October 1, 2025 • 71 mins
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Our guest, Mindy shares her experience growing up in a cult-like family led by her controlling pastor father. The family moved often due to financial struggles and her father’s various church roles. Mindy describes strict rules, harsh punishments, and emotional and physical abuse, alongside the influence of charismatic ministries and the chaotic "holy laughter" movement.
She also discusses her struggles with depression, the complex role of her mother, and how she now fosters openness with her own children. This episode offers a powerful look at the impact of cult upbringing and the path to healing.
#cultleaderfathers #cultleaders #psychologyofcults #authoritarianleaders #highcontrolgroups #religiousabuse #spiritualabuse #familytrauma #generationaltrauma #powerandcontrol #cultsurvivorstories #escapingcults #mindcontrol #psychologicalmanipulation #narcissisticabuse #truecrimepodcast #cultawareness #lifeaftercults #toxicleadership #thecultnextdoor
Our guest, Mindy shares her experience growing up in a cult-like family led by her controlling pastor father. The family moved often due to financial struggles and her father’s various church roles. Mindy describes strict rules, harsh punishments, and emotional and physical abuse, alongside the influence of charismatic ministries and the chaotic "holy laughter" movement.
She also discusses her struggles with depression, the complex role of her mother, and how she now fosters openness with her own children. This episode offers a powerful look at the impact of cult upbringing and the path to healing.
#cultleaderfathers #cultleaders #psychologyofcults #authoritarianleaders #highcontrolgroups #religiousabuse #spiritualabuse #familytrauma #generationaltrauma #powerandcontrol #cultsurvivorstories #escapingcults #mindcontrol #psychologicalmanipulation #narcissisticabuse #truecrimepodcast #cultawareness #lifeaftercults #toxicleadership #thecultnextdoor
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
The world tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
The Worldwide Church of God presents Herbert's w Armstrong.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
And I'm here to bring you the truth.
Speaker 4 (00:11):
No one else is telling you the things that God
is telling you through me.
Speaker 5 (00:16):
He's speaking through me the Lord.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Let me experience what it is to be a new bride.
You know, I'm not worried about what I'm about to say,
though it may be graphic. We're coming to the Lord
and if you.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Can take it, beyond.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
The veil is the chamber.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
That's the wedding chamber. The Lord told me that.
Speaker 5 (00:37):
But from then on, visions begin to come. When this
comes up on me, it produces the vision. I'm able
to tell people what's wrong with them, what they must
do in life, and the sins that they are holding back.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
In their life.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
God is going to be moving vitally and bot like
he dies before booths judgment. How to everybody, and welcome
back to the Cult next Door podcast. We have a
new podcast guest for this week and the next couple after.
Her name is Mindy Ashley and I had a really
(01:13):
good conversation with her for several hours, so I think
that you guys will really enjoy it. You'll laugh, you'll cringe,
and there's lots of really interesting and funny and good
moments in these and I'm excited for you all to
hear it before we jump into that. As always, want
to remind you go follow us on our socials, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.
(01:33):
Also leave us a review if you haven't five stars, preferably,
and then you can leave us a voice message too.
Like I said last week, I'm always excited when I
get these, So if you have something to say, click
that link at the top of the episode description that
you know for the episode that you're listening to right
now and leave us a voice message. Also, before we
move on, want to do our Double Portion Club shoutouts
(01:55):
Shanda and Chase, Heather Bartlett, Carla Julia b thank you
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(02:15):
you a really cool holographic Cult next Door sticker. So,
as I said earlier, we've got Mindy a new guest.
I think you guys are going to really enjoy it.
So let's jump into episode one with Mindy.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
All right, thanks for being here, Mindy, thanks for having me. Yeah,
we're really excited about this. We obviously we had that
exploratory call and we got just a tiny taste of
your experience, so I think we're both really excited about
(02:48):
exploring all of this with you. And you know, before
we started this, we talked about where do we start,
because a lot has happened and transpired, and I think
starting from the beginning is good, you know, because our
childhood experiences basically shape who we are today and kind
of lay the foundation, you know, for how we see
(03:09):
ourselves and how we interact with the world around us,
how we handle all the challenges you know that you
went through in your life. So not exactly sure where
you want to start in your childhood story, but we're
ready to listen.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Okay, I guess I'll probably just start close to the beginning.
When I was born, I grew up the fourth of
six kids. There was four girls and two boys, and
so I'm kind of just plopped right in the middle there.
My mom had all six of us by the time
she was twenty eight, so that's pretty wild to me.
(03:47):
But she started. My oldest sister was born when my
mom was eighteen, and so also in those ten years
of having children, she lost a few in there too,
so she was pregnant perpetually, and I think she was
(04:09):
early on. I think she believed a lot of the
quiverful kind of things of like just however many children
God will give you is what you should have. And
I think when I think back about my upbringing and
really listening to your podcast has kind of given me
(04:29):
some revelations about things in my own life too. So
I always just thought we were part of a cult,
But listening to you guys, I realized that we actually
were the cult as well. Like my family was a
cult and then my parents were also cult leaders. So
(04:51):
my dad, I don't think he was really answering to
any you know, higher power. I think that he made
the rule, he interpreted the Bible, and he enforced it
however he wanted to. My mom backed him up and
carried that out in the home. He wasn't home a
whole lot. He worked several jobs and we traveled on
(05:18):
the weekends to other churches. It was like a evangelist
kind of thing before he became a full time pastor.
But they created a system in our household that just
controlled every single aspect of our lives, what we wore,
(05:38):
what we said, like literally words, you know, they said,
every single word is so important. They would use the
scripture verse life and death are in the power of
the tongue. And so like one time I said something
to my mom, she said, like, thank you for something,
and I said, oh, no problem, it's the least I
could do. Like that's just people say that, right, And
(06:01):
she like reamed me out, what do you mean it's
the least you could do? Why would you do the least?
Why wouldn't you do the most? You know, your words
are really important, say what you mean kind of thing.
So it was like, you know, everything was just very controlled,
and everything we did was very criticized. Any attempt to
(06:24):
challenge them led to severe punishment. It was spiritual, it
was emotional. It was often physical. I'll probably get into
that a little bit with the physical abuse a bit
later in the story, But a big part of this
(06:45):
story is my mom's death and so my feelings surrounding
her part in all of this are really kind of confusing,
and I think two things can be true at the
same time. I think that she was a perpetrator of
the abuse, and I think she was also a victim
of the abuse. And so it gets a little, you know,
(07:07):
complicated how my feelings about her, because when like when
she died, that was such a trauma and so hard
to lose her, and you know, everybody needs their mom,
so that was really hard.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
But then now.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
After processing through some things and realizing, you know, she
was a part of all of the trauma that happened,
it just it's a little messy in my head about
how I feel about her. Yeah, of course, because I
love her, you know, and I don't think she deserved
what she had to go through. And I'll get into
that too. And then there are some times where I
(07:45):
think about that was pretty bad what she did or
what she said, or what she didn't do, you know.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Ye.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
So we moved around a lot. We never lived in
the same place for more than two years. That was
sometimes we were moving just to a different house in
the same town. Sometimes it was you know, a different town.
Sometimes it was a different state, but just constantly moving and.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
I'm sorry, Yeah, what was the reason that, like why
you moved around so much?
Speaker 4 (08:28):
So I can only speculate, and my opinion on that
is just I think that well, I think there's a
few reasons, but I think there was some instability financially,
and so I think maybe because we were renting houses
and so I think maybe he couldn't pay the rent,
so then we had to move. Potentially that was some
(08:50):
of it. And then I just think there were some
reasons of Like our first move, I was five years old.
We lived in Minnesota. My parents, both of their families
are from here, like very established here, but we moved
to Michigan. I was five years old. That was the
(09:11):
first time I moved, and that was because my dad
had gotten a job. So my grandfather owned a car
dealership and my dad worked for him. But he wanted
to be some sort of you know, fivefold minister, and
so he had gotten a job for Jimmy Swagert Ministries.
(09:33):
And what his job was, I think it was called
like a visitation pastor. So technically he went to people's
homes who were partners of Jimmy Swagert Ministries and he
would collect offerings from them. I mean he would go
pray for them in their homes, That's what I meant. Yeah,
(09:59):
if they happened to give an offering after he prayed
for their prayer request, then I mean, how do you
say no to that? But yeah, he was supposed to
be an extension of Jimmy Swagert. And so if these
partners requested, you know, a visit or prayer or whatever,
then there were it was it was a sales position,
(10:22):
you know, and they were traveling salespeople, and they they
had regions that you know, each person had. Each of
these visitation ministers had their own regions. So we moved
to Michigan so that he could work for Jimmy Swagert Ministries,
and then we moved to Arizona a few years after
(10:44):
that to help start a church. That didn't work out,
so we moved back to Michigan then eventually back back
to Minnesota. And but there were a lot of moves
in between two. So there were big moves that had reasons,
and then there were a lot of you know, just
moving to the next town or whatever. And that also
translated for me specifically. I went to a different school
(11:09):
almost every single grade. There were several grades where I
went to two different schools in the same grade, and
again we weren't allowed to go to public school. So
I have a suspicion that the reason why we switched
schools so often was because they didn't pay the bill
(11:29):
and so they wouldn't let us come back the next year.
I don't know that as a fact, but that's my presumption,
because there was six kids. Private schools not cheap. I mean, granted,
we weren't going to any of the nice, prestigious private schools.
We were going to tiny, little one room cult schools, right,
(11:53):
So that was there was just always some sort of
instability or chaos. Really Arizona. We only lived in Arizona
for a year less I think, maybe even less than
a year, and we had moved there, I guess, to
help start a church or something. I was like nine
(12:15):
years old at the time, so I don't remember a
whole lot of that, but I do know we lived
in two different cities and we went to probably three
or four different churches before we ended up moving back
to Michigan. So I don't remember all the details of
like what happened to the church plant. We were going
(12:38):
down there to help with and why didn't like, did
that stay open and we just split off, Like, I
don't I don't know any of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
I have a question. Yeah, so your dad, your parents
had all of these rules about what you could do
and what you could say. Was that of your dad's
own making or was that influenced by, you know, a
different ministry.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
I think both. I think early on a lot of
it was just my dad putting rules because he just
liked to control people. And then I think as time
went on, he adopted more rules from other ministries that
he followed. To me, it seemed like he was always
(13:33):
trying to be like the big you know, evangelist, like
the Joel Ostein well, not him specifically, the ones that
my dad looked up to and tried to emulate and
be like would be in the early days, it was
Jimmy Swagert, and then he kind of moved on to
people like Rod Parsley and Lester summer All and Billy Graham,
(14:03):
Oral Roberts, like just those big ministry people.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Kenneth Copeland.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Kenneth Copeland, Yeah, that was a big one in the
later years. That didn't start until later on, But yeah,
as time went on, he got more and more extreme.
So yeah, Kenneth Copeland was a big one.
Speaker 6 (14:25):
So did I answer your question, yes, yes, Okay.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
So by the time, so after we moved from Arizona,
we moved back to Michigan and back to the evangelism
where we would go and speak at different churches on
the weekends. And then eventually I think by the time
I was around twelve, he found his first senior pastor position.
(15:00):
So I think before that he had been a youth pastor.
That was before I was born. He was an associate pastor,
so he was always trying to get to this, you know,
his own church thing. So finally he did, and that
was in Chelsea, Michigan, and it was a tiny, little
country church. We used to joke around that once we
(15:20):
came there, we doubled the church attendance because of our
family was so bid eight more people, we doubled it.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
We can relate.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
So we were there for a couple of years. I
in my memory and looking back in my feelings about
my life, that was one of the places that I
enjoyed the most. I felt like I had some sort
of freedom, like I could get away from the rules.
