Leaving the Church to Find God
Descending from Mormonism's Founder: Lynn Smith Gregory finds Balance in Faith and Family Legacy
Embark with us on a journey that challenges the very core of belief and identity, as Lynn Smith Gregory, a direct descendant of Joseph Smith, shares her profound transition from the Mormon Church to atheism. Our conversation reveals Lynn's confrontation with historical facts and the deep-seated questions that arose from her encounter with an atheist professor, shaking her lifelong beliefs to the core. It's not often we delve into such intimate revelations of faith and its unraveling; Lynn's forthcoming memoir, "We Were Smiths: Escaping the Shadow of Joseph Smith's Mormon Legacy," promises even deeper insights into her transformative experience.
The path of self-discovery and rebuilding one's life outside the familiar structures of religious communities can be tumultuous, marked by exclusion and the intense redefining of one’s identity. Our guests candidly discuss their personal stories, highlighting the critical role of therapeutic support and the courage it takes to forge new connections beyond the church's boundaries. As they share, we're reminded of the complexities that arise when leaving a faith, from the impact on family dynamics to the inner conflict one must navigate. The resilience and growth that emerge from such profound change are both inspiring and instructive for anyone on a similar journey.
In our final exploration, Lynn brings us into her world of navigating spiritual identity post-faith, demonstrating that life can be richer and more authentic when embracing the uncertainty of life's mysteries. From redefining family relationships to discovering a spirituality unbound by dogmatic beliefs, this episode is a testament to the strength of the human spirit and the power of intentional living. For those who've walked this path, or for the curious minds seeking to understand the resilience it requires, Lynn's story serves as a beacon of hope in the quest for personal truth and fulfillment.
If you would like to be a guest on this podcast or would like to support this work, visit www.leavingthechurchtofindgod.com where you can contact Melissa and or make a donation. Follow along my journey on IG at @authenticallymeli and find more in depth content on YouTube at Diary of an Authentic Life.
Embark with us on a journey that challenges the very core of belief and identity, as Lynn Smith Gregory, a direct descendant of Joseph Smith, shares her profound transition from the Mormon Church to atheism. Our conversation reveals Lynn's confrontation with historical facts and the deep-seated questions that arose from her encounter with an atheist professor, shaking her lifelong beliefs to the core. It's not often we delve into such intimate revelations of faith and its unraveling; Lynn's forthcoming memoir, "We Were Smiths: Escaping the Shadow of Joseph Smith's Mormon Legacy," promises even deeper insights into her transformative experience.
The path of self-discovery and rebuilding one's life outside the familiar structures of religious communities can be tumultuous, marked by exclusion and the intense redefining of one’s identity. Our guests candidly discuss their personal stories, highlighting the critical role of therapeutic support and the courage it takes to forge new connections beyond the church's boundaries. As they share, we're reminded of the complexities that arise when leaving a faith, from the impact on family dynamics to the inner conflict one must navigate. The resilience and growth that emerge from such profound change are both inspiring and instructive for anyone on a similar journey.
In our final exploration, Lynn brings us into her world of navigating spiritual identity post-faith, demonstrating that life can be richer and more authentic when embracing the uncertainty of life's mysteries. From redefining family relationships to discovering a spirituality unbound by dogmatic beliefs, this episode is a testament to the strength of the human spirit and the power of intentional living. For those who've walked this path, or for the curious minds seeking to understand the resilience it requires, Lynn's story serves as a beacon of hope in the quest for personal truth and fulfillment.
If you would like to be a guest on this podcast or would like to support this work, visit www.leavingthechurchtofindgod.com where you can contact Melissa and or make a donation. Follow along my journey on IG at @authenticallymeli and find more in depth content on YouTube at Diary of an Authentic Life.
Aloha God Pod. Today we have a very special guest, Lynn Smith Gregory. She grew up in Utah as one of nine children in a devout Mormon family. Her great-great-uncle was Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church. At 19, she left the church and moved to New York City, eventually obtaining an MBA at NYU. At NYU, After a 20-year career in the tech industry, she left to pursue writing full-time and has attended the Iowa Summer Writing Program and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. She lives in Savannah, Georgia with her husband, Aloha Lynn. Welcome to the Leaving the Church to Find God podcast. I appreciate you being here. We always start these conversations with where did it first crack for you? What brought you to leave the church?
Speaker 2:It was actually a challenge by a professor of mine when I went away to college my background is Mormon professor of mine. When I went away to college, my background is Mormon and I went instead of going to BYU. I graduated a year early from high school. So I said, well, I'll do a year at this state school before I transfer to BYU, which is like Harvard for Mormons. That's the school everybody wants to go to.
