Becoming Sister Wives: The Story of an Unconventional Marriage (31 page)

While the kids were saddled with the problem of opening up to their friends, the adults had a different problem. We had to tell our families, who naturally worried that we might inadvertently
expose them on the show. My family agreed with my decision to go public, but they were concerned that I’d bring them into it. They weren’t ready to be outed. I had to work hard to convince them that I would never dishonor their wishes and mention their names or show them on television. As we prepared to do the show, we took steps to hide certain identifying details so that our family would stay out of sight, both on television and online. While we knew that it would be impossible to protect our families’ privacy entirely, we attempted to do our best and hoped that the media would respect our boundaries.

While my family quickly came to terms with my participation in a reality show, I’m afraid that most of the members of our faith were disappointed with our decision to go public. The plural lifestyle is considered sacred and many people feel that exhibiting it for the public is like casting pearls before swine. While I am sad to have angered and disappointed so many in my faith, I do not understand how they can tolerate the fact that the world thinks we all marry off our fourteen-year-old girls to older men. I cannot understand why they are content to live in secrecy and fear. If I had to upset them to make the world a better place, this was a risk that I was willing to take.

When filming began, it was really strange. It took me a while to get used to having a camera around. Tim would interview us about day-to-day activities and I’d be at a loss to see why anyone would be interested in hearing about groceries, teacher conferences, and cleaning. It was difficult to know how to behave with the camera rolling. It seems trivial to be concerned about superficial things, but if I knew the crew was showing up for an early morning shoot, I worried about how I would look without makeup. Should I do my hair? Can I let them see me in my pajamas? These were totally new concerns in my life.

Suddenly, even the most basic things got a lot more complicated. Life was pleasantly chaotic before, but the show
really added a new dimension. I worried about my kids’ outfits and their uncombed hair. I realized that some of their rooms might look unacceptable to a television audience. I had to repaint them and buy new bedding and bunk beds. I also realized how dirty the house was. I’m a pretty aggressive cleaner, but with five kids and another on the way (I was pregnant with Truely when we started shooting) cleaning became a job in itself. Of course there was an upside to all of this—there’s nothing wrong with a cleaner house and nicer furniture.

Once we started filming, I had to learn how to be comfortable talking about my lifestyle in front of the camera. My previous media training had instructed me to get the message across about the choices that I made in accepting polygamy. But now I could be as open as I wanted about my own marriage. It was a strange transition to share everything from my love for Kody and my children to struggles both inside the family and outside it.

Of course, frankness isn’t always advisable. While I was comfortable talking honestly on camera for
Sister Wives,
I was hesitant to be as open during our press tours. By the time we began publicity for the show, I had learned to trust that Tim and his staff would be honorable when they edited our footage. They didn’t change what we said for dramatic effect and they always conveyed the meaning of our confessions exactly as we wished. However, I didn’t have as much faith in the outside media. I quickly discovered that they would edit our answers to suit their purposes and tease something salacious from our story.

We made a point of addressing sex in the first episode of our show. We wanted to get it over with so there would be no further questions. We were willing to do this, especially because we were certain that nothing improper would be made of our words. However, during our press junkets the media always hammered away at the sex question. We had to find countless ways of deflecting it. Journalists always wanted to know why we were
willing to talk about sex, however briefly, on the show, but not in an interview. It was hard for us to tell a person directly that we didn’t entirely trust his or her intentions. Other television shows and news programs have their own agenda, making it impossible to guarantee we came across as we wished. This made talking about sex completely out of the question.

The media tours were insane. Nearly every day, we had a packed schedule of back-to-back interviews. We got tired, but we still had to remain on guard. We needed to watch every word that came out of our mouths, so that nothing could be twisted or misconstrued. We wanted the proper messages to get out there—the positive ones that pertained to love and family. Despite our best intentions, from time to time we said the wrong things and had to do a little damage control. But this can only be expected. We are five normal, middle-American adults with little or no experience in the ways of the media.

On the media tours, it was our goal to get across the basic facts about our family and debunk the myths that most people ascribe to us. No matter what a journalist asked, we tried to steer the conversation back to something positive. We wanted to come across true to our natures and beliefs, as well as strong, independent adults who’ve come to our faith of our own volition. We wanted to make it perfectly clear that our children make their own choices—they don’t have to live polygamy if they don’t want to. And most of all, we wanted to convey the stability and love of our family.

During our press junket in New York, we appeared on
Nightline
. I thought the interview, conducted by Dan Harris, had gone really well and I was pleased. The night it aired, Kody and I were in our hotel room. (It was completely surreal sitting in a fancy hotel in New York City, watching myself on TV and thinking about all the people in the same city watching the same show at the same time!) When the announcer introduced our segment it
was clear that she thought we were ridiculous. Her tone of voice and facial expressions made her contempt for us clear. She didn’t hide the fact that she thought our lifestyle was wrong.

After this less than reassuring introduction, they cut away to the interview, which included wonderful clips of our children. When they returned to the announcer, she was smiling. Her whole demeanor had changed. We’d clearly made an impact. I remember thinking about the millions of people who’d just watched the same thing and how we might have influenced their thinking for the better.

