You Can’t Rob Grief

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

You can’t rob grief.

I don’t mean you shouldn’t, but that it is impossible to do so. One way or another grief will have its due. My father’s death when I was 21 taught me this. My mother’s death confirmed it. Since my son died a year and a half ago, I’ve had to struggle to learn it again.

I visualize grief as sharp arrows of bloody, festering emptiness. A nothingness that shreds our insides and leaves us hollow. When you feel the first sharp stabs, it’s only natural to want to run from the pain. It’s no wonder that denial is the first stage of grief. Letting all those arrows hit us once, especially when the lost one is your child, would annihilate you. But there isn’t any way to outrun grief or hide from it forever.

My junior year in college, the day before Fall semester final exams, I received a 4 a.m. phone call from one of my brothers-in-law informing me that my father had died. I had been home for Thanksgiving just a couple of weeks earlier. My dad hadn’t been sick, and he was only 54. There was no reason to suspect that would be the last time I saw my father. But on December 11, a cold Sunday morning, he had a massive heart attack and died. Not only was his death completely unexpected, he died before his time. In today’s world, fifty-four is young to die. I am now older than my father ever got to be.

I had lost previously lost three of my four grandparents, but their deaths in no way prepared me for my father’s. Not only was my relationship to them not as close as the one to my father, my grandparents had been old and sick. In many ways, their deaths, when they came, were a blessing, a comfort. They were now out of pain and at peace. But my father hadn’t been old or sick, and he was just suddenly gone.

My younger sister was a freshman at the same university. One of her friends drove the two of us the one hour from Provo to Bountiful, Utah, while one of mine drove my car down. That night I drove the two of us back to school to take our final exams. My father had been a college professor, and we were told that taking our exams is what he would have wanted. Looking back now, taking my exams at that time was a terrible idea. It may well have been what my father would have wanted, but it wasn’t good for me, and I shouldn’t have been made to feel obligated to do so. I couldn’t take exams with those arrows of festering emptiness descending on me. I had to put up a shield to hold them back.

I was young and had no one to teach me any other way to deal with grief. I took my exams and did okay on them, but I felt lost, cast adrift. My family was all caught up in their own grief, and my friends, all of whose parents were still alive, didn’t understand. It didn’t take me long to discover that most people are uncomfortable with grief. I quickly found myself pretending to be okay to make others feel better. But I wasn’t okay. I was in pain without the ability to process that pain. So even after finishing my exams, I kept the shield in place, trying to keep a barrier between me and the grief. The problem is that holding grief at bay takes an enormous amount of energy, leaving little with which to live life. What’s worse is that while you fight against feeling grief, the grief doesn’t grow smaller or easier to handle. It’s all still there waiting to ambush you if you let your guard down for an instant. I sank into a deep depression and stayed there for close to five years. Fighting not to feel my grief, I felt little of anything. Eventually, my husband got me into counseling, and I was able to work through the debilitating depression and grief and learn to truly live again. But that process involved facing and feeling my grief at the loss of my father. It was incredibly painful, but I learned how to live again.

Twelve years later, when my mother died equally unexpectedly, I was in a much healthier position. Her death wasn’t easy, but I allowed myself to feel the pain, and within a year I was mostly okay again. Still, what I remember most about my mother’s funeral wasn’t my own grief, but my mother’s mother. I’ve never seen anyone look as lost as she did that day. She seemed lost, broken. Her words to me were, “No one should have to bury their child.”

While I could see my grandmother was in great pain, I didn’t fully appreciate her grief until my son was murdered. We use the same word “love” for how we feel toward our children, but it is a completely inadequate word to describe the emotion. I have loved many people, but what I felt for Jesse, I’ve never felt for anyone but him. The arrows of bloody, festering emptiness I faced when my parents died were like pin pricks compared to what awaiting me when I buried my son.

The pain nearly destroyed me, and I seriously contemplated joining him. I still sometimes do. I did not and I do not want to feel this pain. When the arrows of grief rip through me, the pain is nearly unbearable. Who would want to feel this grief? Who wouldn’t want to hide from it?

Over the last year and a half, I’ve gone between feeling the worst pain I’ve ever felt and fighting not to feel. When I’ve allowed one of those arrows of grief rip through me, the pain is staggering. But afterwards, I can be sort of okay for a few days until I have to feel the next one. When I fight not to feel, it just gets worse.

Even though I know that grief cannot be robbed, it is still difficult not to try to protect myself from it. The first few months after his death, I truly don’t know what I did. The days passed even though I couldn’t tell you how I spent them. It took nearly a year, but I thought I figured out how to handle the pain. On Sunday, I would visit his grave, let the pain in, and sob, mourning the loss of my son who had also become my best friend. Then the rest of the week I’d be functional at least.

Then came my brother’s announcement that his cancer had returned, and they had no good further options to treat it. His life expectancy was short. His coming death on top of the continuing pain of losing my son was too much, so again I tried to hide from it, and again, it didn’t work. I sank into depression and could accomplish almost nothing. And all that pain still lay in wait for me.

Yesterday, I visited my son’s grave for the first time in weeks. I again let the pain of losing him in and sobbed. It was hard. It hurt badly. But today I managed to write over 1000 words in the book I’m currently writing. Today I am functioning. The pain isn’t gone by any means. But for today I can go on.

The problem is finding that balance–the balance between allowing the pain to rip you apart and fighting against it in order to feel nothing. I can’t yet say that I’ve achieved this, but yesterday and today proved to me yet again that grief can’t be robbed. It will have its due.

I’d love to hear your experiences with grief in the comments below, if you’d like to share them.

