Growing Up in a Polygamous Family & Learning from Adversity: Liz Watt's Story - Latter-Day Lights

Ever wondered what it's like growing up in a polygamous family? Or what it takes to leave?

In this episode, Liz Watts shares her extraordinary journey growing up in a polygamous family in Utah. A journey marked by clashes with societal norms, struggles with identity, and grappling with faith, Liz's story is one of resilience and determination.

*** Please SHARE Liz's story and help us spread hope and light to others. ***

To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/lliENcjNbqY

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To LEARN more about the Be Healthy Utah Conference, visit: https://www.behealthyutah.com/

To LISTEN to Liz's LDS podcast, Bring the Light, visit: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/bring-the-light/id1468569122

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Also, if you have a faith-promoting or inspiring story, or know someone who does, please let us know by going to https://www.latterdaylights.com and reaching out to us.

Transcript

Scott Brandley: 0:00

Hi everyone, I'm Scott Brandley.

Alisha Coakley: 0:02

And I'm Alisha Coakley. Every member of the church has a story to share, one that can instill faith, invite growth and inspire others.

Scott Brandley: 0:10

On today's episode, we're going to hear how growing up in a polygamous family taught one woman that each of our challenges can be used to help us better the world. Welcome to Latter-day Lights. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Latter-day Lights. We're so glad you're here with us today and we're really excited to introduce to you our guest, Liz Watts. Liz, how are you doing today?

Liz Watt: 0:41

Oh, I'm doing great on this Sabbath day, so thanks for letting me come on to your podcast today and to share my story.

Alisha Coakley: 0:50

Well, we're really excited to have you. I know when you and I first met over at, was it Calliope?

Scott Brandley: 0:57

Yeah.

Alisha Coakley: 0:57

Calliope At the Calliope Conference and I heard about your story. I was like, oh, like I just I just want to hear more. And so I'm really excited because not only have I been helping you you know, edit your book, that you're writing about it, and I've been learning all of these nice little things you know about the, the complexity of your childhood, but now I feel like I get like a third perspective. So I'm really excited. I think it's going to be awesome. But for our guests out there, why don't you tell everyone just a little bit about yourself?

Liz Watt: 1:31

So I'm Liz Watts and I live in the south part of the Salt Lake Valley, in Riverton, and we've been here in this part of that town for about 20, about 26 years, and my husband, he's a chiropractor, and so we set up shop in South Jordan. I have six kids, five boys and one girl, and we just kind of talked about before that our third, our third son just came home from his mission and so we've had one go to Japan, one to Ecuador and one to Columbia and it's kind of fun because the two boys that speak Spanish can sit there and speak all day in Spanish together. So it's kind of fun to hear that throughout the house. But me and my husband, since we started our practice a long time ago, for a long time I was just basically just did a stay at home mom with having kids and things like that, but as they started to get older we actually started. It's called the Be Healthy Utah Natural Health and Wellness Conference and it's the largest natural health conference in Utah and this, yeah, this last, yeah it is. It's been a huge accomplishment.

Liz Watt: 2:48

We started it the year before COVID and little did we know what we were going to get ourselves into, because you, when you put together a conference, you have no clue, like we had no clue how to do that, and we just worked every single day and we had a goal that our first conference we would have 1500 people there, because we had 25 speakers, 40 vendors and anyways, working the whole year. We ended up only having 400, which a lot of people say, well, that's great, you had 400, but we had it at the South Palace and you know it's a lot of time and effort to put in something like that. And then all of a sudden we had the next year scheduled, six weeks before they canceled it on us.

Liz Watt: 3:41

Because we were having it now in Mountain America, and they said, sorry, everything's canceled. And so all of our time and our effort we put into that was canceled. And so then they canceled it another two more times on us. So we decided, okay, we are going to do a virtual. So I had just put together everything that I knew, got footage and put on my very first virtual conference, the health conference, and so then we scheduled it for that next year.

Liz Watt: 4:14

Well, what happened is right when we come up to it. They changed some things and they decided to use Mountain America as their COVID center to go get the vaccines. So they canceled this again and so it was just was like a long, long process. But the next April we put it on and that conference we ended up having 2200 people come to that conference and I think it's because people were so aware of their health and how much they needed to take care of their own health, and if they didn't then they could end up in trouble, and so people were starting to have their eyes open and we had a great success.

Liz Watt: 5:00

Well, this last April we had 3300 people come to the conference and we're expecting this next conference will probably have 5000 that come, and so it's just has been seeing it grow from not knowing what we're doing to, all of a sudden, this huge, the biggest conference in Utah on natural health, and it's probably even the largest conference even on the West, and so we've actually decided this next year we are, yes, we're going to have it again here in Sandy you talk, but we're also expanding it to St George and to Arizona. So, yeah, it's really nice that we can expand it and hopefully we want to be the biggest one on the whole West of being able to help people find natural approaches to their health.

Alisha Coakley: 5:56

Wow, that is so cool. I absolutely love that. And in the midst of all of that, that was the only thing you're doing. You're also writing a book. I'm writing a book.

Liz Watt: 6:06

That's right and I think my family's getting kind of sick of it because it's like, mom, you're on the computer again, but yet then I also have. It is so funny because there's so many things that my kids just do not know about me and I bring up some of these things as I've been writing it and I'm like what, mom, you did that and what that happened, and it's so true. And so the thing that I love about this book that I'm writing is that it's not just a book for entertainment, but it's also a book for my posterity, because there's so many times that we have things happen in our lives and what were those lessons that we learned or these experiences that we have? And as I've been writing it, I've been able to use these stories to be able to teach my children in different ways and they can understand a lot of stuff about how I grew up and how I thought and how I was a teenager, so that they can better understand me and their grandparents more, because we lose that a lot. We lose that as we started to get older.

Liz Watt: 7:25

My dad he was the youngest of 11 kids and I never knew his siblings, and so now it's kind of like my kids are going to have this history of our life and that their kids are going to be able to read that book too and just know where I came from and how our family got to this place, because growing up in a polygamous family can be a little bit different and it's not just like a normal average day family, and so there's always a lot of questions that go with that. So that's what I love is that this book isn't just any book, but it's a book that my kids can learn more about me and my family and my thoughts and my experiences and just how I've grown throughout it.

