March 25, 2025 • 61 mins
In this episode of Cults and the Culting of America, hosts Scott Loyd and Daniela Mesteneck Young engage in a profound conversation with Lydia Knight, who shares her harrowing experiences growing up in a cult. Lydia discusses the complexities of her upbringing, including themes of racism, the satanic panic, and the psychological impact of fear and control within cult dynamics. The conversation delves into the process of healing and deprogramming, the importance of reconnecting with family, and the empowerment that comes from leadership and coaching. Lydia's journey of transformation serves as an inspiring testament to resilience and the power of reclaiming one's narrative.
Lydia's Links:
Daniella's Links:
You can read all about my story in my book, Uncultured-- buy signed copies here. https://bit.ly/SignedUncultured
For more info on me:
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Daniella’s Tiktok: https://bit.ly/4bwvNC0
Instagram: https://bit.ly/4ePAOFK / daniellamyoung_
Unamerican video book (on Patreon): https://bit.ly/YTVideoBook
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Other Podcasts
Daniella's other podcast: Hey White Women
Scot's TikTok
Takeaways
- Lydia Knight shares her experiences growing up in a cult.
- The concept of 'apocalypticizing' reflects societal fears.
- Racism and identity play significant roles in cult experiences.
- The satanic panic of the 80s influenced many cult narratives.
- Fear
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:25):
Welcome to another edition of Cults and the Culting of America podcast.
My name is Scott Lloyd along with my friend, the Knitting Cult Lady, Daniela MesteneckYoung.
Daniela, good to see you this evening.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well, you know what, needed a shot of energy today and I logged in and I sawthat we were talking to Lydia Knight and I am so excited.
(00:50):
Because what our guest went through as a child is so fantastic and far out and bonkers andis also so relevant to the national conversation of what is happening in our country right
now.
And it's something that I call apocalypticizing, which like is not just a convenient wayto turn apocalypse into a verb, but it's fantasizing about the apocalypse.
(01:21):
And I think we're going to have a journey, but I just want to put this in everybody'sminds that like, there's a reason that panic is comforting sometimes.
All right, well, with that introduction, our guest Lydia Knight is here and wow, myinterest has certainly peaked.
(01:43):
And so I'll take a moment to introduce Lydia to our audience.
She is an author, professional speaker, executive coach and recipient of the SacredService Award.
Her innovative approach has earned recognition from major outlets like CBS, NBC, Fox News,Yahoo and beyond.
Knight is the founder and CEO of the She Center, a top 2 % woman owned business globallywhere she specializes in leadership training, executive coaching and leadership
(02:16):
certification.
Lydia, welcome.
We're glad that you're here tonight.
Thank you, it's wonderful to be here.
Danielle, the couple of things that you touched on, I feel like we could go down all ofthese rabbit holes.
Like there's so much to talk about.
So I'm thrilled to be here.
And I just have to say, Danielle, I loved your book so much.
(02:37):
I had an experience reading your book where I was just crying over and over and connectingto your story in ways like I never expected to connect with someone else's story that way
and be like, whoa, someone else knows how that feels.
I just wanted to first of all thank you.
It was a really cool experience and incredibly well written and I'm like so proud of thatbook that you wrote.
(02:58):
So thank you for that.
I really appreciate that.
I lost 30 pounds going through all that trauma.
But one of the things that I wanted to do with my story is to show that even in the mostextreme cults, it's not extreme all the time, and it might look a lot more like your thing
(03:21):
that you didn't realize was maybe that extreme.
And it's so, you know, I want you to give a little introduction of your story of whatwe're alluding to, whatever you're comfortable with, because it's so interesting how we
can come from the most extreme childhoods, but not realize how extreme it was.
(03:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I'm very open about my story.
You're both welcome to ask whatever.
I didn't share my story for a really long time, just because I, you know, I'd done thehealing and the moving through it, but I just thought it was too bizarre for anyone to
want to hear about.
And then I just, you know, started sharing it on TikTok with a bunch of strangers, becauselike, no one's going to care about it.
(04:04):
It's going to be cool for me to like share this before I die.
And it started blowing up.
So I'm quite comfortable with it now.
I'm like, yep.
Whatever, we'll talk about all of it.
So an overview of my story and where I came from, and like you were saying, had no idea,no idea I was raised in a cult.
It was quite recently that I'm like, what is the word for, to describe what thisupbringing was like?
(04:28):
And I'm like, this is a cult.
So my grandmother was this very charismatic woman.
She was bride of the year.
She was held her auto queen.
She was sort of this like rodeo star.
and very beautiful, charismatic, married someone who worked for the State Department.
They lived all over the world.
(04:48):
She had this home on the Hollywood Hills and she loved attention.
And when my mom had me and I was a toddler, then my mom started getting these revelationsfrom God.
I'll put that in quotes.
And God was telling my mother this sort of undercover truth about how the world worked.
(05:10):
So there was a band of Satan worshipers that controlled everything from government tolocal police departments to, there were so many of them and they would all like talk in
secret codes with each other.
And it was all very secret.
But the reason that my mom knew about it was one, cause God was telling her about it.
And two, because she decided that God told her that my father was the leader of thissatanic
(05:40):
worshiper organization and that as a toddler I had been kidnapped, taken by these Satanworshippers, that I had been put, you know, needles put in my eyes, all this brainwashing,
that my spine had been broken over and over because of the gang rape as a toddler with allof these Satan worshippers.
And I was told these explicit details just since the time I can remember.
(06:05):
There was in the double memoir that we wrote
with my dad's story, looking for his kids for 25 years, and my story growing up in thiscult, there were stories that I learned from my dad that I didn't even realize because I
was so young.
For instance, when I went and visited him as a toddler, I would get up on his lap and Iwould say things like, well, I don't know if you're mean.
(06:26):
And he's like, no, I'm not mean, I love you.
And I would just look at him in the face and be like, daddy, why do you want to kill me?
These were the things that were just taught to me all growing up.
And so we were always, it was witness protection-esque, right?
Like we were always moving in the middle of the night.
If we got a suspicious call, we decided that we were always being hunted.
(06:48):
My mother would keep on getting these new revelations from God to know how to look out forSatan worshipers.
And there was this fear.
And like you were talking about fear being comforting, it really bound our familytogether.
Like we had this little family that was like, we know a secret that no one else knows, butthat we could be triggered at any time.
So I could hear some word or have some child's children's toy given to me that wasdesigned by the Satan worshippers and I would be triggered.
(07:17):
My brain would be broken into a thousand pieces, different personalities.
I'd be under the control of Satan.
So that's a super quick version of the background of how I grew up.
And Lydia, for those who might be listening, could you say a little bit about race also?
Because your grandmother was a white Mormon lady, correct?
(07:37):
Correct.
So on the white side of my family, we were like sort of Mormon lineage.
So like Las Vegas, Nevada, St.
George, Utah, all those started as Mormon colonies and that was my family.
So I'm descended from like the fifth wife of this Mormon colonist guy, Dudley Levitt.
So we were Mormon all the way back.
So that side of my family is white.
(07:59):
My grandmother, my mother, and there was a lot of racism just sort of inherent in...
being a white woman growing up Mormon, it was an intense racism and they'd also grown upall over the world.
So my mother and her brother had been exposed to people that weren't white and lookeddifferent than them.
(08:22):
And so all of the grandkids were either half Chinese, like my brother and I, or half Latinor Hispanic.
And I remember my grandmother pulling aside a friend one day.
like right in front of me, right?
She didn't hide it, but pulling aside a friend and apologizing to her friend that none ofher grandkids were white.
(08:42):
Like was something that she was very ashamed of.
And I grew up in Utah.
I didn't see another Asian person until I was in high school and like went on a schooltrip to a bigger city and saw another Asian person.
And I was taught to be terrified of Asian people because they were especially in the cult,right?
(09:03):
You know, my dad is Chinese and so there was that association, but there was also thisidea in the satanic panic of the 80s, which we'll probably get into, but I didn't know it
was a bigger phenomenon than my family, but that there was like Asian people were justinherently sort of satanic, right?
It's like, that's a given.
If you see an Asian person, they're definitely a member of the cult.
(09:25):
So when I saw other Asian people, I was so terrified of that.
And I remember, you know, I'd have times where I looked in the mirror and saw
how my face really looked, like just my own reflection.
And I would break out into tears because how I looked, the non-white part of me was quiteterrifying to me.
So there are multiple ways it wove in, but those were some ways that race came up.
(09:50):
I mean, that's such an interesting parallel for me because I used to kind of like joke andsay like the children of God like accidentally did their racism wrong, right?
Because just like every other cult out of the 60s, like it was about keeping us from them,right?
It was about taking our precious white children away.
But then they went international, right?
(10:10):
They went all over the world.
Like I grew up in Brazil and Mexico and and but I also think that
inside these systems, right?
We often don't like unpack our internalized racism and like what that experience was andhow different it is, you know, being in these high control white religions as a white
(10:34):
child or as someone who's not considered quite as perfect and how much, you know, thatplays in, in just really complex ways, I think.
Yeah, absolutely.
And growing up, the racism and that internalized racism was more challenging as a childthan feeling and believing that I had grown up in a cult and had all these horrible things
(11:00):
happen to me.
is the racism was so real and in my face every day.
So that was a huge struggle growing up.
Lydia, I just want to take a moment and acknowledge, wow, what you experienced and whatyou had to endure growing up.
That's very traumatic, and I'm sorry that you had to endure that.
(11:21):
Do you have any idea what informed this racism and this satanic panic?
it a connection to the Mormon religion?
Was it informed by that, or were there other factors at play?
Yeah, great question.
And as I've unpacked this, as I've gotten older, I started telling my story, like as anadult, like I just didn't tell it very often.
(11:41):
And I remember sharing a little bit of it with a friend one day and he's like, I think Iheard a podcast about this.
And I'm like, no, you didn't.
Like this was a bizarre thing that only happened to me.
And I listened to this podcast and realized there was this bigger phenomenon of thesatanic panic in the eighties.
So that was a big piece of it.
is sort of the tenets of how people were believing that there were these, you know, Satanworshippers and a lot of Christian religions were believing that.
(12:07):
I think that racism also really came into play from Mormonism.
There is a lot of, so for instance, in the Book of Mormon, there's a curse that is likeall throughout the Book of Mormon, which is these people were evil and they were cursed
with a skin of darkness.
So there's this idea of if you're not white, it's literally a curse that was created.
(12:30):
And like my grandfather, Ji Ma, who was like my cult leader grandmother, so I call him JiMa and Ji Pa.
But I remember him sitting us down and giving us this really long lecture with all theselike Bible references and like he would sort of go off on things.
And the sort of punchline of his lecture was that he was complimenting my brother and Ibecause our skin was whiter than it used to be.
(12:57):
He could tell.
that in Book of Mormon words, white and delightsome, like this is the way to be.
So he knew that we were becoming better people because I guess we weren't in the sun asmuch as we used to be, you know, but like he attributed to like, you're probably better
than you used to be righteousness wise because our skin was lighter.
So there's Mormon stuff in there, there's cultural stuff in there.
(13:21):
I think there was a lot of different directions that racism was coming from.
But the root of it, I believed, was that my grandmother, my cult leader, Jima, did notlike that my mother had married somebody who wasn't white.
