A Mormon Mom's Coming Out Journey with Elena Joy Thurston
One thought helped Elena gain clarity: it was better for her children to have a gay mom than a dead mom. Slowly, she began rebuilding her life and family and rewriting her mot(her) code.
Trigger Warning
This episode contains sensitive content and discussions surrounding suicide. It may be distressing or triggering for some individuals. Reader/Listener discretion is advised. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or needs immediate help, please contact Lifeline, a 24/7 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, at 988 or visit their website at https://988lifeline.org. Your mental health and well-being matter.
Elena Joy Thurston found war within herself. Her mind and her faith were in combat with her body and heart. A devout Mormon mother of four on the verge of suicide, Elena needed to realize that it was better for her kids to have a gay mom than a dead mom. Her incredible heroic story has gone viral through her TEDx talk and was a part of the award-winning documentary “Conversion.”
Elena Joy Thurston
Elena is a diversity, allyship speaker, trainer, and author for LGBTQ+ inclusion. She combines personal stories from her life as a Mormon mother of four who disclosed her sexual orientation as a lesbian and lost her marriage, community, and church, which can inspire both tears and laughter in her audience. She works internationally with HR departments to create actionable approaches to promoting inclusion and belonging through allyship. She is the Volunteer Executive Director of the Pride and Joy Foundation.
Living the Perfect Life and Finding “Stability”
Elena’s story will resonate with many mothers seeking to create the stability they lacked in their childhood. In retrospect, Elena can see that her mother probably had bipolar disorder. Her hot/cold behavior at home left Elena craving something that would give her a sense of security and comfort.
Joining the Mormon Church at a young age, she saw families regularly attending services and activities in the church. She believed that if she could create a similar family life, she would finally find what she had been missing in her own home. Today, Elena can see that she was craving to control her external conditions to solve a crisis in her internal world.
The Mormon Church was more than a religious doctrine for Elena. It was a complete lifestyle that required her full attention 24/7. She began to consume herself with various activities and obligations and started to raise her family. Her rigorous routine rarely allowed her to question her choices; however, there was a nagging thought in the back of her mind that she just couldn’t get rid of. Despite creating the life she thought she wanted, Elena had to accept the truth: she was terribly unhappy.
Coming out in the Mormon Church
Once her children were old enough to attend school, Elena Joy Thurston found ways to occupy herself and soothe her chronic unhappiness. Most notably, her newfound love of fitness helped her find life outside her identity in the church and as a mom.
Fitness helped Elena reconnect with her body, a principle at odds with church teachings encouraging women to overlook their physicality. The more she reconnected with her physical being, the harder it was to suppress her truth: she was a lesbian. Elena found herself in the battle: her body vs. her mind.
After coming out in the church, Elena watched the foundation of her perfect life come crumbling down. Rebuilding her life would be the journey she never envisioned embarking upon.
To maintain her “perfect” life, Elena found herself participating in conversion “therapy” to root out and eliminate the cause of her lesbian attraction, which she believed to be from early childhood trauma.
While clinging to her ideas of a perfect life, Elena reached a low, which saw her come dangerously close to becoming an alarming statistic: 50% of participants in conversion therapy seriously consider suicide as a way out. To learn more about Elena’s experience, see her story in the documentary Conversion.
Rewriting her mot(her) code
One thought helped Elena gain clarity: it was better for her children to have a gay mom than a dead mom. Slowly, she began rebuilding her life and family and rewriting her mot(her) code.
Today, she gives back to the LGBTQ+ community through the Pride and Joy Foundation, which aims to prevent suicides and homelessness in gay communities. She is a corporate consultant, leading companies to take actionable measures to enhance diversity and inclusion in the workplace. She is also a sought-after speaker; her TEDx talk went viral, gaining thousands of views online.
She is giving hope to LGBTQ+ mothers worldwide through her brave story.
Find out more about how you can work with Elena Joy Thurston here.
Show highlights
The pandemic’s effects on LGBTQ+ communities and the birth of the Pride and Joy Foundation, which aims to prevent suicides and homelessness in the LGBTQ+ community
Elena’s journey into religion and the Mormon Church, with its inevitable conflict with her sexual orientation
Her marriage and her biological mothering journey
Her life is chaotic when she comes out of the closet and finds a “therapist” that promises to convert her. 50 percent of participants become suicidal, and that’s where she found herself
The fear of doing things “right” and “wrong” in mothering