Letting Go

Letting Go

How a Family Crisis Brought Clarity and Authenticity

by Lisa Hoelzer

Genre: Memoir

What would you do if your religion forced you to choose between the church and your children?

That's the dilemma Lisa Hoelzer faced after raising her four children within the confines of a strict, high-demand religion that dictated almost every aspect of their lives, from how they dressed to what they ate to how they used their time. Her vision of their ideal future started to change, however, when one child announced they were bisexual. Then another made a similar declaration. Additionally, her children struggled with anxiety and depression-conditions the church didn't prepare Hoelzer to deal with. If she followed the church's restrictive teachings, Hoelzer would have to turn her back on her beloved offspring. For this and other reasons, Hoelzer's small misgivings about the church grew into large objections.

Letting Go recounts the story of how, when faced with a transformational crisis that could have destroyed her family, Hoelzer chose a difficult and forbidden path that would change her world and theirs for the better. 

This is a book for anyone struggling to push ahead when there doesn't seem to be an easy or obvious path. Whether you're deconstructing religion or parenting a teen struggling with mental health, this insightful book will engage you with its thought-provoking ideas. With warmth, vulnerability, and insight, Hoelzer empowers readers to accept their children as they are and step into their more authentic selves. 

Getting Used to They/Them Pronouns

In the fall of 2020, our third child (Brooke) told us they were nonbinary and preferred they/them pronouns. This was in the midst of their mental health crisis, and my husband and I were willing to do whatever it took to help them feel better and be able to function in the world. We had heard more and more people coming out as trans or gender fluid, but we didn’t know much about it. We wanted to be supportive but had some hesitations because of our lifelong participation in a conservative religion. We were more open than some of our church friends and neighbors, though, because we were in the process of deconstructing our religion and eventually left that church altogether.

In an effort to support Brooke, I learned more about the history of gender roles and expectations and how that history is entangled with patriarchy and misogyny. But I also tackled the day-to-day challenge to altering my habits and using Brooke’s correct pronouns. It took effort to get comfortable with the new pronouns, but I was committed to making the change.

You don’t use someone’s pronouns when you speak to the person, you use them more when talking to someone else about the person. This came up most often when my husband, Bryan, and I would talk together about Brooke. At first, we would say “she” and then a few seconds later realize the mistake and repeat the sentence with “they.” This is how new habits are formed—correcting yourself afterwards at first until the new word becomes second nature. I started off at about 30 percent accuracy for the correct pronouns and worked up from there. When we were together as a family, all of us made an effort to use Brooke’s pronouns. I felt thankful that our other kids were supportive and willing to make this adjustment. I would feel a special pride when I used the preferred pronouns in family conversations in front of Brooke, hoping they noticed and felt validated.

            The pronouns also came up when talking to non-family members about Brooke—for example, when I called for their doctor appointments, when I picked up their prescriptions, or when someone asked how Brooke was doing. I often hesitated, pausing to ask myself, should I explain their gender and use they/them to refer to Brooke? Should I not explain but still use the pronouns? Or should I make it easier on myself and others and use she/her? At different times I chose differently. I started referring to Brooke as my child instead of my daughter and used their name more often to avoid the use of pronouns altogether.

In the beginning, I felt nervous bringing it up with others, especially in our conservative, religious community. I didn’t know if people would understand or be sympathetic. A lot of my apprehension came from not wanting to make other people uncomfortable. Eventually I decided that their comfort was not that important, certainly not more important than Brooke’s comfort. Even if Brooke wasn’t present when I spoke, using they/them raised awareness of non-binary people in general. When people found out that our family had a non-binary child, and that we supported the use of the new pronouns, it would stick with them and let them know that LGBTQ people are common and should be accepted.

            When I did use Brooke’s preferred pronouns, people would often get confused. They would ask, “Do you have twins?” Or they thought I was talking about Brooke and our younger daughter, Sydney. It took patience and repeated clarification, but it was worth it. To keep the new pronouns in the forefront of my mind, I changed Brooke’s contact name in my phone to “Brooke (they/them) Hoelzer.” When I texted with friends or family about Brooke, I sometimes began the conversation with those pronouns in parentheses, as a reminder. It meant a lot to me when a friend used the pronouns in text replies. I knew it was different and hard, and I appreciated their efforts.

