Introduction and Amy's Background

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is August 29, 2023, and today we are going to be covering the topic of number one, as a Mormon girl and young woman and woman, sort of the perils of ignoring your own inner voice. And I guess I'd say the upside of learning to listen to your own inner voice, that's going to be a major theme. And a second theme for today is going to parenting after a Mormon mixed faith divorce. So, you know, you lose your faith, your partner's still a believer, you get divorced, and then you have to deal with how to raise your kids when two parents see the world very differently from a faith perspective. And the courageous, thoughtful human that has volunteered to step into these waters is Amy Lloyd. Hey, Amy. Hello.

Amy Lloyd [00:01:00] Thank you for having me.

John Dehlin [00:01:01] Thanks so much for joining us.

Amy Lloyd [00:01:02] Appreciate it. Happy to be here.

John Dehlin [00:01:04] Yeah. And, you know, I sometimes find people and ask them to be interviewed, and then sometimes they write me and tell me their story. And in this case, you used three magic words, Carolyn Pearson, which caught my attention. But you said you kind of wanted to begin by sharing your intention for today's episode. And I will say that I'm also joined today by my lovely, brilliant partner in righteousness and truth, Margi. Hey, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:36] Hey.

John Dehlin [00:01:36] I wouldn't do this without you.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:38] Oh, great. I'm excited for this topic today.

John Dehlin [00:01:42] This is going to be an important one.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:43] Happy to be here.

John Dehlin [00:01:43] Yeah, we get this topic all the time. Okay, so tell us your intention and hello, Carolyn Pearson. And. Yeah. Why you wanted to do this interview.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:53] Yes.

Amy Lloyd [00:01:53] So it came up originally because I was visiting my mom, who's a good friend of Carolyn's, and they were asking me kind of about conversations I had had with my son. And she thought that it would be a really great topic. So she reached out to you, and that's kind of why I'm here. And conversations with your son regarding the church and kind of how navigating that, which, you know, we'll get into later. But I thought if it can be helpful to anybody else, you know, when I was kind of wrestling with this and how to deal with this and make sure that they have informed consent, make sure they know about these topics, but also be respectful because I know they're going half the time and all of those things, it's such a tricky space, and I felt like I was navigating it blind.

Amy Lloyd [00:02:36] And I didn't really find a whole lot for as helpful as I have found, you know, Mormon Stories and other podcasts, which I do. Immensely helpful. I couldn't find anything really specifically on this topic. And so if I can be a helpful voice to anybody, not that I'm an expert on it by any means, I've definitely done some things that I wish I had done differently, and I'm happy to share those. But I did also do some things that I'm pretty proud of. And so if I can be just a helpful, even just for other people who are in the same boat, and it's helpful to just have validation that somebody else knows how hard it is, that's kind of my primary intention for being here, I would say.

Amy Lloyd [00:03:15] The other is there's just. I'm grateful for the opportunity to share my story and to have it out there and to have it. So if anybody that knows me and loves me ever wants to hear my full story, it's there for them to do that.

John Dehlin [00:03:29] Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. We talk a lot about how Mormonism can destroy marriages when one loses their faith and the other doesn't. But we don't talk enough about how to deal with the aftermath of that, especially when kids are torn between a believing parent and a non believing parent. And I get the. That every week. So it's just kind of amazing that you step forward to be the help instead of receive the help.

Amy Lloyd [00:03:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:56] We're sorry we haven't done this more, but we're grateful that you're willing to.

Amy Lloyd [00:03:59] Yeah. And as I was kind of preparing for it, I started realizing maybe why it's not out there very much and

Margi Dehlin [00:04:05] because it is really tricky.

Amy Lloyd [00:04:06] And I want to make sure that I'm not getting into telling anyone else's story. And I want to make sure that I'm not getting into, you know, I don't want anything to be uncomfortable for anybody.

John Dehlin [00:04:15] And you don't want to trash your ex.

Amy Lloyd [00:04:16] No, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:04:17] Not to upset your kids.

Amy Lloyd [00:04:19] Right. So. And I have talked to them about. They know I'm coming on here, by the way. But yeah, it's. It is very tricky. It's very tricky. And so I do want to make a small clarification that me losing my faith is not what made my marriage end. But, I mean, we can kind of get into that. But. Yeah, it kind of coincided, but was not the reason for it.

John Dehlin [00:04:41] Beautiful.

Amy Lloyd [00:04:41] I will say that.

John Dehlin [00:04:42] Beautiful. All right, well, let's jump in. And I think this is going to be in two parts. Part one is going to be, as I mentioned, focusing on maybe ways you ignored your. Your voice as a young, as A girl and a young woman and maybe got married too quickly when you probably shouldn't have gotten married. And the consequences of that, is that right? For part one, yeah. And then part two will be how you've navigated adulting after the church and as a divorced woman and parenting. Right, yeah. That'll be part two.

Margi Dehlin [00:05:13] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:05:13] I think that sounds great.

John Dehlin [00:05:14] All right, so buckle in, everyone. This is going to be great. So, Amy Lloyd, where does your Mormon story begin?

Amy's Deep Mormon Pioneer Ancestry

Amy Lloyd [00:05:21] Okay, well, all sides of my family goes back to the very earliest days of the church. I've got apostles in my ancestry. I've got, you know, BYU building is named after one of my ancestors.

John Dehlin [00:05:32] Which one?

Amy Lloyd [00:05:33] The Mariner Merrill.

John Dehlin [00:05:35] Okay.

Amy Lloyd [00:05:38] Another probably my most prominent Mormon ancestor is Edwin D. Woolley, who was the grandfather of J. Reuben Clark and Spencer W. Kimball. He was one of the first bishops in Salt Lake. He was Brigham Young's business manager. I don't know if you've ever heard that story, that Brigham Young, you know, if you ever. If he ever falls dead in a lake, you'll find him or in a stream, you'll find him floating. The body floating upstream because he was that cantankerous. That was my ancestor that he's talking about.

John Dehlin [00:06:05] Oh, wow. So, yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:06:08] And that other story that has kind of become Mormon folklore about Joseph Smith demand, you know, asking the store owner to give all of his goods, and then he's ready to do it, and he says, never mind. That was just a test of faith. That same. Same man. That was him. So, yeah, I'm steeped in Mormon history. Just pioneer stock all the way back, both sides.

John Dehlin [00:06:29] Wow. Okay. All right. And so where were you born? And also your parents? Kind of just a tiny bit about them. And.

Amy Lloyd [00:06:37] Yeah, so they were both born and raised in Salt Lake. Both born and raised in the church,

John Dehlin [00:06:42] I was told East High School.

Amy Lloyd [00:06:43] Yep, East High School. That's right.

John Dehlin [00:06:45] Where High School Musical was from.

Amy Lloyd [00:06:47] Yep. Yep, that's right. So, yeah, they met. They were actually high school sweethearts. And then he went on his mission. He likes to say my mom waited for him. My mom says maybe, maybe not. They did end up getting married, of course, and, you know, had the four of us. I'm number three of four. But, yeah, they were both born and raised in the church. My mom's mom actually worked for the First Presidency. She was the personal secretary to Benson and Hinkley.

John Dehlin [00:07:16] Whoa.

Amy Lloyd [00:07:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:17] What was her name?

Amy Lloyd [00:07:18] Eleanor. Eleanor Stevens Odell.

John Dehlin [00:07:20] Wow.

Amy Lloyd [00:07:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:21] Okay.

Amy Lloyd [00:07:22] Yeah, she's wonderful. So she's passed away now, but she was Wonderful. Yeah. And my dad's family was. I would say that his parents weren't real stalwart members of the church, but they did raise their kids in the church kind of more socially. And he's always been active, served a mission, the whole. The whole nine. So.

John Dehlin [00:07:41] Okay.

Amy Lloyd [00:07:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:42] So. And so they went to the U. Right?

Amy Lloyd [00:07:45] They both went to the U. We're very chagrined that their four children went to BYU or by Woo, as they joke with us that they used to call it when they went to school.

John Dehlin [00:07:55] And so total children.

Amy Lloyd [00:07:57] You said I'm one of four.

John Dehlin [00:07:58] Okay. And where are you in the birth?

Amy Lloyd [00:08:00] I am third.

John Dehlin [00:08:01] Third.

Amy Lloyd [00:08:01] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:08:01] Okay. Okay. And so, yeah. Where were you born?

Amy Lloyd [00:08:05] I was born in Arizona, just for the first few months of my life, and then moved to Utah. Sandy, Utah. I lived there for seven years. And then the rest of my childhood, I can. Is. Was in California. We moved to Walnut Creek, California, in the East Bay area.

John Dehlin [00:08:19] That's where Carolyn Pearson comes in.

Amy Lloyd [00:08:21] That is where she comes in. Yes. So once we moved there, that's where she and my mom met and became good friends. And. Yeah, so that's the connection there.

John Dehlin [00:08:29] Okay. So, you know, we often have people talk about their Mormon upbringing, but what do you want to share about your. I mean, we're kind of trying to focus on the theme today of, like, listening or not listening to your inner voice.

Growing Up as a Mormon Child

Amy Lloyd [00:08:46] Right.

John Dehlin [00:08:47] What do you want to share about your journey?

Amy Lloyd [00:08:49] Yeah, So I would say there were. Looking back, there were always certain things that bothered me that. Those incongruities that I noticed or things that didn't feel quite right. I was always bothered by polygamy, for example. That was always kind of issue number one for me. My mom was always really open about being bothered by that and not liking it, not thinking it was okay.

Amy Lloyd [00:09:10] And I would ask about it and kind of get the. You know, I was always very validated in my question for. For one thing which I really appreciate about my parents, it was. I never felt like I couldn't ask. I never felt like, oh, you must not be very spiritual if you're asking. I never got any of that at home because my mom was bothered by it, too. And I remember asking my dad about it, and it was, you know, he agreed, like, he didn't love it either. He didn't, but it was more like a don't throw the baby out with the bathwater type.

Amy Lloyd [00:09:43] So I noticed some things. But in my own home, I think my parents are just so great. Like, it never. I never felt we did Have. We definitely had a Mormon home. Like, we went to church every Sunday. We did all of the things.

John Dehlin [00:09:57] Were there good parts about that?

Amy Lloyd [00:09:58] Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, I always felt, first of all, the Bay Area is very. As far as the church is concerned, it's much more progressive and liberal. So I don't. I don't feel like it was very, you know, dogmatic necessarily. And in my. In my own home, I feel like the focus was always on Jesus Christ or always on loving heavenly parents. Like, it was all. That was always the focus.

Amy Lloyd [00:10:23] So, yeah, so we were. We were active. Definitely always active. But they were also a little bit more. I don't want to use the word loose, but I guess, for lack of a better word, a little bit more loose about it. Like, we wouldn't. If we were on vacation, we wouldn't seek out a church to go to on Sunday, or sometimes we would go out to eat on Sundays, specifically because my mom would say that she doesn't want to work on Sunday either. And the people at the restaurant are already working. So if we go out to eat, one less person is. At least one less person is working on Sunday.

Amy Lloyd [00:10:55] Which I thought was a great perspective. So valid. So there were things like that where my mom was always really good at offering kind of another way of looking at things, another perspective. So I do remember that about it. I remember one time she called Nephi a twerp, which I thought was hilarious.

Amy Lloyd [00:11:12] And she just said, you know, that must be annoying for Laman and Lemuel to always be. To always have their little brother pestering them about not being righteous enough. Like, that would probably be really irritating. Like, I could see why they were sometimes annoyed. Like, so she would just. She was just very good about offering kind of another perspective on things.

John Dehlin [00:11:29] And for our never Mormon viewers and listeners, Nephi is a character in the Book of Mormon, one of the first early heroes of the Book of Mormon, who's a younger brother, but who's strong and righteous and faithful. And you could view him as super righteous or as kind of pretentious and arrogant and annoying to his older brothers, right?

Margi Dehlin [00:11:48] Very favored.

Amy Lloyd [00:11:49] Yes, very favored. Well, and I think she brought that up one time, too. Like, that would probably be hard to always feel like your brother gets all the attention. Your brother gets all the kudos.

John Dehlin [00:11:58] He's favored of the Lord.

Amy Lloyd [00:12:00] Right? So she was very good at not only, like, the Nephi perspective, but the Laman and Lemuel perspective. Like, what must it have been like from them, like, their teenagers or young adults uprooted from their life because of a dream that their father had. Like, they probably had friends that they were leaving behind. Maybe they had girlfriends that they were leaving behind. Like, that's a lot to ask. And then to always just be painted as complainers.

John Dehlin [00:12:21] Like, that's a lot of cool. That's cool. Empathy on your mom's daughter. Yes, yes.

Amy Lloyd [00:12:25] And that's. I really feel like there were several times where empathy was brought in, compassion was brought in. Like, let's look at this maybe from another point of view. And so then I kind of, I think, just learned from that example and kind of was able to start doing that myself when I would hear kind of more problematic scripture stories in the Bible too.

John Dehlin [00:12:44] Once your parents model that ability to question or have contrary points of view, it frees you up to do the same.

Amy Lloyd [00:12:51] Right, Right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:53] Which makes me wonder how you got off track later from your own inner voice.

Amy Lloyd [00:12:57] I blame the byu. Yeah. Well, it's funny because there's. At the same time, even though this was going on in my own home, in my own home, I feel like, was very supportive of listening to yourself. And you're still swimming in the waters of Mormonism. Right. Like, that's still where you're going to church every Sunday. That's still where you're getting lessons. And I can remember a couple of, looking back, really problematic young women lessons that even though I loved my leaders, my leaders were always awesome.

Amy Lloyd [00:13:27] The lessons themselves, I think were kind of damaging. And, you know, I can remember one where, you know, we were talking about what we want to be when we grow up, and I immediately thought I'd like to be a doctor. Like, at the time, I wanted to be a neonatologist. And it was something that I hadn't voiced a whole lot, but I'd kind of started thinking that.

Amy Lloyd [00:13:50] And I remember feeling, like, almost a little bit nervous, like I was going to be brave and actually say I wanted to be a doctor. Which, first of all, like, the fact that I felt like that would be a brave thing to voice is a problem. Right. Like, that shouldn't have been a problem for me to feel like I was brave in voicing that. But ultimately I wasn't because I was one of the last ones to go around the room. And every single girl before me said she wanted to be a stay at home mom. And so that's what I said too.

Amy Lloyd [00:14:19] And a big part of me did want to be a stay at home mom. I had a stay at home mom, and I loved it. And so I Feel like part of it too. There's this. It all ends up being fraught because if I chose not to be a stay at home mom, is that me implicitly saying something about my mom? Am I saying that I didn't appreciate that she was a stay at home mom? You know, and so all of these things just you and, you know, arguably, maybe I internalized things too much, but I did. And so, I don't know. So there was that lesson. There was another one where.

