Introduction and Welcome

Part 1 of 4 · Ep. 717

Heidi Packard [00:00:00] Sa.

John Dehlin [00:00:28] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories, and in this case, Mormon Transitions Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin, and today I'm so excited to interview a couple that I've actually known or been in contact with for many, many years.

John Dehlin [00:00:46] Josh and Heidi. I know at least, Josh, I met you in 2011, probably February ish of 2011, but I think we've been in contact. Heidi, were you there as well? Did I meet you in New York? Yeah, we met New York when the Book of Mormon musical first came out.

John Dehlin [00:01:03] A bunch of us went to New York and saw it. And that's where I met Josh and Heidi Packard. But I'm really excited for today's interview. The date is March 2, 2017. We're doing this as a live broadcast so people can join us through Facebook Live as well. There is a video and an audio recording, and there are several things we're gonna be talking about with Heidi and Josh.

John Dehlin [00:01:32] So Heidi and Josh experienced kind of a faith crisis, which is a theme that we're really exploring in depth this year. And there are a few things that are really interesting about their story. So first off, I think, and we'll get into this, but I think for Heidi and Josh, it was a really kind of difficult transition that in its early incantations, probably really strained a lot of their family relationships. In Heidi's case, Heidi is actually related to some people that maybe some of our listeners will know.

John Dehlin [00:02:07] There's a Mormon blogger who goes by the name Nini, but her name is Stephanie Nielsen. My wife Margi followed Nini or Stephanie as a blogger a long time ago, prior to the time where Stephanie was involved in an airplane crash with her husband, Christian. Christian is Heidi's brother, and they remain very orthodox believing members along with their family. The blogger, oh, my gosh, there's the other. I'm spacing on her name.

Heidi Packard [00:02:43] See, Jane.

John Dehlin [00:02:43] Yeah. Kendrick. Right. Courtney Kendrick. She is also sisters with Stephanie, Nielsen and Christian. And so that's a family that Heidi's connected to. So anyway, a lot of still orthodox believing members, Josh's family as well. And so I think Heidi and Josh learned a lot maybe about even how not to process of transition with believing family members. But what's also more important is they report that they've been able to do some really good healing with their believing family members after going through their transition and even kind of maybe not handling things optimally. So we're going to talk about maybe what not to do, but also how to heal relationships after you've gone through Mormon transition.

John Dehlin [00:03:32] So that's sort of one major theme. A second thing we're going to be talking about today, Josh and Heidi read a lot, and they've learned a lot about kind of secular humanism and science. And, you know, a lot of people when they're going through a transition are asking, how do I raise my kids? Can I raise moral kids? Can I raise healthy kids? What will our moral foundation be if we don't have the church telling us what's good or bad, or the church imposing its rules and values on us? How do we raise healthy kids? And I think Heidi and Josh have a lot they want to add about how science and secularism, basically secular humanism, have helped them raise their kids.

John Dehlin [00:04:11] So that's kind of a second theme and then a third theme. Josh, you're a physician, right? Josh, Correct. He's a physician for the U.S. army. And I think an interesting angle to their story is how Heidi and Josh have found a supportive community and as transitioning or post Mormons through the US Military. And that just touches on the theme of rebuilding a supportive community once you leave. And, of course, the military can be a proxy for all sorts of potential communities that can be, you know, ways that people supplement or rebuild, even a happier, healthier life after they've left religion. So those are some of the main themes. Heidi and Josh, welcome to Mormon Stories. Mormon Transitions. We're so thrilled to have you.

Josh Packard [00:04:57] We're glad to be here. Thanks for having us.

John Dehlin [00:04:59] Now, did I get anything wrong in the introduction? Anything you want to correct or add?

Heidi Packard [00:05:05] I mean, I guess I would just add that we have four children and our oldest is in college. She's a sophomore in college. And our youngest is seventh grade. And when we made our transition, when we started our transition out of the church, our oldest was 12 and our youngest was 5. So kind of those formative years of raising our children we have done outside of the church. So that's kind of our perspective.

John Dehlin [00:05:33] So in some ways, is it kind of fair to say that you guys have been down the road a bit? You're not like new kind of newbies to this experience. You've been going through it for years and can offer some insight as a couple that actually is many years into their transition. Is that fair?

Heidi Packard [00:05:53] That's the goal. Hopefully it's helpful.

Josh Packard [00:05:56] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:05:57] Well, that's fabulous. And Again, we've got 32 people joining us live right now. We're really excited that those of you who have joined us are able to join us. And we just Want to encourage our listeners if they want to post comments or questions.

John Dehlin [00:06:12] We will do our best to incorporate comments and questions into our discussion today because that's. That's kind of one of the main things that we do, why we do these sort of live interviews is to be able to just have that additional sort of online spontaneous participation and collaboration. So we're really thrilled about that. So thanks to everyone who's been joining us. So. All right, let's begin. Heidi, if it's all right, we'll start with you. And why don't you just start, as we always do, and talk a bit about your upbringing in the church and kind of what the church meant to you and your nuclear family growing up before you met Josh. And don't hesitate to talk about all the good as well as the things that were challenging.

Heidi Growing Up in a Large Mormon Family

Heidi Packard [00:07:01] I had a great childhood growing up in the church. I'm one of 11 children, and we lived in Mesa, Arizona. Great ward, great community, very strong family structure. My parents were devout. We, you know, had family home evening every week, scripture study every morning, family prayer.

Heidi Packard [00:07:26] All my older siblings. I'm seventh in the family, so all my older siblings went to byu, married in the temple, went on missions. Just great. I had a great childhood. I loved the community of the church. I'm an extrovert. I like people. I liked seeing my friends at church on Sunday.

Heidi Packard [00:07:45] I, you know, once I became a teenager, I became a lot more invested doctrinally and spiritually through seminary. And I, you know, just kind of was, I don't know, I guess your typical model teen, you know, that the church wanted to produce. At that time in my life, you know, I. I just followed the rules and went on group dates and didn't even have a, you know, never paired off, like, just, you know, And I loved it. It was very comforting. It was a very stable structure. I liked that there was this kind of formula, and you were kind of guaranteed to get results, good results, if you followed the formula, if you did all the things you were supposed to do. So that was kind of my experience, and it was great.

John Dehlin [00:08:36] How many. How many kids?

Heidi Packard [00:08:38] 11. I'm one of 11.

John Dehlin [00:08:40] Holy moly. How does that work? Being up being one of 11 kids?

Heidi Packard [00:08:45] It was. It was great. I loved it. I mean, it was, you know, there was always stuff going on at our house, and it was. We had a really large home, you know, with a big basement, and there was. People were. My siblings were always bringing their older, you know, their friends home over to visit. We always had parties. Our house it was great. My parents were always around. It was a really, it was a really good life. I really liked it growing up.

John Dehlin [00:09:12] What were your profession wise? What did your parents do?

Heidi Packard [00:09:16] My dad is a home builder. So he owned his own business and built homes and you know, he built our home and we had it, we had a fairly large home and my mom was full time stay at home mom, very, you know, she's sewed and cooked and just, you know, she was an excellent Mormon mom. So that was my life.

John Dehlin [00:09:39] So super connected to the church.

Heidi Packard [00:09:41] Yes, yes.

John Dehlin [00:09:43] Do you think your family would have sort of been viewed as maybe by some as a model Mormon family? I mean, that doesn't exist.

Heidi Packard [00:09:50] No. Yeah, I mean, yes, in fact, I remember that was Mormon family kind of the. I mean, I don't want to sound braggy, but yes, I think so. I mean, we, we were kind of known as the big Mormon family. And I mean, granted there were a lot of other families in our neighborhood and in our ward that also had big families and that were, you know, just as involved and engaged. So it's not like we were like unique in that sense. There were plenty of families that were just like us, but we were probably one of the biggest families. So that was unique.

John Dehlin [00:10:23] Did your dad end up serving and maybe you already mentioned this, remind me, did he end up serving in kind of leadership callings and stuff?

Heidi Packard [00:10:30] My dad did. I mean, he, he wasn't, he never had really, really high or like time consuming callings, I guess. I mean, he was like in bishoprics and you know, high priest group leaders and high council and stake presidency, you know, stuff like that. But he was never, you know, the bishop or the stake president. It was usually in counselor roles. And so I remember my dad being present there. Like he was, I mean, he was busy with church, but he was also home a lot. So I kind of had a little bit of a different experience than Josh.

John Dehlin [00:11:11] That sounds great. Okay. Do you remember kind of gaining a testimony as a, as a believing Mormon and kind of what that. Or trying to gain a testimony and kind of what that testimony would have been based on as a teenager?

Developing a Testimony as a Teenager

Heidi Packard [00:11:26] Yeah, I mean, it was very much just when I was, you know, younger. You know, my parents taught me and I believe what my parents believe. And then, you know, about the time I'm a teenager, I think the first really formative experience for me was in ninth grade when I started seminary. My seminary teacher I had Book of Mormon was Brother Mask, who is, I think he's a general authority now. And he was Just amazing. Just the most kind.

Heidi Packard [00:11:54] Funny, like, just so charismatic. And then he was also really into, I guess it was farms at the time, just the Book of Mormon geography type stuff in Guatemala and everything. And so he. He kind of introduced a lot of that into our seminary curriculum. And I was fascinated. I just thought, this is so cool. There's all of this evidence to back up, you know, everything in the Book of Mormon. I mean, this is what I thought at the time, but, yeah, I mean, that was. That was kind of when I first started to get really excited about, like, the truthfulness of the church. And it was kind of.

Heidi Packard [00:12:30] A lot of it was based on this belief that there was good evidence that would support, you know, these ideas. So that was kind of exciting for me.

John Dehlin [00:12:41] So for you there. There was a heavy intellectual component to your convictions about the church. Do you remember trying to, you know, pray about the Book of Mormon or receiving spiritual manifestations about the Church?

Heidi Packard [00:12:54] Yeah, I do. And they were. Those were not the things that kind of drove my testimony, but they kind of supported my testimony, I guess, because I did, you know, I had some experiences where I'd pray, and it was mostly I would feel peaceful. You know, I never had this miraculous, amazing witness or anything. It was just more the comforter, the feeling of peace. You know, that was kind of my. More the extent of my, like, spiritual experiences.

John Dehlin [00:13:23] Okay, but you would have. You would have probably borne your testimony saying what. What would you have said if you had borne your testimony as a teen?

Heidi Packard [00:13:31] I know the church is true. You know, I love my family. Book of Mormon is true. The prophet is, you know, speaks for the Lord. I mean, just everything that you would. That you were taught to say, basically,

John Dehlin [00:13:46] you know, okay, so really, really orthodox.

Heidi Packard [00:13:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:13:51] Okay. And happy. You'd say you had a. Happy. You had a happy upbringing. Is that fair to say?

Heidi Packard [00:13:56] For the most part, yeah. I mean, of course, there were things that. That did kind of rub me the wrong way. A little anecdote. I remember feeling very. I love history, and I would always read historical fiction when I was a teenager, and one of the thoughts, recurring thoughts that I always had was, man, I wish I had been born before 1830. Then I wouldn't be, like, I wouldn't have the responsibility of knowing about the Church, so I wouldn't have to be Mormon. But I could just convert after I died, you know, and I could still, you know, I wouldn't be hampered by Mormon culture and, like, all the constrictive elements of what it meant to be a Mormon, all the responsibilities.

Heidi Packard [00:14:41] I could just, you know, I could wear pretty dresses that, like the big hoop skirts and show my shoulders and you know, drink wine sometimes and like, you know, it was kind of this little fantasy that I had that, you know, that was my out. If I could just, could have been bit, been born in, you know, the early 1800s or something. So, you know, that was kind of the extent of my rebellious, you know, attitude, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:15:04] And did you ever consider the possibility that the church wasn't true or have like serious doubts?

Heidi Packard [00:15:10] No, not the church. But this does play into our story. When I was a teenager, I pretty strongly came to the conclusion that every other church was bogus. And like, meaning if the Mormon church. The Mormon Church is true. Every other church is clearly man made. And so in my mind it was. And that kind of shaped my. When I actually transitioned out, I quickly became an atheist because it was, I'd already knocked out the possibility of other religions being true. So that early on, was that the

John Dehlin [00:15:51] church's influence or just your own, your own studies?

Heidi Packard [00:15:54] It was both. It was the church's influence because, you know, I, at least the way I was taught about the church, it was very much, we are the one true church. And I remember reading, I think it was, was it McConkey or who wrote the stuff about the Catholic Church?

John Dehlin [00:16:09] Yeah, Bruce R. McConkie and Mormon Doctrine.

Heidi Packard [00:16:11] Yeah, yeah, Mormon doctrine. Yeah, I remember reading Mormon doctrine about, you know, the great apostasy and, and, and I, and I love history. And so I knew about Protestant, you know, reformation and all that. And I just like, of course God is not, you know, either. This is all man made, this is all made up stuff. But you know, of course the Mormon church is true. It's the one true church. So it was very apparent to me that all other religions were, were made up and that Mormonism was the only true church. That's how I viewed it at the time.

John Dehlin [00:16:41] Okay, so in some ways the church sets you up to kind of have no other chance with any other religion if Mormonism didn't work out. And that's common. Our studies find that over half of post Mormons end up reporting being atheist or agnostic after they're done. Mormonism often ruins people for other religion, for better or for worse. That's just what seems to happen. Okay, that's great. So Heidi, thanks for that intro. Josh, why don't you give us the same kind of background if you don't mind.

Josh's Deep Pioneer Ancestry and Early Faith

Josh Packard [00:17:17] All right, so I am a fifth or sixth generation Mormon ancestors go back to 1830, joined the church. They were very close to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Crossed the plains. Family stayed active all the way down until me, I kind of broke the chain. I had a very good youth. I'm one of six kids. My parents were both active in the church. My mom had prominent callings. She was award and Stake Relief Society president. My dad was in the bishopric bishop, stake residency, and was a mission president in Mozambique, Africa, when I. When I left the church.

John Dehlin [00:18:06] So you're. You're. Your dad's been a mission president?

Josh Packard [00:18:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:09] Okay. Wow, that's cool. Now, any relation to the packers that we would know? Different. Different spelling, right? Different spelling.

Josh Packard [00:18:17] Ard.

John Dehlin [00:18:17] Okay.

Josh Packard [00:18:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:19] Okay. But your dad's been a mission president, so that's. That means he's probably been a bishop or stake president, right?

Josh Packard [00:18:25] He was a bishop and he was a counselor in the state presidency growing up.

John Dehlin [00:18:29] Where again?

Josh Packard [00:18:30] Gilbert, Arizona. So just.

John Dehlin [00:18:32] Okay.

Josh Packard [00:18:32] Next to Heidi in Mesa, Arizona.

John Dehlin [00:18:34] That's kind of like the Provo. That's kind of like the Provo of Arizona, right, Provosta? Yeah, yeah.

Heidi Packard [00:18:40] Yep.

Josh Packard [00:18:41] Lots of Mormons.

John Dehlin [00:18:43] Okay.

Josh Packard [00:18:44] You know, always had lots of friends in. In whatever school I was in that were Mormons. In fact, I didn't really have any non Mormon friends, especially when I was older. In high school, we did, you know, family home, evening, went to church, did all the requisite things. I graduated from seminary, went on a mission, did the whole leadership thing from DL to ZL to ap. Went, Came home, went to.

John Dehlin [00:19:10] Where did you serve? Where'd you serve?

Josh Packard [00:19:12] Australia. Melbourne Mission.

John Dehlin [00:19:14] English speaking.

Josh Packard [00:19:16] English speaking, huh? Yeah, Melbourne, the state of Victoria. And I had a great mission. I had a lot of success and lots of good experiences.

John Dehlin [00:19:28] Talk about your faith. As a teenager, were you. Did you think you had a testimony? Did you. Would you have said you knew the church was true? What was your. And if so, what was the testimony based on?

Josh Packard [00:19:41] Yeah, I would say I had a testimony from a pretty early age, especially once I got into seminary and started going to efy. We'd go do these big youth conferences and drive up to Provo and do efy. And I remember those being a very emotional.

Josh Packard [00:19:58] I would call it a very spiritual experience at the time, but very emotional. Lots of testimony meetings. I remember reading the Book of Mormon when I was young and, you know, reading Moroni's Promise at the end. And I remember praying and getting a testimony.

Josh Packard [00:20:18] So, yeah, I did all the things I needed to do. I had the spiritual witnesses that come with a life in church. And so I was. I was very Committed. I think I read the Book of Mormon, I don't know, four or five times before I even went into the mtc, then just kept reading it the whole time on my mission. So I had a very strong testimony of the doctrine. I was kind of a doctrine person. Heidi. You know, I'm an introvert. Heidi's an extrovert. Maybe she was more into the community of the church. I was more into the nuts and bolts of the doctrine.

Josh Packard [00:20:52] That's what kept me converted, kept me motivated on my mission. You know, I didn't really like going to church that much. I thought it was kind of a drag. But was true. The doctrine was true. And so I was committed 100%.

Josh Packard [00:21:07] I didn't have any doubts. There was no period in. In my life, through my mission and even beyond, really, up until I went to medical school that I had any doubts or considered that the church was not what it claimed to be. What else can I tell you?

John Dehlin [00:21:24] And were you kind of a. When you say doctrinal, were you kind of a Bruce R. McConkie Mormon? Joseph Fielding Smith?

Josh Packard [00:21:30] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:31] Was that your Bible?

Josh Packard [00:21:32] I had it on my mission. I wasn't supposed to, but I had it. I read it. I believed it. And, you know, I read all of the books in the. In the library that you're allowed to have, and I would go to my mission president and he would kind of give me extra books, you know, to read. So I remember reading the Great Apostasy by James Talmage, and I think that's who wrote it. And, you know, just these other little books that you're not supposed to read. But I was reading. I just. I got a lot of enjoyment out of that.

John Dehlin [00:22:05] Not just you, many of us. And it's almost weird that Bruce A. McConkie was so foundational to sort of those raised in the 80s, and now the church has, like, stopped printing the book and has, like, completely, you know, marginalized any of his teachings that we've. In that way, this church has fundamentally changed in a matter of three decades.

Josh Packard [00:22:31] Yeah, he wasn't a very ecumenical church leader, and he rubbed lots of people the wrong way. But when I was in the church, he was great.

Heidi Packard [00:22:38] You know, he made perfect sense.

Josh Packard [00:22:40] He made perfect sense from all that internal logic in the church. Yeah, his system of internal logic made perfect, perfect sense to me.

John Dehlin [00:22:48] Yeah. Excellent. Okay, so you had a great mission, served as an ap. How'd you guys. How'd you guys meet? Who wants to tell that part of the story?

Josh Packard [00:23:01] I'll let Heidi.

Heidi Packard [00:23:02] Okay. His Sister. His younger sister, Ali. She. I became friends with her because I was. I went on this trip to Europe with a group of people, and we met in Europe. He had just gotten home from his mission, and she. She and I became friends, and she said, I gotta set you up with my brother. So she set us up, and we dated for. Let's see, a few. Well, we dated for about four or five months, and then we got engaged.

Josh Packard [00:23:32] Went up to byu.

Heidi Packard [00:23:33] Went to BYU together, and we were actually engaged for six months. So that was a little bit unusual by Marcus.

Josh Packard [00:23:40] Not my idea.

John Dehlin [00:23:41] Okay. Was that too much or too little?

Josh Packard [00:23:44] Well, it was too much. The church teaches that you should have a long courtship and a short engagement. And that's what I wanted to do. I was trying to follow the brethren,

Heidi Packard [00:23:52] and I was like, no.

Josh Packard [00:23:53] Heidi wanted to switch it all around.

John Dehlin [00:23:56] So you're saying six months was a long engagement?

Josh Packard [00:23:59] Oh, yeah.

Heidi Packard [00:24:00] BYU standard.

John Dehlin [00:24:04] Such a long engagement.

Heidi Packard [00:24:07] Most people, it was three months. You know, that was. That was kind of the norm. You got engaged and then you were married three months later.

Josh Packard [00:24:14] So.

John Dehlin [00:24:14] And so you were probably there around the same time I was. Right.

Heidi Packard [00:24:18] We were there.

Josh Packard [00:24:20] We. We graduated or. I graduated in 1999.

Heidi Packard [00:24:23] So 94.

Josh Packard [00:24:24] Started in 90. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:26] Okay, so you started right after I left.

Josh Packard [00:24:27] Okay, 96 to 99.

Heidi Packard [00:24:29] I went there. I went there in 94. So you.

Josh Packard [00:24:32] Yeah.

Heidi Packard [00:24:32] You were on your mission. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:33] Okay, cool. Got it. All right, so you had a long, but by any other standard, short engagement, and you were married by what age?

Getting Married Young and Military Life

Heidi Packard [00:24:44] I was. I was 19. Almost 20.

Josh Packard [00:24:49] Still like a month away.

Heidi Packard [00:24:51] Right. I was like a month away.

John Dehlin [00:24:53] A month shy. A month shy of.

