Embarking on a path to freedom demands courage, a truth Rachel Holt and Liz Humble know all too well. As survivor sisters, they share their gripping tales of escaping the IFB cult, navigating the aftershocks of a controlled upbringing, and the liberating struggle towards healing. Their book, "The King James Virgins," serves as a backdrop to a candid conversation that also spills into their podcast, "Sisters Declassified Life Survival Guide," where they fuse life lessons with actionable advice for those walking similar paths to recovery.
Parenting after cult life presents an intricate dance between providing structure and fostering independence. The sisters delve into their personal experiences, discussing the critical role of supportive partners and the importance of family in reassembling a life once dictated by oppressive control. Their stories of raising children in the shadow of their past resonate deeply, offering a beacon to others striving to break free from generational cycles of restriction.
In an atmosphere where trust is often a casualty of betrayal, Rachel and Liz courageously confront the darker chapters of their past. They engage in a raw reflection on abuse, the complexities of finding trustworthy therapeutic support, and the power of owning one's narrative. Their journey is a testament to resilience, a guidepost for navigating the murky waters of trauma, and an invitation to listeners to embark on their own journey of healing, bolstered by the strength found in honesty, humility, and sisterhood.
Thanks for listening!
Embarking on a path to freedom demands courage, a truth Rachel Holt and Liz Humble know all too well. As survivor sisters, they share their gripping tales of escaping the IFB cult, navigating the aftershocks of a controlled upbringing, and the liberating struggle towards healing. Their book, "The King James Virgins," serves as a backdrop to a candid conversation that also spills into their podcast, "Sisters Declassified Life Survival Guide," where they fuse life lessons with actionable advice for those walking similar paths to recovery.
Parenting after cult life presents an intricate dance between providing structure and fostering independence. The sisters delve into their personal experiences, discussing the critical role of supportive partners and the importance of family in reassembling a life once dictated by oppressive control. Their stories of raising children in the shadow of their past resonate deeply, offering a beacon to others striving to break free from generational cycles of restriction.
In an atmosphere where trust is often a casualty of betrayal, Rachel and Liz courageously confront the darker chapters of their past. They engage in a raw reflection on abuse, the complexities of finding trustworthy therapeutic support, and the power of owning one's narrative. Their journey is a testament to resilience, a guidepost for navigating the murky waters of trauma, and an invitation to listeners to embark on their own journey of healing, bolstered by the strength found in honesty, humility, and sisterhood.
Thanks for listening!
I am so happy to have Rachel and Liz with me today. It's so nice to be able to meet you, and I can't wait for our conversation, and so let's get cooking. Where I want to start with you. Other, rachel, if you can take a few moments to introduce yourself, and then we'll move on to Liz, go for it.
Speaker 2:Excellent. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here also. It's been a long journey. My name is Rachel Holt, as opposed to Rachel Bernstein, which is going to be an ongoing thing. I currently am in San Diego, california. I teach dance and Pilates and I am a IFB cult survivor. I am also a co-author of a book that my sister and I, elizabeth, whom you'll soon meet wrote about our experience growing up in that, and I'm really excited to talk to Rachel Bernstein about this and to just go with her through this journey of what that looks like for you as the listener.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's so nice. And also, do you have a working title for the book yet or no, we do.
Speaker 2:The King James Virgins, that is so good, that's so good.
Speaker 1:You know what happens when you come up with a great, really catchy title. There are going to be a lot of people out there going, oh why didn't I think of that?
Speaker 2:Right, that's a good one. It's as though it was there all the time, and then I also think about it as being timeless, right.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's good, Right, that's right. And Liz, do you want me to call you Liz or Elizabeth? Yeah, liz is great, okay, cool, all right, so take a few moments and introduce yourself.
Speaker 3:Okay, I am Liz or Elizabeth Humble. I go by Liz. I currently own a couple of businesses a food truck, a barbering business, alteration shop. I just work a lot as well as working on, like what Rachel said, the book and the. We have a podcast we work on every week. So we grew up in IFB, in the same one, until around the age I was about 21 when we finally got out. So I've been out for about 25 years. So we are living life outside of that now, which is amazing. But there has been a lot of hurdles in life to get over and to deal with and in all aspects of life, including when you're raised in something, not knowing how to raise your own children, things like that. Both of us have our kids grown. So interesting life after the cult and also inside of it.
Speaker 1:So, liz, you mentioned in your intro something about a podcast, so tell us about it.
Speaker 3:We call it Sisters Declassified Life Survival Guide. So it's kind of a take on a show our kids watched growing up, but it's two sisters with four daughters fishing drama, trauma and survival tips for the everyday. It's kind of a long name but it kind of fit and we basically talk about we do like a how-to every week. It's by week, so every other week but we do a how-to and then we do a define this and so we kind of do different things and we incorporate the cult. We incorporate, you know, raising children. It's basically like listening in on a conversation with me and my sister, so talking about random things, but also you know just how to, how to live every day, because there's so many challenges we face all the time.
Speaker 1:Know just how to, how to live every day, because there's so many challenges we face all the times, right, right. So I'm making a note to come back to this idea of raising kids and, you know, being raised in a different tradition, that's going to have very different views on child rearing, child development. Actually, usually there are no views on child development, but there is a lot about. What is that?
Speaker 2:Right, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's just a lot of rules that are not connected to what is natural to expect at each stage of development, and also without a sensitivity about not only what's possible but what's healthy. It's totally devoid of all of those things. So I just want to make sure to get into that, just as you became moms yourself and I know, rachel, you were going to mention something, as Liz was talking about the podcast.