Alisha Coakley: 8:22

Yeah Well, and they'll definitely learn about you. That's for sure, in a very entertaining way.

Liz Watt: 8:29

And the good and the bad, right Yep exactly, it's all in there.

Scott Brandley: 8:33

That's funny, liz, because my dad was the oldest of 11 kids and I'm the oldest grandson, so I had the opposite experience of you.

Liz Watt: 8:44

Well, you probably got to hear it be amongst a lot of that, a lot of the stories, and you know it's kind of like the last child. You know it was really funny. I have to tell you this story that I just said, how my third son came home from his mission. Well, he started, you know, in Columbia and went to Miami, and then they went to Scott, to Arizona. Well, the flight from Arizona to Salt Lake was an hour and a half and was we're driving to the airport to go pick them up.

Liz Watt: 9:20

My husband just says look to see if his flight is on time, because more than likely it's not going to be early, it's going to be late, right. And we are still probably 15, 20 minutes away from the airport and I look and I see the plane just landed. I was like how in the world is a plane to land? Now? We're early, right. So we are be lining it as quick as we can to get to the airport and we are just running as much as we can to get in there. And as we just run into the airport, all of a sudden we hear this eruption of all of these people like yelling for their missionaries, right, and we are not there. We are not there.

Liz Watt: 10:10

And we are running as quickly as we can and he's standing there by himself, as all of these other missionaries are with their families, just hugging and crying and embracing and all this stuff, and he's standing there by himself. And so the thing is, is that we say, well with Brax, you know, we just we didn't, we weren't there at the airport, but when our last one goes, when our sixth one goes, we're just going to be sending him an Uber, and so I just think that you know, as you have all these kids, by the time he gets to the last one, we're just glad that they're alive, right?

Alisha Coakley: 10:53

Yeah, we're just glad they're sitting in the pews with us Yep, your requirements and standards go just a little lower yeah.

Liz Watt: 11:03

And so it's kind of like, you know, as the oldest one, my kids are always saying you made us do all of our chores before we went to school at six o'clock in the morning, and then it's the last one. It's like okay, you guys have to go to bed in 10 minutes. Make sure your jobs are done, right.

Alisha Coakley: 11:21

Yep, we have that same argument in my house too. My boys are always well, we didn't have to do this and do it, and I'm like you guys should have been better listeners. You stressed me out so much that I'm not even going to try to fight with your sister who's younger, I'm just going to let her do whatever. Yeah.

Scott Brandley: 11:41

Too funny Good times. Well, we're excited to hear your story, liz. We haven't had a podcast with a polygamy or anybody that has a story about that, so this will be interesting to see and hear about your childhood and growing up. So we're going to pass the baton on to you. It's your time to share your story.

Liz Watt: 12:05

All right. So I guess my story starts when I was nine years old, because I at that time you really didn't know, I didn't really know what that I was different from anybody else. I just thought that I was like all the other kids on the street. And I remember going into a bathroom with one of my. She was like my best friend and she was laughing and all of a sudden she just says you want to hear something funny? I heard about you, and giggling. I just said what you know, not knowing what she was going to say, and she said I heard you come from a polygamous family. And it was at that moment.

Liz Watt: 12:48

It was like everything just stopped in my life Because I had all of these realizations. That was like at that moment I had to grow up because I went from a child to, all of a sudden, being this person, that, realizing that people knew who I was, they were laughing at me, they were saying things behind my back that I didn't know and all of a sudden I realized that I was different than everyone else. And that is such a hard realization when you're nine years old to realize that you're not like other people and that other people are laughing at you, that is. That's really hard to to get over that and so that kind of overshadowed me for the rest of my life. For as I was going through school and growing up, I always had that thought behind me that I was different than other people. And it wasn't always in the best way to write, because we want to be the same, we want to be like other people and and I wasn't, I wasn't like them. And growing up we had a lot of different instances where you know we are the only here here, we, my dad, he was actually pretty wealthy, for if he was going to have four wives, right, he had some money. So I can't really say wealthy, because we use the money a lot.

Liz Watt: 14:28

But we built houses up on the East bench side of the Salt Lake Valley and it was a new upcoming area, and so here we move into this, into this area that all of these people have, have more money, right, and all of a sudden these fligamist families move in and kind of invade in these, this nice new upcoming area, and so there was a lot of people there that were kind to us, but there were some people that weren't and we would always get you know you can't come to my house because my, my mom, doesn't want me playing with you, and that was really hard as a child because you already felt like you didn't belong.

Liz Watt: 15:21

And so for them to then these kids I mean, I have kids, I know how kids are and kids don't always. They're just kind of. You know they say whatever on their mind and you know they're in innocent with a lot of stuff that they what they say, because it's what they hear at home or see at home, and so there was a lot of social discrimination when it came to that. But the thing that I also say is that, even though I experienced a lot of that stuff, is that 95% of the people were actually good to us.

Liz Watt: 16:01

It's just probably that 5% that weren't very kind to us, but it's that 5% that never shadow everything in your life and you start thinking that that's how everyone thinks that you are right and I remember when I was young and I Mean, I can't say young I was probably about 11, 12 years old and my parents had not been Excommunicated from the church yet because they had. They were both members of the church and later on decided to live with me, and so my parents had not been Excommunicated yet, because the the rules are the church if you live an a postate life lifestyle, you have to be Excommunicated. And so we had had bishops before and they had never Excommunicated my parents, but they didn't want to have to deal with that and so. But then we got a bishop. That it's it. It felt like to us. But he was just doing his job. That that's what he wanted to make sure that my parents went through that process of being Excommunicated.

Liz Watt: 17:20

And when they were excommunicated, that just made it even seem like they didn't want us there. And and why are we even living here? Right, and I tell the story to my kids because they're totally shocked when I say this, but At that time I had a lot of hurt that was within me, and I remember going over to my bishop's lawn and I this is in my book. So everyone's gonna know about this, right, they're gonna, but it's just one of those things that that we live and learn from. But I ended up peeing on his lawn and Because I was so hurt by it, just just the devastation that you go to feeling Humiliated and feeling out accepted and feeling like it was his fault. And it wasn't his fault, it was actually, you know, it's because my parents chose to live that way. But at that age I just that's what I want as how I just got out my anger, I guess you would say and I peed on his lawn one night and you rebel.

