Truth telling is Liberation, a Divine Rebellion: How Anel Lestage is Dismantling Belief & Finding the Fire Within
In this beautiful episode, I speak with Anel Lestage, a fierce advocate for reimagining the traditional home schooling. She believes learning happens best when rooted in culture, nature, and honest reflection. This powerful episode takes us on her journey of liberation and growth!
Here are some key highlights from our conversation:
- Homeschooling and Photography Career Paths
Photography, blogging, and supportive community; transitioning to family-focused work; raising a creative child; homeschooling journey.
- Faith-Based Homeschooling Journey
Transitioning from traditional to flexible homeschooling, integrating LDS teachings, and personal struggles with changing doctrines.
- Family Conversion and Faith Struggles
A guest shares their family's conversion to Mormonism and eventual departure due to COVID-19 and personal disbelief.
- Transitioning From Mormonism to Secular Education
Marriage and faith in the Mormon community, cultural expectations, balancing responsibilities, and prioritizing well-being and family.
- Exploring Religion and Critical Thinking
Redefining personal and familial identity outside organized religion, preserving critical thinking skills, and celebrating self-discovery.
Follow Anel @casadelestage and at her blog
https://www.casadelestage.com/
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Created by Alicia A. Elatassi for more Señora Vibes Follow @the_aliciae and @senoravibespodcast on Instagram
Please share the episodes with your friends, and please follow my guests.
Let's connect, visit my website https://aliciaelatassi.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
Wonder, wonder, wonder.
Wonder.
Hi friends for this episode.
(00:34):
I'm excited to share with you that I am joined by someone that I've been wanting to have on the podcast for a while.
Anil is so many things.
I mean, there's just so much that I just wanna share about her.
I met her a few years ago.
She has a very interesting story of leaving the Mormon church.
She was as committed as you could be.
(00:54):
She was homeschooling her children, which she still does, but her perspective and the way things have changed in her life in the last five years has been so dramatic that I wanted her on the show to tell us a little bit about that journey and what it's meant for her and what it all means today now in 2025 she's progressed and evolved in, in so many ways.
And just someone who's just a breath of fresh air in this world, in the way that, you know, just feeling super liberated and just joyful for, for the opportunities to do things again, and to live, life at our own terms.
(01:30):
So I hope you enjoy it.
And let me know what you think.
Enjoy.
How are you doing? I'm good.
I'm excited.
I know the last time you asked me to have this conversation I wasn't quite ready for it yet, but I'm there now.
I know, I know.
And I was thinking about like every single year that went by.
(01:53):
I'm like, I wonder if she's ready to talk about it.
'cause it's been like, I think it's been like five years and I've been waiting on this, on this interview.
Mm-hmm.
With you.
Yeah, it has.
And I was like, maybe we could do it anonymous.
I mean, I don't know.
I was thinking of all these ideas, like how to do it so that you can come on, because I think your story is just so fascinating.
And, even though we haven't met in person, we, we were, we were both part of the Latina bloggers group, the Houston Latina Bloggers group.
(02:20):
Yeah.
You did photography for some of the girls there.
You, I remember you, uh, sharing your photography.
I think that was the first thing that I remember about you.
Was it, you did photography and you did a few brand sessions with some of the girls? Mm-hmm.
With Connie? Yeah.
Not sure.
I don't know if it was her or maybe it was some other, another person.
(02:43):
Yeah.
Do you remember those days? Uhhuh? I started out walking with, working with Connie, um, and then I.
I also worked with, uh, Melanie.
I don't know if she's still with Latina bloggers.
And then, Millie.
Mm-hmm.
A little bit with Victoria Garcia, like collaborating on stuff.
(03:05):
And there were a few other girls that I worked with in the group.
Yeah, Victoria became like a, a best friend of mine.
And I met her through the group too.
She had offered to do some photography for my store when I had the store.
And I remember telling her like, she called me and I'm like, girl.
I love that you have the balls to call somebody and ask 'em, Hey, can we get work together? Because a lot of people don't do that, but I will tell you, yeah, a little bit of a control freak.
(03:31):
She goes like, it's fine.
I, I can work with control freaks.
I'm like, okay, good.
That was like the first thing I told her.
I said, I'm not trying to scare you, but I am a little bit of a control freak.
So I met, oh, I met her.
Yeah.
Tell me a few years back, Uhhuh and like the first time we met up for coffee and she had just had her little girl.
(03:54):
Oh wow.
Yeah, it was when she first had her and it was just really nice getting to know her and, you know, connecting with someone in the industry because.
I feel like, uh, it, within blogging and photography, it can be kind of like a caddy industry, you know? Yeah.
So it's, it's nice to have that network of other Latinas to connect with.
(04:16):
Yeah.
You know, I, I discovered through the group so many great people.
I am, I'm still friends with a lot of them.
They would come in and do influencer events for me or, you know, blog for me or model for me.
Mm-hmm.
And I learned so much from them too.
Like, I learned a lot from the girls that would come in and do, you know, um, mar influencer marketing for me.
(04:39):
So it was great.
I loved it.
It was a great event.
Are you still doing photography? I am getting back to it.
I took a really long break after I had my fourth kid.
Mm-hmm.
But I'm just not getting back to it except, um, I used to do a lot of like branding stuff, um, commercial photography, and now I'm moving away from that and going toward like family mostly.
(05:04):
Okay.
I wanna, I wanna give away.
You are supposed to do my photography, but then COVID happened and then we never got, oh no.
Well, we could probably still do it.
Yeah, I would love it.
We should, should.
I would love it.
Now I have to beg my child, my son, to do my photography for me.
Oh my gosh.
I love seeing his work and how you guys have supported him with his production stuff and his videography.
(05:30):
It's amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we, like my husband and I are super left-brained people we're really not right-brained at all.
And so to have a kid that was super, like right brain was just very, uh, hard for us to kind of like wrap our heads around it because.
Uh, are so different to raise a kid who's so creative.
(05:52):
Um, and we, we were like, Nope, no, no, you gotta go to college.
You gotta do this.
You know, the whole traditional thing.
And that kid was like, mom, I hate school.
I can't do well in school.
If you, I will, you'll torture me, mom, if you send me to school.
Cool.
You sent me to college.
So his dad was like, okay, well then it's up to you to figure out how you're gonna get this photography thing going, how you're gonna get your videos.
And that kids started doing a bunch of free videos all by himself, just asking people to do work for them and work for them and work for them.
(06:17):
And one thing led to another, and now he's gonna go work in lane.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
Congrats.
He found himself a manager out there and so he's, he's gonna be doing that, so I'm super proud of that kid.
But, you know, that's why I wanted to reach out to you.
'cause, you know, the way that I also got to know a little bit more about you is because you homeschool your kids.
(06:37):
Mm-hmm.
How long have you been homeschooling your kids? We just wrapped up our 12th year.
12, so, so basically since my oldest started first grade.
Really.
And I, I'm, I'm the opposite.
I'm a teacher myself, but I'm like, go to school dude.
Bye-bye.
Yeah, no, I hear you.
(06:57):
I'm making it different.
Yeah.
But I used to do a lot of, of, of schooling here at, at home with them.
'cause when there was test time, I used to say, there's no way you, you're the child of a teacher and you're gonna do, you're gonna do bad on a test Uhhuh.
So what got you started into that? What, what motivate you to do homeschool with homeschooling? So my oldest did try public school.
(07:19):
Um, he went for kindergarten and it just didn't really work out with his personality.,
He was at the time like a very quiet, shy kid and kind of got lost between the cracks, you know?, And.
I think the thing that really, well he was having like some bullying issues one.
(07:40):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And then the thing that really did it for me was at his kindergarten graduation,, his teacher could not pronounce his name.
