After Daughter’s Suicide Ex-Vangelical Chooses To Listen To Her Inner Guide

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Lisa recommends the Facebook forum Serendipitydodah. It’s a private forum (you have to apply to join, to keep out trolls) for parents and family of LGBTQ kids.

Learn more about Lisa Sorrell and see a gallery of her custom boots at www.sorrell.design.

TW: A heads up we mention an eating disorder and suicide.

No Medicine

Lisa Sorrell was raised in a conservative evangelical community in the small town of Neosho, Missouri. It’s called the Church of God and the New Testament is their guide. 

The church I was raised in, one of their really defining beliefs is they believed that medical care and doctors are morally wrong. So I never went to a doctor when I was a kid. I know kids that died. At home. From lack of health care, from things that that probably could have been helped.

Lisa considered herself lucky because the worst thing she experienced as a kid was a migraine. 

And I started getting migraines when I was four years old. So I grew up with frequent, horrible migraines.

The incessant pain was so bad, much later in life she would find out it was more painful even than childbirth.

I remember when I was pregnant … I was talking to my midwife and she said, ‘Do you want me to help you find a Lamaz coach?’ And I said, No, I don't need it. I said, ‘if childbirth is worse than a migraine, I will die.’ And it wasn't. Childbirth was not a big deal after years and years and years of migraines so bad that I just wanted a truck to roll over my head. 

It wasn’t until she was in her 20s that she discovered the miracle of medicine.

I took my first aspirin. Aspirin when I was 26. It's amazing how life changes when you have a migraine and you can just take an Advil and you're better. 

This is a story about living with the destructive consequences of certain beliefs. This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

Lisa Quietly Rebels

In Lisa’s religion all of the women and girls wore their hair long and dresses to cover their ankles, similar to the Mennonites.

My mother started teaching me to sew clothing when I was 12 years old, because in my church, most of us made our own clothing. By the time I was 14, she was coming to me for sewing tips. 

Around the same time the adults chose to pull their kids out of public school so they could attend their own Christian school. Lisa had advanced quickly and at 16 was ready to graduate.

My Christian school principal told me that as a woman, I wasn't smart enough to go to college, so I shouldn't. And I had been raised to respect my elders and especially men. So I said, ‘yes, sir,’ and didn't go to college. 

Lisa said she wanted to be a “good girl” and follow all the rules.

But I had this annoying little quirk of wanting to know why those rules existed and. What the answers were in that was strongly disparate. That was strongly frowned upon. 

One day in Sunday school the preacher gathered the kids to sing a hymn.

In my church, we sang a cappella. We didn't have music. And I remember asking in Sunday school one time why we sang a cappella. What was the biblical reason for that? And the preacher answered, ‘because there's no New Testament precedent.’ And I thought you just walked into the Sunday school room and flipped on a light after driving to church in your car. And that answer does not make sense. 

Lisa Meets Her Husband

Young adults were encouraged to go to camp meetings where they would worship and sing together, and meet their future spouses. But Lisa says there weren’t a lot of options. 

I was an old maid 20. My parents had just about given up hope that I would ever get married. 

But in the early 1980s the family had moved to West Virginia where there was an active Church of God community. At this point Lisa had turned sewing into a business making bridesmaid dresses and choir outfits for the church. 

One summer day in 1988 Lisa was sitting alone at a camp meeting when a boy named Dale caught her eye.

But he didn't notice me because he was too busy flirting with the girl that I happened to know was engaged. But she didn't tell him. So I saw him across the way and thought he was kind of cute.

So a week or two went by before the next camp meeting.

...and sure enough, he was there. And there was a ping pong table in the basement and everyone disappeared in the basement after service to go play ping pong. And I went down there and managed to catch his eye by almost beating him at ping pong.

Sex before marriage was a sin. In fact during the engagement it was expected couples keep their distance. 

We were supposed to keep six inches between us at all times. It's funny. That church is changing a lot now. I see engagement pictures posted on Facebook where they're snuggled up and his arm is around her. But in my generation, the engagement photos, they're like two feet apart. And that's the way I was raised. You're not supposed to touch. You're not supposed to kiss. You're not allowed to hold hands. 

