Introduction and Loss After Leaving Mormonism

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under Support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:36] The kindly light amid the encircling gloom Lead thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home. Hi there, it's Margi. As mentioned on the Mormon Transitions Podcast last week, we have decided to have me share an essay that I wrote.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:05] An essay that came to being, actually, when John came to me and just said, hey, would you mind compiling some of your thoughts about our last five years or so? Or what your life has looked like for the past five years or so. And I did.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:22] And those thoughts and musings became an essay called Broken Open, which I will be reading to you today. And just like at the retreat, I normally start with a visual, which is a painting by my daughter, my oldest daughter, Audrey.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:40] This is what it looks like. Okay, Broken Open I tend to cry. A warning of sorts, Louise Erdrich wrote in the Painted Drum. Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love, you have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:14] You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken or betrayed or left or hurt or death. Brushes near Let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:37] Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could. If you are breathing, there will be something in this life and you will be lucky if it is only one thing that will break you open. That is both the excruciatingly painful news and the potentially wonderful news. Mind you, it rarely feels good to be broken open.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:01] I don't know many people who would choose it. Certainly not me. A quick disclaimer I try to be aware that I live a privileged life. It's a comfortable one compared to most, and I get that. I am aware of the state of women worldwide, the larger problems of sex trafficking, the lack of education and opportunity afforded my sex. I acknowledge openly the plight of disease, the damage of natural disasters, and the effects of poorly distributed resources that include the restricted access to basic needs like food, clean water and a safe place to rest one's head.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:40] And yet pain is still pain, and I still feel loss amidst this knowing, and I might guess that you have too. I suspect that transitioning away from Mormonism is only part of it. What have you lost? Your identity?

Margi Dehlin [00:03:59] Friendships? Your innocence? Stability. Family, relationships? Community. Here are a few of the major losses I have felt in the past five years and what that loss has looked like in my world. Loss looks like the gentle eyes of my father, trapped inside a body and a mind that is deteriorating quickly.

Margi Dehlin [00:04:37] My Yale educated, brilliant, sensitive, gentle father. A psychiatrist. The man who sought to understand and give hope to those exiled by mental illness. The classically trained pianist, the former boys choir singer of Haverford College, the man who openly cried watching movies, reading poetry or listening to Beethoven now wears a diaper, can't walk, does not know his own children and is unable to communicate with words.

Margi Dehlin [00:05:13] The man who once studied the mind has met up with Lewy body disease, a combination of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Loss looks like the pain that sneaks under our locked doors at night to smother the children we have tried so hard to protect. The brutality of life is no longer a distant threat, but real and true. It leaves their hearts shattered and stunned and for a time hopeless and disconnected from themselves.

Margi Dehlin [00:05:44] Katrina Kennison writes of this loss in her memoir, Magical Journey. We want to shield our children from pain, and what we get instead is life and heartache and lessons that bring us to our knees. Sooner or later we are handed the brute, necessary curriculum of surrender. We have no choice then, but to bow our heads and learn.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:10] We struggle to accept that our children's destinies are not ours to write. Their battles are not ours to fight, their bruises not ours to bear, nor their victories ours to own or take credit for. We learn humility and how to ask for help.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:28] We learn to let go, even when every fiber of our being yearns to hold on tighter. We learn that love is necessary, but that love doesn't always save people. We learn we can't change someone else. We can only change ourselves.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:44] We can go down fighting, or we can begin to practice acceptance. Grace comes as we loosen at last our white knuckled grip on what ought to be. But even grace is not always gentle or chosen. Sometimes it arrives disguised as a burden, as loss or hurt or unwanted upheaval.

Margi Dehlin [00:07:12] Loss looks like marital trauma, our marriage the restructuring of a relationship after great tumult. We are left shaken at the core. How did we get here? Who are you? Who am I? We are left deeply wounded, our hearts and dreams strewn about in fragments.

Margi Dehlin [00:07:34] Loss looks like the realization that we no longer belong to or feel aligned with the safe haven of the faith of our youth. Somehow, by being honest and authentic, we find ourselves alone and and without a tribe. Family relationships are strained and shaken, friendships are altered. Our lives can feel like barren lands. We are like snails without our shells, exposed, vulnerable, without protection.

Reading from Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser

Margi Dehlin [00:08:06] I'm going to read an excerpt from Broken Open by Elizabeth Less. To be human is to be lost in the woods. None of us arrives here with clear directions on how to get from point A to point B without stumbling into the forest of confusion or catastrophe or wrongdoing.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:28] Although they are dark and dangerous, it is in the woods that we discover our strengths. We all know people who say that their cancer or divorce or bankruptcy was the greatest gift of a lifetime, that until the body or the heart or the bank was broken, they didn't know who they were, what they felt or what they wanted.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:49] Before their descent into the darkness, they took more than they gave, or they were numb or full of fear or blame or self pity. In their most broken moments they were brought to their knees. They were humbled, they were opened. And later, as they pulled the pieces back together, they discovered a clearer sense of purpose and a new passion for life.

Margi Dehlin [00:09:12] But we also know people who did not turn their misfortune into insight or their grief into joy, but instead became more bitter, more reactive, more cynical. They shut down. They went back to sleep. The Persian poet Rumi says, the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the door sill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open.

