The Dark Side of a Mormon Mission - Brinley Jensen Pt. 1 | Ep. 1680

hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast I'm your host John delin today we are super excited to interview Brinley Jensen hey Brinley hi um over the past several years as uh Millennial and gen Z Mormons are starting to question their faith and or leave the church one of the topics that we've been really interested in covering is what's it like to be raised uh as a believing Orthodox Mormon sometimes in Utah in kind of the 2020s and um and then also what's it like to serve a mission in the 2020s right now during this time either covet or post covet when uh so many people are you know especially so many young people are actually leaving the church well uh I learned about Brinley on Instagram because Brinley uh was raised Mormon she was raised learning about things like Mormon stories podcast learning to fear these sorts of quote anti-mormon um you know elements of social media she uh entered the mission field as a believing Mormon and um started to experience doubts and to question her testimony and maybe even have sort of a bit of a feminist Awakening while she was serving as a missionary is that right Brinley yes definitely yeah um it was an interesting experience for sure and uh and so you know we're going to be covering many themes today we're going to be covering what it's like to be raised in the Mormon church as a teenager in the modern era you know within the past few years what's it like to um serve a mission and to start having serious doubts or questions on your mission we'll talk about you know we'll find out whether Brinley leaves her Mission early or not whether she completes her mission after she experiences questions and doubts on our mission and then uh how she has navigated her doubts and questions since coming home from her Mission and how long ago did you leave the mission field I got home a little over a year ago okay so July 2021. so you've been home for a little over a year from from your mission yeah and if it's okay to say your dad is currently a Mormon Bishop yes is that right yes so you come from an orthodox very Orthodox yes so that's that's what we're in store for today Brinley we're so grateful that you'd be willing to come share your story um how old are you right now I'm 21. yeah 21 yes okay so welcome thank you for coming thank you I'm excited to be here and I am so thrilled to have as my uh riding shotgun today as my co-host my brilliant partner um in what I call truth and righteousness hey there I am so thrilled John I am so thrilled yeah thanks for being here yeah my pleasure people love having you on the podcast so I'm glad you're here that's that's great to hear yeah you're going to be honest for the for at least the foreseeable future at least once a week is that right that's right maybe only once a week is that right I think that's the plan Marty's good on boundaries these days okay well Margie we're so glad to have you great okay so um without any further Ado Brinley let's dig in but first what I'd like to do is start off by having you share your intentions because especially if you've got Orthodox believing family members or even a dad who's a bishop it would be easy for believing Mormons to think that you want to cause harm or ill um by coming on Mormon stories podcast so without giving kind of your story away would you like to begin by just sharing why you wanted to come on Mormon stories podcast and what your intention is yes definitely isn't yes um I definitely have a lot of believing Mormons in my life that I love a lot and would never want to offend um but a big part of coming on this podcast for me is sharing my story because for me hearing other people's stories on this podcast and on social media help me not to feel so alone and I think it's so important to be open-minded to the different experiences that we all have um navigating faith especially in Utah for me but all over the world yeah absolutely all the yeses to that thank you absolutely okay great well that's a great disclaimer and I think we're going to try and do this episode in one in one part yes because you're not 50 or 60. I don't have that many years to talk about no yeah so maybe you know listeners and viewers we're going to try and get this done in a single part okay so Brinley uh maybe sometimes we start with kind of the parents you know as far as sort of your your parents Mormon stories people like to know or your parents Converse were they Pioneer ancestry talk a little bit about your parents and your ancestors and kind of your Mormon story that begins probably before you were born yeah for sure um both of my parents grew up in Orthodox Mormon households probably just like mine um my grandparents are all members very faithful Temple marriages my parents got married in the Salt Lake City Temple do you know where they met um they met because my mom went to the temple and met my dad's sister and she set them up okay so wow very um yeah very typical yes thank you yeah yeah that's how they met didn't date for very long knew that they were in love um yeah and where were they growing up my mom grew up in Riverdale Utah what was that yeah um Ogden area close to Ogden yeah and my dad grew up in Hooper Utah also close to Ogden hopper Hopper how do you spell Hopper h-o-o-p-e-r it's not Hooper so you're kind of Davis County your parents are like Weber County Weber County Mormons yes so for those who don't know that's kind of 30 to 45 minutes north of Salt Lake City yes on I-15 is that right exactly and it's traditionally viewed as I don't know a pretty heavily Mormon oh very very yes yeah South Salt Lake City but Salt Lake City is probably less Mormon oh I would say definitely Ogden's very Mormon yeah okay so okay so your parents had a very Mormon up reading they got married quickly do you remember how young your parents were when they got married do you even know I think my mom was 19 and my dad was 21 just off a mission okay so 21 22. so your dad did serve a mission yes he did you know where he served yeah he served in Wisconsin Green Bay Wisconsin okay yeah all right how many kids did your parents have total three three kids yeah and where are you in the birth order I am the oldest you're the oldest yes I'm the oldest and I have a brother who just turned 18 and a sister who's 14. okay all right so where does your Mormon story begin what were you what year were you born I was born in 2001 2001 yeah so you were born four years before Mormon stories podcast started yeah during the year I had my faith crisis really yeah yeah wow who knew I mean for me it was a long burn but yeah at the beginning yeah but in 2001 is where really really picked up steam for me so yeah okay so 2001 tell us about your your Mormon upbringing as a child um what was that where were you born oh I was born and raised Ogden Utah I was born at McKay-Dee I've the house that my parents live in now is the house I grew up in um and I had a typical Mormon upbringing prayers every night reading scriptures if you watch any of my family home videos there's something about what did you learn at church today or what do you mean your family home videos like little video like old video videos yeah home videos that you you've shared on the internet oh no no I haven't shared that okay they could be out there I don't know but just videos that my parents took of us growing up okay okay um you're doing family prayer and scripture studies yes all the time okay and it was important to me too I always was very I loved church and the church and the gospel I loved outfit do you remember primary and what you liked about primary yes I was probably the one that was like sitting there reverently folding my arms and listening I was pretty quiet when I was a kid um but I loved all the songs I loved to get up and share my testimony in church um I loved learning about all the Bible and Book of Mormon stories all of it okay yeah and you were the oldest of three were there expectations as a young Mormon oldest girl yes um I mean obviously regular expectations be respectful to your parents but I grew up like I know my parents wanted me to do this but I expected of myself from as long ago as I can remember to always say my nightly prayers daily scripture study think of Jesus in all things that kind of thing okay yeah did you have a favorite primary song or favorite primary songs um probably I'm trying to be like Jesus was my favorite one okay yeah yes trying to be like Jesus yeah I mean good which I still do yeah okay they're pretty catchy yeah designed to be yes oh Margie are you being a little cynical no not necessarily I mean just for for kids to sing along yeah that's true and that's right okay sorry okay okay so um so anything happen in your family your your family's life kind of pre-adolescence that is important for your story anything with your parents anything with you anything with your siblings or is it just kind of like a simple idealistic Mormon childhood um pretty simple I mean there are a few things there was when I was in sixth grade my family went through a lot my mom had a miscarriage where she lost more than half of the blood volume in her body it was really bad and I think that was a big faith not necessarily turning point because I already was pretty faithful even as a little kid but I remember feeling like I relied on my faith heavily even at a young age when that happened and in that same few months that that happened um my brother had a surgery that didn't go well and he also lost a lot of blood was in the hospital for a while and so I think being so young and seeing all that pressure and stress put on my family I like it really solidified I relied on the church and the gospel and those teachings very heavily every second of every day and that's how I was after that so the family crisis brought your family even closer to the church than it was I would say and I think my family like it's almost like you can't even say they could get closer to the church because we were already so close but for me personally right I think it strengthened my faith just to know that that's what I was relying on so what I'm hearing you kind of say is it was during those times where on a level suffering reached you it kind of came into your life in an unexpected way it sounds like yeah where you were able to kind of develop lean on your own you know it kind of emerged your own sense of these things that you had been taught that you needed them then exactly right yeah yeah that makes sense yeah okay so going into your adolescent years sounds like you were you were you know your Mormon identity was maybe the most important part about you oh definitely um I put pressure on myself a lot to be perfect and any tiny thing I did that I didn't view as perfect would like fill me with sickening amounts of guilt um do you have idea of examples yes I do um I had a calendar a tiny little calendar that I would check off if I read my scriptures and prayed every day and I went years without missing a day and like there was a night that I had been doing homework and I was so tired and I fell asleep without praying or reading my scriptures and it took me months to not feel guilty about that of reading extra I started reading I'd say okay I have to read a few chapters of the Book of Mormon some of the Old Testament some of the New Testament some Doctrine and Covenants every day to make up for it and so I remember feeling really guilty about that and then just normal teenage things like having sexual feelings for boys or even you know understanding those feelings Within Myself things like masturbation things that every teenager goes through but I feel like I just doubled down on myself about everything just zoning in on the guilt if that makes sense so what were those guilt thoughts like how did they take shape in your brain um a lot of it was like I felt like everything I did was a step further away from being able to be with my family forever and so that stressed me out a lot and then a lot of it was like no I'll be with my family forever like I'm baptized I have my whole life plan I'll go to the temple but then even with things like like masturbation it's fine I talk about that on here right um I was just like I'll just have to hide that I ever did that until like Jesus comes again and then I'll be like please forgive me is kind of how I thought of it but yeah okay so tell people for those who really aren't familiar with Mormonism yeah what would the tie be between being with your family forever in masturbation kind of make in your mind how did how did those things to explain to a non-mormon if our audience is non-mormon how those things all tie together well I grew up with the for strength of Youth pamphlet the church put out which I read a lot okay and the church has always been pretty clear on its views on anything relatively sexual that that is only for between a man and a woman in marriage not for yourself like not to be shared outside of marriage especially with someone of the same gender um and so with that I just kind of thought like I knew it was in God's eyes a really big sin and I'd so often heard like if you have sex outside a marriage like that's comparable to murder and I was like how close am I to that if that makes sense even if it's just with yourself yeah definitely you feel like that that could have applied and so if it becomes a really big sin Mormons teach that families can be together forever take us through how that made you feel worried about your ability to be with your family forever um I definitely thought I was the only member of my family who was making a mistake at all or like sinning and so it's like you can't let your whole family down because being with them for eternity that's a pretty big deal um and so it's just that constant pressure of I have to tell someone I did this but that makes me very uncomfortable and so I didn't want to obviously so I don't I hope this answers the question but I guess I just prayed a lot to God about all my mistakes in general kind of begging to forgive me like remember how I read my scriptures so much does not make up for it but that's not exactly like when they teach repentance to kids it's not just make sure you read your scriptures and he'll forgive everything else it's there's a process you're supposed to feel guilt which I did and forsake your sin and confess and never sin again which is just kind of an impossible process when you're a teenager and there's billions of mistakes you can make every day right and specifically the one around repenting would involve you at what 13 14 15 16 some age having to go to your Bishop a grown man to confess what when you thought about needing to perform that step of repenting of these quote sins yeah to a grown man in your home congregation what was that thought like for you uh it made me sick to my stomach because I didn't feel comfortable with that and which is why I didn't um and it made me feel like a liar as well because I wasn't but the bishop I had at the time I remember other kids and or teenagers in my ward saying like well I told him I did this and I got in so much trouble and I was just like yeah I do not want to be a part of that I don't want to get in trouble or have to explain in detail that just scared me I was I was shy in my early teens and so I just I didn't feel comfortable with that at all I didn't want to do it so on the one hand you want to be righteous and live with your family forever on the other hand you know you're committing this sin that's next to murder yeah um but then on the other hand you know that to be forgiven you got to go talk to this 40 50 year old man and tell him about your private sexual behavior behind closed doors one-on-one and you don't want to do that so on the other hand you're living with this guilt and shame of feeling like you're a liar and you're hiding things yes and disobeying God so all that pressure what was that like for you as a teenage girl um I um any part of Junior High School where I wasn't feeling guilty about something um and I remember so specifically thinking as like a 14 year old girl um relating to the sin of masturbation specifically I was like I wish that I was going to confess that I had sex with someone rather than the shame of me doing something by myself because I was like I feel like that's more common is what I thought and obviously a 14 year old girl like that I think that's a very sad thought process to have but that's how I felt um and I thought that all the time I was like if only that was my sin instead and I could go confess that which would have probably been worse for me but if that makes sense because if because if someone else is involved you have someone else to kind of take part of the blame yes exactly it's just you then it's all it's all like yeah it's true and I think maybe there's an inherent with women particularly in the church around Purity yes um you know there's a different standard there yeah that you know it's not widely supported this idea of a woman owning her own sexuality her own you know sexual desire um yeah yeah so I feel like do you feel like that was a layer two oh for sure um it reminds me of a time I think it was my sophomore year in high school we'd always have the Purity lessons in church and it was time for that lesson again and our teacher posted pictures on the chalkboard of women in bikinis or with lots of piercings or tattoos and kind of talked about how they don't look as pure and then she invited all the young men into the room to say how those pictures made them feel and it was really awkward but yeah and none of them wanted to say anything obviously but what she kind of concluded the lesson to was like if you want to make people uncomfortable if you want to not have the spirit with you then behave in this way like it was all about not only appearance but how you act like she did talk about masturbation she did talk about like don't think this way about boys either and so I feel like so much of my identity was trying to be as pure as possible yes yes it reminds me of just what is so um for me one of the most Insidious kind of byproducts of of it is just how serious everything is yes how you can be judged for your very thoughts um they they can do you in you're you're held responsible for thoughts you have every single decision