Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Rise of Eve community.
Speaker: Here we dismantle the patriarchal narrative of the story of Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden by rejecting that it was ever about the fall of Adam.
Speaker: We believe that this narrative has empowered the church to weaponize the feelings of its members.
Speaker: They tell us Eve transgressed, and by so doing was cursed to be alone and isolated from the Garden of Eden, Adam and God.
Speaker: Just as the Church wants you to feel that if you ever question or leave it, you too will become isolated and lonely.
Speaker: But this is not and never was true.
Speaker: You are not alone.
Speaker: Mother Eve knew that the only path to sincere joy was to potentially lose everything.
Speaker: But she also knew that the risk of loss, loneliness, and difficulty would be worth the reward of a more fulfilling and joy-filled life.
Speaker: We wave Mother Eve's banner of courage for all those who've bravely stepped out of orthodoxy and into the unknown of nuance and unbelief.
Speaker: The Stories on the Rise of Eve podcast will step out of the black and white of orthodoxy and into the gray area of a faith journey and deconstruction.
Speaker: We will share resources on Instagram, Facebook, and this podcast, and through it all, we hope that you will find yourself and your community.
Speaker: A faith journey is hard.
Speaker: We promise no matter where you are on your path, you are not alone.
Speaker: Welcome to Rise of Eve.
Speaker: Hi, I'm Eve.
Speaker: Not really, but for right now, you can call me that.
Speaker: I am a pioneer stock, Mormon in my blood and bones kind of woman.
Speaker: I was fully in, could not get more believing than me.
Speaker: I knew exactly what the spirit felt like.
Speaker: I knew the church was true, and I followed that Mormon path damn near perfectly.
Speaker: A little about me, I grew up in upstate New York, surrounded by a lot of non-Mormons.
Speaker: This, of course, meant that I was lucky and special, a part of the, quote, chosen generation.
Speaker: I was an example of righteousness to all those around me.
Speaker: And I really felt like I was.
Speaker: I was baptized at eight, had my first temple trip at 12, attended early morning seminary for all four years of high school.
Speaker: I never swore.
Speaker: I never wore immodest clothing, not even to prom.
Speaker: I was never even tempted to drink alcohol or do drugs or have sex.
Speaker: I didn't obey all the rules perfectly, which I would now attribute to having both ADHD and not having religious scrupulosity, but I believed to my core that the church was true and that I would do everything in my power to be a faithful member.
Speaker: I attended BYU, I worked as an intern for the New Era, and yes, there is an article published in the New Era all about my modest prom dress.
Speaker: I married in the temple to a faithful returned missionary who checked all of the Mormon boxes.
Speaker: I did not have sex until after marriage.
Speaker: I knew I was going to be a mother to 12 children, no less.
Speaker: But thank goodness that is not part of my story.
Speaker: I was an amazing example of righteousness to the younger generations, and I really did see myself that way.
Speaker: Until, until my shelf started to crack.
Speaker: I won't go into all the details because my faith journey started long before I can even say.
Speaker: Long before I had even realized I had a shelf.
Speaker: If I had to put a number on it, it would probably be over the past 10 years that my beliefs really started to change.
Speaker: I'd like to think it started with a shifted belief of motherhood, but maybe earlier.
Speaker: My first pregnancy in 2016, I got really, really sick.
Speaker: And for 18 weeks, everyone, everyone, the doctors, the nurses, my own husband, thought I was being a bit dramatic.
Speaker: The number of times I was asked questions,
Speaker: Aw, are you a first time mom?
Speaker: Yeah, morning sickness is normal.
Speaker: Is too many to count.
Speaker: And for 18 weeks, I suffered, believing both that I was being a bit dramatic and
Speaker: and at the same time knowing that I absolutely was not being dramatic.
Speaker: And when I finally did get a proper diagnosis, which if you're wondering is hyperemesis gravidarum, AKA extreme pregnancy sickness, I felt incredibly validated and I was finally taken care of.
Speaker: This was a pregnancy that we wanted.
Speaker: we planned for, we had good health insurance, I didn't have to work.
Speaker: Everything lined up perfectly for this pregnancy.
Speaker: And I had this stark realization that there are so many others who may not have had things line up as perfectly as we did.
Speaker: And that maybe I needed to rethink my stance on
Speaker: things like abortion, because there were so many times when I felt like I wanted to end that pregnancy because of how awful it was.
