I was passing through an airport today, and there were signs inside the bathroom that were aimed at helping people who are subject to human trafficking. However, from things I’ve learned from this channel about the mission, the overlap seems to be unavoidable. The questions were: 1) has someone taken away your identification or telephone? 2) is not letting you contact family, 3) is forcing you to work without pay.
These videos are so therapeutic for my sister and I. I left the church at 14, and she stayed in until her 30's. It was one of my happiest days when she got herself and her three children out. Her husband left at the same time, but I think his heart always stayed. He ended up being very manipulative and borderline psychotic. I am glad she left him too
@@alyssadgrenfell Thank you! I am glad we have each other again, and I don't plan on losing her. It is such a shame that my nieces have to go through it as well. Never easy for children
Sadly, I imagine the ex-husband was always manipulative and borderline psychotic. I think the patriarchal condescending philosophy of the church itself just forces women into those subservient and complacent roles, so the husband doesn't have to personally exert much energy towards that while you're active members. Escaping that BS just helps you see it for what it really is.
Poor man. Psychotic is because of the cult manipulation. Cults do dreadful things to the spirit and minds of men who have been groomed to be responsible and loyal to the false teachings, but are left with emptiness and nothing to respect.
5:19 “these journals are produced by _thechurchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaints,_ the mormon church…” I can tell you’ve had to say that ten million times in your life haha
Fun fact: I discovered I was a lesbian on one of my first girls camp trips. She was a little older than me and definitely gave off those “emo rebel” vibes that I really liked. I’m sure I’m not the only one who found out that way lol
Absolutely love that you say "discovered" as that is what so many don't understand - these aren't choices people make, they are who you are and sometimes it takes time to figure that out, especially if you're outside a societal norm (I don't mean that offensively, I hope you get that). Good for you learning that so young, then again I'd guess i was around that age when I too learned I was attracted to girls - sadly they wouldn't let me go to girl camp :(
I was the "emo rebel" at my church. Funny enough, the first time a girl ever hit on me was the girls' camp I went to at 15! It was kinda funny too bc it wasn't until I told my best friend about it (who was also part of the church but in another stake and this was stake camp) who had already come out to me previously told me that girl was hitting on me. My best friend is oblivious to that sort of thing period (she's autistic, so that's part of it) so the fact she noticed meant to me that this girl must've been aggressively hitting on me and my heteronormatively brainwashed ass was still certain I was straight so that thought didn't even cross my mind. About a year or so after this I figured out I was bisexual, though, so there's that (although I've never been given the chance to really explore that more yet as I've never had a true crush on a girl/woman before so I usually just tell people I'm straight still). Just kinda funny how that turned out. I feel like girls camp is a great place for people to have their queer awakening at tbh.
Something very cool is that I have my Grandpa's journals. He was also very Mormon and was taught that journaling was important, so he journaled almost every single day from 1936 to 1993. My Dad ended up typing the whole thing out and he gave a copy to every member of my family. Something that I find pretty funny is just how mundane most of it is. There are some entries that are just like "Thursday; bought $3.00 worth of gas and washed my car."
Ur grandpa was so real for that tbh. I remember I always thought it was silly to journal bc mine would be stuff like that, and it was, up until high school. But I had to stop keeping one that was easy to find at that point because I wrote some super personal stuff about my mental health at the time and my shifting beliefs as well as some really awful emo poetry as I was neck deep in my emo phase during that time lol. But yeah, most of it was like "went to school. Did homework. It sucked. Okay going to bed." Or silly stuff like "my sister stole my barbie :(" and whatever. It's why I struggle keeping a journal now unless I've got something genuinely interesting to say.
5:35 this is so family Biblecore. My dad came from a Hindu family in a little village, but they randomly had a family Bible in which my grandfather dutifully recorded a ton of genealogy information. It's the most accurate information on my family before my generation, and because of the village thing, government records won't line up. I just wish someone knew where the damn thing was...
Listening to your missionary stories has made me wonder: if missionaries showed up at my door, could I tell them "hey I'm not interested in converting but I know you have a tough job, would you like to just sit down and take a break and have something to drink?" Growing up with religious indoctrination and working in the service industry I feel bad for these kids and if I could give them some time to rest I'd like that but I also don't want to get their hopes up or get them in trouble.
i've read a comment under a podcast alyssa was on of someone who always lets the missionaries stay at their house to use the phone, internet, lets them shower or just take a breath and get some alone time, with the rule that any religious talk is of the table. like i said its just a comment i saw, i've never had someone knock on my door to convert me but it seemed to have worked for them 🤷🏻♀️
What a kind idea. I’ve welcomed mormon girls into my home and corrected them on scripture…but now I understand that was more work for them and all they need is peace and quiet.
@@link3980 tagging you didn't work, its one of the most liked comments under the 'cults to consciousness' video with alyssa so it shouldn't be hard to find if you wanna look for it
You can and they would most likely accept. They may or may not still try to sneak in a lesson, or they might respect your upfront refusal, that's very down to the individuals
12:33 that’s crazy to me, Judaism doesn’t make you wait the full 24 (really 25…) until 12-13. Before that it’s typical to have kids do partial fasts, like skipping just lunch, still having water etc but having to fully do it at EIGHT?
My stepdaughter started going out with a morman boy and joined the morman church. Her mother let her against my husbands wishes. They live a few hours away in a rural area by their grandparents. She just wanted to fit in. I swear they are already planning to be together forever at barely 15 years old. How do we remain supportive and hopefully get her to come around. She is a gifted artist and I don't want her to waste her talents thinking she has to marry and have babies.
Maybe you and your husband reinforce for her all the options she has available to her. Education, traveling the world, etc. Speaking against the relationship could just make her dig in her heels.
I think the best thing you can do is to state both. Something like "I appreciate that you love your boyfriend and want to be married to him. However, I also understand that you are a young, passionate, and talented artist with big dreams and goals. I support these goals and want your partner to have a similar level of support regardless of who they are, and where they come from. I also do not want your partner, or his context to pressure you into giving up those dreams, or to follow a different path that does not feel right for you."
well, if she wants to marry him, she will have to wait until he comes back from a mission - so she has 5 or 6 years to think about it. Like others have said, education and interaction with new ideas and people is the best way to allow her to make a more informed decisions. She gets to decide who she wants to be, and maybe she really likes this young man, or maybe she is searching for purpose. respect either journey.
Thanks so much. She is looking for acceptance and is unfortunately in her sister's shadow. Her mom often favors her sister because she does better in school. We always tell her she is smart and anyone would be happy to draw as good as she can. We are a blended family of 7, and each of them are unique and special. It is hard when you have different parenting styles. Hopefully, she will find her confidence and enjoy her life and not rush into anything. The legal age to marry in our state is 18, with no underage marriages allowed even with consent.
I haven't been brave enough to look through my mission journals. I was so severely depressed and su*c*dal and journaling was my only true escape everyday. It really helped my mental health. I still don't know if I could face it, but this video kind of inspired me to take a crack at it.
Ik it’s not exactly the same, but I went to a mental health treatment program where I had a journal. I put off opening it as I knew it would have some heartbreaking things in it. But when I did finally read it , it made me think “wow look at how far I’ve come”. I did have a good cry over much of it, but it was cathartic.
Showering every day is more of a social expectation than an actual necessity. In some countries it's normal to only shower every couple of days. If you don't sweat a lot and wear natural fiber clothing, you don't get very stinky, and showering too often can actually dry out your skin and hair. If you think about it, as recently as a couple of generations ago, not every house had a shower, so before that people would keep clean in different ways. Washing with washcloths was very common, and having the occasional bath (like once a week or once a month, depending on how easy it was to access hot water).
Ah yes, the unspoken article of faith: we believe in meetings; we hope for meetings; if there is any reason to have a meeting, we will hold a meeting. 😂
Journaling has been a kind of bittersweet practice for me. It was a way for me to express who I really am, although I do hold back some stuff even while journaling. This is bc there was a time in childhood where I brought one of my journals to school and left it on a desk. It was only until after, that I knew that a boy found it and showed it to the rest of the class and it totally left me broken. From then on, I attempted to not let anyone see my journal, even my parents or sibling. It sucks that it has to be this way, but it is. I was such a prolific journal and I still am, but I do wish that I could show at least someone one of my journals without a deep fear of everyone seeing it. I hope nobody has to go thru this kind of experience anytime during their life.
yeah I’ve had a similar relationship with journaling. I think because a combination of having my privacy violated (similar situation with losing a diary at school, as well as having nosy siblings), and just being paranoid all the time that it would happen, I’ve always been very guarded in my journaling. and I’ve been super into journaling, going back as far as I can remember. but when I write I always catch myself sort of lying haha (like little white lies, or phrasing things in obtuse ways, etc)… and it’s because I’m writing for both posterity (ie. trying to anticipate & factor in what information I think the reader will want to know later on, or what people will want to know if/when the journal gets found after I’m gone) and I also just find myself writing in a way where I’m sort of directly addressing potential snoopers. :)
I'm the same I had my privacy violated and from then on I write while editing myself as I do. So it's not really me, in there to scared to be truly vulnerable again.
