Welcome and Guest Introductions

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is April 27, 2026, and today we have one of my favorite types of Mormon stories, interviews. We're interviewing sisters. We're interviewing Meggan. Hey, Meggan.

Meggan Hayes [00:00:16] Oh, hi.

John Dehlin [00:00:18] And Julie. Hey, Julie.

Julie O'Neal [00:00:19] Hey.

John Dehlin [00:00:20] They're the o' Neill sisters. They were raised in Utah. And we're going to be talking about family dynamics in a Mormon context and specifically what happens when one just say sibling in a Mormon family leaves their family system early and then it's many, many years until a second sibling leaves. And you know, what's it like to be kind of the black sheep of your Mormon family for leaving the church? What's it like to experience being the black sheep? What's it like to be a believing sibling now? Identifying a beloved sibling now as a black sheep, and then how can reconciliation between siblings later on? In other words, how to have hope that if a family relationship is difficult now, how to have hope that things can get better? That's what today's episode is about. As an overview from my perspective, we have Margi here, my co host. Hey, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:21] Hello.

John Dehlin [00:01:22] We have Margi here with us as well. And some of you will recognize Meggan's face because Meggan is also coincidentally the host of a very popular, I wanna say TikTok, but it's Probably Instagram and YouTube as well. Channel called generally unquotable. Is that right? Did I get that right?

Margi Dehlin [00:01:42] Yep.

Meggan Hayes [00:01:42] It's a long, long name.

John Dehlin [00:01:44] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:01:44] But you did.

John Dehlin [00:01:45] And Meggan, we've had lots of people request that I interview you over the years. And you and I talked a long time about when the right time was. And I think we hit it.

Meggan Hayes [00:01:56] Yeah, I think so. We had to wait until we were inspired to get in here two years later.

John Dehlin [00:02:04] Yeah. And it was at the recent thrive St. George to meet Julie.

Meggan Hayes [00:02:09] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:02:10] Y' all came as sisters to thrive.

Julie O'Neal [00:02:12] Yes. And it was such a good experience. I had a community there that I didn't even know I needed after leaving the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [00:02:19] Yeah. Well, beautiful. Well, anything either of you wanna say before we kind of jump in? Oh, I should also add, huge theme of today is being raised in a super large LDS or Mormon family. Tell us the number of children in your family.

Growing Up in a Family of Fourteen Kids

Meggan Hayes [00:02:37] Me, 14 kids.

John Dehlin [00:02:39] 14 kids.

Meggan Hayes [00:02:40] Do you want me to answer all the questions that people ask when I say that? Because I can do that too. There are eight girls and six boys. I'm number seven. There are no twins. And there are 20 years almost to the day between the oldest and the youngest.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:55] Wow.

Meggan Hayes [00:02:55] And all from the same two parents. Yeah, those are all the questions.

John Dehlin [00:02:59] And raised in Utah. Right.

Meggan Hayes [00:03:01] We moved to Utah when I was 10.

John Dehlin [00:03:03] Okay.

Meggan Hayes [00:03:03] So the majority of our upbringing was in Utah.

John Dehlin [00:03:08] Yeah. So that's Mormonism at its, in some ways, highest and most intense level, I think.

Julie O'Neal [00:03:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:14] Kind of old school. So, Meggan, anything you want to say by way of introduction? And I'll ask you the same thing, Julie, before we dig in. Anything else you want to add?

Meggan Hayes [00:03:26] I am a little nervous to be here. Obviously. I've listened to a lot of Mormon stories, and sitting here in this space, it's almost like I'm listening to the same thing I've been listening to in the past, but now it's me. But I think it's really important because just the way that Mormon stories has affected me, has made me feel like I'm not alone, has given me the time to heal. I don't want to come on here and hurt anyone. What I want to do is come on here and continue to let people know that they're not alone.

John Dehlin [00:04:08] Yeah. Beautiful. Well, and we're really acknowledging the courage that it takes to come on Mormon stories, so thank you for that, Meggan. Julie, anything you want to add before we begin?

Julie O'Neal [00:04:22] No, that was perfectly said. Okay, thanks, Meggan.

John Dehlin [00:04:25] And where are you in the birth order?

Julie O'Neal [00:04:27] Number 10. A 14. In the middle somewhere.

John Dehlin [00:04:31] Okay, beautiful.

Meggan Hayes [00:04:32] Yeah. And I'm number seven.

John Dehlin [00:04:33] Seven and ten.

Meggan Hayes [00:04:34] Seven and ten.

Margi Dehlin [00:04:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:36] You're both middles?

Meggan Hayes [00:04:37] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:04:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:37] At seven and ten.

Margi Dehlin [00:04:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:39] That's wild. Okay, Margi, anything you want to add?

Margi Dehlin [00:04:44] I don't think so.

John Dehlin [00:04:44] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:04:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:45] All right, well, let's begin. So I always like to start with your parents, and I know that your parents aren't totally traditionally Mormon. Pioneer upbringing. So maybe Meggan will have you start. Tell us about your parents. Mormon stories, you know, at a high level.

Margi Dehlin [00:05:04] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:05:05] So our mom was raised Mormon, but neither of our parents talk a lot about their upbringings. I don't know why they just didn't. And so our mom was raised Mormon, but I think her parents were semi active, less active for a while, and then got more active. And she's the oldest, and our dad is a convert, so our parents met when they were 14.

John Dehlin [00:05:29] Where was your mom raised?

Meggan Hayes [00:05:31] In Vegas. They were both raised in Las Vegas.

John Dehlin [00:05:34] Both parents.

Meggan Hayes [00:05:35] Okay, so they met when they were 14. My mom was a member, my dad wasn't, and they fell in love at 14. They never dated anyone but each other. And he joined the church, I think about the time they graduated. From high school. And they waited two years maybe to have kids and then started having kids and he was in the Air Force. That she was a stay at home mom. So.

John Dehlin [00:06:03] Yeah, you don't know if your dad served a mission. Sounds like he did.

Meggan Hayes [00:06:06] He did not.

John Dehlin [00:06:07] Didn't serve a mission.

Meggan Hayes [00:06:08] No. And I asked my mom about that when I was younger because it was confusing to me. And she said that back then men were called, they didn't all sign up. So, yeah, that was the reasoning I was given, but he didn't serve a mission.

John Dehlin [00:06:23] Any idea around what year your parents were married?

Meggan Hayes [00:06:26] 70. 1970, I think.

John Dehlin [00:06:29] And was it in a temple or.

Meggan Hayes [00:06:30] Yeah, so they were in Vegas, but they got married in the St. George Temple. And I do know that they did that all in one day. Like they went and did their endowment and then got married. And it was this big marathon thing because they had to drive up and go through the St. George Temple and.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:46] Yeah, that's an intense day.

Meggan Hayes [00:06:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:49] And just a time date check. Is your oldest sibling around 55 years old? Does that sound right?

Meggan Hayes [00:06:55] She's 10 years older than me, so because I am right in the middle, my oldest sibling is 10 years older and my youngest sibling is 10 years younger.

John Dehlin [00:07:01] So how old would that be for your oldest sibling?

Meggan Hayes [00:07:03] Yeah, 55.

John Dehlin [00:07:04] Okay, okay, okay. All right. I got the timeline going. Your parents were in my brain. I like to have a timeline. So your parents were married in the temple around a year after I was born. So that's interesting to get straight in my mind. And a year before Margi was born. So. Okay. All right. So their Mormon story is going to track with our Mormon stories a little bit. Okay. So, yeah. What are your earliest memories of growing up in a Mormon family? And maybe Julie, I'll let you start and then go back to Meggan.

Julie O'Neal [00:07:38] Yeah, I will say I always liked it because there was always something going on. There was always someone that you could play with or go do something fun with. But I always just felt like, not that I was cast to the side, but it was really easy to just be quiet and unseen and unheard, you know? Cause with that much going on and the sister that's a little older than me, she's very loud. And so I was like, well, to compensate for that, I just have to be really quiet and perfect. I was perfect. I'm sure of it for so many years, but that's kind of how I felt. So it was fun. But it was also just really easy to just kind of be unnoticed.

John Dehlin [00:08:17] Okay, Meggan.

Meggan Hayes [00:08:19] Yeah. I had A lot of similar feelings. I got more noticed because I didn't learn how to be as quiet as Julie. And I grew up with two brothers and then me and then a brother. So although I have seven sisters, I grew up with my brothers and so it was louder. And we did things that we weren't supposed to do, but I did always have a friend. We were a very insular family. And Until I was 10, we lived in Colorado. So being Mormon, we were set apart.

Meggan Hayes [00:08:53] And so I spent a ton of time with my brothers. And, you know, we were always outside and we had a wood burning stove, so we were building things out of all of the wood that was outside waiting to be burned and riding bikes. And it was, it was really fun. When I was with my siblings church. At the time when we lived in Colorado, our dad was the branch president.

Meggan Hayes [00:09:19] So he wasn't only the rule maker in our family, but also at church. So we sat on the front row in our tiny little phase one building, and he sat right in front of us and we were all lined up and if anybody made a peep, he would snap his fingers.

John Dehlin [00:09:38] Wait, he's on the stand?

Meggan Hayes [00:09:39] Well, there is no stand because it's a phase one building. So we would go early, we would set up the chairs and there was just a little podium and then there were just chairs. So he's got it not sitting that far away from us. And he would just snap his fingers. And if anybody. Yeah, if anybody had been watching, I'm sure they could see us all.

Margi Dehlin [00:09:57] Just keep you in check with the.

Julie O'Neal [00:09:59] Straighten up.

Meggan Hayes [00:09:59] Yeah. Line up. And I mean.

John Dehlin [00:10:02] Yeah, like, I started attending an LDS church in Katy in like a house. And I'm just trying to imagine the bishop sitting in front of us and like snapping his fingers at his family and, you know, sternly pointing at his family in the front row.

Meggan Hayes [00:10:21] That finger snap. And he can do it. It's loud. I seemed loud when I was a kid.

John Dehlin [00:10:25] Yeah. And for those who don't know, branch president is like a bishop, a Mormon bishop ahead of a congregation, but for a smaller unit. So how did Mormon culture manifest in your family's day to day, week to week living? In what ways was your family Mormon at home when you were home as a kid?

Meggan Hayes [00:10:47] Yeah, we were very, very Mormon. We. There isn't. Yeah. There is no way to separate Mormonism from our family culture. So we all got up before anyone left the house. So if I had an older sibling who had to leave the house at 6am, the entire family was up and doing scripture study at 5am wow. And every day, I do not ever remember that not happening. We were very regimented and we wore garment friendly clothes always from the day we were born. Just no tank tops, nothing. Even as a small child.

Meggan Hayes [00:11:27] And you know, if we were being mean to a sibling, a primary song came out to or if we weren't having a good day, it was turned that frown upside down and there was no, there was no separation.

Meggan Hayes [00:11:39] So scripture names and scripture stories. That was what we did. We had family prayer in the morning. We at dinner we had this, you know, huge table that my dad had built. And at the end of the meal we sat and it was. We always went in turns. You know, someone whose turn is it to read scripture tonight at the end of dinner. So then someone would read a scripture and we would all discuss it and we all had to sit until my dad stood up.

Meggan Hayes [00:12:09] And then we had family prayer at night. So it was very integrated. We never missed family home evening. Never. We always had it and it was. We had a little chart and someone gave the prayer and did the song and all of those things.

Meggan Hayes [00:12:24] So I knew about Nephi and Laman and Lemuel before I knew how to tie my shoe or read. I mean those things came before other learning.

Rules and Restrictions in a Mormon Household

John Dehlin [00:12:40] Julie, what were some of the don'ts things you couldn't do in your Mormon family growing up that you remember?

Julie O'Neal [00:12:46] So where not even on accident. You can't even say like the knockoff swear words. Cause I really love saying flippin and I got in trouble for that one. So then I had to keep saying it but just not in front of my parents.

Meggan Hayes [00:12:58] We couldn't say.

Julie O'Neal [00:12:59] But we couldn't.

Meggan Hayes [00:13:00] Yeah. So I would say butler. Call my siblings a butler.

Margi Dehlin [00:13:07] Creative.

Meggan Hayes [00:13:09] Yeah, creative there. Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [00:13:10] We couldn't. Like I got caught wearing lipstick one time when I was 14 or 15 and that had to come off immediately. I'd been wearing it for like a year and then I couldn't wear it anymore. So there was that. Yeah, the modest clothing. So I couldn't wear the tank. But I still would. Then I would just take off the jacket when I got to school or whatever it was. The overalls, cinch them up when you get home, put them back down. Some of the other things we could not do.

John Dehlin [00:13:39] What about beverages?

Meggan Hayes [00:13:41] Water was a good choice, but we didn't have caffeine. I remember because we lived in Colorado. Right. So we were the minority being Mormon and I would have friends who would drink Pepsi and I was afraid of it. And actually we went over to a friend's house down the street. One time, me and a younger sister who wasn't Julie, a different sister. And they served iced tea. And I was torn because I was a people pleaser. So I wanted to accept it and be polite, but I knew we weren't supposed to have it, so I just said I wasn't thirsty. And then my little sister drank some, and I was. I honestly felt afraid for her. Like, Satan is coming through this tea, which is a totally normal experience for the people we were with. But then we went home and I ratted her out, told the parents that she drank tea.

John Dehlin [00:14:29] You just reminded me of a story. So I'm like, in fifth grade, I'm playing basketball at my elementary school outside, and one of the kids I'm playing with had one of those Gatorade bottles, the orange Gatorade. Gatorade bottles. And so I went and took a swig of it, but it was tea and it wasn't. And I spit it out as soon as I tasted it. I'm like, this doesn't taste like Gatorade. And I spit it out. Cause in Texas you drink sun tea all the time. So that was my one accidental consumption of tea. Anyway, no tea or coffee, no Pepsi, no caffeine. Okay.

Julie O'Neal [00:15:05] Yes. Another thing that we were not allowed to do was change into comfy clothes after church Sunday. It was like breakfast. The dress comes on, even if church is until one or two. And then you cannot take your dress off until pajamas come on.

Meggan Hayes [00:15:21] Yeah. So you better believe pajamas were happening

Julie O'Neal [00:15:23] at 4pm I would just sneak them on underneath my dress. I still had my dress on, but the pajamas were on underneath. Because it's. It's hard to do stuff in a dress. You can't jump on the trampoline.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:34] Right.

Meggan Hayes [00:15:35] I guess we weren't honest.

John Dehlin [00:15:37] Anyway, so no playing outside on Sunday.

Meggan Hayes [00:15:40] No. We could go on walks and we could read scriptures. There were. Every once in a while we'd be able to watch a cartoon, but it was always religious themed. But because there were so many of us, we didn't have a lot of money, so we didn't have living scriptures. That was very fancy. We had like this old cartoon of the Easter story that I watched many times. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:01] How about media in general? Movies?

Meggan Hayes [00:16:05] Well, so we didn't have tv.

Julie O'Neal [00:16:08] Right.

Meggan Hayes [00:16:08] Cause you had to pay for cable or have like a satellite dish. We didn't have that. So we did watch movies, but they were always, you know, it was as a family. We didn't, you know, I didn't Go rent a movie and bring it home. It was like, dad got a movie, and we're all watching it together on Friday night.

Julie O'Neal [00:16:25] So we could watch PG movies. And if it was a PG13, as far as I remember, our parents would have to watch it first before we were allowed to.

John Dehlin [00:16:34] Did you ever go to the movies ever?

Meggan Hayes [00:16:37] I saw Willow in the theater.

John Dehlin [00:16:39] Just like one.

Meggan Hayes [00:16:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:41] Okay.

Julie O'Neal [00:16:41] Home Alone. Do you remember that?

Meggan Hayes [00:16:43] We saw that in the theater.

Julie O'Neal [00:16:44] We did Home Alone one and two. We saw in the theater. So we were.

John Dehlin [00:16:48] Do you remember wanting to see movies in the theater? Not being allowed to.

Meggan Hayes [00:16:51] I wanted to because we never had any money. And so I would try to earn up money, but it was hard to do. You know, you get like a nickel for ironing a shirt or so. When I did earn it, I knew it was a finite resource, so then I would just hoard it. So I earned. When we lived in Colorado, I earned a dollar and fifty cents. And it took a long time so that I was just saving it, saving it, saving it. And when we moved to Utah, all of my friends there was this outdoor pool they would go to, and I really wanted to go, but I couldn't go because we couldn't pay for it.

Meggan Hayes [00:17:22] And I was going to use my $50 on it that I'd saved for so long. And then one of my brothers convinced me to buy this little bird, this little bird where you would wind it up and it had a rubber band on it. Then you could let it go and it would fly. And this $50 that I'd saved for years, I spent it on that bird. And I had some major regrets because then my friends were going to movies and they were going to the outdoor pool. And the outdoor pool was at the park down the street from our house. So I would walk down and I would watch them swim at the outdoor pool. And I just wanted to be there.

Margi Dehlin [00:17:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:56] What about journal keeping?

Meggan Hayes [00:18:01] Yes.

Julie O'Neal [00:18:02] We were both very righteous at keeping journals. Meggan was actually the one that convinced me that I needed to start doing that.

Meggan Hayes [00:18:08] I can see that.

Julie O'Neal [00:18:09] So I think I was 8. I have journals from when I was 8 years old, maybe younger. Like when the handwriting is so bad I cannot read it because I started

Meggan Hayes [00:18:17] mine when I was 10. I went to a. What was it called before Mary Ms. Was that when you were 10? I went to an activity, and they had us. It was a daddy daughter activity, which actually was terrifying because I was terrified of my dad, but I had to go to this activity with him. And so I went and, you know, they're taking pictures of us. And I still have that picture, I think, in my very first journal. But that's when they talked about journal writing. And so I went home that day, and I was gonna follow that rule and wr. Write that journal. And I wrote a journal every day from that day until I got married. So for 10 years.

Margi Dehlin [00:18:55] Wow.

Julie O'Neal [00:18:56] I was not as righteous as Meggan. I did keep it very well, but it wasn't like every day she beat me on that.

John Dehlin [00:19:04] What about food storage?

Meggan Hayes [00:19:06] Oh, we definitely had. So we grew a garden, and we had tons of food storage. I don't know when we moved to. Well, in Brigham City. Oh, yeah, we did. So there was a room in the basement that was just lined with shelves. And every house that we lived in, actually, now that I think about it, even in Colorado. And yeah, we had the buckets of wheat. The many, many buckets of wheat. And we didn't. Just because there were so many of us, my parents had to be very careful about their money. And so we didn't just have the wheat. We ate the wheat. My mom did a hot breakfast every day, and a lot of times it would be oatmeal from these huge bags of oats, or cracked wheat.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:46] Right? Yep, yep.

Meggan Hayes [00:19:48] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:19:49] And then make. My mom made bread from the cracked wheat.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:51] Oh, yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:19:52] We had one of those old wooden grinders for the wheat.

Julie O'Neal [00:19:55] Yeah, right?

Meggan Hayes [00:19:55] Yeah, yeah. You put it in the top, and then the little tray comes out at the bottom.

John Dehlin [00:20:00] It's weird. I grew up in Katy, Texas, and I had the same. So much of the same upbringing.

Julie O'Neal [00:20:04] It's interesting because listening to her, I think by the time I started having memories, my parents had a little bit more money because we did have the oatmeal. I remember that. But we had, like, cinnamon rolls, pancakes, waffles, Swedish pancakes.

John Dehlin [00:20:19] We had Swedish pancakes.

Julie O'Neal [00:20:20] They were my favorite. I knew I was not gonna go to school hungry on that day.

Meggan Hayes [00:20:25] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:25] Interesting.

Meggan Hayes [00:20:26] The oatmeal needed a lot of brown sugar.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:28] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:20:29] So you could use sugar. Some Mormon families don't allow sugar.

Julie O'Neal [00:20:32] We were raised on sugar.

Meggan Hayes [00:20:33] Yeah. We were definitely raised on.

Privacy, Chores, and Family Dynamics

Margi Dehlin [00:20:35] Okay. I was gonna bring up your shared room situation. I think this idea, in big families of privacy or lack thereof. Do you wanna talk about your shared room and how many children tended to share a room? Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [00:20:55] I say, Meggan, you take that one because you have more of the memories on that.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:58] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:20:59] Cause I was a little older. So when we lived in Colorado, our youngest brother hadn't been born yet, but there were 13 of us, and we Lived in a very small house.

John Dehlin [00:21:08] How many rooms?

Meggan Hayes [00:21:08] I'm trying to remember. Approximately there were. There were three upstairs and there was only one full bathroom in that entire House for 15 people.

Margi Dehlin [00:21:16] Wow.

Meggan Hayes [00:21:17] Wow, wow, wow. And yeah, and then downstairs was our parents bedroom and another bedroom at the end of the hall where the boys were.

John Dehlin [00:21:26] Maybe five bedrooms.

Meggan Hayes [00:21:27] Yeah, five bedrooms.

John Dehlin [00:21:29] That's three per bedroom. Ish.

Meggan Hayes [00:21:31] Well, there were five in our bedroom. So my dad built bunk beds and there were two bunk beds in that room. But five kids. So there were two kids that were always sharing a bed.

Margi Dehlin [00:21:39] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:21:40] So yeah, we would. And sometimes it would be Julie and I, but sometimes she'd be in a different bed and we didn't really have assigned beds. But yeah, so we were packed in there and getting ready for Sunday. My dad got us a membership at the local pool, like a rec center pool. And on Saturday night we all went to the pool. But my mom didn't go showering. Yes, we would swim for an hour and then we would all shower because

Julie O'Neal [00:22:10] otherwise I did not know this was on a Saturday. Yeah, I remember going, well, remember Saturday is a special. Oh, I do remember that Saturday.

John Dehlin [00:22:19] Yeah. The day we get ready for Saturday.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:21] But this was really strategic. Cause it allowed for that barrier of one bathroom. Right.

Meggan Hayes [00:22:26] Is that why it was to allow

Margi Dehlin [00:22:28] for people to shower in a more efficient kind of way?

Meggan Hayes [00:22:31] Yes, it was a cost saving measure. And time. Because there were times when we didn't go. But we were pretty religious about going to the pool to shower. But when we didn't, there was a tub that was filled up and then we just all took turns getting in it. And if you weren't first, the water was not clear anymore by the time you got in.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:50] Oh dear.

John Dehlin [00:22:51] Now I'm dying to know if your mom worked outside the home because how in the world is a single income going to support 16 people?

Meggan Hayes [00:23:01] Well, so she did paper out. I remember her doing a paper out real early in the morning when we lived in Colorado. And she's all, she's a seamstress. And so she would pick up little side jobs. A lot of times it was reupholstering the insides of people's vehicles. So she was doing little things. She would babysit sometimes, but for the most part she stayed at home and cooked and.

Margi Dehlin [00:23:27] Well, I was trying to think so 14 children. The work load of 14. So how would you describe your family culture around work as children?

Julie O'Neal [00:23:42] That was one thing I always liked coming from a big family is that I got work ethic from a very young Age, because we had to, you know, it was like I was super young and vacuuming the whole floor, probably five years old, and doing dishes when they were still, you know, running down my armpit. So I liked that fact because it helped me become independent at a very young age.

Meggan Hayes [00:24:05] Well, and I think we had to become independent because there is really no way for two parents, one of which, you know, our dad worked full time, sometimes a little bit more. There's really no way for two parents to manage the. That amount of children and give everyone the time they need to not be super independent. It was partially. We had to clean because our parents needed us to be the little worker bees. But we also just had to be independent because a lot of times we were totally unsupervised.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:36] Yeah, right.

John Dehlin [00:24:38] And you were the oldest daughter, is that right?

Meggan Hayes [00:24:40] No.

John Dehlin [00:24:41] Okay.

Meggan Hayes [00:24:41] No, I just.

John Dehlin [00:24:42] Sorry. I'm just trying to remember.

Meggan Hayes [00:24:43] Yeah, it's hard. There are a lot of us.

John Dehlin [00:24:45] How many daughters ahead of you?

Meggan Hayes [00:24:46] There are eight girls and six boys, but I grew up with my brothers, so two boys. Me and then a boy.

John Dehlin [00:24:51] That's why I had that. So how many sisters older than you? You got three.

Meggan Hayes [00:24:57] Three.

John Dehlin [00:24:58] Okay. Okay.

Julie O'Neal [00:24:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:59] Okay.