Margi Dehlin [00:09:46] Don't go back to sleep. I am fascinated by what it takes to stay awake in difficult times. I marvel at what we all do in times of transition, how we resist, how we surrender, how we stay stuck, and how we grow.

Margi Dehlin [00:10:01] Since my first major Broken Open experience, my divorce, I have been an observer and a confidant of others, and as they engage with the forces of their own suffering, I have made note of how fiasco and failure visit each one of us as if they were written into the job description of being human. I have seen people crumble in times of trouble, lose their spirit and never fully recover. And I have seen others protect themselves fiercely from any kind of change until they Are living a half life, safe yet stunted?

Margi Dehlin [00:10:37] I've tried it both ways. I've gone back to sleep in order to resist the forces of change. And I have stayed awake and been broken open. Both ways are difficult, but one way brings with it the gift of a lifetime. For if we can stay awake when our lives are changing, secrets will be revealed to us. Secrets about ourselves, about the nature of life, and about the eternal source of happiness and peace that is always available, always renewable, already within us.

Margi Dehlin [00:11:15] So determine not to go back to sleep, but to live awake to what is real and at hand. We break open. These losses are deaths, and they are to be fully mourned. And this takes time. And yet, amidst the loss, new parts of ourselves can begin to take shape and breathe with new life.

Margi Dehlin [00:11:41] They may emerge in days or weeks. Some take years to take root and grow. We must keep our eyes open for them. They are the secrets that have always been there within us. What are the new parts of ourselves rising up and taking shape? And what are these births, these new green shoots bursting forth out of the seemingly barren land? And what do they look like? What do they look like? For me, these births may look like my mother's hands working tirelessly to care for what is left of my father.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:21] The insight of her heart is worn freely now as my father dies, For he is the love of her life. There is no doubt about that. A nurse by profession, she bathes him, dresses him, feeds him, lifts him, wipes him and sleeps by his side each night.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:47] My mother, who has always lived life on the go, has slowed to honor my dad in his last days. Her growing softness, her open vulnerability and bold determination have been an absolute revelation. My oldest brother, on his own rocky journey for years, has returned home and stabilized, bought my parents a house, enrolled in graduate school and works full time. He provides my mom, vacations, cares for my dad each night so my mother can sleep.

Margi Dehlin [00:13:21] Each of us, my siblings, have stepped forward to help out. We are a diverse clan, but we have united in purpose, to show up for our parents, to give back. It is the birth of healing grace amidst an undignified long goodbye.

Margi Dehlin [00:13:41] These births may wear the faces of my teenage daughters who have had to endure or are enduring their own inner reckoning with sensitive feeling, hearts battling shame, self doubt, ostracization and painful adult emotional baggage, only to emerge with a renewed sense of who they are, of what they want from life, what is theirs to heal, and how to cope with that in ways that honor them, not hurt them.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:10] These births may look like John and myself a few years later, after months of work together, stepping forth as two fully formed humans together, but not codependent. It has been a reconnection of hearts, a time of forgiveness. We walk with a better understanding of what our wounds are and of what friendship and intimacy mean to us.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:36] We must give it every day. It is the privilege of supporting one another, to pursue a life of meaning together and apart, to do our own work in the relationship and partner with unwavering devotion to show up for our children day after day.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:55] These births may look like me now. This face, these eyes, a rather fragile new being created from the ashes of the religion of my youth. I gather up with a full heart what has been offered, grateful for the good, keeping that part safe and protected, and I let the rest go.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:20] Each day, each moment, I read, I crossfit, I walk, I write, I cook fresh food, I meditate, I speak about topics I am passionate about on Mormon Transitions Podcast. I am propelled forward by meaning and joy and those around me who take me by the hand and remind me this is what it means to be alive and we are made for this work. You are not alone.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:55] Our charge is to feel it all, to mournfully, to grieve deeply, to cope well, to break open, to rebuild again and again upon what remains, to become more open, to love truly, to feel the joy of this moment. Here now.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:25] We will be broken open, and parts of us will be lost. But much like nature, after a brutal forest fire reduces a green forest to ash, there will be new growth in the barren parts of ourselves. New births are unfolding as we speak.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:47] We will survive the tumult. We will thrive. It is part of who we are. And in closing, I'm just going to read some excerpts from the poem Still I Rise by Maya Angelou. You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies. You may trod me in the very dirt. But still like dust, I'll rise.

Still I Rise: A Poem of Resilience

Margi Dehlin [00:17:15] Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? Cause I walk like I've got oil wells pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, with the certainty of tides, just like hope springing high, still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes, shoulders falling down like teardrops, weakened by my soulful cries. You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still like air, I'll rise.

Margi Dehlin [00:17:50] Out of the huts of history's shame. I rise up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean Leaping and wide Welling and swelling I bear in the tide Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave I am the dream and the hope of the slave I rise I rise I rise.

John Dehlin [00:18:32] Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the Lower Lights and other sources.

Margi Dehlin [00:18:48] Cease to make me whole when with the wounded heart, anger or malice I draw myself apart Searching my soul.

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.