Julienna Viegas

Introduction and Personal Background

[00:00:30] I have to say that I am honored to be the visible representation of diversity today. So for a minute, I thought I was the only one in the building. And then I saw. Actually met Kim Lin at the front. You know, she's part of the.

[00:00:56] The organizing crew. And I'm like, I have to come and meet you. There's only two of us in the building, so I'm honored to be here. So I shared my notes with John Dellen a couple of days ago just so he could look. Know what I was talking about. And I wanted some feedback. And he said, you need to take about half of it off. Just take. Take it off, take it off. I'm like, why? He said, well, I'm already going to talk about all of that.

[00:01:27] I was like, okay, I have two days. And then I thought, wait a minute. If John and I had the exact same thoughts about what we were going to share today, that means I don't have to go get a PhD. I'm already smart enough.

[00:01:52] No, I can. I consider John Dillon a great friend. We don't see each other all that much. Last time we saw each other was in Dallas, where I live. And he had the Mormon Transitions Retreat, which I attended, which was awesome.

[00:02:07] There was a lot of crying and a lot of laughing and a lot of singing and a lot of eating and drinking. Not too much drinking, just enough. And I have to give a shout out to the. To the Dallas Area Mormon in Transition, the Demit group, because it's full of awesome people.

[00:02:26] There's a couple here, and we're thriving over there. We're thriving. So I'm really, really excited to be here today. So a couple of weeks ago, when John texted me and said, hey, are you coming to Thrive in November? I said, sure.

[00:02:43] Are you flying me in? He said, sure. Can you talk for a few minutes? And I said, well, obviously I'm here. But then I thought, oh, crap, there's probably going to be a lot of people attending and listening. And I had a short moment of panic attack and thought, what am I going to talk about?

[00:03:04] And then three words came to my mind. I thought, hang in there. Not just for me here today, but I thought about all of us and how we need to hang in there in this life through thick and thin.

[00:03:17] And so in the next few minutes, I will share some thoughts about finding ourselves in phase transition, and I will talk a little bit about the hard things. I will talk about some of the fun things, and I will talk about some of the hopeful things in Phase Transitions.

[00:03:36] So for those of you, the majority of you who haven't heard my Mormon stories From back in 2015, I'm just going to give you a quick recap so you can have a little bit of a context. So my mother joined the Mormon Church in Belgium when I was about four or five years old after two cute young missionaries knocked at her door. And it was kind of the perfect situation. She had just gone through a divorce and she was a bit shaky. She was battling depression at the time. So they came at just the right time. We all know how Mormon missionaries can be. Such sunshine and brighten people's day.

[00:04:12] So she was golden. So she joined. And I grew up in a church, very, very active in Belgium. I went to primary Cub Scout Young Women Seminary, institute, church dances. I worked for the church education system in Belgium before my mission went on multiple temple trips in the Frankfurt Temple in Germany, which was our sign temple at the time.

[00:04:35] And then I came here, right here to Temple Square. I served a mission here. I then went to byu, find my ex husband. We were married in the Salt Lake Temple and stayed very, very active and had many different callings here and abroad up until 2014.

[00:04:56] But going back a little bit to when I was here serving my mission, I was super excited. I was very zealous. Before my mission, I had gone with the missionaries out and knocking on doors. I was very dedicated and I was super excited to come and serve the Lord here. But just four months after I started my mission, something pretty dramatic happened. My brother passed away in Belgium.

[00:05:20] And then it was time to make some real decisions there. He was in his 30s. He had four children. I chose despite myself to stay on my mission. My mission president was very thoughtful. He was very considerate. He told me, sister Villegas, you can go home if you want to. I can get you a plane ticket this afternoon, but I want you to go home and pray about it. I want you to know what the Lord wants you to do. And so I did.

[00:05:50] I went back to my apartment with my companion at the time and I prayed about it. And at the time, I really felt like I needed to stay on my mission. So while my whole family was attending my brother's funeral in Belgium, I was right here mourning on my own.

[00:06:10] And the reason why was because I believed that if I stayed here and served the Lord, he would bless my family. I believe the scriptures that said, let the dead bury their dead. If you don't take your cross upon me and follow me, you're not worthy of me.

[00:06:27] Now do I believe this today? No, I don't. Would it be easier for me to believe this today? It sure will, because then it would justify everything. But I choose also. I mean, it was. It cost me a lot. I have to say that it cost me a lot. My brother left behind four children, my niece, three nephews that I have, and they didn't talk to me for many years. They did not understand why I would abandon them at a time like this when they needed me the most. And so that was the cost.

[00:07:07] Now I don't want to dwell in the past and I'm grateful that what matters most is today. I'm grateful that now I have been able to rebuild these relationships with my niece and my nephews and we are moving forward with the positive that is today. I choose not to blame myself for my past decision. I choose not to blame the church or to not blame anyone because that doesn't help move me forward now. The second thing I want to share with you is of course my faith crisis. The second hard thing in my exit from the LDS Exit from the LDS Church Op ed that I wrote and was published in the Salt Lake Tribune back in 2016.

