Episode 121: I didn’t make room for doubts; they made their own room, w/ Sara Fisk

Meagan – Welcome everyone to today’s episode of Beyond the shadow of doubt. Podcast I’m Megan Skidmore, your host. And today I have my fellow coach friend Sarah Fisk, with me. This has been kind of a long time in coming, Sarah.

Sara – It has it has.

Meagan – I am thrilled that you were able to take time out of your busy schedule and join me today. So welcome.

Sara – It is an honor to be here. Truly.

Meagan – Well, I feel the same. So Sarah and I you we first met either virtually first or or at various conferences, and so. I know that you are of the same faith background as myself. But I don’t know all of your story. So it’s like I before I hit the record button, I told Sarah I’m I’m really grateful to get your story recorded and out there for others to learn about and learn from and experience. So let’s just dive right in. I want to give you the opportunity to share as much as as we possibly can. so I’ll just turn the floor over to you. Start off with just sharing about you your your origin story, I guess. Your background including your family, your growing up years, your education, and so on, and so forth.

Sara – Thank you. First of all. It’s rare that, you know. We get to reflect on things like stories. And what brought us here. I grew up in I was born in Provo. My parents were students. I think it’s a pretty common, you know. Mormon beginning of of a Mormon story we moved to Central California when I was young, and that’s where I was raised, and I always had to explain to people who were

when I eventually went to Byu, and when people found out that I was from California there was always a little bit of like excitement around that until I told them that it was not the beach and not the mountains. It was the farms in Central California, and so I grew up on 4 acres of raisin grapes. Literally we farmed grapes and put them out in the sun to dry, and turned them into raisins. And so there was a lot of a lot of farm work, a lot of just hard manual labor. My dad is a general contractor, and so we joke that the way he raised us is probably against a bunch of child labor laws now, but pouring cement and hanging sheet rock and and doing those kinds of things to the family was always just kind of a part of how I grew up, and it was also just very centered around our faith. You know you mentioned our shared background in the Lds. Or Mormon faith, and it was it we didn’t have any close family. And so the church was our family, and it was the center of a lot of our time spent, you know. I I grew up when mutual was still on Wednesday nights, and I know it’s still different in lots of parts of the world now. But the Youth group was on Wednesday nights, and we’d go on Sunday and on Wednesday and on Saturday to do different projects. And so I I never really had because it was a very rural area. I didn’t have other Lds friends. My age ours. Our congregation drew from little teeny farming towns across, you know, a a several like a really large radius. And so I remember just really being lonely growing up. I wanted a friend who could understand my faith because I

it I, our family took it seriously. Our family was very orthodox without being overly like strict about some things like little rules. That other families tended to really stick to my family, didn’t. And I had a pretty active. questioning phase and bringing, you know things to the attention of my parents and youth group leaders that raised some eyebrows. I remember one incident in particular in the Lds faith, once a month there is what’s called a fast and testimony meeting and fast fast just means everyone is fasting. And then testimony meeting just means that anyone who wants to can go up to the front of the congregation and share their feelings about their faith. And it’s kind of an it’s kind of an open mic situation in some ways. and I remember going to the front, and just really wanting to give words to a wrestle that I was feeling of like. I don’t know if this is true. I don’t know if this is right. I don’t like I I like all of you. You’re very good people, and I remember the look in my mom’s face just kind of wishing I would sit down is what I thought how I read her.and there weren’t many people who I could talk to about big questions not my parents, not I mean, not really anyone. And I didn’t even really get the feeling that those thoughts on my behalf were even like really taken seriously, it was more like a you know. Sarah will just grow out of it, or it’s a phase.

Meagan – How old were you again when you stood up on that fast.

Sara – I was 15. I was 15. Yeah. And.

Meagan – Yeah, that’s that’s young to be that open about where you were. That’s great. Well.

Sara – It was. I remember feeling like I just had to say like, lest you all think that I am at the same level of believing in faith as you are, I just wanna set it clear. I don’t know. I don’t know but I’m coming, and I am here. And and so then I went to Byu. and Byu is the university owned by the the Lds. Church, and.

Meagan – Yeah.

