Episode 157 - Leaving Polygamy, Finding my Voice with Shirlee Draper
Today, I get to talk with someone whose story has stayed with me for years. Shirlee Draper grew up in a polygamist community that became more controlling and unsafe as time went on. With no money, no work history, and no support outside her community, she made the difficult decision to leave everything behind and start over. We discuss the tension between staying and knowing something isn’t right, and what it takes to start trusting yourself again. This conversation is not just about Shirlee’s journey—it’s about what can happen when women find their voice and their autonomy. Here’s what we cover:
How Shirlee spent years saving money and quietly planning before she could leave
What it means to choose the “least harmful option” when every choice feels like a betrayal
Why we can’t understand other people’s choices without their experiences and context
Why decision-making is something you have to learn after being told what to do your whole life
What it looks like to help women build their own inner voice instead of replacing it with another authority
Shirlee Draper was born and raised in “Short Creek.” After leaving the community, she obtained a Bachelor of Social Work and a Master of Public Administration. She has served in many capacities in the rebirth of her hometown, including facilitating the election of the first female mayor in 2017; opening a community health clinic in 2019; serving on the board of the UEP Trust and Short Creek Community Center; and part of the Collective Impact project aimed at community revitalization.She is employed as Deputy Director for Cherish Families, a social service nonprofit which helps people from polygamous backgrounds move from crisis to thriving. She specializes in bridging the population with mainstream society and provides education for outside service providers and government agencies She also serves on several state and civic committees. Shirlee lives in St. George with her special needs children and loves to play the piano, read and travel.
Find Shirlee here:
linkedin.com/in/shirlee-draper
Support Cherish Families' work
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pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations
youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333
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Transcript
Sara Bybee Fisk 00:59
I am so excited for you to hear this interview with Shirlee Draper. Her story has inspired me, and as I have followed the work that she has done, it has just been an endless source of inspiration. It is so deeply human. Let me tell you a little bit about Shirlee. Shirlee grew up in the FLDS church, the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is an offshoot of the LDS church that I grew up in. And she grew up in this really tightly knit border community known as Short Creek, which is Colorado City, Arizona. She was born into a polygamous family and raised in the FLDS church that really dictated everything about what she wore, who she married, and how much of the outside world she was allowed to see. At 23, Shirlee was placed into an arranged marriage. She became a first wife, and then part of a plural wife household, and then a mother of four children, including a medically fragile daughter that she almost lost. And then, with no money, no credit history, no rental history, she packed her children into a car and left everything she had ever known in her community when she realized she did not want that life anymore.That all by itself would be remarkable. It would be an incredible story. But what Shirlee has done since then is what really made me want to have her on the podcast. I actually first met Shirlee back in 2018 when Short Creek was just beginning to open itself up to the outside world. For context, Warren Jeffs was the self-proclaimed prophet of the FLDS church, and he wielded absolute control over the community for years, arranging marriages, including lots of underage girls, expelling families on a whim, abuse and violence, and using fear and isolation as tools of really total domination. It's an incredible story. Google it if you're interested. He was arrested in 2006, and he's currently serving a life sentence for sexual assault of minors. His grip on Short Creek had been so complete and so suffocating that even after his arrest, it took years before the community felt safe enough to cautiously begin opening its doors.
Sara Bybee Fisk 03:27
And I was among a small group of people who got to visit in 2018 as that was starting to happen and meeting Shirlee then, kind of planted a seed that eventually led to this conversation. A little bit more about Shirlee, just so you really get a feel for how amazing she is. Shirlee went back to school, she earned a master's in public administration, and she is today the director of operations for Cherish Families, which is a nonprofit that has grown from two volunteers in 2014 to 21 employees that help families in 17 different states, Canada and Mexico.And the heart of what Cherish Families does is something that I find I just connect with. so completely. It's meeting women exactly where they are and helping them make choices about what they want for their lives. If a woman wants to leave her polygamous community, then Cherish Families helps her leave with housing and support and case management and mental health resources and somebody who actually understands what she's walking away from. But there are women who don't want to leave. They want to stay. And if she wants to remain with her family and in her community and with her faith group, then Cherish Families helps her to do that too with dignity, without judgment, and with resources that will help her make the best decisions for her life. Because the goal is not ever to tell women what to do, right? The goal is to make sure women actually have choice, informed choice, resources to help them make their choice. And that's what Shirlee does. And I think it is just incredible. Now, some of you might be thinking, okay, what does somebody who has left a polygamous, you know, life and faith organization have to do with me? And you're going to find out what Shirlee and I talk about in this episode, the themes, finding your own voice when every system is telling you to be quiet, trusting your gut, even when the stakes are high, and making brave decisions before you can possibly know how they'll turn out. Those are not niche experiences, right? They are the human experience and Shirlee just lived them in a different way than most of us will. But that clarity makes her one of the most honest and insightful, wise people that I've ever encountered about what it actually looks like to stop outsourcing your life to other people's expectations, and to start trusting yourself to reconnect, or to connect to the voice that all of us have, that helps us know what is best to do. You do not have to have grown up in a polygamous community, in order to know what it feels like to silence yourself or to stay somewhere out of fear, or to wonder if you're allowed to want something different. Shirlee's story just covers all of those themes, and I'm so excited for you to hear this. Finally, if this episode moves you or is intriguing to you and you want to go deeper, I have actually some, it's news that I'm truly excited about.
Sara Bybee Fisk 06:35
This April 17th through 19th, Shirlee is leading a historical tour of Short Creek in Hilldale, Utah, and I will be there. All of the proceeds benefit Cherish families. It is genuinely a rare opportunity to visit this community, to be hosted by Shirlee, to learn its history, and to support the women and families that Shirlee's organization works with.You can find all the details and get your tickets, find out any information you need at lostandfound.club. I will put the link in the show notes. I'd love to see you there. Please welcome the remarkable Shirlee Draper. Shirlee, it is such a pleasure to have a chance to talk with you again. It's been several years since you and I interacted, but I have thought about you many, many, many, many times.
Shirlee Draper 07:24
Thank you. It's an honor to be asked to be on your show.
Sara Bybee Fisk 07:26
As we kind of begin our interview, I'm really interested in if you could just give us an overview of your life as many details as you would want us to know that kind of set up the context for our conversation today.