I did one diary at 15, spilling my heart out about the first boy I liked. I had even attached his photo. Then soon after my made a joke referencing the ridiculous pants the boy wore. That destroyed me and any trust in my own home. She could have read it and kept it a secret but to so nonchalantly bring it up as a joke and mock me out of the blue 😢
@@KarlaEmmersonomg I had a similar thing happen too. But instead of a picture it was a drawing (an awful drawing) of my crush who lived close to me btw, which made things worse). And that’s what the boy in the class made fun of. I hesitated to include this in the OP bc of fear, but I can’t believe that this happens to so many ppl
I grew up in San Antonio about five minutes from the Mormon temple. I am not Mormon and never have been but being so close to the temple I grew up around it. Most of my choir department was Mormon. But I need you to talk about the “trek” cause I remember girls talking about pretending to be pioneers and I thought I made it up in my brain 😂
Oh thats definitely real! I got duped into going by my parents and I hated it. Worst 3 days of my entire life and I turned 12 the day they left, so on my birthday I was stuck out in the desert when it was over 100°F in the direct sun, pushing a heavy ass solid wood handcart full of the crap they let us bring with limited water (bc they kept running out), hiking on rocky terrain up hills when they told us it would be all flat land, and eating and breathing dust bc it was so dry dust clouds were just in your face the whole time, all while wearing stupid poorly made pioneer clothing, getting little food for "object lessons" and "reenactments" and being preached to 24/7, away from home, with a "family" made up of people you don't even know. This was my first time away from home without my mom (my dad went but he was one of the camp cooks, so he was NEVER around. The one time he was, I ran up to him and started sobbing and he told me I was being a little baby....I was barely 12 and that was my birthday).
I had that same journal on my mission! So sad realizing that instead of using my journal as a means to explore the complexity of my emotions and who I was becoming it just became another practice in painfully forcing myself into the Mormon cookie cutter mold :(
I would love for you to do a video about your mushroom experience and how it opened up your mind! Psychedelics have been so helpful for my depression and I love hearing peoples trip stories.
I really enjoy how you cover these topics, because it's very much just your lived experience and you bring the receipts, which helps with people saying "it isn't really like that!"
@derekbrown9574 forcing a hungry child who is likely growing, while they know you have the means and the ability to eat is pretty gnarly. There are better ways of teaching scarcity and sacrifice.
Wait…. HOLD ON…. Sooo when I was in middle school, we did that same thing with “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in our drama class, accept it was about drugs during like a don’t do drugs campaign week. The girl in white, the signs, everything. I was OxyContin lol. Ummmmm WAS IT A MORMON THING THE WHOLE TIME??? Looking back, my teacher was very religious, very into pairing kids for roles based more on race than on ability (like if one kid was black and the wife in a play, she would assign another black kid as the husband and then explain to us all that they “match”.) And for the Total Eclipse of the Heart performance, the girl in the middle was the only white girl in our class. And the drugs were black and brown kids 😳😳😳 And now that I’m thinking back to it, I remember her having us pray before this “performance.” I was a pretty devout Christian at the time so I didn’t mind, but looking back LOTS of different religions were represented in our drama class. WAS MY TEACHER MORMON AND WAS SHE TRYING TO PUSH MORMON IDEALS ON US THE WHOLE TIME?? 😳 Don’t get me wrong though, I LOVED that performance and that song is one of my favorites now because of it. But still! (Note I remember walking into her room in the middle of the school day during her prep period just to visit her because we all loved her, and she was crying on the phone. I asked her what was wrong and she mention it was family stuff.. but I heard her saying “I can’t divorce him… he’s my husband…” before she saw me come in. Sealed in the Temple perhaps??)
I can never get over how missionary Alyssa has the same look in her eyes as the lady who stalked a coworker of mine. When they showed me her picture in an old company directory, I literally jumped back. So if I had met Sister Grenfell, I would have outrun Usain Bolt running away from her in terror😨
When I worked at a locally owned cafe several years ago, there were a few lady missionaries who came in to eat supper. Bless their hearts, I hope they're doing well.
I'm working with this Mormon girl, and she’s super mormon, lol. The funny thing is I'm a Mason, and I'm afraid to bring up the history of the Mormon church, Freemasonry, and Joseph Smith. She's cool, but I choose not to say anything because I like her mormon corkyness, and I don't wanna hurt her beliefs. Hope she runs into this channel someday.
? You're robbing yourself, and her, of the potential to learn. The best summer of my life thus far, I managed a vineyard, and all of my workers had diverse religious beliefs. We had an evangelical guy who wanted to be a pastor. The owner's of the vineyard were mennonite, but clearly different than any mennonites I knew, as these ones owned a vineyard & winery, ironically... One of my other workers was a guy who got ex-communicated from the mennonite church for getting council from a Catholic Priest. We also had a gal who belonged to a religious sect that traced their origins to the same people that committed the Salem Witch Trials, and I'd say one of their most different beliefs was a belief that a person was predestined to go to heaven or hell from birth, regardless of what they did on earth, and the only one who knew if they were going to heaven or not, was themselves. I was raised as a shame filled, "you're forever doing everything wrong," Catholic, and at that time in my life, I would consider myself pious. Another gal, who became my wife, was and always has been atheist. And then we had some lutherans as well. Anyways, we chatted about religion, faith, etc... at length, probably every other day, for an entire summer. That summer formed the foundation of my religious beliefs I still carry today, that being atheism. If a person gets challenged on their faith, and it sounds as ridiculous in their own head, as it does to you.... you're not doing harm. You're opening eyes. Most people who were born into a faith, so to speak, don't become irreligious or atheist because they want to. They become irreligious or atheist because they're only now contemplating all of the things they've been told, and coming to some of their own conclusions about things. That's not harmful. It's good. Just look at Alyssa! And if they keep their faith... good for them too! If your entire faith falls apart because some random person asked you a few particular questions in regards to your faith, then you didn't have real faith to begin with. You were merely following along with "your group." Ask her! I bet $50, you both, in your own ways, will be surprised by the dialogue, and that's where learning happens and real faith, if any, is developed. The other thing is.... if a person is willing to speak about their faith to you, openly, and you approach it in the same way.... that's a point of vulnerability. That's also where relationships sometimes form. At least it did for me.... I married one of them, still have contact with some of the others, and now the wife and I have a vineyard and winery of our own. And yes, I still discuss religion with my workers, not from a patronizing point of view, but merely to understand their world view. When you understand a pious person's religion, you understand one of, if not the most important thing in their life. With atheists, ironically, the dialogue is a lot more dull in a sense, simply because religion is a thing that has 0 importance in their life. They may actually feel it a hinderance to the world for many of the reasons Alyssa says.
Your entire statement that you start at 4:19 is so true. It especially hits home for me, a trans person who grew up in a Mormon and very religious environment.
For context on the cold / ❄️ thing in Texas.... Our infrastructure is built for hot weather because we really don't get a lot of cold weather we have very tall Bridges etc etc. to sum it up in one sentence our infrastructure does not work for Frozen conditions or cold weather therefore it is impossible to drive to school work whatever when you have to go over a 12 to 15 story bridge that is frozen. You simply cannot do that with our infrastructure.
I was visiting a friend in Arlington when an ice storm hit. Even though she had lived in northern Illinois and New Jersey, she didn't have a scraper. We ended up using our student IDs to scrape 😂 at least she knew how to drive in those conditions, especially from her Jersey years. We were laughing and avoiding getting hit by people who were out of control at 5mph. Of course there was no question of anyone salting the roads.
I went to a Methodist high school, and in our performing arts group, we did a similar performance to Turn Around. There were figures dressed in black shirts that would attack and frighten the main character, then Jesus would come on the stage and banish the black shirts. It's interesting how different groups use the same iconography.
Omg I would love a video about Mormon trek! I remember loving the bonding experience with the other kids but hating absolutely everything else 🤣 I feel like non Mormons would be fascinated by it all
Hi Alyssa 👋🏼 There's a new series on Netflix about the time the Mormons were settling in Utah,there's Brigham Young in it,and I think it's settled around the conflict between the Mormons and the us government in that region at that time,it's called American Primeval. I started to watch it and you came to mind. Now I don't know exactly how accurate is the show to the historical events,but it's a very interesting series.