Speaker 2:Oh, I was just going to expand on the podcast, that it really came out of an idea that we want the whole reason for basically 25 years out, coming out and doing something like this. I will reiterate the fact that it took us about 25 years to really be able to go to this place where we're able to talk about it and to write about it and to work through all of the things because our podcast, if we would have started this 20 years ago and we would have recorded our phone conversations between the two of us as we co-raise daughters and we call them roommates one through four, so Liz has three and I have one, so mine's the youngest, Liz's first was the eldest, so it's roommate one through four. We call them our roommates because we don't want to use their names all the time and deluge them in this therapeutic experiment that we have going on. That podcast is a thing is because we know we're not the only ones and that the experience that we had with raising daughters and going out of this you know world viewpoint, which actually we had no idea what was out there, we had no idea how to do it or how to raise our kids, but we had each other, and that was a really, really critical thing, Whereas had we been solo siblings, it would have been a very different thing. But also the interest or the idea that we had is okay. Well, had we recorded our phone conversations 20 years ago, we would have had a book, we would have had a feature film, we would have had spinoffs, we would have had a TV series. It would have been a whole thing, Because our phone conversations are just real.
Speaker 2:They're what's going on in our life right now and how we're dealing with it and how we manage to deal with the life that we had, the life that we left and then the life that we're now living and trying to hurdle all of these monumental tasks at the moment. But then how we dealt with them and we talked through them as sisters and as both cult survivors, but then also as females, mothers, women. Wife Liz is a wife and right dealing with all that. So it's a cacophony of everything that we are and who we want to be, and then also the dirty, nitty, gritty, nuts and bolts of getting through these things on a daily basis. And that was the point is to sort of be, you know, an inspiration. I mean people are going to dip in and just listen to it out of pure voyeurism. But that was the goal is to try and reach out to those who also have gone through this, or it could be a similar experience, it could be another trauma, something else.
Speaker 1:Right. So I think about also, when I started my podcast, it suddenly dawned on me and I mean, podcasting became more of a thing around that time anyway. But I think at the time that I was thinking about the podcast, I was thinking I've been already doing this for whatever 25 years or so and that means that I've heard many stories up until that point. Many, many, many, and I had had that thought over and over of someone else should be learning from this, like this shouldn't just be something that people are sharing with me in my office. I mean, even though that is the point of therapy and I'm going to help them, but still these points are really important.
Speaker 1:I mean, even though that is the point of therapy and I'm going to help them, but still these points are really important, I think, for the public to know and also for people's healing, sometimes just coming forward with their story and putting it into words, feeling brave to tell it, not feeling like they have to keep the secrets of the place anymore or the secrets of a perpetrator anymore, because they don't deserve that right. I think it was sort of a win-win, like the public got educated and people also were able to feel empowered by being able to talk. You mentioned that it took a long time to start putting the thoughts together for a book or thinking about a book, and I'm curious, before we even get into your story, just about that, about that delay, and also I just want to add this caveat, which is that not everyone needs to tell their story. It's okay, and some people have contacted me almost apologetically, like I'm just don't think I'll ever be ready. It isn't something you have to do, it's only really if you feel like you want to.
Speaker 2:I like that point a lot. It's actually what drove us to this or at least myself and Liz can speak for herself also. For years, everyone's told us you need to write a book, you need to write a book. Right when they hear our stories and one of the probably smartest people I know said that you can't write until you have to. And for Liz and I both because our daughters are relatively close in age, so we were both sort of empty nesters around the same time, and it was as though we had a task, we had it done and then we could move on. And then I would say a lot of this has to do with political climate. It felt compelling. We had to. If that makes sense, you can't write until you have to. I never felt like I had to until when we started writing the book, and I think Liz had the same experience, but I'll let her speak for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm really glad, though, that you mentioned that. Yes, because people have said to me and it's happened actually in the support group I was running last night where people say I feel bad that I haven't come forward or I'm not even ready to talk, even in this group, like I've come and I want to listen, but I'm not ready to even speak it or say the word cult, or you know, everyone's at a different point and what is monumental for one person is just maybe that they have left and stayed out, or that they've told one friend, you know, and that is sufficient, because that was a big deal and you can put a period at the end of that, unless you start to get that drive and the have-tos. It's interesting, right, okay, and so, liz, from your perspective, what was that about for you? About the delay and putting pen to paper, so to speak.
Speaker 3:I think exactly pretty much what my sister said.
Speaker 3:As far as raising the children, we lived very close to each other for about three years in Southern California and we would get together almost every day and we would talk about it and we were like we need to do this, we need to do this.
Speaker 3:But there was always and I don't want to say that our kids were the reason we did it, but that was more important at the time to just try and do that, because I don't think, honestly, I could have mentally handled writing the book because it was extremely therapeutic for me. I haven't had traditional therapy like Rachel has, and so for me, writing it was the first time I had actually wrote a lot of that stuff down and put it out there. So as soon as I wrote it down, it was very therapeutic. But I think if I would have tried to do that while I was raising my kids, it would have been traumatic and I don't feel like I'm done raising my kids. They're grown and out of the house, but they're still, you know, still need mom. But it's a whole different story when you're not there with them on the daily, you know, and you have more time and headspace to focus on that and even concentrate on what you want to actually put on paper.
Speaker 1:Right and I think that's really beautifully said, though about being able to check in with yourself and think is this the right time? Is this going to just fragment me, is this going to be too much and I'm not going to be able to be present? I mean so much of what happens when people and that's why I want to hear more about your own story early on, when people are raised in these environments, they do get the feeling from their families, often from the community often, that they don't matter as much as the church, as much as God, as much as other things or something standing between you or something standing between you. I think how healing for you to know that you could put your kids first, that this, the church, all of it, was not going to stand in between you, which I think is really powerful, actually, and spot on. Okay, so let's talk about first with your parents getting involved and how far back it goes. Did it start with your folks or before them?
