November 17, 2023 • 16 mins
What happens when a child's innocent hustle inadvertently brings the FBI to the Church of Scientology's doorstep? I lived it and I'm ready to share my story. This episode of Tonka Talk is a powerful testament to my journey of growing up in, and eventually escaping from, the Church of Scientology.
Every moment was a life lesson, from my childhood in Hawaii spent selling drawings, to the dramatic incident that drastically changed my life—a mall shooting where I was forced to reassess my ties with the Church, risking the loss of my family.
The impact Scientology had on my family dynamics was profound and complex. Join me, Natalie Webster, as I narrate my life-altering journey, shedding light on my experiences with Scientology, and the community I found in its aftermath. Stay tuned as I promise to delve deeper into my story in the coming weeks, releasing an episode each Friday.
Learn more at https://www.tonkatalk.com where we share more about our Lake Minnetonka community, including upcoming events and our take on local experiences.
Connect with us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TonkaTalk/
If you have feedback, questions, or suggestions of a future guests creating community and connection, email natalie@tonkatalk.com
We appreciate your support in sharing Tonka Talk Community and Connection with someone you think could benefit from our content.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi and welcome to Tonka Talk, where we talk about
community and connection.
I'm Natalie Webster.
Each Friday, I'm sharing mypersonal story about why I'm
passionate about discovering andsharing how people connect, how
people create community.
For me, it has everything to dowith having grown up in a cult.
I was raised in the Church ofScientology and I left as an
(00:23):
adult with three generations ofmy family.
I'm going to do this in a waythat hopefully, you won't need
to listen to each part in order.
This is part two.
This is Lake Minnetonka, a safehaven after Scientology.
Part two.
I did part one last week andasked if you'd want to hear more
about my story and how itrelates to community and
(00:45):
connection and why I'mpassionate about it, and it
sounds like it's a topic youwant to hear more about.
So again, I'm going to releasean episode on Fridays where I'll
be sharing my personal story ofwhat happened in Scientology
and why I do what it is I dotoday.
In part one, I talked about themoment I decided with certainty
that I had to leave Scientology,and that was when I was taking
(01:12):
shelter in the back of a shoestore at a mall in Seattle
during a mall shooting.
And again you can go back andlisten to part one, but that was
kind of the gist of it.
In that moment I realized thatI needed to leave, no matter
what I could, possibly, what Iwould lose.
And when you leave Scientology,you risk losing your family.
(01:32):
And again, I had threegenerations of my family in
Scientology.
But I realized that I could notgo another day, didn't want to,
without being able to reallyfigure out who I was and live my
life and make my own decisionsand have a sense of freedom and
(01:53):
free will.
So today I'm going to share.
Last week I also talked abouthow, ironically, it was gun
violence that got me trulystarted in Scientology and it
was gun violence that ended it.
It ended with the mall shootingin 2008 when I made that
decision.
When your life is flashingbefore your eyes, it puts a lot
(02:16):
of things in perspective.
Now, what happened when I was achild?
It was 1980 and I was turning10 years old.
My younger sister, lana, shewas turning eight at the end of
the year.
Our mom worked for the Churchof Scientology in Hawaii, on
Oahu at the time.
In fact, I think that thechurch was on Nahuwa Street, if
(02:37):
I remember correctly, which isjust blocks from Waikiki Beach.
It was right near the AlawaiCanal and because our mom was
there evening and weekends thatwas her shift she would take us
with her and we were pretty muchcompletely unsupervised.
She worked a regular job duringthe day, which she needed to do
(02:58):
because the church did not paytheir staff even minimum wage,
so pretty much everybody had towork another job to support
themselves.
And the way that the church gotaround paying their staff is
because they're a church andthey had different rules that
applied to them.
Now, which again I often getthis question is when do you
(03:19):
think that?
Do you think Scientology isjust going to go away?
I'm not sure, but I'll tell youwhat I do know their tax exempt
status as a church needs to bere-evaluated and taken away.
