Exponent II's Blog, page 25

Millie Tullis Named Exponent II’s Next Editor-in-Chief

We are thrilled to announce Millie Tullis as the next Editor-in-Chief of Exponent II! 

Millie Tullis (she/they) is a writer, editor, teacher, and researcher. She holds an MFA from George Mason University and an MA in American Studies & Folklore from Utah State University. Their digital micro-chap, Dream With Teeth, was published by Ghost City Press in 2023. Her poetry has been published in Sugar House Review, Stone Circle Review, Cimarron Review, Ninth Letter, SWWIM, Moist Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Millie is the Editor-in-Chief of Psaltery & Lyre, an online literary journal. Raised in northern Utah, they live and work in upstate South Carolina. Read Millie’s full bio below!

Millie will be supported by additional new editorial team members, who will be announced next month. We’re also preparing a forthcoming Q&A with Millie! This team’s first issue will be the Fall 2025 issue. Until then, Millie is training with the current Editor-in-Chief, Rachel Rueckert, and Managing Editor, Carol Ann. We thank Rachel and Carol Ann for their years of dedicated service to Exponent II and for investing their time and labor in a successful transition.

More about Millie Tullis:

Millie Tullis is a writer, editor, teacher, and researcher from northern Utah. In 2015, Millie won the Sandy River Review‘s Undergraduate Poetry Prize; in 2016, she won the Elizabeth R. Curry Poetry Contest. Millie won the Utah State University (USU) Peak Prize: Undergraduate Researcher of the Year in 2016. In 2017, she won USU’s Joyce Kinkead Award for Outstanding Honors Capstone Project. Her thesis was an archival-based lyric essay on Sylvia Plath. Millie graduated from USU in 2017 with BAs in English (creative writing) and philosophy, with a certificate in women and gender studies.

In 2021, Millie earned an MFA in creative writing with a poetry emphasis from George Mason University (GMU). At GMU, Millie was awarded the thesis fellowship from 2020-21 and the Margaret R. Yocom Graduate Student Paper Prize in Folklore in 2021. In 2023, Millie earned an MA in American Studies and Folklore from USU. She was awarded the English Department’s Master’s Student Researcher of the Year in 2023, the English Department Scholarship in 2022, and the Folklore Fellowship (2021-2).

Millie’s poetry has been published in Sugar House Review, Dialogist, Stone Circle Review, Rock & Sling, Cimarron Review, Ninth Letter, Up the Staircase Quarterly, SWWIM, Moist Poetry Journal, Exponent II, and elsewhere. In 2021, her poetry manuscript, Saints, won the honorable mention for a book-length collection of poetry from the Utah Original Writing Competition. Her digital micro-chap, Dream With Teeth, was published by Ghost City Press in 2023, and her first full-length collection is forthcoming from Signature Books in 2026. 

She has worked on a variety of literary journals and anthologies as a reader and editor. In 2022, Millie became the Editor-in-Chief of Psaltery & Lyre, an online literary journal publishing literature at the border of the sacred and profane. Previously, she served as Phoebe’s poetry and social media editor, assistant editor at Best of the Net, and poetry co-editor for Sink Hollow. She also began volunteering with Poetry Daily, a digital anthology of contemporary poetry, in 2019.

Millie’s folklore research focuses on the lives of Mormon women in early Utah. Her master’s thesis at USU was titled “Mormon Women’s Peepstones: Divination, Revelation, Gender and Power in Utah.” She is interested in family narratives, women’s microhistories, and place-making narratives. Her essay, “Comfort, Counsel, Money, and Livestock: Mormon Women’s Divination Communities,” won the Don Yoder Prize from the Folk Belief and Religious Folklife Section of the American Folklore Society in 2023. Millie’s work has also been awarded the Helen Papanikolas Award (Utah Historical Society), the Alta Fife Graduate Student Paper Award (Folklore Society of Utah), and the Best Unpublished Graduate Student Paper (Mormon History Association). Her essay, “Polygamy and Revelation in Magical Mormonism: Four Peepstone Bride Narratives,” was published in DNA Mormon: Perspectives on the Legacy of Historian D. Michael Quinn, edited by Benjamin E. Park.

Her folklore research has been supported by the College of Humanities and Social Science’s Summer Graduate Student-Faculty Funding (USU), the Annaley Naegle Redd Student Award in Women’s History (Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, Brigham Young University), the Elliot Oring Student Travel Stipend (Western States Folklore Society), the Polly Stewart Student Travel Award (second place, the Women’s section of the American Folklore Society), and the Elaine J. Lawless Graduate Student Travel Award (Folk Belief and Religious Folklife Section, American Folklore Society).

Millie works as a Digital Learning Strategist at Clemson University and teaches part-time at Southern New Hampshire University. As a Digital Learning Strategist, she facilitates and develops online instructional development training sessions for faculty on topics related to online pedagogy, accessibility, and best practices with teaching technology. She has taught in face-to-face, synchronous, asynchronous, and blended formats. She tutored writing for over nine years, working with undergraduate and graduate writers at USU and GMU. Millie also worked in writing center administration at USU and GMU, facilitating tutor trainings and writing center outreach. Millie is passionate about empowering writers to reach her communication goals by emphasizing process-based writing, reflection and metacognition, and increasing rhetorical awareness.

 

Sylvia Cabus will be our Keynote Speaker at the 2025 Exponent II Retreat!

We are thrilled to announce our Keynote Speaker for this year’s Exponent II Retreat on September 19-21, 2025 at the Barbara C. Harris Center in Greenfield, New Hampshire! This year’s retreat will open for registration on May 3, 2025. Spots are limited, and some years the retreat sold out in less than 24 hours. For more information visit exponentii.org/retreat.

About Sylvia Cabus

Sylvia credits her involvement in Exponent II as one of the most formative experiences she’s had as a Mormon feminist of color. Ten of Sylvia’s essays have been published either in the Exponent II magazine or on the Exponent II Blog. One of these was featured in the 50th anniversary anthology. She has attended every retreat since 2008 and from 2009-2012 Sylvia volunteered on the Exponent II Magazine Editorial Board. In March 2025, Sylvia spoke on the panel “The Enduring Sisterhood of Exponent II” at the Festschrift for the 50th Anniversary of Mormon Sisters & Claudia Bushman.