And so, villainizing that, like the racial part of it, I think was a good reason for herto break up that marriage and then to also create this story and become the savior of the
(13:45):
story.
Yeah.
And there's something greater here with the satanic panic and racism also that I reallywant to tie in, which is like the satanic panic basically is what we believe was the
reaction to human beings getting online.
Right.
Which I like to point out for people like this was an apocalypse that we all livedthrough.
(14:09):
Right.
The industrial age crashing into the information age.
You know, and finding out how badly children were being abused, right?
And like Freud, who in the 20s or something, listened to women and children, and thensaid, at the end of his study, he said, this can't be true, because if it's true, all men
(14:32):
are monsters, so I'm gonna decide that women and children were lying, right?
And now, by the way, we've come even further, because now DNA is proving how common.
incest and abuse is in the home.
But in the 80s and 90s, we're just starting to feel the impact of the information age andwe're starting to realize how often children are being abused.
(14:56):
And so it was easier for people, white people, to tell themselves that it was bands ofsatanic people stealing children and abusing them.
than it was to say that like your brother or your pastor was the one abusing the children,right?
(15:19):
So it was, I mean, it was literally the witch hunts by another name, right?
It's pizza gate by another name.
And then there's this really complicated layer of all of you children who were absolutelyabused by growing up with these people.
(15:41):
telling you these things, right?
I mean, it sounds like you had a mix of like mom cult leader and grandma cult leader andmom was maybe a little bit not too mentally stable and all of these different things going
on.
But a lot of it, I think, tied into also like racially diversifying America rapidly.
(16:04):
And this was very, very scary for people.
And it was just so much easier to be like them, the other, the different people.
They're doing these horrible things to our perfect children.
And I just really have to emphasize that always in this imagery is like little blondeblue-eyed children who are having their souls sucked out of them by these Satan
(16:29):
worshipers.
The poor, perfect, white, and this is why think we have so many examples of Mormons.
Right, sort of being like really involved in this sort of satanic panic industry, which ofcourse gives us, know, Teal Swan and other interesting people.
Yeah, that's come up a few times.
(16:50):
I was like, okay.
It's the conclusions that some other people that have been through perhaps a similarexperience to myself have come to have surprised me.
I've been learning so much recently.
And I mean, I recently got into a clash with followers of a certain cisnet, that's swan ifyou speak a Latin language, because I was talking about how the satanic panic was made up,
(17:20):
right?
There's a reason we call it satanic panic and not the survivors of ex-satanic cult, right?
There were 1200 cases.
research, right?
As you as you mentioned, right, there was a larger thing going on, right?
This was a thing that spread throughout the country.
(17:41):
And as soon as you say like, this didn't happen.
People jump down your throat and say, how dare right?
Like, how dare you say, especially as a sub abuse survivor yourself, right?
That that children didn't suffer this, right?
Like, how dare you say that people weren't ritually abused?
(18:02):
And it's, you know, again, there's so many complex things here, right?
Like have individuals ritually abused children in like ways that they were callingsatanic?
Yes, right?
Humans, there's no limit to the amount of suffering that humans will put each otherthrough.
But like, was there a large cabal of...
(18:25):
Asians and other people like around the country trafficking children and babies and Youknow all of the things you mentioned right that would have left these physical marks and
and all of these different things And then there's the deeper even right of the abuse thatwas done to you by making you believe that and having the
(18:54):
It's what's called disorganized attachment, right?
Of the humans that you relied on for safety and care also being the ones who were harmingyou, which is a very universal cult baby experience.
Yes, and in a way where they were harming me in the guise of that they were protecting mefrom this absolute evil.
(19:16):
So there's all these strange layers.
And one reason that it took me so long to conclude with the language of cult is because mywhole life I was told that we were running from the cult.
Like we're running from the Satan worshipers, but in short, we just called them the cultfor code.
So I was like, I mean...
(19:37):
surely it wasn't a cult because that was the thing that we were running from.
I'm like, no, it was a cult that had a story about a cult that we were running from.
And it's wild to think of how many things that were accused, you know, of other people didthat, but it was actually the abusers that were doing it.
Yeah.
And isn't that always like the, isn't that always like, I almost feel like they know howto make the accusations because they're the ones doing it.
(20:04):
Yeah.
And it just got more and more complex sort of as time went on.
And it is that confusing, like, what is real?
And almost the gaslighting of, well, I certainly couldn't mention this to them becauseit's almost laughable that I would accuse them of the very thing that they were trying to
protect me from and save my life from my whole life.
So it gets into this weird knot.
(20:27):
Yeah, and it strikes me that given all of our experiences with cults and high controlgroups, even though the abuse is on a spectrum, it strikes me that there are a common
denominator within these groups.
The idea of secret knowledge, like we know better than anyone else.
(20:48):
And then also this idea of creating
a monster that is outside the group that is always threatening the group.
In fact, threatening the most vulnerable in the group.
And it's amazing to me that all of these groups were blaming this imaginary satanic cabalthat is out there, this conspiracy, when they were the ones that were inflicting harm on
(21:14):
children in the name of God, in the name of Jesus, in the name of their religion and
They were the ones that were were perpetuating this evil So I think you see this in a lotof these groups right this idea that that we have secret knowledge We know what's really
happening and what's really going on and and this extends into the consumption ofinformation in the day and age in which we live How many times do you see someone
(21:43):
claiming?
Well, I know the media is saying this but they're biased and I'm not or the the mediasource is
that I am getting my information from, they're not the mainstream media.
They're not the media.
I always tell people, if someone on television is telling you not to trust the media,remember, they are the media.
(22:05):
Yeah, and I think that's a great point.
like you were saying earlier, that just keeps on coming up for me, Daniella, of howcomforting or how special that secret feels.
Because that's the way that, you know, G-ma really drew people in.
You she would call person after person for hours, and I would sit next to her and hearthis over and over for hours.
(22:26):
But she'd tell them all of these horrible, explicit details of the secrets of what hadhappened, all the things the Satan worshippers were doing.
and ask them to go without food or water, like as a strong prayer in the Mormon Church,it's called fasting.
But then when they would see each other at church on Sunday, I mean, these people wouldbreak out, like they'd see my brother and I, and they'd just break out into tears, knowing
(22:48):
the horrors that had happened to us.
And then they would look at my grandmother and just fill with praise and literally saythings like, thank you for saving the lives of these children.
And there was this, hey, we've got this really special secret together.
and it was very bonding.
Every time I hear you talk about like your grandmother and this reaction, it's like it'slike spiritual Munchausen by proxy.
(23:15):
Right.
Like like she was getting the attention of the Munchausen by proxy.
Right.
Like that's what they're doing it for.
Like they're hurting their kids so that their kids go to the hospital so that then theyget care and attention because their kid is in the hospital.
But.
she didn't even have to like physically harm you.
(23:37):
She was just able to build this lie story, right?
Like origin story.
And also it's so interesting, right?
Because like the children of God is considered the extreme cult.
And I mean, this is a very similar thing to what we were taught.
which was like everyone in the outside world was absolutely evil, right?
(24:01):
You systemites.
And I feel your pain with the like, I was like, our bad guys were called the system.
And now I'm a scholar of groups and systems and I'm gonna spend my life criticizing thesystem.
I was like, no.
(24:21):
But there's this weird.
I think you'll relate to this weird feeling of like deconstructing but realizing that likethe cult antis weren't wrong when they said like the outside world was evil or like there
are these problems, right?
Like children were being abused, right?
(24:45):
It just wasn't in the way that it was being said.
But I think there's this really like
For me, there's like this meta experience of discovering that the United States reallykind of is a lot of times the bad guy and, you know, the systems that we're in really
(25:05):
don't work for people because that's what the cult said, right?
That's why they pulled us all out of the world and, you know, my parents, grandparents,obviously, in like the 60s and 70s to go build this cult.
And
You know, it's this weird thing where I still feel like the seeker thing is valid, right?
(25:28):
The like wanting to change the world and like wanting to find systems that work foreveryone.
And it's so hard for us when we come out of like being raised that way, because I think wevalidly want that, but it's also super triggering.
Yeah, and I'm sure this has come up for you criticizing the systems and me, you know,deprogramming from the cult and teaching other women how to deprogram from their
(25:57):
oppressive upbringings or their, you know, traumatic religious experiences or just, youknow, the stuff that as women we get programmed into our mind living in this world that
doesn't serve us.
And it's interesting to see how some people have, you know, felt triggered by that andwould
accuse me of like, you're creating a cult.
(26:17):
Part of healing is that you can really look at what happened.
You can process that and you can take principles that can help other people if that's whatyou want to do.
But that reactive, well, I'm going to be the exact opposite of everything that I've beentaught growing up.
You're still controlled by the systems that controlled you when you were young, if you'regoing to react to that.
(26:41):
So finding
those threads of truth of like, this principle still makes sense.
We do want to have systems that serve us better.
There are systems that don't serve us.
And I think it's important to find those truths and to be authentic in that instead ofliving a life of, you know, reactivity.
And I have just today been talking about rapture psychology and like persecution porn.
(27:06):
And I think it's really important for us who are activists on the left, who might havecome from like religious extremist backgrounds to like take a pause and understand that
like we're really triggered right now.
You know, like I every day I'm like how
how are my people running the government, right?
(27:29):
How is it possible that I spent 35 years like surviving that and fighting and putting mylife together and now these people are running the government?
But the reason that apocalypticizing works, keep repeating to people is because when youthink the rapture is about to come, you just stand there and lift up your arm.
(27:52):
If you think the Rockets are incoming in 20 minutes, like that time they sent out thismessage to Hawaii by accident, like you just sit down and hug your family.
And so like, I just think it's an important thing to talk about that we should allprobably kind of like, almost just like understand that we're all triggered right now.
(28:15):
Like we're triggered, we're pissed, and like rapture psychology.
If we think about the things we were taught, right?
This world is not my home, but there's no place like home, right?
We're just all of the suffering you deal with in this world, right?
All of the tiredness, all of the sacrifice, all of the everything.
(28:36):
Children you have lost, loved ones you have lost, everything.
It's gonna be better in this perfect world.
And, you know, this was something I tried to show in Uncultured in my Apocalypse Nowchapter.
And I think it's really relevant to the conversations of right now is that, know, cultmembers aren't afraid of the apocalypse.
(28:57):
They're prepared.
They want, you know, they want the end time to come.
They want what your grandmother would have given for there to be an actual satanic cult,actually abusing children, right?
Because then their thing was valid and their sacrifices were valid.
(29:19):
Yeah, absolutely.
you know, in the vein of what's happening in America right now, it's interesting because Iknow that we've all evaluated the programming we grew up with and those stories, and then
to start evaluating in like a different category.
Like I have thought about American propaganda and the programming from growing up in thiscountry more than ever before just because of what's happening.
(29:45):
And this is something I don't think you know since last time we had chatted, which hasbeen such a strange experience.
But I started telling my story.
Then I got back in contact with G-Ma, because she's my daughter's great-grandmother.
And I wanted my daughter to meet the women that she came from, even if they are cultleaders.
So we went on a trip and met G-Ma, like, in person.
(30:08):
So I was, like, in contact with her.
