When faced with a life that no longer fits, the journey to reclaim your identity could be both terrifying and transformative. For people raised in high-demand religious communities, the path to living life on your own terms often requires extraordinary courage. The decision to leave behind not just a faith, but an entire identity, social structure, and promised eternity is one that fundamentally alters the trajectory of a person’s life.
Imagine spending over four decades adhering to strict religious guidelines – wearing specific undergarments even in scorching heat, tithing 10% of every dollar earned since childhood, limiting physical affection before marriage, and structuring your entire existence around rules designed not for this life but for eternity. Then imagine reaching a breaking point where, despite following every rule, you find yourself profoundly empty.
“I had done everything the way that I was supposed to,” explains Susie Bell, describing her experience within Mormonism. “We were taught that if we save ourselves for marriage and we’re only sexually with one person, and that is not until the day we get married in the Mormon Temple, and we follow all of the rules that our lives will be a certain way. But our lives are not intended to serve this life. It’s intended to serve the next.”
This tension between living for a promised afterlife versus finding fulfillment in the present moment creates an impossible choice for many people: continue suffering in this life to secure salvation, or risk eternal consequences to find happiness now. When the pain of staying exceeds the fear of leaving, transformational change becomes possible.
Finding Yourself Outside The Only World You’ve Known
For those raised in high-control religious environments, identity can become completely intertwined with religious teachings. When Susie began feeling unfulfilled despite following all prescribed rules for happiness, she faced a crisis that many experience but few discuss openly.
“After six children, I found myself very disappointed and lonely. After all of those years and after all of those children and having been a church leader for many years and doing everything the way that I was taught and told to do, I was dismayed and I just felt empty,” Susie reveals.
This emptiness led her to reconnect with a former passion—fitness and bodybuilding—as a way to reclaim some sense of personal identity. However, this innocent attempt at self-fulfillment created unexpected ripples throughout her religious community.
“Back then, there was a lot of shaming and ridicule as a mother of six children bearing it all on stage,” she explains about her figure competitions. “It was considered highly inappropriate… My kids were embarrassed. My parents were humiliated. My husband was just absolutely disappointed. I got called in the bishop’s office. It was a big deal.”
When Amy Stone asks about the importance of Mormonism in Susie’s daily life, the answer illustrates just how all-encompassing high-demand religions can be: “I ate, breathed, slept Mormonism. It was my whole life. 10% of everything I made, even my dollar an hour babysitting money growing up. 10% of it was tithing.”
This level of commitment makes the prospect of leaving nearly unthinkable. Yet sometimes the very intensity of religious expectations creates the breaking point that ultimately leads to freedom.
When Religious Expectations Collide With Personal Fulfillment
The collision between personal happiness and religious expectations often reaches its breaking point in intimate relationships. For Susie, marriage within her faith tradition was meant to be eternal yet left her profoundly lonely in the present moment.
“I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be in love. I was so in love with my husband. I was crazy head over heels in love with him. And it just was never reciprocated,” she shares candidly. Despite attempts to save her marriage, including a disappointing trip to Hawaii that became a turning point, she eventually reached a moment of clarity while sitting alone on the beach.
“I thought to myself, you cannot make him love you. You cannot force another human being to feel about you the way you feel about them. It’s time to focus on your own happiness,” Susie recalls. “Like a lot of mothers, I thought, what do I like? Where is my heart calling me?”
This moment of self-reflection led her back to fitness, initially as a way to reconnect with herself rather than as a path out of her faith. “I had no intention of doing the figure competitions. It was just, I am losing my mind here and I need to reconnect with this body and I finally have it back after having six kids. It’s time for me.”
The simple act of putting herself first—something discouraged in many religious communities—began a transformation that would eventually lead to leaving both her marriage and her faith. What makes this particularly challenging is that high-control religious environments often interpret any form of self-prioritization as selfishness, creating intense guilt for those seeking personal fulfillment.
“Am I being selfish?” Susie questioned herself, having been told her whole life that prioritizing her own needs was wrong. “I need to decide who I am. If I’m a selfish person, I want to change that. But it’s not going to be in this marriage.”
Breaking Free Comes With Profound Consequences
The decision to leave a high-demand religion rarely comes without significant consequences. For Susie, these included the loss of community support, public excommunication, family disruption, and financial challenges.
“I was all by myself,” she explains when Amy asks about support during her transition. “I also got excommunicated publicly by the church. At that time, they made sure that everyone knew that I was done, gone. And that was very scary because now that covenant was stripped from me.”
The excommunication process itself became a traumatic experience: “They called me in and they made sure that I was disciplined, and they made sure it was very public, and they made sure I was very embarrassed and humiliated.”
Beyond spiritual consequences, practical challenges mounted as well. When Susie filed for divorce, her husband “made my life a living hell because he did not want me to leave. Assets were hidden. He made sure that, literally, I was left with pretty much nothing. He wanted to make sure it hurt so bad that I would stay.”
Despite these obstacles, Susie found strength to continue her journey toward authenticity. She enrolled in graduate school to become a nurse practitioner, ensuring she could support herself independently. This practical step toward self-sufficiency represents an often-overlooked aspect of breaking free from religious constraints—the need to establish financial and practical independence.
The consequences extended to her relationship with her children as well. “My children were very embarrassed by me at the time,” she admits. Yet she made the difficult decision to seek 50/50 custody rather than staying in an unhealthy marriage. “If I ever have a relationship with these children, it will not be by staying in this marriage. It will be by getting out of it and allowing my children to see who I am for themselves.”
Rebuilding Identity Outside The Faith
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of leaving a high-control religion is learning to navigate a world you’ve been taught to fear. As Susie explains, “In the church, we’re told if you go out in the world, it’s a scary place. And it was damn scary. It was damn scary. I didn’t know how to navigate it at all.”
This transition from a sheltered religious environment to independence requires developing an entirely new set of skills and perspectives. For those raised in high-demand religions, even basic social interactions outside the faith community can feel overwhelming and confusing.
The process of rebuilding identity involves questioning deeply held beliefs, developing personal values independent of religious teachings, and learning to trust one’s own judgment—often for the first time. It means discovering who you are when you’re no longer defined by religious roles and expectations.
