Abstract
This thesis is the first third of my memoir in progress. The focus pivots around my relationship with loss. This is done by examining growing up in the Mormon Church (then “leaving” the religion) and the death of my mother at age eleven. It is a coming of age story, in which, a girl becomes a woman in a world of men. Throughout the piece specific gender expectations, ingrained in me as a child, are explored and re-imagined. The rising tension in the piece comes by exposing the discrepancy between my lived experience and the societal/cultural expectations that were forced upon me.