If the name Elissa Wall sounds familiar, you may have met her in the Netflix docuseries “Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey.”
Released in June of 2022, the four-part docuseries explores the polygamous Mormon offshoot known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), as well as the rise and fall of its now-incarcerated leader, Warren Jeffs.
Elissa Wall, one of several former FLDS members who appears in “Keep Sweet,” left the church at 19 and went on to give key testimony in the first trial of Warren Jeffs. In this special episode of Embodied, Wall sits down with host Anita Rao to discuss her upbringing in the FLDS, her forced marriage at the age of 14 and her ongoing journey to re-establish a relationship to her own body after leaving the community.
Elissa Wall is a speaker, advocate, mother and author of the memoir “Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs.”
Please note that this episode contains references to religious trauma, pregnancy loss and sexual assault of a minor.
Three quotes from FLDS survivor Elissa Wall about her ongoing journey to reclaim her body
“The moment I found myself at the very bottom in pieces, that was the beginning for me in a lot of ways, because I got to pick up the pieces that I wanted to stitch myself back together with. And the ones that I didn't, I could leave at the bottom, and that was the past.”
"I happened to be at the library one day, and I found this book on this Japanese art, kintsugi. It’s these beautiful vases and cups and bowls that have been broken, and then they're brought back together and they're mended with gold. And it was this powerful epiphany that I had, where I looked at myself as a broken vase … and my goal right now is to find the gold that can bring it back together."
“I see [grace] as this beautiful container that can kind of hold a little bit of everything. It has the place to hold sadness and pain. It also has the place to hold joy and pleasure and ecstasy. That's really where I'm at in my world — to continue the healing journey and give myself permission to be in the middle of it, even when it's really really messy. And then to just be messy and graceful in the process.”
