Welcome and Introducing the Guests

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's June 2, 2021, and we are in the middle of Pride Week in Utah. We are celebrating and honoring the LGBT community, showing our love and support as we've tried to do over the years here on Mormon Stories podcast. And today you are. We just finished yesterday an amazing interview with. With Kyle Ashworth. Such an inspiring interview about a gay Mormon man who married a woman as he was taught and had three children with her, were married 10 years and how she set him free. And. And then they adopted this motto even after they divorced. One home to one family. Two homes or two homes, one family. It's a beautiful story. Check out Kyle Ashworth's story if you haven't yet. And today we're continuing with the love. Today we have in studio Kelly and Kayla Mikesil.

Carah Burrell [00:01:04] Hi, guys.

John Dehlin [00:01:04] Welcome.

Kelly Mikesell [00:01:05] Hi. Thank you for having us.

Kayla Mikesell [00:01:06] Yeah, we're super excited to be here,

John Dehlin [00:01:07] all the way from Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. This story is epic, so hold on to your hats. Kelly is married to her bishop, Kelly Miksel, currently serving as a bishop in Las Vegas. Faithful members for many, many years prior to this interview. And then. And then Kayla, of course, is. Is the child of. Of Kelly and Bishop. Kayla is also the reigning current Miss Salt Lake City, Utah, and her platform is LGBTQ advocacy. And they're here for Pride Week. But this is a story about so many things. It's a story about, you know, Mormon upbringing, Mormon family, kind of a blended family. That's going to be an element to this story.

John Dehlin [00:02:05] There's going to be elements of law of chastity, kind of worthiness, sexual shame. There's going to be some LGBTQ themes because as Kayla kind of developed and progressed in her life, she has come to identify as bisexual. And we're going to talk about what that was like for her to come out as bisexual with devout Mormon parents. And I don't know if your dad was bishop at the time, but. Well, he was. So what's it like when your daughter comes out as. As bisexual when you're bishop or bishops married to a bishop? I don't know if you want me to call you bishop's wife.

Kayla Mikesell [00:02:43] It's fine, whatever.

John Dehlin [00:02:45] But then there's also faith issues and feminism issues. Kelly's got her own story of her journey with Mormonism, and there's just so many cool, important themes. So buckle up for a multi hour epic mother, stepmother, daughter kind of pair. Kelly and Kayla Mike. So welcome so much.

Kelly Mikesell [00:03:11] Thank you so much for having me.

John Dehlin [00:03:13] Anything you want to correct. Did I call you mother when I should have said stepmother?

Kelly Mikesell [00:03:16] No, you're fine.

Kayla Mikesell [00:03:17] I am her.

Kelly Mikesell [00:03:18] I am her.

Kayla Mikesell [00:03:18] I've got two moms.

Kelly Mikesell [00:03:20] But, yes, I. She's my daughter in all regards, so.

Kayla Mikesell [00:03:23] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:03:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:24] All right, well, we're so glad you guys are here. Thank you for coming. And of course, we welcome back to Mormon Stories Podcast Studio, Carah Burrell. Carah, thanks for joining us.

Carah Burrell [00:03:33] Yeah, thanks for having me. We were just talking. I'm so excited for this one. This is going to be really, really interesting. So thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [00:03:40] Yeah. And it's just been so great to have Carah in the studio handling audio and video and time codes and just all the things that we need and adding her questions and commentary and wit and wisdom. So it's just. It's been great to have you, Carah.

Carah Burrell [00:03:54] Thanks.

Kelly and Kayla's Mormon Upbringings

John Dehlin [00:03:57] All right, well, let's jump in.

Carah Burrell [00:03:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:58] So we have an epic Mormon Stories podcast interview, and I'm guessing it's going to start with you, Kelly, is that right?

Kelly Mikesell [00:04:05] Yeah, I'm. I'm a few years older than Kayla. I have a few more stories to tell.

Kayla Mikesell [00:04:10] Yeah. So do you just jump right into.

John Dehlin [00:04:12] Jump right in. Mormon.

Kayla Mikesell [00:04:13] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:04:13] How did your Mormon story begin?

Kelly Mikesell [00:04:15] I. I've been Mormon or LDS or member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints my whole life. I was born in the covenant. I was born to parents who were converts to the church when they were. Their parents were both converts. So both of my grandparents, both sets of grandparents joined the church when each of my parents were young. They were children, and so each of my parents grew up in Southern California.

Kelly Mikesell [00:04:43] My dad served a mission in Central America when Central America was all one mission. Like four countries was one mission when he got back. My parents met at a singles activity and got married in 1975 in the Los Angeles temple. And I have an older sister and two younger sisters and a younger brother. So I'm the second oldest of five kids. And we lived in Southern California, moved when I was nine to Boulder City, Nevada, and then when I was 14 to American Fork, Utah. So during that whole time, we did everything Mormon. We. I mean, it really. I think one of the themes that I've noticed is in the stories that a lot of the individuals you have on interview is that Mormon was just who they were.

Kelly Mikesell [00:05:28] Like, it wasn't that we just went to church on Sunday or youth activities on Wednesday. It was. That is our whole life was being Mormon. So we did everything. My mom and dad always had callings, always served, went to the temple. I'd see my mom ironing sometimes the temple clothes and folding them carefully back up into her temple bag. And we had family home evening and scripture study and family dinner was really important to my mom. And so she really tried to protect that growing up. Even when church activities often took us away from family dinners, she was always an advocate for that. My dad served as bishop for a time period when we lived in Boulder City, Nevada.

John Dehlin [00:06:08] And so you're a bishop's daughter as well as a bishop's wife?

Kelly Mikesell [00:06:12] Yes, I have just really great parents and they've always been good examples and have raised us in a home where, you know, I was taught to pray and we just were taught to live our values and we were taught, you know, in family home evening how to behave and act. And I was always did personal progress. I was incredibly self driven. Laughing, she's like, you were a nerd. Say you were a nerd.

Kelly Mikesell [00:06:42] I loved personal progress. I wasn't aware of the fact that not everybody just, just, you know, did personal progress on their own because I did. I was very goal oriented. And I think that because of that making lists and being goal oriented, that definitely impacted, you know, my personality, definitely impacted the way I internalized messages within the Mormon community. And so from a very young age, one of my very first. Because I think for 41 years I had, I mean, for. I'm 43 now, so for 42 years I had.

Kelly Mikesell [00:07:18] I couldn't even remember a night. I had never prayed. I'm sure there was a night I came home late from something and fell asleep, but I don't ever recall. I just, it was not something I ever had to work at. I just prayed every night to my heavenly father. And I remember pleading as a child with my heavenly father to help me not be so influenced by Satan. Because I was taught that good feelings like love and faith and service and happiness and joy, those came from God and those were good. They were godly traits and feelings. And that anger and sadness and depression and anxiety, those were all from Satan and not to give in to those feelings.

Kelly Mikesell [00:08:04] And so I was an individual with very passionate feelings and I had big emotions and I was. Sometime my family would refer to me as Dr. Jekyll, Mrs. Hyde because I'd be so compassionate and loving and then I'd feel so much anger and I didn't know what to do with these big emotions.

John Dehlin [00:08:26] Anger at what?

Kelly Mikesell [00:08:28] Just I had a huge social injustice issue. My dad recalls an incident where he was having to Give me a bath. As a young child. And I was fighting him and I looked up at him and said, I don't remember this, but he laughs and says, you looked at me and said, I wish I were the parent and you were the child and I would stick you under here. Like, I just, you know, I was super into equality in everything. And I just saw social injustice in my family, social injustice in the church, social injustice in the world. And I was super angry all the time.

Kelly Mikesell [00:09:00] And I just was easily. I was very sensitive to things. And so I just didn't know what to do with these negative emotions. And so I remember praying like, heavenly Father, please take away this anger, Please take away these sad feelings. And just obsessed, Became obsessed at a young age with not being good enough. Like, oh my gosh, I'm so influenced by Satan. What is wrong with me? Because if I felt that anger, then I succumbed to Satan.

Kelly Mikesell [00:09:30] And that was just a theme that continued my, really up until this past year because I of how I internalize those messages. I'm fully aware that not every member of the church internalizes messages that way, but unfortunately I did. And so worthiness became a huge issue for me. And I was a journal writer at a very young age. I remember writing in my journal at 8 about things I hated and are angry about or loved and was passionate about. And I never felt I could really talk to anybody about it because I think the world was different back then too. I mean, you go back 35 years.

Kelly Mikesell [00:10:06] Like our conversations with each other now are so different than they were 15 years or 14 years ago when we first met and 35 years ago. And conversations I can have with my children now didn't happen with parents typically. So I was allowed to have thoughts and feelings at church or at home or at school, but I had to keep my opinions and thoughts and feelings to myself. And so I just internalized. I was a child that I don't know. I think I was really conflicted inside because on one hand I wanted to be so good and be perfect and I tried so hard. And I was that kid. I was that kid that when in

Kayla Mikesell [00:10:47] high school, she it's.

Kelly Mikesell [00:10:49] Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [00:10:51] You said you got a day planner for your 16th birthday?

Kelly Mikesell [00:10:53] Yeah. What 16 year old asks for a Franklin day planner? Like, I'm kind of embarrassed to say that at 16, that's what my gift was. And I still have that Franklin day planner. Like it was so meaningful to me. Like, I made lists and I organized and I was always trying to be a good person and I Think some of the most formative things in Mormonism for me that I never talk about you. A lot of things in my mind I would never talk about because there was never a forum to talk about it. You become, when you grow up in a culture where you have to be quiet like you, you're allowed to have opinions and thoughts, but you keep them to yourself.

Kelly Mikesell [00:11:31] You just become observant. You just kind of observe. And so I just became an observer a lot. And I was in my head a lot. And I remember being 11 when I very first, like, so I had those feelings of lack of, you know, worthiness in terms of, oh, I'm so easily influenced by Satan. I get angry all the time, but no ability to really process emotions. I, I, I didn't, I had limited tools to recognize that and no understanding that those were human emotions. And, and it didn't mean I was succumbing to Satan, but that's what I believed and thought in my heart, like, for years.

Kelly Mikesell [00:12:07] And so when I was 11, I remember specifically two experiences that really defined and took me on a trajectory with my Mormon experience. One of them was, and they both, ironically, were around female feminism issues. So as a child, like many people, I was obsessed with outer space, and I wanted to be an astronaut. Obsessed. I read space books. I asked for a telescope from Santa Claus.

Kelly Mikesell [00:12:37] I read books about astronauts. When I was eight years old, I watched the, you know, sitting in school, the Challenger space shuttle not blow up. That was, it was engulfed in a cloud of fire. And a lot of the country didn't actually see that footage until after. But a lot of the kids in

John Dehlin [00:12:57] the school, I watched that live.

Kelly Mikesell [00:12:58] Yeah, watched it live because NASA had arranged with the schools systems, you know, the Department of Education, to broadcast that live. And it was really because Christa McAuliffe was the teacher, a civilian teacher, and she was the first civilian teacher to go up into outer space. And she was the first astronaut of President Reagan's Teacher in Space program. And it, and the goal was to have teachers go up in space and to come back and, you know, inspire students to be interested in, in space and naturally, do whatever you like. Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [00:13:35] Strive to do what you want, live

Kelly Mikesell [00:13:36] your dreams and, you know, shoot for the stars and, and really propel that, that forward. And so I was just, I learned all about her. And, you know, so for years, I was obsessed with space. I wanted to be an astronaut. Now I'm fully aware that kids want to be a thousand different things when they grow up. And most of the time, a Very small percentage of what you want to be at age 11 is what you end up being. But so I remember being at a family activity, it was like a family meeting or dinner with extended family. And an uncle came up to me and said, Kelly, you know, just talking to me, seeing how I was doing, super nice, love him.

Kelly Mikesell [00:14:13] He said, kelly, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I said, oh, I want to be an astronaut. And I remember the look on his face. He looked at me with an amused smirk and he said, you'll never be an astronaut, Kelly.

Kelly Mikesell [00:14:33] That would conflict with being a mother. The time restraints to be an astronaut are so intense. You wouldn't be able to be a mother. So you really should think about something that would be more conducive to you being a good mother. And shocked me like it was a gut punch because I had been dreaming about this for years. I mean, 8, 9, 10, 11, long

Kayla Mikesell [00:15:00] before I was 8, I wanted to change.

Kelly Mikesell [00:15:02] That is, I mean, that's a pretty. I mean my six year old changes what she wants to be 50 times every two months. And so, I mean that's a long time to really want to be something. And so, I mean, even one time I remember reading a book about astronauts and, and the qualifications and requ because I needed to make sure at 10 that I had the qualifications to be an astronaut. And so I had read that you can't have ringing in your ears. And I could be recalling this incorrectly because I am 43, but I had ringing in my ears periodically and I didn't know why.

Kelly Mikesell [00:15:36] And I just started sobbing. I like went and wedged myself between my bunk bed and the wall and I was just sobbing like, oh my gosh, how did you be it so bad? How saved me from being an astronaut. And so I was passionate about this. And so when he said that, I became hyper vigilant in noticing what limitations were put on women. And I was told all growing up and expectations that I could be anything I wanted. I was brilliant, I was so smart. I even had a leader or a teacher one time, say, it's such a shame you weren't born a boy.

Kelly Mikesell [00:16:13] And and I began to really resent that I was born female. I was angry about it and I thought that, you know, every time I would hear, women are so good, they're amazing, they don't have to have the priesthood because they're naturally amazing. And I'm like, you're just telling me that I really, I know what my place is. I'm a second Class citizen, I'm a helper. I don't get to be what I want. And over time I just assimilated that. You know, I just became really sad about the fact that I was.

Kayla Mikesell [00:16:47] But I feel like from hearing you

Kelly Mikesell [00:16:49] talk about it before, resigned to this

Kayla Mikesell [00:16:50] second status, I feel like not only did it make you sad and kind of resentful in that anger, but it severely impacted that you had these goals and aspirations. Because as the older you got, I

Kelly Mikesell [00:17:03] had no goals and aspirations.

Kayla Mikesell [00:17:03] You didn't have any goals anymore. So it did get to you and it got to the point where you were like, yeah, I just need to get married.

Kelly Mikesell [00:17:10] Yeah, I had no goals or aspirations.

Kayla Mikesell [00:17:13] By the time you were like 17, right?

Kelly Mikesell [00:17:14] I went to college. Yeah, absolutely. And another experience I had when I was 11 that was, I don't know, 11 was traumatic. I mean, you're still in primary, you're young at 11, you're not even in young women's yet. I mean, I know they've just recently changed that. So 11 year olds go into young women's now. But when I was 11, I was still in primary and singing Helaman's warriors, you know, like the army of Helaman was my favorite song and I belt that out in the primary program. I was just loved primary and I was reading a novel. My older sister was an avid reader and my parents just could not keep up with her with books and so they were always buying her her books.

Early Doubts and Troubling Doctrines

Kelly Mikesell [00:17:54] She's 18 months older than me. And so I was just reading one of the books that they had gotten her and it was from Deseret book and it was just a novel, a fiction novel. But one of the main character, the male main character, wanted to marry this second woman and felt justified in doing it because of this doctrine of plural marriage. I was like, what is this? I literally had never heard of it. And clearly if it was ever talked about, I mean, at 11 as a little kid, I just wasn't aware of it. And I remember being horrified, horrified. So I go over to my parents bookshelf with all our LDS books and I find this Mormon doctrine, this white book.

Kelly Mikesell [00:18:37] And I pull it off the shelf. It's like a dictionary, you know, with the two columns and it goes in alphabetical order of all the doctrine, doctrine of, you know, you pick a name or topic and you go to that section. And I was horrified that this holy practice of polygamy was going to commence at the second coming in. And so began a love hate relationship with the book. Mormon Doctrine and Bruce McGorney

Kayla Mikesell [00:19:07] Love Hate

Kelly Mikesell [00:19:08] would be a really good, A good example because I cherry picked when I gave talks what quotes I liked out of that book. And in fact, I never told. Told you this, and I don't think I told Sean this, but when we first got, when Sean and I first got married, I saw that book, Mormon Doctrine on his book, on the bookshelf when we first got married. And I took it and threw it in the trash. I mean, for years after, he'd be like, have you seen Mormon Doctrine? No.

Kayla Mikesell [00:19:30] No.

Carah Burrell [00:19:30] I don't know.

Kelly Mikesell [00:19:31] Once I went to the dump, I had nowhere I went. So I just really hated that book. And so I went, I climbed up to the top of my. I, I was the top bunk in my room. I shared with my older sister and I sobbed. I felt so sick Inside as an 11 year old girl, that felt so wrong to me.

Kayla Mikesell [00:19:50] So just two impactful things of yes and not telling, you know, being a mother. And then the second thing of now, not only that, but you're not even a priority.

Kelly Mikesell [00:19:59] That solidified to me that here I was. Nope, here I really was. And I remember praying because I. For three months, I did not pray to Heavenly Father. I was so angry. I prayed to Heavenly Mother because I was like, I'm not talking to you.

Carah Burrell [00:20:10] You.

Kelly Mikesell [00:20:11] Unfortunately, the way I internalized it is I viewed him as deceiving me. I viewed him as. I did not grow up. Unlike your dad, who grew up with this very loving view of Heavenly Father, I grew up being afraid of him. Like I didn't trust him because he lied to me. How did I just like miss that for 11 years? And now I was gonna have to live this holy practice Like I was terrified of eternity.

John Dehlin [00:20:41] There was a lack of informed consent. That's a recurring theme on my story's podcast.

Kayla Mikesell [00:20:46] Yeah, yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:20:47] Cause I don't recall being asked if I, I wanted to live the law of polygamy when I was 8 years old getting baptized.

Kayla Mikesell [00:20:53] Right.

John Dehlin [00:20:53] And for our, for our non Mormon listeners, you know, the Mormon Church has this weird relationship with polygamy where it's baked into our founding. We practice it until the early 1900s in reality, but then the government forced us to stop the practice, but we never stopped believing in it. So my, my grandmother was the daughter of a polygamous marriage. I knew her. So I, my grandmother, I knew her. She was in a polygamous family. But. But now the modern church, modern LDS church wants to distance itself from polygamy. And so they tell everyone in public, oh, Polygamy, that's some other group where it's baked into our history.

John Dehlin [00:21:34] Most of our prophets lived it, most of our ancestors lived it, and most importantly, it's still in our scriptures. So if you go to Doctrine and covenants, section 132, polygamy is absolutely still Mormon doctrine. Our two top leaders in the church, Russell M. Nelson and Dallin H. Oaks, our prophet and his first right hand man, so to speak, they're both polygamists in the sense that they're sealed to multiple women in heaven. And, and so there's this love hate relationship with polygamy that, that torments us to this day. But anyone who tells you Mormons don't believe in polygamy is not being honest. Fully honest.

Kelly Mikesell [00:22:10] No, true. And truthfully, because I am such a binary black and white thinker. I am like the law of Moses. This is what it says. This is what we will do. I know what section 132 says and I've known what section 132 says. And I knew that I was going to be destroyed like Emma was if I didn't live the law of polygamy

John Dehlin [00:22:33] because God, God, I'll put that in air quotes. God through Joseph Smith. Basically, the historical context of D&C132 is that Joseph had married out of, I don't know, a couple dozen wives before he let Emma in, his actual wife, on the idea that he was practicing polygamy. And Emma freaked out and got angry, so he needed a way to get her in line to allow him to keep practicing it. And so miraculously, he receives a revelation. And those listening won't see my air quotes. He receives a revelation from God telling Emma that she'll literally be destroyed if she doesn't support him in him obeying, quote, God's will. And so there's literally a verse threatening Emma with destruction if she doesn't support Joseph's plural marriage. And you read that?

Kelly Mikesell [00:23:18] Yeah, absolutely.

Kayla Mikesell [00:23:18] Yeah. And Kelly, you, when she reads things she remembers, like.

Kelly Mikesell [00:23:22] Yes, you're.

Kayla Mikesell [00:23:22] It's. Well, because it's internalized, like she said,

Kelly Mikesell [00:23:24] pictures in my head, like, especially if I've studied it.

Kayla Mikesell [00:23:26] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:23:27] I see in my mind the column paragraphs.

Kayla Mikesell [00:23:30] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:23:31] Mormon doctrine.

Kayla Mikesell [00:23:31] And it's for how much? I mean, you know, that you've been in my life for this long that I see how smart you are and resilient and going after things that you want. And it just makes me sad to think of you growing up with these aspirations and all of these things that you wanted to do, but then just kind of being beat down with all of these things that eventually get you to the point where now you're. You have no self esteem, you're in college and, you know, and your goal is just to try and find a husband and be a mother, which if that's somebody's goal, that's awesome.

Kayla Mikesell [00:24:05] Like, I. I'm not saying that everyone needs, you know, every woman needs to be out working, and if you. To be a mom and that's what you want to be in life, that is absolutely wonderful. But you wanted to do other things. And it's not that you can't do both, but I just. It just makes me sad to think that that's.

Kelly Mikesell [00:24:17] That wasn't the framework in which I

Carah Burrell [00:24:19] was like, you started from the beginning saying, this is your life, Mormonism. You didn't know anything else.

Kayla Mikesell [00:24:23] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:24:24] So it's something you have to accept as a woman. Like, there wasn't a choice.

Kayla Mikesell [00:24:28] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:24:28] And there was never. For me, there was never. I think this is where the chasm was forged inside of my heart. Because there was never a point ever that I thought, God is wrong. I knew God was right.

John Dehlin [00:24:46] Right. By definition.

Kelly Mikesell [00:24:48] I believed that with all my heart.

John Dehlin [00:24:50] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:24:50] But I did not agree with him.

John Dehlin [00:24:52] So God's a jerk, basically.

Kelly Mikesell [00:24:53] And I knew where people who went. Who did not agree with God. And so here I thought, I'm not this horrible person, but I'm so easily influenced by Satan. I have doubts. I have doubt about polygamy. I don't trust that. That I'll be fine with it in eternity. And I just. It just. It formed this chasm that just over the years got wider and wider and wider and wider until I just couldn't. I had to confront things, you know, when. Eventually, but with. When I was a junior in high school, we studied DNC in seminary, and I didn't have to get up early like Kayla did. I. I lived in American Fork, so I went to American Fork High School.

John Dehlin [00:25:39] You're a caveman?

Kelly Mikesell [00:25:40] Total caveman.

John Dehlin [00:25:41] We had Wayne sermon on. He's a. He's a caveman. Oh, Wayne sermon of Imagine Dragons.

Kelly Mikesell [00:25:46] Oh, that's awesome. And so.

John Dehlin [00:25:48] So you're not the first caveman.

Kelly Mikesell [00:25:52] So I just walked across. I had release time, you know, in the middle of the day. Went to the church building for seminary. And my junior year, we were studying Doctrine and Covenants, and the seminary principal was my Doctrine and Covenants teacher. And that was a really tough year for me because there were just so many things that bothered me that, you know, we didn't have the Internet. Like, you know, we didn't have information even you. Just whatever your leader told you or whatever your parent told you or whatever your teacher at school told you, that was fact. Like, there was no reason not to believe anything that was being said.

Kelly Mikesell [00:26:33] And I remember I was never one of those kids that would raise my hand and be like, well, what about this and this and this? But when anyone else rose their hand and was, what about this, this, and this? Oh, I perked up because I. I wanted to know, what about this, this, and this? So one, I remember a young woman asking, well, what about polygamy? You know, and she was really concerned about it. And he said, everyone will have to marry or, you know, everyone will have to live. That law, it is the higher law. This is what Section132 teaches. It's our doctrine. And so then he.

Kelly Mikesell [00:27:07] He said things like, I mean, sisters, come on, think about it. If you had billions of worlds and people to populate, wouldn't you appreciate the help? I mean, you know, and his reasoning for. And now this is a seminary president.

John Dehlin [00:27:22] So meaning God needs multiple.

Kelly Mikesell [00:27:24] Yes. Because.

John Dehlin [00:27:25] Assistance.

Kayla Mikesell [00:27:26] Right, right.

Kelly Mikesell [00:27:28] So he even had this mentality that we would physically give birth. You know, and in my brain, I'm

John Dehlin [00:27:33] like, to billions of spirit children.

Kelly Mikesell [00:27:35] That's not how Adam and Eve were created. Like, did you miss the memo? But whatever. Okay. We're not allowed to ask or say anything because we don't have faith if we ask questions. And so I remember something else he said was the reason why we didn't talk about Heavenly mother is because we had multiple heavenly mothers. So how would we know if my heavenly mother was the same as your heavenly mother? Oh, my gosh. Because God had polygamous wives, so why would I doubt that that was true? Coming from the ces, you know, the. They work for the CES department. He's the principal of seminary. So I just. I internalized, like, shove it down, shove it down, shove it down. Have faith, have faith. So I learned a lot of thought stopping techniques. So really good at that.

John Dehlin [00:28:23] Someone's been listening to. Well, someone's been reading up on the literature a little bit. That's an important topic.

Kelly Mikesell [00:28:29] Oh, I was very good at it. I am a child.

John Dehlin [00:28:32] So you're singing a primary song.

Kelly Mikesell [00:28:35] I'm a child of God. I'm a child of God. Anytime, anytime I had an impure sexual thought, I'm this child of God. Anytime I had a doubt, I'm a child of God. Shove it down Shove it down. So I never really let my brain get to that point, contemplate or evaluate very far.

John Dehlin [00:28:49] Yeah, it just.

Kelly Mikesell [00:28:50] It starts to bubble up and you shove it down. Right. So I'm not even really cognitively aware to the extent that I have some serious issues going on.

John Dehlin [00:28:59] Totally. Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:29:00] At this point.

John Dehlin [00:29:01] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:29:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:02] So that's seminary.

Kelly Mikesell [00:29:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:04] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:29:05] When I was 16, another kind of. Right before I get to graduating when I was 16, I distinctly remembered. So I love science and I love science experiments and I think in terms of more scientific experiments and things. And so I viewed life. I remember being 16 years old and just looking out and seeing people and cars drive by. And I had this vision in my brain. Not a real vision, but imagined in my mind that this planet was a giant laboratory experiment and we were all the rats and we were set here or set here. And then we were supposed to go through this maze.

Kelly Mikesell [00:29:51] And then God and his angels were standing above us with lab coats on and clipboards, injecting us with cancer, injecting us with this darting thought, putting my God in front of us, crushing a family member, crushing us, pinning us down. And they were just observing and taking notes about how we responded to the injections of this and this. And it was just like this callous.

Kelly Mikesell [00:30:19] I never viewed God himself, my heavenly father, as someone loving because I had a very loving father. And whenever discussion about God, I mean, in the scriptures, I mean, especially in seminary, you know, you have Old Testament and New Testament and I mean, we are trenched deep in banishment. I mean, and it starts from the plan of salvation. And that was one of my issues as a teenager. Like, what kind of dad kicks out a third of his children because they. He doesn't like what they chose.

Kelly Mikesell [00:31:00] Adam and Eve, getting banished from the Garden of Eden. I mean, the whole Old Testament is, you know, if you eat unleavened bread on a certain day, you're cut off. The uncircumcised are cut off. You don't obey the Sabbath the right way, you're cut off. You consume blood, you're cut off. I mean, it's just like, cut off, cut off, cut off, cut off, Banishment, banishment. So I began. I mean, Noah, evil, kill them all. Burn this city, destroy this. I just viewed God as this very hateful, hateful, like, you don't do what I say, get out of town type person. And I viewed Jesus Christ as like my savior, like my savior from God's justice and wrath. I don't know how to explain it. It makes Sense, you know.

John Dehlin [00:31:41] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's. Yeah, yeah. And how you view God so often shapes how you live, how safe you feel in the world, how you view yourself and humanity.

Kelly Mikesell [00:31:56] Right, yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [00:31:57] And I think the interesting thing is just showing the difference of being in the same religion, both of us, you know, growing up with it with our parents and everything, and how differently I viewed everything. So even like that, you had all of these thoughts and things like that, and I didn't have any of that. And so it's just so interesting to see the differences. And with everybody, I bet all, you know, all four of us have had completely different ideas of what, how we pictured heavenly father. But we were all taught similar things. I mean, a little bit different things with our ages and stuff.

Kelly Mikesell [00:32:24] But we internalize it very differently.

Kayla Mikesell [00:32:25] But yeah, that, the fact that we all. And yeah, how we internalize it, it's just interesting in the way that it comes out.

Kelly Mikesell [00:32:30] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Purity Culture and Sexual Shame in the Church

John Dehlin [00:32:32] For those who don't know Mormon theology super well, like Mormons believe that we were going back to this idea of God, Father God and multiple mother gods in heaven. We believe that father and mother God birthed all these spirit children and then they all existed as spirits before they all came to this earth. And then there was this battle in heaven between Jesus and Lucifer in the pre existence as we call it, and that one third of all of God's spirit God, mother and father God's spirit children chose to follow Lucifer and thus a third of God's spirit children were cast out of heaven and will never have bodies, never come to this earth, never go to heaven. And that's just a really vicious. If you really think about it.

Kelly Mikesell [00:33:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:20] First of all, that's super inefficient.

Kelly Mikesell [00:33:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:22] If a third of your children, right off the bat, before they even come to earth, are all condemned forever to be seen because of a choice spirit, because of a choice they made because a charismatic, persuasive son of God, you know, made a good argument at some celestial court. But then also the Mormon view of heaven is, is often thought about as sad heaven because in Mormon heaven when you die, there's three degrees of heaven and then a outer darkness. And if you don't do the right things, you get put in a different level and you don't get to be with God and you don't get to be with your family.

John Dehlin [00:33:53] And that leads to this idea of sad heaven. So Mormon pre heaven and post heaven is sort of super stratified and kind of tragic, which makes God kind Of a jerk like. Or not very smart or powerful. Like, why would God. It's one thing to have adversity on the earth. It's another thing. Why would God create a celestial plan of, quote, happiness where so few of his children make it back to live with him and they're cut off from not only God, but their own physical family in heaven. Mainstream Christians just, oh, everyone goes to heaven. If they go to heaven. It's not like splitting up families.

