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Cicero celebrated patriotism. Tolstoy called it a superstition that makes people kill strangers. Travel taught me which view holds up better.

When a prophet tells you not to listen to loved ones who question the church, he's not protecting your faith—he's protecting the institution from scrutiny.

A mother's hesitation before sharing a birthday photo reveals how thoroughly an institution can colonize even a moment of joy.

When my grandfather died while I was on my mission, the church didn't give me the choice of going home. Looking back, I was robbed — not just of a funeral, but of the chance to choose.

A viral Mormon recovery story credits God for healing - but the shame-based sexuality teachings that fueled the compulsive cycle came from the church in the first place. What happens when we separate the real healing mechanisms from the religious framework?

A line from David Archuleta's book sent me back through a series of moments when the real me made it out — and the system that made sure that version of myself stayed on a leash.

Field notes from Genesis 43 through Exodus 7: Joseph's resolution, God's plan that required 400 years of slavery, and Moses — who may be the most complicated man in the Bible so far.

A line from David Archuleta's book about his father and his sister sent me back to my teenage years — to a bishop's office, to shame over nothing, and to the words no one said to me then.

Leaving a church you've belonged to for forty years isn't a moment. It's a four-month bureaucratic process, a few strange coincidences, and a quiet Sunday when you can no longer log in.

David Archuleta's book cracked something open. A story about a neighbor girl and butterfly feelings sent me back to some of my own earliest memories of intimacy — and what I learned was already missing.

Field notes from Genesis 25–42: the patriarchs' moral inheritance, the rape of Dinah, and a story about Joseph I wasn't ready to look at critically.

The greatest tragedy of my LDS faith wasn't that I didn't achieve my dreams. It's that my dreams weren't mine to begin with.

Field notes from Genesis 7–24: a God who haggles, regrets, selectively hears, and demands the unthinkable — and the men who follow him without question.

I got called a libtard for the first time. What caught my attention was the reason why.

I'm reading the Bible cover to cover as an atheist and ex-Mormon. These are my field notes from Genesis 1–6.

My therapist reminded me that once you hang art on a wall, viewers' responses reveal more about them than about you. It's a lesson I keep having to learn—in writing, in relationships, in the strange new world I'm navigating without my old maps.

Dallin H. Oaks gives his first address as president of the LDS Church. I listen from the outside and hear recycled counsel dressed as revelation.

The LDS Church says their abuse helpline exists to protect victims. A growing mountain of evidence tells a different story—one where lawyers assess liability while children remain in danger.

One of my most profound spiritual experiences happened when an apostle told us angels were watching. Decades later, I understand that experience differently—not as supernatural validation, but as human capacity for awe and wonder.

It's a story about writing your way out, about flawed humans doing extraordinary things, and about who gets to tell your story. Even before leaving the church, I needed all of those things.

The world is watching what's happening in America. They're seeing the same patterns I am. The question is whether enough Americans are looking.

A conservative legal argument about Alex Pretti's death sounds compelling—until you notice it only applies scrutiny to one side of the equation.

Plato described what it's like to leave a high-demand religion 2,400 years before I experienced it.

Two US citizens have been killed by federal agents in the same month. Neither had a criminal record. The question no one in power seems willing to answer.

The Mormon temple shows me what heaven might looks like. And all I can think is: who would want to live there?

As I deconstructed my faith, I found myself deconstructing my political beliefs too. The two were more intertwined than I ever realized.

As a missionary, I taught investigators to read 3 Nephi 11 and then pray about it using Moroni 10:3-5. Looking back through the lens of an atheist, I can see how these passages prime the reader toward a predetermined conclusion.

Religious advice often contains useful wisdom. But you don't need God to access it. You just need to translate it into something real.

When government officials can act without accountability, we've abandoned the foundational principles this country was built on.

Mormon scripture systematically strips you of ownership over your goodness while blaming you for your wickedness. This isn't theology. It's designed shame.

I have no inclination to go back to church. Even if I did it wouldn't be the same.

A quote from Jeffrey R. Holland reveals how the Mormon church frames those who leave as foolish, dishonest, and deceived. When leaders speak this way, is it any wonder that those who left feel disconnected from those who stayed?

A family member asked me what I believe now that I've left the church. I didn't have a quick answer. But I'm working on figuring it out.

The entire holiday was supposed to celebrate the birth of Christ. So what does Christmas mean when you don't believe in Christ anymore?

A Facebook commentor sent me to Mosiah 2-4 to answer my concerns about Mormon theology. Instead, these chapters confirmed everything I said about the shame cycle.

Mormon theology teaches that God sent us to earth knowing we would be 'soiled by sin' then offers to cleanse us from contamination He orchestrated. This isn't love. It's designed trauma.

My most-played song of 2025 was a K-Pop track by an all-female group. At 43, making crucial adjustments to the way I approach life, that's not a coincidence. It's a manifesto set to music.

I'm not sure I believe trees have literal personhood. But I'm reconsidering what it means to be in relationship with the earth that formed me—and whether the distinction even matters.

After decades of being told who I should be, I'm learning to define myself on my own terms—as a product of the cosmos, a feeling being who thinks, and someone worthy of compassion rather than condemnation.

An article blames consumers for keeping devices too long and dragging down productivity. But when people can't afford new phones, the problem isn't 'hoarding.' It's an economy that's left them behind.

The Mormon church just lowered the mission age for women from 19 to 18, calling it revelation. But when you look at the timing, the pattern, and the outcomes, it looks less like divine guidance and more like institutional optimization.

Religious leaders claim to know your 'true' identity better than you do, defining you as God's child with eternal spiritual roots. But who you really are is something you get to determine for yourself, based on your lived experience, not unprovable claims about pre-existence.

The Mormon church promises deliverance from problems, but the real deliverance came when I stepped away from the framework that created most of those problems in the first place.

Reflecting on the No Kings protests reveals not just concerns about Trump's authoritarian actions, but deeper questions about systemic erosion, the limits of reform, and the absence of good options when working within a broken system fails but violent change promises catastrophe.

Contemplating the incomprehensible scale of the cosmos, both spatial and temporal, reveals humanity as simultaneously insignificant and extraordinary: a brief arrangement of matter that became the universe's way of knowing itself.

Religious institutions maintain prophetic credibility through unfalsifiable frameworks that absorb all outcomes, a pattern revealed clearly in Russell M. Nelson's presidency, and my decade-long journey from silence to speaking.

Religious institutions maintain prophetic credibility by counting hits, discounting misses, and retroactively drawing targets around wherever their predictions happened to land.

The real threat to American democracy isn't coming from the left or the right—it's coming from the normalization of political violence itself and the leaders who exploit tragedy to deepen divisions rather than heal them.

From clear answers to honest uncertainty - why I'm writing again.