Exponent II's Blog, page 2

Guest Post: “Lord, To Whom Shall We Go?”: Latter-day Saint Women and the Rehabilitation of Heavenly Mother – Part 3

Guest Post By Paige

This is the third in a three part series about Heavenly Mother. Part 1 and Part 2 were published the previous two Sundays.

Part Three: Imagining the Divine: Authority, Art, and the Hope for a More Inclusive God

This is the third and final part of a series exploring the role of Heavenly Mother in contemporary Latter-day Saint discourse—from the perspective of a non-member trying to understand what’s at stake.

In the first section, I looked at how gendered roles like priesthood and motherhood are framed in LDS theology, and how these frameworks shape gendered access to divinity. In the last section, I examined how many are beginning to reimagine Heavenly Mother in ways that move beyond heteronormative expectations. In this final section, I want to reflect on where I’ve seen those possibilities come most vividly to life: in art.

When I first saw Caitlin Connolly’s In Their Image, I was struck by what it seemed to offer—a vision of divinity that felt inclusive, relational, and shared. As someone who doesn’t belong to the LDS Church, I still found myself moved by what the painting represents: not just a depiction of Heavenly Mother, but an invitation to imagine a God who makes space for everyone. I find these artistic spaces so meaningful because they gesture toward an inclusive spirituality that, from my perspective, feels deeply possible within Mormonism, even if not yet fully realized.

This latent possibility is what continues to draw me to a Church I’m not a part of. Mormonism contains within it a vision of divinity that is deeply embodied, generational, and relational. When artists and thinkers stretch that vision to include a wider range of bodies, identities, and experiences, it resonates far beyond the bounds of the Church itself.

This section explores those spaces, where Latter-day Saints are reshaping not only the image of Heavenly Mother, but the very contours of who God can be.

Caitlin Connolly’s In Their Image illustrates the value of art as a space for Mormon feminists to rehabilitate Heavenly Mother. Margaret Hemming Olsen showcases Connolly and other LDS artists in Dialogue to highlight the power of art as a potential solution for the concerns. Taylor Petrey articulated regarding the weaponization of Heavenly Mother against queer and nonconforming saints. Olsen points out the vernacular quality of Mormonism as a ripe opportunity for members of the faith to impact theology through personal engagement and artistic creation.1

The lack of representation of Heavenly Mother, especially within art, offers a unique opportunity to interpret her divinity within a wide variety of races, gender expressions, body types, ages, and roles. Hemming points towards art as an important kind of theological work that benefits the LDS Church as a whole. She includes her personal hope “that artists will even more enthusiastically reimagine deity in all kinds of forms, embracing the expansive God Mormonism deserves.” 2 This article showcases the growing artistic depictions of Heavenly Mother within multiple categories of depiction: maternal deity, cosmic creator, ineffable divinity, and diversity in collectivity.

These categories showcase critical varieties in feminist perceptions and rehabilitation of Heavenly Mother, revealing the diversity in Mormon experience through understandings of the divine. Hemming notes the importance of this diversity: Mormon women of diverse backgrounds and beliefs frequently speak of the importance of Heavenly Mother to their testimonies and sense of self. In a deeply patriarchal world and church, the recognition of a female God opens
theological possibilities that otherwise feel unthinkable.”3

Then Shall They Be Gods

In response to Caitlin Connolly’s planned renewal of In Their Image and request for critique, one commenter said “I’ve never thought about what I don’t like, since I love the painting and the inclusion of Heavenly Mother, but if I’m looking for something I’d change, it’s maybe her looking down in a more passive, inaccessible way. That’s probably because that’s how she feels to me in this religion, sadly.”4

This debate has caught the attention of non-Latter-day Saints like myself because the possibilities for empowerment in this theology defy so much of what defines the popular imagination of the Church, at least to non-Latter-day Saints.

I read of the increasing number of LDS women leaving the Church because of the patriarchal structure that has restrained female empowerment, and as non-member, I am deeply disheartened by this because I see so much potential for empowerment in this theology.

Contemporary Latter-day Saints— like Caitlin Connolly, McArthur Krishna, Bethany Brady
Spaling, and Blaire Ostler— offer a Heavenly Mother that opens up space for more Latter-day Saints to find themselves represented in the Godhead, challenging the institutional constraints that have kept Heavenly Mother absent from mainstream LDS discourse. However, these efforts reveal tensions within Mormon feminist theology itself. While some seek to affirm Heavenly Mother’s significance as a distinctly feminine and maternal deity, others question the entire structures of gender and sexuality being used to do this work.

The question, then, is not just whether Heavenly Mother should be recognized, but how her recognition reshapes LDS understandings of gender, power, and divine embodiment.

If, as Judith Butler suggests, gender is not a fixed essence but a performance shaped by power structures, then any act of constructing Heavenly Mother within an existing theological framework risks upholding the same binaries and power dynamics LDS feminists are searching to break down. Yet, at the same time, her presence—however contested—opens up space for these new theological possibilities. The struggle for Heavenly Mother is, at its core, a struggle over authority, presence, and the right to shape the image of God. As engagement in this work continues, divinity will hopefully begin to feel accessible for more Latter-day Saints.

Paige is a Religion, German, and American Studies student looking to pursue Divinity school following her undergrad. She is a non-member, but has found much joy in Mormon Studies and has developed a meaningful relationship with the Church through both her studies and personal explorations. She is deeply passionate about Interfaith work, Bible literacy, and napping on the beach.

Hemming, Margaret Olsen. Divine Feminine in Mormon Art.” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 55, no. 1 (April 1, 2022): 1–35. https://doi.org/10.5406/15549399.55.1.01. pp. xx ↩︎Hemming, Margaret Olsen. Divine Feminine in Mormon Art.” pp. 35 ↩︎Hemming, Margaret Olsen. Divine Feminine in Mormon Art.” pp. 33 ↩︎Connolly, Caitlin @caitlinconnollystudio. “��T�� _ACT� ↩︎

Guest Post: The Shadow Side of Faithful Womanhood

 

Guest Post by Josie Grover

I had a terrifying dream about six months ago at a time in my life when I was attempting to return into full believing membership of the church.  That evening I has been reading The Priesthood Power of Women by Barbara Morgan Gardner.  I was struggling immensely with this book. It was not increasing my testimony like it had done for other women who had read it. I was finding my confusion and anger about women not having equal privileges in the church increasing as I read.  Tears were flowing as I could not think of a good reason women were not ordained to work along the side of men with all power and authority Gardner claimed women were authorized to have in the eternities.

That night while I was sleeping, my mind went into the ocean where I was indulging in my favorite hobby, free diving, with one of my favorite diving buddies from the island where I used to live. After an amazing water session we were climbing back onto a rocky beach nestled in a cove.  As I was about to take off my long diving fins, I heard a guttural, humanistic roar echoing off the stone walls of the cove.  The sound came from the opening of a cave and from that cave emerged a tall and ferocious woman holding a rifle trained in our direction.  My friend was able to remove her fin and run away, but I was immobilized with fear.  As the women quickly got closer and closer, I noticed a man in military uniform marching behind her as if to direct her actions.  The last thing I saw before I woke up was her eyes wildly staring into mine. 

I have come to know that this dream was a message from my sub conscience. It was meant to be studied and interpreted. A full explanation of which deserves further insight to how I view the LDS church at the  time currently.

Let’s start with a statement that I know many faithful Latter Day Saint women would disagree with.  It is that our church is not as healthy a place to worship for women as it is for men.  Not in the amount of opportunities available to us or in the trust the organization shows toward us. Definitely not in the safety it provides to us. But to recognize this dynamic, we must first be in a position where we are comfortable being critical of the church.  Women who lean into absolute faith in the prophet and the church,  typically claim to have a testimony of a male only priesthood. They will say that the church gives them all the blessing necessary to fully embrace their divine potential with out having the priesthood. But I wonder what those women are unknowingly sacrificing to be faithful?  What parts of themselves are they ignoring to feel fully aligned with LDS church beliefs? And what happens when real harm occurs?

In my life I moved instantly from being super comfortable with a system of mostly male spiritual authority to realizing the position of incredible vulnerability it puts women under.  It happened when I was in a ward with a Bishop who was not treating many of my friends well.  I was sitting in sacrament meeting one day with realization after realization washing over me.  I could suddenly see how the structure of the church presented a constant level of danger.  Men in charge are able to access very personal parts of members lives. And were able to do so privately behind closed doors.  There is no phone number to church headquarters for members to report abuse within the church.  Something clicked in me internally to know that widespread mishandling of abuse was taking place in wards and stakes.  

With this realization, my belief in male headship shifted to where I was able to acknowledge my internal feeling of spiritual inferiority as a woman.  I had internalized temple language about hearkening to my husband negatively. Church structure had invited a false understanding of divine self in that I was meant to serve more in temporal ways than spiritual.  I came to know that gender imbalances were hurting me on a deep level. I could not move  back into full belief in the church at this point.  Trying to do so chaffed up against my value system and initiated a trauma response that showed by in my dreams.  But I am left wondering how many other women are like me in that they bury their hurt in comforting blanket of unwavering orthodoxy as I had once done, and if those women will one day have an irrevocable reckoning as well.  