can be grave when you're Purity when you're looking at sort of you know this perfectionistic my Purity is at stake which determines you know it's just that mix I think as for a teen especially just trying to kind of develop and grow and understand them yourself and understand yourself in the world that is just so so much it's heavy for sure yeah yeah is there a way for you to explain how that's harmful for you so let's just say there are viewers of listeners out there that are like hey premertal sex even if even if God doesn't care you can get STIs you can get on unwed pregnancies some people think abortion's bad and so it's like hey okay the church is putting a lot of pressure on you to not have premarital sex yeah but maybe it would have been unhealthy for you to have premarital sex so for the church to kind of try and Tamp down your sexuality was probably for your good even though it probably made you feel stressed sometimes so like let's say somebody says hey maybe that wasn't so bad is would there be a way for you to communicate how it actually was harmful or was it yeah for sure I think that so often thinking back I wish that instead of shaming that it was more educating because I understand there are parents and leaders that don't want their kids to do these things and I can respect that but there are kids that are going to do anyways because there I was being so scared of these little things and I had friends that like there were girls at my high school who did get pregnant and it was really scary for them and people that I was friends with but if they would have been educated instead especially in a setting where it's supposed to feel safe and you're with people that have similar beliefs as you I think it could have had a way more positive outcome because I think it's taken me a long time to get past that um shameful feeling like even how I dress um it's hard because all growing up you're told you have to dress a certain way to not provoke other people um and act a certain way let's talk more about that yeah so what do you mean provoke who what ways should you not dress so that you don't provoke who men yeah I mean like there's just so many lessons I can remember um where I was specifically told you need to keep the men of the church and of the world Worthy and not let them think bad thoughts about you so don't wear revealing clothes don't have low-cut shirts or short shorts or skirts try not to wear tank tops the tank tops was big [Laughter] um even like showing shoulders yes shoulders definitely um I remember a girl that wore a tank top to church once and everyone was she was giving a talk and she wore a tank top dress and she received a lot of backlash for it because it's like oh you're supposed to be up there sharing this christ-like message and instead you're provoking all the men in the audience and so I think making a child so aware and conscious of how they're making other people think when it's really not it wasn't my fault if someone thought something about me um it affected me well into my mission still now sometimes it's something I have to constantly I have to retrain my thoughts around it if that makes sense yeah it makes a lot of sense this idea that you're kind of told how to show up in the world yeah how you're responsible for the actions of other people or they're the thoughts of other people kind of their experience I think it I mean let me ask this in a question you know did you feel like it set you up for uh this profound self like where you don't trust yourself because then what that's saying is in your humanness when you're you kind of evolve and you do have you know feelings or you do have developmentally appropriate kind of you make mistakes yeah it makes you kind of feel a sense of unworthiness a sense that you can't trust yourself right oh definitely your um you are innately lacking in something yeah which then can make you be more hyper vigilant you know I would double down yes did you notice like a cycle of sorts with that where you felt this sense of like okay I'm I'm not sure oh I made a mistake or I didn't show up optimally yeah and now I have this pay for it like I'm bad or I'm or whatever and now I have to make myself good was there ever like did you notice a cycle to that yeah and it costing you your relationship with yourself definitely definitely I feel like I was so aware of how I was dressing and what I was thinking and how I was acting that there were even times where like in high school my mom bought me a dress and it I mean it was a tank top it was it was a modest stress like it was it went up high on my chest and it was long but my shoulders barely showed and I remember crying thinking like why would you buy that for me to wear oh sorry why would you buy that for me to wear like it shows my shoulders don't you want me to wear garments one day and she was like Bren it's fine like it's just it barely shows your shoulders but even I couldn't even take my own Mother's word that I wasn't dressing provocatively because I was so self-aware yeah of how I was acting and then even when I started to kind of grow into my sexuality later in high school and wanted to wear things that I thought looked good on me there was still that sense of guilt and then if anyone made a comment about it I'd never want to wear it again yeah let me ask you this can I ask you a question around um growing up as a a girl a young woman in the church what were some of the messages that you feel like I feel like you know as young women were were given all sorts of messages right um conditioning growing up that we're taught to kind of some things are overt and some things are a little bit more covert right or not obvious what were some of the messages that you feel like you absorbed that stay with you kind of are in this moment as being particularly problematic for you yeah I think it comes down to the ones that weren't as obvious because all growing up you hear um like the women of the church are so sweet and so perfect like us men just will never measure up to you guys and it sounds like that that sounds great I know woman that sounds great I know it does sound great it makes you feel like oh I don't have to do anything I'm just perfect by nature but then it just puts this pressure of well if I'm making these mistakes like what like dressing a modesty or having impure thoughts or swearing or masturbating or any of these things that you're told not to do or doubting then you're not living up to that expectation of being a perfect woman and I often felt deep down when they were saying all these nice things about women was that you know they're giving they couldn't give the priesthood to women they couldn't give big leadership roles and so instead they were giving that sense of well you're so perfect you have these motherly roles your innately nurturing and sometimes I didn't feel any nurturing or sweet a lot of times I didn't but you have to act the part it also seems like there's some tell me if if you agree that there's this implication that if how you dress or how you act can lead to a young man becoming sexually active and maybe even not going on a mission yeah that somehow you you have a bigger response and then let's just say you are sexually active with the young man that somehow there's more of a guilt or a burden on you than on the young man because you started it by showing your shoulders or your knees yeah that was my yes yeah that was definitely one of my biggest fears and probably because I saw it happening all around me like I was in a friend group where everyone would end up dating each other in high school and so you'd hear about a lot of that and I was terrified of that I didn't want to be the cause of anyone acting that way or thinking impurely just because like I saw it happening around me and it wasn't that I was judging those people but I just it just made me feel guilty about every little thing I ever did so does did perfectionism have a toll on you in your teenage years and if so what was the tool yes um I mean perfectionism took a toll on me in every part of my life but especially in the church I was always like my Seminary teachers loved me I became a lot more outgoing in high school and you know they would talk to my parents and just be like Brinley is so outstanding she always has something important to say um she's such a good example I would get asked to go around to different stakes and sing or give talks in seminary or all those they just gave me lots of opportunities to be an example and with everyone constantly speaking so highly of me and saying there was such a light about me um I it felt good because I felt like I was succeeding at being perfect but then nothing was ever enough so I had to keep being more perfect hence the keeping the scripture calendar and journaling about how like I'd write notes to My Future Self on why I should never ever doubt in case I started to not believe in certain aspects of the church it was constantly just preparing and being one step ahead of myself just trying to be as perfect as possible yeah it kind of puts you in that hyper vigilant mode yeah yeah I guess that's stressful if nothing else yes it was stressful it's also self-betraying I think it's also self-betraying because it disconnects you from yourself while connecting you to what other people see in you so you have this you know the when we talk about all the you know uh dress standards or you taking responsibility having to hold responsibility for other people's experience and behavior or feelings towards you that's deeply problematic moving forward in in relationships with others but let's set that aside and also just talk about the preoccupation with body in a really disconnected way women and their bodies I think there's so much like there's a a standard there an ideal there and so this preoccupation of like am I like trying to manage this thing that you feel kind of a sense of Shame about right and a disconnection too and then if we go on the inside it's what's the problem with being talk talked about is sweet or like you know pure and inspiring to men or there to sort of remind them of all that is good is that we're whole human beings and we feel like all sorts of things just like you know men do or non-binary or you know however we want to talk about it like as human beings we feel all things yeah but when you're reinforced for just one way of showing up then ultimately what happens is to get the love and approval is you start you start not showing up as a full human you start trying to show up in a way that gets you the love and approval and so you betray other parts of yourself or keep them in the dark and only let the parts that you get love for and do that you feel seen and valued for show up and that path is just that is a you know the cost is high absolutely yeah okay okay so um what were you into in high school what were your interests or Pursuits um I loved to have fun that's the first thing I think of I love to be with my friends um I loved to sing and play piano I've played piano ever since I was like four or five um and yeah I love to be outside go on vacation with my family just be with my friends yeah were you part of any clubs or special interest groups in high school no not in high school um yeah I mostly just had fun with my friends academics are not so much uh yeah I I mean I was I was always in high honors I took lots of college classes which added to the stress oh it's like I don't know if that was just for my Weber or my school district or not but just when you take all of the needed classes and then get a 4.0 in the classes okay so you're you're getting great grades yes I was until my senior year I struggled a little bit because of all the college classes I forced myself to take but I still got decent grades I shouldn't be as hard on myself they were good they were good grades but they weren't a pluses what was your testimony like in high school um very strong I I mean I always had those little doubts not creeping just like everyone I think um but I had a really strong testimony I loved Seminary I loved church church was probably my favorite part of the week I was one to always share what I was feeling um I was probably testimony a lot yes I did I was probably the one that would cry while talking about my beliefs but very strong very much wanted to go on a mission um yeah typical strong Mormon had you prayed about like the Book of Mormon or the church to ask God to send you the Holy Ghost to let you know if it was true like what was your testimony built of in those high school years yeah um I think my testimony was built on I feel like the church was my security blanket because it gave me an answer to everything and I got my patriarchal blessing in high school which was I think that's what held my that's what really held my testimony together because of how personal I felt it was to me what types of things did your so for those who don't know patriarchal blessing is where this older man in your community anointed by the church it's almost like a tarot card reading but a Mormon version of a tarot card reading yes where he basically tells you your future yeah and makes promises and gives you guidelines so what did you and then it's written down and you're asked to save it and keep it in your scriptures as like additional scripture to kind of tell you if you're righteous all the good things that are going to happen to you so what did your patriarchal blessing say that was meaningful to you um my patriarchal blessing made me feel Untouchable Unstoppable um it told me that I would not die young that I would live a long life and that no significant harm accident illness would ever come upon me wow so in my mind I was like I can do anything and nothing will happen to me um I mean I I still I wasn't careless because um it still told me like it's conditional upon my faith but it told me that I needed to marry a righteous man with the priesthood in the temple um that I was a big part of you know I was going to be a big part of the morning of the first resurrection what does that mean for a non-mormon what does that mean that means you know honestly I still to this day a little I'm confused about it but I think what it means mine says the same thing means that when Jesus comes again the second coming of Jesus yeah and he does the resurrection where he lifts up all the dead yes the he's gonna bring he's gonna resurrect the most righteous people first which means they're going to go to the Celestial Kingdom and become God someday living with God and all their family righteous Mormon family members yes in the social Kingdom so it's basically a promise you're going to be among Jesus's Elite humans and the billions of humans who've ever lived you're going to be one of the elite people resurrected as soon as Jesus comes back to live in the Celestial Kingdom and become a God yes definitely um and I mean it was just very like God knows about your mistakes and he still loves you which yes that helped me a lot um but I still felt guilty but when I first got the blessing I was like yes then you met then you messed up again yeah exactly and I was like well I ruined it um but yeah just it told me I needed to be a missionary um it told me God would call me to a place I needed to go it told me I would have success in pursuing my higher education and that I'd get to travel the world and doing that which um right before my blessing I had told the patriarch I wanted to go to BYU Hawaii and so when I got when I heard that I was like yes I'm going to BYU Hawaii [Laughter] um and yeah it was just it was everything I wanted to hear yeah patriarchal blessings are so interesting because on the one hand they can be so inspiring to a kid it's probably to be protected and God loves me and I'm forgiven for my sins and look at all these cool things I'm going to do in that sense it can be so inspiring but there are a couple other interesting things about it number one is if anything doesn't come true like if you get sick or get hurt or die early it could always be explained well you weren't faithful enough so there's always the church always has kind of a loophole there's always something if if something if some prophecy doesn't come true but also um they interview you beforehand so a lot of the prophecies that they give in the patriarchal blessing can be reflected in things the patriarch already knows about you or literally things you tell the patriarch right before he gives you the blessing so that's kind of interesting so it can be like hey if you stay faithful in the church you get all these things you want and God said so it's a way to kind of really seal your commitment to the church I think definitely but then the but then the final thing that's interesting is in normal circumstances you're never told you won't serve a mission you're going to become a professional career woman and not get married and not have babies yeah like yeah it's pretty much you're always going to be told that the things are going to happen to you are the things that the church wants you to do yeah and in that sense it can be viewed as coercive or undue influence because it's basically the church in in the under the guise of predicting your future through God's prophecy and revelatory power it's basically the church telling you how you're supposed to live your life in ways that benefit the church yes exactly that wrong is that right no that's right if I were to follow every word that my patriarchal blessing said then it'd be exactly what the church wants I mean it was all about missionary work and bringing others into the light and being an example all those things that I was already putting pressure on myself to do but it kind of solidified that Not only was that something God saw as good that was my purpose for my entire life yeah so like Marcus said around so betrayal you don't get to decide what your intrinsic inherent purpose or meaning is you're you're told at 16 or 17 what it is and you'd never get to make that choice Margie we're gonna dude oh just nodding yeah yeah so but but at the time you received it it was a beautiful wonderful thing yes yeah yes yeah in the moment in the moment it was a miracle yeah yeah yeah I was going to ask you really quickly during those years of just feeling tremendous pressure and shame did you have times or moments