'Mormon Wives' star Mayci Neeley turns pain into purpose in debut memoir

A star tennis player, an unplanned pregnancy, a deadly car crash, a new beginning. Sounds like the plot of a tear-jerking movie, no? Welcome to the last decade or so for “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star Mayci Neeley.

The 30-year-old reality TV personality – whose calm demeanor separates her from her dramatic co-stars – pulls back the layers in her debut memoir, “Told You So” (Simon & Schuster), out Tuesday. It covers topics as difficult as rape and and sexual abuse and grappling with faith, but makes room for the lighter moments of life like falling in love, getting engaged and pursuing a reality TV career. There’s room for laughs amid the tears and smiles amid the frowns.

Neeley is mostly glad she wrote it all down. Her father gave her a journal after she became pregnant in college with her then-boyfriend Arik’s baby, a book she still has. “Maybe one day you’ll write a book and it’ll help someone else,” he told her.

“I keep it in my office,” she said over a phone call, describing the black book. “It’s something that I hold near and dear to my heart, and so I almost hide it away so none of my kids could ever get into it, or, honestly – my husband wouldn’t go looking through it, but it’s really vulnerable. I don’t want anyone to read it.”

The parts that did make it into her memoir, however, will keep readers turning page after page.

‘I didn’t realize it could be from your partner’

Neeley grew up in California and attended Brigham Young University with a tennis scholarship in tow. The devout Mormon quickly developed a penchant for partying like many a college student before her. Neeley’s journey took many rough turns from there; she writes a man she was seeing sexually assaulted and raped her. She thought it all was her fault, and didn’t think she was being raped – wasn’t it supposed to look like someone hiding in the bushes, popping out and getting her?

“I didn’t realize it could be from your partner,” she said, part of her reason for speaking out. Little signs of manipulation and gaslighting apepared along the way, further confusing her. “I literally had to Google all the things that were happening to me because I didn’t even know I was being abused.”

Someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted every 74 seconds, according to RAINN. Neeley knows women and men in the U.S. are going through this and have no idea. “You get so intertwined in the relationship that you don’t even know what’s happening to you, but you just feel miserable,” she says.

‘Grief never really goes away’

Still in school, Neeley later met and dated boyfriend Arik and got pregnant. She learned Arik cheated on her, then confronted him about it; shortly after, he died in a car accident. He’d been texting her. The guilt swallowed her whole.

“It’s still hard this many years later, but I would say that, the grief never really goes away,” she says, now a parent to their child, Hudson, and two other children, Harlow and Charli, with now husband Jacob. “It just gets easier over time.”

Neeley leaned into her (at times lapsed) Mormon faith as a means of coping.

What ‘Secret Lives’ star Mayci Neeley will do next

For all her tennis prowess, Neeley doesn’t play much now. She went back to competing after her pregnancy but tore her ACL and returned again. By the time college ended, exhaustion set in. She’s missing the competitive drive, though, and is installing a pickleball court in her backyard to bring sports back to her life.

“It’s sometimes hard for people to get outside, with social media and video games,” she says. “And so sports are definitely always gonna be a huge part of my life, and hopefully my kids lives.”

That may sound ironic given Neeley’s rise to stardom as part of “MomTok,” the group of Mormon women featured on the “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”

Neeley and her co-stars, along with other influencers, have shown that Mormon women don’t have to fit into certain stereotypes. “People are getting used to women stepping into that role in being like a mom, but also the breadwinner,” she said. Neeley is also the CEO of Babymama, a nutrition gummy company.

What’s on tap for Neeley after the book is out? The next season of “Mormon Wives,” out in November, and hopefully another book eventually and maybe a reality TV hosting gig someday. A dating show, perhaps.

Either way, we’re tuning in.