Josh Packard [00:24:55] We usually tell our kids she was married at 20. More respectable. And I think I set a goal to be married a year and a half after I got home from a mission. And I was. It was. I was 22.

John Dehlin [00:25:08] And did you guys like that? You're both from Arizona. Was that a huge draw?

Josh Packard [00:25:16] I mean, it made holidays nicer because we could go home and spend time with both. And, you know, we just. We shared that Arizona Mormon culture thing.

Heidi Packard [00:25:25] Yeah. I mean, I don't know that we ever. I don't think that was necessarily what attracted us to each other, but it was kind of a nice bonus.

John Dehlin [00:25:32] Sure.

Heidi Packard [00:25:32] We were both from the same area.

John Dehlin [00:25:35] Yeah, that makes sense.

Heidi Packard [00:25:37] Yeah, it was kind of nice.

John Dehlin [00:25:40] Right, right, right.

Heidi Packard [00:25:46] We were married and we had our daughter, our first daughter. We had. I had her a year.

John Dehlin [00:25:53] Oh, wait, wait. Let me just ask. We have a listener, Kathy, who asks if Joshua is is related to Floyd Packard.

Josh Packard [00:26:01] Not that I probably.

Heidi Packard [00:26:02] You probably are. Not that.

Josh Packard [00:26:04] You know, we all just stand from the same Samuel Packard who came across in the 1630s to America. And Packard was kind of a derivation of Packard, so.

Heidi Packard [00:26:14] Yes.

Josh Packard [00:26:15] Related to people named Packer. That was also a derivation of Packard.

John Dehlin [00:26:19] Okay.

Josh Packard [00:26:20] Packer, Packer and Packard.

John Dehlin [00:26:22] Okay.

Josh Packard [00:26:23] Somehow.

John Dehlin [00:26:23] Okay. I just wanted. I just wanted to be responsive to our listeners, so. Okay, keep going. I didn't mean to interrupt. And by the way, we have. We have 75 listening now, so our audience is growing.

Heidi Packard [00:26:34] So we. So we had our first daughter a year and a day after our anniversary. Yes. So I literally went into labor on our anniversary.

Josh Packard [00:26:46] We were taking birth control advice from my mom, who's a midwife, and she was giving us pretty bad advice.

Heidi Packard [00:26:55] So it was a sort of unplanned.

Josh Packard [00:26:57] She wanted grandkids. I think she sabotaged it.

John Dehlin [00:27:00] Okay.

Heidi Packard [00:27:01] Anyway, so. And then we. And then we had our children pretty much two years apart after that, so.

John Dehlin [00:27:07] And four. Four children total.

Heidi Packard [00:27:09] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:27:10] And during this time, Josh is. Is. Is applying and going to med school. Right.

Josh Packard [00:27:18] So we. We had two kids at byu, and then. Yeah, I applied to medical school, and then we had our two youngest in medical school in Maryland.

John Dehlin [00:27:27] Wow. Okay, so which. Which med school in Maryland?

Josh Packard [00:27:30] It's the Uniformed Services University. It's. It's the military medical school.

John Dehlin [00:27:34] Oh, wow. I've never heard of that.

Josh Packard [00:27:36] Yeah, it's.

Heidi Packard [00:27:38] They say it's in Bethesda.

Josh Packard [00:27:39] Yeah, Bethesda, Maryland. Right near the nih, Walter Reed. And. Yeah, it's full of Air Force, Army, Navy, and even some public health doctors.

John Dehlin [00:27:51] And did you have, like, military in your family where that was something. You were kind of following that up, or was it just a great way to pay for school? Or were you super patriotic? You know, what was it about the military?

Josh Packard [00:28:05] It was a great way to pay for school. We had a advisor at BYU who knew the dean at Eusis Uniformed Services University, Val Hemingway. And so he kind of cued us into the secret of useless because it was kind of a secret. Nobody knew about it. And it was a great way to get a medical education and not go into a lot of debt because you're

Heidi Packard [00:28:31] commissioned as an officer, medical school is free.

Josh Packard [00:28:33] Right. And then you get a salary as a second lieutenant while you're going. So it was a nice way for us to get through school debt free. Heidi could stay home with the kids. And there was probably about 15 other LDS students at the school with me, so. About 10.

John Dehlin [00:28:48] 15?

Josh Packard [00:28:49] Yeah, about 10% Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:28:52] Okay. And that's got to be a. Probably a really high quality med school, right?

Josh Packard [00:28:56] Oh, yeah, yeah. I still think it's one of the best med schools out there. Thought it was great.

John Dehlin [00:29:03] That's great. Okay, so what. Any interesting stories about your sort of. I mean, it sounds like, honestly, an idyllic Mormon life up. You know, from everything I've heard so far, like AP on the mission, family of 11 or 12, like super devout, married young, lots of kids go to med school. It's sounding kind of like the Mormon dream.

Josh Packard [00:29:30] Yeah. Why would we leave?

John Dehlin [00:29:32] So any. Any stories about your marriage and relationship prior to when things started to fall apart that you wanted to mention?

Josh Packard [00:29:44] I would just say that my dad was always involved in the church and leadership callings, and there was kind of an expectation that I would do that as well after my medical education and residency. And so I think I was kind of boning up for those callings during medical school and residency in the little free time that I had.

Josh Packard [00:30:06] You know, kind of from a doctrinal, scriptorian historian kind of point of view, I thought that was important. If you need. If, you know, I believe that God knew everything, and if we were going to progress and become to be more like God, I needed to learn a lot of stuff too. And so I never was scared to dive in and try to learn more things.

Josh Packard [00:30:27] It wasn't until I started to discover more things that it became a problem. But I felt like I needed to know this stuff, know the scriptures backwards and forward, know the church history, to be a good leader. Um, and I. I kind of felt that that was coming at some point.

John Dehlin [00:30:41] And that's the irony of what, for many is the. The transitioning Mormon experience. The stereotypes are often. They were never committed, they never had a testimony, they wanted to sin, uh, they got offended. All things that would. That would suggest kind of a weak commitment to the church. And what I think the evidence really shows is that for people like us, it was actually the opposite. That our faith crisis was born out of actually a very high, intense level of commitment to the church. We believed it. We believe the truth mattered. We believe that it was so important that it merited serious study and scrutiny, and that it was actually intense commitment that led to the problems. Is that. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but is that exactly.

Heidi Packard [00:31:31] Yeah, exactly true.

Josh Packard [00:31:33] That's it.

Heidi Packard [00:31:34] And I guess the one thing I'd add about my experience from before the transition was that when we got married, when I went to byu, I had this dream of going to law school and becoming this high powered attorney. And actually when Josh and I were, we were first thinking about getting engaged, I was planning on going to Jerusalem, study abroad. I was applying to that to go for the summer. Right. I think I was going to go over the summer. And I ended up praying about it. Right. And saying, okay, should I go on this study abroad or should I, you know, stay home and get married?

Heidi Packard [00:32:15] And I got the answer that I should get married. And it wasn't really, I mean, I wanted to get married, but I really wanted to go on and study abroad to Jerusalem. And so that was always kind of this like, thing that bugged me that I felt a little bit like I had, I had to give up something that I really wanted to do because I needed to follow what the church or what God wanted me to do. And that would come up later when I kind of started to explore feminism and learn about it. Those. I reinterpreted a lot of those experiences from a lot of things that hadn't necessarily bothered me a lot before. Suddenly I could look back and see, oh man, I was not really making choices for myself. So, yeah, my perspective, and that is

John Dehlin [00:33:09] such a major component of coping with a religious transition. It's dealing with the mourning and the regrets of what decisions would we have made if we had had all the information and had felt fully empowered to direct our own lives instead of just kind of lead a life that was kind of imposed upon us. Right, yeah, that's an important theme. So let's make sure and cover that. Okay. So you guys were super in it, super devoted, super committed. Any other stories about your marriage or your lives prior to when things started unraveling? Anything important for us to know or.

Marriage, Medical School, and Settled Mormon Life

Heidi Packard [00:33:52] I think just basically, I mean, we had a good marriage. We've always been good, like good friends. We like to talk. We have a lot of the same interests, especially the church. I mean, we like to talk about deep doctrinal things together, interesting things. And, you know, I enjoyed being, being a mother, having little kids. I loved having babies and toddlers. And I was happy to support him, you know, and his doing his thing. Although again, it was a little bit hard because I had to give up some of my things that I wanted to do, but I didn't have a lot of resentment about it at the time. And so it was, you know, it was good. I mean, we had a good experience, you know, up at BYU and just kind of living in the married ward, you know, and just having our little friends and difficult experience at byu.

John Dehlin [00:34:44] Okay. And I think that's notable because, you know, sometimes when well intended church leaders talk about leaving the church, one of the things they like to do is say, you'll get divorced. It'll wreck your marriage, blah, blah, blah. And one of the things that I found is that sometimes it's not so much that a faith crisis causes divorce, but sometimes people get married and they're not great friends, they're not super close, they don't have a great healthy relationship. And so oftentimes what a faith crisis will do is reveal an unhealthy marriage that was otherwise buttressed by devotion to the church, instead of it being the faith crisis fault for the divorce.

John Dehlin [00:35:27] And what it sounds like in your case, you're saying that you had a relatively healthy, well functioning relationship, and that's an important factor in going through a transition. And I'm guessing that as you guys start talking about your transition, we're gonna find that that was a really useful part of helping you guys through it, was just having a solid relationship beforehand. Is that what we're gonna find out?

Josh Packard [00:35:53] I think so.

John Dehlin [00:35:55] Okay, so really quickly, I'm just gonna say that we have a listener who just wrote, John writes, Mormons are dramatically overrepresented in the military, medical corps, and JAG corps. Is that true, your experience, Josh?

Josh Packard [00:36:09] I don't have the stats on it, but there were a fair amount of Mormons in my medical school, and when we moved in my residency as well, quite a few number of Mormons went to residency with me. When we moved here, we thought we were, you know, the church is gonna be puny. There was, I don't know, three or four other Mormon families that lives in our neighborhood that were also doctors.

John Dehlin [00:36:32] Oh, wow.

Josh Packard [00:36:33] So I would probably guess that we're overrepresented in the medical field and also in the military just because it's a great way to get your education while you're married and kids. Yeah, that's what made us unique, was we were older, we were married, we had kids. Not many guys go to medical school. Guys or girls go to medical school in that situation.

John Dehlin [00:36:56] Yeah. And John. John asks which branch of the armed forces. I think it's Army. Is that right?

Josh Packard [00:37:02] Yeah, I'm in the army.

John Dehlin [00:37:04] Okay, excellent. Okay, so this is great. And really quick, Josh, did you. Did you serve overseas at all? Sort of. During your believing years as a Mormon, did you have to. Were you deployed outside of the U.S.

Josh Packard [00:37:18] yeah, we can talk about it later. I deployed to Baghdad as a camp cropper for about seven months. Just a few months after I left, the church came out.

Heidi Packard [00:37:29] And that plays into our story.

John Dehlin [00:37:30] Okay.

Heidi Packard [00:37:30] Okay, well, that'll come up.

John Dehlin [00:37:32] One other quick thing is, Dennis, Mormons are overrepresented, as I understand it, in the dental field and in the orthodontic field as well. We crank out a lot of doctors, lawyers, dentists and orthodontists.

Part 2 of 4 · Ep. 718

Heidi Packard [00:00:00] Sa.

John Dehlin [00:00:28] Okay, so why should we jump into now? You know, kind of when things started unraveling, kind of. How many years into your marriage did that start?

Heidi Packard [00:00:42] Well, it started.

Josh Packard [00:00:43] Started in Medical School.

Heidi Packard [00:00:45] 2000. Yeah, so we got married in 96, so four years.

John Dehlin [00:00:50] Okay. And this is five years before Mormon story started. So you guys were. You were hitting this early. This is around the same time I was. My faith crisis at Microsoft. So around 2000, 2001. Around 2000, 2001, what happened?

Josh Packard [00:01:04] So I would say that my first faith crisis was kind of a mini faith crisis. It happened when we were at medical school. One of the things was I just was bumping into a lot of non Mormons that seemed very functional, very happy families in the military, outside the military, religious people, non religious people. It was the first time that I got out of really, the Mormon bubble and started to notice that there's not a lot of Mormons out here on the East Coast. And a lot of them seem to be pretty darn happy, just as happy, I think, as I was. And so that was a bit of a chink in the armor because I had always been taught that, you know, the only true way to be happy is through the gospel.

Josh Packard [00:01:45] And I wasn't discovering that that was always true. I started to learn more about science, about the scientific method, and specifically about evolution. And I noticed that there were some problems with evolution as taught as a purely natural phenomenon of, you know, genetic variation, you know, natural selection, an unguided process leading to, you know, all the different forms of life that we see on the earth. As opposed to the Mormon view, which is, I would say it's more of like an intelligent design. I think I've kind of got to that part, that view today that, you know, okay, maybe evolution is a process, but God was in charge.

Josh Packard [00:02:29] He was kind of guiding things behind the curtain, and he had an end goal. And that was humans, because, of course, he is an involved human as well. So the end was already predetermined. And that's not how evolution works. And I think I kind of realized that in medical school.

Josh Packard [00:02:47] That was tough. And then the other thing was I just was noticing that the church was so small and so parochial. And if this is God's kingdom on the earth, why wasn't it bigger? Why wasn't our missionary program more successful?

Josh Packard [00:03:02] And so I expressed some of these concerns to my dad, and my dad felt that it was significant enough for him to come out. So he flew out to Maryland and spent a few days with us and tried to resolve some of these, you know, nascent concerns I was having.

Josh Packard [00:03:21] But it wasn't very successful because he mostly just kind of bore testimony, let me know that he loved me. And that was great. You know, it helped the relationship out, but it really didn't resolve my concerns or make them go away.

John Dehlin [00:03:39] So by 2000, you were sort of in a faith crisis, is that fair to say?

Josh Packard [00:03:44] It was a little bit later. It was probably 2002, 2003. You know, in medical school, I was just so busy that I didn't have a lot of time to devote to these topics. So I couldn't do a lot of reading, thinking it was there was this kind of these little concerns in the background.

Heidi Packard [00:04:03] But I would say that was. That was when he first started to build a shelf that he was first having for the first time in his life. You were starting to put things on a shelf, like, okay, I have questions about this. It doesn't make sense. I'm just going to have to put it away and not really think about it. Maybe someday when I have the time and the energy, I can explore it. Whereas before, you didn't necessarily have those things that you were right.

Josh Packard [00:04:31] And we didn't have any big church callings. They kind of gave us a pass during medical school. I think we were the nursery. We were like the co nursery leaders for a number of years. Sunday school teacher, you know, just kind of these little callings, you know.

Heidi Packard [00:04:47] And for me, during that time, I guess the reason we say this is the beginning of our transition is because it literally is the beginning of our transition. Our transition took a long time. And for me, the medical school years was basically a kind of a softening of my Mormonism. So I was first introduced to Dialogue, the Journal of Mormon Thought, when we were in medical school, because the dean of the medical school, Val Hemming, was partners with Gregory Prince. Gregory Prince, and he would give a free subscription of Dialogue to all of the LDS students.

John Dehlin [00:05:29] Oh, that's right. Maryland. Because Greg lives in Maryland. Right?

Heidi Packard [00:05:32] Yeah. And so we. I had never heard of Dialogue. I had heard about Sunstone growing up, but I had always assumed Sunstone was fringy, excommunicated type of Mormons. And so.

John Dehlin [00:05:47] That sounds scary.

Heidi Packard [00:05:49] Yeah, So I was. But the fact that this dean, who was also in the Stake Presidency, would give us dialogue made me feel like, okay, I can read this magazine. And so that was my first exposure to this more, I guess you could call it liberal Mormonism. I mean, I wouldn't even define it that way now, but that's the way I viewed it at the time. It was this whole different world of, you know, not published by Deseret Book, not from the LDS publication.

John Dehlin [00:06:18] So uncorrelated. We like to call it uncorrelated.

Heidi Packard [00:06:22] So that was really exciting for me. And I kind of started to see a different side of Mormonism. And then the other big thing was that also shifted my politics. I had been a Rush Limbaugh, conservative Republican growing up in Arizona. That was my family. I mean, I literally listened to Rush Limbaugh in high school, and I thought that he was just so correct in every way. And I remember when we moved to Maryland, I listened in the morning to some radio station with Sam Donaldson from abc.

John Dehlin [00:06:56] Yeah, he was on this Week with David Brinkley.

Heidi Packard [00:06:59] Yeah, yeah. And so he had this morning radio talk show. And he. I just remember being so struck by how polite he was and how he gave every side equal chance to talk. And I just. It was just that I respected that so much. And I. And I immediately saw the difference between his style and Rush Limbaugh style is it really turned me off to conservatism and that whole movement. And I started to think, huh, maybe there is, you know, some. Maybe I'm. I've got it wrong. It made me start to question some of my beliefs. And so I kind of started to shift. And during those years, I actually read George Stephanopoulos, wrote a book about Bill Clinton. And I read that book, and it really changed my view about Bill Clinton. So anyway, I just kind of had some interesting experiences politically.

Intellectual Stirrings and Early Doubts

John Dehlin [00:07:53] I love. It sounds like you were really intellectually alive, Heidi, and that. I love that idea of a Mormon mom who's just, you know, immersed in orthodoxy, staying emotion, staying intellectually awake. And it makes me smile because I discovered Rush Limbaugh at byu. I fell in love with his TV show. He actually had a TV show at one time. But then as I was a young Mormon, married Mormon, I fell in love with Cokie Roberts and George Will and George Stephanopoulos and David Brinkley and even Tim Russert from NBC News. And that was all. Watching those Sunday morning political talk shows was really important to me in those years.

Heidi Packard [00:08:36] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:08:36] So I relate to that. That's super cool.

Josh Packard [00:08:38] Yeah. I had a softening of my political stance as well. I was conservative race conservative. I thought that was the only kind of political thought that was allowed. And I would listen to Sean Hannity as I drove back home from medical school. And I liked it at first, but it slowly began to really grate on me. And I just felt this guy's really angry and he's mad. He's always, you know, something's always wrong with this guy. And I started to become turned off. And Heidi. I blame Heidi for kind of infecting me with a liberal bug, and I

Heidi Packard [00:09:15] pushed him the other way. Right.

Josh Packard [00:09:17] And that took a few years to grow. But during our residency, we were.

Heidi Packard [00:09:21] That's kind of when it started was medical school.

Josh Packard [00:09:23] We self identified as liberals. And, you know, that's kind of hard to be a liberal in the church. So that's the first time we started to see some type of schism between us and the body of the church. You know, little political comments at church started to bother us a little bit. Started to see how leaders in the past were very conservative and very political and how that gets kind of melded into the policy of the church. And anyway, it was a small wedge, but it started in medical school.

Heidi Packard [00:09:53] And then the last thing I would want to mention before we move on about the medical school years was that my sister Charity died from cancer. And I actually did a podcast about this on Mormon Mental health with Natasha. But that experience and going through that grieving process and trying to make sense of that from a Mormon perspective, it really shaped it, caused both of us to kind of start to have to think about God and like, how. What kind of, what is God capable of doing? And why does God let bad things happen to good people? And so that kind of. That experience kind of opened up a lot of questions and caused us to start having to kind of re evaluate our notions about what God could and couldn't do. So that was kind of the beginning of our theological, I guess, transition.

John Dehlin [00:10:51] Yeah.

Josh Packard [00:10:51] One important thing about that was that, you know, she was young, newly married, pregnant when she was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma. And she was able to do some treatments before she got pregnant. But then when she got pregnant, she couldn't undergo the cancer therapy anymore, and she decided to forego those so she could have a baby. And during this time, Heidi's family committed 100% that she would be cured.

Heidi Packard [00:11:20] There's a lot of faith.

Josh Packard [00:11:21] There's a lot of faith. So blessings with promises of healing, prayer, fasting, everybody was united, and she had a very bad prognosis. And, you know, despite all that, she died shortly after giving birth to her son. So this was sad. And we also had to square it with, wait, you know, she died? And yet we prayed and we had fastest priesthood blessings, promises, if there's anybody that should be saved of Cancer, you know, it should be charity. And she wasn't. And so we had to, that was, we had a lot of cognitive dissonance around that subject, and we had to really change our views about God.

Josh Packard [00:12:02] God became, I think, to both of us, kind of a deist God who, you know, started the whole thing in motion. But then he's not going to get involved all the time, and he's going to let things happen the way they happen just according to natural law. Some people get cancer. You know, it's sad, but bad things happen so that we can, you know, grow because of it. You know, we just kind of worked it into our theology.

John Dehlin [00:12:27] Love it. Okay. That, that's, I'm loving the story. This is, this is a story really resonating with me. So just to touch in with our, with our live listeners, and I think we're going to touch back to this. But it sounded like, so, Josh, it sounds, sounded like your questions started happening around 2000.

John Dehlin [00:12:47] They started growing between 2000, 2003 into like a full faith crisis by 2003. And it sounded like, Heidi, you were processing things as well, both in terms of your political awakenings and questions around theosis and God's limited powers and why bad things happen to people.