Speaker: And I wanted that pregnancy.
Speaker: Then in 2018, something controversial came up in the church about a woman being shamed for breastfeeding in the church foyer instead of in the mother's room.
Speaker: So me, I
Speaker: being me, took a shaky photo in the chapel, the chapel, that's right.
Speaker: I know it's a big no, no, but I did it anyway of me breastfeeding my second daughter.
Speaker: And I wrote a big long caption to my fellow nursing mamas,
Speaker: We love you.
Speaker: We support you.
Speaker: We want you here in church with us.
Speaker: We want you to fellowship with us and be a part of our spiritual community.
Speaker: We want you to have the opportunity to partake of every blessing of the sacrament and of coming to church.
Speaker: And if you are most comfortable in the nursing lounge, the foyer, the sacrament hall with a cover, without a cover, please just come.
Speaker: We want you.
Speaker: We need you.
Speaker: And then I wrote a big long caption to anyone who's uncomfortable by the sight of a nursing mother.
Speaker: That post received a lot of good attention and critical feedback.
Speaker: I do remember one person commenting, asking if they could share that on the exponent too.
Speaker: And I ignored it because I was worried that it would be seen as anti-Mormon.
Speaker: The irony of this, of course, is that I had previously been the one telling women that they needed to cover up.
Speaker: These and many other personal experiences where my own values and lifelong held beliefs were challenged made me realize that I was not offering that same respect to other people's lived experiences.
Speaker: And it took a while, but listening to other people's stories is what has radically shifted a lot of my beliefs.
Speaker: And when it comes to Mormonism, I'd like to believe that my shift in beliefs is because I was raised to be a Christ-like, loving person.
Speaker: Which leads me to why I created Rise of Eve.
Speaker: My Facebook profile picture has a photo of a woman wearing a shirt that says, womankind, a gender neutral term referring to both women and men.
Speaker: When you hear that definition, it sounds a little absurd.
Speaker: Yet, if you think about it, it's actually the more inclusive term since the word woman already has the word man in it.
Speaker: But it feels so foreign and uncomfortable to define it that way.
Speaker: There are so many words in the American English language that are rooted in male centricism.
Speaker: It's so deeply embedded into our words that we don't even realize it until somebody flips that narrative.
Speaker: One of my college professors talked about her story rather than history.
Speaker: The quote radical feminist from Legally Blonde talking about Ovestor instead of semester.
Speaker: Ovaries and semen, if you didn't catch that.
Speaker: And of course, the blog post that flips the entire Mel-centric script in Mormonism.
Speaker: It's called Dear Mormon Man.
Speaker: And if you have not read it, I highly recommend that you do.
Speaker: Seeing that patriarchal narrative flipped is so deeply uncomfortable.
Speaker: You start to see exactly how embedded male-centricism is into Mormonism and into American society in general.
Speaker: Now, I'll admit to having a terrible memory, but there are moments throughout my life that just stick in my mind.
Speaker: Once...
Speaker: As a young child, my mom gave a talk in our tiny branch in upstate New York, wherein she talked about how she never really believed Eve was seduced by Satan, or that Eve had committed the great sin that led to, quote, the fall of mankind.
Speaker: I can't even remember if she mentioned Adam in her talk, but she spoke about how she saw Eve as a heroine who made an intentional choice that led to greater joy despite the greater sadness that would also have to be experienced.
Speaker: My mom saw then what I didn't see until the 2013 Temple videos were released.
Speaker: When Eve said, is there no other way?
Speaker: It wasn't the ignorant, naive, foolish, simple-minded way the Temple video of my mom's time had shown.
Speaker: No, Eve was powerful and intentional, and my mom saw that.
Speaker: And you can see that so much more clearly in the 2013 temple videos.
Speaker: When Eve looks over at Satan with this look of realization, is there no other way?
Speaker: Her voice breaks.
Speaker: She tears up knowing that she's going to have to deliberately disobey father because this is the only way that she knows to have that greater joy.
Speaker: See, when Satan approaches Adam, Adam pretty quickly declines.
Speaker: Adam asks one question, which is a new world in an attempt to understand who this person is and what he's talking about.
Speaker: But when he realizes that Satan is trying to get him to disobey,
Speaker: He shuts down the conversation.
Speaker: However, when Satan approaches Eve, Eve is curious and questioning.