What is his name? We also Nathaniel.
Oh.
Oh, okay.
And.
And he also goes by Nate, so.
Okay.
She, it, she just like totally butchered his first and last name and well, well, I guess, you know, our last name is kinda unique, um, but I felt like you, you've had all year to interact with him and you can't even learn his name.
(08:12):
Mm-hmm.
That day we had sent him to school and like the cute little like button up shirt and a little bow tie for his kind graduation.
And then when he goes up on stage, he's like in shorts and a t-shirt.
Mm-hmm.
And a completely different outfit.
So I was like, what happened? Well, it turns out he had walked outta class, gone and gotten changed and the teacher never noticed.
(08:37):
Yeah.,
When I asked her about it, she said, well, there's a lot of kids and I just can't keep track of them all.
And for me it was like, Hmm, but these are kindergartners.
They're five and six years old.
You know, if you can't keep track of 'em, I, I didn't think it was, um, the safest environment at that point.
Mm-hmm.
(08:57):
So, with my teaching background, I decided to give it a try.
Initially, it was just gonna be temporary, but.
As the years went on, then my second started homeschooling and it just got easier.
Mm-hmm.
With each year.
Each year got easier.
Um.
I don't know.
Did you ever like go crazy? 'cause I, I could go crazy very easily.
(09:18):
Oh yeah, definitely.
How did you that in the beginning it was very crazy.
Um, I struggled a lot with needing to deschool myself, um Right.
Because in the beginning I really tried to like recreate the classroom environment with them and have rules and even did the whole, you know, raise your hand to talk to me thing.
(09:40):
Mm-hmm.
And.
They just were not being receptive to that, you know? Got it.
Yeah.
And I realized it was because they were at home, it was meant to be their safe space and you know, they should have felt comfortable instead of me trying to mold them into a classroom environment.
And so it took, I think we took about six months off of schooling for.
(10:06):
That must have been the second year.
Um, and instead did a lot of more hints on stuff, field trips, things of that sort.
And that opened my eyes 'cause I saw my kids thriving to and being receptive to that kind of learning.
And I realized that I needed to kinda toss the workbooks aside and, you know, reconstruct.
(10:32):
My own education of what it meant to mm-hmm.
Educate the kids.
And you belong to the mor, to the Latter Day Saints to the Mormon church back in, back then, right? Yes, I did.
I thought you were doing the homeschooling because of that.
Like, I kind of like equated it and maybe it's, it's, it's, it's a dumb idea, but I kind of equated it to sort of like the offshoots of LDS.
(10:57):
That are very much more conservative.
So I've, I found, I thought that you came from like a sector, like a very conservative sect that didn't allow their children to go to regular public school because they would be, you know, exposed to sexual mm-hmm.
Education.
They wouldn't be praying, they wouldn't be doing a lot of the things that I figured.
So educate me a little bit on that because I, I, I think I had the wrong idea.
(11:22):
So I was actually part of the mainstream, uh, LDS religion, but I did incorporate a lot of the religion into their learning.
Definitely like we would do daily devotionals.
Prayers, um, even the education that they were receiving at the time Yeah.
Was very much, um, I try to correlate it with our religion as much as possible, like incorporate the Bible and things like that.
(11:51):
Um, and they were even doing a online, like group learning, um.
That where it was only church members and the educators were church members as well.
And that gave me like an hour, an hour and a half break.
But it was all like the, um, elective courses, like pe, um, music, those kinds of things.
(12:18):
But it was all very much faith-based.
Um, like whenever they would do PE.
Mormons, they have this thing called the word of wisdom where, um, they, they believe that the body is a temple and there are a lot of substances and things that are not allowed to consume, um, alcohol.
(12:40):
Yeah.
Coffee.
Right.
Um, because of the caffeine, right.
Is that correct? Is it the, yeah.
Well, yes.
It's what we were.
It's what I was told growing up, but very recently the church changed that.
Uh, and um, yeah, it's one of the things I've struggled with, um, now that I'm on the outside of, of seeing how the church is.
(13:06):
Doctrines and revelations, right.
Um, come in and I think as mainstream kind of criticizes certain things about the church.
Mm-hmm.
They then make changes to retain some of the membership, but they call it revelation.
And so when my two oldest were little and we were doing the faith-based learning, it was very much.
(13:29):
You know, don't, don't drink coffee.
Don't grow up to, to be a drug addict.
Don't, don't try this.
Don't try that.
Um, take care of your body.
And were you born into it or were you I was.
You were born into it.
So your parents converted or were they also born into it? No, my parents converted.
(13:50):
So at the time when they converted, they were living in Mexico and my dad converted first.
My mom was.
Resistant to it in the beginning.
Was it the missionaries? Like through the missionary work that they come and, okay, gotcha.
Yes.
Yeah.
So two young men came knocking to their door and taught them and got them to baptize.
(14:12):
Uh, they had my oldest sister, she was four at the time, and my dad actually was looking for.
Of faith.
He grew up Catholic, but not ever attending church.
Um, so he was seeking a community, I guess, and this was kind of the thing that he latched onto.
(14:33):
And like I said, my mom did not really wanna do it in the beginning because.
It was just not her tradition.
Um, and so she was resistant to it.
I think it took her about a year to finally be convinced and my dad, what, what was it about it that your dad really gravitated to? What was it? What particular thing? What was the seed that grew in his brain? So he came from an abusive background.
(14:59):
His father was abusive and an alcoholic, and he was.
Wanting to break that cycle but did not know how.
And, um, one of the main things that the church offers is this teaching of eternal families, um, of being sealed and being with your family forever and ever.
(15:20):
And so that was the thing that my dad, it appealed to him.
And because they're very family centered.
Yeah.
Um.
That helped him kind of transition away from the, you know, the life that he grew up with and not wanting to repeat the same cycle.
And I think that was mostly.
(15:42):
What it was, um, he did has told me that he was looking for community, but outside of what he grew up in, um, got, because everyone he knew was of a similar background, you know? Mm-hmm.
And he wanted, are they still in the church in it? Yes, they are.
They, they are still believing Mormons.
(16:03):
So it's my sister.
So you are the only one that left.
No, I have a brother who's younger than I, and he left first.
Okay.
So where were you in your life when you left the church? What, what place were you in your life? Were your kids, you had already your, all of your kids, or did you, you know, I had, I had, when I officially left, I had just had my fifth, um, he was a baby and COVID was starting to shut things down.
(16:33):
Mm-hmm.
And.
Um, in the beginning the church went to something called, um, home Church.
Mm-hmm.
Where they were now encouraging us to have all of the, like all the rituals that we would do at church, we could now do them at home.
And that was kind of the thing that really.
(16:54):
Blew my mind because Uhhuh, before that I was taught that these were really sacred things that you could only do in church.
Mm-hmm.
You could only do these things in the temple and those weren't things that you could do at home, like the sacrament, you know, um, blessing of children being done at home and because.
(17:15):
COVID happened and church shut down.
We were now allowed to do all of those things at home.
And so that's when I really, um, I had been questioning things before that, but that's when I really thought about just walking away from it because all of a sudden, it's okay that.
We don't attend church, you know? Yeah.
Were you afraid to disappoint your parents? Oh yeah, definitely, definitely.
(17:40):
I mean, I hid it from them for the first two, maybe three years.
Oh, really? Um, yeah, I, I didn't think I could talk about it with them.
Um, my parents, both of them serve in the church.
Um, my father has had high ranking callings within the church, and they're very, I.
(18:03):
Orthodox Mormons, um, they're there every week.
My mom also weekly attends the temple, which is not church.
It's a place where they do secret rituals, for lack of a better phrase.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and she's, I've heard, I've heard of that.