John Dehlin [00:13:07] Russ wrote, he wonders if rough stone rolling ended up being a part of your process, Josh. So you can answer that in just a second. And Kimberly Anderson was joking about how sunstone and dialogue are so fringy. So I just, I just. And Carl asks, Carl asks Heidi, where you come from? I think you said Mesa, Arizona, right?

Heidi Packard [00:13:28] Yes, Mesa.

John Dehlin [00:13:29] Okay. Carl's from Duncan, Arizona, where Spencer W. Kimball was his first stake president. Okay, so let's, so let's jump to, let's just say 2003, 2004, your dad comes, your stake president, future mission president dad, sort of, or bishop or stake presidency member, swoops in, tries to save you. It doesn't help what comes next. Josh and Amy?

Josh Packard [00:13:53] Well, I put concerns on the shelf and got busy with medical school, so they kind of went away. It was a mini faith crisis. And then we just got busy with school. I applied to residency. I decided to do anesthesia and got a residency in San Antonio at Brooke Army Medical Center. And so we moved out to San Antonio and we met a whole bunch of other great Mormon friends that were

Heidi Packard [00:14:18] our ward had probably about 17 to 20 couples who were all medical residents.

John Dehlin [00:14:26] Wow, that's great.

Heidi Packard [00:14:28] Was huge. And it was so fun. I mean, they were just the most amazing, wonderful people.

Josh Packard [00:14:34] We're still friends with A lot of these people today, but it was this formative time in our marriage, you know, just growing up, growing close to other couples, exploring things we were learning about. Heidi will tell you about her, what they called the AP Book Club, my feminist awakening. It was her feminist awakening, and I discovered Rest on rolling. So Russ asked a very perceptive question. So, yeah, that was really the first deep dive I took into church history just because this was an amazing book. He was a Mormon historian from, you know, Columbia and Harvard. And I wanted to. The only exposure I had to Joseph Smith was the Truman G. Madsen tapes, which I loved and listened to a million times and. But, you know, not as scholarly as an approach as Bushman's book was. And so, yeah, I did read it. I think I got an advanced copy.

Heidi Packard [00:15:32] He did. He had an advanced copy.

Josh Packard [00:15:34] Yeah. And I got to work on was just like Manna from Heaven. I loved it. But then, of course, you know, the truth starts to come out and polygamy became my big bugaboo. That was the issue that eventually did me in was polygamy. And it started while I was reading Rough Stone Rolling.

Josh Packard [00:15:56] And I would even say that Bushman takes a pretty faithful approach to Joseph Smith. And. But it really was the first attempt where Joseph Smith warts were on display. And to me, after finishing that book, a. I was troubled about polygamy. I didn't have good answers for it. And I started to doubt what a prophet was. And the only way for me to kind of save my notion of what a prophet is and what revelation is is this. This idea of duality that prophets are only a prophet when they're being a prophet and they're receiving revelation and transcribing it.

Josh Packard [00:16:38] But when they're not being a prophet, you know, they're just regular guys and they can make mistakes. And that kind of held my testimony about prophecy together for. For a while, but. But. But not completely. Polygamy was always there in the background because I continued to learn little details about it that were not resolved by this idea that I had as a dual natured prophet. Because of course, he, you know, received revelation about polygamy. He did all of this stuff about polygamy in the role of a prophet. So. But I got into like fair and farms, and that sort of quieted my concerns for a while.

Josh Packard [00:17:20] But. And also what saved me was again, I just was so busy. I was a resident. Long hours, lots of call, lots to learn besides Mormon church history. And again, no big church calling at the time. They again kind of Let us alone. And so I didn't have any big

Heidi Packard [00:17:38] callings, but one of the big things too, that happened during those years was the Warren Jeffs episode. And that really.

Josh Packard [00:17:45] Yeah, I guess I need to talk about that because. Yeah, Warren Jeffs.

Polygamy and the Beginning of a Faith Crisis

John Dehlin [00:17:48] But before you do, Josh, it's going to be obvious to you, but talk about what? About polygamy bugged you? It may seem obvious, but just why was it a problem?

Josh Packard [00:18:00] So to me, I thought it was pretty obvious why people in positions of power want to have sex with a lot of girls, especially young girls. This idea that it was about binding communities together never really made a lot of sense to me. I was a guy. I have a healthy sense of libido.

Josh Packard [00:18:21] And I know that men, as soon as they get power, they will sometimes use that power to gain what, sexual access to women. It just seemed to me that's what Joseph Smith was doing. Using religion as an excuse or as a justification for it. So that was troubling. He was in a position of power. He was marrying these girls that were not in a position of a power. They were, they were, you know, younger, they were transient. Maybe they're orphans.

Josh Packard [00:18:52] And then he would pressure them. He would give them this, you know, ultimatum. He would promise blessings associated with getting married to him, like salvation for them and their families. So it's very manipulative. And then also just the fact that about a third of these girls were teenagers, some as young as 14, which was troubling. Another third were married to other men.

Josh Packard [00:19:16] And then most damning was the fact that he lied to his own wife about it, he lied to the church about it, he lied to the public about it. And honesty is always something that's very important to me and actually hurt my initial approaches in talking to my family because I think I was too honest. But the fact that, you know, seeing Joseph being so dishonest about polygamy, exploiting young girls sometimes because of his power, hiding it, smear campaigns against anybody that spoke out against it, excommunication was extremely troubling to me. And I didn't really know this stuff. Like, you know, it's not like today where there's these essays out there about the church and polygamy and these troubling topics. We had none of this. This was still when talk about Joseph Smith being a polygamist was anti Mormon.

Heidi Packard [00:20:08] I remember the moment. So this was about 2006ish, maybe when he read Rough Stone Rolling and he would read every, every few chapters that he'd read, he'd Come and, like, tell me about it. And we'd sit and talk about it. And I remember we were standing in our kitchen, and he just finished the polygamy section, and he said, heidi, did you know? Because we both knew that Joseph Smith was the one who had originally received the polygamy revelation. But he said, did you know that Joseph Smith actually practiced polygamy and that he had about over 30 something wives? And I was like, no.

Heidi Packard [00:20:47] And we had gone to byu, we graduated from seminary. We had gone to all of the religion classes at byu, and I mean, we got eight. Like, we were good, engaged students, you know, and we. Neither of us knew that. You know, that was the first time that we fully knew that Joseph Smith had married not just all these women, but other men's wives. Was reading Rough stone rolling in 2006.

John Dehlin [00:21:14] And that's another interesting change for a modern orthodox Mormon versus one who grew up in the 80s, is that now that the Internet has forced the church's hand, the church has had to come out with the essays. It's now incorporating this information into its curriculum. And in 10 years, the church will be. Yeah, we've always taught this. And a bunch of Mormons will go, yeah, I learned that in seminary. But the truth is, it's a new experience to Mormonism, at least compared to the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, when orthodox Mormons were informed that Joseph was an actual polygamist.

Heidi Packard [00:21:57] Yeah, because I. And I have to think. And I actually do believe this. I mean, of course, I don't know, but I really believe that if I had been a teenager and I had been sitting in seminary and someone had taught me these things about Joseph Smith marrying teenage girls and all of that, I think I would have been upset by that. Even at the time. You know, not knowing. You know, just being an innocent kind of teenage girl, I don't think I would have been okay with that. And I think that information would have caused me to have doubts.

John Dehlin [00:22:25] Sure.

Heidi Packard [00:22:26] You know, that's frustrating to kind of not find this out until you're in your mid-20s or however old we were.

John Dehlin [00:22:34] Absolutely. Yeah. You just feel betrayed, right? Yeah, for sure. Okay. So polygamy becomes a throbbing problem for Josh.

Heidi Packard [00:22:45] And at the same time, I'm also. That's when I have my feminist awakening. I have. There's a group of girls in my ward that had. We had a Relief Society book club, and there were a few of us there, about four of us, that were kind of like. We didn't. Like, they were reading Nicholas Sparks Romance Novels. We wanted to read real literature. And so we. We kind of got together and we called it AP Book Club. And we had our own little book club.

John Dehlin [00:23:13] And AP AP Standard stood for what Maybe that's obvious.

Heidi Packard [00:23:17] Advanced Placement, you know, like.

John Dehlin [00:23:21] Yeah.

Heidi Packard [00:23:22] So it was just a funny joke. Anyway, and so we ended up reading a lot of. Not. It was all novels, pretty much, but they were novels that were very feminist. And I didn't really. I hadn't ever studied feminism from an academic perspective. I wasn't aware of any of the terms or definitions or anything. But these novels were definitely feminist novels. And so it just. The discussions that I would have in this book club, you know, we inevitably, we would end up start. We would end up talking. We would start talking about the character. The female characters in the novel, and we. And how they were being oppressed and the kind of struggles that they were having in their particular community.

Heidi Packard [00:24:04] And then it always ended up leading into. Yeah, and what about the Mormon Church and these, you know, all of these ways that we feel we are being oppressed or, you know, that our voice isn't being heard. Anyway, so that was kind of my first.

Heidi Packard [00:24:20] And there was one girl in the group who actually had gone to college. She'd gone to Boston University, and she had studied gender studies or something like that as an undergrad. So she did have some academic training in it. And she was always telling us things, and we were just like, what? You know, so that was kind of when I read Betty Frieden's book the Feminine Mystique. And anyway, I just. That was when I really started to fully become aware more of how I had been.

Heidi Packard [00:24:55] How the patriarchy of the church and the patriarchal structure of things had shaped me as a woman up to that point in my life. And it was troubling. And especially as he was going through, you know, the polygamy issues, and I was hearing about those as well and kind of seeing some of those same patterns in church history. It was. It was hard. It was hard, but we still. We still hung in there.

John Dehlin [00:25:19] So one of the things I'm not hearing that's often typical is just one going down the rabbit hole and the other just sort of like, being scared. I'm not hearing a lot about that. Was there. Did either of you ever have a sense of fear or concern about the others awakenings?

Heidi Packard [00:25:37] I did, yes.

Josh Packard [00:25:39] Yeah. So eventually I go down the rabbit hole and Heidi's scared. And we'll get to that.

John Dehlin [00:25:44] Okay. Okay.

Heidi Packard [00:25:45] Yeah. At this point, during our residency, it was more. We had A thriving community. I loved going to church. Our kids were fully enmeshed in everything. We were super busy. I was super busy. He was super busy. So all of these, you know, discussions and kind of cognitive dissonance, it was easy to kind of. It would come up, but then we could kind of distract ourselves and just go back to our life and our busyness and, you know, and we were happy. You know, our kids were having a great time, you know, so it was. It wasn't. It was manageable. We could manage the. Our angst or our issues about the church while still kind of belonging and participating and doing all of that.

John Dehlin [00:26:35] So that's kind of a special. That's kind of a special place where you can have your cake and eat it too. You can enjoy. You don't have to lose all your beliefs. You can challenge them. You can learn more, be stimulated and have this amazing community. I'm guessing that that was a wonderful time for you guys.

Heidi Packard [00:26:52] It was.

Josh Packard [00:26:52] Yeah, it was. I mean, we. We had read Terrell Givens, and that was kind of.

Heidi Packard [00:26:58] That wasn't till later.

Josh Packard [00:26:59] No, I'd read. I'd read him.

Heidi Packard [00:27:00] Oh, you had?

Josh Packard [00:27:00] Yeah, I'd read his book about the Book of Mormon.

Heidi Packard [00:27:02] Oh, yeah.

Josh Packard [00:27:03] And so that was kind of my

John Dehlin [00:27:03] model by the hand of Mormon or whatever.

Josh Packard [00:27:07] Okay. I could. I could be that kind of Mormon. An intellectual Mormon who reads his books and knows the history and. But yet still finds a way to be faithful and active. And.

Heidi Packard [00:27:19] And I will say there, this was my very first exposure to feminist Mormon Housewives. Because I had. I had a friend in my ward who was. I. She was a little fringy. I wasn't that good friends with her. She was a little bit fringy. And I remember she confessed one time we were having some kind of study group, like, Bible study group. And she's like, there's this blog that I found called Feminist Mormon Housewives. And I remember looking at it once and kind of being like, huh, this is interesting. But I didn't really go back. It was just kind of. So I knew it was out there. But, you know, we were. So we were becoming more open and kind of liberal, but still very mainstream. You know, we comfortably fit in mainstream Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:28:02] Yeah. Coincidentally, we had Lisa Butterworth on Mormon Transitions Podcast on Tuesday, and she was the founder of Feminist Mormon housewives. That was 2004. And that was also a really fascinating time in intellectual Mormonism when the blog started coming on the scene and by common consent followed. Well, there was times and seasons Feminist Mormon Housewives and by common consent. And these blogs started emerging and there was a whole. What was called the Mormon archipelago of faithful Mormon bloggers talking about this stuff. It was a very heady time. And it was my introduction into Internet Mormonism prior to starting Mormon stories.

Heidi Packard [00:28:47] Yeah, so that was kind of interesting. And then things. So this is leading up to the big. The big moment then. So at the end of our residency, we moved here to Georgia, and that's. That summer was when a lot of things happened.

Going Deeper Into Church History Together

Josh Packard [00:29:09] So, yeah, so I'll pick it up from there. So I had still, I had some unresolved concerns about polygamy and a lot of other things too. Like I'd read Gregory Prince's book, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism. And that was very influential to me because it showed that the modern church also is, you know, lots of problems. Blacks in the priesthood era, John Birch Society, politics, the corporate nature of the church. All these things started to land on my radar and I didn't have great answers. The biggest takeaway from that book was I couldn't tell the difference between a church led by prophets and revelation and God and just a business model, you know, board, you know, and directors of the board and CEOs and, you know, policy.

Josh Packard [00:30:06] So the church started to look not as inspired, very different from the days of Joseph Smith, and very corporate. And it was troubling. So this is where things accelerate. I graduate. I line up a. I graduate from residency. So now I'm an anesthesiologist. I line up a moonlighting job in Indiana, which is where I had my license, my medical license. You have to have a medical license. I had mine in Indiana. So I go for about a month and I start moonlighting, working at this hospital. And I'm done by about 3 o' clock and I've got nothing to do. So on my way home, I drive by a Barnes and Noble and I had this thought, you know, I'm gonna go in that Barnes and Noble.

Heidi Packard [00:30:49] I'm just laughing that, like, this is what you do on your free time. When he has, like time to himself, I'm gonna go to Barnes and Noble.

Josh Packard [00:30:56] And I had that dirty. It kind of felt dirty to go because I knew what I was looking for. It was for books about. About the church and religion. So I go in there, I go right to the religion section. I find the Mormon books and I get two books. One is Mormon America by great book, the Oslings. Osling. He was the guy who wrote that Time article, Mormon Inc. And he Basically just wrote a book based on that and it was the first.

John Dehlin [00:31:26] Here it is. I got it right here on my shelf. Mormon America. It's actually Richard and Joan. It's a married couple. Richard and Joan Osley. This is a great introduction to Mormonism. I think it's a great book.

Josh Packard [00:31:38] Yeah, it's a very good book. It was the first book I'd read that was, you know, single volume history of the Church. It talks about the doctrine and the financial history of the church, all the modern issues from a non faithful perspective and very, very challenging. And then the other book I picked up was Mormon Polygamy A History by Richard Van Wagener, which I still think is one of the great books out there about Mormon polygamy. He was, he was a Mormon independent scholar. He wrote this book and it's just the facts, you know, he just lays it all out there. And I remember reading this and then calling Heidi and we started to have these discussions about polygamy.

Josh Packard [00:32:23] They started to get a little bit contentious. But we were still communicating. We'd always been good at communicating and, and we were trying to talk through this. This is the first moment where I admitted to myself that the church could be not what it claims to be. I remember I was in the airport, I was about to fly home. I'm eating some fast food. Before I get on the plane. I just finished Richard Osling's book, close it. And I think, I think I said it audibly. I said, the church is not true. It's not true. I said it.

John Dehlin [00:32:57] Isn't it amazing that so many people have that? It's almost like a testimony, it's almost like a revelation. But it's this very clear almost, where was, where were you when JFK was shot? Sort of like undeniable moment. Do you remember what year that was?

Heidi Packard [00:33:13] 2008.

Josh Packard [00:33:14] 2008.

John Dehlin [00:33:15] Okay, so all the way to 2008.

Josh Packard [00:33:17] Yeah, summer of 2008. And I guess the other experience I need to share was I wasn't just doing this in books. I was also trying to pray and read my scriptures. I would go on a jog out in the woods in Indiana. They have these beautiful hardwood forests and I'm running on this trail and no one's around. And I have my. My first, you know, sacred grove moment where I stop, you know, I pray. I really just kind of bare my soul to God and I ask him for something, some food, feeling some emotion, anything to, you know, support my faith. And just nothing. I had never had that before where it just. I Felt nothing. And I felt silly. After about a minute, I'm like, I'm talking to. I felt like I was talking to nobody, and, you know, I just run off.

John Dehlin [00:34:10] How did that feel? What emotions did you feel when you tried to pray and didn't get an answer? How did that feel emotionally?

Josh Packard [00:34:20] It was strange because prayer had always been. I never had gotten audible answers or specific answers. It was always more of, like, just a feeling of peace. If I was praying about something, like, you know, should I marry Heidi? I remember having a very strong feeling of peace.

John Dehlin [00:34:36] That was true.

Josh Packard [00:34:37] That's true. That's true. Answer. I remember reading about the Book of Mormon and just got this feeling. But this was the first time I prayed about something that I thought was really, really important and based my life on up to this point. If there's ever a time for God to give me just a little bit of a feeling, that was it. And nothing. It just was. It was dead.

John Dehlin [00:34:55] And must have felt disappointed, right?

Josh Packard [00:34:58] Yeah, very disappointed. And then I somehow kind of put the pieces of my testimony together. I fly home, we get involved in the ward. And this is where I'm thinking, okay, I'm in this pretty small Southern ward. Not a lot of BYU strength here. This is my moment to, you know, give back, pay it forward. And so I get involved, I make some great comments, and gospel doctrine. So I become the gospel doctrine teacher.

Heidi Packard [00:35:28] He's become a little cynical about church callings, as you can tell.

Josh Packard [00:35:32] Yeah, I was. I was putting my resume out there, you know, and. And the bishop picked it up and put me to work. I stayed gospel doctrine teacher for a few months, and then, you know, I got the promotion to second counselor in the bishopric. That came in October. And I felt at the time that by serving the Lord and really putting the effort in that some of my concerns could be resolved.

Heidi Packard [00:36:00] Okay, now, wait.

John Dehlin [00:36:01] Was this. Was this before the 2008? It wasn't true? Did we go back, or are you saying.

Josh Packard [00:36:06] No, this is after.

John Dehlin [00:36:08] So after you thought it might not be true, you went into a bishopric?

Heidi Packard [00:36:11] Yes.

Josh Packard [00:36:12] Yeah, I wasn't sure.

Heidi Packard [00:36:14] Let me. You skipped some important things, so fill us in, Heidi. I'll fill in the gaps here. So that was the summer when he was in Indiana. I was in Arizona with my family, just hanging out until we could meet up and then move to Georgia. So during that time, when he came. When he finally came back from Indiana and we drove out to Georgia together, it was tense. I remember. I think I remember staying in a hotel room one night with the kids. While we were driving, and I was trying to get everyone to say family prayers, and I remember you didn't want to say prayers with us, and you kind of grudgingly.

Heidi Packard [00:36:49] He kind of, like, grudgingly decided to, like, participate, but it caused tension. And I think that was, you know, like, that was our first real moment that I can remember where there was a, like, tension between us that it was like. I didn't feel like we could resolve it because any other time we'd get in a fight or, you know, we would maybe. It would maybe last a day or two, and then we'd end up talking through it and everything would be fine. But this was the first time where I felt like we couldn't actually fix the tension that was there. This issue. I knew that that was there.

Heidi Packard [00:37:25] But we. So we moved to Georgia. We are, you know, of course, you're trying to get established in a new place. We bought a new house. We're busy. And that. Some. So that was okay. In August was when my brother Christian and Stephanie were in their plane accident. So that was a huge. We. I think we had moved here in July, and the next month they were in that accident.

John Dehlin [00:37:50] And this is 2008. Is that right?

Heidi Packard [00:37:52] 2008. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:53] Okay. And just. Just to let people know, that was a really important time where kind of these Mormon mommy blogs and just mommy blogs were really becoming a big deal, and not just in Utah, but. But across the country. And Nene. Nene was one of the real big first Mormon mommy bloggers, and she had a national readership, right?

Heidi Packard [00:38:16] Yeah, yeah. That was my understanding. I've never been into that scene, so I'm not an expert in it, but that was my understanding was that she had a large readership.

John Dehlin [00:38:26] No, my wife Margi was a follower of Mimi's blog, and she didn't care about Mormonism, you know, but she was into, oh, look how cute their family photo is. Oh, look how cute their marriage is. Oh, look at the lovely dinner. Or, you know, look how cute.