Speaker 3:My dad and mom were in the Marines and they found an independent fundamental Baptist church when she was in boot camp, where they met. So at their first station they met, found a church, my dad got himself into some trouble, to prison, and my mom was in colorado, like they hadn't. They had moved around a bunch but ended up in colorado. I was two, rachel was about one, because we're only a year apart. So, um, my mom, someone came and knocked on her door and invited her to this church and she said that she felt like she needed To go and this was the place that God wanted her to be at. So she went. So that's literally all we knew.
Speaker 3:I from the time. I was two. So I was in the nursery at the time, you know, up until I got married and then my husband and I eventually left. Rachel was a baby, so same thing in the nursery, so it was my mom, but she has no. Her parents were totally different. So my dad and mom got divorced when I was five. He had got out of prison for one thing and then he was back in prison and then they got divorced. He was in and out, he was kind of a mess, but my mom stayed with it. She felt a lot of support from them in the younger years so she felt like it was a place, a safe space. She actually believed that and I think in the beginning it probably was a good support system for her Raising three kids on her own basically.
Speaker 1:Wow, incredible. Okay, that's a lot. From that history, too, you can see that both your parents were in what I would see as restrictive environments, with bootcamp, with prison, which some people have likened to being like prison, or prison being like boot camp. It's interesting. And so being told what to do, you know, having something highly, highly structured where you don't have a say, you can't ask questions, it's interesting. Okay, yeah, go ahead, rachel, you want to add to that?
Speaker 2:So I'll bring into that, because it is psychology, it is the cult, it is what we're dealing with in terms of a lot of things right now, and this is another reason why Liz and I both felt we had to speak now is because we've seen this before. We know this pattern. It's not rocket science. So my mother left her restrictive parents and that environment to go to a more restrictive environment which she felt safe in. My father was abused horribly as a child and then also found the same thing right, but they again repeat the pattern of abuse.
Speaker 2:My mother has never felt safe without that structure, without someone having that control over her life, where she didn't have to make decisions, and that's almost like a developmental retardation, and I use that in the exact word or meaning that it's meant to be. It's that you don't have the skills or the toolkit to actually make decisions on your own. Therefore, you're going to let. There's a permission structure there allowing someone to take over, and I think that that was part of it where my mom was so. Therefore, you're going to let right, there's a permission structure there allowing someone to take over, and I think that that was part of it where my mom was so overwhelmed with three kids by herself as a single parent that that made sense for her to have the structure, to have a surrounding community that helped her make the decisions without having to do them all on her own. And that's a repetitive pattern of behavior.
Speaker 2:And Liz and I, both in our very different ways, made very sure that we did not raise our kids that way and in varied differences we were very and I think this is common. You try and not create the same environment you were raised in and, to our dismay or not, that's how it works. And of course we choose varied paths and they're all different and I don't think any of them are wrong. But I do think the important part is that we recognize where we come from and then also we're able to go okay, that's not the right path, we shouldn't be there.
Speaker 2:And then how do we change it or how do we correct it. And healing yourself is a big part of that. And that I think for both of us was a wake up call to go okay, we have priorities now. We have to fix ourselves to move forward. So Liz's telling of the origin story, if you will move forward. So Liz's telling of the origin story, if you will, is also a reflection back on what we lost in terms of that and then also what we knew we lost and then had to regain with our second generation, our kids.
Speaker 1:Okay, my goodness Right. So when you were talking about a structure that answers the questions or just keeps you from being able to ask any, what is really interesting, too, is the amount of inherent gaslighting that's, in that that you learn that you can't make decisions right, or you shouldn't, because if left up to you, you would make the wrong ones right Like who according to whom? You'd make the wrong ones right Like who according to whom? And a lot of times the advice that you get in these places is so off but you listen to it anyway, and people often will say once I could shed myself of thinking I had to defer to the other person to tell me what to do, or to the leadership, or to my disciple or whomever, whatever the role was or whatever the title was. I realized that there I mean, I've heard, I actually heard this last night their advice sucked was was actually the phrase, but I had to follow it and I. But I just thought, well, even if there's my suck, so to speak, mine is going to be worse. Well, no, not necessarily, because yours is going to be intuitive and yours is going to be checking in with you and it's going to be reading the room and it's going to be filled with a lot of things that someone else sitting in an office or whatever doesn't really know you is.
Speaker 1:Not only do I get to, but I'm able, is a huge leap. I think people don't realize what a monumental leap that is and how nerve wracking it is also, especially if you make a decision and it turned out to not be the right one, to just be able to say whoops and not. Well then that's it, I'm never. I learned my lesson. I'm never going to make a decision again. But just really to have it be a whoops, because most of the world outside is going to treat it that way, that it's a whoops, and often in these kinds of restrictive environments if you make a mistake, well then that's it. That just proves something lifelong about you. I mean, there's so much risk, you know, for making a mistake.
Speaker 2:Rachel, you bring up exactly what Liz and I just talked about, actually on our other podcast, because we're talking about the fact that even social media is a restrictive environment, particularly for younger kids. Their like buttons are their whole world, so they're encapsulated and restricted within this like button and they're afraid to fail and you can't be. And we just got over describing this fear of failure and it's in the public realm. But Liz and I, with our phone conversations, we ultimately figured out we could fail and fall flat on our face every single time, parenting-wise, life-wise, making decisions, but we had each other and that was really really the tie that binds for us in terms of that, and our mom still struggles with it. I didn't mean to bring this up, liz, but I'm like my God she's talking about mom, because it's a fear of making a poor choice.
