Welcome and Introduction to Thrive Stories

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host, John Dehlin, and I am joined by my lovely partner in life, Margi Delin. Hey, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:13] Hello. Welcome to Thrive Stories, everyone.

John Dehlin [00:00:16] Yeah, yeah. And Carah, welcome. Thanks for joining us. All right, so I am so excited to announce that this is the inaugural Thrive Stories episode. And Margi, do you want to just remind our audience what Thrive Stories is just really briefly, or do you want me to.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:34] I can.

John Dehlin [00:00:34] Okay, go for it.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:35] So the idea of Thrive Stories is to highlight a particular area and kind of something that maybe you feel like is healthier post transition. So it could be something like finding your voice. It could be intimacy in marriage or healthy marriage. It could be finding a passion. It could be mental health. It could be.

John Dehlin [00:00:56] Yeah, yeah. And just to. Just to back up, I don't. I want to just throw one thing in and then. Have you finished? So normally I'm. Mormon Stories, we do long form, you know, five, six hour interviews about someone's entire faith crisis. What we heard from you, our audience, is that you would like to see Margi interview people about healing and growth after losing your faith. You know, shorter interviews, one to two hours, focused on a specific area and mostly focusing. Focusing on the healing and growth part, not just the past. So that's kind of the shift. And so you were saying that was very succinct.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:32] It like feels like you do this for a living or something. Yeah, that was amazing. I was just listing potential areas. I mean, there are a lot of different. You want me to keep going with the areas? So it could be like parenting if you feel that you're showing up and you're actually a healthier or more connected parent. If it can be your physical health, maybe your physical health is better. It can be that you've kind of recreated spirituality for yourself in a way post transition that you kind of feel like is healthier now than before. What am I leaving out?

John Dehlin [00:02:04] No, that's perfect. And I guess the idea is we're looking for if you know, someone who is, you know, lost their faith in Mormonism or left Mormonism or other religious traditions, and they've. They sort of exemplify as kind of a role model these areas. You're talking about spirituality, meaning purpose, parenting.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:24] Right.

John Dehlin [00:02:25] We're finding a new job or occupation, finding a religion or church or a new sense of spirituality, improving your mental health.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:32] Oh, a path after divorce too. That's another one that's coming up.

John Dehlin [00:02:36] Or navigating being a single person, like, that's Right. If you know someone who you think would be a great kind of spokesperson or teacher or guide and in a specific area, then you go to the website. We're going to care. Is going to share that now in the show notes and also in the chat, there's a. There's a post on the Mormon Stories website that just says Thrive Stories. You can Google it, but you can nominate either someone you really respect. That's the preferable way, or self nominate if. If there's no one to really nominate you fill out some forms. Margi will vet them. Not. We won't be able to interview everyone that qualifies, but Margi will do two of these interviews a month. We are paying her to do it. So we need your donations to make that possible. We're transparent about that. Yes. She's my wife and she is a super wise, talented person who's sacrificing her own coaching business to be able to do this for us. So we're going to pay her the same type of thing we pay John Larsen or Simon Southerton or others. She do this twice a month. She'll be selecting from the applicants and then you can expect two of these a month. And people are super excited.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:48] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:03:49] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:49] Yep.

Introducing Margi's Story and Format

John Dehlin [00:03:50] And today we thought for the kickoff because many of you don't know Margi or haven't really learned anything about her. I'm. Margi is going to share with us her own one of her own Thrive stories for a particular domain. So normally, you know, Carah and I will ride sidecar as Margi interviews these people. But today Karen and I are riding sidecar as Margi kind of gives us one of her Thrive stories. Is that right, Margi?

Margi Dehlin [00:04:22] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:04:23] Okay, Carah, is there anything you want to add to the intro?

Carah Burrell [00:04:28] Just that this is the first interview where I'm not wearing makeup because I know I'm going to cry because I feel like I'm going to like really love everything that you're going to say. And I'll be like a weepy ball of tears and I hope everyone will join me. And this is all part of the title is Coming Home, right?

Margi Dehlin [00:04:44] Yeah. I feel like I have numerous titles at play today that all work. Do you want me to go ahead and share kind of my area or do you want to wait for that?

John Dehlin [00:04:53] Yeah, no, I think it's. It's. We'll dive in. This is now. And normally we won't do an introduction this long, but Carah will share that link in the chats right now and in the show notes. Thank you, Carah. And. And we would love your comments and questions. We'll do our best to incorporate them because this is a live stream.

Carah Burrell [00:05:11] Yeah. Are we going to be taking Super Chats as well?

John Dehlin [00:05:14] Yeah. You want to talk about that, what that is?

Carah Burrell [00:05:15] Yeah. If anyone's watching live on YouTube right now, you know what I'm gonna say, There's a button at the bottom that has a dollar sign on it. You can click that, you can send us $2, $5. You could really get creative with the mount that you put in that box. And you can make a comment and we can read it and like pose a question to Margi if you want us to, or just a simple compliment like Emily has here, that said, Margi has such a beautiful soul. This is an amazing idea. And I agree.

John Dehlin [00:05:44] And people may get annoyed that we have to do a plug for Super Chat or donations every once in a while, but literally we need the Open Stories foundation to be sustainable. We're paying care, we're paying you, we're paying me. We run this facility so your donations make it so we don't have to like sell ads or like plug, you know, plug product. We can just focus on this, the content at hand. So, Margi, what you're doing the inaugural Thrive story. Go ahead.

Carah Burrell [00:06:11] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:11] I'm going to say one last thing that's kind of interesting for people watching. If you're thinking, if as you watch this interview and you're thinking about an area either for yourself or with someone, you know that something that's interesting about this today is that you'll be able to see the template. So these questions will be in common. It's. They're designed to kind of take you through a journey where we're going to look at the area kind of in like pre transition as opposed to. And it's going to kind of take us through a process. And so that's really helpful for people if they're considering an area. You'll be able to kind of have a sense for what you would say. And, and it will give you kind of, I don't know, a way to kind of orient yourself.

John Dehlin [00:06:55] So you're saying we've put together kind of an outline or a structure for these interviews. We'll share that also, Carah, if you'll add a reminder, we'll share that link with, with you as well, Carah, so you can put it in the show notes. So there's the application form to nominate yourself or someone else for the Thrive story. And then there's an outline, like a template. That's a template that we probably haven't shared yet publicly that. That will be following today that other people can use when they're preparing for their own thrive story.

Margi Dehlin [00:07:24] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:07:25] Okay. So you're following that format?

Margi Dehlin [00:07:27] I am.

John Dehlin [00:07:28] Okay, well, let's tell us, how does that format begin? Let's jump in. So.

Three Domains of Personal Growth

Margi Dehlin [00:07:33] Well, what's the first question? The growth areas.

John Dehlin [00:07:36] So, yeah. So what areas, Margi, will you be focusing on for your thrive story today?

Margi Dehlin [00:07:42] Yeah, so I think so. The growth areas that I sort of identified here are kind of the. The titles, I would say. Becoming significant to myself, I think. Coming home to myself, finding my own voice, and then with a little side plate of grief. That's how I would talk about it. And I did. Before we begin. Begin, I did want to have a disclaimer because I will be talking about parenting, mothering in my story of becoming significant to myself, that I just wanted to acknowledge privilege here, that there I was able to have children. I. You know, we had a lot of privilege in our journey. So as I'm talking about hardship or things that, you know, some suffering that hit us, I also want to acknowledge that, you know, we're white, we're cisgender. The person who was making money for a lot of the years was a male. So we were walking with a lot of privilege. And I just like to be aware up front of that. Going. Going in.

John Dehlin [00:08:45] Okay. All right. So the topics are finding your own voice, becoming significant to yourself, and grief. Those are. Those are the domains you'll be talking about.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:57] That's right.

Life Before the Faith Transition

John Dehlin [00:08:57] Okay, so is the next question, you know, what were these domains like before. Before you started. Yeah, before you had your faith crisis. Is that the next step?

Margi Dehlin [00:09:08] Yes, it's kind of what this. These areas looked like, and I kind of thought it would be helpful because where my journey really begins is actually in a space where I feel like I was getting started, becoming significant to myself. And it happened when I went off to college. I had this brief moment of a break of being in relationship to someone, being defined by being a daughter, being defined by being a sister, an older sister, and being. I had a break from being defined by role. And that really was developmentally helpful to me. So in college, I loved learning, I loved ideas. I studied philosophy, I studied English literature, and I just ate it up. I was traveling the country like, nine months out of the year. I got to see most of America that way, so my world felt expansive. I had left home, My family was in Florida. I. I was Living in Utah. And I had this, this brief moment of, you know, exploration. And what I would say is, you know, if we think of the 20s as maybe developmentally normative development. And this is really important to my story, as you'll see because I had a little voice emerge and I had a little connection with myself and, and so it gave me a mini connection that I ended up sort of when I met John my final year at byu, once I.

Identity, Athletics, and Early Married Life

John Dehlin [00:10:51] Can I jump in one thing, just because I was a part of your story, I think it's worth mentioning you were a cross country runner for byu. And so that was, that was a really elite kind of thing. You were, you know, BYU cross country team was and is a top five in the country. So you're going to, we're going to Stanford, going to Indiana, running in nationals. I think that was a real, I mean that was a. What was it? Kind of empowering. Right. And kind of prestigious. And how was that for you? And you can switch your glasses back on and off. Just take them off as you don't need them for reading.

Margi Dehlin [00:11:32] Okay, so maybe. Got it. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:11:35] But when you need to read, keep your glasses.

Margi Dehlin [00:11:36] Okay, okay. No, I think that's really true and I think it really was important because some of these parts of my identity when you came in and met me and had some ideas of who I should be role wise because we were both conditioned, I was resistant to. And that's where that came from was I had a minute, I had a minute to process, I had a minute to explore and I had a minute to kind of connect with myself. And then I think what happened over time as we, our relationship became more serious was I kind of, I can only really express it as it was like a default, a default conditioning of I became in relationship to again to someone. And the formula kind of kicked in for me and I kind of. My default was that I ended up getting back on this train of formula, getting back on the train of like what was expected of me and by who, by the church, by religion, by culture. I think there are a lot of layers here and that were influenced family culture, family expectations. And we all I think have that or kind of those, those layering that come together. But it resulted in sort of me on a level abandoning myself. And that's really I think pivotal. And it didn't happen over all at once, but it did happen kind of over time. And so when I'm thinking about what were the indicators of this time, if you had just dropped in on me kind of Peak family life pre transition. What you would have seen, some of the things you would have seen was that I was incredibly defined by my relationship to everyone but myself. So it was just like, what kind of wife am I? What kind of mother am I? The minute I married, it was like. I don't know if you remember these discussions, but John and I would go on walks and runs when we were dating, and he would, you know, say on some level, like, what do you want? And here's what I'm kind of looking for. And here's. Here's what the church says, and here's what's expected. And I would say things like, I don't want a big family. I. I came from a big family. I was a caretaker in that family. I want to work part time. I want to get a master's in English. Like, I had this connection to self at that point, but something snapped. And when we got married and we were kind of put in these roles of make a living, survive. Now you're a. Now you're married, you're a wife. And there's kind of this time expectation too, of how quickly it should happen.

John Dehlin [00:14:23] So.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:24] And so inevitably what happened was I fell back to being defined by making my husband happy and making the church happy and being this good mother.

John Dehlin [00:14:39] Having babies quick, right?

Margi Dehlin [00:14:40] Having babies really, really quickly. And it's kind of like if you look at my life at 21, I was competing, I was racing around the world and. And by 24, I had two children under the age of like three or something, and I was home all. It was like my life completely shrunk. And I'm going to just say this because I like, mothering was the privilege of my life. Like, I love my children. So this is not about that at all. Like, there were. I'm just going to say, like, there was a magic to those years. And this is the. Yes. And of life. And the paradox of life is that it can be two things. It can be complicated. And so it's just important for me to recognize that I put a lot of me there. There was beauty in that. There was magic in that. I'm proud of a lot of what happened in those mothering years while also saying that, that this. This me being defined by everyone else and not having a relationship to myself was really, really harmful.

John Dehlin [00:15:55] And I'll just own my part of this. I. I remember you saying, I want to get a master's. I remember you saying, hey, I. John, I know you're getting a job and we're getting Married, but I haven't finished school yet. And I remember you saying, I, I only want one or two kids at the most. And in all those instances it's like, well, I got a job, so we're leaving school. And in my mind, you finish your education wasn't even important. It was like, well, you can finish it through correspondence courses or. But we're going to take the job because we got to go do the Mormon thing and have kids. I feel like a jerk saying this, but like, when you said to me, I need to finish school, I was just like, we, we can't. We gotta go take that job. And when you said to me, I don't know, you know, when you said to me, I want to get a master's in English and teach literature, in my mind I'm like, okay, sweetie. But in my mind I'm like, we're gonna start having kids. How are you gonna teach community college or teach college when we have all these kids we're raising? And yeah, and then when it came to number of kids, you were saying one or two. And for me, I came from four. And Mormons have six to eight at least back then. And so in my mind I'm like, no, we kind of have to have four. But I'll, I'll make you feel like I listened to you, but at the end of the day, we're going to kind of do four. And I, again, I know I sound like a jerk, but that's, I really did ignore those things. What you were saying to me wasn't that important because. And I guess I'm going to try and apply the rule of systems, not people. I was in a system that taught me that women getting an education, not important. Kids have them quickly and kids have them often. Have many of them, and a woman shouldn't. I was raised in a church where women shouldn't work outside the home. And my cousin Ezra Tab Benson had taught that it was evil for a woman to work outside the home unless she had to. Carah, were you feeling some feels?

Carah Burrell [00:18:03] Of course. I have so many comments. I'm going to read some, some comments to whatever.

John Dehlin [00:18:07] Yeah, yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:18:08] And I definitely feel that. And I feel like in the system of Mormonism, it's not a high priority for a woman to like, self actualize and know who she is first. Because enmeshment to the church and to her husband is the highest priority. And in that you'll find yourself, you'll find yourself in the position, your proximity to your husband as his proximity to God is all that really matters. And in that you'll find purpose. In that you'll find your highest self. And as we know, that really can fall short. And then you're left with four kids wondering who you are, who. Who you are when you strip everything back. So I definitely relate to that a lot. That like, you are like an appendage onto a man. And I didn't see that as a negative thing until I recognized that the whole system of Mormonism was not even a healthy system to. To begin with. Like, who's Carah, who's Margi, who's John, outside of your relationship to everybody else. So I think you guys articulated that beautifully. So far we're getting into it, but I wanted to read A Mormon's Gone Mild Said. I love this idea. Thanks for the super chat. Holy schnikes. Hoping this series will help my wife feel comfortable to even consider leaving Mormonism. Like, I have the uplifting and loving side of this journey. I think can help give her and others courage to follow their hearts. I think that's beautiful. And Laura said, this hits deep. I relate to this so, so much. Thank you for sharing this feeling. And last one I'll read is Ali Said, this is priceless advice from someone who has been there and done that. I appreciate your story so much.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:39] Oh, thank you. Yeah. So I think moving back to that question about what it would look like if you were dropped into kind of who I was pre transition in this area. Another thing is you would have seen that everyone else's life was significant to me, like, but mine. So it was kind of like I woke up in the morning and what was my charge? I really took it seriously that John enjoyed his job, that he felt like it was purposeful and that we had a relationship where we connected. I feel like throughout our marriage we, we talked more than anyone I, I knew. We walked for like an hour every day, almost every day of our marriage and just kind of connected that way. I really, like, his needs were real to me and that was something that was important to me from the beginning. And same with my kids. It's like hobbies or what lights you up or, you know, I created rituals that were really soothing to them. I really tried to get to know their personalities, but it's this idea of any interest they had, any sort of observation of their personality, like, it meant something to me. And my, like, my charge was sort of to create this world for them that felt safe, that felt creative, and felt kind of meaningful where they could feel seen and, and it was Just that was my. And I don't know that I really feel that feeling like people's lives, you know, being significant, that's not really a problem. The problem came that it took all my energy. It's just how much space that took up and how little it left for. For me in. In time. So I think that's. That was where the real kind of issue was. Was it how much space it took up of my own life to kind of create that for other people and at what cost it came to my own.