John Dehlin [00:14:53] Can I just say, in psychology there are a few, like, super famous studies.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:57] Yes, I was thinking of that.

John Dehlin [00:14:58] You were thinking the same thing. There's one called the Asch Line Conformity study, where they get like 10 people, nine of them are actors, to sit in a room and comment on the length of a line. And long story short, all of the nine confederates or actors are paid to give the wrong answer, to see whether the 10th person will give the right answer, which is obvious, or the wrong answer, because the previous nine people gave the wrong answer. And something like 2/3 of the people give the wrong answer just to confirm,

Amy Lloyd [00:15:35] even though they know because it's obvious which is longest.

John Dehlin [00:15:38] And that's. It's a classic study. Look it up. The Ashlein Conformity Study. But you almost.

Amy Lloyd [00:15:42] Oh yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:43] You almost perfectly repeated that just in a Mormon context.

Amy Lloyd [00:15:47] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:47] Conformity is powerful.

Amy Lloyd [00:15:48] Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:15:50] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:15:50] Well, especially when the message is, you know, I grew up in. I was after Benson or maybe he was the prophet when I was little, I don't remember now, mid-80s. Yeah. So I was, you know, Benson and Hinckley were the prophets of my, you know, childhood. And I mean, he gave that awful talk about mothers come home and they're

John Dehlin [00:16:14] women's places in the home.

Amy Lloyd [00:16:14] Right.

John Dehlin [00:16:15] They damage their kids if they work outside the home.

Amy Lloyd [00:16:18] Exactly. And that's God's mouthpiece. Right. So what are you gonna do? Like, do something. Go against something that God's told you to do. And there are people who were able to do that. My own OB currently, like, she is just a couple years older than me, so she was raised in the same time and she's Mormon and she's a doctor. Like, so obviously people do kind of do it anyways. But I feel like, and this is something I've thought a lot about, like, why were some people able to not internalize that and still do what they were, but I wasn't? And I guess maybe some of it just comes down to personality.

Amy Lloyd [00:16:49] I'm a people pleaser by nature, 100%. And I feel like I had. I always feel like I've had enough defiance in me to notice things and be bothered by them, but not quite enough to do them anyways, you know? And so I had kind of just the wrong amount of defiance.

Young Women's Lessons and Female Roles

Amy Lloyd [00:17:08] And I don't know. So this other story that comes to mind, the young women lesson was. It was along those lines, but I remember it was, you know, a mom was at home, and she was upstairs ironing and kind of taking care of the house, and her kids were outside playing. And one of them comes in and calls out for her, mom, Mom. And she says, oh, I'm up here, honey, and what do you need? And, oh, nothing. And runs back outside to play. She's like, that was kind of weird. So a few minutes later, another child comes in. Same thing happens. He calls out for her.

Amy Lloyd [00:17:35] She, you know, tells him where she is, and he's like, oh, okay. And runs back outside to play. This happens with the third child. So finally she goes outside and she says, you guys, like, are you okay? Everyone keeps coming in and calling for me, but then just, like, running back outside like, do you guys need anything? And they say, oh, no, we just wanted to know that you were home.

Margi Dehlin [00:17:53] Mm.

Amy Lloyd [00:17:54] Like, how was. How was I supposed to go to med school after that? Like, how was I supposed to want to be anything else? Cause I always did wanna be a mom, and being a mom is the greatest joy of my life. I adore my kids, and I've always wanted to be a really good mom. And when that lesson is taught to you that the only way to really be a good mom is to be only a mom, that's what you're gonna do. And.

John Dehlin [00:18:24] And dads don't have to choose. They can be dads and have careers.

Amy Lloyd [00:18:28] Right? Right.

John Dehlin [00:18:29] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:18:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:31] Why should moms have to choose?

Amy Lloyd [00:18:33] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:18:34] I think it's really important to recognize, too. You were talking about personality types and how for you, you know, you. That dream sort of died right inside you of being a doctor, whereas a different personality, you know, went ahead and became a doctor as a woman. But I also think it's really important to say that all those internalized things are likely there in the woman that is working. That's what I found for the women I know that did it anyway. There's, like, incredible amounts of guilt they walk with every day.

Amy Lloyd [00:19:08] Oh, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:09] So, yeah, outwardly, they. They made that choice, but inwardly, like, it's still, you know, absolutely insidious messaging.

Amy Lloyd [00:19:16] Well, and I'll. I'll definitely talk about that later in My story when we get there too. Because at this point I have done both. I was a stay at home mom for. For several years and then I've been a working mom as well. And so I definitely had all of that as well. And it's not even that. It is for a lot of people that the dream dies, but I almost didn't even allow myself to get that far down the dream path with it.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:35] Yeah, right.

Amy Lloyd [00:19:36] You know, the thought was in my head, oh, maybe I want to be a doctor. And then I just kind of immediately squashed it and didn't, you know, and who knows, like, maybe I ultimately wouldn't have chosen to do that. I don't know. There's no way to really know now. But just the fact that having the choice. Right. And I didn't feel like I really had the choice. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:19:56] Okay, so those are some damaging young women's stories.

Amy Lloyd [00:20:00] Yeah. That I didn't even really recognize as super damaging at the time, but now, like looking back, for sure. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:20:07] Okay.

Amy Lloyd [00:20:08] And I think it's gotten much better. I don't notice as much of that anymore. But that's almost the thing that's frustrating too, because there's never, like, we might kind of universally view it even within Mormonism that Benson talk as being damaging and not appropriate and like, people don't necessarily quote from it anymore, but it is there. And it's never been kind of taken off and it's never been, oh, hey, yeah, denounced. Definitely never denounced or apologized for or anything like that. And people might not agree with it now, but at the time, if you tried to disagree with it.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:42] That's right.

Amy Lloyd [00:20:42] That's a no go. Right.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:43] And it kind of affected that generation

Amy Lloyd [00:20:45] in a certain way badly. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:47] When Margi and I were raising our daughters in, you know, our kids in Logan, just, you know, 10 years ago, we noticed just how comprehensively mother and non working outside the home focused their Mormon upbringings were in the 2000 and tens. And you know, it just goes to show you that the church can stop emphasizing something from the pulpit, but the cultural teachings can persist for decades, if not longer. Even when the teachings are no longer emphasized.

Amy Lloyd [00:21:20] Absolutely. And I think part of that is because of this thing of prophets. And that kind of brings me to another incongruity that I would notice. You can disagree with the prophet, but never in real time.

Obedience, Prophets, and Suppressing Doubt

John Dehlin [00:21:32] Never vocally.

Amy Lloyd [00:21:33] Well, never in. Never at the time. Right. It always has to be after there's at least one or two other prophets, then you can maybe go a Couple prophets back and disagree with what the previous one said. Well, maybe never at the time, but

John Dehlin [00:21:45] at church, if you're like, Joseph Smith was messed up here or there, Brigham Young was bad here, there.

Amy Lloyd [00:21:49] Oh, there's still a point, right? Like, I'm just talking about, like with this Benson talk, for example.

John Dehlin [00:21:53] Okay.

Amy Lloyd [00:21:54] It's people I think are, I think, actually currently right now. Like, one of Julie Hanks's recent post is about that is about that talk.

John Dehlin [00:22:01] But she's constantly talking to her stake president about whether she gets to stay a member. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like it's easy for Julie Hanks to do that.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:09] That's true.

Amy Lloyd [00:22:09] I'm sure it's not. But there's, I think, probably zero chance if it was a talk that was current.

John Dehlin [00:22:15] For sure, right? Yeah, for sure.

Amy Lloyd [00:22:17] There's no way that's gonna fly.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:18] So true.

Amy Lloyd [00:22:19] So you can disagree, but never in real time. And so that's always. That's kind of a struggle of mine with this concept of profits in general too, and especially with how emphatically it's taught that they speak for God rather than just being inspired leaders or something like that. It's when you are taught that they speak for God and you take that seriously and you internalize that, what else are you gonna do other than take their words to heart, Right? And then it gets very confusing when a past prophet has said something that is universally understood to be problematic. Like some of the racist things that we've heard that now nobody agree agrees with.

Amy Lloyd [00:22:59] But like in the past, it's, what do you do with that? If they were speaking for God. So then the choice either becomes to me, I don't know any other way to pair it other than they either don't speak directly for God or God's very fickle and sometimes not too nice. Right. Like, it just. I don't know how to pair it. And some people are able to and good for them, I guess, but I don't know how to do it.

John Dehlin [00:23:23] So as a teen, how did you process all that?

Amy Lloyd [00:23:25] Well, so as a teen, I think it more just came in as confusion. Like things that I would. I would hear that I'd be like, that doesn't really feel right. Like, I don't really like that. But then it was always just kind of ultimately.

John Dehlin [00:23:35] Well, you pack that down.

Amy Lloyd [00:23:36] Yeah, you pack it down and. Well, don't worry about it. We can't know all things. We can't. You know, I would kind of get

John Dehlin [00:23:41] that as Isaiah 55 scripture that you learned in scripture mastery. The Lord's ways are higher than man's ways.

Amy Lloyd [00:23:47] Right.

John Dehlin [00:23:47] We don't understand the Lord's wisdom.

Amy Lloyd [00:23:49] Which kind of leads me to another dichotomy though, because why would God make our. Like God made us right under this, you know, these beliefs. Why would he make our brains incapable of understanding his ways, but then hold us to the understanding of his ways?

John Dehlin [00:24:04] Why would the. Why would God create the natural man, which is an enemy to God?

Amy Lloyd [00:24:07] Make it an enemy? Yeah, but that doesn't make any sense to me. Right.

John Dehlin [00:24:10] Never thought about that before. Right.

Amy Lloyd [00:24:11] So it's just all of these things, like even the. Even the answers that you get end up being just brand new dichotomies that you have to kind of figure out. And it was just very confusing. But yeah, ultimately I think it never occurred to me to not believe. So you just kind of have to figure out a way to live with it. And I think you just kind of live with that cognitive dissonance for a while.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:34] So were you. If we were kind of drop in on your teen kind of years and see you and how you functioned and coped during those years, what did that look like? Were you aware that you kind of had this inner world where things weren't all sitting right, or was it more like. And did you have kind of that outward self, so you were kind of doing all the things, but then having this separate experience internally or like, how did you experience that?

Amy Lloyd [00:25:03] Well, I think for me, I was fortunate in the area that I was being raised in because with the exception of the stories I just shared, like, in general, my church experiences were very positive. And I do feel like I was in a more kind of liberal ward. And so it wasn't. I don't feel like I butted up against it a whole lot. I just. So when I noticed it, it was more just. Well, I don't know that I love that or I don't know if I agree with that. If I would ask my parents about it, I was definitely validated. So I didn't feel like I couldn't express that.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:37] Nice.

Amy Lloyd [00:25:38] But then it was just kind of, that's not the focus anyways, like, let's not worry about it type of thing. And it was easy to do that because it wasn't really the focus as much where I was. So I don't know. That's, I guess, hard to answer in a way. I think that I definitely outwardly kind of did all the things. Right. I was very good girl. But I also didn't really want to not be like that anyway. It kind of fit personality wise in that way. Yeah, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:08] So, yeah, at that time, would you say you were very invested in kind of the Mormon plan, the Mormon sort

Amy Lloyd [00:26:15] of structure of how your life would

Margi Dehlin [00:26:17] go where you, you were bought into

Amy Lloyd [00:26:19] that you were bought in, in terms of like wanting, you know, going to college, getting married, having kids, being a stay at home, all of that? Yeah, yeah, I did. I never had an interest in going on a mission though I will say that that was never interested. Interesting to me. For one thing, it wasn't, you know, I'm 44 now, so at the time it wasn't as prevalent for girls to be going like the. You. Yeah, they definitely did. It wasn't like it was rare for them to. And I had several friends who did, but it was totally fine if you didn't want to.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:48] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:26:49] So. And it was just not something that ever interested in me. I, I always kind of felt like live and let live. Like, why do I care if someone else is born or not? Like I didn't care. Like I didn't, I didn't have this evangelical, you know, spirit about me at all.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:03] Oh, got it. And if we were going to look at kind of your associations and connections during that time living in Walnut Creek, California, were the majority of your friends Mormon?

Amy Lloyd [00:27:14] No, no, not at all. I had really just one good friend who was Mormon and she is an example, actually. She and her family are an example of women who were able to kind of overcome or not let themselves be stifled by that same, by that exact same programming. And I actually saw her the other day and kind of had a conversation with her about this. But she was one of five girls and they also had a son. And so five strong women in that family. And it was always very much, you know, girl power, we can do anything. There was almost, I think they did have the right amount of defiance to be able to kind of overcome that. Right. I had like half defiance, so I didn't quite overcome it, but they did. So I know that there are examples of it. So.

John Dehlin [00:28:03] So going back to your story, where do we pick up?

Amy Lloyd [00:28:05] Oh, gosh. Okay, so high school, I guess another thing that was really formative for me. I just, I had a. I had someone I was close to who really struggled a lot with scrupulosity, religious ocd. And that was very hard to watch. And I don't know that.

John Dehlin [00:28:30] So that's like hyper righteousness, fear, drives to be pure and perfect. That really is more of a mental illness than it is righteousness, you know, Healthy righteousness.

Amy Lloyd [00:28:43] Yeah. And I think kind of watching that, a couple of things happened. I think I. And I don't know if I even processed it this way at the time, but I think I started noticing that maybe some of the messaging we get at church isn't always super helpful, isn't always really very healthy.

John Dehlin [00:29:01] Like be therefore perfect. Like, again, it's personality. For some people, that's like, oh, I'll try and do better.

Amy Lloyd [00:29:07] Right.

John Dehlin [00:29:07] For other people, that means they have to be perfect and it can become devastating to their mental health.

Amy Lloyd [00:29:13] Yeah. Well, and there's this idea of, you know, talks from the pulpit being, being meant for kind of the, the people that need to hear it, like the lowest common denominator. Right. But those people aren't listening and the ones that are, are really internalizing it and it can do a lot of harm. And I think that was kind of my first experience of recognizing that maybe there are not healthy messages going on. But I didn't take it too far down that road because I think it just went somewhere in me noticing it.

Margi Dehlin [00:29:47] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:29:47] Because I was.

John Dehlin [00:29:48] We saw this friend, we'll say friend. We saw this friend starting to struggle. Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:29:54] And just really. Yeah. And from what I observed, like the help that was being asked for at church, like the response from the church was not very compassionate. It was more, well, you know, sometimes this is a holy war that we're fighting and sometimes there are casualties on all sides like that. It was very much not in my view how Jesus would respond. And it really was uncomfortable. It was hard for me to watch that. And it was hard for me to kind of see that again, that dichotomy of aren't we supposed. Don't you go after the one. Like, isn't it supposed to be this compassion, empathy filled thing? Why are we hearing messages that can make somebody, that can damage somebody, that can really be harmful?

