Welcome to Mormon to Muse. I'm Kristen Martineau, certified life coach, artist, and former Mormon. This podcast is for post Mormon women ready to heal, reconnect with their inner wisdom, and create a life that feels fully their own. Each week, we'll explore life after faith crisis through therapeutic art, life coaching tools, and creative reflection. If you're ready to deconstruct the past and create something beautiful in its place, you're in the right spot.
Hi, friends. Welcome to episode three of Mormon to Muse podcast. I'm going to talk to you today about some of the common pitfalls people experience when they leave the church, why that happens, and how to avoid making decisions that you are not going to regret later. Think of your life like building a house. In Mormonism, you were given a blueprint and you followed it faithfully, putting up the scaffolding and building the walls, just like it said.
It was looking pretty good. Everything in your life is based on the blueprint, your assumptions, what you wear, who you married, what you eat, when you have kids, how you parented your kids, how you relate to your spouse, your career or lack of it, your family traditions and rituals, your belonging to a community, your moral decisions, how you think about other people, etcetera. You get the point. Everything is built on the blueprint. Then there's an earthquake.
You didn't ask for an earthquake and you didn't cause it, but all of the sudden, all of your hard work crumbles to the ground. Not only the house, but the scaffolding came down with it and the blueprints got destroyed. After the dust settles, you look around and it feels like you are in a foreign land. The landscape looks completely different and you have no idea how to begin to make a new house without the materials you're used to using and the scaffolding and the blueprint. You miss the blueprint.
You miss the comfort of knowing how to do it and thinking that if you followed the blueprint, it was all going to be okay. While you were following the blueprint to a T and being proud of yourself because you seem to be making faster progress than your friends around you, you're also realizing that you missed out on some important developmental milestones that most people go through in their teenage and adult years. Come to find out your non Mormon friends were learning not only how to build the house, but also they've been learning how to make the blueprint something that you didn't learn. So now it's your turn to go to blueprint school. Welcome to your first class.
I'll be your teacher in blueprint 101. In this class, we're going to learn the five areas that most post Mormons are lacking development and understand which areas apply to us. Once we have a good understanding of that, we can talk about how to go about making a new blueprint and start rebuilding. Are you ready? I don't want to start this class off with an insult, but if we can't be honest with ourselves, we can't grow.
Most ex Mormons are stuck in adolescence in many ways. Sorry, but it's true and I'm going to give you five reasons why. Listen carefully and see if any of these resonate with you. You don't have to take notes. I'm a nice teacher.
And if you sign up for Mormon to Muse email list, by clicking the link in the show notes, I'll send you the outline and a therapeutic art activity to go along with it and reflection questions. So the first way that ex Mormons are kind of like teenagers is that we are going through individuation. We're forming a sense of ourselves separate from authority. Adolescents naturally go through individuation. This is the psychological process of separating their identity from their parents and the authority figures.
And maybe you did go through some of this as a teenager, but leaving Mormonism also mirrors this. You are separating from an entire system that once told you who you were, what was right, how to live, and what to believe. Just like teenagers, you start asking, what do I believe? What do I want? What rules am I choosing for myself?
This one definitely applies to me. I've always been the good girl, the people pleaser. I was the oldest daughter. I wasn't a rebellious teenager. When my mom left the church when I was 16 years old, I doubled down on my identity of being the faithful one.
If she couldn't be at my siblings' temple weddings, I would be. I married a return missionary who could take me to the temple so I could wear a really weird outfit on my wedding day. I regret the outfit. I don't regret my choice of who I married. I chose my college degree based on the messages I learned as a Mormon girl, x-ray versus nursing school, because x-ray school was shorter in case I got pregnant.
It's only been in the last five years or so that I've really been able to ask myself the question, who am I outside the identity the church handed to me? What do I think is right or wrong and why? What would I wear if I could choose anything? Seriously, what is my style? I don't know.
How do I want to present myself to the world? Who am I outside of being a wife and mother? What things do I want to learn and explore? We can often feel rebellious, angsty, confused, immature, but this is actually a healthy developmental milestone that may have been delayed by your religious conformity. A lot of ex Mormons go and get tattoos, piercings, wear short shorts, etcetera.