Susie’s journey through fitness competitions, education, and eventually building a career helping others represents this process of identity reconstruction. Today, she embraces her life’s new chapter with enthusiasm: “Life has become a great adventure through this process.”
Perhaps most significantly, her experience inspired her to share her story through an upcoming book titled “A Piece of Me: Finding My Voice After Mormonism, Marriage, Medicine and Men.” Her willingness to speak openly about her journey serves an important purpose: “For me, having experienced those very scary and traumatizing things, I wanted to write about it, every aspect of it, so that women coming out of high demand religion or just a marriage or just trying to navigate this crazy world would know that they weren’t alone.”
This desire to support others facing similar challenges points to a common theme among those who successfully transition out of high-control religions—the importance of finding community and connection with others who understand.
Finding Freedom On Your Own Terms
Breaking free from religious expectations doesn’t necessarily mean rejecting spirituality entirely. Rather, it often means reclaiming the right to determine your own beliefs and values rather than accepting those imposed by authority figures.
For many like Susie, the journey involves learning to trust yourself—your feelings, your experiences, and your inherent worth—often for the first time. It means recognizing that you don’t need to earn your value through religious compliance or sacrifice your present happiness for promised future rewards.
The path toward living life on your own terms rarely follows a straight line. It involves setbacks, moments of doubt, and the challenging work of reconstructing your understanding of yourself and the world. Yet those who undertake this journey often discover a sense of authenticity and agency that transforms their lives.
As Amy Stone observes during the interview, many people operate under “this myth that at any given point we’re supposed to know what we’re doing.” This expectation creates shame when we inevitably face uncertainty. The reality, as both Amy and Susie acknowledge, is that no one truly knows what they’re doing when navigating significant life transitions. Each step requires courage to move forward without guarantees.
Breaking free from religious expectations ultimately means embracing this uncertainty and reclaiming your right to write your own story—even if that story diverges dramatically from the one you were raised to believe was your only option.
This article was inspired by a thought-provoking interview with Susie Bell and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast. To hear more compelling conversations like this one and receive special offers from our guests directly to your inbox, join our email community today.
Interview Transcript Susie Bell with Amy Stone | The Art of Imperfect Adulting | May 31, 2025
Amy Stone [00:00:04]:
Susie Bell. Welcome to the art of imperfect adulting. Thank you.
Susie Bell [00:00:08]:
I’m so excited to be here today.
Amy Stone [00:00:10]:
I’m happy you’re here. Are you ready for a fun chat?
Susie Bell [00:00:12]:
I am ready for a fun chat. Let’s do it.
Amy Stone [00:00:15]:
Let’s do it. So I start all my interviews by asking people where they are in the world. And so tell us. Tell us where you are. Thank you.
Susie Bell [00:00:24]:
Currently, I’m on the West Coast. I’m in Washington State. State. And I’ve been here for about five years, but lived in Vegas for 30 years. I’m glad to have a change.
Amy Stone [00:00:35]:
Very nice. Washington State. Love it. Pacific Northwest. I’m enamored. I live about as far away as I can get from you, but I’m enamored with the concept and the weather and everything about the Pacific Northwest. So super fun. All right, so now, before we dive in to the topic of the day, I’d love to give people a chance to share a little bit about their personal background. So not talking about your family, not talking about your job, share with us if you want to, just as a way of making a connection. Something about a hobby you have or a personal project, a passion project is something you want to share with us today about you.
Susie Bell [00:01:10]:
Thank you. I would say my personal hobby throughout my whole life has been weight training and bodybuilding. And that was something that I got started in very young, at a young age, and then reconnected with that after my children were born. And it’s something I do today, although not competitively anymore. It’s something I still enjoy today.
Amy Stone [00:01:31]:
So when you talk about weightlifting, does that mean in your background you have powerlifting or like, bikini. Bikini lifting.
Susie Bell [00:01:40]:
It was actually back then it was called figure Competition.
Amy Stone [00:01:43]:
Figure. That’s. Those are the words. That. That was the word. I didn’t find them in my mind, but if I had had a better brain function, I would have said figure. So figure.
Susie Bell [00:01:51]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:01:52]:
And then now. Now you’re doing. Are you still doing figure or in competition? You said go to the competitions.
Susie Bell [00:01:58]:
I don’t compete anymore, but I still weight train. And I’ve gotten more into, like, the. The yoga and the Pilates, kind of. I’m a little bit of a Yogini now, but I just really love connecting with my physical body. I think it’s so important for our entire wellness.
Amy Stone [00:02:15]:
100.
Susie Bell [00:02:16]:
Yeah, I totally agree.
Amy Stone [00:02:18]:
I’m trying to embrace my inner. My inner love for weights, but truthfully, that is the part of my fitness routine that I have always relied on trainers and coaches and things so the joke used to be that I would only do. I mean, I did, you know, I was running, so I was doing a couple hundred sit ups a day, but only when people were like, hey, Aim, sit down and do your sit ups. Right? So. But everybody says. Everybody says lifting heavy is good for you, and I believe them. So I’m trying to make it a priority and employing all of my mindset tools to channel my love for this process. So now, enough about me. Let’s talk about you to get to the topic of the day that you proposed, which I love this. I’m very excited for this conversation, I have to admit it. Leaving Mormonism. Did I say that correctly? Mormonism. Okay. All right. And you ready to talk about that today?
Susie Bell [00:03:12]:
I am, I am.
Amy Stone [00:03:13]:
All right, let’s do it. So I did not actually know the word Mormonism. I would have said something like leaving the Mormon faith or something, but so now I have a new word. I’m very excited about that. How old were you? When or how long ago? If you don’t want to say your age, but how. How old were you or how long ago was it when this change happened in your life?
Susie Bell [00:03:34]:
It was about 12 years ago when I was about 43 and I was born and raised into the church. So it was all I knew. And I was at 43.
Amy Stone [00:03:43]:
That was the. That was going to be my next question. So your family of origin is all rooted in the Mormon faith. And so I’m gonna jump into the deep end here because I don’t know the answer to this question, but what was going on that brought you to this point where you were ready to walk away from basically anything that all that you had ever known, I had been.