Shirlee Draper 07:41
Hey, that's, that's not a small ask. Let's do that.
Sara Bybee Fisk 07:46
Just that little thing.
Shirlee Draper 07:48
Okay. So, of course, born and raised in the FLDS community in Short Creek, which is Hilldale, Utah, Colorado City, Arizona. And growing up really in a village, like it was, everybody in town was either my relative, my neighbor, my school friend. I literally knew everybody in town. When the saying, you know, takes a village to raise a child, nobody knows what that means anymore. We really did have a village. We took care of each other. We lived in common. The community was owned by a trust, which was owned by the church. And so, that meant that we were all pretty cohesive.And we had a community garden, and we all went and bottled the fruit, and it went in the bishop's storehouse, and people who needed it could take it. And we just had our plays and programs and dances. And we were a self-contained community. As a child, there were very overt messages about, you know, what a girl's role is, what a woman's role is. But I was raised by a woman who was not quite a round peg for a round hole. She was quite an outlier. And so, my mom, very early on, well, she instilled a love of reading into me. And so, I read everything I could get my hands on, but she was also quite a feminist, very outspoken, quite independent.And so, she instilled in me the, and quite explicitly, you know, you question things. You feel good in your soul before you do things. She called it the distant early learning system. If somebody sets your bells off, she said, you trust your inner being. And so, my mom taught me how to be outspoken at the same time as kind of reinforcing the religion. And so, it was a little anachronistic, but that's human nature. Like, there are all of these contradictions we're constantly encountering, and that was my home life. And so, before Warren Jeffs came along, we had, you know, I went to public school, graduated from public high school. I was going to the local community college. There was a lot of freedom.I was working. I had my own job. I had my own car. There was, you know, girls were not expected to get married really young, but they were expected to toe the line. They were expected to be obedient and say the right things and do the right things. And I wasn't necessarily saying the right things, but I was doing the right things. I was a good girl. I would go to church every Sunday. I fully believed in this religion that was the correct religion because I was born into it, and that's how we define correct religions. And I fully believed, you know, this is what God wanted. And there were things about it that I didn't agree with, and I just figured I was going to navigate those things, and I would have it out with God after I died. And so, I was placed into an arranged marriage because that's how our community did it. And soon after my marriage, or even right around the time I was getting married, was when Warren Jeffs was really starting to rise to power.
Shirlee Draper 11:12
But at that point, he didn't really have any impact on my life. You know, he was in Salt Lake. Mostly, you know, he'd come down with his father once in a while. We'd see him around and things like that, but I never had any regard for him, and it didn't mean anything to me.But soon after I was married, I had three children in rapid succession. And by then, he'd really kind of ensconced himself into this leadership. And I remember the first time I heard him speak in church, and he said something that made me just go, oh, I don't like this guy. Like, that's not what we believe. And so I just, at that point, I'm like, well, and it doesn't matter because he's not in leadership, I don't have to worry about him. But I started to see him really slide himself between his father, who was the prophet at the time, and the community and start to really do horrible things and taking families apart and instilling really ridiculous rules and saying we can't say certain words, we can't wear certain colors, we can't play, we can't, you know, all of these things, we can't be critical or questioning of any doctrine and then really seeing the cost when people would start to do any of those things, they would immediately be ejected from the community, they would lose their families, they would lose all contact with any friends, family, anything. And so that cost was so high, and that's when it became so rigid that I started realizing that I would have to be really careful, I would have to start being silent about my questions and my concerns, my way of operating in this world.
Sara Bybee Fisk 13:04
So fascinating that you have a mother who teaches you about this distant early warning system. And then one of your earliest memories of Warren Jeffs is him triggering that early warning system.That's exactly right. And you feeling in your body, I don't like this guy.
Shirlee Draper 13:25
the very first time I heard him speak.
Sara Bybee Fisk 13:27
help those who would be listening to this who don't really understand the cost of being ejected from the community, right? They might think, Oh, well, you just go live somewhere else. Or yeah, you just, you know, you just move.Can you please, if you're, if you're watching the YouTube version of this, Shirlee's eyes just got real big. Can you please help them understand what the actual cost was.
Shirlee Draper 13:55
Oh yes, there was no just about it. First of all, if the church owns the home that you live in, and you've spent your entire life giving over everything you own, and all of your money and everything because that was
Sara Bybee Fisk 14:10
the practice, that was the expectation, right? You're provided a home, buys church, and in exchange, you...
Shirlee Draper 14:17
Yes. You turn over all of your access to the church. We were living Brigham Young's version of the United Order. And so for many people, you have no assets that you can parlay into a new home. For everyone, you have no rental history. You can't just walk up to a landlord and say, I've got all of these years of good rental history. So there's all of these barriers. For women specifically, there's no credit history. There's no income. Sometimes there's not a lot of education, no work history. And so for me specifically, there was no just anything. By the time I decided I have to get out of here, I had three children and another on the way. And with no rental history, no credit history, no work history, no income for children, and two of them were special needs. And my daughter, who was medically fragile, her nighttime nursing care, all of my friends, all of my family, my identity, my sense of belonging, everything was tied up in this community. I had literally nothing on the outside, no assets, no support structure, no sense of belonging.And I don't know if your listeners are in tune to how critical the sense of belonging is to good mental health. When you are taken from that, it has a huge psychological cost. So all of these costs coupled with the fact that every time I left my community, I was treated with a lot of hostility because we were deviants. We were evil. And so people would see me in my distinctive dress and go, that's one of those. She's evil. She's not welcome here. And I would get treated like that. So when I'm saying the cost of being ejected from this community, where first of all, it's mostly safe, you take away the Warren Jeff, but everything else is safety. It's belonging, it's love, it's support, it's all of this structure. And so you're choosing in a moment, am I going to negotiate with Warren Jeffs? Or I'm going to leave literally everything and try to negotiate with the hostility on the outside.
Sara Bybee Fisk 16:44
That is certainly the tension that I want to get into in just a second, but before I just, I want to go back because you talked about this kind of beautiful village, right? This self-contained community.And for those who are not familiar with the way that the FLDS community works, it was isolated. The only people who lived in that community were members of the FLDS communities and the various, you know, maybe different branches. Is that the right way to say that?
