38: Trauma Bonding: Testimonies of Women Pt 3 | 132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy

Please consider supporting this podcast:

Book: Complex PTSD by Pete Walker

Links

(If youtube disables the links, just copy and paste them into the browser)
Jaycee Dugard
Elizabeth Smart
Elizabeth Smart 2
Elizabeth Smart Link 3
Understanding Appeasement as a Trauma Response

Helen Mar Kimball by Laura Hales
Helen Mar Kimball Link 2
Helen Mar Kimball Link 3

The Mormon Exodus—as Seen through the Horace K. Whitney Journals | Religious Studies Center (byu.edu)
Scenes and Incidents in Nauvoo | Religious Studies Center (byu.edu)
Juvenile Instructor » “My Father Had but One Ewe Lamb”: Joseph Smith and Helen, Heber, and Vilate Kimball

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon Polygamy, where we explore the scriptural and theological case for plural marriage. As always, I invite you to listen to these episodes in order so you can start with the more basic and central topics before you go forward to these more specific subjects. This is episode 38, which is finally the third part of our series on the testimonies of women. Today we are going to discuss the components of trauma bonding. We could also use terms like CPTSD or codependence or the fawn or appease response, but we’re going to talk about what that means and how it may apply to women in polygamy. So my name is Michelle Stone. Thank you for joining us as we take a deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon polygamy. First, another sincere thank you, serious gratitude to those who have been willing to support and um fund this podcast, and an invitation to anybody else who feels able or so inclined, I would very much appreciate some more support for this podcast. So. To get into the subject matter today, we first need to go over some more recent history that has nothing to do with the church and nothing to do with polygamy. So I’m going to tell a couple of very difficult stories that some of you may have already heard of, and then I will tie in how I think they relate to our subject matter today. So please bear with me for a few minutes and just be a little bit patient. First, There was a famous case in 1977 of an abducted woman named Colleen Stan. She was hitchhiking from, she was a back in the 70s, I guess, hitchhiking was like a thing. Maybe this is part of what changed that. But she was an experienced hitchhiker who knew what to look for. She had let several rides go by and then she’s, there was a couple, a man with his wife and baby that offered her a ride and she rode with them. And that was the beginning of her 7 years of horror. She was abducted by this man who turned out to be an actual sadist who. Um, really liked torturing women, and she became the victim of his torture. So he had worked, worked many hours plotting and preparing this. He had built several torture devices. He literally kept her locked and chained in a coffin-like box 23 hours a day. The other hour she was let out and given some food and tortured. It was a Horrible, unbelievable story. She was kept for over 7 years and um her captor managed to she was kept in that box for some of the years, but for other years she was allowed out. She, when they struggled financially, she they had her get a job at a hotel as a maid. She even at one point was allowed to go visit her family as long as she would. Tell them that this awful man was her fiance, and they even took a picture, and I will, there you can see the picture of this woman and the man. He managed to convince her that he was part of what he called the company that was a network of people that dealt in sex slaves and um That that they were watching her wherever she was, and if she escaped or if she told anybody they would kill her entire family, they would write he had quite a control, an amount of control over her. She even while she was in captivity, wrote love letters to him. And even after when his wife finally told Colleen that the company wasn’t real, that his wife who had helped him in this endeavor, told her that it wasn’t true, and she managed to get the mental and emotional and physical wherewithal to leave. She still didn’t go to the police because she still felt like he deserved a chance to change. Her loyalties were still confused. After that fact until he finally was put on trial and found guilty, and that is the story of Colleen Stan. I recommend

[00:04:13] looking into it if you have any interest or questions. It’s quite, it’s quite something to learn about what what people can do. The next story that some of you may remember is from 1991, a little 11-year-old girl named JC Lee Dugard. She was taken while she was on her way to school again by a couple, and she was held in captivity for 18 years where she was kept in a shed in the backyard, and during that time she gave birth to two daughters and um it was also the the result of much planning and preparation. Um she was told that there were dangerous dogs that would, you know, that would kill anybody that was loose in the backyard, um. She said that um she felt scared and trapped and like there was no other place for her and her children, so she couldn’t imagine any other um life for herself. despite her captor being on parole, he was actually a convicted, um. Um, what’s the term convicted for being inappropriate with children in the past, that’s ridiculous. I can’t think of the term. But um he um and he had parole officers coming regularly, but she was never found. They never found her, and it was finally when her daughters, her two daughters that she had had were 11 and 15. She’d been held for 18 years. Her captor, their father, took them to UC Berkeley to the campus on errands, and there were thankfully there was an extremely insightful and intuitive female UC Berkeley cop who did not get a good feeling, and she arranged it so that he would come back again and she just kept pursuing and pursuing and pursuing until um. She finally she got JC Lee in there who continually insisted that her name was Alyssa, the name that she had been forced to go by, and when they repeatedly pressed asking her her name, she broke down and just she said, I can’t say it. I can’t say it. And after a long time, they finally gave her a piece of paper and asked her to write it, and she wrote down JC Lee Dugard. So this girl even being after rescued. And that she couldn’t say who she was. She couldn’t stop telling what she had been forced to say. And then again a long many years process of helping this girl cause she still felt great sympathy for her captor and she still was very concerned about him. So it’s been a long process to try to help her heal. And then There is someone a little bit more recent in memory, um, Elizabeth Smart. Many of you will remember just over 20 years ago in 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was taken from her bed with a knife at her throat, told that if she made a sound, he would kill her little sister who was sleeping beside her and kill her family, and that threat continued the whole time that she was that she was kept. Um. Again, he had been planning this for months. She was kept chained in a tent in the forested hills several miles above her home and taken into town, taken around, and she remained, many of you will remember the pictures that she remained. Obedient to what he and his wife told her that she needed to do. Um, at one point, a detective, they were at the Salt Lake library and a detective approached the three of them and said he needed to see her face, but The man insisted that nobody would see her face until it was her her future husband, and so that policeman, that detective, accepted that answer and turned around and left. And when you hear Elizabeth Smart talk about how

[00:08:00] her heart sank when she saw her would-be savior. Listen to the story that he was told and turn around and leave and and um and the the awful woman, the wife of her captor had had her leg in a vice grip warning her not to stray from the storyline. um. So it, it, it’s a pretty tough story to hear. So they believed the story right, rather than saving the girl. And so anyway, it’s a really, really tough story to know. But finally, well, I guess because that detective turned away, she was forced to suffer months more captivity when she could have been saved at that point, but Finally, after 9 months and all like, boy, there are some, I’ll link to some videos of some of these girls speaking and they are, they are some tough, brave women that um have like, like the way that um Elizabeth Smart arranged to get her captors back to Salt Lake and followed the spirit and trying to do what she could do is pretty amazing. But even still, when she was finally found and the officers had separated her from her awful captors, she still continued to adamantly stay with the script that she had been given. She continued to say that her name was Augustine Marshall, that she was here visiting her, her, I think, stepfather and mother or her father and her stepmother, her father who was a preacher, and she kept saying that story until finally she was able to Very softly acknowledge in just the words thou sayest when they asked her if she was Elizabeth Smart, even when she was safe, she didn’t feel safe enough yet to let go of the storyline that she had been told to say. And so this is just one quote from Elizabeth Smart. There’s so much material you can watch to try to understand this better. She says I was physically chained up, but I was also manipulated and threatened and ultimately felt like those manipulations were much stronger bonds than the actual chains I was held with. So those are three stories that I think we need to keep in mind as we continue to explore this topic. There’s one more story I want to go to that is in the Book of Mormon. It’s found in Moziah chapters 19 through 23, and it is again the despicable polygamist priests of King Noah. Who had already abandoned their own wives and children and out of shame and fear didn’t go back. Um, they spent night after night, so again, the premeditation, the plotting and planning, who knows how long it took them to, um, commit their lust driven crime. They continually spied on and stalked the young lamanite girls who innocently sing and danced until their opportunity arose. It says when there was only a small number of them, so it was 24, which was considered a small number. They sprang and took them and carried them into the wilderness. So now again, kidnapping 24 girls at one time would be no easy feat. I’ve since I’ve been doing this topic, I’ve looked into this story a little bit more and thought about it more. How would you get 24 girls and not one could escape because they would tell what had happened and the Lamanites didn’t ever know what didn’t, at least at this point, didn’t know what happened. So they somehow.

