When Your Sister Leaves the Mormon Church - Meggan & Julie O'Neal | Ep. 2144
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2026
⏱️ 224 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In today's episode, sisters Meggan and Julie share what it was like growing up in a family of 14 children in a very strict Mormon household. They describe a home built around structure, obedience, and high expectations: early morning scripture study, strict rules, limited privacy, and constant pressure to represent the “ideal” Mormon family.
They each re-tell their own experiences growing up in this environment, and discuss why they found their relationship fractured for many years—then reveal how they re-kindled their relationship. They also each discuss their individual faith journeys and where they stand with their beliefs today.
Topics/themes include:
-Family dynamics
-Authority and control in the home
-Modesty and purity culture
-Perfectionism, shame and worthiness
-Faith transitions
Meggan is also the host of her own post-Mormon channel, Generally Unquotable, which can be found here.
This episode is a beautiful example of bridge building and unconditional love, and we are very grateful to Meggan and Julie for sharing their story with us.
___________________
At Mormon Stories we explore, celebrate, and challenge Mormon culture through in-depth stories told by members and former members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as scholars, authors, LDS apologists, and other professionals.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John DeLinn. It is April 27th, |
| 0:06.3 | 2026. And today we have one of my favorite types of Mormon stories interviews. We're interviewing |
| 0:13.3 | sisters. We're interviewing Megan. Hey, Megan. Oh, hi. And Julie. Hey, Julie. Hey. They're the O'Neill sisters. |
| 0:21.9 | They were raised in Utah, and we're going to be talking about family dynamics in a Mormon context, |
| 0:27.7 | and specifically what happens when one, let's just say, sibling in a Mormon family, |
| 0:33.1 | leaves their family system early. |
| 0:37.0 | And then it's many, many years until a second sibling leaves. |
| 0:42.3 | And, you know, what's it like to be kind of the black sheep of your Mormon family for leaving the church? |
| 0:48.3 | What's it like to experience being the black sheep? |
| 0:51.3 | What's it like to be a believing sibling now, identifying a beloved |
| 0:56.1 | sibling now as a black sheep? And then how can reconciliation happen between siblings later on? |
| 1:05.2 | In other words, how to have hope that if a family relationship is difficult now, how to have hope that things can get better. |
| 1:13.9 | That's what today's episode is about as an overview from my perspective. |
| 1:18.6 | We have Margie here, my co-host. Hey, Margie. |
| 1:21.3 | Hello. |
| 1:22.2 | We have Margie here with this as well. |
| 1:24.0 | And some of you will recognize Megan's face because Megan is also coincidentally, |
| 1:31.4 | the host of a very popular, I want to say TikTok, but it's probably Instagram and YouTube as |
| 1:36.7 | well, channel called generally Unquortable. Is that right? Did I get that right? It's a long, |
| 1:43.4 | long name. Yeah. He did. And Megan, we've had lots of people request that I interview you over the years. And you and I talked a long time about when the right time was, and I think we hit it. |
| 1:56.5 | Yeah. I think so. We had to wait until we were inspired to get in here, two years later. |
| 2:03.8 | Yeah, and it was really fun at the recent Thrive St. George to meet Julie. |
... |
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