Yeah.
She's there weekly.
Um, she's very believing and so in the beginning I.
(18:27):
I was really afraid to, to talk with them about it.
My sister did know.
Um, my sister and I are very close.
She is seven years older than me, and she's a very, um, nonjudgmental person.
Um, so I really felt comfortable talking with her and she was very accepting from the beginning.
Um, but the conversation with my parents happened in an unplanned way.
(18:52):
Um, so about I.
Three years ago, I was really struggling with my anxiety and had to get back on medication for it and the conversa.
I was visiting my parents, my sister was there.
I think we were there for someone's birthday and somehow the conversation about my anxiety came up and I told my parents that I was medicated again.
(19:16):
My dad is very anti.
Clinical, anti-medicine, anti-vax, is that, is that a church doctrine or is that like something that's frowned upon in the church? Is that why he felt that way? It's not doctrine, but yeah, it is frowned upon.
Again, it goes back to the word of wisdom there, you know, only consumed things that God created and anything manmade is not, is not really.
(19:45):
Encouraged.
Yeah.
Or good for the temple or for the body, which is right.
Yeah.
But it isn't doctrine.
Um, okay.
It's, it's just cultural, I think, within the Mormon church.
Okay.
Um, and so when I mentioned it, my dad offered me a blessing, so it's this.
Special prayer that men who hold the priesthood mm-hmm.
(20:08):
Can give to heal.
They believe that through laying of hands, they can heal a person.
And well, I was no longer a believing Mormon and I refused my dad's offer for a blessing to heal my mental illness.
I, I did not believe that was gonna work.
Um, so I declined politely and he insisted, and it, it was very awkward because he said that, oh, you're rejecting me.
(20:36):
I'm your father.,
I wanna do this for you.
And I told him, I mean, we can pray.
I'll, I'll accept that we can sit here and you can pray for me if you'd like.
But I do not want a blessing.
I do not want laying, hence, uh, because I no longer believe in it.
And wow.
Wow.
And I felt kinda pushed into, you know, talking about it in the moment and it was very much a shocker for my parents.
(21:02):
My mother began to cry.
Um, she, you know, told me how disappointing it was for her.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and my poor sister tried to kind of mediate the conversation and.
You know, like, Hey, let's not judge her.
Um, mm-hmm.
But I know that they, they weren't coming from a place of, you know, like hatred or judgment toward me.
(21:29):
It's, they really, truly believe in, in their religion, and they honestly believe that it's wrong to.
Live outside of it.
Yeah.
And then they become afraid of you going to hell or not going into Oh yeah.
Or going into the, 'cause there's different states of heaven, right.
There's different levels, right.
Of getting into it.
(21:50):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
There are three levels, what you're saying.
Gimme one second.
I need to go get like a package.
Yeah, of course.
(22:31):
All right.
Thank you.
They always need me to sign something.
All right.
So tell me a little bit about like, where were you in, in terms of your relationship with your husband? Was, was he also starting to have his doubts as well? Like, were you guys feeling the same thing at the same time or, um, kind of a catalyst or was he a catalyst? I think, um, I.
(22:58):
Now I realize my husband was never like fully committed to Mormonism.
He did not grow up Mormon.
He grew up Catholic and he converted so that we could get married in the temple because it was one of the requirements I wanted to get married in the church.
And in order to do that, he had to be baptized and convert.
And you married young, right? Anil? Yes.
(23:20):
I was 19 years old and I noticed a lot of women, a lot of women in, in, in, in a lot of Mormon women marry very young.
It is encouraged almost immediately.
It's encouraged.
Oh yeah.
It is encouraged by the church to marry as young as possible, find your eternal companion.
It's what they teach us and.
Um, have children right away because the belief is that there are spirit children of God waiting in heaven to be born into bodies, and that it's our sacred duty to bring those spirits into the world.
(23:53):
Oh, interesting.
I've always wondered why they had so many babies, so young and so early.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it's, it's very encouraged by the church.
So, um.
Like you say, you've noticed it, but, and then I also noticed that a lot of them get divorced very young because I don't think they get to know each other very well or get to not at all the person they're marrying for very, very long.
(24:18):
Yeah.
Usually very short of a, of a, of a dating period, if it even is called a date.
Yes, yes.
I know people I know.
Uh, LDS people who dated for three months and then got married or, uh, I do know somebody that dated for one month and then was engaged and got married.
Um, and yeah, the divorce rate is very high.
(24:39):
Um, although it is discouraged, it is divorce is not it encouraged within the church, but like you say, a lot of people do not know each other well.
And I think that marrying very young, um.
Many of us are not emotionally prepared for what marriage truly means.
Mm.
And for me and my husband, that was definitely the case.
(25:01):
I was 19, he was 20.
Um, I was 21 by the time I had my first kid.
Mm-hmm.
And, um, I was not ready for it emotionally or mentally.
Mm-hmm.
It was, it was hard.
It put a very big strain on our marriage because there's a very idealistic, um.
(25:22):
Idea of what, what marriage is supposed to be.
You know, you're, you're gonna get married, you're going to have kids, you're gonna be a housewife.
This is, uh, very much the life plan that women or young girls within the church are taught to follow.
Mm-hmm.
Um, but there's no time for self-development, self-care.
(25:45):
Um, you're also, while being young, a young.
In a young marriage and young parents are also expected to serve in colleagues in the church and be committed to that.
Um, so you're having not only expectations or responsibilities within the family, but you have responsibilities in the church family, in that community.
(26:06):
So you're being pulled in many different directions.
So not only are you trying to raise yourself because you are young, you're raising babies, you're maintaining a, um.
A relationship, a husband, wife, relationship.
Right.
So that's also happening years that you're probably also taking care of your parents because a lot of them don't know the language or maybe they're new to the, to the, to the country.
(26:30):
Right.
So in your own education, like where does that go? Like where do you educate yourself? Like at 19 years old, are you going to college? At 19 years old, me, myself, uh, I was done with a two year degree and working in a school.
Okay.
Um, when I, when I got married, I was a teacher's assistant and then taught in a classroom after that for a few more years.
(26:59):
Wow.
But, um, so.
Young women is what they're called young girls, 12 to, or 11 now 11 to 18 years old.
Mm-hmm.
Within church are called young women and they, I don't know now because I haven't attended in a long time, but when I was a teenager we used to have something called Personal Progress where it's a little book.
(27:22):
Oh, I wish I'd had, I had one handy.
It's a little book that has.
The young women values and these values each have different goals or, um, achievements that you're supposed to, uh, complete before you turn 18.
Oh, and so there is a section called Divine Nature where, um.
(27:46):
You, you get to know yourself a little bit, but people are kind of rushed through the program.
So the part where you're encouraged to figure out what career you want, um, or think about yourself and self-love, those, those are very rushed.
There are some classes.
(28:06):
Or there were back in my day, some classes about self-worth and things like that.
Mm-hmm.
But like I said, they're very brief.
Mm-hmm.
Um, a lot of it is focused on motherhood becoming a wife, um mm-hmm.
That's, that is women and women aren't discouraged from having a career, but they are encouraged to put family first.
(28:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So kind to be mother first.
By defacto you're being discouraged to pursue higher education.
Wow.
In 2020, you started having these, these doubts, you started thinking, I don't know if I want to continue this.
What was that moment that you said, okay, I'm done.
I just, I'm just not doing this anymore.
I don't, you know, I don't care if my parents are just going to, you know, disown me.
(28:53):
I don't know.
Shun me.
What made you get to that place? Honestly like church being shut down and being able to breathe.
Mm-hmm.,
Not having that responsibility.
I served in the youth ministry and so I.
