Unbrainwashing: it can take a while!

This past summer, I started to somehow unbrainwash myself from the religion I was born and raised into very firmly, and I cant even explain why it happened, or especially why it took so long for it to happen.

I was a firm testimony-bearing member of the church for about 23 years. It wasn't until after I had been married and divorced (which was actually further indoctrination into the religion itself) in the church that I stopped being an "active" member...and I really only stopped going to church physically because of my severe social anxiety. 

So it was a very gradual process of me slowly letting go of some of the long-held beliefs that had me so well-trained and trapped in my own prison of limiting (and limitED beliefs). I turned 30 at the end of this past year. It took me almost 8 years to slowly disentangle myself from my religion of origin, simply because my conditioning went that deep.

Even today, I have so many seemingly random moments of recognition of yet another piece of outdated information i was operating on without realizing it yet. I still catch myself thinking "Mormon" thoughts, and it still shocks me every time...simply because I realize now how incredibly untrue and illogical most of my beliefs were.

On some very basic/deep level, I always knew I was being lied to (unintentionally in most cases...people who believe dont realize they're lying, because they believe the exact same things), or at the very least, that a lot of church "doctrine" just didn't make sense.

But I was taught my entire life to never think past the concept of "God." If God could be the final answer, then it was the most righteous form of behavior to not even think beyond that answer. Today, I realize how faulty that logic is, but I also realize how powerful that logic is in literally brainwashing people. 

Theyre not even brain-"washing" in cases of indoctrination of children born into it; they're just keeping it blank and empty. If you know nothing about a certain concept, you cannot question it. And if you dont question anything, the "authority" cannot be wrong. And as long as the authority is never wrong, it doesn't really matter if they're not exactly "right" all the time (there are usually various other ways of writing off 'not being right all the time...like, "The gospel is perfect, but people aren't," and the authorities are just people like you and me! You can't expect them to be right ALL the time!)

So, could science be true? Sure, as long as it wasn't saying something that by-passed God. Could society be right? Sometimes, because people are on a lower plain than God. But the answers eventually had to end up right back in the church in the pews on Sunday! Because if you started finding truth in other places, what would keep you 100% dedicated to that particular organization? And most importantly, what would keep you giving 10% of your hard-earned money to any organization in particular at all?

I never thought into these things past the initial "what if?" Because the answer was always "That was just God's plan" or "God's will." There was no real possibility that the church was not right: because if the church was actually false, then I personally was wrong about A LOT of things. And I personally made so many decisions that I had talked myself into through the logic of what I was taught to be truth. Everything that I thought was "right" and "wrong" was actually based on absolutely nothing of any moral merit or value. 

It would all be based on some story some guy made up in the 1800's, and I was foolish enough to never question, even though the tale was outlandish. If I could believe THIS...then what could I NOT believe, and what made those things any different or better or worse than the lines I was fed my whole life? 

I've learned that confidence is the best way to lie to people, especially large groups of people. If you are confident enough in what you are saying, or if you can at least project the appearance of enough confidence, you can make a very rational and otherwise intelligent person start to really question themselves. 

Celebrities, politicians, royalty, clergy: what makes what they say any more valuable than anyone else? It's usually not the amount of time they put into their thoughts, or the academic sources they researched when forming their opinions, or their own work or credentials that earned them a reputation for being "good thinkers." It's the confidence they feel in themselves as they are presenting their information to you. 

We are such social creatures, Homo sapiens. We evolved not because of our physical strength or prowess, but our ability to work together and use our minds to store larger and larger amounts of information in many brains (more brains=more data storage capacity). We adapted to relying on other humans for help in child-rearing, food-gathering, and basic survival. We evolved to be able to enact and read complex social cues. It's as inherent to our biology as unconscious breathing or blinking. Our brains are constantly sorting through information and picking out the "right" data to save, use immediately, or memorize for later. 

We have evolved to trust each other, to some universal degree. Early humans under the genera "Homo" but different species, lived at the same time, probably around 5-6 different human species. But Homo sapiens (us) evolved in a way that made us feel threatened by or power over all the species that were just a little different than us. So we, as a single species, eradicated all other species of humankind. But we didn't start turning on each other (except for some certain circumstances). We decided to keep mating with each other and propagating our own species. 

And tens of thousands of years later, we are still relying on one another. It is no surprise that we are so "easily duped" by confident lies, sometimes. Confidence wins more than reason does. Just look at modern politics...how often have we realized only after we voted someone in as President of the United States, for example, only to find out later that they were lying about something (or a lot of things)?

For our own psychological health, then, when we're faced with a reality that only we seem to be able to see, despite our entire social group seeing it a different way, we try to convince ourselves that we are the ones who are not seeing it correctly. We gaslight ourselves back into the majority opinion, because it's too scary to be the odd one out reading different social cues than everyone else around you. It goes against our evolved nature. 

Without even realizing it, I forced myself to think in ways that easily dismissed my own feelings, thoughts, or concerns. "Doubt your doubts" was a phrase we heard often in church. And another huge weapon they use to keep people from understanding truth: "Never allow yourself to consume any 'Anti-Mormon' literature." 