Not all journalists are as kind or considerate as Dan Harris was. After a particularly long day of interviews on that first press tour, I had reached my breaking point. One of the journalists had been pretty brutal to me. He asked me too many questions about whether or not our lifestyle or the show was fair to our kids. He kept trying to get me to admit that I had ruined my children’s lives by putting them on TV and exposing them to the public. He really wanted to force my hand and get me to slip up and say something he could use against me.

When the interview was over, I nearly broke down. “I need my people,” I said. Then my family gathered around me. We joined together in prayer. I drew strength from them and was able to refocus. On tour, we really help to strengthen one another and build one another up, which is phenomenal. Since we are able to travel openly as a family—something I hope all polygamous families will one day do—we can be there for every moment. We rely on one another for support during the tough questions and the long days. We are one another’s safety net. We are stronger than I’d ever imagined.

However, traveling as a family is not always easy. Being on the road as a group of five adults is a completely new and unexpected experience, and it has made our differences more obvious. We’ve learned that we really have to meet each individual’s
needs and that as a group we have to listen to one another and accommodate one another. We have had to learn how to express in a polite and constructive manner when someone’s behavior is bothering us.

I learned, for example, that sometimes I really embarrass Janelle. I can be kind of goofy in public. I thought it was all in good fun, but I realize that my actions are embarrassing to her and I feel terrible about this. What she thinks is acceptable in public is far different from what I think is acceptable. We’ve had to come to a place where we can both have fun and be relaxed, while respecting each other’s boundaries.

Now that we’ve figured out how to address our various needs and differences, I’ve grown to love doing things together. I feel a force of power when we are in a big group. We really are dynamic. Sometimes I feel as if we could conquer the world!

Part of this empowering feeling comes from the freedom of being open as a family. I know that our decision has made us stronger adults and more secure, not just in our individual marriages but as a single-family unit. I’m especially happy for our kids—no longer do they have to duck awkward questions from curious schoolmates or strangers who wonder how so many siblings could be so close in age. Even now in their Las Vegas public school, they are proud to call one another brother and sister. Now Janelle’s kids confidently introduce me to their friends as “one of my moms.”

I think openness has brought them closer together. They are a tightly knit group, unafraid to hang out together during school. They are happy to draw attention to themselves and their special relationships. Their classmates refer to them as the Cullens—the vampire clan in the
Twilight
books. Together, they are a force to be reckoned with.

Our decision to live openly has allowed our entire family to come into our own. I love meeting all the kids’ friends, and I absolutely
love taking my sister wives’ children places and introducing them as my kids. I enjoy being open about being married to Kody and we do many things as a married couple, and he can openly say we are all his wives. It’s fun going places together and being recognized. People meet us and talk about how we have changed their minds and their perspective on families and relationships. I feel humbled and overjoyed at the response we receive about our family, people grateful that we opened up our lives so they could see this plural family choice.

When I was in middle school and high school, none of my friends knew about my religion. I am the child of my father’s second wife, which meant that legally and publicly he couldn’t acknowledge me as his daughter. This was difficult at times and hard for a young child to understand. I remember when I was about ten being at a park with my father and my mother and my full biological siblings. When my father noticed one of his work colleagues approaching us, he walked away from my mother, my brothers and sisters, and me. He acted as if he didn’t know us. Of course, I knew that he was doing this out of necessity. He wanted to protect us and his job. Nevertheless, it hurt me terribly.

My mother would usually explain the presence of her sister wife by saying she was my father’s sister or his wife from a previous marriage who had remained amicable with the family. For the most part, people bought it.

I went to a sizable public school. There were students from different races and religions, but the majority were LDS. My fellow students, and even my teachers, often made disparaging comments about polygamists. They said we were backward and wrong. They openly made fun of the polygamous families that
lived in our county. The majority of these families were FLDS. They were openly recognizable because of their extremely modest dress and the women’s strange, old-fashioned hairstyles. My family was nothing like these families, but I was distraught by these comments all the same.

I spent my childhood and teenage years terrified someone might uncover the truth about my family. I had few friends, and those I did have didn’t seem to question or care about the strange unexplained things in my life. I kept most friends at a distance so they wouldn’t start wondering about my family and asking questions.

I did have one friend in the mainstream. Her name was Danielle Scott, and she was LDS. Danielle and I were best friends for many years. When we were in high school, I decided to tell her about my family. I was tired of hiding things from her.

When I told Danielle that my family was polygamous and that I had two mothers, she began to cry. “I thought you guys were the perfect LDS family,” she said.

She was understandably confused. Most LDS followers condemn fundamentalism and polygamy. Suddenly Danielle felt as if she didn’t know me at all and what she’d just learned about me made me morally wrong.

When Danielle got over her initial shock, she began coming over to my house regularly. She realized that I was just me and my “perfect LDS family” was not all that different than what she’d previously imagined it to be. She grew close to my mom and came to understand that the differences between our faiths were not a big deal. We could be friends regardless of our beliefs.

Over time, Danielle and I agreed to disagree about religion. This was a healthy development. We do try and stay away from the hot-button topics with each other. But this agreement has led to a completely open, safe, and sweet relationship between us in which we can tell each other anything and everything.