Morality Gets Heavier

There is peace in waking up and knowing exactly what you’re supposed to do with your day. How you’re supposed to parent. What things in life should be prioritized. I was given that on a silver platter, dressed up as a delicious plate of salvation. The Mormon Church is the key to happiness. Everyone knows that.

It was easy to believe.
My friends believed it.
My parents adored it.
And so did I.

It’s a beautiful thought — that there is a father in the sky who loves me and who gave me a plan to live in peace and happiness for eternity. That if I followed the rules closely enough, I would be safe. That goodness was something I could earn through obedience.

But what happens when that framework shatters? When the questions you whispered for years turn into shouts. When you can no longer reconcile that the loving God you believed in does not love the gay community, does not respect minorities, does not include them, and does not uplift women.

When a quick Google search quietly dismantles a version of history you accepted without question. When you finally look inward and realize that, for your entire life, you have been delegating your own autonomy to an institution—shutting down “doubts” that were never doubts at all, but questions.

What happens when you finally see that your version of right and wrong might not be divinely given at all — but inherited, constructed and deeply flawed?

For weeks, I felt like I was swimming in the ether and my soul was dead. Everything about me and who I was was suddenly no longer valid. My entire identity had been built with rotten blocks disguised as truth and morality. For a while, every belief I held about myself and the world was tainted.

I thought losing my faith would mean losing my moral compass. I was terrified that without God watching me, without commandments telling me what to do, I would drift into something selfish, careless or unrecognizable.

I worried most about my children. How would I raise them without a moral map? What would I teach them about right and wrong if I no longer believed in an absolute authority?

My mother’s voice played over and over again in my head: “I promise you, Sami, you don’t want to raise kids in this world without the church. You don’t know how difficult it will be. They need direction.”

And she’s right. They do need direction. But that direction doesn’t need to come from a man in the sky. That direction can come from me. From my husband. From the people in their life who know them for who they actually are.

Without an external authority to lean on, every decision became mine. Every kindness. Every harm. Every choice I made with my children, my partner, my body, my time — there was no one else to credit and no one else to blame.

What I lost in certainty, I gained in responsibility.

And strangely, taking eternal consequences off the table made it feel like there was more room for nuance. When you’re not raising children out of fear for their salvation, rules and morality become more buoyant. More flexible. More humane.

One afternoon, my twelve-year-old daughter was walking into my mother’s house carrying a stack of books. Her shirt rode up, and her belly button was showing.

I panicked. “Aria, your belly,” I blurted out. “You can’t wear a crop top! How you present yourself to the world matters.”

The words came out of me automatically, like muscle memory. I heard my own mother’s voice in my mouth. All of my church leaders and lessons about how to dress and acceptable ways to present yourself all rushed to a head in an entirely subconscious moment.

I watched my daughter tug her shirt down in embarrassment, and something in my chest cracked open.

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: part of me still thinks how we present our bodies matters. I still believe in self-respect. I still believe context matters. I still believe children deserve guidance, not total moral anarchy.

But everything about how I execute those beliefs is different now.

Before, modesty was about obedience. It was about avoiding temptation. It was about keeping my body “pure” so God would approve of me.

Now, when I stop and ask myself why I care, the answers are completely different.

Do I want my daughter to feel ashamed of her body? No.
Do I want her to understand consent, confidence and situational awareness? Yes.
Do I want her to grow up believing her worth is measured in inches of fabric? Absolutely not.

The rule didn’t disappear. The reasoning changed. And that change required something religion never asked of me before: conscious moral labor.

The same thing has happened with everything else I was once told was sinful.

I was twenty-nine years old before I tried my first sip of alcohol. I was in my bathtub, with my husband. I got drunk and we had a blast. I felt none of the guilt I expected to feel after being told alcohol was a sin against God.

Today, I still don’t consistently drink, but the reasoning has changed. I no longer think it makes me morally superior to abstain. I’m not scared of divine punishment or striving to be worthy. Now I choose not to drink every day because I want so much for my life. I want longevity. I want presence. I understand the science of how alcohol affects my brain and my body, and I want to take care of myself.

I didn’t suddenly become reckless when I stopped believing in God. I became more intentional.

And in some ways, more afraid — because now there was no cosmic excuse waiting for me if I got it wrong.

Losing my belief in an afterlife has only intensified this sense of responsibility. When I believed eternity was guaranteed, suffering in this life felt temporary. Tragic, yes — but ultimately part of a larger, divinely ordered story.

Now, this life is all I believe we have. And that makes other people’s pain feel unbearable in a new way.

It makes injustice feel urgent instead of theoretical.
It makes kindness feel like a moral emergency instead of a spiritual bonus point.

I feel more obligated now — not less — to help people, to show up, to reduce harm where I can, because there is no heavenly reset button waiting on the other side.

If something matters, it matters here.
If someone is suffering, it matters now.

And if I make a harmful choice, I can’t outsource responsibility to God, fate or a divine plan.

I have to own it.

That’s the part no one warned me about when I left religion:

Morality doesn’t get lighter.

It gets heavier.