Sometimes I could break out of the bubble. We actually
(15:55):
lived in a neighborhood, which was the first. Typically we
would like of like we had like a hobby farm
with twenty acres or like just kind of out in
the middle of nowhere. And I think a lot of
the reason for that was my dad didn't want to
follow rules that neighborhoods have, right so like how many
(16:18):
cars you can park in your driveway, or like when
we had lived in neighborhoods before, he would get very
upset when they would the city would come and knock
on his door and say, you have to clean you
know this up out of your yard. You can't have
that many cars in your driveway. So it's easier to
live out in the country where nobody cares how messy
(16:39):
your yard is or how many cars you have, because
that was always one of my dad's side jobs was
he would work on cars, like on the side, so
he would have maybe he worked at a car dealership
where after Jimmy Swaggert before he got his first church,
like in between there we were still doing the traveling
(17:01):
minister thing. But then he also had an autobody and
mechanic shop at our house and he was managing car dealerships,
you know, wherever. So when we moved to Chelsea, we
were in a neighborhood and I loved that. I had
a next door neighbor that was my best friend. We
(17:24):
could walk into town and I don't know how or why,
but my mom let me do that sometimes. And so
it just felt a little bit like the bubble was breaking,
you know, And I, even though I was only twelve,
I could feel that, and I could sense, you know
that this is different. I don't have as much control.
(17:47):
But then, you know, they would give a little rope
and then yank at that kind of thing of like
we would get in trouble for things we didn't even
know we were doing wrong. The rules were just constantly changing,
and they were stupid things too, Like you could get
in trouble for what you wore, but like they bought
me those clothes. So that's confusing, you know. Yeah, So
(18:14):
my dad what That church was non denominational when we
got there, but my dad was ordained by the Assemblies
of God, and so he eventually brought that church into
the denomination. So that was I think it grew more
(18:36):
after that. But again, I think in the whole time.
We were only there for like two years, and I
think it only grew to be like maybe one hundred people.
But the building was really small, so that meant we
had two services on Sunday mornings then, so that seemed,
you know, like you were making it, you were getting.
(19:00):
But inside of our house we had it was like
he ruled with an iron fist. We had no privacy.
And some of that comes with just six kids, eight people.
That's a lot of people in one house. And I
don't care how big your house is, and ours wasn't
usually very big, so a lot of times I had
(19:23):
to share a bedroom with my three sisters, and we
a lot of times had one, maybe two bathrooms in
a house for eight people, so you know, you didn't
get to take a shower by yourself. People were coming
in to brush their teeth and go to the bathroom.
So like no privacy in that regard. But also they
(19:45):
would not let us have our own you know, like
if they would go through our stuff all the time,
just so that we knew we had no privacy. If
they found a diary or a journal or a note
from a friend, or even if somebody mailed us a letter,
because again we were moving a lot. So sometimes our
(20:05):
friends from the place we just moved from would send
us a letter or a postcard. They would always read
it first to decide if they would even give it
to us or not. So they also were very critical,
like I said, about our clothing, and my mom would
always make comments about my body and like that, I,
(20:31):
you know, didn't look good in those clothes. Or I
remember one time I was about twelve years old. I
had gotten a new pair of shorts. And again when
I'm talking shorts, they were bermute a shorts, okay, because
they had to touch our kneecaps or below, we weren't
allowed to wear like normal shorts. So I thought they
were cute. They had some polka dots and a little
(20:53):
puppy dog on them or something like that. So I
went to try them on, and I think we had
some friends over and my mom was in the kitchen,
so I walk out there to show her my new shorts,
and she like made a derogatory comment about my chubby
knees having dimples. And I was so humiliated because there
was people around you. It wasn't like she just told me,
(21:15):
like those don't fit you. Right, you know, or something
like that. But like no, like just a comment about
my chubby knees, and I was just like, wow, that's embarrassing.
So I went back to my room took the shorts off.
I didn't wear shorts again for like three years because
it was just I felt humiliated. Yeah, so let's see,
(21:44):
I'm getting lost.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
They would also listen in on our phone conversations. So
you know, back in the day, we had a landline
attached to the wall, and we did have one with
a really long cord, but there would be another phone
in the house and you could hear when it would,
you know, click, and you could hear somebody was on
(22:08):
the other line, so that they were just listening to
your conversation. So even if I could stretch the cord
long enough to like go in the bathroom and shut
the door or something, for it didn't matter. You didn't.
You didn't. Privacy wasn't a thing that was ever allowed.
I do remember when I was growing up, I would
(22:29):
hide a lot. I remember climbing trees in the yard.
The tallest highest I could get up in a tree,
and I would just stay there the whole day because
I think that if I wasn't around anybody. I couldn't
get in trouble. I couldn't get a beating, you know.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah, you were like creating safety for yourself.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
Yeah. I would hide in the back of my closet.
There were my dad had built shelves in there and
they were pretty There was pretty good space between the
shelves and they were pretty deep, so I could get
into one of the shelves at the back and like
put things in front of me so people couldn't find
(23:15):
me too. So I just I remember always trying to
hide and like get away from the abuse. We were
controlled what we could watch on TV, which was almost nothing.
We could watch, you know, Christian things. We could not
(23:36):
watch Disney movies because there was magic. We weren't even
allowed to go to movie theaters. We couldn't play card games,
we couldn't read comic books, we couldn't play with Barbie dolls,
we couldn't everything, oh, puppet even in churches, like we
(24:02):
were traveling to minister at different churches on the weekends,
and if there was a children's church program that actually
did puppets in their program, we couldn't go. And that
even extended to like my dad's parents and his sisters
were normal people and they would just like have a
(24:25):
beer at a barbecue or something like that. We couldn't
go if they brought out alcohol, we had to leave.
We couldn't go to a wedding reception if they were
serving alcohol. So like never grew up even seeing or
knowing what it was like with if people would drink,
like drinking was you would go straight to hell if
(24:48):
you drank. Definitely struck by lightning as you're taking a sack. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
And we weren't allowed to have friends with people who
didn't attend the same church as us, like not even
other Christians because like sometimes at the private schools we
went to, like there were other Christian people there and
we really weren't allowed to be friends with them because
they didn't go to our church.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yikes.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Yeah, So it really was like every single aspect of
life was heavily controlled. So we only lived in Chelsea,
Michigan for two years, which was sad for me. We
ended up moving back to Minnesota, and initially when I
(25:38):
heard we were going to I was actually pretty excited
because our grandparents, you know, cousins, aunts, uncles like all
of that were he were in Minnesota, so I was like, yeah, cool,
we get to go back to our family. But then
I realized, like it felt so heavy to me that
we had to leave my friends again. And I remember
(26:04):
like making this sort of inner vow of I am
not going to make new friends at this new place
because it's just too hard, it's too painful. I can't
just keep losing people all the time. Back in that day,
there wasn't social media to really like keep in touch
with your friends either when you left, and it would
be like writing letters, but that sometimes that would happen
(26:28):
for a little while, but that would fade out pretty quick,
so you just really didn't keep in touch with people.
I also think that one of the reasons we moved
so much was so that people wouldn't see what was
going on inside our household. You know, like my mom
wasn't really even allowed to have friends. She was a
(26:50):
very friendly person and she would always make friends wherever
we went, but my dad would be really controlling about
letting her, you know, go in time with them or
talk to them on the phone or things like that.
He was just very very controlling of those sorts of things.
So I think, you know, if you don't stay in
(27:12):
one place for very long, people can't really read your mail.
So I think that could have been a big part
of it too. It's like if people start asking questions
or whatever, like time to go. Yeah. So when we
moved back to Minnesota, though we moved to a it
(27:34):
was because my dad got another pastoral position at a
different church. I don't think that that's what his intention was.
In the beginning, his sister went to this church in
Elk River, Minnesota, and they had a pastor who was
being shady and having affairs with women when he was
(27:55):
supposed to be counseling them in the office. And so
there were you know, he obviously got let go, and
then there were a bunch of lawsuits and different things.
And so my aunt was on the committee for people
trying to fill the pulpit, like while there was an
empty space without a pastor. So since my dad was
(28:18):
a pastor, she just asked him, would you be willing
to come and preach on this Sunday that we don't
have anybody to preach for. He said sure. So apparently
they liked him enough that after that they asked him
to actually come back and do a I guess an
audition trial. I don't know, but like where he preached
(28:39):
again and then the congregation members would vote whether they
wanted him to be the pastor or not. So they
voted yes, and so we were moving back to be
in that church. So it had some issues, and it
had been one of the larger Assemblies of God churches
(29:00):
in the state before, and there was still probably I
don't remember, but maybe somewhere between five hundred to one
thousand members still, so it was pretty large, and of
course that's getting my dad closer to his goals of
being a famous megachurch pastor. So we moved there. I
(29:25):
was just turning fourteen and going into high school. In
my teenage years, I was extremely depressed. I was suicidal.
There was actually a time where I did attempt suicide.
I took every single pill I could find in the house.
(29:50):
Being young and naive, it was mostly over the counter
medications and vitamins. I just I guess I was just thinking, like,
if I take enough thing and enough different things, maybe
just the amount and the interactions will do something. I
didn't know what I was doing, but I was obviously
(30:11):
in a very desperate spot. Yeah, didn't work because I'm
still here, but I was. I just ended up vomiting
all of the pills, and so my mom heard me,
like in the middle of the night, came in the
bathroom and noticed it was pills in the toilet, and
(30:34):
she said, do I need to take you to the
er and get your stomach pumped? And I said nope.
She said okay, and she went back to bed, and
she never never spoke of it again, which to me,
I have kids. My child is only a couple years
(30:56):
older than I was at that time, and I could
never imagine. But I think, you know, there was always
this image thing of like, if you go to the
emergency room in the town that I'm a pastor in,
then people are going to talk bad. People are going
to say stuff about our family, and it's going to
(31:17):
look bad on us. So if you're not going to
ask me to take you to get your stomach pumped,
then I guess let's just pretend this never happened. I
don't know, it just bizarre. So I was always kind
(31:39):
of the black sheep and the scapegoat. My younger brother
was too, and I think sometimes maybe he got worse
physical abuse than I got. But we would. My mother
took her parenting advice from Bill Gothard, James Dobson, and
later on Michael and Debbie Girl. So the trifecta of evil. Yeah,
(32:06):
I mean I was the strong willed child that James
Dobson wrote his books about, and my parents did their
best to break me. I some of my other siblings had,
you know, they had each other or like my younger brother,
(32:29):
who got probably worse physical abuse than I did, my
mom would kind of advocate for him and stick up
for him to my dad. But I didn't really have that.
My brother and I were close, but he was younger
than me, so he couldn't really do anything to like
protect me or anything. And I think both of my
(32:51):
parents really didn't like me at all. My mom would
tell me things like, one day you'll have a child
that's just like you and then you'll see like how
bad you are kind of thing. And the truth is,
I do have a child that's just like me, and
she's amazing. She's she's brilliant, she's bold, she's kind, she's empathetic,
(33:16):
she's artistic. There's so many things that she is. And
she's feisty and she's fiery and she's got a strong will,
and I think that that is wonderful. And so what
I see is not how difficult I was to love.
