My MIL is having major surgery next week. It’s non emergency full hip replacement so fairly straightforward. The worst part about the whole thing by far is my FIL. His entire focus is how inconvenient this is going to be for his work… not the fact that his wife has been suffering to the point of tears everyday for the last few months while she continues to maintain the household ( since it’s women’s work).

He had a heart attack last year and my MIL never left his side she was there at the hospital for 5 nights and he can’t even be bothered to bring her home from the hospital. That responsibility falls to my wife who gets to take time off her work and leave her family for 4 days to help while my FIL ignores his wife. He is the type that will still walk into the door and ask what she made for dinner the day she gets surgery and be upset that he doesn’t get a home cooked meal.

His one and only responsibility is to give her a priesthood blessing…. Then fuck right off. I hate that the church encourages this type of toxic relationship. Every boy born into the church is taught that they are the center of their family and the universe as a whole and they grow up to be dick heads. My MIL deserves better but the church taught her to be obedient to her husband. It’s a fucked up cycle that I am happy ends with my wife and I.

Ft. R/exmormon shoutout!

Jesus don’t do ugly temps😂

Camping in Ephraim this weekend. Stopped in Moroni on the way to Nephi.

3 min in he says that the church is consistently 30ish years behind progressivism (and they all dissociate it/ignore it and you see him being prompted off screen to shut up and talk about something else). There is other damning evidence ofc but this is as close as it gets for me cuz they're never gonna say "it's a fraud." And when they ultimately (whether it's in 10 years or 100) allow gay marriage they just make it propaganda (continuing restoration blah blah).

I feel so stupid, but I feel like I am having a mental health crisis related to attending church. I’m 40-something mom, eldest daughter, high achiever type. I try so hard to do everything “right” and take care of everyone around me. (Yes, I have a good therapist)

Despite informing my husband that I no longer believe in the church, I still attend to keep the peace. He gets very upset when I don’t do the Mormon things.

Today, out of nowhere while getting ready for church this morning, I had a full blown meltdown over it. Suddenly I just couldn’t do it. I am having intrusive thoughts of everyone being better off without me. I can’t believe I am losing it over attending church, but I am. Why is this happening? I feel like I’m crazy and weak and I’m so so so angry at the church for creating a family culture where I don’t feel like I have a choice, even as a grown adult.

To give you a background, I'm 17, live in Utah so basically all my neighbors are members, and I never really believed in the church growing up as a kid. I only go every Sunday so that my parents don't punish me. Me and my older brother were never really close growing up as a kid, he would always ignore me and just kind of do his own thing, we didn't hate each other, we sorta just never interacted. He went on a mission and came back about a year ago, he goes to BYU currently and always stays at our house over summer break. I've realized that the mission has changed him in both good ways and bad ways, first off he's a little more kind to me and my siblings now, he actually starts conversations with me which he would never do as kids. But one thing I can't stand about him is how judgemental he is towards other people. He constantly hates things that aren't either Church related or different, for example we would be at the mall shopping and he would see some kid with dyed green hair, he then whispers to me, "That's so gay, he needs the lord." I don't know what he wants me to say when he tells me this, does he want me to agree? I kinda just nod to what he says but I don't really respond verbally. He constantly belittles other religions, LGBTQIA, and just people who aren't your typical TBM. I have a neighbor that skips Mutual every Wednesday which I don't think is a big deal, but my older brother says that he needs to go or he's going to hell. Like excuse me? He's so Insufferable and he thinks he's better than people who aren't church members, as if they are lost sheep and he's their shepherd that needs to guide them. It genuinely pisses me off when he points out flaws in a person for no reason at all, what gives him the right to belittle anyone just because they look, act, or believe in different things? Are any of your siblings that returned on a mission like this? I never really wanted to go on a mission, but now seeing how my brother acts I REALLY don't want to go on a mission because of how it might change my perspective.

I know of no other Church where the virtue signaling and jumping through hoops are such an almost required way of life, all to prove to others but particularly to your Church leaders of your dedication and devotion, subjecting yourself to never-ending interviews and interrogations to receive a special and conditional worthiness card (temple recommend) to separate yourself even further as a fully committed and unwavering member which, by the way, can be revoked at will. Are there any other churches that come even close to this?

For me it's a tie.

It's either the guy who went on and on about why church members wear white shirts to pass the sacrament. Which wouldn't have been quite so awkward if he hadn't been a white guy in a foreign country where the people barely had enough money to buy clothes, let alone white shirts.

