S3 E32 The Source Family: In Conversation with Father Yod's Daughter-in-Law

In this episode of the Cult Vault podcast, host Kacey speaks with Wendy Baker, a former member of the Source Family and daughter-in-law to the leader, about her experiences growing up in the counterculture movement of the 1960s, her relationship with the charismatic leader Jim Baker, and her life in the Source Family commune. Wendy shares insights from her memoir, 'My Name Was Mushroom,' detailing her transition from a typical teenager to a member of a spiritual community, the dynamics of communal living, and the impact of their beliefs on their daily lives. The conversation explores themes of identity, spirituality, and the complexities of life within a cult-like environment. 

My Name Was Mushroom: My Life as a Teenage Runaway in The Source Family Commune: https://amzn.eu/d/hZgKSkx

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Episode Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Cult Vault podcast, your dedicated
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Speaker 4 (02:03):
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(02:28):
Hello listeners, and welcome back to another episode of the
Court Vault podcast. I'm your host Kazy, and I'm so
excited to be diving into a group that I researched
and did a deep dive on, but have never done
a public episode with a guest before. So we are
going to be talking about the Source Family. I don't

(02:49):
know if all of the listeners outside of Patreon will
have heard of this group. Maybe you have let us
know if that's the case, but I'm so excited to
welcome Wendy Bay Hi.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
I'm Wendy Hi there. Thank you for having me today.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
Thank you so much for joining us and for letting
me read a copy of your memoir. My name was Mushroom,
which is what we are going to be talking all
about today. That title, I imagine, for some people that aren't
familiar with the Source Family, is a very peculiar title
for a book.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yes it is, but it's true. My name was Mushroom,
so it seemed appropriate.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
And I'm really looking forward to going into all of
the reasons why somebody would go from having the name
Wendy to having the name Mushroom. So I suppose we
should start by asking you to introduce yourself to the listeners.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Okay, well, my name's Wendy Baker. I'm sixty seven years
old today. I'm I have no no, no, it's not
my birthday. I just mean I'm sixty seven. I have
three children, one of I was born in the Source
family at Tea just prior to turning seventeen. I have

(04:10):
four grandsons that are all teenagers now. I've been married
for forty seven years. I live in Malibu, California. I
lead a pretty much I don't know if it's normal life,
but I, you know, have led a completely different life

(04:33):
after the Commune, and I'm guessing that's probably in a nutshell.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yeah, there's lots of things inside that notshell's unpacked today,
and I know that we won't get through it all
in the hour or so that we have, but we're
going to give it a good try.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
So in this work on the podcast that I do,
there's often talk of the counterculture movement of the nineteen
sixties in certain parts of America, and I talk a
lot about how a lot of groups that are discussed
on this show came up at that time on certain beaches,

(05:15):
on certain stretches of you know, California in LA and
I talk about it through research I found online. But
you're here today as somebody that was a child, a
teenager growing up in those times. So I would just
love for you to explain to the listeners what that

(05:35):
was really like being around like hate Ashbury and all
of those areas, just as a as a child, as.

Speaker 4 (05:41):
A teenager, like in those years.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Well, you know, to me, it was normal. I grew
up in Hollywood, California, and you know that was with
the Loven's were happening and the hippie movement, lots of drugs,
lots of sex, you know, rock and roll. It was
great times. It was you know, young young children were

(06:06):
involved with that, even the adults, even the grandparents. You know,
everybody was smoking marijuana. It was just a very different
time and education was secondary. It wasn't a priority, you
know in those times. And everybody was protesting against Vietnam
the war. I actually was one of them, and you know,

(06:30):
it was just it was a crazy time. It was
very interesting time to grow up, I think, and that
might have something to do with why I was able
to leave home and join a commune at the young
age that I did.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
It's wild to think of children hitchhiking and being picked
up and just moving around America that way, because it's
quite a thing now if you see somebody with their
thumbsta ticking out on the side of the highway or
the side of the motorway, I think people are a
bit like, oh, you wouldn't pick a stranger up.

Speaker 4 (07:06):
But that's how you moved around a lot of the time.
In your memoir when you were younger.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
That is exactly how I moved around. I mean, there's
no doubt about it. And everybody was hitchhiking. It was
just the pitch shiked all the way to San Francisco.
I've to Big Sir, and then of course all over
Laurel Canyon, which I don't know if you're aware of.
Let's know about Laurel Canyon, but it was like the

(07:33):
happening place for the hippies and the music industry. I
used to get picked up by Bob Dylan Crosby, David Crosby,
Carol King, you name it, I've got picked up by them,
hitchhiking wild.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
And of course everything with Charles Manson was happening around
Laura Canyon.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
It happened pretty much. Yeah, it happened pretty much when
I was part of that whole. Aptly. Jim Baker, who
was the leader of the commune, was friends with Sharon Tate,
and we actually went and visited her before she was
killed and she was pregnant, and I remember how sweet

(08:15):
she was, and you know, all of that, and then
that happened and we were just completely stunned. That just
shocked everybody shocked. Our world is wild.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
It had the same sorts of feelings as a lot
of the Manson family moved from kind of communal house
to communal house around that part of America at the time,
and a lot of your story where you were moving
sort of from home to home, had that same type
of vibe. Is that something that you think was normal
for everybody or just you just sort of shared small

(08:53):
elements of your group and the Manson family in terms
of cohabitation.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
I really don't really our group at all to them
in any way. We we did move around, but we
also you know, had homes to live in, beautiful homes. Yeah,
I never ever correlated me with the Manson group at all.
I really don't even know very much about them, to
be honest, but ours was a sort oarctive, loving environment.