Kayla Mikesell [00:34:25] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:34:25] And growing up, I was taught that the family here on earth is the model in heaven. And I could not wrap my brain around my father would never do those things. Banish us, my father, because we didn't agree with him. He may not like it, but I didn't have a father that would yell and banish and cut off. And so I.

Kelly Mikesell [00:34:52] My father was someone I could rely on and I could trust. And even when I made decisions that might have hurt him, he loved me and he didn't. I mean, I think the only thing that I would get disciplined was. Well, quite frankly, is I talked back to my mom, like, insanely, because it was like the voice of justice, you know, I tried to organize a revolt with us five siblings once because I felt we were being unjustly treated by.

Kelly Mikesell [00:35:21] I don't even know what it was. We were all lined up for spankings on the couch, and I was like, I'm sure my mom went to go get my dad or the wooden spoon or something. And I was like, okay, everybody, we are going to jump up and say, hold your buns and run. And everyone thought that was a great idea. We were just going to, like, five against one.

Kayla Mikesell [00:35:38] We could do it.

Kelly Mikesell [00:35:39] And 1, 2, 3, mom comes in and I'm like, the only one that jumps up.

Kayla Mikesell [00:35:43] And of course I get all the spankings.

Kelly Mikesell [00:35:46] So, yeah, I was really like that child. But so I just adored my dad, and I do to this day. He's someone that no matter what he was doing, all five of us kids knew we could call dad if our car broke down, if we got a flat tire on the freeway, if we were stuck somewhere, dad would leave work and come help us.

Kayla Mikesell [00:36:10] Like.

Kelly Mikesell [00:36:10] And so I couldn't it. To me, there was no parallel between the God I was reading about in the scriptures, but. But the Savior. There was a parallel between the Savior and my dad. And so I just.

Kayla Mikesell [00:36:23] I feel like that's what kept you hanging on to. Yeah, because I feel like the resentment, anger, if it was just Heavenly father would have driven you.

Kelly Mikesell [00:36:29] Yeah, I think I would have gone mad. But I. Having Jesus Christ resonated so much. And I loved the Savior and I wanted to be like him. And there to this day, I see a video or the birth story and I. I just feel that warmth inside and, you know, tingle in my eyes like I am resonated with the Savior. And so I just, I think that is what helped me, you know, hang on. And.

Kayla Mikesell [00:36:57] And plus, you don't have a choice.

Kelly Mikesell [00:36:58] What are you gonna do?

Kayla Mikesell [00:36:58] And repress all the anger.

Kelly Mikesell [00:36:59] Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [00:37:00] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:37:00] And plus, I never. I didn't know. I. I was very emotionally immature. When I graduated from high school, I graduated in 1996. I was on seminary council in my senior year of high school.

John Dehlin [00:37:12] I mean, the elite.

Kelly Mikesell [00:37:13] Oh yeah. Laurel president. I got a. I was super, you know.

Kayla Mikesell [00:37:19] And then you went to Rick's, which was byui.

Kelly Mikesell [00:37:22] Yeah, it's BYUI now, but it was Rick's College. It was just two year school when I went. But I got a tuition scholarship, a partial tuition scholarship and went up there. And I didn't get into BYU in Provo with a 3.97 unweighted GPA because when you live in American Fork, everybody wants to go to BYU Provo. So I wasn't like a genius. And so I actually had to study and work hard for my grades because I just wasn't blessed with raw intelligence. So I went up to Rick's and so there I am, you know, I 18 years old, I'm living in the cooking dorms and I have three roommates.

Kelly Mikesell [00:37:55] Love them. I'm still friends with one of them to this day. She's amazing. She lives in Texas and has been such a dear friend to me. So I loved Rick's college and I know that that is, you know, a lot of people don't love Mormon schools. I loved everything about it. I loved prayer.

John Dehlin [00:38:12] Rexburg's pretty next level intense, right?

Kelly Mikesell [00:38:14] Yeah, it's intense. But I loved that we opened prayers for. For meeting, you know, devotional.

John Dehlin [00:38:21] I love classes at a university.

Kelly Mikesell [00:38:22] Every class, every class you go and you open a prayer. I don't know if they do that now, but they do. Do. They do.

Kayla Mikesell [00:38:27] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:38:27] So you go every class you go to, they open with a prayer. They don't have a closing prayer. They didn't when I was there, but. And every Tuesday was devotionals. Elder Bednar was when I graduated. He was the president has my, my two year associate's degree. I have his signature on mine. I just loved. I loved studying in the library. My kids are like, oh my Gosh, how embarrassing now. But I loved, I loved everything about it. I do, I have fond memories of Ricks College. But I went there with a goal. I didn't have a goal. I didn't know what to study because it didn't really matter, did it?

Kelly Mikesell [00:39:04] I mean, people said you can be anything you want, but we all knew that wasn't really true, so what's the point? So I was there and I was super concerned because I had been there for three months and I had not been asked out on a date.

Carah Burrell [00:39:22] Had you dated in high school at all?

Kelly Mikesell [00:39:24] I had a few dates in high school.

John Dehlin [00:39:26] But when you say you didn't have a goal, I think Mormonism gave you a goal.

Kayla Mikesell [00:39:30] Yeah, that's maybe wasn't an academic goal

John Dehlin [00:39:32] or a career goal.

Kayla Mikesell [00:39:33] That's what I was saying.

Kelly Mikesell [00:39:34] You had a goal to be married,

John Dehlin [00:39:36] get married, go to college to get married.

Kelly Mikesell [00:39:38] And I felt like there was a time bomb going for.

Kayla Mikesell [00:39:41] And you're 18, right?

Kelly Mikesell [00:39:43] But I was seriously concerned that I had gone three months, my friends had been asked out on dates and I was just one of those invisible girls. There was nothing remarkable about me. And so I just was super insecure. I was immature.

Kayla Mikesell [00:40:00] And once again, I think like I said earlier, if those things maybe wouldn't have said to you, I think that you would have been different because starting out at 11, you're wanting to be an astronaut, you want to do all these things and then by the time you've hit college, you're now insecure. You don't know, you know, you're thinking, oh, I'm not desirable. And that's why you guys don't want to go on dates on me. That doesn't sound like the same 11 year old girl. You know, it just sounds like because of everything that happened by the time you got there, that's it was like, well, I guess I just, that's what I have to do now because this is what's been told.

Kelly Mikesell [00:40:30] And I wasn't excited for that prospect. I mean a lot of the women I knew growing up, a lot of the mothers, they didn't appear to be happy. I, they seemed depressed and discouraged and overwhelmed. Why would I, why would I want to, why would I want that life, you know?

John Dehlin [00:40:50] Totally. Totally.

Kelly Mikesell [00:40:51] Yeah. So totally. I, I think when I was at.

John Dehlin [00:40:57] Let me, let me ask you really quickly as I was. Did you have a question?

Carah Burrell [00:41:01] I'll let you ask it. We just wanted to ask more about how you internalize a lot of those teachings about going from being 11 plague me not being ambitious, just thinking so much about that you needed to get hitched immediately and how that affected your dating life around purity and the ways that you viewed your body throughout your teen years. If there's anything else you wanted to

John Dehlin [00:41:21] mention about that area, is that relevant? Do you want to.

Kelly Mikesell [00:41:23] Yeah, it is relevant and I'm sad to say, but I hated my body and I was embarrassed. I didn't think I was pretty. I was, I was taught and raised during those years that my virtue, AKA what virtue meant when I was growing up was my virginity. So my virtue or virginity, my sexuality was the most important thing that I possessed. I was taught that it was a woman possession. It was this thing that wasn't mine that I had to guard it because it belonged to my future husband.

Kelly Mikesell [00:42:09] And no righteous priesthood holder would want a defiled, you know, used young woman. And in order to. And I really was, I, I really was very good at thought stopping. I, I wanted to be pure. I knew that if I was pure and I didn't engage in immoral thoughts or look at pornography, I had never seen pornography. I didn't even know what pornography was until after I was married. I had no idea it was just this gross. You know, whores, prostitutes, you know, strippers, like those were the people that engaged in sexual thoughts. Not good women, not pure women. And so I went to college.

Kelly Mikesell [00:43:00] Just. I just had no self esteem and I just didn't think I was. And I know I still struggle with that because I'm self deprecating but to try to be funny. But seriously, I still don't have any self esteem. And so I, after three months of being there, our family home evening dad. So at Ricks college they put you in. When you're in a singles ward, they put you organize you by, I don't know, they have a family home evening mother and father. It's like your Monday family home meeting. You get together and do activities and study. So our family home evening dad asked me on a date.

Kelly Mikesell [00:43:36] This is November, so I've been a student for three months there. I'm 18 years old. And so I went on a date and I was flattered that he went on a date. He was the first person that showed interest in me. And I remember really being attracted to his roommate. But his roommate, I don't think the roommate was even aware of my existence on the date. He was very into his date and

Kayla Mikesell [00:43:58] I was super jealous that he was

Kelly Mikesell [00:44:00] so into his date. But so my family home evening dad, he kept calling me and interacting with me. And. Very nice. And three months later, he asked me to marry him. And he knelt down on one knee and he asked me to marry him. And he put a ring on my finger. And I can. You know those formative moments in your life where you can picture. Exactly. It's like a snapshot in your brain. So I picture it. I'm in my dorm, right inside the doorway, and he's kneeling in front of me. And I look at the ring and I look at him. And it's those moments you think a thousand thoughts in 110 second period. And I remember thinking, what if this is my only opportunity to get married? What if I never have another chance to get married at 18? Yeah, 18.

Kayla Mikesell [00:44:55] Three months of dating.

Kelly Mikesell [00:44:57] Well, I had just turned 19, so two weeks earlier, I had turned 18.

Carah Burrell [00:45:00] Oh, I got married at 19. I get it. At 19.

Kelly Mikesell [00:45:02] Still I get dated three months. Yeah. And it's not like we knew each other super well. You have to remember, there were no. People didn't have cell phones. We didn't text and call. I was super. I had to maintain a certain gpa. So I was very committed to school and keeping my grades up.

Kayla Mikesell [00:45:19] You didn't know?

Kelly Mikesell [00:45:19] No. So I did not. We didn't go out during the week or talk during the week. We. We went on the weekend. We know. We got together and, you know, spent time on the weekends. And I. I had that thought, like, what if I never. What if no one ever chooses me ever again and I blow this chance to be. To fulfill the measure of my creation, which was verbatim what I was taught.

Kelly Mikesell [00:45:44] The measure of my creation is to be a wife and a mother. That is my fundamental role here on Earth. Everything is secondary to that. And so I said yes. I said yes to a marriage that I should not have said yes to. I was not emotionally or mentally.

Kelly Mikesell [00:46:05] How do you say yes to a marriage when you don't even know who yourself is? You know, it was so unfair to myself and to my spouse at the time, to be quite frank with you. It was.

Kayla Mikesell [00:46:15] It.

Kelly Mikesell [00:46:15] We were so incompatible. And everyone around me could see how incompatible we were as humans. But I was too prideful. My parents were. I had been told what to do my whole life. My parents were not going to tell me what to do, and I was going to go ahead with it, you know, and I did. And the purity teachings really come into play here. I really debated on whether or not to talk about this because it is very personal. Only a handful of people I've ever talked to about But I'm so sorry.

Marriage, Divorce, and Lasting Wounds

Kelly Mikesell [00:46:54] So I never made this connection before. Actually, this past year, when I got married, I was terrified on my wedding night. I had never seen a naked man. I had never been seen naked. I hated my body. I was ashamed of it. I was embarrassed of it. I didn't know how sexuality worked. I would ask questions, and this is the question. This is the answer was like, oh, you'll figure it out, sweetheart, on your wedding night. It'll just all work out.

Kelly Mikesell [00:47:25] And I was so scared, and it was painful. And. I remember thinking, oh, my gosh, this is so awkward. This is so much anxiety. This is not like the movies. And.

Kayla Mikesell [00:47:41] And it had built up to be. This is supposed to be amazing moment between spouses. And.

Kelly Mikesell [00:47:46] And it was not that long.

Kayla Mikesell [00:47:47] Connecting. Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:47:48] And part of that was we. We weren't super emotionally compatible, and we didn't know each other very well. After we got engaged, he went home. He was. And worked in the middle of the semester. He was, like, on a block break. And so we didn't hook up again. He asked me to marry him. He left a few weeks later, and we didn't hook up until two weeks before our wedding for me to go meet his family.

Kayla Mikesell [00:48:18] And I just have to clarify, hookup means different things.

Kelly Mikesell [00:48:21] Oh, sorry. I'm so.

Kayla Mikesell [00:48:23] No, you're. You mean going on a date before you got married? Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:48:26] We didn't reconnect.

Kayla Mikesell [00:48:27] Yeah. Reconnect.

Kelly Mikesell [00:48:28] Get back together. Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [00:48:29] I was like, I gotta clarify that

Kelly Mikesell [00:48:31] I did not have intercourse. Thank you very much for clarifying that. Because we have. I was like, you know, we were like, I'm a good girl.

Kayla Mikesell [00:48:38] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:48:38] And so.

Kayla Mikesell [00:48:40] Yeah, that's.

Kelly Mikesell [00:48:41] Thanks.

Kayla Mikesell [00:48:41] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:48:42] They're always telling me my kids are. Yeah, I wouldn't say that, Mom. I wouldn't say that, Kelly. So I. This anxiety around sexuality and intimacy was a huge problem because I could not turn off the thoughts of anxiety and dirty. I felt dirty after intercourse. In fact, I know this is probably too much information, but I. I would take a shower afterwards because I just wanted to wash it off of me. Everything.

Kayla Mikesell [00:49:17] It's just, how are you supposed to. And once again, this is when you'll hear my side. It's just interesting to hear the two different dynamics of her doing, quote, the right thing and waiting until marriage and doing all of that and how that affected you, that you couldn't turn off what you. Because you did the right things. You were like, I'm hitting these checklists, I'm doing the checks.

Carah Burrell [00:49:35] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:49:35] Thought stopping, thought stopping, thought stopping.

Kayla Mikesell [00:49:36] So how, on your wedding night are you supposed to switch that off? How are you supposed to just turn that off? And now this is.

Kelly Mikesell [00:49:41] And maybe for some, they can, but

Kayla Mikesell [00:49:43] there's a lot of women. It's not that way.

Carah Burrell [00:49:45] But I could not.

Kelly Mikesell [00:49:45] I could not. And I was embarrassed. I was. I had anxiety. There was. We did not talk about it, my spouse and I. And it drove farther and farther us apart because it. I went in this direction of anxiety, embarrassment, shame. And he's like, okay, he doesn't want to hurt me. And it was painful for me and you. He's trying to make, you know, me comfortable and want to. And it drove him in a behavior that just made our behaviors farther and farther apart from. From each other. And I don't want to go into it very much, but we. I said, you know, it was.

Kelly Mikesell [00:50:21] It played out. I was married for six years, and he and I eventually divorced, and we fought quite a bit. And I remember a year being married about a year, and we. We were fighting, and he left, and I. He left and slammed the door. And I. When I get angry, I feel like I have this electricity inside of me. I just am like, oh. And I picked up this candle and I shattered it on the ground, and I just dropped to my knees, and I was just sobbing and sobbing. And we were still in Rexburg. He was in, finishing his degree. We had just thought we were in our final semester there.

Kelly Mikesell [00:50:58] I was just working full time because I had graduated the year earlier. And so I just was sobbing. I just. This whole marriage, this is. This is not what it was supposed to be like. I don't even know what it was supposed. I don't. And I didn't know how to fix it. I didn't know how to change myself and change him and change our marriage. And I picked up a piece of glass, and I, to this day, have no idea what possessed me to slice the top of my hand. But I'm sobbing and sobbing, and I pick up this glass, and I look at it, and it's jagged.

Kelly Mikesell [00:51:37] And I just slice the top of this hand. And I see. And it wasn't very hard, but it was enough to draw blood. And I see the blood come out. And simultaneously, as the blood's come out, I just.

Kelly Mikesell [00:51:52] All that anger and sadness just seeped out of that, and I just went numb. And that numbness was a relief. I know that sounds really messy.

Kayla Mikesell [00:52:02] The numbness was better than anger.

Kelly Mikesell [00:52:04] The numbness was better than the pain. And so I cleaned up the candle, and I went to bed. And I thought, I'm psychotic, because who does that?

Kayla Mikesell [00:52:18] Well, and you didn't know that cutting was a thing.

Kelly Mikesell [00:52:20] I've never even heard of cutting. Yeah, genuinely. Because this is really pre Internet and pre. People don't really go to psychology and

Kayla Mikesell [00:52:27] they talk about mental health.

Kelly Mikesell [00:52:29] So I had no idea what you were doing.

John Dehlin [00:52:31] What you were emotionally regulating in the best way you knew how to.

Kayla Mikesell [00:52:34] Yes.

Kelly Mikesell [00:52:35] So for two weeks, I probably. I probably engaged in this behavior for a couple weeks, for two to three times a week. And I would cut the top of my legs with a razor blade. And I. It was when I felt. It was usually after a fight or after intercourse because I just felt so sad and so dirty and I didn't know what was wrong with me. And that numbness, there was something about watching the blood come out that just made those emotions just. Because I just remember I have big emotions and I don't know how to deal with them. And oh my goodness, this allowed me to deal with it even though I'm going crazy.

Kelly Mikesell [00:53:16] Okay. And I don't know what this means or anything. So two weeks go by and I write a letter. I type a letter. I'm 21 years old. I type a letter to my bishop asking to have my name removed from the records of the church. And I don't send the letter. You know those square discs we saved?

John Dehlin [00:53:44] All our floppy disks?

Kelly Mikesell [00:53:45] Yes, a floppy disk. I saved it on that. I didn't own a computer, so I had to do it at the computer lab on campus. And a week goes by and I get a call from my bishop and he invites me into his office on campus. Now I'm in a married ward at Ricks College and my bishop is a religion professor. He's not my religion professor. He's just a religion professor there, but he's my bishop. And we're chit chatting and he asks me after. After chit chatting for a little while, he goes, I wanted to ask you if you knew why you were here. And I said no.

Carah Burrell [00:54:24] Why?

Kelly Mikesell [00:54:25] He says, because I've had the strongest impression this week that I needed to meet with you. And I didn't really know him. I was the homemaking leader at the time. So I mean, I had a calling, but I didn't really know him personally. And he said, I just had no idea why. So I've just been putting it off. But I just was slammed with this inspiration today. So I thought, okay, fine, I'll call her. I'll call her in. I have no idea what. What I'M supposed to say to her. So I was hoping you could tell me. And I just started crying. And I told him about the letter I had written, and I told him about my issues and concerns with the temple. And when we had gotten married in the temple, in Mount Tipanoga's temple, I was just so angry when I went to the temple.

Temple Experience and Polygamy's Impact

John Dehlin [00:55:18] Do you want to tell that temple experience?

Kelly Mikesell [00:55:21] I'll share a little bit of it.

John Dehlin [00:55:22] Whatever you're comfortable sharing. I know that I. For Mormons, talking about the temple is

Kelly Mikesell [00:55:26] very sacred, and I want to be respectful, but just. Overall, I was not prepared to go to the temple. I had never taken a temple prep class. I didn't. I'm not a person that thinks in symbols, to be quite frank with you. I just want direct information that I think symbols and parables and stories is like roundabout, obnoxious ways to give information. And so I just tell me the information. And so it was just difficult for me. And what I struggled the most with was it was very blatant to me. Remember, hyper vigilant. At age 11, all I could see when I went to the temple was the male dominance and the female subservience.

Kelly Mikesell [00:56:09] Yeah, I couldn't. I couldn't even concentrate on anything else. I would be so livid, and I'd be like. I'd be praying. Sometimes I would fast before I went, like, okay, please help me to focus and have the spirit. Please help me to just, you know, be enlightened, whatever I'm supposed to learn. Because I never. What. What information was in the temple was not anything new with regards to what I had been taught previously. It was just presented in a symbolic way. And I remember in my letter,

John Dehlin [00:56:43] you

Kelly Mikesell [00:56:43] know, bringing up the letter about the temple and my. My intense issues with it. And so my bishop, he asked me to write down all my issues. And so one of my issues was the temple.

Carah Burrell [00:56:53] I was.

Kelly Mikesell [00:56:53] I wanted to know why women had to cover their heads and why God is. So I just viewed. Okay, I just viewed God at this time in my life. And I don't feel this way now, but I don't feel like we. We talk about honest things. We're not honest in the church with each other. And we. And so we look at people who are serving in all these callings, and. And we think that they never have inappropriate thoughts or questions or beliefs that were just, like, so amazing in their testimony. And to be quite honest with you, at this time in my life, all I could see that God was the most sexist, bigoted, Racist, nitpicky, judgmental, wrath.

Kelly Mikesell [00:57:43] Human divinity in existence. And I wanted no part of his church. And I knew I was going to go to hell for that. I. I knew because I. I knew he was right, but I didn't. There was something deeply wrong with me. I didn't agree with what I had been taught with in seminary that I've note the scriptures, the Book of Mormon scripture wording has been altered since I was in seminary. But when I was in seminary, I was taught that I had to live the law of polygamy and that I had to have a good attitude about it or I would be destroyed like Emma.

Kelly Mikesell [00:58:24] I was taught that the gradient of your skin color from blackest of black to whitest of white was a gradient of value. White being the most valuable, pure black being descendants of Cain, fence sitters in heaven unworthy of the same blessings as white people.

Kelly Mikesell [00:58:49] And Native Americans were descendants, direct descendants from Lamanites. And I was taught at firesides and I was taught in seminary. That and in Emmanuels and in. In Sunday school. That and the scriptures specifically said in the Book of Mormon that they would become a white and delightsome people as the Native Americans became righteous. Yes. And their skin color would literally change. That is what I was taught.

Kayla Mikesell [00:59:19] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [00:59:20] I am. Blacks in the priesthood, they were not allowed to have the priesthood because they were descendants of Cain. God did not deem that worthy them worthy of that. For whatever reason. We don't know. We just have to have faith. Until 1978, Revelation, the year I was born. None of that, all of that. I just. It did not sit well with me. But who could I talk to about it? Nobody. So I write in my journal. That's who I journal. I don't tell God because he already knows my thoughts. Like I already know I'm going to hell. And so I just. I just couldn't do it. Like I just emotionally I did. I thought God was. I didn't think he was a good divine father.

Kayla Mikesell [01:00:08] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:00:08] And so my bishop asked me to just write down all my thoughts and feelings and he said he would research them and that we could talk about them together. And he had written. He was an author. And I just don't remember his last name, but he had authored some books that were sold at Deseret Book. And I remember buying a couple of them. One was a religious novel, some were fiction novels. And so I met with him over a course of some time and he pacified me. And one of the things that has stuck with me my whole life, which I've reiterated to my children a million times is. He told me that prophets can only receive inspiration. Okay, how did he say it? Prophets can only receive inspiration in direct correlation to their intelligence and cultural limitations. And so that's why our world changed. Tiny incremental pieces at a time.

Kayla Mikesell [01:01:17] So when you look back at.

Kelly Mikesell [01:01:18] So somehow that pacified me. And we talked about Adam and Eve, and we talked about. He researched polygamy with me. And I took comfort in knowing that Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy. So I kind of vilified Brigham Young in my mind. Yes. No. Yes, totally. So I did. I. And the website lds.org I went there all the time. At the time, it was lds.org I know. They changed it to churchofjesuschrist.org, but at lds.org I'm. I like to read encyclopedias. I would read the dictionary. I looked up the gospel topics section regularly. Polygamy. It did say Joseph Smith. Excuse me. Never practiced polygamy. Women were sealed to him after. After the fact, but he never practiced polygamy. In fact, it said. In fact, the saints never practiced polygamy until they came west. So there was something. I took comfort in that. Like, okay, in the organization of the church.

Kayla Mikesell [01:02:12] At least.

Kelly Mikesell [01:02:13] At least in the organization of the church. It. It never started. Somehow, Brigham Young went terribly awry. Okay, so.

Kayla Mikesell [01:02:20] So it's people. The church is right.

Kelly Mikesell [01:02:22] The inspiration is people, not. Yeah, the church. And so he said to me in this first meeting, my bishop, can you hang tight for just a second? Because I'm just gonna go talk to my friend in the psychology department. I mean, I'm sure his eyes were. To see if he can meet with you. Just emotionally, just. I'm like, sure, no problem. Sat there for a while. He comes back. He's like, yes, he had a meeting, but he canceled it, and he's gonna meet with you. So he walked me over to his office.

John Dehlin [01:02:51] Triage.

Kelly Mikesell [01:02:52] Yeah. And he had me meet with him. And I met with him quite a few times until I moved. And. And he was obsessed with this idea that I had experienced some type of sexual trauma in my life as a child. As a child or a teenage girl. He explained to me that cutting is known as self harm. I had never heard of that before. And that actually this was fairly common among teenage girls or young adults, females who had experienced some type of sexual trauma. And I was, like, shocked. I'm like, no, I've never experienced sexual trauma. Like, I.

Kayla Mikesell [01:03:28] First time is married.

Kelly Mikesell [01:03:29] Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [01:03:30] He kept going back to my father

Kelly Mikesell [01:03:31] Male relatives, you know, like, he. Revisiting that. Like, even thought at one point maybe I had forgotten something. You know, like this. This is like, this is a deep rooted issue. Like you got. And it's. And there was no correlation.

John Dehlin [01:03:44] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:03:44] And. And I didn't talk about my sexuality or anything. I had no core, no idea. So I for three years, struggled on and off with self harming, with cutting. And it wasn't until I eventually got help that. That taught me different coping mechanisms from a counselor at one point, but it was years.

Kelly Mikesell [01:04:13] It wasn't until this last year that I made the connection and learned that I did. Sexual trauma is a sexual experience or encounter that is associated with intense fear. And unfortunately, I internalized that and my self hatred and my disgust of my body and my embarrassment of my body and just the Always the thought stopping. So I was so emotionally immature, sexually immature, worldly immature. I was so naive.

Kelly Mikesell [01:04:54] I had no idea while I was at Rick's college why people would say to me or giggle. I had no idea why they would giggle when I told them I lived in dorm 69. I had no idea. I had no idea it was a sexual reference. I'm so naive. I mean, to this day, I'm. Two years ago, we're driving past a dispensary. Dispensaries are popping up all over Vegas. And I look at my husband, we're driving in the truck, and I'm like, sean, I've noticed these things called dispensaries popping up everywhere. Like, what are they? And he looks at me, I can't even do the face because his face is like. Like this smart.

John Dehlin [01:05:31] Like.

Kayla Mikesell [01:05:31] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:05:31] Are you kidding me? Are you. Are you being serious? I'm like, no, I really. I wondered what they. What are they? He's like, that's where they sell marijuana. I'm like, what? How do you know that? And he goes, everybody who doesn't know that. I'm like, well, I didn't know that. You know, I'm incredibly naive. Like, if friends were having sex or drinking alcohol or doing anything in school, I had no idea. And to this day, I have no idea. I was the kid that got up.

Kayla Mikesell [01:05:57] Because you did everything you were supposed to.

Carah Burrell [01:05:58] Yeah, I got up.

John Dehlin [01:05:59] Yes.

Carah Burrell [01:05:59] I was gonna say, if you were living a Mormon life, like, you should. You shouldn't know what those words are. I went to Tempe, so that's not far away from where you lived. Exact same type of high school. Like, yeah, it's. To be naive is kind of the. The, like the Status, Utah County Mormon girl.

Kelly Mikesell [01:06:12] Yeah. I had no idea.

John Dehlin [01:06:14] And what I kind of hear you saying is this purity culture and this naivete and this kind of bubble that you can get in. Not all Mormons are going to have experienced this. But if you are hyper conscientious and scrupulous and you live in this bubble, you can get to adulthood with a lot of naivete, but also a lot of shaming sexual messages around your body that can amount to spiritual or psychological trauma when you then marry them. With this idea of getting married and I mean, have sex when you thought it was dirty for so long.

Kayla Mikesell [01:06:49] And that's why he thought it's kind of trauma. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:06:52] It's spiritual or psychological trauma or abuse a little bit.

Kayla Mikesell [01:06:55] Yeah. And so that's what you thought, or, you know, the counselor kept thinking it was when you were a child. And it wasn't.

Kelly Mikesell [01:07:00] It wasn't.

Kayla Mikesell [01:07:01] It was living a Mormon life.

Kelly Mikesell [01:07:03] Yeah. And it wasn't like. I mean. I mean, I don't want to. It wasn't like my husband at the time was sexually abusing me. Right. He was. It was what he did because he was so. He wanted so badly for me to enjoy our relationship sexually that he was introducing all these things. I was like, oh, my gosh. Do you know what I mean? Like, what about this? What about this? You know, like, maybe this will help you or this. And I just was just traumatized, you know, And I just had no. I just thought he was disgusting. Like, who wants to have sex every day? Like, you're some kind of sick pervert, you know, and if there was a.

Kayla Mikesell [01:07:47] Because you just. You were never.

Kelly Mikesell [01:07:48] Force of it. I had discovered, you know, pornography, and I was just like, oh, my gosh. Like, that just made me feel even more.

John Dehlin [01:07:57] Defiled. Dirty.

Kelly Mikesell [01:07:58] Oh, yes. And I thought, oh, my gosh. Like, I don't look like those women and I'm not desirable. So my. And I hated my body even more. I didn't understand. I just didn't understand anything, to be honest with you. And how it negatively impacted. I had no sexual agency because I didn't understand sexual agency. I thought my sexuality belonged to my spouse. And I just endured it for the most part. Of course, I was married for six years. Of course, there were times that I enjoyed it. I'm not, you know. Right. But for the overwhelming majority of the time, it was painful. I didn't know that. Maybe I should go to a doctor about that. I just thought, nobody talks to you about these things.

