Ep.69: "He Ran Away From Me"

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In this final part of Mindy’s story, the truth finally comes crashing down—and her father literally runs from it. What began as suspicion turns into undeniable proof of a shocking betrayal: her dad, the pastor, pursuing a relationship with his own daughter-in-law just months after her mother’s death.

From the bizarre family “meeting” meant to confront him, to his financial exploitation of a vulnerable relative, Mindy walks us through the unbelievable events that followed. It’s a story about confronting power, surviving spiritual abuse, and reclaiming your voice when the people who should’ve protected you become the ones you need protection from.

This one is raw, surreal, and, somehow, still hopeful. #CultNextDoor #Podcast #ExCultMember #CrusadeChurch #TheLoveMove #EndOfTheCult #BreakingFree #SpiritualAbuse #CultSurvivor #ExposingTheTruth #CourageToLeave #CultStories #LifeAfterCult #EscapingControl #TrueStory

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
The world tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
The Worldwide Church of God presents Herbert's w Armstrong and.

Speaker 3 (00:09):
I'm here to bring you the truth.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
No one else is telling you the things that God
is telling you through me.

Speaker 3 (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 can take it, beyond the veil is
the chamber. That's the wedding chamber. The Lord told me that.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
But from then on, visions begin to come.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
When this comes up on me, it produces the vision.
I'm able to.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Tell people what's wrong with them, what they must do
in life, and the sins that they are holding back.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
In their life.

Speaker 4 (00:51):
God is going to be moving vitally and bot like
he dies before Booths in judgment.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Cult Mix Store podcast.
Before I jump into anything about today's episode or any
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and also not just a thank you on my behalf,

(01:24):
but on behalf of all of the people who have
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(02:33):
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(02:54):
go in the next year, two three, howevery long this
thing keeps going. So today's episode is our third and
final part with Mindy. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 4 (03:05):
And I feel so dumb even to this day thinking
back about like what I said, but I was just
I was in shock, and I was like, what is
happening here? So the words that came out of my
mouth didn't make sense and they were pretty dumb. But
I was just like, well, you know, when the time
is right, maybe we could help you find somebody, you know,

(03:29):
just thinking like stop talking please right, yeah, I can't
even hear this right now. And his response to me was,
oh no, that won't happen. God already told me I
already know who is and I don't. I'm glad nobody
asked him at that time, and I don't think he

(03:49):
would have told us anyways, But it was just like
so gross to like, my mom is still in the room,
what are you doing? Well? That was a middle of April.
My dad's birthday is the end of May May twenty fifth,

(04:10):
so barely a month later, we are going to the
zoo for my dad's birthday, like all all the kids
and their spouses and their kids. And again, I have
this five month old infant and a four year old child,
and I just my husband was at work. I didn't

(04:33):
want to go to the zoo that day, and I
was just like, you guys have fun. I can't do this,
you know, like it's just too much for me by myself. Yeah,
but they put so much pressure on me and they
were like, no, we'll help you with the baby, blah
blah blah all this stuff. So I'm like fine. So
somehow I ended up having to ride in the car

(04:57):
with my dad, nobody else, just me and my dad
and my kids, and the whole ride to am from
he was just trying to convince me that he should
get remarried. He started asking me, like, how soon do
you think is too soon to start seeing somebody else?

(05:18):
And I was like, well, now it's too soon. It's
been a month, you know, six weeks, Like yeah, not now,
I said, I don't know, maybe a year, couple years
from now maybe. And he also at that time, like
right after my mom died, he had all of us

(05:38):
girls literally the next day, clean out her stuff, like,
go through all her stuff, get it out of his room.
He redecorated, got new bedding, you know, got all her
stuff out of her his closet, got all her stuff
out of his bathroom. He put it all up on
the other side of the house and then made us
come and go through it the next day after she died. Wow,

(06:02):
Which yeah, I guess I didn't think much of that
at the time, but it was pretty weird to just like,
how do you clear because they'd been married almost forty years,
like thirty seven years or something to that effect, Like
you just move them out of your room the next day. Bizarre.

(06:24):
The other thing that was really bizarre was the day
she died, we got home from the hospital and he
started having us shred papers like he had just he
wasn't very organized in his life, and he just had
stacks and stacks of financial documents like ups in his

(06:44):
office area, and he had people just shredding financial documents,
and he had my brother in law. I heard him
tell my brother in law go to my brother in
law's a notary. So he said, notarize something that gives

(07:05):
me power of attorney over Mary, my mom who passed away.
But he didn't realize that once somebody's gone, the power
of attorney is no longer in effect. He also the
very next day put his name on my mom's mother's
bank account. She was ninety five living in a nursing home.

(07:31):
Like he didn't need to put his name on her
bank account at all. My mom's sister was still alive,
you know, that wasn't so just a lot of things
right after my mom's passing that were weird. You're right,
And my dad's real shady financially anyways, as we talked about,

(07:54):
So who knows what all of that was about. I
still don't know to this day. But the other thing
is my sister in law was still living there at
the house, and even though my mom had been in
the hospital Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Now it's Monday night. We
come back home and she's acting like she's just gonna

(08:16):
keep living there. And so my sister, my younger sister,
and my sister in law, my older brother's wife, they
were like, no, this isn't happening, and they started packing
up her stuff and moving it out. So she was

(08:36):
crying and sobbing and like literally saying, I just don't
feel like that's my home anymore. I feel like this
is my home. And we were like, what do you mean,
Like what happened to avoid the appearance of evil? Because
that was a big thing for us growing up, and
the whole thing about like never being alone with the

(08:57):
same with the opposite gender, like your in a relationship
or not. You you know, shouldn't ever be alone in
the same place with them. So I'm like, how do
you think that's going to look to people in the
church if she just stays here now, Like, yeah, that
doesn't make any sense. Well, so then I, you know,

(09:21):
I had all this other stuff going on in my
life with an infant and all these things, so I
wasn't noticing all the weird stuff between them quite yet,
but my sister and my sister in law were cued
off because of that interaction where she didn't want to
leave the house that day after my mom died. So
then my so my sister and her husband, and my

(09:46):
brother and his wife, my older brother and his wife,
the four of them kept talking about what's he doing?
And they were they all lived in the same neighborhood too,
and what did my my younger brother's wife. So they
would watch and follow my dad and they kept touching him,

(10:08):
sneaking over to her house, and they caught him inside
her house one time. My brother was like, what do
you think you're doing? Get out of here. This is
not good. So they called Ed Dufraine, who was then,
you know, supposedly my dad's spiritual yeah father whatever, yeah,

(10:32):
and asked him like, would you please come and have
a meeting with us as a family, because this is
what my dad's doing and it's weird and we don't
feel okay. So he said, yeah, fine, I'll come, but
don't tell your dad that you called me, because there's
this hierarchy of spiritual authority and we're not supposed to

