CAROL LYNN PEARSON

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.

At 85 years old, Carol Lynn Pearson laughs that she is “still functional”--still walking daily, still writing, still being asked to speak for organizations like Gather and Encircle. And she is still deeply committed to her lifelong assignment—as a poet, playwright, and truth-teller inside a church she both loves and prods toward compassion.

Born in Salt Lake City to two devout Mormon, as those in the faith were widely called for so many years (it’s still her preferred term), Carol Lynn was raised with the belief that the LDS Church was God’s true plan for the human family. “The air that I breathed was certainly Mormon air,” she recalls. “And I loved it.”

Even as a child performing as Raggedy Andy in a Primary musical, she saw the path ahead clearly. “As I looked around, I thought, ‘How come everything important seems to be done by the men’?” She figured, “I’m as good as any of these boys.” Yet she observed how all the people on the stand were men, the voices on the radio were male voices, the Bible stories all seemed to be stories about men. She quips, “I very quickly became an unconsciously devoted feminist.”

Her brilliance was evident from an early age. As a student at Brigham Young High School in Provo, Carol Lynn won speech competitions, represented Utah in a national contest in Washington D.C., and had her photo taken with President Eisenhower. Later at BYU, she majored in theater and won Best Actress twice, once for playing Job’s wife and once for portraying Joan of Arc. “I must have absorbed a lot of cellular energy from playing Joan,” she reflects. “Because I was able to look around at my own church and say, ‘This is not right’.”

After college, Carol Lynn taught at Snow College to save money and then traveled the world for a year—finding herself in Russia the day JFK was assassinated. When she returned to Utah, she worked as a screenwriter for BYU's Motion Picture Studio, including the beloved short film, Cipher in the Snow.

It was as a student at BYU that Carol Lynn met “a charming young man” named Gerald Pearson. He called her "Blossom" and insisted the world needed her poems. After marrying in the Salt Lake City temple, together they borrowed $2,000 to self-publish Beginnings, a small book of her poetry, packed with spiritual gems. It took off. BYU Bookstore and other Provo shops couldn’t keep it on the shelves. 20,000 copies sold, which was unheard of for a book with this kind of origin story. Her former English professor, Bruce B. Clark, was thrilled with the poems and wanted to reference the book in the Relief Society manual he was responsible for producing for the Church. Carol Lynn was on the map.

She went on to publish Daughters of Light, a groundbreaking book on early Mormon women and their expression of spiritual gifts. Her research and poetic insight earned her speaking invitations from general authorities and their wives at various events. Her reputation grew. Her next book, Flight of the Nest, about the early LDS women’s stronghold in politics, firmed her household name across Utah and beyond. “I became well known to the brethren in Salt Lake,” she recounts. “They were impressed by and fond of me.” (She also later penned the well-known stage play, My Turn on Earth, Primary children’s song, “I’ll Walk with You,” as well as numerous other books.)

Carol Lynn and Gerald had four children. But behind the scenes, their marriage carried a silent ache. Before they married, Gerald had told his wife he had had homosexual experiences in the past but that it was not who he was. He had repented, and “all would be well.” Years later, after their third child was born, he confessed that it wasn’t. Despite trying to make the marriage work, and experiencing what Carol Lynn calls a “good physical relationship together,” there was significant heartache because Gerald had acted on his attractions during their marriage.

They decided to move to California for a fresh start. Gerald, an artist and visionary, had gotten them into some financial troubles with his interest in developing Mormon art and investing in some products that didn’t sell. Having spent some time in Walnut Creek and loving it, Gerald convinced Carol Lynn that was a good location to begin again. They moved together, but ultimately, they determined the best thing was to end the marriage and choose to part as friends.

From that time on, Carol Lynn supported the family through her writing.

Four years after the move, Gerald contracted AIDS.

Carol Lynn brought him into the family home to care for him until he passed away.

“It never occurred to me that I’d write about it,” she says. “It was such a shameful thing at the time.” But something stirred. She had come to believe, “We have this whole thing wrong. I don’t know why people are gay, but I know they are children of God. We must figure out a better way to treat these people than we’ve done in the past.” As Carol Lynn witnessed families rejecting their gay children and churches offering no refuge, she knew: this story had to be told.

That story became Goodbye, I Love You, published by Random House in 1986. It was a national sensation, and Carol Lynn appeared as a guest on both the Oprah show and Good Morning America. The book was crafted to appeal to a mass audience, and she says, “Most active Mormon people also knew about this book.” Carol Lynn went on a 12-city tour and had to have a second phone line installed to handle the calls and outreach which came pouring in. She feels lucky her kids didn’t experience any nasty fallout from the book’s publication.

The book marked a watershed moment in how the LDS community began to view its LGBTQ+ members. Historians who’ve examined the plight of the LGBTQ+ community in the LDS faith have been very clear that the publishing of Goodbye, I Love You was the turning point for individuals and families, and ultimately for the church, in seeing their gay brothers and sisters in a different light. Carol Lynn became a voice not only for her late husband but for thousands of others.

