Joanna Brooks

“This is a church of tenderness and arrogance, of sparkling differences and human failings. There is no unmixing the two.”

— Joanna Brooks

Courage doesn't mean being free from fear; it means learning to work through fear and speak even when we are afraid.

— Joanna Brooks

What do we do with ourselves when we find we have failed to become the adults we dreamed as pious children?

— Joanna Brooks

I am not the same kind of Mormon girl I was when I was seven, eight, or eighteen years old. I am…

— Joanna Brooks

“I can’t go on like this, I told myself. And You can’t possibly want me to feel this way, I demanded of God. …

— Joanna Brooks

“After many years of confusion, she will come home to a house she chose herself, with a man she chose herself, a…

— Joanna Brooks

“Religion is about responsibility to a community and a tradition ...”

— Joanna Brooks

“I said "it is my first language, my mother tongue, my family, my people, my home; it is my heart, my heart,…

— Joanna Brooks

“Who watches over us when we leave?  Who remembers our names when disappear ourselves from home? Who hears the absence of our…

— Joanna Brooks

“You see that? That big messy spiral of people, moving, trying to find God? I ask them, as the exodus unfolds once…

— Joanna Brooks

How badly I wanted to belong as I had when I was a young Mormon girl, to be simply a working part…

— Joanna Brooks

“How is it we come through the most difficult miles?  Do we come silent or singing?  Do we come in company, or…

— Joanna Brooks