Introduction to the Ten Things To Do List

Britt Hartley [00:00:00] This is going to be a good to do list for you to hopefully take away and say, not only are there things to avoid, but these are the things that tend to help people go through the deconstruction process. A lot of these things I did the wrong way or wish I would have done better, and it's part of my story and I just hoped that it helped someone on their deconstruction path. I think I would have done better in my deconstruction if earlier on I would have been more okay with, I don't know, claim a chapter of grief and anger. Anger is an emotion that tells us there's a boundary that's been violated. And if you were raised in Mormonism, that has happened to you thousands of times. Dark nights of the soul and Fowler's level of faith, midlife crisis, it's a very common human thing to go through. It's so scary and disorienting. But when you feel like, oh, a lot of people deconstruct whatever their reality from childhood was, and then they move forward and you can actually get language for it and models for it and words for it, it helps you feel like, I'm not the only one who's thought this or gone through this or in this situation. And then it can help you feel like, oh, that's happening to me and it's going to be okay. And it can just give you a level of confidence in your deconstruction. The easiest part of a Mormon deconstruction is going and doing the church history dive. That's the easiest part. The real work is how do you decult your brain that has been wired for cults? How do you do that? How do you rebuild? It's not a rejection of Mormonism to take up your handcart and move forward. Actually a great homage to our ancestry if we take what was good and hold on to one another's hands and point out the pitfalls along the way that we can avoid. I have hope that what is ahead is better than what we are leaving behind, especially for our children. They need us to not just leave religion. They need us to create something better in its place. Otherwise, what was it all for?

John Dehlin [00:01:53] Top 10 things you should do when you're experiencing a faith or a Mormon or religious deconstruction. My name is John Dehlin. Welcome to Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm here with my co host and some people don't know my wife, Margi Delin. Hey, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:09] Hi there.

John Dehlin [00:02:09] Every once in a while we get a comment. I had no idea. That Margi. You and Margi were married. Margi, we are married. Is that true?

Margi Dehlin [00:02:17] That is true.

John Dehlin [00:02:18] Yeah. Anyway, today we're going to be having back for part two of this series, the one, the only, Britt Hartley. Hey, Britt.

Britt Hartley [00:02:29] Hey. Good to.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:30] Good to be back.

John Dehlin [00:02:30] Britt. Not Brooke, right?

Britt Hartley [00:02:32] Britt.

John Dehlin [00:02:33] To be clear, the book is no nonsense spirituality. That's also Britt's Instagram channel and YouTube channel and tick Tock channel. We had her on months ago to talk about her own Mormon faith experience and post Mormon journey. And also to promote this amazing book which many of you bought, which sent Brooke and her family to Harry Potter land. I said, brooke,

Britt Hartley [00:03:00] it's okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:01] It's okay.

Britt Hartley [00:03:02] Why do I. I don't even really know a brook. It's so fun. It's so fun.

John Dehlin [00:03:06] I'm not gonna stop.

Britt Hartley [00:03:08] Everyone who purchased the book helped to take my family to Harry Potter land. So, yeah, keep buying the book so that I could maybe take them to the Florida one.

John Dehlin [00:03:17] We just did. Top 10 things to not do when you're experiencing a faith or religious or Mormon deconstruction. And now we're for the positive stuff. How to build a big, bright, beautiful life. When you feel like you want to die, basically. Is that right? When you feel like there's no hope and no meaning and no purpose and you've lost all friends, family, and your marriage is in jeopardy, what are 10 things you should do? Yeah, things just got dark and serious.

Britt Hartley [00:03:46] Yeah. But this is going to be good. This is going to be.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:48] Be a.

Britt Hartley [00:03:49] Be a good to do list for you to hopefully take away and say, not only are there things to avoid, but these are the things that tend to help people go through the deconstruction process. So today won't be as much about spiritual reconstruction, which is kind of its own beast. And honestly, if you wanted, like, my favorite book on spiritual reconstruction, it would be the book that I wrote. And so, you know, and that's when you go into, like, how to really rebuild your spirituality. But before we do that, I wanted to talk about things that I'm seeing from my clients where, where they're in more of the deconstruction phase. What are the things that they're doing that tends to help them really go through that phase? Maybe a little bit smoother or with less regret or the things that they, you know, most valued that they did during that time. So I really want to focus on just kind of that deconstruction space. What are the things that my clients are doing? That are really paying off for them.

John Dehlin [00:04:45] I love it. Let's jump in.

Leaning Into Healthy Anger and Grief

Britt Hartley [00:04:46] All right, ready? Number one is a healthy anger and grief phase. So a lot of the emails that I get from people who want to do coaching will. It'll start with something like this. I feel angry. I don't want to be another one of those angry, bitter ex Mormons. How do I not be angry?

Margi Dehlin [00:05:04] Right?

Britt Hartley [00:05:05] And it's that question. And so my response to that is lean into the anger. That's the only way to kind of go through this. And so there's a little bit of a stigma, especially as we're coming from Mormonism, and we haven't made peace with the emotion of anger yet anyway, where we want to kind of skip that phase, or we don't want to be one of those people because we've, you know, you. You maybe know someone who was very angry in their phase and kind of bleeding that out onto everyone. And so people will want to skip that phase. But the. The people in my coaching who tend to do this really well are ones who just kind of claim a chapter of grief and anger. Now, that doesn't mean necessarily that we need to project that onto other.

John Dehlin [00:05:48] Punch everybody.

Britt Hartley [00:05:49] We don't need to punch everybody in the face or, you know, we don't need to do things that cause harm to relationships that you may want to come back to at some point. But if we can claim a healthy grief and anger phase, anger is an emotion that tells us there's a boundary that's been violated. And if you were raised in Mormonism, that has happened to you thousands of times. Thousands of times in Mormonism, you had some kind of autonomy or some kind of boundary that was violated. And so you need to be able to be angry at that. And underneath that anger is also grief. There's a lot of people that I know who want to skip right into reconstruction, and they haven't yet had the funeral. This is especially true if God dies. Like, if God dies as part of your religious deconstruction, then you need to have a funeral for all the things that died. When God dies. When God dies, ultimate justice can die. Truth can die with God. Community, identity, sense of self. There's a lot of things that can die in that process. And so sometimes it almost feels like people are coming to me saying, what are all the books? It's like if someone lost a child and asked you, what are the 10 best books on grief? But they skipped the funeral. It's like, you can read all the books on grief. You can read all the books on how to, you know, live your life after a child dies, but if you don't attend the funeral, you're just going to be reading these books for forever because you haven't felt your feelings. And so kind of just claiming that, like right now, I just give myself permission to be grieving.

Margi Dehlin [00:07:25] Right.

Britt Hartley [00:07:25] I give myself permission to be angry. I'm going to try to not have that anger burn bridges that I may want later.

John Dehlin [00:07:34] What does it mean to lean into your anger without yelling at people and punching people?

Britt Hartley [00:07:39] Write out all the things that sucked. Like, I remember one time for me, it was like, especially when God died, it was a little bit less so for Mormonism, but I wrote out all the ways that the universe should not have been like this. There should not be this much needless suffering. It should not have created me smart enough to ask questions that don't have an answer. And I burned it in a fire and I screamed fuck you at the universe. And I cried. And I did that for a night. And it was extraordinarily helpful. We need to do those things. And so there are rituals, things like writing or talking things out or crying or screaming or going into a rage room with some girls and talking about the patriarchy and blowing shit up. You need to find some way to allow this emotion to process through your body, or else you're just pushing that off. The longer you push that down, the longer it's your. It's going to need. The longer that you'll be kind of stuck there before you can actually feel like that emotion has left my body. I'm ready to reconstruct. I'm ready to see what that looks like. And so a lot of people, they don't want to be an angry, bitter ex Mormon. And so they're trying to repress that for a long time. And that actually makes that chapter last longer rather than shorter.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:56] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:08:57] So good friends, good partners, good coaches, good therapists.

Britt Hartley [00:09:00] Yeah. And rituals, too. Ways to get your body involved in. In the processing it. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:09:07] Because you can punch just not people.

Britt Hartley [00:09:09] Yeah. Try not. Try not to punch people. But. But definitely say what needs to be said and grieve what needs to be grieved. For sure.

Margi Dehlin [00:09:16] Yeah. I think for many of us too, that fear of. And that idea of like expressing anger automatically hurts people is so. It can be so wired in from whether it's our family systems and watching how people processed anger or. So I think it's so interesting that comes up where it needs to be said that you can process anger.

Britt Hartley [00:09:42] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:09:42] Without actually hurting people.

Britt Hartley [00:09:44] Yeah, yeah. And that's. That can sometimes be an entirely new emotion for us because we've repressed anger for so long because it's not an emotion that's okay to feel. So not on. Not only do you have to feel this thing that's new, but also it's going to be very strong because especially for women, much of my coaching is attending the funeral of the woman who never got to be because she started a life before she knew who she was.

Margi Dehlin [00:10:11] That's right.

Britt Hartley [00:10:12] And a lot of my coaching is just being a witness to that funeral and just allowing them to be sad about that. We need to mourn the life that you didn't get to live before we can talk about building a life based on where we are now. But we have to attend that funeral. And like you said, John, because Mormonism is more built for men. That tends to be something that I do with women more. But yeah, we need to make space for those things. And the people who do kind of just claim that chapter, they tend to be able to go through that a little bit faster and easier than people who are trying to repress that for longer.

