A doctoral student focusing on nineteenth-century Mormon women, Jenny Reeder feels passionate about bringing our foremothers to light and letting their stories inspire women today. Jenny not only studies Mormon women leaders, she’s worked with them: She represented young singles on the Visiting Teaching Curriculum Committee under Bonnie D. Parkin. How did you become interested in Mormon women’s history? I went to Brigham Young University (BYU) for college where I studied Humanities, and in the middle of my college years I went on a mission to Italy. My parents had divorced when I was on my mission, and when I returned home I lived with my mother and finished my degree. I attended a singles ward in Provo, UT, where I had a visionary bishop, a wonderful man and a great mentor—a father-figure—who encouraged me to get a master’s degree in communication. I attended Arizona State University (ASU). The communication degree wasn’t really my thing, but I’m not a quitter so I saw it through. In the summer between my two years in Arizona, I came back up to Utah and worked as a research assistant for Carol Cornwall Madsen [BYU emeritus professor of history and research historian with the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History]. I can’t even remember how I came to know who she was–I think I read a devotional speech she gave at BYU and I was intrigued by it and I emailed her out of the blue and said, “Hey, I’m going to be in Utah over the summer, do you need a research assistant?” And she said yes. I’d never had a history class in college, but that summer changed my life. I really became interested in Mormon women’s history. I went back to ASU for my second year and completed a thesis on quilts as cultural artifacts for the Relief Society. I worked for Carol again after finishing at ASU. Well, that turned into a three year position at the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History where I worked as a research historian and documentary editor. At first, I worked mostly with Carol on her Emmeline B. Wells biography and then with Carol and Jill Mulvay Derr [BYU religious education professor and director of the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History] on documents from the first fifty years of the Relief Society. I soon felt like this was part of my mission in life, to work with these documents. I realized that this was what I wanted to do. I knew I couldn’t spend a career as a research assistant, and that I needed a doctorate degree to really move forward. Because I didn’t have an MA in history, I applied for to a master’s program. I attended New York University, where I earned a degree in history and archival management and historical editing. I lived in Harlem. I loved it there. Now I’m in an American History doctoral program at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Jenny Reeder What aspect of the Relief Society’s history are you focusing on in your dissertation? In my dissertation work, I’m looking at how the members of the Relief Society in the late nineteenth century tried to situate themselves among mainstream American women in several different ways: being active in suffrage, going to medical school, being on the National & International Counsels of Women, writing for newspapers, etc. They worked against a lot of cultural prejudice due to polygamy and theological differences, as well as geographic dislocation from the American heartland. I believe that similar to Jewish and Catholic women, as well as other groups of ethnic women, Mormon women worked to present themselves and their identity in a way that appropriated ideas of Americanization. I also believe that they “used” their past — they presented their heritage (in a very Victorian way as “custodians of culture” and “guardians of history” according to Victorian gender roles) in a very strategic way, discarding the pieces of the past that didn’t work for the American mainstream, and highlighting the things that made them valuable. You say Victorian members of the Relief Society acted as “custodians of culture” and “guardians of history”. Do you think the Relief Society still has a responsibility to protect culture today? In what sense? I do. I think it’s different today simply because we’re so much more global than we used to be. The context of the world around us has completely changed. While Church doctrine remains the same and must be maintained and protected, there is no longer one distinct culture to protect and promote. Part of our responsibility now is to teach members of the Church of both genders to preserve their own cultures and their own communities. There is a responsibility that continues today to maintain identity and belief and core values that don’t change, but in a worldwide context. What are personal goals after you complete your schooling? I have no idea where I’ll end up after I graduate. There’s a part of me that really really really wants to be married with children — and yet I know that’s not the full extent of my life mission and that I will juggle a professional career with my family. I love teaching, but I don’t know that I see myself in an academic publish-or-perish position. I do have two “dream” jobs: To take over the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers — professionalize, digitize, and unify it as an organization — and to be the Mormon women’s manuscript curator at BYU. However, at this point in my life, I’m not ready to head back to Utah, so we’ll see when it comes time to really look for jobs. You wrote the Relief Society messages in the Ensign for a time. How did you get to do that? It’s a funny story! After Bonnie Parkin was called to be the General Relief Society president in 2002, I was really impressed by her testimony at her first General Conference. I wrote her a quick note and just told her I supported her and I looked forward to her administration. She actually sent me a letter and asked if I would come meet with her. I went up to her office and we talked for an hour or so and we had a delightful visit. She wanted to know my experiences as a single woman in the Relief Society. About four or five months later, I got a letter in the mail informing me that I was on the Visiting Teaching Curriculum Committee, responsible for the Visiting Teaching message that appears in each month’s Ensign and Liahona magazines and is distributed worldwide. It was a great experience. There were only five of us. I felt like I was the token single young person! Everyone else was married and much older than I was. We met once every month and we took turns writing the message and reviewing it with each other. We didn’t really write it, I guess. We gathered quotes that we thought were appropriate for the topics chosen by the General Relief Society presidency. Our committee determined it was important to have a quote from a woman in the message each month. I learned a lot about how church curriculum committees work! Jenny Reeder What were some of your other takeaways from that experience? Everyone on the committee would say that the most impacting thing about the experience was that our names didn’t go anywhere. Nothing was mine: My name was never put on the messages, I didn’t own anything. I simply felt like I was an instrument. I learned how important it is to have people doing that ground work for the Church’s materials. The other thing that was fascinating was understanding the importance of the Visiting Teaching message. At that point, the message was translated into 75 different languages. Some of these 75 languages don’t even have the Book of Mormon translated yet. They don’t even have the Liahona. The Visiting Teaching message — along with the First Presidency message — is the only official thing that the people of these languages get from Salt Lake City. It was a lot of responsibility, but we really worked hard to make sure we didn’t have tight cultural references in the quotes we selected so that they could be helpful to women all over the world. One time we wanted to use a quote by one of the living apostles who talked about how prayer is like having a direct phone line to the Lord. And we realized that we couldn’t use that, because people in some third-world countries would have no idea what we were talking about. Our goal was to recognize the real core of the doctrine, stripping it of metaphors and stories. We didn’t want anything fluffy or cheesy. We also decided that by focusing on the core doctrine we could allow women wherever they were to apply it to their own lives and share their own stories with the people they visit teach. From that interaction with the General Relief Society presidency, what did you learn about the power of the Relief Society organization in the world? I loved Sister Parkin’s goal for her presidency: She wanted women to feel the love of the Lord in their lives daily. It’s important to realize that these Relief Society leaders are anxious to serve and to lead. They can receive revelation. There’s power in their callings. My personal understanding of that comes from my knowledge of the history of the Relief Society and the stewardship that these women have had since the time of Emma Smith. It is a stewardship over the women of the world, to make sure they’re on the path that God would have them on, and that they are working as partners with the priesthood in building the Kingdom. You mentioned that you talked to Sister Parkin about your experiences being a single woman in the Church today. How do you fit yourself into church culture being a single woman today? I’ve grappled with this a lot in the past and it’s something I don’t grapple with it as much anymore because I feel that I personally am in a really good place in my life. I’m in a really great ward. My ward is 40% mid-single and my bishop has done amazing things to integrate us. All of our auxiliary presidents are single women. We have two Relief Societies, divided geographically. I think the bishop recognizes the value of the single people in our ward. When I was in Harlem it was really hard to be single in my ward there. The first Sunday I was there I was put in the Primary, and there I stayed the whole two years I lived in that ward. I never had Visiting Teachers or Home Teachers. I never had adult contact except with the parents or other Primary teachers. That was hard. Right now, there’s a rumor going around that an older singles ward is going to be created here. And I don’t want to go! I love being in the family ward that I’m in. I love having interaction with married women and older women in my ward. I love the diversity of that. I love that they seek me out, I seek them out… There’s no difference between us. We sit next to each other. I hold their kids, I babysit their kids. It’s an incredible partnership where we look out for each other. I have struggled with being a single woman in the Church, but I’ve come to a really good place where I’m confident in who I am, and I’m confident in the direction my life is headed. And I think that’s come from having a strong sense of my personal mission in life. I know that my education is a part of that mission. I know that I want to get married and have kids and I know that’s a part of my mission too and that will happen one day and I look forward to that. But I’m content too with where I am, and I think that comes from having a strong relationship with Jesus Christ and learning to utilize the Atonement in my life. Is there some advice you might give other single LDS women to help them find the peace you have? The best advice is to recognize that we all have missions in life. We all have incredible talents to contribute to the world around us. We can do wonderful things, whether we’re married or not. That doesn’t really matter. It’s important to recognize the power of the Atonement and recognize that immediate power that God’s grace has to enable us to be better at what we’re trying to accomplish: To be better people and to be healed. But we also can’t lose site of the importance of marriage and family. It’s a tricky balance — you go one way and you may lose site of the other. We have to learn how to maintain that balance: Feel personal fulfillment without losing site of the importance of being in families. My family has had a lot of crazy challenges and part of me feels, “Ugh! I don’t know what I can do to help them!” And there’s another part of me that realizes I am separate from them. I can serve them and help them in a lot of different ways, but I have my own life. And I’m happy with the way my life is turning out and the decisions I’ve made, the friends I have and the support system that I have. I mean, I’ll never be entirely separate from my family and I don’t think that I should be, and yet I’ve found great peace in becoming who I am individually. It’s probably a realization I should have come to ten years ago! Could you elaborate on how studying the original Latter-day Saint women informs your identity today? Are there things that you do to emulate them? My understanding of the history of “my” women has provided me with an incredible sense of identity and connection — to them as well as to LDS women around the world today. I have a richer understanding of the mission and role of women in general, and I appreciate the responsibilities, experiences, attitudes, and deep beliefs of these women. There are a number of stories about these early Latter-day Saint women that inspire me to be the person I am today. There’s a story I love about Eliza R. Snow. She was the head of the board of Deseret Hospital. It was a really busy time in her life; she was also Relief Society General President and was occupied with a ton of other activities. At one point, there was an unfortunate incident with one of the female doctors at the hospital and Eliza decided that the best thing to do would be to let the doctor go, to fire her. This doctor was so upset about this that she went straight to John Taylor, who was the president of the Church at the time, and she complained and John Taylor reinstated her. And I love Eliza’s response: Instead of trying to maintain her ground and be all upset and angry, as she could have done very easily, she said, “You know, I have too much going on in my life anyway. I’m just going to resign from the hospital board.” And she just took herself out of that situation. She didn’t want to ruffle any feathers with the priesthood leaders because she had this incredible understanding of the Priesthood and she supported it, and she knew that her efforts and activities were better served in other places. I’ve found myself keeping that in the back of my mind — whether it’s in interactions with professors or with people at church: What is really important and where is my energy best served? It helps me just to let go of some things. That’s just one little story. But I love the way Sarah Kimball was so innovative with her organization of the Relief Society as it was just getting started in Utah. You know, she was so careful as she planned out the different branches of the Relief Society and the women who were going to have different roles. She figured out the whole thing herself. I love that when Louisa Barnes Pratt’s husband was called to go on a mission, she was in Nauvoo, Illinois, at the time and she had to go across the plains by herself with her kids. She went to Brigham Young for help but he couldn’t help her cause there were just too many people in need. So she said, “Well, I’ll show him. I’ll do it myself.” And she did. She wasn’t bitter, she just figured out how to do it herself. These stories fuel me and I think, I can do anything. I can figure it out. I can decide where I want to spend my time and energy. They’re just little anecdotes, but they give me direction. At A Glance Name: Jenny Reeder Location: Arlington, VA Age: 35 Marital status: Single Occupation: PhD Candidate Schools Attended: Brigham Young University, Arizona State University, New York University, George Mason University Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” “How Firm A Foundation” Current Church Calling: Gospel Doctrine Teacher Interview by Neylan McBaine.

For almost four years Brittney has been writing about the 18 months she spent in Venezuela as a missionary. While she was there, her father, who was excommunicated from the Church when she was 14 and from whom she had been estranged for years, began sending her letters, photocopies from the journal he kept as a missionary in Colombia between 1973-75. This began a reconnection and reconciliation of their relationship which, by the end of her time in Venezuela, would become the most poignant and enduring conversion of her mission. People ask where I grew up and I never really know what to say. I was born in Idaho Falls, Idaho. My parents lived on a pig farm, which I have no memory of but love nonetheless. A sort of absurd and wonderful place to start a life. We moved to San Diego, California, when I was four, and lived there until I was eleven. Then St. Simons Island, Georgia, and though we left the South and moved back to California when I was 14, when I get nervous that southern twang comes shining. My parents divorced when I was 17 and my mother took us (I’m the oldest of five) back to Idaho. I graduated from high school there, drove west the next morning and swore I’d never go back. I spent a lot of time wandering. Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and California, I even lived a few days out of the back of my car in Wyoming. But my best friend was in Rexburg, Idaho, at Ricks College [now Brigham Young Univerisity – Idaho], and I missed her, so I caved. And bless Rexburg’s heart, I hated it there. Still, 13 years later, here I am, 9 hours north of those cold, lonesome streets, in a little piece of heaven called northern Idaho. That’s life I suppose, God laughing and playing, as they say. My family is many generations Mormon on both sides, so I was raised in the Church. My father always held some leadership position. My mother was my first Young Women’s president. It’s a strange and sad thing, I suppose, that of the seven members my family, only my brother and I remain active in the Church. My dad was excommunicated when I was 14. My mom, for reasons she keeps close to her chest, hasn’t been active for 6 years. Did you have a testimony at a young age? What factors in your childhood helped you to develop faith? Like lots of kids born into the Church, I was baptized when I was 8 years old. I’m not sure I had a testimony then. My aunt had given me a journal, and that night, after my baptism, on the way home, we stopped at the grocery store for milk. Later, in my bedroom, holding a flashlight under my sheets, I wrote that while I walked through the Albertson’s parking lot, I was sure my feet hadn’t touched the ground. I didn’t know how to name the lightness, but it was real as the cup of milk on the nightstand beside my bed. What was your relationship like with your parents? My father is a really eloquent man, a fantastic, commanding speaker. I remember once, as a kid, hearing him speak in Church. I don’t remember the subject (though I do remember he quoted Harry Chapin’s tune “Cats in the Cradle,” which lends itself to myriad possibilities…), but I’ll never forget the feeling, the pride that he was my dad, that I was his daughter. And for a long time as a child and into adolescence, I would have believed anything he said. I guess in a way, my faith in the Church started simply as faith in my father, faith in the way his eyes lit when he told stories about his mission to Colombia, in the way he could take a song from the radio and make some gospel truth. For a long time, I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world. Mine was always the “happening” house; my parents were the ones all my friends loved. This was, of course, part of what made their divorce so devastating. Choosing to live with one over the other was, hands down, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The choice to live with my mom was certainly more theoretical than real, I think. Or at least it felt that way back then. My youngest brother and sister (ages 9 and 11) were going with my mother. That was non-negotiable. The older three of us were given the choice, and I think it was mostly out a sense of obligation to keep our family together that we chose to leave California and go to Idaho with our mother. My father was, of course, devastated. Frankly, I don’t think either of my parents really understood, nor had any way of anticipating, the fall out that would result from their separation. Shortly after we left, my father’s girlfriend (whom he would later marry) moved in, and I think, in a way, this solidified the kids’ decision to stay with our mom. We felt betrayed. My father, in his own right, felt the same way. Christmas Day 1993, he called in an effort to explain, to help me see things from his perspective. The hurt was so deep though, so hard for either of us to express that somehow, perhaps because it was the easiest place to start, the Church got caught in the middle. He felt like I was judging him because I’d been “brainwashed by the Church.” And that’s where I hung up. I didn’t speak to him for three years. Looking back on it, I wouldn’t do it again, but back then I didn’t know what else to do. It killed me. And only now, as a parent myself, can I see how deeply it killed us both. This was clearly a painful time in your life. What kept you going to church during these difficult years? Two things, I think. First was that I firmly, earnestly believed in the Church. I’d felt the burning of belief and couldn’t walk away. Second, for all intents and purposes, I’d just chosen the Church over my father. I’d prayed every night since I was 14 years old that he’d come back, that the storm in his eyes would pass. I thought if he did, maybe, somehow, I’d get my family back again. I figured that if I were strong enough, had faith enough, that would do it. There’s some faulty logic there, and it’s a terribly treacherous path, but I walked it for a good long time. How did you decide to go on a mission? Your father had been a missionary in Colombia in the 1970s. What was your parents’ reaction when you were sent to Venezuela? How did you feel about it? Now there’s a long story: Age 19, I’m nannying for the summer in Florida, and I start doing splits with these two sister missionaries, Sister Matthews and Sister Hawkins. I’m lost at the time, still reeling from my parent’s divorce. I haven’t spoken to my father for almost 2 years. I hate Ricks College but that’s where I’m headed back to once the summer’s up. So many things. One day, I’m out with the sisters and we’re teaching this wonderful, crazy family—a single mother with a whole mess of kids. They live in a giant, crumbling colonial house on Glouchester Street in Brunswick, Georgia and Sister Hawkins asks this beautiful little ten-year old girl, Shameka, to give the opening prayer. She makes it short and sweet: Dear Heavenly Father, please bless Sister Matthews, Sister Hawkins, and the girl whose name we don’t know yet. Name of Jesus Christ, Amen. It wasn’t so much that I was touched by the Spirit as it was simply that her prayer made me smile—a really big, really sincere smile, crooked and all. And it felt like I hadn’t smiled like that for years. That same summer, it happened that one of my best friends, a roommate from Ricks, was 4 months into her mission in Rochester, New York. I couldn’t help it, couldn’t resist: I gathered up a few friends and we drove north through the night. And there she was in the morning, in Waterloo, New York, standing in the doorway of Peter Whitmer’s house. Like the fantastic missionary she was, she gave us a tour. We saw the bedroom where Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery worked like madmen, scribbling through the dark. She broke the rules and took me out the back door. She said “Look!” and pointed to a stand of trees. She told me a story about Martin Harris when Joseph was showing him the Golden Plates: Martin couldn’t see the plates, at first. And so he came out of the trees. But Joseph Smith took him back there, held his hand, and when it was finally finished, after Harris had seen the angel, Joseph came running and fell on his mother’s lap. He cried and begged his mother, “Now can you believe I’m not crazy?” It’s a pretty simple conversion story, really: crazy or not, I believed. My patriarchal blessing talks pretty specifically about me being a missionary, about finding and teaching “those who you knew before coming to this Earth.” I couldn’t read it and not feel pulled, especially after that summer in Georgia, that trip to New York. I got my call in July 1997. On Pioneer Day. In the parade our ward put on in the church parking lot, a kid had fallen off his covered wagon replica and broken the heck out of his leg. My friend Aaron, just home from his own mission in Philadelphia, said there were days on his mission he’d wanted to walk in front of a bus on Constitution Avenue, break a leg, and get a free ride home. He said I had no idea what I was in for. My mother, still active then, told him to shut up and get the atlas. I’d been called to Barcelona, Venezuela. She kept saying, “I thought Barcelona was in Spain.” My father, with whom I was only barely speaking, said Venezuela was too dangerous. He threatened to call the Church Headquarters. He was, to put it mildly, not pleased. Brittney Poulsen Carman Would you describe the development of the relationship with your father? How did your mission influence his testimony as well as yours? Like I said, my dad was excommunicated when I was 14, and that began the undoing of our relationship. Understandably, neither of my parents was really forthcoming with the details, but suddenly, I suspected my father was someone I didn’t know, maybe someone I’d never known at all. He was hurt and angry and fighting a fight so fundamental and yet so isolating that I didn’t know how to reach him. There was a lot of grieving on both our parts. When I got my mission call, we were speaking, but very tentatively. He was still angry at the Church. I think he felt unfairly judged and betrayed, even by his children. The way he saw it, we’d been brainwashed and were too far gone to realize it. He didn’t come to my mission farewell, nor the Missionary Training Center (MTC). He didn’t come to the airport when I flew to Venezuela. So then I’m there, struggling with my first companionship, feeling taken out at the knees. The MTC nearly killed me. It was 8 weeks of a fire that didn’t feel so refining back then. But this thing started happening, this slow, subtle thing. I hated the food less. Spanish started making a little more sense. The boy I loved (on a mission in Honduras) didn’t feel so far away anymore. And my father began to write. Cards first, then letters. He wrote sometimes in Spanish, and it was like magic. A simple connection, one small thing we shared. Eventually, once I was in Venezuela, he started sending me pages from the journal he kept as a missionary in Colombia. And I can’t really speak to how my mission affected his testimony; he has never been re-baptized. Still, I can’t help but think it was a study in redemption for both of us. I know it was for me, day after day after day. How did you get the idea to write a book? What is the book about? How have you prepared to write the book? Oh the book. The book started as a lie I cooked up to get into a writing workshop in Barcelona, Spain. I’d written an essay about my mission (“Barcelona, Venezuela. 