In some ways it does feel immature because people usually experiment with these things much earlier in life, but it's also a way of reclaiming ourselves. Getting my first tattoo was actually a hugely spiritual and healing experience for me, a way to reclaim my own body. The second way ex Mormons are like teenagers is emotional intensity. Adolescence is a time of huge emotional swings, high highs and low lows because you're facing massive internal shifts. Post Mormon transition is similar.
One day you feel euphoric with freedom. The next you're crushed by grief, rage, fear, and loneliness. It's completely normal because you're experiencing a major death rebirth cycle. You're experiencing the death of your old self and the emergence of a new self. On top of all that emotional turmoil, we hadn't been taught how to manage our emotions in a healthy way.
I've had a lot of people tell me that I seem very calm and chill. I thought I was calm and chill. I learned how to manage my outward expression by stuffing down how I was really feeling. The messages I was operating from were contention is of the devil. So don't express how you feel if it will cause contention.
Don't overreact to things. Don't be a baby. Do your best to smooth things over and make everyone happy. For a long time in my marriage, I had a really hard time telling Carl anytime I was upset. I wasn't stonewalling him intentionally, but it was very difficult for me to speak when I was feeling strong emotion, any strong emotion, because as soon as I would open my mouth, I would cry and I hate that.
I'll cry and scream and sob in my closet when no one is home, but it made me angry to feel so vulnerable in front of him. And especially if he was empathetic because I was being seen and I didn't want to be seen. I wanted to keep that place inside me to myself and not let anyone in. When I first started therapy, my goal was just to go and say the words and let her witness my crying and refrain from punching her in the face when she validated my pain. I'm getting better at it.
I can talk to Carl and say the words and cry. I've had to let my family see my grief over the church, even if they don't relate to it. I love my friends and I will go into the depths with them, but I'm still learning to let them go there with me. I don't know why we humans are so resistant to feeling all the feelings. Emotions can't hurt you.
Did you know this? Emotions can't hurt you. What hurts you is what you do in response to those emotions. Just feeling them in your body. It sucks.
It's uncomfortable. You don't want it, but it's not going to make you shrivel up. Learning to allow those feelings will make it less likely that you'll do something harmful to numb them. Here's something I try to remind myself of. These feelings aren't a regression.
They're a sign that I'm fully engaging with healing and rebirth. Emotions are a signal. They have a message for you. Are you listening to what they are trying to tell you instead of just stuffing them down? When I stopped believing that difficult emotions meant something was wrong with me or that I was being influenced by Satan, I was able to listen to the message instead of feel shame for even having them instead of feel shame and figure out why I was feeling that way.
Number three: ex Mormons, like teenagers, are testing the boundaries and exploring new experiences. Adolescents often experiment with different clothes, ideas, friends, values, relationships. After leaving Mormonism, you might find yourself exploring things that were forbidden, questioning everything you once accepted and wanting to experience life without rigid rules. This exploration can feel messy, but it's about reclaiming autonomy, freedom, and choice. Whenever the idea of exploration or experimentation comes up, my Mormon brain kicks into full gear.
So you can just do whatever you want. You're just going to go try all the drugs and have sex with all the people. Woah, Mormon Christian, settle down. That's a big jump. I don't want to be a hedonistic maniac and I definitely think people can go too far with this.
If you are rebelling just to rebel against the church, the church is still controlling you and you can definitely burn your life down by doing stupid stuff. We're going to talk about how to avoid that later on. But for now, just know that I'm not talking about getting addicted to heroin, having sex with everybody and getting a tattoo on my face. For me, experimenting was trying new clothes and styles that I was never able to wear before. I got a couple of tattoos, a second ear piercing.
