Heather Gay from the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City

The campiest show on Bravo, "Real Housewives of Salt Lake City," is back—and we’re diving deep into one of our absolute favorites: Heather Gay! From breaking free from Mormonism to her candid memoir Bad Mormon and her evolving views on sexuality, we’re unpacking it all. And yes, we're finally addressing that black eye. Join us as we peel back the many complex, hilarious, and self-deprecating layers of the one and only Heather Gay!

Chapters

• 5:41 Heather Gay Intro
• 8:50 Mormonism
• 12:52 Lisa Barlow and Heather
• 22:46 Whitney and Heather
• 31:27 Heather and Sexuality
• 44:09 Heather and Jen
• 54:32 Heather and the truth
• 58:55 Heather's black eye
• 1:06:10 Final Questions

Transcript

00:00:00 Unknown: Hello. Hello. Are unhinge friends? I'm Jenny, a reality TV producer in Los Angeles. And I'm Sam. I'm a psychotherapist in New York City. We're best friends and bravo superfans. And we're here to take you behind the scenes into the minds and lives of your favorite reality TV stars. This is unhinged and on camera.

00:00:30 Unknown: Hi, everyone. Welcome back. Our ultimate unhinged unicorns. I use chat GDP to, like, give me some suggestions. And they were all really bad. I got a good one? My unhinged underdogs. Oh, that I had. I had thought of that too. While I hadn't chat UDP thought of that. I don't think I don't have thoughts anymore actually, which is basically the same as the A.I. thing that Google does. So yeah. So there was a lot of drama over the past week with Shannon and the host of Love Hotel, which is kind of interesting. So listen to our Shannon Pod that we did with Jamie Stein. I think at the time when we recorded it, we thought it was like too harsh. But I think that conflict with the host of Love Hotel kind of reiterated a lot of the things that we were saying. So if you haven't listened to it, check it out. And I feel like just over the past week there's been this like push pull of like they're like a lot of the things that we talked about, about Shannon and about her, disowned like anger and rage and feelings and victim mentality and then what's like happening on the show around her and Alexis and I think it's creating a lot of conflict for people of like or at least for myself of like how are we supposed to feel about this person? And that can feel really icky. Yeah, I think Alexis is doing her a lot of favors. They just recorded their reunion this past weekend, so when the season's over, we're definitely doing like a recap because the season was really good and New York City Housewives is back. The premiere was air to me. The thing I didn't like about last season was I just felt like there was a lot of, you know, dinners where someone was just trauma dumping about their past, which normally I would like, but it just felt like totally unmotivated and it just felt like it wasn't coming from it didn't feel like that coming from real actions or conflicts. It just felt like it was like now it's friends turn to tell her sad story. Well, and I felt like there was this demand of, like, we all have to share trauma. And if you're not sharing trauma, then you're not sharing and being open. And it felt very unfair and it felt very not okay, especially when they would aim the demand on someone who maybe wasn't ready or wasn't in a space to share traumas and for them to sort of name that as your like not showing up felt really uncool and it made their trauma dumping feel less authentic. It made it feel less connecting. What I did love about the premiere is Pavitt, who is clearly the star of the show, who came out later with his demo video on Instagram. If you haven't watched it, it's hilarious. And I just love like him embodying Michelle Obama's like they go low, we go high and him, you know, turning everything around into something that, like, benefits him into something that's like fun. This is an experience, a sublimation that, you know, coping mechanism we have where we turn something negative into something positive. And it's really work and it's for the greater good. Definitely that video made me laugh. Also a quick shout out to our fan, Suzanne, who's been listening from the beginning. She listens to every one of our podcasts and always texts me and gives me like feedback, even when it's like episodes of things that she doesn't even watch the show. She's still listening. Tell me I like this inside. And she's convinced Sam is her long lost twin because they sound and have the same thoughts and feelings. But so today we're actually covering a show that she doesn't watch. So this will make her watch it. So anyone who's joining who hasn't watched Salt Lake City, a fan of ours, April, actually requested this a couple months ago That we do, Heather Gay from The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. So we're getting into that today. Yes. Heather is so interesting and has such an interesting journey on the show. And what's nice about Salt Lake City is there isn't like I didn't have to rewatch years and years and years, which I never really do, but I felt less intimidated of years and years of content. We have sort of a small mind to go through and if you haven't watched, it's easy to catch up on. And I think along with, you know, the recent mom talk, what's what's the mom talk show called? I've been calling it mom talk. But I know I think it's the secret lives of Mormon wives. Along with that, I feel like these shows are very parallel. And I think Heather is a really interesting one who parallels a lot of the young women on that show. And we see sort of like, I feel like that show gives me a flashback to who I feel like Heather was or wanted to embody in her younger years as a young Mormon. And so I think there's a lot of interesting parallels So I did less of rewatching and I read Heather Gay wrote a book called Bad Mormon and I actually bought it like when it came out because I was so interested to hear her story because I've always loved Heather. Like I thought she was great. The black eye of it all kind of turned me off of her, but I always wanted to really like, read her book. But I'm going to be honest. Like, it was really hard to get through, especially the first half. If anyone's ever read one of these Housewives books, the best one that I've read is definitely Dorinda medley. I thought her book was funny. I thought it was real. I thought it told the great stories. Heather is was hard to get through, but to be honest, I got through it. The first half is all about like her early years and it just feels like and we'll get more into this, but it just feels like it's not super authentic. And then when we get into her marriage and where she is presently, it was way more interesting. So I felt like the first half was hard to read and then the second half I like flew through that. To me just saying that makes a lot of sense of who we like. See Heather to be in this like conflict between like her past and her present self and the way she feels about her past self and her history with, you know, LDS and Mormonism. And this way she wants to feel disconnected from it but still feel so enmeshed with it in ways that are so uncomfortable for her, that make it really hard for her to talk about in a way that always makes sense to us as an audience, where it feels like she is critical of it. And then there's still this part of her that idealizes it and the way it can feel like both a flip flop and just a huge disconnect. And so it feels like that was your experience of reading the book. This like how she's talking about this first part of her life of being entrenched in Mormonism. And I didn't, you know, disclosure, I did not read the book. So it's going to be a lot of journey educating me on what was in the book. But it feels like there's this piece where it's like hard for her to talk about Mormonism and that period in her life because she hasn't fully processed what she feels about it. Yeah, I felt very much like her childhood was very idealized, I think. And also, if you want to get more into Heather Gay, Jamie Stein did like two or three podcasts about her, which I really quickly listen to before this, because he hit on a lot of things that I had never really picked up on because again, like I had a bit of a blind spot because I really always loved Heather, like she was from the get go, someone I related to. Like I just liked her. So it wasn't until I started seeing the cracks and it was like, Oh, wait, there's a lot more going on with this woman. But yeah, the beginning of her book is very idealized. She talks about like, my childhood was these perfect Christmas mornings. It doesn't seem like she's processed a lot from her. Well, you feels like when somebody dies and we go through grief, what we end up doing with the person who's dead is we idealize them. We don't think about all the ways they've hurt us, all the negative aspects of them. We put them on this pedestal and only kind of focus on those good memories that like we don't want to let go of and that we don't want to grieve. And so it feels like maybe that's what was happening in the book