(10:56):
our dad is our spiritual authority. We're not supposed to
go over his head. And so yeah, so we did,
because like, what are we gonna do. He won't listen
to us because he says he's our spiritual authority, so
we have no authority over him to tell him what
you sutor shouldn't be doing. So this dew frame guy,

(11:17):
he he decides to come and have a meeting, but
of course he has to preach and get an offering first,
Like we have to pay him. He's not just gonna come,
you know, right, And every time, because my dad was
a brown noser, every single time he would come, my

(11:38):
dad would try to give him personally like ten grand
plus take several offerings and give those to him as well.
So yeah, I guess that's some incentive to be your friend. Yeah,
So he came and I went to my dad's house
that day to give him a haircut before the serve

(12:00):
and he starts talking to me about why addu Frain's
coming to see us in the first place. Well I
know why, but he doesn't, so I'm just listening to
what he has to say. So he's like, yeah, he's
just coming to check up on you guys and see
how everything's going. Since your mom passed away. And this
by this time, it's July from April when she died,

(12:24):
and so I said, oh really, I said, how do
you think we're all doing since she died? And he said, well,
some of you are doing better than others. But you know,
emotions just weren't allowed at all, Like we couldn't be happy,
we couldn't be sad. You know, none of that was acceptable.
So grief absolutely not. No way, you just have to

(12:45):
move on as though nothing ever happened. You can't oz
and be sad about your mom passing away. That's not okay. Yeah.
And also by this time a Zoo day, when he
took me to I had to ride with him. He's
trying to convince me he should get remarried. So I'm

(13:08):
starting to think, like what's going on here? And then
he also tried to bribe me with giving me a
piece of my mother's furniture that like when we went
through her stuff and separated everything out, like there were
a few pieces we left with my dad because we
didn't know what to do with. One of them was
a pretty large armois cabinet for jewelry, and she had

(13:33):
bought that she saved up for a really long time.
It was from like, I don't know, Bombay and Company
or something like that was kind of an expensive furniture
store back then, and it's like cherry Wood, I don't know.
It was a large cabinet, and so because none of
us wanted to say I want that, because it wasn't

(13:53):
fair for the other sisters to have it, So he
tried to bribe me with that cabinet. And at first
I wasn't going to take it because I was like, no,
you can't manipulate me that way. But then I was like,
you know what, No, I want that, and I will
take it, and you still can't manipulate me. Yeah, and
I'm just not going to do what you want me

(14:14):
to do because of it. Yeah. So so I did
take it and he didn't get to bribe me that day.
But we got back to his house after the zoo
and my brother had called me from Fort Benning. He gets,
you know, one phone call a week for like fifteen

(14:35):
minutes or whatever, so he had called me and I
was talking on him when I pulled in, talking to him.
When I pulled into my dad's driveway and my dad
was out pushing my niece, my brother's daughter, on a swing,
and it was so weird to me because he never

(14:56):
played with us growing up as kids. Never ever, ever,
do I remember him ever pushing any of us on
a swing, nor any of our our kids, like any
of his other grandkids. He wasn't the kind of grandpa
that would get down on the floor and play with
the kids at all, Like he just didn't care, and
so to see him pushing my niece on a swing

(15:19):
was really strange to me. But I have my brother
on the phone and I was like, Hey, your daughter's
right here. Would you like to say hello to her?
And he was like, oh my gosh, yes. So I
go to handle the phone and my dad says nope,
and I was like wait, and he goes, you better
go ask her mom before you let him talk to
her on the phone, and I was like, what, exuse me?

(15:41):
So I went into the house where she and my
older sister were cooking, you know, a meal or whatever,
and I was like, Okay, this is dumb, but I'm
just gonna ask you because my dad said, so, can
you can your husband talk to his child on the phone?
And she said no, I'm not comfortable with that, and
I was like, wait, what is happening? And so then

(16:06):
at that point, his time on the phone call was
already up anyway, so he couldn't like even if she
would have said yes, there wasn't time left, but she
didn't say yes. So then at that point I kind
of lost it a little bit, and I was like,
you know, that's not okay. And also people are going
to start talking that there's something going on between you

(16:28):
and my dad. And I had no idea that my
siblings were already discussing this amongst themselves and keeping it
from me on purpose because I'm close with my brother
and they didn't want me to tell him. Oh, and
I don't why why can't he know? Yeah, because if

(16:50):
you're not doing anything wrong, then why can't I tell him? Right?
And so I I I didn't say anything to him
at that point, but I did get into a pretty
big argument with his wife at the time and one
of my older sisters, because she kind of stepped in too,
and I was like, this isn't about you. Actually, I'm

(17:12):
talking to her, and I was just saying, like, this
is inappropriate. You should not be having this type of
a relationship with my dad. People are going to start talking.
This is weird. And then when I went home, my
younger sister called me and she was like, so, this

(17:33):
has already been a thing, and we've already we've been
kind of keeping it from you because we didn't want
you to tell our brother. And I was like, oh,
my gosh, this is crazy. So then I had also
confronted him. I confronted my dad later on because they
had gone to a conference in California, to like one

(17:55):
of these camp meeting things where it's meetings every day,
and they had loaded up a bunch of people from
the church, and my dad and a few of my
siblings and their families had gone, and so one of
my friends had gone too. So my dad was supposed
to share a room with my older brother, and then

(18:18):
my sister in law was supposed to share a room
with one of my friends. And they get to the
hotel and both of them, my dad and my sister
in law, switched their room assignments to be by themselves,
like they each had their own room now, and coincidentally

(18:39):
they ended up on the same floor, which was a
separate floor from everyone else, and they had conjoining rooms
and we know where this is going uh huh. Yeah.
So there was a picture posted from breakfast one of
the days of this convention, and everybody else was in

(19:01):
the picture except for my dad and my sister in law,
and so this was my friend that was supposed to
room with her that had posted the picture. So I
made a comment on underneath her picture on Facebook and
I said, looks like there's some people missing from your picture.
That's all I said, because she had called me and

(19:21):
said it was she thought it was weird that my
sister in law switched her room assignment, and she's the
one who told me they were on the same floor
in conjoining rooms. So like, other people are noticing this now.
So when they got back from that meeting, my dad
called me into his office to confront me, like I'm

(19:43):
the one who did something wrong.

Speaker 5 (19:47):
Yeah always Oh man, that was so fun for me
because I went in there with like, no, that's not
what's going to happen here today.

Speaker 4 (19:57):
I will confront him as a matter of fact. And
so he starts out by telling me I shouldn't have
made and he also had started preaching against Facebook at
that point too, you shouldn't have a book account. Facebook
is the devil all of this convenient. So so he

(20:18):
calls me into the office and he starts trying to
shame me for making a comment and what did you
mean by that? And I was like that there were
that everyone who went on the trip wasn't in the picture,
like were they were lies spoken?

Speaker 3 (20:35):
You know?