(33:38):
It's not that I was too much or too dramatic
or too whatever. It's that she didn't have the capacity
to love me the way I needed to be loved.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Yeah. And the problem, well, you were, it wasn't Yeah,
I mean you were not easy to control. Yeah, that's
what it feels like to me. It's just that you
weren't easy to control, and therefore it sounds like shame
was kind of heaped upon you, like, well, oh you're bad,
(34:11):
you're defective, and that's why we can't control you. I'm
just I hate that so much. I'm sorry that you
went through that. But I'm really glad that you have
a child like you, you know, because you're going to
be I'm sure you already you are, you know, empathetic
and understanding and like embracing of all of those qualities
(34:34):
actually are good qualities that were rejected by your parents.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
And you and both of my kids are a lot
like me in different ways. Yeah, And so it is
very interesting from that perspective of seeing how it's not
that hard to just work with your child's strengths and
encourage them in that way. And my early parenting was
(34:59):
rough because I was doing what I was taught. And
it's changed a lot now my kids are older, and
you know, it's kind of one of those things like
I hope it didn't change too late, but I think
it still counts. You know, even my son is twenty
one and my daughter's sixteen, so they're older and the
(35:21):
changes have been more in just the last probably handful
of years that the changes have been really dramatic. But
I still think it matters. And I talked to them
all the time about before and how you know, I'm
sorry and this was wrong. I shouldn't have done that,
and we're going to do it different moving forward.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
So that's so good because you're making you're making repairs too,
like you're changing it, but then you're also repairing with them,
which I think is really key, you know, with our kids,
like that's what they're going to remember.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
It's something I didn't get right. I never I never
got an acknowledgment that they did something that was wrong
or hurtful. I never got any of that, And I
do think those things are really important. It matters, It
changes things, I think.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
So, Yeah, because you are creating safety in this new
type of relationship that you have with him, I think
it is super important.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
Well, and I think it sets the precedent to I've
noticed this with myself, and I don't think this is
just a like ex cult member type thing only. I
think this is just societal but the getting an apology
type thing, like I remember I think one time ever,
I don't remember what it was, but like one time
(36:55):
ever from Dad. But otherwise that was not a thing
because it was meant to be like they're an authority
and infallible to a certain degree. That was the whole idea,
like there's nothing to apologize for type thing. But that
idea kind of perpetuates that that's what strength is. That
strength is just never admitting that you're wrong. And of
(37:17):
course we're seeing that on a real grand scale right now,
which we won't get into you everybody who's listening, that's
what I'm talking about, Yeah, but kind of breaking out
of that and understanding like, no, that's actually the opposite.
That's when you're weak. Is this fake pounding of the
chest bravado stuff like I'm not wrong I'm not gonna
say sorry that type of thing. So that has been
(37:39):
like a revelation for me, never that I was never
really that way or like Dad in that way or anything,
but kind of in the last five years since we've left,
kind of shifting and saying like, actually, real strength is
over here and it's being able to say sorry. So
just that flipping that and then thinking about like our
(38:00):
raising being the opposite of that, like the work that
you have to do as an adult to change that,
you know, those things that carry over, which I hate that.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Now than never, and building on that. Maddie, I don't
know if this was true for you, but I think
because Dad was never able to admit any fault, I
think that carried over into at least for me, how
I viewed making mistakes. Like I think because of the narcissism,
(38:35):
he didn't actually think he was making mistakes. Yeah, so
his conscience was clear. But for people who do not
have that pathology, you know, you're feeling guilt and shame
when when you do something that you feel is not right,
is not wrong, And so I think that added extra
(38:58):
shame because it's like, why can't I get this right?
Like why do I keep making mistakes, like I don't know,
that was more probably my teen years, but it's like
we were taught not to make mistakes, and Dad is
the example of that, you know.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
Yeah, yeah, we experienced that in our family too. Yeah.
Nothing he did was ever wrong, there was right. I
can't recall a single apology ever. Yeah, never, No, And
he I mean, similar to what you're saying, he definitely
set himself up as the authority on all things. He
(39:38):
kind of put himself in the position of God, you know,
like we had to go to him for things, like
we had to ask him for advice on everything. We really,
even as adults, you know, and I'll get into that more,
but even as adults, we really weren't allowed to make
our own choices for ourselves, like they always had to
(39:59):
tell what.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
To do.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
Like even you know, later on, it was kind of
they would give recommendations that they expected you to follow,
even about like who you would get married to. And
that didn't happen for me as much as like some
of my other siblings, because that just wasn't something I
would have listened to. I don't think back then, even
(40:26):
though I did listen to a lot of things I
was known as the rebellious one, so I don't I
don't think I was nearly as rebellious as they made
me out to be. I mean, I did a couple
things that they didn't want me to, so I guess
technically that could be rebellious. I feel like they were
developmentally appropriate things for my age. But right, yeah, we're.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Just three black sheep here. Yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
What do you think your moniker was? Shendy is the
rebellious one? What what were you?
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Oh? I mean I was told that as a kid
that I was like rebellious and obstinate, stubborn, like willful,
you know, and that was the whole James Dobson thing.
You've got to break the spirit of the child. And
like they they talked about that, you know, the church
dad talked about that as if that was like, you know,
(41:29):
something you should be really proud about, if you were
able to break your child. So gross.
Speaker 4 (41:36):
Yeah yeah, but like but.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
The cool thing is that we weren't broken. It might
have looked like a yeah, me too, but meaning that
that's still that was still in there. We had to
like adapt, you know, so as not to allow that
like rebellious, like you know, stubborn spirit to show so
(42:03):
that we could survive, but it didn't die. I guess
that's what I'm saying. Yeah, so that I always like
to look at that like he tried so hard, but
he couldn't couldn't fully break me. And I feel like
that's obvious for you too. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:22):
Yeah, I think one of some of the ways they
tried to break us was and I've heard you guys
talk about some of this too, but like very intense
physical punishment. We would have to there was a ritual
to it, which is also really weird, you know, but
(42:44):
it would be we would have to pull down our pants,
grab our ankles, and they would swat us with an object.
So most of the time it was a wooden spoon.
Sometimes it was plastic paintster stick that had little holes
in it, and so you could hear it whistling through
the air as it would be coming at you, and
(43:06):
they would count out loud ten swats, and if you flinched,
if you cried too much, if you didn't cry enough,
you know, they would start over at number one. And
so often, you know, I was left with welts and bruises,
and they didn't just hit my butt either like it
(43:29):
was on my legs and my back, and you know
it was and those spankings would spankings would be for anything,
nothing like if you talked back, if you had, you know,
in their opinion, right, if you had an attitude with them,
(43:50):
if you wear sassy, if you know, it didn't even
have to be anything that bad. But then also sometimes
there were things like growing up with a lot of siblings,
you get into little scuffles and things like that, and
so a lot of the time we weren't really being
(44:12):
supervised that closely. And like I said, we had, you know,
twenty acre hobby farm. We had motorcycles and ATVs and
stuff like that. So we would just be out there.
And this was the case in the eighties too for
most kids. Right, you're just if when the street lights
(44:33):
come on, go home. So we were just out there,
and you know, so if they didn't know what happened,
but somebody went home and was tattling, then both of
you would get beat. So it was just sort of
sometimes you would tattle because you wanted the other person
(44:55):
to get in trouble. But then you were real careful
because you weren't ever sure like am I going to
get travel too.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah, I noticed you did the air quotes around spanking,
and I'm curious if that has been a difficult thing
for you to like go through the process of like
naming that what it actually is, because forever I kept
saying spankings, but that doesn't really describe what it was,
(45:24):
you know, like it was actual physical abuse. But I
do still have a hard time shifting that perspective from
a spanking, which has its whole you know, connotation and
meaning to like, no, we were being beaten with belts
and you know for you objects.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
Yeah, I mean to the extent that my mother actually
would buy wooden spoons in bulk because they would they
would hit us so hard they would break them, like
the wooden spoon would bust and go flying, and so
then she would buy them in like ten packs. I mean, yeah,
that's not normal. That's that's physical abuse.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
And also they're taking down your pants, like that's not
something we've talked about a whole lot, but that is
you know, it didn't always happen, but enough, Yeah, so humiliating.
That's a whole other, like to me level of abuse.
That's psychological abuse as well as physical.
Speaker 4 (46:32):
And that wasn't just when we were little children either. Yeah, Like,
you know, it's bad enough to make an eight year old,
a ten year old pull down their pants, but once
you're like going through puberty and stuff.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
The last time that that my dad tried to do
that to me, I was fifteen years old.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (46:54):
There, and I actually developed early permonally. I you know,
was like pretty young, like twelve when I started showing
the physical signs of changing. So like I was, yeah,
fully a woman body at that point. And he I
(47:19):
don't even remember what my sin was that day that
was so terrible that he said, you know, go to
my room and assume the position. And it was like
the house that they lived in at the time was
pretty large, and to get from the main living area
of the house to his bedroom was a long It
(47:43):
was the Green mile. It was, Yeah, it was walking
the Green Mile. And the whole time I was thinking,
this is not going to happen. I'm not getting beat today,
No way in hell I'm pulling my pants down for
this guy, Like, not a chance. So I'm just trying
to figure out the whole way down, Like how I'm
gonna get out of this. And so we get to
(48:05):
his room and he like turns to go get the
belt or whatever he was gonna beat me with, and
I just took off running. I was gone. I was
out of there. And I almost almost made it to
the front door. I literally had my hand on the door,
and he got me and he tackled me and he
(48:27):
pinned me to the ground. He had like one like
my neck was in this side of his arm, and
my knees were in this side, and he just had
me like this, like my knees were to my forehead basically,
and he had me like this. But I'm screaming, I'm thrashing.
I'm saying I'm gonna call the cops. I'm calling CPS
(48:47):
on you. You know you can't do this. This is wrong.
I actually even had a friend over that day and
she saw it all happen.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (48:59):
Yeah, And he looked at her while he's got me panned,
and he says, you're probably gonna want to leave, and
she was like okay, and just like left and because like,
what what are you gonna do? And so I don't.
I eventually got out of the hold he had me in,
and he told me like, go ahead and call the police.
(49:23):
They're just gonna take you away, which I should have,
but I didn't like because he let me go. And
then I don't remember how anything you know, transpired after that,
But yeah, I didn't call the police, and I probably
should have, but I maybe I was scared that they
would take me away. I don't know. Maybe I believed him. Yeah,
(49:47):
but he never touched me again after that day in
that way. Yeah, So I don't know, maybe he realized like, whoops,
maybe this is too much, or or just if somebody's
gonna fight back, then he's done. I don't know, but
I think that was, like you said, like they couldn't
(50:08):
break me. They tried real hard, and it never I
mean it did to an extent, right like it was.
It's been hard emotionally to deal with the wounds of
that as an adult, but as a kid, I definitely
(50:30):
I was stubborn and strong willed and I didn't just
I didn't just believe everything that was said. I had
questions and that was never okay. You know, you can't
ask questions. We also had to deal with purity culture.
(51:00):
I don't know if you're familiar with that book, called
I Kissed Dating Goodbye, but that was one that they
passed around.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Yeah, yeah, did you have to read it, Matthew Many,
Yeah you did too.
Speaker 4 (51:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
Yeah. Hey, and anybody listening, please send us an email
or a comment or a voice message about your experiences
with that book, because I know there have to be
Almost everybody who's coming to this right now is familiar
with that in some way.
Speaker 4 (51:34):
Yeah, so that was sort of the expectation that was
put out there of Like you know, also, I think
maybe a cultural thing that a lot of people are
familiar with is the Douggers and how they could only
you know, the Dugger family, and how they were supposed
to only court and they had to have a supervisor
(51:57):
like chaperone, like they were never to be alone with
somebody from the opposite gender, even if you were just friends,
like that wasn't allowed.
Speaker 1 (52:09):
You know, they live in our area, sorry, I work
in which.
Speaker 4 (52:18):
Is where.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
Yea and our aunt. Our aunt used to live Springdale Townytown,
and you had to pass their house to get to
her house.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
So like the Vans and stuff, I haven't seen them,
but I know Liz has seen. I forget the mom's
name at the sands club or whatever.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
Yeah, mom was on a plane with them from either
to Florida or from because she texted She's like, you
will not believe it was on this flight.