Speaker 2:If you're a Mormon, and I had an atheist professor for my creative writing class and I had written a short story about my parents arguing about going to church and he really liked it and he asked me to read it out loud in class and then afterwards he said so, you're a believer. And I said, oh yeah. And he said, hmm, and that was the first time anybody, because I grew up in Utah where the majority of people are Mormon. That that was. I realized that was a negative to him and I was sort of taken back and he said, well, I challenge you to come to my the Bible is literature class next semester. And I I realized that point, that I was going to have to defend my faith, and I felt totally up for the challenge and so instead of going home over the break before the next semester started, I asked to borrow books that were not in the Utah libraries about the Mormon church and Joseph Smith in particular. Now my maiden name is Smith, so I have to add here that Joseph Smith is my great-great-uncle, my great-great-grandfather.
Speaker 2:Samuel Smith was Joseph Smith's younger brother and the first convert to the Mormon church. Younger brother and the first convert to the Mormon church, and there have been four generations of unbroken devotion. And so I started reading these scholarly works on the Mormon church, specifically Fawn Brody's book no man Knows my History, which is still considered one of the definitive books on the history of Joseph Smith, and as I turned the pages I was in shock and I discovered for the first time context for religion. I realized the atmosphere that Joseph Smith grew up in some of his background activities before he became a prophet, and I saw the evolution of this young man into becoming a religious figure and rather than a 14-year-old boy who had been approached by Jesus and God and said you need to start your own church because none of them are true. And all of a sudden things started falling into place. Questions I'd had younger like well, you know, he found these plates of gold, which turned out to be the book of Mormon, right in his backyard. That's really convenient. You know that that's where an ancient civilization ended up burying this record and it's supposedly the record of the Native Americans who lived on the continent.
Speaker 2:But then I was reading about how he used to make up stories about Native Americans ancient civilizations that devolved into Native Americans as we currently experience them, when Columbus came and I suddenly saw things differently and I spent the week just trapped in the library, buried in these texts, and I suddenly realized there was a tipping point where I read that he had copied the temple ceremonies that were so sacred and supposedly based on the ceremonies in King Solomon's temple from the Masons Cause he was a free Mason and I just didn't believe it anymore and what it was was not like. Well, I guess I don't believe it. It was like I realized I no longer believed it and it came as a shock to me because it wasn't a conscious decision that I'd made. It was a realization of recognizing the facts, and the facts had told me a different story and the facts had told me a different story, and the reason those books were forbidden to read became obvious to me, and this was before the Internet, so you could avoid damaging information about the Mormon church much more easily than you can today.
Speaker 2:And in typical 19-year-old behavior, I decided well, if Joseph Smith was a fraud, maybe this whole idea of God is a fraud too? And became an atheist Just like that, and became an atheist Just like that. I threw the baby out with the bathwater and I didn't realize what I was closing the door on, and it created a kind of existential angst. Really, what is the meaning of our lives on Earth if it's just a random universe, an accident, a petri dish that suddenly had the right combination of ingredients to create the world, of ingredients to create the world? So it took me a while before I changed my perspective.
Speaker 1:And it was through a spiritual experience that I realized I wasn't an atheist anymore.
Speaker 2:Do you mind telling me about that experience? Sure, even though I'll tell you a little bit about it, I cover my story more extensively in my memoir, which is currently being shot to publishers as we speak. It's called we Were Smiths Escaping the Shadow of Joseph Smith's Mormon Legacy and it's a story of leaving the church. My sister and I both left about the same time for very different reasons, and our trajectories ended up very, very differently because of choices that we made younger, like. Well, you know, he found these plates of gold which turned out to be the Book of Mormon, right in his backyard. That's really convenient. You know that that's where an ancient civilization ended up burying this record and it's supposedly the record of the Native Americans who lived on the continent continent.
Speaker 2:But then I was reading about how he used to make up stories about Native Americans, ancient civilizations that devolved into Native Americans as we currently experience them, when Columbus came and I suddenly saw things differently and I spent the week just trapped in the library buried in these texts and I suddenly realized there was a tipping point where I read that he had copied the temple ceremonies that were so sacred and supposedly based on the ceremonies in King Solomon's temple from the Masons because he was a Freemason, and I just didn't believe it anymore. And what it was was not like well, I guess I don't believe it. It was like I realized I no longer believed it, and it came as a shock to me because it wasn't a conscious decision that I'd made. It was a realization of recognizing the facts. And the facts had told me a different story, and the reason those books were forbidden to read became obvious to me. And this was before the internet, so you could avoid damaging information about the Mormon church much more easily than you can today.