is there's this sort of like I am grieving this thing I had. To almost that I had to let die. And so I'm only able to like focus on the positive aspects of it or those idealized things. And I think something that I didn't really think about or it reminded me was that she really didn't leave the Mormon Church until season one of Salt Lake City. Like she was basically living a double life. Up until the show aired because she was still going to church and being a, quote unquote good Mormon. Well, on the side, doing everything, not Mormon. And the show was really the vehicle to make her formally leave the church. And she does talk about that, I think, in the first. Well, it's I think I'm not an expert on Mormonism. Most of my information comes from this show, comes from Big Love, which I really love that show. It also comes from and if a the Jon Krakauer book, and they made a show about it recently, I think with Andrew Garfield. I can't think of the name, but it's a really good book about, you know, Mormonism and polygamy and a lot of the traumas that happened there. Probably a more subvert community, culty community than the ones that are kind of like in I don't know, I don't want to say extreme. Yeah. Yes. I mean, what I'm conscientious of, I think there are different levels to this and different sects of it and different cultures of it, just like with everything. But I do think there is sort of levels of leaving the church that that like there's like a signing out. I think we saw like Whitney do. It was that last year, a couple of years ago where she like signed the form to have her name removed from the Book of Mormon, which you don't have to leave the church or have disconnected from the church before you do that. Like, I think there's different steps to how disconnected you become from the church and how disconnected I imagine, like the church has with you. Right. Like there's a lot of, I think, talk about ways people can go, what is it called when you're forced to leave a church or excommunicated or things like that? I don't know enough about like all the ins and outs of those things, but I imagine like mentally she had left the church maybe before she did. in the book she talks about like going to temple and like becoming formally part I don't really know that much about Mormonism. I'm sure people listening know way more than I do because I didn't really do that much research and I'm like, not that interested, to be honest, as other people are. But she basically like details what happens in Temple and like a lot of it is just like, what if a normal person was dropped into this insane like religion that has a lot of, you know, you know, crazy rituals and stuff that like, you know, they believe in and I respect that. But like to a normal person might be like, oh, wearing these underwear is weird or whatever. And she kind of talks about it in that way. She does disclose everything that happened in Temple, which is apparently like something no Mormons like supposed to do. And it really made me question because her and Lisa Barlow have a really interesting dynamic on the show, right, where she's like Mormon 2.0 and like Heather actually grew up Mormon and there's some conflict there. And reading the stuff in Heather's book really made me feel like I don't feel like Lisa Barlow goes to Temple. I don't know that she actually participates in the Mormon Church at the level that like Heather did. So I'm I can understand why she resents that and and doesn't respect that because it's kind of like it's like I grew up Catholic. So when you're group Catholic, you go to church every Sunday, you take communion, you confess every week. You know, there's certain things you do, but like a modern Catholic or maybe only go to church like Christmas or whatever. Like I remember my sister started going to church with my grandma and she turned to her and said, You shouldn't even take communion because you're not really Catholic, because you haven't really finished your baptism and you haven't done this and you haven't done that. And here my sister thought like, I'm going to church with my grandma doing this day thing. So I think every religion has that sort of like, how much are you in it? And I think that's an interesting dynamic that plays out on Salt Lake City. But I I'm often frustrated with Lisa Barlow's unwillingness to participate in that conversation sometimes. Yeah, I think that it feels and you have to tell me more about like how she writes about this in the book. What I get the sense from Heather is that she was really enmeshed in this culture of Mormonism, which there was a significant repression of women specifically. And that's something that feels like a big point of contention of why she left. She wanted to be a businesswoman. She wanted to be successful. She wanted to. And I think there's stuff about her sexuality, too, that she wanted to own, that she couldn't own while in the church, and that was very repressive for her. And then I think there's this other aspect of and I think it's still. Kind of fits in with like this sort of patriarchal thing of like how women have to behave as part of this Mormon culture and part of the Mormon Church, and that they have to be good girls. They have to be domestic. And again, I don't know all the INS and out of it. I'm speaking of what I feel. Heather kind of talks about her experience of it, like being this good girl, Mormon. She talks a lot about her dad and how her dad was this really intense Mormon and that she always just wanted to make him proud and she wanted to be seen as a good Mormon in his eyes. And I think what that meant for her as a woman versus what that meant for maybe her brothers and sisters, for men, for her dad was very different and the expectations are really high. I also get the sense in especially the female Mormon communities, there is like a level of female competition and cattiness and we see that a lot. And that's why I brought in like the moms of TikTok, the TikTok moms, because I feel like we see the roots of that. They're like, how catty and competitive and how it's like, throw one woman down too to build yourself up. And I can see where Heather struggles with that within herself of like, I want to be a girl's girl. But I was trained to pull people down and to make people feel bad and to bring myself up and make myself feel better than them. And that's part of what's been ingrained in me of being like the good Mormon is attaining some level of perfection. And better than that, like for us outside of that can feel really disingenuous and really not cool. And especially for me, I'm someone who like prides myself deeply on being a girls girl and wanting to like build up other women. And so I think Heather comes in and she's so fun and she comes in like almost trying to embody the perfect girls girl, right? Like she comes on the show and we're like, Oh, she's so cool. She's a girls girl. She's self-deprecating. She can call herself out. She uses humor. And I have some feelings about like where that stuff comes from is a deeper coping mechanism around not feeling like gritty and not feeling like physically desirable. And so she has to make herself desirable in other ways as far as like her humor and her intelligence and her business. But I feel those conflicts in her and then we see them come out, especially, I feel like with Lisa, someone who I think she sees as having this privilege of getting to be a mormon but not follow any of those rules and not be confined by the patriarchal parts of it. And also, like Lisa has like skinny privilege, right? Like she's someone and she often talks about it on the show. I only eat burgers and like this, and yet I'm this thin. And so it feels like this double thing for Heather of like you get the two things that I don't ever get. Yeah. I mean, there was something there that triggered so much in me to say because I feel like with, you know, the the patriarchal sort of gossiping. I always loved Heather because I relate to her because I'm self-deprecating. You know, I am a girls girl. I like your commentary always hits for me. But I think what doesn't hit for some fans is the behind the scenes gossiping with Whitney mostly about Lisa Barlow and like the things they say behind her back. And I think you're right. If you look at mom talk, you're seeing the roots of that, which is like when you're in a patriarchal society where women don't get equal, rights to men, they're forced to fight over the scraps with other women, which is just embodying the patriarchal structure more so. And with Lisa, I feel like she does have all that privilege. I mean, she runs a alcohol company but says she's a mormon. She talks about drink, too. Am I getting that wrong? Like I feel like I've seen her drink. I mean, she must drink. She drinks her beta tequila, but I think she does it. The thing is that kind of frustrates me about that is I feel like she has a tequila brand. She definitely drinks, but we've never seen it be an issue on the show, which like, shouldn't it be where I get Heather's like, indictment of Lisa is that Lisa at times will acknowledge, like, well, we