Sara – I underwent a really interesting change there. It was, first of all, all I had ever wanted to be surrounded by people of my same faith and like. I said that that loneliness component of growing up was it? Was it was really big. I had lots of challenges around friendships and wanting to have friendships, but not wanting to do the things that a lot of people in high school were doing and wanting to be popular, but not doing the things that at the time would kind of result in that popularity, like drinking or sleeping around. And a byu just seemed like the answer to all of that teenage Angst and.

Meagan – Right.

Sara – And what I I just had the most wonderful time finding friends and feeling like I had finally finally found my people, and in a way. That was like I said, everything I had been looking for and it also had an interesting side effect of like kind of radicalizing my Mormonness and cause. Now you’re in a sea of people who are all acting the same way, upholding the same standards, and it just became really easy to fall into really black and white, thinking it was everywhere. and I ate it up. I wanted to be I wanted to be seen as a faithful righteous, you knowLatter Day Saint, righteous young woman, and so I mean my sisters call it my super Mormon years, where I just.

Meagan – I just be.

Sara – I came all the I did all the Mormon things right. I was. became a Temple worker. I went on a mission. I was the president of everything that could have been offered, you know, to me as a female in in the congregation and I taught at the missionary training center, and really just kind of loved giving everything to the church. And I did, and I had no question that it was the right thing to do the thing that I wanted to do, and the thing that I would do forever. And Byu was just a beautiful, a beautiful time. I served a mission for the church in Bolivia. And that was incredibly catalyzing for me to see such poverty and for me to see the way that the church membership offered a lifeline to a lot of people in in poverty. And that experience changed me. I mean today to this day I run. I’m the president of a nonprofit organization, with 4 of 3 of my former mission friends.

Meagan – We.

Sara – We go back to Bolivia every year and run humanitarian projects or partner with other organizations doing humanitarian work, that it really deeply impacted me. And that it was. It just seemed like it was the thing That brought The most joy, the most good, the most it’s it’s it’s hard for me to find the words just for how deeply committed to Lds way of life and and teachings that I will.

Meagan – You were. You were, as they say. all in, I guess.

Sara – Oh, yeah.

Meagan – Sometimes. That’s how I’ve I’ve heard it’s described. If I can pause you just for a minute, because I know that’s not all of your story. It really strikes me how young you were when you felt like you felt that need. But it was deeper than a need. It was like almost a duty to be open and honest about your faith as a teenager.

That’s so young. I you know the clients that I work with, and I’m sure that you’ve worked with allowing the questions and the doubts to come in brings up a lot of feelings, sometimes guilt. Sometimes shame, sometimes worry, you know, or anxiety about what others are going to think or say. If you verbalize those doubts, but from a young age like you. That’s just so striking to me. Can you think back like? Why, that was so important to you? To speak your truth at that young age, knowing that it was going to be different. or guessing that it would be.

Sara – Just remember feeling like I didn’t want to be misunderstood.

Meagan – Okay.

Sara – Like. Here we all are on Sunday, and we’re all doing the same thing and believing the same thing, and putting our hearts into the same thing. And it just felt important for me to say, guys, I’m just not 100% sure about this. I it felt like an act of like being honest.

Meagan – Oh!

Sara – About things that that I I just couldn’t. They didn’t make sense to me yet, and I didn’t really know how I was. Gonna make them make sense, and I think the the part that I that made my mom’s face cringe a little.

Meagan – Yeah.

Sara – Is is when I.

Meagan – You.

Sara – I said, I know I’m supposed to get up here and tell you all that. I know that this is true, that I know this. This isn’t this, but the truth is, I just don’t. And I like being here. I you know you tell me that this is, you know, that the feeling of the Holy Ghost telling me that it’s true I just don’t know and It didn’t even I don’t even know. I don’t remember planning that beforehand, but it felt like just an act of honesty, and I didn’t really have any other agenda other than it felt like I just need to be upfront with all of you here.

Meagan – That’s so interesting. I mean, I remember growing up and being taught how you know you gain your testimony and the bearing of it. You know you can stand up and say the things that you do know and do understand, or that you’re learning, and I mean good on you for being just so forth forthright about where you really were and you know that’s something I I believe you’ve carried with you into your

journey up until now, and and we’re going to hear a little bit more about that. But I I appreciate you sharing that little insight.

you know my one. My, I I consider myself a story collector. I’m collecting all these beautiful faith journeys. And it’s just I find myself saying the word Testament. I don’t know. It’s it’s demonstrative to me how they are all just so different. And they’re supposed to be that way. And it’s a beautiful thing, and

yours is supposed to look differently, although I related to a lot of what you were saying when you said your sisters called them your super Mormon years. That’s funny. I did a lot of the same things that you did.

