August 13, 2025 • 49 mins
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In this episode, our guest Luna Whitlock shares her compelling story of growing up immersed in the Jesus movement and navigating life within multiple high-control religious groups. Raised by a former hippie father who became deeply involved in fundamentalist and patriarchal teachings, Luna experienced the strict discipline, purity culture, and submission expected of women in these environments.
Her family’s journey took them through various cults, including one led by the notorious R.G. Stair, before Luna found the strength to leave with the support of her future husband. Now a solo parent, Luna reflects on her healing journey, reclaiming her voice, and raising her daughters with a sense of freedom and self-trust. This episode offers a raw and hopeful look at resilience, faith, and the path to personal liberation.
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for updates, and support the podcast on Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee to help us continue sharing these important stories!
#TrueCrimePodcast #CultSurvivor #ReligiousTrauma #ExposingCults #FaithDeconstruction #CultStories #SpiritualAbuse #ChurchAbuse #LifeAfterCult #BreakingFree #SurvivorStory #TrueStoryPodcast #PodcastRecommendations #HealingJourney #CultAwareness #ExposingTheTruth #CourageToLeave #ManipulationAndControl #ApplePodcasts #SpotifyPodcast
In this episode, our guest Luna Whitlock shares her compelling story of growing up immersed in the Jesus movement and navigating life within multiple high-control religious groups. Raised by a former hippie father who became deeply involved in fundamentalist and patriarchal teachings, Luna experienced the strict discipline, purity culture, and submission expected of women in these environments.
Her family’s journey took them through various cults, including one led by the notorious R.G. Stair, before Luna found the strength to leave with the support of her future husband. Now a solo parent, Luna reflects on her healing journey, reclaiming her voice, and raising her daughters with a sense of freedom and self-trust. This episode offers a raw and hopeful look at resilience, faith, and the path to personal liberation.
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for updates, and support the podcast on Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee to help us continue sharing these important stories!
#TrueCrimePodcast #CultSurvivor #ReligiousTrauma #ExposingCults #FaithDeconstruction #CultStories #SpiritualAbuse #ChurchAbuse #LifeAfterCult #BreakingFree #SurvivorStory #TrueStoryPodcast #PodcastRecommendations #HealingJourney #CultAwareness #ExposingTheTruth #CourageToLeave #ManipulationAndControl #ApplePodcasts #SpotifyPodcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
The world tomorrow. The Worldwide Church of God presents Ribert's
w Armstrong and.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I am here to bring you the truth.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
No one else is telling you the things that God
is telling you through me.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
He's making through me.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The Lord let me experience what it is to be
a new bride. You know, I'm not.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Worried about what I'm about to say, though it may
be graphic.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
We're coming to the Lord and if you can.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Take it, beyond the veil is the chamber. That's the
wedding chamber. The Lord told me that.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
But from then on, visions begin to come. When this
comes up on me, it produces the vision.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I'm able to.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Tell people what's wrong with them, what they must do
in life, and the sins that they are holding back.
Speaker 5 (00:50):
In their life.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
God is going to be moving vitally in fot judgment.
Speaker 5 (01:03):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Cult Nick Star Podcast.
I know that it's been a hot minute since you've
seen us, So we took.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
A little break.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
Part of that was planned, part of it wasn't. We
just had some scheduling conflicts and then I had some
fantastic travel, so we couldn't do exactly what we wanted
to do schedule wize, so we took a little impromptu
break here which was nice. But now we're back so
I know you've all been missing us. As always, please
go follow us on our socials if you're not already, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.
(01:32):
We also have that newer way to connect with us.
You can leave a voice message with a question or
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right now. Follow that link, click record and send us
a voice message. We want to hear from you now.
(01:53):
I also want to do our Double Portion Club shout
outs right quick. Shanda and Chase, Heather Bartlett and Carla.
Thank you all for being in our club and supporting
the podcast. If you are listening and you want to
support the podcast, got a couple of different ways you
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Club just ten dollars a month, you get the ad
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Speaker 2 (02:14):
The shout out.
Speaker 5 (02:16):
Or you can pay five dollars a month to support
the work and you'll get ad free episodes and we'll
send you a cool holographic cult mixtoor sticker.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Now, I'm gonna quickly read a review.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
That we got.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
We've had quite a few in the last six weeks
or so, so's we kind of have a backlog that
we can read through. But I really like this one.
It says I can't stop listening riveting real life story,
tragic and inspiring. I've never personally been in a cult,
but my husband was in scientology, so much is familiar
between cults. My husband disconnected from me and our three
(02:51):
sons because of Scientology.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
What I really love.
Speaker 5 (02:54):
Is listening in on family discussions and how they interact
with each other. Maddie and family and friends are likable, smart,
and resilient, I hope for all the best life has
to offer them. I wish I could give the young
Ashley a big hug for all she had to endure
alone without her family. And that's from Gallan two thousand
and one in the US. So thank you very much
(03:18):
for that review.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
I didn't want to give me a hug.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
And a hug as well.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, should have.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
That's very sweet.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
Yeah, thank you very much for that review. Now onto
today's episode. We had a guess that actually reached out
to us.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I don't remember how many months ago. It's been.
Speaker 5 (03:38):
Like we've said before, like we have so many people
reach out through all these different ways, email and Instagram
and Facebook and whatever else TikTok, and it's hard to
keep up with those, but this was one that kind
of stuck out. This is her name is Luna, and
she we met with her before we had her on
the podcast, just to kind of have like an informal
(03:59):
get to know you kind of thing, and her story
was very interesting and we thought have a lot of
things that were parallels to what we experienced and could
be helpful, so we wanted to have her on. So
I actually want to tell the folks a little bit
about Luna.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Yeah, and I loved this conversation. She reached out to us.
A lot of her story really paralleled hours so many commonalities,
which I think is what really prompted her to reach
out and ask about sharing her story. She grew up
(04:34):
like in the heart of the Jesus movement and found
herself entangled in quite a few different cult groups. Her
family did a lot of moving around, and so she
unfortunately had a lot of experience with a lot of
different high control groups, and you know, is deeply affected
(04:58):
by purity cult in patriarchal control and had a lot
of like deep religious conditioning that she has been working
on to unravel and heal from. And a lot of
our conversation, I feel like did center around the healing process,
(05:20):
which is really important even if you haven't even started
that process yet to be able to hear like what
that looks like and how that starts. And I thought
she gave some really good advice to listeners, and I
found her story really like a hopeful one, and she's
(05:42):
a very resilient person and I loved talking to her.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
So have a listen. So I go by Luna. That's
my name, and I'm fifty five and i have two
teenage daughters that I'm raising as a solo parent. And
I've kind of been in a huge life change with
a laugh three years, I mean really twelve years I
(06:13):
left cool. You know, I'm really finding myself to be
perfectly honest with you. If you ask me who I am,
I would say I'm discovering that. So I really don't
know what to say to that.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Yeah, I think that's normal, considering considering your background, I
feel the same.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, yeah, okay, So you.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
When you wrote into Us, you mentioned that you were
the eldest of six right during the rise of what
you call the Jesus Movement, which I have to say, like,
I'm not exactly sure.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Could you explain what that is? Yeah? So I was
born in sixty nine and it was at the end
of the Vietnam War and my dad was in the military.
So my teen my parents were teen teen parents. They
got pregnant with me, got married, and then my dad
(07:18):
went away. He was he was in Germany during my
first birthday. Well, when he came home, he was basically
a hippie, which is pretty typical for the early seventy
and by the time I was three and a half,
things had gotten pretty I think they were pretty rocky
(07:40):
with my parents. I think my dad was searching for something.
He had had a very dysfunctional upbringing, difficult home life,
and so it's my interpretation that he was searching for something.
And so he had some hippie buddies who he kept asking.
(08:01):
They would you be sitting around smoking out and they
would be talking about, you know, living naked in caves
and things like that, and he would say, are you
talking about God? And they were like, no, Dued, we're
not talking about that. And so finally one day he said, again,
are you guys talking about Jesus? And he had been
(08:22):
raised Lutheran, so I think what he knew about that
was we're not Catholic, but he didn't have a lot
of religious input. So anyway, they said, dude, we need
where you need to go. So they loaded up in
the hippie van and they took him down to this
church where a former Baptist preacher who had gotten filled
(08:42):
with the spirit was preaching to long Hairs. And I
guess the place was packed out standing room only, and
he was preaching to all these hippies who were searching
for something. And so that's where he got saved. And
I think it just I think he had a lot
of guilt and he felt he felt new, I guess.