John Dehlin [00:30:50] How is it affecting your friend? Just in a couple general ways.

Amy Lloyd [00:30:55] You know, I don't want to speak, I don't want to speak for anybody else. So I'll kind of leave it to just what my observation was, which was just that I, to me, I saw that sometimes church messaging is. Is not healthy.

John Dehlin [00:31:05] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:05] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:31:05] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:06] And watching someone really suffer.

Amy Lloyd [00:31:09] Yeah. Yeah. So that was another kind of formative thing for me growing up. But overall, I really will say that overall I loved my childhood. I feel like overall it was very positive. Certainly in my own home where the church was concerned, it was very much love focused And Christ focused and compassion focused and empathy focused. So I've always really appreciated that about my parents and how I was raised.

John Dehlin [00:31:40] Yeah, I relate and I think Margue will too, that we lost our faith in 2001, but decided to raise our children in the church thinking that if we just had positive, balanced messages at home, we would neutralize and overcome any of the messages that our kids received at church. And we were super wrong.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:03] Yeah, we definitely underestimated, I think, the impact that church messaging would have. And we definitely overestimated, I think, our inoculation ability.

Amy Lloyd [00:32:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:17] Cause kids famously care much more about social messaging than what their parents have to say, especially in the teen years. And if the messaging is all around purity, modesty, perfectionism, anti lgbt, whatever it is, your kids are gonna absorb those messages whether you try to neutralize them or not. Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:32:39] And I do think that some neutral neutralizing happens. Like I can remember in general, I was a very, I was like I said I was a very good girl. I didn't, you know, I toed the line and didn't even view it as toeing the line. I just, I was very, I was.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:52] And by good and obedient.

John Dehlin [00:32:53] Yeah, yeah, you gotta say that.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:54] Are you saying that in the. Let's talk about good, Because I do think. What do you mean when you say good?

John Dehlin [00:33:00] Sometimes good can mean depriving yourself of healthy normative experiences.

Amy Lloyd [00:33:04] It's like obedient. Well, and that's probably. There wasn't a whole, a lot of dating going on, for example, but. But yeah, you know, I got good grades. I went to, I was, you know, my maid and beehive president. Like I did my personal progress, you know, all of that stuff.

Amy Lloyd [00:33:19] I did have a rebellious moment where I got caught drinking. I do have that experience and I bring that up just to, just to give an example of neutralizing that happened. Because I think that when I. That could have, depending on my parents response, could have been a very shame filled experience. And it wasn't at all.

Amy Lloyd [00:33:39] My parents response to that was very loving and very about my safety and about my health and not. I don't remember church being brought up at all other than my dad saying, I remember him saying to me, listen, everyone's gonna have their own temptations and things that, you know, you know, rules and temptations that other people might not have. This is not one of mine, but if it's gonna be one of yours, you need to be smarter about it. And that's the extent of how much church was brought in to that I wasn't told I need to go to the bishop. I wasn't told that I made Jesus sad.

Amy Lloyd [00:34:19] I wasn't told any of that stuff. And there was no shaming involved at all. It was very much. Like, this was not healthy for you. Like, this is not a healthy choice. It was very much about my safety and not about sin or morality. And so I do think that. That. That they did a good job of neutralizing what otherwise could have been a harmful message, you know, in the. In the discipline of that.

Margi Dehlin [00:34:47] Yeah. Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:34:49] So.

John Dehlin [00:34:49] Yeah. Okay. All right. So should we leave the high school years, or. Yeah. Do you want to talk about your testimony at all? Is that important?

Margi Dehlin [00:34:58] Oh.

John Dehlin [00:34:58] Or was it just a traditional testimony or.

Amy Lloyd [00:35:00] I would say. I would say it was very strong. Very strong. I. You know, I. I play music, and it's always. Music's always been an important part of my life and of my upbringing, and I was always doing, you know, helping with musical numbers at church and singing, and I always felt the spirit so strongly when I was singing and involved in those things. And, yeah, I had a very strong testimony. I felt things very, very deeply. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:29] Okay.

Choosing BYU and Early Adult Life

John Dehlin [00:35:30] All right. So what came after high school? Not admission?

Amy Lloyd [00:35:34] No, not admission. I did go to. I went to byu, and that was another instance, I think, where I ignored my own kind of what I wanted to do. I had gotten into UCSD San Diego and chose to go to BYU instead. And I think a big driving factor in that was that I was.

Amy Lloyd [00:35:56] I was tired of feeling different. I didn't want to kind of have to explain my beliefs anymore. It was really attractive to me to be in a place where everybody else was Mormon, too, and I maybe didn't have to feel, you know, uncomfortable about being Mormon or.

Amy Lloyd [00:36:14] It was very attractive to me to go to. To go to BYU for that reason. And looking back, like, that's kind of a bummer, because I think UCSD would have been a great school, so. And who knows? Like, maybe I wouldn't have decided to go there anyways. But again, it's all of these decisions that are so informed by the church and what you're told is right, and that's kind of just what you end up doing, whether it's kind of what you want to do or not.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:41] Can I ask, in your. Like, your Walnut Creek ward, was UCSD and byu, were they seen as, like, equal decisions, or was BYU kind of a step up from a more righteous decision then? I'm just curious about your messaging, the messaging you received around that.

Amy Lloyd [00:37:03] I don't Even know if I feel like so much of this stuff was internalized because I think that if I had decided to go to ucsd, it would've been great. Like, I don't feel like. And I think that there were a couple of girls in my ward who didn't go to byu and I don't feel like they got judged for it at all.

Amy Lloyd [00:37:20] I don't know. I also had two sibling, Two older siblings who were. Who had gone there. And so that was probably part of what enticed me about it. But I do think there was definitely this idea of, well, that's where you'll be more likely to meet a Mormon husband and where it was definitely more the natural thing to do. And it was definitely seen as a big deal that you got in wiu, and that's great. And I was worried I might not because I actually didn't go to seminary and got in anyways. And so I do feel like it was a little bit of a source of pride.

Amy Lloyd [00:37:58] But I don't remember my ward being like super gung ho. Either way, I just, for whatever reason, internally felt like I should probably go there.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:09] Optimal.

Amy Lloyd [00:38:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:10] One thing I'm just curious about, living near the University of Utah and now having some kids who have gone there and knowing that several Mormon apostles were super proud youths. I'm curious why back then with your parents being graduates of the U, or at least having attended the U, why applying to the University of Utah where there would be a strong institute program and a lot of Mormons, I. I totally get that. That's how it was. It was for me too. BYU is the only consideration. I'm just wondering in your case, why, especially in your family.

Amy Lloyd [00:38:44] Right. Since my parents went to the U,

John Dehlin [00:38:45] why the U wasn't more of, like a possibility?

Margi Dehlin [00:38:48] I think.

Amy Lloyd [00:38:48] I think that the thing I did not like about the U and that I, I think is still true is that it's more of a commuter school. So I think it's less. I mean, I don't know if I say as still true. I don't actually know, but it seems like it's more of a commuter school than it is, like, meaning kid, not

John Dehlin [00:39:03] enough kids lived on campus and not enough campus life.

Amy Lloyd [00:39:07] That's what it seemed like.

John Dehlin [00:39:08] Okay. Okay.

Amy Lloyd [00:39:09] I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what it seemed like. And I really liked the idea of going to BYU campus and living on, you know, and it was fun. I actually really did like byu.

John Dehlin [00:39:18] I mean, BYU is a marriage funnel for the Mormon Church.

Amy Lloyd [00:39:21] Yeah, you know. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:23] Because kids that don't get married to Mormons often leave the church at a higher rate than kids who marry Mormons.

Amy Lloyd [00:39:30] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:31] Full stop.

Amy Lloyd [00:39:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:32] So BYU has been the marriage funnel for 30, 40, 50 years.

Amy Lloyd [00:39:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah. My mom said at the U, they used to call it Breed Em Young University.

John Dehlin [00:39:43] Yeah, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:44] That's awesome.

John Dehlin [00:39:45] Okay.

Amy Lloyd [00:39:46] And I don't feel like. At least I.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:47] At least.

John Dehlin [00:39:49] But this is topical to your story particularly, right?

Amy Lloyd [00:39:52] Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [00:39:54] Yeah. Keep. Sorry, keep going.

Amy Lloyd [00:39:55] No, at least explicitly, I don't feel like I was going there to meet a. To meet a husband. I don't feel like that was my. My conscious motivation at all.

John Dehlin [00:40:05] Conscious.

Amy Lloyd [00:40:05] But I'm sure unconsciously it was at least part of it for me.

John Dehlin [00:40:08] It was super conscious.

Amy Lloyd [00:40:09] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think for a lot of people it is. I think that again, going back to that, like, half amount of defiance that I had, like, I would never have, like, admitted that.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:17] Right.

Amy Lloyd [00:40:17] But it probably did play.

John Dehlin [00:40:19] See, that's the parental conditioning and the inner voice versus the social conditioning.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:26] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:40:27] You may have some conscious preferences, but often what wins out.

Amy Lloyd [00:40:32] Right, Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:40:33] Right.

Amy Lloyd [00:40:34] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:40:34] Social conditioning.

Amy Lloyd [00:40:35] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:40:37] And the conformity.

Amy Lloyd [00:40:40] But I did love byu, especially my first two years. Loved it. I had a lot of fun. And it was nice to be around people who, you know, felt the same as you and who believed the same as you, at least. At least on the outside. And I kind of ended up feeling different there too, because I think I was, you know, maybe didn't internally conform as much as other people did. And so things started to bother me. And I think my cognitive dissonance really ramped up when I was there.

John Dehlin [00:41:12] Was that like 97? When were you.

Amy Lloyd [00:41:14] Yeah, so I would have started in the fall of 97.

John Dehlin [00:41:16] Okay.

Amy Lloyd [00:41:16] Yeah. Graduated in 2001.

John Dehlin [00:41:18] Okay.

Amy Lloyd [00:41:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:19] All right.

Amy Lloyd [00:41:20] Yeah. I mean, it was fun, though. BYU's a funny place. Like, we had. I made some great friends there and friends that I'm. People I'm still really good friends with today. Really? I met some really good people there, but, yeah, it's a funny place. I remember my. I remember my. Was this my fresh. No, it must have been a little bit later on. But the Daily Universe had a, you know, an opinion you could write, like, any newspaper, you could write in opinions. And there was a guy who wrote in about how inappropriate it was for girls to wear cross body bags because it accentuated, you know, their boobs and that, like, how inappropriate that is.

Amy Lloyd [00:42:01] And girls should not Wear those because it's, you know, makes it harder for the guys, I guess. And it was this back and forth ridiculous thing in the newspaper for weeks, and one that I, I was glued to it because it was highly entertaining but just so ridiculous. And, you know, obviously tons of people writing in about how ridiculous it is, but then tons of people defending him and agreeing with him. And this one girl writes in that maybe we should all. Maybe we should all just stop wearing seatbelts too, if that would help. If that would help the men and just highlighting how ridiculous that was. So it's just a funny place.

Margi Dehlin [00:42:37] It was just.

Amy Lloyd [00:42:37] It was a funny place.

John Dehlin [00:42:38] But like, BYU Idaho has had that either formal or informal policy for decades

Amy Lloyd [00:42:45] where, where they literally can't wear crossbody bags.

John Dehlin [00:42:48] Where, where women have been discouraged from either, either officially or unofficially from wearing, you know, book bags or purses is crazy. I've heard many BYU Idaho students say that was culturally forbidden.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:02] So.

John Dehlin [00:43:02] So like, BYU Idaho usually is like, takes. Takes BYU to 11.

Amy Lloyd [00:43:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:07] So to speak.

Amy Lloyd [00:43:08] Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [00:43:08] I call it Mormon Saudi Arabia. But it's just historically, it's been literally that.

Amy Lloyd [00:43:14] That wow.

John Dehlin [00:43:15] Thing.

Amy Lloyd [00:43:15] Wow. Well, luckily at BYU Provo, it was more just a funny. Most people, I think, rolled their eyes and thought it was ridiculous, so. But yeah, I mean, even the fact that somebody feels comfortable writing that in is a little silly, right?

John Dehlin [00:43:28] Yeah, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:29] And the lens on women's bodies.

Amy Lloyd [00:43:32] Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:43:35] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:35] Just.

Ignoring Her Inner Voice at BYU

John Dehlin [00:43:37] Okay. And so what do you want to talk about? Your voice and dissonance between your inner voice and messages or experiences you were having at byu. Anything you want to say about that, other than what you said?

Amy Lloyd [00:43:51] Well, for one thing, with the major I chose, you know, I'd already kind of not allowed myself to go the, the med school route. And I thought to myself, that is what I was interested in is medicine. And I wanted to help babies and I wanted to, you know, do that stuff, but I refused to pivot once I decided not to be a doctor, because at the time it was, well, then I'm not gonna graduate till I'm 32 and I don't want to wait that long to have kids. And then what am I gonna do? Like, in my mind, the only option other than other than being a stay at home mom myself was maybe having.

Amy Lloyd [00:44:28] Working and having the dad stay home. But that didn't seem like a real viable option to me because it didn't seem like very many Mormon men would sign up for that. And that's not even really what I wanted either. There it wasn't this, there wasn't this kind of middle normal ground of yeah, so you guys will work together and you'll figure it out. Right? And there's lots of ways to do that. And actually being a doctor would probably be a great profession as a mom because I don't know, like, maybe you could work two days a week or something. And I don't know, maybe doctors out there listening will be like, haha, that's not true.

Amy Lloyd [00:44:58] But I don't know, I just, I didn't allow myself to even go there as a possibility. But I also didn't want to pivot to nursing, which you'd think I would just do nursing then because that was too stereotypical and I had enough defiance in me that I wasn't going to go to BYU and be elementary ed or a nursing major.

Amy Lloyd [00:45:20] And which is unfortunate because I actually probably would have loved nursing. And so that's kind of a bummer too because both in trying to conform and in trying to not be so conforming, I ended up ignoring my own inner voice.

Margi Dehlin [00:45:34] Right.

Amy Lloyd [00:45:34] Like both. I got it on both sides.

John Dehlin [00:45:36] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:45:37] And so instead I was like, okay, well what about accounting? And I thought of account. Someone in my family, maybe my sister or my mom, suggested accounting because BYU is really, really one of the nationally best accounting programs.

Amy Lloyd [00:45:54] It's like always two or three in the country. And that appealed to me because if it's hard to get into, then that's kind of a point of proving something. And I can do this too. And so that's what I ended up doing. And I took the first accounting class and actually loved it. So I was like, okay, that's what I can do. But I don't know that I don't think I would have made that same choice again. Like, it isn't, it's worked out okay and I landed fine and it ended up working out well later on when I needed to go back to work. But yeah, I don't think it's certainly not where my passion is and not probably what I would have chosen.

