Initially, I resisted the urge to come out as a polygamist. I have never been ashamed of my lifestyle—in fact, quite the opposite. However, I didn’t want to be judged for it. Most of all, I didn’t want our children to suffer because their parents had revealed themselves to the world. Kody explained that this show was important and necessary. We needed to step out from the shadow of Warren Jeffs and the FLDS, who for too long had been the face of polygamy. We needed to disassociate ourselves from the negative connotations of polygamy—child brides, sexual abuse, and religious oppression. We wanted to show America that we aren’t really that different from anyone else. Most important, we needed to pave the way for a better and more tolerant future for our children. This, Kody explained, would be the purpose of the show.
Although Kody felt called to do this show, it took me a while to come to terms with going public after having guarded my privacy my whole life. It took many conversations with Kody and the family before I started to feel comfortable with the vision he had in mind for us. It also took many conversations with God; I knew we would be looked down upon for taking our family public, so I needed a strong indication from God that this was what He wanted for us.
Deep down in my heart, I knew Kody was right. Secrecy breeds evil and unhappiness, and for too long, that is the only thing about polygamy that had been portrayed in the media. While I was nervous about all the repercussions of taking our story public, I knew that I needed to support my husband. Ultimately, I wanted the world to know that what most people think of when they think of polygamy has no place in our family. We are a great family, with the normal disagreements and laughter, heartbreak and happiness of any American household. I guess I started to believe that our story was worth telling. I contemplated long and hard over my decision. Eventually, I also felt the call to go public with our story; it just took a little longer than it did Kody. In the end, I agreed to do the show and prayed for the best.
Once we committed to being on television, I became incredibly nervous. I was concerned about how people I had known for years would feel about me. I was worried that the children would be ostracized by their friends. I knew from the beginning that there would be those from our own faith who would support us in the message we were sending, but even more who just wouldn’t understand. I was worried that we’d be made into pariahs.
It wasn’t until I told my daughter, Mariah, about the show that I realized how important it could be to her future. I explained to her that our primary intention in doing a reality program and opening up about our faith was so people would be more accepting of our beliefs. After I told her this, Mariah said, “Mom, you say that you are doing this so that we all can be open. But I’ve never been secretive about my faith. I’ve always been open with my friends.” While this was true, most of Mariah’s friends at the time were kids from our own faith, so there really was no risk involved, she was still young, and her world was the church and the church school. I had to point out to her how easy things can be when you rarely associate with anyone outside the faith. Mariah is so confident in herself and her faith that it never occurred to her that there could be a whole world out there opposed to her lifestyle and her religion.
Unlike many of our other children, until that time, Mariah hadn’t had a lot of experience with friends outside our religious community. She is a very spiritual young woman and dedicated to our church. She’s naturally drawn to people who share her morals, standards, and beliefs—which usually means they share her faith as well. She hasn’t yet had the misfortune to suffer on account of others’ intolerance, and she doesn’t know what it is like in the real world—the cruelty and fear that might temper her enjoyment of life. As her mom, I want to protect her from having to experience these things, yet I don’t want her believing that our religious community is the only place that she could be safe being who she is. There’s a big world out there and I want her to enjoy it without having to lie about her beliefs.
At the young age of sixteen, Mariah has already expressed a devotion and desire to live the principle of plural marriage and remain in our faith. While I know she’s a teenager and may or may not actually follow through with this plan, I hope that when the time does come, she will be confident enough in herself and her relationship with God to be able to come to her own decision. I believe in order for her to make this decision she needs to feel comfortable in the society of those outside our faith. She needs to have a wealth of experiences before choosing the path for her adult life. I want the world to be a safe and tolerant place for her.
When we thought about doing Sister Wives, I knew that if all went well, the show would make it possible for Mariah to live openly, without feeling judgment or oppression. She might live as she pleased in public without fears of ostracism or rejection. She would be given freedom and opportunities that I wouldn’t have dreamed of when I was her age.
The first day the cameras showed up at our house was strange and uncomfortable. I was completely unprepared when I came up the stairs into my living room and saw a cameraman there. I had no idea how to behave. I felt awkward trying to act as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. I’m not the actor in our family—that would be Christine. When the cameras first started rolling, it was difficult to behave naturally as the crew instructed.
It took all of us a while to adjust to having our lives filmed. Whenever the cameras were around, the kids, who are excitable enough, became hyper. Family dinner, our Friday tradition, went from mild chaos to an all-out zoo. I did my best not to modify my behavior for the cameras, but it’s hard not to be aware of how you look when people are filming you every hour of the day. One of the things that I’m very particular about is not letting myself be seen without my makeup. When Tim Gibbons, our producer, wants to film an early morning episode, I’m up an hour beforehand getting ready, doing my hair and makeup. This way I can truly look like a “TV star,” waking up in the morning with perfect hair and makeup. This doesn’t really have anything to do with being vain—I think of it as protecting the world from a good scare!