John Dehlin [00:21:47] Yeah. And we didn't plan this, but I'm just having these memories, and I'm so grateful you're willing to be so vulnerable. Margi. I remember coming home from work in those early years where you've got one or two littles, and. And, you know, I remember, like, you would cut your hair and then cut your hair again, and then cut your hair again, and. Or you would. I would come home and you'd rearrange the furniture and then rearrange the furniture again. And I took that as, like, what's wrong with this person? You know, or you could. Would sometimes be emotional, really, really angry. Now, some of that's going to be just. Motherhood's hard. Some of that's just going to be lots of hormones when you're pregnant or having kids or nursing. But I think as we've looked back, whether it's the haircuts or the moving furniture or other things, I think there was a part of you that felt deeply. I don't know. What did you. What were you feeling? Is there anything you want to share about, like, how it was for you to kind of be jammed in that role that may have not have been what you would have chosen for yourself?

Margi Dehlin [00:22:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:55] Was it hard? Were those things symptoms of you being jammed into a box that maybe you wouldn't have chosen?

Margi Dehlin [00:23:03] I. I mean, probably yes and no. I mean, if I'm gonna be honest, I still like to rearrange a room. You know, there's some beauty in that. But, yeah, for sure. I think all that energy that a few years earlier I was putting toward myself and feeling just so expansive and excited about it had to go somewhere. And I became like, uber. Read every, like, parenting book. Every. It's like all that energy went into this new charge, this new place I was in. And then within that, it created some. Some dynamics as well, around my identity and my lost identity. Like, I had this new identity that kind of took over, but it also canceled out a lot of other identities that were Just newly being formed. And I've. Of course, we're not conscious of these things oftentimes in the moment, and. And more of this will come out in the next question around kind of the. The church's role in these things. But I think there's cultural support for this too. I don't. I think a lot of women feel what, especially women who marry early because you kind of have this life interrupted where the 20s are kind of all about. If you look at psychology, you. It's about exploration. It's about trying things out. It's about trying. And if I got married at 22, I mean, my brain wasn't even fully developed. Like, that's like 26. So, you know, at 22, I was just barely getting started before. You kind of go ahead and give that person four children, right? And so, I mean, that's. That's a very real thing. Um, and the only other thing I would say about this time to share if I were going to try and give you a feel for it. Um, and there's again, a lot of goodness and magic and. And beauty going on as I'm like. I kind of feel like certain muscles are getting like super strong in tone during this time, and then other muscles in myself are like, absolutely have disappeared. But I had this sense, this moment of feeling prior to this, a feeling of losing myself and finding myself on a new terrain with very little guidance, actually, and very little. I felt alone. I felt disconnected from myself. And I had this sense of like, okay, now I'm in it and I have no idea what I'm doing.

John Dehlin [00:25:43] And.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:43] And my other. My partner in it is now so stressed out because we now have two kids or four kids, and now we're like adults, but we're kind of children, but now we're adults and are like, responsible for people that. He's stressed out, trying to earn money. And so he's just gone, you know, and I. He leaves for the day and I'm like, oh, my God, seriously, what are we doing? You know, so my days were just full of othering tasks. It's just. I had no idea. Just like, if you looked at my days, something that. That kind of stayed a piece of me. Like the part of me that stayed a remnant of my old life were two things. I always exercised in the morning, no matter what. Sometimes I woke up before the kids did or before John got off, but I always exercised. And that was like a piece of me that remained. And then I always read before I went to bed those two things but the rest of the day, if you have enough children in, in a certain amount of time. I did the. I did the meal planning, I did the money, I did the shopping, I did the lawn, I did the, you know, it. I did the rituals, I did the education for the kids and their homework. I did the. It was like my sense of respons the minute I woke up. It was like I had a full plate of othering tasks all day. It filled an entire day just to kind of survive and show up. So it's sort of like the structure and the charge of what you're asked to do. It requires a level of you that I think just to get through the day, there is no space for you. And we were really limited on money for a lot of those early years. And so I think I felt first of all like a lot of the coaching I do around this now is so different from what I experienced, probably because of what I experienced, but I really felt like I had to do it all.

John Dehlin [00:27:49] There's a comment from our dear friend Mindy. She writes jammed into a box. I genuinely didn't ever entertain another box. Ever. Love you, Mindy. Thanks for sharing.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:00] And add insult to injury, I don't think I was awful about this but I do think there were some times I'd come home and like maybe suggest what would you do all day? Right. Like not, I don't know, I don't want to make it sound like I was a monster, but how could I have gotten. It took me years to understand how hard the job of a stay at home parent is. I didn't, maybe I didn't always get it right.

Margi Dehlin [00:28:23] Yeah. And I think, you know, if we look at roles and this is something that the church really, really. And maybe I'm jumping ahead here, but this is something that the church really, really when we were marrying and kind of developing our family, they were so, so strong about this. And you know, there's some, let's just say clean lines around roles that maybe would appeal to certain people or personalities where it just happens to work. But I think the weakness, one of the weaknesses of the role is that it, it doesn't really allow you a true partnership. Like there's no this sense of like I'm really good at this and I see you're better at that. So how could we have you do that? And me and we kind of. And it's this sense of team, it's the sense of creativity and ownership to what you're doing as opposed to like this default and yeah, you were gone all day. Because now you're feeling tremendous pressure to provide for this family now that we've created. And then I'm in the house and I have four children looking to me and how I had no sense for your world, really, and you had no sense for mine. It was like, we tried, though, but it was like speaking different languages. Like, he was like, what? Like, just do this. Why don't you just do this and get a sitter? Go out and do this? And it was like, we just. It did not compute.

John Dehlin [00:29:54] Sometimes you would call me and I'd be at work and there'd be like important things going on at work, and you would be just frantic at wit's end. You know, maybe. Maybe Adrian had pooped on the floor and Maya eaten Adrian's poop or just something.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:07] Maybe we're just saying something like that might have happened.

John Dehlin [00:30:10] And you would be a wit's head. And in my mind I'd be like, can't you just handle it? You know, I mean, it's your job.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:16] Like, I'm doing my job. How about you do your job?

John Dehlin [00:30:20] But. But you were doing the. You were. You were maxed out psychologically and emotionally. And I. We didn't, you know, and it took me years to realize, you know, and probably, you know, Microsoft offered me some parental leave where I could, you know, be a stay at home dad while you had your third or fourth kid, where I had to stay home and understand what it was like to watch the kids all day. But it. It took me a while to realize how hard. And I'm not trying to just put forth platitudes here or be condescending. It took me a while to realize how hard, incredibly hard your job was. I didn't get it for many years.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:56] Yeah. And that makes sense to me because there were moments you saw it. But for the most part, I don't like to show that. And it was really important to me to feel competent. I was used to feeling competent. And so that's not like, in some moments you got that. But I was also pretty efficient and really invested. Like my heart was there. And so I was just. I was kind of all in. And so it doesn't surprise me because I think a lot of those feelings around it feeling hard or that I should feel fulfilled by it. And the guilt I felt for feeling like it was hard, this thing that had always been, like, by the church, talked about like it was a given, like it's natural at times felt incredibly challenging.

John Dehlin [00:31:47] Yeah. So all Right. Well, Tom trails writes John, your memories of Margi's life and her memories is John splaining Margi? We don't want John members, we want her Margi story. So John, unless you don't trust Margi to tell her own story. I guess he's basically saying I shouldn't jump in. I don't know what the right thing is. But you tell me if you want me to jump in or not. I'll.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:11] Whatever either way.

John Dehlin [00:32:13] Okay. No, I'll try.

Carah Burrell [00:32:15] I like Aaron's comment that said that he talked with his guests in his interviews. Besides, he's actually involved in the guest story, so it gives a more well rounded view. But yeah, it's also a Margi story. I don't mind it. I think this is. I want to know what's going on in the Delin family home, you know, and also can we say how long have you guys been married, first of all and see at what ages around were you guys having kids just right around in your 20s.

John Dehlin [00:32:40] That's when all your kids are married in 93. We've been married 28 years right now as of today, I was 24, Margi was 22. We waited a year to get pregnant and then we had our first kid by the second year of our marriage and then we had four kids two to three years apart each of them.

Carah Burrell [00:33:00] And you just celebrated your wedding anniversary in December?

John Dehlin [00:33:02] Yeah, 28th.

Carah Burrell [00:33:04] 28th. Congratulations.

John Dehlin [00:33:06] Okay, what's next in your story, Margi? Well, thanks for the feedback, Tom.

Margi Dehlin [00:33:10] Okay, do you want to ask the question or do you want to. Yeah, yeah, you want me to ask the question?

John Dehlin [00:33:16] Go ahead. Just because I'm. Okay. I just, I'm not, I'm. Oh, it's hard for me to coordinate where you are in the outline.

How Religious Orthodoxy Held Margi Back

Margi Dehlin [00:33:25] So the next question is how is religious orthodoxy not serving you well in this domain? And I think this is really, you know, I feel like we were kind of touching on it a little bit before. One of the things that's come to me really in the last maybe five years is this idea of the church really supported and the system of the church in particular really supported in my view, my own disappearance and disconnect from myself. And it did this through a few ways. But the first way that I can really see is with this over identification from my beginnings of life, with my purpose in life being to be a woman, to be a mother and a wife. And I think this whole paradigm and this expectation and formula of like get married early, have as many kids as you can you know, have a lot of children. And this is all happening during a time where developmentally, we're supposed to be developmentally developing ourselves. Instead, I think it just, you know, yeah, big families are better. It. It's like you create this life that's defined. Defined by these decisions that you don't really understand until it starts adding up, and these decisions add up to a life. And I really. I was, you know, really thinking about this the other day. I grew up. I was mothering in a time where there was no Instagram. It wasn't like I could look outside and see what other women were doing or if there were other options. For me, what I got was kind of this undiluted message from the church that my salvation and the salvation of everyone I love was dependent on me doing this. Well, it kind of hinged on me, like. And so it gives you this kind of fishbowl reality of what life should be. And it's reinforced when you go to church on Sunday and what do you see? You see women with lots of children in pews, everyone sitting there in their Sunday clothes and acting fine. Like, everyone's fine. This is fulfilling. This is what we're meant to do. This is what we're. And so that's one thing that I think where I feel like the church kind of supported this level of disconnect in myself. The second thing for me that's really important is I just find there were serious boundary issues around the expectation of women. Just the expectation about. Around what a woman. For a woman's psychology to have a bunch of children when she's young. How about physically to her body, what it means to have four children. You know, on a body. Women suffer. They have damages to their. But it's never spoken of. It's never acknowledged. It's like this sense, it's. It's genuinely not possible for many to have that many children all at once. It's not healthy for many to have that many children all at once for their bodies or their psychology. And this idea that so much again, that I've. All this pressure. My salvation and everyone I love hinged on this offering that was never acknowledged. It was treated like a given, like I should just give it. It was never asked. It was never like, this is a hard thing. This is a tall order. The thing you're doing is incredibly challenging. It's only been in the last five years that it's really hit me. And my children have been a big part of it as they've grown into young adulthood. And Really, I think, had their own relationship with how they want to live their life and relationships and if and when they want to have children, that I have recognized. And to be able to say it felt hard because that was ridiculously hard. That ask was like, so boundary, like breaking, you know, and so just acknowledging to all the women out there the sheer amount of work that was involved in creating this reality for those around me. I think, you know, it feels hard because it is hard and because what is asked of you is too much. You know, for most of us, it was just too much.

John Dehlin [00:38:53] Beautiful. So hard. And I know so many listeners and viewers are connecting with what you're saying. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:06] So the another thing that I have recognized where the church seemed to support this disconnect, too, was in this belief that. And this is a really big one for me. I'm curious if anyone else relates to this or if it's like just the way I kind of took it, took the church teachings and, you know, how they talked about kind of mothering. But I had this real belief that I could protect my children. And it's part of why I had children was I had this buy in that I thought if I was righteous, if I. If I did things like if I prayed and if I taught them and if we did family home evening, and if we did all the things that I could not only protect them, but. But I could give them things that I didn't have growing up. I could, like, show up in ways that you know, and love them in ways that I had wanted and that I could kind of ensure and provide joy for them, like a life in a world of joy and protection. And I know that sounds really like. It sounds innocent to me now, but I really did think that. And in my coaching, I know I'm not alone in that, because a lot of women start out with that kind of idea. And then when you're kind of amidst it, you realize, oh, man, that is just so far off. But the reason why I bring that up is because that belief, that idea and belief and almost promise, like, if you think of interviews, when you go in, anytime anything's going wrong in your life or you're having any type of suffering, it's just like, are you doing these things? You know, are you praying? Are you, like, alleviate it? It's on you. Like, correct it. And I think that just. It transferred over to me, this idea that I. I had this potential within me, the superhuman potential to create a world where my kids didn't suffer. If I could just do the right things. And that was my why. That's why I had four, you know, that's why I stayed home. That's why, you know, I did so much of what I did was this idea of like, I'll do anything. I'll do anything for them, you know, so it was super harmful, harmful, super harmful because it. It had me. The way I showed up and what I asked of myself and what I felt like, why. The why of what I was doing, it. It was. It was never possible. It was never mine to give. It's not anyone's to give to. What a sense of security. A sense. It's on you. It's on your decisions. It's on how you basically sacrifice yourself for someone else. That's not the way it works. It doesn't make people safe. It doesn't make people happy. It doesn't make people. It's all a lie. But I believed it. And it hits. The problem with it is it hits people where they live. It hits you where you love. It hits you with your yearning. It hits you with what you want to be true. It hits you in your innocence. You know, we were young, and so that was something that I really felt like a belief the church supported that, in the end, really hurt me.

John Dehlin [00:42:53] Yeah. What I hear is kind of this idea that life has suffering no matter what. It's kind of the Buddhist principle, and you could be the perfect mom, and your kids are still gonna, you know, stumble and fall and get hurt. And if you've been set up to expect that if you can do it perfectly, that you'll. You'll prevent suffering from your kids or prevent them from. From stumbling. It just makes you feel worthless, and it makes you feel, like, super disappointed either in yourself or in life, because the promise doesn't come true. Is that right?

Margi Dehlin [00:43:30] Yeah. And I think sometimes it makes people have more children than they would have.

John Dehlin [00:43:34] Or.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:34] I mean, if you think you have the answer, then you're like, yes to them all. Then of course, it's just that. Let's apply the system. Sure, we can have four because we have the secret, you know, Whereas if you go into it being like, life is vulnerability and, you know, it's a hard world and this is a tough job, and this is going to require a lot of me, this parenting thing, and how am I going to be healthy as an individual and. And sort of embody what I want my child to see and in. And claim for themselves by kind of emulating it. I just think it's. Yeah, for me, deeply Problematic.

John Dehlin [00:44:12] How did it hurt you? You said hurt you.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:17] Have I not expressed how it hurt? I feel like it hurt me because

John Dehlin [00:44:22] other than being disappointed and maybe expecting too much of yourself or. Those are the two things.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:27] Yeah. You know, that's going to come into a later question when this. It talks about kind of what your suffering looked like and where you suffered. I'll show where that is. But I definitely feel like I made decisions based on this sort of promise, this sort of perception of how it worked, and I don't think it was just me.

