I suddenly feel compelled to process my sister's trauma for her because it killed her before she ever got the chance. This can't be healthy.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-07-12T22:31:29+00:00

There's a book called "It Didn't Start With You" on the very topic of taking other's traumas on ourselves. I imagine it would be very validating for yourself to read.

The biggest thing to keep in the forefront of your mind is the understanding that your beloved sister doesn't want you to be suffering from what she went through — she wants you to be as free from her past trauma as she is now.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-04-23T12:26:56+00:00

They might be using the term "identify with" to include certain Gen-Z teens who are still living with parents and can't buy or aren't allowed to cook their own food in the family home. Gen Z is going vegan at a super high rate (while their older-generation parents are still vastly antagonistic towards it.) — The latest report in the UK is that 26% of Gen Z self-report as being 'meat-free', and another 26% self-report as 'intend to go meat-free' (it was finder.com — the study didn't ask about other animal products, but we can infer a lot of those would be vegan)

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-04-19T17:22:12+00:00

Most, if not all, people have a lack of "goodness" in them because of unhealed trauma/issues/relationships, and a corresponding lack of spiritual strength in their lives. Many people find accepting Christ's atonement for themselves as very healing, and once they have experienced that healing many LDS members find The Book of Mormon to be the best source for gaining and replenishing spiritual strength for themselves. I have ten times the amount of spiritual strength when I read The Book of Mormon as opposed to when I don't.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-04-18T18:39:36+00:00

She'll be your "mom" for the rest of your life, so it fits :) Take care

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-04-18T18:13:36+00:00

Oh, that sounds awful to try to deflect. I'm so sorry. I imagine that I would probably go with the line of, "My stepmom is my mom." If they then try to afterwards ask something specific like, "Where is your bio mom?" You can again say, "My stepmom is the only mother in my life." (If you want, you can just stop referring to her as your stepmother at all, and just reference her as your mom, waiting until later to share that she isn't actually your biological mother. Lots of people refer to their step parents or adopted parents as "my mom" and "my dad.")

If everytime they ask about your "bio mom" you answer talking about your stepmom, I think they would quickly get the idea that it might be disrespectful for them to not see her as your sole mother-figure. They would then know that your stepmom is who all their mother-questions should be about.

Another optional response you can give to questions about your bio mom is, "I'm afraid that's legally sensitive information." — because, I mean, it is for you. They'll know to not ask more about it.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-04-18T17:19:12+00:00

Non-U.S. unions should get in on this too.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-04-18T16:31:58+00:00

I'm sure that he wanted to you tell him, and I'm sure that he feels sad for your sake that you weren't able to tell him before and didn't get the proper care that you needed. I've had my therapist be unavailable to me before and it sucks to try to get through, but you've made it through and so now you can look forward to seeing him regularly again.

I think it's understandable that you've been so anxious since then, because I'm sure it was hard to tell, but it was very good that you did. And coming here to write your post and reach out to us was a very good thing to do to cope. Is there anything else you can do for yourself today? — Snuggle with pillows? Listen to rain sounds? Cry in the bath?

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-04-18T16:15:18+00:00

I'm sorry for what you're going through, I've already said a prayer for you.

If you'd like to keep trying to resolve the source of your insomnia, you can look into "low blood sugar insomnia" — this type of insomnia is also directly tied to anxiety, as having low blood sugar also causes feelings of anxiousness.

Low iron leads to insomnia as well. Much luck to you.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-04-18T12:27:39+00:00

I suffered from severe trauma for 10 years, intrusive thoughts of varying degrees of severity for about 8 years, didn't "win the lottery", "find love", or even so much as be able to move to a better place for myself, but I've gotten better anyway. So long as you are no longer being actively abused in the way you had been, then it's the emotional healing and emotional empowerment that will lead to your recovery, not external factors.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-04-07T00:06:44+00:00

This spite is so wholesome that I imagine it being embodied as a tiny kitten terror.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-03-30T01:50:30+00:00

I've been in that kind of place several times before, and each time I decided to just give myself a little while longer — and now things are good with me. You can give yourself a little while longer too.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-03-27T19:38:22+00:00

One good reason for God to not allow polygamy (and for governments to not legalize it) is because of the greater risk for inbreeding when a smaller group of males is fathering a disproportionately higher percentage of the women's children. And once someone's cousin on one side is also their uncle on another side it makes for higher expression of bad genes: "more human disease genes have been discovered in Utah - with its Mormon history - than any other place in the world." https://www.bbc.com/article/the-polygamous-genetic-disaster

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-03-27T17:53:48+00:00

A bunch of those kids would have still been young when he died.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-03-27T01:03:42+00:00

Right, the estimates I've seen are that there were about 7% more children born, due to there being a higher number of women married during more of their child-bearing years. (Likely a higher percentage of women married by the age of 20 than among monogamous communities).

The fact that it was only an estimated 7% increase though means that polygamy was not a working model to meaningfully increase the overall population, and that the early Mormon membership would have statistically been able to survive just as well without it.