Susie Bell [00:04:07]:
I had done everything the way that I was supposed to. So in Mormonism, we were taught that if we save ourselves for marriage and we’re only sexually with one person, and that is not until the day we get married in the Mormon Temple. And we follow all of the rules that our lives will be a certain way, but our lives are not intended to serve this life. It’s intended to serve the next. And so nothing about it was living or serving the life that we’re currently in. And I found my marriage very empty. After six children, I found myself very disappointed and lonely. After all of those years and after all of those children and having been a church leader for many years and doing everything the way that I was taught and told to do, I was dismayed and I just felt empty. And I began. That’s when I began the bodybuilding, to react with myself. And that did not go over well in the Mormon Church. Things are different today. Ten, 12 years later, it’s more acceptable. But back, back then, there was a lot of shaming and ridicule as a mother of six children bearing it all on stage. And there were a lot of consequences with that. And I endured a lot with the Mormon Church. And that was the time that I separated myself.
Amy Stone [00:05:30]:
So, you know, I didn’t even think about that when you said you were doing figure competitions. Because Mormonism is not my background. And I live in Miami, Florida, where a bikini is basically a church appropriate outfit. Exactly. Because it’s so hot and because. I mean, just because that’s the way it is in Miami. But. So, yeah, that does not match even my outsider view of what would be the outfit to wear to the. To after church brunch.
Susie Bell [00:05:59]:
Right, right. And it was. It was considered highly inappropriate. And at that time, I was posting the pictures on my social media and, you know, pictures of my. Excuse me. The competitions and the modeling pictures in bikinis. And it was my. My kids were embarrassed. My parents were humiliated. My husband was just absolutely disappointed. I got called in the bishop’s office. It was. It was a big deal. It was a really big deal.
Amy Stone [00:06:28]:
All right, so let’s walk that cat back a little bit because there’s a lot in there. First of all, you know, six kids, which is. That’s a large family. So you were busy.
Susie Bell [00:06:38]:
You.
Amy Stone [00:06:38]:
Very, very busy. How old? So when you start. When you start researching, going into the gym and you’re going to start this, how old is your youngest kid?
Susie Bell [00:06:47]:
Roughly 15 months.
Amy Stone [00:06:50]:
15 months. So, wow, okay. How old is the oldest? What’s the spread between the six kids?
Susie Bell [00:06:58]:
Let’s see. He would have been probably 11 or 12. The oldest would have been 11 or 12.
Amy Stone [00:07:03]:
All right, so you’re right in the thick of running this house and the family, but you’re feeling unfulfilled, Empty.
Susie Bell [00:07:11]:
Yeah, very unfulfilled.
Amy Stone [00:07:13]:
How was that showing up in your daily life? Like how. Tell me a little bit more about. Describe the feeling of empty and how it was showing up in your life when you were looking to find something else that you found through fitness.
Susie Bell [00:07:24]:
You know, at the time that my marriage was really dissolving, it had not been good for probably 10 years. But in Mormonism, you’re married, you stay married for life, you’re married for eternity. And so in my mind, there was never any walking away from it. That was not an option. And more than anything, I Wanted to be loved. I wanted to be in love. I was so in love with my husband. I was crazy head over heels in love with him. And it just was never reciprocated. And after the sixth baby was born, and we had gone through the death of a baby about five years before that, but at that time, when the baby was about 15 months old, I told him, I want to go on a getaway trip. I never got my honeymoon with you. I thought if we could just get away, we could reconnect and things would be better. And so he planned a trip to Hawaii, which I was so excited about. I’d never been on an overnight with him, never been on a trip. And he planned it with his high school buddies and their wives. And I was disappointed, but I thought to myself, well, as long as we have our own room, it’ll be fine. We can reconnect. We can have a couple time with them, It’ll be okay. But I’m going to get bikinis for him or swimsuits. And not bikinis at that time, but swimsuits, lingerie. I’m going to do everything I can to, like, make him fall in love with me again and reconnect. And I think that the big part of our disconnection had happened after the baby died. And after a depression that I had gone through that he really felt like I. Later on he told me that he felt like my depression was attention getting. And so he had a lot of anger at me toward the depression for the depression I’d gone through. So I was just trying to win him back, win him back, reel him in. We got to Hawaii and the room was a One bed, one bath with his friend and his wife.
Amy Stone [00:09:18]:
Oh, my goodness. Okay.
Susie Bell [00:09:19]:
Yeah, I was. I was. I was so angry and so disappointed and so, so frustrated. And that was my final straw. I thought it was right when that book or that movie came out. He’s just not that into you.
Amy Stone [00:09:33]:
I do remember that.
Susie Bell [00:09:34]:
Yeah. And I went out in the beach and I sat there alone with my feet in the sand, and I thought to myself, you cannot make him love you. You cannot force another human being to feel about you the way you feel about them. It is time to focus on your own happiness. It’s time to let it go. And it’s time to do for you what you need, what your heart is calling. And like a lot of mothers, I thought, what? What do I like? Yeah, where is my heart calling me? And I thought back to the happiest time in my life. And it was in college and high school when I did the aerobics and I was training and eating right and focused on that and I thought, that’s what I’m going to do. That’s something I can do. I’m going to get up every morning at 5am before I’ve got to have the kids to seminary at 6 and I’m going to, I’m going to work out every day and I’m going to do it. For me, I had no intention of doing the figure competitions. It was just, I am losing my mind here and I need to reconnect with this body and I finally have it back after having six kids. It’s time for me and that’s what I did.
Amy Stone [00:10:43]:
So there’s a lot in there. First, I have like a slightly unrelated, well, not unrelated, but a stage setting question which is, so this coincides, this decision coincides with your relationship was dissolving and you’re reassessing forever and eternity and what you think of your marital covenants and. But is there a phase of this relationship in the beginning where you guys were heading over heels in love, where this was like a really passionate relationship?
