Laci Green

Opening Breath and Welcome

[00:00:00] Sa. There is so much power in this room. It's really kind of overwhelming me. So I was wondering if you guys would kind of join me in taking a big deep breath and just kind of like taking it all in and letting it all out.

[00:00:47] 1, 2, 3. In. In doubt. Yeah. All right. So today I want to share with you a little bit about my story. I apologize that it's not exactly the topic that was on the program, but it is related, so I think there are some overlaps there. I also wanted to give a little PG13 warning for reasons because I teach sex ed. So yeah, so today I want to talk about Great Expectations.

Great Expectations and Personal Pressures

[00:01:26] Great Expectations have been a big challenge in my life. Mostly self imposed, but not entirely. Not to be confused with the book that I pretended to read in high school English class. If you're anything like me, your journey toward living your truth started with an ending.

[00:01:48] The end of my faith, the end of certainty, the end of community in some ways, and the end of a lot of really tasty Mormon casseroles. RIP I feel a little bit like I'm out of the element here because I was really young when I left the church. I was a teenager and it was kind of a crazy period in my life.

[00:02:12] And, you know, being a teenager just kind of sucks in general. It's really hard. It's the first time you experience a lot of extreme emotions. You fall so deeply in love, you break up and everything's so dramatic. At least it was for me.

[00:02:29] It's a tumultuous period of exploration of who we are and what we believe. And so young adults need safe spaces to figure that out. They need a place to push the limits and maybe to push your limits. To dye their hair purple.

[00:02:48] To go through their communist phase. Oh, where's my communist phase? I might have pushed the wrong button. Okay. To go through their communist phase and of course to question their sexuality and their beliefs. Life beyond Mormonism offers more freedom to really create these spaces to better support young adults who are figuring everything out. If they can't push the limits in a non judgmental space, they will go elsewhere. And we don't always know where that is.

[00:03:24] That's what I did. While my parents were worried that I was running around having sex and smoking weed and drinking, I was making videos in the wooded area behind my community college and occasionally having sex with smoking weed.

[00:03:43] I started doing this when I was 17, back when YouTube itself was only a couple of years old. And I was, and still am, very curious about the world. I was also Very angry. Angry about the hypocrisy and double standards that were unfolding around me.

[00:04:04] Double standards toward women. The hostile yes on eight signs that littered my small town as me and my best friend, who is gay, came of age. And shockingly, the hostility toward coffee. Coffee. What did it ever do to us to make things worse? Nobody in my life wanted to answer these questions. They told me to pray about it. They gave me stern looks, and I was warned to stop talking about it.

[00:04:37] Well, that wasn't going to do, was it? My first few years on YouTube, I discussed leaving Mormonism. I talked about atheism and philosophy. I wanted to find an online community, and this was before there were all of these beautiful online communities that there are today.

[00:04:56] Secretly, I wanted to find someone out there who would tell me that I wasn't crazy, that I wasn't a bad person for asking questions, that I wasn't alone. Now, looking back at those videos now, I can appreciate how instrumental they were in helping me explore my ideas and my beliefs and hearing other perspectives that were new to me. This was all really pivotal in my journey, and it was all thanks to YouTube.

[00:05:28] My journey on YouTube eventually pivoted from cathartic rants to, I must be using this wrong, because I keep showing me, hi, me. There we go to sex education activism. When I graduated university, I was like, is this too much? But actually, this is one of my tamer videos. So sorry.

[00:05:56] I was a student of abstinence only education. I wanted to make a change, and I really just wanted to empower my peers, other young women who come from religious backgrounds, to own their body. Like, girl, it belongs to you, and it is capable of so many beautiful things.

[00:06:17] And that was a message that I didn't really get growing up. So I ended up making hundreds of videos, maybe thousands, across all the projects I worked on about sexual health, about anatomy, healthy relationships, communication, social justice for vulnerable groups throughout the world.

[00:06:36] I wrote a book, and I wanted to create a comprehensive resource for young adults called SexPlus. That's actually the name of my video series, too. And I built my community to over 100,000 of my peers, and then somehow to over 2 million of my peers.

[00:06:58] But over those years and through that journey, something strange happened. Something that came really easy to me at first got a lot harder. And that something was just being myself. Being yourself is the very first thing that your parents and your peers and your counselors and your teachers tell you. Just be yourself, man. Don't worry about it.

[00:07:28] Listen, how am I supposed to be myself when I don't know who I am. Cue existential crisis number two. Being yourself is really difficult sometimes, and I think it's especially hard when there are people around you who expect you to be someone that you're not or to believe something that you don't or to do something that your heart's not really in.

[00:07:53] The more my online community grew and the more press that I received, the more I felt the weight of expectations that I couldn't fulfill. The New York Times called me the queen of sex ed. Time magazine called me the millennial. Dr. Ruth.

[00:08:11] Forgive me if this sounds like a humble brag, but I was genuinely shook. Dr. Ruth, that is not me. I make videos in my bedroom. I lick pans on the Internet. Not my proudest moment. Sexy thank. In another time and space and dimension, these might have been points of victory accomplishments.

