Introduction - Next week will mark the one-year anniversary of me officially leaving the LDS religion. Over the last year, I’ve thought about writing and sharing my story quite a bit. I shied away from it initially because I felt like it would be vain and self-promoting. Then, a couple months ago, a conversation I had with my wife solidified my desire to write this. She shared with me how she was planning to write her own experience of leaving the LDS church and why that would be helpful for her. However, she hadn’t written her story for an entirely different reason than me – anxiety. For my wife, sharing her story was a very sensitive act. She was laying bare intimate details of her life for others to view and – in her anxious opinion – mercilessly scrutinize. This was a hard task for her to take, but something she knew she’d work up to. In that moment I realized my story of leaving the LDS church could serve as a stepping stone for others to explore their doubts or to gather t...