Speaker 1:And it's like, but that's also a choice. Yeah, and it's like, but that's also a choice. Yeah, right, exactly, it's also a choice and you learn that you can deal with the consequences and you also can learn that in the world outside, the consequences are not so severe or swift and it's not a damnation of you and your sense of agency. I know know raising my kids to be strong, to be individuals still needing to be respectful, but being able to voice what's on their mind. You know, sometimes it's a little hard, because I would say something and they'd say hmm, or we could look at it like this and they were kind of right, and so I would joke. I'd be like, damn it, you know, like you're. So, okay, let's start this again, the scene of me being a really wise parent. Take two, and then I would just quote them to them. You know you can try to make it funny, but, liz, what are your thoughts about this?
Speaker 3:I definitely think my kids do have a hard time making decisions. I have fallen flat on my face a million times. My kids have seen me fall flat on my face.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to interject for comedy, both literally and physically.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, I'm kind of a clumsy person, so yeah literally.
Speaker 2:you're right In the charmingest of ways.
Speaker 3:Okay, gotcha, I tried to let them make decisions as they were growing up, because all of our decisions were taken away from us. We didn't get to choose if we were going to do something or not. We lived in such a world where it was these are the rules, you follow them and these are the consequences. And sometimes the consequences were more extreme than others. Sometimes they didn't follow the consequences, but the rules were always there, and then they would make up rules inside of the rules. And it was just like I live such a structured thing and then with my kids, I tried to let them be a little bit more of their own people and failed miserably many times, because sometimes they need that structure. So finding a balance was always very challenging for me Having too many rules and not having enough with my kids, especially when they got a little bit older and were able to start making decisions on their own that weren't life altering, you know. But, um, I they've seen me do all kinds of ventures Um, I've, I think, the freedom of not living inside of those rules and stuff, and I also have a husband who's extremely supportive.
Speaker 3:So he, you know, I'm like I'm going to start doing this and he's like okay, go for it.
Speaker 3:You know, he's always been very supportive. For the most part, I'm going to say, in the last 20 years of our relationship, he's been extremely supportive, probably seven years outside of the cult, because he came into it a bit later than I did or a lot later. I met him inside the cult but he'd only been there for about a year and so he was raised normal if there's a normal outside of a cult. He wasn't raised in a cult and so when we met and then when we left, he just was like okay, back to normal, his normal, and I was falling apart, but I have always been able to make decisions and just like go for it. And I felt a sense of freedom outside of that, but many times fallen on my face. So, yeah, that's just that has been my experience and sometimes it's successful and sometimes it's not, but I haven't been afraid to make decisions. I think the further outside of it I get, the more freedom I feel of being my own person and taking my own risks and things like that.
Speaker 1:So I heard you talk about the chronology that he became more open and accepting, because you know he's, of course, going to be impacted by the teachings within the group, which is not going to be about letting you do your thing, and so it's really nice that he was able to transform over time along with you, so that you have this ability to be able to say I'm going to try this and I'm going to do this Because I noticed in that example you didn't say is it okay with you if I? You just said I'm going to try this. I like that. That's also big.
Speaker 2:She's been that way our whole lives, not necessarily in the cult, and I think we have to talk about that a little bit in terms of like. We have to talk about that a little bit in terms of like how, because I think IFB culture is a 10. If you take Baptists right, a Southern Baptist, which you mentioned at the very beginning, where, like, it's typically thought of as like a Southern thing, and then all of a sudden Colorado comes out of nowhere. But IFB culture in some degree is like proliferated throughout the US in little pockets of stuff, right, kind of like the Mormon. And if you take IFB culture and then you kick it up four notches, five notches, that's where we were in terms of our thing.
Speaker 2:So it was very like for her husband, liz's husband it was a huge change, but remember that his brother at that time was kind of impacted by that.
Speaker 2:He was like, wow, you've changed your whole world around and he turned his life around based on this.
Speaker 2:So Liz's husband and, by the way, she got lucky Of anyone I know that should get lucky about this Liz deserves to be lucky with finding a good man and how willing and loving and caring he's been with her throughout this whole journey because it's been a journey and it's really important to me that she's taken care of and I'm so glad that she got lucky in terms of finding this man for her, because she got married a virgin, she had a honeymoon baby and she had three babies in four years, four or five years, three babies in five years and it was phenomenal to watch like her go through this journey. Her husband was there. He's been magnanimous in this whole thing because he just came in blind, not knowing what was going on, and that restrictive culture and then allowing her that freedom is really really like as a sister. It makes me just go. Oh my God. I'm so glad that she has him, you know, and we're there for each other. But also he was, he was ridiculously supportive and still has been, you know, in this whole thing.
Speaker 1:It's really nice and it's lovely for you, rachel, as a sister, to be clearly so supportive and happy for you know, for your sister. It's interesting because one of the things that I talk about is that sometimes, when people have been in groups like this, their relationships with each other have been weaponized, and I don't hear a lot of that. I'm happy for you, and so that is very meaningful, and I want to be able to come back to that. I do want to go into your history, though, just like a day in the life or a year in the life. What was your life like there? If you're saying this, kicked it up a notch. So many times can only imagine, so paint us a picture.
Speaker 2:Okay. So obviously both of us were there from birth. Basically, I mean earliest memories Were there inside the we'll say cult. I have no problem using that because by every definition of that it was a cult, every definition. So there's a lot of oh, it's, you know, purgatorial in terms of like what it is, and I'm like no, no, no, no, it's not. It clearly definitively was a cult. So I have no problem using that word and I will defend it and I don't mind that.
