I picked the name "Unpacking Mormonism" for my blog about leaving Mormonism because being raised in the church is a sunk cost in my life that I wish I could leave behind (and have tried to do just that), but I realized that there are hardly any things in my life that the church didn't try to take over and control.
I actually CAN'T just ignore my upbringing as I work on moving forward.
I wish I could.
But to understand where I am at and how to improve, it helps to understand how I got here.
So that means I'm left doing a lot of "unpacking".
I end up still spending a lot of time reflecting on current emotional issues and tracing those feelings back to their roots.
Unsurprisingly, most of my emotional hang-ups are related to coping mechanisms or teachings from growing up Mormon.
Some of it also has to do with generational trauma, but even those issues are tightly tied to my Mormon ancestry.
My angry-Exmormoness ebbs and flows with the experiences I have in my life and how closely or not my emotions dip into areas related to my upbringing in the church.
I definitely am my own person. By that, I mean, I don't feel like I'm beholden to my past or my experiences. They don't dictate who I get to be.
I'm responsible for my life going forward.
I get to control my own choices.
But my emotions are also very real and not as easy for me to control or understand.
Sometimes things will hit me out of the blue that cripple me in unexpected ways and make it hard for me to live the life I want.
The biggest example of this is how it feels for me to be around my Mormon family.
Cognitively, I want to be able to make the choice to spend time around them as long as they respect my boundaries and treat me in healthy ways.
Emotionally, though, things aren't that simple.
Sometimes my emotions just aren't ready for certain situations.
For example, Christmas has been an off-and-on thing for me since I left Mormonism.
Some years things are fine, and other years, I'm left unpacking deep fears or sadness, or anger because of a single Christmas song.
I wish that didn't happen.
I wish I could just move on and choose to be unaffected by my past, but it doesn't work that way.
The best I can do is love myself, be patient, and keep on unpacking.