With a structure that is so diametrical in defined gender roles, it is nearly impossible for women not to be negatively impacted whether directly of indirectly., acknowledged or not.  It might be that a women’s ideas were ignored in a ward council meeting.  Or she struggles with the idea of eternal polygamy.  Or she carries shame about her body from church lessons she was given in her youth about not tempting boys and men. Or it could be something much more dark and nefarious. 

Recently Jasmin Rappleye, a popular apologist for the LDS church, posted a summary of a presentation given by a church lawyer on her Instagram page. The lawyer was making a case against clerical mandating reporting for childhood abuse. The backlash on this post has been loud and strong.  Most everyone, in and out of the church, violently disagrees with not reporting abuse when it is made known to a Bishop or other church leader. While I am happy to see people recognize the absolutes wrongs being stated there, I wish active members also could realize this position is coming from top leaders of the church based on practices already in place.  As it is, Bishops are instructed to call the church legal department when they learn of abuse, and many times they are being urged not to report harm of women and children to authorities. Floodlit is an organization that documents sex abuse cases in the church. It  has found 374 instances where LDS faith leaders failed to disclose abuse to authorities and the victim continues to be harmed. The church is facing lawsuits for this type of gross mishandling. 

Within the comment section of Jasmin’s post and other that address it, so many women are saying they were not supported when they told their Bishop of abuse.  The perpetrators were not adequately held responsible. To add another disturbing element, many victims were urged to repent for the supposed part they played in the harm done to them.  As devastating as theses accounts are, to me there are not surprising.  In a study done by Peter Warren of South Carolina University in 2015, power differentials between partners was one of the most consistent factors for predicting intimate partner violence.  We can apply this principle broadly to faith organizations that center male leadership over female leadership.  A power differential is a pedestal for unfair and abusive treatment. From Lyn Yonack, MA, MSW, “Far and away, most sexual assaults and sexual violence are perpetrated by men, and typically arise within asymmetrical power dynamics.” 

In a church where men’s leadership is vital, the church will privilege and center men. This has been a repetitive pattern in the lived experience of many members.  Centering men and the revelatory experience of men above the comfort and care of women has been in the works since the beginning of the church.  Girls as young as 14, and women already in marriages, were spiritually coerced into entering in marriage with early prophets. Women who are outspoken in the pain gender imbalance causes today as well as in the past, has been labeled as less faithful.  Women’s experiences that don’t promote the views of the church are ignored and gaslit.  The organization will draft new narratives in hopes women will shift perspectives to align with the church instead of owning the responsibility to create institutional change. They will tell us that motherhood is an adequate equal. Then they will tell us we’ve  always had the priesthood.  

Since the time of my terrifying dream, I have learned that the book by Barbara Morgan Gardner was released in perfect timing with the talk given by President Russell M Nelson at the Women’s Session of the October 2019 General Conference, where he introduced the idea that the temple bestows priesthood power on women.  This theme was repeated during the following BYU Women’s conference.  I see that the church was needing to address the problems that women were seeing with being second to the priesthood, and this is the direction they took.  This same principle was repeated in the General Conference after an 2024 church Instagram post was responded to by so many dissenting women that it made national news.  Again, the women were urged to adapt to mindsets that honor the male lead organization, asking us to embrace the priesthood we already have. These messages were being delivered by women who toe the line. 

I now understand that the woman in my dream was threatening my new found belief in equality and in knowing women deserve more fair treatment in this church. She was doing so under marching orders of those truly in charge, the man in uniform. My dream friend who was not a member was easily able to escape, but in my attempt in be all in, I was left to have my divine femininity undermined.

Women like Jasmin Rappleye,  Barbara Morgan Gardener, and others in General Auxiliaries of the church will try and prop up the faith of women in ways the men in leadership desire to have done. In this they unknowing support the harm of women, and keep the shadow side of faithful womanhood from being recognized and healed. If we have learned anything in the past few weeks, it is that we are not wanting our church to be one that sidelines victim, and gives leniency to abusers.  But this is the real situation and its going to take a lot of people waking up for it to change. It is up to women on the sidelines and in the pews to keep speaking up,  supporting one another in meaningful ways, to trust our intuitions, and petition for real change in the church.

Josie is a wife and mother living in Southern Utah. She works as an ultrasound technologist and spends much of her free time learning about LDS church history and feminism in Christianity. While she is not a full believing member of the church she attends her local ward with her family and loves the community found there. She just started an Instagram account where she expounds on her passions concerning social justice issues. You can find her at @josieunpacksitall.

Guest Post: A Parable of Power and Priesthood- Just give me the keys to my own dang car!

Guest post by StephenieG

There was once a kingdom that idolized fast cars. Power and rank were determined by the horse power and speed of your car. Only the King could approve how much access and power each car owner was allowed. The good King of this kingdom had two children, fraternal twins, a prince and a princess. The King loved them dearly. We can assume the queen loved them too, but she was so beautiful and so special that no one was allowed to see her or talk about her. So, we won’t talk about her in this story either. The twins loved each other very much and for most of their early life, their father treated them equally.

But, when the prince neared age twelve, he was given a small scepter and crown representative of his preparation to be king one day. The princess was angry when she received no crown or scepter. The king explained that the princess didn’t need a crown, her crown was implied because she had inherent power at birth simply by being a princess. She would just “become” a queen as part of her divine nature. Her brother didn’t have this natural gift, so he must learn to develop it by managing power and authority over her and over other simple tasks in the kingdom. For a while the princess seemed to accept this, it was after all, how things had always been.

When the twins neared adulthood, they each were endowed with a car, as was the honor and custom in the kingdom. They were beautiful, fast cars. The King said he only wanted the best for both his children. The princess was excited to drive her car. She had never seen a woman drive a car. Usually, husbands and sons drove the cars. However, the princess (in her youth and naivety) assumed that other women chose not to drive their cars. She assumed other women were afraid of the powerful machines or that they just enjoyed being passengers. After all the women did indeed have access to and own their own cars. They must not like driving, she thought. Inside she knew that she wouldn’t need the men to drive a car that rightfully belonged to her. And the princess wasn’t afraid to drive, she knew she was fully capable and looked forward to sitting behind the wheel of her beautiful new car.

On the day the cars were presented, the King handed the prince the keys to his car. The prince proceeded to take his new car out for a drive. The princess held out her hand for the keys to her car. The King withdrew and said: “You can’t have the keys, my daughter, I only promised you a car equal to your brother’s.”

“What good is the car if I don’t have the keys? How is that equal?” demanded the princess.

“You don’t have the keys, but you have full access to the car whenever you like. Just let me know when you would like to use it, for I will be in possession of the keys,” said the King.

“Will you let me drive when you use your key to grant me access?”

“Sweetie, you won’t need to drive it. You’ve got men to drive you around the kingdom. However, there will come a time when you travel to the temple palace and at that time, I will let you have the keys briefly. But they can only be used within the temple palace gates2. You will be able to drive around the track for a bit with other women only. And you’ll stay safe, because I’ve put a governor to control the speed which your car can go. We don’t want you to be bothered with too much power.”

“What good is a car that can go 120 mph if I can only use it to go 25 mph within the temple palace only?”

“You don’t need to go 120 my dear, you just need to know that the power is there, the same power your brother has.”

“It isn’t fair that he gets to use his power and I don’t.”

“Dear, you have access to the same power as he does.”

“Power or platitudes?” she angrily challenged.

The princess argued with her father everyday over this matter as she longingly looked at her car idly parked in the driveway. One day she stopped arguing. She started to believe that having access was the same as having keys. So, she drove her beloved car once a month at the temple palace and grudgingly relinquished her keys on the way out. She loved seeing other women drive cars in the temple palace. Although their speed was governed, they were able to drive as smoothly as the men did on the outside. Most women seemed satisfied with this asymmetrical arrangement3.

But the princess knew she deserved more. And she lived miserably, but since princesses aren’t allowed to be miserable, she smiled and expressed gratitude for the little tokens of power the King allowed her. Her twin brother drove freely throughout the land. In time, he even had keys added to his keychain. He enjoyed the power and speed of driving his car and being admired throughout the kingdom.

One day, the princess asked the prince if he’d plead with their father on her behalf. To ask if he’d allow girls and women the right to carry the keys to their own cars. The prince pondered this in his heart and considered her request. But he was too afraid. He thought: What if her car and power exceed mine? What if no one looks at me when I rev my engine and drive down the road, but instead look at her? No, I won’t ask or plead on her behalf, I’ll just tell my sister that I don’t know why our King and Father won’t allow her the keys to her car. I’ll convince her the King is a mysterious and wise man, so it must be for her own benefit. And besides, she DOES have access.

So, day after day, the princess sat looking at the shiny red muscle car parked in her driveway, the one she had full “access” to. The car she was only allowed to drive briefly when she visited the temple palace. Some days she felt just like that car parked in the driveway, never to know it’s full potential, never to feel the freedom and speed of the open road.

That is until she learned to hotwire. After much pondering, the princess realized that all the necessary components to start her car were contained within the car itself and the key could be bypassed. She knew that potential energy had no tangible power when it only patiently sat in dormancy. It took careful study and time to disassemble the systems put in place by men to require a key. It also took time to reverse the mechanisms that were put in place to limit and govern the car’s speed. But the princess was persistent. She worked daily unscrewing, disconnecting, reconnecting, realigning. One day, she felt satisfied that she had succeeded in bypassing the system meant to deny her power. She attached the last two wires and heard a faint grumble and then the whirr of the engine starting in its full glory. She got behind the wheel. It felt weird to her at first, and she had to spend a lot of time adjusting the seat and the mirrors to her liking. Afterall, she was seeing the world from a new perspective behind the steering wheel of a car, endowed to her by her father, whose full power was now in her hands.

