Starting over, honest life update for my followers...

hey everybody welcome to the new one so YouTube channel you'll notice a handsome guy over here to my right it's my husband Aaron oh thank you everyone give a thumbs up for Aaron coming out of his like hi we haven't made a video with you since I first did my first channel she's always come out of hiding one on the long winding Journey so yay Aaron's here Sam Shelley's already in the chat Richard Jones thank you for showing up guys uh we just kind of wanted to do a life update video to let the people just followers of mine know uh kind of our journey what we've been through and tell people where we're at right now or anything else you want to say speak to the people yeah I'm just excited to you know be here I feel like uh it's been a while so it's been a while yeah I feel like I've been hiding in the the Shadows you know trying to find myself here's my other half so Aaron's an important part of this team so anytime when I was on Mormon stories you know John Dylan would always be like thank you to the donors thank you and they know he's like thank you Margie and thank you Aaron and we have the same none of that would ever happen which is also funny that John Dillon's wife and my husband have the same thing what is it you'll never know so please make sure that if you're just coming across this video to subscribe to my channel because I try to put out weekly YouTube videos for the Post religious post Mormon Community I also have a patreon patreon.com so um some other exciting updates that all have to do with content and things to do with money in just about a second but I thought we would just jump into the uh to the meat does anyone want to guess uh uh so I'm actually sitting in Aaron's apartment right now because uh we kind of informally separated this year so Aaron tell everyone why you left the mother of your children well we put it that way it was kind of one of those things where it was like if I'm going to succeed in this marriage I need to find myself first and it was a lot of work that I saw I needed to do I lost my mom unexpectedly uh after Losing My Religion um and covet hit I lost my job I was just smiling and I was like I need to find myself and find out what's going on so that I can show up uh yeah it was a yeah it came out as fast starting in 2019 I would say I haven't taken a breather like this whole month if you wonder where I went I had to take off this whole month of content because I needed a breather and we really haven't had a breather since 2019 uh we left the church summer 2019 I immediately got pregnant like another month later and then uh I was pregnant pregnant you know how it goes ladies and that's all you think about it's like Mormon ladies there's nothing else I did during winter pregnancy that was 2019-2020 and then uh and then covet hit March 2020 I gave birth to Cal and then Aaron's mom died right after that and then I started doing Tick Tock right after that and if anyone follows this channel knows that like I've I've been a Content grading machine for uh since then since 2020 I pretty much amazing I went a good couple years without stopping to do anything but content whether it was Tick Tock or Mormon stories and stuff and then um I quit all that time Erin he lost his job during covid and uh that and lost his mom at the same time so it's just like sitting on top of thing on top of thing yeah and you don't have a lot of time to find yourself you don't have a lot of time to process yeah yeah with three kids it's like I need a timeout but you can't really take a time out without like I don't know you have an extended time out sometimes yeah so I was able to take some time off work which felt really good but that was I don't know you got sick and I felt like the burden of you know trying to take care of a family while I was spiraling and it was like it was a lot yeah a big thing that happened was after I did Mormon stories um so I started getting some notoriety on Tick Tock it's the start of 2021 yeah yeah and I recorded my warmesters interview John offered me a job there and I had never done anything but nanning in my life like I didn't graduate from college I took one year of college I was like I haven't had a job I haven't been out of this child care space ever I haven't done anything like this so it was a big deal for Aaron to transition right at that time out of working and just being a stay-home dad I was really excited at first I was like oh hell yeah wants to make the money at first I get a chance to like stay home with women's work you know you realize like oh I did not train at all to be a homemaker yeah so that should lead into our first discussion uh super chats are welcome comments are welcome I don't know if I can throw them up on the screen necessarily because I'm not in stream yard right now um but there is I was just on uh Jimmy with Jimmy Snow a couple days ago and we were talking about on the line uh the difference between being raised as a CIS hat male versus a female in the church and the expectations and stuff and I mentioned on that podcast how a major part of it is I just didn't have any Ambitions for anything outside of what else they tell me that the most fulfilling part of my life is going to be being a wife and a mother and so just kind of focusing and setting my sights on that and just the expectations I had for who I was going to be and then my husband being raised that he's going to be this Breadwinner and that he's good with kids and he likes our kids and he's but to actually take over kind of a home-making role over that's how my brain has been wired since I was a kid planning out my kids baby names you know so what were your expectations when you went to stay at home Dad versus reality well I thought like I was a programmer so I had like the nine to five mentality of doing tasks and things but uh I the thing that hit the hardest was not having adult conversations anymore and not having adult interactions and it was really really draining there's no water cooler talk I mean you you're watching kid shows you're getting up It's a Grind because the kids are so young and just not able to communicate their needs and so it's very our kids are they have an eight-year-old girl six-year-old girl and a two-year-old son right now so if you just rewind time you can adjust their ages but they're in if any parents now and have like kids that are that young it's just they're all they're all hard they all individually one-on-one they're great you put them in a circus that's what our house kind of is so they're all have their own types of special needs let's say in their own behavioral issues that we as parents are really trying to always be proactive to be the best parents that we can be but our kids are just freaking hard at these ages it's hard doing it all day and yeah where you don't have a lot of structure where you need to be somewhere and do this it's just doing dishes and dropping kids off and stuff and so I always just plan on that already being my life I was a nanny for I was a career nanny for eight years that already is just what I was used to yeah that's just how I do and so Aaron taking over that role I think if you want to talk about out like your history with depression and how that oh yeah I think like I would say serotonin I don't know whatever dopamine or depression it's really hard when you're trying to cope with your own depression and your kids are very needy and you want to be there for them but you're just so Tapped Out constantly and it's like your bucket is Never full and you never yeah you don't know how to refill that bucket because you've never established those patterns or read the right books or really studied and that's my bad too it's like I should have probably prepared myself a lot better to be even just a father with a job to know like you know for your kids you need to help them regulate there you just never know how hard they're going to be you have like abstract ideas of how hard too so we didn't have exposure to younger siblings or anything like that did I not so the people you guys are what I just I've been a nanny for eight years Aaron pay attention no I think it is different though when you you don't know how never ending and stuff it is and so if you're working through any kind of trauma I always like to say I don't have any Trauma from organism only time was finding out it wasn't true um I'm pretty much fine I see a therapist and we don't have a lot to talk about I'm just paying to gab right now so Aaron's talk about Budget on that um Aaron's therapist uh has been very helpful and Aaron has a lot more trauma and things that he has to undo and especially with depression and not having a good job and not really feeling like you're like the the man who brings home the bacon all kind of contributing to well yeah in some way you want to feel like you're contributing and so failing as a homemaker not feeling just spinning and not knowing how to be like successful at it like I kick ass at I kick ass at task I mean I do have like I also another update is I got uh diagnosed with ADHD and uh that's really helped me um oh you didn't know that oh my gosh I was glad we had this chat we actually paid a babysitter to make this video for you guys thanks Katie um so uh this is also our day where we share things about it yeah about a month ago I actually found out anyway long story short is uh when I'm obsessed with one thing whether it's kids like I I do a good job and so I like to focus on what are their behavior issues what do we need to do what's how do we problem solve this is not a benefit of video and if you don't hyper focused yeah so if you don't if I'm pulled in too many directions I've been pulled to Mormon stories or I'm pulled to doing content or pulled to you know smoking the crack pipe no smoking I'm just going over experiment trips don't worry Mom don't worry Mom I will answer your calls but I know this is a faster way to hear what's going on um so uh what we're talking about please get me back on topic the point is crack pipes I don't know um YouTube please don't demonetize me you got adhdp from now um anyway the ADHD and just being able to focus and knowing how to problem solve for your kids and stuff and just giving all of that over to kind of Aaron to manage the household it's hard for him it was hard for me and so people who already follow me they already know that like I've been doing this content for a couple years now but it's it's still a very I call it like a trauma heavy space there's just a lot of people a lot of DMS that need to be read and I always want to do justice to reading the DMS and I try not to check things if I can't I'm not in a headspace to be able to reply to it because these stories are people's important things that they're telling me and I want to be able to give an honest you know helpful resource or a link or something and just the amount of time the amount of bandwidth dealing with how much harm