(09:08):
So he says that he got home that night, got
out of the hippie van, looked up at the expanse
of stars in the sky, and said, Wow, what would
a family look like after thirty years of this? And
that began his journey of wow what he always referred
(09:30):
to as his relationship with Jesus, and I totally get that.
But I look back now and I see it was religion,
and you know, you can you can call it all
kinds of things, but it was religion, and it was
increasingly more high control religion as the years went by.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
So yeah, okay, So how old were you when that happened.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
I think I was about three and a half.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Okay, See, you probably don't remember a lot about what
life was like before religion kind of took center stage.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I don't, and I remember the stories, you know, and
of course mostly my dad told the stories. So yeah,
I'm sure that my perspective and my memories are colored
by you know, his perception.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
But yeah, was your mom on board with this? Like
did she come along with him?
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So? I think at first, no, she. I think she
tells the story that she was like sitting on the
stairs in the stairwell, you know, listening to all the
guys in the living room with me, and I think
my little brother was a baby at the time, and
she was just like, oh my god, what are you
doing now? Like she had heard the whole you know,
living naked in caves thing, like she was she was afraid,
(10:50):
she was sixteen when I was born, so she was
still only like nineteen, you know, less than twenty. Oh yeah, yeah,
so I think she was a little afraid, but he
took her back to the church another time with him,
and I think she had a lot of guilt a
(11:10):
bround being pregnant with me, you know, out of wedlock,
and I don't know what else, but she felt convicted
and had a similar experience going down to the altar, repenting,
feeling forgiven. And then at that point I think she
(11:31):
joined him, I don't know how oldheartedly, because they very
quickly began to conform to the submission standards of the Bible.
Women submit to men, wives submit to husbands, and so
that's that's pretty much all I ever knew. So I
(11:53):
don't know how much of what she experienced was was
herself or or if it was just her following him.
I know they had some struggles in their early years,
and she eventually acquiesced and submitted, and that's so that's
(12:16):
really what I always knew.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Yeah, so you're talking about basically that hierarchy. It sounds
like the umbrella that we always talk about with you know,
God and then the husband and then the wife.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
And the children, and.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
So what do you remember about that to like the
role of women and then you as you know, a
female child of being in that so early.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
So I can tell you the first thing I remember,
And I don't know if it's an actual memory or
if it was because I heard the story so many times,
but it begins with my relationship with my dad, as
Richards disciplined and he got the memo that children needed
(13:09):
to be punished corporally spanked to have them comply to
your wishes. And you know, the whole train of a
child in the way he should go, and when he's old,
he won't depart. And then later it was beat thy son,
he won't die now, shall take his hole from hell.
So you know, that's that's the mindset that I was
raised in. And so my very first spanking, he tells
(13:32):
the story. I was four and he had me over
his knee and he was spanking me, and he says,
I looked up at him, and he says, it was
like that movie where the little kid's head spins on
the neck. And I looked up at him and I said,
where's the love of Jesus now, daddy. Oh, it shocked him.
(13:56):
And he said, I am showing you the love of
This is how I show you. So from a very
early age, I was taught to equate pain, discipline with love.
And you know, when you have that foundation on top
of the foundation, you are a dirty sinner that needs
(14:21):
a blood sacrifice to commend you to God. Well there's
a lot of words I could think of to describe that,
but yeah, it's a It really warps you. And that
(14:41):
was the foundation of my entire life from that point on. So,
getting back to your question, I was raised to believe
that because man is the head of woman. I was
a woman and until I got married, thought it was
my head. So a woman needs a spiritual head. She's
(15:04):
not capable of making decisions for her life by herself.
She is not capable of going to God for herself,
and she has to i mean essentially be submitted to
all men. Everybody with a penis Like I mean, let's
be real, right, the mom supposed to say that, but
it so that's how I was raised and I believed it.
(15:28):
And then watching the dynamic between my parents through the years,
my mother not having a voice, she basically uh was
not able to speak for herself to think for herself,
and so that's what was modeled to me. And you know,
she was very quiet anyway. She was raised in a
(15:49):
death home. Both of her parents were death so her
first language was signed anyway. So I don't remember a
lot about my interaction with her except that she modeled
me to follow my dad. So as the years went by,
we went from group to group, and my dad was
(16:10):
promoted pretty early in his ministry to I don't know,
elder pastor worship leader. He was very talented on the guitar,
has a very nice singing voice, just a natural gift
with music and a gift of leading people in worship.
So he involved all six of us as we got
(16:33):
older in that with him. So I was raised in music,
making music in the church. Eventually, when I was older,
being on the worship team as a family, we made
CDs of you know, worship and praise music. So but
the whole time, every group we were a part of
(16:56):
seemed to get more and more high control. We were
part of the Covenant movement in the in Texas in
the early to mid eighties. I don't know if you're
familiar with them. Some men out of Samobile, Alabama. I
don't know, Pasca Gilla, Mississippi. I don't know they started.
(17:17):
They decided that they all needed accountability, and I think
it was because of a moral failure of one of
their colleagues. So they were like, we need accountability to
one another. So they covenanted with each other to maintain
accountability together. And so we were part of an offshoot
of one of those groups. One of those men. We
(17:40):
moved all the way from Kansas City to Texas to
be part of one of these groups. And then after
I graduated high well, so I went to a private
Christian schools my whole entire school career, graduated from high school,
and then we moved to the north of Virginia area
to plant and church with one of these pastors. And
(18:05):
at that point I was unmarried and still and still
living at home because I believed I needed a spiritual head.
So I'm a grown adult woman in my early twenties.
And we were fairly normal, I think, you know, like
I wore a miniskirit to sing on the worship team
(18:25):
that whole you know, it just was pretty normal, make up,
jewelry pants. And then my dad experienced some kind of
a Oh, people might have called it a mid life crisis.
His father passed and he was in his say, mid forties,
and he just took a turn down a super fundamentalist path.
(18:51):
And so during that time he began to preach to
his children, God doesn't have grandchildren. You can't get to
heaven on my cook And it became very much more.
There was always fear, shame and guilt used to control us,
but it became much more intense and lots more fear
(19:13):
and shape. And I remember sitting around the table as
young adults and him just like digging in our woodpile
to find out what we needed to confess. And at
the time I thought that that was normal, you know,
I thought, well, this is what God requires, and he's
(19:33):
the head of the family. So even though it didn't
feel right in my gut, I still followed it. And
especially being a woman, you know, I didn't feel like
I had any agency whatsoever, and I was just waiting
for the day when He would give me some other man,
and that was a long time in coming.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
So was that something where he talked to you about
that and he was going to choose a mate for you,
or were you going to have any say in.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
That at that point I always I would say, theoretically,
I had say, yeah, you know, there's a lot of
nuance there when when you're not free to make your
own decisions, then you're not really free to ask advice.
(20:29):
So I was in a relationship with a young man
for a couple of years, ended up engaged to him,
but I wasn't really in love with him. I wasn't
attracted to him, and I felt like, this is so warped.
I thought, well, if it's not my will, it's probably
God's will. Yeah, So I just resigned myself to the
(20:53):
fact that this was my lot in life, and in
order for me to do God's will, I needed to
put my desires and will aside and take up my
cross and follow Jesus. So that's what I was doing.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
I'm curious about that, because, like I I that resonates
with me. I was thinking about this the other day
that it felt like for me, being a young woman
in the church, like I was going to get chosen
by someone rather than I would like equally choose someone
(21:32):
who's also choosing me. And it's almost that sense of like, well,
whoever decides they want to pursue me and marry me,
like this is like you said, like this is God's
will or whatever, And I'm wondering if if that's kind
of where you were and why you were like not
(21:56):
exactly aligning with this guy, but feeling like this is
who God has chosen.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah. Yeah. So I was raised in what would come
to be known as purity culture. Now we have a
word for that, but basically I think I don't know
if I would if I can pinpoint any like sermon
(22:24):
or something like that that was specific in those days,
but basically, the woman's body is a stumbling block to men,
so we need cover it as much as possible. And
I remember my dad saying to me at one point
in my early twenties, remember the modesty of your mother.
