Mormon Stories Podcast: An Interview With Annie

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's August 4, 2026, and today we have one of the most, I think, for me, exciting interviews of the year. We have Annie. She is a TikTok and Instagram creator. In my opinion, one of the funniest and most talented Mormon or ex Mormon themed creators I've ever seen on the Internet. And so that's who we. We also have Margi here with us. Hey, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:34] Hello.

John Dehlin [00:00:35] And before we dive in, I'll just introduce, I guess, actually bring Annie on. I'll just say that today's episode is going to be a real treat because we're going to hear Annie's story. So she's in studio, but also we're going to be playing clips of her shorts. So you're going to be laughing at her amazing creative talent in humor and comedy. But also her story deals with very sometimes serious and significant or even sad or traumatic themes, including abuse. So you may laugh and you may cry. It's going to be an emotional ride, but for sure it's going to be amazing. So without any further ado, Annie, also known as Annie MDK on all the socials, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Annie on The Mormon Stories Podcast

Margi Dehlin [00:01:25] Hello.

Annie Marie [00:01:26] Thank you so much for having me. I'm super honored to be here and really excited to showcase some work and just kind of talk about my story. Yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity.

John Dehlin [00:01:40] Yeah. Well, I think you were here for Sunstone, is that right?

Annie Marie [00:01:43] I was, yeah. Friday with Sunstone in Salt Lake or at the University of Utah. First time doing a panel and actually first time meeting some other ex Mormon creators or ex Mormons in general in person. Most of my deconstruction has been alone in my room with my phone. So that was really amazing. I had a great time.

John Dehlin [00:02:05] Well, we're glad we could have you here in studio as well. And Margi, it's good to have you back. Margi and I had to divide and conquer with some family stuff, but we're back in the saddle. So, Margi, welcome.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:18] Yeah, I'm glad to be back.

John Dehlin [00:02:19] Yeah. The audience has been saying, where's Margi? More Margi. We need more Margi.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:24] That's the nicest.

John Dehlin [00:02:25] Yeah. All right, well, Annie, let's jump into your Mormon story and we'll sprinkle it with maybe 10 or so of your shorts, but we'll let you drive. So where does your Mormon story begin?

Annie's Mormon Story

Annie Marie [00:02:41] Yeah, let's do it. So I was born and raised in Southern California into A large Mormon family. I'm one of 11 kids.

John Dehlin [00:02:52] Whoa, 11, 11. Oh, my goodness.

Annie Marie [00:02:55] Yeah, Big, big family.

John Dehlin [00:02:56] Southern or north? Northern.

Annie Marie [00:02:58] Southern California.

John Dehlin [00:02:59] Okay.

Annie Marie [00:02:59] Yeah. Rancho Cucamonga.

John Dehlin [00:03:01] Okay.

Annie Marie [00:03:03] So, yeah, Yeah. I was born into a Mormon family. My dad was born and raised in the church, and his line goes back to the pioneers at some stage. I know they settled in Idaho. My mom was a convert. She was actually born and raised in Spain, so I'm half Spanish. And she actually served a local mission in Spain a few, like, maybe a year after she joined the church.

John Dehlin [00:03:32] Do you have a sense for about what year your parents were married and. Or sealed? Just so I can get a sense for their generation.

Annie Marie [00:03:39] I know before.

John Dehlin [00:03:40] How old's your oldest sibling?

Annie Marie [00:03:42] She's 38.

John Dehlin [00:03:44] Okay.

Annie Marie [00:03:45] And they were like. She was pregnant six months after they got married.

John Dehlin [00:03:48] So your parents are around our age? Yeah, 56, 58, 59, something like that.

Annie Marie [00:03:53] Yeah, he's turning 60 this year, my dad.

John Dehlin [00:03:55] Okay, okay, got it. Okay.

Annie Marie [00:03:56] So.

John Dehlin [00:03:57] So they're about our generation.

Annie Marie [00:03:58] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:03:58] Okay.

Annie Marie [00:03:59] So, yeah. And my dad, she's from Spain. My dad served his mission in Spain. That's how they met.

John Dehlin [00:04:05] Oh, drama.

Annie Marie [00:04:06] Naughty. Yeah. And she moved to the States just a little bit before he got back. They got married a day after he arrived home, they took a train to Vegas and got married.

John Dehlin [00:04:23] Wait, did you just say they got married a day after he got home from his mission? I've never heard that before.

Margi Dehlin [00:04:28] I have not either.

Annie Marie [00:04:29] Yeah, it's kind of crazy. It's a crazy story. Lots of details in there, but that's generally. Yeah, their start. And they got married in the Los Angeles temple shortly after and had a bunch of kids.

John Dehlin [00:04:42] Were you in the birth order?

Annie Marie [00:04:43] I'm the middle smack down the middle. I'm five.

John Dehlin [00:04:46] You're five of 11?

Annie Marie [00:04:49] My parents together had eight. Okay, so I'm five. And then other marriages and kids. So. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:55] Okay, you're five of eight. Biological.

Annie Marie [00:04:58] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:04:59] Siblings, yeah. Okay, so some came before you.

Annie Marie [00:05:03] Yes.

What Was My Mormon Family Like Before I Was Baptized?

John Dehlin [00:05:03] Okay, so do you give us a sense for what your Mormon family was like before things got crazy?

Annie Marie [00:05:12] Yeah, so I think before the age of eight, it was relatively. I mean, my parents were both very devout. Again, my entire family on my dad's side has been Mormon for a very long time. And so we followed all the niche Mormon rules. I think a good way to describe my parents and the way that we were raised is it wasn't really by individuals, it was by the church. So the way they structured their parenting was definitely that way. And same as my dad and Generations before. So a little bit authoritarian, to be honest with you.

John Dehlin [00:05:52] So a strict family.

Annie Marie [00:05:53] Very strict, yeah. Very strict with the rules. Like, we followed all those niche, weird Mormon rules. No swimming on Sundays. Just all those sorts of weird rules.

John Dehlin [00:06:05] Our movies, swearing.

Annie Marie [00:06:07] Our movies, swearing, moxie. Yep, all that. But for the most part, as a young child, I enjoyed the community aspect. I loved singing, loved, you know, my friends and most of the activities. But relative, like, we did not miss a day of church. Every activity that we could be at, we were there. Even if we went on vacation, we would find a local ward, or my brothers and my dad would break bread, bless it, we'd have a lesson out on vacation. So all of that, we. We never missed anything. So that was kind of what my upbringing was like before the age of 8. So definitely raised pretty devout Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:07:00] Okay.

Annie Marie [00:07:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:02] Any other. Any other stories you want to tell about your Mormon story before we talk about your baptism and show the first video clip?

Margi Dehlin [00:07:10] Yeah,

Annie Marie [00:07:13] I think that's pretty good for before the age of eight. So I would think leading up to the age of eight, when you start getting some of the lessons surrounding baptism, for me, it started to become very confusing, which I've made some videos about, and I think we'll watch in a second. But I think generally, as a child, trying to understand the concept of the Holy Ghost and baptism and what that all means, sort of being told that the Holy Ghost is going to be guiding you and that the Holy Ghost will align with the church's teachings, and anything that tells you in your mind or thoughts that come in your mind that go against the church's teachings might be Satan. That was a really tough concept for me to grasp. Very confusing. So I actually have a video where it kind of talks about generally that idea. If we want to play that clip, roll that clip.

John Dehlin [00:08:14] So we're gonna play the first. The first video, and y' all are gonna love this. So get ready. It's really good. All right, here we go.

Why I Got Baptized At 8 Years Old

Annie Marie [00:08:23] God wants you to get baptized. This is the first step to staying with your family forever. Everyone in your family did this. At your age, it is your choice. But I already bought cake. Grandma will be coming on Saturday to your baptism. Baptized will help you know right from wrong. You were especially chosen by God to receive the Holy Spirit and be on earth at this time. You've been preparing for this since you were born. Once you're baptized, Satan will try harder. This is the most important choice you'll ever make. And a good girl would say, yes. Heavenly Father is so Proud of you for choosing to be baptized in the Mormon Church. You will be the fourth generation in the Mormon Church. When you say yes. Your family will be so happy after today. You're responsible for your sins. Baptism protects you from Satan. You don't want to say no and disappoint God. This is a covenant you'll keep for the rest of your life. Eight year old, you're setting such a good example for your siblings. You now have the Holy Ghost as a companion in life. You're eight years old now. You are old enough to make promises to God. I'm so glad you said yes to getting baptized. It shows just how mature you really are.

John Dehlin [00:09:37] Wow, we're dying.

Annie Marie [00:09:40] I haven't seen that in a while.

Margi Dehlin [00:09:42] You know what?

Annie Marie [00:09:43] I think that pretty much sums up. I couldn't explain it better than how I can portray it in my videos, to be honest. I'll just kind of sit and jot down all the things I remember being told. And so I think that captures it really well. But yeah, it's kind of a lot of pressure to put on an 8 year old and it's really not a choice. It's really not. You are essentially coerced and bribed. I mean like literally, word for word. We already bought the cake. It's gonna be a joint baptism with your cousin, which mine was. Your grandma's gonna come in town. It wasn't really a question, it was an expectation. So it's really funny.

John Dehlin [00:10:24] I'm guessing you didn't feel all those things as a kid. Some of that's processing after and reflection.

Annie Marie [00:10:30] No, absolutely. I think, you know, for me I was a self aware child and I think I can read. I was intuitive, I can read like the expectations that adults wanted of me and I wanted to make my parents happy. I did know that as a child and so I knew this is what I was supposed to do or at least I felt that I was supposed to do that. But those are the things that I remember being said to me.

John Dehlin [00:10:57] Wow.

Annie Marie [00:10:57] Yeah.

"Comedy Is Pain + Time"

Margi Dehlin [00:10:58] Can I say something that's just so beautiful about your art? Like in watching is I feel like you capture so well the seriousness and the intensity of some of these things that we all experienced. And you also bring humor to it, which I think is just that pairing is so interesting, the seriousness, but then you choosing to have the humor. And at the root of the humor is a bit of pain.

Annie Marie [00:11:31] Yeah, I mean, I think for me most comedy is rooted in some pain. And I think I've always dealt with a lot of pain. This way. So, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:42] Who is it that said comedy is pain plus time? Somebody said that.

Annie Marie [00:11:45] Someone's. I don't know, but I think that's true.

John Dehlin [00:11:47] Yeah. A comedian said comedy is pain plus time.

Annie Marie [00:11:50] It's definitely true. Yeah.

Got baptized at 13 years old

John Dehlin [00:11:52] So, okay, so you got baptized. How was that for you overall? Like, an overall experience, joyous or painful or stressful or.

Annie Marie [00:12:04] It was stressful because, I mean, there were certain things going on at the time. There was a bit of family drama that started. And so for me, it was more of pressure because now I was responsible for sin and for my thoughts. And for me at that age, it scared me. I would describe it as maybe ocd, like, symptoms starting and a lot of questioning of just every thought that would come up. Scrupulosity is a word I have gotten. I've come to know. So I think that's how I would describe just generally that time.

How The Book of Mormon Could Stress Out a Child

John Dehlin [00:12:54] You mentioned in your outline some Book of Mormon stories that contributed to your stress as a child. Do you want to share, like, just a sense for how the Book of Mormon could stress out a child?

Annie Marie [00:13:05] Yeah. I think what I learned was, you know, reading through the Book of Mormon or even the Bible, God can be vengeful and violent, but then you sit in sacrament on Sundays and you hear the older women crying at the pulpit that he, you know, has helped their life so much, and he loves us all so much. He helped them find their keys or a parking spot. And the contrast of those was confusing for me. And I have some videos that kind of portray this where I would ask questions, whether to my parents or to my teachers in church, trying to make sense of it. And so for me, the contrast of love and violence and vengeance didn't make sense. And I was trying to make sense of it through questions. And I quickly learned through, again, just being very observant of the way parents and teachers kind of their body language or their face would react to questions. I learned that that wasn't really safe or. Okay. And so I started kind of quieting down a little bit. But I think I have a video that portrays some of those questions that I had. If we wanted to roll the clip.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:35] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:14:35] Oh, okay. So the next clip we had is receiving the Holy Ghost of Bapt.

Receive the Holy Ghost of Baptism

Annie Marie [00:14:42] We could play that one, too. That's kind of. It kind of goes through.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:47] Yeah.

Annie Marie [00:14:47] After baptism, what that feels like. Oh.

John Dehlin [00:14:50] Oh, okay. Okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:51] So we'll do the. We'll do them in order, but we'll

Annie Marie [00:14:54] get to the ones we can kind of go through. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:56] Okay. Okay. So this Next one is receiving the Holy Ghost. Anything you want to say about that before?

Annie Marie [00:15:01] I might have some comments afterwards.

Reveal: The Holy Ghost Of Baptism

John Dehlin [00:15:03] All right, let's roll the next one. This is receiving the Holy Ghost of Baptism by. By Annie.

Annie Marie [00:15:11] Once you're baptized, you'll never be alone again. You will have a ghost with you. But don't worry, it's holy. It is God, but not. Don't ask questions. The Holy Ghost will stay with you if you're good, the Holy Ghost will leave you if you're bad. What's good and bad? You don't get to decide. The Church does. Feeling when you feel guilty, that's the spirit. That feeling when you feel good, that's the spirit. Will you be able to tell the difference? No. He can hear your thoughts, so try to keep them clean. If you have bad thoughts, it will leave you, but not before it makes you feel guilty. That still small voice you have inside your head, that's not your consciousness or your brain. That's a ghost. If you do something the Church approves of, you will have a warm feeling in your tummy. That's the Holy Ghost. If you do something that feels like good that the Church does not approve of, that's Satan. How do you tell the difference? No one knows. Just stay obedient and you'll be fine. Don't worry. You'll only have a little bit of cognitive dissonance when you're older. Good luck.

John Dehlin [00:16:17] Yeah, I. I, as a faithful Mormon, I never understood the difference between my emotions and the Holy Ghost.

Annie Marie [00:16:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's. Yeah, that was the foundation there. Set up of getting. And I. Just staying in the moment, I think. Yeah, I spoke to this a little bit, but it was just really difficult to understand that. And. It's, I think, just inappropriate developmentally for children. But, yeah, that prompted a lot of questions and a lot of paranoia. I think something that was a result of this, that I have vivid memories of, is just seeing in my closet like a shadow. And I don't know if that was like a manifestation, but I would just wake up and just have a lot of fear that something was with me. So that's also something that manifested a lot of fear and paranoia and sort of fear of ghosts, which I. Holy Ghost. I mean, so that's something that. That was prevalent at 8 years old. For me, it's just a lot of fear around that and then just confusion, not knowing which thoughts to trust and sort of having to check with the church or check with my mom or teachers and just being confused just A layer of confusion there.

Margi Dehlin [00:17:50] Yeah. I have a quick question for you with. With regard to your experience so far as a child. It feels like you're really perceptive and that you have an inner life that is kind of like it exists inside you and it's creating this tension at times between what you're being told. Would you say that's true? Absolutely. I guess I'm curious if you were able. If you had any other siblings at the time or people to talk to about this or if this was something that you were alone with, you kind of kept it, you know, inside yourself in the way of, like, having someone to confide in?

Exploring Sexual Abuse as a Child

Annie Marie [00:18:35] Actually, no. This is something. All of these things, for the most part, were kept very internal, which I think is where a lot of that suppression comes from. I didn't talk about this with my siblings. I would, again, ask questions here and there to whether it was like my parents or teachers, but again, having that learned sort of sense of, oh, we don't ask these questions. And so it kind of started to die down. But I think it was always there under the surface for me, where I was like, something doesn't add up. Something doesn't add. It doesn't feel right. And I knew that as a child. I very much knew that as a child. I don't know why. I don't know how. It just didn't click.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:19:26] Yeah. The next video clip, I think, might be illustrative of things not clicking as a child. It may be the one you're referring to. Yeah, let's roll that one, and then we'll talk a little bit more about that.

"If God Asked You To Kill Me,"

Annie Marie [00:19:42] If God asked you to kill me, would you do it? Who do you love more, me or God? If I get baptized and die right away, do I go to heaven? If I went to hell, would you visit me? If God can see everything, does he watch me shower? If I left the church, would you still love me? If God said you had to give up one of your eight children, who would you give up? If you had to choose between me and God, who would you choose? If I was gay, would you still, still love me? If the prophet told you to kill me, would you do it? If I don't feel the spirit, is there something wrong with me? If God has a plan, how do I have free agency? Would you rather have Jesus as a kid than me? When God sends people to hell, does he miss them? God said I had to be sacrificed. Would you be okay with that? If someone thinks God is talking to them, how do they know it's not Satan. If the prophet was wrong, how would we know? If I went to outer darkness, would you still love me if I did? If I didn't make it to the celestial kingdom, would you come visit me? Could God forgive Satan? Would we know if Satan and God just made up? If I feel scared, how do I know if it's the Holy Ghost or Satan? If God really loved us, why would he separate us in heaven? Would you believe the prophet over me?

John Dehlin [00:20:48] I'm dying to know. In your creative process, do you just sit down and think up those questions all in succession right before you shoot a video, or do you, like, have a notebook or take notes throughout the week or multiple weeks and develop these scripts over time?

Annie Marie [00:21:05] Okay, so for these ones that are kind of. This was a result of a lot of inner child work where I would sit. I started working with a therapist, which we'll get more into later. But asking my inner child what's still there, that's influencing me as an adult. And these are the kind of things that I see them in my head. Like for that video, I remember watching my mom do her makeup in the mirror and looking at myself in the mirror and literally asking her word for word those questions. Would you rather have Jesus as a child because he was perfect? If the prophet asked you to sacrifice me, would you listen? Because we follow the prophet and just being dismissed. Like, she didn't take those questions seriously. She was like, she know. What are you saying?

Margi Dehlin [00:22:01] So,

Annie Marie [00:22:03] yeah, that's. Those are the memories that come up when I reflect on my Mormon upbringing, my Mormon story. And that's. I would write those down and just go bang, bang, bang, bang. And just. It just would flow out of me. My inner child speaking truly.

John Dehlin [00:22:19] Yeah, I kept like four or five journals from fourth grade through, like, post mission, and my journals are full of questions like that. So I really relate from the very beginning to having these types of questions. So it's meaningful to me to hear them articulated through somebody else because it feels very validating.

Annie Marie [00:22:40] I think most people have these questions, and I think as a child, when you have these questions and they're not answered and you know that this is the way of life that you're supposed to, you know, agree with and conform to. You suppress them and you just keep going, you know, you don't know any different. And that was certainly the case for me. Then,

John Dehlin [00:23:01] then. Then we'll play a couple more clips just to talk about the child perspective, and then we'll go to your parents. Splitting up. Is that okay?

Annie Marie [00:23:10] Yeah, absolutely.

Dark Skin in the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin [00:23:10] Okay, so the next clip we have is about dark skin in the Book of Mormon. So we'll. We'll. We'll play that one.

Annie Marie [00:23:19] So the Book of Mormon teaches that dark skin color was a curse, like literal dark skin. Yeah, well, that was symbolic. It shows a separation between righteousness and God, of course. But then they taught it literally for like, a hundred years. Well, the church has moved on from that. You see, the prophet can receive new messages and therefore enact new light and knowledge to the church members. I don't get it. If prophets can be wrong about race, can they be wrong about other things they're teaching? Why don't we schedule you a meeting with the bishop and then we can pray about it?

Margi Dehlin [00:24:14] Okay.

Annie Marie [00:24:17] What.

John Dehlin [00:24:23] You meant, you offered. So we asked people to give perspective titles, you know, suggested titles for what we might title the episodes. One of the titles you chose, I think, was Losing My Testimony as a Child.

Losing My Testimony As a Child

Annie Marie [00:24:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:38] So, like, for me, it feels a little weird to be playing some of these topics because they're pretty advanced questions for most orthodox Mormons. Yeah, but you were having these questions as a child.

Annie Marie [00:24:50] Yeah, and this one specifically because my stepdad was African American, and I. And some of these things, you know, I. I make these skits in certain different perspectives sometimes. So like this one, I had heard this at school, and so now I make, like, I made this video in the perspective of if I was asking. And. But I did have conversations like this, probably not with a leader, but with my mom because I had an African American stepdad. So that's kind of how that one came about. But I like that one because for me, it kind of speaks to the masking that sort of happens when you do come with these questions. And certainly I saw that in my mom, too, where she's like, well, yeah,

Margi Dehlin [00:25:43] you capture the facial expression really well.

Annie Marie [00:25:48] I feel people say that I appreciate it and also, like, I know I do because I know it well.

John Dehlin [00:25:56] Yeah, it's kind of dark in a little dark.

Questions about Mormonism as a child

Margi Dehlin [00:25:59] I have a quick question. Just follow up. So what I'm hearing you say is, as a child, this was part of you, this questioning, observant, perceptive piece, and that basically you were conditioned. You learned that it was something basically to be ashamed of. It wasn't welcomed. Is that right?

Annie Marie [00:26:22] Yeah, you were sort of the problem if you didn't understand.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:28] Yeah.

Annie Marie [00:26:29] You were probably being led by Satan for these questions. That was how it was framed towards me.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:34] Yes.

Annie Marie [00:26:34] So, yeah, it was a little bit beaten out of me, to be honest with you. In that way.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:41] Okay.

Annie Marie [00:26:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:43] And did your mom and dad sort of tend to feel or react the same way when you had questions about Mormonism?