where you felt free of that were you on a level you I don't know you know what that would look like for you if it was like with friends or in nature or you know I don't know or was it like something that you really walked with pretty much all the time I really walked with it um and there was one time where I kind of talked to my parents about it and this was before my dad was the bishop and they were very reaffirming um I didn't give them lots of detail but I mean obviously your parents probably don't want to get into too much detail about that anyways but they were very they did give me a lot of peace and they weren't shameful they didn't shame me about it um and I felt relief until I made mistakes again and you were human again yeah until I was human again then everything sinks back in um and that's really the only time I can remember and I still felt peace at church and felt big emotions about the things that they would talk about and I enjoyed the lessons I enjoyed going and I still felt like amounts of Joy there but when I was alone with my thoughts or when I'd be in seminary and a teacher would say something about really any mistake a teenager could make I took it personally and I assumed like I'm the only person in this room that has ever thought this mean thought or that has ever been impure in this way um so I still I wouldn't say had a horrible childhood like I still loved my life and I had fun but there was just that guilt with me through all of that yeah okay so anything else that's important to your faith Journey or your personal story or your family story prior to let's just say Mission so let's just say up through graduating what high school did you graduate I went to Fremont High School Fremont High School yeah and you graduated what year 2019. okay 2019. that's only three years ago I know that's crazy it is crazy okay I have a question so during that whole time of going to High School in Utah in the late 2010s had you ever heard about the CES letter had you ever heard about Mormon stories podcast have you ever heard about other podcasts or even doubts or questions about the church had you heard of The Gospel topics essays have you been exposed and this isn't to be self-referential this is because I'm wanting I'm always stunned at how even 50 and 60 year olds just now are learning about things that have been around for 50 years or in this in the case of the internet you know 10 or 20 years so like I'm curious whether you had exposure to any of that stuff and if so or even doubts or questions about the church and if so what you had exposure to and what you thought of the things you had had exposure to yeah so I did not know about the CES letter I didn't know I really didn't know anything um the one thing I remember hearing about was that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy which obviously was a shock to me I'd never heard about that and I asked my mom about it and she just kind of had typical answer for a believing Mormon um this was what if you're like it's uncomfortable but we just have to have faith we don't know everything about history there's too much to cover in church lessons all the time um but we just have to have faith that's what God needed him to do at that time that was the only kind of taboo topic I'd ever heard of until my mission and even then like there were sometimes doubts but I always came back even stronger with my faith like I would literally just Journal about all the reasons why I knew the church was true and how there's no way it could be false and I was honestly pretty judgmental towards people that I'd heard of that left the church because it's like why would you there's no real reason to do that okay wow so you'd never heard of the CES letter prior to 2019. no I'd come across what the church would call anti-material once on Instagram but I just wasn't sure what it was what do you remember what it was not really it was called it was some lady she didn't show her face she was just making like memes and pictures and I was like what is this and it was talking about Adam and Eve and I like showed it to my mom and she was like never look at that again and so I just took her word for it and I was like okay I'll never look at it again okay so what did you think about Joseph Smith prior to your mission um I thought he was a great guy I mean I believed in the fact the church always says like either Joseph Smith did this or it's a fraud like either it's true or it's not they use that I mean I said that on the mission multiple times it's in preach my gospel the pamphlets they give to missionaries to teach with I believed in that 100 that I knew he was imperfect but the narrative around him that I knew of was he was persecuted he went through so much and he still came out on the other side and there's no way that someone would be able to go through what he went through and still produce what he did and have the church have so many people now and all of that so I had complete faith in Joseph Smith what about the Book of Mormon same thing I by the time I went on my mission I had read the book of Mormon cover to cover like three to five times um and what did you think the book was I mean absolute history I believed everything in it everything yeah and so what was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to you the only true church on the Earth like I believed everything the church teaches I agreed with a hundred percent you're I I think it's so um it just shows your level of devotion and to be writing letters to like your future self in case you ever have doubts yeah really yeah true yeah I have a quick question okay can you show us a couple things we remember your question yeah okay I just I was going through just a little list what did you think about lgbtq people was that was that yeah what were you say go ahead yes no you ask it that was that was the question you did just um if you had any experiences uh growing up knowing loving being familiar with um lgbtqia youth or and and what your thoughts were for them within kind of being in the box of Mormonism yeah um that one was hard for me and I feel like I tried to avoid thinking about it because it's a heavy topic when you believe everything the church teaches and the church teaches that they can't be together if they want to be real true members of the church um and I remember thinking like well I understand like some people are born with that and I was like maybe some people just decide they want to do that and I remember thinking like I don't really understand trans people like I just didn't understand and I regret to say I didn't try to understand but I still like I had a friend that was gay and I loved him but we just didn't talk about that and like I I would have said for myself at the time that I didn't hold any judgment or ill feelings but the way I feel towards that Community now is obviously so much different so I mean I felt like I wasn't judging how did you feel at the time about the fact that Women Within Mormonism didn't have the priesthood and you know there was no women in top leadership positions of the church there's the issue of just the word feminism and whether you would have identified as a feminist talk about women's issues and how you felt prior to your mission about yeah women's issues and feminism I remember coming across there's literally an account on Instagram called like feminist and I came across it and I like it gave me the same feeling as when I came across anti-mormon content and I was just like oh my gosh what is this but then I had a teacher in high school and I knew she was a member of the church and she is a very inspirational person and I remember in class she said I'm a feminist so if anyone has something sexist to say don't say to my class and I was like she's a feminist and I started like looking more into it and it would honestly cause arguments with like people around me because I'd be like well why and I was thinking more like in the world not in the church like what about equal pay and what about abortion because I was like I would never and like I think that's evil but why can't she do it if she wants to and so the wheels were turning and I started to realize some of those things in the church like when there were the whole protests about women in the priesthood I remember being like those women are crazy like like the ordained women yes in 2015 2015. yes exactly what I was like those women are crazy like what are they doing but I think the wheels were turning I it just wasn't all the way there yet I was definitely curious about it and I was like I'm I think I'm a feminist that's how I thought about it I'm curious for you when it came to kind of the formula of where you taught that you should stay home and kind of have children is that something a message or an expectation that you received um yeah I would say definitely having kids like that's not even a question it's like you get married you have kids as fast as you can and preferably lots of kids um it was never like no one ever specifically said like you cannot have a career but it was also like you have to make sure that your career allows you to also be with your kids too so I was like maybe you should be a teacher so that when they're in school you're in school and then you have the Summers off together like it was always like just be a teacher or a nurse so that you know how to take care of your kids got it so that was kind of the narrative I received and did you ever um you know let's just say we'll stay with the narrative up to this point were you feeling quite um let's just say like it was in line with you to have lots of kids did you experience any inner resistance around well or individuation like I'm not sure I'm gonna have four kids maybe I'll have two or what was your experience with those types of expectations of a role um I'm gonna be honest I hoped that Jesus would come before I'd have to have kids because I ever since I was little like I just have been so scared of giving birth the whole thing but it was just like okay my plan was if Jesus doesn't come first then I'll just have to like push through it maybe I'll just adopt so I don't have to give birth yeah um that would have been tied to your mom's miscarriage I'm guessing yeah a little bit and even before then I was scared but just seeing like I never wanted to go through what she went through and yeah I think I mean I did want kids I love kids like I'm a nanny right now but it definitely scared me and I truly often thought like maybe Jesus will just maybe the second coming will happen before yeah yeah I genuinely thought that all the time yeah so how did you envision your life going post High School like if you had to say what were the Milestones the Mormon Milestones did you envision for yourself you know and how soon um I envisioned I'd go on a mission complete the 18 months come home go to BYU Hawaii and meet another return missionary get married preferably a guy yeah yes yes definitely um get married to a worthy priesthood holder and then have three kids you know go through the temple raise them in the church make sure everything's perfect so that we're all together forever that was pretty basic yeah and the cycle would continue yes and the cycle would continue yeah but I I don't I feel like there was always this idea I heard from leaders around me and from other members I knew that like like Jesus is coming so sometimes I was like maybe my kids won't grow old and have kids like I really until a year ago I didn't imagine myself growing old because so many members would be like well my patriarchal blessing says that Jesus comes during my lifetime and I'm like well you're older than me so yeah I didn't imagine myself growing old wow did you have that at all oh yeah I mean when I was growing up there was this musical called Saturday's Warrior that you probably heard yes but the whole idea of Saturday's Warrior is Jesus comes on Sunday it's the evening of Saturday it's the last days Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints yeah and Jesus is coming any day now and you I'm 53 you when I'm 16 17 in 1986 87 you're the chosen generation to usher in the return of Jesus that's why I was the chosen generation exactly I was just I didn't realize I mean it makes sense but I didn't realize that message was still yeah I mean so many people and I don't know if other people my age in the church felt that way but of course it's it's been they've been the church has been teaching its youth that yeah since the 1830s yeah so I like it's still hard for me to think about me growing ignored and dying I'm like I guess that's really going to happen wow you're I'm surprised you're surprised by that Margie so that wasn't part of your Mormon upbringing I think that might have been more conceptual like an idea to me uh but no definitely not uh to the point that it's interrupting kind of my life span yeah in a in a way wow that's honestly partly why I married you because I was so I had been so intense and Orthodox and wrapped up about the church I didn't think it'd be good to marry someone who was that intense and wrapped up so I I even had a sense that you had not internalized Orthodox fundamentalist Mormonism as much as many people had and I saw that as a good thing because I I think I knew it some level I'd be losing my faith or at least I would be liberal and I wanted a spouse that could be flexible so I I'm actually grateful you never reached that level yeah yeah yeah but it makes it is something to hear you kind of say on a level that um kind of hoping for Jesus to come to relieve you from this sense of obligation with your role to have to to to basically do something with your body that you would not openly choose to do yeah that's really something it is it is in the field of psychology we call that egotistonic in other words it's something that you don't want necessarily and you're aware that you don't want it so at some level you're aware you don't want to live the you might not want to either they're afraid of or you don't want to necessarily live the life the church has given for you and you're hoping that Jesus is going to save you from that yeah definitely wow okay yeah okay and why didn't you other than like fearing childbirth were there other reasons why you didn't you felt like you might not want the Mormon life the Mormon life for women that you feel like the church wanted you to pursue no I think that was at the time like the church was still everything to me and so my thought process was I'm just really scared to give birth okay like deathly afraid yeah you're not alone in that yeah okay so what happened so I mean did you go to did you go to college first or did you go straight no so I worked for about a year after my mission uh or after graduating high school and January of 2020 I got my mission call to Orlando Florida I was so excited um I love tropical climate so I was like this is the best I get to be by the beach um and then everything happened with covet I was working two jobs actually and both my jobs had to close down and suddenly I wasn't busy and I kind of I don't know if I had recognized feelings of anxiety and depression a lot before I know they were there for a long time not just because of kovid but it kind of brought everything out of the dark and I really really struggled with anxiety and depression this is before even entering the MTC yeah before going out um and about a month before I was supposed to start online MTC I just I would Pace my room like every night till three in the morning just panicking not about necessarily going on a mission but just why do I feel like this I want to go on a mission how am I going to survive out there feeling like this um and I remember going to my parents room at like three in the morning and just being like something's wrong in my brain like I've been praying and praying to make it go away and my mom was like no no you can't pray my mom's a nurse and she is a really big mental health Advocate which I'm very grateful for but she said to me like you can't pray to make anxiety and depression go away like we need to get you help and my parents said if you don't want to go on a mission like we'll support you you do not have to go and I was like no I want to go like this is a goal I made for myself my patriarchal blessing says I'm supposed to go like I have to go and so they said okay and we went to the doctor tried to get some medication and I felt decent I was just kind of floating um and then I started online MTC and okay wait so yeah okay so you even though you were having doubts and fears and depression yeah you decided you wanted to do it anyway yes yeah I mean I felt like it was my duty and I felt like I had always wanted to and I was just like no I can do this like I'm resilient I can go um and I honestly loved the online MTC so let's talk about that so this is this is unique so yeah prior to covid if you got called Stateside as a Mormon you would go to the MTC in Provo Utah for three weeks you know thousands of missionaries and it would just be this intensive training of mission rules and and but you'd make all these friends and it would be the spiritually uplifting thing yeah um and if you got called to a foreign mission where you had to learn a language you'd go to the MTC Mission training center for two months and learn the language as well as missionary rules yeah once covet happened they couldn't you know missionaries started giving each other coveted in the MTC they had to shut down the MTC so what what was covet MTC like home MTC I had a little desk set up in my room and a computer and it's just all day you get I think an hour and a half break in the middle of the day you start in the morning so you're still supposed to follow a schedule wake up at 6 30 work out get ready I believe class started at eight o'clock and you just learn how to teach on a mission and I loved it home MTC I did yeah I feel like because of how anxious I was feeling I didn't want to be around people for real and which is unlike me but I just I was feeling so anxious I was on a new medication and so I felt really peaceful about it and I liked having challenges to overcome to feel like okay I can do this so when they'd say okay it's time for you to teach us the first lesson the restoration talk about Joseph Smith I was like okay I'm gonna