1998”) which was published earlier that year, and I submitted it with my proposal to the Student Grant program at the University of Idaho, where I was in the second year of an MFA program in creative writing. I made a really half-baked plea for money saying that this workshop in Barcelona, Spain was the missing link between me and completion of the “book” I was writing about my time in Barcelona, Venezuela. This, of course, was a fiction: one four-page essay does not a full-length memoir make. Nonetheless, they ponied up, and in July 2007, I found myself walking the Passeig de Gracia, dumbfounded by the difference between Spain and Venezuela, reeling at what I’d just gotten myself into: my mission had become a world I could neither reenter nor make sense of, and now I was obligated by this grant to write a book. The workshop was led by Patricia Foster, a professor at the University of Iowa, and one afternoon, she asked me to stay after class. She’d looked at my essay and wanted to talk about the book. I said, essentially, there was no book. I didn’t know how to write it, and even if I did, who’d read it anyway? Plenty of Mormons have mission stories, and no one who isn’t Mormon is interested in hearing them, so what would be the point? And really kindly, Patricia Foster just said I was wrong, that the literary community was waiting for a book like this. She said, “The story of why a thinking person leaves the faith has already been written. What we want to know now is why you stay.” I walked out onto Aragó Street both energized by her assurance and vaguely aware that if I was supposed to try and answer that question, I’d just bitten off more than I could chew. I fought with it for about a year. Starting scenes but never finishing them, always pestered by the feeling that I was trying to write from a vantage point that was simply too distant. I’d been home from my mission for nine years. I didn’t understand the story anymore, couldn’t see what it meant in any way that might resonate with a larger audience. But I kept writing anyway, trying to remember, trying to make sense. And then, visiting my father in California last summer, I got an amazing gift. We went to play tennis at my old high school, and beside the courts is a huge magnolia tree. It was in full bloom, flowers as big as your face. My father says, “I wish you could see the magnolias in Barranquilla, B [B is my nickname].” He laughs and tells me if I think the flowers here are big, in Colombia they’re the size of small kids. And right then I understood what was missing. At home I had the letters my father had sent me, the pages from his journal, full of the doubt and loneliness he wrestled with, commentary on the food, the weather, the drivers, the relief of basketball games on p-days, the heart-racking poverty, flowers and the faces of children more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen. All of it was so familiar it could have been my mission. I could have been walking with him, which is, of course, why he sent them. And suddenly, I knew the book wasn’t so much about my mission as it was the story of a family’s redemption. The story of me and my dad—his choice to leave the faith, my struggle to stay, and the ways in which the consequences both destroyed and redeemed us. I think embedded in that story, ultimately, is the answer to the question, why does a thinking person stay? Once I knew that, I knew I needed to go back to South America. I needed to see the magnolias in Colombia, to walk the red clay roads of Venezuela again. The Idaho Commission on the Arts got behind it, as did The Peery Foundation. Thanks to those grants and some unbelievably generous family and friends, my husband and I spent the month of June, 2009 tracing my father’s footsteps and retracing my own. People ask if I found what I was looking for: like you can’t believe, and then some. It will truly take a book. Brittney Poulsen Carman How is your desire to write connected to your spiritual journey? How do you feel your journey is now influencing your mothering? I hope I don’t sound nebulous or abstruse, but I think writing, especially memoir, is inherently a spiritual journey. I’m not writing because I have the answers, I’m writing because I still have questions. My experience has been that through writing—and the soul search that accompanies it—meaning is made. By connecting the dots of what feels like my own, pretty personal story, I’ve learned some really beautiful things about life. And hope. And redemption, in the end. As far as mothering is concerned, I can tell you right now that leaving your eighteen-month old with her grandparents to go trek through the wilds of South America, spiritual journey or not, is no way to win to favors with said child. Our six-year old held up like a champ. The baby? Nope, not so much. I’m pretty sure she hated us when we got home. Thankfully, that stage has passed. But I’ll tell you what, trying to write about yourself makes you hyper-aware of who you are, who you’ve been, and who you want to be—as a woman, a mother. The trick, writing a book or not, is to remember what you’ve seen. At A Glance Name: Brittney Poulsen Carman Location: Moscow, ID Age: 32 Marital status: Married. Happily. 9 years. Children: Two daughters — 18 months, 6 years. Occupation: Writer, Secretary of the University of Idaho English Department Schools Attended: Ricks College, University of Utah (BA), University of Idaho (MFA) Languages Spoken at Home: English, Spanish Interview by Neylan McBaine. Photos by Heather Parkinson-Nelson.

Although the product of a Mexican mother, a Peruvian father and an Ecuadorian mission, Maria Babin always had a special love for France. Now living in Paris as a mother to four children, Maria adapts and innovates in her efforts to teach her children three different languages: English, Spanish and French. How I ended up in France is an interesting story because ever since I was a little girl I’ve always had a fascination with France—I wanted more than anything to learn to speak French. I was already growing up bilingual. My mom is Mexican, my dad is Peruvian, and so we spoke Spanish as well as English in our home. So when I was small, my mom would take us to the library, and I would look for books to teach myself French—vocabulary and picture books where you could learn simple words like chocolate and I thought I was speaking French! When I got to high school, I had the choice between Spanish or French classes. French was the obvious choice for me! When I was seventeen, I went to France for a month with a group of about 30 students from my high school French class. We stayed individually with French families for two weeks, where I stayed in the countryside near Le Mans with a really sweet French family. And then the other two weeks we traveled as a group in the south of France, in Avignon, and then we spent a week in Paris. That month in France is when I fell in love… I remember getting on the plane to leave France and go back home to the United States and just feeling like a part of my heart was staying in France. I cried. My French teacher Mrs. Brown had put her arms around me to comfort me and then suddenly told me with great conviction, “You will come back. I know you will”–and I have! When I turned in my papers to serve a full-time LDS mission, I had secretly hoped to be called to France, but the call came and it was to serve in Quito, Ecuador where I labored in the foothills of the Andes mountains amongst a humble and beautiful people. I perfected my Spanish. I came home from my mission and decided to major in French at BYU Provo. In my first semester in my new major, I was taking a French civilization class, and my (future) husband was in the class. I had my eye on this handsome and reserved and well-groomed Frenchman so when he offered to help me with my French, I quickly said yes! So we started studying together, at first once a week and then twice a week and then everyday and then we weren’t studying anymore! We would spend hours talking and soon realized that we were inseparable. We got married the following December. I had finished my degree and he was still finishing his when we had our first son, Alex. When he finished his degree he got a job in Draper, so we moved to Eagle Mountain and lived there for a few years. Our daughter Elena came along. Maria Elena Olivares Babin and Her Family After living as a married couple in Utah for six years, we came to live France seven and a half years ago. We’ve had two more children (Gabriela and Remy) here in France, so we have four children now. Two boys, two girls. Two American and two French. My daughter Gabriela says, “We’ve got two teams in our family because there’s Papa and me and Remy that were born in France and then there’s you, Mom, and Alex and Elena who were born in the United States.” What has been your experience living in France? It has been a wonderful adventure with lots of ups and downs. Leaving my country has been challenging because I’m very attached to my family and country, but it’s been marvelous to come and live in France. To live in such an old and beautiful country full of culture and history, to learn a culture so similar and yet so different from my own, to live so close to my husband’s very large and very close-knit family have each been a blessing in its own respect. To learn and grow and stretch myself far beyond my comfort zone has been unbearably uncomfortable at times, but has pushed me to grow as a person. I’ve found it important to seek a sense of personal identity and purpose beyond the initial reason that I came to live in France, which was to be with my husband and to raise our family here. I’ve found that sense of purpose by exploring and developing my creative interests (such as my blog and photography and gardening), and developing my talents and professional aptitudes (I’ve worked part-time as an English teacher and have become certified to run a day-care in my home). It’s also been wonderful to serve in the Church. I’m currently the Relief Society president in the Versailles ward, and to give to these sisters and to help the Church progress has been an amazing experience. I feel so strongly that in the pre-mortal existence I knew these sisters, and I told them I would be there to help them and be a leader for them, that I would gather the sisters to be a strength and help the Church move forward here in France. That’s something I’ve felt very strongly throughout the time that I’ve had this calling. There are hard times, but that testimony is what carries me through. I know that Heavenly Father called me to do this work. He could have chosen so many other women that could do a better job than me, but for whatever reason he chose me, and I really do have that feeling that I covenanted to help here in this little corner of the world. Living in Three Languages When my husband and I started talking about having children, my husband said, “Our children need to learn French.” and I told him, “Well if you’re going to teach them French, I’m also going to teach them Spanish!” (We lived in the United States at the time so it was kind of a given they would learn English on their own!) And so it became a challenge we set for ourselves, convinced that it would work, in spite of others’ skepticism! I did a lot of research and formulated a multilingual plan for our family. That plan has evolved as the children have grown and as we’ve changed countries, but it’s working! Our three older children are trilingual. We currently use a two-week system: for two full weeks my children and I speak nothing but English together, and then every other Saturday we switch. And then for two full weeks we speak nothing but Spanish together. My husband speaks purely French with the kids because he feels very unnatural speaking English or Spanish with them! When it’s Spanish week, it’s very tricky at the dinner table, because I’ll speak Spanish with the kids, and my husband and I always speak English to each other and then my husband speaks French with the kids, so there are three languages going on and a lot of switching back and forth depending on who you’re talking to! English week is a little bit easier because we just switch back and forth between English and French. Maria Elena Olivares Babin and Her Family When you’re raising a multilingual family, you have to adapt as you go. The two week system has worked really well up until now, but Spanish has a suffered a bit now that the kids are older and constantly want to participate in Mom and Dad’s English conversations. We’re not sure what we will do to adapt so one evening at the dinner table I decided to bring it up. “You know, kids, have you noticed that Spanish has become a bit more challenging?” My daughter suddenly looked up at me she had big tears in her eyes. She thought I was going tell them we were going to drop the Spanish altogether. Her reaction was so touching and adorable! She thought I was going tell them we were going to drop the Spanish. We thought that was so cute and so touching that she’s so attached to this language, and we had a good laugh about that. The first two or three days are really hard when we make the transition between languages. But what really helps is that my kids love being trilingual. That makes it so much easier. For example, when we transition from Spanish to English, we’ll sometimes forget and start speaking in Spanish instead of English until someone says, “Oh no! It’s English today!” We do that anywhere between 10 and 20 times before we are fully transitioned! Usually by Monday we’re on track and then it’s smooth sailing (or something like that) for the remainder of the two weeks. How do you teach three languages at once? We live in the language. There are all kinds of everyday things that you experience with your children no matter what language you speak, so we just switch over to Spanish (or English or French). We do everything in the target language: we eat meals, get ready for the day, go shopping, visit friends, go to church, everything. Even homework. When I do homework with the kids, they don’t like me to speak French to them. So I explain concepts to them in English or Spanish that they’ve already learned in French and they are in turn forced to not only work on their French school-work, but also increase their listening comprehension and oral expression in English or Spanish. I’m also a very hands-on mom with my kids: they’re in the kitchen cooking with me, we do a lot of crafts, and we go on a lot of outings together— the park, the forest, the farm, the swimming pool. Living in France helps because we get to visit places like Paris, the Eiffel Tower, beautiful castles and gardens, or museums. The richer your activities as a family are, the richer your opportunities to increase vocabulary and expression. So there’s no formal instruction, we just live the language. We read a lot of books too. When my kids were younger, I would read a lot to them, but now they love to read on their own. My three older kids have even taught themselves to read in English and Spanish on their own. What language do my kids play in together? I give my kids free reign when they play, because I don’t want to be restrictive on their language expression with each other. And their play language of choice is French. But they do know that when it’s English week, they speak to me in English and they’re pretty good about that. Sometimes they’re a little lazy as far as vocabulary is concerned, and they’ll say a word in English or Spanish or French— whatever comes easiest. I don’t always hear it, but my husband will call the children on it. I do correct them every now and then but I try not to be very strict. I want it to be a fun, magical experience and so far I think we’ve been able to achieve that for them. We keep going this way because they’re trilingual and it’s amazing. I just look at them and think “Oh my goodness!” It’s working, our language experiment is working! What was your experience taking on the identity of being a mother? Motherhood was the ultimate goal ever since I was a little girl. It’s what I dreamt of. I was twenty-six when I got married. I had served a mission and was about to finish my Bachelor’s degree and had started thinking about the future: a Master’s degree or getting a job. I was at a turning point, and I didn’t know what was going to happen with my life, but I knew I needed to make choices for me so that I was happy even if I didn’t find a husband or have children. But that was the year I met my husband, so it all worked out. We both wanted to have children fairly quickly, and sure enough, six months after we got married, we were expecting our first little one. Motherhood has been a wonderful blessing that makes me feel fulfilled as a woman; to me, it is the ultimate purpose of my being. Our little ones bring me so much joy and teach me so much. I often think I’m here to teach my children and guide them, and I am, but when I am really still and observe them, I realize they have so much to teach me! Motherhood has been a wonderful ride—not always an easy one—because there’s a lot of sacrifice that goes with being a mom. When my son Alex was born, my firstborn, I remember wondering how my mom had had seven children and made it all look so easy. I remember talking to my mom on the phone and telling her, “I can’t even imagine having a second child, it’s so much work!” But I got past that! It got easier, and I got used to it. I think I probably grew and changed too. How have you seen yourself change as a mother? I think I’ve really needed to learn to become a more selfless person. Maybe the reason it was so hard for me in the beginning was because I was very self-centered—I had learned to live just for me. I went to school and I studied and I worked and everything, even my trials, was all about me. That’s all I had known the first twenty-six years of my life. And all of a sudden there was this wonderful little person who needed so much from me and around the clock, and that was tough. I’ve really had to learn how to let go of me and put my children’s needs before mine. And I’m not at all perfect at that, I still have a lot of work to do, but I think that’s one way that I have grown – in my capacity to give selflessly. I am still working on learning to be still, and to enjoy the moment, and to listen to my heart. How do you define motherhood? Love. A lot of love. I think motherhood is nurturing another person. I think it’s a lot of observing to learn what needs exist and then being still enough to listen to our heart to know how to fill those needs. And I believe we can be a mother to a lot of people, not just the children we give birth to. And as my capacity to be a mother to my own children grows, my capacity to mother or nurture others grows as well. Maria Elena Olivares Babin and Her Children It’s also a balancing act. Motherhood embellishes and fulfills our female identity, but our personal identity can be so much more than just being a mother. Personally, it’s very important for me to learn to balance motherhood and my personal identity: giving selflessly of myself to my children, but also taking time for my needs, to develop my talents, to create and to be able to enjoy what I love in life, because those things in turn rejuvenate me as a mother and increase my capacity to love and nurture. Sometimes I give a lot of myself to my children and others and forget to nurture myself, and then I get a little off balance and I’m not as happy. Other times I maybe take too much time for myself and the balance gets thrown off and I’m not able to give as much as I should. I believe that as mothers, and as women, we learn to stay in balance as we teeter back and forth between motherhood (or nurturing others) and our personal identity (nurturing ourselves). The careful balance of these two facets of womanhood is what has brought me the greatest joy in this life. Living with a family in France When we lived in Utah, we would walk around the corner to go to church, whereas here in France we live 30 minutes from the church, so being really involved in activities is not always so easy. The fact that all church members are so spread out, activities tend to be longer to make it worth the drive! So you have to block out a major portion of your day and have a fairly good organization at home: preparing meals, giving children baths, grocery shopping, homework, after-school activities, etc. You have to take all those family and household duties into consideration and find another time slot to get it done. For example, if we are busy on Saturday evening and don’t think ahead, then it’s really crunch time on Sunday morning when we realize, Ah! Nothing’s ready. The kids haven’t had their bath, their clothes aren’t ironed, the baby’s bottle is not ready, and so on and so forth! And then when we come home from church tired and hungry, if our organization was not tip-top the previous day then there’s the meal that hasn’t been prepared, whereas we just spent a three hour plus block at church. Also, the members of the church in France are very social so you can count on staying anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours mingling after Sunday meetings! If there is a baptism or choir practice or other activity planned on the same day, these activities will sometimes run into each other. Rather than going home, some snack or picnic at church and carry on to the next activity! So coming to church on Sunday is a huge ordeal. We have to get up around seven in the morning with our four children in tow and we’re back at home around two or three in the afternoon. It’s really a bigger chunk of time than what we were used to in Utah. In Utah, we were used to participating in everything that was offered to us. We could say, if there’s an activity, we’ll be there, or if there’s a dinner, we’ll be there. Here in France, if we try to do that, we find out really quick that it’s not possible, and we don’t have time anymore for just being a family. So we’ve really had to learn as a family to create a balance and say “we’ll go to this activity” and “we won’t go to this one” because we just need some down time, some quiet time to enjoy each other. I’ve seen families who have tried to do it all, and they get tired really quick. We’ve learned that even if we’re not at every activity, or doing every single thing they’re asking of us, it’s okay. We’re still living our religion and we’re creating harmony in our family, and that’s what’s most important. For me, living our religion means living a Christ-like life, a Christ-centered life. It’s treating each other with love and kindness and learning to love each other. And if we get to the point where we’re so overwhelmed with activities and running left and right that we start to be tired and crabby and we’re not feeling happy anymore, then that makes it really hard to live our religion. We want to be a Christ-centered family where there are happy and harmonious family relationships. At A Glance Name: Maria Elena Olivares Babin Location: Paris, France Age: 40 Marital status: Married to Samuel Babin on December 17, 1999 Children: Alexandre 12, Elena 9, Gabriela 7, Rémy 9 months Occupation: Day care provider Schools Attended: Brigham Young University, Provo Languages Spoken at Home: English, Spanish, French Favorite Hymn: “Our Savior’s Love” On The Web: www.busyasabeeinparis.blogspot.com Interview by Ashley Brocious and Lauren Brocious.