Amy Lloyd [00:46:32] So it was a choice made very much because I was both wanting to conform and not wanting to conform. So something funny about that, when I made it into the program, which is hard to get into, so I was excited that I, that I tested into it and another girlfriend of mine who was also in the program, we were, we went up to the office to turn in some paperwork for it or something. I don't remember exactly why we were in the accounting office.

Amy Lloyd [00:46:58] And a student, a male Student came in and told us that we were taking, like, how dare we be in the program because we were taking the spot of a breadwinner.

John Dehlin [00:47:09] That happened.

Amy Lloyd [00:47:10] That happened.

John Dehlin [00:47:12] So we were just like, does that make you feel? Well, which side came out? The submissive or the dominant or the rebellious?

Amy Lloyd [00:47:19] The rebellious side came out for sure. And my friend and I looked at each other and then he just quickly left. He didn't, like, wait for a response, and we were too stunned to give one immediately. And then we just looked at each other and laughed it off. But, I mean, that was pretty stunning that he would say that.

John Dehlin [00:47:37] And those messages can still settle subconsciously.

Amy Lloyd [00:47:40] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:47:41] Even if consciously you kind of shake them off.

Amy Lloyd [00:47:43] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:47:44] Right.

Amy Lloyd [00:47:44] Absolutely. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:46] It kind of tells you your place.

Amy Lloyd [00:47:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:48] Right.

Amy Lloyd [00:47:49] And I had a friend who did go to med school and she was told the same thing.

John Dehlin [00:47:52] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:47:52] That by her being pre med, she was taking the spot of a breadwinner.

John Dehlin [00:47:55] Yeah, yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:47:56] So. So not appropriate. And again, not something that I think would probably happen now. But that happened then.

John Dehlin [00:48:03] Yeah, I think it would still happen now sometimes. Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:48:07] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:07] Culture doesn't change.

Amy Lloyd [00:48:09] It takes a long time.

John Dehlin [00:48:09] In 10 or 20, 30 years, it takes longer.

Amy Lloyd [00:48:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:12] Okay. Well. Yeah. So how did that. How did your BYU experience kind of wrap up for you?

Amy Lloyd [00:48:20] Yeah, so I did the accounting program and got through that and ended up junior year because of the accounting program. Meeting my first husband. And that was interesting, too. I don't ultimately think we were very compatible.

John Dehlin [00:48:40] I will say you did avoid the trap of, like, the freshman marriage to the rm.

Amy Lloyd [00:48:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:46] Which shows you had something going on inside.

Amy Lloyd [00:48:49] Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:51] That's true.

Amy Lloyd [00:48:52] I did have friends who got married after freshman year.

John Dehlin [00:48:54] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:48:55] But, yeah, so he. You know, I don't ultimately think we were a very good match. I remember relying very heavily on the talk that was. That we. It was delivered or quoted from at one of the BYU devotionals about any two. Any two good people can have a successful marriage.

John Dehlin [00:49:14] Any two righteous Mormons.

Amy Lloyd [00:49:15] Yeah, any two righteous Mormons. Something along those lines.

John Dehlin [00:49:18] Can have a successful marriage.

Amy Lloyd [00:49:19] Can have a successful marriage.

John Dehlin [00:49:20] So don't worry about compatibility. Don't worry about taking your time to get to know each other. If you're both righteous, just.

Amy Lloyd [00:49:26] It'll work itself out.

John Dehlin [00:49:27] Punch in.

Amy Lloyd [00:49:28] Yes, absolutely. And I remember reading and rereading that talk, and I actually even went to BYU counselor because I actually did have concerns about the relationship. It was pretty rocky. Even when we were dating. We broke up several times. And I went to a counselor over It. And instead of being like, you're 21 years old, like, maybe he's just not the right person for you, and that's why you feel like this instead. His response is very flippant. And it was, well, I mean, if you get married, though, like, what's the worst that happens is you get divorced and that you can work that out.

Amy Lloyd [00:50:08] And I thought there's another incongruity. Like, what is happening. Like, we. Marriage is supposed to be. It's taught in this church as being the. The best thing you can do, right? Like, that's one of the greatest things. It's very sacred. It's very. It's forever. It's not. It's very serious.

Amy Lloyd [00:50:24] And yet this BYU counselor is being so flippant, almost, in a way, to get me to just get married, which felt very confusing. But again, I was like, well, I guess that's true. I guess there would be worse things. And, you know, I, again, was relying very heavily on this talk. And. And I don't know why. I don't know. It's.

Amy Lloyd [00:50:47] A million other people would have recognized that maybe it just wasn't the right relationship. But for whatever reason, I felt. I just felt compelled to work it out and to keep going with it. And I feel like I do want to make a quick pause to just say that there is nothing in my life that I would do any differently if it means, like, not having the life I have now. So I would not trade my kids for anything. I would not. So from that perspective, like, I would do everything exactly the same because I would never risk not having them. So I don't want it to come across like, I'm regretting this so much.

Amy Lloyd [00:51:26] But, like, just to make the point that I. I don't think I made decisions that were in line with myself. So I don't know. That's always so tricky, right? Because I don't. I don't want my kids to be thinking that, you know, I wish that didn't happen because that is 100% not true. Like, I would do zero things different if it meant not having them. Like, I would never risk that. So just wanted to make that clear.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:48] I hear that. And I also think that piece of advice from the therapist, it really ignores, I think, the conditioning of women around staying at home, because it. Yes, for women that get married and then, you know, oftentimes you have children really quickly and then get divorced, it's very different for a woman than for the man, the breadwinning man, and the woman that has Only gone to school knowing that she's gonna stay at home. That power differential, that opportunity differential, it leaves the woman so vulnerable that just completely ignored all of that. Right?

Amy Lloyd [00:52:32] Absolutely, absolutely. And I did have an accounting degree to fall back on, which I'm grateful for, and that ended up being a very good thing. But it doesn't mean I didn't start at the bottom. And I always did. I did work for a few years after we got married, but it always was.

Amy Lloyd [00:52:51] I approached it more like a temp job because it was always just until I had my first baby. And so I didn't put the. And maybe part of it too, because I wasn't passionate about accounting. That's probably not the right field I should have gone into for what I was interested in. Right. But also it did always feel very temporary. I always viewed it as temporary. And so there wasn't the same attention given to building a career and you know, to getting. I'm sure there are places. And actually now my job that I have now, I really do like a lot. And so maybe I could have gone that route instead, you know, so it's just, it's fraught in so many different ways. But yeah, so we got married.

John Dehlin [00:53:34] But there's gotta be, I mean, so many 20 something, 30 something, 40 something Mormon Women for whom it's both. It's. I love my kids. And I totally didn't have informed consent and was operating under conformity and social pressure and not under what I felt would have been best for me or what I truly wanted or didn't even know. Didn't even have the chance to get to know what I wanted. And it's gotta be both. Yeah, it is both.

Amy Lloyd [00:54:08] I think it is both.

John Dehlin [00:54:09] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:54:09] And I always knew I wanted to be a mom. I had always wanted to be a mom. And I do think that that is genuine. That was not church conditioning for me. That did line up very strongly for me and I don't regret the years that I spent staying home with them either. But, but, but I do think that it.

John Dehlin [00:54:25] Timing matters.

Amy Lloyd [00:54:26] Timing matters. And I think that it could have been done in a way that was a little bit more beneficial.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:30] And if we're talking about informed consent, I also think culturally, I wonder sometimes what it would, it would be like to have a sense of informed consent around what it means for women's bodies to have babies. Yeah, like, I don't think that's discussed enough. Like, hey, just so you know.

John Dehlin [00:54:48] Or mental health too.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:49] Or mental health. And as well for a partnership to say hey, it's beautiful you want to have children. And here are some things that you should know research wise, about happiness in partnership once babies are introduced. And further down the line, teens, the teen years, I just think that's a very different conversation. And how you would navigate that as a couple would be so different. I think you could strategize, you could actually go in saying, okay, so we know this. What do we want to do? How do we want to actually go about that? Sorry, just a little side, because you mentioned informed consent being so important.

Amy Lloyd [00:55:35] Right. Oh, and that actually reminds me of a class that I had at BYU on child development where they actually taught a study about how children of stay at home moms versus children of working moms are no different in terms of success and happiness and security and all of those things. There's essentially no detrimental effects that are measured for children of working moms versus children of stay at home moms. And I remember thinking in that class, well, then why are we all taught to be, say, to only be stay at home moms? Why is that what's being taught if you at BYU are teaching me?

Amy Lloyd [00:56:19] And he even went so far, this professor, to say that, to say, I have found that true in my personal life too. My wife was a stay at home mom for the first, you know, few of our kids, and then worked with the last two. And they are, they're all great. They all turned out great. Right? Like, there's. So that was confusing messaging to me. So why, why is the church teaching us one thing when we know that that's not the case?

Amy Lloyd [00:56:43] And why do I still feel the pressure to only do that, even though I'm hearing that it was very confusing, the messaging around that. So that was something. So I don't know, was that an attempted informed consent, like to let women know, like, you can't. But again, it wasn't. That was kind of all that was said. And then we moved on. And I was, you know, I wanted to go talk to him afterwards and ask him more about it, and I just, I just didn't. And you know, I remember that class though. I remember being like, that's confusing. Why is the church teaching us this then? Why is God telling us this? Because that's how I viewed it. Right.

John Dehlin [00:57:20] Yeah, Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:57:21] I don't know. I had a couple of classes at BYU that kind of gave me pause about things. Like another one. I've always been very interested in just religion in general. I think it's fascinating. And so I took a Greek mythology class. I Thought as one of my just gen eds and thought it was super interesting.

Amy Lloyd [00:57:40] And I remember having this thought when I was taking this class that I wonder, like, it is everybody in the world, like, nobody in the world thinks of Greek mythology as like, religion anymore, right? It's all. It's myth, but it was religion to them.

Amy Lloyd [00:57:55] And the thought crossed my mind, like, I wonder in 200, 300, 500,000 years, however long, if the religions of our day are gonna be universally seen as myth. And then I was kind of like, huh, I don't know what to do with that. I'm gonna put that away.

Amy Lloyd [00:58:15] But it was interesting. And then another thought I had in that class was on their view of gods, which in a way kind of made more sense than our view of gods, or at least the Christian view of gods. Like, we try to make God this all knowing, all powerful, all loving, and yet he commits genocide in the Old Testament, and yet he's, you know, there's all of these things that are not loving, but it's called love anyway. And that's confusing. At least with Greek mythology.

Amy Lloyd [00:58:50] They might be like, yeah, Zeus is a real jerk sometimes, but he's a God. What can you do? Right? Like, he's got to do what he says, but at least they acknowledge and they don't try to call. They don't try to call it love, Right. They just acknowledge, yeah, he's kind of a jerk sometimes.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:04] Or.

Amy Lloyd [00:59:05] Yeah, Poseidon's got a real angry streak, right. Like, they don't try to. They don't try to act like these stories where they're clearly not being loving, but they're all loving, right?

John Dehlin [00:59:15] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:16] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:59:16] I don't know.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:17] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [00:59:18] So just kind of some questions. Yeah, Some just confusing dichotomies on even just the nature of God. And what does that mean? And I was raised with such a

John Dehlin [00:59:26] strong

Amy Lloyd [00:59:28] faith that in a loving God that it's made some of these other messages feel extra confusing, I think, because that's something that I just have held onto.

John Dehlin [00:59:42] What I think is super complex is that if you think about the classic abusive profile, it's always someone who's super loving and warm and then violent and abusive.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:54] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:59:55] And then after they're called out on their abusiveness, they can't switch back to

Amy Lloyd [00:59:59] the super loving classic abuse cycle and the triangulation of victim and aggressor and, you know, all of that stuff.

John Dehlin [01:00:06] And how can that not permeate into Mormon culture?

Amy Lloyd [01:00:12] Well, and even into what you end up tolerating in relationships? And you're not going to recognize unhealthy behaviors if that's kind of been internalized,

John Dehlin [01:00:21] if it's divinely mandated and inspired.

Amy Lloyd [01:00:24] Yeah, exactly.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:24] And if all you're given is emotional immaturity models, then it's just. It's really a recipe.

Amy Lloyd [01:00:32] Right.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:33] You know?

John Dehlin [01:00:33] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:00:34] Yeah. And there was a lot of that. Like, a lot of this kind of messaging that just, like, I remember going to devotionals and hearing things that didn't quite sit right, but I wasn't sure exactly why. Like, I would hate those ones where they talked about their wives and how much their wives did, but. Cause it was always in the context of.

John Dehlin [01:00:52] Meaning the general authorities. Right?

Amy Lloyd [01:00:53] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:00:53] Okay.

Amy Lloyd [01:00:54] Cause it was always in the context of, you know. Cause I was so busy and I was off doing this and this and this, and my wife took care of everything. Home. But she never complained.

John Dehlin [01:01:02] Right.

Amy Lloyd [01:01:03] Like, how many times have you heard that? That's the idea about a more woman

John Dehlin [01:01:08] when I got home, you know what I mean?

Amy Lloyd [01:01:10] I don't remember that exact one, but, yeah, probably. But yeah, I remember the ones. It was like, she never complained. I remember hearing that one a lot. And maybe because of my mom's Laman Lemuel story, maybe that's why that one rubbed me wrong. Maybe she had a reason to complain sometimes. Like, and what's wrong with that? Like, what's wrong with Voic? That maybe something's not right? Like, but it was. It was very much this implicit, like, teaching that you just take it. You just take it and you don't complain about it and serve you don't. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:01:40] Don't have needs.

Amy Lloyd [01:01:41] Don't.

Margi Dehlin [01:01:42] Lung suffering.

Amy Lloyd [01:01:43] Yes. So there was that, and then there was this.

John Dehlin [01:01:45] I mean, the worst manifestation of that is Warren Jeffs. He used to have keep sweet.

Amy Lloyd [01:01:49] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:01:49] Written on. On his feet. And when the women would come in to complain, he'd put his feet up on the desk.

Amy Lloyd [01:01:55] Right.

John Dehlin [01:01:56] And they would read keep sweet, which basically meant, shut up and do your job.

Amy Lloyd [01:02:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:01] You know what I mean?

Amy Lloyd [01:02:01] Yeah. And I do. I think that she never complained. And she just.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:05] She.

Amy Lloyd [01:02:05] She asked. We asked her how she did it, and she just said, well, I never expected much out of him.

John Dehlin [01:02:09] Ha ha ha.

Amy Lloyd [01:02:10] Like, and everyone just kind of laughs about that. And I was like, that's. That's not actually funny. Like, that's like, you should have helped her more, like.

John Dehlin [01:02:17] And it has an impact of perpetuating those. Those. Those systems.