Speaker 4 (52:56):
Oh that's so weird.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (53:01):
Yeah, So I think I was not real good at
following those rules. I will say, so that's what was
expected of us. And I'll say like there were a
couple of relationships where I was like, all right, fine,
I'll try this. We'll see what happens. Like I've put
(53:23):
the boundary up there of like, Okay, if we're courting
to get married, then I want to you know, keep
our physical interactions to a minimum and no kissing, and
you know, we can maybe like hold hands. But like
at this point, actually I'm skipping ahead in the story
a little bit, but at that point I was actually
(53:45):
like in my twenties, I had already been married and divorced,
and so like that's just weird.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
That is really weird to just.
Speaker 4 (53:54):
Be like Okay, no no holding hands, no kissing, no nothing,
like I've been married and divorced or I don't know.
It's just bizarre. Yeah, but I guess. And that's another
purity culture story, is I got married when I was nineteen,
(54:15):
because you're not allowed to really have a long term relationship.
And in my own family cult, like the rules were
you can't you can't start seeing somebody, courting, dating, whatever
you want to call it, until you're eighteen, and then
(54:36):
it's double dates. Like you again, you can't be alone.
Well that just didn't work for me really, so technically
my mom said I wasn't even allowed to like boys.
I wish I would have said, cool, no problem, I
like girls, but I didn't think of it. I didn't
think of that.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
Then.
Speaker 4 (54:56):
Unfortunately, hey, I'll follow your rules, no problem. I mean,
not that it's a choice, but if it was, I
might have made that choice. Well yeah, so I would
just keep it a secret, right, And I feel like
that's super harmful too. That's a rule that I changed
(55:19):
with my own kids right away, was like, if you
like somebody, I want to know and let's talk about it,
because how else do you learn and when you get
to be older, like I've seen this with some of
my nieces and nephews who grew up in the cult
and you know, had to live under those rules. They
(55:39):
weren't allowed to have relationships, and then so then they
get to be an adult eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old,
and it's like the first time they've ever even had
a significant other when you know, that kind of happens
around like nine to twelve, fourteen years old maybe somewhere
in there, and it's it's little and it's not so
(56:03):
impactful on your life, and if it if it's over
in a week, like your heart isn't shattered, you know,
And then you build up from those little things to
then when you're an adult and it's a serious relationship,
you've had practice and you kind of know how to
handle it and you've kind of learned some red flags already,
(56:23):
maybe like I don't I had a relationship that was
like this, and I don't want that for my future.
Where Like when you wait till you're in your twenties
to even start trying any of that, I feel like
that puts you way behind the game. So with my kids,
I just didn't do that. Like I was like, if
you like somebody, that's awesome, Let's talk about it. Let's
(56:47):
discuss why do you like them, what do you like
about them? You know, really think about it. And I
think that's been beneficial and my kids, you know, my
older kid, he's been in a relationships and I think
that's helped him figure some stuff out. My younger one
not so much, but that's just not her thing, so
that's okay too. But yeah, I was I had basically
(57:12):
the same the same guy that I liked from the
time that I was fourteen to eighteen, and we were
on again, off again a little bit. But and when
we were off I probably liked somebody else, but I
generally probably tried to keep that a secret from my
parents so I wouldn't get in trouble. The guy that
(57:33):
I liked from fourteen to eighteen, his dad was on
the board at our church, so like that was kind
of okay, but again we weren't really allowed to like
hang out just the two of us, was like in
youth group things or you know, they really controlled a
lot of that too. But then his parents left the
(57:58):
church and that happened because well, this is a whole
other story. So, like I was saying earlier, how my
dad kind of wanted to be one of the big
time preachers, so he would have like he was really
always chasing revival and whatever that meant to him, and
(58:20):
so he actually like bought a coach bus, like a big,
huge bus, and he would load anybody from the church
who was willing to go, and we would drive down
to like Florida or Ohio and we would just go
to like meetings like I don't know if you ever
heard of Rodney Howard Brown or we went to like
(58:41):
rod Parsley camp meeting stuff. Rodney Howard Brown was back
in the nineties and he was big into Again. I
don't know if this is anything you guys have heard of,
but Holy laughter, like the Holy Laughter movement, and it well.
Speaker 3 (58:59):
I need to hear more about. Just let's pause, right,
Holy Laughter episode title for starters. There we go. What
the hell is Holy laughter?
Speaker 1 (59:12):
It sounds better than the move though, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (59:15):
I don't know, let's hear it.
Speaker 4 (59:19):
It's weird. Let me just start. It's weird, okay. So
the so we went to, right, we went to Florida,
and this preacher's name was Rodnie Howard Brown, and he
was South African, very very heavy, thick accent, a big dude,
(59:41):
real big dude, like probably over six feet maybe three
hundred pounds, like big guy, booming voice, and so he
would just literally walk back and forth like pacing, and
he would just go ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha, and then people in the in the crowd
(01:00:05):
would start doing that, and then pretty soon everybody's just laughing,
rolling around on the floor, running around in circle, just chaos,
just weird chaos, but you know, it was the Holy
Spirit making everyone laugh.
Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Well.
Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
Then, also around that same time in those movements, like
there started to be this thing where they would say
that gold dust was falling from the sky, and so
then everybody would look at like their hands and be like,
oh my gosh, I have gold dust on my hands.
It's like your makeup. I'm sorry it was your eyeshadow,
(01:00:49):
but that's okay. It was, you know, the Holy Spirit
glitter on your hands.
Speaker 3 (01:00:54):
Didn't Bethel? I need to look it up. I think
Bethel said that that happened at one of their churches.
Like gold this was coming down as a theme.
Speaker 4 (01:01:05):
That was My dad would find things like that and
just copy them. So he would copy like Kenneth Hagen's
sermons or even the cadence of his speaking, like he
just was always, you know, copying, and so I do
think that was part of why we were going to
these you know, we would go to like Benny hin
(01:01:26):
Services or the Brownsville Revival, or like if Lester Summer
All when he was still alive was speaking in Ohio.
They'd load up the bus and go listen to him speak.
So our Rod Parsley, like I said, he's got a
big World Harvest church in Columbus, Ohio. So my dad
(01:01:48):
was always just like following these things, and then he
would come and copy that stuff and try to bring
it back into our church. Well, there were a lot
of people who thought it was weird and were kind
of uncomfy with it, and so they would reach out
to At this point, we were still in a denomination,
(01:02:12):
the Assemblies of God, so they reached out to like
the higher ups, and we're kind of being like, what's
going on? Can you do something? So they would call
my dad and they would be telling him like, you're
getting too far off the mark here. This isn't what
our belief system is. And so then at that point
he decided he didn't want anybody telling him what he
(01:02:34):
could or couldn't do. You know, I'm following the Holy Spirit.
How dare you tell me I can't do this? So
he decided at that point to disaffiliate with the Assemblies
of God, and that's a thing that you can do.
But there's procedures in the by laws, and you know,
there's the church has to vote, the board has to vote,
(01:02:57):
all these things. Well, you know, my dad doesn't want
anybody to tell him what he can or can't do,
so he just he actually, allegedly, I have heard from
people that he forged their signatures, board members signatures on
things to just force this to go through because he
(01:03:19):
wanted to own the church for himself. So that did happen.
He got the church under his own personal name instead
of the Assemblies of God. But there were lawsuits to follow.
The Assemblies of God sued. I think there were former
church members who sued. There was one guy in particular
(01:03:42):
who was pretty upset because he had donated a bunch
of stock in his company and then he was like,
this isn't what I want to support. So he wanted
the company stock back. But you know, I technically you
can't do that if you give an offering that it's
a gift and you don't get to ask for it back.
(01:04:02):
But he was suing, and I I remember telling my
dad one time, I was like, why don't you countersue,
and he said no, because that would open it up
to discovery. He would be allowed to ask for my
financials and I don't want to do that. So I
was like, oh, weird, but okay.
Speaker 3 (01:04:27):
So.
Speaker 4 (01:04:29):
Yeah, I guess then he has no guardrails right now.
He's his own thing. He doesn't have anybody who can
keep him in check or in line. He did end
up finding a what he ended up calling his spiritual
(01:04:50):
mentor leader head. I don't know whatever word you want
to plug in there, but spiritual mentor named Ed Dufrain.
He came across him at one of those Rod Parsley
camp meeting meetings. Apparently there's a video that shows him
walking on air or something. I've seen the video. It
(01:05:13):
didn't look like that to me. I can't no idea,
no idea.
Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
We have to look that up. Yeah, I think to
see the gold does too. I need to see all
of this.
Speaker 4 (01:05:24):
Yeah, so that was I think again, that supernatural thing
was always like what my dad was chasing. He always
wanted the weird. I don't know what else to call it,
just the weird stuff of people, you know, the old
(01:05:46):
school what they would call holy rollers, and like you know,
people literally were would like roll around on the floor.
They were dancing, not the way you guys did, Maddie,
not like slow romantic.
Speaker 7 (01:06:04):
Dancing, but like like none of that, more of like
we would laugh because it was literally like a jump kick,
like they would.
Speaker 4 (01:06:18):
Do a little hop and then kick and then hop
and then kick and then hop.
Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
I'm just imagining like roundhouse kicks.
Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
Boy Church, that would have been better.
Speaker 4 (01:06:32):
Well even sometimes because it was just ridiculous, right, And
so sometimes I'd be sitting on the front row with
my mom and I would just look at her and
I would be like party laugh and she'd be like okay,
And so we would just make up ridiculous sounding laughs,
like just weird laughing noises. You just do that because again,
(01:06:54):
everybody is it's chaos. Everybody's running around screaming, laughing jump like, okay,
let's just play a funny game. I don't know, it's bizarre.
Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (01:07:10):
Yeah. So I think I got a little off the
topic that I was talking about there, because I think
we were talking about baty culture. So I don't know
how we got here.
Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
I side tractice. I wanted to know more about the
Holy laughter that's where. That's how we got here.
Speaker 4 (01:07:29):
Yeah, that's fun times. I mean, actually it wasn't that
bad because a lot of times it would be like
our services were long, like I'm talking five to six
hours plus like long, and sometimes I don't want to
just listen to a sermon that long. That's real boring.
(01:07:52):
So at least we're just sitting here watching people be ridiculous,
like people watching at its absolute finest. For sure, there
would be like I remember one time where there was
this kid who was crawling on the floor looking for
chicken nuggets. That was the Holy Spirit. I don't who
(01:08:16):
are we to question what the Holy Spirit does?
Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
The Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways. Correct, you can't
understand it, so you don't need to ask any more questions.
Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
Do not question it.
Speaker 4 (01:08:34):
I'm surprised you even asked me what holy laughter was.
Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
I mean I assumed, but I yeah, I needed to
know for certainty.
Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
Yeah, I didn't know there was an actual like term
for it.
Speaker 4 (01:08:48):
Yeah there was, you know.
Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
What that Actually, I'm not going to get a sidetracked.
I was just remembering we had, uh, I think she's
probably in her nineties now. We had a woman in
the church I mean I think they came in like
two thousand and five and we're there until we left.
That would do that sometimes, like on a Friday night
worship service. She would pray and she would kind of
(01:09:11):
get into like a little bit of a hysterical crying
prayer type thing, and then they would be the laughter.
And I'm betting that she's probably from that old school
of thought. What you're talking about. That was probably a
thing that she learned elsewhere. And because I always wonder
like what is that, Like why the laughing? But like
(01:09:32):
now it makes sense. I guess I have experienced. I
just didn't know what it was, where it came from,
what it was called.
Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
Yeah, well you remember, like I think this was Benny
hen was It was he the one that would call
people up and just like push them on the forehead.
