Exponent II's Blog, page 62

Can Not Doing What Church Leaders Say Bring Joy?

It’s a lovely late spring evening where I live; it’s warm yet not hot. Sunlight lingers into the evening yet doesn’t stay so long or rise so early that there isn’t enough darkness to get a good night’s sleep. It’s truly a pleasant time of year. All of this has me thinking about what brings me joy.

SunlightDinner conversations with my familyGoing clothes shopping and actually being able to see my body (I stopped wearing garments a few years ago)Reading a good bookBirdsongSunday mornings with my family – whether we go to church that day or notLifting weightsConversations with friendsMaking my own choices without fear that I am making the “wrong” choice about.every.little.thingFunny moviesSoft fabrics against my skinMy two very silly catsFiguring out what my spirit needs on any given day without worry that I’m not ‘doing it right’SketchingChoosing when I attend church knowing that I don’t have to believe things I don’t agree withReally good dark chocolateKnowledge that I get to make my own choices in life

Making this list showed that the things that bring me joy also feel reassuring and peaceful. Growing up, I was taught that reading the scriptures for at least 15 minutes a day, getting a patriarchal blessing, going to the temple, attending church, and doing all the callings would bring me joy. However, the opposite has been true. My last calling, 2 ½ years in nursery, led to me disassociating to survive. Attending church has been a mixed bag. While I made friends that I am still friends with nearly two decades later; church attendance also caused exhaustion and many, many fights with my husband who was busy serving in leadership callings while I was angry that the church ignored me. My patriarchal blessing led me to silence my voice; silence what I wanted from life. Grief was the result. The temple caused trauma to the point of me nearly causing physical self-harm. A common result of listening to church leaders is that I either wasn’t allowed to make my own choice or didn’t feel like it was possible to make my own choice. I suspect there is something deep inside the human soul that requires choice, a true opportunity to use agency, in order to be whole.

I still love sacred texts; my favorite is the Bible. However, now I read when I choose. I don’t enjoy the Book of Mormon so it’s not currently a part of my rotation. I have expanded my definition of sacred texts to include wisdom texts and any writing that teaches me and brings me into connection with something larger than myself.

One of the most significant things that brings me joy and peace that I didn’t put on the list is getting to define my relationship with Deity. There is no longer another person standing between me and Jesus and God. There is no one telling me I can’t have a relationship with the Divine Feminine. Getting to directly access Deity, to get a glimpse of the expanse of God, is breathtaking. Joy and peace.

I feel somewhat bitter about this. I found God because I was raised in a religious family. Yet this same church also kept me from God by placing itself between me and God. Yes, I know this isn’t correct grammar. It better expresses how I feel. The church in many ways acted as a roadblock that kept me from knowing God. Somehow setting down the anxiety and fear about not doing life right as dictated by church leaders, led to a soul-expansive life giving joy. I still don’t know what to make of it because this is not what I was taught would happen from forging my own path. I do know that I feel peace, joy, and golden light spilling out to fill the tiniest corners of life. It’s joyful, it’s peaceful, it’s messy and sometimes even a bit scary. I love it! For the first time in my life, I am awake and alive.

Our Bloggers Recommend: Life Is Incredibly Unfair – In Our Favor

Happy Memorial Day from Exponent blog! Please check out this beautiful video from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about Jennie Taylor, the wife of the late Brent Taylor, killed in Afghanistan during a military deployment in 2018.

In Memory of George Floyd

Four years ago today George Floyd was brutally murdered on a Minneapolis sidewalk in broad daylight by four police officers. Viral video footage of the incident led to what the NYTimes named the largest protest movement in U.S. history. As the reality of George Floyd’s viral murder sunk in, we began having hard conversations about other unjust police killings such as that of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others. Our conversations turned to the racial climate that got us to this place. 

Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

As an American, I live in a country that was founded on the displacement of Native Americans and the kidnapping and forced enslavement of Africans. Centuries later, racism still permeates the air we breathe. Implicit and explicit racial biases characterize the healthcare people receive, the quality of education people can access, the economic stability opportunities, and the safety of neighborhoods. 