Speaker 2:So our earliest memories, everything we knew, was surrounded by a um, we'll say a community. And in honesty, I think Liz and I I think Liz will agree with me on this In all honesty, we had an idyllic childhood. We had a diverse and a very mother and we had multiple siblings who were friends. We had multiple people on which we were raised in. So if you want to say it takes a village, that's what we were raised in from our primary right. So if we talk about child development, primary was actually quite developmentally stimulating. It was good for us. We actually, liz and I, are avid readers. We didn't have television, secular books, we didn't have a radio, so we were very much sheltered in this little bubble that we lived in. When her and I went to school, it was not at a public school, it was at a church school. So most of our days look like we would wake up very early in the morning, we would go to the church and or school in our primary years I'm specifically referring to those and we would have all day with our schoolmates and our classmates, and most of that was surrounded by the exact same people that we knew from church. On Sundays, all day, we were at church. On Mondays, we were at school all day. On Tuesdays, we were at school all day. On Wednesdays, we would go to school, and then we would have church in the evenings. On Thursdays, we would go to school all day. We would have proselytizing in the evenings. On Fridays, we would go to school all day. On Saturdays, we would get up early and go to do bus routes or further proselytization within the community, and that would last most of the day, including outreach to marginalized communities, including homeless, mentally impaired, those kinds of things, and that would happen all day. So then we would repeat that process every day. Our whole entire world revolved around this community. That in all of our best knowledge of that community was to help people and that was a big, huge part of it is that you're here for a higher purpose. You are going to be in service of the community around you and the community around you is servicing you and they are taking care of you, they're educating you, they are educating you, they are feeding you.
Speaker 2:My mom, for many years, was a school teacher. She was not a certified school teacher, nor was she qualified, but all of our investments in this world went to that investment. My mother was single mom. She did not have any child support, she did not have any other outlets. Her community was the church and she was single mom. She did not have any child support, she did not have any other outlets. Her community was the church. And she was also vulnerable and I can't overstress that point is that it was a vulnerable position in her life and she was preyed upon Absolutely and she did what she thought was best for us and that's okay.
Speaker 2:So, as and Liz and I have talked about this ad nauseum in the book, it progressively got more.
Speaker 2:I don't think anyone joins a group in a community like that that's as welcoming without it progressing to a different point, and it did so over our lifetime, between the time Liz and I went into grade school, primary school, quote unquote school to the time that I was in middle school is where it took a huge dark shift and started getting more repressive, more rules that you know the guidelines here, you know you need to be dressed this certain way and you need to act this certain way, and then the line got moved and it kept getting moved and it kept getting moved and it got more and more restrictive, more and more controlling more and more of your individual thoughts and ideas were completely quashed in terms of this overbearing purpose, and I think that's pretty common among cult behaviors and that definitely we saw that. So you know it did reach a point at which, yeah, her and I both were, there was a, there was a breaking point right, okay, and so, yeah, we certainly want to talk about the breaking point.
Speaker 1:When you said also that she was preyed upon, can you talk a little bit more about that?
Speaker 2:Sure. So again, my mother, as Liz already spoke about, was a Marine. It was very uncommon in that era for a woman to join the Marines. My mother had a pretty abusive childhood, in my opinion, and does not really want to talk about that, and that's okay, I understand it. It's sort of a generational thing and there are some things that she's not happy to deal with. That's okay, we understand that, and you know that's okay.
Speaker 2:In her own time, she was escaping something that she didn't want to be in. She met my father, who was not a father, he was just a sperm donor, as we lovingly refer to him, the story of which is death is also a long one. She was a single mother with absolutely no life skills to which she could rely on to support and or provide for her children and her family, and someone knocking at her door, inviting the community in which she so craved, was exactly what she needed and also what they and I say they in terms of the cult we're looking for In terms of loyalty. You're never going to get someone who's more loyal or more forgiving of wrongdoings when you meet a mother who's trying to provide for her kids and do the best by them and then also going well, we're going to do this now and are you okay with this? Well, yeah, well, you've provided for me and my children, including, at times, food.
Speaker 2:Liz and I dumpster dived when we were kids. We were so poor that we had to at times. This is a vulnerable population and I'm not talking about in terms of race or anything other than socioeconomic class. She had no skills, she had no job, she had nothing and outside of being on the welfare system which, at that time, reaganomics, was right in terms of Republican and right-wing culture, absolutely not okay.
Speaker 2:So she avoided food stamps, in a way to say, oh, I'm better than that, but I'm not going to choose to feed my children. And who else do I have to rely on? Oh, the church, right, the cult. So, therefore, food to Mao, feeding your children, all came from the church. So, sustenance, the life, life giving her kids, life, giving her kids food, shelter, housing all came from the church. So it put her into a square peg, into the hole where she had to rely on that, because her belief system was so intertwined and loyal to this cult that she had no other option than to just continue to double down on that and continue to rely on that cult to survive her.
Speaker 3:When you say prey on them, I felt like they did have a target. They did. This particular brand of cult went towards military single moms. They prayed it's a good word, but they prayed on those types of people because in a military, you're used to being told what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and so they pulled those types of people in. And then single moms, because they were loyal, because they would provide something that they couldn't, and so there was a lot of single. There was a huge single mothers group in the cult. There was also, you know, military was huge. I think probably at one time half of the church was military. You know, there's just there was a lot of that type of people that they prayed on because they were looking for people to follow their rules and to follow the system.
Speaker 2:And, just like every other cult, it progresses over time. Where there were some major, major issues with how it was structured, that, as their risk gets higher, that they tighten the rules.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, and I'm wondering then also you know, liz, if there are more stories. I mean it's very, very moving when you say, rachel, you went dumpster diving. What a difficult life. I mean just having food insecurities very hard for anyone. What else do you remember, liz? That really paints a picture of your life.
Speaker 3:I just know that we were so mentally immature I think that was a massive thing for me. When I got married I had no clue. There's no sex education, except both of us were obviously abused in that situation my sister much younger than I was. But when you tell someone that you were sexually abused at 16, they're like well, 16-year-old, you know what's going on? Nope, you don't. In that type of environment where everything is so restricted and so you know you go by these rules and you follow this and these leaders are like God and you know you do everything they say. And then when one of them breaks your trust and you know, abuses you sexually, emotionally, all of the things, you just go with it. And then you have, you have no idea.
