I’ve been thinking about polygamy this week. It’s partly due to the Mormon polygamist family that was attacked in Mexico and partly because polygamy (or the history of polygamy) is a major part of my exit story. Polygamy was the item that “cracked my shelf” and was the final straw that broke my belief. 

Polygamy, regardless which sect of Mormonism someone believes, is a complicated, uncomfortable thing to discuss. I know that for myself, I held a morbid curiosity and fear over the subject. I wanted to know more, but didn’t know where to look. I was always told to “be careful” when researching. If I saw a book on the subject, I felt instant fear that the author was one of the “anti-Mormons” I’d been warned about. I couldn’t trust those authors from the beginning, so I never bothered picking up the book. 

I don’t remember the first time I learned about polygamy. I think I was in middle school and someone had asked how many mothers I had (so original, you know!). It was an off handed comment, but the idea of polygamy didn’t shock me so maybe it was something I had heard before. What I do remember is going to my mother and asking her why? Why have polygamy? Was it really a thing? Why do it?

“We don’t,” my mother had said, “We don’t do polygamy anymore.” Then she explained all she knew. “It was started to help women because a lot of men were killed by mobs and from crossing the plains. Women can’t own property or buy houses and they needed to be married. Polygamy made sure they were. It wasn’t against the law at the time, but once it was, we stopped. Most importantly, we don’t do it anymore.”

To my twelve year old brain, it made perfect sense—well, mostly. Getting married made sense to me. The fact that women weren’t allowed own property a hundred years ago was something I knew. Polygamy wasn’t against the law for a time, so that made it okay, right?

What I didn’t understand was why Brigham Young wouldn’t just make a law allowing women to own property and houses. That seemed like a much simpler, less complicated solution and would give women autonomy and freedom. Also, a “no polygamy” law seemed like something that didn’t need to be explicitly spelled out. It felt like a weird loophole—like someone getting away with murder because someone forgot to write it down. Wouldn’t it be wrong regardless?

I pushed those questions aside because of the one thing my mother emphasized: we don’t do that anymore. It was a phrase I heard every time polygamy was brought up. “We don’t do that anymore,” someone would quickly say. Polygamy was a thing of the past, a solution to a temporary problem. It wasn’t illegal at the time and once it was, we stopped. It’s not something we do anymore, just an uncomfortable bit of history better left alone in its own little corner of obscurity. End of story.

Of course, that wasn’t the whole story. I was an adult when I sat in Sunday School and learned that it might be practiced in the next life. Somehow this wasn’t something that surprised me either. Perhaps I’d subconsciously picked it up along the way. I sort of brushed it off as “deep doctrine” that the teacher was speculating on. I looked around at the others in the class, and they all looked a bit glazed over, as if they thought the same thing as me. 

Still, I considered it. The revelation is still in our Doctrine and Covenants and I thought of all the women I knew who were either married to non-members or who weren’t married at all. Whenever the subject of marriage came up, the same message was told: single women would get their chance in the next life. And what if your husband wasn’t in the highest level of heaven with you? Well, there would be other men in that kingdom to marry. In every ward I’ve been in, there were always more single women than men. If everyone had to married, then I guess polygamy would have to be a thing in the next life as well. 

I didn’t like that. I didn’t like the idea of sharing my husband with another woman. There was also this other fear of my husband not being with me in the next life. I didn’t want to be someone else’s wife. And if I wasn’t in the Celestial Kingdom with him? Well, I didn’t like the thought of him having a wife that replaces me either. 

Maybe this wasn’t really a thing, I told myself. Maybe there was an “opt out” option because God wouldn’t force us if we’re unwilling, would He?

I squirmed in my seat. When God asks you to do something, you’re supposed to do it. No questions asked. 

Besides, would I really deny another woman her happiness and right to marry and have children? Would I stand in the way of God’s will?

I couldn’t find comfort in the idea. This afterlife didn’t sound so wonderful. I hoped when it did happened that I would find some form of peace. Maybe there will be a new way to look at it, a new idea or understanding, that I couldn’t comprehend in my limited mortal existence. I held fast to the idea that all would become clear in the next life. God would be there to teach me and I’d have a perfect understanding. I might even be embarrassed at my reluctance and will need to repent. I clung desperately to the thought that God would make everything work out and told myself not to be afraid. 

Of course, that all eventually changed. In 2015 I read the church’s essays on polygamy in Nauvoo and Missouri. Let’s just say there were a lot of “What the fuck?!” moments during that particular half hour. The excuses I held so tightly slipped through my fingers. Joseph Smith married many women—including teenagers and women who were already married—and it was, in fact, illegal due to bigamy laws. It was more widespread than I had ever been lead to believe and it wasn’t a small, insignificant part of my Mormon history. We don’t do that anymore still rung through my head, but I added an amendment. We don’t do that anymore—until we do.

This was definitely the moment I knew my religions wasn’t all it said it was. I couldn’t blame my mother for telling me these untruths. She was only telling me what she’d heard and what she’d been taught. She was giving me a way to be comfortable with all of this by telling me the things that brought her comfort. It was the sugar that made the poison go down.

As I sat in my shock and pain over being lied to, something else starting happening. Another wound opened up within me that hurt just as much as realizing I had been lied to. “We don’t know much about these marriage,” the essay had said.

“Bullshit,” I uttered. 

At first I didn’t know why I said that. I had to sit back and think why that word suddenly came out of me. 