2020 was often described as a “racial reckoning” where white people were finally starting to talk about the reality of our racialized history and the far reaching implications that has in the present day.

Unfortunately, almost immediately, white fragility caused intense backlash to this movement. Suddenly the progressive movement that seemed likely to invoke real change for the better in our country was being met by infuriated white folks who pushed back heavily against the progress. While organizations began making institutional changes, then President Trump began banning institutional changes within his jurisdiction and his supporters likewise tried to stop progress. 

Rather than being a time of progress forward for a better world, it became a lot of competing steps forward and steps backward in a climate of increasing political tension. Nearly a year after George Floyd’s death, Trump-supporters attacked the capitol – what many believe to be racially motivated and a protest against the racial progress (see here).

Now, four years after George Floyd’s murder, where are we? We’ve seen four years of steps forward and steps backward. We’ve also seen four years of progressive energy start fizzling out. In 2020 we were talking about race everywhere we went. I was receiving emails from every email list I’m on discussing what [fill in the blank organization] was doing to address racism in their organization. I haven’t received any of those emails any time recently and the informal conversations we were having four years ago have largely stalled. We can’t hope for progress if we’re not creating real and meaningful change. 

I want to note that some progress has been made since 2020 (see a list here), but there is still a lot to be done, and we can’t be complacent about it. Until we’ve eradicated health disparities and everyone has equal access to positive social determinants of health, we have a lot to do.

Questions to ask yourself:

How am I promoting anti-racism in my workspace?How am I promoting anti-racism in my church community?How am I promoting anti-racism in my family life?In what ways might I be implicitly biased? How can I change?In what ways might I be explicitly biased? How can I change?In what ways am I complicit in the racist policies/feelings/organizations I participate in? How can I change?How am I teaching others to promote anti-racism?

Need some pointers for getting started? Here are a couple that I like and I welcome you to put more resources in the comments to share with others:

Don’t be silent. Silence is complicity. Here’s an article I recommend reading: https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/149/2/e2021052115/184392/Your-Silence-Will-Not-Protect-You-Using-Words-and?autologincheck=redirected If you have small kids in your home or that you work with, it’s not too early to start talking about race. Sesame Street has some excellent materials to get you started: https://sesameworkshop.org/our-work/impact-areas/race-ethnicity-culture/ and PBS generally: https://www.pbs.org/parents/talking-about-racismAnd here’s a starting guide for talking with older kids about race/racism: https://www.newportacademy.com/resources/empowering-teens/talk-about-race/Here’s a list of anti-racism books to get started learning: https://www.powells.com/featured/antiracismMake your workplace more inclusive. Here are some tips on how: https://hbr.org/2020/01/5-strategies-for-creating-an-inclusive-workplace

What are you doing to fight racism? What resources can you share with others? How can we make more progress?

Photo by Oladimeji Odunsi on Unsplash

Our Bloggers Recommend: “What was lost when the LDS Church started emphasizing covenants over community”

Guest author Candice Wendt followed up her recent post “The Insidious Exchange of Community for Covenants” with an interview on the Salt Lake Tribune’s religion podcast, Mormon Land. Check out her great interview here:

Happy Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month!

Happy Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month! Too often, I’ve found the celebration of this month to be too narrow: too focused on Asians of certain origins, too exclusionary towards mixed-race people of Asian descent like me, and too ignorant about the unique histories and experiences of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.

Just as AANHPI history is an important part of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), AANHPI contributions are crucial to the Church’s past and present. Look no further than iconic Chinese-Japanese American Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye for proof that our community needs AANHPI members and their talents and perspectives.

I’m going to take this opportunity to share with Exponent readers just a few stories from AANHPI Mormon history and culture, but I hope May isn’t the only time you dedicate to learning about Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. Please keep in mind that these are just a few snapshots of an amazingly diverse and varied group of people (that make up about 60% of the global population)!