Mission taught at the Mtc. And worked in the Temple. Yeah, all the all the callings interesting. How sometimes that pendulum will swing but anyway, so you went to Byu, and that had a significant left a significant impression on you on your journey. I love how you took note of you kind of became a little bit more. I guess we could say orthodox because you were around a lot of that, and it’s easier to oh, black and white thinking is what you said. How you noticed you just kind of got a little bit more steeped in that So then you, I know you’re married and you have family. You have kids. Yeah. Can you share a little bit more about how things went for you. Then.

Sara – So yeah, I I met I met and married my husband. in in Mormon land We were quite old. I was 25 when we got married, and he was 26. And so I had even started to experience some of the some of the the programming around like, yeah, that I that I was that I was getting old, and so I had. I had dated a lot of byu, and it just hadn’t worked out, and I had planned to go do my student teaching. I was becoming a teacher in Washington, DC. And just kind of leave that you know that that particular Mormon Bubble. I felt like I’d I’d outgrown it. It had done. You know what it was supposed to do for me, but then met my husband, and and we got married and stayed for about another year while he finished his degree, and then we moved to Houston and I brought that orthodoxy and that zeal for doing doing all the Mormon things to my marriage as well, and the way we were gonna raise our kids. And so because we’d gotten married. This just makes me laugh now. But because we had gotten married, quote unquote older, I did feel like I needed to start having kids pretty quickly. And so I had our daughter Rachel when I was 27. And then, 13 months later, twin boys.

Meagan – Oh, my goodness!

Sara – And so the 3, those 3 Musketeers were the first of our eventual 5 children and They were born in Houston, and that was a really interesting pine for me, because now I was a Mormon, but living in the Bible belt. In fact, some of the some of the way ways people talk about Texas is Texas. Is the bubble or the the buckle of the Bible belt? It is it? It’s and there was a lot of anti Mormon.

Meagan – Yeah, I serve my mission in Houston. So I.

Sara – Oh, my! Gosh, yes, yeah.

Meagan – I do?

Sara – You know exactly what I’m.

Meagan – Spanish, talking.

Sara – Think about.

Meagan – So, yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Sara – And anyway, it only it it it was like going from, you know the Mormon Bubble, where everybody was like me, to the place where nobody was like me. I didn’t. I? I I did have, you know, and make friends at church, but we ended up feeling not oh. alone. But one of the one of the things that the Mormon Church teaches the Lds Church is

that the followers of Christ are peculiar. And and yes, yeah. And that was a time, I think, when I kind of reveled in that peculiarity because I had to embrace it. I had to own it. I had to stand up for it because I couldn’t and didn’t want to hide it. and so I had a lot of conversations with neighbors and with coworkers. I was teaching in Houston public school district, and I they they would bring things up about the Lds religion. That was kind of outside of their experience of what a religion you know should do or practice, and I would jump in and say, That’s right, that’s and this is why this happened. And so I.

Meagan – And stick.

Sara – I was very, very enthusiastic about sharing with whoever would listen and have a lot of experience, is just continuing to try and share my religious faith with other people all the while. Really struggling, I think, in my marriage to really be loving because I was really concerned about doing it right, being.

Meagan – Okay.

Sara – Doing Mormonism right and holding us to a really high standard. A lot of the ways in which I criticized my husband were because of my perception of his shortcomings or his him not leading our family in the way that I thought he should, and I look back on that now with just a lot of generosity with for myself, because I thought, that’s what I was supposed to be doing. I thought that. Yeah, I thought that. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing.

Meagan – Oh I love that you use the word generosity. It would be so easy to look back with heavy judgment.

Sara – Yes, yeah. I Yeah, it’s hard to judge. because I know where my heart was. Yeah. And by that time in a lot of transparency. I was feeling a lot of anxiousness all the time about. Am I doing it right? Is this enough? Is this? Is this what Jesus would want is this, am I doing this correctly? And I didn’t realize until much later kind of the the hyper vigilance load that I was beginning to that. I had developed in watching my own behavior at BYU.