Margi Dehlin [00:10:48] Yeah. And what I love about that is that it feels like that process of identifying what it is we feel angry about, where we have felt violated, where we feel like our boundaries have been crossed as well as that grief part of the mourning is that many times those are the seeds for reconstruction. Like without that process of knowing, you know, where our boundaries were. First of all, we don't have that insight to build the next kind of thing or what we grieve what, what we wanted and what was not able to be in a past self without actually going through that process.

Britt Hartley [00:11:29] Right.

Margi Dehlin [00:11:29] It's. It's kind of that it really is rich germination for the next thing.

Britt Hartley [00:11:35] And I talk about it that way. I talk it about it as a forest fire. Like anger is a forest fire that burns things that shouldn't be there. And that's what it's for. And so if we try to limit that, we're going to limit that new growth that comes post fire. And so the things that you grieve are also is information that we're going to need for the, the reconstruction because it'll point to what do you value or what did you miss or what did you wish you have? And now we have some seeds to work with.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:06] Yeah, yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:12:06] But we have to, we have to let it burn. We gotta be angry. We have to claim that as an emotion and a chapter too.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:13] Yep.

Britt Hartley [00:12:14] Yep. All right, Next one is embracing I don't know. And I think sometimes Mormons struggle with this more than other people who deconstruct, because we're so built on this is the capital T, truth. And so then this is how you build your life. And that's just how our brain works. And so a lot of us are really uncomfortable at the beginning of just not knowing. And so we can sometimes, you know, give our autonomy to other people who claim that they know when really the best thing that we can do to make peace, the best we can do with not knowing is not just try to find the truth. It's actually becoming comfortable with. I don't know. So the coaching clients that I have that embraced I don't know earlier on tended to do a lot better because they didn't need to know things. They could just explore. They could be curious. I don't need certain things to be true. I don't need to know. I've made peace with not knowing, and now I can just explore. And if I learn something, great, and if I change my mind, great. And that tends to be a much healthier process than the person like me. And this is one where it was like, I'm the model of what not to do. I spent another 15 years after my Mormon faith crisis trying in Christian theology school, trying to figure out what was true. And even though there's. There's benefits to that, and I don't really regret that I would have. I think I would have done better in my deconstruction if earlier on I would have been more okay with. I don't know. But that came a lot later for me, and I think I struggled a little bit because that came later on for me. The people who do that earlier on tend to do better in their deconstruction.

Embracing Uncertainty and Sitting With Not Knowing

Margi Dehlin [00:13:58] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:13:59] I'm curious about. You guys did, like, who moved into. I don't. Being comfortable with, I don't know, sooner after you deconstructed.

John Dehlin [00:14:08] So do you want to go first?

Margi Dehlin [00:14:10] I feel like I moved there pretty quickly. I think you did too, with, I don't know. And I think part of that was because of the nature of how deconstruction works. And I am a bit of a stability person seeker. So I went hard on the rituals, but I really, I have to say, noticed how I engaged with the world differently when I did not know. And I liked it. I liked the idea of being curious and allowing for some mystery and. And kind of living a question for a While, and I know that's not true for everyone. I did have stabilizing factors. I have a lot of routines and rituals, and I still feel like I'm there. I still feel like I walk with a lot of. I don't knows.

Britt Hartley [00:15:07] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:07] Right now.

John Dehlin [00:15:08] Yeah. I been reading my journal from middle school and high school. I never knew. I never knew. And I was always trying to obtain the knowledge, and I was always frustrated that I wasn't receiving the witness to the point where I did what the church told me to do. And just, I just made the conscious decision to start saying I knew when I didn't. And I was just not listening to myself because so much of the church never felt right from the beginning.

Britt Hartley [00:15:39] And I, for you, was like, I don't know, easier because you could just reclaim what was already there for you.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:44] I think was, like, honest.

John Dehlin [00:15:46] I think so, yeah. It was a relief I felt. Believing that this was the one true church and that we were better than everybody was a burden for me. It was. So many people love it. They're like, oh, I love certainty. That's the hardest thing to give up is knowing that I'm the best, knowing that I know everything. For me, it was always a burden because I'm like, there's a lot of smart people around here that seem to be very good, and they're not anywhere near Mormon. And by the way, Mormons seem to know everything, but. But if you scratch on the surface, they kind of don't know very much sometimes. So anyway, I, I, there's a lot of people who miss that certainty. And all I can say is it was never real. You know, it's like I'm reminded by Noah Rachetta's groundlessness episode where he talks about, you know, we're always falling. We all thought that we were standing on solid ground, but the truth is we're always falling. And it's more about a conscious embracing conscious fall that's kind of endless.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:54] Yeah. And I mean, I want to fill out my answer. Like, I do feel like there was part of me that I was able to see how differently I engaged the world. And it felt like a reminder of when I was younger, how I viewed the world. But there was a lot of pain there too. Like, it was definitely a broken open feeling. Like you were broken open and feeling very. I described it like a snail without a shell, where all of your soft parts are just kind of. So I would say it was an exercise of polarity, great pain, but also finding, like, the process of it. I really connected to when you tapped

Britt Hartley [00:17:36] into, like, your inner child curiosity and openness. For me, my, my process with this one was, I think, harder than, than both of those because I had identity around being right. So when I was a Mormon, I tried to do it the right way. And when I was a nuanced Christian, it was like, no, this, this is what Christianity is. And I have, I have some apologetics in my past. And so I had an identity around being someone who was either right or a truth seeker. And so that part of me had to die. And that was very painful for me. And I see that because a lot of times people, people who go through a Mormon deconstruction are truth seekers because they're digging through the history, and so it's a value to them. Sometimes I see people who kind of have to die in that process. You have to. That part of your ego that's attached to being someone who knows, knows things will have to die. So for me, like, if I'm a true seeker, but we're not interacting with ultimate reality and maybe there's no truth, then what am I? And that was very difficult for me, but that's because I had more identity wrapped around that.

John Dehlin [00:18:44] Where's your knowingness in terms of atheism these days?

Britt Hartley [00:18:49] Yeah, it's pretty hard to say that you're a nas. A gnostic atheist. Most atheists are agnostic.

John Dehlin [00:18:57] How about just confidence in your atheism?

Britt Hartley [00:18:59] Yeah, that's a good question because it goes back to my brain always thinking that it's right.

John Dehlin [00:19:06] Yep.

Britt Hartley [00:19:07] And it's a, it's a, it's a pattern there for sure, for me. For me, I don't have any confidence in the fact that I've looked out into the universe and I know that there's no God. I'm an atheist, but not an atheist. I don't, I don't know how life began in this universe. I don't know if there's a creator. I'm, I'm very, I very don't know that kind of thing. But my atheism is different because it's grounded in. I got so good at knowing what kinds of cultures create what kinds of gods and what kind of people create what kinds of gods, that it's difficult for me to see a personal God, a theistic God, as anything more than figments of our, of our own mind. So I'm, I'm a little bit more willing to put some chips down on my atheism in that way, in the sense that, that I just See such strong evidence that we're the ones who create gods. Especially after studying this for so long and working with people and beliefs in God for so long. But as far as, like, if you take a step out into the universe, that's where I would just, like, I don't know what consciousness is. I don't know how life began. I don't know anything. But I know a little bit about human nature. So I'm willing to put a little bit of my chips on. On atheism. Yeah, I like it, but, yeah, I still have that tendency, John. It's true, but I know it's there. And that's, you know, that's. We got to work with those things.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:33] The awareness. Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:20:34] Yeah. All right, next one on my list is dating yourself. So to be in religion means you have to shut down certain parts of you, certain emotions, certain dreams, sexuality, lots of things in order to put on a mask to be a good member of the community. For women and queer people, this is amplified because you have to repress a lot more because the box is smaller and requires more contorting. And so I'm reminded of this show, Parks and Rec, where Ann realizes that when she's dating, she gets sucked into the personality type of each of the people that she's dating. And so after a breakup, she starts dating herself. And so she'll go on a menu, you know, she'll go out to dinner, and she'll just order something for the part of her that wants to know what this tastes like or do I like this? And so I think having a season where you date yourself can be. Can be really healthy. The ones who take that season seriously are ones who are building a foundation for then their reconstruction.

Dating Yourself and Rebuilding Your Identity

John Dehlin [00:21:38] So date yourself.

Britt Hartley [00:21:40] Date yourself.

John Dehlin [00:21:41] No. Is that kind of a know thyself kind of thing?

Britt Hartley [00:21:44] Kind of. But it's like, do all the personality type testing. Do the enneagram and the big five and spiral dynamics and like, really, what. What do you do if you're in a city by yourself for a day? My husband and I started doing this when we were deconstructing where if one of us were on a trip, we would extend it a day because we really don't know. Didn't know because we were married so young, we didn't know what we would do with a day to ourselves. Like, what. What does your body do when you have an open day in a new city? What does it do? Yeah, like most of us who got married at 19, like me, and have never been alone ever. I've never, I've never lived alone. I've never to this day have not lived alone. And so it was actually like an exercise of like, like, what do you do when you are by yourself? Because we. I went from being raised in a Mormon home to having six roommates at byu, Idaho to then being with my husband and then having children. I actually had no idea what I do with a day to myself. I've never had that before.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:50] That's right.

