Long-exmo, newly reaching out.

I, an AMAB trans woman, have been an exmo for a little over 6 years, but I largely kept to myself. Now I am reaching out because my partner has encouraged me to seek out other exmos. I have felt more and more that my perception of reality is skewed because of being raised in the church, and it has affected every aspect of my life and health. I have spent years fighting mental illness after my family collapsed in on itself after sibling SA and the subsequent coverup while I was at BYU-I for a semester. I want to get clarity so my life stops feeling so intimidating. I left mainly to reaffirm my sense of self-worth after some major ableism around serving my mission (I am autistic, formerly what was called Aspergers but for one that guy was a fucking Nazi). It was either A. the church was true, its administration inspired, and my ability to serve a mission was rightfully in question despite my whole youth being spent preparing to serve and enduring bullying, resisting temptation, and generally trying to be a good Peter Priesthood, or B. the church was bigoted, deeply flawed, and I was an otherwise capable person misled by my family and community.

I chose to live without doubting myself anymore. If God knew me then he knew the stakes the missionary department was toying with. And he did nothing, because as far as I know he was never real; later I learned he was just some jumped-up mythical raider/flash flood god from the Canaanite fringe whose worshippers took advantage of the Bronze Age Collapse to form a massive culture of banditry. Yahweh’s worshippers syncretized him with the Canaanite patriarch-god El at a surviving Elohist stronghold at what is now Jerusalem iirc, and also with bits of the worship of the storm god Baal (outright plagiarizing some songs or stories about Baal).

History lesson aside and fast-forwarding, since the pandemic started I learned that I was actually raised in the combination of “high-control group” and “new religious movement” that describes what is popularly referred to as a “cult” these days. It made the cultural isolationism make even more sense. A few weeks ago I watched Alyssa Grenfell’s video on Temple Rituals, and had my mind blown that there was a whole further secret-er ritual called the Second Anointing, and just yesterday watched her video on it. Even more so I was outraged that the “birthright” I had been denied before my “trial mission” that I had wasted so much of my life on getting ready for ripoffs of freemasonry, violations of consent, and sanitized versions of rituals that were supposedly of eternal importance with vital symbolism. Not to mention the death oaths aka “Penalties” that my parents and grandparents, etc. swore before the practice was discontinued in 1990 it turns out. I can’t believe I was hung up on being denied that cheap trash. Now I just resent having been faithful for so long and having taken longer than my other “apostate” siblings to decide to “go inactive” and leave. I recently realized I am transgender, and I have known since around 2017 that I am pansexual, and have slowly been working through being trans since being cishet is pretty much compulsory brainwashing in the church. I don’t know how long I have been trans, but I know it feels so good to be called a woman; it feels like I have stopped holding my breath and am breathing fresh air. What doesn’t feel good is living with my Mormon parents while learning this… and even with a good support structure outside, living with my parents is not preferable outside of the financial stability I need since they choices in the wake of the familial SA sabotaged my life. To be clear I have made poor decisions along the way as I have struggled with having the rug pulled out from under me and having to grow to understand non-dogmatic morality. I know my decisions have also hurt people and I regret causing that hurt. But by and large none of this would have happened without the influence of the church and the sabotage of my parents.

So… what I am asking is how do I “ground” myself in reality after all of the aversion suspicion and pessimism of more than two decades in the cult? How do I set my relationship with life and living and perception and risk into being more free?