(22:46):
And I was like, okay. And at that point, I
was kind of getting ready to find my wings. I
was engaged to be married already. To me, I was
starting to taste some freedom from those constraints, and so
I just kind of sheltered it. I didn't really take
it seriously, but that was the mindset. And then during
(23:06):
this relationship with this young man, I was curious if
I could be attracted to him, If I can, Yeah, uh,
you know, with him, intimately, I was a virgin. Yeah,
I had. I don't think i'd ever even kissed anyone.
(23:28):
I had never seriously dated long term, I had. I
had dated a few young men, but nothing serious. So
I initiated some physical encounters with him that crossed lines.
And so one day I came home one night after
a date and I came in the house and my
(23:48):
dad was sitting and watching television. He turned to me
and he said, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said,
your virginity is threatened. Oh my goodness, Oh my god.
So I go downstairs, I get my phone in my
bedroom and I call him and I'm like, oh my god,
my cand nosina. And so I said, we've got to confess.
And so we went and sat down with him a
(24:10):
couple days later and divulged the extent of our physical interaction.
And it had the effect of, you know, shame, obviously shame,
but I knew that that was something that I had
chosen because I needed to know is it going to
(24:32):
be possible for me to be intimate with this man
once we're married. So I made a choice with my
body for myself, but because he and I can tell you.
When I look back now, I was a fifty five
year old woman. I'm like, the Holy Spirit didn't tell
him Jack. What happened was he got up from his
(24:54):
chair and went and looked out the front window and
saw us making out in the car. Yeah of course, Yeah,
but he had always conditioned me to believe that he
was privy to God's thoughts about me, and God talked
to him about me. So I lived in that fear
(25:15):
all the time. So long story short, I didn't end
up marrying that young man. Some things happen, and now
I'm like, oh, the universe intervened on my behalf because
that just would not have been a match and it
wouldn't have blasted long term. But that set me up
for another I don't know. I was thirty a by
(25:38):
the time I finally got married, so you know, but
at least I wasn't in a marriage that I didn't choose,
you know. So yeah, I'm.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
Just going to say it was the Holy Spirit told
me card that your dad pulled with. Was that something
that he did routinely with you.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
And your family?
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Absolutely, sound so familiar.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Obviously the.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Most obvious thing the Holy Spirit told you.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Oh, yeah, well, you know, one time, and I think
the first time I ever saw through this was because
of my ex husband. My dad was his pastor and
we hadn't been married too long, and my dad had
this thing about coffee. He's very sensitive to caffin, so
he's kind of a little bit legalistic about things, and
(26:33):
so if he if he doesn't feel like God wants
him to do that, then it's probably just the best
thing for no one to do that. So anyway, my
husband came, uh, greeted him with a hug, and had
just had a coffee and my dad said, and it
wasn't like a spoken rule, you can't drink coffee, okay,
(26:53):
but my dad said something to him like, uh, the
Holy Spirit revealed to him that he'd had coffee, and
he was like, later he told me about it, and
he was like, dude, you smell that on my breath.
Like there was no Holy Spirit revealing anything. And by
the way, if the Holy Spirit was going to be
(27:15):
revealing stuff like that, don't you think he would have
revealed to you that the prophet in the cult we
were later in was molesting young girls, Like wouldn't that
have been the type of thing that the Holy Spirit
would be revealing rather than people having coffee.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Yeah, in these groups, the Holy Spirit is really fixated
on these minute details, right And honestly, the coffee thing
you would have lost me, I would that would just
be the end.
Speaker 5 (27:52):
So, Luna, the track that your dad kind of started
taking your family as you age, do you think that
was kind of hand in hand with his natural inclinations?
And I guess for context, the reason I asked is,
so many of the things in my life, and with
Ashley too, with our dad, like you can look at
(28:12):
it now and say like, well, yeah, you liked these
things or didn't like these things, so naturally the Lord
is leading you towards the things that you already think.
Do you feel like that was the case or was
it kind of separate from is how he naturally would be.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
No, the way I've come to see it, and what
I've studied about attachment theory and personality disorders and things
like that, I am a firm believer that your formative
years in childhood predict your path if you don't heal.
(28:51):
So it's my opinion that his dysfunctional upbringing his relationship
with his mother. I think he has a mother wound.
I know he does, and I think that religion afforded
him the control over the people around him so that
he could feel safe. I don't think he ever felt
safe as a child, and I think that the core
(29:15):
wound for him was his mother. So it really served
his wound to view women as Jezebel if they weren't
in submission. So that's just my opinion as I've come
to understand it, and so it offers me a lot
(29:36):
of compassion for him, and yet not an excuse for
the ways that he controlled people in order to feel
safe himself. And I just think it's artificial, and I
think religion really offers that avenue to people who are
I mean most of the men that I am familiar
(30:00):
you're with, either from my past or just observing and
hearing other stories, especially from women, were wounded in childhood.
And of course, you know, you don't go to therapy
because you don't go to the world for healing. You
just put it all under the blood. And I'm sorry,
that does not heal. That doesn't work. And you can't
(30:22):
just put things under the blood and expect the healing
to occur. You have to revisit it. You have to
feel it to heal it kind of thing. And that's
just been my experience in my healing journey that there's
no there's no panaceah, there's no You've got to go
through it. And so I just feel like that's that's
(30:47):
he found. He found that ability in religion to control
the people around him to feel safe.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
Yeah, I think we can relate to that. Really, well,
that's that's been our experience, I think with our dad
kind of the conclusions that we've also come to.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
I think that that is an important thing that you
brought up, kind of getting to a point to where
you can recognize damage done by somebody, like you're talking
about your dad, you know, in this context, I'm thinking
about mine too, But you can also look at where
they came from, again not as an excuse, but just
(31:29):
as a way to.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Understand and to have empathy for that person.
Speaker 5 (31:32):
Like I think it would be easy and for people
on the outside looking in to think like, well, you
hate that person and you should and all of this, Like,
and I think we probably all can go through cycles
or have in the past with that. But really, I mean,
I feel like I can honestly say, just from my
perspective now, like it's uh, not a ton of anger.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Often, it's more just like I hate that that.
Speaker 5 (32:00):
Happen to you, and that this is how you responded.
I hate the things that you've done, but like I
can recognize, like that is a terrible way to be raised,
and I can understand why things might not be normal
in your worldview. But at the same time, like you said,
not an excuse, because people go through all kinds of things,
and not everybody that goes through difficult things turns.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
To this avenue.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
So I think kind of balancing those two is important,
and I hope people listening can kind of understand that
and that it's normal also to go through the cycle
of the anger and maybe the hatred, if that's not
too strong a word. Like that's a normal thing, absolutely,
and it's okay to let yourself kind of work through that,
like you said, that's the only way you can like
(32:45):
kind of going through it.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
And it's like layers too. I mean, in my healing journey,
oh my gosh, I've tried so many modalities and I've
had to go back and sit with all kinds of things,
and like memories will come back and I don't have
a lot of memories from my early childhood, and I'm
not really not sure why that is, and I don't remember.
(33:10):
It's so funny. I don't really remember like exact words
that people say, But what I remember is the feeling
that I got from the interaction. And so those are
the things that I've had to sit with and just
be uncomfortable with and feel the anger, and feel the
hatred and feel the rage at the way that my essence,
(33:37):
my truth was suppressed and silenced, and in coming to
reckon with all of that, taking my power back, reclaiming
my voice, and reparenting myself. Yeah, And I have found
(33:58):
through parenting my daughter, oh my gosh, there are times
when stuff comes up for me and I'm like, do
you really feel that way? Do you really feel that
way about women? Do you really feel that way about
a woman's body? Do you really or is that a
conditioning that you need to revisit and deprogram yourself from.
(34:22):
So I'm really grateful to be a mother. I'm grateful
to have two teenage daughters who do have a voice,
They have a sense of self that I never had. Yeah,
And so I learn from them every day and I
admire them, and it's been it's been a beautiful thing
(34:44):
to reparent myself through parenting them and to be able
to say to my inner child that little girl, you
know you do matter and what you think matters, and
you can trust yourself to know you know. Yeah. So
that's been hugely healing for me.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
I think you just touched on something that is probably
pretty common with all of these groups, and that is
not being able to trust yourself, the conditioning that something
is inherently flawed and defective so much so about yourself
that you can't trust those gut feelings like it's it's
(35:30):
so I feel like, just so incredibly damaging, and I
feel like through my healing journey, I continue to realize
how damaging that was, because those things just keep popping
up and you realize, oh, it's just related to that.