Instead of placing the burden on themselves to prove that their version of history is actually what happened (ie, convince large numbers of people to believe in a lie), they can place the responsibility on YOU to never even want to question the validity of the information that has always been presented to you. And if you do question it, THAT is the problem, not the information itself. You shouldn't have even looked at it, it doesn't matter how "accurate" it is. You "disobeyed," so now you have to live with the uncomfortable feelings it brought you. That's what you get! "Wickedness never was happiness...duh..."

When you're simply taught these things as just "the way things work," from birth, you dont even think to question it. We don't see any examples of someone questioning the church and walking away with a positive outcome. Because to us, there IS no positive outcome outside of the church. Anything outside is not "real happiness" or "truth," and to choose to leave those things behind can only produce misery and confusion. Only someone who really wanted to "sin" would choose to leave real happiness and all-knowing truth for temporary "pleasures of the flesh!"

As if this wasn't all enough to keep you from questioning the truth of the gospel, they reinforce their manipulation tactics by encouraging you to never even "entertain" any conversation that brings about any doubt. If someone tries to confront you with "Anti-Mormon" propaganda, it's up to you to shut that conversation down. After all, you must have already been close to "the line" at all if you somehow managed to cross it. 

And if you cross the line, you messed up! You need to repent, often by confessing to your bishop (an older man in a position of authority over you who has no training whatsoever to be talking to you about sensitive behavioral/psychological concerns/issues), and you have to truly believe that the Atonement of Jesus Christ will save you. Because if you don't, you're going to be worried that every single "unrighteous" choice you make or thought you have will keep you out of Heaven, away from our all-loving Father in Heaven and our eternal families we know here on earth (which we are taught to fear as essentially the "ultinate punishment"). Why would you ever do anything that could remotely jeopardize you from your ETERNAL FAMILY? Satan must have a really powerful hold over you!

Isn't the psychological terrorism abuse enough to keep people from ever doubting if the church is true? Apparently not. Because the social consequences can be just as devastating. 

Imagine your family, the one you were taught your whole life was extra special and extra loving because that is literally the entire point of being here on earth: to have families; imagine that those people, who your whole life likely revolved around in some tangled way, suddenly thought you were controlled by Satan, or stubbornly "clinging to your own pride," or simply just "led astray." Imagine being looked at by the people closest to you as weak, dumb, sinful, or prideful, when all you are trying to do is get away from the anxiety and fear that comes with the package in a high demand religion, that controls almost every single thought you've ever had. 

It's daunting, to say the least, to consider doing anything that would risk putting you at odds with those people. People you were vulnerable with, that you cried with, that you prayed with, that you read scriptures with...that you participated in this humiliating lie with. People who helped you continue to believe in the lie, as well as people you helped to reaffirm. People that actually understand what it's like to live that life of constant, continual self sacrifice. Ironically, all for the sake of never actually having to look deeper inside themselves to see who they actually are underneath the religion.

Other people look at you weird. Non-members just aren't comfortable to be around, because you can't "truly be yourself" (read: unashamedly follow the strict demands of the religion) with without them thinking you're "weird."

For the longest time, I could not even consider why I was always the "weird" one. Why didn't people treat other people this way? Why was it always me that had to be different? Well, because most people find membership in a cult weird. Sorry. To believe the same exact beliefs with a group of equally weird people is just weird to most other people. "But that's unfair, they don't know the real me!" I would always say to myself. 

After so many years of saying that (and believing it) to myself, it was a miracle that I ever found the wherewithal to try NOT thinking that way, and even more so that I kept at it. I made that the way I permanently thought. I found the courage to sit with the extreme discomfort I felt, the humiliation and embarrassment, of finally accepting I had been wrong about so many things. 

It took even longer for me to find the courage to be able to admit that to other people, especially the people closest to me, the ones who would be the most disappointed in my courage that I was so proud and equally embarrassed of. Proud that I finally did it...embarrassed that I ever believed any of it, and that it took me so long of being in it constantly before I let myself really look at it. 

It's been a very long process, and every single day has felt like an entire journey since I've been deconditioning. It's like my mind froze like a computer with a virus; I kept trying to open different windows, but they never opened until years later, when all at once, it suddenly started working again, and they all tried to open at the same time. It takes a lot of effort and energy to sift through all the windows and examine each one, and decide if you really meant to exit it out it or not. Deciding what programs you want to keep running, if any...but not realizing any of them exist until you physically see it and take the time to look at it to notice it's there. 

Objective reality and hard facts are the anti-virus software of the brain. As it slowly eliminates the outdated software and harmful viruses from your programming, you start to learn to live with reality being your operating belief/principle. It's almost impossible to reconcile any other religious belief with what you know now, after finding out the truth of your brand of it. 

I somehow managed to hold on to spirituality, but I am wise enough now to know that spirituality is wholly independent from religion. I know now that the most "righteous" ideology I can claim to believe in and live my life by, is the one that is best for me personally. And what is best for me is probably different than what is best for you.

It's absurd to me now to think that what works for one person, who is genetically, biologically, and experientally very different from another, will work for anyone else. Now, though, I realize that what I think now is simply just that, what I think in this moment. I realize how possible it is to change my entire belief system, let alone what I think about any single concept. 

But most importantly, I know now that I have the freedom to believe anything I want to believe. Intellectual freedom to pursue information and come to my own conclusions based on sources and information that I feel good about and trust to be as accurate as possible. And I have the freedom to use my mental capacity to disregard pieces of information that my brain and instincts do not deem to be relevant or important. 