[00:11:29] Through ingenious preparation and design, came up with some way to take these 24 girls without being caught and like, you know, that like, like the perpetrators and the other stories, they had enough motivation enough fore forethought to accomplish this horrible, horrible crime. Um, these girls, like those above, were forced into marriage, which to me means raped and enslaved. They were kept as wives to these, I guess, homeless priests in the harsh wilderness. Um, these priests had been accustomed to wealth, servants, multiple wives taking care of them, and now they were living by stealing and plundering from the Nephites, sneaking in at night, and quote, carrying off their grain and many of their precious things. And apparently because of their deep entitlement to narcissism, they felt no compunction about also stealing women to serve their needs and desires. So after a year or two, a troop of Lamanites, some of you will remember this story I said it’s in those chapters above. A troop of Lamanites happened upon the priests and discovered their the lost daughters, the lost Lamanite daughters. Um, they had previously blamed the Nephites, the people of King Lemhi, and um they attacked, they attacked them in revenge, so. These priests also, you know, allowed the Nephites to be butchered because of their crime. Let them be blamed for it. But when they stumbled upon the settlement of the of the guilty Nephite priests and saw their missing daughters, they would have slayed the awful men. That’s what they were ready to do. But Ayan, the leader of the band band, quote, Sent forth their wives who were the daughters of the Lamanites to plead with their brethren that they should not destroy their husbands, and the Lamanites had compassion on Ayon and his brethren and did not destroy them because of their wives. So this story was really interesting to look at again in this mindset in this context because I think in the past I had. had considered that maybe these women really loved these men and you know, but as I’m looking at it now, I’m like, these girls were stolen, they were taken. They were not allowed to see their mothers and their fathers and their brothers and sisters. They, they lost their homes, they lost everything and they were stolen. Taken as wives and held captive in the wilderness like they weren’t free to make the choice. It also says that they were sent by Amyon, and again that brings up the question how many of them already had children at this point? What were the threats used against them to force them to be compliant like the girls above to be willing to go plead for their husbands and um. Let’s see, it’s, I don’t know that it’s any different from the girls above who felt that there was no option but to obey and no hope for escape. So, um, also, is it possible that these priests, like these other captors might have told these girls that their families would be killed or, you know, once they had children used their children against them. There are just some tough questions that we need to at least consider. We can’t know the full story, but reading it now, I’m like, oh my gosh, I am so sad that I ever considered,

[00:14:47] oh, maybe these girls were happy. Like, no, no, that’s not how this story should be read. I’m convinced of it now. And is it possible that like JC Lee Dugard and Elizabeth Smart, they may be now saw themselves as broken, soiled, ruined, and couldn’t see any other potential life for themselves after what they had endured and experienced at the hands of their of their assailants. And so I don’t know, but I think as we’re looking at this story, anyone who is a parent, right, if you have a teenage daughter, I have a little 15 year old girl, and, you know, would you be OK with this story, like, Would you be OK going, oh, apparently she’s happy with this captor who, who knows what threats he’s making against her? Absolutely not, right? We need to, some people say it’s some sort of presentism, presentism, presentism to look at the past. But they were people, right? These daughters, these were girls who were stolen from their families and forced into this lifestyle without their choice. How is it presentism to assume that families loved each other, that family bonds existed, and that people throughout time have wanted personal autonomy and the ability to make their own decisions. So I think that we should liken it to ourselves and see how we would feel in that story as we consider it, so. Anyway, but again, just kind of like the Elizabeth Smart Elizabeth Smart story, there would be saviors, listened to their testimonies, listened to their pleas, and left them in their situation, and I think we need to really ask. How well that served them. Should they have been listened to when they were pleading for the lives of their husbands, or maybe would it have been better for those men, their fathers, brothers, neighbors, whoever it was in that band, to look deeper, to consider, investigate what those girls were experiencing, and try to find greater context and understanding for the things that they were saying. So that’s why I think these stories are important, because that is what I think our polygamist foremothers deserve that same consideration. We need to not just listen to the surface of what they said. We need to look at the entirety, the totality of their lives, of their experiences to help gain greater insight into what they were experiencing and how that might have affected what they said. So that’s what we’re going to do today. So Again, there are plenty of other similar examples that you can find of these kinds of horrific crimes happening and these same dynamics occurring, and that’s what I want to talk about because Just believing what victims say under these circumstances does not serve the victim. It serves the abuser, the controller,

[00:17:39] whether that’s an individual or a system. So again, let me, let me clarify. I am using these extreme examples to try to point to a concept. I am in no way saying that polygamy. Missed wives were in the same situations as these three girls or the Lamanite daughters. I’m not necessarily saying that. I’m looking at these people to try to teach the concepts we want to talk about now, so please don’t take this places I’m not trying to take it. Please understand what I am trying to explain. So we need to talk about the concept of trauma bonding. Some Of you who are really into psychology or may have had difficult experiences yourself and therefore have looked into this, will understand what I’m talking about. For some of you this may be all brand new and I think it’s important. I think with like the way that things like narcissism and other just kind of negative dark personality. traits are seem to be growing in our society. I think that these are important things to begin to understand, so. Um, there are many different labels that people use for this not yet very well understood trauma response. Um, it’s a coping mechanism or or a survival instinct for the most terrifying and horrific situations. So most people have heard of fight or flight, right? And then it turned into fight flight fight, flight or freeze, and there is 1/4 1 that is some people refer to it as Fun. The fourth one is fun, so fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, but other people really prefer appease over fawn, so it’s if you want the four F’s or if you want the word appease, but it’s the fawning or appeasing reflex, which is just as instinctive. Um, natural, it’s just as much as of a survival instinct that shows up in extreme situations as those others do. And so it’s something that’s important, very important to recognize. So I think that the people like Elizabeth Smart doesn’t like the word fawn, she likes appease because what it what it helps to understand is you’re not trying to fawn over your capture. You are You are trying to appease them, to co-regulate with them, to try to calm them and to please them, to be helpful enough and appealing enough to them by being obedient and cooperative that they won’t kill you. That’s how that response shows up, right? And so there are some people that, uh, well, so that they won’t kill you or in other people’s experiences, like with children who grew up in difficult situations or with women in long term situations that are difficult also there can be So that they don’t abandon or reject you, which can also be a life and death, can feel like a life and death situation in some of these, a life and death threat in some of these situations. So when there are no other solutions, trying desperately to appease, to please and appease the abuser becomes the trauma response, especially, I think it. Among women or children who are more adapted to being physically weaker and culturally less powerful. So it’s something that we really need to learn about. So some other terms that are tied up with this, um, some of you will have heard of CPTSD. So, PTSD,