Susie Bell [00:11:11]:
That. That’s a really good question. Because the word passionate, I would say was missing. But I thought it was missing because we weren’t allowed to touch each other. We weren’t allowed to lay hor, we weren’t allowed to engage in anything sexual. And so when I met him at 15 and then we ended up getting married at 21, I’d known him for five years. And I knew like the kissing, it felt passionate. And that was about as far as we could go. So I knew he was excited to have sex. He knew I was excited to have sex. It would have been our first sexual experience together. I know it was for me. I’m assuming it was for him too. You never know. But I thought that the passionate part of it was missing simply because we weren’t allowed to until marriage. And so that’s a question that people ask me a lot, like, how could you not know? How did you not know? But I thought he would kind of push me away when I went to grab his hand because we just didn’t want to get into it too much. He would occasionally hold my hand, he would occasionally touch me, but he wasn’t a warm person. And I discovered, discovered that when the intimacy started in our marriage, that outside of sexual contact there really wasn’t anything. And that was disheartening for me. And I didn’t know that until I got married. So early on. Early, early on, I knew, and I craved it. I just craved it and begged for it, but I was pushed away when I would attempt to be intimate or kiss him in public. Oh, my God. Do not kiss me in public.
Amy Stone [00:12:43]:
Yeah.
Susie Bell [00:12:44]:
Grab my hand.
Amy Stone [00:12:45]:
So. Yeah. So I think it’s an interesting thing because outside of the religious courtship situation that you guys are going through, there definitely is a thing in any type of starting relationship where we show we want. We see what we want to see, right?
Susie Bell [00:13:01]:
Absolutely.
Amy Stone [00:13:01]:
We see what we want to see, because that’s what we want. And we show each other what we think they want. And it can get confusing. It can get really confusing. And so it’s one of the. It’s one of the most painful things people can say to somebody who ends up in a situation that they don’t want. Right. Which is like, oh, well, you signed up for this, or how could you not notice? Or whatever. It’s like, I cannot not notice. I just didn’t like that. Boat has sailed. Thanks so much.
Susie Bell [00:13:27]:
You don’t have experience, and I was 21.
Amy Stone [00:13:31]:
Yeah. And you’re in a situation. Correct me if I’m wrong, because this is not my expertise, but you said you were following the things that people told you to do. So you had a little bit of a checklist that the elders in your community, the people that you look up to for how to build a successful adult life are like, these are the steps.
Susie Bell [00:13:47]:
Right?
Amy Stone [00:13:47]:
These are the steps. Go to college. Marry this guy. How did you guys meet?
Susie Bell [00:13:51]:
We met at a church dance when we were 15, and my sister had been talking about him for months. We weren’t allowed to go to church dances until we were 14, and so he was about six months older than me, and she just thought he was the cutest kid, and she’d come home talking about him. And then when I went to the church dance and met him, I was just. Just. I was mind blown. He was. He was. He was just. I love to smile. He was so happy. He was so cute. And I fell in love with him right away. I just loved him.
Amy Stone [00:14:24]:
Okay, but it was five years before you got married. So you’ve got six kids. Seven pregnancies and six kids. Is that. Or is it six pregnancies and five.
Susie Bell [00:14:33]:
Kids and five living children? Just five, five weeks.
Amy Stone [00:14:38]:
I don’t want to. Yeah. Yeah. That’s sad. That’s.
Susie Bell [00:14:41]:
Thank you.
Amy Stone [00:14:42]:
Sorry about that. The. So what if at this time, as you’re doing this. What. How would you rank the Mormon faith in terms of importance? In the 24 hours of your life, because this is your, this is that your whole family is Mormon. Did you go to a Mormon college and do everything? So, and you were in Las Vegas, but you’re primarily in a Mormon society. Like it’s like.
Susie Bell [00:15:08]:
So I grew up in Vancouver, Washington. I didn’t move to Vegas until we got married.
Amy Stone [00:15:13]:
Oh, okay.
Susie Bell [00:15:14]:
Went to byu. I, I ate, breathed, slept. Mormonism. It was my whole life. 10% of everything I made, even my dollar an hour babysitting money growing up. 10% of it was tithing. So I always paid tithing. My husband went on a mission for the Mormon church again. We waited till we got married or to have sex and we got married in the Mormon temple. And you have to meet stringent requirements and interviews in order to get married in the Mormon Temple. And I even wore this sacred Mormon underwear under my clothes every day of my, my adult life, which was not comfortable. And they’re changing it now, but it literally went down to kind of where my scrubs are going right now and down to my knees. And I had to wear that in Las Vegas. 115 degree weather through six pregnancies and never batted an eye at it because I didn’t like it. But I knew it was what I was supposed to do and what I was commanded to do and what I promised to do as they reminded me of the sacred covenants that I made in the temple. So hardcore Mormonism was my whole life and it was his whole life too. And that’s what our relationship was based on, was that faith.
Amy Stone [00:16:30]:
So the reason I wanted to set that up is because I want to talk to you about leaving the faith because I. And what it really took to step away from this. I did not grow up in Mormonism, but I grew up in a family that had faith. And I stepped away in my 20s. But for me, really it was. I just kind of stopped going. I had moved away from home, I had moved away from that sort of weekly culture. And so it was like I didn’t have to announce it or make a big thing. And also important I go back whenever I want. Like if there’s, you know, a wedding or if, you know, I can go for the holidays. Like, I think so anyway, I think that you’re leaving story is probably very different from mine and I’d love for you to talk a little bit about what was involved in making that decision. And then actually, and then actually not being a part of it because it was so much of your life.
Susie Bell [00:17:24]:
You know, I don’t think that when I decided to focus on myself that I intended to leave Mormonism. I don’t think I even intended to leave my marriage. I just wanted to find myself.
Amy Stone [00:17:38]:
Sure.
Susie Bell [00:17:39]:
And I none of those things. The Mormon faith was so strong that the idea of just walking away from it like I still believed it. I believed it with every they call fiber of my being. And I felt a lot of guilt and shame every time I would start to think, is this the only true church on the earth? Because that’s what we were taught. And if I don’t do these things and if the brethren think I’m so bad, am I? And I had to start asking myself that this might be going on. This is information in there that, that does explain why I left though. When I. When I did find out that and realized that my marriage was not giving me any satisfaction, I knew I was very vulnerable, especially as I started to enter very sexual aspect of, you know, the bodybuilding and figure. And there’s a very sexual component there. And there was a lot of attention at the gym. And of course that was a fear of mine that I’ve only been with this one person. I’ve done everything the way I’m supposed to. I don’t want to be tempted. I don’t want to do the things I’m not supposed to do. And it was coming at me from every angle. And I never looked as good in my life. I’d never had that kind of male attention because I didn’t look like a little Mormon girl anymore.