I feel free to finally believe that I can be myself without living in fear that everything I do is being judged by an all-mighty, omniscient ruler whose job it is to be just and to make sure all the bad I do is somehow accounted for. And I don't have to rely on a magical demigod to save me from this authority figure whose job is to punish me, and I don't have to live my entire life in deference and gratitude to this probably-imagined figure who will never be aware of any of the actions I make or anything about my life. 

So why did it take me so long to get here? I'm a human being. 

Am I grateful to be here? Absolutely.

Would I change anything about my journey here? Probably not. If I hadn't taken that specific road, I wouldn't have gleaned all the information about life that is now so important to me. And now I treasure most what is important to ME, not what is important to a God that probably doesn't actually matter. 

Just a Lil Somethin on Change

Change is really hard...it's no wonder so many people avoid it so much. 

You have to be able to see yourself doing things that make you uncomfortable, and take note. You have to be really self-aware. 

It really sucks to look back and think, "i can't believe I said/did/thought that." But the very fact that you recognize it now means you have changed since that moment, enough to recognize you shouldn't have made the choice you did at that time.

Change is a good thing most of the time. It means you're growing and developing and  evolving...but it isn't easy. Sitting with feelings of disappointment and embarrassment is really hard. 

Do you remember what it felt like in high school to sit by yourself? To not have anyone to sit with? To be in a room filled with people your age and know you don't "fit in" with any of them?

Your feelings (all of them) are a part of you. When you ignore any of them, they are wounded somehow. If you dont sit with your sadness and get to know it and keep it company, there is a part of you that is hurt and lonely and suffering in silence. 

You ARE your sadness, your sadness IS you. Not all of you, not the whole you. But you can't just cut off any part and expect everything else to go on functioning perfectly. 

It's totally okay to not have anyone to sit with, and to feel sad about that. And then to choose to sit with someone else who looks like they could be feeling sad, too. And to feel better after. 

This is how change happens. You recognize the part of you that is needing comfort and support, and you comfort and support yourself from all of the parts of you that aren't hurting. You are your own ecosystem filled with resources to be able to keep yourself running. We were made to do this.

We live in a world now where we are lucky enough to have external resources for almost any type of crisis our little ecosystems can come up with. And it is absolutely okay/healthy/good to use those resources available to help yourself. 

Just make sure you give yourself a fair shot, though. Make sure you're really aware of all the options and ideas your body is trying to make you aware of. And dont stop putting your energy into your healing after you get outside help, too. 

It's a great time to be alive, but it's also a confusing time. Our intuition/inner voice is an essential tool to figuring out what is best for each of us personally, individually, in a sea full of seemingly endless possibilities. 

One thing I've learned undeniably so far in life is that only you can truly know what is best for you, and we should all learn to trust ourselves a little bit more. 

Dont give up when you want to see a change in yourself but you don't see it right away. Another thing my life has taught me: change is a gradual process and time really is essential to understanding. With time, we learn, as long as we're not constantly ignoring ourselves. 

Don't ignore yourself. You've got way too much potential for that! And im proud of you for making it this far in life, and for all the things you've accomplished (no matter how "big" or "small"). You can do the thing.👍❤

A Blog Re-brand for 2021

I've been going through a lot of changes personally this last year or so and I think I'm finally getting back to myself, the person I naturally am. My depression and anxiety issues had really taken over my identity for a while without me even being cognizant of it...

But getting off the medications I had been taking for almost 10 years has literally changed my brain. It's like im experiencing every part of life for the very first time, and this time I dont have much guidance/influence on where I should go or what I should think/believe. I dont know what is "normal" or what is "weird." I was protecting myself (my fragile identity) from the entire world for so long, that became my entire focus in life subconsciously. 

I keep saying it's like my anxiety and depression/all my environmental issues were filters i was just wearing over my eyes without knowing I had them on. They colored every single thing I saw/perceived, and affected everything I thought I "knew." In reality, I only "knew" things that I wanted to know, anything that would reaffirm what I was scared of losing. 

I guess fear was the ultimate filter of my reality. 

But now that I seem to be seeing everything so much more clearly now, I have to reassess every single thought I've ever had, any type of memory that somehow finds its way back to my conscious mind. I have to evaluate every thought i had then against what I know about life now, and so often they do not match up. It can get really confusing and maddening, if im really being honest.

I realized that whatever feeling you feel when you experience anything in life is really important. The feelings we have add another little piece of nuance to every situation we face, and is stored away as part of that memory when we file it away in our long-term memory. As we go about our day-to-day lives, we naturally remind ourselves of anything similar we have experienced in the past to make sense of it in the current moment.

Let's say you are craving some ice cream.

When you were 6 years old, there was a moment when you had just gotten an ice cream cone you had been asking for all day. It looks even better in front of you than it did behind the glass it is stored under, or in your imagination while you were picturing how good it would be before you got it. The color, the texture, the smell --- all pieces of your memory. But, you dropped your ice cream. It just wasn't balancing right on the cone when it was presented to you, and right when you went to take that first much-anticipated lick, it fell to the ground right next to your shoe. 