Liz Watt: 18:39

But you know, it's like. I told my kids that one night they're like what you did, what, mom, you did what? And it was like I peed on the bishop's lawn. So you know, it's it there was. Just Not only did I have that, and I also had not only growing up with me, it's like we also have other things that happen to us in our lives, and everyone struggles with things, everything that has.

Liz Watt: 19:10

But Having that compounded with then, I also had dyslexia, and that was hard because I had to learn a different way and I was pulled out of class a lot. And so here I was, being, you know, taken away from the class and had to be taught differently. And so not only was I being, you know, taken away with flicking me and stuff, I was also with dyslexia. And then, when I got into high school had a tragic accident happened to me and I tore my my knee completely in in cheerleading and ended up having to be homeschooled. And here I was. I just thought, oh, go into to High school is gonna be so much fun, I'm gonna be able to learn and meet all of these new people. Most of these people I'm gonna go to high school with aren't getting even know that I'm a polygamist and I can just have like live a normal teenage life right, and all of a sudden I tore my knee and I was taken out of school and had to be homeschooled, because at that time, you know, knee operations were way different than and to where the extent of my in my knee was. I had to spend a whole week in the hospital like you don't hear stuff like that anymore and I had to now Start out my whole high school Time of being in homeschooled.

Liz Watt: 20:45

And here I thought, hey, I'm in cheerleader, I'm gonna have so much fun, right. Well, that was a really good time. Hey, I'm in cheerleader, I'm gonna have so much fun, right. Well, that was kind of taken away from me. Everything was, and I just was stripped down to nothing. I just felt like here I was, I was polygamist, I struggled learning, I had a knee, you know, a knee accident that took me away from everything and I just really felt broken a lot of that time because I I could never get ahead. I could never felt like that I could. Whenever I had breaks come, it was never where I could go ahead again and that was just really hard as a teenager having to grow up that way.

Scott Brandley: 21:33

Yeah, but so Liz, did you live, so you lived in Salt Lake, so you weren't on a compound or it like you lived now the community. You did community things like yeah, so that was did you go to church at like our typical LDS church?

Liz Watt: 21:49

So this is the thing is that you know, when I was young, we, we went to that neighborhood here I, when I was younger, we went to the ld s church and stuff like that. We moved up into this neighborhood and at that time my dad, he, like I, said he had his own business. He actually invented the very first Bed wetter alarm for kids that went to bed and that was sold all throughout the world. And Because of that he was, you know, like I said, he had made some money doing that and the flick of his church that we were going to they, they, of course they, they they run just like the LDS church does, on on hiding right and and things like that and donations and things. And so my dad, what he did is, even though we didn't go to the Plingmouth school, he, he gave them, donated computers to them and To all the students, and so he felt that he had already donated enough. And so they came to him and said we need you to donate some more. And he got offended by that and decided to Leave not necessarily leave, but just not go to church anymore, like he didn't want to Continue that.

Liz Watt: 23:20

And so here us kids we weren't going to church every week and there were that when we moved into this, into this neighborhood, there's a family down the street and they actually befriended our family. And he was a lawyer. He ended up becoming the lawyer to my, to my parents for the business and he, as he became friends with them, just came to the office one day and just asked my dad if he could take us to church. Well, because my dad, he was one of his friends and my dad knew the importance of us going to church. He told him yes, but, and so every week he showed up, their family showed up at our house and Whoever wanted to go to church just piled into their van and we went to church with them every single week. And so If we, if that would never have happened, I probably would not be sitting here right now with you. I probably would have been living a totally different lifestyle. Who knows right? But because of that, we had the opportunity to go to church any week and we ended up going off the primary, we ended up getting into young women's and doing all the young women activities and going to camp with them. And Seminary we enrolled into seminary and so it was just was like we lived this life, you know, doing the church things, because we started that when we were young.

Liz Watt: 24:57

I remember when we went to church when it was on Wednesdays, you guys remember to go during the week, and so I started when I was pretty young doing that and stuff, and so I I always say that I grew up in a polygamist family but I was raised to To basically be married in the temple, because those were the steps and the progressions that I went to. And there's a lot of people on the outside that will say, oh well, you know, you grew up in In a normal neighborhood and you went to normal school and you went to church and stuff like that. But the thing is that people don't realize is that I, yes, I did grow up in a normal neighborhood and went to the church and all that kind of stuff, but we are the only polygamist in that neighborhood and we're the only polygamist going to that church, right, and you know we're the only polygamist going to that school, yeah. And so what happens? You become different than everybody else, right?

Alisha Coakley: 26:04

It's almost like you guys were kind of like that, with the square pig trying to fit into you know around hole somewhere. Right, like you, your parents, they, they, they felt and I don't want to ruin it, but but their opinion of polygamy was that it was so important that they had to live it. Right, even if it didn't include being on the commune and all that kind of stuff. Right, because they had their own Belief that it just shouldn't have ever gone away. Is that right?

Liz Watt: 26:34

Yeah, they believe that. Well, saw, as my dad like, he was a Convert at 18 years old. My mom actually grew up in the LDS religion, but he was a convert, and my dad, he was very smart. I always said that he was too smart for his own good Because it got him into too much trouble. Right, he loved to read and research and study, and just he loved that kind of stuff.

Liz Watt: 27:03

And so when he became a member, he started to get into church history and started to Read every kind of book that he could get a hold of, and he was then found out about polygamy and he started to, as he was searching it, started to realize that For himself. What he started to realize is that the reason why polygamy was ended wasn't because of religious reasons, but it was because of political reasons. And so he thought, well, if I want to get to the highest kingdom, then I need to live these laws, I need to live these spiritual laws. And so by him just being a regular member, he didn't feel good about it, because he knew that there was these other laws that people weren't living because of political pressure and we should never live a certain way because of political pressure. Right, we should live it because that is, because this is what God is asking us to do. And so he felt that the best way that he can be a follower of God is to live polygamy, and that he needed to set aside all of the political stuff, all of the you know, just like the worldly stuff, and live polygamy. And so that's what. So when he was in California at the time, he was married to his first wife and he realized that they couldn't really live polygamy there. They needed to move to Utah and be part of a group that was living polygamy. And so they were in California at the time came here and then my my mom she came about it because she had two sisters that were living in the Salt Lake Valley who were in the polygamist group and she got divorced from her husband and they lived in St George, moved up here and they introduced my mom to my dad.