Britt Hartley [00:22:50] And so taking that season seriously of like, I need to get some sense of who and what I am and doing all the, doing all the personality typing, trying new things, seeing what resonates and what doesn't, that tends to be when people really take that season seriously. I really see them have such a strong foundation for just like a really beautiful reconstruction because they have a sense of who they are and what they value, which is going to be really important for things like how do you connect? How do you like to spend your time? What do you want to do with your life? What do you value? How are you going to. What's the meaning and purpose of your life? We can't move on to those reconstruction things if you have no idea who you are. And so really you have to go on a first date with yourself.

Margi Dehlin [00:23:38] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:23:39] Like, and rebuild that connection with yourself. You don't move in with yourself. You don't move in with someone on a first date. And. And so we have to actually rebuild that relationship with yourself from the beginning. And. And I would actually recommend doing a season of that before you start doing reconstruction things because your reconstruction is going to be really messy if you're trying to build things on this foundation that you just don't have.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:04] Right. That's right.

John Dehlin [00:24:06] I remember when we used to do retreats, I used to always quote Jesus. The. The kingdom of God is within. And that means the journey is moving from that extrinsic source of authority to being driven from within. And that requires you first to do that self exploration and obtain that self knowledge.

Britt Hartley [00:24:27] Yeah. And it's, it's a hard shift for us who are raised Mormon because we're very external, we're very checklist oriented. I will get clients who will. They're essentially asking me for a checklist of how to do inner work. And it's like you're kind of missing the point here. And so yeah, we have to. There are things that we can, there are tools that can help, but we definitely need to get better at that eye looking within.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:52] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:24:53] And we don't, we don't have that skill coming right out of Mormonism. None of us do.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:56] That's right.

Britt Hartley [00:24:57] None of us know how to do that.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:58] That's right. I really like the idea too, of this structural support of allowing yourself to be alone in a city. Because I think sometimes that in relationship to where we're always kind of gauging what our partner is experiencing or how our children feel about it, or when that's what we're used to, when we haven't lived alone, we haven't actually. I think it can be. It gives you just structural support where it actually allows you to be with yourself and not have the competing interests of considering all those other people, which I think can be really helpful in the beginning because I think for many of us, who we live with or if we're in relationship to people, that. That brain thing that we do of considering other people or what's best for the whole or. And then trying to do. Reorient to ourselves into that.

Britt Hartley [00:25:56] Yeah, it's going to be loud.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:57] Yeah. Because a lot of competing.

Britt Hartley [00:25:59] Yes, yes. And. And true for me, too. I. I think I was like 35 by the time that I. I don't know if I said this somewhere in. In this talk, but I think I was 35 by the time I ordered the kind of pizza that I liked without concern that my kids will have to pick off things. Do you know what I mean? Because it was just so natural, especially as women, especially when we get married young, that we're just going to whatever the loudest voice is, we're just going to adjust to that. And it's going to be really hard to. To reconstruct who you are if you only know who you are in relationship to us.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:35] Exactly.

Britt Hartley [00:26:35] And so, yeah, we have to claim a chapter there of like, actually, what pizza do I want? And I had never, my whole life, never really asked that. I just. Whatever, you know, whatever you want. Whatever, whatever. But I like pepperoni and peppers and pineapple. I didn't know that I liked that, but that's what I like. And I ordered it and it was just like this little tiny gift to myself.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:00] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:27:00] That I had never given myself before. Because we become, especially as women, you know, just in relationship to others, and we're not a person. And if you're not a person, how can you even talk about what your meaning and purpose is going to be when we start reconstructing if you're not even really a person yet? And so the people, the clients that I have, that really take a chapter to just Say, I'm just going to kind of quiet voices for a little bit because I need to. I need to date myself a really big. Build a strong foundation for reconstruction.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:31] That's right. And just to call it, like, make it a little bit more practical for people who maybe can't do a day in the city alone. But that could be a walk alone. That could be an afternoon. That could be time in your room journaling. That can be where you're claiming space and intentionalizing. Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:27:51] Or even just that, asking yourself the question of, what do I. What do I want to do today?

Margi Dehlin [00:27:57] That's right.

Britt Hartley [00:27:58] And sometimes you only have five minutes. Like, I. I've had young children before where that's all you have. But. But any way that you can claim just that little bit of, like, I'm dating myself tends to really pay off.

Margi Dehlin [00:28:10] And let yourself have preferences.

Britt Hartley [00:28:13] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:28:13] Let yourself actually have needs. That's what actually.

Britt Hartley [00:28:17] And this is where we get a difference between men in deconstruction and women in deconstruction. Because men will need to realize that they're not the center of the universe, and they'll have to go through that journey, whereas women need to actually learn how to center themselves. And so that looks different. That looks different. And it's something I talk about a lot because there's a lot of male spiritual leaders out there that really talk hard, talk a lot, and really belabor the point that you need to kill your ego. And I can't tell you it's. It's probably thousands of women now, if I were to go through my messages who tell me that they left religion, they spent a few years under some meditation guru trying to kill their ego. It wasn't working. They thought that they were. There was something wrong with them and that they were broken, but they didn't know. No one told them.

Margi Dehlin [00:29:03] You're.

Britt Hartley [00:29:04] You're trying to kill an ego that you never developed. You're on the other side of this ego work. And then their. Their guru or their teacher didn't know enough about kind of seeing other paths that they just thought that their path would work for everyone. And they spend years there just feeling broken. Why can't I kill my ego? And it's like, you. You don't have one. You've never. You've never centered yourself, ever. What are we trying to kill here? You need to actually grow your voice and grow your space. And this is true of men who didn't feel like they were the leadership in the patriarchy. This is true of men, too. And Queer people. But, but if you were never able to center yourself, that's, that's more of your spiritual path.

Margi Dehlin [00:29:47] Yeah, that makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:29:49] Thanks.

Britt Hartley [00:29:49] Thoughts, John? Anything?

John Dehlin [00:29:52] I love it. Yeah.

Inner Child Work and Shadow Work

Britt Hartley [00:29:54] All right, next one is inner child work. And this is part of like dating yourself and reintegrating yourself. So I have yet to not recommend inner child work for anyone recovering from religion. I just seems to always be necessary. So inner child work is when you go back and re parent yourself and become the parent that you needed at key ages of your development. And the reason that it's so helpful is because no matter who you are, your parents were not perfect. And the church is your third parent who also wasn't perfect. And we're essentially using the brain to be able to heal itself. And so because the brain doesn't know what's real and not real, like I could imagine an argument with my spouse and actually get angry in my body, our brain doesn't, does isn't a good gauge of what's real and not real. We're actually going to use that for our advantage by going back to these key ages. What did you need to say at this age? What did you need to hear at this age? And you become the parent that you needed. And it's an incredibly healing, it's an incredibly healing process. It really does a lot for self worth and self love and self understanding and really feeling like you have your own back. And even for something like narcissism, like true narcissism, narcissists don't make a lot of progress in therapy. It's tough, right? But we have found, there are some studies that are showing that the only thing that has made an effect on narcissistic personality disorder is to go back and heal the child who had to put on that personality to survive. And if you could go back and rewire that, you can actually make progress with a narcissistic personality disorder in therapy. So it's an incredibly powerful brain tool to be able to go back, back to these key ages and heal things that were healed. So for me, I wrote At 5 years old, I needed to hear that my emotions were okay to share and that none of my emotions made me bad. At 8, I needed to be able to voice my concerns that I wanted to die right after my baptism so that I would go to heaven. And I never got to say that out loud. At 12, I needed to hear that as eldest daughter, I was allowed to be a kid and didn't have to be second mother. At 15, I needed to Hear that sex didn't make me a licked cupcake and that I was not fundamentally broken at 16, I needed to. I needed to say that kicking me out of the house and making me visibly not take the sacrament in my uncle's ward was wrapped in so much shame that it was wrong, and it was wrong for them to do that. There were so many things that I deserved to hear and so many things to say that were unsaid. To claim those parts of me and say what I needed to hear allowed those wounds to heal. And it allowed me to love my imperfect parents as they are because I became the parent and home that I needed. And so I think this is good for everyone. This is something I recommend to the majority of my clients, honestly, because it can be such powerful work.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:54] I so am with you, with that. And I love how you have kind of that chronology of you kind of becoming and what you needed. And I think there are just so many ways too, we can do this, whether noticing in a moment that we're being triggered by something and there's a story connected to it, like this. This can happen with your children. This can happen with a spouse where in a moment you realize you're actually connecting to a. A belief about yourself that was given to you.

Britt Hartley [00:33:26] Right.

Margi Dehlin [00:33:27] And you can re parent in that moment. Right. When you're. When you're really experiencing, I think, a lot of distress. I just. There are so many ways to do it. I think a lot of ifs or parts work.

Britt Hartley [00:33:40] Absolutely. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:33:41] Is reparenting where you actually.

John Dehlin [00:33:42] Will you tell people what ifs stands for?

