In part 2 with Tia Levings, author of A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy, Tia she discusses how, in the midst of a church-sanctioned abusive relationship, motherhood began to change her beliefs - at first making her more zealous. She’ll talk about how her time trying to save her baby in the children’s hospital, plus working with women doctors and nurses, planted the seeds to help her imagine a world that wasn’t completely run by men.
She discusses moving to more heavily patriarchal churches, how the churches may change but it’s all part of the same larger evangelical culture, and how she joined a more extreme and isolated one as her husband became more authoritarian. Plus, she touches on her recovery process, as well as the ongoing and growing danger of fundamentalist Christianity in the United States government.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you have your own story of being in a
cult or a high control group.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Or if you've had experience with manipulation or abusive power
that you'd like to share.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Leave us a message on our hotline number at three
four seven eight six trust that's.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Showed us an email at trustmepod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Trust me, Trust trust me.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
I'm like a squat person.
Speaker 5 (00:25):
I've never lived.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
To you, I've never If you think that one person
has all the answers, don't welcome to trust Me. The
podcast about cults, extreme belief and manipulation from two poorly trained,
unmarried people who've actually experienced it. I am Lola Blanc
and I'm Megan Elizabeth, and today is part two of
(00:48):
our interview with Tia Leving's, author of a Well Trained
Wife and former fundamentalist christian So last week we talked
about how she became involved with this type of Christianity
and married a man who abused her with no recourse
for her when she went to the church for help.
This week, we're going to talk about how motherhood began
to change her beliefs, initially making her actually more zealous.
(01:08):
She'll talk about the trauma of losing her baby in
the children's hospital, how it was hell on earth, and
how seeing women doctors and nurses in the hospital planted
seeds to help her imagine a world that wasn't completely
run by men.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Truly, such a fascinating story. She'll tell us about moving
somewhere even more isolated and joining an even more extreme
church as her husband became more and more authoritarian and terrifying.
You're going to have to read the book to hear
the details of how she escaped, but for today, we
will also explore her recovery process, as well as the
growing danger of Christian nationalism in the US. And it
(01:44):
should be stated that there is a very heavy trigger
warning for this episode.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
It is a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
We will be discussing loss of a child and the
trauma that comes with that, as well as abuse as
well as abuse. So heads up, where are we get
in to it all with Tia.
Speaker 6 (02:05):
Megan?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Please, can you kindly tell me your cultiest thing of
this week?
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Okay, so I'm going with the cultiest thing this week.
That's a little bit lighter than normal because of our
heavy material this week. So I went to Disneyland on Friday. Yes,
you did the biggest cult of all freaking time, number one,
Like statues of Walt Walter Elias Disney everywhere, like they
(02:36):
you know, they would like turn down the lights and
his voice would become booming over the loudspeaker and be
like you must dream, you.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Know, Favery l Ron Hobbert.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Listen. All I am saying is the lines to get
food are so long, the like rides don't close until midnight,
so you're there till one a m. They're keeping us
hungry and tired and crazy and delusional off of love.
And by the end of the night you would do
anything that they.
Speaker 6 (03:01):
Asked to be.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I mean, listen, it's a fun cult, but there are
certainly there, there is certainly way to take being a
Disney adult to an extreme, as we have discussed before.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
I mean, yeah, the Disney adult thing doesn't bother me.
It's it's more just like, uh, how deep this Disney
thing has rooted into our psyche?
Speaker 7 (03:26):
Is?
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I mean it's shaped how we yeah, totally, how we
think of love, how we think of society.
Speaker 6 (03:34):
What about you?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
What was the culziest thing that happened to you this week?
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Mine is also light. Oh good, we're doing some light
in a in a dark world. Okay, So I've been
catching up on The Bachelorette nice, which I originally was
not gonna watch this season because, like, let's be honest,
if anyone watches The Bachelorette, I wanted Maria to be
the Bachelorette. But I know what you're talking about. But
I know my Bachelorette fans will understand. But I got
(04:00):
on board and I'm into Gen. Now I'm not into Gen.
I support Jen as the Bachelorette, but so so in
the episode I just watched, which I'm late to the party,
you guys, so forgive me. But in the episode that
I just watched, there's a guy who whose name I
don't remember so I won't.
Speaker 7 (04:17):
Say it who.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
He's like clearly very insecurity, seems super inexperienced, he's never
been in love. And then at some point he starts
talking about manifestation, and then that whole day he literally
starts wearing a leather jacket, starts being really assertive, keeps
calling her his wife. They have never like hung out
one on one. At this point, he already had like
(04:41):
professed that he was starting to fall in love with
her when he had talked to her for like thirty
minutes Max, and he's like walking around and like stealing
her away, and like he writes on his jacket like
Jen's husband, and like gives her one that says his
name's wife. And it is so it's so embarrassing because
(05:04):
like clearly, like somehow he was giving himself a pep
talk because he's feeling low, and he was like, you
just have to manifest it. If I just like act
like she's my wife, she'll be my wife. And you
can see his like eyes getting wider and he's like
it's like it feels like almost like psychotic levels of believing.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yes, and you can just got a little manic with
it maybe, And I'm sure the producers were all too happy.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
I am sure the producers' yes, Like like I cannot
imagine what is happening to your psyche when you were
in that environment and the only people you have to
talk to their producers or like your competition. So like
I do not blame him, but it was fascin I
mean I kind of blame him. It was crazy and
(05:48):
all the other guys, what you're doing, this is so weird.
But it was like it immediately turned her off and
she was like, you know what, like I'm just.
Speaker 5 (06:02):
To her.
Speaker 6 (06:04):
Just being like you're my wife.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Now turns out that doesn't work, and it just it
just made me think how much we get entrenched in
these various beliefs, and I know there's a lot of
different opinions on manifestation, and how much of it is
just like, you know, influencing how you go about your
day and like priming yourself. I personally don't believe in
(06:26):
the magical version of manifestation. He very much did, and
it came back to bite him in the ass.
Speaker 6 (06:31):
And on this timeline I'm just.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Kidding, Yes, the one we're in, the only one we
know of. Yes, he made it added the opposite effect
that he was intending you guys just be real people,
just be real.
Speaker 6 (06:48):
That's all.
Speaker 7 (06:49):
That's all.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Anyway, you know, weird believes whatever, it's fine. I'm sure
it'll be fine.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, he'll be fine, he'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Good luck to him. Whatever his name was that I forgot,
let's call him many Manny. I hope you find real
love and are your real, true, honest self without having
to manifest someone into loving you.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Do you know who is her real honest self?
Speaker 6 (07:14):
Who TiO lovings?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Should we talk to her?
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yes, let's do it. I would love to hear about
motherhood and how that sort of transformed you as a person.
Before Clara, you were taught to not listen to your intuition,
not listen to your instinct. Talk about that experience and
how that shaped you.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Yeah, motherhood's a very interesting piece of tea. I think
it's the thing that saved me. I think it's probably
the undoubtedly the most important vein in my life. I
always wanted to be a mother, like I remember being
this very small child dreaming about being a mother. And
so it's really convenient when you want what the patriarch
he wants for you. I leaned into that for a
(07:55):
good many years of like, well, I want what they
want anyway, you know, So it's it's okay to do
what they say because I we're compatible. I knew how
to be a mom like tactically speaking, I'd been a
babysitter since I was eleven. I was certified. I babysat
for lots of kids. I made lots of money. I
worked as a nanny. I was familiar with newborns and
infant care, and so I knew how to take care
(08:16):
of babies. I knew what kind of mother I wanted
to be. I had rehearsed this for nineteen years. I
wasn't worried about any of that high control religion through
a wrench into it, because what I considered perfectly fine
and normal a baby is going to cry at night
when it's a newborn because they don't sleep for very
long because they need to eat, like that's just normal
(08:38):
humanity was a problem in high control religion because now
you have a man who has to sleep, and he's
already violent, and if he gets overtired and grouchy, and
if you have this like unpredictable factor in your home,
you're going to increase violence. And so my maternal instinct
to protect my baby was what originally drove me to
find a solution for something that hadn't been a problem.
(08:59):
In a hell your situation, it would have just been
me and my baby. I would have gotten up and
fed him, would have been no big deal. So that
led us to this program called baby Wise, which was
preparation for parenting at the time, and it's gary as
I was growing kids God's Way, and it's an infant
feeding schedule routine, but it is also predicated on this
(09:20):
idea of original sin and that the baby is manipulating
you by crying, and so it's it's got a really hateful,
dark theology in it, but it's also the gateway book
that lead sets the stage is John MacArthur's Church, and
it's it sets the stage for the rest of the
parenting materials that come on down the line. It's what
put me into contact with the women who became my
mentors and ultimately changed the kind of mother I always
(09:44):
saw myself being and wanted to be like I didn't.
It turned me into this high control person that was
like regulating my children in ways that I never wanted
and that changes to when you know, when you get
past the infant management stages, it changes the reallylationship that
you have with your children. And that became a really
big point of contention in my heart because I didn't
(10:06):
want to have this dynamic with my children and I
didn't want to be indoctrinating them and molding them for
an ideology. I wanted them to become self actualized, fully developed,
healthy children that became adults and went on their own
way and knew what they wanted for themselves, And so
I could already tell by the time they were young
children that what I want for them is that odds
(10:26):
for with recipe that we're following, that's not the cake.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yeah, And I feel like it's so important to note
how much fear had become a part of your life
at this point, Like if you know there's an empty
house when you're younger, you've been left behind. Jesus came
back and you've been left behind, and that was a
big fear for me as well. So I totally relate
to you there. And so this is somebody might say, well,
just don't do that stuff to your children, but you're
being taught that this is how you save their souls.
(10:52):
They will go to hell if you don't do this
stuff in a very real, non metaphorical way.
Speaker 5 (10:59):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
So that must have just been so much cognitive dissonance.
I can't even imagine.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Yeah, until I would say, that really stuck with me
until I actually experienced what I would consider hell on Earth,
and when the when the actual suffering became so bad
tangibly that the eternal promise of it faded because I
couldn't contend with what what my reality had become.