Having that break was allowed me to actually think about where I was at in life and do I want to keep doing this? And I realized I didn't, um, because I'd gotten my own time back.
(29:26):
Mm-hmm.
And was because everything was shut down with COVI was actually spending time with my husband and my kids and having time for myself, and I realized that the grass was greener on the other side.
Wow.
And, uh, we did very briefly return to church when, um, meetings resumed.
(29:47):
Mm-hmm.
Um, initially the church encouraged masking and so that they could go back to church in person.
And so we went, I think twice, but I just wasn't feeling it.
I sat there, um, through service and I, I just.
It did not resonate with me anymore, and I knew at that moment that I was not gonna come back.
(30:10):
That I, I was ready to walk away for good to leave.
Were your kids excited about it? Were they, look, were they like, how, what were their, what was their reaction? My oldest, I think, was 13 and he was the one who was most discouraged because it was definitely losing our community overnight.
(30:32):
Mm-hmm.
Um.
The majority of our friends were LDS.
Uh, I would say probably 90% of our friends were LDS.
And so it is, I don't think the Mormons officially shun people like other cults do, but uh, they definitely do in a more quiet way.
(30:55):
They do shun you and um.
It was like a slow process.
How did you feel about your community again, Anil? How did you bring your com, your, how did you, how did you surpass that? 'cause I know, speaking to a lot of people that really, the reason, really the real reason why they even go to church is for the community, for that holiness, for that feeling of, mm-hmm.
(31:18):
How did you recreate that? Because that is probably one of the hardest things to lose.
Yeah, so I, through homeschooling friends, um, initially it was with, um, there were a few families at church that also homeschooled and we did things outside of church already.
(31:40):
Like there was one family that my kids went to science club with, and they also are a large family.
The kids are the same age as mine.
And so because we already had interactions and the kids.
Got along so well and we'd known each other for so long.
We continued our friendship outside of church.
I was transparent about leaving church and, um, they were okay with that.
(32:04):
And our friendship continued.
Um, and a lot of our community was built, rebuilt through homeschooling, acquaintance acquaintances.
Okay.
Okay.
At what point did you move from deleting, I guess the devotionals, the, the, some of the morbid teachings and move on to like what you're doing now, which is, is from what I'm seeing, very earth-based, very secular.
(32:36):
Mm-hmm.
Um, very open.
There's a lot of talk of like, you know, actual like, history, right? Like actual mm-hmm.
Like, I noticed that about you, like you really dive into like history, you dive in hard to like teaching your kids about, um, processes and systems in the country, in the world that we don't typically get in, in, in the regular public school.
(33:05):
Or, or you, or we are self, we teach ourselves those things as we go on, right? As we leave college, we leave, you know, high school, we, you know, check out books at the library or we go online and find these different things.
But I noticed that you've become super intentional about changing that, that, that com, that curriculum and, and it, I'm amazed and I'm, I'm, I wish I would've had that curriculum for my kids.
(33:32):
Like I would've sent them to your school if you had, if you had a school.
That would be the place I'm sending my boys because.
I, I, on my husband and I are non-believers, so mm-hmm.
It's, it's difficult for us to even have conversations with people who are, because, um, they don't understand why we do things the way we do them.
And why, how could you ever raise your kids without, you know, a belief system? Right.
(33:56):
Or how could you ever, like, I mean, it is like you are literally sending these kids to, to hell.
Where? Well, uhhuh, at the end of the day, we don't believe in heaven or hell.
So we don't think our kids are going anywhere that, right.
Right.
So.
But it's, it's a difficult concept to try to, to explain to people that that's not, that's that we've never even thought that way for our kids.
(34:18):
We ever never wanted that for our boys.
Um, how do you handle that? Because that, that is a high control religion.
It is.
It's prescribed.
They tell you how you should live your life, how you should conduct yourself as a female, as a male.
Yeah, I think it happened in a very organic way as I dove down the rabbit hole myself.
(34:41):
Um, I really wanted to, once I stopped believing, I really wanted to understand, um, where I stood in life as a person without these, this belief system.
And so I went down a rabbit hole learning about.
Mormonism.
And, um, the more I learned, the more I deconstructed not just my faith, but other beliefs, political beliefs, um, personal beliefs, and I learned that there was a lot of truths that were hidden.
(35:18):
From me as I grew up Mormon.
And so, mm-hmm.
I, that's all I knew.
And as I dug deeper, I learned that there were a lot of things that were hidden from us.
And that took me further, further away and deeper into my own deconstruction.
(35:39):
And as I learned more, um, I tried to.
Incorporate that into our homeschooling in an organic way.
Um, I first told my kids, Hey, you know, I used to teach you this, but now I know better.
Um, wow.
And I, I just very openly said it to them.
(36:00):
That is so powerful, girl.
That is so powerful because you're building tons of credibility with those kids.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was, um.
It was hard for my oldest to, at first they were confused for sure.
Um, but a lot of it was, it was no longer me lecturing them about what they should believe, but asking them, do you believe this? Remember this is what we used to learn in church.
(36:28):
How do you feel about that? And I learned that my own children just like me, were conflicted in their own beliefs.
Um.
You know, not truly believing in heaven and hell not truly believing that all these things that were, we were told were bad, were actually bad, for example, drinking.
Um, I remember on one occasion, um, I think this was during, I.
(36:52):
The first, the first time Obama was running for President Uhhuh, and you know the schools have mock elections, right? Yeah.
So we, we did that too at home and we were discussing it with my nieces and one of them said.
Yeah, my parents aren't gonna vote for Obama 'cause he is a bad guy 'cause he drinks.
Oh.
(37:13):
And I said, wait a minute, hold on.
There are people who drink.
At the time I was still a believing Mormon, but I said, there are people who drink who aren't bad people.
Like there are people who.
Are alcoholics and it's because they're addicts that they make the choices they make.
Yeah.
And I've always tried to, you know, look at things from a more logical standpoint, like be a critical thinker.
(37:39):
Yeah.
But it was things like that where, um.
Once I talked to my kids, once we left the church, um, like, Hey, do you, do you really think that people who drink are bad people? No.
Right.
There are people who drink that are good people.
There are people who drink coffee, who are good people.
There are people who have sex outside of wedlock who are good people.
(38:00):
Like that does not define what a good person is.
Yeah.
And I really wanted my kids to understand that, that.
That their religion previously, or, you know, our, our faith did not define us as people, that we could reinvent ourselves, that we could be true to ourselves.
And I, I would have felt like a hypocrite had I been reinventing myself and evolving without being transparent with my kids.
(38:29):
Wow.
And then that is like so powerful because that's the part that I always felt.
Why I didn't wanna raise my kids in a church was because I did not wanna hinder their critical thinking skills.
I didn't wanna put blocks in their heads of like, this is how it is it when it really isn't how it is.
(38:49):
There are so many, there's gray areas and so many things.
Right.
The whole black and white mentality for us.
Mm-hmm.
For, for my husband, my husband was, was actually raised with nothing since he was a baby.
I was raised Catholic and our moms were Catholic, so we got married in the Catholic church and we went to a Catholic university together.
But I was already, I had already kinda left the church and left my belief system like at 19.
(39:13):
So by the time I met him, I had already kind of like been done with it.
And so, um, I, I, I, I was like, wow, I connected with somebody in a, in a, in a mental way that I would've never met with, you know, met with anybody else within that church or within the community of the church.
And.
When we got married and that was like the first conversation where like, I don't wanna raise my kids with anything.
(39:35):
Like I don't wanna raise my kids with any.
Okay, good.
And so for me, and now my kids are like, man, we're so glad that you didn't do that to us because you know, like we feel free.
Like we feel like we can Yes.
Think what we want.
We can feel there's a freedom.