It's honestly so weird how there's suddenly SO many shows and movies about Mormonism. In just the past few years we've had Under the Banner of Heaven, Murder Among the Mormons, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, Heretic, and now American Primeval.
Some members can’t afford to pay for a mission but want to serve anyway, so their bishop will arrange for their monthly fees to be paid by either the local or general missionary fund.
I always find it funny to realize what random stuff from my childhood was actually inspired by Mormonism. Didn't everyone journal all the time as child?? Didn't everyone address entries to their future children?
I was born and raised Christian but my family certainly weren't extremely devout. I'd go to Sunday school and Cadets and all that jazz. Over time our family started going to church less often and when I turned 18 I stopped going completely as I thought church was boring and a waste of time. I always thought I was still Christian but after a while I just realized that I didn't really believe. I'm saying all of this because there was really no push back at all from my family and I was excommunicated or anything. Life went on and I was happy. To watch these videos and see how rigid life is in the Mormon faith just really makes me realize how lucky I am. The amount of time being a Mormon takes out of your day would have destroyed young me considering I could barely handle a regular Church service. I'm glad I subscribed to this channel! Thank you so much Alyssa!
Your future generations will cherish this journal. Utterly precious and adorable from the mind of a loving and obedient child. At some point, we all have to "put away the things of childhood." But we should NEVER condemn them. Religion is a failed attempt to explain and exploit life. Some are sinister, but some mean well.
My Catholic school sent us to a Christian retreat, and we had that EXACT experience with the "turn around" song, except the other actors were drugs and alcohol. Is this in an indoctrination handbook somewhere??
Jenny-ology? I love it. Random quirks of accents fascinate me so much. And while so religious based, encouraging journaling isn't a bad idea on the whole. And I do remember coming across a couple of Mormon men who had a booth dedicated to looking up your family history at a local fair and they asked if I was interested and I passed saying they wouldn't have mine, which definitely surprised them. But I'm 4th gen Scottish/German, the German side being Catholic to boot. I know my roots are in church books on another continent. 😅
To be honest they probably did have your family history. In the video she really under sold how big the church is on genealogy. Collecting genealogical information isn't just church members writing down their ancestors it's a massive organized operation that collects, digitizes and organizes records from around the world. This includes census data, records from other religions, military enlistment records, grave rubbings basically any information they can find. It is so prevalent that individual members are encouraged quite frequently to do something called indexing where they basically digitize scanned hand written records. Growing up my ward held trainings on indexing multiple times a year. And that doesn't even include the people who are paid to do this by the church.
@@devinnielsen6967 If they made it to the tiny, hole in the wall town of Aufess Germany... maybe. But I do ancestry myself, & a cousin over there said they haven't digitized & it's slow going. The Scottish side, I will admit, the chance is higher cause those have been scanned.
Alyssa lost a big chuck of her youth to a "cult" (a term I use to describe ANY formal institutional "religion" or other ideologically-driven social institution; of course, some cults are even worse than others!), It's really sad that human cultures have tended toward repressing/oppressing most people for the benefit of a few.
The fact you’d have to relearn how to journal when you left, what it’s REALLy supposed to be used for by teen girls, really adds a whole other layer to this ☕️ (coffee)
Im so happy for you, now that you are free to be yourself, or at least have a real, honest journey to figuring that out. I think thats all a journey we have to take and never actually reach our destination😊
It's so weird because I was never raised religious and have always been accepted as queer by my cool leftist family (even my christian grandmother is super cool and not fully believing) but for some reason your videos give me catharsis as though I've been thru this stuff myself lmao. It's such a relief in today's day and age to see someone who deconverted rather than someone who got sucked in to yet another horrible, harmful ideology. Like a tiny slice of victory against all current odds. I swear your stuff helps keep me sane lol. edit: if the book of mormon is a compilation of journals, does that mean that very technically there is a .000000001% chance that alyssa's journals become canonized in the book of mormon journal entry franchise
I’ve been binging your videos recently! Your words are so healing ❤️🩹 There’s so much we can learn from you! Im in my first same sex relationship with a woman. With the religious trauma it can be tough 😅 Your videos really help find my strength. To live how I want. To live for me! 🥹
I myself didn't grow up LDS at all, nor did any of my immediate family have any LDS upbringings, but I do have family friends that were raised into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and later left it. Your videos have been helping me a lot with understanding what my exmo family friends are talking about when they talk about traditions they were raised with. Also helps me know what my dad was joking about when he talked about his time living in Salt Lake City as one of the only non-LDS people who had missionaries knock on his door three times a day. Thank you Alyssa Grenfell :)
Yep they have normal jobs as well! Their families basically don't see them cos outside of their paid job they have all of their bishop responsibilities
For some reason, the bit that is sticking with me from this video is the bit near the beginning about Fast Sunday and that you were praying for God to make the hunger go away, or be easier to bear. I was raised Catholic, and I'm not sure if it's that influence or not, but i was fully expecting you to say that you prayed for forgiveness for sneaking food instead of praying for help. I think it probably reflects on the differing natures of various branches on Christianity and how "active" God is in each. I would have never asked for help for myself - for other people, yes, I have so many memories of lighting candles after Mass and praying at the foot of the statue of the Virgin Mary for help on their behalf, but never for myself. A little difference, but one I was completely unprepared for.
When did they decide that *everyone* age 12 and up gets a "calling"...? I got out I think in maybe 2002, and it was only something that was supposed to be determined by when a member in a leadership position felt moved by the spirit, or whatever. It's not a "calling" if everyone is just assigned something to do starting at age 12. And the bathroom cleaning I don't remember either. We would of course need to clean spaces after we used them, and I think there were maybe organized quarterly deeper cleanings, but I'm pretty sure there was a cleaning company that did bathrooms and common spaces, and particularly the regular upkeep of the floors. You want people taking care of the bathroom that are sanitizing things, and people taking care of the floors who are doing things like cleaning carpets and buffing gym floors properly. That's stupid to make members do that stuff. But it's sure more tithe money for the rich people at the top.
I didn't grow up Mormon. We attended the Assembly of God. I journaled from age 12 onward, but it was based on what I read in the Bible. I was given instruction by a church mentor on how to do reading and journaling. It was never about whose doing what or what was happening in my life. Just about what I read what I thought God was speaking to me about in that passage, etc. I think as a child with an unsupportive family, my point of view was skewed. But a lot of the things you talk about are eerily similar. Brain washing, and I cringe at what I wrote back then. Thanks for sharing.
Omg the Turn Around dancers were a mormon thing!? There was a presentation at my school lmao, it was like a legit company that did abstinence/just say no kind of stuff and had costumes and did a play/dance to that song. But the only thing we learned was how bomb that song was 😂 for about a week after me and my bestie would bust into dramatic song in the hallway at each other
UA-cam has been pushing your videos on my recommended list for awhile and I am really happy I popped into this one and recognized the other thumbnails!
We did enforced fasting in the cult i was in during college (now called World Church of Christ). It triggered migraines and IBS, which I still struggle with at 64. These practices, done without knowledge of how the body works, can cause permanent damage. I would sneak a can of Diet Coke (our beverage of choice, caffeine was one thing we were NOT forbidden, and I'm sure that also fed migraine and IBS), then feel so guilty and hope nobody smelled my breath. It made me a "weak Christian."
I’m an ex-Mormon teen. My mother and her side of the family are almost all Mormon, so we fasted a lot. Honestly, I feel like that might have had a hand in my ed. It’s scary what they can and will do.
I was raised in the south start school at a parochial environment not knowing what a Mormon was. Then I was about ten years old moved up north, still being naive, landing access the street of a Mormon a church ! They never seen the likes of me, nor of them. I was raised to be honest and not be manipulate the truth. Not knowing the rivalry between Catholics! I do now. Open the door to a missionary, is like opening the door to a vampire once opened it stays open. Then as for the book of Mormon I try to throwing away putting front the house in the garbage its been like a ouija board. The only thing I did was moved out of that house. But two of my siblings got brainwashed, yet I am not free of it. Nieces and nephews, missionaries and seminary teachers. I keep the motto when you're tired of crying,.just start smiling, then they really don't know whats going on. The spiritual side of me. Hope's every one have a good life with out harming others.
I was LITERALLY in a nearly identical "Total Eclipse of the Heart" interpretive dance in college. Not Mormon, just collegiate Christian fellowship. I played the Average Christian, and during the big drum hits in the bridge, I had to mime/dance that if I choose sin, it's like I'm nailing Christ to the cross himself.
I never made my kids fast. Probably because I joined the church at I think 22 years old, and I would get very sick from doing it myself. I cannot imagine putting children through that. My lifelong Mormon (now ex) husband was a total monster about it, but I was not budging on it.
