Choosing What You Believe with Chelsea Paxton

Rebecca:

Welcome to Beautifully Bloomed, the podcast where we explore how to break
you out of the box of rules and beliefs that are holding you back from the
life you are meant to live. I am your host, Rebecca Tervo. Join me as I
share mindset tools, coaching conversations and human design to help you
uncover your unique gifts and create the life, relationships, and business
you desire.

Rebecca:

So today, I am with Chelsea Paxton and she is a fellow Life Coach School
coach and she is a faith crisis and faith transition coach, right?

Chelsea:

Yes.

Rebecca:

For women, and coming out of Mormonism I guess I would say. Welcome
Chelsea, thanks for being here today.

Chelsea:

Yes, thank you so much for having me Rebecca.

Rebecca:

I am so interested in your story because as you know I am doing this ... On
the podcast this year, I am doing kind of a series to invite women on to
tell their stories about their faith transition or their faith crisis and
it sounds like you've been through this a while ago. Like how many years
ago has it been that you left your church?

Chelsea:

Over 20 years ago now.

Rebecca:

Wow. So that's a long time ago. But what I was curious about, because you
were 17, like wow. Like I'm thinking of myself at 17. I would have never
had the courage. Well I'm 51 now, so let's just say [inaudible 00:01:19]
... I just didn't have the courage to stand up and say anything about
anything I questioned, so for our audience, who probably a lot of people
know this, I was not a Mormon. However I did grow up in a high, I would
call it more of a high demand religion, where the rules, there's these
rules you have to follow, or certain beliefs, you're so afraid. I mean it
was so scary to me. What if I didn't do it this way? What if I didn't go to
church anymore? Like all these things I thought that were super scary to
me, which is why I just stayed. Even though I started having thoughts
probably when I was in high school. But yeah, so for you to just say ... I
mean what was it that when you were 17, which ... Were you still in high
school even at that point?

Chelsea:

Yes. I was still in high school. Yeah. So I grew up in the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. I call it the Mormon church because I grew up
in the 80s and 90s and so that's why I will use as a term, and yeah. I was
born into the church, so both my parents were members, they met at BYU, I'm
one of five kids born in Salt Lake City. So pretty Mormon and as members of
the church will say that I have pioneer stock, my family. So generations
back, we go back to the founding of the church, and so it's like literally
in my blood. Just how I was born and raised.

Chelsea:

But even as a little girl, I started noticing things that just didn't make
sense. So for example, one time I was in Sunday school, I was probably in
second grade, and our Sunday school teacher who is a volunteer, just doing
the best they can, probably just teaching out of a manual, and they were
teaching us about how ... What are we supposed to do if one of our friends
stops going to church? And of course the answer was, "Well, we shouldn't be
friends with them anymore because they might be a bad influence, right?"
And I remember raising my hand and just saying, "Well, isn't that when they
need a friend the most?" And just kind of being like that doesn't make
sense to me. Like if someone's going through something and something's
happening in their lives, why would I stop being their friend? Like that
doesn't make any sense to me. And I just started noticing little things
like that.

Chelsea:

When I was in high school, probably around when I was 15 years old, this
was in the mid 90s, my parents, who like I will say are Sunstone parents.
So for Mormons, there's a publication called Sunstone Magazine that's for
more progressive Mormons, and so we were a little bit more progressive and
my parents are pretty open to different ideas and topics. And when I was
15, my parents read a couple of books by BYU professors who had just been
excommunicated from the church for their research and scholarship. In the
Mormon church, we call this the September Six. There were six BYU
professors who were excommunicated all around the same time in September, I
think it was maybe 1993 if I'm not mistaken, but they were all kind of
excommunicated as a group for their research and their scholarship into the
history of the Mormon church and what they were publishing.