Land mines

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

The moment I first held Jesse in my arms, I noticed that he was perfect. I never changed my mind about that. He wasn’t perfect in the “my Jesse would do nothing wrong” kind of way. I had to pick up at the police department once because he’d been picked up for shoplifting something he didn’t need and had the means to pay for the item on him. He had his flaws, but and no mom could have ever asked for a better son than Jesse was to me. I doted on him, sometimes to the degree that it embarrassed him. When I’d praise him, he’d roll his eyes and say something like, “Well, at least my mom thinks I’m great.” I never apologized for doting on him. I always told him that children didn’t their parents to be objective, and about Jesse I never was. Still, he fit with me perfectly and became integrated with every aspect of my life. I teach freshman writing and literature at Auburn University, and when I taught, he was everywhere. When I didn’t a writing example, I’d say something about him. We talked all the time about what I was teaching, and he even recommended one of the books I taught in American Literature. When I wrote, he was there to, as my biggest plan.

I took the semester after he died off, and started back teaching in Fall of 2021. It was then I discovered how much he was a part of everything I did. I wrote the following poem to express what I felt. I’m a writer of fiction, but I’ve written few poems, and none that I’d consider good, so take the following as an offering of my heart, not necessarily a literary masterpiece.

Land Mines

October 12, 2020, I died.
A hand reached inside and tore out my heart,
Tore out my soul,
Leaving a raw, bloody, festering nothingness behind.
Yet still I breathe.

Now land mines lurk in every thing I teach.
When the smallest scab begins to form, one explodes.
How could I know they’d be dangerous?
Sentimentality seemed their own flaw.
An apostrophe lesson shattered me last month.
I love my son’s cat.
I love my sons’ cat.
For one son, for Jesse, the apostrophe before the s.
After the s for the two other sons I never bore.
But where does it go now that I have no sons?
Help me breathe.

“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” lay in wait in my literature class.
A mother, as she dies, reaches longingly for her child
Only to find her daughter isn’t waiting in heaven.
There is god, no afterlife.
Oh, no, there’s nothing more cruel than this.
I’ll never forgive it.
Like Granny Weatherall, I didn’t see the danger until too late.
Twenty-seven sets of eyes watched that one kill me.
When the mines explode, I cannot breathe.

The worst mine yet crouched in a lesson on song lyrics.
An ellipsis is used to indicate a skipped line:
“Like Rod Stewart, I know that someday my son will leave home,
but my love for him will not end then:
‘And when you finally fly away
I’ll be hoping that I served you well. . . .
Whatever road you choose, I’m right behind you win or lose.’”
But the road he chose brought him between an abuser and his victim.
How can I be behind him in a choice that took his life?
How can I breathe without him?

Jesse also lives in everything I ever wrote.
My queen holding her newborn child.
“Brianna, I’m your momma. Your momma loves you.”
But to call what she felt “love” was wholly inadequate.
She’d felt love before but this intense desire to hold, nurture, and protect?
This she couldn’t even name.
Those words differed from my own only in the child’s name.
When I read them now, I can’t breathe.

Jesse shared my love of stories.
“Mom, read to me.” |
How could I say no when my pleasure equaled his?
We started Harry Potter when he was four.
Harry Dresden took Potter’s place ten years later.
I dreaded the day that he’d stop asking.
But that day never came.
Months before his death we read Peace Talks together.
And saw Dresden again facing the destruction of his world.
That novel ended in the middle of the story.
But how can I read Battle Ground without Jesse?
I won’t be able to breathe.

If I root these land mines out, how many others lie in wait?
He was my heart, my soul, made from me, a part of me.
If I take out all the mines, will there be anything left?
Will I then be able to breathe?

Unbelieving Grief

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

I have been no stranger to grief. My father died without warning when I was 21. My mother’s death 12 years later was equally a shock. Even as I write this, my brother is dying of cancer. He is 57. While my faith in a god had been shaky most of my life, I put it completely to bed in 2015. I now call myself an atheist. Then on Oct. 12, 2020, I experienced the worst loss possible. My 24-year-old son and only child was murdered. I would have a million times preferred to die myself than to lose Jesse. Below is a picture I took of him during the our 2018 Christmas trip to Miami. In many ways, this picture demonstrates the man that he was. He was an angel, but not an innocent, rose-cheeked cherub. No, my son was a powerful, avenging archangel, who was killed trying to defend a victim of domestic abuse. The multi-colored wings represent his reverence for life in all of its beautiful, weird, and amazing varieties. Jesse’s death nearly destroyed me, and there are still many days when I contemplate taking my own life and joining him in oblivion. But I can’t do this on the off-chance that I’m wrong about there being no afterlife. If Jesse were there to greet me at death, he would be furious with me for giving up on life and on hope, so I must live on.

In order to figure out how to truly live in his absence, I’ve started this blog category, talking about dealing with grief without the comforting belief in a deity. I wanted to make a different design for this blog topic, but I lack the technical skills to accomplish this. Join me on my journal through my son’s death. I’d love to hear your comments below on either my post or your own experiences dealing with the death of a loved one.

Why Don’t Mormons Drink Coffee?

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

But why? You may ask. Why is drinking coffee such a big deal to begin with? Why did I violate this most sacred rule in front of my deeply committed Mormon family members?

Last week at my family reunion, I performed a rebellious act. I made and drank coffee every morning. Those who aren’t Mormon will not understand how defiant of everything holy and decent this act was. Obeying what Mormons call the Word of Wisdom is one of the most fundamental aspects of the religion today. Stories of turning down coffee or alcohol while under the influence of societal pressure to imbibe have formed a part of more Mormon sermons (although Mormons would call them “talks” rather than sermons because Mormons have no paid local clergy and messages are given in church from regular members rather than a minister or pastor) than I care to remember. Whether you obey the Word of Wisdom is one of worthiness questions Mormons have to answer to enter their temples. Openly violating these rules is a sure sign of apostasy.

We’ll get to both of these things. The Word of Wisdom is the Mormon health code. It is supposed to assure good health and long life. This is a picture of my siblings and me at the reunion. If you count, there are only seven of us. There should be eight. Instead of joining us, my brother Roy was at home, dying of cancer. I visited him the week before the reunion, and seeing just how ill he’d become was heartbreakingly difficult. He is only 57, two and a half years older than me, and he doesn’t have long left. Roy first got cancer of the tongue about 25 years ago. With periods of remission, he has been battling cancer of the mouth and throat ever since.