Speaker 3:I mean, I thought for years that I was, I had done something wrong when I was 16, you know, because that's how I was made to feel and that's how I felt and didn't even deal with it until several years ago because it's something that I thought that was my fault. But they make you feel so guilty. I think that I live with guilt now continuously. I have a major guilt factor. I have a guilt factor with my kids. Anything they bring up. That happened when they were growing up or something that I did wrong. It's something that's painfully, but they drilled in us this guilt that we had to follow these things and if you did anything outside of that, the guilt was just something that was ingrained in us, and so I feel that I really had a hard time overcoming that because they just I mean, when you're drilled it for 20 years, it's hard to get that out of your system.
Speaker 2:Well, it's not even just 20 years, it's your whole life. Up until that point, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you know, Liz, you were telling a story and I want to make sure to you know, to honor some of these experiences that I know are not easy to talk about, but they really help the people listening understand what was so difficult, what also was part of the crux, of what you needed to heal from after leaving. So what else would you like us to know about what you went through?
Speaker 3:In terms of the sexual abuse, I will say that from the pulpit, from school, from everywhere, there's these leaders screaming at you about how you need to keep yourself pure and how, and then you have a leader that puts you in these vulnerable positions and there's absolutely the word grooming applies here because we didn't have a dad. So there was this guy that was making me feel like I could trust him, me feel like I could trust him, like I could rely on him, like he was there to help me, and then do all of these nice kind gestures and just different things that he would say compliments and things like that, and then eventually start the abuse and I had no idea how to handle it. I literally thought, also, I'm the only one this is happening to, you know, at the time, and so I can't say a word. And he said you can't tell my wife this is going on and because you know, he made me feel like I paused this to happen and so you know I'm living with this. I lived with it for over 20 years before I started dealing with it because I still felt guilt over it. So that is one of the hardest things that I have ever had to get over. I think, like Rachel and I talked about earlier, writing the book and writing all of it down and actually wrote out the whole experience. I wrote out everything and it was so therapeutic for me just to put it on paper. I've kept a journal. I journal my sister is a very large component of therapy.
Speaker 3:I had some extremely messed up situations in the Holt with therapy, which they call it counseling with the leader, and so for me that was off the table for years because he, the leader that I was giving me counseling, was so inappropriate and so the leader that was giving me counseling was so inappropriate and so made me so uncomfortable and it was not a good place for me to be. So I had a lot of issues trusting somebody to be a counselor or a therapist or anything like that, because of how many years of counseling I had inside the cult that were so negative and so bad and I would leave in tears and just thinking there was something wrong with me and it was never a good experience. But you were not allowed to cease a secular psychiatrist or a counselor or anything like that. The leaders were your counselors and those were who you talked to, but you couldn't tell them anything without being judged or being screamed at from the pulpit. They would lay everything out there what you told them. So there was no trust, and so I think that that has been tough for me to just trust a therapist.
Speaker 3:I've tried to do it a couple of times. I find that journaling has been one of the best things, and also my sister and my husband are also my people, so talking to them and getting it out there like that has been very helpful for me. So that's how I've sort of I mean that's pretty much how I've overcome it. I have not overcome all of it, but I have been able to function, I feel like, in a way that is productive and that I can. It's not in my mind 24-7.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm really glad to hear that and I think, if you don't mind taking a few moments and talking about the therapy when you're saying that it was making you really uncomfortable. A lot of people have said that too, that they're really nervous about coming to therapy with me because of their experiences in their church or whatever they were in and also with group therapy. People are nervous because they've been called on the carpet in front of a group that was a of set up for shaming, and so there are people also said that I've met with a counselor who just told me how I was the cause of my abuse, and they also asked for lots of details and I felt like they were kind of getting turned on by the things I was saying, like it just felt wrong on so many levels. I'm wondering what felt wrong to you about this.
Speaker 3:So I would go to ask for advice or, especially during my abuse, I went in a lot because I thought that I was doing something wrong and I needed to find out what was wrong with me, that I would cause this man to do this to me and I never said the words because I couldn't tell him what was going on, because it was a horrible sin. So I couldn't tell him what was going on. But I would go and talk to him and just tell him what's going on in my head outside of the abuse, but that I didn't. I was feeling like I didn't belong there anymore. It was like I was uncomfortable being even in the church. That was when I started to question being in the cult, in the religion, in anything like that, and I started questioning. So then I would bring it up and then that I was questioning whether God would think that these types of things, such as the way certain situations were handled or they would, he would preach people out of the church, which, when I say preach people out of the church, he would get up at the pulpit. This is the main leader with an agenda that these people did wrong and he was going to say whatever he wanted to say to make them leave the church and his goal was to get them to walk out in the middle of the sermon. So I would bring things like that up to him and I'm saying well, if God is, if somebody is sinning, don't you think God would want them to stay and get help? Why would you want to preach them out of the pulpit? And it would immediately I mean I would immediately get shut down, that I don't know what I'm talking about. I am not a man of God, things like that. So any kind of questioning was never allowed.
Speaker 3:And when I did question, um, and I questioned, I remember asking him one time this is how naive I was how I would know if I was a virgin, because you were not supposed to get married until you're a virgin. And I got asked questions like do you masturbate until you're a virgin? And I got asked questions like do you masturbate? Like super uncomfortable questions like this from somebody who is, in my opinion, a man of God and it would freak me out and he would go into specifics of these things, of what I did. And at this time, you know, I was just like so embarrassed I didn't even know what the word meant. There was just so many uncomfortable conversations like that that made me think that I could not trust him any longer and I eventually quit going and then going outside of that. I don't even know how you start, has been my thought. How do you even start talking to somebody about your experiences that doesn't understand? Because I feel like if you don't grow up in that situation, it's very hard to explain it really is.
