Introduction and Welcome to Lindsay Hansen Park

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 460

John Dehlin [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3. Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. This is John Dehlin, back in the podcasting saddle again after too much time spent on my dissertation and on applying to internship for my psychology PhD. But I'm out and I'm back and I'm excited to have a brilliant and talented and important guest on Mormon Stories today.

John Dehlin [00:00:55] Her name is, if you don't know, Lindsay Hansen park or Lindsay Park. Lindsay is known. She's very prolific on the Mormon Internet. I think I met Lindsay in 2012 when she was actually co leading kind of a fun run for women in the Congo, women who were abused or battered or mistreated in some way. But she also by that time was a perma blogger on Feminist Mormon Housewives.

John Dehlin [00:01:28] Lindsay does a lot of cool things. She's a part of fmh. She runs the Feminist Mormon Housewives podcast. They're currently doing a series on the Wives of Joseph Smith, which is super cool. She's been a part of the Wear Pants to Church initiative, the Ordain Women movement. She's currently working for Sunstone and for John Larsen at the White Fields Education Foundation. But what we're here to talk about today, at least to begin with, is a series of very, very serious and important topics within, within Mormonism, within the LDS Church, within Mormon culture.

John Dehlin [00:02:07] And it has to do with body image, it has to do with eating disorders. And from there it actually leads to several, you know, issues around faith and feminism, etc. But the topic today, at least to begin with, is going to be Lindsay's kind of struggle with body image concerns, bulimia, eating disorders, etc. It's something that we've covered on Mormon Mental Health a little bit, but we've never covered here on Mormon Stories Podcast. And Lindsay Hansen park, we're just super excited to have you on Mormon Stories. So welcome.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:02:42] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:02:43] I hope you don't feel like you're cheating on your other podcast.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:02:47] I don't. We have an open relationship. So

John Dehlin [00:02:52] you're polypodcastious.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:02:55] Yeah, I was going to make a terrible joke, but I'm not going to do that for the Mormon Stories Podcast. But yeah, thank you for having me.

Lindsay's Mormon Upbringing and Early History

John Dehlin [00:03:03] Well, Lindsay, let's just dive Right in. And tell us a little bit about your. Your Mormon background, your history, and then let's just talk about how that led to kind of struggling with bulimia and eating disorders. So take as much time as you want to give us a background about your life to the extent that it informs these types of issues.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:03:29] Sure. And before we get started, I want to say, I guess I want to give a trigger warning for the podcast that I am going to try to talk in language that is as healthy as possible and not set off triggers for people. But when you're talking about these issues, it's so difficult.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:03:49] I'll tell you a story later on about an actual church article that made my disorder worse, and I don't want to do that. Sometimes with this disorder, you can get ideas from people that you didn't have before that can lead to more unhealthy behavior. So I'm really going to try to avoid that while still sharing my experience. And I. And I would just say, John, for you, I don't know if you know this, but it's really important that we keep away from numbers. Like, we don't tell. I'm not going to tell you what I weighed when I lost a lot of weight or what I weighed before.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:04:24] That stuff is really, really triggering because as disorder eating people, people who suffered from that might know that can become like a benchmark that they're trying to get to. So, anyway, so totally, totally. That's my disclaimer at the beginning.

John Dehlin [00:04:42] All right, well, thank you for. We know this is serious. I've had, you know, there have been eating disorders in my immediate family and in my extended family. And just as another disclaimer, eating disorders are considered to be among the most severe of all diagnoses in the diagnostic and statistics manual that psychiatrists and psychologists use that there really aren't necessarily good standardized cures for eating disorders. They tend to have some of the highest mortality rates in mental health, and it's just a really tough business. So. Yep, I'm with you. And let's tread as responsibly as we can.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:05:27] Okay with that. Fun introduction. Yeah. So I grew up in Utah, in Murray, and it's the same old story. I have generations of Mormons. I have an ancestor that I like to say was part of Mountain Meadows, not as a part of pride, but as a part of something interesting. So I'm related to Juanita Brooks. I have ancestors that go all the way back to Nauvoo, which is really cool. And I grew up faithful, very Very faithful. I loved the church. I loved my church experience. I got married in temple and still married. I'm endowed. And up until about three, it's almost, it's going to be three years ago, I've stopped engaging fully in Mormonism. So I don't know how much you want to go into that.

John Dehlin [00:06:24] Not just like what, talk about the good parts, about your Mormon experience before it kind of turned, before the eating disorder and body image kind of stuff started to flare up.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:06:36] Well, I was always very devout and very earnest. I've always been very earnest. And my mom likes to say that I'm like a pendulum. I swing to one side or the other. And I think, you know, that used to really make me feel bad, but I think that there's some truth to that. If I love something, I'm in it 100%.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:07:01] And I felt that way. You know, you hear those stories growing up about being Mormon and like someday somebody might come and ask you if you believe in the gospel and they could do it at gunpoint. Would you be willing to die like our ancestors did? And of course I was like, yeah, yeah, I will. And I remember going over those sort of scenarios in my head, thinking what I would do and practicing and practicing what I would say because I believed it. I was almost fanatic in my beliefs about it. In fact, my dad, who is a great guy, he has always been kind of what I used to think was a lazy Mormon.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:07:43] He, he went to sacrament meeting with us every week, but he didn't give us blessings. The story goes that he blessed me as a baby, but he was so nervous about it that he threw up for days beforehand, so his voice was hoarse.

John Dehlin [00:07:58] Oh man.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:08:00] And if they would ask him to pray in church, he wouldn't pray. He didn't give us blessings. He stopped paying tithing. When, I don't know when he stopped, but he was an accountant and he just didn't. He had some problems with the church. And so that actually made me more religious because I felt like he was kind of our trial and that we had to be more religious to make up for not having the priesthood in our home. Which is ridiculous because technically, I mean, he had the priesthood and he was in home.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:08:35] So yeah, so my dad, I remember we would go as a young girl, we would, we would go out to eat on Sundays with my grandparents, my dad's parents, and it became this tradition. And once I hit seminary and I really got a testimony for myself, I put an end to that. I was very self righteous about it. And I said, hey, we can't do this anymore. This is sinning,

John Dehlin [00:08:59] okay?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:09:02] So I was that kid that got their family to stop eating out on Sundays. And I've told this horrible story on one of the podcasts before, but in college, I had a friend. My best friend fell away from the church. I hate that term. She stopped attending. She was struggling with belief, and she went on a vacation. She kind of went to a Smashing Pumpkins concert with her, with her boyfriend. And I felt like that was wicked because they were going to stay in the same hotel room and they didn't do anything, but it didn't matter. It was just so wicked of her to do that. So when she left, I organized. I got all the roommates to kind of kick her out.

John Dehlin [00:09:47] Oh, man, it was terrible.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:09:48] It was like, the worst thing. I can't believe I'm being so flippant about it, but it was terrible. It was terrible. So she got back, and I had told her mom. Her mom showed up at the airport and was waiting for her when she got off the plane with this guy. And things went terribly south for her. But I remember at the time feeling like this was my job to help her. And it hurt me so much personally that she was questioning her faith. I took that very personally. So, yeah, I've done some pretty bad things in the name of God, I think.

John Dehlin [00:10:25] But it was all because you really believed it and you felt like the stakes were high and.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:10:32] Yeah, I do. I feel like sometimes belief can be a weapon, you know, instead of a tool to make you better personally. And I was definitely one that felt like I interpreted the young women's motto, stand as a witness of God, to never to put principles over people, I guess. And I did. And I have several stories, unfortunately, of myself doing that, you know, growing up to certain friends, if they didn't. If they weren't doing what they're supposed to do, Standing as a witness, for me meant punishing them, I guess, in a way, with my friendship. And as we'll talk about later, I think karma kind of came back and punished me for that, too. But it was. It was terrible. And I. I have. I still have a lot of regret for it now.

John Dehlin [00:11:26] And do you feel like this. This tendency to take things very seriously and very literally maybe was a bit of a. Bit of a proclivity that led to feeling very strongly about your body image?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:11:44] I think so. I think I'm. It's not something that I'm going to consider like a defect in my personality. I think it's so much an inherent part of my makeup that it's really hard for me to say that it, that it would be a bad thing.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:12:00] I'm very trusting, I'm very sincere, and I'm very earnest. And so if I believe something, you know, I believe it. And so you're right. I was doing these things because I thought they were the right things to do. I didn't enjoy doing it. It was painful to me to, you know, kick out my best friend. I was in a lot of pain. But it was absolutely the wrong most sort of insidious, sort of taking the Lord's name in vain that I could have ever done.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:12:29] But I thought, I thought being faithful meant doing hard things for your faith, you know, and including losing. You know, we're told these stories of people that have given up their families to join the gospel. And I was prepared to do that if I needed to.

John Dehlin [00:12:46] Right.

First Signs of Disordered Eating

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:12:48] So I don't know if it's all me or if I. I have to say, I know a lot of people don't like putting the blame on the institution, but unfortunately there are some teachings that would take this aspect of my personality and completely inflame it into something harmful.

John Dehlin [00:13:07] Right, right. So when did the, when did the symptoms of an eating disorder first emerge?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:13:15] Well, I remember really at a young age, really young, I hung out with a lot of boys. So our ward was really close knit, which is something that I love. There were like 17 boys my age and three girls. So we were always just running around the whole neighborhood playing night games. It was, it was great. But I remember listening to the way that boys talk to each other about girls.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:13:39] And you know, you could pick up really quick what they're saying is a good characteristic of a girl and what is not a good characteristic. And one of the things that I lacked, I was a late bloomer. So I was flat chested forever. It was terrible. And I remember saying prayers to, you know, like, please help me develop. This is terrible in junior high because the boys were all talking about that and I was really self conscious about that.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:14:07] That was part of it. But I also remember the way my own mom would talk about her body and the way that my dad would talk about my mom. My dad had this picture of my mom from high school and my mom had this beautiful long hair and he kept that on his desk always.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:14:25] And my mom had always had short hair as long as I knew her. And he kind of would make reference that he missed her looking the way that she did. And that always stuck with me, too. And so those are things that I had internalized well before the behavior started. But I. You know, I grew up with this idea of, here's what a good woman does, here's what a good wife does, here's what a bad wife does. And I. My mom was a really strong, independent woman, and sometimes that embarrassed me. I wish that she could be more of the, you know, housewife. I mean, she was.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:15:03] She cooked, she stayed home and all of that. But I wanted her to be what, you know, perfect. This perfect Mormon housewife. And so I internalized that, and I was determined to be that. So at 10 years old, I'd already started cooking for my family. And when my dad would like my food and praise it, I considered like I was on my way to being the good Mormon woman.

John Dehlin [00:15:28] So you started cooking pretty. Pretty young.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:15:32] Yeah, I did. My mom was busy. She was really involved in, like, PTA and stuff, and. Which was great. But so I liked to cook, and I really enjoyed it. But I also liked the praise that I got. And. And that would carry over as I got older, into high school. It became a competition. Internally, I liked that I was a better cook than my friends because that meant that I had more value to the boys than they did. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:15:59] So your life starts orienting towards, you know, looking right, looking good for boys, being. Being a housewife, being the ideal mother, looking good, and performing in ways that. That please your future companion, basically. Eternal companion. True.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:16:19] Absolutely. Yeah. And that was always on my mind, and I was always aware of how other people talked about their own bodies and how they talked about other people's bodies. And internally, I always would say, okay, that's a bad characteristic, what they just said, and this is a good characteristic. So this is what I do want to do, and this is what I don't want to do. And I became really good at kind of, I don't know, incorporating those traits that people saw as good traits or as bad traits. So my identity was a. Was really, you know, revolving around adopting what I thought other people liked about myself, if that makes any sense.

John Dehlin [00:16:59] Sure, sure. So it's kind of this external locus of authority, so to speak.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:17:05] Yeah, yeah. And so I go into young women's and. And of course, there's a lot of talk about modesty. I think it's actually gotten worse since I was a youth. But I remember, you know, I really prided myself that the boys thought I was attractive, but they didn't think I was slutty.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:17:30] So boys respected me and I knew that I was gonna be the one that they wanted to marry. Even some of the boys that liked the. I hate this term, but I'm going to use it to be descriptive. The slutty girls, they might like them now, but when they got home from their mission, I would be the one that they would want. And that played out in our dating interactions.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:17:53] I actually. I got. This is so stupid, but I got the nickname Crusher in high school because boys would get like, ask me out, and when they wanted me to kiss them or whatever, I would end the relationship, you know, right away. And that felt really good to me, really heady. To make boys attracted in me feel like even if they confess that they loved me, and then to end it right there, to set that boundary. And I think that was really validating to me. It was kind of a really dumb thing to do.

John Dehlin [00:18:26] Was it. Was that about control? What was that about?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:18:29] I think it was about validation. I think that I was so. At this point, by high school, I was so set on showing that I was going to be this good, this good wife, this good woman, that this played into it that. See, Yep, I must be on the right track because all these people think that I'm attractive or that they. They want to be with me. And so.

Restriction, Body Image, and Early Struggles

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:18:53] So that was really great, Great for me. It felt really good. And I remember I took a dance class for. For gym, and we had to wear tight clothing, you know, and that's when I first started realizing, oh, my gosh, I don't look like the other girls. I'm a little bit thicker than the other girls, which isn't true.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:19:15] But, you know, I had to. I was always in competition with these other girls, even though it was never outward. And that's when I first started noticing my body was not as tone as some of the other girls. I played basketball.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:19:32] That was a really healthy environment for me, I think, because it was not built around. It was built around your functions of your body, not how you looked. Dancing was different. I mean, it was about how you looked. So a lot of it. So that was when I first started noticing. So I decided to start skipping meals at lunch. I don't remember ever being anything more than that. I just. Just thought I would start skipping meals at lunch. And so I did.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:20:04] And as I started losing weight that way, the more you lose weight, the more praise you get sometimes, right? And of course, that is like, you know, cracked cocaine to someone like me. Just give me praise. Give me more praise. And so I took that as a Validation and a motivation for what I was doing. So that's. Do you want me to keep going?

John Dehlin [00:20:29] Yeah. So basically I'm thinking about Skinner, my studies in psychology. There's this notion of positive reinforcement where if you want a rat to run the maze, you give him cheese at the right points and. And you're positively reinforcing that behavior. And that's the most powerful form of reinforcement. And it just feels like that's what you were receiving.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:20:54] Yeah, I mean, I really was. I don't think. I mean, every. Everyone means well when they compliment you on how good you look, right?

John Dehlin [00:21:02] Yeah.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:21:02] And. But it was so validating. And then also what it did is it told me that somehow what I was before was deficient, that I was right, that this was the right course. Because clearly if they're complimenting me, that must mean that before was not as good.

John Dehlin [00:21:24] Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:21:27] This might be a little triggering, so if you don't want to hear this, you can skip this part. But I remember at being a perfectionist, starting to want to be the best. I came up with a game with myself that the more hunger pains I felt, that was a more. It was a measure of success.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:21:46] So those pains began to feel really good to me because it meant I was successful. And I craved that feeling. And I have to say I've had a lot of different deposits disordered eating patterns, but the restriction, the anorexia is the most hellish sort of twisted way of thinking that I've ever lived. And one of the greatest blessings of my life is to have changed my behavior to bulimic behavior rather than anorexic. Because that is such a terrible trap in your mind.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:22:28] Just the games you play, like the hunger pains feeling good or the calorie counting or anything like that. It's such a creepy, crazy way to think. I. It's hell. I mean, it's hell on earth, truly.

John Dehlin [00:22:42] Okay, So I mean, I'm. I'm as a guy and I know that, that men struggle with eating disorders as well, but. But I can just say that for myself and maybe it has nothing to do with gender. I don't even know why I invoked gender, but. But basically I'm always looking to alleviate that pain. I love to eat, I love to get filled up. And I'm just trying to imagine feeling motivated by being hungry. That's a real reversal of kind of how, how I function on a day to day basis. And so it kind of flips your world upside down. It sounds like it does.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:23:17] It does. And you know, there are all kinds of really crazy stories. I think. I think there was this terrible quote by one of the models, Kate. I forget her name, but she said something like, being skinny feels better than being hungry. I can't remember what it was, but it's terrible. But that is exactly anorexic thinking. And if you go on Pinterest, there's a. There's a lot of terrible motivators, little memes that show, like, women exercising that have a lot of this anorexic sort of rhetoric. It's kind of sick, but it's coming from a really sick, twisted way of thinking, which is motivating yourself to do harm to your body and convincing yourself that it. That it's what you want, that it

John Dehlin [00:24:01] feels good, and that it might even be best for you.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:24:05] Yeah. But it's a measure of success. So let me just give you an example. And this is not your fault at all, because you didn't mean to do this. But when you said at the very beginning of the podcast, eating disorders are some of the most severe disorders. Right, right. There's a part of me still that goes back to this perfectionist thing that says, see, we are the worst. That means we are trying the hardest to be the most severe. I can't explain that sort of twisted thinking, except for I know a woman, we did an interview on my podcast about eating disorders, and she felt bad that eating disorders weren't considered bad enough to her mom. And so she wanted her mom to say eating disorders are so bad because then she knew that she was doing something so extreme and she was achieving that goal. Does that even make sense?

John Dehlin [00:25:00] Yeah. Yeah. It's like a. It's almost a badge, right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:25:03] It is a badge. The. The more that we can be severe, the more it means we're losing weight.

John Dehlin [00:25:10] Yeah.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:25:11] Or. Or whatever it is that we're trying to get to.