But soon Dale and Lisa were married and moved to Guthrie, Oklahoma. It was there that Lisa and her husband started asking more questions about the church rules.

…and that was not appreciated. And we just kind of evolved together. 

One day they met up with some friends from their old church back home and discovered they were asking some of the same questions – like if we drive cars and use electricity why not take advantage of medical treatments and doctors. So they decided to start a splinter church that was more open.

At this point Lisa had traded in her long dresses for jeans, even on days she went to church.

I'm tired of this. I'm wearing jeans every single day, but I'm putting on a skirt before I go to church. And they all know that I wear jeans, so I'm just going to wear jeans to church. And then after a while, other people started wearing jeans to church. So we were able to evolve in that way without being judged. 

Lisa Hones Her Craft

Six months after moving to Oklahoma Lisa grew bored. She missed her sewing business so she answered an ad in the paper looking for someone who could stitch boot tops.

I had no idea what that meant. I didn't know that real people could make footwear, but it sounded like sewing. So I called the guy and said I wanted to come up and apply for the job. And he kind of cussed at me and told me that sewing leather was nothing like sewing fabric, but he told me I could go ahead and come up. And I did, and I got the job.

She always liked to sew but stitching boots was different.

I remember sitting at my sewing machine and thinking. This is it. I want to be a bootmaker. I loved everything about boot making because the way I was raised, girls did girl things and boys did boy things. I loved sewing, but it was a girl thing, and it annoyed me that I was conforming in that way. But when I found boot making, I got to sew. But I also got to hammer and pull things. It was very physical. And I knew this is this is what I've been looking for all along. I want to be a bootmaker.

She stayed at that job for just a year and a half before realizing she could do it by herself and opened up her own shop. 

Paige, Fiery From The Start

Five years after they married Lisa and Dale started their family. They had two children three years apart – Arthur and Paige.

She had such a strong personality from the very beginning. When she was born, she, of course, came out crying and I tried to nurse her and she would start to nurse and then she would just you could tell … she would just think about this horrible thing that we had just done to her and she would just start screaming with rage. And I couldn't nurse her for about an hour because she was just so mad about being born.

Lisa says Paige was in touch with her feelings from the start. Her mom recalls when Paige was a toddler sitting on the couch reading her favorite book that she had memorized.

And the whole book, The Little Monster, wants to do things. And then his mom will tell him he can't. And he was just so mad. And she was reading that book with great fervor. She was just so mad. 

Paige had red curly hair to match the fire in her belly.

She hated her hair when she was growing up because … the girls would make fun of her for her huge curly red hair. And I didn't know how to deal with hair like that. So that made it bigger. And frizzier 

Finally in the seventh grade, tired of the bullying, Paige decided to shave her head.

And that just sort of became a turning point in her life, because after that, she did not care. She did not care what people said about her hair. She learned to love her hair. 

Lisa got a new apprentice named Qiana.

…and Qiana was a black woman. And Qiana taught Paige how to care for her hair…Qiana from a young girl had refused to straighten her hair and she proudly wore it natural. And she taught that attitude to Paige of how to not only care for her hair, but how to fiercely appreciate it. And boy, once, once Paige claimed it, she was fierce. Her hair was her crowning glory. And it just defined who she was. It was huge. It was red, it was wild. And she owned it.

In addition to being fierce Paige had a big heart. Her mom had to keep her lunch account at school topped off because she’d buy lunches for the kids who couldn’t afford it.

After school the kids would come to their mom’s boot shop. These are not your typical cowboy boots. They’re custom handmade works of art that take days to make and cost thousands of dollars.

So when the kids became distracting, Lisa had to find something to keep them out of her hair so she’d give them scraps of leather to make into bracelets. Then when another girl in town wanted to make a pair of shoes, Paige signed up to make her own.

Paige was very competitive, so she wanted to make sure she was the best student and my favorite student. So she really applied herself so that she could do well in this class. And that was it. That was when the bug bit. 

Paige’s Mental Illness

It was around this time that Paige started dealing with some anxiety. When she was 13, Lisa recalled she spent the night at a friend’s house.