John Dehlin [00:44:48] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:44:48] Yeah. Well, your daughter Claire is here, and she said, I love you so much.

John Dehlin [00:44:55] Oh, love you, Clara.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:56] So thanks, Clara.

Carah Burrell [00:44:58] People are really connecting with this. This is. I mean, this is the hardest truth of Mormonism, like leaving the church and recognizing the structure of the reasons why you did everything, the hardest things that you did in life, like, you were just saying, like, you thought that you had the answer, and then not only was it not the answer, and maybe all of us had more kids than we recognized. We made decisions based on bad information. Furthermore, as I'm sure you guys can attest, what you're grasping at, to hold onto, to give you that structure when you have so many kids and you need the community you need the answers to, you grow up and you. Your kids tell you that that was actually poison to them.

Margi Dehlin [00:45:34] That's right. We'll get to that, too. It hits you on the other side as well.

Carah Burrell [00:45:39] It hits. Yep. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:41] Quickly, the church. You know, the church. I remember every Mother's Day would make sure and give a flower out to every mom or a cookie or cupcake or something, and then they would teach everyone. No, let's just be clear. Motherhood is the highest calling. Was that. Was that any consolation? Did that make it better somehow that, you know, those. That language, those ceremonies, you know, Mother's Day, primary songs to support moms. Did you feel really respected for your choice in the church? Honored? Did you feel honored and respected, and did that make it any better or not?

Margi Dehlin [00:46:23] I know I heard messages of honoring, particularly. I mean, I know there were those messages out there. I just think this is tough, right, Because I think culturally, what I would look at it as, when you're looking at the experience of women overall in a church, like in a church organization or church system, it just reminds me emotionally of this idea of Valentine's Day. When you're in a relationship with someone who kind of criticizes, puts you in a kind of lifestyle where you can never thrive, you can never, like, show up the way they want you to. It's just. It's not possible. But then on Valentine's Day, they give you a box of chocolates and say, great job. It's like, I don't know.

Carah Burrell [00:47:21] Yeah.

Perfectionism, Codependency, and Losing Herself

Margi Dehlin [00:47:24] So the other thing that I've really kind of come to recently where I feel like religious orthodoxy did not serve me was I feel like. And some of these things I realized kind of build on each other. But this depraved and deprived sense of self that emerged from me going after the formula getting married at 20 to having, you know, two kids really young, four kids within, you know, what, 10 years maybe, is that you have this sort of depraved and deprived sense of self which leaves you vulnerable to perfectionism. And let me explain that. I think, you know, overall, I think religion sort of is built over this inherent unworthiness of humans. Like on some level there's a buy in. That's why there's a Jesus who has to kind of save you. That's why, you know, it's all about kind of, you judge your own thoughts. Everything's serious, every action matters, everything. There's just. There's a great deal always at stake. There's always kind of a proving. But I think with, you know, so much of Mormonism in my experience was what it looked like. It was so externally focused, didn't matter so much what you felt like, wasn't asked about, didn't really want to hear it either, that I feel like it. It sort of perpetuated this external overachieving, you know, that it must look good, it must look effortless, it must look. And I think this comes to play when in diminished selves, you know, it's like what happens when you're kind of given so little respect. There's this part of Little Women where. And this is what it reminds me of when Meg comes home from a dance and she's been like, you know, they don't have a lot of money, but the. At the ball, they dress her really fancy and she has this experience of being really disrespected and feeling like on a sense, on a level, like women are so easily, like disrespected, objectified and, and belittled and devalued. And the mom says something to the effect of when you're given so small a space, when you don't have rights, when you're given this, this crumb and you're told it's a meal, it's. It's easy, it's so easy to devalue. You you have no room, you have no space to be fully embodied. You're just this like shadow of a human. And so that kind of connection of, for me, unworthiness and, you know, this real focus on the external, particularly for women. And so I don't know, I. I can see where there was a layering for my perfectionism. It wasn't everything. It wasn't the whole reason why I struggled with perfectionism for so long, but it definitely was one of the roots. And then the last thing I would just say that came to mind for me, and this is just. There is a lot of dependence. I mean, when I look at myself, I view myself as like, I was dependent on my parents then I had, like, I was, you know, went to college for a minute. Now I'm dependent on my husband. I was, I have always, you know, so much of my life was where I was dependent on, on other people. And I think. So that builds kind of the sense of codependency, right? And it also builds this support for enmeshment without an identity, without this sense of who I am versus who you are and how we come together. And when you go about it when you're young, so young that you haven't been given a minute to develop into those people, you create these systems of codependency and enmeshment. So as a mother, my whole world is my children, right? And I'm told on a level in many, many instances and in scripture that I am responsible for the lives of my children. If they don't believe, it's on me, right? And so this makes for a setup where you're overly tied to your children, to your children's behavior, to their happiness, to their. In a way that is incredibly unhealthy. And it doesn't, it's not good for anyone, it's not good for the children, it's not good for the mom. It's the system is. And that is something that we have spent some years kind of trying to heal. But those are some of the things that came up for me with the question about religious orthodoxy and how I felt like, you know, if you drop in this, these are the ways I feel like it really was not serving me. Well, does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:52:31] Yeah, makes total sense. So Mormon orthodoxy was not serving you because you were disconnected from yourself? This is what I've heard. You were disconnected from yourself. You were over identified with your role as a woman, as a mother. There were boundary issues around these expectations. You were led to believe you could protect your kids. And yourself from pain and suffering. If you. If you were perfect, which you feel like wasn't true, and put you on a cycle of perfectionism that was harmful for you and maybe a little bit for those around you. And it. It encouraged and developed a system of enmeshment and codependency that's just fundamentally unhealthy. That's my summary. Is that right?

Margi Dehlin [00:53:15] Amazing.

John Dehlin [00:53:16] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:53:16] Okay.

Moments of Suffering Along the Way

John Dehlin [00:53:18] All right, so the next question. The next point or question in the Thrive story outline is, what were some of the moments that show your suffering? So this is like when it got really painful. You know, kind of like the dramatic. This is like.

Margi Dehlin [00:53:34] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:53:35] Where it gets really bad before it gets better. Right. So tell us in what ways it got.

Margi Dehlin [00:53:40] Really. Can I just say. Can I just pop out for one minute? Like, this had my. Our hope in having it kind of go this way. And this is some suffering and is. Because I don't feel like it's unique. I don't think my story is that unique. I don't think suffering is unique. And with the Thrive stories, the idea is or are. I mean, what we kind of think is that this may hit some people in these places. They may be suffering. They may be. And we won't end it there. We're going to build out from there. But it also can provide normalizing if you're there, and also hopefully, a bit of hope that you won't stay there.

John Dehlin [00:54:32] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:33] So, yeah, here's to suffering.

John Dehlin [00:54:35] So there's purpose in our discussing the low points. There's meaning.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:40] That's right. So lean into suffering. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:54:44] Yeah, let's do it.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:46] Okay, everyone ready? I think for me, in thinking about suffering, I think about an essay I gave on YouTube, and I did it with Mormon stories, I believe, and at a retreat called Broken Open. And if you. That essay was written during a time of my suffering. And I feel like when you listen to it, you could probably feel it, you know, so, you know, a picture or a slice of. Of where my suffering kind of came from and the areas that were hit. I would say it hit me in sort of some key towers. And I talk about these ideas of towers that we build up. Towers the church informs. These towers we build. And it can be like a relationship tower, how we perceive, you know, marriage and how it should work and what's true about marriage. And, you know, it can be parenting. I just shared, like, a belief in parenting. That was part of my parenting tower. Right. My identity, my sense of purpose. And what I noticed is my suffering happens on some level, when I have a direct confrontation with a loss of meaning, a loss of stability, and a loss of innocence with regard to that tower. In other words, the way I've. I constructed that tower based on what people told me, my family, culture, church. I put the blocks in to my understanding. And then something in particular hit each of those towers over time, and my understanding and sense of meaning was lost on that thing. Meaning, whatever I was given, I was like, not anymore. Not anymore. That's not true. Like, I know it's not true. And so my real suffering came with my identity tower. And that showed up with this sense of, like, confronting this on a level, what I've shared around mothering and meaning, that I had this sense of, like, what do I live for? What is my purpose? And for me, it was this idea that mothering is a privilege and should be fulfilling, fully fulfilling, right? And that my offering and all my resources and all my time and effort will kind of produce this meaning and purpose that I intend and that I've been promised. And so I kind of touched on this earlier, and that was one of the first things to fall for me, was to kind of realize I thought this was, like, my why, and now the why has changed for me, and why am I not fully fulfilled? And what. For a long time, it just came up as guilt because I would almost cyclically, like, cry, or I had this sense of loss of myself, of, like, things I wanted to do or I was interested in but didn't have time to pursue. And it was like, these lost pieces of myself that every once in a while would, like, emerge, and I would cry about them, and then I would feel guilty about it. Like, this is a privilege to mother at home. Like, I'm lucky to do this. And why. Why am I not happy? I'm supposed to be happy, and this is supposed to be kind of everything. And that's amidst also feeling, like, deeply connected to the meaning and purpose of mothering. And so it was really confusing for me. But that was kind of the core of my identity tower going down. But I also had my marriage tower go down during this time or shortly after. And that's when, kind of in our partnership. What would I say? It was like Mormon stories. John began the podcast from our basement. And it started out kind of as a. This obscure idea. And then, you know, within how many years, John, would you say it was kind of gaining traction? I feel like it was like.

John Dehlin [00:59:02] Well, it gained immediate traction. But around 2005, we started. Around 2010, I started thinking about really doing it full, you know, as full time as I could and starting a nonprofit. So maybe five or six years into it, okay, we started getting really serious.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:19] So what I'm remembering is the time frame for me was that my children were kind of all hitting kind of maybe the age range of 6 to maybe 14. And so demand was really high for me in my realm and in my life. And I was feeling it. I think I was feeling a lot of it was effortful, right? It required a lot. And John was feeling this sense of like, elation because for many years I think he hadn't necessarily felt this sense of purpose with what he did. So his life is expanding, his life. He is all jazzed and excited in finding this purpose and meaning. And he's interviewing people left and right, and he brings them into our home. They walk through our doors, go down, they're like. And it's. It's kind of happening. So it's in our family sphere. And he starts doing events and he starts traveling and we start getting letters and he starts getting, you know, noticed. And it was kind of like a couple things were happening. Our realms were getting further and further apart. So he was more external, he was feeling pulled more toward expansion and going outside of our home. Having said that, I have to also say John always kind of showed up in ritualistic, important ways during that time, which I find to be like, he was always grounded in morning breakfast, making lunches, being home for dinner. Like, it is amazing. But like his emotional energy and his heart were kind of somewhere else and I could feel it. And so I was then left with this intense pressure of now I have teenagers, full activity mode, everyone has activities and. And it's kind of on me. And my world is feeling actually like it's getting smaller, more defined and. And I'm feeling a lot of pressure, right? And I'm feeling a little of abandonment too. Like he's super happy and he's having all these experiences and self developing. And I'm so glad he found his thing. And I'm still kind of in this world that, by the way, I had mixed feelings about initially that I really love and don't want to abandon. But also it's like a tall ask for me. And so this created attention between us. And I'll share a story. I remember that. That reminds me of that time. And John was. Had just finished up an interview in the basement of our home, and I had gone down, I think, for something and. And in that kind of disconnect and separateness he was talking about the interview he just had and how touched he was. And this was pretty, pretty regular for him to kind of. He really loved interviewing and he really loves people genuinely and. But I was noticing that our connection time was kind of dwindling or he was a little bit more distracted or not as really curious or in the moment. And I remember turning to him and saying, why don't you feel for my story like you feel for everyone else's story? Like, why is my story not as real for you or not as valued or important? And it was just this real moment. And I remember it hitting him. I remember you stopping and like letting it land, you know. But that was a moment where I feel like that kind of vocalizes that tension that was apparent. And also I think around that time we had a rupture where an intimacy rupture where amidst this world that's opening up and I'm here and we're in this kind of place of trying to get a new normal. I feel like, you know, John had a relationship with someone outside of our relationship. And I was already feeling that separateness. And I feel like the suffering for me came in sort of confronting this idea that if you do the right things, if you marry in the temple, if you tend to your marriage, if you go to church and you, you know, show, show up in all these ways, you will be protected. It's like a God given relationship. It's like God blesses it and you will be safe. And I think there was just a moment for me where I had such. I was so struck by this reality of like, I'm not protected. I'm like just. We are just as fragile as ever as anyone else. You know, we are just as vulnerable. We are vulnerable to the same things. And that kind of made that tower of safety and what I thought marriage was and how I viewed kind of what happens when someone has a relationship with someone else and what that means about me, what that means about kind of the marriage. And I felt like on some level it made it really clear to me that my whole world was my marriage and my kids. And so in that moment, it was just so, so devastating in a way that I feel like it can. It would be devastating, but like, if I had this sense of like independence or I had a world or I had a. Of my own, at least I would have the grounding of that. But I just remember really, I would cry at night because I wouldn't want to cry during the day because I didn't want my Children to see. But I just remember feeling so devalued that here I was. The irony, the irony was I did it all. I did the things that were supposed to protect me. And I'm here, I'm here, completely not protected. I'm here alone. I'm completely defeated, dependent on someone. And the thing that I care most about is the thing that is at stake, you know. And so this was just a time where I, you know, had reached a point where I went to, to John after event, an event he had given and some things had been happening and I just, and it was me recognizing on some level marriage, this God given thing wasn't a guarantee. And I remember I went and we were at your mom's for Father's Day and it was after an event where you had, in a moment I had brought the kids and you had said that this was your purpose in life was Mormon stories. And I was driving with the kids back to Nan's and you had stayed to be with people. And my oldest said to me, if you and dad get divorced, I wouldn't be surprised because you guys are so different. And I just remember sitting on his lap and the kids, I had shut the door and I just said hey, I wonder if it isn't time that we just let it go, that maybe we want different things and maybe the right thing is just to not. To not hold on and to just acknowledge that we had this marriage that was young and now you have this chance and this opportunity and this thing that you really love and it's like your purpose. And at that point I remember you saying no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what I want. And, and that began something that was important for me because I was able to kind of say if that's true, if that's what you're really saying, then we gotta burn this marriage down. I don't like there can be no remnant and we've got to do things differently. And we spent a year doing that. We spent a year of no travel. His work schedule really simplified and we, we did a ton of work during that time of trying to figure out the meaning, what this would mean for us, why we were together and what we wanted to create from it. And really living this question of for me, not just giving my trust back, but saying we'll see, we'll see, we'll see what we do, we'll see if it heals, we'll see if we can create something. And that was a place of just a real crumbling of a way I had been thought to think about relationship and marriage and then having an experience that I feel like just kind of. It had that tower just kind of come right down. I had a parenting tower at a. At the similar time as well, where I feel like the confrontation and meaning there for me that created the suffering was this belief that I could protect my kids. And so our kids grow up. They're now kind of, you know, in their teens. We've got numerous ones in teens. And this is where it starts breaking down. We have the excommunication happen. We have our kids are, you know, starting to experience this complicated life. And we have a child that, you know, is systemically bullied by a system with. With, you know, students and leaders and. And where it's just so traumatic. We have a sexual assault while a child's in. In high school. We have, you know, we're going through our own marriage stuff. We have a public excommunication. And I have this sense of like, I can't protect my kids. Like, that's insane. Like, it's all come for us. And. And so at that point, my. My parenting tower around that belief of I can protect my kids, I can create this world where I give them joy and happiness, and they. They somehow bypass how the world really is magically by my power. And. And that just completely, I feel like, went away. We had just a series of traumatic events happen within two or three years that come back to kind of haunt us a little bit later. But I think another. Another sort of layer of that is just kids growing up. You know, once my oldest or older two left home, it left this, like, empty room for me where I realized, oh, they leave. Oh, they go away. And, like, at this point, John has like, a fully. Like, if we're going to talk about Virginia Woolf's, it's Virginia Woolf, right? A room of your own. The room of the. I think it's Virginia Woolf. But this idea of a woman having a room of. Of your own, it was like, I felt like John had, like, a fully furnished house. Like, he's.