Occasionally, doubts about they/them pronouns crept into my mind. Do we really need to do this? At times I thought it was weird, different, and uncomfortable. My mind kept going back to the idea that it was incorrect grammar. I wondered why the community hadn’t come up with a new singular pronoun for non-binary people, like zhe. That would be easier. I came to find out that new pronouns have in fact been suggested and temporarily used, but they did not gain widespread consensus. I didn’t want to have reservations about the pronouns; I wanted to embrace the idea without qualms.

One day, I came across an Instagram video that alleviated my questioning. I had started following LGBTQ accounts to learn more about this population. Because of that, Instagram suggested I might like to follow Jeffery Marsh, a popular non-binary influencer who helps people understand LGBTQ issues. In one of the first videos I saw, Marsh explained in their unique and soothing voice,

“You know, the thing about the singular they is that it’s already been decided. If you’re just finding out and you’re just objecting, you’re objecting to years and years of tradition within our movement. It’s in the Oxford English Dictionary; it’s in Merriam Webster; yes, all of that. But in addition, we’ve been using it for ourselves for years. It’s time to give up your objections and to use it.” 

            This video hit me with such power; it was as if they spoke directly to me. I’m the one just finding out, just objecting. It’s been decided. Let go of the objections. From that moment on, I relinquished my reluctance. This is a thing; it’s here to stay.

Three Life Coaching Principles That

Helped Me Through a Family Crisis

My memoir, Letting Go: How a Family Crisis Brought Clarity and Authenticity, chronicles a year in our family’s life when three things happen: our kids struggle with depression and anxiety, some of them come out as LGBTQ, and I reconcile that with my religion. Our third child, Brooke, attempted suicide and was in an inpatient behavioral health unit for five days and then an outpatient, or “day treatment,” program for six weeks.

This was certainly not how I expected my life to go. Everyone has ideas about how their children and their lives will look, but mine were even more narrowly defined because I was part of a high-demand, conservative Christian religion. My church’s prescribed lifestyle and personal choices were billed as the only way to happiness. At the time of our family crisis, I was already having doubts about and frustrations with the church, and within a year of Brooke’s hospitalization, I had left the church altogether.

Thankfully, I had been somewhat prepared for these challenges. Two years before I had joined a life coach program that taught a whole new approach to dealing with problems. My coach, whom I’ll call Liz, had been trained at The Life Coach School, where she learned the Model and many other mind management tools to help clients see reality more clearly and let go of painful thoughts.

There are three concepts I learned in Liz’s program that helped me through the difficult times our family was facing.

1.     It’s all a story.

The mind management skills I had learned from Liz had prepared me to let go of one story and embrace a different one. I knew that my brain gets ideas about how the world should work or what my life should look like, and that sometimes holding on to those ideas can cause me pain. I have learned how to redirect my mind to a new thought, even before I have a lot of reasons to accept the new idea. In fact, one of my favorites of Liz’s teachings was “believing things I don’t have much evidence for makes me mentally stronger.” That concept made sense to me, and I had worked to create a habit of identifying my stories and letting them go.

When Brooke came out as non-binary, I realized I had thoughts and stories about gender and how it should look. I was fortunate to be able to quickly see that these were just made-up ideas. Gender norms are a construct our society created. Somewhere along the way it was decided that girls and boys must look and act a certain way, that there’s nothing in between the two polarities, and that it’s wrong to look or act differently than society’s (or my church’s) definitions. These views had been held for a long time, but that did not mean they were true, real, or right. We could cling to them and continue to marginalize large groups of people who exist outside those norms, or we could see our notions for what they are: false paradigms that we had bought into.

I asked myself, what’s wrong with changing? Why do we hold on to these outmoded opinions? It seemed to me there is no danger in letting these beliefs go, no harm to society. In fact, the opposite would happen, more members of our community could live happy, productive lives, free from discrimination and prejudice. Many of our constructs are based in fear, and I could see that people were afraid of this change in thinking.