Meagan – Yeah.

Sara – Now I was kind of watching the behavior of my husband, and then later, my children, and kind of correcting and and shepherding, and. In in ways kind and unkind, because when you’re w, when my understanding was, what matters is the obedience right, the obedience to the commandments, or the standards, or the rules. And however you get, that is okay. Because what matters is the obedience.

Meagan – So this is painting a really you know. Great picture, really colorful. Detailed picture of where you were at And so my big question that I I can feel coming up for me, Sarah, is how in the world did you start to make room for? I mean, this was adult Sarah, 15 year old. Sarah. I mean, you did what you did that that incident, that past a testimony meeting, you had experienced a lot of things and gone through, you know, different evolutions of self. How did you start to make room for questions as they started to come up? That’s a that can be a painful process when you are as as I said earlier, when a person is very all in very orthodox, even to the point where you are kind of managing your family members again, looking at this through a lens of generosity. But yeah, I’d love to know more about that process. How you started to allow questions and make room for doubts.

Sara – Well, I don’t think I made room for them. I think they just made their room in.

Meagan – Okay, that’s fair.

Sara – Because.

Meagan – Totally fair.

Sara – I really was in a very, very black and white phase, and The certainty of knowing how everything was going to work out, and what was right and what was wrong just really? I think, as as just a human, it feels good, but also.

Meagan – Yeah, it does.

Sara – I think, within the context of of you know, you know my daughter was born, and 911 happened a couple of weeks later, and just the uncertainty of world events. And we lived in Houston during a a couple of really big hurricanes. And so it really was a lifeline to just know.

Meagan – Were you there for Katrina.

Sara – Katrina and Rita.

Meagan – Oh, wow, yeah, those were big.

Sara – Yeah, yeah, and so, and we’ve.

Meagan – Just by then. So.

Sara – Okay, yeah, we we evacuated for Rita, and that was its own. It’s. you know, interesting experience for us. Because when we evacuated, we found ourselves almost out of gas and stuck in front of a cell tower in one of the few places where you could get cell service. And I My husband, had the ability on his phone at that time to look up phone numbers, and I looked up the the name and number of the local Lds church. We called the phone number in the in the phone book at the time, and someone picked up, and within an hour we had a place to go, and we were pulling into a stranger’s home to spend the next couple of days while the hurricane blew over, and and that is something kind of uniquely Mormon. Right to to be able to go anywhere in the world and and and find help is is something that I’ve that has happened to me several times, and so but to to get back to your question of how did questions, you know, arise when I was at BYU and I was engaged to my husband. This is 1999. His brother came out to us.

Meagan – Okay.

Sara – It was after his mission. and he had come back to BYU, and was living with a couple of other people who were also gay, and at the time when he confided in us we both had what I would call just a very typical reaction. You know we love you, but this is wrong. That was when the Church was still teaching, that being gay was a choice.

Meagan – Yeah.

Sara – And it’s it didn’t have. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. I was about to say it didn’t have a huge effect on us because we didn’t live near him, or I mean, and and at the time I don’t even know that we had a a really close relationship. He and my husband were creating a closer knit relationship, and and have become much closer since then. But at the time we both. you know, we got married. We moved away, he finished up at BYU, and then he moved to New York. And so it was kind of something that we grappled with from afar. But we had and I have to remember this with a lot of generosity as well. Just a very typical kind of conservative Christian religious reaction to that, and I remember telling my husband that I didn’t want him alone with our kids.I remember telling my husband that we needed to be careful, right?

And just all of these assumptions about things that he was gonna do. And as we got closer to either, you know, seeing him at family events. there was a lot of kind of care and orchestrating that went into how we talk about him and the boyfriend. Yes, yeah, just a just a lot of orchestrating and trying to control the narrative, because I really believed that keeping it secret from my kids was the best thing that if they knew about it it might somehow have an effect on them. And like, I said, I have to have a lot of generosity with that that version of me, because I was the product of what I had been taught to believe, and it all kind of culminated in. We went out to New York to visit some other friends, and had dinner with Craig, and that’s my husband’s brother, and.

Meagan – Okay.