Shirlee Draper 17:17
kind of. I mean, it was the vast majority was FLDS. There were a few outliers.
Sara Bybee Fisk 17:22
Okay, thank you. And this beautiful community that you talk about where everybody takes care of each other, everybody donates all of their extra money and food into this common pot that takes care of everyone.That seems like such a beautiful idea until you look at the effects on the women and those who want to leave, no job history, no rental history, no ability to provide for themselves, no understanding of how the quote unquote outside world works so that you can navigate it. Your dress is distinctive, your hair is distinctive, your manner of speech is distinctive. And any time you leave your community, you are treated as the deviant other.I remember traveling through on family trips, traveling through that Four Corners area and stopping in a Walmart and seeing members, I'm not sure where they are from, but the distinctive dress, the long hair, the buns, the many, many children, and just staring, right? And so I can't imagine what that was like for you as a woman with children, especially the ones that you described having special needs and medical fragility. And so at a certain point, you knew you wanted to leave.Yes. Right. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Can you tell me a little bit more about what was it that kind of tipped you over from, I don't like this. I don't know about this. This, my early warning system is being pinged too. I don't want to be here anymore.
Shirlee Draper 19:05
Yes, there was actually a moment, and I had actually several of these moments, but the one that tipped me from going, I can navigate this, I think I can figure this out, to I have to get out of here, was the day that Warren Jeff stood up in church and said, Father said we have to take our children out of school. And it was because it was a public school and they couldn't keep apostates or others from the outside in coming to that school. And so our children would have to associate with apostates, which was again, very high cost. So that day, because education meant so much to me and my children weren't even of school age at that point. And I just thought, oh my gosh. And again, remember my history is having read every book in the school library and everybody's library is in town. And there was a lot of history books in there. And I'd read about what dictators like Hitler does and about how shutting down education is very, very important to keep people in ignorance. I just had a chill run down my back and I'm like, oh my God, okay. So I knew this train was going off a cliff, but it's going off a cliff now. This is it, I have to get my children out of here.And that day it was nuts. I'm sitting there in church and I'm thinking, I can't be the only one that's feeling like this. And I'm looking around at other people's faces to see if anybody else is going, what? And everybody was just like, very serene. And I'm like, did you not hear what he said? And I just, I sat, I used to be in the choir, but that day was sitting in the audience and I leaned forward and I looked at the side doors and I thought, those are closed. If they trot the poisoned Kool-Aid in here now, how am I going to get out? That moment I equated to this, this is it. Like, this is the final straw. This is, there's no getting out of this. I had no idea how much worse he could get. I had no idea. All I knew was that I was not going to stay there and let him do that to my kids. And so, and that was, so in 1998, I decided that I wasn't part of anything and I might have to leave, but I think that was in the year 2000 that he said that. And that was the moment that I was like, oh, I'm not, I can't just play around anymore. Like, I have to actively get going on planning this. And I have to figure out a way to leave on my own terms with, and that means I have to have time to create assets and figure out finances so that I can take my children with me. Because if I had just left at that moment, I would have been sleeping under a bridge and I couldn't do that to my children.
Sara Bybee Fisk 22:28
I think what people can identify with is being a part of a system that is getting increasingly more toxic, controlling, whereas less sovereignty and freedom, and thinking, okay, all right, I'm going to have to figure out how to do this. I'm going to figure out how to handle this. Okay, I can do this because what they get out of being in the system, like a job or a certain relationship is still worth it to them, quote unquote, worth it, right? But then there's that moment where it tips over into, wow, I don't think this is worth it anymore.That's right. And there are professions like that. There are relationships like that. There are situations like that. And systems like that. Systems like that. That's exactly right, right? And so whether it's the polygamist FLDS system or the medical system where you're a doctor in a hospital that is increasingly just squeezing more and more and more and more out of you and having less and less and less room for you as a human and what your humanity demands, I think we're talking about themes that are very, very familiar to a lot of people. And so I appreciate you speaking about it that way. And I also appreciate you bringing up the fact that you centered the experience of your children, because I often think that women especially and parents will often do things for our children that we may not necessarily do for ourselves. And that is also a really important connection point for people listening to this because you knew if we're going to leave, it has to be done in a certain way so that I can take my children with me so that they are safe and so that I can care for them.
Shirlee Draper 24:35
Yeah, that's right. And I think I probably, I don't know, it's hard to speculate, but it really was trying to keep my children safe, that gave me the strength to do most of it.And that was that was really the moment where I stopped thinking, I'm just going to continue to try to negotiate this, I'm just going to, you know, keep quiet, keep to myself, keep, you know, keep we have to, we have to be done.
Sara Bybee Fisk 25:08
Yeah. You've said that you spent some time in what you call the little dance of self-suppression, right? Because you were not ready to be kicked out. You wanted to avoid being ejected, but you knew that that was the direction you were heading in. How did you manage that?And how do you distinguish between being strategically patient and self-betrayal?
Shirlee Draper 25:37
That's complex because it felt like a betrayal. It felt like a betrayal, but no matter what I did, it was going to be a betrayal. In that moment, I'm choosing the least harmful thing. Not the best option, but the least harmful option because all of the options are harmful.From that moment on, I'm packing up a pan here and a blanket there and some toys and things that might not be missed from the household and starting to pack boxes together and I'm starting to save money. I'm starting to make plans, but I have to keep my mouth shut about how I feel about Warren Jeffs and what's happening because if I'm exposed, I'll be ejected and they'll be able to keep my kids and it will be a fight after that. Those were all betrayals. Listening to people talk about Warren Jeffs as if he's God and inside it's burning my very soul. That was a betrayal to not say anything, but it would have been a bigger betrayal to my long-term plans to expose myself. Starting in the year 2000 until the last week of February in 2004, that's four years of betraying myself in service of something better for my kids and just listening and trying to not give myself away while I'm strategizing and saving and planning. It came to a moment where it was a ready or not moment. There was a Saturday meeting where Warren Jeffs called 21 leaders of the community in front of the audience and ejected them publicly and then he made everybody get down on their knees and swear allegiance to him. And that was my moment where I was like, there will be no more betrayal. And every time I took a breath for those four years, it was like there was a band that was tightening around my chest to where I couldn't breathe and I couldn't breathe and I couldn't breathe. And that was the final moment was like a harness clicked into place. And I went, this is the day there will be no more days like this. When I finally said, OK, next Saturday, I'm driving away.