(09:25):
And I don't know what hit that group was, but
I don't get the feeling that it was positive and loving.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, no, not particularly, not particularly at all. And they
kind of stayed in like a Western film set type
of type of place, which is a very far cry
from some of the beautiful homes that the Source family
lived in. You know, it's in its many years of
being around. So I suppose that leads us really nicely

(09:55):
into talking.

Speaker 4 (09:57):
About how you first I met.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
James Edward Baker, Jim Baker, your first impressions of him,
and how you were really swept up into this, into
this charismatic.

Speaker 4 (10:14):
Movement that he created.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
Well, I suppose he hadn't created it when you first
met him.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Really right right when I first met him, I was
twelve and I was dating Bart Baker, which is his son,
and he just said, you know, we're gonna go meet
my dad. He owns this restaurant called the Sours. It's
a vegetarian restaurant, and don't be scared by him because

(10:40):
he's kind of he's a big guy, and you know,
and I just thought, okay, that's fine. I mean, I know, nothing.
So I walk in and my god, he was magnetic.
He was I was just drawn to him like he
was beautiful. He was a big six five and a

(11:01):
half and you know, just had the most loving relationship
with Bart And we had lunch with them, and that
was my first meeting him.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
Of a wild backstory to Jim Baker's kind of past
before starting The Source Family, he he auditioned for the
role of Tarzan. I believe that sensa reading about in
my research, and there was a lot of other stuff
that happened around him before he opened that restaurant, And

(11:31):
I just wondered if you could give the listeners a
bit of an idea of who he was before he
became father.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Owed. Well, I know that he was a war hero.
He saved unbelievable of lives in Japan. I also he
was a weightlifter. He was a He became a Yogi.
He followed Yogi Bajan became a Sikh. He was married

(11:57):
to Bart's mom for fifteen years. They had three boys
named Bo, Barton, and Ben. All their births were natural childbirths,
which was did not take place in those days. He
was a naturalist, a nutrition fanatic, ate perfectly, very much
into health, and he got a divorce from his wife, Elaine,

(12:23):
because he was a womanizer and he kept having these affairs.
He also, you know, killed two men and he was prosecuted.
The first one he was let off. It was in
self defense and the second one took about a year
and a half to prove that it was also self defense,

(12:44):
and it was over a girl, a woman who was
an actress, and he killed her husband who was in
a jealous rage and came after him and his wife, Elaine,
And I guess Elaine had just had and she just said,
I can't do this anymore, and so she got a divorce.

(13:04):
And that's when he decided to build the Source restaurant.
I think it was maybe all the Terian health food
restaurant in la and all the celebrities and musicians and
everybody ate there. I mean, everybody was intrigued by being
a vegetarian. Oh, come back correct. He was a disciple

(13:27):
of Yogi Bajan and that's where he learned a lot
of his the spirituality and the teachings that we that
we practice in the commune. So that's kind of the
beginning of him.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
Research reading about how the Source Restaurant was the place
to be on the Strip. There was no other place
like it. All the celebrities ate there.

Speaker 4 (13:54):
It was like a.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
Really beautiful spot that he'd created. And then eventually, over time,
more and more people that just wanted to be around
Jim Baker would move their caravans sort of behind the restaurant. Now,
I don't know if the research is accurate, but you
lived through this, so I would love to hear from

(14:17):
your perspective how that transformed from being the Source Restaurant
to the Source Family.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
Well, I actually started hanging out at the Saurus before
it became the Source Family, and it was just a
cool place to be. I used to waitress after school,
hang out with Jim Baker and he was called Jim
Baker at that time, and he just people just kept,
you know, coming there and just wanting to work there

(14:45):
and be there. And it was like a family that
worked there. Everybody was so friendly and everybody had the
same mindset. Everybody was very involved with meditation and yoga
and eating healthy and you know, just that whole job.
So then one day one of the servers said, why

(15:07):
don't you start your own you know, like spiritual commune,
and he said, yeah, why don't I. So really it
just started like just piece by piece, one step at
a time. And actually my sister joined the commune before me.

(15:27):
My mom let her go and join. She would not
let me I wanted to. And then there were like
three or four other girls just a year older than
me that were able to join. And so before you
knew it, you know, forty of us, and those forty
pretty much stayed with the whole thing till it ended.

(15:50):
But it just it was like a progress. It was
it was a work in progress. It was it wasn't premeditated,
it wasn't designed to we're gonna do this, this and that.
It really kind of just evolved and we just kind
of made a lot of mistakes along the way and
then just created this beautiful family. Before we knew we

(16:12):
had one hundred and forty four people. And so that's
when he decided, we need to get a big house,
we all need to live together. That's when I joined,
you know, pretty much. Committedly I was still in school
and I was not allowed to participate in the Source
family in any way. But Barded.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
Rush, it's so strange to hear somebody that lived through
explain it after reading so much about it from you know,
journalists who weren't there, and from you know, books of
out you know, different different people, but they weren't there,
and so this is really insightful and I'm just marveling

(17:17):
in all of this perspective that you're giving us today.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Now my book just so just to throw it out there,
I wrote it through the eyes of a teenager. So
my experience in the Source family is going to be
far different than the ones that came into the family
at twenty twenty one point thirty. They have a different experience,
and I don't want to negate their experience because it

(17:43):
was real and true. But the way I saw things
and the way I experienced it is what I wrote
my book about is coming from my eyes.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
So you joined officially when Jim Baker said we're going
to all move into a communal home. I'd love you
to describe that home for us.

