TikTok's "ExMormonMindy" - Kayla White - Mormon Stories #1353

hello everyone and welcome to another edition of mormon stories podcast i'm your host john dulin it is october 10 2020 and we're here uh saturday afternoon in studio when we should not be here we should be home having fun with our family but instead we're doing a cool interview today we are interviewing kayla white you may or may not know that name but you uh if you follow uh ex-mormons on tick-tock you will know the name ex-mormon mindy uh we had genie man on tick tock he impersonates uh mormon general authorities it was an amazing interview and i want to spotlight this platform of tick tock because i think it's important uh you know podcasts are great mormons have been dominating that market for at least 15 years youtube has has been coming online there's a lot of good activity on youtube but we don't want to miss important emerging platforms especially platforms that are reaching uh young adults and kids and even even hip 20 and 30-somethings and others so that's what tick-tock is and i think probably the biggest hottest uh one of the biggest hottest channels on tick-tock in the space of mormonism is uh ex-mormon mindy or kayla white and here she is in studio hey kayla hello thanks for joining us no problem and you had to wake up early and drive here i did we live in the armpit of utah so which is it's vernal yeah and you came all the way from vernal all the way yeah so thanks so much thanks so much for joining us it's so good to have you and this is really fun yeah yeah so you're a tick-tocker i am didn't think i ever would be but life throws you curves when did you first learn about tick tock oh earlier this year it's all this year right yeah it's not new it's it's really new yeah so for those who don't know i'm just going to show you for those who have visual this is ex mormon mindy's tiktok channel and it's basically just these little two minute videos and as we're scrolling through you can see various videos that uh that kayla has produced and we're going to be playing them throughout the show and what i'm going to go ahead and do is just play the first one all right so this is ex-mormon mindy with uh her ex-mormon rap in the mormon church i was born and raised believing the prophets how i spent all of my days modesty scriptures and following the rules and believing all the like some kind of a fool well i was in love so the choice was made gotta get married so i can get laid i got my recommend to the temple we went and this is where i got my magical underwear coke or mint they were white and cut sleeves and knee-length beauties i hated to wear them but i did so out of duty unhappy in the church so i did some reading oh boy do you see where the story is leading i left in november like a true trader and i yelled to my garments you andy smell you later look to my shoulder and it's bare i see i smile to myself i'm so glad that i'm free [Music] so i guess that gives you a sense for what ex-mormon mindy's throwing down yeah yeah that's pretty hardcore i know it you're not messing around i'm not taking any prisoners well so let's dig in what we want to do is we're going to go ahead and hear uh kayla's story and throughout we're going to play some of kayla's videos and it'll be fun so uh yeah fun so let's start so kayla let's start so are were you born mormon i sure was tell us about that um well my dad converted my mom and they got married in the temple they had a bunch of kids and when i was 18 months old my mom was pregnant with my little sister and my dad was hit by a drunk driver coming home from work and was killed and i think that had a really big effect on how my family viewed the church because it becomes more important for your eternal salvation when you have someone you love so much on the other side so where were you guys living we were living in california at the time so i was 18 months so really little i think my eldest sister was almost 12 when it happened and then my mom was pregnant with their sixth daughter actually so are you feeling emotional about that right now talking about that yeah it was one of the things that was really hard you know further on in my leaving story was losing that eternal promise because i kind of clung to that really hard and i think it kept me in the church for a long time so growing up as a little girl did your mom remarry she did so she reminded my stepdad how many years after not super long i won't say two to three years after maybe less and he brought in two kids and then they had two kids together so we became a yours mine in ours kind of family 10 of us total in the family but my dad my stepdad and i never had a great relationship and so again it was back to that eternal like well you know i don't have a dad here on this earth that i feel like i'm close with but at least i'll have him in the next life that's super hard so you don't feel like you bonded with your stepdad no and it's gotten better over the years but i don't think we'll ever have a father-daughter relationship but we're friends now but it wasn't always that way we had some really rough patches for sure okay so mormon theology was an important part of you having hope that you would see your dad someday exactly and it was talked about a lot obviously in our house so it was very important there okay so growing up was it a pretty unconventional mormon upbringing or pretty conventional warming it was pretty conventional you're in california is that right up until when i was eight and then we moved so i got baptized in california and then we moved up to you know zion here in utah okay so you grew up where here yeah here just outside of farmington if your viewers know where lagoon is centerville or valley okay so high school was yuma high school home of the vikings okay so um so anything about your uh childhood here in utah or your adolescence that's an important part of your story like take us through kind of how your mormon story went okay move here we move desire yes to zion and it was a new experience for sure having so many mormons around because it definitely wasn't like that you know central california it was more diverse for sure and we were the minority and then coming here we were in the majority of the people my stepdad actually did maintenance for the temple that was his job so it was a very beautiful bountiful temple yeah so he was always there and again that eternal salvation thing was always there i do want to mention being baptized i was super excited about it this is what i was talking my husband about and i really was excited to receive the holy ghost i have a million siblings older than me and watching them and and hearing their stories about feeling the spirit i was really really excited and we get into it and i get the confirmation and i remember like i opened my eyes i was just waiting like i thought there would be like some magical light switch moment and instead i felt nothing and i think that was the first time i didn't doubt i ate but i was like something's wrong with me like what is wrong with me that i am not feeling this magical moment that everyone said i would have and that was that was the first inkling of something that was what age well i ate when i got caught okay and and so how'd you reconcile that i guess as an eight-year-old i just figured it must be normal i never really told anyone about it but yeah i just thought you know either there's something wrong with me or i didn't know how to feel the holy ghost uh it was really hard and it definitely is something that follows the rest of my story is that lack of spiritual feeling so where do things go from there oh we'll see i'm pretty boring moved to utah i had a really normal childhood i am we went to church every sunday it was very expected but it we didn't do a lot of the at-home stuff you know we had family night once a year and then we go through spurts with family scripture study or family prayer but you know we do it really good and then we kind of tinkle off and then we do it really good i think religion was always there it wasn't something i really thought about until i reached seminary in ninth grade and i decided to probably read the book of mormon because i was feeling really insecure that i hadn't because i felt like everybody had and so i read it and i remember the last book of the book of mormon and just like rushing through it because i knew about moroni's promise and i was like oh yeah i gotta get to that part this is a good part and i finally finished it which by the way mariah's promise isn't at the end i thought it would be like the last and i had to keep reading and i was really disappointed and i remember specifically seeing my room was the middle of the afternoon because i was that dedicated to read it and i closed it and i got on my little knees with all the faith that my little 14 year old heart could hold and i prayed so hard and i waited because they tell you have to wait and so i just sat there and i was like the anticipation here is real and i got nothing and i was like okay you try that again so i prayed again and i got nothing and i was like well that sucked and so i i was kind of ho hum for a couple days and my mom finally was like what is going on with you and i told her this issue i was having and she said oh well sometimes god doesn't give you an answer because you already know the answer and essentially in a way gaslighted me into this feeling and i was like oh that's how that works i was like well i guess i do know it's true i guess maybe god didn't feel like i needed that answer because he knew i already knew and so that's kind of what held me over for the next little bit was this thought of like okay god knew i knew so he didn't need to tell me personally when you were telling that story it looked like you were starting to get a little bit of money oh i am weepy okay i'll get you to cry all the time but what what emotions come up for you when you think about your mom giving you that answer is it anger is it sadness what what what was coming up for you um i think it brought up just feelings for me of that i always felt like there was something wrong with me in the church because i never felt like i fit the classic mold uh again i have a lot of siblings compared to which isn't always a good thing and they kind of follow this standard example you know they they went to byu and they got married and they you know had lots of kids and and i remember even from a young age feeling like oh man i just like i don't fit that i don't have these same experiences i hear them talk about i don't i don't have those same feelings and i wanted it so desperately as as the younger sibling looking up to that and wanting to fit in and to be part of the cool club and yeah those those insecurities have always been like oh man what's wrong with me like i remember even at a young age being like how am i gonna repent for every single sin you know like i can't keep track during the day or i would get to the end of the day and be like did i do anything wrong like i can't remember doing anything wrong and i always worried like maybe i wasn't repenting for something and that's why god wasn't talking to me and it was yeah it's kind of traumatic as a little kid to so desperately want something and seeing everybody else have it and feeling like i'm broken there's something wrong with me like i don't have these things and as i've thought about because because i i had almost an identical experience in 1986 as a 16 year old i prayed about the book of mormon twice didn't get the answer so very very very similar and you wonder is it that other people are getting the answer or do that they learn to lie or do they just have the same experience where they gaslight themselves or they were guests led by somebody else you know because because is it that we're defective or is it that we're honest have you thought about that yeah i have because i have wondered you know how are these other people feeling feeling things i i'm not and as i've grown out of the church i've decided i think what the holy ghost is to me now is just your intuition it's your you know inner self knowing what's right and what's good for you and i guess my inner intuition just never thought the church was a good fit for me and it wasn't wrong so wow so i mean i think this this is important because i think you know you could you could probably interpret some of your videos as having some anger in it although it's what's so powerful about it is it's wrapped in kind of the sweet happy peppy kind of you know mormon girl mojo oh yeah but then it's bringing in f-bombs and it's showing garments and and temple clothes so there is a would you say there's a sour a salty sweet oh yeah oh yeah that's intentional oh yeah well i mean i come off very innocent very innocent all the time in my life and it's not a bad thing it's a great thing but yeah i think there is that two-sidedness and i think i do have a lot of anger to the church and it is something i constantly trying to work out within myself but i approach that anger and that hurt by comedy and by taking things that really hurt me like the subjects i talk about are things you know like the temple and garments and and those things that really betrayed me in my mind you know that eternal family concept again and i make them funny you know and i feel like people relate to that on so many levels being able to take traumatic things that make it humorous absolutely all right well let's go ahead and let's show another video and um and then we'll talk about it tell us about this one before we actually started i have a passion for song spoofs i think they're just a great way to give information and they're entertaining and hysterical and so i decided to take some classic church or hymns or primary songs and change the words into maybe a more truthful version than the sugar-coated one you sometimes get a thing about in church and so what is this about uh this is kind of it's i see my mother kneeling i think is the name of the song and it the song itself has you know a woman's part and a men's part and the women's part is really sweet and dainty in the original song and then the men is always like really strong is this love is spoken here yes that's what it is love is spoken here and so you've taken the song love has spoken yes and changed the words and so i kind of made the woman's portion those feelings of you know not feeling good enough and dressing modestly needed to fulfill that and then the men's version is kind of more laid back and and you know they have the priesthood power so it goes along with that strength that they have in the church yeah all right so this is uh kayla white as ex-mormon mindy and uh a video about gender roles kind of right yeah exactly okay i am so very valued i get to dress modestly to help the man stay clean i never i'm trying my very [Music] a best where i preside what does that mean i call on people to pray i am so very important because i hold the priesthood what makes me worthy of this gift it's because i have a penis that is so good so yeah so i mean like it's that's so powerful you that's one of your favorites oh yeah for sure i just i think it hits so close to home with so many different things that people relate to in the church especially as a woman just the the man presides but it's because he gets to say who says the prayer it's because he has a penis right yeah that's kind of true i mean there's no other answer given that's why you know women can't have the priesthood so yeah it's fantastic brutal so let's talk about your teen years and adolescence like you know obviously there are a lot of things that can come in dating a lot of chastity stuff bishops interviews seminary things you're taught to what extent did you have a normal versus a non-normal kind of adolescent experience in centerville is that where you have centerville yeah i would say it was very average i had a i guess i had some rough factors we lived in a very rich neighborhood but or a ward boundary i should say but we weren't super well off i mean we weren't poor but compared to everyone else and it definitely was like a class system so i never had good friends in church or very few friends in church but my mom was very you go every sunday you know no matter what like no matter what so we went every sunday and it got to a point short i think shortly after when i was 15 or 16 so shortly after my book of mormon failure experiment and i realized i didn't know if i believed because i never felt what i thought was the spirit and so i remember when i was in my house which is so random but i was sitting on my stairs as this teenager and i was just like contemplating life and i realized you know even if it isn't true it's a good religion so i'm just gonna like keep going like it makes my family happy it's working for them you know i'll just fake it till i make it i think it's kind of what i thought in that moment that's almost like gaslighting yourself right right yes i mean i don't know i want to project but no for sure for sure and it's that you know indoctrination like you know this is what's gonna make me happiest it's gonna make my kids happiest it's gonna keep my family together you know all of these things but uh and i was really good in high school i didn't break rules i didn't you know do anything i was classic what you would call molly mormon a hundred percent so what did you do extracurricular activities did you have personal interests yeah i was on the winter guard team what is that that's the flags so like in the parade with the marching band except you do it like a dance routine so it's on a floor with music and so i did winterguard for a lot of years do you have a dancing background no i can't dance at all but it's more focused on like the flags and other instruments you use in it but it was really really fun and really good for me honestly i needed that friend group i was kind of a loser so that was important and i will say my mom bless her soul i always tell my husband there's my mom pre 2007 and my mom after 2007. and pre-2007 she was a little psycho um i think she would agree with me and she like her big thing was modesty and possibly because she had so many daughters it was so important to her but she definitely instilled a lot of body shame that came with that you know if we went shopping with her it was you know lean over make sure your shirt doesn't gape you know raise your hands up so your midriff isn't showing and uh it really i think shaped how i saw myself and my body and it was a very you know something to be covered in something to be you know that ashamed word of um specifically at this experiments we were experiment experience thank you i had this experience we were doing a color guard show and this was when i was in ninth grade and so in utah high school starts at 10th grade but it will be on the high school color card team at ninth grade because everywhere else that's high school and we were performing at the school's assembly and we were wearing i think it was long like legging type pants but our shirts were like barely a cap sleeve i mean barely and my mom told me she was gonna come and watch us in this performance and it was my first it was my first one i'd ever done as my little 14 year old self on the color guard team and so we performed and we get off stage and my mom had to drive me back to the junior high and we were looking for him we couldn't find her and we had to borrow someone's cell phone which is so funny now but we brought someone's cell phone we call her like hey where are you and she's like oh i'm coming i was like well didn't you watch our show and she told me she was like i couldn't support you while you were dressed in modestly yeah so oh my gosh i'm sorry because the cap sleeves yes because she didn't think the sleeves were long enough in on our uniforms so but she couldn't tell you that directly before no and so she kind of just knows yes in our culture we don't talk about hard things yeah yeah i think so and i mean maybe there was something else going on with her in that moment but that's what she told us and similarly actually because wait how did that make you feel oh terrible i mean as a 14 year old i think number one it was um something i'd worked really hard at and i really wanted approval with and obviously she wasn't able to give that and severe like disappointment that she didn't come see me my very first one it was really terrible so and um yeah winter guard or color guard was the only time i ever wore anything near a modest because i wasn't still i mean not to bed never not even walking around the house nothing immodest i never owned a tank top and so we had a parade and it was a similar thing it was more of a tank top it was a white strap and she came before and saw it to approve and she was like i guess that's okay and she left and somehow she got this weird miscommunication where she thought i was gonna wear an undershirt under it i don't know so i'm in the parade the fourth of july parade in central and i'm marching my little heart out and doing my little color guard routine and she sees me coming and my family's cheering you know my sisters are all there and she starts screaming at me and i just hear her on the sidelines she's like kayla you get out of that parade right now you get over here and she's freaking out and i was like oh my gosh like what do you do like i'm 15 or 16 at this point and i'm like do i just like leave the parade like i'm part of the formation like i do things in with a partner and so i just kept walking i was like i'm like i have tears like streaming down my face as i'm in this parade and i remember afterwards she was so mad at me because i'd worn this wide tank top that showed some shoulder and that was like she