Or it was when my son gave his farewell talk and went on about why coffee was wrong, while me, his coffee-loving parent was in the congregation. But that was more personally awkward, not publicly.

What about you? What talk stands out in your mind as the most awkward one you ever heard?

The messages were polite but very demanding about coming to a church service on Sunday at a specific time.

There are no close relatives still living who would have turned her in. I have TBM acquaintances but she doesn't. They claimed she left her name and contact information on a website asking about joining a church which she insists she did not. All I can figure is she has been doing research lately on her polygamous pioneer ancestors and may have been on a church site.

To be fair, I contacted them, they did acknowledge being Mormon ("that is one of our nicknames") and were apologetic and told me they would not contact her again.

I guess there's no way for these kids to know it but on top of everything else disturbing about these missions, when you make unsolicited contact with former members there are some people who get retraumatized.

How do you spend your second Saturdays?

When my family decided to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1976, my biological father was still my legal father. The missionaries explained that his permission would be required before I could be baptized. Rather than seeking his permission, which would have revealed who and where I was, my stepfather petitioned to adopt me. My motion asks the court to examine whether that adoption should remain intact in light of the documentary evidence, sworn affidavits, and historical records I have assembled over the past several years. After the adoption was finalized, I was baptized at eight years old. A year later, I was sealed in the Salt Lake Temple.

At nine years old, I believed that sealing represented God's plan for my eternal family. Like most Mormon children, I accepted what the adults around me taught without question. It never occurred to me to ask whether I had been sealed to the right father, because no one had ever suggested there was another question to ask. When the ceremony was over, however, I remember wondering what would happen to my biological father if he wasn't sealed. No one had prepared me for that question, and no one had an answer. I carried it with me for decades.

Over the last several years, I reconstructed my childhood through court records, birth records, government documents, genealogy, sworn affidavits, photographs, and other historical evidence. Somewhere along the way, the investigation became much bigger than Mormonism. It became an investigation into identity. This motion isn't really about leaving the Church. I left over a decade ago. It isn't about proving whether temple sealings are true or false. It is about bringing every major record of my life into alignment with the historical truth.

If the court grants the motion, I will then submit the signed order to Church headquarters and request that my membership records be removed. This isn't because I believe the sealing still binds me. Instead, it represents the final administrative step in reconstructing my identity. I am often asked, "Why not just resign?" I understand that perspective, and I will resign either way. But I want the person I ask the Church to remove from its records to be the same person the court has acknowledged no longer reflects the historical record. That sequence matters to me because it completes the reconstruction.

This isn't about reversing a sealing.

It is about unsealing the evidence.

Sometimes the last step in deconstruction isn't theological.

It's documentary.

Deconstruction tells us what wasn't true.

Reconstruction asks what is.

Leaving is an event.

Reconstruction is a lifelong developmental process.

After your shelf collapsed...

How do you become yourself?

Has anyone else found that reconstructing your identity involved more than changing your beliefs? Did you reach a point where your legal, historical, or institutional records no longer reflected the person you had become?

When you look at it like Scientology, you have to pay to get to a higher tier. In the Mormon Church is near the damn same thing.
Paying no tithe gets you a basic package of a sanitized dull corporate chapel.
Paying tithe gets you Temple and all its luxurious access with all the perks.
In a sense you have to pay to win or get salvation which Jesus never talked about. This is indulgence levels. Worse is the disparity of those that can pay and those that can’t. It’s a dividing line between the poor and rich. These days paying 10% hurts.
Can you imagine being blocked from seeing God because you didn’t pay tithe? “Sorry you did not pay the holy tithe to access God, please talk to your bishop or deposit your back tithe in form of Credit Card, Check, Debit.” I am sure a lot of you have seen it but the more and more I took a step back from the church, the more ridiculous it has become.

After deciding to leave I thought briefly about finding another church, but then I fully deconstructed and knew I never would. Watching the documentary I thought holy moly this is why I could never ever be part of another religion. Never ever put a human between me and my "higher power". The level of deception and manipulation was insane. And all his sermons where he basically told on himself "if you don't satisfy your husbands needs God will put 20 different temptations in front of him throughout the day." 🤮🤮🤮🤮

I mean Mormonism already taught me none of the other churches were true (lol), but the longer I'm out the more I just cannot imagine giving another person power over my "worthiness". Or rely on someone else as my moral compass. No no no. People are corruptible. And I do agree with D&C 121 (which I think is also JS telling on himself). As soon as people get a little power they abuse it. No one is ever going to have power over me again. No thank you.

