The Book of Mormon Girl selection

My partner ordered Joanna Brooks's memoir The Book of Mormon Girl; it arrived this weekend. Once I've had a chance to read the whole thing, I may post a review. But for now, here's a selection I found particularly moving. This is a very short chapter about 3/4 of the way through titled "sealed portion."

The square brackets are in the original. The bolding is me highlighting a phrase that resonated immediately with me.

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[Here are parts of the story I do not want to tell.

But I will for you, wayward Mormon boy or girl. I will for you, girl seeking.

Because our stories are not told in sacred books. They are not told over the pulpit. They are not told by the prophets.

No one says: I felt my church turn away from me, and it was a kind of death to me.

No one says: I drove into the desert. I wandered around the city in the dark. I was alone and it was cold and inside me was desolation.

No one says: I sat in the hotel lobby bathroom, my ribcage wracked with sobs, until a stranger, insistent, knocked at the stall door, handing me a Kleenex and urging me to be strong.

No one says: when my family treated me as a stranger, I preferred the company of strangers, and I walked among strangers and what did I find but God in every one of their faces.

No one says: I broke rules, I broke rules, I broke rules--I broke all the rules. That one. And that one. And that one too. Yes. I did.

No one says: I laid on the floor of the Venice Beach apartment and Parliament was on the record player and my friend and I, we looked at the ceiling, and I waved the smoke from the air with the back of my hand, and when he asked "Help me understand what this Mormonism means to you?" I said "it is my first language, my mother tongue, my family, my home; it is my heart, my heart, my heart."

No one says any of these things. But they should.

Because no one should be left to believe that she is the only one.

No one should be left to believe that she is the only Mormon girl who walked alone into the dark. No one should be left to feel like she is the only one broken and seeking.]