Amy Lloyd [01:02:22] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:02:22] Right. Yes. The church. The God church patriarchy system just gets replicated in the marriage and in the family unit, right?

Amy Lloyd [01:02:31] Yeah, absolutely. So there's all of that stuff going on. Another time at byu, I remember having a Relief Society lesson. I think it was in those years where we were doing teachings of the prophets, and so each year was a different prophet focused on the manual. This one, I'm pretty sure, was Wilford Woodruff.

Amy Lloyd [01:02:49] It was definitely one of the first four, because I knew that he had more than one wife. And, of course, polygamy's always kind of been a real issue for me. And I remember in this lesson, they read a love letter that he wrote to his wife. The only wife that they mentioned that he had in the lesson completely omitted the fact that he had many others. And they read this love letter, and it was this beautiful, sweet, loving letter. And that made all the girls aw.

Amy Lloyd [01:03:19] In the class. And afterwards, I remember I was talking to my roommate, and she said, wasn't that letter so sweet? Couldn't even help myself, I said. I said it was. But I wonder if he wrote a similar letter for all of his other wives, too.

Amy Lloyd [01:03:34] And she was really kind of taken aback by that, but I was like, well, what? Which one's worse? Like, is it worse if he did, or is it worse if he didn't? Because if he did, then that kind of cheapens it, all, right? But if he didn't, then I feel really bad for all of those other wives who don't have a husband who loves them like that. So I noticed these things. I did notice it, and I did.

Amy Lloyd [01:03:54] I would have my kind of moments of defiance or moments of rebellion where I would voice things or where I wasn't okay with things, but it just wasn't enough for me to really listen to myself for real, you know?

Margi Dehlin [01:04:07] Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:10] Wow. That's powerful.

Amy Lloyd [01:04:12] Yeah. And I think being at byu, too, kind of made me a little more orthodox in a lot of ways, too, because I felt like, of course, it's kind of this classic. You hear this all the time on your podcast. But, like, I felt like I was the problem. Something's wrong with me, that I'm not, you know, that I'm not oohing and ahhing over this, that I. That I'm not chuckling at the cute, quippy, devotional talk about, you know, what's wrong with me. And so I think it made me very susceptible to feeling like I was the problem, and I need to be the one that changed. And so then when I was with somebody that was more. More letter of the law than I was really comfortable with, rather than just recognizing that we're not a good match. It was, well, something must be wrong with me. I need to be more like that.

Identity, Ideals, and Cult Conditioning

Margi Dehlin [01:04:58] Yeah, yeah. Because there is that ideal. Right. So you're coming up against an ideal, Something that's idealized within the church culture.

Amy Lloyd [01:05:08] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:09] Something that Steven Hassan, the world cult expert, really made clear to me when I was here. He had the benefit of having an identity as a sec, being raised secular Jew and then joining a cult, the Moonies, and. And then leaving it and being able to really internalize this idea of your personality and then the cult personality. And you know, we don't call Mormonism a cult on Mormon stories. We call it a high demand religion. But either way, the organization's job is to work, do everything it can to get you to assume the personality that it wants you to have. That's most beneficial for the organization.

John Dehlin [01:05:56] And the organization believes it's also most beneficial for you to assume the organization's personality. But what we don't get as someone born and raised in the church, we don't ever get the chance to develop our own personality really.

John Dehlin [01:06:14] Or we're always beating it back. So in your case, your parents did their best to help you nurture your own personality, but because you were in the Mormon context and then at BYU or going on a mission, you know, just kissing goodbye, the whole game, whether it's mission or byu, is to indoctrinate you into the personality that the organization wants you to have and to pack down whatever authentic personality is really down there. That's the whole game. And I don't think it's intentionally nefarious, but it ends up being nefarious for certain personality types.

Amy Lloyd [01:06:54] Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:06:57] It's so well said.

Amy Lloyd [01:06:58] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:06:59] It's like a false. It's a false self that was created by an outside entity for you.

Amy Lloyd [01:07:05] Right.

John Dehlin [01:07:07] For the. For the organization's benefit.

Margi Dehlin [01:07:09] That's right. Which is important.

John Dehlin [01:07:11] Yeah, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:07:11] Like I think even. Doesn't Stephen Hasson talk about it as sort of a dissociative state? It disconnects you actually from yourself, which is why. Anyway, this is an aside. But upon leaving.

John Dehlin [01:07:23] That's the whole theme of this part one.

Margi Dehlin [01:07:25] Upon leaving, so many people are like, I feel lost. I have no idea what I want. I have no idea what I desire or long for. And it's like, yeah, yeah, that's how that works.

John Dehlin [01:07:34] Yeah. How many ex Mormon women in their 20s or 30s or 40s are like, I don't even know who I am. I don't Even know where to start, you know.

Margi Dehlin [01:07:41] Yeah, well, and I'm sure that all

Amy Lloyd [01:07:43] of that was part of it too, in terms of wanting to stay with the Mormon plan. You know, I'm dating my now ex husband and, you know, senior year comes around, and I don't remember overtly or consciously thinking, oh, crap, I better get married because I'm about to graduate. But that was probably in there too. It probably was.

John Dehlin [01:08:03] People use your one chance to find your faithful return missionary.

Margi Dehlin [01:08:07] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:08:07] And so there's a clear path if I go this way, and there's a real unknown path if I go this way.

John Dehlin [01:08:13] Scary.

Amy Lloyd [01:08:13] And that's scary. That's a lot scarier than maybe putting up with a relationship dynamic that you kind of know is not quite right. But, like, maybe it's just me, maybe. And any two people, righteous people, can make a really good marriage work. So I'm gonna go that way. I'm gonna go that way.

John Dehlin [01:08:27] Not maybe it's you for sure. It's your fault if it's not going wrong. You know what I mean?

Amy Lloyd [01:08:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:34] Mormonism doesn't curate you to blame others for your, you know, what's not going wrong. It curates you to blame yourself.

Amy Lloyd [01:08:41] Right, Absolutely. And, you know, you're not by your family, at least I wasn't, you know, and so I didn't have the benefit of, you know, my parents kind of raised some concerns like this. Some of this doesn't seem super healthy. Like, are you sure that this is maybe right. But then they want to tread lightly, too, because you don't want to, you know, rebellion, that's a tricky balance. Right. And so. And for them, too, they're like, well, you know what? Like, we're not around it all the time, though. Like, maybe this is just, you know, snippets that we're seeing that isn't representative of the whole. Like, you know, so it becomes hard there too, because.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:11] So hard.

Amy Lloyd [01:09:12] Right?

Margi Dehlin [01:09:14] So hard.

Amy Lloyd [01:09:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:15] So you got married by your senior year.

Amy Lloyd [01:09:18] We sure did. Yeah. So, yes. Summer after graduation, we got married and we moved to Chicago.

John Dehlin [01:09:27] Which temple?

Amy Lloyd [01:09:28] Well, Oakland.

John Dehlin [01:09:29] Oakland.

Amy Lloyd [01:09:30] Yeah, Oakland Temple. And it's interesting, I actually did. This was another kind of tamping it down. Like, I had this experience in the temple where I thought to myself, if you go through with this, you're gonna end up divorced.

John Dehlin [01:09:43] Whoa.

Amy Lloyd [01:09:44] I did.

John Dehlin [01:09:45] So your inner voice told you that?

Amy Lloyd [01:09:46] It did.

John Dehlin [01:09:47] In the temple.

Amy Lloyd [01:09:47] Yes. And again, I don't know why, because even many Mormons would have been like, that is the spirit. I need to listen to that. Right. I don't know why I didn't tell. I don't know why I didn't. Maybe it's because I needed to get my two babies here, but I didn't listen to it. I convinced myself it was cold feet and it was hard. Right. I mean, everyone's there and everyone's waiting and people have flown in from out of town, and so.

John Dehlin [01:10:15] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:10:15] And that's real. I think you can't.

Amy Lloyd [01:10:17] Yeah, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:10:19] And I do think when those moments where, again, your voice takes you off plan.

Amy Lloyd [01:10:25] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:10:25] I. I just. There's not a lot of incentive for that.

Amy Lloyd [01:10:28] Right, right. And it's hard. I don't want to make this, you know, I don't know. It's hard. I'm sure my ex agrees at this point that we probably weren't a good match either, but it's just.

Margi Dehlin [01:10:38] It's hard.

Amy Lloyd [01:10:39] It's hard.

The Temple Experience and Its Impact

Margi Dehlin [01:10:41] How old were you?

Amy Lloyd [01:10:42] I was 22.

Margi Dehlin [01:10:43] So you were 22. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:46] Actually older by Mormon standards for marriage, but for the rest of my old, quite young. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But the most important theme is you were just tamping down your inner voice.

Margi Dehlin [01:10:58] That's right.

Amy Lloyd [01:10:58] Not listening to it. Yeah. Well, and the temple, too. Like, we haven't talked about the temple experience yet. That was uncomfortable.

John Dehlin [01:11:05] Whatever you want to say.

Amy Lloyd [01:11:06] Yeah. So I had heard enough. I don't know how, but I had heard enough that I knew that women veiled their faces. And at the time, this was before. I know that they've recently changed this. But at the time, you covenanted to obey your husband, and I did not like that.

John Dehlin [01:11:24] While your husband covenanted to obey God. So you're obeying your husband, Your husband's obeying God.

Amy Lloyd [01:11:28] Right. And I didn't like that. And I talked to my bishop about it, and I've always had very good bishops. I was very lucky in that regard. And I remember talking to my bishop about it beforehand and saying, I don't like that. Like, I don't feel like that's okay. That doesn't feel. That feels sexist to me. Like, I don't like. You know, I don't like how that feels like. Because the only reference I had for why women veil faces was, is it the New Testament where Paul's talking about how women can't stand being in the sight of. In the presence of God and so they have to veil their faces or something like that? I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:12:00] The answer is nonsense. Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:12:02] Whatever it is, that's not great. Right. So that's what's in my Head. As far as why we fail faces.

John Dehlin [01:12:07] I mean, Paul says women should stay silent in the church, which basically puts women down in oxygen. Right?

Amy Lloyd [01:12:13] Absolutely. Yeah. So I remember talking about that beforehand, but just again, and having a very understanding bishop and being like, I understand. I don't love that either, but don't let it kind of ruin the whole experience type of thing. So, okay.

John Dehlin [01:12:28] Sometimes understanding bishops can be nefarious, because if a bishop is a jerk, maybe that would shock you into making a different decision.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:35] That's a good point.

John Dehlin [01:12:36] But if the bishop's like, oh, you know, I'm so sorry, that's hard. Let me validate you. And now go do the thing that you're supposed to do for the organization that might.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:44] To lead.

Amy Lloyd [01:12:45] And obviously very well meaning, like, he's just a good guy. Right.

John Dehlin [01:12:48] That's the trick. That's the rub.

Amy Lloyd [01:12:49] Right, Absolutely. So, yeah, And I did. I went through. I went through anyway. And then, of course, it's hard because anytime you're going through, in general, it's because you're either about to go on a mission and you already have papers in, or it's because you're about to get married and invitations have already been sent. And so pressureful. It's very pressureful. Right. And that is very hard. Like, what are you gonna do? Like, be in there, say, no, I actually don't want this? And know that your entire life is about to be turned upside down in a second. Like, that's. You're not gonna do that.

Margi Dehlin [01:13:22] And the public shame element.

Amy Lloyd [01:13:24] Right. Absolutely. So, yeah, I was. I never have enjoyed the temple. It always felt uncomfortable to me. And I know that there are people who love it and, you know, and that's great if you find peace there, but it's. It was always something that. I always felt uncomfortable with it, and I never liked that, particularly that part of it, the veiling and the stuff that I think they don't do anymore. But. But, yeah, I never liked that. It was always very uncomfortable. Yeah. And I was bugged that, like, I couldn't know his name, but he could know mine like that. Like, just all of the sexist elements were what were difficult for me. I didn't like that at all.

John Dehlin [01:14:05] And just this whole structure, that it's your husband that brings you into the celestial kingdom and that if he forgets your name, you don't get to come, but he's your entry point. Isn't that the message that's being sent?

Amy Lloyd [01:14:19] That's the message I got.

John Dehlin [01:14:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's Very symbolic, but very real.

Amy Lloyd [01:14:25] And, yeah, like, people can. I think that there are people who are really good at reframing messages that they hear like that. But I mean, should we have to reframe things all the time? Like, should that. I don't know. I think the people can reframe it and have it be a wonderful experience for them. And that's fine. It was not comfortable for me ever

John Dehlin [01:14:45] really, to go, you've addressed this, but maybe just address it again. Like a modern Mormon apologist would go, oh, all that stuff's taken out of the temple, so it's okay now. But what is that? How does it feel to have gone through it and then know that it's been taken out? Does that make you feel better?

Amy Lloyd [01:15:03] No, not at all.

John Dehlin [01:15:04] Why doesn't it solve all the problems?

Margi Dehlin [01:15:06] Not at all.

Amy Lloyd [01:15:06] Because, for one thing, all of the damage was already done. Whatever damage that does to people has already been done. And it also just adds to the confusion because I thought, at least I was taught that this was given by God.

Amy Lloyd [01:15:20] And why is it changing then? Why and why is it changing without really an explanation or without, I don't know, apology, I guess. Like, not apology, but just acknowledgement. Acknowledgement, exactly. Just an acknowledgement at least that, you know, what we were kind of doing things based on it doesn't change the symbolism of it, but we were kind of doing it without thinking about the implications of how that makes it sound. And that's not right. And we know now how that sounds. And so we're going to do better. Right? Like, there's no acknowledgment like that at all.

Amy Lloyd [01:15:56] And so it does just make it confusing. And then it makes it annoying because you find out things later and it's like, people wouldn't even believe you. Like, does the generation today even believe that we used to have to do that? Or do they think that you're making stuff up because you're anti Mormon now? Like, that's really frustrating.

Amy Lloyd [01:16:11] I remember learning, and this is a little bit later, I guess, when we get to kind of my faith crisis part, but I remember watching the documentary that PBS did on the Mormon, and that is where I learned that they used to do deathos in the temple. I did not know that.

Amy Lloyd [01:16:28] And I called my mom to confirm it, and I was blown away. But there are people who don't believe that. Like, I'll see it in, like, online comments or something. And someone says that and they literally don't believe it, and they act like the person's making it up to be and to just be against the church. And so that's really frustrating. Like, I don't know, just. Yeah. The lack of acknowledgment, I think when changes are made is frustrating. They just try to pretend like it's always been like that. So I don't know what your problem is.

Margi Dehlin [01:16:56] Yeah. I think that acknowledgement piece, what it does communicate is what you experienced was real.

Amy Lloyd [01:17:04] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:17:05] But until you have that, you have this sense of, like, the system messing with reality. Yes. In a way that makes you feel like, am I crazy?

