joysprings https://joyspringsblog.com/ Life After Leaving the LDS Church Thu, 26 Mar 2026 13:39:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://joyspringsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/cropped-Logo-512-1-32x32.png joysprings https://joyspringsblog.com/ 32 32 Becoming Ex-Mormon: The Thing I Feared Most Saved Me (Part One) https://joyspringsblog.com/becoming-exmormon-part-one/ Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:55:19 +0000 https://joyspringsblog.com/?p=701 What I Believed About Ex-Mormons The narrative has changed a bit in recent years, but when I was young and through most of my life an ex-Mormon was a scary thing. Ex-Mormons were angry, bitter, vengeful, and dangerous. They wanted nothing more than to pull me out of the safety of the one true church.… 

The post Becoming Ex-Mormon: The Thing I Feared Most Saved Me (Part One) appeared first on joysprings.

]]> Unconditional Love and Boundaries: How to Hold Both https://joyspringsblog.com/unconditional-love-and-boundaries-how-to-hold-both/ Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:52:31 +0000 https://joyspringsblog.com/?p=639 So, we’ve realized we don’t want to continue the pattern of control we experienced in our families. We’re working on parenting from unconditional love. It’s kind of awesome — and we’re beginning to see the possibilities of connection and peace in our relationships. And then we realize we’ve swung too far to the other extreme.… 

The post Unconditional Love and Boundaries: How to Hold Both appeared first on joysprings.

]]> Too Tired to Parent from Unconditional Love? https://joyspringsblog.com/too-tired-to-parent-from-unconditional-love/ Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:51:53 +0000 https://joyspringsblog.com/?p=653 Post-Mormon parenting from unconditional love sounds beautiful in theory.  Theory: All while our kids melt down or make mistakes. Reality:  Basically, we melt down and make mistakes. And then we wonder where all that love went and what’s wrong with us. The Myth of Endless Availability There’s nothing wrong with us! But unfortunately, if we… 

The post Too Tired to Parent from Unconditional Love? appeared first on joysprings.

]]> Post-Mormon Parenting https://joyspringsblog.com/post-mormon-parenting/ Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:51:10 +0000 https://joyspringsblog.com/?p=624 When I was in the church I was pretty darn confident in my ability to parent. Sure, maybe I yelled more than I was comfortable with, but I knew exactly how to manage my children’s behavior. And I made sure they believed what they were supposed to believe. My kids talked the talk, walked the… 

The post Post-Mormon Parenting appeared first on joysprings.

]]> How to Give Ourselves Unconditional Love While Parenting https://joyspringsblog.com/how-to-give-ourselves-unconditional-love-while-parenting/ Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:50:43 +0000 https://joyspringsblog.com/?p=675 Sometimes, the part of us that needs the most care isn’t the child sitting across the kitchen table — it’s the child inside us. This child: We can be a loving parent for that inner child. This is reparenting. It lets us give ourselves unconditional love: The way we want to for our own kids. … 

The post How to Give Ourselves Unconditional Love While Parenting appeared first on joysprings.

]]> Iron Rod: Utopia or Dystopia? https://joyspringsblog.com/iron-rod-utopia-or-dystopia/ Thu, 08 Jan 2026 23:50:31 +0000 https://joyspringsblog.com/?p=520 The Dream Once upon a time a man named Joseph Smith had a dream, and he told his family about it. Later, his son, Joseph Smith Jr., wrote a book and included a version of the dream in the book. His son also wrote an explanation or interpretation of the dream in the book. (To… 

The post Iron Rod: Utopia or Dystopia? appeared first on joysprings.

]]> Post-Mormon Parenting with Unconditional Love https://joyspringsblog.com/post-mormon-parenting-unconditional-love/ Sat, 01 Nov 2025 08:00:23 +0000 http://sh00016/cgi/addon_GT.cgi?s=GT::WP::Install::Cpanel+%28nfdgplte%29+-+127.0.0.1+%5Bnocaller%5D/?p=1 In the post-Mormon community, many of us were raised by parents who couldn’t offer unconditional love because their deepest held beliefs were not compatible with it. On top of that, many of us were devoted to a God who really sucked at love in a lot of ways (read my post about conditional love in… 

The post Post-Mormon Parenting with Unconditional Love appeared first on joysprings.

]]>