Chelsea:

So they were excommunicated and then my parents read their stuff, and so
they ... A couple years later, when they found their books and that kind of
thing, they were pretty open. They said, "Hey, if you want to know some of
this, you can read this." Like just kind of gave it to me as an open-ended
thing, and so I did read some of that and it was pretty shocking and
startling because it was so different from what we were learning in Sunday
school. And it kind of just started there and then in high school, whenever
I needed to write a research paper for like an English class let's say I
would write about the Mormon church. Like I would go and ... At the time we
were living near Seattle, so I would go down to the University of
Washington library and go bury myself into the stacks and look in the
archives and all these things and find more sources and more stories that
were not being taught in Sunday school and I would write about them.

Chelsea:

So that kind of started that little seed, that little curiosity, and then
later in high school, I still had all these questions about the church. A
lot of things with like the history of the church and how women were
treated, I had a huge issue with polygamy and all the stuff that the church
was just basically trying to hide and cover at that point in the 90s. And
for me, what also compounded that was that my parents started going through
a divorce, and in the Mormon church, good families don't divorce. Like this
is just not a thing, and there really wasn't a place for me in the church.
I was discovering that I am a feminist and I was having some really serious
big questions around the history of the church and how women are treated
and polygamy and all of these things, plus there was all this going on at
home with my family that was not accepted by the church. There really
wasn't a place for us, and so those things together is what when I was 17,
I'm like, "I don't think it's safe for me to be here anymore."

Rebecca:

You feel like you just didn't fit in, right?

Chelsea:

Yeah. I really felt like there wasn't a place for me. I saw how my
congregation, we call it a ward in the Mormon church, treated me and my
family when we were going through that.

Rebecca:

What do you mean? Like how did they treat you? Did they kind of, "Oh,
they're ..." Like push you off sort of to the side?

Chelsea:

It was so interesting because like ... I will say the Mormon church does a
fantastic job caring for its community. So if you move in to a Mormon
church, like people will show up on your front doorstep, ready to help you
unpack boxes, bring you a whole week of meals if you just had a baby, they
will take care of you if you are ill, someone will show up and mow your
lawn. Like they really do care for their church members, like it's a very
close-knit community. But when you no longer fit within their model of what
a family should look like, I just don't think people knew what to do. Like
I don't blame them. Like I think at that point, this was the mid to late
90s, there wasn't a model for what to do with a family of five kids where
the husband leaves the wife with five ... Like there was no ... There's no
[inaudible 00:08:09] for something like that.

Rebecca:

Like did your mom and dad still go to the church? Or did they leave the
church? Or [inaudible 00:08:15] -

Chelsea:

Yeah, we stopped attending at that point. Yeah, there was just so much
going on.

Rebecca:

So you would have had to go by yourself, right?

Chelsea:

Yeah. And I did a couple of times. I was able to drive and I tried it out
for a little while but it just ... It wasn't the same. Like as a coach now
I know it's my thoughts and what I was thinking at the time, but I did feel
that judgment. I did feel the eyes. I did experience that contrast of like
when suddenly you're an outsider within your own community and I had
already had so many questions about the church in terms of its history and
practices and doctrine and how they treated women and I was able to kind of
keep making it work because I had friends in the church, I liked going to
the church dances, I liked being social. Like there was enough to keep me
in even when I had those questions, like that dissonance was ... I was able
to manage it when I was doing all that research. But then when I really
experienced what it's like to be kind of on the outskirts, that's when I
was like, "Well, I think I need to move on." And yeah.

Chelsea:

I will say there was part of it where in the Mormon Church, one of the core
doctrines is that families can be together forever, and here was my family
falling apart and the church wasn't there in the way that I imagined that
they should be, to help us through that. And my 17-year-old mind thought,
"Well ..." It felt like my dad abandoned me and also felt like God and my
church had abandoned me too. And I kind of ... My brain kind of put those
two things together and so that's really what kind of started the exit.

Rebecca:

And your whole family left? Like all the kids in your family, did none of
them go anymore?

Chelsea:

Yeah. I was one of the oldest and so yeah, we all stopped going at the same
time.

