Exponent II's Blog, page 268

Guest Post: Advocating for Victims in the LDS Church, Part 1 #MormonMeToo

[image error]by Ann

It’s been nearly two decades. Yet, I’ll never forget sitting through training to become a victim’s advocate where the trainer pointed out how ridiculous it would be if robbery trials were handled like rape trials.

The trainer explained that in court, you would never hear the victim of a robbery being asked, “What were you wearing? You OBVIOUSLY looked like you had money and a wallet. ANYONE can see you’re just asking to be robbed when you’re dressed like that.” “What were you doing walking down the street with a wallet? AT NIGHT? You must have wanted to be robbed if you were there.” “You’ve given cash to other people before. What’s the big deal? It’s not like this is the first time you’ve shared cash with someone. In fact, 10 years ago, you were giving out money for free, and now you complain about it being taken?”  Yet, in a rape trial we often see victims blamed for what they were wearing, blamed because they were not virgins, or blamed because they did not have a spotless past.

Yet, as absurd as this is, we see the same thing happening in our communities and in our church.  It is happening now with the sexual assault case of Joseph L. Bishop.

In a recent statement, the LDS church said:

“The Church, as a religious organization, does not have the investigative tools available to law enforcement agencies. Nor can the Church substitute for the courts in adjudicating legal claims.”

Yet, the church had the resources to pay for lawyers to draft a 5-page dossier about the victim’s past – EVEN when there was at least one other victim of Bishop’s sexual abuse.

The statement later read:

“The Church has great faith in the judicial system to determine the truth of these claims. “

Yet, the church provided the PERPETRATOR, his son, AND the legal system with 5 pages destroying the victim’s credibility and intimidating her into silence because her past was less than ideal. This is manipulative.

The LDS church evidently had the resources to investigate the victim, but not the perpetrator. What if that effort had instead been put into finding out whether there were other victims, or how many women were taken to the basement MTC office?

To the lawyers who drafted the dossier, I would say, SHAME ON YOU!  Shame on you for blaming the victim. As a former victim’s advocate, I can tell you that victims don’t always have a perfect past. Being a victim can lead to poor life choices down the road. It’s a result of the trauma. Perpetrators often prey on victims who don’t have ideal life circumstances. A victim is still a victim. A perpetrator is still a perpetrator. No matter the past history of the victim, it never excuses or justifies the abuse committed by the perpetrator. There is NO excuse for abuse!!

There is nothing noble, honorable, or Christ-like about trying to destroy the credibility of character of a victim while trying to protect the perpetrator. This puts other victims at risk. It silences victims who see the intimidation and bullying. It puts the victim on trial rather than the perpetrator.  By protecting the perpetrator while simultaneously trying to destroy and silence the victim, the church has become complicit in the abuse.

The victim is NEVER to be blamed. As a society, we must hold perpetrators accountable.

Ann lives in the Northwest, and enjoys advocating for social justice, teaching, and spending time with her family.

Call for Subscriptions – Exponent II Spring Issue 2018

[image error] The following is the letter from the editor for the Spring 2018 issue of Exponent II, which will go to print at the end of April. If you would like to read this issue, the deadline for subscribing is April 20 . You can subscribe here.  The Cover Art is by Beth Allen.

I have to remind myself to sit still and just listen. Someone is sharing an experience that for them feels so immediate and overwhelmingly specific and I want step in and wrap their uncertainty with my certainty that everything will be fine. I know this story, I have lived it, the ending is mixed but there is eventual meaning and new insight, I promise. I want to say: you are part of a human pattern that connects all of us, it is your pain but ours too. But it is not time for this. It is not the right thing to say in their now. In this moment, I feel old.

A close friend was coming over after weeks of traveling. I had missed her and was so excited to see her again. I went to the store to buy “treats” for her visit and came home with bags of candy, cupcakes, fruit, cheese, crackers, chips, soda, enough party food for many people and many days. We spread it all out on the table and could not stop laughing. It was as if someone had given a credit card to a hungry seven year old. In this moment, I am still young.

Then day to day, going from meeting to meeting, having to recall and speak to a wide range of topics from minutiae to strategy. I concentrate on what is in front of me, the meeting before is filed away, the next one not started. In this moment, I must stay completely present.