Her first essay as a Mormon feminist was published in 1998 in the Washington Post’s “Faith Stories” series, which featured essays from converts in different denominations. In addition to Exponent II, Sylvia has also published essays in Sunstone, and on the Ordain Women and Mormon Feminist Women of Color (FEMWOC) blogs. She presented a Dialogue Sunday School session in 2021. Sylvia has been interviewed by Patheos, the Mormon Women Project, Mormon Matters, Mormon Women’s Voices, the Mormon Women oral history project, Aspiring Mormon Women, Voices of Global Mormon Women, and Faith Matters’ “Peacemakers Needed” newsletter. Sylvia and her family have been featured in the Church’s public affairs campaigns on marriage equality and the re-opening of the Washington D.C. temple. Sylvia also spoke as one of several active Mormon women supporting reproductive rights in a video during the 2020 election season.

Sylvia joined the Church as a single woman at the age of 27 between returning from the Peace Corps and starting graduate school. Sylvia was born in the Philippines, grew up in southern California, lived in Francophone Africa for 9 years, and now calls Washington D.C. home with her husband and 11-year-old son. She is a member of the Capitol Hill Ward in Washington D.C. She has worked on gender equality and women’s empowerment issues for over thirty years – most recently as a technical advisor on gender and dvelopment at the Peace Corps. Sylvia received a B.A. in History from UC Berkeley and an M.A. in International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University.

Body and Mind

“Can I have some more pizza?” my son asks after devouring 2 whole pieces. 

“What does your body say?” I ask back as he rolls his eyes. He’s heard this before.

“My body says ‘I want pizza!’” he laughs, using his monster voice for effect. 

“K, just take a second to check in and make sure your body actually wants another piece, but if it does you’re welcome to grab one,” I respond.

I’m not a perfect mom in many ways. My kids have too many screens, they don’t play outside enough, they fight way too often, and I lose my cool with them. But one area I feel pretty good about is my focus on teaching my kids about their bodies. 

When they are angry or upset, I’ll usually sneak in a “What is your body feeling?” question as we’re sifting through their needs. When they fight with each other, I’ll often focus on how their body hurt another person’s body and that’s not OK. They know all about puberty, consent, and that no question is off-limits when it comes to bodies.

I don’t remember ever making a conscious choice to make “bodies” a point of focus in my parenting. It has happened organically as I became a therapist and learned about trauma and the many ways our bodies store and learn information about our environments. It’s also become more of a focus as I’ve reconsidered areas of my own childhood/ young adulthood and the many ways I felt my church-centered upbringing impacted my relationship with my body. 

I grew up in the era of “no extra piercings” and “leggings are not pants” debates. I was 15 when President Oaks gave his infamous talk about immodesty and “becoming pornography” to the men who see you. Every YW lesson about modesty focused on covering bodies so the boys around us would not be tempted.

So much of what I learned growing up was that my body was a vessel to be tamed, a gift from God, yes, but one that could easily displease Him. 

Beyond the modesty discussions and purity culture, I was also taught about “what” my feelings mean. When I felt warm and happy during a Sacrament Meeting, that was the Spirit. When I felt curious about exploring beyond what the church had told me was “appropriate”, that was from Satan. When I felt connected to the people around me while singing a hymn, that was the Spirit testifying that the church is true. When I felt discomfort listening to people critique the church, that was the Spirit telling me they must be wrong. 

Almost all of the ways I learned to relate or respond to my body were through the filter of the church. 

Then I went to grad school to become a therapist and learned about trauma and somatic processing and realized I had been doing it all wrong. 

No one can interpret feelings for you. Feelings are completely individual based on what you have been through and your own body-mind connection. They are information from your body about your environment (even if they aren’t always accurate or logic-based). And because they are happening in your body and yours alone, no one else can accurately interpret what they mean. 

I believe the church does a disservice to its members by interrupting or taking ownership over people’s feelings. When the church says, “This feeling means you are feeling the Spirit and the Spirit wants you to do this”- that is a vast overreach. This kind of overreach creates a dependency on the church for the interpretation of your feelings rather than you being able to trust yourself. 

When a client comes into my office and I notice they are not connected to their body, the last thing I would do is interpret their feelings for them. Instead, I have them notice. “What’s happening in your body right now? What are you feeling?” I have them tell me the sensations connected to their emotions. Then we explore what that could mean and what their body might be trying to communicate. I intentionally withhold any assumptions or insight I might have about their feelings until I am sure that they are in the driver’s seat. 

Feelings and logic come from different places. Our rational self is invested in figuring out “what this means.” It wants to make sense of our surroundings and make it all fit together. But our emotional self is what happens before “what this means” can even take place. It’s our body’s first line of response. It’s the most primal, initial way we receive information. And because of that, it can tell us a lot. 

Lately, I’ve seen a lot of discussion in the Latter-day Saint world about the new garments and the ability to show shoulders now. I saw a video of a woman heading into a church building while wearing the new garments, shoulders free, and her caption was “the anxious feeling you get when you walk into church wearing the new sleeveless garments.” My mind has come back to that caption over and over again.

She noticed she was anxious. And I wonder what her body and mind were connecting to. Was it the many messages she has received about what “modesty” is supposed to look like? Was it the many lessons she likely attended telling her that shoulders are pornography for the men around her? Was it the cultural pressure of blending in, costly signaling to show she is “in” and not “out” of the church group? 

Only she could be the one to interpret that for herself, but I hope she does. While the church might teach us to shut down or disconnect from uncomfortable feelings, her body is sending an important message that something about showing her shoulders and walking into church is triggering for her. I hope she’ll spend time sitting with that feeling, getting to know it, and asking what it needs. 

