Both of my parents came from Mormon pioneer families. The trek in 1847, the Mormon Battalion, making the desert bloom in Utah -- they did it all.

My parents were born in Utah, and they came to California as young people. When they met, my mother was a student at Stanford University and my father attended the University of California, Berkeley. After they married and my mother graduated from college, they bought a little home in Richmond, which is not far from Berkeley, so that my father could finish his studies.

I was born in Oakland, California, and grew up in nearby towns. I'm the oldest of seven children, and I believe that my parents intended to have a large family. However, my family was not a happy one. My parents' marriage went sour after only a couple of years, and I can't remember anything but a dreary home life. My parents fought constantly, using foul language.

When my brother Benny died of meningitis as a baby, that added another layer of sadness to all of our lives. Even though my parents tried to teach  us that we would all be together again in the hereafter, that belief didn't comfort them in the here and now.

I don't want to rag too much on my parents, though. My mother died in 1980 and my father in 2003, so neither of them are here to defend themselves.

To be fair, my parents did do a lot of things right, and I'm grateful to them for these opportunities. My mother read to us regularly, and I learned to love books at an early age. I also remember many camping trips among the beautiful California coast redwoods and many blissful afternoons at the beach. We had a huge back yard to play in, with lots of trees, and we enjoyed swimming, bike riding, and skating.

Both of my parents had artistic and musical training. They sang and played several musical instruments. My mother did oil painting as a young woman, and one of my earliest memories is of my father making me the cutest little animals out of clay. They bought rolls of butcher paper so that we could make murals, we got new boxes of crayons every year or so, and they bought modeling clay in five-pound blocks.

We also had a little parlor organ that had been brought across the plains. It was the kind of instrument that you have to pump with foot pedals to get it to play. When I was in first grade, I found some of my mother's music books, and taught myself how to read music and play this organ.

I had always loved music -- I was the kind of kid who sang before she could talk -- so I was thrilled by these simple pieces of music. Later on, we got an old piano and several other instruments, and we did quite a bit of performing in public as a family. Music has always been my passion, and it still is today.

When I was a kid, I did feel lucky. Not only had I been born in the United States, I had been born a Mormon.

However, my faith in the church started to crumble when I was thirteen years old. My mother had made arrangements for me to receive my patriarchal blessing. Before my blessing, the patriarch asked me what my interests were, and I told him that I loved art and music.

My blessing was a great disappointment to me. I was told that I would be a mother in Israel and receive my reward as a valiant member of the church during the morning of the first resurrection. That's fine -- those were blessings that every LDS woman should enjoy.

However, there was not one word in my blessing about art or music!

Nothing, not even some platitude about my having been blessed with artistic and musical talent, no mention of any music-related church callings. I wasn't expecting to hear that I would become a world-famous artist or musician, or any thing like that. I just wanted to be someone special.

That blessing felt canned, much like the other church blessings that I'd been hearing all my life. Realizing that really shook me up. I started thinking about the other things that really bothered me about the church.

For one thing, I just couldn't accept the fact that people of African descent couldn't hold the priesthood, and my mother didn't believe this either. She taught me that this curse really referred to people who had no conscience, who were seriously disturbed, who enjoyed preying on others and showed no remorse for their evil actions. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the mark of Cain is being of African descent.

In the mid-1960s, I started following the events in the civil rights movement. It was more thrilling to me to hear Dr. Martin Luther King's speeches than anything that I heard in any LDS meeting. I also started reading feminist literature, and realized that I didn't need to feel that my choices in life were limited just because I was a woman.

There was no money for me to go away to college, so I started attending the local community college while continuing to live at home. At the time, any California resident could attend classes in the community college system free of charge. Most of my classmates were not kids fresh out of high school -- some of them were people with families and jobs, and quite a few of them were retired people. Some of the people in my music classes were musicians and music teachers who wanted to refine their own skills.

I did so well in my studies at Diablo Valley College that I won a full-tuition scholarship to any college in California that I wanted to attend. I transferred to Stanford University as a junior. My grandmother lived in Palo Alto, just a short bike ride from the Stanford campus. She rented rooms to students, so there was a small room set aside for me.

A young LDS man named Bill was also renting a room at my grandmother's house. We fell in love, and got married in the Oakland Temple during the summer between my junior and senior year.

One decision that we made early on was to hold off on having children. Bill had health problems and wanted to finish college first. I wanted to wait, too, since I needed to keep up with my own studies while maintaining a nice household. I was also working in the Stanford library system -- during the academic year, I worked part time and during the summers I worked full time.