Margi Dehlin [00:33:45] It's. It stands for internal family systems work where basically you're from. You familiarize with different parts of yourself. Oftentimes they were born very young. They are birthed out of this idea of trying to allow you to survive. It's not like a conscious thing that you do. It's something that just kind of happened where you surmised that you did not have what it. What you needed as yourself to survive. And so you create these different parts to you that then enable or allow for you to survive. And I think that's been really powerful for me.

Britt Hartley [00:34:27] It's so powerful because we can thank that part of us too. Right. Like an empath who allows people to maybe step over their boundaries too much. We can actually go back and say, why did you develop the skill where you needed to get the emotional temperature of every room you walked in? Why?

Margi Dehlin [00:34:45] And when. Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:34:47] And when.

Margi Dehlin [00:34:47] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:34:48] And we can actually thank that little you for developing that skill. Because it helped you stay safe in and maybe an environment that was really unsafe. The majority of empaths have some kind of like unstable emotional parent where they had to learn the skill. Right. And so rather than just working on, oh, we need to work on your boundaries, it's like, yes, but that will be so much more powerful if we can talk to the root of why you develop that skill in the first place and why it's showing up this way in the world. So, like, even something like imposter syndrome, like a lot of women have, have imposter syndrome and it's like, well, why do, why do women have imposter syndrome and men seem to not. And it's like, well, we have to go back and talk to the 5 year old US where someone told us, you're being too loud, you're being too much. And we actually need, you know, so your imposter syndrome work, you can work on it at a surface level or you can go back to the child who was told that she was too much and heal that. And then the imposter syndrome kind of tends to go away on its own. Because you've healed that.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:50] That's right. It's like the root.

Britt Hartley [00:35:51] It's the root. Yeah. And I think parts work does this. I think inner child work does this. We have to go to some of these routes. Otherwise we're just kind of like playing whack a mole at the surface rather than becoming the parent and home that we needed. And then, and then once we do that root work, it's less whack a mole, it's just much more connected in your kind of internal brain and it's just a nicer way to live in your brain. So for me, like, I just don't, I don't feel, when I talk about my parents and some of their shortcomings, I don't feel any grief, I don't feel any anger, I don't feel any disappointment in my parents. I'm, I feel like I'm just able to love them so much more because I finished the parenting that they were unable to do because they're people and they had their own journeys and own stories.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:38] And I think there's such power in that too, because I think many times without that, you're waiting on people, right,

Britt Hartley [00:36:46] to heal things or choosing partners. Right. Choosing a partner in order to finish trying to get love from your dad or trying to get love from your mom.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:55] They have a lot of the characteristics.

Britt Hartley [00:36:57] It's the root of what's going on with you. And I just have yet to not recommend it to people in religion. Just because you have to suppress so much of, of who you are when you're in a high demand religion.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:09] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:37:11] Okay, so the next one is shadow work. And I usually do this kind of alongside inner child work. And again, it's one of those things with clients that I have yet to not recommend to people because this is one area, there's some areas where religion does really well. This is one area where religion does very poorly. And so essentially what it is is evolutionarily we have selfish traits to feed ourselves and we have social traits that helps keep our tribe alive. We have both. Evolution gives us both selfish traits and social traits. Religion labels the social traits good and the selfish traits evil. But both are just a natural part of human nature. And so when you're raised in religion, your shadow is highly, highly repressed. And we can't even start to integrate that part of ourselves until we've met them and have compassion for the part of ourselves that we're most ashamed of. And with Mormonism, we have a lot of shame. And so for me, what that looked like personally is I had a lot of shame for the, for the years where my children were very young. I had violent, intrusive thoughts. And every time my husband left the house with my kids in the car, I'd have very vivid imaginations about them driving off of a cliff. And it was so shameful. And I couldn't tell anyone because, like, motherhood is supposed to be this thing and I'm having these thoughts, these violent thoughts. And I'm a pacifist. I've never had these kinds of thoughts before. Yeah, it was just drenched in shame. I didn't tell anybody. And then you wonder why, like, you know, pop psychology affirmations, looking in the mirror telling you, you know, I love you, and looking in the mirror. I felt nothing when I tried any of that kind of affirmation work. Because there's a part of your brain saying, like, you're ashamed of me. Like, I'm not going to resonate with this at all because you won't even look at me. And so for me, what that looked like is a lot of shadow work with, with the thoughts that I had when I was, you know, a mother of young children and actually being able to be compassionate to that side of me that I didn't choose to have those thoughts. I didn't choose what happened to my brain when I'm that sleep deprived. And we're finding more and more that postpartum rage or postpartum depression is far more common than we thought it was because we're able to talk about these things. And so I'm able to talk about it now with just like no shame. I have no shame saying these things out loud that are not very. It's not a nice thing to say. Right. But it's because I've done shadow work and I just don't shame the parts of me that are human. That this is something that happens to women's brains when we are that sleep deprived and when we are struggling that much with. With young children. And I know now I said this in, in the talk that I gave, that if I were to give this talk at thrive and I was to have everyone write down the thought that they have that they're most ashamed of, there'd be some really dark things on that list if I were to read it. Everybody has a shadow because there are, there are selfish traits that we have and parts of us that it's not socially acceptable to show to others, but they're human. And there's a great well of self love and even creativity that can come when you make peace with the parts of you that religion tried to shame. And that is a process that, you know, the, the shadow work being whole, this is something that religion does really poorly because they really repress your shadow side. And so it's something that has to be reclaimed so that you have a kind of wholeness. And this is something like. There's a lot of parts of deconstruction that are hard and maybe sometimes your life gets harder. Like, like having to raise your kids outside of religion can feel harder. But doing shadow and inner child work post religion, the kind of wholeness that you get, you did not have that at that level in a high demand religion. It's just really not possible to be honest. Honest.

Margi Dehlin [00:41:24] Right. Yeah. Let's just.

Britt Hartley [00:41:26] Yeah. This is one thing that like gets better for everyone. Like just the wholeness of being able to just be human in all the ways that you're human.

Margi Dehlin [00:41:34] Yes. Be integrated as opposed to.

Britt Hartley [00:41:36] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:41:37] So if you were going to describe the process you described a little bit of inner child work, what that can look like the root and the. I mean, how would you describe. And maybe that's hard to do, but like how would you describe the process of shadow work with a particular thing?

Britt Hartley [00:41:55] Yeah. So we just want to. First we want to meet that part of ourselves because sometimes it's so repressed we won't even look at that part of themselves. So first we have to meet that part of themselves, and then we have to find some way to show compassion to that part of ourselves. So one that I. So one that I recommend is maybe even just writing down on one side of the paper the thoughts that you have that give you the most shame that you would be most afraid. Like, if people could hear your thoughts all day, every day, what would be the thoughts that you have that I see you would be most embarrassed that other people would know? Write those down. And then on the other side of the paper, what if, if this was your child or a best friend saying this, what would you say? So for me, on my piece of paper, it was something like, your brain has gone insane because you are so sleep deprived. It's gonna be okay. This does not mean that you're a bad mom and a bad person.

Margi Dehlin [00:42:50] Right?

Britt Hartley [00:42:51] And so you're actually. So some people will go on walks and talk to that part of themselves. Sometimes you write to that part of themselves. Some people do artwork to express that part of themselves. Some people do this through sexuality, like just being able to allow themselves to say, in a safe sexual relationship. I really like this and kind of claim that that's shadow stuff. Sex stuff is all shadow stuff. So some people do this like through their kind of sexual journey. So there's lots of ways, but really we just need to meet the part of you that you'd be most ashamed for others to find out about. And then is there a way that we can interact with that part of you to not shame that part of you? Now, that doesn't mean that, like, if you have very violent thoughts that you're just going to do them. And so some people have a fear that if I validate these thoughts, I'm going to do this them, when actually the, the evidence is that it's the opposite. If you can integrate that part of you, then actually you're less likely to be driven by your shadow. And because you bring it into the light and you bring it into relationship with all the other parts of you, it's actually less likely to influence your behavior if it's an integrated shadow, if it's a repressed shadow, that's when people like do something just. It just like bubbles up and it'll just, just pop open in a very unhealthy way.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:11] Got it.

Britt Hartley [00:44:12] And so actually, actually giving compassion to your shadow makes it less likely that the things that really are like, could cause harm in the world would be reduced rather than increased because it's integrated with the Rest of you, repressed shadows are the most dangerous.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:31] Yeah. Okay, that's good.

Deculting and Releasing Programmed Thinking

Britt Hartley [00:44:35] Okay, Next one is decolding. So decolting is a lot more than just walking out of a building. Our brains are wired for cults. We look for leaders. We look to find someone who sells us a path. To prefer simplicity over complexity. We like to create in and out groups. The most vulnerable time for joining a cult is actually when you just left one. Probably the one that I see the most is people who were conservative when they were Mormon and then kind of which is it's okay to like, change your political values or your political stance, but there is. If you don't know that the political left can act like a cult, then you're in a cult. And so we need to be aware of.

John Dehlin [00:45:18] And the right.

Britt Hartley [00:45:19] And the right. Yeah, and the right. But you know it when you see it in Mormonism and you see it in Trump and you see it in all these other things. If you don't even know that that can happen with the left too, then you've gotten sucked in too far.

John Dehlin [00:45:32] Are.