don't. I think she says things like, we don't, we didn't we don't have the same Mormonism. And for Heather, it's sort of like, well, no, I was taught there was one Mormonism. I'm like, what are you making up? And this demand that she wants of Lisa to like validate that experience of, no, I do get this privilege. And it's almost like Lisa won't fully do it. She wants to be able to do it, but she won't fully acknowledge. And I think part of her like it almost goes into what they say about like how Mormons aren't supposed to look up all the bad press about Mormons. And it feels like for Lisa to fully acknowledge Heather's experience, she has to acknowledge there are bad parts of Mormonism and she can't do it. And so she does this thing of like, no, this is different. No, we're just different. And I think it's really this part of her that is learn to like. And I think Heather does that too in certain ways. That's like we can get into that later. Her relationship with like truth and facts feels like rooted in being learn and then that learning of don't look at certain things that you don't want to know. Just ignore them. Just put them out of your head. But going back to Lisa and Heather, it feels like the big thing there is that Lisa can't meet her needs because in doing that, she would have to can't meet Heather's needs because in doing that, she would have to, like, acknowledge something that she's like not allowed to acknowledge in order to uphold that she's a mormon. Yeah. And lot of other Mormons are coming out and saying Lisa's Mormonism is not it's not it's just not Mormon. And I even think her own stone doing mission and taking I think he doesn't take his mom seriously as a mormon either. I mean, I don't I mean, there's simple things that, again, I know very limited about this. So please write in Mormons or Mormon experts too. We're happy to be educated. Yeah, but like even wearing the undergarments, it was clear that Lisa doesn't do it. So. And to me, if you're a mormon, that's not acceptable. So I don't I, I don't know. It just doesn't make sense to me. But I think what you're saying of Lisa just doesn't look at it. That's an easy way to just disengage, right? Also about Heather's father. She speaks very highly about him in the book. You can tell she idolizes him. She talks a lot about the prejudice her father faced because they actually grew up in Colorado. And so there was a lot of people who were prejudiced against the Mormons. And she saw her father endure that. And I think she talks more about that in the book than anything negative about her childhood. But again, I just don't feel that she's processed much from her child. Right. That's interesting. She's sort of talking about this external thing because that's safer than really getting into like the internal dynamics between her and her dad and potentially the whether it was implicit or explicit, the expectation of her to play a certain role in life as a woman, as a mormon, and the ways that she did that and then also the dynamics that that has with her siblings. There's a lot of interesting scenes, or at least two in season two, where she meets with her one scene with one of her sisters, I think. Is it her older or younger sister, Nancy? I think right here, young. It's so it's the youngest sister there in Vail. She apparently Nancy lives in Vail and she goes and meets up with her. And Nancy kind of like never followed the family expectations and was always kind of the rebel. It seemed like her and Heather particularly had a very contentious relationship because Nancy was this rebel and because Heather was such a judgmental and Heather kind of even owns, which I and I think this is the parts that make her so likable. She owns that. Like, I was really judgmental. I was a bitch. Like, I was the one who was putting people down. And Nancy really confronts her about that. And Heather, like, takes it in a little bit. She, like, does some explaining of it that feels like, I'll just take it in and don't explain it. Like, you don't have to give that explanation, but it really feels like she's trying to take Nancy and and her, you know, the sister's feelings of rejection. And then it's really interesting because there's this part where Nancy says, like, I was always jealous of you because you got dad's attention like you were dad's favorite. And I always I like, even though I couldn't do that, I wanted to be a favorite. And in that you feel this part where it's like, well, Heather's also kind of jealous of Nancy that Nancy didn't get confined in this, didn't get you know, didn't get stuck in it in the way that Heather did and lost so much of her experience through it. And I guess we're seeing in that scene where it's like a loss either way, because Nancy lost her family, she got cut off, which I think is also a really interesting dynamic that I feel like Heather uses, that she kind of is clearly like a learned behavior of if someone does something I don't like, I should cut off from them. And that feels like it's very rooted in the way religion, especially these more, I want to call it intense, but that feels like the wrong word. These. Yeah, well, I think you're referencing when Whitney is like, I need a break from the friendship, which seems I mean, we all take implicit or not implicit breaks from our friendships from here and there. And I felt like she was just being like, I just need some space. And then Heather was like, You're with me or you're against me like that. That there's other time, that there's another time with especially. And I think this dynamic pops up between her and Whitney a lot. There's another time where they're in the fight, in the lounge. Rae fighting over this rumor about Lisa and Heather's like, You're going to lose me forever. And it feels like, Oh, that is like religious trauma coming out. Like, she does not know how to handle this space of someone just did something to rupture something with me. And so my go to is I have to cut them off. Oh yeah. That scene was wild because I remember watching it and being like, Heather is taking this. I mean, they were all intoxicated, so I kind of chalked it up to that, but I was like, Heather is taking this. I think it's because then because then Whitney comes over again later and tries to talk to her and she, like, throws her out and is just like, No, I'm not going to speak with you. And it feels so it feels like a trauma response, which is why I want to connect it to like religious trauma, because it feels like she's embodied this way of being that either if someone does something that I can't tolerate, I have to just cut them out. And that's what religion does, right? Like if you're going to come in questioning our beliefs or our behaviors or the way we do things, then we're going to cut you out. Like there's no space for that. And it feels like sometimes that can be the unlikable part about Heather is where someone does something. And I imagine there's I'm not thinking of them in the moment, but I imagine there's other moments with other women. Maybe not Jen, because Jen seemed to get all the passes and we can get into that relationship. But it does feel like there's this in body part of her that wants to like either cut you out because you're doing something that's intolerable or idealize you. Yeah. And with Whitney that whole season, I felt like there was such a subtext to what was going on, that Whitney was really processing some really deep and dark trauma that, you know, especially the sexual abuse that she was detailing, which we only got bits and pieces of. She was not detailing it. She was. Which I think is fine. But it's interesting that she like she did a lot to protect that story, but also processing on TV. And I think that's like a hard line to hold. But I'll also say I felt that some of those scenes where she was talking about, you know, what she remembered and what she was talking about felt very edited to me. And I think a big part of that is, you know, just working in television, it's it's very difficult to put any kind of accusations like that or even infer who that could be about, because, you know, it's you know, someone could file a huge lawsuit and they and they would win because unless there was some kind of legal charge that she just has no basis to make that accusation. So I can imagine, you know, 20 lawyers watch that scene 20 times and each lawyer had to just cut this. Yeah, because if anyone could even assert oh, maybe had maybe Whitney is talking about her uncle or her her father or her father's friend, they would just strip it from the show. So I, I do think that there was an element that she wasn't telling the whole story, but I interpreted it more like it was edited. But that's interesting. That's actually helpful, that context to hear. And I think it's okay. Like I don't think people I don't have like I personally don't have a demand of my reality stars to tell traumas that maybe they're not processed or not ready to tell. And maybe that's better in their healing journey. Healing journey. But yeah, I really agree with you that I think in that season, Whitney is going through a trauma process