My Journey Deconstructing Mormonism

It was October 27th, 2014 and Taylor Swift had released her newest album, 1989. It was also the same exact day I returned home from my Mormon mission in Italy. A year and a half earlier, I entered the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah and traded in my identity as Kaeli and became Sorella Wiltbank. I had also traded in all contact with the outside world for the next 18 months. No phones, no music, no books, no TV, and I was thrilled with my luck. It’s like Taylor knew I had been going crazy without my iPod and if she had released her new album even just a day before I got home, I would have been pissed.

I got off the airplane and demanded my parents take me straight to Target to purchase the album. We crammed into the truck, I slipped the CD into the dash, and forced my entire family to listen to 1989 the whole four hour drive back home to the ranch.

I remember feeling caught off guard by this new Taylor. She was more scandalous, more worldly. Regardless of the initial shock, Taylor was my muse and I’d be obsessed with anything she graced me with. It was the beginning of an era and I was happy to be home.

I returned from my mission just shy of 21 and knew that I had sacrificed precious time while I was away serving the Lord. I needed to get to Utah ASAP or else I might miss my window. Nobody ever spoke plainly about the expiration date of women, but we all knew it. The girls knew it, the boys knew it, the old people knew it, even the kids knew it. There was no life more sad than that of a single, childless woman. Plus, if I didn’t get married I wouldn’t be qualified for the Celestial Kingdom after I die.

After making it back to the motherland, I began the task of finding a husband. I traded in my LG Chocolate for an iPhone and hopped on this new dating app bandwagon.

In Salt Lake City I was dating people who come from General Authority families and money and plastic surgery and it was so different from how I was raised. The idea of being a housewife of SLC didn’t sound so bad, but there always seemed to be something wrong with me. I suspected it was either because I was a country girl, or a size ten, or I had dreams — I could never settle on which.

In 2016 I voted Donald J. Trump for President of the United States and I was extremely relieved he won and was able to save us from the horrific mess Barack and Michelle Obama had gotten us into. Hillary was a crook and this election cycle showed how closely we managed to avoid the downfall of our nation.

This was also around the same time the church implemented a new worldwide policy. Mormon prophet, Thomas S. Monson, announced that individuals in same-sex marriages were apostates and their children were to be banned from being baptized until they reached the age of 18.

I had been working at a social media marketing agency at the time and I had a few coworkers who were gay. It was truly the first time I ever made friends with openly gay individuals, and I was enamored with them. They radiated so much love and kindness and this church news really shocked me. It didn’t make sense that God would direct His Prophet to do this. They were taking hate the sin, love the sinner to a whole new level.

In 2017 I was getting a degree in Journalism at the University of Utah and while I loved all the liberal arts classes I was taking, at times the discussions brought out a devil’s advocate side of me that was frantically trying to piece together the conflicting parts of my identity within humanity.

I was enrolled in a summer course called Gender and Communication. My lonely single ass signed up for the class thinking I would learn how to finally keep a boyfriend, but the curriculum turned out to be all about feminism. Ugh, what a dirty word that’s been used to misconstrue the true role of women.

The professor asked me what women’s voices in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints looked like. It hurt my pride to begin seeing that we don’t have a voice. That October during the worldwide General Conference broadcast, the one where God’s prophet and apostles speak to the world, I anxiously consumed the five sessions, taking note that of the 33 speakers, only two were women.

One really unique and beautiful doctrine of my root religion is that we believe in a Heavenly Mother. I brought it up all the time as a missionary, and everyone agreed that this is key doctrine that is often missing from mainstream Christianity. I’d always felt so much pride that our church acknowledged the Divine Feminine.

There was no doubt in my mind that God loves me just as much as he loves men, but the organization of the church didn’t make it seem that way. The term ‘cognitive dissonance’ hadn’t made its way to my vocabulary until years later in therapy, but this is when my inner world started to conflict with itself. It felt as if I had suddenly been trapped in a room of mirrors and at every corner I was met with the shattered glass of my identity.

A white woman. I’m a white Mormon woman who’s ancestors colonized the west. I was learning about the story of who I am through the lens of people who’ve been oppressed by us for hundreds of years and it wasn’t pretty. Suddenly the injustices of the world were front and center and I played a part in the oppression.

I tried to talk about it with friends and family. They could tell I was distressed by this recent awakening, but every time I tried to break down my thought process I was met with a sympathetic “huh, I’ve never thought of it like that” and a pivot to a lighter conversation topic. The Mormon Stories Podcast and CES letter became my life raft. There were others who had the same questions and knowing that made me feel a little less crazy.

I would go to church and squirm in my seat the whole three hours, restless from the flood of questions that were suddenly claiming every inch of my mind. I needed answers and nobody had them. In fact, every well-meaning church leader who sat down with me and my list only seemed to make it worse. “That’s a question we may not have answered until the next life,” ugh it make me sick.

What do you mean we don’t have an explanation for why out of the 34 women Joseph Smith married, 7 of them were teenage girls as young as 14-years-old?

From the time I was a child I was taught that Joseph Smith was chosen by God to restore the true gospel of Jesus Christ. When he was a humble 14 year old God and Jesus came to him and called him to be the Prophet. He was chosen to be the mouthpiece of God. He had received divine revelations directing him to restore the ancient practice of plural marriage in order to establish a righteous and chosen people. My people.

Of course we stopped practicing polygamy in 1890, but that’s really not so long ago when ya think about it. I was always taught that our church was different from the polygamist cults of Warren Jeffs and other Mormon apostate groups, but truly what is the difference between them and us?

What does it mean that the whole of our beliefs are founded on the same Joseph Smith who claimed that God and Jesus appeared to him and gave him the green light to sexually and psychologically abuse women? Just because The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints no longer practices polygamy doesn’t mean they still don’t sexually and psychologically abuse women.

I’ll never forget the panic attach that came after I fully comprehended the extent of spiritual gaslighting I’d received about Joseph Smith and the slew of other beliefs that stemmed from him. I wasn’t ready to admit what that epiphany meant. Belief that Joseph Smith was a prophet called by God is foundational to your membership in the LDS church. Without it you are not deemed worthy to participate in the ordinances of salvation. That’s the doctrine, there’s no escaping it.

So I had to make a choice. Was I going to live inauthentically to my truth so I could remain a participant in my community, my family, my life. Or was I going to choose to step away from an organization that is designed to oppress people. Designed to oppress me.

It’s one thing to realize you’ve spent your entire life being spiritually and psychologically groomed, it’s another thing entirely to get yourself out of it. And that, I believe will have to be saved for another day, another blog.

If you’ve made it this far, please consider donating to the Navajo Water Project.