[00:08:45] But instead, they made my world feel so small. Popular YouTubers took me under their wing as my channel grew. But in return, they expected me to endorse their ideas or their behaviors publicly. And at the end of the day, the weight of a thousand expectations greeted me in my inbox. I came home to people across the world asking me personal and sometimes painful questions about life, religion, and sexuality that I did not and do not have the answers to.

[00:09:22] My mental health took a dive. I started having panic attacks Every time I turned on my camera. I would have longer and longer breaks in between each video. I began to feel like an imposter. There was YouTube's Laci Green, and then there was me, the real me, terrified of making mistakes or not being enough.

[00:09:46] Oh, goodness. I just lost my notes. It's not loading. Can you give me one second? Because I really want to make sure I. I say this. I say this right. Thank you. Thank you, guys. And honestly, that's part of my anxiety, is just saying things wrong, right?

Growth, Getting Lost, and Finding Your Way

[00:10:17] So one thing that I've learned is that you can't grow if you never get lost. You know, you can't find your way if you're already there. And navigating public life without a support system felt like tiptoeing around a minefield. For me, Every so often, there were these huge explosions. Millions of people in my inbox and in my Twitter feed out of nowhere. How did I get here? I needed a map. I needed to retrace my steps and find myself again. Whatever that meant.

[00:10:52] Well, let's think. In the beginning, I didn't approach life from a place of fear. I didn't come to what I do with so much anxiety. I Came to it with curiosity and passion. And I was persistent. And I didn't care. I was unapologetic about my values.

[00:11:13] When I feel challenged or pressured or I'm facing a decision that has no simple answers, I always come back to my values. Being myself didn't require figuring out some quintessential truth about who I am. It didn't require figuring out the meaning of life. And it all.

[00:11:31] It just meant figuring out what kind of person I want to be today, each day in the world. To my friends and to my family, of course, but also to the barista at the coffee shop, or to the guy that brings me my mail every day in 90 degree heat in LA, and even to the group of men who made angry videos about me for years.

[00:11:57] I found some peace in navigating my decisions through the lens of how to be excellent to myself and to be excellent to those around me. To be the bigger person. But you know, this wasn't the end of the minefield. In some ways, there were more of them. But knowing that I'm making choices that I can stand by and that I can defend and I believe in offers me protection from the fallout.

[00:12:23] Negotiating our values is arguably one of the most important philosophical exercises that humans should do. And all of us being here today shows proactivity in that process. You should be really proud of yourselves. It takes a lot of bravery and energy and tenacity to do this, but we're here. I don't have any magic bullets, I don't have any stunning insights. But I do want to share 3ish things that I've learned along the way that have been really helpful to me.

[00:12:56] I keep these on my phone and I check in on them every so often just to kind of center and remind myself. So the first is to listen to you tune in to how you feel. Just quiet all the noise best you can. People do this in different ways. Exercising, meditation, hiking, whatever it is for you. Try to tune out the noise.

[00:13:23] So many of us are taught to feel bad about how we feel and what we believe and what our needs are. And I think that this really provides a breeding ground for guilt and shame. Listen to the things that scare you.

[00:13:39] If we don't acknowledge our fears, we have no hope of facing them or conquering them. Without careful examination, it's easy to let fear sort of seep in and run your life, have this outsized impact on our decisions. And of course, listen to others seek perspectives that are different than yours, which might be why you're here today.

[00:14:05] But you know, I'd caution that you shouldn't listen to everyone. Not everyone's going to be in the same place that you are or able to support you in the journey that you're on. Listen to the people who care about you, who can set aside their own feelings, their own judgments or motives, and really see you build out that support system.

[00:14:29] We cannot do any of this without each other. But life and social media especially, exposes us to thousands potentially of voices every single day. And not all of them are worth listening to. Secondly, worry less about what other people think of you.

[00:14:53] This one is way easier said than done, right? And another one that kind of gets tossed around, but I do think it's important. Best you can try to prioritize what you think of you. Not everyone in life is going to like you or understand you. I mean, there are so many people out there who have committed their lives to hating cats.

[00:15:17] Cats, the most perfect creatures on this entire planet with their tiny little toe beads. And there are people that don't like them. Look at those toe beans. I love it. So, wow. This is not a safe space anymore.

[00:15:37] So when I'm down, I like to remind myself that there are people out there who don't like cats. And if cats can deal with that, so can I. Other people's judgment or assumptions about you are not reflective of. Of your goodness as a person, your worth as a person, or your cat's worth either.

[00:16:00] There are 7 billion people on the planet, and like many people today have already said in many eloquent ways, find your people. We're out here. Lastly, I try to resist the temptation to go through life as if the negative experiences that I've had were imposed on me. You know, like they happened to me. I am not a victim of life's circumstances. I am an improviser. I am a creator. I am a fighter.

[00:16:32] I cannot control everything that happens to me, but I can choose how to respond to it. Life is beautiful. It is full of joy and. And warmth. But to truly embrace all of that and appreciate it, we have to embrace life's challenges.

[00:16:52] This is a little morbid, but I truly believe that to be human is to suffer at least a little bit, to struggle. And since struggling is inevitable, let's find a journey that's worth struggling for. Thank you for having me and for your patience with everything.

[00:17:15] I really appreciate this space and I really appreciate the organizers of this. This is beautiful, and I wish it had been a part of my life when I was younger. Thanks, guys.

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