Speaker 4 (01:09:46):
And there was a lot of that too. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
I was gonna ask because that's what I think of
when I think of some of these gatherings.
Speaker 3 (01:09:55):
Yeah, you know, doing like this with your hand and
a bunch of people fall, that type of thing, like
not even touching them. I've seen that stuffy.
Speaker 1 (01:10:03):
Yeah, I talked to a girl the other day. I
talked to someone the other day who grew up in that,
and she was saying that she would just pretend to
pass out just because like that was what you're supposed
to do.
Speaker 6 (01:10:16):
So she's like, okay, well, and also sometimes if you didn't,
they would just keep pushing you, like they're handles on
your head, and that you would be like and then.
Speaker 4 (01:10:28):
Finally I'd be like, fine, I'll just lay down there. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
I was just say the spirit of rebellion is strong
in this one, to push.
Speaker 4 (01:10:39):
A little harder. Yeah, that's probably.
Speaker 7 (01:10:42):
What was happening.
Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
If you like this episode, please go leave us a
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The world tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
The Worldwide Church of God presents Herbert's w Armstrong.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
And I'm here to bring you the truth.
Speaker 4 (00:11):
No one else is telling you the things that God
is telling you through me.
Speaker 5 (00:16):
He's speaking through me the Lord.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Let me experience what it is to be a new bride.
You know, I'm not worried about what I'm about to say,
though it may be graphic. We're coming to the Lord
and if you.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Can take it, beyond.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
The veil is the chamber.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
That's the wedding chamber. The Lord told me that.
Speaker 5 (00:37):
But from then on, visions begin to come. When this
comes up on me, it produces the vision. I'm able
to tell people what's wrong with them, what they must
do in life, and the sins that they are holding back.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
In their life.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
God is going to be moving vitally and bot like
he dies before booths judgment. How to everybody, and welcome
back to the Cult next Door podcast. We have a
new podcast guest for this week and the next couple after.
Her name is Mindy Ashley and I had a really
(01:13):
good conversation with her for several hours, so I think
that you guys will really enjoy it. You'll laugh, you'll cringe,
and there's lots of really interesting and funny and good
moments in these and I'm excited for you all to
hear it before we jump into that. As always, want
to remind you go follow us on our socials, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.
(01:33):
Also leave us a review if you haven't five stars, preferably,
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(02:15):
you a really cool holographic Cult next Door sticker. So,
as I said earlier, we've got Mindy a new guest.
I think you guys are going to really enjoy it.
So let's jump into episode one with Mindy.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
All right, thanks for being here, Mindy, thanks for having me. Yeah,
we're really excited about this. We obviously we had that
exploratory call and we got just a tiny taste of
your experience, so I think we're both really excited about
(02:48):
exploring all of this with you. And you know, before
we started this, we talked about where do we start,
because a lot has happened and transpired, and I think
starting from the beginning is good, you know, because our
childhood experiences basically shape who we are today and kind
of lay the foundation, you know, for how we see
(03:09):
ourselves and how we interact with the world around us,
how we handle all the challenges you know that you
went through in your life. So not exactly sure where
you want to start in your childhood story, but we're
ready to listen.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Okay, I guess I'll probably just start close to the beginning.
When I was born, I grew up the fourth of
six kids. There was four girls and two boys, and
so I'm kind of just plopped right in the middle there.
My mom had all six of us by the time
she was twenty eight, so that's pretty wild to me.
(03:47):
But she started. My oldest sister was born when my
mom was eighteen, and so also in those ten years
of having children, she lost a few in there too,
so she was pregnant perpetually, and I think she was
(04:09):
early on. I think she believed a lot of the
quiverful kind of things of like just however many children
God will give you is what you should have. And
I think when I think back about my upbringing and
really listening to your podcast has kind of given me
(04:29):
some revelations about things in my own life too. So
I always just thought we were part of a cult,
But listening to you guys, I realized that we actually
were the cult as well. Like my family was a
cult and then my parents were also cult leaders. So
(04:51):
my dad, I don't think he was really answering to
any you know, higher power. I think that he made
the rule, he interpreted the Bible, and he enforced it
however he wanted to. My mom backed him up and
carried that out in the home. He wasn't home a
whole lot. He worked several jobs and we traveled on
(05:18):
the weekends to other churches. It was like a evangelist
kind of thing before he became a full time pastor.
But they created a system in our household that just
controlled every single aspect of our lives, what we wore,
(05:38):
what we said, like literally words, you know, they said,
every single word is so important. They would use the
scripture verse life and death are in the power of
the tongue. And so like one time I said something
to my mom, she said, like, thank you for something,
and I said, oh, no problem, it's the least I
could do. Like that's just people say that, right, And
(06:01):
she like reamed me out, what do you mean it's
the least you could do? Why would you do the least?
Why wouldn't you do the most? You know, your words
are really important, say what you mean kind of thing.
So it was like, you know, everything was just very controlled,
and everything we did was very criticized. Any attempt to
(06:24):
challenge them led to severe punishment. It was spiritual, it
was emotional. It was often physical. I'll probably get into
that a little bit with the physical abuse a bit
later in the story, But a big part of this
(06:45):
story is my mom's death and so my feelings surrounding
her part in all of this are really kind of confusing,
and I think two things can be true at the
same time. I think that she was a perpetrator of
the abuse, and I think she was also a victim
of the abuse. And so it gets a little, you know,
(07:07):
complicated how my feelings about her, because when like when
she died, that was such a trauma and so hard
to lose her, and you know, everybody needs their mom,
so that was really hard.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
But then now.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
After processing through some things and realizing, you know, she
was a part of all of the trauma that happened,
it just it's a little messy in my head about
how I feel about her. Yeah, of course, because I
love her, you know, and I don't think she deserved
what she had to go through. And I'll get into
that too. And then there are some times where I
(07:45):
think about that was pretty bad what she did or
what she said, or what she didn't do, you know.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Ye.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
So we moved around a lot. We never lived in
the same place for more than two years. That was
sometimes we were moving just to a different house in
the same town. Sometimes it was you know, a different town.
Sometimes it was a different state, but just constantly moving and.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
I'm sorry, Yeah, what was the reason that, like why
you moved around so much?
Speaker 4 (08:28):
So I can only speculate, and my opinion on that
is just I think that well, I think there's a
few reasons, but I think there was some instability financially,
and so I think maybe because we were renting houses
and so I think maybe he couldn't pay the rent,
so then we had to move. Potentially that was some
(08:50):
of it. And then I just think there were some
reasons of Like our first move, I was five years old.
We lived in Minnesota. My parents, both of their families
are from here, like very established here, but we moved
to Michigan. I was five years old. That was the
(09:11):
first time I moved, and that was because my dad
had gotten a job. So my grandfather owned a car
dealership and my dad worked for him. But he wanted
to be some sort of you know, fivefold minister, and
so he had gotten a job for Jimmy Swagert Ministries.
(09:33):
And what his job was, I think it was called
like a visitation pastor. So technically he went to people's
homes who were partners of Jimmy Swagert Ministries and he
would collect offerings from them. I mean he would go
pray for them in their homes, That's what I meant. Yeah,
(09:59):
if they happened to give an offering after he prayed
for their prayer request, then I mean, how do you
say no to that? But yeah, he was supposed to
be an extension of Jimmy Swagert. And so if these
partners requested, you know, a visit or prayer or whatever,
then there were it was it was a sales position,
(10:22):
you know, and they were traveling salespeople, and they they
had regions that you know, each person had. Each of
these visitation ministers had their own regions. So we moved
to Michigan so that he could work for Jimmy Swagert Ministries,
and then we moved to Arizona a few years after
(10:44):
that to help start a church. That didn't work out,
so we moved back to Michigan then eventually back back
to Minnesota. And but there were a lot of moves
in between two. So there were big moves that had reasons,
and then there were a lot of you know, just
moving to the next town or whatever. And that also
translated for me specifically. I went to a different school
(11:09):
almost every single grade. There were several grades where I
went to two different schools in the same grade, and
again we weren't allowed to go to public school. So
I have a suspicion that the reason why we switched
schools so often was because they didn't pay the bill
(11:29):
and so they wouldn't let us come back the next year.
I don't know that as a fact, but that's my presumption,
because there was six kids. Private schools not cheap. I mean, granted,
we weren't going to any of the nice, prestigious private schools.
We were going to tiny, little one room cult schools, right,
(11:53):
So that was there was just always some sort of
instability or chaos. Really Arizona. We only lived in Arizona
for a year less I think, maybe even less than
a year, and we had moved there, I guess, to
help start a church or something. I was like nine
(12:15):
years old at the time, so I don't remember a
whole lot of that, but I do know we lived
in two different cities and we went to probably three
or four different churches before we ended up moving back
to Michigan. So I don't remember all the details of
like what happened to the church plant. We were going
(12:38):
down there to help with and why didn't like, did
that stay open and we just split off, Like, I
don't I don't know any of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
I have a question. Yeah, so your dad, your parents
had all of these rules about what you could do
and what you could say. Was that of your dad's
own making or was that influenced by, you know, a
different ministry.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
I think both. I think early on a lot of
it was just my dad putting rules because he just
liked to control people. And then I think as time
went on, he adopted more rules from other ministries that
he followed. To me, it seemed like he was always
(13:33):
trying to be like the big you know, evangelist, like
the Joel Ostein well, not him specifically, the ones that
my dad looked up to and tried to emulate and
be like would be in the early days, it was
Jimmy Swagert, and then he kind of moved on to
people like Rod Parsley and Lester summer All and Billy Graham,
(14:03):
Oral Roberts, like just those big ministry people.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Kenneth Copeland.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Kenneth Copeland, Yeah, that was a big one in the
later years. That didn't start until later on, But yeah,
as time went on, he got more and more extreme.
So yeah, Kenneth Copeland was a big one.
Speaker 6 (14:25):
So did I answer your question, yes, yes, Okay.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
So by the time, so after we moved from Arizona,
we moved back to Michigan and back to the evangelism
where we would go and speak at different churches on
the weekends. And then eventually I think by the time
I was around twelve, he found his first senior pastor position.
(15:00):
So I think before that he had been a youth pastor.
That was before I was born. He was an associate pastor,
so he was always trying to get to this, you know,
his own church thing. So finally he did, and that
was in Chelsea, Michigan, and it was a tiny, little
country church. We used to joke around that once we
(15:20):
came there, we doubled the church attendance because of our
family was so bid eight more people, we doubled it.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
We can relate.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
So we were there for a couple of years. I
in my memory and looking back in my feelings about
my life, that was one of the places that I
enjoyed the most. I felt like I had some sort
of freedom, like I could get away from the rules.
Sometimes I could break out of the bubble. We actually
(15:55):
lived in a neighborhood, which was the first. Typically we
would like of like we had like a hobby farm
with twenty acres or like just kind of out in
the middle of nowhere. And I think a lot of
the reason for that was my dad didn't want to
follow rules that neighborhoods have, right so like how many
(16:18):
cars you can park in your driveway, or like when
we had lived in neighborhoods before, he would get very
upset when they would the city would come and knock
on his door and say, you have to clean you
know this up out of your yard. You can't have
that many cars in your driveway. So it's easier to
live out in the country where nobody cares how messy
(16:39):
your yard is or how many cars you have, because
that was always one of my dad's side jobs was
he would work on cars, like on the side, so
he would have maybe he worked at a car dealership
where after Jimmy Swaggert before he got his first church,
like in between there we were still doing the traveling
(17:01):
minister thing. But then he also had an autobody and
mechanic shop at our house and he was managing car dealerships,
you know, wherever. So when we moved to Chelsea, we
were in a neighborhood and I loved that. I had
a next door neighbor that was my best friend. We
(17:24):
could walk into town and I don't know how or why,
but my mom let me do that sometimes. And so
it just felt a little bit like the bubble was breaking,
you know, And I, even though I was only twelve,
I could feel that, and I could sense, you know
that this is different. I don't have as much control.