John Dehlin [00:25:13] Okay. So, um. So you start dancing, you start thinking, you start wanting to please the boys you're dating. And. And you sort of sounds like you start funneling into this extreme behavior as it relates to your appearance and eating. How does it talk about how that sort of moves from just, you know, a little bit extreme behavior or response to culture and society? How does it move into an eating disorder?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:25:44] So, I mean, I would consider that restricting it was well on its way. I mean, the thinking patterns were already in place. But meanwhile, I started to wait for a missionary, and he was never really interested in my appearance, and that bothered me, which is dumb.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:26:03] He really liked my personality and, you know, my writing and things like that. And I thought there must be something wrong with me if you. All these other people are giving me praise and my own boyfriend won't. So I tried extra hard to please him. I tried extra hard to make him think that I was pretty. And it's just not looking back, it's not in his personality to give praise for that sort of thing. And he went on his mission and I would hear a lot of rhetoric like you have to keep yourself spiritually fit and physically fit because he's going to be out there tracting all the time and he's going to be out there working his mind.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:26:37] So you, so you have to really try hard to not let yourself go when he gets back because he's going to be in Australia with all these beautiful girls. And that was so hard for me because he meant so much to me and I thought I have to not let myself go. You hear about going to college and getting the freshman 15.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:26:59] I didn't want that to be me. I didn't want him to go and have me be worse off when he came. I wanted to be better when he came back. So that was a huge motivator for me. Also at the same time my mom started noticing that I was restricting my food and she didn't understand the disorder at all. So this is not to place blame on her at all.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:27:23] And she reacted in a way that was probably not helpful at the time. She thought that I was being vain. She thought I was just being vain and self centered a little bit.

John Dehlin [00:27:36] Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:27:38] So she threatened me that, you know, if I didn't start eating, she would come to my school and shove the food down my throat in front of my friends. And I believed her because my mom, my mom's kind of batty like that. She would have done that.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:27:54] And so I was scared. So I started eating and she would watch me. She would watch and make sure would eat. And this made me feel like I had lost complete control because I hadn't corrected the underlying thinking. So I still have this need to lose weight in my mind to change my body image. But you know, I have someone watching out of good intentions. She was absolutely doing what was she thought was best. And in the meantime, I'm going to church and I'm hearing so much stuff about our body as a temple. Our body is a temple. Take care of your body. And I always internalize that with, with such shame.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:28:33] I must not be taking care of my temple. You know, I'm doing things to my temple. And my mom would Say things like that, too. This is going to ruin you. You're not going to be able to have kids. And then who will want you then? Or, you know, you can.

John Dehlin [00:28:48] And she's just trying to help you, right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:28:50] She's just trying to motivate me. She doesn't know. I mean, eating disorders still have a huge stigma, but just Even, you know, 10, 12 years ago, we didn't know anything about it. I had an aunt that had an eating disorder, a very, very severe one, and she was adopted and was abused severely as a child. And my mom, because my aunt's life was so dysfunctional, I think we internalized that as this is what a dysfunctional, abused person does. This is not what a girl like me, who has had a lot of advantages does. This is not how you act.

John Dehlin [00:29:28] Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:29:29] So I have all of that going on. And so, of course, you start engaging in unhealthy behaviors because you can't help it. So I started wearing baggier clothes like they say you do. And of course.

John Dehlin [00:29:45] Why? What's that about?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:29:46] You hide. You don't want anyone to know how much weight you're losing at a certain point. So it's ironic because everyone thinks it's about losing weight. Right?

John Dehlin [00:29:55] Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:29:56] And I even thought it was about losing weight, but it got to the point I didn't like people to touch me. When my mom would hug me, I felt like she was feeling my bones to see how skinny I was.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:30:07] I still feel that way sometimes when people hug me. It's really weird. People would comment on the way you looked a lot. I hated that. I started to hate that. I started to think that they were. It was an indictment, like they were saying I was sinning if I was skinny.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:30:26] And, you know, I really started internalizing this religiously, especially because my boyfriend's on a mission. I'm trying super hard to be spiritual. I went to college and I had. I was. I couldn't restrict my food, and I started binging because college was stressful. The missionary was out. That was really stressful. Just, I had a friend that had passed away from cancer that was really stressful. So I started binging on food.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:30:59] And binging is, I think, kind of misunderstood because I think sometimes when people snack a lot, they think, oh, yeah, I know what that feels like. Binging to me was compulsive. I couldn't stop it. I. I could eat, I don't know, seven or eight bowls of cereal in one sitting, or I could eat, like a. Almost a whole gallon of ice cream.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:31:23] I. I hate to even say that because I don't want someone out there to go like, oh, yeah, well, I'll eat two gallons of ice cream. That's not. I just want people to understand that it's like a dangerous amount of food that you're putting in your body. There are stories of people's stomachs bursting and things like that. But since I had no conception of what this was, I thought I was going to die. Like, immediately die. Like, I would wake up tomorrow and I would die. I thought that I was sinning. I thought that I was doing something so dangerous, and it only made it worse.

Bingeing and Purging Through College

John Dehlin [00:32:01] And so where were you at BYU at the time?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:32:04] I was at Utah State.

John Dehlin [00:32:05] Utah State. Oh, okay. That's right. That's right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:32:08] Yeah, I was living on campus too, so I was in a little apartment. And of course, we didn't have a lot of money then, so I found ways to buy really cheap food at first. And then that's when I started stealing from my roommates.

John Dehlin [00:32:25] How do you go from restricting to. To binging?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:32:29] For me, for me, it was about the fear that my mom would follow through on her threats. And that happened early on when I was still in high school. So I had already started binging at this point. And I should say I forgot about this. To counteract the binging, I would exercise. So I became a compulsive exerciser. And I did that the summer between high school and college. And then I did that the first year of college. And I gained weight because I was binging. You can't possibly run off seven bowls of cereal after you've done that. But I tried. I sure tried. So I was really fit in that way. But I started going to the field house at Utah State about twice a day.

John Dehlin [00:33:20] I was there this morning.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:33:22] I love the field house. I started doing ROTC workouts with rotc.

John Dehlin [00:33:28] Yeah, they're there every morning. Yeah.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:33:31] And they're working, actually. And I did enjoy exercising, but it was. I mean, I would count in my mind how many calories I thought that I had. And of course, this is me not knowing anything about nutrition. I thought water had calories. I didn't know water didn't have calories. So I would punish myself if I drink too much water.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:33:52] All kinds of things like that. I just, I just had no clue what I was doing. I thought, you know, fat free meant I wouldn't gain weight. So you can buy fat free ice cream. And I would eat a lot of fat free ice cream anyway. Just kind of. It's just really, really unhealthy. And I'm trying to think, oh, I went home. It was when I went home and I had binged. I went home for the holidays and I had binged on something that I found out that I could throw up completely on accident. I just found out. And that's what started it out for me.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:34:26] I thought it was such a relief to be able to throw up after I ate. It just. It felt. Felt wonderful, but also it felt terrible because now it felt like a deliberate cheating, you know, like this taking the sin to the next level.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:34:44] And because, you know, there's nothing wrong with eating right? In the church. There's nothing wrong with eating. Of course I was binging, so I was punishing myself for gaining weight. But it wasn't a sin to binge, but to purge, to throw up, that felt different. That felt like a sin.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:35:03] And so I went back up to school. And of course it's really hard to have that kind of behavior when you're in close roommates. So I found really extreme and unhealthy ways to hide it. And the more that the closer people got to finding out, the more secretive and dangerous and underground the behavior got. I remember actually someone blamed an eating disorder on one of my roommates.

John Dehlin [00:35:33] Oh yeah.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:35:34] Because she was thinner and she was funny about eating her food. And so they just thought it was her. And I felt bad at the time, but I. Of course, you know, you try to protect your addiction, your compulsion.

John Dehlin [00:35:48] So nobody did they like find throw up or they.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:35:53] She. I think one time the bathroom had smelled like throw up or something. And she was funny about food. Like I said, she would eat very small portions, which was hard for me as well. I judged myself. I was so jealous that she could do that. I hated that she could do that. Just naturally. She just didn't have an appetite. It just wasn't her thing. And here I am. So it got really, really bad. I had a scholarship. I was at Utah State and I loved it. Don't get me wrong. Utah State was. It was amazing. It was some of the funnest years of my life. My roommates were fantastic. Other than the fact that I kicked out my roommate Will get, you know.

John Dehlin [00:36:33] Right, right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:36:35] But it was wonderful. At the same time, you know, I've now molded myself into this perfect Mormon wife. Right. So all these returned missionaries are just all over the place. At our apartment, we had a lot of cute roommates.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:36:51] We. We did well in the dating scene. But it got to be so, so overwhelming and so I don't say this to say, look how popular we were. It just the culture there was so out of control. Our ward directory was called the Menu.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:37:11] Yeah. And they put a photo by us, by our name. They took everyone's photo. And I remember walking. Walking by the Elders Quorum room, and there was a group of the men looking through it, pointing to the pictures of the cute girls.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:37:31] And of course, like, that just played into my. I don't want to be on their bad list. You know, I don't even know who these guys are. I don't. I don't have any feelings towards them, but I can't be that girl on the bad list, so.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:37:46] Or we would walk out of Relief Society. I kid you not. I'm not exaggerating. The men would line up in the hall, and you felt like you were cattle. Being, like, graded as the women would walk out, some men would nod, and they would just check out the train of women. It was really gross. So we would sometimes turn out all the lights and, like, eat ice cream on the floor. So no one would. They would just leave us alone. Because the marriage culture, it was so.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:38:16] My roommate had been proposed to twice. I had been proposed to once just on, like, second dates. It's all the terrible singles award stuff that you hear happening. It happened to us.

John Dehlin [00:38:28] Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:38:30] So is this still interesting?

John Dehlin [00:38:32] Yeah. So there's this heavy marriage culture. There's this heavy emphasis on appearance. In some ways, these freshmen or these college wards are kind of like meat markets or, you know, where everybody's kind of on display to try and pair off. And you can't. I guess you're worrying that you can't restrict because of your mom. I'm still not totally understanding how that converts to binging, though, because binging seems to be in the opposite direction of where you would want to go. Still, like an extreme. So is it just an attempt to cope with anxiety? Is it a way to medicate, or is it something else?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:39:19] I felt like I couldn't restrict. I mean, I literally could not restrict my food anymore.

John Dehlin [00:39:27] So you just kind of got sick of restricting?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:39:30] I couldn't restrict. My mom would watch my food. She would make me get on.

John Dehlin [00:39:35] But not while you're at college. She can't watch your food.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:39:37] No. But at this point, I started binging before I went to college.

John Dehlin [00:39:41] Okay. Okay.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:39:42] So it becomes a compulsion. You can't stop. But that's what I didn't know. So I hated myself when I did it, but I couldn't stop. It was really weird. And so I start getting more depressed at this point. Right. So I'm up there. Things are really great on the outside. I'm dating a lot. I've got the scholarship, I'm a really good artist. I'm doing really good in my classes. But I'm miserable inside because I feel crushing, crushing guilt. So I.

John Dehlin [00:40:12] Is this religious guilt?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:40:14] Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:40:15] And how does. What is it, what is it about Mormonism that made you feel guilty? Specifically about binging and purging? Is it word of wisdom? Were you saying, this isn't taking care of my temple. It's a body, you know?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:40:29] Yeah, all of that, all of that. Anytime word of wisdom came up, I internalized that towards what I was doing.

John Dehlin [00:40:36] You are not treating your body well.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:40:38] I wasn't treating my body well. There was, you know, eat meat sparingly. And of course I wasn't binging on meat necessarily, but I couldn't eat sparingly. I just felt terrible. And I already felt like I couldn't measure up because there was this whole rhetoric of like, boys go on missions and they come back and girls don't get that. And at Utah State, they called me to be a ward mission leader or stake mission leader, which I felt really good about. But here I am teaching a class and all these returned missionaries would come back and it was automatically assumed that they knew more than I did because they had served right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:41:16] And I believe that they knew more than I did. So I kind of felt spiritually inferior. I felt physically inferior. I felt like all those men up there wanted me and not in a good way. It felt. So I'm trying to think of the.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:41:36] It just felt like everybody was looking at me all the time and not just me, like my roommates. It wasn't like I was self centered and I thought it was all about me. I just felt like women were being devoured. Like that was our job and I was trying to stay afloat. And we're talking about modesty and how men are always thinking about us. And us roommates would talk about our cute, modest clothes and how to make them cuter. And I just felt like as a girl going out on campus, people were always looking at my body, always.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:42:11] And it felt, I don't know, it put so much more pressure on me than I would have put on myself alone. So I decided as a stake mission leader, I felt really guilty. So I decided to go confess to my bishop.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:42:28] And so I go into the office and I'm really lucky because my bishop was a good, good guy. And he. I started crying. You know, I tell him that I'm starting to throw up a lot. And to his credit, he said to me, lindsay, you're not sinning. This is not a sin.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:42:49] And I didn't believe him. You know, I thought he just doesn't understand, like, what it is I'm doing. But. But it felt good to hear that. And he said, you know, why don't you go get some therapy at the counseling center, right? So I did that. That was actually not a good experience for me, but it was a good start.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:43:10] So I started paying for therapy. I didn't want my parents to know. I knew that if they knew that I was doing this, this would be worse than restricting my food. So they would make me come home. And so I went to the therapist, and the first guy was this guy who said.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:43:27] They gave me to a guy, and the guy had pictures of his family all over the wall. And he said, lindsay, I know exactly how you feel. Because I was a chronic masturbator, and I couldn't stop either. And I know exactly how you feel. And as a Mormon girl, I was mortified, right? Like, I could barely even say the word masturbate. I just. I mean, I thought masturbation was evil and a sin. And to have him compare that to what I was doing only played into, oh, my gosh, like, if that is what I'm doing, if. If it's like masturbation, I am going to hell, you know?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:44:06] So it was really uncomfortable. And eventually I got a therapist that sent me to the. The U or USU's. I don't know, doctor. I can't remember what it's called. And they prescribed me some Prozac. And we're not telling my parents, so I'm paying, you know, 60 bucks a month, which I only had 200 bucks a month anyway.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:44:30] But I'm. I'm trying to do this because I don't want to sin. I. So I'm on Prozac. And it was not a careful diagnosis. So the medicine just messed me up. So I remember sitting on my bed, and just, like, sitting there, I would start missing classes. I didn't have any motivation to go and do anything.

John Dehlin [00:44:52] It took away the medicine. Took away your motivation.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:44:54] It took away my motivation, yeah. I don't know exactly what. I just remember that it didn't help the problem. It really compounded the problem. I started feeling even more sinful because I thought the bishop's prescription meant I would go to therapy. I. I would get fixed right Then I could get back on track. And since I couldn't do that, I felt even more deficient. I felt like a sinner. And so I. I remember I would start to make rules for myself. I would say, okay, Sunday is the Lord's holy day. You're not going to defile your temple on that day.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:45:34] And so I would make all these rules. And I knew that if I were in my apartment, I would just want to eat. So I would pack a really small lunch and I would go take it on Old Main Hill. And I would read my scriptures, and I would read my scriptures until the hunger pain was so strong.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:45:52] And that's when I knew I could eat my lunch. And then I would go into the institute building and I would study there. And I took an extra institute class, and I went to the USU bookstore. And I only bought church books because I was determined to beat this. I just knew that I could because I had enough faith to do it. And I would do that every Sunday. I would do that because I couldn't throw up on the Sabbath.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:46:15] And then I would get home and I would wait till midnight and my roommates would all be asleep, and I would binge and purge so much that one time I passed out. It was constant. I would binge and purge all night long until I passed out.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:46:33] And that is the first. Well, to make a long story short, I stopped going to class. I lost my scholarship. I like to tell people that I bulimiad out of college because that's what I did. My grades that second semester just plummeted. It was terrible. And it was really hard for me because I was doing so well. The program, you know.

John Dehlin [00:47:02] What were you studying?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:47:03] Art.

John Dehlin [00:47:04] Studying art.

Losing Scholarships and Hitting New Lows

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:47:04] I had an art scholarship, and I lost that.

John Dehlin [00:47:07] And were you a painter? What did you like to do?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:47:09] Yeah, I was going into illustration, but I was a painter. And, yeah, it was. That was a whole. A real huge sadness to me. That was. But the summer I came home.

John Dehlin [00:47:24] Wait, let me ask you. Let me ask you one quick question before. Is that okay?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:47:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:28] But before we talk about you leaving Utah State, and you tell me if this is too much of a trigger for either you or for the audience, but to what extent can you talk about just how does it work? Like, if you've got roommates, how do you keep them from hearing? How do you do it at family vacations or family time? How do you hide it from everybody? Like, is there a routine you do? Are there secrets you develop? How do you hide it?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:48:00] Well, I'll say Something, and this is going to be triggering too. But I feel like this is illustrative of the problem with the church's rhetoric. So at the same time, I was only looking to church resources for help because that is what I believed. I believed that they had the answers for me and nothing else did. So I would desperately, often, often Google eating disorders and bulimia and anorexia on LDS.org to see what they would have. And I would check it often. And of course, it wasn't updated often. There was only a few resources.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:48:39] And one of them was a story that had been printed, I think in the new era or the Ensign. And it was about a girl who developed an eating disorder. And her story became so severe, I can't remember. I think she dies in the story. Like she dies from it, which didn't help my paranoia that I was going to die. So I, you know, that gave myself an ultimatum like, if you don't stop, this is going to be your fate too. But in this story, they gave a detail where the girl throws up in garbage bags and to hide him from her mom. And. And that was one of the things I was like, hey, there's an idea.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:49:16] Right? And so I started doing that. And that was. That worked very successfully for me because you can do a lot with that without going into details. I was able to hide it. I was able to do it with roommates in the room and while you

John Dehlin [00:49:33] were in the room with your roommates.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:49:35] Yeah, yeah. Not all, not all throwing up is like you see on tv, you know? You know, it's not all gagging sounds and you just get really good at it. And anorexics get really good at sitting down and having a meal with you and making it look like they're eating. There's just. It's almost a contest or a badge of honor. Like how good.