Two weeks later, after I visited her last,
She died, so G-ma passed.
And that was a weird experience for me in ways that I didn't think, because she was anevil person, but she's also the person that raised me more than anyone else.
Yeah.
(30:29):
And my mother kept her death a secret for weeks.
And my uncle found out from a neighbor that talked to him, like sort of...
condolences, that's how he found out that his mom died.
And so all of this weird movement started happening with the cult that I grew up in.
(30:52):
G-ma died on January 16th and the inauguration was January 20th.
So I've been having this experience of seeing this like macro and micro cult stuff just bespinning so fast.
And it has been a really
weird and very disturbing experience to see it on both levels.
(31:17):
And that's interesting that these groups and even the government that we're seeing, right?
That they create these outside entities because if you're going to embrace a doctrine thatbelieves in a supernatural deity, an experience that has supernaturally chosen you and
(31:41):
only your group has this special knowledge, then there better be a
Big bad, right?
On the other side of that, that can be the antithesis to everything that you claim torepresent.
And so in your case, they created these satanic cults, warned you about them, kept youafraid of them, and then told you that the only escape from them was believing the
(32:11):
doctrine that they were giving you.
And so it was lie upon lie upon lie, much like we see people in the government today, theywill create a problem and then come in and say, we're now going to solve this problem that
we have created.
Yeah, and we're the only ones that can solve it.
And it was that feeling growing up of like, it totally makes sense to have absoluteobedience and believing this story because the alternative is death.
(32:39):
The alternative is game over and you're going to be found and you're going to be tortured.
Like the stakes were always so high.
Yeah.
And by the way, this is one of the ways I counter the apocalypticizing a little bit,right?
Because I sort of say to people, okay, so, you know, my, this is gonna sound morbid, buthe was a 20 year soldier, my husband, and he always used to say like, how do you fly, you
(33:04):
know, in combat zones and all this?
And he says, you know, I always figure it'll either work out or it'll immediately not bemy problem.
And so, you know, I will say to people, like,
The of disaster planning is for you to think, what would you do?
So you wanna think about the worst case, okay.
Say the worst happens, right?
(33:24):
What are you afraid of?
Labor camps?
You're afraid of death?
Like what you're gonna find out?
What are you afraid of?
Now what would you do?
And I feel like this can be a good shot of reality.
I do this to myself all of the time, right?
What am I afraid of?
Okay, what would I do?
I used to like,
walk through this when my husband was deployed and I was a expert on how people like myhusband died because that's how we met.
(33:53):
Right.
So I'm back home with a baby.
He's deployed.
I'm just sitting there with open anxiety and I would literally make an operations plan.
Like I would walk myself through.
OK, these two guys pull up.
Right.
And I got it down to where I'm like, I have 20 minutes till I can fall apart.
I'm sending four text messages and making one phone call, and then I will have the thingsin motion that I can just fall apart, right?
(34:20):
Because that's what we're afraid of.
We're afraid of this thing coming and just wrecking our life.
But the thing about apocalypticizing and preppers and all of this, right, is they're soafraid of their lives being ruined that they ruin their lives, right?
They're so afraid of someone abusing the children that they accidentally...
(34:41):
build a cult and abuse the ch- you know?
And so really just looking, like looking at that fear and being like, okay, the worst hashappened.
What are you, you know, I'm sure you get this Lydia, but I get asked like why I'm sounflappable all the time.
And I've just started looking at people and being like, I've survived the labor camps,right?
(35:02):
Like, I, you know, like, what's the worst, and then we'll deal with it.
But
The living in that when you don't have to be, like that's the cultiness and that's thething that I think makes it, as you said, easy to control, right?
(35:23):
Because of course you're gonna just follow the leader when the leader is shouting, they'reall coming to kill us.
Yeah, absolutely.
it's, you probably have this experience where you start realizing there's, there are oldremnants of like programming or things you grew up with that you didn't quite sweep out of
the corners.
You know, it's like, there's another thing that popped up.
(35:44):
And with, you know, the, the looking forward to the apocalypse, like I've alwaysromanticized the apocalypse.
Like, you know, Mormon and a cult within Mormonism, the idea of having like five yearsworth of everything in a bunker, like,
Even talking about it now, like it just feels so nice.
This is one of the reasons I say there's no sisterhood like the ex-cult sisterhood, right?
(36:08):
Because I'm like, the way I would lead a brigade of femmes that took Nazis out into thewoods and came back with that, right?
It's fun to sit around and being like, if it was unleashed, right?
If I didn't have to follow the laws of normal society, then what would we do?
(36:29):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's like, bring all your friends to the commune.
It is going to be awesome.
But like my partner also grew up Mormon.
So we're both former Mormons, which was an interesting coincidence when we first met tofind out.
But we just, just in like the last few months, we've realized how much we both love likesaving and stockpiling things.
(36:51):
And we had this weird realization of like, we're going to die with stuff.
We're going to have nice stuff.
So we just started using things.
Like I've got like the nice candle that I'm burning next to me and like, you know, I'musing all my face creams and we just realized why wouldn't we use it?
Why wouldn't we enjoy it now?
such, this is such an important tip for cult deconstruction, by the way.
(37:15):
Thank you for giving this to our listeners.
And I also like to say like everything we're going through is cult babies.
feel like millennials are going through.
And my analogy here is the plastic couch, right?
Like everyone had a grandma whose couch was covered in plastic.
And then you never, like you never enjoyed the couch because you didn't want to ruin thecouch.
(37:37):
And I'm from a family that
everyone gets like a fancy set of china when they get married.
And during our last move, as we were packing the china that we rarely ever used, we werelike, we're gonna every time, every time someone comes over, we don't care if it's the
best friend, we don't care if it's whatever, like the china comes out, it gets used, theheirloom table gets used, use your stuff, you know?
(38:03):
The stockpiling thing is real.
I just call it poverty trauma.
Like, my poverty trauma is still there.
My rapture trauma is still there.
What's interesting about our particular group, we didn't prep for the rapture or thetribulation, right?
Because we were convinced that we were going up.
(38:26):
So we were going to escape all of that.
And what that demonstrated in my thinking was I didn't have to worry about all of theproblems.
So it was a cop-out, right?
So if you talk about global warming or if you talk about World War III or famine or death,
All of that wasn't our concern because that's just all what you poor bastards are going tohave to endure after we are gone.
(38:52):
And so, you know, it alleviated us having to think about anything difficult or hard in ourlives.
In fact, we would come together on that Sunday evening service and we were a collection, agroup of people steeped in poverty, lots of problems.
But the goal for that Sunday night emotional catharsis was for a moment to escape all ofthose problems, to be caught up in this glorious bliss of worship.
(39:22):
And so, you know, it's a double-edged sword for those that are prepping.
Yes, they do have some things to do, but for those of us that were convinced we're goingto escape all of this, we didn't have to think about it.
We didn't have to try to wrap our minds around what is happening in the world.
Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
feel like Mormonism sort of had a combination.
Like we needed to stockpile and save everything to get through the hard times.
(39:45):
But then when the whole earth burns with fire, like in the Mormon church, it's like acommon thing that people say, fire insurance.
Fire insurance is as long as you gave at least 10%, like at least 10 % of all the moneyyou've ever made in your life to the Mormon church, then when the whole earth burns, the
Mormons will be raised up.
(40:05):
So it's fire insurance.
but you've got to have your food storage to make it to that point.
So we were doing all of it.
Can I tell you all an amazing story?
All right, so the Children of God in the 80s moves to Japan, right?
And this is in Japan's heyday of cults, right?
So they moved to Japan, they have super fancy backers, they're gonna go legit.
(40:29):
And they make this deal with the government of Tokyo to give them this huge portion ofland that they can use for their commune.
And basically the deal is they're gonna develop this land
in parentheses with teenage slave labor, and then they're gonna give it back to thegovernment after 10 years, right?
(40:50):
And the children of God made this deal around the world in many places.
But they were so chuffed with themselves because they knew that in less than 10 years, in1993, Jesus was gonna come back.
So they were not gonna have to give the land back to the government.
(41:11):
So anyway, needless to say, Jesus did not come back.
The land went to the government.
of God got deported from Tokyo and they cannot wait to someday go there and like walkaround this part of Tokyo that was developed by the cult that like felt so, just so
self-righteous, right, about how they were getting one over.
(41:32):
And here we are.
Lydia, tell us a little bit about how you started your journey out of that particularbelief system and that hyper control and what led you out and was there one moment or was
it a process?
What did that look like in your life?
Yes.
So there were moments that led up to it, but a really poignant part was when I was incollege and my dad never stopped looking for his kids.
(42:04):
Like 25 years, he never stopped looking for his kids because my mother essentiallykidnapped us away from him.
He wasn't able to contact us.
He just always kept looking.
So I was doing this like first independent thing.
You know, I'd lived with my mom my whole life and you know, G-Ma essentially, cause my momalways lived with G-Ma.
We were always in the same house.
And I went to college and one day I went into, I went to BYU, so like the Mormon college.
(42:30):
And I went into my bishops, like the leader of our congregation's office and he justcasually said, he's like, hey, your dad reached out and he's trying to get in contact with
you.
And I just like went, why does a ghost?
And I got the tunnel vision and like, I couldn't hear anything that he was saying.
(42:51):
And I was going through like this full panic and all I could get out was like, he's amurderer.
He's a rapist.
Don't tell him anything.
I'm leaving.
Like I'm not in this, you know, you know, the ward, like our congregation anymore.
Like I had to leave.
I went and I called my roommates.
I'm like, I'm sorry.
I never told you this, but
You might not be safe, lock the doors, lock the windows.
(43:11):
Like they're Satan worshippers.
I didn't say Satan worshippers.
was still trying to be like, I have a, I have a stalker.
I was still trying to like seem kind of normal.
And I was terrified.
So what my mom did, she came and picked me up.
This was like the confirmation of like, yes, he's, he's found you.
And she drove me around to all the police departments and in Northern Utah, there's likeall these little towns that are really close to each other and they all have their own
(43:36):
police department.
So we went around to like five, six police departments and I went from my whole lifelistening to these stories, believing them, but they were secrets that I wasn't supposed
to tell.
I was just hearing my mother and G-ma talk about them.
Two, I was walking into these police departments over and over and my mother was having mesay the story for the first time in my life.
(44:00):
So I would go up and I'd be like, you know, my father has found me.
He's the leader of a satanic cult.
He's murdered multiple people.
He's a rapist.
you know, satanic ritualistic abuse.
So, you know, when the Provo Linden police, they don't know what to do with that.
They're like, okay, what do you want us to do?
(44:22):
But it was in the saying it out loud.
It was in hearing my own voice say this that for the first time I got this, what we callin our community, like a logical kickback of
You say something and there's a part of your brain that doubts it.
And I'm saying this and I remember thinking for the first time, I hope that's true.
(44:43):
That's a really big thing to say about someone if it's not true.
And that was one of the first little breaking points where I started wondering.
And that led to really wanting to know for myself.
I'm like, I wanna know.
I was told there was boxes of evidence that were from the floor to the ceiling.
of all of the medical reports of the horrible things that had happened and are spinebroken and all of this, that medical professionals had to take the entire day off after
(45:12):
examining my brother and I, because even though was their specialty, they couldn't evenhandle our child abuse and that it was all documented.