In some ways, as I teach my kids about listening to their bodies, I am learning right alongside them. We’re all learning to check in, listen, acknowledge, hold space, and open up to our emotions. We’re learning to be our own authority on what our body needs. No more outsourcing, no more handing it over to a church or any other person or organization to interpret our feelings for us. We’re connecting rather than filtering. 

And sometimes that means we really do need an extra slice of pizza.

“Retreating” by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Consider attending this year’s Exponent II Retreat on September 19-21, 2025, at the Barbara C. Harris Center in Greenfield, New Hampshire! Registration opens May 3. Learn more here.

This essay was originally published in the Fall 2021 Exponent II magazine. Shared here with permission from the author as part of the Exponent II Retreat blog series.

When Exponent canceled its retreat in 2020 and again in 2021, any relief I felt in not having to deliver a keynote address was overwhelmed by a desire to celebrate the importance of past retreats in my life. This essay is a small gesture in that direction. It builds on a kind of dialogue between the things I remember and the things I have been able to document in my patchy journals. As a historian, I know better than to trust anyone’s memories, including my own. Human brains have a way of shifting things around in random ways. Written records are stickier. In a pinch, they may even help settle an argument. So, my first take-away point from this essay is simple: don’t throw away anything that even pretends to be a journal. The second may at first seem contradictory: cherish your memories. For all their deficiencies, memories often tell us what we care about.

Although I am known for my work on early women’s diaries, I have never thought of myself as a diarist. The small stack of journals I consulted while writing this essay has forced me to reassess that assumption. On top of the stack is a little chronicle I began on July 11, 1953, my fifteenth birthday. Although I managed to keep it going for only nine months, it provides irrefutable evidence that even as a kid I loved Girl’s Camp. It also tells me that early on I was determined to become a writer. My second journal, marked “Record” in gold on the cover, contains only eleven entries between 1961 and 1963. Yet one of these records is my encounter with Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. “How wonderful in the midst of diapers & dishes — to know that I can be a woman and have brains, too,” I wrote. I added nothing else in that diary for the next 13 years.

I opened it again in 1976. By then, I had five children, ranging in age from sixteen to one. After six years of part-time study at the university where my husband was a professor, I had begun the dissertation that years later would become my first book. Although my life had never been busier, something impelled me to keep adding entries to my once abandoned diary. When I had filled its pages, I switched to cheap composition books, completing five of them by July 1999. I did not write every day. Sometimes I went months without recording anything, and in the last book I wrote on only one side of each page. Without really intending to do so, I created a more than two-decade-long record of significant events in my own life and those of my children. I also captured small moments in the complex history of Exponent II.

Exponent II Retreat, Hillsboro, New Hampshire

If I had written this essay without consulting my diaries, I would have said without hesitation that Exponent’s retreats began on or before 1974. I knew that in the way women often know things: because I connected it with a major transition in my life, the birth of my last child. I believed I became pregnant with Amy shortly after an Exponent retreat held at my house. Since she was born on August 8, 1975, that retreat had to have been held toward the end of 1974. But because my diary entries didn’t pick up until 1976, I had no way of confirming that. That was a problem because the retreat mentioned on Nancy Dredge’s impressive Exponent timeline was at Hillsborough, New Hampshire in 1983.

I consulted several of Exponent’s “founding mothers,” hoping someone would be able to confirm my memory. None of them had the slightest interest in my obsession with chronology. Although two of them agreed that we held retreats before 1983, they insisted that these were “only for the Board.” I didn’t much like that answer because I knew that from the pink Dialogue onward, our group had always prided itself on welcoming anybody who wanted to come to our meetings, even if by doing so we risked having people spread tales about our supposed feminist heresies.

After several days of fussing over this seemingly inconsequential problem, it finally occurred to me to consult our beloved little newspaper. Since I had already given my old issues of Exponent II to the Schlesinger Library, I had no choice but to use the awkward digital edition provided by BYU through Internet Archive. (Many thanks to whoever linked them to the Exponent II website.) When a word search failed, I decided to skim the earliest issues from the beginning. To my astonishment, the headline “Retreat” popped out on page 1 of Volume 1, Issue 1, dated July 1974. That article contained a report of an October 1973 retreat held somewhere west of Boston where the idea for starting the newspaper had begun! Eleven women and several babies had been in attendance.

Exponent II Retreat, Hillsboro, New Hampshire

It took less than five minutes to reach Exponent II’s third issue. There on the second page of the December 1974 issue was confirmation that “thirty women from Massachusetts and New Hampshire” had recently spent two days “in retreat” in Durham, New Hampshire, at the home of Laurel Ulrich. I was impressed that the number had jumped from eleven to thirty in just one year. The writer explained that there had been delightful meals, jogs in the woods, open discussions, and formal presentations on a variety of topics, including “for some of us,” a discussion of progress, problems, solutions, goals, and dreams related to the production of Exponent II. In short, this was the sort of retreat that hundreds of women have since experienced, a gathering sponsored by Exponent that included both those deeply involved in producing the paper and anybody else who wanted to come. According to the author, the participants came away with a greater understanding of themselves and each other. “The hours were full,” she concluded. So, I hasten to add, was my unfinished house.

I don’t know why it took me so long to consult the paper. I knew in my bones that our gatherings had produced our projects, rather than vice versa. Everything our little group had accomplished since 1969 had begun with open talk, gabfests like the one I documented in my diary on January 7, 1979. Held in Judy Dushku’s living room, it had begun as an “Emmeline Press Meeting,” then devolved into a late-night sharing of “disillusionments & testimonies” produced by a “seeming link between politics & pronouncement from Salt Lake.” One participant asked, “How can the Church do this to my testimony?” But true to form, we felt better after talking it through.

I do not know when and how informal gatherings such as this one led to retreats. I suspect Carrel Sheldon, who had some experience with then-popular self-realization groups, may have suggested the form. Some of the retreats I mention in my diary occurred in people’s homes or vacation houses, others in what were probably rented spaces. People who were involved in the paper invited friends to join them in the same way we invited others to a church event. In May 1982, I took a friend from my ward in New Hampshire to a retreat held in Framingham, Massachusetts. In my diary, I noted the presence of “a large group of single women & many young mothers.” I explained that because Judy, Carrel, and a couple of others I had expected to see were not there, Bonnie Horne and I attempted to fill the gap. I wrote that we “felt very maternal.”

