Shaking in my (tall, black, leather, four inch-heeled, fuck-me) boots

From:     Rhonda Relief Society* <rrsociety@gmail.com> 

Subject:     Contact with LDS Church

Date:     August 7, 2009 8:26:27 AM EDT

To:     myemailaddress@University.edu

Hi Amy,

It has probably been a few months since you last received an email from the 1st Ward Relief Society, due to our slower summer, vacation filled months. I hope your summer is going well.

I'm grateful that you allow us to send you (via email) invites to these activities, but we definitely do not want to be a burden and end up in your spam box. I'm certain that there are reasons why you and your husband have not been attending church services (or perhaps you have and I just haven't met you yet). In either case, I would like to ask you (and your family) what your desire level of contact with the church is. Would you be comfortable with home and visiting teachers, newsletters, telephone calls, receiving weekly ward and RS email announcements, or no contact at all. This last option is quite extreme resulting in either a personal, telephone or mail contact from and with Bishop Oooohhh Intimidating Priesthood Authority**.

Please prayerfully consider what you would like and what you would like us to do, and I hope to hear back from you within the next few days.

Thanks for your time and understanding.

Best,

Rho*

_________________________________________________

This was an email from some woman, maybe the RS President, in the local ward.  I had never attended there.  My thoughts were:

• "How did they get my email address?" After I searched through my emails I remembered that I had sent an email in response to one of these "invites" informing them that they had been sending the emails to my husband's email address and that I was never going to attend a RS event. We assume that they got his address through the online student directory where he was a student, which can only be accessed by students and faculty and is specifically NOT supposed to be used for non-academic purposes.
• "I am sure she sincerely hopes that a stranger's summer is going well. Stupid niceties."
• "Are you grateful?  Really? Why?"
• "When did I give permission or state that I would 'allow' you to send these emails?  And how could I have prevented it?"
• "You TOTALLY want to be a burden and you TOTALLY ended up in my spam box."
• "You are certain that there are reasons I am not attending?  Yeah, no shit.  I don't do anything without some sort of reason. I am certain that you just threw in this sentence so that you could passively-aggressively imply that my reasons are invalid."
• "Perhaps you just haven't met me?  You have some doubt about whether I am or am not attending at yet you are willing to send this accusatory email?  Would it not be worth finding out if I attend before sending this?"
• "Is my desire(d) level of contact with the church not implied by my complete absence from it?  If I wanted contact, I would show up occasionally or respond to my home teachers.  I might even give my phone number to someone."
• "Wait. Whoa. Has there been some sort of paradigm shift in the church since I left?  Have gender roles been eliminated?  Do I actually get to speak not just for myself but also for my family and the priesthood holder in my home? Can I be trusted to determine what is best for me? Is my husband's authority over me and my submission to his decisions no longer required?"
• "No contact at all. I definitely choose no contact at all."
• "Oh, that last 'option' is 'quite extreme'?"
• "Are you threatening me?  If I don't show up or submit to allowing others to harass me I will be forced to submit to harassment by the Bishop? And how will that be enforced? How can I be made to meet with, open the door for, answer calls from, or read correspondence from the Bishop? Bwaaahahahahahah!  You actually think that the church has some authority over me!  That I would recognize or tolerate that authority! Silly woman."
• "If I believed in prayer would you need to ask me to please prayerfully consider what I want? Wouldn't I have already prayed about my relationship to the church?  Has it occurred to you that perhaps I no longer attend because I don't believe in a god to whom I could pray?"
• "Oh Honey!  Believe me when I say that you do NOT want to hear back from me.  I don't respond calmly to veiled threats, passive-aggressive insults, or faked concern. I've got nothing nice to say to you and I am hoping that my non-response is understood as the response that it is intended to be."
• "I don't 'understand' you or the motivation behind this email at all."
• "Shit.  Fuck. Damn.  Am I about to be excommunicated? Is this email intended to elicit a response that can be used as evidence so that I can be convicted of apostasy? Am I paranoid?  Has the church been notified about the negative things I say on my blog. Why is this email sent now, eight years after I stopped attending? Very minimal effort has been made to have contact with me previously but I haven't been threatened with Bishop confrontation before."  