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview is the first in a series, “Sisters Speaking Out,” that features Mormon women speaking out on social and political issues. The opinions expressed here represent the speaker, and do not imply endorsement by the Mormon Women Project or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We ask that all readers maintain respect for the views of the interview subject. Angela Fallentine is a U.S. expat living in New Zealand. Angela has had a long career with the Church’s public affairs offices—but she recently gave one of her most significant public speeches as a private citizen, when she and her husband spoke before the New Zealand Parliament during debates on this year’s Definition of Marriage bill. Angela felt impressed to present teachings from “The Family: a Proclamation to the World,” an experience that reconfirmed her commitment to the doctrine of eternal families. Did you make a deliberate choice to be a “warrior for family”? Not at all! Just like many people in the Church, it’s just something ingrained in our doctrine and beliefs. However, while I was a single adult, I received an amazing father’s blessing that foreshadowed something along these lines. This was just over a decade ago, when I was ready to move out to Washington DC and work with the Church’s Office of International and Government Affairs. It was a big change in my life—moving from university and Church Public Affairs in Salt Lake, to working with foreign ambassadors and diplomats. In that blessing it said that I would be called upon to defend womanhood and the family. You never really realize, when you get those blessings, how everything will come about. And at the same time, you don’t really set out to be a champion of anything; you just live the gospel day to day and then the Lord places you in situations to be instruments in His hands. But I have never forgotten that blessing and I remembered that I would be given opportunities and be asked to do this many times in my life. So as far as defining moments with the family proclamation, I’ve had plenty just by living the gospel. But to verbalize it in front of Parliament was a pivotal moment for me. I would say it defined me because it was a proving ground and a tremendous experience. I think there’s something that happens when you verbalize something, when you say out loud your beliefs, despite opposition. Tell us about your experience presenting The Family: A Proclamation to the World to the New Zealand Parliament. Last year the New Zealand Parliament discussed a gay marriage and gay adoption bill proposed by one of the members of Parliament. The procedure was to invite everybody in the country to make a submission: you’d go online and you write up your facts, your feelings, why you were for or why you were against gay marriage. My husband and I did it for Family Home Evening. And then there was this little box that you can check, “Will you be willing to stand before Parliament and defend your position?” We just looked at each other and we said, “Let’s check the box!” We felt really passionately about this. We felt that if we didn’t speak then, if people don’t speak up, then our voices can’t be heard. What I’ve always felt is that silence is exactly what Satan wants when it comes to the doctrine of the family, and we had to be heard. And if we got picked, we got picked. If not, then so be it. Angela Fallentine We received word a few months later that our submission had been picked to be presented in front of Parliament. (There were about 200 people allowed to present in the country). We called the Area Presidency office just to ask for advice. I had worked in Church public affairs; my whole career was mostly working for the Church so I knew that we needed to be clear on the division between personal statements and Church statements. So I told the legal counsel that we know we’re not to be representing the Church, we have to be careful on this, but please if there’s any advice, just let us know what you have. The phone went silent and the individual I talked to, one of the legal counsel, he just said, “You’ve been picked? What do you mean? This is significant! No member of the Church has been chosen to present before the Parliamentary Committee and our Church has been trying to present and so far, it has been without success!” So we were the only members in the country who had been chosen. That put the pressure on us. Ultimately, they [the Area Presidency office] just said, “It’s between you and the Lord what you say. For whatever reason, you and your husband were chosen. You’ll be guided and you’ll be helped in what to say.” Did they make it clear that you were speaking as individuals, not officially representing the Church? They made it very clear that we could not be representing the Church. We had to make sure that we weren’t going under the guise of official representatives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—we’re just ordinary people. There was a lot of prayer. We asked family and some trusted people what they would say if they were given this opportunity and they had some wonderful thoughts. But at the end of the day we realized that it possibly wasn’t by chance that we were asked to do this or chosen randomly out of the country, and that Heavenly Father had a specific message that He wanted, and we would just do what He wanted us to do. By hopefully living close enough to the Spirit we would be able to give what He wanted us to say. So we prayed like crazy! We had about a week to prepare, and half of it I was at Stake Young Women’s camp, so my mind was away from the internet. It was actually good to be away from the dialogue that was in the media. I was removed; I was in nature with these young women. When I came back from camp and walked in the door, my husband said that he received his answer of what he needed to speak on. And a couple days later, I received a really strong prompting to go back to where the family proclamation began, and that was in 1995 with President Gordon B. Hinckley in the General Relief Society broadcast. I’ve had a few experiences in my life, when I’ve read or heard something from Prophets or Apostles or general authorities that was so forceful that it has hit me completely and powerfully, to the core. And this happened when I was watching President Hinckley give the proclamation on the family. Literally from head to toe, I knew, I felt it. I actually got pretty emotional because I knew when I was reviewing certain paragraphs and certain phrases that those were the ones that I needed to put into my speech. And I knew that I had to say them, and it was undeniable. But this also meant it was going to be hard. The words were going to be so different and foreign from what everybody else would be saying. Were you afraid your message wouldn’t be taken seriously? Definitely. It’s not easy; it’s hard out there in the world. It’s hard to stand up when everybody’s sitting down, and you’re the only one out there. But I think that’s how as members of the Church we stand out, and how we can help others to have a voice. I think that you have to put everything in God’s hands and basically say, “I’ll say what you want me to say, I’ll do what you want me to do,” even if it may be unpopular by the world’s standards. I got a really strong impression about what I was supposed to say. What mattered more was if I didn’t say what God would want me to say. I was more worried about what was recorded in heaven versus what was recorded in Parliament. So how was the actual experience in Parliament that day? It was difficult in that we had felt confident in receiving specific direction on what we were supposed to say but somehow we started losing some of our confidence. Reality was setting in. We also realized by checking in on Facebook and checking in with the media the day before (which was not a good idea!) that this audience was hostile to religious belief, and we would not be in a position of popularity. It was in Auckland, a few hours away from where we live, so we drove up there and when we arrived, we got dressed up and then entered the ballroom. I was shaking. I was nervous. Not nervous that I didn’t know what I was going to say, because we had prepared presentations, but more for the questioning afterwards. I think I didn’t know what to prepare for, and I was just hoping Heavenly Father would fill our mouths with the right answer as they questioned us off the cuff. It was set up like a debate. They had a moderator in the front and they had members of Parliament and the press all around the room, and then you sat at the front. So they would call your name, you’d get your allotted time and then they’d question you if they felt so inclined. When they called our names they said we had the option of going separately or we could come together, and we thought of course, what symbolism! Of course we would be together as a husband and wife. We would walk up together, we would sit together, and we would stand and defend the doctrine of the family together. It was powerful to walk up with my husband, John, who is such a great man and strength to me. They had him go first, and he shared a story from President Uchtdorf that had to do with aviation (of course!) which talked about expert navigators who thought that they knew what they were doing but were off by a mere two degrees, which resulted in catastrophe. I think there’s something powerful about seeing a man defend motherhood, and womanhood, and marriage, and children. It made me fall in love with him more, just seeing that. Then instead of questioning him, they decided to continue on and hear my presentation and then they would question us afterwards. I wasn’t nervous at that point, which was interesting. I got up there and I had my paper in front of me. And as I started reading the words, I quoted the words of President Hinckley in the preface to the proclamation on the family. I heard my words echo in the ballroom. It was completely silent, and I knew at that moment that what I was saying was being recorded in heaven, and in front of the video cameras, and everywhere else. But those people and the Parliament became insignificant compared to what was more important eternally, what we were about to say about the doctrine. Angela Fallentine and Her Husband I didn’t read the whole proclamation, but I read bits and pieces of it, and at one point I said, “We stand with those that have gone before us and warn and forewarn about this bill to redefine marriage.” And I remember as I said this, I thought of President Hinckley, as if he were there, because the family proclamation was one of the hallmarks of his presidency. I heard those words as I read them and I knew that was what my Heavenly Father wanted me to say. I was surprised that I wasn’t nervous, and I know that I felt the power of God as I spoke. I felt the Spirit. It wasn’t a weak moment; it was without fear. It was powerful for me to hear that and verbalize it. “…we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.” As soon as I finished, the members of Parliament started their questioning, and they were hostile. They were not happy with what we had said. They spent their time questioning me, on the doctrine of the family basically, and motherhood, womanhood. Questions such as, “Why can’t families be made up of anybody? Everybody can make a family. Why does it have to be a man and a woman? Why does it have to be a mother and a father? Why do they have to be married? What is so important about marriage?” As soon as they asked the first question, with a prayer I hoped I would say the right thing, and I just blurted out, “This bill will dilute the sanctity of motherhood and fatherhood. It would dilute the importance of mothers and fathers and dilute marriage, and it will purposely take either mom or a dad out of the equation for children, so yes, it is significant.” They were so intrigued by that and they were not happy about it. They said, “How could that be? You’re making it sound like this bill will change the face of society. You have a pretty gloom-and-doom perspective on this.” Eventually our time was up, but before we left, we handed each member of Parliament and the press a copy of our statements and a copy of The Family: A Proclamation to the World. We held hands as we left the ballroom and were just so relieved that it was over. As hard as it was, it absolutely solidified our testimony of the doctrine of the family and the plan of salvation, and we knew that from this experience, we would never go back. What did you take away from this experience? First, I’d have to say it was both the easiest thing to do and it was the hardest thing to do. It was easy because when the Lord asks you to do something and when you’re given that opportunity, you go and do. But it was hard emotionally. It was hard to know that it wasn’t well received. And it was hard to know that we’re going to be raising children in a world that is hostile to the doctrine of the traditional family. Elder Hales said, “Sometimes we become the lightning rod, and we must “take the heat” for holding fast to God’s standards and doing His work. I testify that we need not be afraid if we are grounded in His doctrine. We may experience misunderstanding, criticism, and even false accusation, but we are never alone. Our Savior was ’despised and rejected of men.’ It is our sacred privilege to stand with Him!” [Robert D. Hales, “Stand Strong in Holy Places,” April 2013 General Conference.] I think that’s what I learned. What does “defending family” mean to you? Do you think that’s a special responsibility Mormon women have? For me personally, it would have to mean defending the doctrine of the plan of salvation. It means defending the Savior and our Heavenly Father. It means being fearless, and not flinching in the face of criticism. Yes, women do have a special responsibility. They are the ones who bear the children. They are the nurturers. They bring children into the world with a husband. The role of a righteous woman has been prophesied about by President Kimball. In 1978 he talked about the need for women to defend the family, because they are the creators, the nurturers. For women, defending the family is increasingly important. I think Satan is attacking women and he’s attacking motherhood and the sanctity of women, and we see that throughout the world. We see virtue being a non-issue for most of the world. Just like many other women around the world, I come from a long line of strong women who have defended the faith, and I think it’s part of my DNA. There are really strong, fearless women from the past—defenders of faith and family–and I think we all have these types of people in our ancestry. They’re courageous, and we can bring that with us into our battles to defend the traditional family. We can draw strength and spiritual support from those who have gone before us. You and your husband do not have any children yet. What does it mean to you to live the family proclamation at this point in your life? It’s ironic because even when I was single for a number of years, I still felt a really strong desire to defend the doctrine of the family. Because truth is truth, and Heavenly Father’s plan is for everyone, regardless of marital status, regardless of children or the lack thereof. Dealing with infertility is probably thought of as really ironic when it comes to defending children and families. “How could you be so interested in defending children and families when you do not have that yourself?” was actually a question that came up a lot while I attended the World Congress of Families recently. I found that people were pleasantly surprised and curious when they found out that my husband and I didn’t actually have children. But they would quickly acknowledge that truth is truth. Having children or being married is not a qualification for a testimony of doctrine. The important thing to remember is that we’re all part of a family, we all have a mom and a dad, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and so forth. So defending the family can be pretty natural for anyone who believes in this critical unit of society. I have a mother and a father, and because of their relationship, I’ve seen it work so well and I’ve seen them complement each other in their different roles. That’s where my personal, positive experience of marriage comes from, by seeing those distinct and unique roles magnified in a temple marriage. At the end of the day, for all of us, life unfolds differently than we anticipate. But that’s okay. Elder Holland once said, “Remember that He is God, and you are not.” So, we follow the Spirit as our guide, as a way to navigate through challenging or surprising life circumstances. I have been taught to rely on the Lord and to seek His plan for me and not my own and what I thought it would be, and then leave it to Him and move forward with faith. That’s pretty much the basis of it. And I believe it to be so true. At A Glance Name: Angela Fallentine Location: New Zealand Age: 34 Marital status: Married Occupation: Business owner Schools Attended: BYU, Utah State University Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “I’ll Go Where You Want Me To Go” Interview by Lydia Defranchi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview is part of a series, “Sisters Speaking Out,” that features Mormon women speaking out on social and political issues. The opinions expressed here represent the speaker, and do not imply endorsement by the Mormon Women Project or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We ask that all readers maintain respect for the views of the interview subject. On March 17, 2013, Kate Kelly launched OrdainWomen.org. Her efforts to draw attention to the possibility of female ordination have drawn both impassioned praise and criticism, but Kate feels that the example of her parents, the experience of her mission, and her training in human rights law has made female ordination a flag she’s prepared to carry. How did your family and childhood experiences influence who you are today? My mom in many ways is a pioneer. She was one of six women in her graduating class in law school, she was a Mormon woman who worked outside of the home and created her own career. She’s also a believing woman. She was a great role model for me. Both my parents worked. My mom was an attorney and my dad was a newspaper publisher, and so they took turns doing the housework, shuffling us around, picking us up from school or when we were sick. My dad called himself the “Laundry King” and would do the laundry. They divided tasks, but each took a fair load. There were no “women do this” barriers or limits. I’m grew up in Hood River, Oregon, where there were only a couple thousand people. We had a tiny town library, and in middle school I checked out “The Feminine Mystique.” It had old yellowed pages like a vintage copy. A lot of the suffrage literature spoke to me. I was interested in ideas, but I also cared about clothes and boys like most other middle school girls in the United States. I don’t have any children, but my husband and I are complete equals in our home. We share (and neglect) household tasks equally. He worked to put me through law school and I’m now working while he’s doing his Ph.D. We make decisions together. We collaborate. It’s the most joyous collaboration of my life. My husband is a miraculous feminist. He comes from a traditional Mormon family from Idaho, and he somehow emerged from that a strong feminist. For him, gender equality is intuitive. In that way, he’s similar to my dad. Does your family share your political views? My parents aren’t liberal at all. They’re die-hard Republicans and the farthest thing from radical that I can imagine. I was definitely socialized to be a Republican, though. My grandfather was a state senator from North Dakota, and we had the elephant mugs lining our house from every election year. I went to BYU, and in so many ways was socialized to be socially conservative. But it was actually on my mission when I started interacting with a wide variety of people that I questioned whether I really bought in to all the conservative agenda. It’s not like a mission is a political time, but in some ways it was a political awakening for me just to know that all people should be treated equal, and should have equal access to the same things. I had a late political awakening for most people, but that was the start of it. Were you as outspoken and outgoing as a child as you are now? I was modeled from a young age that it was okay to be opinionated, and I certainly was. I also loved creating a magical space where my friends and I could be creative together, whether that was making costumes and going to a dance, or creating a fake news channel. What was your fake news channel called? Channel 5 News. We acted out the news stories (bank robbers, celebrities, athletes) and rotated as the anchors. We also made fake commercials for silly products like a trampoline weight-loss program. How did you become so passionate about women’s issues and activism? Growing up, a lot of the things were modeled for me in the home. My parents shared household duties and parenting equally. They were both breadwinners, and when that was pitted against what I was learning in church about what my role would be as a woman, there was a lot of dissonance. That started picking up later in my teens as I started thinking about what I wanted to be—a lawyer. Since I didn’t have any Mormon friends in school in Oregon, when I went to BYU it was nice to be in an atmosphere with tons of enthusiastic Mormon kids. At the same time, I started feeling more and more pressure to adhere to strictly enforced gender roles, and I started realizing that those gender roles didn’t describe me and who I wanted to become. Kate Kelly A pivotal experience for me was when I took the “Teachings of the Living Prophets” class taught by Lloyd Newell, the voice of “Music and the Spoken Word.” He assigned a research paper on any topic that was important to us and what the prophets taught about it. I chose working outside the home because that was important to me and something I wanted to do. I remember reading talk after talk after talk, and all the words of the prophets on this subject—it was the middle of the night, the paper was due the next day, and I’m sitting on some shabby couch in some slum apartment in Provo, and I just broke down. I clearly remember sobbing on the couch and saying to my friend, “What am I going to do?” because I realized my dreams were incompatible with these things I was reading—that I was suppose to stay at home and have kids. I didn’t see any other way around it, there was no other option. That’s when it started to break down for me. I served a mission in Barcelona, Spain, and this is where the priesthood comes in. I felt like there were a lot of jobs that sister missionaries would have been very good at. They would have been very capable and effective interviewing investigators to be baptized, baptizing them, or confirming them—any of the ritual or ordinance responsibilities that we weren’t allowed to participate in. Especially in Spain, a lot of congregations just don’t have many men, maybe one or two Melchizedek Priesthood holders in a given congregation, and those unfilled priesthood roles could have easily be filled by capable, faithful women. There was a lot of imbalance, and that’s when I started factoring in priesthood as being the root of all these gender inequalities. After my mission, I finished my studies at BYU and got married in the Salt Lake City Temple. When I graduated from law school, I began working in human rights litigation. I work with some amazingly courageous people around the word, such as women in Zimbabwe who are routinely arrested, beaten and tortured for asking for simple concessions and to be treated equally, and it gave me a lot of pause. I began to wonder, I’m doing all this work around the world but what am I doing for my own community? It was one of those moments—you know that quote, “I always thought someone should do something about this, and then I realized I am somebody”? Well, for me, I wished someone would do something about women and the priesthood. I thought someone has got to start this conversation and no one seems to be doing it, so I’m going to do it. I am somebody. What kind of responses did you get after OrdainWomen.org launched? I wasn’t really out of the closet about ordination, so I was unclear how people would respond. My family has been extremely supportive. My mom submitted a profile; and my sister, an orthodox Mormon who I never thought would have, submitted a profile. My dad also just put up a profile; he’s a former bishop, stake high council member, also very orthodox. I think the hardest responses for me have been from so-called Mormon feminists who strongly disagree with ordination or are upset with what we’re doing. I didn’t expect pushback from a population that already publicly called themselves feminists. I understand it’s a difficult issue to grapple with—asking for change means the status quo is insufficient and I think that’s a hard place for a lot of people to go. I totally understand the social and emotional cost, but I disagree that things are just fine the way they are. The Sunday the website launched, I vacillated between enthusiasm and abject fear. I was nervous about how it would be received, not just by the church, but by my family and people in my neighborhood. But going to church that Sunday, March 17th, when we launched the Ordain Women website, was one of the most joyful Sundays I’ve had since my mission—I was able to be my authentic self. I think a lot of that was because that dissonance was resolved, not in the church or organizational structure, but for me personally. I was able to say publicly what I felt. For me the victory is just starting this conversation. Whether or not the church changes, we’ll see, I have a lot of faith it will change, but opening up in this public way was a very transformative experience for me. How would you describe your relationship to the institutional church? I think women should be ordained, but that doesn’t mean the spiritual benefits of being part of the body of the church don’t outweigh some of the challenges. That’s not to say those challenges aren’t real and painful and difficult at times, but as a lawyer I imagine the scales of justice, and the benefits of my church membership outweigh those other challenges. There’s this amazing song sung by Paul Robeson, a civil rights leader and musician who, at the height of the civil rights era, witnessed horrible racism. America was turning the hoses on civil rights activists and firing rubber bullets at them. America was a difficult place to be, but he sung this song called “The House I Live In,” and it basically says, what is America to me? It’s the house I live in, it’s the people I love, it’s the men who made this country a democracy—he describes all these things; and to me that’s what Mormonism is. It’s the house I live in, it’s how I was raised, it’s my marriage, it’s my paradigm, it’s my family. So, no, I’ve never considered leaving. Just because I want the house to have a slight remodel or be more inclusive or larger, doesn’t make it any less of my house. For Mormon women who don’t agree with your thoughts on ordination, what would you say? I think that this movement is much bigger than ordination. It’s about creating a space where there is dialogue about controversial issues. I think that’s new territory for Mormons in general. I can totally sympathize with people who might find this a very threatening approach, but I think the tone of the website and campaign has been one of absolute respect and calmness because we are insiders. We are invested. We aren’t interested in diatribes against the church. Honestly, I don’t begrudge anyone who disagrees with me. This is a project of opening up a dialogue. And the dialogue isn’t just one person speaking or just one side speaking. All I want is for people to open up their imagination and think about what it would be like if a woman was a bishop, if women were integrated on the stand at General Conference, if women were integrated into all of the decision making? What would that look like? How would we act and feel? Kate Kelly and Her Husband I feel like Mormonism is a big tent. We are racially, politically, demographically diverse. We are a broad group and it can encompass so much more than the traditional views that are often conveyed. That’s what we’re trying to open up with Ordain Women—we’re a broad, wide group ranging from the Relief Society president to the radical, and opening up that space is really important to me. What is a key message you hope your work is delivering? I want women to know that they are valuable, but not from someone telling them. I want them to feel and see it. Images are very important to me, and when I look on the stand, I want to see women. When I hear people talk, I want to hear women. Functionally, there is no person that can tell me I am equal. I know I am equal, I know I am a daughter of God, I know he loves me … I feel that when I pray and when I go to the temple—I just think that needs to be reflected in the institution, in the everyday practice of the gospel I love. That’s why I created Ordain Women. It is an endeavor in radical self-respect. At A Glance Name: Kate Kelly Location: Washington D.C. Age: 32 Marital status: Married Occupation: International human rights attorney Schools Attended: Brigham Young University, American University Washington College of Law Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “For the Beauty of the Earth” On The Web: http://ordainwomen.org/project/my-name-is-kate/ Interview by Kathryn Peterson.