[00:21:03] post-traumatic, um, stress disorder, but this is complex post-traumatic stress disorder, which applies not To like someone had a traumatic experience, but someone who was raised in some level of trauma or lived for an extended period of time in some level of trauma and how that goes in, it actually can create even more. It’s called complex PTSD because it is so complex and deep and there’s so much to work through with that. It’s also related to codependency and all of those. All of those characteristics. So um there are other labels which people use, which I think are less accurate and more insulting. For example, example, Stockholm syndrome is something that many people have talked about or will know about, which is the idea that the captor falls in love with their, um, the victim falls in love with their captor, and I think that is very insulting cause it’s just a deep misunderstanding of what is actually happening here. The victims do genuinely start to, like I said, co-regulate so they feel concerned for their captors. They feel complete dependence upon their captors, but to say that they fall in love with them is, is can be quite offensive to victims because it’s like they can’t fake this as a way to stay alive. Their body, their, their, it automatically happens as a survival mechanism. That’s really important to understand. So, um. Let’s see. OK, so it can be really difficult for people to understand, including victims and survivors. It can be hard to understand and it can elicit a ton of shame and blame, the questions that anyone who suffers with this gets, like, why didn’t you try to escape? Why didn’t you leave? Why didn’t you tell? You know, those, those can be really trigger triggering to people who have survived these kinds of ordeals, and they also Begin to attack themselves with why didn’t I leave? Why didn’t I tell? Why, you know, once they’re out of the out of the experience of the trauma, they can start to really blame themselves as well. So it’s important for us to recognize this for all of these reasons. It also plays into like Battered wife syndrome, which is, I think that’s what they call it, which, you know, I think some people might find insulting too, but that question of like, why doesn’t she leave? Why don’t you, you know, like it’s important to understand the deep, deep psychological like instinct level dynamics that are going on here to help us understand these phenomenon. So, OK. And so again, let me just again state it is a well adapted survival response, trauma bonding that happens as instinctively as fight or flight. It is not necessarily a conscious choice and more than that, it is not a syndrome or a sign of weakness or lack of intelligence or You know, it is a very logical and natural intuitive strategy for survival in unthinkable circumstances. When those circumstances change, when there is an opportunity for rescue or escape, that response still exists.

[00:24:10] So that’s when it becomes no longer useful and it needs to be worked through and resolved. But in the moments of the trauma, it was very, very necessary for survival and And so after people are out of the system is when the hard psychological work begins to try to unwind layer after layer of confusion, pain, loss, shame, grief, like all of this has to be looked at and worked through in order to undo that trauma response. So that’s what people need. Experience to be able to heal from this. So, OK, so there are 4 basic components as, as from, from the research I’ve done. And again, if there is anyone who is a psychologist out there who specializes in these things, I would love to have your um insight and input. I have I have spent a lot of time studying this. I’m doing my best to encapsulate it, and you know, of course different people have different versions and say different things. So I’m doing my best to explain it, but I’m very open to other input or if anyone has corrections, but again, corrections is tricky because everybody has different ideas. So this is my best encapsulation and I’m open to learn. More, so there are 4 components that are considered necessary for trauma bonding to occur. The first is a perceived threat to life, so the feeling that the captor or the system has life and death power over you and or your loved ones. That’s the first requirement. The second is isolation. That at least that you are isolated from anybody who could help you. So, you know, like, um, you, you are taken apart for a while and separated from your community, your support system, who maybe would help you see through what’s happening. And then the third is a perceived inability to to escape. So a learned helplessness like some of you will know about how they train elephants, right, and and like keep them tied so that they learn that there’s no escape. They’ve done the same just horrible. Oh, there’s a book called The Body Keeps the Score, I think it’s what it’s called, and I won’t remember the author’s name. Excellent, excellent book, a classic of psychological literature. I think it’s older now, but I really admire the writer and I love that book. I highly recommend it, but he talks about dogs that were just torturous things were done to them to teach them, you know, they would, they would just sit and experience the shocks that were given to them instead of trying to run away even after the doors were opened because they had been. They had spent so long being shocked if they tried to get away, right? So it’s this learned helpless response. So there may be an actual inability to escape for a long time, but then even when, say, Colleen Stan was allowed to work in a hotel and was around people or was allowed to go back to her family, she had this learned helplessness. She perceived the inability to escape. Same for Elizabeth Smart, same for JC Lee Dugard, and I think same for the Lamanite girls. The fourth necessary component of trauma bonding is an interesting one. It’s perceived acts of kindness, and that means in comparison to the level of threat.

[00:27:20] So it doesn’t like this one, this is a really interesting one and it’s important to And we as humans are so in need of bonding like without so we’re such social creatures that without bonding we don’t thrive, we don’t, we die, right? And so our bodies create bonding hormones. So when you are Abused and then one day your abuser abuses you a little bit less that can be seen as a mercy, which can be received as an act of kindness, which can elicit gratitude which Evokes all of these hormones and write all of these chemicals that create that create bonding. Same if if they give you some food which sustains your life, even if you’re being starved, being given some food or some water, all of that is a perceived act of kindness compared to the situation, and that can begin to bond you to that captor. Isn’t that interesting? And so that’s the fourth part that’s necessary, and I think it is just fascinating. So OK, I, I, I hope that these elements, these four elements were outlined are pretty clear in the stories above. All of these girls were, their lives were directly threatened, as were the lives of their families and loved ones. So that one is obvious. They were All isolated. They were all physically taken and separated from anybody that they were bonded to. They were kept either in a box or in a shed or, you know, chained in a tent in the woods, however it was, they were isolated from anyone who could. Help them see through what was happening to them, right? Or anyone who could help them. You don’t necessarily have to be alone, you just have to be isolated from anybody who can help you. So if everybody around you is in the system that is captivating you, that is keeping you captive, you’re still isolated. And then um that’s how these girls were. They all saw it as completely impossible to escape. They all had come to believe that any attempts at escape would be futile and fatal, right? That they and their loved ones would be killed if they Tried to escape and they would never be able to escape anyway. Your capture seems so huge that there’s no hope for anything else. And then they all also had the perceived acts of kindness. They were all completely and utterly dependent on their captor for everything, for anything to sustain their lives. And so all of these, all of these components were met with all of these girls. So I want to just um Because this is such a deep and perhaps strange concept for people it’s new to and it’s so important to understand, I’m just going to really quickly recap one more time to try to understand it. So, because I think it really does seem unbelievable to some people, but it’s so important. That we can really comprehend this so that we can avoid sending the messages of blame or shame and, you know, like, like so that we can really understand what’s going on in these types of situations with people. And um so if it may, if it seems unbelievable to you, I invite you to go to go in further and study this out.