Sara Bybee Fisk 28:10
That's so incredibly powerful and also so nuanced. I think it's so fascinating that we want there to be good guys and bad guys. We want there to be right choices and wrong choices. And we so often look on the outside of people's lives and want them to have made different decisions.But I think you're talking about having to choose the lesser harmful things in service of the greater purpose is such a beautiful thing to consider because we just can't know what that is for other people all the time. That's right, that's exactly right. And so the judgments that we make and the way that we look through the window to their lives and criticism is such a disservice not only to us, right, because we don't know, but to the humanity of other people and to the wisdom that individuals are only given for their own lives.
Shirlee Draper 29:15
That is so true. I've learned since then, and I've said so many times, that if there's one thing I know, is that if I were the person I'm looking at and wondering why they're doing something, if I had been raised, because they had been raised, if I had the information in my head that they have in their head, if I have the fears and the experiences and all of the things that make up their world, I would be doing what they're doing. Yes, yes.And I can't just imbue my perspective into their world and expect them to do something different because they don't have the information that I have in my head, and I don't have the information that they have in their head.
Sara Bybee Fisk 29:54
Yeah, their life makes sense in the context of their experiences and what they know. And I think that's so easy to lose.I lose sight of it, right? When I look at people with whom I, I have differences, I want them to act, quote unquote, better, different. I lose sight of that. And I really appreciate how you're, how you're talking about that. So the following Saturday came, what happened?
Shirlee Draper 30:21
So I had, I had found two allies during those intervening four years and one was my younger brother whose soul had also been insulted by Warren Jeffs. I finally found somebody I could talk to about it. And so he was very sympathetic and told me, you know, I will gather up your boxes and keep them in my room so that you won't be found out. And I had recruited him and my nephew to get a U-Haul and show up at my house that following Saturday. And I think, you know, there's, there's this, this pervasive notion out there that if somebody left, they had to flee in the middle of the night and people were coming after them and they were dragging them back and all of that. And that might have been true for one or two people, but, but writ large, you know, Warren Jeffs was very mindful of the poisoning of the well. If he was preemptively removing them so that they would not talk about things that he didn't want them to talk about. So, so rather than having people come after you, it was good riddance and we never want to see you again, mostly.So, so my plan was that Saturday I was going to get up and just tell my husband and my sister wife that I'm leaving and I'm taking my children and I'm also taking this particular piece of furniture and, you know, things like that. But it was, you know, if it was very lucky, my husband and sister wife decided to go out of town that day. And so I didn't have to navigate that. So my brother pulled the U-Haul up to the front gate at 10 o'clock in the morning and we loaded up and drove away. But, but before I left town, I went around to my family to tell them goodbye. So I, I just made the announcement to my family. I just went to my parents. I went to each of my siblings in their homes and said, I do not believe in this. I think it's been very harmful. I understand that you do. And I also understand that if you believe in this, this means this is the end of our relationship and I'm not going to pursue you. I won't, you know, I won't put you in harm by coming to your house, but I want you to know, here's my address. You can come and find me at any time. My door is always open to you. And so I just, I said goodbye believing that that would be the last time I would ever see them. And so you can imagine that day was so hard because I was so close with my family. And, and leaving them and rethinking, you know, I'm going to a place where I'm going to be friendless and family less. I'm going to be an orphan. You know, it had to take me being at a point where I literally could not breathe before that was going to happen. So I moved, I moved to St. George that day and, and my parents and my brother and his wife came and found me that they just got in their car and followed me down to make sure that I was moved in okay. They helped me move all the furniture. They made sure everything was safe and secure and we had food and, and they didn't leave until like one or two in the morning. And, and I just, in that moment I was like, well, I wish I'd have known you were going to do that before. I would have left a long time ago. So.
Sara Bybee Fisk 33:57
Yeah, not being able to talk about it, not being able to talk about your feelings, not being able to talk about that distant warning system that is now fully on fire every single day in your body suffocating you not being able to breathe.Do you have a sense of what that was like for your mother to watch you do that?
Shirlee Draper 34:21
You know, it's so interesting. This is my mom because she's passed away now, but she occupies such a huge part of who I am and what I became. And she is so, she's so human in that she's got so many contradictions because until she died, she still professed to believe in the religion, but she wasn't doing the dutiful, obedient things that she was supposed to be doing. And so she chose to live her religion on her terms.My mom was one of the few people that I actually expressed quite a bit of my discontent to. One time I told her that I felt like that Warren Jeffs was the antichrist because he was undoing everything Christ taught us. And she never betrayed me, you know. And she said, you know, I said, what, you know, Christ only asked us to love. And Warren's telling us to not love. I can't think of anything more antichrist than that. And she said to me, and as I look back, I think it was so ingenious how she worded it. She said, that's not right. And I'm like, no, it is not right. And it could have meant anything. She could have meant that you're not saying the right thing about Warren or that she agreed with me that it wasn't right. But she never, never did shun me. From that moment on, she would come and see me all the time. And we spend a lot of time together. And so she was, it couldn't have been a surprise to her that I was going to leave.
Sara Bybee Fisk 36:09
I experienced the smallest part, I think, of what you're talking about because when I was having my own inner turmoil, I couldn't talk about it with my parents either. I was afraid that I was afraid of their disappointment. I was afraid of crushing them. And the day that I told them that I was leaving, it was the hardest conversation that I ever had.And I had nowhere near on the line that you had, right? I did experience the loss of friends and community, but nowhere near the scale that you are describing. And so when you were driving away, what was that like for you?
Shirlee Draper 36:51
you. Again, the contradictions, you know, it was terrifying. You know, the there was an overriding fear of the unknown. I know I'm leaving behind hell, but I don't know that it's not hell that I'm going into. There was
Sara Bybee Fisk 37:10
so that your previous treatment whenever you would leave the community.
