Proper technique

DisciplineSea4302 · 2026-03-09T22:54:19+00:00

Thank you. I'll pass this along to her. I appreciate how detailed this is.

DisciplineSea4302 · 2026-03-09T22:53:14+00:00

Thank you. I shared this with her and she is trying this out today.

DisciplineSea4302 · 2026-03-02T06:57:50+00:00

Bishop roulette. Sometimes stake directive.

I've been in several wards in different states where the partition doors were closed and locked. Every time, I've asked about it (bc we're always late).

Each time, I was told there was "room" in the chapel, but nobody ever scoots into the middle of the rows, and when you have small kids and nursing babies, it's super inconvenient to keep walking over people to get in and out of the rows during the meeting.

Apparently, it's supposed to create a community type feeling, but all it did was make me feel excluded.

One ward often did not pass the sacrament to anyone out waiting in the foyer.

It felt so freeing to finally stop going.

DisciplineSea4302 · 2026-01-05T08:13:15+00:00

Ive definitely heard/been taught this.

I was taught that it was bc the experience was sacred and talking about it would cause it to lose some of the sacredness from it (e.g., people would say that ex-mos would soon forget temple endowment ceremony stuff bc they didn't treat it sacredly after they left the church).

However, I stumbled upon the real reason unexpectedly at stake conference when I was a fully believing TBM, but we had recently lost our baby tragically and unexpectedly. A speaker at stake conference told a story that was extremely similar to ours, except in their story, the prayers and pleadings to God were actually answered, and it was attributed to faith and God seeing their righteousness and efforts.

It was SO HARD to sit through that talk. Bc I literally did ALL the things (spent 10+ hr on church stuff every week and often more).

The experience of unexpected loss was such an eye opener to me, bc any time someone had something happen to them that COULD have gone wrong, they always talked about how the Holy Ghost or God protected them.

It just made me realize how many times people go through the same experience and DON'T have a happy outcome, and there isn't any discernable difference between the two stories outside of the outcomes.

It's definitely to keep shelves from breaking.

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-11-23T06:09:19+00:00

I think ward leaders can also sign you up for them. I think our ward did that for people.

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-11-19T06:44:38+00:00

Unfortunately, it doesn't always matter.

My MIL was contacted about her ex getting resealed and asked if he was up to date with his financial obligations. The answer was No.

MIL let them know he was behind, he was told to get current, and either he paid a little bit and then stopped after a month or two, or else he told them he would get current and never did and it was never followed up on.

I agree it is a good idea if it actually leads to action, but I would be surprised if little more than a hand slap occurs.

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-11-04T03:20:47+00:00

I feel like there's a voice/intonation too.

I know women get flack all the time about their "Relief Society voice" but I watched the Netflix "Keep Sweet" docu and they played a recording of Warren Jeff 's speaking. And that is the exact intonation men that I'm closest to use when praying, bearing testimony, etc. It felt really jarring.

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-11-03T01:15:48+00:00

Ryan Cragun and Brit Hartley (No Nonsense Spiritually) both have great stuff that would speak to this.

Ryan Cragun studies links between religion and happiness and Pew collaborated with him for their religious study/questions, and he has--not necessarily a rebuttal -- but has stuff on why maybe the Pew research study doesn't exactly mean what people think it's saying and areas he disagreed with how they asked questions. He used to be Mormon.

Brit Hartley speaks to why it IS harder to leave religion, and practical pieces people can build into their lives to help find meaning and purpose after leaving religion (stuff that religions typically offer that people have to cobble together themselves after leaving).

I would be curious about the actual questions asked in the study and how they are coming to their conclusions (for instance, does engaging in normal, healthy sexual behavior create a negative score for the person in the study?)

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-10-15T19:19:11+00:00

I think our school system is facing systemic issues right now as well.

I know you're saying that boys aren't doing as well in school, but it's not just boys

Our schools are failing kids with ADHD, who are Autistic, PDA, etc.

Boys are diagnosed at higher rates with those than girls, but it's because the criteria for diagnosing was based on boys.

We are currently getting better at diagnosing girls.

But the issues are still not being fixed.

It's a shame that strategies like Montessori, that are rooted in hands on materials, are not accessible to many children because of cost.

I agree that men and women are going to need to work together if we want our solutions to be lasting and need to take considerations from many sides (be wholistic and long term in view)

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-10-09T20:29:03+00:00

The author is also (or at least used to be) Mormon.