[00:30:35] So it is actually, I see it as an amazing, miraculous, fascinating element of human nature that is designed Help us survive truly unimaginable situations. So the bonding that occurs between victim and abuser is this innate survival strategy that we were created with. And so in some situations where we feel deeply threatened, socially isolated, have come to believe that escape is impossible and where we can find something, no matter how small, to view as kind. We begin to develop an emotional connection to our captors which allows us to co-regulate with them, to calm them and ourselves, and it develops a bond of of cooperation to some to at least some level. So the emotional dependence back and forth helps us to do better than we would otherwise do, and it also. Makes it more likely that our captor will see us as useful to them and keep us alive, right? So it’s our brain’s way of helping us increase the chances that we will survive these kinds of unthinkable, traumatic and abusive situations. So that’s, that’s trauma bonding. And um OK, so now I need to again clarify, I am, I am of course not claiming that polygamist women were in the same situation as Elizabeth Smart and JC Lee Dugard and that and Colleen Stan. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m using that extreme example to make this point, but we do need to look at, I was making that point to explain trauma bonding, and now we need to look at trauma bonding and codependence and CPTSD and these other these other titles that we have for this er this system of events that can happen. Um, so. Again, I’m not a psychologist or a therapist. I am not even a even a psychologist or therapist can’t diagnose somebody right from afar. So they have to sit with them and experience them to make come up. a diagnosis. So I’m not beginning to diagnose anybody. All I am doing is saying, wow, let’s look at these components of human nature. Let’s look at the necessary elements to cause them to occur. And let’s see if that is a, is a possibility for at least some of the women living in polygamy to help us have another way to understand their words and their actions. That’s what we’re doing. I hope that’s clear, right? So please don’t accuse me of things that I’m not actually doing. So, OK. So we’re going to apply these necessary components of trauma bonding to many women living in polygamist Utah in early Utah. So first, the perceived threat to life, right? OK, so this one should be kind of easy, not like. They, their lives were, they were living in Utah completely dependent on on Utah for their lives, right? It wasn’t just their physical lives, it was their eternal lives, their eternal salvation, which, like Elizabeth Smart said, you know, that she knew that um I’m not, I’m just intentionally not saying the names of the awful men.

[00:33:57] She knew that her captor wasn’t the prophet that he claimed to be. But even still, he had that much power over her. Can you imagine how, how like just exponentially magnified that would be if you believed that they had that they had eternal power over you, that they could actually say that you were going to hell, that you were not going to be with your loved ones and the eternities, and that you were going to be damned, right? And so they definitely felt that um there it was a life and death, an eternal life that there. Their situation had eternal life and death consequences. And so that was, um, and, and you know they they come to this honestly because it is taught in three different verses in Section 132 that if you don’t live polygamy after you’ve been taught it, you will be damned. It’s um verse 4, verse 6, and verse 27. And so, and you remember from the very beginning in the, oh, if you haven’t watched the um The emergence of 132 clear back in 1852 when it was Orson Whitney, I believe that was reading the revelation, and he asked the question, what will happen to anyone who doesn’t live this? And the, you know, it came from the audience, they’ll be damned, which like, like this was definitely part of the teaching was that if you didn’t live this, you would be damned. So, um, then, but then in addition to that, right, we also had the teachings of blood atonement. So there are like, if you think about the situation that these people were in. They were taught the sermons that were being preached were intense, and then if you’ll recall, the church leaders told all of the other leaders on every level that this needed to be taught, that they wanted, they wanted preaching with pitchforks tying down, raining down on the audience week after week, so it’s likely that these girls were hearing this at church on Sunday, possibly in their homes, right? They were being Just totally inundated with these threats both to their internal lives and possibly to their lives because of the teaching that apostates, meaning those who rejected these teachings needed to have their blood spilled, mean be killed. And then for those who went to the temple back in that day, they were acting out the very um graphic ways of being killed if they Didn’t live up to their, to what they were being taught, right? So I think that we can say that there was definitely the possibility of feeling like this was, there was life and death power over them. So that’s the first one. Then the second one is isolation. Again, this is pretty easy. They were in front. Here Utah, right, thousands of miles from nothing and surrounded by hostile wilderness and hostile Native Americans whose lands were being taken, right, like they, they did not have a way out. And let’s see if there’s anything else I wanted to say about that.

[00:36:52] Anyway, I, I just think that the level of isolation that these, that these people experienced, like say you were a teenage girl and your family converted and you crossed the plains and your father died, I’m, I’m using the example of my great grandmother, my great great grandmother, but this is a very common example. You get to Utah starving, penniless, you have nothing, and this is your new reality. How is that not the, I mean, that is a level of isolation that we couldn’t even reproduce in the world today. The world is too populated to eat, so we can’t even imagine how isolated they were. So, um, and then also, you know, there was very little contact with the outside world. There wasn’t yet the train that came in. Decades later there there were letters, but I mean it was, it was pretty darn isolated. So the next one is the perceived inability to escape. So this again goes along both I think with the isolation and with the eternal teachings, right? How do you escape God? Jonah learns you can’t escape God. He can see you wherever you are. So even the company that Colleen Hunt’s captor convinced her that was watching her and that like, even that concept couldn’t come close to. God can see you and can see into your heart and you know, like there was truly no escape. And so so my understanding, and someone can help me with this story whether this is true or not, but I know that the US Army, so some of you will recall when the army was going to come back in the Utah War and they buried the temple, right, and Brigham Young said they will not come here. I think I’ve mentioned this before. My what I have been told and someone can help me if if you have a source for this or a source to say it’s not true. But when the army had been here before, um, before that happened, the army had actually been stationed in Utah and they had all um interacted with each other, and when the army got ret stationed in California and left several Girls and women went with them. It was kind of like their way out and so that could have been part of the motivation to Brigham’s adamant that they will not come here, right, cause they, when they left, the some of the they like they took some of the girls, some of the women, and so, so it’s just an interesting thing to to consider, but anyway, so there was not really a way to physically escape. How is, how is someone going to leave? Early Utah and then I think that there also wasn’t a way to spiritually escape, right? If, if they were believing in this in the truth of the gospel, then there was no escape from what their lot was. Then you add to that that the possibility that um some of them had children, right? And like we talked about with the Lamanite women like how even if you could somehow imagine a way to escape with yourself once you had children, you were just completely trapped. I know that in the FLDS. The understanding is that if there’s a teenage girl who’s a little bit