What a Faith Transition Really Costs

[00:07:55] It's called what I have Learned As I Transition from My Faith. I say a faith transition can be very difficult and painful, often resulting in loss of identity, community, friendships, alienation from loved ones at times. And going through such a transition taught me a great deal about myself, those who genuinely care, my place in the complex world we live in, and the fact that I can be spiritual without being religious.

[00:08:24] Now my ex husband left the church a couple of years before me and I was in complete denial when he chose not to believe in the Mormon Church anymore. I wanted to hear nothing about the reasons why he did not believe anymore. So for those of you who are in mixed faith relationship, I get how tricky it can be.

[00:08:48] Despite it all, we decided to stay together because we decided that our family was more important than the church. He was not the reason why I started my own unbiased research and study about the LDS Church. Rather, it was a friend I met when we were living in Switzerland. She was actually from here, from Utah, and she wasn't attending church. And so I was curious. I started asking her a lot of questions. I wanted to know why she wasn't going to church, it was such a wonderful church, why she couldn't be active.

[00:09:23] And she started telling me about the hurt she had, the pain she had right over here, the negative experience she had had in our ward and feeling unequal. She's A feminist. I'm a feminist. And she couldn't accept that. And so she decided to not go to church anymore.

[00:09:45] I personally think that it is courageous to follow your conscience once you have found and accepted true facts and choose to stand up for your own truth. When I think of people trapped in religion who honor their own truth, I think of people like Malala who got shot for standing against the Taliban. I mean, she survived a shot. I think of people like Carolyn Jessup who fled the FLDS church with all her kids. I think of people like Leah Remini who left Scientology. Tara Westover who turned away from her oppressive, fanatical based religious family. Megan Phelps Roper, who left the Westboro Baptist Church where she was born and raised and where her family had led the community for generations.

[00:10:28] And we have right here Amber Skorra, who, even though she was deep into the Jehovah Witnesses, she found that courage to leave what she knew wasn't right for her. And of course, there are millions of others among you included who will not see their names in print who have made these courageous decisions to leave because of the oppression and injustice that they saw in their former religious communities.

[00:10:56] And as John Dehlin says in his TED Talk, it takes great courage to be on the right side of history before it becomes the norm. The pain of a faith crisis is very real. I know it varies from person to person, but I want to say that I lived it at its most acute level, at the trauma level, really not knowing and understanding what was happening to me with a pain that I can only describe by telling you that I didn't sleep for months. I probably lost around £10 the first week.

[00:11:29] I felt like I had fallen into an abyss, spiraling down fast into a black hole. I think that one has to live that to really fully understand what it feels like. So that was very, very difficult. But I survived.

[00:11:46] Again, I will not go into details about what happened in my faith crisis. If you're interested, you can go and look up that Mormon stories and I tell a bit more about my transitions there. The last hard thing I want to share with you today was my divorce.

[00:12:00] So I got divorced a couple of years ago after being married for 14 years. And leaving the church was not the cause of my divorce. As I explained in the first episode of my own podcast, which is called the Faith Transition Podcast.

[00:12:16] Leaving the church allowed my ex husband and I to be more honest with ourselves and our circumstances. My ex husband and I met at Brigham Young University. We both had grown up, you know, very strong Mormons. He's from pioneer descent. And because the way we were raised, we thought for a long time that our only option would be to just persevere and endure to the end.

[00:12:43] Right. Even though we knew that the marriage was not going to last. And it's only until we stopped believing the tenets of Mormonism that we were able to be really honest with ourselves, we realized that we respected each other, we were friends most of the times, but truly, as a couple, we were miserable.

[00:13:05] Eventually, the tension and despair became too great, and we agreed that it would be better to free each other from a marriage that could not happily last. And we did not want to give our children the example of what a couple should not look like.

[00:13:21] Now. Shortly after we separated, my ex husband came out as gay. Did I know he was gay when I married him? No, I didn't. Did I have my doubts as our marriage progressed? Yes, I did. But you don't tell a person who's gay that they are if they haven't come themselves to that conclusion.

[00:13:43] And some of you probably know that and experience that. And so, especially when you've been raised in a religion where you really are looked down upon and treated just about as if you were a freak in this world, it's very difficult for the LGBTQ people to accept that many times.

[00:14:10] And it took him a long time, it took him our whole marriage and after, to finally come out. And I'm sharing this because I know many people are stuck in this situation, and at some point, you have to be honest with yourself and you have to look inside and really live as your authentic self. Otherwise, it's miserable.