Liz Watt: 29:10

And one thing that's kind of interesting like Alisha she was, she was editing my book. She didn't realize this, that in polygamy relationships it's not that the man goes out and searches for the wife, but the wife needs to make sure that she's okay with being part of that family. So she kind of searches out for the husband, and then she goes to the leaders. She goes to the leaders and says I want to be part of that family. And then the leaders ask the men if they could start creating a relationship type thing, if they could start dating not saying that they're going to get married, but they could start exploring a relationship, right. And so my mom went in for a meeting one time with one of the polygamous leaders and just asked if she could start dating my dad, and so that's how it all came together. And then by the end my dad had had there was five wives, but there was one wife that she was only in it for a short amount of time, couldn't handle their the lifestyle because it is, it's not just like a regular lifestyle, it's not just like a regular marriage, right, there's a lot more that comes to it and she just couldn't handle it anymore, and so it. So by the end there was four wives five, but four at the end that stayed right, right. So anyways, then it was kind of like when I was in at the first there was only that my mom and then his first wife.

Liz Watt: 30:56

When I got into middle school, my, my dad's first wife. Her sister ended up passing away this the sister's husband in Montana and she was also part of the group because there was a group here and went in Montana, and so they went up there, got her, brought her here, my dad bought her a house, they ended up starting a courtship and then that was his third wife and then his fourth wife. When I was in high school she was a secretary for my dad and she was. She ended up getting a divorce from her husband and then my dad brought her into the family and they started, you know, dating, and that would end up to be his fourth wife. So that is kind of how it our whole family came about, and later on, after my parents were married for 24 years it's like I said, there's a lot that comes into a relationship like that and my mom just couldn't handle it anymore and she decided to step away and leave the, leave the relationship and so.

Liz Watt: 32:13

But by this time I was married and there was only one kid still at home, and so it was just was. You know, when you look at that, how can you really blame somebody, though, for stepping away from something like that when you see all of that when you see all of, there's a lot of hard things that come with it, a lot of emotional things, a lot of jealousy, that and it's not. A lot of people look at polygamy and they say, oh, it's because they live it. You know, whatever there's the, there's the. I don't know how much you want to get into, like the sexual part, whatever, but there's. It's not that you know it's. It's the jealousy isn't necessarily about that part, it's about all the other relationships that you have within a marriage to. That can be hard.

Alisha Coakley: 33:06

Yeah, well, you know, and I was debating whether I even wanted to go here, you know, because it is such a sensitive topic. But looking at it from the perspective of just the experiences that I've read from from your book so far, to me it almost feels like like polygamy just couldn't one, it couldn't sustain itself here because of what you're talking about, all of the jealousies of like we're just not, we are just not those higher beings, right, like we are very natural man induced, and so we just can't imagine how to live a life where you really don't have it. And I think even families that are in polygamy now, like you said, they, they struggle with all of that, you know, and there are divorces in polygamy and there is abuse that happens in polygamy just like in regular marriages as well, like it's not, it's not just central to that lifestyle. So maybe it's that we, we truly aren't ready for it or weren't ready for it, and that's why it was taken away, or part of why it was taken away.

Alisha Coakley: 34:15

I do think the political thing definitely played a part as well, but I almost feel like sometimes it's because the world's not ready for accepting that. And there was a BYU talk that I read once I can't remember who gave it, I just I can't, though and he spoke about how, sometimes, the Lord will allow little pieces and practices to be taken out in order for the moving forth of spreading the gospel to continue without delay and like we know. Looking back then and I don't know how many of our listeners know this, but maybe you can share a little bit about the history of what was going on in the country why was it? Why was there so much political pressure put on the church at that time?

Liz Watt: 35:03

Well, the government, they were they when they they didn't know that the that they were trying to live polygamy and the state at the time was trying to get a statehood. And then the government found out what was going on. And they were trying to live polygamy and they were not going to get them their statehood, they weren't going to do you know, they were going to start taking everything away from them. And so it, in order for the church to really flourish in the Salt Lake Valley, the government had such political ties around the church that it was kind of like Wilford Woodruff had a vision and he saw what would happen to the church. He didn't take disband you know, like me, practice of plug in me and he saw that the church would not be able to flourish, they would be disband. And so he knew that in order for us to bring the gospel to the world, then that principle had to be, had to be taken away.

Liz Watt: 36:13

And the thing is is that it was hard for those early saints to live, like me, but once they started to live polygamy, it was still hard. But they had these whole families now. They had many wives and many children. And all of a sudden the prophet comes out and says you need to quit living polygamy. Well, if you think about it, these families now here. They put all of their heart and soul into living this principle right and now they've developed the. They have these families that are what if the prophet came in and told you you had to separate from your husband right now and you can put your kids together?

Liz Watt: 36:57

Yeah that's hard right. That was really hard for them. And so there was a lot of people then who tried to go against it. They tried to live secretly. They tried to. They wanted to still get to the special kingdom because they felt like this was the higher law, you know.

Liz Watt: 37:15

And so there was things that were put, you know, like underneath the rug.

Liz Watt: 37:21

There was people that were hiding, there was people that were you know, some people were thrown into jail. There was some people that were still secretly practicing polygamy and having even new marriages that were happening. There was a lot in the church at that time that was going on, and so the government ended up finding out that these practices were being, even though the church came out with the manifesto, came out and said you know, you need to quit living it. The government ended up finding out that these secret practices were actually being still performed in Utah and in Mexico and in Canada, and so they came back even harsher to the church. And so then Wilford Woodruff came out and said, gave a second manifesto and said stop, we can't do it anymore. And if you find out that you are living polygamy, if we find out that you're performing ceremonies to live polygamy, then you're going to be excommunicated, and that's where that principle came in, that you are basically being an apostate if you continue to go forward.