Exponent II Retreat, Hillsboro, New Hampshire, circa 1983

For me, the biggest surprise in my diary accounts was how integrated these early retreats were with my activities in my own Latter-day Saint congregation. In fact, the earliest full description of a retreat in my diaries is the one for October 8, 1978, organized by the Portsmouth Ward Relief Society. I noted, “Much anguish & dissatisfaction expressed. But also — much sisterhood & sharing & a generally ‘I can cope now’ feeling by morning.” That sounds a lot like an Exponent retreat to me. I had obviously been free in sharing my enthusiasm for such events with local Relief Society leaders. One of my favorite diary entries records attending two retreats back-to-back: “I left the Portsmouth Ward women’s retreat at 7:30 a.m. after staying up most of the night & drove to Harvard, Mass for the Exponent retreat. What a feast of contrasting & harmonizing colors, tastes, sounds, & feelings!” Yes, these events were both contrasting and the same. When given time and an atmosphere of support and openness, women talk. When we feel understood and supported, we talk more and become stronger.

My diary entry for March 7, 1981, was filled with family news. It mentioned that I had sent the revised draft of Good Wives to my publisher. In the midst of the jumble, I added: “The Exponent retreat here circa February 6 was marvelous. See Nancy’s editorial in the paper.” That editorial appeared in the Winter 1981 issue under the title “Retreat and Rejuvenate.” It explained that because recent retreats had become a bit haphazard, the organizers had been more ambitious in planning this one. I think anyone who has ever attended an Exponent retreat would recognize its description, including its emphasis on food. Nancy reported that Exponent’s “in-house gourmet chef,” Linda Othote, had brought all the ingredients for a fabulous but simple menu and organized us into crews to put each meal together. I still have recipes from that retreat. My husband, who had decamped to Boston with our children, returned home just in time to see departing retreaters stuck in a snowbank. Although I can’t prove that it actually happened, I have a vivid picture in my mind of Mimmu Sloan single-handedly lifting a bumper out of a rut.

Histories of Mormon feminism often refer to us as “the Boston group.” In fact, few of us lived in Boston proper. Our home area, which extended from New Hampshire to Rhode Island, was one node in the creation of what Leonard Arrington called Mormonism’s “unsponsored sector.” From the beginning, we were connected with writers, editors, subscribers, and readers from similar nodes in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Denver, Provo, Salt Lake City, Berkeley, and beyond. My diary records a surprising number of in-person as well as virtual encounters with like-minded women based in such places.

In May 1982, some of us participated in the “Nauvoo Pilgrimage,” an event organized by women historians who had been meeting together in Salt Lake City to discuss their research on early Latter-day Saint sisters. As a way of honoring the 140th Anniversary of the founding of the Nauvoo Relief Society, they welcomed 53 women to a three-day event in Nauvoo. For those of us who had grown up with idealized portrayals of our pioneer foremothers, the presentations by Carol Cornwall, Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Linda Newell, Jill Derr, and Lavinia Fielding Anderson were transformative. I love the snapshots somebody took of us hamming it up in a Nauvoo sculpture garden. We both embraced and pushed back against the sanitized legends that had shaped our lives. For most of us, the highlight of “Pilgrimage” was the so-called Quaker Meeting on the final morning, where the poets and the non-poets among us tried to capture the spiritual meaning of what we had learned.

Exponent II Retreat, Hillsboro, New Hampshire, circa 1983

Pilgrimage helped inspire Exponent’s first truly national retreat, a three-day event held in October 1983. We called it the “Exponent Reunion,” perhaps because we hoped to see the return of women who had worked with us over the years and then moved away or who were connected to us and each other only through the paper. Sue Booth- Forbes spent much of the summer looking for just the right setting. She found a circa 1922 camp in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, run by two amazing sisters, Harriet & “Puffy” (Priscilla) Nissen. As I wrote in my diary, Hillsboro Camp had “a pond, beautiful woods, surrounding fields with bell-ringing cows, and log cabins with names like Sing-Sing, Bug House & Doggy House, and with genuine five-hole outhouses.” For me, the outhouses brought back memories of being at my grandfather’s cabin in Big Springs, Idaho, where an acre of bubbling springs produced a fork of the Snake River. Our New Hampshire site was not quite that magical but it was impressive.

The home-cooked meals were among its charms. Harriet and Puffy and their helpers served homemade bread and rolls, jams from local berries, salads filled with fresh vegetables including sweet-tasting summer squash from nearby farms, and eggs and meat from chickens that had been fed from our dinner scraps. According to my diary, 100-120 persons attended. Other accounts reveal the presence of six or seven somewhat dazed men. When I read my own description, I was stunned to realize that this was also the retreat where novelist Virginia Sorenson and her cousin, labor activist and consumer advocate Esther Peterson, spoke. In memory, I saw us introducing them to a space that we already loved and had made our own. No. We met both our new site and members of Mormonism’s so-called “lost generation” at the same event. In my diary, I described our guests as “two lovely ‘ex-patriots’ who nevertheless reflect Mormon ways.” Although both left Utah and apparently the Church in young adulthood, they both carried much of their Mormon heritage with them.

I knew Virginia Sorenson’s novels quite well because the essay I contributed to Mormon Sisters had explored fictional portrayals of pioneer women, a genre in which she excelled. I was thrilled to meet her and listened intently to her description of her struggle to find herself as a writer. She was not only eloquent but had a self-deprecating sense of humor. She quipped that she had been married twice “with a little overlap in between.” I have a more vivid memory of Esther Peterson. I believe we were all together in the big room with the twiggy sign over the fireplace that read “May the fires of everlasting friendship burn.” People were sharing their woes when Esther gently raised her hand and said something like, “But wouldn’t it help to look beyond ourselves?” She asked if we remembered a Sunday School song that she then began to sing: “Have I done any good in the world today? Have I helped anyone in need? Have I cheered up the said, or made someone feel glad? If not I have failed indeed.”