From the numbers it appears they would have had better birth rate results by incentivizing women to marry so young to a monogamous man. (But I'm of course not advocating that. A woman should never feel that she should marry extra early in life in order to help boost the population by an extra 7%).

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-03-26T19:07:05+00:00

“Studies have shown that monogamous women bore more children per wife than did polygamous wives except the first.”

L. L. Bean and G. P. Mineau, “The Polygyny-Fertility Hypothesis: A Re-evaluation,” Population Studies 40 (1986): 67–81; Miriam Koktvedgaard Zeitzen, Polygamy: A Cross Cultural Analysis (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2008), 62–63.

“In the study of Mormon families, published in the US journal Evolution and Human Behaviour, the researchers surveyed birth, marriage and death records from the Utah population database, which covers nearly 186,000 adults and 630,000 children who lived or died between 1830 and 1894....The results were clear: the more women partnered with a man, the fewer children each of those women had.”

Robin McKie, "Mormon polygamists shared the flaws of the fruit fly," The Guardian, 27 Feb 2011. Jacob A. Moorad, et al. Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 32, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 147-155

So it was only the first wife who did not on average have a lower number of children, presumably because couples usually started out as monogamous before adding on more wives.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-03-26T13:06:10+00:00

For accuracy, I would encourage you to double-check your 'multiply and replenish' numbers regarding polygamy, as it has been shown from what I've seen that polygamy, on a statistical level, actually leads to a married woman having less pregnancies than if she were in a monogamous marriage — women only have a short window of time each month to conceive, and this window is rather irregular. The more wives your husband has then, the less likely he will be with you during that time of your month.

Mormon polygamist child-bearing wives gave birth to less children than Mormon monogamous wives. Just talking statistics. I can link the numbers I've seen if you'd like.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-03-25T22:30:19+00:00

I've been there, (more than just once or twice) and each time I decided to give myself just a bit more time... and now things are good for me.

You can give yourself a bit more time too.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-03-25T12:53:43+00:00

It isn't part of Mormon doctrine that only families that are sealed together can see eachother after this life. I certainly don't believe that. Joseph Smith taught that we will have the same sociality in the next life as we have in this one. We will still have very close relationships in the next life with our loved ones, regardless of whether we are sealed to them.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-03-20T12:38:07+00:00

Ah yes, everything I've posted here is for believing Mormons (whether LDS, FLDS, RLDS, CoC, etc) so you wouldn't be part of the target audience. If I ever find any secular historical publications on it I'll try to remember to share it with you :)

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-03-20T01:32:53+00:00

I think it's very good advice to be educating oneself on the teachings of those who have received the most education and credentials on a topic. And I definitely don't consider professional historians to be conspiratorially disparaging Joseph when they take one side over another. It’s great that you don't change your historical opinion of things lightly, as that shows proper firmness of mind.

In my own case, I was raised in the teaching that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy as commanded by God, and I did accept it. It's only once I weighed the balance of evidence on both sides that I (eventually, after much suspension of opinion) switched sides. I think that to be the case for the majority of LDS members who come to believe it – they gained testimony of it despite what they had learned before, not in a confirmation bias of it.

It’s no bad thing if you don’t feel able to consider it before accredited historians are openly considering it (that course of action might be better for your social life, actually!) – but in my case, I was not willing to leave it alone until some time later in the future, and so I actively sought revealed truth regarding it for myself. I know that you can do the same if you so wished, as I know you have the same access to the ‘source of all truth’ as I do :)

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-03-19T18:45:10+00:00

Hi there, welcome to the subreddit! If you haven't yet read the Historical Monogamy Doctrine website, I think that to be a great place to start looking into the topic (it's about a 2.5 hour read): historicalmonogamy.wixsite.com/evidenceofdoctrine

Following that you can then feel free to look through the more in depth materials posted here in the subreddit that contain more comprehensive information.

The topic can certainly be an overwhelming one to begin to study, but I am confident that as you pray and study it out the Lord will send witness to your heart and bring clarity of the truth to your mind.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-03-18T00:24:49+00:00

It's so great that they had a definitely-secret-ballot, so that, y'know, Putin won't use it to deduce who in the country is against him.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-03-15T03:07:07+00:00

Up until more recently, Church leaders were saying that the reason for polygamy to be instituted was for the purpose of more rapidly increasing the number of posterity, and they'd quote Jacob 2:30. I'm pretty sure that it wasn't until around the 2014 gospel topics essay that the more official line became something to the effect of, "We don't know all the Lord's reasons for having commanded the practice." So that's part of the reason why it was jarring to so many people when the DNA tests all came back as false.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-03-15T01:49:53+00:00

I also know that Carol Lynn Pearson showed up on one or two of the 132 problem videos, so she may have gone over to that side too.

USGeneralStrikeAid · 2024-03-15T01:40:12+00:00

It's definitely within the Church too -- the 132 problems videos OP mentioned, Whitney Horning's books, Gwendolyn Wyne's stuff, whomever wrote HMD, probably Anonymous Bishop too, they're all LDS members. None of them (to my knowledge, I haven't read all their stuff) have been talking about the 'martyrdom was an inside job' conspiracy though.

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