Speaker 4 (20:35):
And he was like, well, no, but it seems like
you're insinuating something. And I said, are you feeling guilty?
Did you do something you shouldn't have done because I
didn't mention your name? Like why are you acting like this?
And then I said, let me just ask you, straight up,
straight forward question, are you in a relationship with my

(20:57):
sister in law? And he said I'm not going to
answer that question. And I said that's the answer I needed,
because if the answer was no, you would say no,
and you just said I will neither confirm nor deny.
So that tells me all I need to know. And
then he was like, no, I'm not saying that, but
I wouldn't. I wouldn't back down because I knew what

(21:19):
was happening. And so I said, I looked at my
watch and I said, at you know, this June whatever,
at this time of day, I am going to look
back and tell everyone that you lied to me, and
he was like, I'm not lying, I just won't tell you.
And because I wouldn't back down, he actually now a

(21:40):
little hindsight, My dad is not a physically active person.
He recently had a double bypass surgery because he had
like a ninety percent blockage in his heart. So he
doesn't run. I've never seen him exercise in my entire life.
He is a small person, he's but he just isn't fit.

(22:04):
And so that day he got up out of his chair,
left his office, and there were other people in their
offices in the building as well, So I got up,
followed him out of the office, continued, you know, yelling
at him. So then I hear these doors closing in
the office of other people, like, uh, oh, we're not

(22:26):
going to listen to this. But he literally walked out
the back door of the church and his house was
up the hill, and he ran as fast as he could.
I've never seen this man run before in his life.
And I'm helding after him, like you're not gonna lie
to me and get away with it, But oh my gosh,

(22:46):
she ran so fast away from me up to his house.
Like he just couldn't run fast enough. So then I
was just like, Okay, I think I accomplished what I
said to accomplish that day. So then he he called
me the next day and he was like, I think

(23:07):
we need to have another conversation, but would you come
to my house this time? He didn't want other people.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
Here, he didn't want to have to run again.

Speaker 4 (23:22):
I was like, if you're gonna make me take the
green mile to your bedroom, the answer is no, yeah, yeah, exactly.
But that time I just I went to his house.
I just sat there and let him say whatever baloney
he was going to spout because I didn't believe him

(23:43):
and he knew it. And so then after he was done,
I was like, is that it and he was like yeah.
I was like can I go now? And he's like,
I guess, And I was like, Doucess just left because
you can lie all you want, but I know your
number now, like I'm not taking anymore. So that was

(24:06):
in June. So then Dufrain comes in July and my
dad thinks he's just coming to check on how we're
dealing with our grief after our mom's death. So I
asked him, how do you think we're doing. And he's like, well,
some of you are doing better than others. I said,
oh really. He goes yep, like you are not doing

(24:27):
that great. It's like okay, start of your campaign. Okay.
And so I was like, well, I guess we'll see
what he has to say then, because again I knew
that's not why he was there. Yeah, gonna sit and
argue with my dad about it either. So that night

(24:50):
after the service, my brother had just come home from
his basic training, and uh, he asked to come to
that meeting that night, even though like he wasn't really
attending church at that time or whatever. So he showed
up at the meeting. Afterwards, he didn't go to the service,

(25:12):
but he showed up to the house where we were
all sitting, and he sat in between myself and my
oldest sister. And they had had a tight relationship too,
because they had owned a house together for a while,
and he helped her after her divorce with her kids
and stuff, so that they were pretty close. So you know,

(25:33):
I think he felt the safest with me and her.
And so we're sitting there and Dufrayin asks like, does
anybody have anything they want to say? And so he
was gonna make us start it like, oh my god.
So we're all sitting there like literally not saying anything,

(25:53):
and then my oldest sister reaches over and puts her
hand on my brother's arm and just says, this is
going to be really hard, but I need you to
sit and listen for a minute before you react. So
I like grabbed his other hand at that point, and
then she just started in telling Dufrain like what was

(26:15):
going on and that we were we keep catching him
like with Drew's wife. And so my dad literally sat
there the whole time with his head just down. He
wouldn't look at us, he wouldn't say anything. I've never
seen anything like that before. And I don't know for

(26:35):
sure what why, Like was he ashamed he should have been,
but I don't think he was. I think he was
just refusing to participate in the conversation. I'm not sure.
But my my other siblings were having a hard time

(26:57):
being direct in their confrontation of what he was doing.
They were kind of eating around the bush. They were
kind of giving him little excuses and ways that he
could have an out, and I wouldn't do that. I
was just being very direct and saying exactly what he
was doing, exactly what he was saying. So Defraye looks

(27:18):
at me at one point and he goes, are you
calling your dad a liar? And I said, that's not
a word I used. You used that word, not me.
But if that's what you think, then okay. I mean,
I'm not calling him a liar, but if that's how
you're hearing it, then I'm just saying he's not being truthful.

(27:42):
I'm not correctly saying the liar. But and my other
siblings were getting mad at me too, like wanted me
to shut up, but I was like, what are we
doing here? Then none of you guys are going to
be straight out and confronted. I'm not going to shut up.
This needs to be dealt with. And I was personally

(28:03):
waiting for that meeting to see if Dufraine would reprimand
him in any way or tell him like what he
was doing was wrong, then maybe I could stay at
the church, and if not, I had to go because
there was no way I could go along with this.

(28:24):
And so Dufrain never did tell him he was doing
anything wrong. He never reprimanded him, he never told him
to get his act together. You know, this is the
appearance of evil. This will ruin your ministry like nothing,
none of Actually he performed the ceremony when they got
married a couple months later. Eek. Yeah, so they got

(28:46):
married I think January. My mom had died in April
and they got married the following January.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
I want to say, so did she did she like
get a quick divorce from your brother? That's like a
two step.

Speaker 4 (29:06):
Yeah, my dad actually counseled her to divorce my brother.
He also bought her a car, paid for a place
for her to live, paid all her bills, paid for
her divorce attorney. Meanwhile, my mom didn't even get a

(29:26):
headstone on her grave. So yeah, so yeah, I think
that was a pretty interesting thing because there was another part,
and it's my brother's part, but it is an interesting
part of the story. When he got home from his
basic training and it was like the day before that
meeting with Dufrayin, he asked my dad to go to

(29:49):
lunch with him, and at lunch he asked my dad
if he would help him revive his marriage, Like, help
me with my marriage is struggling. My wife won't talk
to me. Can you help me with this, Can you
give me some advice? Can you give me some counseling?
And his advice was there's probably no hope. I would

(30:13):
advise that you just get a divorce and then pray
that God will soften her heart and there can be
reconciliation in the future, but for now, I think as
to just and so in that meeting with dufrayin that night,
once my sister finally like spilled the beans, what was
actually happening? Like we have been following our dad and

(30:37):
we think he's having a relationship with you know, Drew's wife,
blah blah blah. Drew literally stood up and said, are
you kidding me? I sat with you yester day at
lunch and you told me that my marriage was over.
You failed to mention the reason why is because you're

(30:57):
with her now? Like whyeah? Yeah, So that was pretty disturbing.
He wopped out and did not even listen to the
rest of the meeting at that point. Yeah, yeah, there's
nothing else? What Yeah, what else is there to hear
at that point? Yeah, I don't blame him at all.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
So at the point that he like married her, was
that the end of everyone in the family, Like the
siblings relationship with him.