John Dehlin [00:49:59] So you become highly skilled at something, right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:50:01] Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:50:03] You know, I've heard these stories. There's a residential eating disorder facility here in Cache Valley and, you know, they actually have, as I understand it, monitors in the bathrooms, where they monitor you all the time. And I've heard that women can get so good at it that they can actually throw up in their hand and discard it and not have it be detected by somebody who's actually watching them as a full time job. So I guess the point is some very extreme forms of hiding that are highly skilled.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:50:42] Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Very creative, too. So you take like your good creative aspects and you can do some crazy things. So.

John Dehlin [00:50:53] Yeah, so I was just curious how that works, and I guess it's probably

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:50:56] different for everybody, but, yeah, I think it's different. I also know at the time that there, you know, there are some really unhealthy communities online that really promote this and give other people ideas. And to my credit, my mom, when I. So I told them, and I'll tell you about that in a minute. But when I did tell them, she had read about those sites somewhere, and she threatened me, saying, if you ever do that, you're going to be in so much trouble. And to my credit, I'm so glad that that is one of the things I stayed away from, because I really feel like, for me, where I was at, if I had gotten sucked into that, I would have been lost.

John Dehlin [00:51:37] Into what? Specifically?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:51:38] Into these communities that perpetuate and promote and help teach you tricks and tips.

John Dehlin [00:51:44] Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:51:46] So although my mom's style was hard to take at the time, I'm actually really grateful in a lot of ways because even though fear is not a good way to overcome these things, it did protect me in a way from some really dangerous stuff. I never messed with diuretics. I'm really lucky that I didn't.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:52:07] That became one of my principles. I wasn't. You know, that was something I was gonna stay away from. So. So I didn't. I didn't mess with that kind of stuff. But I did tell my parents, and of course, they did threaten to.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:52:23] To make me come home. And so I came home that summer, and since I didn't have money now to pay for it, and because my grades were terrible, I had to earn my own money. So I got a job at a snack shack in Murray park cooking food. And I love to cook. You know that I love to cook. So it was a fun job. I was around a lot of my friends, but I was around food, which was terrible. It was a terrible idea.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:52:55] And meanwhile, this friend that I had kicked out, my best friend from growing up, she being hurt from what I did, had gone home and told a lot of our friends that I had this problem.

John Dehlin [00:53:05] How did she find out?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:53:08] I told her. I told her and another roommate because I felt such guilt about it. And we had one of their boyfriends come and give me a priesthood blessing, you know, towards the end of it. So she went and told people that. And so what they did in turn was when they first saw me, they would say, like, things like, oh, Lindsay, oh, gosh, you look horrible. Oh, my gosh, you're so skinny. What happened to you? And I think that they were trying to do that, like, as a motivator, you know? But it made me feel even worse. Like, it just made me know people are looking at your body.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:53:42] They're always caring how. What you look like. And to be told you're skinny. I mean, I've had arguments with people about this, but I imagine it felt the same to me as when I felt fat. So to be told skinny, and, like, we just shouldn't be commenting on people's body weight at all, ever.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:54:04] You just don't know how they're internalizing it. So I came home, and of course, my parents didn't understand this behavior at all. And they didn't understand the frequency. In fact, my mom, we had talked about it years later, and she still didn't understand the frequency. I mean, I was binging and purging, I think, on average, 15 times a day.

John Dehlin [00:54:27] Whoa.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:54:28] Yeah. And so it got really bad. But I'm working. I can't save up money. All of my money is going to food. I just can't help it. So I realized I don't have enough money to go back to school.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:54:46] So I decided to stay, do a year at the community college at my house. And that was a big mistake because I'm living with my mom now. My mom is really trying to help me by controlling it. And if anyone knows about these issues, how it's about control. You lose all control in your life, you feel like you have no control, and food is the only thing you can control. Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:55:07] Or at least you think so when that was gone. And so, like, when I hear about your treatment facility, I understand what they do with, like, the cameras in the bathroom. And I understand that there's. That there are women or people that need that sort of intervention. But like me, that would have only perpetuated my problem. It would have taken away my control.

John Dehlin [00:55:30] And I'm not sure they had cameras, but I think they had people go in and watch them.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:55:34] Oh, they do. And there's all kinds of. Yeah. And that was the threat that I would be put in one of those places. And I knew this. I knew what happened in these places by this point. I'd done some reading. I knew how carefully they watched it, and I knew that I would have even less control. And so that was a huge fear. And so meanwhile, you know, I'm still feeling guilty. I'm praying for this to go away. I'm trying to fast. I couldn't fast. I. I couldn't stay away from food. I'm Trying to go to the temple often. Like, weekly, sometimes daily, when I felt like I had to binge, when I would sing hymns. You know, all that stuff that they tell you when you have a bad thought, and it only made it worse. It only made it worse.

John Dehlin [00:56:18] So going to the temple, trying to sing hymns when you have the bad thought, trying to read your scriptures and be extra righteous made it worse?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:56:27] Yeah, it is. Like, this is why I feel like the porn rhetoric is so damaging. Because we say, you know, don't think of an elephant. Right? I hate that cliche. But don't think of food, Lindsay. Don't think of throwing up.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:56:42] Plan your whole day around not throwing up. Right? So I'm thinking the entire day of not throwing up. It's constantly in my mind. And I think they call it like a sick soup cycle in your mind. And that what I was doing in trying to avoid it, I was only obsessing about it the entire day till I would get home, and my resolve was gone and I was tired. And, you know, I. I told you this earlier. Like, you would. You would start binging on frozen peas. Like you just want to shove food down your throat as fast as you can. Because what it becomes, the.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:57:15] The purging becomes a release. It's like whatever you're feeling before, after the binge and purge cycle, you feel a different feeling. Even if it's shame, even if it's guilt, it's different than what you felt before. And it serves a function. Right?

John Dehlin [00:57:34] Right?

Dangerous Behaviors and Rock Bottom

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:57:35] So things are bad. I am having some really dangerous behaviors at this point. I'm supposed to be in school. Now I'm driving around instead, skipping classes, going from fast food restaurant to fast food restaurant to dumpster to dumpster to bathroom every morning, all the time.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:57:53] I can't stop. All my money's going to that. I'm going in the hole. I'm bouncing checks at this point for food, and I can't stop. And in the meantime, like, I look like this. I look very thin, but I'm this happy Mormon girl, you know, I'm going to church. I'm trying to hide this. My mom was really embarrassed about this problem. We didn't want to talk about it. I remember we went.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:58:16] I saw a therapist, and they got me on some new medication. And we went to the pharmacy, and my mom was really, really embarrassed about it. And I was determined to, like, be brave. I don't know what I was thinking. But the guy asked her a question, the pharmacist asked her a question, and I Spoke over him and said, it's for food compulsions.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:58:37] And my. And we got in the car, she's like, why did you say that? Don't ever say that again. And it just added to my shame, you know, that, like, I, like, what have you done? What has happened to you? You are so low.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:58:52] And that's when it hit me that either I stop doing this or I kill myself. Those are my two options. Because I have tried everything I have tried now for two years to pray it away, to fast it away, to live righteously, and it only made it worse. And so this was a really good turning point for me to realize I can't stop.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:59:20] So my choices are either keep going or kill yourself. And I toyed around with that because I really wanted to stop. I felt like it was a sin. And that, I think, was the very first thing that stuck in my head that kind of challenged my faith, right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:59:41] I mean, I know what it's like. I know what it's like to want to stop something so badly and not be able to. And I mean, I can hear people still saying, well, you could have done this. You could have done this. I promise you from the bottom of my heart, nobody wanted to stop this more than I did. And I couldn't.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:00:05] You just. Nobody wants to be eating frozen peas like two in the morning. That's not what you want. You just can't. And I knew that. And so suicide was a sin, right? And binging and purging in my mind was a sin. So I really was with the struggle.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:00:27] And so I started praying that I would just disappear. I. I didn't want to die because I didn't want to go on in the next life and have to feel how I was feeling. I wanted to stop existing. And I remember thinking about the sons of perdition and how lucky they were to be able to have the priesthood because then they could have the full knowledge and maybe just stop existing.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:00:55] Because to me, that was the only way that I could find any sort of peace. And I remember telling myself one point, if you can starve yourself to be as empty as you feel, maybe. Maybe that's the answer. Like, if you. If you can be as empty inside as you are outside, then maybe you won't feel anything anymore. And that was the goal. So.

John Dehlin [01:01:21] So numbing. Numbing yourself.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:01:23] Numbing. I. Numbing is not. I wanted my body to look how I felt inside. Does that make sense? So I wanted to waste away. This sounds really dramatic. I wanted to turn into dust. I wanted my fat to fall off my skin to fall off. I wanted to get so thin that I would just shrink inside myself because

John Dehlin [01:01:48] there was no escape. You just felt trapped.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:01:51] I was trapped, yeah. I mean, suicide wasn't an option. I mean, it was, but. And I toyed around with the idea, but was sinful, too. I couldn't escape it. I felt so worthless. I. I felt so terrible.

John Dehlin [01:02:09] So, Lindsay, before we talk about how you got better, if you can maybe describe maybe your lowest point when you knew you hit kind of rock bottom.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:02:21] Okay. Yeah. This is going to be a hard story to tell for me because it's. It's a gross story, for one. And second of all, it's just a hard story. And again, it's triggering, so people might not want to hear this, but I.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:02:36] I was throwing up in garbage bags at this point and hiding them in my dresser drawer. And my sister found it. My little sister found one of these bags, and she brought my mom in and said, hey, mom, what's this? She went into my dresser to borrow a shirt, and she found it.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:02:56] And my mom confronted me on it. And I was so mortified. I was so embarrassed because I was the older sister, and I wanted to set this example and to have them find my greatest secret, you know? And such a disgusting secret. Secret was terrible.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:03:14] But of course, I couldn't stop, so I started hiding it even more. And the worst time was I was carrying a bag, a full garbage bag of this stuff, and the bag snagged on something and spilled all over my floor. And we're talking, like, just days of this stuff kept up. I mean, it's really gross. I'm sorry to get into that detail.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:03:41] And there it was. It was all there in front of me. And I looked down and I saw my reflection. And I remember that is. I think that was the lowest point. Just feeling the most disgusting a human being could feel about themselves. It was right there. There I was. It was a mirror of who I was.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:04:06] And, you know, I was frantic. So I cleaned it up as best I could, and the stain stayed on the carpet for years. For years and years and years. As always, a reminder. I couldn't even go back to the room for a long time to see the stain, because there it was. That was who I was. And I think that was my lowest point. Come, come, ye saints, no toil nor labor fear. But with Jo.

Shame, Secrecy, and Emotional Roots of the Disorder

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 461

John Dehlin [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3. Mormon Stories podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org if you're just joining us, this is part two of a multi part interview with Lindsay Hansen Park. We're talking about Lindsay's battles with eating disorders and first restricting, but then bulimia. And we're going to go on to talk about body image in the church and other types of issues. But Lindsay, you've been so gracious and kind to talk us through kind of these really dark, dark times for you. Now, by what age are you hitting this really low point?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:01:06] I was 19.

John Dehlin [00:01:08] Okay. So we're talking all this spiraling out of control within a year or two.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:01:12] Yeah, it started at 17 when I started restricting, and then 19. Yeah, it happened really fast.

John Dehlin [00:01:17] And is your potential fiance still on his mission at this point?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:01:22] He is.

John Dehlin [00:01:23] Okay. Okay. So. So, wow. I'm imagining this over like four or five years and you're saying you can go from relatively healthy to wanting to disappear within a matter of a year or two?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:01:37] Oh, yeah, Yeah. I mean, it felt so long. I remember thinking dramatically at that age, like, I feel like I've grown 100 years inside myself. But I mean, I just. Every day was punishing. It was really hard.

John Dehlin [00:01:52] Yeah. Okay. So if you feel like you want to disappear, if you feel trapped, like there's no escape, that suicide isn't an option, but getting better isn't an option. How in the world does anyone change? How does anyone get better?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:02:10] Well, I'm still trying to live my life, at least this facade of a life. Right. Because clearly what everyone thought of me was so important. So I'm going to church and of course the whole ward is asking about the missionary. I'm this ward golden girl. I've come back from school and, you know, some of them think I look great.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:02:33] And of course it was terrible. My, you know, my skin's gray and hollow and. But I'm super spiritual and super happy and they, they love that about me. So I have this pressure to keep up this appearance. And it's the only time that it made me felt like I was good, but at the same time it made me feel even worse because I knew who I thought I was. So my mom and dad had no idea to the extent, but there were some Instances like the other one I shared on the first part. So some pretty low points where I was discovered. And I promised to get into therapy because they promised to take away the car from me to put me in one of these treatment facilities.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:03:22] And that was the scariest threat to me. I couldn't do that. I couldn't have done that. So I went to a series of therapists and had some bad luck. That's why I would say with therapists, everyone shop around, don't just try once and have a bad experience and say, well, therapy is it for me. Because I walked into an office of this great man, his name is Steve.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:03:47] And I sit down in his office and he asked me why I'm there. And I just start telling him I'm this, I do this. I throw up this many times a day. I've lost this much weight. This is how much food I steal. I've lost my scholarship. How do you like me now, right? And I wanted him to be like, oh, yeah, gosh, Lindsay, that's really rough. You're terrible, you are bad. And he didn't do that, right? He goes, okay, yeah, so tell me how you feel. And I was like, no, well, I want you to tell me how bad is it? And he was like, oh, I'm not going to.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:04:21] I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to tell you how bad it is. He said, I'm not going to, I'm not here to take your disorder away. And I was like, wait, what? You don't want to stop me? And he said, no, you can. No, Lindsay, do what you want. You can do what you want. And I said, whoa, why? Why don't you want to stop me? I'm going to die. And he said, well, why do you think you're going to die?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:04:42] And of course they didn't have a, you know, a real reason. And he said, lindsay, your disorder, I would never take that away from you. It's saving your life. And I was like, what are you talking about? Who are you? And he said, you.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:05:01] Your disorder is saving you. Your body needs an outlet and you're not giving it an outlet. And so your body, our bodies are wonderful, Lindsay. They figure out ways to relieve themselves, to help themselves to cope. This is what you're doing to cope. And if you didn't have this, you would go crazy. You would lose your mind.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:05:19] And the way he framed it, which was so accepting and non shaming, the depressed, the depression and the guilt that I had felt, the shame lifted instantly. Like, I just felt like, oh my gosh, he's right. Like, I knew that I couldn't stop this, and it made sense. My body was actually doing me a favor. I wasn't punishing myself. I was.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:05:45] I was coping, you know, and that was life changing. The shame was gone. And once the shame was gone, I could start to get to work. And I'm really lucky that I found him so early on in my process because he lifted that shame and I still had a lot of work to do. But that was the beginning of my transformation. Once I knew that I wasn't sinning and that this was serving a function, it changed my life.

John Dehlin [00:06:17] And what was the function, looking back? You think it was serving?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:06:22] I think I, you know, Mormons, Mormon girls don't cope with alcohol, they don't cope with drugs, they don't self medicate. I didn't really have really good skills to deal with things. I internalized things. I wanted to be the happy Mormon girl. I put a lot of pressure on myself. There's a huge perfectionism issue in the church, and I took it very seriously. And perfectionism is impossible. We know that. But we don't also, in the church celebrate humanness very much. We don't embrace human flaws or mistakes. We always say, yeah, mistakes happen, but you can make them better. And so I didn't have the skill set to internalize normal life.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:07:06] I just didn't. I didn't know how, like, if I had made a mistake, I didn't know how to couch that in a healthy way. I internalized that as a flaw, as a sin. And it just piled up. It piled up. I lost control. I didn't have control over my life.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:07:22] I was dealing with this death of a friend and this roommate who was my best friend that I had hurt and this missionary being gone, which was really difficult for me. I didn't know how to deal with it. So this was the only outlet that, that I had.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:07:39] Food wasn't a sin at first, you know, and so, and that's how he couched it for me, that if it wasn't this, it was something else. And I remember going into his office at one point saying, you know, I'm doing something really weird. I'm like coming home from work and I'm changing my clothes three times a day. What's. I don't know what to do. And he said, oh, well, yeah, that makes sense because pretend that you're standing on this metal floor and underneath the floor is fire, which is all these flames. And this Metal floor has holes in it. And one hole. The flames will shoot out of one hole.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:08:12] And so you'll run to cover it up. And that's you with, you know, your. Your purging. You'll go cover that up, because you can't do that. You want to cover up the flames, so you cover it up with that. And meanwhile, flames will shoot out another hole. So you do that with changing your clothes. And he said, lindsay, I'm not interested in changing, like, changing your coping mechanisms necessarily. I'm interested in getting rid of the fire underneath.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:08:35] And that was helpful to me, too. So that was a lot of the work that we did on my control issues, on the shame that I had. And that's why I'm such a big advocate on how we talk about pornography in the church. It's so shaming.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:08:49] All it does is add fuel to this fire. And I would imagine that people that struggle with porn consider it a compulsion. They can't stop. They can't stop looking at it. And they want to. They don't want to be doing this. But the rhetoric that tells them that if they don't, they should just sing a hymn or not think about it or wear more clothing or whatever it is that they say, it's all so shaming. It just from experience. It's making the problem worse every time.

