wHoly Human

Kim Siever is a Canadian LDS father and journalist who has arthritis, asthma and ADHD.

In this interview, Serena and Katie discuss Kim's experience with how the concept and focus of "reverence" in the church affects his worship as a person with ADHD, his diagnosis journey, the idea of sensory rooms at church and the inherent problems of how "the mother's lounge" is named and designed into our chapels, and how to fulfill our covenant to build up Zion. He also shares a brief history of the white supremacist movement hidden within Ottawa's blockades and protests.

You can support Kim by following his news site- kimsiever.ca - and his social media. He is on all platforms under Kim Siever.

This is a follow-up interview with Maggie Slighte, whose first interview we released two weeks ago!

Maggie Slighte (she/her, they/them) is a neurodivergent and disabled, writer, Tiktok creator, DID system, and former Mormon. In this interview, we find out why Maggie decided to remove their records from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and how that journey really was a long time coming. We discuss cognitive dissonance, OCD and religious scrupulosity, and Maggie's queer identity. This conversation highlights how traumatizing it can sometimes be for multiply marginalized and neurodivergent people to simply exist in the Church.

At wHoly Human, we are so proud to know Maggie, and fully support her as her spiritual journey continues to grow outside of the Church!

Important note: Maggie is currently looking for an agent for their upcoming memoir, The Car That Ran on Prayers! Please get in touch if you have any leads!

Maggie's Links:

MaggieSlighte.com Maggie's personal website

@neurodivergentgranny on TikTok

Slightely Maggie (a podcast and a YouTube vlog)

MyMesBlog.com, sharing their experience with multiplicity/DID

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Check out the Dialogue Podcast Network

Today we will be sharing the conversation we had with Maggie Slighte back in 2021. Maggie is well known in the Mormon podcasting community, as one-fourth of the now-concluded podcast, Strangers No More, which joined wHoly Human in the Dialogue Podcast Network in 2021.

But Maggie's creative juices haven't stopped flowing! They are a rebel, a community builder, and an online activist. She currently runs Slightely Maggie (a podcast and a YouTube vlog) and MyMesBlog.com, sharing their experience with multiplicity/DID. Maggie can also be found on TikTok as @neurodivergentgranny!

It took some time for us to release this episode into the world, and a lot has changed in Maggie's life since we had this interview. In lieu of these important updates, we plan on releasing a second part to this interview in the next few weeks to check back in with Maggie and learn from them.

wHoly Human Links:

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wHoly Human is proud to join with Professor Bryce Fifield in this bonus episode to share stories of early disabled saints. Fifield is a professor of Special Education and Rehabilitation at Utah State University. His career within the disability studies field spans decades. He has also had many callings in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but his greatest calling in life has been that of father, grandfather and husband.

In this episode he shares the extensive research he has done into finding the names and stories of early disabled saints in church history. He also shares how he found these names, and gives resources for learning more about early disabled saints.

Here, Serena and Katie cover Doctrine and Covenants 137–138, and Official Declarations 1 and 2. This will be their last Come Follow Me of the year, but not their last episode release of the year. Stay tuned for more wHoly Human content!

Two weeks' worth of LDS Come Follow Me study and commentary, covering Doctrine & Covenants Sections 133-136.

In this episode, we deepen the conversation around 19th century Mormon polygamy and disability/neurodivergency. We mention various instances of disabled and neurodivergent people in polygamous relationships, and discuss how that relationship style worked to either aid or disadvantage the disabled/neurodivergent person.

We reiterate the fact that just because a person has a specific disability or neurodivergence, it does not make them an automatically good person; we can hold space for disability/neurodiversity representation while also holding people accountable for the harm they've caused others.

This is especially true when discussing Brigham Young and both his eschewment of tradition (a neurodivergent trait) and the fact that he promoted eugenic, ableist rhetoric around Mormonism, as well as his complicity in the enslavement of indigenous people.