Sara – And I said to him I said these words. You know, Craig, we want to be close to you. We want to have a good relationship. But if you ever introduce homosexuality to my children, you will never see them again. And he looked at me with so much graciousness and he just, said Sarah. What I would never do that like. I don’t even know what I was talking about him doing, introducing homosexual. I have no idea what that even means now. But what I felt like is that I had his promise right, that that he was not gonna do anything to make my kids be gay, and that that we could kind of proceed on forming a closer relationship with him. And there was always something about it that because in the back of my mind. The church was telling me that what he was doing was a choice and yet every time we got together and talked I had seen the the grief and the yeah, the the grieving process that he went through about the Church’s teachings and I don’t even remember when the little doubt started creeping in But if I could have put it into words. It was saying, I don’t know about this. I just don’t know. This doesn’t add up to me. This doesn’t add up that he would just choose this, and torpedo his whole life and his faith. He had. He loved the Church, he had served a mission for the Church in Mexico, and loved that experience. And but what I do clearly, clearly clearly remember is by this time we were living in Mesa Arizona and I was sitting in our front room, and I was reading my Scriptures And again, just that rolling that thought over my mind of like I don’t. I just don’t know I don’t. That doesn’t add up to me.

Meagan – Hmm.

Sara – And just. It’s kind of a Testament to the black and whiteness of my of my thinking, that was like a decade later. Right? It hit. It was a long time and maybe not quite a decade, but.

Meagan – Quite a few years, anyway.

Sara – Quite a quite a few years, and then it was as if something just opened up. And I just thought. I think the church is wrong about this. I think we’re wrong. It doesn’t make sense to me that this is a choice. And at the same time I had that realization. I was gripped with like fear because it felt like a private heresy, right like something that I was allowing myself to consider, believing that was very out of step with what my church was teaching, with what the leaders were telling me. and yet I couldn’t. I couldn’t not feel that I couldn’t not see that, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t know how to begin to grapple with that, but I just started to talk with my husband about it, and we didn’t know what to make of the way. That the church was really coming down hard is, too, is too strong. It was just really making this pointed effort to it felt like ostracize a whole group of people that we I mean, we knew Craig. We knew some of his friends. We knew some other people who he had become friends with the Byu, who were also Mormon and Gay, and it just never sat right. But what it did was it gave me a little bit of bravery to start to just start noticing, and to start speaking up.

I don’t know how soon I started doing that. My my recollection is probably not immediately, because again I was very, very orthodox, very committed. But what we did start doing was going out to visit Craig, and he had a long term partner at that point. And we started cultivating a really active, connected relationship with him, where we would visit him and spend time with him and his partners. And so, all of my kids.

it just began to be very normal that they had Uncle Craig and Uncle Michael and they’re they’re.

Meagan – And in in more recent years.

Sara – No, that. Well, that was. that was when we probably starting at about 2,007 or 8, maybe.

Meagan – Okay. So your kids were still young enough.

Sara – They were. Still, they were still very yeah.

Meagan – No shame or no judgment on any of this. It’s I. I’m coming from a place of complete curiosity, because I’m sure there will be folks listening to this that maybe could relate to some of your story. And again, I just think it’s so important to offer ourselves a whole lot of grace, just poor Grace, all over your situation, and wherever you are at in your understanding, your willingness to entertain the idea that things might be different than maybe you had thought, even if it’s been many, many years. I noticed one thing that you said that you just saw this struggle, this you were. You were grappling from afar, but you said you saw him meaning your brother-in-law just struggling with his own you know his own journey, and I truly believe it’s that when we allow ourselves that proximity to others, when we really and truly put ourselves in their shoes that’s when it just it kind of becomes undeniable. You can’t. You cannot look away from what’s going on when you really try to put yourself in their shoes, and how hard that would be to go through whatever you see them struggling with and whatever they might be telling you, I mean, you didn’t specifically say that, he? He said certain things to you, but you noticed his struggle and I think that’s what breaks our hearts wide open.

Sara – Yeah.

Meagan – Is, when.

Sara – Yeah.

Meagan – Allow that.

Sara – We had one conversation in particular, where he was like openly crying with me about how much he missed going to church, but how painful it was to go and trying to be helpful, I said, Well, Craig. why don’t you find another congregation that you could go to? And he just said I, I could never I I just this is where my home is. This is where my people are, and and just how bereft he was in that moment of his home and his people was really really heart wrenching for me to watch.