Um.
I think I, I don't know if my kids would ever join a church.
Maybe they would.
I'm not sure.
They're very, they're critical thinking kids, but mm-hmm.
(39:56):
I don't know.
I mean, there's, there's that allure of the community, right? There's that allure of feelings of holiness.
So like when you were posting and you were at, you were your change.
I was like, wow.
I admire that courage in somebody I admire.
Thank you.
That sense of like, wow, I'm gonna do this for myself.
I'm gonna do this for my kids.
(40:17):
And, and at the end of the day, did your husband did, was, was it hard for you to kind of pull him with you or did he come along? He was like, oh girl, I was ready for you to just tell me No.
He came along.
Friends, this is just part one.
Stay tuned for part two.
Wonder, wonder, wonder.
Wonder.
Hi friends for this episode.
(00:34):
I'm excited to share with you that I am joined by someone that I've been wanting to have on the podcast for a while.
Anil is so many things.
I mean, there's just so much that I just wanna share about her.
I met her a few years ago.
She has a very interesting story of leaving the Mormon church.
She was as committed as you could be.
(00:54):
She was homeschooling her children, which she still does, but her perspective and the way things have changed in her life in the last five years has been so dramatic that I wanted her on the show to tell us a little bit about that journey and what it's meant for her and what it all means today now in 2025 she's progressed and evolved in, in so many ways.
And just someone who's just a breath of fresh air in this world, in the way that, you know, just feeling super liberated and just joyful for, for the opportunities to do things again, and to live, life at our own terms.
(01:30):
So I hope you enjoy it.
And let me know what you think.
Enjoy.
How are you doing? I'm good.
I'm excited.
I know the last time you asked me to have this conversation I wasn't quite ready for it yet, but I'm there now.
I know, I know.
And I was thinking about like every single year that went by.
(01:53):
I'm like, I wonder if she's ready to talk about it.
'cause it's been like, I think it's been like five years and I've been waiting on this, on this interview.
Mm-hmm.
With you.
Yeah, it has.
And I was like, maybe we could do it anonymous.
I mean, I don't know.
I was thinking of all these ideas, like how to do it so that you can come on, because I think your story is just so fascinating.
And, even though we haven't met in person, we, we were, we were both part of the Latina bloggers group, the Houston Latina Bloggers group.
(02:20):
Yeah.
You did photography for some of the girls there.
You, I remember you, uh, sharing your photography.
I think that was the first thing that I remember about you.
Was it, you did photography and you did a few brand sessions with some of the girls? Mm-hmm.
With Connie? Yeah.
Not sure.
I don't know if it was her or maybe it was some other, another person.
(02:43):
Yeah.
Do you remember those days? Uhhuh? I started out walking with, working with Connie, um, and then I.
I also worked with, uh, Melanie.
I don't know if she's still with Latina bloggers.
And then, Millie.
Mm-hmm.
A little bit with Victoria Garcia, like collaborating on stuff.
(03:05):
And there were a few other girls that I worked with in the group.
Yeah, Victoria became like a, a best friend of mine.
And I met her through the group too.
She had offered to do some photography for my store when I had the store.
And I remember telling her like, she called me and I'm like, girl.
I love that you have the balls to call somebody and ask 'em, Hey, can we get work together? Because a lot of people don't do that, but I will tell you, yeah, a little bit of a control freak.
(03:31):
She goes like, it's fine.
I, I can work with control freaks.
I'm like, okay, good.
That was like the first thing I told her.
I said, I'm not trying to scare you, but I am a little bit of a control freak.
So I met, oh, I met her.
Yeah.
Tell me a few years back, Uhhuh and like the first time we met up for coffee and she had just had her little girl.
(03:54):
Oh wow.
Yeah, it was when she first had her and it was just really nice getting to know her and, you know, connecting with someone in the industry because.
I feel like, uh, it, within blogging and photography, it can be kind of like a caddy industry, you know? Yeah.
So it's, it's nice to have that network of other Latinas to connect with.
(04:16):
Yeah.
You know, I, I discovered through the group so many great people.
I am, I'm still friends with a lot of them.
They would come in and do influencer events for me or, you know, blog for me or model for me.
Mm-hmm.
And I learned so much from them too.
Like, I learned a lot from the girls that would come in and do, you know, um, mar influencer marketing for me.
(04:39):
So it was great.
I loved it.
It was a great event.
Are you still doing photography? I am getting back to it.
I took a really long break after I had my fourth kid.
Mm-hmm.
But I'm just not getting back to it except, um, I used to do a lot of like branding stuff, um, commercial photography, and now I'm moving away from that and going toward like family mostly.
(05:04):
Okay.
I wanna, I wanna give away.
You are supposed to do my photography, but then COVID happened and then we never got, oh no.
Well, we could probably still do it.
Yeah, I would love it.
We should, should.
I would love it.
Now I have to beg my child, my son, to do my photography for me.
Oh my gosh.
I love seeing his work and how you guys have supported him with his production stuff and his videography.
(05:30):
It's amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we, like my husband and I are super left-brained people we're really not right-brained at all.
And so to have a kid that was super, like right brain was just very, uh, hard for us to kind of like wrap our heads around it because.
Uh, are so different to raise a kid who's so creative.
(05:52):
Um, and we, we were like, Nope, no, no, you gotta go to college.
You gotta do this.
You know, the whole traditional thing.
And that kid was like, mom, I hate school.
I can't do well in school.
If you, I will, you'll torture me, mom, if you send me to school.
Cool.
You sent me to college.
So his dad was like, okay, well then it's up to you to figure out how you're gonna get this photography thing going, how you're gonna get your videos.
And that kids started doing a bunch of free videos all by himself, just asking people to do work for them and work for them and work for them.
(06:17):
And one thing led to another, and now he's gonna go work in lane.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
Congrats.
He found himself a manager out there and so he's, he's gonna be doing that, so I'm super proud of that kid.
But, you know, that's why I wanted to reach out to you.
'cause, you know, the way that I also got to know a little bit more about you is because you homeschool your kids.
(06:37):
Mm-hmm.
How long have you been homeschooling your kids? We just wrapped up our 12th year.
12, so, so basically since my oldest started first grade.
Really.
And I, I'm, I'm the opposite.
I'm a teacher myself, but I'm like, go to school dude.
Bye-bye.
Yeah, no, I hear you.
(06:57):
I'm making it different.
Yeah.
But I used to do a lot of, of, of schooling here at, at home with them.
'cause when there was test time, I used to say, there's no way you, you're the child of a teacher and you're gonna do, you're gonna do bad on a test Uhhuh.
So what got you started into that? What, what motivate you to do homeschool with homeschooling? So my oldest did try public school.
(07:19):
Um, he went for kindergarten and it just didn't really work out with his personality.,
He was at the time like a very quiet, shy kid and kind of got lost between the cracks, you know?, And.
I think the thing that really, well he was having like some bullying issues one.
(07:40):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And then the thing that really did it for me was at his kindergarten graduation,, his teacher could not pronounce his name.
What is his name? We also Nathaniel.
Oh.
Oh, okay.
And.
And he also goes by Nate, so.
Okay.
She, it, she just like totally butchered his first and last name and well, well, I guess, you know, our last name is kinda unique, um, but I felt like you, you've had all year to interact with him and you can't even learn his name.
(08:12):
Mm-hmm.
That day we had sent him to school and like the cute little like button up shirt and a little bow tie for his kind graduation.
And then when he goes up on stage, he's like in shorts and a t-shirt.
Mm-hmm.
And a completely different outfit.
So I was like, what happened? Well, it turns out he had walked outta class, gone and gotten changed and the teacher never noticed.