It felt good. She knew she would no longer be satisfied letting men, including her own father, cripple her, just to watch her finish the race last.

So, she gently pressed the gas pedal and lurched forward in search of a kingdom where power didn’t require a key, where equal access wasn’t just lip service, and where kings and queens ruled together in love and harmony. The End (or maybe, the beginning…)

StephenieG is just your typical perimenopausal woman who wants to make the world and religion a more loving space by challenging patriarchy. She thinks deep and always has more questions than answers. She writes about them on Substack (substack.com/@stephenieg) in her spare time.

Guest Post: America’s Sweethearts: What LDS Women and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Have in Common

Guest Post by Martha of Bethany

Netflix’s series “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders”, has taken the country by storm. In a sport centered on men’s views and preferences, we come to know the women on the 50 yard line. We, the viewers, see them not only as professional, outstanding performers but also as successful, highly-educated women on and off the field. From the tumultuous tryouts to game day, we share in their emotional peaks and valleys. 

While this is a beautiful commentary on the strength of women, it is impossible to ignore the disparity between the male professional football players and the female professional cheerleaders. The moment that resonated with me the most was when the team managers were listening to the cheerleaders’ criticism regarding how many of them have two jobs to make ends meet. Their trusted coach, a former DCC herself, responded “why would you quit your second job when that’s what makes you so impressive?” While in my emotional tailspin from the comment, I began to contemplate the following:

What if each year, every member of the football team was forced to recompete, through multiple rounds of tryouts with no contract for an additional year?What if the football players needed second jobs to supplement their income?What if football players were required to get a makeover to play?What if the football players were responsible for washing their uniforms before each game?

As many of us read through the list above, you probably realized that if even one of those hypotheticals were true, professional football as we know it would likely cease to exist. When watching America’s Sweethearts from an LDS feminist’s perspective, one cannot help but see the overlap between the women of the DCC and the women of the church; instead of football fields and white mini shorts, we have cultural halls and some longer white shorts. Nonetheless, we are expected to be America’s Sweethearts.                                                                                                                       

The same type of patriarchy we see in the show, we see echoed in our church experience; as the kids say, same story, different font.  As women in the church, patriarchy and misogyny dictate what we wear, how we wear it, how we should speak, where we can speak, what we should do, who we should marry, etc. Just like the DCC, we are casualties of the very protocols, policies, and procedures that are designed to “shape” us or rather keep us in a mold of beautiful, talented, educated, driven, but silent and compliant women.

One of the most apparent spaces LDS women see a disparity between men and women leaders is at our General Conference. Nearly a decade ago, President Russell M. Nelson spoke these words:

“My dear sisters… we need you.”  from A Plea to My Sisters By President Russell M. Nelson (October, 2015)

I second President Nelsons’ claim, they do need us! The church needs us! Think of all the things in your ward that would cease to continue without women. Think of what would happen if women in the church stopped marrying men in the church. Who would make all the compassionate service dinners and feed the missionaries? The question we must ask ourselves is, do we want to continue to work in the shadows supporting the very men who oppress us? I offer another reason the church needs us. The church needs us to move it forward and fulfill the church’s complete restoration of gospel truths, but they are not ready to address that yet. 

Church leaders often emphasize that women are an important part of church structure. Many have said that women are more sensitive to the physical and spiritual needs of our brothers and sisters. While patriarchal church leadership emphasizes the importance of women in the church, they fail to mention their preference for the types of work women can and should do. The church leadership may retort with how women are invited to councils and hold many high level church callings. Though that is true, I ask the following questions:

Who holds the majority of callings? Who really gets to make the decisions? Who gets the final say? Who really holds the power?

The answer is simple. It’s men. 

Women inside of the church, from my experience, are often highly educated, many of them holding one if not two degrees. These women are pillars in their community. Some have decided to pursue careers. Others have decided to forego them to raise families. Many even served missions. Despite this, there is still a disproportionate weight placed on women to bridge the gap in the home and in church while letting church decisions be run and discussed by men. Men are called to serve in callings like Bishop, Stake President, or Elders Quorum President and their wives are expected to take care of all of their family needs; in many cases, the wives are also included in the decision. 

Conversely, the Relief Society President and Primary President are expected to absorb their calling responsibilities and the family ones. No one ever talks about the Relief Society President’s husband having to stay home and take care of the family. Nor do they expect the Primary President’s husband to make Sunday dinner. Even when the women in the church are in the depths of compassionate service and selflessness, we are told to look to the Savior and continue serving. Never mind that he was the literal Son of God who could go 40 days without eating. 

Even women outside of the church, like the DCC, are face to face with the depressing realities of patriarchy, but at least in the world there are resources to help. In the church, this battle against patriarchy can feel overwhelming due to the lack of support built into the church infrastructure. So where does that leave us other than in a daily knife fight against what we know to be true and what men tell us is true? I reflect on a fitting passage of scripture to close.  

In 2nd Thessalonians, Paul (and likely some other supporting authors) address the external persecution and internal confusion the Thessalonian church was facing regarding the timing of Jesus’s return. The false information and interpretation of Paul’s earlier teachings led to this second letter. Paul concludes his remarks in chapter 3 and I leave you with these words.

1 Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may run swiftly and be glorified, just as it is with you, 

2 and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men; for not all have faith.

3 But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you and guard you from the evil one. 

4 And we have confidence in the Lord concerning you, both that you do and will do the things we command you.

5 Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ…

13 But as for you, [sisters], do not grow weary in doing good.

Martha of Bethany is the writing moniker of a lifelong member of the Church who, like her biblical namesake, considers herself a close friend of the Savior. Rooted in faith yet unafraid to wrestle with hard questions, she writes from the tension between devotion and doubt on LDS policies, protocols, and doctrines.

Guest Post: Feeling Nourished in Our Worship of Jesus Christ

Guest Post by Carina Gillenwater

This was a Sacrament Meeting Talk given by Carina in her ward on August 10, 2025.

How can I feel nourished by my worship of Jesus Christ? 

This question is one I’ve spent many years of my life pondering, thanks in part to varying circumstances in my life that have made worship hard for me at different times and in different ways. Before I dive into some of those circumstances, I wanted to take a moment to talk about what it means when I’m talking about “feeling nourished” and “worship.” 

Most of us probably have an idea of what it means to worship Christ, right? You might say it’s something like “loving Jesus,” or “going to church and the temple,” or “praying.” And you’d be right! Those are all included in how the Church talks about worship. In the Gospel Library, there is a “Topics and Questions” section, and I found a section within that talks about worship. It says, “To worship God is to give Him our love, reverence, service, and devotion… worship not only shows our love for God and commitment to Him, it gives us strength to keep His commandments.” It also lists various ways to worship. Prayer, joining in fellowship and worship with others, and participating in priesthood ordinances are all listed. In addition, it also speaks of having a “worshipful attitude.” As Alma and Amulek taught those who weren’t allowed to worship in their church, we are not limited to worshipping God only on Sundays. In Alma 34:38, it reads, “worship God, in whatsoever place ye may be in, in spirit and in truth.” 

I also need to talk about what it means to be nourished. On the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s website, it has three definitions for nourish. The first is to nurture, or rear. The second is to promote the growth of. The third comes in two parts; to furnish or sustain with nutriment, or to feed, and to maintain and support. To feel nourished is to feel sustained, supported, full. It is to grow and become more than what you started as. In John chapter 6, we read the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fishes. The people who receive this are so amazed they follow Jesus for some time. He explains to them in verse 35: “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” That is what nourishment is, and that is what we will experience as we worship the Savior. 

Imagine, if you will, a paper cup. The paper cup is a representation of our worship practices. When we worship our Savior, we fill the paper cup with delicious, refreshing water. We drink of that nourishment and grow, feel filled with our love for the Savior, and become more like Him. Every act of worship fills more water inside the cup. Every time you read the scriptures, fulfill your calling, minister to those around you, pray, go to the temple, sing joyful songs, every single act, fills your cup. Now imagine someone stabbed a hole in my cup. Maybe the hole is in the side of the cup. I can still fill the cup with my nourishing, worshipful water, but now it won’t fill all the way, because there is a hole in my cup, and the water will spill out. Maybe the hole is bigger, and at the very bottom of my cup. I can do all the worship practices that I desire, but I’m not going to feel nourished. If I can’t mend the holes in my paper cup, I am not going to be able to grow and progress and improve my relationship with Christ and Heavenly Father. 

What are these holes in my paper cup? These holes are things in my life that get in the way of me feeling nourished in my worship. I mentioned at the beginning of this talk that over the course of my life, I have experienced various circumstances that made worship feel difficult and frustrating to me. Some of these circumstances you may be familiar with, or have even experienced yourself. Some will be personal to me and my life.