Kind of just a side note there.
My sister and I, we were prettymuch left to fend for ourselves
in Waikiki, which again is wherethe Scientology organization
(03:42):
was located.
I always had a hustle going on,even as a child.
My sister and I wanted to makemoney to buy candy.
That was our big motivation.
And again, remember, we werealmost eight and 10.
So we would draw pictures andtry to sell them for a quarter a
piece, and we didn't sell manywithin the Scientology
(04:04):
organization because everybodywas busy and working.
And one of the worst things youcould do as a child, even just
as a person, is to interruptsomeone when they're either
doing their Scientology servicesor working at the.
At the Church of Scientologythey have a very different view
on children.
(04:24):
You're not really children.
You are spiritual beings insmall bodies.
So in Scientology kids aren'tgiven a lot of the same
concessions or treated in waysthat you would normally see a
child being treated.
So to have us running aroundhere unsupervised was not, was
(04:44):
not that big of a deal.
Plus, it was the 80s.
It was more common to havelatchkey kids, but this was not
that.
Remember, this was nighttime InWaikiki and my sister and I
would kind of go wanderingaround trying to sell our little
drawings for a quarter to makesome money so that we could buy
candy, which was a very primemotivation for us at that age.
(05:07):
We had one customer really, whowas a really good customer.
He worked as a security guardacross the street from where the
Church of Scientology was, onNahua Street, again not far from
Waikiki Beach.
Now, in the evenings, after wecolored our pictures, we would
go across the street and see ifour best customer but frankly
(05:30):
our only customer, mark, wasthere.
Again, he was a security guard,so we would see him outside and
we'd go out there and chat andwe'd try to get him to buy these
photos, and sometimes he'd evenmake a request of what we
should draw.
He seemed into it.
All we cared is.
We got 50 cents, I think weeven got a dollar once for two
(05:52):
pictures.
Eventually we didn't see himthere anymore, which wasn't
unusual for us.
In Hawaii there's a lot ofpeople coming go, you know,
tourists or even people who livethere that change jobs.
Plus, we were, you know, almosteight and 10.
What do we know?
People come and go, so we don'tsee him.
We think, really we don't thinkanything of it.
(06:13):
Eventually, what happens is ourmom pulls us aside and she is
hissed, I mean very upset.
She's explaining to us that shegot in trouble with the Church
and that we were in trouble withthe Church because my sister
and I brought the FBI andinvestigators to the Church,
onto the property, and that wasnot okay, and she was going on
(06:36):
about what a distraction it wasand you know what a crime it was
.
In Scientology, one of theworst crimes you can commit is
interfering with somebody'sability to continue taking
Scientology services.
So from Scientology's point ofview, this was a very serious
thing.
At the time I didn't evenunderstand what fully was going
(06:57):
on.
I mean, I don't think I fullyunderstood what the FBI was at
10, but I understood that wewere in some massive trouble.
When my mom years later, when Iwas I think I was about I was 40
the year that we leftScientology and thankfully my
mom left as well we had a lot ofconversations about a lot of
(07:20):
things that happened over theyears that we weren't allowed to
talk about when we wereScientologists, and we talked
about this incident and mymemories about it and,
interestingly, I remembered itvery accurately and she had said
what had happened was the FBIdid come over for an
investigation and that did endup getting my mom temporarily
(07:41):
suspended from going to thechurch.
What I didn't know at the timeI actually didn't know this
until I left Scientology wasthat the church of Scientology
had several people who went tojail in the mid to late 70s.
It might've been 77,.
I'm not positive forinfiltrating the US government
(08:04):
and Mary Sue Hubbard, the wifeof Elron Hubbard, the founder of
Scientology, was one of thosepeople.
The church of Scientology wasraided as well.
So I didn't know.
There was this holds drama goingon between the FBI and
Scientology and again, this was1980.