Shirlee Draper 37:14
Yeah. And, and being unclear about how I'm going to, you know, how am I going to help my children navigate, um, acculturation? My kids don't know anything about public school or, you know, pop culture or anything. That's a huge barrier.Um, how am I going to navigate financial systems and structures that I don't know anything about? There's the fear, of course, of, of losing all of my friends and family and not knowing, you know, where my support structure is going to be. But there was also a sense of exhilaration. And I am, I think I have a little bit of a neurodivergence in that I've always mistaken fear for excitement. So, and so I did have this sense of grand adventure. Like I have no idea what's going on and I'm free. I'm going to be making every decision on my own without repercussions, without, you know, denigration. I will choose exactly what I want to do. I will manage my life exactly how I want to manage my life. And so that sense of exhilaration as I was driving away coupled with the fear and the sorrow was just, it was really overwhelming.So having left this very controlling culture, I was, I was so excited to join what from the outside looked like such an egalitarian society, you know, all of the right things are said, you know, women have all of these rights and women can hold public office. And, and it was, in fact, it was one of the things that the FLDS pointed to as evil was that women didn't know their place in outside society. And so I was really excited to join this, this place. And, and it was, it was such a shock and a disappointment that the outside world really wasn't different than the FLDS. It was just more covert about it. There were a lot of unspoken rules, a lot of microaggressions, a lot of side eyes, but you know, nobody was ever honest about women shouldn't do that. They never said it out loud, but, but there was a lot of cues that I just kept just tripping over and bumbling into. And pretty soon I'm like, Oh, Oh, Oh, I see how it is. Okay.
Sara Bybee Fisk 39:49
I wish you were wrong, Shirlee.
Shirlee Draper 39:51
I wish I were wrong too.
Sara Bybee Fisk 39:55
Hey, have you ever had a moment where you really wanted to ask for something? You wanted to maybe set a limit or tell someone about the support you needed and you just couldn't make yourself say it, almost like the words got stuck? Me too. And actually, I lived that way for years. I felt alone and exhausted. And it's the whole reason that I do the work that I do now.If any part of that sounds familiar, have I got a workshop for you? My next workshop is called Say What You Want to Say. And it is for you if you find that it is really easy to speak up for maybe your clients or your kids or your colleagues, but when it comes to your own personal life, you can't ask for what you want. Or maybe you've noticed that you spend a lot of time, days, weeks, maybe even months rehearsing what you want to say, but then the minute things get uncomfortable, you cave or you apologize or you retreat. You're not the problem. You just never learned the skill. Say What You Want to Say is a free one-hour workshop that's happening on April 9th at 5 p.m. Pacific. And here's what I can promise. You will leave with one skill and one thing you can actually do that week. So you become the woman who can have any conversation she needs to have and handle whatever happens. Check the show notes for the registry link or you can also grab it from my Instagram bio and I'll see you there. But yeah, the gender roles and the rigidity and the desire for compliance over sovereignty is, yeah, it's a feature, not a bug.
Shirlee Draper 41:40
Oh yeah. Yeah. And I mean, and that's what makes, you know, right now there's, there's this dystopian fun house mirror where, you know, handmade's tail apparently has been a, a how to instead of a cautionary table and tail. And so now I'm, I'm looking at this stuff being coded and being, now this is being said out loud, you know, these kinds of things. And I'm, I'm horrified because I'm like, did nobody learn anything from what we just went through.Yeah. Like people are saying out loud, women need to be obedient and submissive. And I'm like, Oh yeah.
Sara Bybee Fisk 42:19
Oh, but no. Women need to know their place, right? Women shouldn't vote. Women should be... Yes, there's a lot more of that being done.
Shirlee Draper 42:28
said out loud now. And it's, you know, actually, in retrospect, it's good that these things are rising to the surface because before, you know, I would be calling this out 22 years ago when I joined this wonderful society. And I would be called a feminazi. And that's not true.And women have all of these special privileges. But now that it's being said out loud, now I'm like, now can we talk about this?
Sara Bybee Fisk 42:54
Yeah, it is. You and I are in agreement.We have to expose that dark underbelly of people who still think this way. We have to know that they are not just a figment of feminist nightmares, right? It's happening in actuality.
Shirlee Draper 43:14
Yeah. And now, because now because, you know, it's being recorded, it's on the internet, we can not just say, this is what I'm experiencing, because women can't be believed that that's what they're experiencing, it has to be shown. And another man has to be saying it before other men can say, Oh, oh, you are experiencing this.
Sara Bybee Fisk 43:34
It is true. It is happening. So, Shirlee, you now work with women who are exiting controlling systems. I would love to know about your work with Cherish families.
Shirlee Draper 43:48
I would love to talk about cherished families. So, you know, it's interesting, the more the more therapy I do, the more I realize, you know, cherished families is, is a result of my trauma. We always work through our trauma. But it was born out of, you know, seeing, you know, I'm like, okay, this is my experience. There are going to be more and more people who are going to catch on to this, who are going to be victims of trauma and family abuse and all of these things that are going to need help. And in fact, people would show up at my house, I was having people sleep on my couch while I would be connecting them with services. And and I would go to elected officials and say, Hey, did you know that there's all these kids being taken from their parents and farmed out to different places and being abused and what we know about childhood trauma and its impacts on the lifespan, we are going to have a flood of crisis. It's coming, it's arriving. And I felt like chicken little running around, saying the sky is falling and everybody's like, Oh, yeah, probably, probably. And nobody was doing anything about it.And so finally, I realized that I'm was going to have to do something about it. And that's when I can collect connected with Alina Darger. And she'd already filed the paperwork for cherished families. She came and hey, I hear you're talking about doing this work. And I said, Yes, I am. But I also had had a lot of experience with other organizations who were trying to quote unquote rescue the polygamists. And what that looked like was rescuing them from their bad religion and imposing the correct one on them and thereby solving all their problems. And you know, shipping them out of the world. It's like now you're a whole human being because you look like me. So now you're worthy of God's blessings. And and then a lot of exploitation in the process, you know, putting people on television, making them say horrible things about their own DNA, their family, their upbringing. And and I just I was horrified by that.So you know, we Alina and I had to come to Jesus, I'm like, you will not exploit people, you will not do this. And and a lot of it really was about, you know, we're not making people's decisions. So one of the things that cherish families does not do is tell people they have to leave polygamy. We're like, what would you like to do? What help do you need? What would help you become a whole human being expressive of your own wants and desires and best life choices. So we help people from any polygamous background, they don't have to be leaving for us to get help for them to get help from us. And we provide crime victim services, which is so huge, mental health, housing, family peer support, basic needs, legal services, and and we connect to any other thing that people need.