Melissa Dalton Bradford raised four children in the midst of an international life: Norway, France, Singapore, Germany. But what appears glamorous to many has its costs, and Melissa honestly talks about the lack of community and permanence that has defined her years abroad. She also reveals how important those intangibles can be when struck with a tragedy, like the loss of her 18-year-old son in a drowning accident, and how we all can learn to mourn and comfort more compassionately. Melissa’s memoir, Global Mom: A Memoir, was published this summer. Would you please describe the trajectory of the story that you’ve written about in your recently published memoir? The book begins when we had been married for seven years, Randall and I, and we were living in the New York City area. It was my husband’s first job and at that point we had two little children, Parker and Claire. I had been, as I describe in the book, busy following a few different career trajectories: I was a full time mother; I was teaching writing part time at a local college; and I was launching a career as a musical theater actress. And it was right in the middle of a musical that I was in that my husband received an offer pretty much out of the blue for us to move to Scandinavia for two or three years. As it turned out, that move ended up lasting a couple of decades. As I describe in the book, we had already lived in Vienna as a young couple before we had had children, and then when our first child, Parker, was a newborn we had lived in Hong Kong. We had both served German-speaking missions and I had studied in Vienna and lived in other places in Austria, so this idea of living “foreignly” was not that far-fetched for us. You got the call out of the blue? When Randall targeted companies to work with, he was deliberate in seeking for positions that would land us on an international trajectory. And so this company knew from the very first assignment that he was given, that we were aiming to move internationally. Usually that takes several years with a company, so we were thinking that would come maybe five, six, seven years down the road. But it came after three years, much sooner than we’d expected. He called me while I was backstage doing a show and he wanted to know how I felt about moving to Scandinavia because they wanted an answer really soon. I recognized I was given clear spiritual direction to do this thing, not knowing what it would mean but having a sense that this would bless my family. It would be tough for me probably, but it would bless my family and generations to come. Melissa Dalton Bradford and Her Family So that was the move from bright lights and that whole world of lyrics and scripts and communication to Norway in the middle of a bitter, dark winter not knowing a word of Norwegian. Well, I think we might have known how to say “hello.” And Randall’s job was in Norwegian from the first day. We went right into a Norwegian ward and I was called to be Primary music director the first month and then Primary president the next month. We put our two children into “barnepark”, which is the Norwegian equivalent to an outdoor nursery school. So within a very short time they were fluent in Norwegian and we picked it up rather rapidly. Wow! I love the descriptions of barnepark in the book. I would love to be able to send my kids to something like that in the Utah winters. Yeah, I would have wanted to be able to give that experience to all of my children, too. That experience was really healthy, I thought. Wonderful not only for language acquisition, but for learning self-sufficiency, the value of community over the individual, gender equality, and how to survive tough weather! We were in Norway for just under five years, time to have our third child, Dalton, and then we moved to Versailles, a medium-sized city which lies just fifteen minutes outside of Paris. We were there for four years, just enough time to have our fourth child, Luc. We were then moved to company headquarters in New Jersey and thought our foreign years were over and that it was time to plant ourselves in the homeland. So we moved north of Philadelphia ; Randall was called into the bishopric and I was called into the stake Young Women’s presidency; and we remodeled this entire home thinking, okay, this is where we will live out the rest of our lives. But within seven months we were asked by Randall’s company if we would be willing to move back to France (there had been an unexpected resignation and Randall was asked to take on a new role) We moved to the heart of Paris that time, two blocks from the Eiffel Tower. We enrolled our two youngest, Dalton and Luc, in French schools. Our two oldest attended an international school, and we were there for a little over four years. At the end of our time in Paris, our oldest son, Parker, graduated from high school. The plan was that he go to university for one semester and then go on his mission. We sent him off to college, and that very week we proceeded with the big move to Munich. We lived in Munich for three years, and then went to Singapore, where we were supposed to stay for many years, if not until the end of Randall’s career. But there was a sudden restructuring and the entire international component of the multinational company he was working for was dispersed and his position was moved to Geneva. That’s where we live now, while getting our third child through high school at least; he is in his last year. It sounds exhausting and adventurous all at the same time. Right now I’m feeling like it’s exhausting! But someone once noted that Randall and I picked this poison. That person was right. We asked for this life! So I don’t want to be guilty of spitting out the poison that I picked. I shouldn’t be spitting it out or complaining that it’s bitter. I am thoroughly grateful for the experiences, the gifts of diversity and growth, but they have a whole list of costs that people wouldn’t understand, I don’t think, unless they really lived this globally nomadic lifestyle right along side me. Tell me a little bit about these costs, because it certainly does seem that the idea of living abroad is glamorous. Your kids speak two, three, or four languages. But talk a little bit about the honest costs to you personally and to your family. I will tell you what a couple of them are. The core costs are related to community. I don’t have a continuous, long-standing community with me, and I have not had that kind of permanent, reliable, known support ever while raising my family. When your life is going peachy and there are no speed bumps whatsoever–then you might not feel you need a strong community. You can breaststroke all by yourself. But when you are paddling upstream against currents like new cultures, new languages, new ways of doing everything, parenting while your partner is half a world away and for over half the month, and when there are whirlpools . . . Oh, I didn’t think I would come to that metaphor, but I tend to always come back to water and drowning metaphors. Melissa Dalton Bradford And let’s explain to our readers: you say that because Parker actually died in a whirlpool. He died because of a whirlpool. He died trying to save the life of a fellow classmate he had known for a week. Our eighteen-year-old son, the one we sent to college after leaving Paris, was in a Freshman academy before school started. One night, there was this casual water activity planned with some classmates. There, Parker and another young man got sucked into a whirlpool in a small, well-known and frequently -visited irrigation canal. The danger was hidden. The canal was unmarked neither as private property nor as a known danger. All the locals seemed to know it was a death trap, but that didn’t keep them from suggesting newcomers go there for “fun”. Parker got out of that vortex twice and he went back in twice to try and get this other boy out. Parker was the only one who knew that this boy couldn’t swim very well. This boy was a competitive bodybuilder but he’d told Parker privately that he lacked lower body strength and he couldn’t swim as well as other students. So when the other boy was trapped, Parker went back into the whirlpool twice and tried to get him out. There were other students who tried to help, notably a former lifeguard, who risked his safety to pull bodies out, and somehow in all of that the drowning classmate was pushed out or swept out and was given CPR immediately. But Parker could not extract himself a third time and was underwater for too long. When his body was eventually flushed out, it went head first over some lava rock waterfalls. His head was badly battered. He was given CPR and priesthood blessings by students, locals and the EMT crew, but his heartbeat did not return until much later. So everything went wrong. Yes. And no. Those kids gave him all they could, CPR and blessings. When his heartbeat was miraculously restored, it justified life flighting him to the closest trauma center, which was in Pocatello, Idaho. And that’s when I got the call at 11:00 at night. I drove through the night from Utah Valley to be with him and then my husband, who was in Munich, got my phone call and through a series of more miracles was able to make it to the ICU so that we had a few hours together with our boy. So I do seem to come back to that whirlpool metaphor a lot, don’t I? When life deals you whirlpools, it’s very difficult to navigate those without a stable, trusted community, and when you’re trying to regroup after major loss it’s extremely difficult if you don’t have a continuous community, meaning anyone near you who has known you from before the trauma. That sense of utter dislocation or social alienation significantly complicated our experience with early, acute grief. Looking back, though, I realize it was a great gift from a benevolent and wise God. It allowed us to retreat completely into what I call our “monastery”, and connect in profound ways with the Spirit. God knew we needed total isolation to be tutored in the depths of grief. Strange, maybe, but I miss those months. Another cost of this perpetually interrupted life that I have noted hits me sometime between November and December. That’s about when I get Christmas cards from around the world, cards where people have these big family shots, where dozens of people were gathered to celebrate this child’s wedding, or that grandchild’s birth, or this missionary’s mission call, or that missionary’s homecoming, and I’m left standing in the entryway of my little village home in Switzerland holding that card and I’m overcome by a wave of regret in a way–or concern is maybe the better word–for my children because I don’t know how I could gather a group and I don’t even know where I would gather one. I don’t have twenty-five years or even ten years or even five years in one uninterrupted place so that people know my name or my family’s history. Who do my children have to champion them from year to year? I don’t have school faculty that has known them for three or four years and that knows their strengths and weaknesses and feels invested in them. We’re always the newcomers. I don’t have piano teachers and clarinet teachers and flute teachers that have been progressing with my child. We seem to always be reestablishing ourselves. And as anyone knows who has moved even from one home to another in one city, of from one city to another in the same state, in the same country, it takes a lot to reestablish oneself. If you then add to that the overlay of moving to a different country, culture, neighborhood, house, and a different school system, and a different church community, and above all to a different language, you can begin to imagine that it takes a long time and great deal of energy to get yourself up to speed. People in the international community know that you kind of write off the first year in a new country as an unpredictable and exceptionally demanding adjustment period. You’re just trying to figure out where in the heck the baking soda is. Is it anywhere in this country? And what is it called? And how can I find a doctor for my child? And how many times am I going to re-transcribe into a new language all of my children’s medical records? I’ve done this five times, by the way, from English to Norwegian, from Norwegian to French, from French to German, from German to English and Chinese, back to French. Yep. That alone takes a great deal of time, focus and effort. Melissa Dalton Bradford and Her Children Back to how this exacerbates the ongoing experience related to our family’s major loss, it’s been informative to watch how my children have taken this sacred treasure, carrying it under their ribcage, hiding it when they move from place to place. It’s a difficult ice-breaker with new people to whom to explain that your brother died. You’re the new kid in the class and others want to know about your siblings. It’s very difficult to say, “Well, four weeks ago I buried my brother.” It’s difficult, not only because people can’t engage in that conversation–although often that’s very problematic for people–but sometimes people respond in a way that trivializes something unspeakably precious and vast. Observers don’t want to hurt the bereaved person and so they sometimes do a jollity jig around the big crater. They will talk about anything but this thing that you just pronounced in their face: death. And what it’s done to my children is it’s told them they really aren’t safe sharing these things. One of the biggest concerns in carrying the burden of grief is, I’m going to expose this sacred, immense thing about myself and no one’s going to care. So all of my children have gone silent either categorically or for long stretches, and that is problematic because it hurts them to not be able to share this central part of who they are, of how they fit into and see the world. Hiding that story requires play acting, it’s disingenuous, and all of that eats up your energy, as well as your trust in others. I’ve observed that for those who experience significant trauma yet are living in one place for an extended period of time, there is an on-site community that at least understands the unspoken context of one’s behavior, be that silence, shock, anger, or deep sorrow. There are all sorts of other things that are part of an international life that also are a part of localized life. Like heavy business travel. There have been periods when my husband has been traveling two to three weeks at a time, then comes back for two days, and then travels for another two to three weeks circling the globe. There have been others stretches, and I write of them in my book, where Dad lived in one country and the rest of the family in another. This has been the case four different times. Again, that’s tough enough if you are in a familiar community and you are functioning in your mother tongue. But try it in a place where every day is loaded with the stresses of just figuring out how to manage the basics. It’s a different level of “tough.” That and other things put extra stress on your health, both mental and physical, and it imposes significant stress on a marriage and it obviously affects your children’s well being and your parenting. Now I’ve arrived in a season of my life where I am wondering about where I am ever going to settle. People often ask us what our plans are for the future. Well, my response to that is that I wouldn’t know where to go. Because there is no single place that I would identify as my family’s home. I don’t know how that sounds when you hear that . . . does that sound like someone who is determined to be eccentric? But the truth is that you do end up being “eccentric.” You’re outside of some imagined center place because you’re constantly on the periphery. You’re an American living in Oslo or Paris or Munich or Singapore or Geneva. And no matter how well you master the language, you aren’t really Norwegian or Parisian because you don’t have generational roots there, you don’t have Parisian grandparents and you didn’t go through Parisian schooling. You can come back and visit Utah, which we do just about every year, but it’s not the same as being “from Utah”, after having marinated in so many other places for so long. I have a harder time connecting with those “roots” sometimes because my life experiences and my children’s life experiences are quite different from someone who has lived in one place all their life. There’s a term for it in international circles, and that is the CCK or Cross Cultural Kid, which refers to someone whose life crosses so many borders, that there is no concrete location that she can identify as “home.” Over these two decades raising family outside of my native country, I’ve learned that I’ve become used to playing the role of an “In looker.” Not an onlooker but an in looker because I’m sort of an armchair cultural anthropologist, always observing and figuring things out. Even when I come back to my roots in the wild west, I’m trying to relearn and re-understand the culture I’m surrounded by. Of course you’re talking about something beyond just traveling. It’s one thing to travel broadly and it’s another thing to not actually have a home for twenty years. That’s right! You’ve absolutely hit it right on the head. We don’t have a permanent residence anywhere. When I talk on cross-cultural integration, I talk about the difference between traveling to and residing in foreign places. Being a tourist is to long-term foreign residency what window shopping is to buying the whole store. The latter demands an entirely different kind of investment. When you own a place, it comes with an entire boatload of responsibility and disappointments and negotiation and straddling. It carries with it all sorts of different demands for every member of your family. Let’s move to the idea of comfort for a moment. You have said to me that the way that we think people can be comforted after major loss is different than what they really need. You have said that it’s an American tendency to “comfort things away.” What have you meant by that and how is that an American or Christian tendency? And what did you really want when you were in need of community and comfort? The first thing I have to say is that grief is as individual as blood type. Every loss is peculiar and sacred and unique. Having said that, I have researched this at length. Researching was my way of ferreting through the wreckage after loss, particularly the grief that weighed on us throughout those first couple of years. What I discovered is that many of us are operating under a misconception, and that misconception seems to be an American one, and does the bereaved a tremendous disservice. In fact, we exacerbate their pain by holding tenaciously to this idea, and that idea is that pain is bad. We don’t like pain or we don’t like entering into it or watching others experience it. We want at all costs to skirt it ourselves or to numb it in other people. And so our assumption when we face someone who is in deep pain is that we ourselves need to avoid it or them, or we face them, but without talking about “it.” We are going to talk about our latest fishing trip, our best support pantyhose, about the vegetable tray we want you to bring to the next church function. But we will not address the agony in front of us. We will not look the hurting person in the eye and say, “Can you talk about what’s really going on?” I think there are multiple reasons for why we avoid pain, but the obvious one is that it’s not photogenic. It gets messy and it might get angry. Maybe some bereaved avoid the hard work of grieving precisely because of the fear that the pain is so big, they will implode into a million splinters if they touch pain’s edge, or they’ll never survive the descent into such a dark and frightening place. It is dark and it is deep and scary. I had no idea myself such pain could exist and one could survive it. Melissa Dalton Bradford and Her Family Another reason we might not acknowledge loss and hurt in others, is that we fear we are going to make things worse by mentioning it. Or we’re waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect phrase, the perfect lead-in. But those don’t exist, do they? I’ve read volume upon volume about how people respond to grief and the recurring theme is that the bereaved is hurt by the avoidance silence. Such silence is interpreted as a trivialization of their loss. It’s the silence that literally avoids you in the grocery store. The one that scoots down another aisle, that walks to the other side of the street. A bereaved friend of mine called that kind of silence like being a sudden member of a leper colony. Nicholas Wolterstorff, a marvelous writer, lost his young adult son, Eric, in a mountain climbing accident. He has written a book, a thin sliver of potent reflection called Lament for a Son. In it he says, “Your tears are salve on our wound, your silence is salt.” So while we might think that in that sort of avoidance silence we are doing the bereaved a favor, in actuality, for the majority of bereaved people that type of non-acknowledging avoidance silence is salt to their wound. There’s a different kind of silence, however, and that can be the silence of solidarity. It’s where you sit as the Jews do when they sit shiva. You sit in silent solidarity, actively mourning with another person. That’s a different kind of silence than the one you feel when someone avoids you in the grocery store. Mormon culture, like other Christian faiths, is based on the belief in the reality of the Savior’s resurrection and eternal life. Faith in that beautiful truth isn’t incompatible with grief. It hurts when someone questions your faith in gospel basics when you grieve a beloved’s death. As if faith would eradicate our longing for those who die. What might be peculiar to our culture is that we do emphasize a great deal that ours is a gospel of joy. That God’s plan is a plan of happiness. All of this is thrilling, marvelous and I wholly agree with and am determined to live it. But there’s a catch. We believe in and hold as our model a Jesus Christ who was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. And the God who revealed himself to Enoch was a God who wept openly. At the same time in Primary, we learn that “no one likes a frowny face.” Perhaps we’ve absorbed conflicting messages, and subsequently feel shame (or worse, we shame others) for feeling genuine, even bone-crushing sorrow. Maybe we get Alma’s exhortation in Mosiah 18 wrong where he talks to the people who want to enter the fold of Christ. It’s striking to reread his words. He doesn’t say, “Here is a strict list of dos and don’ts.” He says you need to – number one, top of the list – be ready to bear one another’s burdens, to suffer with others. You need to be open to sorrow, to others’ sorrow. You need to learn to actively mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort. But here’s the core of it: Alma says we are to mourn first and comfort second. I think that we might too often jump over the mourning. We want to rush in and comfort things away, in the sense that we want to make everything better, back to normal, and quickly. Mourning, though, real mourning takes energy, sympathy, focus and time. Much more time than anyone imagines. A lot of time. For some injuries, a whole life full of time. It’s disturbing to see our family and friends who were maybe once high energy and buoyant become decrepit and sort of catatonic in their grief. One of the most comforting things that a friend ever said to us however, was, “I want you guys to know that I’ve read everything I possibly could and here is my conclusion: You’re gone. You will never be the same Randall and Melissa I knew from before.” That for me was so