🗺 The map
Stages of a Mormon faith transition
Nobody hands you a map for this. Here is the one we would have wanted: the stages most people move through, what is normal at each one, what tends to help, and what tends to make it worse. You may be in two stages at once, or loop back to an earlier one on a hard day. That is normal too.
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1
Discovery
Something you cannot un-know
What is normal here
A single fact, essay, episode or conversation, and the floor tilts. Shock, nausea, sleeplessness, compulsive reading at 2 a.m., a sense of unreality. Many people describe the first days as the worst of their lives. Some feel relief almost immediately; that is normal too.
What helps
Slow down. Nothing has to be decided this week.
Read the Start here guide and the first-weeks checklist.
Tell one safe person, even if it is a stranger on a helpline.
Eat, sleep, move. Your body is in a stress response and it needs the basics.
What to avoid
Announcing anything to family, ward or social media while you are in shock.
Making big decisions (resigning, moving, ending a marriage) in the first month.
Reading only one side and calling it research.
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2
Investigation
Reading everything
What is normal here
Weeks or months of research: essays, podcasts, primary sources, apologetics, the CES Letter, the Gospel Topics Essays, back and forth. Anger arrives here for many people (“why was I not told?”). So does bargaining (“maybe it is still true in some way”).
What helps
Read both critical and faithful sources, and notice how each one treats evidence.
Keep a list of your actual questions instead of drowning in everyone else’s.
Set limits on reading hours; obsession is a symptom of anxiety, not of rigour.
What to avoid
Trying to resolve two hundred years of history before you talk to your spouse.
Debating believers who did not ask to be debated.
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3
Grief and anger
Losing a world
What is normal here
A faith crisis is a bereavement. You lose a worldview, an afterlife, a community, a version of yourself, and sometimes the way your family sees you. Grief comes in waves: sadness, rage, numbness, guilt, relief, and back again. It can look like depression and sometimes becomes it.
What helps
Name it as grief. The stages are messy but the frame helps.
Write. Move. Cry. Talk to someone who has been through it.
A therapist who understands faith transitions, if the waves are not passing.
What to avoid
Numbing with alcohol, spending or endless scrolling.
Believing that anger means you are bitter. It means you were hurt.
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4
Deciding who to tell
The hardest conversations
What is normal here
You cannot keep this to yourself forever, and you cannot tell everyone at once. Spouse first, almost always. Then children, parents, siblings, friends, the bishop, the ward. Each has its own timing, wording and risks. Fear of the reaction is often worse than the reaction.
What helps
Tell your spouse before anyone else, and before they hear it from someone else.
Use the Scripts and letters to plan what to say and what not to.
Lead with love and continuity (“I am still me, I still love you”) and keep the evidence for later.
What to avoid
Delivering your research findings as the announcement.
Ultimatums, in either direction.
Read: Telling people you no longer believe · Scripts and letters · Parents, siblings and extended family
Listen: 012–015 “Coming Out” as a Non-Believer to Family Members · 016–017 Communicating with Believing Family and Friends · 018–021 Communicating with the Church Leadership, Ward Members, and Neighbors During and After a Mormon Faith Crisis
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5
Renegotiating relationships
New terms with the people you love
What is normal here
Months of working out what changes and what does not: church attendance, tithing, garments, the temple, what the children are taught, holidays, family prayer, what your parents say to the grandchildren. Mixed-faith marriages go through a real crisis here; most survive it when both people fight for the relationship rather than for the outcome.
What helps
Separate the marriage from the Church question. You can disagree about God and still be a team.
Agree on what you will tell the children, together.
Couples counselling with someone who is not trying to fix either of you.
What to avoid
Trying to deconvert your spouse. It rarely works and it costs trust.
Letting the ward or extended family into the marriage’s decisions.
Read: Your marriage, and the mixed-faith marriage · Your children · The bishop, the ward and the neighbours
Listen: 022–023 Communicating with Children During a Faith Transition · 028–031 Parenting After a Mormon Faith Crisis: An Overview · 037–038 Healthy Marriage · 040–042 Thriving as a Mormon Mixed-Faith Couple – Kattie and Allan Mount
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6
Choosing your path
Stay, step back, or leave
What is normal here
At some point the question shifts from “is it true?” to “what am I going to do?” Some stay, quietly or openly nuanced. Some step back without a formal break. Some resign. Some do one and then another. None of these is the “right” answer and all of them are reversible.
What helps
Make the decision on your own timeline, for your reasons, not to satisfy anyone.
Read the Stay, step back, or leave decision guide and the “How to Stay” and “How to Leave” resources.
Handle the practical matters (records, callings, garments) one at a time.
What to avoid
Resigning in anger to make a point.
Staying only out of fear; fear does not hold up for decades.
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7
Rebuilding
Meaning, community, self
What is normal here
The Church gave you a calendar, a community, a moral code, a purpose and an identity. Now you build your own. This stage is slow and unglamorous: finding friends, deciding what you believe about death and ethics and sex, learning to rest on Sunday, discovering what you actually like.
What helps
Join something weekly: a group, a class, a team, a choir. Friendship takes hours, not intentions.
Explore spirituality on your own terms, or none; both are fine.
Notice the goods you kept: service, family, honesty, hard work.
What to avoid
Making “ex-Mormon” the new whole identity.
Waiting for the Church to change before you get on with life.
Read: Building a life after · Meaning and purpose · Community
Listen: 050 Finding Purpose After a Mormon Faith Crisis by John Dehlin · 053–061 THRIVE Retreat – 8/30 – 9/1/2019 in Salt Lake City, UT · 054 Understanding and Navigating a Religious Transition (August 2019 THRIVE Retreat) · 064–074 THRIVE Day Presentations
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8
Thriving
The gift
What is normal here
Years on, most people we know say the faith crisis was one of the best things that happened to them: more honest relationships, better mental health, a bigger world, a self they chose. The Church stops occupying the centre of your thoughts. Holidays are yours again. You can even feel tenderness for the tradition and the people still in it.
What helps
Tell your story when it helps someone behind you.
Keep the friends and the rituals that still nourish you.
What to avoid
Assuming everyone is on your schedule. Your parents may need years.