30 days and 2 years

30 Days.

Here we are, 30 straight (not sober) days of blogging! Woot. Thanks for the challenge Daniel... I have gained a lot from it and only cursed your name a few times, swear.

From the looks of things you all want me to chill and meditate for the next month ( I did not in anyway influence this outcome ;) with a dead tie on the 30 day photo thing BUT I did attempt the 365 day photo challenge a few months ago on FB and got about 75 days into it so I think I'll try that one a bit later,  maybe in conjunction with a photogenic 30-day challenge, like the "make something everyday" or "clean something everyday" challenges, for proof.

2 Years.

September is my birth month and it also now happens to mark the years of my life outside of the Mormon religion. I stopped paying a tenth of my income to CoJCoLDS (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) in September of 2009. I had my emotional/mental rift with the church about 6 months before that but the very tangible monetary factor halted in 09/09.

I was going to try and make a break tomorrow and neatly shovel all of my ex-Mormon baggage into a neat little pile and decorate it with flowers etc for you to peruse at your leisure but otherwise ignore it myself. I have decided against this now. I am not healed. I am not new and sparkly and whole and transformed. I have worked through A LOT of shit over the last 2 (and a half) years but there is plenty more to go. I don't think it would be wise to try and hide from it. I have this urge to tuck it under the rug because it would make a bunch of OTHER people a lot more comfortable.

There is also this urge to gloss over the REALLY dark stuff and dress it all up to look presentable to the believing community so that they (if they are still lurking) would see how brilliant it is to be out of the church and may even venture out for themselves. Whilst I am so glad that I am out and I will never ever go back... life goes on and it is not always easy.

My partner (Rockstar) and I have each been on HUGE personal journeys this year and our relationship has scraped through by the skin of its bloody teeth. I mean it. That was fucking rough man.

But here we are on some kind of high again and I can't help but feel very optimistic about the latest hurdles we have overcome because they were sooooooo huge (and they're not all entirely surmounted yet) and there is a very real sense (at least on my part) of victory atop a panoramic mountain; flag in hand; bright sun smiling back at me.

Thanks for coming along for the ride. I think I can safely guarantee you another year of drunken posts and unwanted revelations. 2012 looks set to rock the house! Plenty of 'end of days' action to be sure... Big sloppy Irish kisses to you and yours.

Love and chest bumps,
Bikinimaureen.

Moving On

We're at the butt end now of the September 30-day blog challenge and I am really happy with the results so far. I have blogged about all kinds of stuff that I otherwise wouldn't have bothered to. There have been new people commenting. I have discovered new blogs thanks to other people taking on the 30-day blog challenge.

I have also thought a lot about where I would like this blog to go. I think that once September is up I am going to change the look a bit and start blogging about my new 30-day challenge. I'd like to largely leave the ex-Mormon element of my blog behind. I have been blogging about my de-conversion for 2 years now and I would like to refocus. I am going to have links to the old stuff still readily available and I am still going to talk about whatever comes to mind but I would like to try something new.

So, I need your help.

What should I choose for my next 30-day challenge?

• 30-minute houseclean (not counting dishes, laundry etc i.e. everyday stuff) 
• A photo a day
• No chocolate!
• A letter a day
• No face-book 
• Abstain from alcohol
• 2x 15 min Meditation per day. (Or one 30 min)
• Make something every day (crafty)
• Push-up challenge (30 push-ups a day) 
• Kiss challenge 

I want you to vote! If you have more ideas please let me know. I plan to keep this going; once I've finished one I'll move onto the next. Check out the poll in the top right hand corner of this blog. 

Encounters

I've bumped into just a small handful of Mormons since leaving the church. The Mormon population in Perth, Western Australia is pretty negligible so I can get around without too many unpleasant reminders.

I had one today but I think I will describe another encounter first. It was probably about a year ago. I was late night shopping with a friend when someone grabbed by arm and I was spun around a little by the force of it. I found myself face to face with the Relief Society President (I was one of her counsellors when I left). We each asked and answered those boring greetings and questions "Hello" and "how are you"... quickly followed by "have a nice night" and "good-bye". At the time I had found the encounter to be odd and a little unnecessary. I mean, if she had not grabbed my arm I would have walked right past her and never noticed. The paranoid me thought that maybe she was trying to confront me and make me face her. The more grounded me considered that she had been brave and caring in reaching out. She had seemed a little nervous and I think that I can safely say now that I think this was a positive encounter.

Especially when compared to the next two encounters.

The next one was at the shopping centre again. My daughter was browsing through purses when a member from our old Ward entered the store with a mobile phone to her ear and her face angled away from me. She went straight up to the service counter, took the phone away from her ear and started talking to the sales assistant. Okay, so paranoid me thought this was quite hilarious. It really did look like an elaborate (and woefully unsuccessful) attempt to go unnoticed. We had been browsing there for a while and I figured that this woman had decided she couldn't wait any longer and had to get into the store. Whatever.