I am fifty-five years old. Squarely in middle age, moving toward older. I try to control the aging process with hair dye, refreshed wardrobes, and just released music. But at some point the jig is up. I have to consider what to do with the accumulating memory and unknown time ahead. As I turn from obvious markers to an inward timeline, I sense a definite vantage point. Often, it feels like a kind of tennis match, looking backwards and forward, at where I have come from and where I may be headed, gambling that I have enough time to make sense of it all.

I remember holding my newborn baby many years ago and seeing a vision of our family tree, now with a new box below mine. My place had shifted, no longer the culmination but a link in something bigger. I had become part of a path, a stepping stone charting one generation to the next.

I try and hold on to this image of purpose. I often say that I love my birthday because I was an awkward, self-conscious young woman and every year I care a little less about what others think. But that isn’t the full truth. I still care, and worry, and regret, and fuss over what I am not yet. The difference as I get older is that what I am “not yet” seems more attainable. I have seen myself evolve and iterate over time. Who I was has led me here, but as I turn my attention forward more than back, is who I want to be in reach? Are my expectations changing? or am I just beginning to understand my capacity? As birthdays go by, my identity continues to reveal itself, stable and mutable, backwards and forwards, old and young and present.

This Spring issue presents stories from women at all stages in their life, looking backwards and forwards to find themselves and their people, to understand their place and their path. In Shadows, an essay by Annie Wiederhold, tells the story of a woman in conversation with her current life, her 8-year-old self, and her desire to understand what it means to cast her own shadow independent of others in her life.  A young woman at the beginning of her life grapples with a start that was not what she planned in A Place Of Love and Beauty. Ash Mae Hoiland and Julianna C. Hansen look to the women in their family for connection and clues on how to navigate their own experiences. Ash Mae writes about discovering her grandmother in Gleaning and Julianna finds insight from her mother’s life in A Fleeting Slice of Holiness. In her essay, Life Perspective from the Far End, Rebecca Norman begins, “I am 70 years old,” and shares the highlights of her life from her point of view. And in the prose poem, Upon the Posts of My House, Ericka Anderson, inspired by a verse in Exodus, brings the story fully forward in words that inspire us to action in today’s world.

Each essay takes us on very personal journeys through time, threading each version of ourselves with those people who challenge, inspire, and walk alongside of us as we meander from age to age. I remind myself to sit still and just listen to stories shared. To look back and depend on my own life too often is to stop growing. To not acknowledge what I have learned is to deny wisdom. To ignore the present is to miss out. In this balance we find young, middle aged and older sisters. In this span, we find each other.   

Guest Post: The laying on of hands #MormonMeToo

Anonymous grew up in a faithful Mormon family in which her father was sometimes bishop and her mother was sometimes relief society president and probably every person was abused. She tried and failed to interrupt the abuse cycle as a child; She tries and mostly succeeds at the same as an adult.

 

[image error]

father

he doesn’t remember

what he did to my body

my body

remembers.

 

nurse

did she tend the wounds

and never ask what caused them?

did we stay home

when there were wounds to tend?

 

sister

on winter break, while

he tears upstairs to hit me

she yells stop

&

he

stops.

on summer break, when

he makes our brother’s ears bleed

splits his lips

she warns she’ll tell CPS

if it happens again.

when she is back at college

it happens again.

 

again

and again and

again

and

again and

again

(I lose count,

climb trees,

disguise my limbs as branches,

hum and cry until the house is quiet

again.)

 

mother

he parents with fists;

she asks him to.

 

bishop

something wrong is happening at home

the words slip from my mouth like oil;

he laughs.

I know your family

he says

nothing is wrong.

he knows my family

from three months of sundays.

something wrong is happening at home.

the words sink on my tongue

I don’t try to tell

again.

 

brother

he doesn’t remember

what he did to my body

my body

remembers.

Guest Post: What’s That Smell? #MormonMeToo

[image error]By Caroline Crockett Brock

Last year mold was found in my daughter’s middle school. It was black mold, and it was growing behind seemingly sound walls.

