It hasn’t been easy for Ashley Fryer to let go of her faith. For thirty years, she dedicated her life to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She grew up attending church multiple times a week, and dutifully studied her scriptures. Over the years, she found inconsistencies in church doctrine, and would pile these up on what she calls ‘the shelf’. She’d pile it higher and higher, thinking, “well, I’ll deal with it later.”
For Ashley, her shelf broke on November 5, 2015. On that day, a new LDS church policy leaked. This policy said, among other things, that children of gay parents could not be baptized unless they were eighteen years old, living on their own, and had renounced same sex marriage. It was a controversial policy that members of the church came out for and against. This ran counter to Ashley’s personal beliefs, and she didn’t believe the leadership of the church spoke for God. So she put down her beloved scriptures, unsure what to do with relics of a religion she no longer believed in.
Since then, Ashley has been on a journey of spiritual discovery. She started exploring Wiccan practices, paganism, and her Norse heritage. She found that Hel, the Norse goddess of the underworld, resonated with her. Half beautiful maiden, half rotting corpse, Hel is the keeper of dead things. To Ashley, Hel represents a spirit of radical self acceptance, and new beginnings rising from the ashes. Ashley realized that she knew what to do with her LDS scriptures.
This episode was produced and edited by Ashley’s little sister, Bethany Denton. Additional editing help from Jeff Emtman and Nick White.
Music: The Black Spot
HBM126: Sounding the Deep
HBM125: Deepfaking Nixon
HBM124: Banana Softies
HBM123: Water Witches
HBM122: Should Cows Have Names?
HBM121: True North
HBM120: Own Worst Interest
HBM119: An Episode of Pebbles and Twigs
HBM118: Mountain Seabed
HBM117: Grave Oversight
HBM116: Finest and Most Rotten (Going Forward)
HBM115: Bound in Walton et al.
HBM114: Envisioning AIDS
HBM113: The Last Ones
HBM112: Negative Space
HBM111: Waiting for Earth
HBM110: Big Numbers
HBM109: Untitled Noises of New York (Sound Matters)
HBM108: Witch of Saratoga
HBM107: Carlo Surrenders
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