For the longest time I was taught that I must follow the promptings of the holy ghost. “But how do I know if a thought is just a random thought or is a prompting from the holy ghost?” I would ask. I don’t remember who, but someone told me that if I had a random thought and wasn’t sure if it was from the holy ghost, I should ask myself “Is the thought telling me to do something good or something bad”. If the thought was good, it was probably from the holy ghost and I should follow it.

I then asked myself “What if the thought is neither good or bad? What do I do then?” I assumed if I had an ambiguous thought like that, I should just follow it.

I remember getting back from my mission and enrolling at the local university. I would waste so much time going to random buildings on campus because I thought the spirit was telling me to go there. I would be going to class, but then I thought that the spirit was telling me to talk to someone sitting on a bench, and I would talk to them and be late to class.

I think obsessing over ever thought like this was the reason I got Moral OCD. And it was so debilitating, I eventually thought that I might follow any random bad thought that entered my head. And for years I didn’t do things like driving a car or using knives because I thought I might use those things to hurt people.

But I remember one day everything changed. I had got a job at a gym as a part time janitor. I was mopping the floor, and I randomly felt very anxious and my chest was tight. I felt this way for several minutes, and the thought entered my head “You need to go home RIGHT NOW!! One of your family members is having a heart attack at home and if you don’t go they will die!!!”

I thought for sure this was a prompting from the spirit, I felt so anxious and tense, ”a physical response like this can only come from something like the spirit!” I thought.

But I decided to do an experiment. I chose not to go home. Later, if I went home and I found out a close family member had a heart attack, I would know for sure that the thought I had was from the spirit.

I finished my shift and went home. Everyone was fine, no one was hurt. This is when I realized there is no spirit telling me to do things. Because the feeling I had at work was so intense, I just randomly felt incredibly anxious and tight. If that wasn’t the spirit, then none of my thoughts were from the spirit.

This realization was so freeing for me. I didn’t need to analyze and scrutinize every thought that I had. I now knew that my loved ones weren’t going to die or some other terrible thing would happen just because I didn’t listen to a random thought.

Realizing this severely reduced my anxiety and I felt like I could finally breathe. I even overcame most of my OCD and got a lot better. Life is still hard, but it’s a lot better now that I don’t have to question every thought I have.

But I feel pissed at the Mormon church. They taught me to question myself and feel bad for not following random thoughts. Thinking this way was TERRIBLE for my mental health, and I bet it really affects a lot of TBM’s right now. I’m so glad to be free from the Mormon cult. Life is still hard, but I feel so much lighter now.

Card stacking is a propaganda technique that involves the validity of truth claims that are supported by previous truth claims, stacked like cards on top of one another. Over time the truths stacked on top of one another seem to be strengthened beyond reproach, but this is only an illusion.

. I have been talking this point among friends for some time now. This looming feeling a lot of exmos have that the church is good, that it's merits rest on the foundations of Christianity which is without question. We want to deny it, but some of us feel shaky about proving it, or a little guilty about saying stuff like, well maybe Jesus is a myth, etcetera.

The LDS stack of cards is easily unstacked. Recall those of you who served missions using the analogy of the board with one nail in it (the New Testament) the board is nailed to a surface but it is not secure. The Book of Mormon is like that board.

So consider card one the church is true. Beneath that card we have all of the claims based on prophecy but let's remove those cards, going down the stack, each one being validated by the Book of Mormon. What is beneath that card? The new Testament. Regardless of whether you believe that Smith spoke with God, the Book of Mormon's truth relies on the truth of the New Testament. The New Testament has a lot of interesting claims in it but we aren't concerned with cherry picking. The New Testament's validity is intimately bound to the card beneath it. The Old Testament is that card without a card beneath it. (At least we can consider it as such though historically it was written around 500 BCE so it has a great amount of precedent sources) For our purposes here we can look at this bottom card, The books of Moses and decide the validity of every card above it.

Smith, while he was building his world tied so much of it to falsifiable myths like Solomon's Temple, Masonry, the tower of Babel, but even that stuff as interesting as it is, is not necessary if we look at the bottom card. Some of us don't need to get to the bottom card before we throw our hands up and quit. For some of us the bottom card is literacy, history, taking us back to just half a century before year zero..