Amy Lloyd [01:17:16] Right.

Margi Dehlin [01:17:16] Like, did I experience what I experienced?

Amy Lloyd [01:17:19] Yes, absolutely.

Margi Dehlin [01:17:21] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:17:21] And I think that's why, you know, a lot of. I really hate when people are like, well, why can't you just. I haven't actually had this said to me personally, but, like, the idea of, well, if you don't. If you don't like it and it's not for you, that's fine, but then why don't you just leave it alone? Well, because we spent years without this acknowledgement, and now there's a whole group of people that acknowledges and says, yes, that did happen. You are not wrong. That happened to me, too. I felt like that, too. Like, that is real, that is valid. The validation is really important because I do think in Mormonism, unless you do just happen to line up on every single thing, you go without validation a lot.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:01] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:18:01] And it makes all the difference when you can have some validation and acknowledgement of what's going on.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:09] That's right. Because there is no even hope or possibility of accountability without acknowledgment. And so when you apply that, I think, too, to this idea of personal relationships, like you were saying.

Amy Lloyd [01:18:24] Yes, right, absolutely.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:26] That dynamic can live on in these personal relationships and no acknowledgement, which makes accountability.

Amy Lloyd [01:18:33] Absolutely.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:35] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:18:35] Yeah. That makes it really hard, too.

John Dehlin [01:18:38] And that's not always a great way to start off your marriage. Right. With a super patriarchal, awkward, clumsy, uncomfortable ritual that's supposed to be the happiest, most meaningful spiritual moment of your life.

Amy Lloyd [01:18:52] Yeah. And I'm sure for some people it is, but it was not for me.

John Dehlin [01:18:55] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:18:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:18:56] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:18:56] It was not for me. It was uncomfortable. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:19:00] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [01:19:01] So.

Amy Lloyd [01:19:01] Yeah, so we moved to Chicago. Lived in Chicago for five years total. After three years, our first son was born. And I loved Chicago, by the way. Chicago is such a great place. It's such a great city. It's a really interesting. It's a really fun ward. Loved my ward there.

John Dehlin [01:19:17] What part?

Amy Lloyd [01:19:18] Right in the city. Chicago. Like, Right. Like the first Two years we lived right downtown, like, right on, like, a block from Michigan Avenue.

Margi Dehlin [01:19:26] Fun.

Amy Lloyd [01:19:26] Yeah, it was really fun. And then for the next three years, we lived in a neighborhood called Wicker park, which is pretty fairly close to, like, the Cub Stadium, like, the kind of the neighborhood next to that. So it was a really fun neighborhood. It was a really fun ward. A lot of really young couples living there and then a lot of kind of inner city converts living there. So it was a really interesting.

Amy Lloyd [01:19:53] We all had really big jobs because we were, like, the ones who knew what was going on. We were the ones who'd been raised in the church and kind of knew. I mean, not new, but at least knew more.

Amy Lloyd [01:20:04] So we all had really big jobs. I was in the primary presidency. My husband was in the young men's presidency. And I think our bishop was, like, in his 30s. Like, he had young kids. Like, it was just that type of ward where we all just did all the big jobs.

John Dehlin [01:20:18] I wonder if this is the same ward Rachel Weaver was raised in. She one of the black menaces that we had on recently. Did it cover South Chicago?

Amy Lloyd [01:20:27] No, it probably was not that ward. No, mine was more like more the North. The north side. Yeah. So I'm sure it wasn't her ward.

John Dehlin [01:20:35] Marty and I lived in Chicago many years.

Amy Lloyd [01:20:37] Oh, you did?

John Dehlin [01:20:37] We loved a lot about it.

Margi Dehlin [01:20:38] Where did you live?

John Dehlin [01:20:39] We lived in Naperville.

Amy Lloyd [01:20:40] Oh, yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:20:41] I worked for Arthur Anderson downtown.

Amy Lloyd [01:20:43] So did I.

John Dehlin [01:20:43] A county firm.

Amy Lloyd [01:20:45] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:20:45] 69 West Washington.

Amy Lloyd [01:20:46] Yeah, that's right. Well, we were on West Monroe when I worked for Anderson, but I worked for Anderson for nine months before Enron happened.

John Dehlin [01:20:54] Yeah. And so I had left Arthur Anderson by the time.

Amy Lloyd [01:20:57] Yeah. So then I moved over to Deloitte and Touche and worked for them for a couple years before Noah was born.

John Dehlin [01:21:02] Okay.

Amy Lloyd [01:21:03] Yeah. So. And they were in the Prudential building.

John Dehlin [01:21:07] We loved a lot about Washington, about Chicago.

Amy Lloyd [01:21:09] Oh, Chicago's awesome.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:10] I love it.

John Dehlin [01:21:11] Except the weather.

Amy Lloyd [01:21:11] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:21:13] But then you go to Houston. Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Amy Lloyd [01:21:16] Yeah, yeah. I haven't lived in the best weather places. I grew up in a weather place, which is unfortunate because it made me a weather baby. I'm only comfortable in, like, a 10 degree window.

John Dehlin [01:21:27] Now, tell me if this is true for you. But in spite of that awful quote that any two worthy Mormons can make a marriage work, one thing that is also true is that if you get on that Mormon train of having young kids, serving your callings and building your career and building your early life, that busyness can mask a lot of dysfunction and unhealth, for sure.

Amy Lloyd [01:21:54] Absolutely true. Yes. And it's not gonna be bad all the time, right? I mean, otherwise, people know to leave bad situations if they're bad all the time. So, no, it's not like we never had any good times. But, yeah, it wasn't healthy in general, I would say. And from the beginning, I would say.

Amy Lloyd [01:22:13] But ye, especially those Chicago years, I would agree with that. I think that that was masked a lot. And I think that we made some progress too, and enough so that it made me feel. It made me feel hopeful that we would find our way. And so I didn't necessarily want to put off having our family for too long because I did feel confident that we would find our way. Like, we'll just keep working on it, it'll be okay, and eventually. And so then I don't want to, you know, not have our kids because I want to have four kids. And so I don't want to be an old mom. And, you know, all of these things. So, yeah, so all of that, you know, was in play.

Early Marriage and the Mormon Life Plan

John Dehlin [01:22:51] And the church, this is what's hard, is the Mormon Church has done studies. They know that if they can get you on missions, get you to byu, get you married young and get you having kids young, close together and close together, all those pressures are going to make it, number one, make you bonded to the church more and probably make it more difficult for you to ever consider that maybe you made a wrong decision, because how are you going to question your husband, let alone the church, if now kids are in the mix? And so that seals you to your husband, to your marriage and to your kids and to the church because of all those commitments that get laid on top of each other.

Amy Lloyd [01:23:35] Yeah, all of that's very true.

John Dehlin [01:23:37] And that's a conscious decision by the church, not necessarily nefarious. But they know that that leads to people feeling stuck or committed.

Amy Lloyd [01:23:48] Well, and I can remember us reading a book together because I don't think it was. And of course, I don't want to speak for him, but I think. And I might be wrong, but I think that he recognized too, that we maybe weren't the best match. Maybe. It certainly wasn't an easy compatibility, for sure.

Amy Lloyd [01:24:05] And I feel like at one point I remember reading a book together on the importance of working on your marriage and how. And how even if kids aren't involved, that doesn't make, like, a lot. I remember the book saying, people think you should stay together, especially if you have kids. But even if you don't have kids, you don't want to get divorced. Like, it's not. So it was very much programmed into me that, okay, like, we're not going to get divorced. This isn't like. I know it's not really working, but. But we're not going to get divorced. And so if I know we're not going to get divorced anyways, we're just going to keep working on it, then I don't need to put off having our family too, you know?

Amy Lloyd [01:24:44] So I don't know. You hear these messages that kind of. And of course you're looking for reasons to confirm the decisions you've already made. Right. Because you want to feel good about the decisions you've made.

Margi Dehlin [01:24:58] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:24:58] So, yeah, all of that was kind of in play as well.

John Dehlin [01:25:03] How many total years were you married to your first husband?

Amy Lloyd [01:25:06] Eight years.

John Dehlin [01:25:07] Okay.

Amy Lloyd [01:25:07] Yeah. Well, it was seven when. Eight. By the time the divorce was finalized. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:25:11] Wow.

Amy Lloyd [01:25:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:25:12] So this is the tricky part. How do you talk about what didn't work in the unraveling in a way that is still.

Margi Dehlin [01:25:20] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:25:20] You know, it's hard. And I think I probably don't want to go too much into that just so that it's not. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:25:25] So what do you want to say?

Amy Lloyd [01:25:27] Maybe just to say that it was. It was definitely an unhealthy relationship dynamic and things that I didn't. I didn't recognize as. As not.

Margi Dehlin [01:25:38] Okay.

Amy Lloyd [01:25:39] That I kind of later, as I got a little bit older and as I had more experience in life, just in general. And I mean, I was 22 when we got married, so.

Margi Dehlin [01:25:46] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:25:47] As I started getting a little bit more mature myself, I think just recognizing things that weren't healthy about the dynamic and things that were really not sustainable for. Healthy for a healthy relationship. So. Yeah, I'm sorry, Like, in general, I'm pretty vulnerable and I'm going to be annoyingly vague about that, just so that I don't know.

Margi Dehlin [01:26:07] We appreciate boundaries.

Amy Lloyd [01:26:09] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:26:11] And I'm imagining, and you don't have to comment on this, but the system that is Mormonism and Mormon patriarchy and the Mormon conceptions of God and authority and the woman's role and the men's role, all that probably replicates itself into the system that becomes your nuclear family, Correct?

Amy Lloyd [01:26:39] Yeah. I mean, in some ways more than others. Like, certain aspects of patriarchy was definitely in place. In certain aspects, I don't think was as much like, it's not. And again, so much of it was. Were subtle things that Kind of came into play that.

Amy Lloyd [01:26:58] I don't know. Sorry, I know I'm being super vague, but. Yeah, there were a lot of, I think, messaging, a lot of things that were unhealthy about my marriage that I did eventually start recognizing in the church as well.

Amy Lloyd [01:27:14] And. Yeah, I can see we kind of talked about some of it a little bit, like lack of acknowledgment, accountability, that type of thing. Yeah, yeah, I. I did start seeing a lot of parallels and in a lot of ways that not everybody does. And it also made me feel like I was going to lose every argument I tried to have because there was going to be a conference talk here that would stop it or a general authority quote there that would stop it. And of course, not everybody does that. And of course, people can use words to their own purposes, but the fact is those words are there. And so there was a lot of kind of that going on.

Margi Dehlin [01:27:55] Yeah, that.

Amy Lloyd [01:27:56] Yeah. And ultimately, I think it just comes down to we just weren't right for

John Dehlin [01:28:00] each other and probably never should have been married to begin with.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:04] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:28:05] Except again with that caveat that I'm going to keep coming back to because

Margi Dehlin [01:28:07] I just adore my boys and I

Amy Lloyd [01:28:08] would never do anything that, you know, takes them out of the equation. But, yeah, yeah, yeah. Super grateful for it, for. For my kids sake. But, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:16] Yeah. So then it's not like the church prepared you to strike out on your own and to have a fantastic career. And this is something Margi has just continually impressed upon me. Once you've had those kids, you're committed to them, you know, as a mom.

Amy Lloyd [01:28:36] Right.

John Dehlin [01:28:37] And so you're going to want to do all the mom things.

Amy Lloyd [01:28:39] Right.

Navigating a Failing Marriage with Children

John Dehlin [01:28:41] So what do you do as a Mormon woman when you're realizing with kids that you're realizing the marriage just isn't going to work?

Amy Lloyd [01:28:49] Yeah. And I don't live by family, and so, you know, that's a thing, too. Like, that. That's hard, too. So. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:57] So how did you experience and. Or manage that to whatever you want to say or don't want to say?

Amy Lloyd [01:29:04] How did I manage kind of having those feelings of knowing it wasn't really working, but, yeah, it was.

John Dehlin [01:29:09] Was there a point where you realized this just wasn't gonna work?

Margi Dehlin [01:29:11] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:29:12] And that point really came. You know, we struggled kind of from the beginning, but it really became a dire struggle, I would say, once we moved to Texas, that was a real turning point in our marriage. We moved to Texas when our second child was a newborn, so we had two kids. And I had always wanted the kind of. The plan had been let's do, let's have an adventure for a couple of years in Chicago. And then I to move to California. I wanted to live by my family.

Amy Lloyd [01:29:44] And that was what I thought the plan was. He ended up getting a job in Texas, where he's from. And I was so desperately trying to make this marriage work. And so I, you know, bloom where you're planted type thing that, okay, let's go to Texas. And so we moved down to Texas. And I don't know why that was such a turning point, but it really was like it, it imploded pretty quickly once we moved to Texas. And I think, you know, within three years we were divorced.

Amy Lloyd [01:30:17] So yeah, Chicago was, There were definitely struggles there too. But it was. And maybe just because of, you know, other things that were masking it. But yeah, it was, it really went downhill quickly once we moved to Texas. So.

John Dehlin [01:30:32] And what are you, if anything, are you able to share about what it's like for a Mormon woman who's had children and is still relatively young and has not been able to really pursue the education or career that they wanted to now be facing divorce? What can, what can you share about that?

Amy Lloyd [01:30:53] It's scary. It's really, it's daunting because, you know, I did have, at least fortunately I had three years of experience working for big five accounting firms, which is rare. Which is, which is great because to this day that's something that headhunters will call me that they saw my resume because of that. So I recogn. Like that was very, very lucky.

John Dehlin [01:31:19] But you did that in spite of the culture?

Amy Lloyd [01:31:21] I did well, yeah, I did. But it was also like recruiting came out to byu and so it was also once you're in the accounting program, that stuff kind of falls, kind of follows naturally. So I do feel very fortunate for that and I am glad that at least if I didn't, if I didn't pursue what I was maybe a field that I was maybe passionate and I am glad that I pursued a field that was very marketable. Yeah, I do think that that was very good.

Amy Lloyd [01:31:47] And I have. That has really been to my benefit. So I am grateful for that. But yeah, it is daunting. I knew I was going to be basically starting from the beginning, I had a five year break on my resume. So I did. I was able to get a job pretty quickly because of what was on my resume. But you know, it was an entry level type, you know, anal accounting analyst role.

Amy Lloyd [01:32:09] But I Am grateful for it because I was, I was able to support my boys. Yeah, I was able to do it as a single mom. I was able to buy my own home. I was able to do. And living in Texas was helpful for that too. For as much as I would love to be in California, like, as a single mom, I was able, yeah, I was able to raise the boys as a single mom, which I'm grateful for. I was able to provide for them.