Meggan Hayes [00:24:59] But enough older that I didn't really spend a lot of time. Yeah, three. I didn't spend a lot of time with them as a friend playing and.

John Dehlin [00:25:08] Yeah. They're like cohorts in a family this size. Cohorts of kids.

Meggan Hayes [00:25:12] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:25:13] So by the time you're next. Oldest sister left home, how many children were still in the home while you were the oldest sister living in the home? Does that make sense?

Meggan Hayes [00:25:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:29] I mean, if you're seventh, there would have been six.

Meggan Hayes [00:25:32] I mean, there were seven younger than me while you were.

John Dehlin [00:25:35] So you were. At one point, you were the oldest sister of seven living in the home

Meggan Hayes [00:25:41] at some point of eight. I mean, I would have been. Yeah. So seven years.

Julie O'Neal [00:25:44] Yes.

Meggan Hayes [00:25:44] Yes. When we. So we moved from Brigham City to Payson halfway through my junior year of high school. And I was the oldest.

Julie O'Neal [00:25:50] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:25:51] Right at home. What I'm getting at is this idea of children almost being a parent.

Meggan Hayes [00:25:56] Yes, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:25:57] Did you experience that?

Meggan Hayes [00:25:58] Yeah, yeah. Well. And I think so. Our parents were there to manage the home, cleaning and cooking, but. And teaching us the gospel. Okay. Reading the scriptures and doing all of those things. But they were not there emotionally for us. They were there to manage us.

Meggan Hayes [00:26:20] So any emotional help that we got was from each other. So when we shared a room when we were little, and we'd go into the room at night I was the oldest one in that room because the two brothers around me were in a separate room downstairs. They were in the room downstairs.

Meggan Hayes [00:26:40] And so it was my job to get everyone settled in for the night. And Julie remembers being afraid. And so I would click my fingernails against the wall and I would talk about these horses that were galloping. And it was this calming ritual that I had for myself because I was also terrified of the dark and the other siblings in there. To get us quieted down, we didn't get. I mean, we had a family prayer and then we were sent off on our separate ways. And we were in charge of regulating ourselves at night and getting to sleep. Because even if I didn't feel well and I got up in the night, I was too afraid to go disturb mostly dad and get in trouble for being up in the night.

Julie O'Neal [00:27:26] Yeah, don't disturb them. You'd had to just figure it out on your own.

Meggan Hayes [00:27:31] Actually, one time one of our sisters fell off the top bunk and hit her chin on the toy box because the. It was in between the bunk beds and was bleeding a ton. And she just got back into bed and just went to sleep because we didn't. You didn't disturb mom and dad.

Patriarchy, Priesthood, and Father's Role

John Dehlin [00:27:49] That leads me to want to learn a little bit about family culture. Like, you know, patriarchy is one way to describe it, but there's family proclamation stuff. What was daddy's role? What was Mommy's role? What were the kids role? How was communication? How were rules enforced? And in what ways did priesthood and lack of priesthood permeate the structure and cultural dynamics of your family? It's a big question that is.

Julie O'Neal [00:28:20] I can start with, like the priesthood thing, because I remember, I think it was monthly. We would do the PPIs. Priesthood. What does that state?

John Dehlin [00:28:27] Personal. Yeah, Priesthood interview. Yes, tell us what that is.

Julie O'Neal [00:28:32] And so we would go from oldest to youngest. My dad would bring us in the room, like just us. And I think it was supposed to be a nice time for him to get to know us because there were so many of us. But I think we were all very scared. Like, I would just be dreading it because the power of discernment. It's like he's gonna know that I had a naughty thought or whatever as a child. So I would just dread it the whole day until I could finally just get it over with and be on my way. So it was. I mean, the priesthood was everything that was monthly.

John Dehlin [00:29:04] A monthly kind of worthiness interview almost. Okay.

Julie O'Neal [00:29:08] But I think it was supposed to be a good thing. But as far as I know, we were all just very scared of it. Okay, you can speak for yourself.

Meggan Hayes [00:29:16] I have a core memory of lying to my dad during one of those because he asked me where I was at in my scripture reading, and I didn't know. I mean, I read scriptures sometimes on my own. I mean, we always did it as a family, but, you know, I was seven or eight. And so I just. The first book I remembered, I set it out, you know, oh, I'm in ether. And then in my mind, I was like, I think that's at the end. I'm like, so I'll be starting over soon. And then later, I went and looked, and I was like, oh, no, he's going to know. You know, it was terrifying. It was terrifying.

John Dehlin [00:29:51] What about, like, was there spanking? Was there yelling? What about discipline?

Meggan Hayes [00:29:57] So there was spanking. I don't know. By the time Julie was.

Julie O'Neal [00:30:02] You know, her experience is probably going to be different than mine, I will say that.

Meggan Hayes [00:30:07] So the brother that's young, one of the brothers that's younger than me is. Had a really hard time conforming. And so I got looped in with him a lot. We did get spanked a lot, but he got a lot worse punishments than I did because I learned to hide and to not always say the things I was thinking and, you know, lie about the scripture reading. But the rules were very.

Meggan Hayes [00:30:39] There was not a gray area. And if we didn't follow him then and dad found out, then we were in trouble. And it was hard because at a certain point, he kind of would stop spanking. But the fear was already there.

Meggan Hayes [00:30:58] It was already there. And so having a conversation. I mean, we didn't have a conversation with him. Having a lecture from him was just as scary, if not worse than being hit, because I didn't know how to answer. I didn't know what he wanted me to say. And it didn't always seem like it was the same. And so one of my core memories is my brothers and I were in a room, and my brother, just older than me, had just come back from Scout camp, and he was educating me and one of my other brothers about blue darts, something we'd never heard of before.

John Dehlin [00:31:36] Tell our audience what a blue dart is. I know what it is.

Meggan Hayes [00:31:39] So it's when you fart and you light it on fire. And, of course, like, we knew we weren't supposed to think farts were funny probably, but we were kids, and so he was telling us about this, and he learned about it at Scout camp, and we Were laughing so hard and making him just tell us about it over and over. And halfway through this glorious childhood time, our dad walked in. And the minute he opened the door, we just.

Julie O'Neal [00:32:08] It.

Meggan Hayes [00:32:08] You know. Silence. You could drop a pin in that room. And he says, what were you guys talking about? And we're just looking at each other, like, who's gonna tell him? Because five seconds ago, this seemed really fun, and it just got a lot not fun. And so then one of my brothers says, barney. And I'm looking at him like the purple dinosaur. He's never gonna believe this. And he just keeps looking at us. He doesn't say anything, you know, my dad. And so then my other brother says, flute arts. And he goes, is that appropriate? And then, you know, that was the time we knew. Okay, we might have thought this was fun, but now we know it's not.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:48] I don't remember learning about blue darts until the mtc, the mission training center. And we. There were elders in their garments who demonstrated to me what a blue dart was in the mtc. So that's.

Meggan Hayes [00:33:01] You didn't have the right scout camp, Apparently.

John Dehlin [00:33:03] Yeah. I mean, we did other things, but it was in the MTC in garments that I learned about blue darts. Yeah, that's true story.

Margi Dehlin [00:33:13] I have a quick question with regard to your parents. Did your home feel different when your dad wasn't around? Did you experience. I'm just kind of curious with his presence, if some of that fear was brought with his presence. Did you fear it? Did you feel it all the time, regardless of whether he was there or not? Did your mom have a bit of a different way of showing up in the house and showing up in your lives? Like, how would you describe. I'm trying to get a sense for if the fear was, like, omnipresent. If you. Or were there times when you, you know, you could relax a little?

Julie O'Neal [00:33:57] Yeah. I think we have different experiences with this as well, because my mom was a safe place for me, and so if my dad wasn't home, then it was okay. Like, if I made a mistake or broke something or broke a rule, my mom did not rat me out. So as long as he wasn't home, I felt okay. But the moment he was there, I was very tense the whole time.

Meggan Hayes [00:34:23] Yeah. And I was. When I think back on my childhood, if I give it one overarching feeling, it's fear. It's fear. And because sometimes, if my mom knew something I'd done, she'd tell my dad, and sometimes she wouldn't. So I Was always guessing, is this gonna make it back to dad? And four hours from now, am I gonna get a punishment for this or not?

Meggan Hayes [00:34:48] So I was always on edge. And when he was the branch president, I turned eight during that time. So he was the one who did the interview for my baptism. So he came home from work one day and said, you need to go wait in your room for me. So then I was scanning the day, the week. What have I done? What's gonna happen? What is he gonna say when he comes in here? What's my story gonna be? And then he sat down and he said, do you know what it means to be baptized? And because I was so afraid, because I didn't know that's what he was going to talk about, I wasn't prepared to answer him.

Meggan Hayes [00:35:28] And so then he's looking at me with this expectation, and I'm supposed to be recalling my gospel knowledge, but I was just afraid. I was in trauma. I was terrified. I didn't know what to say. So it was a hard interview because I was expecting a lecture or spanking, and instead he was asking me gospel questions.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:47] Yeah,

John Dehlin [00:35:52] I mean, it just sounds like your dad made you all afraid constantly. And sometimes that's just someone's personality. Sometimes it's what they learned from their dad or mom. Sometimes it's the way they perceive their God is that their God is a fear of punishment. Their God is a God of punishment and of fear. And so I don't know if you would even know why your dad chose to parent that way, but also, it's kind of old school parenting.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:23] Did you mention he was in the military?

Meggan Hayes [00:36:25] He was, yeah. He was in the Air Force until he got out. Before I was born.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:29] Yeah. Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:36:30] I mean, yeah. And his. He didn't talk about his childhood a lot, but I think it was very tumultuous. His parents separated when he was a teenager, and his mom had a lot of boyfriends coming and going, and his younger sister lived with his dad. And.

John Dehlin [00:36:48] Yeah, so it's possible part of it was he was wanting to have his children have a better experience than what he and his siblings had had. And strictness might have been a way to help make sure we all had a better life.

Meggan Hayes [00:37:05] I think the church, because he joined when he was, you know, 17 or 18, I think. I think that gave him this level of structure that he had craved as a child. And that's what he presented to us was the structure of the church, the. The very black and white thinking, the very specific rules, because in the 80s and 90s. I mean, 80s especially. The church was the Bruce R. McConkey Church. And it was very structured.

John Dehlin [00:37:37] Yeah. And strict.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:39] It sounds like, to me, you know, the more layers we have of, like, reinforcing a desire for structure, it sounds like childhood. It sounds like the church came into his life, introduced it, and he really was like, you know, and it also sounds like, you know, military also another reinforcer of, like, a lot of obedience and. And structure there. And a great need, I would imagine a great need with 14 children as well.

Meggan Hayes [00:38:13] It's just like.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:13] It seems like all those layers are like amplifiers to.

Julie O'Neal [00:38:17] And then add to that.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:19] That.

Julie O'Neal [00:38:20] And I don't know if this is just a church culture, but you want everyone to think you're perfect, you know, that the family dynamic is perfect. So how do you have perfect children? At church? You have to be very strict, and obedience has to be something that's in that. Right. And fear sometimes gets meshed into all of that. So I think we did look very perfect.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:42] Yes.

Meggan Hayes [00:38:43] At church.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:43] That's so good. I feel like that you brought that up, and I think that's true for the average family, but for a branch president's family or kind of the higher up you go, I think that's another amplifier.

Meggan Hayes [00:38:55] Right.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:55] So you just have so many.

John Dehlin [00:38:59] Yeah. We're taught as Mormons that obedience is the first law of heaven. And so families often are governed that way as well. Yeah. And sometimes the most hardcore strict Mormons I've ever met had a tumultuous childhood or teenage experience even. Sometimes they made a lot of, quote, mistakes based on Mormon moral standards. And so they're harsh and strict with their kids, partly because of what they chose or they experienced when they were younger.

Julie O'Neal [00:39:33] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:39:34] Well, so our dad would tell us, like, he tried out swearing once as a teenager, and it just didn't sit right. And so then he didn't do it again. And it was almost like the Joseph Smith, you know, denying alcohol story. Like our. To me, my dad was. Was God in our household. So I had the Mormon God, who I compared to the God in my house. And there were rules, and there was the following of the rules. And that was supposed to bring love. And so that's what I thought love was as a kid, was obedience.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:19] Yeah, that is something.

The Sisters' Bond Before the Faith Journey

John Dehlin [00:40:24] So let's just talk quickly about what you two meant to each other as siblings before Meggan, we start talking about your kind of testimony, faith journey.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:36] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:40:38] What do each. What memories, what key core memories do each of you have about what the other meant?

Margi Dehlin [00:40:44] To you.

John Dehlin [00:40:45] I'll start with you, Meggan, because you're older.

Meggan Hayes [00:40:47] So when I went through my teenage years, it was very. It was hard because I wanted to do the right thing. I wanted to be loved. But it was hard to follow the rules because we couldn't steady date. We couldn't. You know, if I had a guy I really liked, I could go on a date with him. But then my dad had the abcd and I think he added E later rule where if I went with guy A, then I had to go on a date with B, C, D and E before I could go on a date with guy A again. But I really.

John Dehlin [00:41:17] That was to prevent sex. Right. I mean, let's just be honest.

Meggan Hayes [00:41:20] Yeah, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:41:21] To.

Meggan Hayes [00:41:21] To prevent getting in trouble before the boy goes on his mission.

John Dehlin [00:41:24] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:41:25] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:41:26] And so to even. But it wasn't just dating. It was like I had friends and we lived in Brigham City, so all of my friends were members. And for fun we played board games and ate Twizzlers. So we weren't doing. But I had friends who turned 16 before me and they had boy girl parties that were in the basement. One of my friends, it was in the basement of a bank, her parents were there and there were literally board games all over and snacks. And I was not supposed to go because I wasn't 16 yet. So of course I went, told my dad I was doing something else and then went.

Meggan Hayes [00:42:08] And that always. That tension of I really wanna do all the right things, but also I just wanna hang out with my friends. So once Julie was coming along, I made a point to be that buffer for her. Like, if you wanna go hang out with your friends, just tell mom and dad you're gonna be with me. And then you can go out with the boys. You can do the things that I didn't get to do.

Meggan Hayes [00:42:35] And I will be that person who will cover for you. Cause that's what I wanted, but I didn't. And I don't think there's anything wrong with just hanging out with people.

John Dehlin [00:42:45] What's your perspective on that, Julie?

Julie O'Neal [00:42:47] Yes. I always wanted a surprise birthday party. And for my 16th party, Meggan threw me a huge surprise party, invited all of my friends. And she was just doing stuff like that for me all the time so that I didn't have to have the experiences that she had.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:06] Wow, that is really something.

Julie O'Neal [00:43:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:10] Good.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:11] Yeah. It's sort of like you. So how old would you have been if you were throwing a birthday party for her?

Meggan Hayes [00:43:18] I'm four years older, so, yeah, to

Margi Dehlin [00:43:23] me it feels like by then, that signals that you are creating a place of safety and kind of softness. You're recognizing somewhere that something's lacking and trying to provide it. Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [00:43:36] Wow.

Meggan Hayes [00:43:37] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [00:43:37] Yep. So she gave it to me. There was even one time on Friday night she called me up. She was like, hey, you're coming to my house. I was like, I am. And she was like, and you're gonna bring your friend, your boyfriend, whoever it is you want to bring, and you're gonna come to my house tonight. It's like, okay. So she did stuff like that for me all the time. And it was. I didn't know how much I appreciated it until older because I was still in the tumultuous of everything and a teenager.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:02] Right.

John Dehlin [00:44:03] So in your words, Julie, what did older sister Meggan mean to you growing up?

Julie O'Neal [00:44:10] She was my friend. She was a safe person. You know, we did talk about things together that I never could. I'd never had anyone else to talk about things with. Even just like, kissing a boy. Like, ooh, I admitted that I kissed a boy. I could tell her that. Even though she was like, don't do that. That'll make your life at home really hard. Don't do it. But she still supported me, so it was nice to have somebody to talk to.

Meggan Hayes [00:44:36] Yeah. I wanted her to have those experiences. At the same time, I was like, if she can be better than me, she will be more loved than me.

John Dehlin [00:44:45] Better than you? What do you mean better?

Meggan Hayes [00:44:47] Like not kissing boys?

John Dehlin [00:44:49] More righteous.

Meggan Hayes [00:44:49] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [00:44:50] Yeah, more righteous.

Meggan Hayes [00:44:51] If she was more righteous than me, she would be more. Things would be easier. She would be more loved, and I wanted that for her.

John Dehlin [00:44:58] You wanted her to be more loved than you felt loved?

Meggan Hayes [00:45:00] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:45:01] And more safe than you felt safe.

John Dehlin [00:45:05] Was there a sister between you or multiple sisters between you?

Meggan Hayes [00:45:08] One sister between us.

John Dehlin [00:45:10] Did you feel that same thing, Meggan, for that middle sister?

Meggan Hayes [00:45:13] No, that sister and I didn't get along.

John Dehlin [00:45:15] Okay. Okay.

Meggan Hayes [00:45:17] No. We shared a room once for a very short amount of time, and it didn't work out.

John Dehlin [00:45:20] Sometimes the closer you are, the harder

Meggan Hayes [00:45:22] it is to get along. Yeah. Our personality is just really. We're not similar at all in a way that we meshed like that.

John Dehlin [00:45:28] Okay. So, Julie. Oh, go ahead.

Julie O'Neal [00:45:31] I was gonna say, Meggan let the spirit of contention in her heart with that sister.

Margi Dehlin [00:45:34] I did.

Meggan Hayes [00:45:36] I did.

Fear, Anxiety, and Coping as Mormon Teens

Margi Dehlin [00:45:37] Can I ask a question around coping a little bit? It sounds like you grew up in a climate of feeling a lot of fear and anxiety. Right. And I am thinking, didn't you mention for you that you Became perfectionistic and kind of your attempt to stay safe. Right. Was to please. Is that right? Here's my question. How did you cope with that? How?

John Dehlin [00:46:08] You mean internal distress emotionally?

Meggan Hayes [00:46:10] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:10] Like this constant state of just sort of anxiety and walking in fear. What emerged in you to try to keep you safe?

Julie O'Neal [00:46:22] I stayed. I have lots of memories of just being alone in my bedroom. Because in my bedroom it was safe. We were not allowed to close the door. It had to stay open. So you still couldn't have, like, privacy as a teenager. But I was in there a lot, like journaling. I did love music, and so I played the piano a lot and I practiced a lot because I was gonna be perfect. I was going to be the best, you know. And then When I was 15, I started playing the guitar. I threw some bagpipes in there and all this could just be alone in my bedroom. That was safe.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:55] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [00:46:56] So that's how I coped with a lot of it.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:58] Yeah, that makes sense. Yes.

Meggan Hayes [00:47:00] And I studied. I was a very good student. And because also if I was at school and I was doing the. What was it? The Constitution Bowl, I could stay after a little bit. And.

Margi Dehlin [00:47:16] Yes.

Meggan Hayes [00:47:16] If I. Yeah. And I.

John Dehlin [00:47:17] Constitution Bowl.

Meggan Hayes [00:47:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:19] That's so Mormon.

Meggan Hayes [00:47:21] Yeah, Right, right. I hadn't said that name in years. Oh, that's way for me.

Julie O'Neal [00:47:26] I don't know what that is.

John Dehlin [00:47:27] It's like, can you recite the preamble? What's the First Amendment to the Constitution? What's the Second Amendment to the Constitution?

Meggan Hayes [00:47:33] Right, yeah, yeah, Yep. No, that's what it was. But then I played the violin and I was in. In choir. But most of the way that I dealt with it was I thought I knew that if I got straight ace, I could get a scholarship to college and then I could get married. And if I got married, my parents would love me. Because then.

John Dehlin [00:47:57] Temple married.

Meggan Hayes [00:47:58] Yeah, Temple married. Yes, of course. Of course. That's a given. If I got Temple married and I had a priesthood holder and had kids, then all the things that were getting me in trouble, hanging out with boys, I mean, that was all the things then that wouldn't be an issue.

Julie O'Neal [00:48:14] That was the umbrella.

Meggan Hayes [00:48:16] That was all the things that made

Margi Dehlin [00:48:17] you beyond love was hanging out with

Meggan Hayes [00:48:19] boys and wanting to. Not just doing it, but I wanted to do it. And so I, you know, graduated second in my class and had to. Graduation.

John Dehlin [00:48:32] You were salutatorial.

Meggan Hayes [00:48:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:34] This is in Utah, right?

Meggan Hayes [00:48:35] Yeah, in Payson.

John Dehlin [00:48:36] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:36] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:48:37] Had to speak at graduation. I was like, this is what I get for This. I worked hard. Now I have to stand up in front of all these people and say, anyway, yeah. So I had to speak at graduation and then got a presidential scholarship to Rick's college, which is the only school I applied at. But I was like, why not be

John Dehlin [00:48:52] where you pro bo.

Meggan Hayes [00:48:56] Two of my older sisters had gone to Rick's. And.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:00] And it just. Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:49:01] Yeah. Seemed. You know what? Also, I think it was further away from home.

John Dehlin [00:49:06] That makes sense.

Meggan Hayes [00:49:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:07] Because Payson. How close is Payson to Provo?

Meggan Hayes [00:49:09] 20 minutes.

John Dehlin [00:49:10] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:49:11] Yeah, close.

John Dehlin [00:49:12] But you probably academically could have gotten in to byu, Provo, certainly. Okay.

Meggan Hayes [00:49:16] Yeah. I just. I only applied at Rick's. I didn't apply anywhere else.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:21] So. Okay, so let's transition, Meggan, to your kind of testimony development, spiritual development, and sense of worthiness in high school.

Chastity, Shame, and Hiding the Truth

Meggan Hayes [00:49:33] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:49:33] Prior to leaving home.

Meggan Hayes [00:49:35] Yeah. That's difficult. I.

John Dehlin [00:49:39] You said you were boy crazy.

Meggan Hayes [00:49:41] I was. I just. And I mean, that started before high school, but I was always keeping toeing the line. And in what way?

John Dehlin [00:49:53] What do you mean?

Meggan Hayes [00:49:54] I mean, lying to hang out with boys, but I was not gonna have sex with somebody. And honestly, I went and confessed to the bishop because I let a boy touch my bare back when we kissed when I was a senior in high school.

John Dehlin [00:50:07] Oh.

Margi Dehlin [00:50:08] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:09] Really dicey behavior. But I did. I went and confessed.

John Dehlin [00:50:13] So you were keeping the rules?

Margi Dehlin [00:50:14] I was.

John Dehlin [00:50:14] The law of chastity rules in high school. Okay.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:18] Yes. But I also did not know how to say no. So even when he did that, I didn't want him to do it because I knew it was. I knew it was going over the line, but I didn't know how to tell him to stop.

Margi Dehlin [00:50:29] Right. Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:30] So it was hard. And my worthiness was tied to my ability to do all of the things I was supposed to do and to gatekeep, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:50:41] Boy behavior with you?

Meggan Hayes [00:50:43] Yeah, absolutely. You know what my dad would tell me? You wouldn't wear stuff like that if you knew what boys thought when you did. And I didn't. I mean, it would be like a pair of. I didn't even really wear shorts. Every once in a while, I would find a pair that was knee length. But then I didn't think I looked good in him, so I.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:01] It.

Meggan Hayes [00:51:02] I don't know why he would be constantly lecturing me on that because I didn't have clothes that were not garment friendly.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:08] Wow. So even that was being said with garment friendly clothes?

Meggan Hayes [00:51:13] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:14] Yeah. That's intense.

Meggan Hayes [00:51:16] Yeah. Like, only one time did I go to school and borrow Clothes from a friend and change. And that's because we were going to Lagoon. I was in high school and I really wanted to wear shorts and I just didn't even own any.

John Dehlin [00:51:26] So regular old shorts weren't allowed. Really in your home or not available.

Meggan Hayes [00:51:30] My knee length ones and it was just hard.

John Dehlin [00:51:32] Knee lengths were garments friendly.

Meggan Hayes [00:51:33] Yes, Yes. I was so excited when capris became fashionable because then I could have something that wasn't pants and would be garment friendly.

John Dehlin [00:51:43] Wait, how far do capris go down your leg?

Meggan Hayes [00:51:45] You know, like mid calf and beyond knee, it's like some real short pants.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:50] That's what I thought.

John Dehlin [00:51:52] So it's not even about the deal.

Meggan Hayes [00:51:53] No, no, it's not.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:54] It's hard to find shorts, especially back, you know, when they weren't.