and it's and Heather feels threatened by that. And I think that goes back to that, like fighting over the crumbs that you were talking about with women. Like these are my crumbs. I am the one with the trauma storyline. And now you're trying to come in with your trauma storyline and you've served like what has been foundational to me. And I think again, she can't like tolerate it and does because you see these moments where she's trying to give Whitney some empathy. I think there when Whitney first tells it, she's just like, I'm so shocked. Like, it's almost like she makes it about herself in that moment in a way that I don't even think she notices. She's just like, I feel like, got it about this. Like she goes into her own emotional experience of Whitney's thing. While on the other side we have like Meredith, who, you know, monotone of it all, is actually being the most supportive friend to Whitney in that moment. But Heather, who like clearly has this connection with Whitney, like, still can't like hold space to give Whitney room to also hold this narrative because I think she's been trained that if I give this up, I'm going to lose myself. Yeah, I remember that scene at dinner and I just remember Heather feeling like a deer in headlights when Whitney started telling that story. And it was not it was more of a physical response. And for me, I felt like there are two things happening. I think, one, Heather has made it her brand since season one, that her storyline is leaving the church. She's the bad Mormon, and I think her and Whitney are constantly competing over that. I definitely think like an ultimate girls trip when she's like, You haven't even gotten your name off the role yet. They they're doing this competition thing. But then I think that the second piece is that I feel that there's some level of trauma that Heather has not processed. And seeing Whitney go through that was a deer in headlights of like, holy shit, this is confronting something very deep in me that I can't even touch kind of thing. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, from her book, I can't really speculate what that was at all, but just reading her early childhood, I was like, There's so much missing here. And I know she's, like, working on a second book, so I'd be really interested if she's done any of that work and and would explore that more because it just didn't feel like it was explored at all in her book. But yeah, I think, I think Heather holds some really deep religious trauma wounds and I think it would be really hard work for her to move through those because there's so much of her truly having to face the parts of her that were probably are really kind of not a nice person while she was Mormon. It seems like she was really judgmental and cut out a lot of people. And then I think there's a lot of wounds around, like leaving Mormonism and being disowned by her family in a lot of ways, and now being on the receiving end of those judgments that she made of people that like, Oh, it's so messy. It's so messy. And it makes a lot of for me, it makes me hold a lot of empathy for Heather's bad behavior because it feels like it is rooted in these deep, deep conflicts in her and the way she feels really fragmented in these, like, different parts of life. One part of me is morally superior to everyone, and this other part of me wants to be fun, wants to be grounded, wants to be the good time girl, right? Like whatever that is. And we even hear a conflict around that where she's like, Lisa called me a good time girl. That's bad. But also, like, I really want to be a good time girl. Like, that's who I want to be now. Oh, okay. Okay. So I want to jump into this because I think we need to get into the black eye of it all, for sure. But this sexuality, I'm actually not that interested in the black. I am interested in the sex of it all. Yes. Okay. So let me let's get into that. It all interweaves. So but the sexuality piece of it in the book, her sexuality is hot. It's age like from a young age. She's like very sexual person. She talks about in college she had met an older man and they had this like romantic date and they were making out. And it seems like she's a very sexual person and even with her husband is or isn't. The one thing I want to bring up about that I'm sorry to interrupt you. I just need to say it before the thought. You know, I experience in doing therapeutic work with people from more repressed communities, especially sexually repressive communities, that a lot of people don't understand their level of sexuality because they move through this place of feeling arousal and feeling sexual excitement at different ages because we are sexual from the day we are born, like we feel arousal in our body from the day we're born, maybe even in utero, I don't know. Probably in utero. Like we feel pleasure, we feel a arousal. Like our bodies get aroused. Maybe not always sexual, but we feel it in our sexual parts. And then those things become different things based on societal narratives. But when you grow up in a sexual community, I think a lot of people who feel arousal in their body at a young age make meaning of that as I am a hypersexual person and they don't actually have a realistic scale of what arousal and sexual desire is in a realistic way. And I think in general, people don't always have that. I think more so now that sex is being talked about a lot differently. But I even think for myself, like being a young person, like when I was younger, having like sexual desires and being like this is I shouldn't be having this. And like, that's not true. Like, we have sex, like, that just is. It's not a should or shouldn't. It just is. And so it makes me curious about like her relationship with understanding what sexual desire is and that being allowed for her as a woman and that any any experience of it. I wonder if that feels hypersexual. Yes. That that tracks completely with I'm sorry to interrupt you, but yeah, no, it's very helpful because I agree. I don't feel that she's because even like when she talks about being single and she talks a little bit on the show about her dating, but we never really see it. It doesn't seem like someone who's like being in and out every night at the club, like. But she. All right, like, yeah. Fun. It seems like she's single. It seems like she's coming to this renaissance of I had children and it does feel like she's trying to figure out what is my relationship with my sexuality now that I'm not a mormon, now that like motherhood journey is over and so sex isn't going to be about reproduction anymore, which is like what I was taught is supposed to be about, Oh, I wish she would go to like a sex therapist and really kind of work through like what sex? And I think anyone who comes out of religions that have more like repressive ideas about sex should see a sex therapist. Because there's no way you don't have confusion about those feelings in your body and holds shame around it. Yeah, I think that's exactly what she needs because again, she does describe her sexuality as being like so intense and it really isn't. So I would love to see that journey from her. And I think Whitney got really mad at her about what she wrote about in the book. So the whole book I was, you know, itching to get to that part, which she says way worse stuff about Whitney. She actually reveals that Whitney wasn't initially cast on Salt Lake City because she was so over the top and their sizzle reel and was too much that they cut her out. And that Heather actually was, I think, a big part of getting Whitney as a main cast member. So I would think Whitney would be more insulted by some of that she writes about, but she writes about that she did this boudoir shoot with Whitney and Whitney says, You use my sexuality for your book. And it's like, I don't think that if she had read it, actually read it, I don't think that's the argument she would have. But I think she like Whitney going through the same journey in a different way that Heather is going through of like what is my relationship with my sexuality? Because I want to have ownership and narrative over it. And so if someone else is talking about it, I don't feel in control anymore. And so therefore they're like taking something away from me. And so I get where Whitney feels betrayed, but it does feel a little misplaced. And also it was super delayed. I think Whitney does a lot for it. And Heather talks about in the book that Whitney does these things sort of for camera. And that's one of the reasons she wasn't initially cast on Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, because I think the producers didn't like that. They felt that she was in authentic. And in that moment, it did. I get why viewers felt that way? Because I kind of felt like that. But in the book, when she's writing about this Bridgewater shoot with Whitney, I almost was reading it. It was like, Do you want to fuck Whitney? Because that would be if I was Whitney. I would read that and be like, Heather, we need to sit down. You didn't tell me, do you want to fuck me? Because that's really what was going on in that