I have had cancer twice. I call my Melanoma Cancer 1.0 and my Breast Cancer 2.0. I may refer to each one of them that way.

Anyways, this also has had an influence on my guilt of leaving my religion and that is what this post will be about.

For years, well even decades, I have struggled whether or not I was doing the right thing with my whole faith crisis. When you are told certain things will happen when you stray from the teachings you will always wonder if it is true or not. Even if you see the writing on the wall that you will be OK. That feeling of, “but what if I am wrong,” will still shoot you in the head and you can easily just put it off and keep dealing with the guilt.

I was always taught that if I left the church and denounced my churches teachings that I would not have the “Holy Spirit” guide me. Meaning that I would not have help knowing between right and wrong and I would be left to do this on my own. That is a scary thing to someone that has always had that little voice in her head and gut feelings leading my decision making. I mean, I listen to that voice and it has lead me in the right direction many times. For me this was honestly the most terrifying thing while I was going through my faith crisis. In the end I came to realize that I could still have this “voice” even if I wasn’t following someone else’s doctrine.

Here is the timeline of events.

November 2021 Cancer 1.0 my Melanoma. It was a poop show. I ended up with 3 surgeries and looked like Frankenstein afterwards. This was during Covid too so part of the extreme surgery was due to long waits for the doctor. I was already going through the thought process of whether or not I wanted to leave my church and getting this cancer kind of scared me to not do anything yet. Mind you I wasn’t attending church, but I was thinking, this maybe was what I was getting for questioning it. Like I was being stricken with cancer for straying. My religion always told us that we were tested, on everything.

June 2022 I finished this 1.0 journey. I had a lot of time to think at home because things were still not totally open from the shut downs and I had a very long healing process from this cancer. I will make a post about this journey and link it here when I get it done.

June 2022 to October 2023 normalcy and life were going pretty well. I had started to extensively look into leaving the church in June of 2023. I had watched over 100 episodes of Mormon Stories Podcasts and other people stories too. I had found where to download the letter I needed notarized to leave. I had it all filled out and notarized by August of 2023. I had sent it in the mail in September of 2023. This is also another story to link to later.

I had sent it in 3-times by October 2023 because they would never respond. I had tracking and even required a signature so I knew they were getting it but I could not get responses back. I even tried phone calls and emails and I never got responses back.

Previously, I was scheduled to be checked every 6 months for 2 lumps they noticed in my breast tissue and mid October was my last and final check until I could go back to yearly. At this point I was just getting ultrasounds because you get a better look at the lumps. I went in for this last, of 2 year check, and this day changed my whole life again…Cancer 2.0. Not the original lumps they were watching, those ended up being fatty deposits, this time it was 2 more spots that they felt needed to be addressed with a biopsy. So these had popped up within the last 6-months of my last check.

I had a biopsy 3-days later, and a all from my Cancer surgeon withing 24 hours of the biopsy. It was now confirmed that I had breast cancer. I scheduled a lumpectomy with radiation to be done in December. This was all by the end of October 2023. This cancer hospital moves fast!

I decided to go to quitmormon.org and have them send my notarized letter. I received a reply back from the lawyer from the website that I had finally been removed from the records. So now, according to my old church teachings that Holy Spirit should stop talking to me. I am now alone and I am going to not have all the benefits of this spirit guiding me.

Right after this church record removal I did not sleep for 9 days. I had a lot going on and I was stressed and still questioning if I did the right thing especially now when I needed that voice and gut feeling to help lead my decision making. During this no sleep, OK well I slept 2-3 hours a night so none is a little much for me to say, but barely any sleep. So during this time the only dreams I had were that I would have the lumpectomy and radiation and wake up from surgery, come back to my follow ups and be told I had more cancer and I was going to die. Seriously these dreams were vivid. I chalked it up to sleep depravation and just being scared of everything.

By day 9 I had this dream that screamed me awake. Literally I woke up terrified because when I say screamed me awake I mean it. It was like someone yelled into my ear and told me to call the doctor and get a double mastectomy. Mind you I only had the cancer in 1 breast but this voice told me to get them both gone. I listened to this voice and I called my doctor and sent her a my chart message and said that I really thought I needed to get the mastectomy because I can’t go through the rest of my life wondering every 3-6 months if this cancer was coming back. She agreed that we could do this but it would be January 2024 because now we needed to have my plastic surgeon present for the surgery. Yes I have a cancer doctor and a plastic surgeon on my speed dial. This is what happens when you keep getting the big “C.”

Literally that day I slept 16 hours. I am NOT kidding. I slept like I was dead. I slept well for the next 2 weeks making up for 9 days of pure hell. Now I did lose a lot of sleep during this whole journey but nothing like I did over those first 9 days.

Fast forward because the actual cancer story will be a different post.

I had surgery January 9th, 2024. I woke up from that mastectomy to the nurse standing over me. By the way, these people are amazing and I was so taken care of. I could tell in her face that she really wanted to tell me something. She asked if I was awake enough to talk and I said yes. She said, “I am so glad that you listened to your body because surgery pathology said that they found a 2nd cancer in your breast that did not show up on any ultrasound. I had Invasive Ductal Carcinoma which was 1 of the 2 spots they biopsied. 1 was just a fatty deposit. The 2nd cancer was Invasive Lobular Carcinoma. It spirals or something like that so the Mammograms nor the Ultrasound picked it up. Had I not had the mastectomy I would still have cancer even after the radiation.

If you know anything about radiation it is really precise and would have just targeted the cancer they saw and my 2nd cancer would have been too far away to have any radiation work on it.

I could not believe this. I was so relieved, I cried, I was like, “are you serious right now?” I was so happy I made the decision to do what I did. My body told me for 9 days to do this, 9 days after I was assured my church membership was no more. This was a great day. Even though I didn’t have any breasts, I didn’t have cancer. My lymph’s were clear and I was considered stage 1 on both of them and I didn’t need radiation or chemo.

Now this physical healing journey was not fun at all but I was able to heal emotionally a lot during this. There was some hiccups later with the reconstruction but what started to go away, and quickly, was my guilt. I knew I had done the right thing. I was not no longer under the thumb of someone else’s doctrine trying to rule my whole life. What I eat, drink, wear and every aspect. I no longer feel like I am being tested 100% of my life. Like, my God has let up and lets me live and I can do that without fear or guilt for the choices I make.

I never want to be in a relationship again with anyone or anything that is going to make me feel like I am not good enough. I am not giving my earnings or my time to people that don’t care about me. When these religions (corporations) become accountable for all the negative things they do to their people, the world will be a better place.

I feel bad for those that think I am going to be lower them then in heaven because I denounced my church. They are exactly where I was before 2023. It is such a hard thing to do when you have to deconstruct. It is still hard some days because there are things that will sneak up. But now I can handle those emotions a lot better because deep down I know that I am OK.

I have had that “Holy Spirit” talk to me so many times. I listen to that voice and that gut feeling. It has steered me right just like it did before.

If all my old doctrine were true I wouldn’t have any of this and quite frankly I would be dead form Cancer 3.0

Live you life. Don’t be angry at people that believe different than you. This is how hate and wars start. Love people for what they want to be. You don’t have to be friends with everyone but you don’t have to ostracize them for not being you. Be different religions. Be part of no religion. Be different in politics. Be different in how you want to live. Talk without pointing fingers. Don’t judge and let people live their truth. Life is way to freaking short to be angry and scared all the time.

I truly believe that we are not supposed to be living on this earth in fear of the afterlife. What is the point if that is where all our energy goes?