Now here’s the thing about mold: If conditions are right, it can grow just about anywhere. A school. A home. A church. It doesn’t discriminate. All it needs is food, water and a dark stagnant environment.

There’s mold in the church today. Black Mold. We’ve begun to see the toxic effects of its spores in the story of Joseph Bishop, and more widely, in the Protect LDS Children campaign. Truth is, evil predators reside in every faith community. It’s the tragic reality. What concerns me are the systems that allow a predator to operate freely in this church and the underlying communal false beliefs and dysfunctions that contribute to the rise of their behavior.

When mold was found in my daughter’s school, there was a public outcry. There was no resistance to these efforts. The school district did not turn to lawyers in order to deny culpability. It quickly employed experts to investigate the problem. To eradicate the mold, they had to find the source.

In the same fashion, we as a body of Christ must find the source of our own black mold and to do so, we can’t worry about what our neighbors will think. We’ve got to put on masks, pick up sledgehammers and be brave enough to investigate its origins.

Did it start in the 1830s with a leader who coerced 14 year-old girls into marriage by promising eternal rewards for her and her family?
When he used the power of his position as prophet to marry other married women?
When he hid his exploits from his wife then called her to repentance for not accepting polygamy?

The belief that women are passive vessels designed to house a man’s eternal dynasty rather than equal partners in a process of co-creation has birthed a malignant false belief in man’s eternal entitlement. This emotion of ‘benign’ superiority is the breeding ground for the toxicity we feel today. It’s in the lie of Eve’s ‘sin’ and the historical societal oppression of women justified by that myth. It’s in the blatant untruths embedded in the temple story wherein attendees watch men mimic a hierarchical string of commands about creation, without a whisper of participation from the feminine divine. It’s the lived experience of generations of LDS women who were manipulated into polygamy in hopes of an eternal reward. Let me be perfectly clear: ANY dominion is unrighteous dominion. It’s these practices and untruths that Mormons have never truly repudiated and repented of, that have served as food and water for this mold. Because of this, black toxins have been quietly growing behind walls made of God-sanctioned patriarchy ever since.

There’s mold in the walls of this church, and denial has never been a successful strategy in eliminating it. Without an honest investigation of the source, we have little hope for eradication and a toxic-free environment. When we seek to protect the structure more than the inhabitants within, we all continue to suffer. Before healing can occur, Mormon iniquities and untruths about the male dominance over females must be revealed, properly named, and eradicated.

There is no other way.

 

In the case of my daughter’s school, investigators found the mold to be so pervasive that a new school was erected instead. Rather than having children stay in a school dangerous to their long-term health, the district built a state of the art facility where children could learn and grow in a safe and toxic free environment.

In contrast, rather than eradicating the original mold from the walls, the church has decided to explain away the generational iniquities of the past with the platitudes and apologetics of today. They have labeled the abused souls “blips” rather than victims of a system that promises eternal salvation yet allows for the equivalent of spiritual homicide. The church issues a policy change that only wallpapers over black mildew stains which are ominously spreading across the room. Having two leaders in a primary room is great. It’s not the problem. Reminding me of parental rights I already have is great. It’s not problem. Until men no longer feel they have a right to preside over females due to their gender, the contamination will continue. Until men dismantle its hierarchical system where position and authority is honored above all, mold spores will fly. Until men begin to honor women’s voices and experiences rather than marginalize and minimize their personhood, this toxin will continue to cause illness.

Once this recognition and repentance occurs, perhaps we can begin to understand that patriarchy alone was never meant to be a whole or holy system. Once we feel through the pain this system has created and provide true assistance to the acutely affected victims among us, perhaps we can rebuild the walls of this faith community with the support of both men and women, patriarchy and matriarchy. Together, hand in hand, we can co-create systems in this church that support wholeness and healthy understandings of worth, sexual expression and identity. That honor and value men AND women. Until there is a balance of a patriarchy and matriarchy, there will be no hope of a structure without toxicity. No hope of a Zion-like society.

There’s mold in these walls, and it’s corroding the souls of the remarkable people in this church.

There’s mold in these walls, and to fix it, we’ve got to find another way.

By Caroline Crockett Brock. Wife. Mother. Writer. Goddess in Embryo.