Thankfully, most of secular society has accepted gay people and the concept of gay marriage. Now we have a new hurdle: recognizing and supporting transgender individuals and those with genders outside of the binary. These new and different ways of being feel scary because we’re not used to them. But the sooner we can put down our defenses and embrace them, the happier we will be.

2.     How can I be the hero of this story and not the victim?

Liz taught me to ask this question whenever I was facing a challenging situation. I returned to this query again and again, and the answers lifted and sustained me. It would be easy to think of myself as a victim, to ask “why me?” when faced with the mental health struggles of our family. But I liked to turn it around and ask, “why not me?” Who else could do it as well as me? I was made for this. I’ve got this.

Thinking about how I’m the hero directs my brain toward reasons I am capable of handling this instead of focusing on how hard it is. I had knowledge and experience with mental health systems and treatments. I had Bryan to help navigate the doctors and medications. We had a strong foundation as a close, loving family. I remain calm in difficult situations and contemplate what I do and say before acting. Seeing myself as the hero of the story was comforting and motivating.

3.     Negative thoughts and painful emotions are a normal part of being human.

I used to think that feeling any negative emotion meant there was something wrong with me or my life. Before joining Liz’s program, I constantly compared my life to other people’s and concluded that mine came up short. On one hand, I felt cheated and bitter that I didn’t have what others had, but on the other hand, I felt guilty for being unhappy because I had so much.

It was such a relief to learn that these thoughts and emotions are normal and expected. No matter what our circumstances, our default mind finds something wrong with us and our lives. In an effort to keep us safe and to make sure we have what we need, our brain insists on comparison to others’, self-criticism, and worry about what others think of us. Unfortunately, all this usually causes us pain.

As part of Liz’s program, I got to listen in when others were being coached. Hearing other people talk about their problems convinced me that we all create painful emotions for ourselves. There isn’t a way of being or a way of living that prevents experiencing difficult feelings.

As we went through Brooke’s mental health crisis and tried to help them, I experienced a lot of challenging emotions. Luckily, I didn’t overreact to them. In the past, I might have berated myself for being negative or thought that I would feel down forever. But now I knew that no one is immune to life’s difficulties and that resisting the hardships just makes them worse. One of my mantras during this time was “This is what it’s like to be human.”

Liz’s wise teachings were in line with concepts from Buddhism: there will be pain in life that cannot be avoided, but when we resist hard times, we add on a layer of unnecessary suffering. On the other hand, if we put down our defenses and allow ourselves to feel the pain and experience the difficulty, we actually feel more alive, and the discomfort passes through us instead of getting stuck inside of us. 

Getting through that challenging year wasn’t easy, but because of my work with Liz, I had many tools to help me manage the situation. If I hadn’t joined the life coaching program, I would have seen Brooke’s mental health problems as an indication of something wrong with me or something wrong with my life. Fortunately, I had done the work and learned how to manage my mind, so I was able to respond with peace and acceptance. I had also improved at identifying my stories more quickly and loosening my grip on them. I had trained myself to identify how I was the hero of the story and not the victim. And I knew that painful emotions were part of the human experience. I had the skills to allow the discomfort and move through it instead of resisting it and letting it fester inside.

 Book Excerpts

Many parents in our faith community would be distressed by this conversation, particularly the lack of interest in church. They would worry about their child following the precepts of the gospel and qualifying for heaven, and they would worry about the cohesiveness of their eternal family. “What if everyone else in the family made it to heaven, but this one child wasn’t there with us?” they might ask themselves. That would be tragic. I’ve heard a saying from members of our church: “No empty chairs in heaven.” Each person has a seat at the table, and if one of them doesn’t make it to heaven, there will be an empty chair, and the rest of the family members will be forlorn.

Bryan and I have both felt for years that this was a manipulative and fear-based concept. It implies that everyone must be the same and take the same path or something has gone horribly wrong. It also implies a lack of long-term perspective. Life is long. Sometimes children finding their own way come back to the church eventually, especially if they are treated with kindness and acceptance during their time away. The people who use this saying are well-meaning, but in essence it is a form of coercion to get your children to act how you want them to.