I learned how to order coffee and figure out what I liked. I have an occasional cocktail, finding a friend group that's not connected to Mormonism, who, by the way, have been some of the most accepting and genuine and fun friends that we've ever had as adults. Experimenting was allowing myself to be curious about what interested me, which led to learning how to paint and taking community college classes, which led to starting a monthly therapeutic art group at my house for ex Mormon women, which has led to this podcast. It's so fun to just try new things. Experimentation is part of finding what truly fits you, not what was handed to you.
It has been one of the greatest gifts as a result of my faith crisis. The fourth way ex Mormons and adolescents are alike. We're developing a personal moral compass. Teens begin to realize that the world isn't black and white and they have to decide what's right for themselves. Former Mormons face this too.
You now have to decide what your personal ethics are without the old reward punishment system. It's deeply empowering, but also terrifying. Without a prophet or a handbook, how do I know it's right? Developing my own moral compass was really the catalyst that finally pushed me out of the church. When there's a queer person right in front of your face that is suffering because of the church's rhetoric, it's so clear that what you've been taught to believe about them is false.
When I was hanging on to my belief in the Church's theology, I could not fully unconditionally love my own child. Didn't Christ come to teach radical love and condemn the Pharisees? The quote unquote rules I was trying to follow were at the cost of genuine love and connection in my family, and I could not give my allegiance to an institution at the cost of truly loving my people as they are. I do not care what the church says about loyalty to it at all costs. Institutions never ever come before people.
If an institution is asking that of you, it isn't God's. The morality of Mormonism makes no sense. No coffee, alcohol, pay tithing to a $300,000,000,000 corporation while people in your city are starving. Also, make allowances for men who use spiritual coercion to have sex with lots of women. That's like the oldest cult leader trick in the book, seriously.
And also somehow try to make racism and homophobia and sexism acceptable. I'm not perfect. I make a lot of mistakes, but if I'm condemned for following Jesus out of the church, so be it. I don't want to be in Mormon heaven anyway. This is a sacred process of becoming a moral whole adult based on inner wisdom, not external control.
And the fifth way that ex Mormons are like teenagers is longing for belonging and the fear of rejection. Teens are wired to seek community and fear abandonment. Post Mormons feel this. You may feel isolated from your old social circles, misunderstood by family, and desperate to find your people. The loss of built in belonging creates grief, loneliness, and sometimes vulnerability to new unhealthy systems.
Community belonging is an evolutionary survival instinct. Getting rejected from your tribe meant you were going to die. You couldn't survive without the protection of the tribe. Our brains are still wired this way. The need for community is strong.
People who aren't in strong communities have worse mental health. I think community is one reason people stay long after they don't believe anymore. I get it. The fear of being rejected from your community and your family is absolutely terrifying. It feels like a literal death.
Nobody raises their hand to sign up for rejection. No one risks it for petty reasons or because you're too lazy or you hadn't said enough prayers. The cost of staying has to be higher than the risk of losing the people and the community that you love the most. So it's okay. Recognizing the normal human need for community can help you seek new healthy connections without shame.
Let me tell you something. It will change some of your relationships. I've been surprised by the reactions of some people. Once I started being more open about it on social media, about leaving the church, I was surprised by some of the messages I got and who I got them from. Just expressing their own faith struggles and thanking me for being brave enough to talk about it.
I've also been heartbroken at how some of my family relationships have changed and probably will never be the same. They see me differently now. It hurts. I'm not going to lie. But one of the tasks of adulthood is deconstructing the beliefs we picked up in childhood, whether that's religious beliefs or your assumptions about the way the world works or beliefs you have held about yourself.
Beliefs like I'm not an athlete or I'm not an artist. And sometimes not believing those things anymore will be disappointing to other people. Learning to stand in your own integrity is part of developing into a whole grown up person. So while there will be grief about losing your belonging in your family or community, there's also beauty in creating something new for yourself. Most of us raised in Mormonism didn't really learn to make friends in the real world, especially as adults because a lot of our time and social interaction was taken up by the church.
I was surprised to find that there are tons of post Mormon groups. They're easy to find on Facebook or Google search. Thrive Beyond Religion is an organization that does yearly or semi yearly events for post Mormons. I've gone to some of those and made friends there. You'll have to be brave in a way that you haven't been before.
