Hello and welcome to Not So Mali Mormon podcast Minisodes. I'm Katie. Thanks for being here. Today's email comes from Amanda.

Hey girls, my name is Amanda and my pronouns are they, them, and I wanted to share my story with you about being non-binary and a gender. I don't

identify with any gender and queer while growing up in and leaving the church. I'm hoping to reach

out to other LGBTQ people who are either exmo or questioning, so maybe if they feel the same

things I felt they could understand something about themselves.

My dad's family has been in the church since it was founded, and my mom's family converted when she was in her teens while she was living in southern Brazil.

They met in Sao Paulo as missionaries, and my mom moved to the U.S. to marry my dad without knowing any English and only after a few months of knowing each other and sending each other letters while my mom finished her mission.

Growing up, my whole life revolved around the church, but I knew from a young age that something about me was different.

I always thought it was because I was opinionated and loud,

or that I went out of my way to ask questions, but in hindsight, I'm pretty sure it was because

I was having gender dysphoria, and I was having confusing thoughts about women that I didn't

understand. I remember looking at myself in the mirror, or listening to all the adults telling me I was supposed to be a certain way as an assigned female at birth, and just knowing that it didn't feel right, but not knowing why or how.

I never wanted to have kids, even as a 15-year-old, or be this typical housewife, stereotypical housewife they told me to be.

I also knew I didn't like Mormonism as a religion when I was 12 or 13, and I told my mom I wanted to try Wicca, which went very badly.

So from age 13 to 18, I just kept my head down and tried being the perfect Mormon girl they wanted me to be.

And they loved it, but I was so depressed and dissociated from my body and myself that I barely remember sixth grade to my senior year.

And I had this painful ache that was constantly in my chest and stomach of just misery 24-7.

I prayed a lot for Celestial Jesus to make it stop and just cried myself into exhaustion.

I told myself that was Jesus giving me relief, which was complete bullshit.

I had no idea what was happening to me and no one around me knew how to help or they wanted to ignore it.

And then I moved to BYU and it got worse because I was on my own and had no idea how to function in the real world.

I forced myself through three years of more pain from my dysphoria being completely ignored.

...