I just knew what the church said couldn’t possibly be true. These events didn’t happen thousands of years ago. We weren’t excavating sites made delicate with time and searching out words etched on stones. There had to be journals, letters, obituaries, newspaper articles, and speeches written down somewhere. The church must have a list of these women somewhere with all the historical documents connected to them. In the whole history of the world, this was pretty recent. What we don’t know for certain could surely be inferred.

Why didn’t I know about these women? I asked myself. Why didn’t the church tell me? Not only had I been a faithful church goer my entire life, I had graduated from seminary and taken religion classes at BYU. The only thing I hadn’t done was serve a mission, but as a woman it wasn’t a requirement. Yet, not once had I been taught about these women. They were as much part of my heritage and history as  Parley P. Pratt, Brigham Young, and Joseph Smith were. Didn’t I have a right to know all about them and to hear their stories?

I knew what the answer was. I knew it as soon as I asked. It was in every utterance and quick explanation that came when anyone asked me about polygamy. “We don’t do that anymore,” I always said and then let the conversation die. We don’t do that anymore. Period. End of story. Don’t ask me anything because it’s irrelevant to myself and what the church does. It’s not part of my story. It makes me uncomfortable and I don’t wish to think about it. It’s embarrassing and shameful.

These women were part of that embarrassment and shame. As much as I tried to distance myself from the idea of polygamy, the church also did its best to push polygamy to the background.

I knew the church had to know more. Polygamy wasn’t always a thing pushed to the side as “deep doctrine.” Brigham Young, John Taylor, and Wilford Woodruff all had polygamist marriages in the Utah territory—where it was openly practiced. Being married to Joseph Smith, the prophet that restored Christ’s original church, would be one of the highest honors a woman could tout. I could easily imagine one of his wives walking through town while other women whisper to each other, “There goes one of the wives of Joseph Smith! Can you imagine what type of woman she is? How holy she must be?”

These women would’ve been held up as the epitome of faithful and good. Their records and story must’ve been shared at conferences and in church where the wonderful spirituality of polygamy was discussed and taught. Why wouldn’t it be? The perfect, faithful woman who followed the prophet and was blessed for it would always be taught and looked on as an example for other women. Since families are such an important part to the plan of salvation, there had to be a list of all the women Joseph Smith married somewhere. These women’s stories had to be out there. 

The pain inside of me grew the more I thought about these women. Did they struggle with the concept as I have struggled? How did they feel about sharing a husband? Where they in love with Joseph Smith or did they see this as a necessary duty? How were they able to maintain a loving relationship with him? There was no way he could support all of them, so how did they manage? Somehow these women were able to accept and follow what God demanded of them. They found the peace I would be expected to find in the next life, except they found it here and now, in this life. 

Why was I never taught about these women? I asked again. Again, I knew the answer. It was in every shrug from teacher who didn’t know the answer to a difficult question. “Well, we don’t really know, do we?” they said. “We’ll know in the next life.” It was in the way it was glossed over in lessons and never discussed in magazines and talks. “It’s not important to our salvation,” I heard countless times. Except it did deal with my salvation. It was my afterlife and something I was expected to eventually do. 

Whatever the church did know must not put the church in a good light, I decided. Because, if it made the church look good, if these women praised polygamy up and down, the church would be shouting it from the rooftops. I would know about these women if the church was proud of them. However, their stories involved polygamy and because polygamy is now a shameful part of our history, they’ve become irrelevant, their voices silenced, their stories swept under the rug.

Will my story, when it’s no longer convenient to the church, become irrelevant and swept under the rug as well? I asked myself. 

Yes. Yes it will. 

I never felt as if I had a true voice within the church. As a good, faithful member I already felt irrelevant and pushed aside. Whatever I said could be discounted by the whims of priesthood holders. Concerns I brought up were diminished and I couldn’t say “no” to a calling without being questions and pressured to pray for a different answer. Women barely spoke in conference and when they did, others tuned them out because “women never had anything important to say.” Half the women in leadership positions weren’t actually leaders, but the wives of leaders. The Temple President and his wife. The Stake President and his wife. The Prophet and his wife. 

My voice was only useful when it held up a narrative the church liked. If that changed, I would be brushed aside like the wives of Joseph Smith. My faithfulness, my contribution, my story, my thoughts, and my feelings would be diminished so as to not be an embarrassment.

The chasm in my chest was fully opened now. I couldn’t shake the hurt I felt as I realized these women’s stories were denied from me. Just because the church was uncomfortable and embarrassed over its past, they hushed these women. I never knew how much I wanted to know these women until I realized how much was kept from me. I had to know who these women were if for no other reason than to keep their contributions to the church alive. They faithfully followed God and shouldn’t be silence because of it. 

I did eventually find what I was looking for. The podcast, Year of Polygamy, was everything I wanted and needed. I cried over the kitchen sink as I listen to story after story of their struggle. I even sighed with these women when they wrote of the peace they eventually felt when following the prophet. These were real experiences, with real fears and real reservations. 

I also knew how very wrong this all was. These women might’ve been married, but they weren’t family units. They had children, but their husbands were absent.  I knew a loving God would never demand polygamy and subjugation. These women didn’t deserve this just as much as they didn’t deserve to be silenced. Their stories shaped me and I knew that if I wanted my voice heard, I wouldn’t find it in Mormonism.