I have to start with an example about South Korea, since my mom is Korean (and I put a hanbok – Korean traditional dress – photo of myself from Korea as the image for this post). One fun fact is that the LDS Church only entered the Republic of Korea (ROK, i.e., South Korea) because the ROK President sent someone to the United States to learn about nutrition and agriculture. That man was Dr. Kim Ho Jik, and he decided to join the LDS Church while studying at Cornell and learning about the gospel from his colleague Oliver Wayman. He was baptized near where Joseph Smith was baptized, and as he emerged from the river after his baptism he heard a clear voice saying, “Feed my sheep.” Once he returned to Korea, Ho Jik worked with LDS American military service members to teach the gospel. He also later secured approval from the ROK government to allow LDS missionaries and paved the way for generations of Korean members after him.

Another less well known example from Korea I just discovered while confirming details about the famous Dr. Kim Ho Jik for this post is that of Sister Ho Hee Soon: “She began doing temple work in her 80s. She performed endowments for at least 1,500 people. In 2007 alone, she performed vicarious ordinances for more than 600 people. One American painter, touched by her service, painted her portrait and donated it to the Seoul Temple to commemorate her unceasing efforts to help save souls.” You can read more about Sister Ho Hee Soon, Dr. Kim Ho Jik, and other Korean members who made irreplaceable contributions to the Church in “The Church in Korea,” an article by Church history advisor Hee-Chul Seo. (Note: Korean names are traditionally three syllables, with the first syllable being a family name and the next two syllables forming the given name. The reason why I keep this convention with the historical figures but not with the Church history advisor is because I have copied how their names have been presented online. I’m a big fan of using whatever naming convention for people that the people themselves prefer.)

One example of a Native Hawaiian LDS founding member we should all know more about is Kaleohano. He was one of the first people George Q. Cannon converted and baptized in Hawaii, and he was a crucial missionary and advocate for the young church on the islands. When Kaleohano’s first child was born, a daughter, he was so thrilled he gave an “exuberant” sermon for two hours the following Sunday! When Walter Murray Gibson became head of the Church in Hawaii in 1861, Kaleohano worked with him at first but soon withdrew. Multiple Hawaiian members (the historical record seems unclear whether Kaleohano was among them) expressed their concerns to Church leadership and Gibson was ultimately excommunicated for practices like charging members for membership and priesthood offices and then embezzling funds (not to mention forcing Hawaiian members to crawl on their hands and knees in his presence). Kaleohano became a trusted intermediary between the Church and Hawaiian royalty: King Kalākaua and Queen Kapi’olani. I encourage you to read more about Kaleohano and other Hawaiian LDS members like Jonathan Nāpela online yourself or to share these stories with your Relief Society group or in your Sunday meetings.

I’ll conclude with a Pacific Islander story: that of the second-generation Tongan American family music group The Jets. They so skillfully mixed Polynesian dance and acoustics with trends from the American Top 40 (AT40) that they finished three world tours and released five songs that hit the top ten ranking on the Billboard Hot 100. They performed at the World Series and the Summer Olympics in Seoul. The band fell apart later with some legal and financial conflicts, but the story has a happy ending since the group came back together and ultimately put family over profit. You can learn more about that in this LDS Living interview with Moana Wolfgramm Feinga, the youngest member of The Jets. You can listen to their music and enjoy a blast to the past (specifically the 80s) on their official YouTube channel. Maybe you can give them a listen during your next Family Home Evening.

I hope you learned something from this post and you’re inspired to learn and share something about AANHPI history or culture with the people in your life. Let this post just be a starting point, and if you know any more amazing Mormon AANHPI stories then please share them in the comments below!

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Martha Deserved Better

The Mary and Martha story won’t leave me alone this week. Someone shared it on Sunday as a simple example of choosing good, better, best. No reprimand for either woman; just a generic use of a tale to remind us to choose Jesus.

Like happens so often for me these days, though, it mattered to me that the main characters in this story are Mary and Martha and not Matthew and Mason. The lives of men and women in Biblical times – and the expectations placed upon them – were vastly different. To imply that Martha even had a real choice, especially if Mary left her duties as well, feels disingenuous and unkind.

My heart aches for Martha, who I imagined performed exactly as she was taught. Dutiful, conscientious, and good, Martha knew practical preparations for Jesus fell to her. It’s easy to sit and learn comfortably when you aren’t worried about all of the preparations and care needed to make that learning possible.