Heidi Packard [00:38:43] It was very lifestyle y. Like, it was like kind of like lifestyle.

John Dehlin [00:38:48] It was a big deal. It was a big deal. Yeah.

Heidi Packard [00:38:50] So that experience was.

John Dehlin [00:38:52] And what. Just tell them what happened with that. With that.

Heidi Packard [00:38:55] They were in a place. My brother had just gotten his license and his pilot license, and they were flying. They'd flown to. My dad has a ranch in New Mexico. So they had flown to the ranch. They were living in Mesa at the time. They flew to the ranch for the day, and they were coming back, and they had stopped in A. In Snowflake to like fuel up. And his pilot instructor was actually. Oh yeah, St. John's sorry, St. John's and his instructor was in the plane with him since he was kind of a new pilot. And upon takeoff from the St. John's Airport, the. I'm not exactly. I can't remember the details. Something happened with the engine and they had to. They were like halfway up and they had to like do an emergency landing.

Josh Packard [00:39:46] They hit some telephone wires.

Heidi Packard [00:39:48] Yeah. Anyway. And anyway, the plane, the plane caught on fire and they were all burned. Doug, their friend Doug was. He died from his burns. Stephanie was burned 85%, something like that. And Christian was burned about 30, I think. I don't know exactly the details, but anyway, so that was a very, you know, of course we didn't know if they were gonna live. You know, I mean, at the time, you know, this was life or death situation, so.

John Dehlin [00:40:21] And it made national news. And this is when CJ And Courtney Kendrick sort of like filled in for Stephanie, for Nini. And that's how C. Jane became such a well known blogger is stepping in for Stephanie Ernini after she had been burned and updating the world as to Stephanie's progress as she was recovering from her burns. Is that right?

Heidi Packard [00:40:48] Yeah. Again, I don't know all the details.

John Dehlin [00:40:50] Yep, I lived it. I lived it.

Heidi Packard [00:40:53] So that kind of. That whole family crisis, you know, that was happening and here we had just moved to a new place. I'm totally separated from my family. You know, I'm, you know, it's. It's just hard to be away from your entire family when something like this has happened. So that kind of took the. That took precedence over any kind of like, you know, doctrinal church issues that we had been discussing. That tension that I had mentioned before that was there, suddenly it was like, okay, that's not that important. We gotta deal with this family crisis that's going on. So I think that was part of why Josh was willing to kind of

Josh Packard [00:41:38] put it on hold.

Heidi Packard [00:41:39] It on hold and just be like, okay, I'm gonna give this another chance. You know, I'm just gonna recommit myself and just try to serve and, you know, not. Not make waves. You know, life is hard enough as it is. Kind of.

John Dehlin [00:41:54] Sure, absolutely. Yeah. When. When people are dying or suffering, faith crisis can be put on the shelf because it's relatively less important.

Heidi Packard [00:42:05] Right. Yeah. That was a huge event. And that. Yeah. And then within, I think it was in October was when he was called into the bishopric.

John Dehlin [00:42:16] Okay. Got it got it.

Josh Packard [00:42:17] So. So I. You know, I continued my. My reading and my study after I was called into the bishopric, and. And the book that did me in, John, was no Man Knows My History by Fawn Brody.

John Dehlin [00:42:28] Was that another one that you bought at that bookstore?

Josh Packard [00:42:30] No, I bought it on Amazon.

Heidi Packard [00:42:32] Okay, I'll tell the story. I'll tell the story. He was in the bishopric, and I knew he was still kind of reading things, but I had just kind of been like, okay, I'm not gonna really talk to him about it. So one day I go out to the mailbox to get the mail, and I see an Amazon package, and I was like, oh, a book. I knew it was a book. You know, I was excited to get a new book. And I opened it and I saw it was no Man Knows My History. And I was so mad at him. I was so mad at him for buying that book, because that book was so.

Heidi Packard [00:43:01] I had. When I was at byu, I majored in history, and I had heard about this book from some of my history professors, and it was like. It was the bad book that you don't read in my mind. And so.

John Dehlin [00:43:16] Except you were reading Betty for Dan, so I'm not sure that's any better.

Heidi Packard [00:43:20] I was. I was. What?

John Dehlin [00:43:21] You're reading Betty Friedan.

Heidi Packard [00:43:23] Oh, that's true. But. No, but. Well, because this. I think the reason I responded that way is because I knew that if I read that book, that would be the thing. And I had read Rough Stone Rolling, by the way, at this point, I had already read Rough Stone Rolling, but I knew that no Man Knows My History was gonna be the book that did it in for me. And I was mad that he was reading it.

John Dehlin [00:43:43] Sure brought it into our home.

Heidi Packard [00:43:45] I'm so mad.

John Dehlin [00:43:46] Yeah.

Josh Packard [00:43:47] And, you know, Rusty Unrolling, I think, is almost written as a response to no Man Knows My History. And I felt like I needed to read it just because it's referenced so much. And, you know, it was an incredible book. It was the first book I read that I thought gave a very accurate account of who Joseph Smith was. You know, it's kind of been described as a psychobiography and, you know, just kind of criticized for trying to get too inside the mind of Joseph Smith. But it's very plausible because it talked about his motivations for a lot of the actions that he did that were in the historical record. And, you know, it's a great historical book.

Heidi Packard [00:44:26] It's a great read.

Josh Packard [00:44:27] It's easy to read. And I was about halfway through when the shelf came tumbling down. And it's strange how it happened. You know, I woke up. I even remember the day. December 28th, 2000. I woke up. It was Sunday. I had a bunch of bishopric meetings in the morning.

Josh Packard [00:44:44] I went to them. We had church. I collected tithing. I went and I deposited it in the bank. And during this time, during this day, this load is kind of building up. And I'm thinking about having to conduct next week, which would be fast and testimony meeting. And I knew I was conducting. And we start off by bearing our testimony to kick off the fast and testimony meeting. And I knew then I couldn't do it. So I was kind of up against this hard deadline. I could not pretend anymore, and I wasn't going to get up there and lie to a bunch of people in church.

Josh Packard [00:45:24] So I came home. I just was feeling sick about this. I knew I had to tell my wife. So I came home, I went to the bank, deposited the checks, and then it came right home. I had to go back again for more meetings, but I came home in the interim. And I came in, I was looking kind of down. Heidi was making dinner. And I just was kind of standing there, and Heidi says, like, what?

Josh Packard [00:45:47] And I don't say anything was wrong. She says, what? And I think she said it three times. And finally I said, do you really want me to tell you? And she says, yes. And I said, I cannot pretend anymore.

Josh Packard [00:46:04] Then I told her I lost my testimony, and I don't believe. And I'll let Heidi take it over from there. It didn't go well.

Heidi Packard [00:46:12] It didn't go well.

John Dehlin [00:46:13] Oh, yeah, tell us. Get into it. Because that's so common. It's so common. Let us have it.

Heidi Packard [00:46:20] Yeah. So I remember I was making enchiladas for dinner that night.

John Dehlin [00:46:23] Oh, my gosh.

Heidi Packard [00:46:24] I had enchiladas in the oven. And this was. You know, we were gonna plan on eating early dinner. And when he told me that, I mean, my. My heart just sank. And I was just mad. I was so mad that he would, like, do that. I felt like my first response was, why are you doing this to me and our kids? You know, that was my first thought. And I was just. I was so mad. And so I just. I remember going into my room and just like, I can't do this. And so I just went. Locked myself in my room for the rest of the night. He just had to, like, finish dinner, feed the kids, you know.

John Dehlin [00:47:04] What were you feeling? When you're locking yourself in your room, what were you feeling?

Coming to Terms With Leaving the Church

Heidi Packard [00:47:08] I Well, I was mad, and I was. It was interesting because my thoughts were all centered around the community. Like, what would people think? What. You know, what will our kids think? You know, seeing their dad, like, disgraced this way, you know, by resigning from the bishop. Oh. Because he told me. He's like, I'm gonna go back and tell the bishop, you know, that I want to be released, and, you know, this will be public for our kids. What. You know, what does this mean about Josh? Like, he's gonna. I was so mad. I felt like he was changing, like he'd become this other person overnight.

Heidi Packard [00:47:48] Like, you're not who I thought you were kind of a thing. And then just kind of sadness that I felt. Like my whole perfect life that I had been living, you know, was suddenly being threatened. Like, a rug had literally been pulled out from underneath me. And this whole structure, this little formula that I had been building by following the profits and doing what I was supposed to be doing had just been yanked away, you know, in the middle, you know, in literally, like, five minutes. And so. And I viewed him as being the one responsible for that. So just a lot of anger, a lot of sadness, and, you know, probably fear of just what comes next. You don't know what comes next. You know, it's scary. Never done this before.

John Dehlin [00:48:31] Anger, Fear. Yeah.

Heidi Packard [00:48:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:35] Overwhelmed.

Heidi Packard [00:48:36] Mm.

John Dehlin [00:48:37] Yeah.

Heidi Packard [00:48:38] That was not. That was not good. But this is the weird part. The next day, it was probably. Yeah. Because that was a Sunday. So that night, I think, you know, he. I don't really remember. We must have just kind of talked a little bit. The next day, you know, he goes to work in the morning. And I called two friends that day, during the day. The first friend I called was my friend from San Antonio, who was the feminist one that had kind of, you know, more liberal Mormon, I thought, you know, she's. She was just so wise, and I just thought, oh, she's going to give me great advice.

Heidi Packard [00:49:13] And. And also she had family members who were kind of in a similar position, like, they had left the church and stuff. So I thought, she'll give me some good advice. So I remember talking to her, and she was very empathetic and just great listener and everything. But she said, yeah, you know, that's. You just have to be the strong one for your family now. Like, you have to be the one who, you know, initiates scripture study and, like, really just stay strong in the church so that your kids will, you know, follow you and not him.

Heidi Packard [00:49:45] And that really rubbed me the wrong way. I just Was really. I couldn't pinpoint why it bugged me so bad, but. And I love this friend, you know, like, it wasn't her at all. It was just that message was. It just grated on me. And so I thought, like, why? I couldn't figure it out. So I called. The next person I called was his sister Ali, the one who had set us up. And she.

Heidi Packard [00:50:13] Josh and Ali were very. Have been very close her whole life, very close siblings. And so I knew that she really loved Josh and that she would. But we were also really good friends. So I knew that she would give me, like, more balanced advice.

Heidi Packard [00:50:29] And, you know, I told her everything. And again, she was very empathetic and listened and everything. But that conversation, she just really kind of said, like, yeah, but, Heidi, he's still Josh. Like, this is Josh. This is kind of how he is. And we kind of just talked more about him as a person. And I don't think she was doing this intentionally. I think just kind of the conversation happened this way. But basically, the end result was she helped me see that Josh, first and foremost, is a person, and he's just a person. And he has personality traits and characteristics and qualities that haven't changed just because his beliefs about a church or a religion have changed.

Heidi Packard [00:51:16] Who he is inherently is still the same. And that was kind of my takeaway. And I just, like, I came out of that phone conversation, I was like, okay, I can do this. Like, I can do this. It's gonna be okay. Like, he. Yeah, we'll just have different views about religion. We'll. You know, we might not agree on everything, but he's still the man that I married. He's still the person I love, and he has all of his great other qualities, and we're gonna be fine. So he came home that day from work, and he was like, what happened while I was gone? Because I was a totally different person.

John Dehlin [00:51:52] Isn't it powerful how getting the right perspective can really be transformative?

Heidi Packard [00:51:58] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:51:59] And I guess getting the wrong perspective can in some ways be really damaging.

Heidi Packard [00:52:03] Yes. Yes. And they happened back to back. That was what was so weird. Literally happened within a few hours of each other.

John Dehlin [00:52:11] Right.

Heidi Packard [00:52:12] So that. That really helped. That was a. I mean, it didn't solve everything, but it definitely made things a lot better for a time.

Josh Packard [00:52:23] Yeah. So I. We continue to have big conversations, usually at night after the kids had gone to bed, about the church and what I believed. And I think I was really kind of taking a missionary approach. I was really trying to convert Heidi to my cause, because the reason why I was doing. I know it was bad tactics, but the reason why I was doing what it was because what was most important was our marriage and our family. And I knew that it would be a huge strain for me to be outside the church and for Heidi and the kids to be in, because I knew what was coming down the line.

Josh Packard [00:52:58] There was baptisms coming. I wouldn't be able to baptize my kids. I think I would have felt very demasculated. I knew that temple marriages were coming. I couldn't go to the temple. I know that it just. The longer we tried to live these separate lives, one in the church, one outside the church, I knew that it would put additional strains on my marriage. So I was trying to move fast. And that was a bad technique. It was a bad tactic for me to try to change Heidi's mind. Heidi's very intelligent, as you can tell, and she's also fairly stubborn, and she doesn't like to feel manipulated. And, you know, my missionary skills weren't working on her.

John Dehlin [00:53:39] Right.

Josh Packard [00:53:40] Really, the thing that saved us was I deployed to Iraq 2009. 2009. So just a few months later, I deployed to Iraq, and that gave her the space that she needed to explore all this on her own.

Heidi Packard [00:53:57] I finally read a lot of the books that he had read. So he didn't stop reading books after he had this moment. He kept reading books, and he. He. He kept trying me for me to get to read them. And I was like, no, because I just felt I wasn't ready. I just wasn't ready to go there. And I knew. I knew that when he was gone because we knew his deployment was coming up. I knew that while he was gone, that's when I was going to finally read some of these books. And so. And that's what. And I did. And it was. Yeah.

Josh Packard [00:54:32] So that's the first. That's the first mistake I did was just try to try to convince my wife. It was all. It was for a good cause, but it was the wrong thing to do.

John Dehlin [00:54:40] No, and that's just. That's like one of the most important takeaways for a transition is if you. The analogy I like to use is, you know, imagine the husband and the wife on either sides of a canoe, and the children are in the middle, and the husband looks over and says, there's a shark, and stands up and starts screaming. The first thing the wife is going to do is grab the sides of the canoe and stabilize.

John Dehlin [00:55:08] And the more the husband shouts and screams, the more the wife is going to hunker down because the last thing anyone wants is the whole family to tip over and become shark bait. And it's not until the husband, and this could be reversed, wife versus husband.

John Dehlin [00:55:27] This isn't about gender, but it's just about how until the partner's going down the rabbit hole, stops, calms down, sits down, backs off, and gives their partner space. The partner won't have the psychological comfort or space to be able to make their own measured explorations.

John Dehlin [00:55:50] And so, like you said, the missionary efforts, the zeal, they're well intended, but they create the opposite effect. And being calm, just letting the person have their own experience, can often be what's necessary to allow both partners to get on the same page.

Heidi Packard [00:56:11] Yeah. And I think in addition to that just giving space, I think the other thing that he, Josh, kind of learned after a while was I needed constant reassurance that he was committed and loved me, loved our family. Because there again, there was that fear that if you could do this, if you could change your mind about religion and the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, maybe you're going to change your mind about me and be married to me or being, you know, maybe you're gonna abandon us and go off and whatever, buy a convertible Corvette, you know, whatever, have a midlife crisis. And so, you know, it was.

Heidi Packard [00:56:53] And it was totally. There was no evidence. There was no logical reason for me to believe that. It's very irrational, but it was still like a fear. And so I think one of. One of the most defining moments for me that really, I always remember was when one time we were talking, and by this point he had already become an atheist, I think. Yeah. And I was still kind of waffling back and forth, and we were talking about, you know, giving up the concept of eternal families if you don't believe in Mormonism. And he said to me, you know, because I was like, you know, that's so lame that you don't even.

Heidi Packard [00:57:33] It kind of makes me feel like you don't care about me enough, that you don't even believe in that we're going to be together forever anymore. And he. And he said, you know, yeah, I don't believe that we're going to be together forever. And that's what makes me value my time with you all the more that you are. You're precious to me because this is the only time that we have together. So it makes me value our time together instead of, you know, just thinking, oh, we'll have the eternities, to sort things out. And that was a real. I don't know, that really stuck with me and kind of made me.

Heidi Packard [00:58:07] After that, after. After he made that point to me, I think I kind of felt like, okay, I really get it. I get where you're coming from now. And it really helped calm me. And like, I don't know, it just. It was. It was a very formative comment, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:58:22] Love it just. So let's just to check in with our listeners. Grace Packard says. Hey, mom and dad taking it? That's your daughter?

Heidi Packard [00:58:33] Yes, she's in college.

John Dehlin [00:58:37] Where is she?

Heidi Packard [00:58:38] I love. She's at Georgia State.

John Dehlin [00:58:41] Okay.

Heidi Packard [00:58:41] She's pretty awesome. Shout out to Grace.

John Dehlin [00:58:44] Hi, Grace. Hi, Grace. Patricia writes she used to follow Nene. She loved their positive outlook and realistic approach to dealing with struggle. Kathy writes that. I think she writes that goes for children, too. I think she's saying that if parents are struggling in a faith crisis, they need to give their children space and reassurance for the children to be okay as well. Really quick, Laurie asks, why are we so concerned about our church being true over just being good? Do you guys want to respond to that really quick?

Heidi Packard [00:59:27] Yeah, you talk about that.

Josh Packard [00:59:30] Yeah, I remember I was. I was converted to the gospel because of the doctrine.

Heidi Packard [00:59:35] And

Josh Packard [00:59:37] part of that was that the church was what it claimed to be. It was God's true church, his kingdom on the earth for the purpose of salvation for, you know, us and everybody else on the planet. So if it wasn't. If it wasn't what it said it was, then it didn't fulfill that purpose for me. So it's, you know, the idea of the church being, you know, what's. What's the word? Useful or utility versus validity. Right, right, right. You know, just more good in it than bad. And if you belong, good things will come into your life. Like that may be true. And I think that's how a lot of people stay in the church.

Josh Packard [01:00:18] But for me, it didn't. That's not why I was in the church. And the church would not continue to be of value to me if it wasn't what it claimed to be. I was and I think committed to the doctrine, to the promises, to the truth claims.

Josh Packard [01:00:34] I was in it for, you know, all the good that it could do my life now, but also for salvation at the end of it. So I. Once the church lost that truthfulness, it no longer was attractive to me.

John Dehlin [01:00:50] Yeah, it's. Oh, go ahead.

Heidi Packard [01:00:52] Well, I think it's also because, too, that the Church being good. The church does do a lot of good for people and it can be a very good thing in your life. But there's a lot of other things that are just as good. Another, a lot of other organizations, a lot of other communities that are just as good and that don't have the negative baggage associated with it. And so, you know, and that's it. You know, some people can navigate that better than others. Some people can appreciate and participate in the goodness that the church offers and they can minimize the negatives. And that's great if that works for you, you know, it doesn't work for everyone.

Heidi Packard [01:01:35] Some people can't, they can't have the, they can't participate in the goodness and partake of the goodness without also having the negative things affect them negatively. And so it's a balancing act that people just have to make for themselves.

John Dehlin [01:01:50] You know, I think there's just a basic integrity argument, which is that it's the church that claims to be the one true church, that claims other churches are false. It's the church that claims a testimony in the church is essential, that encourages members to speak about the church in terms of its truthfulness and that actually casts views of utility as inferior. And so if the church were just saying, yeah, we're one of many true churches and it's not about a true church, it's just about being kind and having a good life experience than that, then we all have the freedom to take a more utilitarian approach. But if the church is constantly obsessing and focusing on its validity, then we have to hold it to account, I think.

Josh Packard [01:02:47] Yeah, and honesty was always a big value for me. And I couldn't go back into the church and pretend that I believe the Book of Mormon was historical or that I believed in the foundational truth claims. And if I couldn't say that I believed all those things, I would be a second class citizen in the church. And I was not about to go into a church and be that second class citizen that, you know, the church tolerates and lets me come to activities. Maybe it lets me be the assistant scoutmaster, but you know, I can't pray, can't bear my testimony, can't do anything worthy. And you know, you have this like red letter on your chest that you were, you're the, you know, the infidel or the apostate.

Josh Packard [01:03:31] And so I can do that. I was either 100% in and I could be open and honest and speak my mind. And that doesn't work in the church. They don't. They don't let you with alternative beliefs. Come in and be open, honest and a member of full standing in the church. Doesn't work that way.

John Dehlin [01:03:47] Yeah. Yeah. And it's awful for me, it's awful to be a second class citizen in any organization, although women in Mormonism have been dealing with that for years. And people of color, for this white male of privilege, that was really hard.

Josh Packard [01:04:03] Yeah.

Part 3 of 4 · Ep. 719

John Dehlin [00:00:28] All right. All right, good. So, like. So that's just like full. Full unraveling then?

Heidi Packard [00:00:36] Yeah, pretty much. And then, like. So he. He told our kids at different times.

John Dehlin [00:00:45] How did he. How did he tell him? Did you guys get on the same page before he did that?

Josh Packard [00:00:50] I told the kids after. Now, this was pretty soon, like, things were still pretty tense between me and Heidi.

Heidi Packard [00:00:55] It's been a couple weeks.