Oh the Irony, "We need to protect women's right to choose traditional roles" (Yeah you do that by protecting women's right to chose.... end of sentence)
My grandma was the daughter of an RLDS minister in Missouri. She was a lifelong devout practitioner of the faith herself. But my mom told me that she was very angry about women starting to be ordained in the 70s. She and others stayed in their old church building across the street from the modern-looking temple you visited, while the more progressive cohort moved there. I’m not sure how many of the conservative group are left but it seems like the reformed version has thankfully become much more popular. It’s very sad-she was charismatic and VERY pious-she could have made a very good minister herself.
If you haven't heard of it, I highly suggest looking up Jeffrey Lundgren and The Kirtland Cult. It was a group that broke away from the RLDS in Ohio in the 80s because they thought the church was becoming "too progressive". Unfortunately, they ended up going full doomsday cult and killed a bunch of people.
After watching quite a few of your videos, I'd love to know more about how you handle your relationship to family members that still identify as Mormon. Given how important family and genealogy is to the Mormon church, I'm curious to know how your removal from the Mormon faith affects your familial relationships. From the vids I've watched, I get hints of it but would love to know how you navigate that (unless it's too personal to delve into or you've already talked about it).
I remember writing journals like that. One time I wrote in mine on a mothers day, Sunday. I wrote, "I can't wait to have kids and be a mom." It made me laugh cuz I think that's the one and only time I have said that. I never wanted kids before that day, and never wanted them after. Someone must have given a reeeally manipulative talk about motherhood. 😂
Your girls camp story makes me think of the "Everything" skit that evangelicals did that was basically the same thing, but Jesus comes in and protects you at the big part of the song. It's called the "Everything" skit because it's to the song "Everything" by Lifehouse, who is not a Christian band lol.
Your story of the Texas Jubilee reminded me of our local temple opening, it was the second one around here, and much closer to my house than the other. I was 16 I think when it opened, maybe 15? And I remember I told them I didn't want to go and they told my parents. I got grounded and had to take my younger sister with me when we went. We practiced at every mutual activity before it for like 2 months. We did a dance AND a choir performance. The day of was awful because they chose to do it a city over (because where I live, there aren't any buildings large enough around here) and so we had to carpool over there an hour away at 5AM during the summer. The parking lot for the building was full, so we had to park a fifteen minute walk away. I just remember being so tired and absolutely hating the white t-shirts they made us wear because they were ugly, they gave me a size too small and so everyone kept mentioning that it looked "inappropriate" as I have a large bust and did back then as well, and I also HATED white clothes. Plus, I had to wear a skirt and at the time, I only had a few skirts my mother deemed church appropriate and I didn't like any of them and hated wearing pantyhose which I was persuaded to wear by my mother (I was babysitting and old enough that I went shopping without my parents at this point. I would get in trouble for the stuff I bought but my parents surprisingly never made me return anything). The whole event was a whole lot of hype over literally nothing. My sister and I fell asleep during the majority of the performances and preaching. Everyone was SO excited to see the prophet (I think it was Monson at the time? Idk man, I was pretty checked out by that point in time, but it was whoever was after Hinckley) and I remember being upset because he couldn't remember where he was and mostly only spoke to the men even though the local women and young women had put way more effort into the event as a whole and were the ones running everything. I had an opportunity to meet him and speak to him and ngl I thought he was dumb. He told me he didn't think God would like my hair, which was dyed firetruck red at the time. I think I glared at him and told him that it was a good thing it wasn't his hair then and left. I'd already opened my eyes to the bs the year prior and I was pretty over this whole thing. My sister was too. We got home, ripped off those ugly ass shirts and crashed out on the couch. It pissed my mom off because she wanted to know everything that happened and what the prophet was like as she'd never met him nor had she ever been to something like that. We just called it a "Temple Celebration" though, nothing super fun lmao. I remember my sister didn't want to talk to the prophet but our group got like selected to speak to him and so she like clung to my arm when it was our turn. Something about him felt unsettling to me tbh. Didn't like him. I guess that was my good old bullshit-o-meter going off 🤷♀️ I got really good at fine-tuning it the older I got and it really pissed off my church leaders lmao. Anyways, thanks for bringing that memory back, it gave me a good giggle
Amazing video Alyssa, thank you for sharing! That tithing slip 💀I was wondering if you could do a video about the pearl of great price? I just can't get over how whacky Joseph Smith was.
First of all love your content. Secondly I just had to chuckle a bit when you started to read the journal. It’s just this is not the first person whose Journal I’ve heard read allowed for posterity or things 😮. It’s just it’s very often that those who write journals certainly aren’t writing them for themselves and would like nothing more then an impromptu Public Journal Reading 😅
16:27 To be fair, show tunes and hymns can be quite good 😄 I wish I'd been that talented. All I can do is poetry. 36:24 That was my 16th birthday lol VERY fascinating video! So cool to see such an adult subject through young eyes and then have it being critiqued by the adult self. Makes me glad I had the foresight to download a lot of my earlier writings before MySpace died (used them for university assignments because I felt lazy freshman year), although I'm still hunting for my high school notebooks. Definitely shows a lot of growth and ideological progression doing self-analysis.
Am i the only one who always reads LDS as LSD?? Lmao Sometimes those weird beliefs do sound a bit like someone made them up while on psychedelics though, so kinda fits.
I grew up catholic and they would pull me out of school to be an altar server at funerals. They would give us a $10 target giftcard lol. It was weird af
The way your object lesson at girls camp LITERALLY sounds like a scene from Midsommar omg 😭
😭 omg so so true. Hi Hyram! Happy new year 🎊
Only missing the flower crowns 😂
@@alyssadgrenfellomg if you ever did a vid on midsommar i'd gobble that upppp. its christian analogies are rad
@@alyssadgrenfellyour guys collab was everything omg
that's how it was though we would braid each other's hair and sing songs it was so creepy
I was passing through an airport today, and there were signs inside the bathroom that were aimed at helping people who are subject to human trafficking. However, from things I’ve learned from this channel about the mission, the overlap seems to be unavoidable. The questions were: 1) has someone taken away your identification or telephone? 2) is not letting you contact family, 3) is forcing you to work without pay.
These videos are so therapeutic for my sister and I. I left the church at 14, and she stayed in until her 30's. It was one of my happiest days when she got herself and her three children out. Her husband left at the same time, but I think his heart always stayed. He ended up being very manipulative and borderline psychotic. I am glad she left him too
Wow, I am so glad she got out, that sounds like a terrible situation. And now you can be there to support her as she goes through this process
@@alyssadgrenfell Thank you! I am glad we have each other again, and I don't plan on losing her. It is such a shame that my nieces have to go through it as well. Never easy for children
Glad you all got out
Sadly, I imagine the ex-husband was always manipulative and borderline psychotic. I think the patriarchal condescending philosophy of the church itself just forces women into those subservient and complacent roles, so the husband doesn't have to personally exert much energy towards that while you're active members. Escaping that BS just helps you see it for what it really is.
Poor man. Psychotic is because of the cult manipulation. Cults do dreadful things to the spirit and minds of men who have been groomed to be responsible and loyal to the false teachings, but are left with emptiness and nothing to respect.
5:19 “these journals are produced by _thechurchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaints,_ the mormon church…” I can tell you’ve had to say that ten million times in your life haha
Lol yes!
The COJCOLDS!
Ah, I remember listening to the codge-colds tabernacle choir. So much better to say than Mormon Tabernacle Choir, right?
the transition from “i hope he lives forever” to “he died” 😭😭😭
I can never get over how much you look like the Mormon poster-child. Great content! Excited to listen to this while I work
Yeah I have a VERY mormon face, even the nose ring doesn't quite shake the general vibe imo haha
@@alyssadgrenfell face tats are surely the answer here (!)
@@alyssadgrenfell I gotta say, it's the loose curls, it's a very cute hairstyle, and it's also every girl in my old seminary class lol
@@alyssadgrenfellface tattoos next, that'll get em
Fun fact: I discovered I was a lesbian on one of my first girls camp trips. She was a little older than me and definitely gave off those “emo rebel” vibes that I really liked. I’m sure I’m not the only one who found out that way lol
I bet she listened to my chemical romance and wanted to wear heavy eyeliner
Id watch a movie about that
Unclear if there were multiple people crushing on the one emo girl or if you two had an adorable little romance together.