Speaker 4 (18:06):
And at what point you were given your name Mushroom.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Okay. So the home was in by the Griffith Park
area they called Los Villas. It was a mansion. It
was three stories. It had an attic which we also
used for people to you know, sleep at. It had
a guesthouse, It had a garage and another place above
the garage. It had a swimming pool, It had gates

(18:33):
to go in. It was very secured, a beautiful lawn
out front, plenty of room for everybody to have space.
I mean, we didn't have our own bedrooms, but some
people did. Some I would say about ten people had
their own bedrooms. They were married with child or whatnot,

(18:53):
so they got their own bedrooms. There was a children's
room where all the children slept and did their schooling
because there were you know, several children there as well.
And I moved in pretty quickly in this in May
of just leaving tenth grade. So I was fourteen at

(19:16):
the time, and then I had just turned fifteen in June.
So yeah, and I stayed there all summer. That's kind
of when I left home and never went back home.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
Was your mum's reaction to you leaving completely, not just
hanging out at the restaurant and coming home or not
just going off on road trips and you know, visiting
San Francisco and then coming back again.

Speaker 4 (19:43):
You actually left and you didn't go back. What was
your mum's reaction?

Speaker 2 (19:48):
Well before I left you know, she did everything she
knew I wanted to go, and you know, I was
going to the Source restaurant all the time after school,
and so she did everything in her power to convince
me not to go. She had my aunt come over
and try to, you know, convince me my friends. You know,
it just didn't work. So she was livid. She was very,

(20:11):
very upset, and eventually in the book it tells you
what she did. And I don't really know if I
should be giving that away because I really want people
to read the book. But it was pretty pretty gnarly
what she did to me, and it didn't turn out,
I think the way she was hoping. Who would have thought, right,

(20:31):
I mean, I would not have thought that. So you
have to read the book to find out what happened,
why what she did to me to not allow me
to join.

Speaker 3 (20:45):
I think it's I think it's good to leave a
little bit of mystery around around the book, because I
agree that listeners should definitely go and pick up a
copy of My Name Was Mushroom Because before I hit
the record button, I to you, Wendy, what a roller
coaster of a memoir. Oh my goodness, so much happens

(21:06):
in that book. And it's not particularly long. It's not
it's not a long memoir. Some memoirs are really hefty.
But it wasn't that long. And so much happened, and
I was just, at what point you have said? And
at this point my daughter was one, and I was like,
what hours all of that happened since she was born?

Speaker 4 (21:25):
It was wild.

Speaker 3 (21:27):
So that's another reason why listeners should go and pick
up a copy of My Name, was just to find
out why it was.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
It all happened within five years, five or six years.
That's it. That's but then my life became boring.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
It's it's yeah, it's it's a roller coaster. And that's
all I can really, that's all I can really say.
And what when you moved in to the mansion, at
what point during the source's journey was this? Was this
before Jim Baker changed his name? Is this before you

(22:05):
changed what you were wearing and you had a name change?

Speaker 4 (22:09):
And what were the kind of.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
Rules that Jim Baker was encouraging you to live by if.

Speaker 4 (22:16):
You were in the commune.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
So, first of all, the house was called the mother House.
We named it, so that's one thing. One of the
rules was is that you wear white. Everybody were only white,
and so I was wearing white in high school at
fourteen years old at school, so I stood out like
a sort of thumb when everyone was wearing sea through

(22:38):
tops and bell bottoms and beads and fat. Secondly, if
my name, my first name was Lilah. He gave that
to me. That lasted all but two weeks. I and
the source family that had four names. My second name

(23:00):
for probably a good year was Nirvana, so a lot
of people in the family at the beginning know me
as Nirvana. And then my third name was when I
was in Hawaii in Maui and we hiked, he came
to visit me and whoever whatever family members that were
there at that time, and we would hike to this

(23:22):
waterfall in Maui and we decided to eat mushrooms that day.
There was probably about eight of us. So I ate
the mushrooms. And I'm not a drug person and I
don't take drugs. I never really have, so I didn't
think what the harm was to eat some mushrooms with
my leader of the commune, who I trusted with my life.

(23:46):
So I ate some mushrooms and oh my god, I
must have put on some performance, and that's when I
got the name Mushroom, so that became my name. He
wanted me to have a different name than Nirvana because
I was a runaway and they were looking for me,
so no one's going to know. They're going to ask,

(24:06):
do you guys know where Nirvana is? They would know,
but if they say, do you know where Mushroom is?
Nobody would even understand, because you have to understand. The
family members didn't even know what I had been through,
and that was for protection for them, So it was
really just between myself at the time. His name changed

(24:27):
to Father Yode and a couple of his women and
that's it. That's all who knew. And Starman he knew,
So that's how the names happened. So then my name
was Mushroom for you know, a good three years. But
then the last year of me being in the source,
my name was Heartstar, and so that name is also

(24:51):
a name that people know me by, his Heartstar. But
I decided to name the book my name was Mushroom
because so much happened in the Mushrooms stage. If that
makes sense to you at all, yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
It absolutely does, It absolutely does. And There's a few
things you touched on in that kind of anecdote about
being given the name Mushroom that I think might be
really important to unpacked for the listeners. You mentioned you
mentioned Starman, so I think for context, people might be like,
who is that? And also, obviously there's Hawaii that that

(25:30):
in my mind of the source family kind of came
after the Mother House. So of course this is just
my understanding of it, and you'll know a lot better.
And we've already mentioned that the family really moved around
a lot and and stayed in all of these different places.
So who was Starman and how did you meet? And yeah,

(25:57):
and and how what?