the Mormon church has caused and just this Fallout these ramifications these people who are in mixed marriages these people who don't know how to talk to their families and I want to be able to be in this space for the right reasons to give people some validation and some laughter in things and so that's a huge part of my personality and a huge pull and a huge calling that I feel to do but it's it's always if I only focus on that and I was a single person I could do it all day but I just am pulled in all these different directions and so um later this week as well um I will probably be responding to some stuff that's come out about Mormon stories um I don't really know I feel like talking about it um but uh Mormon stories uh me and John were on good terms everything's good um but uh working there was one of the many reasons I've I've already made videos about why I had to leave I made a couple um so I won't get into that right now but one of the major ones is like it really is a like a 24 hour job things are going up all of the time and if you really want to be a good employee and you're like trying to be on your A-game and stuff like you will be sucked into your phone and like this needs to go up and this person needs to get back to this it's just being the adjusted co-host is one thing where you just show up and do it and then you go home exhausted but then you have um a family to come over to and there's still things that you know you got to do as a producer as well so um there's a lot of reasons I had to leave Mormon stories and I will say that oh one of the big big big ones was just how much bandwidth it takes to raise our kids and how I have to focus and really remove all distractions to be able to get to the core of their issues to get to um yeah how to problem solve how to run our house functionally so like I said our kids kids are six and eight and they especially they need a lot of routine and things and if I'm too tired it's really hard to follow through on routine I'm just saying he's doesn't entertain because he's literally perfect so Joe thanks for the Super Chat engaging to share the love for you guys I get it nine and five-year-old here sleepy sleepy sleepy man yeah I wish I could throw it up on screen but that's not available in this application because it costs 50 a month to be on stream yard and I'm like not quite made of money so anyway um anything else you want to say about our kids that we love them and they're definitely worth the sacrifice that's what's so hard is like you you would do anything for them and that's what's hard is when you feel like you're failing them or you're not showing up for them it's just like doubles down on like the emotional turmoil like I really want to show up for them but it's like I have to show it for myself first it's kind of like that analogy of the airplane like if you're crashing you have to put your own mask on first before you can put the mask on others and it's one of those things you don't know that you're not putting your mask on until you kind of take a step back and look at the past you're like oh I was not I thought I was doing everything then but I wasn't and I need to yeah and I was never really willing to like self-care that's why I didn't get a therapist until it was like way too late men get self-care I did have a therapist for like a week or two but she had to quit the network and so that was a bummer so I was like oh I can do this on my own but then it really just helps to go through therapy and have somebody to talk to that's just there so you can dump all your trauma on them instead of dumping it on your wife and kids and I'll also say that is um pros and cons working for Mormon stories definite con that came out I would never would have guessed necessarily is you know I like hearing people's stories get great interview people all day I'm very intently listening I am not zoning out for eight hours straight um second that interview is over I don't want to hear anyone talk to me ever again for until the next interview so I became a very checked out life and I also had to self-medicate with a lot of marijuana um so to not have a headache I just had constant headaches from just exhaustion in my brain so to be able to stay awake I had to um yeah so and then sometimes when you're on what um sometimes you only want to do the things that you want to do when you're really tired too so you know hi honey come home from work tell me about your day you're like oh I'd rather dodgeball and check out right now like please know so I take accountability that I just could not put two F's together to give about anything else outside of just work then sleep and work and sleep so it's I don't have enough I just don't have enough hours and brain cells in the day but uh ADHD medication um yeah uh anything else well and I try to have as much conversion as possible for you and your new career and I was trying to be as well me and my new partner John it's like okay it's like I'm so happy for you but at the same time I'm like can you come and uh take care of the kids at night so I can Warren stories schedule is stressful sometimes it's sometimes it's all over the place sometimes you just you interviews go to what they go and you have to have a spouse at home it's just like okay all right but it's also like you put up with so much for me to go through college and our time like me trying different career paths and you've supported me so many times so I was like really excited to finally yeah so let's talk about how awesome I am so one of the stories of our marriage is uh Aaron and I met in a comedy club when I was 19 he was 25 and he was the MC I was a little 19 year old girl who just got her braces off and I need an open mic playing a funny song and uh we hit it off uh got married same year May 2008 got married December 2008. Mormon Mormonism could be really rushed in on that um and and 2011 we moved down to La for Aaron's work for Tig Notaro who is an awesome comedian so he spent three years doing that on a podcast with her called professor blasto and being a personal assistant and your little girl care over here she didn't go to college she didn't know Jackson about the world she was just a little innocent Mormon girl we know what she was good at children working with children and and people in general you were really good with just being a people person I never went to a job interview that I didn't totally yeah yeah so I was able to support us living in Santa Monica a mile from the beach great times while Aaron was able to do that work out his comedy career longings while I was able to work as a nanny got that out of my system and then we got pregnant in 2014 came back home had our babies Aaron graduate from school I watched the babies we are poor poor poor we're always poor poor poor um had two little babies back to back and we were both 14 2016. yeah now I have fake eyelashes and uh it's it's it's got its own new standard of living so anyway I just happen to have this my hand I don't carry it around all the time um and so life for most of all that time being very Mormon and supporting him through school with the kids and stuff and Richard's got a 20 Super Chat I'm sorry you're hurting it will get better it is better we'll get into we'll get into it so um so yeah lots of healing kids just like it's we're talking on Mormon stories the other day about pimos and people who stay in the church and I always like to say that like you could not have gotten me to read anything negative about the church when we were in this stage when he's in school when our kids were little because the community of the church meant everything to me but it was taking us to move into our house by ourselves where we weren't so integral to a community to be in a new Ward to feel like a little bit more distance and stuff so we're independent too like the new war didn't really give us the support system like other awards did so it's an easy transition I think um yeah and uh what was the first what was the first thing would you say in our marriage that happened in that kind of got you to question the church that got me to question the church I think that just in general um when you were starting to become more Christian and reading stuff that was outside of like Mormon Doctrine I was questioning like why is she so interested in non-mormon kind of stuff I was like into Hugh Nibley and those apologists and I was like Karen just stick to the classics you're getting astray and so I got more interested in um checking out Mormon stories and Mormon the Dan Witherspoon one where he was more and alarm Bells went off for me because I was in my my Jesus Freak phase but I was like Mormonism is still true so the fact she was listening to Mormon stories it matters too yeah little little me Little Miss I yeah I was like he's listening to anti-mormon material my husband is going to ruin our Eternal family like I had all those panic attacks and I was like Mormon stories yeah well a lot of it was about guilt and things like should I go talk to my Bishop about everything I feel guilty about and they talked about how Mormon matters like uh just typical things that adult men will deal with and you're like I shouldn't feel guilty about this or I shouldn't try to like masturbation and pornography what kind of masturbation Mutual I'm just trying to ask a follow-up question I didn't have anything uh this is like uh Aaron let's replay our no let's replay our uh the night that you proposed to me for a second I'm 19. I've known him for two weeks basically I just got home from working a summer camp we're sitting on the couch at my parents house watching Goonies we'll get back to your story in a minute but the people must know you were watching we're in the middle of Goonies Arizona yeah I was about I was going to move to Arizona go ASU and not be Mormon anymore I was gonna go a little wildlife and Aaron really liked me and I was like yeah he's fine um and uh we're watching Goonies as I've stated 17 times already and then he paused the movie and says I was like oh here's I was thinking about the booby trap scene and that triggers interesting mind I was like he also wanted to travel movies I don't like the idea that you're moving to Arizona and you're like why I'm like I want this to be a more long-term relationship what do you mean by that let me do my line okay what do you mean by that uh like potentially if it goes well possibly maybe a marriage oh my God Aaron and then I just met you and then I said I hope so like two days later I got a text and you're like crazy idea what if and then no it was a week later oh it was a week later it was very about a week later I was like hey here's an idea what if we got married on December 18th hear me out you already want to and now I'm basically agreeing to it let's get it done anyway super romantic because you know we all love movies and Steven Spielberg so what you need to take away from that is two very horny young kids who are just like