Rebecca:

So in some ways, that seems easier. At least you have your family, right?
So some people who leave, their family stays in. I'm just thinking about my
situation at the moment, but it's like when you're leaving and your family
is still there, it's really difficult, right? But the other part is as you
were probably brought up like we were brought up too, like we have friends
in church. That's like where they are. They're not ... Yes, you could have
some school friends, but it's kind of not encouraged. So what happens with
your friendships?

Chelsea:

Right. So it's so interesting because I did have some good friends at
church of course. At the time I was going to a private high school and so I
wasn't in the main school district where a lot of my church friends were
going, and so I already had some friends that were outside the church
because they were in a separate school. And what I will say is that when
all that happened, my friends in high school really stepped up and were
there for me. It's fascinating because again I felt like with the Mormon
church, we are so good about taking care of people in our community, except
when we don't know what to do when they're experiencing something that's
outside of what you're supposed to be doing. And so yeah, all of that
reach-out, it really dropped off and then my friends in high school really
filled that gap for me because they weren't Mormon and to them, they
probably knew who had gone through divorces and had struggles at home and
could really understand what that was all about and so it was a good
experience for me to know that there are really wonderful relationships to
be had outside of your faith as well.

Rebecca:

Yeah, because that was the next question. Although you were 17 and you had
friends outside the church, but I mean how do you find community outside
the church, because that's my biggest issue I think is like, "Okay, where's
the community?" Like I've been in this community for 50 years, right?

Chelsea:

Yeah. A lot of Mormons will share that sentiment as well because within the
LDS church, if you move somewhere to a new neighborhood, you have an
automatic church family when you move in. It's just how it works which is
so lovely but incredibly painful when that no longer works for you. So for
me, the tricky point was ... This was right before I was going to be
applying for colleges and all these kinds of things and in the Mormon
church, you are really taught and conditioned that you are going to go to a
Mormon school, though my parents were very open. They were like, "If you
want to go to a Mormon school, great. If you don't, it's totally fine too."
Like they were very open and flexible but kind of the expectation is that
you're going to go to a Mormon school, you're going to get married to a
Mormon.

Rebecca:

To a missionary is what I've heard.

Chelsea:

Like your whole life is laid out for you and so for me I was kind of on
that precipice of like, "Well, I'm going to be starting so many new things,
like going to school, making new friends, all that stuff." So I remember
when I was doing all the research about the early history of the church and
how it was founded and all that stuff and I remember learning some things
about Brigham Young who was the second prophet of the church and I just ...
In integrity with me, like I decided that I could not go to BYU because it
carried that man's name, and he was so harmful and so ... I mean it was
just so hurtful. Like I just knew, even before I decided to apply to
colleges, like I could not go to that school if it had his name. Because to
me it carried abuse and all different types of things from the history that
to me I just couldn't do out of integrity with my values.

Chelsea:

And so when I had that moment, I'm like, "What am I going to do?" And so I
applied to different colleges and it all ended up working out but things
had to happen very quickly. When I was doing this research and going
through this experience, it was like all these life decisions really sped
up, and what's so interesting is that when I did go to college, and I made
friends with my freshman floor and all that kind of stuff, I didn't tell
many people that I grew up Mormon. I kind of kept that -

Rebecca:

Did they have to know, right? Like -

Chelsea:

No. It was something that I really kept private unless I was really close
to someone. Because I think I was still deconstructing and still healing
from all of that that just happened, and trying to figure it out, and
what's so interesting now that I look back on my college experience, I was
deconstructing and I was doing all this, but I didn't know that at the
time. And I ended up majoring in psychology and majoring in religion
because my campus offered a religion major that was not religious. Like it
was an academic study of religion, and so it was so fascinating to me to
look at sacred texts from across different world religions and look at it
with a totally different perspective. So I was all in on that, I loved it,
and I think the reason why is because I was trying to figure out what I
believed in and what had my church been teaching me and was this really
true and what are some other ways to look at this and what do we as humans
have in common and what are we trying to answer and solve together? And so
I can see those four years now as like, "Oh, I was actually deconstructing
my Mormon faith," but I didn't know. For me academia was a really safe
place to do that. So for me, that's kind of how I created community.