Speaker 4 (25:58):
What?

Speaker 3 (25:58):
What were the expectations of living in the Motherhouse as
part of the commune.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
So I met Starman when I was fourteen. He was working.
I met him at a Grateful Dead concert and he
was working.

Speaker 4 (26:14):
People always be grateful.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
I don't know. They were very popular. Everyone was a
dead head, what can I say? So I went there
with my sister and Michelle and Nancy, which you also
joined the family, and we all met these four guys.
We met his name, Starman's name was James, and we
met Bobby Roy and Patrick Okay, So that's where I

(26:39):
first met him, and he had beautiful green eyes. He
was he was just a beautiful man, and he was
so funny and just so interesting. He was seven years
older than me, But I didn't really start a relationship
with him until I moved to the Motherhouse, and then
at that point we started having a relationship. And then

(26:59):
it was Sarah. I pretty much was with Starman the
entire time in the family. He was a very nice guy,
a lot of fun, very special person, and I was
with him. I was not one of the cult members
that moved around sexually or like with other men and stuff.

(27:21):
Many of of the women did. I I did not.
I pretty much stayed with entire of time till the
very end. And then what was the other question, like.

Speaker 4 (27:31):
What, yeah, life in the mother House?

Speaker 3 (27:34):
What what the expectation because you mentioned that everyone wore white,
and I recall from reading your your book that just
there were certain things that were expected of you if
you were staying in the house, your diet, you know,
everybody was vegetarian, and just yet painting the picture of
what it was like to live in this in this

(27:55):
mansion together, well.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
It was beautiful, So you had to be vegetar Harrian.
Of course, you can't cut your hair, so your hair
is long. You had to we meditated every morning at
four thirty as a group. You had to be there
on time. If you wanted to join the family, you
had to do a diet called the yodhey Vahe diet,

(28:19):
which was a very strict diet and it was for
thirty days. And once you were able to complete that diet,
then you that was your initiation. Then you can join.
You could be a permanent member of the Source family.
There was a lot of juice fasting going on. He
was a real firm believer in Jew's fasting for healing

(28:39):
and for eliminating poisons and bad stuff in your body.
What else the rules were, you know, to follow the rules,
you know, basically to you know, we got up every
morning super early. There was no negativity spoken. You were
not supposed to have an ego. It was very interesting.

(29:02):
I was young enough that I could mold into all
of that pretty easily. But these older people, now that
I'm looking back, I'm like, how were they able to
change their thoughts and their ways? Like because it was
pretty dramatic, you know, as far as I'm concerned. It
was a beautiful place to live. There's a lot of

(29:22):
music going on. We had our own musicians, a lot
of singing. We had some beautiful singers in the family.
Jim Baker's wife, Robin, who later became a home or
some people called her mother. She was always related to
his mother in the family. The most beautiful singer I've
ever heard. And there was another guy named Aladdin in

(29:45):
the family, and the two of them would sing together,
and we had our own music. Was it was like
being in heaven. It was so beautiful. So there's a
lot of happy times.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
And there's talk in your book of how there were
some professional or famous musicians that had moved in and
so it wasn't just people, you know, messing about with instruments.
They all really could play, so it was like a
true jamming session.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
Yeah, we had a band. We formed a band. Music
was very big in our family. Arlck his name was
Arlac in the family. I don't know what his real
name is, but he was part of the Seeds, which
was a big group in the sixties. And Patrick was
about to travel with another band. His name was Sunflower

(30:59):
in the family, and a lot of members were engineers, editors,
so they knew how to make albums and record well.
James Starman was one of them. And there's a lot
of just incredible musicians and singers. Oh and then Lovely
was the daughter of Andre Previn and she was a

(31:21):
violinist and she was big in our music world as well.
I'm trying to remember who else, you know, because I'm
not I was not up with all but several, you
know what I mean. I was kind of young, and
I really didn't give a shit. I was like, Okay, well,
whoever you are, that's fine, you're here now, let's just
start now.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
You know, Yeah, especially if somebody joins and it's not
like you know it is today when you could just
google a picture of somebody and know what they look like,
or see what films they've been in, or see what
music they've produced, and you get introduced to somebody that
has a well known, famous name but then now called
something completely different, like you know, it's waterfall, you know,

(32:02):
and you're like, oh, nice to be right.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
Well, I've actually had people contacting my my assistant saying,
you know, Uppy, you know, I knew Mushroom, but I
didn't know Wendy Baker and like, and then they would
tell her that there we call it pisser name. I
don't know them by that name, so I'm like, you

(32:25):
have to find out what the name was in the family,
then I would be able to put a face to it.
So it's it's interesting, yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
And it's interesting that the Jim Baker changed your name
again so that you couldn't be tracked down by authorities
after your mum was you know, she was looking for
you or you registered as a missing person and and
it was only from your book.