we like each other and could love each other but we're in this by Year's End could we have sex could that be could we could we schedule that in it's pretty much what you should take away from that Mormon marriages there's a lot to be said about what makes a good marriage and I feel like it's say that under the confines of Mormonism Purity culture restrictions on sexuality and gender role it doesn't set you up for um the happiest most flouraging but marriage to be fair you are the only comedian like to come to and I would that you were cool with me being in comedy I've never met any girl that would Circle back to my point though two doesn't matter comedian comedian too indoctrinated into occult comedians we made it work we laughed our way through it but it's I still it's we're still we're still the good ones okay guys we made it out obviously we're smart and talented in all those ways but like we had we still had a lot of stupid ideas about gender roles and conservatism all these ideas about what makes marriage and just so much ownership and possession and and uh yeah just I've made videos before about one of the reasons why I paid attention to the problems with the churches because I was instructed I thought of my husband as somebody um who has a better connection to God than I do I really did and that he has what I said I still do by the way yeah do you have a connection to like doing this because you do it anyway after 14 years you pick up on nuances and annoying things and that's really why I got the apartment because I was sick of her pointing out all of the things like that I point too much or talk through my finger anyway we've talked Aaron's we're staying married because Aaron's excited uh now the point is that uh we had to I had to listen to my husband in Mormonism and I believed all of that stuff I believed all that stuff about the husband obeys the father as the wife you obey the husband you guys have a direct potential the priesthood Authority and inspiration uh you're like Miranda's singing sing me when I'm trying to uh trying to copy you um and so while I was listening to what his problems were and I was more interested in his traumas his like needing to I made a video about this before just like literally you can leave the church coming at it from like a men's rights angle where it's like why do you have to do all these callings and you have to and you also have to work and like honey that's a lot on your plate and like he has all of these yeah research responsibilities and gender roles that were just over the top and I could see that he was suffering and I was like I'm fine I'm basically lobotomized myself to stay in this church but I'm fine but I saw how much pain that it caused him and then from that I was willing to listen and then really the only Flex I ever used was like moving out of your parents basement I was like I have the priesthood and God has told me that to move your parents basement so after we moved from La um and I stand by that I think he's invoked his priesthood power in our Mormon marriage a couple times because I didn't want to leave La when we got pregnant and he's like I have to go back to school I'm not gonna be a waiter in L.A like we need to like literally go make some money no if I wanted to stay in L.A I was like we'll just be poor we'll freaking live off of Government I was like let's just live here he's like no obviously we have to move back to Utah and then we moved into my parents basement and it was I was like okay that'll be fun I'll have all my family around to help with the baby and it was the worst the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my lifet times one thousand and he's like we have to move to Salt Lake back to our old apartment that we used to live in then I had a lot of bad feelings about we had to move back to our exact same apartment complex and he's like I invoking the priesthood that this is what we should do and I was like Wow slamming on the door I was I guess I'll go babe will you carry me over the altar no and then when it worked out I was like see isn't this so much better everything always just works out both of us speaking of our marriage both of us sometimes you just have like knee-jerk reactions we're like I don't want to do that hard thing and then you're like actually after all it was best for all of us I'm so I'm sorry but you were the one that got us to move to LA in the first place you're like hey you should go open for tignataro you should go and talk to her about you know whatever and we've made this friendship because Cara was a fan of the Sarah Silverman program and really wanted to meet TIG and really put herself out there and force me to put myself out there and so it's like we were a team from the start I think that's really cool that you pushed me in ways that I wasn't willing to push myself I'm grateful for that from Missouri and I I was listening to the priesthood Authority when I got married to you because I knew that God had a plan for us to go to La and all that stuff so did he yeah that was you know I felt that through the spirit and it felt good it felt right everything that feels right is from the spirit yeah yeah and then you know what else felt right um becoming an actual Ally to people like Tig Notaro and not just a [ __ ] one where you say one thing and you get your connections that you want to but then you also are still a member of a church that actively tries to restrict their marriage yeah kudos to take first employing a Mormon guy and uh 10 of her money the money she paid him going to Department Church actively trying to restrict her access to marriage so talk about how uh the first big like shelf item the first big issue church and otherwise in our marriage prop 8. no I think talking like in 2019 when you started listening to those podcasts oh like you know the ones the Troublemaker John delin John Dylan and Bill real and rfm you know logical leaders of culture and thought and uh yeah it really got me yeah I'm in the ranks and then it's like yeah was like from Ohio from the same place that Kara grew up in so yeah I feel that story on board of it already that's so she's bored but the point is I was like we were we were uh sorry Ellie finished your point but we were working on renovating our house through 2017 and we were listening to podcasts all day long super conservative listening to friggin things I don't want to talk about right now conservative comedy I used to be a huge Gavin McGinnis fan okay but like he's he then he went way off the deep end after like she was proud boys and stuff but he's the founder of lice and then and then founder of proud boys then the proud boys went way off the [ __ ] white scrumps his deep end but back in the day the Gavin McInnis show was it was like the man show I just have a man's brain and I just wanted to be demoralized by men all day so you were used to listening to priesthood Authority and I listened to that and sermons I was a real Ultra like Trad wife back in the day and uh and then Aaron's over on the other side listening to Liberal things and non-mormon things listening to things while we're working on our house and a lot of I remember he was listening to one day I was like what you listening to and it was about like how being gay is like totally normal and I was like this will be devastating tonight episode or somebody was using science to prove that it was like normal and that it was part of biology and everything yeah the church had actually had an official policy that they believed that it was a born innate um that line from liar Liars coming to my mind where he's like I object on what grounds it's devastating to my case home being gay is completely normal anyway no I was nice to gay people I was fine with gay people it's just I uh was a total bigot because I didn't think that they should be allowed to get married so uh besides that major flaw um see that's the way that Mormons will do it they're rationalize that they're like I have tons of gay friends which I did plenty of gay friends um do we ever have actual conversations about how I'm like hey just so you know um in an Ideal World you wouldn't be gay or in an Ideal World you wouldn't be married um if Mormons don't have those kind of conversations then you don't have like gay non-gay friends like you just you're not actually friends you're just it's a transactional relationship because you want to have like a like a cute queer person in your life just to like check that list do you remember going and visiting a ward in Salt Lake and they were during like the Sunday school they were talking about is it bad for man to be alone yes and so it's like people were advocating for gay marriage yeah in Sunday school it was really cool yeah um still paying tithing to a church that uh still uh really some harmfulness yeah it's hard we've been we we beat this this let's kind of not beating a horse thing but anyway back on topic Aaron started to uh really try to be Ally and I was opposite of the Ally town and uh that started to riff and well you're a real child's rights Advocate too and justify a lot of things through the lens of yeah your old girl over here is not that bad I'll explain it all in context someday it's just traumatizing for me to even talk about how I used to be yeah but she's all right deep down Cara of yesteryear and care of today is just I love kids and I want people to be happy and pursue their dreams and not have trauma I'm a person who says please don't inflict trauma please heal yourself before you go into relationships or have kids or like do some work on yourself is pretty much care of yesteryear and care today same overall thing well it's nice to have less time you know exposure to TIG she had two sons and she was a wonderful mother and Stephanie was a wonderful mother and it's just like you see these real world examples and you're like wait a minute can we take these real world examples and and really start to think about how off everything else is mostly like that this people who work so clearly have been gay since the day where they were born like tignataro uh that in my world view as a Mormon I'm looking at her and I'm supposed to think that like she chose this or like that never fit like I was never like that far gone I was like obviously this is my choice for her I don't know what who's this God I'm worshiping who's like in this ideal Mormon World everyone would get baptized and like everyone would like be able to like word of their same things attraction and just like being heterosexual marriages I was I wasn't that dumb I knew that that was never gonna have happen so it's like if everyone doesn't fit in this plan then there's got to be something about that plan but that was a secret I I buried deep deep down and that let Aaron come right up to the surface so so Aaron by Easter 2019 he said he was done with the church I was done taking callings and I said Karen you continue you got a calling and it was really awkward because they're