Speaker 2:And in typical 19 year old behavior, I decided well, if Joseph Smith was a fraud, maybe this whole idea of God is a fraud too, and became an atheist Just like that. I threw the baby out with the bathwater. I didn't realize what I was closing the door on, and it created a kind of existential angst. Really, what is the meaning of our lives on Earth if it's just a random universe, an accident? If it's just a random universe, an accident, a Petri dish that suddenly had the right combination of ingredients to create the world? So it took me a while before I changed my perspective, and it was through a spiritual experience that I realized I wasn't an atheist anymore.
Speaker 1:Do you mind telling me about that experience?
Speaker 2:Sure, even though I'll tell you a little bit about it. I cover my story more extensively in my memoir, which is currently being shot to publishers as we speak. It's called we Were Smiths Escaping the shadow of joseph smith's mormon legacy, and it's a story of leaving the church. My sister and I both left about the same time, for very different reasons, and our trajectories ended up very, very differently because of choices that we made. I was struggling with the meaninglessness of life and I was not able to outrun my past, the indoctrination. I tried very hard. I went to therapy, I read things, science became my new God, but it was somehow ultimately unsatisfying and it didn't answer questions about well, where does love come from? It shut the door on mystery. Awe wonder, where does altruism come from?
Speaker 2:I wasn't happy and after a crisis between my husband and I, I remember wishing that I believed in something because I didn't know where to go for answers. And I remember thinking I wish I could pray and I realized I was in the posture of prayer, that in my unhappiness I had sunk to the floor and was on my knees. I had sunk to the floor and was on my knees and I didn't think too much about it, but at the time just recognized wow, full circle here. And then I had an experience of a presence, wasn't it's very hard to describe, and I was an atheist, so it was the last thing I was expecting was this feeling, sudden being flooded with this feeling of love, acceptance and awareness that there was something beyond myself.
Speaker 2:And I remember saying out loud this God, are you God? Um, and I? I didn't really get an answer to that question. I just knew that if I made certain changes in my life, that I was going to be okay, and that was to open up to the idea of something bigger than myself. And I was terrified. That meant well, I'm going to have to return to the Mormon church. It's so funny, the black and white thinking.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, for sure.
Speaker 2:If your only context of God is this, then it's hard to open your mind to the idea of what else it can be. But that's the point at which I became willing to look at other definitions of the divine. God still to this day, has connotations for me that are too religious in nature. I don't feel like it's a big enough word to describe what I felt Right. It's too small and and I'm not sure that I could say what I believe now exactly it's hard to put into words, but it is a and it's a mystery to me, but it's not one that I feel like I need to solve.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel the same way. I get that, oh really. Yeah, just like being in the experience is more than I could have ever imagined and that's full enough. It's just constantly like I don't want to put definition on it because then it stops there at the definition and I just love the infiniteness of source, energy or or whatever we want to call it. Like that it constantly expands and I learn more and I grow deeper and more connected and like I don't ever want to define that because I don't ever want it to stop evolving Right and I really realize that words are only pointers to direct us to what the experience is.
Speaker 2:They can't define the experience. They do the best job they can, but some things are beyond words and this is one of those kinds of experiences. So I learned how to meditate. I was very interested in finding a path back to that state of euphoria, bliss, and looked at different formal religions, buddhism particularly. With my meditation practice I was looking at, you know, different types, different styles of meditation, but ultimately I'm put off by a lot of what organized religion involves and the difference between spirituality and religion for me is that spirituality is much more personal, specific ideology rules that define beliefs for everyone in the group and, after having myself defined in the Mormon church in ways that were damaging, the last thing I was interested in was someone else defining my relationship with God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get that. Yeah, so when you left I know you were mentioning earlier, you were talking about the indoctrinate not being able to outrun the indoctrination, and I get that on a personal level, because I feel like I've kind of been through a similar experience. I moved 6,000 miles away to Hawaii instead of dealing with it, but then, 20 years later, I'm like, oh wait, this is still completely ruling my life and the decisions that I make and the way I feel about myself and the way I feel about other people, and you know just so many things. So I just would love to hear what you're thinking about Exactly.
Speaker 2:I did the same thing. I tried a geographic. You know I moved to New York City. It's about as far away physically and experientially as you can get from. You know, utah is quite wonder, bread, baby and um. You know the diversity, melting pot, uh, of ideas and people and uh, colors and uh was huge, a huge shift, and I thought I could shed my skin like a snake and come out the other side with this move. And, like your experience, I found that anything that I had not consciously brought up and dealt with was running my life and I had experiences of just how long the deconstructing process is. It takes years and it takes being in a variety of situations, I think, to see what's still active. It's like peeling an onion you get through one layer and you think, okay, I'm done.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then there's another layer a deeper layer. Yeah, did you find um that you're leaving? Um created a schism in your family because that was a huge you know my experience you know it hadn't.