Annie Marie [00:26:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:26:52] Oh, wow. So you didn't have. Sometimes there's a good cop, bad cop dynamic where one parent winks and is more supportive, but the other's more strict. You kind of had two strict parents.

Annie Marie [00:27:03] Yes. They were both pretty towards questions, I feel pretty dismissive and didn't take them seriously. They thought almost like, didn't think it would matter at that age to really answer those questions. Maybe that's how it felt.

John Dehlin [00:27:21] So as a kid, they just thought, you're just a kid.

Annie Marie [00:27:23] Yes, exactly. Yeah, that's how it felt.

My Parents Split Up When I Was 8 Years Old

John Dehlin [00:27:26] Let's talk about your parents splitting up. Because, I mean, hearing them be so kind of orthodox and kind of strict and invalidating, you wouldn't expect an eternal Mormon marriage to dissolve, what, 13, 14, 15 years into their marriage. I don't know what it would have been. 18. Okay. Yeah. So how'd that happen? Whatever. You want to share about it?

Annie Marie [00:27:48] Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, it was definitely shocking. So at eight years old, after my baptism, my parents were going through a divorce, and my dad was very worried. This is what I remember the most about this time. Of course, divorce in general is painful, but adding the layer of the church, I think made this experience quite worse. Just made it worse. So my dad was quite worried because my mom. It was determined by church leaders that my mom had broken her temple marriage covenants for pursuing a relationship with another man, and she wanted to cancel their temple ceiling. And she. Her temple recommend was taken away at this time. So my dad was very worried that what's going to happen to our ceiling with our kids, with their mom, with me? What happens here? Because I think at this time, it was around 2003, 2004, there wasn't a lot of guidance. I don't think, at this time, like, the bishop handbook was publicly available. And so he went to the bishop with these questions. The bishop didn't know the answers either. And so together they wrote to the First Presidency, and my dad got a letter back signed by Dallin H. Oaks, essentially saying, your temple blessings and your sealing to your kids is good, but meaning your dad. My dad, yes.

John Dehlin [00:29:30] Because he didn't, according to the church, break his covenants.

Annie Marie [00:29:32] Yes. Although his temple recommend was also taken away. Just because they were in talks of divorce. He told me recently, actually. I was like, that's weird. He said, apparently that was the policy then. That was his experience. So the letter said that his blessings are an intact are sealing with our dad is good, but my mom will have to face the consequences of her actions and would not receive those temple blessings. So what that means is she would not be in the celestial kingdom with us. That's what my bishop understood and my dad understood and that was conveyed to us as children, unfortunately, which was really hard. And at this time, with the state I was in leading up to my baptism and having just being baptized for some reason, I remember feeling almost like I had been caught for something, like I had forgot to repent for something. Was Satan leading my mom away? Was God punishing us like I had learned like he does in the Book of Mormon and in the Bible for people who are disobedient. Was this a consequence of something that I forgot to repent for?

Margi Dehlin [00:30:55] I.

Annie Marie [00:30:56] That is how I felt at that time. And I remember feeling like I had like almost hiding at that time, like I have a secret, like this is my fault or something.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:08] It was really.

Annie Marie [00:31:09] I mean, of course looking back, it's of course not. But yeah, that's how I remember feeling. Feeling very scared and like I had been caught. And then of course many other emotions. My parents were splitting up. I had been told my mom is not going to be with us in the celestial kingdom.

John Dehlin [00:31:28] Was that like to both be told you were only going to be sealed to your dad now and that your family had been broken up celestially and that your mom might not be there with you in heaven? Like, what's that like for a Mormon kid?

Margi Dehlin [00:31:42] Yeah.

Annie Marie [00:31:44] I mean I believed it at this time, so it was devastating. You know, you grow up singing, families can be together forever. And I had just been told that this wasn't the case for me anymore. I was heartbroken, shocked. I remember feeling

Margi Dehlin [00:32:08] very

Annie Marie [00:32:12] angry towards my mom for a long time. I still feel it very angry that she would do this. Also feeling guilty, like did I also do like so many emotions all at once.

John Dehlin [00:32:27] You were saying, did I do you were wondering if you were to blame? Possibly, yeah. How does.

Annie Marie [00:32:33] It doesn't make sense. But I think for a child, because these concepts are so

Margi Dehlin [00:32:41] inconsistent. They don't.

Annie Marie [00:32:43] Inconsistent. And it's almost like the reality that you've been taught for, like basically your eight years of existence just gets ripped out from under you. That you're going to be with your family forever and you've done all the things that you're supposed to do. I just got baptized and now I can be in the celestial kingdom with my family right now and being told that that's taken away it was just heartbreaking. But I think, particularly the time in my life that I was in having the baptism lessons, and I'm now responsible for sin for some reason, I internalized it that did I do something to cause Satan to be in our home? And I think at this time, too, why I was feeling this is because I had my best friend in the church came to me as this was going on and said, my parents said, I can't come over to your house anymore because divorce drives the spirit away. So there's no spirit in your home. And so I think a combination of all these things gave me almost anxiety and paranoia about this, if that makes sense.

Margi Dehlin [00:33:56] Yeah, it does make sense.

Annie Marie [00:33:57] Like, I try to make sense of it as an adult now. I'm like, dang, I remember feeling that way. And that was crazy for me to feel that way, but that's what I felt.

Margi Dehlin [00:34:05] Yes. I mean, children try to make sense of things with what they have at the time. Right?

Annie Marie [00:34:11] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:34:12] And for me, it makes so much sense because you're swimming in a baptism situation where all the messages are around. You're going to be the cleanest you've ever been. You're going to be without. So to have that coupled with all of a sudden, your family, not just for your earthly life, which is painful enough. Right. But for eternity now. Sorry, your mom is not going to be part of it. It's like this duality of like, wait, I just got started. I was just clean. So it makes sense to me, like, where you're like, whoa, and now it's all ruined for me. Exactly. In a second, it makes sense to me that your childlike brain is like, wait, did I do something? I didn't feel like I did anything. Maybe I missed something and it ruined everything for us.

Your Stories About The Divorce

Annie Marie [00:35:01] Right? Exactly.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:02] Makes all the sense.

Annie Marie [00:35:03] Exactly. Because you're just taught how important it is that this change is happening in your life, being responsible for your sin, and you're clean now. And then that happening, it's all up to you.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:14] Then you're like, wait, my mom.

Annie Marie [00:35:16] Yeah, a lot of responsibility. And it felt like God was, like, punishing our family. And I was like, did I do something for God to do this? I think when I try to think of this time, that's what comes up for me. And that's how it felt.

John Dehlin [00:35:30] Yeah. To receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and to be told, that's the benefit of being a Mormon, is you're gonna get the gift of the Holy Ghost and then to be told, sorry, you can't be around our intact Mormon family because divorce drives the spirit away. How did a kid make sense of that?

Annie Marie [00:35:52] You can.

John Dehlin [00:35:54] It's also subjective, and it's so brutal.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:58] It's so brutal for the psychology of a child to hold all of this. Can we have a moment for that? Yeah.

Annie Marie [00:36:07] Can we?

Margi Dehlin [00:36:08] Because.

Annie Marie [00:36:09] And that's truly why I talk about it.

John Dehlin [00:36:12] I'm just noticing this is, like, what we call a process observation. But the videos are so funny. Your videos are so funny, but the

Margi Dehlin [00:36:21] pain

John Dehlin [00:36:23] and the sadness of your story is really deep. And I'm just noticing the dissonance between how much I want to laugh at your videos and how serious and kind of hard and sad and dark elements of your story are. Yeah, yeah.

Annie Marie [00:36:38] Like, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:39] And it's almost like the comedy doesn't bit in the story. You know what I mean?

Margi Dehlin [00:36:44] Yes. Yeah.

Annie Marie [00:36:46] I agree with you. It sort of covers a little bit of how dark it actually is by doing it through comedy. But I think it's helpful for a lot of people to acknowledge their own experiences that way because when it's so heavy, it's kind of hard to watch.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:01] Absolutely.

My Parents Got Divorced...

John Dehlin [00:37:02] There's a clip about families can be together forever. Is that. Is this a good time to play that?

Annie Marie [00:37:08] Maybe this is a kind of a recreation of a scene from my childhood.

John Dehlin [00:37:13] Okay.

Annie Marie [00:37:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:14] All right. But let's laugh and cry at the same time.

Annie Marie [00:37:17] Let's. Families can be together forever through heavenly Father's plan. I always want to be with my own family, and the Lord has shown me how I can. Now. Why were you crying and not seeing? Singing? My parents got divorced, and their seal is broken, so we're not gonna be together in the afterlife.

John Dehlin [00:37:47] Oh,

Annie Marie [00:37:49] so this song really makes me sad. Parents breaking their seal doesn't mean you are broken from the seal of eternity. Wait, so we might be together still? My mom got sealed to someone else. Are we still with my dad? We believe kids will still be sealed to their parents in eternity. But to actually be together in the afterlife, you all must individually repent of your sins through Christ. Keep your temple covenants, pay 10% of your income to the cult for the rest of your life. I mean, church. And faithfully keep the commandments. Anyway. So the temple ceiling doesn't actually mean anything. Well,

John Dehlin [00:38:31] Like, it's so well done. And I remember I was a freshman at BYU when I was notified that my parents sealing was canceled because my mom wanted to remarry her third husband. And I had a 4. 0 my first semester, and it almost tanked my second semester. And I was 18. I'm just trying to imagine what that's like to be 8 or 9 and to be grappling with these things.

Annie Marie [00:38:54] Yeah. And it does. It opens up so many more questions. And I think that video captures it well. And I think that's really where I started to question, sort of the testimony, if you will, that I had at that age, because I also had a friend at eight years old whose dad just passed away. They weren't members, but I thought of her and her dad and will she be with her parent or her dad, you know, in the next life? They're not members. What happens there? What about, you know, my friend who is gay? What happens to her? And so it starts to open up so many more questions. And so over the years, I think that's where I went. But also what was really confusing is we had the letter from the First Presidency, and we were told one thing, and not everybody in the ward was privy to exactly what was happening with the breaking of the covenants. And so some people would tell me, no, divorce doesn't mean your ceiling's canceled. And it would be very confusing as well to be told different things by different people. So it was a lot that was happening at this time and hearing a lot of different perspectives and sort of reasonings around why I might still be with my mom or why I might not. And then, you know, a few years later, she did get sealed to someone else. And so then your questions are, are we gonna be with him, too? He just ruined our family. She married the same man she was pursuing while married to my dad. I don't want to be. Oh, but he converted for my mom. Oh, yeah. That's a whole other thing. But, yeah, I was like, I don't want to be with him. I. I hate him.

John Dehlin [00:40:41] He.

Annie Marie [00:40:41] He ruined our family. I don't want to be with my mom. I'm mad at her. She. She left my dad, and he's depressed and broken, and I. You know, all of these things that you feel as a child, and you're just way too young to hold.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:54] Right.

Annie Marie [00:40:56] So that was the next couple years after dealing with that aftermath and the changes in my family dynamics and just feeling so much anger, confusion, and sadness.

John Dehlin [00:41:10] Yeah. I think it was John Larsen who first sort of communicated this idea that every Mormon doctrine falls apart if you scratch, like, a centimeter thick. You know what I mean? Like, you know, the example was like, if God has a body, does he use his colon? Does he use his spleen? Does he, you know, the big blinks can he not see? Like, what does it mean that God has a literal body? Does he go to the bathroom up in heaven? You know, but like, I got in trouble by the Paul brothers once for saying that the atonement can be an insidious doctrine at times. And it can be. But also this teaching of eternal family and of the Holy Ghost, they can be two of the most beautiful teachings of Mormon. But also, it's just. Your story is illustrative of how surface beautiful doctrines in Mormonism can also be insidious.

Annie Marie [00:42:12] Yeah, I think that actually sums up, in my view, the totality of the church. It's beautiful on the outside, and the doctrines are beautiful on the outside. Of course I want to be with my family forever in the next life. Of course I want to have the guidance of some entity that is guiding me and knows what's right and wrong. Of course I want that. But it's not as simple as that, actually. Especially when you look at it under a microscope where you have different family dynamics that go against the parameters of church teachings.

Mindy Gledhill on Child Work

John Dehlin [00:42:46] Well, this is a lot to hold as a child. How was that for you as a child? Were you. Do you look back on. You've done child work? And it's. I love that. It's serendipitous that we just interviewed Mindy Gledhill and released on Monday her episode on Child Work on Inner child Work. So it's serendipitous that you're mentioning that as well, because some people probably think inner child work is hokey.

Annie Marie [00:43:12] I know.

John Dehlin [00:43:13] But, you know, I think you and Mindy and Margi are all pretty smart people. And if you're all telling me there's value there, I'm got to pay attention.

Annie Marie [00:43:21] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:22] So for you is really valuable. But how was your inner. How was your child doing at this time, if you even know or remember?

The Secret Life of Anger During Child Abuse

Annie Marie [00:43:34] Yeah, I think I remember elements. But to be honest with you, there are a lot of. I usually see it in my mind of, like, what I was doing, what that kind of looked like. And there's a lot of blocks and blurs there, which cues the inner child work that I still do to try and access these and form my art with those. And I think that's how I've dealt with it. But then I didn't really have an outlet. All I had was my emotions. And we still attended church and we still did all of the things. I didn't really have anywhere to put it. I would talk with my dad about how he was feeling and would sort of absorb his emotions as well. But to be honest with you, I don't even know. I don't think I did anything with the emotions that I had. And that's why they still existed in me for so long, which we'll talk about later. They were stuck inside of me.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:38] Yeah. It sounds like you were in survival.

Annie Marie [00:44:41] Absolutely.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:42] And when you're in survival, all, like your whole world is. Is changing and everything you thought you knew is. It just feels like that's not the time when people process emotions. So I love how you describe it as kind of frozen or closed up somewhere because you honestly don't have the capacity support any of the things that you would need to really unpack it. You're just trying to get. Get through the day. Is that kind of.

Annie Marie [00:45:14] Absolutely. And I think, too, my dad was raised, you know, Mormon and all the generations before him. And I don't think there is a lot of emotional work that goes on. And so my dad didn't have the tools, and so that carries on. So I think it's a generational thing as well. Yeah, you kind of just keep presenting as everything's okay, and that's definitely Mormon church culture. And so for a lot of. I think that's why it becomes suppressed. And for a lot of people who go through things in the church, things are suppressed because that's how you're taught to deal with it culturally. Right.

Margi Dehlin [00:45:56] So true.

John Dehlin [00:45:57] Really quick with the divorce. Did you all stay in the same house? Did you stay with your dad? Did your mom leave? Was there a custody battle? All that?

Annie Marie [00:46:07] All that, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:46:08] Oh.

Annie Marie [00:46:09] So my dad. There was a custody battle for a while. My dad kept the house, you know, paid my mom a sum of money for alimony, I think it is. And the custody order was that we would be with my mom on the weekends, but I didn't want to be with her. And so because I was under the age. I think it's 13 when you can start deciding if you want to go or not. I was under that age, and so I had to go. I remember I have memories of her coming to pick us up on a Friday, and I would run from her screaming. Didn't want to go with her. The man she left my dad with was at her house. I would jump in our pool so she couldn't get me. A lot of memories like that for years where I just so angry and I didn't want to be around her. So that's kind of what that was like for a couple of years. It was very messy and I think a lot of the adults around me,

Margi Dehlin [00:47:17] too,

Annie Marie [00:47:19] would talk very negatively about my mom. And so it kind of fueled that anger too. So that's kind of what it. What it was like. A lot of my siblings, too. I mean, there's seven others that were also dealing with it in their own way. And there was a lot of anger and a lot of violence from other family members that started to come about as their own reactions. So I got a lot of that as well. I would be hit. Verbally abused for years as a result of how they dealt with it. And so that's kind of. That's what it was like the next couple of years. And my dad was still full time working, so we were alone a lot when we. Wow. Just my older siblings were taking care of us. So that's kind of what that looked like for the next couple years.

When You're a Mormon Child and Love Your Parents

John Dehlin [00:48:18] I'm mindful right now of like, you go to church on Sunday in a Mormon church, and it's all about having the perfect Mormon family, You know, Love at Home is a song that comes to mind. And I'm trying to imagine the pressure it would be like to be in a broken Mormon family with a bunch of young siblings, with your parents divorced and fighting and separated, and then you're constantly seeing those Mormon messages of love at home and there's beauty all around and what that would do to the dynamics potentially in a divorced Mormon home. Yeah, it's a lot.

Annie Marie [00:48:53] It was a lot. And I felt. I remember my brother saying, and this is how we all felt. We are the broken family at church. We are like the broken, dirty family at church. Because no one else in our ward had been through a divorce. No one looked like our family. We didn't have a mom dressing us up for church anymore, doing our hair, making sure we look. My dad, there's six girls, six, seven, eight, two boys. So all of us looked kind of ratty going to church, whereas all the other girls were. Had their moms doing their hair, making sure they were dressed nicely. And that was also something that was different too, is like that presentation. That's pretty important, at least in the Mormon culture. I grew up in presentation. And looking good was of prime importance. And that I definitely felt that difference too. And just emotionally we were unstable. And so, like, sitting in sacrament for hours over the next couple years was hard. We had a lot of emotions. And so I just remember feeling so different and unworthy of being there. And that definitely played a part. And just hearing all the music, yeah, music was really important to me. Growing up in the church, Families Can Be Together Forever was my favorite song before. And then hearing that afterwards, or Love at Home, all those types of songs were. I would cry. I would cry in sacrament. I'm like, I hate going to church. I started becoming very angry with my dad, but for him, generationally being a Mormon, and that's what you just do. That's what your life is. He didn't know any other way. He didn't think it was something that we could leave. And so continuing to go was torturous for me because I didn't feel love at home. My family wasn't going to be together forever, as far as I knew it, and it was torturous. And I became very angry. Anger is a main emotion that I felt throughout my childhood and teenage years.

John Dehlin [00:51:04] Yeah.

Annie Marie [00:51:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:06] I'm just having the thought that the Mormon plan of salvation is the most beautiful thing in the world and totally works until it doesn't work and it falls apart. And then it's like a horror movie. And the. The secret little rub is that it. It falls apart for almost everyone.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:22] It does. And it really does. The thing that is the emotional lore or the like. Yeah. The hope and the dream becomes the weapon. It becomes the thing that blows you up inside and disempowers you. Because as a child in particular, you didn't have a choice in any of it.

Annie Marie [00:51:45] Nope. Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:51:48] Yeah. So if you have a gay kid or your kids leave the church or you get divorced or your parents, it's just like, game over.

Annie Marie [00:51:55] Yeah. You realize that doesn't work for everybody. And so. Yeah, absolutely. That's really where a lot of my questioning and distance from the testimony that I did have started to grumble, you know?

Margi Dehlin [00:52:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:09] Let's play a couple more clips about maybe some questions you had as a kid, and then we'll get into the teen years. Is that all right?

Annie Marie [00:52:16] Yeah.

The Garden of Eden

John Dehlin [00:52:16] So this next one is Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Annie Marie [00:52:22] That's how humanity started. Eve ate from the fruit of knowledge of good and evil and doomed the rest of humanity. You're saying they didn't know right from wrong until after they ate from the fruit? That's right. How did they know not to eat it if they didn't even know what wrong was yet? She had to do it so we could all be born. Eve broke the rule. But breaking the rule was a good thing. They were supposed to break the rules. She needed to choose it for herself. It was part of God's plan for us to come to Earth. Then how is that a choice? And if God knows everything that's going to happen, he knew that was going to happen. If God knew they were going to eat it anyway. Wasn't that, like, a setup? I'm so confused. If you're feeling confused, that's Satan, not God. God punished them with. With death and pain after they did what he needed them to do to start humanity. Why didn't God just start them outside of the garden? Well, God's ways are higher than ours. We can only understand so much. Does anyone else have questions?

Margi Dehlin [00:53:30] Please.

Annie Marie [00:53:30] If humanity started with Adam and Eve, but they had two boys. What? The start of humanity doesn't make any sense. Okay, we're moving on.

John Dehlin [00:53:45] Yeah, yeah. Where did the I. I was always asking. It had to have been incest. If Adam and Eve. Even if there were daughters, let's just say it mentions Cain and Abel and then there's daughters. Yeah, like, oh, that solves the problem. Until you realize that they must have had incest to then have more kids after that.

Annie Marie [00:54:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:04] So, like, just that alone invalidates.

Annie Marie [00:54:06] Right?

John Dehlin [00:54:07] Unless God was okay with temporary incest, you know?

Annie Marie [00:54:10] Yeah. It's like.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:10] Wait, what?

Annie Marie [00:54:11] And then people say, well, no, there were already beings on Earth. And it's like, okay, so then those weren't the first humans.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:16] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:54:17] What?

Annie Marie [00:54:18] So the story just seems to fall apart in my eyes.

John Dehlin [00:54:21] Yeah, I had these same thoughts. Yeah, that's wild. Okay, the next one you have is about Joseph Smith and polygamy. So here's the next one. Here we go.

Questions About Joseph Smith and Polygyny When I Was a Child

Annie Marie [00:54:35] I have a question on this part. So Joseph Smith had multiple wives? Up to 30 wives, and they were under age, like 14. Why did he do that? Yes, it was a different time. And it was commanded by God. Isn't that illegal? Polygamy was a test of faith for the members to marry teenagers, other men's wives. I don't get it. These women were strong spiritual pioneers. Isn't that called grooming? Grooming? Please don't let that work worldly thinking cloud this beautiful environment. I can feel the spirit leaving as you speak.

John Dehlin [00:55:29] Please.

