I grew up in a big Mormon family, with roots in the church stretching all the way back to my great-grandparents. I’m the oldest of five kids.

I was raised in the Phoenix suburb of Scottsdale. When I was quite young, we were well off. My dad was a news anchor for a TV station in Flagstaff. But during the recession of the late 1970s, the station went bankrupt and closed down. I was 4 or 5 years old.

The only job my dad could get after that was as a janitor; we went from riches to rags. We were a very traditional, very old-fashioned Mormon family, so mom stayed at home to raise the kids. We often didn’t have enough to eat, and sometimes the electricity would get shut off. We ended up having to sell our house and move back to Oregon to stay with my dad’s mom.

The church dominated our lives: religious study at home Monday nights, youth group Wednesday nights, Saturday potlucks, and church all day on Sundays. 

Our religious lessons were focused on having us memorize things: Scripture, youth group songs, the history of the church, the history of the universe according to the Bible. 

When I was about 7, my school tested me and determined that I was gifted. They pulled me out of school two days a week to bus me to another school that had a program for gifted kids. I loved it; we were doing amazing stuff, in particular learning critical thinking and problem-solving. I felt like my brain was being tickled.

We studied the fall of the Roman Empire. We studied Pompeii. We would spend a whole day trying to puzzle out a murder mystery. Besides critical thinking, I learned how to analyze data and how to write a bibliography.

One day in Sunday school, the teacher told us about the Golden Plates (described as plates engraved in Egyptian script from which Mormonism founder Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon). With my new critical thinking skills, my 8-year-old self had questions. Where are the plates? I asked. “The angel Moroni took them,” my teacher said. 

I was really suspicious. There were no photographs or other documentary evidence. Driving home from church that day, I told my parents I didn’t see any evidence that Joseph Smith found the Golden Plates, so I didn’t think it was true. My mom started crying, telling me I just had to believe, because it was a miracle.

Unfortunately, my time in the gifted program ended after 5th grade. My dad decided to go back to school in Scottsdale, and there was no similar program there.

I started in the Mormon church’s young women’s program when I was 12. It’s an immersion program to prepare you for trad wife life. They taught us how to take care of kids, how to cook, how to scrub a toilet, how to be a good conversationalist (so we could be good wives), and how to iron a man’s shirt. It was kind of depressing.

By the time I was 16, the church regularly hosted dances and date nights. It was very focused on having young men and women flirt in preparation for getting married.

Meanwhile, my naturally curious personality drove me to the local library. I was constantly learning and fact-checking. I read in the encyclopedia about the Iran-Contra scandal, about Iran, about communism. I always had to know how the world worked. But I was living in a family, church and community where I was supposed to just say “Yes, sir” and accept that the prophet and our bishop had final authority. They burned into me the idea that critical thinking was worldly (bad), because it caused doubt. If I read something in the Book of Mormon, that was the truth; I wasn’t supposed to go to an encyclopedia to check things.

When I graduated from high school in 1992, I saw non-Mormon friends living incredible lives, doing amazing things like traveling to Europe. I didn’t want to be a traditional Mormon wife and mom. I thought my mom’s life was horrible; she spent her whole life changing diapers, cooking, baking bread, making our clothes. I wanted more, but I was told the prophet wanted me to be a mom, that Jesus wanted me to stay home and have babies. I figured I had to abandon my desires, because it was just Satan trying to pull me away from my family.

But my independent streak wouldn’t go away so easily. I decided to go to college; I filled out the applications, got a loan, got a job. I got accepted to Ricks College (now BYU Idaho) in Rexburg, Idaho. Now, Mormon girls aren’t supposed to go to college to learn; you go to find a husband. But I had hit upon the idea of becoming a Russian-speaking international trade attorney, so I wanted to major in Russian and pre-law.

When I sat down with my counselor a couple of days before classes began, he said, “ Heavenly Father wants you to be a wife and a mom; I can’t let you keep all these classes.” He let me keep Russian, but I had to drop pre-law and take classes in early childhood, dating and marriage, and Mormon study. I remember the sinking feeling I had; I naively thought they’d support me wanting to have a different future for myself. 

I ended up following the trajectory the counselor had laid out for me. Within two months of starting school, I got engaged. I was 18. 

It was love at first sight when I met Ryan. But he hadn’t gone on his two-year Mormon mission yet, and I said he had to do that first before we got married. 

I stayed in school; while Ryan was on his mission I graduated from Ricks with an AA in Russian and a minor in political science. I went home to Portland for the summer. That’s when an adult leader in our congregation set me up with a returned missionary, even though I was already engaged. He said the Holy Ghost was telling him Jake (not his real name) was my future husband. I was raised to believe the Holy Ghost spoke to people, so I reluctantly agreed to meet with Jake.