I have struggled with the transition to attending church on my own, when I started college at BYU-Hawaii. I’ve struggled with worshipping in the midst of postpartum depression and anxiety and the loneliness I felt in the early motherhood years. We all struggled together, but separately, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Whenever I have moved or changed wards, I struggled with having to rebuild my local community and support system. I have wrestled mightily with learning about and learning how to love my queer identity as my Heavenly Parents do. I still struggle sometimes with the demands on my time during church, between my calling, my children, and my husband’s calling, and feeling frustrated I can’t give my full focus to the ideal of worshipping for these two hours I’m here. There has not been a year that goes by that I don’t struggle with some form of anger and dismay at a new or reiterated church policy that I don’t agree with. I struggle with the loss of those I love leaving the church I love, and how we who are left often treat them. At times I have struggled with individual people, or comments, or attitudes and old traditions that leave me feeling further from Christ and His love. 

But Carina, you may say, with this laundry list of holes in your paper cup, how do you feel nourished in your worship of the Savior? Is it not more hole than cup at this point? This is the good news. This is my hope I want to share with you. I’ve done the work to mend, or at least shrink, the holes in my cup. I can walk you through the things I’ve done, but I will remind you again, that these are personal to me and to my circumstances, and that you will have to take the time and dig through your own life and work these things out with God. Work I would greatly encourage you to do!

Let’s start with the first one. I struggled with attending church on my own while I was at college. Most of us here are either past this stage or have not reached this stage of life yet, but some of you will be there pretty soon. I didn’t like attending the student ward at BYU-Hawaii. I felt like I didn’t know anybody there, I felt like the Bishop didn’t actually know me, and it was a large ward so I could just sit in the back and zone out and play on my phone. But that changed when I got a calling. I had a few different callings during my student years, from ward emergency substitute pianist to being the person who makes the programs each Sunday. Taking the time to serve and participate in my ward helped me to become more involved in my ward community and to feel like I was getting nourished. Service was the solution here.

There is always work to do, and when you do it, you are helping yourself as well as others. Elder Steven E. Snow, in a talk given in the October 2007 General Conference, says this. “We demonstrate our love when we help and serve each other… we have an obligation as members of the Church to accept callings to serve in building the kingdom of God on earth. As we serve in our various callings, we bless the lives of others… in Church service we learn to give of ourselves and to help others.” There is a balancing act to play here as well, since one of the other holes in my cup is that sometimes I feel my calling and my husband’s calling and taking care of my children during church meetings takes away from my ability to focus on the sacrament and worship in a way I would like. But I’ll tell you what. When I get to primary and sit with my little Sunbeams, my heart is full. Mostly of joy. And what frustration is also in there is held back by my knowledge that this service, this shepherding of the Lord’s most precious little ones, is itself an act of worship. President Gordon B. Hinckley has said: “No man (or woman) can be a true Latter-day Saint who is unneighborly, who does not reach out to assist and help others. It is inherent in the very nature of the gospel that we do so. My bothers and sisters, we cannot live unto ourselves.” If you find yourself with a hole in your cup, maybe look to see if service is the right shape to plug that hole. 

More holes in my cup have included postpartum depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Sometimes this was exacerbated by moving or changing wards. When your brain is not working as it’s supposed to, when you are scared or feeling alone, it makes the effort of worshipping difficult, and it feels more draining than nourishing. At these times, I found nourishment by accepting love and help and service from others, even, especially, when it felt hard for me to do so. Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf has taught, “We all know that ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive’, but I wonder if sometimes we disregard or even disparage the importance of being a good receiver… sometimes people even get to the point where they can’t receive a gift, or, for that matter, a compliment without embarrassment or feelings of indebtedness. They mistakenly think that the only acceptable way to respond to receiving a gift is by giving back something of even greater value.”

Allowing people to help me has let me find new best friends, rekindle old friendships, and led us both to feel the love of God in our lives as we gave and received service and love to one another. If we cannot learn how to accept love and help from our mortal companions here on earth, how are we to learn to accept all the love and blessings our Heavenly Parents have in store for us all our lives? Please, if you are feeling alone and you are scared of being a burden, of asking for help, I would encourage you to find a way to reach out to someone. You will be blessed not only in the immediate sense of being helped with your problem, but you will also plug that hole. You won’t be alone. Matthew 18:20 reads, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” 

Sometimes, though, the struggles are with the people we are worshipping with. This might manifest when we encounter an inaccurate or unkind statement said in Sunday School, a personality that you might find difficult to get along with, or the general flaws and foibles of being with other imperfect humans. These problems have been my opportunity to practice patience and love and to remember that we are all children of our Heavenly Parents. 3 Nephi 27:27 says, “… Therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am.” I cannot control what others around me do or say. I can only take control of my actions, and do my best to dedicate myself to becoming more like my older brother, my best example, Christ. Jesus loves us all, and by trying to become more like Him, I feel my love for others grow, even when I am annoyed or frustrated by them and their actions. This is a hole that comes and goes but tends to disappear when I am doing my best to be loving. 

And then, there are those issues that I’ve had to work out on my own with God. These include my sexuality, my negative feelings about various church policies, and old traditions and attitudes that I don’t agree with. These are holes that I’ve had for my whole life. I have not yet been able to fully plug all those holes or make them go away. I live with these. Sometimes the worship is just hard, and my water is spilling all over my legs, on the floor, and everywhere except in my cup, where I want it to be. But I am not alone. I have a testimony that is built on Christ, and He will never forsake me. He loves me in my fullness, not in spite of the parts of me and my identity that others label as bad. He loves me when I am yelling at him in my prayers, angry and frustrated and feeling betrayed. He guides me to the scriptures, to the temple, to others who share my situations and concerns. He gifts me with an understanding heart and the strength of His love. He has atoned for my sins and for every pain and piece of suffering that I have and will endure in this life. 

At the end of John chapter 6, many of Jesus’ disciples leave him once they learn he will not give them the physical bread of which he shared earlier with the five thousand. Jesus turns to the Twelve and asks, “Will ye also go away?” In verse 68 we read Peter’s reply. “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.” 

It is the same for me. Where else would I go? I am here, I stay here, I keep coming here because I know what it feels like when the cup is full and the worship is nourishing. I have experienced the joy of singing in the choir, the delight of a child participating in primary classes that I prepared, the sanctification of the sacrament and the spirit that is felt when God’s words are shared among His people. I know of the love that is shared in a smile, in a hug, in a kind word or text. At our best, we are truly a family. My worship is nourishing because I have hope. Hope is not just to be waiting and wishing, but hope is to be working and moving forward, expecting good things to come. I have a phrase I’ve used a lot over the years, and it’s this: you find what you’re looking for. Look for the nourishment in your worship. Work for it to be so. Expect that good things will happen. 

When I was younger, my mother put me in piano lessons. She said I would stay in them until I learned how to play any song in the hymnbook, so I could always be of service whenever I was needed. One of the first hymns I learned how to play was hymn number 72, Praise to the Lord, the Almighty. I picked it because it is relatively easy to learn how to play, but it has since become one of my favorite hymns. It is a song all about worship and joy. 

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation!

O my soul, praise him, for he is thy health and salvation!

Join the great throng, psaltery, organ, and song, 

Sounding in glad adoration!

Praise to the Lord! Over all things he gloriously reigneth.

Borne as on eagle wings, safely his Saints he sustaineth. 

Hast thou not seen how all thou needest hath been

Granted in what he ordaineth? 

Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy way and defend thee.

Surely his goodness and mercy shall ever attend thee. 

Ponder anew what the Almighty can do, 

Who with his love doth befriend thee. 

Praise to the Lord! Oh, let all that is in me adore him!

All that hath breath, join with Abraham’s seed to adore him!

Let the “amen” sum all our praises again, 

Now as we worship before him.

I pray that your cup may be full, your holes small or easily plugged, and your joy in worship unceasing and full of nourishment. As you seek for these things, I know that you will be guided to where you need to be. Our Heavenly Parents love us. Jesus Christ loves us. They have given us the ultimate gift, the atonement, so that we may one day return into the arms of our loving family and our joy will be everlasting.

Carina is a mom of two living in Southern Indiana. She loves reading, cooking, playing Dungeons and Dragons, and going on walks.

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Joseph Smith and Plural Marriage: Imagining an Honest, Realistic Middle Ground

Mormon plural marriage has been a hot and contentious topic this year

One of the difficult questions raised repeatedly is how to make sense of why a well-meaning religious leader would take such actions. What could possibly compel Joseph, for example, to betray and lie to people he cared about, especially his wife Emma?

The old official narrative can’t help us here; it rationalizes abuse and sin and fails to grapple with moral complexity. Meanwhile, alternative approaches jump to dualistic conclusions: Joseph must have never done what history claims he did or Joseph must have been ill-intentioned and dishonest in general.

There is a need to find a middle ground where we can explore more complex possibilities. Carol Lynn Pearson’s The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy does a great job opening such a space. Yet there are important questions beyond what she covers to explore, including why. Why would Joseph do this to us? Is there any framework to help us make sense of his behavior?

Claiming our ties to people impacted by polygamy and our right to reinterpret what happened

Growing up, I was taught I should not use my imagination to make sense of plural marriage or how the people who lived it felt. Teachers and leaders talked as if what happened was way beyond my understanding and occurred during a distant and foreign part of history.

Yet many of the people impacted by plural marriage are somewhat historically and relationally close. My second great grandmother, Sophia Poulsen Shepherd, born in 1868, was hired out at age seven to earn her own keep doing housework and living permanently in another family’s home because her polygamous parents couldn’t afford to provide for her. She was promised organ lessons in exchange for this immense sacrifice, but the lessons never happened. At age 14, she rejected an offer of marriage from her polygamist bishop. At age sixteen, she married a handsome young English immigrant. As a middle aged mom of a large (monogamous) family, she teared up when she heard one of her favorite songs, “After the Ball is Over,” Years later, as a grandma, she fainted from shock and grief when she heard the news that her grandson, Rolla Glick, died by machine gun fire in France during WWII. These brief glimpses into her story bring her to life for me.