John Dehlin [01:08:48] Or a sex therapist, for example.

Kelly Mikesell [01:08:50] No, I Could have benefited so much. And sadly I took a lot of, you know, I took. Took some of those things into my marriage with your dad. You know, those. That body shaming, embarrassment. I mean, it's just in the last year that we've been working through things, you know, and for my end and stuff. Poor dad. And so anyways, I just. Trying to be respectful, but I can't. I am. I understand that not everybody internalizes.

John Dehlin [01:09:23] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:09:24] The sexual messages this way. I understand that. And I'm not.

John Dehlin [01:09:28] But you're also not alone.

Kelly Mikesell [01:09:29] I. I can't imagine that I'm the only one.

Kayla Mikesell [01:09:31] No.

Kelly Mikesell [01:09:32] So I could be maybe more severe. Like to cut myself.

John Dehlin [01:09:34] Yeah. Yeah. Scrupulosity is a thing that is insane.

Kelly Mikesell [01:09:38] You know, that I would.

Carah Burrell [01:09:40] That.

Kayla Mikesell [01:09:40] That drove you to.

Kelly Mikesell [01:09:41] Drove me to that. You know, like that is really problematic and that I wasn't even able to identify that for. Oh my gosh. How many years is that? Married at 19 now I'm 43. Whatever.

Kayla Mikesell [01:09:49] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:09:50] Do the math. I don't know, 20 something years. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:52] And I'll just say is my observation, as someone who studied psychology, you know, for as much emphasis as the Mormon church puts on families, the average Mormon couple is woefully unprepared for marriage, psychologically communications wise and definitely sexually.

Kayla Mikesell [01:10:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:11] And it wreaks havoc on Mormon marriages. Mormon marriages don't necessarily have any better outcomes in terms of divorce rates or marital satisfaction. There's just the. The marriage therapists in Utah are just six months out, so. So busy with all the problems. And the sex therapists, they're a year out. Like it's. It's ridiculous, all the dysfunction because nobody talks about it. And I mean, there's so much education we get as Mormons. Two hours now it's two hours of church every week and seminary institute and religious instruction at, you know, at church schools. In all of those thousands of hours of religious education, can we get some sex education? Can we get some community education?

Kayla Mikesell [01:10:54] Even if it's a class for newlywed, you know, like newlyweds.

John Dehlin [01:10:57] Newlywed classes.

Kelly Mikesell [01:10:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:59] Instead of just like learning the celestial doctrines and the plan of salvation, how about just life skills, financial skills, literacy skills, healthy sexuality? Why not? Like the church is richer than God at this point. Point.

Kayla Mikesell [01:11:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:13] All these hours of education, can we, can we invest in these young couples and frankly not rush them into marriage.

Kelly Mikesell [01:11:19] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:11:20] At age 17 or 18 and then rush them into childbearing at age 19 or 20? Because we actually know in the social. Social science literature that waiting to get married and even waiting to have kids leads to the healthiest outcomes for, for everyone involved. And of course, the church is never in this lifetime gonna listen to any of these things that are being said. But that's what the social science literature, as I understand it, would recommend.

Kelly Mikesell [01:11:46] Yeah. And to be quite honest with you, I don't, I have reflected a lot this past year. I don't to this day understand that urgency. Why, I mean genuinely, why is there that, why are we teaching this sense of urgency? Where does that urgency come from?

John Dehlin [01:12:03] Well, I can tell you that they've done and honestly, the church leaders have done studies about who stays in the church and becomes an active, devoted, tithe paying member. And they've found a correlation between getting married young, getting married in the going on a mission, getting married young, and getting temple married and then having kids young. That seals people to the church at the highest rates.

Kayla Mikesell [01:12:30] And especially women, because they're in your situation where you never finished college, you got married, you're now dependent on your husband, you're not gonna leave, and you now you have four kids and you don't have an income, how are you gonna start your life? Yeah, So I mean, that's another element too. All of these women, they're in a checkbox. If they're not gonna leave, they have to stay.

Carah Burrell [01:12:49] Dependence on a husband, dependence on the church, dependence on your community. You have all these kids, so do that early. Dependence, dependence, dependence. Like you're talking about the markers of undue influence that. It's a beautiful thing. It could be a beautiful thing to. There's so many happy Mormon families. I was one of them. I absolutely left the church just because it wasn't true, not because I wasn't particularly having a good time. I was that person who got married at 19 and was sealed into the church for all of those reasons that you, you mentioned. And yeah, it comes down to an absolute dependence and nothing.

John Dehlin [01:13:21] Yeah. And it's not even that the church is like insidious, like, why do I wreck lives? No, they want people to have happy, healthy marriages, but they also remain Mormons for their entire lives. And so they're just taking. And they have, believe me, they have social science researchers that know the data. And so they're just trying to optimize to keep people in the church, which is in their self interest, but it really does wreak havoc on people's lives.

Kayla Mikesell [01:13:45] And because that system doesn't, it's not built for everyone in ways that it can work for. You clearly didn't work for her.

Carah Burrell [01:13:55] Because it sounds like you're a much more black and white thinker. I am the hoe of nuance.

Kelly Mikesell [01:13:58] Okay.

Kayla Mikesell [01:13:59] Discussed.

Carah Burrell [01:14:00] And so you're internalizing these messages in a much different way.

Kelly Mikesell [01:14:03] Very literally.

Carah Burrell [01:14:04] Very literally. And if the church is not giving you tools to think about how to behave sexually and you're just taught all of these things, you're carrying that from your teen years into your marriage. How else are you supposed to look for things when you're taught that these things are dirty? Where I probably had a more nuanced look, where I was like, as long as the rings on my finger, I can think whatever I want to do. We can do whatever you want to do. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of. There's a Facebook group that's really popular, a couple one for LDS women talking about these things. There's like 60,000 people in it. It's a humongous group.

John Dehlin [01:14:33] What's it called?

Carah Burrell [01:14:35] I shouldn't say it, because people are going to go look it up. And I have a lot of things to say in that group. I need to delete all my stuff. There's two of them. There's more than one. There's some for men, women, married couples.

Kayla Mikesell [01:14:42] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:14:43] There's so many super popular. People need help. People want to have these healthy marriages. Like John was saying, people are striving for all of these, this perfection and stuff. And in the area of sexuality, that's where the church is just completely let people fall through the cracks. They don't have the resources that they need. And women are always trying to reach out to each other and need resources, need to know what they're allowed to read, what they're allowed to do in the bedroom. That's a completely. Like a whole other world for a lot of people that they're just completely blind to. As soon as they get married, things of things are different. Things are hard. It's. It's an important part of marriage and they're not given the tools.

John Dehlin [01:15:16] Super important part.

Kelly Mikesell [01:15:17] And I do have a real issue with this idea that anyone in the church or in the world has any input on what a married couple does in the bedroom. I just don't know why that is even something that anyone in our religion thinks is in their domain to even discuss or. I just. It's fascinating to me now that there's so many people that are like, what can we do in the bedroom? Are you kidding me?

Kayla Mikesell [01:15:49] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:15:50] Like, yeah, you know, and maybe that compels them. Maybe they do get so many questions. Because we aren't taught to think critically. At least I wasn't, you know, I wasn't taught to think critically. I was actually just taught to go along. In fact, I never really developed my own thoughts and ideas about things. It was like, oh, what political party is my parents, or what? What does the church say about that? Okay, that's what I say. You know, I'm ask a question. I, well, our church says this. You know, our church says this. And so I just adopted all of that. And not that what they say is bad about everything. Not what, you know, there's so many great things and so many great values and so many great teachings. It's just I never learned how to critically think critically, think about which one of those I wanted to internalize and why.

Kayla Mikesell [01:16:39] I just did.

Kelly Mikesell [01:16:39] Because that's what they said. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:41] And what's hard is that some, probably I'd say unintentionally by design, because what we're studying in on Mormon stories this year is, are the markers of undue influence and unhealthy organizations, high demand religions and cults. They rely on the bite model. They control your behavior, they control the information, they control your thoughts, and they manipulate you with emotion. And the, the B part, the behavior part. Any high demand religion has high controls on sexuality. And that's just how they function.

John Dehlin [01:17:12] Not to, not, not, you know, not to negatively stereotype the church or to call it bad names, but, you know, Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists, Evangelical Christians, Orthodox Catholics, Orthodox Jews, they're all in your bed, they're in your business. And that's, they control what you dress, they control what you eat, and they control your sexuality. And that's part of the deal. And there's, there are good things about that from an organizational perspective because it binds you to the organization.

John Dehlin [01:17:40] And of course, if you're feeling guilty and shameful and sad and unworthy, you need the organization to make you whole and clean. That's where Jesus and the Atonement comes in.

Kayla Mikesell [01:17:48] And there's that dependency again.

John Dehlin [01:17:49] And there's that dependency again. But it's just, it's unfortunately not healthy. And I know that the Mormon Church wants to not be compared to Scientologists and Jehovah's Witnesses and other unhealthy organizations. And so it's, you know, safety tip for Salt Lake City. Give yourself, get out of people's bedrooms if you can. Give them healthy sex education. Empower women to know themselves, to get educated, to figure out what's important to Them. And guess what? You'll have less divorces, you'll have healthy, happier members and you'll have less people coming on Mormon Stories podcast talking about how the church wrecked their lives.

Kayla Mikesell [01:18:25] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:18:25] Yeah, right? Yeah. So fast forward. I was married for six years. I had a little boy born with a neuromuscular disease. He spent four months in ICU and came home on life support. They didn't know if he would live. And I was actually given the option to pull him off of life support and terminate his life.

LGBTQ Issues and the Church's Teachings

Kelly Mikesell [01:18:54] And I was just horrified because they didn't even know what was wrong with him. And I had a really huge attachment to this little boy. I loved reading the Friend magazine when I was a little girl. I think we've established that. I loved reading about everything. My favorite thing about the Friend magazine was the grid of all the children and they would say, like their names, their age and where they're from.

Kelly Mikesell [01:19:25] So When I was 9 years old, I read a two page article about a little boy who had a muscle disease that was baptized. And he was able. It was a miracle. Like, I think it was like Brady's miracle or something. And it was written by the physician, his physician, who was able to make it so Brady could be baptized.

Kelly Mikesell [01:19:44] And I have read so many Friend magazines, so many growing up. I liked to read it even when I was in high school. I, you know, would grab the New Era and the Friend and read them both.

Kayla Mikesell [01:19:57] You remembered that.

Kelly Mikesell [01:19:58] But that is to this day, I can visualize the page layout and every couple years that that two page layout would just pop into my head which said what it was about the boy, Brady and who had a neuromuscular or who had a muscle disease. I don't know if it was a neuromuscular disease, but he had muscle disease. And he was on a ventilator. He had a trach and was on a ventilator.

Kelly Mikesell [01:20:23] And I just thought it was random because by the time I was like 17, like it had popped into my head enough times that I was like, that is so weird. That just randomly pops into my head every couple years. And I had this little boy and he's in newborn icu and a month after he was born, one of the nurses said to me, he's probably gonna have to go home on a. With a trachea. And I didn't know anybody with a trach. I'd never seen anyone with a trach. I mean, I had seen Christopher Reeves on television with a trach. He was paralyzed after his accident and that Was it.

Kelly Mikesell [01:21:00] And I was sitting in the hospital and that two page layout came into my head and I just knew that I was gonna have this boy that they didn't know he had a neuromuscular disease at the time. They actually weren't able to diagnose it till he was eight months old.

Kelly Mikesell [01:21:19] But I knew he was going to have a trach, he was going to be baptized with a trach. And I just felt like that was Heavenly Father's way of. Just preparing me for a very life altering thing in my life. And so when my little boy was a year old, his dad and I got divorced. We were living in American Fork, Utah and I moved down to Las Vegas with my little boy and moved in with my parents.

Kelly Mikesell [01:22:02] And about six months after I moved there, my brother came home from his mission. And this is like biggest regret in my life. I adored my little brother. I loved him so much. He was four years younger than me and he had served a mission in Japan and he came home, yeah, from his mission about six months after I got divorced. So Brandon was not quite two years old.

Kelly Mikesell [01:22:43] My, my son was not quite two years old. And my son had been born while my brother was on his mission. And we wrote letters every week and he was just like this lifeline for me. I loved getting his letters every week and I wrote him all about our family and how Brandon, how my son was doing.

Kelly Mikesell [01:23:07] And when he came home from his mission, about six months after he got home from his mission, he told our family that he was gay. And so this is like 17 years ago. And I was afraid, I was scared, I was sad, I was disappointed.

Kelly Mikesell [01:23:35] And he and I were walking, we had this two mile loop walkway, circular, two mile circular walkway loop in the development that I was living in with when I lived with my parents. And he was living at home because he had just gotten back from his mission and, and we were walking and I remember him trying to tell me, I don't even remember what it was, things about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and tithing and I, and that he, he couldn't be a member of the church. And I said to him,

Kayla Mikesell [01:24:14] okay, the

Kelly Mikesell [01:24:15] virtual stones your viewers are going to throw at me are 100% deserved. I said to him, you are just looking for excuses so you can live a gay lifestyle. You are so much better than this. Why can't you try harder to be straight?

Kelly Mikesell [01:24:40] And every myth, every myth there is about people who are gay, I believed. I don't even know where they came from. I didn't know anyone who was gay, you just kind of absorb and assimilate things over time. And to say I was ignorant about the LGBTQ community would been a vast understatement. I believed it was a choice. I believed it was a trial. I believed it was not.

Kelly Mikesell [01:25:19] It was a sin. I believed he would go to hell if he lived that lifestyle. And I even told him that. And I told him that I was going to teach my son to love him and accept him, but that his uncle's lifestyle was a sin and it was unacceptable.

Kelly Mikesell [01:25:47] Do you know the damage that that did to him? So for years, we tried to have a relationship because I loved him. And I thought by reaching out to him that I was. I was the loving one. I was accepting. I would invite him. He was.

Kelly Mikesell [01:26:09] He was a student at unlv, and my brother's incredibly intelligent, and as he went through college, I had harder and harder times having conversations with him because he's so smart, and he was a. He graduated with a PhD in neuroscience, and, I mean.

Kelly Mikesell [01:26:32] But all I could see was what a disappointment he was and what a failure he was. He could have literally won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it wouldn't have mattered to me because he had forfeited his exaltation by choice.

Kelly Mikesell [01:26:52] And I was angry because I wanted to be with him in the celestial kingdom, and he wasn't going to be there. And I. He would come to family functions sometimes, and he sometimes would be agitated and would say things that I felt were just trying to get a rise out of us as family members.

Kelly Mikesell [01:27:17] And the irony is, I thought it was he that had constructed all these walls and barriers and that I was being so loving and accepting that I would ask him about his life and ask him how to go to lunch, and I would never ask him about his partners or anything, because I didn't want to encourage that behavior. So if I asked him about his partners, that was condoning the behavior.

Kelly Mikesell [01:27:47] I am so ashamed. I am the classic, this is what not to do to a family member. And I never realized until this past year that I was the one. I was the one that, brick by brick and mortar, put the barrier wall between us. And I was so ignorant and judgmental that I literally, in my mind, thought it was him.

John Dehlin [01:28:22] Yeah, he's choosing it.

Kelly Mikesell [01:28:23] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:28:24] He's choosing to be separate from heaven. This is the Mormon mindset. He's choosing to be separated from his heavenly father. He's choosing to break up our family. An orthodox Mormon can be angry at an LGBT person thinking it's a choice and that they're choosing to ruin our eternal family, which is for selfish reason.

Kelly Mikesell [01:28:43] He wasn't trying hard enough. Yeah, he needed to try harder. He was so much better than that.

John Dehlin [01:28:48] You know, it's all. It's. We all have things. We, you know, some of us have diabetes, and some of us have a gene for alcoholism, and some people are gay. It's pathologizing it and then claiming it's. It's something that's a result of lack of effort or lack of purity or lack of righteousness. Right.

Kelly Mikesell [01:29:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:05] Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [01:29:05] So.

John Dehlin [01:29:06] So there's righteous indignation is all I'm saying.

Kelly Mikesell [01:29:08] Yeah. I. Oh, yeah. Hi. Queen of Molly. Mormon. Queen of. I mean, I. I recognize that I'm probably don't represent the majority of members of the church. I'm. I'm. I'm fully aware of that. But unfortunately, that is how I internalized messages, and they weren't healthy and they weren't kind, and I was so proud my whole life of how while I kept the commandments, I just didn't understand why people couldn't do the same thing. Get your act together. You know, it's not that hard.

John Dehlin [01:29:48] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:29:49] And don't you want to, like, be exalted? But then on the other side, I was like, the hypocrisy is that I knew I wasn't going to be exalted because I didn't agree with God about some fundamental doctrines that I had been taught. And so there was just that chasm, you know, and I was, you know, kind of just carried on. I served in callings. I read my scriptures every night, and I tried to heal from a painful divorce. And my parents were so amazing and supportive because it wasn't easy having a little boy on life support, living with them and taking over their home and their life and the sacrifice that they made for us.

John Dehlin [01:30:37] And.

Kelly Mikesell [01:30:38] And then in 2007, I met Kayla, Bayla's dad, and.

John Dehlin [01:30:44] Wow, this is like. So I'm 2,567. That's.

Kayla Mikesell [01:30:48] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:49] Mormon stories just started by that point. So now.

Kelly Mikesell [01:30:51] That's. Right. It's a couple years old.

John Dehlin [01:30:52] And now I've got a parallel timeline going on.

Kayla Mikesell [01:30:54] Nice.

Kelly Mikesell [01:30:55] Yeah. 2007. And I just. I was serving in the Stake Primary at the time. And I think your dad was a young men's president, probably.

Kayla Mikesell [01:31:07] He was a young. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:31:08] Had he ever been married previously?

Carah Burrell [01:31:09] Oh, yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:31:10] He had been married for 14 or 15 years to Kayla's mom.

Kayla Mikesell [01:31:13] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:31:13] And they had. Their divorce had been in litigation for A couple years and had gotten finalized and he didn't want to date anybody. The stage. No, I wasn't serving in the stake. That was. Oh, yeah, I was.

John Dehlin [01:31:26] Doesn't matter.

Kelly Mikesell [01:31:27] Okay. Anyways, I don't remember. The stake Primary president at the time was obsessed with introducing us. I knew her because I was serving. That's right. In my ward primary. And she knew Sean as just a family friend and loved him and wanted. I mean, everybody in the stake was trying to hook Sean up and. Sorry, not hook up. Introduce people.

Kayla Mikesell [01:31:49] Yes, introduce.

Kelly Mikesell [01:31:49] Introduce people. And he didn't want to meet anybody until his divorce was final. Cause his brain was. Well, I'm technically still married. No way. I'm not going there. So when she told me about this guy, she fudged a little bit on our ages. She told me that he was in his early 30s. And she told him that I was in my early 30s. And we had some mutual friends. And so they just were obsessed with setting us up. And she said, he's really amazing. He's divorced. He has four kids. And I was just like, oh, are you kidding me? And I remember going home and telling my mom, and I'm like, yes, sign me up for that. And I used my fingers like thumbs like that. Like, that guy's gonna have, like, massive baggage issues, you know, because I'm the

Kayla Mikesell [01:32:35] epitome of not having baggage. Clearly.

Kelly Mikesell [01:32:38] Hypocrisy runs thick in me. And so, anyway, so we met on a meet a meet and greet type thing just to kind of get these. These everyone off our backs and hit it off. Sean had. Was friends with the stake president at the time, and. And he, like, comes over with his wife to just casually meet, you know, like, act like they were just to see who I was and stuff. Anyways, ironically, the funny thing was, is my bishop at the time, I. I hadn't thought of this for a long time. But I did a photo shoot with my daughter just this past weekend, Memorial weekend with my former bishop and his family out in the sand dunes.

Kelly Mikesell [01:33:19] And as we were. I was in the truck with. With him and his boys as we were kind of going over some rocky train. My little car wasn't going to get there. And so he was saying, I had said, can you believe I've been married 14 years? Because he was my bishop when I had to go through the whole process to get my. Cancel. My sealing to my former husband canceled. And so he said, oh, my. My goodness, has it really been 14 years? And I'm like, I know. Isn't that crazy. And he says, it seems like just yesterday when all the bishops were sitting on the stand and listening to you speak at a stake baptism about the Holy Ghost, and the stake president leaned over to me and whispered, who's that?

Kelly Mikesell [01:34:02] Sister's husband. And I said to him, oh, she's a single sister in my ward. And then he looked at another bishop and said, Sean, like. And so, like, their bishop is trying to set us up. And, you know, so it is funny, like, how.

Carah Burrell [01:34:17] How great the church is.

Kelly Mikesell [01:34:18] Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [01:34:19] Like, honestly, setting them up, though. Yeah. Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:34:22] I was grateful in a way, because I was just.

Kayla Mikesell [01:34:25] You never would have met him.

Kelly Mikesell [01:34:26] No. And I was so. I didn't trust myself, and I didn't have a desire to get married again. And so when we. We met, and we call it love at second sight, because it was super awkward. I mean, people are standing around you looking like, how are they? How are they interacting? Are they getting along? Are they hitting it off? Like, it's so awkward. And so when he asked me, like, almost six weeks later out onto a date, we just hit it off. And so.

Kayla Mikesell [01:34:53] And then I met. Yeah. So then I.

Kelly Mikesell [01:34:55] This might be a good time. Yeah. Where do you come in?

Carah Burrell [01:34:58] That's perfect.

Kelly Mikesell [01:34:59] This is where Kayla comes in.

John Dehlin [01:35:00] Yeah. So, Kayla, let's back up. And what I know. I mean, you're seven at the point that they meet, right?

Kayla's Teen Years and Family Struggles

Kayla Mikesell [01:35:05] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:35:06] So you probably didn't have a long and epic life, but you had a life. So what do you want to tell us about your upbringing prior to meeting.

Kayla Mikesell [01:35:18] Yeah, this is gonna be messy for me. So my parents. My mom and my dad have been married for. Was it 14 years? Yeah. I mean, so I'm the youngest out of those kids. Out of us four. I've got three older brothers and then me. So they've been married, and I'm five at the time of their divorce, Obviously, you don't really, you know, remember a lot. Ages, like 1 to 3. So two years is all that I, you know, kind of in between there that I remember things. And it wasn't good. It was, unfortunately, just a lot of small first memories of them fighting in other rooms and my older brother holding me while I'm crying and trying to comfort me. And so I don't remember anything positive from it. My older brothers say they can remember some things, but I don't. Cause I was just too young.

John Dehlin [01:36:07] Were they married in the temple?

Kelly Mikesell [01:36:09] Yeah. Yep.

John Dehlin [01:36:10] Did your dad serve a mission?

Kayla Mikesell [01:36:12] Yeah, so he. Yeah. So my mom. Both of them grew up in Utah and Salt Lake. Both of them have gone to church throughout their entire life, raised Mormons, everything. My dad served a mission in Brazil, and he had some very powerful experiences on his mission that made him very.

Kayla Mikesell [01:36:29] This is the true church. And from that point forward, made sure that it, you know, all of us kids were raised in it. And so even during all those times and stuff, I know that we were going to church, even with those hard times with their marriage and everything. So then they, you know, end up getting a divorce. But right before that, like I said, in those just couple memories that I remember, I remember because of, you know, what we're being taught about prayer and everything. Remember being really little and praying to Heavenly Father to bring comfort to our home because it was obviously divided and just so much going on and praying to Heavenly Father and wanting for things to get better.

Kayla Mikesell [01:37:12] I'm a kid, you know, I don't know, you know, want just mom and dad to be happy and feeling absolutely nothing. And that theme continuing through my life of just the absence of and hearing everyone around me talk about the spirit and the power of prayer and all of this. And so already starting off the bat with just nothing.

Kayla Mikesell [01:37:33] So then they end up, you know, divorcing. And then I meet Kelly at 7. And this is where, like, I remember, you know, more things. So I meet Kelly at 7, and, you know, they get married. And now I've got a new step or not. Stepbrother. I have a. Yeah, stepbrother. So I have a new stepbrother.

Kayla Mikesell [01:37:53] Completely different family dynamic now with her, you know, with Kelly and everything. And so it's definitely weird trying to balance the differences between my family with my mom, like, being, you know, being with her, and then now having Kelly introduced into my life. So I have these two, you know, maternal figures.

Kelly Mikesell [01:38:13] And you can be completely honest.

Kayla Mikesell [01:38:14] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:38:17] So it was hard for them.

Kayla Mikesell [01:38:19] Yeah, it was hard for all of us. Such a huge blended family. And so. But during this entire time, you know, obviously they meet at church. That's how my dad and Kelly are, you know, introduced to each other. So they get married. We're going to church. They get married at the temple. I remember, you know, getting my dress and standing outside, and I remember being really sad that I couldn't go inside and see you guys get married. I didn't understand. I cried. I remember crying outside the temple, wanting to be there and not being able to. And so there was just these. It's just little things. Nothing that was, like, detrimental, but just hurt. Not answering prayers, not being able to see you guys get Married and just like little things people don't.

John Dehlin [01:38:56] People don't understand that. Why. Why were the children not allowed into the. Your wedding? Just for those who don't.

Kelly Mikesell [01:39:03] Yeah. Oh, because they. Well, you have to have a temple recommend. So you have to have a. You get asked a series of questions based on your beliefs about the church and based on your behavioral standards of the church. And. And you have to have received an endowment.

Kayla Mikesell [01:39:24] At 18.

Kelly Mikesell [01:39:25] At 18. Yeah. You know, or, you know, I'm actually

John Dehlin [01:39:28] fuzzy on this because I, you know, I was born in the covenant, so I was just automatically brought into that. But I hear about families who get sealed after joining the church and all the kids are allowed in.

Carah Burrell [01:39:45] True.

John Dehlin [01:39:46] To get sealed.

Kelly Mikesell [01:39:48] They weren't sealed.

John Dehlin [01:39:49] Okay.

Kayla Mikesell [01:39:49] So it was just a temple.

Kelly Mikesell [01:39:50] It was just them getting of my sons. I have one biological son and one biological daughter, but I consider all of my kids my kids, so I talk about them that way. But one of my step children at the time was very concerned about this sealing aspect when his mom and dad got divorced and it ate away at his soul. And I didn't know that at the time, but the ceiling is maintained between. Because my husband did. He wasn't allowed to get a temple cancellation from his wife. So I. Technically, to this day, I

Kayla Mikesell [01:40:29] mean, that's his second wife.

John Dehlin [01:40:31] This is where Mormon polygamy comes back in. Because even though your husband got civilly divorced from his first wife, your mom.

Kayla Mikesell [01:40:38] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:40:39] He did not get. The ceiling wasn't canceled. He's still set to be married to her in the afterlife.

Kelly Mikesell [01:40:46] And I almost didn't marry him because of that.

John Dehlin [01:40:48] Right.

Kelly Mikesell [01:40:49] I. I was so terrified. But I mean, being a second wife in eternity.

John Dehlin [01:40:53] But, but just to be clear, when you got sealed to your. Absolutely, yes, he was sealed. You were sealed to him as his second wife. And to this day you're saying he's

Kayla Mikesell [01:41:04] sealed even to this day.

Kelly Mikesell [01:41:05] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:41:05] Why didn't he cancel it?

Kelly Mikesell [01:41:07] They're not. Men are not allowed to men. Men under rare exceptions.

John Dehlin [01:41:12] And this is just like where. This is like Mormon crazy. My understanding is, unless he wanted to get. No, no, no.

Kayla Mikesell [01:41:18] He wanted to get a kid.

John Dehlin [01:41:19] Unless the first wife. This is why everyone needs to read the book the Ghost of Mormon Polygamy by Carolyn Pearson. Because this is. This is something that. It's like this hidden. Not hidden, but like this spiritual psychological trauma that so many women face in Mormonism in 2021 to this day. But my understanding of the church policy is that the only. So husband and wife get married, they get sealed in the temple and then they get divorced. The husband can remarry 2, 3, 4, 5 times and get. And be sealed to each woman. So marriage two gets sealed to the woman, they get divorced. Marriage three gets sealed to the woman, they get divorced.

John Dehlin [01:41:58] By the time he's dead, five wives in Mormon heaven all sealed to him. The, the first wife won't have her ceiling broken to her first husband unless she finds another worthy Mormon husband to get married to. And she has to file or petition for that ceiling to be removed and the first wife has to sign off. And there's all this like investigative work and the husband doesn't have to deal with any of that if he wants to get remarried multiple times. It's just each other. It's just simple. It's approved. It's this weird, corrupt, abusive, psychologically damaging practice.

Kelly Mikesell [01:42:44] And there is serious investigation work too.

John Dehlin [01:42:47] Yeah. Yeah. That's almost like a legal thing. But your, your mom has not remarried to a Mormon man in the temple. And that's why.

Kayla Mikesell [01:42:56] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:42:57] That's why your dad's still sealed to your.

Kayla Mikesell [01:42:59] And I didn't know that until years later and was very disturbed by that too. But yeah. So yeah. Not being able to go into the temple for their, for their wedding was not also just adding this is little annoyance that it's just like how you said, like you growing up.

John Dehlin [01:43:14] Yeah. And I mean I. That's another thing. The Mormon Temple ceremony where only Mormons get to go in. So if your parents or your siblings or your children or whatever aren't active, faithful, orthodox Mormons with the temple recommend, they're excluded from the wedding.

Kayla Mikesell [01:43:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:43:28] So if you convert a woman and, and she marries you and her parents are not members of the church. Sorry. They sit outside the wedding and that's awful. But also I didn't, I didn't get to see my older siblings weddings.

Kayla Mikesell [01:43:41] Because you were too young.