Speaker 1:Because I haven't. I'm not going to say I was hiding, I just kind of like left it all behind and was like that's not me, I'm going to where I can be. Me came here, you know, and I've been my own journey that I'm not going to get all the way into but, like you know, through different spiritual practices and like in the whole new age world and like everything until I've, you know, found myself where I am now. But so it wasn't public, like it was just me doing my own thing 6,000 miles away. Nobody knew. I'm in a different time zone, different life, different friends, different people.
Speaker 1:And it knows that I'm not in church, but just kind of like never bothered with it, like I felt like my whole life was consumed by the church for the first 20 years, that I didn't want to be the church girl or the anti-church girl. I just didn't want to be involved with the church. I just was living my own life, doing my own thing, own thing. But since I started this podcast and I've been writing this book and like being more public about my experience and my feelings, now I'm experiencing those things that I would have experienced 20 years ago.
Speaker 1:Interesting, yeah, so um, yeah, a lot of people that I used to feel seen by and close to they just can't help themselves but send me religious stuff all the time online and trying to convert me and all of that which is really dehumanizing. Yeah, you know, I still haven't heard a word from my mom about it. I'm assuming either she knows or she doesn't know and she likes to look away from things that she doesn't like. So we're just going to leave it at that. But other I've had some family members secretly kind of come behind the scenes and say I'm proud of you and thank you for doing this and this is so needed. And then the other ones are like you know, of course, I'm going to hell and I'm heretic and blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:so I'm just trying from all this peace, joy and happiness I'm experiencing over here. But, yeah, I'm really starting to see this. So I'd really love to talk more because I know you have a lot of experience with this and that you touch on this in your book about like setting boundaries with family and navigating these different relationships. So you know, people who are estranged from their families, like leaving the religion. You know, what would you, what would you say to that?
Speaker 2:When I left, I was the real divide in my family, a polarization between the mormons and the heretics, and it we scattered. When my parents divorced, my father ultimately, uh, for a couple of different reasons, uh, very significant reasons, uh also ended up pulling away from the church. He never left, but he stopped become being active and that was enough for my parents. It created a divide between my parents that could they couldn't reconcile and they divorced after 28 years of marriage. And it really put my family clearly into two camps those aligned as Mormons, with my mother and because my mother was all about doubling down then, you know, more committed than ever to her faith and the heretics, which were exploring lots of different possibilities to define spirituality or God.
Speaker 2:And it took a crisis in our family and I'm not going to go into it here, but that crisis it was a secret that we didn't know about and when that came to light, luckily, my family decided that family therapy might be helpful, because we were geographically and emotionally at that point quite distant and hadn't seen each other in a couple of years, maybe five years, and after being a very, very tight plan. So everybody was kind of off doing their own thing and we decided to gather once a year for a couple of days of family therapy and a reunion, and family therapy helped us understand that a lot of what our issues were were semantic, that we were more alike than we were different. When you really got through all of it, we loved our kids, we wanted to be good parents, we cared about the human race, we had values that were very similar, an awareness that there was a possibility that we could dialogue more respectfully and more um be more open about allowing everyone to have their own path.
Speaker 1:And that is not too typical no, it's not uh in a mormon family initiated this and how did you get everyone on board?
Speaker 2:uh, like I said, it was a crisis that was that shocked the family to its core and that was enough to, I think, make people aware that we needed to do something. Or we might as well just say you know, we're not a family anymore and everybody go their own separate ways. I also think that the non-Mormons had all gotten some therapy of some sort, both to leave to learn how to live with deconstructing their experience in the church, but also just personal issues. There was some alcohol and addiction issues, and those 12-step programs are incredibly helpful for raising your awareness and giving you some tools. But it was tough going. We, even today, don't discuss religion or politics. It's sort of just a tacit agreement across the board. We agree to disagree, but sometimes you know assumptions are made. For example, you know when we're at a family gathering, you know the Mormons are the ones who bless the food because they're the religious.
Speaker 1:Because they're talking to God right.
Speaker 2:They've got the direct. Line.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's the subtle little things and they don't. The Mormons don't understand why we might be offended that we're not included in. Well, dirk, would you, you know my brother, would you like to offer a blessing? You know that wouldn't do it for them. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Oh, I do yes.
Speaker 2:And so it's. It's not easy and I think we are very careful and it still feels a little fragile at times, but most of us now at this point have had individual therapy and most of us now at this point have had individual therapy and that is, I mean, worth its weight in gold in terms of soul to the devil and I was going to be in outer darkness forever, or my mother chose to believe that eventually I would return, which she maintained for the next 30 years until she died.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my mom is still there too, uh-huh.