And so I asked to see it.
I'm like, there's all this evidence.
I want to see it.
And I got totally shut down.
G-ma and my mom, they're like, absolutely not.
If you see it, your brain is going to be triggered.
You'll be under the control of Satan, like not worth it.
(45:33):
So I did the first sneaky thing I'd ever done in my life because I knew where the boxeswere.
And I went in and I looked inside and there were boxes and boxes and it was documentationof letters of my dad wanting to see his kids.
Please come home.
Why didn't you show up?
I've been trying to see my children for a year.
(45:55):
Like, you know, whatever you need, we can sort this out." There's like all of theseletters from him.
And then there was a big, thick packet that was a training manual written by some churchfor police officers to recognize satanic rituals and the signs and how Satan worship
works.
So I started opening this packet and as I flip through, it's like, well, Satan worshipers
(46:20):
They baptize children in blood because they do the opposite of what God does, which isbaptize them in water.
so it was like a whole list of all the things that Satan worshipers do.
And this packet wasn't about me.
This was like an educational packet.
But I had been told verbatim, everything that was in that packet had happened to mepersonally.
(46:42):
And I had this realization of this is all made up.
I started making all those logical connections like, well, how do they know that my spinewas broken over and over and all this rape happened?
Either they weren't there so they don't know or they were there and they let it happen.
Like my brain started putting these logical conclusions together and that was the breakingpoint of really understanding that this is a made up story.
(47:09):
And this really demonstrates, I think, a point that just always applies always, which isif it's valid, it stands up to scrutiny.
And when you're asking to see proof of stuff and you're getting shut down, if it's valid,it stands up to scrutiny.
And I add to this for people, there's no reason for an or, there's no valid reason for anorganization to tell you not to speak to ex-members.
(47:34):
Like, right?
There just isn't.
If it's valid, it stands up to scrutiny.
Am I the same token, like comparing something to a cult or a bad group?
Doesn't hurt them if they're not a cult or a bad group.
know, so when you like my first like huge blaring red flag is like when you ask to seeproof and they start stalling and they start making it I'm sure right about you and
(48:01):
doubting and this is what happens and
Instead of just showing you because literally if all of these horrible things thathappened to you and your loved ones had proof of it They would just be able to say here it
is
Yeah.
So Lydia, did you confront the folks that were perpetuating these lies?
(48:23):
what did it look like?
What were the next steps for you?
Yeah, so I did confront my mother and G-ma and I told them that I had looked in the boxesand I didn't see anything and they simply just would not talk about it.
Like they didn't get defensive.
They're like, we will not talk about this.
And I had been so practiced in like suppressing my emotions that I wasn't like mad.
(48:46):
I was just confused.
I was like, but I don't understand.
Like, why would you say this if there was no proof?
So.
I really genuinely was curious and wanted to understand and was open to hear what theysaid.
Maybe there's another box somewhere else.
It's like maybe I missed something.
But my mother very vehemently told me, I would rather you blame me and think that I liedto you your whole life than talk about it and have your brain break and be controlled by
(49:18):
Satan and we'll never get you back.
So that is where it ended.
you know, I kept trying, you know, years after that, if we were just talking about theweather, because it was always very surface after that.
And I wanted to have a real conversation.
It was just completely shut down.
So it just never went anywhere.
They were never willing to talk about it until much later.
(49:40):
Just a few years ago when I talked to G-Ma and she came up with an amazing explanation.
Happy to share that.
But at the time, they just shut it down.
And so did you manage to reconcile with your birth father?
Yes.
So I...
Yeah.
a completely different story on the other side.
(50:00):
absolutely.
And he had been trying to contact us for 25 years.
And when I found out that it wasn't true, there was really no action that I took.
And I think that's part of the time and the healing that it takes to leave a cult is I'mlike, well, I don't know him and maybe he is a scary person.
like, you there's probably something valid here.
So I just sat on this information for years.
(50:24):
And I was getting into meditation, which was like a little edgy as a Mormon, but I saw thebenefits.
So I was getting into meditation and one day I was meditating and I have not had anexperience like this before or since this moment.
But in the meditation, just sort of out of the blue, I got this very strong message ofyour dad is going to die and you will have never known.
(50:49):
And that landed in a way that it seemed impossible.
Like I had my own daughter at that point.
She was about the age that I was when my mother kidnapped me away from my dad.
And I remember looking at her and being like, if she disappeared tonight, what would stopme from caring about her, like trying to find her?
(51:11):
And I had this new understanding.
And so I had an old email address from when my dad found me that fateful day at
my college and I reached out to him and he sent me back this beautiful email of like, thismy daughter?
Is this true?
(51:31):
And it ended up that he had just moved back to the United States like a month before,because he was living in Taiwan where the rest of my family was and we were only five
hours apart.
And so I drove with my daughter and my husband at the time.
drove to like a Starbucks inside a grocery store in like Asheville, North Carolina, likesort of halfway point.
(51:55):
And I was so scared.
Like even though I knew it wasn't true, as I was driving, I remember just looking out thewindow and like seeing the trees go by and I was just soaking in everything.
I was like listening to the sounds my daughter was making in the back seat.
Cause I just knew this was the last day I was going to be alive.
Like I just knew I was driving to my death.
Like everything in my nervous system was like, you are
(52:17):
dying going to meet your dad.
And the moment that I walked into Starbucks, I saw this old Chinese man that was sittingat a table and he turned around and we saw each other and we just both broke into tears.
And all of that fear, all of that you're gonna die, all of that lifetime of if you evermeet your dad, that'll be the last day you've ever been alive, just completely melted
(52:42):
away.
And we just cried and hugged each other.
And I found out I had a little sister and she was there and she was like the same age asmy daughter and they've been best friends ever since.
And that has been one of the most beautiful and rewarding relationships that I couldimagine.
Cause my dad wasn't just not an evil person.
My dad is an incredible human being that has loved his children with no contact from them.
(53:08):
That has found his own healing after his life was completely destroyed by my mom and Gma.
It has found
like kindness and he texts me like every day and gives me life advice that he never got togive me growing up.
So yeah, my dad is amazing.
That's a beautiful story.
Wow.
(53:29):
So where are you at today?
And what does your life look like today?
Obviously, you're taking a lot of what you learned, and you're channeling that intohelping others.
So what does that look like for you today?
Yes, so it's interesting because as I was getting out of the cult, I was finding someneuroscience principles that were really, really helping me.
(53:52):
It started in that moment where I said those things out loud and my brain was able todoubt it.
And I started understanding how my brain worked and it really helped me in the healing of,you know, moving out of a cult where I could live a normal life and, you know, have a
family of my own and, you know, build a career and do all the things that,
Like for instance, my brother was never able to do, like he's been in a basement fordecades and hasn't ever like moved forward in life.
(54:18):
And I was able to do that because of working with my brain.
And I thought that I would just never use those principles again.
I was really grateful that they essentially saved my life.
But then later on, I developed a life-threatening eating disorder and I was completely outof control.
And I was at a low point where I didn't know if it was worth living.
I was going to be in this awful cycle with binge eating and starving myself and bingeeating again and out of control.
(54:43):
And I remembered those principles of understanding my brain of how to deprogram from acult.
And I'd been trying things for my eating disorder for years and it just kept on gettingworse.
And I remember wondering at that low point, I wonder if I could deprogram from an eatingdisorder like I deprogrammed from a cult.
And in one week, I was completely free.
(55:06):
I never wanted to binge after that.
Like it was not even just managing it.
Like I was done with my eating disorder and I was a health coach at the time.
So I had a big network of people.
was a lot of hypocrisy there.
Clearly I was totally out of control and a health coach, which, which definitely happens.
And so I started helping other people that had been struggling as well and found thatthose set, that set of principles was extremely effective.
(55:30):
So we've helped over a thousand women to end their eating disorders.
And then that group of women was like,
this is the most effective thing I've ever done in my life.
What else does this apply to?
So that's when we started our executive coaching, doing leadership training for the USArmy and for leaders at Disney, Adobe and National Geographic.
And so helping leaders to understand their own brains and match their identities to theirgoals.
(55:54):
And at the She Center, really our mission is to restore women to leadership.
We believe that the root of every problem in the world is the missing influence of women.
And so we're here to restore that influence and decision-making and leadership and thewisdom of women in the world, because we see that's incredibly, incredibly effective.
So we support women moving through creating new chapters and not wanting to pollute theirpresent with their past and really letting their past go and rewriting their own story.
(56:24):
So that's what we do now and coach 9,000 women, over 9,000 women since 2010.
And it's been an absolute joy of my life.
And we love our community.
It's one of those things that makes me grateful for growing up in a cult because thoseprinciples came in handy of getting out of that.
that's beautiful way, right?
(56:44):
To take what was evil and harmful and traumatic in all of our lives and to turn thataround and to try to find a way to not only help ourselves, to help others.
So, wow.
Thank you, Lydia.
And I think it's such an important thing to the power of deconstruction, right?
Like, I've always found what you said, like once you can name it, you kind of almost havea handle on it, you know, like, can I apply these to this?
(57:12):
You know, and like I've been through some similar eating disorder stuff as you.
It's inspiring to hear you talk about that.
But I think, you know, once we deconstruct, like we get to use all of that stuff.
that was like in our experience.
And one of the things I'm really proud of, of Uncultured, and for those watching onYouTube, you can get it signed, attached here now, because we're fancy like that.
(57:41):
One of the things I was proud about is I think I was like, I think something that I showedwas that cult babies can teach us stuff other than just surviving trauma, right?
Like we understand group dynamics and
programming and leadership, right?
And some of these things that we were talking about, like at this very deep intrinsiclevel, and we see patterns that other people don't see.
(58:08):
And, you know, I used to think it was trite when people said like, oh, I wouldn't change,you know, how I grew up.
But now that I've actually done healing, I'm like,
a little embarrassed that I'm starting to feel that way, right?
Like I'm starting to feel like, no, no, I get it, right?
Like I use so many of the skills that make my life what it is and my relationships, whatthey are, are from the things that I've been through and the healing and all of that.
(58:36):
So that was really beautiful what you said and your whole story really.
Thank you for asking and thank you for sharing.
I just, I love that we get to be on the other side of these stories and to be sharingthat.
And it is, like, it's not acceptable the way that we were treated or raised or thesesystems.
And you might as well get all the gold out of it, right?
You might as well enjoy how great you are at focus and singing and doing harmonies orwhatever the weird stuff that was like hammered into our experience of mastering skills
(59:06):
that we can still enjoy.
my gosh, I'm writing a musical and I'm like, I'm going to put it on and it's going to playfor 10 years because all the cult babies are going to want to come and sing and dance and
perform and like, we're going to get through it by embracing performance culture, right?
Like, amazing.
so much.
Absolutely.
(59:26):
Lydia, thank you so much for joining us and we'll have all of your contact information inthe show notes.
So if people want to reach out to you and support you and support your work.
And I feel like we've got to have you back at some point in the future because there's somany parts of your story that we didn't get to that we want to talk about and unpack
because it's so very helpful.
(59:47):
So Lydia, thank you so much for being with us.
Thank you for having me on, it's such a joy and I really appreciate your message and it'sall so good hanging out with our cult babies.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, all of you that watch and listen on a weekly basis.