tried to pull me out of the parade over it so modesty was definitely huge in my house really really huge and it's so hard because you know your mom may see this and it's not like she's evil she's just she's just incorporated what she's learned right well yeah and she she's a really great mom but i really feel like for some reason modesty was her her tic and maybe that was to protect us maybe she saw as a protection against men in their sinful ways so how did that affect you and your thoughts about your own body and your sexuality and just all that stuff yeah it was terrible i definitely um my mom gave me the sex talk one time and it was kind of bare bones very basic i didn't know i don't know how much i can say i didn't know what an orgasm was until a senior in high school it's not like anyone specifically explained it to me i just kind of had to like feel it out through movies or from what people mentioned or said and you know i think and maybe that again like i didn't know anything about birth control or anything like that besides just again the bare bones basic about what sex and again sex was taboo not good that's all i heard like you don't do it you're the gatekeeper you know you gotta help the men like we're less sexual beings so you need to not you know i don't know do you know what i mean so i kind of had this very instilled image of you know a woman and what they should be sexually and that was basically you know you know in the streets and everywhere you go you have to present yourself very modest but then you're expected in the bedroom to be something different and i remember thinking once i got married then that would make sense and the switch would flip and it definitely played a big part of my marriage and you know my relationship with sex and how that incorporated into my marriage it was really damaging to how i viewed myself and how i viewed sex because you can't just teach someone constantly that sex is bad and then think that switch is going to flip once they're married like it doesn't work that way right so and i don't think even mormon boys or men can understand what it's like as a teenage girl to have so much pressure and emphasis and focus on what you're wearing and what you're wearing because it's your body and because of the way that it can impact other people so what's it like to have so much negative what does it do to a mormon teenage girl to have so much pressure and emphasis and negativity around the clothes you wear and the importance of covering up the body help us understand what what why that might not be good or why that might be hard i think it's terrible it kind of makes you feel like you're inherently evil you know kind of like the adam and eve sereno eve was the one who led it and i just i always felt that pressure to be very very careful with what i was wearing um i mean i can't give you a specific example but my mom would even warn us you know with adult men you know as teenagers like you don't want to attract adult men's eyes like you don't want to be showing yourself off for them and my mom would always say you know like why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free and those kind of really damaging phrases meaning what uh you know if you're gonna put out why why is anyone gonna marry you like if you're gonna and not that the unworthiness aspect of it but again just that if i can get for free i'm not gonna be in a relationship with you i'll just leave and it was really really damaging to how i viewed myself because again i think i felt always inherently evil you know my body was something to be desired and tempting and making people want to sin and preventing them possibly from going to the afterlife or you know to a kingdom in heaven because of something i could control and so i was very again just very careful with what i wore and how i presented myself to everyone you're like always having to worry about what people are thinking what you're giving off yeah and i mean our physical bodies you shouldn't put that much attention on them it's too much attention yeah so much focus so much focus and it was it's terribly hard as a teenager like it definitely gave me some body dysmorphia and again it it drastically affected my marriage uh and again my family was even i mean we had some so many strict rules about sexuality with dating um like no laying down next to each other obviously no being alone except like in the car because you can't prevent that but like no being alone my mom wouldn't allow us to study date in high school but i broke that rule so that's probably why she didn't trust me no french kissing because my mom thought that was passionate kissing and nothing should enter your body from the man until you're married clearly so i mean it was very clear-cut strict lines if you want to make it to the temple then you better not be flirting with that line like you're going to be in trouble so so how did you navigate that as a teenage girl i did pretty good overall i french kissed my senior year actually with my super molly mormon boyfriend uh one of the reasons we broke up is he was too mormon for me surprisingly but besides that i mean i was very careful up and up until i met my husband so okay yeah anything else about your high school years that are important part of your story and and you know some of the videos you you've created or some of the messages you've been sharing not a whole lot i feel like my story really starts after those years i always tell my husband now i'm like i hate looking back on mormon me because there's so many things i would done differently i mean i didn't know anything about the lgbtq community at all until shortly after i graduated i mean i barely even knew it was a thing that girls liked girls or boys liked girls let alone had sexual intercourse together um my mom really frowned on that she was very she once told me if she had a kid turn out to be gay she would just lock herself in her room for a month and i remember that just really cutting me i was like oh like that must be a really terrible thing to be like but again i didn't even really understand it and it definitely was presented in a way where you know people who are gay they only want sex like it's not about relationships it's just the physical aspect and so that's how i saw it i was like these people are just especially after having such a strict sexual upbringing you know hearing that these people just out there like throwing themselves around i was like oh no wonder why that's so terrible so in terms of the types of you know doubts that current mormons have you know truth claim stuff book of mormon stuff book of abraham stuff up till graduating in high school had you had any exposure to any kind of controversial critical or anti-mormon kind of things at all no no once i decided to stick with it i do feel like i started gaining that testimony i think anytime you fake it till you make it you might end up making it and so i never maybe was super sure and again my super molly mormon boyfriend helped with like me gaining that testimony i mean i considered going on a mission and i became again just really active in church i think it became like the laurel president at some point and that's an honor right yeah i guess i found it really stressful because i was supposed to pray and find these counselors and again i just received nothing and i prayed and i prayed and i cried and i begged god and i went outside so i could talk out loud because i thought maybe that would help and i i think i just ended up picking names i'm like yeah sure i i guess i guess that's who it should be that's what everybody does actually i think so i think so by the time i was expecting the heavens to open and god to give me this great answer to who i can make into this presidency so but yeah i definitely by the time i graduated i was very firmly both feet in seeing my life classic mormon on the mormon train all aboard so what happens next okay so uh right after i graduate high school i broke up with my mormon boyfriend because he was two two mormon what does that mean he lived in nevada and i lived in utah which obviously the distance was crazy and he was preparing for a mission and he would go days without calling me because he would just forget because he'd be so busy you know doing missionary work or studying i don't know the gospel and so it got to a point we were planning on going to byu idaho together in the fall and so but we won't be able to see each other all summer and he kind of just blew me off one day and was like i think you should break up we're not gonna see each other all summer and then once you come his birthday was in january so he's like we'd only have one semester together and then i'd be on my mission like what's the point and it was really soul-crushing and i was like oh okay it was terrible and of course you know when that happened i called my best friend at the time whose name is greg and you know i cried to him and he took me out and we had been best friends i guess not a super long time probably get six months at that point and he took me out for hot cocoa i did sneak out of the house i was such a rebel and while we were sitting there i was like i think i like greg and i was like oh well like that's crazy he's my best friend like no no and so but two weeks after that we started dating so now had greg go on a mission no so he was the eldest in our class and i was actually the youngest because of how california works i graduated at 17. and so and he was 18 at that point almost 19. and so he actually wasn't super active he grew up in a very faithful family but at that point he just he wasn't going wasn't interested didn't care and so and again i just got this relationship where i gained this huge testimony i was this molly mormon and so i was like doing things like come to my house and read scriptures together and all these things and so he decided to come back to the church and for me we got serious really fast because we have been best friends before but remember we're also really young i graduate 17 and he's barely 18. and like two months and we were talking about getting married because we can't do anything physically and we live in utah and so he realized he had something seen to work out with the bishop and so he started working on those things which was really i had a moment when he first told me he had you know issues he had to work out i remember being like really sad and i went to my room i laid in my bed and i was like does he deserve me and that sounds so terrible but i'm like i've lived my life clean and worked so hard and like you know he's tainted and so as this like 17 year old having to accept the fact that my boyfriend who i'm very serious with at this point is tainted by sin and his purity culture yes dirty he's soiled yes and um it only took me about an hour to sing on my bed before i was like no like there's the atonement he can get better and move on and it's going to be good and so we obviously move forward with our relationship and and he went to the bishop and got it worked out um i remember when he became worthy to do baptisms again we went to the temple together and it was very exciting uh yeah and so we we did pretty good with our relationship and staying clean he proposed meaning to those who don't know what that means not towing the line not having sex i mean even mormons i'm not petting which means what uh i mean touching each other appropriately not doing anything like that at all right and so we got engaged on our one-year dating anniversary so we made it a long time people yeah it was a long time especially for mormon culture but so we got engaged when i was 18 so just a tiny tiny baby because you know we wanted to move in together we wanted to do these things which meant we had to get married like that was the only option and so we started moving forward and my mom was very angry with me because i remember um to jump back a little bit well i introduced her to greg for the first time as my boyfriend i mean he'd been my friend but she didn't know him hardly at all maybe seen him once or twice and he came over and we said hey and this is greg and we went on our date and she calls me in the middle of the date she's like you need to come home right now and i was like well we're watching a movie can't wait and she was like no you need to come home right now it's like what did i do like what is happening and so i went i went home and heard my stepdad pulled me up to their room and sat me down they looked very sternly at me and they said we're not gonna allow you to date greg anymore and i was like wait what i was like why and they're like they're like because he is a gang member and i was like okay and so in my head i was like tom has combat i remember specifically asking why do you think greg is a gang member and like well he was wearing a band t-shirt and i was like like who it was rascal flats so the most appropriate band in the history of the world is that kind of explain i'm like that's rascal flats and they are very appropriate they're country band like this isn't some hard rock thing and they're like oh well he was wearing a chain i was like yeah he had like the chain that connected to your wallet it was kind of cool then so i was like yeah it connected his wallet and their final reasoning of why he was in a gang was he wore jewelry and i was like right because he works at a cub scout day camp during the day so he displays all of their like purchase items like it's what he does he just doesn't take it off when he gets home and so they finally decide he wasn't a gang member but they never approved of our relationship i think they still because he wasn't super active he wasn't clean-cut you had the longer hair and the shaggy beard he wore black he didn't go on a mission he didn't go on a mission and so they definitely did not approve and so greg and i didn't spend hardly any time with my family because they just didn't like him and it was all again based on his appearance and based on the fact that they got a mission and and he was like i'm wondering what mormon boys in centerville what gangs are mormon white mormon boys in centerville joining i have no idea but they were like convinced dead set convinced and it took me i think a good week or two before they were like fine i guess it's okay i mean that's it's motivated reasoning it's like they didn't like him because he didn't fit the ultimate mormon mold so they're just coming up with reasons oh for sure because they didn't they didn't like right they needed a good excuse to have them kick the curb so what'd you guys do did you so we get engaged oh you got engaged a year a urine um and we told his family right away and they were all very very excited for us but i actually waited 24 hours to tell my family because i was like is it's not gonna be a pretty thing and so i remember we walked into the kitchen and my mom was there my heart oh my gosh my heart's pounding just thinking about it and i was like sweating i was like okay because also i'm 18. so i'm a baby like i look at 18 year olds now and i'm like you don't know anything about life and but i thought i had it figured out and so we walked into the kitchen and i was like hey we're engaged and i just like held up you know our little ring we could afford and we just stood there and my mom just like looked at us and told her credit i don't know what she was thinking but she put a smile on and just just i think she was just kind of like oh that's cool like there was no hugging there was no like oh my gosh like it was like well we're eating pizza tonight if you want to have some she faked it until she made it yes yes and so the next day then became this couple months of them obviously trying to talk me out of it which i can understand the youngness part being an issue i think if my daughter came to me 18 i'd be like no you're not you're not getting married what are you thinking but they focused instead i think on this religious aspect and so the next day after we told her she sat me down my sweet mom and she was like i don't think you should marry greg and i was like yeah figured and her big reasoning which was such a low blow at the time and even now she said well your stepdad who works in the temple you know he was working last night and your dad came to him and told him that you you should not marry greg and i remember being like what i'm like did you really just say that and so we got into this really heated argument i ran away and i called greg and it was like so traumatizing to hear do you think that really happened or they made that up i have no idea i've thought about that moment a lot and i just i don't know if it was like a last stitch attempt or to play at my heart strings or what they thought was going to come from that or if he really did believe he saw him and this happened i don't know but it was really really traumatizing to think you know my because i believed you know the temple that that's where spirits can come back and and i've always believed in ghosts and all that thing and so i was like oh my gosh like what if my dad is like on the other side and not approving like how terrible and then you know i prayed about marrying greg but again never gotten an answer and so i'm like well crap like am i not supposed to marry this guy and it put me into this turmoil the other thing is when somebody pulls that stuff like i have a dear friend a family member whose son died yeah and someone walks up to him at the wake and says hey your son came to me and he says he's fine and he wants me to tell you he's fine yeah and i'm like if i had a son die i would want the son to come to me yeah like someone else rando in my steak or war yeah to send me a message it is a little bit it feels a little bit abusive to be able to tell somebody who's vulnerable who whose loved one has died i'm the one that the loved one's coming to exactly and let me tell you what they what message they have for you right i'm not saying your mom or stepdad were bad people at all but that that's that's really fraught i hate that yeah and it was really emotional did you wonder why didn't dad come to be yeah again i was like well i don't know and i think i kind of just decided i'm like that can't be true like i can't have this fantastic relationship with this guy you know where we were friends and then we've dated all this time and we're getting married like i can't imagine that being true and i think it was extra hard coming from my stepdad because we didn't have a good relationship at that point we had almost none honestly besides like fighting we didn't have a relationship so i'm like why would he choose someone i have such a terrible relationship with to give me this message that doesn't make any sense so there was that experience and then the other time i can specifically remember is my mom had somehow figured out greg had to go the bishop to repent for whatever and she was just really mad about that and she was driving me to work early one morning and she was like you know what this has always stuck with me and she's like you know what people have messed up need to marry people who messed up and i'm being like what about the atonement like and that's why i told her at the time i was like he should marry a girl who lost her virginity yes like if you if you have messed up with someone then you shouldn't marry someone who's clean and pure like you're damaged goods you should marry someone who's damaged goods exactly if you're pure you should marry someone who's pure exactly and it was really really hard for me because i was like no but the atonement like doesn't make it like it didn't happen and i tried to say that and she kind of just brushed me off and i had to go to work and it was a really hard conversation and and we had lots of conversations about how he didn't go on a mission my mom was very upset about that it was not okay which is super funny because my dad they got married young he didn't go my stepdad didn't go on a mission and so i always felt so hypocritical but again i think part of that is that all my siblings had done it you know i had three sisters and are married at that point and they'd all married you know gone to byu and married return missionaries and you know i got accepted into byui like i had said and supposed to go and i ended up going to weber state instead because i want to stay by greg because we were dating and you know i just i think greg was the epitome i think to my parents of me not following what i should be doing you know not going to be iui not marrying return missionary and and once my mom found out that greg had messed up in some way she assumed i'm sure it was sex and she started asking me if i was pregnant all the time anytime i was like i don't feel good and she's like you're pregnant aren't you i was like whoa unless i'm the virgin mary not a possibility not a possibility at this point so but always having those accusations were like really hard because i was you know i felt like even though greg didn't go on a mission like we were still working towards the temple and you know he was getting things fixed and he was getting the melchizedek priesthood you know taking the right steps but i kind of always had that layer of doubt just because of whatever passed and she'd even know she even didn't even know what greg's past was but she just assumed and that was really hard um i will say an important part of me and greg being together is before we were married we got married in april i think in december or january we started like towing that line with the physical stuff we never like touched each other but there was like a lot of making out and laying on top of each other with our clothes on and i felt so guilty about it and so i was like we gotta stop like this is this is