That memory now holds that feeling of surprised sadness. The anticipation coupled with the disappointment when it fell. The loss of just having had what you wanted, to seeing it on the floor in front of you, unavailable now. 

Back to this moment: you're an adult now and you're just craving ice cream again. How might you order it, in a bowl, on a cone? Oh, remember when you were 6 and you finally got that ice cream cone you wanted so bad and it fell before you could even taste it? That was so sad, you felt so disappointed. 

Now you are feeling that same feeling that was tucked away with the memory, attached and opened automatically. 

Most people can probably remember that experience and feel that emotion again, and then move on and order the ice cream, chances being that it's not going to fall this time. And so they get it and eat it and they're happy/satisfied, that's that! 

Someone struggling with their emotional health, though, might not be able to change their feeling so quickly. It might take them longer to recover from the feeling of loss stored in that memory made fresh, or maybe they'll just consciously ignore that feeling as it slowly makes its way back to the end of the line of sad feelings just waiting their turn to be seen and felt and healed. 

When that happens enough times, every moment is just another old feeling refreshed and put back in line again. And after so long, that line gets so long, it takes up all the available space in your brain, seeping into the front where your conscious mind is trying to go about daily life. Your conscious mind slowly loses more and more space to bad feelings, and eventually, there's just no more space to work from. Your conscious mind is trapped in the line of memories you keep putting back there, and never returning to.

At some point, you've got to start listening and paying attention to all the memories and feelings you kept putting in the back of the line of your brain. You manage to clear out a little space for your conscious brain again, and that part of your brain just listens; lets each memory come up and speak its peace, and release that pent up emotion stored with it. 

It is very scary and overwhelming at first. Every emotion feels so big and important. Your conscious brain doesn't know how to handle these situations or what to do about it, that's exactly why you let it get so backed up in the first place.

But with practice, everything becomes less scary and less overwhelming. You start to see patterns and get a feel for what makes you feel better in each specific circumstance. And slowly but surely, you start to get the hang of handling your emotions. Soon enough, you realize the line of memories and feelings is getting shorter and shorter, the space for your conscious mind to work getting bigger and bigger. It's much less cluttered up there, and you feel so much more free to do things and be yourself again. 

Eventually, without even realizing it, you are healing. You didn't even realize you were doing it, because it was still super uncomfortable to face every single memory and feeling that was waiting for your attention for so long. But you realize you're starting to feel better, and you actually accomplished a lot in the time it took you to do it all. That line had been filling up your entire brain before, and now your consciousness has all the room it needs to operate. 

Once you get to this place in your journey, you have a choice. Do you let yourself continue to not face each feeling as it comes up, or do you learn how to transmute your feelings from negative to positive as they arise?

That is where I am right now. I recognize that I do not want to ever face that long of a line of memories again, and the emotions that accompany them. Therefore, it is my hope and intention to learn how to acclimate myself to my emotions. I need to learn to feel sad in the moment, and let myself feel sad until the sad runs out and fades back into content. Memories being formed right now in this moment will not need to wait in line ever again if I just let them run their course back to neutral. 

Neutral memories lead to a healthy mind. They don't even need to be "happy" or "joyful," just neutral will keep you with enough space for your conscious mind to function.

And when I cant just do it by myself, as will likely be the case for any fallible human, I can ask for help in getting myself back to feeling okay, back to forming neutral memories. And the more space I give my conscious mind to work with, maybe I'll become more and more capable of forming memories filled with happiness, leading to an overall feeling of happiness with my life. 

It seems pretty far-fetched now. But I was sick for a very long time, and never thought I would even be capable of making it here, into the "Neutral Zone."

Change takes a long time. To really transform how you let your conscious mind process things takes a lot of self awareness and courage and intention. But if I have come this far already, I have to believe it is possible to go even further. 

So watch out world! Once I learn how to let myself face and feel my genuine emotions in every single moment, i'll be unstoppable. If there's one thing I know, it's that I can always surprise myself...and now I am patiently waiting (but also expecting) that surprise to happen. And I have a feeling it will be a good memory accompanied by a great feeling once it does. 

So anyway, welcome to my blog, again. It's been years since I created this and I've been incredibly inconsistent, but I just feel like writing again. It helps me so much to figure out what im going through, almost like therapy! Just to get my thoughts out into the external world where I can study them the way I would with anything else to understand it.

There are so many topics I've found so much value in learning about over the years, and im hoping this can be a spot where I can just talk about them, along with what I continue to discover during my healing journey. I know there's probably no one reading this, but a sense of community would feel pretty awesome, I think. So feel free to interact with me. But also cut me some slack, im working on myself, I promise 😅❤👍

A post about being brainwashed in romance

 Being brainwashed for most of your life really takes its toll on every aspect of it 😅 im still trying to put pieces together to figure this thing called "life" out, and it has been one of the biggest struggles of my life. 

I was with my ex bf until recently off and on since 2013. Id say a total of 5 years "on." 

I've been realizing how messed up that relationship was...but I was so used to being brainwashed and having to do mental gymnastics in order to make sense of the world through the lens of my "beliefs," that it just made me think that mindset was normal, even in romantic relationships. 

There were a lot of things (im just realizing how many things there were) that my ex didn't want to talk/hear about. So I trained myself early on to just completely disregard my past and things that had happened to me, good and bad, simply because he was the main person I even talked to at all, and especially about "myself."