Speaker 4 (31:28):
No, so before they even got married, Like right after
that meeting in July, I left. I didn't go back
to another service after that, And I did tell him
I was leaving too. I just said, like, I don't
agree with you. I think what you're doing is wrong.
I can't go along with this. I can't stay here.

(31:50):
He told me I was going to regret it and
that I would have to come back. I would want
to come back, but when I did that, I would
have to go through the office and repent to him first, yeah,
before he would allow me back in. So like essentially
it was kind of one of those like you can't quit,

(32:10):
I'm firing you. Yeah, you know, like I told him
I was gone, and he was like, never come back
unless you repent, right, because you know, I don't need
to repent to God, just my dad. Yeah. So then
it took a while for like my younger brother, he'd

(32:34):
been gone already because he was in the army and stuff,
so like he hadn't been around for a few months anyways,
So he never came back after that either. And then
my youngest sister, she had her oldest son in the
church that they had at the not the church, in
the school. They had at the church, and so she

(32:56):
kept him there. I think they had kind of stopped
attending services, but they were still kind of staying connected.
And her son came home from school one day saying
that his cousin told him that his grandpa's going to
marry his aunt and that his cousin's going to now

(33:18):
be I even get confused. What how all those relationships
are so strange, Yeah, super weird. So when he came
home like that, she was like, Oh, yeah, we can't,
we can't stay anymore. So they left at that point.

(33:39):
So that took that took a little while longer. And
then the oldest three siblings, so it's me and then
I've got two younger siblings, and then i have three
older siblings. So the three older siblings stayed and supported it,
and they're all still there to this day. Wow, is
he still married to her? Yep? So how many years

(34:02):
ago is that? My mom died in two thousand and nine,
so like fifteen is that right?

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Gosh, so he's been raising his grandchild.

Speaker 4 (34:17):
Yeah, and that's a whole disaster to she My brother
had to fight for years and years and years to
get the right to be in her life. And every
time he would go to court, he would win because
the courts were like, this is wow, holy crap, And

(34:38):
so he would win everything he asked for, but they
would not follow the court orders. And every time you
break a court order, the only way to resolve that
is to go back to court, and that costs so
much money. And so he literally spent hundreds of thousands

(35:00):
of dollars on lawyers. And eventually he started posting his
personal story on TikTok. So he had little TikTok story times,
and my dad heard about those and told he told
my brother's daughter that she had to tell my brother

(35:22):
to stop posting those tiktoks or she wouldn't talk to
him anymore. And at that point, my brother just kind
of took the opportunity to explain a lot of things
from his perspective of what happened and how it happened,
and he said, you know, I love you very much,
and I'm sorry that this is uncomfortable for you, but

(35:42):
I am not and I cannot stop posting about this.
I deserve to be able to talk about my experience
and this is true. So listen to all these episodes.
This is true, you know, yeah, ye, but she stopped
talking to him after that, so he hasn't he hasn't
had any contact with her in the last couple of years.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
That's so sad, and so it's just hard to believe
that a parent could harm their child. So like, just like,
it's nothing. I mean, we've dealt with that is too
you know, yeah, my dad, you just can't wrap your
brain around it.

Speaker 4 (36:24):
It's it's so confusing. He did try to stay connected
to my younger sister for quite a while, Like he
would call her every few months and ask her to
have coffee with him, and she would go, and I
would always get so mad and just be like, why
are you even entertaining this? What is your point? Yeah, yeah,
Well he thinks he's going to manipulate me because it

(36:45):
was always around a custody hearing or something like that,
and so he never he never does anything without an agenda,
so there's no impure motives. It's not I just missed
my child and I want to have coffee with you.
It was that, and so I was just like, you

(37:07):
don't know for sure what information he's trying to get
out of you, though, so why would you even do that?
And she's like, well the information from him too. I
was like okay, and but what information and what are
you going to do with it? Like he was looking
for information against our brother specifically, I think, I think,

(37:29):
and maybe other things too. But he's never once like
he called me. He called me one time, and I
want to say it was like ten years ago and
I he said, you know, do you want to have
coffee or lunch or something? And I said why, what
could you possibly have to say to me after how

(37:52):
many was like six or eight years of silence at
that point, Like what could you have to say to
me now? And he said said, well, I have some
things you probably really want to hear. And I was
like okay, like what and he wouldn't, like tell me
over the phone. Well it was a text, and I
just said, oh, text, Yeah, if you tell me what

(38:13):
the subject like. I'm trying to set some boundaries here.
If you tell me what the subject matter is, I
can keep it to that topic alone. That's the topic.
I will agree maybe depending on what it is, right,
But if you tell me, I can decide if I
want to discuss that topic with you. And then if
you try to veer off that, I'll say, nope, I

(38:34):
didn't agree to that. This is what we're talking about.
So I just said, if you want to tell me
the subject matter, I will consider meeting you. If not,
I won't. The ball's in your court and he would not.
He refused, So I was like, I feel okay with
not talking to him then, because he's not going to
have any boundary I have no. So then back in

(38:59):
twenty nineteen or twenty early late twenty nineteen or early
twenty twenty, I had run it was it was late
twenty nineteen because it was Halloween. I had run into
him at Walmart. I actually saw my niece and she
ran up to me and was like, oh, d bitty,

(39:20):
and like gave me a huge hug and was talking
to me about her school and all the things she
was involved in. And I looked kind of down the
aisle and I see my dad and her mom, and
I was like, oh, yuck, Like I hadn't run into
them in all those years. So I just didn't really
know how to handle that, and I didn't want to,

(39:42):
but I did for the sake of my niece. And
so they were walking real slow. I think they were
hoping that my niece and I would be done with
our conversation and they could just go and not have
to stop and talk to me. But my niece wasn't
on talking by the time they got to me. So
my dad actually like said hi, and we talked for

(40:06):
a few minutes, and like I showed him some pictures
of my dogs or some something like. I don't know.
I just felt awkward and I didn't know what to say. Yeah. Yeah,
So after that he texted me and asked if I
would have lunch with him, and I was like, fine,

(40:27):
what's it going to hurt after all these years, I
don't really care. So I met him for lunch and
again kind of same thing, like when he would sit
and talk to my sister, Like he has no remorse,
he has no apologies, he has no regrets, he doesn't
care how much he hurt us, he doesn't care what

(40:48):
he caused. So there's nothing, there's nothing here, There's nothing
here for me. Yeah yeah, So I sat through at
lunch and then at the end he said, we're walking
out to our cars and he said, you know, if
you need anything, you can call me. I'm still your dad,

(41:11):
you know. And I was like okay, and he goes
love y'all and I was like, love you too, and
then that was the end. And then a few months later,
my grandpa died and I got a phone call from
him telling me he was he had passed, but I
wasn't allowed at the funeral. And I hadn't been allowed

(41:34):
at my grandma's funeral either because of the church. Yeah, okay, yeah,
my god. Yeah, and my grandparents wouldn't talk to me
after I left either, So I don't know that I
even wanted to go. Yeah, yeah, but it was that's

(41:56):
just a weird thing to say, like, you can't go
to your grandma was funeral? Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
So is your dad still running a church right now?