Speaker 4 (32:51):
It was only you and Jim Baker that knew about that.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
So well, there's a few people that knew. Starman knew, well,
he didn't know every detail of what Jim Baker was
going to do, but he knew that I was, you know,
a runaway fugitive and all of that. A couple people knew,
and my sister knew. She was in the Source family
with me, So I'd say about five people.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
Knew, right, And there was this element of kind of
being in the present and not talking about the past,
and that fits in a lot with the kind of
belief system of the Source family. And you mentioned your
Piscan name. So for listeners who might not kind of
be aware of the Source Family, what was the belief

(33:38):
system and how did it really feed into the times.
There was a lot of spirituality happening, There was a
lot of New Age stuff happening, and the Source Family
is like a perfect example of the Age of Aquarius.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
Really yeah, well, basically, the Piscans are all the people
in the Maya, and the Maya was like everybody else
but us, and basically we were the chosen few. A
lot of fear stuff going on, the chosen few that
were going to survive September two thousand and one when

(34:11):
the world was gonna fall apart, And so did I
believe that? Not really no, but that was that was
the talk. So we were just the you know, so
if you left the Source Family, basically they would say, oh,
you're going back into the Maya meaning everybody else or

(34:34):
oh and the Piscin would be that you wear normal clothing,
that you're no longer a vegetarian, and that you follow
the government rules and that you pay taxes and you
you know, that's that's what Piscin is.

Speaker 3 (34:51):
This is so interesting to hear all of this from
you from your point of view. So you're in the
mother House, You've met Starman, you two are a in.

Speaker 4 (35:01):
A relationship together.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
There's like a really rapid change of lifestyle that you
settle into because you're like a chameleon. You're a younger person,
so you can just kind of like change with the
with the rapid changing of the environment.

Speaker 4 (35:19):
What comes after the mother.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
House and the music and you know, and the communal
living there.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
Well, leaving out a lot of stuff that I went
through because a lot happened to me. But basically, Jim
Baker deserve your home. At that point he was father Yo.
He changed his name too, from Jim Baker father Yo
to Yohoa. He decided that we're going to sell the
Source Restaurant and we're all gonna find some land in

(35:51):
Hawaii and we're gonna live peacefully and quietly and do
what we want to do uh in Hawaii. So he said,
I was already there, but he sat sent people to
look for land and look for a place to settle
and we did. And then everybody, not everybody, but some

(36:14):
people moved over to Hawaii. They still had a cruise
stay at the Source when they sold it, and that
was our transition. So it was interesting everybody flying in
the airport wearing white, with children and long hair, and
you know, everybody looked vibrant and healthy and beautiful. And

(36:37):
I'm sure we blew the minds of just about anyone
that watched us.

Speaker 3 (36:42):
Yeah, there's a history of Hawaii as a kind of.

Speaker 4 (36:51):
As a kind of.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Nation.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
I don't know, like as a kind of community. They
don't always welcome groups of new people. This has cropped
up quite a lot of different groups heading into Hawaii.
I didn't realize until I read your book that there
was a bit of confusion among the residents and the
locals about who you were and who some other people were,

(37:18):
and so you.

Speaker 4 (37:19):
Got persecuted wrongly.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
And I didn't know that until reading your book. So
if you, if you kind of go back to that time,
what's your recollection of going to Hawaiian and the locals
being not too happy with your community moving in.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
So when we went to Maui, it was fine, they
accepted us. Everybody there was hipbie and in the same thing.
But when we moved to Kwaii, they they misjudged us
as being the beach people, and the beach people was
a com communal group that just over this beautiful beach

(38:01):
in Kawai and they were on major drugs and they're
running around naked and leaving garbage and you know, just
being very unruly and in neighborhoods where families lived. And
they thought that we were part of that because you know,
we're a commune and we're all white, and but we

(38:21):
weren't and picked up off island. They were, you know,
shooting guns at us. They were not allowing us to
buy fish at the fish market, not allowing us to
sell our fish that we would you know, go and get.
And yeah, they were. It was horrible. Kawai is not

(38:41):
my favorite place. I do not have good memories of Kawai.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
It's really interesting to think about Kawai and other groups
that tried to move in because they just run people out.
They if a group of people show up and they
are not local to the area, then the island will
not let them stay.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
They actually paid for us for over one hundred and
fifty people to fly and get out of there. They
literally did that. Can you believe it.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
Well, they was serious about not having people people stay. Wow,
that's that's fascinating to me. But that's not where the
source family's life in Hawaii ends. You you kind of
have ties there, and you shift backwards and forwards in
your own story. And it's really hard for me to

(39:36):
ask you to talk us through everything because you shift
around so much. But at one point, you do have
a daughter. A daughter is born.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
Yes, So when I'm in Maui, I got pregnant and
I had her there and Jim Baker delivered her and
and we had a this we had a ranch style
house on the property and actually I lived in a

(40:07):
tree house with Starman until I gave birth. And yeah,
it was It was interesting. And I had witnessed many
births because people were having babies, you know, quite a
bit in the family. That was the thing was to
pro create, have children, raise them in this certain environment.

(40:28):
And I had my my little Stardust and she was, uh, yeah,
it was. It was interesting to be a mom that young.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
I had a lot to learn, right, I was a

(41:00):
moment twenty six and I still feel like, you know,
I had to. I don't know if if you would
ever feel like you knew enough to have kids?

Speaker 4 (41:07):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Yes, I yes, it does. I mean I really, at
least I was smart enough to reach out and figure
things out, you know. And I didn't give up, and
I wasn't you know, I was going to try to
do my very best. And I've always felt that way.
So I mean, I took classes when I joined the
Maya and the Pissing World, I took a lot of

(41:31):
classes and learned, and you know, I had a lot
of catching up to do, but it worked out. I'm
guessing Starters would say that I was a pretty good mom.

Speaker 4 (41:42):
Was the name given by Jim Baker to your door? Yet,
that's right?

Speaker 3 (41:46):
So when you moved into the pissing world, did she
keep that name?