I was so used to not talking about myself/my life experiences that I literally FORGOT about A LOT OF THINGS that had happened to me/I had been a part of. I literally did not even THINK about these things for so long that my mind had literally forgotten them. All because this guy I was in love with didn't like to hear about my past. 

I was listening to an audiobook (that I have listened to several times) last night...theres a scene in the book explaining how this prehistoric woman started to ride a horse for the first time. From the prehistoric perspective, it explained it as how the very first human that rode a horse probably came to that conclusion/finally had the idea of putting things together to think "what if I sat on the horse and then I could actually 'run' with/as fast as the horse?" 

It seems so stupid but in that moment I was like, "wait a second, ive ridden horses before, too!!!!???" I remembered how much my butt hurt after and how I was thinking "how do people do this regularly???" 😅 I had literally just FORGOTTEN that i had those experiences personally!  Those memories included my mother in one case and my brother in another case and YSA (young single adult) activities where my exhusband was, and just being "church-related." 

For all those reasons, and the reason that my ex was not comfortable with hearing about my involvement in those types of situations, I had just trained myself to not think about those things. For several years. To the point where my conscious brain just FORGOT ABOUT THEM. And it's insane because that was SUCH a big part of my life for most of it! And I just never had a chance to talk about those things or bring them up. So much so that i forgot they even happened until times like last night, where I remembered I had ridden a horse several different times, and my own life was so foreign to me at this point that I was so disconnected from mySELF.

I just wanted to share that because even though it's so embarrassing coming to these realizations, I felt so much anger towards my ex for being so unempathetic, so unwilling to even listen to me at all, that I had forgotten about my own memories just to make him comfortable. That is so much more power than any one person should have over anyone. I cannot believe I didnt see how NOT normal that was until just recently! 

It is NOT normal or okay to shame someone so deeply just due to your own discomfort and inability to empathize and deal with FEELINGS at ALL that you completely make someone you "love" NOT feel anything anymore. 

What we resist PERSISTS. The FEELINGS included in those memories/life experiences for me never went away. I just never faced them/dealt with them. And it caused so much anguish, depression, anxiety, and instability in myself that I wish so much I had known how to deal with so that I could just HANDLE them so they never piled up on me like that.

Please, talk about your feelings. Man, woman, non-binary, gay, straight, gender-noncomforming, child, adult, teenager, black, white: people of ALL RACES, COLORS, GENDERS, AND AGES: 

TALK ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS. Emote! Never get comfortable with someone who doesn't want to hear those things. It is NOT healthy, emotionally, mentally, OR physically! 

I will repeat this because it's worth hearing twice: WHAT WE RESIST PERSISTS.

You might get away from your memories for seven or ten or twenty or forty years, but the feelings involved in those memories never leave you. You can try to squash them or bury them or pretend they don't exist, but you will still feel them and they will still manifest in some way. And you won't have control over them at that point. It is so much easier to just deal with them in the moment as they come rather than trying to not feel them.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. If you have any memories of me, good or bad, id love to hear them in the comments. If not, that's cool, too. 👍🤟❤

Exiting the Plan of Happiness

"The Plan of Happiness" (an original poem of sorts)

It's sad that it's confusing for me to feel happy.

The very first time I pushed through my own limiting beliefs keeping me in the prison of never having experienced joy. Feeling happy.

For the first time in my life I felt zero self consciousness. It's so sad that my first reaction to that moment after that feeling though, was devastation. For my sad, lonely, confused inner child, and for myself in that moment for being 29 years old when I literally first felt happy.

It was so confusing to me that I had literally made every choice I had ever made for the hope of THIS feeling, this amazing, orgasmic, LIFE-gasmic moment where I would suddenly feel everything I had always been missing. I always knew something wasn't there but I just never fathomed that this would be what that something was: feeling happy.

It took me hours of sobbing and simultaneous rollercoasters of emotion, to try to reconcile my entire past with the present moment, what I was feeling, and the sudden opening of a door to an entire WORLD filled with new possibilities for the future, because i finally felt happy.

He held me while I cried for hours, and my mind was overflowing with sudden realizations that I now had the capacity to actually understand correctly. I had done so many things in the name of this emotion, but suddenly everything I had done made so much sense! The flooding of realization made me so happy!

I didnt feel self concious about feeling these emotions. I let myself drench his t-shirt with my salty tears, and I finally let myself express them without a filter. I was so fucking happy.

But I couldn't help but think it must have been confusing for him...my sudden realization that made me finally able to understand that I had been cutting myself for years to just heighten my misery and pain so that I could put a wet washcloth on new scars and feel the flooding of RELIEF. I thought for so long that "relief" was "feeling happy."

I fought so hard to trudge through the utter terror of what everyday life felt like. I felt "okay" occasionally...and sometimes "content." But I realize now those were just times that I was "less burdoned" just for that moment. But that wasn't me feeling happy.

It was so hard and confusing when I realized that everything I had been taught to believe in, these principles that if I lived my life by, I would be saved. I could rest easy. I should have "felt happy."

But all I felt was scared. Scared and confused and hurt, because the "Father in Heaven" I was taught to believe in so HARD without doubt, who supposedly loved me so much he sent his "only son" to die for me...but i was just one of his daughters. I thought that He "wept when I wept," and for some reason that comforted me. But that NEVER made me feel HAPPY.