Speaker 4 (42:06):
Is he? Picture? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (42:09):
About how old is your dad?

Speaker 4 (42:13):
Yeah, I was wanting to know that too. He is seventy.
I'm gonna look up and use my calculator. He was
born in nineteen fifty two.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
Okay, okay, And then you're so he's seventeen. Oh, and
how old is your brother or was? What was the
age difference between them? Not that that matters nearly as
much as like the relationship, but I was curious about
the age difference.

Speaker 4 (42:46):
It's she is six months younger than my youngest sister,
so there's like thirty two years, thirty to thirty some
years between them. That's icky, so many levels, right, and
she'd been married with my brother for just under ten years. Yeah,

(43:08):
so that's kind of I couldn't I mean, I couldn't
do that. No, my god, just the thought of my
father in law in that way makes me really feel
like I want to vomit. Like I don't know how you.
I don't know how you switch that in your brain. No,
I don't either. So there's another big piece to this,

(43:31):
where the day after I said already, the day after
my mom passed, my dad put his name on my
grandma's bank account. Yeah, and he started using her money
like that that week or whatever. I don't know if
it was the exact same day, but he spent her money.
He wrote checks to my brother in law, he wrote

(43:54):
a check to one of his employees at the church.
He wrote checks to pay his own taxes. And meanwhile,
my grandma is ninety five in a nursing home, in diapers,
in a wheelchair, and she her bills aren't getting paid,
so they shut off her cable TV. She couldn't get

(44:17):
her dentures fixed, she couldn't get her glasses fixed. So
she's got her glasses like halfway off her face because
they're all crooked and broken, and she's got teeth missing,
and she can't even buy her snacks in the gift shop.
She can't get her hair done. Like she's just you know,

(44:38):
suffering because he's using all her money. Well, I went
to the nursing home to visit her one day, and
I happen to have a client who worked there, a
hair client, and she told me, she said, there's some hippolaws.
So I'm not supposed to tell you a lot of things,

(45:00):
but you need to go talk to admin. They're about
to evict your grandma. I said, what do you mean
how they can evict? How can they do that? Where
will they put her? Yeah, like she's she's in a wheelchair,
in diapers, she can't take care of herself. They're like, well,
park her on your dad's door step, And I was like,
that might be worse. Actually, yeah, yeah. And so I

(45:26):
happened to have another hair client who was a prosecutor
in the county we live in, and so I called
her right away and I told her what was going on,
and I said, what do I do? And she said,
she gave me a list of instructions, and so I
did all the things, and she gave me the name
of a detective to go talk to. So I took

(45:47):
all the papers she told me to gather and I
brought them to this detective and told him the whole story,
everything that was happening, and so he went into investigation mode.
It got assigned to a process cuter, but not my friend.
So my friend kind of was keeping an eye on
it for me. So she would call me and tell me, like,

(46:08):
you should call the prosecutor this week because she wants
to drop this case because her own mother was in
a nursing home. And I think she just felt like
it was just like a innocent mistake. But I knew
it wasn't because I knew how shady he was with money,
and I knew it was intentional because I actually had

(46:29):
told my aunt that day, because she came to the
hospital too, and I told her before we left. We
stood in the foyer for a while and I said,
you need to make sure you put your name on
grandma's accounts and get all that stuff back in your
control instead of since my mom has passed. And she
was like, oh, it's fine, he can't really do anything.

(46:52):
And I was like, I don't agree with you, yeah,
but whatever. And so I had called her that day
and I said, can you please come help me with this?
Since you are her daughter? You know, I can do
it all myself, but I think you should help. And
so she did. She came down and she got the
they had taken power of attorney away from my aunt

(47:13):
with and I guess you don't have to notify a
person of that. So my older sister and my dad
were on there, and my dad was on her bank
account and so he'd been using her money for himself
and not paying her nursing home bill or any of
the other things. So I called the prosecutor multiple times

(47:36):
a week and just put the pressure on to keep
to keep this, you know, going, And so it did
go to court and he did get convicted of financial
exploitation of a vulnerable adult. I was the only one
who went. I went to every single hearing, even if

(47:57):
it was just a hearing to change the date to
a different day. I was there and I sat there
and I ended up giving a victim impact statement at
his sentencing as well, which was really hard to do
because I had to stand there and look him in
the face while I said it. But I'm glad I

(48:18):
did that. I'm glad I stood up for my grandma
because nobody else was going to do it. My aunt
didn't even want to do it, so I was like, fine,
then I'll do it. Did he like? What did what happened?
What was his sentence? Yeah? Sadly, it wasn't very much
because that was the first, not the first thing he'd done,

(48:39):
just the first thing he'd gotten caught doing. So he
didn't have a criminal record at the time, so he
got sentenced to four days but he really only served two.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, and he was convicted of a felony.
But unfortunately, again the prosecutor just had too much empathy

(49:03):
where it wasn't deserved, and she allowed him to take
what's called an Alfred plea where it and it was
literally the day before the trial because he wasn't going
to plead guilty until she told him an Alfred please says,
I admit that there is enough evidence that I could
get convicted, but I don't admit I did anything wrong.

(49:27):
So that was enough for him to feel like, I'm
not admitting to fault and it was a felony, but
they put in the stipulations that it would go down
to a misdemeanor on his record if he completed probation
with no violations. And yeah, so that was disappointing to

(49:49):
me either way.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
I can't it's hard to imagine that you could be
convicted of something like that and then just still have
your own church where you are able to extort people
and manipulate people.

Speaker 4 (50:04):
Well, and the silly thing is he literally got out
of jail on a Sunday morning at seven a m.
And went and preached to church service that morning, and
of course he shut off the live streams so nobody
could watch. He live streams all of his services on
it was a different platform before and now I think
he does it on YouTube. But yeah, he shut off

(50:28):
the live streams so nobody could see what he said.
As I could order the tape to do it under
a pseudonym.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
There's no reason to like traumatize yourself.

Speaker 4 (50:43):
No, I don't even want to hear it. I don't care.
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
So after all that, I guess like that was probably
enough to just turn you off from religion and general
I just geared it's like quickly, like how like where
you are now?