The vast majority of the time this type of cancer comes from smoking or using smokeless tobacco, but my brother never did either. Still, the cancer has so consumed his body that there is now an open wound in his throat exposing several vertebrae that the doctors have no way of treating. If a god is behind the Word of Wisdom, he has a lot to answer for as far as my brother goes.

The Word of Wisdom is a product of 19th century folk medicine that dominating some sectors of American society during the lifetime of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon religion. Not using tobacco is about the only part of it that still makes sense. Mormons like to see what is known today about the detrimental effects of tobacco, as a sign that Smith was inspired by god, since science didn’t definitely establish these until decades, if not more than a century, later. Remember Mormons see Joseph Smith as a prophet in the same way that Abraham and Moses were prophets. Not using tobacco remains the only portion of the Word of Wisdom I still follow.

The rest of the “revelation,” found in section 89 of the Doctrine & Covenants, consists of cautions thoroughly debunked by science, misinterpreted or ignored by Mormons, or all of the above. Nothing illustrates this more strongly that the Mormon prohibition of coffee and tea. First, coffee and tea aren’t mentioned specifically in the doctrine. The doctrine prohibits “hot drinks.” This prohibition was based on 19th century folk medicine beliefs that drinking hot liquids was bad for you, and it meant any hot liquid. This is, of course, ridiculous according to modern science, and later Mormon leaders interpreted it to mean just coffee and tea, no matter if they were drunk hot or iced. When I was younger, I was taught that this was because of the caffeine in these beverages. More austere Mormons wouldn’t drink caffeinated sodas either. My parents wouldn’t buy caffeinated soda, and my first major act of rebellion was drinking Diet Coke. But more recently, Mormon leaders have come out and said that caffeinated soda is just fine, and faithful Mormons, without the slightest bit of guilt or sense of hypocrisy, will even drink things like Monsters or 5-hour energy concoctions that are not only full of caffeine, but a shit ton of other unhealthy things. But still, somehow coffee and tea are bad. The doctrine in this matter went from unscientific to incoherent and just weird. Why hate on coffee and tea? These aren’t unhealthy substances, but don’t try to tell a Mormon that.

I had just been to see my dying brother. I wasn’t going to give up my morning coffee. So I made coffee and drank it, and nobody said anything because we are a conflict-avoidant family.

I’ll have more to say on the Word of Wisdom later, but I think that’s enough for now. As always, let me know what you think in the comments, and if you have any questions about Mormons, you’d like answered, post them as well.

Where Do Mormon Go When They Die?

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

Before I answer that question, I’m going to give my own perspective on the afterlife. I have long believed that fear of death and grief from loss of loved ones are the two main motivations for humans creating religion. One of the reasons I clung to belief as long as I did is I didn’t want to face the reality of never seeing my parents again. They both died relatively young. But I came to have peace with that, and I was at peace with the idea of my own death being the end of my existence. What I wasn’t prepared to deal with was the death of my son. His death nearly destroyed me. As I write this, my brother lies in the hospital dying. He has been fighting cancer for years and is now losing. He probably only has weeks. Roy is just 57, two and a half years older than me. My son was 24. The belief that my son no longer exists and that I will never see him again has been so agonizing that I’ve tried to believe in all sorts of afterlives to avoid facing it. Contemplating my brother’s death adds to this nearly intolerable grief. But despite this pain, I can’t bring myself to believe again. Since I’m a woman, the Mormon afterlife requires me to give up personal autonomy, and the traditional Christian afterlife is monstrous. So I’ve tried to come up with an afterlife I could accept. I deigned a version, which is basically a “scientifically” based version of reincarnation, that I could almost get myself to believe. But the realization that I was simply making up what I wanted to be true was too powerful to ignore. When I allowed myself to think about it, it was absurd to think my personal fantasy had any basis in reality. Part of me still wants to hang onto a belief in some sort of afterlife where my son and parents now are and where my brother will soon join them. As my therapist says, I can’t know for certain that no such place exists. I think having such a belief would make the loss easier to bear. But even to soothe my pain, I could never accept either the traditional Christian nor the Mormon version.

The traditional non-Catholic Christian belief, I find monstrous. There is heaven, and there is hell. That’s it. Heaven is a place of eternal bliss, and hell a place of eternal torture. All of humanity is headed for one of these two options. What’s worse, is that your actions have nothing to do with where you end up. Traditional Christians teach that because Eve ate an apple 6000 years ago, we are all horrible sinners. Absolutely, everyone deserves to go to hell and be tortured forever. But since god is “loving,” if you grovel appropriately before him, he will save you from this fate. If you have the faith to grovel, even if you develop this faith on your deathbed after a lifetime of heinous action, you go to heaven. If you don’t have the faith, it doesn’t matter if you’ve spent your life striving to be the best person you can or if you’re Stalin or Mao, you will be tortured forever, something I don’t think even Stalin and Mao deserve. It is an infinite punishment for a finite crime. Any god who would do this is a monster. The Catholic afterlife with provides a bit more justice, but there is still the sickening belief in eternal torture. The concept of Hell is made worse by the belief that god is all-knowing, which means that he created people who he knew would end up suffering unimaginable torment forever. What kind of monster would do that?

I find the Mormon version of the afterlife less objectionable, but I have no desire for the ultimate reward for being a good Mormon—Godhood. Yes, going to the Celestial Kingdom to become a god is what every Mormon is striving for. Lorenzo Snow, the 5th president of the church, put it this way: “As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be.” This is one of the reasons that many Christians insist that Mormons aren’t Christian, and other people think Mormons are so weird. Many find it blasphemous to believe that God and humanity aren’t essentially different. Truthfully, it is a bit on the arrogant side. My biggest objection, however, is that people become gods as a couple with the wife forever subordinate to her husband. An eternity of subordination isn’t something I find desirable.