I’m certain Mary knew it too. I’m not certain why she felt justified in ditching the cleaning and cooking in favor of sitting with Jesus. The implication is that the spirit so overcame and moved her toward the Savior, she could not help herself. And that by itself sounds admirable.

So, Martha carried Mary’s burden, now with even less of a chance to follow her own heart to the feet of Jesus. How heavy that must have felt. When I hear her Martha asking,

“Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me,”

I hear a woman pleading to be a part of Mary’s learning, but unsure how this is possible within the confines of her role as a woman and the unyielding demands placed upon her. It was a lovely sentiment to tell her to drop everything, but not realistic within the systems these women lived in.

Yet, Martha is – lectured? chided? rebuked? – by Jesus for having the wrong priorities. She becomes a simple object lesson written by a man for all. Martha will always stand for how not to act and Mary will be praised at her expense. And I think Martha deserves better – at least until we are willing to change the systems that demand she continually accept the “good” so others can have the “best.”

If Martha learned, as women do today, that her primary role, her duty, her purpose even, was caretaker and homemaker, then what better could she offer her Savior then a beautiful home and meal?

If Martha regularly supported men in their endeavors and made their spiritual learning possible through her homemaking efforts, how could she be expected to know that sitting at the feet of Jesus, instead of preparing her home for him, was even a possibility for her?

Why do we so love a story of an unconventional woman like Mary who pushes against convention to reach for her greatest potential – but not the reality of the life we create and demand from her?

And why is it that Mary reaching for her potential, like so often happens with men, must come at the expense of a woman like Martha?

Who makes it possible for men to sit at the feet of Jesus? The Marthas of the world. And yet they can still be chided for not setting all aside as Mary did. They can still be expected to keep everything running in the background, keep everyone fed, organize, support, and sit on auxiliaries and still not be enough; still not do enough.

If we really want Martha to sit at the feet of Jesus, we need to do more than scoot aside for her. We need to create a place for her, made possible by a system that sustains and supports her in real, concrete ways that make this possible.

The Sisterhood of the “Slightly Off”

I have this giant print in the entryway of my home. Legit giant, like 3.5 ft by 6.5 ft. Regularly, as people walk into my home, they see the print and start that knowing head shake thing that means, “Wait, is this…what is this?” They point their finger and try to access the part of their brain hosting their art history class notes from decades earlier. Once (if) they get it, and remember it is Michaelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam,” some will do a double take and proclaim, “But wait, there’s something’s slightly off about it.”

Art connoisseurs immediately know what’s wrong. Others can sense something is different about this particular rendition, but can’t quite put their finger on it. When my husband and I were first married we were poor, newly graduated college students. We both loved art but couldn’t afford anything that even feigned artistic. My husband’s cousin worked for an advertising agency at the time. She was doing a campaign and needed a vinyl poster printed of this scene. When she got to the print shop she noticed it was done incorrectly. The image had been mirrored. Adam was on the right hand side and God was on the left, instead of vice versa. Unusable for her campaign she was just going to toss it. I asked if I could have it and immediately hung it in our tiny basement apartment on 9th East in Provo. That vinyl print, which was never meant to be more than a temporary advertisement, has gone with me to every house I have ever lived in. It’s big and beautiful and not quite right, and I love it.  

The print, after twenty five years and six different homes, is falling apart now. It wasn’t meant to be hung and rehung across several states and many walls. The sides are coming unglued. The holes are getting saggier. But its beauty is not just the picture itself, but in its familiarity. It’s also beautiful to me because it’s “slightly off.” The imperfection of it appeals to me.

I identify as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When hearing me talk about my faith, people recognize its roots grounded in the LDS faith tradition. Plus, we own a trampoline and have children old enough to have children, and a middle schooler still at home. The tell-tale signs of being LDS. But the more I talk about my faith and the God I believe in, the more some people who identify as LDS say, “Are you sure you’re a Mormon?”

I was asked to speak in sacrament meeting a couple of weeks ago. One of the things I talked about was the sometimes-irreparable harm that can come from “othering” people at church, especially people who are already marginalized in our LDS faith tradition. I spoke directly about racism and homophobia. After my talk was over, someone came up to me, almost giddy, and said, “I can’t believe you said the word ‘homophobia’ over the pulpit.” 