John Dehlin [01:43:42] Because I was too young. So kids aren't allowed into the weddings in the Mormon Temple. And this is all like way too much control and way too coercive. Yeah, it's, it's kind of abusive. It's, it's again, where high demand religions get it wrong. Wrong. Mormon Church fix your, your temple wedding marriage policies. Okay.

Kayla Mikesell [01:43:59] No, definitely, definitely.

John Dehlin [01:44:00] That wasn't.

Kayla Mikesell [01:44:01] No, I agree. Definitely.

John Dehlin [01:44:03] But that's why you weren't at your parents.

Kayla Mikesell [01:44:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:44:05] Your dad's second wife.

Kayla Mikesell [01:44:07] Yes. And, and yeah. And I think something that could have been helpful to bring us closer together.

Kelly Mikesell [01:44:12] That was another layer of my children were suffering.

Kayla Mikesell [01:44:16] Yeah. And then that was another they're getting married and we're not even there.

Kelly Mikesell [01:44:18] They're not a part of it. It was just.

Kayla Mikesell [01:44:20] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:44:20] Yeah. And we chose not to have a response exception or anything because the second

Kayla Mikesell [01:44:24] marriage, you guys just wanted to keep it. Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:44:26] Our oldest son was really struggling and we felt like to just maybe let.

Kayla Mikesell [01:44:33] Not just make it easier on everybody.

Kelly Mikesell [01:44:36] Easier for every. Like I think there was so much embarrassment when your parents get divorced and never really understood until my oldest son was older how much he internalized and how much embarrassment and shame he had. And so we just didn't want to have a. Make a big to do about it to add to that hurt. Like rub salt in my kids wounds that your parents aren't together.

Kayla Mikesell [01:44:59] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:45:00] You know.

Kayla Mikesell [01:45:02] Yeah. So. Yeah. So then Kelly, you know, is now in our lives and living at home and with everybody. And I just remember definitely dynamic changing with the relationship with my dad through the divorce and then through those years I was his little girl, slept in the bed with him, very close.

Kayla Mikesell [01:45:30] And then getting older with now Kelly introduced and I, and even then I am just, I love everybody. I am just. I want to be friends with everybody. I, I give everybody benefit of the doubt. And so when Kelly, you know, comes into our lives and everything like that, obviously our family dynamic's gonna change. Kelly, I'm not gonna sleep with my dad anymore. I need to go to my own room. So Kelly's taking my dad, like and not only is she taking him, but our family is different.

Kayla Mikesell [01:46:09] And we. It's normal church stuff. It's going to church every Sunday and there's these priorities that like I said, I was younger with my dad, so I don't remember them. Maybe it was the same and I just don't remember. But so many more of these priorities that we were hitting these checklists as a family. And especially I feel like we were trying to prove. Because divorce isn't looked highly upon, you know, in lds.

John Dehlin [01:46:33] Super prevalent.

Kayla Mikesell [01:46:34] Yeah. Yeah. That we were trying to prove so hard that we were a functioning, amazing blended family.

Kelly Mikesell [01:46:40] That's fair.

Kayla Mikesell [01:46:41] And that it.

Kelly Mikesell [01:46:42] There's that element.

Carah Burrell [01:46:43] Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [01:46:43] And so it was just us going to church, doing all of these things. You never really getting to know me or any of the boys, but making sure that we were going to church and going to, you know, like activities and the boys were going to scouts and we never actually connected as a family. It was just, okay, now you're my new mom and you know, stepmom and we're doing these things.

John Dehlin [01:47:06] Does it kind of fill the Slots and look perfect. Yes.

Kayla Mikesell [01:47:10] And so we continue on with that. And I just feel as more and more time goes by, even just as a kid, I am losing the relationship with my dad and that he has other priorities and all these. He's been in so many different callings and is being dragged so many different ways that I am kind of by myself. I have my brothers, but we're not really close yet.

Kayla Mikesell [01:47:29] And I don't feel ever, ever comfortable talking to Kelly and not really my mom either. So I'm just been kind of alone. And it kind of stays that way until then. Once I get into, you know, elementary school, and I just remember having so much anxiety about my parents because my mom and dad do not like each other. And in elementary school, I would lie about. And I did in middle, and I even did it in high school, I would lie about events, school events, because I didn't want them being in the same room.

Kayla Mikesell [01:48:03] So in third grade, I would tell my dad, hey, I have this Christmas choir concert on the 25th. And then I would tell my mom, hey, the graduation's on the first or whatever. So if they would come different times, they had come on the same day for something, and I legit had a panic attack in the bathroom, freaking out that they were in the same room together. And Kelly come. I just remember Kelly coming in and being like, what is wrong? Like, you've been in here for 10, 20 minutes, and I'm just hyperventilating, crying, and saying, mom and dad are, you know, in the same space.

Kayla Mikesell [01:48:27] And she's like, it's okay. It's fine. But it wasn't fine. And just having to deal with that. And so, once again, it's just creating these boundaries between all of the people, adults in my life that I don't. I don't have a connection with. I can't speak to them. I can't be honest about anything.

Kayla Mikesell [01:48:45] So then I get into middle school, and I am trying new things. I'm an orchestra, and I join the dance team, and then I do cheerleading, and I'm making friends, and I, you know, I'm turning into a young woman.

Kayla Mikesell [01:49:00] And so I'm getting attention and validation from boys my age. And this is. I don't want to say it's the first time, because I know that my family loves me and they would give me attention and stuff, but it was in a different way. It was, you're so great and you're so amazing, and, you know, boys talking to me. And so I fed into that, and I knew that I wasn't supposed to because I wasn't 16. So of course I didn't say anything. That was just another layer of me hiding. Date. Okay, so I'm hiding all of this. Yeah. Because for yes, in LDS culture it's recommended in like the strength of youth that you do not date until you're 16 years old.

Sexual Trauma and Stigma in Adolescence

Kayla Mikesell [01:49:33] And even then it's not steady dating. It's. Yeah. Not being alone. No sec, you know, no sexual things happening, anything like that. And so I'm 13, 14 and am talking to a boy who is also LDS and we just get more and more and more serious and we're trying not to because we both know this is not what we were supposed to be doing.

Kayla Mikesell [01:50:00] But I unhealthily just put so much energy and effort into him because I wasn't getting it anywhere else. And in some ways I'm glad because it made me the person I am today, the experiences that happened. But in other ways it just makes me sad that I was so alone and that this is how it ended up happening. So I.

Kayla Mikesell [01:50:28] We're dating, definitely boyfriend and girlfriend and I'm only 14 and end up losing my virginity to him. Like I said, both of us LDs and I didn't feel guilty about it. I loved him. We had been dating for a while, as much as 14 year olds can. And yeah, I remember not feeling really guilty about it and feeling like, what on earth is wrong with me? Because I should feel guilty. I did it. It was in the moment type thing. But. But something is wrong like with me, the church is true and I'm just messed up. And then in young women's, they're talking about modesty and I just had this feeling that all these like leaders thought of me as just temptress and tempting to all the boys in our ward and everything that I just felt like an outcast even within the ward.

Kayla Mikesell [01:51:21] And they always talk about the young men in the light of, you know, women having to dress modestly for them. They. We never talk about young women having sexual thoughts or feelings or anything. So I once again am reclusing it to a corner even more because I'm alone. I'm sitting in young women's looking at the other girls around me and thinking none of them are looking at their, you know, their crushes and wanting to like make out or, you know, do things with them. I'm just crazy. I like, I have a serious problem because they don't talk about sex and especially for women and they.

Kayla Mikesell [01:51:54] And once again it's You're a teenager. Your hormones are through the roof. Like, how are you, you know, like, it's not just the young men who are having these emotions. It's young women, too.

Kelly Mikesell [01:52:03] And so it was your fault, Kayla, because you weren't practicing thought stopping.

Carah Burrell [01:52:06] Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [01:52:06] Yes, I wasn't doing the thought stopping techniques. And so. And so John's like, oh, my God. Yeah. So I. Yeah, like I said, we're closing that corner even more. Just getting all the validation and attention from him that we are actively. We're sexually active. And no birth control, no nothing. Because who am I gonna go to? And I'm not gonna, like, do sex ed, right? Yeah, Nothing. Nothing. And I. And I was so young that I hadn't even gotten into high school when they teach sex ed. And so I just. So, yeah, not great decisions, but a lot of it was just. And like I said, just wanting that love.

Kayla Mikesell [01:52:51] And so this goes on. And this is just where a huge, pitiful moment, the worst experience of my entire life. We're continuing our relationship and texting. And I. I gotta be careful about this because he. I know that he's a good person and has a life and is continuing and everything, and I wish the best for him.

Kayla Mikesell [01:53:15] And both of us made mistakes, but there were times where I did not want to participate in things sexually, and I was forced to or cursed. Whatever you want to, however you want to say that. And once again, with no sexual education or anything, I didn't know that I could say no.

Kayla Mikesell [01:53:42] And never talked to anybody about it until recently. And there was just one moment, like Callie said, how you just got pictures in your head. That there was a picture in my head of being in his room with my face down, looking into a mirror in the side and just looking at my blank face on and not wanting to be there, but continuing on, continuing this relationship in unhealthy way for both of us. And I know that he wasn't educated sexually as well, so I'm not going to put that blame all the way onto him as well.

Kayla Mikesell [01:54:28] And so we get to the point, we're dating everything. And he also would. When he was upset. I'm putting parentheses or quotations here, not parentheses, quotations. When he was upset, he would request that I do things sexually to make him feel better. And I was texting him as he wanted, and his mom ended up taking his phone and pretending to be him and let it off.

Kayla Mikesell [01:55:00] And I sent pictures, I sent texts. She literally entrapped me. And you didn't know this until a couple Days ago, she thought that the young man had gone to the bishop and said, hey, I want to stop this now. It wasn't him. And that also perpetuated a thing of. I got blamed, especially by my parents, because they thought that I was the one that was wanting everything. And he finally was like, no, we're putting a stop to this. That wasn't the case. His mother dated, did, and went to the bishop, who is how old? 70, 80s, with these pictures and text messages, and outed me, basically,

John Dehlin [01:55:40] so that you could be blamed and not her son.

Kayla Mikesell [01:55:45] I don't know what the motive of that was, but even then, that shows it, too, that she didn't contact my parents and say, they're young. We need to figure this out.

Kelly Mikesell [01:55:53] Out.

Kayla Mikesell [01:55:53] She went to the bishop. The bishop calls my dad on a Tuesday and says, I need to meet with Kayla tonight. And I know what's happening. He stops responding to my text. Everything I had, I just had a gut feeling. I was like, his mom found out. And my dad knocks on my door, and at this point, like I said, we don't have a relationship. It's gone now. Through the years of me feeling so unbelievably separated, he knocks on my door, and he goes, the bishop wants to talk to me night.

Kayla Mikesell [01:56:22] Is there something you need to tell me? And I know, even though I knew that I would have to, I just said I wanted to put it off as long as I could because I knew I was about to be a massive disappointment.

Kayla Mikesell [01:56:34] So I just said no. And we go to the church building. No one's there. It's just our fam. Just me, my dad, and Kelly. And he goes, kay, I want to talk to Kayla first. So my parents are sitting outside of the room. I go in, and I have to tell him everything. He wants the details. He wants me.

John Dehlin [01:56:56] How many types of questions does he have?

Kayla Mikesell [01:56:57] How many times?

Kelly Mikesell [01:56:58] Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:56:59] What age are you again?

Kayla Mikesell [01:57:00] I'm 14.

Carah Burrell [01:57:01] 14.

Kayla Mikesell [01:57:03] Yeah. How many times? What types of sexual thing? I know this is a podcast, so I don't know how much I can.

John Dehlin [01:57:11] No, no. It's important you learn to stop doing these things.

Kayla Mikesell [01:57:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:15] So it's not to be graphic or explicit. It's to educate. That's the only thing.

Kelly Mikesell [01:57:19] And I was horrified. I didn't know all the explicitness of these. The details of these questions until recently,

John Dehlin [01:57:25] because you're not in the room, which

Kelly Mikesell [01:57:26] is its own problem. Yeah. I even told my husband.

John Dehlin [01:57:28] And I mean, so you're.

Kelly Mikesell [01:57:29] He's. He's horrified.

John Dehlin [01:57:32] You're 14. You're alone with the Mormon adult bishop man, and he's asking you.

Kayla Mikesell [01:57:37] Yes. And not 30s or 40s, 50s. I mean, like 70s, 70s. And so. Yeah. Like how many times? Orally questions like that just also. Yes. Masturbation. Yes, like masturbation as well. Literally everything. And then as traumatic as that was crying, horrified. He then asked my parents to come into the room and said, what do you need to tell them? And I mean, how long did I sit there in silence?

Kayla Mikesell [01:58:13] I just sat there, just in silence. He wanted me to tell my parents with him in the room. And I don't even remember what I exactly said. I don't know if I said I have. I've had sex or it was something like that. And I just said it. I genuinely don't remember anything after that. I thought my brain has. I don't remember. I just remember saying it. I remember that experience, and I don't remember much after that. We were obviously completely cut off from each other. Our family's like, no contact, everything. But we went to the same school. Everything gone.

Kelly Mikesell [01:58:45] We hardcore punished her.

Kayla Mikesell [01:58:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:58:47] Were you in. Was it you or her mom?

Kayla Mikesell [01:58:50] She was in the room. So it was my dad and Kelly. Yeah. Yeah. And so then another experience I don't want to go into happens with the same boy. And I need to move. I had to move schools to go to the school that my brother was going to. And at this point, obviously, I am not allowed to take the sacrament as my bishop requested. I needed to repent.

Kelly Mikesell [01:59:21] I'm making you go to see a professional counselor.

Kayla Mikesell [01:59:23] Yes. They're making me see messed up. They're making me see a counselor, An LDS counselor who I knew. I tried to open up and talk to her about something, but then knew that she ended up telling you guys about things. So then I never said anything ever again. Whenever we went, I wouldn't talk to her. Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [01:59:38] She told us everything, Kayla.

Kayla Mikesell [01:59:39] Everything. So there was no trust.

John Dehlin [01:59:41] Privacy.

Kayla Mikesell [01:59:42] Yeah, no privacy. No trust anything.

Kelly Mikesell [01:59:44] And we punished her more.

Kayla Mikesell [01:59:46] Yeah. After finding out what my thoughts were. So in church, I'm sitting there. Everybody knows everyone. He's not in the ward anymore. His family's making him go to his sister's ward. I have to stay there. And everyone's taking the sacrament, and I have to take it with my right hand and pass it on because I have sinned so bad that I can't take the sacrament.

Kayla Mikesell [02:00:09] The bishop said that I could not participate in the sacrament and taking the bread and water. And this is in the first hour. Of church where the entire congregation is there, the families, other kids my age, Everyone is there. So I bet I was just more hyper focused on it because I was so terrified. I don't even know how many people noticed or anything, but that is shaming inside of me of having to grab it and. And give it to the next person and not taking it. I'm like, everybody's looking at me. Everybody knows, everybody's judging me. And every Sunday it was awful.

Kelly Mikesell [02:00:42] And I felt like she deserved it. She deserved to feel that shame.

Kayla Mikesell [02:00:47] Yeah. And I just got to the point where I was a brat at first with it, and you guys wanted me. They wanted me to repent so bad. And I was like, I love them. I don't feel bad. And that made them so mad.

Kelly Mikesell [02:01:00] What is wrong with her?

Kayla Mikesell [02:01:01] That's so mad.

Kelly Mikesell [02:01:03] What that is is wrong with her.

Kayla Mikesell [02:01:04] And I ended up getting to the point where I was just so broken because of it that I just was like, yeah, I repented and was just numb. I was like, yeah. Like, yeah, I don't. I. Yeah, I did.

Kelly Mikesell [02:01:14] I took you and to and from counseling for months.

Kayla Mikesell [02:01:17] Yeah. Yeah. Pregnant.

Kelly Mikesell [02:01:19] With. With. Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [02:01:21] Yeah. So I had to deal with that. And I remember even at one point, a boy in my ward, when time had gone by a little bit better, I had felt a little bit better with interacting with people because I had basically shut off from the world.

Kelly Mikesell [02:01:32] Super suicidal, though.

Kayla Mikesell [02:01:33] Oh, yes.

Kelly Mikesell [02:01:33] And I was angry with you for being suicidal because I thought it was a manipulation tactic to defer her bad choices.

Kayla Mikesell [02:01:41] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:01:43] That's horrible. I know. It's horrible. I'm so embarrassed. I'm so embarrassed.

Kayla Mikesell [02:01:46] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:01:48] Can I ask something? Yeah. Because we're. I know that we're going to get to kind of your faith deconstruction, but sorry, I have to ask this. How much of how would you have parented this situation different if you were not religious, if this was not even an issue with going to the bishop? Because it is. That is a problem that you're having unprotected sex at 14.

Kayla Mikesell [02:02:05] And at 14, that's young.

Carah Burrell [02:02:07] That's young to be getting in these kind of relationships. So it's like the church is used as this, like, bully pulpit that you're able to smack your kid over the head with. God wants you to repent. And if. If you're saying, Kayla, that like, I repented, I'm done. I'm fine. I'm good with God on it. Like, why isn't a child. Why isn't anyone able to say, yep, you should validate that. You should say that I've repented. But when the church gets involved, you're able as a parent to make sure that your child feels worse, that you're able to go and meddle in their business in such a high degree.

Carah Burrell [02:02:37] Like you were saying earlier about the way that you viewed a very vengeful God. Like, how does all of that play into how you handled the situation then, versus if you didn't have the church, how would you have handled it? In the most healthy way.

Kelly Mikesell [02:02:51] I think I modeled the. I modeled. What I viewed God was.

Kayla Mikesell [02:02:55] Was.

Kelly Mikesell [02:02:56] You're gonna do what I say because I said. Because I said so. This is the correct way. I was. I'm a binary thinker. I grew up in a home, in a church culture. At the time, that was. You don't like what I say, get out of my house. You don't agree, keep your mouth shut. You can have your opinions and your thoughts, but keep them to yourself.

Kayla Mikesell [02:03:16] It's hard to imagine, honestly.

Kelly Mikesell [02:03:18] Get out. You don't like, you know, like, the apostates and stuff? You know, I. I think very differently now, but at the time, I'm like, what's her problem? Like, okay, so you don't agree. Get out. No one's making you stay here. Like, I was just so.

Kayla Mikesell [02:03:31] It's hard to imagine, though.

Kelly Mikesell [02:03:32] Honestly, I wish I could go back.

Kayla Mikesell [02:03:34] Yeah, I don't know how she would have handled. It's hard for. Even as the person that she's grown to today. I can't imagine how you would have. How you guys would have handled that. How would you have?

Kelly Mikesell [02:03:42] I have to be quite honest with you. If I could go back and some of my saddest tears this past year have been around how I've treated my brother and how I've treated Kayla Bayla, and I wish I could go back. I mean, she was seven when we got married. She was not loved and accepted and adored and encouraged. All I could see is what Kayla was not what Kayla was not doing. That's inappropriate. That's not appropriate. I mean, what, A thousand times you guys make fun of me by crying.

Kayla Mikesell [02:04:17] That's not appropriate. That's inappropriate.

Kelly Mikesell [02:04:19] Because that's. That was like a real. In my life. That's not appropriate, kids. That's inappropriate, kids. And it was all about appropriateness, you know, and inappropriateness. And if I wish I could go back from day one, not even that situation, because I firmly believe that that was generated not because Kayla's broken, not because there's something seriously Wrong with Kayla. But Michaela had no one to confide in. Her brothers teased her, they made fun of her. I was not warm and kind to her.

Kelly Mikesell [02:04:52] I was overwhelmed and discouraged and this was not exactly the life I had wanted. Like I was so overwhelmed and I was very administrative and I wish I could go back and just hug her and love her and know her and be part of her life and get.

Kelly Mikesell [02:05:10] Have all of the kids go to counseling. They were grieving, processing their mom and dad's divorce. They didn't want me, they wanted their mom. And I was too emotionally immature to value that. I was so emotionally immature that hurt my feelings. Like I am embarrassed to say that, but I was jealous of their love for their mom. And I'm horrified. I mean, now I want nothing now for them. I mean, for years I've not. I want nothing for them to have a loving, good relationship with their own mom. But I was jealous because I felt like I was doing all the work and I didn't get the love and devotion and I was so much immature, you know, so, so how I would have parented. Would have. I wish I could go back and do it all over and honestly and not shame her with.

Kayla Mikesell [02:06:01] And I'll get into a little bit more. But keep in mind with throughout this entire thing, like I said, I genuinely wouldn't go back because it is the reason that I am who I am today.

John Dehlin [02:06:11] Sure.

Kelly Mikesell [02:06:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:06:14] And if it's okay, let me just ask one follow up question too. When parents and I made tons of mistakes, even as a progressive Mormon dad with my kids, that I really regret and even when a bishop or Mormon church leaders, when they're grilling you, when they're doing this inquisition, when they're asking these sexually explicit questions, when they're meeting out of punishment and disfellowshipping you and punishing you to not take the sacrament, they're in their minds, just like with you and your brother. They're trying to help you. They're trying to help you stay righteous, help you stay clean, help you stay pure, keep you from STIs, keep you from unwanted pregnancy, keep you pure for marriage, all those reasons.

John Dehlin [02:07:00] That's their intent. What I want you to speak to really quick is how is it experienced? How is it harmful when you're 14? How does it, how does that. Well intended punishment, how is that actually experienced? And what does that do to you in terms of helping or harming you?

Kayla Mikesell [02:07:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:07:20] Take as much time as you want on that.

Kayla Mikesell [02:07:21] Yeah, I, I don't, I don't think that it helped in any way. That definitely harmed my relationship with the church. So it definitely the opposite of what the intention was of all of this, you know, surrounding gospel principles and things that we think that should, you know, should be right. It drove me further away for sure.

Kayla Mikesell [02:07:48] Not that I was insanely faithful before. Like I said, I'd prayed and felt nothing and blah, blah, blah. But at this entire time I'm thinking something's just wrong with me. But the church is true. It's just me. So this just dug that even further of, yep, there's something wrong with me. And like it's my fault that I'm in this situation. I never put the. I never truly looked at the adults around the bishop and my parents and the other adults in my ward that were definitely judging me and talking about me to other people. I never looked at them and not like really thought that they were in the wrong.

Kayla Mikesell [02:08:22] It was, it was still me. And I'm going to say, and now that I'm older and I realize, no, that's not true and that it was really sad that as a 14 year old that that was all put on me.

Kayla Mikesell [02:08:33] But yeah, it just drove me further away from the church and it didn't help build a testimony. I had fake repented so that they would get off my back.

John Dehlin [02:08:40] Which is you learning to what, lie and to see.

Kayla Mikesell [02:08:43] And at that point already was I was having to further and further lie to try and get out of these things because it wasn't worth it. And I can't talk to anybody, honestly. I'm not gonna go to my bishop, especially after that traumatic experience, and talk to him about how I'm feeling, like that's, like it's not gonna happen. And especially my parents, who, who I'm just, they're ashamed because everybody in the ward, they have this slut daughter, you know, like that I'm not gonna talk to them. There's no one. And who am I gonna Talk to? Other 14 year olds my age? Like that's, you know, so completely, completely alone.

Kayla Mikesell [02:09:16] Yeah. So it just drove me further away from the church. It did not benefit in any way that even though it was well intended, it did not, it did not be, it was not perceived that way and it did not end up sinking in that way.

John Dehlin [02:09:27] How about how you felt about yourself?

Kayla Mikesell [02:09:29] Absolutely horrible. Lowest point in my entire life. And think it will definitely stay up there. I know I'm only 21, so I've got years to go, but I think it will stay as one of the most traumatic experiences. And I got to the point where I was extremely suicidal.

John Dehlin [02:09:46] What was behind that?

Kayla Mikesell [02:09:47] That once feeling completely alone. So the one person that I had felt love and everything from, I'm literally cut off from. We didn't get to speak. It was a cutoff. There was no closure. There was nothing. Instant, instant cutoff.

Kelly Mikesell [02:10:02] So no, we micromanaged her to make sure it stayed cut off.

Kayla Mikesell [02:10:06] So no closure with someone that I loved and I even, yes, it was 14 year old, whatever, I loved him. So no closure from that already. The driving relationship away from my parents is even further now. Now. So.

Kayla Mikesell [02:10:23] And then just being a massive disappointment too. So I, I literally just couldn't see in my bubble a way out of it. I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. I couldn't see how this was going to get any better. And especially with the shame that was being brought on to me. Why would I want to go to church and continue this? Why would I want to keep going to these things when everybody knows my business?

Kayla Mikesell [02:10:47] And so every time I went, it just made it even worse. It internalized that I don't want to be here. And not, not, not even just in church living. I don't, I don't want to be here. And so when that whole experience happened and I had to switch schools and I remember being at my mom's house and sitting on the floor for. And this is like a blur too, for like four to five days.

Kayla Mikesell [02:11:13] Didn't shower. My mom tried to get me to eat. I was so depressed. And my mom did try to help me and ask how I was doing and did the best that she could to try and help me, but no one cared.

Kayla Mikesell [02:11:33] And so that's when I really was just done. And the only reason I made it through that time was because of my older brother who at this point, out of all of my siblings, him and I are the most clash. We hate each other. We're so mean to each other. Mainly him. I wasn't mean to him actually.

Kelly Mikesell [02:11:53] He was really mean to me.

Kayla Mikesell [02:11:55] So we're at this time where he's a senior in high school, I'm a freshman, majorly depressed, having to switch schools. And he just went to bat for me. And I don't even mean when like trying to talk to my parents, anything like that. It just was. He was there, he.

Kayla Mikesell [02:12:16] Was. Made sure that I was with him. We went to seminary every morning together and went to school together. I had lunch with him because I didn't have really any friends then. He made it. So I was in choir with him. So I was with him for two hours out of the day, and then I would hang out with him after school. And it was just that for an entire year, he got me out of that place. That was just so hard.

Kayla Mikesell [02:12:44] And that was another major turning point with the church for me, because the church didn't bring me out of that. He did. And he didn't use religion in any way. He was just being a kind brother or person.

Kayla Mikesell [02:13:00] So that made me even more angry at the church because not only did it cause all this harm and hurt, but it didn't fix it either, because I thought, oh, this was all my fault, everything that happened, so the church should be able to fix it. And it didn't. So it just made it even worse. So I'm just getting more and more angry at the church, but I just kind of internalize it. Once again, it's all true. It's just me, but I'm angry.

Kayla Mikesell [02:13:23] So I get out of that period of time with him, during that year of my freshman year of high school with him, and then he's preparing to go on his mission. And I did not want him to go.

Kayla Mikesell [02:13:38] I knew that when he. Everybody talks about, you know, when missionaries leave, they come back and they're not the same. And I wanted my brother, and I didn't want him to change. And I was scared to not have him.

Kayla Mikesell [02:13:56] And so one of the funny things, too, with him is that we never actually talked about anything. He just pretended like nothing was going on. And that made a huge difference. He's not an emotional person. He's very.

Kelly Mikesell [02:14:14] But he feels very deeply, deeply.

Kayla Mikesell [02:14:16] So I knew that he cared. He was never going to say it. Um, but. So he's preparing to go on his mission. And I honestly could kind of tell that he wasn't excited about it.

John Dehlin [02:14:27] He.

Kayla Mikesell [02:14:27] It's. He's the third. I have two older brothers. And then it's him. They had all gone on missions. He needs to go on a mission. My dad expects it. But I could tell that he wasn't, like, stoked to go. Like, he. It's just like, okay, I gotta do this. Which made me even more mad at the church. It was just all these things that are just making me so angry because he was taking away my brother and he didn't even really want to go. He didn't say that. I'm not putting words in his mouth, but I could. I just had a feeling that it just looked like he didn't want to.

High School Relationships and Faith Identity

Kayla Mikesell [02:14:53] So he leaves. I know the person that is my rock is gone. And I don't date for a while during high school. And then I end up dating again and meet in my junior senior year of high school. I graduated a year early from high school, so I did it in three years.

Kayla Mikesell [02:15:17] And during that last year I met my boyfriend that I would end up dating for a really long time. And he was an lds. And at this point, I'm so far gone of caring because everything that had happened, even at this point, I.

Kayla Mikesell [02:15:34] My dad, I don't care. I don't care that I've already made a major disappointment. So what else am I gonna fail in, you know. And so during that freshman year of really hard times, I made a goal to myself that I was going to travel and I was going to make that happen. And I don't know why I think it was like to try and prove people wrong is I was a failure to my family, everybody else that saw me in the ward, in church, that it was just something I wanted to do for myself and to get out of it, just get. Get out of home, basically.

Kayla Mikesell [02:16:07] So I did the work to do it. I took the classes to be able to graduate early. I met my boyfriend who had zero religious background. I mean, literally didn't even know the Christmas story. So that was disappointing, I know, to them.

Kayla Mikesell [02:16:22] But he was an amazing person. So kind and generous and thought of other people. Just a genuinely good person. And he didn't have an ulterior motive. It wasn't because he's trying to get to heaven. He was doing it because. Because it was the right thing to do. And that's when I started to really question the church. Because I'm thinking about the people who have hurt me and the bad experiences I've had. And those are bishops and those are people in, you know, higher callings and things like that. But they're going to heaven.

Kayla Mikesell [02:16:53] But my boyfriend, who anytime somebody, you know, his car is. He gets. Pulls out and makes sure pushes this person's car. And it's like a good person, he's not gonna go to heaven. Like it just that once again the anger just even more and more. And it just didn't seem fair to me.

Kayla Mikesell [02:17:08] And he is African American. And I remember wanting to bring him to church. Cause he is this such amazing person. Bring him to church. So even like I said, with the anger and everything, I'm pushing it back because the church is true. It's me. I'm inviting him to church. First time he's ever really been in his entire life. And he is just the token that everybody just wants him to get baptized.