way too close to tone that i mean might have even crossed it and so i was like no no no and so we talked about it like do you think we need to go the bishop and we kind of both decided like no we can just like stop and we did and we stopped didn't do anything further from that point on and repented ourselves but i always felt such guilt about that because my whole life i had not done anything anything except french kissing and so to toe that line even a little bit was it really made me feel uneasy it really made me be like maybe we should have just gone but then you know the wedding's coming and you're busy and you know you're looking to get your endowment out and i just we we just handled it on our own and it's definitely something that that followed me the rest of my years until i left that we didn't go and repent to the bishop that you maybe weren't worthy yeah even though you were probably more worthy than most than most 100 percent i have many friends with stories of doing way worse but yeah i i was always so paranoid of being worthy enough because um when you're not feeling the spirit like other people appear to be i always assumed it must be i'm not living righteously enough i'm not reading my scriptures enough i'm not praying enough and and i walked around with all this guilt like you know i praying i'm not getting answers so what did i do wrong like it kind of always went back to okay so what sin is god holding on to that i haven't repented for yet which was such a toxic way to live your life always being like well what terrible thing could i have possibly done that would make god not want to talk to me you know yeah so yeah that definitely definitely plays a role as we get later on into it so you guys did get married in the temple yes so we actually got our endowment out together because greg didn't go on a mission and so it was really cool we got to do it together and i remember leading up to the temple i was like this is amazing like we get experiences together and i was almost grateful i had to go on a mission at that point because i always was jealous the men knew the secrets before the girls but greg sucker you're getting them with me and i remember we did the initiatory stuff and i didn't have a problem with that i actually really liked that part should we show the video should we show your video first yeah sure okay so so uh kayla or ex-mormon mindy uh did do a video of her first temple experience do you is there anything you want to say to set this up um yeah no i decided to sit down one day and and i do try really hard to not be i told the line with not going into the temple stuff too much um i'm actually not wearing i'm wearing my temple dress but the rest of it's just like random fabric i found that looked similar not total real temple no no no no and i actually put that in my comments because i was like oh my gosh i don't want to be like reamed for wearing actual temple clothes like i don't wear actual garments it's just like an undershirt um anyways but i really want to put this out there because i think part of the reason actually was did anyone else feel this way like did anyone else go and not have that oh my gosh it's just great and awesome and wonderful and um so represents what you felt yes when you went the first time yes yeah and i think almost everyone has this very similar experience so here is ex-mormon mindy or kayla white uh in her two-minute tick-tock video uh sort of portraying her reactions to the temple the first time she went through that right yep that's right okay so here it is oh my gosh i finally get to know what happens in the temple oh nelly i am not ready i gotta get out of here oh no no i'm okay i can do this okay so so women sit over here and men sit over there here we go i am ready to know all the secrets i've waited my entire life for oh it's a movie about the creation all right you know adam's not that bad looking oh but satan he's got it going on oh wait what's happening now wait what am i supposed to do why am i taking off my shoes and and this goes where exactly okay what is up with the handshakes i am never going to remember all of this there is no way well i did it what the hell was that [Laughter] so as you watch it now go ahead and tell what it was really like okay i mean other than that i mean again the temple growing up with the eternal families aspect was so important and i remember i honestly thought like there was gonna be some big mystery like some big answer that was gonna be like amazing and life-changing or that is gonna be deeply inspirational like you'll feel the most powerful spirit you've ever felt yes and you know what's interesting as i've gotten comments on that video from people like oh my parents told me you know basically everything that happens and it was no like you do not talk about it i think my mom got like my packet items like i didn't see anything beforehand um so i was real shocked and again the initiatory part i thought was beautiful like i'm like okay i'm blessed and and i remember there's a line so did you go when i went in the initiators you wore like a poncho it was like the silk pancho that had no sides right and so there's a sheet coming in front and a sheet in back and you're totally naked and then you're all naked from the side and if anybody's seeing you walk by oh my gosh they're seeing everything and then when you when you're doing the initiatory they're they're putting oil and they're touching different parts of your body and they're reaching into the poncho and touching different private parts of your body but then at some point they they we made a big enough stink about this that they realized that was kind of sexually predatory yeah and so they sewed up the poncho so when you went through it was sewed up on the sides okay you're lucky you actually had it better yeah yeah which is probably why i appreciate it a little more but i remember i really clung to line i think it says you were clean every here with or something and again with me feeling so guilty about you know our levi loving or whatever it was like okay like it was set in the temple that has to be true like i have to be okay right and so then we go into the actual ceremony and i remember being so disappointed i couldn't sit by greg i'm like wait we gotta do it together like what's he doing over there in the temple you're separated yeah you're separating on one side women yeah men and women on their different sides and that was so disappointing but you know you go through the ceremony and i remember everything i said being frantic like panicked i am never going to remember all this you know why why are we doing these weird things why does it matter what shoulder this thing is on and you know before i got in i think the only word of advice i got was like focus on how you feel like focus how the temple makes you feel and so i tried really hard and you know i think always in the temple it does feel quiet and peaceful because that's the atmosphere it's clean and bright and beautiful so i could kind of just focus on that but i definitely was super disappointed i was like there was nothing nothing for me there i i did not like it i felt super betrayed almost like this is what i've worked so hard to be clean for and worthy for was this you did feel that way yeah and you're willing to admit it to yourself you know it took me a while but i definitely was like that was weird and i'd heard a story right before i went where someone's daughter went through and like are we in a cult and so i guess maybe that prepared me a little bit but yeah it's definitely like oh okay but your your family's there because i remember they gave you an option for your first time through where they're like you know if you're not ready to take these whatever covenants upon yourself you know leave and i had this moment where i was like i should go like i should not be here and part of it was the feeling guilty and i think part of it was also just not feeling ready you know i was super young but at that point we got our endowments on the 12th and married the 17th so we had five days and i was like well i can't i can't leave like my family's here greg's whole family's here because it's his first time and there's all this pressure we're getting married and i'm like i can't leave like even even though i wanted to i knew it wasn't possible and part of what makes it kind of serious or insidious is that you make covenants in the temple that are super serious like you know a lot of chastity obviously but but the big one's a law of consecration and they literally make you raise your arm and say raise your arm to the square and promise that you'll give everything to the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints your time your talents your money and then it even when i went through it said even your own lives if necessary for the building up of the kingdom like that's a crazy uh sort of ask for an 18 year old when you're not given informed consent and told ahead of time what you're committing to so it's weird that they do give you that out without telling you what you're about to experience and then they lay these super intense commitments on you yeah uh that it's basically saying you're going to give your life over to the church forever until you die yeah yeah and i was 19 at the time and i was just like what no and i remember that line i was like i don't know am i would i be willing to die for the church and the one that got me which is so funny is that you know no loud yeah it says no loud laughter or evil speaking of the lord's lord's anointed so like i mean you have a you have a loud voice you like to laugh right so so do i you can't laugh loudly ever again and you can never criticize a church leader ever like that's a crazy commitment right uh-huh and i again i'm a very loud person i'm a very outgoing person i laugh i have a terrible laugh it's super loud and i remember multiple times after going to the temple i would laugh and be like am i sinning somehow like that was so loud and obnoxious but yeah and again i remember i got home that night just being like what and i think i just banked on you know the more you go it'll make sense the more you know it'll become more comfortable it'll it'll work itself out it's the self-gas lighting again it's like it it can't be culty and weird because it's the lord's true church so it must be me and if i just keep doing the thing that feels awful and awkward and weird and cultish somehow i'll i'll feel better about it yep yep i'm like i just don't understand i as i get older it'll come to me i believe that what about the feminist stuff of like the woman hearkening to the man that the man covenants with god and the woman covenants with the man i i think they've taken that out in the past couple of years but it was there when i was there did that bug you or not yeah it's not worse i think that might be worse but like for some mormon women they don't even notice that the man covenants with god and the woman covenants with the man because the man is your inner intermediate you didn't even notice i didn't even notice i think i was like so shell-shocked and remember i have a sister who's she's active still but she's very feminist and she mentioned it to me she's like well doesn't that bug you and i was like oh but even then again i like hate who i used to be i was like oh i don't mind i'm like i trust greg i'm like that's fine like give it away then you know because i was like i don't need responsibility like i was i was classic submissive woman which is funny because greg isn't like that like with everything else i mean with everything i was always one taking the lead but for some reason i thought with this he can he can handle it but yeah i it didn't bother me i was totally fine with being a woman in the church for a long long long time almost the entire time right right i was good with my little don't because i don't want to lead i'm not a leader and so i was like oh this means i can't you know i don't have too much responsibility put on me especially where i didn't feel like i felt the spirit very much yeah i didn't feel in a position where i could even lead anyways okay so anything else about the temple or is that it pretty much oh we can talk about my marriage okay yeah yeah no no yeah yeah okay yeah yeah and garments we gotta uh do we do we talk about that now or later whenever because i mean you you you have to wear the garment right right and i was told 24 7. okay so set up set up the garment video with whatever you're tempting sure so i mean it's just actually are you showing the cups one i think that's one we decided on yeah so i made a video where i mentioned garments in my ex mormon wrap actually um and people had so many questions and so i was like okay well i can were they mad at that first video yes people thought they were real garments and i had gone to di actually thanks di for sponsoring and i just bought like some long underwear or long johns and cut them at the knees and then wore a shirt like it did not look like garments at all i don't know why people thought it was but whatever and so anyway so i had people so angry and i kept responding i'm like it's not real garments because i do try and be as respectful as i can handle and so i was like it's not real garments it's not real garments anyways but that sparked interest in people because in that video i walk in after going to the temple for the first time and i look very like shell shocked like i did and then i take off my dress and i'm wearing my fake garments and i was just like my face in that video i'm just like well and i say this is what it looks like and i i had that moment except it was in the temple because that's where you put on your garments for the first time and where they told me to go in and change into my garments and i sat there and i held the bag in my hand i was like oh my gosh i will never wear real underwear again like this is the moment and it was this like thing for me i'm like okay here we are so anyways i decided to answer the questions about the garments and i decided to do it in a song because i want to make it entertaining so i came up with a song it's anna kendrick's cups from pitch perfect and changed the words to fit garments and what they're about and it's actually very factual people think it's mormon tick-tock when they see it and i always have to remind them like not for you ex-mormon ex-mormon so yeah all right so here it is here's uh ex-mormon mindy's video on garments set to the tune of cups right i heard you had some questions about garments i hope this song will answer some they are basically long underwear the church requires members to wear i wish they were sexy but they're not they are white and cops and they go down to your knees you get them in the temple we swear to always wear them as a reminder of your covenants to god you have to wear them 24 7. unless one of these applies you are swimming you are sweating or making sweet love to your spouse then it's okay to take them off they are hot and uncomfy and they're bulky under clubs but there is one perk to wearing them you can pick a wedgie real easy just by pulling on your pant leg that's so awesome i know and it's factual a hundred percent i didn't say anything that was not true okay so i wanna we're gonna have to jump back and forth between your story and some questions about tick-tock because so so pause your story there's so many things that's going on there that i think is so cool so you're you're cheery you're kind of acting you're singing uh you you have to write a song you have to pick a song you have to write the lyrics you're doing the cup thing and you're and you're trying to make important points there's a lot that's going into that so much and yeah oh and also you're having to decide how inappropriate am i going to be and you're dealing with the topic that's so sensitive like like you know 100 years ago people feared death like literally being killed if they revealed secrets in the mormon temple and so that's a lot of load i'm going to say and that's why i find that's kind of why i want to highlight tick tockers because there's a lot going on there it's not just like sit down and interview somebody right it's a it's a pretty complex intense creative yes effort yes talk about that oh that's what drew me to tiktok i am an actress like i'm in plays me my husband both we've done plays together in high school you didn't mention that yeah i i didn't make the school play in high school thanks for bringing it up but my husband did that's where we met i was the assistant director okay so he was in the plane that's where we met but you know since then we've been in two plays together and again multiple plays apart and brutal inverting invernal yeah in vernal and what's the playhouse in brutal uh it's vernal theater live okay and they're fantastic we love them but you know musicals they do musicals and plays and i've never done a musical i don't actually think i sing well but you do it's fun you do sing well at least for comedy right it's good enough for tick tock so it's fine but uh yeah and so i've been doing youtube actually for a long time i started back in 2015 just family we're those crazy white people okay because our last name is white oh that's why um and so we've been vlogging for a long time but it wasn't super creative you know i'm just filming my family and i was looking for a more creative outlet in a way again to reach ex mormons oh i don't know how much you want to go to this so i did actually on my family channel conference weekend this last april so april 2020 i announced to the world that we left the church through a youtube video on my family vlogging channel and i actually filmed myself going through the process like i filmed myself you know a little bit about why i decided to leave and then leaving and you know filming myself before i told my family and then talking about the reactions and so i wanted to document it because i felt like at the time there was so much content about what it looked like after you left or why you should leave but it didn't tell you why like what it felt like you know what did it actually look like and feel like and what do people say and and i looked for that so hard when i can start leaving because i was like what is this afterlife you know after mormonism what what is that we'll come back to that but yeah you're saying that led to the tick tock yes that led to the tick tock well i did it on youtube for a long time and my goal with youtube actually was to be able to have mormons be able to watch it as well and feel super comfortable and i tried really hard and i thought i was doing a good job i actually had a sister get after me one time about how i was being so inappropriate and it actually stemmed from a video the first time we went back to church was at a baby blessing and i was worried about the effect you'd have all my kids and anyways we ended up having this conversation about how girls couldn't go up and bless the baby because they had asked why the mom hadn't gone up and it was this great powerful moment for my kids to kind of see one of the flaws that they could understand because they're quite young of why we left and i was so proud of them for realizing that my sister told me i was teaching them to you know hate other religions and you know kind of teaching them intolerance because i didn't explain why women weren't allowed to hold the priesthood and anyways it was a really hard conversation and it was terrible and so i stopped on youtube and but i still i still searching for community i still wanted to find people who felt like i did who had been through similar experiences and my sister had done tick tock and so i started a tick tock just to follow her and she had actually done some ex-mormon tick tocks and i was like this is great and i realized no one in my family or my husband's family was on tick tock and so it became like a safe space at that time where i'm like i can come on here i don't use my real name i can be anonymous and just kind of make these funny tech talks about things that traumatized me so okay and it was it just really played into those strengths of being a character like they're all real experiences but for humor you just amplify them and so i got to you know act these out a little bit more amplified a little bit more on the humorous side and it was just it was just great it's a great medium well it's a lot of work i don't think people understand how much work goes into a two minutes in a two-minute video how much time do you think you spent preparing for that two-minute video oh for that one all the time costumes lyrics you know rehearsal takes that gets cut old everything the writing the song took took the longest writing the words and you know figuring how they fit into the cadence and then i actually sang it into the microphone and then lip saying it when i recorded and so and i played the piano like just the one hand but i'm so rusty and so anyways it took me take after take after take of trying to get the piano and seeing the words and seeing the words with attitude you know like would i be acting out kind of to be in my head and then filming i mean probably that one took a good three hours to between writing and then recording and then filming it was and filming actually usually is the fastest part for me it's like getting the song and then recording and then doing it yeah so like a two minute video can take three four or five hours to produce absolutely i'm doing ten minute youtube videos and sometimes i spend three days like this tithing video that i released i spent three full days to make a 15 minute youtube video so yes it's a lot of work social media content people definitely don't realize even with like our family channel