I didn’t understand her reaction. “Why?” I asked.

“Because we need to hear about this, specifically at church, and we need to talk about it. At church.”

Okay then. Cool.

I always want people to know where I stand in my beliefs. All of my beliefs. I know I have some haters, but it was nice to have an ally. My oldest son is gay. I have told my daughter, who is in the Young Women’s Program, that if she is ever in a lesson where anyone says anything that is derogatory or makes her feel badly about the way her older brother (or anyone else for that matter) exists in this world, she is to politely excuse herself (or impolitely, if necessary), get up, leave the class, and come find me. We made a deal. She will get up and leave, or I will get up and leave if it happens in one of my classes. But neither of us will tolerate intolerance from a pulpit where we are in the audience. She knows that we will always side with our family and will not allow someone to speak about the way God does or doesn’t love someone in a way that is counter to our belief. That just isn’t the worship service we want to participate in. It puts a heavy burden on a pre-teen. It puts a heavy burden on me as an adult. I am not immune to what people think of me. But we have a deal and we honor it.

In fairness to her leaders, and to create a pathway for her to hopefully avoid potentially awkward interactions, when she entered the YW Program, I reached out to the YW President to tell her about the deal my daughter and I have. I explained it was not to be offensive or disruptive, but it was to allow us the space to worship in ways that were good for our family and good for our souls. The YW President was very receptive to the conversation and understood both my concern and my messaging about the deal my daughter and I have.

Today, we had to look at each other and act on our deal. Thankfully, we were able to do it together. We had a high council speaker who launched in about how “the family” was under attack. My husband and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes about how there is this false narrative that the nuclear, Christian, often right-wing leaning family is “under attack.” But we rolled with it, because it isn’t an unfamiliar narrative to hear.  We shook our heads as we expressed frustration about the double speak, knowing that by saying “the family” was “under attack” was really code to actually attack gay marriage, and if I had to guess, transgender identities as well. But when the speaker started digging in his heels, really harping on gender, my husband bounced. My daughter was distracted, and I was curious, so we stayed. For another minute anyway.

In his next breath, the speaker mentioned how he felt “especially bad for women, who were really the ones under attack.” He then proceeded to talk about how women are told they can have it all, and how women are encouraged to be selfish. He talked about how now women “travel, get jobs, and make themselves a priority, instead of getting married and raising a family.” So we can’t give our babies a name and a blessing, we can’t hold positions of true authority at church, we can’t pass the sacrament, we can’t handle the money, we can’t be in the building alone, and now we also shouldn’t travel without feeling guilty about it? (I am laughing at the absurdity as I type this because I can’t believe it is 2025 and this guy just felt like he was nailing it, emboldened to continue). I looked at my daughter and asked her quietly to pack up her things, told her we were leaving, and I would explain it to her outside.

As we were walking out, the speaker started launching into a discussion about abortion from the pulpit. To be fair, I don’t know what he said, because I left. But as he said “abortion” on the way out, my daughter said, “Doesn’t this guy know there are children in the audience? I am not sure that is a subject for this group.” Out of the mouth of my babe.

Texting friends after church about the wildly inappropriate talk that was given, one of my friends mentioned how she sat there in the pew shaking her head wildly. She said, “Everyone around me could tell I wasn’t happy. You guys should start sitting in the front of the chapel so everyone can see you walk out.” I chuckled at the thought. She was joking, and that isn’t our goal, but it is a funny image. The idea isn’t to show the world our indignance, although if they do, so be it. But it is about upholding a promise I made to my daughter. It is also to uphold a promise to my older children who have left the church. I want all of my children to know about my testimony and what it includes and what it doesn’t. And it doesn’t condone homophobia, sexism, racism, or general judgment and hate speech. I promised all of them that when individuals who speak in antithetical rhetoric I believe to be in conflict with the teachings of Christ, that I would be a voice. I want to be active in my church because of my relationship with my Heavenly Parents, but I will NOT let hateful doctrine enter my head or my heart, nor their sisters’ head and heart. 

