On Grappling with my Emotions about the New Garment Changes

It’s been a few weeks since the church announced changes to women’s garments. Changes that women have asked for for decades, but God finally caught wind of. As I’ve sat with my feelings about it, I’ve ranged from total apathy and disinterest, to anger from my own experience, to guarding myself against the gaslighting that will most assuredly happen when an experience is no longer what it was once mandatory to be.

So much of my experience in leaving the church was pushing through the continuous gaslighting that I was so willing to put myself through, and then was reinforced by the church itself. At so many turns when I knew I wanted to leave, I would find myself second-guessing my intuition. I could always back up my doubts in myself with a lovely quote from a church leader, or a memory that I cherished, or a belief that crept back into view that told me I could not make it on my own.