(08:37):
Yeah.,
When I asked her about it, she said, well, there's a lot of kids and I just can't keep track of them all.
And for me it was like, Hmm, but these are kindergartners.
They're five and six years old.
You know, if you can't keep track of 'em, I, I didn't think it was, um, the safest environment at that point.
Mm-hmm.
(08:57):
So, with my teaching background, I decided to give it a try.
Initially, it was just gonna be temporary, but.
As the years went on, then my second started homeschooling and it just got easier.
Mm-hmm.
With each year.
Each year got easier.
Um.
I don't know.
Did you ever like go crazy? 'cause I, I could go crazy very easily.
(09:18):
Oh yeah, definitely.
How did you that in the beginning it was very crazy.
Um, I struggled a lot with needing to deschool myself, um Right.
Because in the beginning I really tried to like recreate the classroom environment with them and have rules and even did the whole, you know, raise your hand to talk to me thing.
(09:40):
Mm-hmm.
And.
They just were not being receptive to that, you know? Got it.
Yeah.
And I realized it was because they were at home, it was meant to be their safe space and you know, they should have felt comfortable instead of me trying to mold them into a classroom environment.
And so it took, I think we took about six months off of schooling for.
(10:06):
That must have been the second year.
Um, and instead did a lot of more hints on stuff, field trips, things of that sort.
And that opened my eyes 'cause I saw my kids thriving to and being receptive to that kind of learning.
And I realized that I needed to kinda toss the workbooks aside and, you know, reconstruct.
(10:32):
My own education of what it meant to mm-hmm.
Educate the kids.
And you belong to the mor, to the Latter Day Saints to the Mormon church back in, back then, right? Yes, I did.
I thought you were doing the homeschooling because of that.
Like, I kind of like equated it and maybe it's, it's, it's, it's a dumb idea, but I kind of equated it to sort of like the offshoots of LDS.
(10:57):
That are very much more conservative.
So I've, I found, I thought that you came from like a sector, like a very conservative sect that didn't allow their children to go to regular public school because they would be, you know, exposed to sexual mm-hmm.
Education.
They wouldn't be praying, they wouldn't be doing a lot of the things that I figured.
So educate me a little bit on that because I, I, I think I had the wrong idea.
(11:22):
So I was actually part of the mainstream, uh, LDS religion, but I did incorporate a lot of the religion into their learning.
Definitely like we would do daily devotionals.
Prayers, um, even the education that they were receiving at the time Yeah.
Was very much, um, I try to correlate it with our religion as much as possible, like incorporate the Bible and things like that.
(11:51):
Um, and they were even doing a online, like group learning, um.
That where it was only church members and the educators were church members as well.
And that gave me like an hour, an hour and a half break.
But it was all like the, um, elective courses, like pe, um, music, those kinds of things.
(12:18):
But it was all very much faith-based.
Um, like whenever they would do PE.
Mormons, they have this thing called the word of wisdom where, um, they, they believe that the body is a temple and there are a lot of substances and things that are not allowed to consume, um, alcohol.
(12:40):
Yeah.
Coffee.
Right.
Um, because of the caffeine, right.
Is that correct? Is it the, yeah.
Well, yes.
It's what we were.
It's what I was told growing up, but very recently the church changed that.
Uh, and um, yeah, it's one of the things I've struggled with, um, now that I'm on the outside of, of seeing how the church is.
(13:06):
Doctrines and revelations, right.
Um, come in and I think as mainstream kind of criticizes certain things about the church.
Mm-hmm.
They then make changes to retain some of the membership, but they call it revelation.
And so when my two oldest were little and we were doing the faith-based learning, it was very much.
(13:29):
You know, don't, don't drink coffee.
Don't grow up to, to be a drug addict.
Don't, don't try this.
Don't try that.
Um, take care of your body.
And were you born into it or were you I was.
You were born into it.
So your parents converted or were they also born into it? No, my parents converted.
(13:50):
So at the time when they converted, they were living in Mexico and my dad converted first.
My mom was.
Resistant to it in the beginning.
Was it the missionaries? Like through the missionary work that they come and, okay, gotcha.
Yes.
Yeah.
So two young men came knocking to their door and taught them and got them to baptize.
(14:12):
Uh, they had my oldest sister, she was four at the time, and my dad actually was looking for.
Of faith.
He grew up Catholic, but not ever attending church.
Um, so he was seeking a community, I guess, and this was kind of the thing that he latched onto.
(14:33):
And like I said, my mom did not really wanna do it in the beginning because.
It was just not her tradition.
Um, and so she was resistant to it.
I think it took her about a year to finally be convinced and my dad, what, what was it about it that your dad really gravitated to? What was it? What particular thing? What was the seed that grew in his brain? So he came from an abusive background.
(14:59):
His father was abusive and an alcoholic, and he was.
Wanting to break that cycle but did not know how.
And, um, one of the main things that the church offers is this teaching of eternal families, um, of being sealed and being with your family forever and ever.
(15:20):
And so that was the thing that my dad, it appealed to him.
And because they're very family centered.
Yeah.
Um.
That helped him kind of transition away from the, you know, the life that he grew up with and not wanting to repeat the same cycle.
And I think that was mostly.
(15:42):
What it was, um, he did has told me that he was looking for community, but outside of what he grew up in, um, got, because everyone he knew was of a similar background, you know? Mm-hmm.
And he wanted, are they still in the church in it? Yes, they are.
They, they are still believing Mormons.
(16:03):
So it's my sister.
So you are the only one that left.
No, I have a brother who's younger than I, and he left first.
Okay.
So where were you in your life when you left the church? What, what place were you in your life? Were your kids, you had already your, all of your kids, or did you, you know, I had, I had, when I officially left, I had just had my fifth, um, he was a baby and COVID was starting to shut things down.
(16:33):
Mm-hmm.
And.
Um, in the beginning the church went to something called, um, home Church.
Mm-hmm.
Where they were now encouraging us to have all of the, like all the rituals that we would do at church, we could now do them at home.
And that was kind of the thing that really.
(16:54):
Blew my mind because Uhhuh, before that I was taught that these were really sacred things that you could only do in church.
Mm-hmm.
You could only do these things in the temple and those weren't things that you could do at home, like the sacrament, you know, um, blessing of children being done at home and because.
(17:15):
COVID happened and church shut down.
We were now allowed to do all of those things at home.
And so that's when I really, um, I had been questioning things before that, but that's when I really thought about just walking away from it because all of a sudden, it's okay that.
We don't attend church, you know? Yeah.
Were you afraid to disappoint your parents? Oh yeah, definitely, definitely.
(17:40):
I mean, I hid it from them for the first two, maybe three years.
Oh, really? Um, yeah, I, I didn't think I could talk about it with them.
Um, my parents, both of them serve in the church.
Um, my father has had high ranking callings within the church, and they're very, I.
(18:03):
Orthodox Mormons, um, they're there every week.
My mom also weekly attends the temple, which is not church.
It's a place where they do secret rituals, for lack of a better phrase.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and she's, I've heard, I've heard of that.
Yeah.
She's there weekly.
Um, she's very believing and so in the beginning I.
(18:27):
I was really afraid to, to talk with them about it.
My sister did know.
Um, my sister and I are very close.
She is seven years older than me, and she's a very, um, nonjudgmental person.
Um, so I really felt comfortable talking with her and she was very accepting from the beginning.
Um, but the conversation with my parents happened in an unplanned way.
(18:52):
Um, so about I.
Three years ago, I was really struggling with my anxiety and had to get back on medication for it and the conversa.
I was visiting my parents, my sister was there.
I think we were there for someone's birthday and somehow the conversation about my anxiety came up and I told my parents that I was medicated again.
(19:16):
My dad is very anti.