John Dehlin [00:51:59] I remember I. I wore cargo shorts.

Meggan Hayes [00:52:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:02] As a way to cover my garments.

Meggan Hayes [00:52:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:04] And they looked fashionable. Ish.

Meggan Hayes [00:52:06] Did they?

John Dehlin [00:52:06] I mean. Exactly. That's why I said it with a little bit of hesitation. I mean, I thought they were relatively fashionable.

Meggan Hayes [00:52:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:15] That's funny.

Meggan Hayes [00:52:16] Yeah. She's called me up, so I'm here for it.

Margi Dehlin [00:52:19] I love it.

John Dehlin [00:52:19] I just got fashion shamed by this.

Meggan Hayes [00:52:21] We can. We might need photographic evidence of this.

John Dehlin [00:52:25] That's funny.

Meggan Hayes [00:52:26] But yeah, high school was hard. It was hard because I, you know, we were in Brigham City. We moved to Payson halfway through my junior year. And so that was a transition that was really hard. Making new friends and at a school that was really different. I had a. Brigham City is a company town. That's how my brother always described it because most of the people who worked there worked at the same place. And so it's like.

John Dehlin [00:52:50] Which was that? Morton Thiokal.

Meggan Hayes [00:52:51] It was Morton Thiokal. And so the CEOs lived on the hill, and my dad worked at ICOM Fitness in Logan. So we weren't even associated with that crowd. And we lived in the, you know, the middle area of town with the normal people. And so there was a hierarchy there, not just with the church, but also at school. The same hierarchy existed.

John Dehlin [00:53:18] That means his commute would have been Sardine Canyon every day. That would have been incredibly dangerous in the winter to commute to Logan from Brigham City through Sardine Canyon.

Meggan Hayes [00:53:27] But when we lived in Colorado, he had a similar commute from Woodland park to Colorado Springs. It's a very similar snowy mountain.

John Dehlin [00:53:36] It's a treacherous canyon in the winter anyway. Okay, so that. So by any objective, quote, Mormon morality standard, you were a, quote, good girl.

Meggan Hayes [00:53:49] I was.

John Dehlin [00:53:49] In terms of law of chastity and yet you were probably having to hide and lie to or from your parents and still feeling a ton of shame. Can you explain that?

Meggan Hayes [00:54:03] I. I mean, even if. So, my freshman year of high school, I wasn't 16 yet, and I was in this creative writing class. There was a boy in there I had a huge crush on. And so, you know, oh, I'm go for a bike ride, and I bike to his house, and we'd talk outside for 10 minutes.

John Dehlin [00:54:18] And you feel what?

Meggan Hayes [00:54:19] Terrible?

John Dehlin [00:54:19] Oh, yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:54:20] Yeah, just terrible. And the whole time I'm thinking, what if my dad drove by right now? You know, this isn't a huge town. He could drive by. I don't know why he would, but he could. So I could never relax. I couldn't relax. I couldn't, you know, just be sitting on the curb, even after school, you know, if I had a little boyfriend and we decided to hold hands on the sidewalk after school while we walked home.

Meggan Hayes [00:54:46] I knew my dad was at work in Logan, but what if he drove by? Or what if somebody from church drove by and he caught wind that I was holding hands with this boy? So I was always afraid, and I always had. My brothers were around, and they were watching me. They were seeing what I was doing. And that would get told sometimes to dad. Like, one time, there was a family that lived on the street right behind us, and there were two boys in that family who were right around my age. And I had crushes on both of them. And so I would, you know, just walk down onto the street behind our house.

Meggan Hayes [00:55:25] And what if they're out riding their bikes? I don't know. And so hanging out with them. And I look back one time, and my brother is peeking around the bushes watching me. And I'm like, dad's gonna find out. I'm gonna be in so much trouble. Just, you know, roller skating on the street, riding bikes, because there were boys present.

John Dehlin [00:55:44] And then as you're getting 16, 17, and you're really dating, did you find yourself having to hide and lie then, too? And feeling guilty?

Meggan Hayes [00:55:53] Yes. Not because I was even breaking the rules, but just because I enjoyed it. I liked dating. I wanted to be out on a date every weekend. And, you know, I would catch feelings for somebody and want to go on another date with them. And so then it's like, well, how do I do that?

Margi Dehlin [00:56:10] With the ABCD plan?

Meggan Hayes [00:56:14] With the ABCD plan? And so. And how do I have a boyfriend who knows that I have the ABCD plan? And so then he's colluding with me to Be like, well, you know, just say you're going to hang out with these girls and then I'll end up being there. And so there was always.

John Dehlin [00:56:31] Yeah, it is an interesting dynamic where you can even be hyper righteous. But still the plan expects so much perfectionism that you end up growing up feeling like a liar, which is not a good thing. It's still a horrible thing. Right?

Margi Dehlin [00:56:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:56:48] And then the church has such a standard of lying. Did you learn about half truths and full truths?

Margi Dehlin [00:56:54] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:56:54] Tell about that because it makes it so nobody escapes deep guilt and shame.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:59] Right?

Meggan Hayes [00:57:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:00] Do you want to talk about that?

Julie O'Neal [00:57:01] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:57:01] Because like I said, like, if I was going out on a date with someone and we really just had fun, you know, we would go to the di, which is a thrift store, and buy clothes and whatever we buy for the other person, you have to wear it and then go to McDonald's. It's harmless, it's fun. But because I did that with the same guy two times in a row, then I have to.

Julie O'Neal [00:57:28] Oh, yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:57:29] You know, we just, we this. I'm not going to be specific about who I was with. Oh, yeah, we just went here and then we did this. But in my heart, I knew that I was lying. And then because of discernment, can my dad tell? And if so, what does he think about me right now? And is that gonna affect how now Heavenly Father's thinking of me? Because my dad and God were very connected, right?

Margi Dehlin [00:58:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:58:04] Yeah. So it's it. And I guess to try and look at it from the church's perspective of your dad's, he. They are trying to prevent unwanted teen pregnancies, STIs. And then what the Book of Mormon describes is the sin next to murder, which is any sexual activity outside the bonds of marriage.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:25] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:58:25] So, I mean, they are. The hard part is they're coming at it from a semi altruist, from an altruistic place. Right?

Meggan Hayes [00:58:34] Yes. And I would tell people, as in my later teenage years, if I wasn't a member of the church, I would have absolutely gotten pregnant because there was no middle ground there for me where you can have safe sex and protected sex and educated sex that didn't exist. So I was either Mormon or I was a teen pregnancy.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:57] Yes, right.

John Dehlin [00:58:58] I remember that.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:00] I do think it's interesting that, you know, you can go with the dad's intention or even the church's intention. And how, what would I say? It's like how insidious fear can be that you come from this place. If a Parent comes from this place of the world is scary. The world is a fear based sort of approach.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:28] Then the child also feels in some way either fear for the parent who's trying to do. I don't know. To me it just feels like the expectations, I don't care who you gave those to. It's like no one can live up to expectations that are that high where there are that many things, that many things for a child to do.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:51] So inevitably you're going to walk around with, you know, a lot of shame and a lot of internal pain, you know, and the thing about it is you probably were looking for comfort too, like happiness, just to have a break from that anxiety, which is like the most human thing in the world to desire. So some of the environment of growing up, it sounds like with so much anxiety and fear for a parent or can set you up for this thirst and desperation to just feel some connection somewhere.

Meggan Hayes [01:00:28] Yes, yeah. And trying to find that with other male figures other than my dad, and then being punished for looking for that. And it also was very tied to the shame that I just had in general about my body. So we were not, at least I wasn't taught anything about my body. So when I started my period, I didn't know that was going to happen.

Meggan Hayes [01:00:55] Like, I had gone to one maturation clinic in fifth grade and I didn't know what they were talking about. I honestly thought that I would start my period, whatever that was, when I was 9 or 10, and I would have it every day until I was 60. I didn't understand that it was because I didn't realize it was tied to, you know, maybe you could get pregnant once a month. You know, I didn't realize there was this cycle. I didn't understand it. Yeah. And so when I started my period, it was scary and it was shameful because I didn't know what it was. And then because I didn't talk to my parents about anything other than the church, I didn't know who to ask to figure out what was going on.

Meggan Hayes [01:01:36] I finally worked up the courage after hours that morning to say, mom, I think I have a period. And she said, are you okay? And I was like, I guess so. So then I went in the bathroom and read the back of the box with the pads.

Meggan Hayes [01:01:52] And that's how I figured out how to manage that. And that was tied. That was just really tied into all of this shame about sex and being afraid of boys and what could happen. My body, I didn't exist comfortably in my body. I had to cover it up. And we didn't talk about periods, so that felt really scary and shameful. I didn't talk about it with the other girls at church. If I forgot a pad at school, I didn't ask anyone. I said I was sick and I went home.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:25] And I remember teen pregnancy rates being very high in Utah during this time period. And I remember just talking to women who just said I was never taught how babies happen. Right. I didn't know how you got pregnant. Right.

Meggan Hayes [01:02:42] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:42] I mean, I like, some would kiss or touch, and they would be worried that they got pregnant from kissing or touching because they were never told what causes impregnation.

Meggan Hayes [01:02:52] I just picked it up in sixth grade. They said the word chromosomes in my science class, and I was appalled. I thought that was a bad word. Something we shouldn't talk about. Chromosomes.

Margi Dehlin [01:03:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:07] Okay. So, yeah, I always say that shame seems to be a secret ingredient in the Mormon and business model because it just. No matter what, you're going to grow up feeling unworthy and like, without the church, you're lost and broken and damned and unworthy. Right. But let's just talk quickly about your spiritual development and your testimony development sort of in high school, and then we'll go towards how you end up losing your faith. So, yeah, let's talk about that.

Cracks in Faith During High School

Meggan Hayes [01:03:41] Yeah. So I was in Utah, so I had release time.

John Dehlin [01:03:44] Seminary, meaning you would walk across the street.

Meggan Hayes [01:03:47] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:48] During high school, it was like third

Meggan Hayes [01:03:50] period, you know, walk across. Right across the street to the institute seminary building. Yeah. And have a paid seminary teacher who taught us. We got grades. We, you know, had attendance whether we were tardy or. And that was something Julie and I were talking about when we were driving over here was that I was never late, ever. I. If you looked at my high school and junior high transcript, I did not have one tardy ever.

Meggan Hayes [01:04:15] So I would just. But, yeah, so I would go across the street. And we had done so much scripture study growing up, but it was very Book of Mormon focused. So I remember when we did Old Testament in seminary and they started talking about the plagues in Egypt. I had never heard of that before.

Meggan Hayes [01:04:33] And so I was looking around and everyone else knew what it was. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I know what that is. But I had started bearing my testimony over the pulpit when I was young. When I was young, When I was 7 or 8, I went up and bore my testimony. And I was scared. I was nervous and anxious, so I started to cry. And afterward they told me that was the Spirit.

Meggan Hayes [01:04:54] So I knew that if you cry, that's good. That's the spirit. But in high school, I. I believed all of it. I believed all of it. And as much as I was

Julie O'Neal [01:05:11] really,

Meggan Hayes [01:05:13] I want to say begging, but, like, for my dad and my mom to love me, I was doing the same with God. Like, I'm gonna go to seminary, and I'm gonna ace it, and then God will also love me. That is what I will get in return. And when I was a senior and I was gonna graduate from seminary, they had all the seminary graduates speak in sacrament meeting.

Meggan Hayes [01:05:38] And they called my house to say that was gonna happen. And nobody gave me the message. You know, I don't know who answered the phone, but they didn't tell me. So I showed up at church that Sunday. The bishop's standing there greeting, and he's like, are you gonna come to prayer meeting? And I said, for what? He's like, because all the people who are speaking and sacramenting today are gonna do prayer meeting. And I was like, good one, Bishop. You know, I'm not speaking. And he's like, yeah, the seminary graduates are speaking today.

Meggan Hayes [01:06:02] And I was like, really? I at that moment, realized it was not a joke. And so he said, well, you know, we'll just put you at the end of the program. And so I was sitting up in front of everybody preparing a talk, and all the other seminary graduates were getting up, and they're saying, oh, we had missionary week, and we learned how to iron a shirt. And I got up and I talked about how the gospel was the cornerstone of everything I did. Right. I actually gave a very spiritual talk. I remembered this one movie where that they showed us in seminary where there was this little kid who was out playing in the front yard, and his mom was watching through the window, and the kid started to run towards the street, and the mom is banging on the window, and the kid's not listening, and so she runs down and she scoops the kid up and was like, I told you not to go to the corner.

Meggan Hayes [01:06:51] And the kid looks at her and says, mommy, what's the corner? And I talked about that in my talk and, you know, all included all of this emotion. And I was like, the gospel taught me what the corner is, so I know so I can stay safe.

Meggan Hayes [01:07:09] And that was what my testimony was based on, was if I do these things, then I can. Hopefully I can be safe and I won't run out in the street.

John Dehlin [01:07:23] So by all, pretty much all markers, you were a hyper, righteous, believing, faithful, devout Mormon Teenager.

Meggan Hayes [01:07:33] I think people, my friends, thought that I was not perceived that way in my family.

John Dehlin [01:07:42] Let me check in with Julie about that. So how did you perceive Julie? How did you perceive Meggan's righteousness when she was. By the time she was a senior in high school?

Julie O'Neal [01:07:52] Like, I thought it was fine, but I heard what other family members said.

John Dehlin [01:07:57] What were they saying?

Julie O'Neal [01:07:58] You know, she's lies. She has boyfriends.

Meggan Hayes [01:08:03] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [01:08:04] Just. She wasn't very righteous, you know?

John Dehlin [01:08:08] Dang, what a difference. And what a set of elements of indictment. You, like, hid what you were doing with boys, but you weren't having sex. But, I mean, the fact that inside your family, you were viewed as less righteous given your behavior, that's wild. Anything else you want to?

Julie O'Neal [01:08:30] Yeah, because you had that one boyfriend. And I thought it was in high school, but I think it was when Meggan got out of high school that she had the boyfriend. But with the way the family talked about it, I thought it was when they were still in high school. So that was. I mean, you can clear the air on that one.

Meggan Hayes [01:08:47] We started dating at my 18th birthday party, so. And that was a month before I graduated high school. So that was the boyfriend, but he was premission, so I can see that.

John Dehlin [01:08:59] But what a weird condition in your family to be working so hard to be righteous, but to have the perception in the family of you being one of the least righteous. That's my. What is that like?

Meggan Hayes [01:09:14] It was a lot of pressure because so many siblings. Wasn't always my dad policing me because the siblings took over that job. You know, they weren't just the parent in a comp. You know, I was parenting Julie in a comfort role. Not purposely, but my brothers were parenting me as another dad.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:39] Right. They were upholders of your, like, supporters of your dad. The kind of arms maybe thinking they're protecting you or maybe trying to stay safe themselves by pointing the.

John Dehlin [01:09:57] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:57] Okay.

Meggan Hayes [01:09:58] So, yeah, there were always eyes watching. And actually, my brothers that I went to.

John Dehlin [01:10:04] Under his eye.

Meggan Hayes [01:10:05] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:10:06] Gosh. Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:10:08] Yep. But when I went to high school, when I was a freshman, two of my brothers were in high school with me, and one of them wouldn't acknowledge me. He was a cool kid, and he didn't acknowledge me at school, and the other one would sometimes, but it was in that role of another father. So one time my locker got jammed, and he unjammed it for me, which was really kind, but it was in this role of, you probably can't do this. I'm gonna do it. I'm the man. I'M the protector. And also, you should listen to everything I'm telling you about boys.

John Dehlin [01:10:50] Real quickly. Julia, any other impressions of Meggan before?

Julie O'Neal [01:10:54] I know. I mean, she was four years older than me, so I just thought she was the cool sister.

John Dehlin [01:10:58] Okay.

Julie O'Neal [01:10:59] You know, because she. She was the cool sister. She helped me get ready for prom and any of the fancy dances. She was doing my makeup and hair. So when I would hear negative things in high school, I just. I didn't really care because I was like, she's the cool sister.

John Dehlin [01:11:14] Did y' all spend time just hanging out together, too? Fun, you know, whatever.

Julie O'Neal [01:11:20] I don't know. I don't know if I have a lot of memories of, like, going to the mall together. Cause she was out. She was, like, in college already by the time I was really getting old enough. But I do just remember her kind of in that caretaking role.

John Dehlin [01:11:32] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:11:32] Yeah. I don't remember just having hangouts either.

Julie O'Neal [01:11:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:35] Once you're a senior in high school, you don't always want to hang out with your freshman sibling.

Julie O'Neal [01:11:39] Yeah. Yeah. Well.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:40] And she was.

Meggan Hayes [01:11:40] Yeah, she was so far away. Yeah. There were a lot of siblings between us.

John Dehlin [01:11:44] Yeah. Okay.

Julie O'Neal [01:11:45] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:46] I'm curious if, at the time the pain registered for you that you were working so hard and being so misunderstood, like, the narrative was beyond your control in your family of origin. Like, did the pain register for. Were you. Do you remember? Like, were you angry? Were you just desperate? Like, just trying to, like, hustle even further? Or do you remember that it kind of. You. When you actually start feeling like, wow, there's a disparity here in the way I am experiencing myself and in the way my parents are talking about me or my.

Meggan Hayes [01:12:33] I didn't realize it in high school. I think I adopted their thoughts about me. And I was. I was depressed because of it. I felt lonely. I felt lonely because I couldn't even feel safety from myself. I didn't feel it from them. And that translated into me putting, you know, their words were in my head. My internal voice was my dad. And there are still times when I have to push back against that. So the feelings were coming out in ways, but I didn't recognize that's what was happening because I thought, I'm bad, so of course I feel bad.

John Dehlin [01:13:24] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:13:25] Yeah. All right, one last question before we.

John Dehlin [01:13:28] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:13:30] Did you have moments where you were able to discern that the way your parents were having you live to be good in quotation marks, righteous, whatever, was so much harder than everyone else that the expectations for you were always like when you had to be home or that you weren't watching TV shows that other people were or did any of that as you were being feeling disappointing, as you were feeling, like, why can't I get this right when I'm working so hard? Did it ever. Did you ever, like, with your friends or people you were out with, realize, wow, they. They're living a different Mormonism than I am?

Meggan Hayes [01:14:18] I didn't.

Margi Dehlin [01:14:19] Okay.

Meggan Hayes [01:14:20] I really didn't. I just thought all teenagers kind of hate their parents.

Margi Dehlin [01:14:26] Got it.

Meggan Hayes [01:14:27] And so what I'm experiencing is what people are talking about. When people say your parents are strict or harder. They have rules. This is what they're talking about. But they say, honor thy father and mother, and they say that your parents love you. So this is the only thing I know. So this is love.

Margi Dehlin [01:14:50] Yeah. Yep.

Marriage, Parenting, and Early Doubts

John Dehlin [01:14:53] So I guess there's so many ways we could drill deep, but for the sake of time in the narrative, take us from you graduating high school salutatorian, I imagine you served as president of your respective Laurel.

Meggan Hayes [01:15:12] President.

John Dehlin [01:15:13] Yeah. Is that right? You were Laurel president?

Meggan Hayes [01:15:16] I was.

John Dehlin [01:15:16] Okay, so you did all the things. Graduated. When did you first start questioning or having doubts about your faith?

Meggan Hayes [01:15:29] When did I.

John Dehlin [01:15:31] Well, where it was.

Meggan Hayes [01:15:33] It's hard because it was happening for a long time and I didn't know. So I can tell because it wasn't when I graduated. I mean, I graduated, I went to Ricks College and I graduated Rick's College without being married, which I felt shame about. I thought I was washed up at 20 years old.

John Dehlin [01:15:49] You graduated at 20?

Meggan Hayes [01:15:51] Well, because it was a two year.

John Dehlin [01:15:52] Oh, right, right, right, right.

Meggan Hayes [01:15:54] Okay, okay.

John Dehlin [01:15:54] Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Meggan Hayes [01:15:56] So I. Yeah, I got my associate's degree and got married. Got married later. Like, I. All of my roommates got married after that first year, and I didn't. And so I went back a second year and all my roommates were engaged or got married and I didn't. So I graduated. It was very shameful. But at that point, I wasn't married yet, so I hadn't reached that point where God could love me.

John Dehlin [01:16:21] So what were you taught about your future as a woman in Mormonism?

Meggan Hayes [01:16:25] When I went to Rick's college, my dad gave me a father's blessing beforehand, and he told me I would find my eternal companion. So when I went there, I was going to school, but my one job was to find someone to marry because my worth was bound to getting married and having children.

John Dehlin [01:16:49] Yeah. So stay at home, Mom.

Meggan Hayes [01:16:51] Yeah. Yes. And in first grade, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up. And I said, I want to be a mom. And I literally had no other thought about anything else ever.

John Dehlin [01:17:03] Yeah. So when did you get married?

Meggan Hayes [01:17:07] Like, how old was I?

John Dehlin [01:17:07] How many years after graduating Rick's graduated.

Meggan Hayes [01:17:11] There, see, it was.

John Dehlin [01:17:14] What'd you do after Rick's?

Meggan Hayes [01:17:15] Moved to California because I didn't know. I didn't want to go to byu and Rick's was a two year college. So I was like, well, I'll go out there and work for a little while and then maybe I'll go back to school later. And that's when I met Donnie, and we met two weeks later, got engaged, got married four months after that and had our first child 11 months later.

John Dehlin [01:17:37] what age were you married?

Meggan Hayes [01:17:39] Married at 20. Had our oldest at 21.

John Dehlin [01:17:41] So, like right after graduating Rick's, you go to California, meet Donnie, get married, and you have a kid nine months later. 11 months later. Okay, 11 months. Okay. So by 21 you're married in a Mormon temple.

Meggan Hayes [01:17:54] Yeah. Yep. Manti Temple. Manti Temple in January, you know.

John Dehlin [01:17:59] Yeah. Okay. Did you experience the unconditional love from God, your dad, mom, and yourself once you got temple married?

Meggan Hayes [01:18:09] Well, so Donnie was the first one who I'd crossed lines with when it came to chastity. We didn't have sex, but yes, pre marriage, we didn't have sex, but we might as well have. Right. And so when I got married, I knew it was a lie.

John Dehlin [01:18:24] That you weren't worthy to enter the Lord's sacred house.

Meggan Hayes [01:18:29] Yes. So it's plagued me.

John Dehlin [01:18:32] And you lied because you had learned to lie. Maybe in high school.

Meggan Hayes [01:18:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:18:36] Right?

Meggan Hayes [01:18:36] Yeah, Yeah. I mean, that was what I did because I wanted them to know, but I also wanted them to. I was a people pleaser. I wanted them to like me.

John Dehlin [01:18:47] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:18:47] So there was always. I was always torn between the two. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:18:51] So there's also that weird thing where in Mormonism you didn't have sex.

Meggan Hayes [01:18:55] We didn't have sex.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:56] I know.

Meggan Hayes [01:18:57] And so then I'm justifying it and. But I knew, I knew we crossed some lines. Yeah. So after I went through the temple for the first time a month before we got married, and after that I was like, okay, I've got the garments now. And when I went through the washing and anointing, I think my sins were forgiven. So we just can't for the next month. Yeah, But I was 20. Yeah, he was 22. That wasn't happening. So, yeah, I got married, but then I had a baby and I was like, it's got to be behind me.

Margi Dehlin [01:19:31] Right.

Meggan Hayes [01:19:32] But there was always that nagging feeling of, what if it's not?

John Dehlin [01:19:36] So you're saying you were never able to feel fully worthy because your temple marriage, in your mind, wasn't worthy?

Meggan Hayes [01:19:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:19:44] So you never got that satisfaction of arriving at Worth?

Meggan Hayes [01:19:48] No. I think for about 10 seconds after I got baptized was the one time where I can pinpoint right now, I'm perfect.

Margi Dehlin [01:19:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:19:55] Yeah. That's. Yep. Yeah. The whole model breaks down if you actually feel worthy.

Meggan Hayes [01:19:59] Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't. I was following the path.

John Dehlin [01:20:02] Okay. Okay. So at what age did you start having serious doubts about your faith in the church?

Meggan Hayes [01:20:10] It was way later, so when our oldest was five years old, she did something that I didn't approve of. I do not remember what it was.

John Dehlin [01:20:19] You're 26 at this point.