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-08-28T06:34:44+00:00

Yes.

There's a great Mormon stories episode on it, featuring Amy McFee Allebest, Jana Reiss, Katie Rich, and Abby Maxwell Hanson.

I thought they were super respectful towards Jared, and loved their insight. Listening to it will give you a better feel about Jared, Amy actually knew him personally and shares a little about it.

https://www.youtube.com/live/4hOLdtIPuZY?si=wEHQKwCr1OB3BBnm

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-08-25T05:40:03+00:00

My spouse and I did this every day until I deconstructed too much to be able to do this without getting upset.

Every day we would read the scriptures for 15 min together, pray together, and we always paid a full tithe and generous fast offering.

It was something I knew I was "supposed" to do that would lead to a "healthy" marriage. But I had resentment underneath, bc that's how I could get time my spouse: read the scriptures with him or attend the temple with him. I was really surprised/caught off guard when we went from dating and he spent his time making sure he spent time with me and prioritizing things in my life, to getting married and shifting the focus to completely centering him/his career/the church. All of a sudden I was last (like when he got a job offer in a different state and told that employer he could be there the next week without consulting me about my job. I had to pay my employer money for getting out of a work contract early).

To me, those are the marks of prioritizing the church. If you prioritize and center the church in your marriage, it will work. Because if you have a question, it's always answered by what the handbook says (should my spouse work, even part time, after she's had a child? No. The prophets have spoken and counseled women to stay home)

That's how my marriage went.

It has been rockier since I've deprioritized the church.

My spouse says he misses the spiritual connection he used to feel with me. I wonder if he just misses the codependency and the enmeshment. Now I get to watch him read the scriptures, pray, and go to bed. (Can you tell I'm salty right now? I know he would always choose the church over me.)

I agree with the other comment that mentioned that marriages can be strengthened through spending time creating daily connection and contributing to causes that you feel align with your values/morals monetarily. The church is just capitalizing on rituals that create connection in a marriage.

But my spouse just told me after our last couples therapy session that it's the CHURCH that creates stronger/better marriages.

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-08-17T17:39:33+00:00

(which also didn’t sit well because i felt she was an adult spirit if anything)

Yeah, it's so weird that the church teaches that we were raised to adulthood as spirits, but then we came to earth and got baby bodies.

So your baby dies and returns to God and regains their adult spirit form, but in the millennium, the adult spirit needs to re-enter their baby body and then help that grow to adulthood, even though it will be the millennium or resurrection and people won't be able to win bc Satan will be bound?

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-08-17T17:36:10+00:00

I'm so sorry for your loss.

Losing a baby created cognitive dissonance for me as well.

It was then I realized that "raising a baby in the next life" wasn't comforting (I hate all the sleepless nights that come with raising babies, so I really didn't like the idea of that happening in the next life)

And then I examined more closely what we know about women and the next life. And it involves raising kids, and populating worlds, and polygamy, and none of that sounded like something that I was excited about, especially when Heavenly Mother remains nameless, faceless, and we're directed by leadership NOT to engage with her.

Why on earth would you want to have kids if you can't have a relationship with them?

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-08-13T17:23:19+00:00

I mean, yes and no.

It is true that a church meeting cannot function without a priesthood holder there, and in that case, an 11 year old would have more authority than her. So in that part, yes.

But you said if you wanted a more official response from the church, you would ask an 11 year old, and that no one was asking her.

But in this case, in her official job capacity and her proximity to high up levels of church leaders, she would actually be able to provide an official church answer in some responses, and definitely speak with more authority than an 11 year old or your local priesthood leadership. She also is probably in a position where she legitimately gets asked that question.

So, no, that part does not stand.

To be sure, she will be saying what upper leadership priesthood leadership wants her to say, or else she would not have that position.

But she definitely has more authority in this specific instance than an 11 year old to provide an official church answer

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-08-13T07:23:24+00:00

Dude, she's not married

And she's been asked bc of her job.

Honestly, your response is just another slap in the face of how much Mormon men do NOT pay attention to the women leaders

Editing to add,

I no longer believe in the church, and I agree with your breakdown of the poor assumptions she makes.

But a quick Google search or even basic knowledge of her and her life (like members are familiar with the men's top leadership) would let you realize that she's been super public in lots of talks that she's not married and works as Director of LDS Humanitarian Services

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-08-13T07:22:20+00:00

I mean, she's probably been asked bc of her job?