John Dehlin [01:11:08] I had a Mormon stories mansion.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:10] That's right. He was, like, doing so. And I'm here in this empty room where I'm like, where'd everybody go? What's happening? And I think that was another component of me kind of coming to terms with how overly identified I was to kind of this. This role and needing to face myself again. So. And then the last tower that kind of went down in peak suffering would be my dad. It would be the Existential Tower. This idea that also during this time, my dad is slowly dying over a decade, and he's like this, you know, the confrontation for me is. Which I realize is really innocent, was this idea that, you know, there was this comfort in knowing this feeling like we knew if someone dies, you know, you'll see them again and, you know, you know, kind of. That they'll live on. It's not really an ending. And I think I had. I had already kind of grappled with the loss of that on some level, but I think I had this other belief that, like, a beautiful human that, like, lives a beautiful life, deserves a beautiful death, and it's innocent, but it's also what I really hoped, you know, so my dad had this beautiful, beautiful mind. He was a psychiatrist. He showed up with. In mental illness with, like, such a love and belief and such a care for people, and in the end, he loses his mind. You know, it just felt brutal, and it made me confront this idea that there has to be meaning in everything, and, you know, that you have to know things. And I just felt like I don't know anything. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of meaning in this. It just feels like there's a lot of suffering over this decade. And that's not to say that there weren't beautiful aspects, because I think they're always there. There can be overlays there. You know, I'm just saying that there was something about that process and the indignity and this long suffering that I just felt like, no, no meaning in this for me, you know, and that's okay. And by the way, I don't know. I. I'm not sure where he's going either. And I think that Tower came down in a really, a personal way where we can all talk about death all day long. But I think until you watch someone have a process of dying and you watch their last breath, you know, it's just. It's super different. So that is a picture of kind of my suffering in a. In a snapshot. Those areas

Marriage Struggles and Painful Turning Points

John Dehlin [01:14:09] so beautiful, so powerful. Thank you so much for your rawness and your vulnerability. I know listeners and viewers are just loving it.

Carah Burrell [01:14:18] Yeah, everyone's giving you virtual hugs the screen right now. And how are you doing over there, John? I don't want to neglect.

Margi Dehlin [01:14:24] I think.

Carah Burrell [01:14:25] Are you feeling okay? I know this is all. This is putting kind of your guys's life out there. How are. How are.

Margi Dehlin [01:14:32] Just.

Carah Burrell [01:14:32] Are we grounded? Are we feeling good?

John Dehlin [01:14:35] Yeah, no, I. You know, yeah, we're talking about some. Some really private, sensitive stuff. But I. You know, this. Some of these stories I've wanted to tell since 2012, like. Yeah, but out of respect for just lots of different parties involved, including me. Yeah. I. I don't. I. The last thing I ever want to do is be a hypocrite or hide or make us look better than we are or try and pretend something. So, yeah, it's. It's not fun stuff to be talking about. But I. I, like, I. I feel it's important. Important for all of us to model authenticity and vulnerability, because that's the. I mean, that's the secret. Like, you and I, what. What we were missing was learning what emotional intimacy was.

Margi Dehlin [01:15:22] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:15:22] And. And vulnerability. We. We say in our workshops and retreats when we do them, that vulnerability is the gasoline in the engine of emotional intimacy. So we had to learn that to get our relationship right. And, of course, we want to model that in these Thrive stories. That's kind of what they're all about. So I. I love this stuff. Of course, you're afraid of, like, what if somebody knows? I made some pretty big mistakes, but I. I'm. I don't want to be worshiped. I don't want to be adored. I don't want anyone to think we're perfect or that we're like prophets or new gurus. So let's lay it all. I love this is what I'm saying. Thank you for asking, Carah. It's not fun, but it's just right where our values are.

Carah Burrell [01:16:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:06] And what we want for Thrive stories.

Carah Burrell [01:16:08] Yeah. And somebody said earlier in the chat that the irony is that, you know, you're doing so much as a woman in the church and for your children, but now as like, a grown adult, you're able to look and reflect and have the vulnerability and be so honest that this podcast is gonna do so much healing and help for so many people. So it almost is ironic that, like, all of that that you're going through. I'm crying over here. John's crying. Everyone in the chat's crying like this. We're all being quite vulnerable right now, and the work is getting done that we always wanted to do. Like, we're really helping heal and push the ball forward to give people, you know, what we all seek after. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:16:44] And I think. Let me just say with. In. In particular, to sharing some of those marriage moments that I did so with the intention, because. And I haven't gotten to this yet, but I think there are things that we're taught about marriage that are deeply damaging. And the expectations and the system, the overlay of the system was incredibly not helpful for us. Creating intimacy with each other. And that there can be moments when you look at each other and think, I don't know, or even it could be. And one thing that I recognize is out of suffering, out of pain and suffering can come something unexpected. And that year, and then applying that year to the. To the years that came, it was kind of like being woken up. Like, I almost feel like I was a little bit asleep at the wheel there with how I was. I feel like I had a lot of misunderstandings about what marriage should look like. And not just with enmeshment, but I think this idea of owning each other, owning each other's sexuality, owning, you know, there was just a lot of things that were deeply unhealthy. And now I feel like there's power in burning down a marriage. There's power in actually saying that, particularly when you marry young or you're in a different stage of life, or you're just different people that now value different things. To say, yes, it's important for me to look at whether this relationship serves me and whether it would be better to just kind of start it and that everyone has to make their own decision. But I knew John had shown up, and I knew his heart, and I knew what he had brought to those years up at that moment, to that moment. And I took all that into account. And I'm proud we burned that sucker down. And I didn't know. I didn't know if it was going to work. I really didn't. But, like, it did. That's the thing. It did. And we stand on part of that today, part of that work we did, you and me, that year, looking into our wounds and reading, like, five books on wounds and, you know, what to do in Betrayal and how to rebuild and kind of trying to recreate that intimacy that had been elusive and that vulnerability that had been so elusive. And so I'm really proud of that. And I think it's important for people to see that within a marriage, there are times like that. And some of the messaging can be when you have a time like that, get out, or it means it's wrong. Or it means. And sometimes it does, but it doesn't always. There are times like, of acute suffering. I loved that Michelle Obama said recently, like, if you're going to be married for, you know, any significant amount of time, there are going to be times when you really don't like each other where you really want to, you know, kick. I've wanted to kick Barack Obama out the window or I've wanted to. And I just think that's important to. To acknowledge that what we're trying to do in marriage today is really different historically than what we've been trying to do. And it's kind of our expectations are like through the roof. So there you go. A little.

John Dehlin [01:20:10] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:20:10] Rant.

John Dehlin [01:20:11] And I think, also, I think some of what we're talking about is framed by Esther Perel's quote that everyone's going to be married at least three times. And this isn't everyone, but just take this as a quote where you can value. Drive something from it. Most people are going to be married at least three times. It'll be either to the same person or to different people. In other words, when we say burn the marriage down, we don't mean forever, obviously. We're talking about, like, there's marriage 1.0, and then at some point that falls to the ground. And then marriage 2.0, we burnt down marriage 2 or 3. But. But weirdly, kind of like the lotus flower coming out of the mud, we didn't. We. We weren't able to revitalize the previous versions of our marriage. And not to ever justify bad behavior, but, like, for whatever reason, it took things really coming to a head in kind of a really painful, hard way to make it so we could create something really beautiful afterwards. And I'm not to say that that's. Not to say that is a requirement for everybody, but that's what brought us to where we came.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:20] That's part of our story.

John Dehlin [01:21:21] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:22] And I think this idea that you get married at 22 and you don't like, we're all in process. We're all kind of learning. And there is a sense that we're all kind of in a state of becoming as we go. And it's messy. You know, it'd be lovely if it just looked neat and, you know, but it's a messy, messy endeavor. So.

John Dehlin [01:21:48] Yeah. And then just really quickly, for other THRIVE stories, they'll usually be a really more. More condensed sort of faith crisis. What's a little bit unique about our story is that we kind of lost our faith in 2001, and we're talking 11 years later. So we lost our faith but decided to stay in the church. And so a lot of this. These towers falling down, they're falling down after we lost our faith, but while we're still in the church and that. That Might be a little bit different than other people's stories. You know what I'm saying?

Margi Dehlin [01:22:24] Yes. But in this time, even though we went to church, it was more that we were going to church, as in my memory, for our kids. And I was, like, reading Eckhart Tolle in the foyer. And, like, I was. I would not say that for me. I was going for me anymore.

John Dehlin [01:22:41] Yeah. Yeah. We were definitely unorthodox. Okay, so this is so great. So the next part of the Thrive Thrive story outline, the question is, was there a particular moment or impetus for change now? You know. Yeah, so that's basically. You talked about all these different. You know, that your identity, you know, losing yourself, you know, so when we talk about an impetus for change, we're not talking about your faith crisis here. We're talking about. For the main topic of this Thrive story, which is coming to find yourself developing a new identity. Right. What was. What was the impetus for you? Sort of like making. Starting to make a big transformation. Correct.

Margi Dehlin [01:23:34] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:23:34] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [01:23:35] Yep. And it is kind of suffering still.

John Dehlin [01:23:41] So this is when. When you started learning to come home to yourself.

Margi Dehlin [01:23:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:44] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [01:23:45] These. These two things were the impetus for some changes. So we're kind of at that in the narrative arc where it's going to kind of round out or start kind of coming kind of back up, but a little more. A little more suffering. Because I think if you look at the role of kind of suffering, that is. That is how it tends to go. I mean, I guess you. You can change when you're super comfortable. I just find, like. And even research seems to suggest that we tend to have to be pushed to change. We have to get pretty uncomfortable before we change. And so a couple things. A couple things really, I feel like, were crucial moments. One was the death of my dad. And I think that was hard to kind of distill, and it's taken some time. But here are a couple things that came out of the death of my dad that changed who I was and changed my experience from then on. The first thing was just when you lose someone, I think you become aware of things that you just. You weren't aware of when they were alive. And I had a sense for it when he was alive, but I really felt the full force that he represented safety for me in the world. So when he died, I had this moment of, like, the safety is gone. You know, I just didn't feel he. He kind of represented in my life. A place that was rare, something that was rare to experience in that he had a Way of just making you feel very seen accepted and just enough as you, as you are. So to lose that. It was kind of the one place that I was like, I always had that and now I don't. And so it was this turning point where I. Two things happened. I realized I have to be that, like, I can't look to someone else. I have to be the safety for me, you know, that has to be something that, that I. That comes from, you know, myself. I need to advocate for myself. I need to appreciate myself in that same way that I look to him. I need to do that. And so in that way, reparenting kind of hit full tilt there where I was, I was super hit with this idea of like, I have to be this. For me, I've lost it. So if I want it, I'm gonna have to create it. And so that was the first thing that I think emerged from that. And the other thing was this idea of like, daylight's burning. Like, people die, they leave. Like, life is finite. So if that's true, like, I need to do this thing, I. I need to create it for me. What kind of life do I want? Because I'm like a good. I've got, you know, several, several decades behind me, and I'm awake and I'm healthy, and so what is that going to look like? And it was emotional. I have heard all these concepts before, but it like, aligned inside me in a way. It just shifted something. And from that point on, I can notice my behavior changed and how I wanted to show up for myself changed. And I became really sensitive to this idea of like, in my life, what do I want my life to feel like? So I became like, really sensitive to like, conflict during that time. I'd be like, like, life is so short. Like, let's not, let's not do this. Let's. Can we just love and be bigger than this issue that seems so large or I became quite so. It was just kind of an interesting time, but that's something that emerged. So that's the first thing was the death of my dad made you realize

Loss, Grief, and the Death of Her Father

John Dehlin [01:27:48] how precious life was.

Margi Dehlin [01:27:49] Maybe it made me relate to my sense of safety and to start creating a relationship with myself that I had funneled off to my dad. So safe, safety, self advocacy, feeling loved, feeling valued, feeling seen. I had to do that. I started literally on that path then of like, how do I do that? What does that look like? You know, before I want someone else to understand me. Do I understand me? Do I value me? And so that Kind of piqued that. And then the second thing. Yeah. Was just sort of this passion for life and almost taking responsibility for this sense of, like, life is finite, like, this. This is going to end. And if that's true, like, I don't want to waste time. I don't want to waste time in relationships I don't value. I don't want to waste time doing things I don't like and serve. Don't serve me. I don't want to should myself anymore. Like, things became very clear in that moment of just like, wow, this does not go on forever. When it's gone, it's gone.

John Dehlin [01:28:57] So that was one big impetus.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:59] Was there another?

Margi Dehlin [01:29:01] And then the second impetus happened actually at a. We were kind of in a family gathering. Boy. And it had been back when we had kind of, what, three or four years, would you say, of just. I mean, I'm using trauma carefully, but layers of trauma for all of us in the family. We had had a few deaths within a few months of people that we really loved and treasured. Your sister, my dad, Mavis, was part of that. We had, you know, each of the children had had some. Some traumas. We had had the excommunication. We had had family strains and. And things. And so there was just a lot going on, and a situation arose where it just became extremely clear to me that our. All of our traumas were just coming out to play, and we could not do this on our own as a family. We needed healing, and we needed help. And it hit just sort of this breaking point.

John Dehlin [01:30:09] Can I just say, just in terms of timing, so we're talking years after 2012, after 2015. We're now past the excommunication. We're here in Salt Lake City, and this is just a few years ago where. Where the story you're about to tell happened. So this is just like literally three, three, four years ago.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:29] This is more.

John Dehlin [01:30:30] Again, we had. We'd healed from the breaches. In 2012, the excommunication happened. We. I just a month. I would say a week or a month before this big breach, this big meltdown, I would say. I would have said our marriage was the best it had ever been. So I was sort of on cloud nine thinking, man, we made it through all the hard stuff. We're healed. We're good. We've moved to Salt Lake. Mormon Stories is starting to really take off. We've worked through a lot, and then life happened.

Margi Dehlin [01:31:02] Well, and I think that is the nature of. Of trauma. And. And you have very real trauma from the things that have happened. We had attacks during that time. It's real. Our kids had real trauma. And we had this compounded trauma kind of conflict, emotional regulation issue coming up, particularly around trauma. And so it just became. And it had been there all along, but our, you know, I think you're right. I think a lot of our relationship was beautiful. And. But this one area around conflict and people's trauma and how we dealt with that was insidious. And it. I just witnessed it in a way where I remember inside I hit an inner limit where I was like, not another minute. Not another minute am I going to ignore it. Not another minute am I going to reinforce this pattern that comes up often enough that is completely wounding to our family system and to us as individuals. And I did something completely shocking and completely out of character where I asked John to leave, move out. And that was really, really important. I knew, I think innately in that moment, a couple things were happening. I knew that we had conflict issues, how we resolved conflict or didn't our own styles. I knew emotional regulation was an issue of the moment and in some ways had come up around the. I knew enmeshment in codependency based on how we grew up together and our, you know, upbringing in. We didn't know what we didn't know. But I knew those issues were kind of at the forefront. And on some level, I knew I needed it too. And there was a piece of me, and that's why this is in there is there was a piece of this. Of me becoming significant to myself in this moment where I knew if we stayed together, it would be like gravity. We would just go back to what we knew because we have grown up together. And those grooves of how we show up are so. They're worn so well. And so it was just this moment of knowing, like, this requires space and I need space. I had not been alone for a minute in, like, in decades. And I had this sense that I would just get sucked back in. And you are like your energy and the way you show up in the world and I love this about you is it's large and you have this presence and this way of just kind of taking up space. And at this point, by the way, you are still having interviews in our home.

