Debra Jenson speaking at the Ordain Women launch event in 2013.
In March 2013, the Ordain Women website launched. I saw it that night and immediately fell in love with it. It was like a newborn baby to me: something I had prayed for, and waited for, but didn’t know what to expect when it finally came into my life. For the first few hours after I saw the website, I just stared at every part of it—searching for flaws but finding only beauty and falling in love with it. Within weeks, I found myself speaking publicly about Ordain Women and found a sisterhood of women I never would have predicted. In my late 30s, I found immense respect for a young college student, Hannah Wheelwright, whose intellect and idealism still astound me; and I, a member of the Relief Society presidency, sat next to, and received the best hug in the world from Margaret Toscano, whose story I really only knew from headlines but she is so much more. These women, and countless others, taught me how to navigate the waters of this new role Ordain Women’s arrival had carved for me.
By the time Ordain Women celebrated its first birthday, we had celebrated an impressive list of firsts and none of the shine had worn off. We had seen women from around the world come to Salt Lake City to do the impossible: ask to attend a meeting of general conference. That’s an over-simplification, but my memory is slightly clouded by the heady haze of those early days when I was on the rollercoaster ride of countless new experiences, exciting events, and sleepless nights wondering if I really had what it took to help raise up a successful and healthy social movement. And by the second priesthood action, when more than 900 women descended on Salt Lake City in body and spirit, I felt invincible, because of course we knew exactly how to do this.
The second year, however, quickly lived up to the moniker “the Terrible Twos.” We struggled and, though we honestly did everything we could think of to fend it off, we couldn’t control the actions of others and a tantrum came. Only this came from the much older, and supposedly more mature, force in the relationship, and we could only sit while it passed judgment. It felt arbitrary, unpredictable, and inexplicable. The aftermath was… difficult. Our community felt the sting and was rocked back on its heels. Many of us still look back on it with emotion and disbelief.
As we moved through the third year of Ordain Women, we experienced a sort of settling in. The frantic pace of the first two years changed to a period of hard training that required commitment from a whole team. We laid the foundation for the long-term existence of this organization by establishing bylaws and gaining 501c(3) status. It was tough, and we had to follow the rules: regular planning meetings, formal procedures for leadership and supporters, and more. Not the work we were used to, or that got our pictures taken, but without it, this organization we loved would never survive to maturity, and people would grow frustrated and tire of it pretty quickly.
The fourth year of Ordain Women was much the same. We saw ourselves coming out of that training period and moving into a more established routine. We had been doing the work and saw some actions that demanded longer attention spans and had more specific, immediate goals. To our frustration, we were still dealing with that same older, more mature force, except they had decided that the best way to deal with us was to ignore us. To be honest, I might prefer a new tantrum. In the words of Albus Dumbledore, “indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.” And for me, at least, the fact that Ordain Women supporters are so easily discarded has caused me more pain than the harsh treatment I received.
But this month marks something exciting! On March 17, Ordain Women will reach the age of FIVE! In some ways, it feels like so much longer—we have so many accomplishments to celebrate—but it also feels like only yesterday since I first met this group and found love and support from so many others going through the exact same experience. So I sit here, nostalgic for what was in those early days, fearful for what Ordain Women might still face, but confident that OW supporters have each given a piece of themselves to create something beautiful and resilient. And if you were to ask what OW needs for its birthday, I would answer confidently, “Your profile.”