book. And I don't know, like, I don't know. Heather Sexuality. I don't know if Heather will ever fully know her sexuality because she'd have to get past a lot of, like, internalized narratives around like, shame of having anything but a heterosexual sexuality. But I also wonder if there's a part of her that sees Whitney both having, like, some thin privilege, right? Like Whitney does have a more easily attainable, you know, standard beauty body. And so I think she does see that and probably feel something about that, like her having that body and being able to do that kind of boudoir shoot like I really want. Another thing I really love about Heather is that she always seemed to come from, like, a more like she was willing to show us her body and not be the traditional thin privilege that we see on housewives a lot. And, you know, besides lack of racial diversity, I think there is also a lack of body diversity in these shows. And so when Heather came in, she kind of symbolized to us something more real. And I think that's been something she's been in conflict with probably her entire life is not having sort of the perfect body and I don't know, go again referencing mom, talk like those. Look at all those girls like they all have perfect bodies. They have seven children or you know, they have multiple children and still have perfect body is perfect hair. Also, we could talk about how that is not a realistic version of motherhood, where you're going to look that perfect all the time with three children. But I think there's a piece of that where I think there's some. Like the feelings she has towards Whitney's relationship with her body. And then I think there is probably also a feeling towards Whitney's exploration of her sexuality on. Like on display. Right. Like she's displaying it, like right. Then the boudoir shoot the naked. What were they doing? Were they naked? Painting like so in your chest. But like, yeah, interesting side story. So Heather always wants to be this businesswoman, And she got really interested in photography and was selling prints of the temple that she had done in Photoshop. So she's very passionate because Sam is also a photographer. I thought you'd be interested in this part of the book because she's very passionate about it. She learned it all herself and then she was photography, like photographing families and stuff. And then she started doing this. But when she got divorced, she started doing the powder boudoir. Wah, wah, wah, wah. Whatever that is. Shoots it. It's Friday. Yeah. I mean, it's just, you know, women who, I guess, need pictures of themselves naked with all power to you. And it's so interesting because she's also doing Beauty Lab at the same time. But what's interesting is her husband leaves her or leaves her. But it's complicated, obviously, and she's struggling with being a single mom while at the same time still in the church. But living this double life and part of the double life is the photo shoots. And so the photo shoots almost feel like a way for Heather to explore her sexuality. Totally. That makes so much sense. It's like a safe way. Exactly. And with Whitney, I don't mean to say like anything about heterosexual or not heterosexual, it just comes off very like either she wants to be Whitney or she wants to fuck Whitney or maybe, maybe at all. Like, maybe she feels all of those things and how confusing all of that is and the section is really about that. So I actually thought Whitney's and after really reading it, which she didn't read it, I feel like she would have come to her with someone told her Heather wrote about the boudoir shoot and she made a lot of assumptions about what that was exactly. And I mean honestly it's she's spoken very highly of other people on the book is not spoken especially of typically Lisa Barlow being one of them. I don't know how that flew under the radar for her, but she does talk about Lisa Barlow being sort of these Mormons that, you know, manifest whatever they want. So Lisa Barlow had come to her and said, you know, I'm making this reality show. She came to her and said, this is my reality show I'm making essentially and started casting the show with the idea women and had thrown her name in and Heather never thought that she was going to be part of the show. She thought she was going to recommend other people from Beauty Lab and then she recommended Whitney. And actually Lisa Barlow got extremely mad that she had recommended Whitney because she said Whitney was trashy and not what the show should be, but it was never a Lisa Barlow show. A production company was putting it together, so obviously they went ahead with Whitney. So that was a that's interesting because again, like, it feels like that's a place where Lisa Barlow is holding that. Like, I'm not allowed to look at that like Whitney is. Someone is putting her sexual sexuality out there more and that makes clearly makes Lisa Barlow very uncomfortable. Yeah. I think what is most interesting here is what feels like Heather's journey to figure out what her sexual desire is less about, like her sexual preference or orientation, but more about like the desire of it all. And I kind of wish she would talk a little. Maybe she has, and I am not remembering it, but talking more about like where she carries shame around that and where or maybe there is more conflict around that for her because I think there is this piece of her and I'm going back to that moment where I guess Lisa had said she was a good time girl in college and Heather was really offended by that. She's like, that's, you know, you can't be a good time girl and go to be why you like. That's not you. You'll get kicked out. That's not how that works. And and yet there's this piece of Heather that really wants to be a good time girl. Like, I feel it and I feel like and we can get to the gen shore of it all because I think that's their connection. Is Gen Shore is a good type girl. Oh, okay. Yeah. Let's get into that So when I got to Jen Shaw on the book, I was really interested because the way it feels on the show, especially when we get to leder the black eye of it all, it feels like they've been friends for a million years. It feels like Jen Shaw might have something on her, that she controls her in some way, that this runs so deep. And and then when I got to it in the book, I was kind of shocked. She basically barely talks about Jen Shaw. She says she only met her when they were casting for the show, so they didn't really have a friendship prior to on the show, they say, she says, I think her and Jen both say that Jen was a frequent customer of Beauty Lab and that's how they knew each other. But maybe their real friendship didn't begin till the show because that didn't feel like a lie. That felt honest. Yeah. She said she knew Jen Shaw from Coming Beauty Lab, but they were not like friends. They didn't really spend that much time together until she had met Mary at all. And they actually set up. She talks about casting, set up a dinner for her and Mary that was really stilted and bizarre. But she she knew of this every scene with. Yeah, exactly. But she didn't really have a close friendship for like, you know, some of these housewives comes come on. And they they've been friends for ten years. And we can really feel that, like Meredith and Lisa did have a long friendship prior to the show. And actually, Meredith and Heather were very close prior to the show as well. But Jen was not. And but she talks about being fast friends with Jen. Once the show came around, she talks about that they went to New York City and Jen Shaw was doing a dinner at Tao for her company, which now we know what her company was and they had full glam and they showed up late but still got all this food. Then they go to 1:00 and they're partying all on Jen's credit card, it seems like. And then Jen plays Wing Woman and gets her with this hot guy from Harlem. And and Heather wants to, you know, bang this hot guy from Harlem. And so Jen is sort of doing this mother thing where she's getting like a copy of his driver's license and a copy of the car they're in and keeping all these records so that he won't try to kill their essentially. So Heather could go to Harlem with them and fool around or whatever. And it was sort of like she was being a mother hen to like let Heather because they're out the whole book too. And I want to mention this throughout the whole book. And she's telling her life story every time she tries to escape Mormonism in some way or disown her religion, something external happens and she sees that very much as a sign. And there's a couple examples, but the clearest one is basically like her and her husband left her. I mean, she talks about her and her husband kind of got married after three months because they wanted to have sex. And then once they had sex, they realized that's really the only reason they got married. And then everything after that was sort of performative. So after her husband leaves, there is a couple of things that happen. So she she tries to sort of rebel and go out with some friends. She ends up driving, she goes to clubs. She's not