Annie Marie [00:55:32] Okay,

John Dehlin [00:55:36] I'm curious. Like, I didn't learn about polyandry until I was like, 30 or 31. Do you remember? I. I'm guessing you didn't learn about Joseph's polygamy when you were 9 or 12. You know, came later.

Annie Marie [00:55:47] Yeah, I. I remember talking about it with my grandma, actually, because my grandma is huge into history and genealogy, so I remember having some of those questions with her, actually. But most of the things I Heard were from school. And so again, this is one of those where I make a skit kind of in hindsight, like a child kind of asking this way. But I definitely did have conversations with my grandma and getting that answer. They were spiritual pioneers. And, you know, they. They sacrificed so much. And the men did it because, you know, they were protecting the woman or they were, you know, it was for the woman. And then you get older and you look back at it and you're like, oh, okay. But that. Those are the types of answers you get as a child.

John Dehlin [00:56:43] Yeah.

Annie Marie [00:56:43] The reasons.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:45] One thing watching that video that I feel like was just so brilliant about it was how it illustrates children really having to take responsibility, like, by shutting down questions. Children asking questions sincere, trying to understand what they've been kind of given. It really is about taking care of the adult. It's just sort of like, you know, don't make me think about things I don't want to think about. Don't make me have to question things. Like it participates and sort of supports this fragility, this emotional fragility of adults. Right.

Annie Marie [00:57:32] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:33] And I think that's something that just really came out so much in that video.

Annie Marie [00:57:38] Yeah. You know, it reminds me there were many times from teachers where I received a lot of that, like, a lot of hostility back towards questioning. And I think it just shows that they also have those questions and they can't really answer them or they, you know, when someone else, especially a child, brings them up, it's like, oof. They notice it too. And I feel like that response that the hostility that I experienced was a result of that them not really being okay with the answers either.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:16] That's right. And on a deeper level, being very uncomfortable with discomfort. And I think that Holy Ghost whole thing of like, oh, oh, I'm getting uncomfortable. I do think the Holy Ghost is leaving or Satan has come. It's just a way to just shut down a conversation and protect. Like, I'm starting to feel uncomfortable.

Annie Marie [00:58:38] And we can't have that because that means the spirit is leaving. You're making the spirit leave. You're the problem. That was a common experience. I think many children have that experience.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:58:49] And what's wild, this is all done unconsciously. Like, it's not like adults are sitting around saying, let me silence and mute a child because I'm uncomfortable. It's just they're protecting unspoken emotional dynamics.

Annie Marie [00:59:03] You know, it's interesting because I think children are smarter than. Especially in the church they're giving credit for. Yeah, absolutely. But it's actually viewed opposite, inverted, where it's like, oh, they just don't understand. They can't understand. That was a common one. My mom said to me, you'll understand when you're older.

John Dehlin [00:59:21] It's like.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:21] Or you're labeled disobedient or you're labeled. Yes. Like disturbance, a character flaw then, as opposed to actually being earnest.

Annie Marie [00:59:32] Yeah, Actually, disobedient was my nickname.

John Dehlin [00:59:36] Seriously?

Margi Dehlin [00:59:37] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:59:37] Oh, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:39] Yeah.

Annie Marie [00:59:39] Layman and Lemuel were my older sisters nicknames.

John Dehlin [00:59:42] Oh, dang.

Annie Marie [00:59:43] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:59:44] You have nicknames in your family?

Annie Marie [00:59:46] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:47] Okay.

Annie Marie [00:59:48] My mom. Yeah, my mom called them Laman and Lemuel when they were being disobedient. That's how Mormon my family was. It's like our nicknames came from the Book of Mormon, like, if we were bad or good. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:03] Deep breaths. Okay. I'm curious about your belief and participation. Were you still orthodox in your belief before adolescence, and were y' all still fully on board with the church before

Janine on Her

Annie Marie [01:00:16] adolescence as a family unit? We were. Individually. I don't know if any of my siblings were. I definitely wasn't at this point.

John Dehlin [01:00:26] You weren't what?

Annie Marie [01:00:28] Believing?

John Dehlin [01:00:29] Really? So you really feel like you lost your Mormon belief as a child?

Annie Marie [01:00:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:34] Oh, yeah.

Annie Marie [01:00:36] I think it. And I do think at that point, it was as a result of all the hurt. And in my mind then it was, how could something so perfect, the church's doctrines, cause so much pain? That's how it was. That's how it felt for me then. And my whole life was just pain in those years. I couldn't feel the spirit. I never felt the spirit after that. Truly, there were times where it was. You know, you could feel the reverence in the room. It was quiet. And that was sort of looked at as like, that's. That's the spirit. When you feel it, it's like, oh, that peace.

Margi Dehlin [01:01:25] But for you, it was just quiet.

Annie Marie [01:01:26] It was just quiet. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:01:30] This is gonna be out of left field, but, like, if there were an age where you acknowledged to yourself that you didn't believe it, what do you have an age where you, like, to yourself came to that conclusion consciously?

Annie Marie [01:01:48] I will say I think I continued to try because I had no choice other than to be there. But I think from age 8 and that very disruptive experience of my parents ceiling getting canceled and all of that happening, I do think I never got it back. And to be honest with you, I don't think it's really possible for a child to have their own testimony. You're taught to Have a testimony. You go up there and you're conditioned to have it.

John Dehlin [01:02:20] Religious belief is not native.

Annie Marie [01:02:23] So did I ever actually believe? Because what was that? What truly was that testimony?

Margi Dehlin [01:02:28] That's such a good point.

Annie Marie [01:02:30] So I tried at some points because I couldn't always stay in anger out of survival. I had to sometimes participate. I had to join in and try and conform to survive, to. To feel part of the community. And so I would pretend and I would try, but I never truly felt it. Yeah, I never truly felt it again.

John Dehlin [01:02:53] Yeah.

Annie Marie [01:02:55] You know, this starts to get into adolescence, but we're there. The modesty teachings and how that felt inside didn't feel Christ. Like.

John Dehlin [01:03:11] You talk about your body's development in your outline. Maybe start there and then take it because you.

Annie Marie [01:03:16] Yeah, yeah. So sort of going into my teen years, I developed sooner than most girls around me. My family is just a little bit. They. They develop quicker. I don't know. And so there were often times as I got into young women's where I was used as. As an example to the other girls. You know, if I would sit down and my skirt would go up, I would be corrected in front of everybody. Or if I, you know, wasn't sitting straight up, I would be told from across the room, annie, your top is down. And would literally be made an example of in front of boys and girls. Like, this is not how we dress girls. And that doesn't feel Christlike, but they are upholding the modesty standards that the church set. And so in that way, I was like, this is the church. So experiences like that. Absolutely.

Margi Dehlin [01:04:19] So kind of cruel to a human being to uphold a standard.

Annie Marie [01:04:26] Yeah. And I think I had been with the same people, same youth leaders, pretty much all my life. And so they knew that our family was a little bit different. I don't know if it was sort of trying to course correct me. It felt like that. Trying to course correct, like, oh, she might veer off. She doesn't have a testimony. She acts out. And so I was corrected for modesty a lot. And I think at this time, my dad was flailing, so it wasn't always checking what we were wearing. And I had friends that were not members, so I would borrow their clothes sometimes and I would wear them to school or church. And then they'd be like, what are you wearing? And so that was a constant experience I had, but particularly the most damaging. And what I truly remember reinforcing, like, okay, this is not Christ's church. Was being told a regurgitation of what you Know, prophets and leaders have said in general conference talks, you. This was said to me by a youth leader. You are responsible for boys and men's thoughts. And what you wear determines whether they can stay worthy of the priesthood because they might have thoughts about your body. So you need to cover up, and it is your responsibility. And I had that talk a few times, but I had so much disobedience and anger in me where I was very much acting out throughout my body and what I wanted to wear that when they would walk away, I'd pull it back down. It was almost like my act of rebellion and like taking back my body because I didn't agree. And at this point, I don't know how I had that perspective. I don't know if it was just compounded of. I don't feel that this is Christ's church. I don't feel that this is true. And it makes me very angry being told these things. I don't know if it was just that sense of intuition or perceptiveness that I had, but I didn't believe it. And so I would be disobedient, and I would go against it, and I would continue to dress how I wanted to, even if I was reprimanded. So many experiences like that would be. That's my experience with modesty in the church. And I think I have some videos that lean into that.

Mormons talk modesty in the church

John Dehlin [01:06:59] Let's roll the first one. This is about swimsuits?

Margi Dehlin [01:07:04] Yeah.

Annie Marie [01:07:07] Oh, Annie, you made it. Hey, Sister Johnson. I'm so excited to go swimming. Holy Max macaroni. What are you wearing, dear? Cover up with your towel right now. Okay, this bathing suit is too revealing. What are we gonna do with you? But it's just the girls today. There's no boys here. What's wrong with my bathing suit? Yes, but Brother Johnson, my husband is inside watching.

Margi Dehlin [01:07:39] Watching us.

Annie Marie [01:07:39] He's watching us. Besides, you want to be modest no matter who's around. My mom lets me wear this bathing suit all the time, and I even go to Raging Waters with this on. Okay, well, let me ask you this. Would you wear that if Jesus was here? What if God was watching? Probably wouldn't care. Let me just see what I have here. Go ahead and put these shorts on. And I know I've got something over here. Ah, perfect. Go ahead and put this on as well. Now that looks much more modest.

Margi Dehlin [01:08:15] Way better.

Annie Marie [01:08:16] Now go have fun. Off you go. I'm gonna drown.

John Dehlin [01:08:24] I've told the story a few times, but I. I brought Renee Zellweger to a Steak dance when I was 16 in Katie, and she wore a sleeveless or strapless dress. And they told her, you either need to go home and change or wear John's blue blazer for the entire dance. She chose to go home.

Margi Dehlin [01:08:48] I believe it.

John Dehlin [01:08:48] Over wearing my blazer.

Annie Marie [01:08:52] She chose to go home.

John Dehlin [01:08:53] I took her home. Yeah, it was terrible.

Margi Dehlin [01:08:55] That's hilarious.

Annie Marie [01:08:56] Good on her.

John Dehlin [01:08:57] Yeah. She never came to another Mormon thing, I can tell you that. But anyway, I, I, I've thought back about, you know, because I was trying to be Nephi throughout all my Mormon years. And I've thought back on the people who are disobedient, the teens that did drugs or drank or who had sex or the missionaries that were disobedient. And I realized that, yeah, some of them just didn't believe or weren't into it or whatever, but there had to have been some who just literally disagreed with it. And so their disobedience wasn't being weak or faithless or even rebellious just because they were rebellious. But it's like, I don't believe this or agree with it, and I think it's wrong. And so it's rebellion or disobedience from an informed, conscious perspective. That's something that never occurred to me then, but now I think back all the time. Maybe that was you a little bit.

Annie Marie [01:10:01] Oh, absolutely. It definitely for me, came from a place of not believing that my shoulders were immodest. And I grew up in Southern California, so it was always really hot. Everyone around me was allowed to wear tank tops and shorts at school. And I had a lot of friends outside of that community who wore what I wasn't allowed to. And I was like, they aren't trying to tempt people like, we're kids. This doesn't make sense. That's not. And it just. Yeah, that was something that angered me a lot. Again, anger.

Margi Dehlin [01:10:37] Yeah.

Annie Marie [01:10:38] Yeah.

Discipline During Adolescence

Margi Dehlin [01:10:38] I honestly, this is during your kind of teen years you're talking about and thinking developmentally for teens, differentiating from your parents is a key point of adolescence, actually, and exploration. And I think also. So, like, can we have space for that? Like, how developmentally, like, brain development it is to have. But also, like, I am looking at, through the lens of you have had. You have been acted upon so much as a child, had so little control over your environment and what you're experiencing. That to me, what I see is empowerment, like an attempt at just feeling empowered in your own body, in yourself, in what you feel for a moment, you know, which, like, I view as, like, you trying to save your own life and it feeling like that, just drowning in feeling acted upon all the time, being told what to do, being told how to suppressing all this time to this significant part of yourself that it has to seep out sometime, somewhere, you know, this. So just a moment for that. And then like something I'm really appreciating at this point in your story is just this tension between wanting to feel valued, wanting to feel loved in your family system and in the community. You're planted. You didn't get to choose. It's where you were planted and you're trying to survive there. So you're trying to get like these really basic needs met. Just feeling valued and loved and kind of safe. And the way you do that is obedience. And the way you do that is going. But when you do that, you're always did you feel attention. Because every time you do that, you have to betray this other part of yourself that actually feels like, you know, it's not true, it's not me, it doesn't feel authentic. And that's just a really hard place for a young person to be, that every time they try to feel love, they're kind of over. And every time you do this, you lose love a little, you lose approval, you lose. It's just this. This impossible situation that I'm feeling for

Annie Marie [01:13:16] you describe it perfectly. And there were times where, you know, my acting out or disobedience and the attempt at maintaining who I felt I really was inside and receiving the label of, you know, disobedient, knowing that wasn't actually what was going on inside of me and not feeling understood just was so painful. And I remember, I mean, I would get in trouble all the time and they would tell my dad. And I remember one time my dad making a comment after many times of getting in trouble, why can't you just be like so and so? This other girl at the church who wasn't actually behaving either, she just kept it a secret, hid it better. She hid it better. Looked better on the outside, looked better on the outside. Like her dad was the bishop and she got away with things. She was secretive where I was caught more. I would sneak clothes to school and change and someone would tell on me or just various things like that. And just feeling the absolute betrayal of hearing those words from my dad at that time, just realizing, oh, he doesn't know me at all. He doesn't know my internal world and he doesn't care to know because what's more important to him is sort of like the conforming, because that's what he thinks he's supposed to do as a dad. To keep me on the straight and narrow is to keep trying to course correct me onto the Mormon path. So there was a lot of tension between my dad and I or my mom and I. They were very similar in that way, even though they were two different households, very strict and very. Came down hard on me when I was disobedient. But again, it was just an attempt at me to maintain who I knew I was in the only way that I knew how. And that was through disobedience.

Margi Dehlin [01:15:27] Right.

John Dehlin [01:15:29] I had a parent who was disciplined for similar reasons, but that parent never again tried to enforce church standards with me because, I mean, it would have made no sense. So I'm just. It's blowing my mind that your mom sinned, quote, sinned, experienced church discipline, and then she's trying to enforce church standards on you after that. Like, how did that work?

Annie Marie [01:15:56] You're telling me? There were many times where I brought things back at her like that, and a lot of it was denial of thing of how things went down, even though I knew what the truth was. I quite literally saw emails and saw, you know, my stepdad there before. He was my stepdad at her home saying he was fixing the oven. That's why he was there. I knew what the truth was, but she would anyway lie to me. And so I would bring things back to her and be like, but you did this and why? Like, you don't follow the rules. And so why. Why are you trying to make me be this way? You couldn't even be that way. I don't know. Just things like that where I was, like, I came down, I would argue, and I would, like, try to, like, have her see my side. But of course, back then, I was combative in the way. Like, that's all I knew, was angry.

John Dehlin [01:16:50] Yeah. Yeah. Let's do the next clip, which is about porn. Shoulders.

Annie On The Message

Annie Marie [01:16:57] I was, like, totally obsessed with that show. Annie, what are you wearing? Oh, that's not very modest of you. My shoulders? What's wrong with my shoulders? If the boys see you, I don't know what's gonna happen. This is inappropriate. I just want to help you keep the spirit. We don't want to encourage the boys to have sexual thoughts, do we? Since one is shoulders a temptation. Do you know what? I'm getting sick and tired of this talking back. If you're gonna participate in these church activities, you have to follow the rules. Start respecting yourself. I Have respect for myself. Actually, that is, in fact, why I'm wearing this on a day that is 102 degrees outside in California. I refuse to put myself in conditions that you think are morally right because it is hot out here. Well, if you want to keep coming here, I'm gonna have to talk to your parents about your behavior. Well, you know what? I'm not even here because I want to be. I have to be. I'm forced to be here. So I'm going to wear what I want.

John Dehlin [01:18:11] That's illustrative of how the story's gone so far. Any. Any thoughts or feelings, reactions to that.

Annie Marie [01:18:19] I mean, I think that just perfectly conveys my attitude, to be honest with you. Just the only way I knew how to communicate at that point, because I had no skills to communicate and no choice of what I was wearing being there and my expression. That's how I pretty much was like, no, this is not right. I'm wearing this. You know, it's hot outside. This is ridiculous. So, yeah, that's.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:55] Do you look at that at all and celebrate her? Oh, chills, huh?

Annie Marie [01:19:02] Yeah. She was with me making these videos. She speaks through me in her child work, like, legit. I channel that version of Annie all the time. She's here right now. You know, this being here, telling my story. She is with me. She's always wanted to be able to reclaim herself. I celebrate her all the time. And, like, the strength that I had, I pull from her all the time. Because sharing online can be brutal. Brutal. And being misunderstood again in the same ways. Brutal. So I pull from her all the time. Yeah, yeah. It's quite a spiritual experience.

John Dehlin [01:19:51] Yeah, yeah. Because in a high demand religion, the whole goal is to beat that child out of the children. Right?

Annie Marie [01:20:00] Yeah, yeah. And I refused. I refused. Of course, there were times where, like, it was, you know, I couldn't hold that level of, you know, you're being constantly told the opposite. That's. You're not supposed to be. You're meek, you're quiet, you're obedient. That's a good girl. And holding to the. Being in anger all the time, you know, and that being the forcing, the fuel was hard to hold. It's not good for you. But that is what was driving me a lot of the time. And so sometimes I would be exhausted and, you know, it would. It would be an ebb and flow of having to conform and having to be quiet to survive. That was a constant relationship I had with the church as a teenager.

John Dehlin [01:20:55] I'm reminded of the quote, woe unto those who call good evil and evil good. It's like that childhood adolescent spirit was good, but it was called evil.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:05] That's right.

Annie Marie [01:21:05] It's so inverted. Everything about, like, I just feel living in that world felt like an inversion of truth.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:13] Yeah, absolutely.

Covering Up a Church: An Adolescent's Perspective

John Dehlin [01:21:17] All right, the next clip is about covering up a church. So more. More from adolescent Annie here.

Annie Marie [01:21:33] Cover up

Margi Dehlin [01:21:36] what?

Annie Marie [01:21:36] Remember, girls, modesty is about respecting yourself and making sure you're not a temptation to the boys. So you're saying we're responsible for other people's bad thoughts? Well, how you present yourself can influence others around you, especially young, impressionable boys. Now, don't you want to help them out a little bit? Just cover up. So if a boy can't control themselves, it's my fault. Your cleavage can be a stumbling block for the young men, and we want to make sure that we help them stay worthy. Right. Why don't we teach the boys how to control their thoughts instead of telling us to cover up? This is us doing our part to limit the distractions that they face every single day in this world. So instead of teaching boys not to sexualize the girls, we will teach the girls to shrink themselves. Modesty isn't just about clothes. It's showing your faith to God and it's showing that you value and respect your body.

Margi Dehlin [01:22:51] Body.

John Dehlin [01:22:54] Around what years are you an adolescent? Just so I can kind of put it in the timeline in my brain,

Annie Marie [01:23:00] like this type of.

John Dehlin [01:23:01] Yeah, like high school years was what? What years?

Annie Marie [01:23:04] Oh, like in. So I graduated 2014.

John Dehlin [01:23:08] Okay, so 2011 to 2014 is your high school years. Okay, that's helpful.

Annie Marie [01:23:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:16] Okay. Any reactions to that, to that video?

Annie Marie [01:23:18] So many thoughts. I mean, that video got almost four and a half million views. It was quite a big one for in my journey and feeling so seen and heard by other ex Mormons or even active Mormons. Got a lot of messages there which we can talk about later. But I think for that that was as a result of inner child work and some things I wish I could have said back. And because there are a lot of thought stopping phrases in there. This is what God expects of you. This is what it means to respect God and respect yourself. This is the truth. And combating that at that age and trying to hold still. My truth was so difficult in the face of an adult telling you that this is what truth is and this is what it means to respect God. It just felt, again, so inverted. And I absolutely felt that at that age. So I think that video portrays it very well, of how I felt, but sometimes couldn't always articulate, too. I felt I started to become, as I got older, a little bit more shut down. And I think that's kind of what comes to mind when I remember this particular video, as I start to age a little bit more.

John Dehlin [01:24:51] Yeah. Powerful. This is powerful. Tell me if this is a good time to transition into kind of sexuality as a teen, because you've got some shorts on that, and that's also in your outline. Do you want to talk about how you developed in that way?

Anal Experience of Sexual Abuse When I Was 16

Annie Marie [01:25:12] Yeah. So I think one part that's important to note for my story, and I'm talking about it in my teen years versus when sort of this occurred, because this is when it came out. So When I was 16 years old, my stepmom sat me down and asked me, hey, Annie, have you ever been sexually abused? Have you ever been touched inappropriately? And the way I responded to that question was, oh, I don't know. I mean, this happened when I was 7 or so. But that's not abuse. Right? That's how I answered that question. And so she said, oh, my gosh, that is abuse. That's molestation. And I was kind of shocked. I sort of knew it was, but also kind of categorized it in my mind as not for some reason, but essentially when I was around, I think it was seven years old. So again, around that same time, as a lot was going on in my life, I was sexually abused by a family member who was a few years older than me. And at that age, I don't think you realize that's what that is. I didn't realize that's what that was. But that world was opened up for me very, very young. And at this time. So I was 16 years old when this came out. And when I was. When I acknowledged and realized that I was sexually abused, A lot of family members, Mormon family members that were told this said, she's lying. She, you know how Annie is. She wants attention. And of course, I had that reputation, that view of myself, because unknowingly, that probably contributed to some of my disobedience or some of my acting out that I didn't. It was unconscious to me because at this time, I was also more sexually curious than I think the girls around me or was more willing to go there. I would sneak out and meet up with boys. Not boys, but one boy in particular. It was like I had a boyfriend that I wasn't allowed to have, and I didn't care if I got in trouble. You know, I would do it anyway. So that's kind of. So the view of me was that I was saying this for attention. And so particular family members said, we should keep this within the family. We shouldn't. Don't take her to therapy. We shouldn't talk about this. Keep this. Just tell her, go to the bishop. And particularly my mom said that I was lying, which was really, really hurtful. And she said, well, that happened to me too. That's normal. So as you can see, there's a lot of sort of denial and also. I don't know the right word, but sort of reasoning.

