The saying goes something like, “Everyone has one book in them. Almost no one has two.” “They” might be right.

In 2021, in the aftermath of the unexpected death of my ten-year-old son Sawyer, I wrote
a book entitled, Heartbroken, but not Broken. The book addresses cultural narratives around grief,
especially faith-based narratives and offers some experienced based suggestions on what to do and not do as when supporting someone on a loss journey. This post isn’t about my first book. It’s about my second book.

Spoiler alert-there was no Book Two.

In Heartbroken, but not Broken I let readers know from the onset that my perspective is grounded in place as a practicing member of the LDS faith and a feminist. I acknowledge up front that my world view might not be for everyone. I never dreamed I’d use the ‘f’ word (feminist) in a book sold at Deseret Book, but it happened, and I was thrilled. Looking back, I think about how including the literal word “feminist” was so important to me. I wanted people to understand that if they were going to come on a portion of my loss journey, they needed to know a little about me. My feminism shaped me, grounded me in my testimony and the way I engage with my faith. It’s that particular perspective that prompted the idea for my second book. Well, that and good
conversations.

In 2022 my publisher reached out and asked if I had another idea for a book, and I suggested a few. The publisher gave me the green light to go ahead and start working on an official pitch for my second book, which I immediately submitted. The publisher was interested, and I was energized.

My idea was the confluence of two specific events. The first took place at my son’s graduation from BYU. We
held a graduation party for him, and he invited a really diverse group of friends and mentors. A woman he’d met playing pickleball came up to me at the party and said she had read my book and would love to chat. She said after reading my book she read some of my blog posts on Exponent II. I had only authored a couple, but she read lots of posts from all of the great people who share their wisdom and perspective on this blog. She said she was struggling with her faith but had no one to talk to about it. She said, “If I brought any of these issues up during Relief Society, I’d be shunned. I work at the temple with my husband, we are seen as a true blue
Mormon couple, and I know there would be a lot of whispering in the halls if I said what I was
really thinking and asked the questions I really need to ask.”

Fast forward a couple of months and that graduation party conversation still lingered on my heart. My friend Bee and I met for lunch at a downtown café and I was excited to swap life stories. Bee and I both call The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-days our faith tradition so often our conversations regularly turn to discussion about our own current worship strategies. She was sharing how she’d drawn strength from a particular article written by a fellow Latter-day Saint author, and I found myself speaking critically of the author Bee was talking about. I (admittedly and embarrassingly now) said something like, “I don’t really read her work anymore because she wrote a piece that I found to be extremely offensive.” Taken aback, Bee said to me, “Hm, well I am not aware of that piece. Regardless, I find spiritual wisdom wherever I can. Just because I don’t agree with everything someone
might espouse doesn’t mean they can’t teach me something valuable at any given moment.” Insert my shame face. I wholeheartedly live by this wisdom. At least, I thought I did. Yet there I was, in a tiny, overcrowded, downtown cafe, eating crow. Why hadn’t I been willing to offer grace to this random author, but was willing to offer it to everyone else? I even felt myself getting a little defensive as the conversation continued, harried by what I was feeling and processing what she said.

Looking back, I think it was pride seeping in as I realized Bee was right and I was wrong. Bee and I are friends. We can cordially disagree and move on to the next thing as friends do. We proceeded to finish our delectable turkey, blue cheese, and cranberry jam sandwiches, hugged, and went our separate ways. My lunch devoured, I had an hour-long drive home to mull over my thoughts and I did just that. But it wasn’t just for the hour-long drive home that the conversation weighed on my mind. It was over the next several days which turned into weeks that the conversation took up space in my mind. I merged my feelings from both the downtown lunch conversation and the graduation conversation, and I knew book two would need to be less of my perspective and more of the stories of others. I wanted to create a space for everyday Latter-day Saints with stories about their faith struggles, and sitting with those struggles while still going to church. There are so many stories we should all be hearing and sharing. book two would be a collection of these stories, not just my words.