John Dehlin [00:09:22] So it. So for you, the fire was shame?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:09:26] I think a lot of the fire was shame, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:29] Shame about what?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:09:31] I had a lot of shame about not being a good enough, pretty enough girl, thin enough girl, righteous enough girl. I really wanted to do what was right. And I wouldn't have ever said it was perfect because we always say, well, we don't expect you to be perfect. Only Christ was perfect. Perfect. But we do expect perfection in a way. I mean, because there's no room for sin. It says in the young women's manual that even having a thought, a sexual thought, is a sin. I mean, that's impossible. That's an impossible standard to live by. But someone like me who took this very seriously and was gonna hit all these benchmarks, that is what I strive for. And when I didn't, because you can't, I felt immense guilt and shame over it.

John Dehlin [00:10:24] And, Lindsay, this is what's, you know, what's difficult is that, you know, I think it's fair to say that for many, the fact that the church kind of encourages a higher standard of living, being righteous and good and noble, you know, it may be that that works for a certain group of people, that they don't necessarily internalize all this as shame. They don't necessarily move to perfectionism. They just sort of say, I want to be better, and they try and do better, and they are better than maybe they would have been otherwise.

John Dehlin [00:11:01] And, you know, I don't want to be the type of person that just jumps to, oh, well, the church's standards are bad, and the church just wrecks people's lives. And. Because, you know, maybe there's a lot of people for whom this is really working. But, you know what's very clear for me over the past 10 or 20 years that I've been kind of asking people questions is that inevitably, any standard you set is going to be toxic for at least some, maybe depending on your upbringing, depending on your genetics, depending on your personality. And. And for you, this was just a toxic kind of trap.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:11:40] Yeah, I feel the same way. I always say the church didn't cause my eating disorder, but it definitely gave me lots of reasons to make it worse. So instead of going to church for sanctuary from this problem, I would go to church and I would take the lessons and it would compound my problem.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:12:04] Church was not a sanctuary for that. Away from this guilt and shame. It only added to it. And of course, as a. As an LDS girl who wasn't drinking or doing drugs or having sex or missing tithing payments, I didn't have a sin. Right. Like the ones that some of these standards are set out to avoid.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:12:26] So I found sins in myself to apply this to. You know, we are supposed to apply every scripture to us. And so I did. And that probably wasn't a healthy way to go about living. And I will say, I'm sure that these standards do help people, but I've just learned over the years that the people that look like they're happy or that look like they've got it all figured out, it's just impossible. I mean, it's. The standards that we have are absolutely impossible. They can't be lived up to. That doesn't mean that people shouldn't try to be better. That doesn't mean that there shouldn't even be standards. I just know that the rhetoric and the culture surrounding those standards are damaging. Damaging spiritually and physically to a lot of people.

John Dehlin [00:13:14] Right. Okay. So the fire was shame. The fire was guilt. The fire was perfectionism. The fire was feelings of inadequacy. Does that capture it, or are there other things you would say, oh, we're wrapped up.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:13:32] I think it was control, again, is a big one. But shame. Shame. I know. Shame. So Well, I just do. I remember writing pictures on my wall, like, to avoid doing things as a youth, like anything that I thought was sinful, I would make sure that I would put it on the wall and say, don't do this with like a big no smoking sign. You know, I just. Shame was something that I think I really was a spiritual gift I inherited, I guess. I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:14:06] Right. Okay, so how do you pull yourself out? So recognizing it, I guess, is that an important first step? And then what. What. What was. Went from there?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:14:16] Well, I would say treatment. It was impossible to do this without treatment.

John Dehlin [00:14:20] Now it sounds like this was an eating disorder treatment. This was just psychotherapy, kind of generically. Is that true or not?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:14:28] He got me. Steve got me into outpatient therapy. There are all kinds of options. Inpatient therapy is one of them. But we decided to try outpatient therapy. So that was me working with him. I was working with a nutritionist and a doctor.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:14:43] So I would meet with all of them. And the nutritionist was great because she said, okay, what is it that you want your body to do? And it kind of gave me some control right over my body. And she explained what food did, and I had never had anyone do that before. So I learned that water wasn't harmful. It didn't give me calories. You know, I learned what foods did to my body physiologically, and that was really helpful to me.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:15:13] So I did that. And meeting with a doctor was really great because then she was. Worked with me on medication. She worked to tell me that I wasn't going to die. They checked my heart. You know, it was just really, really great. I mean, I'm not. Not to say that it wasn't. It was very difficult. It was hard to do this.

Beginning Recovery and the Work It Required

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:15:34] It was hard. It was really a lot of work. But I'm so glad that I. That I got that. It was. It was just a gift. It was a gift. But I'm telling you, it couldn't have happened until the guilt and shame left. And once it did, I was ready for it. It was incredible.

John Dehlin [00:15:53] So one quick question. One of the things I've heard about eating disorders is one of the reasons why it's so difficult to treat is that there are a lot of people who don't see it as a problem. They like it. They feel comfortable in it. And any attempt to try and change is just dystonic. It's against where they are. They don't see it as a bad thing or a problem. Were you ever at that point, or was that Just not how it was for you.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:16:25] That's not how it was for me. And I'm so glad you brought that up, because I think that that's an important part to understand the thing that worked for me. This is why this. This disorder is so complicated. If I would have had an intervention, if I would have been put in a place, I probably wouldn't have survived it. I think I would have probably followed through on suicide or something like that, because that was playing into my problems. But there is absolutely people that struggle with this disorder that need intervention, that see nothing wrong with it, that are at death's door and do not want to change. That wasn't me. I always wanted. Wanted to change. I always felt deficient.

John Dehlin [00:17:15] And so for. For either. Either for people struggling with an eating disorder or for those who are trying to help. I guess what I'm hearing you say is that we can't look at all eating disorders as the same. They can have very different functions and topologies. And in your case, you always wanted to get rid of it, but in other cases, there may not even be an awareness that there's a serious problem, or if there is, there's not a real desire to fix it.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:17:47] Well, wanting to get rid of it is interesting because I didn't really want to get rid of it. Like, I wanted to stop being bad, but I didn't want to get rid of it. So I don't know if that makes any sense.

John Dehlin [00:17:58] Right. Okay.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:17:59] If you would have tried to make me get rid of it, I would have probably killed myself. So. Because I wanted it that bad, but I just didn't want to be bad. And I associated it with being bad.

John Dehlin [00:18:13] But the therapist. But the therapist got you to stop thinking of it. Like, he wanted to take it away. He got you to stop thinking about it in terms of shame. And then he eventually just said, hey, are you interested in some specialized treatment? And you said, yes. Is that right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:18:31] Yeah. What he did is he let me live with it for a while, and he gave me permission just to make my own choices, if that makes any sense. And that's what I needed. So I got to live with it. He said, you know, I'm not going to take this away from you. And some people have this for 20 or 30 years. And I was like, wow, they do, and they don't die, you know? And he said. He said, no, no, no. People live with this for a while. So I decided to live with it for a while. I decided to stop beating myself up about it, and I Would.

John Dehlin [00:19:09] So you kind of accepted it a little bit.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:19:11] I did. You know, it's so, so dumb. But, you know Disney's Frozen song.

John Dehlin [00:19:16] Yeah, yeah.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:19:17] This is so silly, but I think this is why it resonates with people so much. So, you know, she has this power with the ice, and once she goes up on the hill and she's by herself and she can just do it, how great she feels, she's like, ah, I can, you know, let it go. And that's how I felt was, I get to live with this and it's not going to destroy me, you know, and it was just. It was wonderful to feel that it was just to accept it, like you said. And just like in the, you know, Frozen, how she realizes, oh, this.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:19:50] I can't live with this forever because it has consequences. I got to that point too. But being able to live with it was amazing. And at the same time, there was all this drama that happened with the missionary. I ended up marrying someone else. My husband is super low key, and it didn't bother him. He knew about it. He didn't care in the sense that, like, he was not going to tell me what to eat or what to do.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:20:16] And I just had space. I just had space. Finally, for the first time in my life, to just be. And that was incredibly important for me.

John Dehlin [00:20:28] There are a couple quotes that I remember from a book by Eckhart Tolle called A New Earth. One was, what you fight, you strengthen. Yeah. And another was that which you resist persists.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:20:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:43] Does that resonate with you?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:20:45] Absolutely. I think that that's exactly it. I think that that is exactly what happened to me Once I was able to let it go, just live with it for a while and sit with it. Then I started, you know, and of course, I'm still in therapy, so I'm getting these tools. And the therapy never in the psychotherapy, never focused on my behaviors. You know, like, I had to do some work with a nutritionist and stuff like that. But he was taught. We were talking about how I just cope in life and the stresses that come up. And so I'm working on all of that. And eventually I just got tired of doing it.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:21:24] Like, I just didn't want to throw up anymore. I didn't want to eat until, like, my stomach hurt. I just. I just stopped wanting to do it. And that was amazing. I never thought it was possible. I mean, I was in such the grips of this compulsion. It was wonderful just to kind of let it. Yeah. I just don't want to do that anymore. It was great.

John Dehlin [00:21:51] Right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:21:52] And the good thing that my therapist said when I first met him is the good news is it will never be as bad as it is right now. It will never be. But Lindsay, you always have to watch because it will creep back up in your life. And I found that to be absolutely true. So, like, when I stress, I find some of the warning signs of the disorder coming back or I find myself doing some weird things with food. But he is right. It was never as bad as it was because I've had tools since then.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:22:25] And I don't know, I just feel so optimistic and so grateful for that time in my life because it gave me such compassion. It challenged what I thought I knew. I was very literal with my faith and very self righteous. And once I knew what it was like to want to stop something, but not being able to, that was really, really good for me. And once I knew that sometimes prayer and fasting doesn't work the way that I thought it did, that was also helpful.

John Dehlin [00:23:00] Hmm. How is that helpful?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:23:06] Well, like I said, I mean, I kicked out a. I kicked out a girl because she was struggling with her faith. Right?

John Dehlin [00:23:12] Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:23:13] I felt like that was the right thing to do. And then when I became the one who was the sinner, if you will, or doing things wrong. And I knew that I didn't want. I didn't want to be the bad one. I didn't want to be struggling that sometimes our choices aren't real choices. It really messed with my idea of agency, that agency is not as simple as we make it in the church. I know what it's like to be able to not stop yourself from doing something you really don't want to do.

John Dehlin [00:23:45] Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:23:46] And so agency just. It lost a lot of its credibility to me in that way. And I knew, I knew forever because I had lived it. I knew forever changed that the narratives that I was taught, or at least the way that I interpreted them, just weren't true.

John Dehlin [00:24:05] Yeah. So when you look at someone, for example, who experiences same sex attraction, you know, someone who's gay or lesbian, or somebody who is looking at pornography or masturbating and can't stop, or, or someone who is addicted to drugs or alcohol. Right. If you've experienced that, you look at, you look at that whole class of people in an entirely new way, don't you?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:24:28] I do. And I. You know, it's funny that you should bring that up. I actually, I really want to apologize for this comparison because I do not think being homosexual is a Disorder.

John Dehlin [00:24:37] No, I don't either. I don't either. It's. I'm only talking about wanting to change something that you can't. That's all.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:24:43] Yeah, well, and that's what I'm saying. So I was very self righteous, I was very bigoted. And this is what changed it for me. Because I remember that rhetoric of saying, you know, well, they can change it, they can choose not to be gay or whatever, because that was really popular a few years ago. And I remember knowing right away, wait a minute, like, I know what it's like because, you know, I'd heard people say I've tried to change and I can't. And I knew instantly what they were talking about. And that shook up my paradigm because I thought, yeah, something's wrong because we can't ask these people who want to change to change, and they can't.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:25:20] So I think at first I did look at it as a disorder just like mine. So I came to that place saying, oh, it's a disorder and they need, you know, other help. But it opened the door for some nuance. Like it's not as black and white as just choosing not to be gay. I'm telling you, if you still believe that narrative, like, you just, you have to walk a mile in someone's shoes trying to stop something that you can't stop. Choice and agency is not, is not simple. And so it, I'm really grateful for it because it opened the door for me to eventually start studying homosexuality and getting to know people.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:26:01] And I've come to a point where I don't believe at all that it's a sin or a disorder. But like you said, I know what it's like to want to change something and not be able to.

Marriage, Healing, and Moving Forward

John Dehlin [00:26:09] So what was the time period from sort of hitting rock bottom and going to see that therapist for the first time to where you kind of feel like you were out of the thick of it, so to speak. How much time did that take to where you were no longer binging and purging?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:26:26] Basically, I would say it probably took me about six or seven years.

John Dehlin [00:26:33] Whoa. Okay, so it came on. You hit rock bottom within two and then spent the next six years trying to fully recover.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:26:42] Yeah, I wasn't trying to fully recover in that sense. I was. No, I mean, for me, trying to fully recover means like doing things actively to stop myself from doing it. And I knew that that made it worse. So it was probably about three years. Three years of really dangerous behavior. Then the moment where the shame kind of drops Away and then living with it for a few years.

John Dehlin [00:27:06] Still binging and purging?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:27:08] Yeah. Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:09] So you got married while you were binging and purging?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:27:11] Absolutely. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:12] And your husband wasn't like, watch. Go. Following you to the bathroom and like, did you do it today? Did you do it today?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:27:19] No. In fact, he never talked about it. And I, you know, before I got married, my mom was like, you need to tell him because what if he won't want you? You know? And so I. I told her, I said, we need to have a talk before we get married. We were like, you know, we had the temple date set. And I was like, I have to tell you something about myself. You're probably not gonna want me after this, you know? And I could do this whole confession and he starts laughing when I tell him that. And I was like, this isn't funny. What are you laughing about?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:27:48] And he was like, oh, my gosh, I thought you had cancer. I thought you were gonna die. Fine, I can work with this. This is totally fine. And it just felt good to have someone say, like, what's the big deal? And I know that that might make some people cringe, but having someone tell me, lindsay, it's not a big deal, okay? Just. Just relax a little bit. Was so nice.

John Dehlin [00:28:13] So was he lying? I mean, was he either lying or was he just didn't understand how severe it was?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:28:19] I don't. He certainly didn't know how severe it was. But yeah, and I don't think that he thought it was like a sin. I mean, I think that's a good question. I don't know. He just. He is one of those people anyway, that everything kind of rolls off his back. He doesn't take anything too seriously, which sometimes I'm like, take it seriously, come on. But this, I don't know. For some reason it gave me space. It just gave me space to do it. So I didn't. I stopped doing the crazy, like, garbage bag hiding stuff because I didn't have to. He wasn't. He never like walked in on me in the bathroom.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:28:59] He always respected my privacy. He never asked, like, are you sure you want to eat that too? You know, it just. He just let me be. I don't know. It was the first time in my life that he just. Someone just let me be. It was pretty amazing.

John Dehlin [00:29:16] And so is that an important component for family members? You know, the well intended spouse or mother or father who has a child or a spouse or a sibling with an eating disorder do overt attempts at helping or control pretty much always backfire. I mean, is the answer for the family member to just pretend it doesn't exist?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:29:44] No. So that's. It's really, really difficult. And this is hard. I've talked to recovering people whose parents did that, just ignored it. And that made it worse because they felt like, like I said, they had to make it severe enough so people would finally give it legitimacy, like, oh my gosh, she really is suffering. But I think if you're a family member and you suspect it, the very first thing you do first is start doing research.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:30:15] Don't come at this from like, you know, a place of fear or shame or guilt that never, ever, ever, ever helps. But I also think that sometimes people do need to be intervened. But the other thing I would caution is you cannot judge someone's health based on how skinny or fat they are.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:30:37] A lot of people that are a little bit overweight are bulimic, severely so. And so I really don't like it when we characterize eating disorders as severely thin people because that adds a benchmark for bulimics who don't feel skinny to live. So it's.

John Dehlin [00:30:58] You can't judge it. You can't judge it by weight.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:31:00] Don't judge it by weight. I. My suggestion, and I'm not a therapist, so keep that in mind. But my suggestion is if you are a family member, you always come out of love and concern and give them space to tell you how they feel and to be who they are. And you also have to accept that sometimes people don't want to change and that isn't something that you can do for them. And that's a really hard, hard thing. But if you do suspect it's life threatening, and you can know that with the help of professionals, then there are some severe measures you might have to take.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:31:40] But I know in my case, and in the case of a lot of LDS women, it's about pressure and perfection and control. And so when you shame them and you tell them how bad it is and react, they're going to be watching your face to, to see your judgment of them, because that's what I. That's what I did. If you reacted bad, it just told me that I was as broken as I thought I was. I don't know if that's helpful.

