At Last She Said It

Latter-day Saint women hear motherhood described as their highest, holiest calling from the time they are young girls. But not all girls grow up to be mothers. Some don't get the opportunity to have children, and some don't choose to. Is there a place in our doctrine, our teachings, or our culture for women to just be...women? Whole, complete, fulfilled, and enough, with no specific role spelled out for them but the one they choose to create for themselves? Cristall Harper joins us to reflect on her journey, without children in a church that assumes—even insists—women desire motherhood.

Who has authority over your relationship with God? Who has control over your spiritual life? And how do you approach the Divine authentically, and for yourself, when you've spent your life being handed a script for that? The answers may seem obvious to some, yet many Latter-day Saint women feel they lack permission to step outside the language and practices they've been taught, to seek God in new ways when their old ways come up short. In this episode, Cynthia and Susan discuss claiming spiritual authority to rebuild their personal faith foundations.

We get asked a lot of questions, but one thing we knew from the outset of the ALSSI project was it couldn't be about answer-giving. The kinds of questions to build a podcast around don't have simple answers. Of course, we think a lot about all of your questions, as well as our own. So in this episode, we're taking a stab at some listener questions and offering our personal answers. (Your answers may vary, and ours could change tomorrow too.)

What is it about God's generosity that's so hard to trust? In this episode, Cynthia and Susan discuss The Parable of the Laborers, in which Jesus turns the idea of fairness on its head with a story that disregards the rules we insist are so important. It's a reminder that the kingdom of heaven runs on grace, and all our careful scorekeeping and human expectations of scarcity will someday be confounded by God's abundance, so we may as well get used to it.

If you ask a Latter-day Saint woman what she keeps on her metaphorical faith "shelf," there's a good chance polygamy will be there. It's largely unacknowledged in our current church conversations and teachings, a historical wound that continues to fester in our doctrine, making it easier to ignore than to heal. Many friends and family members can't even share their true feelings about it with each other. But what are the consequences of our silence around polygamy? How long will we be able to collectively carry an enormous weight we never allow ourselves to set down?

In this conversation, Cynthia and Susan explore belief and behavior in an attempt to answer a listener's question, "Are you women true believers?" There are a lot of markers members use to figure out where other members sit on the spectrum of testimony and church engagement. We judge not just beliefs, but the language used to express them. But if we really must vet each other's faith, a better question might be, "How does being a member of the Church change the way you live?"

Resentments form when we get angry at a person, institution, or situation. For many Latter-day Saint women, denying themselves and putting others first is a default setting. But when we live to please others, we often end up pleasing no one—even ourselves. As a follow up to Episode 65 on healthy boundaries, C.A. Larson joins us for a conversation about resentments. Understanding what they are and why we have them can help us set down the ones we carry, and avoid picking up new ones.

If you asked a Church member for a short list of words or ideas that are central to our lives as Latter-day Saints, there's a good chance worthiness would be on the list. We talk about worthiness, we teach about it, we speculate about it in others, we answer a list of questions to certify it in ourselves. But what does it really mean? Could changing the way we think about worthiness improve our ability to share God's love with others and experience it for ourselves?

We're all wired differently, and our personality has an impact on our experiences. Understanding the self we bring to church may help us better understand the experiences we have there. Identifying underlying differences can also help us manage our expectations in relationships, and can be an empathy tool for interacting with people around us. In this episode, Cynthia and Susan are joined by Jana Spangler for a talk about what makes individuals tick, and specific ways those differences may matter in our lives as Latter-day Saints.

Perhaps nothing has a greater impact on a woman's experience in our church organization than the fact that she does not and can not hold the Priesthood. Do Latter-day Saint women need ordination? Do they want it? While the answers to these questions may not be clear, what is clear is that many women feel little space to discuss their true feelings about the nebulous messaging we receive around power and authority, and our inability to hold and access Priesthood directly. In the Season 4 opener, Cynthia and Susan take a deep breath and wrestle the question of women's ordination.