John Dehlin [01:28:46] And there's definitely generational trauma because it's so prevalent.

Annie Marie [01:28:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:51] In Mormonism and Catholicism, you know.

Annie Marie [01:28:53] Oh, absolutely. It's in. I mean, it goes from bottom up. It's religion, it's our society, cultural. But it's super prevalent in the church. And what we found out was the person who did it to me was also abused and the person who did it to them also abused within our family, so on and so on. And so what I realized was, oh, my gosh, this wasn't just me. It was happened to them. This is a familial pattern. And the way that this has been dealt with, as older members in the family wanted mine to be dealt with, was to hide it, keep it a secret, and continue to present as nothing's wrong. It wasn't abuse, it wasn't what it was. And my stepmom, who was a recent convert, maybe had only been in the church for three years, who had experienced similar things as a child, said, no, we're putting her in therapy and we are not keeping this a secret. Although it was a little bit of a battle between her and my dad of, like, whether I go to the bishop or not. My dad being, you know, my sole provider, said, we're going to have her go to the bishop. I'll be honest, some. This is a part where I have a hard time accessing these memories, going to the bishop. But I do remember how I felt and being asked questions. Where did they touch you? How long? Questions of that nature that were quite uncomfortable. And what I remember feeling is freeze. Yeah, just complete. Just feeling shocked that I was being asked these types of questions.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:49] Yeah.

Annie Marie [01:30:50] Related to the abuse and feeling like I again, like that. Feeling like I had got caught, like I did something wrong. And so I don't know what particular questions led me to feel that way, but I felt like I did something wrong. And at the end, what I remember is the emphasis on forgiveness.

The Healing of Sexual Abuse in Mormonism

John Dehlin [01:31:07] And so meaning, you Forgiving me.

Annie Marie [01:31:09] Forgiving. And so this is quite difficult to talk about, but I think it's really important because it shows the patterns, both familially, generationally, culturally, that exist in Mormonism. Obviously, we see it on steroids in the news right now. And so many people have experienced this and how the church deals with it and how the culture deals with it to keep it a secret and to keep putting on a face in face of abuse. And I experienced that firsthand. And being, you know, the teenager and going through that bishop interview and having people have all these opinions of what to do about it, not wanting it to come out and not wanting to go to therapy, just didn't feel like I had much control or support. But luckily I had my stepmom and she put me through therapy. But to be honest with you, the emphasis on forgiveness having been raised from birth in the church, I think I forgave very quickly and they became part of our life again. And I think I suppressed it. And so the therapy, like, as well intentioned, looking back, it didn't do much.

Margi Dehlin [01:32:47] Yeah.

Annie Marie [01:32:47] So I think the culture kind of overruled.

Margi Dehlin [01:32:49] Yeah.

Annie Marie [01:32:50] And that had lasting effects. But just keeping it at that age, it made so much sense. Also adding that layer to how I acted, I think that definitely contributed to maybe some of my disobedience or my sexual curiosity.

Margi Dehlin [01:33:11] Absolutely.

Annie Marie [01:33:12] And that was hidden for so long. And so I think just for me, it made a lot more sense and that informed my teenage years. So I think having that experience, the messages of, you're a temptation, your body causes them to stumble and have bad thoughts. And general conference talks by church leaders saying that you might have some part in the abuse. All were things I had heard before that even came out. And. It was just, it was just difficult, all this, all at this time. But those are the elements that I remember and I think those contributed to how I behaved as a teenager. I think it's irresponsible to teach about sexual purity and specifically the gum analogy, or the cupcake analogy that most people are familiar with.

Sexual Purefication

John Dehlin [01:34:21] Explain that to our Never Mormons.

Annie Marie [01:34:22] Okay, so never Mormons. Here we go. So when you're a young woman, typically you'll have an object lesson is what it's called. And the one that I had was with a piece of gum, where the leader, the youth leader, shows you a pristine, untouched piece of gum and says, this is your purity and your virtue and takes it, chews it up, takes it back out of their mouth and says, this is what happens when you explore sexually or you become unpure as a result of exploring sexually, you can never be restored again. And that is the lesson that you are this piece of gum. And pairing that with sexual abuse, which is rampant, as we see in the media that's now coming out. Can you imagine the internalization of those messages?

John Dehlin [01:35:26] Because they don't say you're too gum if it was something you chose. It's just if it happens to you.

Annie Marie [01:35:32] It's just if it happens. There's no I. There was no conversation about sexual safety or sexual abuse in that conversation. It's just if that happens. And then pairing with the messages of you being a temptation and you being responsible, paired with the general conference talks of you having some part in your abuse, like, what were you wearing? What were you doing? Did you tempt them? Were you being modest? All of these messages combined, how else am I supposed to feel but shame? What else am I supposed to internalize but shame?

Margi Dehlin [01:36:12] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:36:13] And feeling dirty. Right?

Annie Marie [01:36:14] And feeling dirty.

Margi Dehlin [01:36:15] And responsible.

Annie Marie [01:36:16] And responsible.

John Dehlin [01:36:17] Yeah. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:36:18] So

Annie Marie [01:36:22] a lot of feelings at that time. And also paired with Annie's promiscuous. That was a message I got from an older person in my family. Annie's just a little bit promiscuous. You gotta watch her. And being uninformed of the entire experience that I had, and those messages coming at me when I knew that wasn't the truth of me, just kind of that theme is like, it's not the truth of me, but that's what's being projected onto me by this system, by these, you know, people in my family, by these youth leaders, by the church leaders, and just knowing that's not the full truth, and that being very hard to stay strong. And how am I supposed to have a testimony in the midst of all of this?

Margi Dehlin [01:37:15] Right.

Annie Marie [01:37:16] How am I supposed to feel the spirit? It doesn't make sense.

Margi Dehlin [01:37:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:37:21] So. All right, we'll play the first one. This is about sexual feelings. As a. As a Mormon teen,

Mormon Songs For Same Sex Relationships

Annie Marie [01:37:28] we've noticed some inappropriate behavior amongst some of the girls. So we thought we'd address it tonight. Now, sometimes girls feel unusual feelings for other girls. And I just want you to know you don't have to worry.

John Dehlin [01:37:44] Worry?

Annie Marie [01:37:44] It's just a temptation, just a phase. It's not the real you. Now, the prophets have taught us that acting on this is a sin. Right? But if you pray hard enough, read your scriptures and fast every Sunday, these feelings will go away. I've done it myself. I'm just kidding. I have no idea what it like. Same Sex. Attraction is like an illness, but God gives his toughest trials to his strongest warriors. If you feel these feelings, God wants you to stay celibate and stay faithful, and heaven will fix it all. And if you're struggling with these sinful feelings, I want you to stop and start singing this tune to help you get back into your alignment. I will prepare to make and keep sacred covenants. Seek promised blessings of the priesthood through obedience.

John Dehlin [01:38:53] I didn't realize that was about LGBT stuff because it's the first time I've seen it. But, I mean, it applies.

Annie Marie [01:38:59] It's sort of general, too. Like, that's how they talk about sexual sin and exploring your sexuality, too. So it kind of applies both ways, actually.

John Dehlin [01:39:08] So reactions to that, just the performance

Annie Marie [01:39:14] of it all, I mean, the.

Margi Dehlin [01:39:16] The.

Annie Marie [01:39:17] The way in which you talk about it, that's what I remember a lot. And that's how it felt to me is, like, silly. And I think that's why a lot of my content is informed through humor, because I saw it that way. I was like, this is silly. The way that you are behaving is a mask. That's how it felt to me. It was like I could. I just felt like I could see through, and it just wasn't authentic.

What was fake in your perception of Mormon leaders trying to teach sexuality

John Dehlin [01:39:46] What was fake in your perception of Mormon leaders trying to teach sexuality?

Annie Marie [01:39:53] I would just see there's no way I would think about them as a teenager. I'm like, you know how I feel. You know what this is? Like, you don't believe this. There's no way you believe this. Like, you know how you know this experience. And I just think it was inauthentic to me, the way that they talked about it and it being so easy just to read your scriptures and pray. Like, that was a cure for your sexuality or being a teenager, and it's just normal behavior for the like. Like. And that's how I see it, too, is like, yes, there were. There was disobedience or sexual abuse that informed some of my sexuality, but it was also normal at that age to be curious. And so it felt inauthentic to me.

Margi Dehlin [01:40:53] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:40:54] You say silly, silly.

Annie Marie [01:40:57] I just think in general, and this is the way I played that character, seeing the woman go, like, up on Fast Sunday and the performance of it

John Dehlin [01:41:08] all, it was like, to a Janice Cat Perry song.

Annie Marie [01:41:12] What was that?

John Dehlin [01:41:12] To a Janice Cat Perry song?

Annie Marie [01:41:13] Yeah, it just felt like a performance and, like, performing for other people and almost like a virtue check or like a testimony check. And I, like, I would literally go home and my sisters And I would recreate the church testimonies because we thought they were so funny, because they didn't feel. They felt like they were acting.

Margi Dehlin [01:41:41] Yeah.

Annie Marie [01:41:42] So that's actually why I create a lot of these skits too, because it felt like theater.

Margi Dehlin [01:41:49] Yeah, I see that.

Annie Marie [01:41:51] Yeah.

Recognizing the General Conference Voice

Margi Dehlin [01:41:51] I'm curious with the comments that you get with videos that you release like this, because when I watch it, I recognize cadence. How you know the cadence. You choose the voice, the facial expressions, the laughter, even amidst sort of like it is recognizable. So it's simultaneously ridiculous and yet there's something you capture there that is part of the culture. In the same way, there's kind of a priesthood voice and a righteous rhythm to General Conference that can make you. The minute you hear. It's like the certain voice that's used. And so I'm curious, do you get that in comments, a recognition, people saying that this level, as ridiculous as it may seem, or over dramatized that actually there's something you capture?

Annie Marie [01:42:55] Absolutely. I get that comment a lot. It's like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what it was. Like. You have the voice down. That's like, I remember. And with a lot of the videos that I post, I get that is like, oh my gosh, you just brought back a memory of when this lady said this crazy thing. And she said it exactly like that. And it's. How can we all be having that same experience all over the world, all over the country, in different wards? It's kind of funny, like the cadence and the voice. It's a learned behavior, which is really interesting. And I think again, I would go home and act those out, because you can recognize it. Even though I'd been between two wards and I recognized it in both wards, my mom's and my dad's, or even coming here to my grandma's ward. And you could. It was like routine, same testimonies, same voice.

John Dehlin [01:43:54] I've heard it described as a Relief Society voice, as General Conference voice, General Authority voice, priesthood voice. You know what I mean?

Annie Marie [01:44:03] Yeah, yeah. And I think it's intentional. Yeah, definitely the General Conference voice to disarm you, to create some familiarity that you feel like you're home.

John Dehlin [01:44:15] Authority.

Annie Marie [01:44:16] Authority. Yeah, all of it.

John Dehlin [01:44:18] It can put you in a trance. You know what I mean?

Annie Marie [01:44:21] Don't get me started.

John Dehlin [01:44:22] Why?

Annie Marie [01:44:24] I'm just obsessed with the psychology behind these types of things. The music, the voice, the inner workings of all of the rituals we participate in and how they play with your psychology. That's something that in the past year or so I've been really getting into. And I look back at experiences like this or general conference talks or just all of these experiences. I'm like, everything is intentional. Absolutely intentional. And it plays with your psychology in such a way that makes it so hard to deconstruct from.

I Confessed To The Bishop

John Dehlin [01:44:59] So next clip's about confessing to the bishop. Do you want to share anything about anything of your story before we talk about that context of repentance and confessionals with the bishop?

Annie Marie [01:45:12] Yeah. So, I mean, for my Mormon experience, too, there's sprinkles of bishop interviews because obviously baptisms for the dead was something I participated in regularly since I was 12, and then I was constantly in trouble, so that would get sent to the bishop a lot. I was arrested at, like, 13 years old, so went to the bishop for confession, then for my sexual abuse, went to the bishop then and was always taken away from taking the sacrament, which was confusing for me because, like, at the same time as I was didn't believe, I also seek to understand at the same time. So I remember asking, like, wait, I can't take the sacrament because I sinned? Like, isn't that what's supposed to be forgiving me? So that's sort of what this video entails as well. Sort of a mixture of all of those bishop interviews, but with a twist of humor.

How To Shame Yourself in the Mormon Church

John Dehlin [01:46:14] All right, let's see a video about interactions with your Mormon bishop around sex.

Annie Marie [01:46:24] So your dad tells me you broke the law of chastity. Please tell me everything in explicit detail so that God and I can determine your punishment. I feel really embarrassed. That's great. Feeling shame is the first step. Fear not. We provide a checklist for proper repentance. You'll do some free child labor for the church. You'll be banned from taking the sacrament that forgives you of your sins for three weeks, and then we'll check in and see how remorseful you're feeling. Wait, I thought the sacrament was supposed to help me repent, but now it's taken away as punishment. It is. You need to show God you're serious first. The ritual of repentance is being taken away until I can prove I'm worthy. By being publicly shamed? That's part of the process. It teaches humiliation. I mean, humility and obedience to the Lord. If you take it while you're unworthy, you dishonor God. You need to go through a longer repentance process with the bishop, which. Which is me. It's really the perfect way to teach you to shame yourself about sexuality. Well, what if I die before I take it again. Will I be unworthy forever?

John Dehlin [01:47:33] Die?

Annie Marie [01:47:35] Oh, heavens.

John Dehlin [01:47:36] Well,

Annie Marie [01:47:38] I suppose God might still let you in. I'm not sure. The details are a little fuzzy.

John Dehlin [01:47:47] Like the comedy and the acting, the impressions are so good. But your writing is just as good, if not better. Like, that's phenomenal writing and comedy and acting. I appreciate that. Yeah.

Annie Marie [01:48:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:48:02] Okay. So reactions to, you know, that let's slow walk the bishop, Mormon, bishop interactions thing.

Discussing the Bishop-Meeting Experience

Margi Dehlin [01:48:09] Yeah.

Annie Marie [01:48:10] I mean, for me, in those experiences, there being just confusion of that process of repentance is taken away if you had a.

John Dehlin [01:48:21] The sacrament.

Annie Marie [01:48:22] Oh, yeah, sorry. Sacrament was taken away if you had a grievous sin to repent for. And there being like a longer process to respect God and feel. Feel the shame or feel the whatever emotion they want you to feel, to feel sorry. But repentance being the very thing that forgives you and you're already there to confess. So it's just like that those extra layers were like, whoa. So I experienced that a couple times. I was like, ah, whatever.

John Dehlin [01:48:56] And it is shaming to not take the sacrament because everybody around, what's it

Annie Marie [01:49:01] like to not take this sitting in, sitting in the pews and your peers, by the way, are the ones, you know, teenage boys handing you the sacrament and you having to either, no, I can't, or shamefully passing it to your sibling and your siblings knowing. And the bishops and all like his council looking down at you also making sure. It's just like you feel all the eyes on you. Because a lot of the time too, a lot of the word is informed of what. What happened. There was actually a lot of that. My friend was the bishop's daughter and there was one time where she told me something that I had said in my bishop interview and said, yeah, my dad said this at the dinner table. And I was like, what? That was supposed to be, you know, a confidential thing and just feeling the shame and embarrassment that like, that's being talked about at the dinner table.

John Dehlin [01:50:15] The stuff you shared confidentially with the bishop in confession.

Annie Marie [01:50:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:50:20] Can get shared to his wife, to his family, and sometimes in ward council to other leaders. It's not supposed to. And I'm sure there are lots of instances where confidences aren't violated, but also there are lots of instances where it is.

Annie Marie [01:50:35] Yeah. And I heard about other teenagers, sins that they confessed. Like it was like rumor mill a lot in our ward. And so that might be just, you know, a ward thing, but I have heard that that happens other wards too. But yeah, Just feeling very on the spot and shameful that you're not allowed to take the sacrament and everybody knows it and your peers are the ones handing you the sacrament and just everybody knows. But I think that's exactly the point. The system is behaving exactly how it's meant to in that moment.

The Shame of Being Shamed

Margi Dehlin [01:51:10] Right.

Annie Marie [01:51:11] To make you feel shame.

John Dehlin [01:51:13] And what do you reflect? I mean, I guess you weren't totally buying in at this point, but you were still subjected to it. So what do you remember about how that was for you?

Annie Marie [01:51:27] I mean, you can't escape embarrassment like that, no matter if you believe it or not. And that was certainly the case for me then. I just felt embarrassed even though I didn't think what I did, of course, stealing, like when I stole and got my sacrament taken away for that I'm like, yeah, I deserve this. Which is like also I'm a teenager, that happens. Not going to do it again. Yes, that's wrong. But I felt like I deserved it. Then I was like, yeah, no, this is, this is right. I should feel shame. And in some ways that helped me grow, although I don't need it. I think I needed that level of shame, like public shame within my church. But regardless, you can't escape that kind of shame and embarrassment that's public and amongst your peers and everybody knows. And I certainly felt that even if I didn't believe necessarily, you know, the doctrine or it's your community, still you're being shamed. So I absolutely felt all of that.

John Dehlin [01:52:31] In your therapy and child work, did you end up concluding that that type of shame maybe damaged you in some ways or, Or.

Annie Marie [01:52:44] No, I don't know that I've touched on that yet. It's, to be honest with you, it's only been the last like two years that I've been working on the shame specifically and a lot of it has been sexual shame. So I actually don't know that I've gotten there with the public shame. Yeah.

Bishop Interviews in the Mormon Church

John Dehlin [01:53:05] So did you find that the bishops were sometimes inappropriate? Asking probing questions, introducing topics that are inappropriate for a non parent to be introducing and especially when alone behind closed doors with the man?

Annie Marie [01:53:20] Yeah, absolutely. I think back then I thought it was normal, but what I felt in the moment was always freeze and fear and like I was in trouble, of course, being questioned by a man who has a perceived authority over me and having to recall sexual details of, you know, whether I was, I got caught with a boyfriend sneaking out or my sexual abuse and those being having a lot of emphasis in the questioning. The Questions were absolutely inappropriate. Now looking back as an adult, but then it was normal. But I felt the freeze, I felt the shame and I felt scared. And I don't like my dad didn't know what they were asking me. He wasn't in the room. He still to this day doesn't know all the details. Like I haven't really talked about that with him. I don't know that a lot of family or parents know what is being discussed in bishop interviews unless they went through it themselves. And my mom didn't as a kid. She was a convert and neither did my stepmom. So I don't know that my dad knew or ever had that experience, but that was my experience and it was really hard. Just the freeze, the shutting down and just feeling that they had complete and utter authority over my worthiness.

Margi Dehlin [01:55:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:55:07] The idea of a 40, 50 year old man having a 14 or 12 or 16 year old girl alone in a closed room room grilling her about her sexual experiences in 2026, oh my God, in 1946, it's just unbelievable. But in 2026 it's totally still completely normal in the Mormon church.

Annie Marie [01:55:33] Right. And that's why we talk about it. Because secretive too. Like you're not really supposed to talk about what happens in your bishop interviews. That's between you and the bishop. At least that's how it was taught to me. I don't know that that's the standard. So I didn't talk about this for a long time. I held it all on my own and my parents are just assuming that I'm being guided in that room when really I'm being asked sexually explicit questions and my worthiness is being measured in there. So. Yeah. Not the most fun experience to look back on.

Margi Dehlin [01:56:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:56:16] And the assessment of your worthiness might be more damaging than the inappropriate probing sexual questions.

Annie Marie [01:56:22] Yeah, yeah. Because what you're learning from there is that your worth is not inherent. It can be judged by a man impartial to you, let alone a man. That's what your local plumber and has all of these details about you, has no training or qualifications to do so. Not a licensed therapist, just a plumber. You know, highly inappropriate and it puts them in a horrible situation because what if something comes up and you don't know how to address certain topics like abuse or just anything that might come up sexually. That's so unfair to put on a grown man that is not qualified for that.

Margi Dehlin [01:57:16] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:17] Either the bishop, Mormon bishop, hates it because he doesn't want to be Talking about sexual activities with a 12 year old or a 14 year old. Either he hates it or he likes it. And that's even more. More disturbing, right?

Margi Dehlin [01:57:30] You said it.

Annie Marie [01:57:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:31] Yeah. And we see reports every week here in Utah of another Mormon bishop or bishopric member who's abusing youth or children or youth leaders. It's just. It's weekly. It's a weekly occurrence now in Utah or Arizona or Idaho of a Mormon leader convicted or charged with sexually abusing a Mormon teen or child.