Speaker 4 (51:05):
Yeah, So I do not I believe in spirituality. I
don't follow any organized religion. I don't believe in it.
I don't like it. I do, you know, guided meditations.
I connect with the earth and ground myself. I have
done a lot of therapy. I've been in therapy for

(51:29):
probably five years now. Even before the therapy, I read
a lot of books. Shortly after I left, I came
across a book called The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse,
and that really opened my eyes to some things. And
like I said, some of my other my younger siblings,
like they got out a little bit after I did. So,

(51:51):
Like I told my sister about that book, and it
really kind of made her mad. She didn't want to
hear about that. And then when I started using the
word she didn't want to hear about that either, Like
that really bothered her, But she came around to it. Yeah,
now she's totally on board and understands. But yeah, I
think I kind of started moving through some of those

(52:13):
things pretty early on, but didn't get myself into actual
therapy till a few years ago, and then in the
last couple of years I started doing an online nervous
system regulation program called Smart Body, Smart Mind. So it's
based on Peter Levine's work in somatic experiencing, and I'm

(52:36):
really really helpful. I love his work.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
I've been like this actually this week, I've been listening
to a whole bunch of his Just podcasts that he's
been on and ordered the book The Autobiography of Trauma
that he wrote about his own life and experience.

Speaker 4 (52:58):
Yeah, that's really incredible. Also, Gabor mat Mate, I listened
to him a lot, Like he has a lot of
really good information on trauma and how it affects you.
And yeah, so that's that's the kind of stuff that
I do to try to help and heal. And you know,

(53:20):
there has I've heard you guys talk a little bit
about like health issues that happened to people after they've
survived this kind of stuff, and I've gone through that
as well, autoimmune issues. I had cancer, I I had
a brain injury. That doesn't that doesn't connect to the trauma,

(53:42):
but it that's what helped me find the somatic work.
And so even though I have had a lot of turmoil,
and it's been hard and sad, and I, you know,
I don't have a lot of friends. I realized that
I didn't learn how to make healthy friendships. And as

(54:07):
I started my healing work, I realized that some of
my long term friendships were very toxic and they were
harmful to me. They were using me and not like
but that's what I was trained for. I was trained
to give up of myself and to be selfless, and
to not think about my own needs and only meet

(54:28):
the needs of others. And you know, so as I've
started to learn about how to put healthy boundaries in place,
some of those friendships dissolved because they weren't happy about
boundaries being a place. So it's been, you know, hard,

(54:49):
it's been really hard. And at the same time, I
would never go back. Never in a million years would
I ever choose to go back. Even though so it
felt like I had a community and you had support,
like after you had a baby, the women of the
church brought you meals. That doesn't happen now. Like when

(55:10):
I had cancer, I don't have a support system. I
didn't have anybody to help me or bring me food
or bring me to my doctor appointments or you know,
any of that stuff. So but I don't care. I
don't care, right, Yeah, I would rather never have another
friend again than go back to that kind of mess. Agreed.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
Yeah, I think that's often overlooked. Kind of we've talked
about this, I know several times about the the leaving,
the action of leaving for me, and I think for
a lot of people that was the easier part. It's
all the stuff after that's hard, and then you know
the stuff that really lingers, like the kind of learning

(55:54):
different attachment styles because we learn like, well, this is
the way relationships are supposed to be. It's like, but no,
that's not it's definitely not the way it's supposed to be,
so kind of like relearning that. And like you said,
like some relationships will fall to the wayside, not because
of anything that you might think like oh, we butted

(56:14):
heads or we had a falling out, Like no, it's
just because you're trying to learn this new, healthier attachment
style and this relationship was literally built on this structure
that you don't want to do, you don't want to
use anymore. So it's like either you learn a new
way to have that relationship or it just doesn't work.
And so like learning that has been man that challenge,

(56:38):
but overall good.

Speaker 4 (56:40):
And I feel like the concept of forgiveness was super
harmful for me too, because then like I just let
people walk all over me and I just have to
forgive them. Yeah, and not like there's no accountability, there's
no repentance repair like remorse, Like no, people can just

(57:02):
use you and you have to let them because that's
you being selfless and you have to forgive and you
have to you have to follow God's rules whether they
do or not. Yeah, So I think that can be
harmful too, Like I don't want to hold a grudge,
but I don't think it's okay to let people walk

(57:24):
all over you because the way that I was taught
forgiveness was just let people off the hook.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
And all of this does if you wanted to boil
it down, which you've already kind of hit on. All
of this boils down to boundaries, and whether you have
them or you don't like healthy boundaries, you know, where
you're allowing yourself to be taken advantage of it because
you don't know how to set a boundary, you know,
and then when you do set a boundary, you feel
bad or guilty. Like that's still now it struggles first,

(57:57):
I still with.

Speaker 4 (57:58):
That, Yeah, still struggle with that where I know this
boundary is healthy and I know this is what I
need to do to take care of myself, and I
feel so guilty. Yeah, but yeah, I know I shouldn't,
so I just kind of push through the guilt. Sometimes
it sucks no fun.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
Yeah, yeah, Well, I feel like you we were going
to ask like any parting words or you know, things
that have helped you. Yeah, I know, and you did
mention Gabormante and Peter Livin and and like the somatic
where can mindfulness and stuff? Which is like all stuff? Yes,

(58:40):
for sure everybody should be looking at that. Is there
anything else that you didn't mention or that you want
to leave the audience with.

Speaker 4 (58:49):
I think just that there is hope, Like even when
it's a struggle, even when it's hard, it's worth it.
It's worth it. I got a little tattoo on my
arm it says with pain comes strength, And I just
remind myself that, you know, it's not always easy, and
it's not always something I want to go through, and

(59:11):
I you know, it's easier not to change, it's easier
to stay the same. Yeah, but that just wasn't working
for me anymore. And so as as hard as it
is and as hard as it's been, it is worth it,
and there is there is hope. Yeah, I agree. Do

(59:33):
you agree that I do.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
It takes a little while before you where you feel
like there's hope for.

Speaker 4 (59:42):
Me, Yeah, to go a while, yeah. And it goes
up and down. Yeah. Yeah, it depends on the day.
There's still days where I feel like I don't feel
a lot of hope. I don't. I don't always look
to the future and say that it looks bright, you know.
Sometimes I just can't see the future at all. And
I think think that's okay too. I think it's okay
to just take it one day at a time and

(01:00:05):
the best you can in the moment you're in, and
don't worry so much about the future. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
And I think that just speaks to you know, the
fact that healing is not linear, So there's just going
to be the ups and downs and the ebbs and
flows that you have to go with. But hopefully if
you're on that journey, like you're still coming out a
little a little better each time, even after the recession.

Speaker 4 (01:00:31):
You know. Yeah, I wanted to ask you guys a
couple questions, and you act don't have to put this
in the podcast at all, but I was curious about
your sibling dynamic because mine is real, real, sketchy.

Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
I'm glad that you asked.

Speaker 4 (01:00:52):
Are you know what? My mic isn't working anymore? What?

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
Oh you're breaking up?