For many who have left their LDS church membership behind, this might seem incongruent. When I was speaking to someone I minister to who left the church, she said, “I just got tired of the code switching and couldn’t justify it anymore.” I get it. But I guess for me, that is part of my faith journey. Making sure that I am able to worship in a way that is good with my soul, doesn’t involve justifying or pandering, or being ashamed of my family. To be committed to my God and my family and know that the God I love and worship would never ask me to criticize myself, my children, and my life. My God would love me forwards, backwards, unconditionally, when I am spot on, or even when my worship might feel “slightly off” to some folks. 

For art purists, my version of the Michelangelo masterpiece is too far afield, almost blasphemous in its mirrored portrayal of the original. But I find beauty in this altered version. So as simple as it sounds, my testimony isn’t a masterpiece. Like my butchered version of the “Creation of Adam,” my testimony has turned into something it wasn’t really intended to be. It has come unglued in some places, it is definitely showing some wear and tear, and it has a lot of holes in it. Like, a lot of holes. But I hang that janky vinyl in the entryway of my home for all to see, in spite of its flaws. I’m committed to the deal my daughter and I made. To the promise I made to her older siblings. I will participate and love my God and serve my God, but it will NOT be at their expense. I will share my slightly off testimony, and show my version of the Gospel to anyone who will look close enough to see it. I want those around me to know that the sisterhood of the “slightly off” exists, is strong, and is accessible to anyone who wants to sit in the pews and shake their head with us, or when necessary, read our scriptures out in the hall. 

Patty Sessions: Mormon Pioneer Midwife & Mormon Polygamist/Polyandrist Wife

The diary of a Mormon pioneer woman is a fascinating record of a paradoxical time. These women participated in the priesthood in ways forbidden to modern Latter-day Saint women. And in many ways, the early church better supported women in their careers than our modern church, which may finally be emerging (fingers crossed) from a many-decade streak of male leaders promoting stay-at-home-motherhood. And yet, they struggled with the same Victorian-era sexism and injustices experienced by most women of their time, compounded by the LDS Church’s experiment with polygamy which, according to most Mormon pioneer diaries I have read, made women miserable.

Patty Sessions was the perfect example of this paradox. As a midwife, she was a careerwoman and a spiritual leader, called on for healing blessings. She supported church policies while privately mourning how polygamy wreaked havoc on her marriages.

To clarify, reading the diaries of a woman like Patty Sessions would be fascinating, if most diaries weren’t so dull and unreadable. Most people don’t write their diaries for public consumption, and it shows. The unedited, scribbled pages of a diary tend to drone on in tangents. Juicy historical and personal details are scattered needles lodged in haystacks of errands and grocery lists. I’ve read many diaries as I’ve researched my Ask a Suffragist book series and I’ve learned so much from them, but the process wasn’t usually a lot of fun.

Luckily, Patty Sessions’s great, great, great, great granddaughter, Melissa Tyler, teaming up with illustrator, Luciana Maruca, has converted the best content of her ancestor’s diary into a more reader-friendly format—a graphic novel.

Some images take quotes from Patty’s diary and paint them out in a fanciful direction, like this one:

“My life at this point started being filled with babies. My babies being born and passing away and other woman’s babies that I helped bring into the world and also bury.”

—Patty Bartlett Sessions, as quoted in Midwife of the Wild Frontier by Melissa Tyler& Luciana Maruca

Sometimes the imagery points out blindspots in Patty’s perspective, particularly when her words reflect the biases of white settlers encroaching on inhabited indigenous lands.

“You have the first babe born in this land.” – Patty Bartlett Sessions
“Well, not quite the first baby… I guess they think only the white ones count.” – Indigenous woman with a baby

— Midwife of the Wild Frontier by Melissa Tyler& Luciana Maruca

In addition to chronicling her midwifery career, Patty’s journal recorded her experiences with polygamy and polyandry during the early years of the LDS church. This uncaptioned image summarizes what her experience with polygamy was like.

Patty was also one of several women who practiced polyandry in the early days of the LDS church, becoming a plural wife of Joseph Smith while still married to her legal husband.

