Are "All Things Lawful Unto Me"?

Note to cult leaders: Maybe read the whole Bible verse before starting a new belief system?

Jemima and Whisper talk a little about everything (again) in this episode, including the correlation--that Whisper doesn't pronounce correctly (again)--between Human Trafficking, Domestic Violence and cult life. Parenting, The Scarlet Pimpernel, telling our stories and why our parents won’t apologize are just a few of the things talked about, all peppered with personal stories, candidness, and humor. 

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Transcript

 📍  They seek him here, they seek him there, they seek him everywhere. Is he in  heaven. Or is he in hell, that damn illusive pimpernel  That would be fun to watch that movie again. Man, so stupid. And though how we got so many things just stuck in our heads . There was so few things that were actually halfway cool Scarlet Pimpernel was one of the very few movies that was actually like a good movie. A good movie. Just fun. They didn't have to fucking pow it . I probably did it anyways though.

Did they? I dunno. I can't remember. I can't remember. And here I am again with this cuz , all the girls were just  sweeting over , the Scarla Pierino guy or whatever his name was Dar. Or no, not Darcy anyways but I was like, , my big crush   was on the girl  j Seymour

Oh my God. It's funny when you look back and realize things Yeah. Like that. You didn't even really realize, and you're like, Oh my God, I was like that all the way back then. , But you were never like allowed to pursue that or feel that, so you just stuck it away and then later on you're like, Oh my God, , that's been going on for quite a while, for quite some time.

 It makes me feel so grateful for the people that are getting out of cults. In early enough stages, , that  they can gather some of their own independence and start figuring that shit out.

 We've talked to this before in Thailand we had the thumb on us a little bit harder it's funny for me looking back  in 19 years and going what?

Obviously,  I've been like this my whole life obviously and that I laugh about. But I think what makes me what makes me sad  is how deeply ingrained the misogyny from the cult was and  how you never felt validated or you never felt seen unless you were seen by a man and spending so much of my life thinking that was attraction or thinking that was  desire.

And it's actually just, I was pretty fucked up in the head.   Programming, Yeah, programming.  I guess the key for that is figuring it out, yes. Is that once you. See it  and you can know it. Yes, exactly. , not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

Yes,  so  last night  the nonprofit organization that I work with that I work for I five Freedom Network. We were doing a town hall on human trafficking. And basically it's , we just put out the word that we're having this tile hall,

and there was all these different people that were going to speak. So we had this whole agenda. But the main course of the meal for this for this town hall was  a panel of five people. And they each came from different walks of life and different avenues 

we had somebody from the city council, we had a detective. We had somebody from a school,  and then we had somebody from hotels. , there's a survivor that was going to be on the panel. Someone who has a little bit more  like generally conceived,  type of human trafficking where she was, pimped out and that whole thing.

And so she was going to be the representative of the I-5 Freedom  network  and the survivor. And I was going to speak  at a different time and just for a couple minutes,  about what to look for  familial trafficking and all that,

so that's what I spent a month preparing for.  Last night. So the doors were gonna open at 6:00 PM I got up there at five 30 and Brenda calls me aside and she's like, So  the survivor that was gonna speak on the panel decided that they couldn't , speak that it was too much for their mental health, unfortunately.

  Anyway she called off. And  Brenda was like, So I guess  you're gonna represent. .

   All the work and all the planning and all the work that I've done on myself personally and all the work that I do in my job

and still, I get up there in front of this crowd of people and I just, I'm terrified because I know that people are gonna be judging. And that's,

 it's a tough spot to be in because you can know yourself, right? You can know what the truth is and you can know that, it wasn't your fault. But it's really hard to stand strong in that place, , when,  either out of, just dick ishness or out of ignorance, people are gonna be judging like it's the same thing domestic violence, right?

Like, why don't you get out? People think that all the time. And it was  difficult because I think just the day before too, I was reading some comments on one of the social medias  about, being born in a cult and they were like, Yeah, that stuff really like screws somebody up.

And it's just yeah. Yes. Yes, , yes it does, but not any more significantly than, quite a bit of the population at large. There's all kinds of things that happen to people , that quote unquote screws them up.

it's like, a conundrum because you wanna go out, right? And you want to be more social, you wanna meet new people, you wanna make friends. And especially  now, my actual job , is representing as a survivor, like, , I just have to deal with the fact that every time I meet somebody, they're gonna judge or assess if they can even fucking respect me, just based on, That's a lot, you know,

  that's part of the importance of speaking up, telling our stories, right? Yes. It's hard, There's always that kind of fear and shame almost too. Yeah. When even, like you said, I prepared for two months . It doesn't matter how well prepared you are it's still difficult and there's still gonna always be people that judge you, 

 I definitely notice more  than I used to.  My inner critic, that's  telling me bull. , even if it's true, it's not necessary. What does that matter?  I know, you're familiar with this , us ex called babies a lot of the reaction is like, Oh wow, you're so well spoken.

Oh, wow. You know how to talk, . And after the panel got done,, so many people were coming up and like, that was so great. You're so brave. Like giving confluence. And it was really nice. But I struggled for a quite a while to not keep telling myself, Oh, they're just shocked that you know how to talk.