Washington Post picks up Elder Cook’s misstep: “non-consensual immorality”

article also quotes Natasha Helfer Parker.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...

A Therapist’s Perspective on “Worthiness Interviews” in the LDS Church #MormonMeToo

[image error]

[Image by Jochen Spalding on Flickr]

 

No matter how the LDS church adjusts “worthiness interviews,” I just can’t get behind them from a professional, moral, or spiritual standpoint. As a psychotherapist, I’m of the mind that these interviews condition children and adults to outsource their moral authority about right and wrong and set them up for a lifetime of dependency on an authority figure to determine whether or not they are “right” before God. Not only does this dynamic triangulate one’s relationship with the Divine, but it can also be confusing as the role of bishop changes about every five years (more often if you are in a congregation with a lot of turnover). For example, one bishop may tell you that a certain choice, behavior, thought, or feeling is wrong, and the next bishop could tell you it is just fine. Ultimately these interviews interfere with the principle spoken of by the founding LDS prophet Joseph Smith that church members should be taught “correct principles” and then be left to “govern themselves.” Moreover, in my opinion these required interviews can interfere with healthy psychological, sexual, and moral development across the lifespan.

Negative Outcomes for Females’ Development

“Worthiness” interviews can have negative implications for girls and women’s psychological development specifically. From the age of twelve on up, girls and women are asked to regularly sit alone in a room with an adult male to discuss intimate topics that range from their beliefs about God to their sexuality—and even at times their relationship to their own body as queries about masturbation are common despite being “off script.” This situation lays the foundation for females to feel God sanctions this kind of verbal probing of them by a man, which is dangerous because it can desensitize them to grooming behavior by sexual predators that most often prey on females. It can also unconsciously program girls and women to conclude that their value and “worth” is dependent on getting a male’s approval. It can center females’ sense of self on feedback they get from men and can set girls and women up to be vulnerable to male church leaders who may consciously groom them for nefarious purposes. We’ve seen this recently with the MTC sex abuse scandal in the LDS Church where an MTC president admitted to engaging in such behavior with young women whom he was responsible for in the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah. This horrific story is sadly just one of many that are now being revealed regarding some male church leaders who have taken advantage of their position of authority behind closed doors.

Updated Church Policy Falls Short

Some may argue that the recently updated church policy that allows children and women to have a second adult present in these interviews is a safeguard against sexual predation or abuse. However it’s not that simple. Having another adult present does not eliminate the inappropriateness of minors and women being questioned about their sexuality by a man. It is also developmentally inappropriate for adult men to be required to answer questions about their sex life in order to be deemed “worthy” by a church leader. And we know that adult men can also be targets of sexual predation and that members of the LGBTQIA+ community are especially vulnerable to harm given that their sexual relationships—and legal marriages—are condemned in LDS church pronouncements and policies, even discriminating against children who live with their same-sex married parents.

In addition, the second adult option does not account for the fact that this second adult, whether a parent or another church leader, etc, could themselves be emotionally, spiritually, physically, or sexually abusive. The second adult chosen by a child to protect her/him could use the information gleaned from a confession during an interview with a bishop as fodder for more abuse. For instance, if a child confesses something an abusive parent deems abhorrent, it could set the child up to be victimized at home—under the guise that the church leader who condemned the child’s behavior also condones the abuse.

Abused children may not be aware of behaviors that constitute abuse (especially when it is emotional or spiritual abuse) and may choose an unsafe adult, who again could be their parent and unknown as an abuser to the child and to the bishop, to accompany them in these intimate interviews. This policy also doesn’t account for a minor or adult woman being interviewed by their bishop-father who may be their abuser. And most egregiously, the policy puts the onus on the minor child or adult woman to be informed about the policy and to invite another adult in the room. This seems to set up potential for the victim of abuse to be blamed when ecclesiastical abuse happens. And in my opinion, as long as worthiness interviews are conducted, incidents of abuse will continue. There is simply no way to safeguard against further victimization even with this new policy.