John Dehlin [01:33:59] I was writing Mormon stories out of the home.

Margi Dehlin [01:34:01] And his voice projects people. But we had such an enmeshed. I don't know if you can get the feel of this, but how enmeshed our home life was to the work Life to the. And so it just was. It was something. And I. It was really. I feel like one of the first times in my marriage where I expressed something and it gave birth to the best version of our marriage yet, in my opinion. Like, I stand by it 100%. And that means. And we can. We can talk about kind of, you know, why that was so important in the rebuilding part. But.

John Dehlin [01:34:43] Well, just. I just want to add that this was. This, you know, just a few years ago, and this is after we worked through so much, and it's really weird to be, you know, 47, 48, and to kind of be, in effect, you know, told you need to find a place to live. And we weren't necessarily getting divorced, although that was a possibility, but I had to go find a place to live. It was. It felt humiliating at the time. I didn't feel like I deserved it. Yes, we, you know, yes, we were working through stuff, but at the time, I was like this. I don't deserve this. I was angry. This doesn't make sense to me. And I probably had some tantrums just saying, you know, this isn't right. But, you know, just a shout out. I didn't know who to turn to. And I just interviewed Tom Christofferson for Mormon Stories podcast. This is the brother of D. Todd Christofferson, and Tom was living downtown. And I asked. I asked Tom if I could move in with him because he lived alone downtown. And Tom said, yeah. So I lived for a couple months with Tom Kristofferson in his Salt Lake City home. And.

Margi Dehlin [01:35:57] And we love Tom now and forever.

John Dehlin [01:35:59] Yeah. Yeah. Like, he's always going to be an important part of our family for his just Christmas. And he's a believing Mormon to this day. And he just didn't ask questions and just. Just provided his home for a couple months until we were able to work through stuff. So. Love you, Tom. Thank you.

Margi Dehlin [01:36:16] You.

John Dehlin [01:36:17] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:36:18] Yeah. And. Well, I. I guess we're going to do something that's like pausing this for a minute. There's more to this story than just, you know, you kind of get told where else to live. There were some plans in order right then. But we have another question before we get back to that narrative, so to be continued. We'll get back on that thread.

Grief, Groundlessness, and Letting Go

John Dehlin [01:36:41] Okay. Yeah. So the next question is, did you experience a sense of loss or grief, you know, when everything fell apart?

Margi Dehlin [01:36:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:36:52] You know, the change happens and you realize things are never going to be the same. Did you experience grief? And how did you process that grief when Your towers of marriage and of, you know, security and of identity and of parenting and of mom and you. All those. You were looking at the ground of all those things haven't fallen down.

Carah Burrell [01:37:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:37:15] How does he deal with grief, anger, sadness, betrayal.

Margi Dehlin [01:37:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:37:20] Shock, all that stuff?

Margi Dehlin [01:37:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't. For whatever reason, I had a lot of towers down. I don't feel like that's, you know, necessarily typical for people to have so many towers down at the same time. But for whatever reason, I had this profound, dark time where I kind of feel like I was in rubble. And I think I talk about this in coming home a little bit. This idea of. I think I talked about it in the terms of groundlessness, which I'll talk about in a minute. But I recently listened to a podcast on nihilism, actually, that really spoke to how I felt during this time of, like, speaking sitting in the rubble. This is where you are, where you're like, you've lost. What used to give you meaning is it doesn't give you meaning, right? The things that used to work no longer work. The things that were true are no longer true. And you're in the dark.

Carah Burrell [01:38:22] You're.

Margi Dehlin [01:38:22] You're kind of alone in it, and you haven't rebuilt, and you're just feeling loss, like loss of innocence, loss of what could have been loss. Loss of you. You that could have been. You know. And so it was really, really helpful for me to kind of have that framing of nihilism, this idea that there's the. That it's a philosophy of this. That it almost has to happen for a new. A re. Emergence of yourself. And the thing that has really moved me lately is thinking about a caterpillar. So I have this analogy. It makes me cry. But what did you know with caterpillars, right, that when caterpillars cocoon themselves, right, they. They actually eat. Their old selves are almost completely dissolved inside, that if they're digested, they eat away at their old frame, their old structure of being a caterpillar. There's a point in the process where if you poked the cocoon, it would. It would be liquid and it would all fall out. It would just drain out. And that speaks to me. It speaks to me of that time of just like you feel like so many things are eaten away, that this old form of you no longer exists, and you don't necessarily know what. What's coming or if there is something coming or. And so you're kind of in the dark and you're looking for any Remnant of you that remains, you know, And as it turns out, with a caterpillar, there are certain cells that remain. It's like parts of their brain and

Carah Burrell [01:40:19] a little bit of.

Margi Dehlin [01:40:20] I think it's their heart. And then that becomes the foundation for the butterfly. And I don't know. That feels like me. So I did a lot of looking around, trying to find a little morsel of me somewhere during that time, like, what's left? And I did find some things, and I find most people do. And so my charge then was to kind of tend to it, love it, grow it, you know, kind of like how a caterpillar does to become, eventually the butterfly that breaks through that cocoon and is transformed into something completely different. So I really like the image of that, and it kind of feels true to my experience. But, you know, I've described it before as kind of groundlessness. Noah Rashada speaks to that in his podcast. I listen to that podcast in particular every day for, like, over a year.

John Dehlin [01:41:35] It's an episode on Secular Buddhism podcast.

Margi Dehlin [01:41:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:38] Referencing groundlessness.

Margi Dehlin [01:41:40] Groundlessness. And it was my way of, like, retraining my brain to not think there was a reason, a certainty, and a purpose to everything. It was like, oh, this is actually life. This is how life is. There's a groundlessness to life. There's a fragility that we. If we want to be fully alive, that we have to acknowledge and walk with. It's part of being alive. It gives meaning to being alive, you know, and so that was one thing I did. But what really emerged from that time, after a time, I created grief practices, because, of course, I'm still mothering. I'm still showing up during this time.

John Dehlin [01:42:23] Really quick, will you explain the idea of groundlessness that Noah tries to convey? Yeah, just briefly.

Margi Dehlin [01:42:31] I mean, the idea of groundlessness is that we like to think that, you know, there's like a structure to, or even a solidity to how we live. We can keep ourselves safe if we do this, this and this, or if we teach our children this. This eliminates risk, harm. You know, it's. It's kind of built around this idea of safety, which is Mormonism. Like, for me, it is so much of what I learned. And so. But it's really like we're in a free fall, is how he talks about it. We're free falling through life. It's a free fall. But what we've done through Mormonism is like, we've put on these glasses that make us feel like we're, like, on the side and we're really safe if we just do all these things, holding on. We're standing on the side of the mountain and we just kind of hold on to this, this like, gate that kind of keeps us. And as long as we keep the glasses on, we feel like we're safe. And we're not, actually. But if we took off the glasses while we were in Mormonism, we were just as vulnerable when we knew this. Like, if you looked around a congregation, tragic things happened all the time in congregations. Children got sick or, you know, people died in tragic accidents or. But we loved. It didn't matter if it wasn't true or if we could see because we wanted it to be true, you know, so just keep the glasses on and keep with the. That's like. That part of our psychology, I think is just so persistent, this desire to be safe, this desire to figure things out, this desire to feel like you. You have the answer or the reason. And so. But the idea of groundlessness is if you, if you take off the lens of Mormonism or whatever else that's telling you that you are not actually free falling, you know, you really are. We were then. We were then. We just didn't know. Yes. And so then it's. It then it becomes if that's true, if we all walk with a certain level of vulnerability and fragility, uncertainty, uncertainty, then what do we do about that? How do we live? And so that was kind of where I wasn't sure. So, but just dealing with these two things, the darkness, me feeling like I'm digesting and eliminating and like parts of myself I don't want anymore and they're not there and the meaning's gone. And this idea of groundlessness, I had to create grief practices. I had to process what I was feeling or it wasn't going to be good, it wasn't going to be healthy. And I knew that I was still showing up every day in our home in the same. In many of the similar ways now with probably one or two kids at home. And so I, for many years, had started this meditation, a grief meditation, after the loss of my dad, where I would sit down and I would go through a grief meditation and I would just weep. I wept for like a year. Like every time I would do the meditation, I would just weep through it, you know, so feeling, feeling the loss is so important. Processing loss, we don't know how to do that in culture. I don't think we've necessarily. We're very aware of what it means to grieve we definitely aren't supported in grief and loss, you know, So I, I did the meditation, the grief meditation. That's when I started doing more yoga. I would take long walks with sunglasses and just cry through, through my walks. Yeah, I think what I really wanted to just kind of say is that there's a level of like letting go on, on. It's kind of like, it's kind of back to the caterpillar, but really allowing yourself to let go of and let it wash through and process your loss, that actually it points you to what you value. It really innately sets you up for a seedling for a birth in a bit. And so I just view grief and loss is so important to this process. I don't think it can be bypassed. I don't think it can. You just won't end up in with the insight and the changes that I think are so integral to living an intentional, purposeful life without this step. And so, yeah, I definitely felt all the feelings. Read a lot of books and Eckhart Tolle was huge during this time, a great comfort. I listened to the Oprah and Eckhart podcast and so from a New Earth. Yeah. And that's a little bit rebuilding. But I mean, in the grief and loss there was a lot of processing and think of not just cognitive processing, not just thinking like, I'm going to just think this through, I'm going to think through with my rational brain or I'm going to take this psychologically, but body processing. Oh, massages. Massages were another huge part to grief. I would go in and just have someone like the touch and moving through my muscles and it was really, really helpful. So there's a body component to grief too.

John Dehlin [01:48:03] Yeah. And just, just if I can remember a bit what you did is it was just this idea that, you know, we tend to avoid as humans if we've experienced some great loss and there's a lot to process. Sometimes we'll just get really busy or get really distracted or self medicate to avoid the processing and to avoid the confronting the pain and the discomfort. So you would do these grief meditations where you would invite thoughts about your dad, invite thoughts about death, invite your sadness or frustration around your life and then sit with the pain after inviting it. And I would just come to you and say, what are you doing? You are choosing every day to cry. And what do you. Why are you putting yourself through this? But it's like that inside out movie. You lean into the sadness, you lean into the fears. That's the only Way through it is to lean into it. And if you push it away, there's just this payment plan where you. You live a life of avoidance and it catches up and probably can cause mental and physical health that can even have medium to long term consequences if you just are always running from the processing you need to do. So I just have to say that that was my understanding of what you were doing in those grief meditations, was leaning into the suffering and learning from it.

Margi Dehlin [01:49:30] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:49:30] Processing it, learning from it. Right, yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:49:35] Yeah. Can I ask, you mentioned a grief meditation that you did. Is that like a podcast or is that something people listen to?

Margi Dehlin [01:49:42] Is something I got from Desmond Tutu and his daughter in a book. It's on my blog, Beauty in the now under Meditation for the Heavy Hearted.

Carah Burrell [01:49:54] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [01:49:55] Yeah, people can have access to that.

Carah Burrell [01:49:58] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:49:59] Yeah. Thanks, Carah. Okay, so. So does that. I think that kind of. Yeah. I love what you wrote at the end of your outline. Pain and suffering can be our greatest teachers, and we tend to want to avoid pain. So whether it's through weed or Netflix or distraction or overworking or ex Mormonism. You know what I mean? And just like raging at Joseph Smith, there are lots of ways you can avoid, you know, the. The grieving and the processing that you need to do. But it's that suffering that we self medicate away that actually becomes our teacher.

Margi Dehlin [01:50:46] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:50:46] So that's the. That's the downside or the risk of. Of relying on numbing when you're feeling pain.

Margi Dehlin [01:50:54] Yes, that's right.

John Dehlin [01:50:55] Yeah. Okay, so now we're to the rebuilding.

Rebuilding Self and Relationship

Margi Dehlin [01:50:59] I know.

John Dehlin [01:51:00] What did the rebuilding process look like for you? So now. Now we're through most of the heavy, hard stuff. Big, deep sigh.

Margi Dehlin [01:51:08] I know. And should I be a little bit briefer so that we can end? Because I feel like we're at 2.

John Dehlin [01:51:13] No, let's just do it.

Margi Dehlin [01:51:14] Okay. Yalls buckled in? Yeah. So let's go pick up a little bit. Back to the story around, you know, John finding another place to live for a time. So what I did that night was I. We were still actually at this family gathering, and I called Liz Dalton, who is someone I had heard amazing things about with regard to, oh, divorce mediation, conflict resolution, structured separation, which is what I went to her for, was this idea of we're going to live apart. So how do we intentionalize the work we do? Because I didn't necessarily. I didn't want the marriage to end at that point, but I just wanted this change. So we. I contacted Liz and the rest of what I described pretty much now happens during the time we spent apart from each other. So we met with Liz Dalton usually one or two times a week. And we had assignments, and the sessions were usually around two hours, as I remember. And we began. And here are some of the things that emerged from this time of rebuilding. And with regard to the significance to myself. I had space for the first time in a long time. I woke up in our house and John wasn't there and his work wasn't there, and it was just kind of. It was really, really important for me to. I kind of heard a lot of silence. Like, it was really, really quiet. And the first thing that Liz pointed out to. She pointed out to me in our first session was, you know, you're in relationship to someone who has a world. He has a world for himself, and your world has so little in it, but you have a world too. So how do we build up your world so that it actually reflects you and looks like you? That's the first thing, right? So just from that, I started really thinking about what I wanted in my world. And that. That involved a lot of exploration, trying new things, you know, doing a lot of processing, considering parts of myself that I feel like I hadn't considered. And it. And having that space was so important for me because I wasn't. It eliminated a huge relationship to person in my life, so that I. I kind of had just myself to relate to in a lot of ways during that time. And so I really was able to kind of build up. There were so many births during that time. So many things came out of that. And we'll get to that in a minute. But I really took the time to listen to myself, to feel for what I wanted. And the second thing that came out of this assignment that Liz gave me was I realized that part of me had to go back to this idea of choosing. And I'll explain that. But I think for me, I realized that because of the formula and the expectations, there was so much that drew me to John in the beginning. And I know a lot of it was really, really soulful. But that pressure of a formula, it didn't feel like the same type of choice people outside religion make. Just like, I really like you and wow, we've, you know, experienced life together for several years, and oh, my gosh, I think coming from me, I really want to be with you, or. And I realized that for me, part of my healing had to involve feeling like I was choosing this relationship. I was choosing the Public Life of Mormon Stories and as it was, I was choosing John as he is really, as. As much as he loves work and can be really like he is, just naturally that is always going to be a big part of him. It was like me looking at our reality and truly seeing it for what it was. And I worked on creating an alternate one, a choice. And I did this by looking at homes or townhomes during this time. I looked at how much they would cost. I fell in love with some. I decorated the rooms in my mind. I thought about how I would live there, how I would go to sleep thinking about my kids coming over, what friends I would have, what job I wanted. Maybe I would be a school counselor. I looked into school counseling. I looked into going back for a master's in counseling. I looked and I just explored. But the more I did it, the more real this was alternative world became. Maybe I'm going to live in the woods. Maybe I'm going to live in a tiny home. Maybe I'm going to like have a relationship with a yoga hot dude. Maybe, you know, like literally things that I probably at some point should have had thoughts of but didn't. And that was so crucial on so many levels for me to now feel like, okay, I have this life and I don't need it. I'm not going to choose it because I need it and I'm dependent on it and because it's comfortable, I now have another life I've fallen in love with. I love it actually equally well to that life. I feel like it's equally possible that I could have this life. And now what do I want to do with that? And that was just a really important, I think, moment for me to kind of be able to go back in time a little bit in that way, but also in this present moment, feel empowered that I actually have a choice now. And so that was really, really important. Another thing that came out of this was this idea of it's John's world, Margi's world. Liz was like, now you have a shared world and that, that you create together. And our shared world was kind of. We had kind of children and some work projects at that point, but our shared world didn't have a lot of fun. We were very kind of serious and. And I remember her kind of saying, what do you want in this shared world? And I began asking John questions like, how, what would our life look like if. If you do Mormon stories? But we grow, like, is that possible? Is it possible? Because I don't want A life filled with purpose and contribution, where my growth and my sort of sense of joy in this life is diminished out of sacrifice. I'm familiar with that already. I don't. I don't need a second chapter of that. And so we started having these great conversations about how, you know, what that could look like, what practices we would have, how we would prioritize that. If I chose to actually get involved in some ways in Mormon stories, I now had a greater idea of how I would want to contribute in what spaces I felt comfortable contributing. So that was a key part, too, was kind of recreating our shared world to have some fun in it, to have going to movies and regular hikes and tending to it. Which leads me to another thing we did during that time, which is.