Talking to Children About Bodies and Modesty

John Dehlin [00:32:04] So there's got to be a heavy, obviously a love component, but al. Not an ignoring but not a shaming.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:32:13] Yeah. I mean, you can walk with them. If, if you want to help, you say, I want to understand this can we do this together? Can. And a lot of people won't want to engage. They want to talk about it. The secret, the secrecy really becomes your friend. The secrecy is what kind of fuels it. And so you want to keep that. You want to protect the secret.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:32:40] And so, I don't know, it would have been really nice to have people walk with me and say, okay, let's learn about healthy eating, or let's learn about what makes us happy or ways that we can cope in a healthy way.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:32:56] I think that that's the role a family member has. I think that the actual treatment should come from trained professionals. So I would recommend therapists get a good therapist right away. And that, I think could be done with some.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:33:13] Some pressure and some firmness, especially from those that are resistant. But I think a therapist is a good way to go. But at home, you can't be their policeman. That's just not. That's not a way to live a life.

John Dehlin [00:33:30] So there's gotta be this element of, let's not ignore it. I love you. I'm here for you. I think there are ways that we can learn together and grow together, but there's not a shame element, and there's not a policing, control element.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:33:45] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:33:47] Okay. And the person may or may not accept it. Right. They may not want the help. They may not accept it. Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:33:56] They might not. And oftentimes they won't. Especially. And especially not at first. I think the best thing we can do is help people get the tools they need to empower them to make choices that are the best for themselves. And again, like I said, there are some times when that is not just not an option. And so people do need that sort of critical intervention, but we have to look at. I mean, we live in a society that puts so much pressure, first of all, on women's bodies. The main advice that I would give is stop. We call it no fat talk in the house.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:34:36] Stop talking about fat or thin. You have to stop doing that. There's a lot of research coming out that says that women really learn their body image issues from their own mother. And one of the women on my other podcast, she talked about how her mom had her ideal weight written on the mirror as, like, a motivator.

John Dehlin [00:34:56] Her own. The mother's own ideal weight.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:34:57] The mother's own. Yeah. And this little girl would grow up looking at that number, and that number always stuck in her head because to her, that number was the ideal. Right, Right. And it really messed with her. And so we're finding out A lot of these issues stem from the ideas our own parents have about body image issues. So if you're a parent that's always dieting and always worrying about your weight, that is going to affect your kid's worldview about their own body image.

John Dehlin [00:35:29] Not to blame parents, of course, but.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:35:31] No, no, not to blame parents. It's definitely not about blaming anyone. It's about creating, fostering, healthy environments where we can alleviate this pressure a little bit. And it's really hard to do. I mean, we have our. Our media and our culture is really obsessed with it. Our church is really obsessed with the female parents, even though it's meant to. Well, and that's. It's hard. It's a hard thing to combat.

John Dehlin [00:36:02] Right. So just eliminate talk about she's fat or, wow, she's lost weight, or I really need to lose a few pounds, or that that type of talk is just any. And you replace it with what?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:36:15] Well, it's hard because, you know, I know I have some friends that have worked really hard to lose weight, so it's really important to them to have that acknowledged. So that. That's also hard. But there's a whole feminist dialogue going on that talks about how we reward people with our compliments. And normally, like with little girls, we're always telling them they're pretty or they're so cute or what a little princess they are. And we'd like to change the dialogue from the appearance to, wow, you are so energetic, or, wow, you're so smart. Look at how. How you never give up those kind of compliments that have an inherent positive trait that doesn't fit an impossible standard.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:37:00] Because little girls can be cute when they're little, but maybe they go through an awkward stage and they stop hearing those compliments, and then they think, what have I done? You know, no one's telling me I'm cute anymore. Why? What do I need to do? And it's so hard because it's meant well. Right? I say it all the time to little kids. Oh, your hair looks so cute. You look great.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:37:20] That's a hard one. It's hard for me when I see someone that I don't know, I want to compliment them on their appearance because I have nothing else to go on. It's really tricky, right?

John Dehlin [00:37:30] Yeah. Yeah. I got to the point where when someone would say to me, wow, you look like you've lost weight, I'd be like, why are you paying attention to my weight? And, no, I haven't lost weight. But it doesn't make Me feel good to have you say that because it means you've been paying attention to it. Yeah, yeah, and I don't want to hear that.

LDS Modesty Culture and Its Impact on Women

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:37:47] And that's the whole. You know, we have a lot of modesty rhetoric in the Church, which is why I find the monastery rhetoric harmful. It's meant to protect women. But what it does is it. It adds an increasing focus on what our body looks like, and not just what our body looks like, but you can tie your physical appearance directly with your righteousness. And for someone like me who wanted both of those things, it was just poison.

John Dehlin [00:38:10] So let's talk about modesty rhetoric for a second. What do you mean by that?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:38:15] Well, modesty rhetoric is often taught to women to protect them so they can be more virtuous. So we're told that women are supposed to be Mormon. Women are better than the world, right? Because we don't put the pressure that society puts on women to be sexualized and things like that, because we have more respect for our bodies. But what it really is is two sides of the same coin. So by telling women to cover up instead of undress, we're acknowledging that their bodies are sexual objects all the time, rather than just bodies that do stuff that, like, go to work and, like, you know, go to school and learn and run and do things.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:38:53] Our bodies are all about sex. So society is telling us that women's bodies are all about sex. You know, they're sexualized on TV all the time, but church does it too, unintentionally. But they do it by saying, yeah, cover up, because you have to respect yourself. Cover up, because men are going to think bad thoughts about you. What that does is it teaches women that their bodies are all about sex, that they're for sex. And I know that some people disagree with that, but I'm telling you, think about the concept for a minute. Think about the term modest is hottest. Okay, what's that even mean?

John Dehlin [00:39:35] Right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:39:36] Modest is hottest. Are we trying to be hot, like, sexy? Or are we trying to be modest? Or are we trying to be both in the same? It doesn't even make sense. And I understand it's a term trying to inspire women to accept modesty, but I mean, what it does is it's like you said with your quotes back there, we're reinforcing this idea that women are sexual objects. And we're. I think we're reinforcing the idea of society that we want to fight. Men are looking at your body. People are looking at your body. Your body is going to be used. And instead of saying, no, your body is not always going to be used, sometimes your body is just a body. We say, yeah, you're right. So our answer to that is cover up, not undress. And that's a problem.

John Dehlin [00:40:27] And what does that do?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:40:29] It makes your body an object, always. Your body doesn't become yours. And here's the other thing. When we say our body is a temple, I understand that. But as someone who internalize that terribly, I really don't like that phrase. I wish we'd get away from it. My body is not a temple. It's just not. It's a body. The temple is this perfect, white, beautiful place with a lot of upkeep and a lot of money put into it. It's a standard on a hill. My body is not that way. Our bodies get sick. Some of them don't work. Bodies throw up, they have diarrhea, they leak, they cause problems, they get diseases.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:41:11] That is what a body does. It also functions. It helps you do things. It helps you work. It gets bruised, it gets cut. It's not a temple, it's a body. And I understand that we need to take care of those bodies. Absolutely. But you don't take care of your body in the same way as you take care of a temple. You just don't.

John Dehlin [00:41:33] Right. It's a pretty charged approach to tell within the feminist community to tell young women, you know, cover up. Because if you dressed immodestly, if you wear super tight clothing, if you show a lot of cleavage or whatever, then that calls, you know, young men's attention to how you're dressing and to your body, and it sort of maybe increases their likelihood of having improper thoughts or sexualized thoughts. Whereas if you dressed more modestly, it wouldn't be such draw. What's wrong with saying that to young women and to young men and to young men?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:42:25] Exactly. Yeah. I served in young Women's just a few years ago, and this rhetoric was a key motivator because we thought if we told girls that what they wore affected boys, that that would help make them more modest. And I remember having a conversation with a leader.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:42:42] I was first counselor, and she happened to be the president. And I said, you know what? I really don't like how we're talking about this. Our girls right now are obsessed with what the boys think. And that's really distracting for us. It causes us problems. They're always on the cell phones. They're always making choices about what the boys want. That's a huge distraction. Right. We don't want that. So is our. Is our goal to tell them, don't care what the boys think, but hey, care what the boys think and make all your choices around them. Dress up and cover up, because if not, the boys are going to look at you.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:43:15] I knew some of our young women who would say, really? That's going to make a boy think bad thoughts about me? Okay, that's exactly what I want. And it made it worse. And so right out the gate, I was like, there's something wrong with this. We don't want the girls to care what the boys think, and yet we're encouraging them to care what the boys think.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:43:33] And the young women later said to me, yeah, I see what you're saying, Lindsay. But the fact of the matter is it does affect what the boys think. It does make them think bad thoughts. And I just remember thinking, oh, gosh, something is so wrong here, this rhetoric. Something is wrong because we're trapped in this sort of paradox that everybody loses. The girls are responsible for what the boys think, and the boys, you know, are going to be around these girls. And if the girls are. Wear too tight of clothes, then we're all in trouble.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:44:03] And I think after a lot of exploration and a lot of reading on feminist theory with this, this is why it's a problem. It's, you know, two sides of the same coin. But it also tells. The narrative in the LDS Church is that men are uncontrollable. They're these sex creatures that are always thinking about sex. They're one step away from just losing control. And. And I have a lot of men in my life that are just not that way. I have men in my life who grew up that way. My husband grew up thinking that, you know, if he masturbated too much, he would become gay.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:44:39] You know, and now we know that that's not how it works. But if you're told these things enough, you start to believe that maybe they could be true. And so I still find myself thinking these things about men every once in a while, that they are too sexual, and that if I do something wrong, they're gonna think this. And the bottom line is I've been able to meet hundreds and hundreds of Mormon men, and they are so unique. Some of them have really low sex drives. Some of them have really, incredibly high sex drives. Some of them think they're addicted when they're not addicted.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:45:14] And I think a lot of it is. It's just really unfair to have a narrative that men are these wild animals and Women have to cover up or they're gonna be eaten alive by these men.

John Dehlin [00:45:24] And the women and not men are responsible for their thoughts and behavior.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:45:27] Yeah, I mean, we talk about rape culture. It's come up a lot. I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar, but rape culture is blaming the victim. So anything that puts blame on the victim, like, you know, you shouldn't be wearing that.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:45:41] That makes men think bad thoughts about you. What's to stop that sort of reasoning from saying, you shouldn't have been wearing that. That is why he raped you. And I know a lot of people that believe that, like, a slutty woman deserves to be raped. And the bottom line is a rapist is responsible for his actions, not the victim. The victim could be walking down the street naked, and it's still not her fault if someone attacks her. It just isn't. It's. The responsibility is on the perpetrator, not the victim. And we have a terrible, terrible culture in this. Down H. Oaks is talk of walking pornography.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:46:19] He talks about women becoming walking pornography for men. That is so wrong on so many levels. It says a lot about the way that we view women, and it also says a lot of the way about a lot of things about the way we view men. And if you know anything about rapes and global violence, Women are raped in burkas. They are. Old women are raped. Young women are raped. Boys are raped. Rape is about power and control and violence.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:46:47] It's not about what a woman is wearing, clearly, or by the church's logic. Women in burkas would never be raped because they're covered up.

John Dehlin [00:46:57] Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:46:58] Sorry, that was a rant.

John Dehlin [00:47:00] No, it's good. So I have daughters, and, you know, it's hard to get the Mormon out of me. I. I guess I want them to dress pretty, and I want them to feel good about themselves, and I don't want them to feel objectified or to feel responsible for things that aren't theirs. And yet there's a part of me that feels like there's some sense of appropriateness or inappropriateness for how one might dress. And I want to find the right way to ground that type of.

John Dehlin [00:47:38] And to be honest, in our family, it's not an issue. Our kids just dress. They dress pretty and cute, and there's really never a discussion about this. So I'm not bringing this up because it's a problem with my family, but I can. I can certainly sympathize. If my kids did dress in certain ways, I would start getting nervous as A dad. So how does a parent approach these issues in a way that's well grounded versus in a way that's damaging?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:48:07] Yeah, your question always comes up, especially from protective fathers who say these things like, you know, we had this discussion like, well, I'm not going to tell my daughter to go walk in an alleyway alone. I mean, it might not be her fault, but that's still a dumb choice to do. I think for me, I teach this to my kids and to, you know, others around me in the terms of responsible choices. Right. And teenage girls are not stupid. Teenage boys are not stupid. They know the dressing a certain way is going to get a reaction. Now, they might not understand the exact context and extent of that, but they do know they do have some concept of that at that age.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:48:47] And so I feel like it's a discussion that you can have. Now. It's really important for teenagers to fit in with their peers. They're going to want to look attractive, and we need to not be afraid of that. That's where we get this whole modest is hottest. Clearly, you can't get people to stop wanting to be attractive. Some of the people that care the most about their appearance are women at church, and they will look really sexy even though their shoulders are covered. So we know that that doesn't go away. But maybe exploring the underlying choices.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:49:15] What does our dress say about us? What are we trying to say? Does that work for what we're trying to say? When you're going to school and you have a test that day, is it really important that we want to make all the boys think that we have a cute butt? Is that what we're going for? And, you know, as a teenager, that might be what they're going for.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:49:34] But maybe working on the fact that we don't need the acceptance of everybody around us, that would be a really healthy community thing. Mormonism isn't really good at that. We're really focused on what our community, what our ward thinks of us not being really authentic.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:49:51] So I would say start working on those issues first. Dressing is just a symptom of how we feel and what it is we want from people. It's not the problem, and so we need to stop making it the problem. But if you're going to focus on dress, I would talk about responsible choices, weather, appropriateness. You know, are you going to wear booty shorts when it's freezing outside? Probably not. Not a responsible choice, but something not as extreme. Do you need to wear tight shorts to show off every curve of your Body. Why do you need to do that? What is motivating you to do that? Those kind of things.

John Dehlin [00:50:26] And so just talk about what a young woman's goals might be, who she wants to be, what she's hoping to do with her life, and have her just sort of think about how she wants to represent herself in the world based on who she is and who she wants to be.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:50:50] Yeah, and accepting. Accepting that women are going to want to look attractive. That's part of what our species does. That's what we do. We want to look attractive. We want to look pleasing sometimes. But not just that. I feel like dressing is about self respect. But there's also what I wish we could teach our youth, honestly, is media literacy. If anyone's out there, you can watch the documentary Misrepresentation. It does a really good job talking about these issues, but basically it talks about sexualizing something.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:51:24] And I wish our teenagers knew that. Sexualization is usually meant to sell something, to sell an idea, to sell a person, to sell a product. And so there is a difference between looking attractive and sexualizing it. And that's when it can get dangerous, I think to naive young women, young men, and even adults, you can sexualize yourself. And that can be harmful because sexualization is used for all kinds of sort of, I don't know, risky behaviors and things like that. So media literacy is a huge one. Sit down and watch a show and say, oh, gosh, like, look at that superhero. Why is she wearing tight black leather and killing the bad guys?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:52:11] Is that like, is that something that helps her or what's going on? And media literacy, I think, is so critical in this day and age, since we are inundated with media. What is the media? What is the message that they are trying to sell? Why are they wearing what they're wearing? Men and women, this is just not. It's not just a female thing.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:52:33] And find out the function behind that. Train your children to identify that, and they're going to start to identify that in their own behavior.

John Dehlin [00:52:42] So the more you're aware of how the media works, of what they're trying to do, of what tools and techniques they use to try and manipulate and give impressions, then you start not just swallowing the message, but being mindful of these types of things. And it can inform not only your awareness of what might be influencing you, but also you're more mindful of how you want to sort of take control of your life and live the way you want to live.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:53:09] Yeah, yeah. And, you know, objectification. There's some debate on this, but I'm one of the people that. I don't think objectification is always a bad thing. People objectify themselves all the time, right? People use their faces for stock photos. They use themselves to sell things. We turn things into objects. That's what human beings do to understand concepts. We reduce something down to a concept. So objectification isn't always a problem, but there needs to be informed consent about what people are objectifying themselves for, what they're using their image for, what they're using their brand, their representation for. And there's just no concept of that. I think largely in the world, and especially in our culture, where we kind of object.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:53:56] Objectify women in the church as domestic objects. You know, we reduce them to this. This protector of the hearth. And is that bad? Is that good? It just is. It's what we do. It's the image that we sell of Mormon women to people. And we just need to be aware of the function that's behind that object, if that makes any sense. Come, come, you saints. No toil nor labor fear, but with joy when you're with.

Fasting, Utah Beauty Culture, and Church Influence

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 462

John Dehlin [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3. Mormon Stories podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org hello and welcome again to part three of a three part interview with Lindsay Hansen Park.

John Dehlin [00:00:37] We've really enjoyed Lindsay the past couple hours. It's actually March 18, the day after the first two segments. So we interviewed yesterday on Monday, March 17. It's March 18. We've talked about your. You're sort of acquiring an eating disorder or bulimia during our part one for those who haven't listened yet. And in part two, we talked a bit about how you recovered and got better. And we talked a little bit about how friends and family can help with that. And we also talked a bit about body image in the LDS Church and things like Modest is hottest and what types of messages we send to our young women and men and how that might affect them for this third hour of our podcast. First of all, I just want to say something that's awesome, Lindsay. You have someone joining us. Who is that joining us?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:01:37] Yes, I have, my little Violet. It wouldn't be a feminist podcast without a little baby in the room.

John Dehlin [00:01:42] All right, so I'm going to suggest to my listeners that that should not bother them. And we welcome Violet. Welcome, Violet.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:01:52] Thank you. I hope it's not too distracting. It's hard to schedule these things with kiddos.

John Dehlin [00:01:57] No, it's great. Also, so what we're going to be covering today, we're going to be answering a few questions that have been posted to the Mormon Stories podcast community on Facebook. For those of you who aren't members of it, just type in Facebook Mormon Stories podcast community. Feel free to join us. There we go. We love to take your questions. We're going to have you answer some of the questions of some of our listeners and then we're going to talk about sort of quickly, try and just cover a little bit about your participation in feminism and in some of the more intellectual kind of facets of your work within Mormonism, such as your work with Sunstone and the White Fields, and find a way to draw this to conclusion. Is that all right, Lindsay?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:02:45] Sounds good to me.

