Mayci Neeley Reveals Her Evolving Relationship with Mormon Faith (Exclusive)

Mayci Neeley is opening up about working through ups and downs in her relationship with her faith.

The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star, 30, opens up about the different ways she relates to her faith in her new memoir, Told You So. While Neeley does continue to practice the Mormon faith, she’s had some serious struggles with belief along the way.

The memoir, which hits shelves on Oct. 7, reveals that though Neeley grew up in a more “relaxed” Mormon family, she carried aspects of her faith with her into different moments and decisions, even when she didn’t consciously realize it.

“It’s funny because I feel like in Mormon culture, a lot of people journal. It’s kind of a thing. It’s like, ‘Oh, write down your life and your memories,’ but I never really did it. Maybe when I was a kid, 8 years old, and then obviously hadn’t done it in years, so I’m like, ‘That’s outdated,'” she tells PEOPLE.

“Then when I was pregnant, my dad, as you can see in the book, he came in, handed me this black diary. He was like, ‘Hey, write everything down when you’re mad at us, when you’re sad, when you’re angry and maybe you can use this to help someone else one day.'”

Neeley admits feeling “dumb” trying it out at first, but admits, “I was salty, I just didn’t want to be there. And then I just started doing it because during that period of time, I didn’t feel like I had someone to really talk to.”

While Neeley’s parents were supportive of her decision to go ahead with her pregnancy at 19, the young mom “didn’t feel like they truly understood what I was going through and what I wanted and how it felt for me being pregnant so young, especially as a Mormon.”

In those moments, journaling helped. “It became almost freeing for me. It was almost like a person to talk to, writing everything down in my journal. And so I feel like that really helped me throughout my pregnancy.”

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While the Mormon faith has always been part of her life, Neeley says it wasn’t always such a big aspect of her identity.

“I’ve never talked about being Mormon in my entire life, and even when I went on this show, I feel like being Mormon was part of my just normal life,” she says. “It’s never been a big piece of my identity, but when I look back, I feel like it is so layered.”

“My family was, I always say, the ‘cool Mormons.’ We were able to do a lot more than the typical Mormon growing up, as far as most Mormons don’t wear tube tops or they don’t wear bikinis and we all did that. My parents were pretty chill. I could watch whatever movies I wanted … and music as well.”

“It’s always been a part of my identity but when I went to college and got in my party phase, it became being a bad Mormon,” she adds. “In our culture, the slang for it is ‘Jack Mormon.’ When you’re not following the rules, they call you a ‘Jack Mormon.'”

Her college rebellion was a time when Neeley felt she got a taste of life outside the bounds of her religion. Despite some good times, she still felt drawn back to her faith.

“I don’t want to say I lost myself because I didn’t. I still love that part of myself that was a little bit wild and had fun, and I feel like I needed that — for the curiosity in me, an ‘I’ve got to scratch an itch’ kind of thing — because I’ve always been a curious person. But at the end of the day, I do feel like I couldn’t handle it and had to go back to my roots of spirituality, being Mormon,” she says.

Neeley feels particularly connected to the tenets of the Mormon faith that are rooted in overall “Christian values.”

“I feel like I have the Christian values of believing in God, in Jesus and being a good person, doing good works,” she explains. “For me, being Mormon is just part of that. I got back into religion when I was going through the hardest times of my life because I needed it to make sense. I was in a dark place.”

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Neeley felt confronted with deciding whether to “turn away” from her faith for good, something she thinks “probably would have led to a path of destruction, because I was already on a little bit of that path.”

“Or I could turn towards religion and I feel like I turned towards what’s always really helped me, because I needed to make sense of what was happening. For me, it wouldn’t make sense unless there was something with a higher power going on.”

The mom of three is aware, of course, of backlash from her religious community about Secret Lives, but she chooses to focus on the support of those closest to her instead.

“With the show, there’s a lot of backlash from the Mormon community. My parents are active in the church and they were like, ‘Screw those people, who cares what they think?'” she shares.

“It has meant the world to have their support especially, and I feel like it’s very full-circle for me too, because I don’t know if I would’ve written a book if my dad didn’t bring that journal into my room. Because he was like, ‘Maybe you can write a book one day and help someone else.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, whatever.'”

“After I went through everything, it became my life’s goal and dream to write a book,” she adds. “So I think when I got my book deal, it was so full-circle because I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is fine, this is happening.'”

Told You So will be published on Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025 and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.