Britt Hartley [00:45:32] And you don't recognize the way that the left can act like a cult, or you're not recognizing the way that whatever you find yourself in is acting like a cult too. And so we don't just want to decult from Mormonism. We want to decult in general. I want to not ever give my autonomy to someone else. I want to watch when my brain is preferring simplicity over complexity. I want to watch when my brain is trying to make in and out groups. I want to be able to watch all of that and not just deconstruct from Mormonism, but kind of decold my brain in general.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:05] Right.

Britt Hartley [00:46:06] And sometimes we forget that that's part of the deconstruction process too. The easiest part of a Mormon deconstruction is going and doing the church history dive. That's the easiest part. The real work is how do you decult your brain that has been wired for cults? How do you do that? How do you rebuild? That's the hard stuff.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:26] The easiest.

Britt Hartley [00:46:27] Like we. We like to say the Mormon deconstruction, like, is mostly just like doing a church history dive. That is just the tip of the ice of what your deconstruction is. That's the easy part.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:37] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:46:38] And that part's hard. That part's hard. Learning things that you didn't know about your church and feeling like you're lied to, that's hard. But compared to everything else is actually the easiest part.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:46] Right.

Britt Hartley [00:46:47] We need to be honest about that.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:46:50] Only thing I take issue with there is you said the second, you said the. The most vulnerable time to fall into a cold is when you've just got out of one. I'd say the most vulnerable time, Time to join a cult is when you're a child raised in it. The second would be.

Britt Hartley [00:47:05] Yeah, we can do.

Margi Dehlin [00:47:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:06] When you're coming out of it.

Britt Hartley [00:47:07] Yeah, for sure. For sure. It's something that I've been saying Stephen Hassan, but it's Stephen Hassan, and that is just hard for my brain. But it's something that he says, so take it up with him.

John Dehlin [00:47:21] But.

Britt Hartley [00:47:21] Yeah, no, I think you're right on that.

Margi Dehlin [00:47:24] All right.

John Dehlin [00:47:24] And I think. I think I found out I. I'd survey. I don't know. You weren't able to attend my Thrive presentation, but actually, this is just off the rails a tiny bit. But I surveyed the Thrive audience. How many voted for Trump? How many voted for Biden?

Britt Hartley [00:47:37] I'm so curious.

John Dehlin [00:47:38] A fourth of the Thrive audience voted for Trump. There's this assumption that by, I think, liberal ex Mormons, that all ex Mormons are kind of liberal.

Britt Hartley [00:47:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:48] And then that's not true. Yeah. And so we have to be really careful, number one, to not assume that we're all one side or the other. But two, like you said, to think that the other guys are cults, but you're not. In one. I think there's a cult of liberalism that's as real as a cult of

Britt Hartley [00:48:06] conservatism somehow with Trump, because it's more central to a person, it's a little bit more visible. And so people will not know the authoritarian ways that the left can act. Things like that.

John Dehlin [00:48:18] An ideology can be as cult. As much of a cult leader as.

Britt Hartley [00:48:22] And there are times where it's. You'll pay more of a social cost to say something on the left than you would if you said something unpopular on the right anyway. And I think some. Some liberal ex Mormons kind of don't see that at first because they only see kind of the side that they're coming from.

John Dehlin [00:48:40] And we just want every. I know why you're thinking. We just want everyone to feel comfortable and welcome on Mormon stories. We. There's no one political way.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:48] Right.

John Dehlin [00:48:48] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:48:49] I had something to say there, but I lost. It must be. It's stupor of thought. Must not be true.

John Dehlin [00:48:53] True.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:54] That's.

Britt Hartley [00:48:54] That's what DNC says. It's a stupor of thought. Whenever I was stupid. Stupor of thought. I could say, well, Must not be true. So that's a. That's a deep cut Mormon joke.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:04] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:49:05] Oh, no, I do remember. So I used. This is something I've changed my mind on recently. I used to think that people who swing to the left when they deconstruct religion is because it's like reactionary.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:17] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:49:18] And what we're finding in the data is the opposite. The people who deconstruct religion and start to swing to the left already had values of the political left, but they were masked by religion. And so it's actually not a reactionary swing. It's actually what they always were as far as their political values.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:40] That's so different.

Britt Hartley [00:49:41] And then I thought it was more of like a trigger reaction that, like, I was over here and, you know, political values of the right are things like authority and loyalty and purity. And if you're having a faith crisis, then you're having issues with those in general. And so maybe we swing to the other side, but we're. What we're finding is that the people who are deconstructing already leaned left in their political values, but they took on kind of the values of conservative religion as they were raised in it. But it actually wasn't their political values. Many of them, Many of them, not all of them. And so. So this swing to the left is that maybe they were actually already there. And. And because your political values are much deeper than. Than just your faith crisis that goes into your core values.

Margi Dehlin [00:50:30] Yeah, that's fascinating.

Britt Hartley [00:50:32] So I thought it was people changing, but it's actually people discovering more than changing, which I was wrong about. I was wrong about that one. All right, next one is vulnerably reaching out to others. There is no secular community that is as tight knit as Mormonism. It may not be possible without dogma, myth, and money. We sometimes wish that there was just a me hole in some community perfectly built that you could just walk into, but that does not exist. So the people who are doing well in replacing community are people who just have learned how to lead with vulnerability. The Boise group that we started in Boise 10 years ago now, it started when one friend of mine came to me and said, I need this. I need new friends. I need people to talk to about this. I don't have this. Could we, like, meet in my home once a month? I want. Or once a week or once a month or whatever it was, because I just feel like I need this. And it was that moment of vulnerability from her that built an entire kind of community of post Mormons in Boise. But without that moment, it would have just fizzled. We met at a Thomas McConkey retreat in Boise. And because she had that moment of vulnerability of just like, I'm not going to pretend that I have a lot of friends and that I'm popular, I'm actually just going to put my mask down and say, I need to, I need to talk to somebody about this. Can I please take you out for a cup of coffee? Do you want to come over? Whatever. The people who are doing that tend to replace their community pretty quickly.

Practicing Vulnerability and Building Real Connection

Margi Dehlin [00:52:03] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:52:04] And now it's to the point like when I was first leaving Mormonism, every single friend that I had was Mormon. I didn't know anyone outside of Mormonism. And it was very scary and it's very daunting. It's very hard, scary to do with kids. But when I got better at just leaning with vulnerability, I feel like now I have more friends than I have time for, honestly, like more people that I care about than I have time for because I just got better at learning how to just put down my mask and be human. And when you do that and invite other people into that place, you can build relationships so quickly. You can rebuild your community to the point that when my daughter fell out of a window, a two story window, a few years ago ago, if that would have happened right after I left Mormonism, to be honest, I would have gone back to my Mormon ward and said, I need, I need dinners, I need help. Because I would have been so resourceless outside of Mormonism, I would have just gone back to my Mormon ward. Like I'm being honest, that's what I would have done. But because I had kind of built this, this post Mormon community and real friends that really knew my kids, I had dinners, I had babysitters, I had gofundmes. Like I was so well support and taken care of during a time when, you know, my daughter spent six months, six weeks in the ICU for a traumatic brain injury. And I was so well taken care of, but only because it had been a couple years since I had left the church and had rebuilt community. And if I didn't have that, I would have, I would have gone back just, just for the resources because my family was struggling.

Margi Dehlin [00:53:41] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:53:41] And we have to do that with vulnerability. You have to get better at just taking off your mask and hey, you, I really, I'm interested in your thoughts on things. I'd love to take you out for. I'd love to take you out to coffee sometime. It's vulnerable. It's hard, it's awkward, it's weird. But the better you, the more comfortable. The people who I see who get comfortable with that sooner, like, tend to within a year or two, have a really bustling social community. Because we need that. We can't. We really don't do well without that in every aspect of our lives. Lives. Even just your longevity, like, will be affected if you don't replace your Mormon community.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:19] Yeah. That really makes me think of the work of Brene Brown. I think she's done a lot of work around.

Britt Hartley [00:54:25] She's done a lot there.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:26] Vulnerability. And this reminds me of a deconditioning of its own sort with regard to. At least I'll speak for me, but I feel like within the realm of perfectionism in Mormonism, it's very much like, I'm feeling fine. How are you? Fine.

Britt Hartley [00:54:41] Yeah, Good.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:41] I'm good.

Britt Hartley [00:54:42] And we all want to. We all serve each other. And nobody asks for to be served. Right. Because we want to be the ones giving the service.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:49] That's right. And so this can be something that takes. What would I say is effortful for people to actually get comfortable leading with. But it's. I feel like there's an invisibility in. I'm fine. I'm good. I'm good. You know, we never know each other. We never actually see what's real. Real about each other. And so that vulnerability, in many ways, is us actually being made real and visible to another.

Britt Hartley [00:55:18] For me, what that looked like is it was really hard for me at first to feel like I was taking people's time as a woman. That just felt very off limits to me.

Margi Dehlin [00:55:27] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:55:27] And so I had to push myself. I think I was listening to Brene Brown at the time, but I pushed myself to just call someone and say. Say, could I just have 10 minutes of your time? I just want to talk through something. Can you give me a call when you get a second? I hated that. That felt like torture in my body. In from my Mormon woman body. Like, we don't ask people for their time. Like that just felt so selfish.