John Dehlin [01:59:00] Yeah, I was just gonna say this idea of your world, my world, and our world that Liz introduced us to, for me, was really important on a few levels. Like, in Mormonism, it's just all intermingled. You're just. It's everyone's world. Mom, dad, kids, church. It's just all one big mess. And so, like, you might have been uncomfortable with me having my own friends and my own activities in space. You may have not felt like you should have had your own. So I really. I really didn't feel good about how. I mean, I did work, and that was the way I had my world. But there was always this tension about, like, well, we're supposed to always be doing everything together. And why are you. Why are you gone so much? So part of the my world, your world that Liz brought to us, is this what you're about to talk about?

Margi Dehlin [01:59:50] No, this is great.

John Dehlin [01:59:51] Okay. Part of the your world, my world concept is you should. Liz basically said you should both have your own worlds, right? And this is what you needed. With your time away, you developed a Margi's world that you probably had never developed before. So all of a sudden, there's a Margi's world, and I had had, in some sense, my world all the time, but I always felt guilty about having it. And I always felt like you kind of resented or didn't feel good about me having my own world. And so the your world, my world thing, for the first time, it's like, no, we both should have our own worlds. We are both individuals, and I should be able to go on a work trip or have my guy friends or hang out. I should be able to have my world, my hobbies, and. And you, Margi, can't be upset about that. But Margi you need to start developing your world and stop feeling like you're intermeshed with me and the kids. I'm like, build your own world. Build a world. Because you needed that to give you fuel and identity and meaning and purpose. So. So Liz helped us cultivate and feel okay with each of us having our own worlds. And then, then. And then the final thing that's most, you know, that was kind of most groundbreaking is in Mormonism. It all becomes so intermingled that you really aren't intentional about the Our World piece. The our world is just like whatever time is left after. You're doing the mom stuff, I'm doing the dad stuff, I'm doing the work stuff, you're taking care of the kids. And if we're lucky, we'll have a date night. You know what I mean? Or have some moments at the end of the day where we talk. But Liz helped us to cultivate in our world that was more intentional. That still allowed us to have our individual worlds, but then to be more intentional about the our world.

Margi Dehlin [02:01:40] That's right. And work and children could show up there, but they did. They weren't dominant. They weren't the only two things.

John Dehlin [02:01:48] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:01:48] So. And that was important. And really what that concept was was differentiation. So she explained. She expressed this idea of, like, Margi, you're an introvert. You don't have to go to every party. John's. John may want to be more social than you. And it is healthy and good for you to say no and to do the things that. And to honor yourself in that choice. And it's great for John to actually honor his needs in that way. And this is oxygen to your relationship. It's not something that makes your relationship weaker. It's not something that makes. It's not scary. It doesn't make it so that you're not connected anymore. This actually of all of many, many things, ensures that your relationship will remain alive and interesting.

John Dehlin [02:02:32] Yeah. Because there's a fear that if we each, you know, do stuff on our own, that will grow apart. And that can certainly happen. But what can also happen is if you don't get your. If you don't develop your own individual worlds, you become resentful and unhappy, and that can guarantee you'll fall apart. Does that make sense? So you've got to find a balance. That's all. He's helped us see that.

Margi Dehlin [02:02:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:02:54] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:02:55] A couple other things that emerged during this time apart were that John got an office, Boundaries showed up in our relationship, and I learned More about boundaries and where I needed to boundary in some of the relationships I was in and also in my relationship with John. And that was one of the first things to emerge was this idea of a home space. This idea of, you know, separating work from our home, from our family. And John got an office and it was and is amazing.

John Dehlin [02:03:28] And I was afraid because we didn't necessarily have the budget for me to, to, you know, pay for office space. Part of what allowed Mormon stories to continue for a long time was just keeping the budget really low. So it felt scary for me to, to actually go rent out an office and have an office space. But it, but it led to us eventually being able to set up a whole studio and have higher quality interviews. Plus it improved our marriage. There were so many good things that came out of that decision. But you literally just said no more Mormon stories at home. Mormon stories out of the home. You kicked Mormon stories out of the home, Margi. And it was the best thing that happened to our family and of Mormon stories. So your prophet Tess. Thank you.

Margi Dehlin [02:04:11] That was important. I mean, I think the last thing I would say, and we are, we're wrapping up, we're getting to kind of the end here for people because I realize that we're, that we're over. But the, another piece that was really important during this time was me re establishing trust in myself. So I think because when you come to the realization that you have had a pattern of either abandoning yourself in all the forms that that can happen, that can be, you know, with regard to you having needs or that you have dreams or you have desire. And. But it all, it, it can come up in like many, many different ways. But also self betrayal, this idea that I would betray myself or abandon pieces of myself or abandon myself in difficult emotions that I really had to work on creating self trust again. And that involved kind of for me this emotional experience of going back to myself, Like to the 22 year old me who had those dreams that I remembered and those desires and like picking her up and kind of owning that I left her and I was sorry and kind of doing the internal work to commit to never, never do it again. And that was really powerful for me to do. And it also required a level of me taking responsibility for being part of that. And that was hard, hard work of looking at like what's my part? Like how did that happen and how can I prevent that from happening again in relationship, in systems, in. And being aware of my own blind spots there. And that was really powerful, powerful work for me and to kind of give that girl some voice moving forward.

Taking Personal Accountability and Moving Forward

John Dehlin [02:06:28] Yeah. I mean, you could just say we've all been victims and it's. It's all the church's fault and Mormonism betrayed me and Joseph Smith, blah, blah, blah. But you're saying, why is it important? Why was it important for you to recognize that you were a part of your own abandonment? Is that important? Was it important?

Margi Dehlin [02:06:50] It was important for me because there are other systems and there are other things at play. There are relationships, too. And I had done that in my relationship in certain ways. And so me, I'm about being aware. I want to be aware of myself and how I show up and have an understanding and compassion for where I've been. And I also don't want to repeat it. And so that requires that I understand where my own blind spots are so that I can ensure in, no matter what system I'm in, moving forward, because I have privilege and I can kind of choose a lot of that, but also in relationships that I can be very committed to myself first.

John Dehlin [02:07:39] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:07:39] The health of myself. And we tell our kids that too. Like, your health comes first, your mental health, your. You matter.

John Dehlin [02:07:51] And I guess if you put all the blame on the church, you're forgetting the fact that you are ultimately the driver. And by. By accepting partial responsibility for having abandoned yourself. The upside of that is. Is of that accepting responsibility is it becomes a reminder and a sense of empowerment that never again. I'm never going to abandon my efficacy, my self advocacy, my autonomy. I'm never going to abandon it again. But you have to acknowledge that you did play a role in that.

Margi Dehlin [02:08:28] Yeah. And that's where the trust comes in. The trust in yourself can only come in when you start saying, oh, otherwise another system can get you. Another relationship can get you. Unless I'm really, like, very aware of the fact of, like, oh, no. Oh, no, we've been here before. And I got you. I got you. I recognize it. This is not happening again. And that's why it's under self trust.

John Dehlin [02:08:52] Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful.

Margi Dehlin [02:08:57] So we can kind of move through the last little bits. I feel like a little bit faster.

John Dehlin [02:09:01] I mean, I don't. I don't want to rush this. I do. I will say I think I caused an up. An upheaval by talking about weed. And now there's a conversation about mushrooms. In the chats, Samantha Shelley felt like I gave weed a bad rap. And I. I have to admit, I've never tried marijuana or alcohol or mushrooms, at least at the time. Of this recording. I was not. I was not trying to say that I shouldn't speak about weed when I haven't tried it.

Carah Burrell [02:09:23] So, Carol, all I can say is has this been the best year of Mormon stories? Has it yes or no?

John Dehlin [02:09:28] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [02:09:29] Does he owe it? In some.

Carah Burrell [02:09:30] He owes a little bit to me and I owe everything to the power of campus.

Margi Dehlin [02:09:37] So there's no John Dehlin without weed, Is that what you're saying?

Carah Burrell [02:09:40] Basically, you guys remember geometry, transitive properties one to the other.

Margi Dehlin [02:09:44] See what you did there?

Carah Burrell [02:09:45] This exists? No, but all the same point.

John Dehlin [02:09:49] Let's give her a show. She's basically saying that sometimes weed is about more than self medication and numbing your feelings.

Carah Burrell [02:09:56] Right? Yeah. I was just saying in the chat that there's. There's different places where you can put walls down and sometimes people can do that in a therapist's office. And sometimes people just need to meditate on their own. Sometimes they need weighed. They need the assistance of mushrooms. They need different things to be able to different tools and a tool belt and stuff. So there's the idea, there's good and bad in all of it though too.

John Dehlin [02:10:15] There's kind of this idea of plant medicine that things like cannabis or psilocybin. For many post Mormons, it turns out we should probably do a series on this. Have been important parts of healing. But they can also self numb. Is it possible?

Carah Burrell [02:10:30] Yeah, no, absolutely. We're not saying it doesn't.

John Dehlin [02:10:32] It's both.

Carah Burrell [02:10:33] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:10:34] This will be a player in some of the thrive stories I'm looking at.

John Dehlin [02:10:36] Yeah, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:10:37] By the way. In beautiful ways.

Carah Burrell [02:10:39] Yeah, yeah. It's just tapping into recognizing what you need to. Sometimes it's good to just numb and escape and then other times it's good to go to work. So people who follow me on Instagram know that I did mushrooms this last weekend for the basically the first time. And it's kind of fun because it kind of entices you to think it'll just kind of be like an escape. And it's not. It's like gotcha. It's like a service project when you thought that it was gonna be an ice cream social. It's like, get your shovel, get to work now. This is labor intensive, so got a lot of good inner work done this weekend. So all of this is like. Everything that Margi's saying right now is deeply just on the level that I've been thinking and concentrating on all these same things coming into myself. Everything that Margi's been saying has been really Touching of all the same ideas around my head. And a lot of the people in the chat, too. Every. So many women and men, too. Recognizing just all of the things that we're talking about right now is like some of the most important things in the world that we just don't talk about enough. So I'm loving this. I think everyone else is too.

Margi Dehlin [02:11:36] That's so great to hear.

John Dehlin [02:11:38] All right. Yeah, thanks, car. All the viewers.

Margi Dehlin [02:11:41] I'm gonna bring us home. I feel like we're in the.

Key Moments and Resources in Rebuilding

John Dehlin [02:11:43] So the next bullet is, are there any moments that stand out to you around rebuilding?

Margi Dehlin [02:11:48] And I can do this fast. I'm gonna. I got my glasses on. I think this is celebratory. This is fun. This is gonna work.

John Dehlin [02:11:53] These are ways. These are ways you rebuilt. Is this the list? What is the list?

Margi Dehlin [02:11:56] Small moments of me reclaiming and choosing myself. Silver hair. Okay. Started going silver. I just embraced the way and came to terms internally with how I want to age, get older. Okay. Victory. Re. Establishing trust myself in moments daily. The simple question, what do I need? And learning to meet my own needs wherever possible. Giving myself time and resources to explore myself. This was a wound before. It was like anything that costs money, anything that it was not for me, it was just too much. What if I don't like it? And so much guilt associated with my own self development. It was ridiculous. So that was a healing kind of thing for me that I am worth investing in and so are you. So connecting to and living my values, that was a big thing that emerged from grief. Was like, what do I value? What do I want to propel me forward in this life? And what does it look like to actually live them? So don't just connect to an obscure value, but, like, what would it look like? Like, lived that value in my life. My meditation practice. Honoring movement as opposed to aggressive sort of exercise.

John Dehlin [02:13:09] The meditation. You would. You. You got an app. The calm app. And.

Margi Dehlin [02:13:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:13:14] Okay, go ahead. Yeah, I just want to make sure you started meditating at least 10 minutes every morning.

Margi Dehlin [02:13:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:13:19] You got out of bed. That was important. Very important.

Margi Dehlin [02:13:22] Honoring movement as opposed to self aggressive or punishing kind of exercise mentality, which I had as remnants from competitive running. My coaching certification. While we were apart, John would come and take the kids and support me to get my. So I was able to actually obtain a coaching certification over a period of three months. Coaching. My first client was a major victory. Calling Liz and asking for help was a major victory. Calling a therapist to kind of talk through some of my childhood wounds. Some relationships that I had was a major victory.

John Dehlin [02:14:01] So getting therapy, getting help.

Margi Dehlin [02:14:03] Yes. Getting my first payment for coaching. Like the first time I was paid, the first hundred times I was actually it's still thrilling joining a yoga so studio because I love yoga and it's just for me and I get what I want. It's heated and it's beautiful and I like that was a major thing. Sitting in the middle of the day to read, taking baths during the day. This like major victories with regard to healing, this, this idea that I always had to be productive. Permission to just be like a major victory is a day where I can wear all my cozy clothes, all of my cozy clothes and cozy socks and I sit and watch birds. Like just knowing that that's something I love and giving myself time for that is like a major victory for me.

John Dehlin [02:14:58] You bought a bird feeder. You put it right outside the window, you know, where you could view it from a comfy chair.

Margi Dehlin [02:15:04] And they have like that was you.

John Dehlin [02:15:05] You did that.

Margi Dehlin [02:15:05] Good food. I love those birdies. And then buying a full price outfit from a store. I love, I love thrift shopping. But I had thrift shopped so much of my life out of necessity that it was like absolutely liberating to go in and pay full price for something with my own money.

John Dehlin [02:15:27] That you earned.

Margi Dehlin [02:15:28] That's right. Participating in the podcast Mormon Transition, when John initially did an interview with him me also the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast, that was me meeting my fear and doing this discovery of testing out can I like something? Can I enjoy this type of work when I feel like it's aligned with my values. So. And then lastly, one of my, my greatest victories in my mind is that when I am sad, triggered, uncertain, destabilized is how I show up for myself now. And I can say my dad lives in me, you know, because I show up for myself in the same love he used to give me. And it kind of brings him to me in a way and it makes me remember him in a way and it's wholly my own in a way. So those are some victories.