Alisha Coakley: 38:37

Which would have been I can't even imagine, like literally. Like how do you choose you know what I mean how do you choose to say goodbye to your family like that, and that was such a huge struggle for them. That, again, we don't talk about and we don't? I mean, I feel like it's come out more like the closer we get to the second coming.

Alisha Coakley: 38:55

I feel like a lot more information is coming forward about the church and about our history and I've noticed that one of the things that is also happening, especially in this distensation, is that people get so focused on one aspect of the gospel that either they totally believe in or that they can't get on board with it all, and then they make all of their decisions based on that one principle of the gospel and ultimately, if we step back and we say, okay, what is the most important thing to the Lord? Is the most important thing that you know we have these polymist marriages? Or is the most important thing that the gospel gets to every individual on the earth so they have a chance for baptism and repentance? Well, you can't go and get this one if you're not getting this one right. Like you have to start at the bottom, you have to build the foundation first, and so I think Heavenly Father will do anything and everything that he has to do in order to make sure that that foundation can constantly be reaffirmed and then it can constantly go forward.

Alisha Coakley: 40:00

And I think that we're all at risk of being too smart for our own good right, like we are all at risk at diving so deep into these one or two little aspects of the gospel that we either believe or don't believe in, that we kind of set our testimony and all the foundations off to the side and we think that they're not important, but in reality they're the things that are the most important. You know, we need to make sure that we have that really strong foundation, like rooted in Jesus Christ, rooted in the principles of the gospel, rooted in those main first ordinances and stuff you know.

Liz Watt: 40:39

Well, and the thing that I have come to realize is through this whole thing, is that if it is so true what President Nelson has said is that you have to have the constant guiding influence of the Holy Ghost, because there's going to be things that come to us that we don't know what to do, that we can be. You know, our minds think different than our hearts do and our minds are like we just go forward, but our heart is the one that actually teaches us what our Father wants us to do. And if we don't develop that spirit within us to be able to guide us, it is so easy to get off track. And that's one thing that I have also have struggled with with my whole life is because, I mean, I never. I don't know what my dad experienced, I don't know what my mom experienced, I don't know what their thought processes were, why they chose to live it. You know it was going against what the church wanted us to do at the time, and I think we all have this thing within us that we don't want to be told what we have to do. We want to do what we feel like is best for us to do right, and so I have always just had that in my forefront, that my dad left the church. Guess what I could do. And so what am I going to do to be able to keep myself on the straight path?

Liz Watt: 42:16

And I remember one time I was sitting in the temple. It just felt like everything was just coming to me, of not feeling like I'm going to be able to make it right Like I have, for the sake of the sake I come from a flick of this family and there, you know, it's the taboo of the church. And I can remember just sitting there and I was like great, so when is it my turn to leave? Like what's going to take me away to right? And, heavenly Father, what can I do? Because I just felt like why even work towards it? Because I'm going to, I'm going to stray someday too.

Liz Watt: 43:01

You know, I just had that feeling and I was just so discouraged and I was in the waiting room to go in and do ceilings in the temple and I opened up my eyes and there's this big portrait of Christ right there in front of me. And all of a sudden I just heard the words that said always keep your eyes focused on Christ. And I realized at that moment. That's the key, right there. That is the answer to everything that comes up to us is always keep your eyes focused on Christ, and there's going to be many moments in our lives that are going to take us away from things and get us distracted, and the world's going to teach us one way, and we don't. You know, it's kind of like what do we do? But if we keep our eyes focused on Christ at every moment in our life, then that is our true guidance and that we don't have to be afraid, we don't have to feel like I don't have to continue, to feel like I'm going to, it's going to be me sometime. Right, and I'll tell you what.

Liz Watt: 44:07

During that whole time with going, one of the biggest tests that I think our whole nation had and our whole church had was recently when we went through the whole COVID thing and I don't really want to get into that because everybody has their own beliefs with that, but there was a lot of counteracting beliefs at that time. Well, and you always felt like we always felt like you weren't that the world was, that you are not following the world in a certain way, you are not following the prophet in a certain way you are not. I mean, it was every single thing. There was being shame, shame, shame, shame around, no matter where you stood. No matter where you stood, there was just that constant all the time. And so it was like during that time I had to really become grounded in who I was and the beliefs that I had and what Heavenly Father wanted me to do at that moment.

Liz Watt: 45:07

And I tried to spend actually a lot of time at the temple at that time. We might have been called the Temple Tuesday, even if we went every single Tuesday because we needed. Of course, the temple would shut down for quite a bit of time, but there was a lot of time that was open too, and we tried to spend as much time as we could there being grounded and then into the gospel so that we could get that clarity. And every morning it was like I had this routine of waking up, going downstairs, meditating, saying my prayer, reading my scriptures. I also put on audio my Patriarchal Blessing so that I could always listen. I can always listen to it and I can pick out different parts in there and just be like, okay, I'm on the right track, this is what, heavenly Father you know, what do you want me to do, heavenly Father?

Liz Watt: 46:06

And even though some of the things Heavenly Father asked me to do was different than the norm, I felt like I was doing what he wanted me to do at that time, because he uses us all in different things, and I think that that's kind of where I want to bring this back to. Is that you know, like I said, I don't know what my parents were feeling. I don't know the spiritual experiences they were having, but what I do know is that I was supposed to grow up in a polygamist family, whether if it was them or somebody else, right, I needed to learn those lessons growing up in that family. And there's things that I would not have learned if I would not have grown up in that family. And so for so many years I struggled with why me Like, why did I have to grow up this way, right?

Liz Watt: 47:02

And then, all of a sudden, when I had this realization of everything, where Heavenly Father, just at this moment, told me that he blessed me with my childhood, it was kind of like I had a whole shift in my mind of wait a second, if he blessed me with that childhood, I mean he wanted me to be in that childhood. He wanted me to experience everything that I experienced. He wanted me to be with those parents that chose to live that way. He wanted me to have the dyslexia, he wanted me to have the you know, the catastrophic knee thing that I went through, and he wanted me to have that feeling abandoned. He wanted me to feel not saying that these are all perfect scenarios, but he wanted me to experience all of these things in my life because otherwise I wouldn't be able to know how to help and serve and bless and love other people.