John Dehlin [00:02:46] All right, well, thanks again for joining us. All right, so I guess one of the questions I'll just answer, I'll just kind of go through these. Jamie asked, do you Fast and does fasting trigger eating disorders in either you or in. In other LDs, people with eating disorders? Any thoughts on that?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:03:11] I don't know. Outside of my own experience, fasting was impossible for me when I was. When I had food compulsions, when I felt like I needed to binge. And I think it did exacerbate the problem. I have heard that it can make things worse for people who are restricting their food.

John Dehlin [00:03:32] That.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:03:32] That's kind of an unhealthy excuse. So, yeah, it's. I would say that it's involved. Since it's involved with food, it's going to complicate things, right?

John Dehlin [00:03:44] Yeah, definitely. That makes sense. Rita asks if it's hard to be a woman, if it's harder to be a woman in Utah. In Rita's perspective, there's more plastic surgery in Utah. I don't know if that's true. And she feels a heavy influence of the beauty industry. Things like tanning, eyelash extensions, nails, clothing. And she basically says she's never felt more shame about her appearance than when she visits Utah. Do you have any thoughts on Utah culture and beauty and body image and eating disorders?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:04:20] Well, I've never lived outside of Utah, so that's hard to say. But I do know we actually do statistics, statistically, have more plastic surgeons per capita than I think even la. And it is a culture. I lived in a ward where women would go get chemical peels instead of, like, play dates, they would go get chemical peels together.

John Dehlin [00:04:40] Oh, wow. As a group.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:04:42] As a group, yeah. And there was a whole. Not that there's anything wrong with the chemical peel, but, yeah, there's a lot of women that I know of. I served in Young Women's presidency with two women that had breast augmentation.

John Dehlin [00:04:57] And this is a. This is a really sensitive topic, but, you know, because. Because we certainly don't want to judge anyone who's made any decision, really. But what do you have thoughts or feelings you're comfortable sharing about plastic surgery? Even cosmetic plastic surgery? Yeah.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:05:13] We did a. We have a series on the podcast, Feminist Mormon Household Podcast called Feminist Kryptonite, and it talks about things that are controversial like this, that maybe feminists, quote, shouldn't like, because it plays into, like, a unrealistic beauty standard.

John Dehlin [00:05:30] Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:05:31] Sorry. Is she so bad?

John Dehlin [00:05:32] No, no, no, it's fine.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:05:33] Okay. I think plastic surgery is complicated. Even Gloria Steinem, who is a famous feminist, has advocated for it for women that are in the spotlight because it's a proven fact that women that get plastic surgery have it adds longevity to their careers, especially if they're in the public.

John Dehlin [00:05:54] I've also heard, and I don't want this to cause an increase in plastic surgeries, but I've also heard that studies have shown an increase in self confidence. Have you heard that?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:06:06] Yep, yep, There are studies absolutely. To back that up. And there is some feminist literature out there that says it's a feminist thing, women taking control of their bodies and, and being able to. There's this artist, her name is Orlan O R L A N and she actually gets her face redone as performance art in front of an audience.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:06:30] And it's really interesting. You should read up on her. But that said, so I'm not condemning anyone that gets it, but it does absolutely add to this increased pressure. Plastic surgery is expensive. Not everyone can do it. Not everyone should have to alter their body.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:06:46] And there's a billion dollar industry that's based on telling women that they are flawed to make money. And so that's a problem as well. And I do think Utah does have an obsession with appearance. I think that LDS women are beautiful women and very well put together. But I know a lot of women that that takes an incredible amount of work for.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:07:11] And anyone that's been in a Utah award can maybe attest to the sort of competition that goes on, even if it's unspoken with fashion and those kind of things. So there's definitely a culture of it here in Utah and I think that it definitely has some problems.

John Dehlin [00:07:25] What would you like, Would you be able to summarize what you'd like to see in terms of that culture?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:07:30] Yeah, I would like to see more authenticity. Again, our culture and our doctrine sometimes doesn't allow for a lot of humanness, sin, flaws, mistakes. And so we try really hard to put on this face of perfection that is unrealistic. And we know that it's unrealistic. And yet we still fall into that. We still think that people are a certain way that they appear to be. And as I said with my story, it's absolutely not the case. I did really well when I had the eating disorder, publicly and socially, but inside I was like decaying. And so I think that that's a huge part of the problem is we're not allowed to be human.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:08:14] We're not allowed to be authentic. And you can see this when you're sitting in Relief Society and someone says a comment that's a little bit off the norm. Everyone wants to shut them up really quickly. So when you have topics that are forbidden to talk about you have subjects that are taboo. That really creates a culture of shaming. Anything that's authentic. And I think that that's a huge problem.

John Dehlin [00:08:38] Right. Okay. So Jamie wrote a lot of questions here. Jamie wrote and we talked about this a bit. A lot of people you did and others have that I've spoken with, they kind of associate eating disorders with the issue of control.

Separating LDS Culture From Broader American Culture

John Dehlin [00:08:59] And so what Jamie asked was if some people experience the LDS church or its culture as being controlling, is it possible that LDS Church culture sort of might encourage eating disorders? Because it's for some, in Jamie's mind, the only way that a young woman or man might be able to take back some control. They can't be promiscuous technically or at least according to the church, they can't drink or smoke. Do you think that there's some, you know, you talked a bit about your therapist saying that your eating disorder was sort of the way you coped and so does that. And since you mentioned it being about control, does that theory hold any weight for you at all?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:09:47] I haven't done a lot of thinking about the church's aspect of control, to be honest with you. The way that I experienced it was more my parents perception of the standards. So like curfews and rules in our home. And so I never really perceived the church as controlling me so much as the standards that I lived by controlling me, if that makes any sense. Sure, I'm sure that it does affect people. That is not how I experienced it. And again, I haven't done a lot of thinking about that. So there could be an aspect of that. But I definitely think the control that the church does have would be in the perception and the culture of perfection, which is driven by society and driven by the Mormon culture. And so we control each other, we self censor each other and ourselves. And that can be really controlling.

John Dehlin [00:10:45] Is there anything, like Doug asks, is there any way to separate the influence of just American culture from the LDS Church? I know that in some countries there are many diagnoses in the DSM that are in all cultures, like depression or anxiety. They're pretty much everywhere. It turns out, as I understand it, that eating disorders are not in all cultures, so cultures definitely. And in some cultures they're way worse than others. Like in Japan, I've heard they're even worse than in America. Is there any way to separate out the LDS Church's influence and let's turn it positive. Are there any good messages that the Church sends out that could be helpful in terms of things like body image and eating disorders?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:11:34] Yeah. I think just like any disorder, I don't think you can say it is caused by this. This is the one thing that causes it. These are complicated issues, as we've talked about, and there are a lot of factors involved.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:11:48] I think one of the factors is the availability of food. I think that that's a new modern challenge. A lot of us are dealing with eating disorders we know have existed for hundreds of years. But I do think the prevalence is more so because food is much more available. There's a lot more options of food. We're not starving to death, those kind of things. So I think that that's part of it. I also think that in cultures that are more strict, like Japan, that would make sense to me, where you have high societal narratives and high societal prices. Because again, for me, a lot of this has to do with perfection and doing what's right and pleasing people.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:12:35] The LDS culture has a lot of that. So I don't necessarily think. Again, I don't think the LDS Church causes it. I don't think that there's anything nefarious. I don't think anyone is saying, how can we make women starve themselves?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:12:49] In fact, it's the opposite. There's a lot of benevolent desires here. My leaders that said harmful things sometimes wanted to protect me. They thought they were protecting me. They thought they were doing their duty. I think our leaders do that now. I think it's very sincere.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:13:08] But sometimes I think that there are unintended consequences. And another thing I was thinking about is a lot of the standards and the rules that we still adhere to were really helpful maybe 100 years ago, maybe 60 years ago, because the world needed rules and standards like that. But as the world changes, we can't adhere to the same sort of narratives about women that we used to.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:13:41] Societies are different. The economy is different. And I really wish that we would kind of upgrade and update our standards or our revelations. I know that makes people uncomfortable, but it just doesn't make sense that we would still be living by some of those rules, if that makes any sense.

John Dehlin [00:13:58] Sense, sure.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:14:03] So.

John Dehlin [00:14:08] Natalie asks, when did the modesty code we now know and love cough, cough, she wrote, start becoming the norm? And this is interesting because I've always sort of operated with this perception that society gets more and more lenient and permissive over time, even Mormon culture. But then I look back at my mother's senior picture. When she was graduating from high school, she went to Preston High School. She grew up in Franklin, Idaho. That's where Napoleon Dynamite took place back in the 50s. And she's wearing a strapless dress and she was as Mormon and as devout. Her mother was the daughter of a polygamist, so they were as conservative and as Mormon as they came. But she was wearing bathing suits and getting photos and wearing strapless dresses or a dress with the spaghetti strap. And I'm just wondering, is it possible that we're getting worse over time as a culture?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:15:11] There's this great flowchart that Ziff did for Zillow Fahed's daughters. It's a feminist blog and he actually did a search for modesty terms on LDS.org from, I think from their entire archives. So like from the 1970s until now. And there's definitely, definitely an increase in the rhetoric, especially concerning young people and primary as young as four years old. And like there's that mention of a four year old in the new era. No, in the Children's friend is what it was. And they were talking about her shoulders. So there is an increase. I think the people.

John Dehlin [00:15:51] Wait, people get really mad about that like when. And I just like you to explain this because at times on Facebook, like let's say someone posts a picture of their kids at Disneyland and the girls are wearing a tank top, the little four or five year old girls. And then some well intended LDS church member maybe posts an unfriendly comment saying, or even a private one, hey, you really should cover up your daughter. That makes feminists really mad. Why does it make them so mad?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:16:18] Well, I think it, I mean there's a lot of things to unpack there. But some of that has to do with what I talked about. I have experienced. Anytime someone has talked about my body, I have internalized that to what I, what I thought that I should do. And that is dangerous.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:16:37] And you know, there's this whole culture on Pinterest if you go, there's this big, this big trend happening where people paint their naked Barbies with fingernail polish so their bodies are modest. And it's so absurd to me because what that does is it says that there's something wrong with being naked, there's something wrong with your body. And little children are born naked. They come into this world naked, they're going to be naked. What does it tell them when their mom is so afraid of a plastic Barbie that's not even anatomically correct?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:17:11] It tells them that their bodies are sinful and naughty and need to be covered. That's just a recipe for a lot of body shame. I don't know how we can expect our adult Mormons to have a healthy, open sexual relationship with their partners, with their spouses. When you grow up thinking that your body is inherently wrong, naturally.

John Dehlin [00:17:40] Right. But. But is the fear there that if we become too comfortable with nakedness that we become sexually promiscuous? And do you think that's true?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:17:51] I. I think the reason why we're seeing an increase in the modesty rhetoric is it's a reaction to the world, right? We're reacting to the world. So. So on tv, you know, standards are a lot looser, I guess, and there are a lot more sexualized women on TV and violence. And so our reaction is to double down. Right, and fight against that.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:18:14] And so I think that that's part of it, that we are reacting to that. But I also think that there's a whole modesty industry now and a modesty culture that people are making money off of. This modesty stuff. I've been invited to, I can't even count how many modesty parties in my ward and stake where women have modest clothing companies come in and sell you shirts to wear. So I think that that's a huge part of it. People are making money. It's becoming a culture. You can go to desert book and find little cute quotes and chapstick that says modest is hottest. So there's all of that.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:18:52] But to answer your question, do I think that if we accepted nakedness more that we would be more sexual? I don't think that there's any evidence at all to back that up. Cultures where clothing norms are different, there's not an increase in that. If anyone's curious about this, you can look up sexual dimorphism. It's the idea that human beings need to be attracted to each other, and so no matter how you dress, they're going to find ways around it. So like in the FLDS culture, you know, if you cover up a lot and you wear the hair bump, that's considered attractive, right? Because the culture has been trained to find that attractive.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:19:33] Or small feet in ancient China. And that's why they did foot binding, because that was the thing that society deemed to be attractive. And so what we're doing with our culture is saying covered up, modest is hottest. If you cover up, then you're attractive. And so we're giving those sort of standards and training, training our whole culture around what's attractive. But it doesn't mean attraction is going to go away. If we were naked more, I think we would get used to bodies being Bodies, I mean, we all have one. We shouldn't be afraid of it. I know, I know Mormon women who have never, like, don't even know what the names of their body parts are called.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:20:18] They have never even touched themselves down there, like for, you know, technical reasons. It's absurd to me that we need to be afraid of our own bodies, especially when we do have a beautiful theology and doctrine that talks about how amazing the human body can be.

John Dehlin [00:20:34] Isn't there some research that suggests that teenage pregnancy actually increases when you don't talk about sex? Have you heard that?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:20:43] Yeah, I've heard similar studies. Not directly to that, but the abstinence, I mean, we know the abstinence, abstinence doesn't work as far as it doesn't equip people with tools that they need. And so it might work for some people, but it doesn't really. Yeah, there are a lot of studies, especially globally, that suggest that we're not, that we all have, well, intentions, but we're not getting out of it what we want. And that's how I feel about the church rhetoric. I think it's absolutely well intentioned. I think they want to protect the youth. I think the intentions are really good, but we're getting the opposite effect, unfortunately.

John Dehlin [00:21:22] Right. Yeah. I'll just take a minute to attempt to answer my own question as well. I think that what we, you know, if we look at just for example, the plague that is pornography and masturbation, and I don't, I use those words from the church's perspective. The messages I hear from the church is that pornography and masturbation is a plague.

John Dehlin [00:21:48] And I remember posting to Twitter a couple years ago that I feel like one of the reasons pornography is so prevalent is because we keep talking about it so much. I mean, if you're 11 years old and you start hearing about pornography at church in every general conference and every other month in young men's or whatever, it's going to make you more interested. But then when we talked about that, don't look at the pink elephant, right? The more you're saying, don't do this, don't do this, you know, oftentimes the more you're going to get it. And so just like we see, we apparently see a lot of pornography and masturbation use.

John Dehlin [00:22:27] Now, I'm not sure the masturbation is more common than it used to be, but I think pornography probably is because of its accessibility. I think that's one argument that just because talking about something and talking about bad about it or Discouraging it doesn't necessarily mean that we see a decrease in that thing.

John Dehlin [00:22:49] The other thing I'll just say is that I'll never forget when I was working for mit, we had this meeting with all of these influential educators across the country. And I met with a woman who was a professor at De Anza Foothill Community College, I think, which is this really important network of community colleges in California. And she just told me that she had some LDS students in her class, and she got to know them pretty well. And what she found out was that they had engaged in this really strange practice of engaging in anal sex with their boyfriends who were lds.

John Dehlin [00:23:31] And the logic was, well, I don't want to violate the law of chastity, and I want to be able to go on a mission, but it's vaginal sex. When everybody talks about sex, they mean vaginal sex. And so what these youth in California were doing, they were having anal sex so that they could tell their bishop that they were. Were living the law of chastity. Now, of course, that's twisted on many levels. I guess I'm just using that to say that this is. This. This is the type of stuff that I don't ever remember being discussed as a kid.

John Dehlin [00:24:07] And I guess I'm also just saying that this is the kind of stuff that now I'm hearing more often in a society that's also maybe more sexualized, but also is highly emphasizing this modesty rhetoric. And so I'm just wondering again whether being scared of our bodies, not talking about our bodies, wanting to cover up our bodies, and, and always sending these sex negative messages might sometimes lead to some twisted behaviors. Does any of that make sense?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:24:34] Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, to your point with pornography, when we as feminists challenge the rhetoric of the church, it's not. Everyone always says, oh, so you want people to be addicted to pornography? You want them to look at pornography? No, of course not. I want people to live happy, healthy, safe, safe, responsible lives. But what we're doing, like you said, the problem with me, with the pornography rhetoric is not that they're telling people don't look at porn necessarily, but it's so shaming. And like I said, this rhetoric probably worked 100 years ago, 50 years ago, when people had to wear your trench coat and go into a sex shop in an alleyway somewhere.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:25:20] But what it doesn't account for now is, like you said, the accessibility, the fact that probably every person is going to see pornographic images without fail in their life. Whether they sought it out or not. And the problem with the rhetoric now says that if you've done that, then it's going to stay with you forever. It's going to affect you forever. It's poison to yourself.

John Dehlin [00:25:41] You can't get it out of your mind. Those images will never leave.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:25:45] Yeah, it's so shaming. And I really wish there are. There are plenty of problems with pornography. First of all, pornography is a very broad term. You know, it can mean, I mean, there it's like saying, I like cinema. Right, right. There's. Pornography is. It's a huge spectrum and it is designed to arouse people. So when people see it and are aroused by it, they feel guilty and it's not their fault. It is designed to do that. And so there's no accountability in the rhetoric for that, that it's natural to be interested in it. Instead it's saying, you know, if you're interested in it, there's something wrong with you.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:26:28] It's this trap that's going to draw you in. There's a lot of fear and shame. But also, if you want to criticize pornography, why aren't we talking about human trafficking? Why aren't we talking about exploitation, exploitation, objectification? Instead we're talking about it as sinful and dirty and gross and dangerous.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:26:50] And I really think that if we want to have a healthy discussion about the industry and the effects of pornography, we need to talk about what it really does, not about what we fear that it might do. And I think that that's a good place to start. And I also think that people need to not feel bad for wanting to look at it. I think that's a very human natural tendency.