Absolutely love that you say "discovered" as that is what so many don't understand - these aren't choices people make, they are who you are and sometimes it takes time to figure that out, especially if you're outside a societal norm (I don't mean that offensively, I hope you get that). Good for you learning that so young, then again I'd guess i was around that age when I too learned I was attracted to girls - sadly they wouldn't let me go to girl camp :(
I was the "emo rebel" at my church. Funny enough, the first time a girl ever hit on me was the girls' camp I went to at 15! It was kinda funny too bc it wasn't until I told my best friend about it (who was also part of the church but in another stake and this was stake camp) who had already come out to me previously told me that girl was hitting on me. My best friend is oblivious to that sort of thing period (she's autistic, so that's part of it) so the fact she noticed meant to me that this girl must've been aggressively hitting on me and my heteronormatively brainwashed ass was still certain I was straight so that thought didn't even cross my mind.
About a year or so after this I figured out I was bisexual, though, so there's that (although I've never been given the chance to really explore that more yet as I've never had a true crush on a girl/woman before so I usually just tell people I'm straight still). Just kinda funny how that turned out. I feel like girls camp is a great place for people to have their queer awakening at tbh.
Something very cool is that I have my Grandpa's journals. He was also very Mormon and was taught that journaling was important, so he journaled almost every single day from 1936 to 1993. My Dad ended up typing the whole thing out and he gave a copy to every member of my family.
Something that I find pretty funny is just how mundane most of it is. There are some entries that are just like "Thursday; bought $3.00 worth of gas and washed my car."
Ur grandpa was so real for that tbh.
I remember I always thought it was silly to journal bc mine would be stuff like that, and it was, up until high school. But I had to stop keeping one that was easy to find at that point because I wrote some super personal stuff about my mental health at the time and my shifting beliefs as well as some really awful emo poetry as I was neck deep in my emo phase during that time lol. But yeah, most of it was like "went to school. Did homework. It sucked. Okay going to bed." Or silly stuff like "my sister stole my barbie :(" and whatever. It's why I struggle keeping a journal now unless I've got something genuinely interesting to say.
"I hope he lives forever" and "it wasn't boring at all" made me lol. Thank you for sharing!
“He died.” 😂
She’s right, Gordon B. Hinckley was never boring! Hahaha
5:35 this is so family Biblecore. My dad came from a Hindu family in a little village, but they randomly had a family Bible in which my grandfather dutifully recorded a ton of genealogy information. It's the most accurate information on my family before my generation, and because of the village thing, government records won't line up.
I just wish someone knew where the damn thing was...
Sounds pretty interesting actually 😮 l wish I could do that
You should sooooo get a coffee sponsor. 🤣"The Mormon Grind" Arabica beans has a certain poignancy to it.
“Church’s overall mission”
Insert Mr Crabs “hello I like money” meme
So accurate 😭😭
Listening to your missionary stories has made me wonder: if missionaries showed up at my door, could I tell them "hey I'm not interested in converting but I know you have a tough job, would you like to just sit down and take a break and have something to drink?" Growing up with religious indoctrination and working in the service industry I feel bad for these kids and if I could give them some time to rest I'd like that but I also don't want to get their hopes up or get them in trouble.
i've read a comment under a podcast alyssa was on of someone who always lets the missionaries stay at their house to use the phone, internet, lets them shower or just take a breath and get some alone time, with the rule that any religious talk is of the table. like i said its just a comment i saw, i've never had someone knock on my door to convert me but it seemed to have worked for them 🤷🏻♀️
i'm gonna look for the comment and tag you
What a kind idea. I’ve welcomed mormon girls into my home and corrected them on scripture…but now I understand that was more work for them and all they need is peace and quiet.
@@link3980 tagging you didn't work, its one of the most liked comments under the 'cults to consciousness' video with alyssa so it shouldn't be hard to find if you wanna look for it
You can and they would most likely accept. They may or may not still try to sneak in a lesson, or they might respect your upfront refusal, that's very down to the individuals
12:33 that’s crazy to me, Judaism doesn’t make you wait the full 24 (really 25…) until 12-13.
Before that it’s typical to have kids do partial fasts, like skipping just lunch, still having water etc but having to fully do it at EIGHT?
It's super crazy, kids are growing! Let them eat!
i’ve read through some of my journals from elementary/middle school and i can confirm, no baptisms, mostly crushes and depression 😭😭
Mine are about pokemon and my cousins 😂
My stepdaughter started going out with a morman boy and joined the morman church. Her mother let her against my husbands wishes. They live a few hours away in a rural area by their grandparents. She just wanted to fit in. I swear they are already planning to be together forever at barely 15 years old. How do we remain supportive and hopefully get her to come around. She is a gifted artist and I don't want her to waste her talents thinking she has to marry and have babies.
Maybe you and your husband reinforce for her all the options she has available to her. Education, traveling the world, etc. Speaking against the relationship could just make her dig in her heels.
Focus on building her up and asking about her art, etc. Remind her how much you love her.
I think the best thing you can do is to state both. Something like "I appreciate that you love your boyfriend and want to be married to him. However, I also understand that you are a young, passionate, and talented artist with big dreams and goals. I support these goals and want your partner to have a similar level of support regardless of who they are, and where they come from. I also do not want your partner, or his context to pressure you into giving up those dreams, or to follow a different path that does not feel right for you."
well, if she wants to marry him, she will have to wait until he comes back from a mission - so she has 5 or 6 years to think about it. Like others have said, education and interaction with new ideas and people is the best way to allow her to make a more informed decisions.
She gets to decide who she wants to be, and maybe she really likes this young man, or maybe she is searching for purpose. respect either journey.
Thanks so much. She is looking for acceptance and is unfortunately in her sister's shadow. Her mom often favors her sister because she does better in school. We always tell her she is smart and anyone would be happy to draw as good as she can. We are a blended family of 7, and each of them are unique and special. It is hard when you have different parenting styles. Hopefully, she will find her confidence and enjoy her life and not rush into anything. The legal age to marry in our state is 18, with no underage marriages allowed even with consent.
I haven't been brave enough to look through my mission journals. I was so severely depressed and su*c*dal and journaling was my only true escape everyday. It really helped my mental health. I still don't know if I could face it, but this video kind of inspired me to take a crack at it.
Ik it’s not exactly the same, but I went to a mental health treatment program where I had a journal. I put off opening it as I knew it would have some heartbreaking things in it. But when I did finally read it , it made me think “wow look at how far I’ve come”. I did have a good cry over much of it, but it was cathartic.
“I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t have white skin and blue eyes…”
…or photos. 😂😂😂
To normal people not feeding your eight year-old for 24 hours is called child abuse
Look, showering every day is hard when you’re a kid! No judgements at all (I have ADHD and still sometimes struggle with this as an adult.)
Mood, feel l you on that one
Showering every day is more of a social expectation than an actual necessity. In some countries it's normal to only shower every couple of days. If you don't sweat a lot and wear natural fiber clothing, you don't get very stinky, and showering too often can actually dry out your skin and hair.
If you think about it, as recently as a couple of generations ago, not every house had a shower, so before that people would keep clean in different ways. Washing with washcloths was very common, and having the occasional bath (like once a week or once a month, depending on how easy it was to access hot water).
Ah yes, the unspoken article of faith: we believe in meetings; we hope for meetings; if there is any reason to have a meeting, we will hold a meeting. 😂
Journaling has been a kind of bittersweet practice for me. It was a way for me to express who I really am, although I do hold back some stuff even while journaling. This is bc there was a time in childhood where I brought one of my journals to school and left it on a desk. It was only until after, that I knew that a boy found it and showed it to the rest of the class and it totally left me broken. From then on, I attempted to not let anyone see my journal, even my parents or sibling. It sucks that it has to be this way, but it is. I was such a prolific journal and I still am, but I do wish that I could show at least someone one of my journals without a deep fear of everyone seeing it. I hope nobody has to go thru this kind of experience anytime during their life.
yeah I’ve had a similar relationship with journaling. I think because a combination of having my privacy violated (similar situation with losing a diary at school, as well as having nosy siblings), and just being paranoid all the time that it would happen, I’ve always been very guarded in my journaling. and I’ve been super into journaling, going back as far as I can remember.
but when I write I always catch myself sort of lying haha (like little white lies, or phrasing things in obtuse ways, etc)… and it’s because I’m writing for both posterity (ie. trying to anticipate & factor in what information I think the reader will want to know later on, or what people will want to know if/when the journal gets found after I’m gone) and I also just find myself writing in a way where I’m sort of directly addressing potential snoopers. :)
I'm the same I had my privacy violated and from then on I write while editing myself as I do. So it's not really me, in there to scared to be truly vulnerable again.