Speaker 6 (11:26):
Right, Well, let's talk about that. So yeah, tell us
about Clara.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
So Clara Bara, my little sweetie. She was three, three
under three. She was going to be my third pregnancy
in a year.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
I was terrified to have.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Three under three because I knew I was going to
be outnumbered my baby I got. My second baby was
only eight months when I got pregnant, and so all
of it was just very overwhelming, and.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
I was trying so hard.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
I was in the home birth movement at that time,
and my mentors were really pushing to have no pediatricians
or kind ofcologists involved, no vaccines, any kind of mandatory reporters.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
So if you know my work.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Online, I have a series of videos called ordinary Parenting Things.
My Gothired funding mentors said I could skip in order
to have a quiver full.
Speaker 5 (12:15):
And this is that period of time.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
They were my mentors in Bill Gothard, and they were
telling me, you don't need to go to the doctor.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
You don't need to like the doctors are just going
to tell you it's not safe to have the baby
at home. And doctors are just going to tell you that.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
You shouldn't have your babies so close together, and you
really need to be using contraception, and so just don't
go to the doctor because you don't want to hear
that kind of messaging and that's anti God.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
And so I was trying so hard.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
To be obedient, but I had this nagging feeling that
something was wrong with this baby or was going to
be wrong with the birth, or something something was going
to be off, and that I needed a doctor.
Speaker 5 (12:50):
And I'll skip through all those.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Details, but long story short is that she was born
with a heart defect and she did end up in
spent her whole life in a hospital, which was two months,
and when she died, I it was the first time
I'd lost somebody. It was the first time I had
come really face to face with all the promises and
platitudes that they had offered me had failed, and also
(13:15):
their rejection of the actual experience. They wanted me to
move on. I could have like an appropriate grieving period,
but then I was supposed to get pregnant again, move on,
give God the glory that she was in heaven, and
just pick up where I left off and continue.
Speaker 5 (13:30):
And I could not do that.
Speaker 8 (13:33):
The chapter in which you describe the experience of being
in the hospital with her and then finally getting the
news is just absolutely devastating, and I can't imagine that
would just change anyone's life completely.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yeah, that chapter.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
I'm dehydrated just from crying from reading it again. It's
funny that you said earlier that it kind of had
you doubled down on your beliefs, because how I read
it was like, oh, she you came to break you
free from all of it a little bit.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
She really did. She broke me free, and that it
wasn't under I wasn't passively under their control anymore. And
I think that I have to be honest about and
contend with that. When you're in patriarchy, they're breeding perpetuators,
and I became I have a season of my time
where I was a perpetuator and I thought I was
in control of it. I thought I had the freedom
(14:25):
that Clara offered me. It had given me a spine
and had given me a power and a backbone to
stand up for what was important for me to me,
but that I could also manage it. And I think
a lot of women are in a place where they
know that there are some abusive practices, but they are
in control of picking and choosing what those are and
it's not going to hurt them the way that it
(14:45):
hurt other women.
Speaker 5 (14:47):
It's a lie.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
You're not You can't be that effective against an abusive system,
and it is sinking into your family in ways that
you aren't aware of right now, and you are, you're
complicit in a systemic harm that will come for you
one day. But yeah, my immediate years after Clara, I really.
Speaker 5 (15:05):
Thought I was.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
I thought I was in control a little more than
I was. But where I was able to see clearly
and her name does mean clarity, is all of that
sheep following that happened beforehand, that was done. I was
no longer just following along in a blind spell. I
was taking charge where I could and questioning things and
rebelling and talking online to women.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, before we get into that, which is one of
my favorite parts, it's like you say in the book,
like the children's hospital is a completely different world. It's
a completely different universe, and you're no longer like, it's
no longer like what are my bills? Did I get
a speeding ticket? As my husband not at me? It's like,
who give us a shit, I'm going to save this baby.
So it feels like in that moment, like so much
in doctrination was just kind of stripped from you and completely.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
When I was surrounded by women who had not been indoctrinated,
which was the first time in my life I had
been in an environment where women were doctors and nurses
and social workers, and they didn't know what I was
talking about. When I was just like, I don't know,
quote something off scripture, and everybody would resonate with it.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
In my old life, they'd be like, what what did
you just say?
Speaker 4 (16:12):
I don't know where that's from, right, I was like,
wait a minute, in the world out here and no
one's burning up and dying, and yeah, these are not Jessabelle's.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
That glimpse into the outside community that you've been told
is so bad is so important for so many people,
even though obviously it came in the most harrowing way
possible for you.
Speaker 6 (16:39):
One thing that I.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Want to note, because I think it's really interesting, is
that you guys actually changed churches.
Speaker 6 (16:45):
Multiple times, multiple times.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
And I think that's important to say, only because there
tends to be so much fixation on like, oh, this
church is the bad church. Oh that church is the one,
you know, But you're right within this like larger patriarchal
fundamentalism ideology, and you're moving around and going to more
high control churches as you go, but they're all kind
of in the same sphere.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
And Alan was like hunting for more structure.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Is that right?
Speaker 5 (17:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (17:13):
And if you choice it backwards, there's some common denominator
theologians Rushdoony in the Seven Mountain Mandate that says where
Christians are to have dominion over these seven pillars in
society that includes like government and entertainment, education. I don't
know all the seven off the top of my head,
but that's who Gothard built his ministry on. And then
(17:35):
Gothard's ministry was multi denominational, so that's very important for
the spread of fundamentalism in America. And then the spinoff
pastors each went in their own vein in. A hallmark
of evangelical patriarchy is that men get involved in this
high control, but they also don't want to be controlled themselves,
and so when they bought up against each other, they
(17:55):
split and form another church.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
And so it's like this and then in the middle
of it you have the.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Family integrated church movement, which is like more Dale, Partridge
and Home church, where people are going home because they
can't even find a congregation that's like minded enough.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
They and the head of the household is also the
spiritual leader of the home.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
So you don't really need a pastor at that point
because Dad's got you covered, right.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
So how much of the control that you are experiencing
do you attribute to Alan versus the churches versus fundamentalism
in general.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Oh, it's interesting to tease a part because he was
mentally ill, and the church teaches things that feed off
of a narcissistic model and authoritarian model. There is a
part of this that's just like a perfect soup. But
when you talk to survivors and you hear that those
are actually traits and features, they're not bugs. Covert narcissism
(18:52):
and authoritarian abuse and all of that seems to be
in almost every dynamic. And when you couple that with
lack of mental health care and lack of psychological awareness. Sure,
we can look at this and say, well, this is
an example of an extreme It gets less extreme when
you listen to other people say that happened to me too,
or so much of this was relatable, or I see
(19:13):
how my situation could have easily become yours because the
ramp up was the same, you know, just just swap
out a few factors.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
And there's no accountability within these systems, right, it's essentially
enabling this abuse.
Speaker 6 (19:28):
So whatever, if it were a healthy.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
System, if it weren't like a high control patriarchy, there
might be some breaks in place that are like, hey,
you're not supposed to do that, go to counseling.
Speaker 6 (19:39):
But instead of everyone's like, good job, keep doing that
abuse thing.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
We love it.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Yes, yes, And they also took away counseling and created
new andthetical counseling. But the biblical counseling movement is running
in parallel to this. So even when pastors say we
will send you to counseling, they mean we'll send you
to another gatekeeper that will reflect back into the system.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
You're not stepping out of this world for therapy.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
So they spend a lot of time shunning licensed therapists
and psychology and mental health services in general because they
want you to stay in their world. And so biblical
counseling is a whole other lane we could talk about,
but it just points you right back in keeps you
in the fold.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
I want to get into how much stricter things got
with Tulip and how your clothing changed and.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
Stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
But one of my favorite parts of the book is
when your friend says to you, like you guys are
talking and everything, it seems like you're kind of in
a play, which is also how I felt growing up
and a religion like that. Like I remember when I
read the book The Emperor's New Clothes.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Do you remember that.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
I remember feeling like I can't believe I'm allowed to
read this because this is what I feel like.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
The world is offering around me. But your friend, you know,
everybody's just like keeping up the thing. They're never cracking.
The women are like, yep, this is great.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
And one of your friends, you you call it, broke
the fourth wall and turned to you and was like,
don't go off a grid with your husband.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yeah, And that gave me goosebumps.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
That like, at the end of the day, we're all
just kind of like playing into it and when it
really comes to danger, like I believe there was a
moment when you were giving birth and you needed like
actual women's knowledge and advice that we have, like we
have to like snap out of it to actually survive
and take care of ourselves and be like, just for
(21:30):
a second, I'm gonna dip out of the patriarchy so
I can actually do some shit.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
And then.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Yeah, not really interesting, but yeah, what was tulip?
Speaker 1 (21:45):
And how did you get deeper and moved to Tennessee?
Speaker 3 (21:49):
And what did that look like?
Speaker 5 (21:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (21:51):
So tulip And it's just Calvinism. It's the it's the
tenets of cabalism. It's total depravity, unlimited atonement, irresistible grace. Uh,
limited God, I'm gonna I'm gonna choke on it.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
We haven't written somewhere.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah we have it, Oh, preservation of the saints.
Speaker 5 (22:09):
What's the l limited?
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you got it all right.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Which to me it sounds like just a collection of
random words, like I'm staring.