Meagan – Yeah, it’s real. It’s it’s part of his heritage. It’s in his blood.

Sara – Yeah. yeah.

Meagan – So so very interesting. you didn’t really allow the questions and doubts. They just kind of crowded their way right through just kind of bulldoze their way right into your heart and your mind, and you were kind of left with you. You had no choice but to face them, and to grapple with them, and to do something with them. And I noticed that you said you felt like it was this personal heresy to actually kind of admit to yourself. Oh, my gosh! I’m having these questions. I completely relate to that. It took me a long time to really lean into my own, because I I was sure I was gonna be. I laugh about it now. But this apostle, I was going to be seen as this apostate person.

Sara – Yeah.

Meagan – And somebody who wasn’t I? Just I just. It taught me a lot about how I had viewed myself up to that point, and how much I really gripped onto that identity.

Sara – Yeah I absolutely wanted to be seen as someone who was faithful, who was righteous, who was trying to do the good work right alongside everybody. Yeah.

Meagan – The definition that had been given to me. Yeah, so that shame, that fear that it’s it’s you said you were gripped with fear. I told.

Sara – It was fear. Yeah, it was a hundred percent fear, because I didn’t. I didn’t know what to do with it. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it.

Meagan – And on.

Sara – It felt like just admitting it was something, you know, like a referendum on how faithful I was. And yet I couldn’t. I just couldn’t make it make sense any other way. And the beauty of that realization was that it kind of pointed me in the direction of kind of the plight and struggle of Lgbtq folks inside of the Lds religion, and we connected with a local organization that was doing a lot to try and build bridges between. Gay members of the church and their family members, and try to build a place that was safe and brave. I love how you talk about that. And it really put us right in the middle of a lot of relationships with a lot of local families and members in in a really really beautiful way which only which only served to increase my like.

Meagan – You can’t.

Sara – Guys.

Meagan – And Nancy.

Sara – Yeah, I don’t. I don’t think we’re do. I don’t. I think we’re wrong on this one. I just this doesn’t make sense to me.

Meagan – So. Can you remember, when did you start to say those things out loud? I mean, it starts with our own selves. First, we have to acknowledge it to our own selves first and foremost.and then maybe to those that we’re closest to. Right? yeah. And then often within our own faith communities. It’s it’s less so, especially in the beginning, I think. But can you remember what you know? How did you finally do that like? How did you get to that place where you would start to say out loud whether it’s with your own family or your husband? Or because, yeah, that takes it to a new level.

Sara – It does. And I I actually don’t think I said anything for a while. We just started doing things differently, like we would start to go out to visit Craig and his partner like we would go every year for Thanksgiving, and they lived in Atlanta, and I ha! I fielded a lot of questions. At the time I was home schooling my kids, and we had a very tight knit group of all Lds families, and we all kind of did classes and activities together. And there were a lot of questions, what are you doing? Have you thought this through? Aren’t you worried? It’s gonna normalize that for your kids. It’s going to.

And

Meagan – Yeah.

Sara – I I was very. I don’t wanna Misre represent. I was very invested in what other people thought of me very. And but I also felt like that was good and right to do, and the thing I guess that I’m proud of is that I did choose to go, and. you know, make some waves or rock the boat in that way because my parents were worried about it. There were a lot of people who started speaking up and having a lot of opinions about the amount of time that we were willing to spend with Craig, and how that was going to normalize being gay and.

Meagan – Right, yeah.

Sara – And.

Meagan – Things associated with it.

Sara – All those things right. And so I don’t know that I started saying a lot. I think we should started acting differently, spending time with not just him, but our other, you know, gay local friends and.

Meagan – Which is, which is communicating in a different way. You may not have been verbalizing it, but you were definitely communicating it with your actions, which.

Sara – Yeah.

Meagan – Which says a lot as well.

Sara – Yeah.

Meagan – So I wanna fast forward a little bit if we can, to.

Sara – Course.

Meagan – Cause you. Obviously you have created a very successful, thriving, live coaching practice and they kind of revolve around some of these themes.

Sara – Yeah, and.

Meagan – So quite a few of them, actually. And so so speaking up. You know, owning your truth, we could say, is not something you struggle with any longer. But you say that’s a fair statement.