John Dehlin [02:16:25] I love it. So that's when you started really building it back together again and learning to self parent and self love. And there's, I know there's a lot of listeners that never had your dad who never had a parent at all.

Margi Dehlin [02:16:40] That's right. And that's where you're kind of coming up a little bit with your own roadmap based on kind of what you need to hear or what you wished you had felt or experienced from a parent.

John Dehlin [02:16:51] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:16:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:16:53] I think we should have a thrive story on someone who learned to self parent when they didn't have great parents to begin with. All right, so the next thrive story question is what resources were most useful to you in rebuilding?

Margi Dehlin [02:17:08] Yeah, I'm going to kind of plow through these two because I feel like we could almost list these two at the end. Like, everyone can share their resources at the bottom of the interview, but here are some. You know, I feel like working with a coach. We worked with the coach individually as a couple and as a family, by the way, so that was important. I would say conflict and emotional regulation work and the power of something called the pause, which I've shared on Mormon stories and it's all over my blog with regard to conflict.

John Dehlin [02:17:40] You're in a fight. Call timeout. Don't keep fighting. Wait till your amygdala cools down.

Margi Dehlin [02:17:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:17:47] And then re engage. Just don't fight when you're both heated. Yeah, it's a really important tool I

Margi Dehlin [02:17:53] have kind of around not stigmatizing the burning down of a marriage because our marriage technically burned down twice.

John Dehlin [02:18:01] At least. At least.

Margi Dehlin [02:18:03] And it is like, like the healthiest it has ever been. And just a beautiful. Like I have just so much warmth and love for what the work we've put in and what we've created together. So it's a beautiful thing. But resources I love reading. It may not be for everyone, but the great thing about this is I can mention someone to you and if you're a podcast person, you can just Google where they've been interviewed and get a taste for what I'm saying. But for marriage, Esther Perel. The book State of Affairs was really helpful. The course of love by Elaine de Botton was really helpful. Getting the love you want by Hendrix and his. I feel like his wife. Yeah, the Gottmans as well. They. They have. I always forget their book. It's green and white. Anyway, that's great.

John Dehlin [02:18:54] Schools for making marriage work.

Margi Dehlin [02:18:55] That's great for marriage empowerment. Books. Untamed Magical journey for me by Katrina Kennison. Braving the wilderness by Brene Brown. Healing and wisdom. Eckhart Tolle. Eckhart Tolle. Eckhart Tolle. A New Earth. Another book called adult children of emotionally immature parents was another really powerful one for me. Tiny beautiful things by Cheryl Strayed. Set boundaries, find peace is another one. A guide to reclaiming yourself. That was another important one for me. Parenting books an empty nest and kind of healing it would be the awakened Family. The gift of an ordinary day. There's a video as well as the book, which is a memoir. And so but in addition to that, I would say Red Table Talk. That was. That I love because that is Jada and Willow and then her mother. And it's fascinating the topics, but what's really healing is to see three generations who have very different opinions be open and to communicate with a sense of love and curiosity there. So that is another. Like, that was a key thing for me. Therapy, nature, movement, massage, working with a therapist, working with a coach. Leaning into my own knowing, like knowing when enough is enough of the reading and actually being able to just get quiet. And what do I think? Like, what do I want to. What do I want to make of all this? Sexual healing was huge. And connection to myself in that way and pleasure. Pleasure is one of the best resources in this journey ever. So those are my resources next.

John Dehlin [02:20:46] That's beautiful. And we'll list those in as many of those as make sense in the show. Notes. What were there some obstacles to rebuilding that are worth mentioning? Kind of the more difficult aspects of rebuilding so the people can know it's not just simple. Yeah, it's not just rebuild. There's going to be challenges. Challenges that arise.

Ongoing Challenges After Leaving Orthodoxy

Margi Dehlin [02:21:06] Yeah, there are plenty. There are plenty, as it turns out. But I feel like one of the biggest ones that comes up is just sort of your default conditioning. So that's kind of like you can know cognitively that you feel differently about something and still have. Feel guilt and still feel. Have like this. There's this emotional disconnect between your update that you've done with regard to a belief or. And actually when you experience it because you're so conditioned, you still can feel. So yeah, that comes up for me a lot in parenting. Still feeling responsible, still wanting to fix aspects of my kids. Feeling suffering as an example. So default programming for sure. Healthy boundaries is really challenging in relationships with people that you love. We haven't, many of us haven't learned how to boundary with love what that looks like and how that can actually save and enrich and. Yeah. Create a healthy relationship with people that, you know. Yeah. Internal versus external. It's still a challenge for me at times to not look everywhere or seek the advice or research of someone who's an expert, but instead to kind of look inside. And sometimes I still catch myself looking to. For what other people feel, what other people want from me. And I have to actually just be very aware of like, oh, we. We can actually look inside on this. Like you're in this decision, as it turns out, and what you're actually feeling. One of the biggest ones for us, for me personally, has been acknowledging the pain and suffering that our conditioning and that has caused our children. And we have had conversations, some on deeper levels than others, but with all of our children that involved them coming to us and saying, this, this, and this hurt me. And you know what? It hurts me still. And there are parts of myself that have evolved around this belief that came from what you said about me back then. And we have had to hold that and cry with them and apologize and ask what we can do moving forward to create a relationship where they feel safer and respected and trusted. And that has been a gift of. Has been both a gift and also, at times, really, really painful,

John Dehlin [02:23:42] also for raising the Mormon.

Margi Dehlin [02:23:44] That's what I mean.

John Dehlin [02:23:45] Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's our issues that we.

Margi Dehlin [02:23:47] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:23:48] And then.

Carah Burrell [02:23:48] Oh, God.

John Dehlin [02:23:49] That we raised them in church. Right.

Carah Burrell [02:23:50] Oh.

Margi Dehlin [02:23:51] With parenting, there are layers upon layers that you'll end up feeling like messing up.

Carah Burrell [02:23:55] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [02:23:56] Yes. Tell me more about how I have really, really hurt you.

John Dehlin [02:24:01] You're not traumatizing your children.

Margi Dehlin [02:24:02] You're not parenting and therapy for everyone. I would also say the daily showing up for myself took a long time to kind of. The what do I need? Was not really intuitive. For me, this idea of getting comfortable with groundlessness took a lot of time to reorient my. To myself around, like, lack of certainty. This lack of certainty that we walk with and that not everything has a reason. There's just not a reason to everything, you know? And then loss of relationships. We have lost people along the way, and relationships have. Have suffered.

John Dehlin [02:24:42] Yeah. Yeah. And you lose some relationships and you'll.

Margi Dehlin [02:24:46] And then you gained. Yep.

John Dehlin [02:24:47] Better relationships.

Margi Dehlin [02:24:48] That's right.

John Dehlin [02:24:49] Sometimes. All right, I guess we've got two more questions. What is your life like now with respect to these domains? How does it show up differently? So this is sort of the summary of, like, climate, like, sort of, like, resolution of the story.

Margi Dehlin [02:25:08] That's right.

John Dehlin [02:25:09] When it comes to coming to yourself, knowing yourself, discovering yourself.

Carah Burrell [02:25:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:25:14] How are you today?

Margi Dehlin [02:25:15] Yeah, I feel like that we should have, like, a musical score at this part. Like something just like, da, da, da, da. Like, this is where it is.

Carah Burrell [02:25:24] Everyone's wearing, like, a ball gown and dressed up. It's the end of the. It's like the end of Titanic. Yes. Go back and see Jack standing there, and he turns around. Anyone get me? Anyway, that's what it's like.

Margi Dehlin [02:25:34] A tom totally made it through.

Carah Burrell [02:25:35] And you're in this fever dream of the reality has come to fruition. Yeah. Things are actually falling into place.

Margi Dehlin [02:25:42] Yeah. I mean, I'll. I'll rip through this list, and then I was going to just share a quick thing at the end, but I think one of the biggest differences is I actually have a relationship with myself now. I feel like on some level, I share a world with you, John, and I share a world with our kids, but I belong to myself. That's a Maya Angelou quote. I belong to myself first. And that, as it turns out, with all the messaging around how selfish that would be or how it has turned out, that it allows me to not only give the best love, in my opinion, I've ever given, you know, to those I love, but to receive it too. I think I'm better at receiving love belonging to myself, too. And that matters, you know, so there's definitely that. I think I have a different relationship with my children now. I think when you're enmeshed and you're counting on them and you need them to be good so that you're good and so that you feel like you've done a good job and that you're feeling like your salvation and all that pressure you're putting on them, that makes it so. I think children feel that and don't feel like they can be honest with you and don't feel like they can show their whole selves. And so I've noticed a shift there, and that's been one of the. The biggest gifts of my life is just to have our kids come over and pour out the really difficult, really personal things that they're struggling with. That's. That just feels amazing to be trusted that way. I know it lights me up now. I know it gives me a sense of purpose and fulfillment and that drives me forward. I know what my values are, which grounds me in this reality of groundlessness. I boundary. I speak up, I self advocate. I. I also listen more. I feel like I'm less threatened overall. I definitely feel like my towers are alive and well at this stage, and they reflect me now, as opposed to a system that would benefit from me giving my money and all my time and my resources. My towers really reflect me, and you can see them in my life. And I'm always updating and changing them because I'm always changing. And then I would just say, I used to live with a lot of fear. A lot of fear. That was maybe one of the most defining emotions I felt. And I think one of the biggest things I have now is having lived through so, so many of my worst fears. And I think what isn't talked about enough is that something happens when you live through your fear, and that is that you get to see who you are on the other side of the fear. And that you're stronger maybe than you thought, or you're more resilient, or, you know what, you're just still here. And you might have guessed that those things would have killed you, you know, so there's a beauty in that. And then I thought it might be nice to just kind of illustrate something about what this journey has kind of meant overall in an ad that's of kind. Kind of symbolic. I don't know if how many of you grew up with the Nike ads in magazines, but they were. When I was running for byu, they were all over the place. And I used to rip out the. The Nike ads and I saved them in a binder and I. I was going to read just a part of one. And I was talking to Clara, and Clara remembered when I used to read her the Nike ads. And she was like, you've got to read the whole thing. You've just got to read the whole thing. So if you don't mind indulging me, it just goes so well with how I feel like my journey has gone and maybe you'll relate to it. Can I start?

John Dehlin [02:29:36] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:29:37] You were born.

John Dehlin [02:29:38] We have a visual here for those watching.

Margi Dehlin [02:29:40] Great. So for people watching, hopefully you can see the pictures, but this is literally a Nike ad. You were born a daughter. You looked up to your mother. You looked up to your father. You looked up at everyone. You wanted to be a princess. You thought you were a princess. Princess. You wanted to own a horse. You wanted to be a horse. You wanted to your brother to be a horse. You wanted to wear pink. You never wanted to wear pink. You wanted to be a veterinarian. You wanted to be president. You wanted to be the president's veterinarian. You were picked last for the team. You were one of the best on the team. You refused to be on the team. You wanted to be good in algebra. You hid during algebra. You wanted the boys to notice you. You were afraid the boys would notice you or girls. You started to get acne. You started to get acne that was bigger than your breasts. You wouldn't wear a bra. You wouldn't want to wear a bra. You couldn't fit into a bra. You didn't like the way you looked. You didn't like the way your parents looked. You didn't want to grow up. You had your first best friend. You had your first. Your first date. You had your second best friend. You had your second first date. You spent hours on the telephone. You got kissed. You got to kiss back. Got kissed back. You went to prom. You didn't go to prom. You went to the prom with the wrong person. You spent hours on the telephone. You fell in love. You fell in love. You fell in. Fell in love. You lost your best friend. You lost your other best friend. You really fell in love. You became a steady girlfriend. You became a significant other. I would say you became a mother. You became significant to yourself. Sooner or later, you start taking yourself seriously. You know, when you need a break, you know when you need a rest. You know when to get work, what to get worked up about, and what to get rid of. And you know, when it's time to take care of yourself for yourself, to do something that makes you stronger, faster, more complete. Because, you know, it's never too late to have a life, and it's never too late to change one. But I loved that. Because of that, I became significant to myself. It shows this journey and then a flip of when it turns back to you.

John Dehlin [02:31:45] So how does it feel?

Margi Dehlin [02:31:47] It feels. It feels good. It feels good. It feels like alignment, You know, coming, like, full circle.

John Dehlin [02:32:04] So you. I mean, I'm thinking about when, like, Oprah's asking ecartole. So you're enlightened. Like, you have no ego. Like, oh, I'm wanting.

Margi Dehlin [02:32:13] Like, is it not?

John Dehlin [02:32:13] No, I'm not. I'm not.

Margi Dehlin [02:32:14] Oh, it's effort.

John Dehlin [02:32:15] Same question. I'm just saying, like, wow. You're basically saying you have come back to yourself. You. You feel like you really have.

Margi Dehlin [02:32:23] This is what I'd say. There is no arriving. I don't feel that with anything. There's no, like, oh, I'm done. I did it. Yay. Like, there's no such thing. Not in relationship, not with anything. And so, no, I think what I have are practices and an awareness and an intention that I matter, that I live with and practice these practices of being and showing that I am significant to myself in my life. Right.

Joy and Meaning Found After the Transition

John Dehlin [02:32:56] Yeah. And for those who are for. Let's just say Mormons or orthodox Mormons who are being told there's no happiness if you leave, you can't. If you leave, you know, you'll leave everything of value behind. If you leave the church, you'll leave everything of value behind. You know, what would you. What would you say to that?

Margi Dehlin [02:33:21] Well, I mean, I'm never really great at these questions. This is reminding me of the Mormon transitions interview, because it's basically what people believe. So you live. That's what you do. You live your life. And sometimes it doesn't look pretty outside the church, there's a lot of work to do, and there can be a lot of reckoning and there can be a lot of suffering because it's not easy and you don't have a community. Oftentimes you've lost that piece too. So, I mean, what I just say is that you commit to yourself and you live.

John Dehlin [02:34:01] And how is it?

Margi Dehlin [02:34:03] And I think it's been a journey, and it's been a journey of, like, all the things, all the things you're resisting.

John Dehlin [02:34:12] Just saying it's amazing.

Margi Dehlin [02:34:13] But I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to be here with you. It's the reason why I chose this for the thrive story is because for me, it's so much better. Like, when you look at all those beliefs and how I was living before, like, I feel fully integrated. I feel fully connected to myself. I feel like I've healed. A lot of the things that, you know, I felt like at one point were liquid instead of inside the cocoon. That on some level I have the possibility now to fly wherever I want to go. It's up to me, you know, and it's not without risk, but I can fly, you know, and that's incredible. That's incredible. And I don't think. I don't see how that would have been available to me before in the church. I just don't, you know,

John Dehlin [02:35:13] So you're all in all, you're. You're glad you went through it.

Margi Dehlin [02:35:16] All in all, I'm so grateful I went through it because I'm here and I have the relationships that I do, and. And I have this sense of just joy and excitement about my life and connecting to my life. And it's not that I can't be hurt. That's the thing. It's like, just because I've gone through. But on some level, I think when you do go through part of that transition where it gets dark is like, you. You kind of get to know what that feels like, and so it's less scary, and so you don't fear it like that. Like the same way. Do you know what I mean? So it ends up kind of setting you free. Free in the end.