Meggan Hayes [01:20:22] Yeah. I can't do math in my head, so what you're saying is probably right. But, yeah. We lived in St. George, so we had three kids by then and a fourth on the way. And she did something, and I reacted in a way that my dad would have. I didn't spank her, but just the way I talked to her. And she looked at me, and I saw myself looking at my dad, and I. In that moment, I knew that I did not want to do that to her. I never wanted her to look at me like that.

Julie O'Neal [01:21:01] I never did.

Meggan Hayes [01:21:03] So we were so poor, so I couldn't just, you know, sign up for a parenting class or. So I went to the library and I got parenting books because I was like, I have to do something different, and I have no tools for this. I had scoured everything the church had, and there was nothing about how to be a good parent that I could find that was actually actionable material. Show love. Well, I don't know what that means. And so I became a voracious reader of parenting books, and that was the beginning of my faith deconstruction. But I didn't know it.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:47] Whoa.

John Dehlin [01:21:48] Margi's nodding. Why are you nodding?

Margi Dehlin [01:21:49] No, I relate to it.

John Dehlin [01:21:51] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [01:21:52] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:21:53] I didn't know I was deconstructing my faith, but I was, because my parenting was tied to my dad and was tied to God.

John Dehlin [01:22:01] Mormon God.

Meggan Hayes [01:22:02] Yep, Mormon God. So when my parenting started to change, I started to realize that a God who would be so dysregulated that he would drown all of his children.

John Dehlin [01:22:17] Noah.

Meggan Hayes [01:22:18] Yeah, Right. Yes. Noah. In the flood.

John Dehlin [01:22:20] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:22:22] I. I, as an imperfect mortal being and becoming a better parent than that. So how can I Worship someone who would treat their children the way that I have now vowed I will not do. But that took, what, 10 years

Margi Dehlin [01:22:44] to

Meggan Hayes [01:22:44] come to that conclusion? But it started that day when my daughter looked at me and I thought, there's gotta be something better than this.

John Dehlin [01:22:53] Yeah. So your faith in Mormon God started to fade?

Meggan Hayes [01:22:58] Yeah, because I didn't know anything outside of the correlated church material, so there wasn't any church history stuff that was bothering me. I didn't know anything about poly. I mean, I knew polygamy existed. I didn't even ever think about whether or not Joseph Smith was a polygamist. If I had known, it wouldn't have bothered me. But I don't remember knowing or not knowing. It wasn't something I thought about. I didn't. None of that bothered me. I just accepted it all and brought it in. The thing that started to crack, that was when I realized that God maybe wasn't a very good parent.

John Dehlin [01:23:34] Tell me what year you were born.

Meggan Hayes [01:23:35] 1981.

John Dehlin [01:23:38] So it would be 2006. 7ish. When you were kind of 25. 26.

Meggan Hayes [01:23:44] Right?

John Dehlin [01:23:45] Does that sound right?

Meggan Hayes [01:23:46] Yeah. So St. George was. I graduated from. Because I went back to school after we were married and got my bachelor's degree. Graduated in 2006 and we moved to St. George.

John Dehlin [01:23:56] Your bachelor's was where from?

Meggan Hayes [01:23:57] Where from BYU, Idaho.

John Dehlin [01:23:59] Oh, you went back.

Julie O'Neal [01:24:00] Okay.

Meggan Hayes [01:24:00] Yeah, Okay. I went back.

John Dehlin [01:24:01] Okay.

Meggan Hayes [01:24:01] Had to eat up the rest of that scholarship.

John Dehlin [01:24:03] Yeah. Okay. So you did finish?

Meggan Hayes [01:24:04] Yeah, I did, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:06] So, yeah. 2005, 2006, that's the beginning of the Mormon, you know, blogger NaCl. Podcasts were young. The CEO Mormon Stories was just starting. The CS letter didn't exist yet. MormonThink was just coming online. But it. Most Mormons didn't even know what podcasts were, let alone start getting exposed to the historical problems. So that makes sense. You didn't know Joseph Smith was a polygamist in 2006, 2007?

Meggan Hayes [01:24:35] No, I don't know if I did or didn't know. Honestly, I didn't care. Polygamy was not something that bothered me.

John Dehlin [01:24:41] Because I could bet lots of Money that at 26 in 2005, 2006, you weren't told that Joseph Smith had 30 wives and 14 year old wives and mother, daughter pairs and sister pairs and other men's wives?

Meggan Hayes [01:24:53] No, no, I didn't.

John Dehlin [01:24:54] Other, I just.

Meggan Hayes [01:24:55] I don't even know that's what. When people say they were bothered about polygamy back then, I don't know how or why. Because I didn't think about it. I didn't realize that he was or wasn't. If I. If someone had told me he was, I would have just accepted it.

John Dehlin [01:25:07] Yeah. Okay, so what was the next big crack in your testimony that you recall?

Meggan's Faith Crisis Begins

Meggan Hayes [01:25:14] Yeah, there were a lot along the way, but it. A lot of it was tied to parenting. Watching my kids get into their teen years and navigating the same things that I did and seeing that same shame showing up and further separating myself from the church, because as a parent, I didn't want to enforce all of that stuff that made me feel so much shame.

Meggan Hayes [01:25:45] So we went from St. George to southeast Alaska, and that's the first time I was a Relief Society president in a small branch in southeast Alaska. And my oldest was getting into middle school and starting to navigate some of those, you know, boys and hormones and wanting to have boys over to the house and realizing because I was still voraciously reading parenting books at this time, that I was fearing from the church a little bit. But I thought, if Heavenly Father is at least as understanding as I am, he's gonna understand what I'm doing.

Meggan Hayes [01:26:32] But I was pushing a little bit. You know, my daughter wanted to dye her hair, and I was like, yeah, that's fine. For me, that was never okay. Growing up, that was an unnatural hair color. Even, you know, Rick's in byu, Idaho have those standards. So.

Meggan Hayes [01:26:47] But I was like, it's fine. It's just hair. And that felt like a departure. And so it was kind of tiptoeing into these little departures.

Julie O'Neal [01:26:56] It was a departure. This is when rumors started around the family because she was allowing these things to happen. Like, her kids have colored hair. We're like, did you see?

John Dehlin [01:27:07] Yeah. So, Julie, let's hear your perspective. So you're growing. You're now still at home, still in high school.

Julie O'Neal [01:27:12] So I graduated high school in 03.

John Dehlin [01:27:15] Okay.

Julie O'Neal [01:27:15] So I was in college at this point. So I was separated from the family, but I was still involved.

John Dehlin [01:27:21] Well, let's talk quickly, just about your high school experience as a Mormon kid. Was it different than Meggan's or identical?

Julie O'Neal [01:27:28] Yeah. No, it was different.

John Dehlin [01:27:31] How so?

Julie O'Neal [01:27:33] I tried so hard to be perfect, like we had talked about before. And when I was 15, I found, you know, I got a boyfriend. And I felt so guilty after a few months, so I broke it off and tried to really get into the church and just do everything my dad wanted me to do. And I realized that it didn't matter how much I did, it still was never going to be enough. So I was like, screw it. I'm just going to do what I want to do. So when I went back to whatever grade that was like a junior year, I think when I was 16, I got my boyfriend back.

Julie O'Neal [01:28:06] I started learning the guitar so I could be in a band, though I never did that. And I snuck around all the time. And I had rebellious teen years. And I always called it rebellious teen years until later on I realized it was just being a normal teenager, just wanting to know about things, you know? Yeah. So I had the boyfriend all through high school.

John Dehlin [01:28:30] You just had to hide that.

Julie O'Neal [01:28:32] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:32] And maybe lie about it.

Julie O'Neal [01:28:35] I never even. To this day, I've never told my parents. They had to have known, right? They had to have known. I don't know. But I never admitted it, you know, And I was still doing the abcd, but it was all his friends that would pick me up, and then I would go out with him, you know, and I'd go hang out with my girlfriends on the weekend. But he would be there.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:53] Yes.

Julie O'Neal [01:28:54] So it was always sneaking around, lying. But, like, my parents stopped asking where I was going. I would just say, I'm going out with friends, you know, but they stopped asking. And in my mind, I was like, it's because they know I have to lie and they don't want me to lie.

John Dehlin [01:29:09] Also, like, how do you police 14 kids? You know, it's just. It's going to wear you out. You have to, you know, you just can't.

Julie O'Neal [01:29:16] Yeah, it's a lot.

John Dehlin [01:29:18] How about your sense of worthiness and guilt and shame throughout those high school years?

Julie O'Neal [01:29:23] Yeah, it was still there, but I was able to kind of detach from it is what I did. And I got really into my guitar and music. I wrote a lot of songs, which I won't play them now because they're so sad, you know, it was like this. A cry for help. Like in the songs I was saying, I just want to be loved. I just want to feel good enough. I just want to be seen. But it was not the experience that I had, you know, Like, I was just scared all the time, you know? But I did. I started finding a sense of my own identity when I was like, screw it.

Julie O'Neal [01:29:59] I'm just gonna do what I want, you know? And so I still thought that I would graduate high school, get married right away, have babies, because that would make me beautiful. Not just worthy, but then I would be beautiful. And people would perceive me as. That if I could get, like, a ring on my finger, I would be the pretty girl, you know. But I was super rebellious. By the time I turned 18, I'd pretty much done all the things the church says not to.

Julie O'Neal [01:30:25] I still have never told my parents that. You know, I smoked a cigar, I tried a cigarette. I got drunk a bunch of times. You know, just things that Mormon kids should not be doing. But my friends were all doing it too.

Meggan Hayes [01:30:38] And I didn't know. I didn't know that any of this was happening.

Julie O'Neal [01:30:42] Yeah, I think I was still perceived as the good girl during all this, I think. But again, we've never talked about it, so I don't actually know. And then I moved out the week after I turned 18 and had a different boyfriend. And obviously the law of chastity, I was like, don't care about it. Don't care at all.

Margi Dehlin [01:31:02] Yeah, interesting. So the family narrative. Whereas for Meggan, there was this overarching family narrative. It feels like that kind of followed you those years. You just couldn't shake it. No matter. But for you, you did experience that same thing. There was no narrative you could detect at that time about you or a way that your parents started treating you as like a lost cause or like a troublemaker. That was different for you.

Julie O'Neal [01:31:33] Yeah, I was not treated that way. Like I said, I was still like a safe, safe, ish place with my mom. Cause there was one time I'd slept over at my girlfriend's house and we went out and toilet papered at midnight. We both liked the same boy, and he was awake and caught us. So we ended up going into his house and, you know, spending three or four hours there. And when we got back to my friend's house, her mom was in the bedroom waiting for us. It's like, oh, no. We got caught because we were gone from like midnight to 4am and she was like, I'm gonna have to tell your parents.

Julie O'Neal [01:32:08] I was like, do not tell my parents. And she told my mom. And I was just freaking out the whole day for my dad to get home. And she'd never told him, so it was still. And I was the peacemaker, the people pleaser and the perfectionist. And so even though I was doing these things, I think that that still stayed with me. They still thought I was this good girl.

John Dehlin [01:32:35] Yeah. And it's interesting that by, like, measurable behavioral standards, and forgive me for using these words, but you were less faithful or less righteous than Meggan Julie. But somehow Meggan got flagged as the less righteous one. And because you kept things private and secret for very good reasons, you were Able to create the perception of righteousness by your family standards.

Julie O'Neal [01:33:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:33:06] And so it was more. And I was gonna ask that just about your family. Cause I think this is a common trait of many Mormon families, but probably human families is the emphasis is more on the perception than the reality. The appearance. Is that valid or not? Yes.

Julie O'Neal [01:33:23] Yeah. Cause yeah, it was just the appearance. It was an illusion of me being the, you know, the perfect good Mormon girl. I mean I was hanging out with friends that called Mormonism a cult.

John Dehlin [01:33:34] Oh yeah. Even back then what the niggas like you were.

Julie O'Neal [01:33:39] Yes, they called it a cult. And I was like, well, like it's. But you can say that, I guess.

Margi Dehlin [01:33:46] I mean one thing I do feel is really remarkable about you during this time is that you continued connecting with yourself like you did when you were a girl. Right. When you would go to your room and journal and be by yourself. Like you kind of, you continued that. And whereas Meggan, I hear you saying throughout high school I did these things, but I also was really merged enmeshed with my parents view of me. What I'm hearing from you, Julie, is that you were able to think through some of these things enough and differentiate enough that you were less like adopting the shame, like wearing the shame. You had like a little piece of you that you either put aside or created or were like slowly feeding that was like really different from, you know, your parents version or what your parents kind of valued for you.

Meggan Hayes [01:34:49] Would you be that?

Julie O'Neal [01:34:50] Because I didn't think that I was bad.

Margi Dehlin [01:34:52] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [01:34:53] I was like my dad might think that some of these things I'm doing is bad, but I did not think I was bad. And that's what shame is. If I had said I am bad, the shame would be there. But it wasn't. It was. My dad is really strict and when I turn 18, then I can be who I am. And I know who I am.

Margi Dehlin [01:35:12] Yeah, that's.

Julie O'Neal [01:35:13] That's what it was for me at that time.

John Dehlin [01:35:15] It's interesting, by being less, let's just say mind controlled by the church, you actually had a healthier self development.

Julie O'Neal [01:35:23] Yeah. Yep.

Margi Dehlin [01:35:25] And family and parents.

Meggan Hayes [01:35:26] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:35:27] And relationship with your parents.

Julie O'Neal [01:35:28] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:35:29] But you, Meggan, by being more mind controlled by the church, you had a less positive self esteem and a worse relationship with your parents.

Meggan Hayes [01:35:40] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:35:40] Yes.

Meggan Hayes [01:35:41] And I didn't know that I wasn't the worst one. Yeah. I mean.

Margi Dehlin [01:35:49] Right. You don't know what? You don't know.

Meggan Hayes [01:35:51] I didn't know.

John Dehlin [01:35:52] Right. Yeah. Worst in terms of the dumb.

Meggan Hayes [01:35:55] I did toilet paper twice. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:35:59] So Julie was you graduate what were kind of the high level milestones that you achieved, and then we'll come back to Meggan's faith. Well, I want to hear your milestones leading up to Meggan's loss of faith and leaving the church, but also the growing family rumors and perceptions of Meggan as you're into college and that sort of thing. Does that make sense? Any other thing you want to say about your high school school years that are really important to your story?

Julie O'Neal [01:36:30] I don't think so.

John Dehlin [01:36:31] Okay.

Julie O'Neal [01:36:31] Yeah, we can.

Margi Dehlin [01:36:32] Well, can I prompt a story that came out last night? Oh, the seminary graduate. I think that really tells about the pressure.

Meggan Hayes [01:36:41] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:36:42] The intense pressure you feel.

Julie O'Neal [01:36:44] And I'll even add a little backstory to that too, because Meggan graduated seminary, was never tardy, was never absent. I had over 40 absence in seminary. And I was like, I probably better get this graduation or my parents have the same parents.

Margi Dehlin [01:37:03] Yeah, right.

Julie O'Neal [01:37:05] Basically, I missed a whole semester because I just didn't like the teacher because he said that if you made a mistake, God would know and you would get struck by lightning. And I was like, that's not true. I'm never coming back here. So I skipped a whole semester of seminary. But then I had to make it up. And then by the time I was a senior, I did graduate and I was gonna have to speak in church. And I knew it. And this was already by this time, I had gotten my friends that were not. They had all left the church and they were all out. They were all graduated from high school at this point. But I was telling them how I did not want to speak at seminary. And so one of them gave me a couple of lore tab, which I didn't even know.

John Dehlin [01:37:45] A lore tab? What is that?

Julie O'Neal [01:37:47] It's a painkiller. So I think people use. Use it after like really intense surgeries. And so I'm like, is it like,

John Dehlin [01:37:54] is it an opiate?

Julie O'Neal [01:37:55] Did it make you loopy?

Margi Dehlin [01:37:57] Do you remember or do you.

Julie O'Neal [01:37:59] Oh, I remember. Yes. So they told me, they're like, it's gonna take at least 30 minutes to get into your system. So I had this whole thing planned. I woke up early on a Sunday morning and I got in the bath.

John Dehlin [01:38:09] Okay, it is an opiate. So it's like, you know, morphine or like OxyContin. Or OxyContin.

Margi Dehlin [01:38:16] They were planning nausea. It's not about that pain right now.

Julie O'Neal [01:38:19] But they had told me, they're like, if you take two of these, you will be really sick. I was like, perfect, then I will have to Speak.

Meggan Hayes [01:38:27] Great.

John Dehlin [01:38:29] Because you couldn't say, I don't want to speak, right?

Julie O'Neal [01:38:30] No, no, no, no, no, no. I don't even know what the word no was at that point. It was just like, okay, I'll do it. Yeah. So I got in the bath and I was so nervous because I'm like, I've never even taken anything more than ibuprofen. But I was also in the rebellious years, right. So I took the two and I was in the bath and I'm like, I'm not really feeling it yet. And once, 30 minutes, hit man. I was sick as a dog, like, dizzy, puking, my skin was like white, and I was in bed all day. But it was worth it, you know,

John Dehlin [01:39:03] to not have to speak at seminary graduation.

Julie O'Neal [01:39:05] So I got out of it.

John Dehlin [01:39:06] Was it ward soccer meeting or was it Sunday graduation?

Julie O'Neal [01:39:09] But I just, like, I didn't. I didn't like the church at that time. I didn't want to be up there speaking. I mean, I couldn't even take the sacrament at this point, so I would have, like bloody noses. That would conveniently occur right before the sacrament was passed. And I would go out into the bathroom for. And it takes a long. That's like a 20 minute process before you can go back in there. It's a long time.

John Dehlin [01:39:35] What kept you from just lying and taking the sacrament unworthily?

Margi Dehlin [01:39:39] Yeah, you could.

Julie O'Neal [01:39:40] That was just. God would know. God would see that. So I could not do that. So I'd just conveniently hop on out.

John Dehlin [01:39:47] Isn't that funny what we do and don't realize God can see. You know what I mean? Like the, you know, if soaking is a thing, like, in theory, God could see that, but he would still know. Somehow we're selective on what we realize God can actually see.

Meggan Hayes [01:40:04] Yeah, but I better not take that sacrament.

Margi Dehlin [01:40:08] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:40:08] Okay.

Julie O'Neal [01:40:09] Yeah, so that was me. And then when I turned nine, well, it was right before I turned 19, I actually had taken a hallucinogen, if

John Dehlin [01:40:21] that's the right word, like a mushroom or. Okay.

Julie O'Neal [01:40:24] With my friends.

John Dehlin [01:40:24] At what age?

Julie O'Neal [01:40:26] I was 18.

John Dehlin [01:40:27] What year was that?

Julie O'Neal [01:40:27] About 2003. 2004. Yeah. Because I turned 18 in 2003.

Julie's Path Through Marriage and Belief

Margi Dehlin [01:40:33] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:40:34] That's early to be doing mushrooms, but.

Julie O'Neal [01:40:37] Well, I mean, it's like all of us were raised in the church and had left and were experimenting with these things that we had never been taught about, you know? And again, I was so nervous to do it, but I didn't know how to say no. And my friends were doing it, so I did it. And during that I actually had a Joseph Smith moment and I saw Heavenly Father and Jesus on the wall. This is what got me to go back to church because they told me like, you need to get your life back together and you need to start

Meggan Hayes [01:41:05] going back to church.

John Dehlin [01:41:06] That used to be a Mormon Stories episode. Mushrooms converted me to Mormonism.

Julie O'Neal [01:41:10] No, I don't share that story a lot.

John Dehlin [01:41:15] Wow, thank you. Mushrooms. I want to bear my testimony that Mushrooms led to my testimony.

Julie O'Neal [01:41:21] Yes, because they did. Yeah. So that's. I started cleaning up my act and going back to church at that point. So by the time I was 19, I was starting to get back into church and I hadn't really learned anything since I was 16. So I felt like I was relearning a lot of that stuff. Just stories out of the Book of Mormon. I'd forgotten a lot. But so when I got back in the church, I was like 100% in, you know, I gave up my identity. So many things I gave. I didn't know it at the time, but I gave up lots of pieces of me when I went back into the church because you have to be obedient. You know, I gave up a lot of my music, my piano playing because it just didn't feel like those were Christ like things to do. I had to focus on getting married.

John Dehlin [01:42:10] Did you get a rush of guilt and shame for your wayward youth or not? Did you just skip that bypass that?

Julie O'Neal [01:42:16] I didn't. I mean, I think it was always there and it was always underlying because I had to go through the whole repentance process for a year, you know, and meet with.

John Dehlin [01:42:25] Oh, what? Oh, you confessed to your bishop that you had had sex.

Julie O'Neal [01:42:29] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:42:29] And his punishment was.

Julie O'Neal [01:42:31] I mean, I had to tell all the details too. How many times, where we did it, what we did. Like it was.

John Dehlin [01:42:37] Why did he need to know that?

Julie O'Neal [01:42:39] I don't know. But I was being obedient right back to that. So I just told him everything. And I will say he was, I felt very safe. Like nothing. He never. Nothing inappropriate in my mind happened. Granted, now I know that him even asking those questions is inappropriate.

Julie O'Neal [01:42:57] But yeah, the ward that I went to, I wasn't taking the sacrament. People could see that. They knew I was meeting with the bishop all the time. So I never made a friend the whole time. I was in that singles ward for a year, but I didn't care. It was almost like this self righteous thing. I was like, I have God's love and I don't need any of yours. You Know, So it's just getting back into it. I was feeling the spirit. And I think what it was too, is I was feeling love for my dad that I had never received. That is, in that one year, I felt more love from him than I still ever have. And once I started dating again, it was gone. It felt like it was gone.

John Dehlin [01:43:42] So your dad loves you when you're not dating? Basically. When you're a baby, a child, or not dating.

Julie O'Neal [01:43:48] But, I mean, I was 19, so I should have been married.

Meggan Hayes [01:43:51] Interesting, right?

Julie O'Neal [01:43:52] But that's when I felt. Because I was just doing all the church things, like, I worked. I lived from home for, like, three or four months of that somewhere. And I was reading the scriptures all the time. And even on my lunch break at work, I was reading the Scriptures, like. And he, you know, he saw that I was being so good, and I felt it. I did feel it from him for that year.

John Dehlin [01:44:16] Must have felt so great and then so terrible to lose it again.

Julie O'Neal [01:44:20] Yeah. Because I sensed it immediately. You know, the first guy that I started dating, he was a very good person. And just my family didn't like him because he knew how to say the word no. He could set up boundaries.

Margi Dehlin [01:44:33] Oh, yeah.

Julie O'Neal [01:44:34] He was not as scared. He wasn't scared of, like, authority. So even if a bishop or a stake president wanted him to do something, if he didn't, I mean, he was a good guy, but he would say, no, no, not garu. So my parents and my family did not really like him.

Meggan Hayes [01:44:51] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [01:44:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:44:52] How long did you date before you got married?

Julie O'Neal [01:44:54] I didn't get married till I was 24. I was practically a spinster.

John Dehlin [01:44:59] Okay.

Julie O'Neal [01:44:59] By the time.

John Dehlin [01:45:01] And you went to uvu, is that right?

Julie O'Neal [01:45:03] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:45:04] Okay.

Julie O'Neal [01:45:04] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:45:04] Okay. Okay. So. So you dated for 3ish years. 3 or 4 years. Before you got married?

Julie O'Neal [01:45:15] Yes. And I dated a lot. Every Friday. Every Saturday night, I had a date. Sundays I was hanging. I've always had friends that were guys, too. So Sunday I was with all the guys. Yeah. But I dated a lot. I was trying to be very righteous, and for some reason, it was just never working out, you know? Like, there was one guy I was dating, and then he decided he took off his garments, and I was like, we are over. We're over. You know, So, I mean, I tried it.

Margi Dehlin [01:45:44] Just.

Julie O'Neal [01:45:46] Thankfully, none of those relationships had worked out, you know? And when I met my husband, when I was. I think I might have been 23 or 24 somewhere around there.

Meggan Hayes [01:45:55] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [01:45:55] He was just different because he kind of tested the limits a Little. He was like, you don't have to read your scriptures every day, and you can still be good, you know? So, yeah, it was a while. And then we dated for almost a year, which was a long time. And then we waited six years to have kids, so that was also, like, unheard of.

John Dehlin [01:46:16] Were you Temple married?

Julie O'Neal [01:46:17] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:46:18] Okay.

Julie O'Neal [01:46:18] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:46:19] Which Temple?

Julie O'Neal [01:46:19] The Draper.