[00:39:42] who’s not as willing or able to keep sweet, who has a little bit too much of a mind of her own, the solution is, or or at least was, you know, I don’t know what the situation is now, but the solution was to marry her early and get her pregnant because once um Once someone is a mother, they are much easier to control. So that’s just, that’s just a sad reality of of these kinds of situations. So that was the third component and then the next one is the perceived acts of kindness. And again, these were right, like, like these were their husbands. So I think of with this one, the example that comes to mind first for me is Emmeline Wells. We’ve read some for the some of the entries in her journal. And how she was so alone, so lonely, so desperate for the companionship of her husband. So when he would come visit her, whether it was twice a year or, you know, however infrequently it was, she was just in raptures, so in love with him, so thankful, so, um, you know, just overwhelmed that he came just with overwhelmed with joy and If you put that into our context, how many of us would be satisfied with a husband that was so busy with his 6 other wives that, you know, we got to see him if we were really lucky once a month, but maybe only a couple of times a year, right? So, We can see how anything that was that was done for them was, I I also think this is, and I’m again I’m not trying to paint these people as captors or as bad guys or anything like that. I’m just trying to look at the elements that are necessary for trauma bonding and so I think of several of I’ve been struck by several. Several of Brigham Young’s sermons are coming to mind. He’s one I’ve really, really noticed it in that he will just like, he can just really just launch into the congregation with this forceful ferocious sermon and then at the very end say, and I feel to bless you and I feel to leave you with my, you know, it’s really interesting how it’s like. Oh, there’s some kindness and some love for us. Thank you, you know, so you can see very much how these elements could all be there. I apologize for the buzzing you might have heard. I’m hoping that my son will be able to edit it out, but if not, I apologize. I Had to pause and run my children somewhere and then came back and forgot to silence my phone again, so hopefully it won’t happen anymore. It’s now silenced. Let’s move on. So, OK, in addition to these four basic elements we’ve covered, there are other components that I think could have greatly contributed to the emotional, social, physical, and spiritual control of these women, both the Victims of the kidnapping and potentially some of the polygamist women. So while those situations are, as we’ve acknowledged many times, extremely different, there are some striking similarities that I think at least deserve consideration.

[00:42:31] So first of, first of all, all of these women were made to feel completely and utterly powerless. They had Absolutely no power, just none. In addition to being physically isolated and mentally, emotionally and spiritually dominated with constant messages and teachings that they were completely reliant, their physical and eternal lives were at stake. It was made clear to them that their needs, their feelings, their desires, and their experiences did not matter. None of these girls were seen as people. Who mattered, right? Like all of them were taken, all of the kidnap victims, including the Lamanite daughters, were taken against their will and used in whatever way their captors saw fit for their benefit. Um, and I, and I, while polygamy is very different, it is very much like the ideas in 132, the reason they are so That they just ring so false is because in that ideology girls and women don’t matter their their ideas, their desires, their experiences, their feelings, none of that matters. They are just possessions to be used in service to the system or to. What, you know, the exaltation of their husbands, and that’s the whole, that’s the whole foundation of the keep sweet doctrine, which really is the core of polygamy. Like you have no power. You are just to smile and obey, and that’s it. And so that’s really a hard thing to consider that powerlessness. That is something that can mess with that can just mess with people deeply on many levels. So they really like they had no ability to improve their lives, lives, not only no way to escape, but no ability, like, like there was nothing they could do to make their situation better, right? They just had to endure it the best they could. So, and then I would say that also their feelings where I’m talking about all of the women, right? Um, all of the women we’ve talked about in this episode, their feelings were not only irrelevant, but they were wrong. Like, like, often in polygamy, women’s desire to bond, have this special bond with her husband and have fidelity from him, that’s called jealousy and selfishness and seen as a negative thing that she has to overcome, right? Like, like, so, so it’s not. Only that your feelings don’t matter and are invalid, it’s that they’re temptations, they’re evil, it’s the devil, right, that you have any feelings. So that’s something that I think is an important thing to consider that powerlessness. And so here’s an example.

[00:45:15] This is just one talk from 1874, so this was 20 years after the Reformation, just so you can see that the rhetoric kind of continued some of it. And again this was a Like, like anyone that wants to read this entire talk cause cutting just a little part of it doesn’t do it justice. There was this, this was a tough talk. So this was Brigham Young. He said, I want to say to my sisters that if you lift your heels against the revelation concerning celestial marriage and say that you would obliterate it and put it out of existence if you had the power to nullify and destroy it, I say that if you imbibe that spirit and feeling, you will go to hell, just as sure as you are living, just as sure as you are living women. He then goes on to talk specifically about Emma saying that she will be damned to hell, so they, you know, we’re shown an example of what a wicked woman is. And then he continues, You sisters may say that plural marriage is very hard for you to bear. It is no such thing. And right here this is another element, the gaslighting. Right, so those who are familiar with narcissism or psychological terminology will know what gaslighting is. It’s, it’s, it’s not the best term because it’s from a really out of date movie, but it’s basically saying, telling people that their experiences aren’t valid, that their perceptions of the world aren’t real. They can’t trust their own feelings, that they’re wrong and what they experience. It’s like, it’s like when like one of the things that really upsets me with my kids is if One of my children hurts another one of my children then says, You’re not hurt. That didn’t hurt. And that’s a form of gaslighting, right? That I really I’m like, you don’t get to tell them what hurt them. You get to listen to them tell you what hurt them, right? You don’t get to define their reality for them. And so that’s what gaslighting is. So he says that’s, you know, so that’s what he says here. You sisters may say that plural marriage is very hard for you to bear. It is no such thing. It’s not hard for you to bear. And then he goes on, a man or woman who would not spend his, his or her life in building up the kingdom of God on earth is not worthy of God or His kingdom, and they will never be crowned. They cannot be crowned. The sacrifice must be complete. If it is the duty of a husband to take a wife, take her, but it is not the privilege of a woman to dictate to her husband and tell who or how many he he shall take or what he shall do with them when he gets them. It is the duty of the woman to submit cheerfully. So it goes on and on from there. So you can see that this, these components were present in the culture that these women were living in, right? It to um I just, I really want to be careful. Don’t think I’m comparing them to the kidnappers or the kidnapping victims, no, but the elements of trauma bonding were very much present. In their lives. So um here’s another similarity that I think is important to really consider. These women were all forced to lose their identity. um, when you can take a person’s identity away, it becomes much easier to control them, like, like again, JC Lee Dugard and um Elizabeth Smart,

[00:48:14] like they communicate, they say they couldn’t. See themselves as who they who they were and they couldn’t imagine a different life for themselves cause their entire identity had been taken away from them. So all of these girls were forced to actually take different names. Colleen and Stan was actually forced to sign a contract, a slave contract signing away her body and soul to her captor and that she was his slave, and that that was her only purpose in life. And her name was, she wasn’t even given a name. She was just given the letter K. She was slave K and so she wasn’t known as Colleen. She was K, right? And then, and not the name Kay, the letter K, right? JC was forced to go by Alyssa, and again that’s who she became. that’s she, she couldn’t tell the police she was anyone other than Alyssa. She was Alissa. Her identity had been taken away. And then Elizabeth Smart was forced to say that her name was Augustine Marshall and um that her kidnappers were her mother were her mother and stepfather’s father and stepmother. I can’t remember which one, but again, that’s what she kept telling the police who she was because her identity had been taken away from her and she had to take some time even to be able to find her identity again to to say. OK, if you’re saying Elizabeth Smart, I won’t say I’m not, right? Like that’s kind of how it was when she finally said thou sayest to to the officers. And so, um, so like I have, I, I, you can see this sometimes in your lives. I have a friend. Whose controlling husband actually forced her to take a new name. He had a revelation that she needed a new name, gave her a new name, and it wasn’t until she finally was able to free herself from first the first emotionally, and then she left him and reclaimed her name. She’s like, No, this is my name, this is who I am. So this is something that really happens and That my poor friend and her children are still still dealing with the aftermath of that level of control that they had to experience, so. So again, differentiating, right? But as I’ve thought about this, in polygamy, women are also forced to give up their identity as beloved and valued daughters of a Loving God who sees them and knows them and cares about them, right? I’m like, sorry, this is just so important and it’s frustrating to me that all of the pushback I’m getting from people saying that I shouldn’t be saying these things and I’m like, no. Nobody should have been saying those things. Women matter. Our identity as beloved daughters of God is essential to our nature, to our beings. We have to know who we are and that God does care about us and does see us and does want us to have our righteous desires fulfilled, right? God. Does not want us to just be

