June is Pride Month.
As told to Nicole Audrey Spector
I grew up in a chaotic household. There was a lot of turmoil, anger and abuse. My parents divorced when I was 8 years old. I never really knew what a healthy, happy family looked like, but I definitely knew what an unhealthy, unhappy family looked like.
As a teenager, I was determined not to compare myself to the adults around me.
In high school, I found stability in a supportive group of friends – kids who lived the traditionally normal life I had always longed for. They had happy families who ate dinner on Sundays and went on vacation together. They were also members of the Mormon Church – something I had no personal experience with, but which made me more and more curious as I grew closer to people in the faith.
My Mormon friends and their families attributed their structured, peaceful lives to God’s love. It was simple: If you lived by His rules as the Mormon Church understands them, God would love you for all eternity. I had never experienced a love like this, a love that would never leave me.
I was baptized at 16. Members of the Mormon Church greeted me with admiration and reverence.
Living an obedient life in the Mormon faith means abstaining from all sexual thoughts and actions until marriage. Once you are married, your main role as a woman is to be a wife and have children. I was more than happy to sign up for all of this, checking all the boxes that guarantee God’s love by overcoming feelings and desires.
When I was 20, I met Chad, a kind, respectful, and smart young man at church who was interested in me. I liked him as a person and was flattered that he liked me. We were engaged and married within a year.
1999, Elena and Chad on their wedding day
We tried to conceive early in our marriage, as the Mormon Church requires. I played the role of an enthusiastic sexual partner, but I always felt disconnected and wondered when sex would become the powerful, all-consuming force that the church portrayed it as. We lived in a shelter with other Mormon families and the walls were thin. It sounded like the other women were having a better time than me.
Sex may have been a disappointment, but motherhood was my chance to give my children the healthy family life I hadn’t experienced. In Mormonism, once you are sealed in the temple (which you do through constant obedience), you have secured not only your eternity, but that of your children as well. As long as a mother follows the rules, not even death can separate her from her child. But if the mother breaks the seal by disobeying God’s rules, her children could die tomorrow and she would never have contact with them again. The threat of losing my children’s souls was terribly close to my heart.
In my mid-30s, when my youngest of four children was in kindergarten, I began to have sneaky thoughts about how I didn’t like my life. I found that vigorous exercise was a great way to distract myself from these thoughts, but I could only run so many miles and lift so many weights before the thoughts came back. I started fly fishing, which was absolutely exciting and the best distraction.
I was one of six women in a fly fishing club with 150 male members. One evening one of the other women, Kristen (not Mormon), came up to me and said, “So I guess boobs just talk to other boobs, right?” We laughed and a close friendship developed.
Fly fishing at the Grand Canyon, 2021
I had never felt the same around Kristen as I did then. I thought pins and needles and weak knees only existed for characters in romance novels. But with Kristen they were real. And she felt it too. Soon it was undeniable: Kristen and I were in love. I was gay. It was a terrible truth to face. Same-sex attraction is a major sin in Mormonism. Loving a woman felt like a curse and I just wanted to free myself from it. Still, I couldn’t.
Three weeks into our friendship, Kristen and I had our first kiss. It was magical – but right after, Kristen said we shouldn’t see each other. She said it was too hurtful to see me in an unhappy marriage that I didn’t seem to want to give up.
I couldn’t imagine life without Kristen. I sent her a series of text messages begging her not to leave me. Chad read these text messages one evening while going through my phone. He woke me up angry and upset. I was afraid and ashamed as I thought about how I might lose my entire community and, most importantly, my eternal connection to my children.
My rights within the church were immediately revoked. I was no longer allowed to take communion on Sundays, pray in public, or teach children in Sunday school. I tried so hard to repent by praying away the gays as instructed by my church, but I couldn’t free myself from my attraction to women.
Desperate to save my marriage, my children, and my soul, I attended conversion therapy.
2014, Elena with one of her children
Conversion therapy, also called “reparative therapy,” aims to change a person’s sexual or gender identity and is not endorsed by any major mental health organizations, including the American Psychological Association. Many states have banned conversion therapy because it is both illegal and harmful. But in Arizona, where we lived, it’s not illegal.
I went to conversion therapy two hours a day, four days a week. I started in August. By December I had come close to taking my own life three times. Once, when I was just hours away from attempting suicide, a friend intervened and said, “You think taking your own life will stop the pain. It won’t. It’ll just spread it.”
These words penetrated me. And for the first time, I allowed myself to step back from the chaos of my pain and shame and simply pause. Stop judging myself, stop hating myself, stop trying to make me into someone I wasn’t. I reached a place of calm and safe mindfulness, a space where I could accept who I was without testing myself. In that clear, strong space, I realized that nothing was more important to me than staying alive to be with my children – and that they saw me happy to be alive.
In that crystal clear moment, I knew that homosexuality should be accepted at all costs. And what a price it was. I lost almost all of my community through the divorce. Years of friendships dissolved overnight. The love that would never leave me has finally left me.
I was alone in a deafening silence. Just me and my thoughts. And all of these thoughts were questions, criticism and ultimatums. I delved deeper into mindfulness practice and meditated daily to teach my brain to be an observer and not a dictator.
It wasn’t easy to become mindful during the most painful crisis of my life. The condemning voices from outside were louder than ever. But the more I practiced mindfulness, the easier it became and the stronger I became. I became able to make the bold changes needed to live an authentic, inspired life.
I divorced Chad, got my own apartment, came out to my kids (they weren’t surprised or upset), and built a wonderful career in public speaking and leadership development, with a focus on LGBTQ+ advocacy.
2022: Elena is a visiting lecturer at the University of Arizona
It took me a long time to process my internalized homophobia and include all parts of me. I did a lot of therapy with a queer non-Mormon therapist who could relate to aspects of my experience.
I studied quantum mechanics, which opened me up to the concept that there are different versions of myself and that what matters is being the highest version of myself that I can be. I no longer externalize God but seek inner spiritual wisdom.
As for eternal life… Well, I think consciousness is eternal. But are we connected to our loved ones and our children in the afterlife? I really don’t know and I’m okay with not knowing because I’m no longer willing to live for heaven. I live in the moment.
Do you have any real women, real stories of your own that you would like to share? Let us know.
Our “Real Women, Real Stories” are the authentic experiences of real-life women. The views, opinions and experiences shared in these stories are not endorsed by HealthyWomen and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of HealthyWomen.
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