Rebecca:

Yeah. No, I'm just curious. Oh yeah, we were talking about community, but
here's a question.

Chelsea:

Yeah, for me [inaudible 00:16:24] created it. Like in college and studying
in that, but I didn't know that at the time. But now I can look back and
see like that's so interesting, that's what I was doing.

Rebecca:

Yeah. So I'm curious too. You said something about the comments. Did you
find a common thread amongst the religions that you were studying?

Chelsea:

Yeah. I think as humans, there are just these big questions that we're all
trying to answer. Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? What's
the purpose for my life? Why is there pain and suffering, and what do I do
about that? And what happens in the next ... After we die. Like I think
these are just very big human existential questions and what I see so
beautiful about religion and beliefs and spirituality is that it also gives
us a way to mark out our lives. So when there's these transitions or
liminal moments where we're betwixt and between, like you think of when a
baby is born or when we come of age or we enter a big relationship or
someone passes away, like these are moments that humans across time have
created rituals and understanding around because there is something kind of
sacred or magical or unknown or uncomfortable, just this like ... We're
going from this stage to this stage and what are we going to do about that?
Well religion gives us a way to mark out how to organize our thoughts and
beliefs and so we can move through those phases with a little bit more
confidence, like we know what we're doing. So I find that really
fascinating and I love that because that's something we can all connect
with. We just do it in different ways.

Rebecca:

Right. So how did you choose then, I assume you didn't marry a Mormon man.

Chelsea:

No.

Rebecca:

How did you choose to raise your family? Just I mean there's a ... That's
what's interesting about religion to me, it gave you, it gave me too, a
foundation for raising my family. So I'm curious, now my family, my
daughter turned 18, our youngest turned 18 this past summer. So then I felt
like free of this obligation to have the foundation, right? So I'm curious
about you, like what kind of foundation did you use?

Chelsea:

Yeah, that's such a good question because I also describe the LDS church or
the Mormon church as a high demand religion where it gives you a very clear
structure as far as like all those big questions that I just asked, it
tells you everything, it gives you an answer for everything you need to
know and how you're supposed to do your life and it gives you a very clear
script and so that can be the hard thing about leaving because all of a
sudden, you're like, "Well, do I need to toss that all aside? Can I pick
and choose what is right, especially when we've been conditioned to believe
that there is a right way to do something and if that's not the right way,
then I have to go find the right way to do it, it has to be out there
somewhere else."

Chelsea:

So what's interesting is after I went to college and I studied religion and
psychology, I knew I wasn't done. I was still just so in love with studying
the two subjects, and so I went to grad school in Boston and studied
theology and looked at more specifically theology and psychology and how
they come together. And that's where I met my husband and it was so
interesting because I was there studying just purely for academics and
interest on my own, and he was there to become a minister.

Rebecca:

Okay.

Chelsea:

So it was a really funny turn of events, but many of my classmates were
there to become ordained clergy in their denomination, which is something I
wasn't as familiar with because in the Mormon church, you do not need to go
to college or grad school to become clergy, it's lay ministry, so everyone
serves the church in their own way, you don't need a degree to do so. But
in many other denominations, you need to go to school to become a priest or
a rabbi or a pastor and many of my classmates were at Boston University to
do that and I remember telling one of my best friends, like, "Oh, I'm not
going to date anyone here. I'm just going to go somewhere else on campus to
meet people," and it actually ended up turning out that I married someone
within my program and he is a minister or pastor in the United Methodist
Church, and that's where we're raising our children right now and it's a
very progressive side of the United Methodist Church and -

Rebecca:

It's like what a turn of events.

Chelsea:

I know. It's so funny.

Rebecca:

Like I didn't expect this part of the story.