[00:51:11] possessions to fulfill the needs of others, of other people or a system. We matter. We are daughters of God. That is our identity, and it’s essential for us to know that and to claim it and own it and not let it be taken away from us. And that’s what polygamy does. It takes away our identity of who we really are. So, that’s a really important thing. to to really for us to cling on to because we had so much like generational trauma of our foremothers sitting through those sermons repeatedly being told that they didn’t matter, that they didn’t have the identity that we know we have. So that’s one reason that this is an important topic. We need to know who we are. We can’t let our identity be taken from us through the mistaken ideas of polygamy. So There’s one more similarity I think that we need to consider. It’s a difficult one to talk about, so I’m asking for your grace to try to understand what I’m trying to say instead of trying to use this against me somehow. But all three of the men, the kidnappers that I talked about at the beginning, all three of them had wives who acted as their accomplices. These three women, um, their names were Wanda Barzey, Nancy Garrido, and Janice Hooker, I think were themselves. Victims of abuse and trauma bonding, I think that they were so desperate to find some way to, they were so desperate to be pleasing to their husbands to find have their husbands see some value in them and see a reason to keep them, that they would do anything necessary to please their husbands, including help them actually kidnap and conceal for years. Another younger less powerful girl and so I am, I think that it’s important to get into the dynamics going on here because it was so complex, so complex and messy. So these women in their desire to please their husband. Participated in getting another girl, but then they struggled with jealousy with their husband’s bonding of their victim, right? So all of these girls talk about how how actually those women in many ways were more awful to them than the actual abuser was because they had all of these dynamics going on. So it’s just like this crazy, crazy thing to try to understand. And so I think that the reason I think it’s important is because we can look at these women who were compelled somehow to actually do this thing that I don’t think any of them would have on their own ever done or even wanted to do. In fact, it was Janice Hooker that told Colleen Hunt finally that there was no company and that helped her escape, you know, so I think that they were just kind of broken down women who could be made to do anything. To please their controlling and abusive husbands. So, um, so I, I am, I am not in any way again comparing uh the situations just looking at the dynamics in them. I, I feel like I’m saying that so many times, but it’s important that you understand that. So I think that it’s

[00:54:29] useful though to say if these women could be made to do that, is it impossible to believe that women could be made to say and claim things. You know, when when some of the same dynamics were at work when they were so needing to, so they were so desperate to keep their own platform, to have their own voice, to have some status to be useful to their community, to the power structure, right? Like what Mormon women did was nothing compared to what these women did, but so the dynamics we can see there could have inspired them to do things that they would not have otherwise done and maybe didn’t want to do on their own. And um, so let’s see what I wanted to say about that, um. Oh well, so for example, first wives were told that they needed to participate in helping their husbands get younger wives. They would have been so torn by that, right? So so desirous of being obedient and helpful, but struggled with the dynamics just like these the poor women in these stories who were actually the I mean the women that we’re talking about in those stories were just twisted awful women. I, I think of that saying hurt people, hurt people. Like I think those women were Women were so just broken down and destroyed that they couldn’t have compassion for even their victims. But to some extent we see the same dynamics in polygamy. Like, I’ll remind you of the Reformation hymn that was sung that they would have been singing at their Sunday services sometimes. Now sisters listen to what I say with trials this world is rife. You can’t expect to miss them all. Help husband get a wife. Now this advice I freely give, if exalted you would be, remember that your husband must be blessed with more than thee. Then, then, oh let us say, God bless the wife that strives and aids her husband all she can to obtain a dozen wives. So their way to like be worthy was to contribute to this system, right? Isn’t that a confusing, difficult place to be? And it maybe can help us understand some of the things that some of these women did like. Like Phoebe Woodruff, for instance, you know, we know that she gave her testimony according to her own account under duress. Like she was forced to say things that were not her own words and her own sentiments, and um I don’t think that she was a victim of tram bonding. I think she was truly like facing homelessness in her own age and forced to be compelled to be obedient. But um we can look at like it makes me think of we spoke earlier about gaslighting and like some of the some of the speeches that some of these women gave that denied that there was suffering in Utah, denied the reality of so many women in Utah, and it’s hard to understand how that could have happened unless we understand these dynamics, right? And what the necessities were in their life. So I again want to just read this one. Quote from the great indignation meeting, um, it’s Eliza Snow says, and you know Eliza Snow was a more privileged woman and who denies the suffering of her sisters. It’s hard to understand that unless we can see what she was struggling with. So she said our enemies pretend that in Utah woman is held in a state of vassalage, that she does not act from choice but by coercion. That we that we would even prefer life somewhere else were it possible for us to make our escape. What nonsense. And the crazy thing is we know that that’s true for so many of these women that were here, right? And she just says that’s nonsense. That is not the case at all for anybody.

[00:58:00] I don’t think that she is equipped to speak on behalf of all of the women in Utah. She says we all know that if we wish we could leave at any time, either to go singly or we could rise in mass, and there is no power here that could or would ever wish to prevent us except their inability to have any means to leave or any life to go to, right? We have to look at all. These dynamics at play, she says, I will now ask this intelligent assembly of ladies, do you know of any place on the face of the earth where a woman has more liberty and where she enjoys such high and glorious privilege as she does here and as a latter day saint? No. And so, OK, so she’s saying that, but then we have the talks being given about how women have no say in your place is just, just be silent and obedient and right, so it’s really an interesting dynamic to look at. So. Anyway, we’re going to move on from that, but I think it is a tricky and tough thing that we need to consider that can help us understand why women said and did the things they said and did, at least one possibility. So, um, OK, now we’re going to move on to, I think that we’ve, we’ve painted some possibilities. I just want to apply it to some specific cases. Again, I cannot diagnose anybody with anything, and that is not what I’m doing. All I’m doing is saying In this person’s life, do are the elements present that could potentially result in trauma bonding, and so is that a possibility we could consider? So I’m not diagnosing, I’m not saying this is the case. I’m just looking for the elements. Please understand that. So, um, I want to talk about who I believe is probably the most diag the most discussed and the most. Controversial supposed polygamist wife of Joseph Smith, and it is Helen Mar Kimball Whitney. So we’re going to do a future episode that is dedicated entirely to her because her story is so important and so central to everything. So first of all, the reason that she’s so controversial is because she was supposedly married to Joseph Smith when she was 14, right? But that’s not. Like that’s not the totality of her story and her central position in polygamy. So she was the daughter, the only living daughter of Hebrew C. Kimball and his first wife, wife Violet. I used, it’s spelled like vile, so, but I think it’s pronounced Violet, so that’s what I’m going to say. So, um, so I’ll remind you, we’ve read several of Hebrew C. Kimball’s um snippets from his talks in the past. He was Um, supposedly, again, according to the stories that the Kimball family tells, he was the first polygamist after Joseph Smith. He was told by Joseph Smith to take Sarah Noon as a wife and to not tell Violet. He was supposed to do that behind her back, according to The stories we get from them. So, um, so he um was the first president, the first counselor in the first presidency under Brigham Young, so he loomed large both in the church and in his daughter’s life, right?

