Skivvies and Damnation

“Ordinances and covenants become our credentials for admission into [God’s] presence. To worthily receive them is the quest of a lifetime; to keep them thereafter is the challenge of mortality.” –   LDS President Boyd K. Packer

I better just get the underwear thing out of the way.  I am not sure that the necessity of special  underwear in order to find eternal salvation is something I can just zip on past.   It’s a topic that needs addressing.  Not just because people in general are fascinated with the idea that mormons wear secret underwear, (they do) but also because it was certainly a huge part of my overwhelming unhappiness as a mormon woman,  and a painful hurdle to overcome.

 But.

I dread it….writing about this part.   Because it’s absolutely sacred to the mormon population.  And while I will poke fun, be irreverent, and unafraid to talk about the church’s darker, more damaging side… it is not my intention to hurt or disrespect LDS people.

I don’t believe in the church anymore.  And the secrecy surrounding many of the beliefs and teachings were damaging and hurtful to me, and many others. There is so much secrecy, and so much fear in talking honestly and openly about real experience.  There is no safe forum for mormon people to express their feelings of doubt or fear or disagreement.   I have been filled with much hesitation to share some of these more sacred elements out of respect for the LDS people, out of my desire to not feel hated and condemned by them, my own family members especially. I squirm in my seat as I write this.   It has taken me a long time to arrive here, to this moment when I believe that I deserve to share it, to own it, to call it out, just as they will spread their message and try to find people to blindly follow their faith.

 I will share the sacred parts…  the temple, the underwear, with intention…not to desecrate something holy, but to own my story and shed the shame and propensity to hide behind propriety at the cost of my soul, my spirit.  It is all I can do.

 l love mormons.

I was one.  I am married to someone who was molded and shaped into an incredible father and husband by the LDS faith.  I was a fifth generation mormon, and almost all of my ancestors and living relatives are still faithful LDS people.   Mormons are some of the most generous, caring, loving, and thoughtful people you will meet.  They are resourceful and energetic and loving and they will bring you a casserole and a pan of brownies, help you move, jump your dead battery on the side of the road, or visit you when you are sick  without pause or reciprocation.

So.  Deep breath.

To start with the basics, yes, mormons do in fact wear special underwear.  Mitt Romney?  He wears the undies.  So does his wife.  Any faithful, active adult member of the LDS community with a church resume like the Romney’s must wear the garments, or they would be deemed unworthy of holding those important church positions.  Children do not wear garments…you must be 18, found worthy, and go through sacred and very secret rituals and ceremonies in an LDS temple in order to purchase and wear garments.

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-Denver, Colorado Temple.  The temple I first received my garments.

Mormons believe the underwear is absolutely sacred and is not supposed to be shown to others or spoken about to outsiders.  The underwear is worn to keep one modest, serve as a reminder of the promises made to God, and when worn faithfully and correctly can be protective.  There are hundreds of stories floating in mormonland and even shared over the pulpit about people who were physically protected in accidents or fire by wearing the garments.  These are the stories that confirm the notion to outsiders that mormons wear “magical underwear.”


Mormon underwear is all white, a symbol of purity.  The men wear a basic white shirt, and the bottoms look like white boxer briefs but the legs are lengthened to a few inches above the knee.  There are secret symbolic markings embroidered into various places on the bottoms and tops.  The markings are small, white and not very noticeable.  The women wear tops that look like tank tops with capped sleeves.  They come in a variety of neck lines, but they all come up high enough to modestly cover indecent cleavage exposure.  For women with bigger breasts, the tops are sewn with boob pouches, of sorts, so that the top will fit smoothly over all the skin.  The catch is, women must wear the sacred garment under the bra.  Ladies will understand the supreme discomfort that this may cause the well endowed LDS.  I don’t care how smooth you try to make those boob pouches, they are simply not good enough to prevent bunching, puckering, and movement of the bra in all the wrong places.  The bottoms look like white spandex, that go down to a few inches above the knee, to prevent scandalous immodest flashing of the upper thigh.  The female garments have the same markings as the men…  a strange phenomenon of equality within the faith, not often replicated.

Thankfully, the design has changed over time, as they used to be one-piece numbers, with long sleeves, long pants…and a crotch flap. These beauties may still be available for worthy purchasers. Awesome.  The one-piecers were a piece of history my mother loved to remind me of as we commiserated about the hot misery of those boob pouches. And despite our shared discomfort, the sacred power of those garments held tremendous control over our lives.  The influence the underwear has in daily LDS life is hard to articulate, and the guilt and perceived wickedness over letting them go was immense.  The decision to slip on a pair of good ol’fashioned bikini briefs caused almost paralyzing anxiety at times, paralleled only in my emotions now, as I let go to the fears associated with writing about the underwear.

Releasing that fear was a challenge, when I am going to burn in hell for writing about this.  Actually, I don’t think most mormons believe in “burning in hell.”  Hell is called outer darkness, and is rarely spoken of.