Lastly, we bring Emma Smith to the forefront during our discussion of Joseph Smith's martyrdom, as we read the blessing she requested from Joseph right before he went to Carthage Jail. We correlate the mourning of the LDS church after Joseph's death with the expression of mourning of Black people in America during Black Lives Matter. The spilling of innocent blood is therefore something that Mormons should especially resonate with.

CW: In this episode, we touch on eugenics, enslavement, and anti-Black racism.

A solo episode by Serena, where she breaks down how one cannot speak about polygamy without also speaking about how it is shaped by and connected to disability, neurodiversity and queerness.

If we only talk about the negative aspects of 19th century Mormon polygamy, while talking about both negative and positive aspects of Mormon monogamy, then we are not taking an equitable approach to polygamy as a relationship style/structure. And when the history of polygamy is also shaped by disability, and when neurodivergent and queer people are highly represented in modern day nonmonogamy, the way we talk about polygamy matters. 

Those of us in the progressive Mormon sphere are trying to build a bridge from Mormon history and doctrine to those of us who have historically been excluded and even expelled from Mormonism. If the bridge purports to lead towards inclusion of neurodivergent, disabled, and queer people, then should it not consider our viewpoints while reimagining and analyzing our collective Mormon history? How can you talk about polygamy - literally, marriage to more than one person - without centering love? How can you talk about polygamy, a “deviant” relationship style, without centering the people whom modern Mormonism considers deviant, meaning queer and neurodivergent people? 

If we believe that “love is love”, and that “we are here and we are queer!” are true principles when it comes to BYU students protesting homophobic policies at the Church administrative building in downtown SLC, then those principles are also true when people engage in nonmonogamous relationships.

Two weeks worth of Come Follow Me covering D+C 125 through 132.

In this episode, Serena and Katie discuss how privilege plays a role in the gathering of the saints despite desire (or lack of), the circumstances around Brigham Young's call to stay with his family, the nuanced space Joseph Smith and disabled people today dwell in in regards to trials, real life policies in regards to temple attendance and baptisms for the dead who are deemed "not accountable" during their lives on earth, considering people with psychosis when discussing angelic or other spirit visitations, the logic of feeling comfort in suffering with prophets, when personal revelation conflicts with prophetic teachings, and brief insights on polygamy.

Watch out for a bonus episode that will be coming out this Thursday (11/11) with more thoughts and information on polygamy, from a queer, disabled, neurodivergent perspective.

Two weeks of LDS Come Follow Me commentary, covering Doctrine & Covenants sections 121 through 124.

In this episode, we provide context for the circumstances that led to Joseph Smith's imprisonment in Liberty Jail, and explain that the tension between non-Mormons and members of the Church in Missouri at the time was not unilateral. Violence was high on both sides, and that is something we need to acknowledge to move forward honestly in our faith.

We go on to discuss how we should approach the privilege and marginalization of other people, especially when we're going through a hard time ourselves. Is there a "right" approach, or do certain approaches simply not work at certain times? We make a connection between the verses discussing suffering and the suffering of disabled people during the pandemic.

Finally, we bring it back to disability by sharing some stories of disabled, Deaf, and neurodivergent people all around the world who have been impacted by COVID-19 disproportionately. We share these stories to point out the diversity of disabled experiences, but strongly encourage our followers to seek out and listen to the experiences of disabled people in their own congregations, neighborhoods, and communities.

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Two weeks' worth of LDS Come Follow Me study, covering Doctrine & Covenants Sections 111 through 120.

In this episode we discuss how Thomas Marsh left the LDS Church in 1838 for legitimate (non-cow-milk-related) reasons and what that teaches us about allyship, and what it means to "arise and sit down, and shake off the dust."

We introduce another disabled person from LDS church history, Oliver Granger, who was mostly blind, a good friend of Joseph Smith's, and served in many important positions in the early church. His story is a remarkable example of how disabled people can and should be in leadership positions in the church nowadays.

Finally, we delve into the issues surrounding tithing and disability, especially when a disabled member of the Church is on government disability benefits. Many people are unaware that the Church cannot require disabled people to pay tithing on government benefits for legal reasons, and yet many disabled people are still being pressured to do so, and shamed and excluded if they don't.