[01:01:07] So that was her father, um, just to recap, he’s the one. Later, you know, in in polygamist Utah, he’s the one who’s quoted to have said that he thinks no more of taking another wife than of buying a cow. He’s quoted to, well, we’ve read where he castigated the missionaries for marrying the pretty girls and only bringing the plainer ones home for the leaders to choose from from their missions. And then he um he’s also the one that is quoted to have said when when his daughter-in-law said to him, I think polygamy is a viol and demoralizing doctrine. His response was, I don’t care blankety blink what you think so long as you either keep still or say what you are told. So so that’s that’s the Hebrewy Kimba we’re talking about who is her father, right? So that’s her father. She married the son of Newell K. Whitney, who was the presiding bishop, I believe. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s who he was. So she married his son, um, is it Orson F. Whitney. Oh, no, no, that’s her son. She married um the son of Noah K. Whitney, and then she was the father of Orson F. Whitney, who became an apostle, who was the one who wrote the biography of his grandfather, Hebrew C. Kimball, that included the story of the flaming sword and included all of these stories. That’s where we get them a lot of them from is from Orson F. Whitney’s biography. Of his grandfather, so they really came down in this family. And Orson F. Whitney is also the one who, he was an apostle and he’s the one who read Section 132 when it was first acknowledged in that 1852 special conference that the Mormons were indeed polygamists practicing polygamy. So do you see how central she is to all of this? It’s just an amazing, an amazing story that we have. And of course, another reason that um Helen is so important is because she is one that later in her life wrote much in defense of polygamy. So all of these accounts are, I think when she was in her mid-50s, decades after the events would have happened. But so that’s another reason that she’s so important is that she, we have a lot of what she wrote in defense of polygamy. So I’m going to read part of one of her autobiographies right here. She said just previous to my father starting upon his last. But one to the eastern states, he taught me the principle of celestial marriage and having a great desire to be connected with the prophet Joseph, he offered me to him. This I afterwards learned from the prophet’s own mouth. My father had but one ewe lamb which willing but willingly laid her upon the altar. How cruel this seemed to the mother whose heartstrings were already stretched until they were ready to snap asunder, for Had taken Sarah Noon to wife, and she thought that she had made sufficient sacrifice, but the Lord required more. I will pass over the temptations which I had during the 24 hours after my father introduced me to the principal and asked me if I would be sealed to Joseph, who came next morning, and with my parents, I heard him teach and explain the principle of celestial marriage, after which he said to me, If you will take this step,

[01:04:20] it will insure your your eternal salvation and exaltation. And that of your father’s household and all of your kindred, this promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward. None but God and angels could see my mother’s bleeding heart. When Joseph asked her if she was willing, she replied, If Helen is willing, I have nothing more to say. She had witnessed the sufferings of others who were older and who better understood the step they were taking. And to see her child who had scarcely seen her 15th 15th summer following in the same thorny path in her mind she saw the misery which was as sure to come as the sun was to rise and set, but it was all hidden from me. So, OK, There’s so much here and we’ll go into it more when we go into the um the episode that’s just specifically about Helen Mar Kimball, but just looking at these elements. You can see what she says in her own testimony. I, I think that this was in an era where sacrifice was really praised, like the greater your sacrifice, the greater exalted you were, and I think maybe that’s why her way of defending polygamy is talking about how great of sacrifices they made for it, because it does seem kind of counterintuitive that she would say, look how great polygamy is, this is how much we suffered, you know, but I think that that’s why it was this way. But you can see, she said about her father having a great desire to be connected to the prophet Joseph Smith, he offered me to him. So her father wanted to be connected to Joseph and wanted to have exaltation, and so he Saw his daughter as a means to accomplish that, and I think that what’s so interesting there is, I think, well, my husband and I see ourselves as here to sacrifice for the sake of our children, right? We give of ourselves to help our children grow up and live their best possible lives, discover who they are and what they’re here to do and accomplish, and we want them to have the best lives they can. We don’t see our children as here to sacrifice themselves for us, right? I think that that’s an important thing to consider. I think that there are families who do it that way and it just, it’s really sad that that’s where the trauma bonding occurs is when, when you see families where The parents see the children as there to fulfill their needs, there to give them what they want, you know, that’s where trauma bonding can really be a problem and really mess people up. So that’s something there that we really need to pay attention to. And you know, she talks about her father’s sacrifice in there, like my father had but one yam, but willingly laid her upon the altar when it was her life that was being, I mean according to what she’s saying, like really just devastated for For their sake, and also when you consider, like for those of you who are parents, I have a 15 year old daughter telling a 14 year old that the eternal destiny of her entire family and all of the all of her kindred rests upon her being willingness to sacrifice herself like. That’s intense. That is a level of. I guess I, I mean these are hard things to say, but really the amount of manipulation in that is just hard to really comprehend. And so that was how Helen Mar, how Helen Mar Kimball like portrayed herself. So um we’re going to go on to read a little bit more of what she said.

[01:07:55] Um, she wrote, like, yeah, she wrote about that same story again a year later. And let’s see, I just want to read parts of it because it’s really long and this episode is really long. I remember how I felt when the principal was first introduced to me by my father one morning when he asked me if if if I believed it was right for a man for a married man to take another wife, and she says, I’m trying to cut through it. She says that she got indignant. I was like, no, but it was the first time she’d ever been angry at her father. But instead of seeing being upset about it, he actually seemed pleased and then he went on. To talk to her about polygamy, she says in this account that nobody that he didn’t tell her anyone was living it yet. So there are differences between the two accounts that we’ll again get into later. But this is the part I wanted to read. She says for that next 24 hours she had various and conflicting ideas. I was skeptical. One minute believed, then doubted. But I thought of the love and tenderness that he felt for his only daughter, and I knew that he would not cast her off, and this was the only, the only convincing proof that I had of its being right. So again, her father looms so large that the only way she has to believe this is right is she knows that her father wouldn’t tell her something that wasn’t true, but At the same time, this is the father who’s sacrificing her for his own benefit. I, I, I, I mean, these are hard things to say, but I hope you can understand what I’m, how, how this really is, you know. I knew that he loved me too well to teach me anything that was not strictly pure, virtuous, and exalting in its tendencies, and no one else could have influenced me at at that time or brought me to accept of doctrines so utterly repugnant and so contrary to all of our formers and former ideas and traditions. So then she says that the prophet came back and taught them, and she said, I had no proofs, only his and my father’s testimony. I thought that sufficient and did not, did not deem it necessary to seek any further, seek for any further. My father was my teacher and revelator, and I saw no no necessity then for further testimony. So that’s what she’s writing in her own journal. She does go on to say how God took her through the furnace of affliction and suffering and learning, and that she learned that she had to put her trust in God and not in any man, but this is how she portrays herself as a 14-year-old girl accepting a life of polygamy and It’s, it’s really tough, right, when we, when we’ve talked about what we’ve talked about, the how this reads to me is quite heartbreaking, really. And so she says that, you know, her father is her source of truth and also should be her protector, right? And um. Like, like the story is recorded that at um Violet’s death, Heber commented, There lies a woman who gave me 44 wives. So really in a way the value Violet had to her husband was in submitting to this and giving additional wives, right? And,