(17:47):
But then, you know, they would give a little rope
and then yank at that kind of thing of like
we would get in trouble for things we didn't even
know we were doing wrong. The rules were just constantly changing,
and they were stupid things too, Like you could get
in trouble for what you wore, but like they bought
me those clothes. So that's confusing, you know. Yeah, So
(18:14):
my dad what That church was non denominational when we
got there, but my dad was ordained by the Assemblies
of God, and so he eventually brought that church into
the denomination. So that was I think it grew more
(18:36):
after that. But again, I think in the whole time.
We were only there for like two years, and I
think it only grew to be like maybe one hundred people.
But the building was really small, so that meant we
had two services on Sunday mornings then, so that seemed,
you know, like you were making it, you were getting.
(19:00):
But inside of our house we had it was like
he ruled with an iron fist. We had no privacy.
And some of that comes with just six kids, eight people.
That's a lot of people in one house. And I
don't care how big your house is, and ours wasn't
usually very big, so a lot of times I had
(19:23):
to share a bedroom with my three sisters, and we
a lot of times had one, maybe two bathrooms in
a house for eight people, so you know, you didn't
get to take a shower by yourself. People were coming
in to brush their teeth and go to the bathroom.
So like no privacy in that regard. But also they
(19:45):
would not let us have our own you know, like
if they would go through our stuff all the time,
just so that we knew we had no privacy. If
they found a diary or a journal or a note
from a friend, or even if somebody mailed us a letter,
because again we were moving a lot. So sometimes our
(20:05):
friends from the place we just moved from would send
us a letter or a postcard. They would always read
it first to decide if they would even give it
to us or not. So they also were very critical,
like I said, about our clothing, and my mom would
always make comments about my body and like that, I,
(20:31):
you know, didn't look good in those clothes. Or I
remember one time I was about twelve years old. I
had gotten a new pair of shorts. And again when
I'm talking shorts, they were bermute a shorts, okay, because
they had to touch our kneecaps or below, we weren't
allowed to wear like normal shorts. So I thought they
were cute. They had some polka dots and a little
(20:53):
puppy dog on them or something like that. So I
went to try them on, and I think we had
some friends over and my mom was in the kitchen,
so I walk out there to show her my new shorts,
and she like made a derogatory comment about my chubby
knees having dimples. And I was so humiliated because there
was people around you. It wasn't like she just told me,
(21:15):
like those don't fit you. Right, you know, or something
like that. But like no, like just a comment about
my chubby knees, and I was just like, wow, that's embarrassing.
So I went back to my room took the shorts off.
I didn't wear shorts again for like three years because
it was just I felt humiliated. Yeah, so let's see,
(21:44):
I'm getting lost.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
They would also listen in on our phone conversations. So
you know, back in the day, we had a landline
attached to the wall, and we did have one with
a really long cord, but there would be another phone
in the house and you could hear when it would,
you know, click, and you could hear somebody was on
(22:08):
the other line, so that they were just listening to
your conversation. So even if I could stretch the cord
long enough to like go in the bathroom and shut
the door or something, for it didn't matter. You didn't.
You didn't. Privacy wasn't a thing that was ever allowed.
I do remember when I was growing up, I would
(22:29):
hide a lot. I remember climbing trees in the yard.
The tallest highest I could get up in a tree,
and I would just stay there the whole day because
I think that if I wasn't around anybody. I couldn't
get in trouble. I couldn't get a beating, you know.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah, you were like creating safety for yourself.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
Yeah. I would hide in the back of my closet.
There were my dad had built shelves in there and
they were pretty There was pretty good space between the
shelves and they were pretty deep, so I could get
into one of the shelves at the back and like
put things in front of me so people couldn't find
(23:15):
me too. So I just I remember always trying to
hide and like get away from the abuse. We were
controlled what we could watch on TV, which was almost nothing.
We could watch, you know, Christian things. We could not
(23:36):
watch Disney movies because there was magic. We weren't even
allowed to go to movie theaters. We couldn't play card games,
we couldn't read comic books, we couldn't play with Barbie dolls,
we couldn't everything, oh, puppet even in churches, like we
(24:02):
were traveling to minister at different churches on the weekends,
and if there was a children's church program that actually
did puppets in their program, we couldn't go. And that
even extended to like my dad's parents and his sisters
were normal people and they would just like have a
(24:25):
beer at a barbecue or something like that. We couldn't
go if they brought out alcohol, we had to leave.
We couldn't go to a wedding reception if they were
serving alcohol. So like never grew up even seeing or
knowing what it was like with if people would drink,
like drinking was you would go straight to hell if
(24:48):
you drank. Definitely struck by lightning as you're taking a sack. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
And we weren't allowed to have friends with people who
didn't attend the same church as us, like not even
other Christians because like sometimes at the private schools we
went to, like there were other Christian people there and
we really weren't allowed to be friends with them because
they didn't go to our church.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yikes.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Yeah, So it really was like every single aspect of
life was heavily controlled. So we only lived in Chelsea,
Michigan for two years, which was sad for me. We
ended up moving back to Minnesota, and initially when I
(25:38):
heard we were going to I was actually pretty excited
because our grandparents, you know, cousins, aunts, uncles like all
of that were he were in Minnesota, so I was like, yeah, cool,
we get to go back to our family. But then
I realized, like it felt so heavy to me that
we had to leave my friends again. And I remember
(26:04):
like making this sort of inner vow of I am
not going to make new friends at this new place
because it's just too hard, it's too painful. I can't
just keep losing people all the time. Back in that day,
there wasn't social media to really like keep in touch
with your friends either when you left, and it would
be like writing letters, but that sometimes that would happen
(26:28):
for a little while, but that would fade out pretty quick,
so you just really didn't keep in touch with people.
I also think that one of the reasons we moved
so much was so that people wouldn't see what was
going on inside our household. You know, like my mom
wasn't really even allowed to have friends. She was a
(26:50):
very friendly person and she would always make friends wherever
we went, but my dad would be really controlling about
letting her, you know, go in time with them or
talk to them on the phone or things like that.
He was just very very controlling of those sorts of things.
So I think, you know, if you don't stay in
(27:12):
one place for very long, people can't really read your mail.
So I think that could have been a big part
of it too. It's like if people start asking questions
or whatever, like time to go. Yeah. So when we
moved back to Minnesota, though we moved to a it
(27:34):
was because my dad got another pastoral position at a
different church. I don't think that that's what his intention was.
In the beginning, his sister went to this church in
Elk River, Minnesota, and they had a pastor who was
being shady and having affairs with women when he was
(27:55):
supposed to be counseling them in the office. And so
there were you know, he obviously got let go, and
then there were a bunch of lawsuits and different things.
And so my aunt was on the committee for people
trying to fill the pulpit, like while there was an
empty space without a pastor. So since my dad was
(28:18):
a pastor, she just asked him, would you be willing
to come and preach on this Sunday that we don't
have anybody to preach for. He said sure. So apparently
they liked him enough that after that they asked him
to actually come back and do a I guess an
audition trial. I don't know, but like where he preached
(28:39):
again and then the congregation members would vote whether they
wanted him to be the pastor or not. So they
voted yes, and so we were moving back to be
in that church. So it had some issues, and it
had been one of the larger Assemblies of God churches
(29:00):
in the state before, and there was still probably I
don't remember, but maybe somewhere between five hundred to one
thousand members still, so it was pretty large, and of
course that's getting my dad closer to his goals of
being a famous megachurch pastor. So we moved there. I
(29:25):
was just turning fourteen and going into high school. In
my teenage years, I was extremely depressed. I was suicidal.
There was actually a time where I did attempt suicide.
I took every single pill I could find in the house.
(29:50):
Being young and naive, it was mostly over the counter
medications and vitamins. I just I guess I was just thinking, like,
if I take enough thing and enough different things, maybe
just the amount and the interactions will do something. I
didn't know what I was doing, but I was obviously
(30:11):
in a very desperate spot. Yeah, didn't work because I'm
still here, but I was. I just ended up vomiting
all of the pills, and so my mom heard me,
like in the middle of the night, came in the
bathroom and noticed it was pills in the toilet, and
(30:34):
she said, do I need to take you to the
er and get your stomach pumped? And I said nope.
She said okay, and she went back to bed, and
she never never spoke of it again, which to me,
I have kids. My child is only a couple years
(30:56):
older than I was at that time, and I could
never imagine. But I think, you know, there was always
this image thing of like, if you go to the
emergency room in the town that I'm a pastor in,
then people are going to talk bad. People are going
to say stuff about our family, and it's going to
(31:17):
look bad on us. So if you're not going to
ask me to take you to get your stomach pumped,
then I guess let's just pretend this never happened. I
don't know, it just bizarre. So I was always kind
(31:39):
of the black sheep and the scapegoat. My younger brother
was too, and I think sometimes maybe he got worse
physical abuse than I got. But we would. My mother
took her parenting advice from Bill Gothard, James Dobson, and
later on Michael and Debbie Girl. So the trifecta of evil. Yeah,
(32:06):
I mean I was the strong willed child that James
Dobson wrote his books about, and my parents did their
best to break me. I some of my other siblings had,
you know, they had each other or like my younger brother,
(32:29):
who got probably worse physical abuse than I did, my
mom would kind of advocate for him and stick up
for him to my dad. But I didn't really have that.
My brother and I were close, but he was younger
than me, so he couldn't really do anything to like
protect me or anything. And I think both of my
(32:51):
parents really didn't like me at all. My mom would
tell me things like, one day you'll have a child
that's just like you and then you'll see like how
bad you are kind of thing. And the truth is,
I do have a child that's just like me, and
she's amazing. She's she's brilliant, she's bold, she's kind, she's empathetic,
(33:16):
she's artistic. There's so many things that she is. And
she's feisty and she's fiery and she's got a strong will,
and I think that that is wonderful. And so what
I see is not how difficult I was to love.
(33:38):
It's not that I was too much or too dramatic
or too whatever. It's that she didn't have the capacity
to love me the way I needed to be loved.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Yeah. And the problem, well, you were, it wasn't Yeah,
I mean you were not easy to control. Yeah, that's
what it feels like to me. It's just that you
weren't easy to control, and therefore it sounds like shame
was kind of heaped upon you, like, well, oh you're bad,
(34:11):
you're defective, and that's why we can't control you. I'm
just I hate that so much. I'm sorry that you
went through that. But I'm really glad that you have
a child like you, you know, because you're going to
be I'm sure you already you are, you know, empathetic
and understanding and like embracing of all of those qualities
(34:34):
actually are good qualities that were rejected by your parents.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
And you and both of my kids are a lot
like me in different ways. Yeah, And so it is
very interesting from that perspective of seeing how it's not
that hard to just work with your child's strengths and
encourage them in that way. And my early parenting was
(34:59):
rough because I was doing what I was taught. And
it's changed a lot now my kids are older, and
you know, it's kind of one of those things like
I hope it didn't change too late, but I think
it still counts. You know, even my son is twenty
one and my daughter's sixteen, so they're older and the
(35:21):
changes have been more in just the last probably handful
of years that the changes have been really dramatic. But
I still think it matters. And I talked to them
all the time about before and how you know, I'm
sorry and this was wrong. I shouldn't have done that,
and we're going to do it different moving forward.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
So that's so good because you're making you're making repairs too,
like you're changing it, but then you're also repairing with them,
which I think is really key, you know, with our kids,
like that's what they're going to remember.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
It's something I didn't get right. I never I never
got an acknowledgment that they did something that was wrong
or hurtful. I never got any of that, And I
do think those things are really important. It matters, It
changes things, I think.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
So, Yeah, because you are creating safety in this new
type of relationship that you have with him, I think
it is super important.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
Well, and I think it sets the precedent to I've
noticed this with myself, and I don't think this is
just a like ex cult member type thing only. I
think this is just societal but the getting an apology
type thing, like I remember I think one time ever,
I don't remember what it was, but like one time
(36:55):
ever from Dad. But otherwise that was not a thing
because it was meant to be like they're an authority
and infallible to a certain degree. That was the whole idea,
like there's nothing to apologize for type thing. But that
idea kind of perpetuates that that's what strength is. That
strength is just never admitting that you're wrong. And of
(37:17):
course we're seeing that on a real grand scale right now,
which we won't get into you everybody who's listening, that's
what I'm talking about, Yeah, but kind of breaking out
of that and understanding like, no, that's actually the opposite.