like you want to come and put your hands on her head I was like so that was weird for me for a few months yeah and you're like I don't know you're not gonna baptize our kids and it's like really hard when you grow up feeling like that's a huge I had a big crying breakdown around the bed when I had to I had to realize that my kids are still going to get baptized but I was like their dad's not going to baptize them total crying meltdown like all your hopes and dreams since you were a kid that you know you'd marry a really priest holder and your kids would get baptized in the church and you just have that picture in your head so it was really hard tribal Milestone yeah so then uh soon after that though I read all of the information about like is this a true thing or not a true thing because I was like I don't know I was on my Jesus Freak path which I've talked about a lot and I was like oh it's it's not a true thing one night I came to the realization and I told her and I was like get in here read this Joseph Smith totally made it oh yeah and that was July 12th and I hadn't deconstructed 2019 the actual validity yeah he had it read so that was the Cs letter or anything like that he just knew it was false because he's like these they took away the being gay is natural they took away the Holy Gift of the Holy Ghost from Children of same-sex married people and that was like yeah [Music] yeah we all had like our inner shelf items that we all I think snubbed down but they're always like what the next thing they do wrong I'm totally out of here yeah because you're still holding on to like well I kind of want my family to still love me and keep me in their whole Graces and you know support system and it's like yeah but then you want to learn to be independent anyway and it's it's a whole thing yeah Aaron's parents are very lovely people my parents are lovely people too but his mom sadly passed away really suddenly um kind of at the height of covid um make peace on things yeah so we left the church it was all just Bam Bam Bam things are just like I said the beginning and then bam bam bam since 2019 so we left the church basically that spring that summer got pregnant September yay hooray you're really excited we were super yeah it was on it was purpose it was planned um and uh and going through really really hard pregnancy I never had such a hard pregnancy which is surprising um and I was I hate throwing out I was just nauseous like I said when you're pregnant that's all you remember is like I was just pregnant for nine months I remember doing anything else and uh I needed more salt is what it turned out to be yeah I always like to do my PSA I went to tons of different I tried everything in the book to stop throwing up and be so sick and all it took was figuring out that I needed a lot more salt a lot of French a lot of salt so anytime just pregnant people you need you see a pregnant person be like are you feeling sick have some french fries dump a ton of salt on them uh just thinking about it makes me happy right now anyway so fix that but then you know cobit hit and the pandemic and stuff and Aaron's mom sadly sadly passed away really suddenly right after our son was born and uh about when did you lose your job well I took like the three months off and then I decided you were you were starting Mormon stories so I thought okay this is a good chance to transition out of my job because it was getting to the point where the job was losing its luster and I was deciding if I wanted to be a programmer anymore because it was just so boring and working from home I lost the water cooler talk I lost the support system I was like working out of our laundry room all my friends tell them that I was leaving the church because that would have made things I did have one friend that left at the same time as me so that made it nice but then it was like yeah kids were banging on the door and I was just like I need a break and now and then I was also an important part of this I was super super sick after I gave birth to myself and I was having what felt like neurological issues um and I was just not I was not functional at all whatsoever could not function I had to borrow five thousand dollars from my sister just to hire a nanny just so I could sleep just to feel better so our kids were so young and Cal was sleeping like 45 minutes at a time for so long it was just miserable so I was on non-functional Aaron's work was just he's stressed all the time trying to work out of the laundry they're really trying hard to work with me too to like light my load and everything but the stress of like knowing that I was what do you do for a living room uh programmer software engineer oh cool so I took a year off of that to see if I really wanted to go back into it but um turns out that it was so that's another update we have to share so Aaron since 2020 that he left his job everyone say a big congratulations Aaron just do you know how hard it is to like get out of programming and then like get yourself back into it when you're like not like a programmer you're not like a you know not a real like like not like a Die Hard programmer so he had to like relearn a lot of stuff and like it was a really big deal so he just got a job two weeks ago three weeks ago well and it was like I could either go back into Tech or I could go you know start a new career and I was looking at like I don't know anthropology going back into education I want to be like an English teacher maybe there's a Drama teacher or anything like that but I was like and anyone who's ever like supported their husband through school you're just like please God do the thing that's gonna call them please just and then recruiters I don't want to go back recruiters like we'll pay uh between 120 140 000 a year for the job that you are getting paid like I started at 68 000 so I was like I guess I could respond to this recruiter yeah and then I had a really crappy resume that I needed to fix up and uh and it just fell in my lap almost because it was the perfect kind of culture one of those things they said we hire offer awesome people's personality more than their their hard skill set more their soft skill set is more important not that like I didn't have to have five years experience and know what I was talking about but I was able to talk up the tech jargon and make it sound like I knew what I was talking about he was typing stuff into chat GPT I'm fine I was just like no I'm just kidding um but uh you beat out like hundreds of other candidates and I just felt like I should meditate before my interview instead of programming for all the you know Tech questions that they might ask and they just asked a lot of questions like what does failure mean to you and like what do you learn from them and it was like you're in luck because I've been listening to nothing but Alan Watson Eckhart Tolle for the last two years on repeat so let me give you the most badass philosophical answer you ever heard in Evers so so they're like our core values are uh empathy is the number one and they're like we see that you've been struggling for the last year so we're going to give you a shot but at the same time they wanted to make sure that I mean it is like a three-month trial period and I've been able to like at least show up and do the work and uh yeah and it's that first week was really hard going back and being like how do people have a nine to five where they're not just able to get up and go for a walk every 15 minutes and just staying on task and being like having somebody over your shoulder being like all right now do this and like but can I go get a drink yeah so he's like okay there's no on that okay whatever but after that first week it was like okay okay and all the knowledge dump that you have to go through and realize like oh most of this is not important but people want to know thanks Zeus appreciate your Super Chat uh somebody wanted to know and what Geo want to specify your area of this might be of tech um software engineering for a company that makes um real estate software which is very interesting because uh it pays a lot it gets it's fascinating but it's interesting because the economy now has taken a nosive and so I was like wow this seems like kind of a scary industry to get into and they actually I don't I guess it's public but they did lay off a bunch of people like the second week that I got hired and I have this extreme like survivor's guilt but then at the same time I'm like I paid my dues [ __ ] yeah yeah but so it's really exciting to like enjoy this job versus my last job just because I feel like the last job they handled layoffs very poorly and we don't like them and saved it for themselves and didn't hand it out really don't like his old employer but I did like everybody I worked with yeah yeah and like I think they kind of help them out of church and stuff too so which leads us back to our original point of so Aaron just barely started his job he got it in December and um let's rewind for a second and I don't want to make this video too long so I want to give you this kind of get through the dirt you guys can ask any questions we're open books we're fine um why was I dumb and why did I not see the value in staying very loving and just a good husband and very much you are all the time you just had to do it in your own way um so taking us back to uh I would say February of last year so about a year ago um was the first time that it had ever crossed my mind truly truly let's keep in mind at this time I'm working at Mormon stories still I didn't quit till the month later in March everything that's moving along just swimmingly Aaron was out of work still taking care of the kids at home working on stories doing what I gotta do on Tick Tock you know and um I introduced to the substance of mushrooms and um had some great Revelations uh that first night second night I take it home uh Valentine's Day my husband and I are home together and I said hey this would be a fun activity for us to do on Valentine's Day you know fall in love and no we were already good our marriage was literally didn't have an issue I don't think I've always said like the amount of fights we've had up until this year I could count on like one and a half over like who's watching the kids tonight and like no but I mean like fights like where it's like hey enough or go sleep on the couch I can't see you right now but they always were resolved like within the night or within like very very quickly so 14 years of just mostly like it helps me have two horny people or it's like where can when can we just can we resolve this we can have sex again it's just like it really is what saves a marriage right if you are just like what do I need to say what do you need to say can we just like forget I'm codependent based on my sexual needs and that's what saved our marriage so we need your marriage to succeed find somebody Sam is in the chat um anyway wow here I'm not seeing any bad chats yet or