Life On The Outside

Hello everyone. My name is Tom.

I come from a multi-generational Latter-Day Saint (LDS or ‘Mormon’) family, with two brothers and a sister, in addition to my two parents who have been married for thirty-eight years. My upbringing was fairly standard for those of us born into the Church: I attended church each Sunday, was baptized when I was eight years old, received the Aaronic Priesthood when I was twelve, attended early-morning seminary classes before high school each day, and enjoyed the youth social events put on by the Church. I currently have many strong ties to Mormonism, since nearly all of my immediate and extended family, and close friends, are active members of the Church.

After I graduated from High School, my friends all started to prepare and leave on their missions. This is when I took my first step outside of the Mormon framework; I told my family I wasn’t going to go on a mission. This was the hardest thing I had ever had to do. I had also just started dating my future wife, who wasn’t Mormon and never intended to be. Six years later, I married my wife in a civil ceremony, officiated by my childhood Bishop-turned-Stake-President. My attendance to Church was sporadic prior to our wedding, and then non-existant afterward. I grew disillusioned and discussed with the Church’s superficial ‘friendships’ and its increasingly narrow-minded teachings. It’s been 10 years of being ‘less-active’. Over the last 4 months, I have been writing an essay entitled, “My Apostasy From The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints“, which contains a detailed analysis of how my values and beliefs conflict with those of the Church. It also contains much of the research I have done on the Church up to this point. Today, I gave this essay to my close family & friends. As I await their responses, I realize that I’m now starting a new life as an ex-Mormon.

I have created this blog as a way for me to share my experience, opinions, and beliefs of life after Mormonism, as I have found that others have helped me in this way. I hope to be able to further explore my religious, political, and societal views, and share them with you. I encourage questions, comments, and challenges to anything I write here. It is my opinion that we should all find ourselves in that uneasy state-of-mind, where we challenge our core beliefs, on a much more frequent basis, as this is when we truly learn.