We are so appreciative of you.
Do us a favor and hit that subscribe button, that like button.
(01:00:11):
Leave us a review.
That's always helpful for the analytics to get the information out.
Support Daniela.
Purchase her book if you haven't done so already.
Check her out on all of the social medias as well as
Myself, I'm there too, so you can find me and our delightful producer who does a wonderfuljob, Haley.
(01:00:34):
They do a tremendous job week in and week out.
And so we're so appreciative to what they do and to all of you.
Thanks for being here.
And for Daniela Messenek-Young, my name is Scott Lloyd.
We'll see you on the next episode of Cults and the Culting of America.
Welcome to another edition of Cults and the Culting of America podcast.
My name is Scott Lloyd along with my friend, the Knitting Cult Lady, Daniela MesteneckYoung.
Daniela, good to see you this evening.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well, you know what, needed a shot of energy today and I logged in and I sawthat we were talking to Lydia Knight and I am so excited.
(00:50):
Because what our guest went through as a child is so fantastic and far out and bonkers andis also so relevant to the national conversation of what is happening in our country right
now.
And it's something that I call apocalypticizing, which like is not just a convenient wayto turn apocalypse into a verb, but it's fantasizing about the apocalypse.
(01:21):
And I think we're going to have a journey, but I just want to put this in everybody'sminds that like, there's a reason that panic is comforting sometimes.
All right, well, with that introduction, our guest Lydia Knight is here and wow, myinterest has certainly peaked.
(01:43):
And so I'll take a moment to introduce Lydia to our audience.
She is an author, professional speaker, executive coach and recipient of the SacredService Award.
Her innovative approach has earned recognition from major outlets like CBS, NBC, Fox News,Yahoo and beyond.
Knight is the founder and CEO of the She Center, a top 2 % woman owned business globallywhere she specializes in leadership training, executive coaching and leadership
(02:16):
certification.
Lydia, welcome.
We're glad that you're here tonight.
Thank you, it's wonderful to be here.
Danielle, the couple of things that you touched on, I feel like we could go down all ofthese rabbit holes.
Like there's so much to talk about.
So I'm thrilled to be here.
And I just have to say, Danielle, I loved your book so much.
(02:37):
I had an experience reading your book where I was just crying over and over and connectingto your story in ways like I never expected to connect with someone else's story that way
and be like, whoa, someone else knows how that feels.
I just wanted to first of all thank you.
It was a really cool experience and incredibly well written and I'm like so proud of thatbook that you wrote.
(02:58):
So thank you for that.
I really appreciate that.
I lost 30 pounds going through all that trauma.
But one of the things that I wanted to do with my story is to show that even in the mostextreme cults, it's not extreme all the time, and it might look a lot more like your thing
(03:21):
that you didn't realize was maybe that extreme.
And it's so, you know, I want you to give a little introduction of your story of whatwe're alluding to, whatever you're comfortable with, because it's so interesting how we
can come from the most extreme childhoods, but not realize how extreme it was.
(03:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I'm very open about my story.
You're both welcome to ask whatever.
I didn't share my story for a really long time, just because I, you know, I'd done thehealing and the moving through it, but I just thought it was too bizarre for anyone to
want to hear about.
And then I just, you know, started sharing it on TikTok with a bunch of strangers, becauselike, no one's going to care about it.
(04:04):
It's going to be cool for me to like share this before I die.
And it started blowing up.
So I'm quite comfortable with it now.
I'm like, yep.
Whatever, we'll talk about all of it.
So an overview of my story and where I came from, and like you were saying, had no idea,no idea I was raised in a cult.
It was quite recently that I'm like, what is the word for, to describe what thisupbringing was like?
(04:28):
And I'm like, this is a cult.
So my grandmother was this very charismatic woman.
She was bride of the year.
She was held her auto queen.
She was sort of this like rodeo star.
and very beautiful, charismatic, married someone who worked for the State Department.
They lived all over the world.
(04:48):
She had this home on the Hollywood Hills and she loved attention.
And when my mom had me and I was a toddler, then my mom started getting these revelationsfrom God.
I'll put that in quotes.
And God was telling my mother this sort of undercover truth about how the world worked.
(05:10):
So there was a band of Satan worshipers that controlled everything from government tolocal police departments to, there were so many of them and they would all like talk in
secret codes with each other.
And it was all very secret.
But the reason that my mom knew about it was one, cause God was telling her about it.
And two, because she decided that God told her that my father was the leader of thissatanic
(05:40):
worshiper organization and that as a toddler I had been kidnapped, taken by these Satanworshippers, that I had been put, you know, needles put in my eyes, all this brainwashing,
that my spine had been broken over and over because of the gang rape as a toddler with allof these Satan worshippers.
And I was told these explicit details just since the time I can remember.
(06:05):
There was in the double memoir that we wrote
with my dad's story, looking for his kids for 25 years, and my story growing up in thiscult, there were stories that I learned from my dad that I didn't even realize because I
was so young.
For instance, when I went and visited him as a toddler, I would get up on his lap and Iwould say things like, well, I don't know if you're mean.
(06:26):
And he's like, no, I'm not mean, I love you.
And I would just look at him in the face and be like, daddy, why do you want to kill me?
These were the things that were just taught to me all growing up.
And so we were always, it was witness protection-esque, right?
Like we were always moving in the middle of the night.
If we got a suspicious call, we decided that we were always being hunted.
(06:48):
My mother would keep on getting these new revelations from God to know how to look out forSatan worshipers.
And there was this fear.
And like you were talking about fear being comforting, it really bound our familytogether.
Like we had this little family that was like, we know a secret that no one else knows, butthat we could be triggered at any time.
So I could hear some word or have some child's children's toy given to me that wasdesigned by the Satan worshippers and I would be triggered.
(07:17):
My brain would be broken into a thousand pieces, different personalities.
I'd be under the control of Satan.
So that's a super quick version of the background of how I grew up.
And Lydia, for those who might be listening, could you say a little bit about race also?
Because your grandmother was a white Mormon lady, correct?
(07:37):
Correct.
So on the white side of my family, we were like sort of Mormon lineage.
So like Las Vegas, Nevada, St.
George, Utah, all those started as Mormon colonies and that was my family.
So I'm descended from like the fifth wife of this Mormon colonist guy, Dudley Levitt.
So we were Mormon all the way back.
So that side of my family is white.
(07:59):
My grandmother, my mother, and there was a lot of racism just sort of inherent in...
being a white woman growing up Mormon, it was an intense racism and they'd also grown upall over the world.
So my mother and her brother had been exposed to people that weren't white and lookeddifferent than them.
(08:22):
And so all of the grandkids were either half Chinese, like my brother and I, or half Latinor Hispanic.
And I remember my grandmother pulling aside a friend one day.
like right in front of me, right?
She didn't hide it, but pulling aside a friend and apologizing to her friend that none ofher grandkids were white.
(08:42):
Like was something that she was very ashamed of.
And I grew up in Utah.
I didn't see another Asian person until I was in high school and like went on a schooltrip to a bigger city and saw another Asian person.
And I was taught to be terrified of Asian people because they were especially in the cult,right?
(09:03):
You know, my dad is Chinese and so there was that association, but there was also thisidea in the satanic panic of the 80s, which we'll probably get into, but I didn't know it
was a bigger phenomenon than my family, but that there was like Asian people were justinherently sort of satanic, right?
It's like, that's a given.
If you see an Asian person, they're definitely a member of the cult.
(09:25):
So when I saw other Asian people, I was so terrified of that.
And I remember, you know, I'd have times where I looked in the mirror and saw
how my face really looked, like just my own reflection.
And I would break out into tears because how I looked, the non-white part of me was quiteterrifying to me.
So there are multiple ways it wove in, but those were some ways that race came up.
(09:50):
I mean, that's such an interesting parallel for me because I used to kind of like joke andsay like the children of God like accidentally did their racism wrong, right?
Because just like every other cult out of the 60s, like it was about keeping us from them,right?
It was about taking our precious white children away.
But then they went international, right?
(10:10):
They went all over the world.
Like I grew up in Brazil and Mexico and and but I also think that
inside these systems, right?
We often don't like unpack our internalized racism and like what that experience was andhow different it is, you know, being in these high control white religions as a white
(10:34):
child or as someone who's not considered quite as perfect and how much, you know, thatplays in, in just really complex ways, I think.
Yeah, absolutely.
And growing up, the racism and that internalized racism was more challenging as a childthan feeling and believing that I had grown up in a cult and had all these horrible things
(11:00):
happen to me.
is the racism was so real and in my face every day.
So that was a huge struggle growing up.
Lydia, I just want to take a moment and acknowledge, wow, what you experienced and whatyou had to endure growing up.
That's very traumatic, and I'm sorry that you had to endure that.
(11:21):
Do you have any idea what informed this racism and this satanic panic?
it a connection to the Mormon religion?
Was it informed by that, or were there other factors at play?
Yeah, great question.
And as I've unpacked this, as I've gotten older, I started telling my story, like as anadult, like I just didn't tell it very often.
(11:41):
And I remember sharing a little bit of it with a friend one day and he's like, I think Iheard a podcast about this.
And I'm like, no, you didn't.
Like this was a bizarre thing that only happened to me.
And I listened to this podcast and realized there was this bigger phenomenon of thesatanic panic in the eighties.
So that was a big piece of it.
is sort of the tenets of how people were believing that there were these, you know, Satanworshippers and a lot of Christian religions were believing that.
(12:07):
I think that racism also really came into play from Mormonism.
There is a lot of, so for instance, in the Book of Mormon, there's a curse that is likeall throughout the Book of Mormon, which is these people were evil and they were cursed
with a skin of darkness.
So there's this idea of if you're not white, it's literally a curse that was created.
(12:30):
And like my grandfather, Ji Ma, who was like my cult leader grandmother, so I call him JiMa and Ji Pa.
But I remember him sitting us down and giving us this really long lecture with all theselike Bible references and like he would sort of go off on things.
And the sort of punchline of his lecture was that he was complimenting my brother and Ibecause our skin was whiter than it used to be.
(12:57):
He could tell.
that in Book of Mormon words, white and delightsome, like this is the way to be.
So he knew that we were becoming better people because I guess we weren't in the sun asmuch as we used to be, you know, but like he attributed to like, you're probably better
than you used to be righteousness wise because our skin was lighter.
So there's Mormon stuff in there, there's cultural stuff in there.
(13:21):
I think there was a lot of different directions that racism was coming from.
But the root of it, I believed, was that my grandmother, my cult leader, Jima, did notlike that my mother had married somebody who wasn't white.
And so, villainizing that, like the racial part of it, I think was a good reason for herto break up that marriage and then to also create this story and become the savior of the
(13:45):
story.
Yeah.
And there's something greater here with the satanic panic and racism also that I reallywant to tie in, which is like the satanic panic basically is what we believe was the
reaction to human beings getting online.
Right.
Which I like to point out for people like this was an apocalypse that we all livedthrough.
(14:09):
Right.
The industrial age crashing into the information age.
You know, and finding out how badly children were being abused, right?
And like Freud, who in the 20s or something, listened to women and children, and thensaid, at the end of his study, he said, this can't be true, because if it's true, all men
(14:32):
are monsters, so I'm gonna decide that women and children were lying, right?
