Welcome to Escaping Eden

Created by poet, lyricist, and aspiring memoirist, Elizabeth Hood, this is a space for folks escaping and recovering from high-demand religions and/or psychologically abusive relationships (and unfortunately, it’s often both), where together we figure out WTF happened to us and WTF we’re going to do about it.

Story is my medicine.

My reason for starting this Substack newletter is to help me publish the memoir that been working on since 2018. It has taken me far longer and has been far more difficult than I imagined. In the process, I’ve become painfully aware of my protective parts, and have been surprised by the intensity of their determination to keep me safe through anonymity and silence.

My hope is that this Substack will be a creative means of healing those parts. It is a place where:

• I can practice the art of story

• I can come to know my own mind,

• I can gently reassure those protective parts of myself that it is safe to be seen,

• I can connect with you, my future memoir readers, so that we can celebrate together when I’m ready to put my work into the world.

Why sign up to Escaping Eden?

Here you will find my original essays, poetry, lyrics, and music on

• faith (leaving the one you were handed and discovering/creating one that works for you),

• love (what it is, what it isn’t, and how to tell the difference),

• sex (how I got through all the abusive shit with my fucking love of it healthy, intact, and better than ever),

• transformation (the muck and the miracle of it), and

• healing from cult tactics and coercive control from someone (me!) who has lived through all of it and successfully come out the other side.

🙋‍♀️ Hi Elizabeth, who are you?

Hello, I’m Elizabeth Hood. I live in the heartland of the US. I’ve had a few of careers and side gigs that have given me a pretty interesting skill set, which I’m now bringing to the table as a writer.

• I was a doula (CD/DONA), childbirth educator (LCCE), and non-profit birth advocate (BirthNetwork National) and speaker for thirteen years, empowering women with the information and confidence to advocate for themselves in the labor and delivery room.

  

• I’ve been a real estate broker for the last nine years—a career that gave me the financial freedom to leave an abusive marriage. It also turned out to be a great career for teaching me real-world skills like negotiation, contracts, and running my own business—all of which empowered me to build an amazing life for myself and my kids.

  

• I’m a yoga teacher. I’ve been practicing for almost thirty years and teaching for seventeen years. I’m a rebel in that I never did the whole RYT certification thing. But people love the way I teach, they love my voice (give a listen to the audio versions of my pieces), and studios hire me on my reputation alone. When people ask me how I didn’t develop some sort of chronic illness from all the stress I’ve endured, I tell them it was yoga. Yoga, yoga, yoga.

  

• I’m a mom and a wife. I have four kids of my own and four stepchildren, all between the ages of 21 and 11. Yes, we are worse than the Brady Bunch. My new husband (the freaking love of my LIFE) and I met as Mormon missionaries in the Netherlands, where he fell in love with me and I didn’t know it. (I know! Ships in the night! Gah!) Our paths converged twenty years later when we both independently left the church, our marriages disintegrated, and then we started talking over Facebook Messenger. (Our love story is probably memoir number two, and I already have a working title for it… Rule #1: Never Let Him See You Cry). Raising a blended family this big is no joke, and due to rising grocery bills, I now haunt the markdowns in the meat aisle for fun. But we’re learning a lot and I will probably be sharing some of our challenges, and learnings here as well (while preserving the privacy of our kids).

  

Why join the membership?

Because this space is a tender and private place—not only for me, but for many of my readers and community members—a few of my most posts will be behind a paywall. But the majority of my posts will be free. I have learned in my first year of Substack that there will be weeks and sometimes months when I won’t publish because I’m focusing on writing a chapter of the memoir or deep in the work of parenting and doing community advocacy. I appreciate any support you choose to give, but please know that your presence here is a gift to me.

Why “Escaping Eden”?

Even now, ten years out of the faith, I still think one of the most unique (and frankly, coolest) doctrines in Mormonism is the idea that Eve’s choice in Eden was a brave one. For me, it’s all metaphor now. But I acknowledge how deeply symbol and metaphor inform our first feelings about the events in our own lives.

In the Mormon version of the Christian origin story, Eve chose to partake of the fruit, not because she got duped by a snake, but because she recognized that God had given contradictory commandments. Multiply and replenish the earth, but stay away from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The mighty change from a state of innocence to a state of consciousness (and therefore responsibility for one’s choices) had to be entered by an act of agency. And it might as well be her.

Despite having left the Mormon faith over a decade ago, I do find the cultural phenomenon fascinating, and way better for women than the traditional Christian view of Eve as the instigator of original sin. In Mormonism, Eve is celebrated for making the “wrong choice” for the right reason. And therein lies the seed of the church’s eventual demise. Obedience may have been the “first law of heaven,” but disobedience was the key to becoming wise. The original red pill.

I left Mormonism in 2013—when John Dehlin was still trying to convince people to “Stay Mormon,” Kate Kelly was marching for women to get the priesthood, and Jeremy Runnells’ CES letter was gaining steam and blowing up testimonies like a hand grenade. There wasn’t a lot of support online for making the transition from “in” to “out,” except for a few podcasters armed with pitchforks (a la John Larsen) and humor (Infants on Thrones), and a few angry Ex-Mormon Groups on Facebook and Reddit.

Admittedly, my exit from the church was messy. Especially as my husband and I renegotiated our opinions on and relationship with all the sins—alcohol, gambling, drugs, sex—all while still trying to raise four kids and keep our double life a secret from our families and communities.

My exit from my marriage was even messier. I was very very afraid. He had collateral. Lots of it. And he threatened to use it to destroy my reputation and my relationships with my family if I didn’t do what he wanted. In my haste to get out as peacefully as possible, I made several tactical errors that perpetuated my prison sentence with this man and cost me thousands in legal fees as I fought my way out.

Long story short, I made a lot of “wrong choices” and ended up in some very dark places. BUT, I wouldn’t change any of those choices, because they gave me experience, wisdom, and a sense of meaning. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything. I escaped Eden—a state of innocence and naivety—and found that the “lone and dreary world” I was taught to fear is actually a beautiful place.

A bit more about me:

I am a reader as much as a writer. I keep books stacked around me on my desk and nightstand and I call them my “friends”. I loathe amusement parks, Black Friday sales, and Dave and Busters. I was born in the last year or so of Generation X, and as much as I love my Millennial friends, X’ers are my people. They’re all old enough to have had sufficient ass-kickings in life that they are tough—like jerky. I want to walk the Camino de Santiago someday. My hair is naturally curly. I like my glass of wine or two, especially in social situations. I like riding on my Dutch bike with my husband, tulips and windmills, memoirs by women, working for myself, fire pits and s’mores, the occasional cigar, yoga pants, swearing, Survivor (I applied several times but haven’t made it yet), moon circles, Ganesha statues, snuggling with my kids, and inviting friends over. Truthfully, I adore the life I lead now. I’m a Capricorn sun, Sagittarius moon, Leo rising. And I hover between a 2 or 3 on the Enneagram. 

Are you online anywhere else?

Short answer, for now, is no. No websites, no Twitter, no Facebook, no Instagram for Escaping Eden. (I maintain some personal connections there but for now, I would like to keep those personal.)