Liz Watt: 48:11

Later on, and as I started to look at that, everything that I went through was a blessing. I realized that, heavenly Father, you know it wasn't why me it was. Why did you choose me then? And what an honor it is to grow up that way and to be why did you choose me? And to realize that he chose me because I was a special person. You know, all of us are special. But to come to that realization of being feeling like I was being picked on and humiliated and embarrassed and my whole life to all of a sudden be in like, wow, heavenly Father thinks I'm that special that he knew that I could live a life like that and gain the experiences that I need to gain so that I can bless so many other people. And if I'd never lived that way, I would not know how to bless so many different people's lives. And you know, we can make such an influence in people's lives more than what we know.

Liz Watt: 49:27

And I had an experience that happened to me last week because me and my husband we were put in as ward mission leaders and there was that we had the missionaries over at our house and they were like, hey, where do you think we should go visit? Well, in our board we have, well, actually in our stake, there is one apartment complex that they break it up and they give each ward. You know so many of the units type things and this area there's, you know, people that are financially just are struggling and stuff like that. And so it's good because our board can come in and really help financially and things like that. So, anyways, they said where do you? I was dropping them off at the apartments. They're like where do you think I should go visit? And I told them I'm a family to go visit and didn't know that they had moved. Well, I dropped them off there. They went and knocked on their door. They weren't there. So they decided I'm just going to go and knock on all the other doors, right? So they went and knocked on this other door.

Liz Watt: 50:35

At that they started the very top of the building and they ended up finding this girl and she's about ready to have this baby. So they call me and they said, hey, we've met this girl and she's got ready to have this baby, and and so I, just, being who I am, you know, I went to go visit her and see how she's doing. And I'm also not only the ward mission leader, I'm the compassionate service leader. And so I was like, hey, let's get you mill set up and all this stuff. Well, me and my husband, we decided that we were going to continue to go and see her and then I just made a note to keep on texting her all the time. I knew that having a new baby and all that kind of stuff is different and I just continued this friendship with her and just loved her and enjoyed spending time with her and things like that. Well, anyway, she ended up moving away.

Liz Watt: 51:32

I ran into her mom the other day and she started crying and she said you know, I don't know if you realize that how much you influenced her because of she wasn't going to church or anything at that time when I started to come this year, but now she's in temple prep, she's been going to church every single week and she's like, as a mom, you can't push you, you don't push your kids so much, right, you need the outside influences to come in.

Liz Watt: 52:06

And she's like For you. You are one of those people and I'm like If it wasn't for you, I don't think that she would be on that track right now. And the thing is is that growing up, I had so many times where I just felt like I was that underdog, I felt like that I didn't belong in a place and she had felt like that. And so that is just as like what I grew up as I realized that you know, my child was a blessing and that I can bless him with people's life. That was just incorporated in me to be able to make sure that she felt welcome, make sure that I had a place for her at church, making sure that she had the link that she could watch sacrament meeting at home. You know, I just was always wanting her to feel like she belonged and because of that she now is on that path of coming towards our heavenly Father.

Scott Brandley: 53:04

Well, so I had a question about about your story. So you talked about being, you know, younger and getting out of high school and things. How did you I mean so you obviously got married in the church and everything how did your family take that? And, and, and especially like your mom and dad?

Liz Watt: 53:30

And you know that was really. I will admit that was getting baptized was one of the most difficult things I ever did in my life and and that I know that's pre to what you just asked me but it took a lot to get baptized in the LDS religion. When your family is living a polygamist lifestyle, it's not like where you just go and you leave with the missionaries when you're eight years old and get baptized right or nine or you know whatever. It's not like that at all. I had to wait till I was 18 out of the house and and then I had to go through a series, a series of interviews. That wasn't just one or two interviews like normal, but I ended up having my last interview with President Faust of the church office building.

Scott Brandley: 54:32

Wow.

Liz Watt: 54:35

And, and you know the thing is, is I my my interview before.

Liz Watt: 54:44

My two interviews before that were with the mission president. And the mission president, when I was in there in the, in his office, he kept on wanting me to say that what my parents were doing was wrong, because they want to make sure that you're not going to live that lifestyle right. But to me that was devastating to ask me to do that, because here my parents raised me and they loved me and it was like I was going against them, right. And the first time that the mission president, he he's like well, you know, if you don't, if you don't say that they're wrong, then I'm not going to let you get baptized. And I just was like devastated, right, and it was so hard on me and I, finally, I was just like I can't, I can't say that. And he goes oh, you're going to have to go home and think about this for a little bit and we're going to have to have another interview. So then I go back to his office and he wants me to admit again that my parents are wrong. And I just was like I can't, I can't tell you that they're wrong. And so finally I don't know what happened, but he finally gave me that clearance to go meet with one of the general authorities. So I ended up being I ended up going to meeting with Elder Faust, and this is back to the question that you asked me.

Liz Watt: 56:19

I go into his office and I sit down and he says to me he goes. He first asked me you know, do I have a testimony, jesus Christ? And then he kind of just stopped and he's like can I give you some advice? And I say yeah, and he said always love your parents, always love your parents, no matter what you do. You know you are now. You know your parents raised you and now you're going to become a member of the church and always remember your parents, love your parents. Don't do anything that will make you distance yourself from your parents. You know the church is all about family. They are your family. Make sure you keep them close. And so right there I knew that that was Heavenly Father speaking to me, because here I just went through this awful experience of feeling like I had to disown my parents so that I could become a member of the church. And all of a sudden I get into his office and he is like make sure your parents, you keep your parents close to you right.

Liz Watt: 57:37

And so, growing up, my mom, my mom, was always there. She knew what I was experiencing in my life. She knew the hard things I was going through, she knew I'd been going to church, she knew I you know, just because you're when you know my dad was only there every two of the eight days, but my mom was there all the time. So my mom didn't struggle with it, but my dad really struggled with it because he knew that if I was, if I was to marry Shane, my husband, there's no way that I would ever live with him. And so he actually banned my husband from dating me. He told my husband he was no longer able to date me, he was no longer allowed at my house, all that stuff because he felt like his chance to teach me was slipping away and that if I was to go with Shane, that would not be in my future. And anyways, for six months.