Speaker 2 (41:51):
So she was start Us all the way up until
she joined high school. And you know, my daughter, you know,
was a cheerleader, a damn her, a champion swimmer, a
very good student, an honor student. And it just she says, Mom,
this name, it just doesn't fit me. I've got to
change it. So before she went to high school, I

(42:13):
gave her a middle name of Jamie. So she used
her name Jamie when she went to high school. So
a lot of people in Malibu still say, oh, how starts.
They don't see her as Jamie. And then there's the
high schoolers that know her as Jamie and knew that
her name was start Us. And then you know, she

(42:34):
got stopped by a police for a ticket and that's
on her license. They say, your parents are from the seventies, right,
she goes right, so it really legally is her name,
but she goes by Jamie.

Speaker 5 (42:46):
Now that's so funny. Oh my god, that's so funny.
At least they get it, you know. And she does
have to explain herself every time she gets stopped by
somebody or has to go through an airport.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
Well, when she became a teacher where she is right now,
and she had to fill out her application and all
of that go through the vetting process, they said, your
name is start Us. She had to like really explain
that in her background check. It was like, you know it,
as she said, it was a little difficult.

Speaker 3 (43:21):
You have your daughter, and it's a very communal between
the moms and the babies. It's kind of like a
group rearing.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
It could be, and many of them it was. For me.
I was hands on to my daughter. I watched a
lot of children, I nursed a lot of them, but
I didn't like put my daughter into the midst of
you know, here take her and I went off and
did something. I was a hands on mom.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
Yeah, yeah, you talk about that a lot actually in
your book. You know, when you go for a swim
and she'd be with you, on your on my, on
your back, ridrey, my gods.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Oh and she ended up being a champion swimmer. Go figure.

Speaker 3 (44:13):
And you have this wild first year of your daughter's
life really moving around and stuff with the source family
starts to change. You know, there's talk of maybe disbanding
the group, maybe the group stays together, maybe the group
needs a new direction. Can you can you talk us

(44:35):
through what those moments were like, the difficulty in shifting
around and not knowing where you were going to be
or where you were going to be staying from like
one day to the next.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
That was very difficult and to be honest, traumatizing. I
was very insecure really emotionally going through it at that time.
My only stability really was starting man, just knowing that
he was there taking care of me, if you could
call it that, but yeah, it was. We really didn't

(45:09):
even read a group until Jim Baker passed away, up
until we were one hundred percent devoted in being together
as a group. And how that took place. It was gradual,
just a lot of uncertainty, and it just was not
going to work out because he was no longer the leader.

(45:31):
And I've for him.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
Yeah, yeah, I've read in some newspaper articles, journal articles
that the day that Jim Baker died it was intentional
because he'd had enough of being the leader of this group.
I think even from reading your book, there's a way
you could interpret it that way, but of course the

(45:56):
way that you experienced it was different. So for people
listening that don't know what happened to Jim Baker, could
you talk us through the days that he fell on
the beach?

Speaker 2 (46:09):
Well, So that was the worst day of my life,
I have to say, because I truly was in love
with him, you know, as a father. It's a debate
did he do that intentionally or not. I don't think
he did it intentionally, but I do that it's risk
that most likely was not going to be good a

(46:31):
good outcome. So he's a hang glider and he's never
been hang gliding before, but some of the family members
took up hang gliding, so he wanted to do it.
I was wore a bestless and he loved change obviously,
because all we did was change. And he used to say,
change is the only constant thing in the universe. And

(46:52):
I love saved me through a lot. So the hang
glider got stuck in a turban when and he landed
in a tree in Makapou Beach and they found him
there hanging, you know, from the hang glider, and they
were able to get him down, and he was with

(47:13):
his twelve women at that time, and so they sped
down the mountain in their cars and found him there
and they took him home. He was in horrible pain,
and he did not believe in going to the hospital
or doctors, so you know, they didn't tell us the

(47:34):
rest of the group right away. And basically he suffered greatly,
like more than any human being should, and he he died,
and they were shocked. Well, I mean, you know, why
they would not get him help from a doctor or
goat to the hospital and find out, you know, what

(47:57):
was going on is beyond me, and nobody seemed to
be able to. Well, there was a small group about
two or three women that told me and everybody else
that these other women to let him go to the hospital,
but they kept saying, but your teachings say don't do that.

(48:17):
But then my only seventeen eighteen at that point, and
I'm like, well, how do you know he didn't break
a bone? He said, you can go to the hospital
if you break a bone, But how do you know
if you don't go to the hospital to find out?
So there's a lot of strange questions. Ultimately, I guess

(48:39):
it was his plan. I guess it was the plan
God's plan. If you want to say, but he passed away,
you know, of nine hours of horrible pain. I don't
get it. I still today don't get how that all
came down. And they all have great comebacks and answer

(49:00):
for it, but me as a young teenager, I don't
get it.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Yeah, it's it's really quite something to think about the
teachings that Jim Baker ingrained in so many over so
many years to then go back on those, obviously when
he was in significant pain and discomfort and he was saying,
you know, I need a hospital.

Speaker 4 (49:26):
But his teachings were.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
You know, they were so impactful on those that followed
him that they were like, well, we don't do that.

Speaker 4 (49:33):
That's not what we do.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
It's just.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
It's it made you know, those types of things, they
make my knees and elbows go, you know when you
think about somebody in that amount of pain.