Amy Stone [00:18:57]:
Yeah.
Susie Bell [00:18:58]:
And so that was very hard for me because I thought in this environment I’m very vulnerable. So I’m going to be very careful and I’m going to train with someone that either a woman or someone who I’m completely not attracted to whatsoever and it will never happen. And that was something I learned too, because I ended up training with a guy that was actually a little bit shorter than me. He was about as wide as he was tall. I wasn’t attracted to any aspect of him, but he was the nicest guy to me. Like, he would say things to me like, susie, I believe in you. No one in my life had ever said that to me. He said, I know you can become a national competitor. I know you, you can, you can. After six kids, yes, you’re one of my best athletes. And he was very genuine. And after three years, I ended up having an affair with him. And I felt like a piece of garbage. I felt awful. I felt horrible because it was not what I Ever sought out or intended had. I wanted to have an affair. It was all around me. You know, at that time, I didn’t want to have an affair. I wanted to maintain my marriage as, as empty as it was because I still had hope. But I needed to save my mind and my, my, My sanity. And then I found myself in this friendship, slash now sexual relationship with a guy I never. I prepared to never be with. And I would fight it and I would tell him, I can’t do this. This is wrong. And I finally admitted it to my husband after it had been going on a few months. I felt so much guilt and shame. I felt like I was going to hell. Told my husband, told the brethren. And then the shaming got even worse. Obviously with good reason. But that’s how the cookie really started to crumble.
Amy Stone [00:21:00]:
Oh, so here’s a question about the gym.
Susie Bell [00:21:05]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:21:05]:
Before we dig into the other stuff. So when you find this gym and you are engaging in a fitness regime, a fitness plan, are there other people from your faith community in the gym or are you setting up sort of like a sideline? It’s like a little bit of self exploration. Different part of Susie is allowed to show up.
Susie Bell [00:21:26]:
Totally different part. Totally.
Amy Stone [00:21:29]:
That’s interesting because. That’s interesting because maybe. Did you do that on purpose or was it, you think, subconscious that you found someplace where you didn’t know anybody?
Susie Bell [00:21:38]:
I think it was subconscious. I think it felt good to. It’s, it’s, it felt very strange for the first time in my life to be embraced by and to embrace by a different community because it was the first time in my life I had done so. And also to be good at something outside of homemaking and childbearing and, and all of the religious things I’d done. I mean, I was doing something that what we were called the world did, and I was good at it. And it, it felt like, wow, this is, this is a whole different world out here. So.
Amy Stone [00:22:15]:
And it sounds like the way you tell the story and I’ll, I’ll reflect this back to you and see if I’m off base, but it sounds like there was a little bit of a. You were really desiring positive reinforcement that when. And the gym, like not exclusive to figure competition, but like fitness is if you’re in a well designed program, a perpetual, like ever. It’s like, it’s, it grows with you. It’s like, oh, now Today you did 11 pounds, tomorrow you do that twice. Yay. It’s like constant positive reinforcement. And so as an Outsider listening to you tell a story, I can see. See how you would crave it.
Susie Bell [00:22:59]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:23:00]:
And how it would feel good. And also how if you had a very self comp. Very compassionate, kind, praising trainer, that would be a mirror of what you weren’t getting at home.
Susie Bell [00:23:14]:
I never had it growing up. I never had it in my marriage. It felt very fake to me. But having had such a long friendship with him and being able to attain these levels in the competitions and seeing my success. And he would say to me, susie, you do everything I tell you to do. You do everything I tell you to do. And I did. And I thought compared to what I’ve done my whole life, rules are easy. I can do that. I mean, it was to me, that regiment was so easy because all I had to do was eat what he told me to eat. Train when he told me to train. Piece of cake. And it was. He didn’t know anything about Mormonism. Well, very much about Mormonism either. And he was intrigued by that. He thought that that is. That’s odd. It’s odd that you just don’t question it. And I thought it’s because I went from one religion, really.
Amy Stone [00:24:13]:
Yeah, kind of.
Susie Bell [00:24:14]:
To another regimented religion. And many people leaving high demand religion. Go from one religion to. Was my new religion.
Amy Stone [00:24:22]:
Yeah. So we call them high demand or high control. And so you were preconditioned through your childhood to accept a leadership and accept. Accept instructions. And it does. It is one of the things that in the self help. If you’re working with somebody in the self help community or self development community, people who are most helpful are on the lookout for people who come to them who are coming out of those communities. Because you’re vulnerable. You’re vulnerable to taking suggestions that other people who did not come out of that background might be like, well, but why, but what? You know, people were coming out of Hawaii. Control environments, like, all right, fine, yeah, I’ll eat cabbage for four days. No problem, you know?
Susie Bell [00:25:03]:
Yeah, no problem. Fish six times a day. I mean, fish six times a day.
Amy Stone [00:25:08]:
Who would do that?
Susie Bell [00:25:09]:
Right?
Amy Stone [00:25:10]:
Well, I once, once upon a time, I had to do like one. It’s called an elimination diet. Inside the nothing but chicken and rice for like, it was. It was miserable.
Susie Bell [00:25:17]:
That’s hard.
Amy Stone [00:25:18]:
It was so hard. It was so hard. It was. It was effective in figuring out what was going on. So it was worth it. But I don’t suggest it for anybody else. But. So when we talk about this, you were doing. You were really going down a path of Self search, like searching for your true self. Lost after really being focused for 12 years, creating a family which is very emotionally and physically taxing. Working on homemaking. You had moved from your origin. You grew up in the Pacific Northwest, you’re in Las Vegas. That’s a big change. But when you find your way to the gym, you are not thinking that you’re going to leave the faith, which is this important part of yours. That happens, it sounds like, because you are ashamed by the community. And so. Yeah. So, wow. Ouch.