be really good at teaching and I was told I was really good at teaching they're like you're going to bring so many people to Christ you're well spoken and so I felt like I was overcoming all my challenges mm-hmm okay so you like you didn't you didn't feel like you were being um kind of like getting a lesser experience by staying home versus going to the MTC no I I didn't really care yeah were you able to make friends with the missionaries in your district and like because I made friendships and and that was an important part of the MCC experience was the friendships I made were you even able to make friendships or you didn't want to um yeah I did I like I had a companion but you're just over yeah we'd study together we'd talk through our lessons that we had to plan together um so I loved my district it was a group of I think 10 of us and yeah we're going to the same mission in Florida no so even my companion was going to California but there were two other Elders in my district that were going to my mission okay yeah okay and and it was three weeks with home MTC three and a half I think three and a half weeks yeah and over anything you want to say about that experience overall not really I I felt prepared and I was like okay if I could if I can feel like I can teach these lessons confidently then I got this I was like it'll be fine okay yeah okay so is your time doing home MTC completes what happens next so I finished MTC I give my farewell talk to my ward and friends and family over Zoom and everyone I love came over to my house to have lunch social distance lunch and Say Goodbye and I just I felt pretty at peace about it I was like I can do this and I got on a plane and got to Florida and I remember walking off the plane and like the humidity hit me and I was like okay it's gonna be fine I already love it there's palm trees everywhere this is perfect and everything was really good until I got to my apartment and sat in my bed and I was like what did I just do and the first three days of my mission was like the second hardest part of my mission because I just told my companions I was like look my parents told me I didn't have to come out here if I didn't want to because they like weren't sure if I was going to be okay and I think I agree with them now like get me out of here I was crying I felt so depressed I didn't eat for the first two days at all um what was it it what what was that like what what was going on do you think I just everything hit me that like this structure the structure of the mission was going to be my life for 18 months and I think every missionary gets hit with that a little bit when they first get out there and they're like what did I just do but I just suddenly was like I'm so scared that I came out here on a new medication that I'm not used to we didn't really solve my depression and I forgot to mention I had my parents got me a counselor but I just ghosted him I blocked his number and I was like I'm not going to counseling which was my first mistake but I just felt so overwhelmed and on my first day I called my mission president and I was like so I think I'm gonna go home and he was like you seemed so happy at the airport and I was like well I'm not so send me home and they said okay if you can make it to next p-day we'll talk and if you still feel like you want to go home you can go home and I was like okay good because I'm going home and I think what changed is I was so when you first got on a mission you have to be trained for 12 weeks and I was in a trio so I was with two other girls that trained me and they were the most like the sweetest most loving people I've ever met all three of us had like such different personalities came from way different backgrounds different interests but we were just like the best of friends and I think the only reason I survived that time and like made it through was because they honestly like prioritized fun and that night when I was just freaking out on the floor they just held me while I sobbed for hours and they said okay let's cancel the rest of our plans for the evening we're not going to go to our meetings let's go get ice cream let's go look for alligators in the ponds and they made it fun and I think I was kind of in a bubble I started my mission in Daytona Florida and my mission president lived in Orlando which is like over an hour away so we're kind of off by ourselves by the beach and we were probably being what other missionaries would call like lazy or also not as motivated because we would like it was coveted so there were obviously some different rules but we would have like movie night where we'd watch like we'd there was like a drive and I didn't even know it was against the rules I was just like this is so fun I love Michigan you're getting trained yeah you're like wow I was getting trained and they were great missionaries like like a Mormon or an orthodox Mormon Mission president would say that they were amazing missionaries they both ended up being Sister training leaders like they're amazing but they saw my needs and helped me which I am eternally grateful for but we'd watch like those old movies that the church would put out I don't even know like singles like Hollywood movies church movies still but and they would let me listen to the I don't even want to admit this right now but the Kanye West like uh Christian album I don't like that guy anymore I just gotta throw that out there but um like just different things that made me happy we'd go play basketball some nights all these things that technically you're not supposed to do you're supposed to be constantly dedicated to working right but they made sure I was like happy and having fun yeah they put the human human into it they did they really did and we were always laughing we'd make like funny Vlogs about our day we'd bake cookies and take them to other missionaries like we had fun and we still did the missionary work and taught people all this stuff but we just had fun so I was like this is what a mission is like I can do this yeah that's interesting because for me I was probably one of the least fun missionaries in the history that's okay like for me the mission wasn't about fun the mission was about obeying the rules yeah bringing souls to Christ getting baptisms working super hard and getting baptized you get extra points if you have no fun yeah it's like I'm actually it is very true yeah so I mean but it's weird that like enjoying your time is viewed as yeah as like lazy or bad yeah it's true but that was keeping you there it was keeping me there and I remember I became a trainer right after my training and the girl I trained is so sweet and like I tried to do the same thing for her and I remember going to there's a weekly meeting with other missionaries in the area called District Council and I was like what do you guys do for like companionship Unity time and they're like What's that I'm like you know like my trainers would always like we'd play games or like go on a walk or go get ice cream in the middle of the day and they were like you're not supposed to do that and I was like what called companionship Unity time they're like that's not a thing and I was like oh well okay and so that's when I kind of started to see like they were they kind of had me in a safe little bubble and so that was like the first six months of my mission and then right before Christmas I get moved to Palm Bay Florida did you during that time did you teach people or have baptisms or any of that yeah I forget about that part um we had one baptism it was a guy named Cody and he was really sweet we were serving in a young single adult Ward um which I really loved and then we got moved to a family ward in the same area which I loved all the people were so nice so yeah we were teaching lots of lessons we met amazing people um I I do have some regrets there was a lady that she was super sweet and she was trying to quit smoking because you can't get baptized unless you quit smoking and so I stole all of her cigarettes and threw them away and I'm just like missionaries always do things like that because you have to do what you have to do like you hear the inspirational stories of them smashing the beer bottles on the ground and it didn't go over that well with her but but I did it anyways okay so a baptism in the United States you know that that can feel really good to have a baptism in your mission yeah yeah yeah it wasn't really my focus which I often felt guilty about I liked the service projects getting out in the yards meeting new people that's what I liked the most and I did love teaching but I felt like I didn't like when everyone was about the numbers because it made me feel really anxious and so I still wanted to get baptisms obviously but it did give me anxiety yeah yeah okay what happened after six months that's the third into your mission you're only serving for 18 months as a woman and yeah 2021 or whatever so what happened after six months three months into your mission it was like I went into the real world mission oh okay it was like I was out of my bubble I was no longer in Daytona um I get to Palm Bay and I meet my companion um and she is the most amazing person we're still close um and she taught me so much she opened my eyes a lot she was a feminist she is very politically educated and you're not supposed to talk about politics on the mission but I remember the first night um she puts her pajamas on and her t-shirt says BYU Democrats and I was like what the hell is that BYU Democrats and she was like yeah I joined a club um and she taught me so much about that and it opened my eyes and it's not like she was meaning to turn me away but I was like oh my gosh like I was telling her all about how I went on this amazing humanitarian trip with the church and I was showing her the pictures and she's like uh-huh and I was like what and she's like you don't want to have like a white savior complex though and I was like what and she just like she was never rude but she just like she really did educate me um what why were you shocked at a BYU explained to our audience why you're shocked at a BYU Democrats shirt because I didn't think that was allowed what being a Democrat at BYU especially on campus Because the church is very conservative very Republican I mean I was scared of that feminist account I found on Instagram like it's not popular at all so in your mind the Republican Party in the United States and the Mormon Church were synonymous oh for sure okay like people would always talk about like there's no separation of church and state and I kind of was just like yeah there's really not like the church does affect a lot of what happens in Utah and it wasn't like I wasn't like this I was not conservative at that point really at all but I kind of had it all just like inside and she would talk about all her beliefs with like the lgbtqia community and we ended up teaching this amazing amazing these two amazing girls that they weren't dating when we first started teaching them they were friends but they wanted to take the lessons together and they ended up falling in love and we knew one of them identified as lesbian we didn't know the other one did and she came out to just my companion and I she was like can I talk to you guys for a minute we get in the back of her car or she got in the back of her car and we were all just talking and it was like I hadn't felt those like emotional like you're crying because you feel something so strongly for so long until that moment and I just remember feeling like so much love for this woman and like I was so proud of her for telling us and feeling brave like telling two Mormon missionaries that you're a lesbian that's got to be terrifying but I was so grateful that I was with the companion I was with because we were able to tell her like we support you you do what you want like because this girl was already baptized years ago but she wanted to take the lessons again because she had not been to church in a long time but her friend that she was in love with she like she really loved the church and she liked the things we were teaching her about and it was heartbreaking to tell them like like I remember when they texted us and said wait so can she not get baptized if we're together and we had to say no and I'm just like I was like I have to be nuanced like I have to try and change this culture because like they are just to this day still like some of the most amazing people I've ever met and it just broke my heart to be like I don't want to tell them that they're less than because of something that's first of all not in their control and second of all not a bad thing like not something that's wrong with them or weird so was it this companion that changed because you had talked about the LGBT your lgbtq views prior to Mission which was you try not to think about it and loved your gay friend but you kind of supported the church's position was it talking to this new companion that changed your views on LGBT stuff um I think a little bit of it throughout my mission as I was exposed to like not living in Utah living outside of the deep rooted Mormon culture that I on my own started feeling more and more open and accepting but she just like reaffirmed that like she made me feel like I wasn't wrong for thinking that because to this day she's faithful member of the church oh okay yeah attends BYU great girl but she made me feel like I wasn't wrong for thinking those things and we would have great discussions about it and even before I was with her I had experiences where just a few experiences where I had gone in trouble for being a little nuanced um and actually I forgot to share one of the things I wanted to share about earlier if I could is there anything else you wanted to ask please um I think the start of all this was when I was in Daytona with the girl I was training because we met a man he was so cool um I'm not going to say his name obviously but he really wanted us he's like I gotta get you girls like immersed in the Southern Culture like he fed us fishing grits and taught us about all the different football things and who not to cheer for even though we couldn't watch football and he really loved talking to us and we were doing a service project with the elders at his house and he was talking to us and he said so why didn't you let because he was black and he said why didn't your church let the blacks have the priesthood and I spoke up first and I said well that was a mistake because of racist leaders in the church whoa where'd you picked up that that's just what I believed like I had learned about that and I was like there's no way that's from God and I just I didn't think that was wrong of me to think that that was just my intuition and I think on my mission especially I mean I had been taught to force down my intuition my whole life but when this specific event happened and all the other missionaries in the room go whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa and automatically just cut me down what do they say and they tell this black man to his face one of the elders says the way my dad says it to me is and of course every mission in the room is white and completely unqualified two speak to him this way but he says well the way my dad explained it to me is some things need to happen for the churches for the church to be able to move forward and the this man just looks at him and is like what did you just say and I'm sitting there like oh my gosh I don't want to be a part of this conversation because even before my mission when the Black lives matter movement was getting so big like I Had No Reservations with that I completely agreed my family agreed um and just to see like be in a room with four white missionaries who are young really don't know as much as we think we knew to be talking to this black man who has been through so much he had a professional football career he's gone through so much in his life and he lives in Florida he knows about racism like obviously and to have these kids sit there and say like well this is for the church is good and I was just like no and they look at me and they're like yes and I was like I turned up and I said no I don't believe that so you can choose what you want to believe and I got in so much trouble because one of the guys in the room was my district leader and of course that goes straight to my mission president and I'm told like you can't preach things that the church doesn't preach and then the next time we go visit this guy he was having all of his health problems and he said I heard you guys give blessings and the elders were like yes and he says well I want sister Jensen to give it to me and I just sat there and they're like she can't and he was like why and I think he said because she's the only one that doesn't believe you're church leaders were right about the the priesthood thing and they're like no because women can't give blessings and he just I think he said like well that's or something like that sorry I don't know if I can say that but um it was just so awkward I was just like they're right I can't and he's like fine then I want her to pray for me can she do that at least and I was like yeah I can pray for you so I prayed for him and the second we walk out the elders just like they put me in my place what'd they say they said it's not your place they said you just took away the opportunity for someone to receive a priesthood blessing from a priesthood leader implying what that about Their Blessings versus yours that there's come straight from God that mine's just a nice little like that there's do more than mine and which is obviously I mean the priesthood is the higher power like if you want to be healed you ask for a priesthood blessing in the church and so I I never did that again how did you feel when the elders I guess made you feel bad for giving up a faithful prayer for this man's health but telling you that was the wrong thing to do or inferior to the prayer they might have given or the blessing they might have given how'd that make you feel I was pissed yeah and I think that's why all these things leading up to being with this companion who was so openly a feminist and so sure in her beliefs that it was just like I have I'm not crazy like I haven't been wrong all along I do have a voice that needs to be heard and it is