I have sat to write posts so many times and I always find myself thinking about things but not actually writing. I push it off that I am busy but I seem to have some sort of barrier to sit down and write. This is a lot to process and has taken nearly 50 years of my life to come to the realization that I do have some skeletons that are peeking outside of the door and I think I do not want to face them all. It is easier to become busy and find other things to take up my time but today I decided I needed to write it down.

I am not going to really go back and read past posts before I make new ones to make sure I haven’t talked about it before. I find myself spending too much time wondering what to do and then I lose my train of thought. So if anyone actually reads this and this drives you nuts, well, sorry, not sorry, but this may not be the place for you. I am a hot mess and my life experience both good and bad have made me that way. I am also not an English teacher so if you comment on how bad my grammar is…you may want to leave too.

Being brought up in a high demand religion came nestled with a whole ton of guilt. This guilt still gets me and it is when I let it take over my whole being I end up overeating, scrolling on my phone or whatever else I can find to sit and do nothing to try and take all the guilt away. The funny thing is, this doesn’t help. I find myself getting upset at myself for not doing something productive. That could be laundry or cleaning but I need to also quit fighting the writing because I know from past experience that this does help me.

Here is the main thing and this is very important and honest. These experiences are mine and mine solely. Some people thrive in high demand religions and need that purpose. I was brought up in a loving household with parents that did not pressure me, they just educated me in all things the best they knew how. When I questioned things they did not get upset and make me feel guilty. I had parents that I could have conversations with. So, this is by no means a bash on them because they did the best they could. This is about me and how I see the world differently. To be 100% truthful, they did not even know all the things that happened in my local church to me. I kept a lot from them because I knew I would have to talk about it and I didn’t want to. There were a couple instances that they did know about and they defended myself and my family. The church just has such a mental hold on their members that I was not wanting to go there…until now.

Before we moved to Utah and got submerged into the faith we lived out of the country. I had a few times where I really questioned my family’s faith but I did not feel the judgement and ridicule that I felt from fellow Utah members. When you are surrounded by like minded people you would think that is a good thing but in my experience, it makes you judged a million times more because they are always comparing you to everyone and have some perfect lifestyle to portray.

This has been a long intro and I will get to a lot of the above later. Today’s post is about the first day that I actually questioned the church and I was only 8 years old. Actually, let’s make that the next post because this is long.