I didn't respond to the email.  I was tempted to tell this woman exactly what I thought of her tactics but I held myself back.  I never heard from her or the Bishop or anyone else for that matter.  This email was the last straw for me.  I knew I was never going back but I wasn't sure resigning was really necessary.  This email made it clear to me that the attempts to visiting/home teach me, drop-in visits from the missionaries, emails, letters, and phone calls would never stop until I insisted that they MUST.

*Name changed to protect the passive aggressive bitchy stranger innocent.
**Name changed to protect the Self-Important Local Patriarch innocent.

I haven't told my mom.

I've been wrestling with the decision to tell or not tell my mom that I have resigned from the church.  I put off resigning because I was worried about hurting her.  Last year, I could take it no more so I resigned. My husband chose to announce his resignation to his parents.  They took the news surprisingly calmly.  I expected a major freak-out.  Instead, they reacted with less concern and emotion than when we told them we wouldn't be getting sealed in the temple. (Have I told you that story?  If not, I really should so remind me sometime.)  That said, they are extremely judgmental of his lifestyle.  I guess they have learned to keep it to themselves.  That's progress, right?

I couldn't bring myself to tell my mom.  We have sort of an unspoken agreement about this sort of uncomfortable discussion.  I don't tell her something she doesn't want to hear.  I will if she asks.  Since she doesn't want to know, she doesn't ask.  She has never asked me any questions about the years of complete inactivity and she certainly hasn't asked if I have resigned.  I haven't confessed outright to my atheism.  She knows that I'm a liberal and a feminist.  Maybe she figures she knows why I stopped attending.  But, she suggested a few days ago that I should go back to church as a means of making friends when I move later this year.  I told her it was never going to happen.  You see what I mean about our unspoken agreement?  She pushed the issue, I answered.

So far, I have adopted the same approach to my resignation.  I'll tell her if she asks but I am not going to tell her because I don't want her to perceive that as me throwing it in her face.  I am not sure if there is any reason she needs to know.  Does she need to know?  But, I've been sort of living with the fear that she will find out from someone else, if she hasn't already.  I don't want her to feel like I kept something from her.  I believe in being honest with my parents.  I always have.  Is it dishonest to keep something from her because it can only hurt her?  Is that lying by omission? Am I obligated to share everything about myself, my life, and my decisions with everyone in my life? I don't know.  I also believe in being authentic.  I don't want to hide major aspects of myself from friends and family.  I want my mom to know because I want her to understand me.  I know she will love and accept me no matter what so I don't stand to lose anything.  But would it be fair to tell her because I want her to know?

What do you think? Should I tell her?

Parental Priorities

I've placed two polls to the right side.  I've had a long-standing curiosity about how LDS parents prioritize their kids' secular vs. religious educations.  I also want to know about approval.  Are children hoping to gain approval from their LDS parents better off being letter-of-the-law Mormon kids, being super-spiritual/religious Mormon kids, or focusing on their studies and extracurricular activities and staying out of trouble? I would really appreciate as many responses as possible.  In addition, and as always, comments are welcomed so please elaborate in a comment if you'd like.