John Dehlin [01:46:21] Okay.

Julie O'Neal [01:46:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:46:22] What year?

Julie O'Neal [01:46:23] 09.

John Dehlin [01:46:24] Okay. All right, so let's talk about as going back to anything else you want to say about your story before we go back to kind of your perception, your family's perceptions of Meggan's falling away. Anything else you want to say about your upper union?

Julie O'Neal [01:46:39] No, I think that's good. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:46:41] Okay. So when from your perspective, Julie, did you start perceiving a family vibe that Meggan was losing her faith and becoming even more horrible than she was perceived to be in high school?

Julie O'Neal [01:46:56] So we weren't even saying that she was losing her faith. Just like, little rumors were just going around the family. Like, one of them was like, did you know she's anorexic? And whether it was true or not, we never. I never thought to, like, call her and say, are you okay? Is everything okay? Are you? We just believed it were like, oh, she is. She's such a horrible person because of that. Oh, was it true? I don't know.

Meggan Hayes [01:47:24] Actually, it was. So after I had our oldest daughter, my metabolism just went really high, and it actually scared me because when she was six months old, I thought something was wrong because it didn't. I could eat whatever I wanted, and I was just very thin. So I went to the doctor and they did tests, and he just said, this is just your body. There's. Your blood work is great. Your hormones are great. There's nothing wrong with you. Your metabolism is just really high right now. So when you're hungry, eat.

John Dehlin [01:47:57] Did you. Ever since your family was talking about

Meggan Hayes [01:48:00] that behind, I had a brother who would make comments, and so then I would try really hard to eat a lot when I was in front of him to try to push back on it.

Margi Dehlin [01:48:09] But, yeah, the thing about that is normally that's a time for care, actually. Right. That would be a situation where you'd want to care for that person and make sure they're supported and getting things that they need right.

Julie O'Neal [01:48:27] Yes. Instead of spreading rumors, call them.

Margi Dehlin [01:48:30] Yes.

Julie O'Neal [01:48:30] Or, like, if they're okay.

Margi Dehlin [01:48:31] If it's a deficit or a place to judge them. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:48:36] And in my experiences, a lot of times in Mormon family culture, the gossip is about someone gaining weight. Oh, they've Gained weight. Oh, they're looking a lot heavier. Not about sort of losing weight being associated with being a bad thing. So I don't know.

Meggan Hayes [01:48:51] The gaining weight rumors went around, just not about me.

John Dehlin [01:48:54] Yeah, okay.

Meggan Hayes [01:48:55] Yeah, they did.

John Dehlin [01:48:56] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:48:57] There were sisters who got that because

John Dehlin [01:49:00] Mormons are very weight conscious, I believe.

Margi Dehlin [01:49:03] And appearance.

Meggan Hayes [01:49:04] Yes, appearance in general.

Margi Dehlin [01:49:06] I feel like a lot of attention is to changes of appearance that are. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:49:11] Okay. So rumors around being anorexic.

Julie O'Neal [01:49:13] Yes, that happened. There was also rumors that, like, did you hear that her husband comes home from work and he doesn't help out around the house? You know, he just. He's tired, he sits around, and Meggan has to do everything. And again, this is looking at it now. I'm like, why didn't we call and see if that was true and see if she needed help? Like, we just gossiped it around and were just appalled that they would have a relationship like that, you know, where a man would come home from work and need to rest, you know, which

Meggan Hayes [01:49:46] is weird because our dad, he didn't help out in those ways. The standard for Donnie was higher than it was for our dad. And this was coming from his kids saying, how dare a man be so patriarchal? I don't know. That doesn't make any sense.

Julie O'Neal [01:50:06] You know what? That's true. Because another one of the rumors was that he. That Donnie yelled sometimes.

John Dehlin [01:50:13] And I'm guessing you say your dad yelled sometimes.

Julie O'Neal [01:50:15] Yes, I'm just, like, putting that together right now. Like, again, we were holding him at a higher standard than what we even had.

Margi Dehlin [01:50:23] Right.

John Dehlin [01:50:24] Was there. So, Julie, was there a tie to all this gossip about Meggan and her faithfulness? Because ultimately, that's how it all culminates. Was it just general negativity, gossiping about family members, or was it somehow associated with faithfulness in the church?

Julie O'Neal [01:50:44] No, because Meggan hadn't left the church yet at this point. So it was just.

John Dehlin [01:50:47] So they were just crapping on Meggan?

Margi Dehlin [01:50:50] Well, I do think there are family systems that operate this way, like high control, especially if there's. I mean, can I. Would you agree if I said a parent with narcissistic traits there can be favorites just independently, like favoritism shown or the opposite of that, where a child gets just a lot of strong disapproval from parents and oftentimes don't even know why. Like, don't really understand? I don't know.

Julie O'Neal [01:51:20] Does that feel like 100%? Yes. I would say that's how it felt.

Margi Dehlin [01:51:25] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [01:51:26] Like, even she just. She was the scapegoat. I don't I can't really pinpoint why or when. She just was.

Meggan Hayes [01:51:33] Yeah, me and my brother just younger than me, got a lot of that. And you know, I cliche middle children. I don't know. But I heard my dad say on more than one occasion, I love my kids when they're young and I struggle with them as soon as they learn to say no.

John Dehlin [01:51:54] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:51:54] So.

Meggan Hayes [01:51:55] And I don't know if that applied to all the kids, but I knew it applied to me.

Margi Dehlin [01:51:58] Right, Right.

John Dehlin [01:51:59] Yeah. So Meggan was telling a story about how she let, I guess, her daughter color her hair. Do you remember when, around that time, what the family gossip was?

Julie O'Neal [01:52:11] That's what it was. It was like, did you see that? She let her daughter color her hair blue and now it's green and it was purple before. Like, that's what we were saying. It's just like, I can't believe she does that. Like, it doesn't look good. You know, the hair needs to be clean cut. But why did we care? I don't know. We just did. And her parenting was so soft and so gossip was spread around that too.

John Dehlin [01:52:35] What would they say?

Julie O'Neal [01:52:35] Like, she let her kids make a mess. Yeah. And she didn't discipline them. She doesn't discipline.

John Dehlin [01:52:42] So she's a laxed parent.

Julie O'Neal [01:52:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:52:45] When she was trying to be more of an evidence based, healthy parent.

Meggan Hayes [01:52:49] That's right.

Julie O'Neal [01:52:49] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:52:50] Children be children.

Julie O'Neal [01:52:51] She started posting it on Facebook, like when her kids would make these huge messes. And it was her. Well, she can explain her side of it, but what we saw was that she is not watching her kids. She should be there. She should not allow them to make those messes. Like, it's just unacceptable. And I didn't have kids at this point. I was judging, but I didn't know how it was to have kids. It was just kind of like feeding into all the gossip of the family.

Meggan Hayes [01:53:21] So our youngest two are 14 months apart, and they were thick as thieves as soon as the youngest could follow the second youngest around. And by that point, I was getting to a place in my parenting. I had studied for years where I wanted them to feel comfortable making a mistake and learning how to fix it.

Meggan Hayes [01:53:48] And so it was hard for me because I did feel that pressure from my family, from my parents, from church, to have the perfect kids so to regulate my own emotions when they would do something. I mean, they overflowed the toilet in our house so many times. We kept a stack of wax rings so we could take the toilet off and put it back on whenever we Needed to, because they were always putting stuff down there so that I wouldn't yell at them, so that I wouldn't revert back to those things that I had been taught.

Meggan Hayes [01:54:23] I would take a picture as soon as I figured out what was going on, and I would post it on Facebook and I would tell what they did, and I would put mischief managed. And that was my way of taking a pause so that I could then sit down and talk with them about, this is what happens when water gets all over the floor. This is what happens to our house. This is how we clean it up. Which at that young age, you have to do that a lot of times before it catches on. And so. And the two of them were just. We had chickens.

Meggan Hayes [01:54:57] And I would go to the bathroom and they would bring all the chickens in the house. And, you know, I would be preparing dinner, and the pantry was around the corner, and they would go and dump the baking soda all over the carpet in the living room. They just. That's just what they did. They were exploring. And so I would be like, you know what? If you wanna play with baking soda, that's fine. Let's put it in a bowl and sit in the middle of the wood floor. And then if it makes a mess, we can just vacuum it up. But that was seen as very permissive. And I wasn't controlling the kids. But for me, it was being able to enjoy my kids.

Margi Dehlin [01:55:33] Yeah. And connect with them where they were. Right.

Meggan Hayes [01:55:37] Yeah.

Meggan's Testimony Collapses and She Leaves the Church

John Dehlin [01:55:39] So when Meggan was the first time, your testimony really started, like, taking a big blow. What age, what year? And what was the issue?

Meggan Hayes [01:55:50] So we lived in Petersburg, so it would have been.

John Dehlin [01:55:54] This is Alaska.

Meggan Hayes [01:55:55] Yeah, Southeast Alaska. I was probably the Relief Society president at the time. And so it would have been like 2012 time frame, maybe 2013. And a member of our family made some accusations about a different member of the family. And I believed them. I thought that they were telling the truth and that I should support them. And I had been at that point, Donnie and I, our marriage, we were trying to heal our marriage.

Meggan Hayes [01:56:31] And so I had not only been studying parenting, but now I'd been going into therapy and reading books by Brene Brown. And so I wanted to be the support for this sibling that I thought was the healthiest thing. And so I was trying to support them. And the pushback I got from my mom, like, she called me at 5am one day and said, you just need to forgive and move on.

Meggan Hayes [01:56:59] And I just. With everything that I'd learned was like, I can't do that it's not that I can't forgive, but we as a family need to address these things that are happening. We need to stop sweeping them under the rug. We need to be able to talk. I need to be able to say my marriage is really hard right now and I would love some support. I would love to be able to say it's hard without Donnie being condemned and being allowed space to change and heal. I don't want to pretend like it's not happening anymore.

Meggan Hayes [01:57:41] I don't want to pretend. I need to be honest. I've lied my whole life and I need to be honest. And I started to feel a separation from the church then. And actually it's around the same time that I asked to be released from being the Relief Society president. And the branch president said, give me some time to think about it and we'll meet again. And he came back to another meeting and he said, I spoke with God. And God said, you need to keep doing it. And I said, that's fine that you spoke with God, but I am not going to do it anymore. And so.

John Dehlin [01:58:22] Which is radical. People won't understand. But in a Mormon context, a woman telling a bishop, my personal revelation trumps your bishop revelation. That's bold.

Meggan Hayes [01:58:33] And it was terrifying. But it had been 10 years since I had started that journey, and it took me 10 years to say no. For the first time.

Margi Dehlin [01:58:45] Yeah. Wow.

Meggan Hayes [01:58:46] For the first time, I really hadn't said it growing up. I really hadn't said it in my marriage.

John Dehlin [01:58:53] So it sounds like in Margi. This is a theme you highlighted with me. Sounds like you started to be a system disruptor within your local ward slash relationship with the church and your bishop. And at the same time, it occurred to you to maybe be a bit of a system disruptor with your family in the sense of saying, we need to start talking about hard things and not sweeping things like abuse under the rug. We need to change the family. Is that, Margi, what you were wanting to highlight there?

Margi Dehlin [01:59:27] Yeah, that's right. And also in that moment of saying no, it's a moment of, like, recognizing your self exists and just like celebrating that. Yeah. How powerful and how long. It was just such a work that you really put a lot of time and effort into all those years. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:59:53] So 10 years into your marriage, you're how old?

Meggan Hayes [01:59:55] Well, was it 10 years? I mean, it was probably 15 years because our oldest was about five when I started the journey, and it was 10 years in.

John Dehlin [02:00:03] So what age did you start. Start awakening, I guess, inside.

Meggan Hayes [02:00:08] So I can't do math in my head, but it would have been 35 or 2013.

John Dehlin [02:00:14] Okay. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:00:15] So though I do love that it was kind of the initial birth of differentiation was you feeling for your child. It was in a parenting role that it kind of. Is that right? Was kind of. Yes.

Meggan Hayes [02:00:32] Yeah. And then I just kept doing it, and it got to a point where I had learned so much in therapy, and I had been doing it alone. You know, I was there reading books by myself, and I would try and be like, donnie, this parenting book is so good. And he wasn't interested. So I was doing that on my own. And then going to therapy. We would see the therapist separately and then together. But I was having a much different experience than what Donnie was having. And so trying. I just wanted anyone to understand that it was okay if things changed a little bit and someone had a little bit of purple hair. And, you know, I cut my hair short at the time, which our dad did not like.

John Dehlin [02:01:25] Truly smiling.

Meggan Hayes [02:01:26] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [02:01:26] Because we gossiped about that, too. It's like, oh, yeah, I forgot about that. But, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:01:32] Because short hair means what?

Julie O'Neal [02:01:35] I don't know.

Meggan Hayes [02:01:35] You're just.

Julie O'Neal [02:01:36] I don't even know. What did we even say about. It was just like, she has short hair. That's not okay. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:01:42] Yeah. Because I think in traditional Utah Mormonism, long hair means feminine.

Margi Dehlin [02:01:47] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:01:47] Short hair means masculine.

Julie O'Neal [02:01:49] Yeah. I guess if it's longer, you're just more righteous. Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:01:52] But I was. So my hair, I got made fun of for my hair. Always. Always. As long as I can remember, my hair was something that people tease me about. Mostly my brothers. And because it's very curly in the back. Very, very curly. Like, I would get perms to relax the curl in the back, and it's straight in the front.

Meggan Hayes [02:02:12] And so when I woke up in the morning, it was doing whatever it wanted. And it didn't matter if I straightened it or curled it halfway through the day, it was. Half of it was straight and half of it was curly. And I have a big cowlick in the front, and so my bang is always poked up. And if I didn't have them, then my brother said forehead was too big. So once I had six kids, I couldn't spend. I just. It's not even that I couldn't. I no longer wanted to spend. I had done enough therapy that my hair was something I was willing to take a stand on and say, I'm not spending two hours on my hair every morning.

Meggan Hayes [02:02:48] Instead, I'm gonna spend an hour alone working out or half an hour alone working out. And then I'm going to have my hair short. So if I go out in the rain, I don't have to go back in and fix it. I can just be with my kids.

John Dehlin [02:03:06] And when did this turn into a full on, like faith crisis? Like not even wanting to go to church and telling your husband you didn't believe anymore, all that.

Meggan Hayes [02:03:14] Well, I see. And that's the thing. It didn't even really happen like that. So we moved to Missouri for a

Julie O'Neal [02:03:23] year and you were already not speaking to the family. Like, I feel like we should interject this because she. I think it was in 2014 when she was starting to go to therapy, at least for all of us. We'd heard of it, but it was still kind of new and she had. I didn't know what was going on. It was just all of a sudden she was gone, you know, and then she. I think you guys lived in Alaska.

Meggan Hayes [02:03:47] Well, yeah, we lived in Petersburg. And 2014, we had a big family reunion, just our parents and siblings, you know, but that's a lot of people. And all the kids. And during that family reunion, it was in, you know, Payson Provo area. We all stayed at different family members houses and we had all these plans every day. And there was parts of it when. Because my therapist that I was seeing was in. He. He was down here. Because in Petersburg there were no Mormon therapists, Right. So I did like a telehealth thing. And so I went. Wanted to go see him in person because I'd never seen him in person. And so during the family reunion, I cut out for two hours so I could drive to Provo and see my therapist in person. How timely.

Julie O'Neal [02:04:32] We gossiped about that too.

Meggan Hayes [02:04:34] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:04:35] I can imagine there are a lot. You get a lot of feedback in

Meggan Hayes [02:04:38] your family, a lot of evaluation going on.

Julie O'Neal [02:04:42] I'm like, oh, yeah, Because. Because we're like, she just deserted her kids to go do therapy. Like, we just didn't understand. And there was no compassion at all for what she was going through. We just didn't understand it.

Meggan Hayes [02:04:55] And it was shortly after that that the sibling made the accusation and I supported them. And then because I was standing up for them. It was too much. It was too much. I had already been the bad teenager. I had already gone to therapy. During the family reunion, I had sent out an email to my whole family saying, donnie and I are in therapy and here are some of the things I'm learning. And it's great, you know, I thought they would just jump on board and want to have these vulnerable conversations that we'd never had.

Meggan Hayes [02:05:31] And I was like, well, maybe I'll start it. Maybe I'll be the one to say, I'm not perfect. My marriage is not perfect, and if yours isn't, that's okay. And then supporting this sibling in the thing that was going on with them, it was too much. And so I started to get actual emails and text messages and phone calls that were awful. Just like a picture of them flipping me off through Facebook messenger or, you know, you've always been so terrible to mom and dad or why can't you just forgive? And it. I couldn't. Yeah, I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't. I. I knew too much to go backwards.

Margi Dehlin [02:06:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:06:21] So you felt sort of kicked out or rejected.

Meggan Hayes [02:06:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:06:24] Your family at that point. Okay.

Meggan Hayes [02:06:26] So I. But I kept, Kept trying, you know, I would send out an email or try to call somebody or. But at. It eventually just became untenable. I. It was. I would talk to my mom for 10 minutes and have to recover for a week.

Margi Dehlin [02:06:42] Yeah, right.

Meggan Hayes [02:06:43] And talk to my therapist about it. And, you know, during this time, like my. There was a Christmas previous where we had been. I mean, we had six kids in 10 years. We had never had any money and we were always trying to play catch up from having them so young and school loans and so my mom had helped us out for Christmas. Well, during this time when I was doing all this pushing, she called and wanted the money back. And I just, I was like, I want to have a relationship with you, mom. But I talked to my therapist about it and I just told her, I said, I can give it back, but it will hurt our relationship and it won't help it. And so it was. All of these things were just piling up and I. For my own safety and mental health, I had to start pulling away.

Margi Dehlin [02:07:37] Yeah, I'm feeling why. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:07:44] And then just because I want to talk about the church related stuff too.

Meggan Hayes [02:07:49] Yes. Yes.

John Dehlin [02:07:50] Then when did you go full blown start questioning and leaving the church?

Meggan Hayes [02:07:55] Yeah. So we moved to Missouri and I was uncomfortable about church because of the. How hard it made me. It made it for me to be a good parent. And so while we were in Missouri, we took a trip to Nauvoo because I was like, gotta bolster my testimony. We went in the off season, we brought all the kids and did all the sites and saw, you know, where Joseph Smith died. And I was desperately trying to hang on to my testimony.

Meggan Hayes [02:08:25] And we were in a ward that was amazing. It was a bunch of weird people just like us. Just the salt of the earth, that ward. You know, the teenagers showed up at church in dresses that barely covered their booties, and nobody cared.

Meggan Hayes [02:08:42] And so I hung on for that year. And then we moved to Fairbanks. And the ward we were in was not like that. It was. All of the doctors and lawyers and dentists lived where we lived in that same area. And so we just didn't. We didn't fit in. And I was still learning and studying, and my kids were becoming teenagers, and I was letting them be teenagers. And I started.

Meggan Hayes [02:09:13] I got a job at a grocery store. So Donnie and I's schedules would never overlap. I had always been doing graphic design and photography, mostly graphic design, freelance. But I wanted something steady. And so I got a job at the grocery store. And I worked nights.

Meggan Hayes [02:09:29] And I purposely started scheduling Sundays where I would work through church because I just didn't want to be there. I just didn't want to go. And if I. But I couldn't just stop going. But if I had to work, I had to work. You know, are you guys going to pay our bills or am I going to go get a job at the grocery store? And they weren't going to pay our bills, so I got a job at the grocery store, and I was working Sunday. So I didn't go to church for about six months.

Meggan Hayes [02:09:59] And I loved it, but I was still. I didn't consider myself as falling away. I didn't know I wasn't. That my testimony was struggling. And then I had this group of ladies who we had all met through therapy because we thought our husbands were sex addicts, which that term never applied to Donnie. And actually our therapist made that real clear. But I still was like, he doesn't know. Donnie did look at porn two times. So in our whole marriage.

Margi Dehlin [02:10:29] Oh, gosh.

Meggan Hayes [02:10:30] So he's probably, you know. So I had met this Facebook group of women, and all of their husbands were porn addicts. And in quotes.

Margi Dehlin [02:10:38] Yeah, yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:10:39] Big, huge, huge quotes. And there was a group of them were. That were starting to get more nuanced like I was. So we started a Marco Polo group, which is where you can do, like, recorded video chats with each other. And so we were starting to talk about not leaving the church, but being very nuanced members and not still not having to do anything with church history stuff. Just, you know, it's okay if your teenagers are teenagers, and it's okay if you relax the rules and those Sorts of things. And. But then one of the girls in there said, this podcast episode just came out talking about the Book of Abraham and you should totally listen to it. So I brought some of the kids to karate, and they were in there for an hour. And I was like, I'm gonna go for a walk. And I listened to a portion of it.

John Dehlin [02:11:27] And this was not Mormon stories. This is Bill Real and Radio Free Mormon.

Meggan Hayes [02:11:30] And Radio Free Mormon, right? Yes. And it broke my brain. I remember feeling like I couldn't understand what they were saying because nothing like that had ever occurred to me before. Because even though I was trying to be a better parent, the church was true. I was the problem, not the church. Up to that point, I was the one who needed to make my new parenting paradigm fit enough within Mormonism that I could still stay temple worthy and raise my kids in the church and do the things I was supposed to do. But at that moment, I started to actually look at the spiritual, historical side of the church as, what if I'm not the problem?

Meggan Hayes [02:12:30] What if it's not me? And that opened the floodgates. But I wasn't talking to Donnie about it. He still was like, sort of on boardish with the parenting stuff, but I wasn't saying anything about the church stuff. So I listened to, in a very short period of time, every single episode that Radio Free Mormon had available.

Meggan Hayes [02:12:57] That's when I started running. Because then I could have time out and I could just put my headphones on, and for hours and hours and hours on two times speed, I could learn all of the things I had never learned and feel validated that

Julie O'Neal [02:13:20] maybe,

Meggan Hayes [02:13:21] just maybe, it was okay if I was a good parent and did things that the church didn't want me to do. Like, it was still just felt like such baby steps.

Margi Dehlin [02:13:34] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:13:35] And once I finished all of the Radio Free Mormon episodes, that's when I was like, well, I know about Mormon stories. And I'd been afraid of Mormon stories ever since the ordained women stuff when I first heard about Mormon stories.

Meggan Hayes [02:13:51] And that's when I started listening to Mormon stories. And I did the same thing where I just devoured every episode one after the other. And during this time, I had quit working at the grocery store and I had started working at the high school in town.

Meggan Hayes [02:14:13] And so I started having to go back to church. And it was so uncomfortable. But because I was such a rule follower and church was. It wasn't ever a question about whether or not I was gonna go. I had never even asked myself, is this something I want to do.

Meggan Hayes [02:14:35] And so we went to church in Christmas of 2018. It was like the Christmas sacrament meeting. It's shorter, and it's just a bunch of musical numbers. And after church, we went home, and Donnie was sitting in a chair in our living room. And, you know, it's Fairbanks in December. It's cold. We've got the fire going. And he says, you know, babe, come here. And I was like, okay. He's like, you have to stop going to church.

Meggan Hayes [02:15:07] And I was like, you know, I can't do that. He's like, you are miserable there. And I was like, but I. It doesn't matter. I have to go. And he's like, well, next week I'm not going, so you can stay home with me if you want.

Meggan Hayes [02:15:34] And we didn't go back. We didn't go back. So I really think if Donnie hadn't done that, I probably would have kept going for who knows how long, because it had been my Sunday expectation my whole life. My whole life.

Margi Dehlin [02:15:56] Right? Yep. So

Meggan Hayes [02:16:02] not going to church. I then felt a little bit more permission to continue deconstructing, but Donnie had just stopped going to church. So I was still on this internal journey of therapy and deconstructing, and Donnie was just enjoying a second Saturday.

Meggan Hayes [02:16:25] So I still felt very alone in my deconstruction, but with the permission that I had gotten from Donnie, that I had then kind of given myself to start looking at things more critically and just slowly but steadily realizing that the problem wasn't me, it was the church. And I didn't throw out God at that point. I just was like, maybe Mormonism's not where it's at. And that is when I learned, you know, it started with the Book of Abraham. Then I learned about the seer stone and the hat, and that Joseph wasn't probably looking at the plates when he translated. And every single time I learned something new, I felt shocked. But for the most, mostly I felt better. I just felt okay.