Eventually, I grew used to having my life filmed. Often what they’re filming seems really uninteresting—which I guess is good in a way. After all, we are a pretty normal family that does normal things. I’m happy to show the world our everyday reality and defuse the myth that there is anything weird or inappropriate about our lifestyle.
However, every once in a while, private issues crop up that we don’t want to share with the public. In general, the crew is respectful of our wishes to keep some issues off camera. They will generously leave the room when we need privacy to deal with a particularly difficult matter. Of course, the production staff does push and probe us. They want drama, after all. Since I’m a black-and-white person, I don’t hold back, even on TV. It’s not in my nature to sugarcoat things, even for a national audience. On TV as in real life, I can only be my honest self. The Meri you see on the show is the person you’d meet face-to-face.
I don’t think any of us realized what a strange experience it was going to be discussing our lives in front of a producer. The “couch sessions,” in which we talk about issues and problems, were a real wake-up call for our family. We had to learn to think before we spoke. At first, when the producer would ask us questions about a particular situation, each of us would answer as if he or she was alone with the camera, and not sitting on the couch with the rest of the family. Often one of us would inadvertently throw a sister wife or Kody under the bus, publicly airing a grievance that would have been better dealt with in private.
These couch sessions turned into a public form of therapy. Issues that might have remained dormant were quickly brought out into the open. One of the things that the producers were eager to dig into was my relationship with Robyn. They latched onto my struggle with Kody and Robyn’s courtship and exploited it into a major story line. I can’t really blame them. After all, this was, in reality, what I was dealing with at the time.
When they first started filmi
ng the show, Robyn and I were going through an unbelievably difficult period. After getting the ball rolling between Robyn and Kody, I had just stepped back in order to allow them to have the time, space, and freedom to get to know each other better. I was at a low point, feeling unwanted and unloved. I know I wasn’t being as kind or welcoming as I could have been.
Despite this struggle, Robyn and I knew that we wanted a good relationship with each other. The couch sessions helped to bring our issues into the open, and we began to address them on the show and behind the scenes. The beauty of it is that over the course of that first season, Robyn and I developed a wonderful relationship. Fans of the show can see just how close we’ve become. Whenever they stop us in public, we almost always get some sort of comment about our relationship.
Watching how we began to overcome our initial struggles and differences and became close friends is both rewarding and satisfying to me. It’s also important, for it shows the audience that something that seems dysfunctional at the start actually works when you give it some time. The success of Robyn’s and my friendship is essential to understanding the beauty of the sister wife relationship. Like Robyn and myself, our family is constantly evolving for the better. The show brought that process to light, both for us and for the audience.
When I look back on the first season, I’m thrilled by our family’s evolution. I love our collective strength and the maturity that has developed. Of course, there are still some moments during that first season that, while interesting to the public, I have chosen not to watch, one of those being the honeymoon episode. Kody, Robyn, and I have made such progress in our relationships that I worry seeing them in such a romantic setting might set me back a few steps. I’m sure I’ll watch it one day when I trust myself with my emotions a little more. The wedding reception episode, however, is my favorite moment of the show! When I watch it, I’m overwhelmed by the love and joy I see on the screen.
While I certainly benefited from being given an additional forum to work through some of my personal issues, when the show began to air, our family suffered both individually and as a whole. Right before the first episode premiered, an article appeared in a Utah newspaper about our family and the upcoming reality show.
I was working at a rehabilitation center for troubled youth at the time. Again, I was in a situation where I felt it was best to keep my family and religious beliefs to myself. When one of my coworkers read the article, she was shocked, not because of my beliefs, but because I hadn’t been open with her. “I had no idea you had this lifestyle,” she said. The fact that I was a sister wife didn’t bother her at all. I felt relieved that she now knew, and still accepted me as her friend—and I hoped my employers would be just as accepting.
I had discussed my lifestyle and our family being on a reality show with my immediate supervisor, who had subsequently discussed the situation with upper management. No one seemed concerned for six weeks—but the day after the series premiere of Sister Wives, the Lehi City police department sent out a press release that they had been investigating our family. The next time I went to work, upper management called me into the office and fired me. I was devastated. All I wanted to do was help troubled kids, and I was being terminated because my employer was afraid of somehow being involved with this police investigation. They said to me, “Meri, what happens if the police show up here at the facility?” Management told me that they were not firing me because I was a polygamist, but because they were concerned the investigation would bring unwanted attention to the facility and the children housed there. Suddenly, I’d gone from being a private person to being a public figure, and a controversial one at that.
Losing my job was the most difficult thing I suffered as an individual once the show aired. It made me question whether or not our family had really done the right thing in going public. At my core, I knew it was right for us, but suddenly having to deal with losing a job that I loved and was very good at made me angry.