Bryan and I had decided long ago that instead of having a family motto centered on no empty chairs in heaven, we would focus on having no empty chairs at our earthly table.  We wanted everyone in our family to feel comfortable with us and accepted by us, not judged for their actions or for who they are. We didn’t care what the church told us to do, we were going to keep our children close.

Needless to say, I was not distressed by Brooke’s answer. I understood that, in general, many people do not have the same interest in the church that I have, and I could especially understand why an LGBTQ person would not want to be involved. I was happy to set Brooke free of the restrictions of the church. I felt calm and comfortable with the idea that she would not participate in or be a part of the church anymore. But of course, there was that nagging thought in the back of my mind that I should care more, I should be more distressed. If I were a true believer, I would strongly desire that my family, as well as everyone else in the world, join and stay in the church.

I had learned from my coach Liz that the “shoulds” of our lives create unnecessary guilt and disgrace. The more we think we should be doing something, the more shame we generate, the worse we feel about ourselves, and the less motivation we have to do that thing. The brain thinks this judgment and criticism are useful, but it’s the opposite. When we have compassion for ourselves, acknowledge the reality, and say, “This is what I should be doing right now, because I am doing it,” then we can use that self-love to activate a desire to do and be better. Although it’s non-intuitive, the best way to change yourself is to love yourself however you are.

            When I learned about this, I was stunned to recognize how the rules and standards of the church result in an intense environment of shoulds. It is human nature to find fault with yourself, of course; non-religious people still create shame and guilt for themselves. But being part of a religion takes it up a notch. There were so many ways to mess up, so many ways to be and do the wrong thing. There was so little grace for and acceptance of weaknesses and shortcomings. Even though the doctrine taught that Christ offered love and forgiveness and grace, the demanding culture of the church fostered judgment of yourself and others. There were some families who had it “all”: job success and affluence, happy marriage, successful children who stayed in the church. The natural conclusion was if your life doesn’t look like this, you’re doing something wrong. 

            I was ready to let go of the shoulds and move into self-approval. My depression developed because of my powerful dislike of myself and my alleged weaknesses. I was tired of berating myself and spiraling into crying spasms. I yearned to release those stories. One of my favorite new concepts from Liz was formed as a question: “Why does it not matter that I have weaknesses and shortcomings?” I was trying to trust that this is what it’s like to be human; we identify faults in ourselves and magnify them in our minds. This feels important, but that focus is damaging. I wanted to adopt the thought “I am not expected to be perfect” and practice radical self-acceptance.

            In addition, I had grown tired of the shoulds the church encouraged for my kids. I was weary of the rules I felt compelled to enforce for them. I wondered if my and Bryan’s diligence in teaching our children the tenets of our religion had contributed to Brooke’s depression and suicide attempt. Had we unknowingly made Brooke feel distressed and inadequate? The church guidelines seemed to engender disapproval, judgment, and disconnection between me and my kids. I didn’t want to participate in that anymore.

 

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Book Links:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Letting-Go-Brought-Clarity-Authenticity/dp/B0CJ1W9RZH

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Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199723628-letting-go

About the Author

Lisa Hoelzer took being a stay-at-home mom to her four children very seriously. She studied parenting books and worked hard to improve and grow as a parent. She eventually created her own paradigm for parenting, which you can find at www.betterwayparenting.net.

An avid learner, Lisa has a bachelors in chemistry and a masters in social work. She is a lifelong student of the human psyche, including motivations, biases, mind management, and mental health. She writes about mind management on Medium. Lisa loves to read, write, and discover more about the world. Her other interests include anti-racism, LGTBQ-allyship, and spirituality after religion.

Her memoir, Letting Go: How a Family Crisis Brought Clarity and Authenticity will be out in October 2023. An essay based on an excerpt from the book was published in the literary journal Academy of Heart and Mind in November, 2022. She and her family have lived in New Orleans, Minnesota, and Utah.

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Author Links

Website: https://lisahoelzer.mailerpage.io

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisahoelzer_author

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/lisa-hoelzer

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Lisa-Hoelzer/author/B0CL2R7XKT

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/43718543.Lisa_Hoelzer

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