So you're probably wonderinglike, what the heck did we do to
(08:24):
get the FBI involved and showup at the church?
So remember, my sister and Iwould make these photos where we
draw these pictures, we goacross to Art only in our best
customer mark and we'd sell themto him and then we'd go back
and we'd walk around the street,kind of where we were, go down
to the main drag by Calicoa, orwe would be back in the building
(08:45):
.
Frankly, I am super thankfulthat nothing happened to us as
children.
Well, I should rephrase that alot happened to us as children,
but we weren't kidnapped off thestreet or anything like that.
So come to find out, causewe're trying to find out here.
I am 10 years old.
(09:05):
I don't understand what the bigdeal is.
I don't even understand what itwas that happened and we were
told that the person that wewere going and selling these
pictures to, these drawings, heflew to New York and he shot
someone.
He murdered someone in coldblood and that person died and
(09:30):
still we were having a hard timeprocessing that.
But that someone was JohnLennon, and the mark that we
knew as the security guard wasMark David Chapman, which pretty
much the whole world knows bynow that he did fly to New York.
He flew to New York from Hawaii, where he was living at the
time and working as a securityguard, and he shot and killed
(09:51):
John Lennon.
He went to prison and he'sstill in prison today, as far as
I know.
The crazy thing is no one in theScientology world ever brought
up that, hey, these two kids whoare barely eight and 10 years
old are wandering around Waikikiwithout any supervision and
(10:12):
stumble upon and have aacquaintance type of
relationship for us who was acustomer because we would sell
him these pictures that we woulddraw.
No one cared about that.
The big deal was that webrought the attention of the FBI
to the church and that was oneof the worst things we could
possibly, possibly, possibly doFor many years.
(10:35):
When I would look back on this,I would feel this tremendous
amount of guilt and I thought isthat guilt?
Because I feel some type ofguilt having this Connection to
Mark David Chapman.
And then within months he wentand he did what he did and I
realized, no, because Irationally understand, I had
nothing to do with that.
My sister had nothing to dowith that.
(10:56):
We were kids.
The guilt was what was kind ofimplanted, planted in me, that I
was responsible for having mymom banned from Scientology, at
least temporarily.
That was so driven into ourheads as such, this horrible
thing that we did now keep inmind.
(11:18):
But all we did was drawpictures, go across the street
selling to somebody.
We had no idea we were kids,kids we did not know what was
going on, but it created thisreally big hoo-ha within the
church.
Eventually my mom was allowedto come back.
But for that to happen my sisterand I had to really officially
(11:39):
start our Scientologyindoctrination.
We had done, I think, maybe oneChildren's course a couple of
years prior, but we hadn'treally dug in and started with
our actual official training andindoctrination into Scientology
.
I Was actually happy at thetime that we were kind of banned
(11:59):
from the church because Ienjoyed being home at that age.
You know, it just wasn't fun togo to Waikiki and be there into
the you know late evening hours.
But because we felt all thispressure and we knew that it
would make our mom happy, weagreed we would go back to
Scientology and we would startour indoctrination.
(12:21):
So my sister and I started onour Scientology courses and it
went from there.
Our mom stayed later than ourcourse would go and we weren't.
I don't think we were doing ourcourse every evening.
There were.
There was someone who wouldhelp with the children who were
in the course room and thatperson wasn't there every night.
(12:42):
So thankfully we didn't have todo that every night.
We were told we weren't supposedto leave the property.
Of course we did.
No one was watching and we werebored and we made friends with
a woman who lived in a buildingdirectly next door to the
building that the church was inand she would.
We were like these strayanimals and she met us out on
the street and we would chat andeventually we just followed Her
(13:04):
up to her apartment.
She would let us watchtelevision, she would feed us
chips and snacks and then in theevening, about the time that we
knew our mom would, would bedone at the church and we would
have to rush back and make likewe'd been there the whole time.
She would shoe us out and saythat she had to go to work.
She would get really dressed upand then she would.
