June is Pride Month.
As I said to Nicole Audrey Spector
I grew up in a chaotic family. There was a lot of running around, anger, and abuse. My parents divorced when I was 8 years old. I had no idea what a healthy, happy family looked like, but I certainly knew what an unhealthy, unhappy family looked like.
As a teenager, I decided that I would never be like the adults around me.
In high school, I found stability in a supportive group of friends. These were kids who lived the traditionally normal lives I always yearned for. They had a happy family, having Sunday dinners and going on vacation together. They too were Mormons. It’s not something I have personally experienced, but the closer I get to people of faith, the more I wonder about it.
My Mormon friends and their families attributed their organized and peaceful lives to the love of God. It was simple. If you live by His rules, as Mormons understand it, God will love you forever. I have never known such a love that would never abandon me.
I was baptized at age 16. The Mormon church members welcomed me with respect and respect.
In the Mormon faith, living obediently means abstaining from all sexual thoughts and actions until marriage. Once married, a woman’s main role is to be a wife and give birth to children. I was so excited to sign all of this and check off all the boxes that would guarantee God’s love by overcoming my emotions and desires.
When I was 20, I met Chad, a kind, respectful, and smart young man who took an interest in me at church. I liked him as a person and I was glad that he liked me. We got engaged and married within a year.
We began trying to get pregnant as soon as we got married, as instructed by the Mormon Church. Although I was a passionate sexual partner, I always felt disconnected and wondered when sex, as defined by the Church, would become a powerful, all-consuming force. We lived in a house with other Mormon families, and the walls were thin. The other women seemed to be having a better time than me.
Sex may have been disappointing, but becoming a mother was an opportunity to give my children a healthy family life that I had never experienced. In Mormonism, once you are sealed in the temple (you do so through continued obedience), you secure not only your eternity but also that of your children. As long as a mother follows the rules, not even death can separate her and her child. But if a mother breaks the seal by disobeying God’s rules, her children could die tomorrow and never be connected to them again. I carried the threat of losing my children’s souls deep in my heart.
In my mid-30s, when the youngest of the four was in kindergarten, I began to have secret thoughts that I didn’t like my life. I find that rigorous physical exercise is a good way to distract me from these thoughts. But I couldn’t run too many miles or lift too many weights before the thought crept back in. I started fly fishing, it was such a thrill and the best distraction.
I was one of six women in a fly fishing club with 150 male members. One night, one of the other women, Christine (who is not Mormon), approached me and said, “So I guess breasts only talk to other breasts, right?” We laughed, and a strong friendship was born.
I have never felt the way I did around Kristen. I thought that only characters in romance novels felt excitement, excitement, and feeling weak in the knees. But to Christine, it was real. And she felt it too. Soon it became an undeniable fact. Kristen and I are in love. I was gay. What was faced was a terrible truth. Same-sex attraction is a cardinal sin in Mormonism. Loving a woman felt like a curse, and I wanted to escape it. But I couldn’t.
Three weeks into our friendship, Kristen and I had our first kiss. It was magical. But right after that, Kristen said we shouldn’t be seeing each other. She said it was heartbreaking to see her in an unhappy marriage that I seemed to have no intention of leaving.
I couldn’t imagine life without Christine. I sent her a text message begging her not to leave me. Chad read that text message on my phone one night. He woke me up angry and upset. I was horrified and ashamed at the thought of how I could lose my entire community and, most importantly, my eternal connection to my children.
My rights within the church were immediately taken away. I was no longer allowed to take communion on Sundays, pray publicly, or teach children in Sunday school. I tried hard to repent, prayed and stayed away from homosexuals as directed by my community, but I could not escape my attraction to women.
Desperate to save my marriage, my children, and my soul, I enrolled in conversion therapy.
Conversion therapy, also called “reparative therapy,” aims to change a person’s sexual or gender identity and is not supported by major mental health organizations, including the American Psychological Association. Many states have banned conversion therapy on the grounds that it is illegal and harmful. But it wasn’t banned in Arizona, where we lived.
I received conversion therapy for two hours a day, four days a week. I started in August. By December, I had come to the brink of suicide three times. One time, when I was hours away from a suicide attempt, a friend came to me and said, “You think that if you kill yourself, the pain will stop, but it won’t. It’ll just spread the pain.”
Those words sunk into me. And for the first time, I was able to step back and stop from the chaos of pain and shame. Don’t judge yourself, don’t hate yourself, don’t try to be someone you’re not. I have reached a calm and safe place of mindfulness, a space where I can accept who I am without putting myself on trial. In this clean, strong space, I realized that nothing was more important to me than to survive and be with my children, and to see them happy that I was alive.
In this moment of clarity, I realized that being gay was something I had to accept at all costs. And how much it cost. In the divorce, I almost lost my entire community. Years of friendship disappeared overnight. The love that would never abandon me eventually abandoned me.
I was alone in deafening silence. It’s just me and my thoughts. And all those thoughts were questions, criticisms, and ultimatums. I became more serious about my mindfulness practice and meditated daily to teach my brain to be an observer rather than a dictator.
Practicing mindfulness during the most painful crisis of my life was not easy. External criticism was louder than ever. But the more I practiced mindfulness, the easier it became and the stronger I became. I have been able to make the courageous changes necessary to live an authentic and inspired life.
I divorced Chad, got my own place, came out to my kids (they weren’t surprised or upset), and built a beautiful career in public speaking and leadership development focused on LGBTQ+ advocacy.
It took me a long time to overcome my internalized homophobia and embrace every part of myself. I have received a lot of therapy from gay, non-Mormon therapists who can relate to my experiences.
I studied quantum mechanics, which helped me realize the concept that there are many versions of myself in the world, and that what matters is being the highest version of myself I can be. I no longer externalize God, but instead look within for spiritual wisdom.
And as for eternal life… Well, I think consciousness is eternal. But are we connected to our loved ones and children in the afterlife? I really don’t know. It’s okay to not know because I don’t want to live for heaven anymore. I am living now.
Do you have a real woman, a real story of your own, that you’d like to share? please let us know.
Our Real Women, Real Stories captures the real experiences of real women. The views, opinions and experiences shared in these stories are not endorsed by HealthyWomen and do not necessarily reflect HealthyWomen’s official policy or position.
From your site article
Related articles on the web
