Hello everyone, it's John Delin. I am releasing this quick Mormon stories episode as a really important announcement.

It's April 2nd 2020. We're in the middle of the Corona virus COVID-19 global pandemic.

I'm working a lot from my private Mormon story studios here in holiday, Utah.

I've had a lot of time to reflect over the pandemic and I've had a creative impulse that I'm really excited about.

I just wanted to announce it. What I'd like to do is announce a new project under the Mormon Stories podcast banner called the Thriving After Mormonism project.

And here's what it is. It's basically a project where we want to profile on the Mormon Stories podcast page post Mormons and progressive Mormons who are thriving in their lives.

Now, we already do that in the form of interviews, long form interviews. We've been doing that for a long time.

But there's a couple opportunities here. Number one is there's a lot of people out there who don't have time to listen to six or into our interview that want or need support.

There's a lot of people that just want to read kind of the distilled sort of aggregate perspectives on a faith crisis.

There's also a lot of people that I don't always have time to interview in the short term. A huge backlog of great inspiring people whose stories need to be told.

But, you know, you know, counter doesn't immediately permit. And so this Thriving On Mormonism project is going to let hopefully dozens of you, if not hundreds of you, share your stories on Mormon Stories podcast.

The target audience for this project, I guess primarily is, is people who are doubting or questioning Mormonism and or have lost their faith in Mormonism but are super afraid to pursue their questions or their doubts or to leave Orthodox Mormonism or Mormonism altogether.

We want this project to let those people know that they're not crazy, that they're not alone, that they shouldn't be afraid to doubt or question Orthodox Mormonism and that most importantly they can find healing and growth beyond Orthodox Mormonism or beyond Mormonism altogether.

There are a couple, there's some secondary purposes as well. This allows those of you who are interested to sort of stand in your truth, to bury your testimony to the world of where you stand in terms of thriving after Mormonism. It's meant to be positive, it's meant to be uplifting.

The purpose is not to downgrade or criticize the church. It's simply to shine a light and let people know that there are tens or hundreds of thousands of us out there who are thriving after losing our faith in Orthodox Mormonism.

So, who am I looking for? A hundred post-mormons or progressive Mormons who will answer 20 questions that I've put together. It needs to be people that would consider themselves as thriving. Now that doesn't mean their flawless or perfect living a perfect life. In fact, part of thriving beyond Mormonism is to acknowledge the messiness of life and the imperfections of life and to come to accept them.

So, I'm not looking for perfect people, I'm looking for people who just feel like they're happier or healthier than they were when they were in the church. That's the only criteria.

So, what I've done is I've put together 20 questions that each person reflects upon and answers in written form. You can go to mormastories.org and find the thriving after Mormonism project post, mixed in there with all the other podcasts.

This will be its own episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. And what you'll do is you'll answer, you'll reflect upon and answer these 20 questions. Questions like, you know, what parts of Mormonism were most useful to you? What doctrinal or theological parts of Mormonism were most important to you? What spiritual experiences did you have as a Mormon?

How did you lose your faith in Mormonism? What parts of Mormonism were harmful to you? How do you now explain the spiritual experiences that you had as an Orthodox Mormon? What was transitioning out of Mormonism like for you? What was most painful about it? What was most healing about it? What was most joyful about it?

In what ways did church leaders help the transition? In what ways did church leaders or members hurt you in your transition? What resources were most helpful in your transition? What mistakes did you make in your transition? How has your transition affected your family relationships, your friendships, your job, your neighborhood relationships, your social life?

And other questions like, what beliefs have you retained after your faith crisis? What ways of your beliefs or behaviors changed? What aspects of your life are better and what's still missing and then what final advice would you give folks who are transitioning?

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