About this site
Support for leaving the Mormon Church, questioning it, or staying on your own terms
This site is produced by the Open Stories Foundation, the 501(c)(3) non-profit behind Mormon Stories Podcast. It replaced, in 2026, the original home of The Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast, which John Dehlin, Margi Dehlin and Natasha Helfer recorded in 2018 and 2019.
What it is
A free, plain-English companion for anyone whose belief in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is changing, and for their spouses, parents, children, friends, bishops and therapists. Guides by situation. Real stories. The full podcast with transcripts. A directory of resources, communities and people, each one chosen by hand and labelled with the side it comes from.
What it is not
It is not a place that tells you whether to stay or leave. Both are legitimate outcomes and we show both paths honestly. It is not therapy, legal advice or a crisis service; if you are in danger, contact emergency services where you live. It is not affiliated with the Church.
How resources are chosen
Everything in the directory was chosen by a person, not an algorithm, because it has helped people we know. Where a resource argues that the Church's truth claims fail, we label it critical; where it argues for staying or believing, faithful; scholarship and support that take no side, neutral. Links are checked when the site is rebuilt. Tell us when one breaks.
The people
John and Margi Dehlin have spent twenty years helping Latter-day Saints through the hardest thing many of them will ever go through. In 2005 John left a senior position at Microsoft and the two of them moved their four children from Seattle to Utah so that he could start Mormon Stories with a microphone in a spare bedroom. Margi's own faith transition had begun years earlier, the night John told her what he had found in Church history. Together they went on to co-host Mormon Transitions and The Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis, and to sit with hundreds of individuals and couples, believing and not, in the middle of exactly what you may be facing now. This site collects what they have learned.
John Dehlin, Ph.D.
Psychologist; founder of Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation
John has a Ph.D. in clinical and counseling psychology from Utah State University, where his research covered religious faith crises, mixed-faith marriage, scrupulosity and LGBTQ Latter-day Saints. He founded Mormon Stories in 2005, ran the Understanding Mormon Disbelief survey in 2011, co-hosted Mormon Transitions and The Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis with Margi, and co-wrote How to Leave the Mormon Church with Alyssa Grenfell. He was excommunicated in 2015 and is still Mormon in every way that does not require belief.
Margi Dehlin
Co-host of Mormon Transitions and The Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis
Margi grew up in the Church, married in the temple, and raised four children in it before her own faith transition, which began years before the podcast. She has walked hundreds of people, and couples with John, through the same passage, with a particular focus on grief, staying grounded, the holidays and family culture, re-telling your own story, and the experience of women leaving the Church. Her voice runs through the guides on grief, meaning and the holidays on this site.
Natasha Helfer, LMFT, CST
Marriage, family and sex therapist; co-host of The Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis
Natasha has worked with a mostly Latter-day Saint clientele for more than twenty years and is a certified sex therapist. She led the mixed-faith marriage webinar and the sexuality episodes of the podcast, and was excommunicated in 2021 for her public teaching on sexual health. She practises independently.
How we measure use
We use Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity to see which pages help and where people get stuck. Clarity's recordings have every word on the page masked, so nothing you read or type is visible to us. We do not sell or share this data, we do not use Google's cross-site "signals", and nothing here asks you to create an account. If you would rather not be counted, a browser extension that blocks trackers will do it and the site works the same.