We Were Made to Speak

The few of you who follow my blog know writing is a big coping mechanism for me. It allows me to unleash the fire that burns within me when something is on my mind. A lot of the time, I feel the need to share, to be validated, to generate heartfelt discussion, to offer a different perspective.

Don't get me wrong, that doesn't always happen. Sometimes my posts are misinterpreted. Sometimes they just don't resonate with people. I'm a writer, sure. I'm not a perfect one though. Some thoughts are well-received while others get buried in the sand. That's totally fine. Even though I know not every post will be a winner or the popular opinion, I still write because I need to give freedom to my thoughts. So I put pen to paper or....fingers to keys?

I publicly announced my departure from the LDS church a couple weeks ago. That was so hard, and as much as some people believe I was seeking attention, I didn't want to do it. I told the people who needed to be told and went on with my life chock full of pull-ups and messes. I knew people would talk about me behind my back, and honestly, I didn't really pay any mind to it because it wasn't directly affecting me.

Until it did.

See, gossip fuels certain feelings within us, so we feel the need to address that with the person at the heart of the gossip. This time it was me. I started getting some unsolicited messages that meant well, but deep down I had this pit in my stomach, this crippling anxiety just eating away at the very core of who I am: a thinker, a feeler. I was hurting that somebody felt they could simply remind me of something I had never forgotten, sending messages like "Happy General Conference Day!" when they knew I was disaffected from the church at the time.

I had let that go. I tried to just live my life the best I saw fit without the intention of ever coming out of the spiritual closet. I thought the gossip would stick to a small circle, but just as a wildfire does when left unaddressed, it spread.

That hurt too. Spirituality is such a personal thing; it's an experience that doesn't need to be shared with everyone. When someone divulged something I feel is so deeply personal in my own life to others, it pained me. It was painful to get more messages from people under the guise of following the spirit when I know there was talk. It was even more painful to have assumptions made about why I had left.

It had to be politics. It had to be the desire to do things contrary to church rules. It had to be that someone said something offensive. It had to be this, this, this.

Nobody asked. They just threw assumption after assumption in my face.

"Where do you get your information?" when I had said nothing about history. "Politics hardly ever bring the spirit" when I had said nothing about my political views regarding my faith.

What's sadder? I knew it was coming. I knew because I did this to others. I sent texts telling people not to jump ship, to think about what they are doing and what they are giving up, to consider the eternities. I might even go so far as to say I deserved all this.

But it still hurt. It caused me more anguish thinking of all the people who believe I am now someone to be fixed, saved, changed, altered. I am different to them. My identity has shattered not only as it pertains to the church but also people.

The consideration one makes to leave the church is not taken lightly. It rips them right open. It is disruptive and destructive, not because the person still believes what they were taught is true, but because who they are has so often been associated with being a Latter-day Saint. When that is ripped away, so is their identity.

There is this false idea in the culture of church that leaving is more convenient, that staying is harder, but it simply isn't true. For me, leaving was harder. Acknowledging my doubts was harder. Knowing that I once believed and decided to walk away was harder. Telling my family was harder. Hearing them cry was harder. Getting text message after text message was harder. Feeling like a project was harder, and it still remains that way.

Leaving is not easy, and I would never romanticize it as such.

The pain I already feel in addition to countless others who have chosen this road is exacerbated when someone says we should just go quietly. No need to announce it.

Sure, there isn't a guideline that I needed to post on social media, but it wasn't for them. It was for me. I felt I needed to share so I could put all the conversations about me behind me and make room for another chapter.

It isn't fair to expect a person to harbor any secret as it pertains to church or any other facet of life. When someone tells you to just keep it to yourself, more problems arise than are spared.

We weren't built to keep things in. We were made to speak.

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A Cry for Compassion

Note: This post is about suicide loss, suicidal ideation while pregnant, postpartum depression, and my views on abortion. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, please call the Suicide Hotline. 1-800-273-8255.

Had someone asked me five years ago whether terminating a pregnancy was murder, I probably would have nodded vigorously, casting no doubt that abortion was wrong. There was no gray area. God had a plan, and abortion wasn't part of it.

But my life has changed drastically since then. I lost my brother to suicide. I fell into the pits of grief, despair ruling my world, darkness overcoming my body, my life, my marriage.

Of course, it wasn't always bad.

Even in grief, I could find little pockets of joy. I even became pregnant just two months after Christian died. I was elated thinking this was a gift from God, maybe even a little blessing from my brother telling me how sorry he was for leaving. I treated my pregnancy like any other overjoyed mother-to-be would. I raced to make my first obstetrician appointment. I immediately told my parents, my friends without a second thought. I smiled. I cried. I expected everything to be perfect, even in the midst of grief from putting my little brother in the ground at the age of fifteen.