Kelly Mikesell [02:17:33] He's been there.

Kayla Mikesell [02:17:35] Yeah, he's been there for three weeks, three Sundays. And they're like trying to get him to say the prayers and things like that. I'm like, he's never been to church his entire life. Calm down. Missionaries are trying to set up a baptism date, three weeks. And we're like, calm down. And he was very blunt and was like, this is not for me.

Kelly Mikesell [02:17:52] Oh. And I went to Deseret Book and got him and I bought a Book of Mormon for him.

Kayla Mikesell [02:17:57] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:17:57] And I bought the children's version of the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants and I, I bought, you

Kayla Mikesell [02:18:05] know, to introduce him to everything.

Kelly Mikesell [02:18:06] I wrote him a letter and bearing my testimony and you know, and I just was. I'm that Mormon that, hey, you're such a good person. You have to be part of this

Kayla Mikesell [02:18:17] church because good people don't exist outside of the church. So he just bluntly tells me he actually walked out in the middle of sacrament one time. And I follow him. I'm like, what is wrong? And he's like, I do not like the feelings here. I don't like anything about it. This isn't for me. You can continue to go. I support you in it and stuff. I don't want to be here. And it hurt, but not as much as I anticipated it to. It didn't. Something that I, you know, was supposed to cherish and be very proud of. I was like, no. Okay. Which once. Just this transition of the church. Oh, yeah. This transition of like not, I know. Being into it.

Kelly Mikesell [02:18:57] Please don't read the comments. Please don't tell me the comments. I already have bad self esteem.

Carah Burrell [02:19:02] Did you assume. I know, like, I always think, I think in terms of comments too, of like people would assume, oh, Satan got to him. Yeah. He was feeling the spirit and Satan was like, oh, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:19:14] Spirit of adversary. The adversary.

Kayla Mikesell [02:19:15] Yeah, exactly. And. And you even put the blame on me that why was never a truly faithful.

Kelly Mikesell [02:19:21] We blamed her member. We didn't think she was a good example.

Kayla Mikesell [02:19:24] Yes.

Carah Burrell [02:19:25] We're standing here today is such a beautiful, healthy, vibrant young woman. I can't wait to hear, man. Because this is difficult. This is a difficult teenage years girl.

Kayla Mikesell [02:19:34] Yeah, yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:19:36] He's been through a lot.

Kayla Mikesell [02:19:37] He's been through a lot.

Kelly Mikesell [02:19:38] Sadly, I'm.

Carah Burrell [02:19:40] When we. We know better, we do better. It's all good. Oh my gosh.

Kayla Mikesell [02:19:44] So then, yeah, we get to that point. We've graduated high school, and I did it. I. We saved the money. I invited him to go on this trip with me, and we backpacked Asia for a couple months.

John Dehlin [02:19:54] That's so cool.

Kelly Mikesell [02:19:55] Yeah, cool. And it was such a.

Kayla Mikesell [02:19:57] Like, I can do this. I know that nobody else saw it in the way that I did of proving people wrong. It's just a trip, you know, but it was a goal that got me out of high school, that got me to that point, and I am. Huge accomplishment. Yeah. I am so glad that I met him. And unfortunately, the cultural things of Mormonism, like, we talked about getting married at a young age. I put that pressure on him and was like, well, you love me. We've been dating for two and a half years. Or no, two year or a year and a half or whatever it was. So we need to get engaged. And I'm 18. And at this point, like I said, I'm not even that into it as much, but the cultural aspect was still stuck.

Kelly Mikesell [02:20:57] Massive sense of urgency. She felt.

Kayla Mikesell [02:20:58] Yeah. That I needed to get married.

John Dehlin [02:21:00] History repeats itself, right?

Kayla Mikesell [02:21:01] Really, Right. Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:21:02] Was he 18 as well?

Kayla Mikesell [02:21:04] He's a year older who's 19, so.

John Dehlin [02:21:06] Does that sound familiar, Kelly?

Kayla Mikesell [02:21:07] Yeah, it does.

Kelly Mikesell [02:21:08] But because of my experience, it helped.

Kayla Mikesell [02:21:10] Yes.

Kelly Mikesell [02:21:12] I did pull. I did pull my head out of the sand. A redemption started to act like a normal human.

Kayla Mikesell [02:21:19] So we.

Kelly Mikesell [02:21:22] She confided in me.

Kayla Mikesell [02:21:23] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:21:24] Just the incompatibility.

Kayla Mikesell [02:21:26] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:21:26] And I'm thinking, oh, my gosh.

Kayla Mikesell [02:21:28] Repeat history's gonna repeat. I woke up. Good for you.

Kelly Mikesell [02:21:31] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:21:32] So I.

Kayla Mikesell [02:21:33] We get engaged. I put that pressure on him. We moved to Salt Lake because I hated Nevada. Wanted to get out of it, especially that everything. It just reminded me of all of those horrible memories. I just needed to get away.

Kayla Mikesell [02:21:44] So we moved to Salt Lake after traveling. And it's great. He's my best friend, but something's just missing. But I haven't said anything to anybody, and I go months without saying anything. We've planned our wedding. Haven't said a thing.

Kayla Mikesell [02:22:01] And I talked to him about it. Great communication, especially for as young as we are. Great. I told him how I felt at all times. So I would say probably like seven months before we were supposed to get married, I told him. I was like, something's just missing. I don't know what it is. I'm just worried. And he's like, okay, we'll work on it. Like I said, he's an amazing person. And tried to.

Kelly Mikesell [02:22:21] And all the tickets to Cancun have been paid for.

Carah Burrell [02:22:23] Yes.

Kayla Mikesell [02:22:23] It was A destination wedding. Everything's been. Basically been paid for. So I have this pressure of all this money on the line, like, everything. And just the embarrassment, too, of engaged. I posted about it and having to cancel that. So I talked to him about it. We're trying to work on it. Trying to work on it, and I just. It's just not happening. So I call Kelly in tears, and I'm like, I don't think I can do this. And at this point, Kelly and I, near the end of my high school, we kind of had a.

Kelly Mikesell [02:22:50] Not fully, no, but it's starting.

Kayla Mikesell [02:22:52] It's. Our relationship is starting to heal. She apologized.

Kelly Mikesell [02:22:54] She's starting to be a normal person.

Kayla Mikesell [02:22:55] Yeah. She started to apologize for some things, but we didn't get really into it. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:22:59] Okay. I have to ask.

Kayla Mikesell [02:23:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:23:01] How does two faithful Mormon parents allow their Mormon daughter to go to Asia for a month with her boyfriend? Because obviously, you just didn't want to happen. Right. I'm just curious. I have to.

Kelly Mikesell [02:23:14] So it was two reasons. One, I. I saw what a good human being this individual was, and. Yeah. Just really adored him. Very bright, very educated. Yes, ma'. Am. No, ma'. Am. Dad served in the Air Force. Retired Air Force. And so polite and kind and no ulterior motives. I sensed his genuineness.

Kelly Mikesell [02:23:49] And two. Six foot two. How tall? Six foot three. Six foot three. Black man. Okay. I was terrified when I found out she wanted to go to Asia by herself. And I really was trying to encourage her because I wanted her to live her dreams. And so I and my husband butted heads a little bit. He didn't want her to go. I mean, he's terrified. He's like, do you know what happens to.

Kelly Mikesell [02:24:16] She's cute, she's white, she's, you know, blonde hair, blue eyes. Are you kidding me? I'm not going to just say, yes. She can go. I'm like, we can either support her and. And build a relationship with her or we. I'm going to do it her all together.

Kayla Mikesell [02:24:29] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:24:30] So we need to change. And I felt comfort in knowing that this good person, 6 foot 3, was going to be there and protect her.

Kayla Mikesell [02:24:43] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:24:44] So I knew people judged me. I had many people make comments to me at church.

Kayla Mikesell [02:24:51] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:24:52] Letting me do that, letting me. Like, how dare I allow her? Like, that is so irresponsible.

Kayla Mikesell [02:24:57] Which at this point is funny. I'm 18. This is my money. I was gonna do the trip anyways. It didn't matter if he was gonna come or not.

Kelly Mikesell [02:25:06] And that's what it came down to with Sean and I is that it was like, she's gonna do this, and we can have communication or we can stick our head into the sand and

Kayla Mikesell [02:25:16] I could get kidnapped. And they wouldn't even know.

Carah Burrell [02:25:17] Yes.

Kelly Mikesell [02:25:18] And they would never know.

John Dehlin [02:25:19] What about the law of chastity stuff? You didn't answer that.

Kelly Mikesell [02:25:22] I knew that they were intimate, and I had just accepted it because he was such a good person. And my heart was changing a little.

Kayla Mikesell [02:25:36] A huge growth from 14 to 18 for you.

Kelly Mikesell [02:25:40] That was Kelly.

Kayla Mikesell [02:25:40] Yeah. Huge.

Kelly Mikesell [02:25:43] Fewer stones now are being thrown into at me virtually.

Kayla Mikesell [02:25:47] And at this point, too, I don't care anymore. There are poor, and we sense that.

Kelly Mikesell [02:25:52] So I can either be part of her life or I cannot be part of her life and completely be cut out.

Kayla Mikesell [02:25:58] So I. Yeah, I didn't care at this point anymore. Yeah. That's the blunt way to put that. And did that. Moved to Salt Lake. It's not working out. I let him know that's not working. Tell Kelly that I, you know, want to not get married. And I. And I let him know.

Beginning of Faith Deconstruction

Kelly Mikesell [02:26:14] She was terrified. Terrified because of the financial investment.

Kayla Mikesell [02:26:17] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:26:18] Her dad and I had made.

Kayla Mikesell [02:26:19] Yeah. But Kelly was supportive with it. And she's like, you know, what happened with me, the thought of, you know, when I don't get another chance and how hard that marriage was, that she was like, you know, absolutely. 110. I'm going to support you and not going forward with this. I love him, my. You know, my fiance. And he's an amazing person. And that's okay that you guys aren't compatible and that this isn't gonna work. And once again, you're 19. It's fine.

Kelly Mikesell [02:26:46] Because when I was three days after I had married my first husband, I sat on the edge of the bed in the hotel room on our honeymoon, and I sobbed. And I was. I knew I had made a mistake. Not because he's this evil person and, you know, but because I just knew inside I had made a mistake. But I was too proud. Proud. I was too proud to tell my mom and my dad and I got. Just got married in the temple. I hadn't even opened up all my gifts. I hadn't come back from my honeymoon. And so was I just gonna eat. I just wasn't gonna go back and eat crow.

Kayla Mikesell [02:27:20] And.

Kelly Mikesell [02:27:20] And my mom, to this day, just wishes with all her heart. But you would have said something three days after that. I had said something because she felt that it was wrong as well. It wasn't right for me. And I wasn't gonna let that happen to Kayla.

Carah Burrell [02:27:32] I didn't.

Kelly Mikesell [02:27:32] I told her I didn't care how much money be lost, that it wasn't worth it.

Kayla Mikesell [02:27:37] Yeah. So at this point, and while dating. Sorry, I got it back a little bit. While dating him and living together, I start investigating the church at a deeper level. Because like I said, even up until this point, I'm the problem. It is still true. I've accepted that I am just horrible and something is wrong with me. And all of these. The anger and hurt and everything like that, it's been. All of. It's my fault. So I'm at the point now where I'm starting to look into things, listening to podcasts and reading books.

John Dehlin [02:28:09] So, about Mormon truth. Clean system.

Kayla Mikesell [02:28:11] Yes. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:11] What year is this about?

Kayla Mikesell [02:28:12] So this is 20 2019.

Kelly Mikesell [02:28:15] 2019.

Kayla Mikesell [02:28:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:17] 20 years ago. That's awesome.

Kayla Mikesell [02:28:20] 2019 to 2020. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:21] Oh, wow.

Kayla Mikesell [02:28:22] Yeah. So start looking into that deeper at this point, too. But also, I'm not living any of the standards. Standards. Like, I'm not. I'm not part. Yeah. But I think that the church is still true.

Carah Burrell [02:28:32] It's just praying at all.

Kayla Mikesell [02:28:33] Nothing. I'm not living any standards.

Carah Burrell [02:28:35] So you don't feel like you have a.

Kayla Mikesell [02:28:36] Hell, yeah. I've accepted that. I just. I've literally just accepted it. And also kind of had a thing that was like this anger thing at God that was like, you know, what you have to do to get me to believe, and you're not doing it. So if you want to do that, cool. And I'll be ready, and I'll. And I will, you know, go back to being a dedicated member and everything like that. But you have caused way too much hurt for me to just hop back into doing, you know, participating and doing everything. And I also, after moving out and being with him, noticed it was the happiest I had been in my entire life. And what does the church say? Anyone who leaves, if you're not following these things, you're not happy. You're searching for something.

Kelly Mikesell [02:29:13] Right.

Kayla Mikesell [02:29:14] Even with a relationship that's not working out, still the happiest I've ever been. So this is making me even more like, what in the world? This church.

Kelly Mikesell [02:29:23] So, look, I'm thinking. Thinking you just think you're happy.

Kayla Mikesell [02:29:26] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:29:27] And I knew.

Kayla Mikesell [02:29:27] And I knew that everybody.

Kelly Mikesell [02:29:28] Because I'm trying to change, but that's

Carah Burrell [02:29:30] not a conversation you guys had. You never told her?

Kelly Mikesell [02:29:33] She told me she was the happiest. And I'm learning to try to keep my mouth shut and Quit pushing enzyme articles on her. But my testimony every time she raised a question. But I'm in my mind thinking she's not happy you're happy.

Kayla Mikesell [02:29:44] When it was genuinely the most happy I've ever been.

John Dehlin [02:29:48] So tell us about your investigation because.

Kayla Mikesell [02:29:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:29:51] What you learned and for what.

Kayla Mikesell [02:29:53] So I first a co worker who moved to Utah and had. Didn't really have any experience with Mormonism was obviously slammed with all this culture. So she like wanted to learn about it. So she listened to a podcast which was. It's very aggressive at first. So I even like I said, not practicing or anything, tried to listen to it and the defense mechanisms came up again.

John Dehlin [02:30:15] Do you remember which one?

Kayla Mikesell [02:30:16] Yes, it was last podcast on the left.

John Dehlin [02:30:17] Yeah, yeah. About More savage. Yeah, it was the last podcast on the left.

Kelly Mikesell [02:30:22] Oh, that's funny.

John Dehlin [02:30:23] It's a savage.

Carah Burrell [02:30:24] I've listened to it three times.

Kayla Mikesell [02:30:25] Yeah, they. In the perspective that was kind of cool is that it's not xlds people and it's not more. They're just people who researched it. So it's. It gave a cool perspective of like it's funny when they like pronounce things wrong and like, because they don't know anything about it, they're just researching it from a standpoint that's like explaining it. So anyways, I listen to. I try to listen to it, but my defense mechanisms and wanting to defend the church, I stopped and then it took a couple months before I would listen to it again. And then I listened to it so fast. I. Because I mean there are a couple.

Kayla Mikesell [02:30:56] I mean it's like a seven part series or something like that. So I listened to the entire. Yeah, so I listened to that entire thing and I just was, oh my gosh, just so many things. I was like there. That cannot be true. Not that I'm like so in disbelief. It wasn't the disbelief thing. It was just how did I not know? So then I start, you know, look googling and things like that. And once again thinking this is anti Mormon literature and things like that. But realizing it's just history.

Kayla Mikesell [02:31:24] I can't remember all the sources that I looked at. But yeah, definitely that podcast. And I listened to other random off ones. I started just putting in. I listened to a couple Mormon story ones. I cannot remember which ones.

Kayla Mikesell [02:31:36] And yeah, just like going into different things. It was just unbelievably shocked. This was super difficult because like I said, my. My fiance grew up with zero religion. So this is. While we're kind of near the end of our relationship. I'm going through this insane faith crisis that he has no idea how to assist or help. I can't talk to anyone.

Discovering Troubling LDS History

John Dehlin [02:31:55] What are the shocking things you learned? Just.

Carah Burrell [02:31:56] Yeah, sorry.

Kayla Mikesell [02:31:57] Yeah, yeah. Everything about Joseph Smith. So the hat. Never been taught that in my entire life. That he translated the Book of Mormon by looking into a hat with the Seer Stone. I, I, my entire life was shown pictures of him with the curtain in between with the, you know, the gold plates and retelling it to Emma or, you know, the other translators or, you know, people transcribing it that I, yeah, that just absolutely blew my mind. And I was like, this is just the podcast. There's no way. And then a little simple Google search and a couple things like, nope, that's exactly what it is. The polygamy thing, I knew that he had had wise it. I don't know why it didn't bother me as much. I wish I kind of annoys me that it didn't bother me as much as it should have. But realizing how young and how many.

John Dehlin [02:32:43] And then the women were.

Kayla Mikesell [02:32:44] Yes. That he married at like 14, 15, 16 year old.

John Dehlin [02:32:47] Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [02:32:47] And I look at myself at that experience that I had at 14, and thinking, oh, my gosh, this is somebody who's supposed to be a prophet. This young woman does not know. Like, and even with that time, we've progressed a lot with being sexually, you know, oppressive society. Then I just can't imagine how terrifying and lonely that was for all of the women in all ages. But especially relating to kind of putting myself in her shoes of being 14 years old.

Kayla Mikesell [02:33:17] That, that was very shocking. And then the further time that I took away from listening to conference talks and things like that, when I would hear snippets of it, I would be like, I listened out and thought that that was normal or that was fine. I hear them saying things like, that's not okay.

Kayla Mikesell [02:33:34] But, like, I don't know, the talking about modesty things and saying that, like, men will look at you like an object. Like, they've literally said things like that during conference. And I'm just getting taken aback. So it's just, it's hyper fixing on, like, literally everything that's being said and done. And then noticing conference talks and things from older times and then people making the excuses. Oh, they were just culture. It was the, you know, result of those times. So then I'm thinking, well, okay, so that means in 30 years, our kids are gonna look at our, the profits that we had and are gonna say, oh, it was Just culture and things at the time. So who's right. When.

Kelly Mikesell [02:34:06] When is.

Kayla Mikesell [02:34:07] Where is the difference between this is doctrine. They were speaking to God and they're telling us. And then oh, it's just cultural. How do you know what the difference is? So that's when I started having really big issues with prophets and you know, going all the way back to Joseph Smith. So at this point I don't think any of them are real. They're not. They're not talking to God and they're not giving. They're not giving real revelation.

John Dehlin [02:34:28] I have to ask. You're dating a person of color at the time. Yes, you can.

Kayla Mikesell [02:34:32] Huge. So I remember asking you because it bothered me when I was still in Vegas. I said how on earth am I supposed to justify or explain this to him? This is. It's just insane.

Kelly Mikesell [02:34:45] And you.

Kayla Mikesell [02:34:46] And you say you regret it very much now, but it is a huge excuse that people make in the church is that it was because of the times and that the church giving blacks

Kelly Mikesell [02:34:55] to the priesthood didn't know it had been a disavowed doctrine yet.

Kayla Mikesell [02:34:58] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:34:59] And that despite it was 2019.

John Dehlin [02:35:01] Tell our audience what the doctrine.

Kelly Mikesell [02:35:02] 2019. I still didn't know it had been.

John Dehlin [02:35:04] People don't even know what we're talking about.

Kayla Mikesell [02:35:05] Yeah. So in 1978 is when the church finally allowed blacks or people of color to have the priesthood and to go to the temple. And to go to. And yes. And go through the temple. So before then they couldn't. And wrapping my head around. You were born in 1978. That's not that long ago. And it just.

Kelly Mikesell [02:35:21] And the reason being. And the reason being. Oh, they were descendants of pain.

Kayla Mikesell [02:35:26] Yes.

Kelly Mikesell [02:35:27] They were cursed with black skin because they were not valiant in the pre existence. They were fence sitters and somebody who is an amazing. Punished.

Kayla Mikesell [02:35:34] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:35:35] By for with skin color. That is. I mean that was the doctrine.

Carah Burrell [02:35:38] That's what Foundational to the Book of Mormon, the Lamanite as well as Cain.

Kelly Mikesell [02:35:43] Yes.

Carah Burrell [02:35:44] Yeah. Something that you can't erase just by saying, oh, we don't believe that anymore. We don't teach it anymore. It's fundamental to the doctrine. Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [02:35:51] Yeah. And so that definitely was. That was actually probably one of the more first things before those other things that had come through. But I just didn't. I just sat on it. But I never like really looked into it until every. All those other dominoes started to fall and was like there's no way I can possibly justify this and it's not okay for me. To believe in a religion that not supports, but has believed in those things. While I'm with someone who is a person of color, it. It erases any respect to him or anybody else that I know and don't know.

Kayla Mikesell [02:36:26] I don't want to be associated with something that's racist. So, yeah, that was definitely a huge marker for that. And he didn't even. Like I said, he didn't even really look into anything or care, so it didn't really bother him. Not that it didn't bother him, but it wasn't like a huge conversation. Racism. Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:36:42] And he handled it. He was taught by his father to just, you know, he wasn't angry. He. His father taught him to.

Kayla Mikesell [02:36:51] It's ignorance.

Kelly Mikesell [02:36:52] Part of. It's part of being a black man. This is how you respond. You, you're quiet. You don't look. You don't look up. You just.

Kayla Mikesell [02:36:59] If.

Kelly Mikesell [02:37:00] As long as you don't antagonize it,

Kayla Mikesell [02:37:02] it won't get worse.

Kelly Mikesell [02:37:02] It won't get worse. You know, and so he was. Just had it. And he just had a gentle nature anyways, you know, his. He just had a gentle nature so he didn't get all riled up about.

Kayla Mikesell [02:37:10] I feel like, you know, I. I got describing it to him, even though, yeah, of course it was upsetting to him. I feel like I got more angry about it than Asia, like, than he did.

Kelly Mikesell [02:37:22] You came home super angry and. Yeah, Asia, I remember you.

Kayla Mikesell [02:37:25] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:37:25] I mean, I was horrified how he was treated.

Kayla Mikesell [02:37:27] Yeah. And when we were traveling, he was treated very badly when we were traveling around with racism. But, yeah, so that was definitely a huge problem, but it was just hard because he didn't know how to help me because I'm going through this year of just ups and downs. There were highs, which you hear so many people talk about in their faith. Deconstruction. It's. I'm free and I'm happy. And then. And then you hit these lows of super bad sadness and depression and what does the world even mean? Why am I here? And so just going through those ups and downs and he was just like, oh, my gosh, like, why is it that serious? Because he just didn't understand.

John Dehlin [02:37:56] What's the big deal?

Kayla Mikesell [02:37:57] Yeah, what. What the big deal was even with, once again, me not even being that dedicated of a member, it was still, still shocking because I thought it was true. Something's wrong with me. Like, I said that main theme going throughout my entire life and then realizing all of those things that happened to me were a result of this thing that's not even true. All of this hurt. My not having a relationship with my parents, the sexual shame, all of that, that the church didn't exist. Not saying that those things wouldn't have happened, but maybe not near to the extent of the degree that it did.

Kayla Mikesell [02:38:25] So just all of that anger that just definitely pushed me over the edge, didn't talk to anybody about it. And I still go through those phases of anger and sadness and feeling really happy and free with it and just wanting to share it. And I will go on my Instagram sometimes and post about stuff and people get angry at me, but I just want to tell people. And even it's been comforting. And I will post on my Instagram story about different historical things and stuff like that. And there's been people I know from my ward that I never would have guessed will message me and be like, I've been having these same issues.

Kayla Mikesell [02:38:56] Or I friends that are going to BYU and are like, I don't know what to do. And so there's so many people that in even just my circle that have reached out to me and are just like, I'm shocked. I don't know what to do. And so even though I may piss people off with sharing some things that they call anti Mormon literature, which I like to call history, that it's. Even if I touch three to four people, it's worth it to me to make some people mad.

Kayla Mikesell [02:39:22] So then at this point, we break up, up. And I, I'm going through this change and it's literally, I'm the same person, but there's still so much change happening in the way that I look at people. So like I said, not living standards and stuff like that. But I noticed that I stopped judging people about the weirdest things. Modesty, right? I wasn't even dressing super modestly, but I used to hyper fixate on it. I would walk down the street, no shirts too short, or, you know, like, just looking at things. Now I don't even pay attention. It's not even in my radar radar of like those types of things.

Kayla Mikesell [02:39:55] Language too. I'm not noticing when people are using, like cussing or things like that. I just noticed that I wasn't judging as much because I wasn't hyper fixating on it. So I'm going through all these changes and I'm ready to start dating again and settling Tinder. And I'm just like, I'm gonna put it to men and women. And I, I didn't tell anybody. I just put it to both and.

John Dehlin [02:40:17] And did you notice attractions to.

Kelly Mikesell [02:40:21] I don't.

Kayla Mikesell [02:40:21] I can't say then if like looking now I can see things that were like, yeah, I was. But then not in that moment. I don't know why. Yeah, I was just like, why not? Because everything doesn't matter anymore.

Kayla Mikesell [02:40:32] So I said it to men and women, but I only really go on dates with guys for a while. Cause I was just too like scared. And I didn't really know. I don't know. Didn't know what it was like to date women and stuff. But then I like really start to think about it and question it, my sexuality. And I YouTube and I start googling things. And one of the funniest things that I saw when trying to figure this out, I youtubed just like how to know if you're bisexual or something. And I click on a YouTube video and the guy is like, I'm gonna count down like 10 reasons of like, you know, why you may be bisexual or bi curious or something like that.

Kayla Mikesell [02:41:07] And he starts number one with the fact that you YouTubed this. Straight people don't YouTube. Are you bisexual? So I just thought that was really funny. But start.

John Dehlin [02:41:16] I never have

Carah Burrell [02:41:19] taken a quiz on like Buzzfeed. I guess that makes me 1% 1%.

Kayla Mikesell [02:41:25] So yeah, I thought that that was really fun. I was like, yeah, that's probably a good point. So then I just really start to think of it. So now I'm thinking, okay, there's a difference with learning the terminology with things. There's a difference between bi curiosity and bisexuality. Bicuriosity is just wanting to see. You're not sure. Bisexuality is pretty.

Kayla Mikesell [02:41:41] I'm attracted to both genders. I could see myself with, you know, both genders. So really start going into that and seeing. So I start going and finally getting up the courage. Because dating women is total different world than dating guys. So finally get the courage to go on dates and realizing like, yeah, I could absolutely. In the same way that I could date and talk about my day and have a connection with a person on all levels that you're supposed to in a relationship. Sexually communitively. Just everything. I can have that with a woman. And it was like, whoa. Because I. It just. I was like, there's no way.

Kayla Mikesell [02:42:17] How have I gone this far in my life and not realized it? And I just have come to the conclusion, conclusion that it was internalized homophobia because of the church that I didn't even allow myself to think about if that was a possibility because I Look back at things. And my middle school best friend is also bisexual now. We used to give each other other massages with our shirts off on the ground, like, laying down, and nobody. What other 13 year old girls were, like, doing that? Like, yeah, that wasn't normal. So, like, I look back. Yeah, yes. I look back on things that I'm like, yeah, I should have known.

Kayla Mikesell [02:42:52] And we joke about it all the time, me and my friend, because I started. I would get jealous when she would get closer to other girls and stuff. And it's. She. They were just friendships. Everything was just friendships. But it, like, I was like, that's my friend. Like, that's my best friend. So we joke that we were essentially, like, in a relationship, but we didn't even know that we were in a relationship.

Kelly Mikesell [02:43:08] We were very territorial of each other. Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [02:43:09] Yeah. And she even said she was the same way with me and both of us. This is a term that you hear a lot with bisexual or lesbian women who figure it out later in life. Is, is it, do I want to be her or do I want to be with her? That is like, a huge question of, like, wow, you're just admiring her, and she's so pretty and all these things. And it's like, wait, do I just want her hair or do I just want. Or no, no, I actually want to date her.

Coming to Terms With Sexuality

Carah Burrell [02:43:31] I want to run my fingers through her hair.

Kayla Mikesell [02:43:33] Yes, yes, exactly. So that was a huge, huge, obviously, thing to uncover. I don't even know what to label that as. That was pretty shocking. That settled in for a while, felt confident with it, and I felt fine with it. I'm not ashamed of it. I'll talk about it. And I realized that I have a point of. Even within the LGBT community, which is obviously judged and people do not agree with, even within that community, I have it the easiest. I'm a bisexual woman.

Kayla Mikesell [02:44:06] Transgender people, that is. It is the absolute hardest. Gay men and lesbian women, they have to constantly deal with that. I, as a bisexual woman, yes, it's annoying that we're sexualized in media and by men and things like that, but annoyance is a lot better than being beaten. And I just realized, like, that I had no problems with me being bisexual, like I said, being able to be open and talk about it, but then realizing my privilege because of that, because I'm a. A woman who's bisexual. Even men who are bisexual get ridiculed way, way more. So I. I think I have it

Kelly Mikesell [02:44:40] the easiest and experience violence.

Kayla Mikesell [02:44:41] Yes. Literally, very. Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:44:44] And so then, yeah, I. When I was learning about this.

Kayla Mikesell [02:44:47] Yeah. Especially. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:44:49] So very high death rates. Murder rates.

Kelly Mikesell [02:44:50] Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [02:44:51] Very bad. So I started to just reflect on that because I was thinking, like, oh, I'm. I'm, like, prideful. I don't have to deal with anything. And then I, like, reflect on. On, well, wow. I'm so glad that I figured out this faith transition before that, because I can't imagine knowing that I'm gay, lesbian, transgender, or even bisexual.

Kayla Mikesell [02:45:13] And being in the church at, like, 8 years old or 9 or 10, and figuring that out, it just broke me. It just made me so sad to think. And then I thought of your brother. And like, so many people that I'm so fortunate that I'm on my own, have supportive people in my life, that she's come to a point now that I can talk to my parents about it and everything, but the circumstances could be so different, and it is so different for so many people, and not just LDS people. There's so many people in other religions that do not agree with, you know, LGBT community.