However, by instituting this new policy, the LDS Church seems to be acknowledging that there is reason to be concerned about the current set up. I see this as a positive step forward. But as a psychotherapist I fear church leaders may not be aware of the deep-seated psychological and moral damage that is being done by these interviews being required at all. Not only is the dynamic rife with potential for abuse of children, it is infantilizing of all adults and can stymie individuals’ and whole families’ healthy psychological, emotional, sexual, moral, and spiritual development. When church members are conditioned from a young age to believe that their bishop or other male church leader is responsible to judge a person’s “worthiness,” this can cause them to abdicate their moral authority over their own lives. This is antithetical to the LDS church doctrines of agency and personal revelation. My recommendation is for one-on-one meetings with any church leader to be on an opt-in basis only, and that confessions should be voluntary. I am not alone in this professional opinion. Additionally, church members should be able to choose between a female or male church leader to discuss private matters—always with the option for anyone to bring someone of their choosing into the room.

Independent Hotline Needed to Report Abuse

In order for the interests of the LDS church to not enter into the equation when someone has been victimized at church, when an allegation of abuse or need for counseling is made, any reporting system or therapeutic resource must be independent from the church. Too many competing interests have been in place for too long for victims to be protected or for members to get sound psychological treatment. Through the media’s reports of how the church responded to the MTC sexual abuse survivor, we are now seeing the kind of conflicts of interest involved when an institution is asked to hold perpetrators in leadership accountable. Other institutional churches outsource resources for reporting of abuse to keep their system in check. This seems like the next logical step in responding to our broken system.

Report Abuse to Police or Independent Victims’ Hotlines

Until the church decides to separate its interests from those of its victimized members, the free U.S. national hotlines below are places survivors can turn. I recommend that anyone victimized at church or elsewhere go directly to the police and not their bishop as a first step toward healing and holding a perpetrator accountable—whether the perpetrator is a church leader or otherwise. (And for those in other countries, please include resources in your communities in the comments section.)

 

National Sexual Assault Hotline

800.656.HOPE (4673)

https://www.rainn.org/

 

National Domestic Violence Hotline

1.800.799.SAFE (7233)

http://www.thehotline.org/

 

Need for Routine Background Checks & Psychological Testing

All adults who work with children or youth should be screened with background checks, including all ecclesiastical leaders, who should also undergo psychological testing as is standard for most clergy of other faiths before they are put in positions of power over entire congregations. These safeguards seem to be the most basic standard for best practices in responsible church organization.

Patriarchy Contributes to Sexism & Abuse & Harms Everyone

The damage done to the psyches and, too often, to the bodies of females during worthiness interviews cannot be underestimated in a patriarchal system like the LDS Church. It is ripe for misuse by male church leaders who are given ample opportunities to prey on the most vulnerable in our community. Granted, not every male church leader consciously grooms females or sexually assaults them. However, the current church system of girls and women being subjugated to boys and men—by all males from age twelve and up being given exclusive  priesthood authority—contributes to overt and internalized sexism and misogyny. Girls and women are often told that their faithfulness and obedience to God is dependent on their submission to male priesthood authorities’ instructions about everything from how to dress their bodies to how to negotiate the complex dynamics in their most intimate relationships, including how they should interact with God (e.g., the prohibition against praying to the Feminine Divine, or “Heavenly Mother”).

This institutionalized sexism impacts all church members on an unconscious level because LDS church leaders consistently proclaim that the patriarchal structure of the church is of divine origin and is therefore forbidden from being questioned. This prohibition on criticism about patriarchal authority can have a deleterious effect on women and girls’ ability to identify abuse and assault when it is happening to them. It can contribute to Mormon men thinking they are entitled to dominate women. It can lead to girls and women believing this domination is God’s will. It can keep couples from sharing power and engaging in equal partnerships in marriage. Ultimately, it can limit every church member’s belief in their ability to claim authority over their lives and can prevent us from reaching our God-given potential.

Wendy is a psychoanalyst, licensed clinical social worker, and marriage and family therapist in private practice. She wants her church to be a safer place for everyone.

Guest Post: Molested on a Young Women’s Trip #MormonMeToo

[image error]by Megan Buhler

I sat in the Bishop’s office with my Young Women President. She had pulled me in to tell him what had happened the day before on a young women’s trip. She had learned of it from the only person I actually told – my also-15-year-old friend who had cried in the backseat with me as we drove the hours home from a tour of church sites on the East coast of the United States. The Bishop listened, then called in my parents as well as the man I accused and his wife, and asked me to repeat my story. He swore us all to secrecy and insisted the details of what happened shouldn’t leave the room.