So, let me tell you why I am curious.  Growing up, my parents always told me that I HAD to go to college.  According to them this wasn't a choice and because I valued my own secular education, I never questioned that.  Furthermore, my parents never said anything to me that might reinforce the pressure to get married, have babies, and be a SAHM that I got at church. In fact, I believe that the message from my parents was that I should get as much education as I could/as I wanted/as I needed so that I would have all options open to me as an adult.  I was very studious of my own will so they didn't need to enforce good grades but I am sure that they would have if my grades had slipped much.  They were very supportive of my desires to be a good student and learn outside of school or participate in extracurricular activities and even supported my choices when I felt that my church responsibilities were interfering with my participation in other things.  When I became an adult, I started college at BYU.  But, I realized very quickly that the religious aspect of education there was overshadowing my secular education, and preventing me from seeing other perspectives of the world, far more that I was comfortable accepting.  When after a year I decided to leave BYU and transfer to one of the University of California schools, my parents were supportive and non-judgmental and were clearly more concerned about my thoughts and feelings about my education than whether there would be a significant religious component to my education or if I would be able to meet an upstanding RM to marry.  I know that my parents felt a certain amount of (righteous) pride in having a child at BYU but when that was no longer to be the case, they never let on to me or anyone else that they were even a little disappointed (if they were).  In addition, they were extremely proud of my accomplishments at UCLA. (They may not realize it, but there were certainly more accomplishments at UCLA than there would have been at BYU just by virtue of my having many more opportunities there.)

When I decided to leave the church, there was very little, if any, commentary on that choice from my parents. I had been skeptical since childhood and asked a lot of questions that ended with "really?", so they weren't terribly surprised.  I have never felt that my parents loved me any less or were any less proud of me after I stopped attending church.

I thought all of that was just normal parenting and love.  However, my husband had a very different situation with his parents. I don't want to speak for him so I won't elaborate too much but just share my perspective on it.  As far as I can tell, there was little if any attention paid to his education.  In high school, he wasn't a stellar student - he skipped a lot of class and got bad grades and hid report cards, etc, - and was never in much trouble for it.  It is important to note that my Hubster is exceptionally intelligent and LOVES learning.  So, his bad grades and class-skipping were not the result of him struggling academically or being a bad kid.  He just wasn't sufficiently supported or expected to live up to his potential.  I think his lack-luster academic performance was primarily the consequence of some depression and social anxiety that was either not fully appreciated or not adequately treated (or both). They did take him to a psychiatrist once but when the first medication he was given didn't help after a month at the first dose he was prescribed, they allowed him to stop taking it and they never insisted on or even suggested a follow-up appointment to ask if something different could be done.  As far as church goes, I can say that I have never known anyone more concerned about keeping up appearances at church than my in-laws.    My impression is that my MIL and FIL saw their kids more as accessories -  to help them portray the perfect, large, Mormon family - than as children they were responsible for raising into healthy, functioning members of society.

I will share one example.  When my husband was in his first year of grad school at MIT (mere months after attending a college graduation in which their son was on stage receiving honors and awards at least 3 times as frequently as the next most-accomplished graduate) his parents decided they needed to have a serious "heart-to-heart" with their son.  If I recall they did this in person when he was home to attend his sister's wedding.  That talk essentially consisted of his parents expressing how disappointed and concerned they were with the "direction his life was taking."  He was a self-sufficient, intelligent, accomplished, responsible, law-abiding, upstanding citizen with very bright future - the kind of adult child any REASONABLE parent would gush over.  But, he wasn't attending church. For shame.  He was proudly pursuing education while neglecting his eternal salvation.  As you can probably imagine, we were pissed!  His parents did serious and lasting damage to their relationship with their oldest child that day.  They must have known this would be the case, but decided it was worth it to make sure that he knew they did not approve of his choices.  It may also be worth noting that his parents gush over their kids who make bad life decisions but are otherwise at least pretending to be good, uber-churchy Mormons.

It's this difference in the way my husband and I were raised in the church that intrigues me.  Were our upbringings on the extreme poles of a spectrum? Do LDS parents who emphasized the religious education and activity of their children also more or less equally emphasize academics and other talents of skills? Is the extreme emphasis on religion over academics the norm among LDS parents and my upbringing was an anomaly? The polls I've designed are in no way going to be comprehensive or statistically significant. I am obviously polling primarily people who have left the church and may be quite disenfranchised with the church and/or their parents and not sampling many people who were raised in the church who have stayed with it.  But, I'd like to at least get an idea of the perspectives of current and former Mormons who participate in outer-blogness.