And now, by the way, we've come even further, because now DNA is proving how common.
incest and abuse is in the home.
But in the 80s and 90s, we're just starting to feel the impact of the information age andwe're starting to realize how often children are being abused.
(14:56):
And so it was easier for people, white people, to tell themselves that it was bands ofsatanic people stealing children and abusing them.
than it was to say that like your brother or your pastor was the one abusing the children,right?
(15:19):
So it was, I mean, it was literally the witch hunts by another name, right?
It's pizza gate by another name.
And then there's this really complicated layer of all of you children who were absolutelyabused by growing up with these people.
(15:41):
telling you these things, right?
I mean, it sounds like you had a mix of like mom cult leader and grandma cult leader andmom was maybe a little bit not too mentally stable and all of these different things going
on.
But a lot of it, I think, tied into also like racially diversifying America rapidly.
(16:04):
And this was very, very scary for people.
And it was just so much easier to be like them, the other, the different people.
They're doing these horrible things to our perfect children.
And I just really have to emphasize that always in this imagery is like little blondeblue-eyed children who are having their souls sucked out of them by these Satan
(16:29):
worshipers.
The poor, perfect, white, and this is why think we have so many examples of Mormons.
Right, sort of being like really involved in this sort of satanic panic industry, which ofcourse gives us, know, Teal Swan and other interesting people.
Yeah, that's come up a few times.
(16:50):
I was like, okay.
It's the conclusions that some other people that have been through perhaps a similarexperience to myself have come to have surprised me.
I've been learning so much recently.
And I mean, I recently got into a clash with followers of a certain cisnet, that's swan ifyou speak a Latin language, because I was talking about how the satanic panic was made up,
(17:20):
right?
There's a reason we call it satanic panic and not the survivors of ex-satanic cult, right?
There were 1200 cases.
research, right?
As you as you mentioned, right, there was a larger thing going on, right?
This was a thing that spread throughout the country.
(17:41):
And as soon as you say like, this didn't happen.
People jump down your throat and say, how dare right?
Like, how dare you say, especially as a sub abuse survivor yourself, right?
That that children didn't suffer this, right?
Like, how dare you say that people weren't ritually abused?
(18:02):
And it's, you know, again, there's so many complex things here, right?
Like have individuals ritually abused children in like ways that they were callingsatanic?
Yes, right?
Humans, there's no limit to the amount of suffering that humans will put each otherthrough.
But like, was there a large cabal of...
(18:25):
Asians and other people like around the country trafficking children and babies and Youknow all of the things you mentioned right that would have left these physical marks and
and all of these different things And then there's the deeper even right of the abuse thatwas done to you by making you believe that and having the
(18:54):
It's what's called disorganized attachment, right?
Of the humans that you relied on for safety and care also being the ones who were harmingyou, which is a very universal cult baby experience.
Yes, and in a way where they were harming me in the guise of that they were protecting mefrom this absolute evil.
(19:16):
So there's all these strange layers.
And one reason that it took me so long to conclude with the language of cult is because mywhole life I was told that we were running from the cult.
Like we're running from the Satan worshipers, but in short, we just called them the cultfor code.
So I was like, I mean...
(19:37):
surely it wasn't a cult because that was the thing that we were running from.
I'm like, no, it was a cult that had a story about a cult that we were running from.
And it's wild to think of how many things that were accused, you know, of other people didthat, but it was actually the abusers that were doing it.
Yeah.
And isn't that always like the, isn't that always like, I almost feel like they know howto make the accusations because they're the ones doing it.
(20:04):
Yeah.
And it just got more and more complex sort of as time went on.
And it is that confusing, like, what is real?
And almost the gaslighting of, well, I certainly couldn't mention this to them becauseit's almost laughable that I would accuse them of the very thing that they were trying to
protect me from and save my life from my whole life.
So it gets into this weird knot.
(20:27):
Yeah, and it strikes me that given all of our experiences with cults and high controlgroups, even though the abuse is on a spectrum, it strikes me that there are a common
denominator within these groups.
The idea of secret knowledge, like we know better than anyone else.
(20:48):
And then also this idea of creating
a monster that is outside the group that is always threatening the group.
In fact, threatening the most vulnerable in the group.
And it's amazing to me that all of these groups were blaming this imaginary satanic cabalthat is out there, this conspiracy, when they were the ones that were inflicting harm on
(21:14):
children in the name of God, in the name of Jesus, in the name of their religion and
They were the ones that were were perpetuating this evil So I think you see this in a lotof these groups right this idea that that we have secret knowledge We know what's really
happening and what's really going on and and this extends into the consumption ofinformation in the day and age in which we live How many times do you see someone
(21:43):
claiming?
Well, I know the media is saying this but they're biased and I'm not or the the mediasource is
that I am getting my information from, they're not the mainstream media.
They're not the media.
I always tell people, if someone on television is telling you not to trust the media,remember, they are the media.
(22:05):
Yeah, and I think that's a great point.
like you were saying earlier, that just keeps on coming up for me, Daniella, of howcomforting or how special that secret feels.
Because that's the way that, you know, G-ma really drew people in.
You she would call person after person for hours, and I would sit next to her and hearthis over and over for hours.
(22:26):
But she'd tell them all of these horrible, explicit details of the secrets of what hadhappened, all the things the Satan worshippers were doing.
and ask them to go without food or water, like as a strong prayer in the Mormon Church,it's called fasting.
But then when they would see each other at church on Sunday, I mean, these people wouldbreak out, like they'd see my brother and I, and they'd just break out into tears, knowing
(22:48):
the horrors that had happened to us.
And then they would look at my grandmother and just fill with praise and literally saythings like, thank you for saving the lives of these children.
And there was this, hey, we've got this really special secret together.
and it was very bonding.
Every time I hear you talk about like your grandmother and this reaction, it's like it'slike spiritual Munchausen by proxy.
(23:15):
Right.
Like like she was getting the attention of the Munchausen by proxy.
Right.
Like that's what they're doing it for.
Like they're hurting their kids so that their kids go to the hospital so that then theyget care and attention because their kid is in the hospital.
But.
she didn't even have to like physically harm you.
(23:37):
She was just able to build this lie story, right?
Like origin story.
And also it's so interesting, right?
Because like the children of God is considered the extreme cult.
And I mean, this is a very similar thing to what we were taught.
which was like everyone in the outside world was absolutely evil, right?
(24:01):
You systemites.
And I feel your pain with the like, I was like, our bad guys were called the system.
And now I'm a scholar of groups and systems and I'm gonna spend my life criticizing thesystem.
I was like, no.
(24:21):
But there's this weird.
I think you'll relate to this weird feeling of like deconstructing but realizing that likethe cult antis weren't wrong when they said like the outside world was evil or like there
are these problems, right?
Like children were being abused, right?
(24:45):
It just wasn't in the way that it was being said.
But I think there's this really like
For me, there's like this meta experience of discovering that the United States reallykind of is a lot of times the bad guy and, you know, the systems that we're in really
(25:05):
don't work for people because that's what the cult said, right?
That's why they pulled us all out of the world and, you know, my parents, grandparents,obviously, in like the 60s and 70s to go build this cult.
And
You know, it's this weird thing where I still feel like the seeker thing is valid, right?
(25:28):
The like wanting to change the world and like wanting to find systems that work foreveryone.
And it's so hard for us when we come out of like being raised that way, because I think wevalidly want that, but it's also super triggering.
Yeah, and I'm sure this has come up for you criticizing the systems and me, you know,deprogramming from the cult and teaching other women how to deprogram from their
(25:57):
oppressive upbringings or their, you know, traumatic religious experiences or just, youknow, the stuff that as women we get programmed into our mind living in this world that
doesn't serve us.
And it's interesting to see how some people have, you know, felt triggered by that andwould
accuse me of like, you're creating a cult.
(26:17):
Part of healing is that you can really look at what happened.
You can process that and you can take principles that can help other people if that's whatyou want to do.
But that reactive, well, I'm going to be the exact opposite of everything that I've beentaught growing up.
You're still controlled by the systems that controlled you when you were young, if you'regoing to react to that.
(26:41):
So finding
those threads of truth of like, this principle still makes sense.
We do want to have systems that serve us better.
There are systems that don't serve us.
And I think it's important to find those truths and to be authentic in that instead ofliving a life of, you know, reactivity.
And I have just today been talking about rapture psychology and like persecution porn.
(27:06):
And I think it's really important for us who are activists on the left, who might havecome from like religious extremist backgrounds to like take a pause and understand that
like we're really triggered right now.
You know, like I every day I'm like how
how are my people running the government, right?
(27:29):
How is it possible that I spent 35 years like surviving that and fighting and putting mylife together and now these people are running the government?
But the reason that apocalypticizing works, keep repeating to people is because when youthink the rapture is about to come, you just stand there and lift up your arm.
(27:52):
If you think the Rockets are incoming in 20 minutes, like that time they sent out thismessage to Hawaii by accident, like you just sit down and hug your family.
And so like, I just think it's an important thing to talk about that we should allprobably kind of like, almost just like understand that we're all triggered right now.
(28:15):
Like we're triggered, we're pissed, and like rapture psychology.
If we think about the things we were taught, right?
This world is not my home, but there's no place like home, right?
We're just all of the suffering you deal with in this world, right?
All of the tiredness, all of the sacrifice, all of the everything.
(28:36):
Children you have lost, loved ones you have lost, everything.
It's gonna be better in this perfect world.
And, you know, this was something I tried to show in Uncultured in my Apocalypse Nowchapter.
And I think it's really relevant to the conversations of right now is that, know, cultmembers aren't afraid of the apocalypse.
(28:57):
They're prepared.
They want, you know, they want the end time to come.
They want what your grandmother would have given for there to be an actual satanic cult,actually abusing children, right?
Because then their thing was valid and their sacrifices were valid.
(29:19):
Yeah, absolutely.
you know, in the vein of what's happening in America right now, it's interesting because Iknow that we've all evaluated the programming we grew up with and those stories, and then
to start evaluating in like a different category.
Like I have thought about American propaganda and the programming from growing up in thiscountry more than ever before just because of what's happening.
(29:45):
And this is something I don't think you know since last time we had chatted, which hasbeen such a strange experience.
But I started telling my story.
Then I got back in contact with G-Ma, because she's my daughter's great-grandmother.
And I wanted my daughter to meet the women that she came from, even if they are cultleaders.
So we went on a trip and met G-Ma, like, in person.
(30:08):
So I was, like, in contact with her.
Two weeks later, after I visited her last,
She died, so G-ma passed.
And that was a weird experience for me in ways that I didn't think, because she was anevil person, but she's also the person that raised me more than anyone else.
Yeah.
(30:29):
And my mother kept her death a secret for weeks.
And my uncle found out from a neighbor that talked to him, like sort of...
condolences, that's how he found out that his mom died.
And so all of this weird movement started happening with the cult that I grew up in.
(30:52):
G-ma died on January 16th and the inauguration was January 20th.
So I've been having this experience of seeing this like macro and micro cult stuff just bespinning so fast.
And it has been a really
weird and very disturbing experience to see it on both levels.
(31:17):
And that's interesting that these groups and even the government that we're seeing, right?
