Episode 175: Using Agency to See Others is a Sacred Privilege with Mindy Peterman

Hey, everybody, welcome. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Whenever you might be tuning into this episode of Living Beyond the Shadow of Doubt podcast.

I’m so thrilled to welcome my friend Mindy Peterman, to be on the show with me today. Welcome Mindy.

Thank you. I’m so excited to be here.

I’m so excited that you are here. And, Mindy, you have a unique role, a unique space that you occupy in the Joa Collective and the Mose network, which is the month-long focus of all of these episodes.

You’re not only an author and a member of the network, but you’re also part of the team. And I’m gonna let you share more about that later. Yes, I want your perspective and the inside, because you’ve been with the Joa—you’ve been with Kara since the beginning. Yeah. So you have very unique perspectives.

So with that, Mindy, tell us all about you. Tell us your story, your background, your family, upbringing, faith, your educational pursuits, and whatnot—all the things.

Okay. So I’ll start, I guess, with childhood. I was raised in a home with two parents who got married very young—18 and 20 years old. They came from different religious and family backgrounds, and they both smoked. My dad was an alcoholic, and there was just a lot of their own traumas in their lives. When they were in their mid-twenties, my mom’s parents joined the LDS church, and then my mom and several of her sisters followed suit. My parents joined, still smoking, my dad still drinking.

My dad actually quit drinking when I was about 6 or 7, and never went back to it. He has been what I call a recovered alcoholic for the last 40-something years. He still has fought those demons, but he fights them and wins, which is amazing.

I come from a family that’s kind of broken up. My older brother and sister are 8 and 6 years older than me, my younger sister is 2 years younger, and my next brother is 6 years younger. So my mom kind of had three families.

So I serve as both a middle and an oldest child—various roles.

You wear a lot of hats?

I do, yeah. My parents… I did grow up going to church in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and both my parents ended up quitting smoking in 1985. We lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and that year my parents took us five kids to the temple with them.

For those who don’t know, in LDS faith, temples are where ordinances and promises are made between God, the individual, and the family. One of those ordinances is called the sealing of the family, which is a spiritual binding of families to continue on as families into the eternities in that family unit.

It’s a promise of eternity. I believe that families still get to see and know each other in heaven regardless of whether that happens or not—that’s my personal belief. But there’s a purpose to that promise.

It’s more between the individual and God.

Yes—relationship with the divine, and how they’re trying to cultivate that.

Yep. That happened right before I turned 10 years old, and then we moved to Mesa, Arizona, August of 1985. That’s where I grew up. We called it Little Utah, because there were a lot of members of the church there. We used to joke that church buildings were almost as common as Circle K’s—like every mile and a half.

I grew up just believing. I’m not a questioner by nature as far as questioning what I’ve been told. I have more of a personality of “that sounds right, I’m going to ask God, and see if that feels right between me and Him.” I guess that is a little questioning, but it’s more “trust, but verify.”

As a little girl, I was very observant. I lived my life in a way that if I saw something cause pain for someone, I would make the decision not to do that because I didn’t want to hurt people. I was always very compassionate. I loved reading, being outdoors, and swimming—growing up in Mesa, we had a pool at every house. We moved a lot, and I think that actually helped me develop my ability to connect with people easily.

I’m learning so much about the Mindy I know today from hearing all of this from your youth.

Yeah.

So, that’s a great foundation of where you’ve been. Fast forward—tell us about where you’re at now.

I always wanted to serve an LDS mission, but about 9 months before I would have gone, I had the opposite experience of almost every girl I knew—I was told I wasn’t supposed to serve. I was devastated, because that had been my life’s purpose. I met another guy soon after who insisted I was supposed to marry him, and because I felt vulnerable, I got engaged. Eventually, that ended, and it was the first life-changing experience that taught me to really trust God’s plan, not just my own.

That experience set the tone for my marriage and life—trusting the next steps, moving with God. Now, I’m the editor for Joa. I love it. Every book I edit shifts my perspective.

In 2018, I felt the need to go back to school. I’d left BYU without finishing my degree, but they never expire credits, so I started again in 2019. I majored in editing and publishing—BYU had just turned that into a full major in 2018, two months before I got the impression I should be an editor.

I graduated in April 2023. My cousin Kira started a publishing house in 2020 and needed editors, so I joined her. Throughout school I edited here and there, and near the end she asked me to take on more. I hit the ground running after graduation.

Our energies align well, and my energy with authors aligns well. Editing is about more than technical skill—it’s about the people skill of connecting. Moving a lot as a kid taught me that.

At the recent Joa Collective Conference, that was very evident—everybody knows you. And now, you’re moving into the author space yourself.

Yes! The book landed on my heart in May of last year, and I’ve been writing it since. I’ll be finishing at Writer’s Island with the Mosaic Masters. My writing ebbs and flows with my editing workload, but I’ll complete it there.

Who’s going to edit your book?

I don’t know. People have asked me that so many times. Hopefully one of the other editors will be the right fit. I trust it will work out.

We also talked about your faith journey—how you’ve learned to own your beliefs while honoring others’. You shared how your mom modeled having a personal relationship with God, and how that shaped your confidence. Your engagement experience gave you the courage to trust your own answers. You honor others’ agency and maintain relationships based on personal connection, not religious alignment.

You believe people struggle with this because of fear—fear that differences mean loss, harm, or eternal separation. You choose to see the divine light in others and let them see yours.

For anyone feeling called to write, you encourage them to just start—stream of consciousness, give their words space, then revisit to find what to develop. Don’t worry about grammar; that’s what editors are for. Remember that those who need your message will receive it.

When asked what living beyond the shadow of doubt means to you, you said it’s stepping into the light—seeing the light in yourself and others, and questioning beliefs only if they’re keeping you from that light.

We wrapped with some fun quick-fire questions:

• Favorite fiction book: The Happy Life of Isidora Bentley by Courtney Walsh.

• Favorite nonfiction: all the ones she’s edited.

• Introvert or extrovert: wildly extroverted.

• Favorite artist: her grandmother and aunt.

• Night owl or morning lark: neither—needs 8 hours of sleep.

• Celebrity crush: Chris Hemsworth (“so pretty, but so young”).

• Favorite drink: still water.

• Favorite place traveled: Hawaii (soon to be BVI).

You can find Mindy on Instagram at @the_connection.community and @luminous_book.editor. She’s building her new business and will be launching a podcast soon.

Thank you, Mindy—this has been wonderful.