In this bonus episode, Susan and Cynthia share and discuss a few voicemails from the ALSSI mailbag. The male gaze, sad heaven, organizational/prophetic focus, sealing policy, and dancing with parables are some of the topics touched on in this wide-ranging conversation.
TW: Emotional Abuse and Physical Abuse Members of the Church don't talk much about polygamy, but isn't it time we did? After all, it continues to haunt our family trees, our church history, and many women's minds and hearts. Imagine getting married to a man only to find out he actually has a deep testimony of polygamy and insists you'll need to have one too. In Bonus Episode 221, Blakelee Ellis is joined by Alicia Owens, who shares her personal story of finding herself in that unthinkable situat...
How much in the Church is still, in 2025, coming to us through the male lens? Pretty much all of it. Our scriptures, doctrine, ward boundaries, curriculum, conference talks, local leadership, and decisions are almost entirely by and/or about men. A women’s organization made and presided over by men is not really a women’s organization, is it? How could men ever describe or define women—our roles, attributes, or experiences—not as they see us, but as we actually are? In Episode 220, Cynthia and S...
Linda Hamilton explains, “I spent my whole life believing that spirituality was in big things. Visions from heaven, angels, signs. We always say in Mormonism, don't wait for a sign. You won't get a sign; you won't get a miracle. We say that...and then we go up in testimony meeting and talk about some sign we received." She describes having spent much of her youth wondering how to get things like signs, or a surefire testimony. "And now," she says, "I've really embraced [that] spirituality is sma...
Therapist C.A. Larson defines a high-demand religion as “a religious group that exerts significant control over its members' beliefs, behaviors, and daily lives. These groups often require strict adherence to doctrine, discourage independent thinking, and use social, psychological, or spiritual pressure to maintain compliance.” In Episode 218, C.A. joins Susan and Cynthia for an exploration of high-demand religions and the impact they can have on their members’ mental and spiritual health. Thoug...
“We have direct access to light and knowledge and power, and we have the right—the divinely given right—to take that power, even if it says to us something different from how the authorities or power structures over us may be thinking. If it's the thing that's right and true for ourselves, we are benefited when we follow the dictates of our own conscience,” says Laurie Lee Hall. She joins Susan and Cynthia in Episode 217 for a conversation about trusting ourselves in the journey toward wholeness...
These days it seems Latter-day Saints talk about the importance of temple attendance in almost every meeting and lesson. It makes sense: in 2001, then-Elder Russell M. Nelson explained, “Every activity, every lesson, all we do in the Church, point to the Lord and His Holy house.” But might this relentless focus on a thing not all members participate in work as a separator in our congregations, communities, and relationships? In Episode 216, Susan and Cynthia return to the topic of the temple for...
Shibboleths are customs, traditions, words, or phrasings that distinguish one group of people from another. Latter-day Saints have a lot of unique identifiers. Garment lines, beverage choices, vocabulary, or prayer styles might serve as reliable clues to whether or not someone belongs to our church. In Episode 215, Cynthia and Susan talk about some of these shibboleths and how they function within our culture to identify not only whether or not someone is a member, but in some cases what type of...
“Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have a book about girls who ask great questions?” This question from a 9-year-old inspired authors McArthur Krishna and Anne Pimentel to create their book Changemakers: Women Who Boldly Built Zion. By highlighting women’s stories, the book affirms our roles in building, growing, and sustaining the Church—influencing organization, policy, and culture. In Episode 214, Cynthia and Susan are joined by the authors for a conversation about specific ways women’s voices ha...
“What is it like to be an introvert in a church that really supports extroversion?" When therapist C.A. Larson asked this question in a previous episode, it was a lightbulb moment for many listeners. Through voicemails, emails, and on social media, women of the ALSSI community reported feeling seen, and understanding their own church experiences in a new way. In Episode 213, Susan and Cynthia share and discuss the messages listeners submitted, as well as their own experiences. What might our chu...
“My faith is this process of evolving, ebbing, flowing, forming, reforming, shaping, shape shifting,” explains Kathie Debenham. It’s no surprise that she describes her faith as a moving thing; as a dancer, her education includes a graduate certification focused on “observing, describing, recording, and making meaning of movement.” In Episode 212, Kathie joins Susan and Cynthia to talk about her personal journey—where she’s been, where she is, and how she intends to keep moving. She says, “I have...
When asked about the possibility of priesthood ordination for women in 1998, Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley famously told Larry King, “It would take another revelation to bring that about. I don’t anticipate it.” Big changes have come following revelations in LDS history, but must prophetic revelation always precede change? Even on a local level, many leaders are hesitant to innovate in small ways. Natalie Brown posits that “not every small experiment should require prophetic sign off.” In Episode 211...
In Part 2 of the conversation about biblical marriage, Susan and Cynthia ask Dr. Jennifer Bird about virginity, purity culture, and—of course!—biblical polygamy. Joseph Smith drew on polygamy in the Hebrew Bible to justify instituting the practice in early Mormonism, teaching that sometimes God not only condoned but actually mandated it. So what does a feminist biblical scholar say about it?
“If we want to look at this sacred collection called the Bible as our guide, let's be really clear and honest about what it was saying on its own terms first, then leave it up to everyone to figure out what we're going to do with that, because we're going to do different things with it,” suggests Dr. Jennifer Bird. In Episode 209, she joins Susan and Cynthia for part one of a conversation about biblical marriage. Is it possible that in our reading of the Bible, we’ve layered a lot of our own ide...