But the fate of those who don’t qualify for Godhood is more palatable than the eternal torture of Hell. If you don’t do all the correct Mormon stuff, but you’ve been a basically good person, you go to the Terrestrial Kingdom. You don’t become a god here, but it’s a really nice place. When my oldest brother (not the one who is dying) tried to reconvert me to Mormonism, I told him in the incredibly unlikely possibility that Mormons are actually right, I was okay with going to the Terrestrial Kingdom. Truly bad people will go to the Telestial Kingdom, which isn’t as good as the Terrestrial, but it’s still better than earth.

There is a 4th place called Outer Darkness, which is basically hell. Those who end up here are called Sons of Perdition, but there are few of them. To qualify for Outer Darkness, you must commit the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. “Wherefore I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men” (Matt. 12:31). What this means is vague, but I was taught to qualify to be a Son of Perdition, you have to have an absolute knowledge of the truth (something akin to god appearing to you personally) and then work to destroy it. Not something that many would do. Also, note that they are “Sons” of Perdition. With the patriarchal nature of god, he's not likely to appear to any woman. Nobody ever actually said this, but it was implied.

What do you think happens when people die? Are you at peace with this? Do you have any questions about the Mormon belief system? Answer in the comments below.

Unsettling Honesty

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

Unsettled.

Yesterday, my husband kept asking me how I was. I replied, “I don’t know.” I didn’t feel good, but I wasn’t really feeling bad either. Finally, I found the word to describe my emotions.

Unsettled.

Growing up Mormon, especially Mormon in Utah, caused me multiple levels of trauma. To be mentally healthy, I need to examine this and stop hiding pieces of myself. While I hold no animosity against individual members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the church itself is abhorrent and causes so much damage. There are reasons why the teen suicide rate in Utah is so high, and the level of depression among women is through the roof. Other conservative religions cause similar damage, but most of the others aren’t as strange, so little understood by outsiders, as Mormons are.

Explaining Mormonism to others helps me wrap my own brain around just how incredibly, flipping weird growing up in a Mormonland was. For example, they use words like “flipping” instead of the proper, curse word. I don’t recall ever hearing either of my parents utter even the mildest curse word. None of my siblings do real cursing either. (Mormon cursing deserves an entire post of its own. I promise, it’s weird.) My son once gave me quite a lecture because I called some politician (I don’t remember which one) a bitch at my oldest sister’s house. Jesse told me in no uncertain terms that my sister didn’t use that kind of language, and out of respect, I shouldn’t either when I was at their house.

A part of me is excited to publicly own my entire self. Come out, as it were, since June is Pride Month. This part of me wants to do nothing but write about Mormonism. I have dozens of topics in mind.

So why am I so unsettled? There are many reasons.

I worry about how any Mormon who comes across this blog might feel. I truly believe most of Mormons are good people. Many of the people I love are believing, faithful Mormons. I don’t want to insult or offend anyone, especially not members of my own family. One of my mother’s favorite sayings was, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” This is a rule I’ve pretty much lived by, although I’m not sure how well it has served me. The only thing I can think to say to offended Mormons is to promise honesty, to accurately portraying the church, as I experienced it.

The Mormon church also doesn’t take kindly to public criticism from current or former members. Publicly criticizing the church has a decided tendency to get a person excommunicated. The September Six are famous in the Ex-Mo world, although basically unheard of outside it.

Writing this blog is distracting me from my WIP. The Llama Apocalypse is serious business. I haven’t been this excited about something I’ve written in quite some time.

Another part of me whispers that I’m being self-indulgent. This is primarily intended to record my own personal journey, but I’m not only posting it on my blog, I’ve been promoting it on Twitter and Facebook. This voice tells me that nobody, except maybe Momma Turtle, would find any of this interesting, and she’s probably just being polite. It tells me that I should write this stuff in a diary, not post it where anybody could read it. But writing it in a diary doesn’t serve the purpose of publicly owning my full self, something I feel is necessary for my own mental health.

However, as a writer, I do also want to be read. So, if you’re reading this, please leave a comment and tells me what you find interesting or less than fascinating. If you’ve experienced anything similar, let me know. If you have suggestions on what you’d find more engaging, please tell me. Most importantly, if there’s anything about Mormons you’re curious about, ask it in the comments. Maybe this way I can produce something of value for people other than myself and feel just a bit less unsettled.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

Yes, that is the official name of the Mormon church. Somebody on Twitter said he thought I should mention it in my blog, and he’s probably right, but in my first two posts, I resisted doing so.

Yes, the term Mormon was originally a pejorative nickname given to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by outsiders. Normally, I think we should use the term a people prefer for themselves. For example, I believe in using the term Inuit, instead of Eskimo, because Eskimo, like Mormon, is a term given to the group by outsiders. The Inuit people prefer to be called Inuit, so out of respect we should use it.

Why do I put the word Mormon in a different category?

Because I grew up Mormon in Utah, and Mormon is the word we used to identify ourselves the entire time I was a Mormon. It is true that in the beginning, the church fought against being called Mormons. Early members of the church referred to themselves as Saints. Since others claim that Mormons aren’t Christian, I see why Mormons would want the official name of their church known. But long before I was born, Mormons had embraced the word Mormon. When I was young, the church had ads on television. At the end of the ads, they would say “the message was brought to you by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ‘The Mormons.’” In 2010-11, the church launched an $6 million ad campaign, called “I’m a Mormon.” The purpose of the campaign was to show that Mormons are normal people, not the weirdos people tend to think they are, and also to imply that church is more diverse than it really is. Many of the “I’m a Mormon” spots, featured people of color or non-Americans. Members of the church were encouraged to put up their own “I’m a Mormon” profile to say, “See everyone, we’re not weird. We’re just like you.” The church’s choir was known worldwide as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and has had a weekly radio broadcast using the name Mormon Tabernacle Choir since 1929. The news portion of the church’s official website was called Mormon Newsroom. So why in 2018 did they suddenly start objecting to the use of the term Mormon again? I’ll get to that.

