The Book of Strife and Healing?
With season 5 of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” premiering on Hulu today, fans are in for plenty of drama — and dirty soda.
While the stars remain tight-lipped about some parts of their lives, they’re perfectly candid about others — including their health.
The ladies have opened up about everything from mental health troubles to autoimmune disorders to surgeries, speaking in candid confessionals and social media posts about what they’re going through.
The bottom line? #MomTok is definitely surviving this.
Mikayla Matthews: CIRS and chronic eczema
Over the course of three years, what Matthews initially thought was a eczema flare-up spiraled into a terrifying autoimmune disease that turned her life upside down.
The 26-year-old had struggled with chronic eczema since childhood. But in 2023, she shared the skin condition spread to her face after getting breast implants.
She had them taken out, but her skin continued to flare up, causing more than changes to her appearance. Her skin symptoms were accompanied with debilitating pain and physical exhaustion — something a mom of four definitely doesn’t need added to her plate.
For years, she struggled to get a diagnosis, but in March she put a name to her condition: chronic inflammatory response syndrome, or CIRS.
This is inflammation across multiple organ systems, in response to mold, fungi or other toxins. “It is not an allergy, but a dysfunction of your immune system due to genetics that you are born with,” Dr. Alan W. Gruning, President and Medical Director of the International Center for Health and Wellness, told The Post. “It results in chronic inflammation and a host of symptoms that can be misdiagnosed and misinterpreted.”
Matthews believes hers was brought on by mold, saying it “ruined just everything in my body. Nerves, skin, hair, brain, gut, liver, hormones, etc.”
“Nobody is ever going to understand the impact [of] chronic illness and skin condition[s] and the way that it has completely, completely stripped me of so much happiness, stripped me of so much time with my family, with my kids, that I’m never gonna get back,” she said.
Layla Taylor: anorexia
At 25, Taylor is busy raising two sons and building a budding modeling career while in recovery for anorexia.
In March, she revealed that she’d been struggling with an eating disorder she “believed I had left behind in high school. It’s been lonely and exhausting, fighting a battle in my own brain while trying to show up like everything is okay and receive comments daily on my body.”
On the show, she said she weighed only 99 pounds and “can’t stop” taking GLP-1s, describing the weight loss drug as “addictive.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be small enough in my head,” she said. “And I know it’s affecting me. Like, I’m so exhausted all the time because I don’t eat. And my body hurts every night when I go to bed.”
She’s since stopped the medication and said she was in treatment.
“I’m still learning how to choose self-love over self-criticism. Even this video seeing my body side-by-side is triggering; But I’m still fighting — not just for me, but because my boys deserve a healthy, present mom. So grateful for those in my life that helped me through that low time.”
Jen Affleck: prenatal depression
Affleck, 27, temporarily dropped out of season two while battling prenatal depression — and this summer, during her fourth pregnancy, she revealed that it had come back.
There were days “my mind went to some really dark places. It scared me,” she wrote on Instagram. “If you’ve ever experienced depression, you know how isolating it can feel. Add moving to a new state, being pregnant, and trying to show up for your kids, and some days felt impossible.”
She had said months during her last pregnancy “were filled with ups and downs,” and she navigated “countless therapy sessions, long nights in prayer, journaling, and some really hard conversations with myself, Zac and those around me.”
Affleck also checked into a wellness retreat for 11 days during the pregnancy.
“This journey taught me that it’s okay to not be OK and, more importantly, that it’s okay to ask for help,” she wrote. “As mothers, we pour so much into others that we forget to care for ourselves, but you can’t pour from an empty cup.”
Demi Engemann: endometriosis, PMOS and OCD
On the show, the 32-year-old opened up about struggling to conceive with her husband Bret over four years. She suspected her endometriosis played a role.
This is a painful condition that makes tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grow outside the organ, affecting the nearby ovaries and lining of the pelvis.
She’s also said she lives with PMOS, a condition that affects one in eight women. In addition to adding roadblocks to fertility, it can cause acne, facial hair and hair thinning, insulin resistance and weight gain, and abnormal periods.
