brunhiddensmusings:

and-she-was:

chortletortoise:

dredsina:

kittleimp:

dredsina:

dredsina:

mormon kids under the age of 18 being told their church is a cult

mormons 18-24 after they go through their endowment ceremony and receive their new name and secret clothing and learn the secret handshakes and passwords and realize everyone around them has been secretly doing this the whole time and now theyre going to be sent away from their family for 2 years where they will literally not be allowed to be alone for 1 second of the day except to go to the bathroom and they have no idea how to get out of what they just got into

one of the only perks of being a mormon woman is that i didn’t get my endowment at age 19 and i had a little extra time to mature and be out on my own. that’s all i needed to make a clean break and i got out at 21 before i wouldve gotten my endowment. 

wait what? can anyone elaborate on this? because I had no idea this was a thing

basically when youre a mormon kid growing up you realize your church is a little strict but you’re like whatever. i have friends at church because i go to church 6 days a week and everyone around me is affirming that this is the right thing to do and we have special knowledge no one else has otherwise everyone would be like this. so youve gotta go teach them & it’s the greatest thing in the world to be a missionary. also the temple is beautiful and amazing and spiritual and holy and everyone wants to go there. but it’s a secret! :) because it’s holy and sacred

then if youre a boy and u turn 18 they’re like wow amazing!!! you get to go on a mission and be like all the great men around you!! and now you get to go through the temple! so #blessed!

and then you go through the temple and all the above mentioned SECRET CULTY SHIT happens (EXPLANATION HERE http://mormoncurtain.infymus.com/topic_templeceremonies.html) and youre shipped off to a strange place where everything you eat, wear, go, listen to and do is controlled, and you’re not allowed to talk to your family or friends (except through a once-a-week email) and you literally are being watched by your companion at all. times. 

some might say “you can leave at any time” but consider that i never went on a mission and i never went through the temple and i still consider leaving the mormon church the hardest thing i ever did. you have no social network outside the church. you are lacking major knowledge and skills. you have to grapple with the fact that you may never see your family again.

I’m reblogging this again bc I have Thoughts.

Leaving is such an isolating experience. No one inside wants anything to do with you anymore and no one outside understands the scale of messed up that Mormonism is. Like it’s easy to point and laugh at the ridiculousness, but it’s literally a cult. There’s so much trauma involved and there’s trauma in leaving.

People on the outside don’t understand how hard it is to leave. I grew up where all my friends were catholic and are no longer religious and they’re like “well everyone hates church, you just stop going” but Mormonism isn’t like that at all. For starters I had to get a lawyer involved to leave and then the ostracization from the entire community that nurtured me growing up was just the cherry on top. It’s effectively being shunned. Everyone you were forced to call sister and brother growing up no longer wants anything to do with you. And you deserve it, because you shouldn’t have fallen for the anti-Mormon lies.

Leaving The Church was the hardest thing I ever did and my family accepts me so I’m a lucky one. But they still ardently adhere to the institution that hurt me and has resulted in the deaths of people I love. I will never understand.

I’ve never seen it said so well. I was one of the lucky ones; my whole family left the church when I was about 17. We just stopped going. But I didn’t fully reject it until I was in my 20’s, because it takes years to unlearn Mormonism. It’s a twisted, sick cult. Being asked explicit sexual questions as a child. Being told everything we did, we did for God only. Going to church 6 days a week, twice on wednesdays. Everything you do is controlled. Every move you make. Literally everything you eat and drink and wear. Anything you watch; any and all media is controlled. Once you leave, every person who claimed to love you shuns you. You have to rebuild your life into something totally different and it takes years.

oh, yeah, that reminds me of one of those ‘if you live in utah its so normal you dont think about it’ things that openly sounds like a hamfisted YA dystopian novel

the church basically has its own tv channels, not like we think of church on tv but like full blown actually funded like a normal tv channel

i only knew about this because i had heard people talking that on wednesdays theres a full hour of ‘its required for mormon men to watch this channel women arent allowed to see it’ so its customary for the women to be out of the house shopping and then as they were out of the house unable to prepare dinner wednesday is traditionally eating out at a resturant night

let the levels of that sink in because in addition to the obvious disturbing implications it also alludes to how the mormon society in such places is also heavily dependent on non-mormon workers so those stores and restaurants can operate during these times and yeah theyre second class citizens, as well as how normalized the 1950s mindset of the housewife is still alive there (note, the 1950s housewife wasnt even standard in the 1950s that was a nostalgia lie) to the point many women in utah universities literally have ‘homemaker’ as their major and see their highest goal in life to be a good housewife