The first time I heard a Mormon object to the use of the word, I was probably 9 or 10. It was in Sacrament Meeting (the term Mormons use to refer to their main worship service). At the local level, Mormons don’t have a professional ministry. The bishop and stake president are lay leaders, and they aren’t paid. In contrast to most Christian church in which a minister gives a weekly sermon, different members of the local congregation (called a ward, by Mormons) speak in Sacrament Meeting. So the talk I will be referring to was given by a regular member of the congregation. At the beginning of his talk, he asked all Mormons to stand. I, along with the entire congregation, stood. The speaker then lectured us, saying that none of us should have stood up because Mormon isn’t the proper name of the Church. He referred to a revelation, supposedly given to Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon church, that proclaimed it was God’s will that the church Smith started be called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. To be Jesus’s church, the organization must be called by Jesus’s name. If the organization is called after the name of a man, it is that man’s church, not Christ’s church. Mormon is the name of a prophet in the Book of Mormon, so if we are Mormons, we are called after the name of a man, making us Mormon’s church, instead of Jesus’s church. Even as I child, I thought the talk was dumb. The speaker obviously knew everyone would stand, or he wouldn’t have asked the question, so his intention was to shame Mormons for thinking of ourselves as Mormons. Shaming is one of Mormons’ favorite things to do. Despite thinking it was dumb, I did also feel shame. This tendency to shame was probably the most damaging aspect of the church to my own psychological and emotional development, so even though it’s been about 40 years since I listened to that talk, I’m still annoyed by it.

Other than this one talk, I don’t recall another time during my membership in the Mormon church where anybody objected to the term Mormon, and I have heard Mormons use the term to refer to themselves thousands of times. It’s important to understand that Mormons consider the leader of their church a prophet, in the same manner that Moses and Abraham were prophets. According to their belief, Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon church, was called directly by God as a prophet. Smith claimed, that as a boy, Jesus Christ and God the Father appeared directly to him (Mormons don’t believe in the trinity and consider God and Jesus separate beings) and told him that all churches had fallen away from the truth and that God was going to restore his true gospel through Joseph Smith. Throughout his life, Smith claimed to talk directly to God on a regular basis. The Doctrine & Covenants contains these revelations, including the one on God’s choice for the name of the church. Mormons believe that every leader of the church since Joseph has also been a prophet who speaks directly to God. Mormons sustain these men as prophets, seers, and revelators. This means that when Thomas Monson, the president of the church from 2008-2018, launched the “I’m a Mormon” ad campaign, he did so, as a prophet directed by God.

In 2018, Thomas Monson died, and Russell M. Nelson became president of the church. one of the first things Nelson did was issue a new style guide, telling the press not to call us Mormons anymore. In a speech Nelson gave in the October 2018 Conference of the Church, he claimed, “If we allow nicknames to be used or adopt or even sponsor those nicknames ourselves, He [God] is offended.” Using the term “Mormon” is “a victory for Satan.” Nelson told Mormons, “If someone should ask, ‘Are you a Mormon?’ you could reply, ‘If you are asking if I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, yes, I am!’” Nelson launched a concerted campaign to stamp out the use of the term Mormon by members of the church. He changed the Mormon Newsroom to the Newsroom of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He even changed the name of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.

You may be thinking that this doesn’t make any sense. If God told Monson to run the ad campaign, “I’m a Mormon,” why did he suddenly adopt an antipathy to the word a few short years later? Why is God offended by the word Mormon in 2018 when he hadn’t been in 2011? How can an all-knowing, all-powerful God change his mind so radically in less than a decade? These are excellent questions. They are questions that we Ex-Mo’s ask.

Actually, we Ex-Mo’s don’t ask the questions because we know the answer. The presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints aren’t prophets. They are simply men, very old white men. Nelson spent years nursing a sore spot about the term Mormon, but couldn’t do anything about it until he was 94 and became president himself. If this isn’t sufficient evidence to prove that Mormon presidents aren’t prophets, I’m not sure what else anyone would need. The current movement against the word Mormon is not an authentic objection by members of the church. It has been imposed upon them by a church hierarchy that preaches about obedience more than anything else.

I personally will no longer obey this church hierarchy. If you have any feelings about the use of the term Mormon or any questions about Mormons, post them in the comments.

Mormons are Nice

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

Few can understand what it’s like to leave the Mormon church, what it means to be a former Mormon, an ExMo, as we frequently refer to ourselves. To begin with, outside the United States Intermountain West, most people don’t know much about Mormons, and most of what they think they know isn’t true or at least not completely true. However, there are two basically accurate things that most associate with Mormons: they are nice, and they are weird. The South Park episode about Mormons, although it is exaggerated for satirical effect, portrays both of these aspects of Mormons quite well. If you’ve never seen it and you have any interest in Mormons, I suggest watching it. If you do, you’ll have a more accurate view of Mormons than most of the people on the planet.

I will address the weird part in future posts, but today I want to discuss Mormon’s stereotypical niceness. Some ExMos will disagree with this assessment. They’ll say that Mormons are only superficially nice in their effort to convert you and will stop being nice if you show no interest in joining them or especially if you leave the church. I don’t discount the stories I’ve heard from other ExMos about how they have been treated by Mormons, even Mormon family members when they left the church, but this has not been my personal experience.

When anyone criticizes the Mormon church, Mormons like to say that the church or the gospel is perfect, but the members aren’t. They will say that all legitimate problems with the church are the fault of imperfect members, not the church itself. I don’t accept this. The reasons I left had everything to do with the church or the “gospel,” and not with the members themselves. Both when I was a Mormon and since I’ve left, Mormons, with few exceptions, have treated me with kindness. When I criticize the Mormon church, it is nearly never because of the actions of individual Mormons.

I grew up in Bountiful, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. When I lived there at least, Bountiful was close to 90% Mormon. Nearly everyone one I knew as a child—my neighbors, my friends, my teachers—were all Mormon. My family has been Mormon nearly since the beginning of Mormonism. All of my great-great grandparents were Mormons, and today nearly all of my extended family are still Mormons. Not that there aren’t exceptions, but the vast majority of Mormons I have known are good people. During any period of difficulty in life, they have been there for me.