[00:14:31] In the meantime, I had already changed my mind from pretty religious conservative when it came to LGBTQ issues, which I really didn't know anything about, to informing myself and becoming very outspoken about the wrong that had been done in the church toward LGBTQ members.

[00:14:48] And I have to say that one of the articles I wrote, which got published in the Salt Lake Tribune, and for which I'm very proud of, was when the policy regarding children with gay parents being unable to get baptized came out. The title of my article was, Love Did Not Create this LDS Policy and It Won't Survive.

[00:15:19] So you can imagine how I felt when at the beginning of this year, they came out to reverse the policy. And all I have to say is, maybe it's time for a woman to be a prophet. Today, my ex husband and I live six minutes apart from each other, and we share 5050 custody of our children, whom we adore, our children of course had a lot of questions, you know, we patiently answered them and one of the question my youngest, who was seven year old at the time asked is mom, am I gay too?

[00:16:03] And I said I don't know, I don't know and it doesn't matter. I told him, one day you will close your eyes and you will imagine who you want by your side to have your own family. Is it a girl? Is it a boy? I don't know. You will know. And no matter what it is and what you choose, we will love you exactly the same as we do now. But for now, there's nothing to worry about.

[00:16:37] So even though our separation was amicable, my ex husband and I are friends. It wasn't another earthquake in my life. No divorce is easy and it came a bit delayed for me. About six months later, everything crashed down and I was in a really, really bad place.

[00:16:56] I had a really bad depression. But again, I survived. And I have to take a pause and thank my family, my friends in and out of the church who were there for me. Today I am stronger and rebuilding and okay. I promised myself I wouldn't cry.

[00:17:25] I want my children to understand that when life gets hard, gets really rough, we need to hang in there. Because eventually there is brighter days that come. Alright, now let's talk about the fun stuff related to phase transition. Let's switch gear a little bit.

[00:17:42] Now if you're listening at home and you have little kids in the room, I encourage you to put your earphones on or go in a different room. I'm going to go PG 13 here. So in the last article, the very last article I wrote that was published in the Salt Lake Tribune back in 2016, I wrote I jumped off a cliff I was told my entire life to stay away from.

[00:18:08] And I discovered I had wings. I started soaring and the view from where I stand is magnificent as I discover tastes and colors I never knew existed. So what are these tastes and colors I'm talking about? Well, obviously sex, drugs and alcohol, right? I mean, isn't that what all ex Mormon do as soon as they go out? Like they find the wildest party and then have as much drugs and sex and alcohol until they pass out, right?

[00:18:48] Okay, maybe a few do, but we know that's not the case. Although I have to say that even though I don't have alcohol at my home, just because it's a personal choice, I don't care to. If I go to a party, I'm fine having a glass of champagne or a cocktail or you know, have A glass of wine when I go out. I also grew up in Europe where the culture of wine is really big and even in my own family I have the two kinds of experts, the ones who drink too much and the one who actually knew about wine and made it a career.

[00:19:23] So that is something that is very new and exciting to discover as well. Now, speaking of the fun things, if you don't think that the ex Mormon community is fine, you just have to go online a little bit. So don't get lost in there. But you'll see some of these memes and all that is put out there. Sometimes it's better to laugh at things than getting all depressed about it, so I encourage you to go and check it out.

[00:19:50] I want to argue that Post Mormons dominates when it comes to being the most active people online who care about telling the whole world that they left their religion. Do you agree or what? And I think it says something about how much we cared when we were in and I also think that we are leading the way for members of other religions or cults saying that it's okay to leave if you feel like you don't belong there anymore and there is a more authentic version of yourself you can find outside of where you're at now. That said, I do admire progressive members of any faith who stay to make a difference by pushing against the dogmatism and injustices they see around and allowing others to do the same.

[00:20:38] It takes a lot of courage and self sacrifice to remain for that purpose. Now finally, Finally I want to talk about the hopeful things related to face transitions. So the four most common question I get from people transitioning out are these.

Building Community, Identity, and Healthy Habits After Transition

[00:21:01] Where are you at spiritually today? How do you build community? How do you build moral ground for your children? And how do you deal with family and friends who are still in? So I'll quickly share my thoughts on this. I don't know what my time is like.

[00:21:20] Am I okay? Okay, so where am I at spiritually today? I call myself spiritual non religious. I don't fit in any ism. I don't care for walls around me on Sundays. I love nature. So if I can be outside and doing something, that's what I want. Basically for me it's the golden rule.

[00:21:43] Just do good for goodness sake and respect each other. I want to create the type of world that I want to live in and I want to create the type of world that I want my children to live in. So it's very simple. That's all it is for me.