Sophia and me.

Years ago when my mom and sister found a couple photos of Sophia as a teenager at my grandparents’ house, they noticed how much she reminds them of me. We had similar jawlines, snub noses, cheeks, and eyes. We later realized as we traced our family tree that I most likely inherited the underbite that caused me to need jaw surgery at age 16 from her. Sophia and I are close enough in time that my grandfather spent a significant amount of time with each of us. We can relate meaningfully to the people impacted by plural marriage. Yes, there is some distance, but there are also many rich threads that bind us together, even with generations further back.

I am claiming some personal authority to reinterpret what happened with Mormon plural marriage, specifically why it all started. It’s not for the sake of trying to resolve all the questions, but to scout out avenues for healing and greater understanding.

In claiming this right, I am inspired by the thinking of African American historian Tiya Alicia Miles, who in the introduction to her All That She Carried discusses how researchers and writers from historically oppressed groups may benefit from draw on a variety of creative methods to reinterpret and retell their deceased predecessors’ stories in ways that challenge standard, traditional accounts. Writing about her own research on artifacts and records pertaining to enslaved women, Miles explains that “because archives do not faithfully reveal or honor the enslaved, tending to [our] intimacy with the dead necessitates new methods, including a trans-temporal consciousness and use of restrained imagination” (All That She Carried 18). As needed, Miles draws on her creativity and imagination to do greater justice to the stories of the women she researches, and to help bring them to life.

We can apply her ideas to the ongoing legacy of plural marriage doctrine and narratives, which have likewise failed to “faithfully reveal or honor” lay members’, and especially women’s, experiences. Like the rich connections between modern African American writers and enslaved women, contemporary Mormon individuals share their own special “intimacy” with our predecessors. We have been subjected to some of the same inequities and questionable doctrines, policies and expectations as they were in the past. For many of us, lived polygamous experiences are written into our DNA and evident in our intergenerational struggles and wounds. As I suggested in sharing Sophia’s story, our hearts, minds and lives are noticeably interconnected across time.

Using our best insights and a reasonable amount of restraint, there are times when we can draw on personal wisdom and imagination to help them make sense of the past. I believe ordinary Mormon folks like me have invaluable insights that we’ve gleaned from the trenches of everyday life to offer concerning Mormon plural marriage. Applying our experiences and imagination to our history is our right as the impacted inheritors of this problem, and may even prove necessary to move forward and heal. What we learn can and should speak to what needs to change today, helping us to surmount oppressive narratives and conditions and flourish.

On Sexual Brokenness and the Addictive Thinking that often Accompanies it

My process of applying my own wisdom and experience to the history of plural marriage started when I found myself in my thirties supporting individuals around me who experienced or were impacted by compulsive sexual behavior. Good people around me were being hurt and troubled by this problem and wanted my support, whether they had patterns of unwanted behaviors themselves, or were partnered with someone who did.

I learned about how when individuals struggle with these habits, there is a lot going on under the surface. Initially, I didn’t understand the first thing about it, and had so many wrong and judgmental ideas. The psychology is complex and not intuitive. When we hear about people struggling with these issues, it is easy to assume that the root cause is all about mismanaging lust, and that the solutions should be simple or obvious, like “duh, just stop.” Yet that is not the case. Sexual compulsion originates in complex, painful early life experiences and the emotional and relational wounds and struggles these leave behind.

Jay Stringer is a licensed clinical therapist and ordained minister who researches and writes about unwanted sexual behavior and how to heal from it. He is the author of Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing. According to Stringer’s research study that included 4,000 individuals, struggles with unwanted sexual behaviors are not at all random. He writes:

“Unwanted sexual behavior forms when six core life experiences are linked together: deprivation, dissociation, unconscious arousal, futility, lust, and anger. Any of these experiences on their own are not enough to create pervasive damage. Rather, it is when these experiences link and reinforce one another that the stage is set for unwanted sexual behavior to appear. These experiences usually exist unexamined and therefore lead to a predictable, pernicious cycle that traps the soul over time” (Unwanted 86).

Those who acquire this particular emotional damage have often been abandoned, shamed, controlled, abused, and/or neglected in some way, and they end up with a chronic problem of feeling shame and as if they are unloved and unwanted by others. While each person’s wound has unique meanings, narratives, and fantasies attached to it, the particular emotional dynamic he describes is consistent. Stringer and other voices refer to the resulting woundedness and struggle as “sexual brokenness.” This type of wound is not uncommon.

When such wounds remain unaddressed, people may begin to struggle with sexual compulsivity. As they re-experience instances of deprivation, dissociation, arousal, futility, lust, and anger in some sequence in day-to-day life, vicious cycles of sexual compulsion and feelings of personal worthlessness can develop (Unwanted 86-87). Shame is a key driver; anger often also plays a big role in cycles of compulsive sexual behavior. An individual might get caught up in porn use, extramarital affairs, and/or risky or excessive sexual behaviors such as buying sex that are against their values and beliefs. The behavior disrupts their lives and often endangers their relationships. It is hard to make sense of what is going on and why, and they may struggle for years or decades to find relief.

The compulsive behavior can be a way to dissociate from pain, try to get some kind of comfort or validation, or claim a sense of control or getting what the individual wants after feeling powerless and controlled by others. Yet above all, Jay Stringer asserts, at its core, the behavior is driven by an impulse to stay connected to one’s sense of personal shame, unwantedness, and despair about desires for love and connection being fulfilled. He writes:

“Self-contempt is not a by-product of unwanted sexual behavior; it is the very aim of it. Through this lens, unwanted sexual behavior is not primarily an attempt to remedy or self-soothe the pain of a wounded child. It is attempting to reenact the formative stories of trauma, abuse, and shame that convinced us we were unwanted to begin with. In other words, we are not addicted primarily to sex or even a disordered intimacy; instead, we are bonded to feelings of shame and judgment. In this way, unwanted sexual behavior is not seeking medication but rather a familiar poison to deaden our imagination that something could change for the better (Unwanted 10-11). When you examine it more closely, sexual compulsion is not all about pleasure or sex or wanting to hurt or use other people. It’s mostly about unhealed, painful personal shame.

When people struggle with patterns of compulsive, unhealthy behavior, they can easily get caught up in cognitively distorted self-deceptive systems of thinking. They develop habits of rationalizing their actions that Abraham J. Twerski describes at length in Addictive Thinking: Understanding Self-Deception. While this problem is common with substance abuse, people struggling with various adjustment problems, from chronic procrastination to sexual compulsion, also struggle with creating systems of self-justifying cognitive distortions, arguments, and excuses, which Twerski refers to collectively as “addictive thinking” (Addictive Thinking 2).

When addictive thinking takes root, people go to great lengths to justify their harmful behaviors without being cognizant of what they are actually doing. They are literally not aware they are lying to themselves. The rationalizations they come up with are often ingenious and seductive and very logical sounding. Twerski explains:

“Rationalization means providing “good” [or plausible] reasons instead of the true reason…This does not mean that all rationalization are good reasons. Some are downright silly, but they can be made to sound reasonable. Rationalizations divert attention from true reasons…As with denial, rationalization is an unconscious process–that is, the person is unaware of rationalizing. A fairly reliable rule of thumb is that when people offer more than one reason for doing something, they are probably rationalizing. Usually the true reason for any action is a single one” (41).

People caught up in self-deceptive thinking may succeed at deceiving those closest to them. However, as Twerksi notes, the justifications prove absurd and flimsy when we look at them more closely or observe the ugly end results of their behavior (Addictive Thinking 40-41, 71). A person caught up in addictive thinking has great difficulty ever admitting that they are wrong or doing wrong; their perception is that they are right and justified (71-73).

People struggling with sexual compulsion also usually hide their habits from the people they love and lie about what is really going on. Lying may appear necessary and right to them in the context and is easily rationalized. They also want to have some control over a situation that feels unmanageable. Insecurity and shame make them highly sensitive to criticism and rejection. They want to continue to enable what they’re doing because they don’t see a way out and aspects of it make them feel gratified. The secrecy signals that on a less conscious level, part of them does acknowledge that what they are doing is wrong and shameful. (For a thoughtful contemporary example of how secrecy and deception can pan out in a well-intentioned person’s life, I recommend Faith Matters’ conversation with Jason Portnoy, the author of Silicon Valley Porn Star).

Joseph Smith’s behavior regarding plural marriage resembles features of sexual compulsivity and additive thinking

Both Joseph Smith’s childhood and adult life could have easily linked the six core experiences and emotions that when reinforcing one another can lead to unwanted sexual behaviors. He grew up poor and undereducated in a large family with parents who were stretched thin. The family was transient and faced some major setbacks due to his father’s errors in judgment, a context that could have easily created shame and strain in the family. As a youth, Joseph walked with a limp and was sometimes ridiculed for his claims to visions from the heavens. We also know he was worried about his sins; it’s one reason he prayed in the woods at age 14. Experiences of deprivation and suffering continued in adulthood. He struggled to provide for his young family. He was arrested and imprisoned many times. He was physically attacked by mobs, and one such incident resulted in a chipped tooth that caused him to speak with a lisp. Meanwhile, his aspirations and expectations for himself were sky high, which may have set him up to experience profound shame.

