Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [154]
It was reassuring to know that a precaution could be taken to prevent losing another baby. The idea that there was an explanation for my miscarriages and that God had not been punishing me after all gave me comfort. I took good care of myself, but Lamont and I still worried a great deal. Though he knew about my miscarriages, I’d never told him about the stillbirth. Originally it had been too emotionally painful to describe or even bring up, but now I didn’t want to make him more concerned than he already was. Not sharing this with him didn’t make it go away, and often I worried that I would end up in another pregnancy nightmare.
While these problems of fitting in, money, and my pregnancy brought my anxiety to new heights in the first weeks, what weighed heaviest on me was the fact that I might never see my mother and little sisters again. I longed for Ally’s infectious smile and the sound of Sherri on the piano. Mom had secretly called me in those first days to make sure I was okay. It was healing for me to confront the issues that I had with her because of my marriage to Allen. Tearfully, she told me how sorry she was and that if she could turn back time, she’d change the outcome. Still, she held out hope that I would come back and repent, so that we could remain a family.
Like so many things about the FLDS, her words were one big contradiction. While she was genuinely sorry about how my life had turned out, it seemed she couldn’t see that there was any way other than that of the church. She’d lived her entire life in the FLDS, and she didn’t have the mental capacity to question beyond its walls. This conversation was one of the rare times I’d ever heard her express doubts. Her willingness to actually raise questions made me cautiously optimistic that she would continue on this road, but only time would tell if she would actually be able to change her beliefs. At fifty-four, this would be a monumental feat, to reverse a lifetime of conditioning. I knew that Mom loved me, and in the only way she knew how, she was trying to communicate that to me. It was with this understanding that I was able to begin the process of letting go.
Though Lamont and I remained in love and hopeful that we would adjust, those first weeks offered a frustrating overall picture of our new reality. Gone was our vision of escaping and simply starting anew. It would be an arduous road, but it was one that we needed to travel. It seemed like everyone we came into contact with during that time had left the FLDS with dreams of starting a new life only to end up penniless and drug- or alcohol-dependent with no place to turn. I thought back to all the times when I’d seen my older brothers go through the same struggles that I was now experiencing. I wish I could have known the mental battle that had to be waged.
Getting out wasn’t just about starting a fresh routine, it was about establishing a totally new way of thinking. When you leave the FLDS, your whole foundation crumbles. You have to start from scratch and think about large, far-reaching questions, like What do I believe in? What about heaven? What are morals? What will I fight for? We had gained freedom and each other, but we had lost the ground beneath our feet. It made it even harder when our thoughts turned to the families we’d both lost. While I was now without my mom and sisters, Lamont too had lost his family.
Despite everything that had happened to me, I continued to talk to God as if he were my friend, and I begged him to give me the strength to find myself. I wanted to believe that God loved me, even though I had made such drastic changes and abandoned the FLDS. Still, I wasn’t sure if he would listen to me. Years and years of intense religious conditioning led me to second-guess everything about my new life. It was truly a godsend when my friend Natalie’s older sister, Sarah, turned up at my front door in Hurricane one afternoon with a boxful of maternity clothes and the new mother’s “bible,” What to Expect When You’re Expecting. I’d run into Sarah at a party