really drinking. She's just sipping other people's drinks because she's still doing that good Mormon thing. She gets pulled over and she actually is she blows under the legal limit, but she still gets a charge for reckless driving. And so that was a huge sign for her. Okay. I need to go back to being straight and narrow. Then there's another incident when her and her husband, I think, finally actually do the divorce. She gets Bell's Palsy in her face, so like half her face goes numb. And in my estimation, I'm like, okay, you're disowning all of your feelings for years, all of your sexuality, anything that makes you happy. Now, you've lost everything you've ever worked for. You're still trying to hang on to it. But the cracks are, you know, now an earthquake. It makes sense that you would have a stress reaction and get Bell's Palsy. Yeah, but to her, it was a sign from God that she had done something wrong by losing her marriage. That's so interesting. It fits so well into this thing that they talk about in cognitive processing therapy, which is a trauma based therapy for people who have experienced a lot of like big T traumas, which are like. If the attachment traumas can fit in there. But it's more like sexual abuse. It's physical abuse, different things that happened directly to you. But the just world theory is basically this idea that we get as children that if you do something bad, bad, it's going to happen. If you do something good, something good is going to happen. And it feels like she's bringing that into all of her experiences of like, oh, if, if something bad is happening, it must be because I'm not following the church, which must have been installed in her at such a young age that like any bad thing that happens to you, it's because you're not being Mormon enough Yeah. And so when I read that, I really started to understand that there was a displacement on to Jen somehow that she must be, because she talks about this a lot in the book with her marriage to like how was this sinking ship? And she knew it. And she just would be like, you know, be sweet, pray and obey. Like just, you know, follow the rules, be the best wife possible. And she did that for ten years. And it really felt like Jen became her husband on the show somehow. And I'm still kind of confused how because again, it really felt like they had this ten year friendship before the show. But maybe it's also I think Jen has this power and control over the women, and I'm still not sure how really, because even when she finally confessed, Jen hit me, which I'm we'll get into. I'm not sure if I even still believe that that all the women are like, we totally get it. We totally see that's how Jen was. And I'm like, from an outside viewer, I'm like, I how like, unless she had blackmail on all of you, I don't understand. I get the sense that Jen became this symbol of the opposite of her religion. And so then she, like, displaced the loyalty and the way she would kind of proscribe herself to Mormonism, to her father, onto Jan, that it's like, now this is who I'm going to put this on because this is the opposite. And it's like the pendulum, like we're either going to be over here with Mormonism or we're going to be over here with Jen. And it felt to me, it felt like that like this is where now I'm going to displace all this energy that I had in religion, and now it's going to you. And you get all my loyalty. You get, you know, all of your negative stuff I'm going to disown in the same way that I would disown anything negative about Mormonism. And it's like she doesn't know how to have that in between relationship with something where it's like there is nuance and it's not loyalty or disloyalty. It's not all or nothing. So that's the sense that I got in that relationship with Jen. Why? Jen I think because again, it feels like everyone, at least on the show, Jen represented what she at her core maybe wants, right? Like she's like this empowered woman with all this money who, like her husband's, never around to tell her what to do. She gets to do whatever she wants. She's, you know, kind of sexy, I guess. I mean, to me, she kind of look like there are times where I'm like, she looks like, what's the guy from Lord of the Rings? Gollum. Gollum. Like, I feel like she's got some, like, Gollum type looks. And I think she's like the person of color, which I think was really interesting and was a pull for Heather into like a different type of community that isn't, you know, most of LDS, for my understanding, is fairly white. And yeah, I mean, she talks about in the book that Jen was cast for diversity because they were really pushing Heather, we need more diverse people for this cast. And she was like, We're in Utah. Everyone's white, like, what do you want? And that that's one of the reasons Jen got pulled in. But also, you know, Heather talks openly on the show about how she's primarily attracted to black men. Mm. Which I think, I think she wants to be pulled outside of this thing that she knew so that she can explore her sexual urges, so she can explore her like her feminist parts of her without carrying the shame of the church. Because to do that with Lisa, to do that with Whitney, I feel like even to do with Meredith, even though Meredith isn't part of it, she's still like, there's a way that Meredith is kind of more uptight and I think would reflect back some of the shame that that Heather holds. And so she can't do it with any of those women. She but she can do it with Jen. Yeah, I think Jen gave her a safe place. That makes sense to me. I also think it was just opposite. I think it's the way she was so different and she wasn't any of those girls she was in competition with growing up. And Heather's father died around the time Jen went to jail. And I think it got glossed over in a way because it got wrapped up in this weird fight with Lisa Barlow. But it was something we never really saw processed on the show in the same way Meredith's father's death was. And like, to me, everything you're saying about, like, Heather's dad and their relationship and how she was the favorite, it seems like it would have impacted her a lot. So I could see how, like holding on to Jen might have been maybe a part of that. Also, Jen really expected ultimate loyalty from everyone around her, but also because we know she was running a criminal, know she needed loyalty because like that's how she kept herself safe. And I think she saw that Heather was someone who's easily, you know, and whether she saw this consciously or unconsciously, we don't always know what's at work with people, but that Heather is someone who moves in those ways of if I build her up and if I do certain things, she is going to stay loyal to me and in the ways that I need her to stay loyal to me. I mean, I think we've talked about in the show how sometimes it can be very like Maffia, ask me if I'm going to take down the doors or basically all of New Jersey. But actually, Jen Shaw, out of everyone at any show is Mafia adjacent more than like anyone else, because she was running and high up in a very complicated criminal organization, I think that gets swept under the rug sometimes and the absurdity of it all. I think, you know, I can't remember all of Jen's history, but I do feel like she must have come from this place where she learned to manipulate at a very young age as a way to get her needs met. And I think Heather learned at a young age that like being manipulated would get her validated and get her to be needed and wanted. a throughline throughout the book is her need for validation. It's huge. Throughout her marriage, she sort of, you know, she gets asked by the bishop to run this special organization or whatever within the Mormon Church. And it was hugely validating. But her husband didn't, you know, give her that validation. So she's hurt. And I think getting the show was like the ultimate validation. I think being a fan favorite was the next like biggest, you know, validation. And I want to get into her relationship with the show, but I will say on the whole black eye of it all, which let's not do the whole recap because I was like less interesting when you really think about Heather than it seems on the surface. I know because I rewatched I just had to rewatch in in order everything that happened with the black eye because I thought maybe there'd be some clue I missed that would explain it. And there's no clue. The story doesn't make sense. She's constantly changing it. I just feel I'm still not convinced. We've heard even 10% of the real story because all the stories are true. I think Jen gave it to her. I think it was bad Botox and I think she hit her head on something. And I think they're all true because I think they're all true to her in the moment that she's telling them, because, again, I think she is a powerful denier and creator of what she needs in a moment, Tim, to feel in control or to feel like she's going to get the validation she needs. Yeah, because, you know, her relationship with the truth. I was really interested in evaluating because Jamie Stein talks about this a lot on his podcast, so definitely you check