These Are a Few of My Favorite "Sins"

Baring my shoulders and more than one piercing

Cute, sexy skivvies and open–mouth kissing

Back rubs then front rubs, that’s where it begins

These are a few of my favorite "sins".

Drinking espresso or tea with two sugars

Ciders, malt-beverages (lambics! and lagers!)

Hot drinks and strong drinks that give me the spins

These are a few of my favorite "sins"

Being pro-choice and anti-scrapbooking

Neglecting housework and family home evening

Earning degrees while putting off children

These are a few of my favorite "sins"

Erotica

Heavy petting

Sex before marriage

I always remember my favorite "sins"

And I wish that I had cleavage

_________________________________

So, Reader, what are your favorite "sins" ?

Labels, Authenticity and Avoiding the Appearance of Evil

Many members live in a isolated social bubble that allows them to believe that apostates are sinning/prideful/offended.  The bubble allows them to believe that it is the first sip that leads inevitably to alcoholism and that atheists are morally bankrupt - having nothing upon which to base their morality.  We have all had the opportunity to see firsthand that these things are not true.  While we may abhor the Church and we may find many church doctrines and policies to be bigoted, deceitful, and so on, we know that it is unfair to ascribe these characteristics to "Mormons" as a group of people. After all, we all have friends and family, people we love and respect, who are tolerant and honest.

For this reason, it is good to be authentic*. It is good to be "out".  I am a firm believer that people need to know that their loved ones are atheist, or gay, or liberal, or democrat, or apostate, or... "different" in whatever way they are different. It's harder to apply labels and their negative connotations to entire groups of people when you love someone who self-identifies as (whatever) and you know they aren't evil and don't do horrible things and, in fact, live moral/ethical lives.

It is also important to remember that when one decides to self-identify as (something), one should represent that label carefully.  If we want our TBM families and friends to know that atheists DO have moral codes based upon their own consciences and humanistic concern for the well-being of others, we need to be kind, compassionate, trustworthy, (Christlike?) people.  If we want them to know that many "apostates" (sorry, I hate it too) leave the church for reasons that aren't sin or pride, we need to vocalize our real reasons.  We need to share and educate.  Just as hate and bigotry are learned, so is tolerance. 

I was just reading the post The Heretic wrote on her response to 8: The Mormon Proposition. My response was perhaps a little different. Before I saw the movie, I knew that the church had been involved, that it didn't seem right to me and that it all made me mad. I can't say that the extent of the Church's involvement was a surprise to me, although I learned a lot of things from the film.  I certainly didn't expect better behavior of Church leadership.  I'm not sure that I was even surprised at how willing so many members were to get behind the proposition.  What did surprise me was how viscerally angry and disgusted I was with the members.  All of them.  I know that there were a considerable number of members who were not comfortable with the involvement or stance of the church leadership and the campaigning going on in their chapels.  Unfortunately, few made any sort of decrial in their wards or among their LDS friends and family.  Fewer still spoke out to the media.  Most sat by quietly - angry but unwilling or unable to voice their disapproval.  I was disappointed to put it mildly. What happened to having the courage of ones convictions and standing up for what is right? I know it's harsh for me to feel that way.  I know that most of those people had much to lose if they had spoken up.  The anger didn't last that long.  But, it did light a fire under me.

I'd been meaning to resign from the church for a few years.  Mostly, I just wanted to get off the harassment lists.  I couldn't seem to get around to it. I kept telling myself I'd definitely do it before I had a child so as to avoid them getting all mixed up in it.  After Prop 8, I realized there was a reason FAR more important to resign my membership.  I didn't condone that organization.  I loathed it. I didn't want to carry that label "Mormon" and all of its baggage around with me anymore because it wasn't something I was proud of to be sure.  I wanted to avoid the appearance of evil. 