anything anyway so when we were on mushrooms and we spent some time apart that night and we came back together and as you do you cry a lot with your spouse and you kind of see things really clearly and it just felt like I had this big Haze over like why I wasn't particularly like into you know you quit your job and you're just kind of like uh was it the fact was it the fact that you were home being a pothead and like things just weren't really just lost all faith in humanity and you're just so negative and like I was on my Allen Watts face and I was stuck in some of the uh lectures where he was just like there is no meaning and so I was really glomming onto that but not the other parts where he is like no actually there is meaning I was just yeah and so Aaron's had a lot of healing to do with his mom and so mostly I just remember sitting in bed with you and remember had our knees up and we're looking at each other and we were both crying and I was like I was like I just haven't seen you be strong for so long that that is what our marriage has been it's been us both working it's us both in our own zones thriving in our own ways but you know everybody everybody in life deserves a season of time where you're going to order I'm just saying it's hard though when you are you just don't know what why you're not particularly attracted to somebody you can't quite see what it is and that night it was like I haven't seen you thrive with the kids I just haven't seen all of this I haven't seen you be strong I've just seen I just felt like I've been carrying you for so long and it just occurred to me that night just occurred to me that I feel like I've been like holding this whole house on my freaking backpack yeah and uh just so everyone knows Sam is making vegan enchiladas and they're shaping up really well and she also texted me and told me that I'm hot so I haven't even taken off my jacket in this episode nor will I I'm a married woman as we already talked about um um anyway so that was February and then um I took mushrooms in February too yeah yeah we did that that same night that was your first night that was my second night I got a hotel to do mine and that was the first time I was like hey this might be actually a good idea to get a hotel more often and so that was a slippery slope it was kidding mushrooms are slippery slope to your husband leaving you and being like great about about having all of this free time in my mind free time in my everyday life no uh what are you gonna say it was it was good the vision and the tapping into like the because my mom had died I tapped into this feminine energy that really was a powerful like everyone's invested so much energy into you and especially your mother and your children as well they there's just so much invested into life and it was such a beautiful thing to come out of Mormonism which is obsessed with heavenly father and like the masculine Divine energy and to go into this feminine Divine energy that was just all about like live live it was like breathing life and it was just like this flood of stop giving up like we've given you so much like it's kind of just like shaking you awake with love but it was like I need to be tapped into that constantly or um I also need to like see everything that's been invested in in life in general so it was a good thing to happen after just being kind of pessimistic about Mormonism following through and being like this sucks that my whole world view seems shaken and yeah and I thought Divinity was all false and there was no Divine and there was just like we're just here alone but that was really a beautiful moment to be tapped back into something spiritual so it was a new Spiritual Awakening I think right on we are live by the way thank you but then the dopamine dumped the next day was hard because I came home very tired and I think there needs to be like a day after mushroom you need to have like some some pills or something to get the serotonin back up or something I don't know yeah um it's uh feels like sometimes you're purging demons and you're crying and it's a lot it's a lot it's sometimes just an emotional Journey it can be a lot of things obviously but um so um it was at that point where I felt like we kind of identified the issue of like Aaron I need you to you know actually take your healing kind of seriously um I obviously it was perfect um he's like do you remember when you were it was really beautiful when you were like I don't know how I'm gonna do this without God yeah and when I gave birth to my son and having to pull that strength of pushing baby out of me without believing that Jesus was going to help me doing it I mean like it was me the whole time so like I just like get you done and like you know I'm like super humble about it so I just but you found your core I dropped his strength you're just like you found yourself I just I don't know just with kids you just go you should go go go and uh you do what you can you show up where you're supposed to take accountability we're supposed to be authentic to people you should and uh yeah I just feel like I was just going going and I didn't needed a lot of reflection a lot of pause just a few weekends here and there the reason why I first did mushrooms that first time is I remember saying that I just needed to be nobody to everybody that means Exmark Community kids husband I don't want anyone to freaking know who I am or what I'm doing I just want to be alone and have nobody to talk to me so if that's the stat to self-care I take every once in a while but for Aaron he just had a lot of I don't know spider webs of well my depression before I never knew like my depression was probably also intertwined with scrupulosity and never really being able to forgive myself for coming home early on a mission which was also tied to depression and just like the pressure of society to be something that you're just not and never dealing with depression in the right way and like I just should have had a therapist when I was a teenager to deal with that scrupulosity I think because I had a lot of friends that were able to just look at all the rules with being Mormon and just being able to just brush it off and not really let it affect them Aaron was a good boy I was I wouldn't say like good because I was well I mean I was trying too hard to impress the leaders into my mom never wanted to make his mom cry I never wanted to make my mom cry I wanted to be the best at everything said I'm sorry Mom even though I was actually I got really into Eminem that was a benefit of him going on so many Edibles just sitting there with YouTube listening to Eminem and I was like am I in middle school again and are we dating because this seems like uh never meant to hurt you Eminem bled into NF and bled into um post Malone that's a good song by the way which one remember when Ronnie died and you said you wished it was me well haha I am dead did you as compete I will say like leaving Mormonism has done a lot for my appreciation of music and marijuana as well yeah it's been amazing right anyway so back on topic um what do you want to talk about being too many uh the potheads hopefully are being feeling really seen right now uh uh so I would say that throughout this last year um I think I just needed I think if I really had to narrow it down I feel like we just had to communicate better and I know that that is the most cliched thing in the entire world we had to be more intentional um about choosing our words choosing uh like really a leaning into our feelings but also taking time apart to sit with them and not need somebody to just co-regulate all the time and kind of breaking some codependent cycles and so by July I uh went to Ohio to go visit my family out there and then Aaron was watching the kids for five days straight and second I got home I walked in the door and he said he's that was the day yeah my grandma died and I was really emotional and I didn't feel like I got the codependency that I needed from you at that time without hold on we have an emergency somebody said please stop right please stop rapping I'm begging you please stop rapping have we been wrapped if you've had one shot one opportunity sees everything you've ever wanted would you capture it you know you were born in Michigan so I was born I was born in Michigan anyway if you guys haven't seen me wrap Ice Ice Baby at lightning speed you haven't lived anyway um sorry put it in the Super Chat and maybe she'll stop rapping anyway what um anyway point is uh the I came home and I remember that day he was like um I gotta go I am moving out and wait wait wait wait wait I just got in a hotel yeah I just got a hotel but first we just got a hotel he said I'm going to a hotel I'll see you when I see it and then I was mad because you can I say this I was mad that like I don't like everything to be public like when I look bad and so I was like I don't want you to make me look bad by telling everybody that I'm doing I'm stressed but I I'm like okay I didn't want to be accountable for being a shitty uh he wasn't being shitty because everything in its proper context he was taking some personal space to be able to be the man he needed the 40 stake which I know is probably not didn't even know self-indulgent no so he went out and moved out to a hotel we just didn't really know what was going to go on and stuff but I did feel very abandoned and I was like say what um children who and looking back it was it was kind of a reaction to somebody who was just very depressed and very overwhelmed who had just spent five days with these kids and we just hadn't I would say it sounds corny but like we hadn't seen each other communicated where I felt like he was understanding me or that I was understanding him on pretty much any area of our life so kind of when you're just at that point where you're sometimes walking past each other a lot yeah and uh um and then that turned into him like actually leasing an apartment and well first of all I got an Extended Stay which I'm proud that I was willing to put up with a really shitty hotel because I thought it was um kind of like uh self-fulfilling prophecy or just something you know humbling the Talking Stick it's because it's my channel and I'm like I'm only one used to talking here sorry um before I got the apartment I got enough uh one month paid for one month Hotel Extended Stay to see if that was the right move and kind of was like a time for me to read a bunch of books like inner bonding and like I wanted to see what it would take to be like a writer for like uh kind of a David Sedaris type and I was like oh it probably takes a lot more skill and discipline than I'm willing to put in right now I should probably go get a job so we went to um visit John Larson and he gave me good advice because he's like you know you just gotta have a job so that you can do the things that you want to do um say the books that helped you inner bonding was huge and um and what's it about inner bonding