it's like you said it can take hours and hours and hours to get it right okay so you guys get marrying the temple start wearing garments how does life go from there so i did want to mention one thing about my marriage because i'm so curious if anyone else experienced this my like i said my stepdad worked in the temple and he was like i got the best news and he was so excited to tell me he was really sweet about it he's like because i work in the temple the temple president is going to marry you guys and i was like oh okay so the day comes and we're actually sitting in the celestial room and i still haven't gotten my answer if i should marry greg it's the day of my wedding we've been engaged 10 months at this time and so i remember in the slush room and i prayed and i was like if you don't want me to marry him like speak now or forever hold your peace because there's nothing like we're here this is happening and i didn't get an answer and so i was like okay we're getting married that's what's happening so we go into a room with the temple president and he kind of talks to us about what the ceremony will look like because i'd never seen a temple wedding at that point and he said something that i've learned is not common having gone to other people's temple ceremonies and he said when i'm marrying you you're gonna kneel across the altar and you know do the grip and he said i don't want you to look at each other and i was like wait what and he's like well the ceremony is going on he's like you have the rest of your life to look at each other he's like during this and you look at me because i'm representing god and you need to remember that god needs to be in your marriage and i remember being like okay so we we we're in the ceremony we kneel down it's so creepy i know and i was like how unromantic as i'm like promising eternity to the love of my life i'm like looking at the old dude like it and i have never seen a temple ceremony where they've had that instruction before and so we're saying they're getting married and my sweet husband was convinced if he broke that rule our ceiling wouldn't count and so he was like not looking away and i was like sneaking glances and like trying to smile at him and yeah he was like stone cold didn't look at me once while we were getting married and it was so scarring to me it's like another temple experience i'm like i've been looking forward to this my entire life and this is what i got like i can't even look at my husband while i'm marrying him and it was it was terrible and i've never seen that before or since i'm so curious what the thought process was it's part of weird mormon culture that there's weird side doctrines yes little families or regions or certain temples may implement yes that are just kind of rogue rogue doctrine you know yeah they can have a real impact yeah it was depressing but yeah it's all right it was like another thing where i'm like well that was fun like i remember just being like whatever so we you know we get married we start wearing garments i didn't hate garments as much as i thought i would but they're definitely not comfortable they're definitely really bad for women's health i don't think that something has ever talked about because they're so enclosed like it doesn't give any breathing room and i suffered with like the bottom the bottom part yeah yeah like i said yeast infections yeast infections right yeah so much and again my family was very strict on their outlook of garments i don't know if that was a cultural thing with us or if other people experience that but like i wore them when i exercised i mean basically swimming and sex and showering was the only time i took them off and you put them right back on like as soon as possible and so as much as i didn't hate them they were you were exercising yes that is so crazy i know like summers are hot here so hot and now i'm like what was i thinking but that was one of the things i used to judge people for i'd be like i'm suffering wearing my garments because i remember i don't know where this thought came from i'm sure someone said to me like what if you're hit by a car while you're running if your garments aren't there to protect you what is going to happen and so i was just always like i gotta have them protected and i think my elder my elder sister actually ran a marathon wearing her garments and so i was always like if she can run a marathon in these things like i can do my little 5k you gotta out righteous people oh yeah or at least match their rights yeah especially where you feel like god hates you yeah and isn't talking to you because you're because you're broken yeah 100 well and you know i didn't go to the bishop for my little heavy make-out scenes the leave i love it so i was definitely tainted and cover up your clothes because you showed your shoulders that one time yeah yeah well i think now's the time to show the the video about judgey yeah because you mentioned it is that all right yeah let's do so set this up and talk about the reaction first right sure so i did a video it was so funny i was i trying to put a video out every other day and so i needed a video and i had no time it's like what's something fast i can do and so i look through my ideas list because i keep a whole document of them and i'd written this idea down to talk about like stupid things i judge people for and i you know listed a couple of different things so give us some examples um i mean in the video i talk about you know not wearing your garments or not going to ceiling when you know they've been through the temple like standing outside of a marriage ceiling and i mean just different things like that like little you know not paying tithing or not having children right away these are all the stupid things i judge people for that now i'm like that's so dumb and so i just did all of my bathroom because tiktok has an ability to put like a green screen behind you of different scenes and so i just stood in my bathroom didn't write a script just like put it out there and i started the video here i say stupid things i judged people for when i was mormon and i put this video out and again like i worked no time on it and so i'm like it's not gonna do very well but you know gotta keep the algorithm like it's fine and it blew up i think it's at 2.5 million views right now that's a lie yeah so it blew up and i was like what is happening and that's actually where i started getting a bunch of followers and the reactions are very interesting how many comments do you think oh i don't even know hundreds no probably more like in the ten thousands maybe maybe more of comments oh yeah oh my gosh i didn't think it was polarizing i didn't think it was gonna be a big deal hardly because you're self-disclosing your judgingness your judging us yes like i didn't say stupid things mormons judge people for it like it was me my judging and you know the ex-mormons get on and they're like oh my gosh i was this person or i can't believe it but you know i feel the same way or this is so true or i see this all the time and then the mormons would get on and be so defensive and that was so shocking to me that's the video where the comments are the meanest the meanest by far well in this stupid judging because let's show the video this is ex-mormon mindy uh it's kayla white as ex-mormon mindy talking about the way she judged other people when she was a mormon right right all right let's take a look stupid things i used to judge people for when i was mormon part one oh hey how's it going she was wearing a tank top she was not wearing her garments i mean i guess it's a personal choice but i cannot imagine not wearing my garments i mean what if she was hit by a car what is gonna protect her did you notice her brother wasn't in the ceiling i mean he just got home from his mission what would make him unworthy to enter god's house i mean i hope it's just a tightening issue and not something more serious like a pornography addiction i mean we need to pray for him oh hey julie what are you reading there oh hey megan i'm just reading 50 shades of grey actually [Music] but you're the relief society president [Music] okay are you gonna do another one of those uh yeah i'm planning on it we'll see so people freaked out about that freaked out and again i mean the mormons got on like it's not like that our church isn't like that we're not like that i had people be like that was a you problem we're glad you're out we don't need your type in the church and i was like whoa there like none of us were judgmental right right and i was like on some level everybody has something that they judge people it turns out you were the only judgmental mormon and now and now they get rid of you so they're good i know they're good now their religion is perfect again that's fun one of the things i also want to mention about what's so hard about this is it's hard to make things short no like anyone who listens to warmer stories know i can do 15 hours in a heartbeat like not even a problem but there have been times where i'm like i'm gonna make a 10 minute video and it's 28 minutes and i'm like how do i freaking cut this so like to have to cut it down to two minutes i don't know if you feel this way but like no it's not for me short is harder sometimes so hard yeah yeah and it's really you have to decide what you're going to say and be very precise about it and there's sometimes like with the cup song i am like booking it through that i remember every take i'd be like i wasn't breathing you got to end right on time yes it will cut you off and it can be really challenging but it's fun to see a challenge you're having fun oh yeah so much fun okay so how does your story follow so we're married and you know we would go through stages where we weren't super active i always believed we just were lazy we were newlyweds we didn't want to go to church and bountiful at this point and so it's it's really weird to go to family ward when you're newlyweds especially as young as we were like we were like we don't fit in here we're young so we definitely weren't active for a couple years um that's bad i know terrible right i mean we went and i never stopped to make garments i mean we followed all the rules we just weren't active and you did nervous oh yeah we stayed in them hardcore i was okay you follow the rules followed all the rules just didn't go to church okay okay and so we ended up having surprise pregnancy my son um i was 20 when we found out i was preg we were pregnant and then 21 when we had him and once i had him i started really kind of getting freaked out about religion because all of a sudden i was responsible for his eternal salvation like that is a big weight to take on like if he doesn't make it to top heaven with me that's my fault i messed up as a parent like whoo it was so much pressure and so definitely being a parent changed how i felt about the church in the sense i almost buckled down into it where i was like okay no gotta do this like i gotta get him to top heaven it was a huge weight on my shoulders so much as a young parent i mean i was 21. so what would you say to your husband i would say greg um you know he worked most sundays and i did too at that point we we but we definitely it became more like we're gonna go like we went a lot more than ever before in our marriage once we start having our kids because that was important to me so what comes next in your in your journey so we end up moving to vernal at this point we have two kids we have my son and my daughter and i had grown up in the church where i was taught my big contribution to society would be to be at home with my kids and at that point i was the full-time worker and my husband was working part-time and you know i was getting more and more upset you know i just want to be home i felt like a terrible parent all my sisters were stay-at-home moms and you know got to raise their kids and i was missing everything and it was really just emotionally traumatic and i feel bad i feel like i put that stress onto my husband like you're not providing for us and not that was ever mean to him about it but i just added to that stress for him in the sense of always crying like i just won't be home like it's my divine calling like it's all i want to be if you ask me i was young what are you going to be when you grow up i was going to be a mom like that's all i'd ever wanted and so he was able to go to the oil fields in vernal and he would be making enough where i could stay home so there were some other factors but that was definitely a big one is we want me to be it will be home to raise our children and so we moved to vernal um three hours away from everyone we knew and is that hard work working in the oil fields it is it was very what type of stuff do you do when you go to vernal work oh what he did he didn't have a cdl which is a very different thing so he like his he couldn't drive semis okay so you have a cdl marshall driving yes and so he drove a pickup truck around and connected different valves and pushed water different areas i don't even know but it was very taxing tracking stuff you know he worked out was about probably 45 minutes to an hour from vernal and it would get so cold i mean in the winters he's working at one point was negative 15 like it was very very taxing and he was working at that point he was working i think five on and one off so we worked five days have a day off and he was working graveyard so even on his day off he was sleeping part of the day and then going back to work so i was thrust from being the you know full-time working parent to being the parent home by themselves in a town where i didn't know anyone and i remember there was some guilt because i'd finally come to the point where i'd gotten the right thing like i was home this is where i'm supposed to be and not that i didn't feel fulfilled but i remember being like there's no there's no atta boys when you're the stay-at-home parent there's no like you did a really good job not screaming at the kids today whereas when you're in a working situation you do get those moments you know where your supervisor's like hey you did a good job or you know someone you help customers like you know thanks a lot and it was really traumatizing and for the first year i think i was there and alone and at home with my kids i was so disappointed myself and i didn't even talk to greg about it because i was like we'd sacrificed you know moved to this tiny armpit of utah town is vernal rough it i mean we have a walmart but it's very small and it's hard because the closest you know if i want to target it's two and a half hours away yeah like it's not even like an hour drive somewhere no costco nothing so that part makes it rough but yeah i just had so much guilt that i finally got in this and we sacrificed so much and i was like this sucks this is hard like being home all the time is really hard but i got into a groove and at this point when we moved to vernal that's when we were like 100 active i got called into the primary presidency the first time and i think part of being super active was not having friends and needing to find people and find community and so we became super active i got called in the primary presence it was a really good experience i really loved it we got pregnant with our third child shortly after we moved um and overall was it was really good in the beginning i mean yeah the small town thing sucked and but once i got into my group with parenting and it was okay that was good you know i've thought a lot about the mormon experience and mormonism the mormon church the lds church really is wrapped around raising kids like to the point where the bishop is assigned to the youth because like that's it if you don't if you don't primary young men's young women's that is it people people just like you my sister was the same way she was inactive got married married and now member it was having the kid that made her come back and as soon as this is probably stereotypical but as soon as the woman has the kid things get serious with the religion and then the whole church experience is pretty much wrapped around indoctrinating the young children and then indoctrinating the youth to the point where they can hand them off and get them uh on a mission and then married in the temple that's really what the that's the core mormon experience and it's all about getting your children really indoctrinating and i know the church wants to be about love and kindness and its theology and its doctrine but if you really look at its backbone it's about raising indoctrinating children and then raising them to adulthood so that they jump on the train just like you did and pay the tithing get married in the temple go on the missions and then give their kids to the church and it's just and that's how the church grows with a big birth rate and then they always get your kids and then it always grows i don't know i just thought of that no it's 100 true and it was working for us oh yeah yeah we were pretty happy uh that first year i and then we moved and it's so funny we only moved across the street but we're in a completely different ward and so i lost my primary calling i'd lost this great support system i built in that ward and we moved to this other ward and i immediately got called into primary again into the presidency and i was like okay this has happened twice like okay and that primary presidency was really hard and i never felt like connected to that ward and it was really rough and so we spent a year in that ward and we bought our house and so we moved again and it was a very similar experience where i was called straight into the primary presidency again i was in four primary presidencies in those three years like i was just always in the primary presidency and besides that first ward my experiences in the primary presidencies were terrible um i don't know again i don't think i fit the mole and so i usually had differing opinions and i was new vernals very small town and most people live there their entire lives it's very very common for people stick around and so people don't know me and so they don't trust me i think and so these presidencies i never had as much of a voice or um the last presidency i was in would have presidency meetings without me and i think i was the first counselor but the president's best friend was the second counselor and so i would get really frustrated because i'm like i'm in this calling and i'm trying but you're always you know diverting to your best friend who's the second counselor and having presents he means about me was just terrible i felt really unwanted and unused and i um at this point was having my fourth child and it was so overwhelming that's a lot of kids it's a lot of kids four kids and how many years uh there's six and a half years between them so pretty fast between the oldest oldest and the youngest so four kids and six and a half years that's intense yeah holy crap yes yes having children my mom actually specifically would tell me you're not gonna get financial blessings until you have kids like it was i think i think the church used to push that and not as much anymore uh but definitely my mom had that and i mean they had what's really going on is it puts the fear of god into the husband who's the bread maker you gotta freaking start making some money you gotta feed these mouths and your wife's gonna freak out on you if you don't start making some money so you could say that's when the miracles come but really it's when you just have to you just have to work harder because you have more kids and we were always always poor i mean ridiculously poor so much but we always paid our tithing because i counted on those blessings and even though we weren't like receiving tons i felt of financial blessings we always paid our tithing no matter what um i mean we paid our tithing where we were going into debt every month you know because we kind of afford things and it was just really important because i had heard my entire life from my sisters from my mom that that's most important and so we had our fourth kid and it was really hard and greg was working sundays so i was going to church for three hours with my four kids and i never got a break because then i was in primary and my kids are there so it was just it became really overwhelming and i told greg i'm like i want to be released i really i'm unhappy i'm not loving it i don't feel like they need me even and so i i pulled the president aside and i felt so terrible i had never said no to calling i'd never been asked to be released from a calling so i felt like the shame of like going to her and asking to be released i like my hands were shaking and i just felt terrible and i was like you know i really think i need to be released and i remember she was like yeah i thought so i already put your name in to be released and i was like you weren't gonna tell me that you were releasing me and so she was i was like oh okay and so it took a minute to get me released and greg's parents were leaving on a mission and so we had gone down to their mission and i hadn't been released and the primary presidency actually texted her or the primary president texted me it was like hey i need your binder and manual i was like oh was i released and she's like yep like not a thank you i'm not like hey like this happened it was just like here we are and so i was like okay and i during that really terminus time of being that primary presidency in that ward is i think where i first started being just unhappy and recognizing i was unhappy in the church because i feel like looking back now i can see how the church negatively affected me through my entire time in it but i think that point was when it really started to affect me and i guess i can talk