Sign up for classes that interest you. A community art class or yoga or hiking group. Be in places that will put you in contact with people who have similar interests as you. Reach out to your neighbors. That's what I did.
There's a woman who lives just across the street from us and I knew that she had been a member of the church, but wasn't sure exactly what their status was and I didn't want to just knock on the door and ask her. So I messaged her on Facebook and asked if they wanted to go for dinner. We did and we really hit it off. They invite us to dinner with a group of friends in the neighborhood and we instantly felt loved and accepted by them. The people in our neighborhood group have become some of our dearest friends and support system.
And I'm so, so grateful for that. We were pretty lonely in our neighborhood after we stopped going to church. It's not that anyone from the ward had been mean to us. They haven't. It was just different.
Most of my relationships were built on callings I had with other women and I love those women too. It was just such a tender time for me. I didn't want to have to explain myself or what our family was going through. I didn't want to be invited to church things or feel like a project. And I do know that they have the best of intentions and they're sincere in wanting to help us, but there are times I'm sure they have discussed our family and word council because there's a coordinated effort to reach out to us.
And also it felt a little demeaning to feel like they felt sorry for us or that they were doing their valiant effort to save us. Honestly, other than being heartbroken that the church is a corrupt and dishonest organization and the grief of losing something we based our whole life on, Our family is doing great, better than it had been. Anyway, this is all just to say you'll have to build a new community on your own. It's harder, but it's also more genuine and so worth the effort. It can just begin with reaching out to one person.
Sign up for one class. So those are the five ways that ex Mormons tend to be like teenagers. How are you feeling? Can you identify some of the areas where you need growth? Good.
But we still have a big problem. Unlike teenagers or young adults, a lot of us leaving the church now have responsibilities that we didn't have when we were younger. We have jobs that we need to support a family. Many of us have children. Many of us are married.
The choices we make now have a much bigger impact on the people around us. We can't afford to mess around in the same ways that we could have as teenagers or young adults. So while this is an exciting time and it's fun to try new things and discover new interests and friends, you can absolutely blow up your life if you aren't wise about how to do this. My husband is a psychiatrist on an inpatient unit. He's seen many people who started drinking in their forties and ruined their lives and their marriages and became alcoholics.
To be fair, he's also seen a lot of people whose mental health is negatively affected by the church, but that's a subject for another day. So here's the task ahead of us. We need to create another blueprint, but how do we do that? It begins by asking yourself some questions and taking the time to thoughtfully answer them. Once you get your bearings a little bit, you can use your answers to guide you in making decisions.
I'm going to give you a list of these questions in the next podcast, but for now, I want you to remember this. Go slow. There is no rush to make any decisions. You don't have to throw it all out and jump in the deep end right away. Remember, a rebellious reaction to the church is still a reaction to the church.
The goal is to figure out how to do it on our own terms. Also, go to therapy. You are going to need some extra support as you go through this. You need someone to call you out on your blind spots and the way in which you're being self destructive and to validate the things that you have gone through. Just go to therapy.
So my friends, I hope this gave you a little insight into the areas where you might be struggling. Next week, I'm going to give you the list of questions to ask yourself to help you make decisions in your life. If you haven't signed up for the Mormon to Muse email, do that now by clicking the link in the show notes. I'll send you a therapeutic art exercise that goes along with this podcast right to your inbox every week for free, and you'll also get a link to a video of me doing the therapeutic art exercise, just so you can have an idea of how I approached it. It's a really easy way to engage in some creative self care.
That's all for now. Take care. Thank you so much for joining me today on Mormon to Muse. I hope this episode helped you feel seen, supported, and inspired to explore your healing through creativity. Before we go, I want to remind you that while I'm a certified life coach, I'm not a licensed therapist.
The tools and conversations I offer here are for personal growth and creative healing, but they're not a substitute for professional mental health support. If you're struggling with trauma, depression, or thoughts about hurting yourself or someone else, please reach out to a qualified therapist. Until next time, take care of yourself and keep creating.