John Dehlin [02:36:08] Yeah. And I think the conclusion we came to at the end of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast is the. The real gift of a Mormon faith crisis is the rest of your life. It's you. That's right, you, you are the gift, self discovery and empowerment. And then the rest of your life to spend your time, money, your identity, your resources exactly as is most healthy. And I'll add, we were all ashamed that selfishness or self centeredness is the epitome of evil. But the truth is you, like Oprah said once, you can't give what you don't have. You know, the giving tree winds up a stump. So you, if you can take the time to get to know who you are and develop yourself and learn to self care and to self nurture and self grow ironically, not only have you self developed and not become a stump, but you can bring a better partner to a marriage, you can bring a better human to a parent child relationship. You can be a better friend and you can, like you said, just be alive and have the mental health and the resources to also benefit other people or society. And ironically, it's that self centeredness that, that gives you the power and the ability to also eventually bless other people's lives at, at the right pace. That's healthy for you. Does that make sense?

Margi Dehlin [02:37:37] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:37:39] So in some sense we've misinterpreted Christ's teachings about lose yourself in the service of others. No, you don't lose yourself. You find yourself and that makes you able to show up for other people in healthy ways. Is that okay? Is that fair?

Margi Dehlin [02:37:54] I like it.

John Dehlin [02:37:55] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [02:37:57] I do. The last one.

John Dehlin [02:37:58] Yeah. So this is the final. So the question is, any final tips, tricks or resources you would recommend to others regarding this domain? So we listed a lot. What, what do you want to list in terms of resources?

Margi Dehlin [02:38:14] This isn't resources.

John Dehlin [02:38:15] Oh, sorry. Final tips and tricks.

Margi Dehlin [02:38:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:38:18] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [02:38:18] These are just kind of things that I.

John Dehlin [02:38:19] So this is like a summary, like parting words of wisdom.

Margi Dehlin [02:38:22] This is like when I think about the whole. Here are things that kind of emerged for me that were important. Be gentle with yourself and rest. Get curious about yourself and look at what you find in the form of data versus judgment. So make it neutral. Make the information that you learn about yourself neutralize it. It's just data you're learning about yourself. Lean into what inspires you and what comforts you. This is a great place to begin. When you're rebuilding identity. Consider the power of values. Lived values for grounding amidst groundlessness. Consider new practices to support you as you change or self discover. Connect with yourself in your distressed moments. Connect with your body. Ask questions. Don't leave You. The power of what do I Need? Is kind of an entry point to you showing up for yourself and in your own life. It restores your trust in yourself, but it also restores trust in your relationships with others. Ask for what you need. Seek professional help when necessary. Mentors and dear friends are hugely important, and that's a shout out to our pod people.

John Dehlin [02:39:48] Our book club friends and our friends and our children.

Margi Dehlin [02:39:53] Part of our pod.

John Dehlin [02:39:55] Caldwell's the Gardeners.

Margi Dehlin [02:40:01] Are you listing our pod people?

John Dehlin [02:40:03] The Woodbags, the Buns, the Martins. Holly. Dave Schultz's Martins. Lots of. Lots of Cooley. Really important people. The Burrells.

Margi Dehlin [02:40:17] What?

John Dehlin [02:40:18] The

Carah Burrell [02:40:20] pod.

John Dehlin [02:40:22] We're gonna pod you Gerardo yourself.

Margi Dehlin [02:40:24] Potted.

John Dehlin [02:40:26] Works become. Works become kind of family a little

Carah Burrell [02:40:29] bit, you know, Got your back.

John Dehlin [02:40:31] Yeah. That's all. That's it.

Margi Dehlin [02:40:34] You did was not one to two hours.

John Dehlin [02:40:38] It was almost 3. 2 hours and 45 minutes. So this is our first.

Margi Dehlin [02:40:42] We'll refine.

John Dehlin [02:40:42] We'll refine and hone the thrive stories.

Margi Dehlin [02:40:46] But you did make more. You probably made a little more comments than. Maybe we will because you shared my story, but I won't share. No, that's not. I'm sorry. I'm saying that element probably won't be there, though, right? Because I won't. I won't know their story.

John Dehlin [02:40:58] We're trying to get these down under two hours.

Carah Burrell [02:41:00] All I know from the comments is that this podcast was perfect and it was healing, and people were saying it's like the tall glass of water that they've been needing to drink. So I don't think anyone would change a single thing about this. Oh, this is deeply healing. If nobody else benefited out there in podcast listening world, at least I did. So. Felt good.

John Dehlin [02:41:18] And were you a prophetess by not wearing makeup, Carah? Was that. Did that turn out to be a wise decision?

Carah Burrell [02:41:23] It turned out to be a very wise decision.

Margi Dehlin [02:41:26] And it also is kind of, again,

Carah Burrell [02:41:27] like, ironic where it's like, coming home, like, stripping back the layers and stuff. Like, girl, take off your makeup. You know?

Margi Dehlin [02:41:33] Right. What do I need? What do I want?

Carah Burrell [02:41:36] Yeah.

Closing Reflections and Farewell

John Dehlin [02:41:37] All right, well, I guess I. I guess we'll just couple. Just final closing points. Thanks to everyone who commented that made this possible. Thanks to everyone who Super Chatted, who donated, either through the super chat feature on YouTube or through the stars on Facebook. This is a program where we're seeking nominations. Either have a, you know, nominate someone that you think represents thriving in a particular domain. So whether it's parenting, relationships, spirituality, mental health, finding religion after finding community Finding meaning, finding purpose. There are lots of domains. Physical health, mental health, spiritual health, psychological health. We want to find our shining examples or mentors in each of those domains and we want to interview them to a month on Mormon Stories podcast. So Carol, provide that link and you can go to that link, kind of the Thrive Stories link, and you can nominate someone you really love and respect or yourself. Margi will evaluate the applications. She'll pick two a month, and that means next week we're going to have another one. Is that right?

Margi Dehlin [02:42:51] That's right, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:42:53] And so that's important if you want to support Margi and if you love to see this work, if you want to support this effort, please donate to mormonstoriesgmail.com, become a monthly donor or donate however you want to Patreon. But. But you know, we're paying Margi for this. The board, independently of me, I recused myself. The board said, just like, just like Simon Southerton, just like John Larsen, just like Carah, we are going to be paying Margi for this. Full disclosure. We do transparency here, but Margi's adding value. So the board feels okay about that. Please donate to support us and just generally, thanks for supporting Mormon Stories, Carah. The, you know, the donations that have come in to support you have really transformed us this year.

Carah Burrell [02:43:38] Yeah, it's been incredible.

John Dehlin [02:43:39] Best year ever, everyone.

Carah Burrell [02:43:40] Best year ever. And we're just gonna keep going. I'm so excited about this project. Like, I think this is a whole other layer to Mormon stories of a, a certain niche of growth that people are really craving. So I'm so glad you're doing this, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [02:43:52] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:43:53] Thank you.

Carah Burrell [02:43:54] I get to just sit here and bask in it. So. And I was just telling Sam Shelley in the chat that, you know, you're mentioning Eckhart Tolle and Bene Brown and all these different amazing voices and things that have helped facilitate so much healing and growth. And I genuinely think that you are up there with those types of just wise leaders who have so much wisdom to give. And not only am I just, I'm grateful that you're my friend and that we get you in this, this post Mormon, ex Mormon space. Like, we get our own Brene Brown, we get our own Eckhart Tolle here like twice a month to come and give these interviews. Like, how cool is that you guys, like, give it up.

Margi Dehlin [02:44:28] Like, we have.

Carah Burrell [02:44:29] We've got so much wisdom here sitting in this chair that we all get to learn from and especially people in the chat just are loving and there's so much good work that's going to be done from this, this new project. I'm so excited you're here.

Margi Dehlin [02:44:42] Thank you. Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:44:44] Maybe Sam Shelley is worthy of a Thrive story.

Carah Burrell [02:44:47] For sure. We were just talking about re parenting is what she's had to learn.

Margi Dehlin [02:44:51] So if you want a reparenting that is an amazing.

Carah Burrell [02:44:54] She's had to really learn that. So she said she'd be up for it.

John Dehlin [02:44:58] Weed and mushrooms can change your life by Samantha Shelley. That's so I was being silly. Jokes, jokes, everyone.

Carah Burrell [02:45:11] It's like not quite a joke. It's just like it's not on brand for John to say though.

John Dehlin [02:45:18] All right, so yeah, join us.

Margi Dehlin [02:45:20] Next week we'll have another episode of Thrive Stories and I will be in the main interview chair. I'm very excited, so I believe the what I can say about it. I kind of want to make the person a surprise, but it the main premise is on finding meaning and purpose. It'll be great.

John Dehlin [02:45:40] Yeah, Beautiful. All right, well, Carrie, you make everything better on Mormon Stories, so thank you for joining us.

Carah Burrell [02:45:46] I'm just so grateful to be here. I have nothing but gratitude. Thank you for the donors for letting me have this job. Thank you you, John. Thank you, Margi. Thank you listeners. This has been literally one of the best podcasts ever. I think this is going to do so much good for so many people and I'm just honored to be here.

Margi Dehlin [02:46:00] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:46:01] And Margi, I love you and we love you and we're lucky to have you and thank you for, you know, sacrificing this coaching practice that you built up a little bit so that you could share with, with so many people your wisdom. And, and we're again, thank you and thanks to the board for supporting Margi in this endeavor. It's a trial. We'll do it for three or six months. If it doesn't add value, it doesn't work out, we'll. We'll stop it.

Margi Dehlin [02:46:27] That's right. That's part of life.

Carah Burrell [02:46:29] That's impossible. And do we want to plug the show that we're doing tonight?

John Dehlin [02:46:34] Yeah, yeah, sure.

Carah Burrell [02:46:35] Go for it.

John Dehlin [02:46:37] Yeah. So, so we have a show. Carah and I are committed to a new call in show either Tuesday or Thursday nights, depending on the week, usually around 7:00pm Mountain Time. What's the name of the show, Carah?

Carah Burrell [02:46:53] Called Mormon Scoops. And you're gonna get like a scoop of what's going on in the Mormon world for that week and something that's relevant. Last week we did Kind of an update about Brad Wilcox after like his whole speech got out, updating what we still called it like top 10 things that still need to kind of be addressed. This week we're doing something that's a little bit different. We're going to go into some, would you call it like internal?

John Dehlin [02:47:24] Yeah, yeah, I'll just say. Yeah. We, I had a, I had a member of a stake high council on the Wasatch front who's a non believing stake counselor, share with us internal data not just for his Wasatch front stake, but also from sources he's connected with at church headquarters about the many ways in which the Mormon Church is really struggling with not only anecdotal evidence from his stake, but also hard data from his stake and again from stories and in addition to sharing in the title of the episode is Mormon Church in decline, question mark. And it's basically analyzing with data the, the impact of COVID and modernity on the health and vitality of the Mormon Church, in particular on its youth. So tune in, join us at 7 tonight for that. And we're going to be incorporating a new feature that we developed last week where we're going to allow call ins. So after we do our general presentation, we're going to let you join us. Video with your phones, with your microphones, with your desktop and we'll allow users and listeners and viewers to call in and comment at the end of the show. This is a new feature. It's a little bit risky, it's a little bit vulnerable. But you guys loved it and care. Are you ready?

Carah Burrell [02:48:49] Yeah, I mean, are you guys ready?

Margi Dehlin [02:48:51] Like

Carah Burrell [02:48:53] we, again, we're kind of like workshopping, trying to figure out exactly what we want to do. But the call in show that we did last Wednesday, I wasn't there. It was so successful. People loved it. In Mormon stories, so many people have something to say. We don't act like gatekeepers here. We want to have as much diverse voices as possible and stuff. So hopefully it'll be good. No crazy people come in and like just like scream at us or something. Hopefully it'll be good. I'm giving them ideas.

John Dehlin [02:49:15] No, no trolls, please. Trolls stay home.

Carah Burrell [02:49:17] Yeah, but I mentioned in my Instagram stories this week that I've read these things that John has shared with me and you guys. My, my job was on the floor. I said, okay, so the church is toast and then you're also going to get some tea if you guys know what that is, if you know like, you know Gen Z language. So I Might want to rename the show Tea and Toast because that's what it feels like. You're getting the tea on how the

John Dehlin [02:49:40] church is toasty and toast with Karen John.

Carah Burrell [02:49:42] Anyway, it's all food related scoops. Ice cream. Anyway, you guys are gonna love it. This is going to be a really, really interesting program. Two amazing Mormon Stories episodes in one day. So tune in for that.

John Dehlin [02:49:53] So join us tonight at 7pm Mountain Time. Don't forget to join Mormonism live on Wednesday nights at 6:20 with Bill Real and ready for Mormon. That's not part of what we do. But we, we believe in a big ecosystem and a rising tide lifts all ships. So support those as well. And yeah, so thanks everyone. Love you and be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Please share this everywhere. Give us a positive review on the Apple Podcast app Because haters have dragged down our average review rating. Not even listening to the podcast but just wanting to spread hatred. So please review us on the Apple Podcast app. Give us a positive review. Please review us on Spotify so we can keep our high review there. Please give us a positive review on the Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page. Become a monthly donor@mormonstories.org we lose. Actually, let me say it this way. We have had our best year ever on the Open Stories foundation and Mormon Stories Podcast. My compensation is fixed. I'm not looking for any more money. However, with every increased level of donation, we've been able to bring on more resources. So bringing on Carah, bringing on Gerardo, upping our cinematography game. Now we've brought on Jen to help with office management. Jennifer has been helping with time codes and show notes. The more that you guys support us, the more you'll be part of a movement to transform Mormonism and post Mormonism. The whole Thrive movement has been able to grow out of this where we're able to support the Thrive initiative. Thrive Houston's coming up. Thrive SoCal is coming up. Thrive Florida is coming up. Thrive for Women is coming up. All of that's in early April. Go to thrivebeyondreligion.com to register for those amazing events. We've got Thrive weekend over the summer and so many positive things with Thrive, which is separate from the Open Stories foundation but still a sister organization that's that's helping people find community. So support us in all the ways. Also, I'll just end by saying we're going to be offering along the Wasatch front and online a new faith crisis support group series. Where in St. George in Provo in Alpine, Lehigh, in Salt Lake and in kind of Davis County. And then online we're going to providing low cost or free faith crisis support groups for those in need. So we're going to be announcing that later today. We think it's going to be transformative. And so just know that if you need coaching or therapy, you can't afford a coach or a therapist. Or if you want the benefit of group, you know, group support and a therapist or coach to guide you. Check out the announcement we're going to be making soon about free or low cost or affordable faith crisis support groups where you live or online. So many cool things in the weeks, months and years ahead. Thanks for tuning in on Mormon Stories podcast, Margi. We love you. Thanks so much again. Thank you, Carrie. You're the freaking best. So great to have you here in

Carah Burrell [02:52:59] the presence of greatness.

John Dehlin [02:53:00] Yeah, well, we all are. And you viewers and listeners are the greatest of all. Cue Whitney Houston singing the Greatest Love of All.

Margi Dehlin [02:53:08] Carah, hold up.

John Dehlin [02:53:09] I believe the children are our future

Margi Dehlin [02:53:15] Magic.

John Dehlin [02:53:17] Should we stop?

Margi Dehlin [02:53:19] No, I want to carry the concert. I would totally go.

Carah Burrell [02:53:22] Yeah, I'll sing all my hits. Unbreak youk My Heart. Oh, my gosh. Hold on on a

Margi Dehlin [02:53:30] for sure. That one.

Carah Burrell [02:53:32] I can go forever. End the podcast. We got places to go, we got people to see. We got a show to do tonight.

John Dehlin [02:53:37] Thanks so much. Stay tuned. Thanks for joining us on Mormon Storage Podcast. Please support us and we'll see you guys all again very soon. Bye, everybody.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.