I resigned my membership in the CofJCofLDS in 2010.  Resignation was my coming out. It was an important part of representing my ex-Mormon, atheist, and humanist labels.  I'm not a Mormon because I don't believe in god, because the evidence against the claims and character of the church's founder is compelling, and because I honestly think that the CofJCofLDS is a detriment to humanity and I cannot condone its repression of any of my fellow humans. Resignation was also my way of reclaiming my authentic self so that those who love me will see that I am still a good, conscience-guided, compassionate person.

*There are plenty of other reasons it is good to be authentic or course.  It just feels better to project oneself as one truly is.

Confession

Alright, so I have to make a confession.  You might question whether I am really even an ex-Mormon after this one.  I am!  I swear! But, I haven't seen Johnny Lingo.

How is that possible?  I don't know.  Where did you all see it? Was it something they showed in YM/YW? Did anyone else manage to completely miss it?

Should I see it now just so I finally know what the hell you are all talking about? I have some vague notion that someone is bartering 8 (or is it 6? 7?) cows either to get a wife or is demanding that she come with 8 cows because she's hideous or something.  Will it make me mad?  It sounds like it will make me mad.  Having heard about the movie but never having seen it, I don't really understand what the message is supposed to be.

The Squelching of Passion

I didn't believe much that I learned at church. Book of Mormon stories that my teacher told to me...like the ones graphically and hilariously described by Cognitive Dissenter here were clearly not possibly factual and anyone who took anything in that book, or any of the other Sacred Works, literally, seemed silly and juvenile.  I mean, really. Really? I still don’t believe anyone really, truly believes those things.

So, scriptural stories of miraculous adventures, visions of angels, and the stone-facilitated translation of golden plates were the sorts of things I didn’t believe. 

These are the things I wanted to believe:

• That my family would be together forever if we happened to exist, in some form, following this life.
• That although misguided and willfully delusional, my fellow church members were good and honest, loving people.
• That there was some wisdom to be found in the transparently false scripture stories, simple metaphors, and trite “real-life stories” of blessings bestowed upon the faithful that made up the lessons I heard in church each week.
• That even if it was all a hoax or the result of a few caught-up individuals believing the rantings of a crazy person proclaiming himself to be a prophet (and then passing these rantings as fact to their children for many generations), adherence to the plain and simple lifestyle (as dictated from the podium and socially enforced on the members by the members) would result in stability and security and loving family and ergo, happiness. 
• That I could find intellectual stimulation, passion, romance, excitement, and adventure within the confines of that lifestyle. 

These are the things that I knew:

• That I had a loving family in this life.
• That my family members were good, honest, loving and tolerant people.
• That I wanted stability, security, loving family AND intellectual satisfaction, passion, romance, excitement, adventure and happiness. Just, you know, “It All.”

These are the problems with the Church’s prescription for happiness and a life well-lived (please add at will in a comment):