Speaker 4 (01:01:03):
I can't hear you.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
Oh yeah, it's I'm serious with you. It's all over
the place. Yeah, And we may not put this in.
It's all I know. And it has done this, like
I mean, not with Ashley and I. We haven't had
not yet, we haven't had our It's scary.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Though, Like I actually get scared about that just because yeah,
there's no indication, there's no indication from you that it's
going to happen. But I think whether we leave this
in here or not, I think I've learned that safe
relationships require both people like I don't know, understanding the

(01:01:53):
boundaries like you mentioned, Maddie, or emotional regulation like being
able to do that and how conflict with each other
and work through it. And like none of us have
really like been taught how to do conflict resolution, And
even though I've been out of it for a long time,
I realized that I'm not good at it because it's

(01:02:16):
like it has to be modeled for you. And if
if you just like, if you don't practice that, like
how do you how do you work anything out? And
so like with the with the siblings, like there have
been so many difficulties. And it's not that I think
Matt's going to do that, but it's still scary because

(01:02:37):
I'm still even figuring out how to how to do
conflict resolution.

Speaker 4 (01:02:41):
So I worry what if we have a conflict. Yeah,
and you were you were the first one to leave,
and so then you were blacklisted, right, there was a
big smear campaign against you. Yeah, and for many, many
many years. And that's what's happened to me with my
siblings too, because even before I left, I was always
labeled as too dramatic, too you know, sensitive, too loud,

(01:03:07):
too stubborn to everything. And then when I was the
one who made sure that my dad went to jail
for stealing my grandma's money, well now I'm even worse.
And at some point, and I don't remember when or why,
but there were signs posted around my dad's church with
my name my name on them, telling people not to

(01:03:29):
get in touch with me, not to contact me. He
also would preach about me from the pulpit, using my name,
and I happened to hear one of his sermons and
I got so sick I almost died. I literally ended
up in the emergency room and I had pancreatitis. But like,
I started feeling this pit in my stomach as I

(01:03:52):
heard him saying my name and talking about me from
the pulpit, and then that feeling just got worse and
worse and worse and worse. Did I get pancreatitus because
my dad talked shit about me? Probably not, Maybe, I
don't know. It seems connected to me, knowing what I
know about how stress causes health issues, I think it
was directly related. And so I was in the hospital

(01:04:17):
for almost a week. I literally almost died. It was
so bad. And I stopped listening after that because I
was like, I'm not going to do that to myself anymore.
But I don't know when or why. But like, you know,
that whole smear campaign against me, and they like I

(01:04:38):
was always labeled as the bad one, and nobody liked me,
and so now on the outside, you know, like my
my younger brother and sister left shortly, you know, just
surrounding the same time that I left. And so then
we tried to sort of form a group of like

(01:04:58):
we're gonna still be family, We're still going to support
each other. And my younger sister just was, I don't know,
it was complicated, and she and I would get in
fights all the time. She didn't want to have me
around and I felt offended by that. And and my
brother was in the army, so he has some pretty

(01:05:20):
severe PTSD, not only from what he experienced growing up,
but also he was a sniper, so that's pretty rough.
And he was in Iraq, and so he had a
couple ied attacks, you know that he had to go
through and save some of his fellow soldiers, like just
just trauma yea. And so I'm helping him with some

(01:05:43):
things right now that he's going through in his life.
So we're spending a couple days a week together at least.
And there's been a few times like because I've been
through therapy and I recognize the signs and I've I
have PTSD and CPT and so I recognize it and

(01:06:03):
so then I'm able to not get like triggered by him,
and I can sometimes help pull him out of it,
but it's super complicated. And then we had an older
sister who left for a little while, and she and
I were never very close growing up again because our
dad triangulated all of us against each other, and she
and I just butted heads a lot. But I had

(01:06:26):
heard some really hard things happened to her and she left,
and so I kept calling other people to try to
ask them to reach out to her, because I didn't
think she would receive it from me. Nobody would, nobody
would call her, Nobody would, but I just I knew
how hard it was to leave and be out there
on your own. So finally I called her and I

(01:06:47):
was just like, I heard you left, Are you okay?
You know, do you want to get together? And I
was surprised, but she did decide she would meet with me.
So we had lunch, and then we started talking here
and there. But she said, you know, like it's off
limits to talk about Dad, it's off limits to talk

(01:07:08):
about you know, our grandma and her money, and like
a bunch of things she wouldn't talk to me about,
and that's fine. I respected that from her, and but
she just again she has this viewpoint of me based
on the picture that was painted, even though I'm the

(01:07:29):
one who is kind and empathetic enough to reach out
to her. She Now, I did end up getting her
in touch with my younger brother and sister. They didn't
want to have anything to do with her at first,
but after I started talking to her, then they did,
and then she completely stopped like she barely ever she went.

(01:07:50):
She did get pulled back into the cult, but she's
sort of on the outskirts now, so she still connected
to them, but she moved to Wisconsin so she doesn't
have to go to their services all the time. But
she will still call and talk to like my younger
sister or you know that kind of thing. But she
still doesn't want to have anything to do with me,

(01:08:14):
because one time she had called me and asked me
to stop telling her kids things because they were lied
to their whole lives growing up. They weren't told the
truth about what happened and about why anybody left, and
they were lied to about our grandma's money and you know,
all of those things. So they are asking me questions
and I'm answering. Honestly, I'm not exaggerating things or trying

(01:08:37):
to make anything sound worse. I'm not talking bad about
their mom or anything like that. But if they're asking questions,
I'm going to answer. And so she got pretty upset
and she called me and she said, I want you
to quit talking to my kids, and I said no,
And so she said that was a relationship ending conversation

(01:08:59):
for her. But then there's been some other things that
have happened lately, like I still just keep I'll text
her Happy Birthday, Happy Mother's Day, Merry Christmas, just whatever,
like just I don't know why I just do. And
so I guess because of that, she was like, oh,
maybe we didn't end our relationship then, And so then

(01:09:22):
she will text me a little bit from time to time,
but it's always just self serving of like she needs
some information about, you know, like our mom's health history
or something like that. So I think our sibling relationship
dynamics have been so uh chaotic. I guess, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
I don't think there could really be any other way
when you know you've grown up through all of that
and had all the different trauma and everybody's like experiencing
all those things in different ways in their bodies. I mean,
it's just it, like, I don't know, it's like every
person has got to do their own healing work and

(01:10:06):
whatever that means for them.

Speaker 4 (01:10:08):
Yeah or not.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
I mean in order for like the siblings to have
any type of cohesive, like productive, good relationship. So we're
still in the middle of all that. I don't know
where it'll end up for us. Yeah, I think we
Matt and I are both like, well, we just have
to do the best that we.

Speaker 4 (01:10:31):
Can and hopefully things work out. I mean, I don't know.
That's where I'm at. So, yeah, my sister and I
were talking about this the other day because we had
a huge falling out last August and we've only just
now started barely talking to each other again. Yeah, and

(01:10:52):
this is the second time that we've had a huge
falling out where we didn't talk for over a year.
And I'm very trepidacious, right, Like, I feel very nervous
when I talk to her. I don't know if she's
gonna get triggered by what I say and like just
fly off the handle and we'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
That is what's not a safe relationship.