liberating because I knew I’d been fundamentally changed. On a cellular level, things were different and I knew that it was also going to be that way for my husband, for our relationship. Things were changed, and I didn’t have the desire or a scrap of energy to put on some happy face that might resemble the face I’d had before. I’m not suggesting that every change was for the worse. Not at all. I’ve seen that there have been many changes that have made us stronger, deeper, and I hope more compassionate people. Has losing a child given you a different perspective of what it means to be a woman and to be a mother? For many years as a young mother, I felt pulled in so many directions in addition to being a mother to our children. I had an education and a small bundle of talents and this burning, restless energy, and longed to use them. I wanted to be doing something concrete and measurable with them in the world. Then with our move to Norway I was plucked out of one kind of life and plopped into a situation where I was reduced and of necessity laser focused. And helpless! I was helpless in that I was stripped of my former identity, support community, my language, and it was suddenly just me and my kids and the tundra. It redefined what I was doing as a woman and mother. How did that restlessness as a mother evolve, or better, how do I see it today in the context of having buried my child? Oh, this is tender for me. Well, it’s changed my perspective entirely. Let me see if I can explain. I tend to be hard on myself and I tend to be driven. I tend to have sometimes rather high, unrealistic and even perfectionistic expectations and I think that I might have had those also for my children. I was not the parent that was letting my kids eat Pop Tarts and Twizzlers for breakfast. I had certain standards and expectations and so while I love my children fiercely – desperately, even, to the point of making my bones ache, as we all love our children – I always kind of wanted them to be, oh, just a little bit better. You know, like I thought they were going to play the lute and speak Latin. And quote Hamlet, right? Well of course! Exactly! That’s what they would do between bites of organic quinoa and sips of sea weed llama milk shakes, right? Our lips never touching refined sugar, only the most refined arts! But Parker was this big loud boy, an athlete, and a drummer, who played in orchestras and in jazz ensembles and in rock bands with his African djembe consortium in the open squares all around Paris. This is not the lute. He spoke languages fluently, not because he wanted to read Henrik Ibsen or Victor Hugo in their original, but because he was very social, an utterly life-embracing force of nature. My itching, irritating expectations of myself and of my children changed in the sacred hours spent next to my son’s body in the ICU, when I stood over him there alone and was tutored in that silence. I was tutored by him, by his spirit, and I was tutored by the Spirit. What I experienced there was a kind of super radiance that was emanating from him that caught me completely off guard. This wasn’t something that I just concocted because I was terrified and in terrible grief and a bit disoriented in that moment. No, I was in fact very oriented in that moment. I was probably more oriented in that moment than any other moment in my life. I saw things as they are. This boy that I’d perhaps nagged or ridden somewhat, the one I’d wished would have played the lute and spoken Latin but played instead drums and played basketball and spoke great street French and Norwegian was far greater, far more refined in spirit than I had ever known as his mother. Was I blinded by my insecurities, my ambitions? I felt also in clear statements from him his profound gratitude for me. That he kept saying, “Thank you, Mom. Thank you, Mom.” And I understood that it was the universal thanks for having given him life and for having tried my very fumbling, lurching-forward best to be his mother. I think that his spirit must have understood, once released from his body, how much I’d struggled inwardly with the demands of being a mom and that I had put a lot of things aside for a long time because of our lifestyle so that I could be the on-site parent that was kind of holding everything together with all of these moves. So often I had considered myself a complete failure as a mother, but here was my sweet comatose child thanking me. It breaks my heart as I think of it. Melissa Dalton Bradford That is part of what I learned in that ICU; I felt my son’s strength and acceptance of my efforts to be his mom, and I felt as if I wanted to kneel at the side of this altar. Not worshipping him per se, but feeling in awe of this human being that I had had the honor of giving a mortal body to and had spent eighteen and a half years with. And what I want to boldface here is that it’s not just him. It’s all of our children and it’s all of us. We are all endowed with a sort of super radiance. I understand too well the anxiety that parents, particularly Mormon American parents—especially mothers–have about the need to raise super-achieving children. I am aware of that anxiety, but I’m constantly telling myself that my responsibility as a parent, my primary responsibility, is not to get them into a certain university or to help them get certain scholarships or mastery in an instrument, sport, or language. While those things are of value, that’s not my primary objective. My aim is to enjoy my children right now, to get to know them as great beings, to love and grow and learn with them ­– to mediate God’s love for them in their lives ­– so that they will recognize God’s presence here and now. That prepares them to stand at any moment in God’s presence. Because that eternal moment can come at any mortal moment. And so I find myself embracing them more, embracing life more, and relishing mortality as a fragile chance to experience joy together. There is so little time, and far too little joy. At A Glance Name: Melissa Dalton Bradford Location: Prangins, Switzerland Age: 51 Marital status: Married once and still Children: Luc (13) Dalton (17) Claire (22) Parker (deceased, would be 24) Occupation: writer and lecturer Schools Attended: Brigham Young University BA, MA Languages Spoken at Home: English, French, German, and Norwegian. (Also speak conversational Mandarin, but rarely at home.) Favorite Hymn: “If You Could Hie To Kolob” On The Web: Melissa Writes of Passage (WordPress) and Global Mom @ Facebook Interview by Neylan McBaine.

Annie Bush joined the Church in her native Bordeaux, France at the age of 16. Working as a translator for the Church, Annie spent years immersed in bringing The Ensign, the scriptures, and church manuals to life in her mother tongue of French. Through it all, Annie says her priority has been her family. Read this interview in French. I was born in Pessac, France, which is a suburb of Bordeaux, in southwestern France. I was born a few years after the end of World War II. From what I remember of my childhood, life was difficult. The country hadn’t recovered yet from all the damages of the war, and the people were generally poor. Life then was completely different from the one I know now. I remember all the stories my family would tell about the war and the occupation. But I think I had a pretty typical childhood for the time period. We weren’t Mormon then. My parents were Catholic by tradition—they didn’t go to church. But they insisted I receive a religious education and sent me to catechism. I had my first communion there in the Catholic Church where I was active on Sunday. My parents were people who didn’t actively go to church, but who had very strong principles and values on the family, work, etc. After my first communion, I have to say that I had faith in Christ in particular, but I found that all the traditions didn’t correspond with what I believed. I had been very interested in the Protestant religion. The English had occupied Bordeaux and the region for at least two centuries, so there is a strong Protestant tradition. So I would go to church for Christmas and for Easter like everyone else, right? Like the majority of the French. I think I was sixteen when the missionaries came to my house. I wasn’t there; I was at the time in high school, and so it was my father who received the missionaries. Kindly, of course; my father was very kind. The missionaries wanted to present their message, and he said, “Listen to me, this doesn’t interest me. But it might interest my daughter.” So they came back one afternoon when I was available and presented their message. They told me, “In order to have a response, you must pray and ask if Joseph Smith was a true prophet and if this church is true.” And I said, “Okay! If it’s as easy as that, I’ll do it.” So I did it, and I found out quickly through a feeling that it was true. I was baptized when I was sixteen years old. My mother was baptized a few months later. I was baptized in April, Mom was baptized in June, and Dad was baptized a few months later. We were very active in the church. If you want my testimony of the church, it was that when the missionaries presented to me their message, I truly had the impression of discovering something I had already known. I felt perfectly at ease, everything made sense, everything corresponded with what I imagined a church should be. What were the things you found familiar in our faith? I had already thought that it was very important to have a living prophet. It seemed obvious to me that there had been an apostasy a little bit after the death of Christ when the Catholic Church said that it was their heritage from Jesus through Peter. And through Peter then all the other Popes received their authority. I found this questionable. I found Mormonism was more open as a religion, more practical. I really liked the teaching of the Divinity as three distinct personages. I didn’t understand why in the Catholic Church you pray to the Virgin Mary. I respected her as the mother of Jesus, but I didn’t think you should pray to her. I liked the way in which leadership was held in the Mormon Church, that there was member participation, that I could ask questions, and that members studied the Bible, because in the Catholic Church, there are very few people who truly read the Bible. You go to mass, and the mass at that time was still in Latin, so most of the people didn’t understand it. I had, however, found that there were priests and nuns who were truly very, very good. See, they were people truly engaged and sincere in their beliefs, who loved others and served them. But I found in our church something that could help me in a practical way every day: to serve, to participate as a member, etc. It was truly the engaged members, active every day, who had an influence on me. Did your conversion to the church change the experience in your home? Completely–for good and for bad. We were already very close; my parents were big on family. The church brought us closer and we had things in common, we prayed together, we went to church together. It was more difficult for the other members of our family to accept us. In fact my godmother in the Catholic church was disturbed by our conversion and had asked her priest what she should do, if she should continue to contact us or no. He said, “No, no don’t. You must cut all relations with those people.” So for ten years we had nothing to do with her. She suffered a lot, and we did too. The rest of the family didn’t understand very well. Before our conversions, we had the tradition of all gathering at my grandmother’s house for Sunday dinner. We couldn’t do this anymore. And I felt there was a little bit of regret. We continued to be nice to them. But it’s true that our connection with the church isolated us from the rest of our family. After about ten years, I think, my godmother was really troubled and sad to not be able to see us. I think her old priest died and was replaced by a young priest. So she went to see him, and she told him the whole story and said, “I have suffered a lot because of this.” He told her, “Madame, the Mormons are very good people and you should renew your relationship with your goddaughter.” So we were reconciled, and it was a great joy. In fact, she received the missionaries, but she was very, very sick. She had heart problems, and she couldn’t be baptized because her doctor said that it would kill her. But we promised that when she died we would do her work in the temple, which we have done. What kind of education have you had? I finished my university studies in French and English letters. Once I finished my university studies, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my diploma. I had thought about teaching but I wasn’t sure. So for two years I taught high school in southern France. Before going back to school, I was hired by the church to do translation work. I worked for ten years in the church’s translation service. Annie J. Bush and Her Husband I started translating when I still lived in France, and when I moved to the United States, they offered me to work by correspondence. They sent me work, I translated it, and I sent it back to them. I did this for ten years, which worked really well for me because we had four children fairly quickly, so it was a flexible and easy schedule. It allowed me to work when I could. What sorts of things did you translate? Church manuals, The Ensign, everything really. I even participated in the retranslation of all the scriptures of the church, which was a huge project. We retranslated everything: the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, everything. It was a project that lasted a long time and it was very, very interesting. You said that you had wanted to be a teacher; during the ten years you did translating work, did you miss teaching at all? No, not at all because I loved to translate. It was an exercise that interested me a lot. And then, in the church there are many opportunities to teach. I remember after I was baptized when I was sixteen, my first calling in the church was to teach a Sunday school class. I was completely terrified because it was a class of adults! We had a really small branch in Bordeaux, and it was me there, not very big, very, very young, and I taught everyone. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. It gave me an opportunity to study a lot and to pray a lot. What has been your experience in the Relief Society? It was a very rewarding experience for me, especially because when I was president or even the last time when I was a counselor, we worked very, very closely with the sisters. We learned to get to know them. We understood their problems, their struggles, but also the richness that they brought and their faith. We helped them, but they also helped us a lot. It’s truly a two way thing. What comforts me, in this completely crazy world that we live in, is to have women who are engaged in the gospel, who have superb priorities, irrevocable faith, who have suffered very hard trials, and who have maintained their faith, who serve others, who are examples. For me, that is very, very enriching and it strengthens my own faith. I appreciate especially the dedication women have towards their families and their understanding of the greatest thing they can accomplish in this world, which is to raise a good family. It’s an incredible example. I can’t think of a career more important, more enriching and which yields such blessings and satisfaction. Why did you move to Utah? I met my husband when he was on his mission in Bordeaux. We spoke to each other, but we were just friends since he was a missionary. Then he returned home and I continued my studies. We wrote to each other for a little bit. We met again two and a half years later, completely by chance, in France. He was directing a group of young Americans called “Experiment in International Living.” It’s out of Vermont and they would take them all over the world to experience the culture, the language and so on and so forth. So we met totally by chance at the wedding reception of some friends we had in common. And we were able to date then and the rest is history! We were married the year that my husband finished his studies at BYU. He then became an officer in the Air Force. We’ve lived a little bit everywhere: California, Missouri, Ohio, Colorado, Paris. He had a twenty year career in the Air Force. Then when he retired from the Air Force, he taught here at BYU. We moved here in 1992, so that makes almost twenty-one years since he retired. Annie J. Bush and Her Children Was it hard to move from France to the United States? Yes, it was difficult. I left my family, my friends, my habits, my traditions, my culture and food. We were married here in Provo—my husband was a student at BYU. At the time, it was very, very different from France. But since then, Utah has changed a lot. It’s more open, there is more input from other countries. But at the time it was difficult. The first year was hard for me. But just after entering the Air Force, I made some friends. We were a family, so we were having children and all that, so it was something that brought us closer to the others. In fact, we returned to France very, very often, and we continue to do that. Did you like to move around a lot? Yes, I really enjoyed our experience in the Air Force. It was very interesting, with fantastic people of a quality of life and set of values that I admire a lot. Courage, determination, fidelity to their country. I appreciated that a lot. We moved a lot, but everywhere we went we found an instant family because we were united by the work that we were doing together. And anyway, as members of the church you have another family too. I really loved my experiences. When we lived in Paris, every time we had a vacation, we would take a trip around Europe. My children remember it with pleasure. We travelled a lot while they were young to many countries. How many kids do you have? Four children. Two boys and two girls. What was your experience in becoming a mother for the first time and in taking on that identity? It was at the same time a mix of wonderment and terror. I remember that my husband was in the Air Force, and when I had my first son we were in Missouri not far from Kansas City. My husband at the time was what I think they call Missile Launch Officer. He worked with nuclear missiles. At the time he had to work either two nights and a day or two days and a night. When our son was born, my husband came to visit me in the hospital, and he asked me, “Do you want me to take a few days’ leave?” I said, “No, I can manage all alone.” I remember we left the hospital, and they put the baby in my arms. We went home, and I broke down into tears! I said, “I don’t want to be all alone!” So he took a few days so he could support me. Little by little though, I, of course, had to adapt myself to this new little being. It’s true that it’s a little scary. But you progress. It’s an experience that makes you grow. You find emotional and physical resources that you didn’t know you had. I love very much my four children, and now I’m grateful for my grandchildren. It’s truly, I think, an experience that taught me a lot about myself. You can’t be selfish and be a mother. You brought these children into the world and you are responsible for them, for their physical well-being, their spiritual well-being, their emotional well-being, to teach them, to watch over them, to comfort them and encourage them. I learned a lot, and I continue to learn because when you are a mother, you are a mother for life. My children are now married with their own children, and I still feel a responsibility to watch over them. It’s not an experience, a responsibility that I regret. On the contrary, I accept it with joy because it has brought a lot to me too. How would you define “motherhood”? It’s the greatest service you accomplish, I think. For all their needs, for their formation, to help them also better understand the world, to help, to encourage. It’s very important. I don’t know how to explain it, but there are many facets to the role of being a parent. You can’t be selfish, self-centered and be a parent. You have to truly give of yourself. And I think too that, even though it’s a lot of work, you shouldn’t consider it a burden. It’s hard work, but it also brings many rewards. I believe you have to look at it with that perspective. I find that there is nothing more important that I’ve accomplished than to raise a family. And that’s not to say that I neglected the rest. I have other interests, too. But for me, the priority is family. How did you envision your life when you were younger? What were your dreams, plans, goals etc.? When I was younger? I didn’t ask myself too many questions about the future when I was young. No, I had always thought that I wanted to have a family, a nice husband, children etc. but I was not too concerned about the future. At one time I wanted to be a flight attendant, and I tell myself now that it’s a good thing that I didn’t do that because I really don’t like to fly. I wanted to teach and actually taught high school for a couple of years. But besides that, I was not really sure what I wanted to do. How did your goals evolve through the years? My life at certain moments has surpassed my childhood dreams because my dreams were pretty limited. I didn’t have a vision of the world, an understanding of the gospel. So it’s true that the church brought me a new perspective. Yes, my dreams if you want, I live them better now. And you learn every day. Do you have any regrets in life? We always have regrets because none of us is perfect. It’s true I could have been more patient more often. But I see my children as they are now and how they are grateful. They are grateful for what we have done for them. That erases all the regrets. I think that as mothers, we shouldn’t expect too much from ourselves. You have to learn to be tolerant towards yourself. You can always do better, but I believe that the secret to happiness in general is to not linger on negative things. I started the habit a few years ago, before going to bed, instead of thinking of all the things I didn’t do that day, I think of all the things I did accomplish, and I feel a lot better. So I think that’s something to remember. Don’t try to be a “supermom.” Just do the best you can with the knowledge that you have. I think the question of priorities is very important, especially in the world where we live where there is a lot of negative exterior pressure. There’s a certain section of the population that would say, “Oh, stay at home moms! You don’t have any worth. You don’t contribute to society.” I find that idiotic because how can you better contribute to society than to raise children who will be responsible citizens, work hard, people who have faith, who want to help others. I can’t think of a task, a responsibility, a mission more important than that. Because when there aren’t families, there’s nothing. When the family is broken up, and you can see it in our modern society, it creates a lot of problems in the homes. Children, if they don’t have mothers in their homes or aren’t taught values, will have problems, no? So when we succeed in raising children, it’s very gratifying. You can say, “Good, I did something positive with my life.” At A Glance Name: Annie J. Bush Location: Orem, UT Age: 66 Marital status: married Children: 4 (40, 39, 37, 33) Occupation: Housewife & part time in BYU French Department Baptism: 1963 Schools Attended: Lycee de Talence, Université de Bordeaux Languages Spoken at Home: French and English Favorite Hymn: Souviens-toi mon enfant (music by Dvorak) in French hymnbook Interview by Lauren Brocious and Ashley Brovious.