Susie Bell [00:26:06]:
Yeah. And, and what I, what I learned in Mormonism was authenticity and truthfulness. And what I learned in that moment was that is really not the basis of the religion. In order to maintain and stay in the religion, you keep your damn mouth shut when you do something like that. But for me, I felt so bad about what I did because I didn’t want to hurt my husband. I loved him. I didn’t want my family destroyed. I didn’t want any of that. And I felt very torn. And I went to him because I felt like I owed him, because I, I, I mean, I, I didn’t know how to navigate this. And I was actually told by a Mormon counselor that I needed to tell my bishop, and my bishop made me tell my husband. And the interesting thing is most men who have affairs in the Mormon Church, they never tell their wives because it’ll ruin the relationship. So they’re advised not to tell their wives. But I was advised that I needed to tell my husband. Then the shame. He didn’t want to divorce me. He didn’t want to divorce me at all. He wanted to put his thumb on me and hold me down and say, see, this is what happens when you step outside of the religion. This is what happens when you stop wearing your Mormon garments. This is what happens when you do what I, what you’re not supposed to do. And you need to stay home now. You need to quit the gym. You need to come home. You need to fix things. You need to. And that’s what the brethren told me to do. And I tried it. And I’m telling you, I died even deeper. I cut off the relationship with my trainer. I came home and I was more miserable than I ever had been before. It just killed me. It was almost like any dream that you have, you better snuff it now, because it’s not okay. Get back to baking the bread.
Amy Stone [00:27:47]:
I couldn’t do it. And so then do you leave the relationship and what happens?
Susie Bell [00:27:56]:
It’s kind of funny because there was this aspect of the book that I ended up having, I. I ended up with someone I didn’t even really know at the gym, just having kind of a one time relationship, like, boom. And I thought, oh, my God, I am a cheater. I am a. I am a legitimate cheater. I’m a terrible person because I cut off all the contact with this. This other. This person I’d actually had an affair with. And I stopped and reflected and I thought, how do I navigate this? Is this the kind of person I am? Am I just a. Am I a floozy? A. You know, those are the things that we used to. Is that. Is that who I am? Is that what I’ve come to be? Is that really who I am? And I thought, no, you know what? I am miserable. This marriage will never serve me. I am going to continue to step out like this because nothing in my marriage is nothing. I have nothing. It is so empty. Meanwhile, one side note was, he was very empty inside my. My husband because he had started taking opioids at the time that our baby died, and he was emotionally just not there.
Amy Stone [00:29:09]:
So I. Oh, that’s a whole other. So he was going through, like a substance use crisis. Okay.
Susie Bell [00:29:15]:
Very much, very much. It was.
Amy Stone [00:29:17]:
They make particularly bad roommates, addicts, very bad roommates.
Susie Bell [00:29:22]:
And it was a combination of Percocet, Xanax and Ambien. And how he never killed himself I will never know. But it was after me stepping out with this guy who actually ended up. He was Mormon. He was Mormon and he was 15 years younger than me. And I just did it because he was hot and I just felt like it. And it was the first time in my life I had just stepped out and thought, that guy’s hot. I’m going to have sex with him. And it just. It did something to me because the relationship with the trainer wasn’t based on any sex. Then with this guy, it was just, boom. And I did it. And so that was when I decided I need to leave my marriage because I don’t want to be this kind of person. But there’s clearly some deficiencies in this marriage that are never going to work. And I don’t want to be with this guy that I just hooked up with. But this is not fair to my husband, it is not fair to my children, and it is not fair to me because I feel like a piece of garbage and I need to step away from this. This box that I do not fit into.
Amy Stone [00:30:28]:
So when you step away, this is like setting off a landmine inside. Yeah. This is, like, setting off, like, so, do you leave by yourself? Do you get a divorce? Do you move back to the Pacific Northwest right away? Do your kids come with you? What. What happens?
Susie Bell [00:30:45]:
Yeah, I ended up filing for divorce. And he still wanted to stay married. He still tried to talk me out of it. And I just said, this is. It’s just not going to work. I. I can’t do it. So he made my life a living hell because he did not want me to leave. Assets were hidden. He made sure that, literally, I was left with pretty much nothing. He wanted to make sure it hurt so bad that I would stay. And I still wanted to leave. I just couldn’t be. I felt like I was living with my dad. I felt like I was living in that patriarchal, you’re going to do this. You’re going to do what I tell you to do. And I thought, how am I going to support myself? I’m a nurse. But I know he’s going to make my life a living hell, so what do I need to do? And I was in the middle of, you know, all the figure competitions, and I thought, well, I’m a nurse. I can. I can go back to grad school and become a nurse practitioner. If I’m a nurse practitioner, I can support myself. So when I left the church, when I left him, I certainly didn’t want to go back to church. And I knew that there would be church discipline associated because everyone in the community knew that I had stepped out of my marriage. The whole community knew. And so I left the church, I left him, and I enrolled in grad.
Amy Stone [00:32:01]:
School in Las Vegas. Or did you move back in Las Vegas? So that’s a lot of changes, but this is like. I mean, this is an amazing story. So. And you. And you’re in Las Vegas, but you’ve got two things going on. You’ve got your civil marriage, which is like the marriage certificate with, like, the state of Nevada or the state of Washington, wherever you guys are married. But you also have, like, this entirely, this religious covenant, which is very strong in your faith. And that. What were. What was. What were the thoughts going through your head when you were, like, making this decision? Because as an outsider doesn’t always track the weight of these things that people are told their entire life. But basically, you grew up with the idea that once you form this religious bond, that’s it, not just for life on this planet, but forever, right? That’s the forever. Forever.
Susie Bell [00:32:55]:
That bond is your eternity. That bond is what gets you to heaven.
Amy Stone [00:32:59]:
That temple so what’s going through your mind when you’re like, all right, that’s fine. I’m giving up. I’m giving up eternity. Like, it’s. Things have gotten weak enough that I’m gonna go. Grad school is worth more to me than eternity.
Susie Bell [00:33:11]:
You know, I. I think that things go. It was. It was such a hard time for me. I mean, again, I. He was my. My husband was my. My best friend growing up. He was just everything to me. And I. And. And. And I think it. For my children, it was devastating because we had our home.
Amy Stone [00:33:32]:
They.