I mean, just so much about yourself. I mean that's
(35:52):
kind of foundational, you know, to who you are.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
That's so true. Well, I just was thinking while you
were talking that scripture the heart is desperately wicked and
deceitful about all things. Who can know it? So in
my experience, well I couldn't know it, but anybody in
authority over me could know it, like really, yes, yes,
So it's just a lot of cognitive dissonance, you know,
(36:19):
believing two opposing things at once and then not ever
being able to tap into myself and say, how do
I feel about this? How does this make me feel
about myself? Do I feel safe right now? Do I
feel valued? Do I feel seen and heard? And no, no,
that didn't matter at all. You just put your your desires.
(36:45):
Oh those are the luss of the flesh, you know,
crucify them with Christ. And I mean, just so many platitudes,
so much programming. You know, not that there aren't truths
in the Bible, but it was written by men and
changed over the centuries. And I mean, if you look
(37:06):
into it and study it at all, you can see
that it was changed by men in order to control
the masses, but especially women. And so you know, when
I remember when I was first we had first left
the cult that we were a part of when we
got married and we were in Argentina, and that's a
(37:29):
whole other story how we got out. But I remember
thinking now that I'm a mother and I had our
daughters were two and three, and I thought, you know,
what could my daughters ever do that would cause me
to throw them into a burning, fiery torment forever and
ever and ever where the worm diet not. And I
(37:52):
tried to be really objective, and I was like, I
can't think of anything. And then then that's when it
all started to dismantle. I was like, oh my gosh,
there's no help. If God is a is perfect and
a better parent than I, then it all halls apart.
(38:13):
That's a human construct. That's how humans, damaged, wounded humans
deal with things like that, people that don't comply with them.
We just we stamp it out, we smash it down,
we silence it, we condemn it, we judge it, we
destroy it. And once that began, there was just no
(38:37):
way that whole construct could stand. I could not believe
it anymore because it didn't make sense when I actually
thought about it.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
Yeah, I'm right there with you. Having kids definitely changed
my perspective and forced me to think about those things
that you just spoke about. I wanted to back up
just a little bit, like, because you mentioned getting married
to someone else, so or I guess that would be
your first husband. But how did that occur? Was he
(39:11):
in the church that you were in and you were
still living with you or like under your dad's control.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
Yeah, So we had moved to Alaska. So by the
time I was we had been in a cult in
South Carolina, Like I told you about that time where
it was kind of like we took a turn down
a fundamentalist route. So it was at that point that
we So I back up a little before so I
can give you a little context. Yah, in the late
(39:41):
mid to late nineties, my dad started listening to a
radio creature by the name of R. G. Stare and
he called him Stopped the Last Day Prophet of God,
and he had a worldwide shortwave radio ministry. And we
had left Virginia moved back to Kansas, and we're kind
of recover from our years in the Covenant movement, and
(40:03):
my dad was getting more and more fundamentalist. So I
remember being in our above ground pool one evening and
my dad had this little shortwave radio on and I
remember this voice coming out of it, is booming, loud voice,
and he was saying, you bob haired pants wearing painted
faced Jezebels. And I was like, oh my god, I
(40:24):
don't want to be one of those, right. So, but
I also did not resonate with the angry tone and
his words, and he was always calling people peanut brains,
and it was just he was abusive. He was an abusive,
disgusting man, and for some reason, my dad resonated with that.
(40:50):
And so because I was still single and I was
still in his home and he was still my spiritual head,
I just denied myself, took up my cross, and followed
him into this situation. So it was at that point
that we began to adopt the modest dress philosophy women. Well.
(41:17):
So I remember the first time I was house cleaning
gay and I was vacuuming the floor and I passed
by my dad who was seated on the hearth, and
I think he was cleaning the brass or something, and
he had me turn off the vacuum cleaner and he said,
I'm so tired of seeing your button tight jeans. Why
don't you cover it up? And I was like, oh wow,
(41:39):
I hadn't really thought of that. So at that point
we all started wearing. My sisters so I have three
sisters and my mother, so the five of us all
started wearing shirts that covered up our butts, and eventually
that wasn't good enough. And then we got the download that, well,
women shouldn't even be wearing clothing that retaineth to a man,
so you shouldn't even be wearing pants. Pants are made
(42:01):
for men. So then we couldn't wear pants anymore. And
I held out as long as I could on that one.
I was really gosh, that just did not feel right
to me, and I resisted as long as I could,
and then there just cave a point where I was
just in rebellion and I was tired of the battle
(42:21):
over it, so I caved and began to wear dresses.
So then, of course, you know, you can't show any
part of your body at that point, you know, and
nothing form fitting, no more hair cutting, no more jewelry,
no more makeup, Like you can't do anything to attract
(42:42):
the eye to you to your physical form. You just
need to be all about submission and inner beauty, which
is just meekness and purity and quietness and service and
you know, yeah, you know the drill. So we ended
up moving to that community and living there for three
and a half years, and during that time, the prophet
(43:07):
he was I don't know if he was in his
sixties and seventies by that point. But you know, on
twenty six and when we first moved there, I remember thinking,
he's kind of grandfatherly, you know, and this was our
g spare yes, this is urgair. I was trying so
hard to get my heart to line up with this,
(43:28):
you know. I didn't want to be rebellious, and I
was the target of a lot of effort on my
dad's part to get me to comply and to be
in submission and to have a quiet and nique spirit,
you know. And I'm just not that way by nature.
I mean, when you're four years old and you're saying,
(43:50):
where's the love of Jesus? Now, daddy, you're probably not
making quiet. So I just learned that I'm too much.
I need to be quiet. I can say anything that
is in support of the men and the scriptures as
taken literally, but you know, there's a time and a
(44:12):
place for you can't speak in church. Women don't preach women,
don't you know, minister. I mean, later we determined that
women could pray and prophesy, but they have to do
that with their heads covered. So I was a whole
new you know. I mean, just like all these rules
for women I mean, good Lord. So anyway, fast forward,
(44:33):
we had left that cult and he later was I
think he went to jail for molesting girls, underage girls,
and then eventually he was going to go to trial
for that. So you know, he was not a godly man.
(44:57):
And I remember at one point telling my dad it
was not too long before we moved from there. I said,
I just don't feel like his hugs are grandfatherly anymore.
I'm not feeling it. And my dad, God bless him, said,
you trust that that's your God given protection mechanism. If
(45:18):
you have to leave the kitchen, if he comes in there,
if you have to risk offending him, don't worry about
being rude. You just do whatever you have to do.
So I'm grateful for that. I also wish that, you know,
the lid had been blown off of it, because it
could have been. You know, you're just afraid to buck
(45:41):
the system, go up against the prophet, the man of God.
You know, I get it. There's no excuse for it.
But anyway, we eventually left that group, ended up connecting
with somebody else who had left that group, and he
went to Alaska to starter work, and that's yeh where
we all moved to so all of my siblings and
(46:04):
my two brothers had been married. By that point, none
of my sisters or I were married, And we moved
to Alaska, bought a piece of property with some other believers,
and started a little community, and that's where I met
my husband. He was actually he was married to someone
else at the time, and she eventually left with their
(46:29):
children and they were divorced, and then he and I
married and I was thirty eight by the time we
got harry, still virgin. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
So one thing that really strikes me is how often
your dad hopped from one place to the next. Like,
what was that about. Was he betting heads with you know,
the you know, the lead leadership in those churches and
then leaving or was he just searching for something that
(47:06):
he just couldn't quite find.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Yeah, I think it was both. He had conflict in
every group that we ever left, for sure. You know,
I'm not diagnosing anybody, but when somebody has personality traits
like that, there's just not really room for more than
(47:33):
one of those for very long. So when you've got
somebody who wants to have ultimate control trying to fit
in a system of someone else who wants to have
ultimate control. There's really not room and so there's gonna
come a conflict at some point, and that was what
(47:55):
I witnessed, you know, Alaska. We were the first leave.