Although I have yet to remove my name from the church, I have been mostly inactive for 20 years. My husband stayed Mormon far long than I did, but he stopped attended about 5 years ago. Because of the stories I’d heard from other ExMos, I feared for years letting my family know that I no longer believe. Until October 2020, I had said so little about my lack of belief to any member of my family that I wasn’t even sure all of my family knew I was no longer a believer. I was wrong to be afraid and did my family a disservice with that fear.

On October 12, 2020, my 24-year-old son and only child was murdered. There is no tragedy in the world I wouldn’t have preferred over Jesse’s death. I would have a million times rather died myself. But that wasn’t a choice I was given. Jesse was the child that I adored from the first second of his life, but he was more than that. As he’d grown into an adult, he had become my best friend. We were a lot alike, and we’d talk for hours on the phone at least once, usually more, a week. It has now been 1 ½ years since his death, and the pain remains raw and brutal. I don’t think anyone heals completely after losing a child. Jesse was also the one who helped me finally let go of any belief in the Mormon church. I now, like most ExMos, consider myself an atheist. (The same tools that work to deconstruct a belief in the Mormon god work just as well for every other god that human beings have believed in.) Jesse called himself a Deist because he didn’t think the Big Bang had sufficient evidence as a cause of the beginning of our universe.

Jesse was killed about 1 am on a Monday. We found out about his death later than mourning. I don’t know how I would have gotten through that week without the overwhelming kindness of Mormons. When the medical examiner confirmed that the body he had was indeed my son, I shut down. I talked to no one and left my husband to inform everyone, even my family, that Jesse had died. Family and friends started calling and texting me as soon as they heard. I responded to none of them. I just couldn’t. But the Mormons came anyway. I live in Alabama, but my seven brothers and sisters are spread out across the country. By Tuesday afternoon, two of my sisters had arrived—my youngest sister Wendie from Colorado and Julie from Arizona. They both booked flights nearly as soon as they’d heard. Remember October 2020 was at the height of Covid, and there wasn’t a vaccine yet available. Still, they came. My sister Sue in Idaho has heart problems, making her particularly vulnerable to Covid. I told her not to come. She came anyway. Her doctor told her it was safer to drive than to fly. Because she didn’t want to drive all that way (2000 miles) alone, she recruited by brother Roy who lives in Utah to drive with her. According to google, it is a 30-hour drive. But they came. My sister Jalane was in the hospital because infection in her knee had gone septic after surgery. She checked herself out and came with IV antibiotics in tow. All seven of them came, and many of my nieces and nephews, as well.

I wanted them, needed them, but since I wasn’t going to have anything religious at my son’s funeral, I needed to tell them I no longer believed. When I talked to Wendie about it shortly after she arrived, she shrugged, “Yeah, we all know.” This was a relief, but I still feared that they would use my extreme grief over losing Jesse to try to reconvert me.  But no one of them did. They loved me, supported me, and did everything they could to help me through it. The most religious anyone got was my oldest brother asking me if I wanted Jesse’s grave dedicated, a Mormon custom. When I told him I didn’t, he said nothing more.  I can’t emphasis enough how much I appreciated it.

The kindness shown me by Mormons wasn’t limited to my family either. The Mormons in the local area overwhelmed me with their support and kindness. Food started arriving nearly immediately. The bishop (leader of a Mormon local unit) and stake president (leader of an area roughly equivalent to a Catholic archdiocese), both of whom are friends of ours, were there for us. When asked, the bishop agreed to preside over a completely non-religious ceremony. Since it was Covid, we planned to hold the funeral at an outside pavilion in the cemetery. The Mormons arranged to bring and set up chairs, provide the sound equipment and someone to run it, and provide a lunch after the funeral. I was completely non-functional, and Tim wasn’t doing well at all. But because of the kindness of others, mostly Mormons, we made it through the first horrible week, and their kindness continues to this day.

No, my problem with the Mormon church has never been with the members, who have never been anything other than kind to me. So, yes, Mormons are nice.

I am the Tortured Soul

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

Who am I?

My twitter bio claims that I am a “Writer of Fantasy . . . and the tortured soul.” While this is accurate, it is, like every face I’ve ever shown the world, incomplete, revealing only a portion of who I am. Writing is a fundamental part of my identity. I don’t remember a time when I wanted to be anything other than a writer. For the most part, I have written about tortured souls. My characters certainly have hard lives. But recently, I have come to realize that I don’t merely write of “the tortured soul,” The tortured soul I was referring to my twitter bio is partially myself.

Telling stories is a fundamental part of who I am. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t entertain a host of characters whose stories played out in my mind. I even turned my own activities into stories. When I did just about anything, I was simultaneously writing a mental story about it. Occasionally, I wrote these stories down. When I was seven, I began a series about the Man from Mars for my older sister. But most of the time, these stories were never shared with anyone. I believed I was the only one who ever did anything this bizarre. For years I thought that my near constant story telling was a sign of some deep moral or psychological flaw. Why couldn’t I just weed the garden without thinking about how to turn weeding the garden into a story?

What disturbed me even more was how often my stories contained torture. The characters I created, and identified with, were frequently the victims of extreme abuse. One of my most developed childhood stories involved a boy named Max who had an abusive stepmother. (Yes, I was told a lot of fairytales as a child, and elements common in fairy tales, like abusive stepmothers, made their way into my stories.) Except the abuse Max suffered, and that I experienced vicariously through him, was more extreme than anything I ever heard in a fairytale. Max was abused so badly that he had extreme injuries, staring with broken bones and deep scars on his back. The abuse was so intense that he ended up in a wheelchair. Nobody ever acted to protect Max from this abuse. Although any real child treated as badly as Max would have little hope of becoming anything other than a broken adult, Max eventually triumphs over this abuse and wins the gold medal in the Olympic decathlon. This eventual triumph was inspired by Bruce Jenner’s 1976 Olympic win. To give you an idea of how young I was when I wrote Max’s story, I was only eight when Jenner won that medal. While Max did eventually escape his abuse, I spend far, far more mental energy imagining the abuse than I did the triumph. I wrote and rewrote abuse scenes over and over again. One of my most productive story telling times was when I was trying to fall asleep. When I reached puberty, rape and sexual torture were added to the physical abuse my characters suffered. I also read voraciously and was drawn to reading about victims of abuse. I was sure this obsession with being tortured was a sign of deep psychological problem. What kind of child falls to sleep by being vicariously tortured?