Sara – No, you know what I don’t know that that’s that’s entirely.

Meagan – The.

Sara – There are still.

Meagan – You struggle with it less. But I thanks for the honesty. I you know what that’s that’s fair, because we’re always becoming and evolving into our next best self.

Sara – Yeah, yeah, and.

Meagan – So that means we’re coming up against something that’s not currently comfortable for us.

Sara – Right. And and I think like, if that part of my life was getting really clear on what I believed and what I wanted to stand out for, and whose side I was on. I think all of you know, even just this last 5 to 7 year period has been all about being honest, about my feelings, and how I feel about things, and and how I think a lot of the ways that I got through challenges that, I think are pretty normal, for all of us is just by being really strong armoring up, being really strong, being really dependable, getting it done myself, not relying on other people.

Meagan – Half.

Sara – And what I have more trouble being honest about now is how much I need people and how how tenderly I feel toward people that I love and my friends, and really letting myself need other people is something. That is what I’m learning to be honest about. Now.

Meagan – That’s beautiful. Thank you for sharing your heart, Sarah, with all of us you know I love. I’ve gotten to know so many wonderful life coaches, and and it’s I love seeing the humanness there, too, and I love seeing when you open up your heart like you just did. tell us a little bit more about this program that you’ve created. You created the ex-good girl podcast. And you have a coaching program where you work with clients. I don’t know if you do one on one, but you.

Sara – I do. Yup, I have one on one and group coaching, and it’s all about just finding the places where people pleasing and perfectionism it are, are making things painful for you, making things harder, making it difficult to have the kind of vulnerability and relationships the kind of open communication. The ways that women are taught, you know, inside of religion and out, to be nice and kind over anything else to serve and to give to other people and it’s about finding a better balance between the service and the time we give to others, and the time and the attention that we give ourselves.

Meagan – So speak, to how the concepts that you work with your clients. In specifically, you know, geared toward people pleasing perfectionism. How does that help them give their give their own cells permission to look at things, to see things? From the way that they’re feeling inside kind of like you started to right earlier on when you started, you’d have these little whispers come in and say, I just don’t know. That just doesn’t seem right to me regarding your brother-in-law.

Sara – We’re so used to having a voice outside of us that tells us you’re doing it right. Yes, that’s right, that’s correct. He keep going. And and if you’re in a religious organization, maybe that’s the pastor, the bishop, or the whoever leads your congregation, or or maybe it’s you know God or the Scriptures, and I was very adept at listening to that voice and doing what that voice wanted me to do. And so the first step is to reconnect to that inner knowing and wisdom that is there, that everyone has that just gets covered up with all of that programming for outside balance.

Meagan – All the external. Yeah.

Sara – Yeah. And I truly believe that if a woman can reconnect to what her body tells her is good and right and wise, it will not lead her wrong. It might not look like what she thought it was gonna look like. But it is the truest north. It takes a it takes some, some doing and some getting reacquainted with.

Meagan – Yes.

Sara – But it is. It’s unfailingly true.

Meagan – And I think it takes learning how to tolerate the discomfort that comes along with it, because it’s gonna feel really awkward at first.

Sara – That’s that’s the biggest obstacle to it. We’re we are used to the discomfort of over being over committed. We’re used to the discomfort of, you know, putting on a holiday for everybody else while we

have no fun and can’t wait for all the kids to go back to school and just let right. W. That’s the type of discomfort that we know, and we know how to get through. It is very different to feel the terror of I am going to trust myself on this. I’m not gonna validate it with anyone else. I’m not gonna pull my 5 closest friends about what they think I should do. I’m just going to to trust myself. Not that everything’s gonna go perfectly, but that I will take very good care of myself even if it doesn’t work out. You know the way I want to, whether that’s speaking up and saying something that I’ve never said before, or declining to participate in something that I’ve always done, or saying words that I’ve never said before.

Meagan – And would you say I? I don’t know what your experience has been, but the more that you honor that voice, the more you listen, and when I say listen you, you know you hear it, you acknowledge it, and then act on it I think that trust. That’s how that trust grows and.

Sara – Yes.

Meagan – That there’s this relationship there, the discomfort will. It dissolves just a little bit each time just a little bit.