“During the Nauvoo years, I had my salvation secured by being “sealed” or married by the power of heaven to Joseph Smith, as was my daughter Sylvia… …And for that matter quite a few other women. Joseph, in his proposals to women, would tell them that he was their means of getting to heaven. ” – Patty Bartlett Sessions
“And now I pronounce you man and wife, and wife, and wife, and wife…” – Wedding officiator
“Our women’s Relief Society meetings were a little awkward now and then.” – Patty Bartlett Sessions
“Do any of you know where Joseph is? I have a feeling I shouldn’t be so trusting.” – Emma Smith

— Midwife of the Wild Frontier by Melissa Tyler& Luciana Maruca

While perusing this graphic novel, make sure to read the footnotes! The footnotes add a great deal to the narrative, some with historical context and others with wry commentary. The footnote under this asterisk says, “Patty’s own words.” I laughed out loud when I read that footnote and realized this is what Patty herself literally said about her wedding.

“John Parry and I got married. I was really grateful not to have to chop my own wood anymore.”

—Patty Bartlett Sessions, as quoted in Midwife of the Wild Frontier by Melissa Tyler& Luciana Maruca

After you’ve read Midwife of The Wild Frontier, you may find yourself hungry for more Patty Sessions. If that happens, go ahead and read her diary. Luckily, you don’t have to read brittle old pages with bad handwriting. Patty’s diary has been published as Mormon Midwife: the 1846-1888 Diaries of Patty Bartlett Sessions, edited by Donna Smart. Yes, I did say that reading diaries tends to be less than entertaining, but I still do it when I’m researching the Ask a Suffragist books I write, and although reading diaries is not as consistently fun as reading a graphic novel, there’s a certain satisfaction to peering into someone else’s diary, and reading something so private to them they only shared it with themselves. If you loved Midwife of The Wild Frontier, give Patty’s published diary a try. You might not hate it!

Girl Math

Girl math is sitting in a public bathroom stall, looking at your pad that is two-thirds saturated with blood, not having two quarters to buy another one, and wondering if the remaining fraction of pad will be enough to get you through the next three hours without bleeding through your pants. (It won’t.)

Girl math is determining the volume of your breasts as they gradually swell hard as granite five hours into your shift while you’re still waiting for the chance to take your legally mandated pumping break.

Girl math is intentionally limiting the number of ounces you drink, despite the health risks of dehydration, because you have incontinence due to childbirth and you have to be able to leave your house for longer than a couple of hours.

Girl math is calculating how many steps across the parking lot to the bathroom and realizing that you’re not going to make it.

Girl math is counting and recounting the days since your last period, and then counting again. Until you take a test, you are both pregnant and not pregnant. (If Schrodinger had had to worry about becoming pregnant, he would have coined “Schrodinger’s pregnancy” instead of the complicated cat scenario.)

Girl math is counting the number of months without a period or a pregnancy since you stopped taking birth control and realizing something is wrong.

Girl math is coming up with money for full-price procedures for the female parts of your body when your insurance company tells you that they do not cover pregnancy, infertility treatments or even infertility testing because they are not legally required to do so because pregnancy is considered an “elective condition.”

Girl math is subtracting childcare costs from the wages of a job opportunity and realizing that working doesn’t make sense from a numbers perspective.

Girl math is belatedly realizing the economic realities of giving up a promising career decades ago to support your husband’s career, only to have to start over in middle age with no retirement and no marketable skills.

Girl math is rolling the dice when your partner doesn’t want to wear a condom because you don’t feel like you have a choice.

Girl math is wanting more children but feeling like you’re playing Russian roulette with your life, physical health, and mental health if you decide to have another baby.

Girl math is learning that even though something is 97% effective, it still fails 3% of the time. It turns out that 3% odds are much higher than you were led to believe.

Girl math is earning 83% as much as a man.

Girl math is becoming a statistic: globally, 1 in 3 women are physically or sexually assaulted by an intimate partner or sexually assaulted by a non-partner during their lifetimes.

Girl math is weighing the precise moment when “it’s safer to be polite” turns to “it’s safer to scream” and being wrong nearly every time.

Girl math is choosing the bear.