Engemann also said she struggles with OCD, a mental health disorder marked by unwanted, distressing thoughts and repetitive behaviors.
Jessi Draper: thyroid nodules
Last year, Draper, 34, had half her thyroid removed after doctors determined it could be cancerous.
She was spurred into action by nurses who had watched that show and reached out to the star on social media, encouraging her to check out what looked like an enlarged thyroid.
A specialist did determine there were multiple nodules, and that the best course of action would be to partially remove it.
“They said they can’t tell me if it’s cancer or not ‘til after the surgery,” she said on the show. “They won’t know ‘til they take it out. But if I don’t get it removed and it is cancer, it could spread to my lymph nodes.”
Fortunately, they determined the thyroid sample was non-cancerous. “Life is so short and it’s so precious, and what’s not important is us all yelling at each other as a group of friends,” she said.
Taylor Frankie Paul: PTSD, anxiety and ADHD
Paul, 32, has had several struggles play out in the public eye — and she’s been open about her mental health.
In a 2023 TikTok, she said that a therapist told her she had “major PTSD, trauma, stress, anxiety, social anxiety, ADHD — the list goes on.” The therapist also suggested she might have bipolar disorder.
“I know this justifies none of my poor behavior, but it does give a better understanding of why I’m feeling this way and reacting this way,” she said.
In other videos, she revealed she was taking Zoloft to help with depression and anxiety and was trying EMDR therapy.
Earlier this year, amid a legal battle with ex Dakota Mortensen and the scrapping of her season of “The Bachelorette,” she voluntarily checked herself into a rehab facility.
“I knew that I was in a spot to take a step back and be like, ‘OK, we need a reset,’” she said on Instagram. “Number one priority was just a reset for my mental health and to get away — decompress, whether it’s one day, whether it’s seven, whether it’s 30. I willingly did that. That was my choice.”
“I ended up finding a really good antidepressant that has been working for me,” she went on. “I will share the meds eventually, however, I like to trial and error before I talk about them because it takes a while to set in, and I would hate to be recommending something that I don’t even like myself.”
Miranda Hope: Hashimoto’s
Earlier this year, the 28-year-old revealed to fans on Instagram that she has Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks the thyroid gland.
Symptoms can include extreme fatigue, weight gain, feeling cold, dry skin, muscle aches, brain fog and stomach issues.
“I was in remission for a long time. I no longer am,” she told fans, adding that there were “a lot of other things in my labs” that she is trying to address.
“I am a firm believer in there being a direct correlation between your health and your emotions and your trauma, especially when it comes to autoimmune diseases and autoimmune diseases in women,” she added.
This spring, social media users began sharing the idea that “being a bitch” could help women avoid autoimmune diseases. While it’s not quite that simple, there is some scientific evidence behind it — and experts say it’s helpful not to bottle things up.
Whitney Leavitt: hypothyroidism
In a 2023 interview on the podcast “Weekly Trash,” Leavitt, 33, revealed that she has hypothyroidism, a condition in which the thyroid doesn’t make enough hormones. This can lead to weight gain, fatigue, cold intolerance, constipation and other side effects.
It became an issue for the “Dancing With the Stars” alum when she was trying to slim down after the birth of her son Liam. She’d had some success partnering with WeightWatchers — until she wasn’t.
“I was feeling great, doing great,” she said before the weight loss came to a “halt.”
Mayci Neeley: depression
Neely, 31, suffered a bout of depression after her former boyfriend, Arik Mack, died in a car accident. She was 14 weeks pregnant with their baby at the time.
“I was severely depressed,” she recalled to Today. “I’ve never felt like that my entire life. I kind of just felt like my life was over. I had nothing to look forward to.”
In her memoir, “Told You So,” she described the months following months as “a gray, depressive blur.”
“The easiest tasks — getting up, eating breakfast, taking the online classes that will allow me to keep my NCAA tennis eligibility — feel impossible. More than once, I think about dying,” she wrote.