That they create these outside entities because if you're going to embrace a doctrine thatbelieves in a supernatural deity, an experience that has supernaturally chosen you and
(31:41):
only your group has this special knowledge, then there better be a
Big bad, right?
On the other side of that, that can be the antithesis to everything that you claim torepresent.
And so in your case, they created these satanic cults, warned you about them, kept youafraid of them, and then told you that the only escape from them was believing the
(32:11):
doctrine that they were giving you.
And so it was lie upon lie upon lie, much like we see people in the government today, theywill create a problem and then come in and say, we're now going to solve this problem that
we have created.
Yeah, and we're the only ones that can solve it.
And it was that feeling growing up of like, it totally makes sense to have absoluteobedience and believing this story because the alternative is death.
(32:39):
The alternative is game over and you're going to be found and you're going to be tortured.
Like the stakes were always so high.
Yeah.
And by the way, this is one of the ways I counter the apocalypticizing a little bit,right?
Because I sort of say to people, okay, so, you know, my, this is gonna sound morbid, buthe was a 20 year soldier, my husband, and he always used to say like, how do you fly, you
(33:04):
know, in combat zones and all this?
And he says, you know, I always figure it'll either work out or it'll immediately not bemy problem.
And so, you know, I will say to people, like,
The of disaster planning is for you to think, what would you do?
So you wanna think about the worst case, okay.
Say the worst happens, right?
(33:24):
What are you afraid of?
Labor camps?
You're afraid of death?
Like what you're gonna find out?
What are you afraid of?
Now what would you do?
And I feel like this can be a good shot of reality.
I do this to myself all of the time, right?
What am I afraid of?
Okay, what would I do?
I used to like,
walk through this when my husband was deployed and I was a expert on how people like myhusband died because that's how we met.
(33:53):
Right.
So I'm back home with a baby.
He's deployed.
I'm just sitting there with open anxiety and I would literally make an operations plan.
Like I would walk myself through.
OK, these two guys pull up.
Right.
And I got it down to where I'm like, I have 20 minutes till I can fall apart.
I'm sending four text messages and making one phone call, and then I will have the thingsin motion that I can just fall apart, right?
(34:20):
Because that's what we're afraid of.
We're afraid of this thing coming and just wrecking our life.
But the thing about apocalypticizing and preppers and all of this, right, is they're soafraid of their lives being ruined that they ruin their lives, right?
They're so afraid of someone abusing the children that they accidentally...
(34:41):
build a cult and abuse the ch- you know?
And so really just looking, like looking at that fear and being like, okay, the worst hashappened.
What are you, you know, I'm sure you get this Lydia, but I get asked like why I'm sounflappable all the time.
And I've just started looking at people and being like, I've survived the labor camps,right?
(35:02):
Like, I, you know, like, what's the worst, and then we'll deal with it.
But
The living in that when you don't have to be, like that's the cultiness and that's thething that I think makes it, as you said, easy to control, right?
(35:23):
Because of course you're gonna just follow the leader when the leader is shouting, they'reall coming to kill us.
Yeah, absolutely.
it's, you probably have this experience where you start realizing there's, there are oldremnants of like programming or things you grew up with that you didn't quite sweep out of
the corners.
You know, it's like, there's another thing that popped up.
(35:44):
And with, you know, the, the looking forward to the apocalypse, like I've alwaysromanticized the apocalypse.
Like, you know, Mormon and a cult within Mormonism, the idea of having like five yearsworth of everything in a bunker, like,
Even talking about it now, like it just feels so nice.
This is one of the reasons I say there's no sisterhood like the ex-cult sisterhood, right?
(36:08):
Because I'm like, the way I would lead a brigade of femmes that took Nazis out into thewoods and came back with that, right?
It's fun to sit around and being like, if it was unleashed, right?
If I didn't have to follow the laws of normal society, then what would we do?
(36:29):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's like, bring all your friends to the commune.
It is going to be awesome.
But like my partner also grew up Mormon.
So we're both former Mormons, which was an interesting coincidence when we first met tofind out.
But we just, just in like the last few months, we've realized how much we both love likesaving and stockpiling things.
(36:51):
And we had this weird realization of like, we're going to die with stuff.
We're going to have nice stuff.
So we just started using things.
Like I've got like the nice candle that I'm burning next to me and like, you know, I'musing all my face creams and we just realized why wouldn't we use it?
Why wouldn't we enjoy it now?
such, this is such an important tip for cult deconstruction, by the way.
(37:15):
Thank you for giving this to our listeners.
And I also like to say like everything we're going through is cult babies.
feel like millennials are going through.
And my analogy here is the plastic couch, right?
Like everyone had a grandma whose couch was covered in plastic.
And then you never, like you never enjoyed the couch because you didn't want to ruin thecouch.
(37:37):
And I'm from a family that
everyone gets like a fancy set of china when they get married.
And during our last move, as we were packing the china that we rarely ever used, we werelike, we're gonna every time, every time someone comes over, we don't care if it's the
best friend, we don't care if it's whatever, like the china comes out, it gets used, theheirloom table gets used, use your stuff, you know?
(38:03):
The stockpiling thing is real.
I just call it poverty trauma.
Like, my poverty trauma is still there.
My rapture trauma is still there.
What's interesting about our particular group, we didn't prep for the rapture or thetribulation, right?
Because we were convinced that we were going up.
(38:26):
So we were going to escape all of that.
And what that demonstrated in my thinking was I didn't have to worry about all of theproblems.
So it was a cop-out, right?
So if you talk about global warming or if you talk about World War III or famine or death,
All of that wasn't our concern because that's just all what you poor bastards are going tohave to endure after we are gone.
(38:52):
And so, you know, it alleviated us having to think about anything difficult or hard in ourlives.
In fact, we would come together on that Sunday evening service and we were a collection, agroup of people steeped in poverty, lots of problems.
But the goal for that Sunday night emotional catharsis was for a moment to escape all ofthose problems, to be caught up in this glorious bliss of worship.
(39:22):
And so, you know, it's a double-edged sword for those that are prepping.
Yes, they do have some things to do, but for those of us that were convinced we're goingto escape all of this, we didn't have to think about it.
We didn't have to try to wrap our minds around what is happening in the world.
Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
feel like Mormonism sort of had a combination.
Like we needed to stockpile and save everything to get through the hard times.
(39:45):
But then when the whole earth burns with fire, like in the Mormon church, it's like acommon thing that people say, fire insurance.
Fire insurance is as long as you gave at least 10%, like at least 10 % of all the moneyyou've ever made in your life to the Mormon church, then when the whole earth burns, the
Mormons will be raised up.
(40:05):
So it's fire insurance.
but you've got to have your food storage to make it to that point.
So we were doing all of it.
Can I tell you all an amazing story?
All right, so the Children of God in the 80s moves to Japan, right?
And this is in Japan's heyday of cults, right?
So they moved to Japan, they have super fancy backers, they're gonna go legit.
(40:29):
And they make this deal with the government of Tokyo to give them this huge portion ofland that they can use for their commune.
And basically the deal is they're gonna develop this land
in parentheses with teenage slave labor, and then they're gonna give it back to thegovernment after 10 years, right?
(40:50):
And the children of God made this deal around the world in many places.
But they were so chuffed with themselves because they knew that in less than 10 years, in1993, Jesus was gonna come back.
So they were not gonna have to give the land back to the government.
(41:11):
So anyway, needless to say, Jesus did not come back.
The land went to the government.
of God got deported from Tokyo and they cannot wait to someday go there and like walkaround this part of Tokyo that was developed by the cult that like felt so, just so
self-righteous, right, about how they were getting one over.
(41:32):
And here we are.
Lydia, tell us a little bit about how you started your journey out of that particularbelief system and that hyper control and what led you out and was there one moment or was
it a process?
What did that look like in your life?
Yes.
So there were moments that led up to it, but a really poignant part was when I was incollege and my dad never stopped looking for his kids.
(42:04):
Like 25 years, he never stopped looking for his kids because my mother essentiallykidnapped us away from him.
He wasn't able to contact us.
He just always kept looking.
So I was doing this like first independent thing.
You know, I'd lived with my mom my whole life and you know, G-Ma essentially, cause my momalways lived with G-Ma.
We were always in the same house.
And I went to college and one day I went into, I went to BYU, so like the Mormon college.
(42:30):
And I went into my bishops, like the leader of our congregation's office and he justcasually said, he's like, hey, your dad reached out and he's trying to get in contact with
you.
And I just like went, why does a ghost?
And I got the tunnel vision and like, I couldn't hear anything that he was saying.
(42:51):
And I was going through like this full panic and all I could get out was like, he's amurderer.
He's a rapist.
Don't tell him anything.
I'm leaving.
Like I'm not in this, you know, you know, the ward, like our congregation anymore.
Like I had to leave.
I went and I called my roommates.
I'm like, I'm sorry.
I never told you this, but
You might not be safe, lock the doors, lock the windows.
(43:11):
Like they're Satan worshippers.
I didn't say Satan worshippers.
was still trying to be like, I have a, I have a stalker.
I was still trying to like seem kind of normal.
And I was terrified.
So what my mom did, she came and picked me up.
This was like the confirmation of like, yes, he's, he's found you.
And she drove me around to all the police departments and in Northern Utah, there's likeall these little towns that are really close to each other and they all have their own
(43:36):
police department.
So we went around to like five, six police departments and I went from my whole lifelistening to these stories, believing them, but they were secrets that I wasn't supposed
to tell.
I was just hearing my mother and G-ma talk about them.
Two, I was walking into these police departments over and over and my mother was having mesay the story for the first time in my life.
(44:00):
So I would go up and I'd be like, you know, my father has found me.
He's the leader of a satanic cult.
He's murdered multiple people.
He's a rapist.
you know, satanic ritualistic abuse.
So, you know, when the Provo Linden police, they don't know what to do with that.
They're like, okay, what do you want us to do?
(44:22):
But it was in the saying it out loud.
It was in hearing my own voice say this that for the first time I got this, what we callin our community, like a logical kickback of
You say something and there's a part of your brain that doubts it.
And I'm saying this and I remember thinking for the first time, I hope that's true.
(44:43):
That's a really big thing to say about someone if it's not true.
And that was one of the first little breaking points where I started wondering.
And that led to really wanting to know for myself.
I'm like, I wanna know.
I was told there was boxes of evidence that were from the floor to the ceiling.
of all of the medical reports of the horrible things that had happened and are spinebroken and all of this, that medical professionals had to take the entire day off after
(45:12):
examining my brother and I, because even though was their specialty, they couldn't evenhandle our child abuse and that it was all documented.
And so I asked to see it.
I'm like, there's all this evidence.
I want to see it.
And I got totally shut down.
G-ma and my mom, they're like, absolutely not.
If you see it, your brain is going to be triggered.
You'll be under the control of Satan, like not worth it.
(45:33):
So I did the first sneaky thing I'd ever done in my life because I knew where the boxeswere.
And I went in and I looked inside and there were boxes and boxes and it was documentationof letters of my dad wanting to see his kids.
Please come home.
Why didn't you show up?
I've been trying to see my children for a year.
(45:55):
Like, you know, whatever you need, we can sort this out." There's like all of theseletters from him.