Josh Packard [00:00:56] Yeah, the kids. The kids, especially the older ones, could pick up on the attention. So I got. I got most of the kids together. One of our kids was at gymnastics or something. So I told three of our four kids in my bedroom. Just sat him down. I told them. And our oldest, Grace, we'll mention Grace. Grace thought I was kidding. She's like, what? No, you're just kidding, right? You're kidding. It's a joke. And, you know, I finally convinced her it wasn't a joke. And she had been the most, I guess, indoctrinated in the church, so she pushed back.

Heidi Packard [00:01:29] She just started Young Women's. That was her first time going to girls camp that year, I think. Or maybe. Maybe that happened later. Anyway, so she. Yeah, because she was 12, so she had just kind of been the most invested.

Josh Packard [00:01:43] Yeah. So she struggled a little bit. By the time I got back from Iraq, she. She was a disbelieving atheist as well.

John Dehlin [00:01:52] Whoa. How long were you in Iraq again?

Josh Packard [00:01:56] Seven months.

John Dehlin [00:01:59] Holy moly. Wow. Okay.

Josh Packard [00:02:02] Things cycled kind of quick after. After I left the rest of the kids. Like, our oldest son, Noah, he didn't care. He was like, yeah, I think church is boring. I don't want to go. Then our youngest, Sam, 5, he didn't. He's like our kid that has not been touched at all by the church. We took him to church once in Arizona when we were visiting family years later, and they sat him down in the class with a bunch of other kids in primary. In primary. And the teacher asks, okay, let's go down the line. And everybody say your blessings.

Heidi Packard [00:02:37] They had to write down with crayons, list of blessings.

Josh Packard [00:02:41] A list of blessings. And they get to Sam, and they're like, sam, what are your blessings? And he's like, what's a blessing?

Heidi Packard [00:02:47] What do you mean by.

Josh Packard [00:02:48] What do you mean by blessing?

Heidi Packard [00:02:49] Like, that was just like, he liked the terminology.

Josh Packard [00:02:52] Right.

Heidi Packard [00:02:52] And if you.

Josh Packard [00:02:52] And if you think about it, if you weren't raised in the church with this idea that God gives you things and these things are called blessings, you wouldn't know what that word really meant. And then I told Isabelle or youngest daughter. Later, just on there, we went for a walk and I told her. I think that went well. What didn't go well was when I tried to tell my family.

Josh Packard [00:03:15] And I guess I would say that my situation with my family was, you know, we had a close, we loved each other. I didn't feel like my parents did not love me, but we weren't very close because I'm pretty independent.

Josh Packard [00:03:29] We've been living away for years during our medical education, and we'd stayed connected mostly through, like, emails and very rare, you know, phone calls. And so I just thought. And then another thing. I don't think I'm very good verbally. I think I do better if I write things out. That's sort of my strength.

Josh Packard [00:03:50] And I could. I could take some time and write it out logically and people would read it and, you know, they would know where I'm coming from. And so I decided that, that it would be best to write an email and send it out to the entire family.

Josh Packard [00:04:03] And your parents are right, and my dad is the mission president in Africa at the time. And it didn't go well for obvious reasons. So that was a mistake. Even though I read my email now and I don't think I said anything too offensive. I didn't try to convert anybody. I just wanted. The big thing for me was I. I didn't want them to think all the stereotypes of people who leave the church are true with me. I didn't leave because I was sinful, stealing money from the church or having an affair or looking at pornography or wanting to drink coffee and alcohol. I left after a careful study and thought and prayer about the church.

Josh Packard [00:04:52] It was a careful process and I wanted to try to get that out as unemotionally as possible. I just thought that my logic could, you know, at least create a little bit of space that they could listen to me later on. And it just went bad.

Josh Packard [00:05:08] It was a terrible thing. My emails went out to the family, like, hey, Josh is just trying to convince you, don't listen to him. Walls came up, the wagons circled. And I tried to resolve these concerns that were popping up by more email. I just. I go back and I read these emails and it's so pain because I just was making things worse.

Family and Community Fallout After Leaving

Josh Packard [00:05:31] All the things that I was trying to avoid, those, those judgments, the alienation from family, the estrangement, it was just happening and there's nothing that I could do to stop it. And that's exactly what I wanted to avoid. I wanted my family to. I wanted to continue those relationships and fix any of the problems that would pop up. But I couldn't do it because I was emailed.

John Dehlin [00:05:53] And you did provide details, right, of why.

Josh Packard [00:05:57] Yeah, I did, but I tried to avoid, like, did you know that Joseph Smith had 33 wives? And it just was like, you know, here's my issues. Polygamy, blacks in the priesthood. I won't go into details, but these are the things that caused me doubt and caused me to leave.

John Dehlin [00:06:12] It's so hard because. And I talk about this, I call it the Nephi Effect. And I wish the Book of Mormon had a female character, two dimension, that we could have a female hero in the Book of Mormon, but alas, there aren't that many.

John Dehlin [00:06:25] But it's this idea that if we're these orthodox, TBM righteous members, we get used to that status of being viewed as faithful, as strong, as courageous. And I think most of us feel like it's strength and courage and integrity that lead to the faith crisis, because it's not fun, it's not easy. It's a matter of doing what is right and letting the consequence follow. And. And at the same time, that's not how it's perceived by our family members. It's perceived by them as weakness and evil and sin. And so we desperately want to not lose our Nephi status by helping them just see that it was actually a matter of integrity and goodness and logic and truth, and that if you can just somehow explain that to them, then they'll go, oh, my gosh.

John Dehlin [00:07:18] Josh and Heidi are actually brilliant, amazing, courageous people. But in reality, when you're in that mindset, there's no righteous way to leave the church. There's no truth, Truthful, courageous. It's got to be Satan, it's got to be sin, it's got to be deception. There's no other Mormon construct that allows a graceful exit to be possible. And this is where once, Thomas McConkie a long time ago said to me, a cult is any organization that won't let you leave with your dignity intact. And I'm not saying the church is a cult. What I'm saying is that there's no conception of an orthodox Mormon, of anyone who could leave the church with integrity and dignity.

Josh Packard [00:08:09] Right. And I think that was something that I was responding to as well, because I predicted that would happen. I had earlier earned a lot of status in my family and in my community. I was respected. People looked up to me. They thought I was really smart.

Josh Packard [00:08:24] And now I could see how, because I left the Church, all that would tumble. And so my reputation was at risk. We were laughing the other night. I feel a lot like Alexander Hamilton when I read his book. Not his book, but the book about Alexander Hamilton and really just got immersed in the play. And there's that scene when he writes the Reynolds pamphlet. You know, he's accused of stealing money from the treasury and he doesn't want to be accused of stealing, so he says, no, no, no, no, no. I was actually paying off Mariah Reynolds husband, who I was having sex with, Mari Reynolds.

Josh Packard [00:09:01] He just spilled it's the first political sexual scandal in America. And it just goes over terribly for Alexander Hamilton. And that's sort of, I think, what. I was making the same mistake, thinking that I could write my way out of this event by just being honest and telling people, you know, what, what was in my heart and they would understand. And. And, well, it didn't go well for him and it didn't go well for me.

John Dehlin [00:09:27] Never going to be president now. Never going to be president now. Yeah. And, yeah, I think there's one standard rule in coming out to family and friends, which is less is more.

Heidi Packard [00:09:45] Yeah, yeah. You know, we learned that the hard way.

John Dehlin [00:09:49] You know, I sometimes counsel people now just like, hey, hey, we don't feel about the church like we used to, but we love you and let's. It's okay if we never talk about it again. Like, that's a perfectly acceptable coming out letter to me now, you know, and even I even ask people to consider an extra burden, which is to say, but please don't, please don't think of us as scary. We'll never, ever talk to you about the church again. We support your belief. We'll fight for your beliefs. Almost going overboard on the reassurance and saying almost nothing about actually what happened. Because the truth is, 95% of believers don't want to know.

John Dehlin [00:10:33] And those who say they want to know don't want to know. And if you tell them, they're going to fight you or it's just going to make things worse, even if they ask. And so I tell people, make them earn the details. And it's much better to refer them like, oh, okay, you want to know? Go. You know, I don't want to mess with your faith, but if you really want to know, it's your tenth time asking me, okay, go read Fawn Brody or go read CES letter. But I'm not going to be the bearer of bad news because I value our relationships so much that I would never want to do anything to hurt it. So if you're going to learn this stuff, learn it on your own accord. It's not going to come from me.

Josh Packard [00:11:17] Well, that's great advice, but I decided to start a blog after that.

John Dehlin [00:11:23] How'd that go? How'd that work for you?

Josh Packard [00:11:25] Well, just as we're laughing about it, because it went over just as well as you would think, it went over terribly. But, you know, I think the reason why I felt the need to do it was, again, I needed. I needed to be open, honest, transparent. I wanted to reassure people why I left the church. I wanted to let them know there are good reasons for me leaving the church. And I didn't think they knew those good reasons. And I wanted to create just enough space so that they could say, okay, create just a little bit of doubt so they would talk to me. Because, again, my goal was maintaining relationships. I just was going about it all wrong. And, you know, the rumors spread. People started finding the link to my blog, and it was bad. It was bad.

Heidi Packard [00:12:09] Yeah, it was bad. It was kind of a mini scandal in, like, the Gilbert Mesa gossip scene, you know, and people found out and it spread. I hadn't even told my family yet. And so my family found out through, like, gossip, you know, from a third party. And it was just bad. It went over. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:32] And it's hard because orthodox believing Mormons, we can send 80,000 missionaries out at a time. The church can leverage social media, all our believing family and friends, or Trump supporters or Obama supporters, whatever. They feel comfortable saying whatever they want, whenever they want, bearing testimony, sharing the good news. And the reality is that if we value our relationships, those of us going through the transition, in a practical sense, have to live a double standard sometimes of hiding it and being quiet because we value our relationships. And it's not fair. But in a practical sense, it's what we have to do. It's not fair.

Heidi Packard [00:13:21] Yeah, it's true.

John Dehlin [00:13:23] Really quick, really quick. I just want to touch in with some of our listeners. Chelsea. Chelsea writes, this is like hearing someone else tell my own story. And she's great. She goes on to write this was her approach with her family. To this day, she hasn't told them why she left, and they haven't asked. And it's been four years. But it sounds like they. They kept the peace because she just. She just didn't talk about it. So I think that's. I think that's interesting. So let's see. Laurie has some questions. Laurie wants to know what happened with the bishopric did you talk about that?

Heidi Packard [00:14:06] Oh, yeah.

Josh Packard [00:14:07] Yeah. So I know I didn't. I went back to church, and I told my bishop and the other counselor in the ward, and they took it really well. You know, they couldn't have handled it better. I just basically said, I've lost my testimony. I need to be released. And I don't. I don't want you to talk to anybody about, you know, me or why I left. Then I said, maybe don't send over home teachers for a while. I let him know I didn't do anything that would deserve church discipline. I ended up having another interview with my stake president. I think he also needed to know I hadn't done anything that would merit church court. And I actually met with our general authority, who was the area president in the south.

John Dehlin [00:15:00] Oh, wow. What was that like?

Josh Packard [00:15:03] Elder Posey was his name.

Heidi Packard [00:15:05] Apparently, the way it came about was that elder.

Josh Packard [00:15:09] So my. My. My parents were friends with Elder Sweer, who's a friend from Arizona. He was my stake president for a time. He was in the second quorum, I think, and I think he may have called in a favor for the fort, for my family, to Elder Eyring, who Elder Eyring called President Eyring. I'm sorry. Yeah. President Eyring called Elder Posey, and so I got the call.

Heidi Packard [00:15:42] The reason I would just say that is it was a very nice thing to do for, you know, his parents have often said, you know, the leaders of the church are. You know, they can seem like they're very removed from the general populace, but when, you know, when people ask and they have opportunities, they will go out of their way to try to help people one on one. And so, you know, it was a very nice. It was a nice gesture to send

Josh Packard [00:16:13] whatever his name was, but absolutely unhelpful because, you know, I brought up my concerns. They had nothing other than bear testimony. This was really before. Yeah. I insisted that she come with me in the interview.

John Dehlin [00:16:27] Isn't that crazy? You'd think these 70s general authorities would be world experts in resolving these issues.

Heidi Packard [00:16:35] He was so nice, but he had nothing to offer.

John Dehlin [00:16:41] Yeah.

Heidi Packard [00:16:42] Other than just being super, super nice. He was very nice.

John Dehlin [00:16:47] Yeah. That's hard.

Josh Packard [00:16:49] The ward handled it well. Yeah. Good reactions from the ward.

John Dehlin [00:16:54] It's good that your bishop or stake president didn't view you as this big threat. You know, like, I've heard a bad reaction is like, okay, we're calling a disciplinary council on you because you're gonna lead people away just because you left the church.

Heidi Packard [00:17:08] You know, he actually even sent out a letter to the members of our ward, and he. Stake president knew. Right?

Josh Packard [00:17:18] Yeah.

Heidi Packard [00:17:18] You were going.

Josh Packard [00:17:19] I told the stake president I was going to do it. And he said he was a little concerned. He asked me what was going to be in it, and I just, you know, I said, I'm concerned what people will think. I don't want them to think anything negative. I'm just going to say, you know, don't assume these things.

Heidi Packard [00:17:32] You didn't go into church.

Josh Packard [00:17:33] You know, support my family. They're going to continue to come to church. I'll come back when I'm ready. Because I was. I was planning on at this time becoming one of these, you know, stay lds, New Order Mormons.

Heidi Packard [00:17:45] We found. Stay LDS at that time, comes back

Josh Packard [00:17:48] to church and, you know, just kind of sits in the back row. But that didn't happen.

John Dehlin [00:17:53] Right. Let me just touch a few more things. Bruce writes that. Bruce wrote. Bruce spoke with the 70. He had the same experience. No answers, only testimony. Katrina writes that she hasn't. It's been 25 years since she's left the church, and she still hasn't spoke to her family about why. So that's a record, I think. Annie writes, it's hard to balance the need to be understood and repair the distance felt with not damaging the relationship. And that's a really nice way to summarize that. And then Brittany and Kimberly love the Hamilton reference, so they're. They're. They're impressed. Michelle asks, oh, I want to know, Heidi, how did. How did your brother and his family and your parents, how was it for them?

Heidi Packard [00:18:45] Well, they did not. Like I said, they. They kind of found out.

John Dehlin [00:18:51] Through the rumor mills.

Heidi Packard [00:18:52] Yeah, through the rumor mills. And I. It was terrible. And so I was having to call and kind of explain at that point, I was still active. I was, in fact, in the Relief Society presidency. And so, you know, that was. I kind of told my parents, like, look, this is. He's still the same person.

John Dehlin [00:19:06] It was on Josh. Josh was carrying the whole burden pretty much.

Heidi Packard [00:19:09] Right? Yeah. And I was. You know, I was still. Now, of course, I'm. They were concerned that I was going to follow him.

John Dehlin [00:19:15] Yeah. Slippery slope.

Heidi Packard [00:19:17] Yeah. But that was kind of the thing. And I mean, they try. I think that they tried to be supportive, but also not like they're very all about free agency. And so, you know, it's kind of like we're not gonna try to force you, you know, try to convince you one way or the other. And for the most part, that was kind of. So they were a little bit hands off.

Heidi Packard [00:19:42] And honestly, looking back, I think at the time, I kind of interpreted that as, like, man, you don't even care that much. Like, I kind of, you know. Well, I would have interpreted as, you know, if your child. If you see a family member doing something, going down the wrong path, you know, shouldn't you follow and try to bring them back?

Heidi Packard [00:20:03] And actually, I did. I do feel like with my brother Christian, who is so. He's next in age to me, just younger than me. So we, you know, grew up together pretty close, and he was the only family member who really did try to kind of rescue us. Yeah, rescue. You know, kind of like, reach out and, like, what's going on? Let's. I want to talk about it. Or, you know, kind of checking in, like, what are you doing? And I remember at the time being bothered by that and kind of was like, you know, we'll talk about the

Josh Packard [00:20:36] phone calls to the bishop.

Heidi Packard [00:20:37] Oh, yeah. Well, he, like, called my bishop once and, like, kind of asked, like, what's going on with Heidi? You know, and, you know, my bishop told me about this, and I was like, you know, and I was really. I was really mad about it. And. But in hindsight, over the years, I've since then had several long conversations with him about the church and about you, John Dehlin. We've talked about.

John Dehlin [00:21:02] John Dehlin.

Heidi Packard [00:21:03] We've talked about. We've talked about a lot of things. And he. You know, we definitely don't agree on things, but I have come to realize that I think he is consistent in his beliefs, and I can appreciate that about him, because I now see that what he was doing was trying to basically do the same thing that Josh had been trying to do, which was Josh believed so strongly in what he had just discovered. He was trying to get his family to understand him. And, like, don't you see that this makes sense? And my brother Christian was doing the exact same thing. Like, he really, really believes this.

Heidi Packard [00:21:43] And. And he felt that it was, you know, it's a responsibility. And so something that I really. That was a quality that I really, really admire in Josh. And I realized that's also a quality that my brother has. And I have to. Even though I don't agree with his perspective, I can still admire that quality that he still has. And so that has. And the only reason that happened, or the only way that I've come to that conclusion is is because he was willing to engage with me. He was willing to have Those talks with me. And he actually reached out and, you know, tried to convince me, so to speak, or pull me back.

Heidi Packard [00:22:24] But in the end, I think it just made it better because I can see that he was doing it for the right reasons, even if I don't agree with him.

John Dehlin [00:22:33] There's kind of integrity that you can have integrity leaving and you can have integrity staying.

Heidi Packard [00:22:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was kind of a, you know, that. And so that, you know, that's taken several years. But, you know, initially things were not good. My parents. I think my parents responded very differently from his parents. I think my parents were much more of the I'd rather not know, you know, kind of a thing. Don't. Unless we ask, don't tell us. And. And I made. I made the mistake of probably telling them too much more than they wanted to hear and pushing, you know, trying to push more. And that actually is one thing I wanted to talk about, is one of the things I've learned is the issue of boundaries and how.

Learning to Set Boundaries With Believing Family

Heidi Packard [00:23:17] I'd never heard about this word before, but I was reading a book at one point in our transition that talked about boundaries. And so what the imagery that they used was. You know, you can think of boundaries as like a fence, like around your little space or your home, and your boundary can be like a big foreboding brick wall that's really stark and like, eh. Or your boundary can be like a white picket fence with yellow roses in front of it, you know, and, you know, the point is, is that, you know, a boundary can be something that clearly marks your space, but it can still be inviting.

Heidi Packard [00:23:55] And you can choose who gets to come in. Maybe you have a little gate, you know, and you get to open that gate and invite people in sometimes. But you don't have to put up these walls, these brick walls that are intimidating, or send this message of like, I don't want to talk to you. It can be something that's more. More pleasant. And so that's kind of the thing I learned, is that there's a lot of boundary violations in the church. Growing up, you know, where you are, especially as a woman, I think I was used to offering up information about my personal life that I normally wouldn't do or I shouldn't feel obligated to do.

Heidi Packard [00:24:37] But I didn't even question it. It was just kind of like, well, of course, you tell, you answer the bishop truthfully if he asks you if you've been unchaste, you know, or if you've done this with a guy, you Know, or whatever. And so. And then I think I kind of had that same sense with my parents. You know, if my. I felt like I had to tell my parents, if I have this change in my religious beliefs, I, like, I owe that to him. It's my responsibility. And really, you know, I've learned that belief is very personal. It's very private. There's no obligation to tell someone your beliefs unless you want to tell them and you shouldn't.

Heidi Packard [00:25:16] And I think I told my parents more out of that obligation, that feeling that I owe it to them, I have to tell them, rather than. Because I really needed that for myself. So I regret that I wish that I would have just honored my own feelings in the matter and not have allowed, like, this cultural idea that I need. I owe it to them in some

Josh Packard [00:25:42] way to tell them and, like, in, you know, reverse the situation. I think parents and family feel. And at least ours did. I think there were some boundary violations the other way, too, because they thought that they needed to kind of come in and at least save the kids or save Heidi. And so there was some. There was some. We had some negative interactions with the family about that. And so we learned, hey, there's this thing called boundaries. And so we created boundaries. Like, okay, this is stuff that you should not talk about, don't talk about, you know, hey, when are you going to get baptized, Isabel? And, yeah, and we.

Heidi Packard [00:26:16] And we maybe did that a little too forcefully at first. I mean, we did try to create clear boundaries, but I think they interpreted it as, we don't ever want to talk about anything. Like, don't bring up religion in front of us kind of a thing, when in reality, that's not what we really meant. We just meant we don't want you to pressure our kids, you know, or, you know, indirectly pressure our kids to be religious. So that kind of took time to figure out. And, you know, there's a lot of misunderstanding.

Josh Packard [00:26:48] Just, like, it was important for me to give Heidi time and space to process all this. I think it's important that we give our families time and space as well and only give them the information that they want, like you said. I think that was a big learning curve, and I was trying to accelerate the process with my family as well. I was trying to have these big discussions with. With my parents, especially just because I didn't want to have the relationship become estranged. I wanted to be honest with them. You know, we're not Italian, but I think we have a little bit of Italian blood in us.