On our second date, he molested me. Jake felt bad about it, so we went to confess to the bishop. When Jake told him what he’d done, the bishop said, “We need to hurry up and get you guys married.” The wedding was six weeks later. I married a stranger who had molested me.

Marriage was a nightmare; Jake started physically abusing me within a week of our wedding. I wanted to get a divorce, but everyone said I couldn’t because we’d been married in a Mormon temple. My nightmare lasted 24 years.

For a number of years we were quite well off. I bought a friend’s windshield business in 1995. For the next couple of years, I answered the phones, did the books, the branding, the marketing. Jake did the installations. We made a fortune. We built a brand new home. We drove Mercedes and BMW’s. We vacationed in Hawaii. We also got into the business of building and selling custom homes. 

At the same time, Jake was regularly abusing me. I constantly wanted to die; I had anxiety, depression.

Everything changed for me professionally right after I had my first baby. I told a lay church leader during a meeting that I ran our business. (I worked from home and had nannies take care of my new son, so I figured I was not violating any Mormon tenets.)  He was horrified. He said I wasn’t supposed to be working, I was supposed to be supporting my husband at home. He summoned Jake and told him to phase me out of the business. We figured God had commanded us to make that change, so we hired staff and took my name off the business. 

But I kept working, helping manage the business. I also staged and sold the custom homes. But I never got paid. I thought I was obeying God’s commandment.

Politically, we were very conservative, very Republican. As good Mormons, we were waiting for Jesus to come back any day. I didn’t think I’d live long enough to have grandkids.

White supremacy was baked into our belief system. The Book of Mormon says white people are better, and dark-skinned people are cursed. We were anti-abortion and we thought homosexuality was the most evil thing in the world. I spent a lot of time and money helping fight Proposition 8 (which would have legalized same-sex marriage) in California.

We listened to Rush Limbaugh all the time — never missed an episode. I listened to Glenn Beck quite a bit. My granddad, who was one of my best friends, was ultra-conservative. I listened exclusively to Fox News when it came along. I never watched the mainstream networks or CNN.

To be honest, I didn’t have a lot of time to think about politics, because mostly I was really busy keeping my house clean and doing my hair and nails and cooking every meal from scratch, raising chickens and babies.

In 2008 or 2009, I started working at home for an essential oils multi-level marketing company. That was OK because I was still at home being a wife and mom. I started making my own money. I taught classes on our products. After being a slave for years, I finally was making money. I became a top rep. I started a national radio show with a friend: Head to Toe with Jennie and Jo.

I was meeting all kinds of people. Eventually some lesbians signed up for my classes. It was my first contact with lesbians (that I knew of!). There were a few couples, and I spent a ton of time with them. We went to conventions and training workshops together. At first I felt so uncomfortable; I didn’t know if I should be talking to these people. 

But they were so nice, so balanced and compassionate. They were happy, they had good values. In comparison, my marriage sucked, my kids were miserable, I was miserable, I wasn’t a very nice person, I judged everyone. I’d always been taught that people like them had been taken over by Satan. They sure didn’t seem to be under the devil’s influence.

I lost contact with those friends after I started having major health problems. In 2011, when I was 36, I had a benign ovarian tumor. Complications from surgery and a resulting superbacteria nearly killed me. We had never bothered to get health insurance, so I wasn’t able to get some of the care I needed. I was in and out of the hospital for years. Friends held fundraisers for us, but we ended up in medical bankruptcy. Jake’s physical abuse increased during that time. (A health crisis often triggers more abuse.)

We moved to Travelers Rest, South Carolina in 2013, while I was still dealing with the results of the botched tumor treatment. We built a little house there. It was there that I got radicalized into Christian fundamentalism and a more extreme form of racism.

Our neighbors were “normal” people: they lived in beautiful homes, tended their farms, raised their horses. They went to church on Sundays, had big happy families with cute little housewives and successful dads. And many of them were in the Ku Klux Klan. One said he was the local Grand Wizard, and invited Jake to join.

We didn’t, because Mormons don’t believe in joining other groups and are non-violent. I did become a sympathizer, though. Neighbors would talk about how Abraham Lincoln was our worst president, a war criminal. They said Black people were supposed to be slaves, and by freeing them Lincoln destroyed our country.

I was an easy target. Because of my Mormon upbringing, I already believed dark skin was a curse from God, that Heavenly Father had chosen white people to be smarter and better than Black people, who were vicious and animalistic.

Meanwhile, Jake’s abuse was escalating and becoming life threatening. My family intervened in 2016 and forced him to take me to my sister’s house in Utah. Jake went back to South Carolina, but I was still critically ill, and unemployed with four kids. I was so trauma-bonded to him that I let him come to Utah. But the abuse continued. I kept trusting in the power of Jesus. I was 100% righteous and obedient. I thought the power of atonement would change my husband. I kept waiting for Prince Charming to emerge from under the surface.