[01:10:57] and that was this girl’s father. I also should include that um. It was Hebrewy. Kimball who, so, so Helen Marr, after Helen Mar Kimball, after Joseph Smith died, she fell in love with and married Horace Whitney, the son of Newell K. Whitney, as we said, and, and she was really in love with him, and it was actually Hebrew C. Kimball who told Horace, her husband, that he needed to take additional wives and so that it’s just interesting. Even, even Laban, who tricked Jacob into marrying both of his daughters, then made Jacob covenant that he wouldn’t take any other wives, right? Like he was protecting at least his two girls’ interests, so It’s interesting to have a father who would tell your husband you need to marry other women as well. So right, that that was an interesting situation. And so one thing I want to say, there are so many things to this, but a couple of things. So Helen is bearing testimony of the truthfulness of this, but none of this theology is anything that any of us would recognize, right? Do we like accept That because she was willing to be sealed to Joseph Smith that her entire family in Kindred is exalted, is that like a truth that we recognize? Is that how exaltation works? Like God is unchanging, right? So it’s all really messy. They also, and another interesting twist that we’ll go into more in her in her future is that Her father was adopted as I believe Joseph’s son, and then her father-in-law was adopted as her father’s son, so. Newell K. Whitney in the law of adoption that they practiced. I have a quote here that if I find it, I’ll read it, but that that that that was another thing that they were practicing. So it was so different and so strange, and we have let the law of adoption go, right? We don’t, we don’t follow that anymore, so I don’t know why we’re so attached to polygamy when really nothing about it follows anything that we recognize or that we believe. And so um let’s see if I can find that quote. Oh, I don’t know if I’ll be able to find it. So if I do, I will read it. But um I want to read a couple of additional quotes from Hebrew C. Kimball, just, you know, that this, this girl, this was her father preaching this in sermons in Utah when she was married, and, you know, she really also suffered in polygamy. So, oh, another interesting thing in the theology that we wouldn’t recognize is that so um. Helen was sealed to Joseph Smith for time and eternity,

[01:13:31] but she then was only sealed to Horace, the father of her 11 children, for time. So she wasn’t eternally sealed to her husband. He was, I believe, eternally sealed to his next two wives. But like, like all of these theologies are so confusing, like 132 itself says God isn’t the author of confusion, and all I can find here is confusion. So, um, it’s really like, like, I don’t know, it’s kind of like that’s not uh uh we, we don’t, we don’t need that anymore, right? We don’t need to claim this doctrine anymore. It’s just extremely strange so. Here are a couple of quotes from Hebrewy. Kimball. Many of these people have broken their covenants by speaking evil of one another, by speaking against the servants of God, and by finding fault with the plurality of wives and trying to seek it out of sink it out of existence. But you cannot do that, for God will cut you off and raise up another people that will carry out His purposes and righteousness unless you walk up to the line of your duty. On the one hand there is glory and exaltation, and on the other no tongue can express the suffering and affliction this people will pass through if they do not repent. So this was not only her church leader but her father, and he also said it is the duty of a woman to be obedient to her husband, and unless she is, I would not give a damn for all her queenly right and authority, nor for her either if she will quarrel and lie about the work of God and the principle of plural plurality. I tell you, as the Lord God Almighty lives. My sword is unsheathed, and I never will sheath it until those of you who have done wrong repent of your evil deeds. So we, we have to take into consideration this girl’s life experience. And if it’s possible that she could have been Experiencing similar things as some of these other girls we’ve talked about where she would do and say whatever she needed to in order to get along, to get by, right? When you consider what CPTSD really is and what it does, I don’t think that’s out of the realm of possibility when you have a girl who is seen only as A possession in so many of these ways, right, as something to be used to accomplish things. Um, anyway, so, so it’s just really tricky, really tough. So, oh, here’s the quote I was looking for, sorry to waste your time, but this is what um while they were coming back across the plains, what Hebrewy. Kimball said at a sermon to Newell K. Whitney, who he had, who was his adopted son, and and how they understood ceilings at this time, right? He said, I am your head, your lawgiver and king, and will be to all eternity, and I am res and I am responsible to my head and president, and you are responsible to me, your file leader. So I just, that was a really interesting thing that I happened upon in my much, much study that I wanted to include to just say, we don’t have to claim this cause we’re not claiming all of the rest of that. Like it’s so strange to us that, um, anyway,

[01:16:32] that we’re not claiming that that all it has to be part of our religion and part of our eternity, right? So, um, OK, let’s see, we’ll go on, but anyway, from her own testimony, from Helen Mar’s own testimony, she, her entire views were directed by her father, right? So I’m going to leave it there for now and let people further study. I’ll attach some sources that you can learn a little bit more of Helen Mar Kimball, but please understand that this is all given through very specific lenses. So I would recommend not I know that there are some people that write histories of her, but it’s again so tilted in certain ways instead of looking at her actual life in context and what she experienced and what we understand of human psychology, leaving all of that out and just, I mean to me I I just. I’m getting frustrated by people saying, listen to the testimonies of women and like parading the things that these women said around in order to prove the truthfulness of polygamy. Um, it is so upsetting to me because it feels to me like saying Like, like, listen to Elizabeth Smart when she says that her name is, you know, Augustine. Listen to JC Lee Duggard when she says that her name is Alyssa, like, listen to these women when they are still under the influences of these trauma bonds and being and and saying the things that they feel like they need to say. And so I, I just, I feel like these women deserve so much better than that, um. I, I think that we are not serving them well, and we are not actually coming to more truth to use these women’s testimonies. In order to. Support the claims made by this system that abused them potentially, right? Like I, I, I, I, I, anyway, I feel like I’m on dangerous ground here just in terms of offending people. That is not what I want to do. I don’t want to offend anybody. I want to actually Speak out on behalf of these women in a way that is worthy of them, in a way that they deserve. And so, like, here’s an example. When we see FLDS women bearing testimony of the truthfulness of polygamy and how they are going to be exalted, right? Do we therefore say, oh, we must believe them because they’re the ones that are sacrificing and suffering the most for this, or do our hearts break. For them. Why is it my heart breaks for them. I think that that’s how most people feel. We need to apply that same compassion and holistic understanding to the lives of our foremothers. They deserve that, and I believe we owe it to them. So, um, I think that I’m gonna, I’m gonna wrap it up and leave it here, but I, in a future episode will tell.

[01:19:26] A little bit more of the experiences I had that inspired me to start and to do this podcast, but here all I want to say is that. I am doing this because of my foremothers and because of what I have experienced from them and what I believe that they want women to know. And so, um, I am doing my best to speak on their behalf as I feel inspired that they want me to do. So, um. Anyway, I think that they deserve that. So I want to thank you for sticking with me as I try to serve these amazing, brave, powerful and wise souls who suffered and sacrificed so much and who I believe now want to spare us that same difficult, difficult journey. So thank you so much. I will see you next time.