Speaker 4 (49:46):
Oh and the way you describe.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
It in your book as well, it had me kind
of like my butt cheeks clenched, you know, thinking about
somebody begging for, you know, to be helped and then
just kind of laying there not being helped by the people,
you know, with some of the people that loved him
most of the world, of which is again another thing
that Bob was my mind. So this kind of was

(50:09):
the start of the end for the Source family. After
after Jim Baker's death. You know, there was like an attempt,
I think to continue, but it didn't really. People just
kind of fizzled out after a while. Would you say,
would you say that that that's kind of how it happened,
not for people disbanding.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
But it took a good year. But there's a few
people that left right away, but a lot of us stayed.
Most of us stayed and we followed, you know, the
council women to o Wahoo and that's where we were.
We lived there for a good long time. That that
was probably the longest we've lived in one place like
two years. Yeah, it just wasn't working out. The women

(50:52):
were fighting amongst each other, there was no good leadership. Uh,
it just wasn't the same. And there was a lot
of not a lot of money, and so there was
you know, the men weren't able to get jobs go
out work because they had long beards and long hair
and they were robes. I mean, you know, it was

(51:14):
it was ridiculous. But yeah, it just slowly disbanded and
it was sad. But we've all we all have a
connection though. I mean, if ever I see any of
my brothers or sisters, so I call them that from
the source family. We love each other. We've been through
a lot together. There's a core group that stuck it

(51:34):
out from the beginning to the end. I'm talking about
those people, not the ones that left early or came
in for a year and left. You know, they didn't
really give it what we all gave it. So yeah,
it was, yeah, just a whole another thing. And then
I realized, you know, I'm eighteen years old, you know,

(51:56):
I'm going to be nineteen, and I want to go back.
I want to be a piscean. Oh and I want
to go to school and get an education and all
the book that I probably should have done, but I
did it because that was just not my path and
that's what I chose to do. But the way I

(52:18):
did it wasn't exactly the greatest, but it was my
mentality at the time, and that's what I did.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
Was almost like making the best of a really tough situation.
And anybody that's read the book or goes on to
read the book will understand what that means kind of
towards the tail end of the memoir, and I don't
want to give that away either, but I will just
say that you you go full circle, and that's the

(52:47):
most that's the most bizarre thing. You start off at
one point and you end up in that same point,
and you need to tie out out of six year
mad journey in the middle.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
It was our big dream. I don't know, it's something
inside of me. I had to do this, Like I
think a lot of it has do with a mini
pole in my home environment. I did not want to
grow up like that, and it was not a good environment.
It was a very hostile home, not physically abusive, but

(53:20):
more emotionally and it just I just saw that there's
got to be something better for me, and I went
for it.

Speaker 3 (53:27):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
That's that's the way I see it. If I had
a different home environment, I'm not sure I would have
done that.

Speaker 3 (53:35):
Yeah, or just even living in a different part of history.
And you mentioned at the start that you know, the
lifestyle that the children and teenagers were living in that
time might have fed into, you know, your journey through
the Source Family. So you know, people always say, well,
not people Chris Shelton specifically, who's who's an ex scientologist

(53:57):
and had a fantastic content creator. They also say he
always says there's no point living in hypotheticals. I think
it's interesting to reflect on those things because there are
usually two or.

Speaker 4 (54:10):
Three things that.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
You know, result in a person being attracted to something like.

Speaker 4 (54:16):
The Source Family.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
And when we are talking about other groups on the show,
typically you know more destructive groups, groups that have significantly
harmed other people. And I know that that was your experience,
and it's a very different change of pace for me
to interview somebody on the show that's had a largely
positive experience of their group. You use the word cult

(54:41):
in your book, and you've used it here today as well.
And I would just like to know why why you
think other people consider the Source family a cult, and
why you sometimes use that word yourself despite having an
overall positive experience of the Source Family.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
I'll tell you because I think we were brainwashed and
I think we were sleep deprived, hungry, and I don't
think that we had enough to make smart decisions. And
that part of it makes it to me like a cult.

(55:20):
You could leave any time you want, but it wasn't easy.
It was like, oh, you're going to go out into
you know. There's like a lot of mental bashing, you
know about it. So that's why there's the cult aspect
of it. But it's also commune because it's a group
of people living together trying to live a lifestyle. So

(55:44):
it wasn't a negative cult, but there was something about
it that's you know. And by the way, I didn't
want to use the word cult. I really want to
keep it commune, not that there's a whole lot of difference,
because I felt really like it was a family and
a commium.

Speaker 6 (56:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (56:23):
That's such a hard thing to weigh up, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (56:25):
There's the communal aspect of living, you know, and having
a family that you've chosen and loving each other and
supporting each other, especially through really hard times like moving
all the time, and you know, having a child when
you're so young yourself, all of these things that you
know your chosen family helps you through. And then there's

(56:47):
the other side of it with the diet restriction and
you know, wearing certain clothes and using certain language and
having a new name and then another new name.

Speaker 4 (56:58):
So it's it's hard.

Speaker 3 (57:02):
To and not throw the baby out with the bathwater
when you leave a group, and you don't want to
associate yourself with all of the things that happened if
you had an overall negative experience, But sometimes there are
good parts and people do hold onto those and it's

(57:23):
hard to go through that process of weighing up like
what do we keep, what do we throw away? But
with your experience, it's so different, which is why it
was so bizarre for me to read your book about
the Source Valley after everything I'd read, and then your
perspective was so different.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
Well, some people had a bad experience, you know, some
people did go through that, they had some things happen,
but I didn't. And then a lot of people still
kind of identify themselves as a member of the Source family.
Like they're still living that way. They still let their
hair grow, you know, they don't wear makeup. They you know,

(58:02):
they were these flowy dresses, you know, and the men
still have beards. You know. There's a good group of
them that have not let go. But then I would
say about eighty percent of us have let go, and
we just took the positive. What we wanted to incorporate
into our lifestyle, we took. And that's kind of what
I did.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
And this is the probably like the maddest part of
your story. And I don't know how because there's so
much that happens. But you mentioned that you met James
Edward Baker through dating his son Bart when you were
when you were twelve, twelve years old. Yes, and who
are you married to now?