(13:25):
She would go to work.
It didn't take us long to figureout that this woman, who,
frankly, was more kind to us andconcerned about our well-being
than anyone at the church was,was a transsexual female and and
Also was a transsexualprostitute.
(13:48):
We saw her when we would leaveWaikiki, sometimes with our mom,
in the areas where when sexworkers would be, would be doing
their thing, and we would seeher.
We never talked about it withher.
It didn't change you again.
We were eight and ten years oldand this is, at the time, one
(14:10):
of the only adults who wassaying hey, are you hungry?
Hey, why don't you have a seatover here?
She created what felt like asafe and comfortable space for
us.
I, my sister and I, didn't tellour mom that until we left
Scientology, she never knew, noone from the church ever knew.
We didn't really want to get inmore, in more trouble, and, and
(14:31):
this experience in firstgetting into Scientology, even
though I was really young, Ithink it really, it really it
really made me want to be a momso that I could protect my own
children, so that I could makethem feel like they were wanted,
like they, they somebody waswatching and paying attention to
(14:53):
what they were doing, which issomething that was very absent
from most of our childhoodbecause of the role that
Scientology played in our lives.
Now we went on and we did moreScientology services.
My sister and I went into the Corganization essentially when
we were when we were very young,and I'll talk more about that
(15:13):
later I but I wanted to sharethis because, again, in part one
, I talked about how, when I wasin that mall shooting, hiding
in the back of the shoe store,and realizing that I could die
today and I would die not havingcontrol over my life, not doing
things that I or I had alwayswanted to do because of my
(15:34):
limitations within Scientology,and I had wanted to leave, I had
thought about it, but thatsolidified it and again, I think
it's kind of odd and unusualthat it was gun violence that
got me started in Scientology inthe first place and it was gun
violence that prompted me to endmy time in Scientology.
(15:54):
It took me two years from thetime of the mall shooting till I
actually was able to leave, andI'll show more about that in in
detail.
If you have any questions aboutany of this too, shoot me an
email.
You can reach me at natalie attonkatalkcom, you know.
Let me know if you have anyquestions.
This is something I openly talkabout.
(16:14):
I find it's very helpful for meto also process a lot of what,
what happened and the impactthat this cult had on my family
growing up.
Next week, I think, I'm goingto talk about how the church
affected my family dynamic andhow my grandpa became my dad.
For now, I hope that you'refinding community and connection
(16:36):
in a way that works for you.
I'm Natalie Webster, and thisis my personal story of finding
community and connection, parttwo.
Hi and welcome to Tonka Talk, where we talk about
community and connection.
I'm Natalie Webster.
Each Friday, I'm sharing mypersonal story about why I'm
passionate about discovering andsharing how people connect, how
people create community.
For me, it has everything to dowith having grown up in a cult.
I was raised in the Church ofScientology and I left as an
(00:23):
adult with three generations ofmy family.
I'm going to do this in a waythat hopefully, you won't need
to listen to each part in order.
This is part two.
This is Lake Minnetonka, a safehaven after Scientology.
Part two.
I did part one last week andasked if you'd want to hear more
about my story and how itrelates to community and
(00:45):
connection and why I'mpassionate about it, and it
sounds like it's a topic youwant to hear more about.
So again, I'm going to releasean episode on Fridays where I'll
be sharing my personal story ofwhat happened in Scientology
and why I do what it is I dotoday.
In part one, I talked about themoment I decided with certainty
that I had to leave Scientology,and that was when I was taking
(01:12):
shelter in the back of a shoestore at a mall in Seattle
during a mall shooting.
And again you can go back andlisten to part one, but that was
kind of the gist of it.
In that moment I realized thatI needed to leave, no matter
what I could, possibly, what Iwould lose.
And when you leave Scientology,you risk losing your family.
(01:32):
And again, I had threegenerations of my family in
Scientology.
