719: Heidi and Josh Packard’s Mormon Transition Pt. 3
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2017
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
SUPER honored/proud to release my latest interview with Heidi Nielson Packard and Dr. Josh Packard. This powerful, informative, and in-depth interview covers:
- Heidi and Josh’s very orthodox Mormon upbringing and early years as Mormons. For those interested, Heidi’s brother is Christian Nielson, who is married to Stephanie Nielson of the NieNie Dialogues blog (sister to Courtney Clark Kendrick or CJane)
- Their faith crisis involving science and LDS history (reading Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling), which resulted in Josh asking to be released from the bishopric,
- How Heidi and Josh found value in secular humanism as a way to raise their children after Mormonism,
- How the military community has helped to meet there social needs after leaving Mormonism, and
- How they overcame early “mistakes” in communicating with believing family, resulting in more loving, respectful relationships with believing family members today.
Transcript
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| 0:37.0 | Be kindly light amid the encircling gluing, leave thou me on, the night is dark and |
| 0:49.1 | light. All right, all right. Good so like so that's just like full full unraveling |
| 0:55.9 | them. Yeah, pretty much. And then he told our kids at different times. How did he tell |
| 1:04.7 | them? Did you guys get on the same page before he did that? I told the kids after. No, |
| 1:10.9 | this was pretty soon. Like, things were still pretty tense between the high and the |
| 1:13.9 | couple weeks. Yeah, the kids, the kids, especially the older ones, could pick up on the |
| 1:18.5 | attention. So I got, I got most of the kids together. One of our kids was at gymnastics or |
| 1:24.8 | something. So I told three of our four kids in my bedroom, just sat them down. I told |
| 1:29.4 | them, and our oldest Grace will mention Grace. Yeah. Grace thought I was kidding. She's like, |
| 1:34.1 | what? No, you're just kidding, right? You're kidding. It's a joke. And, you know, I finally |
| 1:39.7 | convinced her it wasn't a joke. And she had been the most, I guess, indoctrinated in the |
| 1:45.8 | church. But she pushed back. She just started young women's. That was her first time going |
| 1:50.8 | to girls camp. That year, I think, or maybe that happened later. Anyway, so she, yeah, she |
| 1:57.7 | she was 12. So she had just kind of been the most invested. Yeah. So she struggled a little |
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