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Heather M. Collins🗽

@heathersdesk.bsky.social

980 followers 540 following 3.1K posts

Latter-day Saint. Convert. Writer. Interfaith enthusiast. Mixed race. Genetic Genealogist. Survivor. Chaotic good. She/Her♀️

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · Nov 12

Current, former, and complicated LDS folks and interfaith friends:

Thanks for trusting me to hold space with you on your religious/spiritual journey, regardless of whatever you're coming or going.

I want to take the time introduce myself.

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Reposted by Heather M. Collins🗽

rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 23h

listen. when dolly parton’s sister says it’s time for us all to be prayer warriors for dolly. you fucking pray for dolly

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 2d

I'd agree with you if it weren't for the Stephen Miller tweet basically asking someone to do violence to judges who get in their way.

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 2d

Video shows blaze that injured 3 at Edisto Island home of SC judge, former SC senator

Video shows an Oct. 4 fire that took place on Edisto Island, at Circuit Court Judge Diane Goodstein's home in Planters Retreat in the Jeremy Cay Community.

www.postandcourier.com

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 2d

In case you need a hint about what the Benny Hill nonsense in Portland is supposed to be distracting from:

A judge in South Carolina told the Trump administration they couldn't have the state's voter data.

THEY BLEW UP HER HOUSE.

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 2d

She made a total headass of herself accusing this girl of distracting and tempting this boy that was sitting next to her.

She waited for Beck to finish, then said "he's my brother."

Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 2d

I heard a similar story about Julie Beck.

We got really close to a couple who has been temple, mission presidents. One of their daughters was lovingly scratching the back of the young man next to her in a meeting where Beck was in attendance, and she came up to her had a conniption afterwards.

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Reposted by Heather M. Collins🗽

Hunter @holybible.bsky.social · 3d

I refuse to even discuss AI sentience until we as a species achieve human rights

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 2d

Have a giggle if you need one:

Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 2d

Jason of the Argonauts

Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 2d

Such a good answer!

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 2d

Let's start with the obvious.

Yes, I think Oaks is going to make a sincere effort to canonize the Family Proclamation during his tenure.

Yes, I think there is sincere division about that within the 12.

Yes, I think that's what Rasband's talk was actually about.

Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 2d

Just came from general conference (pajama version)

AMA

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 3d

Please do!

The queer Mormons on Tumblr need a win 🥺

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 3d

Underneath all of that nonsense that was forced upon them are some pretty incredible people who don't understand even a fraction of what they've done, or how sheltered they've been.

And to care about them to see that care reflected back at me in ways that can't help but dismantle differences.

Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 3d

I don't mean to make it sound like removing the most toxic impacts of the Trump administration for my community is easy.

It's not. It's going to take years of patient effort to do that.

But the personal, one-on-one efforts are not as intimidating as they would seem, in my experience.

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 3d

Because of these sessions, I'm sensing my efforts to soften conservative tendencies, and to rehumanize those of us who aren't conservative to them, may actually get easier because of these sessions.

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 3d

By the end of our conversation, he admitted he was deeply misled about the COVID-19 vaccine and how concerned he needed to be about it.

We went into it seeing ourselves as very different from each other, and left that conversation on common ground.

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 3d

It's about fear of the future and aversion to change.

As soon as they can comprehend that the changes aren't bad, that the future doesn't have to be scary, they're very easy to disarm.

I do it all the time.

I got a former bishop in my ward to admit the Church is pro-choice a week ago.

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 3d

And it's because what they're struggling with isn't actually about me. It's not even about politics, ultimately, or it wouldn't be so easy to reason them into more moderate positions.

It's about the bubble that was carefully constructed around them in previous generations.

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 3d

I may be different from them in almost every imaginable way, but I'm not the one they're actually upset with.

As soon as they get the chance to know me better, they embrace it and soften. They along themselves with the vision of religious pluralism they're currently being taught.

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 3d

I can have compassion for those that were raised that way.

I can love them in their brokenness and understand that the community has injured them in ways it shouldn't have.

I can understand something I've observed in conversations I've had with people in my wards out here:

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 3d

I can't comprehend what it's like to grow up in a home where the love you receive is conditional upon your participation in the LDS Church...

Where maintaining that vision of perfection was so important, your contact with anything and everything is strictly controlled towards a forgone conclusion.

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 3d

They need to be told to love people like me because their first instinct is to attack what they don't understand.

They can't differentiate being uncomfortable from being attacked.

They're having their sheltered world views dismantled in public. And now it's happening at Church.

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 3d

And now the way they were raised is crumbling to dust around them.

They can't hide and be sheltered, to be catered to with the reality that is carefully curated for them anymore.

They're fighting so hard to get back to something that doesn't exist, if it ever existed at all.

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Heather M. Collins🗽 @heathersdesk.bsky.social · 3d

I am the first person like me that many people out here meet because they've been sheltered.

I'm not saying they don't know any better in a way that's patronizing and infantilizing.

I mean it in the sense that they've been victimized by people who tried to protect them from reality.

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