I was ashamed of this aspect of myself, so ashamed that I am now fifty-four years old, and this is the first time I’ve ever shared this aspect of myself with anyone. Although I’ve shared tiny pieces of this obsession with my husband and a therapist, I’ve never told anyone the detail I reveal above. I feared if anyone knew how often I imagined horrible abuse, they’d be sicken by me and would reject me. Even as now as I am writing this, I cannot fully escape this fear. I won’t allow it to stop me anymore, but I still feel it.

To answer the obvious question, no, I was never personally a victim of abuse. My parents were loving, and the worst abuse they inflicted on me was making me weed the garden or pick bugs off the tomato plants. Despite this being true, I have recently come to realize that I have been tortured for most of my life, not by other people, but by cognitive dissonance. According to Wikipedia,

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information. Relevant items of information include a person’s actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person’s belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.

Cognitive dissonance is so mentally uncomfortable that people will perform the most amazing feats of mental gymnastics to make the disparate beliefs align.

I was raised in a deeply religious Mormon family, and I was a feminist before I even knew what a feminist was. Few can imagine the cognitive dissonance suffered by a Mormon feminist. Mormons and feminists are enemies. Even the phrase “Mormon feminist” is an oxymoron. Mormons teach that feminists are one of the greatest dangers of modern times, and feminists thinks Mormons are repressive and patriarchal. How is it possible that one person could be both a Mormon and a feminist? No matter what setting I was in, I believed that, to be accepted, some portion of myself needed to be concealed. When I was in a Mormon setting, I hid how deep my feminism ran. Although for years I raged underneath about the patriarchal values taught in the Mormon church, I shoved this rage down and hid the extent of my feminism from Mormons. When I went to graduate school in California, the feminist side of me was embraced by my teachers and peers, but the Mormon side wasn’t. Just as I hid my feminism from Mormons, I hid my Mormonness from the feminists. No matter where I was, I knew that part of me was unacceptable to the group I was with. Despite colossal efforts, I could never perform the mental gymnastics necessary to align these disparate parts of myself, nor could I reject either the Mormonism nor the feminism, so for about forty years, I lived with the torture of cognitive dissonance. I didn’t safe enough to be completely, authentically me in any setting. Even though I am no longer Mormon, the trauma cognitive dissonance inflicted on me still remains.

I recently shared some of this with my therapist, stressing that my parents weren’t abusive. She told me that something doesn’t need to be abusive to cause trauma. She is right. The constant fear of rejection was traumatic. The belief that the full me would never be acceptable to anyone was traumatic.

Cognitive dissonance and the fear of rejection has tortured me for most of my life. I have now decided that it will no more. I will be completely, authentically me. I won’t hide some portion of who I am to please others. This new direction in my blog is the first step in publicly claiming all of myself. In future posts, I will explore various aspects of the dissonance that has tortured me and, hopefully, put that dissonance to rest.

Few people have ever read my blog, and since this is my first entry in years, there’s a good chance no one will read this. But I’m undisturbed by this. I am writing primarily for myself, to own all of who I am. Writing this is part of the path toward healing my personal trauma. I don’t plan on making entries in any particular order, but will address aspects of healing my own cognitive dissonance as I am moved to do so. If no one ever chooses to follow me on this path, it will still represent a triumph in owning my complete, authentic self. But if someone does choose to follow my journey, I welcome you and hope that you can find something of use to you in reading about my struggle. If you do, I would love to hear from you in the comments.

The Plague: We’re in this Together

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

I am sad and worried. Because of my sadness and worry, I’m finding it difficult to write. A twitter writer friend suggested I write out my thoughts and feelings. He argued that maybe by getting what was bothering me out of paper I could stop obsessing over it, so this is my attempt.

My sadness and worry aren’t personal ones; they are sadness and worry for my country and its people. Yes, of course, I worry more about those I love, but I worry for all Americans and for all people across the world. We have been struck by a terrible disease. I know personally how terrible it is because as I had it. While I am no longer ill like I was, I fear that my lungs may have been permanently damaged. I still get out of breath so easily. I’m concerned they may never fully recover.

While I may remain a permanent causality of the war, as a country, and as a world, we could fight this virus and win. Some countries have fought and are winning, but here in the US, too many of us have decided not to. I live in Alabama. Auburn is a college town, so it’s better educated than much of the state, but still when I go out, I see my fellow Alabamians refusing to fight. I went to Walmart last weekend, the first and only time I’ve been inside a store since I got sick. Walmart has done what they reasonably could to less the likelihood that we infect each other. They made everyone enter by one door and leave by a different one. They had signs encouraging the wearing of masks. There were reminders to keep socially distant from others and marks on the floor to show just how far apart six feet was. Aisles had one-way signs, so we wouldn’t come in close contact with other shoppers by passing them. There were hand sanitizer stations placed throughout the store.

The problem wasn’t that Walmart hadn’t created a safety plan. The problem was that so few were following it. Less than half the shoppers wore masks. (I did, even though I had very recently tested negative, and still believed I was immune from being infected again.) It was impossible to maintain six feet distance from other people because so few were obeying the one-way signs. I’d start down an aisle going the right way only to find someone else approaching me from the wrong direction. Walmart employees were doing nothing to enforce their policies, but truthfully, how could they? There were far too many people violating them. Rules, even laws, can only work when most people follow them voluntarily. Then those who don’t can be dealt with. They would have needed employees all over the store directing people, which is not only impractical, it would necessitate employees being closer than six feet to everyone, putting themselves and the shoppers at risk.