However, our happiness didn't last. We had problems within a few months of our marriage and we struggled to make it work for three years. Bill had a hot temper and one day he hit me.

I told him that if he ever did that to me again, I would leave. When he hit me a second time a few weeks later, I packed my stuff and left.

It wasn't easy for me to leave. I still loved him, but I was also aware from experience and from my studies that it's a hard pattern to break. Even when abusers are motivated, they can't always stop abusing the people that they love. I was afraid to stay.

I didn't want to have a marriage like my parents had. Three years was enough for me.

Fortunately, I had my library job, and by then I had graduated from college and was working full time. I was earning enough to support myself and to pay off my student loans. After a year, Bill and I were divorced.

That was another thing that had been bothering me about the church, the very different roles that men and women were required to have. I really didn't relish the notion of the Celestial Kingdom. Why did wives have to be so submissive now and in the hereafter?

For that matter, why did LDS men have to work so hard and be the sole financial support to their families? My father left the house every morning at 6 a.m. to commute from our home in the suburbs to his job in San Francisco, and he didn't get home until 6 p.m. In addition to this, he had his church callings and home teaching duties. He told me a few years ago that he really regretted not having more time to spend at home with his kids, and that he had missed so much. Was this really a good thing?

While we're at it, I was also appalled by the church's anti-gay policies. It's been my experience that the library profession is gay friendly. At the first library where I worked, in 1971, the head librarian was a lesbian and her lover was well-liked among the other library staff members. At another of the libraries where I worked during my career, I was the only person in the unit who wasn't gay. I support the rights of all domestic partners, whether they are gay or straight. If you go to the trouble of forming a household and creating a family, you should be able to enjoy all of the benefits as well.

August 9, 1974, was a red-letter day. Not only was it the day that Richard Nixon resigned his job as the President of the United States, I made my break with the church. It was a hot day, so I went shopping in an air-conditioned department store at the Stanford Shopping Center. I bought new underwear, lots of cute little bras and bikini panties in bright and happy colors. When I got home, I took my temple garments off and never wore them again.

It was also a memorable day in Andrew's life. The same day, he arrived in California after driving all the way across the country from New Hampshire. He had just gotten a job at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park. More about Andrew later....

After I left the church, I started spending my Sundays with my non-member friends. We went hiking in the woods, going on picnics, watching movies, having brunches, visiting arts and craft fairs, going to concerts, dancing, and having parties.

Another thing that I did was to join the Peninsula Bach Choir. Andrew and I  met at a rehearsal in April 1975. When we were both invited by another Bach choir member to be in a small vocal ensemble, we started dating.

On October 13, 1978, Andrew and I got married in a simple ceremony that we wrote based upon the Book of Common Prayer. The place we chose was the summit of Mt. Diablo, with a Unitarian minister presiding. She was a young woman, and it was her first-ever wedding ceremony. I cherish everything about that day, as simple and as home-grown as it was.

Like many young people, Andrew and I moved around a bit before settling down. We bought my old family home in Concord, California, from my father and stepmother. I studied art for a few years, and cobbled together a freelance career as a graphic artist and muralist.

One evening in 1984 -- ten years after I left the church -- the bishop and his counselors dropped by. We were quite surprised by their visit -- because we weren't expecting them -- and they wanted to know what my wishes were. I explained that I wasn't interested in being an active member but I didn't want to have any contact with the church, either. I was told that I either had to have regular visits from home teachers or have my name removed from the church's records, and that having my name removed apparently involved attending a bishop's court. Andrew would be allowed to attend, and I was grateful for that.

On the appointed evening, we all met in the bishop's office. However, when they saw that my temple sealing had never been revoked, they told me that  they would have to ask Bill for his permission before they could have my records removed. At the end of this meeting, the bishop told me that they would contact Bill and get back in touch with me.

That's where things stand, to this day. I never did hear back from that bishop or anyone else. I'm assuming that I'm really Out.

In 1989, Andrew and I sold the old family home and moved to Oakland. I'm working as a library assistant again, but now I work at the University of California, Berkeley.

It wasn't the career that I was planning to have, but I like what it makes possible. I can work part time, so I still have some time for my art and music. I started building an online art gallery and concert hall, and I hope you'll drop by for a visit someday. THIS is the place: <http://www.chez-fleur.com/>!

Everyone's story is unique, and that's the way it should be. There is no straight and narrow path, no Plan of Salvation, and I think that life's more interesting that way. You never know where that curve in the road may take you, and that's wonderful. Everyone is someone special.

Thanks for reading this, and I wish you well on your own journey.

-- Fleur