It was a surprising moment, the outside radical, the labor organizer, and “Great Society” appointee telling us to remember the lessons we had learned in Sunday School. I don’t think I made up the moment toward the end of the Reunion when I heard Esther express her appreciation for having been invited and then said, “Perhaps if we had had something like this when we were younger, we would have stayed.” I wanted to believe that was true.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich commenting at the 2024 Exponent II Retreat in Greenfield, New Hampshire. Photo Credit: Anna Ream

I attended many more Exponent retreats after that. I wrote about some but not all of them in my diary. On July 22, 1996, I copied a scripture I had discovered at the latest one. It was from the Sermon on the Mount, Luke 6:38: “Give and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over.” Obviously something interrupted me, and I didn’t complete that entry until a month later, when I wrote, “I feel like my life has indeed been pressed down — compressed into high-density land — and still runs over! Is this fullness? Or a kind of excess — an overabundance that leaves one frantically trying to grab more [?].” With some irony, I added, “A drop can be delicious.” By the time I made that entry, my children were grown; I had won a number of prizes for my historical work, and I had just joined the history faculty at Harvard University. Although I loved the work I was doing, I was daunted by the unexpected attention I was receiving. Over the next twenty-five years, Exponent’s retreats helped keep me sane. I look forward to the next one.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is a Founding Mother of Exponent II and a retired professor living in Bala Cynwyd, PA.

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Upcoming Launch Party for the “Radical Kindness” Issue of Exponent II

Join Exponent II and dozens of readers and contributors for our launch party for the Spring 2025 issue of Exponent II magazine on April 10th at 6 p.m. MT / 8 p.m. ET.

Register for the Zoom link at tinyurl.com/exiiparty

In this issue we asked contributors to tell us their stories of “radical kindness.” This issue delves beyond simplistic takes and showcases different lived experiences, putting them side-by-side in conversation.

Alongside an array of theology, prayers, poignant poems, artwork, and interviews with immigrant artists, “Tiny Kindnesses” are peppered throughout the issue. We curated these tiny stories in the spirit of Rachel Hunt’s work (@tinykindnesses) of recognizing, naming, witnessing, and documenting the many kindnesses that happen — even in the thick of stress and chaos. No intentional kindness is ever small.

Join us for a sneak peek of this outstanding issue and to honor all of our amazing writers and artists!

Guest post: Let’s talk about sex, baby ex-Mo

By Elizabeth

Amid all the sex ed and sex talks I did or didn’t receive growing up, none of them prepared me for my reality: middle-aged virgin leaving a high-control religion, sporting a fervent desire for a sexual awakening (casual, committed or otherwise) but saddled with a lot of shame and uncertainty around sex and a general awkwardness around the opposite sex.

After I left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints some time ago, I decided it was time to get laid. Puberty was three decades ago, menopause is probably only a decade in the future. No time like the present, right?

Except my life of only dating Mormon men—and only dating a few of those; not dating has by far been my norm in the three decades since I turned 16—stumbling through terrible interactions on LDSSingles.com, watching other Mormon friends seemingly figure this out easily and being reminded constantly that a) we date to get married and b) we do not do anything of a sexual nature and c) everything will be fine on the wedding night because you’re both virgins and it’s cool now, I find myself woefully unprepared for finding a sex partner. Do I have to get on the apps? *shudder* How do I explain that I’m in my 40s and have never had sex? How do I explain Mormonism and how every sex-adjacent experience I’d had up to now has left me guilt-ridden, both enjoying it and hating it, knowing I’d have to confess to a bishop what I’d done? How do I cope with my own insecurities about my body, my attractiveness, the way I look naked? How do I actually know if I’m ready for this? How can I not be ready after all these decades?

I hadn’t gotten this sex talk. So I found my own. Here’s my sex talk: How to Lose Your ‘Virginity’ at 43

I emailed Slate’s How To! podcast with the above subject line, explaining my situation and asking for help. They found Nicole Hardy, author, speaker and former Mormon who, in 2013, wrote an essay for The New York Times Modern Love section in which she described the strange state of being in her 30s and never having had sex.

We talked for more than an hour. Our experiences weren’t the same, and I knew I wouldn’t be approaching a sex life in exactly the same way she had, but it was refreshing to talk to someone who’d felt this way too, who’d had the concerns and insecurities and didn’t know where to start, who’d been both discouraged and encouraged by men along the way. We talked about how the ideas around sex that we’d grown up with often weren’t healthy, they weren’t always positive and they didn’t prioritize pleasure, especially for women. We talked about how broken we’d felt, how religious trauma had wormed its way into our brains and whispered lies and doubts, how sometimes the voices of the world said those things too.

This journey has been (and continues to be) full of twists and turns; before I share my thoughts from my conversation with Nicole, I want to share some of what I’ve thought as I left Mormonism and decided to become sexually active—how the things that I’ve been taught have affected my relationship with my sexuality and my body for most of my life and how I’m trying to overcome them now.

Sexual neglect

The email to Slate happened around the time I listened to a “Mormon Stories,” episode titled “Therapists Combat Mormon Sexual Shame.” The guest, therapist Erika Nordfelt, briefly mentioned how ignoring sexuality was a form of sexual neglect. I remember where I was, what I was doing, what time of day, what day of the week it was when I heard that because it felt like being punched in the gut. I stopped what I was doing, paused the podcast and just sat as the truthfulness of that washed over me, followed by the gut-wrenching realization that this is what I had done. For decades, I neglected myself as a sexual being, I ignored and shoved down and felt guilty about having sexual feelings. Sometimes I saw my body as a kind of double agent—it could run and hike and swim and move furniture, but it also had these biological urges that I wasn’t allowed to do anything about, that got aroused at times when I was kissing my boyfriend and imagining what could happen next, even though it couldn’t. I thought we were on the same team, but my body made my life harder.

