"You broke my world, mommy."

I blew up my life and here's why. / TW

“You broke my world, mommy,” my four-year-old said to me through tears. She continued, “You need to go back to Arizona and fix it.”

Arizona. Where everything changed, and nothing remained but me.

I went to rehab. No, not for addiction—my usual follow-up when sharing this information. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the only substance I had consumed up to that point came in a tincture and made me hungry. My drug of choice was sharp, cold, and made me bleed. Fingernails worked too.

Porcupine Mind

It was the spring of 2021, and my soul hurt. Can a soul hurt? (According to Mormon theology, the spirit has no tangible parts—more like a white puff of smoke that will inevitably detach from our physical bodies and either rejoice in Spirit Paradise or ache for holiness in Spirit Prison.) Towards the end of my stay in rehab, my therapist told me, “Your soul is bigger than your body,” and goddamn, I felt that. But let’s circle back to that.

May 2021—my brain was prickly. Instead of fully processing that my entire existence was in question (by me), along with all of my life choices, every lobe would swell and bristle, warding off any foreseen danger. Occasionally, my mind would soften, but only for a fleeting moment before snapping back into porcupine mode, scaring off anything good before it could get too close. Unbeknownst to me, my entire Mormon belief system was unraveling, leading to choices that detached me from it and altered every corner of my life. I was truly at a crossroads—I could either wrestle with these feelings indefinitely, risking my life in the process (yes, it was that serious), or face them head-on. The decision was clear. I had to get help. For my daughters’ sake, and, more importantly, for me.

Tucson: A Different Kind of Heat

Tucson, Arizona. Even saying it makes me tear up—for both happy and sad reasons. My daughters were two and four years old when I left. The guilt of leaving them was immense, but it paled in comparison to how uncomfortable I felt in my own body.

I touched down on the scorching tarmac at the beginning of June. A tall, burly man waited at baggage claim, holding a sign with my name on it. The drive to the facility wasn’t long, but it felt excruciatingly so. I was consumed with terror. What have I done? I thought as I stared out the window of the black SUV at the desert landscape—so different from the mountain views of Salt Lake City. Everything was different. I wasn’t even wearing my garments (gross Mormon underwear). In fact, I hadn’t brought a single pair with me—I didn’t need an extra layer of clothing suffocating my already claustrophobic body. Especially not in the Arizona desert at the beginning of summer.

Stripped Down

I arrived at the campus with my giant purple suitcase in tow, which I immediately handed over to the staff upon entering the brightly lit lobby. They inspected every belonging I had in case I’d brought drawstrings or unmarked bottles of cosmetics. While strangers rifled through my luggage, I sat on a small couch by myself, waiting to be told what to do next.

My first task was a physical, where two nurses instructed me to strip down completely—they needed to check for bruises and cuts. I was so embarrassed. So ashamed. I watched in horror as the nice girl in scrubs lifted my left arm and asked me how I got my bruises and cuts.

“My fingernails,” I said.

“That’s it?” the nurse responded.

Through tears, I told her, “And a tube of lotion.”

I wished in that moment to disappear into the linoleum flooring. How horrifying to admit that my self-hatred was so desperate that I had resorted to hurting myself with the sharp plastic ending of a lotion tube. I had never felt more vulnerable. Well—that is, until what was to come in the next 42 days of my stay in the mental hospital.

Why Did You Leave Us?

“Why did you leave us, Mommy? Why did you leave our family?”

My daughter—remember, she was four at the time—asked me this continuously after I came home from Arizona. How could I possibly explain how necessary it had been for me to leave? Her innocent mind could only understand that before Arizona, Mommy and Daddy lived together, and after, Mommy moved out. Of course, the decision to get divorced was only one part of what changed for me, but to her, it was everything. Her world had ended.

And despite the incredible transformation I had just undergone, her pain broke me all over again.

But I had to go. I had to. It was either that or my daughters growing up without a mother.

The Un-Fucking

There was no choice in the matter, and if I was going to do this—leave everything I knew behind—I was really going to do it. I would fully submit myself to untangling my brain. And boy, did I ever.

I wasted no time making friends in rehab, though at first, I was terrified. But everyone was just like me: fucked up. We were all extremely fucked up, and we came to Tucson to get un-fucked. Some of us by choice, others by order.