Gerald, she believes, understood the divine timing, and in his own way likely influenced it from beyond. Carol Lynn recalls how once, “He told me, ‘Listen Blossom, I know before we came to this earth you and I agreed to do a project together. I’m so sorry this has been so painful for you, but we agreed’.”

Carol Lynn posits that without Gerald, there would be no Beginnings. And without him, no Goodbye, I Love You.

She has since continued the work. Her second LGBTQ+-centered book, No More Goodbyes, chronicled the hundreds of incoming letters she received, sharing stories with permission from families who had embraced their gay children, and those who hadn’t. “There were still too many suicides, too many alienations,” she says. “I had to do something more.”

And so she wrote the stage play Facing East, a haunting portrayal of a Mormon couple grieving their gay son’s suicide. In the play, the son’s lover unexpectedly appears at the gravesite, offering a chance for truth, grief, and reconciliation. Produced by Jerry Rapier’s Stage Two Theatre Company and premiering in 2006, the play became a staple in LGBTQ+ Mormon discourse. The title references the LDS belief that caskets should face east for Christ’s resurrection, but that somehow “our gay people are still not invited into the light.”

The idea sprang when Carol Lynn attended a playwriting workshop in San Francisco and the participants were told to quickly jot down an idea for a play they knew they were ready to write. She was on fire. “It was electric from the beginning,” Carol Lynn recalls. “I knew it would be important.” She secured funding from Bruce Bastian, who she describes as a “marvelous man with large financial abilities to make big things happen in the gay scene.” She wrote the script in three months. A 20th anniversary revival is planned for 2026.

Carol Lynn is grateful to have seen how these three works, as well as her book, The Hero’s Journey of the Gay and Lesbian Mormon (available on Kindle), have been pivotal in the LGBTQ+-LDS space. In fact, all of the works across the six decades of Carol Lynn Pearson’s career have been mind-shifting and at times, feather ruffling. Her haunting recount of various tales from those affected by polygamy, Ghosts of Eternal Polygamy, also changed the nature of how that topic has been perceived by so many. Her much-anticipated, upcoming four-volume memoir, The Diaries of Carol Lynn Pearson: Mormon Author, Feminist, and Activist, is being published by Signature Books, with the first volume expected in August. “I’ve kept a diary since high school,” she says. “Everything is in it. Everything. Even though I lived it all, it’s still fascinating to read.”

Though Carol Lynn has been cautious about travel in recent years, she remains an anchor in both church and community life. Her local bishops and stake presidents have consistently supported her, even as she’s pushed boundaries. She has often looped both them and their wives in on her new projects before they come out, as was the case with Ghosts—a project they all enthusiastically supported and saw the need for. She recalls how, “One stake president told me, ‘When Salt Lake calls asking if we should be doing something about Sister Pearson, I tell them: leave her alone. Carol Lynn Pearson does better PR for this church than you could ever buy’.”

Carol Lynn laments that other trailblazers who have said and done much less out loud than she has have not always been treated with the same respect. She’s unsure why, but surmises this may have something to do with her geography. She also says her work has always been rooted in love, faith, and hope. “I’ve never caused trouble in a church setting,” she says. “My work is not hateful. It shines light on what has been and directs it toward the future of what ought to be.”

Today, she still stands to speak in Sunday meetings. “Part of my assignment is to encourage women to use their voices,” she says. “I try to model that. I stand up. I speak loudly.” She is deeply aware of how slow change comes. “Sometimes glacial,” she says. “But these teeny, teeny steps are just not sufficient. There should be prophetic confidence in just moving forward on something we know is important and correct—not just based on how it will affect our “public relations.” The leadership will never say, “We were wrong, and we apologize.” But we should acknowledge that we can and will do better.

Still, she believes the heart of the church lives not in headquarters and policy, but in wards and stakes, where people love and support one another. “Too often our church presents itself as a patriarchal, hierarchical corporation. But the church itself is down here, where people live and love and learn.”

Looking back on her life’s mission—the poems, the books, the plays, the pain, the joy—Carol Lynn offers no regrets.

“If I had not been chosen by fate, God, circumstance—whatever you want to call it—to be involved in this,” she says, “a lot of people would have lost out on something that changed their lives.”

She still believes in the term Mormon. She still believes in using her voice. And she still believes that God’s reach extends far beyond Salt Lake City.

“We all have our assignment,” she says. “I have a big one. And it just doesn’t seem to end.”


Note: You can purchase autographed copies of Carol Lynn’s books on her website: www.carollynnpearson.com/store

Please join Lift+Love at the 2025 Gather Conference June 27-28th in Provo, Utah, where Carol Lynn Pearson will be presenting on the main stage and he Gather Conference will be honoring Carol Lynn Pearson’s remarkable life.