John Dehlin [02:17:15] I felt a sense of relief.

Julie O'Neal [02:17:16] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:17:17] I could just, like, take a breath. I could take a breath.

John Dehlin [02:17:20] Each time you learn something problematic about the church, it's another, maybe it's not me. Maybe it's not me. Maybe I'm not the problem. Maybe the church is the problem, and it just compounds.

Meggan Hayes [02:17:31] Yeah. Yeah. And then that. Because I had already been ousted from the family system, because I was just trying to be healthy now, I had left the church. And so the really small conversations I had with a few family members were just so strained.

John Dehlin [02:17:50] So how did you try and tell members of your family, who did you go to? How did you try and tell them? And how was it received?

Meggan Hayes [02:17:57] I. I didn't really. What I did was I just started posting stuff on Facebook, and I was still friends with some of them. And because there was the rumor mill in our family, I knew it would get around.

John Dehlin [02:18:09] Posting what types of things?

Meggan Hayes [02:18:10] I posted a video of a pastor from a different church, some different Christian churches, that was about how they left their evangelical church because of the control. And I just posted it, and the only commentary I made was like, a heart. It was a video, and my whole commentary.

Julie O'Neal [02:18:29] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:18:30] Was a heart. And then in the comments, people were pushing back, and that's when I. In the comments, I was like, no, my experience was real similar to this woman. And so it was stuff like that because I wasn't telling my family, because at that point, I was like, they don't. They don't hold that space in my life anymore.

Margi Dehlin [02:18:51] Right.

Meggan Hayes [02:18:52] They're already upset with me. They already don't like me.

John Dehlin [02:18:56] So you didn't write some big exit letter and post it to Facebook. You started vague booking, things that people who are paying attention could see as kind of dog whistling, having lost your faith or left the church.

Meggan Hayes [02:19:08] Yeah. And we already hadn't been attending by that point for a little bit. I don't remember exactly how long, but. But I'm sure the people who were in our ward and were my Facebook friends were realizing already that we hadn't been showing up.

John Dehlin [02:19:21] Did you stop going to family reunions and stop going home to visit family by this point or not?

Meggan Hayes [02:19:26] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that had happened that last family reunion in 2014. Within a year of that, I wasn't. I was only hanging out with that one sibling who I was trying to support.

John Dehlin [02:19:39] Yeah. Okay. And one big marker for people who leave the church but who haven't really explicitly told their family is when kids reach certain age milestones, like baptism at age 8 or for men, priesthood ordination at 12. Normally you would have some big family event where everybody comes to see the baptism of your kid, or everyone comes to see the blessing of your baby, or everyone comes to see your kid receiving the priesthood, and you don't because you're not attending anymore. And then family all knows that there's something wrong because you're not participating in those faithful Mormon milestones. That wasn't an issue for you because you just lived. Where are you Distant.

Meggan Hayes [02:20:25] We lived so far away, and I was separated from the family, not just by distance, but also Emotionally, because of all the other stuff. So by the time we left the church, they weren't part of. Yeah, I wouldn't have invited them. I. I don't know if I would have left if I had still been enmeshed with them in that way, because. Because there would have been that expectation.

John Dehlin [02:20:50] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:20:51] So leaving the church was somewhat contingent upon me already being separated to all those. From all those rituals where I would have felt that pressure.

John Dehlin [02:21:01] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [02:21:02] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:21:02] It almost sounds like that. That space that you created, having physical distance, but also the emotional and psychological distance, it allowed you to reset yourself. Would you say that? Because your default was always kind of so defined by them, and so giving yourself that space, it allowed you to actually create new patterns, create an identity that. That's about. You have relationships that were able to embody healthy things you were learning. Is that how you would. You would talk about that time?

Meggan Hayes [02:21:41] Yes. And even to this day, I have not had a discussion about this, about the leaving or how hard it was with my dad at all. I have tried to have those conversations with my mom, and they didn't go well. So I stopped doing that when I just realized I. It was too painful. But I had to have space because. And it's not just my dad. Like, I've never gotten pulled over and gotten a ticket because male authority figures are still very, very scary for me. And so I had to have that space or I don't. I don't think I would have done it.

Margi Dehlin [02:22:24] Yeah. Yeah. It's very difficult, I think, to heal when the. I mean, I would say trigger. When the trigger is still dominating or coming up in your life. Right. Is that what you mean by that? A bit. It's just creating more space around that as a. And that. Did that exist at church? You had said at one point that the Mormon church, God and your dad were kind of, like, blurred together. So even in Mormonism, as you're going to church, is Mormon God reminding you very much? And are you experiencing Mormon God in very much the same way as your dad?

Meggan Hayes [02:23:10] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [02:23:10] So taking a step away from that, too.

Meggan Hayes [02:23:13] And so, yeah, then when I left, I thought that if I stepped away from Mormon God, I could embrace Christian God.

Julie O'Neal [02:23:22] Right.

Meggan Hayes [02:23:22] Because Mormon God was. My dad was scary. And there were quite a few people who tried to talk to me and be like, well, you just need to look at Mormon God differently. But I needed all of that space, and I needed to start saying no in ways that felt a little bit easier, one thing at a time. And so it would be something as simple as, like, no, I don't need a drink of water when someone offered it to me. And no, I'd rather not show up at that book club this month, even though I read the book and I was totally prepared until I could get to the place where I could start saying no to the branch president and then eventually Donnie. But still haven't ever really said it out loud, even today to my dad.

Julie Watches Her Sister Drift Away

John Dehlin [02:24:17] So, Julie, two questions. How was your Mormon journey after marriage leading up to the point where Meggan and Donnie stopped going to church? How were you enjoying your Mormon experience? How was your family doing since Meggan was totally disconnected from your family? Were there other people who were becoming black sheeps? Was Meggan just the only one? How happy were you as a Mormon? And then take us up to the point where you and your family started seeing her vague booking apostate, like, messages.

Julie O'Neal [02:24:53] Yeah. So Meggan left the family only a few years after I had been married.

Meggan Hayes [02:25:01] And, yeah, I actually met her kids for the first time quite, you know, recently. Right.

John Dehlin [02:25:08] Wow.

Julie O'Neal [02:25:08] Yeah. Like, after.

Margi Dehlin [02:25:09] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [02:25:10] I mean, we were just Mormoning really good. You know, I thought I was happy, but I knew deep down that I wasn't. But I was just trying to do everything that I was supposed to in the church. Me and my husband had moved down to California, and that helped to kind of get out of the Valley and away from all the family drama so we could just, like, be our own people down there. And, yeah, we were. He was always a little lax on stuff. I think I mentioned that before. You know, he would let me go shopping on Sunday. He would tell me I should be like, it doesn't matter.

Julie O'Neal [02:25:40] God doesn't care. You know, or. Because I was working sometimes on Sunday and feeling guilty, and my husband was like, it's fine. You can do what you need to do. You can take care of yourself. So I definitely wasn't the strict Mormon that my family wanted me to be, but I felt. I felt okay about it.

Julie O'Neal [02:26:01] So I'm trying. I didn't know that Meggan had left the church. Like, there were rumors, but I didn't really know. You know, I was kind of removed from that. I'm trying to think, what was the

Margi Dehlin [02:26:17] other part of that? How did you feel about the. I mean, you noticed probably the increased distance, emotional. Did you?

Julie O'Neal [02:26:25] Yeah. So when she left the family, I was like, what did I do? Cause I am the peacemaker. I'm the people pleaser. And I'm like, I didn't do anything wrong. I don't understand why she's just gone But I will say I never once tried to contact her. It was just like, okay, well, she's gone. You know, we're just gonna gossip. And I was never creating any of the gossipy rumors, but I just went along with it, you know? And that's just as bad, I would say. But, yeah. So we were in California, and me and my husband had moved up to Seattle. And. Yeah, it was when we moved to Seattle and Meggan, like, fully distanced herself from the family.

John Dehlin [02:27:04] What was it like for you to have a sister that meant so much to you growing up? First distanced herself from her family and then from the church.

Julie O'Neal [02:27:14] How was that for you growing up Mormon? I was really good at just not feeling my emotions.

John Dehlin [02:27:19] Wow.

Julie O'Neal [02:27:20] I didn't cry. Even now, to this day, it's really hard for me to cry. Even when I want to, even when I'm sad, I just don't cry.

John Dehlin [02:27:28] Me too.

Julie O'Neal [02:27:29] Yeah. So she'd left the church, and I was sad about it, but I didn't know how to feel sad about it. You know, I talked to my husband a couple of times, and then that was kind of it. Just like, okay, moving on, you know? Moving on.

Margi Dehlin [02:27:44] You had talked about how much she meant to you kind of in your growing up years. I'm curious if you felt like the rumors, like, did the rumors that were created about her blur it for you? Did it, like. I'm curious if it, like, kind of conditioned you, reconditioned you about her in a way that actually got really blurry or you almost forgot or, like, how did you experience that?

Julie O'Neal [02:28:11] I forgot. I forgot the Meggan that I knew 100%. I forgot who that even was. Yeah. So when I was going through. Well, actually, that's in the future. Right. But, like, when I was going through and trying to deconstruct stuff that the family had said, that's what it was. I was like, hang on. This was the sister that I knew. This is the sister the family is talking about. And those are two different people.

Margi Dehlin [02:28:37] Yeah, that's right.

Julie O'Neal [02:28:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:40] The other thing I just wanted to note was for how much Mormons and the Mormon Church emphasizes families. We seem pretty good at just cutting people off and cutting them out and never asking, never having deep conversations about what's wrong and how can we help and how do we resolve your concerns and how do we keep you a part of the family, even though you parent differently or believe differently? Families are everything until someone kind of steps off the train or the track, and then we can just cut them off almost without even Crying. Is that weird?

Julie O'Neal [02:29:16] It is weird. But we had grown up that way. Right. Like, even though they. There were things going on in the house that we did not. Like we were never. Not that we weren't allowed to talk to each other. We just never talked about anything real or hard. Like if it wasn't in the Book of Mormon, we didn't talk about it. So it wasn't. Yes. Families are together forever and that was hard. But having a conversation about what she was struggling with, that wasn't even a possibility. That wasn't even an option.

John Dehlin [02:29:50] Yeah. I think I can safely say that orthodox Mormons are horrible about talking about difficult things.

Margi Dehlin [02:30:00] Just like the church is. It's like the family is the microcosm of the family system. Is the church system. That's right. And so a lot of those same things exist.

Meggan Hayes [02:30:09] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:30:10] I don't mean to project that on your family, but that's how I experience. Yeah, yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:30:16] No, and it fits. It definitely, definitely fits. Because yeah, we could have a six hour conversation about Nephi and Laban and you know what President Hinckley said in the last conference, but if my marriage was hard and I wanted some actual tools to change what was happening, to stop this, this cycle that was happening, we couldn't talk about that. It was read your scriptures. And if you don't have an answer to that problem, you haven't read your scriptures enough because it's all there. You just. You haven't seen it yet.

John Dehlin [02:30:56] But mostly it's just don't talk about it.

Meggan Hayes [02:30:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's how they shut it down, is just, you know, those primary answers.

John Dehlin [02:31:04] Yeah. Wow. Okay. So. Yeah. So even though Meggan meant a lot to you growing up, and plus you just get so busy. Like the Mormon Church keeps you so busy, you don't have a lot of time to grieve about a sibling. Especially if there are 13 other siblings.

Julie O'Neal [02:31:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:31:24] Had other siblings left the church or distanced themselves from the family before Meggan or during the same time Meggan, did you.

Julie O'Neal [02:31:36] There was a brother who'd also distanced himself. And then I think. I don't know. Cause I wasn't in Meggan's timeline. But yes. Like there was a brother that left first. Then I think maybe two brothers. Two.

Meggan Hayes [02:31:51] Okay.

Julie O'Neal [02:31:52] Yeah. So they just kind of. They were sprinkled in there, just leaving.

Meggan Hayes [02:31:55] But they sent out the emails.

Margi Dehlin [02:31:57] Okay.

Meggan Hayes [02:31:58] So yeah, they did the full exit letters. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:32:01] And was there a double standard for how they were treated versus how Meggan was treated, or were they also cut off and gossiped about by the family once they exited vocally or do you

Julie O'Neal [02:32:11] know, I don't think the gossiping was always the worst regarding Meggan for sure. And so I don't. Again, I don't know why. It just was that way. So when the first brother left, we definitely talked about it, but there wasn't like, the gossip behind it. There was, like, sadness. I actually did cry when I found out that he left. I cried for like two days because I really liked that brother and I didn't want to, like, lose him for eternity. When he left, though, the relationship that he had with my parents also left and his other siblings started leaving, the same thing continued to happen. So the next brother left. No relationship with my parents. The other two siblings that left shortly after him. Like, I don't think there might be minimal interaction with my parents, but it's never like, once you left. Like you were saying before, Mormonism kind of breaks up families.

Margi Dehlin [02:33:07] That's right.

Julie O'Neal [02:33:08] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:33:09] And you're like, you are living this evidence, this proof threat of, like, you can choose that, but this is what will happen. This is what it costs. Right. You will lose your parents approval. Love the system.

Julie O'Neal [02:33:28] Yeah. Even you'll lose the surface relationship that you have. Like, you'll lose that too.

Margi Dehlin [02:33:33] Right?

Julie O'Neal [02:33:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:33:35] And I'm gonna. This is gonna be asking the same question from a different way, but given. But this is so mind blowing how religion can come between people that love each other. So, Julie, was there ever a point in your adult life where you're in the church and you can tell Meggan's left, you love her. She was an important big sister to you that really tried to show love and care for you.

Years of Silence and Separation Between Sisters

John Dehlin [02:34:00] This is like, no Mormons ever do this, ever. I'm exaggerating. Where you just call her up and say, hey, it's been a long time. I love you, I miss you. I miss you at family events. And I see you've left the church and I still believe, but I'm just dying to know what happened. Why did you leave? What issues did you face? Because I care about you. I just.

John Dehlin [02:34:22] I'm laughing to myself because this is like the most obvious thing that any family member could ever ask. And it's the one thing that Mormons literally never do. Right.

Julie O'Neal [02:34:33] Never.

John Dehlin [02:34:33] So why didn't you call up Meggan and say, I love you, I miss you. Why did you leave the church? Why are you leaving the family? Come back to family reunions. I want you back in my life. And why did you leave the church? Because, you know, even if I believe it and don't wanna leave. I wanna understand you because I love you and why you would choose to leave. Why didn't you ever make that phone call?

Julie O'Neal [02:34:54] Because I needed my temple recommend.

John Dehlin [02:34:57] What do you mean by that?

Julie O'Neal [02:34:58] There's the question that says, like, do you associate with an anti Mormon? Something along the lines of that.

John Dehlin [02:35:03] I think the church took that out. But it was there when you were, you know.

Julie O'Neal [02:35:06] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:35:07] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [02:35:08] And I felt like if I had talked to her in any way, shape or form, or even my brother that had left, then I wouldn't be able to answer the question. I would have to say like, yes, I do talk to someone who's anti Mormon. I thought my temple recommend would get taken from me and that's what makes you worthy. That's what gets you into heaven. That's what gives you celestial glory. Like, I couldn't risk that.

Margi Dehlin [02:35:31] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [02:35:31] So.

John Dehlin [02:35:32] And even though the church has since taken that out of the temple recommend, the cultural non practice of actually asking Mormons why they left the church, it's one of the most predictable things. It's like the sun rises, the rooster crows. A faithful Mormon is never gonna ask a family member why they left the church.

Margi Dehlin [02:35:52] No.

Julie O'Neal [02:35:53] And that was why I did not. It's just too scary. There's too much, like, too much risk.

John Dehlin [02:35:57] Right.

Julie O'Neal [02:35:58] There's too much risk.

John Dehlin [02:35:58] It could blow up your marriage. It could blow up your, you know, your job. It could blow up your friends, your community, everything. Yeah. So you just never ask?

Julie O'Neal [02:36:07] Never.

John Dehlin [02:36:07] Did you ever want Meggan, a family member to just call and say, what happened? What are you feeling? What did you experience? You know?

Julie O'Neal [02:36:14] Ye.

Meggan Hayes [02:36:15] I didn't necessarily want them or need them to ask about why I left the church. I would have loved it if someone had just called and said, wow, I had a hard day today. I mean, just something that simple or they're sharing with.

John Dehlin [02:36:30] Where they're sharing with you.

Meggan Hayes [02:36:31] Yes, yes. Where they are trying to be vulnerable in any way.

John Dehlin [02:36:37] Yeah. I thought you were going to say, I just wanted them to call to ask if you were okay. If I was okay. You were okay. But you're saying even if they were just expressing a vulnerability, you would have

Meggan Hayes [02:36:47] been lost if they had done that. It would have been like a little signal that we can be honest. Something so simple. And those were the kind of conversations I would try to have with my mom and I because I was so desperate to build some sort of relationship with her. But they didn't happen.

Margi Dehlin [02:37:14] Yeah. It almost can say, you know, how you were asking that question around the Religion, the religious piece. The same can be said for the family system piece. Like, you know, would anyone ever have reached out when you went, you disappeared from. From the family reunions and the family. Or when the rumors are going around and they're like, wait a second, like, you know, actually, I had a good experience with Meggan, or to disrupt whatever narrative was going on, you know, and call you up and say, hey, actually, what is going on with you?

Meggan Hayes [02:37:53] How are you?

Margi Dehlin [02:37:54] You know, and, you know, tell it like it is. I kind of want to just connect and know you in this moment. And. And it's because the same conditioning that exists for the religious piece exists oftentimes in family systems, especially when they're incredibly enmeshed like that, which is why moving away or creating a little bit of distance, I think, allows for a different type of seeing. But the same can be said kind of like the family system question around. Did you ever wish someone just called up and said, you know, how are you? I'm hearing this, but I want to know the truth about you, what you think, and why purple hair is okay.

Meggan Hayes [02:38:37] I'd love to know.

Margi Dehlin [02:38:38] Yes.

Meggan Hayes [02:38:39] Well, and I was a Relief Society president when I had purple hair, so it worked in my mind. But, yeah, no one ever asked me any of that. And after I sent out the big email saying, my marriage is hard and we're going to therapy, any person in my family calling up and saying, I'm experiencing something similar, because they were. They. I have siblings with marriages that were really hard, marriages that have ended, but we never talked about it. And I tried to get that ball rolling. I tried to be the first one who came out and said, it's okay to have all of the emotions, it's okay to be really happy, and it's okay to be really sad. I really tried to model that. And it was not received.

Julie O'Neal [02:39:29] No. Because I remember when I got that email, it's like, what the heck? Why is she. She just sent that email that she sent saying, like, my marriage is hard. I'm having a tough time. And she was really vulnerable in it

John Dehlin [02:39:43] to, like, the whole family.

Julie O'Neal [02:39:44] To the whole family. And I was just like, why is she even sending. I didn't even understand.

Margi Dehlin [02:39:51] You're like, does not compute.

John Dehlin [02:39:52] Does not compute.

Julie O'Neal [02:39:55] What is happening?

Margi Dehlin [02:39:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:39:59] Yeah. Mormons are afraid of vulnerability. They're terrifying.

Julie O'Neal [02:40:03] There's not even a word in the vocabulary. You can't. Isn't there, like, a dictionary somewhere, like, in the. That word wasn't in there in the Book of Mormon.

Meggan Hayes [02:40:10] It's not in The Bible dictionary.

Julie O'Neal [02:40:11] The Bible dictionary.

Meggan Hayes [02:40:12] That's what it was.

Julie O'Neal [02:40:13] I'm like, isn't there?

John Dehlin [02:40:15] Yeah, because, like, there are all sorts of reasons why people. People might not be happy in the church, whether it's getting married too young, the way women might be treated. They might be gay, they might have too many kids. They may not have followed the career they wanted. They just might have normal life things. But if the gospel is the plan of happiness, and if the gospel's working, then everybody's happy. So you can't talk about not being happy or there being problems, because it's both a sign that you're not being righteous or you'd be happy or worse, that the plan of happiness isn't making you happy. And that can't be good. So instead, people just don't talk about the sad things oftentimes, at least in my experience. Yeah, and that sounds like that was your experience.

Margi Dehlin [02:41:03] And it's not. To be fair, it's not just in Mormonism. Right. I think it's a tough thing outside Mormonism, too. I think what we're trying to say is that Mormonism can be a bit of an amplifier.

Julie O'Neal [02:41:14] Right.

John Dehlin [02:41:15] I like to say the Mormon story is the human story, because a lot of this is just human being.

Margi Dehlin [02:41:21] Right.

John Dehlin [02:41:23] So, okay, Meggan, what was it like to be cut off from your family for years and years and years?

Meggan Hayes [02:41:32] There was a constant pull because not just in Mormonism. Right. In society in general, and because that's just how we are. Have evolved. Is that family is everything. You know, people say blood before water, which doesn't that actually that phrase blood

John Dehlin [02:41:53] is thicker than water.

Julie O'Neal [02:41:53] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:41:53] Blood is thicker than water. That phrase is actually misquoted, because what it's supposed to be is the blood of battle is thicker than the water of the womb. It's supposed to mean that those who you struggle with, those who are you are vulnerable with, are the people who are. Who you're connected to, who are your family. Right. But that's not what I was taught. Family was everything in Mormonism. Families will be together forever. I know it says can, but as a kid, I didn't hear that word. And so to be cut off, I wanted. I wanted very desperately to be back in the family. And part of that, too, was that I was seeing the effect that my different parenting style was having on the relationships I had with my kids.

Meggan Hayes [02:42:39] And I thought, if I can actually have a relationship with my kids, maybe I can have a relationship with my parents. And so I would tentatively try to talk to my mom. You Know they. So when the family system really started to fall apart, when I pushed back and then brothers left the church, my parents, to escape all of that, went on a mission.

John Dehlin [02:43:02] That's so normal. Normal parents go on missions when their adult kids lives start falling apart. It's almost an escape.

Julie O'Neal [02:43:10] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:43:11] Or we wouldn't even say falling apart. They start differentiating, individuating, doing things that are very psychologically beneficial for the kids.

Meggan Hayes [02:43:20] But.

John Dehlin [02:43:20] Yeah, and they go for other reasons too, but.

Meggan Hayes [02:43:22] Right, right. I think they'd always wanted to serve a mission, but.

Margi Dehlin [02:43:25] Yes.

Meggan Hayes [02:43:25] So they went on a mission to New Zealand and we had, you know, we were in Fairbanks and my mom FaceTimed us and I was trying to have some conversations with her and my dad is just hovering in the background, not saying anything. And I'm nervous because I've not had a good conversation with her in a long time and. But there was always that part of me that wanted that validation that I am worthy of love from my parents.

Meggan Hayes [02:43:58] And I didn't get it. I still haven't gotten that. So it was hard. It was really, really hard. Even with all the supports that I was putting in place for myself. And as much as I was reparenting my kids, it took me a really long time to accept that I may never get that and try to reparent myself.

Meggan Hayes [02:44:22] There is this movie I was watching and it was about husband and wife who had five or six kids and they decided to live off grid. And the mom had a lot of mental health issues and so she ended up in a mental institution a lot. And the dad was in charge of the kids and he was teaching them to be very rugged, like they killed their own food. And there was this one time he was teaching them how to rock climb and one of the boys slipped and injured his wrist. And the other kids, you know, they're all hanging on this sheer cliff. They start to come to his rescue and the dad goes, just stop.

Meggan Hayes [02:44:57] And he looks over at his son and he says, no one is coming for you, so what are you going to do? And that was how I finally came to that conclusion that Jesus isn't going to save me, God's not going to save me, my kids aren't going to save me, my dad's not going to save me. So I need to do it.

Meggan Hayes [02:45:27] And it's going to be really hard. But I have learned at that point, like I'm telling myself this, I have learned how to be compassionate. And I have never once considered before that point that I could do it for myself. I've learned to do it for everyone else.

Meggan Hayes [02:45:47] And even creating that separation, I didn't realize that what I was doing. But in that moment, that movie, I don't even remember what it was called, I thought, oh, I am my savior. And that relationship is the one I've been looking for. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:46:14] So powerful, beautiful. So true. The journey, Mary Oliver. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:46:22] Beautiful.

Margi Dehlin [02:46:22] Love it.

John Dehlin [02:46:25] So how many years did you and Julie go without really talking or being in touch? Would you guess?

Meggan Hayes [02:46:34] It was 10 years.

John Dehlin [02:46:36] 10 years?