Clinical, anti-medicine, anti-vax, is that, is that a church doctrine or is that like something that's frowned upon in the church? Is that why he felt that way? It's not doctrine, but yeah, it is frowned upon.
Again, it goes back to the word of wisdom there, you know, only consumed things that God created and anything manmade is not, is not really.
(19:45):
Encouraged.
Yeah.
Or good for the temple or for the body, which is right.
Yeah.
But it isn't doctrine.
Um, okay.
It's, it's just cultural, I think, within the Mormon church.
Okay.
Um, and so when I mentioned it, my dad offered me a blessing, so it's this.
Special prayer that men who hold the priesthood mm-hmm.
(20:08):
Can give to heal.
They believe that through laying of hands, they can heal a person.
And well, I was no longer a believing Mormon and I refused my dad's offer for a blessing to heal my mental illness.
I, I did not believe that was gonna work.
Um, so I declined politely and he insisted, and it, it was very awkward because he said that, oh, you're rejecting me.
(20:36):
I'm your father.,
I wanna do this for you.
And I told him, I mean, we can pray.
I'll, I'll accept that we can sit here and you can pray for me if you'd like.
But I do not want a blessing.
I do not want laying, hence, uh, because I no longer believe in it.
And wow.
Wow.
And I felt kinda pushed into, you know, talking about it in the moment and it was very much a shocker for my parents.
(21:02):
My mother began to cry.
Um, she, you know, told me how disappointing it was for her.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and my poor sister tried to kind of mediate the conversation and.
You know, like, Hey, let's not judge her.
Um, mm-hmm.
But I know that they, they weren't coming from a place of, you know, like hatred or judgment toward me.
(21:29):
It's, they really, truly believe in, in their religion, and they honestly believe that it's wrong to.
Live outside of it.
Yeah.
And then they become afraid of you going to hell or not going into Oh yeah.
Or going into the, 'cause there's different states of heaven, right.
There's different levels, right.
Of getting into it.
(21:50):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
There are three levels, what you're saying.
Gimme one second.
I need to go get like a package.
Yeah, of course.
(22:31):
All right.
Thank you.
They always need me to sign something.
All right.
So tell me a little bit about like, where were you in, in terms of your relationship with your husband? Was, was he also starting to have his doubts as well? Like, were you guys feeling the same thing at the same time or, um, kind of a catalyst or was he a catalyst? I think, um, I.
(22:58):
Now I realize my husband was never like fully committed to Mormonism.
He did not grow up Mormon.
He grew up Catholic and he converted so that we could get married in the temple because it was one of the requirements I wanted to get married in the church.
And in order to do that, he had to be baptized and convert.
And you married young, right? Anil? Yes.
(23:20):
I was 19 years old and I noticed a lot of women, a lot of women in, in, in, in a lot of Mormon women marry very young.
It is encouraged almost immediately.
It's encouraged.
Oh yeah.
It is encouraged by the church to marry as young as possible, find your eternal companion.
It's what they teach us and.
Um, have children right away because the belief is that there are spirit children of God waiting in heaven to be born into bodies, and that it's our sacred duty to bring those spirits into the world.
(23:53):
Oh, interesting.
I've always wondered why they had so many babies, so young and so early.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it's, it's very encouraged by the church.
So, um.
Like you say, you've noticed it, but, and then I also noticed that a lot of them get divorced very young because I don't think they get to know each other very well or get to not at all the person they're marrying for very, very long.
(24:18):
Yeah.
Usually very short of a, of a, of a dating period, if it even is called a date.
Yes, yes.
I know people I know.
Uh, LDS people who dated for three months and then got married or, uh, I do know somebody that dated for one month and then was engaged and got married.
Um, and yeah, the divorce rate is very high.
(24:39):
Um, although it is discouraged, it is divorce is not it encouraged within the church, but like you say, a lot of people do not know each other well.
And I think that marrying very young, um.
Many of us are not emotionally prepared for what marriage truly means.
Mm.
And for me and my husband, that was definitely the case.
(25:01):
I was 19, he was 20.
Um, I was 21 by the time I had my first kid.
Mm-hmm.
And, um, I was not ready for it emotionally or mentally.
Mm-hmm.
It was, it was hard.
It put a very big strain on our marriage because there's a very idealistic, um.
(25:22):
Idea of what, what marriage is supposed to be.
You know, you're, you're gonna get married, you're going to have kids, you're gonna be a housewife.
This is, uh, very much the life plan that women or young girls within the church are taught to follow.
Mm-hmm.
Um, but there's no time for self-development, self-care.
(25:45):
Um, you're also, while being young, a young.
In a young marriage and young parents are also expected to serve in colleagues in the church and be committed to that.
Um, so you're having not only expectations or responsibilities within the family, but you have responsibilities in the church family, in that community.
(26:06):
So you're being pulled in many different directions.
So not only are you trying to raise yourself because you are young, you're raising babies, you're maintaining a, um.
A relationship, a husband, wife, relationship.
Right.
So that's also happening years that you're probably also taking care of your parents because a lot of them don't know the language or maybe they're new to the, to the, to the country.
(26:30):
Right.
So in your own education, like where does that go? Like where do you educate yourself? Like at 19 years old, are you going to college? At 19 years old, me, myself, uh, I was done with a two year degree and working in a school.
Okay.
Um, when I, when I got married, I was a teacher's assistant and then taught in a classroom after that for a few more years.
(26:59):
Wow.
But, um, so.
Young women is what they're called young girls, 12 to, or 11 now 11 to 18 years old.
Mm-hmm.
Within church are called young women and they, I don't know now because I haven't attended in a long time, but when I was a teenager we used to have something called Personal Progress where it's a little book.
(27:22):
Oh, I wish I'd had, I had one handy.
It's a little book that has.
The young women values and these values each have different goals or, um, achievements that you're supposed to, uh, complete before you turn 18.
Oh, and so there is a section called Divine Nature where, um.
(27:46):
You, you get to know yourself a little bit, but people are kind of rushed through the program.
So the part where you're encouraged to figure out what career you want, um, or think about yourself and self-love, those, those are very rushed.
There are some classes.
(28:06):
Or there were back in my day, some classes about self-worth and things like that.
Mm-hmm.
But like I said, they're very brief.
Mm-hmm.
Um, a lot of it is focused on motherhood becoming a wife, um mm-hmm.
That's, that is women and women aren't discouraged from having a career, but they are encouraged to put family first.
(28:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So kind to be mother first.
By defacto you're being discouraged to pursue higher education.
Wow.
In 2020, you started having these, these doubts, you started thinking, I don't know if I want to continue this.
What was that moment that you said, okay, I'm done.
I just, I'm just not doing this anymore.
I don't, you know, I don't care if my parents are just going to, you know, disown me.
(28:53):
I don't know.
Shun me.
What made you get to that place? Honestly like church being shut down and being able to breathe.
Mm-hmm.,
Not having that responsibility.
I served in the youth ministry and so I.
Having that break was allowed me to actually think about where I was at in life and do I want to keep doing this? And I realized I didn't, um, because I'd gotten my own time back.
(29:26):
Mm-hmm.
And was because everything was shut down with COVI was actually spending time with my husband and my kids and having time for myself, and I realized that the grass was greener on the other side.
Wow.
And, uh, we did very briefly return to church when, um, meetings resumed.
(29:47):
Mm-hmm.
Um, initially the church encouraged masking and so that they could go back to church in person.
And so we went, I think twice, but I just wasn't feeling it.
I sat there, um, through service and I, I just.
It did not resonate with me anymore, and I knew at that moment that I was not gonna come back.
(30:10):
That I, I was ready to walk away for good to leave.