Speaker 2 (58:45):
So I'm married to Bart?

Speaker 3 (58:51):
Why would that's like my last name's Baker and Wendy Baker.
I was like, oh my gosh, James Edward Baker. So
I kind of already he knew, And you have acknowledgments
at the start of your book, so I kind of
already knew that you must marry somebody in the family.
But it's like when I said, you go full circle.

(59:12):
It's you know, you really go full circle. You know,
that's how you met James Edward Baker, and that's you
and you married his son, which is just wild.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
I know he and he's amazing this Oh my god,
he's so amazing. It's been the best incredible marriage and
life that I could imagine. Like he's a lot like
his dad in some ways, but he's the good part.
You know, he's not a womanizer or anything like that.
He's he's incredible.

Speaker 3 (59:42):
And in the acknowledgments you say that he was really
the person that encouraged you to write this book and
to put it out into the world. What has the
reception been like of your book to wider audiences but
also to those that you call your brothers and sisters.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Well, I interviewed a lot of them for the book,
because you know, I was so young and I needed
help with the timelines and everything. Everybody's been very supportive.
They everybody likes it. I haven't heard one negative thought
from a source member. And in the world, Oh my god, Like,
it's amazing how many people want to read my book.
It's it's incredible. The world is I think is taking

(01:00:24):
my book very positively and lots of questions, of lots
and lots of questions. When I do book signings, you know,
I just get inundated with these questions about sex and
you know, the spiritual stuff and all of that. They
won't know the skinny of all that. Another outcome is
that I have a group of people trying to make

(01:00:47):
a movie about my book, but could be a love
story between me and Bart. It's not going to be.
It's going to be, of course, about the Commune. But
they told me that they they're out. The writer is
just about finished with the script that she wants it
to be a love story. So a lot of positive

(01:01:08):
stuff have come out. And my children they're like, oh
my god, mom, what you did?

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
What?

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
And my son especially, he's like, and you made me
go to school every day, and you never let me
ditch school once, and you made me go to college.
You know, he really reacted. He was just like, you know,
and you didn't even do those things and I didn't. Yeah,
I never told my children what I did. And the

(01:01:38):
pips blown away. They each all three of them had
a different reaction, but mostly positive, but totally shocked.

Speaker 3 (01:01:45):
So it's like that's when the thought terminating cliches come out,
isn't it. It was a different time, or do as I say,
not as I do. You know those quips that parents
say and you're like, but mom.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
I know, I mean, can you imagine me telling my
his you know the stuff I did. I mean, my
kids that were brought up very conservative, normal, you know,
they went to high school, they went to college, they
all have lots of education, and yeah, it was shocking
to them, just shocking.

Speaker 3 (01:02:18):
And now you've got four grandchildren as well.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
They're amazing too. Yeah, I have four. They're all teenagers.
I know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
I would say it before we hit I was saying
before we hit record that when you read a person's memoir,
your journey starts at, you know, with their unless it's
somebody you know personally, you start your journey at with
them at the start of the book, and then wherever
they are at the end of the book is kind
of where you leave them. So it was strange for

(01:02:50):
me to sit down with you today as a sixty
seven year old woman that has four grandchildren, not as
like a you know, young twenty something year old that
has moved into the pissy and world and it's just
kind of fumbling her way through everything. So yeah, it's
just it's just amazing to talk to you today, and

(01:03:12):
today we hear your version of events on the Source
family first person perspective, you know, primary source, if you
might say that, the primary source of the Source family,
and just to hear about your experiences in the book.

Speaker 4 (01:03:30):
My name was Mushroom. It's it's a great read.

Speaker 3 (01:03:33):
I didn't know what to expect, but it certainly wasn't that.
And I can't recommend it enough to listeners. I only
put the links in the episode description for everybody to
have a listen. And if you have read the book,
or you do read the book, get in touch Cult
Vault Podcast at gmail dot com because I always love
to talk to listeners about their reaction to a memoir

(01:03:53):
that I've read or a book that I've read, So
please reach out.

Speaker 4 (01:03:56):
If you do, go go on to read it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:58):
And I guess my next and last question Wendy is
what's next? Are you going to write another book or
are you going to be purpose on this on this movie?
You know what comes next?

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
Well the movie, because I'm going to be very involved
with that. But my husband and I have thought about
writing Jim Baker's memoir because he has all the material
from his childhood on. Uh, it would. He's an interesting
character in himself, and so we're really contemplating doing that.

(01:04:34):
That's that's what I've.

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
Been I mean, you could write a story just even
before the source family with all that stuff around, you know,
the murder through self defense convictions, the Tarzan Stuffy Baja,
and there's so much stuff that you could write about.

Speaker 4 (01:04:53):
He was a hero of course.

Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
Yeah, my gosh, there is a lot of material all there.
Maybe that might be a bit of a longer, longer
biography than my name was Mushroop. That might be one
of those lengthy ones, you know, if you try and
phit everything in.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
Well, thank you so much for your time today, Wendy,
and for letting me talk to you all about your
experiences and reading a copy of your book. It's been
so wonderful to chat and I really appreciate you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
Thank you, Zchel, thank you, thanks for having me