Suzi Fei is a devout Mormon, wife, and mother. She’s also a computational biologist and an enthusiastic career woman who says her natural inclinations to pursue a profession often brought anxiety and loneliness while growing up in the Church. But her life changed when she met her biological parents, and Suzi began feeling more comfortable in her own skin. She encourages women to embrace their natural talents and spend more time trusting in God and less time worrying about cultural expectations. Why do you say you were born a career woman, and when did you first sense that? It was genetic, and I truly mean genetic. Not some undetermined mix of nature and nurture. Three days after I was born, LDS Family Services placed me in the arms of my wonderful adoptive parents, who are two of my very best friends today. My father is a gunsmithing instructor and business owner, and my mother stayed home to raise me and do bookkeeping for the business. I grew up in tiny rural West Coast towns—Janesville, California, and later Coquille, Oregon. It was a wonderful and loving home. Very Mormon. Very conservative. To their credit, my parents always encouraged me to be true to myself and follow my dreams. They never pressured me to be a certain way or do a certain thing. I suspect they learned early on that kind of parenting wasn’t going to fly with me. My dad is a free thinker, always challenging and questioning, always sincere and open. I’ve always appreciated that about him. He taught me to not be afraid to say what I want to say and do what I want to do. When I was about ten, my family got our first computer and I discovered the thrill of computer programming. I still remember the day I figured out how to make the command line in WordPerfect print out graphics. I ran across the yard to my dad’s gun shop to show it off. That excitement hasn’t gone away even as the coding tasks have gotten more complex. In high school, a passionate science teacher encouraged me to take his biology course even though I was sure that computer scientists had no need for biology. I signed up, and over the next year I discovered the glory of the living cell—the precise structures of proteins that enable them to work together in complex networks to produce life as we know it. In college, I double majored in computer science and biochemistry. I now have a PhD in computational biology, and I spend my days analyzing genome data from kidney tumors, trying to figure out what went wrong to cause the cancer. I love my career. There’s nothing like waking up each morning excited to do something that’s fun, interesting, and makes the world a better place. Suzi Fei and Her Family Several years ago, when I was halfway through graduate school, I got a call from LDS Family Services. “It looks like both you and your birth mother submitted letters to your file saying you’d like to meet. Are you still interested?” It had taken years for them to figure out that we had both submitted those letters, but yes, I was still interested. It’s tough wondering what lies in your genes when you spend all day studying how influential they are. So they gave me her name and email address, and I did the first thing any kid in my generation would do—I Googled her. The first thing that came up was this picture of her that looked just like me. The title underneath her picture was Dr. Brooke Hemming, physical chemist at Environmental Protection Agency. I was so proud. Soon after, I sent a long email to my birth mom explaining what I was doing with my life, and she wrote back and told me about her life and how she had met my birth dad when they were both at Berkeley in the early 80s. It turns out that she studied chemistry at Berkeley and then got a PhD in physical chemistry from Stanford. She is now a senior scientist at the EPA doing policy work for air quality. It was like finding myself and finally feeling whole. My birth mother was one of six children, four of which were chemists. Her father was a physicist. She introduced me to my birth father, a computer programmer who had worked on the world’s first Internet browser and written four books on programming. My career aspirations, even my choice of career, have been with me from the beginning, an integral part of me, coded in the DNA in every cell in my body. Finding my birth parents and finding that we had so much in common answered a lot of open questions and helped me feel more confident and self-assured, in almost every aspect of my life. It explained so much of why I am who I am. Of course, I’m very happy about some of the things I got from them, such as my career desires and political leanings, but even the not-so-great things I’m glad I know now. Take, for example, the shape of my body. Now that I know how strongly genetic it is in my birth mother’s family, I’m much less likely to blame myself and my shortcomings for it, and I’m much more accepting of my body. What did you talk about when you first met your birth mother? My birth mom flew out to Portland, and I picked her up from the airport. I was nervous to meet her, but she reassured me that she just wanted me to be myself and do whatever felt natural and right. We ended up talking about science careers a lot. We also talked about things like our common health problems. It’s great to have someone like that in your life when you’ve gone for a quarter of a century with no clue what lies in your genes. Have you kept in touch since then? We email and Skype and talk on the phone fairly regularly. She lives on the opposite coast, so visits aren’t too frequent, but she’s been out here a few times, and we all went to her parents’ house in Utah for a family reunion shortly after I met her. They were thrilled to have me back in the family, and they were thrilled with the effect it had on my birth mom as well. My birth dad also lives on the East Coast, and I’ve visited him a few times when I’ve been out that way for conferences. We talk on the phone a couple times a year. He has two young daughters, and it’s been neat to find and get to know my half-sisters. How did your adoptive parents react to all of this? My adoptive parents were a lot less nervous than I was. They felt confident and secure because we have a good relationship. We have a bond and a history together that can never be removed or threatened. What was your experience growing up a Mormon with this drive to be a career woman? It was lonely. No one understood why I wanted a career so badly. Didn’t I know that a woman’s highest calling is to devote her life to raising her children? Didn’t I know that no other success can compensate for failure in the home? Didn’t I know that mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children? Why would I want to waste my time doing something of little importance when I could be shaping the future generations? Suzi Fei and Her Family Let’s just say I learned to be very grateful, inwardly and outwardly, for the “other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation” clause in the Family Proclamation. I felt like it left a little room for women like me in the Church. Fortunately, I had a string of excellent teachers who helped me feel smart and encouraged me to challenge myself. A caring seminary teacher with a heart of gold who encouraged me not to worry, because things have a way of working out as they should. An understanding father who respected women and praised readily, always telling me I should do this or that career when I grow up because I’m so good at it. A nurturing mother who taught me to be strong, a feminist in her own right (though she may never admit it), never interested in a career or the priesthood, but always interested in fair treatment. What can we do to be more supportive and encouraging to women with interests in the sciences and having a career? Can we please be a little more supportive of the girls and women who truly desire careers, as well as those who don’t but feel the need to work outside the home for any number of other valid reasons? Can we also please be a little more supportive of the men who are married to these women, whether they decide to have full-time careers or stay home some or all of the time to care for their children and home? Sometimes working outside the home really is the right choice for a mother. We need to trust each mother to know what’s best for herself and her family. When possible, as young women leaders, don’t be afraid to showcase women who’ve made a diversity of choices, or who have very different lifestyles sometimes not by choice, but who are happy, productive, and at peace with their lives. Show that different things work best for different people, and emphasize that the only way to figure out the best path for you is to maintain a close relationship with Heavenly Father and not be afraid to ask Him open-ended questions. Sometimes, due to your unique talents and desires, He’ll guide you in a direction that may not look like everyone else’s, and that’s okay. He has a customized plan for each one of us. He’ll help us maximize our time on Earth if we trust Him and let Him. I know many women who choose to stay home, and that is absolutely the right choice for them. I also know many women who choose to work outside the home, and that is absolutely the right choice for them as well. We all have different strengths and different temperaments. No woman wants to be put in a box and told she must do this and be this, or else she is failing to live up to her eternal potential. That leads to a toxic and depressing culture of comparison rampant with feelings of inadequacy. Instead we should be celebrating each other’s strengths and capitalizing on the breadth of wisdom, experiences, and talents we share amongst us. The Celestial Kingdom I envision is full of glorious diversity—many different types of beings doing many different types of things, all working and growing together in beautiful harmony. It is such an important message to internalize: What is right for one isn’t necessarily what is right for everyone. There is a deep well of shared understanding when we stop judging and start listening to, learning from, and loving our fellow humans, especially the ones who are different from us. If we let go of judgment, we can begin to find the beauty that lies in diversity. Each person is a very unique individual. I know from living this life and having felt the support from Heavenly Father, that He has a customized plan for me that takes into account my desires, inclinations, talents, and abilities. He has a plan for me, and he supports me in it. And that applies to every single one of us; and it looks different for everyone because every person is unique. How did you meet your husband? And how have you been able to balance family and work life? I wish I hadn’t worried so much about dating. Ever since I was a kid, Heavenly Father has stepped in and brought miracles into my life, particularly miracles that have enabled and supported my career. When the time was right, He brought a hunky Chinese man into my life who had joined the Church when he was in college. An open-minded man whose parents and culture encourage women to become professionals. A kind-hearted man who never exercises unrighteous dominion and equally shares family leadership, child nurturing, and domestic responsibilities. A humble man who is proud of me, and who knows, as I do, that I am accomplishing what I was meant to accomplish. Together, we are active and devout members of the Church who adore our religion because of the truth it contains, the millions of ways it enriches our lives, and the endless opportunities it gives us to make the world a better place. Suzi Fei and Her Family We now have a bright and beautiful four-year-old daughter. I wish I’d listened when people said, “Don’t worry, you’ll like your own children,” because it’s true. I love her so much and think she’s the smartest, cutest kid in the universe. I am fiercely devoted to her, and I make whatever sacrifice is required to ensure she’s receiving the nurturing she needs. That love and devotion, however, have not turned me into a stay-at-home-mom. The striking restoration of sanity I experienced when my twelve-week maternity leave ended dispelled any lingering doubts. To maintain my mental health, I need to feel in control of my time at least part of each week. Caring for children doesn’t allow that, but my chosen career does. The 24/7 mom thing never has been and never will be for me. My temperament just isn’t well suited to it. When I am at work, my daughter spends her days in a warm and caring environment, and she is growing up to be a confident and independent child. I know with certainty that this lifestyle is what is best for our family, including my daughter. This is healthier for her than having an unhappy stay-at-home-mom, which allows me to let go of any guilt that may come my way. How has your faith helped you make life decisions with career and family? My faith has taught me that I have a Father in Heaven who loves me and who hears and answers my prayers. I do feel like I receive answers to prayers, and that is the foundation of my testimony. As a scientist, of course, I am constantly questioning. I’m not one of those people who can stand up and say “I know it’s true”—I don’t know any real scientist who can stand up and say “I know” much of anything—but I do believe in and have faith in God, a God with whom I can have close relationship when I put forth the effort. Answers to prayers have guided many of the decisions I’ve made in my life. I appreciate the example of Joseph Smith in the grove of trees asking God what to do; I think that idea of having a relationship with Heavenly Father permeates our religion. I don’t think we have a corner on it; other religions do it as well, they just call it different things, like meditation or looking within, and I think the Holy Ghost is speaking to them, as well. I just really like how we teach our kids to seek answers by taking time to study, pray, and ponder in order to develop that spiritual awareness. Are there any books, music, art or other source of inspiration that’s had a profound influence on you? When I was in AP Biology as a senior in high school, I read “Of Heaven and Earth: Reconciling Scientific Thought With LDS Theology.” I ate it up. Without it, I think I would have come to a place where I felt the need to choose between science and religion. It helped me through my faith crisis a year later when I read some things church leaders had said about evolution. I ultimately decided that I wanted to have faith and be a believing Mormon, because of the abundant goodness I found here and because it enriched my life and made me happier. However, in order for it to work for me, I needed to be able to dismiss some things, such as statements that ask me to reject scientific truth, or scriptural interpretations that are too literal, or even simply teachings that just don’t feel right. That book, along with my parents’ examples, allowed me to have the flexibility to do that, and it was necessary in order for me to be able to stay. As Robert Kirby [humor columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune] says, “It took a long time to figure out that faith is a deeply personal matter, and I could drive myself nuts trying to fit someone else’s circus under my tent. So I stopped.” Thankfully, I live in a place where that hasn’t been an issue—I have always felt loved and accepted into the wards I’ve attended and have had abundant opportunities to serve, teach, and lead. At A Glance Name: Suzi Fei Location: Portland, OR Age: 32 Marital status: Married Children: One daughter (4), a son on the wayOccupation: Computational biology scientist, currently a postdoctoral researcher studying cancer genomes Schools Attended: Oregon State University; Oregon Health & Sciences University; PhD in Biomedical Informatics (computational biology emphasis) Languages Spoken at Home: : English (everyone), Mandarin Chinese (husband and daughter) Favorite Hymn: “Master, The Tempest is Raging” On The Web: http://mormon.org/me/5DT1/Suzi Interview by Kathryn Peterson.