Our kids started to come home from school on almost a daily basis with new questions or comments from classmates about their dad being prosecuted. I remember one time the kids told us that a neighbor boy had told them that he had heard Kody was going to jail. Sometimes when our kids were playing outside or walking home from school, they would see a police car on the road and get nervous, wondering why he was driving down our quiet street. Bombarded by these questions and fears, we felt it would be the best thing for us to move away and try to bring some sort of peace back to our children.
While the move was difficult on the parents, it was terrible for our children, who were being separated from their friends and the only life some of them had ever known. I can’t blame them for thinking that we had done something terrible to them by forcing them to move. It’s difficult for them, especially the older children who had deeper roots in Utah, to appreciate the positive impact of the show, when all they can see is that because of the show, they had to leave their friends behind.
I know that when the dust settles, the children will begin to understand how important this show is. Already, their lives are so much different from what they used to be. They attend large public schools in Las Vegas, where they are open about being brothers and sisters. They acknowledge one another in public in a way that was nearly impossible for my generation. They have many new friends, from all different faiths and backgrounds, who accept them and do not judge them. The show has demystified our lifestyle and allowed the kids to be kids.
The show has opened up new avenues to the adults as well. The veil of secrecy behind which we had been hiding has been completely obliterated. I feel such a sense of relief that I can finally be open with so many of my oldest friends. Last summer, I was able to introduce Robyn and Christine and many of our kids to my dear friends who ran the trophy engraving shop in Wyoming, where I worked all those years ago.
It’s wonderful to be open in public. We no longer worry about what it looks like when Kody and four wives go to a restaurant together. We are proud to be a family. It’s also great to get so much positive feedback and support from complete strangers on the street. However, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to people coming up to me and telling me that I’m their favorite wife. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.
Although we are recognized around our neighborhood in Las Vegas, it completely took me by surprise when people in New York and Chicago approached me on the street on our publicity tours. I almost have to laugh whenever anyone uses words like “celebrity” or “famous” to describe me. I’m neither of these. I’m just a mom and a wife who happens to be on TV. I’m just me.
Doing the show has allowed us to see some amazing cities and meet amazing people, all while causing us some of the worst stress we’ve ever had. We’ve visited Times Square, Hollywood, and Chicago. We’ve met Ellen and Rosie, and the four oldest kids even got to meet Oprah with us. I was so excited when I had the opportunity to introduce myself to Matthew McConaughey, only to have Robyn and Christine ruin the moment by acting like giddy fourteen-year-olds around him! I’ve been a huge fan of Matthew’s for years. Although it’s not true, I often tease Kody that Matthew is the reason I let him grow his hair long.
When we travel for the show, we get booked in some fantastic high-rise hotels with awesome views. One of my favorites was looking out over Central Park in New York City. I know this sounds like such a wonderful experience, but the downside is that when we’re on these trips, we are usually going, going, going, to the point that we don’t get to enjoy the room or the view at all! On most occasions, we’re up at the crack of dawn, running all day, only to come back to the room too late at night to do anything but fall into bed and try to be ready for another day. Sometimes, because of the tight schedule we’re usually up against, our emotions can really get the best of us. One thing we have all had to learn to do through this is to get phenomenally better at patience, kindness, and forgiveness.
In addition to the ups and downs of travel, there’s also the negative
publicity we’ve had to deal with. Once you become a public figure, you lay yourself open to that. I know that there will always be someone who has something unpleasant to say about my marriage, my hair, my weight, or any number of other things—it just comes with the territory. My way of dealing with it all? I choose to ignore the polls and commentary on the Internet about our show or family members. I have more important things to do with my time!
In many ways the show has unified us. When we travel together, we are a tightly knit group. We don’t let anyone breach our boundaries because together we exhibit strength in numbers, which is the backbone of our family unity. Being open in public has only reinforced that. Our strength in the face of public scrutiny is what makes us special. It’s what makes our show positive and important for us and for our children.
Chapter Fourteen
JANELLE
Once I converted to the fundamentalist faith, I realized how easy it is to be a Mormon in Utah. Even though Mormons only make up 50 percent of the population there, I’ve read that an estimated 80 percent of the lawmakers in Utah are LDS. When I married Kody, I was no longer a member of this dominant group. I was fringe. I was an outsider.
In polygamous communities, there is a great deal of cultural fear. People my mother’s age regularly shared personal experiences of having their families split up by the government. These stories had a great impact on me, and I became very worried about someone finding out I wasn’t like them. I kept my head down. I rarely discussed my family and private life with outsiders or colleagues.
The Sister Wives television show, which changed my way of thinking and brought me into the public as a polygamist, was a slow and gradual evolution. Of course, I was nervous about exposing our family. However, the more we talked about the show the more enthusiastic I became.
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