I did one diary at 15, spilling my heart out about the first boy I liked. I had even attached his photo. Then soon after my made a joke referencing the ridiculous pants the boy wore. That destroyed me and any trust in my own home. She could have read it and kept it a secret but to so nonchalantly bring it up as a joke and mock me out of the blue 😢
@@KarlaEmmersonomg I had a similar thing happen too. But instead of a picture it was a drawing (an awful drawing) of my crush who lived close to me btw, which made things worse). And that’s what the boy in the class made fun of. I hesitated to include this in the OP bc of fear, but I can’t believe that this happens to so many ppl
@@severalwolvesI would also write many half truths in my journal from around grade 2 or 3, which is when this incident happened
I grew up in San Antonio about five minutes from the Mormon temple. I am not Mormon and never have been but being so close to the temple I grew up around it. Most of my choir department was Mormon. But I need you to talk about the “trek” cause I remember girls talking about pretending to be pioneers and I thought I made it up in my brain 😂
Recommend Jordan and McKay's video about larping
Oh thats definitely real! I got duped into going by my parents and I hated it. Worst 3 days of my entire life and I turned 12 the day they left, so on my birthday I was stuck out in the desert when it was over 100°F in the direct sun, pushing a heavy ass solid wood handcart full of the crap they let us bring with limited water (bc they kept running out), hiking on rocky terrain up hills when they told us it would be all flat land, and eating and breathing dust bc it was so dry dust clouds were just in your face the whole time, all while wearing stupid poorly made pioneer clothing, getting little food for "object lessons" and "reenactments" and being preached to 24/7, away from home, with a "family" made up of people you don't even know. This was my first time away from home without my mom (my dad went but he was one of the camp cooks, so he was NEVER around. The one time he was, I ran up to him and started sobbing and he told me I was being a little baby....I was barely 12 and that was my birthday).
A new Alyssa video always feels like a gift 🙏🏽
1:10:47 - Eye twitch while talking about "equality." Involuntary or not, this was hilarious!!!! You rock, Alyssa!!
I had that same journal on my mission! So sad realizing that instead of using my journal as a means to explore the complexity of my emotions and who I was becoming it just became another practice in painfully forcing myself into the Mormon cookie cutter mold :(
I would love for you to do a video about your mushroom experience and how it opened up your mind! Psychedelics have been so helpful for my depression and I love hearing peoples trip stories.
I really enjoy how you cover these topics, because it's very much just your lived experience and you bring the receipts, which helps with people saying "it isn't really like that!"
A parent forcing a child to not eat for 24 hours is abuse. How is this a thing at all? Thats so fucked up.
That's not even the worst of it
Fasting is pretty common in a lot of cultures, I wouldn’t say it’s always abuse but it can be
@derekbrown9574 forcing a hungry child who is likely growing, while they know you have the means and the ability to eat is pretty gnarly. There are better ways of teaching scarcity and sacrifice.
In my country, for 48 hours.... because there's nothing to eat. Try to say it's I'd up to those kids....
Wait…. HOLD ON….
Sooo when I was in middle school, we did that same thing with “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in our drama class, accept it was about drugs during like a don’t do drugs campaign week. The girl in white, the signs, everything. I was OxyContin lol. Ummmmm WAS IT A MORMON THING THE WHOLE TIME???
Looking back, my teacher was very religious, very into pairing kids for roles based more on race than on ability (like if one kid was black and the wife in a play, she would assign another black kid as the husband and then explain to us all that they “match”.) And for the Total Eclipse of the Heart performance, the girl in the middle was the only white girl in our class. And the drugs were black and brown kids 😳😳😳
And now that I’m thinking back to it, I remember her having us pray before this “performance.” I was a pretty devout Christian at the time so I didn’t mind, but looking back LOTS of different religions were represented in our drama class.
WAS MY TEACHER MORMON AND WAS SHE TRYING TO PUSH MORMON IDEALS ON US THE WHOLE TIME?? 😳 Don’t get me wrong though, I LOVED that performance and that song is one of my favorites now because of it. But still!
(Note I remember walking into her room in the middle of the school day during her prep period just to visit her because we all loved her, and she was crying on the phone. I asked her what was wrong and she mention it was family stuff.. but I heard her saying “I can’t divorce him… he’s my husband…” before she saw me come in. Sealed in the Temple perhaps??)
Same here! This was a staple of the DARE program 😂 in my public high school
🤔 Mr. Hmmm says hmmmmm
I can never get over how missionary Alyssa has the same look in her eyes as the lady who stalked a coworker of mine.
When they showed me her picture in an old company directory, I literally jumped back.
So if I had met Sister Grenfell, I would have outrun Usain Bolt running away from her in terror😨
holy… the journal cover design is so Mormon it’s not even funny. I had one exactly like it growing up
Deseret Book, right? Hadn’t seen one in years, had to click!
When I worked at a locally owned cafe several years ago, there were a few lady missionaries who came in to eat supper. Bless their hearts, I hope they're doing well.
Forced fasting is horrible!!!
UA-cam really hid this for 3 whole minutes
They were busy talking to a Mormon at their door
I am so so sorry 😔😔
Stop making cringe comments
@@isaiahblacksonyou must be fun at parties
I'm working with this Mormon girl, and she’s super mormon, lol. The funny thing is I'm a Mason, and I'm afraid to bring up the history of the Mormon church, Freemasonry, and Joseph Smith. She's cool, but I choose not to say anything because I like her mormon corkyness, and I don't wanna hurt her beliefs. Hope she runs into this channel someday.
? You're robbing yourself, and her, of the potential to learn. The best summer of my life thus far, I managed a vineyard, and all of my workers had diverse religious beliefs. We had an evangelical guy who wanted to be a pastor. The owner's of the vineyard were mennonite, but clearly different than any mennonites I knew, as these ones owned a vineyard & winery, ironically... One of my other workers was a guy who got ex-communicated from the mennonite church for getting council from a Catholic Priest. We also had a gal who belonged to a religious sect that traced their origins to the same people that committed the Salem Witch Trials, and I'd say one of their most different beliefs was a belief that a person was predestined to go to heaven or hell from birth, regardless of what they did on earth, and the only one who knew if they were going to heaven or not, was themselves. I was raised as a shame filled, "you're forever doing everything wrong," Catholic, and at that time in my life, I would consider myself pious. Another gal, who became my wife, was and always has been atheist. And then we had some lutherans as well. Anyways, we chatted about religion, faith, etc... at length, probably every other day, for an entire summer. That summer formed the foundation of my religious beliefs I still carry today, that being atheism. If a person gets challenged on their faith, and it sounds as ridiculous in their own head, as it does to you.... you're not doing harm. You're opening eyes. Most people who were born into a faith, so to speak, don't become irreligious or atheist because they want to. They become irreligious or atheist because they're only now contemplating all of the things they've been told, and coming to some of their own conclusions about things. That's not harmful. It's good. Just look at Alyssa! And if they keep their faith... good for them too! If your entire faith falls apart because some random person asked you a few particular questions in regards to your faith, then you didn't have real faith to begin with. You were merely following along with "your group." Ask her! I bet $50, you both, in your own ways, will be surprised by the dialogue, and that's where learning happens and real faith, if any, is developed. The other thing is.... if a person is willing to speak about their faith to you, openly, and you approach it in the same way.... that's a point of vulnerability. That's also where relationships sometimes form. At least it did for me.... I married one of them, still have contact with some of the others, and now the wife and I have a vineyard and winery of our own. And yes, I still discuss religion with my workers, not from a patronizing point of view, but merely to understand their world view. When you understand a pious person's religion, you understand one of, if not the most important thing in their life. With atheists, ironically, the dialogue is a lot more dull in a sense, simply because religion is a thing that has 0 importance in their life. They may actually feel it a hinderance to the world for many of the reasons Alyssa says.
I think you meant quirkiness 😂 i like this spelling though
@CerealXperimentsLain Goddamm autocorrect 😑
@@CerealXperimentsLainme too…corkyness suits some of my friends!!!
Literally in love with your videos.
I’m an ex Mormon too. I find your content and transparency refreshing.
1 minute in the video and i already know it's gonna be good.
Your entire statement that you start at 4:19 is so true. It especially hits home for me, a trans person who grew up in a Mormon and very religious environment.
For context on the cold / ❄️ thing in Texas.... Our infrastructure is built for hot weather because we really don't get a lot of cold weather we have very tall Bridges etc etc. to sum it up in one sentence our infrastructure does not work for Frozen conditions or cold weather therefore it is impossible to drive to school work whatever when you have to go over a 12 to 15 story bridge that is frozen. You simply cannot do that with our infrastructure.
I was visiting a friend in Arlington when an ice storm hit. Even though she had lived in northern Illinois and New Jersey, she didn't have a scraper. We ended up using our student IDs to scrape 😂 at least she knew how to drive in those conditions, especially from her Jersey years. We were laughing and avoiding getting hit by people who were out of control at 5mph. Of course there was no question of anyone salting the roads.
I went to a Methodist high school, and in our performing arts group, we did a similar performance to Turn Around. There were figures dressed in black shirts that would attack and frighten the main character, then Jesus would come on the stage and banish the black shirts. It's interesting how different groups use the same iconography.