I took the charge to secrecy seriously, but somehow the whole stake seemed to know instantly. I heard – without being able to defend myself – the rumors swirling. Many of which called into question my virtue and integrity – comments about what I was wearing (an oversized T-shirt and jeans if anyone had cared to ask for the truth), my behavior on the trip (made up stories of night time escapades with boys we met along the way of our journey). A few supporters. My mom told me my seminary teacher stopped her in the hall. “I’ve never known Megan to lie. I believe her.”

A pattern of lying, though, was exactly what was established about this man in the Bishop’s office the day I made my accusation. During the conversation, the Young Women President recounted her surprise when he’d shown up just before it was time to leave on this trip insisting that the Bishop had asked him to attend so we’d have a priesthood holder with us. He overruled her objections: his wife was coming along too so he said there didn’t need to be two priesthood holders there, he would sleep in his car since no hotel accommodations had been made. There wasn’t space in the rented cars, but he put one of the young women in the front between him and his wife where his hand frequently and “accidentally” ran up the thigh of whoever was sitting there. The Bishop insisted he had no idea this man was attending the trip and had certainly not asked him to.

This man had also gone to girls camp for many years as the only priesthood holder and rumors had abounded for years about uncomfortable situations girls had been put in by him. I heard that the Stake President asked the bishop of every ward to check and see if there were any stories from the young women in his ward. Whispered conversations from friends, brave enough to tell their stories of what happened despite me being Exhibit A of what happens to the accuser: “I told my bishop about the time he demonstrated CPR on me and had his hands on my breasts the whole time.” Many of the girls had stories from the same young women’s trip “I told the Bishop how he walked into the bathroom when I was in the shower.”

The Stake President asked for other stories, but the one story he never asked for was mine. He never spoke to me.

I also heard the explanations from this man and his supporters. He had gone to girls camp as the only priesthood leader because no one else had wanted to (there had also not been a call for volunteers). Why was everyone so ungrateful? Didn’t they understand how much time he had taken off of work? How much he had sacrificed?

Sticking his hands down my pants? He was only trying to tickle my stomach. It was just coincidence that he was waiting when I came out of the bathroom alone. That he pinned me against the wall of the bathrooms, blocked from the view of anyone else. That a friend saw us both coming around the corner, and that I burst into tears the second I saw her.

My Bishop informed me of the outcome. The Stake President concluded that there was no evidence. All the stories could be explained by misinterpretation and because of the stories and rumors I must have been primed to interpret what happened in the worst possible way. Therefore, this man would no longer go to Girls Camp and they would start following the Church’s policy of having two priesthood holders at camp. He still had his temple recommend and the reputation that took the biggest beating was mine.

Megan lived in many states growing up, but currently lives with her husband and three children in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is an active member of the church and has served in many callings including Relief Society President and Primary President.

Guest Post: Worthy of Being Known #MormonMeToo

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by Mahlah

“And this is life eternal that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent.” There is something profoundly beautiful about intimacy. Humans have a deep desire to be fully known. We long to see and be seen. To love and be loved. And yet, we feel unworthy of that closeness. We feel we must hide our dark parts, our imperfections and our weaknesses in order to be valued. We hide in shame.

To have someone acknowledge the goodness in you and to love you despite all your darkness is powerful beyond measure. It is the intimacy and love that God offers us and that we begin to understand in our human relationships. It is the power of holding a newborn baby and loving her not because she will love us in return or come home with good grades or clean up her room, but simply because she is. She is loved just for the sake of being. Fully, completely, unconditionally loved. It is the beauty of love for a 95-year-old woman, not because she will compliment you on your cooking (she won’t) or tell you new stories (she won’t), but of loving her simply because she is human. It is the joy of marriage that stands as a symbol for the union we are striving for with God – to stand naked before Him, to be seen and to be loved.