Liz Watt: 58:50

Finally Shane, after six months, went to my dad, the kid and asked if he could marry me and my dad because we'd been dating this whole time and he didn't want to get married without asking him. So, even though he was banned from the house. He went and asked my dad and my dad told him no, and he's like well, is it okay if I date your daughter? My dad finally said yes. So then he went a few months later and asked him again if I think he could marry me, and he said no. So, anyways, it just took a little while and I went and talked to my dad and asked him if I just told him that I wanted to marry him, and I think it kind of softened my dad's heart. And so the day that he finally he finally told Shane that he could finally get, he could finally marry me. Right, I'm like I don't know what guy would hold on to a girl this long. You know, having to go through everything that he had to go through was just an idea, and so, anyways, he ended up saying yes, and I didn't know if my dad was going to come to the temple. You know, I know that my parents couldn't come inside, but I didn't know if he was going to be there. But I walked out and he was there. So that was really good of him.

Liz Watt: 1:00:34

And the thing is is that my dad passed away in 2010. And before my dad passed away. He called me and my husband over to his house and he my husband's great, great great grandfather is George D Watt, and I don't know if you know who he is, but he created the Deseret alphabet and he was Brigham Young's personal secretary. And Brigham Young went to him and said there's all of these saints coming from all over the world. Nobody knows how to communicate. We need to create a, a, something that everybody can just learn. And so he created the Deseret alphabet. He translated the Book of Mormon into the Deseret alphabet.

Liz Watt: 1:01:28

Now, the Deseret alphabet didn't ended up taking hold, because they soon realized that in order for them to, for all these saints to be able to communicate with the world, with coming to the United States, they had to learn.

Liz Watt: 1:01:44

They had to learn English.

Liz Watt: 1:01:46

And so, with my dad being so much into books, so much into history, he ended up finding a Deseret alphabet book and he called us up and he handed it to Shane.

Liz Watt: 1:01:59

He's like I know that this is important to you and your family, so I want to give this to you. And that was such a big step for my dad, coming from banning my husband to then giving him something that he was important to him but he knew was important to my husband and as my dad was on his deathbed, they actually the family actually asked Shane if he would get him a blessing. And to just see the whole turnaround from my dad of how hard he was in the beginning to all of the setting as he's passing on to the other side of the world and I mean the other side of heaven Seeing my husband then giving him a blessing was a beautiful experience of how this life is and how forgiveness really plays a role in our progression in life, and if we don't have that forgiveness within us, we can't then progress into becoming what our father wants us to be, you know, and to be able to help.

Liz Watt: 1:03:17

So many other people, and so I think that that's what my story is about. It's about, of course, endurance, but love and forgiveness, because that's what life's about.

Alisha Coakley: 1:03:36

Oh man, I just you know there's I mean, there's so much to your story, too, that I want to talk about but I also don't want to go off on a million different tangents but the thing that in not only working with you in your book, but just hearing you know you today, and hearing about all of these other things that I haven't had privy information to yet, I feel like there's so much patience that our Heavenly Father has, you know, like he's patient in all of it, whereas we're so like, oh my gosh, we have to do this and we have to figure out our life and we have to do everything perfectly and we have to make sure that we have this strong testimony of every single thing on there. Or we're not good enough, you know, or we have to. You know like we have to cut off family and friends who don't live the gospel because they're not being as good as we're being. Heavenly Father is so patient. He's like, just chill, it's okay. Like we got time to work this all out. You got a whole eternity. You're just looking at life and it's just this little tiny speck of durational existence, right, but we have so much time and our Heavenly Father is so patient with us and with our learning and our growing and our understanding.

Alisha Coakley: 1:04:51

And I love how you said you know it's like Heavenly Father wants us to become a certain person, but he doesn't need us to become everything all at once. You know, like he wants us to just keep focusing on that love and that I guess that positive perspective right, like how you said, it's not about like, oh, why me, why me, why me? Is it a complaint? It's you know, why me? Like, what can I do with that? How can I use that for the good and how can I be better and how can I bring light and love and understanding to the world? And I just think, I just think you're an amazing person and I'm so glad that I know you and they're glad to be here.

Liz Watt: 1:05:42

Well, I mean, you know the thing that I sit there and I look at that whole experience and I, once we start to feel gratitude for our trials in our lives, I think that that's when Heavenly Father can open up our eyes to so many more things. Because we get trapped in this victim mentality, I guess is what the world would say right. But once we start to look at it in Heavenly Father's eyes, it's like the world is endless and that we are, we can do so much and that we can just bless so many different people's lives and that we can look at, see how Heavenly Father has guided us along this whole way and to be able to become that person that you know my book is called Becoming Me. Why is that? Because we're in a constant process of becoming who we are and that we might not start out. We're gonna start out of a certain way, but we're gonna end in a totally different way of where he wants us to be.

Liz Watt: 1:06:53

And even you know, I sit there and think about my dad because he's been passed away.

Liz Watt: 1:06:58

Now for an August it will be 13 years and I feel that you know, yeah, he was living apostate, he was not living what the church wanted to do. But I also feel that Heavenly Father knows more and that he, like he, gives us more and he, maybe he did influence him. You know, we don't know, we don't know. Like I said, I don't know, but that was the path that he was supposed to learn, that was the path that he was supposed to grow and, you know, to be on. And so, on the other side, he was avid person about family history and I can just see him there on the other side just trying to gather all of his ancestors together. And you know, we don't know what's on that other side, but I know whatever it is is it's good, because Heavenly Father is good and that he wants us to give us the best things that he can. And so, whatever we have in our lives, it is a blessing if we find, figure out what it is. There is those blessings in there.

Scott Brandley: 1:08:18

Well, some of those things we figure out in this life and some are in the next right. But I agree with you. God's good and he has a plan for each one of us, and including your dad and your mom and your family, right?