Omg I would love a video about Mormon trek! I remember loving the bonding experience with the other kids but hating absolutely everything else 🤣 I feel like non Mormons would be fascinated by it all
Hi Alyssa 👋🏼
There's a new series on Netflix about the time the Mormons were settling in Utah,there's Brigham Young in it,and I think it's settled around the conflict between the Mormons and the us government in that region at that time,it's called American Primeval. I started to watch it and you came to mind. Now I don't know exactly how accurate is the show to the historical events,but it's a very interesting series.
It's honestly so weird how there's suddenly SO many shows and movies about Mormonism. In just the past few years we've had Under the Banner of Heaven, Murder Among the Mormons, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, Heretic, and now American Primeval.
So sketchy that you can "donate to missionaries in your area" when the missionaries are paying for themselves already.
Some members can’t afford to pay for a mission but want to serve anyway, so their bishop will arrange for their monthly fees to be paid by either the local or general missionary fund.
I grew up in Austin in the 1960s. I don't remember ever meeting a Mormon kid, so I don't think Mormons had much of a presence in Austin in the 1960s.
The anti-cult content I await for every Friday😊😊
I kept a journal even before I became LDS. A friend gave me a blank journal. I didn't know how to tell her I already kept a journal.
I always find it funny to realize what random stuff from my childhood was actually inspired by Mormonism. Didn't everyone journal all the time as child?? Didn't everyone address entries to their future children?
@@alyssadgrenfellI did but I was also religious!
I was born and raised Christian but my family certainly weren't extremely devout. I'd go to Sunday school and Cadets and all that jazz. Over time our family started going to church less often and when I turned 18 I stopped going completely as I thought church was boring and a waste of time. I always thought I was still Christian but after a while I just realized that I didn't really believe. I'm saying all of this because there was really no push back at all from my family and I was excommunicated or anything. Life went on and I was happy.
To watch these videos and see how rigid life is in the Mormon faith just really makes me realize how lucky I am. The amount of time being a Mormon takes out of your day would have destroyed young me considering I could barely handle a regular Church service.
I'm glad I subscribed to this channel! Thank you so much Alyssa!
Your future generations will cherish this journal. Utterly precious and adorable from the mind of a loving and obedient child. At some point, we all have to "put away the things of childhood." But we should NEVER condemn them. Religion is a failed attempt to explain and exploit life. Some are sinister, but some mean well.
My Catholic school sent us to a Christian retreat, and we had that EXACT experience with the "turn around" song, except the other actors were drugs and alcohol. Is this in an indoctrination handbook somewhere??
Jenny-ology? I love it. Random quirks of accents fascinate me so much. And while so religious based, encouraging journaling isn't a bad idea on the whole.
And I do remember coming across a couple of Mormon men who had a booth dedicated to looking up your family history at a local fair and they asked if I was interested and I passed saying they wouldn't have mine, which definitely surprised them. But I'm 4th gen Scottish/German, the German side being Catholic to boot. I know my roots are in church books on another continent. 😅
To be honest they probably did have your family history. In the video she really under sold how big the church is on genealogy. Collecting genealogical information isn't just church members writing down their ancestors it's a massive organized operation that collects, digitizes and organizes records from around the world. This includes census data, records from other religions, military enlistment records, grave rubbings basically any information they can find. It is so prevalent that individual members are encouraged quite frequently to do something called indexing where they basically digitize scanned hand written records. Growing up my ward held trainings on indexing multiple times a year. And that doesn't even include the people who are paid to do this by the church.
I was looking for this comment 😂 her pronunciation of genealogy was funny to me
@@clion4155 How do you pronounce it?
@@ezgarrth4555genie-ology/jee-nee-ology. I just assumed it's a regional pronunciation.
@@devinnielsen6967 If they made it to the tiny, hole in the wall town of Aufess Germany... maybe. But I do ancestry myself, & a cousin over there said they haven't digitized & it's slow going. The Scottish side, I will admit, the chance is higher cause those have been scanned.
Alyssa lost a big chuck of her youth to a "cult" (a term I use to describe ANY formal institutional "religion" or other ideologically-driven social institution; of course, some cults are even worse than others!),
It's really sad that human cultures have tended toward repressing/oppressing most people for the benefit of a few.
The fact you’d have to relearn how to journal when you left, what it’s REALLy supposed to be used for by teen girls, really adds a whole other layer to this
☕️ (coffee)
Also your emotional intelligence is so admirable. So well spoken. You’re amazing!
«be clean» - I TRIED TO🤣🤣 omg hahahahh I remember how much I hated taking a shower when I was a kid!!
Im so happy for you, now that you are free to be yourself, or at least have a real, honest journey to figuring that out. I think thats all a journey we have to take and never actually reach our destination😊
It's so weird because I was never raised religious and have always been accepted as queer by my cool leftist family (even my christian grandmother is super cool and not fully believing) but for some reason your videos give me catharsis as though I've been thru this stuff myself lmao. It's such a relief in today's day and age to see someone who deconverted rather than someone who got sucked in to yet another horrible, harmful ideology. Like a tiny slice of victory against all current odds. I swear your stuff helps keep me sane lol.
edit: if the book of mormon is a compilation of journals, does that mean that very technically there is a .000000001% chance that alyssa's journals become canonized in the book of mormon journal entry franchise
I love the little no's you put next to things later, it's adorable.
I’ve been binging your videos recently! Your words are so healing ❤️🩹 There’s so much we can learn from you! Im in my first same sex relationship with a woman. With the religious trauma it can be tough 😅 Your videos really help find my strength. To live how I want. To live for me! 🥹
I myself didn't grow up LDS at all, nor did any of my immediate family have any LDS upbringings, but I do have family friends that were raised into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and later left it. Your videos have been helping me a lot with understanding what my exmo family friends are talking about when they talk about traditions they were raised with. Also helps me know what my dad was joking about when he talked about his time living in Salt Lake City as one of the only non-LDS people who had missionaries knock on his door three times a day. Thank you Alyssa Grenfell :)
Ahh, the Total Eclipse of the Heart skit… we had that in Catholic high school when we would go on “retreats”
It's a credit to you and your husband's intelligence to break free of the intense conditioning you both lived with.
The way my day brightens when Alyssa posts a new video 🤩
33:25 WTF is that creepy drawing supposed to be? A psychologist can build a house and family estate with something like that.
As a never-Mormon, i’m shocked that bishops aren’t paid!!! Like wow… do they also have to work another job? How do they provide for their family? Haha
Yep they have normal jobs as well! Their families basically don't see them cos outside of their paid job they have all of their bishop responsibilities
I was never Mormon, but I really appreciate your content!
Your girls camp dance performance has the same vibe as my evangelical church’s easter dance 😂
For some reason, the bit that is sticking with me from this video is the bit near the beginning about Fast Sunday and that you were praying for God to make the hunger go away, or be easier to bear.
I was raised Catholic, and I'm not sure if it's that influence or not, but i was fully expecting you to say that you prayed for forgiveness for sneaking food instead of praying for help. I think it probably reflects on the differing natures of various branches on Christianity and how "active" God is in each. I would have never asked for help for myself - for other people, yes, I have so many memories of lighting candles after Mass and praying at the foot of the statue of the Virgin Mary for help on their behalf, but never for myself. A little difference, but one I was completely unprepared for.
When did they decide that *everyone* age 12 and up gets a "calling"...? I got out I think in maybe 2002, and it was only something that was supposed to be determined by when a member in a leadership position felt moved by the spirit, or whatever. It's not a "calling" if everyone is just assigned something to do starting at age 12.
And the bathroom cleaning I don't remember either. We would of course need to clean spaces after we used them, and I think there were maybe organized quarterly deeper cleanings, but I'm pretty sure there was a cleaning company that did bathrooms and common spaces, and particularly the regular upkeep of the floors. You want people taking care of the bathroom that are sanitizing things, and people taking care of the floors who are doing things like cleaning carpets and buffing gym floors properly. That's stupid to make members do that stuff. But it's sure more tithe money for the rich people at the top.
This was fascinating, please share more of your journals!
I didn't grow up Mormon. We attended the Assembly of God. I journaled from age 12 onward, but it was based on what I read in the Bible. I was given instruction by a church mentor on how to do reading and journaling. It was never about whose doing what or what was happening in my life. Just about what I read what I thought God was speaking to me about in that passage, etc. I think as a child with an unsupportive family, my point of view was skewed. But a lot of the things you talk about are eerily similar. Brain washing, and I cringe at what I wrote back then. Thanks for sharing.
"finished it 2" = "finished it too" ?