Now, I have a confession. I had been struggling with some aspects of my testimony when Bee and I met for lunch. Bee has a solid, albeit somewhat nuanced, testimony of the Gospel espoused by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Our common faith fueled most of our conversations over many lunches. During lunch, Bee expressed concern about a couple of things she’d been processing during her worship over the previous months. In a moment, out of nowhere, and with no censorship or decorum, I asked her, “With all of these questions and concerns, why do you stay a member of the {LDS} Church?” As I said the words out loud, I couldn’t believe I was saying them. I felt my heart quicken as I realized I was asking her audibly what my head had been asking my heart silently. I think I had been too afraid to ask myself this question but asking her felt like a safer way to force the issue in my mind. I think it has been a persistent question in my heart, jostling for attention, since Sawyer died in 2016. Until that moment I hadn’t had the energy to give it much
consideration.

After publishing Heartbroken, but not Broken, I started speaking at book groups and doing interviews
on podcasts about the intersection of grief and faith. I talked a lot about how we can mourn with those who mourn. About how grief has this dirty underbelly no one ever creates space for, and about the importance of making space for tough faith conversations. Common themes kept emerging during these public discussions. In the quiet aftermath of several of these events, with just a few lingering guests, people would approach me
and thank me for my willingness to speak about difficult subjects so openly. They expressed their
own concerns about difficult subjects in their lives; sometimes grief and death, sometimes faith, sometimes about whatever was most pressing on their hearts. By sharing stories of Sawyer’s death, I was seen as willing to talk about dicey subjects so people would open up to me about other dicey subject matters.

Sharing portions of my intimate grief journey with others it taught me several things. First, it helped me express what I was feeling inside so the darkness didn’t weigh me down and bury me alive. I once heard a survivor of sexual violence say, “I heal out loud, so others don’t have to suffer in silence.” Second, it helped me understand a measure of the depth of the pain and sorrow others feel. Not always because of death, but often because of grief. Grief over death, sometimes. Grief over the life they thought they would live but haven’t. Grief over the loss of a specific aspect of their life, maybe a job or a home or a vision held close to their heart. Grief about trials and
struggles that have come their way and grief because the anger has settled and there is nowhere left for it to go.

Aside from opening my heart to the pain of others, sharing stories about Sawyer-his death and his life- also allowed me passage into the deep, sacred waters where other people hold their pain. But also, it showed me a window into their resilience. Central to the resilience in the many stories I heard was the role of God, spirituality, and an enduring faith in what people believe but may not know to be true. That faith, that belief, became the arc of many discussions I had with strangers and friends alike as we shared what was on our hearts. In addition to grief, a slew of other subjects arose, including fears harbored over openly discussing questions and concerns they had about God, gospel doctrine or church culture. Their realistic concerns, they feared, would make them seem faithless. Instead of talking about them and seeking camaraderie and support from others, they often let their concerns fester. And more regularly than not, those festering feelings had nowhere to go, so they resulted in people sticking around full of resentment or leaving their Church membership behind. It seems like there should be more middle ground.

I wholeheartedly disagree that discussing problems or doubts about gospel subjects makes us faithless, yet we have somehow landed in a culture where hearty discourse can often lead to labels and judgements. Sometimes even worse, depending on where we have landed in the leadership roulette. In our current cultural climate, we seem to have lost our dependence on honoring personal revelation or, at the very least, our personal willingness to discuss hard things. An adjective like “faithless,” in the LDS culture can be tantamount to “sin” for a lot of
people. The goal is to avoid “even the appearance of evil”. Okay so “evil” feels a little strong, but often the regrettable byproduct of that notion for many who struggle is to remain quiet. It’s almost as if the shame of being labeled a “doubter” has worse reprisal than actually doubting. That day in the cafe with Bee, it didn’t really matter which it was-being faithless or appearing faithless-that kept me largely quiet discussing my struggles publicly. I wasn’t speaking up. I assume it was a fear of that “tainted” persona that kept me from asking
myself why I stay. For a culture that espouses the love of God over His judgment, there tends to
be a little confusion sometimes about who is the ultimate Judge. Maybe that isn’t an explicit LDS cultural aspect,
but my own personal experience with faith culture and I have conflated the two. After Sawyer died, I was quiet about a lot of things. Until I wasn’t. I had too much to process, too much to say and no way to say it. The grieving process was breaking me and I had made a commitment to my husband and my family that I wouldn’t let Sawyer’s death break us. Break me. So, slowly, I started to speak. And by speak, I mean write. Writing down every little detail I could remember about Sawyer’s brief time in the hospital, his death, our lives in the wake
of his death, all of it. Then one day, as if by magic, those words had a title and a cover, and you
could “suddenly” buy it on Amazon and or in Deseret Book. 