I can readily see the goodness of my children and I am getting better at loving them even in their moments of obstinence. It is easy to love my husband. But having compassion for myself often seems beyond reach. Coming to know myself and stand naked before God is personally my greatest challenge. Overcoming the shame of sexual assault can feel like a daunting journey. Resilience grows as I begin to see myself as God sees me. Healing starts as I allow myself to grieve for that which was taken from me, as I learn to accept that it was not my fault, and as I fully feel my worth.

Brene Brown, a shame and vulnerability researcher, defines shame as the fear of disconnection. “We are psychologically, emotionally, cognitively and spiritually hardwired for connection, love and belonging. Shame is fear of disconnection – it’s the fear that something we’ve done or failed to do, an ideal that we’ve not lived up to, or a goal that we’ve not accomplished makes us unworthy of connection. I’m not worthy or good enough for love, belonging, or connection. I’m unlovable. I don’t belong.” For me, the shame of my assault silenced me for many years. For years I blamed myself.

As I’ve reached out to others, it is clear that I am not the only one who has been silenced by shame and hopelessness. I see a need to help people understand that nothing can separate them from the love of Christ. I see a misunderstanding between worthy of God’s love (always) and worthy to administer in the priesthood, go to the temple, etc. Reflecting on my own experience surrounding love and connection, I am so grateful for my unshakable faith that God loves me. It has anchored me. It has sustained me through trials. I have asked myself, If I know God loves me no matter what, then why do I feel such pain and shame and fear that others will see me as unworthy of love? I have to reality check the messages, especially stories I tell myself, that fuel shame. I have to have compassion for myself for wherever I am on that journey on any given day. I affirm that God wants us to bear one another’s burdens and I am so grateful for the countless talks, lessons and particularly, the acts of kindness that remind me that God loves me. Nobody needs to travel the journey of repentance or love and healing alone. People need connection with others, they need the strength of facing life’s challenges with others, they need to hear the soothing message that Christ lives. I believe they also need people to witness to their worth and to trust in their goodness. As Chieko Okazaki pointed out, “I would hope that every teacher in the Church will remember that in his or her classroom is almost certainly at least one person who has survived sexual abuse.” We need to be careful with the language we use when talking about sexuality at church. It’s not about people taking unnecessary offense. It’s about creating a safe environment for people to heal.

Love is a powerful force. It binds us together and protects us from the vicissitudes of life. My story is about the shame surrounding sexual abuse, but as Brene Brown points out, we all experience shame and feeling never enough in one way or another. She describes her own fear of vulnerability as a shield “too heavy to lug around, and that the only thing it really did was keep me from knowing myself and letting myself be known.” Brown also describes the beauty of empathy and its power to pull people out of shame. “Empathy doesn’t require that we have the exact same experiences as the person sharing their story with us. Empathy is connecting with the emotion that someone is experiencing, not the event or the circumstance… Empathy is a strange and powerful thing. There is no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘You’re not alone.’”

Mahlah is a lover of children, books and giant mugs of herbal tea.

How the Church Influenced the Future Prime Minister

[image error]Though she no longer considers herself Mormon, the Prime Minister of New Zealand talks about how the church influenced her and possibly helped her confidence:

“I can’t separate out who I am from the things that I was raised with,” says Ardern. “I took a departure from the theology, but otherwise I have only positive things to say about it.” She’s retained certain Mormon characteristics: the positivity, the surprising openness, the at times almost painful sincerity…..But if she’s earnest, she’s also ballsy: and perhaps that’s a Mormon legacy, too. “I’ve never had any hesitancy in talking to people,” she says. “If I’ve got a purpose and I need to go and speak to people, or knock on doors, I will. I don’t mind door-knocking for politics.” She grins. “Because nothing is as hard as door-knocking for God!”

 

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Podcast Features Transgender LDS Woman on “Improving Women’s Ministry in the LDS Church”

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A podcast recommendation in celebration of International Transgender Day of Visibility:

A Thoughtful Faith Podcast host Gina Colvin interviews “Laurie Dipadova-Stocks, a former Stake Relief Society President; Royleane Otteson, a former Ward Relief Society President, and Laurie Lee Hall a former Stake President and now an excommunicated transwoman [about] attending Relief Society [and discusses] women’s ministry in the LDS Church. They speak candidly about what has gone wrong and how it can be fixed.”