Baptized in Utah to Fit In! - Gabrielle Zelaya | Ep. 2044
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.6 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 28 July 2025
⏱️ 137 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Join us today for a unique Mormon Stories episode! Gabriella Zelaya shares her story of growing up amidst Mormon culture in Farmington, Utah as a non-member. Surrounded by an LDS-dominated community and extended family, Gabby navigated social pressure, exclusion, and judgment by the members that surrounded her.
From feeling like an outsider in school to eventually converting to Mormonism as a teenager for a sense of belonging, Gabby opens up about the emotional toll of purity culture, “love bombing,” and the struggle to find self-worth. She recounts her journey through mental health challenges, her eventual disaffection from the Church, and the healing work she’s done to break cycles of shame and rebuild her life on her own terms.
Topics Include:
-Growing up non-Mormon in a Mormon world
-Conversion for community and survival
-Love bombing and disillusionment
-Breaking free and healing from trauma
Join us for this raw and inspiring conversation.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone and welcome to another issue of Mormon stories podcast. I'm your host, |
| 0:03.0 | John DeLinn. It is June 17th, 2025. Today we're going to be answering the question, |
| 0:09.2 | what's it like to be raised as a non-Morman kid and teen in Utah? And I would say in one of the |
| 0:16.4 | most heavily Mormon areas of Utah. Today it's going to be the Farmington Davis area. And then |
| 0:24.3 | what happens when life circumstances get you to the point where you feel like the best thing |
| 0:31.0 | for your life might be to convert to the Mormon church? And then what happens in the aftermath? And there's sort of a theme |
| 0:38.5 | of converting to Mormonism, at least in part under social pressure. And so that's what we're |
| 0:46.2 | going to be covering today. And we're super excited to have with this Gabby Zelaya. Hey Gabby. |
| 0:52.1 | Hi. Thanks for being willing to tell us your Mormon story. This is an |
| 0:56.3 | important one. Of course. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you. And of course we have with us today, |
| 1:02.8 | I'm so grateful to have Margie, Dylan, as co-host. Hey, Margie. Hi. Hello there. So does |
| 1:10.3 | there anything else I missed as sort of the teasers for |
| 1:13.0 | for your interview, Gabby? I think that's right. Yeah. That sums it up. And there will be some |
| 1:18.6 | maybe some, you know, intense mental health themes that we should just let people know, |
| 1:26.3 | maybe even some self-harm or even possibly |
| 1:28.8 | some suicidal ideation discussion. So just be warned, be thoughtful about your own self-care |
| 1:35.1 | and about the care of anyone who might be listening or viewing this episode. Yeah? Yep. |
| 1:41.2 | All right. And I'll just say people write me all the time saying, can you please give voice to the experience |
| 1:49.5 | of being a non-Morman in Utah? |
| 1:53.8 | So I know there's a lot of audience members that are really grateful that you're helping |
| 1:58.3 | give voice to that experience. |
| 1:59.8 | Oh, great. I'm so glad that I could come tell my story and hopefully just bring some perspective to that |
... |
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