Why Apostitch? My Story in a Nutshell

I'm Amberly. The face behind Apostitch. Stitching is the medium I use to express the grief and anger—and the joy—which comes from leaving a high-demand religion. A cult. Let’s just call it what it is.

I was raised on a particularly literal strain of Mormonism—home schooled and sheltered from worldly influences, kept in perpetual childhood while waiting for the Second Coming of Christ. I was raised to expect the world to end before I'd grow old enough for college, romance, or a career. I never expected to grow up at all. (I think that explains my Peter Pan fetish.)

Jesus never did come and whisk the righteous away into a state of eternal bliss. Life on this fallen world continued and, poorly prepared for... anything, I scrambled to fulfill my mission as a Daughter of God. I went to college; again, never quite expecting to ever actually finish. I had a healthy disdain for worldly knowledge, but managed to eek out a degree in Music History. I consider the years I spent at Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University (then UVSC) to be some of the darkest years of my life as I struggled with alienation from my family, financial stress, and never feeling like I belonged despite growing up in the same religion as most of my peers.

After a few false starts (engagements to asshole Returned Missionaries), I was lucky enough to find a life partner who would go on to tolerate an incredible amount of growth and change over the following decade. Suffering under the expectations of a patriarchal religion, I birthed the (recommended minimum) three children while he pursued a PhD. Struggling to find any purpose to my life beyond keeping children alive, I took up as many Domestic Goddess hobbies as I could: sewing, decorating, gardening, canning, mommy blogging, playing the organ at church, baking, yoga, knitting, crocheting, cross stitch, embroidery, and more. I came to understand later that I was existing in a constant state of high-functioning depression and I eventually experienced a suicidal crisis.

It took me several years to find the right combination of medications and stabilize myself. But in the six months after my initial crisis, my partner took his first academic job in Houston where I accepted a calling to be the Relief Society (church women's organization) President in our new ward. While serving in such a demanding role gave me a sense of purpose and kept me busy, I was also experiencing daily panic attacks and sleeping as much as I could when my kids were in school. At the same time my partner, who was serving as a Gospel Doctrine teacher, decided to engage with more... robust... resources in order to keep his lessons interesting. So, with three children under the age of 8, we endured depression and anxiety, the demands of a new academic career, incredible church responsibilities, and a crisis of faith that my spouse didn't even try to hide for long. ​

Then came Obergefell v. Hodges. I did not consider myself to be particularly liberal at the time, but I could not help observing the clear contradiction between church doctrine on Agency and the church's concerted efforts to deny legal marriage to same-sex couples. Aware of my partner's faith transition, I was determined to resolve that inconsistency and make the church a place that made sense for us. I began talking about doctrines that other members conveniently ignored in their defense of The Family. Gently at first, I began posting opinions and what I considered to be legitimate avenues of faith for a Latter-Day Saint supportive of same-sex marriage. The response was soul-crushing. I became a pariah at church and other members began to demand my release from the RS Presidency. I was told that I misunderstood the Gospel; I was deceived by Satan; I must have been on bad medications that were influencing my judgement; I was under the controlling influence of a doubting partner.... anything to discredit my thoughts and beliefs.

I eventually requested my own release and began taking my children to church less and less. I think I hoped that the church would change. The gospel is true, it's the people who make misguided mistakes, right? I had changed my mind when faced with new evidence and naively believed that the church body would as well. But when the infamous exclusion policy was leaked in early November 2015 I realized that it was the gospel itself that was rotten. There was no continuing revelation, no priesthood power, no authority from any God worthy of my worship. I resigned my membership that week.​

Apostitch was born out of my need for a creative outlet for my anger and grief. The irony of subverting the Domestic Goddess skills I had cultivated in a desperate attempt to find meaning in a repressive patriarchal system amuses me to no end. Teasing out the ridiculousness of things I had been raised to consider sacred is incredibly cathartic, and the ideas come faster than I'll ever have enough time to stitch. I'm still angry and I'm not sure that will ever go away, but I've accepted the legitimacy of my anger and pain and embrace it as part of my journey.