All of these scenarios have happened either to me or to friends of mine. Add your own “girl math” additions in the comments.

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

Queer Mormon Joy: An Interview with Kerry Pray

Kerry Pray’s new edited volume: The Book of Queer Mormon Joy is now available through its publisher Signature Books and other booksellers. I sent her a list of questions and here is what she told me about her new book.

NR: How do you usually introduce yourself in Mormon spaces?
KP: Introducing myself in Mormon spaces was a good deal trickier before Nelson was the prophet! I married a woman before the repeal of the POX, which at the time meant mandatory excommunication. (My local leadership conveniently forgot to make this happen and I did not remind them.) “Ex-Mormon” never felt quite right because you don’t actually stop feeling Mormon when you have been one your entire life! It’s your culture and your heritage and where you come from. I tried post-Mormon for a while. But after Nelson made “Mormon” a forbidden word it got a whole lot easier because Mormon no longer necessarily referred to membership in the institutional church, which I no longer consider myself a part of. So now I tend to call myself a queer Mormon, which suits me.

NR: Your previous book, I Spoke to you with Silence, was beautiful and devastating in the best/worst ways. Your new book, The Book of Queer Mormon Joy, clearly celebrates joy. Can you tell me more about your journey with these two books? What made you want to write this second volume?
KP: Jenn Lee Smith and I put the previous book together because we both had felt its absence. When I was deciding whether or not to come out, to leave my mixed orientation marriage, to leave the church, I looked everywhere I could for stories, for anyone who could offer guidance. I knew literally one lesbian I could reach out to and ask questions and she was not Mormon. She introduced me to Affirmation, where I met Jenn and immediately bonded. Jenn and I talked about how we had found a few stories about gay Mormon men, but we just couldn’t find very many of the other stories. And we were so desperate for them. Jenn had actually been trying to collect them for years. She asked me to help turn them into a form that would bring them to other people and preserve them, so that no one had to have the same experience we did and that there would always be something out there for them to find when they went looking, desperate to find out they weren’t alone. The two things that were the most important to us were that we give a voice to the people who didn’t have one and that we tell the truth. But the problem with the truth is that it is heartbreaking. There is so much sorrow and pain in the queer Mormon community. It weighed on us and publishing the book took a toll that we didn’t expect. And so when Barbara Jones Brown from Signature asked about putting together another book, I knew that it had to do more than simply tell the truth: it had to help create a new truth. Because our lives can be joyful and beautiful and hopeful and wonderful. But it is a choice you have to make. And it is not always an easy one. 

NR: What do you want readers to get out of this new book? Is there a kind of argument that these essays make about queer Mormon joy?
KP: If there is an argument about joy that this book makes, it’s this: take it. It’s yours. It belongs to you. Don’t wait for it. Don’t contort or bend yourself to fit to rules written by those who don’t understand you. God is big enough, whether or not the church is. Mortality is heavy and hard, and it’s even harder when you are different. But difference can be joyful when we let it be. The long arm of history may or may not make room for those of us on the outside in our lifetimes. But in the meantime we can laugh and sing and dance and be. 

NR: What has this book mean to you? What drove you to tell these stories?
KP: Putting these stories together was healing for me, personally. I started out in a broken sort of place, weighed down by the sorrow and struggle and sense that it was never going to be enough. But I kept editing and kept writing, pass by pass, essay by essay. And by the end I was surprised to find the broken edges inside me had started to heal–to turn into laughter and celebration. Joy is an act of defiance for queer people. We know people don’t want us to exist. We know they find us odd and viscerally upsetting. We know they are unsettled, squicked out, distressed. We celebrate anyway. Because we are, as we are. And we are good. 

NR: Is there anything from Mormonism that you still hold onto or that is still meaningful to you?
KP: I don’t know that I’ll ever stop being Mormon. It’s baked deep into you. As a queer person one thing about Mormonism I actually found very helpful was knowing–however strenuously they currently object–that marriage doesn’t actually have to look one way. Families can be complicated and different. Maybe you have a husband and another wife! God delights in variety and God wants you to choose for yourself. Mormonism taught me that, and it’s something I hold very dear.