Zelph on the Shelf - 5 Years of Laughter, Wisdom, Healing, and Growth | Ep. 1373

Zelph on the Shelf at Five Years: How Creative Expression Became a Pathway Through Faith Crisis

When a young married couple leaves the LDS Church simultaneously, the typical path involves fractured families, isolated grief, and silence. But what happens when two people with unprocessed trauma, intellectual curiosity, and creative impulses decide to document that journey publicly? According to a December 2020 episode of the Mormon Stories Podcast, Samantha and Tanner Gilmore's five-year evolution of Zelph on the Shelf demonstrates how humor, artistic expression, and community support can transform religious deconstruction from a isolating crisis into a vehicle for collective healing, raising important questions about the role of creative media in post-Mormon identity formation.

The Origins of a Faith Crisis Made Public

The decision to create Zelph on the Shelf emerged not from careful planning but from emotional necessity. Both Samantha and Tanner experienced what they describe as significant faith crises, though on different timelines. Tanner's questioning began during his time at BYU-Idaho, where exposure to critical questions about Church history prompted intensive research, approximately six hours daily over two years. Samantha's path involved a thorough examination of Mormon doctrine and Church leadership narratives before her own crisis of belief solidified.

What makes their story notable is not the departure itself, but what they did with the psychological wreckage. According to the podcast interview, both experienced profound emotional and existential challenges. Samantha disclosed experiencing suicidal ideation during portions of her transition, describing a period where she could not envision a meaningful future. Both acknowledged entering their marriage with significant unprocessed trauma and minimal emotional intelligence tools, circumstances they attribute partly to the LDS cultural environment in which they'd been raised and socialized.

Rather than withdraw into private suffering, they began creating content. The turning point came when Tanner produced "Mormonism and Me," a poem-based video that captured the emotional complexity of religious deconstruction in artistic form. This initial creative act catalyzed years of subsequent projects: spoken word pieces, satirical videos like the "Brigham Young Rap," and eventually a broader multimedia