My husband at the time. He always was a questioner
and so I really credit him with getting us out
of there. And I'm not sure if I would have
ever left on my own, but he was not raised
in religion, so he was a critical thing and I
(48:17):
credit him with teaching me to think critically. So that's
how we got out of that situation. And it was
another three years after we left before it dissolved and
disbanded and the group just went their separate ways. So
I don't know. I honestly am not in contact with
(48:40):
my parents, so I don't know what their church situation
is right now, but I know that my siblings and
I for the most part, are not in contact with him,
just because he really you kind of have to agree
with him in order to be in his world and
(49:02):
his life. And the more we found our voices, the
less we agreed and the more vocal we were about it.
And that's fine. You could agree to disagree, right, I mean,
that's what adults do all the time, but no, not
in that, not now, And if you don't receive his
(49:23):
spiritual gifting, then he really can't have fellowship with you.
And so right, yeah, that's kind of where it's at
right now.
Speaker 5 (49:35):
If you liked this episode, please go leave us a
five star rating and review wherever that is, if it's Apple,
Spotify or another service. It's really helpful. And don't forget
to subscribe so that you can get notified to when
we have new episodes and updates and things like that. Thanks,
and we'll talk to you all again next week
The world tomorrow. The Worldwide Church of God presents Ribert's
w Armstrong and.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I am here to bring you the truth.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
No one else is telling you the things that God
is telling you through me.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
He's making through me.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The Lord let me experience what it is to be
a new bride. You know, I'm not.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Worried about what I'm about to say, though it may
be graphic.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
We're coming to the Lord and if you can.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Take it, beyond the veil is the chamber. That's the
wedding chamber. The Lord told me that.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
But from then on, visions begin to come. When this
comes up on me, it produces the vision.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I'm able to.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Tell people what's wrong with them, what they must do
in life, and the sins that they are holding back.
Speaker 5 (00:50):
In their life.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
God is going to be moving vitally in fot judgment.
Speaker 5 (01:03):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Cult Nick Star Podcast.
I know that it's been a hot minute since you've
seen us, So we took.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
A little break.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
Part of that was planned, part of it wasn't. We
just had some scheduling conflicts and then I had some
fantastic travel, so we couldn't do exactly what we wanted
to do schedule wize, so we took a little impromptu
break here which was nice. But now we're back so
I know you've all been missing us. As always, please
go follow us on our socials if you're not already, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.
(01:32):
We also have that newer way to connect with us.
You can leave a voice message with a question or
a comment and we might play it and feature it
on the show. You can find the link on our
Instagram bio or at the top of the episode description
for the episode that you are listening to or watching
right now. Follow that link, click record and send us
a voice message. We want to hear from you now.
(01:53):
I also want to do our Double Portion Club shout
outs right quick. Shanda and Chase, Heather Bartlett and Carla.
Thank you all for being in our club and supporting
the podcast. If you are listening and you want to
support the podcast, got a couple of different ways you
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Speaker 2 (02:14):
The shout out.
Speaker 5 (02:16):
Or you can pay five dollars a month to support
the work and you'll get ad free episodes and we'll
send you a cool holographic cult mixtoor sticker.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Now, I'm gonna quickly read a review.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
That we got.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
We've had quite a few in the last six weeks
or so, so's we kind of have a backlog that
we can read through. But I really like this one.
It says I can't stop listening riveting real life story,
tragic and inspiring. I've never personally been in a cult,
but my husband was in scientology, so much is familiar
between cults. My husband disconnected from me and our three
(02:51):
sons because of Scientology.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
What I really love.
Speaker 5 (02:54):
Is listening in on family discussions and how they interact
with each other. Maddie and family and friends are likable, smart,
and resilient, I hope for all the best life has
to offer them. I wish I could give the young
Ashley a big hug for all she had to endure
alone without her family. And that's from Gallan two thousand
and one in the US. So thank you very much
(03:18):
for that review.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
I didn't want to give me a hug.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
And a hug as well.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, should have.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
That's very sweet.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
Yeah, thank you very much for that review. Now onto
today's episode. We had a guess that actually reached out
to us.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I don't remember how many months ago. It's been.
Speaker 5 (03:38):
Like we've said before, like we have so many people
reach out through all these different ways, email and Instagram
and Facebook and whatever else TikTok, and it's hard to
keep up with those, but this was one that kind
of stuck out. This is her name is Luna, and
she we met with her before we had her on
the podcast, just to kind of have like an informal
(03:59):
get to know you kind of thing, and her story
was very interesting and we thought have a lot of
things that were parallels to what we experienced and could
be helpful, so we wanted to have her on. So
I actually want to tell the folks a little bit
about Luna.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Yeah, and I loved this conversation. She reached out to us.
A lot of her story really paralleled hours so many commonalities,
which I think is what really prompted her to reach
out and ask about sharing her story. She grew up
(04:34):
like in the heart of the Jesus movement and found
herself entangled in quite a few different cult groups. Her
family did a lot of moving around, and so she
unfortunately had a lot of experience with a lot of
different high control groups, and you know, is deeply affected
(04:58):
by purity cult in patriarchal control and had a lot
of like deep religious conditioning that she has been working
on to unravel and heal from. And a lot of
our conversation, I feel like did center around the healing process,
(05:20):
which is really important even if you haven't even started
that process yet to be able to hear like what
that looks like and how that starts. And I thought
she gave some really good advice to listeners, and I
found her story really like a hopeful one, and she's
(05:42):
a very resilient person and I loved talking to her.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
So have a listen. So I go by Luna. That's
my name, and I'm fifty five and i have two
teenage daughters that I'm raising as a solo parent. And
I've kind of been in a huge life change with
a laugh three years, I mean really twelve years I
(06:13):
left cool. You know, I'm really finding myself to be
perfectly honest with you. If you ask me who I am,
I would say I'm discovering that. So I really don't
know what to say to that.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Yeah, I think that's normal, considering considering your background, I
feel the same.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, yeah, okay, So you.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
When you wrote into Us, you mentioned that you were
the eldest of six right during the rise of what
you call the Jesus Movement, which I have to say, like,
I'm not exactly sure.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Could you explain what that is? Yeah? So I was
born in sixty nine and it was at the end
of the Vietnam War and my dad was in the military.
So my teen my parents were teen teen parents. They
got pregnant with me, got married, and then my dad
(07:18):
went away. He was he was in Germany during my
first birthday. Well, when he came home, he was basically
a hippie, which is pretty typical for the early seventy
and by the time I was three and a half,
things had gotten pretty I think they were pretty rocky
(07:40):
with my parents. I think my dad was searching for something.
He had had a very dysfunctional upbringing, difficult home life,
and so it's my interpretation that he was searching for something.
And so he had some hippie buddies who he kept asking.
(08:01):
They would you be sitting around smoking out and they
would be talking about, you know, living naked in caves
and things like that, and he would say, are you
talking about God? And they were like, no, Dued, we're
not talking about that. And so finally one day he said, again,
are you guys talking about Jesus? And he had been
(08:22):
raised Lutheran, so I think what he knew about that
was we're not Catholic, but he didn't have a lot
of religious input. So anyway, they said, dude, we need
where you need to go. So they loaded up in
the hippie van and they took him down to this
church where a former Baptist preacher who had gotten filled
(08:42):
with the spirit was preaching to long Hairs. And I
guess the place was packed out standing room only, and
he was preaching to all these hippies who were searching
for something. And so that's where he got saved. And
I think it just I think he had a lot
of guilt and he felt he felt new, I guess.
(09:08):
So he says that he got home that night, got
out of the hippie van, looked up at the expanse
of stars in the sky, and said, Wow, what would
a family look like after thirty years of this? And
that began his journey of wow what he always referred
(09:30):
to as his relationship with Jesus, and I totally get that.
But I look back now and I see it was religion,
and you know, you can you can call it all
kinds of things, but it was religion, and it was
increasingly more high control religion as the years went by.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
So yeah, okay, So how old were you when that happened.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
I think I was about three and a half.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Okay, See, you probably don't remember a lot about what
life was like before religion kind of took center stage.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I don't, and I remember the stories, you know, and
of course mostly my dad told the stories. So yeah,
I'm sure that my perspective and my memories are colored
by you know, his perception.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
But yeah, was your mom on board with this? Like
did she come along with him?