Speaker 1:And there are people who will come to see me who will say I already met with a number of therapists where I felt like they just didn't understand or they weren't open to learning more about it, or they just kept changing the subject because that's not what they learned in school. So I do, you know, I'm always kind of doing a plug for people out there who are becoming counselors, who are becoming therapists, social workers, to really learn about this. But thank you for letting me know about what that was like and the fact that you couldn't talk about it because it was a sin oh, my goodness, right and that you're the one carrying around the shame and the guilt, which happens almost all the time, even though you didn't do that to someone, someone did it to you, but still, that's how it works and so sorry. So anything else, before we talk about kind of the breaking point for both of you, any other story you want to make sure to mention?
Speaker 3:I think Rachel's story of her abuse kind of leads to the breaking point, so that might be good for her to share a little bit of. I know that her experience was the cause of the breaking point of when we left.
Speaker 1:All right, so then do you feel comfortable getting into that Rachel for a bit?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, oh yeah. As opposed to Liz, I had a very different version of therapy and I'm always a fan. I'm always not pushing people but also suggesting that it's actually a third party that is outside of Liz's experience with it is actually supposed to be trauma-informed and a therapist who understands and knows what you're doing. But I won't disagree with her in the fact that there are very few and far between and I will say that I have been in and out of therapy since I left the cult, so that's been over 25 years and I rely on it and I actually have a lot of faith in it. And Liz is not wrong. You can have family, you can have friends and you can have other tools also available to you and I think that those are fine. And I think that writing the book with Liz was a huge therapeutic process for her and I absolutely supported that 100%. We had about probably a four to six month hiatus after writing that book in which neither of us could really talk about it or look at it again. That is intentional and that was intentional and it took some time and I think that writing is a form of therapy. So, with that said and I understand and know most of Liz's history about therapy, if we talk about my experience and sentenced to 12 years in prison for sexually assaulting a minor, and that was with multiple accounts. He took a plea deal which I was not actually comfortable taking, but at the time I didn't have a voice for myself and I couldn't speak up about that. And had I brothers, I would have been in the courtroom and I would have faced him personally and been able to do that. I was not strong enough at the time, nor could I have probably done that. However, in hindsight I stood up for what I was abused for and assaulted for and I took the power in that situation and that was quite beneficial to my mental health.
Speaker 2:Moving forward from that experience, I was sexually abused from 12 to about 14, multiple times and from a man who was the pastor's son choir director at the cult and also groomed me for multiple years prior to that I ended it. I didn't feel right. I didn't know exactly why, but I wasn't sure that this was correct. But there's an extreme hypocrisy in cult religions about being untouched virginity and that that is a value upon which you don't, you're not, allowed to tread in terms of what you're supposed to do, comportment wise as a female, and everything that I experienced was exactly the antithesis of that meaning. That was taken away from me at a very early age, and so those conflicting terms and conflicting ideologies in my mind weighed on me heavily for a long time. I had a long period of insomnia, anxiety, still do with that cognitive dissidence.
Speaker 2:That was an ideology of which I was trained to believe in and then also got handed the opposite hand of that. I didn't speak out about that, I sort of let it happen and then went along with the program for many, many years. I also was not a child who was actually a good rule follower. I was always outside of the box and I always made sure that that was apparent, and my mouth has always been my weapon of choice and it was never allowed to be fully extended. And I do think that there were special circumstances surrounding my particular abuse in which it was made to be more suppressive and or more oppressive in terms of that, and I think that that is something that made me actually more vocal when and if it came to be able to speak about it. I dealt with this pain and this abuse and this massive repression of who I was and what I wanted to say and where I thought things were, and it is a cognitive dissonance living a life in which you know everything is wrong about it and then also getting feedback from the every person or entity in your life that is supposed to be the authority on this, and understanding that they're absolutely wrong. So I dealt with that for many, many years. So by the time.
Speaker 2:So 12 was the initial abuse, and then, when I was 19, I had the opportunity again probably very calculated from the cult to go and attend a parochial college in Hammond, indiana, which is no surprise to anyone and after returning from that, foray into what is a different cult, look like. I came home and knew exactly to Colorado and knew exactly what I had to do and I had to leave. I had to get away from everything that I knew was oppressive and I knew was wrong. But now I had some traction. I had a little bit of a glimmer of hope in which to see that there was something else out there and that I knew that this was potentially wrong and I didn't know how or why, but I knew in my gut that I had to get out and I knew that that came along with some repercussions, and I knew that a lot of those were going to probably be losing my family, losing my friends, losing that community that I grew up in an idyllic childhood and I knew that that was something that I would have to give up and I had to get to the point at which I could allow that to happen. And I was slowly doing that as I got back.
Speaker 2:So it was 1998. And I was slowly getting back to that idea that okay, if I do it gradually, if I don't show up for church on Sunday morning, if I don't show up to this event, if I slowly, gradually get myself out, I can kind of piecemeal the loss, the grief of losing all of that at some point. And then I had a breaking point. And that breaking point came when I saw the pattern of abuse. I'm going to let you take over in a minute, liz. As far as the breaking point, I was slowly doing that gradual march to let's loss, let's let this go, and how am I going to deal with that? So, emotionally, physically, I had already kind of started that direction.
Speaker 2:And then my sister had her first child, and that happened before I got back, so I wasn't there for the birth, but of course this child was everything and it was a girl and it was amazing and there's no better Aside from having your own children when your sister has a child.