okay to be an ally to the lgbtq community and it is okay to stand against racism and to not like Brigham Young we would talk about that all the time we hate Brigham Young and she's like but we can't tell anyone and I'm like yeah and so it just like by that time I was like I'm Gonna Change Church culture like I'm gonna use my voice and my actions to be so loving and to just change this negative culture in the church like I just I felt so empowered and that was my goal and then everything kind of just started going south I don't know if you want the church more feminist right yes yes and I was I was like I'm gonna do it I'm gonna be the one um I was like no one's ever tried this before um this is 2019 or 2020 by this point this or 2021 2021 yeah this is last year yes this is last year um and I guess that's when everything started to go downhill for me can I just make a joke yeah of course reference yes have you seen the Book of Mormon musical I actually haven't I've heard the songs okay because they're because because Elder price if I'm remembering it right other price is the early protagonist and he gets called to Orlando yeah yeah it was mission and in his song he literally says I'm going to be the Mormon who changes all mankind yeah and it's just like him it's just but but it's you know I guess it's bold to want to change mankind but it's equally bold for like a 19 or 20 year old woman young woman to want to change Mormonism yeah a church that historically is has a racist sexist and homophobic and Republican passed and here you are at age 19 or 20 wanting to change Mormonism yes yeah I have another question about that moment that you are in this um situation with someone who's a non-member and that non-member is viewing you in a way maybe that you have never been viewed before which is on a level I want her to do it can she do it I feel like she's spiritually in tuned that I want it to come from her in that moment um like what did it feel to be viewed that way um I I mean I was shocked because no one had that's never happened to me before but I felt so honored because he was so amazing so open-minded and to let these kids into his home and not like I just can't imagine being in his position and still treating those boys those elders and all of us with kindness after being racist in his house after he just fed us food and like he was just such an amazing person and him with his very serious health conditions to be like I think she can help me like I like her energy I like who she is I was just like really he wants me to do it and so there wasn't a doubt in my mind that I wanted to say the prayer for him because I was like like it was like we connected on that because he knew that I had stood up for him and like I feel like he felt safe with me and that made me I was very humbled to say the least that he wanted me to help him yeah I think sometimes those moments where we hit up against our view of ourselves of what's possible of what we can do it's just no small thing to have you know an experience with another human being looking at us and then reminding us of something or or you know I don't know allowing us to Envision a way of viewing ourselves that we're like wait a second why has that never occurred to me actually that I could you know that they bring something to us and in a way it kind of brings us back to ourselves in a moment of like you know how powerful very thanks for sharing thank you yeah okay well you know it I think that the Mormon Church in the Mormon Church in 2022 fears a lot of things it fears LGBT people yes it fears being accused as as racist it fears people learning its Mormon history but my my reading of Mormon history is the Mormon Church in the Mormon church leaders fear a feminist Awakening in Mormonism as its greatest fear uh you know and that's why so many of the September six were excommunicated were promoting feminism and that's why when Margie and I were at BYU so many professors were being fired for just talking about mother in heaven and even in 2021 2022 yeah anyone any anyone who speaks publicly about mother in heaven like Fiona Gibbons at the Maxwell Institute her husband is like the leading Mormon apologist working for the Maxwell Institute she's silenced and told to stop giving talks as soon as she starts talking about mother in heaven I think the Mormon church leaders are terrified of a feminist Awakening so for you as a female the woman young woman Mormon missionary having a feminist Awakening oh speaking out even contradicting other or other men more Mormon young men missionaries kind of like speaking out and even contradicting priesthood leadership in your mission that's that's not gonna go well if you keep that up it did not it did not go well and um you know that is when things started to definitely go downhill because even when like she we were best friends we had so much fun and we were constantly praised for just working so hard your companion yes we were teaching so many people seeing success we were like the social media leaders so we were putting out all this content and helping other people to put out content on social media okay explain that so yeah what like when I was on a mission the internet didn't exist yeah but then even until a few years ago I don't know that Mormon missionaries were even allowed to have internet access yeah let alone Be Active on social media so talk to us go back to the beginning of your mission we're at covid talk about the role of like devices and social media as a as a Mormon missionary in 2019 2020 2021. so at the beginning of my mission it was mostly Facebook what about it um we it was very controlled like our phones still had restrictive like I don't know if you heard of moss 360. so you're allowed this is important so you're allowed to have a smartphone did the church issue the smartphone or did you bring it so it's different with every Mission but I brought it on my mission it had to be Samsung so that they could put the um I don't even know what it is like the monitoring yeah the monitor would you call it Moss 360. so the church tells you to bring a Samsung smartphone yeah and has you install an app called Moss 360 that does what controls your phone so they can see what you're doing on there there's like rumors some people are like yeah your mission president can watch everything you do on your phone and other people like I don't really know but you can't go to any websites unless it's like a Church website like churcheschrist.org you can go to school that's it your phone can't go to any other one oh so if you go to Safari or Google browser once you've installed this this app if you try and do mormonsstories.org what happens or Reddit or whatever first of all you get red flagged what does that mean uh your whole phone shuts down um I only know that this happens because the last day of my mission I was trying to install an app so that I would be able to communicate with my family in the airport and my whole phone shuts down it says like you're um authorizer has been informed blah blah whoa so I didn't even know that would happen the whole time so if you try and install an app that you're not allowed to install you're saying this must app shuts your phone down yes so my whole phone restarted I couldn't talk to my family when I was in the airport I just had to find them and I want to come back to that but yeah but right now we're just talking about the phone's limited functionality and if you try and go to a website that's not approved the the app does what yeah it won't let you and and it gets flagged if it's I mean if it's like Mormon stories or pornography or anything like that so your your mission president and or Church Headquarters would be notified that you tried to go to an unapproved website I believe so yes that's what I was told okay yeah okay so you have this phone you install the app you're told what you can't do which is install any apps or go to any websites other than lds.org yeah what about Facebook and Instagram so we didn't have Instagram until later in my mission okay but Facebook finding was always a part of it because of covid you can't go out in the streets as much and talk to people so we would message people on Facebook Messenger we would put out ads for like service in the area join local groups um stuff like that put try and make inspirational posts like every day um so you were asked to be active social media participants at some point trying to spread the gospel through Facebook and Instagram yes okay yeah what was that so could you see other people's social media posts yeah so you're not supposed to follow family members or friends from back home um you're supposed to just follow locals other missionaries just trying to make local connections only and you can't be on your phone unless your companion's watching so like when you're doing Facebook finding or Instagram finding your ha you have to like it's four eyes one screen is what they would say and if you want to make a post you have to read it to your companion first to get it approved um well yeah some policing yes well Four Eyes one screen I've never heard that that was the motto of my mission Four Eyes On Screen what if someone DMS you either on Facebook or Instagram someone from home or whatever um so on Instagram like I mean my mom I think a few times would be like love this because she followed me I just didn't follow her back and then I just like wouldn't respond and we would use Facebook Messenger like on P days to talk to family but if someone from home DMS you or messages you not on a p day then you're not supposed to respond unless it's like a missionary opportunity so if a friend from back home is like I want to join your church then you can respond but that never happened okay okay so you're using Facebook and Instagram to spread the gospel and to try and find people locally so how would you find people locally to potentially teach through Facebook and Instagram yeah we would use hashtags um like when I lived in Palm Bay is when we really got more into it so we'd look up like hashtag Palm Bay influencer hashtag Palm Bay small business we look under the location like different locations in Palm Bay we would go to local like Christian pages and then go to all their followers and message every single follower um I'm trying to think of how else we did it we would join like Palm Bay neighbor Facebook group and post in there like I'm a LDS Missionary ask me anything which does not go well if you're wondering uh some people were nice it got like 600 comments of just like explain this explain this explain this and I'm like I can't what were they asking you to explain um it's usually like local pastors saying like well why does it say in the Bible that no one will ever see the face of God and then Joseph Smith saw the face of God or why does the Book of Mormon have this contradicting thing why does alma have so much of Isaiah in it like stuff like that that for a second Nephi yeah yes okay so you started getting introduced to doubts about the church through process lighting yes all the time you're probably were you annoying people yes I guarantee we're annoying people which I still feel I feel bad about it but also at the time it was like we're saving them like we're bringing them to their stored church and I would like we ended up teaching this girl she lived in Ireland and she was very feminist and having struggles with the church and we're like no like we're feminists and we are doing great like we are members and we go to church every Sunday and we're missionaries we follow all the rules but we're creating a change like if you join the church you can create a change too like that was the mentality that we would give if we were faced with that which it's a lot easier to be like you can make a change but then like you have that lesbian couple where it's like yeah they can make a change but they'd get kicked out pretty fast if they're trying to like be married like oh we want to get married in the temple like that's just not going to happen for them and my mindset of my mission was obey obey exact obedience follow the Brethren and Obey whatever the Brethren say because they speak with God I can't imagine being a missionary thinking well this church is good but it's messed up in a ton of ways yeah and I disagree with the church in a ton of ways and I'm going to be the one that helps make the church better like I can't imagine being a missionary under that mindset I honestly can't either like sometimes I think back and I'm like how did I do that yeah because I think individuation this idea of individuation within the church at kind of any time you know it it requires a lot of effort it requires a lot of Courage it requires just because of culturally how it works and what happens when you do that but for you to do it on your mission for you of all places where you know there's just a whole system upon the system upon the system yes and and for you on some level to be to choose that not to choose but to have that time be these moments of just standing up and speaking and expressing yourself and finding voice and um and and kind of honoring this emerging you know this emerging you you know during this time it's really something yeah thank you okay okay so you're getting bombarded with questions and doubts about the church you're prosely lighting Progressive Mormonism uh that's kind of a woke liberal feministration um anything else you want to say about I mean just generically about the use of social media because this is a whole new category I know there's a lot to say so were you prosely lighting knocking doors we could only knock the doors of people who had been previously contacted by missionaries so we couldn't like if someone approached us on the streets we could offer our message but because of covid we couldn't just go up to someone or knock on their door just because you never know someone doesn't want to be approached um especially once masks weren't required outside anymore in Orlando so um so yeah like 80 to 90 percent of my mission was tracking was knocking doors and so I can't imagine a mission where you're not doing that all the time no what was it like what were you doing in all your spare time um the most active and busy time of my mission was with this companion um and we would just we'd make appointments through social media that's how we found a lot of people or through we have a there's an app missionaries he was called area book where you can see every member in the area every person that's ever been taught people that aren't interested people that you are teaching it has all their information all their past lessons every interaction they've had with missionaries is written down that's quite a record address phone numbers everything so they'd call it gray dot finding because every gray dot in your area book on the map is someone who's not being taught that's been contacted by missionaries before and so we just go through there's hundreds of them and we would just text them call them they started doing this thing where you'd put in the area code of Palm Bay which I think was I don't remember what it was but you'd put in the area code in your phone and then you'd type like one one one one one one one one and then one one one one one one two and call every number in the Palm Bay area code trying to find people to teach like telemarketers yeah so we definitely found ways to fill our time service projects meeting with members asking them to invite their friends it was very it was still very busy just less knocking okay so you felt busy were you frustrated were you happy were you enjoying it were you going stir crazy were you bored um when I was with this sister I feel like we had so much fun together like I was exhausted but I was busy enough that I wasn't thinking about things that were stressing me out um and that was at the beginning of 2021 but with so many responsibilities and like everyone's speaking so highly of us it kind of took me back to that perfectionism and I just started to really go downhill in what way um I just beat myself up about everything and I started to get in trouble with my mission president a lot to the point where I physically couldn't eat I couldn't sleep I felt nauseated all the time anytime our phone rang I was scared it was going to be him calling to be upset with me so talk about getting in trouble getting getting like the things I got in trouble for [Music] um I just started with me like becoming more and more Progressive and feeling more comfortable with myself I started to let my personality show more and I'm very outgoing but as a missionary you're supposed to be like more reserved and professional and spiritual and so it's like the whole laughing loudly thing I was laughing loudly like um and sisters aren't supposed to wear leggings because it'll tempt the elders and on P days we were allowed to go to the beach and not get in the water or anything but just be on the beach play games for like a few hours in the morning and I started wearing leggings because it was comfortable and I got in trouble for that my zone leader kind of got mad at me and what got me in trouble was I made a comment was like well how do you know I'm not staring at all the elders butts and that did not go well like that is so inappropriate I'm like but it's true what if I am like them wearing their tight Church pants is the same as me wearing leggings but obviously that didn't go over well and if I stood too close to an elder in a picture or I would get accused of flirting all the time and I'm like I'm literally just being nice but I got in trouble for it [Music] um and I think one of the bigger ones was we were on the boardwalk we'd go to all the cute little surf shops and walk around town together as a district and we walked in and there's cute swimsuits everywhere and I'm dying because I'm in Florida and I can't wear a swimsuit and me and all the sisters are just like looking at all the cute swimsuits and they're like you should just go try one on like don't come out in it obviously but just go try it on and so I go in I try on the bikini and I took a cute little selfie to show my companion then I deleted the picture um but one sister was very uncomfortable because of that she didn't see me in the bikini just the fact that I tried it on and she knew that it happened