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So? I think at first, no, she. I think she
tells the story that she was like sitting on the
stairs in the stairwell, you know, listening to all the
guys in the living room with me, and I think
my little brother was a baby at the time, and
she was just like, oh my god, what are you
doing now? Like she had heard the whole you know,
living naked in caves thing, like she was she was afraid,
(10:50):
she was sixteen when I was born, so she was
still only like nineteen, you know, less than twenty. Oh yeah, yeah,
so I think she was a little afraid, but he
took her back to the church another time with him,
and I think she had a lot of guilt a
(11:10):
bround being pregnant with me, you know, out of wedlock,
and I don't know what else, but she felt convicted
and had a similar experience going down to the altar, repenting,
feeling forgiven. And then at that point I think she
(11:31):
joined him, I don't know how oldheartedly, because they very
quickly began to conform to the submission standards of the Bible.
Women submit to men, wives submit to husbands, and so
that's that's pretty much all I ever knew. So I
(11:53):
don't know how much of what she experienced was was
herself or or if it was just her following him.
I know they had some struggles in their early years,
and she eventually acquiesced and submitted, and that's so that's
(12:16):
really what I always knew.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Yeah, so you're talking about basically that hierarchy. It sounds
like the umbrella that we always talk about with you know,
God and then the husband and then the wife.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
And the children, and.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
So what do you remember about that to like the
role of women and then you as you know, a
female child of being in that so early.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
So I can tell you the first thing I remember,
And I don't know if it's an actual memory or
if it was because I heard the story so many times,
but it begins with my relationship with my dad, as
Richards disciplined and he got the memo that children needed
(13:09):
to be punished corporally spanked to have them comply to
your wishes. And you know, the whole train of a
child in the way he should go, and when he's old,
he won't depart. And then later it was beat thy son,
he won't die now, shall take his hole from hell.
So you know, that's that's the mindset that I was
raised in. And so my very first spanking, he tells
(13:32):
the story. I was four and he had me over
his knee and he was spanking me, and he says,
I looked up at him, and he says, it was
like that movie where the little kid's head spins on
the neck. And I looked up at him and I said,
where's the love of Jesus now, daddy. Oh, it shocked him.
(13:56):
And he said, I am showing you the love of
This is how I show you. So from a very
early age, I was taught to equate pain, discipline with love.
And you know, when you have that foundation on top
of the foundation, you are a dirty sinner that needs
(14:21):
a blood sacrifice to commend you to God. Well there's
a lot of words I could think of to describe that,
but yeah, it's a It really warps you. And that
(14:41):
was the foundation of my entire life from that point on. So,
getting back to your question, I was raised to believe
that because man is the head of woman. I was
a woman and until I got married, thought it was
my head. So a woman needs a spiritual head. She's
(15:04):
not capable of making decisions for her life by herself.
She is not capable of going to God for herself,
and she has to i mean essentially be submitted to
all men. Everybody with a penis Like I mean, let's
be real, right, the mom supposed to say that, but
it so that's how I was raised and I believed it.
(15:28):
And then watching the dynamic between my parents through the years,
my mother not having a voice, she basically uh was
not able to speak for herself to think for herself,
and so that's what was modeled to me. And you know,
she was very quiet anyway. She was raised in a
(15:49):
death home. Both of her parents were death so her
first language was signed anyway. So I don't remember a
lot about my interaction with her except that she modeled
me to follow my dad. So as the years went by,
we went from group to group, and my dad was
(16:10):
promoted pretty early in his ministry to I don't know,
elder pastor worship leader. He was very talented on the guitar,
has a very nice singing voice, just a natural gift
with music and a gift of leading people in worship.
So he involved all six of us as we got
(16:33):
older in that with him. So I was raised in music,
making music in the church. Eventually, when I was older,
being on the worship team as a family, we made
CDs of you know, worship and praise music. So but
the whole time, every group we were a part of
(16:56):
seemed to get more and more high control. We were
part of the Covenant movement in the in Texas in
the early to mid eighties. I don't know if you're
familiar with them. Some men out of Samobile, Alabama. I
don't know, Pasca Gilla, Mississippi. I don't know they started.
(17:17):
They decided that they all needed accountability, and I think
it was because of a moral failure of one of
their colleagues. So they were like, we need accountability to
one another. So they covenanted with each other to maintain
accountability together. And so we were part of an offshoot
of one of those groups. One of those men. We
(17:40):
moved all the way from Kansas City to Texas to
be part of one of these groups. And then after
I graduated high well, so I went to a private
Christian schools my whole entire school career, graduated from high school,
and then we moved to the north of Virginia area
to plant and church with one of these pastors. And
(18:05):
at that point I was unmarried and still and still
living at home because I believed I needed a spiritual head.
So I'm a grown adult woman in my early twenties.
And we were fairly normal, I think, you know, like
I wore a miniskirit to sing on the worship team
(18:25):
that whole you know, it just was pretty normal, make up,
jewelry pants. And then my dad experienced some kind of
a Oh, people might have called it a mid life crisis.
His father passed and he was in his say, mid forties,
and he just took a turn down a super fundamentalist path.
(18:51):
And so during that time he began to preach to
his children, God doesn't have grandchildren. You can't get to
heaven on my cook And it became very much more.
There was always fear, shame and guilt used to control us,
but it became much more intense and lots more fear
(19:13):
and shape. And I remember sitting around the table as
young adults and him just like digging in our woodpile
to find out what we needed to confess. And at
the time I thought that that was normal, you know,
I thought, well, this is what God requires, and he's
(19:33):
the head of the family. So even though it didn't
feel right in my gut, I still followed it. And
especially being a woman, you know, I didn't feel like
I had any agency whatsoever, and I was just waiting
for the day when He would give me some other man,
and that was a long time in coming.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
So was that something where he talked to you about
that and he was going to choose a mate for you,
or were you going to have any say in.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
That at that point I always I would say, theoretically,
I had say, yeah, you know, there's a lot of
nuance there when when you're not free to make your
own decisions, then you're not really free to ask advice.
(20:29):
So I was in a relationship with a young man
for a couple of years, ended up engaged to him,
but I wasn't really in love with him. I wasn't
attracted to him, and I felt like, this is so warped.
I thought, well, if it's not my will, it's probably
God's will. Yeah, So I just resigned myself to the
(20:53):
fact that this was my lot in life, and in
order for me to do God's will, I needed to
put my desires and will aside and take up my
cross and follow Jesus. So that's what I was doing.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
I'm curious about that, because, like I I that resonates
with me. I was thinking about this the other day
that it felt like for me, being a young woman
in the church, like I was going to get chosen
by someone rather than I would like equally choose someone
(21:32):
who's also choosing me. And it's almost that sense of like, well,
whoever decides they want to pursue me and marry me,
like this is like you said, like this is God's
will or whatever, And I'm wondering if if that's kind
of where you were and why you were like not
(21:56):
exactly aligning with this guy, but feeling like this is
who God has chosen.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah. Yeah. So I was raised in what would come
to be known as purity culture. Now we have a
word for that, but basically I think I don't know
if I would if I can pinpoint any like sermon
(22:24):
or something like that that was specific in those days,
but basically, the woman's body is a stumbling block to men,
so we need cover it as much as possible. And
I remember my dad saying to me at one point
in my early twenties, remember the modesty of your mother.
(22:46):
And I was like, okay. And at that point, I
was kind of getting ready to find my wings. I
was engaged to be married already. To me, I was
starting to taste some freedom from those constraints, and so
I just kind of sheltered it. I didn't really take
it seriously, but that was the mindset. And then during
(23:06):
this relationship with this young man, I was curious if
I could be attracted to him, If I can, Yeah, uh,
you know, with him, intimately, I was a virgin. Yeah,
I had. I don't think i'd ever even kissed anyone.
(23:28):
I had never seriously dated long term, I had. I
had dated a few young men, but nothing serious. So
I initiated some physical encounters with him that crossed lines.
And so one day I came home one night after
a date and I came in the house and my
(23:48):
dad was sitting and watching television. He turned to me
and he said, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said,
your virginity is threatened. Oh my goodness, Oh my god.
So I go downstairs, I get my phone in my
bedroom and I call him and I'm like, oh my god,
my cand nosina. And so I said, we've got to confess.