• The preoccupation with the eternal family precludes the fullest enjoyment of family in this life, which is the only one we know we get for sure.
• The preoccupation with the eternal family makes members unable to accept or tolerate family members who don't share belief in LDS doctrine. This can strain or destroy otherwise healthy and happy relationships.
• The LDS lifestyle, with all of the callings and duties, leaves little time for the enjoyment of family. Hence the need for ONE (and only ONE) designated night reserved for family.  Although honestly, is Family Home Evening - complete with a boring lesson, scripture study, maybe a game, and dessert – really the best way to build meaningful relationships and enjoy our families?
• The “wisdom” found in LDS teachings would have one believe that strict, unquestioning observance of every rule is the path to peace and happiness.
• Preoccupation with the rules distracts people from developing the characteristics of genuine goodness – like honesty, love, tolerance, charity, integrity, and loyalty – and can delude members who manage to follow each and every rule into believing they are exemplary people.  These rules aren’t the ones given by Jesus, which actually do describe how to be a genuinely good person. (I’m no Christian but Jesus is at least reported to have said some pretty great things.)
• Preoccupation with who is and who isn’t breaking the rules prevents members from seeing the more substantial strengths in each other and in their family members. This scrutiny results in the fear - of scorn and retribution - that tends to keep people in line which is good for the church of course.  But, it is completely lacking in compassion and doesn't help people to build meaningful friendships.
• Shared  trivial rule-following does not result in the same level of camaraderie which can develop following compassionately shared experiences and struggles.
• Tithing away 10% of the family income does not promote security or stability.
• Parents barely have time to be parents, let alone companions, lovers, or partner’s in crime (or deviant sexual sins like ***gasp*** oral sex). Parents who lack sufficient time to be passionate, loving couples do not promote stable home life nor do they model loving, equal marriages to their children.
• The prescribed lifestyle devalues intellect (particularly in women).
• Blind faith and obedience are held as virtues, while doubt and personal study are a sure sign of a sinning individual seeking to justify their sins.
• Women and Young Women are encouraged constantly to develop their talents, but it is implicitly conveyed that the only values women have that are worth developing are those which would help them to be good wives, mothers and homemakers, or to magnify church callings.  (Do you happen to rock at science but not so much at cooking, sewing, or playing hymns on piano? Too bad - get back in your proper sphere.  "Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children." And you all must aspire to motherhood.)  
• The LDS lifestyle is tedious, monotonous, and just plain boring. It leaves little to no remaining time to pursue interests and broaden horizons.   The church would have one believe that this monotony is good for people.  In reality, it just drains ones inner resources and thereby squelches the individuality, energy, and natural human curiosity that enable people to live spontaneous, passionate, adventurous, curious, brave and joyful lives.

And these, dear true believing Mormons, are the reasons I never found peace within the church, the reasons I left, the reasons I will never return, and the reasons that I just can’t “leave the church alone.”  I want others to see the church for the dehumanizing force that it is so that they may find courage to reclaim freedom and pursue lives well lived.

 _________________________________________________________________________________________

Please remember to vote for the 2010 Brodie Awards! There are a lot of really great blogs and posts nominated.  Competition is tight! One of my posts was nominated (thank you, thank you, thank you to whoever you are!) for Best Philosophical/Religious Discussion.  I was shocked and humbled that my post was included among the others in the category.  I am now highly motivated to keep writing, write more often, and write more better (wink) in the coming year!  

Happy New Year and much love!

Have you seen this?

Ricky Gervais tells us why he's an atheist.  I think it is worth a read. 

Sharing, maybe oversharing, and possibly triggering. Also long-winded.

My last post was vague.  This one won't be much more clear.  I've been learning a lot lately and I've gained a lot of insight.  But, I haven't remotely untangled it all yet and I don't feel that I have anything resembling a real grasp on things. If I did, I would share more in hopes that someone else might benefit.

Here is what I know: The messages I received in church and from friends and family who were also raised in the church and in Utah, with all of the cultural crap that includes, have affected me in profound ways.  But, I am not talking about the things that I think.  I never thought the things I was supposed to think.  I never believed the things I was supposed to believe.  I was born a skeptic and questioned, questioned, questioned the mythology and the dogma from early childhood.  So, I think pretty independently and rarely find myself thinking something like, for example, "abortion is murder" or "homosexuality is a sin" (these examples are things I NEVER think but I say rarely because I am sure I occasionally think things that might fit into the same category - absolute truths taught in church).

Rather, the profound and lasting effect the CofJCofLDS had on me was in shaping my behaviors, my interactions with others, my ability to be assertive, and, most importantly, my ability to set boundaries to protect my self (two words in this case).  As a result, I've developed some "self issues".  This isn't the same as self-esteem. I've got plenty of self-esteem.  I'm intelligent, kind, empathetic, ethical, strong, hard-working, diligent, ambitious, and dare I say, funny? I know I have significant resources within me.  But, the way I move through the world isn't consistent with that knowledge.  My behavior and communication are often interpreted by others as resulting from a self-esteem problem.  It's not.  The self issue I have is in knowing that I exist and that I am alive. I don't always know that. I feel empty, dead, non-existent.  I stop experiencing emotion although I am intellectually aware of how I should be feeling in a situation.  Feeling unsure about whether I exist (or whether I am the only person who exists and everyone else is a hollow shell) makes me feel like I am losing my mind.  Literally.  As though I am losing my intellect and grasp on reality.  I start to fear that these are early signs of schizophrenia or some other delusion disorder.  (They aren't in my case.)  I know it sounds weird.  Well, it sounds weird unless you've experienced it. 

