places…” Trapped. Conditioned. Stuck. Builders. Messengers. Gatherers. It’s all the same.

Words matter.

Remember when you knocked frantically on my door late one evening with red marks on your neck and no newborn baby in your arms? Your story told in choking sobs. A fight. He put his hands on you. He unplugged the phone. He put the cord around your neck. But you fought. He promised not to hurt the baby when he kicked you out. You ran out the door and four blocks in your exhausted post-partum body to end up at my front door. Because I was safe, because you knew I would open that door. And I did. I saw your broken body crumpled on my step. I took you in. I encouraged you to call the police. You were afraid, you didn’t want to. We were both young. I didn’t know what to do. If you wouldn’t call the police, then who? The Bishop was the only other man I thought might help. But he didn’t. He’d already seen the signs. The argument in the hall one Sunday after church. The name calling. The humiliation. He told me not to get too involved, but how could I turn away? Luckily you initiated a divorce and left. Your ex-husband blamed me. He slashed my tires, he threatened, he stalked. He never got disciplined. He never apologized. And though I was told to, I never forgave. An act of rebellion that only I knew in my heart. We women know how to wear a mask. I rejoiced when he moved far away. And all of it was worth it, because you found safety…

Remember when your husband would smoke pot, drink, and neglect the kids? Remember the exhaustion of working full time to support his addictions while barely able to feed your own kids? Remember when your child spent weeks in the children’s hospital with a wound that could have been prevented? Remember when he wrote “bitch” on your laundry room wall one day when you argued? I encouraged you to leave him. You needed to leave him. But you stayed. I went to the Bishop. I wanted to call someone. I wanted to protect you and your kids. The Bishop told me not to call anyone outside because it will just make it messier. He met with you instead. We had play dates with the kids and pretended like nothing was wrong, when everything was. And then I moved. And a few months later you left. The Bishop finally gave his blessing. But you were a Christlike woman and that’s why at some point you forgave and went back to him. I’m sure your new Bishop encouraged you. How could he not? And you moved so far away that now I only see things from the outside, from the pictures you post. And I wonder how you are on the inside…

Remember meeting at church as two young newly married couples? I liked you, you were so prim and proper, things I always wished I was. I remember the first time we came to your house for dinner. Your husband told you to take the barrette out of your hair because he hated it up and liked your hair down. You did it and I was aghast. I was embarrassed for you as I watched you blush and hold back the tears. You two were married in the temple and did everything at the right time in the right way, unlike me and my husband. On the way home, I told my husband I hated your husband and that he was a control freak. But I wanted to stay friends with you and help you find your voice. I tried to listen to the stories you told me of what he wanted your body to look like, how clean he thought the house should be, how much money he told you that you could spend, how much weight you could gain when you found yourself pregnant. I tried to subtly let you know this didn’t sound normal as I dried your tears. The Bishop had no advice to give, “Let them work it out,” he said. But it didn’t feel right. I watched you struggle to get the body back he wanted. I watched you tense as he entered the room. I felt my own skin crawl when I saw him at church every Sunday. I hated how he bossed you around like he owned you. But I didn’t have the words for what I saw. I’d never been taught to name it. And the men in power who were perfectly aware seem unbothered. So, why was I?? You moved before that baby even turned one. Your husband wasn’t fond of you having friends so we lost touch. I wonder if you ever left him, if he ever hurt you, or your sweet baby… a girl.

Remember when your husband hugged me harder than I liked? He always made me uncomfortable. He thought it was funny when I pushed him away. It didn’t surprise me when I found out he screwed the neighbor. It didn’t surprise me that she wasn’t the first or the last. I cried when you told me you had to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases. I was shocked that your Bishop knew for years before I did. That he convinced you to forgive. That he convinced you to stay. I was relieved when you left him, but also terrified. The threats. The stalking. The guns. The abuse didn’t end with divorce, it rarely does. I worried about your safety. I still do. At times I worried he would hurt me too, just like my other friend’s husband who slashed my tires many years ago. And I cringed and burned in anger when the temple sealer made you sit next to him as your child was getting sealed, even though you told him of the danger, even though you begged him not to. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run to you. I wanted to protect you. But instead, I sat silent in the temple of our God. Priesthood presiding while panic prevailed in the hearts of all the women who knew your situation, but felt powerless to protect. Including me.

And I’m writing to say I’m sorry. I know better now. I’m stronger now. I say things out loud now.

And I’ve always wondered if I could have saved any, or all of you, my friends and my sisters.

What would have happened if I’d seen the warning signs sooner? If I’d been louder? If I’d pressed?

And most of all, what would have happened if I had just trusted my gut and not called the Bishop.

With love and also some regret-

Stephenie