she called my mission president and he was very upset he said to me like this is a very big sin to some people like what would your mother think and I said my mother also wears bikinis and like I mean it he just like he couldn't say anything to that and I it just even though I was standing up for myself a little bit I just felt so guilty about everything um there were just so many little things I just have to say that in my understanding of a Mormon context if your mission president has called you in and is getting after you for something the only right answer is I'm so sorry I'll never do it again so for you to say my mother would be fine with bikinis that's showing insubordination and a lack of respect for patriarchy and the priesthood that would be considered really problematic by a Mormon it's like it's like disrupting a system you're becoming a system disrupter yes and I maybe didn't realize it at the time but I'm glad I did but even though like I was standing up for myself I didn't feel very confident in it just because yeah I was constantly being put down and then all the leaders in the mission like the Zone leaders the male like Elder Zone leaders were always getting after me and I've actually just for like your acting like you're having too much fun I heard you slept in like I heard you guys are having problems with sleeping in I heard you're not liking exercising in the mornings and I'm like because I'm exhausted like um or just like you need to stop flirting you need to stop wearing those leggings um there were some P days where we're playing sports all day long like we'd wake up in the morning beach volleyball go to the church gym play basketball go out to a field throw a football I'm in Florida 90 humidity it's 100 degrees outside so some pea days I wouldn't wear my garments because I'm like I'm exercising and I got in trouble for that because they're like you're a missionary you wear your garments even when you exercise in the morning which I didn't do that I didn't think you had to and so I just felt like everyone was after me and then there were some stls in my mission sister training leaders who were telling my mission president that I was being disobedient and that I would get on my phone and call my family all the time which I wasn't because I was scared like I didn't break rules I wasn't out to break rules like I felt that me wearing leggings wasn't a big deal and for myself I was like that's a stupid rule I'm not doing that yeah but when it came to being like I wanted to be a good missionary and I wanted to make God happy still it wasn't like I was like trying to rebel and be evil yeah and so it just became like missionaries saw me being different and it was like a big problem yeah and I had never felt more like constantly sick to my stomach in my life for months I just feel so so much for that because I think the the strength that it takes to kind of start that process when you're on a mission and they control so much of your life in reality and can punish you yeah and and make things really difficult for you I I there's a lot of emotion management to that because it's true even if you think in the moment this is right and you're starting to kind of emerge and show a sense of self and it doesn't mean you're prepared for what comes at you as a result of that so I can just imagine that's new that's different and particularly in a system where you're really depending on the people around you to be okay you know where you've been taught kind of to do that that you're okay by having by showing up in a certain way and you've got no one really I I mean in a position of power and then I think once it's so easy to be identified as a threat that once people see you being identified that way then it's almost like you know you don't even need the upper people yeah then you've got people around you with that look what she's doing yeah that are out to get you and out and that just must have felt excruciating I can just imagine yeah it was definitely excruciating because people that have never been on a mission or who don't know much about the Mormon church um would say like you were scared because you were wearing leggings like that's not a big deal but it's like when you're on a mission it's not the real world anymore like you're a 21 or 20 21 19 year old girl who should feel like an adult like he just graduated normally people that age are going to college like starting their lives but instead you are completely under control like people are in charge of you and if you say no to what they want you to do that's like incredibly disrespectful yeah like you know I think about you know just like speaking out against the church is terrifying but what you did is also terrifying trying to be independent come into your own learn to listen not only listen to your own voice which is not encouraged as a Mormon or as a missionary not at all but then to stand up for your own power and take on parts of the system that you don't think are healthy trying to do that as a woman and as a missionary is incredibly difficult and stressful and courageous and I can understand why your brain was just dumping adrenaline and cortisol into your system making you stressed and nervous all the time because thousand years ago it could have got you killed in whatever tribe you were a part of yeah and so your biological programming would be saying danger of Will Robinson yeah danger Susie Robinson like don't go against the system or it could be harmful to you yeah and she and you're experiencing it I mean you're being called in you're being on some level all the time that's right so you're experiencing no safety I am not safe that's exactly how I felt and I had expressed I had been going to counseling on my mission because I had gotten in a car accident I had previous trauma with car accidents I was having nightmares every night um he was treating me for PTSD just I was having horrible reactions to even being in the car trying to deal with that stress and so I was going to counseling and I start to bring up these things I'm feeling and I do agree with some of the things that my counselor told me of course it's a church counselor um which means anything I say if I wanted to get counseling I had to sign a document saying he can tell my mission president anything I say okay right there that's such a problem yeah sign the document that was the only way I could get therapy yeah so like you become you you go to get a Masters or PhD in therapy the first thing you're taught is that your your client you assure your client confidentiality yeah and you tell them the only way confidential confidentiality gets break broken is with your consent and or in the case of you or someone that you love being harmed who's vulnerable but confidentiality is like the Cornerstone of therapy and so your Mormon missionaries are signing waivers where they're giving their therapists the permission to disclose whatever they share with their therapist that that violates like a core Cornerstone of of ethical and viable therapy yeah exactly and I really struggled with that because so much of what I wanted to talk to my therapist about was like I feel like my mission president hates me he's constantly getting mad at me I feel like everyone's after me and then my therapist would just tell me like well those are your automatic thoughts like no one's after you it's all in your head and I was like okay like any time these people start to come after me I just have to remember it's all in my head the promise of the concept of interest because your therapist also represents the church yes so they're not uh the other sort of like therapy 101 is you're supposed to stay independent of your own biases and values and preferences and your Allegiance as a therapist is supposed to be to your clients values not to your own but if your therapist is is getting paid by the church and and hired by the church and representing the church they their first priority isn't your values uh Brinley Jensen it's representing the church and so there's a conflict of interest on the part of your therapist it's true and all of this like combined together just like I wasn't really trusting my therapist but he was telling like some of the things that he was coaching me through were helping me to be able to cope still um but I was still really struggling and then they started having me meet with this lady I don't know anything about her it was Zoom meetings and they said that she could prescribe me pills to help me because obviously the medication I was on wasn't helping and I was just not doing well and so every two weeks she prescribed me a new pill and she would just say take it for the two weeks if you don't feel any change we'll do a new one and I don't know how many medications I went through but like it was just horrible there was a week where the pill I was on I don't know what it was but it made me like light-headed and I would pass out and I felt nauseated even worse I couldn't eat still and she's like just keep taking it and so I just had to hold on till the next meeting and so this just led to like a very anxious depressed unstable missionary having all of these pills I don't know how many of them were con Controlled Substances like I don't know what I was taking like I'm sure my mission nurse knew but I would just became so like in such a dark place and at the same time because of this I am praying begging for an answer and getting nothing and feeling like God just is not even there and on top of that at this time the church for come follow me was studying Doctrine Covenants and we're reading through it and some of the things that I was reading I was just like this is what I believe look what just like Joseph Smith forcing people to marry him I forget what section 182 DNC 132 132. we've covered it a lot more yes and what what did you read in DNC 132 just how he was damning people if they wouldn't marry him yeah and specifically Emma he tells his wife Emma after he'd already married 22 people without her consent yeah he in his Revelation says that God says it's in the voice of Jesus Emma if you don't let Joseph take plural wives you will be damned yeah yeah and you're reading that thinking what thinking well just through all of Doctrine covenants there's so much damning like you're damned if you do this you're damned if you do this and I'm like I feel like this doesn't sound like anything I've read in the Book of Mormon at all and I'm like how did I not see this and I was like you know what I'm just gonna be a member of the church who doesn't believe in the doctrine Covenants because I was like I really did I was like I hate the doctrine of covenants and as we're reading through it and studying along with come follow me they skip over all of the parts that like are a little questionable or a lot questionable and so I was like speaking to my companion about this because she had been through a faith crisis before her mission where she you know reconciled some things now is this the BYU Democrats companion yeah okay so she grew up like in the Bible Belt Texas and you know she she was there for me she validated everything I was feeling she was like yeah it's fine um if you hate the doctrine covenants that's fine so that was really good to have her there with me and she was validating but that was the only validating thing because my therapist is telling me like just keep praying just keep having faith it's all your automatic thoughts are telling you this it's not your real thoughts and then I think my breaking point was we went to state conference and my mission president was there and I just felt like he was looking at me and I felt like he just knew everything I was feeling and I just ran out of the state conference what were you feeling just every testimony that was given in every talk I'm just like I don't feel like them like I don't agree with because of course it was all about Doctrine covenants because of come follow me and I'm just like this isn't resonating with me this isn't how church was when I was at home where I just loved everything that was being said and felt so empowered like I feel like if I were to get up and share my thoughts they'd have to stop me like and so I just ran out and my companion came after me and she's like what is wrong and I'm like I I'm just struggling with my faith so much and at the same time as I'm filling all these things I'm still teaching the lessons declaring with everything that I am that I know the church is true and so it was just like that self-betrayal that we were talking about where I'm just like I don't know what I believe I don't want to be here and and even with all those doubts I still there wasn't even a thought of leaving the church like that wasn't even I still binge watched the uh what's it called the apologist any apologist content Saints unscripted yeah Saints unscripted like during my personal study I'm just watching all of their videos like see I know like they're proving everything right like I know the church is true it's just something's wrong in my brain right now um I don't know if there's anything else so when you run out and your companion follows you did your mission president notice and what was how did how did that story end he I don't know if he noticed he never said anything about it um but soon after that I got she got transferred away and so I was with a new companion still struggling like this so you lost your kind of progressive yes I lost my lifeline choose your life flying because she was she validated me yes yeah she let me know that like it was okay to feel that way that it didn't mean I was evil it didn't mean God loved me any less that kind of she was speaking to me that way which was really helpful um and do you think they took her away from you because they wanted to put you with a different type of person um I don't know I've never thought of it she had been there for a long time so it could be anything yeah okay um but to you but to you you lost your Lifeline yes yes I did and how many months into your mission was this this was she left right before my birthday in May so I was going to hit a year that July okay so you're with her six months yeah just about six months and so by the time she leaves now you're a year into your mission which is two-thirds of the way through your mission yeah okay so I had a little bit left all right so yeah two-thirds in your mission now you lose your lifeland how did what happens next um I things just got worse I had I had talked with my mission President right before she left and it was just the point where I'm like I want to repent of all my Disobedience I want to start a new chapter like she's leaving I just need to like force myself into the mold and so I got it all off my chest I said I was sorry and that was that and I kept going to counseling but I was still doing really bad um because at that point you're just internalizing you're just trying to turn it off shut it down pack it down yes especially because I couldn't say the things I wanted to in lessons anymore because I wasn't with someone who was going to back me up um and I think what really just tore me down the most was we were having my companion I were having discussions with some amazing people um we were teaching not really teaching but having discussions with this couple who were Baptist and they would cook us Sunday dinner and we would have a discussion where we knew we probably weren't going to convince them of anything because this they were both very well educated well versed when it came to the Bible and anyone who's well versed in the Bible knows that there's lots of contradictions between the Book of Mormon and the Bible and we would just have discussions and I was like dedicated to researching like I probably could find a bunch of research in my notebook right here like of trying to that's your missionary notebook yeah I have my journal and my and my notebook with me um but I enjoyed going over there because it was just a fresh healthy perspective like they taught me things I had no clue about when it came to the Bible and same with this other guy we were teaching and so then when my companion left and I got a new one generally as a missionary you're taught like if they're not going to accept your message you'd ditch them like you don't teach them anymore because it's not worth your time but I loved going and talking with them and she my new companion was so dead set on we have to prove them wrong or we're never speaking to them again and they were like my home away from home like they cooked us nice meals and they were so kind and I did not want to let go of them and I didn't care if they weren't going to get baptized but she insisted that we invite this other member from our Ward to come with us to a lesson and he it was like a gospel Doctrine teacher very intelligent and it was so like vicious like arguing I felt so embarrassed so discouraged I was humiliated that and sad that they probably assumed I mean I don't know what they thought but I I you're supposed to be one with your companion so I had to go along with it but I didn't want to sit there and have this guy yell at them and so I think that was the last time I ever saw them and I was just like if I act perfectly Mormon then everything I love gets ripped away from me out here like everything that's keeping me sane and lessons just turned into arguments where we're trying to prove people wrong and I'm like for someone that for people that preach of loving Jesus like regardless of if you believe Jesus was God or not this is not what he taught to act like this and so I was very discouraged and there was one night where I was just crying my companion was annoyed with me for being depressed and she said well why don't we say a prayer and so she kneeled down in front of me and prayed that I'd stop crying stop acting depressed get it together so we could go teach this lesson and I just remember being like that is not how it works like you can't just pray that I'll stop crying that made me cry more but I just was to the point where I was so discouraged and I started to I was scared of my companion because she wasn't very nice and there's not much I want to say about that but I couldn't reach out to my mission president through text because she'd see it and there was you're supposed to email you get a