Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church

by Megan Phelps-Roper

There was no way to consider the magnitude of the devastation that I would soon be forever cut off from everyone I had ever loved: my faculties simply shut down before I could even approach that reality. I was betraying my beloved mother—treated unconscionably by the church body and then abandoned by her own daughter. How could I leave her? Monstrous. And all the while, Grace held my head in her lap, running her nails through my hair, periodically asking questions in a low, cautious voice. Distrustful. Why now? What has changed? Where would we go? I had no other ideas, so I mentioned C.G. Maybe he would help us. I didn’t tell Grace that I’d spoken with him already, partly because both she and he were behaving as though they were afraid of me. As if they didn’t know me. Their reactions were crushing, because they confirmed what I already believed: that outside of Westboro, I was nothing. Within the church, I was a cherished daughter—I wielded no power, but my skills were many and useful and valued. I was dependable, and trustworthy, and called upon frequently. I had built my life and identity around the church, and I was well-beloved. Who was I on the outside? I was the perpetrator of untold amounts of harm in the world. I was a lover of tragedy, cruelly attacking the grieving at their most vulnerable. I was a willing participant in the most aggressive anti-gay picketing campaign the country had ever seen. What reason did anyone have to give me a second chance? Grace and C....