And so we went and sat down with him a
(24:10):
couple days later and divulged the extent of our physical interaction.
And it had the effect of, you know, shame, obviously shame,
but I knew that that was something that I had
chosen because I needed to know is it going to
(24:32):
be possible for me to be intimate with this man
once we're married. So I made a choice with my
body for myself, but because he and I can tell you.
When I look back now, I was a fifty five
year old woman. I'm like, the Holy Spirit didn't tell
him Jack. What happened was he got up from his
(24:54):
chair and went and looked out the front window and
saw us making out in the car. Yeah of course, Yeah,
but he had always conditioned me to believe that he
was privy to God's thoughts about me, and God talked
to him about me. So I lived in that fear
(25:15):
all the time. So long story short, I didn't end
up marrying that young man. Some things happen, and now
I'm like, oh, the universe intervened on my behalf because
that just would not have been a match and it
wouldn't have blasted long term. But that set me up
for another I don't know. I was thirty a by
(25:38):
the time I finally got married, so you know, but
at least I wasn't in a marriage that I didn't choose,
you know. So yeah, I'm.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
Just going to say it was the Holy Spirit told
me card that your dad pulled with. Was that something
that he did routinely with you.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
And your family?
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Absolutely, sound so familiar.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Obviously the.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Most obvious thing the Holy Spirit told you.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Oh, yeah, well, you know, one time, and I think
the first time I ever saw through this was because
of my ex husband. My dad was his pastor and
we hadn't been married too long, and my dad had
this thing about coffee. He's very sensitive to caffin, so
he's kind of a little bit legalistic about things, and
(26:33):
so if he if he doesn't feel like God wants
him to do that, then it's probably just the best
thing for no one to do that. So anyway, my
husband came, uh, greeted him with a hug, and had
just had a coffee and my dad said, and it
wasn't like a spoken rule, you can't drink coffee, okay,
(26:53):
but my dad said something to him like, uh, the
Holy Spirit revealed to him that he'd had coffee, and
he was like, later he told me about it, and
he was like, dude, you smell that on my breath.
Like there was no Holy Spirit revealing anything. And by
the way, if the Holy Spirit was going to be
(27:15):
revealing stuff like that, don't you think he would have
revealed to you that the prophet in the cult we
were later in was molesting young girls, Like wouldn't that
have been the type of thing that the Holy Spirit
would be revealing rather than people having coffee.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Yeah, in these groups, the Holy Spirit is really fixated
on these minute details, right And honestly, the coffee thing
you would have lost me, I would that would just
be the end.
Speaker 5 (27:52):
So, Luna, the track that your dad kind of started
taking your family as you age, do you think that
was kind of hand in hand with his natural inclinations?
And I guess for context, the reason I asked is,
so many of the things in my life, and with
Ashley too, with our dad, like you can look at
(28:12):
it now and say like, well, yeah, you liked these
things or didn't like these things, so naturally the Lord
is leading you towards the things that you already think.
Do you feel like that was the case or was
it kind of separate from is how he naturally would be.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
No, the way I've come to see it, and what
I've studied about attachment theory and personality disorders and things
like that, I am a firm believer that your formative
years in childhood predict your path if you don't heal.
(28:51):
So it's my opinion that his dysfunctional upbringing his relationship
with his mother. I think he has a mother wound.
I know he does, and I think that religion afforded
him the control over the people around him so that
he could feel safe. I don't think he ever felt
safe as a child, and I think that the core
(29:15):
wound for him was his mother. So it really served
his wound to view women as Jezebel if they weren't
in submission. So that's just my opinion as I've come
to understand it, and so it offers me a lot
(29:36):
of compassion for him, and yet not an excuse for
the ways that he controlled people in order to feel
safe himself. And I just think it's artificial, and I
think religion really offers that avenue to people who are
I mean most of the men that I am familiar
(30:00):
you're with, either from my past or just observing and
hearing other stories, especially from women, were wounded in childhood.
And of course, you know, you don't go to therapy
because you don't go to the world for healing. You
just put it all under the blood. And I'm sorry,
that does not heal. That doesn't work. And you can't
(30:22):
just put things under the blood and expect the healing
to occur. You have to revisit it. You have to
feel it to heal it kind of thing. And that's
just been my experience in my healing journey that there's
no there's no panaceah, there's no You've got to go
through it. And so I just feel like that's that's
(30:47):
he found. He found that ability in religion to control
the people around him to feel safe.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
Yeah, I think we can relate to that. Really, well,
that's that's been our experience, I think with our dad
kind of the conclusions that we've also come to.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
I think that that is an important thing that you
brought up, kind of getting to a point to where
you can recognize damage done by somebody, like you're talking
about your dad, you know, in this context, I'm thinking
about mine too, But you can also look at where
they came from, again not as an excuse, but just
(31:29):
as a way to.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Understand and to have empathy for that person.
Speaker 5 (31:32):
Like I think it would be easy and for people
on the outside looking in to think like, well, you
hate that person and you should and all of this, Like,
and I think we probably all can go through cycles
or have in the past with that. But really, I mean,
I feel like I can honestly say, just from my
perspective now, like it's uh, not a ton of anger.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Often, it's more just like I hate that that.
Speaker 5 (32:00):
Happen to you, and that this is how you responded.
I hate the things that you've done, but like I
can recognize, like that is a terrible way to be raised,
and I can understand why things might not be normal
in your worldview. But at the same time, like you said,
not an excuse, because people go through all kinds of things,
and not everybody that goes through difficult things turns.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
To this avenue.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
So I think kind of balancing those two is important,
and I hope people listening can kind of understand that
and that it's normal also to go through the cycle
of the anger and maybe the hatred, if that's not
too strong a word. Like that's a normal thing, absolutely,
and it's okay to let yourself kind of work through that,
like you said, that's the only way you can like
(32:45):
kind of going through it.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
And it's like layers too. I mean, in my healing journey,
oh my gosh, I've tried so many modalities and I've
had to go back and sit with all kinds of things,
and like memories will come back and I don't have
a lot of memories from my early childhood, and I'm
not really not sure why that is, and I don't remember.
(33:10):
It's so funny. I don't really remember like exact words
that people say, But what I remember is the feeling
that I got from the interaction. And so those are
the things that I've had to sit with and just
be uncomfortable with and feel the anger, and feel the
hatred and feel the rage at the way that my essence,
(33:37):
my truth was suppressed and silenced, and in coming to
reckon with all of that, taking my power back, reclaiming
my voice, and reparenting myself. Yeah, And I have found
(33:58):
through parenting my daughter, oh my gosh, there are times
when stuff comes up for me and I'm like, do
you really feel that way? Do you really feel that
way about women? Do you really feel that way about
a woman's body? Do you really or is that a
conditioning that you need to revisit and deprogram yourself from.
(34:22):
So I'm really grateful to be a mother. I'm grateful
to have two teenage daughters who do have a voice,
They have a sense of self that I never had. Yeah,
And so I learn from them every day and I
admire them, and it's been it's been a beautiful thing
(34:44):
to reparent myself through parenting them and to be able
to say to my inner child that little girl, you
know you do matter and what you think matters, and
you can trust yourself to know you know. Yeah. So
that's been hugely healing for me.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
I think you just touched on something that is probably
pretty common with all of these groups, and that is
not being able to trust yourself, the conditioning that something
is inherently flawed and defective so much so about yourself
that you can't trust those gut feelings like it's it's
(35:30):
so I feel like, just so incredibly damaging, and I
feel like through my healing journey, I continue to realize
how damaging that was, because those things just keep popping
up and you realize, oh, it's just related to that.
I mean, just so much about yourself. I mean that's
(35:52):
kind of foundational, you know, to who you are.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
That's so true. Well, I just was thinking while you
were talking that scripture the heart is desperately wicked and
deceitful about all things. Who can know it? So in
my experience, well I couldn't know it, but anybody in
authority over me could know it, like really, yes, yes,
So it's just a lot of cognitive dissonance, you know,
(36:19):
believing two opposing things at once and then not ever
being able to tap into myself and say, how do
I feel about this? How does this make me feel
about myself? Do I feel safe right now? Do I
feel valued? Do I feel seen and heard? And no, no,
that didn't matter at all. You just put your your desires.