about a little bit before that okay no my entire marriage almost i would have these panic attacks because i wasn't receiving inspiration i'm like i am begging god to tell me where to go like i'm young kind of questions i mean questions about what job we should go after what school we should do i mean big life questions you know should we have another baby like these huge moments and i would beg and i would plead and i would get squat and i remember again it always reverted back to i it's it's the levi loving it's some sin i've done it's you know it's because i'm not praying enough or reading my scriptures or enough or doing enough and so the longer i was super active in the church and not feeling the spirit the more anxiety it caused in me and i would just stay up at night crying to my husband being like you know what have i done like i'm trying so hard to be a good person a good mom and a good you know person the presidency and fulfilling my callings and you know god doesn't god can't give me the time of day at this point like he either he doesn't care or again i'm a sinful person that he feels like he can't talk to at this point either one's awful yeah terrible options and um yeah i mean it plagued me i started having anxiety attacks going to church um it was terrible it was like so hard and again it reverted back to those feelings of what's wrong with me i don't fit the mold like i'm just an off mormon like why why can't what works for everybody else work for me and i felt so lonely and again you're not supposed to like talk about it and so i never like besides my husband i never talked to anybody else about how i was feeling in the church and so we came off very classic mormon family i think overall but it was yeah i struggled for a long time with just that feeling of like i'm not good enough that's why god's not talking to me it sucked i'm so sorry yeah it was really hard but that kind of again led up to this my husband getting hurt that's where everything changed actually what year was that so that was in november of 2018. on the oil oil fields no no no i wish actually he had left the oil fields barely he had been on his new job less than 90 days and we were at home just hanging out and he's like hey you should walk on my back because that's what you do so i was walking on his back and my cute five-year-old daughter got mad because it was her turn and she pushed me and i ended up falling and my entire body weight landed on his shoulder and so at first we thought his shoulder's maybe just out of socket like out of place and he went and it was at first like he'll be better in a couple days give it you know a week maybe and it was really stressful because he just started this job he didn't have any sick leave any time off again he wasn't even there 90 days yet so he couldn't do short-term disability i mean nothing qualified us and so it just kept getting extended he wasn't getting better he wasn't getting better and um boy it was terrible i mean we had my baby was not even a year i'm pretty sure she was super little still my fourth or she was barely a year and so we had these four little kids i was a stay-at-home parent i had no income and we now faced who knows how long of a future with zero income and so we had some savings and so we lived off of that for about a month and a half but it got to a point you know i'm like we need to do something like we are not gonna make it and i never i mean we've always been super poor ridiculously poor but we had never been to a point where i was like how are we feeding ourselves like how are we staying in our home i was googling like foreclosure because we had just bought our house a year ago oh anyways it was just this really scary awful time and so it got to the point where i'm like we have to go talk to the church right like that's what they're there for like we've been paying our tithing they're there for us like we got this and so it was super humbling i don't think people realize like i think very few people want to go to the church to ask for financial help and um i feel like sometimes it's stereotyped like people just being lazy or whatever and so we went in and we talked to the first council on the bishopric uh because the bishop canceled on us last minute and he said no no the bishop doesn't handle financial help anymore it goes through the elders quorum president and we're like that's kind of weird but okay and so we started meeting with him and because you want to tell that to the elders right i felt like there was just another person who was coming into my personal hell at this point like i hate asking for help and it was humiliating and you know stressful we didn't know how long my husband would be out of work we didn't we didn't qualify for any help from the state because of the situation because in order for short-term disability with the state you have to prove that you're going to be out for a year and where we didn't know what was wrong with him we couldn't approve that and anyways it was huge complicated miss and vernal's economy is terrible so i'm job hunting like crazy at one point i was working three part-time jobs just like trying to get anything so we go to the church and we go to the elder scrolls president and he he was a nightmare individual to work with and you know we kind of laid out the situation and it was very much a blame game with him it was and we had lived off of our own savings for a month and a half and considering how poor we'd always been i thought was amazing and you know it's kind of like well have you tried the government have you tried your family i'm like we've tried all these outlets like that's why we're here and he's like okay bring me a list of all your bills that you need paid and we'll go over it oh that's humiliating that's terrible it's like a it's terrible and we had no debt outside of our car which was a miracle and so you're in your mortgage yeah and my mortgage and so we greg couldn't go with me that night so i had to go alone oh with the man with my four children oh my gosh and have this conversation humiliating conversation like well here's our bills and so he starts looking over them oh and she's so gross this is incredibly gross it was so humbling and humiliating and terrible especially with his attitude like if he had been more accepting from the get-go or like we're here like i know this is hard like you can do this but it was not like that it was very judging as he's looking for my bills he says well i can tell you right now we're not paying your car payment and i was like that's our biggest bill outside our mortgage like wait what and he's like i don't believe jesus would pay your car payment what does that mean i don't know because he didn't drive a car like no those cars are evil i had no idea and i mean comparatively our car payment at the time was 200 which i didn't feel like for a car payment was terrible and so and i remember my head thinking jesus doesn't want me to have a safe transportation to take my kids to school like i drive them to and from school every day like what are we supposed to do if we don't have a car like and so i just kind of was like okay because i was still very much in that submissive mormon woman mode and like again some of the situations i look back on i was like i should have left like i should have been like what like but we were so desperate like what do you do when you have nothing nothing to pull from and so that was like right off the bat and he's like well i don't think we'll be able to pay all of this i think we have five or six bills we need help covering he's like i'll get with the bishop and i'll get back to you and i was like okay well we're tying on a time crunch here but okay and so we went home and we were supposed to be on tuesday and he or wednesday and he canceled i was like okay whatever and he showed up just randomly to my door the tuesday before our meeting that he had canceled and he came in and it was funny because he brought a counselor i think from the elder scrolls presidency which again was like there's another person who's like privy to our situation and they sat on my couch and we did the normal prayer and greg was in a play and so he's actually upstairs getting ready and uh he was like well you know these are the bills we're going to help you with it's like our cell phone our mortgage which was fantastic and something else and he was like but you have to we need you to do something for us and i was like okay and so his first request was that we went to financial the church's financial class and i was like i feel like i'm being like you think i handle my finances poorly when really no one is 100 prepared for a situation like we're in i was like okay that could be helpful like learn some more about finances like i was irritated but i was like i guess i get that and then he said we need to take valid temple recommends because the temple was really hard for me i think my recommend expired in like 2015 and this was 2018. i never renewed it and greg's was expired and it wasn't that we weren't worthy we were worthy to hold them i just had no desire to have one because it i did not like the temple yeah margie hated it she never wanted to go yeah no and she's a believer she's just yeah i believed i was like i like it no it's terrible and boring i was like oh my gosh it's so boring and the only time we could go would be for like date night and who wants to not sit next to each other like on day night yeah so we never went i never had a wedding so i just never got it and so i was like okay i'm like i think we're behind on typing because of this situation he's like well you're gonna get caught up and i was like um we have no income are you guys paying yourself back i don't know um but then he hit the final thing and it was actually right as greg entered the room which was great but he's like greg needs to start wearing a white shirt and tie when he comes to church what the yeah because he would always wear tie in a button-up but he would do like a black shirt or a colored shirt like with a tie like he didn't come looking scruffy like he wore a button-up shirt and tie but it wasn't white and so greg walked in at this point was like wait what and the elders corn president i specifically will never forget it he takes his finger and points it at my husband and says you don't look like a priesthood holder i was like what is what is happening i'm so confused and like you're in my home and you're like in front of my children like my kids are here and you're saying this terrible thing and i knew greg's testimony wasn't super strong at that point i was like why are you doing this like is it isn't it more important to have him there than judge what he's wearing on such like a minuscule thing something that's not even like doctrine you know there's no doctrine that you have to wear a white shirt and so greg was mad and he said some curse words and just left and they left shortly after him i just cried like i had a full-on panic attack like it was terrible and so um yeah and so they helped us with those things and they said they were going to contact us about the financial aid class and they never did so we never did it and greg and i were like we're not going back to that ward like i believed at that point still um i mean i had just normal little doubts but nothing crazy and i was like i can't go back there like we were so judged we were so i guess you could say offended um i was like i can't go back where i don't feel comfortable and so we went to the stake president and we explained this whole situation and he asked he's like who was the the elders corn present there and we gave his name he's like oh yeah like he knew that he was this terrible person i was like why is he why is he in the position he's in because the lord works with imperfect men and women i guess and i was like if you know this is an issue it was terrible sorry and so we asked you know we want to switch boards we're like yeah we're like we don't want to be here anymore where we feel judged and terrible which i didn't think was a big issue until he was like any and i don't know if this is policy that's what he said but he's like any switching of words like that has to go through the first presidency and i was like wait what i'm like the prophet of the entire church this isn't matter important enough to bug him with and i remember being like okay he's like honestly you have no chance i was like wait what he's like unless it's a situation of abuse they're not going to do it and i remember we even said to him we're like it's more important that it's like we're in our word boundaries than us being comfortable and wanting to go to church and he was like you can write a letter good luck with that and we're like bye i don't know what do you want me to say to that so that was a fail so we just say as a couple i'm like i'm done i'm like i'm not going back to church until that bishop and the elders were present not involved not doing it we're done and so we took a sabbatical which is a dangerous thing to do there's a reason they want you to go every week i tell you what but yeah so what you're saying is you were offended definitely i always teased greg i'm like we left because we were offended and i won't lie it definitely was the you know the push down the hill you know what i mean like that's not why we left that wasn't the reasoning but it got us on that path you know i i'll mention this again i did this tithing video recently for the understanding mormonism youtube channel we've started and it's gotten like 20 000 views which on youtube for me is a lot you know especially it's only been a few weeks right so really happy with it but we share a clip of all these general authorities saying pay your tithing before you feed your kids so it's telling these heartbreaking stories of like these latin american families where their parents don't have enough money for shoes or for food and then you've got these white upper class utah mormon general authorities saying in general conference pay your tithing before you pay your food and then someone and and so we share that and it's verbatim but then there's one where we cut off what he said afterwards was um you know once you pay your food then the church will help you yeah and and at first i was like oh that's that's taking it out of context but then i thought about it i'm like not everybody gets that money like it's it's not as simple as you just go to the church and they give you money a lot of people have experiences either knows or get experiences like yours right so it's just i've met a lot of people where when they really had that need the church wasn't wasn't there for them yeah and again they only offered to pay you know i think those three of the five and i was like i don't know how and again one of those was our car payment which was one of our biggest bills and i was like i don't know how they think we're miraculously maybe that's what they were banking it was a miracle i'm like how are we gonna get this money and it was it was really bad so did they keep paying after you stopped attending or how did that work so no so we only asked him that one time and i'm like we will foreclose on our house and i will before i go back to the church for money i was like not doing it not worth it okay so so they gave you one month's worth of help then or yeah i think it was just one month and so we found a way i mean we had actually through youtube uh i talked about my story on our family vlogging channel and not that went viral anything but it made everyone our life aware of our situation and um i guess you could say it was miracles but we just had people come out of the woodwork to help us i mean people on youtube that followed me reached out that didn't even know me personally and um we had a company who they had like a charity account i guess but they paid our tithing for three months or our mortgage for three months and yes and so once we had that covered and then my mom paid our car payment for us for a couple months like it was just so many miraculous things after we left the church which was so interesting and decided they weren't helpful um we had all these amazing things happen and it was it was incredible and i'm so humbled by that experience i will never forget just the amount of people who helped us it was incredible but um anyways so i didn't end up getting a full-time job so uh we got out of the yes but that's hard when you have four kids at home right and my husband was injured and they did end up doing surgery and so he was having to parent our children with one arm and we had our youngest in diapers and so he hit poor soul he really struggled but you know you got to do what you got to do at that point like we didn't have any other choice but yeah i think in total it was like six months without income or with my little three part-time job income that i mean didn't cover hardly anything and i don't mean to place blame but in this situation you were doing what the church had asked you to do you got married way earlier than you should have and you start having kids when you're way earlier than you should have and you have way more kids than you should have at that time and so the church locks you in to the situation when you you know these are worldly couples but when you talk to worldly couples and when i say worldly i mean not mormon you know these are just like protestants or catholics or whatever the both get educated both get degrees both pursue careers they wait to have the kids they have less kids they space out more and they're not put in this desperate situation where they would feel like they were dependent on the church and had to cling to the church to survive they just set themselves up for something so i mean it's if if the church formula if the church train works for you that's great but if it doesn't you kind of get run over by the train right yep but by doing what the church wants exactly and i've actually talked to my husband about that i'm like i don't regret my children obviously but how much easier would our life have been if we could have just moved in together or you know or even you know waited or was able to have sex because i mean honestly we by the time we got married we've been together a year and ten months and besides the levi loving we haven't done anything and so you're really forced like what other options are there than to just get married and deal with the consequences and it's it's hard being like we were financially struggled our entire marriage i can't even tell you how poor we've been and it could have been avoided if we had been not so young not to mention what happens if you're fundamentally incompatible like i know a couple of years where like the woman didn't know she was lesbian because she'd never you know experience anything sexual so they start having sex after their marriage and she finds out she's not attracted she thinks there's something wrong with her or she's asexual or just has a real libido when in reality she's just attracted to girls and it happens with guys and like all that stuff if because you don't have sex before and it's not like i'm pro-premarital sex but in a way i'm kind of pro-pre-marital sex i improve but it's only because it can be it's like russian roulette some of these couples have disastrous either there's really big libido differences right or there's total dysfunction yeah and in those situations you shouldn't got married to begin with but there's no way to know until after 100 yeah 100 true and i mean we could have a whole conversation about how the church messed up my entire sex life with my poor husband okay so what can you what do you want to share about that it's not me digging in no for the benefit of like people learning i think is something not talked about a whole lot but again with me it was sex is bad sex is no no you don't go there and so that switch doesn't flip automatically like i thought it would but like i dealt with so much shame and guilt after having sex with my husband which is church approved and it made me never want to do it like any time he would try and touch me like playfully or sexually i'd be like what are you like don't like i felt dirty and gross inside because you're used to being a policewoman over the young men's morality right yes and i'm not supposed to be a sexual being because sex was dirty sex was wrong and so when he would touch me i'd be like oh like my gut instinct was that's wrong like that's dirty ill like you don't love me you just want to have sex with me like it's not a love thing it's a physical need for you and that's why you're doing this and then he feels what he feels terrible because i think like a lot of guys his love language is physical and when you have a wife who's like any time beyond holding hands or kissing is like whoa what are you doing it was terrible and i it took me a long time because i had heard a good girl syndrome and i was like i don't have that like i have just a low you know libido or whatever and it took me up until like this last what is good girl syndrome i've never heard of that oh so good girl syndrome is is a documented theme where girls in these situations they have good girl syndrome they feel like they have to be good and it affects their sex life negatively it makes them feel dirty about sex or not wanting sex or scared of sex and it really affects a lot of girls from religions like this with a purity culture and um again i had heard of it because i googled myself obviously like what is wrong with me like i never want sex like there's something wrong with you yes like what happened where you know i'm not pleasing my husband and that was one of the things that came up and i read it i was like that's not me i don't have that i know it's okay i