I wasn't okay.

Something they don't tell you is that pregnancy and grief don't mix well. With hormones raging and anger looming, a woman's thoughts turn sinister. I felt immense guilt about my brother dying. It was bad enough that I couldn't do anything to save him. Why should I be able to experience the gift of life? How could I be a good mother if I couldn't even pay attention enough to recognize the signs that he was hurting?

The intrusive thoughts came violently. I wanted to die. I should die. But then I would be labeled a murderer for killing my baby. No one would pay attention to me if I died. They would merely label me a baby killer, giving no thought to my mental state, that maybe I shouldn't have been pregnant at all. Of course, the shame set in, and that only made matters worse. I didn't deserve to live, to be a mom. How could I when this is how I thought?

Only...it wasn't me.

But how could I tell these things to my obstetrician when I had read horror story after horror story of women who had been arrested for opening up and asking for help. There was no way I would risk having my baby ripped away from me. I just had to survive.

Miraculously, I did.

I had a beautiful baby girl, a beautiful birth. I was going to be okay. Gone were the days of suicidal ideation while pregnant, of being scared that I might actually hurt myself. I forgot all about it as I stared into my darling little girl's eyes.

Until I fell pregnant again just four months later.

At first, I found it amusing. It was going to be an interesting ride. But ultimately, we would be okay. Right?

Wrong.

I had a hard pregnancy. It was painful just like the first one. My grief from losing Christian wasn't as fresh, but it still lingered in the background ready to pounce at any given moment. It did. Many times. Top that with pregnancy pains, a husband with a brand new job that kept him from home longer than expected, and the frustrations of being a new mother, and you've got yourself a recipe for prenatal depression.

Despite the intrusive thoughts and suicidal ideation returning and the shame nestling into the core of my soul, I made it. Again.

On the day before my scheduled induction, I tripped and fell while walking to my car. Right on my stomach. I froze. I couldn't answer the EMTs when they got to me.

They took me to the hospital--but not the one my OBGYN had scheduled me to have my son.

Because I was only 38 weeks despite having excess amniotic fluid which was the reason for my induction, the doctor on call for L&D refused to induce me right there. It was fine. She waited to see if I would dilate to a four and would then admit me to have the baby. She said she would break my water once I reached six centimeters to help me along, but per the hospital rules, she couldn't help me until that point.

She lied. She never came to see me until the very end. The point where I had been writhing in agony for upwards of five hours from a failed epidural, and intense pressure that told me I needed to push. Five. Hours. I was screaming. The nurse told me to be quiet, that I just needed to breathe. I tried to no avail. I asked for the OB. She said she was busy. I needed to push. She wouldn't let me. She said my body wasn't ready. But I knew it was.

I tried to advocate for myself. I pressed and pressed to have her break my water. It still hadn't broken, even at nine centimeters.

I don't remember what choice words I used in my delirium from the pain when the OB finally graced us with her presence, but I finally convinced the woman to break my water. Isaac came twenty minutes later. With a bump on his head from sitting in the birth canal for too long. I knew my body. I had known all along.

The birth experience alone gave me PTSD that lasts till this day, but my postpartum period was far scarier than anything I had experienced while pregnant mental health wise.

I won't go into detail for the safety of myself and my readers, but my experiences through pregnancy, birth, and beyond are the reasons why I and my husband have decided I will not be going through another pregnancy.

For the sake of my children and marriage, more babies are not in the cards for me or my family. The quality of life I want to provide for my kids supersedes any societal pressure to have more mouths to feed and bodies to clothe.

As soon as I was able, I met with my gynecologist and started on the pill. I was good for almost two years, but my mom brain took control, causing me to forget the pill more often. This obviously wasn't acceptable due to our family plan, so I recently switched to an IUD for more security.

But the PTSD and anxiety over the potential to get pregnant is still there. I am still traumatized by the grueling pregnancies I suffered despite the beautiful humans that emerged on the other side. I am still terrified, even two years later, of getting pregnant again. So much in fact that I rarely ever want to be touched. After all, birth control isn't one-hundred percent effective. But I'm a married woman who deserves to have a beautiful sex life, who shouldn't be subjected to the idea of celibacy in my monogamous partnership.

Why don't I just get a hysterectomy? Get my tubes tied? Or even removed?

Women's bodies are regulated every which way in America from birth control to tubal ligation to abortion. As a twenty-six-year-old woman who has only had two pregnancies and two children, it would be borderline impossible to find a doctor to perform any lasting surgeries on me. Most doctors and insurances require a woman to either be 35 or have had three or more pregnancies before they would even consider putting a woman under to give them permanent birth control.