Josh Packard [00:27:22] We're just very open, honest, and that's what we always did. But as soon as I found myself on the outside of the tribe, so to speak, I noticed these walls and barriers coming up, and I was trying to break them down by having honest, open conversations that really what I needed to do was just sit back, allow them time to process, and then initiate conversations on their own.

Heidi Packard [00:27:44] And in the meantime, try to spend meaningful time together in other ways that have nothing to do with the church. And that was really hard for us because we lived in Georgia. Right. And so we don't see them very often. And so that was. You know, we've often talked about that, how different things would have been in our church transition if we had been living by family. But the fact that we were so far away, it made it extra hard.

Josh Packard [00:28:11] And yeah, just one other thing I'll add is that I was being a little bit bipolar on this issue with my family, too, because I would try to get them to engage in conversations. I would send them stuff, articles to start discussions.

Josh Packard [00:28:27] I would say, we need to talk, we need to talk. Then I wasn't getting my needs met. Really what I wanted was security. I wanted to feel like our relationship was still secure, but I was kind of throwing these little temper tantrums, you know, like a kid would, to get the attention and the security in that relationship that we needed. And so sometimes I would say, fine, I don't want to talk about religion anymore. And so my parents didn't think that I want. They've taken me at my word. They didn't think I wanted to talk about it anymore, but I did. And I wasn't being honest with my parents.

Josh Packard [00:28:59] And so this continued for about five years, off and on. You know, we would sort of be in a good place and then we would have a fight and I would feel hurt and I'd withdraw. And it sort of came to a head just about a little over a year ago where I wrote a big letter to my family. Again, I'm still writing emails, but I basically say, like, I can't continue to do this. I'm upset, I'm depressed. I'm distracted from things that are important because I want to communicate with you. I don't want to feel estranged. So I am to the point where I'm going to take a break, like kind of a long break, too.

Josh Packard [00:29:38] There's no expectations for around birthdays, holidays. I'm not going to visit. I just need to really kind of wall myself off and sort of fix my. My mental state and focus on my family. And this. This sparked a series of conversations where we were able to heal that relationship with my parents. We said, you know, my mom wrote back and said, you know, just the best thing she could ever said. That, you know, I love you unconditionally.

Josh Packard [00:30:08] Your beliefs have nothing to do with it. We want to focus on just a relationship. We want that. We don't want there to be any agenda. And so we decided that we would start Skyping each other once a week. We would set up the topics for discussion. We would create rules for those discussions. And going through that type of conversation that was more personal, less emotional, less judgmental, accepting repaired our relationship. And now we can talk about anything. We can talk more about that process.

Heidi Packard [00:30:42] But, yeah, and it really is amazing because before anytime there would be a family email that would go out about, I don't know, anything remotely related to the church or even political, like, something political that happened or some new development in church news that we, you know, would trigger us. We, you know, it always would just cause this, like, tension. Even if it was not really apparent, obvious tension, it was always underlying it. And now, since we've been doing these conversations again, which we can talk more about, it is completely different. Like, there is no tension there. I never feel that way. I don't feel awkward at all. It's completely gone. It's amazing. So it's just been an incredible experience to do this because it has worked so well.

John Dehlin [00:31:42] I'm dying to get into that. I just want to note something that feels remarkable to me, which is so many people who go through a faith crisis, kind of. It seems like they get written off by their immediate family and friends, and it's just always awkward and it's always distant, and in many cases, it just ruptures the relationship altogether. And it sounds like for your families, they were committed to the relationship, fundamentally, regardless of sort of your status with the church. Is that fair to say?

Josh Packard [00:32:19] Yeah, I think so. But they didn't know what to do. I think they felt paralyzed because anything that they did or shared seemed to trigger us. And. And so I think they just kind of froze. They didn't know what to do. They didn't know if we wanted to talk or not talk. Should we just have a superficial relationship or we avoid religion or not. And nothing was really working.

Josh Packard [00:32:45] The way that I was interpreting it from my end was that they just were indifferent to me. There's a quote by Elie Wiesel that says the opposite of love is not hate is indifference. Their indifference or at least that's the way I perceived it to me, signaled my religion, my beliefs, my testimony is more important than you.

Josh Packard [00:33:10] I will spend time reading the scriptures and serving in the church and doing all this stuff, but I'm not going to take two hours and hear you tell your story without interrupting you. That's the way it felt. But they, they were not.

Heidi Packard [00:33:26] They, they were doing just. They were trying to save the relationship. They were trying to do what by avoiding those topics?

Josh Packard [00:33:32] They were trying to do what I was saying to do, you know, and, but it was hurtful to me.

Heidi Packard [00:33:38] But they just didn't realize that they. Yeah, they were, they thought that they were doing the right thing by avoiding those controversial topics, avoiding the church thing and just trying to focus on the relationship.

Josh Packard [00:33:49] But I felt that I was being forced to be an actor and I was acting in a role that they wanted me to be, which was, you know, don't say anything controversial. You know, don't be honest. I felt muzzled. I felt like I was being forced into talking about superficial things. And I'm not a person that likes to talk about superficial things. So I felt restricted, restrained, muzzled. And it was a very frustrating time in our life until we were able to fix it.

Rebuilding Honest Relationships With Loved Ones

John Dehlin [00:34:20] Well, let's dive in. How did you, how did you have that conversation to take away the awkwardness, to take away the uncertainty and tension? Because that sounds like a holy grail, you know.

Heidi Packard [00:34:34] Well, it wasn't one conversation. It was a series of conversations. That's the first point.

Josh Packard [00:34:39] Yeah. So we, we listen to a Mormon Matters podcast with Chelsea Shields. I think was her name Chelsea Shields? Yeah, yeah, I think she has a last name. That's her maiden name. And her parents, Heidi and Eric. I believe it was this podcast about mutual respect and building relationships despite differences of religious opinion. And I decided as a great example of two, you know, grown up person who's left the church, Chelsea talking to her parents about religion. And so I sent that, you know, I sent that to my, my mom and my dad after I sent this initial email saying, I'm ready to take a break. This is, this is too stressful for me. And they listened to it. They thought it was very helpful.

Heidi Packard [00:35:31] Can I add something to that? Before that they responded, I do think this is important. He mentioned that his mom responded, responded to his email with a very. Her response was perfect. It was great. It was just what he needed to hear. And it was interesting. She mentioned in there that they had met with one of their friends who was a therapist, a counselor, and they had talked about it, and so they had kind of gotten advice from this therapist or counselor how to best go about communicating. And I think. So that's just a shout out to if you need advice, if you need help, if you need some practical, you know, skills or whatever, don't be afraid to ask for it.

Heidi Packard [00:36:13] Because I think that, that really, she just. She said exactly what she needed to say, and it was just perfect. And so anyway, I think that was. That was. And I think part of that was advice that she'd gotten was you need to listen to your son. And that's why they were willing to listen to this podcast.

Josh Packard [00:36:33] Right? And they did get some valuable advice. I then sent them. They both listened to the podcast. They thought it was great. My mom really identified with Heidi, the mother. And then I sent them. So we were trying to set up some ground rules for this conversation. They had gone to see a counselor and had talked to them about active listening.

Josh Packard [00:36:58] And I sent them a link from. Let's see what it's called, helpguide.org it's an organization they partner with Harvard Medical School. And there's a section about conflict resolution skills that I thought was real good. And basically what they say is, you know, focus on the relationship.

Josh Packard [00:37:18] Well, I guess I'll just translate their advice to kind of a Mormon setting. This is what I told my parents. Like, these are the rules. Let's focus on a relationship and our story. Not on doctrine or the history or winning a debate. We just want to be able to tell our stories. And in return, let's use some active listening. So don't interrupt, don't try to lecture.

Josh Packard [00:37:41] And when I'm done explaining, you know, restate and vice versa. When you. When you're talking, we just listen and then we restate and make sure that we get what you're trying to say. Because, you know, we were just miscommunicating for five years. So. So that was key.

Josh Packard [00:37:58] Let's see, we said, you know, let's talk about our beliefs and our feelings. Let's be honest, no taboo subjects out there. But let's not mistake our feeling and our beliefs, even strongly held beliefs as facts. One of the things we picked up from the podcast was that the barrier in Chelsea's relationship with her parents was that Chelsea thought that her parents thought she was sinning, and she was triggered anytime they interpreted her leaving the church as a sinful act. And I was as well. And Chelsea's parents were triggered whenever they. Whenever they felt they were being called dumb or stupid. That there's something stupid about religion or Mormon.

Heidi Packard [00:38:44] That dynamic was very applicable to our situation.

Josh Packard [00:38:49] I said, let's avoid negative emotions. You know, if we start to feel anger, sadness, frustration creep into the conversations, let's, you know, recognize them, maybe take a break again, don't try to win a debate. No agenda. We have to get. We had to get rid of this idea of there's an agenda other than just communicate, talk and repair relationships. And then the other thing was we can't go backwards. We can't dwell on the past. Our memory is imperfect. Let's just be willing to forgive, understand that we went about this wrong.

Josh Packard [00:39:23] I did for sure. And they did some things that they wish they could have changed as well. And then, yeah, an active listening, which we talked about. So those are kind of our ground rules. And then they agreed to them. We kind of went back and forth just a little bit about some of the rules.

Josh Packard [00:39:40] So we both came to the table with a shared mental model of how the discussions were going to go, backed up by, you know, some good social science research about conflict resolution. And then we decided on topics that we were going to talk about. And my topics were, number one, our relationship needs difficulties in the past, how we're going to go forward. Number two, my religious journey. I just needed to tell my story.

Heidi Packard [00:40:08] That's what he'd been trying to do in the emails all those years, over

Josh Packard [00:40:11] and over and over and over.

John Dehlin [00:40:12] I just want to be heard, right?

Heidi Packard [00:40:13] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:16] And the irony is once you get heard, then you're sort of like, you're, you're better. But if you never feel heard, years and years and years, you're just fighting for that one chance to get heard, right?

Josh Packard [00:40:27] Yeah, exactly. Number three, I wanted to allow my parents to tell me their experience and their reaction to my own faith journey because I didn't, I didn't fully understand the pain and the frustration they were going through. And so we were just going to listen. And then fourth, I wanted to talk about what we believe now about morality, values, meaning, truth, happiness, politics. And then lastly, what are we going to do going forward? Goals. Let's avoid pitfalls. Let's talk about pearls and kind of summarize what we've learned. And so we did that over a period of about, I don't know, four months. We met every Sunday, we talked online

Heidi Packard [00:41:13] and we did it over Skype.

Josh Packard [00:41:14] We did it over Skype.

Heidi Packard [00:41:15] We found that it's more. You need to have that face to face, you know, if you can't do it in person, obviously, then do it over Skype or something because it's. There's so much that you lose that. That's there in body language and you just, you need that. You need to have that connection physically. So that was really important.

Josh Packard [00:41:37] Yeah. So we did that over the course of a few months and it was just so incredibly healing to be able to tell our stories, listen, reciprocate, validate. I felt. I felt valued. I felt secure in my relationship with my parents. Once again, they were able to reassure me that a lot of the stuff that maybe is said over the pulpit or in an Ensign article about secular people and how they're kind of like kori whore and you know, yada, yada, yada, they don't agree with a. So again, I felt secure in that relationship. And, you know, we've continued these discussions, not every week, but. And we talk about politics. We discovered that we're both on the same page.

Heidi Packard [00:42:24] Well, not totally agree on a lot recently. Donald Trump's right.

Josh Packard [00:42:28] We've found it.

Heidi Packard [00:42:30] It's been, yeah.

Josh Packard [00:42:31] More that unites us than divides us. And we have a great relationship now. So I just, I thought that was kind of the. The miracle that I was able to. Not I. But we were able to repair a relationship that I was ready to give up on that I thought was irreparably damaged and unfixable. And you know, just with some silly, not so silly, but some simple tools to. For conflict resolution, we're able to fix that. I will add that I don't think it's possible for everybody.

Heidi Packard [00:43:04] It definitely. This is not a. I don't think I actually kind of tried to do something similar with my parents and I realized that this is not a one size fits all because not. It's like what we were talking about before. Not everybody wants to go that route of trying to get into the nitty gritty and really understand some people, it's much easier for them to not they're capable of that. They're capable of just saying, I don't want to talk about the church again. It's over and done with. You know, you're doing your thing, I'm doing my thing. But we can still have a relationship.

Heidi Packard [00:43:43] And if that works for people, if that's something that, you know, both parties can do, then I think that's kind of the easier thing to do. If it can work. But it has to work on both ends. Like with Josh and his parents, I don't think either of them were either party were able or willing or wanted that kind of a relationship. And so I think it's. It worked for this and it might work for other people if they feel like, you know, they're in a similar situation. But I wouldn't say it's a, It's a solution for everyone.

John Dehlin [00:44:19] Got it. But it's a nice option that I'm sure a lot of people don't even know exists. And it sounds like it was really effective.

Heidi Packard [00:44:27] It really was. Yeah. And I think I was gonna add one more thing to the story. His mom, I think one of the other things that really helped around the same time that he sent the email, she was visiting, teaching a woman in her ward who was going through a faith transition. She was a young mom with little kids. And when we ended up talking about this, she said, you know, it was really, I learned so much because she was visiting, teaching this girl in her ward. She, this girl would tell her, like, all of, she kind of spill her, you know, get all of her angst out, you know, on my mother in law.

Heidi Packard [00:45:04] And so she knew a lot of, like, why she was struggling with her faith and the things that bugged her about Mormon culture and even, like, feminism and stuff and being a woman in the church. And so all of these kind of millennial type issues that are going on right now. She was talking to my mother in law about. And so that kind of personal experience of her being able to listen to that, you know, that, that woman's experience, but it's not her own daughter. It's not, you know, it's a little

John Dehlin [00:45:30] bit distance, distance here.

Heidi Packard [00:45:32] So she could kind of listen and be like, I get where you're coming from. Like, you know, I want you to stay and all these things. But, you know, it just, it was, she was able to understand it better. And so she brought that to the table when, when we were talking about Josh, too, because now she suddenly had this other perspective that she could kind of add to this picture of, okay, what does it look like for someone who leaves the church? And so that was, I think that was helpful to the situation.

John Dehlin [00:46:03] Will you guys make sure and share with us links to both the Chelsea Shields thing and the Harvard rules of healthy communication or whatever those things were. We'll include them in the show notes if you send those to us. Sure.

Heidi Packard [00:46:17] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:46:18] Is that okay? Our listeners are wondering how this affected friendships. And they've asked two questions. I'll ask them both. One is, you know, did you lose friendships over this? You talked about these amazing friends in San Diego and other places. Did you lose friends over this? Did you have other friends that experienced this stuff with you? So that's kind of one part of the question. And then the other part of the question is, have people come out to you since seeking help and support through their transition because they knew you were out? So first part, and then the second part of the question, it's actually three parts of the question.

Heidi Packard [00:47:01] So, yes, as far as losing friends, not really. I mean, I think a lot of it, we happened to move, you know, right when we were leaving, so we were physically being separated from our friends in San Antonio.

Heidi Packard [00:47:20] So that. And, you know, so. And being in the military, we're kind of used to having long distance friendships anyway, because people move. I don't feel like I lost any friends, but I did have one of my friends, one of my close friends from San Antonio, when I called her and told her that, you know, I was leaving the church, she. We joke about it now because she, she said that she basically tried to break up with me and she kind of said, like, oh, I don't even know that we're going to even have anything in common anymore. Because I just felt like so much of friendship was based around this common identity of being Mormons.

Heidi Packard [00:47:55] And I just called her out on it. I'm like, no, I'm like, you can't break up with me. We have a better bond than that. We have so much that bonds us together, like it doesn't matter. And anyway, we kind of talked about it and she was like, yeah, you're right.

Heidi Packard [00:48:09] And so, you know, we've been able to. Actually she has since left the church, so that's actually not even an issue now. But no, I mean, I've had several. So I don't feel like I lost any friends because of the church necessarily. But I'm also the kind of person that has my close friends and those are the ones that I keep in my life. And most of my close friends from those days in the church have actually left the church by now, I think so on their own accord, not because of anything that I did, you know, but they, some, quite a few have ended up out of the church. And what was the other part of the question?

John Dehlin [00:48:52] Have people, like, since learning that you've come out, kind of come to you as they confided in you to get support?

Heidi Packard [00:49:03] Yeah, my sister has a little. I've tried it before I go into that. Any friends? I can't really think of any friends. Friends per se that have. They might, they might now maybe, I mean, we're pretty open about it. It's not a secret at this point.

Heidi Packard [00:49:19] No. So I actually have a younger sister who is also going through a faith transition right now, and she. So that's been really bonding for us to be able to, you know, talk and stuff. And she. Yeah, I think she did come to me initially when she was first finding out things that she didn't know about the church. And I think I kind of did exactly what you had been saying earlier, John, that I was very reluctant to give her any kind of information.

Heidi Packard [00:49:57] She would vent to me. She kind of had a feminist awakening, and she was venting to me about the patriarchy and all this stuff, and I would listen and I would empathize and. And then, you know, she. She'd ask me a question about Joseph Smith or Billet polygamy or something, and I'd kind of tell her, like, the facts, and then I'd recommend go read this, you know, or whatever, and just because I didn't want to be responsive, you know, to be the person that ever was responsible for someone losing their faith, it's hard. It's a hard thing to do. And if you're kind of happy and it's working for you and your life is good, I have no desire to change that or disrupt that in any way.

Heidi Packard [00:50:39] I know some people don't agree with that, but that's just me personally. I just don't. I would never want to change that for someone. And so that was kind of that experience. But she. And she's just kind of gone on her own journey, and it's been great because I've been able to be there for her and listen, and we've really bonded and shared a lot of experiences together and stuff. But it's not. I don't know. I don't know if that answers the question.

John Dehlin [00:51:08] Sure. No, that's great. What a great thing to be able to support a family member.

Heidi Packard [00:51:13] Yeah, it's been really great. Yeah, great.

Raising Children Outside the Church

Part 4 of 4 · Ep. 720

John Dehlin [00:00:29] Well, this has been great. And what a great addition to the Mormon transitions and Mormon stories sort of library to hear about that option that Josh explored and successfully implemented with this family. Noting that it's not going to work for all families. I think we had a comment, we definitely had a comment from a listener that basically said, I'll see.

John Dehlin [00:00:57] Annie wrote, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to try to do what you have done with Joshua's family. That is a huge accomplishment. So people are. People are impressed. Joshua, let's go ahead and move to the two kind of main themes that you guys wanted to share.

John Dehlin [00:01:19] One was how science and secularism really have helped, been guides and supports for you guys when raising children, because how to raise healthy children is a main concern. So many people are like, oh my gosh, if we leave the church, our kids will become prostitutes and drug addicts and we'll lose all sense of meaning and purpose and identity and start having sex with everybody and that sort of thing. And then the second part was what role the military played in helping you form healthy community. So let's start with the first. If you guys are comfortable talking about

Heidi Packard [00:01:52] that, you want me to do the first and you do the military. Okay. I think for me, it was I. All of the rules. When you think about it, you know, as a Mormon of, you know, why you shouldn't drink alcohol, why you shouldn't be sexually promiscuous, and that's a little bit sex, premarital sex and like sexual promiscuity, I think are kind of two different things. But anyway, we'll get into that. But all of these reasons for, like, things that you should do. I was always more focused on the reason why you shouldn't do them. It's not like you shouldn't do drugs because God says you shouldn't.

Heidi Packard [00:02:29] You shouldn't do drugs because they harm your body and they can become addictive and there's all of these other consequences that can happen, right? So, I mean, that was always my. My perspective anyway, so that didn't really change once we left the church. It was still, don't do things that hurt other people or yourself. So whether that's, you know, drinking alcohol and getting into a car, driving and hitting, crashing, you know, or, you know, whatever it is, you know, that those things are still wrong for the more the morality behind it. And I don't know, we can get into more of the morality part of it or like how we came to that conclusion if we want, but that.

Heidi Packard [00:03:11] That just never really changed for Me. And what I realized is that there's a lot of resources out there that help with parenting that don't come from religion. They come from, like, social scientists, you know, people who have studied, you know, relationships and communities and psychology and all of these different things. I mean, there's so many, so much information out there and so many different things that you can try, but you have to be proactive. You have to go seek it out because it's not going to be spoon fed to you like it was when you are a Mormon and you go to church every Sunday and you have a lesson once a month about, you know, parenting or whatever.

Heidi Packard [00:03:56] You know, it's different. And so you do have to be proactive. But I have just, I've never not been able to find answers to a question that I had through secular resources. There's just so many out there. I mean, there's almost too many. You know, it's not like there's a shortage in any way. And do you have some examples? Do you have some examples like, of a specific resource or.

John Dehlin [00:04:24] Yeah, some of the resources that were really, really useful to you?

