Pick the title for my upcoming memoir. Do you like Paper Doll Pioneer? If not, suggest another one.

My story begins. The reader is air dropped onto Salt Lake City’s temple square. It is my first day as a sister missionary there. I want to be anywhere, but on my Mormon mission”

“Years ago, pen to my raven-colored Mormon Missionary Journal, I wrote the following: 

I cannot stop thinking of ways I can hurt myself. When I see a moving car, I calculate how fast I can get in front of it.

When I wrote, “in front of it,” I literally meant that I wanted to get myself squarely in the path of any moving vehicle. I always saw myself jumping through, in front of and off of things. 

“How quickly will this kill me? What will it sound like? Will my death be quick?” I wondered.

As I imagined my dead self, I could clearly see the aftermath: people wiping, scraping, even tweezing my indistinguishable, flattened, mangley bits off of whatever grate, pothole, or windshield wiper blade I had landed on. As fiercely as I wanted to jump, (and was not afraid to jump), thoughts of eternal damnation and making my mom cry, consumed my cautious, cluttered and complicated mind. 

I could hear the church congregation whisper, “Poor girl. Her body was everywhere. Now she will be condemned to a life of eternal darkness.” [insert church members shaking their heads in disappointment here] “This would not have happened if she had enough faith.” 

Seconds later, I made myself stop thinking evil thoughts. As a means to make penance for allowing myself to have self-destructive thoughts, I took a rapid cleansing breath. I gripped my own wrist tightly, protecting me from my hand’s next intended act, which was to claw my face. I did not claw my face. I felt the warm sunshine. It was nice.

I made my way to Temple Square, in the epicenter of Salt Lake City, Utah, where I was now officially a Temple Square missionary.”

The memoir asks many questions. The prominent questions is, “How did I get here?” As I answers these questions I address themes of generational trauma and abuse perpetuated by a pure belief in patriarchy which is then reenforced via my family’s conversion to Mormonism. I explore the importance of being a cycle breakers and separately from patterns of abuse ultimately learning to use my voice, pushback and say no.

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