(36:45):
Oh those are the luss of the flesh, you know,
crucify them with Christ. And I mean, just so many platitudes,
so much programming. You know, not that there aren't truths
in the Bible, but it was written by men and
changed over the centuries. And I mean, if you look
(37:06):
into it and study it at all, you can see
that it was changed by men in order to control
the masses, but especially women. And so you know, when
I remember when I was first we had first left
the cult that we were a part of when we
got married and we were in Argentina, and that's a
(37:29):
whole other story how we got out. But I remember
thinking now that I'm a mother and I had our
daughters were two and three, and I thought, you know,
what could my daughters ever do that would cause me
to throw them into a burning, fiery torment forever and
ever and ever where the worm diet not. And I
(37:52):
tried to be really objective, and I was like, I
can't think of anything. And then then that's when it
all started to dismantle. I was like, oh my gosh,
there's no help. If God is a is perfect and
a better parent than I, then it all halls apart.
(38:13):
That's a human construct. That's how humans, damaged, wounded humans
deal with things like that, people that don't comply with them.
We just we stamp it out, we smash it down,
we silence it, we condemn it, we judge it, we
destroy it. And once that began, there was just no
(38:37):
way that whole construct could stand. I could not believe
it anymore because it didn't make sense when I actually
thought about it.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
Yeah, I'm right there with you. Having kids definitely changed
my perspective and forced me to think about those things
that you just spoke about. I wanted to back up
just a little bit, like, because you mentioned getting married
to someone else, so or I guess that would be
your first husband. But how did that occur? Was he
(39:11):
in the church that you were in and you were
still living with you or like under your dad's control.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
Yeah, So we had moved to Alaska. So by the
time I was we had been in a cult in
South Carolina, Like I told you about that time where
it was kind of like we took a turn down
a fundamentalist route. So it was at that point that
we So I back up a little before so I
can give you a little context. Yah, in the late
(39:41):
mid to late nineties, my dad started listening to a
radio creature by the name of R. G. Stare and
he called him Stopped the Last Day Prophet of God,
and he had a worldwide shortwave radio ministry. And we
had left Virginia moved back to Kansas, and we're kind
of recover from our years in the Covenant movement, and
(40:03):
my dad was getting more and more fundamentalist. So I
remember being in our above ground pool one evening and
my dad had this little shortwave radio on and I
remember this voice coming out of it, is booming, loud voice,
and he was saying, you bob haired pants wearing painted
faced Jezebels. And I was like, oh my god, I
(40:24):
don't want to be one of those, right. So, but
I also did not resonate with the angry tone and
his words, and he was always calling people peanut brains,
and it was just he was abusive. He was an abusive,
disgusting man, and for some reason, my dad resonated with that.
(40:50):
And so because I was still single and I was
still in his home and he was still my spiritual head,
I just denied myself, took up my cross, and followed
him into this situation. So it was at that point
that we began to adopt the modest dress philosophy women. Well.
(41:17):
So I remember the first time I was house cleaning
gay and I was vacuuming the floor and I passed
by my dad who was seated on the hearth, and
I think he was cleaning the brass or something, and
he had me turn off the vacuum cleaner and he said,
I'm so tired of seeing your button tight jeans. Why
don't you cover it up? And I was like, oh wow,
(41:39):
I hadn't really thought of that. So at that point
we all started wearing. My sisters so I have three
sisters and my mother, so the five of us all
started wearing shirts that covered up our butts, and eventually
that wasn't good enough. And then we got the download that, well,
women shouldn't even be wearing clothing that retaineth to a man,
so you shouldn't even be wearing pants. Pants are made
(42:01):
for men. So then we couldn't wear pants anymore. And
I held out as long as I could on that one.
I was really gosh, that just did not feel right
to me, and I resisted as long as I could,
and then there just cave a point where I was
just in rebellion and I was tired of the battle
(42:21):
over it, so I caved and began to wear dresses.
So then, of course, you know, you can't show any
part of your body at that point, you know, and
nothing form fitting, no more hair cutting, no more jewelry,
no more makeup, Like you can't do anything to attract
(42:42):
the eye to you to your physical form. You just
need to be all about submission and inner beauty, which
is just meekness and purity and quietness and service and
you know, yeah, you know the drill. So we ended
up moving to that community and living there for three
and a half years, and during that time, the prophet
(43:07):
he was I don't know if he was in his
sixties and seventies by that point. But you know, on
twenty six and when we first moved there, I remember thinking,
he's kind of grandfatherly, you know, and this was our
g spare yes, this is urgair. I was trying so
hard to get my heart to line up with this,
(43:28):
you know. I didn't want to be rebellious, and I
was the target of a lot of effort on my
dad's part to get me to comply and to be
in submission and to have a quiet and nique spirit,
you know. And I'm just not that way by nature.
I mean, when you're four years old and you're saying,
(43:50):
where's the love of Jesus? Now, daddy, you're probably not
making quiet. So I just learned that I'm too much.
I need to be quiet. I can say anything that
is in support of the men and the scriptures as
taken literally, but you know, there's a time and a
(44:12):
place for you can't speak in church. Women don't preach women,
don't you know, minister. I mean, later we determined that
women could pray and prophesy, but they have to do
that with their heads covered. So I was a whole
new you know. I mean, just like all these rules
for women I mean, good Lord. So anyway, fast forward,
(44:33):
we had left that cult and he later was I
think he went to jail for molesting girls, underage girls,
and then eventually he was going to go to trial
for that. So you know, he was not a godly man.
(44:57):
And I remember at one point telling my dad it
was not too long before we moved from there. I said,
I just don't feel like his hugs are grandfatherly anymore.
I'm not feeling it. And my dad, God bless him, said,
you trust that that's your God given protection mechanism. If
(45:18):
you have to leave the kitchen, if he comes in there,
if you have to risk offending him, don't worry about
being rude. You just do whatever you have to do.
So I'm grateful for that. I also wish that, you know,
the lid had been blown off of it, because it
could have been. You know, you're just afraid to buck
(45:41):
the system, go up against the prophet, the man of God.
You know, I get it. There's no excuse for it.
But anyway, we eventually left that group, ended up connecting
with somebody else who had left that group, and he
went to Alaska to starter work, and that's yeh where
we all moved to so all of my siblings and
(46:04):
my two brothers had been married. By that point, none
of my sisters or I were married, And we moved
to Alaska, bought a piece of property with some other believers,
and started a little community, and that's where I met
my husband. He was actually he was married to someone
else at the time, and she eventually left with their
(46:29):
children and they were divorced, and then he and I
married and I was thirty eight by the time we
got harry, still virgin. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
So one thing that really strikes me is how often
your dad hopped from one place to the next. Like,
what was that about. Was he betting heads with you know,
the you know, the lead leadership in those churches and
then leaving or was he just searching for something that
(47:06):
he just couldn't quite find.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Yeah, I think it was both. He had conflict in
every group that we ever left, for sure. You know,
I'm not diagnosing anybody, but when somebody has personality traits
like that, there's just not really room for more than
(47:33):
one of those for very long. So when you've got
somebody who wants to have ultimate control trying to fit
in a system of someone else who wants to have
ultimate control. There's really not room and so there's gonna
come a conflict at some point, and that was what
(47:55):
I witnessed, you know, Alaska. We were the first leave.
My husband at the time. He always was a questioner
and so I really credit him with getting us out
of there. And I'm not sure if I would have
ever left on my own, but he was not raised
in religion, so he was a critical thing and I
(48:17):
credit him with teaching me to think critically. So that's
how we got out of that situation. And it was
another three years after we left before it dissolved and
disbanded and the group just went their separate ways. So
I don't know. I honestly am not in contact with
(48:40):
my parents, so I don't know what their church situation
is right now, but I know that my siblings and
I for the most part, are not in contact with him,
just because he really you kind of have to agree
with him in order to be in his world and
(49:02):
his life. And the more we found our voices, the
less we agreed and the more vocal we were about it.
And that's fine. You could agree to disagree, right, I mean,
that's what adults do all the time, but no, not
in that, not now, And if you don't receive his
(49:23):
spiritual gifting, then he really can't have fellowship with you.
And so right, yeah, that's kind of where it's at
right now.
Speaker 5 (49:35):
If you liked this episode, please go leave us a
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Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com