There was an almost immediate sacredness to it all. None of us had our phones. The only TV we watched were old DVDs, the single computer in our lodge was closely monitored by staff, and phone calls were made on a landline—also closely monitored.

For the first time in my life, everything was quiet. My brain was on, my senses heightened, and gradually, my smile returned.

Before treatment, Mormonism, marriage, and motherhood consumed me. I existed for Mormonism, forced myself to desire marriage, and lost my underdeveloped personality to motherhood. There was little space in my brain to indulge my authentic self. No, I occupied my time buying beige toys for my children and maintaining my perfectly long hair—dyed Mormon blonde.

Though my mind was sheltered, provocative thoughts crept in every so often. Thoughts I didn’t yet recognize as my authentic self—until my second therapy session in Arizona.

Mormon Cindy on the Shelf

“I don’t know if I’m attracted to my husband.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, the blood drained from my face and got stuck in my stomach. I wanted to wretch, to scream—but I could only cup my face in my hands and sob uncontrollably.

Before I go any further, let me make this abundantly clear: my ex-husband is an objectively attractive person. My realization had nothing to do with him and everything to do with my then-compulsive heterosexuality—the deep-seated conditioning that made me believe I wanted the life I was living. He was my first everything. My first kiss. My first relationship. My first sexual partner.

For seven years of marriage, all I wanted was to appear righteous—the ideal couple, the perfect babies, the picture-perfect Mormon life. I was hell-bent on squeezing myself into that box, so much so that I ignored anything that might tempt me otherwise, including this very real, unavoidable truth.

Debbie was kind but straightforward. By then, she already knew why I was in rehab.

“Cindy, you need to put everything to do with Mormonism on a shelf while you’re here,” she urged. “You need to figure out who you are at your core before adding anything else.”

At first, I was confused.

Inside, I was screaming.

What does she mean, put it on a shelf? I need to figure out if I want to be Mormon anymore, what that means for my marriage, for my family. How can I put these things aside? It’s impossible!

But being given permission not to think about Mormonism—truly, fully putting it down—felt intensely foreign. And equally freeing. I had never allowed myself to do that before. I lived and breathed being a Latter-day Saint. Everything I did, every decision I made, was for the Lord and for returning to live with Him.

Rightfully Selfish

But now?

Everything was about me.

Not Cindy the Mormon. Not Cindy the wife. Not even Cindy the mother. Just me.

How strange. How enticing. How so very crucial.

I quickly learned that I had a voice.

And it was loud.

The louder my true voice became, the quieter my Mormon brain was.

I wasn’t reading my scriptures, going to the temple, or even praying. Yet, I was having deeply moving experiences that completely altered my brain chemistry. The friends I made weren’t Mormon—and they couldn’t have cared less if I was or not. That was the thing—it didn’t fucking matter.

Mormonism did not matter.

Cindy mattered. Before anyone. Before anything.

I didn’t need the gospel anymore. I didn’t need to stay in my marriage. What I did need was freedom—to choose, to explore, to continue discovering who I was truly meant to be.

Because the truth was, my true self was never Mormon to begin with.

She was beautiful in every way, but her chances of living freely had been halted at a very young age. She had been abused as a child, and that abuse had been covered up—buried beneath the weight of religious pressure and institutional silence. That alone had influenced the choices that eventually brought me to rehab.

Yes, I blew up my life.

I broke my world—and, in turn, my daughters’ world. But I had to burn it all down.

Being in Arizona during monsoon season felt like a metaphor for my own destruction. One moment, the heat radiated off the ground, 110+ degrees scorching everything in sight. The next, rain poured from the sky.

The burning. The cleansing.

It was all indicative of the refining process happening inside me. Most of what I knew—what I had clung to—was forced to die.

Actually, no.

I allowed it to die.

And in its place, I made way for rebirth.

For Us

I knelt in front of my daughter, looking into her hurt, confused little face.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” I said softly. “We’re making a new world now. But it’s okay if you’re mad at me for doing this. I would be mad too.”

We sat on the floor in her room, my arms wrapped tightly around her as we both sobbed. Everything was changing, and it was terrifying. But if I had stayed—if I had forced myself to remain trapped in a life that was never mine—what would have been left of me for her?

I had to go.

For her.

For me.