But I realized that I could notgo another day, didn't want to,
without being able to reallyfigure out who I was and live my
life and make my own decisionsand have a sense of freedom and
(01:53):
free will.
So today I'm going to share.
Last week I also talked abouthow, ironically, it was gun
violence that got me trulystarted in Scientology and it
was gun violence that ended it.
It ended with the mall shootingin 2008 when I made that
decision.
When your life is flashingbefore your eyes, it puts a lot
(02:16):
of things in perspective.
Now, what happened when I was achild?
It was 1980 and I was turning10 years old.
My younger sister, lana, shewas turning eight at the end of
the year.
Our mom worked for the Churchof Scientology in Hawaii, on
Oahu at the time.
In fact, I think that thechurch was on Nahuwa Street, if
(02:37):
I remember correctly, which isjust blocks from Waikiki Beach.
It was right near the AlawaiCanal and because our mom was
there evening and weekends thatwas her shift she would take us
with her and we were pretty muchcompletely unsupervised.
She worked a regular job duringthe day, which she needed to do
(02:58):
because the church did not paytheir staff even minimum wage,
so pretty much everybody had towork another job to support
themselves.
And the way that the church gotaround paying their staff is
because they're a church andthey had different rules that
applied to them.
Now, which again I often getthis question is when do you
(03:19):
think that?
Do you think Scientology isjust going to go away?
I'm not sure, but I'll tell youwhat I do know their tax exempt
status as a church needs to bere-evaluated and taken away.
Kind of just a side note there.
My sister and I, we were prettymuch left to fend for ourselves
in Waikiki, which again is wherethe Scientology organization
(03:42):
was located.
I always had a hustle going on,even as a child.
My sister and I wanted to makemoney to buy candy.
That was our big motivation.
And again, remember, we werealmost eight and 10.
So we would draw pictures andtry to sell them for a quarter a
piece, and we didn't sell manywithin the Scientology
(04:04):
organization because everybodywas busy and working.
And one of the worst things youcould do as a child, even just
as a person, is to interruptsomeone when they're either
doing their Scientology servicesor working at the.
At the Church of Scientologythey have a very different view
on children.
(04:24):
You're not really children.
You are spiritual beings insmall bodies.
So in Scientology kids aren'tgiven a lot of the same
concessions or treated in waysthat you would normally see a
child being treated.
So to have us running aroundhere unsupervised was not, was
(04:44):
not that big of a deal.
Plus, it was the 80s.
It was more common to havelatchkey kids, but this was not
that.
Remember, this was nighttime InWaikiki and my sister and I
would kind of go wanderingaround trying to sell our little
drawings for a quarter to makesome money so that we could buy
candy, which was a very primemotivation for us at that age.
(05:07):
We had one customer really, whowas a really good customer.
He worked as a security guardacross the street from where the
Church of Scientology was, onNahua Street, again not far from
Waikiki Beach.
Now, in the evenings, after wecolored our pictures, we would
go across the street and see ifour best customer but frankly
(05:30):
our only customer, mark, wasthere.
Again, he was a security guard,so we would see him outside and
we'd go out there and chat andwe'd try to get him to buy these
photos, and sometimes he'd evenmake a request of what we
should draw.
He seemed into it.
All we cared is.
We got 50 cents, I think weeven got a dollar once for two
(05:52):
pictures.
Eventually we didn't see himthere anymore, which wasn't
unusual for us.
In Hawaii there's a lot ofpeople coming go, you know,
tourists or even people who livethere that change jobs.
Plus, we were, you know, almosteight and 10.
What do we know?
People come and go, so we don'tsee him.
We think, really we don't thinkanything of it.
(06:13):
Eventually, what happens is ourmom pulls us aside and she is
hissed, I mean very upset.
She's explaining to us that shegot in trouble with the Church
and that we were in trouble withthe Church because my sister
and I brought the FBI andinvestigators to the Church,
onto the property, and that wasnot okay, and she was going on
(06:36):
about what a distraction it wasand you know what a crime it was
.