Speaker 6 (22:17):
At them all trying to understand.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
Yeah, the gist is that human beings are completely depraved.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
Jesus God chose some of us to be saved. If
you're chosen, you can't resist it, even if you wanted to.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
He only died for the ones that are going to
ultimately accept him. He didn't waste any blood, and that
if you have a problem with it, you'll be preserved
until the end and you'll get through it. If you
have a problem with what with all of it, with
with being depraved, with life, with suffering, those are good
because you'll be preserved.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Yeah, dying to self is what we call that. Not fine.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
Yeah, Cavinism gets really dark really fast. It's it's the
theology of the Reformation Catholics, you know, Protestants, so it's
really old. There are some, i would say, less diabolical
expressions of Calvinism, like say in maybe some liberal Lutheran
churches and the USA Presbyterians are also technically Calvinists, but
(23:14):
they don't really emphasize the doctrine. That's different in Covenant
Reformed Presbyterian or Orthodox Performed PCA Presbyterian. They all deeply
espouse that theology. And so what was happening is my
husband was looking again for more solutions for his out
of control life. It was always always felt out of
(23:35):
control for him, and he discovered that at the same
time that the evangelical movement was kind of moving towards
Reformation and towards towards this reformed doctrine. We see it
reflected in a Ginger's book Counting the Cost, because she
her book is called Becoming Free Indeed, and what she
did was she and her husband moved from Gothard's Baptist
(23:57):
doctrine to Reform doctrine, and she it feels like freedom
to her because they read books, they're more intellectual, they
get to wear pants, some of the women get to work,
and they feast, they drink alcohol, and so some of
the liberations are there that make it feel like freedom.
Speaker 5 (24:15):
But actually the theology is way darker.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
And in my story, that's definitely when it got it
got more bleak. Total depravity is an awful thing to
think of yourself when you already have no self worth.
Speaker 6 (24:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yeah, So you guys moved and became way more isolated,
and he became way more controlling of you in the
church that you were in now was way more controlling.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
What was that experience like for him?
Speaker 5 (24:44):
He was so happy, like this was the pursuit of.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
He was doing great.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
He was doing great. It was the pursuit of having
like minded believers. You know. So he had found this
church in Tennessee.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
You've kind of sabotaged our lives so that we had
no choice but to move. We end up in this
congregation that I didn't.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Know was what it was.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
What it was was a bunch of very conservative, high
discipline homeschooling families. Everybody homeschooled there. Everybody thought the same,
dressed the same, behave the same. They openly discussed wife's banking.
I didn't know any of this until after we signed
a covenant of membership that we were like in for life,
and he felt like we were living like Martin Luther's
(25:31):
best time. We celebrated Reformation Day in Luther costumes, we
raised mugs of beer. We had this beautiful, very manly
boys and very feminine girls, and it was it just
looked kind of like a utopia on the surface. And
(25:53):
ironically we met on the grounds of an asylum. Always
it was the Seventh Day Adventist Mental Hospital. Wow, and
they in the asylum was in the name, So yeah, yeah,
I was.
Speaker 5 (26:14):
In so deep.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
I call it the cult without walls. This entire movement,
I call it the cult without walls because it does
expand beyond denominational lines. But this part of my story,
I was in the closest to what people traditionally think
of as a cult because we had walls, we had
a covenant membership, we had strict rules, and we had
a membership that was separate from the rest of our community.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
I can't even imagine what it's like to try to
submit to that level. Alan even had you sign a
contract that was like, if you know, a judge gets involved,
we agreed that I can spank you. And a woman
that you knew went roller skating naked through a hurricane
and everyone.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Was like, why would you do that? And You're like,
why wouldn't she? Like fine, mine.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
What's interesting and what's a silver lining kind of is
that you did have this beginning in Michigan where you're
out in nature, you're connected to your authentic self and
that's so amazing. But then you also have these childbirths
that also connect you to your body and get you
to trust yourself, and that was just such a beautiful
juxtaposition to me. I guess it was just interesting that
(27:32):
this quiverfall, which just means have as many kids as
you can. I think movement was also helping you keep
connecting back to self.
Speaker 5 (27:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
I think those were experiences that were outside of patriarchal control,
and because I chose alternative birth methods, I was not
surrounded by that. If I had had I did have
two hospital births, and they were pretty pretty male dominant
experiences that didn't quite get into the graphic details in
the book with But my home births especially were women centric,
(28:04):
and they were beyond the realm of traditional birth practices,
which are very focused on the physicians, comfort needs, structure,
hospital system, you.
Speaker 5 (28:13):
Know, external.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
And so because they were these windows of empowerment for me,
they built upon one another, you know, like I had
had a reference in my mind to go through, like,
but you did that thing, but you can do this,
like loo, look at what you can do, which I
would not have had if we'd chosen other ways. So
I'm grateful for them.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, that's such an amazing takeaway that could go differently.
I feel like if someone felt pressured into having children
or did not have any good experience with the birth itself,
I mean, it's amazing that it at least like gave
you a glimpse back into nature, into like connection with
your body and.
Speaker 6 (28:51):
Who you are at your core, beautiful, How did you
begin to question and deconstruct.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
Well, we have this big escape which I guess we
won't spoil here on the show.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
You read the book, this is very big, very big.
Catharsis parting of.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
The ways and I ended up in full trauma recovery.
I mean it was it was a visceral experience, which
I think the physicality probably needs more discussion, like I
really think we should. We talk a lot about religious
trauma online these days, and it can get easy to
toss it around just as a phrase without realizing that
(29:29):
comes with a body body count that has like shock,
traumatic shock is its own thing to contend with.
Speaker 5 (29:36):
It has an impact on the body.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
The decisions that are made, the reflexes that we go
through when we're in shock and shot can last a
very long time. I think I was probably in shock
for easy year and a half and it was sort
of a daze and a lot of things were happening
as a result of the escape and the divorce itself
that I was having to contend with while trying to
recover and mother my children, and you know they were
(30:00):
there were very active ages. They were ten and ten
to two, and so it was very demanding time I
had to learn. I have no education in my story,
so I don't know if you picked up on that.
I never went to college. So I had to make
up a career. I had to find work, I had
to parent my kids. I had to fight off of
a violent man who didn't take well to being left.
(30:20):
I had to fight the legal system and to detangle
the things that got me there in the first place,
you know. And I think again, the Internet came and swept.
I was just at This happened in a miraculous time
for me, because the vocabulary around trauma, recovery and trauma
in general was expanding. Religious trauma was expanding. At the
(30:43):
same time, deconstruction was becoming a hashtag. Social media was
on the scene, like a lot of things that had
not been available to me five years before even were
And so I healed kind of in tandem with this recovery.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
Language, and.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
It became a long process, you know, and certainly didn't
involve in a bubble. It was and I reached out
all the time and found other people like me. But
I also took a very adamant, stubborn approach to my
healing of I had given enough of my life to this.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
Allow whatever I have to do to put a dividing
line between then and now so that I can have
the rest of my life be the way I want
it to be. I was willing to do, and I
don't hear that reflected a lot in the survivor community.
To hear more of an acquiescence to being broken. And
that's my new fight now. I don't accept that they
do not get to have you. And you have more
(31:40):
autonomy and agency than you realize. So that's where I
put all my energy now is into reclamation.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
I so love that, and I agree with you. I
think once we start to understand that something that happened
to us was traumatic, it can be so easy to
be looking backwards for so long and forget to be
living and growing. And obviously there's a grieving period and
there's a recovery period and you have to heal, but
it is so important to reclaim your life and not
(32:07):
let the rest of your life be defined by those experiences.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
Obviously everyone's timeline is different.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Though, without giving anything away, I just also want to
say how much your story is a testament to the
power of community and having support when you are exiting
a group or a high control.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Situation, especially a group of women, especially.
Speaker 6 (32:23):
A group of women.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
And it is really, really beautiful, and I hope everybody
reads the book.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
I want to.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Talk about Christian fundamentalism in politics because you have a
lot to say on this front. And to somebody who
might not have grown up in a community like this,
why do you think it is genuinely dangerous?
Speaker 6 (32:44):
And not stopping with the reversal of Rob Wade.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
Oh okay, well, let's work backwards. It's not stopping with
Roe v. Wade, because there's never enough in the patriarchy.
There is never a point where you will be small enough,
quiet enough, obedient enough, dutiful enough. They need us to
go backwards. They need they need that strictness. And you
can always look to the way the house is. Their
(33:09):
model for leadership is how they govern families. So all
they do is scale it up. So if you want
to know how they're going to govern the country, you
just need to look at how they govern their homes.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
And there's no abortion in those homes.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
There's no queerness, there's no mommy doesn't have a job,
there's no autonomy, there's no let's discuss this as a family.
There's none of that. There's no democracy, there's none of that.
So I spent a lot of time pointing back to
the family example.
Speaker 8 (33:39):
Roe v.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
Wade was never going to be the thing because it
on the next thing underneath it is contraception. And the
thing that one's alongside contraception is divorce, and underneath that
is suffrage. And so in suffrage, divorce, and contraception have
all been in the conversation in the past four years.
They that's what they're moving towards, and so we have
to look like beyond personalities. This is not just about
(34:02):
one candidate. This is about in a fifty year structure
to make America a dominionist Christian theocracy that starts way
back at the beginning of my story.
Speaker 5 (34:12):
I mean, I so went there on purpose.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
The evangelical movement was politicizing and becoming more fundamentalists back
in the eighties, and what we're experiencing today is the
fruit of that. They raised the generation of politicians. They
raised a network and an infrastructure and a scaffolding that
can be in place, and the manifestation of that is
Project twenty twenty five and the one hundred and ten
conservative organizations that helped architect it, so you have the
(34:38):
frameworks in place regardless of who's the candidate.
Speaker 5 (34:40):
If they swap out Trump, they'll swap.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Him out with somebody that they can get their patriarchal
practices through. They have depth in the court, they have
depth in Congress. Their checks and balances have been removed.
Democracy has been degraded again. Why there's no democracy in patriarchy?
And they've spent time with One of my little hills
to die on this week has been the argument that
(35:03):
we're a constitutional republican not a democracy. Is a perfect
line that's been fed to evangelicals their whole life, and
it's technically there's a truthness to that. We are a
constitutional republic, which is a kind of democracy.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
There are more than one kind of democracy.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
We have a democratic process that elects our representatives.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
But they don't get that deep with that.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
What they're doing is they're offering a paradigm, a little platitude,
so that they can dismiss the depth behind it, and
they will degrade your confidence in an election, so they
don't really want you voting, and they don't I was
not allowed to vote, so I totally one hundred percent
believe that women will lose the vote if the patriarchy
comes to power. They've already floated it. The RNC with
(35:47):
in twenty twenty floated the concept of head of household voting,
and so they've been introducing it and getting people acclimated
to the idea to where it's now a serious conversation
that people have now on social media. I mean, one
of the weirdest things is that the stuff that I
used to talk about in secret is hashtagged now and
just talked about in the open, like it's totally normal
(36:08):
that we would be talking about women not having contraception
in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 5 (36:12):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 7 (36:13):
How?