At this point, Donald Trump was running for president the first time, and I enthusiastically supported him. I was already a longtime fan; I had fallen in love with Trump watching The Apprentice. I never missed an episode. I was obsessed with his whole persona. He was so intriguing to me; he was like my rich Mormon uncles with his fancy houses. I had The Art of the Deal and The Art of the Comeback. I underlined passages and wrote notes in the margins. 

I felt euphoric that America had the possibility to have this incredibly smart businessman running our country. On top of that, my Mormonism prepared me to embrace Trump and MAGA. We were taught that God made America as a promised land for his most righteous children. Christian Nationalism was a natural outgrowth of my religion. We mixed America with the Gospel; I believed the Constitution was written by God, and that the national anthem and “God Bless America” were religious songs.

MAGA became my whole identity. Trump was my personal profile picture on social media. I posted love letters to him.

Trump used rhetoric that persuaded me that he had converted to Christianity. I had friends who had been horrible people who discovered Jesus. That changed their hearts and they became better people. It was so impressive to me that this rich New York playboy who’d spent his younger days carousing had now found Jesus. Now he was this family man who was called by God to lead the country.

Trump’s hate resonated with me too. He hated lesbians, gay people, trans people, foreigners. Every Sunday in church we were taught that half of humanity was going to burn in hell (the celestial kingdom in Mormon doctrine), and Trump really played into that. So whenever he said something hateful, I really enjoyed it. Here was someone who as president was going to call out the people who were evil.

I did have to engage in a lot of mental gymnastics to deal with all the cognitive dissonance around lesbians and gays (years earlier one of my best friends was a gay man). I would think about my lesbian friends and how they were living a better life than me and most of the women I knew. But I stopped myself from connecting the dots. I kept telling myself that living a religious life and following Jesus was the way to happiness, and that if I was unhappy, it was because of Satan.

I didn’t have a problem with Trump attacking the Gold Star parents and mocking a disabled reporter. As a Mormon, I believed disabled people had sinned or done something that prevented them from receiving God’s healing (and I believed Black people were cursed, of course). When the Access Hollywood tape came out, I viewed the episode as part of Satan’s effort to prevent Trump from becoming president. 

When Trump won the election, I felt we were entering a Camelot era, like under JFK. I looked forward to a return to family values and a strong economy. We were going to have more money, more peace. I routinely promoted Trump on my social media platforms. I decided to only hang out with Trump supporters.

I felt Trump was running the country like the Mormon prophet was running the church. Once he said owned a copy of the Book of Mormon. Rumors spread throughout our community that he had read it. I prayed every day that he would convert to our church. His authoritarian streak, his banning people from the country, his claim there were “fine people on both sides” after Charlottesville, that all really resonated with me. Remember, I lived in a religious community that was always banning everything. I wasn’t allowed to watch certain movies, listen to certain music, or even wear my own underwear. They assigned me my husband, and my panties. 

My religious community was a dictatorship, so I wasn’t used to democracy. I questioned why we needed democracy. In the Mormon church, if the prophet is inspired, he just changes a policy.

Due to escalating abuse, I separated from Jake (who had moved back to Arizona) for a while, then in 2018 I moved back there to reconcile with him. I hoped Jesus had done His job and changed my husband’s heart. But he was as abusive as ever.

About a month after I returned to Arizona — it was Oct. 7, 2018 — I went to church one day, really stressed out. Mormon church lasts three hours. That day, the first hour was dedicated to telling us women aren’t supposed to work. I looked around at the working women in the congregation, including a doctor and schoolteacher. For some reason, the judgement and hatred in those remarks really hit me hard.

Then several dozen of the women spent an hour in Sunday school. The preacher said the Holocaust happened because the Jews killed Jesus. I couldn’t believe everyone sat there unquestioningly.

The third hour’s lesson focused on the evils of homosexuality. I thought of my old lesbian friends, of a gay cousin my family had shunned. All of a sudden, I connected the dots. My hands were shaking. It was almost like an out-of-body experience. 

I thought to myself, I come to church to learn how to love people better, not to learn how to hate. But the church had preached hate my whole life. I raised my hand, I stood up, grabbed my purse and keys, and announced I was leaving the church because of the lesson.

Jake agreed to leave the church too. We joined a Christian church, which felt wonderful and healing at the time. 

A few weeks later I caught Jake meeting a prostitute. That ended our 24 year marriage. When I broke things off for good, Jake said, “I’ve hated you since our third date.” 

He cleaned out our bank account, wiped me out financially. 