On June 5, 2002, at the age of 14, Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her home in Salt Lake City and spent nine months in captivity. Her kidnappers, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee, were both sentenced to prison in 2011. Since her captivity, Elizabeth has become an advocate for the prevention of child sexual abuse. On Friday, October 11th, MWP editor Neylan McBaine spent a few minutes with Elizabeth as part of her media tour promoting her new book, My Story. Their conversation follows. How did Jesus Christ’s atonement help you survive your captivity and heal since then? I always knew that my Heavenly Father was with me and that he loved me. That really made a big difference to me, just knowing that he was there. And also knowing that Jesus knew exactly what I was going through, that he wouldn’t abandon me. I know that everything I have lost he will make up to me. I’m not left alone. Elizabeth Smart's Book My Story Was there a teaching from your parents or teachers at church that you continued going back to during your captivity? I knew that my family is forever and that God knows exactly who I am. I knew he would never abandon me or forget about me. Were there ever moments when you felt, if not abandoned, angry with God? How did you move past that? I never felt angry with God. I knew that we are all here to make our own decisions, make our choices, and that sometimes other people’s choices will hurt us. They can almost destroy us, but that that’s not from God. He doesn’t want these bad things to happen to us, but if we are faithful to him and if we hold on good can come out of it one way or another. We may never know how good will come, but it will come. We may never know the effect of what we went through, but we can know that good will come out of it and that we are prepared for what we are tested. Do you feel like your relationship with God changed over the course of your captivity? I always had a testimony but I felt that it became much more real during those nine months and that I didn’t have anyone else to turn to but God. My family wasn’t there, my friends weren’t there. The only person I had to turn to was my Heavenly Father. So I felt like my relationship became much more real and yes, I do think it definitely changed my relationship when I was kidnapped. I think it even has continued to change even to where I am today… knowing that my relationship with God is not like a, I guess. a mystical, imaginative thing. It’s very real like the relationship that I have with my mom, my dad, or a friend. It’s every bit as real as that. You have obviously made the media talking about some of the lessons that you learned in Young Womens that were not optimal. What would you ideally like Young Women in the church to know about their worth and about the role of chastity or sexual abuse in their lives? It is important to understand that, despite whatever happens, no matter what you do, you will always have value. That that can never be taken away from you and that can never be changed. Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will always be loved and that love and that value cannot be taken away from you, cannot be tarnished or will never grow old. It will always be there for you. It’s not for anyone else to judge what someone’s been through, whether it was by choice or by force. It’s not for us to judge. That’s between that person and God and whoever they decide to involve. What are your dreams and next steps professionally and personally? Do you feel like you have been called to do the work that you are doing now or is there something else that you’re interested in pursuing? I certainly feel like I have an incredible opportunity to be able to go out and speak and share my story and be able to work in child advocacy, but I also want to have a family. I also want to be the kind of mom that my mom was for me. I want to be there for my children and that’s a huge deal to me. Is there anything else that you would like to say to Mormon women in particular? Just that miracles happen and that we should always have hope because we are never abandoned. You never know what you are going to be able to do with what you have experienced. At A Glance Name: Elizabeth Smart Location: Utah Interview by Neylan McBaine.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview is part of a series, “Sisters Speaking Out,” that features Mormon women speaking out on social and political issues. The opinions expressed here represent the speaker, and do not imply endorsement by the Mormon Women Project or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We ask that all readers maintain respect for the views of the interview subject. Rachel Whipple doesn’t own a dryer or an air conditioner. Why? Because she believes that being a steward of the earth means making do with what she has and providing for herself and her family wherever possible. Rachel also grows her family’s food, bakes their bread, cans, sews, and rides her bike almost everywhere. She speaks movingly about the need for a revival of provident living, government’s role in sustainability, and our responsibility to the poor. How are you implementing the principle of environmental stewardship into your life? First off, I have to say that my lifestyle is one of great privilege. My husband has a doctorate and we were able to choose which job we took based on the university that had houses that we could afford to buy within walking distance to the school. Not everyone has the luxury of choosing which job they’re going to go to and which city to live in, but we did. So we made sure that we took a job in a place where we could buy the house outright. We bought a little house in the downtown area so that my husband has a fifteen-minute walk to work. The kids and I walk or bike to school and almost everywhere else we go. Where do you live? We live in Provo, in downtown Provo, in one of the old pioneer neighborhoods in a house that was built in 1904. It’s an old and horribly inefficient house but we are trying to revive it, because I believe that it’s better to care for something and build it up and make it better than it is to tear things down and throw them away. So we bought an old house. We walk and bike everywhere. We have our little garden that we grow things in and I get to do canning. A lot of our clothes are second hand and it’s been that way for years because we went to grad school and we had no choice most of the time. But if you know how to sew then you can get second hand clothes and mend them or alter them to fit and you’re good. Rachel Mabey Whipple and Her Family So you’re a mother, how many children do you have? We have three children. They’re 13, 11, and 6 and they’re all three in different schools right now. One does ballroom, two of them do voice lessons and we have got wrestling starting up next month and then swimming lessons. When a lot of families hit this time of life, the moms spend their lives acting as a chauffeur and just driving from one after school activity to another. We have been really careful about which activities our children do so that we can avoid driving and so that we can spend more time together. So with my youngest son’s swimming lessons, the older kids go to the rec center with us and they get to swim or play racquetball while he is doing his lesson. The rec center is a mile and a half from our house. We just ride our bikes over. Even in the winter? Well, sometimes we walk depending on the conditions. We walk all winter long. We don’t drive the car very much. Do you own a car? We do have a car. Our car is a 1999 and it has 200-and-something thousand miles on it. It’s fantastic. But it’s totally solid. It’s paid for so we don’t see the point in buying anything newer or more efficient especially because we drive it so seldom. So we just keep it for doing road trips. How about getting up to Salt Lake City? What about those sort of mid distances where it’s not a road trip but it’s not school and work? Well we usually just ride the train. We live seven blocks away from the Frontrunner station. Other than that, we don’t really go to Salt Lake that often. We really want to be rooted. We’re the kind of people that like to settle into a place and stay there. Our grad school and postdoc experiences were hard because we knew we were only there temporarily. But now that we have finally moved some place and bought a home, this is where we are. We are really investing a lot of our time and energy in getting to know our neighbors and to being part of our community here. So while we do occasionally go up to Salt Lake to go to the museums or to see plays, for the most part what we do is in our community. Rachel Mabey Whipple Can you tell me a little bit about the impact that this is having on your children? I know a lot of people who wouldn’t allow their children to go anywhere by themselves. My 11-year-old daughter will often ride her bike to school and her school is three miles away from our house. She does that on her own. She started by riding with a friend who lives a mile and a half away, and then her friend and her friend’s father would ride the rest of the way with her. That was how she started riding the bike to school. So it was a safe introduction to it and now she does it on her own. I was taking public transportation to school when I was 11. So you’re speaking to someone who has no problem with that at all. Well, I think it just depends on the relative standards of the community. Where we are here, it’s very unusual that my older two children have that much freedom. But Monday night for our Family Home Evening activity we rode up to The Riverwoods, a collection of shops five miles from our house, and bought a hot chocolate that we shared and then rode back. We talked the whole time; we were talking while we were riding. And my son who is 13 said, “Mom, I’m really glad that you’re my mom,” and I’m like, “Really? Because you were complaining when we started this bike ride.” He’s like, “Yeah, but I can go anywhere.” He walks a mile and a half to his school, and after school he will go to the library or to the comic bookstore and relax a little bit before he comes home at four. He realizes his friends don’t get to do that. He has got a lot more freedom, and my older two have about a five mile radius they can go on their own. We have safe routes mapped out for them. They have a lot of freedom that most kids don’t get until they’re 16. We ride together as a family a lot so they know how to do that safely. I would love to hear more about the other practical approaches that you employ in your home. You talked about clothing and canning … Clothing, canning, and doing laundry. We don’t have a dryer. We had a horrible dryer in our house when we moved here and it finally died. I had racks to hang clothes on in the summer so I brought them into our house in the winter to see if it would work when that stupid dryer died and it totally worked. So we got rid of it and now we hang all of our clothes to dry. I like it. In the summer, that makes hanging the laundry an outside activity and it’s so much more satisfying than sitting on a bed over this huge pile that you’ve got to fold. So that’s one thing that we do that’s a little unusual. I cook all our food. That’s a good Mormon house wifery kind of thing to do. I bake all of our bread; I make granola, so we don’t eat cereal. It’s those things that seem like a real waste of money because they are so empty. It’s so much air. Rachel Mabey Whipple So tell me about your motivation? Have you thought about every single one of these things or is this a holistic strategy to live more responsibly? There are a lot of different factors. I think part of it is because I was raised by parents who were strongly influenced by President Kimball, who, in 1976, gave his talk on self-reliance or self-preparedness. That’s where he told everyone to plant trees, and fruit vines, and have a garden, and take care of your homes, and your lawns. Make it beautiful, keep it painted. So I was raised that way and I’ve brought that into my family: this sensibility that we take what we have and we make it good and productive and better. Another part was practical in that being a grad student family for six years and then a postdoc after, we had to be very provident in our living, to use the LDS term. But part of it is I’ve always been drawn to this idea that we have to love and take care of this Earth. I was raised in a little town in rural Texas and I was part of the recycling committee where we started collecting the cans and cleaning them out. It was a radical idea in our town at that time, but I really felt like we needed to do something like this. Then I went to college and studied Geology at BYU and in one of our classes we toured landfills and mines at Yucca Mountain. I saw one landfill where these giant pits were full of sorted recycled bottles: things people had taken the time to rinse out and sort and there they were in a landfill because it wasn’t cost effective enough to actually recycle them and to use the material again. It was so heartbreaking to my poor young little idealistic self. I was like, What is the point of all of this? As I have gotten older, I got over that very sad moment and become more pragmatic about it, but I’m still passionate. I think that if I can be conscious is my decisions, I can help my family and have a better effect on the world around me. In our church we believe strongly in this idea of agency, choice and accountability, and personal responsibility. I can’t save the whole world. I can’t change everyone’s actions. But I can make sure that what I am doing is responsible and is in line with what I believe. It’s not going to make everything better but it will absolve me a small degree of guilt. Recently I’ve started writing publicly and speaking on radio shows and in different forums about LDS environmentalism, acting as an unofficial representative of the church and saying we do care about environmental things, because I believe we do. The reason I care about this is because I’ve been raised in this church with this faith, with this song: “My Heavenly Father loves me.” “Whenever I hear the song of a bird…” Everything in this world is a testament of God’s love to us and our reasons to love him. Do you see that same strain of self-reliance and respect for our earthly environment in the Mormonism of 2013 contrasted with the Mormonism of 1976? Or do you think that President Kimball’s focus has been morphed into other things? What we have since 1976 is a strong shift to a disposable consumer society in the United States. Our church culture has gone along with that to an extent, which is really unfortunate because we do have these doctrines and the model in our pioneer forbearers of self sufficiency, self reliance. We come from a very agrarian based church where most of our people were ranchers, and farmers, and intimately connected to the land. Now we are a church that is run largely by businessman and it’s got a really strong business management culture that’s removed from the land. But there is still a very strong desire in our people to craft and make things. We have this whole new trend of new domesticity and the mommy blogs. Provo has got a ton of those, where you have women trying to reintegrate these skills of house wifery into their lives in a very attractive way. I think that that speaks to our need to still be connected to the land and to do work within our homes that’s real and substantial and isn’t just a commodity. Tell me about your advocacy effort. What is your goal in speaking out about this? Where do you speak out about this and what is your approach? We are told to be actively engaged in a good cause, but we are very suspicious of activists because we are a conservative people who like stability and order and are skeptical of anything that sounds like a radical change or an imposition on our agency, which is how a liberal agenda or an environmental agenda is often viewed. Those ideas have become politicized and so people won’t even listen to them if they think politics is where they’ve come from or where they’re going. My idea is to show that these simple things – like how you do your laundry, how you take care of your home, how you feed your family – are not extreme, and they make our lives better and they’re in line with the gospel teachings. As we walk more, we know our neighbors and we’re building more of a sense of Zion and community and that’s incredibly valuable. I want to show people that they can do these things. It’s not that hard to add a bike ride with your family if you’ve already got the bikes. If you don’t have the bikes, it’s not that hard to go for a family walk. When you do that you’re spending time together that’s qualitatively different than when you are riding in a car together and everyone is watching their little videos that pop down from the ceiling or playing on their Gameboy devices. I think we’ve forgotten we can do that. Let’s start doing that again. I also want Mormons to realize that it’s good to love and care for this earth. It’s good to be socially responsible, to be aware of your consumption. Those things don’t make you automatically opposed to the Church, or for abortion, or any other political things like that. We have all of these political associations in our minds so firmly engrained that we don’t even listen to each other. By talking in Mormon terms to Mormons and testifying in a very quiet way, I feel I can make a difference. Offering these ideas but not telling anyone what to do, I find that offering a range of ideas is much more effective than telling all of us we have to stop driving our cars to church. Many of us here live blocks away. But nobody is going to listen to that. They should, but they won’t. So it just requires patience and humility and knowing that a lot of things have to bow to practical concerns of daily living. Paper plates are horribly wasteful but when you’ve just had your fourth baby then, yeah you break out the paper plates and you are completely justified in that and I am not going to condemn anyone for doing that. We have different demands and we all have to balance that. So I don’t feel comfortable with imposing my choices on anyone else but I want them to see that my choices are viable and that they could do them too. I’ve grown into our current practices, and honestly I have a long way to go. We are still very wasteful, profligate Americans. I have more pairs of shoes than my husband; he has pretty much exactly the number of pairs of shoes that he needs. Why do I need more than he does? Well, because I feel like I do. It’s just an entitled attitude. So we can definitely do better and everything is a process. There are a lot of things that we assume we need in our society but we really don’t. We don’t have to have two cars. We don’t have to have a dryer. If we lived in the South where it is humid we would probably feel differently. We don’t have to run our air conditioner because we live in a dry enough climate where the air cools down at night so that we can open our windows and turn on the fans and the house will cool off too. So we don’t need those things but people assume that you do. I want them to see that those assumptions aren’t always justified. What do you feel is the role of government or legislature in this discussion? I’m on the Sustainability and Natural Resources committee that advises the Mayor of Provo, and I work with the bike collectives and the bike committee. In fact, I’m meeting the Mayor at noon today to talk about the bike master plan and some changes on one of the streets here in the city. That’s relatively new for me. Previously, I was just going to City Council meetings and other meetings and trying to learn and get informed and settle into my community. I think that all of the important work of government happens on a local level. We need to know who our city council people are, our mayor, and they need to know us because that’s the only way that they are held accountable. It’s also how they know what standard we are holding them to. If they don’t know the things that matter to us then don’t know what they’re being judged against. As far as national politics, I find that whole thing very, very depressing. It’s so so sad. I think that there does have to be a role for government in regulations, because many industries and business have proven themselves to be more invested and concerned about immediate profits and short term gains then they are on the long term costs. Actually, I would include in that even the long-term welfare of their own companies and the communities in which they operate. And because many companies don’t have that vision and that kind of discipline, I think that that has to be imposed externally. I would love to be a libertarian but I think that can only work on a small scale, and our county has grown past the scale where that is a viable option. I think that’s sad and it says something really sad about my belief in human goodness but there it is. So I’m for government regulation and things like the EPA and OSHA. But regulations are there because somebody does something stupid and then everyone has to suffer for it. We’ve got to be grown up enough to recognize that we suffer the consequences of bad actions of others in the past. That’s the way it is with the environment too. If we are making collectively irresponsible environmental choices now then we collectively will be paying for that in the future. Rachel Mabey Whipple The people who end up paying the most are the ones who can’t avoid paying, the people who are poor and disenfranchised and already living on the edges, on the margins. These are the people who are our brothers and sisters; these are the people Christ would be ministering to if he were here. We through our selfishness are causing them harm, and that is something that we will be held accountable for. The Doctrine & Covenants is very clear that we have enough on this earth for all of us if we live according to God’s instructions and his commandments, and we know we’re doing things right if there are no poor among us. As long as we have poor in our community, people who are struggling to survive, people who don’t have enough, when we have more than enough, then we are condemned in the harshest language possible and that terrifies me. I think that if we individually are not all stepping up in our personal lives to do what we can to be responsible, then there has to be some external agency that will secure at least a minimal level of accountability, and that’s what the government has to do. We have to be informing those conversations in government and speaking to our legislators and honestly speaking to things like the Sierra Club, the NRA, and other organizations that have developed a lot of political clout and power. We need to be speaking to them as well as to our elected representatives because that’s how we are going to affect change. That’s how we are going to protect people on a larger scale than we can within our own little families and our own little communities. And it’s incredibly depressing to think about it that way. To hear the new stories of pain and suffering throughout the world and to feel helpless in the face of that… We have to push pressure on our leaders, we have to live responsibly in our own lives, and we have to help the people that we can. I was raised in the church reciting the Young Women values, and the idea of integrity is, I think, one of the most important values. We try to make our actions consistent with our beliefs and we have an obligation to get knowledge, to be informed so that our choices are well-founded. I think that in our church we have a really good opportunity to meet at the intersection of prudence – which is our provident living teaching – and altruism – which is our care for other people and stewardship. We need to act like none of this is ours, that we have an obligation to care for it, and that we will be held to account for how well we do that. They boil down to simple rules: Don’t break something you can’t fix. If you do break something, try to make restitution. We are a church of the restoration, right? We should do act on those principles of restoration, of bringing things back, in everything that we do. If we want to see the Tenth Article of Faith be a reality, that the earth will be a paradise again, then we need to work at planting gardens and making this place a beautiful paradise where we could receive Christ and he would see that it’s good. I think that if we do these things and we are able to delay our own self-gratification, we will be happier now. We will be doing good for others. We talk a lot about our pioneer heritage and what the pioneers gave to us. We need to think about the heritage that we are passing on into the future. We have our genealogy scriptures where we turn the hearts of the children to the fathers, but a lot of times we need to think that we are the fathers in those scriptures. We need to look forward because the sins of the fathers are visited on future generations. That’s pretty clear in the Old Testament. I remember reading that when I was younger and wondering how could God be so cruel to visit retribution on people who hadn’t done anything wrong, but it’s not a matter of God’s malice. It’s just a natural consequence of choices and actions and we don’t want our actions to hurt others in the future. We have a strong philosophical and moral basis to do good and to believe in doing good to others. It should be enough to get us to act. At A Glance Name: Rachel Mabey Whipple Location: Provo, UT Age: 34 Marital status: Married 15 years Children: Jacob 13, Claire Elan 11, and Isaac 6 Occupation: homemaker, housewife, student, volunteer Schools Attended: BYU Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “Simple Gifts” or “Come Thou Fount” On The Web: www.ldsearthstewardship.org Interview by Neylan McBaine. Photos of Rachel’s home by mirielle-sanford.squarespace.com

EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview is part of a series, “Sisters Speaking Out,” that features Mormon women speaking out on social and political issues. The opinions expressed here represent the speaker, and do not imply endorsement by the Mormon Women Project or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We ask that all readers maintain respect for the views of the interview subject. Laurel “Lolly” Weed is a wife and a stay-at-home mother to three daughters, but says she has no natural housekeeping skills and doesn’t feel like a typical Mormon mom at all. And she’s okay with that. Her marriage is also atypical; her husband, Josh, is gay. Last year, Lolly and Josh published a blog post about their story. When it went viral, the Weeds were surprised by the resulting publicity, criticism, and outpouring of support. Read what Lolly says she has learned about following the Spirit and leading an authentic life. In many ways, your story is the “typical” Mormon love story: “Boy meets girl. They date. They get married in the temple.” And then in many ways it’s also quite unique. How is it both? Josh and I grew up together on the same street in Utah, so we have a lot of history together. And I think that it’s very similar to what a lot of Mormon couples have in that we came together, we fell in love, we had mutual goals, a strong testimony of the gospel, we wanted to do what Heavenly Father wanted us to do. So we were just two kids that fell in love and wanted to start a family, and raise a family to Heavenly Father. But we were definitely unique in that I knew that Josh had same-sex attraction before we got married. He had told me that he was same-sex attracted back when he was sixteen–we were just friends when he told me that–and I fell in love with him after knowing about that part of him. At the time, it was not really something people talked about, so as I was falling in love with him I was thinking things like, “Am I crazy to do this? Who marries a gay guy? Am I going to be okay?” And so it kind of felt like we were in uncharted territory. That felt very different from your typical Mormon experience. Tell use a little bit about your courtship and how you came to marry each other. He was my best friend, and I didn’t think we would ever start dating because I just didn’t think it would work. And I honestly thought he could get married, and that’s what he wanted, but I didn’t think it would be to me! I just thought intimacy in marriage was too important to me. I didn’t think we would work together because of that. Then he started dating my best friend, who was also my roommate, and I started feeling really jealous! I thought “This is Josh, my gay best friend. Why should I be jealous that he’s dating my roommate?” When they broke up, I started having a whole new mix of feelings: “Could I do this? Could I start dating him?” We talked a lot about it and I told him some of my concerns and he was very patient with me and really kind. We just started thinking “Okay, well, can we have a romantic relationship? Let’s just try it.” And it was really kind of low-pressure. Laurel Weed and Her Husband So we made that shift from friendship into a romance, and it was amazing. He used to hold my hand when we were just friends; he would talk to me and hold my hand. But then when we made that shift and I told him that I loved him like that, then he held my hand and everything changed. I was getting butterflies and I was falling in love with my best friend. I felt like we were going on this journey together, that we were willing, that we loved each other enough and we trusted each other enough that we could work through challenges that would come up. That we were worth it to each other. So you get married, but for a long time this was just between you. Your family knew about it, but it was not a public fact that your husband was gay. Then your husband wrote a blog post that went viral, and things changed quite a bit for your family! How did you and Josh make the decision to write that post, and why did you do it? One day Josh was sitting down to write a blog post—it was just a silly humor blog at the time—he was really having a hard time writing it, and things had come up recently that made me think he was wanting to be more himself. It hit me one day when I was talking with him that he wanted to be more real and that he might want to share that piece of himself. We started talking about doing that, and we felt very much like the Spirit was confirming that was something we needed to do, because it hit me out of nowhere. I was terrified to do it, because I didn’t know how people were going to respond. But I felt very peaceful about it because it was something I knew I had to do. Both Josh and I knew we had to do it. So I wasn’t scared to actually do it, I just was worried about whether I would be strong enough to handle some of the reactions. It took us about a month to write that post. We prayed about it a lot, and we fasted. We sent it out to our family members to make sure that it was saying what I wanted it to say. We felt this was definitely the message that we wanted to share, and that we felt God wanted us to share. The next day [after posting the blog entry] it was insane because it was spreading so quickly that we started getting calls from media, TV, newspapers. My mind was blown! I couldn’t even understand why people were caring so much because we were just this little Mormon couple sharing something about Josh. How has it affected your family? It changed things for us. I wouldn’t go back and change it, though. I would keep everything exactly the same as it happened. I think one of the best things that has come about from it is just Josh being able to feel like he is completely and totally able to be himself. And being able to talk about the issue and helping others to talk about the issue has been amazing. We definitely don’t feel alone anymore. When we first thought about getting married, and after being married, there were times when we thought, “Are we the only people out there doing this?” Since then, we’ve had hundreds of responses from people saying “Thank you, we’re in the same situation. Thank you for representing us. You’re doing great.” Or people calling us or sending us emails or letters—just thanking us for talking about it. And even if it’s been kind of hard at times, I don’t think that it has negatively affected our daughters at all. You’ve also faced some criticism personally. Some readers assumed you were brainwashed into a marriage like that because of religion, or some saying you’re being delusional because “that sort of marriage never works.” How do you face it? What is your response? The criticism has been just across the board. We’ve had people that aren’t members of the Church or aren’t religious who accused us of being religious fanatics, and that we’re trying to make statements about the gay community. Then on the other hand we’ve had religious people call us complete liberals and that we’re not following the gospel path. It’s crazy to me that we could be called both right-wing and left-wing extremists by both parties. We have been criticized for talking about it. People have said, “You should keep this information to yourselves. There’s no reason why you needed to share this.” Which I don’t think is true. Obviously, we were told by Heavenly Father that we needed to share this. When you are same-sex attracted, it’s just who you are, and if no one’s talking about it, no one’s saying, “Hey, I am too,” or, “I know people,” then people start feeling really isolated, like, “I’m the only one experiencing this.” If no one’s talking about it, it creates such isolation. We’ve been criticized that we should keep it to ourselves and that by talking about it we’re confusing the youth of the church. I completely disagree. I think that the youth want to talk about this issue. It’s very much a part of what they’re living with now, and they want to understand what the Church’s position on it is; they want to know how people are dealing with it in their lives. If you’re religious and you’re gay, how do you put those two together? If we’re not talking about it, then we’re doing them a disservice. When people say that I married Josh just because I was brainwashed and didn’t think I could get married, that’s just—first of all, it’s kind of insulting!. I always thought I would get married, it’s not like he was the last choice and I thought, “Okay, I’ll settle for this guy.” I fell in love with him. He’s amazing, a wonderful husband, a wonderful father, and an amazing lover. He’s just a great man and I love him, and he’s worth it to me. The whole package that is Josh Weed is what I wanted. You don’t get to pick and choose the qualities you want in a person; they come as a whole identity. And I wanted him. So I definitely was not “settling” when I married him. You talk a lot about following the Spirit. How have you prepared yourself to learn to speak the language of the Spirit and follow the Spirit? I feel like Heavenly Father has kind of been training me my whole life to do something this big. My parents taught me from a really young age how to make my own decisions through prayer. When I was a little girl, I had a chance to go to Girl Scout camp, and it was on Sunday. I was really young, a second-grader or something like that, and I thought they weren’t going to let me go because it’s on Sunday. But they gave me the opportunity; they said, “What do you think you should do?” And I took that very seriously. I prayed about it, as a little girl, I was thinking about what Heavenly Father would want me to do. And they supported the decision that I made. I actually said, “I’ve prayed about it and felt like I should go to Church and then have my parents take me to the camp after.” And so they had to sacrifice, they ended up having to drive me all the way to camp! And they didn’t say, “No, that’s the wrong choice.” They trusted me. So I feel like all my growing up years I was doing things like that: turning down jobs because I didn’t feel like it was the right job, and then another more amazing job would come along. I just had all these confirmations that when I follow the Spirit, I am blessed. Even when it might not seem like a logical thing to do, Heavenly Father always comes through for me. So I’ve kind of learned how to study it out in my mind, and then feel it in my heart. And it is definitely a process. I feel like Heavenly Father has asked me to do things that are hard, that a lot of people would say ,“No, I won’t do that, that’s crazy, that doesn’t make sense.” But He has not let me down. Up to this point, whenever I have done what Heavenly Father asked me to do, He has always come through for me. And then I have that confidence, even when things are hard, and even when people criticize me, it doesn’t matter. Because I know that Heavenly Father is behind me. There’s nothing like that confidence, knowing that you’re where God wants you to be, doing what God wants you to be doing. It’s the best feeling in the world. And it’s something that I can carry with me for years and years and years. I never questioned myself. And when you’re doing something big, like outing yourself to the world, you have to have that confidence that when people are criticizing you and saying things like, “You shouldn’t have shared that,” I can go back to those moments when I was praying, and feeling that confidence of the Spirit so that those comments don’t shake me. I have those spiritual memories of what God wanted me to do. I also think that that’s one of the things that drew me and Josh together. Just the way we view the Gospel and our connection with God is very similar. We’re always on the same page about spiritual things. Sometimes we’ve fasted for answers and then come together and have compared our prayers, and they’ve been almost the same word-for-word answers. That is a true partnership; that’s a true marriage; that’s a true friendship. And Heavenly Father is right in the center of that. That was my main thing I wanted in a husband, someone that loves God first and foremost, and that was Josh. Both you and Josh, when you’re writing on the blog, talk a lot about “keeping it real.” And you practice it. We’ve seen you talk about everything from spiritual promptings to body deformities to the silly ins and outs of not-so-glamorous parenting. Why the blunt honesty? I think that people tend to feel really alone a lot of times, because we’re not sharing vulnerable parts of ourselves. People don’t want to admit that they’re not perfect. They don’t want to admit that they have struggles. They don’t want to admit that they’re different from what the “normal” person appears to be. We want to be real, so that other people can know they’re not alone. I feel like you can’t live an authentic life, you can’t really build meaningful relationships with anyone, unless you’re willing to share everything. That includes the embarrassing things and that includes the hard things, but that’s how we build our relationships. We’re not perfect, nobody’s perfect, and to try and pretend like you are is not being true to yourself, and it’s not helping anybody. It’s making other people feel bad about themselves because they think they’re not measuring up. Just even with the issue of homosexuality in the Church, since Josh has been so open with the fact that that is a part of him—it’s amazing to me how many people have written to talk to us, and said, “Me too.” It’s just not something that people need to be afraid to share. It can go from something as big as talking about homosexuality to admitting that your house is not clean. We’re afraid to admit, we’re always trying to put on this perfect façade, and it’s just not real life. It’s isolating. What have you come to understand about homosexuality, and what is it that you think more members of the Church specifically need to understand about it? I think that if people really knew and also believed that it’s not a choice to have same sex attraction—they don’t choose to be homosexual, it’s just something that they are. Of course people can always choose their actions, but no one chooses to be same sex attracted. Having known Josh his whole life, there’s no doubt that that’s just been a part of him. I think that people sometimes don’t believe that’s true. They have these weird conceptions of what made someone homosexual. But if they were to believe that that’s just a part of them, then I think that they might view it a little bit differently. Also, if people were to stop and really put themselves into the position of a homosexual in the Church, really stop and think what their reality is, I think they would have a lot more compassion for their situation. Laurel Weed and Her Family I have seen youth that have same-sex attraction, who come from really great families—Laurel presidents, Elders Quorum presidents, coming from families where their dads on the High Council—but these youth are afraid to tell their parents because they don’t know how their families are going to react. They don’t know if they’re going to be loved, if they’re going to be accepted. They feel alone. They don’t know who to talk to about their situation. So I wish people would believe that it’s real, that it’s not a choice, and that they’d think of how hard it can be. It doesn’t always have to be a horrible situation, but if you are alone and you’re being given messages that this is an evil thing to be who you are—that’s torture to think, “I can’t be who I am!” And to not have anyone to talk to about it, that’s why kids are getting so depressed. You and your husband have talked on the blog about how you don’t prescribe your marriage as the only solution; that your goal was to open a dialogue more than anything else. Any marriage has its ups and its downs, and anybody who’s been married knows you have to work at it. In order to make a marriage like ours work, we have to be constantly communicating, we have to be vulnerable with each other. We have to be willing to talk about hard things. So to say to someone else, “Hey, this is the answer, do what we’re doing”—that’s just not fair. It might just not be a possibility for someone. The message I would give to someone that was LDS and homosexual would be to stay close to Heavenly Father, and follow the path that He has for you. Because everyone’s path is different and as long as you know that you’re loved by God, and you are trying to stay close to Him, you’ll be fine. I definitely would not say that what we are doing is right for everyone. Is there anything else you’d like people to know about “the woman behind the blog?” I think as Mormon women, we should not be afraid to be who we are. We’re not all the same. I for one was not born with housekeeping skills at all! I had to learn how to clean the house, I don’t craft, I don’t like making meals, or taking meals over to people. When I think of the typical Mormon mom, I do not feel like that is me in any way. I would love for that to just be okay. We can all be who we are and be celebrated for our individual talents, and it’s okay if housecleaning does not come naturally to me. I have other talents. I just feel okay being who I am. You can go out and you can fulfill your dreams, and that’s something I really want to teach my girls. That they can be who they are, and that they can achieve their goals and dreams. That they can have what they want in their lives and that Heavenly Father supports them being who they are. Because He made them special, and He wants them to show off that individuality. At A Glance Name: Laurel Weed Location: Seattle, WA Age: 35 Marital status: Married Children: Three daughters, ages 7, 5, and 3 Occupation: Stay-at-home mom Schools Attended: Graduated from BYU with a BS in Geography Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “Where Can I Turn For Peace?” On The Web: www.joshweed.com Interview by Lydia Defranchi. Photos from A&W Photography.

Kat S. is a family therapist in New York City and a Jewish convert to the LDS Church. She is also the semi-anonymous blogger behind the popular Tumblr page “Just Say Amen Already,” a light-hearted look at her Mormon experience. Kat says she was prompted to the task of making us laugh at ourselves. Here, she talks about the healing power of laughter and the beauty she finds in life and the Gospel. Kat follows the Jewish custom of writing “G-d” to avoid taking His name in vain. We’ve kept that usage in this interview. What made you decide to start Just Say Amen Already? A friend’s wife from my Jewish days had a similar Tumblr (“What Should We L’chaim”) for the orthodox Jewish community. I loved it. I thought it was so funny and refreshing to see another side to this culture we don’t typically see. I wanted to share it with my Mormon friends because so much of it related to the Church, but none of them knew Yiddish or understood the culture, so the humor would be lost on them. I thought maybe I’d just start one myself. And when I had that thought I had this incredible prompting that I should do it. I thought, “I’m sorry, G-d, but why are you concerned about Tumblr?” I just couldn’t understand why G-d would care about that, but I published my first few posts on July 10, 2012, and it exploded almost overnight. I believe in the healing power of laughter. I believe that if you can laugh about it, you can live with it. I wanted to make people laugh about some of the cultural things in the Church. I think we have to be honest and acknowledge that there are things that are hard to deal with sometimes, and being able to laugh about it gives you hope and strength and perspective. Laughter not only makes life easier to deal with, it makes friends. It connects us. I get lots of comments from followers telling me they’ve felt the same way, that they’re so happy they’re not alone, and that it’s nice to know Mormons don’t take themselves so seriously. How do you come up with your ideas? Two ways. I go through gifs and find those that apply to certain situations. The other way is taking notes during Church or activities; I pretend I’m journaling. What’s been your most popular post? “The Book of Mormon, as told by K” was incredibly popular. I told the story of the Book of Mormon in gifs. That took forever. I also posted one about going to a YSA [young single adult] event and leaving 20 minutes later. That’s been popular because I think YSA events are designed to make you not want to be a YSA anymore. It helps that I’m somewhat anonymous because I’m able to say things many people are thinking but no one is saying. People often feel alone in the LDS community, and if I can help anyone to feel a little less alone, then that’s all that matters to me. One of your Tumblr followers got baptized after reading your blog. Tell us about that. That is one of the coolest things that’s happened. This girl’s friend reposted something I had published and she started reading the blog, messaged me, and we started talking. She also lives in New York, and so I said if you’re in the city, why don’t you come to Church with me? (Realizing there was a significant possibility she could be a serial killer and now I’ve just told her where to find me.) She’s actually a lovely girl. She came to Church and took the missionary discussions and was baptized. She has a calling and is one of my very good friends now. Kat S. I’ve had a number of people reach out to me who’ve been interested in the Church or have been inactive and found they could relate to my posts. Seeing that others have the same frustrations gave them the motivation to keep going or return to the Church for the first time in years. I’ve been able to say you’re not alone. Don’t give up faith. Don’t give up hope. Pres. Uchtdorf said it best at this last General Conference: There is room for you. We need your unique voice and talents and perspectives. Don’t be silent. Have you had any other missionary moments because of your blog? A friend of mine committed suicide about two years ago, right around Easter. Her death really impacted me and so I wrote a post [“What Easter Means to Me”] about Elder Wirthlin’s “Sunday Will Come” talk, and about my friend’s death and my own struggles and feelings of loneliness. After writing that, I got emails from two different people telling me that they had thought about ending their lives and after reading my post decided not to. To think the blog has had this kind of impact is so humbling. Tell us about your religious upbringing and conversion to the Church. I was raised in a Reform Jewish home. For most of my life, I’ve had a very deep belief in G-d. I had a very difficult childhood; I was bullied throughout school and didn’t have many friends. I remember one night when I was in middle school, I sat up in my bed crying and looked up at the ceiling and said, “G-d, I just need to talk. I don’t know if you’re there, but I need to talk and you’re the only one I’ve got.” I started talking and that turned into a nightly thing. I knew someone was listening to me. I believed in G-d. Then, my first year of college, I got really sick, I was lying in the hospital in the ER and said a prayer that I needed a hug. In that moment, it felt as though arms were wrapped around me, and I knew someone was listening. I knew that if I was going to get through life’s challenges, I needed to have a stronger relationship with G-d, and so I delved into Judaism and started saying the ritual prayers every night and morning, studying Torah, keeping Kosher for Passover, but nothing ever felt like it was enough. It felt like there was something more I could do, like there was another step I should be taking. I didn’t feel like I had that relationship with G-d that I knew was possible. For years, since I was in high school, I felt pulled to the Mormon Church and I didn’t know why. Everything I heard about it made it sound crazy, but I was still intrigued. I was looking at Facebook groups at BYU and Wikipedia pages for everything Mormon, and I didn’t know why I was so obsessed with it. I was feeling frustrated with my spiritual journey and thought, “I don’t think G-d would have me feel this way about the LDS Church if he didn’t want me to look into it.” So I chatted with the missionaries on Mormon.org, and they got me the number of the missionaries in New York City. I really didn’t think I’d ever get baptized, but after three months, at age 19, I was baptized. October 12, 2013, was my five-year anniversary. It was delightfully ironic; I spent it at my cousin’s bat mitzvah. What do you appreciate about the Jewish faith and what eventually drew you to the Mormon faith? I was very proud to be Jewish. I found great beauty in Judaism and in the prayers and the culture and traditions. I still do. I still plan to have Shabbat dinners in my house and Hanukkah with my children. I still feel strongly connected to it, so it took everyone by surprise when a nice Jewish girl became a Mormon. There were so many beautiful things that drew me to the Mormon Church, like the idea that we’ll all have the opportunity to hear the gospel message—that was incredibly comforting to me. That was the just, merciful G-d I knew. I thought, “If any Christian church is true, it’s this one.” Kat S. Culturally, the transition was hard on many different levels. There’s a lot of small, cultural things in the church that new members don’t know about. For example, the first time I went to a Relief Society General Broadcast meeting, I went to the chapel and everyone was dressed up and I wasn’t. I laugh about it now, but I felt so ashamed. I just thought I was going to watch a TV show. A year later, being in an institute class, I asked a question about some announcement and the teacher answered it in a very dismissive way as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. I understand that some of these things are small, but I hope we can all help new converts not feel so alone or dismissed. You quote President Hinckley on your blog: “Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured.” What are some of the small things you enjoy in life? My little brother falling asleep on my shoulder. Eating pizza. Reading a really good book. I have a wonderful job. I love to run and make people laugh. They are small moments, but those little things are worth living for. At A Glance Name: Kat S. Location: New York City Age: 24 Marital status: Single Occupation: Family therapist Schools Attended: Smith College (bachelor’s in psychology), New York University (master’s in social work) Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: A tie between “I Stand All Amazed” and “Lead, Kindly Light” On The Web: www.amenalready.tumblr.com Interview by Kathryn Peterson.