The definitive biography of Emma Smith, Mormon Enigma, demonstrates that Joseph’s impulses and efforts to seek attention from women other than Emma occurred shortly after he founded the Church and before he practiced plural marriage or taught it as a doctrine (pg. 64-67). Moments of supposed revelation came long after Joseph started experimenting with superfluous intimate relationships. I suspect the events happened in the order they did precisely because Joseph needed to justify actions he was already involved with. In my mind, his teachings about plural marriage were merely set of inventive rationalizations for his compulsive behaviors. Over time, his rationalizations snowballed into a whole myriad of bizarre, contradictory, silly rationalizations for why plural marriage needed to happen. Today the Church seems to have given up and to suggest there is are no clear reason. I think there is ultimately only one reason: Joseph’s sexual brokenness.

Joseph was sometimes reluctant and ambivalent about plural marriage. Sexual compulsion is characteristically riddled with ambivalence because it is driven by feelings of shame concerning oneself and one’s inappropriate secretive behaviors. This may have just been evidence that he was suffering from sexual compulsion rather than a reason to defend Joseph or argue plural marriage wasn’t his idea.

Sexual compulsion and addictive thinking could explain why Joseph justified being secretive, deceptive and duplicitous toward his wife Emma and others. These are common behaviors for people in this situation. He was fragile and self-defensive and was protecting himself from criticism, from being held accountable to face the truth about what he was doing, and from others intervening with his behavior.

Whatever the “angel” which in some second-hand accounts commanded Joseph to take plural wives, really was, the story only served to strengthen and bolster his rationalizations. Was it actually a hallucination he saw when he suffered from sleep paralysis or was mentally desperate? Was it a dream or a self-justifying delusion? Or even an evil spirit taking advantage of him to hurt others?

Joseph acted like someone caught up in patterns of addictive thinking in that he projected blame for his actions onto others (Addictive Thinking 44-46). It was all God’s fault that these women were expected to marry him–not his. He also projected his sexual brokenness on other people by requiring them to live the same lifestyle as him. By forcing them to adopt his habits and rationalizations, he could attempt to lighten his own feelings of guilt and shame. Seemingly devoid of empathy, he “clapped his hands and danced like a child” when the Twelve Apostles gloomily bent to his orders to practice plural marriage with him (Mormon Enigma 98). Numbing his emotions and sensitivity to others’ feelings was probably a way he coped with underlying pain and shame.

Many aspects of Emma’s experiences with Joseph’s plural marriage lifestyle and teachings resemble those of a contemporary woman experiencing a husband’s sexual compulsivity and infidelity. Like many such women today, she discovered her husband’s behaviors by stumbling upon situations he didn’t want her to see. In some instances, she learned he was secretly married to her closest friends. She anxiously tried to prevent his acts of sexual betrayal; in one instance, she stood in front of a bedroom door to prevent him from spending a wedding night with a new wife (Mormon Enigma 137-45).

Joseph created abusive conditions to get Emma to cooperate with his behaviors by withholding religious blessings until she gave him consent to do what he intended (Mormon Enigma 142-3). From Emma’s perspective, is was Joseph’s voice in D&C 132 that threatened her with destruction if she did not consent to him taking more wives; she said he was “indulgent” and burned the document (152-3) At times, Joseph scapegoated Emma for the problems they were facing; he treated her as the unfaithful, unrighteous one (154, 161-4). Such abuse toward a spouse that blames them for the relational problems they in fact cause themselves and that manipulates the spouse into cooperating with their violating behavior can be characteristic of individuals suffering from sexual compulsion. Emma threatened divorce at one point (158). Her ultimate conclusion was that Joseph’s plural marriage teachings were uninspired; she even said on one occasion that they came straight from hell (171). She was highly anxious about her sons following in their father’s footsteps regarding plural marriage (172). Later in life, she was still in a lot of pain about his behaviors and struggled to speak about what had happened to her. She concealed the truth from her sons (292-301).

There are other facets of sexual compulsion and addictive thinking that line up with Joseph’s behaviors and life history to explore, but I’ll just mention one more here. There is evidence that toward the end of his life, Joseph experienced moments when he started to break out of his self-serving thinking about plural marriage. Such “rock bottom” experiences happen to those suffering from addictive thinking when the negative consequences of a behavior start outweighing perceived personal benefits; these moments are opportunities to start recovering (Addictive Thinking 101-2).

There are accounts that Joseph told William Marks on one occasion and the Twelve on another that he had come to the conclusion he had been deceived about plural marriage and that he and the others must turn away from the practice (Mormon Enigma 179-80, see also Laurence Foster’s article about these instances). In addition, shortly before his death, Emma believed Joseph was moving away from polygamy (Mormon Enigma 207). It does not appear that Joseph set plural marriage aside entirely before he died, and he might have vacillated in his views, or said things to satiate others or protect himself, but perhaps he did begin to acknowledge that his thinking and actions had been distorted and harmful.

How might this perspective provide a supportive middle ground?

There are various potential strengths and benefits to this reinterpretation. It supports the exploration and development of nuanced views about Joseph Smith’s character, motivations, and actions. It allows us to treat him as emotionally and spiritually wounded, sick and self-deceived rather than deliberately, consciously seeking to do harm from the outset as he adopted the practice of plural marriage. By moving closer in and seeking to understand how behaviors and struggles like his work psychologically, we can treat him as a three-dimensional, complicated human rather than all good or evil. It may help us move through anger and suffering toward forgiveness, healing, and a sense of compassion for him and the people he influenced.

In cultivating compassion, we need not excuse him for what he did or treat him as innocent. We can hold him accountable for doing things he should have recognized as wrong and checked himself against doing. We may also recognize that it might have been very difficult or impossible for him to really make sense of why he did what he did or how to make things right, partly because he lived in a time when what he likely suffered from was not well understood and when there weren’t treatments for his struggles like there are today. This provides yet more reason for compassion and mercy. He may have been terribly stuck in what Jay Stringer describes as a “a predictable, pernicious cycle that traps the soul” (Unwanted 86). Even today, it can be very difficult for people with tough cases of sexual compulsion to access the resources they need to recover. Effective treatments and therapy with specialists can be hard to come by and expensive.

Having reasonable, reality-based, and more in-depth explanations for what happened may help us establish a thoughtful middle ground where we can have more grace toward whatever may be good and well-intentioned about the Church and its history (and I mean this, whatever our relationship with the Church is, and whether we’re interested in treating Joseph as a prophet), while also differentiating from the traditional narratives about plural marriage (and other aspects of the Church it has negatively influenced) in more fully developed and emotionally intelligent ways. Whether we are interested in having faith in the tradition and/or practicing to some level or not, compassionate, non-dualistic thinking can help us grow, heal, and become better mentors and leaders to others.

The basic framework for understanding what happened that I have suggested may help us hold seeming contraries together without having to discard them or draw oversimplified conclusions. It can make space for what is beautiful, mysterious, and possibly genuinely spiritual about Joseph’s life and the early Church, while also accounting for what was ugly, abusive, deceitful, and dark. As Richard Rohr writes in The Tears of Things, when we learn to hold such seemingly irreconcilable things in human nature and history all together at once without forcing a resolution, this sets the stage for us grow, mature and transform. “The secret,” he writes, “is to hold the different ingredients together without seeking an answer, a goal, an outcome, a product, or a judgment. Let them marinate together…” A patient, “quiet allowing” of what is may be counterintuitive, but through it we grow and access greater sensitivity, wisdom, and grace (110-112).

In this process, we may even discover clues as to how the seemingly irreconcilable aspects of Joseph’s life may be connected. For example, the beautiful experiences from Joseph’s childhood may have contributed to whatever incidents wounded him. Perhaps such emotional damage is hard for people with prophetic gifts to avoid in an often cruel and broken world.

Another strength of the perspective I’ve suggested it that it is an attempt at utter honesty and realism in answer to some of the tough questions at hand. Richard Rohr writes: “Idealists often cannot or will not see this, but prophets are not idealists. They are truth-tellers and utter realists” (The Tears of Things 144). While I can’t know for certain that the theory I’ve shared is the truth, and it’s surely imperfect and incomplete, it is the most honest and realistic explanation for why Mormon plural marriage came about that I have come across. I actually did not come up with this reinterpretation myself. I learned it from Mormon women who are married to men who suffer from sexual brokenness. They noticed patterns in the history that reminded them of their lived experiences and insights from study and therapy. When they exposed me to their ideas, I had the sensation of hearing the truth about Mormon polygamy for the first time in my life. It was the first time after decades of prayer and struggle and pain about this topic that a perspective of polygamy spoke to my soul.

It may take time to study, understand, and internalize, esp. if you haven’t witnessed how these things can happen close up in real life close up or don’t have such patterns of struggle and wounding in your own family (which many of us do), but this kind of reality-based, honest approach might just be what we need to moved forward, heal, and grow.

This version of the story may impart wisdom and understanding about the human condition and psychology we can all benefit from. These kinds of wounds and problems are common and useful to know about. Learning about them may help us gain self-awareness on various levels–of ourselves, our family members and extended families, and the Church.

