I started attending the LDS church when I was eleven years old right after my parent’s divorced. Growing up in the church I was given many lessons likening my sexual purity to my worth as a person. I was given an object lesson at the age of twelve where my beehive leader held up a…
My story isn’t necessarily traumatic (I’ve read FAR worse on here), though it can vouch for the negative effects that private worthiness interviews and shame culture have on developing youth and young adults. As a young girl in elementary school, I stumbled across pornography through unrelated internet searches. I didn’t know exactly what I was…
I was in my teens when I started masturbating. My bishop at the time was very much interested in emphasizing how sinful masturbation was. He regularly visited my Young Women’s classes and instructed us on the importance of seeing a priesthood leadership should we ever do it. I felt immense guilt and shame and avoided…
I was 11 when a cousin 4 years older than me began sexually abusing me. It went on every summer for 3 years, worsening each year as he viewed stronger porn and got braver about his demands for me. He began to threaten me with physical pain if I wouldn’t comply. He was an “upstanding…
When I was a child, I considered suicide as an alternative route to admitting to a bishop a “sexual sin” I had committed a few years prior. I remember the shame was so great that I would often cry myself to sleep with fear of the eternal damnation I was constantly told would be my…
I am in the process of writing my story about the sexual issues and shaming that happened within the church. It’s really hard to do. I’ve been in therapy for years, and it still sucks. I still feel lost with it. There are so many facets to it. Like old neighbor men asking about my…
I was a 17 year old good girl. Dating at Ricks college with a football player with 16 roaming hands. After months of dating and fighting him off I finally allowed him to touch one boob outside of my clothes. I felt like I had to tell the bishop so we went to see the…
I didn’t know what masturbation was at 11 when I went in for my “are you ready for the priesthood?” interview with the bishop. Little did I know when I walked into that office with my best Sunday clothes and celebratory new set of scriptures that this would be the beginning of years of group…
I could say so much but I’ll keep it simple. I was indoctrinated into Mormonism as a child, I believed it because it was the only perception of reality offers to me. The LDS church taught me to hate myself when I was about 13 years old. I was lucky to get good kind bishops,…
When I was 17, I fell in love for the first time. This boy looked at me in a way that no one else ever had before. It was like his eyes bored straight into my soul and saw me, the me that I didn’t even see yet. It was like our souls met. And…