Until two years ago, I have followed the typical Mormon girl track.

I grew up in a highly populated Mormon city, the fifth of seven children.

Conservative family, my dad was always a ward or steak clerk of some kind and is a high

councilman now, I think.

And I loved the gospel completely.

I'm currently at BYU, and I was married at 19, and I have a two-year-old at age 23.

And I've been feeling off since I started taking religion classes at BYU.

But I couldn't figure out why.

Something about studying scriptures academically was making my connection to God worse.

That didn't make sense, though.

I had a distaste for, come follow me, lesson manuals, that I chalk up to mostly my

disdain for studying.

But I felt that way, especially when I was doing some website work for BYU Studies in

2018, uploading their weekly study guides to go with the manual.

I even met Stephen Harper, who edited saints.

It seems like a nice guy, but I don't know much about him.

In 2018, I married my husband, who I've been best friends with since we were teenagers.

And I got pregnant a year and a half later, unexpectedly.

And it was stupid hard.

I had to go to class vomiting for the full nine months.

My son was born right as the pandemic started, and BYU changed his remote learning flexibility

to allow for Zoom.

...