Annie Marie [01:57:58] Yeah. And if those stories get out too, I think someone has to be brave enough to come out with it or for it to be exposed in a way that probably wasn't intended by either the church or the bishop themselves, or the victim has to come out and expose that. And that takes a lot of guts to talk about. So I can't even imagine how many stories like this or the ones that you see in the media that are there that exist but are being kept secret as intended.

John Dehlin [01:58:33] Yeah. Next clip we have is about your parents during this time. So this one's about growing up with a religious mom, but I think some of these themes are gonna tie in to this particular clip. So let's run it.

Mormon Parents When They're Angry With Their Kids

Annie Marie [01:58:50] Hey, Mama, my friend's birthday party lands on a Sunday. Do you think I could go just this one time, please? You know what? I need to ask God about this. I will go to the bathroom and pray about it, and then we can discuss. Okay. He said no. Sorry, Mama. Can I please spend the night at my friend's house this weekend? Everyone will be there. I don't know, Chinita. That family doesn't go to church. I don't think it's a good influence on you. Mama, it's my senior year. Can't I just go to prom? I've never been to any dance before.

Margi Dehlin [01:59:19] Please.

Annie Marie [01:59:20] Oh, no, but you can go to Mormon prom. That'll be nice. No, Mama, I have to tell you something. And please just listen and don't be mad. I'm sexually active and I need to go on birth control. This is something I'm deciding to do, and I would like your help. Shin. Are you kidding me right now? Are you a slut? How dare you do this? Of course you cannot have birth control. You're grounded. Oh, my God. Yeah, those are like, actual jaw dropping. Those are actual conversations, too. The birth control one, I did more in secret, and my mom found my backpack of like, I went to Planned Parenthood, and I was like, I need

John Dehlin [02:00:02] to as a Mormon teen. That's amazing. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:00:05] Wow.

Annie Marie [02:00:06] I. Yeah, I. A lot of times I took safety into my own hands. If I was going to be doing that, I wanted to be safe. And I was at that age. And so I hid it in a backpack under my bed in the closet. My mom found it one day, along with all of my, like, tank tops and shorts that I kept secret that I had bought with my own money with my job at 16, she cut up all my clothes and, like, burned all the birth control and in front of my entire family.

Margi Dehlin [02:00:40] It was.

Annie Marie [02:00:40] That was like, oh, so mortifying and that. I think that's another bishop interview I was sent to after that. So again, another public humiliation ritual with the sacrament being taken away. But that was the relationship I had with my mom as a teenager. And sort of the restrictiveness that you see with. No, you can't go to regular prom. You have to go to Mormon prom, which I don't know if you guys. Is that a thing here in Utah?

Mormon Prom: The Real

Margi Dehlin [02:01:09] Is it?

John Dehlin [02:01:10] No, not as much, really.

Annie Marie [02:01:11] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:01:12] I think it's out of Utah thing. Tell us what that is.

Annie Marie [02:01:15] Well, so I think we had a stake conference where a leader announced that they were. They're going to start hosting Mormon proms in replacement of regular high school proms. Because a lot of people were being sexually active at proms. Apparently there were reports of that. And so they created their own Mormon prom. And so when it came time, and that was like, the couple years that I was in high school, that that became a thing. And so I wasn't allowed to go to any school dances. I did anyway, without my parents knowing. That was another, like, I just did what I wanted to do, tried to get away with it. I would sneak away. Yeah, we had Mormon prom instead of regular prom.

John Dehlin [02:02:07] What's that one?

Annie Marie [02:02:09] It's like a regular steak dance or church dance. Like, you walk in and at least for our dances, they would, like, literally have measuring tape there for your dresses and your shoulders, like the length of your skirt. The length of your skirt and length of your shoulders. And everyone's. All the leaders are on the sidelines watching very closely to see if you're. How you're dancing and stuff. So it's. Everything's just very controlled, which in some instances is fine. But I think for that to be your reality all the time, I think it was just like. It felt so isolating and you felt weird. And as a Mormon teenager, like, something like prom getting taken away from you, and you're like, no, you're gonna have the Mormon version of this. It just was like Ah, so annoying.

John Dehlin [02:02:59] So you didn't go to regular or prom?

Annie Marie [02:03:01] I did anyway.

John Dehlin [02:03:02] You went to both?

Annie Marie [02:03:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:03:04] Are they on different dates?

Annie Marie [02:03:05] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:03:05] Okay.

Annie Marie [02:03:06] Yeah, I know. I don't know. What? Well, because there's so many high schools, so they would hold, like, One Stake Mormon prom.

John Dehlin [02:03:13] Got it. But you say you snuck to your senior prom.

Annie Marie [02:03:18] Yeah. So I had my own job, so I was able to buy my own dress. And my older sister, who was also out of the church already at this time, helped me. And she, like, picked me up and dropped me off at the place where, like, we were gonna get picked up and stuff. So I had my prom pictures alone, no family, which made me cry at that time. I was like, what is my life? Just, you know, those experiences that you wish you could have as a teenager, but, you know, depending on how strict your parents are with the rules and following, which generally, you know, if your state conference leaders and things tell you not to attend regular prom, if you're devout, you're gonna listen. And so that was my experience. My parents followed those rules. But, yeah, I snuck out and I did it anyway. I made sure I had those experiences because I was like, again, just that part of me that was like, no.

Margi Dehlin [02:04:12] Yeah, that's right.

Annie Marie [02:04:14] Yeah.

Mormon youth speak out about early morning seminary

John Dehlin [02:04:15] Did you do early morning seminary all four years?

Annie Marie [02:04:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:04:19] How was that for you?

Margi Dehlin [02:04:21] Fond memories?

Annie Marie [02:04:22] I'm sensing. I hated it, really. So my sister and I, she's two years younger than me, would skip a lot until we got caught, and then we were forced to go because I was tattled on by some other. Not schoolmates, but other kids there, they would see. My mom would drop us off in the morning and we would wait for her car to go. And sometimes we would leave, but then eventually we had to go. And I absolutely hated it. Just in general. I just had a lot of disdain for what I was being taught. And I remember one time they assigned me for the prayer and I said, I don't want to pray. I don't want to do the prayer. I don't want to participate. And they actually kicked me out after that. Said, annie, get out of here. Like. Like, you're disobedient and we can't have that attitude in here. Like, leave. And I was like, good. So I got in trouble at home, got grounded, but it was worth it because, yeah, they didn't want me back. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:05:38] That'd be hard to go to seminary if you weren't bought in.

Annie Marie [02:05:42] Yeah. Just felt like constantly trying to convince me of something that I already knew wasn't true for me, that I already disagreed with, and it was just torturous. Like, I conveyed to my parents many, many times, all the time. I don't want to go to this church anymore. Doesn't feel Christ like you did.

John Dehlin [02:06:07] You told your parents you didn't want to go to church.

Annie Marie [02:06:09] Oh, yeah. I said, as soon as I'm 18, I'm out of here. I'm not. I don't want to be a member of this church. I was very vocal about that, especially once I reached, like, ages 14 and on. I was honest with them, and I paid the consequences for it. They, like, doubled down even harder. And I think that's why a lot of the leaders responded to be the way they did, too. But you don't. It's almost like a lack of consent, of, we don't care what you think. This is your life path. This is what we do as Mormons, as, you know, generational Mormons. This is the path. What do you mean you're not going? It was just the expectation. And so I think, yeah, they just doubled down even harder. So I think that was like a constant through my experience.

John Dehlin [02:07:08] When you frame it that way, it feels abusive.

Annie Marie [02:07:11] It is.

John Dehlin [02:07:12] I mean, it sounds like harsh words in modern times to call that abusive when your parents and leaders are just trying to help you become a good person in their minds. But if you're not bought into it and you're telling people, I don't like this, I don't believe it, I don't want to do it. And then they're all kind of just ignoring you and forcing you to. Once you frame it that way, then it starts to look abusive. And you're saying it felt. Did it. You're saying it felt abusive.

Annie Marie [02:07:42] Yeah, because then I was labeled as disobedient and, you know, being led by Satan, that's abusive. When it's really just like, I don't agree with this.

John Dehlin [02:07:59] It's your conscience.

Annie Marie [02:08:00] My conscience, yeah. And just constantly being compared to the other obedient girls. Like, that was a lot of my teenage years was that comparison. And why can't you just be like them? Yeah, I. Especially looking at it as an adult, I'm like, oh, my gosh. Certainly felt abusive then, and I do view it as an abusive behavior now.

Margi Dehlin [02:08:31] Yeah.

Annie Marie [02:08:31] I think, you know, they were trying their best, and I do think they thought they were doing what they had to do. And so in that way, I kind of see it as a little bit like, that's what they're conditioned to do.

John Dehlin [02:08:49] Yeah.

Annie Marie [02:08:49] For A lot of Mormons, and certainly there are people that don't have this experience that their parents do listen to them. But I think for generational Mormons, and when you're raised to be devout and that this is the path and there's so much weight on it. Like, I think my parents were afraid of the doctrines themselves, and that's why they, like, put so much emphasis on, like, well, if you're not a part of it, there's so much to lose. And so I think in that way, it's.

Margi Dehlin [02:09:22] It's.

Annie Marie [02:09:23] They're scared of me not being a part of it. And so I think that's where that comes from. That that has to be where it comes from. It's not that they want to control me, although they certainly do. It's. They want to save me, essentially.

John Dehlin [02:09:37] Yeah.

Annie Marie [02:09:39] And that was hard to reckon with because I'm like, that's not how I see it. In fact, me not being a part of this is what will save me because I don't believe this and this isn't right to me. So that was really hard. And of course, I didn't have all of this language as a teenager, but that's how it felt inside. And I couldn't always convey that. It just came out as anger, you know. So. Yeah.

Janine on Suicidality as a Teen

John Dehlin [02:10:08] Did you ever hit a low, like depression or even suicidality?

Annie Marie [02:10:12] Absolutely. Wrote about suicidal ideation in my notebook many times. And the only thing truly that kept me from doing it was the chance that maybe the religion is true, you know, in the back of my mind. And when you do that, you go to outer darkness, like, so that was truly the only thing was, like, they're right. I go to hell, basically, if I do that. But truly, the amount, like, the multitude of emotions and how big they felt then and being forced to continue to go and not being heard, not being seen for who I truly was. Having all these labels on top of me. Didn't feel like I had another way out. And even that wasn't an option because maybe they're right. And so it was really like being between a hard rock and a hard place with that. And I was quite young when I first wrote about it. I was 13 when I first got a notebook. But there were a few times where that's just the emotions and not having a way to regulate them. Coming down on me so hard and being met with a lot of the narrative from my parents on top of all of that, of who I was, was, like, so heavy and there was no way out.

Margi Dehlin [02:11:55] Yeah. So

Annie Marie [02:11:58] it was really, really dark, to be honest with you. And even going through all of this, I don't even think conveys how dark it really was because for a lot of these years, a lot of these things I have suppressed and it's taken me a long time to find even the words that I am conveying right now. And I still don't think they do it justice to how I was truly feeling. And especially being a teenager, all the hormones running through you, like everything just feels bigger. And so I really, my heart just goes out to my teenage self and my childhood self. But all the teenagers and children that are experiencing that still and are in my comments and are in my DMs who see my videos and their experience is acknowledged and they're like, what do I do? I'm like, I wish I knew.

John Dehlin [02:12:52] So right now there are Mormon teens that view your content and who are maybe trapped in a similar system you were trapped in and they're communicating with you.

Annie Marie [02:13:00] Yeah. Oh my gosh, it's really hard because it's like I'm talking to myself. But also there's a line where I'm like, how do I respond to that? They're minors. I cannot advise a minor. Also, if I say the wrong thing, you know, which is why I don't, I don't advise them. I just say, I'm here, I hear you, I've been there. It will get better, I promise you. You know, you can build the life that you want outside of this, but right now I think, you know, I can't advise you to tell your parents or to not tell your parents how you feel about the church because when I told my parents, it was hell and I don't want that for you. And so you can't tell a 12

John Dehlin [02:13:46] or 14 year old, leave the church. You know, it's irresponsible, it's unethical, it's unethical. It might not be good for them, it might be terrible for them.

Annie Marie [02:13:54] Yeah, there's so many different experiences that you can have, so many ways that can go. And so I try not to advise much of anything but just acknowledge and speak through my videos.

John Dehlin [02:14:07] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, same. And part of what's so mind blowing is that there's no one at the helm. It's just a bunch of Mormon adults doing what they feel is right that they're conditioned to do. And there's no one to be mad at other than like Joseph Smith who kicked it all off and maybe even he thought he was doing the right Thing. So it's this abusive multi generational system where there's no one to blame because everyone thinks they're doing what's right because they were conditioned to do it.

Annie Marie [02:14:39] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:14:39] And then the kids can be the carnage.

Annie Marie [02:14:42] Exactly, yeah.

The 'In the Elevator With Amy Schumer'

Margi Dehlin [02:14:44] My experience, though, within therapy, and I'm curious what you've. Is that it's true there's no one to blame in the sense that. That makes sense to blame, but acknowledging harm is a really important part of the process, and attributing where that harm came from.

Annie Marie [02:15:08] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:15:09] Is deeply valuable.

Annie Marie [02:15:11] Absolutely. And I think the medium in which I share my art, because I do both comedy skits, but I also just speak like this, you know, when I have the language to some experiences. But what I've heard in comments and messages is that the medium and the comedy skits is helpful to see your experience reflected back to you, to be able to acknowledge it. Because sometimes words don't do it justice, but to see it and be like, that's exactly what I went through. You can acknowledge that pain, acknowledge that you were never alone. Because for me, I also, for so many years, I thought it was just church hurt too. And I didn't realize it was systemic for a lot of the things I experienced. And so in that way, sharing on social media has been one of the most healing things I've done too. Aside from inner child work and all the many different forms of therapy I've gone through, it's an amazing medium

Margi Dehlin [02:16:17] to

Annie Marie [02:16:18] be able to reflect back those experiences to people that are in it right now and hopefully help them acknowledge things sooner or process them or just know that they're not alone.

Margi Dehlin [02:16:29] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Ex-Mormon Voices on the Internet

John Dehlin [02:16:31] Were you plugged into the Mormon or ex Mormon Internet as a teen? Because by 2011, 2013, there are podcasts, there is, you know, there is YouTube, there isn't TikTok or Instagram, but there is Facebook. Were you oblivious to the Mormon ex Mormon Internet in high school?

Annie Marie [02:16:51] Completely oblivious. I didn't know it existed until I posted my first skit.

John Dehlin [02:16:56] No.

Annie Marie [02:16:57] Because the way. And this is jumping ahead a little bit, but the way that it happened for me was kind of accidental. It was through the process of inner child work and therapy. I had been taking an acting class at the same time as inner child work. And when everything started coming up from all the things that I had suppressed, all the things that we're talking about now, I realized everything that I was writing that my inner child was communicating to me was about the church. I was like, oh, boy, there it is. I was taking an acting class. I was already posting on social media, just random stuff. Like I do other characters. I do a Spanish character that kind of sounds like an uncle that I have. It's silly. I was just posting about stuff like that. And I just had the idea one day I should recreate this memory that just came up. And it was the one. It reached four and a half million views. It was the one where she was telling me to, like, cover up my top. And that's how it started. And then I used the hashtag exmormon. And then my algorithm started to change and I was like, holy this. I'm not alone. I never had seen an Alyssa Grenfell video, a Mormon stories podcast. So that was a year and a half or maybe two years ago now.

Margi Dehlin [02:18:06] That's incredible.

Annie Marie [02:18:07] So the whole world has opened up and I was like, I'm not alone. There's a whole community. This is amazing. It changed my life. It changed my life. And so I continued to do it because of the response. And I realized, like from the comments and messages, I wasn't just telling my own story. I was telling a story of not only all many young women who had experienced very similar experiences, but also generations of this that has gone on. So it was very cathartic and very powerful. That's essentially how. How this all got started.

Mixed Messages About Motherhood in the Church

John Dehlin [02:18:46] Let's talk quickly about messages you got about your purpose as a woman and what your life was supposed to be like after you graduated from high school. And maybe we can start by the motherhood is your purpose video and then you can talk about your transition from high school to marriage.

Margi Dehlin [02:19:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:19:06] Is that all right? Okay, we'll play that clip.

Annie Marie [02:19:11] Now, when you said that you don't feel like you're designed for motherhood, that gave me a little bit of concern. Honestly, every time I watch someone's kids, I get really overwhelmed. So after high school, I kind of just want to focus on my studies now. I don't know where you got that idea from. Certainly not here at the church.

Margi Dehlin [02:19:29] Right.

Annie Marie [02:19:30] Women were created to give birth. That's our purpose. I just don't want you to get into a habit of resisting your God given nature and your divine purpose as a woman. Well, my aunt never had kids and she's 41 and she seems really, really happy. She travels all over the world, she does whatever she wants, and she's still really nice to us. I don't see what's the problem. That feminist ideology this world has spun up lately has just really gotten to the youth. I really Think, think that it's been leading a lot of young women away from God. Are you saying I can only serve God in the right way if I have kids in like a family and stuff? These thoughts aren't going to serve us very much in the future. Let's set up some time with the missionaries and nip those thoughts right in the bud.

John Dehlin [02:20:19] So what? Yeah. How did you reconcile the messages you were getting in church about motherhood and marriage with what you perceive to be your trajectory? And then let's go straight into post high school?

Annie Marie [02:20:31] Yeah. So I mean, yeah, that was exactly the messaging you receive as a young woman that motherhood is your purpose. You have kids already, you know, spirit children waiting to be born. And this has all been set up in the pre existence, all of that type of messaging. And I don't think so. I think as we get into like the next couple years, I started to notice. Actually I didn't notice, but you'll start to see that some of the conditioning did stick. And so that informed my childhood. But I think, you know, I was overwhelmed when I was tasked to watch kids or be in the nursery. That wasn't something that felt natural to me, but something that I almost like forced myself to be okay with is like watching my younger siblings and oh, you're so motherly. Oh, I can't wait to see you as a mother. You're gonna have such beautiful children. That was always the messaging from the people around. And so I think that did inform sort of. For many years I questioned whether I wanted to be a mother. But once I graduated high school, I left the church. It was kind of like, you know, I had communicated to my parents that that's what I was going to do. Said I am going to leave when I'm 18 and I cannot wait. And I did. And my mom said, that's fine. When you're 18, you're not my responsibility anyway, so that's fine. You can, you know, you can leave then. So I got a job and I was working at a nail salon and I wanted to go to cosmetology school. And so I was working, doing that. And a year later I met my husband. So I was 19 and he was in the military and we were dating for seven months and he got orders to Japan. And we said, oh, like we'll just wait the two years that you are in Japan. And he left. And a month in I actually had a conversation. I was still living with my mom at this time, but we were quite distant. And the only thing we really bonded over was that I had a boyfriend. And so I was like, I missed him a lot and was crying all the time. It was with my husband when we first met, it was like he was a never Mormon, so he wasn't a member. And he was so kind, stable, and such opposite of what I had known my entire life. I just immediately fell in love with him and that safety that I felt. And so, you know, when he left after those seven months, I was, like, devastated. So a month in, we're FaceTiming, and my mom goes, you guys should just get married. And I was in such a place where I was like, that's a good idea. And so I said that to Chris, my husband, and he felt the same way. I don't know how, because, like, I feel like in Mormon culture, that's it's so normal to get married young. I don't know why. He also. I think he was feeling the love chemicals. But we agreed, we're like, let's get married. And so he came back. We got married in Vegas, and I moved out to Japan, like, a few months later. And so I was married by 19 years old. And I think going back to kind of like, sort of the normalized getting married young was definitely something that was, like, influenced that. And so I started the next. The next eight years I lived overseas with him, and we started our marriage. So I left my entire community, my family, and was out in the world by myself with him and sort of had this whole new community of military lifestyle, which, to be honest with you, was quite similar in some ways to Mormonism. Yeah, just sort of the view of loyalty and conformity to rules and following authority, no matter what your personal feelings are. And certainly that was more so for my husband. But of course, you know, I'm his wife, and I'm influenced by that. And even having, you know, potlucks and stuff was like, oh, my gosh, this is so Mormon. Like, everyone's bringing, you know, over food when you're sick and stuff like that. And I was like, wow, like a little triggering. And I. I kind of. I shied away from a lot of people because that reminded me of Mormonism. Like, just that community aspect was actually kind of scary for me because I didn't know, like, am I going to be accepted? I just had that kind of feeling. And so those. Those were the first couple years. But what I also noticed when I left was that a lot of things started to pop up in my mind. The first thing was my husband drank coffee, and we had A coffee pot in the house that was his and he drank like a cup every day. And I just. Something in me was like, that bothers me. Why does that bother me? And so I started to tell him, I don't like you drinking coffee. I don't think you should be drinking coffee that like, what if you get addicted? It's, it's addicting, right? Like you have it every single day. And I started to notice, like I didn't consciously notice it, but like I was starting to become kind of. Oh. Like I was overcome with a lot of the conditioning that had no real reasoning for me to personally have. I had disavowed, like disavowed and completely intellectually left and wanted nothing to do with the church and the culture. But things like this started to pop up for me and I didn't understand why.

How I Learned To Control My Marriage

John Dehlin [02:27:04] It's the wiring. The wiring runs deep.

Annie Marie [02:27:06] The wiring runs deep.

Margi Dehlin [02:27:07] And it's also like your experience of, let's just say love in quotation marks. That's wiring too. And it seems like a lot of your experience of love was very regulating and judging. And so you're young, you haven't really had time to process that it sounds like yet. So is that what you're kind of saying?