Meggan Hayes [02:46:36] Yeah. We saw each other at that family reunion in 2014, and it was 10 years with no contact.

John Dehlin [02:46:43] And in those 10 years, Julie, you had kids?

Meggan Hayes [02:46:47] I did.

John Dehlin [02:46:47] How many kids?

Julie O'Neal [02:46:48] I had three kids.

John Dehlin [02:46:49] Okay.

Julie O'Neal [02:46:50] In those 10 years.

John Dehlin [02:46:51] And Aunt Meggan never met those kids?

Julie O'Neal [02:46:53] No.

John Dehlin [02:46:54] Isn't that wild?

Julie O'Neal [02:46:55] Yeah. So she met all three of my kids a little over a year ago.

John Dehlin [02:46:59] Okay.

Julie O'Neal [02:47:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:47:00] So that's where I was going. So you have this experience where you learn no one's coming to save you, where you kind of just accept that there's going to be an extent to which you're alone or can't expect your family to really be there for you. And what, you get an email. Well, I mean, how did, what happened?

Meggan Hayes [02:47:21] That was the point where I really started pushing Donni in our marriage. Like, I have been healing since our oldest daughter was five and she's graduated from high school now. And these, these patterns that we are repeating, I'm done doing that. I'm saving myself and you can come or not. And at this point, it, whatever you choose, I'm gonna be okay with. And so we, we separated in an in house separation. We couldn't. I mean, Alaska.

John Dehlin [02:47:58] This is in Houston.

Meggan Hayes [02:47:58] This was in, this was in Alaska.

John Dehlin [02:48:00] Oh, okay.

Meggan Hayes [02:48:00] And it's just ridiculously expensive there. I mean, we were both working full time, making really good money, but we could not afford two households, so. And we had a huge house. So we in house separated for like eight months. And I thought we were going to get divorced. I was pretty sure it was over. And I was totally okay with, like, I had just. It had been so long and so much time and.

Meggan Hayes [02:48:24] And then Donnie was like, oh, I. I think I'll. During that same time, he started to finally deconstruct. Like, he had stopped going to church, but he hadn't started rooting out all of the patriarchy and the system that he'd been raised in. And during that time, he got a therapist because he wanted to and started changing. And I was real leery about re. Engaging with Him.

Meggan Hayes [02:49:00] But yeah. So about eight months in to that separation, he, we. I really wanted to get out of Alaska. It was small and it was cold and it was hard to travel and it's just hard to live there. And so he took a job in Houston, or south of Houston and Missouri City. Yeah, Missouri City, where they're gonna build a new temple. And I agreed to go, even though I really wasn't sure we were going to stay married because I really just didn't want to separate the kids. I thought, you know, what if we just all go down there? If I need to, I can get my own place.

Meggan Hayes [02:49:35] And it was hard because I had a really good job in Fairbanks and I knew that leaving, I mean, Fairbanks is a small town, so the pool is small and you can get better, higher paying jobs without the levels of experience and education maybe that you would somewhere else. So.

Meggan Hayes [02:49:52] But I was like, I'm gonna go down to Houston. I don't want to separate the kids. And then Donnie just surprised me in all the best ways. He became the person who he'd always could have been without all the shame of the church, without the shame of, you know, he looked at porn two times. And he.

Meggan Hayes [02:50:20] And I was so nervous to engage, but he just kept showing up and showing up in the vulnerable ways that I had been looking for for years. And it was super hard on our kids and we. It did hurt them a ton during that time.

Meggan Hayes [02:50:37] But once Donnie and I had come together, just little baby steps, it felt. Felt easier to allow the kids to be mad at me, even though it was really scary because I had the support in Donnie that I'd never had. And, you know, the church was gone and my family was gone, and then I'd had the kids and they really relied on me and then they kind of stopped relying on me. And then they were mad at me because.

Margi Dehlin [02:51:05] Right.

Meggan Hayes [02:51:05] You know, the thought of divorce was there, but we were in Texas and we. We really started to heal our marriage. Like having those vulnerable conversations. Him showing up in ways that he'd never shown up before. Not going to anger first, not just going to shame first because he would just get mired in shame and shut down and drive away and give me the silent treatment. That all changed because he decided to do the work. And it was really, you know, glorious. At that point, I. I wasn't looking for someone from the family to reach out anymore. I was like, we are nestled in our cozy little 1970s house and our tiny little backyard with our chickens, and Tawny and I are having Fun. Like we are finally kind of being teenagers together. Like, you know, we took a dancing class together and.

Margi Dehlin [02:52:11] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:52:11] So I was no longer looking. I was no longer looking for that.

Margi Dehlin [02:52:15] That's so powerful. It's almost like Donnie then saved himself. He kind of went through something similar and then. So when you came together, it feels like you no longer viewed your life or your relationship like at a deficit. It was like we're whole. We're, you know.

Meggan Hayes [02:52:40] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:52:40] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:52:41] I mean. And I don't think you ever like arrive.

Margi Dehlin [02:52:44] Yeah, we don't. Yeah. That's not. It like healed.

Meggan Hayes [02:52:46] That's healed. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:52:48] Thanks. Glad that's behind me.

Meggan Hayes [02:52:50] Yeah, I did it. I healed.

Margi Dehlin [02:52:52] Yeah, Not a thing.

Meggan Hayes [02:52:53] No. And. But it was okay to not be arrived. And that was a huge deal. That was a huge deal. And I stopped feeling like I needed permission from him to be a whole person and he didn't need permission from me to be a whole person.

Margi Dehlin [02:53:14] That's so big.

John Dehlin [02:53:18] Love it. Beautiful. So, Julie, take us back to the steps that led you to finally reach out to Meggan after 10 years.

Margi Dehlin [02:53:29] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [02:53:29] So I had to leave the church first.

John Dehlin [02:53:30] So talk to us. So let's rewind. Let's go back in the time machine. Let's rewind and tell us when, I guess what the cracks started developing in your Mormon faith. What?

Julie O'Neal [02:53:42] Yeah, it went very fast. So January of 2020.

John Dehlin [02:53:45] Okay, so this is four years ago.

Julie O'Neal [02:53:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:53:47] Okay.

Julie O'Neal [02:53:48] My husband surprised me and said.

John Dehlin [02:53:50] Six years ago.

Julie O'Neal [02:53:51] Yeah, okay. He just said, I don't believe in the church. I don't think it's true.

Meggan Hayes [02:53:56] It's like, what?

Julie O'Neal [02:53:58] And I had this weird calm about it where I was like, you know what, we'll just. That's okay. Kind of always known you weren't super in. We'll just figure it out. And that for him was a turning point because he'd been hiding it for so long that he didn't believe. And so he.

John Dehlin [02:54:15] He hid years without telling.

Julie O'Neal [02:54:17] You never believed it was true.

John Dehlin [02:54:19] See again, that's just such a mind blowing Mormon thing where a spouse can go years, if not decades, not believing in the church, but pretending that they do and never telling their spouse. That's mind blowing.

Margi Dehlin [02:54:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:54:35] For a church that says family is the most important thing.

Meggan Hayes [02:54:38] Right, Right.

Julie O'Neal [02:54:39] So it's just.

John Dehlin [02:54:40] It shows that church is more important than family in Mormonism.

Julie O'Neal [02:54:43] Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:54:44] Right.

Margi Dehlin [02:54:45] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:54:45] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [02:54:46] So he told me that. And he said, I'll still support you. I will still come to church. But then Covid happened.

John Dehlin [02:54:51] Wasn't he worried you would leave him?

Julie O'Neal [02:54:53] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:54:54] So, I mean, that maybe miscommunicates what he was probably feeling, because he was probably feeling terrified that you would leave him.

Julie O'Neal [02:55:02] Yes, yes, he was. But I was like, I think we can make this different faith marriage work. You know? And I was so righteous at that point, too. But the problem was he left the church and started healing and he started becoming happier. That was really confusing to me because

John Dehlin [02:55:21] wickedness never was happiness.

Julie O'Neal [02:55:22] But then it was. It's like, why is he happy? And so he had read a book called Unveiling Grace, and on the front of the book, there's an upside down temple. And he just like, left it sitting on our coffee table.

John Dehlin [02:55:35] This is about an evangelical. Well, this is about a BYU professor who leaves being a BYU professor and the church and becomes an evangelical Christian. Right?

Julie O'Neal [02:55:45] Yes, that was the book. And he just left it sitting on the coffee table. And I wasn't going to touch it because it was obviously satanic. The temple's upside down.

Meggan Hayes [02:55:54] Right.

Julie O'Neal [02:55:55] And then I just had the thought in September of that year, I was like, I'm a pretty smart person. I feel like I could read this book and then I could just decide for myself because maybe I want to just understand what Dusty's going through.

Julie O'Neal [02:56:12] And so I cracked open the book one day, and in the first chapter I was like, oh, no. Oh, no. I don't know. Is this really what the church teaches? So I read the whole book in a couple days, and then I spiraled down in a good way. Like, I was waking up at 4am because I was like, hang on. What does the church say about polygamy? Like, what is the real truth behind the polygamy? And so I researched that and found all the things.

Julie O'Neal [02:56:42] And then the Book of Abraham, and it was really fast. So from the moment I read that book to where I was like, the church is not true. It was two weeks. Whoa, super fast.

John Dehlin [02:56:53] And this was six years ago.

Julie O'Neal [02:56:54] Okay, but I'm talking like 4 to 5am Every day until I went to bed.

John Dehlin [02:56:59] We call that the rabbit hole.

Julie O'Neal [02:57:01] That's what I did. I went down the rabbit rabbit hole. And there, even at the end, I was like, but there's. There's so many temples. And then the other side of me was like, but it doesn't mean it's true. Like, but so many people believe it. It's like, that still doesn't make it true. I'm like, but people have died for it.

Meggan Hayes [02:57:19] And it was like, but that still

Julie O'Neal [02:57:20] doesn't make it true.

John Dehlin [02:57:22] Take. Logic is terrible.

Julie O'Neal [02:57:24] Yeah. And the Final thought was like, well, why would he do it? And the thought I had was meaning Joseph.

John Dehlin [02:57:28] Why would Joseph.

Julie Loses Her Faith and Reaches Out

Julie O'Neal [02:57:29] Why would Joseph Joseph Smith make all this up? And it was like, because he wanted the power and glory of men. And that's when I was like, oh, my gosh, it's not true. And then my next thought, because I had two boys at this time, was like, I don't have to send them on missions. Like, that was the immediate next thought.

John Dehlin [02:57:46] So that was your authentic self didn't want your kids to go on missions?

Julie O'Neal [02:57:49] I never know.

John Dehlin [02:57:50] But you didn't know that.

Julie O'Neal [02:57:51] Like, I knew that. I didn't. I wanted them to go, but I wanted them to want to go, and I didn't want them to have a bad experience. You know, it's like, I wanted him to be righteous, and it was a conflicting thing for me. So when I found out I was pregnant with my first son, that was my first worry. It's like, oh, no, he's a boy. He's gonna have all those responsibilities in the church. He's gonna have to go on a mission. But what if he doesn't want to? So, yes, it all. And it was just a huge weight lifted.

John Dehlin [02:58:24] Wow. So you fully lost your faith six years ago. Okay. But it wasn't six years ago that you reached out to Meggan.

Julie O'Neal [02:58:34] Oh. So I still had to deconstruct so much of it, you know, and so I was still like.

John Dehlin [02:58:42] Can I just say I'll interrupt just for a second? I try not to interrupt, but, like, I know my Chelsea Homer is a friend of mine. She has a twin sister. Sister, Right. They're biological twins.

Julie O'Neal [02:58:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:58:54] Because Chelsea was married to my friend Nick, and Nick left the church after Chelsea and Nick got married. And then that caused Chelsea to question. Then Chelsea left the church. That drove a wedge between Chelsea Homer and her biological twin sister. And so there's a wedge between the wedge between the wedge between them. And then Chelsea's sister eventually starts questioning the church. You would think that a biological twin that grew up doing everything with their twin for a couple decades, the first thing that she'd do when she started questioning the church would be what I know.

Julie O'Neal [02:59:32] Contact the sister.

John Dehlin [02:59:33] And yet she didn't. She went through. Chelsea's sister, went through her full faith crisis to the point of leaving the church. And then I think there was even more time after that before she ever ended up reaching out to her sister. And I think part of it was like. Like, I don't want to admit I was wrong or I'm Embarrassed that now I realize they were right and I mistreated them for so long. Something. But it's just mind blowing that even six years ago, as you fully lose your faith, you're not immediately calling Meggan.

Julie O'Neal [03:00:05] No.

John Dehlin [03:00:06] Right.

Julie O'Neal [03:00:07] No. I was, like, hanging on at that point, too. I was like, what's true? What's even real anymore?

Margi Dehlin [03:00:13] Well, it does make sense in the sense that Meggan was villainized. So you're probably not gonna reach out to the sibling. That. And then I also hear, like, for some sibling.

John Dehlin [03:00:24] The what? Finish that sentence.

Meggan Hayes [03:00:25] You're not gonna reach out to the

Margi Dehlin [03:00:27] sibling that has been deemed less valuable in the family system or problematic or unrighteous or. Right. And I also think sometimes you want to have your own journey with it, and you don't, especially for people that can go both ways. But if you love the sibling, you don't want the sibling that's out to be blamed for taking you out. Or like, it's so complicated with how this affects families and relationships. So. Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [03:01:01] Yeah. So I had to learn how to unconditionally love before I could ever realize that I could even call her. Right. Because if you have conditional love, which is what I knew at that point in time, why would I contact the villain sister? You know, it doesn't make sense. Yeah. So I was starting to. I was out of the church, deconstructing all of that stuff. And then years went by when I was like, okay, I'm feeling like I'm in a mentally healthy place now. And that's when I started realizing there was just toxic toxicity in the family.

John Dehlin [03:01:35] And so you start questioning the family system after you lost your Mormon faith.

Julie O'Neal [03:01:40] Yeah. Like, years after, where it was like, something just doesn't feel right here, too. Because I'd also started going to therapy and started talking about things, you know,

Meggan Hayes [03:01:49] that is a slippery.

John Dehlin [03:01:52] Yeah, therapy's dangerous to Mormon orthodoxy.

Julie O'Neal [03:01:56] Yes. And so I was just struggling. I was the people pleaser still. And I was trying to keep the whole family together because I was also the peacemaker. So even after I'd left, I was still trying to do all this. And my therapist one day was like, you need to read this book. It's called but it's yous Family. And I think it's by Dr. Sherry Campbell, but don't quote me on that. Yeah, okay. As I was reading this book, it helped me distance myself from my family because I needed that. But. But with love, it was like, I'm doing this because I love them, but also I love myself.

Julie O'Neal [03:02:33] And that was the first time I'd really started realizing it's a really good thing to love yourself. And in that book, the author, Sherry, she was the scapegoat of the family. And so she was really honest in this book of what she had to go through. And I started seeing Meggan, and I started just the light bulbs were coming on where I'm like, wait, this was the Meggan I knew in high school. But then the family said these things about her, but those were actually not true.

The Letter That Reopened Their Relationship

Julie O'Neal [03:03:01] And so then I started going through my many journals, and I'd already had a document that I was never planning on sending Meggan that just had excerpts from my journal of things that she had done for me when I was a kid. But now I was really diving in, trying to understand, like, the childhood trauma and just the things I went through when I was younger. And when I finished that book, I was like, I have to tell Meggan that she is, like, a special person. Do you know that?

John Dehlin [03:03:32] Well, you made a list of what?

Julie O'Neal [03:03:34] Yeah. So there was journal entries, like, you know, how special she made me feel when she threw the surprise party for me. You know, whenever I kind of go back and I'm trying to heal from childhood stuff, Meggan was the one really safe person for me. And I just. I knew that she needed to know that she meant something to somebody in the family. I had no intention of having a relationship with her. I did not think she would contact me back. And so I wasn't doing it trying to bring her into the family. I was just like, she needs to know that she. She's worthy and that I love her and that I loved and really appreciated all the things she did for me. And so, yeah, I sent. Well, I didn't even know where she lived. I didn't know if she was married.

Margi Dehlin [03:04:26] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [03:04:26] So I'm like, googling her name.

John Dehlin [03:04:28] You didn't know if she was married? Oh, still married.

Julie O'Neal [03:04:31] Still married, right. Like, is she still married? So is her name Hayes, or is it something else now? Like, I did not know.

John Dehlin [03:04:40] Dang. How'd you find her?

Julie O'Neal [03:04:42] So she had an Etsy account that was, like, inactive. She hadn't sold anything in years. But that was all I had.

John Dehlin [03:04:50] Thank you, social media.

Meggan Hayes [03:04:54] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [03:04:54] So I had this super duper long email that I sent to her just with no, like, I said, no expectation of her contacting me. And it was like, 10 minutes later, she called me.

Meggan Hayes [03:05:07] Wow.

John Dehlin [03:05:08] Do you feel like reading what you wrote to her? Because I think that might be kind of powerful.

Meggan Hayes [03:05:19] Yes.

Julie O'Neal [03:05:19] Is the screen too high or is that all right?

John Dehlin [03:05:21] No, you're good.

Julie O'Neal [03:05:21] Okay. So it says, megan, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for being such a great sister to me when I couldn't be there for myself. I have been learning to heal from my past hurt and traumas, and it has led me to begin reading my many journals from my childhood. You're in there a lot. And I forgot how much you were there for me. I forgot how much you helped me feel loved and seen. You were there for me when nobody else was. I'm not reaching out to you for any reason except to say thank you for being such a great sister to me when nobody else was there for me.

Julie O'Neal [03:05:52] And then I could draw on a few of the journal entries. All right, so here's one. June 29, 2001. You made my 16th birthday the best day of my childhood was pages long. But basically, you threw me my first surprise party when I turned 16 and made me the center of attention. I wrote I had always dreamed of what a surprise party would be like, and now I know. Reading about all you did for me made that day very special and incredible.

Julie O'Neal [03:06:19] January 22nd in 2002, when I got home, Meggan called and said she's having a party at her house on Friday. I asked her what for, and she said, for me and my friends. Meggan, you knew the pain I was going through while still living at home, and you thought of me.

Julie O'Neal [03:06:35] And then this one right here was said, this thought is from me. The last couple of months. You keep coming up in my healing journey. So this was August 2024. I said I realized that you were my safety. Growing up, I really didn't feel safe many places. Not really at home, not really at school. Most of my memories of feeling safe involved you. I could trust you. I could talk to you about anything. And I knew I was safe with you. You protected me, and I love you for that. I'm healthier today because of you.

Julie O'Neal [03:07:03] You once put in a blog post how your family was dead to you. That hurt me because I thought I was perfect. Why would somebody not want me? But now I see we were absolutely toxic to you. I see it now. You were strong and you left. That had to have been super hard. I understand now. Meggan, you weren't fitting into how our family works, and that was so unhealthy for you. You were strong. You finally said no to us and yes to yourself. You did what you had to do. I get it now. I'm sorry it took me so long. You were always there for me.

Julie O'Neal [03:07:36] You Protected me as a child at the expense of you taking the trauma that should have been mine. You protected me from it. You were my safety. You gave that to me when I could not give it to myself. You protected me when you yourself were not protected by anybody.

Julie O'Neal [03:07:54] I survived because of you, Meggan. You did not deserve the childhood that you got. You deserved everything because you were always worthy. I love you,

John Dehlin [03:08:09] Meggan. How does it. How does it feel to hear that? Well, how did it feel to receive that?

Meggan Hayes [03:08:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:08:17] So.

Meggan Hayes [03:08:19] By the way, beautiful writing,

Margi Dehlin [03:08:23] beautiful letter.

John Dehlin [03:08:24] What an amazing, honestly. Email.

Julie O'Neal [03:08:27] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [03:08:29] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [03:08:29] So I was with Donnie and we had taken one of our kids on a. I think it was a Sunday, to a D and D group at the local library and dropped them off, and then we had come back to pick them up and we were a little early, so we were just sitting in the parking lot and I was checking my email and it said I had a message from Etsy. And I was like, etsy, I don't even remember how to log in.

Meggan Hayes [03:09:00] So then I'm going back in my notes and trying to find the password because it said it was from Julie. And I was like, no way. There's no way. And, you know, Donnie's in the driver's seat and he's checking his emails and I finally get logged in and I read probably just the first four, five sentences and I started sobbing.

Meggan Hayes [03:09:27] And Donnie has no idea what's going on because I haven't said what I'm doing. I haven't said I have an email from Julie and I don't know how to log into my Etsy. I'm just checking my email and then I'm sobbing and he's like, what's going on? What's going on? And I'm giving him the. Hold on, hold on, because I'm trying to get through the rest of this email.

Meggan Hayes [03:09:44] And I got to the very bottom. I read what you just heard and I just looked at Donnie and I said, I have a sister. And immediately I didn't know up until that point what it would take for me to get back in contact in a real way with a sibling. But when I saw it, that was it.

Meggan Hayes [03:10:15] That was it. And I. I just couldn't stop crying. And I just kept saying, I, I have a sister. And I couldn't even explain to him because it was so overwhelming because I had tried for so long to be worthy of having a sister. And a lot of those memories that Julie had, I didn't remember.

Meggan Hayes [03:10:41] I mean, I remember wanting her to have the Teenage years I didn't have, but I didn't. She was reminding me of things that I didn't remember.

Margi Dehlin [03:10:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:10:48] Or blacked out.

Julie O'Neal [03:10:49] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [03:10:50] Yes. And so, yeah, it was sunny, and we're sitting in this mostly empty library parking lot, and. And that's when I got my sister,

Julie O'Neal [03:11:07] and she called me, and that's what she said. She was like, I have a sister back. And it almost scared me because she was so vulnerable. That's what that said to me. It was like, how does she trust me? She doesn't even know me. But it was like I saw what real vulnerability was.

Margi Dehlin [03:11:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:11:30] So what was that first phone call like, was weird.

Julie O'Neal [03:11:34] Like, I didn't. Her voice sounded weird. It almost felt like it was a dream, a little bit surreal. I was like, am I talking to Meggan? Like, she called me? She wants to know me. Like, it was.

Meggan Hayes [03:11:48] It was just.

Julie O'Neal [03:11:49] It was unreal.

Margi Dehlin [03:11:51] Mm.

Meggan Hayes [03:11:52] And I was trying not to just dump 10 years worth of stuff because I was ready.

Julie O'Neal [03:11:58] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [03:11:58] I was ready for a sister. I was like, take it slow.

Julie O'Neal [03:12:05] Don't scare her.

Meggan Hayes [03:12:06] Do not scare her. But her email had been so vulnerable and so real and said so many things that I knew in my heart. And I just wanted to be like, here's what I've been doing, and here's where my marriage is, and here's what my kids are doing. And I. I just had to slow down. Let's just start with the basics. Yes. I'm still married.

Julie O'Neal [03:12:28] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:12:30] And this is two years ago, right?

Julie O'Neal [03:12:31] Yeah, it was like, October of 2024.

John Dehlin [03:12:35] Oh, so like a year and a half ago.

Julie O'Neal [03:12:37] Yeah. The first time that we actually saw each other was after Christmas of 2024, so just a little over a year.

John Dehlin [03:12:46] That's wild.

Meggan Hayes [03:12:47] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [03:12:48] So how has the lived experience of having this relationship been?

Julie O'Neal [03:12:54] I mean, she's been through more years of healing. So when I'm struggling with, like, a parenting thing, I call her, you know, like, if I'm feeling shame, she's like, you're feeling shame because you're feeling your own shame, as if you had made that mistake when you're a child, but it's your child making that. And it's okay to feel. Like it's okay to feel, and it's okay to not know what you're doing with this parenting. But you can talk to your kids.

John Dehlin [03:13:18] Kids.

Julie O'Neal [03:13:19] You can have conversations. Like, she's talked to me a lot of times about just simple parenting things where I'm like, I don't know what to do. I'm screwing up My kids, they're gonna need therapy someday.

Meggan Hayes [03:13:30] You know, I'm like, yeah, they will.

Margi Dehlin [03:13:34] I do think particularly around perfectionism, Right. And then being a parent, and if you haven't really processed, you know, that in yourself, and it can feel so counterintuitive to recognize that you make mistakes and, wow, Mommy really shouldn't have done that. You know, and here's what I wish I had done, or here's what I. Or whatever, right? This recognition, especially when you literally have no model for that. You don't know the words. You don't know what it looks like. You don't know, you know, kind of what it means. So I can really see that. And what a resource now that you have in each other, even just to have a friend.