Shirlee Draper 46:50
So our overarching program is crisis to thriving. And we measure 10 life domains, it's whatever you need in any of these life domains to reach thriving. If that's a job, we'll connect you with workforce services in a very culturally sensitive way, so that they can provide services and help you get education and and a job that you know, sets you up for success. If you need education, we'll get you into a university or whatever is appropriate for you. If it's you know, in medical services, we have all of these partnerships that that help people get the resources they need. And it's a way that is that is so much more cultural, culturally sensitive and friendly. So I am really proud of the work that we do. .
Sara Bybee Fisk 47:33
I hear two things kind of reflected back in the story of what you do with cherished families. Number one, you are now that ally that you found in your brother and in your nephew. You are now the person that they can talk to, that they can run these ideas by, that they can get perspective from. And that is so essential, right? To have someone who is willing to hear your inner thoughts of like, I don't know that I want to do this. Or there's something about this, that distant early warning system, right? Mind is being pinged and I think you're someone that I can talk to about that. I might not know what it means yet. I might not even know what I want to do about it yet. That's right.But I hear that echoed often in the work that I do with women, where something doesn't feel right. They don't know totally what it means yet or what it's going to mean for their life. And they're very scared to think about the final destination of this, whether it's in a relationship that is not showing up or working out the way they thought it would, a job, any kind of a friendship. Right. So I have found that if I push them in any direction, there's a collapse because they're not ready to make the decisions. And then the second thing that I hear is that strategic patience again, where honoring someone's sovereignty and inner wisdom is the only way for it to develop within themselves. And it's like trying to harvest fruit before it's ready, right? It has to have the time that it needs to grow and mature because otherwise you're not going to get what you want. You're going to get fruit that isn't ripe, fruit that isn't ready. And it's going to, in most cases, they're just going to go back and kind of double down even harder on what is already known and safe and familiar.
Shirlee Draper 49:45
Yes, that's exactly right. And for this population, particularly, because they've been told what to do their entire lives, and particularly under Warren Jeffs, where perfect obedience at the hint of something that you're told to do, you jump. There is no questioning, there's no thought for yourself. And so to tell someone what's best for them to do is just recreating that authority that Warren Jeffs had over them. And so you take that burden, that mental of Warren Jeffs off them, and you put your own onto them. And all you're doing is perpetuating the crisis.And so it's so important for us to help people develop their own inner will, their own inner listening, their own inner self-determination. And many times, we've had people just say, I'm at this crossroads, I need you to tell me what to do. And we're like, how about we walk through a decision tree? What would happen if? And if you choose this, what might happen? And just really building into those skills, because they have it, they have it within themselves. They just need to learn how to tap into that.
Sara Bybee Fisk 50:59
That is such an important point because I think having also, you know, a lot of experience with being told what to do and being told what to wear and how to behave and what was okay and what to watch and what music to listen to and what life decisions were best on a, on a different scale, right? Where the scales are not the same. And I want to acknowledge that I am so familiar with that feeling of just tell me what's right. Just tell me what to do and looking to some authority figure outside of myself who seems to have it together, right? I'm just going to follow what they want, but you're so right in that that just recreates the system that keeps me disconnected from myself and it reinforces that I don't know and that I can't handle the consequences of making my own decisions.And I think one of the most powerful things that I have learned for myself is that I can, I can handle messing up. I can handle making the quote unquote wrong choice. I don't know that I believe that there, you know, are right and wrong choices. The way I, I know for sure that I, I don't believe that there are right and wrong choices the way I used to. Um, but I, I can handle making a mistake. Right. That's how we grow. And I think when you grow up in, you know, either the FLDS version of perfect obedience or the mainstream LDS version of, you know, obeying with exactness, right? Cause that's one of the phrases that I grew up with. Oh, wow. There is that disconnection from yourself and this absolute a hundred percent focus on am I keeping the rules? Can someone look at me and judge me worthy and, and honorable and obedient? So, York Creek had kind of this impenetrability to like out outsiders, right? Law enforcement didn't really go in. And do you think that that is important to talk about what happened after Warren left and in terms of what that meant for Cherish families, because Cherish families started before he was arrested or it was getting started kind of at the same time that kind of all of that was falling, that house of cards was coming down for him.
Shirlee Draper 53:29
So, Cherish Families wasn't incorporated until January 2014. We got our 501c3 then, but Alina and I were both doing, you know, grassroots, independent social work from, you know, 2003. So, we were, you know, doing this kind of work and trying to connect people to help and everything until we finally had a structure that we could get grants and employ people. But yes, during that time, and even up until around 2015, 2016, my big goal with the work that I was doing was helping people get out of Short Creek, get out from under the control, because, you know, everybody was spying on everybody else. They had cameras. They were destroying people's lives, moving them around from house to house. And for me, it was like, if I can get you out of that community, you know, it's, it's tenuous. It's rough out here, but we can get you, we can get you settled. We can get you safe. We can start helping you make your decisions and, you know, get education until, until after the Department of Justice got a guilty verdict for the towns for discriminating in the police department.And that's when the reform started to happen, 2016, 2017. We really started to have a good police department that we could, we could report crimes to. Up to that point, it was the FLDS police department that was an arm of the church. And whenever I was reporting crimes in that community, I was going to the county sheriff to report crimes. And they were coming in and secretly, you know, working with me to investigate behind the backs of the local police department. And so, and so now with all of the reformations that have happened in the community, you know, homes are privatized. There's a lot of new people moving in. A lot of people who left are coming back and it's a completely different place. And now I'm telling people, and I remember the first time I told a woman this, she'd left the community. She called me, really needed some support. And I'm, and I heard myself say out loud, I think it would be a good idea for you to move back. And I was like, did I say that? And now, you know, we have affordable housing. Cherish families owns affordable housing in the community. And it's a, it's a great place for children to get back into school and be really understood and, you know, get back into community. And, and it's, it's a completely different place.
