Leaving Mormonism and finding my way back

I wrote this post for an old friend of mine from Princeton days and thought some of you here might be interested in it. Click below if you want to read the rest.

When I lost my sixth child Mary Mercy at birth in 2005, I went back to church the very next week. I went back to work. I went back to exercising probably long before I should have. I was convinced that I would feel normal again if I acted normal. I believed that I would get through the worst and come out on the other end if only I hung tight to my religion and trusted in God. We blessed the baby with the permission of our bishop in the hospital. We gave her a name and spoke about her as a member of the family. We told our other children they would see her again when they were in heaven. I gave several “inspirational” (according to friends) testimonies in the months following, explaining that I trusted that God would teach me about “Mercy” through her namesake and that this was all meant to be.

When a woman told me just a few days after my daughter's death, in the nicest possible way, that this was a good thing for our family because she was sure that now we would work even harder to be a “forever family” with all the members determined to make it to the celestial kingdom, I told myself I was sure she meant well. I made excuses over and over again for people who said really unconscionable things to me, including those members of my ward who were certain that it was my decision to home birth that had led to my daughter's death. I was consumed already with my own guilt over what I had or hadn't done to cause her death (all completely unrelated to home birth, since I hadn't even started labor when she died). It was excruciatingly painful to deal with the hints that somehow my own faults, spiritual or otherwise, had led to this tragedy. I believed that I'd stop feeling sad and that random stupid things people said to me would hurt less.

But as the year following her death passed, I didn't feel better. In fact, I got worse. I began to feel suicidal after church on Sunday.


http://janariess.religionnews.com/2014/04/03/leaving-mormonism-finding-way-back/

http://janariess.religionnews.com/2014/04/04/leaving-mormonism-finding-way-back-part-2/