you get an email in your inbox and then it leads to a link where you email your mission president every P day you're supposed to and he would always say like I read every one like even if I don't respond know that I read it and so I started emailing him once a week saying like I am not doing good I'm so depressed I am scared for what I might do like please help me what do you mean the scared of what I might do um at that point I was extremely suicidal I don't know if you need to give a trigger warning for that or anything yeah trigger warning and my therapist constantly asked me if I was and I said no because I knew I didn't know what he was going to do with that information I was scared I knew this wasn't regular counseling he was paid by the church um and so at that point I was I had plans because you know no one was regulating any of this medication I had I had six full bottles of pills that I didn't know what they were and at that point I was planning on taking my own life at some point and so I emailed him week after week with no response and I remember thinking you would call me like weekly if not well more than that when you were upset with me and needed to control me and keep me you know not acting out but now that I need you and like I am crying out for help it's just silence and I didn't want to tell my family that I was feeling this way and anytime I would start talking about my feelings to my companion it was just shut down and so I was just like okay I I'm just gonna try and go on for as long as I can and when I can't take it anymore I'm going to just end my life and I stole um a SIM card because when you move areas you get a new SIM card to put in the phone so I stole a SIM card so that if I needed to escape to I had a whole plan that is pretty personal to talk about so I'm not really going to give details but I I stole a SIM card to put in my phone so that I have some way of contacting someone to just Escape somehow um and I don't know if there's anything else you want me to share about that part just dying to know what happens yes okay yeah suicidal yeah honestly how alone you must have felt yeah you know um and I just I brought my mission Journal because I shared on my Tick Tock um some of the things I wrote down when I was feeling this way and there were some people yeah there was some things that I just want people to know that like missionaries need help because I have heard so many stories even from missionaries in my own mission that I had no clue we're going through the same types of things and so right at this time like almost every journal entry was like hi Journal I'm just here to tell you I'm an empty shell of a human being XOXO sister Jensen like every entry um I wrote one saying hi Journal how are you it's weird that I'm asking you this but since my companion is giving me round 957 of the silent treatment I figured I'd talk to you instead um and just talking about how dark and alone I felt and that the mission is supposed to be this amazing spiritual like everyone talks about like I never want to go home and I was like not only do I want to go home like I want to be dead because of how this place is making me feel and no one's giving me help and I remember I almost told my counselor I kept a journal while I was talking to my counselor and I would write down everything I wanted to tell him and I was writing down the advice he was giving me and I was about to tell him about my suicidal feelings and he told me um that he had an exercise for me to try where I should just go in the mirror every day and look myself in the eyes and say you are a horrible missionary and I remember like he said it was called I don't remember I think it's somewhere right here but it was like closure therapy yes exposure therapy and I was like that doesn't really resonate with me I'm not doing well I don't think I should talk to myself that way and he was like just try it for a week and I remember getting off the phone I was in a church building my companions were waiting my companion some other sisters were waiting for me another room and I just fell to the ground in a panic attack just screaming and people heard me screaming and I ran into the other room and I told them what he said to me and they were like no you're not a terrible missionary but like just the confusion hearing different things my mission president isn't speaking to me when I'm begging for help like I'm being told to try this exposure therapy where I say I'm a horrible missionary and at that point I'm like I just don't trust my counselor because I told him I didn't like that and he told me to do it anyways and like I don't know if that would be effective for someone but not me and so I was just doing bad my mission president still wasn't really talking to me and then it comes time for transfers and he calls me and I'm thinking finally and he says I want to call you to be a sister training leader and I was like what that's what you're calling me about and he's like yep you're going to Lake Nona in Orlando and I'm like okay does he think that's so that's just for the listening audience prior to the ordained women movement uh women missionaries or they're called sister missionaries had no leadership responsibilities at all on a mission yeah once feminists started really agitating within Mormonism starting around 2014 and into 15 and 16. the church came up with a response to the feminist agitation giving sister missionaries some responsibilities some leadership responsibilities shy of District leader Zone leader assistance to the president so that's what an STL is kind of a leadership position and your mission of president's thinking oh Brinley sister Jensen's depressed I'll give her a leadership calling and maybe that'll make her feel what honored and respected yeah I'm not sure and I just remember thinking like I am the one that like all the stls hated because when I was speaking out and being myself they came after me and so I was like why would he think I want to be an STL like I don't want to work with these girls that are so mean and um not saying that every STL ever is mean but that's how I felt and so I meet my new companion she is amazing um she was so sweet and I was just like okay I'm just gonna pretend I'm like the happiest spunkiest girl and maybe it'll like trick my brain and so she's like are you ready to like make goals and get so many baptisms and I'm like yes those works so hard and um every night I would just cry and during personal study I would just cry like anytime I could get to myself I'm just like dying inside um and it was our second day together and we're sitting there having personal study and I just like my gut was just telling me like just be honest with this girl and I felt like she had some suspicions because when I was unpacking I think she saw me moving a billion pill bottles which no one like I'm sure some people have that many pill bottles but a sister missionary I don't know and so I'm obviously paranoid that she's gonna find out take them away but I just kept having this feeling that was just like trust yourself like don't think about your mission president don't think about the fact that you have to be a leader right now like maybe you should just talk to this girl and so we get done doing personal study and she looks at me and she's like what's wrong and I was like I feel like I should tell you something and I just told her everything I told her about my plan I told her how I stole a SIM card and what does stealing a SIM card mean um you're so anytime a SIM card is no longer in use in an area it's supposed to be returned to the mission president and I stole it why are you returning SIM cards to the mission president what does that do um I'm not not really sure if it's just a control thing or like no one you're not supposed to have a SIM card unless your phone is like the dedicated Area phone that you use to contact people so if you have a SIM card in your phone like you can get in a lot of trouble because that's giving you access outside like overriding the bigger World being able to text Moss can't stop you from texting as soon as you switch your sim card so you're you're using your mission phone without a SIM card yeah so you just use hot spots Whoever has losing Wi-Fi yeah so Mormon missionaries only use Wi-Fi and that's the only way Moss works if they use a SIM card then they can they can they can work outside of the control app that controls missionary that monitors and controls missionary Behavior no so like in every companionship both of you have a phone whoever is senior companion so whoever's put in charge over the area has the SIM card in their phone so every area has a dedicated SIM card but it's only to be used for texting members all of that so not necessarily overrides Moss but when you have the phone without a SIM card you can't it's like you can message people or like get on the internet I mean people find ways to get around Moss and so that was my plan to find some way to escape or something I had all these different plans in my head and so an area had been closing when I was in Palm Bay and it was my companion's job to take it back to the mission president but I took it from her and it was just the Lost SIM card that I had it almost sounds like somebody I I'm not calling the church this but it sounds like somebody who's kind of Trapped in a cult trying to find a way to break away yeah definitely because truly any missionary could walk out their door walk to a bus station like it isn't as hard as you would think to just go home like they're not legally in charge of you I don't think but no something about the control of being there is like you were completely trapped even though it should be common sense that you can walk out the door you have no obligation no legal obligation to be there it's like that's not even a thought in your mind it's like you have to come up with some type of Escape Plan and sadly enough mine was death and so when I told this new companion this um the first thing she did was she hugged me and she was like we need to talk to someone we need to tell the mission president and I'm like he's not going to do anything is my first thought um and then she asked me if she could flush all the pills and I said yes which was really hard um and she called the mission president's wife and said we need to come to the mission home and she was like we have lots of meetings today sorry and my companion was like no like cancel your meetings right now and she drove me there and I sat there with my companion and I sat next to my mission president's wife and my mission presence like was just across the room for me and I just told them everything and um I just cried on her lap for a long time and he was extremely apologetic that he had no clue that that's how bad it had gotten um and then he tells me it's church policy that you have to go home immediately and for whatever reason I just like broken the tears all over again it was like I'm gonna disappoint everyone like no one a missionary coming home early no one immediately jumps to Mental Health they're like what did they do on the mission what did they not repent for and so I was just heartbroken um and they booked me a flight for the next morning and my family was excited to see me and I will immediately wow yeah it it's just really clear you felt trapped you felt um imprisoned and you felt like there was no Escape that the church had such control on you that you'd be disappointing your family your mission president God yourself and so you wanted you the only out you saw was was ending your life is that right yeah that's right um where you're so were your parents aware of any of any of this on your mission they knew I was struggling and that I was trying new medications um they didn't know it had gotten that bad and they wished I had told them obviously I mean any parent would um but yeah they just knew it had gotten really bad because I mean I told them about me getting in trouble and how discouraging it was and I remember just bawling to them on the phone saying like please don't call my mission president and get like upset with him for getting me in trouble like just don't say anything um which is so strange because your parents had said you didn't even need to go yeah but you still felt like you'd be disappointing them if you went home early yeah can you explain that it's just I don't think it would have mattered what they said they could have been like just don't go they could have told me we don't want you to go and I still just that lifelong pressure not from my parents but from the church and completely dedicating myself to an organization like just giving myself over my whole life it's like I feel like coming home early would just be like ruining all of that my lifelong commitment like everything that means anything at all to me yeah and probably I mean your concept of identity for yourself how you viewed yourself right yeah I mean if perfectionism was was your was a pillar from these adolescent or even childhood years within within Mormonism early mission return is viewed as failure it just is yeah yeah so you didn't see returning home early as an option no and once I did get home I I did feel good about it once I saw like the second I got home my entire extended family was there welcoming me home everyone was just happy I was okay and I realized like it's okay to come home early um and I had always been an advocate for that but it like I have a younger brother who's not going on a mission and he's faithful Latter-Day Saint like he fully plans on getting married in the temple he like daily prayer scripture study he's a very Orthodox but a mission would not be good for him and his mental health and he's okay with that and I've always been such a like the first one to stand up and be like you don't have to go on a mission but then when it was myself yeah I was like absolutely not she has to go on a mission wow yeah do you feel like your companion maybe saved your life yes I told her that I think if I would have stayed with the other companion I was with then it wouldn't have been the same outcome because I didn't have a safe space but this new companion like she didn't make it about church or missions she didn't ask if I was dealing with a faith crisis or anything she just cared that I was to keep me alive yeah shout out to her yeah she's amazing and you know the intelligence that I'm receiving from people inside the church is that in 2022 something as high as a third of all Mormon missionaries are coming home early from their missions and that some super high percentage of like 60 70 percent or more of Mormon missionaries either come into the mission you know with depression or anxiety or are experiencing depression and anxiety on their mission in a clinical way like there's a there's a mental health crisis with with the Youth and Young adults of today yes but it it even seems worse for Mormon missionaries yeah it's intense pressure just constantly um and it's impossible to reach expectations it's just not going to happen and so I think it breeds depression anxiety because I was already struggling before I came out but once I once it all hit me and I was in the middle of it all I don't think I've ever felt worse in my life yeah yeah and there's there's so many areas you know as someone who was trained as a psychologist I'm seeing so many red flags from your mission president caring more about the mission than your well-being the control um the coercion the fact that the church is recommending a therapist to you there's a conflict of interest there the fact that you're signing away confidentiality uh is a huge problem with a therapist that that has a conflict of interest that's a huge problem and the church controls everything about it and then your mission president's unresponsive when he's supposed to be reading those emails he's neglecting you um and then you've got a some sort of psychiatrist or nurse practitioner that's prescribing you meds in a way that's totally irresponsible like it's just a disaster the churches approach to Mental Health on missions you're making I mean what I'm hearing from you it sounds like a disaster as someone who is trained with the PhD in Psychology yeah and I used to think like maybe it was just my mission but ever since like speaking up about it on social media I've had I couldn't even count how many return missionaries from all over the world that have had the exact same experience with medication with counselors with companions with Mission presidents and I try not to place a lot of blame on my mission president because he like before he was a mission president his job had nothing to do with mental health or anything related to that at all and so it's just that they're calling someone who has no experience in helping hundreds of new adults to just be in charge of them for a year and a half to two years of their life with no clue how to help them other than I'm going to pray about it and God's going to tell me what to do but if he was praying about it and God was telling him what to do then I shouldn't have ended up the way I did on my mission yeah same with countless other missionaries all over the world yeah yeah and I agree with you I have missionaries emailing me dming me for Facebook every week wow me from their missions yeah wow oh yeah and they're saying help me John I I don't believe anymore or I'm trapped or I don't know what to do and I don't want to like one thing I'm not going to do is say get out of there go home like on Reddit these missionaries are coming on Reddit somehow they're getting on Reddit yeah there's links you can follow yeah yeah so they're going on Reddit and they're saying help me I'm trapped on my mission they're reaching out to Mormon Voldemort literally to John delin who's been excommunicated podcaster saying John help me and and I see you know some folks on XX Mormon Reddit going get out of there go home and I'm like I'm not going to do that I'm not going to yeah like I'm not gonna tell a missionary what they should or shouldn't do I don't know what their situation is at home I don't know what their mental health condition is I don't know the circumstances so people might expect me to do that but I'm not going to do that no but then should I should John delin be counseling Mormon missionaries about how to