Kayla Mikesell [02:45:47] And I just. It just made me so sick to think about all the people that have been kicked out of their homes and children and things like that. And the rate in Utah is so much higher than it is in the rest of the country. It's like double what the rest of the country. Like, if a parent or an adult finds out that their kid is in the community. It's like a 20% or something like that. I don't want to give exact numbers in Utah.

Carah Burrell [02:46:10] Should we brainstorm? Why should we talk about that?

Kayla Mikesell [02:46:12] Seriously? Yeah, it's like, double. It's like 40% in Utah. And it just baffles me that a religion that teaches acceptance and love, that there's exceptions. That's how I think of it. It's because it's not what they want it to be. And just like all those stereotypes that you said originally with your brother, that it's a choice, and it's all of these things that it just breaks my heart. I don't know.

Kelly Mikesell [02:46:39] Trust me.

Kayla Mikesell [02:46:40] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:46:40] I have cried many tears.

Kayla Mikesell [02:46:41] Yeah. So when Kelly was going through her deconstruction and kind of figuring out what she was believing with the church when trying to understand us, I finally felt comfortable to tell her. And if I didn't, she really didn't

Kelly Mikesell [02:46:56] know what I was going through emotionally. She just sensed a change in me.

Kayla Mikesell [02:47:00] I just. Yeah. I could tell in our conversations that for some reason that she was more accepting, more genuine. Yes.

Kelly Mikesell [02:47:07] Like, I genuinely cared about you.

Kayla Mikesell [02:47:08] It wasn't fair.

Kelly Mikesell [02:47:09] There was this shift that I wasn't trying so hard to care about Kayla.

Kayla Mikesell [02:47:13] Yeah. Yeah. So then I finally felt comfortable telling her.

Carah Burrell [02:47:18] How recent was this?

Kelly Mikesell [02:47:19] This was, I want to say, September of last year. Cuz you. You told me, a long time. And I didn't tell anyone, not even dad.

John Dehlin [02:47:26] Fall last year?

Kayla Mikesell [02:47:27] Yeah, fall of last year.

Kelly Mikesell [02:47:28] Six months until you came out. And then I ran in the house and was like, dad, Sean, I need

Kayla Mikesell [02:47:32] to talk to you. And this just shows you the timeline still.

John Dehlin [02:47:35] This shows your dad's bishop by this time.

Kelly Mikesell [02:47:37] Yes. Intercept this before he finds out.

John Dehlin [02:47:41] So this is the segment coming out to your dad, Mormon bishop, dad as bisexual.

Kayla Mikesell [02:47:46] So this is where I did not handle this well. I.

Kelly Mikesell [02:47:50] And it's okay.

Kayla Mikesell [02:47:51] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:47:51] I.

Kayla Mikesell [02:47:52] Look, once again, this timeline, it's so short, this is still happening right now that I still don't feel comfortable enough to come out to him. I don't care that he knows, but I couldn't even think about how that conversation would go.

Kayla Mikesell [02:48:07] I didn't know how. I don't know. It just felt like it wouldn't. I don't know what he would say. And unfortunately, like I said, at this point, my separation of caring of what people think and especially my parents was gone. His approval, his everything.

Kayla Mikesell [02:48:21] So I didn't feel the need to tell him. And now it kind of. I kind of regret that. I wish I would have had a conversation with him to tell him, but I. Like I said, I'm just at a point now where it's just I don't care. And if he knows, he knows and. And everything. So I came out publicly on my social media first. First. So I had told Kelly and I came out on social media first before ever talking to my dad. Because I just didn't literally, I guess the best words I can say is I didn't feel the need because with all of those events that had happened, I've already been this disappointment.

Kayla Mikesell [02:48:51] I've already like that why I don't need his approval. Like in my head, that's kind of what it was. And it makes me sad. Cause I. A lot of the times I contribute that to the church. I think that we would have a much better relationship if it wasn't for the church. Church.

Kayla Mikesell [02:49:05] And that breaks my heart because I know that we. I know that he loves me. I know that. But it's just so frustrating that this isn't even that long ago. It's within the past six months. I didn't feel comfortable coming out to him personally. I didn't care that he found out through other channels, through Kelly or, you know, other people. But I didn't want to tell him my. With my. Like, myself.

Kelly Mikesell [02:49:25] Yeah, that's true.

Carah Burrell [02:49:26] What were you. So you. Sounds like you held it in for a long time. Worst case scenario. What was the worst case scenario in your head? And then how did it actually go?

Kayla Mikesell [02:49:36] Like, with him?

Carah Burrell [02:49:37] Yeah, Like,

Kelly Mikesell [02:49:40] I mean, I don't even think he's said anything about it.

Kayla Mikesell [02:49:43] We haven't even had a conversation to this day about it. Like, he just acts. I've seen him and we interact, and every time I see him, it's. He just called me, actually, to congratulate me about something.

Kelly Mikesell [02:49:51] He's been being educated because I forced my education on him.

Kayla Mikesell [02:49:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:49:55] So he probably loop back to your story in a second.

Carah Burrell [02:49:57] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:49:58] I exercise undue influence over my husband. So mature. We already established I'm super mature, right?

Kayla Mikesell [02:50:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:50:08] We're liking you more now.

Carah Burrell [02:50:11] Oh, my gosh.

Kayla Mikesell [02:50:11] This girl.

Carah Burrell [02:50:13] It's just so funny that you're like, the church taught me onto influence, and now I'm gonna use that to my benefit.

Kayla Mikesell [02:50:17] Oh, I totally did.

Kelly Mikesell [02:50:20] I mean, you just learn.

Kayla Mikesell [02:50:21] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:50:22] So, yeah, definitely. I'll be honest with you. Grow raising the family. I mean, you can tell in how I responded and interacted with her what type of Mormon I've been, you know, and what type of our house, our household has been. When Sean and I got married, I asked him, hey, where's your food storage? And he's like, oh, it's like up in the attic. I'm like, well, I need to see it. So I know I have a spreadsheet and an Excel document, because I know exactly how many cans of everything we need for seven people. And I've multiple, by everyone's weight, how much food we're gonna need over the next year. And I'm going to Carah's, like, oh, my God, I feel like I'm going

Carah Burrell [02:51:00] down like a roller coaster on Six Flags right now. Like, this is a perfect explanation of how Mormon you are. Like.

Kelly Mikesell [02:51:05] Yeah, I had a whole program spreadsheet

Kayla Mikesell [02:51:08] about it that the movie the rrm, where he comes home from his mission and sleeps on, like, the food storage. Yes.

Carah Burrell [02:51:14] That was you.

Kayla Mikesell [02:51:15] Literally, it was her.

Kelly Mikesell [02:51:16] It's under all the reds.

Kayla Mikesell [02:51:17] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:51:17] And I was like, I want to see this food storage, you know, and. And he kept putting it off and putting it off. So finally I just. He's like, it's up in the attic. It's hard to get to.

Kayla Mikesell [02:51:24] Blah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:51:25] I'm like, Go get it. So he brings down one case. And if for all members of the church, know that in one case of food storage, there are six cans. And I was like, this is your food storage? He's like, well, I have lots of guns and bullets and stuff. I'm like, storage. So my pet parents were like, from 2007 to 2009, were volunteer missionaries at.

A Child's Medical Crisis and Community Support

Kelly Mikesell [02:51:52] It was called the Cannery, and it's next to lds. It's just where you get food industries, where they. You as members, you could schedule appointments, or as a church group, you could schedule appointments and go to like a big warehouse in the back, choose oats, wheat flour, sugar, whatever, and then can it yourself. So there were a lot of times that my parents had had a group not show up or cancel or, you know, and so they would have a two and a half hour slot. So they'd call us kids and say, hey, do you want us to can you anything? And we're like, I'm like, yeah, yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [02:52:24] So I just bring food storage stuff. They bring it, drop it off. I'd write checks to them, you know, so one day, I mean, Sean's like, okay, I think we have enough food storage. And. And my calculations with my Excel spreadsheet say we do not have enough food storage. Okay, I have, you know, four boys and a girl and a husband. Like, we need a lot of food. Like, more than it even says. I'm convinced. Okay, so it's stacking up against the wall. He's like, I think we're done. How much is this costing us? You know, and he's not the type of spouse to tell me what to do or demand anything or put his foot down.

Kelly Mikesell [02:52:57] He's just not that person. And so he's like, I think we're done. We're good. We're good with food storage. Well, we weren't good with food storage. And so I kept bringing food storage home. And literally he comes home one day and it's like stacked up on the side of our bedroom because I've run out of under beds. Under beds, you know, to put it. And we have this family of seven living in a 1500 square foot house and, you know, there's not a lot of space. And we live in Vegas, so you can't put your food storage in the outside.

Kelly Mikesell [02:53:24] So it's all stacked up under our window. And he's like, I thought we were done with food storage. And he. And he got a little terse with me. And I was like, oh, I'm sorry, do you Remember that Lehi, the prophet in the Book of Mormon. What was the one time he murmured? Do you remember when did he murmur? Oh, that's right. He murmured, when his family was hungry and his grandchildren was hungry and he was hungry. He murmured, against the Lord. A prophet.

Kayla Mikesell [02:53:55] If you think.

Kelly Mikesell [02:53:56] Think on any level, when we come to need this food storage, I'm gonna look at my kids who have hungry tummies and say, oh, I'm sorry. Daddy just didn't like the way it looked in our house. So you'll just have to go to bed with your stomach hungry.

Kayla Mikesell [02:54:09] You're crazy.

Kelly Mikesell [02:54:10] Crazy. So I'm gonna get food storage. Don't say another word about it. I wasn't aware that the prophet said, only if you like how it looks in your house, then get a year of supply. Such a brat.

John Dehlin [02:54:21] So you're telling that story in just to show a type of.

Kelly Mikesell [02:54:25] That is me. My oldest wanted to grow his hair out. Absolutely not inappropriate. I. I was worked in the stake. Sean was had callings and it worked. I had callings in stake. Sean was in stake. Young men's, Young men's president, you know, High Council. Like, no, we're the Mike Sells. You're not going to grow your hair out. Who do you think you are? That would look bad on us. Like, absolutely not. He didn't have a choice. Ugh. Seeds inside. You know what I mean?

Kayla Mikesell [02:54:46] And that definitely, too, with all of that me coming out out. I know that there are people in our ward who have seen it and everything. And I know through a friend that have said, like, wow, Kayla's really gone off the deep end and stuff. And it just cracks me up. It's funny now. It would have.

Kelly Mikesell [02:55:02] I would have done the same thing. I understand. I try to ask Kayla to be patient because you grow up with a mindset and a culture. I truly. I know I probably am different than other progressive Mormons in that I personally don't believe it's intended. I believe it's just part of cultural things that have happened. I personally.

Kelly Mikesell [02:55:28] The first time my brother told me that I was part of a cult, I was like, how dare you? How dare you? And I was so angry, and I didn't listen to anything he said. We do not drink Kool Aid. Are you on crack? And so the more and more I heard it, I was just super offended. I mean, if someone said I was part of a cult, they were illegitimate to me, you know, there was no way. And so I was just such. I mean, we were so devoted, and I Was so unhappy inside. And when I got married, I mean, I had this little boy.

Kelly Mikesell [02:56:07] He was five. He was on a ventilator. He had a trach. He had a G tube. We spent 11 hours a week just in feeding therapy, trying to teach him how to eat. And nobody knew how to take care of him. The kids would watch him while I would go places because it was hard to take him places with a ventilator. And people would say how sorry they felt for me.

Kelly Mikesell [02:56:29] And appointment after appointment, 17 surgeries during, you know, just. It was overwhelming. It was just emotionally overwhelming. And the chest vest, the medication. He has a neuromuscular disease. And so our life was dictated. He had a medication that had a short half life. And so it had to be given every two hours in liquid form. And my brain was just 8, 10, 12, 2, 4, 6, 8. Throughout the day. Like, my brain just operated on an. Everything, what. Everything in my life was run on this rigid schedule because he had it to have it to breathe. And he had so many struggles and challenges. And so much of my focus went to him, him. And I didn't really.

John Dehlin [02:57:16] That can cause a divorce.

Kelly Mikesell [02:57:17] Just having special needs on the other kids. And Sean did his best. I mean, there were so many nights that Sean would take his turn. I. I don't function well on little sleep. And Brandon. Brandon was on a ventilator and is on the ventilator still at night. And moisture would build up in his tubes. And every two to three hours I would have to get up because I could hear the cadence of the machine. Sean had built like a room. Like he had cut a hole in the. Like a door right next to my bed. And built like, from the outside, it looked like a shed, but it was Brandon's room.

Kelly Mikesell [02:57:51] And so I could get up throughout the night and drain Brandon's water and suction him when he needed suctioning because he could cough up his secretions, which he had so much mucus and secretions that if he coughed it up, the ventilator would. Would just push it back into him, cough up. Then, you know, so you had to suction him throughout the night and stuff. And there would be nights when he was sick that Sean would come in in the morning, and I was just sitting next to his bed and there's 80 saline bullets, you know, because he had. There was no point in getting back to bed because 30 seconds later I had to get up and suction him.

Kelly Mikesell [02:58:21] And so I think the point I just wanted to make was with having a child with such extreme Special needs and the fatigue I. And having four kids that I didn't really have time or energy to. To get to know, to invest in. And I'm serving in demanding callings, and my husband is serving in demanding callings. And there are so many times raising our family that our callings took precedence over our family and their needs. And I didn't ever see anything wrong with that because I was serving God. To me, serving in my calling was directly serving God. And I was gonna be blessed for that.

Kayla Mikesell [02:59:00] That what like I talked about with relationship with my dad, that was something that really made me mad too. The amount of time and effort that he put into young men's and things like that. And other people. Yes, and other people trumped over far and away think like my, you know, high school choir concert.

Kelly Mikesell [02:59:16] Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [02:59:16] No, he had to go do other things. So.

Kelly Mikesell [02:59:18] Because it was. If he had a young men's activity that was priority, women's activity, we were in charge of. That was priority.

Kayla Mikesell [02:59:24] Yeah. And so that was really. That really hurt.

Kelly Mikesell [02:59:26] And I know the church doesn't teach like the church teaches. Family first. Family first. Family, Family first. But the reality is, John, when you are in a demanding calling and you are it like you, you are perhaps paired with maybe a less active individual because they put you that way so you can help them grow. When the rubber meets the road, it's not family first. You, you. It's expected. You can't just cancel young men's and young women's because your child has a conversation concert. That's shame on your child for having something that conflicts with young men and young women's. Yeah, shame on them, you know, and so it's just.

Kelly Mikesell [03:00:06] It was really challenging. And I. I think the theme for journal entries during 2007-2019, for me to sum up everything was, what am I doing wrong? I've been told my whole life that being a mother and having children and serving in the church is the culmination of my existence and that I should feel joy. What is wrong with me? This is not bringing me joy. So I read my scriptures more. I go to the temple more. I read ensign articles more. I take one month. I take 10 meals to people in need in the ward because I want to serve more. I want to feel what I'm missing.

Kelly Mikesell [03:00:51] What am I doing wrong? Why am I so easily influenced by Satan? What is wrong with me? That's just a theme over and over and over. And I remember one journal entry I read recently. I mean, last night in the hotel room, because I came up this week to help or volunteer at Pride Week to support Kayla. And so I was in the hotel room last night just reading through some old journal entries. And I mean, here, 2012, 2014, 2017, these are, this is the theme. Suppression is the name of the game. What am I supposed to do? There's nobody to talk to. I'm the one with the problem.

Children Leaving the Church

John Dehlin [03:01:31] You're writing this in your journal?

Kelly Mikesell [03:01:33] Yeah. Every other woman just loves being a mother and loves being a wife and loves serving in the church. And I don't find a ton of joy. I find joy with my spouse. I find joy doing other things. And so during all these years, my husband was super, well, why don't you find a hobby? You know, why don't you do this? I took up running, ran half marathons, and then I took up gardening. He built me a greenhouse to support me after my 6 year old was born. I took up photography. And I'm the nerd that reads the entire manual. And so I became obsessed with that.

Kelly Mikesell [03:02:11] He bought me cameras and equipment and lighting and studio equipment and supported me. And I just never felt fulfilled because I just, I never learned to love myself. And I didn't see how that was connected. And so when 2020 hit, my whole world changed. And it started in February of 2020.

Kelly Mikesell [03:02:33] I was serving as a primary teacher and one of the young women, I was the valiant class. And they are ages, for people who don't know, that class is ages 8, 9, 10, and 11. Well, in my ward we have a very small primary and so they kind of combined it to one class. And so I was teaching and one of the ten year old girls raised her hand and said, sister Mike Sell, why don't we talk about Heavenly Mother?

Kelly Mikesell [03:03:00] And I went into robot mode. And I don't know how to explain, how to explain what I mean by robot mode. It's just something that, that I just did. And I started to say, well, because it's. She's. We don't really know, but it's because. Sacred, sacred silence. And then I just stopped and, and again. A thousand thoughts in 30, you know, 10 seconds. And I'm thinking, that's me.

Kelly Mikesell [03:03:28] That's me when I was 11. And I'm thinking of myself sitting on my bed, sobbing, She's 10, I'm 11. Blonde hair, blue eyes. I'm looking into her little blue eyes. And I said to her, you know what, I don't know, let me research and find out for you.

Kelly Mikesell [03:03:46] And a couple weeks later, Covid kind of shut down all of church meetings. And so that I had always been afraid to research Heavenly Mother on my own because I was so afraid that I would find and I couldn't emotionally deal with this reinforcement of polygamy. It just took me down places that I thought Satan, I was allowing Satan to get into me, into sight of me. So I just kept it at bay because whenever I went there, I wanted to leave the church and it came out with a vengeance. So I, and I just thought I promised her I would find out and I'm going to.

Kelly Mikesell [03:04:31] And so I started researching Heavenly Mother and I really needed to understand polygamy. And I found a book by Carolyn Pearson, the one you mentioned earlier, the. The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy. And because I, I truly believed at the time that there was a conference talk, I listened to conference. I internalized it. The enzyme, one of the, I can't remember who it was, but one of the leaders had said, I, I, I want to say it was like 2012, 2013 in conference that if we have questions, we should not go to the Internet for answers and that if we do, we can repent and receive forgiveness

Kayla Mikesell [03:05:13] for looking things up.

Kelly Mikesell [03:05:15] Yes. And so I was like, okay, I have to find this information. So I was trying to look online. Um, I had never, I honestly, I didn't know anything about Mormon stories podcast. I'd never even heard of you. Yeah, I didn't know there was an ex Mormon or a post Mormon or a progressive Mormon community. I had no exit did that existed until November of 2020. So six months ago, literally, I had no idea. But I found this book and I, and I read the type, I read the synopsis and so then I, I went researching who this woman woman was. And if I had told myself, if she's an active member of the church, I will read this book.

John Dehlin [03:06:00] Which she is.

Kelly Mikesell [03:06:00] If she is not right, I will

Kayla Mikesell [03:06:02] not read this book because you can't trust any.

Kelly Mikesell [03:06:04] So I'm like, Pearson, is she still a member of church? Is she excommunicated? So I'm like, who is she? Found her website, read about her. Really contemplating this. Do I order this or not? You know, this is going beyond what I had ever done in my life. I had never read a book that was not. I did not purchase a deseret book or I did not information I did not find in the ensign or@LDS.org and so I ended up ordering it. I, you know, I, I found a YouTube interview about the book and I was fascinated by her YouTube video explaining the process of collecting that information and how literally came from church archives when she was researching her.

Kelly Mikesell [03:06:47] Her for the movie that she had been, the script that she had been solicited by the first presidency to make for the prophet Joseph Smith. So I thought, okay, this is legitimate research. She hasn't been excommunicated. Clearly, if it was not valid, she would have been excommunicated.

Carah Burrell [03:07:05] Right?

Kelly Mikesell [03:07:06] And so I ordered it and I read it, and I voraciously read that book. And I sobbed and I sobbed and I sobbed, and I wrote her an email, never expecting to hear back from her, her telling her how that changed my life. I did not know the information in that book and what information that polygamy was never, never came from the hand of God.

Kelly Mikesell [03:07:34] And I had. I was simultaneously so sad that I had harbored so much hatred, hatred for God for something that never came from him. And I resonated so much with the stories she shared from the polls she took. And I. I just. For the first time in my life, I felt like my heart opened up and I just prayed to God. And I said, I'm so sorry for how much I. How many other things have I judged you about?

Kelly Mikesell [03:08:12] Because I believed something that had been deified, that I was told that wasn't true. And she emailed me back and the sweetest letter, and she said, you're the very reason I wrote this book. And how many things. You know, how many things and false traditions have we internalized as members? Because it's been said with an air of authority, so we perpetuate that.

Kelly Mikesell [03:08:41] And that just. It just. It did something inside of me. It. It. It switched, like, oh, my gosh, maybe God does love me. Maybe I am just as important. And March, one of my children contacted me and told me he was stepping away from the church.

Kelly Mikesell [03:09:09] And I knew that one child wasn't active anymore, and I knew Kayla had gone in a different direction. And I was so sad, and I just cried. And he said, mom, I don't want you to try to convince me, but I wanted to talk, tell you what

Kayla Mikesell [03:09:31] I feel and think.

Kelly Mikesell [03:09:33] So I listened to him talk for, like, two to three hours. And I got off the phone with him and I just cried. He was so afraid to tell me because he didn't want to disappoint me. And I love him and I love my children.

Kelly Mikesell [03:09:57] He told me he was agnostic and shared a lot of challenges and concerns he'd had about the Bible. And ironically, polygamy was. For a young man, polygamy was his huge Problem that broke his shelf. He, anytime in priesthood and quorum it aided him.

Kelly Mikesell [03:10:22] It just ate at him. He, he just saw, he just thought it was, I don't remember his exact words, like grossly unjust and good for him. He's a very just person, you know. He is very, he's such a good person, you know, he's like I can't go on my mission. Or he's like I can't go away to school because everyone knows Brandon's name already. So but so he's like I have to go. I'll have to just stay and go and be Brandon's buddy and protect him from use his school. And he didn't really, but he was just, he just wants to protect and he wants to.

Kelly Mikesell [03:11:02] There's equality and he just sees social injustice places. And I resonated a lot with that and I connected with that and so I just got on my knees afterward. Oh, he's like agnostic. And I'm typing up like while he's talking to me definition of agnostic, you know. And I just started sobbing like oh my gosh, she doesn't believe in God. What is happening? And so I prayed and prayed and I decided I made that choice

Kayla Mikesell [03:11:30] that

Kelly Mikesell [03:11:30] I was not going to let happen to my children what happened to my brother and me. I had lost so many years because of judgment, because I was angry that he had messed up the celestial kingdom plan for our family. And I loved my brother and I wasn't going house to my be in heaven with him. My goal shifted that day and I decided to go on a journey. I wanted to understand my children. I didn't want to judge them anymore. And the only way I could understand them. When I had conversations I wrote down all the questions. Like questions. Sometimes I they would say flat out questions and other times through the course of our conversation I could tell obviously what some of the questions were. And I had this on the side of my bookshelf. I just started posting stick yellow sticky tabs, posted notes. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:12:32] Of what questions?

Kayla Mikesell [03:12:33] The questions about like there's all of

Kelly Mikesell [03:12:36] us, all of them. Issues with the church, concerns, disagreements, hurts.

Kayla Mikesell [03:12:41] So that she could look up every single one.

Kelly Mikesell [03:12:43] I wanted see to study everything.

John Dehlin [03:12:44] So tell us five of them.

Kelly Mikesell [03:12:45] 72 top five. I'll probably say maybe one from each child and I don't know if it's necessarily their top just ones that come off of my head. So one if Jesus Christ was so

Kayla Mikesell [03:13:01] important

Kelly Mikesell [03:13:03] and God sent him to the world to redeem our souls and to be an Example, and if record keeping is so important that we're commanded to keep journals and that the Nephites were commanded to keep these plates, why did God not feel it necessary to preserve an authentic record from Jesus Christ himself? Why is our knowledge about the Nephites and Lamanites more important than Jesus Christ himself? Why would this is all in one thread for this child? Why would God allow the Bible to be corrupted to the point that scholars now don't know if some of the texts are original or not? And why, if Joseph Smith wasn't allowed to use the gold plates for money and propaganda, why was the Bible allowed to be used at times in history for propaganda and financial gain?

John Dehlin [03:14:28] I never thought of that.

Kelly Mikesell [03:14:29] And I was like, questions, sticky note, Questions, sticky note. Okay, another child, the sexual shaming, this child. I said to me, if the atonement is for the sinner, why was I publicly shamed for so long? And why was I not allowed to take the sacrament for so long?

Carah Burrell [03:14:58] Long

Kelly Mikesell [03:15:02] sticky note, another child. I'm doubting the existence of God because of the absurdity of prophets. Like, oh my gosh, okay, this, this question comes in July. I'm like, okay, tell me more. And I'm trying not to, like, open my eyes really big and like, freak out, you know, this is a different child.

Questioning Prophets and Church Truth Claims

Kelly Mikesell [03:15:22] Tell me what you mean by prophet. The absurdity of prophecy prophets. And he says, what is the point of a prophet if the doctrine and revelation that they teach is later disavowed and told that is not true. And I said, like what? Give me an example. Like, what are you talking about?

Kelly Mikesell [03:15:49] Race in the priesthood just, just aided him. The teachings on Native Americans and the graduation of their skin going from dark to light based on righteousness. That doctrine that we don't teach anymore, that we don't teach it is true. Is anymore blood atonement. Never heard of that sticky note.

Kelly Mikesell [03:16:15] The. Oh gosh, they're just anyways, like political at me, you know? And I was like, well, thinking back to when I was 21, well, you know, prophets can make mistakes. And thinking back to my bishop years and years ago, if you know they can only be influenced as far as the cultural and intellectual level of the prophet. He's like, then what's the point of prophets if they're always 20 to 30 years behind correct change?

Kayla Mikesell [03:16:42] And if we're going by those standards, then why does anything in the Bible, how is that relevant?

Kelly Mikesell [03:16:46] So then he starts rattling off like,

John Dehlin [03:16:48] that's a great point.

Kelly Mikesell [03:16:49] Did you know that. That the church was against civil Rights. This Civil Rights Act. Did you know that the church fought this women's rights move in Civil Rights Amendment? I'm like, no, no.

John Dehlin [03:16:59] Sorry.

Kelly Mikesell [03:17:00] And no idea. No. Tell me more. You know, another child starts taking an institute Pearl of Great Price class. And this child is very scientific. Scientific. Ironically, this child was reading college textbooks about space when he was 8 years old. Sean and I could not consume and purchase enough space astronomy books. And so he comes home, once I take him to institute, he comes back, he is angry. Angry. He is angry. And I feel like every. So then I'm like, okay, he's. His things were like. It says in the Book of Abraham that the earth is 6,000 years old and that is scientifically impossible. So either the book is lying or the, you know, he just, he just could not reconcile it for scientifically. I was told today by my teacher that Adam was the first man on earth that is scientifically not true. Like just thing after thing.

John Dehlin [03:18:08] It's all true. And all of Mormon theology and doctrine is based on literal time, you know, chronology, Noah, you know, Tower of Babel, Mormons, depending on the Tower of Babel. And so you can't have it both ways. That the Bible and the Book of Mormon are true historical records and that, that they, that they're allegorical and that really science is real. You can't have it both ways, really. I mean, you can, but it's not logically consistent.

Kelly Mikesell [03:18:41] And the religious exclusivism ate at this particular child. Just ate it.

John Dehlin [03:18:47] This child, one true church, other churches.

Kelly Mikesell [03:18:49] He could not wrap his brain around it. And I'm always like, well, you know, we used to teach this, but now we teach that all churches have good in them, but our church has all the good. I mean, it didn't matter what, what I said. Like, so I'm. I start re. Oops, sorry. Researching the Book of Abraham because I'm trying to work with him and pre. Everyone do that preemptive with, you know, Tuesday nights, coming home from institute. So all this time and really I decided I needed to start with Christianity. I realized I was so ignorant to Christianity in general. And so I, I read a book called Christianity the first 3,000 years.

Kelly Mikesell [03:19:29] I. Then the next book I read was how the Bible, the Formation of the Bible by John Barton. Then I read Jesus the Christ. And then I read the New Testament and underlined. I bought a new New Testament and I underlined every word or action that Christ did. I'm like, what did Jesus, what was it said that Jesus did?

Kelly Mikesell [03:19:52] I didn't know A lot of the things that I was learning, I had no idea. I mean, I guess I just assumed that Jesus was a Christian. So obviously he was born a Jew, he grew up as a Jew, he was a Jewish rabbi and teacher. He held the Jewish priesthood. He. He taught as a Jew, he died as a Jew.

Kelly Mikesell [03:20:22] And Christianity was a mystic sect for the first 300 years. And it wasn't until Emperor Constantine compiled the Book of Mormon Bible Bible for political propaganda. And he is actually the one that instituted in the patriarchal order order in the Christian Church and he based it off of the Roman Army. You know, I, Jesus Christ wasn't an organizer of a church. He was, he was a minister. You know. And so when I was listening to. So I would walk in the mornings and I'm. When I get home, so I was listening to the New Testament while I was walking. And then when I got home I would read those same chapters and underline everything in so this is about July Lie.

Kelly Mikesell [03:21:11] And I'm, I'm just trying to, I want to understand so I can look at my children and say, I may not agree, but I understand how you came to this conclusion and I respect you. And I just burst out crying because I, I had thought my whole life I had been a disciple of Christ. When I, I love the New Testament and when I see images or read the New Testament or watch the Bible videos, I love the LDS Bible videos about Christ. I just love them.