him out too. But one of the things with the book that I noticed, there wasn't any outward lies, but there was some subtle things where I was like, This isn't really this can't be true. And one of the things is, you know, one of the she gets in a big argument with her ex. They were already separated. He was supposed to he was moved out, but he had a key to the house. So he comes over and she's trying to change the locks and they get into a big argument and it ends up resulting in a domestic violence charge against her. Her has. Bend. And she's talking about that the husband was supposed to be watching the kids and she came home and the kids are running around with full diapers Well, the youngest child at this point would have been six years old. So there's no way that youngest child is running around with a full day. I mean, that to me just seems like a way of like dramatizing the story. Like probably two of the kids that were in diapers had full diapers. And that's just less interesting to like parse out those details. Well, none of the kids were in diapers because the youngest one was six. The only youngest. Okay. Yeah, the youngest one. The the the youngest the her child could have been was five. And by her own timeline that she lays out in the book, the oldest, because she didn't she gets a divorce from her husband because of a fight over her child who's turning eight baptism. And she's the oldest. And they're only between the oldest and the youngest is only like three years apart. So there's just no way that anyone in that house was wearing diapers, which, again, does not matter to me. I'm like an editor, clearly missed that. But also I'm like, I think because we have picked up on these sort of like subtle lies or these fairy tale stories come out with them where like again, going back to that, like Lisa Barlow rumor, like there's like she tells a whole story in that, like, I didn't hear it. Well, maybe I heard it, but I forgot it like and like there definitely is. She has an interesting relationship with the truth. And again, I think that learned from Mormonism because I think they have an interest like I think as a mormon, the way you are meant to again, like disown anything that doesn't work for you and the well doesn't work for the religion. Like that must be something you internalize to do in your life. Like, I'm going to try to disown things that don't work for me, which then you have to like fill in the blanks and like that feels like what she's doing. She's like filling in, like, how do I make this make sense? And so it only makes sense if he wasn't changing their diapers, right? Like that makes it make sense because if I had to really go in to explore what happened there and why that happened, I may have to look at parts of myself that I don't want to look at, because if I look at them, then I have to see all my imperfections and I have to see where I have role and responsibility for the things that happen. And that can be really hard, especially if you're taught that. If you do that, then you get excommunicated or you get punished in some sort of severe way that like I think religion can sometimes hold good and bad. And the argument with her husband, you know, that results in a domestic violence charge. It's rushed through so quickly that when she was like he was charged with the domestic, I was like, what even happened to justify that? So it does seem like a moment. It was interesting that that moment I call it a lie because it was definitely a part of the book where I was like, Oh, she has not she has not really dived into this fully yet with the black eyes stuff. I will say in the reunion, she says the reason she believes Jen did it is because she walked in the room and looked at her and said, Oh, I did that. And then Heather says, I got you. And they play this piece of random footage where you can't hear the audio and she's telling you that's what they're saying. And. That's all we have. And she says, I don't remember anything else. I think from a production standpoint where my issue is, is that I think Lisa Barlow rightly points out there was an internal investigation. I think producers got in trouble because the line between production and cast is really gray, especially when you're on these big trips. Oftentimes, producers will stay up late with the cast to film on iPhones because that has become a big thing. They're also friends with the cast. That's that's almost part of their job. So it's a really complicated, gray area for the people who do this work. And I was really disappointed in the way that Heather, you know, I mean, she lied at the expense of people's jobs. She also lied to lawyers. She also said in a reunion, I wanted that investigation. Then 5 minutes later said, I didn't want that investigation. So we we don't ever know the truth. And I think that's frustrating. But then in another sense, not to get into the Monica at all, because that could be like ten podcasts, honestly. But my frustration is on her end is that she sort of this has been in the blogs and I do think it's true or some sense of it is true that Heather basically went to production was like, I will not film and got the other women on board. I will not film if Monica comes back and really didn't give her any of the grace that she got with the black eye situation. You know, she basically lied in an internal, you know, official investigation. Jobs are on the line. Lawyers were involved. And Monica may or may not have lied about a burner account about Jen Shaw, which is the same person that terrorized Heather it and even Andy calls us out, is like, shouldn't you both have the same tormentor and just handled it differently? So why shouldn't Monica be getting more of a punishment than you? Mm hmm. And for me, I felt it was unfair. Yeah, I hear that. But wasn't Monica asked to come back? No, she was blocked. Oh, okay. They did not push her back to come back. She should have been. I mean, I think they should have given her a chance. I think there's something very deep. And Heather and I don't know what it is that Monica triggers are so much that she could not. I mean, I think if Jen got out of prison, she would film with Jen again over filming with Monica. And I think Lisa Barlow recently said, like, do you see that? Yeah, I mean, me too. I would love to see a jail visit and maybe we can make that happen at some point. But that offer income has to go to like, what is it called when you pay back victims restitution? Yeah. Yes. But she doesn't get paid for it and it just goes all to restitution. There you go. Bravo. There's my. My plan for it. Yeah. I mean, I think there was some sort of agreement floated about about her coming to the reunion after she took a guilty plea. But then she. I think Jane is still unwilling to accept that she committed the crime that she obviously committed because she's been convicted of it. But even Lisa Barlow, I think, recently said she would film with Jane over Monica. And I just don't I, I mean, I get the whole cyberbullying element of it. I don't know everything that this Instagram post did or didn't post or tag them in because I'd never heard of it. I never seen it. But it does seem like there is a lot of, you know, Grace being given to Heather and no grace being given to Monica, but maybe she just need a season off and maybe we'll see her come back. I don't know. I think Heather should give her another chance because I think she was given a lot of chances and that should be allowed for other people as well. Yeah, I appreciate what you're saying. And I really am thinking into like, what is it about Monica that feels so triggering to Heather that make me her reaction to her so different than Jen? I think at the core, she didn't have that initial loyalty to Monica, and so that made it easier for her to like, Oh, I see something bad, and so now I can disown you. And she didn't have to do that whole like, let me ignore the bad and only see the good and idealize you in that way. You know, we see her doing that now with brown, brown, brown wine. I've been spelling her name brown wine because I can't spell it correctly. And bravo, we really don't need any more braunwyn. It's like we should. Just like, I know the brown name is not great and bravo, but we're. I'm trying to give her a chance, but we we see her doing the same thing this season where she's like some of your behavior because they were gossiping in a car, you big gossip being in a car many times, Heather doesn't really trust other women. And I think she wants to be a girl's girl. And so that's what she presents on the surface. But I think in her core, she doesn't really trust other women. And again, not to beat the religious trauma over the head, but I guess that's like what that says is that I think she has been taught that women are not to be trusted and to assume the worst and protect yourself. I think the you know, she's always been a fan of the show. She talks about that in the book. And so I think when I see her and experience her on the show, she almost feels to me sometimes like if I was suddenly joined a housewife show and that's when I love her the