Alisha Coakley: 1:08:33

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, I loved, I love how you mentioned you weren't sure if your dad was gonna show up on the Temple grounds the day of your wedding, and then you come out the door and there he is. I like to think that that's how it's gonna be for a lot of us in the next life. I think there's gonna be such surprising joyous reunions. You know where the people that we weren't sure you know would make it. I think that they're gonna surprise us and they're gonna make it and we're gonna be able to be in holy places with them and we're gonna be able to feel that love and that support for one another and to just be able to appreciate where everyone is on their journey and to know that you know Heavenly Father will continue to give us so many opportunities to grow and to get it right, you know, and he's not gonna throw any of us away.

Liz Watt: 1:09:27

So oh Well, he is very, very merciful and gives us many chances, even if you do pee on the Bishop's lawn.

Scott Brandley: 1:09:41

I used to toilet paper the Bishop's lawn, so Well you know, I think Crazy things we do.

Liz Watt: 1:09:50

I think that's worse actually, because being a mom and having teenage kids, having to go out there and pee and that dumb toilet paper, right.

Alisha Coakley: 1:10:02

Especially after COVID. Toilet paper is like gold, that is expensive.

Liz Watt: 1:10:08

All I did was make a piece of the ground turn yellow.

Alisha Coakley: 1:10:12

There you go.

Scott Brandley: 1:10:15

My grandpa would make us go clean it up off the yard the Bishop knew it was us and then he would put it in a brown paper bag and put it in the bathroom. We had to use it.

Alisha Coakley: 1:10:27

That was so funny. Wow, the things I'm learning today.

Scott Brandley: 1:10:31

geez, that's what happens when you have 11 kids, right, I think it is so. You had 11 boys. Actually, it wasn't just 11 kids, it was 11 boys, oh wow.

Liz Watt: 1:10:43

That is a lot. I'll tell you what. I have five boys and it's giving me a run for my money, although I sometimes wonder if my daughter's combination of all of them to get my first one.

Scott Brandley: 1:10:55

Oh yeah.

Alisha Coakley: 1:10:57

That's so funny. Well, Liz, do you have any final thoughts and anything else that you'd like to leave with our listeners before we go?

Liz Watt: 1:11:05

Well, I do. There is a couple of things here that look at your life, look to see what you've experienced and try to find those blessings in it, because they're there and you don't know where. Sometimes you don't know how it could be a blessing, but there are those blessings and once you focus on those blessings, then Heavenly Father can show you and bless you so much more. And so look for those. And one of the biggest blessings that I have found is, through this whole process is that before I didn't want people to know me, I didn't want people to know my history, and every time my husband would say something I would be like that's not your story to tell, that's my story to tell. Right, you don't tell anybody, this is my story to tell. And so I really, really struggled with people knowing it. But when Heavenly Father told me that this was a blessing and I started to look at that blessings, there's something that's switched within me and that, because I looked at it as a blessing, I started to see how it has been and later on be a blessing in my life and I started to heal that process of my childhood. And because of that healing now I've been able to, like we talked about, write a book about my life. Right, I am a public speaker and I can go and share stories about me and my life.

Liz Watt: 1:12:49

We put on, like I said, the largest natural health conference in Utah and I speak in front of this and I'm on social media all the time and me and my husband, we have podcasts together and I am out there talking all the time and I am changing people's lives because of figuring out that my childhood was a blessing and I am not going to and I'm going to continue to change people's lives because of realizing that it was a blessing. And so I just invite everyone that's out there to really search hard and figure out all of these things that you went through in your life, find those blessings, because now you can be on that other end with what I'm doing in my life to be able to bless so many people's lives. And if you want to come and be a part of the conference, you can go to behelpingutahcom. You can look up to see what it is.

Liz Watt: 1:13:58

I also have a podcast that I do on myself that I'm not quite consistent all the time, but it's called Bring the Light, and that's because we all have a light to share within this world and that if we are continued to be that victim in our life, we can't share that light. And so, finding the blessings and figuring out what that is, we can share our light with the world. And so I just ask everyone to become you. You know, ask yourself every day what can I do to become me? Because we are constantly becoming me, every single, every single moment in our life. And so that's just my advice to you is to be grateful, have, you know, a forgiving need to and to just find those blessings because of them.

Alisha Coakley: 1:14:50

I love that and we'll be sure to share those links that you mentioned in the description.

Alisha Coakley: 1:14:55

So if anyone wants to find them, they will be available.

Alisha Coakley: 1:14:58

So, and I just you know, I love that because I think that it's people like you who are willing to take the stories that they're maybe a little bit afraid of or embarrassed of, or the ones that are hard to face, and by bringing those stories to light, it just lights that flame and I love that you were able to get to the place where you're okay sharing your story and helping everyone else out.

Alisha Coakley: 1:15:24

And I just wanna encourage our listeners guys, make sure that you share Liz's story as well. Make sure that you do your five second missionary work. Put that, push that little share button like comment, you know, let her know what part of her story meant something to you and kind of resonated within your heart. And, of course, if you have a story that you'd like to share, if you'd like to get it out there, we would love to hear more about it. You can head over to Latterday Lightscom and you can fill out the form at the bottom of the page or you can find us on social media and we would be happy to see about having you guys as a guest.

Scott Brandley: 1:16:02

Yeah Well, thanks again, Liz, for being on the show. We really appreciate your time.

Liz Watt: 1:16:07

Yeah Well, it's been an honor for me to be on here, so thank you for inviting me.

Alisha Coakley: 1:16:13

Awesome. And also my book remember, is gonna be coming out soon, so I was just gonna say we are putting some polishing touches on it and then it's gonna be out. So we'll make sure that we can. When that happens, we can even update the descriptions, I'm sure, and then we can put a link to your book in there too, so people can access to it.

Scott Brandley: 1:16:32

Well, liz, we wish you all the best with your health conference and your book and your podcast, and it's great to meet someone you know I don't know a familiar soul, I don't know how you say that, but you know someone else that's really trying to get light out there and share goodness. So we wish you all the best on your journey and let's keep in touch.

Liz Watt: 1:17:00

Yeah for sure, thank you. Thanks for having me on today All right guys.

Alisha Coakley: 1:17:07

Well, that's all we have for now. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of Lottery Likes. Have a good one.

Scott Brandley: 1:17:15

Take care.