Speaker: She wants to know who he is and why he would try to convince her to disobey father.
Speaker: Adam is a yes man.
Speaker: mindlessly obedient.
Speaker: Eve was a critical thinker.
Speaker: Even the LDS prophet Russell M. Nelson agrees with this when he said, we need women and men who have the vision and courage of our mother Eve.
Speaker: Now, I know that this take might get me in a lot of trouble, but I take that to mean that
Speaker: that we need people who are willing to converse with the devil, deliberately disobey God, bring others with them for the purpose of more fully experiencing life, good and bad, light and darkness, health and sickness, pleasure and pain, and sincere joy, as well as sincere sorrow.
Speaker: And if that take is wrong, then I do not believe a loving heavenly mother or a loving heavenly father would punish,
Speaker: or reward, but that's another episode, anyone for an eternity.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Because we as humans can't even conceptualize eternity.
Speaker: How can we promise to be a certain way for eternity?
Speaker: And in my deconstruction of Mormonism came my deconstruction of the patriarchy.
Speaker: In my entire upbringing, I had been taught about the fall of Adam,
Speaker: But what if, what if the story of the Garden of Eden was not actually about the fall of Adam?
Speaker: What if it was about the rise of Eve?
Speaker: I don't believe in the creation story as much more than a myth, but stories are powerful.
Speaker: We talk about the Garden of Eden as a place of perfection, and we say that progress would have never happened without the fall of Adam.
Speaker: But actually that's not true.
Speaker: Progress would have never happened if it weren't for the rise of Eve, a courageous and visionary woman who took a terrifying step into the literal unknown.
Speaker: The story was never about Adam.
Speaker: The story was always about Eve.
Speaker: When I say that stories are powerful, it's because...
Speaker: I have realized that listening to people's stories is how we become the most Christ-like.
Speaker: We become the most empathetic, the most understanding, the most compassionate when we listen to other people's stories with the intent to listen and understand.
Speaker: not argue or diminish or devalue, but to understand and believe and validate.
Speaker: That is what I will be doing on this Rise of Eve podcast.
Speaker: We have so many incredible guests coming up that are going to be talking about a huge variety of topics.
Speaker: Whether you are nuanced in your beliefs, in the midst of deconstructing, or you don't know exactly where you fit or what to call yourself, there will be stories, there will be people that align with you, that you find yourself in.
Speaker: There will be stories that you completely disagree with.
Speaker: that you cannot fathom that someone would do that or behave that way.
Speaker: There will be stories that completely change your perspective on what you've thought and believed your whole life.
Speaker: We're going to talk to people about sexuality, about the temple.
Speaker: We're going to talk about morality, spirituality.
Speaker: We're going to talk about
Speaker: psychedelics and expansion and transformation and mission trauma and how Mormonism is both inclusive and exclusive.
Speaker: We're going to talk about relationship red flags and green flags.
Speaker: We're going to talk about how the patriarchy affects people of all genders.
Speaker: We're going to talk about the prevalence of white supremacy and racism that is still happening.
Speaker: alive and well in the church.
Speaker: We're going to hear from members of the LGBTQIA plus community.
Speaker: We're going to hear from people of all genders who are on the entire spectrum of their beliefs, from nuanced and believing to completely out.
Speaker: We are going to cover so many topics here, and I hope that you will be able to find yourself and find your community and find your people where
Speaker: within Rise of Eve.
Speaker: Thank you so much for being here and for listening.
Speaker: I know that being on a faith journey can bring up so many conflicting feelings.
Speaker: Like, how can you both be grateful for how you were raised and find it traumatizing?
Speaker: How can you love your spouse but hate that you got married so young?
Speaker: There's no one right way to w ander and
Speaker: through a faith journey, but I hope that you can find value here.
Speaker: I hope you can see yourself here in any of these stories.
Speaker: I hope that you can learn from these stories.
Speaker: I hope that you're willing to just take a little time and listen to someone's experience that isn't yours and have learn experience just a little bit more compassion.
Speaker: Just a little bit more empathy.
Speaker: Just a little bit more love.
Speaker: Including for and perhaps especially for yourself.
Speaker: You can find us on Instagram at rise.of.eve or on Facebook at Rise of Eve.
Speaker: You can also reach us at the.rise.of.eve at gmail.com.
Speaker: If you would like to be hosted on our podcast, please shoot me an email.
Speaker: I would love to hear from you.