I wonder now, if over the years as I was shutting down those normal feelings and wanting to be desired but also not and berating my body for being too big or not attractive and ping ponging between disordered eating habits, if my body also thought, “Hey there … I thought we were on the same team. Why are you treating me like this?”

Sexual shame

I remember hearing a story in church years ago about a young man who, on the eve of his temple sealing, called his father into the father’s office, sat down behind his father’s desk and told his father solemnly that he, the son, wanted his father to know he was as pure as the day he came into the world. His father was moved. I felt sick. I couldn’t say that. I dreaded the day I’d meet “the one” and I’d have to confess that in college, I fooled around with my boyfriend. (In colloquial ‘90s terminology, I believe we got to first base.) I was so embarrassed that I’d been so weak, humiliated that I’d let this man down.

Ironically, in the last few years, when I thought about potentially dating (in the abstract, not even with a man in front of me), I’ve also been filled with embarrassment, but this time at the thought of confessing that I’d never had sex. I was way past the point for that to be normal or even just quirkily late. No, it was just weird and a little wrong. Somehow, I managed to have sexual shame on both ends of the spectrum—I’d done too much and I’d done too little.

Now that I’m looking at options—of sex, of dating, of having intimacy of any kind, even the G-rated variety, with a man—I’m trying to tamp down the embarrassment. Yeah, we’ll have an awkward conversation about sex and just how inexperienced I am. But I don’t want to see that as a flaw or a problem, just a reality that we’re working with. I’m hoping having that as a test of sorts will help me find more understanding men.

Sexual safety

Birth control was top of the list. I went with an IUD on the recommendation of my doctor. I was not prepared for an IUD insertion. I knew it likely would be painful; I’d heard plenty of stories from friends and on the Internet. I mentally prepared, took ibuprofen and reminded myself that I’d been getting pap smears for years, and while they are unpleasant and uncomfortable, I got through them, and I’d get through this.

What I hadn’t counted on was the doctor needing to use a dilator because my cervical opening wasn’t large enough. The next minutes … 2, 5, I don’t remember–it felt like ages but certainly was not … they were the most painful of my life. I’d take the knee injuries, the searing pains of burning my hand on a hot pan, the migraines that used to leave me lying prostrate on the couch, unable to move. I was nauseated and sweating. The nurse told me my face went gray; she wouldn’t let me close my eyes because she needed to know I hadn’t passed out. When the doctor stopped, they wouldn’t let me sit up on my own and made me wait half an hour and down Gatorade and crackers before I could leave.

I was shaking. I was also worried. Two questions persisted: Would sex be painful or difficult? Was God punishing me for wanting to have sex?

One of those questions was reasonable. One of them was the product of decades of teaching by fear and shame—that bad things happen if you break the rules, no matter how arbitrary or harmful those rules are. That God is angry and vengeful. That those feelings and my body were bad, that what I was doing was bad. That I was committing the sin next to murder. I worry those feelings, which I know are irrational, will loom over this experience.

I did not get an IUD; I later got Nexplanon, which is an arm implant and has similar side effects and effectiveness. And hurt not at all when I got it.

Sexual confidence

I’m still working on this. Besides some of the logistics that we talked about, this is where my conversation with Nicole helped the most. She told me that early on, a man told her, “No man wants to be your teacher.” She worried about that—that men were looking for sexual partners who were experienced. It turned out, she found men who were happy to be her teacher. And it wasn’t a matter of “taking” someone’s “virginity”—a construct I really hate for all sorts of reasons that I won’t get into here—as some sort of sexual trophy, but of experiencing sex with a new partner, experimenting, demonstrating what they like, communicating, laughing together and more. It will be awkward, she assured me—don’t worry about it. Find someone you can laugh about the awkwardness with. Find someone who cares about your pleasure, and make sure you care about theirs as well. Find someone you can talk to. She suggested looking for feminist men and becoming a part of sex-positive communities in looking for a partner.

This is my next step—finding someone. Experiencing the podcast as a listener, being able to remove myself from it somewhat and without the burden of needing to participate, also allowed me to reflect on past relationships and how ill-equipped I was to find good men. I haven’t had any relationships that I would call healthy. I might have to try the apps. I’m preparing myself to call the friends who’ve already volunteered to set me up. I’ve looked around for ex-Mormon spaces. And as I do so, I’m reminding myself that I’m not weird, that there’s a man who would love to teach me about sex, that it is healthy and good that I want this. It’s an upending of everything I’ve been taught, and that’s difficult and uncomfortable and a little scary. But not wrong or evil.

Now, please wish me luck as I go forth to join Tinder.

Photo: A butterfly pea flower, scientific name Clitoria ternatea. Taken by S Kahn, used under Creative Commons license and resized by author.

Unlocking the Exponent II Retreat—A Guide to its History, Traditions, and Purpose

Consider attending this year’s Exponent II Retreat on September 19-21, 2025, at the Barbara C. Harris Center in Greenfield, New Hampshire! Registration opens May 3. Learn more here.

If you’ve never been to the Exponent II retreat, it may seem a bit mysterious. What exactly do all those Mormon feminist women and gender minorities do in the New Hampshire woods for a weekend each September? And why do so many keep coming back?

Photo Credit: Anna Ream

A friend who attended the retreat for the first time in 2024 told me that without a guide—someone who has been before—it’s easy to feel lost in the traditions. Some things aren’t explained outright—like, what are “Spiritual Autobiographies”? What happens at the Sunday morning “Quaker Meeting”? Why are Friday night introductions done that way? What are the vibes of the workshops and the variety show? How churchy will the retreat feel? How “Mormon” do I have to be to feel comfortable there? 

Then there are the privacy requests. Attendees want what they share in confidence to remain confidential. Some attendees prefer to keep their participation private to avoid potential backlash from employers or church leaders. Out of respect, participants are asked to get consent before posting photos or sharing details online, making it unclear what can be discussed outside the retreat.