Susie Bell [00:33:33]:
They were in high school, middle school, grade school, preschool. I mean, I had kids in all the schools. I don’t want to embarrass my kids. I. Am I being selfish? Because I was told my whole life, you’re selfish, you’re selfish. You’re selfish. Am I. Am I selfish? And I thought, I need to decide who I am. If I’m a selfish person, I want to change that. But it’s not going to be in this marriage. If I’m a bad person, I want to work on who I am, but I can’t do it cheating. I want to work on who I am as a person. I want to know who I am, because I don’t want to be a piece of. And so I’ve got to do that away from all of this. And if the church is true, I will know it. And if the church is not true, I will also know it. And if I’m a terrible person, I’m gonna freaking fix it, because I don’t want to be her. But I am a terrible person in this setting because I don’t like this guy I’m with, and I feel attracted to guys that are 15 years younger than me because there’s a whole portion of my life I missed, and I don’t want to run out there and have sex with everybody in Vegas. But, gosh, that felt good. And I’ve got to figure this out.
Amy Stone [00:34:42]:
So. Yeah. So, like, what I would say as somebody from an outsider, it’s like you got to the point where it was so painful.
Susie Bell [00:34:49]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:34:50]:
That you actually didn’t have another choice.
Susie Bell [00:34:52]:
I did not feel that I had another choice. I could not live that way any longer.
Amy Stone [00:34:57]:
Yeah.
Susie Bell [00:34:57]:
And also, my children were very. They were very embarrassed by me at the time. But one of the dynamics, and I think a lot of women experience this in leaving their marriages, was I would walk in when he was talking to my children about me in a very demeaning way, and the children Were very disrespectful to me. And I felt like with good reason. But I thought, if I ever have a relationship with these children, it will not be by staying in this marriage. It will be by getting out of it and allowing my children to see who I am for themselves, not telling them who I am, allowing them to spend time with me without being under the confines of a dad, telling them what a piece of garbage I am, and allowing them to have a relationship with me and determine for themselves if they like me, if they don’t, if they want a future with me, if they don’t. But it will never be in a situation where little children are being told, your mother is a horrible person and she’s selfish.
Amy Stone [00:35:54]:
Okay, so when you file for divorce and you go to grad school, is part of this that you had to make the hard decision to leave them with their dad, or did you take them with you?
Susie Bell [00:36:04]:
No, we were. We got 50. 50 custody. We both got full time, and we. We got 50, 50 in the state of Nevada.
Amy Stone [00:36:10]:
So it was 50. All about shuffling. Okay, very good. Okay, so you leave. You go to grad school. So this is. You were feeling very unsupported in your family. Unsupported. That’s why you reached out to gym. Did you have any support as you made this decision, or did you feel like you were walking out on the plank by yourself?
Susie Bell [00:36:30]:
I was all by myself. And I also got excommunicated publicly by the church. At that time, they made sure that everyone knew that I was done, gone. And that was very scary because now that covenant was stripped from me. But they wanted to make sure as long. As long as I would have stayed in my marriage, I wouldn’t have been excommunicated. But the fact that I said, I am done. I’m out. And I started dating other people. And it was a very public. People could see everyone in the community. I lived in a very. Even though it was in Las Vegas, it was Henderson, Nevada. Everyone knew everyone, and the church was especially the brethren. They were. They were mad at me, and they called me in and they made sure that I was disciplined, and they made sure it was very public, and they made sure I was very embarrassed and humiliated.
Amy Stone [00:37:21]:
Oh, I’m sorry. Yeah.
Susie Bell [00:37:23]:
No, and it’s. It’s been a very good thing for me because I thought, no wonder people aren’t willing to accept and acknowledge their mistakes. In the Mormon Church, you can’t change unless you acknowledge something. You can’t fix it. But they’re too afraid to. So they just lie about it. And that’s where all of the secrets come from and the secret lives. And a lot of members of the church and any religion live secret lives because they’re too afraid to come forward and say, I messed up. I need to fix this.
Amy Stone [00:37:52]:
So. All right. So the question I normally ask here is more about support, But I want. I had. When I was thinking this through, I was like, it doesn’t sound like she had much support, but what is it about this story that you. You talk. I’m not the first person you told this story to. What called you to feel that it was important enough to begin to talk about this part of your life and share this part of your story?
Susie Bell [00:38:14]:
Because as I am vulnerable and as I am not embarrassed about my life where it is, where it’s where I’ve come from, because I’m not embarrassed about it. And because it was so public, I didn’t want. I didn’t want it public. I didn’t want everyone in the world in my community knowing everything I’d done. But it was. It was. That choice was taken from me. And so it was either face it head on or crumble and die. And for me, I thought, I can’t be the only one that feels this way. And what I found is I wasn’t. There were women that came to me out of the woodwork and would say things like, I’m cheating on my husband, and I have been for years, and I don’t know what to do about it. What do you think I should do? I mean, there were women coming out of the woodwork, and I thought, man, this is. Everyone’s afraid. They don’t know what to do. And they. I’m not alone. And because my story became so public, I knew that at some point in my life, and there were so many things I experienced as a single person in Las Vegas, just trying for the first time in my life to learn how to navigate the world. Because in the church, we’re told if you go out in the world, it’s a scary place. And it was damn scary. It was damn scary. I didn’t know how to navigate it at all. And there were horrible things that happened to me in the real world. And there was horrible judgment that came from the world because they thought a woman of my age with 6 children should know better, and I didn’t know better. And so for me, having experienced those very scary and traumatizing things, I wanted to write about it, every aspect of it, so that women coming out of high demand religion or just a marriage or just trying to navigate this crazy world would know that they weren’t alone and that we can make mistakes and we can just not know how to navigate. It doesn’t make us stupid.
Amy Stone [00:40:11]:
No, it doesn’t. Yeah, that’s one of the through lines, right? That’s one of the through lines. And why I created this project to begin with is the idea. There’s one of these. It’s like this myth that at any given point we’re supposed to know what we’re doing. And yet my, my experience is very different than yours. But like every different stage of my life, I’m like, I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m doing.
Susie Bell [00:40:32]:
You know, beauty in that there really is just knows.