Sara Bybee Fisk 56:02
That was the Short Creek that I visited. It was in probably right. I'm going to have to go find the year, but it was the turning over, right? You did. Right in that time.Yes, there were two restaurants, I think. And when we went, so I visited Short Creek as part of a group that was attempting to help. And one of the projects that we did was to take the former home of Warren Jeffs and attempt to turn it into a halfway home for people leaving polygamy. It's my understanding now that that was not the successful project that we hoped it would be at the time, but it gave me four or five days in that community talking with people and the hope was palpable. The way that people were describing their hopes and their dreams for rebuilding, for people returning, for them being able to own their own homes that had been part of the FLDS Trust. It was such a unique experience and the way that I remember it was in the voice of one woman that I'd spoke to. I remember her first name was Heather and she just said, it feels like I have a chance to create my life now. It feels like I actually have a chance to create the life that I want for myself now. Right.
Shirlee Draper 57:43
Yeah, yeah, those were those were magical and heady times because we made a strategic plan. There was a group of us that got together, we called ourselves the community alliance, we made a strategic plan for the community. And we followed it through it happened.And so now, you know, we're turning the old meeting house into a community center, we've got a rec center, we've got all of these parks, and we've got trails planned. And we have a completely, you know, non religious, both towns are led by a completely secular town council. And, and it's just I mean, it's like a phoenix rising from the ashes. It's pretty glorious.
Sara Bybee Fisk 58:25
must be so just affirming for you because I think back to that little girl whose mom was teaching her about that early warning system. And I mean, first of all, so revolutionary in the context of the life you grew up in.But that guide, that inner knowing is what tells us about the life we want for ourselves. And then to be able to live that out, not just in your own life, but then to be able to translate that work into the community that you loved, that you grew up in, that nurtured you, that cared for you, that was that beautiful. And I'm sure it wasn't all beautiful. There's always good and bad things of every situation. But to be able to take that back to that beautiful community that you grew up in must have been amazing for you.
Shirlee Draper 59:26
Right. I'm, and it's one of the things that we, that we grapple with too, you know, it's like with such huge change and with everything being privatized, how do we get back that sense of community that was so destroyed, that sense of belonging that was just utterly annihilated by Warren Jeffs. And so there's been a conscious effort to, to rebuild the things, you know, our, our celebrations, our parks, the, the things that would bring us together are dances. There, there is a concerted effort to recreate those things so that as people are coming back and they're healing their wounds, that we are reestablishing a sense of community and belonging, because that was so important.And so, you know, looking at, at the whole, at the whole of, of my life of our childhood and taking what was working and was so great and healing the rest. It's, it's a very intentional and, and strategic and complex thing, you know, because so many people's amazing memories really are wrapped up in having two moms, you know, the, our, our lovely mayor, my best friend, Donia Jessup. One of the things she talks about was she always had a mom at home was providing their lunch and their dinner, even while her mom was working and she so deeply loved her other mother and she's still her mother to this day, even though the families are no longer together. And so, and so we, we look at that and we say, how do we recreate that without having the, the patriarchal and harmful systems that created that? And so we, we create our own grandmothers and we connect them with people and we create our own mothers and we adopt family members and, and we figure out other ways to do that. But it is very complex because there's also a lot of trauma wrapped up in the good.
Sara Bybee Fisk 01:01:26
I didn't even think about that. Like how do you navigate the privatization? How do you not tip over into toxic capitalism where now it's every man for himself, every, every person who can just extract and earn for themselves.Like how do you preserve the best parts of what a community like Short Creek offered without poisoning it with the toxic traits of capitalism.That's, that's so fascinating.
Shirlee Draper 01:02:03
I will say that's an uphill battle. We started off with a lot of empty homes and now, there are no empty homes and there's been a lot of investment and at one point, I did a housing study and found that 13% of the entire housing inventory was tied up into short-term rental and that was the direction it was going.So, now, housing there is just as expensive as it is in St. George and it's very expensive in St. George. So, we've got lower quality but the same prices and it's driving out the vulnerable, which is one of the reasons that cherished families invested in the affordable housing. We took a couple of very large houses and we're retrofitting them into multifamily apartments so that we can preserve places for the vulnerable and the population to be able to stay there and receive the benefits of community, home, all of the rebuilding efforts. But, it's hard to fight against that capitalistic machine. I wish I could say with any kind of confidence that we're going to be able to do it but I mean right now, that's the one of the cults that we're in as capitalism.
Sara Bybee Fisk 01:03:22
Yeah, you have done a lot of cultural competency training for professionals who work with this population.What do outsiders most misunderstand about women who come from these communities and how does that, what farm does that misunderstanding or those misunderstandings do?
Shirlee Draper 01:03:47
Well, I mean, there are several. One that I will point to is that women must be stupid to have the temerity to be born into this structure and be staying there and even choosing into it. And so there's this level of pity and condescension that's directed to our women. And I say that's greatly misplaced.You know, most women from all of these communities, first of all, we're all products of our socialization. But I wouldn't say that very many of them are dumb. There's a high level of competence and resilience that most experience, they're the most express. But even beyond that, there are reasons, there are functional reasons that women might opt to stay in polygamy. There are benefits that nobody wants to encounter. And it's true for really all, we talk about Muslim or Hindu or really any Mormonism. There are benefits to these structures. And when they're unpopular religions, nobody wants to hear about the benefits.And so I think that vulnerable, weak women is, that trope to be repeated is very, very harmful because it attracts predators to our community. We've had at least five men that I know of move to the community specifically to exploit women because this is a trope that keeps being repeated. So, for me, I'm like, let's first of all, get rid of the notion that somebody is a bad person for being born into or socialized into whatever the structure is that they're living in. And start to have room for this understanding that human experience is so complex and that everybody's experience can be different.So that's another, that's a third trope is that all of us have the same experience. So I will hear over and over and over, oh, I read so-and-so's book and so I know what you went through. And I'm like, you couldn't possibly know based on her experience because my experience was nothing like hers. And so there's this question, I always get these questions, what do they all do when this? When people leave the FLDS, do they do this? And I'm like, who's they? Tell me how everybody in St. George buys their groceries and I will condense for you the FLDS experience. It's not to be contained because humans all express so differently.