Speaker 2:Yeah and so, but I realized that I had to honor each person's way of handling the situation and not judge it too much, because we also realize that we don't control anybody else, and so my parents attempts to control us and make us into fine upstanding Mormon members had failed. And so you know, when you run out of options, you sometimes can turn to something more healthy, which is tolerance, acceptance and love, acceptance and love and we, we really focus.
Speaker 2:I think our motto is we're more alike than we are different and try to find the common ground yeah so we we had family reunions after after that, where we finally dropped family therapy and just got together for three or four days at some location. We took turns running the family reunion and the stories became more like black humor. You know remember when we did this and how awful that was, um, and we avoided things that would create tension or issues between us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're just going to leave the elephant in the corner, huh.
Speaker 2:Well, there's no way for it to be resolved. Yeah, I mean, the Mormons see their way as absolute truth, and I would say, some of my brothers and sisters in their respective spiritual paths maybe feel more like that, even though I think the heretics tend to have a more inclusive idea of a spiritual path, that there are many paths up the mountain to god, whereas the mormons know that there is only one, theirs. Yeah, and that's how do you? There's there's no compromise in in viewing it, you know, from a different perspective. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious, because you come from this legacy. I deal with this a lot in my family because my grandparents were the pastors of our church. But they were also very good people, like they were just very loving, kind people who gave us a lot of values and things that were good. Now there's also a shadow side to that, like there is to anything that you know a lot of enmeshment, a lot of unhealthy family bonds, a lot of guilt and shame and like obligation and those kinds of things which you know.
Speaker 1:Those who haven't deconstructed can't really quite see that. And so I deal with a lot of this like family legacy, like I'm ruining the family legacy, like it's their job to uphold the family legacy, like I'm ruining the family legacy, like it's their job to uphold the family legacy. Like there's this enmeshment. They can't separate my grandparents as these two human people who had all sides from this legacy of the church. So I know you have that even deeper, going as far back in your history. How did that show up for you and how did you navigate it?
Speaker 2:back in your history. How did that show up for you and how did you navigate it? Boy, I can I'm nodding my head here because I can completely relate, um the sense I mean. The mantra in my family was you're a Smith, um, you know, I E make me proud. You know, ie make me proud. Don't shame the family.
Speaker 2:There was a lot Embodied in that statement and it wasn't. They were also high achievers. You know, my father came from a family where all of his brothers had been student body president. They were all Eagle Scouts. They all went on missions for the Mormon church. There was an expectation to be better than because you had been. You were special, you were singled out, you had been blessed by God, and so you were held to a higher standard and in everything.
Speaker 2:And that perfectionism was a big part of my experience of dismantling how much came from family and how much came from the church, because we're instructed to be perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect, as Jesus is perfect, and yet in therapy I'm learning that it's okay not to be perfect, you know. So you have. You really see where they come into conflict. And yeah, it was hard and it was also fairly public, which is one of the reasons I left Utah was not to shame my family and my cousins and aunts and uncles with being a sinner.
Speaker 2:And the Mormon church is so intimately integrated with community there they don't refer to it as the Mormon church or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's the church. Nobody bothers to preface it because it is the norm, is the norm, and so, um, it wasn't until I left that I could even see it a little more objectively, uh, through, uh, the rear view mirror. But, um, like I said, uh, it caught up with me all the indoctrination and especially the role for women in Utah. In the Mormon church, you are honored for being a mother, that is, they call it even the mother of Zion issue. There are really high rates of depression for Mormon women in Utah, one of the highest in the country. They have the highest rate of antidepressant use in the country, but their depression rates are extremely high, and I've written a blog, um, which you can find on my website, uh, which is just lynnsmithgregorycom.
Speaker 1:I'll link it in the description as well.
Speaker 2:About why that is the case and there is. It's such a patriarchal society. You don't see women in leadership positions. You don't see women in leadership positions you don't see women in, and the only really available option, regardless of your desires or your inclination, is wife and mother. And that's really limiting and that's really limiting.
Speaker 2:There's also a sort of toxic positivity about putting a happy face on everything. The psychologist explained it as the well, if I'm struggling and my neighbor across the street, who's also a Mormon, has three more kids than I do and she seems to be doing great, what am I doing wrong? And so it's very hidden. The struggles are hidden. It's like there's something wrong with me which is internalized, and one of the things that I realized was that it was never okay to express anger. As a woman, you're supposed to be nice, you're supposed to be nice, you're supposed to be sweet, you know, and you're not supposed to be ambitious, selfish, want things other than what the church wants for you, let alone to have a say in things and even the temple ceremonies and stuff. I mean, men hold the priesthood in the Mormon church, which is the power to act in God's name, not women.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And it's just in every single part of your life, and it happens at an age when you are so young and I personally think we're held hostage to the view of the world that we're born into until we take it apart, and it's what we filter everything through.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes. And when that filter is at its core, you are born unworthy and sinful. Wow, that's what the world looks like. That's what the world looks like, no matter what you do. Of course, you feel wrong or like there's something wrong with me or I'm unlovable or whatever, because that's literally what we're taught is the basis of our creation, right?