Speaker 5 (36:14):
How did that happen?
Speaker 1 (36:15):
And people are talking about it in like a positive way,
like no birth control?
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Right.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
Yes, there's this other movement, this this whole Elon Musk
thing with the.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Populators and populate.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
It's the same thing, but the trad wife movement. Again,
there's another. What I used to think was like my
secret special Christians in my church is now on Instagram
being hawked as an ideal lifestyle and being defended as
a positive. And they're number one, They're fools. They don't
understand the roots of that, where it came from and
who was there first. But number two, they're not listening
(36:49):
to the survivors and outcomes and those that's all available.
The survivors of trad traditional homes of the nineties are
active and online now and their parents to and they
know what it's like to be a prinified older daughter,
for example, or what it's like to have strict obedience
culture and purity culture rampant in your homes. We have
proofs for that now that maybe we didn't have in
(37:11):
the nineties because we thought we were being trailblazers. But
they're definitely there and so we don't have to rely
on the promises.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
It is very scary to me how quickly it seems
the Overton window of what we are used to politically, socially,
culturally changes, Like it was kind of unthinkable that Roe
would be overturned, and not only has it been overturned,
but now there's a very serious political discussion about limiting
contraception or removing contraception, never mind the medical necessity of
(37:44):
abortion for so many women whose lives.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
It will save.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
It feels dystopian, but is actually really happening like these
are actual policies being put forth by actual lawmakers who
actually have these beliefs.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
They actually are and I have memory of being thirteen
fourteen in the pew hearing them preach on Sunday, we
need to elect the right people to office who will
appoint the right Supreme judges Supreme Court judges, so that
we can overturn row. I mean, they would preach that
openly on Sunday. So all I'm seeing is the thing
that they've been telling us they would do for forty
(38:20):
years is what they did.
Speaker 5 (38:23):
And one of the reasons why they get.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
Away with that is because we tell ourselves they're not
going to do the thing they say they're going to do.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Right, Yeah, it seems like they will. It seems like
will receivable.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
What would you suggest to women who were in the
spot that you are in? Is there any advice you
can give looking back?
Speaker 5 (38:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (38:44):
Two a woman who is like me. One of the
reasons why I do this work is so that there
will be a voice, There will be a hand reaching back,
there will be an example of how you can get
out and how worth it it is to get out.
And that's still a voice that you hear inside of
you that's telling you this is off, this is wrong,
this is not good for your children. You are becoming
(39:04):
the person you don't want to be listened to her,
and that there are women out here who will catch you,
and that you will you will be okay, And point
for point, everything they told me would.
Speaker 5 (39:12):
Happen that was bad hasn't happened.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
I've had community, have had support, I've had acceptance, had opportunities.
Speaker 5 (39:19):
My children are fine.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
We've are definitely fallout issues from recovery, but they're not patriarchs.
My children are not fundamentalists, and they're and my daughter
has opportunities and she has the life that I wanted
her to have, which was a life on her own terms.
And so I try to be like a proof text
for that of like, you can do it. What I
(39:42):
tell other women who are watching people. And I think
we're going to see this as we see more of
a collective awakening. You mentioned the Emperor's New Clothes. There's
a point in the Emperor's New Clothes story where the
crowd wakes up and realizes, oh, yeah, the Emperor is naked.
Speaker 5 (39:58):
So they collective catch on.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
And I think it's really important as people who are
informed about this and know about this world and what
they're really up to, that we try to be non
judgmental to the people waking up and just relate that
we all sometimes fall under spells, we all sometimes getting
caught up in systems that are they feel out controlling,
and that we are all trying to come out of
(40:22):
it and just be gracious and accepting and helpful and
ask how can we help be a friend to those
who need to need it, and also space to change
your mind. I mean, the people that I reached out
to the most often were the ones I knew probably
wouldn't have agreed with everything that I was living, but
they were safe, they didn't judge me, and if I
(40:43):
asked them for help, they would be there to help.
So like, try to keep the lines of communication open.
Slip my book where you can. You know, people have
joked they're taking the jacket off and they're slipping it.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Into people's Really.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
Yes, it's been mentioned to be in women's study programs,
gender studies.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
It should be everyone should read this book.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
A well trained wife, A well trained wife, and then
just one loss off the cough question. It's crazy, but
you know we go through this experience with you where
you are living a life that is just so controlled,
you feel so empty. What has been your biggest moment
of freedom since leaving all of this behind?
Speaker 4 (41:23):
Ooh, that's a great question and so hard to quantify.
I will say a big one, A a big giant
freedom was one.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
Well, I'll just list a couple.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
Marching at the Women's March in twenty sixteen was massive
because I had not even been allowed to vote, and
now I was like holding a sign about democracy and
screaming it was so great. My check Taylor's on and
I was just so chummed, so good. Another big one
was when the book arrived and I got to hold
it in my hands. It's a tangible milestone, like this
(41:55):
is my story and I can hold this period of
time in a tangible format. And then I read the
audio book in my own voice. I realized I've externalized
the story in a way that I don't have to
carry it inside my body anymore. I felt like one
hundred pounds went away. It was just like I just
it just left me, and it and it's it exists.
(42:16):
It's like if anything happens to me, it exists. I
don't have to be the guardian of this story anymore.
Speaker 5 (42:22):
It was huge.
Speaker 6 (42:23):
That's inspiring. You're making me want to write more. I'm
answer definitely.
Speaker 5 (42:29):
The answer to that question is always yes.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Where can people find you and your book?
Speaker 5 (42:35):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (42:36):
Okay, so finding me is easy online. I'm Tia Leving's
writer on all the social platforms, my websites Tia levings
dot com.
Speaker 5 (42:43):
My book is.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
Available anywhere you buy books, uh in audible, hardcover and digital.
And my substack, where I deconstruct fundamentalism in our headlines
culture in the family is Tia Leving's dot substack dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
All right, y'all go buy the book. It is called
A Well Trained Wife, My Escape from Christian Patriarchy, and
once again it is beautifully written and absolutely worth the read. Megan,
what are your because we know these are not the
ones you would These are not your cults that you
would join. No, what are your takeaways from this episode?
Speaker 1 (43:16):
I mean, I think we touch on it briefly in
this episode, but just how different things can be different
triggers for different people. So to put that better, having children,
I think doubles down religion for a lot of women,
or losing a child might make them depend more on
(43:36):
their faith. That's a story we've seen several times doing
this podcast. But for her, having children was one of
the things that really connected her to her body. And
she had that midwife who was kind of like a hippie,
growing herbs and like speaking this language that she unconsciously
(43:58):
recognized as truth. And and you know, having these children
just connected her to our body in a way that
nothing this brainwashing around her could from.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
It's so wild.
Speaker 6 (44:11):
I know, I loved hearing that.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
It made so much sense when she said it, like
that is the most in touch you can be with
like yourself, your body, nature, like the feeling connected to
all things, you know, because you're a part of this
like natural process. But of course, like when for so
many other people, when you're told forever that this is
your calling, this is what you were meant to do
(44:35):
on this earth, that can deepen your faithor and for
her it did at first. And Yeah, some of these
things it can be so easy to want to generalize
how they impact people, but truly it's such an individual
experience of what leads people to indoctrination and what.
Speaker 6 (44:50):
Leads people out of indoctrination.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Yeah, there was one line in the book that she
said that was just I don't know, it broke my brain.
Or she was talking about giving birth and her husband
was like over her and you know, watching her and
controlling the situation. And then when there started to be
kind of a complication, all of the women had to
(45:13):
like give each other these looks of like, oh, it's
time for like us to really do the work now,
like we have to get rid of him. But before that,
they were all willing to like play into this illusion
that he had all the answers, you know what I mean.
But like it was kind of she explained it as
like a fourth wall, like breaking it and being like, Okay,
thank you, we have to do this now for.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Real, right, you know.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
It's just so interesting. So I can't recommend this book
highly enough. I think it's one of the most beautiful
things I've ever read.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
I just love stories of like this, like implicit unspoken
sisterhood among women who like understand the needs and the moment,
and like, obviously, like this is not always the case.
Speaker 6 (46:00):
For women or ever.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Women are people, and yeah there's always you know, people
of conflict. But I just love, I do love those stories,
and I love that that feeling that like okay, it's
time for the men to go now, yeah, we gotta focus.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Yeah, and of course like yeah, my dad delivers babies
and he's very good at.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
It, and there's you know, of course of course.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
But yeah, this story in particular was just like well,
well woa, uh it was perfect.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
It feels almost like mystical, you know, mystical completely yeah,
completely witchy. Yeah yeah yeah, yeah, just yes, I love it.
That's the kind of uh, that's the kind of peak
experience that that I that I enjoyed.
Speaker 6 (46:47):
Yeah yeah yeah, So hopefully to get more about it.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
So all I let's same for that, y'alls. You know, sisterhood,
I don't know, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
Thank you so much for listening to another episode. Please
remember to read us five stars and leave a review
if you love us.
Speaker 6 (47:05):
If you don't, don't worry about.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
It say away. Also remember you can buy merch from
us at bit dot l y slash trust me Merch.
There are some really fun T shirts on there, as
well as other products, so go check it.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Out please, and as always, remember to follow your gut,
watch out for red flags.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
And never ever trust me.