I had lost my faith in God, my belief in everything, and Jake was about to take my kids. In early Dec. 2018, I tried to kill myself through carbon monixide poisoning.

Two of my kids still lived at home, but they were at school. Thankfully, a neighbor heard my car running and rescued me. After 10 days in a coma, I survived. I decided that I had to deconstruct everything I had believed in and build a new life for myself. I used my critical thinking skills, questioning what I believed about the Bible, about Jesus, about marriage and gender roles. That began my journey out of MAGA.

But trying to survive pushed politics to the side. Jake cancelled the lease on my home. Starting in late 2019, I spent three months homeless. For my two kids who were still too young to live on their own, I found places for them to couch surf. I mostly slept in my Mercedes SUV (the last relic of my former prosperity) in a Walmart parking lot. Friends gave me a little money. Food banks fed us. That was the darkest time of my life.

An aunt and uncle had begun repairing their badly vandalized, abandoned guest house outside of Tucson, and they let the kids and me live there. It was in the middle of the desert, with javelinas and rattlesnakes as our nearest neighbors. Things were still very rough. I was having seizures — a side effect of carbon monoxide poisoning. Then the pandemic hit, and I almost died from Covid. (And I was getting death threats from Jake.)

My new boyfriend, Kevin, moved to Tucson in 2021 to take care of me. We had a commitment ceremony and blended our families. (We finally got our own tiny apartment in 2024.) That’s when I started doing TikTok videos, talking about how I left the Mormon church. I went viral, and suddenly I had this massive community.

Thousands of people would comment, saying they went through similar things. I have half a million followers now between my two platforms. Through TikTok I learned there’s life on the other side of the Mormon church and Jake and being destitute.

At that point my journey out of MAGA accelerated. I read books on racism, feminism, and gender. I listened to podcasts. I befriended other creators, authors, and influencers. Many are very liberal. A couple of my closest friends are Black. I was getting an education I’d never had. Everyone was very patient with me, particularly as I unraveled and rejected the racism that had defined me.

My previous worldview collapsed. I realized most of what I’d believed wasn’t true. A couple of years ago I left Christianity. There’s no evidence a God is out there. I thought, rather than spend Sundays in church with a rock band, maybe I should be out helping homeless people. One day, I burned my Bible in my backyard fire pit. That was very therapeutic.

I completed my journey out of MAGA once the 2024 campaign got going. I was going to give Trump one more chance. I think I wanted to cling to something from my old life that I thought made sense. I watched Trump at his rallies, and I heard the same hatred I heard in the Mormon church and in my Christian church. It struck me that he sounded like my narcissistic ex-husband.

I realized I didn’t actually know what the Democratic and Republican parties stood for. I studied each party’s platform and positions, and discovered I didn’t believe in anything the Republicans were supporting. 

I grew up being taught the GOP was God’s party, because it was anti-abortion and anti-gay. When I looked at the details, I realized they’re for big business, billionaires, and a big army. I found myself agreeing with the Democrats’ positions.

I’d never felt confident talking about politics. But I decided to share what it was like to be part of MAGA, what it looked like to be a white supremacist. I posted a video about being ex-MAGA to my YouTube channel, and it went super viral. I have started to build a community of people from all over the country who are ex-MAGA, ex-Mormon, ex-evangelical, ex-Catholic. 

I’ve become a women’s rights activist, especially around domestic violence. I’m so gratified by the comments people leave on my TikTok: “I just graduated from college because of you.” “I left my abusive husband.” “I got grants to go to junior college, got a lab tech degree, and just moved into my own apartment with my babies. I’m free because you helped me.”

Now politics is a big part of my life. I just took a job with a national organization that helps domestic violence survivors. I volunteer with Secular Arizona. I go to school board meetings. 

I know the playbook. I know all the secrets. I know what they’re thinking. I’ve sat at the dinner table with Christian Nationalist relatives and heard how they hate everybody and how we should have a theocracy. Watching Trump carry out that agenda is terrifying. When he started implementing all those Project 2025 proposals, I felt like, “See? That’s what I’ve been warning about.” 

I wish people had listened before to know where he was going to take this country.

Trump has merged all these groups with hateful ideologies: Mormons, skinheads, Southern Baptists, evangelicals. He became the Grand Wizard of every Christian Nationalist group in the United States. It’s the ultimate political/religious merger.

I used to be a hateful, horrible person, trapped in a cult. Now I’m trying to build a life based on common sense, compassion, and empathy. I’m working hard to push back against everything I once stood for and change the world. It’s the least I can do.

They say that today we are writing the future our kids will act out tomorrow. I’m trying to write a better future for my kids, and yours. They deserve it.

                                                                                                                                                                                  —October 2025