Kelly Mikesell [03:21:47] I always envisioned myself as, you know, one of the disciples in the plain garb following him around. And I realized I was the Pharisee. I cared so much about beliefs and behavior compliance and that took precedent over love and understanding beliefs in behavior compliance and an assimilation into one right way.

Kelly Mikesell [03:22:24] I had no idea that it dominated me so much. I was not aware care. I am not saying all members of the church are Pharisees. There are so many people that are so much better than me. But it was a wake up moment for me to realize that I had, I cared more about beliefs and behavior compliance than I did about a person.

Kelly Mikesell [03:22:51] And then I just kept studying and I kept reading and, and Kayla said to me in end of September or early October of 2020, I'm trying to convince her that she can stay a member of the church and just be kind of progressive. And she's like, I'm not going back to it. I'm done. And she said to me, you knew Joseph Smith was a treasure digger, right?

Kayla Mikesell [03:23:15] And I was like, so I gotta say my ulterior motive and things for this.

Kelly Mikesell [03:23:20] She did have an ulterior motive.

Kayla Mikesell [03:23:21] So obviously Kelly researches things and goes things. She's. If something's in her head, she's going to go at it all the way. And I know that because of the defense mechanism that very active members. And you start to hear things. You put up those walls and you don't want to hear things. And I knew that that's how it would happen if I tried to talk to you about. Like I said, I had been alone during that year of finding all of these things out about the church, historical things that I just never knew about or they didn't teach about. I knew that I couldn't just walk in and start doing that because the defense mechanisms would start. I would be shut down. Everything I said from that point on would not be. I would not be listened to.

John Dehlin [03:23:58] Perfect.

Kayla Mikesell [03:23:59] Yeah. So I knew that if I just said one small sentence and left it at that, she would look it up.

Kelly Mikesell [03:24:06] And I had not yet researched any church history because I liked Christianity was starting from the beginning.

Kayla Mikesell [03:24:12] So I knew that me just saying something little like that and her figuring out, how did I not know this? She said, what else do I not know? And that she would go 110.

Kelly Mikesell [03:24:19] Which. That is exactly what happened.

John Dehlin [03:24:22] Went.

Kelly Mikesell [03:24:23] I went to. After that conversation, she mentions treasure digging. Treasure digging. And I just like a little thing.

Kayla Mikesell [03:24:31] Not something like, she's crazy.

Kelly Mikesell [03:24:32] All she said was this. You knew Joseph Smith was a treasure digger, right? I was like, and the grave robber. And grave robber. And I was like, no. She's like, yeah, look it up.

Kayla Mikesell [03:24:41] And I just left it at that.

Kelly Mikesell [03:24:44] Oh. So I went home because we had.

Kayla Mikesell [03:24:46] Yeah, we like, meeted somewhere.

Kelly Mikesell [03:24:47] But you went home. So I went home and I went to ld, our Church of Jesus Christ, and I looked up Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, and I was shocked to see that everything Carolyn Pearson had put in her book about polygamy was now on LD or Church of

John Dehlin [03:25:09] Jesus Christ.org gospel topics essays.

Kelly Mikesell [03:25:12] Yeah, I had never heard of that. I had been teaching my young women that, you know, prior to 20. 2020, that Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy.

Kayla Mikesell [03:25:22] And it's on.

Kelly Mikesell [03:25:23] I had no idea. And I was horrified that they admitted that He. He not only practiced it, he lied to Emma about it, and he lied to the public about it. And I. I find the information about the Book of Mormon, and that is not what about it. That is not what I was taught. That is not what I taught my primary children, the Book of Mormon. Okay. So I. I was taught that the Book of Mormon. And this is what I, I've made. I have a poster board with all of this on it because I am a primary girl. If people who are members of the church.

Kelly Mikesell [03:25:59] When I say primary girl, you'll know what I mean. I'm a primary girl and I love primary and I love making visuals. And I was taught that Joseph Smith got the gold plates, a breast plate and Urim and Thummim and translated the Book of Mormon from those plates. There are pictures that show him with spectacles and show a breastplate and he's translating the characters. And now on ChurchOfJesusChrist.org six months ago, ago when I read the Book of Mormon essay, he apparently had a seer stone that he.

Kayla Mikesell [03:26:49] That was the same stone that he used to.

Kelly Mikesell [03:26:51] For treasure digging, which I had never heard about. That he put it in a hat and put his face in the hat. And words for to translate the Book of Mormon would appear. And that's. And until he got it right, it would, it would stay. He couldn't go to another sentence or something until he got it right or something like that. That the plates were actually never present. He never used the plates to translate. And this seer stone, they weren't in the room. This, that he was a treasure digger.

John Dehlin [03:27:21] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [03:27:21] And that him using the seer stone, the, the excuse. I'm sorry, the explanation, justification, the reasoning. Let me put it that way. The reasoning on the website says that it was a way for him to practice using the seer stone. And that just blew my mind.

John Dehlin [03:27:47] You don't like that explanation?

Kelly Mikesell [03:27:49] No, I wasn't happy with that because it was directly in opposition to what used to be on the website and what I had been taught before. And then it just dominoed from there. I read all the gospel topic essays. I did not know they existed. And this is 2020 and I had no idea. I had no idea about the seer stone.

John Dehlin [03:28:09] And they'd been out for six years, by the way.

Kelly Mikesell [03:28:11] I had no idea.

Kayla Mikesell [03:28:12] And.

Kelly Mikesell [03:28:12] And I'm an active member of the church. My husband at this point has been bishop for over four years.

Kayla Mikesell [03:28:17] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [03:28:18] And we have served and taught and we study manuals and I'm the nerd that reads the lesson before on that Sunday before. So I can think and ponder and pray about it all during the.

Carah Burrell [03:28:28] The week.

Kelly Mikesell [03:28:29] And I just, I went to my husband and he didn't want to have hear anything about it. He was super defensive.

John Dehlin [03:28:39] He's bishop.

Kelly Mikesell [03:28:40] Yeah. He, he didn't want anything to do with it.

Kayla Mikesell [03:28:42] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [03:28:43] So I kept trying to talk to him. I couldn't talk to him. I. And to be quite frank with you, I. I was just. You were allowed to. How can.

Kayla Mikesell [03:28:51] How.

Kelly Mikesell [03:28:51] What. What have I missed?

Carah Burrell [03:28:54] What.

Kelly Mikesell [03:28:54] Where. What memos have I missed? Like, I have not been asleep at the wheel here. How can this be on LDS.org or. You know what I mean? And I had no idea. I'm still teaching my primary children the manuals and things still say the way I've been taught. So I. My husband won't talk to me. I reach out to a family member. Member and. And try to talk to them, and they don't want to have any discussion about it. I don't feel like I can talk to my kids. I don't want to talk.

John Dehlin [03:29:31] You can't talk to your bishop, right?

Kelly Mikesell [03:29:32] My bishop's mia. And. And I can't. I don't. I can't talk to anyone in the ward for obvious reasons. I. I just felt really alone. Like I am. I just can't live like this anymore. Like, how can you. I just felt like my. When you believe something and you used to go to that source for that information, and then you go to the same source and find different information that contradicts what you were originally taught and there's no explanation about it other than really lengthy.

Kayla Mikesell [03:30:12] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [03:30:12] Carefully. I just was sick to my stomach. I literally felt like I don't know what to believe because my whole testimony, my whole allegiance has been based on this. And now you're telling me that this is what happened? Why couldn't you just tell me this in the first place? It wasn't the information so much.

Kayla Mikesell [03:30:38] It was the deceit.

Kelly Mikesell [03:30:39] It was the direct. I don't even know how to.

John Dehlin [03:30:45] Betrayal. Betrayal?

Kelly Mikesell [03:30:46] Yes. I felt literally decepted and betrayed. I didn't know what was. I didn't know what to believe in the universe at all. I don't know. I felt like I had been running down a hall for so long. And I get to a door and I open the door and there's blackness everywhere. And I look behind me and there's blackness. And I'm just in this door frame, floating in space. I. I don't even know what to think. I don't feel grounded. I'm. I'm having a lot of suicidal thoughts, sadly. Because I.

Kayla Mikesell [03:31:22] Because your entire life is dependent on it. Built on it.

Kelly Mikesell [03:31:25] My whole life I have shoved down and believed that I was never good enough, that I would never be worthy enough. Because I disagreed with God. I didn't trust Myself to make decisions. I didn't think I was worth anything. And to find out that the things that I had problems with, like polygamy and race, I. I was. I was right all along. I. I wasn't wrong. I wasn't bad. I was never being.

Kayla Mikesell [03:32:08] Those similar feelings, too. Yeah.

Carah Burrell [03:32:10] About.

Kayla Mikesell [03:32:11] Of just feeling that all that anger and hurt and everything that was caused.

Kelly Mikesell [03:32:15] It was so needless that.

Kayla Mikesell [03:32:16] Yeah. That it was. It wasn't necessary. And that my instincts of. Of feeling uncomfortable, of talking to the bishop about certain things and not having a relationship with my dad and all these things. Like, all of that, like I said earlier, if the church didn't exist, those things probably wouldn't have been there. So it was just a. Yeah. It was just the same feelings of, like, my instincts of feeling like, this is wrong. This shouldn't be the way that this is. I shouldn't be publicly shamed. And all of that was justified. Like, it felt like I was right.

Life as a Bishop and Losing Faith

John Dehlin [03:32:45] You were right.

Kayla Mikesell [03:32:46] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [03:32:46] Yeah. So now I'm in this space where I can't talk to. I am literally in a network of amazing people who are doing the best they can, who love the Lord, who are serving in their callings. I love the people in the church.

Kelly Mikesell [03:33:08] I believe in the. In so many of the values and standards. But to have these things that ate away at my soul. Soul. And to find out now we're disavowing something that ate away at my soul. And In July of 2020, Elder Cook made a comment. He was talking to the. The. It was in the Liahona. And maybe it was still enzyme. I think it was Leahono. He was. He said something along the lines of paraphrasing the.

Kelly Mikesell [03:33:42] It is among the belief in the senior councils of the church that for whatever reason, plural marriage or polygamy existed, that reason is complete and it is finished and it is no more. And I'm just going, oh, my gosh. Everything Carolyn Pearson said was right. It wasn't of God.

Kelly Mikesell [03:34:07] You know what I mean? And I know that they can't come out and say that, and I understand why, but wow. I was tormented for a long time because I thought I was in opposition against God. I never in a million years dreamed that leaders were in opposition against God. And I disregarded my own soul and my own heart and thought that I was being influenced by someone, Satan.

Kayla Mikesell [03:34:34] And journal after journal entry after journal entry.

Kelly Mikesell [03:34:39] So I was super dark and suicidal and angry for like, four months. And I finally sent a text to my husband because we. He would just not Talk about it at all. Like he just shut it down again. We've established my emotional maturity. So completely used manipulative tactics and I wrote him this really long text and said the fact that you don't want to understand genuinely why 5 of your 6 children. Cuz we have a 6 year old. So why 5 of our children have left or walked away or stepped away from the church at some point in the four years you've been bishop.

Kayla Mikesell [03:35:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:35:22] Plus your spouse.

Kelly Mikesell [03:35:24] I'm not talking to you about anything. And I didn't until he came to me and said okay, I'm ready to talk.

John Dehlin [03:35:32] And it might sound like we're piling on him. Right. Like he.

Kelly Mikesell [03:35:36] Yeah. What I did was really unfair.

John Dehlin [03:35:38] People who don't understand Mormonism are like what an awful human. But no, he's not.

Kelly Mikesell [03:35:42] He's not.

John Dehlin [03:35:42] I know you guys love him.

Kelly Mikesell [03:35:43] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:35:44] And you just have to understand, number one, what it's like to be an orthodox Mormon, but also what it's like to be bishop. Right.

Kelly Mikesell [03:35:50] And that's just it. So I, I said to him, what's

John Dehlin [03:35:53] it like to be bishop? Explain that to.

Kelly Mikesell [03:35:54] Oh gosh. A 2017 journal entry was Are we really a child? A Christ centered church. I'm grateful that Sean can help so many people. But the negative, I mean people call all the time and because of cell phones. Bishop. Being a bishop nowadays is. People are. Bishop is so accessible and they email him. They call him.

John Dehlin [03:36:20] You mean how do they look? They looked at him as what they're

Kelly Mikesell [03:36:22] a leader in every single way.

Kayla Mikesell [03:36:24] Counseling in ways spiritual. Spiritual. Marriage counselor, literally. Psychologist for youth to adults, child therapists. It's everybody.

Kelly Mikesell [03:36:34] And my husband is incredible.

John Dehlin [03:36:36] Financial advisor.

Kelly Mikesell [03:36:37] Yes. Everything. My husband is really confidential. So ironically, I think I don't get information about even activities in the ward because people assume that I already know. And I don't even know when the trunk or treat is or when this is because my husband doesn't even tell me. We get new bishop, bishopric member and I'm the last one to find out. Like you. I mean he does not talk about anything. He, he has told me that because of my, you know, anxiety and depression. I had suffered with serious postpartum depression after my 6 year old was born. And because of just who I am and all the things I've been through, he is such a better bishop and he feels like he's been able to help so many women in the ward and from your perspective of instead of just being.

Kelly Mikesell [03:37:20] Because I got when I went to a bishop about suicide and Cutting I got, you need to read your scriptures and pray more. And so I did. And so when I didn't find relief, when I didn't have these feelings removed, I just thought at my core I was not a good person. And it's at my core and it's

Kayla Mikesell [03:37:40] made the difference too, through what happened to me as being a young woman and what happened to me with the sexual shaming and stuff that it's helped him.

John Dehlin [03:37:47] He's been a better bishop.

Kayla Mikesell [03:37:48] He's been a better bishop for young women.

John Dehlin [03:37:50] That's good.

Kelly Mikesell [03:37:51] Yeah, yeah. He said, you know, he loves the youth and he loves helping people because he's just that type of person. I mean, I would get people text me, I have no idea where my husband is. He. So you ask what it's like to be a bishop. So he'll just disappear. He's out, I'm mowing the lawn and then his truck's gone and he doesn't come back for three hours. And I know he's, I know when he does, when he does that, he's not just running to Lowe's or Home Depot, he, he's doing bishop stuff and

John Dehlin [03:38:14] he needed to leave and somebody has an emergency.

Kelly Mikesell [03:38:18] That's just, it's really hard. It's hard. And I just remember, and by the

John Dehlin [03:38:21] way, non Mormons don't understand. This isn't like a Catholic priest where it's his full time job. He has a full time job in addition to being bishop and his, and children and other responsibilities.

Kelly Mikesell [03:38:33] Right. And when you are bishop, your, your family is second fiddle and, and it, and I get why, but it's really tough. I mean, he's been bishop since our daughter was nine months old and she's six. And he, he has long hours at work and then he comes home and he has lots of meetings or he's outside in the backyard pacing on phones, on phone calls. When the phone rings and he takes it and heads out. I know it's a work call when he looks, when he sees it and then he goes out, shuts the door and then takes it.

Kayla Mikesell [03:38:59] I know it's a church call. You've literally said there's been people who call it 2 to 3 in 2, 3am yeah. Like asking for things, it's just because

Kelly Mikesell [03:39:06] they're gonna kill himself or, you know, and he's always, you know. So I don't, I, I just have to say.

John Dehlin [03:39:12] And they are not trained as mental health professionals.

Kayla Mikesell [03:39:14] No.

John Dehlin [03:39:14] And he's not, they have no idea, idea how to help someone with Their sexual dysfunction, drug addiction with an unruly child or, you know, someone who's cutting or borderline personality.

Kayla Mikesell [03:39:24] It doesn't. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much of a good person you are. And like, in genuine motives to being a bishop, you are not trained in those areas.

John Dehlin [03:39:34] And.

Kelly Mikesell [03:39:35] And, you know, everybody wants, you know, they want his approval and. And it's not. They want Sean, Mike Sells approval. They want the bishop's approval and they want his, you know, them. They just want to feel like he cares, like this important person in the ward cares about them. And so I understand. But it began to make me question the structure of the church, if it really did bring families together or if it took us apart because it spread us so thin, especially with this point that we had nothing to give.

Kayla Mikesell [03:40:03] You're starting to feel closer to us, away from it because all of us have kids, have pretty much separated.

Kelly Mikesell [03:40:11] So really, when Covid. Covid happened.

John Dehlin [03:40:14] Can I just wait before we go to covet. I'm just struck by this idea again that the. The church is all about families.

Kayla Mikesell [03:40:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:40:21] And your husband's helping everyone in the ward.

Kelly Mikesell [03:40:24] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:40:24] And when his own. And this isn't a pile on him because he's a part of a system. It's systems, not people.

Kayla Mikesell [03:40:30] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:40:30] But when his own wife and kids, everything's kind of unraveling. He's like, I can't talk to you. You guys got to go figure that out. Yeah, I got to go help all these other people in the ward. That must be an incredibly lonely for you.

Kayla Mikesell [03:40:42] Definitely.

John Dehlin [03:40:42] And for him.

Kelly Mikesell [03:40:43] Yeah, it was.

John Dehlin [03:40:44] And just not good for the family at all.

Kelly Mikesell [03:40:45] No, it's not good for the family. And. And so when church meetings stopped, oh, I felt so much relief.

John Dehlin [03:40:53] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [03:40:54] I could breathe for the first time in a long time. And it was so nice to have family together. And we could choose what we wanted.

John Dehlin [03:41:03] Global pandemic.

Kayla Mikesell [03:41:04] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [03:41:04] We could teach what we wanted to our children. And we had sacrament at home. And I felt the spirit again. Like I felt connected. And I was. It just made me realize so much more what was really important to me. So when I had sent him that, like, I'm not going to talk to you until you are willing to talk about why our kids have left the church. I said, and I don't know why it's such a threat for you. I. I'm not asking you to change your mind about anything. I want to have a conversation. Why can't I even have a conversation about it? And.

John Dehlin [03:41:44] And maybe you can explain. We've had several Mormon bishops on. But what if a Mormon bishop loses his faith while he's a Mormon bishop?

Kayla Mikesell [03:41:52] It's.

Kelly Mikesell [03:41:53] Yeah, it's.

John Dehlin [03:41:53] It's like catastrophic because every. Because he gets you all. Everyone knows that a Mormon bishop is supposed to serve five years. So if ever a Mormon bishop is released prior to five years. Years, everybody wonders, what, does he have a porn problem? Did he cheat on somebody? Is he. Did he break the law? Like, what. So, and then if.

Kayla Mikesell [03:42:10] And if he.

John Dehlin [03:42:11] Yeah. And then if he stops early, then there's the buzz and the scandal of like, why did he. Yeah. Did the bishop lose his faith? And then, then the stake president, his boss might turn around and want to have disciplinary hearings because the last thing the Mormon Church wants are their top leaders losing their faith. Faith. So you might face an inquiry and possible excommunication if it's discovered that a bishop has lost his faith. And so a bishop can't be entertaining doubts and questions before everything could blow up and it's a public scandal. And then if their job is tied in Mormonism anyway to Mormonism, if they're a dentist or lawyer and then they lose their faith and they get released early, all the scandal of rumors, and then you. You might lose clients or customers. Like, it can be more mentally catastrophic.

Carah Burrell [03:43:00] Right.

Kayla Mikesell [03:43:01] And to be clear, we just want to make that clear that you have gone through this and he's still in that position of, I don't want to talk about it.

Kelly Mikesell [03:43:07] Yeah. In all fairness, not to throw him under the bus, he did say, okay, I want to talk. Why did our. What are our kids issues?

John Dehlin [03:43:17] So you said, I won't talk to you again.

Kelly Mikesell [03:43:19] I won't talk about you with anything. And I said, said, you don't get to dictate what we do and do not talk about in our marriage. And I'm dying inside and you're my partner, so if you can't talk to me about what I'm dying about, then I'm not talking about you. You with anything. And so he came home, like, from work a couple nights later, and it's like, okay, I'm ready to talk. And I shared with him the stuff from the essay essays and gospel topic essays. Yeah, the gospel topic essays. And just I said, and Joseph Smith's character and what it said on there and, and just how different it was from when he had served his mission and what he had taught people about Joseph Smith. And he's like, I. I have not heard. I've never heard of most of this. And I said, therein lies the problem.

Kayla Mikesell [03:44:11] You're a bishop.

Kelly Mikesell [03:44:12] I said, you have been a bishop for over four years. You have been a young men's president. You have served in two stake young men's presidencies. You've been on the high council, You've been in bishoprics. You've served as a ward clerk. You have been a scout master, a varsity coach for Most of your 32 years as an adult in this church. And you served a mission to Brazil.

John Dehlin [03:44:39] And it's tearing your family apart.

Kelly Mikesell [03:44:41] And you have never heard of most of this stuff. Don't you think that's problematic? And I may not have said that so nicely if you haven't gotten a little passionate when I get upset. And he's like, no, no, no, I. I see. I mean, that is problematic, you know, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, don't but me. Just listen. This is why your kids don't want to talk to you. Because all we've ever done to them is let talk to me. And then we're like, why, why don't you read your scriptures more and pray? And why don't you. Why don't you refer. Have you looked at your patriarchal blessing recently? Are you paying your tithing? You know, don't do that to me.

Kayla Mikesell [03:45:22] Don't do it.

Kelly Mikesell [03:45:23] Just listen. I feel betrayed. And every single One of our children's 72 and I point to the wall 72 questions is valid. Now, I may not have drawn the same conclusions as my children on all of those issues, but there is a massive problem with what I was raised and what is currently now on churchofjesuschrist.org and now I don't know what to believe.

Kelly Mikesell [03:45:51] And I just felt like my world had shattered. And he was sympathetic in terms of my emotions. He was very afraid. He said to me, you know what I said? I'm so angry right now. I just want to leave the church. I'm so angry.

Kelly Mikesell [03:46:13] How does this happen? How does this just get slipped in? And I'm an active believing member who teaches there's something seriously wrong here, and it's not with me. I mean, I was taking back, you know, this suicide. And his eyes are getting bigger and bigger and bigger, like, oh my gosh. And he says to me, I respect you and I love you, and I don't necessarily feel the same, although it is disturbing to me that this is. This is here and I didn't know about it, but whatever you decide to do, whether you decide to leave the church or you decide to stay.

Kelly Mikesell [03:46:54] I support you and I love you and you mean more to me than any religion because I made covenants in the temple with you and God. I did not make them with Joseph Smith. I did not make them with Russell M. Nelson, and I did not make them with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. So I respect you and I'm asking that you respect me too. I. I'm asking you not to leave.

Kelly Mikesell [03:47:18] And if we could kind of maybe read things together and I can, you know, I'm asking you to just maybe slow down and not go at Mach 10 speed because I cannot assimilate information as fast as you can. And this is the first time I'm hearing about this and you've been mulling it over for a while, so I feel like a deer in headlights. And so we. I think, because to be quite honest with you, I. If he had responded different, differently, if he had freaked out or been talked about divorce or anything like sadly I hear people do, I think I would have just out of that rage and that rawness, because it's just shocking.

Kelly Mikesell [03:48:03] It's shocking to learn something different. So then you think, okay, so what is. What really happened? This used to be true. Now this is true. Like your brain just. My brain just couldn't handle it and I freaked out.

Kayla Mikesell [03:48:14] Doubt.

Kelly Mikesell [03:48:14] And so if he hadn't responded that way, so, so compassionately, I. I totally would have probably written a letter for

Kayla Mikesell [03:48:22] good and removed your name. My name.

Kelly Mikesell [03:48:24] Because I was so angry. And so I just stepped back and I took deep breaths and I reached out to you. I'm like, you know, I don't really know because he didn't want to talk about the specifics of things. And he said, you know, nothing you say, even if it's all true, I'll never stop believing.

Kelly Mikesell [03:48:43] And I just was like, I'm not asking you not to believe and I'm not even saying. I just completely don't believe in the church anymore. I'm asking to talk about these things, that why are they different? I deserve an explanation.

Kelly Mikesell [03:48:57] And some of this convoluted explanations, it actually hurt my testimony more. And I found fare more Mormon and I was shocked that fair Mormon, this apologist. Okay, first of all, I didn't know there were such things as apologists websites. I found your website in November of 2020. And before I even started listening to things, I'm like, who's this guy? Like, what's his deal? I found your excommunication story and I Listened to the seven hours of it because I wasn't going to listen to the. You know, I wanted to see who you were, and I felt so compassionate towards your story.

Kelly Mikesell [03:49:38] So you didn't have the same beliefs, but you were providing a forum for people to talk about things that doesn't exist in the church. So I want to kill myself because I feel alienated and alone in a church of millions of people. There's a problem with that, fundamental problem with that. And your podcast saved us my life because I had no idea other people were experiencing the same thing I did. And I reached out to you because I just was struggling so much, and I. You had recommended that I listen to Gift of a Mormon Faith Crisis podcast. Yeah, yeah, Gift of Mormon. It was a podcast, and it totally turned things around for me.

Kelly Mikesell [03:50:26] I was like, okay, I can breathe. Like, this is something that people go through. I took a world religion class through Harvard's, the Divinity Harvard online school. And I just, like, want to understand. I just want to learn. I want to slow down. I want to learn. I. I'm not going to make rash judgments either way anymore. You know, I. But the. The Gift of a Mormon Faith Crisis I definitely would recommend to and anyone who either has a family member member or is going through a faith crisis, because it just helped me put things into perspective, you know, like, okay, okay, breathe. And I.

Kelly Mikesell [03:51:06] I did a values inventory, and I did a belief inventory. I. I did. You gave homework assignments after all of them? And I did all the homework assignments. I know, it's a shocker. I'm so arrogant anyway, so. But. But it helped me because I was able to. To write things down. I am not a very articulate person in general, and when I feel very emotional, I just am like, la, la, la, you know, and. And. But I process when I write. I kind of process things when I write, and it allows me to form opinions and change opinions and thoughts. And so I definitely have started picking up all those crumbles that, you know, shattered pieces.

Finding Community and Moving Forward After Mormonism

Kelly Mikesell [03:51:49] And there's some things that I'm like, okay, all right, I'm good. Put this right back up. I'm going to use this for a building block. I feel like I have to kind of rebuild a measure of my scaffolding.

Kelly Mikesell [03:52:00] Other things. I'm like, I've got to research more about this. I do. This needs more attention. So it goes over here. And then those are things that I've just rejected. And it's not that I've consciously rejected it, like, intentionally. It's just when My framework fell apart. And I used to be so judgmental and critical of people based on that knowledge because I knew that it was true the way these things happened. It happened this way. I knew that they had happened that way. And you were just deceived or ignorant or you didn't have all the facts. And so all of a sudden, I'm wrong.

Kelly Mikesell [03:52:38] I don't know what is true. And I'm having. It just scales fell from my eyes. I realized I had been judging people even. Even in the time that I was still trying to, like, convince y', all, you know, and you're like, no, really, like, you get the facts right? And I'm like, you know, and. And I joined the Mormon Stories Facebook group. I joined Facebook in. In January in order to join the Mormon Stories Facebook group because I just felt so alone. And that was really cathartic for me to just read that, okay, other people had.

Kayla Mikesell [03:53:17] Is going.

Kelly Mikesell [03:53:17] Are going through this, and they're normal and they're not insane and they're not being deceived by Satan. One of the things that has made a huge difference in my psyche that I didn't realize I had rejected is one I don't believe. Believe that I am being, like, injected or trapped and tempted by Satan all the time. I don't believe that my feelings of sadness or depression or anger or sexual thoughts or is Satan tempting me. I know behavior. It's human behavior. And for me to understand that has kind of lifted this, like, okay, I have control of myself. Myself, like, I'm in charge of myself.

Kelly Mikesell [03:54:03] I'm not so afraid of the world. I'm not afraid. Like, you know, like, this is Satan tempting me. And I'm, you know, it's like, do I. And I can make choices based on that. Like, you know, fidelity is. Is incredibly important to me. And. And I do value a lot of things in the law of chastity, although I will teach it differently to my six year old. And I will not shame her the way I shamed Kayla. I want to teach her in a way that empowers her. And instead of this fear base, like, if you have sex, you're unworthy, you are shameful, you are bad, and you will not go to heaven if you don't repent.

Kelly Mikesell [03:54:41] You know, this. This fear, I. I just was shocked at how much fear I infused in my children through just my teachings, because that's how I was taught. And I don't want to raise my daughter that way at all. And I want to teach her.

Kelly Mikesell [03:54:56] I value chastity this is kind of what it is. Your body's not shameful. You know, you're, you're. It's beautiful. And the sexualization of, you know, that hyper focusness and stuff I'm trying to get away from. But she's already been indoctrinated with that. Like I bought her, purposely bought her a tank top. Like I had found Jennifer Finlays and Fife's work. And that was really instrumental to me. I took her Art of Desire class in helping me understand I can have my value. I can have a higher value and a higher self, but I can approach it differently and I can teach it to my children differently.

Kelly Mikesell [03:55:38] And that, you know, what do you want? Do you want a committed, loving, long term, monogamous, monogamous relationship that then you have to evaluate along the way? Is this behavior going to get me here? But just talking about it in general.

Kayla Mikesell [03:55:55] So you're saying just like the values of.

Kelly Mikesell [03:55:56] Yes.

Kayla Mikesell [03:55:56] Your higher self, that just because you're not in the Mormon religion anymore or you're questioning or things like that, that it doesn't mean all of these, like the values are thrown out the window.

John Dehlin [03:56:08] You have no values.

Kayla Mikesell [03:56:08] Yeah, you can still.

Kelly Mikesell [03:56:10] And I have important, depraved, horrible people because they've left the church. And so it's just opened my eyes.