I have come far enough to have let go of that belief, the idea that the kind of skivvies I wear is important to God, or a measure of my worthiness as a human being.  Can there be a heavier weight, a more taxing exercise, than a continual critical measuring of self worth?  The memory of that measurement still makes it hard for me to breathe, it presses in on my throat, my voice disappears.

Floating out here in the “outer darkness,” I feel so much lighter.  And I marinate in this idea:

We are all worthy.

Always.

The worthiness is brilliant and it’s still flowering within me.

The projection of strength, faith, and sacrifice is paramount in the mormon community, and even within the family circle there can be a thick communication barrier.  It’s a barrier that still snakes it’s way through me, coiling around my darkest places, the most raw fears.  I know that LDS people will feel disrespected and offended by the things I write here, about my own personal experience as a mormon woman.   I see the fear in my mother and father’s eyes when I tell them about the things  I will write here, for the world to read.  For their family members to read. But their discomfort it is unavoidable,…inevitable, if I am to accomplish what I have set out to do…to find my voice and be unafraid to use it.  That voice has been bound and gagged for too long by the remaining vestiges of mormon unmentionables.   I have set out to peel away the layers of my self, to discover what is underneath, and scrape that away too.

When all the layers are gone, the only thing remaining will be what is at the core of us all.

God.  Love.

My hope is that my willingness to be raw, naked and condemned by people I love will help someone else find the God within themselves too.

I will send this small nugget of release into the blog-iverse with the promise of more details to come.  The next layer must come off.  I’m just going to catch my breath first.

To be continued.

Bottoms up, Sister Poulin

Freedom – Our True Essence.

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After the decision to leave was made, after we let our intentions be known to our bishop, after I began an honest and open investigation of the place I had centered my life around…

Rick and I stood together, muddling through day-to-day life. But it was a life that had lost it’s definition, and our marriage had lost it’s boundaries, and our parenting had lost the written manual.  We were still hiding from most of our loved ones.  We lived in California at the time, and my family lived in Colorado, Rick’s in Vermont.  We did not need to tell them quite yet, about our radical decision.  The ability to secretly flounder our way through those first terrifying months was a factor so gratifying I was both weak with relief and completely wild with the task of hiding the chaos that we had unleashed in our lives.

 

We had to redefine everything.  The names we go by (Brother and Sister Poulin), what we ate (I still love green jello and funeral potatoes) what we drank, and where to charitably contribute now that 10% of our income was not being poured into building more churches.  We had to take a look at the kind of art we hung on the walls, the kind of cheap summer t-shirts I filled my cart with at Target (hello tank tops!!!) and even the kind of underwear we wore.  (It took me 8 years to buy ANYTHING white again).*

Most importantly, we had to discover what we would tell our children about God and their divine nature, what life is all about, what happens when we die, and who they really are… after all, my stories had just turned to ash in my hands. Luckily, they were still so little, just twenty months old and five months old. They had no idea what was happening to us as a family, though they surely felt the shaky trepidation that filled me countless times a day when the question “what if I am WRONG?” rose in my throat like a bubble and burst in my brain, sending waves of panic and visions of outer darkness (mormon hell).

As babies, they surely sensed my rage and deep sense of betrayal as I explored my entire past, my heritage, the doctrine … with freedom and a more open mind, and found things that made me question every conclusion and idea I had ever had about the nature of Heavenly Father, the prophet Joseph Smith, and all of those Book of Mormon stories.  I thought I was just leaving our religion, but mormonism is a culture.  A way of life.  Of thinking.  Of filtering the world.

To lose one’s cultural roots and orientation along with one’s definition of God and the purpose of life was a process, not a simple matter of walking away.

Several months into our life outside of the chapel doors, I was aching to share my fears with someone, but Rick remained adamantly opposed to talking about my research.  We did talk a lot about the rules that had been governing our lives.  Mormons live by a very long list of rules. They undergo interviews to determine how compliant they are, and whether they are worthy enough to enjoy certain blessings that are tied directly to eternal salvation. Chastity, paying 10% of your income as tithing, and following the Word of Wisdom are crucial for earning entrance to the celestial kingdom (the highest degree of heaven).  Additionally,  there are a more complex list of cultural rules that are tiptoed around and wrestled with in mormon life.  Rules about tattoos, body piercings, the color of shirt the men wear to pass the sacrament, length of hair and facial hair for men, dress codes, the kind of t.v., movies, books, music and magazines you enjoy, the language you use, the activities you engage in on Sundays…. it goes on, and on.

Together, we began to pick through this pile, sorting what stays and what goes like a giant garage sale.  It was tedious, and the discussions left us squirming and scared.  After a several months, drinking alcohol was brought up.

I had very little experience with drinking in my past, before we had met.