Margi Dehlin [00:55:53] Yes.

Britt Hartley [00:55:53] Like that. Yeah. We don't have needs. It felt selfish. It actually felt wrong to my body, which is one of those, like, sometimes you're gonna bump up against things where like. Like you've been so conditioned that your response isn't even really a natural response anymore. But I got better at. At. I miss you. I'd love to see you.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:13] Love that.

Britt Hartley [00:56:14] Could I. Could I steal a night from you? And. And it's not even A selfish way, but it's. It's more just I'm establishing relationships where it's okay that I need people, and then they know that I open the door, that it's okay that they need me.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:27] That's right.

Britt Hartley [00:56:28] And that's a whole different level of relationship. My relationship now outside of Mormonism are so much deeper because of that. Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:56:37] I. I'm. I think guys also don't feel comfortable

Britt Hartley [00:56:41] saying, yeah, this might be harder for guys.

John Dehlin [00:56:43] Yeah. And I want to share something hard in my body. I feel those same things.

Britt Hartley [00:56:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:56:49] I don't want to be a burden to somebody. I don't want to put my stuff on somebody else.

Britt Hartley [00:56:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:56:53] So I. I don't. I don't normally do that.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:56] Yeah, you've done work on that. I feel. Feel in your relationships, which is great.

Britt Hartley [00:57:00] There are some things that, you know, we talk about women and queer people in the church, that this is going to be harder or this is going to take longer. But as far as, like, in social situations, being vulnerable, I think this is one where I have to admit it's more socially acceptable for me to call a girlfriend than for my husband to call one of his guy friends and say, I'm struggling.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:19] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:57:19] And. And so even though it's hard for me, it's more socially acceptable for me to do. And we're finding that men are really struggling outside us of church and religion because for many of our men who are finding themselves leaving Mormonism, there is no socially acceptable place for them to cry. Where at church they could cry. They could even get attention for crying. Right. Because that's their sensitive side. There's nothing. There's nothing like that in the secular world. Right. Or sing together or to serve each other or to have an elders quorum where you talk about what it's like to be a husband and a father.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:55] Father.

Britt Hartley [00:57:56] My husband's having a hard time replacing some of those things, whereas I've had. Even though it's hard for me, I've had an easier time of it compared to feeling like what's socially acceptable for him and breaking through those things. So I think this is one where we can admit it's harder to be a man on this one.

John Dehlin [00:58:14] Aren't suicide completions, like, three times more prevalent amongst men than women? I know there's reasons for that. Lots of reasons, but I think this is one of the reasons.

Britt Hartley [00:58:23] Yeah. And it's this place where, with the male loneliness epidemic, that sometimes it's hard for women to be empathetic.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:34] No.

Britt Hartley [00:58:34] I know. I know.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:35] This is work of Brene Brown, too. It's sticky.

Britt Hartley [00:58:37] It's sticky because there's a part of me that wants to recognize that there are ways that men are doing worse outside of religion than women are. And sometimes it feels hard as a woman to know that men created the world. And then to have men come to us and say, we're lonely, and it's like, I know, but I didn't.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:02] We didn't.

Britt Hartley [00:59:03] We didn't create the world this way. It's kind of like you guys did. Like, you guys were the ones who told each other that, like, what you make and how much money you have and peacocking with each other. Like, you. You all did that with each other. You guys called each other gay when, you know, you were being affectionate or. Or being kind or sweet or whatever. And so sometimes it feels like, I can't.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:21] I can't.

Britt Hartley [00:59:22] I can't save you one from what you guys did to each other.

John Dehlin [00:59:25] But remember that free will thing you said earlier?

Britt Hartley [00:59:27] I know, I know.

John Dehlin [00:59:28] You forget that. I do, because we just had dominoes. We all have dominoes. Yeah, we're all just responding to the dominoes.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:36] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:59:37] No, that's.

John Dehlin [00:59:37] Is that true or is that not true?

Britt Hartley [00:59:39] No, it's true.

John Dehlin [00:59:39] Do you believe it or not really believe it?

Margi Dehlin [00:59:41] No, I do.

Britt Hartley [00:59:41] I do believe it.

John Dehlin [00:59:42] Because you had a lot of force in that way, that little monologue you just did. But the truth is, yeah, we're all. It's. We're all swimming in the heart. We all are.

Britt Hartley [00:59:53] Yeah. And there. There could even be, like, biological underlays to all of this. We know, for example, from studies that, like, when women sit with each other, they face each other, and we look into each other's eyes, and men tend to connect better when they're looking at something because it's less competitive. So there may even be, like, biological underlays to some of the things that we're talking about and free will things. But, yeah, it's something that. All I can say there is. I don't think. Even though there is a male loneliness epidemic, and sometimes it is harder. I don't think it's women's job to save them. You know what I mean? I think it's something that men are going to have to find a. Men are going to have to. Yeah, men are going to have to learn how to be vulnerable and learn how to ask someone out to dinner and to talk, and women can't do all of that emotional labor for men.

John Dehlin [01:00:45] And I wasn't asking you.

Britt Hartley [01:00:45] No, I know you're not.

John Dehlin [01:00:46] I was just saying us too.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:47] That's all.

Britt Hartley [01:00:48] Yeah, no, no, for sure, for sure.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:50] The.

Britt Hartley [01:00:50] The honest thing. Like if I'm going to be vulnerable and honest here for as much as we talk about how hard it is to be women in the church, whenever I ask a woman who's really like gone through a lot of patriarchy, like she's really unpacked patriarchy and mourned and grieved, achieved what it is to be a woman, if I ask her, would she rather be a man, more often than not, the answer is no, because there's just a depth to. To. To women into female relationships where even though patriarchy is hard, I wouldn't want. I wouldn't want to trade my female friendships for male friendships. And that's like sometimes we got to be honest about that side too. Anyway, that was a tangent. I don't know where I am now. All right, next one is exploring human development. So steps into the unknown are really scary. It can feel like you're doing it wrong and it can get very busy in your head. I know I spent years trying to figure out should I take my kids to church or not. And I spent years just kind of like stuck there. But doing any kind of human development model dive is when I've seen clients best be able to walk their path of growth more confidently. So whether that's the Enneagram, ifs spiral dynamics, nine levels of intelligence is a new favorite. One of mine. Fowler's levels of faith, heroine's journey, hero's journey, mythology, whatever it is.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:13] If.

Britt Hartley [01:02:14] If you are gathering tools for what healthy human development looks like, I see people be able to kind of walk their path of growth more confidently with a little bit less self doubt and busyness in their own brain. And so I just recommend like deep dives into some of those just models of what. What healthy human development looks like.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:35] Interesting. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. And is that part of. Is that in part because it's curiosity and kind of data gathering, filling in kind of on a basic level even yourself. Like a lot of those like Enneagram or the they kind of poison point toward self understanding. Like you kind of having a sense. Is that the value?

Britt Hartley [01:03:02] Yeah. And a lot of it is just knowing that you're not the only person. You know what I mean? Like if you feel like if you never did a dive into dark nights of the soul and Fowler's level of faith and ways that or midlife crisis, like it's a very common human thing to go through.

Margi Dehlin [01:03:19] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:03:20] But if you feel like you're the only one.

Margi Dehlin [01:03:22] Got it.

Britt Hartley [01:03:22] It's so scary and disorienting. But when you feel like, oh, a lot of people deconstruct whatever their reality from childhood was, and then they move forward. And that moving forward looks like a lot more complexity. And you can actually get language for it and models for it and words for it. It helps you feel like I'm not the only one who's thought this or gone through this or in this situation. And then it can help you kind of walk more confidently. But, like, if I was the only person who'd ever gone through a Mormon faith crisis, I'd feel a lot more like, self judgmental. Like, why is no one else has gone through this. I'm totally alone. That's how I felt. Like. Like it was so early. As far as Mormon deconstruction goes. I really thought I was the only one who was attending church. Not believing.

Margi Dehlin [01:04:06] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:04:07] And of course, I was not even close to being the only person. But that's how it felt because I just didn't have any language or models or understanding of what human development looks like. It was just me, Me and my kind of immediate family because it was a little bit, you know, more pre Internet, so.

Margi Dehlin [01:04:25] I see.

Britt Hartley [01:04:26] So it can just give you more confidence that, like, what you're going through, people have gone through before. And here's what it looks like and here's what different stages of life looks like. And then it can help you feel like, oh, that's happening to me and it's going to be okay. And it can just give you a level of confidence in your deconstruction.

Margi Dehlin [01:04:44] Yeah. And will you just briefly list like, a few of your favorites? That was a long list, but, like a few of your favorites of that list.

Britt Hartley [01:04:51] I really love Enneagram. I love spiral dynamics. Nine levels of intelligence. There's this YouTube video that does a really good job on. On it. I think the video is Homath is what the channel is.

John Dehlin [01:05:04] We actually did a Mormon Stories episode on Spiral Dynamics.

Britt Hartley [01:05:07] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:07] For Julia to put in the show notes.

Britt Hartley [01:05:09] Okay. Yeah. Fowler's levels of faith. I also really like the hero's journey and the heroine's journey because everybody goes on both of those. And they're different.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:19] And they're different.