is about code breaking codependency but also like connecting with your inner child which for me was good because Depression started when I was a child and through scribulosity and if you've ever read like the Ender's Game series there's like this character that has OCD and I really related to that character because everything that they did wrong they would go and do this thing where they'd look at the grains of the floor and like do this OCD kind of penance thing and I was like hey this is a Mormon author that really gets the scrupulosity thing and so the inner bonding was also helpful for me to forgive my father and mother not forgive but understand my father and mother and their upbringing they're the best we can environment my grandparents my grandfathers fought in World War II and that was what made them so Stern and authoritarian and bled Into The Wiggles as somebody said but bled into my being a disciplinarian and not really being there for my kids in a way that yeah I think is actually beneficial um Ender bonding is a great book and also I think has helped me parent a lot better especially because we talked a lot about how parenting is so hard and um you just don't know how hard it's gonna be even if you are a nanny for eight years and inner bonding helped me uh really think about how if I was a kid how I would want my a three-figure you know parent to talk to me so you know really helping hold space for our kids and their feelings and stuff and just it's been very very helpful and uh on that journey together so everything that you do as a as a parent where you're just like I need to work on myself first that'll make me better for my spouse I'm able to actually come back together healing a lot of these wounds and things that are just products of being raised in Mormonism and then do you actually come back and choose that person together after you just kind of got married because you were horny and two comedians you know and just like you actually do come back as better more whole people and then you have these kids already and you're like oh [ __ ] you guys are still here and you're like good news we're all healed we're good we're 100 ready to go pre-packaged and everything zip US Open here to parent you no uh where everything is yeah kind of had to separate kind of had to Aaron Retreat to his apartment that is actually super convenient because we're recording from right now so it's nice to have all my stuff here uh because six months and we made up and it was like well I still have this lease so we might as well make use of it and I get to work from home and it's better to work from home from the apartment because the kids are not here to scream so that's okay also I wanted to say from inner bonding I learned like the dynamic of like uh the caretaker versus The Narcissist and how important it is to not fall into either of those extremes and that you need to caretake your own inner child and that children are narcissists in a way and so it's like they're very needy and not able to see anyone else's needs or you know yeah so and uh I just kind of try to like gamify life it used to look at life where I'm like another day oh the kids oh just like now literally I just look at life as like I'm improving every day at like if you know when you're doing improv and everything is like they shout out uh prompt just being with the kids now is just like a prompt for my brain to problem solve and find a way to make them laugh and have fun with them so much more fun than yeah drop your inner bonding coach I talk about Samantha all the time it is so I said let's try not to talk about Samantha's live stream we've already ruined it um best friend Samantha Shelley from uh zap on the shelf and uh so inner bonding is a great book that she recommended to us so it's been super deep purple and she says you didn't finish it yet Kara hey I listened to the audiobook journey I definitely got it and then I read the first couple chapters and I was like integrated it's inner bonded yes somebody saw on set aside and Speaker for the I think it was Susanna said yeah you'd probably know better it's been a while before since I've read them seriously anyway um care did you ever read um books um I've read a couple um you know fair you can listen to like a 12 hour podcast and just be like I listen to a podcast no one gives a crap but if you're like I listen to it or like I read a book everyone's like oh you read a book but it could have just basically a 12 hour podcast so it's like listen to podcasts should count as reading a book do you learn an absorber of information that's the problem I don't retain it I do I get the gist of it and I'm like make connections got it I could give a BS tag dog on it in five minutes um because that's pretty much what I do really um anyway so reading those books has helped a lot and we had to kind of find a way to like I said go go go for so long and then give ourselves permission to kind of go there's a video speaking of Samsung that I did with her about like being married do you stay married after you leave the church and all of that stuff that people go through that they chose somebody within the confines of a cult under these horny pretenses under these gender norms and stuff and if you change as a person through your journey out of Mormonism how do you still choose that person and and so giving ourselves permission in space because obviously working at Mormon stories there's just so um so many people who have been on that journey and learning from them I remember there's one specific podcast um with a camera's name right now but it was all about so many people talking about their divorces and what they've gone through and stuff and you see yourself in these stories like me is listening very intently as a co-host and being like I have to actually you don't know it until you know what they're like I need to give ourselves space to actually see what would it look like if we lived apart what would our lives look like if we lived apart and then and not being scared of Hell of fire and Damnation and not being kicked out of the Celestial Kingdom but being like this might actually just be a better thing to do for the sake of everybody including the kids but then you start to have to face reality of like it's not about the Celestial Kingdom and I have to actually show up as a partner and I don't get to just free ride and use the manipulation of if you leave me then our Celestial marriage is going to be disrupted blah blah blah and then it's like a subconscious thing but um but in that what you just said there's still all of these codependent mechanisms that are just ingrained then and and some great talks that I've had with Samantha or about what love is and and your your Notions of what marriage is in Mormonism like it is just insane that we let anyone get married let alone like teenagers let alone people in Cults now um but just your your ideas in such a cultural conditioning about what love is like I can't listen to songs on the radio anymore because it's just so so possessive of like this type of love this traditional um ownership kind of basis marketed to that base yeah that just like hits at your court at your ego of like needing to feel like this person completes you and things um while feeling like if we go let our each other go on our own Journeys that we'll be able to come back together as more whole complete people without having all of this this all this um things that we've already unlearned I would say so so I feel like it was a long year and he moved out he's been he's had this apartment leased and stuff that he was thankfully able to uh take a lot of space and stuff and I once I saw that that was good for him I was fine with it and I was like A-Okay with me and so I felt a lot of stress because I want to be able to be the type of person who can do all the things that need to be done but I can't and so I felt a lot of stress wanting to make content wanting to make weekly YouTube videos and things and just being pulled in so many different directions and so um I think now the good news is my update is I'm in a really really good place now where I really feel like I will make content when I want to yeah at the right time that I want to I always feel a lot of anxiety about like what would make the best video though like what do people actually need you know and I feel like I'm over that I'm just gonna go hit apologist in the ball sack every day and that's just my life plan from this point out and I won't feel any anxiety about it there was a lot of pressure for you to be the breadwinner when you were in it and that's not a healthy thing too because Aaron didn't have a job but now they have a job I feel like I was trading Bitcoin making it back 500 a month so you know pain the IRS is listening Aaron terrible um everything's been taxed um so anyway I'm feeling a lot better I feel like I always feel good I really am like you could catch me at any point over the last couple years and I'll always be like yeah like I'm fine I manage things fine I'm not overly dramatic one way or another in too many areas um it's amazing but what having a role and a purpose does to your just psyche just having a job and like seeing you flourish in your skirt skirt job and your role in society and things and just like being able to see your investment in comedy pay off too and like and your investment and your in your education that's not been through the Collegiate system I think that's yeah really really um a kind of a badass rock star kind of road map or I mean Journey just feels like what I meant to do and I just appreciate everybody who's been um helping me out and support me on patreon and stuff and that um everybody who's always like okay you know don't quit and you don't have to worry I never will uh I feel like I made out of titanium I have lots of talks with John Dillon and other people in the space and John Larson is a good friend of ours now and like it's important for people to take breaks and kind of distance yourself there's a lot of just like toxic stuff again like I said at the beginning it's learning how it's self-care through the Journey instead of like breaking down on the side of the road and you're like oh I guess it's time for some self-care yeah and so I feel like I've got a lot of good support system and stuff like I said you could catch me at any day and I'm always pretty much doing good but I genuinely feel like now that my ADHD is under control and I can actually work and if you guys have ever had like issues in the ADHD Department like I when I was getting diagnosed and I had to go over I was like I actually I like really held down a lot of the trauma that I felt because I know I was smart in school and like middle school and high school but I was always um had such a hard time concentrating on learning new things and um I forgot that like I attempted to like unalive myself several times from like attempted or I wanted attempted from like sixth grade