most, where I'm like, Oh, this would be me if I got to be like, Ultimate Girl Strip. I think I really she was okay on the show, but something I liked about her was she was just very star struck. Like I'm sitting here with Gizelle and Porsha. Yeah. Like, there's this humbleness to her that is so fun that it's like she doesn't come on thinking she's better than a fan. Yeah, she is very that. But again, I just want to bring like and I very much have empathy for it, but I think that's a surface coping mechanism that she does to be likable. And because at her core, she has always been judgmental and felt herself above people. And when she left the church, she suddenly realized that that was being done to her. And so now she's sort of like overcompensated in a way that I think is benefiting her. And that is great. And I connect to a lot too. But I also recognize where it does feel like deep down there's this like performative aspect of her of like, how do I be? The perfect version of this thing that's in perfect and it gets all messed up. And that's where like the lying and like all these, like, disjointed parts of her start to come out because there isn't a perfect version of that. And yet she doesn't know how to move through the world without trying to embody something that is like seen as perfect and constantly validated and never called out or judged. Yeah. And one thing I want to go back to is that Heather talks a lot about in the book, how she felt that her ex-husband should be held accountable for not making their marriage work because she tried so hard and he kind of gave up. And also, you know, it seems like other things happened within their marriage. So she's very fixated on that and how the Mormon Church turned her their back on her and not him. And it almost feels like Monica trying so hard to hold Chan accountable for her actions felt very triggering to her because I think she saw a part of herself where she really wanted to hold her ex-husband accountable but couldn't. And I also think maybe that played some part into it. It seems like, well, then if we go on like an even deeper, bigger scale, like the accountability of her family, the accountability of the church for how they have like traumatized her and what they have done to her. And she's never going to get that. And so it is so much easier to, like, throw all of that on to Monica. Yeah. Is she good for reality TV? I think she's still very good for reality TV. I think she's funny. I would like to see her explore way more of her story. I always think housewife shows work best when it's sort of 50% just the women's lives and their relationships and their families and 50% conflict with the other women. And some shows are more balanced than others. So I would like to see more of her storyline of her exploring, like leaving Mormonism and her sexuality is obviously a whole piece of it. Yeah. I really like her. I think she is really good in. She kind of came in again as like a woman who went outside of sort of the norms of body types that we were seeing. I think it's now interesting seeing her on like her Mozambique journey and gaining different a different body and sort of how that is impacting the way I want to see more about like how that's impacting her identity and what she's understanding about herself, her sexuality and the conflicts that come up around that. I just think that's interesting and I think that's something a lot of women on Bravo and just in the world are like going through now that there are these sort of like. Almost quick fixes to body image stuff in a way that there wasn't in the past. I also think she is a good orator of Mormon history on the show, because I think that is like the other character on the show is the like even in the intros we see like the church, like it's always in the background of the like letting us know that that is like a looming figure that is here. And I think she is really good at giving us history and context in a way that feels like I connect to it. And, you know, we can't get that from Lisa Barlow. Like, she's not going to give us the right history and context to the Mormon Church. So I really appreciate her in those ways. I also think her relationships with all the women is really interesting. I like the her and Whitney of it all. I think that's such a complicated they're cousins and how that relates to it and yeah and I think I, I like her. I, I think she's funny. I think she's cool. I think it's her relationship with the truth feels like it would be really hard to have a true friendship with her, but is really kind of interesting for TV. Yeah, I mean, in fairness with the brown brown wen fight, she was correct. She was saying something snarky and gossipy about Whitney. And then when you put it next to what she said to Whitney was definitely a different context. And then she still wants to argue like, Oh, I said the same thing, but the tone in the context matter, right? So is they speak to intention, right? And like we in the moment that Bronwen was talking to, went to Whitney versus when she was talking to Heather and Lisa was different her intentions. So. Is reality TV good for her? And I would say yes, because it changed her life fundamentally. I think if she hadn't joined the show, she would still be performatively being in the Mormon Church. I think her kids would still be forced in the Mormon Church. I think she'd be living a double life. I don't think she would have the independence and success that she has now. So I think it's fundamentally changed her life in a positive way. I agree. And I also think she is someone who it does feel like watches herself back and does some and again, kind of similar. I think we talked about this with Jack. Like it would be interesting for her to do that like with a therapist and in like some sort of intentional processing way. But it feels like she already does some watching back and trying to process herself. Do I think she can do that fully on her own without some sort of objective person would be really hard. But I do feel like she tries to watch herself back and be credible, crawl and try to figure out places where she can grow and change in a way that feels different than maybe some of the other housewives who kind of dig their heels into behaving in the same way as over and over again. And I think she openly talks about how she doesn't really look at social media and she really disengages. And I think that's super healthy. And I think other housewives could follow suit, like just hire someone to run your social media. Like don't look at things. I would say advice or thoughts for the future is I would really hope that she would. I know on these housewives shows, people get very caught up in what's true and the truth. And sometimes it frustrates me in a sense of like, everybody has their own truth, everyone has their own perspective. So why do they get so caught up in this minutia, especially as women? Because we're sort of more emotional, empathetic creatures. So oftentimes it's not about what's true or not true. It's also about just how we feel about something. But I would say I would I would love to see her explore more, her relationship with the truth. because I can see that that's where the fan base is frustrated with her. Yeah, I agree. And I think that's part of like the process that I'm talking about. Like, I think she has this capacity to do that to a certain degree. And again, I think she's having to unlearn a lot of like narratives and behaviors that are really extreme from growing up in a more extreme religious circumstance. And I kind of have faith that she's going to continue to grow and change. And keep in mind, yes, she said this on Ultimate Girls Trip to Whitney. I'm Whitney's 15 years ahead of me in this process. So I think it was very interesting for her to join the show in the middle of trying to figure this out. And that's really what we're the middle. That's kind of like the beginning. True. It's really the beginning. Like we are like I think getting on the show was her fully being like, I've left the church. I imagine that before that she kind of always had a toe and even still feels like maybe she still has a toe in at times. But before that, it feels like the show allowed her to be like, Oh no, I'm fully stepping into a non-Mormon identity. Well, Mormons are having a moment. Mormons are having a moment. And it's really interesting culturally to see, the connections with the mom talk of it all But the ultimate question is, will mom talk survive this? I mean, didn't mom talk already die like didn't die like before the show started. I will say I was I was calling for a mom talk show for like two years before her beard. So I felt like my finger was a little bit on the pulse. I feel like I heard about it through real moms of Bravo, shout out, love them. That's where I learned about Mom Talk. And I feel like that was about a year ago that they started reporting on them. So anyways, but send in your thoughts and your feelings and requests where we have a long list that we're slowly working through, but we'd love to hear what you think. So thanks for listening. Thanks, guys.