Speaker 7 (47:27):
Bye bye.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Trust me is produced by Kirsten Woodward, Gabby Rapp and
Steve Delemator.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
With special thanks to Stacy Para.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
And our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me Podcast,
Twitter at trust Me Cult Pod, or on TikTok at
trust Me Cult Podcast.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
I'm Ula Lola on Intagram and Ola Lola on Twitter.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
And I am Megan Elizabeth eleven on Instagram and Abraham
Hicks on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
Remember to rate and review and spread the word
If you have your own story of being in a
cult or a high control group.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Or if you've had experience with manipulation or abusive power
that you'd like to share.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Leave us a message on our hotline number at three
four seven eight six trust that's.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Three four seven eight six eight seven eight seven eight, or.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Showed us an email at trustmepod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Trust me, Trust trust me.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
I'm like a squat person.
Speaker 5 (00:25):
I've never lived.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
To you, I've never If you think that one person
has all the answers, don't welcome to trust Me. The
podcast about cults, extreme belief and manipulation from two poorly trained,
unmarried people who've actually experienced it. I am Lola Blanc
and I'm Megan Elizabeth, and today is part two of
(00:48):
our interview with Tia Leving's, author of a Well Trained
Wife and former fundamentalist christian So last week we talked
about how she became involved with this type of Christianity
and married a man who abused her with no recourse
for her when she went to the church for help.
This week, we're going to talk about how motherhood began
to change her beliefs, initially making her actually more zealous.
(01:08):
She'll talk about the trauma of losing her baby in
the children's hospital, how it was hell on earth, and
how seeing women doctors and nurses in the hospital planted
seeds to help her imagine a world that wasn't completely
run by men.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Truly, such a fascinating story. She'll tell us about moving
somewhere even more isolated and joining an even more extreme
church as her husband became more and more authoritarian and terrifying.
You're going to have to read the book to hear
the details of how she escaped, but for today, we
will also explore her recovery process, as well as the
growing danger of Christian nationalism in the US. And it
(01:44):
should be stated that there is a very heavy trigger
warning for this episode.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
It is a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
We will be discussing loss of a child and the
trauma that comes with that, as well as abuse as
well as abuse. So heads up, where are we get
in to it all with Tia.
Speaker 6 (02:05):
Megan?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Please, can you kindly tell me your cultiest thing of
this week?
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Okay, so I'm going with the cultiest thing this week.
That's a little bit lighter than normal because of our
heavy material this week. So I went to Disneyland on Friday. Yes,
you did the biggest cult of all freaking time, number one,
Like statues of Walt Walter Elias Disney everywhere, like they
(02:36):
you know, they would like turn down the lights and
his voice would become booming over the loudspeaker and be
like you must dream, you.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Know, Favery l Ron Hobbert.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Listen. All I am saying is the lines to get
food are so long, the like rides don't close until midnight,
so you're there till one a m. They're keeping us
hungry and tired and crazy and delusional off of love.
And by the end of the night you would do
anything that they.
Speaker 6 (03:01):
Asked to be.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I mean, listen, it's a fun cult, but there are
certainly there, there is certainly way to take being a
Disney adult to an extreme, as we have discussed before.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
I mean, yeah, the Disney adult thing doesn't bother me.
It's it's more just like, uh, how deep this Disney
thing has rooted into our psyche?
Speaker 7 (03:26):
Is?
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I mean it's shaped how we yeah, totally, how we
think of love, how we think of society.
Speaker 6 (03:34):
What about you?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
What was the culziest thing that happened to you this week?
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Mine is also light. Oh good, we're doing some light
in a in a dark world. Okay, So I've been
catching up on The Bachelorette nice, which I originally was
not gonna watch this season because, like, let's be honest,
if anyone watches The Bachelorette, I wanted Maria to be
the Bachelorette. But I know what you're talking about. But
I know my Bachelorette fans will understand. But I got
(04:00):
on board and I'm into Gen. Now I'm not into Gen.
I support Jen as the Bachelorette, but so so in
the episode I just watched, which I'm late to the party,
you guys, so forgive me. But in the episode that
I just watched, there's a guy who whose name I
don't remember so I won't.
Speaker 7 (04:17):
Say it who.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
He's like clearly very insecurity, seems super inexperienced, he's never
been in love. And then at some point he starts
talking about manifestation, and then that whole day he literally
starts wearing a leather jacket, starts being really assertive, keeps
calling her his wife. They have never like hung out
one on one. At this point, he already had like
(04:41):
professed that he was starting to fall in love with
her when he had talked to her for like thirty
minutes Max, and he's like walking around and like stealing
her away, and like he writes on his jacket like
Jen's husband, and like gives her one that says his
name's wife. And it is so it's so embarrassing because
(05:04):
like clearly, like somehow he was giving himself a pep
talk because he's feeling low, and he was like, you
just have to manifest it. If I just like act
like she's my wife, she'll be my wife. And you
can see his like eyes getting wider and he's like
it's like it feels like almost like psychotic levels of believing.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yes, and you can just got a little manic with
it maybe, And I'm sure the producers were all too happy.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
I am sure the producers' yes, Like like I cannot
imagine what is happening to your psyche when you were
in that environment and the only people you have to
talk to their producers or like your competition. So like
I do not blame him, but it was fascin I
mean I kind of blame him. It was crazy and
(05:48):
all the other guys, what you're doing, this is so weird.
But it was like it immediately turned her off and
she was like, you know what, like I'm just.
Speaker 5 (06:02):
To her.
Speaker 6 (06:04):
Just being like you're my wife.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Now turns out that doesn't work, and it just it
just made me think how much we get entrenched in
these various beliefs, and I know there's a lot of
different opinions on manifestation, and how much of it is
just like, you know, influencing how you go about your
day and like priming yourself. I personally don't believe in
(06:26):
the magical version of manifestation. He very much did, and
it came back to bite him in the ass.
Speaker 6 (06:31):
And on this timeline I'm just.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Kidding, Yes, the one we're in, the only one we
know of. Yes, he made it added the opposite effect
that he was intending you guys just be real people,
just be real.
Speaker 6 (06:48):
That's all.
Speaker 7 (06:49):
That's all.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Anyway, you know, weird believes whatever, it's fine. I'm sure
it'll be fine.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, he'll be fine, he'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Good luck to him. Whatever his name was that I forgot,
let's call him many Manny. I hope you find real
love and are your real, true, honest self without having
to manifest someone into loving you.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Do you know who is her real honest self?
Speaker 6 (07:14):
Who TiO lovings?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Should we talk to her?
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yes, let's do it. I would love to hear about
motherhood and how that sort of transformed you as a person.
Before Clara, you were taught to not listen to your intuition,
not listen to your instinct. Talk about that experience and
how that shaped you.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Yeah, motherhood's a very interesting piece of tea. I think
it's the thing that saved me. I think it's probably
the undoubtedly the most important vein in my life. I
always wanted to be a mother, like I remember being
this very small child dreaming about being a mother. And
so it's really convenient when you want what the patriarch
he wants for you. I leaned into that for a
(07:55):
good many years of like, well, I want what they
want anyway, you know, So it's it's okay to do
what they say because I we're compatible. I knew how
to be a mom like tactically speaking, I'd been a
babysitter since I was eleven. I was certified. I babysat
for lots of kids. I made lots of money. I
worked as a nanny. I was familiar with newborns and
infant care, and so I knew how to take care
(08:16):
of babies. I knew what kind of mother I wanted
to be. I had rehearsed this for nineteen years. I
wasn't worried about any of that high control religion through
a wrench into it, because what I considered perfectly fine
and normal a baby is going to cry at night
when it's a newborn because they don't sleep for very
long because they need to eat, like that's just normal
(08:38):
humanity was a problem in high control religion because now
you have a man who has to sleep, and he's
already violent, and if he gets overtired and grouchy, and
if you have this like unpredictable factor in your home,
you're going to increase violence. And so my maternal instinct
to protect my baby was what originally drove me to
find a solution for something that hadn't been a problem.
(08:59):
In a hell your situation, it would have just been
me and my baby. I would have gotten up and
fed him, would have been no big deal. So that
led us to this program called baby Wise, which was
preparation for parenting at the time, and it's gary as
I was growing kids God's Way, and it's an infant
feeding schedule routine, but it is also predicated on this
(09:20):
idea of original sin and that the baby is manipulating
you by crying, and so it's it's got a really hateful,
dark theology in it, but it's also the gateway book
that lead sets the stage is John MacArthur's Church, and
it's it sets the stage for the rest of the
parenting materials that come on down the line. It's what
put me into contact with the women who became my
mentors and ultimately changed the kind of mother I always
(09:44):
saw myself being and wanted to be like I didn't.
It turned me into this high control person that was
like regulating my children in ways that I never wanted
and that changes to when you know, when you get
past the infant management stages, it changes the reallylationship that
you have with your children. And that became a really
big point of contention in my heart because I didn't
(10:06):
want to have this dynamic with my children and I
didn't want to be indoctrinating them and molding them for
an ideology. I wanted them to become self actualized, fully developed,
healthy children that became adults and went on their own
way and knew what they wanted for themselves, And so
I could already tell by the time they were young
children that what I want for them is that odds
(10:26):
for with recipe that we're following, that's not the cake.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yeah, And I feel like it's so important to note
how much fear had become a part of your life
at this point, Like if you know there's an empty
house when you're younger, you've been left behind. Jesus came
back and you've been left behind, and that was a
big fear for me as well. So I totally relate
to you there. And so this is somebody might say, well,
just don't do that stuff to your children, but you're
being taught that this is how you save their souls.
(10:52):
They will go to hell if you don't do this
stuff in a very real, non metaphorical way.
Speaker 5 (10:59):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
So that must have just been so much cognitive dissonance.
I can't even imagine.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Yeah, until I would say, that really stuck with me
until I actually experienced what I would consider hell on Earth,
and when the when the actual suffering became so bad
tangibly that the eternal promise of it faded because I
couldn't contend with what what my reality had become.
