exmormonmusings

[exmormonmusings]

Denver, Colorado | dburkephotography

[exmormonmusings]

So....there was just a 5.7 mag earthquake here in Utah. It knocked the trumpet off of the Moroni statue on the sl temple, 😂. But uh...yeah so far we've got the rumors of wars, pestilence and earthquakes....call me a believer!

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times are tough. have this blessed short film from xmas of my sister and brother figuring out they can macarena to cascada’s “everytime we touch”

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$100 billion

I just found out how much the church makes and I am LIVID!! DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY HOMELESS PEOPLE THERE ARE IN SALT LAKE CITY?! DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE YOU COULD HELP WITH THAT MONEY?

And that's not even part of anything like the Bishop's storehouse or the measly (in comparison) amount of money they ( very publicly) donate to help people.

No, that is all part of a hoarder stockpile of tithing money that they are just having sit there and grow. I remember one of my primary teachers telling us that sometimes her and her husband knew they couldn't afford to pay tithing but they told us that "there is always something else you can cut, even if you have to go without electricity" ( 😳😡😤), how much my parents struggled to pay bills, got our car repossessed when we were in the church. How much so many members sacrifice to pay tithing. Not to mention how much ACTUAL good they could have their missionaries do instead of delivering door-to-door lectures. I am absolutely disgusted.

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PLEASE SHARE YOUR STORIES

I am looking to make a post about reasons people left the church, and I need some stories from you lovely people. You can message me, send them anonymously, or reply to this post. They can be a short message, or a paragraph. I don’t care either way. The post will be all your messages. I will keep them anonymous if you want me to, just make sure to tell me!

Please reblog! I’ve always wanted to do a project like this to tie the community together, so it would be great if you could get the word out!

Thank you

- R

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Not good enough

I... don't know how to start this off. I just...have been struggling with a lot of feelings of falling short of everyone's expectations. My younger sister just a full-ride scholarship, my younger cousins are going on missions, four of my older cousins just came back from theirs and are getting married, moving out and everyone is so proud of everyone except me. I work in fast food, still live at home, have never been on a date and I sometimes get so anxious about making even the smallest decisions.

When I was lds, I knew exactly what I was going to do with my life. I was determined to get good grades, go on a mission, come back to Utah and marry a good Mormon man in the temple, raise Mormon kids and be the perfect example of Mormonism, the golden child for my family to look up to. When my parents told us the awful things about the church and my world view was shattered, I just kind of fell apart. But then I watched my parents go through it too, and seeing them so unsure of anything made me feel like I had to try and hide how I was feeling, give them one last thing to worry about. I still feel that way.

My parents would get together with my mom's sister and they were always so bitter talking about the church. I didn't want to be that way. Then I watched my grandma go from this kind, supportive, loving influence in our lives to an ignorant, depressed, close- minded fraud. These are harsh words to use against my grandma and I love her very much, and I know she loves me but her love is conditional. As long as no one mentions or says anything bad about the church, and we let her ramble on about how good it is, everything is fine and dandy.

I understand why she's acting the way she is, she lost her husband, her 7 children slowly leaving the church one by one and she made a big move from the house my mom grew up in to living alone and then from northern Utah to southern to live with her last remaining Mormon child. She felt alone, like we were all ganging up on her and like she'd failed her children (which the church made sure to remind her of). I just wish she would be willing to try to understand us.

I also look at the other exmormon blogs on here and I feel like you all have much more to offer than I do. You all seem so knowledgeable about the church and how religion impacts one's life but every time someone mentions some new horrible thing the church has done or wants to do, I shut down and try to avoid it because I can't stand the thought of my family members being so brainwashed to go along with it.

My mind still can't process that the church I grew up in, the morals and values I believed in with everything I had in me is the same corrupt church I see in the world today. I know the church is ruled by evil, power-hungry men but a part of me still wants to believe what I did before. To say " the world is tricking you, this is what you were warned about."

But above all I need to remind myself of how much better a person I am now. The Mormon me would've condemned people for who they loved, how they dressed, where they were from and basically anything that didn't fall perfectly in line with my world view. I would've just been another ignorant, bigoted, self-righteous fool in the world and because of that, I have some comfort in knowing that at the very least I am able to offer some compassion to the world.

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Validation

You know, scrolling through fellow exmo blogs has been so helpful lately. When my family initially left the church, I lost most of my friends, and when I made new non-mormon friends they kind of just downplayed everything I was going through because they didn't understand.

I definitely got lucky having my parents be the ones to leave, and being so young (13) but at the same time it was really hard going through middle and high school with such a Mormon influence around me, realizing I had become the very thing I vowed most to avoid. I don't talk about it very often because I see so many people who left the church alone and are completely ostracized by their families and it makes me so grateful for my parents being so strong and just truly caring people that I know that no matter what I do, they'd never cut me off.

Sometimes I feel like sharing my experience is more harmful than good because I always end up feeling like everyone else has it so much worse. But I saw something on someone's blog that said leaving the Mormon church is traumatic and it truly was for me. I try to tell myself that I shouldn't feel the way I do (especially after 7 years) and to just get over it already. I can be really hard on myself so it's really nice to have a little bit of validation.