Amy Lloyd [01:32:36] But, yeah, like, I was very cognizant that had I done this a different way, I would not be starting at the bottom. I would, you know, the people that I started with at, you know, Anderson and then Deloitte were. They were controllers by that point.

Margi Dehlin [01:32:50] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:32:51] You know, and I was a first year analyst, so that was a bummer to realize that. And they were great moms, by the way.

Margi Dehlin [01:32:59] Right.

Amy Lloyd [01:32:59] Like, they were great working moms. And I could see that they loved their kids. And I could see that's when I kind of started seeing this. Oh, man. Like, maybe it wasn't. Maybe we didn't all have to be stay at home moms in order to be good moms. Like, maybe that actually was not true. And if you want to be, that's great. And there's nothing. Like, I have. Have nothing against that at all. And I loved my ears as a stay at home mom, but it doesn't mean that you're not. It doesn't make you a superior mom.

John Dehlin [01:33:28] And yeah, it's not like they sat all the Mormon young women down and said there's two very viable paths. Well, three. Right. One is you could be a stay at home mom.

Amy Lloyd [01:33:37] Right.

John Dehlin [01:33:37] That's a great path. Second is you could be a working mom and that's a great path. And the third is you cannot be a mom at all. And that's a great path to. And all of those, those are not

Amy Lloyd [01:33:48] seen equally at all.

John Dehlin [01:33:49] And that is not what your experience was.

Amy Lloyd [01:33:52] No, no. And it did become very apparent and it was somewhat confusing to be looking at people that I knew. And then once I started, once I did go back to work, I was so riddled with guilt. Oh my gosh. That first summer, I cried every single day on my way to work. Every day I would drop the kids off at daycare and I cried the whole way to work all summer. And like, it makes me so angry that I had to. That, that, that was put on me.

Margi Dehlin [01:34:21] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:34:23] Because there was no reason for it. My kids are great.

Margi Dehlin [01:34:25] They are.

Amy Lloyd [01:34:26] They were not harmed by being in daycare. They Were not. Like it wasn't a bad situation for them. I felt so guilty. And I remember going to feeling judgment for it too, and not from everybody. A lot of people are reasonable and wonderful, but feeling enough judgment of it that it was hard. And I remember going to a little soccer game for my 3 year old and he's playing soccer with the other little toddlers and I'm talking to another mom and this was with the ward. I had actually stopped attending at this point, but I was still taking him to the ward soccer thing. And I was just kind of chit chatting with her and her son was about to start kindergarten and I said, oh, you know, that's great.

Amy Lloyd [01:35:10] Like, is your son, you know, is he excited for kindergarten? Has he ever done any kind of preschool before or will this kind of be new for him? And she goes, oh, no, he's never done preschool. I just wanted him to be a kid for as long as possible.

Amy Lloyd [01:35:23] Like knowing that I have my kids in full time daycare and I just let it go. And I was just like, okay. But in my head I'm like, I'm not sending my kid to a sweatshop. Like, what do you think they do at preschool? Like, they play all day. Like, this is not him not being able to be a kid because he goes to daycare, because he goes to preschool.

Amy Lloyd [01:35:45] But that thought was that somehow you are making them grow up faster than they should just for putting them in preschool. That's ridiculous. And so, so it's like I would hear comments like that I would remember these talks that I had heard growing up and that I would. You would still hear in general conference, maybe in a little bit of a softer way, but the implication is still very much there. And even as much as the great talks about valuing motherhood, even those still felt a little bit like there was an undertone.

Margi Dehlin [01:36:20] A little manipulative.

Amy Lloyd [01:36:22] Yes, a little manipulative. And I don't know, and not, not everybody, I guess, internalizes it the same way. I absolutely acknowledge that I am a people pleaser. I am an overthinker. Like I internalize things, I acknowledge that, but I'm not getting it from nowhere. And, and it does go someplace. And yeah, like there. So there was a lot of that. And once I started working and over time realized that my kids were fine, like they were good, I stopped, stopped maybe feeling a little, I stopped feeling as guilty. And not all of it comes from the church either. I think working moms everywhere feel guilt and stay at home. Mom.

Margi Dehlin [01:36:58] We definitely have A cultural layer, it's

Amy Lloyd [01:37:00] for sure a cultural. A cultural problem in general as well. I absolutely agree with that. But it's kind of taken to the next level when you've been taught that God says to do this. God says this is your role. God says this is what is ordained for you. Right.

Margi Dehlin [01:37:16] And this one way is optimal.

Amy Lloyd [01:37:18] Yes, and this one way is optimal. Maybe you can get a. Maybe you can work if you have to because you get divorced or because your husband dies, but ultimately you shouldn't be, except in those situations. Right. And again, I don't know, it doesn't seem like my nieces are feel as much that way. And so I think maybe this new generation is not getting that as much. I don't know. I'm sure that in. I'm sure it probably depends on where you are, but I mean, we sure got it.

Margi Dehlin [01:37:46] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:37:46] And I don't know. And I think it's bad on both sides because then I think it puts. I think it ends up putting working moms on the defensive for obvious reasons, because you're being told that your kids are suffering if you're not at home with them, so they're on the defensive. And so then I think maybe there gets to be overreactions because they're defensive. And so then I also remember kind of apparently getting in on both sides. I remember a friend of mine who did work when I was staying at home with my kids telling me I was flushing my brains down the toilet. Well, that's rude too, right?

Amy Lloyd [01:38:17] Like, that's not okay. And no, I wasn't. And she's. We've laughed about that now. And she actually ironically is a stay at home mom now herself. But like, so we've laughed about that. And she acknowledges that that was a dumb thing to say. But I can see why stay at home moms are also defensive. Right. Like everyone needs to just stop telling everyone what to do is the point. So I don't know, there was a lot of that kind of struggle.

John Dehlin [01:38:40] Part of what's frustrating about all of this, it reminds me my conditioning that was most disturbing in my mind when I was contemplating leaving the church, was the conditioning that you can't raise healthy kids who aren't Mormon. So in my mind it's like, well, I can't leave the church even if I don't believe it anymore because my kids will be inferior. And that's just, not only is it abusive, it's. It's objectively wrong. There are millions and millions of kids raised all over the world. Outside of Mormonism that are as. Or more brilliant and moral and ethical as Mormons. So it's just objectively wrong. And it's similar about kids who go to daycare or whatever or who have working moms.

John Dehlin [01:39:29] Sometimes it's better for your immunity system to have exposure to other kids. Kids. It's. Sometimes it's better for socialization. Sometimes it's just you learn independence, you learn psychological coping skills. You don't have such, such emotional psychological dependence. You know, like there are real benefits. And of course there can be bad things that can happen, but there can be bad things that happen for kids who are raised with stay at home moms.

Amy Lloyd [01:39:54] Right.

John Dehlin [01:39:54] So like it's just objectively untrue that a kid has an inferior experience going to daycare or having a working mom in the home. It's just objectively untrue. And sometimes the opposite is true.

Amy Lloyd [01:40:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:08] And that's what's maddening.

Amy Lloyd [01:40:09] And it just depends on the situation. Right. Like you have. I have. And what I've learned is that that is not makes. Sorry, I'm fumbling over my words. Whether you work or not is not what makes you the good model.

Amy Lloyd [01:40:26] I have known, and I do know wonderful moms who are stay at home moms and they are the best moms. I know I put my, all my sisters in that category. So many of my friends, like all my friends I put in that category, they are wonderful moms and they are stay at home moms. But I also know wonderful moms who are working moms. And that was very helpful for me when I did start working and I started becoming friends with other working moms and I saw how fantastic were they. They were. And I saw how great their kids were and I saw how bonded they were to their kids and I saw that they just bent over backwards for their kids and all of these things.

Amy Lloyd [01:41:00] That was very helpful for me to see because it's like I knew, like I would never have said out loud, like, oh, I think working moms aren't as good of moms. But that was definitely the messaging that you kind of got subconsciously. And to have that just totally dispelled for me was really helpful and it really helped me eventually start letting go of some of that guilt. But it sure took a long time. And now it's great because I actually have the experience where I have teenage boys that I did stay home with for the first several years and I now have a two and a half year old and I've always worked with him and I so now I have the kind of rare direct comparison and I see I am like, exactly bonded to, I am bonded so much to all of them.

Amy Lloyd [01:41:45] Like there is no difference difference in the amount of bonding, the amount of love, the, like how well I think they're doing. So that's been healing as well to see that.

John Dehlin [01:41:53] And I think it's just quickly worth noting that the flip side is also true, that there are horrendous stay at home moms.

Amy Lloyd [01:42:00] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:42:00] And sometimes when they're, quote, horrendous, it's because they were never made, their personalities were not made to be stay at home moms. And so they're not the most mom they could be to their kids because they're in a role they were never fit to, to fill.

Amy Lloyd [01:42:19] Right. I think that's.

John Dehlin [01:42:20] And yet if you flip them and made them working moms, they might become better moms.

Amy Lloyd [01:42:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:42:26] Because that's how they're wired. Is that, is that outrageous?

Amy Lloyd [01:42:29] No, I think that that's true. And I think the other side works too. Like, Right. Like, I just think you have great moms on both sides and you have crappy moms on both sides. It's just not what makes the difference.

Margi Dehlin [01:42:38] Yeah. I also think it's helpful to get outside the role thing. And I think you spoke to this a little bit earlier, Amy, about just what happens when you are partnered. What happens when you're able to have a conversation where it's like, okay, now we have a child and here are all the responsibilities and things we need to do and what's your desire and what's your personality like and who, like, how do we want to do this? And it's like this creative bonding endeavor as opposed to like, well, you're the woman. So if you're, if you're a working woman, then it's daycare. And because the assumption is, is that if you're, you know, anyway, I just feel like the, the gendered role kind of part of this. It doesn't help anyone.

Amy Lloyd [01:43:27] No, it doesn't. And it's not church specific that happens, you know, in society at large. And I think that we're starting to get away from that and we're starting to at least work on that as a society. But yeah, it's a real struggle. One of my best friends that I have now is a woman. We bonded over this exact issue. And our sons were best friends and they actually met through after school care, the elementary school. So that's been a big blessing in my life because that's how I met one of my best friends and, and she and I would call each other on our commutes home and we would commiserate about the stresses that are coming with all of this and that, you know, we kind of bonded over all of this.

Amy Lloyd [01:44:09] And it's funny, she actually has an experience. She had all of this working mom guilt too. And she's never been part of the church, so it is a societal problem. She had all of this working mom guilt as well. And she recently, her two are grown now and she asked her daughter if she ever felt, felt badly that she worked, that she wasn't a stay at home mom. And her daughter goes, you worked while I was growing up.

Amy Lloyd [01:44:32] Like she didn't even like realize that, like it was just not even on her radar. And it was just funny. We just laughed about it. Like all, like, what a waste. Like all of that wasted guilt that we, that we had. And the kids were fine. Yeah. And I asked that of my son recently too, like, did that ever kind of bum you out? And he was like, mom, like, no, like that. It was totally fine.

Margi Dehlin [01:44:51] Yeah.

Divorce Guilt and Leaving the Church

John Dehlin [01:44:52] Really quickly, as we're kind of wrapping up this part one, what about divorce guilt? And there's just general social divorce guilt, but then there's Mormon divorce guilt. Because in Mormonism, the stakes of eternal families are so much higher.

Amy Lloyd [01:45:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:45:06] You wanna talk about that at all?

Amy Lloyd [01:45:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:45:08] So,

Amy Lloyd [01:45:11] you know, I'm a people pleaser by nature and I'm trying very hard to work on that and I think I've made big, big strides. But yeah, if you want a crash course in developing a thick skin, you should leave the church and get divorced at the same time. That's really gonna do it. And be a woman. That's really gonna do it. Be a working mom. Exactly. So I was very, I very much had to work on changing my perspective and on developing, learning what boundaries were and all of that.

John Dehlin [01:45:39] Because what was the Mormon perspective that you were battling? The voices in your head, what were they saying?

Amy Lloyd [01:45:43] Well, it's, you know, I was actually out of the church at that point, so we didn't really talk about that kind of part yet. But at that point. So I wasn't as.

John Dehlin [01:45:52] So you had lost your faith prior to your divorce?

Amy Lloyd [01:45:54] Prior to the divorce, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:45:55] Do you want to talk about that really quick?

Margi Dehlin [01:45:57] Sure.

Amy Lloyd [01:45:58] Yeah. So I call it the great shelf break of 2008. So, you know, a lot of people I think, have things on their shelves that they kind of build up over time. I definitely had a big shelf and 2008. For whatever reason, I felt like. And maybe it was just because I was in a place where I was, like, kind of recognizing things now, but I feel like that was a real. Like, things in the church just kept happening over and over again that I just kept adding to my shelf. So, you know, kind of what was on there prior to that? Polygamy, certainly, you know, these kind of incongruities that I was noticing growing up and at BYU and things like that.

Amy Lloyd [01:46:36] But then I moved to Texas in 2006, and in 2007, the FLDS raid happened in West Texas, and I was glued to that. I was so interested in the news on that. And I started kind of researching the FLDS church, and I learned that their first prophet after the common prophet that they share with the mainstream LDS church was a man named John Woolley.

Amy Lloyd [01:47:06] And I have Woolies in my family. So I called my dad, and I was like, is this the same Wooly family? And he said, well, yes, like, his father is also from our line, so it's like a different brother.

Amy Lloyd [01:47:21] And the reason I'm bringing that up is because it was very jarring to me. It made me feel like that could very easily have been me if only my ancestor had gone his brother's route rather than the mainstream route. That could have been me. And I was so interested in this case and what was happening in this Texas raid. So. And it was making me feel all kinds of things and, of course, bringing back all of the issues I have with polygamy. And I was hearing all of the, you know, defensiveness on the part of mainstream Mormons and trying so hard to distance themselves. But I was recognizing the first four prophets are the exact same people.

Amy Lloyd [01:48:02] Like, we're not that distant. And it's only on this one issue, really. And frankly, they're doing it more consistently with what the earliest members of the church were doing. And that was very jarring to me. So I kind of started taking these things off my shelf and looking at them a little bit closer. I think because of this. Then Prop 8 happened in California, and I was not supportive at all of the church's stance on that. I've never had an issue with that. I've always had a problem with the fact that it was seen as a problem or as a sin. I've never viewed it that way.

Amy Lloyd [01:48:43] So I was very uncomfortable with Prop 8. Gosh, there were just so many things I feel like that were happening all at that same time. Oh, Mitt Romney was running for president. So if I was, was Reading articles.

Amy Lloyd [01:48:54] I would kind of read comments in the comment section on these political articles and a lot of them would go toward Mormonism. That's where I learned about the head in the hat thing with Joseph Smith. And I thought instantly that it was an anti Mormon lie. And I asked my husband about it and he was like, no, like that's true. And I was like, oh, like you don't think that's weird? Like that's like you're okay with that? And it was just. I was not okay with that. And I was not okay with the fact that it had never been presented to us like that. That actually was even more bothersome to me because that felt deceitful.