till I'd say like 10th grade and I was like I forgot about those and it all just came from a place of just feeling overwhelmed and overworked and not able to function and that I would be better off leaving and stuff so you can't like feel like you can accomplish things and that you want to do things but you just don't know where you're going to be able to get the focus from so I feel like I've got my best attention span and and my best husband and my best kids and stuff so um then the other piece of it is that um feel like I just have been like a stoner for like two years at some point over the last two years I've smoked weed at least once a day in some capacity they're a lot or a little and uh yeah they're gonna tax our weed Supply or what so it's I think a lot of people go through an ex-mormon Stoner phase and stuff so everything that I've ever done that you have ever seen I've probably been a little bit high in and uh then to add to that that's good in a lot of ways because I so to be able to like make content sometimes you need to like snuff down like you know oh I'm gonna be cringe or like I don't feel like it but then when you're just a little bit you're just like I feel like I have a point to explain and I'm gonna be really serious about it so I just feel like it's helped me be a content creator but then I've it's like it's time to give it up here so I feel like for every five good things it did or maybe the other way every five good things it did or helped me out with with anxiety or ADHD things it like held me back in two areas where I was too impulsive or um there's plenty of times where I could take accountability and Mormon stories where I was like it's like a little bit too much of a bite of an edible that day or something like um that's never in line with my Mixie feel more codependent it makes me feel like streaking through the lawn no um uh but it's always my my intention that if I you know you know I mess up on something and I hurt somebody or um I'm too whatever because I wasn't in my proper State of Mind whoever is um to be like hey let's Tamp that down so just coincidentally on uh New Year's Eve I was like let's give up marijuana let's just throw it all in the basement and throw it all away and so I decided let's see let's do a couple days and stuff and really that was good for me just to sit with my anxiety sit with my feelings I was going through a lot of big big feelings and stuff and um it was the happiest best time of my life I lasted 11 days and um which is a milestone it was amazing and so but it really gave me some clarity on uh what I need what I don't need and stuff so if you ever in that position where you're like I probably also get stoned every day at some way or another it's really good just to see what it's like for a long amount of time to take a break and so also through this month of January um our kids need a lot of attention and I just needed to focus on getting them into some therapies and stuff and remove caring about Mormonism do I even want to stay in this space some people are saying things about me do I even want to engage in this space anymore do I feel like fighting this good fight um I left it thinking I'm titanium I'll come back yes I will you know and I spent this whole last month not thinking about Mormonism up until on Monday was the first day back where I actually did anything made any kind of content and surprisingly it was like my favorite Mormon stories episode with John Knox never where I was like this is so important so when you feel like you're good at something and people pick it up and you feel like just where you should be so I still feel like it's where I should be and hopefully I can keep making good content for the community yeah and you can do it with a more balanced approach and you don't have to be so uh entrenched in it um I don't do anything with balance I'm still figuring that one out yeah Aaron nothing nothing everything will get done I have a bubble on my throat anyway um anything else to wrap up do you guys have any other questions point is to wrap up my story to wrap up our update basically December by December came around where I feel like we got to the Bedrock of our marriage and I feel like I got to the point where I looked at Aaron and thought like I would divorce you just to remarry you again tomorrow oh my gosh that's so cute where I was like it just really feels like we've grown up together since I was a kid and you have to really decide do I still choose this person to continue life with and there's obviously everything to be said about we have three kids together regardless of all that because no matter you can't force somebody just because you have kids or somebody you can't force somebody to be like I love you because we have kids together like you have to actually figure out where that person meets you and where your communication is lacking and stuff so all of that is important to talk about the kids um and that we don't want to introduce any more issues into their lives because again our kids are very hard and they would miss us going back and forth Just when he was living in his apartment that was really hard for them already right so we already kind of got a good big taste of that so this is all to say that I feel like we we kept we kept it all together and we were really able to break everything down and and get grounded and go back to square one and just kind of remember what made us fall in love in the first place and all those things are still true yeah it's been that's been a journey it's been a lot of accountability and I felt like I wasn't qualified until I like got back into the career and got myself together and figured out what the heck I wanted with my life and uh that's when I was able to show up and be confident and and I I don't know it's just one thing after another and just seeing you and being able to see you and understand you on different levels and also just how wonderful of a mother you are and you know all that stuff just comes back to you and you start we've always put in the work we do yeah you had a growth oriented person I'm trying to say like everybody in my life in my closed Circle including my husband are all very growth oriented people and if you know what I mean you know what I mean like people who are really they really try to do their best to live up to their values and take accountability where they need to and that there's not a douche among them in my circle so it wouldn't work with just any old person and stuff but I would say that every single turn in our marriage where we had a fight and I was obviously right which is 90 of the time Aaron's always come around and I was just like just kidding I'm half kidding half serious but uh still waiting for you to come around have you been right about something you're right to buy this yeah you haven't come around to acknowledging what I've been right about so I'll be patient though I'm not egotistical best part about Aaron okay there's also good parts um but Aaron is a wizard with finances and the only reason I have anything I am a dumb child bride Mormon girl who just was like yes daddy don't take me away yes marry me at 19. I don't know how anything works so I would say that's a downside the downside and a very co-dependent side of our marriage so I don't know jack [ __ ] about how to fix this car my car broke down I wouldn't know what to do if he died tomorrow car stuff house stuff he knows he redid all of our electric he's a wizard he'd read it all the electrical very well insured because I have well insured good job now and so he knows how to get a credit card and how to like do like I don't understand I'm really don't care I'm so dumb when it comes to finances I don't know jack [ __ ] about anything I just make the money I'm like here you go so he's really really been like taking on if if my backpack I wear is like really focusing on like child care how do I figure out negotiations of like the mom all the mom stuff which actually could guess at Aaron's is like finances how do I do this this credit card is due then you do understand interest rates which I'll give you that like hey this zero percent intro rate is now 28 so we need to pay that off stat and you're like oh damn yeah so speaking of patreon.com support me there's also donor box links it'll be down there in a second now um obviously supporting this channel is always super helpful and keeps me motivated and going and I'm sorry I do this but you don't even know or care anyway about what your credit score we don't need to talk about um so be back on topic give me the the talking one again um back on topic um yeah Aaron and I have had overall uh a great marriage and if somebody asked like are you planning on is the goal to stay together um I mean the answer is like yes and no if you want like an honest honest answer like um ideally in a perfect world you know you'd have two very mentally healthy people come together and they make children together and those children have their biological mom and dad who are very healthy and give them the best life hooray for everyone involved um since we don't live in that ideal society and everyone's messy gay couples are messy Christians are messy like Mormons are messy atheists are messy everybody comes with their issues and their problems and stuff and we try to give our children the least amount of things they'll have to talk about in therapy one day that's the same thing that I talked about the beginning of the live stream yeah it's very expensive he knows I went I didn't know uh but if when I was talking about like my child writes out of advocacy and like trying to reduce trauma and stuff and I wasn't probe gay marriage and stuff I was being a little bit like exaggerating there but mostly what I was trying to advocate for that is the same things I care about now is just people trying to come to the table when they create children to inflict the least amount of fireman drama into their children's lives and it's impossible to do but if you were trying to be a conscientious person who's trying to take care of your [ __ ] and you handle it so that your kids don't have to carry that baggage into their lives that's my intention always and so if you're always looking at like a successful life is if you get married and that you both end up our friend Tommy Donegan has a joke that like I proposed my girlfriend and we'll have a successful marriage if one of us gets to stand over the other one and go haha yes we made it I saw you die like that successful marriage is watching your spouse die basically and like our concepts of what make a successful marriage are just the Paradigm is so out of whack you know and so it's about and you know um hi Mom just found just hope you're having a good time anyway um the worst message I just read on my screen right I love you so much please for the love anyway was your mom really on there yes everyone shout out to Carol everyone give me an extra big patreon donation or donor