Today I arrived at the High School I was going to teach at and the Relief Co-ordinator was showing me around the school. He went up to the ladies at the Library counter to have a little natter and then I realised that one of them was a member from my old Ward. This time I said with a smile "Hey, I know you! Hello _____ ". And she looked at me with expressionless eyes, said nothing and then looked away. LAME!

I'm starting to think that my old Ward really isn't that fond of me. I need a smart remark for next time, anyone got one?

Sunday Funday

Midnight

grrrrrrreen

We sleep in

We venture out to the windy town of Fremantle

Submarines

The Maritime Museum

Barnacles

Trinkets

The Shipwreck Galleries

Wet and wild

Dinner with a view (and cocktails)

Love Bombs in memory of Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith Jr. died on June 27, 1844.

I don't celebrate his death but I hear that in Utah (and other parts of the U.S.A.) June 27th is a day where it is hard to escape constant messages praising the man. Over here in Australia I am relatively sheltered from such messages but facebook does increase that phenomenon. This year a facebook event has been created encouraging ex-Mormons (and anyone else who would like to get involved) to Love Bomb facebook today with testimonies, quotes, videos and links sharing the truth about Mormon history.

The creator of this event states... "PLEASE do all of this with Love in your heart, and in appreciation that someone once took the time to share the truth with us, enabling us to now live Joyous, peaceful, and authentic lives."


Living in Australia also means that I get to be amongst the first share these posts. My first one was a link to an "I am an Ex-Mormon" Video  . Accompanying this video I wrote ... 


"RIP Joseph Smith Jr. (Died June 27, 1844) Even though I am very very mad at you I think maybe you were a bit screwed in the head and so I am trying to forgive you. Although I doubt there is a life after this one I do know that there is life after Mormonism ♥


...and now I realise how far I have come. I used to openly hate the man. I called him "bastard, scoundrel, villain, rogue, rascal, snake, jerk, swine, cad, knave.... " I regularly told him to "Fuck off" and so it was a welcome discovery today when I typed out RIP in front of his name... and actually meant it. Then I watched the youtube link of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing 'Praise to the Man' whilst doing some research for this post. Yes, some of the lyrics pissed me off but I felt moved by the music and even got a little teary. I think that I felt sad for the many people who have been hurt by Mormonism as well as thoughtful about the goodness that can spring from just about anywhere, even from a false prophet. I like the idea that I can enjoy listening to this song whilst disagreeing with the man and the religion. Progress? I think so. The people singing the song believe in Joseph as a prophet and they try to live good lives and to honour the good man that they think he was. Now, I may be on the path to forgiving the man but the things that he did and the people that he hurt are recorded in history and I will not forget their pain. 


A couple of things about that 'Praise to the Man' youtube video (if you decide to watch it or if you already know it). The line - "Praise to his mem'ry, he died as a martyr;" gets the goat of ex-Mo's not so much because he had a gun with him, not so much because he shot it into the mob but because he had practised polygamy, kept it a secret (even from the husbands of women he married) and then burned down a printing press that dared to write about the truth of Mormon polygamy. This is why he found himself in prison!!! Whilst he did not deserve to be killed by a mob he was no saint and the church absolutely white-washes the story. As a child I heard and read the Mormon version of events many times. I was lead to believe that he was unarmed and that he was in jail because the law of the 'Wild Frontier' deemed his religion to be a nuisance, i.e. they were being discriminated against. AND I was taught that he was shot inside the jail-room and that the force of the bullet forced him out of the window where he fell to his death. In fact he had tried to jump out of the window to escape and was shot trying to do so. Again, still a sad story and I pity him but not the version of events that I was taught in Sunday School. 


Another line - "Earth must atone for the blood of that man". Can anyone say 'Holy War'? Seriously don't go around saying shit like that! Someone might actually take you seriously and either start a Holy War on your behalf or against you. Either way I think the less people keen to throw us into some kind of thermo-nuclear armageddon the better!

Finally, did you see that final painting of Joseph Smith there in the video? Um, whilst I think Joseph might like this image of himself I don't think it is very realistic and uh, it kind of looks like the artist! Check out the jaw line, the artist seriously just painted a picture of Joseph Smith in his own likeness!

Aaaaaaanyhooo, I think that the idea behind this facebook event is a good one. Reading sickly sweet messages about a man who has had a negative impact on your life kinda tends to leave bile in your mouth so it helps to be able to respond with a Love Bomb. Check out LAM (Life After Mormonism) or the iamanexmormon website and rest assured that you are not alone!

Psychological Dysfunction

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For anyone who has wondered why I have been doing mental gymnastics for the last year or so.

Read me

That's a fucking big list when you put it all together!

You can read the article this list came from here, also very helpful for ex-mos.

Thanks Cognitive Dissenter for posting the link over at Smoking Joe's new blog Moroni Blows.

Hello

So I tried to deal with my deconversion without a blog but my dear husband can't cope with being my main listening ear ALL of the time so I would like to chat to you dear cyber-space and see if that feels better. For now that is all I have to say. Just Hello, it's nice too meet you and I look forward to a long and fruitful friendship.