Chelsea:

I know. Like I said, I told my friend like, "No, I'm not going to date
anyone within this school. I'm going to go somewhere," but no, he's a
wonderful guy and we're just very, very happy ... But we still kind of pick
and choose how to answer our kids' questions and to blend kind of how I
grew up with how he grew up and what we want to raise our kids with on
purpose, like even the other day, my six-year-old was just like, "So wait,
Mom, where did the first humans come from? Like who was the mommy and
daddy?" She's like thinking things out and I'm like, "That's such a great
question. Let's wait for Daddy to come home. Let's all talk about this,"
because I'm like, "Do we talk about Adam and Eve? Do we talk about
evolution? Do we talk about both? Like how do we answer these questions,"
and we blended. We are working through it.

Rebecca:

Well good. It sounds like you're open and he's open and that's the best way
to be, right? Because I feel like ... I don't know, I grew up in such a
black and white mindset, right? It's like this is the straight and narrow
way, it's black, it's white, it's good, it's bad, it's right, it's wrong.
There is not like an in between gray area, and that makes it difficult when
you leave because now I feel this pull too that I could easily just follow
... Like it's just so easy, right? To get into that black and white
thinking about something totally different. It's like you can totally just
... Because you've been so trained to believe that there's a right way and
a wrong way.

Chelsea:

Yes. Yes.

Rebecca:

And so deconstruction takes that, right? It's like how do you get out of
that? Yeah.

Chelsea:

That is a huge thing that I work with my clients is I find that very much
present in like the ex-Mo or ex-Mormon or ex-LDS, post-Mormon communities
where that black and white thinking is very -

Rebecca:

It's still there.

Chelsea:

It's still there, and so ... And it can be really tricky to be in the gray,
like to be in the middle, and that is something that I have been working
towards for many years and I think we're still figuring out, and it's okay,
like [inaudible 00:23:24] with my six-year-old asking about where the first
humans came from, I'm like, "That's such an interesting question. I haven't
thought about that in a really long time," and to try things out and work
it out and to know that it's okay if you don't have an answer. Right away.
It's okay to try things out and it's okay to pause and think like, "Well, I
haven't thought about that in a while. Let me really think about this," and
we're really open with our children and we know we don't have to be perfect
in having the answers and the solutions and we can not make it up as we go
but to give ourselves the flexibility to try things out and see what really
lands and works and what aligns and if it doesn't then we try again and
that permission that we give ourselves is something that takes time and
it's something I also work with my clients is like that permission that you
don't have to ...

Chelsea:

It's not black or white or all or nothing that there is so much more beyond
that and to allow yourself to sit in that uncertainty and that unknowing
can be a really powerful place. Like it's scary at first, but that's where
you really discover what you want to believe on purpose, and it can be just
for you and it doesn't have to be this set of beliefs or this set of
beliefs from someone else. Like it really is claiming your personal
authority. That's something I talk about a lot because growing up in a high
demand religion, your authority is external, and that's just how it is,
you're not allowed to question it or any of that, and a faith transition
really is that journey of transitioning from that external authority to a
personal authority and it takes practice. It's a journey. I'm still in it.

Rebecca:

It really does because we're taught that the answer is outside of us,
especially as women. Especially as women, right? [inaudible 00:25:19],
that's a whole nother topic, but it's like this is exactly what I find
human design to be helpful for too is because it teaches you who you are
and who you're designed to be, and it's like, "Ooh," and it gives language
to that, right? It's like, "Ooh, this is a whole nother possibility of a
story that I could live," and my religion doesn't have to tell me that this
is right or wrong anymore. Like can I live into who I am and not think that
it's right or wrong or good or bad? Yeah, it's just ... It's a journey and
it's an exciting journey in so many ways. It's like, "Wow, what if the
world was just open to me, all the things? Everything was just open and now
I can just go see what I really want. Because it's hard to know what you
really want when you've just been taught, "This is the right way."