John Dehlin [00:27:12] Yeah. You know, you just made me think about something. With as much as the church reports to loathe pornography, why hasn't the church put a tenth of the efforts that it's put into defeating same sex marriage into trying to make pornography illegal? Since I know for a fact pornography affects more members than same sex marriage does.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:27:39] Yeah, I agree with that. And if it is decaying the family, I mean, I know. I think a lot of the rhetoric teaches women to feel like they're being cheated on if their husband looks at porn. And I don't think that that's accurate at all. I think that that is a misunderstanding of human biology. I think it also says that we have this culture that your spouse has to be everything to you. They have to be. They have to fulfill all your needs, all your desires. And that's just setting couples up to fail. I know so many active, miserable Mormons in their sex life because of these expectations. And so, yeah, if we're gonna put our money where our mouth is, let's work on human trafficking. Let's work on the abuse that goes into the system. This whole capitalistic nature of the sex industry. There's a lot of problems there.

John Dehlin [00:28:31] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And I guess to bring this back to the topic of body image and eating disorders, I think the point we're maybe trying to make is just that the more guilt, the more shame, the more negative messages we send about our bodies and about body image, possibly the more negative outcomes, even if they're well intended. True.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:28:59] Yeah. I think that's really accurate.

John Dehlin [00:29:01] Yeah. Okay. Steve asks, and we've already talked about this, but let's just answer it one more time. Steve asks, you've got a spouse, you've got a daughter, you've got a son, you've got someone who is really in the grips of an eating disorder. How can a family member be helpful? Now, what I've heard so far, I'll just summarize what I heard. Read about it. Is there a good book or two that you would recommend?

Advice for Helping Loved Ones With Eating Disorders

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:29:28] Yeah, there's one called Intuitive Eating. That's a really good one. The first book, not the second book. And I don't know, I think that that would be a good place to start for family members. I'm trying to think of. I don't know of any published books for family members. I'm sure there's some good stuff out there.

John Dehlin [00:29:49] I can ask listeners to post some books. If you have some ideas on books, you can post them. I'll post them to the podcast. What are some other things that a well intended family member can do? Lindsay, to help someone who's struggling with an eating disorder?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:30:04] I think always come at it from a place of love. I also think that, but I think everybody does.

John Dehlin [00:30:12] So how do people love in a wrong way?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:30:16] That's a very good point. I think when love is coming out of a place of fear, that can always be kind of a bad recipe for disaster. I think that love comes out of a place of respect, respecting boundaries and other people's boundaries. I also want to point out that with addictions and compulsions. Now, I want to be clear that a chemical addiction with drugs works a lot differently than this does, even though there are chemical reactions with food and that kind of thing.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:30:49] But you can't always trust what your loved one is saying. And I don't. I realize that that's going to put some fear into people. I'm not trying to establish more distrust in a relationship, but when people say they're fine, that that doesn't always mean that they're fine.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:31:10] I think the only thing that a family member can really do or control is not really the behaviors of others, but maybe fostering a healthy environment. So an environment where we're not talking about weight, we're not talking about food, where we are not shaming one another for those sort of behaviors.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:31:30] And I don't know, I think. I think for me, that's being supportive, trying to make the environment that you live in or the relationship you have as healthy and respectful as possible. And that's going to look different for a lot of people.

John Dehlin [00:31:44] But it sounds like if we can learn things from both your husband and your therapist, if it's possible to don't live in fear, to don't try and control behavior, to don't set up an environment of monitoring and suspicion, it's to encourage an environment of, it's okay. You're going to be okay. I love you. This is your battle, but I'm just here to help you. Let's learn about it. You can talk about it anytime. Let's just accept that this is what you're going through, that we all have our thing. Get as educated as you can, but just operate from a place where you're minimizing fear, maximizing acceptance, maximizing support, but minimizing control and shame and negativity.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:32:33] Yeah. And I also think that if you relate to them as something more than the disorder. One of my biggest fears is I thought, you know, you are what you do. And so I was that girl. I was the one with the eating disorder. I was the messed up one. And that really contributed to my behavior in a negative, negative way. And here's the thing. This is why I don't mind talking about it.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:32:59] I'm not just the eating disorder. I have so many things in my personality and in my life that are important to me and that make me who I am. And this is just part of it. So if you can relate to people in other ways, find something else to talk about. Don't always have it be about this. Don't be patronizing.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:33:25] Try to find other ways to connect. And not in ways that you're some savior trying to help someone, because that can be really condescending and shameful, but in ways that you can connect in healthy ways, things that you both like to do.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:33:40] I don't know, things like that. It would have really been nice for people. The people that judged me the least, the ones that helped me the most to minimize judgment. That's really hard to do. I understand that.

John Dehlin [00:33:53] Yeah. Yeah. Okay, great. You know, I'm going to add one thing. It seems like some of this might be harder for the well intended family member than for the actual person with an eating disorder in the sense that it might be really hard for a family member to not fear and to not want to control. And so for that I would recommend a therapist for the family member because maybe that family member's fear and maybe that family member's need to control or that family member's proclivity towards shaming would be something that could be well explored in therapy that, you know, because who knows, maybe there's even an enabling environment that's going on where it would do the well intended family members some good to do some of their own work. Does that seem even possible to you?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:34:54] I think that's a great suggestion. I think back on my mom, who again, my parents were only trying to help me, sincerely, you know, they were worried for me, they wanted to help me as parents do. And when I went to therapy and I started coming home and saying, well, when you said this to me, that wasn't helpful or when you did this, that wasn't helpful. And I think my mom really struggled with that because I think for a while she thought I was blaming her. And for a while I did blame her for some of her ways that she dealt with. And the bottom line is it's not her fault.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:35:30] It's a complicated issue that a lot of things contribute to. And I think that this happens a lot where parents feel responsible for this and it's just not, that's just not how it is. I understand that. But parents or family members or spouse or whatever can feel like they're responsible for it and they're not. I mean, that's one of the good things about Mormon agency is everybody has their own and you can't predict how someone's going to internalize something that you said, even if it was well meaning. And I think the same thing goes for the church. It's well meaning. I think it's a systemic problem that they need to really work on and fix.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:36:12] I would give them the same advice that I would give family members. Do research, find out if the methods that you're using are helpful and sometimes they're not. Therapist for a family member is a great, great idea.

John Dehlin [00:36:26] Yeah. Okay. So I think we've tackled most of the questions that our listeners wrote in about. Thank you to all our listeners for writing in questions. Now I'd like to turn just to your life today as we talk about. You're more than Lindsay Hansen park is more than her history with an eating disorder. But now you're doing all this crazy stuff. You're trying to get women to wear pants to church. You're. You're trying to get women ordained in the LDS Church. You're working for that dangerous organization, and I'm joking, called Sunstone. We all know that that's a little sketchy for some people. And you're working with John Larsen and the White Fields. So how did you get from sort of USU dropout struggling to recover to married to sort of, sort of a high powered Mormon Internet activist?

Faith Crisis, Doubt, and Finding a New Path

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:37:23] Wow. I think with me as all things, I'm very passionate about stuff. And so that's part of it. But I'm just really lucky, John. Having an eating disorder and having a faith crisis and all of these things have been really great in the sense that they continually break my paradigm of what I think the world is so

John Dehlin [00:37:47] real quick, I don't want to interrupt you and I just did interrupt you, but how did you go from eating disorder to faith crisis? Was there a connection there?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:37:55] Yeah, I think there was. I think the eating disorder prepared me in a way for this faith crisis, as all big events in life can do, because it made me realize that the narrative that I was holding on about the church wasn't exactly accurate. Like your bishop couldn't fix things for you. The scripture reading and praying and fasting are not miraculous answers to really complicated problems.

John Dehlin [00:38:20] And you really tried to fix this through righteousness, right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:38:23] Oh, gosh.

John Dehlin [00:38:24] That was the core of it, right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:38:26] That was the core of it, yeah. I mean, I really, really did. I devoted a lot of time to that. And I've always kind of been righteous in the LDS sense. I've always followed the commandments. Those were not the hard things for me to do. I think taking it too far was my challenge. And so I learned pretty quickly after this that like I said, it challenged my view on homosexuality in the church.

John Dehlin [00:38:55] What was the connection? Was it just you couldn't change, so maybe they can't change either? Is that.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:39:01] Yeah. And I still thought it was a sin. I just thought maybe God gives people these challenges. Like he gave me an eating disorder to overcome or something like that. That's the premise I was working under. I'd gotten married and I'd moved into a Utah ward and of course, I'm still trying really hard to be this Mormon wife. I hadn't worked out all of those issues yet. I was really trying hard to be the perfect Mormon woman now, not just the perfect Mormon girl.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:39:33] And I taught a little preschool from my home, and one time, and I was really successful at it. But one time, a little girl came to my house, and on the way from her house to my house, it was said that she was flashed by a flasher. And it became. They got the police involved. It became this big deal. And the story grew and grew. And he became a man wearing women's clothing that flashed her, and then he spoke to her, and then he was in a couple different locations. And the story just got this big, big scandal in the neighborhood. And the only man that was accused was a gay man.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:40:09] The only gay man in our neighborhood, because the perpetrator in this scenario was wearing women's clothing. So, of course it had to be a gay man. And I remember at the time thinking, okay, yeah, I guess, you know, gay men do those things, so that must be it.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:40:26] But as the story started changing, I started thinking about this more and thinking, guys, something's not right. You can't just blame the only gay guy because he's the only gay guy. And they. He let the police come in and check his house for women's clothing, and of course, they found none. And, you know, like, it's great that I. That a gay man would flash a little girl. That doesn't make any sense either. But a lot of people were up in arms about this, and I started saying, I don't think this is right, guys. I don't think it's fair. There's no evidence to suggest this. And I started getting a lot of pushback.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:41:06] And so I started having to develop and craft my arguments, and it really made me dive in and investigate homosexuality. And. And I became confused. I came across, you know, transgendered theory and all that kind of stuff, and I thought, wait a minute. If God would make someone born with both a penis that has a period, then that means things are not as black and white as I thought. If men can lactate, what does that mean? You know? And it was really confusing to me that if nature would allow these sort of gray areas, then that must mean that the narrative we were telling wasn't what I thought it was.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:41:46] So that's. That started for me. And in the meantime, I had a lot of issues with polygamy as a Mormon woman. I was terrified of it. I was terrified that I would have to share my husband. And he made a joke once. He said something like, yeah, if you're not a good cook in this life, it's okay, I'll marry a good cook in the next life or something. It was a total joke. But I internalized that. You know, I already told you I was competitive. I always felt in competition with other women and I always felt like my job was to please the men in my life.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:42:19] And so I really struggled with that. And I worried, I worried about that as a mother, as a wife in bed, all of those things. I worried, if I'm not living up, he can find someone that will be and I will be replaced. And that ate at me. And I came across a fair site on polygamy at one point and I started reading about it because I didn't want to read anything that was not church sourced. And I think LDS magazine had linked to a fair article. And that's how I had seen it. And it just blew open these doors of what I didn't know.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:42:59] I had never known that Joseph Smith was married to other women. And I'm telling you, it's not for lack of trying. I had read only religious books for years. You know, I was on that path reading all this, you know, everything that the prophets had written, everything from Desert Book. And I had never known Joseph Smith was married to other women.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:43:18] So that I struggled with that. So all of these things are kind of building up. Meanwhile, I'm trying to be the perfect Mormon wife, the perfect Mormon woman. And that's when I found feminist Mormon housewives. They had been on the radio out here and I remember hearing the interview and it felt so kind of naughty, you know, to hear them talk. But I think polygamy had come up. And it turns out it was Teresa Edmonds, who is a good friend of mine now, but she was talking and I said to my husband, wait, don't turn that off. I got to hear that. And he was like, no, this is garbage.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:43:53] Don't listen to that. And I thought, no, no, no. What they're saying is really interesting to me. And it felt like kind of a compulsion. Like I felt so naughty and dirty doing it, but I couldn't, I couldn't stop listening. And it eventually led me to their site and then I eventually started blogging for them pretty quickly. But do you remember, you know, Packer's famous 2010 talk? Yeah, I was now at this point, I had started really reading about homosexuality. And I didn't think that the church was wicked or necessarily Wrong. I just thought that they were misguided. I knew that they were misguided in the instructions they were giving about eating disorders at the time.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:44:38] And so I knew that sometimes they got things wrong that I knew. And so I felt the same way about homosexuality, that they meant well. They just didn't understand it. So when he said that, I. It was so painful to me. And I remember I went up to my husband's parents ward. We were in Idaho at the time, right after that conference weekend.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:44:59] And I was just. I was angry. I was so angry at Elder Packer that he would say those things. Not knowing what he was saying. It made me so angry.

John Dehlin [00:45:08] This is when he said, why would a loving Heavenly Father make someone gay?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:45:11] Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, it was. First of all, Dallin H. Oaks had done an interview on LDS.org, this was a while ago, where he talked about, we don't know if people are born that way or not, which I thought was really good progress. But Packer's words just. They were in contradiction with Oakes words, and they were in contradiction to my own life experience, what I knew.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:45:34] And yet I love the church and I loved Elder Packer, and. And I was just hurting. And so I remember going into. There's a High Council room, right? And they're having sacrament meeting, but I'm out in the hall with a baby, and I'm walking around and I'm just saying prayers in my head, like, heavenly Father, I am so hurt right now. Why do you let these leaders say things that are hurting people? And we know that it doesn't work. Am I wrong? Am I the one that's deficient or are they deficient?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:46:06] And there is a High Council room and there's a picture of the quorum of the 12 on the wall. You know, there's all of the men lined up. And I walk in and it's dark, and I'm a woman in the High Council room. I don't spend a lot of time in there, but I just stare at Elder Packer's picture for a long time. And I just start having this conversation with him, saying, elder Packer, like, I'm hurting. You don't understand what you're saying, but it's harming me. Please, please help me, Elder Packer. Almost a prayer to Elder Packer, you know what I mean?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:46:36] And I just look at his face, looking at me, silent, you know, and this thought occurs to me, and I think, I can't leave him in here. I can't leave his picture in here, I have to take it down because what he said is wrong. And I'm so angry at him. And so for a brief moment, I thought, I'm gonna steal his picture. I'm gonna steal it. And then I thought, no, Lindsay, you don't steal. Stealing is wrong. You don't do that. And so I took his picture off the wall and I turned it backwards and hung it back up.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:47:07] And it felt so freeing, but it also felt so wicked, you know, And I left. I left the room, and now my heart is racing, and I think, wow, I just did something really crazy and sad. Sacrament goes over. And I eventually came back in the church house later on that day and turned it back because I felt so guilty about it. But that was the first time that I would ever claim my own power against the authorities at the church, saying, wait a minute, I know what you're saying isn't right, and I can't stand for it. And I know that is a little silly story.

John Dehlin [00:47:44] That's a great story.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:47:45] It was so empowering to me the very first time. So from there, I started blogging. And I really didn't care about women's issues until I joined feminist Mormon housewives. And then it just blew the door open on so much pain and so, so many stories, so many thousands and thousands and thousands of stories of abuse and inequity.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:48:13] And I couldn't ignore it. I couldn't ignore it. I knew what it felt like to be ignored, to be silently suffering, and I couldn't ignore it. And I think that that kind of brought me where I was today. But like I said, I'm so grateful for it because it breaks your paradigm. And what it did for me is it broke my paradigm. And I feel like that's what being a Christian is. It breaks you down and challenges you. And so you're always malleable, you're always growing, you're always willing to accept and love new things and change your mind. And I really like that about my experience.

John Dehlin [00:48:48] Some would say the only paradigm you should have is obey the commandments, believe, read your scriptures, pray, follow the brethren, and that that's the only paradigm worth living. And that if you break that paradigm, it just leads to, best case, you know, losing your faith in the church, and worst case, sin and unhappiness. So why would anyone look at breaking a traditional believing LDS paradigm as in any way a good thing?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:49:22] Well, for me, I had done obedience. I had done that thing, and I was really good at it to a fault. I was so good at obedience that it was destroying me because it's impossible for a human to be perfect. But I was trying to find so many ways around it, I was going to do that.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:49:42] And so obedience didn't really work for me because I just. You can take obedience too far for one and second, when I was following the brethren to a T, it was making me a horrible person and a horrible Christian. I was kicking out my roommates. I mentioned I had a friend that died of cancer. Before he died, he died an atheist. And I lectured him about him being lazy and selfish for denying God because of this trial. I mean, horrible stuff that I did in the name of God that I regret to this day. Some things that I just can't take back. That is what being obedient did for me.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:50:20] That is what following the brethren to a T did for me. It made me be willing to reject family members, misfits, outliers, people that Christ spent his time with. I rejected them in the name of God. And to me, that's not Christianity. That's not following Christ.

John Dehlin [00:50:37] And so. Okay, and that's beautiful. I appreciate that. So what is your involvement with Sunstone about? We haven't talked about sunstone in a long time. Some people don't know anything about sunstone. Other people associate it with critics of the church or rebelliousness or faithlessness. What are you doing with Sunstone and why?