It may also lead us to interesting and useful questions, such as Why and how does God work through broken people? How can ordinary members of the Church prevent, resist, and recover from ecclesiastical abuses of power? In what ways is the Church still caught up in Joseph’s deluded and self-justifying addictive thinking? What can we do to escape any traps of such thinking we have inherited?

This reinterpretation may also help us accept and process the tragic quality of what happened. Rohr writes: “The nontragic sense of life gives easy and quick comfort…In the end, though, it does not really help, because it does not speak truthfully to the soul…[S]uch classic dualistic thinking relies on a rather complete denial of what it does not wish to see.” The wounds Joseph Smith suffered from and the destructive path he took as they flared up and festered were tragic, especially in light of his potential and the positive qualities he had. According to Rohr’s approach to religious messiness and perplexity, we need to look at what we’ve been turning away from, and let our outrage and division evolve into tears and healing grief.

Jay Stringer writes: “Our desire to honor others is often a smoke screen that keeps us from entertaining heartache. It is a brilliant and tragic maneuver we have all learned to make. We swerve to protect others so that we do not have to face the implications of what their harm has brought. What if all of this were not so? What if you could live where the streams of honesty and honor converge?” He is talking about dealing parents and grandparents who were great people we want to honor, but who also abused us and passed down their woundedness and deep-seated shame. In our case, Joseph Smith is like the abusive great grandfather whose sexual compulsion and self-deception has done great harm to an immense extended family. We may not like to talk about how our favorite, even prophetic Grandpa was sick and hurtful and acted selfish and deluded in addition to being someone we admire and appreciate for some good reasons, but we need to learn to do both at once if we want really want to grow up spiritually. Stringer advises: “May you enter your story with [both] honor and honesty” (Unwanted 24).

Joseph probably did not at all reach his potential as a prophet. He died before he even really reached middle age. Toward the end of his life, according to some accounts, he bizarrely talked of little except plural marriage (In Sacred Loneliness 23). Addictive thinking, which is devoid of any spiritual value (see Addictive Thinking 107-10), had come to cloud his mind and heart, and to move him away from his trajectory of achieving a more mature or transcendent vision of God, humanity, and life. While his fall into delusion and sin need not be cause to dismiss and reject his revelations or prophetic call, unlike him, we should keep growing and expanding into greater spiritual and emotional maturity and healing. While the framework Joseph offered us can be a great jumping off point in many ways (minus plural marriage and its fallout, especially unrighteous traditions of obeying leaders even when it doesn’t feel right), faith and spirituality have so much more to offer us than what he managed to gather during his short and adverse lifetime.

Recommended Reading/Bibliography:

Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing by Jay Stringer

Addictive Thinking: Understanding Self-Deception by Abraham J. Twerski

Mormon Enigma (1994 ed.) by Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery

The Tears of Things by Richard Rohr

The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy by Carol Lynn Pearson

Mending a Shattered Heart: A Guide for Partners of Sex Addicts by Stephanie Carnes

In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith by Todd Compton 

For another retelling of Joseph Smith’s plural marriage history by me, see:

Comparing the Nightmare Before Christmas and the Nightmare of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Part 1, and

Comparing the Nightmare Before Christmas and the Nightmare of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Part 2

Other posts in which I engage my perspective and personal experience with Joseph Smith’s plural marriages and abuses of power:

Mr. Reed from Heretic is Right: Polygamy is Mormonism’s Biggest Problem

The Newest Superman is a foil to Joseph Smith, and Reminds me of Nuanced and Post-Mormons

Sovereign God and Sovereign Prophets: Mormonism’s Theologically Unwarranted Stumbling Blocks

On the Powerful, Sacred, Redemptive Work of Mormon Feminist Writing

Feature image of Joseph Smith is public domain and downloaded from Wikimedia.

A huge thank you to all of our recent donors! The current blog fundraiser has now met the blogger’s goal of $10,000 in donations. Sending our love and appreciation to all who contributed!

Guest Post: “Lord, To Whom Shall We Go?”: Latter-day Saint Women and the Rehabilitation of Heavenly Mother – Part 2

Guest Post By Paige

This is the second in a three part series about Heavenly Mother. Part 1 was published last Sunday and Part 3 will be published next Sunday.

Part Two: Toward a Queer Theology of the Divine: Reflections on Rethinking GodReimagining Her Role

In the first section of this reflection, I explored how the institutional language of motherhood and priesthood fails to account for the lived realities of many Latter-day Saint women. As I sat with the inequalities in this motherhood-priesthood framework, I reflected on what other visions of divinity could look like.

As someone outside of the Church, I obviously don’t come to this conversation with the same covenants or doctrinal obligations. But I do share in a larger human desire: to see the divine reflect the fullness of human experience. That’s why I’m drawn to the growing body of work by Mormon feminists and queer thinkers who are asking not only who Heavenly Mother is—but how big she might be allowed to become. In this section, I turn to those who are imagining queerness, complexity, and fluidity as sacred.

In Rethinking Mormonism’s Heavenly Mother, Petrey suggests that Heavenly Mother, in breaking down the homogeneity of the male godhead signifies a fluidity in identity instead of any single identity. He refers to Judith Butler, who offers that “the category of women does not become useless through deconstruction, but becomes one whose uses are no longer reified as ‘referents,’ and which stand a chance of being opened up, indeed, of coming to signify in ways that none of us can predict in advance.”1

Petrey notes “The opening up of the categories of women and men, through the opening up of Mormon theology, is a basis for unpredictable forms of subjectivity or, at the very least, a basis for those forms of subjectivity that already exist.” 2 It is these subjectivities that contemporary Latter-day Saint Women explore in their reimaginings of Heavenly Mother.

In 2015, Utah-based LDS artist Caitlin Connolly was commissioned by authors McArthur Krishna and Bethany Brady Spalding to create an image for the cover of a new children’s book titled Our Heavenly Family Our Earthly Families. The initial sketch and eventual large-scale painting features two prominent figures on top, representing a Heavenly Father and seemingly pregnant Heavenly Mother. Making up the Heavenly Parents’ bodies and cascading down to the bottom of the painting are hundreds of people of a variety of ages, races, and genders. Connolly eventually titled the painting In Their Image. After sending initial sketches to Deseret Book, Connolly was notified that her sketches could not be approved. Deseret Book explained that this was because of the physical representation of Heavenly Mother.

In the At Last She Said It podcast, Connolly shares that following that year’s General Conference, in which Elder Jeffrey Holland referenced Heavenly Mother, and the following doctrinal essay on her published by the Church, Connolly’s sketch suddenly became approved by Deseret Book.3 During her work, Connolly was approached by a collector for the LDS Church Museum, and the larger-scale painting was purchased for the Church. After sitting in storage for almost two years due to hesitation from Church leaders, the painting was finally displayed at the Museum in Salt Lake City, where it remains today, although accompanied by a display card scripted by the Church, asserting the work as a portrayal, not of Heavenly Mother, but a pair of eternal companions looking down on their progeny.

In describing the painting and reactions amongst the Church community, Connolly explains “It’s a conversation about a divine mother we’ve been missing, and daring to bring into existence for ourselves. I have found that what I am trying to learn about womanhood…and the divine feminine…has come through women [and] will continue to. If we are brave enough to get uncomfortable and do that work.” 4 Connolly’s experience with In Their Image exemplifies how institutional control over sacred imagery reinforces LDS gender norms, restricting representations of the divine feminine that are seen as defiant of Church agenda.

To Be Made in Their Image: Rethinking Gender and Sexuality

In January 2025, Caitlin Connolly shared her desire to renew the painting and asked her audience for critiques. The messages in response reveal the ways in which contemporary Mormons still find traditional representations of Heavenly Mother problematic. One commenter shares “I don’t want to be eternally pregnant…So I hope my heavenly mother isn’t.”5

Comments regarding pregnancy were one of the most common responses. Another commenter asks “What if God isn’t a straight mother and father? What if God is bigger than what our imaginations can hold?”6 12

While revealing how traditional representations are problematic, these comments also showcase the ways in which rehabilitation of Heavenly Mother can carve out a more inclusive theology for Latter-day Saints.

Blaire Ostler expands on this idea by arguing that if humans are all made in the image of God, then God must be significantly larger than a heterosexual coupling. Ostler asserts that her “observation that we fashion gods in our image is not an affront but an invitation for LGBTQ+ Saints, Saints of color, single Saints, infertile Saints, and disabled Saints to tell the story of God too. We are all made in the image of God and thus, as believers of Mormon theology, are called to champion the creation of gods as diverse as ourselves.” 7

She examines interpretations of Heavenly Mother and critiques them as incomplete and limited, and offers a more nuanced and individual understanding of Heavenly parents by examining the complexity of historical Mormon cosmology.

Ostler highlights the Mormon conception of God as “a community of generational beings. Godhood is not a one-time occurrence…we all have the potential to share in the same glory as our heavenly parents…We are all made in the image of God with the potential to join the endless network of gods above and partake of our heavenly inheritance. Our theology is so much grander than a single Heavenly Father or Mother. God is expansive, dynamic, generational, and endless. Yet at the same time, God is as familial, personal, and physical as a great-grandparent or great-grandchild.” 8

If theosis, or the process of becoming gods, is at the core of LDS religion then it is not a dishonor to God to emulate them. Ostler notes “queer folksin no way dishonor God when we emulate and worship them in our works, worship, and
theology. Quite the opposite—it’s a manifestation of our highest respect, faith, works, and reverence.”9

Paige is a Religion, German, and American Studies student looking to pursue Divinity school following her undergrad. She is a non-member, but has found much joy in Mormon Studies and has developed a meaningful relationship with the Church through both her studies and personal explorations. She is deeply passionate about Interfaith work, Bible literacy, and napping on the beach.