Britt Hartley [01:05:19] And they're different. Yeah. The heroine's journey continues where the hero's journey ends. And that's just more balance of what we call our masculine and what we call our Feminine, which is kind of part of it. Ifs and parts work. I would kind of put in there Big five people have or. Or Myers Briggs, some of these personality things. A lot of people have different opinions on those. I just see them as, as tools. Just, just, just check it out, see what's there. Big five, help me. Because if you're high in introversion and high in neuroticism, your brain is going to suffer more. And if you are high in extroversion and low in neuroticism, you tend to be happier just as a brain state. That was helpful for me to know, oh, why am I such a moody emo person? Why am I so neurotic? Or why am I. Why do I ruminate on dark things more than other people do? And it was like, oh, there's actually a model to show that you can show human happiness based on, on extroversion minus neuroticism. And that was, that was just helpful. I could, I could do a lot more self acceptance for like why I tend towards the melancholy more than other people do. I didn't, I didn't always know why and then. But enneagram all these things. Help me understand what I am and then help me leaned into my gifts. There are gifts to being the most melancholy of my friends. It means when they're going through something hard and dark, I'm the person they call. This is why I do nihilism coaching. It's the gift that I have to offer the world. And there's also a cost, like any other personality type.

Margi Dehlin [01:06:54] That's right.

Britt Hartley [01:06:54] So knowing that about yourself helps you to lean into your gifts but also be aware of the costs too.

Margi Dehlin [01:07:00] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:07:00] So all of that just tends to be just so helpful for just being able to walk your path a little bit more confidently because you feel like you're not the only person in the world who's going through whatever you're going through. So helpful.

John Dehlin [01:07:13] I'd put another vote in for Richard Rohr and the book Falling Upward because it's only two stages. First half of life, second half of life. But the faith crisis is not a Mormon thing. It's a human thing and it's not just a religious thing.

Britt Hartley [01:07:27] I would also. Yeah, I would also recommend Brian McLaren does a book. Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. Someone will in the comments will post what it is, but it talks about this spiral that we do that we move from simplicity to complexity to perplexity to harmony. And we just keep doing that over and over. So there's lots of different models. Like, there are lots of different words to put to this. It's a subtle thing. So there's lots of models, colors, numbers, words. But digging into that can just help you be able to just feel like there is a path of growth here. Even though it feels very scary and it feels like I've never gone through this before, it can just give you. You give you a lot of language to just be able to walk more confidently.

Margi Dehlin [01:08:13] Yeah, that's great.

Setting Boundaries From a Place of Love

Britt Hartley [01:08:15] All right, next one is boundaries from a place of love. My clients who are doing this have much better relationships than my clients who don't do this. So this would be. Sometimes we will hold boundaries to punish people or to try to change their behavior. When boundaries are done healthily, it is. Is what is the distance or boundary I need between you and me for me to love you unconditionally with my whole heart. Now, if it's a serial killer, I need some jail bars in between you and me. And then I can listen to your documentary and your story and have some compassion that you were dealt a really rough hand in life. I can even maybe see that, maybe feel some compassion there.

Margi Dehlin [01:08:58] Right.

Britt Hartley [01:08:58] But I'm going to need some pretty heavy boundaries because. Because of, you know, some choices that you've made. And so what we want to do with boundaries is do it something like that. What is the. What are the boundaries that I need to be able to love this person, not to change their behavior and not to punish them? Because I'm seeing sometimes on both sides of this Mormon spectrum that we're putting boundaries on each other. And sometimes it's to manipulate each other, to punish each other, to say, I don't like it when you did this, so I'm not going to go to the baptism. And now they're hurt. And it's all. It's really just. Just asking yourself, what is the distance that I need to fully and unconditionally love this person?

Margi Dehlin [01:09:36] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:09:36] And when my clients go into boundaries like that, they tend to have better relationships than the ones who are using boundaries more to manipulate or punish.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:46] Right?

Britt Hartley [01:09:46] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:47] That's very key and I think understanding to the language for many people, even they don't know what a boundary even sounds like. Like, how do you do that? What does it sound like? So there can be, like a learning curve as well as to just the language aspect.

Britt Hartley [01:10:08] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:10:08] And also sometimes feeling. There are times, I think, where boundaries, you know, there can be, what would I say, like, a gravity to them. There's a power to them. There could Be a time and place for that. They don't always have to be. They can also feel very loving, like, oh, I'm not really comfortable actually sharing that. And yeah, anyway, it's even and even

Britt Hartley [01:10:32] just accepting that even with your boundary, do not expect that people will change. If you, if people don't change in your family system, what are the boundaries that you're going to need to love these people?

Margi Dehlin [01:10:43] Right.

Britt Hartley [01:10:44] So for me and my family system as I, as I got better at this and stopped kind of pouring. The hard thing that we get into in these Mormon relationships is the person who went through the faith deconstruction is a black hole need of validation. And the person who is more in is just playing defense because you're attacking things that are very sacred to them and their identity and their belongings. So their ego's job is to play defense. And these two people cannot connect to each other. If you have a black hole need of validation and someone playing defense, both these people, even if they deeply love each other, will not be able to see each other or connect to each other. And so we have to do better with our boundaries of what do I need to love you fully? And then how can we connect human to human? So there are many people in my family system who have never asked me about my book, have no idea about why I deconstructed from Mormonism. It's a boundary for them, but we were able to navigate that. I can still connect with humans are more than they're just beliefs. So there are some people who have no access to this part of my life life. And that's okay because I'm not pouring my validation needs onto them. And they have a boundary that they've set. And now underneath that boundary, we can connect human to human and our kids can play together and I can ask how they're doing and we can. I, I still have deep love for these people and clients that I have that are able to do that in their family systems tend to be able to keep their relationships better than people who are using boundaries to kind of force their family dynamic to change. Change. And it may not. It may not.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:20] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:12:22] So there's, there's a learning curve there for sure.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:25] Intention. Yeah, intention to find a boundary.

Britt Hartley [01:12:28] I'll still do intentions. I'll still walk into a Thanksgiving dinner and say to myself, like I'm going to find ways to put out kind of platforms of vulnerability to invite people to meet me as a human here. And I'll go in with that intention. And when I do that My. My family relationships are a lot better, even though. Though most of them, you know, on my husband's side where. Where I live in Boise. Still. Still active. Don't talk about it, but deep love, you know, between us.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:58] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:12:58] And. And that tends to be better.

Margi Dehlin [01:13:01] Are there particular books or. I think Boundaries is a whole world and I think it can feel very new for people, particularly in the deconstruction kind of. Do you have.

Britt Hartley [01:13:14] Yeah, my go to. One of my go to. I have a few go to. In fact, I'll list some here. My go to for like thought work, boundary work, imposter syndrome. Just getting into the system of your brain and changing your thoughts is Carl Lowenthal. She has a podcast called unfuck your brain and she's a Harvard grad and she specializes in particularly women deconstructing from patriarchy at the level of the brain. I find her fantastic. And then for shadow work and various parts of your psyche, there's a podcast called this union life where they go into union archetype work with stories and mythology. Both those two are. Are I. I tend to recommend a lot.

Margi Dehlin [01:13:57] I really like the work of Nedra Tawab. She has a book called set boundaries, find peace. She's a therapist as well. She has another one, another book called Drama Free Free that I think is great at not only talking about boundaries, the root and. And the intention behind boundaries, family systems work, but also a real. Like a lot of kind of scripts and language situations. So yeah, just some helpful resources. Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:14:29] It's good to get in there and start tinkering your own with your own brain and get your brain working for you rather than against you. And that's been a very empowering process. Yeah, absolutely. All right, last one on the list. And this is the one. This is one that we. I think we can say that we collectively struggle with as. As a post Mormon community learning how to just be. We are busy little bees from a deseret beehive and we take that with us for long. After leaving Mormonism. It was another 10 years after Mormonism before I could really deconstruct hustle, culture, productivity and leveling up in the list of should goods. So I'm a spiritual director. So I had this voice in my brain for years. I should be taking ice baths. I should be doing two hour meditations. I should be able to sit in a full lotus pose. I remember stretching for like I have. I have a bad knee and so one of my knees can go down and one can't. And this really Bothered me because I felt like if I'm a spiritual teacher in person, I should be able to sit in a full lotus pose. Why was I doing this to myself? I don't even know. I should be on retreat. I should know everything about this or that. It took me a long time to learn the art of being, the art of enjoying pleasure for the sake of pleasure, the art of sitting on my porch and doing the wordle for no reason at all. To prioritize, rest, to relearn, how to play, to reconnect to my body and what feels good. For Mormons, this is like climbing Mount Everest. There's a reason that post Mormons get a lot done. We run podcasts, we do events. We're quite busy even after religion. And some of that I think is fantastic and meaningful. But I wonder if some of that is because we still haven't learned how to be. The clients who I have, who recognize this and reprioritize pleasure earlier on in their deconstruction journey and rest and play and just how to be, tend to enjoy that for longer. For me, that was like 10 years after my Mormon deconstruction, before I learned how to just be. And so the clients, the clients that learn that earlier on in their deconstruction tend to enjoy life for longer than those of us who still find ourselves hustling with a list of shoulds which can last for a long time after our deconstruction.