Speaker 6 (11:26):
Right, Well, let's talk about that. So yeah, tell us
about Clara.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
So Clara Bara, my little sweetie. She was three, three
under three. She was going to be my third pregnancy
in a year.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
I was terrified to have.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Three under three because I knew I was going to
be outnumbered my baby I got. My second baby was
only eight months when I got pregnant, and so all
of it was just very overwhelming, and.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
I was trying so hard.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
I was in the home birth movement at that time,
and my mentors were really pushing to have no pediatricians
or kind ofcologists involved, no vaccines, any kind of mandatory reporters.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
So if you know my work.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Online, I have a series of videos called ordinary Parenting Things.
My Gothired funding mentors said I could skip in order
to have a quiver full.
Speaker 5 (12:15):
And this is that period of time.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
They were my mentors in Bill Gothard, and they were
telling me, you don't need to go to the doctor.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
You don't need to like the doctors are just going
to tell you it's not safe to have the baby
at home. And doctors are just going to tell you that.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
You shouldn't have your babies so close together, and you
really need to be using contraception, and so just don't
go to the doctor because you don't want to hear
that kind of messaging and that's anti God.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
And so I was trying so hard.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
To be obedient, but I had this nagging feeling that
something was wrong with this baby or was going to
be wrong with the birth, or something something was going
to be off, and that I needed a doctor.
Speaker 5 (12:50):
And I'll skip through all those.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Details, but long story short is that she was born
with a heart defect and she did end up in
spent her whole life in a hospital, which was two months,
and when she died, I it was the first time
I'd lost somebody. It was the first time I had
come really face to face with all the promises and
platitudes that they had offered me had failed, and also
(13:15):
their rejection of the actual experience. They wanted me to
move on. I could have like an appropriate grieving period,
but then I was supposed to get pregnant again, move on,
give God the glory that she was in heaven, and
just pick up where I left off and continue.
Speaker 5 (13:30):
And I could not do that.
Speaker 8 (13:33):
The chapter in which you describe the experience of being
in the hospital with her and then finally getting the
news is just absolutely devastating, and I can't imagine that
would just change anyone's life completely.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yeah, that chapter.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
I'm dehydrated just from crying from reading it again. It's
funny that you said earlier that it kind of had
you doubled down on your beliefs, because how I read
it was like, oh, she you came to break you
free from all of it a little bit.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
She really did. She broke me free, and that it
wasn't under I wasn't passively under their control anymore. And
I think that I have to be honest about and
contend with that. When you're in patriarchy, they're breeding perpetuators,
and I became I have a season of my time
where I was a perpetuator and I thought I was
in control of it. I thought I had the freedom
(14:25):
that Clara offered me. It had given me a spine
and had given me a power and a backbone to
stand up for what was important for me to me,
but that I could also manage it. And I think
a lot of women are in a place where they
know that there are some abusive practices, but they are
in control of picking and choosing what those are and
it's not going to hurt them the way that it
(14:45):
hurt other women.
Speaker 5 (14:47):
It's a lie.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
You're not You can't be that effective against an abusive system,
and it is sinking into your family in ways that
you aren't aware of right now, and you are, you're
complicit in a systemic harm that will come for you
one day. But yeah, my immediate years after Clara, I really.
Speaker 5 (15:05):
Thought I was.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
I thought I was in control a little more than
I was. But where I was able to see clearly
and her name does mean clarity, is all of that
sheep following that happened beforehand, that was done. I was
no longer just following along in a blind spell. I
was taking charge where I could and questioning things and
rebelling and talking online to women.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, before we get into that, which is one of
my favorite parts, it's like you say in the book,
like the children's hospital is a completely different world. It's
a completely different universe, and you're no longer like, it's
no longer like what are my bills? Did I get
a speeding ticket? As my husband not at me? It's like,
who give us a shit, I'm going to save this baby.
So it feels like in that moment, like so much
in doctrination was just kind of stripped from you and completely.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
When I was surrounded by women who had not been indoctrinated,
which was the first time in my life I had
been in an environment where women were doctors and nurses
and social workers, and they didn't know what I was
talking about. When I was just like, I don't know,
quote something off scripture, and everybody would resonate with it.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
In my old life, they'd be like, what what did
you just say?
Speaker 4 (16:12):
I don't know where that's from, right, I was like,
wait a minute, in the world out here and no
one's burning up and dying, and yeah, these are not Jessabelle's.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
That glimpse into the outside community that you've been told
is so bad is so important for so many people,
even though obviously it came in the most harrowing way
possible for you.
Speaker 6 (16:39):
One thing that I.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Want to note, because I think it's really interesting, is
that you guys actually changed churches.
Speaker 6 (16:45):
Multiple times, multiple times.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
And I think that's important to say, only because there
tends to be so much fixation on like, oh, this
church is the bad church. Oh that church is the one,
you know, But you're right within this like larger patriarchal
fundamentalism ideology, and you're moving around and going to more
high control churches as you go, but they're all kind
of in the same sphere.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
And Alan was like hunting for more structure.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Is that right?
Speaker 5 (17:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (17:13):
And if you choice it backwards, there's some common denominator
theologians Rushdoony in the Seven Mountain Mandate that says where
Christians are to have dominion over these seven pillars in
society that includes like government and entertainment, education. I don't
know all the seven off the top of my head,
but that's who Gothard built his ministry on. And then
(17:35):
Gothard's ministry was multi denominational, so that's very important for
the spread of fundamentalism in America. And then the spinoff
pastors each went in their own vein in. A hallmark
of evangelical patriarchy is that men get involved in this
high control, but they also don't want to be controlled themselves,
and so when they bought up against each other, they
(17:55):
split and form another church.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
And so it's like this and then in the middle
of it you have the.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Family integrated church movement, which is like more Dale, Partridge
and Home church, where people are going home because they
can't even find a congregation that's like minded enough.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
They and the head of the household is also the
spiritual leader of the home.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
So you don't really need a pastor at that point
because Dad's got you covered, right.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
So how much of the control that you are experiencing
do you attribute to Alan versus the churches versus fundamentalism
in general.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Oh, it's interesting to tease a part because he was
mentally ill, and the church teaches things that feed off
of a narcissistic model and authoritarian model. There is a
part of this that's just like a perfect soup. But
when you talk to survivors and you hear that those
are actually traits and features, they're not bugs. Covert narcissism
(18:52):
and authoritarian abuse and all of that seems to be
in almost every dynamic. And when you couple that with
lack of mental health care and lack of psychological awareness. Sure,
we can look at this and say, well, this is
an example of an extreme It gets less extreme when
you listen to other people say that happened to me too,
or so much of this was relatable, or I see
(19:13):
how my situation could have easily become yours because the
ramp up was the same, you know, just just swap
out a few factors.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
And there's no accountability within these systems, right, it's essentially
enabling this abuse.
Speaker 6 (19:28):
So whatever, if it were a healthy.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
System, if it weren't like a high control patriarchy, there
might be some breaks in place that are like, hey,
you're not supposed to do that, go to counseling.
Speaker 6 (19:39):
But instead of everyone's like, good job, keep doing that
abuse thing.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
We love it.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Yes, yes, And they also took away counseling and created
new andthetical counseling. But the biblical counseling movement is running
in parallel to this. So even when pastors say we
will send you to counseling, they mean we'll send you
to another gatekeeper that will reflect back into the system.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
You're not stepping out of this world for therapy.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
So they spend a lot of time shunning licensed therapists
and psychology and mental health services in general because they
want you to stay in their world. And so biblical
counseling is a whole other lane we could talk about,
but it just points you right back in keeps you
in the fold.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
I want to get into how much stricter things got
with Tulip and how your clothing changed and.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
Stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
But one of my favorite parts of the book is
when your friend says to you, like you guys are
talking and everything, it seems like you're kind of in
a play, which is also how I felt growing up
and a religion like that. Like I remember when I
read the book The Emperor's New Clothes.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Do you remember that.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
I remember feeling like I can't believe I'm allowed to
read this because this is what I feel like.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
The world is offering around me. But your friend, you know,
everybody's just like keeping up the thing. They're never cracking.
The women are like, yep, this is great.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
And one of your friends, you you call it, broke
the fourth wall and turned to you and was like,
don't go off a grid with your husband.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yeah, And that gave me goosebumps.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
That like, at the end of the day, we're all
just kind of like playing into it and when it
really comes to danger, like I believe there was a
moment when you were giving birth and you needed like
actual women's knowledge and advice that we have, like we
have to like snap out of it to actually survive
and take care of ourselves and be like, just for
(21:30):
a second, I'm gonna dip out of the patriarchy so
I can actually do some shit.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
And then.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Yeah, not really interesting, but yeah, what was tulip?
Speaker 1 (21:45):
And how did you get deeper and moved to Tennessee?
Speaker 3 (21:49):
And what did that look like?
Speaker 5 (21:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (21:51):
So tulip And it's just Calvinism. It's the it's the
tenets of cabalism. It's total depravity, unlimited atonement, irresistible grace. Uh,
limited God, I'm gonna I'm gonna choke on it.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
We haven't written somewhere.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah we have it, Oh, preservation of the saints.
Speaker 5 (22:09):
What's the l limited?
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you got it all right.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Which to me it sounds like just a collection of
random words, like I'm staring.
Speaker 6 (22:17):
At them all trying to understand.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
Yeah, the gist is that human beings are completely depraved.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
Jesus God chose some of us to be saved. If
you're chosen, you can't resist it, even if you wanted to.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
He only died for the ones that are going to
ultimately accept him. He didn't waste any blood, and that
if you have a problem with it, you'll be preserved
until the end and you'll get through it. If you
have a problem with what with all of it, with
with being depraved, with life, with suffering, those are good
because you'll be preserved.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Yeah, dying to self is what we call that. Not fine.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
Yeah, Cavinism gets really dark really fast. It's it's the
theology of the Reformation Catholics, you know, Protestants, so it's
really old. There are some, i would say, less diabolical
expressions of Calvinism, like say in maybe some liberal Lutheran
churches and the USA Presbyterians are also technically Calvinists, but
(23:14):
they don't really emphasize the doctrine. That's different in Covenant
Reformed Presbyterian or Orthodox Performed PCA Presbyterian. They all deeply
espouse that theology. And so what was happening is my
husband was looking again for more solutions for his out
of control life. It was always always felt out of
(23:35):
control for him, and he discovered that at the same
time that the evangelical movement was kind of moving towards
Reformation and towards towards this reformed doctrine. We see it
reflected in a Ginger's book Counting the Cost, because she
her book is called Becoming Free Indeed, and what she
did was she and her husband moved from Gothard's Baptist
(23:57):
doctrine to Reform doctrine, and she it feels like freedom
to her because they read books, they're more intellectual, they
get to wear pants, some of the women get to work,
and they feast, they drink alcohol, and so some of
the liberations are there that make it feel like freedom.