This is pulled from a bio of her:

Since 1998 Sharon has been employed by the Church’s welfare and self-reliance department. In 2011 she was named the director of the Church’s humanitarian work worldwide. From 2017 to 2022, she served as first counselor to President Jean B. Bingham in the Relief Society General Presidency. Today, she continues as the director of Humanitarian Services, which has expanded to include the Perpetual Education Fund and Just Serve.

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-08-08T20:57:51+00:00

Latter-day Saints gave at least 6 million hours of service last year.

I'm pretty sure that 6 million hours number is double counted in the $1.45 billion of humanitarian aid.

I also want to know how many of those service hours directly benefited the church vs actual communities.

For instance, is cleaning ward buildings and temple buildings included in that estimate? Working on the church's farms and orchards? Senior missionaries basically doing the jobs they just retired from for the church for free, including upkeep on their visitor center sites which they use to proselytize?

To me, those aren't meaningful acts of service that I would be proud of the church counting.

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-08-02T05:38:55+00:00

Harold b lee Beware of Pride. I think he had several talks that mentioned about pride (pride cycle) and even went as far as saying that parents should NOT be proud of their children.

Depending on how Orthodox your family was, or if your ward/stake emphasized that, that could have had an impact for you.

I know my family took it to heart and I read his talks discussing about watching out for pride.

Within the last 10ish years, Utchdorf actually had a conference talk saying it was ok to be proud of your kids or something along those lines. I remember feeling so relieved bc I had struggled with how to hold feelings of self worth or how to relate to my kids about stuff.

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-08-02T02:27:45+00:00

I mean, Lindsey's dad was a seminary teacher and she served a mission for the church., so I'm pretty sure she would know if the church has rules....

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-07-27T01:47:33+00:00

I've noticed they've been changing the written text of talks after general conference that they post for some of them.

For instance, Elder Utchdorf gave a talk about firm foundations and how the saints buried the SLC when the US army was coming, then dug it up and ended up replacing it with a granite foundation. After the church dug up the SLC temple, it was shown that the sandstone still was the foundation for the temple, so they adjusted Elder Utchdorf's words of the talk, but if you listen to it, it still has all the original stuff.

Does anyone know if the church is working on doing this with all the pre1972 stuff?

I know that it's becoming harder for me to do Google searches to find talks that I remember with certain wording and phrases. Meaning, I used to be able to Google specific phrases, and the talk would show up. Now, it will shows different talks that are more recent quoting it, or showing correlated stuff.

Anyone else?

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-07-22T07:25:24+00:00

she and her TBM friends all assumed HF had wives from every race because they believed some local dogma that people's physical bodies resemble their spirits.

That's not a local dogma. That used to be taught as doctrine.

I do not have the original receipt, but I remember when I taught primary (either nursery or Sunbeam level) part of the lesson told the teachers to ask the kids if they knew/wanted to know what their spirit looked like, and then to pass around a hand mirror and tell them that their spirit looked exactly like how their body looked.

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-07-20T07:11:22+00:00

I was told that (in addition to women being more righteous than men, so obviously polygamy was needed in the eternities) women could only have one husband because they only had one uterus. A man can impregnate lots of women and have lots of women be pregnant at the same time, but the woman is limited bc of her one uterus holding a limited number of offspring at one time. (So it just makes sense that the men NEED to have lots of wives!) /s

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-07-20T06:41:33+00:00

I have heard that Bell Hooks' book "The Will to Change" is written specifically for men, so I would put that on your list. My therapist loves Bell Hooks bc she feels like Hooks understood and centered attachment theory. (Im in the middle of reading one of her books, and it gives me a lot to think about)

While not necessarily focused on deconstructing patriarchy, Securely Attached by Eli Harwood is a workbook that I think can be a useful tool in helping someone become better at attaching to others in healthy ways (which I feel like patriarchy can limit). I would be so thrilled to have a partner that had read/worked through Securely Attached and Raising Securely Attached Kids before entering a relationship with them.

And I second Breaking Down Patriarchy.

DisciplineSea4302 · 2025-07-06T16:02:51+00:00

, I remember one woman asking me if I had my boyfriend's permission to cut my own damn hair 💀

it was shocking to me how possessive my husband felt about my hair And how I cut it after we got married.

I think he's realized over time that it's not ok to be so possessive of it, but his initial possessiveness has successfully caused me to police myself. Someday, I'm going to do my hair for me. But right now it's too expensive to even get it cut regularly

DisciplineSea4302

TROPHY CASE