Annie Marie [02:27:34] Absolutely. All I knew was love was like control and regulation of other people. Definitely my experience. And like conformity, like you conform to my rules. And I was literally mirroring what my parents were like to me.

John Dehlin [02:27:53] Wow.

Margi Dehlin [02:27:54] Yeah.

Annie Marie [02:27:54] And so that was how it started and then it kind of expanded into other things. So the things that I internalized the most, I don't know why coffee was one, but that was the first one that showed up. It was like, oh, it's not too bad coffee. Haha, funny. So he got rid of his coffee pot for a while and then it started to expand into other subjects. So I started feeling weird when I would see TV or movies with girls who were in tank tops or low cut top and then obviously like R rated movies or women dressed, you know, like a sex scene. And then this expanded to seeing people in person if someone came over with a top that was low or seeing someone on the street or at the beach in a bikini. We lived in Okinawa, so it was like an island. So everyone was similar to California dressed in tank tops and shorts. And it started to trigger me and I did not understand what was happening. And it got really, really bad where I was controlling him, it was controlling what we were watching. And I became obsessive about ruled my life for like the first Couple of years. And we started to have, obviously, arguments about this because he didn't quite understand. And I refused to talk about where this was coming from. And I actually refused to acknowledge where it was coming from. I was perceiving this at this time as my morals, which made no sense. It just made no sense because I, again, had left consciously the church. And I disagreed with these things for so long. So I still struggle to understand how this came about and how this wiring was starting to manifest in my marriage. And we went to a marriage counselor, and I was like, oh, surely she'll set him straight. I thought he was the problem, that he wasn't seeing my side and how it can be damaging for him to see a woman's cleavage and that that could be tempting to him because that was my thinking. It was like, well, that might be true. Maybe that's a true teaching. Maybe, you know, he could be tempted by another woman and leave me, or, you know, he could become addicted to coffee, and that could turn into other addictions. That's kind of where my thinking started. And we went to therapist, and she said, annie, I think you might have some religious trauma. You grew up Mormon, and you know, that's a high control religion. And I was so not ready to hear that yet and acknowledge that, that I said, no, I'm not. I don't have religious trauma. I truly didn't see it that way at that time. And we left that therapist and never went back. And I was like, no, I'm right. And so this continued on for a couple years and got really bad. And I started to kind of acknowledge for me that this wasn't right, but I didn't know how else to deal with this. And so I kind of tried to suppress it, tried to not police him so much, but I couldn't help it. I suppressed it so much that it started to manifest bodily. So if we watched a movie or TV show where a woman was exposed, I would shake and I would get nauseous, and I couldn't help but to try and control him. Or what we watch. Like, we would walk through a mall, pass by a Victoria's Secret, and I would just look at him and I would say, why haven't you looked away? There's women dressed immodestly, literally use the word immodestly. And I like, what are you doing? Why aren't you respecting me? And I became this. I became my parents and the church, and the church. I became the church. It lived in my body. I had intellectually left, but it lived in my body at this point, and I had suppressed so much of it, and I didn't deal with it, that it was starting to manifest and control my life. And it took. I would just cry myself to sleep because I didn't understand how this could happen. And I was so angry that I had become this way, and I didn't know how I became this way. And I was. It was just so. It was incredibly frustrating that I was at this point in my life, and I was like, why am I like this? You know, I didn't understand conditioning. I didn't understand the wiring that had taken place. I didn't understand that. So I looked at it as morality.

John Dehlin [02:33:17] And you described it in your outline as OCD scrupulosity, just obsessing and compulsive behaviors around your husband's behavior or potential behavior. Is that.

Margi Dehlin [02:33:30] Absolutely.

Annie Marie [02:33:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't want him to go out on his own, and the potential that he might see a woman dressed immodestly. I became controlling. I became abusive. Not physically, but I think, you know, emotionally. I tried to regulate him and have him conform to what felt more safe to me and more familiar to me as what I grew up with. It was just incredibly frustrating because I just didn't want. I didn't want to be this way. And there was a point where I acknowledged that I don't want to be this way. This is. This sucks. I don't want to feel this way, but I don't know how not to feel this way. It was just. It lived in me. It was the craziest experience of my life. And. And as dark as my childhood was, I think this was darker because it was just like, I don't know how to do that. Not like, now I'm faced with, how do I heal from this? What do I do? How do I get out of this? And I, for the first time, was responsible.

How I Learned To Love My Husband Again

John Dehlin [02:34:42] You couldn't blame the church. You were out of the church.

Annie Marie [02:34:44] Yeah, I couldn't blame. Yeah, exactly. So it came to a point where my husband essentially started seeing a therapist because he was in an abusive relationship. And he came to me one day crying and said, annie, like, I love you so much, and I don't want to have this conversation, but I can't live this way anymore. Like, this is really hard. And I. And I think a lot of this comes from your childhood. You refuse to talk about it. You refuse to go to therapy about it. I need you to do something about this, because I'm at my wit's end. Like, I can't do this. I can't live like this. And I realized that I could lose this relationship. Someone that had supported me through all of this, stayed by my side, loved me unconditionally through all of this, had conformed and made accommodations. When friends came over, he would, like, change the tv. If something came on, it would be so embarrassing for him. He accommodated a lot of these things. And I realized in that moment, I have to do something about this. I have to. I have to start looking at where this comes from. And so I started seeing a therapist, and I did exposure therapy. I did exposure therapy. I watched many things. There are certain movies that became triggers for me. And I started small. You know, I go to the mall by myself, walk through the Victoria's Secret and see how I felt about that, would watch certain movies and shows, and eventually I got to a point where I could watch Fifty Shades of Grey.

John Dehlin [02:36:30] By yourself or with him?

Annie Marie [02:36:32] By myself.

John Dehlin [02:36:32] Okay.

Annie Marie [02:36:33] I had to do all of it by myself first because it was me who was uncomfortable. It was me who was uncomfortable because I had been taught to be uncomfortable with women's bodies and what they mean. And it was never about him. It was about how I felt about my own body and other, like, women's bodies in general. So I eventually worked my way through a lot of these things, and exposure therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, plant medicine, journeys helped a lot and really opened my eyes. And eventually I healed from a lot of the conditioning and was able to look at these things from a different perspective and actually embrace my own body and my own sexuality. But healing is not linear for me. It's. It's an ebb and flow. There are still times where things come up, and I'm like, dang it. I thought I worked through all this, but, you know, thought I was healed. I thought I was healed. I think it's just a constant journey. Yes, but that was, like. It just lived in my body for so many years, and if I didn't work through it, I would have just lost, you know, the most important relationship in my life. And so he. My husband, was a catalyst to that healing, to challenge me, you know, and to be like, look at this. You know, you can heal from this. So, yeah, he's very, very special to me, which is love.

Margi Dehlin [02:38:10] That's love.

Annie Marie [02:38:11] That love. He. Our. That relationship has healed me in so many ways. That learning what true unconditional love is and partnership is. He shouldn't have had to endure those years. If it was me, I don't know If I could have done it in the way that I was and how hard that must have been. But he loved me all the way through it. And, yeah, We've been married 10 years this year. And so, again, it's a continuous journey, but it's also been so beautiful. I didn't know I could heal in those ways. I didn't know I could be so strong. But, my gosh, the conditioning and the wiring runs deeper than we know. Generationally, too. It's not just me. I'm healing in my lifetime. It's so many. And that's something I'm coming to now, so. And I think part of that, too, is the opportunity to see other cultures. I traveled in that time to. It's now 30 countries, but a lot of that was in those eight years. I saw so many different cultures.

Margi Dehlin [02:39:26] Oh, I can imagine.

Annie Marie [02:39:28] And, yeah, like, ways of life and forms of spirituality and religion. I was like, oh, my gosh. The thing that I was taught about this being the only truth, the only way to true joy, and the only way to live a good, meaningful, purposeful life, that was a lie. And I experienced it firsthand through such. In such a beautiful way. But it was also painful to have that realization.

Margi Dehlin [02:39:52] Yeah.

Annie Marie [02:39:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:39:54] I don't mean to be trite or glib, but the quote that comes to mind is, you can take the girl out of the Mormon, but it's hard to take the Mormon out of the girl. Right.

Annie Marie [02:40:05] That says it all. Absolutely. Yeah. And I. I've heard, you know, some people's journeys in deconstruction is decades, and I think it really just depends on, like, what did you internalize how. And I also think it's generational, too, what happened in your family line, which is something I'm working through now, kind of just getting started, but Absolutely. It lives inside of you. And I think that's why it's so. Especially sharing this online where people say you can leave the church, but you can't leave it alone. It's like, no, I can't, because it's not left me alone. It still lives in me. What do you mean? You know, the way that we were raised. And also to bear your testimony, too. It makes sense why we are the way we are, as, you know, ex Mormons who do speak out and the way that we do. So, yeah, it's been quite the journey through that, through these. Unraveling, the conditioning.

Ex-Mormons on Their Descent from the Church

Share Your Relationship With Your Parents

John Dehlin [02:41:05] One of the things you mentioned in your outline is, and maybe something that at least at some point wasn't resolved or hasn't been resolved is your relationship with your parents. Because, you know, it occurs to me you're talking very openly about your parents and their. Their conflict with each other and the divorce, but then also your upbringing and. And how they parented you. Like, that's a lot. So do you even want to talk about. I mean, it's in your outline, but like, your relationship with your mom and your dad, where they are with the church and how. And if your relationship has evolved with them or not.

Annie Marie [02:41:45] Yeah. So for my mom, it's still been very much a struggle. I. There's not been a lot of acknowledgment on her part of my experience, I mean, ever. And every time I would go back and visit, there would be mention of, well, if you weren't, you wouldn't be struggling this way if you were part of the church. Comments like that, or at times, you know, when I was more in the space of that conditioning manifesting about modesty and someone being a temptation to my husband, I would. I messaged my mom one time and I said, hey, like, Chris doesn't see this way. And like, I struggled with this in the church, but, like, I see it this way now and like, kind of almost going back to, like, that abusiveness for comfort. So it's. It's been. It's been a journey. But my relationship with my mom has never improved. I have just learned to accept where she's at and she's very deep in the church. Don't know how quite how to describe it. She's not married anymore. Not a lot of my siblings talk to her. Her life is church. It's the only things she has. And so you kind of see the proof in the pudding in that, like, it's hard to have a relationship with her. In many ways. I think that's essentially how I would describe, like, where we're at. It's just a very stagnant relationship that hasn't had much healing. But I hope there's opportunity one day. I think I just have to maybe get through more of my deconstruction first. But I think where I'm at right now is just an acceptance. And that's the healthiest place for me to be is like. And it helps to. With sharing online is acceptance of other people's journey because you can't control that. And I don't want to control it. I'm not trying to control other people's journeys. That's not who I want to be. I used to argue with her a lot more when I Would see her and be like, oh, I saw that. This change in the church. How do you feel about that?

John Dehlin [02:44:30] You know, like, corn shoulders are no longer sinful.

Annie Marie [02:44:33] Yeah. Yeah. And she would come back with, actually a lot of the apologetics that I see online now. So that was before. I'm like, oh, my gosh. I recognize these apologetics from my mom. It's kind of crazy. So that's. That's kind of where we stand with my dad. I didn't talk to him for, like, three years, maybe longer, and then he. And he had a heart attack, maybe. I want to say it was a year and a half ago, right around the time I started doing this. So I started to kind of find my voice in all this. But when he had a heart attack, nothing else mattered. I came to Utah. I went with him to one of his surgeries and was there with him. And I just almost, like the primal childhood love for him came back. And he is inactive at this point, which happened, I think, a little bit after 2020. But he is still someone who. He says he's inactive, but he still believes in some things. And so I think that's allowed us to have more conversations about things. He's not someone that goes deep. He stays a little bit surface, but he listens to me, and he now accepts what I have to say, and that's all I need, is that. And I think it just helps that he's not in charge of me anymore, because as a Mormon parent, having to be in charge of, like, someone's salvation or making sure they're on the right path when. When you can let that go, I think it's easier to see perspective and take my experience for what it was. And so we've had some conversations, and he's listened to, like, I. I did another podcast, and he's seen my videos, and he likes them. He thinks they're funny, and he can see the humor in them, but he doesn't necessarily go deep into, like, the actual opinion of what I'm saying. But I don't need that. I think for me to have a relationship with him is just to be seen and heard, which is all I ever needed. And so he's even come so far to participate in some videos with me, which we might have clips of, too, but I don't know which is next. But that's. So that's kind of where I stand with both of those relationships.

John Dehlin [02:47:11] Has your mom seen your videos? And if so, has she commented on them at all? It seems like you might impersonate her

Annie Marie [02:47:19] sometimes the one with the Spanish accent is her.

John Dehlin [02:47:22] I figured. And then if she saw that, I could see her thinking, it's funny. I could see her being deeply offended and wounded.

Annie Marie [02:47:30] Yeah. So I didn't know how she was gonna feel about it. But one time I went back and visited her in the last two years. I showed her one of her impersonation and I thought it was funny. She didn't laugh and she said, I didn't like that. And then that's it. So I blocked her on everything because I think she has tick tock. Yeah, she has tick tock. So I blocked her. And I was like, well, I know how she feels about it. So other than that, I don't know how she feels about it. She'll still send me, like, general conference links and stuff like that. I'm like, you know how I feel about this. I think that's a common thing for, like, you know, ex Mormon family members to send you, like, things like that. But no, she did not like it. And so I blocked her. And I actually have a lot of my Mormon family blocked because for them, for them, for them, I don't want to offend them. Like, there's that line, right? Like, I know that they believe this is all actually true for them, and they don't understand my experience, so I'm not gonna expose myself to their opinions and they don't need to see it.

My Mormon Sister Denies Any Abuse

Margi Dehlin [02:48:39] Yeah, boundaries.

Annie Marie [02:48:40] Boundaries.

John Dehlin [02:48:41] Yeah, Yeah. I was gonna say, sometimes sinning in a high demand religion or cult can end up leading you out of the church and out of belief because you have bad experiences with your mom. Sometimes sinning can make you double and triple down and make you even more crazy, devout and committed.

Annie Marie [02:49:02] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:49:02] It sounds like that might be what happened with your mom.

Annie Marie [02:49:04] That's what I assume. And of course, I've tried to have conversations about the situation that happened, and there's a bit of denial. Not a bit. There's denial there.

John Dehlin [02:49:20] Do you mean the abuse?

Annie Marie [02:49:22] Yes. And the breaking of the covenant. There's denial there.

John Dehlin [02:49:28] Oh, you mean the infidelity?

Annie Marie [02:49:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:49:30] Oh, okay.

Annie Marie [02:49:32] The abuse too. Like, she doesn't see it as abuse. It's the thing. Like, I've noticed. I've tried to talk to her about her own childhood. Refuses to go there. Refuses to acknowledge any abuse that she's endured. Like, even her own sexual abuse. Said that's normal. And I think that's a generational thing and sometimes a societal thing that, you know, their generation is like, that's not abuse. Wasn't that bad type of thinking. And so I have made that assumption. Of course, I can't speak for her, but I do think that it's a doubling down of. Craving that worthiness again. Yeah. That's my assumption of why she's so. She's still crazy devout. She's a temple worker. She goes to the temple every week, goes to every church, adult dance, every single. Like, I actually.

John Dehlin [02:50:42] As a single.

Annie Marie [02:50:43] As a single.

John Dehlin [02:50:44] Yeah.

Annie Marie [02:50:45] Constantly looking for her next partner. So that's. That's her life right now. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:50:56] It's kind of. I don't want to. It seems statistically fortuitous that your marriage survived. Getting married at 19 with as much trauma as you had as young as you were, and as difficult as your early marriage would have been, it's kind of pretty incredible that you're still married.

Marriage after leaving the Mormon Church

Annie Marie [02:51:20] I know. I say the same thing. I say the same thing. Like, how did we get through that? That was. That was the hardest time we've had in our marriage so far. And I'm like, wow. It's. I'm actually very proud of that, though.

Margi Dehlin [02:51:32] Yeah.

Annie Marie [02:51:32] You know, when you go through those hard times, you're like, we did that damn thing. Like, I overcame that. I'm so proud of myself. I'm proud of him. Grateful that he was, like, would stick by me through such a hard time and he didn't have to, you know, but he loved me so much that he would. It just is such a testament to what true love is and to experience that in contrast to what my childhood was.

John Dehlin [02:51:58] Wow.

Annie Marie [02:51:58] Gosh, what an experience of life.

John Dehlin [02:52:03] You had a corrective love experience.

Annie Marie [02:52:04] Corrective. And to be honest with you, besides going through the healing process and that being so painful, my life has been nothing but the contrast. The amount of traveling I've done, the friendships I've made that are true friendships, as opposed to what it was like, almost like conditional friendships and relationships in the church, if you're not following the rules and stuff, you kind of are outcasts. If you're not meeting the Mormon standard, you're less than. Which was my experience. And to experience the complete opposite. For money to flow my way, for experiences, travel to flow my way, it was almost like. I just view it as a very spiritual gift in a lot of ways. And I feel that my life has been almost led by,

John Dehlin [02:53:06] like, something divine

Annie Marie [02:53:08] or unexplainable, which for a long time, I, like, probably would have considered myself an atheist, But I've seen the hand of almost that, like, I don't want to say reward but just that divine intervention in so many ways where it. And to experience that as well. A different version completely of what I was taught that is supposed to look like too. Feeling the spirit at a Japanese shrine, which I had never consistently actually felt, feeling.

John Dehlin [02:53:46] Oof.

Annie Marie [02:53:51] Ancestors around me, or what I can perceive as that. It was. It's been such a magical experience. Honestly, that's my experience after the church. I've never been more spiritual and believed more in, like, not God in the way we. I don't like the labels because they are so loaded, but the divine, I guess, spirit, I don't know in such a different way. That doesn't have to be just Mormon. And that's what I hope people can get from my story too. Is there is that other way of life and it doesn't have to be the Mormon way. If it works for you, great. But if you have doubts, if you have questions, if you think like, is there a different way of life? Could I be happy? Is my life going to fall apart? Absolutely not. And my life has been, you know, the opposite of what I was taught that would happen if I left.

John Dehlin [02:55:04] We're taught wickedness never was happiness. And you are wicked by Mormon standards. Right?

Annie Marie [02:55:10] Yeah. Look at me. Yeah. Tattoos and. No, no. Now that's fine, but is it weird?

John Dehlin [02:55:18] Your shoulders, your tattoos, my shoulders. But now it's all okay.

Annie Marie [02:55:20] Now it's all okay.

Margi Dehlin [02:55:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:55:21] All that stuff you suffered for is now kind of okay. Just kidding.

Annie Marie [02:55:27] Which is a whole nother, like, bound of healing that occurs now is like facing those things that are now okay. And almost like the, for lack of a better term, gaslighting of it all, too, that occurs online. And like a lot of my experience of sharing online is, you're lying. You didn't experience that.

TikTok on the Culture of the Church

John Dehlin [02:55:48] Or that's not the church.

Annie Marie [02:55:49] That's not the church. That's culture. What do you think informed the culture? You can look at the general conference talks and clearly see what informed the culture.

Margi Dehlin [02:55:58] That is the.

Annie Marie [02:56:00] The most aggravating narrative to me is that it was culture, it was the people. Oh, my gosh, way to blame people. Instead of what actually created the culture. That one I have to work on, of not getting, like,

John Dehlin [02:56:19] I love this story. Don't you love this story?

Margi Dehlin [02:56:21] I'm feeling like for you, it feels like that decision to. You had space, you left your family of origin and literally ventured out into the world.

John Dehlin [02:56:36] It's the hero's. It's the heroine's journey.

Margi Dehlin [02:56:40] That's right. And it feels like, you know, up until that Point. You had experienced love in a certain way. You experienced reality in a certain way. You experienced community in a certain way. You experienced, like, a story of yourself created by other people that really had so little to do with you.

Annie Marie [02:57:03] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:57:03] And it feels like you left that narrow, controlled, you know, experience and, like, burst out into this wider world and just, it feels like, had an expansive reality check. Love, more expansive. Community, Spirituality, more experience. Spirituality, more experience. Your sense of yourself, your power, your voice, your power. Right. What you deserve more expansive and what

Annie Marie [02:57:39] everyone deserves and whatever. Every young woman in the church, every man in the church.

Margi Dehlin [02:57:44] That's right.

Annie Marie [02:57:44] We all deserve to feel this way. And I don't know that that's always available in such a system. Right, right. And I really appreciate that because that really does convey my reality now versus my reality then. And certainly the work that I do now, I never intended to do.

John Dehlin [02:58:04] Yeah.

Annie Marie [02:58:04] I never.

Margi Dehlin [02:58:05] Like, which I love that came out in this interview.

John Dehlin [02:58:07] I thought for sure you were a theater person in high school. You know what I mean?

Annie Marie [02:58:10] My sisters were. And I kind of. I wished I had done it, and I want to do it now, but, no, it's the way that I found I was able to express before I found my voice, to be honest with you, to be able to express this way. I mostly made skits to convey this until I was able to find the language, find Mormon Stories podcast, find Alyssa Grenfell and all these other creators. My world opened up, and I was able to find the language for what I had experienced and now am able to be here. I had to work through a lot of fear of my own voice to be here today and not even consciously knowing that. Actually, of course, like, coming up to it, it was like, all right, am I going to be able to actually articulate? Because for so long, my voice had been squashed, and for a long time, I. It was so. I kind of forgot to speak to this. But for many years, with the experience I had, I couldn't even order at a restaurant. I was so scared to speak. And so to be able to reclaim my voice and articulate my story and to speak for the experience of so many other young women and men is reclaiming my voice, reclaiming my power. And to be here, I'm just so honored. And a lot of people message me, and they're like, please don't stop. We need your voice. And I'm sure you guys get the same messages we need.

