Moving Beyond Our Own Experiences: our liberation is intertwined

When I left Mormonism my reality and identity shattered. I was born and raised Utah-Mormon in “Utah’s Dixie.” So, Mormonism held my friend-group, my mentors, my politics, my cosmology, my morals, my sense of history, my family, my childhood—it was everything and nearly everyone I knew.
 
This feeling of not knowing who I am or want to be was terrifying. Yet, in its own way liberating. Mormonism (and Whiteness) requires us to cling—hold to the iron rod and walk the straight and narrow. 
 
“Nephi taught that by clinging to the word of god we would not lose our way in darkness”
- Mormon Apostle Joseph B Wirthlin

“The truth you cling to makes you unable to hear anything new”
​- Buddhist Monk Pema Chödrön
 
Beyond being my own history, Mormonism is an exceptional microcosm of the U.S. settler-project. The Book of Mormon encapsulated 19th c. settler conspiracy theories about the history of this land and its Indigenous Peoples and cultures.
 
The Mormon Church followed the “frontier” as the U.S. manifested its genocidal destiny. They followed the U.S. as it expanded into empire, from Hawaii to so-called Latin America and beyond. Soldiers, followed by missionaries, followed by capitalists. Learning the history of Mormonism helps me learn the history of this empire. 
 
We can leave a religion and not leave an ideology. We can let go of “the word of God” and still be “unable to hear anything new.” 
 
Yet I also believe that if you fully disassimilate from Mormonism you’ve developed skills that can make disassimilating from the U.S. settler-colonial-imperial project less life-shattering.
 
I remember a podcast talking about how disassimilating from white-supremacy can be pleasurable. Whiteness and Co. ask us to be less than who we are, be limited, cling, walk the straight and narrow. This is exhausting. Letting go of that need for control and dominance and perfection and innocence and purity can be liberating. 

​But to do this we must look beyond our own experience. If you’ve been harmed by this Church as a white-woman, a gay white-man, just imagine how damaging it is for BIPOC women and queers, or any Black or Indigenous person to n their proximity. We must move beyond our own. It is the only way to liberation.