Heidi Packard [00:04:29] Well, a lot of, I mean, this sounds kind of cheesy, but a lot of the blogs on, like, Huffington Post, Parent. I mean, I don't necessarily, I'm not like a blogging person, but a lot of their blogs are written by psychologists or different, you know, parenting people from various areas or expertise. And a lot of the things I, you know, I was like, yeah, that makes sense. There are a few books that I read. I can't remember the names of them right now, but they were all written by, you know, how to Parent Teens, all written by psychologists.

Josh Packard [00:05:04] Raising free thinkers. There was one by Phil Zuckerman called Living a Secular Life.

Heidi Packard [00:05:10] Yeah, a lot of, a lot of podcasts that I've listened to.

John Dehlin [00:05:15] Didn't Dale McGowan write Parenting Beyond Belief or something like that?

Heidi Packard [00:05:18] Yeah, Parenting. We read that one.

Josh Packard [00:05:20] That's one.

Heidi Packard [00:05:21] Yeah, there's just, there's just so many resources. Another thing that I've actually found that's been helpful is I'm actually getting my master's degree right now in education.

John Dehlin [00:05:30] Oh, congrats.

Heidi Packard [00:05:31] Thanks. And a lot of the techniques that I'm learning in my education program, I've used our family setting. So, like, one of the things that we did was called Affirmation Circle, where we had, we did this at Thanksgiving because, you know, Thanksgiving, when you're a Mormon used to be, you know, we'd all sit around the table and talk about our blessings and what we're grateful for. And, you know, then you have family prayer, and then you have Thanksgiving dinner. So I kind of wanted to have some sort of structure or tradition that was similar to that. And so we did this technique in my education classes.

Heidi Packard [00:06:03] And it was an affirmation circle. And we had, you know, we made a circle with our family, and we had a chair in the middle, and we took. The youngest has to come and sit in the chair. And then everyone in the circle goes around and says what they love about that person. And if you're in the middle, you can't talk. You just have to sit there and listen. And while everyone goes around and takes turns and says something good about you, and then when they're all done, then you choose someone else and they come in and then it's their turn, you know, and you kind of go on.

Heidi Packard [00:06:35] And so we did that with our family. And we just did this, actually this last Thanksgiving. And it was basically a secular testimony meeting because it ended up in tears and everyone telling each other how much they love each other. And, you know, hearts were touched. Love was.

Heidi Packard [00:06:54] It was the same. The spirit was there, right? Like, it was the same feeling that you. That same feeling of bonding and love that you get from sharing your testimony as a family. And, you know, I think there's just things you can do like that that are. That you can keep structure and tradition and communication, that the church is so good at giving people this structure. You know, you have to spend time together, you know, once a week for family evening. And, you know, you're going to sit and have scripture study every day. And that's just time that you're spending with your kids. And so you can substitute those things, do those same patterns, but just with secular things, they don't have to be centered around religion.

John Dehlin [00:07:41] And I just. I just have to echo that. It's so often that we have. We have this traumatic experience with the religion. And so our reaction is we're going to do the opposite of whatever we did when we were in the religion. We're going to. We're going to hate everything that has to do with the religion and avoid anything that even reminds us or smells like the religion that we are a part of. And that's probably natural for many. I'm not saying that's bad or evil, but once we get a really safe grounding and a healthy perspective, I think a really wise perspective is to kind of do what Alain de Bouton talked about in his Atheism 2.0.

John Dehlin [00:08:21] TED talk, which is, why don't we as secular people steal the best plays out of the playbook of religion? And if a secular family home evening works, have that, if, you know, music works, have that, if some sort of spiritual or wise thought every morning is useful, have that. If some type of mindfulness meditation like prayer works, have that.

John Dehlin [00:08:49] And don't feel like just because a religion did it, it's bad. Instead, say, wow, religions have been really successful. What can we learn from them to make our lives even better?

Heidi Packard [00:09:01] Yes, absolutely. And that's kind of what I realized about my own upbringing in the church was the thing that I gained the most from the structured Mormon activities in our home was that we were spending quality time together talking about interesting. We were having real conversations. That's what we weren't. My family was not super, like, emotional, you know, touchy feely, testimony meeting kind of stuff. It was more about, like, let's talk about interesting things. And so, you know, having scripture study, having family meeting, those things facilitated that, those kinds of conversations. And so we've been able to do that with our family. It's the same thing we just don't do.

Heidi Packard [00:09:41] We don't talk about religion, we talk about politics, we talk about, you know, different moral conundrums. You know, what would you do if this were the case, hypothetically, or, you know, it's. It's such a. You can still create that environment without. Without the religion.

Josh Packard [00:09:59] Yeah, yeah. We've just taken whatever worked in Mormonism and, you know, we kind of ran it through our secular grinder and do a lot of the same things. We just leave the supernaturalism out of it. And we talk more when we're talking about morals or ethics. We talk about, you know, reasons, you know, the utilitarianism of a choice or the consequences of option A or option B and try to give better reasons for being moral. One thing that I thought was important was to continue some type of, like, family home evening. And so I tried for a while to do secular family home evening.

Heidi Packard [00:10:39] It didn't work.

Josh Packard [00:10:40] And the kids really hated it. They hated the structured format of it. I was giving them lessons on David Hume and Immanuel Kant and Heidegger and Kierkegaard. I'm just trying to make it, you know, interesting. I was making Heidegger cool, but that didn't work. They just said, we don't want to do that. So I said, okay. But I didn't admit defeat. Instead, I took up cooking. Heidi was getting kind of bored of cooking every night.

Heidi Packard [00:11:12] She's way better cooked than me.

Josh Packard [00:11:13] So I took up the skill of cooking and took it upon myself to make dinner. Almost every night, I will make dinner. And part of that is everybody sits down and we have a family meal. Because research shows that families that, you know, eat together and have interesting topics and discussions, you know, they do better in school. They stay away from drugs and alcohol.

Heidi Packard [00:11:34] They.

Josh Packard [00:11:36] They avoid premarital sex or pregnancy. You know, all these negative outcomes can be avoided just by doing something as simple as eating together. And we usually.

Heidi Packard [00:11:47] And having good conversation.

Josh Packard [00:11:48] And having good conversation. That's sort of the rule. I make the dinner if we have some good conversations.

Heidi Packard [00:11:55] And one way to do this, if you. If you are not a great conversationalist or your kids won't talk. We started this tradition of everyone has to go around and say one good thing and one bad thing that happened to them that day. And sometimes it actually started because we were taking turns, and I was just asking our kids, what happened today? Tell us one thing that happened today. And they were always negative. They were always saying something negative like, oh, this happened today. It was terrible, terrible. So I said, okay, wait, you can't do that. You have to first say before you can tell me a bad thing, you have to say a good thing first.

Heidi Packard [00:12:28] So I kind of turned into the good thing, bad thing. And our kids, we've done that almost since. Actually, we did that before we left the church. So we've done that for a long time. And it's just been a great thing because it kind of forces them to look back on their day and kind of evaluate it and notice the good as well as the bad. And a lot of times, you know, they'll say. They'll tell us the good thing, and then they'll be like, well, I didn't really have any bad things today. Or, you know, they'll tell us two good things that happened. And so it's a very. I think it's a good technique to use with your kids.

John Dehlin [00:13:04] That's great. We do that, too. Every dinner, we start with something they're grateful for is what we do. And, Josh, I love that idea of not only challenging stereotypical gender roles where you're taking over some of the cooking duties and giving Heidi a break, but you're finding constructive ways to engage with your kids that don't have to be all serious and philosophical. You know, it's just living right. Healthy, happy living.

Josh Packard [00:13:35] Right?

Heidi Packard [00:13:36] Yeah, yeah. It's just. It's. There's just so much out there that is available to you. I know it is scary. I was scared when we first left, and it was kind of like the fear of how are. How are we going to raise our kids? But, you know, this is actually. I'll add this. This was actually something that happened.

Heidi Packard [00:13:55] I talked earlier about being. One of the things I liked about the church was like, the formula and the structure of it, that if you do all of these things, then this will happen. But at the same time, it was also very stressful because you as a parent, were so invested in your kids having to meet these certain milestones. And if your child doesn't go on a mission or doesn't get married in the temple or whatever, then it's like your life is over. It's devastating. And there's so much pressure and anxiety that I felt, especially as my kids were getting older. Grace was going into young women is like, I have to control almost my kids behavior so that they don't go off the path.

Heidi Packard [00:14:41] And leaving the church and not having that stress or anxiety anymore mean. Of course I still want my kids to be happy and successful, but that definition had changed, and I was. And it opened up so many more possibilities for them. And suddenly it was like it was a huge burden lifted off of me because I realized as their mother, I just had to provide a good environment, a safe structure, communicate with them, show love for them, and they will be able to make their own path. And it doesn't have to be, you know, the one that I've chosen or the church has chosen for.

Heidi Packard [00:15:17] So it's very, very liberating. Even though it was kind of scary at first, it ended up being very freeing and took a lot of anxiety off of me.

John Dehlin [00:15:27] So it was kind of good for your relationship with your kids, it sounds like.

Heidi Packard [00:15:30] Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:15:32] And for each other. So really quick. Johnna writes, Heidi and Josh were my biggest support through my transition. All right, Josh, let's talk about how the military has been an important community for you. The listeners are saying they want to hear more. They want to hear from you more, Josh. So let's have you step up and tell that part of the story. And Heidi. Aye. And I know the listeners are loving everything you're talking about.

Building Community and Identity After Mormonism

Josh Packard [00:16:02] Yeah. So I've been in the military since 2000, did my medical education, and then deployed to Iraq 2009, 2010. And I've been here at Fort Benning, which is, you know, the big military base for infantry and Rangers. And, you know, you have to be in the military to understand the type of community it is. It's similar in the church in a lot of ways because we have this shared. This shared history, these shared traditions, these shared values. You know, we fight together, side by side. We go through some harrowing experiences together. You know, most people have probably seen that show, Band of Brothers.

John Dehlin [00:16:50] That's so good.

Josh Packard [00:16:51] I've never gone through anything like that. And I wouldn't say my military experience has been, you know, that bonding. But we do have a bond because we're in the military together and in the medical Corps, you know, we take care of each other, we take care of each other's families, and we grow a tight bond. The thing that I noticed was most of my friendships before leaving the church were with other people in the church. That was my group. That was my tribe. Leaving the church allowed me to get to know people better at work, to socialize with them after work. And on the weekends. We've started book clubs with people at work. Whiskey clubs. That's one of the things we're doing now. We just socialize. We have fun with these people. And,

Heidi Packard [00:17:43] yeah, they kind of fill the same role as, like, you know, in our. An award, you have these other families that, you know, that you can rely on to, like, help you out. If you get stuck in a traffic jam and you can't pick up your kids, you know, like, that they'll. They have your back, and they'll go pick up your kids for you or whatever. And those people were always the people in our ward before.

John Dehlin [00:18:09] What's up? What's a whiskey club? And to a believing Mormon, that might sound really scary. And I'm not promoting it or not promoting it. I just, you know, for those who might feel like, oh, my gosh, that sounds evil. Talk about why that's been interesting or valuable.

Josh Packard [00:18:28] Well, I like whiskey. I love whiskey. I drink alcohol. I drink it responsibly. I drink it in moderation.

Heidi Packard [00:18:36] And we went to Scotland for our 20th wedding anniversary. We both really like whiskey. And there's. You wouldn't if you didn't know this. There's a lot of. There's a lot of nuances to the different types of whiskey.

Josh Packard [00:18:49] You don't drink whiskey because we like to get drunk. That's the wrong way to drink whiskey. There's a lot of history and tradition and art that goes into creating, you know, whiskey. And I love it. It's great. Lots of different types of whiskeys are all around the world. Different whiskeys from different parts of Scotland.

Heidi Packard [00:19:13] The whole distilling process, different flavors, different

Josh Packard [00:19:16] aromas, and it's and it's really enjoyable. So we get together with a lot of my people at work, and everybody brings a bottle or two, and we sample different whiskeys and kind of figure out what we like.

Heidi Packard [00:19:27] And they have yummy food.

Josh Packard [00:19:30] Yeah. And then. Yeah. So it's. We bring food that goes along with it. It's just, you know, good time if somebody's like.

John Dehlin [00:19:37] But that just sounds evil because alcohol is evil. And what are you doing? Stop that. You know what. What is valuable to your life about that. Talk about why that's enriched your life. Something that people would dissociate with evil.

Josh Packard [00:19:51] Well, alcohol can be evil. If you drink too much of it, it can destroy lives, including your own and your family.

John Dehlin [00:19:57] But

Josh Packard [00:20:00] in moderation, it can be a great thing. I think Mormon activities would be so much more if they could have a little alcohol at these. It would be a lot of fun.

John Dehlin [00:20:10] What does it do? What does it do?

Josh Packard [00:20:12] Well, it's a. It's a social lubricant. It, you know, lowers your anxieties just enough so that you feel like you enjoy the social event. I'm an introvert, too, so I don't really like socializing all that much unless I'm with a pretty small group of close friends. But, you know, this is why people have cocktail parties. So they can go into a new situation with lots of people and actually enjoy it after one or two drinks.

John Dehlin [00:20:40] And this gets like a dumb question, but you can remember the conversations even after you've had a few drinks, and

Josh Packard [00:20:47] it makes the conversations more real. I think it makes them more enjoyable. I think you're more honest with yourself and others. We laugh a lot more than we do if we're at a teetotalling party. So it's a lot of fun. And I don't just like whiskey. I also got into beer, craft beer for a while and cocktails. We went to New Orleans with a friend of ours, another military anesthesia provider, and really fell in love with the cocktail culture that started there in New Orleans. So, you know, I'm an amateur bartender,

Heidi Packard [00:21:25] in case you can't tell. Josh is really into food. He's a foodie. He loves to cook. He loves researching food. He loves, like, the different tastes and textures and how different flavors go together. He should have been a chef in another life. So it's like. It's like a hobby. It's like, you know, it's not. It's not about, like, drinking alcohol to, you know, get tipsy or drunk or anything like that. I mean, it's a type. It's like the food culture. It's part of experiencing good food paired with good drinks and like the history and the craft that goes into making it and all of that.

John Dehlin [00:22:01] It's kind of. Isn't there a philosopher named Epicurus or something Epicurean, Is that kind of right?

Josh Packard [00:22:07] Yeah, I think it's a branch of like hedonism, which is, you know, you should enjoy life. The pleasures of your life should outweigh the pains. And I think this is, you know, people say, oh, hedonism, that's such a terrible thing. But, you know, the Book of Mormon is in line with hedonism. They say men are. That they might have joy. Well, that's, that's one way that I view life now. My. I should do things in my life. They bring a lot of joy to it and minimize any pain or suffering both to myself and other people. So I think, you know, drinking in moderation socially with good food, enjoying good

Heidi Packard [00:22:46] company is a very good experience.

John Dehlin [00:22:48] It's amazing. Josh, what else? So you mentioned the whiskey groups. What are the other ways that your military community, and Heidi too, that the military community has really filled in? What other types of activities have been valuable?

Josh Packard [00:23:07] I don't know, like, you know, friendships. Yeah, just friendships. Like, you know, my best friend is in the military. He's another anesthesia provider. Him and his wife are coming over tonight. We're going to have food, we're going to have drinks, we're going to talk. We used to have a book club with other military friends where we would, you know, read books and then get together again over dinner and drinks and talk about the books.

Heidi Packard [00:23:29] And those book clubs are so much more interesting than the book clubs we've had with our Mormon friends because our military friends come from such different backgrounds that they have such a different perspective on whatever it is that we're reading. And so it just makes the conversations all that more interesting because they're so diverse, you know, they're. Yeah, just totally different backgrounds.

John Dehlin [00:24:00] Love it. Okay.

Heidi Packard [00:24:02] And just as far as personal friends, I guess one of the things that's changed about us is that when we were in residency and we, our children were small and so we really needed that tight knit community of like I did. I needed other moms who had kids the same age that could do play dates with and we could go to the park together and trade babysitting and all of that.

Heidi Packard [00:24:25] Now the phase of life that our kids are in, they are so busy and we are so busy with them. And honestly, I Would I just want to hang out with my kids sometimes? Like, you know, on a weekend? Like when Grace comes home from college and wants to. She's here for the weekend. I want to talk to her, I want to hang out with her. And so it's just kind of changed. I mean, we still have our friends and our social life and everything, but I don't think we need, we don't need it in the same way that we did when our kids were younger.

Heidi Packard [00:24:54] And our kids are self sufficient. I mean, they drive and they're in high school and yeah, it's just, it's just different. Our family needs are different. So we don't. We haven't tried to necessarily find that same tight knit community of other couples with kids the same age, because we don't really need that at this point in our lives.

John Dehlin [00:25:15] Got it. Okay. So anything else about the military? I guess there's this idea of a safety net that you feel in your ward where if you got cancer or if you got pregnant or if you needed your lawn, the sod laid out on your lawn, that the ward's gonna be there, Johnny on the spot. And I'm wondering whether you, you know, whether this is, your position is sort of one of privilege, that you have money, you have education, you don't need that level of support, or do you feel like your military friends would be there for you if someone got cancer, if there was a death, if someone got sick or whatever?

Josh Packard [00:25:58] Oh, yeah, absolutely. Just our group of medical providers at the hospital were pretty tight. And yeah, if something happened and I needed somebody to help out, there's definitely a handful of people that I can call and they would, would be over right away, no questions. Like, in that sense, they kind of fulfill the role of the elders quorum or the high priest quorum or the relief Society.

John Dehlin [00:26:25] That's great.

Josh Packard [00:26:25] Yeah, that's great.

Heidi Packard [00:26:27] And there's also this element too, of, you know, when you're Mormon, you meet, once you meet someone who's maybe not in your ward, but you know that they're Mormon, there's that automatic, like, sense of, oh, I can trust them or I know something about them. Maybe you don't know everything about them, but you feel like you know something about them. There's kind of that same dynamic with the military. You know, our kids might meet, that they bring home a new friend from school and you find out that their parent, their dad is, you know, in the military. It's kind of like you kind of feel like, okay, I feel like I kind of know something about, about this family.

Heidi Packard [00:27:02] Don't know everything, but you kind of know something. It's kind of like, it kind of gives you that sense of like, I guess, trust. And maybe that's not a good thing because you know that can absolutely mislead you sometimes. But there is kind of that element there, I think with the military that's similar to the church.

John Dehlin [00:27:20] Very cool. Grace writes, mom, bff. Sorry dad, you know you were left

Josh Packard [00:27:30] off, but I thought you were daddy's girl. Grace, come on, don't be supposed to

Heidi Packard [00:27:34] be in class right now.

Josh Packard [00:27:35] Go back to school.

John Dehlin [00:27:39] And yeah, Michelle writes, grace sounds like a great kid. A couple people, both Katrina and Michelle are writing that they also have experienced the military as being a great, a great place. Grace just wrote, she loves you too, dad, with three hearts. So you've been redeemed, Josh. Not quite BFF status, but three hearts, that's not terrible. Okay, so Emily writes, what do you miss about Mormonism, if anything?

What They Miss, Spirituality, and Marriage Without Religion

Josh Packard [00:28:14] Well, I don't miss a lot. I would say that, you know, Mormonism has, you know, a community of support. I think that's like the best thing that the church has going for it is that tight knit community. I would just say that's not why I was in the church to begin with and it's not really what I miss now. But I know a lot of people do miss it. And if you don't have the military to fall back on, there's plenty of other non religious or religious communities out there besides the Mormon Church. So they are kind of a one stop shop for all of your, you know, Maslow's needs, your psychosocial needs, it's all there.

Josh Packard [00:28:55] But you can find communities that provide that support outside of the church and I think they're healthier communities because you can have all the good of a community without all of the negative baggage. I'm sorry, I just don't miss a lot of the church. I think.

Heidi Packard [00:29:11] Yeah, I can't really think of anything. I mean, I guess the only thing that I maybe kind of regret is that or miss is that the fact that our kids can't get cheap tuition at byu.

John Dehlin [00:29:25] Public education can be expensive, right? Or private educations.

Heidi Packard [00:29:29] And I don't really want our kids to go to byu. So no, that's not really anything I miss. I don't, I can't really. I guess the community would be that. But I agree with Josh. I think find that.

John Dehlin [00:29:42] So what about identity? Like I'm a Mormon, I know my life and purposes. I know Who I am.

Josh Packard [00:29:50] Yeah, I mean, that was comforting, but it's kind of shortcut, you know, it's just provided for you. I didn't choose to be a Mormon. That was just the identity kind of thrust upon me. The thing I like now is that I'm free to choose my own beliefs, my own identity, my own purpose, my own values.

Josh Packard [00:30:08] There's this analogy that sometimes I heard in the church about a kite. And a little girl asked daddy, daddy, why is the kite attached to the string? Why can't we just let it go and let it fly higher?

Josh Packard [00:30:19] And the dad explains, well, we need the string to keep the kite up. If we let it go, it crashes. And, you know, we're kind of like the kite and the string is kind of like those commandments, restrictions, the culture of the church.