Amy Lloyd [01:49:28] So I didn't like that. So I kind of started learning all of these things. And then I started. I just started wanting so badly to start looking into some things, but feeling guilty because I didn't want to. You're not supposed to really do that. You're not supposed to, like, look at anti Mormon sources or any source other than church.

Amy Lloyd [01:49:48] So I'm feeling this struggle and I had this experience where, you know, this stuff was on my mind all of the time. And I had this experience where I'm getting ready for the day and I'm, I think, blow drying my hair. So I'm like looking at myself in the mirror. And I just, I thought to myself, I am 28 years old, I have two kids and a mortgage.

Amy Lloyd [01:50:11] I can actually decide whatever I want to read. And it was this moment where I was. I felt so sick of feeling controlled and manipulated and like I was being told what to do in one way or another. I was so sick of all of that. And I was done with it. And I just let that guilt of wanting to research go completely. And I was. I decided to start looking into some of these things that had been on my shelf for a long time and some of these new things that were adding to my shelf. And I think I mentioned too, the PBS documentary the Mormons.

Amy Lloyd [01:50:44] I mentioned that earlier that that was also happened. I watched that during that period. There was a documentary on Freemasonry that had nothing to do with Mormonism that I thought was interesting because I had just read the Da Vinci Code and so I was like interested in that kind of stuff. And so I was like, oh, I'm going to watch this. And I watched it with my mouth open the whole time, even though it didn't say a word about Mormonism because I recognized all of the similarities between the temple and.

Amy Lloyd [01:51:11] And Freemasonry. Which I had never known about before. So I just. There were all of these things happening that were making me so badly want to, like, examine it more and look into it more. And I finally gave my permission, myself permission to do it.

Faith Crisis and Loss of Belief

Amy Lloyd [01:51:25] And once I did, I just started learning even more. And it was kind of the point of no return at that point. So at the time I discovered a website called MormonThink, which is still here today, but this was 15 years ago. So it was very like, rudimentary. All websites were kind of rudimentary then. And at the time it was arranged like a wagon wheel. And each spoke of the wheel was like a different typical issue that, like, people might have of concern in the church. So one was, you know, Book of Mormon, one was Translation Process, one was the Book of Abraham, one was Lying for the Lord, which I was really interested in.

Amy Lloyd [01:52:08] So I started going through them one by one. And I liked this site because it was really important to me to feel like I was researching in as dispassionate a way as I could. And I was really. I didn't want to read anything that felt biased. And I liked the way that they constructed this because all it did, you would click on the issue, it would read the kind of critical point of view or the reason people had an issue with this topic, and then it would read the church response to it it or the church point of view on it. And I really appreciated that.

Amy Lloyd [01:52:40] It gave no conclusions. It gave no, like, adjectives to it, no, nothing like that. And so I would painstakingly go through and I would read all of the footnotes. I would cross check everything on the critic side to something I could find on the Church's side. I would try to cross reference everything. If I saw something that was, you know, problematic quote from the Journal of Discourses, for example, I wouldn't just assume that that actually did come from the Journal of Discourses. I would actually find it on the BYU site or on the. I would try to find it somewhere else that I knew was church approved to make sure it was all lining up.

Amy Lloyd [01:53:15] And after a while, I stopped doing that because it always did. Like they. It was. They were not saying anything that was not true. And I just, I started going through it and really, in a way, it felt so liberating because I was like, like, okay. Like, maybe there's a reason some of this stuff hasn't added up for me. And so I went through. I think by the time I got to the Book of Abraham, I was like, okay. Like, I Don't know what else to conclude here. And I had another experience where I will actually call it the most spiritual experience I've ever had.

Amy Lloyd [01:53:54] I was praying and. And just thinking about all of this and kind of realizing, but not even wanting to say it out loud to myself in my own bedroom, in my own company, that I don't think I believe the church anymore.

Amy Lloyd [01:54:10] And I was scared to say it out loud, even though it was only me in the room. And I finally did, and I said it out loud. I don't think that the church is true. Like, is that okay? And I. I remember feeling this overwhelming feeling of, amy, you can choose not to believe it.

Amy Lloyd [01:54:34] It's okay. And that was such an epiphany to me because it actually had not occurred to me that I didn't have to believe it. And I had tried for years and years to make things okay, to somehow make polygamy okay, to somehow, like, make the things that I hear that I knew were not true or good, to make the unhealthy messages that I would hear to make them okay. Like, I had. I feel like I had my whole life just tried so hard to make these puzzle pieces fit, and all of a sudden, I didn't have to anymore. And it was the biggest relief. And it's like all at once, I just put all of my cognitive dissonance down and I never picked it up again.

Amy Lloyd [01:55:22] And that was. That was just the most formative experience for me. And now I'm so fascinated by Mormon history because it's super fascinating, but also, I don't have this emotional gut reaction every time I see something of, oh, my gosh, how can this be true? Like, I don't have to make it true anymore. I get to be like, oh, this seems really wrong, because it was really wrong. Right. I get to have. I get to think that. And it's really liberating for me. It was really liberating.

Amy Lloyd [01:55:57] I don't know. So that was the year my shelf cracked. And I'm trying to remember timeline. I was still going to church, so I don't know how much longer I went. I don't think for very much longer. I know I kind of finished out the year. Actually, on my. On my done day, I was the musical number in Sacrament Meeting on the last day I attended.

Margi Dehlin [01:56:21] Oh, wow. Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:56:22] Or I accompanied the musical number, something like that. I was involved in the musical number. So I was very. I was very in it till the very end.

Margi Dehlin [01:56:31] Yeah.

Amy Lloyd [01:56:32] But, yeah, I just. And I've kind of reflected on this too. I kind of, I wish that I had considered my own voice worthy enough to listen to, to come to that conclusion without having done all of the evidence based research that I did. But ultimately, like, I had to, I think I had to have that external validation that it was okay to not believe it anymore when it should have been. It should have been enough that it didn't resonate for various other reasons. Right.

Margi Dehlin [01:57:04] Yeah, but.

Amy Lloyd [01:57:04] But for me it kind of took confirmation through kind of the evidence that I was reading.

Margi Dehlin [01:57:12] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:16] And you were clear to say that your divorce wasn't really tied to your loss of Mormon faith.

Amy Lloyd [01:57:23] I will say that. Not that it wasn't tied completely. I do think that. I think that they informed each other in certain ways. But the divorce 100% would have happened either way. Like even if I had stayed faithful, active Mormon, believing Mormon, it absolutely would have happened. The divorce still would have happened. And I believe the loss of faith would have happened as well either way.

John Dehlin [01:57:50] And did you talk about, to the extent you were able to talk to your ex husband about this stuff while

Amy Lloyd [01:57:55] it was going to be. I was not able to. I tried to a couple of times and it was just very much. It was. The conversations were very quickly shut down. I think he just was not. It wasn't something he wanted to hear. So yeah, it wasn't something that we talked a lot about.

Margi Dehlin [01:58:16] So were you able to talk to anyone or was this very much kind of a lonely.

Amy Lloyd [01:58:21] It was somewhat lonely, except that I ended up calling my. It was lonely up to this point. Once I finally kind of came to my conclusion, I called my parents and this again is a tribute to just what great Mormon parents they were that I didn't feel one second of apprehension over calling them. Apprehension maybe a little bit, but I wasn't scared to tell them at all. I knew that I would still be loved. I knew that I would still be accepted. I knew that that was not a concern for me, which I know is, is not necessarily common and I'm very, very grateful for that.

Amy Lloyd [01:59:00] But when I did, it turned out that they had also been on their own faith journey, that they hadn't been. They knew that I'd had some questions because I had called them during that documentary and been like, is this true? Like what? And when I would kind of learn certain things, I would be like, I would share things with them.

Amy Lloyd [01:59:20] So I had shared a little bit along the way. So they knew that I was looking into things, they knew that I was questioning. And so they purposefully did not tell me that they also were looking into things and questioning because they didn't want to influence my decision at all.

Amy Lloyd [01:59:34] But once I told them that, you know, I've come to the realization that I don't believe the church is true and I don't want to continue being active in it, then they shared that they were on the same page, which was also really nice because then I did have people to talk to about it.

Margi Dehlin [01:59:52] Yeah, absolutely. I was just reflecting on your story of your, you know, inspired moment where. And I think it's so interesting that, you know, in your own words, you kind of spoke about giving yourself the permission or choice to not believe that that's kind of what came to you. And just thinking about how important that is in a place in a life story where, again, you're kind of born into a conditioning. You're kind of born into an environment kids don't get to choose. Right. Their environment, their family, culture, some of these larger things. And so that, you know, for that moment, the power of choice.

Amy Lloyd [02:00:51] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:00:51] You know how just deeply powerful that is.

Amy Lloyd [02:00:55] And it felt very powerful. It felt life changing, really. And it really did feel like an epiphany. Like it had not occurred to me until then that I didn't have to believe it. Yeah, like that had not occurred to me. Me and I was 28 and I don't know, I just. It really did feel like a very powerful, for lack of better terms, answer to prayer. And was. I think. I think it was a moment where I was finally listening to my inner voice and acknowledging and. And giving myself permission to listen to that inner voice and to be okay with. And that really was that. Yeah, it was that moment. And it was very profound. It felt very profound.

Margi Dehlin [02:01:46] Yeah. And it reminds me of what you were saying, John, about kind of the self, or I think you were talking about it with the way of this constructed personality that the organization creates versus kind of your self. I'll just refer to it as kind of a self. And it feels like in that moment, you. It literally was a change in road. Like for years you were feeding the self, that conditioned self, the one that was created for you.

Amy Lloyd [02:02:18] Right.

Margi Dehlin [02:02:18] And in that moment, it was like this flip where you actually fed the self. You know, you. You're created, you know, new little self. New little, like, you know, saying, I think I'm going to go this direction.

Amy Lloyd [02:02:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:02:40] I'm also just. I'm mindful of this counterintuitive dynamic that sometimes we forget as humans that we're always trying to avoid pain. Because we equate pain with harm or damage. But the truth is, sometimes pain leads to growth and not the opposite of damage, which is growth. And so you did a super hard thing that was very painful. You went against the conditioning, you went against the conformity. You went against everything your community and probably family and society was all telling you to do. It was super painful and difficult. And yet instead of leading to damage, it led to incredible enlightenment and growth and liberation. Empowerment.

Amy Lloyd [02:03:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:03:36] And so we. We need to not equate pain and difficulty with damage.

Amy Lloyd [02:03:41] Right.

John Dehlin [02:03:41] But instead realize that. And of course excessive pain can lead to damage, but the right amount of pain with a difficult decision can be the secret to incredible growth.

Amy Lloyd [02:03:54] Right, Right, absolutely. Yeah. I'm grateful every day for it. Like it's.

John Dehlin [02:03:58] And yet it was super hard.

Amy Lloyd [02:04:00] It was super hard. It was scary and hard. And I feel, you know, in a way it's. You kind of asked about how the divorce and the leaving the church kind of played in together in a way. At the time. I felt frustrated that both things were happening at the same time because it felt like. It felt like adding insult to injury. Like it was too much pain at one time.

Leaving the Church and Starting Over

Amy Lloyd [02:04:19] And now when I kind of reflect back on it, I think that. I think it was good because my marriage was ending anyways. I knew that it was not a sustainable relationship dynamic at all. And it was ending whether I stayed in the church or not. And so in a way, even though it was a bummer because it kind of handed on a silver platter this like, excuse that externally people kind of believed it was because of that and it wasn't.

Amy Lloyd [02:04:51] So that part was a bummer. But at the same time, it did allow me to be able. It was kind of a good break to. It was happening anyway, so this is when I can leave. I knew it wasn't going to destroy my marriage. My marriage was already gone. It was already in process of imploding. Right. So I didn't have that stressor to worry about. And I know a lot of people do. So there were good things about those events coinciding as well.

Margi Dehlin [02:05:15] That's interesting. And it also thrust you though. I mean, a different lens too is just the brain and how much it loves familiarity. Like how much it will choose what is familiar over what is new. Like how much fear comes up when we're gonna do something where we were not familiar. It's different. And you, you were put in a place where you were doing so much that was unfamiliar.

Amy Lloyd [02:05:41] Yeah, yeah. It was overwhelming. It was definitely an overwhelming period of time. For sure.

John Dehlin [02:05:48] And that's how growth happens.

Amy Lloyd [02:05:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:05:52] If it's not too much.

Amy Lloyd [02:05:53] Right.

John Dehlin [02:05:54] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:05:54] And that's how you get familiar with who you are on the other side of the things you fear most. Yeah. Too.

Amy Lloyd [02:06:01] Yeah, I would say that's true. True.

John Dehlin [02:06:04] Well, maybe this is a great point to end part two. Part one.

Amy Lloyd [02:06:07] Okay, sure.

John Dehlin [02:06:08] And then part two will be about what?

Amy Lloyd [02:06:11] Will be about raising. Raising your kids in a mixed faith, non marriage.

John Dehlin [02:06:18] And rebuilding a life.

Amy Lloyd [02:06:19] And rebuilding a life. Yes.

John Dehlin [02:06:20] After Mormonism as a single. What, 30 something?

Amy Lloyd [02:06:24] Yeah. Single even. 29. Yeah. 28.

Margi Dehlin [02:06:26] When?

Amy Lloyd [02:06:27] 29, I guess.

Margi Dehlin [02:06:28] Guess.

Amy Lloyd [02:06:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:06:29] And finding. Learning to listen to your voice and follow it, for better or for worse, all of that. That's part two. That's part two to come. Well, Amy Lloyd, this has been lovely. I loved part one.

Closing Thoughts and Episode Wrap-Up

Amy Lloyd [02:06:41] Thank you. Thank you. It's been really great talking to you guys.

John Dehlin [02:06:43] And Margi, thank you so much for being here. You're always fantastic.

Margi Dehlin [02:06:47] Oh, thank you. I'm glad I'm here.

John Dehlin [02:06:49] All right, viewers and listeners, thanks for joining us. If you appreciate this type of content, our bread and butter is your support through the donate button. So please go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button, become a monthly donor. And that's how we're able to support this work with our staff and all the resources we have. Please share this episode with as many people as possible. We're grateful for all you do. Please follow us on all the social medias, subscribe on Facebook and on YouTube and on Instagram and TikTok. Follow us there. And always, we appreciate your feedback in the comments of all those platforms, but also over email mormonstoriesmail.com and yeah, just. Just come right back for part two, because I know it's going to be as good or even better. So thanks again, Amy Lloyd.

Amy Lloyd [02:07:40] All right, thank you.

John Dehlin [02:07:41] All right, see you guys in just a minute. See you soon.

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