Mormon Polygamy and Intergenerational Trauma: What Families Are Told

What happens when a family remembers plural marriage as a sacred privilege—and barely remembers the wives?

We discuss Joseph Smith’s plural marriages, the accounts of Lucy Walker, Helen Mar Kimball and Zina Huntington, and the church’s changing instructions on polygamy. We also look at what survived in our own families: stories of obedience and sacrifice, missing women, and questions nobody taught us to ask.

Then we examine generational trauma, family storytelling and epigenetics. What can families pass down through parenting, silence and religious expectations? And what can research actually tell us about biological inheritance?

An episode about Mormon history, religious trauma, and discovering how much was missing from the family story.