In Scientology, one of theworst crimes you can commit is
interfering with somebody'sability to continue taking
Scientology services.
So from Scientology's point ofview, this was a very serious
thing.
At the time I didn't evenunderstand what fully was going
(06:57):
on.
I mean, I don't think I fullyunderstood what the FBI was at
10, but I understood that wewere in some massive trouble.
When my mom years later, when Iwas I think I was about I was 40
the year that we leftScientology and thankfully my
mom left as well we had a lot ofconversations about a lot of
(07:20):
things that happened over theyears that we weren't allowed to
talk about when we wereScientologists, and we talked
about this incident and mymemories about it and,
interestingly, I remembered itvery accurately and she had said
what had happened was the FBIdid come over for an
investigation and that did endup getting my mom temporarily
(07:41):
suspended from going to thechurch.
What I didn't know at the timeI actually didn't know this
until I left Scientology wasthat the church of Scientology
had several people who went tojail in the mid to late 70s.
It might've been 77,.
I'm not positive forinfiltrating the US government
(08:04):
and Mary Sue Hubbard, the wifeof Elron Hubbard, the founder of
Scientology, was one of thosepeople.
The church of Scientology wasraided as well.
So I didn't know.
There was this holds drama goingon between the FBI and
Scientology and again, this was1980.
So you're probably wonderinglike, what the heck did we do to
(08:24):
get the FBI involved and showup at the church?
So remember, my sister and Iwould make these photos where we
draw these pictures, we goacross to Art only in our best
customer mark and we'd sell themto him and then we'd go back
and we'd walk around the street,kind of where we were, go down
to the main drag by Calicoa, orwe would be back in the building
(08:45):
.
Frankly, I am super thankfulthat nothing happened to us as
children.
Well, I should rephrase that alot happened to us as children,
but we weren't kidnapped off thestreet or anything like that.
So come to find out, causewe're trying to find out here.
I am 10 years old.
(09:05):
I don't understand what the bigdeal is.
I don't even understand what itwas that happened and we were
told that the person that wewere going and selling these
pictures to, these drawings, heflew to New York and he shot
someone.
He murdered someone in coldblood and that person died and
(09:30):
still we were having a hard timeprocessing that.
But that someone was JohnLennon, and the mark that we
knew as the security guard wasMark David Chapman, which pretty
much the whole world knows bynow that he did fly to New York.
He flew to New York from Hawaii, where he was living at the
time and working as a securityguard, and he shot and killed
(09:51):
John Lennon.
He went to prison and he'sstill in prison today, as far as
I know.
The crazy thing is no one in theScientology world ever brought
up that, hey, these two kids whoare barely eight and 10 years
old are wandering around Waikikiwithout any supervision and
(10:12):
stumble upon and have aacquaintance type of
relationship for us who was acustomer because we would sell
him these pictures that we woulddraw.
No one cared about that.
The big deal was that webrought the attention of the FBI
to the church and that was oneof the worst things we could
possibly, possibly, possibly doFor many years.
(10:35):
When I would look back on this,I would feel this tremendous
amount of guilt and I thought isthat guilt?
Because I feel some type ofguilt having this Connection to
Mark David Chapman.
And then within months he wentand he did what he did and I
realized, no, because Irationally understand, I had
nothing to do with that.
My sister had nothing to dowith that.
(10:56):
We were kids.
The guilt was what was kind ofimplanted, planted in me, that I
was responsible for having mymom banned from Scientology, at
least temporarily.
That was so driven into ourheads as such, this horrible
thing that we did now keep inmind.
(11:18):
But all we did was drawpictures, go across the street
selling to somebody.
We had no idea we were kids,kids we did not know what was
going on, but it created thisreally big hoo-ha within the
church.
Eventually my mom was allowedto come back.
But for that to happen my sisterand I had to really officially
(11:39):
start our Scientologyindoctrination.