Speaker 2:And you were created in sin and you have to be saved, mm. Hmm, yeah, it's a little different, it's like a real loving God huh. No, it's like who wants him?
Speaker 2:The petulant, narcissist God. I was younger that this idea of God. You know that there were certain things you could do that were unforgivable and I thought what could one of my kids do? Right, that would be unforgivable. I couldn't imagine it. And I thought and it was a dangerous thought to have that, well, if I'm capable of forgiving them, you know what's wrong with God, you know, and that was quickly squashed. I don't know how questions were handled in your experience in a religious setting, but they were all well. You don't need to know that now and it will all be explained in the hereafter, and just put that on the shelf, right, you know that Well for me, it was more like the devil is talking to you.
Speaker 1:We need to pray so that those demons or whatever, don't you know, possess you and overtake your mind and your soul, and you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there was always a real sense of danger that you know the devil was working overtime to sway you to his ways and that you had to be eternally vigilant, maintain their I was going to say control, but their homogenous nature is churches is not a Sunday thing, it's an all week thing. I mean every single day of the week there is something going on at the church. There is something going on at the church Monday's family home evening, which is a church scripted lesson, you know. Tuesday is the young men and women's you go back to church for that. You know. Wednesday is choir practice and blah, blah, blah. Thursday is primary, where the little kids get educated and stuff, and then there's priesthood meetings and Relief Society meetings. So it's really becomes a very insular bubble. And you know BYU is so desired so that you can go to a university setting and meet other Mormons at a time at which you're picking a future spouse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I grew up Pentecostal, so it's very similar. You know, you go to the Bible college as a woman so that you can find your husband. You can find your preacher husband, which is the dream, right, right, or like my personal nightmare, but it's sold as a dream.
Speaker 2:And did the cracks happen early for you, and were they sudden?
Speaker 1:Was it a sudden shift or was it spirits contacting me? But I didn't understand at the time. I thought they were demons because that was the only association I had for spirits outside of God and angels.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that scared me a lot. So there was, I bought in, I did go in 100% for a very long time, but there was always this part of me that I knew existed and that I knew had a purpose, even though I had been convinced at that time that it was demonic or whatever. Like that was just this part of me that didn't believe it. And I feel like you know, 90% of me was like, yes, I'll enter whatever. But that was that 10%, just kind of hiding in the background, waiting for the opportunity and what's actually you know for the opportunity and what's actually you know.
Speaker 1:To be completely candid, for me it was cannabis. I was so afraid to think of anything outside of what I've been taught. I was so afraid that I would go to hell. I was so afraid I would disappoint God. I couldn't even allow myself to think those things.
Speaker 1:But when I would use cannabis, it would open up my mind and all the things that I already knew, I couldn't deny them anymore. I couldn't deny. And so it was a gradual of that of me getting all this understanding that I already had and being like, okay, this isn't a mistake, this, what I'm hearing right now, what I'm experiencing right now, this is more real than anything I've heard in those in those four walls, and there was no denying it for me. So the me so the. It was sort of gradual, but like I was yeah one, I'm very much that way once the veil is lifted, once I see something I can't unsee it, I can't pretend anymore, I can't go back. So, yeah, it's like the end, or locked working on. You know, in therapy I'm like still undoing the indoctrination, part of it. But as far as the doctrine I left that long time it was, it was uh, it was just a natural transition.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, yeah, yeah, interesting, and it's interesting the what's happening, uh, with psilocybin and mental health right now in terms of ways that we can get, you know, unlock our brain from its indoctrinated, hardwired almost ways of thinking to be more open to um other ideas. But I mean, I have been very surprised at how um deep the indoctrination went. I I've been out of the church for decades now and I found myself several times surprised at situations that I didn't think would trigger me. That triggered me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get that. Like you said, it's an onion, it's just the layers, and you're like, oh, I thought I had dealt with that. Oh, here's a deeper layer, yay, so do you still have family members that are leaving, like the church, or is it just kind of done who's in is in and who's out is out? How does that uh?