Kayla Mikesell [03:56:17] And so when you're going, I'm seeing this happen during this period of time and seeing how different the shift is in the way that she's talking to me and processing things and just. I'm seeing that difference. And that's why I felt comfortable enough to come out to her because I just wasn't ever gonna say anything because I was like, there's two ways this can go. Literally. Because bisexual, I can either end up with a guy or I can end up with a girl. And if I end up with then that will be the time to tell her. Then I don't really have a choice. But if I end up being with a guy and I'll just silent, they will never know because I can not disguise in a heterosexual relationship.

Kayla Mikesell [03:56:51] But that's a way to be in a relationship that she would just never find out. So I finally felt comfortable enough to tell her that I was bisexual. And her response and everything was like, yeah, that's fine. It was just super casual and no problems at all.

Kelly Mikesell [03:57:06] This past summer, she wrote me a letter telling me she'd had her name, remember, removed from the records of the church.

Kayla Mikesell [03:57:10] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [03:57:10] And I mean, it's just systematically like

Kayla Mikesell [03:57:12] boom, boom, just a ton of things

Kelly Mikesell [03:57:13] in 2020 from child, you know, and I didn't want to judge them or look down on them.

Carah Burrell [03:57:19] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [03:57:19] And I tried to convey that in my response to you.

Kayla Mikesell [03:57:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:57:22] You know, and it's a tiny bit ironic or sad or tragic that being an orthodox believing Mormon. Let's just say the pinnacle of parenthood is you wanting your kids to be able to tell you when they're going through hard things. I, if there's a parent out there that that's not their biggest goal, I would question that parent. I would. As a parent, I. What I want most is when my kids having a hard time that they want to tell me what's going on so that I can be a support to them. And it's ironic that being a super orthodox believing Mormon makes your kids less interested or eager to talk to you

Kayla Mikesell [03:57:59] about hard things because of the judgment.

John Dehlin [03:58:01] And it makes you less, less loving and kind and compassionate and unconditionally loving when they do come into talk to you. And then you flip that it's ironic that you starting to question your faith and losing your orthodox Mormon faith is what then makes your kids feel safe and comfortable to come to you and to tell you what they're.

Kayla Mikesell [03:58:23] The relationship. Because it was so what does that

John Dehlin [03:58:26] say about being an orthodox.

Kayla Mikesell [03:58:27] Yeah. That it completely just destroyed it.

Kelly Mikesell [03:58:29] This past year I've been on a journey. Like 2021 is my journey of mending hurt relationships because I judged them. And I'm also reevaluating my beliefs. Do I believe this and why? And I've learned a lot about elevation, emotion and how easily emotions can be manipulated. And yet I can't deny. And I do believe in God and I believe in Jesus Christ. Christ. But I no longer feel this need

Kayla Mikesell [03:59:03] to hit all the checklists for Mormonism

Kelly Mikesell [03:59:05] and my whatever works for you just shifted. And it, what I tried so hard as a Mormon like just that orthodox binary thinker and, and now that I'm. I mean, I guess I don't know the right word. Maybe a progressive Mormon. I still identify as Mormon. I love many of the Mormon beliefs. I go to church, I support my husband and. But my, my mind is shifting and I, I'm seeing people in the community just with love. I mean I, I said I, I. This past weekend I had a couple photo shoots and I saw and they were with two. One was a bridal at bridal shoot at the temple and the other was just a family and I hadn't seen them for a long time because they were former members of our Ward.

Kelly Mikesell [03:59:49] And when I saw them, I was just filled with so much love for them. Them. And it's genuine. Like, I am so blessed to have so many amazing friendships in the church and good people. And I. And I do value religion. I respect that others don't. And. And being part of the Mormon podcast Facebook group and seeing that there's this ex Mormon community, I used to have this mindset like, well, if you don't want to be part of the church, leave. No one's making you say, get out, get out. Banish, banish, get out. And what's your problem? Like, chill out and. And. And be. In my quest to understand my children, I realized why they couldn't leave it alone, because they felt hurt, they felt betrayed.

Kelly Mikesell [04:00:35] They felt like people just shut them out. And I did. As a Mormon, I'm the one that put up the walls and the barriers, not them. I remember several years ago, standing in Michael's craft store, a woman who had. I had previously known her husband had served in some prominent callings in the ward. I knew she had two daughters, and I had heard that she left and her husband left the church just prior to her daughters being baptized.

Kelly Mikesell [04:01:02] And she said to me, hi, Kelly, how are you? And I was like, hi, so and so. And I had seen her, but I was pretending like I hadn't seen her in line, and I was like, hi, how are you? And I could not see her as a regular human being. All I could see, all that was plastered in front of me was Mormon. She left the church before her girls were baptized. Shame on her.

Kayla Mikesell [04:01:27] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [04:01:27] Are you kidding me? I don't ever want to be that Mormon again. I don't want to be that type of Mormon. I don't want religion to define me that way. So I'm on my own journey. And one thing I told Caleb when I went up for her 21st birthday, to take pictures of her Miss Salt Lake, you know, with her crown and sash, and to go take her to dinner. I told her I was in tears. I said, you know, I know all eight of us are on different journeys in our family, but I'm so grateful we are on this journey together. And even though we draw different conclusions about some things, I just feel like we're so much more connected and other families don't have that.

Kelly Mikesell [04:02:14] And I'm so grateful what happened to my brother won't happen to us. And I have contacted my brother, and I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, and I just apologized, and I was so sorry and that I judged him so harshly when I was just convinced. I knew the way that things were.

Kayla Mikesell [04:02:34] Were the right way.

Kelly Mikesell [04:02:36] And he was so gracious and kind. But I've lost 20 years.

Kayla Mikesell [04:02:41] And that's like, one of the reasons why, for running from Miss Salt Lake and why I chose the LGBT community and specifically being here in Utah, because of the harm. And that example of not speaking to your brother and losing all of that time is that to even if it's just two people, to just be like, take a step back and being like, oh, they're human beings. And they, as in people who are in the lgbt, you know, Q community. And that especially, too, because so many people who are LDs and are in that community, they don't feel comfortable coming out. So they just stay in that bubble.

Kayla Mikesell [04:03:21] And so there's a lot of people, like you said, other than your brother, you didn't know anyone. So there's a lot of stereotypes and things like that that, you know, I know that some people, when they think of lesbians, they think of a girl with short hair, and there's all these different stereotypes. So, yeah, I'm in a beauty pageant. But I also, like, we come in all different personalities and looks and everything. And every year, it's so funny. I know someone that made a comment before, had come out before they knew, saying, I wonder why there's so many people, like, coming out recently. Like, what is it?

Kayla Mikesell [04:03:52] Because I know that adults now are thinking it's like a fading and stuff. It's because people are more comfortable to come out. The numbers have not. The numbers have not changed. People just haven't been. Have felt safe enough to come out. And so that's why I think it's super important that I do this. And even. I've even had some people reach out to me that are going to BYU or some. A lot of high school students have actually messaged me who go, you know, go to school here in Utah and are in the community and have Mormon families. And I've had a couple say that only two people know.

Kayla Mikesell [04:04:22] My family doesn't know, and I'm scared to tell them. If I think. I think that if I tell them, they're going to kick me out. And I just. It just breaks my heart. And all of those kids like, thanking me for choosing it as my platform because it was risky, especially for Utah, for me to do that. I didn't think that I would. They would, like, let me. Honestly, let me to begin with, and then get Miss Salt Lake for it like that. It was just meant a lot. That even if the four people or five or how many people it reaches and it reaches.

Kelly Mikesell [04:04:48] Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [04:04:49] That it's made them an impact. And it's weird to think I don't want to, like, as myself to look up to, but people have, like, reached out and said, thank you for choosing that as my platform to just bring awareness here, especially in Utah.

Kelly Mikesell [04:05:02] And my really goal for coming on today, I, like I said I had no idea about Mormon Stories podcast, but I needed that. I mean, to hear stories like Donna Shulwald and Leah and Cody Young, and I mean, these are heartfelt, genuine people who are experiencing pain. And I never viewed.

Kelly Mikesell [04:05:25] I'm so sad to say, but I. I never viewed people who left the church or who struggled with the church. I never viewed them as legitimate. It was. I'm just embarrassed to say that, but I didn't. And it was comforting to know that even though my. The belief structure I had for 43 years has crumbled, I feel empowered and I feel okay that I'm building a new one, you know, and there's a lot that I'm. I'm keeping, and then there's some I'm not, you know, and. And that's okay. Yeah. And you know what's really sad is our success. Year old said something super cute and funny regarding her beliefs.

Kelly Mikesell [04:06:11] And after Family Home evening one night, okay, so like, I have family home evening, like, a couple months ago, after Family Home evening where we're talking about Jesus Christ. She says, I want to tell you my belief, but I'm afraid to tell you.

Kayla Mikesell [04:06:32] Okay.

Kelly Mikesell [04:06:32] So I guess at the time she's five, because she turned six in March.

Kayla Mikesell [04:06:35] March.

Kelly Mikesell [04:06:35] And I was. Now, because I've gone on this huge journey, I was like, you know what? Beliefs are a construct in your brain. And guess what's so cool is everybody has different beliefs about things, and that's what makes it a belief. So we all have different beliefs, and it's okay. You can have different beliefs than me.

John Dehlin [04:06:56] Right.

Kelly Mikesell [04:06:57] And she says something that kind of shocks me about relationships, religion. And I asked her if I could share that today. And she said, no.

John Dehlin [04:07:05] Nice. And I said, you practice consent.

Kelly Mikesell [04:07:08] Yeah, but here's why. And I said, why not? And she's like, I don't want to talk about it. And I said, I dropped down to my knees because she was playing with one of her dolls. And I said, I respect that you don't want me to tell them what that belief is, and I won't, but can you just tell me why? And her voice started to quiver and she said, because I don't want to get kicked out of the church.

Kayla Mikesell [04:07:31] She's six.

Kelly Mikesell [04:07:32] And I was like, honey, you won't get kicked out of the church because you have a different belief. She goes, yes, I will. And I said, why do you say that? She goes, because I heard you tell daddy that you would get kicked out of the church if you didn't have all the same beliefs. I was like, oh, gosh, yeah. I was like, you know what? You won't, you won't, I promise. And she goes, I can't risk it. I can't risk it as a six year old.

Kayla Mikesell [04:07:59] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [04:07:59] Because she loves her friends and her primary teacher, the community. And the community. And she likes going to church because it's part of our life.

Kayla Mikesell [04:08:07] But I'm excited.

Kelly Mikesell [04:08:08] Do you think that something's problematic with that?

Kayla Mikesell [04:08:10] Yeah, but I'm excited to see the difference in obviously talking about how I was raised with that versus how she's going to be raised, raised. So I'm. It's going to be hard on her. That's like you're trying to figure out how to parent without the Mormonism and stuff with the changes. But even that example right there of her saying, you know, telling her, asking to share something about a belief, I never, even as a 6 year old, 7, 15, 18 year old, would have never felt comfortable to say something like that. So I think the whole point of this entire thing is just she feels comfortable telling you. Yeah. And that's the growth that we've had as a family for all of us, all eight of us. And so we're close now.

Kelly Mikesell [04:08:51] We are a lot closer. One of my boys said to me, I feel like I could tell you anything, literally anything, anything. Even if you didn't like it, I would tell you anything right now. And I just want to. I don't want other parents to go through their life. If someone listens to, to this podcast and only one person, one sister, doesn't treat her brother the way I treated him and salvages a relationship and doesn't lose 20 years. If one family can not go through the heartache of judging their children and thinking they're a failure. We had a quote in our house that said on a plaque, no success can compensate for failure in the home, which means people are failures. I was like, I've failed. I've failed as a parent. I've failed. My kids are failures. I had a family member say, I never thought all of your children would be such a disappointment.

Kayla Mikesell [04:10:09] It's Great.

Carah Burrell [04:10:10] What else you accomplished?

John Dehlin [04:10:11] Right?

Kayla Mikesell [04:10:11] Right. It doesn't matter. Anything else?

John Dehlin [04:10:13] Salt Lake City.

Kayla Mikesell [04:10:13] Yep. Traveling. Being completely independent.

Kelly Mikesell [04:10:17] See my children as disappointment.

Kayla Mikesell [04:10:19] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [04:10:20] And that was that. That was the motivation. I knew that that was wrong. I knew it wasn't right. And I was just determined I was not gonna live the rest of my life crying every night on the side of my.

Kelly Mikesell [04:10:33] Because I was going to be alone with my husband in the celestial kingdom and none of my kids were going to be there. That is hell. That's not heaven. There's nothing heaven about that. And there was nothing Christlike the way I viewed them, but I couldn't see.

Kelly Mikesell [04:10:47] I really thought I was standing up for truth and righteousness. I thought I was defending my beliefs. No, I was being judgmental, shoving my opinions on people, and anytime they had a concern, I'd end the conversation with bearing my testimony. That's not listening. If for me, I wish I had just a long, I guess a long time ago had understood the importance of understanding comes from listening. I recently read a book about Mormons and gay. More gay Mormons, written by Richard Austin, Hustler. And it's called Listen, Learn and Love. Yes, Listen, learn and love. And I just was blown away. Oh, myth, myth, myth, myth.

Kelly Mikesell [04:11:35] Yep, yep, yep. I learned so much. You know, I'm just trying to learn and grow and be a better person. And I've been really fortunate. I've only shared a few of things other outside of my. My immediate children and my husband.

Kelly Mikesell [04:11:52] One friend I had, when I was struggling with this earlier, I had started to talk about some things, and she was like, I can't go there. Like, I respect you, I love you, I want to have a friendship with you, but I can't talk about anything about, like, that, about church. And I respected that. And we didn't. Another friend, I just shared how I've been going through this. Really, this year has been really rough, and I've just come to a different understanding about myself. And then a third friend, I didn't say specific beliefs, but I did tell her more and more depth about how I went through a really dark period and how Sean said to me, you know, you are one of the most faithful, integral people I know, and I respect whatever you decide to do.

Kelly Mikesell [04:12:33] And she said, wow, that's really impressive because I don't think my husband could have said the same thing to me. And this woman is just, you know, steak, really sacked.

Kayla Mikesell [04:12:44] Resident. Steak. Young woman's resident.

Kelly Mikesell [04:12:46] I mean, she is very devout and believing, but she never once judged. Judged Me. And she just listened. And, and my goal, we need more of that. My goal was never. I never told her specifics. I. I have no idea. You know, she'll. She'll find the gospel topics essays online one day and, you know, I will slip her. Yeah, like a little

John Dehlin [04:13:08] bit.

Kelly Mikesell [04:13:08] You know, my goal is. Is not.

Kayla Mikesell [04:13:11] I. I'm to take people away. If you just want to just.

Kelly Mikesell [04:13:14] I was angry for four people months and I probably did want to shout at the rooftops.

Kayla Mikesell [04:13:19] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [04:13:19] But listening to those podcasts was really healing to me.

Kayla Mikesell [04:13:22] Yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [04:13:23] And so I just want to, you know, we should be able to talk about difficult things and not be kicked out of the church. Definitely emotionally and physically through emotional shunning and fear. I was so afraid of people. One of the things, things that has been really, I would say damaging to my original orthodox testimony, believe it or not, is I had no idea the level of excommunications that went on for apostasy. I was shocked when I started reading about or listening to and then to find out that these people were not getting excommunicated because they were touting lies. It just wasn't faith promoting facts.

John Dehlin [04:14:08] Truth, that was uncomfortable truths.

Kelly Mikesell [04:14:11] That was disturbing.

John Dehlin [04:14:12] People have been excommunicated for decades just for sharing uncomfortable truths.

Kelly Mikesell [04:14:17] And that's not okay, you know, and I understand that, you know, truth. God isn't gonna. God is not gonna lie. So who cares what people say? Jesus Christ. I started studying excommunication this fall. Like, I. Why that went on my way. Little yellow sticky note. Like, why do we excommunicate people? Because they have different thoughts and beliefs

John Dehlin [04:14:40] or speak about them.

Kelly Mikesell [04:14:41] That's not okay. Because you create a culture of silence and fear. When in my case, I. Not saying that this isn't the case for anyone. I don't know other people personally. All I know is what me and my children have gone through. But there is no forum. There's no forum. You're a doubter. You've been deceived by Satan. It's a whole deceived by Satan thing.

Kayla Mikesell [04:15:05] Even if not to stop. Even if people who know us listen to this entire podcast, they're still going to be, oh, that's so sad.

Kelly Mikesell [04:15:11] And I understand that. Yeah. And that's okay because I would have done the same thing. You know, she and I were talking about that and I was like, please be patient. Don't just hate every believing member because I still want to be a member of the church and I'm not going to ever view it the same way. And it's going to be a long journey of me figuring things out. But I was a product of environmental. I wasn't doing it intentionally. I thought I was doing what's right. So other people are too. So give them some slack. And I know that there's people that have been seriously harmed by different things. And, and. And I respect that, you know, so. Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:15:57] Beautiful. Powerful.

Kelly Mikesell [04:15:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:16:00] So powerful. Thank you. That's so great. That's such a great story. Both of you, amazing and vulnerable and powerful, and I'm inspired. How about you, Carah?

Carah Burrell [04:16:13] Yeah, I was just thinking about the ways. I know we already said this, but I would just love to really, like, hone down exactly what you just said about how when you were a believing member and you were so orthodox, how many bricks that you put up between the people that you loved. And I. I wrote down in my notes about how you started with the Bible and you wanted to understand the difference between Christ and the Pharisees. And you saw, like you said, I'm the Pharisee, that you were the Pharisee, and you saw the. The ways that you could improve to be more compassionate, be more Christ like.

Carah Burrell [04:16:43] And what are we trying to talk about, ultimately, is the highest form of selflessness and love. And if that's Christ to you, like, that's a perfectly good thing to thing to worship and to. To work towards being like. And the more Mormons that can listen to your story and really, really see themselves, are you being like Christ or are you being like a Pharisee? And who are you building bricks? Who are you, like, closing yourself off from? Is it your own family members? Is it you putting the church before your family? And if so, what harm is that causing? And what do you need to rework?

Carah Burrell [04:17:13] What things do you need to pray? Different and different priorities to be put in place. So I think that that's a really beautiful story, the way that your relationship with your stepmom, understanding all the different dynamics that came into play. So I really hope that people listen and see themselves in your story.

Kayla Mikesell [04:17:33] Thank you.

Carah Burrell [04:17:33] It was really good.

John Dehlin [04:17:34] They will, for sure.

Kelly Mikesell [04:17:35] Thanks.

John Dehlin [04:17:36] I hope. I hope Sean's gonna be okay. He may get a call from his stake president.

Kelly Mikesell [04:17:42] I don't understand why, though.

John Dehlin [04:17:44] Well, just, you know, coming on. I mean, one of the reasons they excommunicate people is to brand them as dangerous.

Kayla Mikesell [04:17:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:17:50] And so coming on Mormon Stories podcast can be viewed in and of itself as an act of apostasy.

Carah Burrell [04:17:56] You're giving them ideas, John.

Kayla Mikesell [04:17:58] What's that?

Carah Burrell [04:17:58] You're giving Them ideas.

John Dehlin [04:18:01] I've been doing this a while. I've been around the bar.

Carah Burrell [04:18:03] Write the letter for them. John, come on.

John Dehlin [04:18:04] No, but. But I mean, hopefully they'll leave him alone, but they probably won't. He'll probably get called in. He may get released early. I hope he doesn't, but he's almost done with his tenure anyway. Shout out to Sean. We love you.

Kayla Mikesell [04:18:16] Yes.

John Dehlin [04:18:16] Hang in there.

Kayla Mikesell [04:18:17] Love you.

John Dehlin [04:18:17] And thanks for all the good things you've done and all the ways you've worked to try and support your family and. And your ward. And thank you to that. Let me just ask really quickly. This is going to just totally, like, be a right angle change. Kayla. There are probably stereotypes about beauty pageants.

Kayla's Advocacy Work and Closing Thoughts

Kayla Mikesell [04:18:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:18:38] Just like. Like, you know, there's going to be people that are like, like them for reasons that may not be the most enlightened reasons to like them. And then there's going to be others that look down on them as, like, unenlightened.

Kayla Mikesell [04:18:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:18:51] Talk about just why you would want to be involved and what maybe how people might misunderstand beauty pageants.

Kayla Mikesell [04:18:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:18:59] Is that even what they're called now?

Kelly Mikesell [04:19:00] No.

Kayla Mikesell [04:19:00] Well, I just said beauty pageant. That's why people know they're just me.

John Dehlin [04:19:03] That's what I would call it.

Kayla Mikesell [04:19:04] Y. So I had never done one before. I just love doing new things. And I did cheerleading all through high school. And it, like, not just like the sideline. I did competitive with it too. And it gave me a lot of confidence. Cause I didn't have a ton when getting into middle school. I was very tomboy, having three older brothers. And so it gave me a lot of confidence. It was like playing a character. So it was really fun to be able to go on the mat and perform these routines and just be not myself. Just to be this character. Being able to. I don't know, it was just really fun. So I thought that pageants should be similar to able to be. Because I know some people would think of it as being shallow or what's it called? Self.

John Dehlin [04:19:49] Like.

Kayla Mikesell [04:19:51] Yes. Yes. When in reality, a lot of women actually do them. And there's. There's even ones for people who are married and like, they have, like, older to gain confidence. It's to. It's a motivator to, okay, this is in September. I'm gonna try and get in the best shape that I possibly can. And I'm going to. And you have to do all of these things. And it's. It's not just getting on stage in a pretty dress. There's a lot of other things that you have to prepare for. There's an interview section that they do before that that's like, on tv, they never show that part. So you get grilled. You have to know. You have to be up with current news, things like that, and be able to answer these questions in any. Yeah, exactly. In a charismatic, informed. Not offending anybody. You need to be able to.

John Dehlin [04:20:29] Diplomatic.

Kayla Mikesell [04:20:30] Yeah, exactly. So I get to educate myself. I get to work on myself. I get to. And then pick a platform. So mine is the LGBT community. So I'm volunteering with the Utah Pride center for Pride. So I've been helping for months plan this.

John Dehlin [04:20:44] Really?

Kayla Mikesell [04:20:45] Yeah. Yeah. For this week. Yeah. So it's gonna be. It's gonna be great with. So Utah Pride center here in Utah, it's just Pride Week. So that's what I'm. I'm volunteering. So my. Yeah, volunteering for that. So you get to. Yeah, pick a platform. So somebody else could be, you know, an animal rights activist or something. So they use their platform with the, you know, the sash and things that they get to hold events and do things. And so it's definitely more than just getting on stage in a pretty dress. There's. There's reasons behind it.

John Dehlin [04:21:14] Is there still a talent kind of thing?

Kayla Mikesell [04:21:15] It depends. There's different types of. Of pageants, so some are. Yeah, some have talents, some have, like, swimsuit portions, things like that. And so, yeah, there's. There's a lot of other aspects to it that appealed to me. But also, yes, being in a dress is going to be fun, but I just think it's been fun to be able to. And not even fun. It's just been an amazing opportunity to be able to use that platform to talk about LGBTQ community, especially.

John Dehlin [04:21:43] How has it made you feel about yourself?

Kayla Mikesell [04:21:46] It's more. Once again, the more confidence thing. It's being able to. Sometimes I. I sit and think I'm probably annoying people with how much I post about stuff. And I've also had some thoughts about people not validating me because, like I said, I didn't figure it out until I was older. So I bet that there's people I know from middle school and high school, like, she's not bi.

John Dehlin [04:22:04] Like the platform part.

Kayla Mikesell [04:22:07] Yeah. So I'm just like, that.

Kelly Mikesell [04:22:08] They.

Kayla Mikesell [04:22:08] They probably don't. They don't validate my sexuality. And so with the platform, it. Sometimes I think that I'm wondering if people are not believing me and things like that. I'm like, it doesn't matter, because even if I wasn't, I could still pick this platform for the voices of other people.

John Dehlin [04:22:24] Right?

Kayla Mikesell [04:22:24] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kelly Mikesell [04:22:26] Isn't she awesome?

Carah Burrell [04:22:27] That's a great message.

John Dehlin [04:22:28] Pretty awesome. I'm impressed. And so the next step is I'll

Kayla Mikesell [04:22:33] be running for Miss Utah in September.

John Dehlin [04:22:36] So you'll be. And so all the different cities are going to send their own reps. And then if someone.

Kayla Mikesell [04:22:42] When someone wins that, then it would be onto usa.

Kelly Mikesell [04:22:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:22:45] Miss USA or Miss America. Or is it.

Kayla Mikesell [04:22:47] Like I said, there's the two different, like, there's two main different, like, systems. She's part of the United States of America.

Kelly Mikesell [04:22:52] Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [04:22:53] Okay, so then I'd be running for that.

Kelly Mikesell [04:22:55] So.

Kayla Mikesell [04:22:55] Yeah, I'm excited.

John Dehlin [04:22:59] Well, I'm just so thrilled that you guys. I was able to get to know you and we were able to celebrate Pride Week by having this epic story. Story. Just so I'm. And that you come all the way from Nevada. Nevada. Nevada.

Kayla Mikesell [04:23:14] Nevada.

John Dehlin [04:23:15] I know this happen, so I'm inspired. I'm grateful. Any final words you guys want to say?

Kayla Mikesell [04:23:22] No, just thanks for having us, inviting us.

Kelly Mikesell [04:23:23] Yeah.

Kayla Mikesell [04:23:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:23:24] All right, well, it's been our pleasure. And I know a lot of people are going to be very positively impacted by this, so. But thank you.

Kayla Mikesell [04:23:34] Okay. Thank you so much.

John Dehlin [04:23:35] All right. And Carah, thanks so much for being sidekick.

Carah Burrell [04:23:39] Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. Thanks for letting me hear your story and chime in. It was really inspiring. It's like, almost sounds cliche. I can't say the word inspiring. My jaw is on the floor most of the time. How's that? It was really, really interesting and really cool to hear your story.

John Dehlin [04:23:54] All right, so is there any way people can support you or the Utah Pride center or Pride or anything you

Kayla Mikesell [04:24:01] want to say about that? So I definitely. Utah Pride center is absolutely amazing. They don't just do Pride. It's not just the week or the month of June, which is Pride Month. They do so many other things throughout the entire year. They have so many educational courses for parents, too, who their children have come out so you can take classes and learn about things. They have resources for teenagers, adults, everybody. For everyone, too. They have trans children, gender, certain, like, classes and things like that for everybody. Gay, lesbian, bi. They have, like certain meetings and things like that. And it's just a sense of community, which especially can be hard here in Utah.

Kayla Mikesell [04:24:37] So they have, like I said, throughout the entire year. So if you just go on their website, just Utah Pride center, they will have a calendar that shows you everything throughout the entire year. And yeah, they could definitely use your support with like donations and things like that. It's. They're amazing. And making sure that not only youth but, but adults get the proper validity here in Utah.

John Dehlin [04:24:57] And if someone wants to support you at Miss Utah, what do they do?

Kayla Mikesell [04:25:00] Yeah, you can just, I guess, follow me on Instagram. Yeah, it's just Kayla K A Y L A dot mikesell M I K E S E L L and you'll see me prepare for and I talk about LGBTQ stuff on there and pride stuff and try to educate. And then I'll be running for Miss Utah in September, so you'll be able to see that.

Carah Burrell [04:25:19] Great.

John Dehlin [04:25:20] Put that in the show notes.

Kayla Mikesell [04:25:21] Thank you.

John Dehlin [04:25:23] Yeah. All right, sweet. Thanks so much. All right, well listeners, thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast. It's been great. Thanks to everyone who donates to the Oba Stories Foundation. Your donations mean the world. I did a State of the Union last week and mentioned that we've lost a lot of donors due to Covid and just normal attrition and several of you have stepped up to help fill that gap. I also mentioned that we, we've tried to really up our game with cinematography, with cameras, with lighting, with a full time sort of rental space and all the equipment and everything. And you guys have all stepped, you know, several of you have stepped up to help finance that as well.

John Dehlin [04:26:05] So thank you so much and to support Carah and Gerardo and Brooklyn and the great work that they're doing with the Open Source Foundation. So thanks to everyone who donates and supports us. And if you value this programming and you want to see it continue and you're not a donor, less than one out of a thousand contributor listeners or viewers actually donates. So Please go to MormonStories.org Click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor. 10 bucks a month, 20 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month. Whatever you can afford. It's tax deductible in the US 100% of it goes to this program programming and you can pay forward whatever benefits you've gotten and make sure that this programming continues for months or years or decades into the future.

John Dehlin [04:26:49] We'll do this for as long as there's support. So thanks for supporting us. Support us if you can. And there are other ways to support us. Following us on YouTube, following us on TikTok, our new TikTok channel. Mormon stories podcast that cares around running is doing great. It's got over 10,000 followers now.

Carah Burrell [04:27:09] 11.6.

John Dehlin [04:27:10] What's that?

Kayla Mikesell [04:27:11] 11 get it right.

John Dehlin [04:27:16] And yeah, so. So follow us on TikTok, follow us on Facebook, subscribe. Follow us on those. Those follows really matter because they affect the algorithms. The more subscribers and followers and likes and comments that you get on all those platforms, it helps make the programming available to more people. So please do subscribe, follow like on all the platforms. Share it with everyone and just, but most importantly, just be good to each other, be kind to each other, love each other, support each other in or out of the church, in or out of belief. Just be kind, be loving, be supportive and enjoy this one big beautiful life that you know you have.

John Dehlin [04:27:54] So enjoy it. Stay tuned. Email us@mormonstoriesmail.com if you have any questions or comments. Comments. If you have feedback, comment on this post or on the social medias. And if you have ideas or suggestions for future episodes, we'd love to hear it. So thanks everyone. Take care. We'll see you guys all again very soon for another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. See everybody.

Carah Burrell [04:28:16] Bye.

John Dehlin [04:28:16] Thanks, guys.

Kelly Mikesell [04:28:17] Thank you so much.

Kayla Mikesell [04:28:18] Yeah, thank you.

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