John Dehlin [02:59:50] That's the only reason we're still here.

Annie Marie [02:59:52] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because it's tough.

John Dehlin [02:59:55] We're not doing this for fun.

Annie Marie [02:59:57] This is not for fun. I mean, of course I try to make it fun. That's why I do skits. You have to have some fun.

Margi Dehlin [03:00:02] And there's creativity in.

John Dehlin [03:00:05] Feels good to.

Margi Dehlin [03:00:06] And it's processing. It does feel kind of like processing too.

John Dehlin [03:00:10] It's just not fun.

Annie Marie [03:00:11] Yeah, no, it's not fun. Like, reading comments that, like, you're a liar and you're a grifter. I'm like, what money? Like, TikTok does not pay.

John Dehlin [03:00:19] I hope you make money. I want you to make money.

Margi Dehlin [03:00:23] Me too.

Annie Marie [03:00:23] But I mean, for me, truly, like, this is quite like a more spiritual experience at this point. Like, I don't make. I don't make money. And that's the. It's the funniest thing when I get that comment, like, what do you want to see this? Like, TikTok does not pay.

John Dehlin [03:00:37] We make nothing from TikTok.

Annie Marie [03:00:39] Yeah, it's not. So

Ex-Mormon on the Hero's Journey

John Dehlin [03:00:43] I just want to say really quickly that going back to the hero's journey and Joseph Campbell, part of it is you leave home and you go have your. You slay your dragons and you have your. It's like Odyssey. You go have your conquests and you slay the dragon, but then you come home and you share the wisdom. And that's what you're doing by creating Mormon and ex Mormon content is you're returning with honor and then sharing the wisdom you've gained from your heroine's journey with the rest of us.

Annie Marie [03:01:16] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:01:17] That's how I see it. I don't mean to put that on you, but that's how I see it.

Annie Marie [03:01:19] Oh, I appreciate that. And that's. That feels good to hear, of course, but I think I didn't think of it that way at first. When I first started creating content, honestly, it was like the. The first video that I posted that went viral is like, you know, I. I got a lot of those comments, those negative comments, as well as positive comments and people reflecting back my experience to me, which was amazing. And I felt not alone for the first time. But it was almost like having to confront those same voices from my childhood of telling me that what I thought was not right, my reality was not reflected back to me being called a liar.

John Dehlin [03:02:01] You probably got appearance comments too, right?

Annie Marie [03:02:03] Oh, absolutely. I think that's a given and that's the things like negativity online is not unique to Mormonism, but certainly, like, it can get really personal, especially sharing your personal story and sharing very deeply traumatic things that affected you in your Life and then being met with, like, gaslighting and just vitriol.

John Dehlin [03:02:26] Yeah.

Annie Marie [03:02:28] Which is ironic. From Christ, like, people. Christ Church.

John Dehlin [03:02:31] Yeah.

Annie Marie [03:02:32] Wow.

John Dehlin [03:02:33] Yeah. Yeah.

Annie Marie [03:02:35] Yeah. That's always like, how ironic is that?

John Dehlin [03:02:37] Yeah.

Annie Marie [03:02:38] So. Yeah. But I. I'm grateful for that because if I didn't have those people poking those wounds, I would never have seen them. And now they don't bother me as much. And I was able to go back and heal those things that were reflections from my childhood. People literally saying the same exact things that they say in the comments. I'm like, thank you. Because now I recognize that that was something that maybe I still believed about myself, that I was a liar, that I exaggerated, that I. You know, whatever it is. And I was able to make myself even stronger because you pointed that out and I found, no, that wasn't true. And then there's the other side of it, where maybe sometimes I generalize and maybe this isn't always someone's experience, and I can. I can open myself up to that, too. And for coming, dealing with such emotions like anger and resentment, sometimes that can get lost, that people can find happiness in that. And being open to that, I think. Think is important for me. I don't understand it, but I know that for some people, it happens. But also being open to criticism and kind of having, like, learning to toe that line, you know, is important. But most of the time, it's. It's not to. Not to really take personal, you know?

Annie's Comments on Religion

John Dehlin [03:04:11] Well, let's do a lightning round. So we're going to end with maybe eight or so videos, and they're just your comments about religion and other types of things. Margi and I maybe will be a little lighter on the commentary, and we'll just play each video, let you comment, and then we'll play the next video. Is that all right?

Margi Dehlin [03:04:27] Yeah, that's great.

John Dehlin [03:04:28] So this will just be like a celebration of some of your work, Annie's work. Is that okay? Yeah, with the commentary. All right, so this first one seeing is about Jesus and religion. And some of these I'm seeing for the first time. So anyway, this is Annie on Jesus and religion.

Annie On Jesus And Religion

Annie Marie [03:04:46] Love everyone. Except for gay people, right? No, Love everyone. But they're gay. It's a sin. Love everyone. Love everyone.

John Dehlin [03:04:58] But.

Annie Marie [03:04:59] But they like the same sex. I is. It's freakish. It's. How am I supposed to love them? I don't want them to have the same rights as me.

Margi Dehlin [03:05:10] I can't.

Annie Marie [03:05:11] I can't love them. Well, then you're not living my true gospel. But it's in the Bible. The Bible was changed and retranslated so many times, it's not the truth. Love everyone. But the pastor says it's okay to hate them. We hate them. Yeah, I never said any of that. I never even made up religion. Also, by the way, I never said to worship me or that I'm your Lord or that I'm your savior. All I said is, you can go to God through me, which means you can be like me. Come on. I won't do it. You can't. I won't be gay. You can't make me be gay. I don't want to love the gays. Don't make me be gay. What? You don't have to be gay. What's going on here? You must be the Antichrist.

John Dehlin [03:06:00] I love seeing you giggle at your own humor. That's fun to watch you laughing. I'm glad, because that's cool. You can laugh at your own humor. Yeah.

Annie Marie [03:06:07] It comes out. I'm like, what was that? That's funny.

John Dehlin [03:06:10] Okay, so commentary on that one.

Annie Marie [03:06:12] I think this is another part of the journey that's been important to me is diving into the history of the Bible or the history of the church and realizing it wasn't so clean and cut. And also that being quite validating, because it was like, as a child, I knew something wasn't quite right. Didn't feel like Christchurch, didn't feel like. Personally, for me, that that is something that, you know. You know, for that example, being so against the LGBTQIA community would be something that Christ would support. And just learning about that was validating. It's like, oh, yeah. Because it was corrupted and it was mistranslated in some areas, it was used for control and power according to biblical scholars. So it's been very interesting to learn about that, which has been another part of my journey in the last, like, year. I've been reading a lot of books, so that's kind of what informed some of that in that video.

Annie On The Bible

John Dehlin [03:07:21] All right, the next one is about the Bible. And again, I want my Christian and believing listeners to know we're not trying to mock or judge anyone. These are Annie's expressions, and you can explain them. All Right, here's Annie on the Bible.

Annie Marie [03:07:38] I don't believe in science. I believe in God and the Bible. A virgin gave birth. The sun stopped rotating in the sky. One time, a man named Jonah lived inside a whale for three days. Noah built an ark out of wood. He fit two of every animal on the entire planet. On this Ark. And then God flooded the earth. A woman was made from a man's rib. A talking donkey. And on the third day, Jesus rose from the dead. Adam and Eve were the first two humans. They had two children, both boys. They populated the entire earth. 10 foot tall giants. Cain was marked by God with black skin. And Jesus walked on water. He also turned water into wine. Jesus cured blindness one time. Demons are the cause of mental illness. Eve ate fruit and regained consciousness. Talking serpents. A blood sacrifice forgives your sins, period. Who needs science when I've got the Bible?

John Dehlin [03:08:39] Okay, what is like, you're kind of going like, what is that?

Annie Marie [03:08:42] I think it's just my expressive movements where I'm like, yeah, like, I don't know, it just comes out when I do ones like that. Yeah, certainly I don't intend to mock. Although, of course, like, for some people who believe these things, I understand why it comes off that way. But for me, I think that just speaks to sort of the confusion of. Because a lot of people and this, I think this speaks to a specific crowd. They take the Bible very literally. And I think that's where, you know, some of the Bible translations have the lgbtqia, you know, that's a sin, and they take that literally, but not other things. And I think that's where I point out the hypocrisy that doesn't make sense to me. And that's what that's really speaking to is like. And then of course, science, which I think sometimes can go. Can work together. But a lot of people in my. And some of this is also made from my comment section and, and the reactions that I see. So this isn't something a lot of the time that is like my personal opinion. It's like, this is what I'm seeing online and I'm just reflecting it back to you guys. Like, does this make sense? Is this hypocritical to you? And so that's kind of how and why I make these ones, but it's also just in a funny, expressive way for me.

John Dehlin [03:10:07] All right, that's cool. So, yeah, my Christian listeners, all the respect and love to you and don't abandon us here. Okay, next one is on Angel Moroni. This one I have seen Angel Moroni appears to Joseph Smith. So now we're going. Now we're going to ask, is she anti Mormon, anti Joseph Smith? Here we go.

Mormon Manifesto On Angel Moroni

Annie Marie [03:10:30] Wake up. We're dropping a sequel to the Bible. Now here's the thing. We're going to need you to be a pedophile. God Wants you to do it. We also want you to marry, like, 30 to 40 women. That's the only way you can be like God.

Margi Dehlin [03:10:41] Okay?

Annie Marie [03:10:41] This is an eternal commandment. Eternal meaning just when the federal government finds out and stops you. No, trust me, you'll be really blessed. Oh, and if your wife has a problem with it, tell her about this. I will destroy her ass. I also buried some fuck ass plates up in Cumhora Hill. Don't worry. They'll soften the messaging in the future. You don't have to worry about your reputation. We're just gonna establish a term called modern revelation.

Margi Dehlin [03:11:05] Brother.

Annie Marie [03:11:05] Basically means if a society isn't responding well to some of the things that we're gonna introduce into this church, we can just change it. And if something isn't mis. Making sense to someone, just say, the Spirit hasn't revealed that yet. Revelations will ultimately lead to your tragic death.

Margi Dehlin [03:11:21] Yes.

Annie Marie [03:11:21] God knows that, and that's actually part of his plan. Don't question God. God's plan for the future is actually marvelous. Very genius. He's going to introduce a 2015 policy where it kills a bunch of LGBTQ members. After that, we change it. We're also going to have popcorn popping on April trees. I know it's not making much sense right now, is it? But by the early 2000s, we're just going to really phase a lot of these origin stories out anyway, so you don't have to worry. God's plan. God's plan started from a vision. Now we're here.

Oh, My Sword

John Dehlin [03:11:55] Okay, I'm dying to know, like, all that funky stuff you did with the sword. Were you, like, consciously, I'm going to do funky things with the sword, or did you just, like that, just develop naturally?

Annie Marie [03:12:06] I initially start with just a little bit less. Less pizzazz. And then I get more comfortable with, like, what I'm saying, and I'm like. I just get the ideas, like, oh, this would be kind of funny if I do that. And then I just kind of flow.

Margi Dehlin [03:12:18] It's a flow.

Annie Marie [03:12:19] Just channeling silliness.

How long does it take you to make a video like "The

John Dehlin [03:12:21] How long does it take you to make a. Make a video like that one? Like, start to finish?

Annie Marie [03:12:25] Yeah. I mean, it. It really depends. That one probably took me an hour.

John Dehlin [03:12:32] No. Yeah. Well, to write it, to conceive it.

Annie Marie [03:12:36] Well, I have the idea. Costume, filming, editing, because I think it happens over time. Really? It's like, what podcast did I listen to in the last month about, you know, the history of the church?

John Dehlin [03:12:50] Are you taking notes?

Annie Marie [03:12:51] Yeah. Yes. I mean, the idea will come to me, and I'll take a note, like Angel Moroni appearing to Joseph and making it silly and highlighting this part. And then I think in the moment a lot comes to me and that's why it goes a little bit quicker. But I'll have like a set of like maybe 5 to 10 lines. I'm like, I want this line and this emphasis from, you know, the vision. And then it actually takes me longer when I want to do reshoots to do something a little bit sillier. But really it kind of happens over time and it depends on what kind of content I've consumed or relearned or remembered from childhood or watching one of your podcasts and learning more. So it kind of happens as a, as an accumulation. But in the moment it probably takes me about an hour, maybe more sometimes. Or sometimes I might get frustrated and come back the next day and redo it. But this one was like in an hour.

John Dehlin [03:13:50] Wow.

Annie Marie [03:13:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:13:51] You have a, you have a full time day job, right?

Annie Marie [03:13:53] Yeah, if I didn't, I would be doing a lot more of this. Like, yeah, I have to take breaks. Cause I'm like kind of exhausting myself sometimes doing, doing both. Nine to five. Five to nine. Like, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:14:06] And did I read somewhere you have chosen to be childless? Did I read that right?

Annie Marie [03:14:12] Yeah, I mean, I think, okay, I just met my nephew and he's really cute. And so I, and my husband and I had the conversation like, oh, maybe he'll get, you know, a surgery. And so we don't have to worry about that. But I was like, let's keep the door open. I'm only 30, but right now how I feel is like, I don't want children. And that's, that stems from like being overstimulated as a child and having the expectation on me. So I think it's multi layered where, you know, I didn't like the expectation of it. So right now I'm, I don't want to do that. But also there was for a couple years too, when I was overseas, I worked for a daycare and I was in a baby room with eight babies to like two people. And that was really overwhelming. But that was like the jobs available. And that's when really too, I was like, I don't know if I'm cut out for this. I don't know if, if like the reality of it, of actually having a child is something that I'm, I don't know, wired for. So I kind of keep it open. But right now we're just enjoying our life. I gave it like a. When we got married, I was like, let's wait five years because I was always told to do it right away. I don't want to. That let's travel, we're overseas. And then we kind of just kept that going. So yeah, we've been married 10 years and are kind of like. That still doesn't sound like something that I want to be responsible for. I think I have other things that maybe I want to do first. If the feeling comes. Sure. I'm not against it, but yeah, for now. For now. It feels like a beautiful.

Margi Dehlin [03:15:56] Just part of deconstruction and rebuilding. To hear you talk about it that way with the introspection and it's just a beautiful thing coming from where we've been, I think.

Annie Marie [03:16:18] Yeah, yeah. Allowing yourself the choice.

On Consent for 16-Year-Old Girls

Margi Dehlin [03:16:21] That's right.

Annie Marie [03:16:21] To allowing yourself the reflection before going straight to the conditioned response or the expectation. Yeah. Visiting Utah and being around some, you know, active members or teenagers. You know, I have a 16 year old sister and seeing or hearing from her how. Because they're not active and so she's kind of a little bit of a black sheep in some ways, but hearing, you know, how her friends talk to her or what they talk about as 16 year olds and they want to get married right away and I'm like, man, I remember what that was like and that expectation and I just wish they were given more of. And you know, it's different for everybody. Of course there's different experiences, but generally. And for me wasn't super like a choice. It was like an expectation.

Margi Dehlin [03:17:19] Absolutely. And. And the pathway to value.

Annie Marie [03:17:25] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [03:17:26] And purpose. That was it.

Annie Marie [03:17:27] So that's the path. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [03:17:29] It just feels beautiful to hear you really think about what you want for yourself, your life, all the things.

Annie Marie [03:17:38] Yeah. Choice is nice. Actual choice, actual agency without the conditioning layering on top of that. Actual agency is nice.

Margi Dehlin [03:17:50] That's right. Oh, and informed consent around.

Annie Marie [03:17:54] Absolutely.

Margi Dehlin [03:17:55] Pregnancy and all the things as well. Like.

Annie Marie [03:17:58] Yeah, my gosh. Yeah, absolutely.

Is The Mormon Church A CULT?

John Dehlin [03:18:02] All right, we got a couple more you're gonna just. And then we'll wrap up. We're gonna tackle whether or not the Mormon church is a cult. Small topic.

Annie Marie [03:18:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:18:11] Let's see what you got to say.

Annie Marie [03:18:13] Do you believe what they're saying online about our church? They're calling it a cult now. It's ridiculous. Is it though? Well, first of all, we don't force anyone to stay. We only threaten your eternal life with your family and we swear you'll lose all the blessings the Lord has to offer. It's Just the truth. We definitely don't control your life. We just tell you what to think, what to wear, what to watch, what to do. It kind of sounds like not a cult. So we don't brainwash. Just repeat the same phrases over and over until they become your inner monologue. Doubt your doubts. Don't doubt your church leaders. Follow the prophet. He knows the way.

Margi Dehlin [03:18:44] See?

Annie Marie [03:18:45] Encouraging girl. We don't isolate you. We just strongly suggest that all your non church friends are going to drag you into sin. And our worldly influences. You should probably spend all your free time with church members. Simple math. And we definitely don't manipulate you with fear. We simply remind you that if you question the Dr. Doctrine, you might be deceived by Satan and risk your eternal life with our heavenly Father. And we definitely don't force our beliefs on others. We just tell you that everything outside of this belief system is wrong, evil or dangerous. Anyway, we're really not a cult. If we were, they would have told us that and we still would have been fine with it.

John Dehlin [03:19:22] Now that one, you didn't even bother changing your hair or your outfit. You just wore the same hair. Sometimes it's just too much.

Annie Marie [03:19:29] Sometimes, like the idea is there and like the content is there. I'm like, love it.

John Dehlin [03:19:33] Oh my gosh.

Annie Marie [03:19:34] Yeah, it kind of overtakes me. And I'm like, they would have told us that.

Margi Dehlin [03:19:37] We would have been fine with it.

Annie Marie [03:19:40] And you know, I've got that comment too. And like under that video, it's like, we are a cult and I'm happy to be part of that cult. It's like, all right, as long as you, you know, which, you know, I'm not qualified. I'm not like a cult expert, but I've seen cult experts talk about the church and I'm like, all right, they're saying it qualifies. And certainly I think it, it fits a lot of the bill. I think when I think cult is a loaded word and when you think of it, it's like, you know, sacrificing a person or something. But like there were a lot of rituals earlier in the church where certainly the death oath in the temple was a part of that. And yes, they've changed it and softened messaging quietly. But like the origin of the church and a lot of rituals absolutely. Make it more of that cult esque.

John Dehlin [03:20:39] I mean, Nauvoo was a full blown, full stop sex cult. There's just, there's no other way to describe Naboo. Yeah, I don't think.

Annie Marie [03:20:47] Yeah, there's many elements. And even modern day Mormonism there are. It's. It's better in, you know, modern day, but still, it is very high control, very high demand. By definition.

John Dehlin [03:21:03] Yeah. Yeah. All right, next clip. Joining versus leaving a religion. Let's see what Annie has to say.

Joining or Leaving a Religion

Annie Marie [03:21:12] Oh, are you new to the neighborhood? Well, I thought I'd just swing by and bring you your favorite cookies. How did I know that? I'll never tell. It's been a few weeks since we've seen you at church. Thought I'd stop by with those favorite cookies of yours, see what's up. I'm so glad you found the truth. You belong here. It's not for you. If there's anything you need at all, just let us know. We'll do it. No, I can't see you anymore. I like to be around people that affirm my faith. I'll never say that to your face. That feeling you're feeling, the spirit. That feeling you're being deceived. Satan.

John Dehlin [03:21:59] Wow.

Annie Marie [03:22:00] What a powerful testimony. You never had a testimony, did you?

Margi Dehlin [03:22:05] The church is perfect.

Annie Marie [03:22:07] The church isn't perfect. You can ask anything you want. Why are you focusing on that? We've taught you everything that we know about the church. Where did you hear that? Have you been reading things online? I've been praying that God would reveal it to you. And look, you're here at church today. You left and now you're sharing your experiences online. I'll pray for you. Wow.

John Dehlin [03:22:37] There's so much wisdom there.

Annie Marie [03:22:39] So much wisdom. And could we have a moment for

Margi Dehlin [03:22:42] the music as well?

Annie Marie [03:22:43] I know. Really adds to the creepy elements.

Margi Dehlin [03:22:46] Yes.

Dad Tries Forbidden Drinks

John Dehlin [03:22:48] All right, well, the last two clips, as you mentioned previously mentioned, your dad, he's participating in these last two. And the first one's entitled Mormon dad tries Forbidden Drinks. I haven't seen this yet, so I'll be seeing it for the first time. Time. This will be fun. This is Annie's dad.

Annie Marie [03:23:06] Oh, my gosh. Okay, this is a Corona la Seresa with some lime.

Margi Dehlin [03:23:12] Okay. This is.

Annie Marie [03:23:13] This is very delicious. It's a beer.

John Dehlin [03:23:18] This is first beer. Oh, my goodness.

Annie Marie [03:23:21] Yeah, you have to do that.

John Dehlin [03:23:25] Barley.

Annie Marie [03:23:26] Barley. There's no barley in this. This, I don't know. Is that what beer's made out of? Okay, what is this made out of?

John Dehlin [03:23:31] Corona.

Annie Marie [03:23:33] Out of 10. One. One. That's the most you've ever rated anything.

Margi Dehlin [03:23:37] You like it?

John Dehlin [03:23:38] Cuz I tasted more lime than anything.

Margi Dehlin [03:23:40] Oh, okay.

John Dehlin [03:23:40] So that helps.