Should my IUD fail and I fall pregnant, I would likely get an abortion.

Why?

Because at the end of the day, my children deserve a mother who is mentally fit, alive even, to be there for them. To hold them. To comfort them. To love them.

How would it be fair for my children to lose their mother because some random person who has never spoken to her thought she shouldn't be allowed to get an abortion? That somehow putting her own  mental health and her children's quality of life above a pregnancy is grounds to be labeled a baby killer?

Words hurt. They cut like knives.

These faceless women being cast aside for terminating their pregnancies were handed an impossible choice. More often than not, a woman doesn't want to get an abortion. It's the last resort. But many have only allowed ignorant judgment to reign.

Choice isn't about loving or promoting abortion. It's simply allowing a woman full autonomy over her body, knowing what is right for her and the circumstances in which she finds herself.

I have never had an abortion, nor do I ever hope to be faced with a decision to have one performed. But I do hope that my story can shed some light on the matter, and maybe open up someone's heart to be filled with compassion for the impossible, painful lived experiences of women who have ever considered or had an abortion.

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A New Path

My faith has been slowly melting away since the day my brother was ripped from this life, a victim of depression's ravenous hunger. It isn't my faith in God that has been the problem--not entirely, at least. As people, we have given churches the power to dictate how we should feel, what we should believe. If we don't? An existential crisis settles into the limelight. It has nowhere to go, but only waits to be noticed. It's inevitable. After all, the only light on stage rests on unanswered questions, anger, frustration, grief, pain. One can only stare off into the void for so long before they must acknowledge what is glaringly obvious.

My whole life I've been told to put any questions I have on the shelf. You don't question. Ever. But if you do, those questions are only to be doubted, for they can never be explored and understood. Although, mine must have been provided by Ikea because it is incredibly rickety. When all those questions and doubts are messily stacked onto a cheap piece of material, it's bound to crumble.

I have tried for the last four years to be the person I was before my brother died--the spiritual giant returned missionary. But I can't. I can't accept the things I accepted before. I'm different. I think differently. I feel differently. I trust differently. I fear differently.

...and I feel wrong for it. But why should I when I have felt a more immense love for my neighbor? When I allow somebody the dignity to follow their own path? When I try to be a good person? When I consider that perhaps God would rather His child live happily outside the church than to yield to the mentally debilitating pressures mounting inside of it?

Yet, I feel wrong for asking questions--the same questions my brother asked before he died. I feel shame for wondering why my family is held spiritually hostage as a means to make me conform to a culture and theology I don't agree with. That same shame is found in my support for LGBTQ+ people and their love for any person. It's found in the disgust I feel when I look in the mirror while I'm wearing garments--not because of what they mean, but rather how I feel about myself. The shame accompanied with membership in the church is very real, and it's almost always served with a heaping side of mental illness.

[enter anxiety and depression, stage left]

The depression I have felt over the last few years has been immense, and its onset has ranged from my subsequent grief to years of suppressed questions to frustration with feeling something so far from the spirit when I hear what are supposed to be God's divinely appointed servants speak about things close to my heart.

I have thought much about my children and the way I want to raise them alongside my husband. I have heavily considered the ramifications of stepping away from the church and living more freely devoid of callings, assignments, expectations, and rules.

A few words my little brother said a few weeks before he died as he heard me judging another person who had left the church were these:

"Why does it matter?"

As I sit here typing these words, my heart is broken, my eyes are wet, and my soul is pained by the judgment I have previously passed on others for the way they chose to live. For some reason, I thought it was my place to think less of a person because I had the truth, and they were somehow lost. I would send conference talks, quotes, past posts they had made in an effort to get them to see what they were turning away from.

Ironically, and perhaps fatefully, I find myself in the same position: aching, yearning for the shame, depression, and anxiety to fall away so I can live my truth free from the painstaking judgment of others on the basis of a religion that taught to refrain from judging, to love God, and to love their neighbor.

As a mother, knowing what I have felt, knowing what my brother felt before he died, and knowing that my children will likely suffer from mental illness even without the church and its teachings, I just cannot subject them to the same shame I felt, that my husband felt as we were growing up, and especially what we are feeling now.

The pandemic has opened my eyes as I have seen Christian after Christian disavow peer-reviewed studies, claiming they will not live in fear, and yet, religion is just that--living in fear that if they don't live up to a certain expectation, they will be burned at the last day, thrust down to hell, ripped from their families.

If the Celestial kingdom is indeed a reality, and I could become a goddess, my husband a god, but the stipulation is that we have to turn the other way while our children take their lives, murderers and rapists run free, and I have to condemn those who love a person of the same gender, I don't want it. Any of it.