And of course, I always told them, if you need me, just call. I'll come pick you up if you need me to. And that evening she called and she said, Mom, I can't stay here. I need you to come pick me up. And I knew the parents and I knew the kid. And it was like 30 miles away. But of course, I got in my car and I went and picked her up and everything was fine. But I always remembered it and it was probably three or four years later, she told me, ‘Mom, that was when it started. That was the night I felt that anxiety for the first time,’ and I guess she successfully hid it. 

Paige didn’t want to worry anyone so she tried to cover it up. But when she was 17 she couldn’t keep it to herself any longer.

Imagine having this hideously painful, disfiguring cancer that changes your entire life, but you're not allowed to talk about it or acknowledge it. You can't tell anyone how much pain you're in. 

Paige told her mom about it and Lisa tried to get her help. She quieted the voices in her head that told her to just keep praying, and finally, after four years of suffering in silence, they sought the help of a doctor.

We had her in the emergency room several times because she just got she was also anorexic, which was bitterly cruel because she did not want to be so thin. She hated being thin. She simply could not eat. Eating caused her great pain, she would throw up repeatedly. Every time we went to the hospital with her, the attitude was just, ‘you know, straighten up and eat.’ 

The doctors prescribed a medicine for anxiety and another for nausea. But they seemed to exacerbate the problems. Lisa soon figured out the medicine the doctor prescribed for her anxiety made her nauseous and the medicine they gave her for nausea made her anxious. So she told the doctor.

And he just looked at me and said, ‘I've never heard that before.’ And that was the end of that conversation. I never once found anyone who wanted to listen and wanted to help us. 

Lisa and Dale didn’t have the insurance or the money to pay for a better doctor.

For a year and a half Lisa says Paige was miserable. 

It was brutal. She would have weeklong spells of just not being able to function, not being able to eat, not being able to sleep. We did that repeatedly. What people don't understand is that mental illness is physically painful. She suffered terribly. 

During this time Lisa couldn’t eat or sleep either. She lost 15 pounds and felt weak all the time. Church, where Lisa had previously sought comfort, was no longer a place she belonged. No one seemed to understand.

They would just say, ‘Oh, pray more and be happy. There shouldn't be any stigma to mental illness. You should be able to talk about it. There are way more people that suffer from it than you know. 

Then when she was 19, Paige went through a period of two months where she finally seemed to be doing ok. She was able to eat and even gained a little weight. She was excited about shoemaking saying one day she wanted to be a famous designer. 

Just a month before her 20th birthday Paige decided to make an adult decision about her mental health and found a doctor in Guthrie and made an appointment. The doctor prescribed Paige an antidepressant.

And she was so proud of herself for taking this adult step of finding a medication that would help her get better.

Within a few weeks her mood plummeted again.

And I started worrying … I said, ‘Paige, do you think that that you should stop taking this medication? I'm really worried that it's affecting you.’ And she didn't want to stop taking it because to her, she was behaving like an adult. She was making the steps necessary to prove that she did want to get better. This was important to her because all she was acquainted with people that that believed in not taking medication and she was taking medication. She was doing it right.

In May of 2017, two days after her 20th birthday, Paige took her own life.

It happened at our house. And I think. I think that she trusted me. So it was really hard, but. I appreciate that she trusted me that much. PAUSE

I will always believe that that medication, it was the wrong dose. What people don't understand about medication for mental illnesses is you have to be so careful. The same medication that helps you feel better. If it's the wrong dosage, can also cause suicidal thoughts. And that's that's what took her down because she had not been having suicidal thoughts. And they started pretty instantly after she began taking that medication. We just didn't have time to get it right. 

It didn’t make sense. Paige had made plans. She died on a Friday and Lisa found a list of things she planned to do on Sunday.

She did not want to die. She wanted the pain to stop. I think she thought she was sacrificing and giving something that we all needed because she felt that she was a burden. I don't feel that suicide is a choice. People don't just go, I think I'll die of suicide today. They reach a point where the pain is so great that all they can think about is ending it somehow.  

Lisa says the two of them grew closest when life got most painful for Paige. 

We were very close that last year and a half of her life when she was so sick. She trusted me with everything. I cared for her. In every way. And she told me lots of things about herself that she might not have told me in other circumstances. And I accepted her. I never said, Oh, that's shocking, or you shouldn't have done that. And so I. I do feel that she completely trusted me and loved me. [00:40:17]I knew that I would lose her this way. I knew that there was a very good chance I would lose her this way. I mean, we talked about it. I tried to. I did as much as I could to let her know I certainly didn't want it.

