We're up just after dawn at the beach rental, because two-year-olds wake early and so do I these days. We're perfect for each other. The rest of the house sleeps. "Go to big water," she commands, so now my granddaughter and I are barefoot in the white sand, called by the ocean, me with coffee, while she clutches a berry juice pack.
She grasps my little finger fiercely, just one finger, she's decided, as she ventures into the ocean waves for the first time, squealing with surprise and delight as the cold water tickles her toes.
She trusts me to keep her safe. Her trust, her innocence, her preciousness, bring me to tears.
I'm fully aware I've been gifted a perfect moment. Deep joy washes through me as I watch her in-and-out dance with the tide, still holding fast to my little finger. Grateful.
Then I feel an almost imperceptible flicker of pain in my chest, an awareness I would have ignored a year ago, but which I now turn toward, trying to be curious, not dismissive.
I realize it's the pain of knowing I am present with my granddaughter right now in a way I hadn't been with my own children. Unable to be completely available to them, without the filter of needing to perform this simple act of introducing a child to the ocean in the "right way."
As if there was some "right" way, some script to follow, and I needed to do it properly. If I could be the perfect mother, do it "right," it would keep me from the self-criticism that followed me like my shadow. My need to "do" perfect, to be perfect. Capture it with a photograph.
My deeply ingrained perfectionism is the result of my formative years of performing worthiness with my family, the Mormon church, and its community. To avoid judgment, to belong, to be loved. Perfectionism internalized, calcified into my core identity.
And then comes a deeper ache of another shadow: the realization that my granddaughter was experiencing safety and trust in an adult in a way I never did as a child. I take a moment, a deep breath, and acknowledge that it's a loss I'll never outgrow. Then let it go.
I return to the moment, the now, the delight. Her pleasure, her curiosity, thrill me. I relish the morning sun on our shoulders, the grainy texture of the sand under our bare feet, the squawk of a seagull. These aren't small things. They're everything I was told I'd lose, genuine happiness, and everything I found in leaving the Mormon faith.
But I’ve been showing you myself as healed, fully recovered, which isn’t the whole truth. The truth is much messier, more complicated, more human.
I'm writing this from a different place than where I began a year ago to share my thoughts on leaving the Mormon faith.
A year ago, I announced my memoir was finished. An agent ready to sell it. But it needed editing. Because in revisiting my writing, I unearthed truths about myself and my family I wasn't ready to see. Truths that demanded I write from a more vulnerable place.
I thought my healing was finished. That I'd understood what it meant to be raised Mormon royalty, descended from the Joseph Smith family. Decades had passed since I left the church. The trauma was behind me, I told myself. Processed. Resolved. Ready to package as a transformation story.
I was ready to teach others how to leave. I started this space for people leaving Mormonism and other high-control religions. I wrote about the challenges of exit, the complexity of family dynamics, the search for meaning beyond dogma. That work matters. It's necessary. But it's not complete.
We're never finished with our past. Or The Church. We can't erase the losses, nor can we be given as adults what we needed as children. We have scars from trauma. They fade, but they remain part of us.
I've been showing you the shattered pieces of what Mormonism broke. The fractures. The sharp edges. But I haven't shown you something else—how those same cracks are how the light comes through. How the breaking made space for everything I now have and value in my life.
Self-discovery. Authentic relationships. Real, not performed, kindness. Genuine empathy, not duty. More child-like curiosity. True compassion, not just for others, but myself. An ability to be more present in this "one wild and precious life," to quote Mary Oliver. To forgive others and myself. Peace with uncertainty. My own connection to the Mystery, or the Divine, or God, as some people call this unknowable energy.
My granddaughter gently drops my finger to explore a shell that has washed up at her feet. And I feel a tiny wave of relief, a ripple of happiness, through me. It’s the pleasure of knowing that the generational cycle of shame and unworthiness that came with my Mormon faith ended with me. She will have her own challenges; we can’t escape them, but not this one.
Where I Am Now
I'll still write about life after Mormonism—the practical challenges, the guidance that matters. But I'll also write with more completeness. More honesty. More of the messy process, not just the insights. More about the joy, the rewards, which continue to expand.
And you'll see less certainty of having it all figured out. Because I don't. And pretending I do serves no one, most of all myself.
Mormonism worships certainty. Having all the answers. I've traded that comfort for something richer: Not knowing. Wonder. Awe. How little we can ever truly know. How much remains to discover.
Psychologist Carl Jung wrote, "The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it."
I spent my first decades building the perfect Mormon identity. Then running from it. Then battling it. Now I'm living who I am within it all, acknowledging the scars, tending what hasn't healed, celebrating the light and spaciousness as I finally let it in.
What This Space Will Be
Here, we create alchemy from the religious language that once confined us by transforming it. Spirituality. Grace. Liberation. Revelation. Sacred. These words belong to us now.
Here, anger has its seasons. So does joy. So does grief. Let's make room for all of it.
Here, we tell the truth about what happened to us without needing it to convince anyone else. We find our voices, even if they tremble. Even if they sound too loud for people still sitting reverently in the chapel.
If healing is quiet for you, beautiful. If it's messy and public and full of swearing, beautiful, too. There's room for everything and everyone.
I'm still Lyn Smith Gregory. Still the great-great-granddaughter of Joseph Smith's younger brother, Samuel. Still carrying that complicated inheritance.
But I'm also someone new, and still in the process of becoming all of me. Someone who understands that the opposite of Mormon isn't enlightened ex-Mormon. It's just human.
Thank you for being here. For reading. For staying, as I change and grow and sometimes spiral back to places I thought I'd already left.
Let's share it all: the stories and the scars, the triumphs and the tender places. The anger that finally freed us. The joy we didn't know was waiting.
We can write our life scripts to have different endings. It's our story now, the hero's journey, both broken and luminous. Let's share it together.
With Love,
Lyn