So the verdict has been given. I am forging a new path for me and my family, one out of necessity to mine and my family's mental health, conscience, and spirit.

I sincerely hope those who know me personally will continue to love me and refrain from silent and subtle, even loud judgments. For everyone is on their own journey.

This is mine.

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But, but, but...

It has been a hot, hot, hot minute since I've written anything on this blog. Since my last post, life has just taken off. We have two toddlers. Corey got promoted. I started a new Instagram dedicated to books. Charlotte started speech therapy. We moved to Utah. I'm going back to school. We bought a house. Coronavirus turned the world upside down, and we're still navigating this new normal. It's been quite the journey.

But you know what else has changed since my last post over a year and a half ago? My heart. My opinions. The way I see others and the way they live their lives.

There's a common phrase used in the Christian culture:

Love the sinner. Hate the sin.

Let me tell you why this phrase is rather toxic and frankly fosters erasure.

Last month alone was a whirlwind of movements for change. We experienced the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, fighting for an end to systemic racism and police brutality, and the month of June is Pride to celebrate and advocate for the LGBTQ+ community.

Sidenote: It's been five years since the Supreme Court ruling that made gay marriage legal in all fifty states, and just last week, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that an employer cannot discriminate against an employee based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Corey and I started a new nightly ritual last month where we have watched one episode of Queer Eye each evening after the kids go to bed. Let me tell you. That show has me in tears by the end of nearly every episode. We have both fallen in love with Karamo, Tan, Jonathan, Bobbi, and Antoni. Each of these queer men have had unique experiences, exhibit love and compassion to the people they serve on this show, and have honestly helped us see a whole different side to the people who identify as LGBTQ+.

Because they're just that. People.

Ever since Christian died, my opinions and biases have gradually shifted. There's something about losing someone you loved so dearly to suicide, knowing they were hurting in such a way that they made a choice to take their own life. It changes you. It makes you understand that validation is a crucial component of being a compassionate, loving, Christlike human.

You're probably wondering, 'Okay, Sarah. I'm sorry for your loss. It's sad but wonderful that you have made something of your brother's death, buuuuut what does any of this have to do with this phrase: Love the sinner. Hate the sin?'

I'm getting to that. I promise.

The very first words in the introductory lesson full-time missionaries from the LDS faith teach their investigators are: "God is our Heavenly Father. We are his children."

As His children, we are commanded to love our neighbor. We cannot truly and fully love someone by condemning, by hating a part of who they are. It just isn't possible. If every time you meet up with your gay friend and think, "I love him so much, but gosh, I just wish he weren't in a relationship with another man. Can't he just learn to live happily and confidently alone?"

There are no I love you buts in following the second greatest commandment the Savior Himself extended to us when He gave the higher law. When the Law of Moses was essentially thrown out and replaced, the nitty-gritty specifics of discipleship went right with it. This higher law is what I like to call the heart law. What matters most in how we live our lives, walking in the footsteps of the Savior is not only how we treat one another, but how we think of one another.

We are all sinners. No one is perfect. Everyone is fallible. You make mistakes. I make mistakes. In the words of Jean from The Perfect Man, "I make whoppers." Because of my status as a sinner, I would be a hypocrite to say, 'Well, I love you, but I hate xyz about you.'

We just cannot foster a community of love based on but, but, but. If you are loving your neighbor, whether you are a Democrat, Republican, LGBTQ+ and in a relationship, single parent by choice, supporting various movements for change, believe in women's reproductive rights, have given up a child, have an addiction...

I could go on and on and on. But if you are loving your neighbor in a way that does them no harm by showing genuine care and compassion, you are loving God. It's that simple.

Next time you read a news story about or meet someone who is different than you, put yourself in the Savior's shoes. He atoned for everybody, but let us remember that the Atonement of Jesus Christ was not only for sins. It was for all the pains, the hurt, the discomforts, the sicknesses we will ever face in our lifetimes.

Imagine the pains of a transgender person being intentionally misgendered on a daily basis because their identity is invalid and "crazy".

Imagine the hurt of a lesbian woman announcing she is in a relationship with another woman, and instead of support, she is met with malice, ridicule, and Bible verses.

Imagine the discomfort of a Black man every time he is stopped by a police officer, feeling an aching anxiety that there is a chance he might not go home to his family.

Imagine the sickness, or rather, the mental toll of a person being invalidated because their life, their love, their belief is wrong, apostate, sinful, disgusting.

Look inward. Are you contributing to those feelings that Christ suffered for without cost to anybody but Himself? His love in that garden was absolutely unconditional.

Love the sinner. Hate nothing. Embrace who they are.

Let's normalize that way of thinking, especially in the Christian community.

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