Speaker 2:I yeah, it's been only in the last couple of years that several people have loved. So one was when my sister's son, who was a beloved member of her big family. She was a heavy-duty Mormon. Nine kids and one of her boys announced came out as gay. Well, the Mormon church is quite homophobic. I mean they say out of one side of their mouth that you know, we love everybody, but they are can't hold the priesthood, they can't really basically participate in any way. And they have participated. The church has participated in Suggesting that kids go to conversion therapy and stuff. So it's pretty homophobic.
Speaker 2:And he is just the kindest, gentlest, most peace-loving soul and adored in that family and that just was a river she couldn't cross. She was like any church that thinks that he doesn't belong and isn't as valued a member of society or our religious organization. There's something wrong there and that was what triggered her um decision to leave and all of her kids followed suit except one. Wow, so yeah, sometimes it takes something like that um, others had, um uh got. One of my sister-in-laws got breast cancer and had a spiritual experience and she had been questioning the mormon church and had a spiritual experience and for it confirmed that religion. You know they were. That's just the words people use to describe what I'm experiencing, and it doesn't. It doesn't have the kind of formal boundaries that the Mormon church had required.
Speaker 1:It sounds like there's some like generational wounding and curses that are being broken in your family. I love that, yeah, because there's not that death grip so much.
Speaker 2:You know like there's a lot of parents who would have stuck with the church not their child, unfortunately so yeah, it's true, I I have a tremendous amount of respect because and there there's a huge population Unfortunately Utah has a very high rate of gay suicide. Yeah, because there is a lot of rejection and lack of acceptance by devout Mormon members. They absolutely see it as a sin and, um, you know, can't get past it, um, yeah.
Speaker 1:What, what, what advice would you give to somebody who's leaving the church or who has a family member Like what ways do you support your family when this is happening? Or what ways do you support your family when this is happening, or what ways do you find that have been helpful for people who are deconstructing?
Speaker 2:Right, right, it's a great question. I think giving yourself permission to take time to fully absorb and define how you feel before interacting with your family is a good suggestion.
Speaker 1:That's really great advice.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't go back to your family when you feel kind of half-cocked. Go ahead and give yourself permission to take as much time as you need to fully decide exactly how you do feel and how you want to handle the situation in terms of disclosing not choosing not to disclose it whatever. I would suggest getting therapeutic support and a supportive community. Nowadays you can go online ex-Mormon In fact, there's a term Mormon blogosphere because there are so many ex-Mormons online. Um, uh, because often they're in isolated situations uh, rural towns or whatever or they don't know who to be it's safe to be out loud about their doubts with, and so, um, find a supportive community, preferably in person, but online, and also find some friends who have your back.
Speaker 2:So, because I underestimated the loss of family, the sense of family, and I was fortunate that I had one or two really good friends who had my back at a time when I felt like it wasn't safe to go home, you know, or talk to my family about what I was feeling and I think, having a lot of compassion and grace with your own deconstructing experience, I wish somebody had said this is going to take time, this is not an easy thing to do. Uh, an easy thing to do. I thought that once I understood that I'd been brainwashed, ie indoctrinated um, you know when, when I was in college, I I took psychology classes and learned about brainwashing and group think and all that, and I thought, okay, understand that I'm done. All that. And I thought, okay, understand that I'm done. And of course, that's just not the way it works.
Speaker 1:And understanding things intellectually and processing them emotionally are two different things yeah, yeah, I get that completely, completely, um, yeah, understanding it intellectually and then realizing oh wait, it's still. It's still hanging out, it's still hanging out over here. Um, what do you feel? Like I? I know for me like there was like a a huge loss, and wouldn't say a loss of identity, but like what, why? You know, like, with the church you're given so much purpose, you have this like this is what you're doing, this is what you're here for, this is like whatever and I know I have, you know, found my own footing in that now, and I'm very clear about who I am and my enjoyment of the world, which is why I believe I'm here. But what do you? How did you reestablish your identity or build a new identity for yourself?
Speaker 2:That's a such a great question because it was such a huge part of my identity.
Speaker 2:Being a Smith was being related to Joseph Smith made me special.
Speaker 2:I was the envy of all my friends you know in the church because of the way they revere bloodline connections, and it was being a Mormon and being a Smith Mormon was everything to me and I didn't expect to feel the loss, especially as my family was imploding at the same time felt very adrift, unrooted, and it took quite a while before I was able to articulate, really took until I had my spiritual experience myself that I felt safe enough.