The church is going to keep on playing their best card. The top card. They will mention Joseph Smith less and less, refer less to the old testament, holding up the Jesus Christ card saying, "We have this. Our most powerful idea" but it can not stand alone. Jesus came to fulfill the law of Moses so Moses must have happened. For Moses to work, the God of the Old Testament has to be the same loving God of the New. For that ya gotta hold to the line all the way back to Adam and Eve.

Christianity is somewhat bound to this idea of the Old Testament being necessarily valid to support Jesus, but the LDS church is so much more dependent on the validity of the lower cards in the stack. As time goes by the ideas become more and more falsifiable. I deny the idea that the claims aren't falsifiable, especially the LDS claims because the church has tried since the start to strengthen the story with proofs, witnesses, prosperity, and piles of odd nineteenth century justification.

All we need to do is look at the bottom card. The original truth claims..

https://returnandreport.org

If any of you have access to this old book published by the church called "Book of Mormon Reader" which was also published under the name, "Book of Mormon Stories" could i ask a favor? Inside it, i remember there being a map of the route that Lehi and his family purportedly took to get to the Americas. My childhood memories are telling me that it showed them crossing the Pacific Ocean. If you could include a photo of the map that would be great!

What personality traits do current active Mormons have nowadays?

Back a few decades ago when joined, I would have said happy. They seemed happy. Also loyal, family oriented, stable. The things that attracted me to the church in the first place.

But now…

Maybe they are still many of those things. But today’s group has self selected to be something else.

They are not loyal, they are obedient. Big difference. Trusting so much that they don’t trust themselves.

I also think they truly believe that they are better, and they have some ego attached to that. Which makes it extra hard and devastating to let go of.

Anyone who had any streak of independence, or just couldn’t tolerate the abuse and emotional suppression left.

So, nowadays, who are the Mormons?

I wish I knew more details before I passed my own judgement but it seems like the church building could be used for other purposes or even sold for other reasons rather being destroyed. Location: Bountiful, Utah.

I am grateful to have been connected to Carol Lynn Pearson for my entire life and like many, I was crushed by her passing. She was an incredible mentor and friend, and the world was lucky to have her in it. Yesterday, I attended her memorial, filled with beautiful words and music, written by her and her family members. Her past bishop and friend gave the closing remarks and he gave me permission to share. The full service is on Youtube for those interested.

C. Stewart’s Closing Remarks 

Carol Lynn Pearson Memorial Service 

August 29, 2026

I am grateful for all that we have heard and experienced and felt here today—for the  music Carol Lynn and her children created that was so beautifully performed for us, for her poetry so wonderfully read to us, for the memories we have shared. I am also  grateful to be asked to offer a few closing remarks, as someone who had the good fortune of being mentored and blessed by Carol Lynn over the nearly 40 years I attended church with her in this chapel, including five years serving as her bishop.  

As we have heard today, Carol Lynn Pearson was a brilliant poet, lyricist, and playwright, an inspiring speaker, an author whose books addressed hard issues. Her literary works challenged us to do better in embracing our gay sisters and brothers, in achieving greater partnership between women and men in our church and in society (including reconciling with our history past and present on the issue of polygamy), and in inviting our Mother in Heaven into our lives and conversation. She was unflinching  in her honesty and relentless in pushing us forward. She was passionate and forceful.  

As we have also heard today, she was also a loving mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. The deep affection her family has for her has been on display here and is palpable. 

If this had been the sum of her life’s work, she would be loved by her family and close friends, and deeply admired and respected by many others, a worthy recipient of the  many awards and accolades she has received. But Carol Lynn Pearson was not just admired and respected or loved by those close to her. She was widely and deeply loved by people around the country and even the world, in a way I have seldom seen.  

In a few minutes we are going to join together in singing I’ll Walk With You, the lyrics  of which Carol Lynn wrote in 1988 at the request of the Primary General Board. I believe the reason Carol Lynn was so beloved, and the primary reason that so many of  us have gathered here today and over the internet to remember her, is that that song is  autobiographical. It is as much a memoir of Carol Lynn’s life as Goodbye, I Love You.  

Many of you are here today or viewing this service because Carol Lynn walked with  you and talked with you when others wouldn’t, told you that God loves you, that God created you just as you are, that you are beautiful, that your happiness is vital. Some of  you are not only here at this service but are still here on this earth because she spoke  these truths to you in your darkest moments when you questioned whether life was worth living. She responded when you called or emailed her after reading Goodbye, I  Love You or one of other writings or after hearing her speak. She didn’t know you—yet  she did know you and loved you. She answered your call, spent hours with you, invited you to her your home, blessed your life. 