know you're supposed to have sex on marriage and again it wasn't until this last year was like once we left and i was like oh my gosh like that is exactly what it was it was my trained my entire life i mean from a young kid i mean you think about the experience with your mom and just yes you know you're just trying to do the flag twirling thing yes and you get this heap of shame about the clothes you're wearing right which means your body's bad and it all comes back right yes it all comes back it all comes back and it was you know it's not again not something talked about and i think it's kind of shameful for a lot of people but it should be spoken about more because again i think it affects more people than you realize because i knew what it was and still was like nah no i just that's not me but it totally is me and then this came out in an interview we did a couple couple back with donna and her husband but there's also this petrification about porn oh yeah and and so during the actual sexual act i've just learned this that there are mormon wives that don't want it to be too sexual too open to what a graphic or even just too free-spirited or enjoyable yeah because then it's going to be too much like a porn movie and then you're encouraging your husband to do things that are like the porn movies and maybe in some way you're going to be encouraging porn or the types of thoughts that are compatible with porn yeah is some of that true or i don't worry about porn so much you didn't then no okay not porn was never an issue for me i mean if he had if he had looked i mean okay that's a lie i told him if he looked it was like cheating but he always said he didn't look and he never actually did which is a miracle honestly for most men but uh yeah so i was never worried about being too porny but i was definitely again it's just that when you feel like sex is dirty and wrong it's really hard to enjoy it and it's really hard like i would have panic attacks like if we were laying in bed next to each other because i was like oh my gosh what if what if he tries something like am i going to do it if i don't do it because if i turned him down i would feel guilty like this poor guy like why would i turn him down and like he's not feeling love from me and like how rude of me but then if if i tried to do it or forced myself to do it i would get panicky and i wouldn't be enjoyable and i'd be freaking out i'd be in my head and it was it was terrible for years for years for years and years and there was times like if i was having more stress in my life it would make it worse or if like i was more relaxed then it was okay but yeah it was always there and it was always something my poor husband he dealt with it beautifully but it was always something he had to deal with is like can i touch her like is it gonna be a problem like is she gonna turn me down like it was it was hard it was really hard and it goes back to that purity culture like how do you just flip the switch between it's wrong and dirty to know what's great and do it yeah it's really it's not there there's no switch to flip yeah okay so now by this point you're not attending church anymore what where does it go from there uh i didn't honestly think about religion so i guess we stopped going in january we went one sunday of what year in january 2019. we got hurt in november we had the one sunday january 2018 where we went and it was i think it's my daughter's first time in nursery and we went and it was terrible like i sat in the hall like i hated being there like that elder's corn present was there like it was just so terrible and that's when i was officially like yeah we're not not doing this i went that one time and then in april uh my husband just had surgery on his shoulder to try and fix it he finally figured out what was wrong and in april my son my eldest son was supposed to be baptized and it was honestly before something i'd always looked forward to and i've always been really excited that he was you know i get my kids would be baptized and everyone comes and parties and it's this big thing and my husband couldn't do it because his arm was injured and so we decided to put it off and i remember when we made that choice feeling relieved that he wasn't getting baptized and that was so confusing to me at the time because i still believed even with the issues with the elders corn present like i was the whole mormon concept like that's just a man that's not the church like i still believe in this so why do i have this weird guard up like i don't want him to be baptized and so that's when i really started having questions at that point i didn't look at anything like anti-mormon it was just kind of like huh it was within those months which i found so fascinating um my husband never had this moment by this really strong moment where i was like i don't have to be mormon and it was like this realization where i was like it's a choice because i don't know when you've grown up in it it's all you know like there's no choice there's no choice like this is the way to get to heaven this will be a kiss devon this is how i see my dad again this is how i get my eternal family this is it there's no options here and so i remember when i had that i was like oh my oh my gosh now then it was scary i always tell anyone going through a faith crisis the in between's the worst like when you start questioning up until you're officially done that point you said you're done that's the worst time for me because you're on the fence and it's turmoil all the time am i gonna stay am i gonna go you know is that true about the church is that not true you know what's what information do i believe what information sources do i not believe and it's just it's sucky it's complete turmoil forever so by by early 2019 you're kind of saying i'm i think i'm done with this i started questioning yeah i started being like we need to decide if because again i felt like my son getting baptized was the tipping point like if he's gonna get baptized that means he's a member they have record i mean i know when they're blessed a member of record or something but he'd be an official member of the church and it felt like we were making that choice for him because at eight as much as maybe the church would like you to think they aren't capable making that choice so i'm like we're making this big choice for him and we need to be sure ourselves that it's gonna be the right choice so yeah i started questioning and that whole summer it was it was just turmoil for months and months i think probably what was your process of mostly i started talking to my nuanced mormon sister a lot and i do have an ex-mormon sister she left years and years before me she's my younger sister um and so i was talking to her a little bit about my doubts and like issues i had and this is when the lgbtq stuff really started to affect me and women in the church those were the two things that really got under my skin because i was like i have this sweet at that time five-year-old daughter five or six-year-old daughter who is stubborn and vivacious and she puts her mind in something and she does it like she spent 12 hours i swear tying her shoe because she wanted to be like her older brother like she's gonna get it and i was like how can i take her i i saw myself be so submissive and i was like i can't let that happen to my daughter like i can't let them be out of her that she can do anything that she wants to uh because women's place in the church is not equal um yeah and then the lgbtq thing i was like greg if one of our kids is gay i literally don't care i mean we let greg's best friend move in with us for a while because he was gay and his parents kicked him out and so seeing him go through that turmoil this friend of you know going back to the church and no i can't and then you know his parents being terrible and and living with us and really getting inside look into that whole experience i was like even if we're supportive how can we take them to a place that tells them they're wrong that tells them they can never be truly happy in a relationship that they can't be with the people that they want to be with i feel like god is always going to be higher up in the opinion you know what opinions are important to my kids over me so i was like and our actions are going to say we're you know we're giving the church money we're giving the church time we're supporting this religion so they're going to believe that we support that even if we say we don't you know we're like it's okay we'll still love you it's you know what i mean it's like that pity patch and i wouldn't do that to my own children so the lgbt thing became a big deal a big deal maybe we should show that video what do you think sure let's do it you want to set it up okay so it was kind of a trend at the time to use this music and say something inspiring i guess so i decided to use it to tell the church members that even though you think you're being supportive you are not because are we okay yeah okay you're not being supportive because um again like you can say you're supportive but you're still giving your time your money to this institution that doctrine is so toxic to the lgbtq community that people kill themselves over it you know people attempt to commit suicide people are kicked out of their families over this so and yeah it was just kind of trying to point that out like i know you want to say you're supportive but as long as you are giving your time and money to an organization that's so unsupportive you're not you're not an ally right all right let's roll the video this is uh ex moore and mindy uh this is kayla white as ex-mormon mindy sharing a video about uh lgbt rights and mormons mormons you have to stop saying you support lgbtq rights you have to see yourself as part of an organization that actively campaigns against the rights of lgbtq people you have to realize you donate your time and money to an organization that preaches the best option for a gay individual is to stay celibate and alone for their entire life in hopes that they'll be cured of their gayness in the next life it's time for you to write your leaders and demand some real change okay so that was a little more serious uh they're not all fun and games that one's a little bit more intense you're feeling pretty passionate about that a hundred percent uh i was one of those people in the church where i'm like i support them but i still couldn't like see a gay couple kissing without feeling like oh like weird and uncomfortable and so you know again these are all derived from my own flaws and experiences and again once i left i realized how much i was not an ally even though i really wanted to be and i desperately thought i was i wasn't and i think it's important for members to realize that like until you're supporting an organization that is supportive of them then you're not an ally you're not it just doesn't work that way yeah i it's been so frustrating because you talked to mormons and they're like oh no wait there are mormons that march in the gay pride parade uh the church has a mormon and gays website they'll even use the term gay or lesbian or lgbt now there's love loud like the church is good with the gay people what's wrong you know we're we all love lgbt people and it's like yeah and you're denouncing it and you believe it's evil and you believe it's a sin and they don't have any options there's no theology for them and you know there's still a super high suicide rate like but but but the way the church has managed it the members think they're they're super allies and like way cool with the gay people you know with lgbt people yep and again i get it i get wanting to be it but always feeling that confliction like okay i do support but wait the church tells me it's wrong and it's just like you have to live in this weird in between and it sucks and yeah i don't want i don't want my kids growing up with that yeah because you don't know if they're gay i mean my kids are like nine they don't i don't know anything so yeah those are my two big things and it was in the winter of that same year 2019 where uh a year ago yeah oh geez yeah so i read the ces letter and i'd avoid it did you find it like i've always known yours don't care i mean yeah for a while i don't remember exactly how i found it in the beginning but i never read it i never ever read anything anti-mormon i mean not even close if something was even like skirting on the edges i was like exit and i remember i told my husband i like because i read at work and i was like i think i'm going to read this tonight because i work graveyards and he was like okay and i was like i'm really scared i think i knew at that point that it was it was going to be done i think um you know trying to figure out how i felt and and i realized i probably was gonna leave but i wanted to make sure i wasn't gonna go to hell first like i'd approve the doctrine wrong it couldn't just be like i don't agree with you know the feminist part or the lgbtq part like i have to prove the doctrine wrong like i'd reach that point and so yeah i read that one in a letter to my wife and uh what did they do they basically just proved to me what i'd already thought and that's it's not true um the real nail in the coffin for me was joseph smith which which were the big issues yeah um i mean polygamy i didn't know he married other women's wives was a big thing how young his wives were and the church they don't talk a lot especially about his polygamy you hear a little bit more about brigham young and the later prophets but they don't talk about joseph smith as much you weren't taught that no you you weren't taught that joseph smith married 14 year olds growing up in the church in centerville you weren't taught that joseph smith sent men on missions and then propositioned their wives and that several of his wives were married to other men at the time he married them and that of course conflicted the narrative that we were all taught was the polygamy happened because there were so many women and not enough men and so we had to just be kind to the women and let them you know allow polygamy so that the women could have righteous husbands but that's not what was going on exactly and i was really bothered i don't remember her name now but joseph i mean told people that you know an angel came in with a sword like they were gonna be destroyed or he would promise people you know if you marry me your entire family's salvation is done like god's good with it if you marry me you you all and that manipulation you'll all be exalted yes if you marry me and if you don't you won't all be exacted and these are like 15 16 year old girls yes young girls who now have their families i mean i felt off my kids like i felt like i had their eternal salvation at stake on me so i can imagine as a 15 year old being like all i have to do is marry the prophet how bad can it be and then my family's fine you know what i mean and that manipulation was so gross to me it was so gross but um but also they used lying to emma the whole time oh yeah emma was like the 23rd or 24th wife sealed to him like why why wasn't emma the first wife sealed to joseph you know she was married to joseph before the sealing power was given joseph starts having adulterous affairs even before the sealing power is given then the sealing power is given and then he gets sealed to 23 other women and lies about it to emma before he finally seals emma to him as like the 23rd or 24th wife because they've been lying the whole time like how in the world is that excusable right it's disgusting and it was another like yep this is how women basically like just you know the kettle yeah one of the numbers and so i it's funny because i was reading the cs letter and i don't remember where it is exactly a letter but i reached the part where it talks about joseph smith translating the book of mormon by the rock and the hat method which again never heard of that in my entire life yeah i was like that's not true you know that's what you do when you're trying to believe something and so i actually went i think the gospel topics essays and lo and behold there's an article on my church's website with a picture of the rock and i was i felt like okay that's ridiculous that we believe that god this rock that wasn't even given to him by god just some random rock he found it in a well he found in a well yeah god was like yeah we're using that screw the plates that you know we've lugged around and preserved rock in the hat yeah moroni supposedly gives him the urim thummim with the plates yeah and the plates all that effort smelting riding carrying hiding delivering and then neither the urim thummim or the plates get used in the translation but instead no plates and some rock he found in a well that by the way he used as a treasure digger to deceive people and make them think he was finding buried treasure when in reality he admitted that he was just fooling people with the same stone that he then claims he used to translate the book of mormon later it's absurd yep yeah yeah so i found that out a couple other things from cs letter and i went home and it was thanksgiving morning 2019 and i crawled into bed and i was like crushed like even though i was you know having these doubts whenever i think i think most ex-mormons wanted it to be true it means what you know it's what you're comfortable with it's that eternal families thing and i just crawled into my bed because i worked graveyard so it's 6 am and i get in bed and my husband he has this amazing ability to always wake up when i'm crying i don't know how he does it but he wakes up and he rolls over he's like what is wrong and i was like i just sat there i think it took me like three to five minutes of just trying to say it and then finally i'm like i don't think joseph smith is a prophet and like it was because i felt like if you couldn't believe in the founder the rest of it's not true you know what i'm like that doesn't even make sense and um yeah and so i cried it was thanksgiving morning we had family over and so we kind of didn't talk about it again until they left the next day and then um i told greg what i'd found out and he was like yep we're done and i remember he was like i'm taking off my garments i was like like even though i didn't believe it was true i was still like wait what are you doing wait wait what's happening like no we promised and and it was like this panic moment and he was so like nope we're good and he just like it was done and i was like oh i felt like it came full circle i brought him back to the church and i helped him leave i'm like here i am but yeah we were done at that at that moment and so that was what month and what year that was thanksgiving 2019. okay so that's yeah always remember it but yeah it was really soul-crushing and i don't think that's shown very often uh not even by me not even in my my videos but it is really soul-crushing to lose that religion and it wasn't a couple months after we left that i really had to grapple with you know i might not see my dad again like i lived my entire life with this this promise that i would see him and be able to have a relationship i never had and it sucked and um you know something i still grapple with i do think there's something after this but you know i don't know what that is i don't have the answers i don't think anybody does and so i have to live like i'm not going to get it in a way and it's been it's been a rough healing process to try and figure out how to come to terms with with that so yeah but also you spent i mean this is something that comes to me as i hear your story you spent 10 20 years feeling inadequate feeling like you were broken feeling like there was something wrong with you and um all that shame all that body shame all the clothing shame uh your husband that you were gonna marry isn't good enough and then you're getting married in the temple and having all these kids and all the shame like all of a sudden it's not true and it's like it's almost like the cinematic thing where you rewind and it's like whoa like all that shame all that pain all the times i didn't get answers it makes sense now now it makes sense why i wasn't giving why i wasn't getting those answers but i gave 15 20 years of my 30 years of my life to this and i made all these decisions based on based on a lie yes i think that was surprising to me it's the main thing i felt um once i grieved the afterlife is betrayal i felt totally betrayed by this organization i was like what what is this again like you said everything you said like all these choices in my life that could have been different and maybe even better and i was denied even thinking for myself because the church literally almost makes every choice for you and i do remember after i mean i was really sad for probably two or three weeks but i hit this moment where you were talking about that shame and that guilt and that stress and anxiety and not being good enough and not having some secret sin and i woke up and i was like oh my oh my gosh like it's gone and like i literally didn't realize how unhappy i had been in the church until i left and until i could free myself from those expectations and free myself from those rules and and everything else and it's been the best part about leaving is finding my voice and i found confidence in myself like i never knew i had and i think that's because when you're in the church especially as a female you're always turning to a man you're turning to god you're turning your husband you're turning to your bishop no no choice can you make by yourself you know you can't rely on yourself to do those big choices and man that confidence was really great like finding that inner power and now i'm a total feminist and i speak up for