Amy Stone [00:40:36]:
It’s like I’ve never bought a house before. I’ve never sold a house before. I’ve never had a kid before. I’ve never had a sick kid. It’s like every single thing. Every single thing. And, and so, and it is. That’s. That is why I want to tell these stories from, you know, small stories to big stories, because somewhere out there is somebody who is going to do it. So. Now listen, we’re going to wrap this up in a few seconds, but I do have a totally unrelated question. I have not actually watched this show, but have you heard about. There’s a show that’s actually called the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Do you like. You love it? I haven’t, I watched like five minutes of it because. But I haven’t watched the whole thing, so. But I was curious if you had thoughts about it, so.
Susie Bell [00:41:15]:
I do, I do. And I love it because it is accurate. But it’s so interesting to see in just a decade how the church has changed because everything that those girls are doing right now were the things I did 10 years ago and they scoffed at me and just let me have it. And, and these girls are still going to church.
Amy Stone [00:41:36]:
Okay.
Susie Bell [00:41:37]:
I was not allowed or permitted. I mean, I was called before four men who asked me detailed questions about how many times did you like it?
Amy Stone [00:41:45]:
Who?
Susie Bell [00:41:46]:
And just a public shaming. And these girls, they don’t have to wear their sacred underwear. And they’re okay. It’s. I mean, I’m proud of them. I’m happy that they’re. That they can embrace themselves and, and find themselves within Mormonism and find how Mormonism can work for them. And I think it’s great that Mormonism still works for some people if it does, but they don’t feel that. It seems like they don’t feel that fear that used to be there. And it is intriguing. But when people do watch that show, they think, God, these women are stupid. Like, what’s wrong with them? It’s because of the sheltering. It’s sure.
Amy Stone [00:42:24]:
Which it is. I think it is harder to shelter people now because information moves so. Information moves so fast and right. And there’s a pushback. Right. People want to all the time. People are like, well, the thing is, is to put in more constraints and shelter people more. I just don’t think that’s possible. I’m not saying that’s a bad idea. I do think it’s a genie that’s out of the bottle, that’s not going back in. But that’s just my opinion, like so. All right, so in a minute we’re going to do the final questions. I do want to give you a chance to tell people about what you do these days, how people can find you all those things.
Susie Bell [00:42:58]:
Oh, thank you. So the book is done? The book is done and we have the First Amendment attorney looking over it right now. And so that’ll be coming out hopefully in the next couple of months. But it’s called A Piece of Me Finding My Voice After Morm is a Marriage, Medicine and Men. And it will be on Amazon. And also my website is get well with Suzy Bell because I do menopause. Menopause is. That has been a journey too. That has been a wild ass journey. But I do menopause and hormone replacement for men and women and then the weight loss that everybody’s doing right now, the GLP one. So I do that on my website and it’s just been really fun for me to embrace this part of my life. The first time in my life having a career and actually learning to that. Gosh, I’m actually.
Amy Stone [00:43:45]:
I can.
Susie Bell [00:43:45]:
I’m good at this little portion too. It’s like you’re saying just all these fun new adventures. So life has become a great adventure through this process.
Amy Stone [00:43:56]:
That’s amazing. So the website, I will put it in the show notes where everybody’s watching and listening to this episode. And the easiest way to get the links and your book will be on the website when it comes out. So we’ll watch for it there. The. The easiest way for people to get the links, I always remind people in the episode is to be subscribed to the imperfect adulting email community because then I send it right to your inbox. You just click on it and I put updates from the guests so that when the book comes out, I will update people again so they can get it. So head there. Do that. We are going to go to the three rapid fire questions. Are you ready, Susie?
Susie Bell [00:44:28]:
I’m ready.
Amy Stone [00:44:29]:
Let’s do it. What is your favorite brand of jeans? It can be a store or a label or anything like. Or like. So jeans, what jeans are you loving right now?
Susie Bell [00:44:39]:
You know, it’s so funny. The last pair of jeans I bought, it’s been a little while. But the Freddie jeans, the kind of snug. Okay, you know which ones I’m talking about inside, they’re not. They’re not mom jeans. Even though they have like that silicone elastic on the inside, but they’re very form fitting and I like the pockets low on the butt because it makes it look more. But Freddie, Freddy.
Amy Stone [00:45:02]:
Freddie. All right, very good. I do think every once in a while I ask people, what do you think is the best invention? And sliced bread. And I think adding stretchy fabric to denim might be on the top of my list because I, I’m old enough to remember buying jeans before it had that and like it fit in one part of your body and not the other. And there was just no way around it. There was like, it was like, all right, I just, I’m going to live with like jeans that fit my knees and not my thighs. So there we go. So. All right. Do you eat breakfast and if you do, do you want to share what you had for breakfast today?
Susie Bell [00:45:30]:
I had a five hour energy so far and a spin drift sparkling water. But I’ve got an organ 20 gram protein shake over there to drink once.
Amy Stone [00:45:42]:
We’Re over the age of 50. Protein is the name of the game. What flavor spindrift this does. This question doesn’t count.
Susie Bell [00:45:48]:
This one is lemon.
Amy Stone [00:45:51]:
I love the lemon.
Susie Bell [00:45:52]:
I do too.
Amy Stone [00:45:53]:
I love it. I just love it.
Susie Bell [00:45:55]:
Love it. Yeah. And the grapefruit, that’s my favorite too.
Amy Stone [00:45:57]:
Yeah, the grapefruit’s not my favorite, but the lemon, I really, really like the lemon. I do, I do, I do, I do. But. All right, so this one is a touch person. Personal in a very silly way. Not serious. But when your alarm goes off in the morning, do you get up right away or do you hit snooze?
Susie Bell [00:46:14]:
Most of the time I wake up before it goes off because I think, you know, with menopause, I’m not really sleeping that well. So. But if it goes off and I’m sitting, I’ll usually hit snooze just for a couple of minutes, and then if I’m really in deep REM and it just keeps snoozing, it’s when it stops ringing that I’m like, oh, okay, it’s. It’s done. So I’ll listen. If it’s a good dream and I’m REM I’m not getting up.
Amy Stone [00:46:39]:
That is so good. That. That’s all right. Very good. That’s the morning routine. All right. That’s it. Susie Bell, thank you so much for being an amazing guest on the show.
Susie Bell [00:46:46]:
Thank you so much. And thanks for doing what you do. Thanks for doing what you do.
Amy Stone [00:46:50]:
Thank you.