Latter-day Saints have a complicated relationship with the word patriarchy. We reverence it, including variations in some of our highest callings and ordinances, yet many members won’t touch it in a discussion of women’s rights or organizational equality. So how can we have meaningful conversations about it with other Church members? Amy McPhie Allebest says, “There are two ways to try to reach people’s hearts and minds to say, ‘I’m serious, this is a problem.’ One is through facts, and one is t...
When it comes to talking about abuse and violence against women, “You have to become comfortable with being uncomfortable,” explains Susan Madsen. In Episode 207, Dr. Madsen joins Susan and Cynthia for a conversation about the link between religiosity and abuse, and the power disparity that fosters it. Even where the Church is strongest, the statistics are troubling, to say the least. How might our church and its members move from lip service to leading "the army to protect home, family, and chi...
“How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you," says Darice Auston, quoting Robert Frost. In Episode 206, Darice joins Cynthia and Susan to share some of the things that have occurred to her, and where those insights are leading her now. It's a conversation that illustrates the ways our unique experiences can shape and inform our spiritual life and church engagement, leading to a truer expression of our deepest personal beliefs.
“The natural world, with all its varieties of God’s creations, shows us so many [other] ways of being,” writes Kaylee McElroy. Zooming out as far as human imagination can take us may bring our ideas about God and our relationship to the physical world into clearer focus. In Episode 205, Susan and Cynthia are joined by Kaylee for a conversation about everything: structures, darkness, creation, connection, and the convergence of physics and spirituality.
In a church where everything is “true,” how do we allocate importance? With only so much bandwidth, we all have to make choices about what matters to us. Which ideas do we find to be consistently resonant, or generative? Which produce meaningful fruit in our lives and relationships? In Episode 204, Cynthia and Susan take on the current interest in the Second Coming in a discussion about deciding what really matters.
There are some topics that seem to surface again and again in our ALSSI conversations: love, fear, self, change, and patriarchy, to name a few. In Episode 203, Cynthia and Susan are joined by Valerie Hamaker for a conversation that touches on these themes and others as we discuss evolving faith.
When things start to shift around our faith, the need to tell people about the change can feel overwhelming. There are all kinds of reasons people want to share—it can feel isolating to carry such big thoughts, feelings, and experiences alone. But depending on the circumstances, spilling the details of your evolving faith can have all kinds of consequences. In Episode 202, Susan and Cynthia discuss the question, “Who deserves to hear my story?”
David French wrote, “We live in an age of misplaced certainty, when even the smallest expressions of doubt or the slightest of disagreements break institutions and fracture families." In Episode 201, Cynthia and Susan take on certainty as it contributes to the development of a Church monoculture. Is there room for existential or intellectual humility in a "True" church? And as members of an organization built around checklists and worthiness assessments, can Latter-day Saints allow individual co...
Our spiritual lives are our own, but they don’t exist in a vacuum. We can do all the inner work we want, but as Latter-day Saint women our personal journey is always going to intersect with our Church membership, theology and history, our marriages, friendships and families, our communities, education and politics, and all the messaging we absorb in these interactions. In Episode 200, Cynthia and Susan discuss how looking at our journey in context can help us better understand our individual sto...
“All dogma begins in mysticism,” says Rob Bell. But by the time programs, practices, and policies filter down to Church members, it’s little wonder the criteria for determining what really matters in the long term—and why—can feel a bit fuzzy. In light of recent changes, in bonus Episode 199 Cynthia and Susan revisit their conversation from Episode 102, Did It Ever Matter? What’s the point of all the trappings of our religious practice as Latter-day Saints? Why do some changes bring so much emot...
An August 2024 Church Handbook update includes instruction inviting “Young Women class presidencies to organize youth to minister by welcoming visitors and members as they enter the chapel.” Does this baby step represent leadership’s awareness of the need for Latter-day Saint young women to have some kind of systematic responsibility at the ward level? In Episode 198, Cynthia and Susan discuss this change in the context of research detailing historic shifts in religious engagement for Gen Z men ...
As a finale to this season of conversations about women’s spirituality, in Episode 197 Susan and Cynthia revisit some ideas that stood out to them, discuss personal takeaways, and chat about what’s on each of their minds now.
“For me, broadening my thinking about ritual has given me more freedom to bring my whole self and my creativity to my spiritual life, as well as meet my unique and evolving spiritual needs,” explains Selina Forsyth, who joins Cynthia and Susan to discuss ritual in the lives of Latter-day Saint women. What about when the rituals provided by our religion no longer fit? Even if they do remain deeply meaningful, in a church where women have not been involved in creating official sacred rituals—and s...
Every Latter-day Saint woman’s walk is unique. Cynthia and Susan are joined in Episode 195 by Candice Clark, who shares a glimpse of her personal path and some valuable insights she’s picked up along the way. She reminds us, “As a mother raised in the Church, one thing I’m grateful to have finally learned is that my desires matter. They don’t matter more than anyone else’s; they also don’t matter less. It’s good to know what I want, whether or not I get it. And it’s okay for me to get what I wan...
“If one is religious but not spiritual, it will not enhance mental health,” says therapist C.A. Larson. In Episode 194, C.A. joins Susan and Cynthia for a conversation at the intersection of religion and spirituality. What are the differences between the two? How do they function together, and separately? And what influence might each one have on our overall wellbeing?
Bad things happen to good people—good works cannot protect us from the natural consequences of being human in an imperfect world. But in a church where the narrative often draws connections between worthiness and blessings, it can be hard to avoid internalizing the idea that we’re special and can achieve control by doing the right things. “How do I reconcile my life experiences with the things the Church teaches about blessings?” This prompt from a listener frames Susan and Cynthia’s discussion ...