We had done, I think, maybe oneChildren's course a couple of
years prior, but we hadn'treally dug in and started with
our actual official training andindoctrination into Scientology
.
I Was actually happy at thetime that we were kind of banned
(11:59):
from the church because Ienjoyed being home at that age.
You know, it just wasn't fun togo to Waikiki and be there into
the you know late evening hours.
But because we felt all thispressure and we knew that it
would make our mom happy, weagreed we would go back to
Scientology and we would startour indoctrination.
(12:21):
So my sister and I started onour Scientology courses and it
went from there.
Our mom stayed later than ourcourse would go and we weren't.
I don't think we were doing ourcourse every evening.
There were.
There was someone who wouldhelp with the children who were
in the course room and thatperson wasn't there every night.
(12:42):
So thankfully we didn't have todo that every night.
We were told we weren't supposedto leave the property.
Of course we did.
No one was watching and we werebored and we made friends with
a woman who lived in a buildingdirectly next door to the
building that the church was inand she would.
We were like these strayanimals and she met us out on
the street and we would chat andeventually we just followed Her
(13:04):
up to her apartment.
She would let us watchtelevision, she would feed us
chips and snacks and then in theevening, about the time that we
knew our mom would, would bedone at the church and we would
have to rush back and make likewe'd been there the whole time.
She would shoe us out and saythat she had to go to work.
She would get really dressed upand then she would.
(13:25):
She would go to work.
It didn't take us long to figureout that this woman, who,
frankly, was more kind to us andconcerned about our well-being
than anyone at the church was,was a transsexual female and and
Also was a transsexualprostitute.
(13:48):
We saw her when we would leaveWaikiki, sometimes with our mom,
in the areas where when sexworkers would be, would be doing
their thing, and we would seeher.
We never talked about it withher.
It didn't change you again.
We were eight and ten years oldand this is, at the time, one
(14:10):
of the only adults who wassaying hey, are you hungry?
Hey, why don't you have a seatover here?
She created what felt like asafe and comfortable space for
us.
I, my sister and I, didn't tellour mom that until we left
Scientology, she never knew, noone from the church ever knew.
We didn't really want to get inmore, in more trouble, and, and
(14:31):
this experience in firstgetting into Scientology, even
though I was really young, Ithink it really, it really it
really made me want to be a momso that I could protect my own
children, so that I could makethem feel like they were wanted,
like they, they somebody waswatching and paying attention to
(14:53):
what they were doing, which issomething that was very absent
from most of our childhoodbecause of the role that
Scientology played in our lives.
Now we went on and we did moreScientology services.
My sister and I went into the Corganization essentially when
we were when we were very young,and I'll talk more about that
(15:13):
later I but I wanted to sharethis because, again, in part one
, I talked about how, when I wasin that mall shooting, hiding
in the back of the shoe store,and realizing that I could die
today and I would die not havingcontrol over my life, not doing
things that I or I had alwayswanted to do because of my
(15:34):
limitations within Scientology,and I had wanted to leave, I had
thought about it, but thatsolidified it and again, I think
it's kind of odd and unusualthat it was gun violence that
got me started in Scientology inthe first place and it was gun
violence that prompted me to endmy time in Scientology.
(15:54):
It took me two years from thetime of the mall shooting till I
actually was able to leave, andI'll show more about that in in
detail.
If you have any questions aboutany of this too, shoot me an
email.
You can reach me at natalie attonkatalkcom, you know.
Let me know if you have anyquestions.
This is something I openly talkabout.
(16:14):
I find it's very helpful for meto also process a lot of what,
what happened and the impactthat this cult had on my family
growing up.
Next week, I think, I'm goingto talk about how the church
affected my family dynamic andhow my grandpa became my dad.
For now, I hope that you'refinding community and connection
(16:36):
in a way that works for you.
I'm Natalie Webster, and thisis my personal story of finding
community and connection, parttwo.
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