how to navigate their mission I feel even though they're adults I feel like they're kind of children yes that's how it feels huh that's how it feels as a missionary yeah so part of me feels like with their parents even though they're adults would their parents want John delin counseling them yeah and so sometimes I don't even know how to answer them and sometimes I don't answer them because I don't know how to answer them and and I want to tell them to get a good therapist but they're locked in a system where they can't get a guitar yeah they're not allowed so this is I mean this is the the Mormon in uh but it's happening so often now that it feels like an epic Mental Health crisis within Mormon missions and I and I don't think the church either they they aren't aware or they don't care or they don't know how to solve the problem and I don't know which it is I don't I have no clue which it is and that's why um I've had several people that I served with in my mission reach out to me you know in disappointment that I've gone down the path that I have and I would just say to them that like I'm not trying to get you to leave the church or anything like that like I know the church isn't going to stop sending missionaries out they're not going to stop doing all the things they're doing but they should at least figure out a way to help these missionaries to not drive them to the point of being suicidal um and to hire like have options for therapists who aren't LDS who can listen with an open heart who can hear anything a missionary is saying and not try and change their mind or tell them it's all in their head because that's what happened to me and I was not helpful for my mental health at all yeah and that's what happens to so many missionaries but it's just hard because the chances of the church hiring non-lds therapists is Slim to Impossible yeah yeah so this is something the church needs to fix and and they if they're not going to fix it for the health and the well-being of the missionaries they should probably fear some type of class action lawsuit yeah because I think it's reaching epidemic proportions by 2022 I think it's a really serious deal I I know like I've already just this month just this month you're the third returned missionary that was suicidal on their mission yeah you're the third in a month that I've interviewed who served a mission in the past few years or or recently you know yeah yeah yeah I'm so sorry that happened I am thank you yeah I am too yeah okay so I'm gonna I'm gonna um maybe suggest something that's a little bit on the Fly I think we should end this episode as part one not end yet but I think what I want to do is kind of have this be its own episode about basically wanting to die in your mission and coming home early so let's let's work towards closing out this episode by talking just about the mission aftermath of coming home and anything else you want to do to tie up your mission experience okay and then we'll take a break to be Humane and we'll come back for a part two kind of about reconstruction like deconstruction well your processing of your faith after your mission and then if there was deconstruction or reconstruction which is Margie's favorite topic we could talk about that um as as a part two yeah that sounds great is that okay yes but but what else would you like to say about coming home early and you know there's going to be either missionaries watching this because there are plenty of missionaries who watch Mormon stories yeah somehow they do it or they're going to be people considering missions or people who come home early any final experiences or encouragement or wisdom or advice you want to share about coming home early in the aftermath as a Mormon missionary yeah um I think that when I came home early um you know you have to give your homecoming talk and I had to stand up in front of my entire Ward friends and family and talk about why I came home early and I didn't go into detail um I mostly just talked about being in a really dark place and being depressed and I still I was still pretty strong in my beliefs that the church was true and that somehow God was going to work something out for me so I shared lots of that in my talk and I talked about being a mental health Advocate and I just remember like being so praised for talking about it and then I was asked to speak in different Wards and it was a little exhausting because the reason they loved it so much was because I was talking about how you can come home early from your mission and still be happy or how like there's it's all going to work out in the end to stay faithful and I think it's like a security blanket to be able to say just because something bad happened to this missionary doesn't mean the church isn't true doesn't mean bad things are happening and so I would just say that it's okay to like I wish I would have let myself sit in my anger and work through those feelings instead of just being like now it's time to put on the show for everyone like what a miracle that I'm home when instead like I should have focused on healing immediately and not worried about a homecoming speech Yes and traveling around my stake telling all these people and there were people that reached out to me that said like thank you for speaking on Mental Health like I really needed that and that is great and I'm glad that I could share that but in the church The Narrative with mental health isn't always going to be my mental health sucks but it's all gonna be okay because I'm reading my book of Mormon and I have strong faith because it does not always end that way and that can be a really painful way to force yourself to feel after coming home like I'm really struggling but don't worry everyone I'm still Mormon so no one has anything to worry about because I think that's kind of what I was trying to put out there about myself when I got home it's what the community desperately wanted you to put out because everybody's like oh my gosh Brinley came home why Not only would it make them wonder if there's something wrong with the church it would make me wonder if there's something wrong with you and so there's this urge to reassure everyone that the church is still true and that you're still faithful exactly and because I know that's why I would have wanted to hear as a teenager when I was obsessed with being perfect it scared me when people around me left the church or even had questions in their faith and so I think I just wanted to give people that safe feeling like she almost died but she's still Mormon so everything's gonna be fine we are I feel like we're so conditioned to do to do this too this idea of we serve others you know and and we take care of others and and it's really this reinforced abandoning of ourselves and our needs this where we don't see our needs as being um valid or important to meet or even aware that we have needs or how we might meet those needs that there really is this conditioning that happens where it's all about others how do I make you feel what what is needed here that you know the community needs or this person needs and in so doing when we when we do that we do abandon ourselves at our time of suffering oftentimes to kind of show up for uh for other people so as you were doing that um what was going on inside you like as you are kind of giving that message of what you're what you're reading as you know what other people need and how to kind of show up in this way that keeps everything intact in the ribbon tied around the you know the just so what what did it feel like to be you in those moments yeah thank you for asking that um I think I thought I would come home and my mental health would just snap into place but on the inside nothing had changed um the first thing that I was I I got home you're supposed to have a little interview before you get released and they said okay the first thing we want to do is get you right to the temple we gotta like start all this do you want to do a service Mission and all of that just like sent me spiraling because the thought of a service Mission even my parents met with the service missionary Leaders with me and even they were like it doesn't seem like that's going to be good for you and I was like no um and so I'm putting on this show and my parents knew I was still having a hard time but I just felt so hopeless I tried to like jump back into normal life I applied for a job and on the first day I just felt so depressed I didn't show up and I thought like I can't even go to work like what is my future I'm not going to be stable enough to be in a healthy relationship with this return missionary my patriarchal blessing talks about and I don't feel like I could be a mother like this um and so I just felt really like nothing had changed and my parents got me another LDS counselor who didn't show up for our first meeting um and so I just and then I got another counselor who after she told me I need to do one spiritual thing a week and I said I don't think I can she ghosted me another LDS counselor wow and so I was just like this is four LDS counselors that have let me down like on my mission and at home and I'm just by myself like trying to figure this out and I'm not doing good so that was kind of if that answers your question yeah it just sounds so absolutely exhausting to be the person's suffering and needing help how many times you you know tried to get help just the effort to kind of try to reach out to communicate with you know your mission president to those efforts are huge you know when you're in a place of just real Mental Health crisis and vulnerability and for you to have so many times of just feeling ghosted you know hurt that when you're reaching out and you're trying to you know get to a safe place or talk to someone that you're feeling hurt by them gaslighted by them or you know just time and time again it just sounds incredibly traumatizing yeah it definitely was traumatizing and it just sent me the message that like I have given all of who I am to this church and they are not helping me like they're not fulfilling their promises I was like I did all the things like I went through the temple I was baptized I went on a mission I tried my hardest to the point of just insanity and I felt like I just got nothing back I was like these counselors that you're paying aren't helping me and even the counselors I was seeing were like as long as you're okay that we tell your Bishop everything you say I'm like well that's my father so no I'm not okay with that by this time your dad will just become your Bishop yes yeah so I just felt completely betrayed by the organization I gave my entire self to my entire life yeah yeah felt betrayed yeah that they weren't looking out for your best interest yeah I'm so sorry and people should know those who aren't Mormon not only does the church not pay you for your mission service but you paid to be a missionary it would be like being on a corporate sales force and paying to be a salesperson for a corporation yeah so you were paying you were giving two years a year and a half of your life and paying to then have the church in effect neglect and abuse you psychologically yes and then after you wanted to die and the church knew it and your home them continuing to neglect in in some sense abuse you yes exactly yeah that's disappointing yeah okay how do you want to how well any final word you want to say for this episode for missionaries past present or future who are returning home early or do you feel like you've kind of said it all um I guess just oh I know I know so these missionaries that reach out to me saying John to Lynn I'm on a mission or John Delan I'm thinking about a mission but I don't believe what do I do can you can you provide any experience or perspective for either missionaries that are trying to decide what to do or for those who are considering whether or not to go what yes you don't have to give them advice because that's not our job but what perspective do you want to share with them I just wish when I was in that position I would have trusted myself because I was giving myself the signals for months that it was not safe there that I was not happy that it was not good for me but because the church told me otherwise I ignored everything that my instincts were telling me um I would go so far as to watch the video that Jeffrey Holland put out about why you should never go home from your mission which is a very damaging video well you would watch that when just on repeat all the time while you were a missionary yes that was available to you yes how anything that any like BYU speeches um any inspirational videos you have access to oh and they actually make you watch that video in the MTC that horrible video where Jeffrey Holland says never leave your mission early never come home early yeah oh they watched that on repeat yeah so and I was told in the MTC like if you ever feel like going home just remember this and so I would watch it and watch it and watch it and be like I am wrong he's right I need to stay out here and so I think I try not to have regrets because everything's a learning experience but any other missionary that is going through that I would just hope they trust themselves before anything else because like everything inside of me was telling me to get out of there but I just pushed it down and it did horrible things to me and so I would just hope that like trust and intuition Trust that you're not crazy and that your feelings are valid simply because you have them and it's okay to disagree with people who want you to stay out there I mean that's brilliant brilliant advice thank you very very good advice very simple but profound and it gets to the themes Market you're exploring which is self-betrayal and I'll just say I just released that video of Elder Holland well an audio recording of Elder Holland saying two missionaries on a mission that he doesn't know a more pitiable group on Earth than Mormon missionaries who returned home early and I am confident that video alone that talk alone has led to a number of of deaths by Suicide or suicide attempts and I've had missionaries within sort of a 20-year window tell me that they have either listened to or seen that presentation yeah but I always thought it was bootleg underground and so it's shocking for me to hear that that talk as a video yes was made available to you as part of the resources made available to missionaries struggling with their mental health yes he they made an apology Video available I don't know if you've seen his not necessarily an apology but being like I didn't mean it like that but he still kind of reaffirms his same message in that video because when I saw the follow-up video he put out I was like oh maybe I can go home and then by the end of the video I was like nope still can't go home so it's definitely available man if anybody can help me find a video of that talk of Holland's or a video of Holland's apology doubling down I I will share that far and wide because I feel like I mean talks like that um jeopardize or or in some cases end the lives of Mormon missionaries definitely yeah yeah one thing I really love about your reflection um and response on some level is that you know any time you know you have a system that punishes you for connecting to yourself or using your own voice and rewards you for kind of falling in line in to the system whatever the system is is kind of asking of you it's a good indicator you're being used yeah and so what I love about that connecting to yourself and trusting is on a level making it really clear um that you won't use me anymore you know unconsciously like if I choose to give it that's one thing but the default setting will not be that I have a relationship where you exploit me and you use me definitely thank you I would agree for sure yeah all right well Brinley Jensen we just hit the three hour mark for this episode and we still have kind of your faith processing slash deconstruction or reconstruction to go yes are is this do you have time for more today or yes I do are you do you have time for more today I do okay yeah all right so check this out viewers and listeners you get a bonus we told you there'd be one part you get a full three-hour episode on the Mormon Church making a missionary want to die I don't mean to be glib but that's what today's episode one was about and uh stay tuned because we're going to go right to part two where Brinley talks about and this is just in the past 12 months uh her return from remission yeah processing her mental health and her faith after an early mission return probably some Faith crisis themes and then where where she is now with her life and with reconstruction and with her thoughts and and even maybe some of her beliefs yeah yeah I can't wait all right thank you thank you so much all right well thank you Brinley because I think this if Elder Holland's video jeopardizes lives I think that your story has the chance of saving lives I would hope so I think that's maybe that's why you're doing it I hope yeah thank you and thanks Margie for being a part of this yeah thank you all right all right everyone stay tuned for part two of this amazing uh two-part interview with Brinley Jensen we appreciate all the support and uh we'll see you on the flip side uh on Mormon's Stories podcast take care

Channel: Mormon Stories Podcast

Views: 574,506

Keywords: lds, mormon, mormon mission, lds mission, mormon abuse, lds abuse, lds missionary suffering, mormon missionaries suffer, lds sexism, mormon sexism

Id: c40rRpTNeK4

Length: 182min 23sec (10943 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 01 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/whoturnedthelighton]

This is a fascinating and insightful interview with an incredible amount of similarities across so many subjects .. Brinley is a remarkable young woman who traversed so many similar issues that we can relate to but especially anyone young enough with their life ahead of them to free themself from religious trauma. She sunk to incredible lows but has turned her life into something joyful and full of promise.

Warning: These 2 videos are 5 hours long .. but if you have the time or watch it over a period of time it is worth it!

[u/[deleted]]

I got through 3 hours before I ran out of time. What a fire cracker Brinly is... good on her