Month: May 2024

Deconstructing is a journey, part two

Last week, we talked at length about religious deconstruction, and how I’ve been healing from growing up in a high control control patriarchal church. Specifically, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Today, I’d like to talk about some specific steps I’ve been taking to heal.

Again, I do want to say that I am not a therapist. I am not a mental health specialist of any sort and nothing I say should be taken as mental health advice. This is simply what helped me.

Unlearning damaging coping mechanisms

Sometimes when we’re hurting, we can lash out at people and things that didn’t hurt us. This is how I was for a long time. I was furious, at anything that tasted a little too much like domestic arts or femininity. I had been put in a box because of my gender, I never wanted to do that to myself again. And so things like home craft, even though I genuinely enjoy aspects of home craft, were things I wanted to avoid. I would be damned if I would make a pot roast or casserole.

Turns out, I like making pot roasts and casseroles. I also like makeup, and doing my nails. As I’ve leaned into my witchcraft journey, I’ve discovered joy and power in home care.

I can like these things if I want to, and it doesn’t make me less of a feminist. It doesn’t mean I only like these things because I was taught to like them. I like them because I derive actual satisfaction from caring for my home and having cute nails.

Educating myself

It should surprise no one that when you’re in a high control group you don’t know a lot of the real history of the organization. Most of these groups have a vested interest in making sure their followers don’t understand the actual messed up shit in their past. This was true for me and the LDS church.

So I’ve recently been doing a lot of research and reading on the history of the church. I’ve been following Jordan and McKay on YouTube. I read American Zion by Benjamin Park. So far, everything I’ve learned has made me happier that I left.

Sun is the best disinfectant. If you’re deconstructing, pull everything about your former organization out and see what it looks like in the light of day.

Taking the good, leaving behind the bad

There are things that LDS members are taught that are good. As a former member, I can tell you that there’s some good advice.

Family home evening is a great thing. We should all strive to have at least one night a week that is just for family time.

Food storage is a great thing. It’s a good idea to have some nonperishable food tucked away. A bad storm might hit and you won’t be able to leave your house. Maybe your car will break down, or you’ll lose your job. Or maybe you’ll just run up against a deadline and can’t make it out to do the shopping. Having extra food in the house in case of emergency is smart.

I could probably list off a bunch of other good lessons I learned from the LDS church.

This is not an all-or-nothing situation. I can take the good and leave the bad. This is related to the last point I made. I can take pride in keeping a good food pantry while still being a feminist. I can focus on my family without surrendering my career. Just because some of it is good doesn’t mean it’s all good, and just because some of it’s bad doesn’t mean the whole lot of it is poisoned.

Understanding that my pain is valid

This is maybe the most important part of my healing. For a long time, I behaved as though I didn’t need to heal from my childhood in the LDS church.

As mentioned in my last post, I was never abused within the church. Are there people abused in the church? Of course. But I wasn’t a victim of that. So what in the hell was I complaining about?

It took me years to realize that yes, I was hurt by the church. And just because others were hurt worse doesn’t mean I can’t have space to heal as well.

Pain is pain. Abuse is abuse, and trauma is trauma. I was hurt by the LDS church. I am entitled to take time to heal from that.

So why am I talking about this? Because frankly, I’m pissed off about the state of the world right now. I have spent so long, and worked so hard, to heal from the mental abuse heaped on me by organized religion. I have often felt like this is a deep hole that I am still climbing my way out of. It is painful. And when I hear things like the backward, self-serving, and selfish speech of Harrison Butker, it means one thing to me. It’s more women and men being shoved right into that hole I am still escaping from.

I cannot stand seeing people suffering in the name of God. I am a Christian, and the God that I know is one of love. They want us to be happy and fulfilled. They do not ask us to suffer in Their name. They do not want us to shove ourselves into a round hole if we’re a square peg. They want us to stand up and be exactly who and what They made us.

God made me a bisexual woman who loves witchcraft, writing, coffee, candles, cats, and ghost stories. They allowed me to see the beauty in the shadows, the light in dark places. And I will be damned if I’ll sit quietly and let the God that I love be lied about in this way. So just in case I haven’t made this clear, let me say it out loud.

God doesn’t care if you’re a homemaker, stockbroker, standup comedian, or heart surgeon. When the time comes for judgment, it won’t be based on what your vocation was. It won’t even be based on what name you called Them, or if you believed in Them at all. The judgment at the end of your life will be on your actions. How did you treat your fellow man? Were you a good steward to the Earth and all of the creatures who live here? Did you comfort the weary and shelter the weak?

And when someone tried to make someone feel like shit in Their name, did you say something?

On an unrelated note, there will be no post next week. It is my birthday and Nebula con week and I’ll be focusing on fun times, writing community, and learning. But I’ll be back on June 14th. See you then.

Paper Beats World is a labor of love. If you love what I do here, please like this post and share it. And if you’d like to support the site financially, you can do so on Ko-fi.

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My deconstructing journey, part one

I planned on writing this post for weeks now. The fact that a certain kicker for a certain football team decided to shoot his mouth off is coincidental.