Speaker 5 (24:15):
But actually the theology is way darker.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
And in my story, that's definitely when it got it
got more bleak. Total depravity is an awful thing to
think of yourself when you already have no self worth.
Speaker 6 (24:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yeah, So you guys moved and became way more isolated,
and he became way more controlling of you in the
church that you were in now was way more controlling.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
What was that experience like for him?
Speaker 5 (24:44):
He was so happy, like this was the pursuit of.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
He was doing great.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
He was doing great. It was the pursuit of having
like minded believers. You know. So he had found this
church in Tennessee.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
You've kind of sabotaged our lives so that we had
no choice but to move. We end up in this
congregation that I didn't.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Know was what it was.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
What it was was a bunch of very conservative, high
discipline homeschooling families. Everybody homeschooled there. Everybody thought the same,
dressed the same, behave the same. They openly discussed wife's banking.
I didn't know any of this until after we signed
a covenant of membership that we were like in for life,
and he felt like we were living like Martin Luther's
(25:31):
best time. We celebrated Reformation Day in Luther costumes, we
raised mugs of beer. We had this beautiful, very manly
boys and very feminine girls, and it was it just
looked kind of like a utopia on the surface. And
(25:53):
ironically we met on the grounds of an asylum. Always
it was the Seventh Day Adventist Mental Hospital. Wow, and
they in the asylum was in the name, So yeah, yeah,
I was.
Speaker 5 (26:14):
In so deep.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
I call it the cult without walls. This entire movement,
I call it the cult without walls because it does
expand beyond denominational lines. But this part of my story,
I was in the closest to what people traditionally think
of as a cult because we had walls, we had
a covenant membership, we had strict rules, and we had
a membership that was separate from the rest of our community.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
I can't even imagine what it's like to try to
submit to that level. Alan even had you sign a
contract that was like, if you know, a judge gets involved,
we agreed that I can spank you. And a woman
that you knew went roller skating naked through a hurricane
and everyone.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Was like, why would you do that? And You're like,
why wouldn't she? Like fine, mine.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
What's interesting and what's a silver lining kind of is
that you did have this beginning in Michigan where you're
out in nature, you're connected to your authentic self and
that's so amazing. But then you also have these childbirths
that also connect you to your body and get you
to trust yourself, and that was just such a beautiful
juxtaposition to me. I guess it was just interesting that
(27:32):
this quiverfall, which just means have as many kids as
you can. I think movement was also helping you keep
connecting back to self.
Speaker 5 (27:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
I think those were experiences that were outside of patriarchal control,
and because I chose alternative birth methods, I was not
surrounded by that. If I had had I did have
two hospital births, and they were pretty pretty male dominant
experiences that didn't quite get into the graphic details in
the book with But my home births especially were women centric,
(28:04):
and they were beyond the realm of traditional birth practices,
which are very focused on the physicians, comfort needs, structure,
hospital system, you.
Speaker 5 (28:13):
Know, external.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
And so because they were these windows of empowerment for me,
they built upon one another, you know, like I had
had a reference in my mind to go through, like,
but you did that thing, but you can do this,
like loo, look at what you can do, which I
would not have had if we'd chosen other ways. So
I'm grateful for them.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, that's such an amazing takeaway that could go differently.
I feel like if someone felt pressured into having children
or did not have any good experience with the birth itself,
I mean, it's amazing that it at least like gave
you a glimpse back into nature, into like connection with
your body and.
Speaker 6 (28:51):
Who you are at your core, beautiful, How did you
begin to question and deconstruct.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
Well, we have this big escape which I guess we
won't spoil here on the show.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
You read the book, this is very big, very big.
Catharsis parting of.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
The ways and I ended up in full trauma recovery.
I mean it was it was a visceral experience, which
I think the physicality probably needs more discussion, like I
really think we should. We talk a lot about religious
trauma online these days, and it can get easy to
toss it around just as a phrase without realizing that
(29:29):
comes with a body body count that has like shock,
traumatic shock is its own thing to contend with.
Speaker 5 (29:36):
It has an impact on the body.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
The decisions that are made, the reflexes that we go
through when we're in shock and shot can last a
very long time. I think I was probably in shock
for easy year and a half and it was sort
of a daze and a lot of things were happening
as a result of the escape and the divorce itself
that I was having to contend with while trying to
recover and mother my children, and you know they were
(30:00):
there were very active ages. They were ten and ten
to two, and so it was very demanding time I
had to learn. I have no education in my story,
so I don't know if you picked up on that.
I never went to college. So I had to make
up a career. I had to find work, I had
to parent my kids. I had to fight off of
a violent man who didn't take well to being left.
(30:20):
I had to fight the legal system and to detangle
the things that got me there in the first place,
you know. And I think again, the Internet came and swept.
I was just at This happened in a miraculous time
for me, because the vocabulary around trauma, recovery and trauma
in general was expanding. Religious trauma was expanding. At the
(30:43):
same time, deconstruction was becoming a hashtag. Social media was
on the scene, like a lot of things that had
not been available to me five years before even were
And so I healed kind of in tandem with this recovery.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
Language, and.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
It became a long process, you know, and certainly didn't
involve in a bubble. It was and I reached out
all the time and found other people like me. But
I also took a very adamant, stubborn approach to my
healing of I had given enough of my life to this.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
Allow whatever I have to do to put a dividing
line between then and now so that I can have
the rest of my life be the way I want
it to be. I was willing to do, and I
don't hear that reflected a lot in the survivor community.
To hear more of an acquiescence to being broken. And
that's my new fight now. I don't accept that they
do not get to have you. And you have more
(31:40):
autonomy and agency than you realize. So that's where I
put all my energy now is into reclamation.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
I so love that, and I agree with you. I
think once we start to understand that something that happened
to us was traumatic, it can be so easy to
be looking backwards for so long and forget to be
living and growing. And obviously there's a grieving period and
there's a recovery period and you have to heal, but
it is so important to reclaim your life and not
(32:07):
let the rest of your life be defined by those experiences.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
Obviously everyone's timeline is different.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Though, without giving anything away, I just also want to
say how much your story is a testament to the
power of community and having support when you are exiting
a group or a high control.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Situation, especially a group of women, especially.
Speaker 6 (32:23):
A group of women.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
And it is really, really beautiful, and I hope everybody
reads the book.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
I want to.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Talk about Christian fundamentalism in politics because you have a
lot to say on this front. And to somebody who
might not have grown up in a community like this,
why do you think it is genuinely dangerous?
Speaker 6 (32:44):
And not stopping with the reversal of Rob Wade.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
Oh okay, well, let's work backwards. It's not stopping with
Roe v. Wade, because there's never enough in the patriarchy.
There is never a point where you will be small enough,
quiet enough, obedient enough, dutiful enough. They need us to
go backwards. They need they need that strictness. And you
can always look to the way the house is. Their
(33:09):
model for leadership is how they govern families. So all
they do is scale it up. So if you want
to know how they're going to govern the country, you
just need to look at how they govern their homes.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
And there's no abortion in those homes.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
There's no queerness, there's no mommy doesn't have a job,
there's no autonomy, there's no let's discuss this as a family.
There's none of that. There's no democracy, there's none of that.
So I spent a lot of time pointing back to
the family example.
Speaker 8 (33:39):
Roe v.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
Wade was never going to be the thing because it
on the next thing underneath it is contraception. And the
thing that one's alongside contraception is divorce, and underneath that
is suffrage. And so in suffrage, divorce, and contraception have
all been in the conversation in the past four years.
They that's what they're moving towards, and so we have
to look like beyond personalities. This is not just about
(34:02):
one candidate. This is about in a fifty year structure
to make America a dominionist Christian theocracy that starts way
back at the beginning of my story.
Speaker 5 (34:12):
I mean, I so went there on purpose.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
The evangelical movement was politicizing and becoming more fundamentalists back
in the eighties, and what we're experiencing today is the
fruit of that. They raised the generation of politicians. They
raised a network and an infrastructure and a scaffolding that
can be in place, and the manifestation of that is
Project twenty twenty five and the one hundred and ten
conservative organizations that helped architect it, so you have the
(34:38):
frameworks in place regardless of who's the candidate.
Speaker 5 (34:40):
If they swap out Trump, they'll swap.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Him out with somebody that they can get their patriarchal
practices through. They have depth in the court, they have
depth in Congress. Their checks and balances have been removed.
Democracy has been degraded again. Why there's no democracy in patriarchy?
And they've spent time with One of my little hills
to die on this week has been the argument that
(35:03):
we're a constitutional republican not a democracy. Is a perfect
line that's been fed to evangelicals their whole life, and
it's technically there's a truthness to that. We are a
constitutional republic, which is a kind of democracy.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
There are more than one kind of democracy.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
We have a democratic process that elects our representatives.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
But they don't get that deep with that.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
What they're doing is they're offering a paradigm, a little platitude,
so that they can dismiss the depth behind it, and
they will degrade your confidence in an election, so they
don't really want you voting, and they don't I was
not allowed to vote, so I totally one hundred percent
believe that women will lose the vote if the patriarchy
comes to power. They've already floated it. The RNC with
(35:47):
in twenty twenty floated the concept of head of household voting,
and so they've been introducing it and getting people acclimated
to the idea to where it's now a serious conversation
that people have now on social media. I mean, one
of the weirdest things is that the stuff that I
used to talk about in secret is hashtagged now and
just talked about in the open, like it's totally normal
(36:08):
that we would be talking about women not having contraception
in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 5 (36:12):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 7 (36:13):
How?