Speaker 4 (01:11:16):
Well you know what I know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
But it's like, if you feel like emotional safety because
the other person is not able to be regulated, then
like that's just hard.

Speaker 4 (01:11:26):
But yeah, and so far, I'm the only one who's
actually done therapy. I did just I found a veteran's
program that would donate some EMDR for my brother, but
they only did like twelve sessions, which I think barely
scratches the surface. If you've ever tried EMDR, that's nothing,

(01:11:47):
but it's I mean, it's something.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
Peter Levine has that whole story as I can't is
the guy's name Ray or something. He was a veteran
that a traumatic brain injury in combat and he came
back with all kinds of issues, including even turetts just

(01:12:11):
like related to what he experienced and through somatic experiencing,
like he is so much better that. I mean, that's
one of the reasons why I'm drawn to his work,
because the idea of like working with the body rather
than just like sitting and like telling someone your trauma.
You're like you're processing it through your body. It's yeah,

(01:12:33):
so if you can find somebody that like practices that,
that might be great for him.

Speaker 4 (01:12:39):
That's what I would like to do, even for myself,
because my therapist that I've been with for five years,
she's just talk therapy. So like, after a while, I
feel like just rehearsing the trauma over and over and
over isn't really as helpful anymore. For a while, I
think it's important to be able to say what you

(01:13:01):
want to say, and like my words were always controlled
and so and I'm always afraid that I'm going to
get in trouble for what I say too, because that's
been an experience of my life. And so to be
able to go and sit down in therapy and just
say whatever and not worry about getting in trouble or
if somebody is going to be offended or did I
say it wrong or did I use the wrong words

(01:13:23):
or any of that, I do think that's helpful for
a while. Yeah, Yeah, But I'm curious what you think
about what have been more effective strategies for either of
you to process some of the trauma and actually release it.

Speaker 3 (01:13:44):
I mean mostly I think I've said it before, like
not that it's a replacement for therapy or talk therapy
like what you talked about, but doing the podcast, Yeah,
I think has probably been there the main the biggest
single thing.

Speaker 4 (01:14:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:03):
And then also I mean it's moving away from Russellville,
the town where I grew up, where my dad still lives,
Like that was a pretty big thing, yeah, Les, and
I because I think we stayed less than a year
or about a year. Yeah, it was about a year
after we left. We stayed in Russeville, but then we
moved hours away. So that was a pretty a pretty

(01:14:26):
big thing. But as far as like actual therapy, I've
probably done I was gonna say done the least in
the family. That's definitely not true. But out of all
the rest of us, probably wouldn't you imagine Ashley, probably
the least. I've done some.

Speaker 4 (01:14:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:14:42):
But also, like with the podcast, you've been able to
share your experience, which is a lot of what you
would be doing and talk there me having someone listened
to you empathetically, you know, it was like really important, well.

Speaker 4 (01:15:02):
And validate your feelings and your experience, and I think
you're getting that in the podcast. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:15:08):
And I listened to the feedback from people, you know,
so I think that's valuable for me.

Speaker 4 (01:15:16):
I listened to the fire Rat episode the other day
with Sandy and it. Sandy's great, Tonny. It's just like
we just like laugh the whole time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
For me, I love meditation, mindfulness huge, but also like
I have had a really good therapist to talk through
things with, and she incorporates I mean it's like person centered,
you know, talk therapy, but also incorporating like internal family
systems and somatic experiencing and all of those things have

(01:15:54):
been helpful. Like thinking about little Ashley, you know what
I mean, it's easy to have like compassion for her
sometimes than it is for me now, So yeah, you
can like look at it that way. That has helped
me a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:16:12):
There were times before, like when I was even a kid,
before I left the cult and everything, where I would
have these like again, this is why I believe more
in spirituality than religion, but I would have these experiences
where like I had a dream one time that I,
as an adult, went and found my child self hiding

(01:16:35):
in the closet where I used to hide, and I
pulled her out and I held her and I hugged
her and I told her it's going to be okay.
I love you. You know, like that's something that you
would maybe do in therapy. I didn't know that that
just happened to me like organically, and I have that experience.
And I also had an experience where I had a

(01:16:57):
dream one time that I had an angel on each
of the four corners of my bed and they had
their wings up like this. That was like making a
canopy over my bed and like over me. And this
was when I was, you know, a teenager and having
such severe depression and suicidality and all of that. And

(01:17:19):
I think, you know, that was an experience that really
helped me at that time. It made me feel like
I have you know, I don't know spirit guides, guardian angels,
but like I wasn't alone, right, Yeah, And so that's
a huge piece of the healing, I think. Yeah, so

(01:17:40):
I think there were things like that that happened throughout
my life. But then you know, now on this side
of things, it's hard because I want to have relationships
with my siblings, but they're not necessarily in the same place.
And so I think about you with that, Ashley, where
you were the one who was on the outside for

(01:18:01):
so long and you missed your siblings and like me,
for my my nieces and nephews, like that was so
devastating for me to have to leave them behind. And
now some of them have grown up and I do
have relationships with some of them, even though I don't
have with their parents, and so that makes me really happy.
But I missed it. I missed all of it, missed

(01:18:25):
them growing up, I missed all the things. Yeah, Concile,
I know. Yeah, it's pretty hard. Well, really appreciate that
you did this because I know it's thank you. It's
not easy. And have a little bit of a hangover afterwards. Yeah,
I've been taking hangover liked go take a walk. I've

(01:18:48):
been taking the preparation kind of slow, like I just
bite off a little chunk at a time. I'll take
a couple hours and write a few paragraphs, and then
I do something different like listen into a happy podcast
or go up or go out in my garden and
put my feet in the grass. So yeah, it's it is, definitely,

(01:19:13):
but I wanted to push through because part of I
think I told you in our call earlier, like there's
still this sort of piece of me that has this
holdback of are they going to hear this? Am I
going to get in trouble? Am I saying the wrong
words kind of thing, and then you know, I just

(01:19:33):
needed to push myself through that, and as hard as
it was, and however, many times I felt like I
should just cancel. I don't need to do this, this
isn't important. It was more like, you know what, No,
I think this is another step in the healing journey
for me, and it means that I don't have to
be held to their standards and I can tell my story.

Speaker 1 (01:19:56):
Yeah, and I hope it's therapeutic for you.

Speaker 4 (01:20:00):
Thank you me too. I think it has been so far.

Speaker 3 (01:20:03):
If you like this episode, please go leave us a
five star rating and review wherever that is, if it's Apple,
Spotify or another service. It's really helpful. And don't forget
to subscribe so that you can get notified to when
we have new episodes and updates and things like that. Thanks,
and we'll talk to you all again next week.