Also, this post is going to be very long and this is just part one.

I was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. While this isn’t strictly a cult, it is what’s considered to be a high-control group. I’ve talked at length about my experience with the church, and what it was like to leave it.

Years have passed. I have found a new faith. I don’t have any real relationship with most of my blood family. I have worked hard to build a life where I feel safe and happy.

I thought I was leaving behind all of the hurt and trauma. And for a while, I thought I was doing pretty good. I mean, I didn’t have anything really bad happen to me. I didn’t experience assault in the church. I wasn’t out while in the church, so I never suffered for that. I wasn’t driven to suicidal thoughts.

I mean, sure, I spent my whole childhood being told that women were meant only to be homemakers and helpmeets. Sure, I was told that I didn’t need the priesthood because I had motherhood. And yes, I was taught over and over that my only value to God was based on serving my family as a wife and a mother, leading me to devalue my education to the point that I never went to college and shrinking my view of the future to one, and only one, path.

But no one ever put their hands on me in the church, so what did I have to heal from?

Here’s the thing about thinking you’re okay when you’re not. You’ll be triggered by things when you least expect it. So when you start bawling halfway through a documentary, it’s confusing to you and everyone else in the room. And when you accidentally come upon a book that explicitly discusses the way you were raised baked into an allegory about an old children’s TV show, it wrecks your whole life for a while.

Or for a couple of months.

So I’ve spent a lot of time the last few months actively trying to heal. I’ve been working with a therapist and doing shadow work. And along the way, I’ve learned a few things.

I think at this point it’s important to mention that I am not a therapist or any sort of licensed counselor. I am a woman in her late thirties trying to make sense of her pain and heal from it.

When you’re taught something at a young age, it tends to stick longer. As a child, I was taught that there was one way a family was supposed to look. That there was one way a child of God was supposed to look. Especially if that child of God happened to be female.

Some of these lessons dropped away faster than others. I dropped the Word of Wisdom right away and started drinking coffee and tea.

Man, I love coffee and tea.

But other lessons, like a woman’s place in the world, those were harder to unlearn. Even though I know, logically, that women and men are equal, I still find myself having knee-jerk reactions that are not my thoughts.

Things that are nothing to most people are still daring and impetuous for me. Going to bars and having a drink. Wearing sleeveless shirts and shorts. Watching racey scenes on TV shows and movies.

If these things were crossing a personal moral line for me, that would be one thing. But I find more and more that it’s nothing of the sort. I want to be able to drink (responsibly). I want to wear tank tops because I swear the older I get the worse I handle hot weather.

But enjoying a glass of wine or being comfortable on a hot day is honestly pretty superficial. What I want to talk about is how LDS and other high-control groups are taught to serve others before they care for themselves.

As a child, I learned somewhere that a lot of people don’t consider LDS members to be Christians. I had no idea why, His name is right there in the title. It’s only recently that I realized it’s because most Christians believe that people are saved by God and Jesus’s grace alone. That we were forgiven for our sins before we even committed them. As a Christian Witch, I have faith that this is true.

LDS members don’t believe that. They believe that we are saved not by grace but by our works. How we serve our fellow man on Earth.

On the one hand, serving others is great! We should all spend at least some time considering how we can make life better for other people. That’s just a good thing to do. The problem comes when you’re taught to give when you have nothing to give. When you don’t have the money, don’t have the time, don’t have the energy or the spoons. When you have nothing of yourself to spare and nothing for yourself. When caring for yourself feels selfish.

That’s when the guilt sets in. When we are taught that we are not worthy of God’s love unless we are sacrificing all of ourselves in His name. When we do good works not for the love of our fellow man, but to score Heaven points.

This is a damaging way to look at the world. And it certainly damaged me. It’s led to a serious case of burnout that I am just now, maybe healing from. It’s led to a serious feeling that I am not worth anything to anyone unless I am giving something of myself to them.

I’m sure that the LDS church isn’t the only one to do this. And I’m sure that a lot of people need to hear this. So I’m going to say it here. You do not need to be giving other people of yourself to be worthy of love. You don’t need to be producing anything. You don’t need to be constantly running.

You deserve love. You deserve good food, good sleep, and good cups of coffee. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to take time for yourself and just do things that make you happy.

I have more tips about deconstructing, but we’re over a thousand words already. So stay tuned for part two next week. For now, please take this away. You do not have to do anything at all to deserve love. Once you can hold onto that, everything else gets better.

Paper Beats World is a labor of love. If you love what we do here, please like and share this post. You can also support us on Ko-fi.

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It’s Nova’s Launch Day!

The time has come! Nova, book five of Station 86 is available now on Amazon in both e-book and physical!

This book took me so long to write, and took such a wild, winding path. I am truly humbled by everyone who read this book already when it was posted here. And I hope that everyone who gets the book loves it as much as I loved writing it.

And if you’ve never read any of the Station 86 books, don’t forget that you can get book one, Seeming, for free on Smashwords.

Thank you all again for reading, for showing up here, and for supporting the work I do. You truly are the reason I keep showing up every week and at my desk every day.

And yes, book six is coming.

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