Lisa Leaves Her Church Behind

Lisa says right away she slipped into apathy, stopped going to church, stopped doing anything that didn’t feel good. 

After Paige died church did not comfort me, and I decided that I was going to allow myself one year. To only do things that brought me comfort.

And then we realized that. No one had called to check on us. And six months went by and a year went by and five years went by and. No one had called.

Lisa felt abandoned by her church community and her belief in the power of prayer faded. 

I don't believe in much. I hope for things, but I don't believe in much.

Eventually she found like-minded folks online. 

There's a group on Facebook called Ex-vangelical that I very much enjoy. I do refer to myself as an ex-evangelical. And there is this huge movement now called deconstruction, which Christians are always preaching about how terrible it is. And it's just Christians who have left. 

Arthur Comes Out

A couple years after Paige died Lisa’s oldest came out as transgender. (Arthur had been assigned female at birth.)

It was hard for me, you know, the first 30 seconds. 2 minutes. I probably said things I shouldn't have because. What I said was I said, I've already lost a daughter and don't want to lose another one. And that was ah, ah, yeah, that was wrong of me to say I'm not, I'm not proud of that. But what I realized really quickly, like within 5 minutes, because I'm not a psychopath, is that, yeah, I had lost a daughter, but I had just gained a son. I still had a living child. And that was fantastic. And so let's not blow this relationship because of. Because of religion. 

Today Arthur lives just 90 minutes away from his mom and dad and has followed his book loving dream of becoming a librarian.

Lisa Honors Paige

For a long time Lisa lost the desire to do most things.

I think what helped the most was just making a decision. I had to make a decision, Am I going to live or am I going to exist until I stopped breathing? And I felt that she wanted me to live. So I decided to live. And some days I do it better than others. There's still a very strong pull of apathy. But I decided to live.

She asked herself what would Paige want me to do? That’s when she decided she’d begin to train apprentices at her bootmaking shop again.

I just felt, okay, this is this is right. And so I wrote back to this complete stranger, and I said. You can come to my shop and I will teach you. And you can stay at our house because we have a big house. And I. I said, You can stay at our house. You won't need money for for lodging or for food.

The first apprentice she chose was named Flora. She was from New Zealand and sought out Lisa on Instagram.

The very first time I met Flora was when I picked her up at the airport. And we were fast friends. By the time we got back to Guthrie and she lived with us for three months. PAUSE I'm trying very hard not to be. You know, I can't replace Paige, so that's not what I'm doing. But at the same time, I can open my heart to more people. So I tried to deliberately do that when? When it's right. 

At 54, Lisa feels this is a way to honor her daughter.

I lost the opportunity to give her to the shoemaking world and let her continue and learn from me. But I didn't want to stop completely. I feel that being generous is important. And when you have a loss like this, it either makes you bigger, it makes you smaller. And I don't want to be smaller. PAUSE

One spring day Lisa was driving home from her shop after work when a strange thing happened to her.

I just had a vision of the design I wanted to do on this boots. And it was something unlike anything I had ever done before and unlike anything I'd ever seen before. I've never seen another bootmaker or leather artist do this technique that I did on these boots. And I remember the vision was so strong. I know exactly where I was on the road when I had this vision.

Deep purple boots with creamy white blooms climbing up a vine in two shades of green. But that wasn’t all…

It wasn't just a vision of the boots and the art I wanted to do on the boots. It was a vision of myself, and I saw myself. With powerful wings, just flexing muscles that I hadn't used in a while. And I saw myself getting stronger. When Paige was so sick and I was doing nothing but being her caregiver, I lost a lot of muscle tone, so it became very weak. But also in the last month or so of her life every time I put my arm around her shoulders I I saw wings. PAUSE I thought it meant that she was getting better. But as it turned out, it meant that she was going to fly away. PAUSE I think she wanted me to be stronger and get back to who I was.

Each pair of Lisa’s boots is named after a country song. This pair is called, “Please Don’t Tell Me How The Story Ends.”

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.