That's when you're weak. Is this fake pounding of the
chest bravado stuff like I'm not wrong I'm not gonna
say sorry that type of thing. So that has been
(37:39):
like a revelation for me, never that I was never
really that way or like Dad in that way or anything,
but kind of in the last five years since we've left,
kind of shifting and saying like, actually, real strength is
over here and it's being able to say sorry. So
just that flipping that and then thinking about like our
(38:00):
raising being the opposite of that, like the work that
you have to do as an adult to change that,
you know, those things that carry over, which I hate that.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Now than never, and building on that. Maddie, I don't
know if this was true for you, but I think
because Dad was never able to admit any fault, I
think that carried over into at least for me, how
I viewed making mistakes. Like I think because of the narcissism,
(38:35):
he didn't actually think he was making mistakes. Yeah, so
his conscience was clear. But for people who do not
have that pathology, you know, you're feeling guilt and shame
when when you do something that you feel is not right,
is not wrong, And so I think that added extra
(38:58):
shame because it's like, why can't I get this right?
Like why do I keep making mistakes, like I don't know,
that was more probably my teen years, but it's like
we were taught not to make mistakes, and Dad is
the example of that, you know.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
Yeah, yeah, we experienced that in our family too. Yeah.
Nothing he did was ever wrong, there was right. I
can't recall a single apology ever. Yeah, never, No, And
he I mean, similar to what you're saying, he definitely
set himself up as the authority on all things. He
(39:38):
kind of put himself in the position of God, you know,
like we had to go to him for things, like
we had to ask him for advice on everything. We really,
even as adults, you know, and I'll get into that more,
but even as adults, we really weren't allowed to make
our own choices for ourselves, like they always had to
(39:59):
tell what.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
To do.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
Like even you know, later on, it was kind of
they would give recommendations that they expected you to follow,
even about like who you would get married to. And
that didn't happen for me as much as like some
of my other siblings, because that just wasn't something I
would have listened to. I don't think back then, even
(40:26):
though I did listen to a lot of things I
was known as the rebellious one, so I don't I
don't think I was nearly as rebellious as they made
me out to be. I mean, I did a couple
things that they didn't want me to, so I guess
technically that could be rebellious. I feel like they were
developmentally appropriate things for my age. But right, yeah, we're.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Just three black sheep here. Yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
What do you think your moniker was? Shendy is the
rebellious one? What what were you?
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Oh? I mean I was told that as a kid
that I was like rebellious and obstinate, stubborn, like willful,
you know, and that was the whole James Dobson thing.
You've got to break the spirit of the child. And
like they they talked about that, you know, the church
dad talked about that as if that was like, you know,
(41:29):
something you should be really proud about, if you were
able to break your child. So gross.
Speaker 4 (41:36):
Yeah yeah, but like but.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
The cool thing is that we weren't broken. It might
have looked like a yeah, me too, but meaning that
that's still that was still in there. We had to
like adapt, you know, so as not to allow that
like rebellious, like you know, stubborn spirit to show so
(42:03):
that we could survive, but it didn't die. I guess
that's what I'm saying. Yeah, so that I always like
to look at that like he tried so hard, but
he couldn't couldn't fully break me. And I feel like
that's obvious for you too. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:22):
Yeah, I think one of some of the ways they
tried to break us was and I've heard you guys
talk about some of this too, but like very intense
physical punishment. We would have to there was a ritual
to it, which is also really weird, you know, but
(42:44):
it would be we would have to pull down our pants,
grab our ankles, and they would swat us with an object.
So most of the time it was a wooden spoon.
Sometimes it was plastic paintster stick that had little holes
in it, and so you could hear it whistling through
the air as it would be coming at you, and
(43:06):
they would count out loud ten swats, and if you flinched,
if you cried too much, if you didn't cry enough,
you know, they would start over at number one. And
so often, you know, I was left with welts and bruises,
and they didn't just hit my butt either like it
(43:29):
was on my legs and my back, and you know
it was and those spankings would spankings would be for anything,
nothing like if you talked back, if you had, you know,
in their opinion, right, if you had an attitude with them,
(43:50):
if you wear sassy, if you know, it didn't even
have to be anything that bad. But then also sometimes
there were things like growing up with a lot of siblings,
you get into little scuffles and things like that, and
so a lot of the time we weren't really being
(44:12):
supervised that closely. And like I said, we had, you know,
twenty acre hobby farm. We had motorcycles and ATVs and
stuff like that. So we would just be out there.
And this was the case in the eighties too for
most kids. Right, you're just if when the street lights
(44:33):
come on, go home. So we were just out there,
and you know, so if they didn't know what happened,
but somebody went home and was tattling, then both of
you would get beat. So it was just sort of
sometimes you would tattle because you wanted the other person
(44:55):
to get in trouble. But then you were real careful
because you weren't ever sure like am I going to
get travel too.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah, I noticed you did the air quotes around spanking,
and I'm curious if that has been a difficult thing
for you to like go through the process of like
naming that what it actually is, because forever I kept
saying spankings, but that doesn't really describe what it was,
(45:24):
you know, like it was actual physical abuse. But I
do still have a hard time shifting that perspective from
a spanking, which has its whole you know, connotation and
meaning to like, no, we were being beaten with belts
and you know for you objects.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
Yeah, I mean to the extent that my mother actually
would buy wooden spoons in bulk because they would they
would hit us so hard they would break them, like
the wooden spoon would bust and go flying, and so
then she would buy them in like ten packs. I mean, yeah,
that's not normal. That's that's physical abuse.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
And also they're taking down your pants, like that's not
something we've talked about a whole lot, but that is
you know, it didn't always happen, but enough, Yeah, so humiliating.
That's a whole other, like to me level of abuse.
That's psychological abuse as well as physical.
Speaker 4 (46:32):
And that wasn't just when we were little children either. Yeah, Like,
you know, it's bad enough to make an eight year old,
a ten year old pull down their pants, but once
you're like going through puberty and stuff.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
The last time that that my dad tried to do
that to me, I was fifteen years old.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (46:54):
There, and I actually developed early permonally. I you know,
was like pretty young, like twelve when I started showing
the physical signs of changing. So like I was, yeah,
fully a woman body at that point. And he I
(47:19):
don't even remember what my sin was that day that
was so terrible that he said, you know, go to
my room and assume the position. And it was like
the house that they lived in at the time was
pretty large, and to get from the main living area
of the house to his bedroom was a long It
(47:43):
was the Green mile. It was, Yeah, it was walking
the Green Mile. And the whole time I was thinking,
this is not going to happen. I'm not getting beat today,
No way in hell I'm pulling my pants down for
this guy, Like, not a chance. So I'm just trying
to figure out the whole way down, Like how I'm
gonna get out of this. And so we get to
(48:05):
his room and he like turns to go get the
belt or whatever he was gonna beat me with, and
I just took off running. I was gone. I was
out of there. And I almost almost made it to
the front door. I literally had my hand on the door,
and he got me and he tackled me and he
(48:27):
pinned me to the ground. He had like one like
my neck was in this side of his arm, and
my knees were in this side, and he just had
me like this, like my knees were to my forehead basically,
and he had me like this. But I'm screaming, I'm thrashing.
I'm saying I'm gonna call the cops. I'm calling CPS
(48:47):
on you. You know you can't do this. This is wrong.
I actually even had a friend over that day and
she saw it all happen.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (48:59):
Yeah, And he looked at her while he's got me panned,
and he says, you're probably gonna want to leave, and
she was like okay, and just like left and because like,
what what are you gonna do? And so I don't.
I eventually got out of the hold he had me in,
and he told me like, go ahead and call the police.
(49:23):
They're just gonna take you away, which I should have,
but I didn't like because he let me go. And
then I don't remember how anything you know, transpired after that,
But yeah, I didn't call the police, and I probably
should have, but I maybe I was scared that they
would take me away. I don't know. Maybe I believed him. Yeah,
(49:47):
but he never touched me again after that day in
that way. Yeah, So I don't know, maybe he realized like, whoops,
maybe this is too much, or or just if somebody's
gonna fight back, then he's done. I don't know, but
I think that was, like you said, like they couldn't
(50:08):
break me. They tried real hard, and it never I
mean it did to an extent, right like it was.
It's been hard emotionally to deal with the wounds of
that as an adult, but as a kid, I definitely
(50:30):
I was stubborn and strong willed and I didn't just
I didn't just believe everything that was said. I had
questions and that was never okay. You know, you can't
ask questions. We also had to deal with purity culture.
(51:00):
I don't know if you're familiar with that book, called
I Kissed Dating Goodbye, but that was one that they
passed around.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Yeah, yeah, did you have to read it, Matthew Many,
Yeah you did too.
Speaker 4 (51:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
Yeah. Hey, and anybody listening, please send us an email
or a comment or a voice message about your experiences
with that book, because I know there have to be
Almost everybody who's coming to this right now is familiar
with that in some way.
Speaker 4 (51:34):
Yeah, so that was sort of the expectation that was
put out there of Like you know, also, I think
maybe a cultural thing that a lot of people are
familiar with is the Douggers and how they could only
you know, the Dugger family, and how they were supposed
to only court and they had to have a supervisor
(51:57):
like chaperone, like they were never to be alone with
somebody from the opposite gender, even if you were just friends,
like that wasn't allowed.
Speaker 1 (52:09):
You know, they live in our area, sorry, I work
in which.
Speaker 4 (52:18):
Is where.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
Yea and our aunt. Our aunt used to live Springdale Townytown,
and you had to pass their house to get to
her house.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
So like the Vans and stuff, I haven't seen them,
but I know Liz has seen. I forget the mom's
name at the sands club or whatever.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
Yeah, mom was on a plane with them from either
to Florida or from because she texted She's like, you
will not believe it was on this flight.
Speaker 4 (52:56):
Oh that's so weird.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (53:01):
Yeah, So I think I was not real good at
following those rules. I will say, so that's what was
expected of us. And I'll say like there were a
couple of relationships where I was like, all right, fine,
I'll try this. We'll see what happens. Like I've put
(53:23):
the boundary up there of like, Okay, if we're courting
to get married, then I want to you know, keep
our physical interactions to a minimum and no kissing, and
you know, we can maybe like hold hands. But like
at this point, actually I'm skipping ahead in the story
a little bit, but at that point I was actually
(53:45):
like in my twenties, I had already been married and divorced,
and so like that's just weird.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
That is really weird to just.
Speaker 4 (53:54):
Be like Okay, no no holding hands, no kissing, no nothing,
like I've been married and divorced or I don't know.
It's just bizarre. Yeah, but I guess. And that's another
purity culture story, is I got married when I was nineteen,
(54:15):
because you're not allowed to really have a long term relationship.