Josh Packard [00:30:31] I never liked that analogy, because I don't think I'm a kite. My, like, spirit animal is a bird, and we are birds, and that's. We're birds, and we're tied, you know, up, and we can't fly where we want to fly. We're not being the. You know, we're not fulfilling the measure of our creation. So when once we left the church, I felt like that string was cut. And it's a little scary, you know, because I get to choose where I fly, where I go. But it's. It's my adventure to take, and it's been nothing but good for us.

John Dehlin [00:31:07] Yeah, I have a cat. And birds become prey when they're tied down.

Josh Packard [00:31:13] Yes,

Heidi Packard [00:31:17] Heidi, I agree. I totally agree. And I think it's been very rewarding to create my own identity. And it's hard. And I feel like there is part of me that is. Will always be Mormon. You know, Mormonism as like a pseudo ethnicity or something. Like, it's always gonna be part of who I am. I can't not acknowledge that part of myself. But in terms of finding a purpose and all of that, I feel like, yeah, it was hard. Like, you did. I did have to kind of wade through that time of feeling like, oh, my gosh, this is scary. Who am I? What am I?

Heidi Packard [00:31:52] What's my point? Like, is it all. Does it not have any meaning? But, you know, you push through it. You kind of figure out. You think, you read, you study, you know, the same things that you're encouraged to do in the church, right? Read, ponder, and pray. Is that what it is? Not the prayer, maybe not the pray part. Meditate, whatever it is you want to do, and you find your own purpose. And, you know, I found that through, you know, going back to school, getting my degree, wanting to become a teacher. I get it through feminism, identifying as a feminist, you know, just being a parent, being a mother, just.

Heidi Packard [00:32:28] I have so many other identities. Being a friend, just a friend, a wife. I mean, there's just so many other identities that I have that are super important. And I've just tried to, you know, strengthen those parts of myself rather than focusing on this Mormon identity that I agree is something that was, I was just born into. I didn't choose, was just something that I was raised with.

John Dehlin [00:32:55] Does the idea of spirituality mean anything to you guys now? Or do you not like the term? Or is there secular spirituality that's important? Anything like that?

Josh Packard [00:33:05] Yeah, I'm comfortable with the term as long as we're not talking about a, you know, a disembodied, non physical spirit that lives in our body. I think there's always parallels. You know, we've talked in this podcast about times where we've felt the spirit.

Josh Packard [00:33:23] I feel the spirit all the time now, but it has nothing to do with the church. But I have moments of, of awe and wonder and amazement. And they're usually associated with, you know, listening to music or watching a movie or being out in nature on a hike or on my bike, going on a long bike ride or spending time with my family or kids or Heidi. That's when I feel that now it has nothing to do with religion. It has everything to do with, with, with our minds and the things that our minds do. I still feel that sense of amazement, wonder, and awe. And there's a purely natural explanation for it. And it's all happening in my brain.

Heidi Packard [00:34:07] But that doesn't mean that the experience isn't powerful. It's still a very powerful experience and meaningful.

John Dehlin [00:34:14] Meaningful, yeah.

Heidi Packard [00:34:16] Like, I want to keep having those experiences, and so does Josh. And we do. We still have them. It's just we put different meaning onto them.

John Dehlin [00:34:25] What if someone would ask, how could any marriage survive without Mormonism? How. How could your marriage be healthy? Why not just go sleep around with everybody and. And divorce? Because it's all about your needs. What's, what's been, you know, what's kept you guys together?

Heidi Packard [00:34:43] Well, I sure hope that the only reason that he was faithful to me was because the church told him he had to be. That would really suck if that's the only reason why he was faithful to me. No, I mean, of course, like, that is not what our marriage was based. Our marriage was not based on. The church told us that we have to act this way, therefore we're going to act this way. You know, we committed to each other because we loved each other and, you know, we continue to love each other, so we wouldn't want to do something that would hurt the other person. I mean, that's how I would.

Josh Packard [00:35:19] Yeah. I think again, we just carried our relationship forward and we kept being faithful to each other for all the same reasons we were faithful to each other before. Because there's a lot of happiness that comes from being in a stable relationship, whether you're married or, or not, and having kids and, and having intimate relationships with people. Like that is a key component, human well being and happiness is having those, those close relationships and most importantly with. With your spouse and your kids. So I, I value them just like I valued them before. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:02] Any. Any beliefs in God or Jesus or resurrection or afterlife for either of you?

Josh Packard [00:36:10] No, not at all. Like Laplace said to Napoleon, I have no need of that hypothesis. I just. I don't feel that there's any need to believe in a God. I just don't. I can't. It's not something that I can choose to do. Like, you hear this phrase all the time. It drives me nuts. You know, faith is a choice. I don't think belief is a choice. I. I think it's. It's a. I don't know, this emergent property that just comes because of what we know or our experiences or our emotions. And I just can't wrap my head around the idea of God or Jesus anymore, so. And I don't miss him at all.

Heidi Packard [00:37:00] Yeah, I don't. I don't have. It was. It was a little bit hard for me early on, coming to terms with that, with my sister Charity's death, but I think the way I look at it now, and I think it's hard for my family too, because, you know, I've had family members say to me, like, how, you know, if you don't believe in life after death, like, that's so sad because you think that you're not gonna see Charity again. And I look at it differently. Like, I think it's actually worse to imagine her being in heaven right now all by herself, pining away, having to watch as her husband marries another woman and raises their child in a new family.

Heidi Packard [00:37:50] To me, that's. That's sad. I don't want to believe in that, and I don't believe in that. And so it's actually very. It's a little more comforting to me to know that she had her life and this. And I want to celebrate that life and remember it and honor it any way that I can pass on memories of her to her son.

Heidi Packard [00:38:14] But, you know, that doesn't mean. It doesn't affect anything. Just to have this belief that she's up there in heaven watching. I don't know that, to me, that's not a very comforting idea. And the idea of living forever is not very comforting either. I read. We both read that book, A Short Stay in Hell. Is that what it's called? I can't remember the author's name, but

John Dehlin [00:38:35] it was Stephen Peck, I believe. Stephen Peck, Yes.

Heidi Packard [00:38:39] And it was really, really interesting. And it totally explored that idea of, do you really. What would it really be like to live for an eternity? And that really resonated with me. And then, you know, I kind of came to terms with it. Josh told me this quote from Mark Twain. What did he say? Oh, is this it? I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and I had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. I just love that quote because it's just so. It's very kind of comforting in a way. It's like, you know, it's. I don't know.

Josh Packard [00:39:14] Yeah, it gets to this idea that, you know, our consciousness exists because of our brain. And if our brain doesn't exist anymore, then we're not conscious. It's not like we're in this limbo land where we're lonely, sad, disembodied, haunting houses just don't exist the same way that we didn't exist before we were born. And that sounds great compared to this idea of living forever and ever and ever. Maybe not a. Not a great place, you know, if we don't do all the things we are supposed to and God punishes us for it. But, yeah, death is not scary to me. I'm an anesthesiologist, and so I give powerful drugs to people every day that takes away their consciousness.

Josh Packard [00:39:57] And really. And, you know, these drugs act receptors in the brain, shuts everything down, and they don't experience anything. It's not like there's this disembodied brain in there somewhere that continues to experience surgery and thankfully so. And, you know, that just reminds me, every time I put somebody to sleep, I. I realized that, you know, consciousness and everything that goes on, our experience of the world happens because of our brain, you know, in our mind. And when our brain is gone, when we're dead, we don't experience anything. And I think that's great. It puts the emphasis and the value on this life and making, you know, having relationships and having joy right here, right now. Life is precious. We're lucky to be here. That which is rare is precious. And that which we have in abundance is worthless.

John Dehlin [00:40:53] After my sister died of colon cancer, I had a colonoscopy. And those are some of the best 30 minutes of my life. I don't remember much, but I sure felt good when it was over.

Josh Packard [00:41:06] People like my drugs.

John Dehlin [00:41:09] Awesome. So a Mormon would say that living a life as a God over your own universe is preferable to like no longer existing. What would you say to that?

Heidi Packard [00:41:25] Not if you're a woman and you're forever having babies in the eternities. No, I would disagree with that.

Josh Packard [00:41:35] Yeah, I disagree too. I mean, I don't want to get too philosophical, but we just finished watching Westworld and that's a show on HBO that kind of explores this idea of, you know, a God, so to speak, creating a world with artificial intelligent robots and his efforts to create consciousness in these robots. And this, the idea of a God creating a whole bunch of creations designed to worship him and follow him. And it's very narcissistic and it doesn't make any sense to me at all why an all powerful, all knowing, all loving God would do that with his powers.

Heidi Packard [00:42:20] Right? And it's like, it's like this idea of being a God and having your own world. It's. You're taught that from a young age and it was always with the assumption that this is a good thing, you should want this. And it's kind of like, wait a minute, I remember the first time I started to really think about that. Do I actually even really want that? Does that even sound interesting? Does that even sound like what I would actually want? And the more I thought about it, the more I realized, no, that's not something that is even that enticing. I just kind of thought that it was because that's the way it was always taught to me.

John Dehlin [00:42:53] So the point you make, that when you're dead, you won't realize it anymore, that's a fair point. But if I ask you now, what about the idea of never seeing or being with your children again? Certainly there's some sadness about that. Just the idea that at some point they die or you die and you're never together again, certainly that makes you sad.

Josh Packard [00:43:18] It doesn't make me sad because I'm not going to be around to experience that sadness. So I Just focus on the here and now, the present, and the relationship that we have.

Heidi Packard [00:43:29] While the only part of that that would make me sad is if I were to see my children suffering and missing me, you know, that's the part that would make me sad. But I won't know that. I won't see that. I won't be aware of that or conscious of that. And I think when you teach your kids, I mean, I think a lot of Mormons actually have a lot of fear about death.

John Dehlin [00:43:55] It's a human. It's the human thing.

Heidi Packard [00:43:57] Everyone does. But I think that if you can work through it and really face it, I'm a huge Harry Potter fan. Dumbledore's words about, you know, facing death are so true. Like, you. You have to acknowledge everyone dies. It is a natural part of death. It's tragic when someone dies young, when they die early, or when they have suffered for a long time in pain before they die. You know, those things are tragic and terrible. But, you know, death happens, and we all have to accept that and understand that and be okay with it in some way or another. And I think it's a natural process for people to kind of go through that and, like, come to terms with it.

Heidi Packard [00:44:42] Our kids have, and they're, you know, they kind of go through that phase and. And I think at the end of it, I think it can help you just appreciate life all the more.

John Dehlin [00:44:51] Yeah. Do you guys. Do you identify as atheist or agnostic?

Josh Packard [00:44:57] I don't. I do, but I don't really use the label that much just because there's so much baggage with it. Everybody has an idea of what an atheist is, and usually it's not a. Not very good thing, especially if they're not. If they're religious. So I. While I try to avoid labels, I will use the atheist because I am an atheist. Heidi likes. I think you prefer agnostic.

Heidi Packard [00:45:19] I don't like to put a label on it.

John Dehlin [00:45:22] I don't either.

Heidi Packard [00:45:24] I don't. I really don't. Like. There is no label that I. I will happily say I don't believe in God, but I don't. I just don't feel comfortable. There's no label that I'm like, oh, yeah, that defines me.

Josh Packard [00:45:37] So, yeah, I use. I use secular humanist or, you know, metaphysical naturalist, tired Mormon, recovering Mormon. But I'd rather just, like, talk about what I. What I think, what I believe rather than slap a cheap label on it.

Heidi Packard [00:45:54] I guess. I guess I am comfortable with saying non religious.

Josh Packard [00:45:57] Yeah. Or secular.

Heidi Packard [00:45:58] I am comfortable with that because I am non religious, that's probably the only label that I'm comfortable using.

John Dehlin [00:46:05] Annie asks how you would deal with believing Mormons who see atheism is just a scary term. And it sounds like you avoid using it because you realize that it's a scary term.

Josh Packard [00:46:15] Yeah, I usually don't like, you know, present. Hi, I'm Josh. I'm an atheist. I keep my beliefs to myself, especially in the military. It's a very religious, very conservative community. So I don't talk about politics or religion a lot. I just, I let them get to know me first as a person and if they ask, then I would tell them. And by that point, hopefully a lot of the stereotypes that come along with the term would, would go away because they say, oh, well, I know Josh is not that way.

Heidi Packard [00:46:45] And his best friend is a believing Catholic.

John Dehlin [00:46:49] Nice.

Josh Packard [00:46:50] Yeah.

Heidi Packard [00:46:50] And we talk about religion.

Josh Packard [00:46:51] Religion.

John Dehlin [00:46:52] Nice. Well, cool. I think we're kind of. I think we're kind of reaching the end. Are there other topics you guys really wanted to hit or you feeling like we covered. Covered the main things?

Reflections on the Transition and Closing Thoughts

Josh Packard [00:47:07] I feel pretty good.

John Dehlin [00:47:08] Okay. So, you know, I ask this every time and I think it's a softball because I think everybody is going to say whatever they're doing is really working well, but I'll ask it anyway. Overall, do you feel like you're better off for your transition and having left the church? Heidi, you go first.

Heidi Packard [00:47:33] Better off.

John Dehlin [00:47:34] And if so, and if so, in what ways are you better off now than when you were active and believing in the church? And if so, in what ways?

Heidi Packard [00:47:42] Yes, I would say that and I guess I would say in my relationships, I think are probably where I've seen the biggest. My relationship with Josh has improved dramatically and we had a great relationship before, but I think it's become even stronger and much, much more accept. We're much more accepting of each other now that we are kind of free from like, the cultural expectations of like, gender. Gender roles that the church had placed on us and our expectations of each other as, like, Mormons, that that was kind of a. Could be a source of tension for us. So it's, it's. With that gone, it's really strengthened our relationship and I think it's improved my relationship with my kids.

Heidi Packard [00:48:33] Kind of what I was talking about before, just lifting up that anxiety. I kind of can be a little bit controlling, a little bit ocd ish, and that just that freedom that I feel has just allowed me to enjoy my children and see them as first and foremost individuals with their own personalities, their own needs, instead of trying to view them as this, like, system that I needed to shape and conform so that it could go along this path. So it's really improved my relationship with my kids.

Heidi Packard [00:49:08] And then I think it's just opened up my eye, allowed me to open up my eyes to the wider world and see and explore things intellectually, like feminism, like, you know, history. Just, I'm, you know, I have my degree, my undergraduate degrees in history, and just be able to view things that I would have felt that I couldn't have done that when I was Mormon, or I would have been going outside of the balance the Lord had set, so to speak, you know, with different cultural interpretations or things like that. So intellectually, it's been very freeing and liberating.

Josh Packard [00:49:47] So, yeah, yeah, I think things have gotten better for me. And I don't want to put too rosy a picture on life as a secular person. It's not like happy clappy atheism. It's the best and everybody should do it.

Josh Packard [00:50:02] But I do. I do have much less cognitive dissonance now than I did in the church. I just. I don't feel that emotion at all. I have a lot less guilt. I don't beat myself up over stupid things that I shouldn't feel guilty about.

Josh Packard [00:50:18] I still feel guilt when I do things that are bad, but that's for a good reason. I feel a lot more freedom to believe what I want to believe for the reasons that I choose to believe in. Freedom to act in ways that I want to act for the reason I want to do them.

Josh Packard [00:50:38] I feel a lot more authenticity. I think that's probably the best thing is I just feel like a much more authentic person now than I was in the church. And also, yeah, just to echo Heidi, I feel like my relationships with her, most importantly with my kids, they're better. You know, they're not perfect, but they're better.

Josh Packard [00:51:02] My relationships with friends think are more authentic. And I just. I enjoy life a lot more now than I did, I think, before. And so it's been a good thing. It's been a rough journey, especially some of those early years getting here, but it's been a journey well worth taking. And I'm happy where we're at.

Heidi Packard [00:51:27] Yeah. And it's. And I just, like one add on to that is. And I kind of told this to my sister who's transitioning as well, is it is hard. It's hard. You're going to have those years, years even, where it is hard. And you have to figure things out and you kind of have to push through it, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. And like, ultimately you will have the freedom to shape your future. And that's scary, but it's also exciting. And so just, you know, try to get support, try to reach out for other resources, things like Mormon stories, Mormon transitions.

Heidi Packard [00:52:06] I mean, we didn't really mention this in our story, but that we found Mormon stories or. I can't remember what we found first, if it was JLDs. Anyway, we found you, John Dehlin, on the Internet, you know, early in, sometime around 2008, 2009. And it was really helpful for us and just to know that there were other people going through this same thing. And so there are, there are people out there, there are resources out there that you can do and just push through it, keep going, even if it's really hard, because it will get better.

John Dehlin [00:52:40] Love it. Alright, well, you guys know how we end Mormon stories. You gotta, gotta give us your testimony, whatever that is. So I think we should. Let's let Josh go first and then we'll have Heidi close us out. What do you, what do you believe now? What do you stand for?

Josh Packard [00:52:56] Okay, well, I wrote some notes actually, if that's okay if I refer to them.

John Dehlin [00:53:00] That's great.

Josh Packard [00:53:02] I believe life is precious and it's finite. I believe in happiness and that people can find happiness without religion, even more of it. I believe marriage and family or close friendships, freedom, security, happiness, meaning, purpose, are all good things. I believe in truth. I think that science and skepticism and personal experience are the best ways to discover that truth. The rest of it's kind of, kind of cheesy, but.

John Dehlin [00:53:35] Say it. Say it. Bring the cheese.

Josh Packard [00:53:38] Bring it.

Heidi Packard [00:53:39] You might get emotional.

Josh Packard [00:53:40] It's too much.

John Dehlin [00:53:41] That's good. Emotion is good.

Josh Packard [00:53:44] And I believe people are fundamentally good and we don't need religions to, you know, take credit for the, for the goodness that is inherent within all people. There's also a lot of badness that's inherent in people, but that people are fundamentally good. And that's my testimony.

John Dehlin [00:54:06] I love it. Amen. All right, Heidi.

Heidi Packard [00:54:09] I believe in all of those things. And if I could just encapsulate everything into like, maybe one thing, I guess. I believe in humanity and relationships. I think that relationships with other people are the most important things in life. And whatever you, you know, whatever kind of success or whatever you have or failures, even if you. Doesn't really matter in terms of outside things, but it does matter in terms of relationships. So that's ultimately the thing that's going to bring you happiness and sense of fulfillment, identity, all of those things. So I just think that's really what I believe in. And same thing as Josh is like, I have this belief that people really are good.

Heidi Packard [00:54:59] There's goodness out there. And yes, we tend to focus on the negative. We see the negative, the negative is out there. There's a lot of evil in the world. There's so much goodness. And as a Mormon, I used to think that goodness was confined to the church. And now that I'm not in the church, I realize it's everywhere and it's amazing. And so we're pretty lucky to be alive at this point living in the world that we live in.

John Dehlin [00:55:26] Well, Heidi, I'm so grateful you reached out to me and that we ended up doing this interview. Heidi and Josh, both of you appreciated your support from afar for many, many years. You know, there are lots of people I think of as just kind of special and you guys count. So thank you for staying connected all these years. Thank you for being willing to be vulnerable and to share your awesome stories and for all you guys have done. I know that your story is going to help a lot of people who are scared, hesitant to take that leap. This isn't about encouraging people to take leaps, but certainly if people feel scared or hesitant, like they can't be happy or can't be healthy, I think your story stands as a great example of health and happiness and thriving after Mormonism. So thank you.

Heidi Packard [00:56:21] You're welcome.

Josh Packard [00:56:22] And thank you, John, for all that you do. Keep doing it.

John Dehlin [00:56:28] As long as people support me, I'm gonna keep doing this. Emily writes, y' all have hijacked, totally hijacked my afternoon. Thanks for sharing your story. It resonates.

Heidi Packard [00:56:41] Sorry, Emily.

John Dehlin [00:56:42] Annie writes, great interview. Very relatable and helpful for believers and ex Mormons. Donna writes, what an amazing podcast. Thank you so much for addressing folks of no religion. I so look forward to your podcasts. Julie writes, thank you for your openness and honesty. A real life story. Very helpful. Bruce writes, thank you, Heidi and Josh. So in addition to thanking you guys, thanks to our listening audience. You guys asked good questions that helped make this more engaging. Thanks to all who tuned in over Facebook. A couple thousand people tuned in over the past three plus hours and of course we're gonna have more people join offline as we share this through Mormon stories and Mormon transitions.

John Dehlin [00:57:21] So, so love to everybody. Gratitude. Thanks for everyone who financially supports Mormon stories and Mormon transitions without your financial support. We couldn't do this. So, please, a 10 or 20 or $100 donation a week, I mean, a month, just really goes far.

John Dehlin [00:57:36] We're a nonprofit. Everything is tax deductible and goes towards the mission of the foundation. Thanks to everyone who makes this possible. And Heidi and Josh, love you guys. Please stay in touch.

Heidi Packard [00:57:46] All right.

Josh Packard [00:57:47] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:57:47] Thank you and all the listeners. Take care. Again, it.

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