And then there was a big, thick packet that was a training manual written by some churchfor police officers to recognize satanic rituals and the signs and how Satan worship
works.
So I started opening this packet and as I flip through, it's like, well, Satan worshipers
(46:20):
They baptize children in blood because they do the opposite of what God does, which isbaptize them in water.
so it was like a whole list of all the things that Satan worshipers do.
And this packet wasn't about me.
This was like an educational packet.
But I had been told verbatim, everything that was in that packet had happened to mepersonally.
(46:42):
And I had this realization of this is all made up.
I started making all those logical connections like, well, how do they know that my spinewas broken over and over and all this rape happened?
Either they weren't there so they don't know or they were there and they let it happen.
Like my brain started putting these logical conclusions together and that was the breakingpoint of really understanding that this is a made up story.
(47:09):
And this really demonstrates, I think, a point that just always applies always, which isif it's valid, it stands up to scrutiny.
And when you're asking to see proof of stuff and you're getting shut down, if it's valid,it stands up to scrutiny.
And I add to this for people, there's no reason for an or, there's no valid reason for anorganization to tell you not to speak to ex-members.
(47:34):
Like, right?
There just isn't.
If it's valid, it stands up to scrutiny.
Am I the same token, like comparing something to a cult or a bad group?
Doesn't hurt them if they're not a cult or a bad group.
know, so when you like my first like huge blaring red flag is like when you ask to seeproof and they start stalling and they start making it I'm sure right about you and
(48:01):
doubting and this is what happens and
Instead of just showing you because literally if all of these horrible things thathappened to you and your loved ones had proof of it They would just be able to say here it
is
Yeah.
So Lydia, did you confront the folks that were perpetuating these lies?
(48:23):
what did it look like?
What were the next steps for you?
Yeah, so I did confront my mother and G-ma and I told them that I had looked in the boxesand I didn't see anything and they simply just would not talk about it.
Like they didn't get defensive.
They're like, we will not talk about this.
And I had been so practiced in like suppressing my emotions that I wasn't like mad.
(48:46):
I was just confused.
I was like, but I don't understand.
Like, why would you say this if there was no proof?
So.
I really genuinely was curious and wanted to understand and was open to hear what theysaid.
Maybe there's another box somewhere else.
It's like maybe I missed something.
But my mother very vehemently told me, I would rather you blame me and think that I liedto you your whole life than talk about it and have your brain break and be controlled by
(49:18):
Satan and we'll never get you back.
So that is where it ended.
you know, I kept trying, you know, years after that, if we were just talking about theweather, because it was always very surface after that.
And I wanted to have a real conversation.
It was just completely shut down.
So it just never went anywhere.
They were never willing to talk about it until much later.
(49:40):
Just a few years ago when I talked to G-Ma and she came up with an amazing explanation.
Happy to share that.
But at the time, they just shut it down.
And so did you manage to reconcile with your birth father?
Yes.
So I...
Yeah.
a completely different story on the other side.
(50:00):
absolutely.
And he had been trying to contact us for 25 years.
And when I found out that it wasn't true, there was really no action that I took.
And I think that's part of the time and the healing that it takes to leave a cult is I'mlike, well, I don't know him and maybe he is a scary person.
like, you there's probably something valid here.
So I just sat on this information for years.
(50:24):
And I was getting into meditation, which was like a little edgy as a Mormon, but I saw thebenefits.
So I was getting into meditation and one day I was meditating and I have not had anexperience like this before or since this moment.
But in the meditation, just sort of out of the blue, I got this very strong message ofyour dad is going to die and you will have never known.
(50:49):
And that landed in a way that it seemed impossible.
Like I had my own daughter at that point.
She was about the age that I was when my mother kidnapped me away from my dad.
And I remember looking at her and being like, if she disappeared tonight, what would stopme from caring about her, like trying to find her?
(51:11):
And I had this new understanding.
And so I had an old email address from when my dad found me that fateful day at
my college and I reached out to him and he sent me back this beautiful email of like, thismy daughter?
Is this true?
(51:31):
And it ended up that he had just moved back to the United States like a month before,because he was living in Taiwan where the rest of my family was and we were only five
hours apart.
And so I drove with my daughter and my husband at the time.
drove to like a Starbucks inside a grocery store in like Asheville, North Carolina, likesort of halfway point.
(51:55):
And I was so scared.
Like even though I knew it wasn't true, as I was driving, I remember just looking out thewindow and like seeing the trees go by and I was just soaking in everything.
I was like listening to the sounds my daughter was making in the back seat.
Cause I just knew this was the last day I was going to be alive.
Like I just knew I was driving to my death.
Like everything in my nervous system was like, you are
(52:17):
dying going to meet your dad.
And the moment that I walked into Starbucks, I saw this old Chinese man that was sittingat a table and he turned around and we saw each other and we just both broke into tears.
And all of that fear, all of that you're gonna die, all of that lifetime of if you evermeet your dad, that'll be the last day you've ever been alive, just completely melted
(52:42):
away.
And we just cried and hugged each other.
And I found out I had a little sister and she was there and she was like the same age asmy daughter and they've been best friends ever since.
And that has been one of the most beautiful and rewarding relationships that I couldimagine.
Cause my dad wasn't just not an evil person.
My dad is an incredible human being that has loved his children with no contact from them.
(53:08):
That has found his own healing after his life was completely destroyed by my mom and Gma.
It has found
like kindness and he texts me like every day and gives me life advice that he never got togive me growing up.
So yeah, my dad is amazing.
That's a beautiful story.
Wow.
(53:29):
So where are you at today?
And what does your life look like today?
Obviously, you're taking a lot of what you learned, and you're channeling that intohelping others.
So what does that look like for you today?
Yes, so it's interesting because as I was getting out of the cult, I was finding someneuroscience principles that were really, really helping me.
(53:52):
It started in that moment where I said those things out loud and my brain was able todoubt it.
And I started understanding how my brain worked and it really helped me in the healing of,you know, moving out of a cult where I could live a normal life and, you know, have a
family of my own and, you know, build a career and do all the things that,
Like for instance, my brother was never able to do, like he's been in a basement fordecades and hasn't ever like moved forward in life.
(54:18):
And I was able to do that because of working with my brain.
And I thought that I would just never use those principles again.
I was really grateful that they essentially saved my life.
But then later on, I developed a life-threatening eating disorder and I was completely outof control.
And I was at a low point where I didn't know if it was worth living.
I was going to be in this awful cycle with binge eating and starving myself and bingeeating again and out of control.
(54:43):
And I remembered those principles of understanding my brain of how to deprogram from acult.
And I'd been trying things for my eating disorder for years and it just kept on gettingworse.
And I remember wondering at that low point, I wonder if I could deprogram from an eatingdisorder like I deprogrammed from a cult.
And in one week, I was completely free.
(55:06):
I never wanted to binge after that.
Like it was not even just managing it.
Like I was done with my eating disorder and I was a health coach at the time.
So I had a big network of people.
was a lot of hypocrisy there.
Clearly I was totally out of control and a health coach, which, which definitely happens.
And so I started helping other people that had been struggling as well and found thatthose set, that set of principles was extremely effective.
(55:30):
So we've helped over a thousand women to end their eating disorders.
And then that group of women was like,
this is the most effective thing I've ever done in my life.
What else does this apply to?
So that's when we started our executive coaching, doing leadership training for the USArmy and for leaders at Disney, Adobe and National Geographic.
And so helping leaders to understand their own brains and match their identities to theirgoals.
(55:54):
And at the She Center, really our mission is to restore women to leadership.
We believe that the root of every problem in the world is the missing influence of women.
And so we're here to restore that influence and decision-making and leadership and thewisdom of women in the world, because we see that's incredibly, incredibly effective.
So we support women moving through creating new chapters and not wanting to pollute theirpresent with their past and really letting their past go and rewriting their own story.
(56:24):
So that's what we do now and coach 9,000 women, over 9,000 women since 2010.
And it's been an absolute joy of my life.
And we love our community.
It's one of those things that makes me grateful for growing up in a cult because thoseprinciples came in handy of getting out of that.
that's beautiful way, right?
(56:44):
To take what was evil and harmful and traumatic in all of our lives and to turn thataround and to try to find a way to not only help ourselves, to help others.
So, wow.
Thank you, Lydia.
And I think it's such an important thing to the power of deconstruction, right?
Like, I've always found what you said, like once you can name it, you kind of almost havea handle on it, you know, like, can I apply these to this?
(57:12):
You know, and like I've been through some similar eating disorder stuff as you.
It's inspiring to hear you talk about that.
But I think, you know, once we deconstruct, like we get to use all of that stuff.
that was like in our experience.
And one of the things I'm really proud of, of Uncultured, and for those watching onYouTube, you can get it signed, attached here now, because we're fancy like that.
(57:41):
One of the things I was proud about is I think I was like, I think something that I showedwas that cult babies can teach us stuff other than just surviving trauma, right?
Like we understand group dynamics and
programming and leadership, right?
And some of these things that we were talking about, like at this very deep intrinsiclevel, and we see patterns that other people don't see.
(58:08):
And, you know, I used to think it was trite when people said like, oh, I wouldn't change,you know, how I grew up.
But now that I've actually done healing, I'm like,
a little embarrassed that I'm starting to feel that way, right?
Like I'm starting to feel like, no, no, I get it, right?
Like I use so many of the skills that make my life what it is and my relationships, whatthey are, are from the things that I've been through and the healing and all of that.
(58:36):
So that was really beautiful what you said and your whole story really.
Thank you for asking and thank you for sharing.
I just, I love that we get to be on the other side of these stories and to be sharingthat.
And it is, like, it's not acceptable the way that we were treated or raised or thesesystems.
And you might as well get all the gold out of it, right?
You might as well enjoy how great you are at focus and singing and doing harmonies orwhatever the weird stuff that was like hammered into our experience of mastering skills
(59:06):
that we can still enjoy.
my gosh, I'm writing a musical and I'm like, I'm going to put it on and it's going to playfor 10 years because all the cult babies are going to want to come and sing and dance and
perform and like, we're going to get through it by embracing performance culture, right?
Like, amazing.
so much.
Absolutely.
(59:26):
Lydia, thank you so much for joining us and we'll have all of your contact information inthe show notes.
So if people want to reach out to you and support you and support your work.
And I feel like we've got to have you back at some point in the future because there's somany parts of your story that we didn't get to that we want to talk about and unpack
because it's so very helpful.
(59:47):
So Lydia, thank you so much for being with us.
Thank you for having me on, it's such a joy and I really appreciate your message and it'sall so good hanging out with our cult babies.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, all of you that watch and listen on a weekly basis.
We are so appreciative of you.
Do us a favor and hit that subscribe button, that like button.
(01:00:11):
Leave us a review.
That's always helpful for the analytics to get the information out.
Support Daniela.
Purchase her book if you haven't done so already.
Check her out on all of the social medias as well as
Myself, I'm there too, so you can find me and our delightful producer who does a wonderfuljob, Haley.
(01:00:34):
They do a tremendous job week in and week out.
And so we're so appreciative to what they do and to all of you.
Thanks for being here.
And for Daniela Messenek-Young, my name is Scott Lloyd.
We'll see you on the next episode of Cults and the Culting of America.
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