Annie Marie [03:23:41] Today we have a Beans and Brews white mocha with four shots of Espresso on accident. And it has a rose soft top foam thing. See how you like this one. Smells like coffee. Yeah, it tastes like it, too. Oh, my gosh. That's got to be a zero, man. I don't taste no rose.

John Dehlin [03:24:04] Nothing.

Annie Marie [03:24:05] Okay, so that's a zero out of ten. Give me a brewski, man. It's a zero.

Margi Dehlin [03:24:11] Okay.

Drinking a Matcha iced latte

Annie Marie [03:24:12] Okay. Today we have from Beans and Brews, a Matcha iced latte with a lavender soft top foam. Whatever that means.

Margi Dehlin [03:24:22] It's good.

John Dehlin [03:24:24] Just guzzle it up.

Annie Marie [03:24:25] But what the hell? But yeah, whatever.

Margi Dehlin [03:24:29] You please get a good lick of it.

Annie Marie [03:24:34] It's actually good, huh? It's not bad. That's pretty good. That's pretty good.

Margi Dehlin [03:24:37] That's matcha.

Annie Marie [03:24:38] So that has no coffee in it, but it has. It still has caffeine because it has tea. It's like green tea. It's good, huh?

John Dehlin [03:24:44] Yeah.

Annie Marie [03:24:44] Okay, what would you rate that out of ten? Probably a nine. Nine out of ten.

Margi Dehlin [03:24:49] Good.

John Dehlin [03:24:49] I like it. Oh, my God.

Annie Marie [03:24:50] That's pretty good. You never had matcha. Oh, he goes with another sip. Oh, my gosh. So would you drink this, like, on a regular? How much did it cost? I think, like, probably six, seven bucks.

Margi Dehlin [03:25:02] Huh. All right.

Annie Marie [03:25:03] Another one from Beans and Brews got a tiger's blood energy. I think this has, like, Red Bull in it, right? It's kind of like a Red Bull drink. So this is actually not too far off from what you're allowed. That's good.

John Dehlin [03:25:17] Pretty good.

Annie Marie [03:25:18] Okay, you like a matcha and you like a Red Bull drink. Would you rate that out of 10? I'd say. I was gonna say six or seven. Eight and nine.

John Dehlin [03:25:31] That's fun. That's fun. Your dad can.

Margi Dehlin [03:25:32] That is fun.

John Dehlin [03:25:33] My dad listens to my podcast still, and it's really fun when you're. And he's still a believer and he still attends church, so it's kind of fun if you can get to that point where your family. I don't care if they like it or listen, but it's fun sometimes when they do, at least is for me.

Annie Marie [03:25:50] Yeah, no, it's been super healing between my dad and I to just have these type of experiences in contrast. Right. To what my relationship was like with him as a teenager. So different. And to experience him sort of outside of the church and outside of that role of authoritarian has been so healing. He's also seen my videos, thinks they're funny. I think I mentioned that. But, like, to feel accepted in that way, too, and for him to participate in things like this it's just healing, but in such a fun way. And I think people really like these videos because they're light hearted. And it's also just seeing some nuance there and seeing people change and grow. Even if it's something as silly as trying a few. A forbidden drink, you know? Absolutely. But then it also kind of speaks to that culture too. So. Yeah, I really, I. This is one of my favorite series that I started.

Margi Dehlin [03:26:44] Oh, it's so fun.

Annie Marie [03:26:45] Yeah.

Dad tries Forbidden Drinks Part 2

John Dehlin [03:26:46] All right, last one. This is dad tries Forbidden drinks part two. So this will be the last video we show. So after this we'll just have a couple wrap up questions. Here we go.

Annie Marie [03:27:01] Okay. This is a chai tea latte with a shot of espresso from Bruise and Beans.

John Dehlin [03:27:05] One shot.

Margi Dehlin [03:27:07] Okay.

Annie Marie [03:27:08] See how you like it.

John Dehlin [03:27:11] Are you sponsored by beans and Bruce?

Margi Dehlin [03:27:13] I wish.

John Dehlin [03:27:14] Can you. Can you.

Margi Dehlin [03:27:15] Is it too coffee?

Annie Marie [03:27:15] It tastes like black paste. Black paste? What the hell is that?

John Dehlin [03:27:19] I don't know.

Annie Marie [03:27:21] This is a caramel crap with three shots of espresso.

John Dehlin [03:27:27] He's gotta like that. Come on.

Annie Marie [03:27:34] Is it good? Which one's better? Neither.

John Dehlin [03:27:38] What?

Annie Marie [03:27:40] We're using the straw.

John Dehlin [03:27:42] That's a cocktail.

Annie Marie [03:27:44] It's just Moscow. What would you rate it out of 10? 0.

John Dehlin [03:27:54] Red wine.

Annie Marie [03:28:00] Why are you so scared of it? Oh my God. You didn't even drink any of it. I didn't even see you getting. I did get some.

Margi Dehlin [03:28:08] Okay.

Annie Marie [03:28:08] Out of 10, negative 2. These are the fun, light hearted videos.

John Dehlin [03:28:17] That's fun.

Margi Dehlin [03:28:17] You know, he's so open.

Annie Marie [03:28:19] He's very open.

Margi Dehlin [03:28:21] Yeah.

Annie Marie [03:28:22] It's just a world of a difference between my childhood.

John Dehlin [03:28:28] I can see why that'd be healing,

Annie Marie [03:28:30] I think for other people too to see that and kind of seeing the contrast in my story. So yeah, that's a fun one that I'm going to keep on going with until we find more things that he likes.

John Dehlin [03:28:42] Four shots is my default, by the way.

Margi Dehlin [03:28:43] Is it?

John Dehlin [03:28:44] Yeah, for sure. Good to know.

Annie Marie [03:28:46] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:28:47] Yeah. Anything less is just.

Margi Dehlin [03:28:49] It's not going to do. It just won't do.

Annie Marie [03:28:52] That's pretty intense for even an ex Mormon.

John Dehlin [03:28:57] It's a non event. It's a daily occurrence for me. All right, Margi.

"Joy Right Now": Working On The Project

Margi Dehlin [03:29:02] Okay. My last question is about the life that you live in now. I feel like we started the beginning of the interview. Your girl self just experienced a lot of tumult, a lot of chaos

Annie Marie [03:29:23] through

Margi Dehlin [03:29:23] your kind of teen years. I think I just. I would love any sense of what brings your life. Joy right now or aliveness. Like what are some of the pieces Right now that make your life feel good to you?

Annie Marie [03:29:39] Yeah, I think I found those pieces throughout the years, but certainly it's traveling. My animals, I have four pets, two dogs, two cats. Oh my gosh. Just that experience of love too, is something that like fills my day every day. And honestly, this work, I, of course, in the last two years, having to sort of revisit those tumultuous years. But it's brought me so much joy to be able to come out on the other side and have this new perspective and way of creating and also finding new passions in that. Like I said earlier, I hope to do some theater and express that way, but I think generally travel. Right now my husband and I are looking for an RV and we're gonna do some US traveling because we. We were gone for so many years and we did a cross country road trip from Michigan to Utah for a family reunion and we stopped in a bunch of states and that's something that we're super passionate about is, you know, camping, hiking, RVing and seeing the states, seeing, you know.

Margi Dehlin [03:31:03] Yeah. So much beauty, huh?

Annie Marie [03:31:04] So much beauty. And that's when I feel most at peace and alive, is when I'm out in nature with my husband and my dogs. Like, that's like my true joy and love. So my life is very, very peaceful and full. But I do have the opportunity to go back into those moments and gain the wisdom and share that wisdom in the way. In kind of the unique, expressive way that I do. And that brings me joy too.

Margi Dehlin [03:31:39] Yeah.

Annie Marie [03:31:40] So it's kind of all of it.

Margi Dehlin [03:31:41] Yeah.

Annie Marie [03:31:41] Yeah, I love that.

Margi Dehlin [03:31:43] Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:31:43] I certainly felt strongly as I was watching these videos that you have the talent to do this writing or comedy professionally. So that was my impression, is that you definitely have that level of talent and skill if you desire and. And if the stars align, I guess,

Annie Marie [03:32:02] yeah, I definitely will look for those opportunities. I'm moving back to Washington State probably in the new year, and we'll probably look to do some theater in Seattle for sure. But I initially got started doing acting classes because that was my. I liked doing that as a kid. We did a lot of talent shows growing up and stuff like that. And I just never kind of got to pursue that through my years. So that's something that I'm looking forward to maybe pursuing in various ways, whatever kind of comes up.

Margi Dehlin [03:32:37] But

Annie Marie [03:32:40] yeah, I think I do plan to pursue maybe some comedy or acting in other ways, not just ex Mormon stuff. But I think this was a very good start and also like a very a Start that I needed almost this healing to be able to find that confidence too, because it was tied in with my self trust and confidence. A lot of these topics that we covered, I didn't trust my expression or my voice because it was shaped in such a way as a young child to be a certain way and not this loud, chaotic way. And so I've kind of been able to reclaim that and find that comedy, find that expression. So I feel I like now I can go and do those things confidently and wholeheartedly. So, yeah, I look forward to maybe that opportunity as well.

Taylor Tomlinson on Her Personal Journey

John Dehlin [03:33:32] You mentioned a hero who's a comedian. Do you want to mention, do you want to talk about her?

Annie Marie [03:33:36] Oh my gosh. So Taylor Tomlinson, I don't know if you guys have seen her. I've been watching her over the years.

John Dehlin [03:33:44] She's done some Mormon stuff, a little bit of Mormon stuff.

Annie Marie [03:33:46] Yes. I think in her most recent comedy show or whatever show that I think she talked a little bit about it. But what I appreciate about her journey and I resonate with as someone who's like kind of just deconstructing so many years later, is her evolution through reclaiming her or claiming her journey, acknowledging her journey through comedy. And it had a lot of pain and sort of seeing how her sets were in the beginning. And then her most recent special, she seemed a little bit more nuanced and accepting of other people's journeys. And that could mean so many things. But like, I think that's where I'm coming to. Not that I'm accepting the harmful parts and being like, that's okay now that I will never stop talking about the harm, but individuals and being okay with their journey and not wanting to control. And so I see that reflected in her entire evolution and her most recent special. So that's someone that I look up to and the way she's just so funny and I look up to her comedy style and through religion. I think it's very brave to do so. Religion is such a sensitive topic for a lot of people, but it shouldn't be. I think, yes, respect it in some ways, but also we need to talk about it. It rules so much of our lives. So I appreciate the way that she's done that through her journey. So I very much look up to her.

Michaela on The Body Keeps the Score

John Dehlin [03:35:30] You mentioned a TV show that you found interesting or entertaining lately. Do you want to share that?

Annie Marie [03:35:37] I resisted watching the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives for a long time because I was like, is this going to be triggering? I didn't really know what the Girls were like. But my gosh, seeing the different experience of, like, Utah Mormons was eye opening, seeing sort of their nuance and sort of. And I know it's not everyone's Utah Mormon experience, certainly I've heard people, you know, kind of be somewhat angry about that, but that is an experience for a lot of, you know, Utah Mormons, but particularly Michaela's story, with my history of sexual abuse and how that manifested later in her life has echoed my story. And so I really appreciated her openness and her story. And literally, I didn't touch on this too much, but intimacy has been something that I've struggled with, both, I think, from the messaging of the church and just expecting that you can be a sexual being once you're married, but also the sexual abuse. It's something that I'm still going through and in therapy for, in sexual trauma therapy. And so seeing that experience reflected back to me through Mikayla's story was like, oh, my gosh. Like, my husband and I looked. We watched it together, we looked at each other, and we're like, are they living our life? Like, this isn't. This is insane, just hearing her story. So I know a lot of people judge it, but I think there's a lot of value in them showing their version of Mormonism. And I think we can find value in many versions of Mormonism, even if we might not agree with all of it. But certainly that story touched me so much. So I'm grateful for her seeing that because I recognized it in myself and. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:37:28] And then a book that's been heavily influential. I think you mentioned the Body Keeps the Score. Is that right?

Annie Marie [03:37:34] Yeah, the Body Keeps the Score. Bessel Van Der Kolk, I think is how you say it. I'm ADHD this way. I read, like, three books at a time, so I've taken a break from that one. But I think, obviously something that I've recognized throughout my journey is trauma lives in the body a lot of the time. And, you know, your childhood, the way that you were conditioned and wired, lives in there, too. Your inner child lives in there. And just. I am. I'm a person that really likes to understand myself. And this book has helped me understand how both being raised in the environment I had and my sexual trauma, how that can be stored in the body and how to also come out of that, which is unique to everybody. But that's a book that I've thoroughly enjoyed and just sort of seeing my own experience in it. So it's been very helpful. So I would suggest if anyone struggled with these things, that's I think a book. It's a little hard to read at first. There are very explicit stories. So I would just say that, just be warned. But I think it's very informative.

The Book of Mormon Musical

John Dehlin [03:38:51] And then final question. I noticed you discovered the Book of Mormon musical recently. Do you have a favorite song or two? You say you're singing the soundtrack constantly now.

Annie Marie [03:39:03] Constantly. So I was in London, my husband had a work trip there and Mormonism has been up in my field for a couple years again now. And I was like, I think I'm ready to go see this musical. I've seen it for years. I wasn't sure what to expect. I didn't know if it was like, I honestly didn't know if it was like pro or against or what it was. I just heard it was funny. I am obsessed with it. I want, I wish they had a woman's version of it. I want to be in it. I want to sing all the songs.

Margi Dehlin [03:39:36] I

Annie Marie [03:39:39] city so freaking funny. But it also reflects very real parts of it too. And it opened my eyes to a lot of dynamics too in the church of like missions. It's a little bit of. Or a lot of bit of modern day colonization in some ways. And that story is reflected in the Book of Mormon musical. And you're like damn, damn. And so. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:40:08] But like you, it's very funny and very serious.

Annie Marie [03:40:12] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:40:12] Simultaneously.

Annie Marie [03:40:13] And so I think that reflected my own experience too where I was like this is hilarious but also has a lot of truth to it. I just want to be a part of it. I want to be all up in it. It's so funny. I was singing the songs for months and my sister who had never seen it, my 16 year old sister, her and I were singing the soundtrack because I was just playing it over and over and. And just thought it was so funny. So I really appreciate that comedy of it and I think when you can enjoy those parts of it, which I think, I think my videos are similar in that way where you can find the humor in it and sort of acknowledge the things through humor. It's kind of a lovely concoction. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:40:55] I have maggots in my scrotum.

Annie Marie [03:41:00] You guys have still seen it?

John Dehlin [03:41:01] Yes, I know. I saw it on opening weekend in New York City and the New York Times flew me out and interviewed me to get my reaction to the Book of Moral Musical the weekend it was

Annie Marie [03:41:14] like it's premiere premiered.

John Dehlin [03:41:15] Yeah. Back in 2011.

Annie Marie [03:41:18] So to be you.

John Dehlin [03:41:19] No, no, no.

Annie Marie [03:41:20] Oh, my gosh, that's so.

John Dehlin [03:41:21] It was just a moment in time.

Annie Marie [03:41:22] But what was that? I mean, what was that like for you?

John Dehlin [03:41:25] I cried, like. Cause I served a mission in Guatemala and experienced a lot of. Not just the colonization, but with the danger and the heartache and the faith crisis stuff. Like, it hit home. I think it's a masterpiece. And the fact that it was written by Never Mormons just blew my mind because I felt seen. I felt so seen.

Annie Marie [03:41:46] Exactly. Yeah. My husband was looking at me the whole time, was like, is that true? Because he doesn't know much other than what I. The videos I make and stuff. And what you don't know, you don't know. And so he was. Was like turning over. He's like, is that true? They teach them, like.

Margi Dehlin [03:42:00] Yep.

John Dehlin [03:42:01] That's fun. Well, Annie, what a beautiful gift your comedy and your writing and your art has been for all of us and your heroine's journey. So I want to thank you for that on behalf of all of us who love your work and who will love your work as a result of this episode. And then also for coming on Mormon Stories and sharing your. Your wisdom and your life experience and a lot of serious, heavy, intense stuff. Your vulnerability and your openness. For all that, Margi and I just want to thank you for everything you've done for our community and for us.

Annie On Saturday Night Live

Annie Marie [03:42:40] Thank you so much. And likewise, I wouldn't be here without your guys podcast and certainly not other ex Mormons videos. Strengthen my own voice. So. So thank you and for the opportunity, truly.

Margi Dehlin [03:42:55] Yeah. We honor your voice.

Annie Marie [03:42:57] Thank you.

Margi Dehlin [03:42:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:42:58] So when you're a cast member on Saturday Night Live, we knew you win.

Annie Marie [03:43:04] Yes. I've literally written that in my journal, so.

John Dehlin [03:43:07] You did.

Annie Marie [03:43:08] I did.

John Dehlin [03:43:09] I saw that in a vision, too.

Annie Marie [03:43:11] Really?

John Dehlin [03:43:11] Yeah, this morning.

Annie Marie [03:43:13] Oh, my goodness. Seeing the beauty of it.

Margi Dehlin [03:43:16] What is going on right now?

John Dehlin [03:43:17] I know. I mean, I just found out that. What's her name, she just stepped down. Was it not Zoe, what's her name, the Scientologist? Chloe Feynman just stepped down. Yeah, she won't be on. So you know they had a Scientologist. Yeah, they need a Mormon to replace the Scientologist.

Annie Marie [03:43:33] Lots of ex Mormon humor or Mormon humor to. To be expressed.

John Dehlin [03:43:38] All right. We're going to manifest that.

Annie Marie [03:43:40] I am manifesting this. It will happen. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:43:43] Are you on board, Margi, or.

Margi Dehlin [03:43:44] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:43:45] Okay. All right, here.

Annie Marie John's Manifestation

Margi Dehlin [03:43:46] Let's do anything Annie wants.

John Dehlin [03:43:48] You heard it here first. Lorne Michaels, if you're listening.

Margi Dehlin [03:43:53] Wow.

John Dehlin [03:43:54] Annie Marie John's doing it.

Margi Dehlin [03:43:55] I Think this is my first John

Annie Marie [03:43:57] manifestation moment, so I'm here for it.

Margi Dehlin [03:44:00] I love it.

John Dehlin [03:44:01] Thank you. So let it be written, so let it be done. All right, Annie Marie, thank you. Tell everyone where they can find your stuff and how they can support you. You.

Annie MDK on Venmo

Annie Marie [03:44:10] Yeah, so I'm on TikTok and Instagram. It's Annie MDK on both. I'm also uploading on YouTube, so that's also Annie MDK, I think, without the period on that one, but try both. Yeah. So if people want to get in

John Dehlin [03:44:28] touch with you or support you, how do they support you financially?

Annie Marie [03:44:32] I don't have something set up for that, so just through social media is fine.

John Dehlin [03:44:37] DM you or whatever.

Annie Marie [03:44:39] Yeah, DM me? Yeah. If you want to support me financially. Yeah. Send me a message.

John Dehlin [03:44:42] You need a freaking Venmo or something.

Margi Dehlin [03:44:44] Is that.

Annie Marie [03:44:45] Should I do that?

John Dehlin [03:44:46] I mean. Yeah, okay.

Annie Marie [03:44:48] Maybe I'll look into that.

John Dehlin [03:44:49] Okay, listen, let's just say by the time this releases, you will create an Annie MDK Venmo.

Margi Dehlin [03:44:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:44:57] And create it today so that you grab it and then once she creates it, log onto it, find it, make sure it's her, and then donate to support your creativity on Venmo.

Margi Dehlin [03:45:14] Love it.

John Dehlin [03:45:15] Will you do it?

Annie Marie [03:45:16] I will do it.

Margi Dehlin [03:45:16] Yeah.

Annie Marie [03:45:16] It'll be there by the time this comes out, I'm sure.

John Dehlin [03:45:19] If you want, check the description to make sure. We'll put a link there. I'll have you send your Venmo link to Brooklyn and Julia so that then people can confirm and then send her all the money. Don't send us any money this week. Send her all the money. Is that all right?

Annie Marie [03:45:36] Yes, that's fine.

John Dehlin [03:45:37] Thank you. Okay, I'll set that up. All right, well, keep up the great work, Annie. Thank you again, really, for all you do and hope you'll come back and stay in touch.

Annie Marie [03:45:46] Absolutely, I will. Thank you so much.

Margi Back in the Saddle

John Dehlin [03:45:48] All right. And Margi, it's so great to have you back in the saddle. Thanks for coming back.

Margi Dehlin [03:45:54] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:45:55] I did a. I did a little query to my viewers and listeners, like, do you want me to have other contributors like Nemo and Julia? And one resounding piece of feedback was, where's Margi? More Margi. We want Margi all the time. So you're loved.

Margi Dehlin [03:46:14] You're like, nice to know.

John Dehlin [03:46:16] Yeah. All right. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Like and subscribe. Please email us with feedbackormorestoriesmail.com we love your comments. You can follow and like us on all the platforms. Also follow and like Annie MDK on all the platforms as well. Share this please and yeah, and I would normally give our donate pitch but for this week donate to Annie, not us. So anyway, thanks for all your feedback. If you want to apply Annie applied to be on Mormon Stories. In this case, we asked you to apply but you did apply. And if you want to be on Mormon Stories, you think you have a good story to tell and you're a good storyteller, go to mormastories.org apply 3 minute video fill out the application. We are always looking for good stories and good storytellers, so please apply if you want to. And we want to thank Brooklyn and Julia for all they do behind the scenes along with all our co hosts including Margi. Thanks to all our donors that make this possible and we'll just end by saying be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Check out Annie MDK on all the platforms and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care everybody.