While Heather Sundahl and I were curating pieces for Fifty Years of Exponent II, a scholar friend pointed out how little had been written about the retreat. I was surprised—so much had been published in Exponent II magazine and on the blog! But I realized that much of it isn’t easily searchable, making the retreat feel even more elusive to those on the outside. 

Famously, the first rule of Fight Club is, “You don’t talk about Fight Club.” However, the Exponent II retreat is not Fight Club, and it does not require the secrecy of temple rituals. We can talk about it while still respecting the privacy of what people share.

That’s why we’re launching this blog series—to be your guide to the retreat’s history, traditions, and purpose. Whether you are considering joining the retreat this September or are just curious about what goes on there, this series is for you.

Photo Credit: Anna ReamWhat this Exponent II Retreat blog series will offer:

Over the following months, we’ll post pieces from the Exponent II archives alongside new reflections on the retreat experience. I’ll update this post with links as we go, but here’s a preview of what’s coming:

Retreating—an essay by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich about the history of the Exponent II retreat (published in place of the 2021 retreat keynote address, which was canceled due to COVID-19)Retreat Friday Nights—an essay by the late Carrel Sheldon, an Exponent II founding mother who developed the tradition and intentions behind the way we do introductionsInto the Woods—an essay by Exponent II Vice President Lindsay Denton about the meaningful rituals and community the retreat brings into her lifeSpiritual Autobiographies—an introduction by Exponent II Founding Mother Judy Dushku and a spiritual autobiographical essay by an anonymous longtime retreat attendeeWhat Happens in New Hampshire. . . Exponent II Retreat Reflections—memories and reactions by recent attendees (and what keeps them coming back!)The Nauvoo Pilgrimage—essays by Melodie M. Charles and Charlotte Cannon Johnson about the original 1982 Mormon feminist “Pilgrimage” to Nauvoo that influenced the format of Exponent II’s first national retreat in 1983, launched the network of Mormon feminist Pilgrimage retreats, and introduced the practice of the Sunday morning Quaker MeetingExponent II Retreat Highlights: Variety Show, Workshops, Keynotes & More—a roundup of blog posts and archived essays to give a taste of what to expect at these eventsOde to Hillsboro Camp—a collection of memories of Exponent II’s original retreat location in Hillsboro, New Hampshire (1983–2000)Retreat through the Years: Insights from Fifty Years of Exponent II—an essay by Katie Ludlow Rich, rounding out the series with thoughts on how the retreat has shaped the organization and community

If you have attended the Exponent II retreat and would like to share a short recollection, please fill out this survey (bonus—you don’t have to answer every question!). If you feel inspired to write a guest post (600–1,600 words), please send it to KatieOnTheBlog at gmail.com.

Sign up for the Exponent II monthly newsletter to stay updated with announcements and retreat registration information. As this series develops, read more blog posts about the Exponent II retreat.

Photo Credit: Anna Ream

Guest Post: My Discovering of God’s Unconditional Love

by Rose

A month after I turned nineteen, I sat beside my dying father’s hospital bed to tell him goodbye. He died five days later while I was attending school at Brigham Young University. My distraught, destitute, chronically ill mom was grief-stricken when her soulmate passed so I made funeral arrangements with my half-siblings.  I returned to school after the funeral feeling overwhelmed with life. My dad and I had been remarkably close, and I missed him terribly. I couldn’t foresee how I would finish school without his help and had some heart-to-heart visits with God on my half-hour walks to school each day. I told God I was afraid, lonely, and overwhelmed. I wanted desperately to finish school, and I couldn’t picture how I would do so without my dad.

After a week or two of these soulful visits with God, one afternoon as I walked to school and poured out my heart to Him,  I felt like He was physically embracing me. He told me He loved me unconditionally and that I would be okay. He revealed to me that His love is infinite and eternal, not only for me but for everyone on earth. He showed me the unfathomable beauty of the world He had created and whispered to my heart that I was not alone.

This singular event transformed my life. With divine help, I finished school in three years and completed a master’s degree in the fourth. I met a wonderful man when I began my master’s degree, and we have been married for fifty-five years.

I wish I could say that I have always held the knowledge of that transformative experience close to my heart, but life happens. Post-partum depression, chronic anxiety, and traumatic events have sometimes stripped the knowledge that God genuinely loves me from my heart. In the past decade, I have undergone eight major surgeries which have at times left me feeling frightened and confused. Sometimes I wonder why I must suffer so and why so many on earth are hungry, unhoused, and without hope. At times, the weight of humanity’s suffering seems crushing, and I long to make a bigger difference in the world around me. For the time being, my biggest contribution to the world seems to be stringing words together and loving others fiercely.

However, in moments of contemplation, I can sometimes recapture the visceral knowledge I once had that God loves me infinitely, just as he loves everyone else. That may be the only thing I know to be true. As my foundational attachment to the LDS Church has unraveled, I still cling to my trust in a Divine Power that loves everyone on earth unconditionally. I believe They love their children as fervently as I love mine. Nothing my children could do would cause me to love them less. I believe in a God that loves like that–and more.

When I hear my religious leader talk about a God who loves others conditionally, I wonder if he has experienced God’s unfathomable love in the way I have. I am writing this to remind myself—and perhaps you as well—that you are enough and that you are magnificent just the way you are today. A God who loves anyone less would not be worth worshiping.

 

Rose finds joys in serving the marginalized and in speaking up for them.

Guest Post: Thoughts on Repentance

by SG Davis

I sat in Sunday School – reluctantly. I had come to realize that church was hard for me. I frequently left feeling empty and frustrated. I had not heard much about Jesus, love, hope, empowerment in living in a long time. And I recognize that for some, the current tone of Sunday School is good.

I thoughtfully decided to attend today with my daughter. My reasons make sense to me and I will leave it at that.

Mid-lesson – another on the lost 116 pages – had come to a point of a section of verses talking about the adversary, the ever present and paradoxically elusive Satan. As I listened to fellow congregation members share some thoughts about how real Satan is and that we need to teach the youth that he is indeed real. And, it’s not good that there are those who do not believe Satan is real. I wrestled with my hand going slightly up, and then down again.  I looked at my friend next to me and she said, “just say it.” So, up my hand went.