I've been in a therapy group exploring these self issues.  It's been hard and scary.  I've picked out things that cause "Aha!" moments when I wonder if or how much the culture of mormonism, and personal deity belief more generally, caused these confusions/delusions.  The boundary issue and denial of the right to the private self are obvious culprits.  Also obvious is that we weren't taught to be assertive.  In fact, we were taught to be passive or passive-aggressive (especially the women?).  Assertiveness was portrayed as negative and even confrontational. But, assertiveness and aggressiveness are very different animals.  Unfortunately, I have a difficult time knowing the difference or seeing the lines between them, so I often attempt to be assertive (And why shouldn't I?  I'm intelligent and capable and deserving.) but overshoot and hit aggressive or undershoot and hit passive-aggressive or passive.  And, as a result, I don't get what I need at work or in relationships most of the time. I feel bullied.  Then I beat myself up because I know people can't meet my needs if I don't communicate them effectively, although sometimes they try. If I had to pick the one personality flaw that hinders me most,  it is this struggle to be assertive.


In the self group, we talk a lot about trauma.  This terrified me at first.  It seemed as though I was learning that having a self issue meant that I MUST have experienced some big trauma in my life. In many cases these traumas are related to abuse, witnessing violence or suicide, or near-death experiences. The doctor who runs the group mentioned that sometimes people block these things or that they may have happened before the age at which children form conscious memories.  I couldn't think of a trauma, which made me fear I had blocked it or had been abused as an infant. I wept for a few days. I considered asking my mom but feared it would scare or devastate her.  Then, I met individually with one of the group leaders who explained that trauma might not be so acute or obvious and I wasn't necessarily blocking anything but that maybe I was looking back to narrowly.  She isn't my regular therapist though and doesn't really know me so she had no ideas.  It had occurred to me that maybe my mother's cancer when I was a young child was my trauma.  It also occurred to me that the mental abuse of my religious upbringing, and subsequently leaving the church, has been a life-long trauma.  But, I didn't know and I felt like I was grasping as straws looking for a trauma that might have caused sense-of-self issues for me.  These ideas just seemed so trivial compared to the physical violence others have experienced.  Yesterday, I had an appointment with my regular therapist.  I was explaining this group and the theory behind it (still unpublished so unfamiliar to the psychological and psychiatric health community). She, unprompted, asked if I thought that my former religion could be my trauma.  It might not be the only trauma I've endured.  But, I KNOW that it was/is a traumatic experience and definitely the most formulative traumatic experience of my life.  It has caused me damage that might be irreparable.

That isn't so easy to accept or move past.  I can't imagine what positive I can ever find in that.  Therapy is long (maybe life-long), time-consuming, painful, expensive, and absolutely necessary. I'm not going to be able to sue the Church to cover the expenses or get closure. My brain is likely never going to function at the capacity it might have had I been raised without religion.  I am likely to be haunted by an existential crisis forever.  I will likely experience emptiness and numbness off and on for life.  All I can hope to do is learn how to recognize when I am drifting into, and snap myself out of that state more quickly and more effectively.  How can I possibly benefit from a lack of normal sense-of-self?

Still Shocked

I am learning more and more everyday about how much the CofJCofLDS totally FUCKED me up as a kid.  It still shocks me just how bad it was/is.  The number of ways I am a hot mess as a result of that upbringing is ever-growing. Will it ever stop?  Does anyone feel like they have figured out ALL of ways they are screwed up?  I don't think I can keep finding new reasons forever.  I'm already pretty bitter.