Speaker 5 (36:14):
How did that happen?
Speaker 1 (36:15):
And people are talking about it in like a positive way,
like no birth control?
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Right.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
Yes, there's this other movement, this this whole Elon Musk
thing with the.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Populators and populate.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
It's the same thing, but the trad wife movement. Again,
there's another. What I used to think was like my
secret special Christians in my church is now on Instagram
being hawked as an ideal lifestyle and being defended as
a positive. And they're number one, They're fools. They don't
understand the roots of that, where it came from and
who was there first. But number two, they're not listening
(36:49):
to the survivors and outcomes and those that's all available.
The survivors of trad traditional homes of the nineties are
active and online now and their parents to and they
know what it's like to be a prinified older daughter,
for example, or what it's like to have strict obedience
culture and purity culture rampant in your homes. We have
proofs for that now that maybe we didn't have in
(37:11):
the nineties because we thought we were being trailblazers. But
they're definitely there and so we don't have to rely
on the promises.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
It is very scary to me how quickly it seems
the Overton window of what we are used to politically, socially,
culturally changes, Like it was kind of unthinkable that Roe
would be overturned, and not only has it been overturned,
but now there's a very serious political discussion about limiting
contraception or removing contraception, never mind the medical necessity of
(37:44):
abortion for so many women whose lives.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
It will save.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
It feels dystopian, but is actually really happening like these
are actual policies being put forth by actual lawmakers who
actually have these beliefs.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
They actually are and I have memory of being thirteen
fourteen in the pew hearing them preach on Sunday, we
need to elect the right people to office who will
appoint the right Supreme judges Supreme Court judges, so that
we can overturn row. I mean, they would preach that
openly on Sunday. So all I'm seeing is the thing
that they've been telling us they would do for forty
(38:20):
years is what they did.
Speaker 5 (38:23):
And one of the reasons why they get.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
Away with that is because we tell ourselves they're not
going to do the thing they say they're going to do.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Right, Yeah, it seems like they will. It seems like
will receivable.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
What would you suggest to women who were in the
spot that you are in? Is there any advice you
can give looking back?
Speaker 5 (38:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (38:44):
Two a woman who is like me. One of the
reasons why I do this work is so that there
will be a voice, There will be a hand reaching back,
there will be an example of how you can get
out and how worth it it is to get out.
And that's still a voice that you hear inside of
you that's telling you this is off, this is wrong,
this is not good for your children. You are becoming
(39:04):
the person you don't want to be listened to her,
and that there are women out here who will catch you,
and that you will you will be okay, And point
for point, everything they told me would.
Speaker 5 (39:12):
Happen that was bad hasn't happened.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
I've had community, have had support, I've had acceptance, had opportunities.
Speaker 5 (39:19):
My children are fine.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
We've are definitely fallout issues from recovery, but they're not patriarchs.
My children are not fundamentalists, and they're and my daughter
has opportunities and she has the life that I wanted
her to have, which was a life on her own terms.
And so I try to be like a proof text
for that of like, you can do it. What I
(39:42):
tell other women who are watching people. And I think
we're going to see this as we see more of
a collective awakening. You mentioned the Emperor's New Clothes. There's
a point in the Emperor's New Clothes story where the
crowd wakes up and realizes, oh, yeah, the Emperor is naked.
Speaker 5 (39:58):
So they collective catch on.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
And I think it's really important as people who are
informed about this and know about this world and what
they're really up to, that we try to be non
judgmental to the people waking up and just relate that
we all sometimes fall under spells, we all sometimes getting
caught up in systems that are they feel out controlling,
and that we are all trying to come out of
(40:22):
it and just be gracious and accepting and helpful and
ask how can we help be a friend to those
who need to need it, and also space to change
your mind. I mean, the people that I reached out
to the most often were the ones I knew probably
wouldn't have agreed with everything that I was living, but
they were safe, they didn't judge me, and if I
(40:43):
asked them for help, they would be there to help.
So like, try to keep the lines of communication open.
Slip my book where you can. You know, people have
joked they're taking the jacket off and they're slipping it.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Into people's Really.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
Yes, it's been mentioned to be in women's study programs,
gender studies.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
It should be everyone should read this book.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
A well trained wife, A well trained wife, and then
just one loss off the cough question. It's crazy, but
you know we go through this experience with you where
you are living a life that is just so controlled,
you feel so empty. What has been your biggest moment
of freedom since leaving all of this behind?
Speaker 4 (41:23):
Ooh, that's a great question and so hard to quantify.
I will say a big one, A a big giant
freedom was one.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
Well, I'll just list a couple.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
Marching at the Women's March in twenty sixteen was massive
because I had not even been allowed to vote, and
now I was like holding a sign about democracy and
screaming it was so great. My check Taylor's on and
I was just so chummed, so good. Another big one
was when the book arrived and I got to hold
it in my hands. It's a tangible milestone, like this
(41:55):
is my story and I can hold this period of
time in a tangible format. And then I read the
audio book in my own voice. I realized I've externalized
the story in a way that I don't have to
carry it inside my body anymore. I felt like one
hundred pounds went away. It was just like I just
it just left me, and it and it's it exists.
(42:16):
It's like if anything happens to me, it exists. I
don't have to be the guardian of this story anymore.
Speaker 5 (42:22):
It was huge.
Speaker 6 (42:23):
That's inspiring. You're making me want to write more. I'm
answer definitely.
Speaker 5 (42:29):
The answer to that question is always yes.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Where can people find you and your book?
Speaker 5 (42:35):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (42:36):
Okay, so finding me is easy online. I'm Tia Leving's
writer on all the social platforms, my websites Tia levings
dot com.
Speaker 5 (42:43):
My book is.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
Available anywhere you buy books, uh in audible, hardcover and digital.
And my substack, where I deconstruct fundamentalism in our headlines
culture in the family is Tia Leving's dot substack dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
All right, y'all go buy the book. It is called
A Well Trained Wife, My Escape from Christian Patriarchy, and
once again it is beautifully written and absolutely worth the read. Megan,
what are your because we know these are not the
ones you would These are not your cults that you
would join. No, what are your takeaways from this episode?
Speaker 1 (43:16):
I mean, I think we touch on it briefly in
this episode, but just how different things can be different
triggers for different people. So to put that better, having children,
I think doubles down religion for a lot of women,
or losing a child might make them depend more on
(43:36):
their faith. That's a story we've seen several times doing
this podcast. But for her, having children was one of
the things that really connected her to her body. And
she had that midwife who was kind of like a hippie,
growing herbs and like speaking this language that she unconsciously
(43:58):
recognized as truth. And and you know, having these children
just connected her to our body in a way that
nothing this brainwashing around her could from.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
It's so wild.
Speaker 6 (44:11):
I know, I loved hearing that.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
It made so much sense when she said it, like
that is the most in touch you can be with
like yourself, your body, nature, like the feeling connected to
all things, you know, because you're a part of this
like natural process. But of course, like when for so
many other people, when you're told forever that this is
your calling, this is what you were meant to do
(44:35):
on this earth, that can deepen your faithor and for
her it did at first. And Yeah, some of these
things it can be so easy to want to generalize
how they impact people, but truly it's such an individual
experience of what leads people to indoctrination and what.
Speaker 6 (44:50):
Leads people out of indoctrination.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Yeah, there was one line in the book that she
said that was just I don't know, it broke my brain.
Or she was talking about giving birth and her husband
was like over her and you know, watching her and
controlling the situation. And then when there started to be
kind of a complication, all of the women had to
(45:13):
like give each other these looks of like, oh, it's
time for like us to really do the work now,
like we have to get rid of him. But before that,
they were all willing to like play into this illusion
that he had all the answers, you know what I mean.
But like it was kind of she explained it as
like a fourth wall, like breaking it and being like, Okay,
thank you, we have to do this now for.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Real, right, you know.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
It's just so interesting. So I can't recommend this book
highly enough. I think it's one of the most beautiful
things I've ever read.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
I just love stories of like this, like implicit unspoken
sisterhood among women who like understand the needs and the moment,
and like, obviously, like this is not always the case.
Speaker 6 (46:00):
For women or ever.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Women are people, and yeah there's always you know, people
of conflict. But I just love, I do love those stories,
and I love that that feeling that like okay, it's
time for the men to go now, yeah, we gotta focus.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Yeah, and of course like yeah, my dad delivers babies
and he's very good at.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
It, and there's you know, of course of course.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
But yeah, this story in particular was just like well,
well woa, uh it was perfect.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
It feels almost like mystical, you know, mystical completely yeah,
completely witchy. Yeah yeah yeah, yeah, just yes, I love it.
That's the kind of uh, that's the kind of peak
experience that that I that I enjoyed.
Speaker 6 (46:47):
Yeah yeah yeah, So hopefully to get more about it.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
So all I let's same for that, y'alls. You know, sisterhood,
I don't know, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
Thank you so much for listening to another episode. Please
remember to read us five stars and leave a review
if you love us.
Speaker 6 (47:05):
If you don't, don't worry about.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
It say away. Also remember you can buy merch from
us at bit dot l y slash trust me Merch.
There are some really fun T shirts on there, as
well as other products, so go check it.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Out please, and as always, remember to follow your gut,
watch out for red flags.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
And never ever trust me.
Speaker 7 (47:27):
Bye bye.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Trust me is produced by Kirsten Woodward, Gabby Rapp and
Steve Delemator.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
With special thanks to Stacy Para.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
And our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me Podcast,
Twitter at trust Me Cult Pod, or on TikTok at
trust Me Cult Podcast.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
I'm Ula Lola on Intagram and Ola Lola on Twitter.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
And I am Megan Elizabeth eleven on Instagram and Abraham
Hicks on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
Remember to rate and review and spread the word
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