My thoughts were focused on agency. We are free to act or be acted upon. Why are we not talking about how empowered we are with our agency? We can choose, and we can learn from our choices. This lesson was hitting me differently today – what if we can look to the lesson as a reminder to follow our personal revelation? Sometimes, we can’t go back and redo to make things better. What if God is teaching us that we can pick ourselves up, acknowledge our choice, and move forward choosing differently? Could that be a lesson here? What if we empowered our youth with their agency? What if we teach them that Satan only has power if you give it to him – if you do not consciously act and you are acted upon? We can be empowered by actively using our agency.

The teacher acknowledged this, stating we will talk more about personal revelation in a few weeks.

As the lesson progressed, I began to wonder why we are spending time talking about 116 lost pages and how it was so hard because of Satan. Is this really helping me in my day-to-day life? How will this discussion edify me and provide me with strength to carry on in this real-time history we are living in?

The lesson continued and after a comment was shared, the teacher asked, ‘what is the prophet telling us to do today?’

A hand went up. “Repent.”

Another voice followed and repeated, “he’s telling us to repent just like Joseph was telling the people.”

My heart sank. I noticed a few heads go down.

Thankfully, the teacher added that there is a message of love. But, that was it and onward the lesson went.

In my thoughts, I was wondering,

“Repent of what? Why isn’t there a message of love? Of lifting where we stand? Of being aware of those in our communities and supporting how we can? Why is an institution that claims to teach of Jesus Christ not encouraging it’s members to be actively engaged in their communities? To be present with those most vulnerable? To let go of insisting that we all see the world the same way and making sure people have food, safe shelter, and health care? Am I missing something?”

Why are we sitting in a church building on Sunday talking about 116 lost pages and how much power an unseen devil has over us? Why are we actively handing over our innate power to think and make sense of things for ourselves? Why are we, in some senses, wallowing in how hard it is instead of actively ministering to those around us? Damn the differences and diversity. If we cannot treat each other with the dignity of being human, what are we repenting of?

So, I return to my initial question: Repent of what?

I didn’t raise my hand this time. I sat with my thoughts. I left church very unsettled. I long for messages of a loving Christ, of meeting people where they are, of prioritizing people and good principles over policy and divided views. I long for community that has room for me and all of the ways my life does not meet the checklist of “righteousness and blessings.”

I awoke the next morning with new thoughts.

Are we all speaking of repentance with a common definition? My hunch is that we are not. I have found that in many Sunday School settings, repentance carries a heavy feeling and command to follow the prophet, go to church, pay tithing, attend the temple, clean the church, etc. There is a common belief of a real separation from God when we don’t fall in line. (I don’t believe that from my own experiences with the divine.)Is it any type of repentance without reflection, inquiry, and a decision to change in, of, and for oneself? Will it be a change for optics? Will it be a change for transformation?What would happen if we stopped in lessons and defined repentance and provided examples of what it might look like in our lives?What if we looked at the word repentance in different languages and the definition and usage? Estonian has two different words that early missionaries disagreed on when we were using early translations of discussions. One word means a change of mind, the other means a change of heart.What if the repentance we are asked to engage in is a return to acting as Jesus did? Where did he spend most of his time and with who? Was he calling them to repentance and telling them loudly how horrible they were if they were not in church, paying their tithing, etc.? Was he talking to them as a person? How did he treat them? The woman at the well? The invitation to the disciples? Mary Magdalene? How do I see and feel Jesus in my life?What if repentance is coming back into alignment with god, with our divinity, with our inner knowing?What if it’s simply doing better when we know better?What if repentance is changing how we live and show up in relationships to move toward more active listening? Learning to love in different and deeper ways? Awakening to a remembrance of who we are and that we are empowered and endowed with the capacity and ability to learn and to grow? That we can change our minds, hearts, and behavior (with practice) when we have new and different understandings?What if the invitation to repentance is a call to engage with our communities, to add our voice to changes in policies that care for the real needs of our vulnerable populations?What if the invitation to repent is a call to analyze our mindsets and to release the fear?

 

SG Davis is sometimes walking confidently and sometimes wandering haphazardly through her midlife awakening and transformation. She is a human, a woman, a mother, an educator, a coach, and encourage of all things good.

A Few More Days to See the 50 Years of Exponent II Exhibit at BYU!

The BYU L. Tom Perry Special Collections has a 50 Years of Exponent II Exhibit for Women’s History Month! The exhibit is up for the month of March in the Special Collections lobby and was curated by Karen Glenn, John Murphy, and Bethany Budge.

Exponent II staff began sending material to the BYU archive in 1977. As described by Katie Rich, co-author of Fifty Years of Exponent II, “the exhibit captures the full sweep of Exponent II’s work — from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and the Cambridge Relief Society producing A Beginner’s Boston, to Susan Kohler uncovering the original The Woman’s Exponent in a Harvard library, to Woman’s Exponent Day Dinners in Grethe Peterson’s backyard, to Carolyn Person’s hand-drawn art. Every stage of their process — mailing personalized requests for submissions, editing essays, advertising discussion groups at Judy Dushku’s house, collecting fan mail — has been preserved and a beautiful snippet is on display.”

Rich said, “It was an honor to see this collection in person…This archive was essential to find the sources to write Fifty Years of Exponent II. We are so grateful to Karen Glenn, John Murphy, and Bethany Budge at the library for curating this exhibit and organizing the Exponent II Records to make them even better for future researchers.”

Curator Karen Glenn said in a correspondence to Exponent II, “Thank you for the wonderful opportunity to work with these records. It was a sacred experience to preserve all of these stories from Latter-day Saint women.”

Check out the collection’s newly updated Finding Guide as well as the archive of digitized issues of Exponent II.

Photos by Katie Rich featuring Nancy Dredge and Judy Dushku as well as Katie Rich and Heather Sundahl and the exhibit’s curatorial team.