There is a common rhetoric that seems to plague people who leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also commonly known as the Mormon Church.
“They can leave the church but they can’t leave it alone.”
When we left the church, “we” referring to my husband and myself, we tried for a long time to do the opposite; to keep quiet. To leave the church, and leave it alone. To leave it behind us and move forward.
But then we realized; it was eating us alive. And we couldn’t do that.
My husband and I both grew up in the Mormon church; born into it, actually.
We put a LOT of time, effort, and SO much love into our time in the church.
A rhetoric that has always bothered us both is that people who leave the church “just didn’t understand everything fully,” “they were just lazy and didn’t want to listen to all the rules,” “they just wanted to have fun and chose sin” or “they weren’t super dedicated members of the church anyways.”
It’s a rhetoric that bothers my husband and myself a great deal more than “they can leave the church but they can’t leave it alone;” and therefore, here we are.
We can’t just “leave it alone.”
Not when I, the wife, have had to undergo Brain Spotting trauma therapy and had to revert back to regular talk therapy because of how intense and overwhelming all of the emotions from the church were.
Not when my husband was plagued with feeling like the entire burden of life and caring for our family was on his shoulders alone to handle as the “man of the house.”
Not when our marriage was actually suffering from the patriarchal beliefs we both had to work really hard towards breaking together.
Not when we gave so much love to this church for 24 years of our lives just to turn around and realize that it was like a massive discovery close to finding out that Santa Clause wasn’t real as a child.
So here we are.
Telling our side.