Chelsea:

Yes. Well especially in that kind of highly structured, high demand kind of
... Any kind of orthodox expression of faith where you're not allowed to
try on different ways of believing, different ways of practicing and
worshiping, when you're not allowed to even look beyond that. It's so
interesting because you think that you have all the information, you think
you're making choices and you have agency, but when you come out of that,
you realize that your hand was almost forced in terms of what you were
choosing to believe when you open that up that can be overwhelming, where
you're like, "Oh, I really do have some choices here and I really can make
my own decisions and I don't know how to do that because I've never been
taught that." But I love that you said that human society can give you
language and a way to shift that inside of you. That's really powerful
because I think that's what we're all looking for. Sometimes we just don't
know how to get started.

Rebecca:

Yeah, and I think that's what ... When I found human design, which actually
was about two years ago, when I just started looking at, "Oh, I'm designed
to be like this. Oh, but that's, no, I shouldn't be researching." Part of
my design is I'm a researcher. I'm like, "Oh, but no, don't go out and
research things because then you're going to go off the straight and narrow
path and you're going to ..." You know what I mean? Like the devil will
start, whatever it is, right? It's just like ... And then I was like, "Well
no wonder I'm so curious and love to read books and like to find out about
all the different religions and cults and all the things," which I felt so
guilty about for so long. I'm like, "I'm not supposed to be studying, like
this is bad, this is wrong." But you know what? Because it does open you up
to questions but wait a minute, that ... I'm not sure. Like, "Okay, what if
that's true instead of this?" It does kind of ... Like you were doing, with
your -

Chelsea:

Yes. I was ... Yeah, and especially in the faith [inaudible 00:28:07] that
I grew up in you're taught not to question, not to look outside, and if you
do have questions, you can do that but you have to read church-only
approved books and you have to get this answer, and stepping away from
that, I can see that that's an element of a high demand group in terms of
really limiting your access to materials and so it's an illusion where you
think like, "Oh, I am making this choice and I do have all the
information," when actually, the group itself is preventing me from even
looking beyond it and there's so much freedom when you can just see that
this is an element of how some groups work and this is a group dynamic and
it's not me and there's nothing wrong with my human curiosity to look
beyond this.

Rebecca:

There's nothing wrong with it. Truthfully.

Chelsea:

No, absolutely. I think it really opens up a whole new world and to use our
critical thinking skills is such a gift because for so long, that was
really kind of forbidden, right? And so -

Rebecca:

I felt so guilty. It wasn't even that ... It's just understood. Do you know
what I mean? Like so many things, so I thought about this so much. I'm
like, "Well who told me?" I'm like, "I don't know. I just heard it. It just
was understood." It's like the group believes this thing and it just kind
of ... Whatever way it comes out, I don't know if it's a certain person,
did they actually say it on a Sunday, I don't know but it's just ... This
is the way you grew up, and there's things you feel guilty about for not
even knowing why you feel guilty, you know it's like nobody said
specifically, "No, don't go read that book." However -

Chelsea:

It's all enforced within the group. Yeah.

Rebecca:

Yeah, it's interesting how that ... Yeah, it's just ... I have a lot of
stuff I can write about that because I'm like, "Wow, there were a lot of
things that I just understood to be bad." I don't know if there was any
written rule about it anywhere, it's just not what you do. You just don't
do that stuff. Especially as a woman, you just don't do that stuff.

Chelsea:

And that's very much prevalent in the church as well and again it's tricky
for people because when they butt up against that, it's difficult. They're
like, "Well, but it's not written in scripture, but it's not written in
this," but somehow, it's just enforced by the group itself and I will say,
for the past few months I've been looking more into elements of like a high
demand group or different kinds of influences of control and I don't know
if the group does that on purpose, like if this is like a calculated
decision that they've all made, like this is how we're going to enforce
this. Or if it's just human nature, sometimes we're in a very closed off
group, sometimes these things just start to happen but what I will say is
that it does have that influence of control over your life that you don't
even see or even know, it's like the fish in the fish bowl.