myself and i feel like i've done a complete change of compared to who i used to be and it's really hard for me to accept actually who i used to be because i almost hate her because i'm like you were weak and you were stupid and and i always had to give her grace because she worked with what she had but yeah you did you went through you endured a lot yeah yeah and he figured it out eventually better 30 than 40 or 50. that's true or 60 100 and i'm again i'm glad none of my kids were baptized and now i can save them from from those maybe those horrible experiences i had that were terrible so it's one thing to it's one thing to leave the church which is a massive thing it is a completely another thing to become an activist to uh to decide that you're going to go public not just talking about the fact that you don't believe anymore but like creating video and songs and materials under an ex-mormon banner which translates to orthodox mormons as anti-mormon and there's a whole like as someone who's been doing this for 15 years like there's a whole level of intensity because you're conditioned never to never to speak ill the lord's anointed doubt your doubts doubt never to criticize this is sacred plus you've got all your your parents family extended family siblings the entire utah community no matter where you live all surrounding you who are believers and it's like oh you're really you're gonna this is a voice inside your head you're going to raise your voice now and start attacking the thing that's most sacred to everyone around you and then you're going to live amongst these people and face both wondering if people are going to recognize you but then also just your parents and your everyone being disappointed in you and even people that don't know you all the haters that are going to come like that's a super intense thing so talk about and that's why i that's why i want to interview you that's why i wanted to interview mitch that's why i like to bring on creative people like rita free mormon bill real indians and park like sandra tanner like i bring them all on because they're heroes to me like yeah i'm doing it but anytime i see someone else doing it i'm like you're a freaking hero you're a legend you're a living legend because i know how hard it is so talk about how you made that decision go from like just leaving to like whoa i think i'm gonna be an activist and speak up okay i'm gonna do videos on tick tock making fun of garments and the temple ceremony and the things that are most sacred and some of these things you're like drinking alcohol or you're looking like you're drinking alcohol or you're drinking coffee drinking tea putting on temple clothes talking about garments like that's that's more hardcore than i've been like honestly i'm pretty hardcore like i'm viewed as evil by a lot of people right you're more hardcore than me oh yeah i have some haters some haters okay so tell us how you made that decision because that that takes a lot of courage yeah or recklessness right and that's why i try like people like you're so brave and like or really stupid i mean you can't tell um like i said i was documenting on our youtube channel and i was being super nice at least i thought i was and people were still mad about it like me just telling my experience was like offensive yeah and i found that so interesting because mormons post about religion all the time yeah which i didn't go on missions oh my gosh 80 000 people a year yes like being missionaries and they can tell whoever whatever all over the world but you can't tell your exit story yes yeah and again at that point i wasn't being anti i never i never made a video why i left i didn't say anything and so i was so mad and so when that was kind of taken from me because like the mormons felt like i shouldn't talk and i felt like again i felt so shushed in the church yeah and i left and found this confidence and i'm like you're trying you're doing it to me again i'm not even a member like i'm not even here and you're still trying to tell me what i can say and can't say and i was mad and so i stopped my youtube for like a month um at least the ex-mormon content and i was mad and i was like well and you know the tick tock thing idea came to my head i'm like i'm going to start a tech talk and i knew because of my youtube that if i was going to do an ex-mormon tick tock it had to be clearly an ex-mormon tick tock well i was like were there x mormon tick tocks at the time you started yes there was a couple i followed my sister had done the sum uh katie the human had done some x1 panda girl those were the three i had seen at that point and when you saw those you were like i was like other people are doing this like i can do this um and they they had a different format though than me they they mostly like sat down and talked to the camera and and did that and i knew i wanted something more on the creative side of things like i love i still love their content i think it's really great but i was like i'm gonna do something different and so i made my account and i called it ex mormon mindy and i wanted x mormon to be in the name because again i don't want mormons it's not for mormons i'm not out there trying to like convince you to leave i'm for those in faith crisis or those who have already left who are just trying to heal and find humor in the trauma and so i made it clearly x mormon and i used my middle name mindy because i thought i could fly under the radar i mean when i started my account was like if i get like 100 followers i mean i have been on youtube for four years and less than a thousand followers and so i'm like no one's going to know it's going to be fine it's your little secret yeah it's my way to have an outlet that no one can know about or no one has to know about where i can just say what i feel because i even you know with family and friends you can't tell them that you're drinking most of the time like you can't tell them that you're doing these things or experiencing these really awesome things because they see it as wrong and sinful and you don't be judged and so i was like i'm gonna find people people like me and so that's why i went into it the way i did is originally just to find a few people and that actually that judging video like i said blew up and at that point i mean i think i had so you started doing videos in what month um june june of this year this year so that's just like a few months ago yeah yeah it was really funny so what was like that first one so the first one i did it was ex-mormon mode which is funny i just was like in my mormon attire and i'm like oh what's this x mormon mode and i pretended the camera was a button and i pushed it and then my finger comes back i'm like in a tank top and have my second piercing and i'm holding alcohol and i'm like well this is great so that was like my intro my like this is what i'm about and then i just kept kept going you know again with things that were traumatizing to me or heartful or issues in the church with feminism or the lgbtq community and there's no really rhyme or reason i just have a list that i write things down i'm like i should make a video about this i should make a video so what was the response when you started doing it um it actually took off pretty fast at least what i felt um let's see a couple right before i posted the big video my judging video i got up to like 12 000 followers and i was shocked that's 12 times just youtube oh yeah like it was huge and i was like oh my gosh like and honestly i feel like when you leave the churches again don't talk about it yeah and so even like even with mormon stories and even with these other podcasters i listened to or other youtubers it still felt really lonely i'm like yeah there's ex-mormons but they're they're not very very many out there that's what i thought i was like there's not very many it's like up to twelve thousand i'm like there's at least twelve thousand either ex-mormon or x other religions that can relate to where i've been and it was this sigh of relief like i'm not alone because i had moments when especially when i first left where i'm like i'm crazy like i'm in the wrong even with everything i know like obviously they make it work and they think it's so true so something against that something's wrong with me it just came back to haunt me over and over and over again and that's been probably the biggest thing a tick tock that has been so good for me is realizing i'm not alone and realizing there are legitimate issues and people see them just because the people who are close to me may not doesn't mean they don't how does taking talk show you that um just by the amount of people and the confidence the quantity of people that can relate and the comments that people are like yep this is me or i needed to see this and i've received i mean a lot of hate but i've received so many cute amazing heart-wrenching stories of people they email you or dmu mostly on instagram i get a lot of messages i have my life after mormonism and that's why i get a lot of them but i get messages on tick tock or in the comments where people are like i was on the fence and you helped me leave or you gave me you know strength to talk to my family about it and i'm a helper i like helping people and it's so great because i know how it felt to finally leave and how freeing and amazing and happier i am now and if i can help you know someone who might be on the fence see the issues or help someone who's alone whose whole family believes and they don't and they feel like something's wrong with them to be like come to my tick tock you know read through the comments look look there's now over 56 000 people followers followers on my page who have similar experiences whether it's a mormonism or some other restrictive you know religion and it's it's amazing and the community of ex-mormons are the best i don't fight with people my comments i won't do it it's not worth it and man those ex-mormon and my comments they really stick up for me so i'm really grateful for them they're fantastic i think the last few video that we have cued for you really helps illustrate the community because it's this put your finger down thing which is i i had never seen that before tick tock do you want to describe what the put your finger down thing is sure so you can make an original sound on tik-tok and then other people can take that sound and use it sound and video right oh yeah so they can make it just the sound or they can choose to have a duet where it's both of you side by side and they do the video some of the easiest ways to do this is you know you say put your finger down if you've ever been mormon and and then you can watch them and whatever they put their finger down for is true for them and so it's a really neat way to be able to see how you relate to people and if they've had some real similar experiences as you and i decided to do a dark side a mormonism one and kind of point out some of the um more traumatizing or hard things about mormonism to build a community of people who maybe you know you could see yeah they experience that too and to me what's kind of cool about it is it's not just you as a creator there you said there's like 60 of people who based on the video where it's split screen it shows you and your video and your audio but then they're it's showing their video too so when you talk about not feeling alone it's a way for you to feel like there's real people who are real watchers and listeners that are joining you as part of a community and really resonating with what you say and it's it's something that podcasts don't offer youtube doesn't quite offer in such a simple way and it's really powerful right it's so powerful and again it helps with that feeling of oh i'm not alone like other people have been traumatized by this other people's feel this and um it's beautiful and heart-wrenching because this one especially you know it talks about those hard things and and seeing how many people have experienced it is really sad so for those who are just listening uh you'll be able to hear her put your finger down but then for those of you who are watching on youtube or facebook you'll actually be able to see both uh ex-mormon mindy or kayla and then some of uh her listeners one of her listeners yeah who who did it and do it and this is kind of fun yeah all right so we'll show that now cue the video put a finger down the dark side of mormonism addition put a finger down if you were asked an inappropriate question by a bishop behind closed doors put a finger down if you felt traumatized by going through the temple put a finger down if you felt shame about your body because of what the church taught you put a finger down if you a friend or a family member was hurt by the church's stance on the lgbtq community put a finger down if you paid typing when you didn't have enough money to cover your own expenses put a finger down if you felt like the leaders of the church purposefully withheld information from you put a finger down if the church ever gaslighted you put a finger down if you ever felt guilt or shame over a normal sexual thought feeling or action put a finger down if you were hurt personally physically or spiritually by going on a mission put a finger down if your wedding was nothing like you wanted it to be because it had to be in the temple and for the ladies put a finger down if the church ever made you feel less thin just because you were a female okay again kind of kind of a little bit heavy kind of dark right yeah yeah i like to do a mixture of both because as much as i love to poke humor on it i think it's also important you know maybe if a mormon sees that to realize the church causes pain i think it's easy for mormons um you know i thought similarly to say you know it's the gospel it's the people you have issues with you know the gospel is perfect and it's not it's not perfect and it does cause pain and it does have issues and i think it's important to address those and to realize you're not alone some of those were really personal you know like the body shame one you're not sure is anyone going to put a finger down with me like that sounds stupid but i would still wonder like is this going to resonate with anyone else because again insecurity have a feeling broken like was it just me who had an issue and then you find out it's almost everyone oh yeah every single female puts their finger down that they felt less than and again it's like i want to just be like look like all you mormons who say they're equal but different like they're not so so it's hard to be an ex-mormon activist it's just it's brutal it's excruciating talk about the reactions i think you did an instagram video recently where you shared that you were surprised at some ways it was harder than you thought it would be what have been the really hard parts about being an outspoken ex-mormon activist and ways that you've been disappointed or hurt by other people you know i think it's interesting i worried a lot especially as it got bigger because in the beginning again i was like i'll get a couple people and so as i started getting bigger i got really worried about how i was going to handle mormons in my comments because i knew they were gonna come and um i worried that they would either make me doubt myself or just hurt my feelings and i was surprised that it has no effect on me like 99.9 of the time someone did say i blinked a lot and that really got under my skin but uh yeah mostly i can ignore them and it's not a thing like i just block people or i delete their you know comments uh most of them i leave up the ones i i take down or if you're like doing missionary work like i'm a member if you have questions you should contact me and i'm like we're not coming here and encouraging people to go to the church or to stay in it but uh anyways and but the ones that get me are my family members you know people who know me my real life because again i feel like it's being silenced and i feel like what they're saying is what i have to say is of less value or is inherently offensive just because it doesn't agree with what you think or what you say about the church and again i was able to keep it under wraps for a couple months i thought i could keep it under wraps forever but now it's gotten to the point with the algorithm if you live in utah and get a tick tock there's a really good chance you're gonna see me some of them have been viewed how many times some of you i mean i want 2.5 million another one in a million a couple of seven hundred thousand like so they're king yeah like utah the whole state is a couple million yeah yeah so there's a really good chance and again tick-tock's newer and so it's people keep getting it all the time and once i realized this was a possibility that my friends and family were going to see i really grappled like do i tell them do i not tell them and so i decided to tell my sister who is nuanced like she's believing 100 don't get me wrong but she she has more feminism and you know has different she can see issues in the church and so i told her and i told her what it is i'm like this is anta you could classify this anti-mormon this isn't like my youtube that was nice and trying to be kind like this is my anger side coming out and i told her about it and i was like don't watch it but it's like pandora's box i think and she ended up watching it and she didn't have a bad reaction it was just not great she kind of was just like i watched your tick tock i had some feelings i cried for like two weeks straight every time i thought about it that's so much guilt yeah now that she's intending no no no no and i i do think she was just trying to tell me how she was feeling about it but i was like i told you what it was and i felt like she was almost coming to me like punishing me after i was very clear and so it was just really hard and honestly i haven't even responded back because i haven't i haven't figured out what what i want to say because i was really confused by her motivations to say it to me in the first place to tell me she watched it i was like you you'd have to tell me like you could literally just go on and not say anything uh and so i'm like i don't know i don't know what her motivations are but it's honestly every time i try to answer because we've been talking to marco polo which is video messaging back and forth i've just deleted it because i always get so mad because again it reverts back to mormons can be all over facebook with you know how great their church is and i mean conference weekend just passed and oh my gosh like it's never-ending stream of just great testimonies and memes and yes sorties and quotes from conference yeah but it's like the minute i say something that doesn't agree with your narrative is inherently terrible and disrespectful and again it's like i have to come to grips with more and more my family's gonna find out greg's parents found out and it was a nightmare and they i mean it's terrible it's really hard again it's the people closest to me that can do the most damage i don't care about the stranger on the street it's the people who are closest to me and again it's clearly ex-mormon like don't watch it like i'm not sending it to you yeah and but tick-tock is but you can block me so easy i'm not gonna be offended if you block my tick tock like go for it yeah i don't want to see your mormon stuff either you were doing mormon videos i block you yeah so it's yeah it's been a journey and i think it's going to be a learning experience um i just have to say that you know i there are members of my immediate family that haven't spoken to me in like eight or nine years and this was this was even during the time when i was still faithful yeah but but the fact that i was talking openly talking about problems there are people who if i come to their house they'll leave oh my gosh you know it's it's it's intense there are we are strange margie and i are estranged from probably half over half our family at this point you know when i say immediate or extended people define that differently but it's it's ruined a lot of relationships and it's the type of thing where you really do feel torn because you know the one thing there's the stereotype or the trope that's like well they leave the church but they can't leave it alone oh yeah and one of the things you show very clearly is you're speaking your story makes it very clear that you're speaking from a place of real pain and real hurt the church has hurt and damaged you so when you speak when you're raising your voice it's not just a bash on the church it's not just to be a hater no it's what it's telling people the church isn't perfect and i think and that it hurt you it hurt me so much and you can't like minimize my pain because that's maybe not something you experienced which is what drives me crazy it's my least favorite when i share something super personal so it says oh that wasn't my experience like it just like brushes it off like well you must have misheard something or understood something wrong because that hasn't been my experience and it's it's it like doubles it's like salt in the wound like thanks like just because you haven't experienced it doesn't mean it doesn't happen and clearly doesn't mean other people haven't experienced it but if you've got 50 or 60 000 followers it's clear that these aren't just your experiences right yeah but that but then it goes a little bit farther because you it's not just so that you have a place to vent i'm going to guess you have uh altruistic motives for other people right it's not that you want to it's not that you want to tear people out of the church what is it it's that community again when you're surrounded by believing family members or friends or both in utah or a highly populated