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Mormon Stories Podcast

704: Kim Sandberg Turner Pt. 4 - Creating and co-leading WOCA

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 5.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2017

⏱️ 56 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kim Sandberg Turner is the founder of Women of a Certain Age (WOCA) - a network of support groups for 40+ post-Mormon women.  In this four part episode, Kim discusses:

  • Part 1: Her years growing up as a faithful Mormon in Salt Lake City, meeting and marrying Terry (her childhood sweetheart and husband of 42 years), and the many years her family lived in Bolivia as devout Mormons (Terry serving as a Mormon bishop twice, and Kim in multiple Relief Society Presidencies).
  • Part 2: How Kim and Terry's Mormon faith began to unravel as their son Josh came out to them as gay, and as they began studying LDS church history in depth.
  • Part 3: Kim discusses how she and Terry navigated their faith transition as parents and grandparents, exploring topics such as how they dealt with their Draper ward once they decided to leave the church, how they have handled parenting and grandparenting through a faith transition, what they do and don't believe today, and the importance of community in their transition.
  • Part 4: Kim shares the story of how she founded WOCA, how WOCA operates, and what WOCA means to her and to the other WOCA women.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

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0:07.0

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0:19.0

All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you.

0:29.0

Thanks for your support.

0:31.0

I remember, see, when I was one of the things I was I was rescued by were the feminist, warm and, uh,

1:00.0

women at Girls Camp and, um, I'll forever be indebted to them because they, they gave me my language. They, they made, it helped me make sense of things and at this time, you know, in, in the group, most of them were all active members of the church.

1:19.0

I think, I think most of them still are, a lot of them have, have left or changed or going through transitions but they were just this, this marvelous group of women that allowed me, gave me a soft place to land that I could, because with them, I could say anything I wanted and, and, and do anything I wanted and, and I was schooled by them and I will forever be grateful to them for the, um, I don't know just what they, what they get.

1:48.0

I was just what they, what they gave me back when it, what, when it could have been a very lonely difficult time because I had them and I didn't have them that often.

1:58.0

This is like once a year type thing but then just the friendships that continued, you know, through them and I've, I've met wonderful people on the journey too because the other thing was is I, so I wanted to talk to you.

2:08.0

I wanted to, I wanted to talk to the people that were telling the stories or saying the things because I wanted to look in their eyes, I wanted to hear what they had to say.

2:16.0

And so that's why I put myself out there to meet people and to talk to people and get to know people. I wanted to talk to Jeremy Rundles and I, and I got to and I, I wanted to talk to people that were saying, Grant Palmer, I wanted to talk to these people and, and see them and, and see, you know, I didn't want to just take everything that was on paper or whatever.

2:37.0

So that, that has been an incredible journey and an incredible gift to meet people like you. Yeah.

2:48.0

And so that led you to feel like community was important?

2:52.0

Well, yeah, community was important and then I was also realizing as I was getting older, even when I was in the church, I was, you know, ageism is alive and well with women and especially in the church when a woman becomes

3:05.0

a pastor, childbearing years and things like that, you know, she has rarely little to look forward to as far as any leadership or any kind of roles that she plays, you know, and stuff that way.

3:17.0

And whereas men get to look forward to becoming bishops and stick presidents and high counselors and mission presidents and seventies and their life still continues in the church.

3:27.0

And we seem to be the ones that sit by holding our purses and listening to through our, you know, our spouses which, you know, that's okay too.

3:36.0

If it's a choice that you want to, if that's what you want to do, I think that's fine.

3:39.0

But so I was seeing, seeing this was an unserved segment of the population and in the community and both in the community and in the church.

3:52.0

And I kept saying to the feminists, I say, okay, you guys, we need to pay attention to your, your matrix and, and, and, and, and, do I want to call me the matrix of the feminist girls and I'm the matrix.

4:05.0

And, and, but, you know, we, we get that, but they're not get, I now I've come to the conclusion is they're not going to know what that's like until they are matrix themselves.

4:13.0

Because you can try to explain it, what it like, what it feels like to be older and to a young person, I don't know where they put it or how they even get it.

...

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