Chelsea:

Like you don't know you're in the water and so it can be really powerful to
just understand that dynamic and to see it and you're like, "Oh, now I have
language for explaining why I think I can't do something when in fact I do
know I can," and so now it's just kind of that transition is moving beyond
that group set of rules and expectations and then deciding, "What do I want
to do?" Because I actually do have a choice here, and it's really
fascinating. But I know a lot of people experience that for sure.

Rebecca:

Yeah, and it just ... Yeah, it feels so ... I think too, there's such this
fear-based thinking about, "If I date a guy who doesn't go to our church,
what's going to happen?" Like there's some terrible thing that's going to
happen, or like if I ... Yeah, if I choose not to ... Well for instance,
get married in the church or I choose to wear my hair a different color or
I don't know, it just sounds crazy actually as I'm saying it. However,
these are real things and these are real concerns when you're -

Chelsea:

Absolutely.

Rebecca:

A young woman, growing up, trying to figure out what you should do with
your life. And my husband, who was in our church, he also is often angry
about the fact that he feels like I just married him because he was the
right choice. Like it's been something to work through in our marriage.
We've been married for 30 years now. But it's a thing to work through,
right? It's like, "Well yes, but I still love you. Yes, I don't know if I
had other choices, I don't know, but I still love you." So there's so many
things that because of the church environment, I made decisions based on
that, and that's really ... Deconstructing that stuff and coming back to
choosing, again, right? It's like, "Well I still choose you now. I still
choose you. Let's just decide, we choose each other. Even though there was
the background thing, it doesn't mean we can't go forward." But we've had
to in our marriage even work through this stuff. That, "Oh, we decided
this, this and this because of that," and, "What if we hadn't decided that
and that and that, right? And what would have happened?" Yeah, so ...

Chelsea:

Well, I love that you say that because I think there's so much power in
re-deciding those elements again. Whether you're going through a faith
transition or not, like just at any point in your life, just the power of
choosing on purpose your life and releasing that momentum and that energy
to propel you forward and keep you going, that's something that I work with
sometimes with my clients, that they'll come to me and say like, "I don't
know how to make decisions for myself because all of my growing up, I
turned to the church to tell me what to do," and especially as women, it
was priesthood holders, men in the family, that would give you that advice
and wisdom and tell you what to do.

Chelsea:

And so I think one of the activities I love doing is just asking people
just to write down like give me all the simple decisions you just made in
the last few days. Like what you had for lunch and [inaudible 00:34:18]
just like little things just like reminding yourself that you make
decisions all the time and you've been practicing these little decisions
and so showing yourself that like, "No, I've made decisions in my life,"
and to not minimize those daily decisions because they are powerful and
then you just build momentum, you keep going and doing little things for
yourself and challenging yourself to make other decisions. Like choose
where you're going to go to lunch today and order exactly what you want and
don't worry about what other people ... Just little things, but those are
so powerful because often we'll tell ourselves I don't know or I don't know
how to choose or how to make a decision on my own. But actually in some
ways we've been doing it all along and now we just want to like amplify
them but that is something that so many women have shared with me. Like -

Rebecca:

Yeah, learning to trust yourself.

Chelsea:

Yes.

Rebecca:

It's really powerful to know that even though I'm married, I don't have to
... My husband doesn't have to have the last word on something for me. Like
I can have a discussion or we can have a discussion, but that doesn't mean
that he gets to decide anything for me really. He can decide his stuff, I
can decide my stuff. We can just come together and be a married couple, but
yeah, that has really taken me a long time. And that's one of the things I
thought so hard. Okay, my husband is probably not the "normal guy" from my
church would be a lot more ... Probably just have a lot more thoughts about
women working.

Rebecca:

Like I did, I went to college, and I worked. That wasn't necessarily the
thing to do. You should stay home, have a bunch of kids, right? That wasn't
the thing, but I just felt like I cannot, I cannot. I'm just not meant to
be a mom of eight, ten, twelve kids. I'm just not. It didn't work in my
life plan, so that was one little way that I was dissonant right from the
beginning. Like I am just not going to be the normal "person", which always
I felt like I should just pretend though still, I should pretend, I should
pretend that I don't believe in birth control. I should just pretend this
stuff because you're not supposed to, even if you do a family planning,
right? You're not supposed to believe in that stuff. So you just pretend.
You know that you do and it's like, "[inaudible 00:36:40]." Why aren't you
having babies, right? I don't know about the Mormon community, but in our
community, it just feels like this pressure. Just like if you haven't had a
baby for three years, what's going on? It's like this pressure.

