On Telling People You’ve Left Mormonism

Chapter 17: Letters to a Leaving Mormon

I fretted for years about the moment when I would be public about my leaving. I was victim to my own belief that I would need to compose the right justifications, tempered with both love and sadness and anger at the whole process. I spent a lot of time imagining an entire audience of people who would step up to voice their disappointment in my failed testimony, worry about where I would go, disgust that I hadn’t left sooner, opinions on what I should do now. Out of the misguided belief that I owed anyone any explanations, I had conjured up a crowd that I simply could not ever make happy. 

***Physical copies of ‘Letters to a Leaving Mormon’ are here.

I knew people could see in photos that I was no longer wearing garments, and that some photos showed the tattoo on my inner arm. I knew my voice in certain spaces had grown quiet. I had declined to speak at forums and write on blogs, and that probably caused people to wonder. But what I knew best, when I finally did say something publicly, was that my experience of leaving was so personal, it belonged only to me. It did not belong to my children, my parents, my husband, my friends, my past congregations, colleagues. The experience of leaving Mormonism was mine alone, no matter how many people were on the same path. 

In my leaving, I wanted to leave a clear trail and evidence that it was not a blithe decision. I desperately wanted people, both the ones I knew and strangers, to engage with my story enough to satisfy my own belief that I had done what my intuition had guided me to. I wanted to outsource the validation needed to do something that felt brave and treacherous, but the thing about listening to your intuition is it does not care at all what anyone else thinks or does. It is not interested in validation or approval. It never has been.

Your intuition is dedicated to honesty. It is a hermit in the woods of your psyche, and it is not working to please or justify itself to anyone. Of course, you can publicly announce that you’ve left Mormonism. You can tell whoever you like. There is no right or wrong way to exit gracefully, but before you do, pause.