Butler, Judith as cited in Petrey, Taylor G. “Rethinking Mormonism’s Heavenly Mother.” Harvard Theological Review 109, no. 3 (July 2016): 315–41. https://doi.org/10.1017/s001781601600.... pp. 27-28 ↩︎Petrey, Taylor G. “Rethinking Mormonism’s Heavenly Mother.” Harvard Theological Review 109, no. 3 (July 2016): 315–41. https://doi.org/10.1017/s001781601600.... pp. 27-28 ↩︎“In Their Image–A Conversation with Caitlin Connolly.” Podcast Episode. At Last She Said It no. 92, 2022. ↩︎“In Their Image–A Conversation with Caitlin Connolly.” ↩︎Connolly, Caitlin @caitlinconnollystudio. “��T�� _ACT����” [Highlight]. Instagram. January 2
https://www.instagram.com/stories/hig... ↩︎Connolly, Caitlin @caitlinconnollystudio. “��T�� _ACT� ↩︎Ostler, Blaire. “I Am a Child of Gods.” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 55, no. 1 (April 1, 2022): 99–118.
https://doi.org/10.5406/15549399.55.1.04. pp. 106 ↩︎Ostler, Blaire. “I Am a Child of Gods.” pp. 111 ↩︎Ostler, Blaire. “I Am a Child of Gods.” pp. 110 ↩︎

Sacred Music Sunday: Bread of Life, Living Water

I’m still learning the new hymns from the new hymnal. As each new batch has been released, the percentage of familiar hymns has gone steadily down. One hymn that was released early on that I hadn’t been familiar with is Bread of Life, Living Water.

The hymnal is a bit thin on sacrament hymns. As the ward music chair, I do the sacrament hymns on a rotation. We start at the end of the list and work backward until we reach the beginning and then repeat. Each sacrament hymn gets sung 3-4 times per year. I added the new ones into the rotation, and I really like this one.

I’m coming to a close on my second stint as ward music chair (I’ve been told I’ll be released next week). The musical bench is thinning in my ward, so I suspect I’ll still be conducting the music from time to time. It’s been enjoyable to be in this calling during the roll-out of the new hymnal.

Guest Post: To the Women Who Fake It

Guest Post by Megan Lloyd

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon 3 disturbing comments in an LDS-related Facebook group where several women openly admitted to faking pleasure during sex. The vulnerability was striking, but even more so was the familiar pattern it revealed: how many of us learned to perform, to please, and to silence our own needs in order to be good, to belong, or to simply keep the peace.

Their words echoed something deeper, specifically how often women are conditioned to contort themselves not just in bed, but in belief, in relationships, and in daily life.

In the group, one woman asked, “How many of you still pretend to like sex? Is it just me?” The replies were heartbreaking. One even said, “A happy husband is better than fulfilling sex.”

That same day, another woman lamented that her husband asked her to be more passionate, just two months after giving birth. The comments were full of men who had an endless supply of tips to spice things up, with no mention of her pain, her healing, or her humanity.

These aren’t rare stories. And maybe that’s what hurts the most. Or maybe it’s because I know a different kind of love – one rooted in mutual care, real consent, and deep emotional safety.

The deeper ache comes from recognizing this dynamic is not just about individual men or even culture. It’s forged in the perfect storm of high-demand religious messaging. A system that tells women to be desirable, but never overtly sexy; to satisfy their husbands, but put their own needs last; to stay meek and humble, rather than risk using their voice.

Messages like this feed into that storm:

“The husband, the holder of the household, is established this day in this marriage covenant as the head of the family and the breadwinner. It may be hard for you to recognize this role, young lady, but your happiness is conditioned upon it.” (Boyd K. Packer) *

“If you dress immodestly, you are magnifying this problem by becoming pornography to some of the men who see you.” (Dallin H. Oaks) **

“We need your voices… Now don’t talk too much in those council meetings, just straighten the brethren out quickly and move the work on.” (M. Russell Ballard) ***

“You beautiful girls, don’t wander around looking like men. Put on a little lipstick now and then and look a little charming. It’s that simple. I don’t know why we make this whole process so hard”. (M. Russell Ballard) ****

It’s messages like these that confuse the sacred companionship that is possible in partnership. Instead, these teachings breed shame, self-erasure, distrust of our bodies, and a disconnect with ourselves and our romantic partners.

It’s all of it combined: system, culture, and doctrine teaching women to suppress and put themselves last.

After reading these 3 Facebook comments, I did what I do and processed by writing. I wrote this poem for every woman who’s ever faked it just to keep the peace. I desperately want you to know: you deserve better.

To Women Who Fake It

A love letter to women who deserve more

I don’t fake it.
But I know why so many do.

You might fake it –
not because you’re wrong to do so –
but because no one ever asked
what you needed to come alive.

They asked you to moan,
but not to feel.
To spread your thighs,
but not your soul.
To be his fantasy,
but never your own.

They trained you to perform divinity,
but never to embody it.
And so your body became
a stage,
a duty,
a bargain.

They called it sacrifice.
They said it made you holy.
But what it made you was
invisible.

The prophets and popes,
the bishops and fathers,
spoke of “virtue”
and called it your divine role
to serve, to submit, to smile.

They shamed your desire,
feared your knowing,
and buried your voice beneath
a thousand modesty lessons.

They taught you to protect the priesthood
and preserve the marriage
by offering your body
like bread and wine
at the altar of peacekeeping.

So you faked it.
Not because you are deceitful –
but because the truth
was never safe enough to say out loud.

Because when you said no,
he pouted.
Or punished.
Or disappeared into silence
until guilt became your foreplay.

And I ache for you.
Because I’ve tasted something different.
And I want you to know –
this isn’t all there is.

You were not made
to disappear in your own skin.
You were not created
for his satisfaction alone.

Your body,
divine as it is,
bears a holy rebellion:
a clitoris –
whose only function
is pleasure.
YOUR pleasure.

Can we sit with that?
The very design of your flesh
is unmeasurable joy.

And the great irony?
By caging the woman,
they caged their own pleasure too.
Because the wild, whole woman –
the one who knows her body
and isn’t afraid to love from the marrow –
she’s the one who says hell yes
with her eyes, her hips, her breath,
not because she must,
but because she wants to.

But he’ll never taste her,
not truly,
while demanding obedience over openness.
He built the box.
Then handed it to her.
“This is where you belong.”
And so he lies beside her
never knowing
what he could have had.

And still they told you,
“Women don’t need sex like men do.”
No, sister.
We do.
We crave it –
when it is safe,
when it is mutual,
when it is real.

I know this, because I live it.
My husband doesn’t demand my passion –
I give it to him freely
because he cares more for my heart
than for my body’s availability.

He prioritizes my pleasure
as much as his own.
Not out of duty –
but out of devotion.

He asks if I got there.
Then asks again –
because he wants to know.

He studies my body
like scripture.
He doesn’t rush me
to his climax.
He waits –
sometimes setting his own desire aside
just to bring mine to the surface.

When I birth a child, he holds space
for blood and tears
and the slow unwinding of my body.
He asks if I’m ready –
and believes me when I say I’m not.

He listens when I speak
even if it’s hard.
Even if it’s different from what he feels.
He holds my “no” with honor
and receives my “yes” with reverence.

I feel safe in his presence,
not because I’m never vulnerable,
but because I can be.

Our sex is passionate –
not because it’s expected,
but because it’s true.
We share the weight of the world –
parenting, dishes, decision-making –
so I don’t arrive at the bedroom
already emptied.

And still,
our passion is full.
Because our intimacy begins in the heart,
long before it touches the skin.

You were never meant
to bear this alone.
To confuse duty with desire.
To barter your body
for peace in your marriage.

So here, let me say it plainly:
You deserve to know your own body.
You deserve to say no without fear.
You deserve to be cherished, not endured.
You deserve a love that sees you
and never asks you to disappear.

This isn’t all there is.
There is more.
It starts with you –
reclaiming your body,
your breath,
your rhythm,
and the wholeness
no man can give
because it was never his to offer.

You were always whole.
You just needed to come home
to you.

And damn,
that is divine.

Sources:

*(That All May Be Edified, Boyd K. Packer, p230, pub. 1982. https://deseretbook.com/p/all-may-edified-plans-building-spirituality-boyd-k-packer-4204?variant_id=106457-paperback)
**(Pornography, Dallin H. Oaks, General Conference, April 2005; lds.org)
***(Boyd K. Packer, Europe Area Sisters Meeting, September 2014)
**** (October 2015 devotional to young single adults, Elder M. Russell Ballard)

Megan is a mom of three in a thriving mixed-faith marriage, where life is messy, magical, and a touch of mayhem. “Mom” is her most sacred title, but not the only one she answers to. By day, she works as a Web Designer and Online Business Manager; by heart, she writes, mostly to reclaim the voice she spent years tucking away. Psychology fascinates her, ice cream regularly seduces her, and she loves exploring the world through a feminist, social justice lens that helps her feel more connected to our shared humanity. Visit www.damnthatsdivine.com to read more of Megan’s work.