Were your kids excited about it? Were they, look, were they like, how, what were their, what was their reaction? My oldest, I think, was 13 and he was the one who was most discouraged because it was definitely losing our community overnight.
(30:32):
Mm-hmm.
Um.
The majority of our friends were LDS.
Uh, I would say probably 90% of our friends were LDS.
And so it is, I don't think the Mormons officially shun people like other cults do, but uh, they definitely do in a more quiet way.
(30:55):
They do shun you and um.
It was like a slow process.
How did you feel about your community again, Anil? How did you bring your com, your, how did you, how did you surpass that? 'cause I know, speaking to a lot of people that really, the reason, really the real reason why they even go to church is for the community, for that holiness, for that feeling of, mm-hmm.
(31:18):
How did you recreate that? Because that is probably one of the hardest things to lose.
Yeah, so I, through homeschooling friends, um, initially it was with, um, there were a few families at church that also homeschooled and we did things outside of church already.
(31:40):
Like there was one family that my kids went to science club with, and they also are a large family.
The kids are the same age as mine.
And so because we already had interactions and the kids.
Got along so well and we'd known each other for so long.
We continued our friendship outside of church.
I was transparent about leaving church and, um, they were okay with that.
(32:04):
And our friendship continued.
Um, and a lot of our community was built, rebuilt through homeschooling, acquaintance acquaintances.
Okay.
Okay.
At what point did you move from deleting, I guess the devotionals, the, the, some of the morbid teachings and move on to like what you're doing now, which is, is from what I'm seeing, very earth-based, very secular.
(32:36):
Mm-hmm.
Um, very open.
There's a lot of talk of like, you know, actual like, history, right? Like actual mm-hmm.
Like, I noticed that about you, like you really dive into like history, you dive in hard to like teaching your kids about, um, processes and systems in the country, in the world that we don't typically get in, in, in the regular public school.
(33:05):
Or, or you, or we are self, we teach ourselves those things as we go on, right? As we leave college, we leave, you know, high school, we, you know, check out books at the library or we go online and find these different things.
But I noticed that you've become super intentional about changing that, that, that com, that curriculum and, and it, I'm amazed and I'm, I'm, I wish I would've had that curriculum for my kids.
(33:32):
Like I would've sent them to your school if you had, if you had a school.
That would be the place I'm sending my boys because.
I, I, on my husband and I are non-believers, so mm-hmm.
It's, it's difficult for us to even have conversations with people who are, because, um, they don't understand why we do things the way we do them.
And why, how could you ever raise your kids without, you know, a belief system? Right.
(33:56):
Or how could you ever, like, I mean, it is like you are literally sending these kids to, to hell.
Where? Well, uhhuh, at the end of the day, we don't believe in heaven or hell.
So we don't think our kids are going anywhere that, right.
Right.
So.
But it's, it's a difficult concept to try to, to explain to people that that's not, that's that we've never even thought that way for our kids.
(34:18):
We ever never wanted that for our boys.
Um, how do you handle that? Because that, that is a high control religion.
It is.
It's prescribed.
They tell you how you should live your life, how you should conduct yourself as a female, as a male.
Yeah, I think it happened in a very organic way as I dove down the rabbit hole myself.
(34:41):
Um, I really wanted to, once I stopped believing, I really wanted to understand, um, where I stood in life as a person without these, this belief system.
And so I went down a rabbit hole learning about.
Mormonism.
And, um, the more I learned, the more I deconstructed not just my faith, but other beliefs, political beliefs, um, personal beliefs, and I learned that there was a lot of truths that were hidden.
(35:18):
From me as I grew up Mormon.
And so, mm-hmm.
I, that's all I knew.
And as I dug deeper, I learned that there were a lot of things that were hidden from us.
And that took me further, further away and deeper into my own deconstruction.
(35:39):
And as I learned more, um, I tried to.
Incorporate that into our homeschooling in an organic way.
Um, I first told my kids, Hey, you know, I used to teach you this, but now I know better.
Um, wow.
And I, I just very openly said it to them.
(36:00):
That is so powerful, girl.
That is so powerful because you're building tons of credibility with those kids.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was, um.
It was hard for my oldest to, at first they were confused for sure.
Um, but a lot of it was, it was no longer me lecturing them about what they should believe, but asking them, do you believe this? Remember this is what we used to learn in church.
(36:28):
How do you feel about that? And I learned that my own children just like me, were conflicted in their own beliefs.
Um.
You know, not truly believing in heaven and hell not truly believing that all these things that were, we were told were bad, were actually bad, for example, drinking.
Um, I remember on one occasion, um, I think this was during, I.
(36:52):
The first, the first time Obama was running for President Uhhuh, and you know the schools have mock elections, right? Yeah.
So we, we did that too at home and we were discussing it with my nieces and one of them said.
Yeah, my parents aren't gonna vote for Obama 'cause he is a bad guy 'cause he drinks.
Oh.
(37:13):
And I said, wait a minute, hold on.
There are people who drink.
At the time I was still a believing Mormon, but I said, there are people who drink who aren't bad people.
Like there are people who.
Are alcoholics and it's because they're addicts that they make the choices they make.
Yeah.
And I've always tried to, you know, look at things from a more logical standpoint, like be a critical thinker.
(37:39):
Yeah.
But it was things like that where, um.
Once I talked to my kids, once we left the church, um, like, Hey, do you, do you really think that people who drink are bad people? No.
Right.
There are people who drink that are good people.
There are people who drink coffee, who are good people.
There are people who have sex outside of wedlock who are good people.
(38:00):
Like that does not define what a good person is.
Yeah.
And I really wanted my kids to understand that, that.
That their religion previously, or, you know, our, our faith did not define us as people, that we could reinvent ourselves, that we could be true to ourselves.
And I, I would have felt like a hypocrite had I been reinventing myself and evolving without being transparent with my kids.
(38:29):
Wow.
And then that is like so powerful because that's the part that I always felt.
Why I didn't wanna raise my kids in a church was because I did not wanna hinder their critical thinking skills.
I didn't wanna put blocks in their heads of like, this is how it is it when it really isn't how it is.
(38:49):
There are so many, there's gray areas and so many things.
Right.
The whole black and white mentality for us.
Mm-hmm.
For, for my husband, my husband was, was actually raised with nothing since he was a baby.
I was raised Catholic and our moms were Catholic, so we got married in the Catholic church and we went to a Catholic university together.
But I was already, I had already kinda left the church and left my belief system like at 19.
(39:13):
So by the time I met him, I had already kind of like been done with it.
And so, um, I, I, I, I was like, wow, I connected with somebody in a, in a, in a mental way that I would've never met with, you know, met with anybody else within that church or within the community of the church.
And.
When we got married and that was like the first conversation where like, I don't wanna raise my kids with anything.
(39:35):
Like I don't wanna raise my kids with any.
Okay, good.
And so for me, and now my kids are like, man, we're so glad that you didn't do that to us because you know, like we feel free.
Like we feel like we can Yes.
Think what we want.
We can feel there's a freedom.
Um.
I think I, I don't know if my kids would ever join a church.
Maybe they would.
I'm not sure.
They're very, they're critical thinking kids, but mm-hmm.
(39:56):
I don't know.
I mean, there's, there's that allure of the community, right? There's that allure of feelings of holiness.
So like when you were posting and you were at, you were your change.
I was like, wow.
I admire that courage in somebody I admire.
Thank you.
That sense of like, wow, I'm gonna do this for myself.
I'm gonna do this for my kids.
(40:17):
And, and at the end of the day, did your husband did, was, was it hard for you to kind of pull him with you or did he come along? He was like, oh girl, I was ready for you to just tell me No.
He came along.
Friends, this is just part one.
Stay tuned for part two.
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