Sara Bybee Fisk 01:06:54
love that you speak to the individuality of that experience and of our human tendency to just kind of collapse everyone from a particular religion, community, profession, culture, language group into a monolith and into one kind of singular experience. That's the human brain trying to simplify and reduce.I think a lot of times so that we can understand, but we have to fight against the urge and the inclination to oversimplify because it does rob people of their individual experiences.
Shirlee Draper 01:07:39
Right. But it also, you know, and it's something that I have to fight against so much, it also collapses us to our worst common denominator, too, right? It's like, I've heard of all of the horrible things that happened in the FLDS. And so you're all guilty of it.Right. And so every news story that focuses on something that happened, and you can go find the comments that say, they all do this, to this day, they all abuse children, they all are, you know, are horrible in this way, they all get married under age. It's like, that's, that's not helpful. When people are trying to unpack and and look at the complexities of what they want to do, if all their experiences collapsed into this evil thing, then they don't have this luxury of unpacking and keeping what works. And so it causes people to go from from this one extreme to a far other extreme, where there's always, you know, really, really counterproductive things come out of that. People need time to unpack what might work. And if they're not allowed to, because of this dominant narrative, we're going to be unpacking on the other side.
Sara Bybee Fisk 01:08:52
That is such an important point. And just speaks again to that strategic patience that you have made such a part of your own survival story and now the career of service.These conversations are my favorite because they really make me think about how I want to ask in a way that honors your experience and really gets at something of value for everyone because we are not all born into the same circumstances. And it is individuals who make up every single system. And so as you look back on the way that one leader dramatically changed the experience you were having and how that one leader sought to silence women and sought to train women in particular to abandon themselves in really particular ways. What do you think we as women in general can learn from that?
Shirlee Draper 01:10:06
Well, I think there's a pattern, right, with authoritarians, with autocrats, that they have to not be questioned. And so I think it bears looking at and witnessing and seeing patterns. I'm literally begging people to see patterns of the creation of autocracy and fascism because they're there.There are no new tricks. The pattern is the same, and it's over and over and over. You just need to go reread the prints. From the beginning of time, the pattern has been the same. And I don't know, I think it's so in your face. And certainly, it starts with women. But it never ends there. And so men who are so comfortable with having women be silenced need to know, they're coming for you. When you create structures and systems that oppress people, you will end up being oppressed. This is a wheel that does not stop just because you're up. And so I think it's so important for people to understand. The world is made so much better when women are allowed to participate in society, in leadership, in structures. Like, there are objective studies that show how much better companies do, how much better governments do, how much more peaceful, how many more people are at the table when women are fully empowered. And for people who seek to oppress that, it's nothing more than a dream of power over others. It's not in service to a better society. It's not in service to anything being better other than having more power for themselves.
Sara Bybee Fisk 01:12:08
That's it. And I'm so appreciative, Shirlee, of you taking the time to share your experience with me and with my audience.I have such respect for the way that you have turned your experience into a career of service and of helping. And as you noted, there's some working through of trauma in that. I feel that in my career, right? I help women leave the structure and the system of people, please. And there is an autobiographical line straight from my old life and who I was and what I used to believe to what I do now. And I feel very privileged to stand with a next two women like you doing this work, because I think we want the same thing. We want women to be able to speak, to say what needs to be said, to have a voice in whatever sphere they want. If it's just their own home, if it's just their own life, if that's what they want, I want them to have that. If they want it to be in their community, I want them to have that in their government, in broader political systems, I want them to have that. And I am just so appreciative of being able to do that work with you.
Shirlee Draper 01:13:25
autonomy. Autonomy.And I'm sorry, I think that women are just more invested in everyone having a better experience and a better life. And maybe that's what makes capitalism so incompatible with egalitarianism.
Sara Bybee Fisk 01:13:47
I agree. I think that over and over and over and over and over again, because another branch of the work that I do is with a nonprofit organization that works in Bolivia, which is where I served my LDS mission. And we work with women and children. And over and over and over and over again, we see that when we empower a woman, when we give a woman resources, she turns to her children and her family and her community, and she wants everyone to have a better, improved experience.That's right. And I, we could go back and forth. Is that nurture nature? I don't know that there's a good answer, but what I do know is that the research bears it out. Whether you are giving women microloans in terms of money, whether you are educating women, whether you are giving women work and job opportunities, they invest and they reinvest in their children and in their broader communities.
Shirlee Draper 01:14:43
That's exactly right. It's my experience, you know, there's the old saying, a rising tide lifts all boats, and I like to amend that by saying when women are out fixing the holes in everyone else's boats, yes, but if we're torpedoing other people's boats, the rising tide does not lift all boats.
Sara Bybee Fisk 01:15:05
That's right. That's right. But Shirlee, I'm so appreciative of your time. Is there anything in our conversation that you didn't get to say that you would like to end with?
Shirlee Draper 01:15:15
Uh, I would, I would love to invite, I think that your audience would be really, really appreciative of this. We're doing an event with lost and found club as a women's retreat in Hilldale in short Creek, the weekend of April 17th through 19th, and it's going to be absolutely amazing. People get to tour the community and, and, uh, learn about it, but also learn about each other and it's going to be a lot of fun. And so anybody who is interested in that, we only have, I think 30 tickets left.Uh, they can go to lost and found.org. I think it's lost and found club.org or something and see the information there. But I would love to invite, invite people to that. And it's not just women men can come to, but they won't be staying on the same location that we'll be staying in because it'll be a shared house, but it's, it's going to be a lot of fun. And that will, that's a fundraiser for cherish families. And I'd also like to invite, you know, anybody who loves the work that we're doing to please become a monthly supporter right now, we're really looking to build our monthly giving club and, and just go to cherish families.org and support our work because, you know, we, we have had some amazing federal funds that got cut last year, along with everyone else. And so we're, we're struggling to maintain the level of services, but, but we're so committed to it. And so always looking for new friends and supporters.
Sara Bybee Fisk 01:16:41
I will make sure that there are links to all of those events in the show notes. And as always, you can send me an email, sarahatsarahfisk.coach, if you have any questions about how to connect with Shirlee. Shirlee, thank you so much.
Shirlee Draper 01:16:56
Thank you, it's been an honor.
