​Hi! I’m Amy.

I grew up in Colorado in a tight-knit Mormon family. My best friend Erik and I got married when we were 22 and have four amazing children.

I have a BA in English from Brigham Young University, where I studied abroad in Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, and spent a year and a half in Chile. I also have a master's degree in liberal arts from Stanford University, where I gained the training to analyze and write about literature, philosophy, and history. I am currently a PhD student at the University of Utah, studying Education, Culture, and Society. 

My awareness of my status as a woman in a patriarchal culture began in early adulthood. Through the years, my emotional unease and philosophical objections to patriarchy grew, and I found myself frequently agitated, trying to understand the invisible matrix of power within which everyone operated but about which people seemed to know so little. When I brought up these issues (often prompted by deep personal pain), men at church would frequently tell me that I was wrong to feel frustrated because either a) patriarchy didn't exist anymore, or b) patriarchy did exist, but it was ordained by God so if it bothered me, it was because I didn't understand it correctly. (Confusingly, sometimes the same man would make both arguments in the same conversation.) I felt profound anguish not only from church doctrine, but from being misunderstood and dismissed. In 2016 I experienced a mundane patriarchal incident that on its own was not a big deal, but for some reason it was the straw that broke the camel's back. A lifetime of pain poured out into an essay, and I swapped the genders in hopes that girls and women would feel seen and validated, and boys and men might be willing to imagine - just for a moment - how it might feel to be a girl and woman in a patriarchal religion.

I hope it continues to provoke thought and conversation, and to inspire empathy.