Book Two felt similar as it began to unfold. I had heard too much and needed others to hear it as well. I naively felt like Book two would be so much easier to complete than the first one. I started laying the groundwork, reaching out to people I knew and those I didn’t to schedule interviews for the manuscript, and it was exciting. My pitch to people was essentially this:

“{After introductions} I am compiling a series of essays about people who have a million
reasons to leave the LDS faith, but who instead opt to stay. Would you be interested in sharing
some of the experiences you personally have had that made you question your faith involvement,
but the reasons you ultimately decided to stay engaged?”

Some people did interviews with me. Some people sent me essays. Traction was building. I even had strangers reaching out to me saying they heard about my project and they were interested in participating. I originally pitched 13 stories (chapters for individual stories) centered around 13 different topics. As interest grew, I
thought I might even have enough material for two books. I even had my title. “Faithfully Agitated: Stories from Everyday Saints who Struggle but Stay.” The concept was to gather stories from everyday Latter-day Saints who, despite having a lot of reasons to abandon thr LDS faith, actually stick around. There are a lot of books about why people leave the LDS faith. There are also a lot of books about what people get from their faith and how it helps them. A lot of these stories are by the famous and “pseudo-famous” Saints who are in the LDS-limelight. They are almost protected by their popularity which allows them space to publicly share their concerns with aspects of the LDS Church culture, doctrine, and policies while decision to stay engaged with the faith. Sometimes those stories, while important and valuable, are inaccessible to the everyday Latter-day Saint. I wanted to change that.

I had two goals. The first was to share the stories of those who are “boots on the ground,” so to speak. Not so much from people who are protected by status, wealth, name, or position. Sharing these everyday stories I thought could bolster those who are struggling to help them know they are not alone. Help me know, I am not alone. My second goal was to reach those who don’t understand people who struggle with their testimonies. Maybe, just maybe, it would help create a learning space to “convert” those who have the gift of believing and can’t understand the struggler, or non-believer. Convert them to the idea that struggling, while maybe incomprehensible to them, is a natural outcome for many living in 2025. Maybe the story sharing could work towards creating an ebb and flow of ideas from both sides of the fence and generate compassion and understand for different perspectives. I see others working towards these goals and I wanted in.

Then it started happening. Or rather, stopped happening. The crickets. People who were genuinely engaged, stopped calling back. Follow up interviews were cancelled or no shows. Emails correspondence stopped. Finally, a couple of people started answering my calls/emails. The gist across the board from those who had gone silent was, “When I went to write down all the reasons I stay, in relation to the reasons I need to leave, I realized the disconnect. I’m not sure I have reasons to stay, so I think I am leaving.”

Over and over again, a similar sentiment.

At first, I panicked. My first panic was about my relationship to others disengagement. Did I make them leave? Did me asking the question result in an answer that could impact their salvation? I did a lot of processing and ultimately landed on a less egocentric answer. This was for them and God to work out, I wasn’t a part of it. Then I panicked that I would not be able to write Book Two. Did I commit to something I can’t follow through on? That hurts. I did a lot of processing and ultimately landed on a less egocentric answer. Book Two was not for me to create, it was for me to share. If there was nothing to share, then I was not needed for this project. I let the book go. Finally, I panicked that for those who had put time and effort, energy, heart and soul into an essay for a chapter, I wouldn’t have an outlet to share their story. They deserved to be heard, I told them they would be heard. I did a lot of processing. A lot of stalling. A bit of hiding. But then I landed on a less egocentric answer and realized that these stories could still be shared.

With permission, over the next several months, I will use my space on the blog to share the
stories of those who have experienced things like racism, homophobia, and scrutiny for mental
health issues in their LDS congregation but stay engaged in the LDS faith. I will share the stories I was able to collect in my attempt to create Book Two as a blog series, “Faithfully Agitated.” I hope by sharing these stories there will be some measure of fulfillment of the goals I intended for the book, but bigger than that, I hope these important stories by everyday saints with their everyday struggles will be heard and used to build a more robust Zion.