Rebecca:

Now I have to say, and I should say this more often on my podcast, if
people are listening who are from my community, possibly they are. I don't
know that everybody believes that way. This is my perspective of what I
saw. This is what I experienced and I just felt so terrible about so many
things that I believe that didn't fit in and I've been struggling with it
for years. So this is what my year this year on the podcast is about, it's
like exploring faith transitions. Like what is that like? What happens on
the other end now, right? When you can be fully authentic and live to
yourself. Like live for yourself. It's like what will that feel like, I
don't know. I'm exploring it though. It's important to me.

Chelsea:

So exciting. Yes. Very exciting, and I think as you were saying there, I
just noticed how ... Again, like what we do with this dissonance. It's like
you have this thought or this belief but then you think you should or
shouldn't have that and it's like you start kind of ... I don't know, you
start wrestling with that, when it's so interesting that sometimes that
thought, like, "Oh, I should or shouldn't be doing this." That's our
thought too. It's not anyone else.

Rebecca:

I know. It's been learned. Yeah, it's probably been learned.

Chelsea:

Yes, it's so learned and so practiced. So one of the freedoms of going
through the transition is that you can start to see both of those thoughts
and then you can start to look at, "Oh, I don't have to put that limitation
on myself. Like I can let go of the idea that I should or should not
believe that and the possibility that maybe people like me actually believe
the way I do too and it's okay."

Rebecca:

You never know.

Chelsea:

You never know, exactly. But it's interesting how we kind of keep ourselves
within our constructs, ourselves with that idea, like we should or
shouldn't believe this certain thing and how mind-blowing it is when you
discover, "Wait, other people like me do it this way? Like I thought
everyone was on this ..." Because I think that's how it is in the Mormon
church too, like when you were talking about birth control. Growing up, I
had this idea that like Mormons don't practice birth control. Like they
have lots of kids and you're supposed to have lots of kids and all these
things, and what's so fascinating to me is that I think recently the church
said that it's the couple's decision about what they do with birth control,
it's not the church's decision, and I'm like, "That's really empowering
actually." I thought that was kind of surprising, I didn't know that the
church taught that, I just had this idea that you're supposed to have a
huge family. But the church doctrine actually says it's up to the family to
decide what they want to do and we're going to stay out of it. I thought
that was so interesting, I had this perception and then it's like, "Oh.
Interesting." So I have experienced that too. Yeah.

Rebecca:

Yeah. So like I said, I know that there are others who ... Or you can make
it work for you, right? You can ... And I thought about that too, but I
have been making it work for myself for about 10 years. So I'm like, "I'm
done making it work for myself. So I'm ready to move on." You know Chelsea,
I could like talk to you for days about this stuff. This is fun. But I
think we're getting to the end here, so before we leave, how can people
find you if they're interested in learning about your work or your
coaching? Like where is the best place?

Chelsea:

Yes. So I have ... I'm on Instagram, and so on Instagram my handle is
chelseapaxton.coach, and I also have a website where you can find out a
little bit more about my story and how I work with my clients and that is
chelseapaxton.com.

Rebecca:

Oh, easy.

Chelsea:

Super easy. Yeah.

Rebecca:

Yes. I'll put those in the show notes so that if people are interested in
finding you, they can find you. So thank you so much, Chelsea. This has
been a really good discussion.

Chelsea:

Oh thank you so much Rebecca. Thank you for having me.

Rebecca:

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, please go subscribe so that you
get notified of all the future goodies that are coming along. While you're
there, please leave me a review and let me know what you think. So excited
to share this with you and can't wait to talk to you next time. Bye.