Omg the Turn Around dancers were a mormon thing!? There was a presentation at my school lmao, it was like a legit company that did abstinence/just say no kind of stuff and had costumes and did a play/dance to that song. But the only thing we learned was how bomb that song was 😂 for about a week after me and my bestie would bust into dramatic song in the hallway at each other
UA-cam has been pushing your videos on my recommended list for awhile and I am really happy I popped into this one and recognized the other thumbnails!
We did enforced fasting in the cult i was in during college (now called World Church of Christ). It triggered migraines and IBS, which I still struggle with at 64. These practices, done without knowledge of how the body works, can cause permanent damage. I would sneak a can of Diet Coke (our beverage of choice, caffeine was one thing we were NOT forbidden, and I'm sure that also fed migraine and IBS), then feel so guilty and hope nobody smelled my breath. It made me a "weak Christian."
I’m an ex-Mormon teen. My mother and her side of the family are almost all Mormon, so we fasted a lot. Honestly, I feel like that might have had a hand in my ed. It’s scary what they can and will do.
I was raised in the south start school at a parochial environment not knowing what a Mormon was. Then I was about ten years old moved up north, still being naive, landing access the street of a Mormon a church ! They never seen the likes of me, nor of them. I was raised to be honest and not be manipulate the truth. Not knowing the rivalry between Catholics! I do now. Open the door to a missionary, is like opening the door to a vampire once opened it stays open. Then as for the book of Mormon I try to throwing away putting front the house in the garbage its been like a ouija board. The only thing I did was moved out of that house. But two of my siblings got brainwashed, yet I am not free of it. Nieces and nephews, missionaries and seminary teachers. I keep the motto when you're tired of crying,.just start smiling, then they really don't know whats going on. The spiritual side of me. Hope's every one have a good life with out harming others.
I was LITERALLY in a nearly identical "Total Eclipse of the Heart" interpretive dance in college. Not Mormon, just collegiate Christian fellowship. I played the Average Christian, and during the big drum hits in the bridge, I had to mime/dance that if I choose sin, it's like I'm nailing Christ to the cross himself.
I never made my kids fast. Probably because I joined the church at I think 22 years old, and I would get very sick from doing it myself. I cannot imagine putting children through that. My lifelong Mormon (now ex) husband was a total monster about it, but I was not budging on it.
Oh the Irony, "We need to protect women's right to choose traditional roles"
(Yeah you do that by protecting women's right to chose.... end of sentence)
My grandma was the daughter of an RLDS minister in Missouri. She was a lifelong devout practitioner of the faith herself. But my mom told me that she was very angry about women starting to be ordained in the 70s. She and others stayed in their old church building across the street from the modern-looking temple you visited, while the more progressive cohort moved there. I’m not sure how many of the conservative group are left but it seems like the reformed version has thankfully become much more popular. It’s very sad-she was charismatic and VERY pious-she could have made a very good minister herself.
If you haven't heard of it, I highly suggest looking up Jeffrey Lundgren and The Kirtland Cult. It was a group that broke away from the RLDS in Ohio in the 80s because they thought the church was becoming "too progressive". Unfortunately, they ended up going full doomsday cult and killed a bunch of people.
The noises I made when I opened youtube and saw this in my recommended, I was hoping a video like this would come out for a while
After watching quite a few of your videos, I'd love to know more about how you handle your relationship to family members that still identify as Mormon. Given how important family and genealogy is to the Mormon church, I'm curious to know how your removal from the Mormon faith affects your familial relationships. From the vids I've watched, I get hints of it but would love to know how you navigate that (unless it's too personal to delve into or you've already talked about it).
I remember writing journals like that. One time I wrote in mine on a mothers day, Sunday. I wrote, "I can't wait to have kids and be a mom." It made me laugh cuz I think that's the one and only time I have said that. I never wanted kids before that day, and never wanted them after. Someone must have given a reeeally manipulative talk about motherhood. 😂
Your girls camp story makes me think of the "Everything" skit that evangelicals did that was basically the same thing, but Jesus comes in and protects you at the big part of the song. It's called the "Everything" skit because it's to the song "Everything" by Lifehouse, who is not a Christian band lol.
Babe wake up new Alyssa Grenfell just dropped (I love your content!!)
please read us more of your mission journals!! it's super interesting to hear (and your handwriting is soo pretty to look at:))
Your story of the Texas Jubilee reminded me of our local temple opening, it was the second one around here, and much closer to my house than the other. I was 16 I think when it opened, maybe 15? And I remember I told them I didn't want to go and they told my parents. I got grounded and had to take my younger sister with me when we went. We practiced at every mutual activity before it for like 2 months. We did a dance AND a choir performance.
The day of was awful because they chose to do it a city over (because where I live, there aren't any buildings large enough around here) and so we had to carpool over there an hour away at 5AM during the summer. The parking lot for the building was full, so we had to park a fifteen minute walk away. I just remember being so tired and absolutely hating the white t-shirts they made us wear because they were ugly, they gave me a size too small and so everyone kept mentioning that it looked "inappropriate" as I have a large bust and did back then as well, and I also HATED white clothes. Plus, I had to wear a skirt and at the time, I only had a few skirts my mother deemed church appropriate and I didn't like any of them and hated wearing pantyhose which I was persuaded to wear by my mother (I was babysitting and old enough that I went shopping without my parents at this point. I would get in trouble for the stuff I bought but my parents surprisingly never made me return anything). The whole event was a whole lot of hype over literally nothing. My sister and I fell asleep during the majority of the performances and preaching.
Everyone was SO excited to see the prophet (I think it was Monson at the time? Idk man, I was pretty checked out by that point in time, but it was whoever was after Hinckley) and I remember being upset because he couldn't remember where he was and mostly only spoke to the men even though the local women and young women had put way more effort into the event as a whole and were the ones running everything. I had an opportunity to meet him and speak to him and ngl I thought he was dumb. He told me he didn't think God would like my hair, which was dyed firetruck red at the time. I think I glared at him and told him that it was a good thing it wasn't his hair then and left. I'd already opened my eyes to the bs the year prior and I was pretty over this whole thing. My sister was too.
We got home, ripped off those ugly ass shirts and crashed out on the couch. It pissed my mom off because she wanted to know everything that happened and what the prophet was like as she'd never met him nor had she ever been to something like that. We just called it a "Temple Celebration" though, nothing super fun lmao.
I remember my sister didn't want to talk to the prophet but our group got like selected to speak to him and so she like clung to my arm when it was our turn. Something about him felt unsettling to me tbh. Didn't like him. I guess that was my good old bullshit-o-meter going off 🤷♀️ I got really good at fine-tuning it the older I got and it really pissed off my church leaders lmao.
Anyways, thanks for bringing that memory back, it gave me a good giggle
Amazing video Alyssa, thank you for sharing! That tithing slip 💀I was wondering if you could do a video about the pearl of great price? I just can't get over how whacky Joseph Smith was.
First of all love your content. Secondly I just had to chuckle a bit when you started to read the journal. It’s just this is not the first person whose Journal I’ve heard read allowed for posterity or things 😮. It’s just it’s very often that those who write journals certainly aren’t writing them for themselves and would like nothing more then an impromptu Public Journal Reading 😅
Great episode! Never forget your actual mission-SALES. SALES, SALES! That 10% cut is not going to sell itself!
Proud of you on this journey. Really enjoy your videos 🌻💫
16:27
To be fair, show tunes and hymns can be quite good 😄 I wish I'd been that talented. All I can do is poetry.
36:24
That was my 16th birthday lol
VERY fascinating video! So cool to see such an adult subject through young eyes and then have it being critiqued by the adult self. Makes me glad I had the foresight to download a lot of my earlier writings before MySpace died (used them for university assignments because I felt lazy freshman year), although I'm still hunting for my high school notebooks.
Definitely shows a lot of growth and ideological progression doing self-analysis.
The fact they MAKE YOU NOT EAT is crazy
Am i the only one who always reads LDS as LSD?? Lmao
Sometimes those weird beliefs do sound a bit like someone made them up while on psychedelics though, so kinda fits.
"It says 'God is real and he loves you'..with an illustration of Santa" LOL
The thought of spending all of eternity with some of my relatives really doesn't sound like heaven, more the opposite.
I grew up catholic and they would pull me out of school to be an altar server at funerals. They would give us a $10 target giftcard lol. It was weird af
That Deseret Book font is giving me flashbacks. One of those journals and an EFY/John Bytheway CD was such an early 2000’s grandma gift.
In Siberia they cancel school when it’s -67 degrees F (-55 degrees C).
Only at -30`C in Minsk and Ekaterinburg.
Ngl Praise to the Man is a banger. Though the tune is weirdly similar to Scotland the Brave.
Definitely not a coincidence.