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I'm 20 years old but I still feel ever so slightly guilty when I listen to non-censored songs or enjoy a show with some "bad stuff" in it because I used to think about this poster all the time and the guilt would make me feel sick to my stomach. It feels good to do things the church wouldn't approve of but at the same time things like this are so ingrained in my psyche that it still feels wrong. It does seem to be getting better with time but I don't think I'll ever be able to be completely rid of it

New Era/Mormon Ad 4

“It’s great except for… except for the bad parts. What kind of movies and music are you feeding your mind?” 

Oh boy oh boy to I have shit to say about this fucking bitch. Turns out I have more shame/guilt revolving this then I thought! considering the second I read it I started feeling really really fucking guilty about media that I’ve said that exact line about! Fuck you mormonism! Fuck you mother who loved this fucking ad I grew up with this being mentioned often.

Okay so at first glance you see ice cream and in the ice cream there is a cockroach. This is to help aid the concept of well its great except for this one little thing and make you think about how dumb it is to say that about media when you wouldn’t eat ice cream that had a cockroach in it. This honestly kinda reminds me of the whole purity culture that exists on this hell site and honestly the biggest reply I have is the same thoughts I have about the purity culture that exists here which is you just gotta look at media with even an ounce of critical thinking. It isn’t bad to consume media that doesn’t agree with your view point, beliefs, morals etc as long as you look at it critically and don’t take what they say at face value. There is a reason mormons push this shit so hard, if you look at stuff that they don’t approve of you might fall away you might become a exmo you might realize its a fucking cult. It is information control soaked in shame at its core and it fucking sucks it causes you to immediately feel guilty about consuming any media that the church wouldn’t like and then they go and claim that that guilt is the holy fucking ghost trying to lead you away from evil. This AD is 17 fucking years old and I still hear it come up in church and in my house. I think my mom had it on the wall for a while. It’s honestly brilliant how the church so effectively gets their membership to restrict their means of getting information, brainwash themselves, do their dirty work for them, etc etc. 

I also find it humorous how I’ll hear the better side of mormons say stuff like well the church is good other this one part because its so hypocritical. 

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just in case anyone needed this. found on r/exmormon. this definitely describes some of my trauma better then i can

[exmormonmusings]

I can’t get this post to come out right but I get so /angry/ at smug atheists, especially public figures who have a public platform (as opposed to people just venting in private which is a different matter), who talk about how Christianity is so irrational and Christians are such sheep when they don’t understand one single particle of what it’s like to have to leave a toxic form of Christianity for your own sake, what it’s like to have to rip out fundamental beliefs you were taught to prioritize over your own feelings, and have to drag yourself out BY yourself because nobody in your community will help you, how much fear and doubt you have to go through, how much those teachings linger in your head and colour every aspect of your life for so long afterwards, how you’re taught from day 1 to view your religion as the most important aspect of your identity and how much work it takes to even get to the point of questioning

when they say things like “Fundamentalists are so stupid to believe that stuff” they don’t understand how emotionally manipulative many fundamentalist churches are and how that’s really saying “you were stupid in the past but now you’re smart like us” but that’s not what it’s like, I didn’t leave fundamentalism because I realized it was irrational I left because I realized it was killing me and it was a choice between staying and probably killing myself at some point and uprooting everything I had been taught was The Right Way, there was no logic involved except survival instinct

and I’m still not normal, I’m not free of the beliefs I was raised with for twenty odd years, I’m still terrified of hell, scared of what might happen after death, clueless about a lot of things my peers know about, that’s not rational either, I know that, my goal isn’t to be the most logical person on earth, my goal is to be able to breathe and be a person of my own

I hate that so many of them use those arguments to feel smart and superior and don’t realize how much that hurts people who have already been hurt enough by the church they left and how much it alienates people still in those manipulative environments who might want to leave but who will just hear “you’re so stupid” and not what they need to, which is “hey, you’ll be safe out here”

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Pity

I've become the person I once pitied most. But now I see that who I was is much more pitiful than who I am now.

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My town is getting a temple. Great. Can't wait. My family's gonna love it. (Yep, half my extended family lives in the same city as I do.) I really need to move out of state. https://www.ktvb.com/amp/lds-church-to-build-8-new-temples-renovate-salt-lake-city-one

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It’s kind of surreal to check Facebook one day and realize that you don’t recognize half your friends’ last names. We’re not even 20 yet…

#exmormon #utah

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Burnt Out

My town is full of negativity, anger over unfulfilled govt promises, frustration that their "little hometown feel" is being replaced by various apartment complexes, plans for growth that have overlooked important water issues and what would be beneficial for the current residents. Not to mention the suicide rate. I work irregular, 9-9.5 Hr shifts 5-6 days a week in fast food, dealing with people who decide to take their anger out on a sandwich that had one too many pickles. I have no idea what I want to do with my life and I don't see myself being able to move out anytime soon. I just feel stuck.

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If you are still a member/defender of the Mormon church after their recent redaction of the children of gay parents policy, knowing how much torment it has caused for your fellow LGBT believers and their families, how many lives were lost because of it, I have absolutely no respect for you.

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My closest cousin is going on a mission in a little over a week. My family and I went to her farewell party, the only non Mormons on both sides of her family. I tried to be happy for her, seeing she was so excited, knowing she has good intentions ( wanting to spread truth and save people) but for me it was just... traumatic. Her brother recently came back from his mission and he's just so... different. Holier than thou. Understandably finding it hard to adjust after two years abroad. I just... We went to the same high school, at one point lived one street away from each other... We used to be so close. I don't want to lose her but feel like I already have.

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