Since 2021, Lift+Love has featured hundreds of Latter-day Saint LGBTQ individuals and families, each with their own unique perspectives and experiences. Each Lift+Love family story is written by Autumn McAlpin, who interviews the family and publishes their story with the express permission of each individual and family member identified in the story and/or photos.
Carol Lynn Pearson has always known she was here on assignment.
“I was born a very smart girl in a very extreme patriarchal situation,” she says, looking back on her life with a mix of clarity, reverence, and that fiery illumination that for so long has characterized her work. “If we did indeed have some sort of plan before we come to this earth, I may have said, ‘I want to go down there and do something really interesting, dramatic, big’.”
And big it has been…
Read MoreMargaret Steward didn’t grow up imagining she’d one day be the wife of a mission president, or the woman quietly fielding whispers after her husband came out as gay. She was born in Nephi, Utah, into what she calls “a super LDS community,” but her family stood slightly off-center from the mold. Her father was a 36-year-old small-town bachelor and partygoer when he met her mother, a 27-year-old schoolteacher. “They hooked up, got pregnant, and married. My mom didn’t want to be married,” Margaret recalls. “My sister always suspected my mom was a lesbian. Their whole marriage was a struggle.”
Read MoreTravis grew up in the small farming community of Tremonton, UT. His parents both had had previous marriages and children before he was born, making him the eighth of ten kids total between them.
“As a kid you don’t know how families are supposed to be, you just are there trying to find your place and figure it out as you go along,” he says. Still, he knew his family definitely didn’t fit the mold of the strong LDS community in Tremonton. Though his parents and stepparents had their own challenges, Travis shares that he knew and felt love amid the chaos and uncertainty that plagued his young, anxious heart.
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