Eden
I like to tell people I'm an ethnic Mormon. Six generations of ancestors in the Church, polygamous family trees, six kinds of Jell-O salad at (huge) family reunions... and me, raised as a good little Mormon girl. God wants you to be a stay at home mother. God wants you to marry young and naive. Stay within these narrowly defined parameters, only sinners and apostates step outside the lines. The greatest commandment is obedience.
The Church tells you what to think, what to wear, what to eat, what music to listen to, who your friends are, what movies to watch, how to vote... an answer for every question... and at seventeen, I left it behind for good. Everything I had believed was wrong, and I had to rebuild everything from the ground up.
I had to say goodbye to those I thought were friends, who couldn't deal with the fact I was an 'apostate'. I went from a dewy-eyed, "I'm going to meet my soul mate after he comes back from his mission and we're gonna date for three months and then the holy spirit is going to tell us to get married and we're gonna get married in the temple and I'll have five kids and raise them all perfectly!" to... me.
After being raised to believe that men had the holy priesthood, the voice of God; after being raised to believe that a good woman is sweet and not much else... I found my own voice. I taught myself to set and keep boundaries. I absorbed feminist philosophy; I went to college and graduated with a degree from UCLA. I learned to speak up.
I am who I am. And I realized a long time ago that, no matter who I am, someone is going to be upset. So why bother caring about what other people think - I am who I am supposed to be, and I don't apologize for it.
Country: United States
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