An entire life lived in fear and wasted to depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder. To a religion that never gave anything back to me...nothing real or lasting or anything to save me from the life I was drowning in. To a mother that always expected the best from me and also the worst. Nothing I could do would ever be good enough for her, and since "this life is for enduring to the end and passing this test," I was set up to never be happy.

So many things fell into place and made so much more sense in that defining moment of my life, a moment that will be seared into my mind forever---the moment I first felt happy.

I realized, "there are a lot of people who do not know that some people have literally NEVER experienced that emotion before!" If someone just could have told me that THIS is what i was fighting for, this literal brand new emotion that i had NEVER EXPERIENCED to even know that i had never experienced. I literally had NEVER been happy!

I felt so much value in having that perspective! I felt special! And for the first time ever I didnt feel SELFISH for feeling special! That made me so happy!

But I think about it now and it makes me sad, because i know now that the one thing my family had always prayed and hoped and fasted for, that I would just "get better," that I would stop feeling so hopeless and wanting to kill myself; none of their prayers or efforts to "help" in their way ever made me feel happy

Their prayers did not cause me finally feeling happy.

I felt strong that I had EARNED this feeling. Through the mental anguish it took to separate myself from the things that I knew would bring me "tolerance" from my family, I LEARNED hard lessons. I went to DBT and started working out my issues in therapy. I made myself stay alive out of sheer will power even when I thought i had no will to live. And I finally broke through my glass ceiling of anxiety and fear to LET MYSELF feel happy!!!!!!

It's confusing that, for the only reason being that my parents are taught not to believe I even could feel happiness outside of their religion and dogma, I have to feel guilty about finally feeling happy.

But im still climbing. The more I have the freedom to finally embrace who I truly am inside, the more I am not trying to fit ANYONE'S expectations or "mold" of what they think I should be, the more power I feel in reclaiming my own voice. I can speak for MYSELF now, and that makes me incredibly happy. 

I have finally unbrainwashed myself through a lot of hard work and facing hard cognitive dissonance, through sitting with those feelings and letting myself FEEL for MYSELF. Without having to tell anyone to validate it for me: that makes me SO HAPPY! 

I am an exmormon, I exited the "Plan of Happiness," and I am finally happy.

PrincessForADay

Social Anxiety is a nightmare. Especially when you’re a person that knows deep within your soul that you have a calling in life to help people.

How do you help people when being close to them terrifies you?

Well, that was the question I was trying to answer when PrincessForADay was born.

My albeit short experience through life thus far has taught me some very valuable lessons, and I’ve dealt with some unique challenges. Looking back, I’m very grateful for the challenges I’ve had to face, because they have made me a much BETTER person in every sense of the word. Hindsight is always 20/20. In the moment, it just feels like you’re going through hell, and all you can do is just try to keep going.

I suffered through a great deal of mental pain and anguish through my very personal struggles with mental health. Years of my life, in my mind, have been completely wasted as a result of my poor mental health, and those years seem to weigh on me constantly, reminding me that I have so much wasted time and potential to make up for.

But even after I started my very long journey to recovery from my mental illness, I have struggled to shake this social anxiety, which prevents me from reaching out and accomplishing most of my goals. It clings to me like a shadow, a reminder of my “defectiveness” everywhere I seem to turn.

Towards the beginning of this past summer, as my intense depression started to lift, it was almost as if I was seeing the world through a whole different lens. It was literally as if I had been living in a completely different world, made up of pale shades of blue, gray, and black. Now, it’s as if the entire world is lit up with a rainbow of colors, and exploring the wonders of the earth have given me so much joy.

I started to spend more and more time out in Nature, because that’s where I simply felt the best, the most like “myself” than I had felt since I was in high school. But as a 26 year-old adult, I also have a completely new set of knowledge and experiences, and suddenly life was so RICH. Being around Nature began to ease my anxiety. I made friends with the trees. I’ve learned so many incredible lessons from their silent wisdom.

Wildflowers became the metaphor for my life: they withstood the broils of nature, they handled all the storms life threw at them, and they were beautiful. They flourished and they grew. They were WILD. They knew how to survive.

I wanted to be like my photosynthetic friends. I wanted to be resilient and beautiful and full of wisdom. The more time I spent surrounded by nature, the more comfortable I felt leaving the safety of my tiny one-room haven, and I soon began to spend as much time as I could surrounded by nature, in any type of way, Whether it was a giant grassy field, a dense deciduous forest, broad expanses of rows of cornfields, or my personal favorite, in a prairie heaven surrounded by tall grasses and wildflowers. Different types of wildflowers everywhere you turn. Soaking in their beauty was healing my soul.

One day, I thought, “These are just so BEAUTIFUL! I wish I could share these with the entire world!” And I started taking pictures. My amateur photography hobby has come only from being exposed to the beauty of Mother Nature herself; I just happen to be there at that moment to capture it in a photo.

As I began to share my photography, I wished I could share my experience with these wildflowers more tangibly, in a way that I could physically share my experience with others. There were just two problems: These flowers would only last for about a day without water/on a crown, and my tricky social anxiety was not going to let the human interaction part happen. I had to think of some type of way to share this beauty with people. I just HAD to share these beautiful wildflowers, who had impacted me and healed me so deeply, and I knew that they could impact other people so deeply, too, even if their beauty only DID last a day. One day is 24 hours worth of memories! That seemed worth it to me.