Julie O'Neal [03:14:28] Like, if a good thing happens, I have someone that I can call now and just say, like, this is great. And it happened, and I have someone to share it with. Because I never had a real relationship the whole time I was in the church, because nobody was vulnerable. But then with Meggan, she was so vulnerable, and we were able to have, like, start building a real relationship.

Margi Dehlin [03:14:50] Right?

Julie O'Neal [03:14:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:14:52] One of the things that's occurring to me that's important to explore, I think we talked about, you know, I talked about Chelsea Homer and her sister and talked about how long it took you to call even after you lost your faith. Years. Isn't there a sense of betrayal that you feel if the whole family system's been set up with parents and other siblings, that Meggan is the bad one to reconcile with? Meggan could be perceived as a betrayal of you betraying the entire rest of your family that either is still faithful to the church and. Or has made her the bad person than the black sheep. I imagine you might be feeling feelings or thoughts of betrayal in reconciling with your sister. Is that right? I don't mean to project that on you.

Julie O'Neal [03:15:41] Yes. I mean, there was that worry a little bit, but also, I'd learned to start loving myself. And once you fully love yourself, you don't need somebody else to. It's nice. It's nice when you still are accepted and loved by someone else, but you don't need it. And so that's how it was for me. I was like, I know that this might change relationships with people in my family, but that's okay, because she needs to know that, you know, I love her. You know, she deserves to know that. So I don't think even everyone in the family knows this yet. Like, the ones that I talk to,

John Dehlin [03:16:19] they may know now.

Julie O'Neal [03:16:20] They're gonna know now, but there's still a handful that probably have no idea that we are even in contact with each other.

Meggan Hayes [03:16:27] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [03:16:27] And I still talk to most everyone in my family except just a couple of siblings.

Margi Dehlin [03:16:32] I do think too, the work. Your letter was just really something. And you can tell there were years of therapy, a whole lot. And that's what I think you felt when you read it. Right? Was there was just so much work that you had done before that letter. And I wonder too, if that's what helps you, because that feeling of betrayal when you don't understand where it came from. Right. And your own family system, you might be manipulated by a feeling of that, but once you understand that the betrayal is the indicator of an unhealthy family system. Yes.

Meggan Hayes [03:17:17] It has less power over you.

Margi Dehlin [03:17:19] It just becomes like this symptom that you're like, oh, of course that's there.

Meggan Hayes [03:17:23] That's part of how I was raised.

Margi Dehlin [03:17:25] That's part of how it all worked. But if a healthy family system allows for individuation, it allows for differing opinions, it allows for Right. Different. That. Is that right. Like, that's how I've experienced it. But is that how did betrayal come up and is part of the reason, too, because of all the therapy and your learning around, like, what a healthy family, actually how it works.

Julie O'Neal [03:17:49] Yeah, that's what it was. I just started healing and learning what a healthy family system should be, you know, so it's like maybe there was betrayal there, but honestly, it's like, I still. Even right now, I can think of my parents and I love them, and it's okay if they don't love me. Like, I still am just going to love them for who they are because they deserve that too. Do you know? So even if they even feel betrayed by what I've done, I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. But I'm still gonna love them. They cannot like me. And I'm still gonna love my family, and they. That's okay. You know, I don't know if that's exactly what you were going for, but that's just maybe how I'm feeling about that.

Margi Dehlin [03:18:36] Yeah.

Siblings Leaving the Church and Reconciling With Parents

John Dehlin [03:18:37] Okay, so before we end, I have a question. So. So 14 siblings. What's the count on siblings leaving the church and. Yeah. Do you have any interesting stories about what it was like, do your siblings know now, Julie, that you left? And do you have any funny stories about that?

Julie O'Neal [03:18:57] Yes. So I was the seventh one to leave. I marked the halfway point, and I was so scared to tell anyone. Because I left in September of 2020 and we wanted to start going to a non denominational Christian church just to kind of figure out things, figure out life. And I was so scared that my parents would find out that I had to make sure I was at home. And then I would turn off my location services at home.

John Dehlin [03:19:26] So you're an adult?

Julie O'Neal [03:19:27] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:19:28] Your parents have your location?

Julie O'Neal [03:19:29] I was 36 and I was so afraid. So I would turn it off before I went to the church. Cause I was nervous to wait.

John Dehlin [03:19:38] To a Christian church?

Julie O'Neal [03:19:39] To a Christian church, yes.

John Dehlin [03:19:43] You're not going to a bar, you're not going to a strip club.

Julie O'Neal [03:19:46] I'm going to church, but just not the right one. Yeah. And even then, it still took me until a year ago to realize that I could set a boundary there. I didn't know what boundaries were. And so I was at Meggan's house the first time I'd visited her in 2025, and I was sitting at her kitchen table and I got a text from my mom, who's not in contact with Meggan, that says, oh. And I hadn't told anyone in the family, not a single person that we were still in contact. And it was like, I see that you're with Meggan. Tell her I love her. Like, that's so sweet of you to do that.

John Dehlin [03:20:23] What I mean, was that passive aggressive? Was it sort of like really saying, how dare you be with Meggan? Or I don't know what. She could have very well reached out to Meggan.

Julie O'Neal [03:20:34] Right, right.

Meggan Hayes [03:20:35] She didn't.

Julie O'Neal [03:20:37] It was really confusing for me. But then that's when I started talking to my therapist and realized that boundaries, that's a word and that's something that exists and that that's probably something that I should not be worried of turning my location services off when I'm a

John Dehlin [03:20:54] 36 year old adult, let alone the having your location.

Julie O'Neal [03:20:59] Actually, when that. When I was at your house, I think I was like 38. Yeah. So either way.

Margi Dehlin [03:21:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:21:06] Yeah. And that's so weird for a mom to say, tell her I love her when she hasn't been in contact with you.

Meggan Hayes [03:21:15] No. And she can. She knows she can contact me. I. She doesn't have my phone number, but she's always had my email and she has emailed me over the years.

John Dehlin [03:21:23] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [03:21:23] And so, yeah, it's strange. She did send me a birthday card after we'd moved to Texas. We didn't tell her we moved there, but I'm assuming she just, you know, found out through the grapevine or Whatever. And she sent me a birthday card and on the front it said, even though we don't see each other often,

John Dehlin [03:21:43] meeting at all, she.

Meggan Hayes [03:21:44] She crossed out often and put ever.

John Dehlin [03:21:49] Oh my goodness.

Meggan Hayes [03:21:51] And then on the inside was a letter just about, oh, the family's great. And Right.

John Dehlin [03:21:57] I mean, what's hard is it's probably really hard for your mom and your dad. Right. I mean, she's probably tortured over this.

Julie O'Neal [03:22:06] Yes.

Meggan Hayes [03:22:07] Yeah.

Julie O'Neal [03:22:08] Because she doesn't know how to like unconditionally love. And it's not her fault. It's not any of their fault. Right. She just doesn't know. So she's reaching out in the only way that she knows how to do it.

Meggan Hayes [03:22:23] Yes.

Julie O'Neal [03:22:24] So there is something for that.

John Dehlin [03:22:25] But she's probably afraid she'll lose her faith and maybe that would hurt her marriage and be a bad example for all the other kids. I mean, I'm projecting or guessing, speculating,

Meggan Hayes [03:22:36] but I don't know if she's afraid she'll lose her faith. I think I really just think it is what she knows. And that's. Of course I was very hurt and of course I was very angry when the separations were happening and I was pushing back or I was trying to offer information and it wasn't being received well.

Meggan Hayes [03:22:57] But I am at a place now where I have the relationships that are healthy and beautiful and from that safe space I can have a lot of compassion for her. And it's harder for me with my dad, but there are times when I can see him as a child just reaching out and wanting to feel the same things that we all want to feel.

Meggan Hayes [03:23:28] And right now they're getting that in the church and that's okay. And they're may be a time in the future that I reconnect with them in a way where I can stay true to myself, where I don't betray myself and allow them to be who they are.

John Dehlin [03:23:46] Yeah, that's powerful. And Julie, did your leaving the church affect your relationship with your parents? And if so, is there anything you want to say about that?

Julie O'Neal [03:23:56] So it was really hard for my dad on that first year when he had found out. He had a really hard time giving me any sort of eye contact. And that was hard, but at the same time I was learning how to heal and learning how to love. And so just like Meggan was saying how she could picture him as a child, that's how I see him now. I see him as an 8 year old boy that's just really scared and he just wants to be loved. But he doesn't know how to. To get it. And because I can see him that way, I do have a lot of compassion and love for him still.

Julie O'Neal [03:24:33] So I do still see my parents and I interact like I saw them just a few days ago, you know, but the relationship will never. I won't say never, but as of right now, and pretty much my whole life, it's just felt very surface. And so. But that's what they have to offer. And so if I want them to accept me for who I am, should I not accept them for who they are?

Julie O'Neal [03:24:57] Right. It needs to go both ways. So I was angry for a while that they weren't accepting me, but then I realized I was not accepting them. So I have kind of changed my attitude towards that. And it is still hard because they do sometimes take temple attendance over watching my kids, you know, being with their grandkids, you know, they're awesome kids, and they're missing out to be with people in the temple who are dead. When I have kids who are alive, like right here, and want them, they love their grandparents and they want them in their life, you know, so, yeah, they're still in my life, and it's in a way that feels safe and it feels good for me.

Reflections, Closing Words, and Gratitude

John Dehlin [03:25:36] All right, well, I'll just call it and say that I think this is close to a perfect Mormon Stories episode, and I'm going to do something I would normally never do, but we're in a really difficult spot right now with the podcast, and so y' all are gonna have to forgive me that I'm just gonna do this, so. Because I think this is like close to a perfect Mormon Stories podcast. And what I mean by that is, I would say our number one driver since the beginning of Mormon Stories podcast has been to bring family together, not tear family apart, and to help people through their faith journeys, to help them see the church and their world more clearly and then to try and heal families.

John Dehlin [03:26:15] But we're in the situation now where the Mormon Church is suing us, claiming that we are intentionally trying to deceive people, fool them, that this podcast is owned and run by the church, and that our motives are to cause people to lose their faith and to break up families and to tear families apart.

John Dehlin [03:26:37] Just the most horrible accusations, I believe, to destroy my reputation and the reputation of the podcast. There's a campaign going on by the church, in my opinion, to do this, and we're being sued by a hundreds of billions of dollar corporation when we're to employee nonprofits. So I Have a couple favors to ask all of you if you enjoyed this episode and if you feel like it represents like I do, the Best of Mormon Stories podcast because we're trying to raise money to protect ourselves from a hundreds of billions of dollar corporation that it appears like they're trying to destroy us and bankrupt us. If you want to support Mormon Stories and our legal fund, you can go to MormonStories.org legal and support us, but no problems.

John Dehlin [03:27:24] If you don't want to. I also want you all to go to the generally unquotable TikTok channel or Instagram or YouTube channel because. Because we haven't really focused on this. But Meggan, you run a super cool channel where you provide a daily news update of Mormon news and I think it's one of the best things on the Mormon Internet. Do you wanna talk about that?

Meggan Hayes [03:27:49] Sure. Thank you for the compliment. Yeah, So I do 10 to 20 minute Mormon news updates, but I bring in a lot of this stuff that I've been talking about because deconstructing the church, like if I look at a news article and they came out with the new young women names, right. I can talk about the language that they use around that and how I perceived it as an active member or would have perceived it as an active member and how I perceive it now because it's still helpful for me to look at what's going on in Mormonism and make my own thoughts about it, talk about a healthy viewpoint.

Meggan Hayes [03:28:31] And you know, sometimes I do feel those intense emotions, anger or sadness, but being able to process that in a healthy way and have all those emotions. And then I, yeah, I put it on YouTube and I am, I hope and I have seen feedback that people are deconstructing with me now because I've done all of this healing and I want.

Meggan Hayes [03:28:56] I actually didn't come into the space on purpose. I never ever thought I would be an ex Mormon social media personality person at all. It just happened. And so I. It has morphed into this space where yes, I talk about the news, but I don't just present here is, you know, what was on the church news. It's elder so and so went here and this is what they said, said let's talk about why that might make me uncomfortable as an ex Mormon.

Meggan Hayes [03:29:29] So yeah, it's really, really valuable to me. To me. And I'm very passionate about it. I've been a graphic designer for 20 years and I was never as passionate about that as I am about this because, you know, I listened to Mormon Stories, all the episodes.

Meggan Hayes [03:29:57] I think the most valuable ones to me were the ones that were similar to the story we just told, but also the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis, that series that gave me a lot of the language that I can use now to help separate myself from the church still. And I.

Meggan Hayes [03:30:18] I really want other people to have that, because this I was no longer looking for and honestly didn't know if it was possible. And it is. People can heal and come together in a vulnerable space. Julie and I, we don't agree on everything, but we love each other so much in a way that allows space for all of that.

Meggan Hayes [03:30:54] For all of that. Like, we can be silly and we can be sad and we can be. We haven't been upset with each other. No, maybe we will someday. But it's okay if we don't. But to talk about those types of feelings, and it's all okay. And if I can go on my channel and I can talk about one news story and I can present how I deconstructed it, and one person can feel the safety that I feel now in my relationship with Donnie and my relationship with Julie, then it's totally worth it.

John Dehlin [03:31:34] And. And let's just address that. You talk about deconstruction, does that mean that your intent with generally unquotable is to take people out of the Mormon Church or cause them to lose their faith? Because that's what people are trying to say Mormon Stories is about. Even though from 2005 on, I've been consistently believing and saying that that's never my intent. Is that your intent?

Meggan Hayes [03:31:57] No.

John Dehlin [03:31:57] Why not?

Meggan Hayes [03:31:59] My intent is for people to trust themselves, to learn in whatever way they need to. I know what my process looked like, that I am blessed with what a

Margi Dehlin [03:32:15] soul

Meggan Hayes [03:32:17] and a body that I can love and care for. And if nobody else loves and cares for my soul, I can do that for me. And it is awesome when other people join me in that space. So even people will say in my comments, you know, if I'm breaking down a video from an apologist, that's pretty harsh. They'll be like, how do you stay so calm?

Meggan Hayes [03:32:45] And a lot of it is that I have all. I get angry when apologists say things that I don't think are true. I was very angry when I saw that the lawsuit came out and the way that it was presented, because I am keeping up with Mormon news. And I understood that it didn't seem like they were being honest. I was really mad.

Meggan Hayes [03:33:07] But if I came online and I presented that and told Everyone, they should leave the church. That wouldn't even be realistic or helpful because if someone can stay in the church, but they can have the relationship that Donnie and I have and that Julie and I have, then stay there.

Meggan Hayes [03:33:26] That was not possible for me. But if you can have this relationship and Mormonism can be part of it, then do that. Do that. Understand that. Understand that that's what you're doing. Make that conscious choice. Yes, please. So I don't.

Meggan Hayes [03:33:46] I mean, the news does bother me, but I try to come at it in a way that everyone who listens can decide for themself. Is this what I want? And how am I going to show up in that space? How am I going to show up at church, or how am I going to show up when I'm not at church? Definitely not to take people out because it's really hard.

John Dehlin [03:34:10] Few people who have really been through leaving a high demand religion or cult like Mormonism would ever wish that experience on anyone. At the same time, how can we not do what we can to help people through the process? Because so many people are going to go through it really quickly. Julie, is it your intent in doing today's interview to take people out of the church?

Julie O'Neal [03:34:32] No, I just want people to learn how to love themselves. That's what it is for me. I had to leave in order to find that. But that's not everybody's experience.

John Dehlin [03:34:43] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beautiful. All right, well, any final thing any of you want to say? This has been perfect and beautiful. I didn't mean to cut it off. But also when we go too long, less people watch. So.

Julie O'Neal [03:34:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:34:59] Because you're the youngest, Julie, I'll let you go first. Any final messages you want to share with our audience before we go?

Julie O'Neal [03:35:06] Nothing. That was perfect.

John Dehlin [03:35:08] Okay.

Julie O'Neal [03:35:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:35:09] Are you happy?

Julie O'Neal [03:35:10] I am happy.

John Dehlin [03:35:11] I just want to say kudos to you for having the courage and the love and the kindness and the compassion to reconnect with your sister.

Margi Dehlin [03:35:20] Yep.

Julie O'Neal [03:35:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:35:21] And then to tell that story publicly.

Julie O'Neal [03:35:23] Right, Right.

John Dehlin [03:35:24] Because in some sense, you ate a little bit. You eat a little bit of crow, I guess. Humble pie. When you tell the story. Right.

Julie O'Neal [03:35:30] Yeah. I mean, that I will say, like, speaking up and sharing any of this is very hard for me because I was the one that became quiet and unseen. So even being on this, this is allowing myself to be seen. So that's really hard for me. But I knew it was important because there are people going through hard things and they need to be validated. They need to know they're not alone.

Margi Dehlin [03:35:52] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:35:53] I think you mentioned at dinner last night that this is also part of you finding your voice or using your voice.

Meggan Hayes [03:35:59] Yes.

Julie O'Neal [03:35:59] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:36:00] Because it's part of your healing.

Julie O'Neal [03:36:01] Part that is part of my healing is knowing that, like, oh, I can speak up and I can speak my mind. I can have my own opinion. Because I didn't know that for a long time.

Margi Dehlin [03:36:10] That's right. So it's kind of like the. Oftentimes the being quiet or the. It feels like safety, right?

Julie O'Neal [03:36:21] Yes. Yep.

Margi Dehlin [03:36:22] But the moment you choose to be visible, that is the healing that is you saying, and I deserve to be seen with people who will honor you for it. Yes.

Julie O'Neal [03:36:38] I don't need to be small anymore. I don't need to be small and unseen. And, in fact, that's hurting me from being the person that I was born to be.

Margi Dehlin [03:36:47] Yes. And it disrupts or is a barrier to you being truly known and to being loved.

Julie O'Neal [03:36:59] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [03:36:59] Because it's very hard to be actually loved if you're invisible. If that person never actually.

Julie O'Neal [03:37:06] They don't get you.

Margi Dehlin [03:37:07] Knows what you think about that thing, especially if it's different from them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Julie O'Neal [03:37:14] I mean, I told you the story about not wanting to speak at seminary graduation. So speaking up is very, very hard and scary. But this is important.

Margi Dehlin [03:37:22] Yeah. Yes.

John Dehlin [03:37:26] All right. Meggan, you get the last word because you're the oldest sister.

Meggan Hayes [03:37:31] Yeah. I was the middle child, remember?

John Dehlin [03:37:33] Well, in this. In this. In this diet.

Julie O'Neal [03:37:36] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [03:37:37] I. I would echo a lot of what Julie said in her message that you, whoever you are that's listening,

John Dehlin [03:37:50] you

Meggan Hayes [03:37:50] are worthy because you exist, and you deserve to know that. And wherever you have to go to learn that, that you are worthy just for existing, go there. Go there. And the people who see you in that journey and want to join you, they will. And maybe you'll have a sister.

Margi Dehlin [03:38:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:38:23] And it's even consistent with Jesus because Jesus said the kingdom of God is within. Jesus said to be born again. Sounds like y' all are born again.

Julie O'Neal [03:38:31] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:38:32] Right.

Meggan Hayes [03:38:32] Absolutely. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:38:34] And you found the kingdom within you.

Margi Dehlin [03:38:38] Yes.

Meggan Hayes [03:38:38] Yes.

Julie O'Neal [03:38:39] Perfect way to put it.

Meggan Hayes [03:38:40] This relationship is absolutely sacred to me.

John Dehlin [03:38:45] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [03:38:46] Yes. We feel that from you.

John Dehlin [03:38:49] Beautiful. All right, Margi. I told Meggan she could have the last word, but you have a last word.

Margi Dehlin [03:38:54] Oh, just all the love to you. Thank you for being willing to come on and for sharing and, you know what a privilege it's been to witness and hear it. So thanks.

Meggan Hayes [03:39:08] Thanks for inviting us. It was really.

John Dehlin [03:39:12] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [03:39:12] Awesome. Very validating. And, like I said, sacred. It's a sacred space. When people show up as themselves.

John Dehlin [03:39:21] And how can people financially support generally unquotable.

Meggan Hayes [03:39:24] Oh, watch my videos on YouTube. That is the one place that I get ad revenue. Sorry about the ads, but just, you know, I'm pretty small at this point and I did, because of a lot of peer pressure, start a Patreon so you can look up generally unquotable on Patreon.

John Dehlin [03:39:41] Beautiful.

Margi Dehlin [03:39:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:39:42] Yeah. Support our creators or they'll get sued into oblivion and go away.

Meggan Hayes [03:39:47] Right.

John Dehlin [03:39:48] Although you were smart enough or, I don't know, you didn't use the word Mormon.

Meggan Hayes [03:39:51] I didn't. I didn't. It wasn't because I was being forward thinking. I was thinking very deep about that.

Margi Dehlin [03:39:57] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:39:58] I don't want to make it sound like it was unsmart of me to use Mormon.

Meggan Hayes [03:40:01] No, it wasn't.

John Dehlin [03:40:02] The church didn't care.

Meggan Hayes [03:40:03] No.

Julie O'Neal [03:40:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:40:05] Anyway, yeah, Support generally unquotable. It's great content and we need to support our creators.

Meggan Hayes [03:40:11] I agree. Yeah. If any time, now is the time that we need to come together as people who care about Mormonism as a whole.

John Dehlin [03:40:20] Yeah. Beautiful. All right, well, o' Neill sisters, thank you for coming on Mormon Stories. It's been amazing.

Meggan Hayes [03:40:28] Yep.

John Dehlin [03:40:29] And Margi, it's been great to have you.

Margi Dehlin [03:40:31] Yes, my pleasure.

John Dehlin [03:40:33] And thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Thanks to our donors that make all this possible. If you're just a regular old donor or a regular donor, we thank you. Thank you so much. We couldn't do this without you. We survived because of you. So thanks to everyone who makes this possible. If you're not a donor and you want and you are in a position to be able to support us, we always live and die by our donors. So please go to mormonstories.org donate and you could become a monthly donor if you want to see this content continue, or if you just want to pay it forward and if you're grateful for it again, we're getting sued by the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [03:41:10] And if you want to support our legal fund, you can go to mormonstories.org legal and support us. So thanks for that. And we love your emails, so you can email us@mormonstoriesmail.com with feedback. Even if you can't afford to support us financially, you can support us by subscribing to our YouTube channel, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, commenting, liking, sharing, all that stuff helps with the algorithm. So please do that if you can. But mostly we hope you just enjoy this content.

John Dehlin [03:41:45] If you want to be on Mormon Stories, it's pretty Easy. You just go to mormostories.org apply and you fill out a little form, send in a three minute video. Margi and I review it, and what we're looking for are stories that our audience will feel uplifted by and will feel like it's a valuable contribution to the library. It helps to be a listener and a viewer. Like, Meggan, how many hours of Mormon stories have you listened to?

Meggan Hayes [03:42:13] Probably, I don't know, but how many episodes are there?

John Dehlin [03:42:15] I mean, there's 12, 2300 or 2100, something like that.

Meggan Hayes [03:42:20] I'm a few episodes behind, but many, many.

John Dehlin [03:42:23] So 10,000 hours you've listened to Mormon stories.

Meggan Hayes [03:42:26] Doesn't that make me a I owe

John Dehlin [03:42:28] you like three cheeseburgers, four steak dinners,

Meggan Hayes [03:42:31] eight ice creams, a couple of pizza parties?

John Dehlin [03:42:34] Yeah, no, but I mean, the way y' all present yourself shows that you can communicate in a way our audience is gonna find valuable. And so people are always, why didn't I get accepted? And how do I get accepted? The more you can show that you understand our audience and who we are and how your episode will be a valuable contribution to our listenership. That's kind of how Margi and I try to decide. Is that right, Margi?

Margi Dehlin [03:43:03] Yes. And I'm going to say there are only a finite amount of slots and

John Dehlin [03:43:06] you can be perfect.

Margi Dehlin [03:43:07] So. That's right. And we appreciate all the submissions I have. I view everyone. And so.

John Dehlin [03:43:14] Yeah, yeah. Because we get about a thousand applications a year and we can only accept 50. So even if you have the perfect application, it's a long shot, but do it anyway because we want and need the best stories. And so please apply anyway.

Julie O'Neal [03:43:32] That's it.

John Dehlin [03:43:34] Never let religion tear your family apart. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

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