Community, Sunstone, and Navigating the Borderlands

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:51:04] Okay. Yeah, well, sunstone is interesting. I remember growing up hearing that it was kind of this bad thing that we don't talk about. But again, I've learned in my own life, through my own experience that the things that we don't talk about or shouldn't talk about are the things that we probably should be talking about the most.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:51:22] I've just learned that that's a life lesson that no one is going to be able to take away from me. And so I've tried to apply that openness with. With my life. I'll just give you an example. Growing up, we are not allowed to talk potty talk with my kids. And I hate it when kids talk potty talk. I hate it. But I'm trying to be open so that in my house things are not taboo, that there's not anything that is wrong or dirty that we can't talk about. So that's just a good example. And I feel like we have a sickness in our church, whether we want to admit it or not.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:51:53] And I think we're seeing symptoms of it all over the Internet. We're seeing symptoms of it in the Newspaper that comes from not being able to talk about hard issues as a people. We don't even know how to talk about hard issues anymore. And that's a problem. And so I think that that points that we need to be talking about hard issues. And Sunstone is a place that allows people to talk about hard issues. Sunstone is considered to be an open forum, and years and years ago, it had many faithful people. I think Dallin Oaks even published for Sunstone.

John Dehlin [00:52:26] Actually, I think he published in dialogue, but, yeah, same kind of thing.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:52:30] Yeah, but a lot of thousands and thousands of members would attend. I think the first symposium there was like 8,000 people that had come. It was really popular. And then when the excommunications and the September 6th happened, the church really cracked down. It became a forum for a lot of anger.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:52:50] Understandably so, because the church had, you know, done some very public things that needed to be discussed and talked about. So it really got the stigma of being a place for critics of the church. It is still a place where people can go and be critical of the church. And I think that if the church is true, then it needs to not worry about that kind of thing, that it is what it is. But Sunstone is great. It has a magazine that it's been publishing for years and years and years. Sunstone's gonna be 40 years old this year, and it does a symposium every year in Salt Lake.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:53:23] That's huge. And so I came on at a really good time. I had been teaching preschool here, and that ended due to my kind of public activism. And Sunstone offered me a job, like, literally the same month that my preschool shut down.

John Dehlin [00:53:41] And we didn't talk about that. But I'll just summarize. You're saying that women from your community who. Who used to send their children to you once you started supporting, what, female ordination or gay marriage?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:53:54] Gay marriage, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:56] Then they. They took their kids out of your preschool.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:53:59] Yeah, that was. I mean, it's a whole painful story. I've talked about it quite a bit online, but they. I just taught a really successful preschool out here for 10 years out of my home. It's what my mom does. It's what my sisters do. It's what my family's done for years and years. And that's all we do. We teach preschool. So my whole basement was designed to it. And I was really, really popular and had a huge waiting list. And when I started being more open about my support, and I'm talking open, but not, like, you know, religious about it, not Evangelical about it. I was always respectful, but I made it clear that I supported it.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:54:38] You know, I reached out to members in my ward who I knew were gay, or I defended the gay man in my ward, respectfully. So. But that made people suspicious of me. That made them worry that I was maybe going to become gay myself or maybe indoctrinate their kids or let little boys wear women's clothing. I don't know.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:55:03] There were all kinds of, like, speculations that being gay is synonymous with being perverted. And so there must be something wrong or changing in my life since I would change. And so there was a group of women that did organize a ban against my preschool.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:55:20] And they. From what I. From what I understand, from what some of the parents have told me that were in my preschool, they were actively seeking out people in my preschool and warning them about me and trying to convince them to pull their kids out. And so after 10 years of a really successful, like, really dedicated business, I had to shut down. Down in May. And so that was really. That was really hard. That was a really hard thing for me to deal with. But I acknowledge that I also do blog publicly, and now I do have a podcast, so I can understand how some of the responsibility might be on my shoulders for that.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:55:56] But it was difficult. So Sunstone was hiring a social media director in May, and I happened to finish up my last class in May. So it's been a really fortuitous thing in my own life.

John Dehlin [00:56:12] Your last class for your bachelor's degree?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:56:14] No, no, no. For preschool.

John Dehlin [00:56:16] Oh, okay. Okay, Got it.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:56:17] Yeah, no, I shut down preschool, so.

John Dehlin [00:56:19] Got it.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:56:20] So, yeah, I closed that down and I started working for Sunstone. And Sunstone has kind of a reputation of being a little bit old and outdated now, and so they've hired me to kind of update that. And it's been a long struggle, but we have some really, really good things in the works. So I'm really excited. We're going to this symposium. We're going to hold a wedding reception for gay couples.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:56:46] We're gonna hold a Mormon wedding reception for gay couples that got married in Utah and kind of rally around our gay brothers and sisters. And so we're gonna do the whole funeral potatoes, cheesy wedding decorations and everything, and show them that we love them. So that's something I'm excited about. And we're going to do, like, a super Saturday and all these kind of things that we don't get to do culturally anymore. We're going to be doing those at the symposium. And the symposium also is a place where people can submit their papers or a panel and talk about issues that are important to them. So I'm excited about that.

John Dehlin [00:57:21] Excellent. All right, and what's your involvement with John Larsen and White Fields again? John is kind of viewed as. I don't know. I would never call him this, but some would say, oh, he's an anti Mormon, or he's angry or bitter, or he's controversial. What are you doing with John and why?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:57:44] Yeah, so you're right. John is considered. John is an ex Mormon. He has resigned, and he has a podcast that is critical of the church. And John is kind of. I'm trying to think of, like, a good adjective to describe him. He's loud.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:58:00] Loud doesn't seem right. He's just very outspoken with what his views are, and it makes him entertaining and it makes him popular. My life experience has taught me that the people that we think are the most dangerous or the most messed up, it's a lot more complicated than that. I have been that person, and I've seen that happen with, like, the gay man in my neighborhood. And so I am really interested in hanging out with ex Mormons. I don't consider myself an ex Mormon. I actually, in spite of a lot of factors, I consider myself a believer in a lot of ways. No, I consider myself a believer.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:58:40] I just do. I'm going to have to own that. But I love the ex Mormon community, and I feel like. I feel like I really resent this narrative of, you're either Mormon or ex Mormon, you're with us or against us. And I see a lot of people that feel like when they question the church, they feel like they have to be ex Mormon now, because that's the narrative the church has given them, that if you question, then you're on your way out and there's no place for you. And I found that out the hard way within my own ward and within, you know, blogging for feminist Mormon housewives.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:59:16] The most painful thing that I have experienced with my faith is realizing that institutionally, the church does not care about me. And I know that sounds really, really harsh, but I grew up really looking to the 12 apostles like they were my parents, like my family. I gave them my loyalty. I loved them. I met President Hinckley once, and I was just crying when I met him because it was just so wonderful. And I could feel his love for me radiating.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:59:47] And now I understand how institutions work and how organizations work, and I. And I don't begrudge them the challenges that they have, because I think it's really hard to do that. But the bottom line is they don't care about me as an individual. How could they possibly, in an institution this size? And that was really a painful, painful thing. And when I was really angry, really angry, and felt betrayed by them thinking they didn't want to hear me, because, let's be honest, I don't think that they do want to hear people like me who blog about the church and blog about problems with women when I was really angry.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:00:29] You can read a lot of my writings that are really angry and bitter. And what the church does institutionally, what our families sometimes do and our communities do, is when you're angry and bitter, instead of giving you space to do that, they tell you you're wicked or you're sinning or you need to shut up. And those are all things, as we know in the mental health community are not conducive. They don't work, they're not helpful. And I think it makes people more bitter and more angry. And there is no empathy for the ex Mormon. There is no compassion for people who have gone angry and question things.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:01:02] And that's a real shame because these people feel hurt, they feel betrayed, they've lost things the majority of them have lost, family members and community. And instead of us rallying around them and loving them and being accepting, we stigmatize them, we push them out.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:01:19] And I just think that's wrong. I think that's one of the most wrong things we can do in our community. And we do it all the time. And likewise, in the ex Mormon community, I see a lot of people that take probably the worst parts of their Mormon experience and kind of enact them in an opposite way, if that makes sense. We kind of become mirrors of ourselves. You don't just leave the church and leave all your hangups behind. You know what I mean? And so people that are sexist in the church before are now sexist in the church out of the church, or people that are really black and white in the church before, you're with us or against us carry that same attitude into, you know, the ex Mormon attitude.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:01:58] You're with us or against us. The church is all true or it's all false. And that's the kind of stuff I really want to fight against, because that's the stuff that harms people are these binaries. And so I fight against those in the church and I fight against those outside of the church because the world is not black and white. It's gray it's full of gray. Everything is a spectrum. And so.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:02:21] So whitefields is an organization that sponsors community building and reconstruction for people who have left the church. And I feel really, really passionate about this right now. So John and I have set up community support groups and workshops with licensed therapists to help people transitioning in any sort of way. We have a religious identity disruption group, because if anyone going through this knows what it feels like, it is painful. And it.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:02:53] I mean, I still. I still feel such pain and hurt and betrayal from not knowing some of the history or not feeling heard on or listened to by women's issues. That hurts. And whether that's on me and the way that I internalized it or it's on the church, that's a complicated discussion, but it's painful, and it can mess with your life. And so that's what I'm doing with whitefields. We're getting community groups set up, and if anyone needs workshops in Utah, let us know. We've got those set up. We've got licensed therapists doing those, and we plan to expand more nationally. So I don't know if that answers your question.

John Dehlin [01:03:35] Yeah, it does. And some. And some. And, you know, this is the. The only reason I went into the field of psychology, because I. I hope to be a part of the same types of thing. So. Awesome. Let me just say. So if someone were to say to you, yeah, but John Larsen, you know, Mormon expression is all about debunking Mormonism, discrediting it, you know, giving people information that might. That would maybe most often lead to disbelief, and you're supporting that, then they would say that you're supporting. You're really supporting efforts that support disbelief and disaffiliation with the church. How would you respond to that?

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:04:18] I would say that I have learned to stop being afraid of things, that I let things be what they are. And I really love. Actually, John Larsen is one of my good, good friends. And I love the way that he looks at the world. I like the way that he picks apart things. I just sat here on this podcast and told you how I threw up in garbage bags. I mean, that's like a really embarrassing thing to admit about yourself. And yet it is what it is. It's true. I mean, it happened. And I'm not afraid to talk about it. I'm not afraid anymore. Being afraid almost killed me.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:04:55] And I feel like it can give you spiritual death, too. If you're afraid to talk about the hard things, then what good is truth? What good does it do? You. And so I really. I invite exploration. I think that we are made better when we are challenged. We are made better when our paradigms break. We are made better when we change our minds. That, to me, is growing closer to God. That, to me, is doing what Christ wanted to do. He hung out with the misfits and the sinners. He did that for a reason. Not to condescend upon them, but because they are the humans, that they are like us.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:05:33] We are human beings. And so I don't. It doesn't bother me if people think that I shouldn't be associating with these people. I am one of these people. I'm a human being that has questions and criticisms. And to say, I really resent when we say the church is true, but the people aren't.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:05:55] I think that that's just like an impossible thing to say. The church is an institution run by human men. So of course it's not perfect. The gospel. You can say the gospel is true. That's completely different. But the church is not. Is not true. What does that mean? You know, the church is run by human men. And when we worship the prophets and when we try to make the prophets perfect, to me that's blasphemy. The prophets are men. Only God is perfect.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:06:24] And it's blasphemy to say that the prophets are perfect because they're not. How could they be? They're human beings. And I'm grateful that they're human beings. I find a lot of strength in Joseph Smith being really flawed. That was such a relief to me to know that he was flawed, to know that our pioneer ancestors, that they weren't just heroic, but they were really messed up and did some really terrible stuff too, because that is what we do. And so it makes me be able to relate to them. It makes me feel more inspired by them and understand them. And so if people are scared of John Larsen, I think that says a lot more about them than it does about John Larsen.

John Dehlin [01:07:02] Beautiful. And if I were just to give you the chance to say, is your intent to lead people away from faith and church membership and activity, what would you say is your goal?

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:07:14] My goal?

John Dehlin [01:07:15] Well, no, I think you've been clear about your goal. But what would you say to someone who said that was your goal or intent?

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:07:21] Yeah, I had a goal for a long time to appeal to the leadership, to change the leadership. I wanted them to stop innocently. I consider it to be innocently and naively harming the membership. People like me who had suffered, who was on the brink of suicide. People that have completed suicide because of the way they internalize their religion. I really wanted to change that. I want the church to be a more hospitable place for women, for everyone.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:07:51] But I've realized in my own life that when I tried to appeal to the authority, it only makes me more angry. And sometimes I want. You know, I feel like I want to just burn it all down. It's so. It's not listening to me. And I had a therapist that told me, when you feel angry like that at the church, you're still looking for validation from the leaders. It might be negative validation, but you're still wanting them to hear you and listen to you. And that was important to me. I have moved away from trying to change the leadership. They're going to do what they're going to do.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:08:25] I'm more interested in empowering individuals within the church to speak their own truth, to find their path, to live Mormonism in a way that's empowering and freeing to them. That is not a way that. I guess you could relate it back to Satan's plan. Satan came and wanted to force us all into doing something. And I feel like fear and shame can force you into doing something. So your agency is limited, like mine was, to a compulsion where you're no longer in control. To me, that is Satan.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:08:56] So I'm interested in empowering people to make informed choices about their lives. And you know what? That's kind of scary because it doesn't look the same for everybody. God speaks to people in different ways. Religion is going to be enacted in different ways. And if people can do that in an informed, healthy way that doesn't harm others, then that is what I want to do. So that is my goal, is empowering people to claim their own choices and their own spirituality.

John Dehlin [01:09:27] And if someone wants to stay in the church, how do you feel about that?

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:09:31] I feel great about that. I want to stay in the church. I really, really do. I feel like there's not really any room for someone like me in the church right now. It's not the way that it's designed so I could go anyway and try to be who I am. And I know a lot of people that do that and do that successfully, but I'm not at a place where I can do that right now. So. So just personally and emotionally, I have a lot of sadness still about the church. I'm feeling really hurt still by some of the leadership. And I have a lot of forgiveness I think I need to do on that front.

John Dehlin [01:10:11] But you're still holding out hope.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:10:13] Yeah, I do. I find God in a lot of places. I think Mormonism is really small and the world is really big. And I. I would hope that people can see that and that there's such beauty in that fact.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:10:27] So I don't just find God in the Mormon Church, but the Mormon Church is so important to me. And I'll just tell you about an experience I had the other night, since there's this narrative that if you question that you're on your way to being an ex Mormon and then an atheist. I really challenge, really struggled with holding on my belief to God. I really like believing in God. I like praying. I enjoy the relationship that I have with Heavenly Father. But since there's this narrative and I do spend a lot of times with ex Mormons, it's kind of either or you have to believe in God or you don't believe in God.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:11:03] And I'm trying to really reject that narrative, but I struggle. And so the other night, I was outside looking at the stars, and I just had one of those feelings that I had had, you know, long ago, praying that God was there, that God was listening to me. And it hit me so hard that I fell to my knees and I started crying and I said, oh, my goodness, I have missed you. Please don't ever leave me again.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:11:27] And that is how I feel. I feel so sad that my faith crisis, that the lack of support in our Mormon community has made me feel that I have to miss this, that I have to have someone institutionally validate it to make me be able to believe in God.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:11:45] If anything, I just want people to be able to claim what they believe and be okay with that. Whether that believes in God or that doesn't believe in God, there's no judgment there. My personal belief in God is not one that I think harms other people. It's not the sort of lost keys sort of God.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:12:05] So I do have a lot of sadness. And I miss belief. I just miss. Felt really good to be in that position. But I know that it also doesn't make me a better person. So I'm accepting who I am and what it's. And how I'm living my life. And I'm really trying to, I guess, do what is right and let the consequence follow.

John Dehlin [01:12:28] Beautiful. Well, Lindsay Hanson park, it's been a real pleasure interviewing you for Mormon Stories. You've been able to share your sort of close with some of your beliefs and feelings. Anything else you want to. You want to leave people with before we conclude.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:12:49] Yeah, I don't know when this is going up, but we're doing a conference, the Navigating the Borderlands conference for Sunstone on the Friday night before conference. And the goal of that is to expand the borders of Mormonism. And the reason why I'm trying to do that, the reason why progressive Mormons like myself are trying to push for this, is because I have seen the pain and the damage, the utter destruction it does to the soul and to a person when they are rejected by their faith community.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:13:22] It's devastating. And I think as a people, we need to do better. And doing better means we get our own house in order. And that means realizing that our house has some dirty spots in it and our church has some sick spots in it. And we need to get our act together as a people. And I believe that that's what God does. He refines us. He constantly makes us better. And so I would just encourage listeners out there to not be so afraid. Don't be afraid of yourself. Don't be afraid of your weaknesses. Don't be afraid of truth, even if it seems dangerous, because, I mean, us ignoring it isn't going to make it go away.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:13:58] So I guess that's my little soapbox. But I really hope that we can, as a people, move towards more nuance and more gray areas, because that allows for a lot more humanness. And there's nothing wrong with being human. The natural man, I don't know, is such an enemy to God all the time. Sometimes God works with the natural man in really great ways.

John Dehlin [01:14:23] And after all, he made us right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:14:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:26] Yeah. He or she or they.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:14:28] They. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:32] All right, well, Lindsay Hanson park, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you for joining us on Mormon Stories.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:14:37] Yeah. And can I just say, atheists out there don't give me crap about believing in God today. All right, I'll argue about it with you another time, but not today.

John Dehlin [01:14:48] All right, thanks, Lindsay.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:14:59] Come, come, ye saints. No toil nor labor fear, but with joy.

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