One day I decided to pick some flowers from the field behind my house, and I happened to come up with a flower crown! “Is this too ‘hippy’?” I thought to myself, as I completely embraced the beautiful feeling that wearing the crown filled me with. I had connected my healing wildflowers with something I could actually WEAR! My imagination was delightfully tickled, and I honestly felt special wearing that flower crown, like a true Princess of Mother Nature.

I don’t know what it is about these crowns, but I’m telling you, you can’t help but feel like a Princess as soon as you put one on! (I think there are many people by now who can attest to this). So I knew I HAD to share these crowns somehow. But who else besides my hippy/bohemian 26-year-old self would want a flower crown?

That’s when I remembered being a little girl. I was the youngest child in my family, with four older brothers. Being particularly shy and sensitive anyway, I felt a lot of lonely moments as a kid, where I would get LOST in books about magic and fantastical things that could never actually happen in real life. But I always ALWAYS wondered, “What if!?” What if magical things really COULD happen in real life? Somehow that thought, that “hope” you could almost call it...was a friend during lonely times. Imagination and wonder and pondering were the foundations of my childhood, and no matter how much I knew magic wasn’t “real,” I still always sensed, back when I was little, that that MIGHT not be the entire story.

All of this came together magically itself. Suddenly the idea clicked in my mind, and PrincessForADayWashingtonIL was born, even if not fully recognized yet. I knew I had discovered a way to help people, and the most important type of people (in my opinion): little kids! I was going to be the person that brought magic to life for them, by placing this flower crowns around town in places where kids would be able to “magically” find them.

I was SO excited at my first attempt. I got up early and made the crown (which was still not a perfected/easy process at that point), took the fruits of my labor to the park, laid it neatly on a bench near the playground, found a spot to sit back and watch, and waited. I waited for hours! And not a single child showed up. I left the crown, my hopes a bit deflated, but hoping that someone would still find it after I left and have some fun with it.

The next day, armed and ready with two more laboriously-made crowns, I excitedly went to the park to see if the crown was still there. I was hoping NOT to find it, meaning someone had used it for its intended purpose and kept it to play with it! I looked around, and I indeed found the crown, wilted and sad-looking, on a pile of trash in the garbage can.

I was devastated! How could someone throw away something that was clearly intended for children to play with it at the park! But then I realized, maybe it wasn’t really so clear after all.

Before I left the two crowns that day, I luckily had some paper and a pen in my purse, and I was able to attach a note reading, “You have been chosen to be a Princess for a day!” to both of the crowns. I hid them around the playground, and again, found a spot to wait.

I was beginning to really lose hope after a couple hours went by, and still no one had shown up to the park. I was starting to think maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. After all, they were only going to look pretty for a day, and if no one found them, what was the point?  I was just getting ready to leave, when a BUSLOAD of daycare children piled onto the playground. I excitedly watched from a distance as the kids eventually found both of the crowns that I had hidden. I saw the first girl’s confused face at first, then she read the note, and ran as fast as she could to her daycare teacher, with a huge smile on her face. The daycare teachers read the note, decided it was ok, and let the little girl wear it. I will never forget that smile on her face! I KNEW for a fact that I had just made that little girl’s day. Another girl found the other one not long after, with a similar experience. At that point, all the kids were gathering around to look at them. Those two girls looked and felt like real Princesses. I couldn’t have been more satisfied with the result!

I quickly made a facebook page so that people would know I was a legit source and not just some creepy person trying to lure kids away! I wanted to make it very clear that it was just purely out of love and wanting to brighten a little kid’s day. So PrincessForADayWashingtonIL was officially born.

Those daycare teachers ended up posting the very first pictures on my page, and I couldn’t have been more thrilled. IT WAS WORKING!!!!!! And I even got to see it sometimes when people were generous enough to take a picture when they found it, and post it to the page.

It became a very cathartic experience for me throughout the whole summer. Ups and downs with anxiety and emotions are always an issue for me still, but having something I could say I was doing to actually GIVE something back to the world after those wasted years of mental illness was a steadying force in my life. It was something I could look forward to every day, but it completely depended on my own effort.

I was forced to confront a lot of my fears. Sometimes, I even started walking directly up to people and offering the crowns. The confidence I felt from the plethora of smiles I knew I had caused gave me the courage to expand my comfort zone. I got so much more comfortable around people through this whole process.

Every single picture posted to my page means the world to me, but even when they don’t respond that they’ve found it, I can only imagine the joy and fun and imagination some little kid is having with it, and it has nothing to do with facebook or the internet. And that thought makes me just as happy!

I intend to continue this project as far into the season as the wildflowers allow. As with everything in life, Nature is seasonal. I have watched with awe as the flowers from early summer have died and the plants of late summer have started to take their place. It’s absolutely jaw-dropping to me that so much life JUST HAPPENS! Without any human intervention at all, the wild continues to be wild.  I’m excited to continue watching how Nature develops and unfolds as the seasons change.