mormon area it's so lonely and i don't think people understand that there's always this elephant in the room i always tell people it's like the church is my ex-boyfriend and we had this really great relationship and then i realized he was abusive and manipulative and so i dumped him but now he's close with everyone in my inner circle and they all think he's great still and it's like you're constantly hearing about you're constantly having it brought up and you have to face those demons every time it's brought up and i don't think mormons realize by bringing up your church you could be hurting someone you can have someone relive a terrible experience by trying to do something good and i don't think that's talked about very much mormons just think they're doing something awesome by sharing a great quote and they can't they don't realize it could be really triggering and really hurtful to someone who doesn't believe anymore had a bad experience so there's that there's helping people find community but tell me if i'm wrong it's not that you're trying to get people to leave the church or stop believing no but like let's say 17 year old you but someone else who is feeling unworthy who is feeling the body shame who is thinking about giving their lives to something that doesn't quite feel right that's thinking about getting married quickly and jumping into four kids in six years and and if you could know that those people are going to end up feeling super sad or or or learned that the church is true after they've made all the decisions right it's not that you want to it's not that you want to tear them away from the church but you've got to have a desire for for them right yeah what is that i think if it's not working right if it's not working for you like there's a reason like the church really teaches you not to listen to your gut it's like you don't listen to that that's the world talking but like if something's not seeing right or if you're part of a religion that doesn't make you happy i feel like the church glorifies sacrifice you know like sacrifice everything for the church and hear those stories you know of people who gave their last dime to the church or you know gave their oxen or whatever it is it's glorified sacrifice and martyrdom like that is what you should strive to be the more you sacrifice for the church the more righteous you are and it's such a trap because it's like yeah the church is making me unhappy but we're supposed to like suffer almost like we're supposed to work through these things and endure to the end and it's such a toxic belief and i feel like that in fear is what keeps people in for so long even if their gut maybe tells them it's not right for them and if you can see someone on your social media you know pop up on your for you page or whatever who is like i left and i'm happier you know i left because there was issues you know you don't have to stay it's an option which i didn't realize until i was you know 30 um if i can be that for someone and be their safe place you know i have this person online who understands how i'm feeling who's been there and done it and come out the other side and they're better and they're happier like what a powerful thing to be for someone and you know it's i've grappled with deleting my tick tock more times i can count because of my personal family uh and their feelings and you know because it's not nice the things i say aren't nice or pleasant to hear for mormons sometimes they're swear words i know or alcohol naughty words so terrible but uh in the end it always boils down to everything you said like there's a kid out there or a young adult or someone who feels alone and trapped and crazy like why isn't this working for me what's wrong with me and if i can be a voice for them until they find their own i'm going to do it it's important really important to me so yeah it's not about getting people out it's it's not for that's why it's ex-mormon so people can block me or skip past it's it's for those who are questioning those who feel alone those who feel crazy those who feel like no one else has left the church because apparently there's at least 50 some odd thousand odd people who have done it and come out the other side yeah yeah i like to say that i i for everyone who you know if we could like see the future like profits are supposed to be we can see the future and know person a b and c they're going to love being in the church have a great experience and when they die they're going to say man i'm so glad i was mormon yeah i don't want them ever to come to mormon stories no don't listen to mormon stories don't go to her tick tock love your orthodox mormon life live in that bubble and enjoy it till the end i have no desire to pull you out of the church but if you're going to like have all the shame go on the mission have a horrible experience come back marry too early marry someone you're not compatible with have all these kids feel all this guilt and shame make all these big decisions and then find out when you're 30 or 40 or 50 that you don't love the person that you're with that you didn't want to have all those kids that you wanted to pursue this other career but didn't and that life ends up this huge disappointment and then you find out it's not true right well i want you to find that out when you're 14 or 16 or and save yourself decades of a life that that wasn't the life you wanted to live for yourself i mean that that's if i could that's what i would do do you kind of feel similar 100 if i can save up some trauma and the heartbreak and the anxiety attacks and the stress like it's worth it like it's worth the awkward family conversations and and everything else i had a sister be like i feel like you're choosing these strangers over me and that was really hard to hear but i was like she's not wrong like if i can help thousands of people you know it's like sacrifice the one for the many and it's it's really hard but it's her it's her that's sacrificing you if the relationship's strained it's not because you will have strained it it's because she will not have liked she will have been uncomfortable right with with your active integrity and but then it gets framed it gets flipped around and framed like you're choosing your tick tock over her which is not what you're doing it shouldn't have to be a choice you don't have to see it you don't have to watch it it's you know i can still love you and talk to you about different things and no problem like i think when you're a mormon you are the church if someone's criticizing the church they are criticizing you yeah yeah and it's really hard for them to separate that and i was that mormon so i get it but it just makes it really hard when you're talking out against it because they're like you think i'm stupid like you think i'm being fooled and i'm like that's not what i'm saying but what can you do it's really really complicated but it's really really worth it it is oh my gosh it's why what's been great it's been so great again finding that voice has been fantastic like being like i can now i couldn't talk in the church and now that i've left i have a voice and i can help a big horse a big voice yeah i keep hoping they'll excommunicate me so i don't want to get my records removed you're still a member oh yeah we have it printed it's like going back do you want to be excluding oh i would see me the freaking work why is it so hard to get out would you attend your ex communication i don't know maybe would you take tacos communication communications yeah but anyways just finding my voice finding community hearing people say i help them leave again those people who are already doubting those people are like i felt alone it's just i can't i can't imagine sweet it's beautiful right beautiful does the work an amazing like and just to feel like you're making a difference in the world yeah you know like i have this reach and i'm able to help those people is humbling and terrifying you know when you have people messaging you like what do i do how do i tell my parents like it's really hard but um yeah it's really great it's really great and people message me their stories and those are my favorite you know like i did this in the church and this happened and like what you do and it's just like yeah i've been there and i can sympathize with them and it's just i don't know i love it and it's a really fun creative outlet for me i really like coming up with the stuff and it's not just you there's other great experiments so many i'll forget but devil trout katie the human x1 panda girl those are like my go-to girls they are so great and again they are very different than me in the sense that they just like talk about issues in the church they point out things um that are issues in the church and it's just they're all beautiful human beings especially ex one panda girl she's so nice about it i was like some of us there's a little there's always me a little bit of bitterness i think but she somehow does it without the bitterness and i think that's amazing i can't do it clearly but yeah and watch out world new name noah has a tick-tock yes he's going crazy he's commented on my stuff what's that like when mike norton i didn't know i knew i'd heard whispering that someone had filmed the endowment ceremony back when he had released it and i never obviously looked or anything and now i'm like oh you intimidate me i love that he's so confident though like he's not going to take from no one and i love that i'm like nothing you say will affect him he's like i know who i am i know what's right it doesn't matter it's fantastic also exmo lex who's got a prominent youtube channel she started a tick tock and that's just recently ex-molex and and there's other great people so many forgive me if i don't mention you but we'll have you on like i want to have more tick-tockers on because i think it's important and and i'm just going to say it like it's reaching the youth like there's seminary teachers who are doing tick tocks as part of their seminary classes but there's a very strong mormon presence but but pot you know 12 hour podcast is going to reach we reach 40 somethings with like a bell curve where yeah there's some 30 and 20 somethings and a few teams and older people but like you know podcast has its bell curve and then youtube has a bell curve that kind of shifts to the left a little bit in terms of the age more into the 20s and 30s but freaking tick tock's bell curve peaks in the teens yes so you're like you are really striking at the heart of the church which is the youth yep that means you're more dangerous than me heck yeah you like that i love it i love it it's so great it's fantastic and you definitely see the youth part i always say the meanest or most like outspoken mormons are young like they're all this age between like 16 and 21 they're the ones like going after the ex-mormons and it's it's hard because i don't i'm not gonna fight with children i'm not gonna ruin your belief i'm just gonna block you so you can't see my stuff like sometimes i feel like blocking is an act of love like you don't need to see my stuff you're a baby so uh anything we can look forward to in the future with with your plans i have a lot more truthful tunes planned i've been writing a lot of songs that's my song spoofs i have praised the man in the work i love to see the temple so many great ones and i'm gonna do another stupid things i judged people for video i'm ready for the hate this time um and just yeah just a lot more on you know my own personal story and things that were traumatizing that i can make humorous and work through how long do you think you'll be able to do this i don't know what do you guess it's something i talked to myself about i'm giving it a year from when i started so next june we'll see i think eventually right now i feel like i'm in a very angry phase and i think that's really common for how little i've been out and eventually i think i'm gonna find peace and not be so bitter that my life was so dictated by a lie and when that happens either i will do nicer ones about the church or kind of just fade away i think there's always going to be new and upcoming next morning voices that need to be heard and i'm happy to be that voice for a minute but i'm also okay giving that away to someone who needs their voice heard so my brother got into tick-tock my brother my older brother joel and he he just did like fun stuff and then eventually he's been doing vegan stuff but one thing i noticed is it can really take over your life because you're always thinking about to to to succeed at the algorithm you got to release something regularly it's got to be good you got to find out what the trends are and then you got to come up with what you're going to do and keep the list and then produce it and then you're always checking to see did people like it how many views how many followers now and it and he's been great like joel's awesome and there were times where like we'd be at lunch or dinner and he'd be like just second i gotta you know he'd be like you know i'm sorry sorry sorry like so i guess my question is does it kind of take over your life a little bit and how's that been for your husband and kids it can you and for you yeah it didn't definitely take over your life i always have to remind myself i'm like my worth is not attached how many views or whatever um i try to be really careful like i film all my kids are at school or i have down time at work where i can come up with ideas and that's why i do a lot of planning like the planning happens a lot in my downtime but um yeah just being careful and prioritizing that time and again i don't see it being a forever thing i i'm already like maybe because i've been doing every other day and like maybe i should go to every three or every four but uh yeah you have to be careful because it does it takes a lot of work and i work full time and i have my children and my husband and a lot could you ever do this full time like have you have you been able to monetize yet i have been and it's not great money i mean it's not terrible i'll take any money hourly rate what do you think you're making per hour right now not enough like 10 bucks an hour yeah 10 to 15 i would say but just minimum wage yeah but it could grow but i mean that's yeah that's true i don't know we'll see i would love my eventual goal my husband's in school so once he graduates like a full-time job i'd love to be able to do it like as a part-time income whether it's tick tock or youtube just some kind of social media to be able to supplement so i don't have to work outside my house and maybe go back to being that stay-at-home parent i desperately still would love to be but you know if it doesn't work out it doesn't work out and i'll take my money and run and have you been recognized on the street yet like just kind of walking around has anybody noticed you okay coven covid is saving my life because i wear a mask and i think without it i have i've had people from my life recognize me on tick tock and like write me like oh i think we went to high school together or but yeah no no one on this side yes no that will happen yeah it will happen once the mask mandate is gone it will be more interesting to see if i'm recognized but yeah with the mask no one knows me it's fantastic it's like my super power i feel like batman it's it's a it's fun and it's annoying honestly to be recognized yeah yeah yeah well you are super funny you're super talented but most importantly you're super courageous and uh smart and witty and i freaking love your channel thank you i love every time you release a video i love it thank you yeah no pressure no pressure keep it freaking up i know as long as you i love it it really is so great and so much fun yeah and i think i'm funny you're great yeah all right well any final things you want to say to the audience just to close no beyond just follow your gut i spent so long seeing issues in the church and then being like nah it's okay you know the shelf thing like putting on the shelf like if there's something wrong you know and don't be afraid like i would take all the pain and the heartache i went through and leaving and all the issues with my family and everything i would do all over again because of the joy and the peace and the happiness i found that was always promised to me in the church that wasn't actually there for me again you there are people who find it but not for me and be brave be courageous follow your truth and follow your happiness nice uh one last question why i shouldn't ask this now but i'm going to announce why do why allow swearing why show coffee why show alcohol especially when there's this like oh of course she leaves the church and now she's swearing and you know why why do that you know it was really nerve-wracking especially show alcohol my dad was hit and killed by a drunk driver like alcohol was demonized in my family hardcore uh but again i said this i think 100 times but i tried so long to make myself fit in the box i was supposed to fit in and i was a circle trying to fit you know into a square hole or whatever and when i left we told our family pretty soon after we decided we didn't at all stay in the closet we put it public on our youtube in april over general conference weekend because being authentic and finally being able to be myself and support the things i felt noteworthy and speak out about the things i felt were wrong was so important and i think there's no greater happiness than finding the authentic self and being able to live that person and so that's why i show it i'm like this is who i am take me or leave me i'm not going to be everyone's cup of tea not even close people will write comments like you're annoying i'm like i know i understand i agree with you on some points but being authentic was important to me i think that resonates with people yeah well kayla white export mnd thank you so much for your courage for your wit your wisdom your humor and for uh helping people not feel so alone and for giving people a voice and for finding your voice and for sharing it with us all and for taking all the heat and for allowing your family relationships to suffer yeah thank you oh well you're welcome thank you for saying that that was really sweet those good comments that keep me going all right all right i've kept you here long enough uh listeners thank you so much how do people follow you if they want to follow like let's say no one's used tic talk okay so you have to get a tick tock account and honestly download download tick tock making a user account and this honestly search ex mormon you will find so many great creatives yes that's how you'll get all the creative people there's a huge community i'm ex-mormon mindy you can just type in my username and they can follow you when they when they click on your profile they'll see it yeah it's just a follow button little follow button and then again we're at my life after mormonism on youtube and instagram that's where i kind of sit down and i'm more raw and vulnerable it's less humorous and then those crazy white people on youtube yep on youtube that's our vlogging channel if you want to see my cute kids and and there's lots of other um i just had the camera on me that whole time sorry everyone and uh and there's a lot of other cool um uh tick-tockers and so uh if you are a cool tick-tocker in the ex-mormon world or or in the mormon world or in any of the worlds just go to mormon stories.org make a comment and list your profile and it can become like this integrated place of like of like all the tick talkers because let's we've taken over the podcast world why can't we take over tick-tock i love it right do it mormon xanax mormons i love it yeah yeah there's so many great ones again you just search ex-mormon and you're like whoa huge amount of people yeah all right uh thanks everyone for joining us today thanks for everyone who makes this program possible if you donate thank you uh less than one percent uh of our listeners actually donate every year from year to year we don't know if we're going to be able to continue if you value this programming if you want to see it continue please go to mormonstories.org click on the donate button and become a monthly donor whatever you can afford it's tax deductible in the us and we're transparent in our finances and all the money goes to creating this programming if someone wants to give you money how do they do it oh i have nothing watch my tick tocks that's it why don't you get like a donut like a paypal button or a venmo button or something i don't know do it will you do it i'll think about it does that count okay okay we need to get you guys some money come on i know i know this is hard work it's so much work yeah but it's so fun all right well people are going to start bugging me they're going to reach out and say how do i give her money they did that with mitch how do i give mitch money i love him by the way he's so great he's so funny yeah he deserves way more of a following i think he's that's the woman that's the mormon woman drop that mormon woman that man doesn't deserve more of a following than you fine fine fine i i'm funny too he can be funny as well you're freaking awesome thank you all right thanks kayla thank you in touch okay let us know if we can help with anything deal all right thanks everybody you guys take care we'll see you again soon on another episode of more stories email me at mormonstories gmail.com uh stay in touch and reach out if you have ideas on future episodes thanks take care

Channel: Mormon Stories Podcast

Views: 50,887

Keywords: lds, mormon, latter-day saints, tiktok, exmormon, ex-mormon

Id: u7cNkruve5c

Length: 166min 13sec (9973 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2020