[00:22:00] How do you build community. Now I understand that it's very hard when you've been an orthodox Mormon your whole life. It doesn't matter where in the world I've lived, whether it's Europe, the us, Asia, there is always a pop up community Harry Potter tent, like your Mormon community is right there. You don't have to think everybody's there to help and whatnot. So it's a bit difficult when you don't have that anymore and you have to be more resourceful. But also I found that you got to get out there. I mean we're in 2019, there's absolutely everything out there and luckily I have children so it's easy for me to make friends with some of my children's friends, parents.

[00:22:44] I'm interested in a lot of things so I will seek out people who have the same interest as me. I don't know how many group me groups I'm attached to even though I haven't gone to anything. But I'm like, I want to do this, I want to dance, I want to do salsa, I want to sing. And then I know it's out there. And because I'm busy, I'm also dating, I have a boyfriend and we like to discover things, including each other. So I'm busy enough. Right, But I'll tell you that, but just get out there. And I know it's hard for introvert people, but if you feel alone, don't wait for people to come to you.

[00:23:20] Go seek out people who have the same interest. What about the moral ground for my children, that's also been interesting because in the Mormon church everything is already pre packed and they go to primary. Your life is pretty much arranged from the moment you're born until you die. You know, every step. So with the children, again, be good, be respectful. What I have found that was very helpful was this philosophy book for children that I found online that basically teach children how to think critically, ask a lot of questions. They don't have to take anything I say for granted. They don't have to take anything they hear for granted.

[00:24:00] But I encourage them to do research and to find out for themselves and I'll ask their questions to the best of my ability. But. And it's working. I can see now that it's already working. They are great thinkers and they know how to make decisions and just. Yeah, teach them how to, teach them the basics to be good, treat each other kindly and learn how to think for themselves. Ask a lot of questions.

[00:24:26] And last, how do you deal with family and friends who are still members of the church. Well, I would say just ask them, can I be your favorite apostate? You know, just be direct with them. They love you.

[00:24:43] Just, can I be a favorite apostate? I actually said that to. I had lunch with two of my very, very good friends here, very active members of the church who live in Alpine. I had lunch with them yesterday and I said, can I be your favorite apostate? Because they asked me why you're here. And we're standing and I'm like, well, let's see, sit down and I'll explain why I'm here, all the way from Texas. And I'm like, well, I'm here to help people who are transitioning out of the church because it's painful. And, you know, they were respectful and I was respectful. We were able to have a very, a good conversation.

[00:25:17] But I think we need to let go of a lot of our fears. If people don't ask, maybe don't tell, but if they ask, be honest, be honest. I think boundaries are important too. I have a lot of very active members around me in Texas from, you know, my ex husband, family.

[00:25:34] And when I get triggered, I just say it. I'm like, all right, this topic right here is triggering. I'm going to leave the room. You know, I don't say anything more, but I think it gets people thinking a little bit.

[00:25:47] So just set boundaries. I know that when I was first at the beginning of my faith crisis, I was not, how do you say, I was not very good at that. I shouted. I wanted everyone to know what I was thinking and feeling and I wanted to shove all my knowledge in everyone's throat.

[00:26:09] Not a good technique. So just be respectful and have your own boundaries. Now just to end, I want to give you quickly just nine habits that have helped me as I transition and keep helping me. These are some things I do to help me on a day to day to just find that balance. And I won't go deep into it. I'll talk about it on my podcast if you're more interested. But first I will say meditation.

[00:26:42] Meditation has been a great, great tool in my whole transition and still in my life today. Exercise and sleep. For people who are prone to depression, anxiety, panic attacks like me, exercise and sleep has done wonder. Eating healthy. I have my 80, 20 rule. 80% of the time you eat well. 20% of the time you eat whatever you want. If you stick to that, you should be good.

[00:27:05] Continuous learning, of course, and discovering things. We live in a beautiful world so don't ever stop learning and discovering great and safe sex. I will say, Natasha, I'm with you. Sex is super important. Safe sex, hobbies, you know, find what makes you thrive and feel alive and do these things.

[00:27:26] Maintaining great relationship with family and friends. Service, you don't have to be a part of a faith. I go and serve in some church in the area. I don't have to believe what they believe. But if there is a service activity that I can take my children to, I'm happy to do that. And gratitude, because that may sound cliche, but when we're grateful for what we have, we recognize that it's a chance and a privilege to be alive.

[00:27:50] We treat our lives a little bit differently. A quick note on that. When I went to Bali a couple of years ago, I got a tattoo in old Balinese that's spelled sukhsma in their language and it means thank you. But the way they interpret thank you is more like namaste, and they say it with a bow and it goes very, very deep. And that thank you means I'm grateful to be alive today. And so having that tattoo just reminds me that, especially after going through really rough times.

[00:28:24] So I want to ask you to just, you know, keep discovering yourself, embrace your journey. I think all of us here understand that we are the master of our fate and the captains of our souls. Whether you are progressing through a phase transition or not, I encourage you all to develop your best self with no fear, no shame, and no guilt. Thank you.

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