I know the time is soon coming that the first freeze will hit, and all the wildflowers will be gone. I plan on making crowns until that day! And hopefully by the time all the snow melts and the sun starts to shine and grow and nourish new life again, those wildflowers will be back, and if I’m still around, so will PrincessForADayWashingtonIL.

To see SO MANY MORE of the beautiful princesses we've had this summer, visit PrincessForADayWashingtonIL on Facebook! :)

https://www.facebook.com/PrincessForADayWashingtonIL/

Love,

Jessi <3

Reasons NOT to Commit Suicide

If you are considering committing suicide, please read this entire list.

the ocean
the waves
the sand in between your toes
finding sea shells
watching a whole ecosystem develop before your eyes in tide pools
the moon
 how the moon is always there, night after night
the sun
 how it gives life to everything on this planet
the universe
the stars
a tiny little speck in the universe developed into a planet, which developed into a world populated  with people over millions of years, just so an even tinier speck (you) could live here
nature
trees
forests
 squirrels and mice and chipmunks exist on this earth...if they can survive living, so can you
  even insects and tiny little creatures
the rainforest
 the way you can see a single ray of sunlight shining down through the treetops
your pet
 how they care about you being happy and lick your tears or let you pet them when you are sad
sunrises
sunsets
puppies
kittens
 all manner of baby anythings
   the way their eyes are so big and they were evolutionarily designed to make you love them so that        you would care about keeping them alive
your baby
 your child who once was just a tiny baby, but you've watched them grow into themselves and          become their own person
  how you're going to continue to watch them grow
your niece
your nephew
your siblings
 watching your siblings become parents themselves
rain
 that kind of rain that just pours, and completely transforms your view of the world for a few minutes
   thunderstorms
 when they're not scary but they are just reminders that you ultimately don't have to control                    everything in your life
  the way the thunder sounds so comforting with the rain beating down on the roof, and you feel so        safe and calm knowing you're inside
lakes
ponds
rivers
the sun reflected on a body of water
the little ripples in the surface that remind you there's a whole different way of life underneath the  water's surface, different from anything you've ever known
boats
swans
 the way they glide over the water so gracefully and calmly
learning about different parts of the world
 different cultures and languages and people
  that live life a totally different way than you do
delicious food
 all the different types of tastes and flavors that are universally delicious
writing
words
 how you can use words to convey a message that was once only in your own mind
little kids
 how they are so innocent and don't understand anything
  how they are so easily entertained and easy to please
charities
 organizations that exist solely for the purpose of helping people
  people that genuinely are trying to make the world a better place somehow
airplanes
 how it's possible to get to any spot in the world
computers
the Internet
 how you can take something from your mind and convey it to millions of people all with the click of   a button, and never having to move from the spot you are at
phones
 how they allow you limitless opportunities for communication
  how they can entertain you for hours while you're just moving your fingertips
elephants
 how silly and playful and gentle and calm they are
rainbows
 how there's even such a thing as rainbows...where we can see all the colors altogether in one                  phenomenon
grandparents
 how they can be so kind and wise
  how they love to tell stories of their lives
    how they've lived through so much history
      sometimes they do stuff like this
history
 how it teaches us so many life lessons
   how people throughout time knew how important life was
     they recorded everything just so that we could know about it
for thousands of years, people have been recording their history so that YOU could know about it
people for thousands of years have cared about YOU, and thought about you
the future
 how you're thinking about it right now
  how not a single soul on this earth really knows how the future is going to turn out
    not knowing is kind of beautiful on a grand scale
music
 instruments and itunes and downloads
  how it can convey a message to you that you understand so well, that words wouldn't have been able     to describe
art
painting
 how one person can create something entirely different than another person
  the human mind is absolutely endless in its potential
softness
 puppy fur and pets and all sorts of animals. blankets and pillows and feathers. anything soft that            brings us so much comfort and relief, just by feeling something
people
 how we can talk to them and help them
   how they can help us
     how we as human beings are innately understanding and sympathetic, and how there are people             you don't even know that legitimately don't want you to suffer
baby rhinos
 because this
fishing
country air
 that fresh air where all you can smell is nature, nothing man-made or pollutant
love
 that feeling in your stomach like butterflies when you know you're in love
   when you know they love you back
validation
 when someone knows and understands your feelings, and why you feel that way
education
  the fact that we are infinitely able to learn new things
warmth
  that amazing feeling when you're super cold and you finally get warm and cozy
    having cold hands and wrapping your fingers around a warm mug of tee or coffee or hot cocoa
        hoodies/sweatshirts, sweatpants, warm blankets, bed, clothes straight out of the dryer
relief
 when you finally realize you don't have to worry about something anymore
colors of leaves in the fall and in the spring
pure joy and hilariousness of how excited dogs get over the simplest things, like a walk or some food
when you really make someone laugh or make them happy
Singing along to favorite music at the top of your voice
campfires and bonfires, the way they crackle, the way they spark like fireworks into the sky, and the way they inspire ghost stories, singing, and deep conversation; and bring a group of people closer together
total relaxation when you lay your head back, let your shoulders relax, and close your eyes while your hairdresser or barber shampoos your hair (I don't know why it's so relaxing but it is at least for me!)

If you have another reason not to commit suicide, please submit it in the comments section, and it could end up on this list! Let's grow this list so that anybody thinking about committing suicide will have to think twice. You could end up saving a life.