My parents told me my whole life that alcohol was sinful, it would destroy my entire life, and if I took one sip I would certainly be an alcoholic, since I had a few in my family tree. I would unleash a demon that could not be tamed if I broke the Word of Wisdom (the code of rules that includes a forbidding of coffee, tea and alcoholic beverages).  Mormon people can not marry in the temple if they do not diligently follow the word of wisdom.  It is a strictly enforced rule, and people follow it because it is an easy choice… go to heaven, or have a latte.  I was absolutely terrified of alcohol.

Being the stalwart rule follower, I had not had a drink of any kind until my 21st birthday.  My boyfriend at the time slid it across the bar table at me.  A Killian’s Red.  On that same afternoon, Salt Lake City was hit with a destructive tornado, right in the heart of the city. A tornado in the Salt Lake valley surrounded by enormous mountains was an unheard of weather phenomenon, and the mormon girl in me shuddered as I sipped that first beer. It was a sign.

 

Rick on the other hand, was a seasoned pot head back in the day.  As a devotee of the law, this knowledge always shocked my innocent mind.

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His stories of graduating from college and moving to Lake Tahoe with his buddies in order to engage in a year submerged in skiing, video games and surrounded in an ever-present cloud of skunky smoke made my head spin in confusion.  When Rick would talk about his past, it always left me completely mystified.  I had only known the mormon version of Rick, the return missionary. His “before the church” Rick stories did not merge with the man I knew. At all.  I felt like he was making it up entirely.  The disconnect seemed so distinct, I simply could not understand how a pot smoking ski bum could also be my straight laced math-geek husband who wrote me hand written love letters, went to four hours of additional church meetings on sundays (regular church service is three hours long) with a smile on his face, and made sure we never watched a rated R movie.

Rick grew up with beer in the fridge and did not think twice about it. He probably had the same perception of it as I did with caffeinated sodas…a can of pepsi was an adult beverage in my childhood home. (A lot of mormons will extend the Word of Wisdom to caffeinated beverages of any kind, but this delineation is left for personal interpretation).

Rick never really liked drinking either, which is why weed had been his choice activity in those pre-mormon days.   But Rick had given up his pot, alcohol, and coffee, to be a mormon man (amongst other things not related to the word of wisdom). He did it happily, and enjoyed the changes it brought into his life. He told me he never missed it, longed for it, or felt tempted by his past.  It is obviously a more healthy way of life, to be free from addictive substances, and it was no problem for him to leave it behind.

 

Our long discussion ended one night, when Rick put a six pack of Killian’s Red down on the couch between us, and we stared at it silently.

Do we dare?

Fear made my heart pulse in my throat as he handed me one.  It felt necessary.  Like swinging an axe uncomfortably close to an appendage in order to break the chains.  A shedding of controlling beliefs, an opening towards our own ability to choose. The most recent material I had read in my research of the church fueled my boldness.  I would not let a church sitting on that newly unveiled foundation control me. We each picked up a cold bottle from the cardboard carrier, clinked them together in the world’s most awkward toast, and headed into purgatory with a few cool gulps…

 

A Killian’s Red. (Ew).

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We each drank one.  It felt scary to put the unopened bottles in the fridge next to the bottles of breast milk and applesauce.  It felt like we were already raging alcoholics, as I buried the empty bottles in the garage with the dirty diapers.  We went to bed, Rick still wearing his garment top as we lay together.  He leaned over and kissed me, and I tasted it in his mouth…the Killians Red lurked there, under the toothpaste.

What have I done?

My brain screamed…I have unleashed an unpredictable monster!

Mayday!

Mayday!  It’s Pandora’s Box!  Evil!

Danger!

 I know mormon Rick.  He was a guy I chose to marry.  I did not know the Rick that existed before the mormoness.  And I had asked him to strip away those mormon pieces. The armor will come off, the rules and regulations will be chipped away…but I did not know what I would find there.

What if he becomes someone completely unrecognizable to me?  A stranger?  A stranger I can’t love?

What if I became a woman unbearable to Rick? If I lost control of myself entirely and was unable to make these choices for myself?

We kissed, and he tasted cryptic.  I pulled off his mormon garment top to touch the real man beneath that cotton barrier, a part of me vowed to pour that evil beer down the sink first thing in the morning. The other part of me, only a tiny bit stronger, softened into the fear and the mystery and freedom of becoming something new. Or perhaps, we would not become something new, but simply discover what we were underneath… once the fear was shed.

*Active, devoted mormon adults wear unique underwear.  You must gain a temple recommend, be deemed “worthy,” and go through a secret ritual in a temple before wearing the underwear.  The underwear is referred to as garments.  It is always white, and considered sacred.  Both men and women wear garments, and by design restricts certain kinds of fashion, including sleeveless tops. You must be worthy and wear the garments at all times except to shower, be intimate with a spouse, or swim. in order to enter the highest degree of heaven.