backs donation because I vulnerably put my life out there and then my parents watch it love you guys so much anyway there's nothing on here I wouldn't tell them except for now they found out that I'm like a super Stoner um anyway uh or was I feel like I already had a talking to to your mom about why I use some well I used yeah Aaron stood up to my mom big time once a couple months ago this is the only thing that helps my depression but now that I am working I can't really go there anymore yes he told my mom to like cut it out girl I have anxiety and depression you don't know what I'm dealing with I have my weak leave me alone yeah anyway um it's a family reunion yeah I can't go on oh no going up uh what was I saying coming back on top what's your mom's name on here she saw me drinking beer oh no I'll take another sip just doesn't but your dad and your grandpa they worked for these companies all right Mom at least it's Miller that's the that's the brand that my family sells in their beer distribution the non-mormon ones anyway what were we talking about gonna be back on topic I'm so [ __ ] triggered right now oh damn it I swore [ __ ] mom please still love me right um we'll pay tithing again just not too bad okay anyway the point is I forgot what I was gonna say we're just basically wrapping up that everything's back on track oh yeah we're kids it's the goal to stay together that's what I was talking about is the goal to stay together um the goal is always to be mentally healthy and to take care of our kids and right now staying together that looked like the plan I just can't think of anything else looks absolutely perfect he looks absolutely perfect um so I have no other friends whatsoever in this year you would have checked my Google search you would have been like this girl looks like she's single mom in it in the future she has a Google Search history that would tell a story so anyway anything else you want to say Aaron to wrap it up just just grateful that we put in the work and it's gonna be you know work work work from here on out because nothing's easy but it's worth it I disagree and would like to divorce you okay um so yeah now I think I think we we just really leaned into the the joy and laughter and absurdity of life sometimes you're just like life is absurd we'll get through it everything's fine don't take anything too seriously and we just roll up Alan Watts talks a lot about finding the absurdity and and learning to laugh at everything that you take too seriously and don't take yourself too seriously which is weird because we both came in through comedy and then started taking life too seriously and that's when things got hard as you forget that it's supposed to be enjoyable I forgot that I'm a master improver and yeah and you have taught me many things about not CM yes handing me um I'm actually uh can you uh tell the people where they can uh support this Channel and thank you guys so much for hanging out with us tonight thanks Mom thanks Dad I really like your parents I think that they I think they're very enjoyable people I don't think that they realize how much we love them and I hope that they see that because we didn't give them a very good Christmas present I don't think but my mom got us the greatest Christmas present she got us some balmy drums so anyway the old Mormon parents they're all right they didn't raise me too crazy or anything but I've turned out okay I am the product of who I am so genetics conditioning who you are seeing me here today thanks Phil thanks girl and I'd say that you get your talkativeness from Phil I don't ever want to hear that I like it anyway we really gotta wrap it up thank you guys for supporting this channel thanks for everyone for spending time with me and my husband thanks for being so good to Cara everybody um yeah thanks for supporting this channel so that uh I've been able to pay the bills I don't can't say that I paid all the bills between Mormon stories my YouTube channel but it has been very cool to be able to make a living a lot of weight with a YouTube channel on the patreon and stuff and people's little donations always help too so if you want to support my channel I will leave the donor box button right after in two seconds just you just sit tight but most importantly patreon.com uh where I put up all the audios if you're just like I'll use a listening podcast I don't want to listen to the video of it I put up all the audios of everything that you listen to up over there and it's you know just kind of like a tip jar just every couple months just throw like a little five dollars there makes me warm in my heart and uh make sure you follow me on all the platforms everything's in my link tree so Tick Tock Instagram Facebook if you're into that thing I don't know that one's for my mom um anything else do you have any guys have any other questions thanks so much for hanging out with us dear Care's parents love Karen Aaron as they are I will say that that is one thing that uh I've been trying to help my mom understand is I am just so deeply entrenched in the trauma of the post-mormon journey your shelf breaking too many things adding up the cognitive dissonance and you're going oh it's a not true thing and all of us have been good little rule following you know conservative type Mormons who have all been there who have absolutely tried our hardest in a system that is absolutely false and goes against every best practice psychologically that we know of has been wrong about everything from race to sexuality um to you know name it and that they've been wrong about and that has ramifications on people's real lives and that I am trying to be somebody who's in the space to help make it laugh and validate you and explain some things and give you whatever that you need and stuff and how I know I know what I do for a living it's really hard to explain that to your Mormon parents it's like forget we're talking about the church just think of me as just a good person trying my best out here that you raised me to love people and care about them and their journey and to be empathetic to their Journey it just happens to be on a thing that makes you feel like you're bashing the thing that you like I like to say you left the 99 to go after the one and a Christian lens I absolutely absolutely do but she's like can you do it without talking about me and I'm like that's where you're uh gonna have to get in now I try I try I try um but gosh why I just have so many darn stories uh but if I can do this with my parents loving me and being able to make this content the same time that would be ideal so thank you everybody for tuning in and uh please make sure to uh oh throw a couple dollars our way you know not not turning it down thanks everyone for your Super Chat thank you Kim thank you Michelle sorry to anyone else 30 interest rate who have we mentioned that apparently that means something I should pay attention to and you guys should too so and I got a new mic stand too so I'm here in my new studio I can just come into his apartment any day I'm so glad that you left me because now look at my YouTube channel is going to be booming hey I said if you want me to get a job I need to have some space to study and that was that you needed a two-bedroom apartment okay well it was like 200 more and like the kids want to stay in the second bedroom sure Aaron and Callahan can stay in the closet and we could sell the house and potentially move in here and hate everything because that was the worst idea but instead we're out here making content for you on a date night so we're gonna go get pizza now and oh we have to end on a kiss okay let's recreate our first kiss you guys want to see our first kiss that'll be a fun way to go out all right so I'm gonna recreate our first guest okay so what happened was I'm 19 years old I just got home from uh this summer camp that I just worked out and he's a good Mormon boy I'm a good Mormon girl pretty much at that point except for I was sitting a little bit now listen so I'm sitting on one side of the room and he's like why you come sit over here next to me I'm on my parents couch at my parents house nobody was home but I knew they're coming back soon so it was like gotta work it in so I was like if I want him to kiss me I should probably go over on the couch we just had a couple dates wrote the whole summer while we were over it girls camp where I was at this this summer camp for girls sitting next to him it's on that side of you but forget that part and so he's talking to me and he's like you know the side smile thing like this and he's like and then he goes in and he leans to kiss me boys girls non-binary whoever you are do not kiss me don't yes kiss them all right everyone close your eyes Aaron's gonna kiss you like he kissed me for the first time it was way worse it was like this okay he had a head tilt down to it he went like this like foggy eyes look at that and he smiled full smile into my face and I was like if I want to have sex before I die we needed to put up we needed you to go to summer camp for three months to get over that uh initial but then you said that the second kiss was better oh that's right that was before I went to summer camp yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I was really hot stuff there I had just good I was going to the summer camp with like all these Europeans and stuff and like one of them was like yeah I just like had sex with a guy last week in a Holland behind a bike rack in my little Mormon sense buildings were like I just had my first kiss and I thought that that was the most interesting story and now we're doing a round circle of our most interesting stories I realized my story is not very interesting and I feel very lame now very very lame but you know at least it was Christian anyway close-eyed kiss and we survived that and then kiss me you kissed the people want a kiss did I kiss your teeth no are you guys my teeth that was a different girlfriend Aaron we're divorcing again you're confusing me with your other girlfriends what are you talking about you said your first kiss was a Disneyland and you kissed her teeth her name was Edna Jesus wow that was the kiss me already all right pleaser no everyone awkward this is awkward because now I have to go sign the lease again anyway well did that kiss sealer did that did that convince you that we love each other yet that was the Meisner technique that I was employing there all right well I don't know how to say goodbye Sam always makes fun to me that I'm always way too I don't know you just don't know how to wrap it up do you anyway I'll wrap you in wrap up wrap it up all right this will make a good thing okay and scenes scene all right love you guys thanks for supporting this channel thanks for supporting Kira

Channel: nuancehoe

Views: 44,814

Keywords: ExMormon, Marriage, Divorce, Leaving Mormonism

Id: 9LQeeh2qYtw

Length: 86min 51sec (5211 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 30 2023