Reclaiming Pleasure and Finding Meaning

Margi Dehlin [01:16:42] Yeah, I really love that. I feel like oftentimes pleasure can be talked about in a way that it is, I don't know, the icing, I mean, like kind of non essential and. And you're kind of lucky and. And I think particularly with grief work, I think pleasure is such a key part of grief work because it kind of balances out some of the heavier themes and it reminds us why we want to live.

Britt Hartley [01:17:17] Right.

Margi Dehlin [01:17:18] Like, those reminders are key.

Britt Hartley [01:17:20] It was like, it seems so silly to talk about now, but it was a huge shift years ago when I looked at my calendar and before I put on anything else, I put on a few things in the month where I was prioritizing pleasure. Like, I'm gonna go play pickleball with this group of friends. I want. I'm gonna podcast with this person and I put on the calendar first. What do I actually look forward to in this month? Because usually it's last, especially as women, especially as mothers, usually that's last. It's an icing on the cake once in a long time, if you can get everything else Done first, like Cinderella. Like, you can go to the ball if you get all your chores done first.

Margi Dehlin [01:17:53] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:17:53] And then you look back and say, I actually didn't enjoy my life at all. And so this is something that the clients who I see learn that earlier on just enjoy life so much more because they've learned how to reprioritize pleasure. And not in just a hedonistic way, like, I'm just gonna go do cocaine all day, but actually, like, what actually do I enjoy doing at the level of experience? And how can I prioritize that in my life before everything else? You know, time and, you know, we'll just take that away. And that's. That's when we end up on the death. On our deathbed, with regret. Regrets that. I wish I would have done that more.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:29] That's right. And would you say rest? Rest can fall into this as well.

Britt Hartley [01:18:33] Yeah. Rest, play, pleasure. These are things that we've. We've limited. We have some even shame around. And then we have whole hustle culture around. We have perfectionism around it. All the layers.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:44] Right.

Britt Hartley [01:18:44] We have all the layers. And the ones who I see who really break through those layers just fundamentally enjoy life for so much longer.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:53] That's right. Right. That's right. No more endure.

Britt Hartley [01:18:56] Right. No more endure to the end. Yeah. And that can. That's really powerful. So this is how I. I want to. I want to say how I ended it. What I hope for this community is that we take up our hand carts again. Our pioneer ancestors took what was valuable to them and walked into the unknown. That blood still pumps in our veins. It's not a rejection of Mormonism to take up your handcart and move forward. It's actually a great homage to our ancestry ministry. What I hope is that we pack our hand carts with the things from our Mormon past that had value. That we take the wisdom and insight to recognize that religion is never all good or all bad. If we take what was good and hold on to one another's hands and point out the pitfalls along the way that we can avoid, I have hope that what is better, that what is ahead is better than what we are leaving behind, especially for our children. They need us to not just leave religion. They need us to create something better in its place. Place. Otherwise, what was it all for? So that's how I ended that talk.

Margi Dehlin [01:19:54] That is good.

Britt Hartley [01:19:55] And I still call it a talk. What. What. What do people call these things? It's not a sermon message. I'll forever call it a talk. It's A talk.

Margi Dehlin [01:20:04] It's a talk.

Britt Hartley [01:20:06] It's what? What. What else would you. I don't know. I don't even know how to say that. I'm just going to keep calling it a talk. A keynote. Oh, that. I don't know. Feels so businessy.

Margi Dehlin [01:20:15] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:20:15] That feels business. Like an abyss.

Margi Dehlin [01:20:17] Business. Yeah. Any terms? Speech, I guess.

Britt Hartley [01:20:21] Speech. I don't know. It still feels more comfortable.

Margi Dehlin [01:20:25] I'm not sure we have a word.

John Dehlin [01:20:26] Keynote.

Britt Hartley [01:20:27] Yeah. That's it. That's all she wrote.

John Dehlin [01:20:31] Love it.

Britt Hartley [01:20:31] Those are just from what I'm seeing in my practice, 10 things to be aware of. 10 things that I'm seeing clients doing that are really serving them. And I hope that helps your deconstruction where you. Wherever you are, because we can't see. Skip all of the work that needs to be done in that deconstruction phase before we can even talk about what reconstruction looks like. It's. It's a chapter that can't be skipped. And so these are things. A lot of these things I did the wrong way or wish I would have done better. And it's part of my story and I just hoped that it would have helped someone who was at thrive and now here on Mormon Stories, hopes that it's some. That it helps someone on their deconstruction path.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:10] Yes. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of that insight and sharing.

Britt Hartley [01:21:14] Yeah, my pleasure.

John Dehlin [01:21:16] So how do people find all your things? Just remind them.

Britt Hartley [01:21:19] Yeah, no nonsense. Spirituality is just kind of my tagline for everything. I spend a lot of time on. On TikTok. I'm trying to get into YouTube more and I will be talking with Rhett and Link next week. If you know them on. On YouTube. He had a very public. Rhett had a very public deconstruction. So I'll be talking with him there and then I'll be talking with John Vervake, who's an expert in the meaning crisis Intuitive. Two weeks and then in three weeks I will be going on Soul Boom with Rainn Wilson.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:45] Oh, wow.

Britt Hartley [01:21:45] Who plays Dwight Schrute in the office and doing a lot of spiritual stuff.

John Dehlin [01:21:48] Now

Britt Hartley [01:21:51] I don't have a secretary or a wife. It's just me. But I'm super. I. I'm super excited for. Yeah. The podcast lineup that I have coming up. And then I always take my summers off with. With my kids and it's just me and my. She shed doing my thing. I love having these conversations with people and hope I can represent the post Mormon community well when I start going on these bigger podcasts, which is very scary but exciting for me. So I appreciate everybody's support.

Margi Dehlin [01:22:20] We're grateful for you.

John Dehlin [01:22:21] Yeah, well, thanks so much, Britt, for coming on. The book is no nonsense spirituality. Please buy it. Lots of copies for you and your friends and family. Check out her stuff. Subscribe to all her channels channels and that helps them grow. And while you're at it, subscribe if and like this episode, if you don't mind, that will help the algorithm send it out far and wide. We're super grateful you're so loved and valued in this community and I, I

Closing Thoughts and Supporting the Show

Britt Hartley [01:22:52] hope people will will donate monthly to Mormon Stories. Like I said earlier, we like to think that when we leave tithing that we just get 10% of our income back. But really what that money should go towards is, is replacements for your children for the things that we're leaving behind, but also the voices that you most want to hear. If we want. You know, we in the ex Mormon community, we talk a lot about how the church has so much money and is it unethical that they have this much money, but sometimes we don't put our money where our mouth is. Of voices that if you have voices, whatever the podcast is that you use as inspiration, that is kind of replacing almost church for you because it's so educational and informative to your life. I really, really, I used to not do this because it felt icky, but I've gotten better at asking that you need to support those voices. So if Mormon Stories is one of those voices, please, please donate. It's the only way that otherwise it's just going to be religion that has all of the money and nobody else will be able to do anything else because we'd have to go back to our day jobs and so please support whatever voices are helping you in your life.

John Dehlin [01:23:57] How do people support you other than buying your book?

Britt Hartley [01:24:01] Yeah, the book and coaching and courses is, is what I feel most comfortable with because I feel like you're, you're getting something. If you've ever felt that my work in any way has had a financial help for you. My, my Stan Store, which is the link in my Instagram and my TikTok, there's ways to, to directly donate to the cause, which is, which is always helpful. It's hard, it's hard to sometimes talk about to do money ethically because we come from a system that required your money and really I want to do it in a way where I hope what I'm doing, I hope what you're doing. All these voices that are trying to do spirituality in a healthier way. I hope that we're able to be able to do that because it's hard to. I'll be honest. Like, if I decided tomorrow that I was going to be an astrologer, I would make so much money on TikTok and if I wanted to go back

John Dehlin [01:24:55] to do don't forget true crime.

Britt Hartley [01:24:59] There are so many.

Margi Dehlin [01:25:00] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:25:01] There are so many ways to make money unethically in spirituality and I could make more money doing those things. And so I hope that for the people that you value, that you feel are ethical, good voices, it's not just me, other people. I hope that you, whatever you were paying and tithing, you do some of that to support those voices or else they're not going to be. Be there.

Margi Dehlin [01:25:22] Yeah. Such a good point. Yep.

John Dehlin [01:25:24] So you're.

Britt Hartley [01:25:25] Don't force me to go to astrology, becoming an astrologer or the next teal swan. Yeah. Please don't make me for. Be a teal swan in order that I can do this work that I just. I love, I love to do, honestly. So.

John Dehlin [01:25:41] All right, well, thanks, Britt. Hartley. So, so grateful to have you in the studio. Hope you'll come back again.

Britt Hartley [01:25:47] Yeah, I loved it. Love you guys. And thanks Mormon Stories community. You guys are the best. Best too.

John Dehlin [01:25:52] Thanks, Margi. So glad you're here for the ride.

Margi Dehlin [01:25:55] Me too. Me too, babe.

John Dehlin [01:25:57] All right, thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. We'll have lots of cool things in the weeks, months, years ahead and be good to each other and be kind to each other. We'll see you guys later. Take care of.

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