Speaker 2:Luckily, I also married a man very, and our relationship was very much unlike my parents, which was very patriarchal in nature and I saw my mother as completely powerless and she was the martyr and he was the martyr and he was the um, uh, severe patriarch and he anchored me, um, and I also saw a different way of being um through the kind of general acceptance that he gave me that wasn't based on perfection or performance, but kind of a love that was just because he loved me, I mean, and that was a whole new concept, uh, that kind of love and so and so when I started, when we had our own family, I was all about you know um doing it differently. Yeah, of course that's challenging.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when it's wired into your brain wired into your brain yeah, like it likes to show up. Yeah, there's some things that I realized that always I felt different or awkward or weird, and I realized now it was just these, these beliefs that were in me, that I was different or, like you said, special or whatever. And a lot of judgment and a lot of yeah, just be feeling on the outside of things. So I get that yeah, to have real love.
Speaker 2:It shows you what the other isn't you know that's a great way to say it. You know, when you have the real deal, you recognize that the other is fool's gold. You know it's pretend it's fool's gold.
Speaker 1:That's a great way to put it. Yeah, yeah, and I always say that about like figuring out who you are, rebuilding identity or whatever. For me, it's like before you can do that, you have to figure out who you're not.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's so true. I know that's not who I am, right judgmental, critical, uh, intolerant arrogance yeah uh-huh, uh, convinced I'm the only person with the right answer yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:it's hard on relationships, isn't it when you think you know everything?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know it was weird coming to terms with the fact that there was something that was so safe about the certainty of Mormon answers. I didn't realize how safe that felt. Mormons had an answer for everything.
Speaker 2:I didn't have any answers for anything, so it was you know just such a huge flip of the switch and, you know, I missed that certainty and I tried to fill it with being a certain atheist. Yeah, these people, they just can't, you know, accept the fact that it's a random universe and they need the idea of God because, you know so, I was just as certain and arrogant, and in my position as an atheist, you know, than my brothers and sisters were with their you know dogma, until I was broken open with the spiritual experience that I realized that it's all about connection, acceptance, forgiveness. Yeah, I.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I love that In all of this journey and everything that you've been through up until this point, where would you say that you are now? Would?
Speaker 2:you say that you are now, I would say that I'm no longer in active search mode. I think for quite a while I was constantly reading the latest book on spirituality that came out. A sister and my father really got into A Course in Miracles, which is a spiritual belief, a path, and I looked at that and it didn't fit for me exactly. So I liked a lot of the concepts of it, but I didn't want to be defined down. But I felt I was. I was pressed to continue to explore, uh, search mode. I was in the self-help section of the bookstore a lot, yeah, yeah, and whether it was conversation with God, you know whether it's untethering my soul or you know, whatever it was, I was looking for.
Speaker 2:The answers. Go of the idea that there are, there is one answer. Um was so free because now, um, now I can see. Well, it looks like that's the answer for you. You know that's wonderful, or I don't need to have the answer defined. I am now content with the mystery. I don't need to know how it all works, love, but, um, it influences my life in a way that makes me I feel a better person. My mantra in the morning when I get up I set my intention and basically say let me be the face of kindness in every encounter. Today, that's, it's so simple now, whereas before. How does it all work? What happens after we die? Do we retain consciousness? Are we a drop in the ocean? You know, I wanted all the answers and I don't know if it's just because I'm getting older that I'm more satisfied with not having them, but it doesn't trouble me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I get that. Yeah, I feel like that need for the answers, that need for like something definite, is a result of the indoctrination, because, like you said, we're given these set of rules and if you follow these rules then you're going to be OK. And so I feel like I know with me, like my brain is always grasping for a definite and that's my newest thing that I've been working on within myself is just like what do you feel? Like you get to decide what the answer is. You get to choose what the answer is. There is no definite. What is right for you, what feels in line with you, um, which also shows me that, like in the choices that I make, the, the, the attributes that I had given to the church about myself, the loving, kindness and and all of my spiritual connection and so many things that I had given credit to the church for now that I make decisions just based on who, what feels authentic to me, I realized that those things were just authentic to me.
Speaker 2:It didn't belong to the church, you know, it's just interesting that you were able to make that distinction and claim those for yourself it's only been recent, but yeah, it's been a blessing for sure.
Speaker 1:Wonderful, that's wonderful yeah, yeah yeah, so I um, I'd like to end with what. What advice would you give with somebody who's thinking about deconstructing, with somebody who's just starting to have those thoughts about leaving? What would you give them?
Speaker 2:You know, I would say be compassionate with yourself. This is a painful, sometimes process. It feels uncertain, it's going to take time and reach out and for the resources and support that you need on your journey and we all need those. There's no way to do this alone, and that's one of the gifts is finding community, a different kind of community, outside of the church community that you grew up in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. I appreciate your time, lynn, and for everybody listening, I will be posting all of the links and all the information on how to follow along her journey in the description of the show, as well as the blog post that follows a couple of weeks later. So, thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it was a pleasure talking with you.