Speaker 2:It was monumental and I was just so overwhelmed with the emotions of joy and love and all the things that come with having a new baby inside the family. That was my sister's and it's almost like having your own, but it's not quite and it's even better. So I'm so overwhelmed with all these emotions and just the outpouring of love. At that point I was almost out. I was like I could taste the door. It's right there but my sister was still in it with her husband, with the new baby, with my mom, and I couldn't bring myself yet to tell them that I was gone and that I was going. And now this new life brings form to something I can't really express. But all of a sudden, there it is, right in front of my face. Liz, you can take it from there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that was, she had been missing stuff. I noticed we talked about it she was wearing pants. So I had found out she was wearing pants and I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, in a strange turn of events, anyway, we went to an event it was it was actually, I believe, a wedding of somebody out in Black Forest. Anyway, everybody from the church was there and I had my daughter, who's about six months old, and we were there together, me, my husband, my daughter Rachel was there. And we went to this event and her abuser, which I had no idea at the time, came over and picked up my daughter and Rachel, was way across the room and made it there in about one second flat, grabs her and says don't you ever let him touch her again. And I was just like, oh my gosh, what happened? You know, I had no idea. I had no idea she had been abused. I had no idea any of this. I had no idea she had been abused. I had no idea any of this. So I just said okay, and it kind of was an abrupt thing. We ended up leaving.
Speaker 3:The next night. She calls me and said she's at work at the mall. And she calls me and she said you have to come here right now. I have to talk to you, it's an emergency. So I went up there. She spilled everything, told me everything, all about her abuse. That was it, because in my mind, my sister was the most important thing in the world and the fact that she had been abused and had held this in for so long and told me everything. I was like we have to go to the police, we have to do this, we have to do this. She said don't tell mom. Of course I told mom and my mom got her to go to the police. You know, the rest is history. Of course, there was a whole whole thing of let's go talk to the pastors about this and let's go talk to them and knew. They all knew it didn't matter. We left. It was very abrupt, but we all left. My mom followed us, which is amazing, rare and rare and appreciated.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, she believed her, she believed my sister.
Speaker 2:Well, mom went to the police. Yeah, I mean, mom and I went to the police and told my story only under threat of subpoena, but she made me do it and you know, that was a time mom stood up for us. She didn't when we were growing up, but she got the opportunity, she saw the wrongdoing and she did the right thing, and that's really, really powerful in terms of women and mom and raising kids and family, and all of that Because when she got handed the opportunity to do the right thing, she did, and that's basically what led to, yeah, we had a criminal, uh, we had a criminal suit. Um, he did go to prison. He actually lives near Liz right now in Oklahoma. So you know I'd be happy to start a campaign against him, but anyway, um, but yeah, again, Scott free now, um, probably grooming and doing God knows what to other women, but that's our system. He did go to prison, he did. We subsequently sued the organization, the church, basically their insurance company, and I got a civil lawsuit.
Speaker 2:It's a long story, but 25 years ago 99 is when this all went down, and it took us that long, though, to figure out. Oh God, we actually have a priority now. We have kids. We're not going to let our kids grow up in a cult. We're not going to let them grow up under a oppressed environment of where their ideas don't matter and where their female voices don't matter. They are going to be loud and heard, no matter what, even if it's to our detriment. And Liz, every fucking morning excuse me every morning she's like, oh God, the girls have done this bullshit. And I'm like that's fine, they're allowed to say their voice, they're allowed to speak, they're allowed to be the imbeciles that they are at this young age and that's okay.
Speaker 2:The freedom that we've been able to give our kids, because we took that into our and and uh, there's a lot of, I would say, like, hoopla right now about the ifb and there's been some documentaries and stuff, and I was like, oh, okay, well, we should get on that. And then Liz and I both are like no, we're over it, partly being because we've been out of it 25 years, we have a bit more clarity, we have a bit more of like insight as to what the journey looks like for someone coming out of this, as to what the journey looks like for someone coming out of this, and it's harrowing, it's hard, it's arduous. It's something that, unless you have you know the cumption and the wherewithal to figure out and then critically think for yourself, which is something that is not taught and we had to learn on our own. You know, I went through education system publicly and Liz went through her own version of it also, but we both have degrees. We're both in the real world doing our thing right now, but it was not without scars.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. I know we're unfortunately done with time, but I'm hoping that you both can come back so we can continue, because I want to hear so much more about this moment and the transition out and the challenges of that, and, even though some things are going to feel so clear and like, yes, they're going to be, these other moments of great trepidation, real worry and a lot of trial and error. You know it's interesting that I mean it's beautiful that the two of you have each other and the fact that, liz, you could call Rachel and say, like my girls just did this. You know, I feel like there are these themes that can be applied to, especially when kids are preteen and teen, that I think their life can be under two headings, which is I thought it was a good idea at the time and that sounded better in my head, and so I think they're learning while you're learning and parents are learning as they go, but also people who just were not raised in this way.
Speaker 2:In every sense of that term, rachel. We grew up together with our kids, absolutely because, like Liz iterated to earlier, she was abused at 16. She was not a 16-year-old at 16. Because of the suppression of the cult, she was probably closer to 12, 13 developmentally. And then, when we had kids and Liz had her first kid at 19, we raised our kids with us. We were growing, we were learning about the real world as they were learning it.
Speaker 1:And that's a really nice thing. I mean, that takes a lot of really beautiful honesty and humility to be able to say that and to acknowledge that and that you don't have to be the I know best parent, right? You know kids need to know that their parents know some things beyond what they know, but you don't have to always know everything, and your process of learning is actually a great model for them to see that it is true that we are all kind of transitioning into being more able, having more wisdom as we go. So, yeah, so let's make sure to find another time to continue this conversation, and then I also want to hear more about the book that you put together, so let's get that on the calendar. I am so happy to at least have started the conversation with both of you, and it's beautiful to see your relationship with each other and how strengthening it's been and how much wisdom you share with our listeners. It's really very powerful. And your honesty it's also really beautiful. Thank you so much for our conversation today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, rachel, thank you.