In addition to putting employees in danger from the virus, it would put them endanger from violence. From the news come story after story of a violent response to safety enforcement. A convenience store clerk was punched in the face for telling a customer she couldn’t serve him without a mask. A security guard was murdered for not letting a shopper into a store without a mask. Protestors attend opening-up rallies arrived fully armed with assault style weapons. Other protestors scream at and refuse to distance themselves from nurses who come in masks to counter protest and mask-wearing reporters who cover the event.

It didn’t have to be this way. Nothing discriminates less than a virus. A virus doesn’t care whether you voted for Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Jill Stein, or no one at all. A virus won’t notice if you’re Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Wiccan, or atheist. It will infect without thought both the billionaire and the homeless. It will invade the lungs of Caucasians, African Americans, Latinos, or Pacific Islanders all on an equal basis.[1] It will eagerly attack whoever comes within its reach. Covid-19’s invasion of America should have united us as a people. We should be fighting this together as sisters and brothers. In the fight against Covid-19, we are not each other’s enemy. The virus is the enemy of all of us.

So why aren’t we? The responsibility for this failure rests primarily on one person. I don’t like to get political on this blog, but Donald Trump’s failure isn’t because he’s a Republican. It’s because he’s Donald Trump. Many both Democratic and Republican governors are providing effective leadership in their state’s fight against the virus. I was recently touched by Doug Burgum’s, the Republican governor of North Dakota, plea to the people of his state: “I would really love to see in North Dakota that we could just skip this thing that other parts of the nation are going through, where they’re creating a divide — either it’s ideological or political or something — around mask versus no mask. This is a senseless dividing line. If someone is wearing a mask, they’re not doing it to represent what political party they’re in or what candidates they support. We’re all in this together and there’s only one battle we’re fighting and that’s a battle of the virus.”[2]

But Donald Trump is about as far as possible from Doug Burgum. Rather than providing the leadership to fight this disease on a national level, Trump has instead divided us as Americans and made Covid-19 into a partisan issue. Because of this, quite literally, he is killing us. From the beginning when fears of the virus first effected the stock market, rather than organizing a national response to combating it, he called concern for the virus as a “Democratic hoax,” designed to bring him down. Because he saw the virus as a personal affront, he did next to nothing while Covid-19 established a strong beachhead in our nation. Covid’s position became so strong before he acted that defeating it would take heroic efforts on the part of all Americans.

But rather than leading those heroic efforts, he continued to portray the virus in personal and partisan terms. When the battle against the virus sent the economy into freefall, he didn’t rally the national together to defeat the disease. Instead, he attacked Democratic governors who battled the virus, including “that woman in Michigan.” Over and over again he has undermined a science-based, united approach and encouraged his supporters to see battling the virus as a fight against him personally. He portrayed the conflict with Covid as Democratic attempt to ensure his defeat in November. His media allies have amplified his message.

Because of his lack of leadership, his supporters (approximately 1/3 of Americans) refuse to see Covid as a serious threat to us all. Rather than uniting across party lines to defeat this invader together, like their leader, they attack their fellow Americans who do battle on the front lines. By doing so, they are ensuring the virus’s victory. Approximately 1/3 of our nation is fighting for the enemy. There is a reason why the United States has over 1/3 of the global Covid deaths when we have less than 5% of the world’s population.

No one, certainly not me, is unaware or unsympathetic to the economic pain the fight against the virus is causing. While my personal finances are unchanged, my son, who was set to graduate in August with a mechanical engineering degree, found his job prospects go from excellent to non-existent overnight. He may end up having to move back into my basement. As a college professor, I know many young people in a similar situation. Many Americans are in far worse financial danger. We all want the economy to recover. Everyone wants life to get back to normal. But until we get the virus under control, no economic recovery is possible. There will be no getting back to normal when the invader still ranges freely in our land. If my fellow Americans refuse to fight it, as a country, we will remain both sick and poor.

Alabama is a strong Trump state. Not coincidentally, it is also a state where the virus continues to ravage unchecked.

I don’t know what to do to change the situation. I’ve found it impossible to convince Trump supporters that the virus is as dangerous as it is. I actually had a Trump supporter tell me Covid-19 didn’t exist. He insisted that the doctor who told me I had it lied to me. I don’t know what disease he thought had me bedridden for 25 days or why he thought an Alabama doctor would be part of a conspiracy to take down Trump. Maybe he didn’t believe I’d actually been that sick. Even if Biden wins in November, he will have a tough time rallying us together against the virus. I fear many of my fellow Americans will continue the fight against him rather than against our common enemy.

We need love. We need compassion. We need empathy. Americans are capable of providing all these things. I have seen it over and over again in both in the past and in this current crisis. None of my or my husband’s family lives close to us (except my husband’s mother who has Alzheimer’s), but during those 25 days that I was bedridden, we had plenty of help. Members of the church I once belonged to dropped off meal after meal. While my husband still occasionally takes his mother to this church, I haven’t attended for years. But that didn’t prevent good hot food from appearing on our doorstep. People—friends, my work colleagues, my fellow dungeons and dragons players, the person who cleans for us—went to the store for us and dropped off groceries. When the father of one of my son’s high school friends wrongly thought I was dying, he offered to let my son stay for free in one of his empty rental houses, so my son could be closer to me without putting himself at risk. Even now the kindness of all of these people makes me weepy.

As a people, we are better than the way we are currently acting. So this is my plea to all my fellow Americans that we stop seeing each other as the enemy. That we unite together as a nation and fight to defeat the invader. We can do it. We are capable of great things. Do not let America’s best days be only in the past.

If you have examples of similar kindness, please share them below.

[1] I’m not unaware or insensitive that Covid-19 is having an unequal effect on the poor and the non-white, but that isn’t the virus’s fault. It is the inequalities in our society that put some people in risker situations than others.

[2] I’ve edited his remarks.