And in my own family cult, like the rules were
you can't you can't start seeing somebody, courting, dating, whatever
you want to call it, until you're eighteen, and then
(54:36):
it's double dates. Like you again, you can't be alone.
Well that just didn't work for me really, so technically
my mom said I wasn't even allowed to like boys.
I wish I would have said, cool, no problem, I
like girls, but I didn't think of it. I didn't
think of that.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
Then.
Speaker 4 (54:56):
Unfortunately, hey, I'll follow your rules, no problem. I mean,
not that it's a choice, but if it was, I
might have made that choice. Well yeah, so I would
just keep it a secret, right, And I feel like
that's super harmful too. That's a rule that I changed
(55:19):
with my own kids right away, was like, if you
like somebody, I want to know and let's talk about it,
because how else do you learn and when you get
to be older, like I've seen this with some of
my nieces and nephews who grew up in the cult
and you know, had to live under those rules. They
(55:39):
weren't allowed to have relationships, and then so then they
get to be an adult eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old,
and it's like the first time they've ever even had
a significant other when you know, that kind of happens
around like nine to twelve, fourteen years old maybe somewhere
in there, and it's it's little and it's not so
(56:03):
impactful on your life, and if it if it's over
in a week, like your heart isn't shattered, you know,
And then you build up from those little things to
then when you're an adult and it's a serious relationship,
you've had practice and you kind of know how to
handle it and you've kind of learned some red flags already,
(56:23):
maybe like I don't I had a relationship that was
like this, and I don't want that for my future.
Where Like when you wait till you're in your twenties
to even start trying any of that, I feel like
that puts you way behind the game. So with my kids,
I just didn't do that. Like I was like, if
you like somebody, that's awesome, Let's talk about it. Let's
(56:47):
discuss why do you like them, what do you like
about them? You know, really think about it. And I
think that's been beneficial and my kids, you know, my
older kid, he's been in a relationships and I think
that's helped him figure some stuff out. My younger one
not so much, but that's just not her thing, so
that's okay too. But yeah, I was I had basically
(57:12):
the same the same guy that I liked from the
time that I was fourteen to eighteen, and we were
on again, off again a little bit. But and when
we were off I probably liked somebody else, but I
generally probably tried to keep that a secret from my
parents so I wouldn't get in trouble. The guy that
(57:33):
I liked from fourteen to eighteen, his dad was on
the board at our church, so like that was kind
of okay, but again we weren't really allowed to like
hang out just the two of us, was like in
youth group things or you know, they really controlled a
lot of that too. But then his parents left the
(57:58):
church and that happened because well, this is a whole
other story. So, like I was saying earlier, how my
dad kind of wanted to be one of the big
time preachers, so he would have like he was really
always chasing revival and whatever that meant to him, and
(58:20):
so he actually like bought a coach bus, like a big,
huge bus, and he would load anybody from the church
who was willing to go, and we would drive down
to like Florida or Ohio and we would just go
to like meetings like I don't know if you ever
heard of Rodney Howard Brown or we went to like
(58:41):
rod Parsley camp meeting stuff. Rodney Howard Brown was back
in the nineties and he was big into Again. I
don't know if this is anything you guys have heard of,
but Holy laughter, like the Holy Laughter movement, and it well.
Speaker 3 (58:59):
I need to hear more about. Just let's pause, right,
Holy Laughter episode title for starters. There we go. What
the hell is Holy laughter?
Speaker 1 (59:12):
It sounds better than the move though, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (59:15):
I don't know, let's hear it.
Speaker 4 (59:19):
It's weird. Let me just start. It's weird, okay. So
the so we went to, right, we went to Florida,
and this preacher's name was Rodnie Howard Brown, and he
was South African, very very heavy, thick accent, a big dude,
(59:41):
real big dude, like probably over six feet maybe three
hundred pounds, like big guy, booming voice, and so he
would just literally walk back and forth like pacing, and
he would just go ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha, and then people in the in the crowd
(01:00:05):
would start doing that, and then pretty soon everybody's just laughing,
rolling around on the floor, running around in circle, just chaos,
just weird chaos, but you know, it was the Holy
Spirit making everyone laugh.
Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Well.
Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
Then, also around that same time in those movements, like
there started to be this thing where they would say
that gold dust was falling from the sky, and so
then everybody would look at like their hands and be like,
oh my gosh, I have gold dust on my hands.
It's like your makeup. I'm sorry it was your eyeshadow,
(01:00:49):
but that's okay. It was, you know, the Holy Spirit
glitter on your hands.
Speaker 3 (01:00:54):
Didn't Bethel? I need to look it up. I think
Bethel said that that happened at one of their churches.
Like gold this was coming down as a theme.
Speaker 4 (01:01:05):
That was My dad would find things like that and
just copy them. So he would copy like Kenneth Hagen's
sermons or even the cadence of his speaking, like he
just was always, you know, copying, and so I do
think that was part of why we were going to
these you know, we would go to like Benny hin
(01:01:26):
Services or the Brownsville Revival, or like if Lester Summer
All when he was still alive was speaking in Ohio.
They'd load up the bus and go listen to him speak.
So our Rod Parsley, like I said, he's got a
big World Harvest church in Columbus, Ohio. So my dad
(01:01:48):
was always just like following these things, and then he
would come and copy that stuff and try to bring
it back into our church. Well, there were a lot
of people who thought it was weird and were kind
of uncomfy with it, and so they would reach out
to At this point, we were still in a denomination,
(01:02:12):
the Assemblies of God, so they reached out to like
the higher ups, and we're kind of being like, what's
going on? Can you do something? So they would call
my dad and they would be telling him like, you're
getting too far off the mark here. This isn't what
our belief system is. And so then at that point
he decided he didn't want anybody telling him what he
(01:02:34):
could or couldn't do. You know, I'm following the Holy Spirit.
How dare you tell me I can't do this? So
he decided at that point to disaffiliate with the Assemblies
of God, and that's a thing that you can do.
But there's procedures in the by laws, and you know,
there's the church has to vote, the board has to vote,
(01:02:57):
all these things. Well, you know, my dad doesn't want
anybody to tell him what he can or can't do,
so he just he actually, allegedly, I have heard from
people that he forged their signatures, board members signatures on
things to just force this to go through because he
(01:03:19):
wanted to own the church for himself. So that did happen.
He got the church under his own personal name instead
of the Assemblies of God. But there were lawsuits to follow.
The Assemblies of God sued. I think there were former
church members who sued. There was one guy in particular
(01:03:42):
who was pretty upset because he had donated a bunch
of stock in his company and then he was like,
this isn't what I want to support. So he wanted
the company stock back. But you know, I technically you
can't do that if you give an offering that it's
a gift and you don't get to ask for it back.
(01:04:02):
But he was suing, and I I remember telling my
dad one time, I was like, why don't you countersue,
and he said no, because that would open it up
to discovery. He would be allowed to ask for my
financials and I don't want to do that. So I
was like, oh, weird, but okay.
Speaker 3 (01:04:27):
So.
Speaker 4 (01:04:29):
Yeah, I guess then he has no guardrails right now.
He's his own thing. He doesn't have anybody who can
keep him in check or in line. He did end
up finding a what he ended up calling his spiritual
(01:04:50):
mentor leader head. I don't know whatever word you want
to plug in there, but spiritual mentor named Ed Dufrain.
He came across him at one of those Rod Parsley
camp meeting meetings. Apparently there's a video that shows him
walking on air or something. I've seen the video. It
(01:05:13):
didn't look like that to me. I can't no idea,
no idea.
Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
We have to look that up. Yeah, I think to
see the gold does too. I need to see all
of this.
Speaker 4 (01:05:24):
Yeah, so that was I think again, that supernatural thing
was always like what my dad was chasing. He always
wanted the weird. I don't know what else to call it,
just the weird stuff of people, you know, the old
(01:05:46):
school what they would call holy rollers, and like you know,
people literally were would like roll around on the floor.
They were dancing, not the way you guys did, Maddie,
not like slow romantic.
Speaker 7 (01:06:04):
Dancing, but like like none of that, more of like
we would laugh because it was literally like a jump kick,
like they would.
Speaker 4 (01:06:18):
Do a little hop and then kick and then hop
and then kick and then hop.
Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
I'm just imagining like roundhouse kicks.
Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
Boy Church, that would have been better.
Speaker 4 (01:06:32):
Well even sometimes because it was just ridiculous, right, And
so sometimes I'd be sitting on the front row with
my mom and I would just look at her and
I would be like party laugh and she'd be like okay,
And so we would just make up ridiculous sounding laughs,
like just weird laughing noises. You just do that because again,
(01:06:54):
everybody is it's chaos. Everybody's running around screaming, laughing jump like, okay,
let's just play a funny game. I don't know, it's bizarre.
Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (01:07:10):
Yeah. So I think I got a little off the
topic that I was talking about there, because I think
we were talking about baty culture. So I don't know
how we got here.
Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
I side tractice. I wanted to know more about the
Holy laughter that's where. That's how we got here.
Speaker 4 (01:07:29):
Yeah, that's fun times. I mean, actually it wasn't that
bad because a lot of times it would be like
our services were long, like I'm talking five to six
hours plus like long, and sometimes I don't want to
just listen to a sermon that long. That's real boring.
(01:07:52):
So at least we're just sitting here watching people be ridiculous,
like people watching at its absolute finest. For sure, there
would be like I remember one time where there was
this kid who was crawling on the floor looking for
chicken nuggets. That was the Holy Spirit. I don't who
(01:08:16):
are we to question what the Holy Spirit does?
Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
The Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways. Correct, you can't
understand it, so you don't need to ask any more questions.
Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
Do not question it.
Speaker 4 (01:08:34):
I'm surprised you even asked me what holy laughter was.
Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
I mean I assumed, but I yeah, I needed to
know for certainty.
Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
Yeah, I didn't know there was an actual like term
for it.
Speaker 4 (01:08:48):
Yeah there was, you know.
Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
What that Actually, I'm not going to get a sidetracked.
I was just remembering we had, uh, I think she's
probably in her nineties now. We had a woman in
the church I mean I think they came in like
two thousand and five and we're there until we left.
That would do that sometimes, like on a Friday night
worship service. She would pray and she would kind of
(01:09:11):
get into like a little bit of a hysterical crying
prayer type thing, and then they would be the laughter.
And I'm betting that she's probably from that old school
of thought. What you're talking about. That was probably a
thing that she learned elsewhere. And because I always wonder
like what is that, Like why the laughing? But like
(01:09:32):
now it makes sense. I guess I have experienced. I
just didn't know what it was, where it came from,
what it was called.
Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
Yeah, well you remember, like I think this was Benny
hen was It was he the one that would call
people up and just like push them on the forehead.
Speaker 4 (01:09:46):
And there was a lot of that too. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
I was gonna ask because that's what I think of
when I think of some of these gatherings.
Speaker 3 (01:09:55):
Yeah, you know, doing like this with your hand and
a bunch of people fall, that type of thing, like
not even touching them. I've seen that stuffy.
Speaker 1 (01:10:03):
Yeah, I talked to a girl the other day. I
talked to someone the other day who grew up in that,
and she was saying that she would just pretend to
pass out just because like that was what you're supposed
to do.
Speaker 6 (01:10:16):
So she's like, okay, well, and also sometimes if you didn't,
they would just keep pushing you, like they're handles on
your head, and that you would be like and then.
Speaker 4 (01:10:28):
Finally I'd be like, fine, I'll just lay down there. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
I was just say the spirit of rebellion is strong
in this one, to push.
Speaker 4 (01:10:39):
A little harder. Yeah, that's probably.
Speaker 7 (01:10:42):
What was happening.
Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
If you like this episode, please go leave us a
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