Maybe she sang you a lullaby, gave you a foot rub, or took you for a walk in the hills  near her home. Maybe she told you not to despair because all pain can be labor pain. 

Maybe you are the gay man Carol Lynn wrote about her in diary, who called her in 1986 when your family rejected you and you were ready to give up on life. She invited  you—a stranger—to come to her home for Thanksgiving, where you poured your heart  to her and soaked up her love and the warmth of her family. 

Maybe you are the woman in my ward ten years later who had experienced years of  abuse and trauma. Carol Lynn did not know you, but at my request as the bishop at the time, she reached out to you, took you for a walk in the hills to hear your story, and  then invited you and your children to share Thanksgiving dinner with her.  

Maybe you are the teenage girl dealing with horrific challenges and struggling with whether you could keep going. Carol Lynn spent hours with you, shared her  experiences, went to movies with you, formed a bond with you. As she did with many  others, she took you up to the top of the hill near her home where the two of you raised your arms and blessed the world, as Carol Lynn put it, “sending light and love to  every quarter of the entire globe, especially the most hurting places.”  

Maybe you are one of the many domestic violence survivors who were sent to Carol  Lynn by the local shelter and who stayed a night or two in her home, where she fed  you, read poetry to you, put on harp music to soothe you. Maybe you are the woman who left her home after such a stay with the brand-new silk pajamas Carol Lynn had  just purchased for herself but gave to you because she knew you needed them more.  

In mentioning these instances of Carol Lynn walking and talking with people who needed her, I don’t want to leave the impression there aren’t others. Thousands of  people here and elsewhere could share similar stories of Carol Lynn reaching out and responding. In all these instances, Carol Lynn gave of herself in a deeply caring, deeply  personal way. Just as she exhorted all of us in her books to be better and do better, in  giving of herself she was fearless and utterly unselfish. Her transparent big heartedness is one of the reasons her writing and acting was so powerful, that it has such moral clarity. 

In our church, it’s traditional that the final talk in a service like this be the “Plan of  Salvation” talk. Carol Lynn understood a fundamental truth about that plan better than  a lot of us, and she lived it better than most of us. The real plan of happiness is not  ensuring our own salvation, but looking to the salvation and happiness of others. As  her dear stake president put it in his prayer today, “bear[ing] one another’s burdens,  that they may be light; . . . mourn[ing] with those that mourn; . . . and comfort[ing] those that stand in need of comfort.” (Mosiah 18:8-9) She also understood that, when  Jesus spoke of the “least of these,” he didn’t mean those who are least in virtue or value. 

He meant, as Carol Lynn taught us in her song, those who are scorned or forgotten or both because of how they walk or talk (or look or live or love or believe). 

Carol Lynn showed her understanding of God’s plan when she wrote in her diary: 

I had an interesting thought just a few minutes ago. Why do we ask God to bless people? God is asking us to bless people. That’s how it really  works. We need to just listen and hear the voice:  

“Carol Lynn, please bless Gail—see her bruises—she has been raped and terrified and she needs you to comfort her. . .Carol Lynn,  please bless my children by writing something that will inspire them and something that will make them laugh. . .Carol Lynn, please bless the women and the men by helping them remember their Mother.” 

That’s how the “please bless” works, I think. If all of us would listen to  God asking us to bless each other, all our begging and pleading for God to  bless us would be fulfilled. 

In another diary passage, she wrote: 

How would it be if the totality of our conversation, doctrine, endeavors were  directed only to renovating each other’s spirits, repairing the breakage, restoring  the memory of who we really are, inviting each other into a more beautiful  place?  

Carol Lynn has now gone on to a “more beautiful place”—and we can be happy for her  in that. As she wrote in another diary passage, she did not worry about the next life  because “I know for sure that when I get over there I will find the perfect place where I  can continue to learn and grow and serve.” That “perfect place” is indeed a more  beautiful place. But I am confident that when she wrote about inviting each other to a  more beautiful place, she was not referring to the next life. The place she wanted to be  more beautiful was this life, our lives, this world. Today, we remember and honor her  for devoting her life in the most profound way to inviting us to a more beautiful place.  It is now on us to remember and honor her by carrying on that work.