975: Jill and Katie Searle - Responding to Tragedy with Grace and Resilience Pt. 2
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 7 September 2018
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jill Searle's story includes:
*Being raised LDS and serving a mission.
*Entering into a mixed-orientation marriage as a lesbian woman.
*Having several children.
*Leaving the church, and finding a committed, long term partner (they were married 5 different times...incredible story).
*Allowing and even supporting her children to remain active/faithful LDS as a lesbian, ex-Mormon woman, all while the church was waging war on committed LGBT relationships.
Katie Searle's story includes:
*Being raised Mormon by an orthodox Mormon father and step-mother, and two lesbian ex-Mormon mothers.
*Marrying her husband, Nathan Williams.
*Co-founding with Nathan a globally successful magazine, Kinfolk.
*Facing the excruciating decision to terminate a pregnancy at 6 months.
*Dealing with the discovery that her husband, Nathan, is gay, while pregnant with their second child.
*Deciding with Nathan to end the marriage.
*Coping with a religious faith crisis through all this.
*Rebuilding a life and raising her daughter, Vi, as an ex-Mormon single mother.
This is an amazing story of responding to tragedy with grace and resilience.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Music |
| 0:22.0 | Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories Foundation and relies solely upon |
| 0:26.0 | the support of people like you, its listeners. To help keep the podcast alive or to become |
| 0:31.0 | a member of the community, please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org |
| 0:36.0 | and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under Support. All contributions to |
| 0:42.0 | Mormon Stories are completely taxed, deductible in the United States and go towards producing the |
| 0:46.0 | podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. |
| 0:51.0 | Thanks for your support. |
| 1:21.0 | Thank you. |
| 1:27.0 | Hello, everyone and welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John D'Linn. |
| 1:33.0 | We are now doing part two of our interview with Jill and Katie Surle. Last episode we began by talking to Jill Surle |
| 1:43.0 | who had very much a non-traditional Mormon upbringing in Ogden, knowing that she was gay, experienced a lot of sexual abuse as a child that |
| 1:53.0 | went untreated. |
| 1:55.0 | Going on a mission, marrying a man, being in a mixed orientation marriage, having that in all work out, getting divorced, |
| 2:03.0 | finding the love of her life, her kindred spirit and the five marriages that she had to have because of the lack of marriage equality. |
| 2:13.0 | But how she and her ex-husband were able to find a way to still co-parent their children. |
| 2:23.0 | And in the end of the story, culminated with Jill's excommunication, which happened twice. |
| 2:29.0 | Five marriages, two excommunications. And it's a great story. So if you didn't get a chance to listen, please do. |
| 2:35.0 | Now we're going to switch to Katie Surle. And she's lovely and delightful and she's got a really fascinating story of her own. |
| 2:43.0 | It's also epic. So Katie, welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast. |
| 2:49.0 | Thank you. |
| 2:50.0 | So not a normal Mormon upbringing. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dr. John Dehlin, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Dr. John Dehlin and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.