Sara – It does, it is, but it’s just like exercising or or like working a new muscle out right the first couple of times. It’s really hard. You you can’t lift a lot. You’re sore. You think about not ever going back to the gym and doing that exercise again, cause it feels so painful, but then, the more you do it, it really creates a virtuous cycle of strengthening that ability.

Meagan – Yeah, yeah, for sure. Definitely. well, I know I’ve I’ve had you for quite a bit of time. Here. I just maybe a couple more questions. One. Just how has your faith journey been different than what you might have expected? You know. Think about younger Sarah.

Sara – Oh, it is! It’s completely different. I my own daughter came out when when she was 15 and it’s one of the great joys of my life that she just sat down at the kitchen table with me and said. Mom, I wanna tell you about my crush. And I said, what’s his name? And she said, her name is.

Meagan – S.

Sara – And then she just kind of bubbled on about her. And and I I knew in that moment that all of those Thanksgiving trips where we had just made it safe and easy to talk about. We’re paying off now inside.

Meagan – Yeah.

Sara – Inside. I was full on freaking out like I write I was

Meagan – Which is normal and natural.

Sara – Yes, which which is Norm. But in my body I felt like the like one of those. My grandma had one of these on her table, and it’s what I saw in my mind like one of those hour glasses with sand, and it’s like it. It flipped over, and the sand was beginning to go through, and what I understood that to mean was your time now in this church is limited because I knew by then I had been speaking up and out a lot. I had already been removed from a calling, a lesson that I gave about how Jesus probably loved gay people, too. And.

Meagan – Tell me, Sarah, just now, when you said you really you felt that in your body that your time in this church is limited. How did that feel to you.

Sara – Terrifying, terrifying. And for a long time I was like, no, no, no, it’s gonna be fine. It’s gonna be fine. We’re just gonna we’re gonna I I actively fought against that, or tried to to make it not true.

Meagan – This is something that is so important to me. you described this, this community that you had growing up in California and that outside of your own family. That’s really who your family was at that time right and different experiences you’ve shared throughout your life. You know the the family who took you in during Hurricane? Was Katrina, or was Rita just all these experiences? I mean it. And and then I could hear in your voice just now you were terrified. This isn’t something that folks step into lightly. This is not something that they decide in a split second. It. There’s so much heartwork and soul work and thought work that goes into it. And it’s just I just. I’ve said this before in previous chats that I’ve had. I don’t want to see you or me, or anybody else as us or them. It’s just we’re all on our journeys. Can we please just honor that in one another, and see each other’s light and honor that your insight just that it’s it’s special, it’s yours. It’s divine in origin, just like mine is. And just just see one another. The light in me sees the light in you kind of thing.

Sara – Yeah.

Meagan – I know we’re very short on time. Can you share with me my one last question I ask all my guests. What does it mean to you to live beyond the shadow of doubt?

Sara – It means that I have like, I said, that true compass inside of me.and that even when things don’t work out the way I ideally would want them. What I can always fall back on is trusting that I’m doing my best, and that I’m gonna take really good care of myself, no matter what happens.

Meagan – I love that internal compass so so beautiful. Can you give me one word answers to these quick questions to get to know you? What is your favorite book?

Sara – Oh, I just read is I. I have so many books, but I just read the horse, the Fox, the boy.

Meagan – I know, Charles. I know.

Sara – Yeah, yeah, just read that to my.

Meagan – Like introvert, or an extrovert.

Sara – I am an extroverted introvert.

Meagan – Okay? Who’s your favorite artist?

Sara – Like painting musical artist, Taylor, swift.

Meagan – Okay, there, you go.

Sara – Then

Meagan – You a night owl or morning lark.

Sara – Oh, I try to be both, and it doesn’t work.

Meagan – Do you do still, or carbonated water? Or do you do diet soda.

Sara – Oh, diet, Coke! But I’m trying to quit.

Meagan – Do you have a celebrity? Crush.

Sara – Trevor, Noah.

Meagan – Oh, fine!

Sara – And I think he’s so intelligent. Yes.

Meagan – And then the furthest place you’ve traveled.

Sara – Bolivia is pretty far.

Meagan – There is. Yeah, thank you.Thank you so much. I will leave your email in the show notes if folks want to reach out to you. Thank you, Sarah.

Sara – Thank you. Bye, bye.