It's not that you're really that great, it's just that they're so shocked that you know how to talk. But Even if that's true.   Why do I need to tell myself that? It's really unnecessary.  , really unnecessary arguments have with yourself.   I think there were a lot of people that were actually like, Oh that's amazing that you got through that.

  The question I, they asked each of us panelists was , What do you know about human trafficking? And I'm like Well,  quite intimately. No ,   when I was talking, I said, familial trafficking is,  one of the most confusing, things that you're dealing with because,, you're born into this war zone, right?

But it's also like the most silent that you're not standing on a street corner or you're not, like hanging out in hotels. You're at home. So I think there was quite a few people that were  even just surprised about that possibility, cuz, they wanna think that it's not true.

They wanna think that it's not impossible that there's people in this world like that, but, but there is. And then of course, then the question is can it happen to me? . I did get a few people coming up. One lady came up and she was like, she's I know this is gonna be a really stupid question but I just wanna make sure that what came to my head is correct, but what is familial trafficking?

I was like family.  There's people even asking that kind of question. They don't know. But it's even a possibility that a family member would want to traffic their own child or Yeah, the child of another family member. But in most cases, surprisingly it's their own children.

Yeah, absolutely. Or someone that's close to the child. Yeah. That's, in some respect, it, maybe it's an uncle or a neighbor or someone that has very intimate close connections that no one's gonna look twice at. Because the family trusts them. Yeah. It doesn't seem odd that he wants to come and take them for ice cream and go buy them clothes, but maybe you should be like, Huh, they're right.

I gonna say No . Yeah. Sure, let's all go together. I'll come with you. And then if they're like, Oh no, nevermind. Something's probably going on.  the the detective cuz the questions were like what do you look for? How do you know? The detective brought up something that I hadn't really  thought of before.

Of course when I thought of it, I was like, Yeah, of course. But he was like especially with teenagers,   ,  you start seeing them  all of a sudden they got  expensive clothes that you did not buy them. Or  tattoos,  getting tattoos and stuff like that.

, I was like, holy hell. I don't even, I don't even know how I would handle that. Something like that.  All of a sudden your kid starts turning up with you got a diamond grill and you're like, That doesn't look normal. I'm being facetious. But yeah , I know you and I both have similar stories and similar outlooks and approaches to parenting.

We're very close to our children. . We know that there's never gonna be something , that they can't bring to us. But it was really surprising how many parents came up to me yesterday and were  asking questions along the lines of how do you, talk to your kid?

And that kind of thing. There's just a lot of people that it just doesn't go past. Boundary, yeah. That parent child therefore means ,  I tell you, do which is not our job. . But it's not our job to tell and them to do.



That barrier of Yeah, I tell you do. They tend to act out more  I was saying , we didn't get a chance to be teenagers. But when you think about it, it's a teenager's job to try and get away with shit. , that's just how they're supposed to do it.

It's how they find out what they like, , who they are. It's how they establish boundaries. It's how they establish relationships. It's all, essentially what they're doing is trying to see what they can get away with. That's just, kids in general are just gonna do that, but it's very formative in teenagers, with teenagers.

It's a very formative time  my view on it is that we can do so much better by, being present rather than protective. Not rather than, but being more present than protective and,

  I can see why that can be scary For parents,  too.  When we were preparing for the panel,  I was supposed to talk about  talking to your kids, , what to look for and that kind of stuff.

  I said, like you have to find a way to make a connection cuz if your kids are not gonna talk to you, if you can't figure out a way to, have your kids talk to you  you've lost already. And that was another thing that, you and I both did was come to me about anything.

We will talk to you about it.  You're not gonna get in trouble.  and we're gonna talk to you like another human being, not like my child, ., so like what's what's the right age then? Because a lot of parents don't even wanna talk about sex.

They're like, Oh, let the school do it. And then all the schools are like, Oh, we can't do that now. We, you know, abstine and all that kind of stuff. So the kids are going to the internet. We didn't grow up with the internet, but even our kids,

my kids didn't have cell phones  in middle school. at that time., they could access the internet, but it was like on the home computer. But they didn't have their own, internet connectable cell phones until they got to high school. But now,  you see kids  people don't even think twice a kid 5, 6, 7 , having their own phone.

Like people don't even think twice about that.

 I feel a little bit, I feel lucky in some ways that we missed that cuz I imagine that parenting must be really challenging. So much more challenging with all that information and bad information , at your fingertips. 

I don't know , if you have this situation too, but going to try to find out information online. You have to pull up like five or six different articles from different places. , you have to vet the source.  People just go up there and just everyone's dumping all kinds of stuff online.

And it's now it's there. All the information that we could possibly want really is accessible to us, but we need to do so much better of vetting it. Cause ,  if you just take as word, the first thing you pull up on any given subject,  that's how you have Q-ANON so  another cult. That would be really interesting to talk to somebody that. of Came outta that cult. The qan on cult,  ? Yeah, , I would just like to hear what took them in and what took them out. Most of 'em still don't know, yeah.

Who started it or , any of that, because if they did, if they actually looked at information, they would know. But they don't, so they don't, People are constantly saying, Oh yeah, who even started that? It's Dude, there's been documentaries done. The dude fucking confessed it. It's like everybody knows.

It's pretty much open information out there, who started it and all what it was all about. You can go and look for yourself. Yeah, exactly. I've still heard people be like, Yeah, nobody ever knows. I'm like, Yeah, they do. I do. It's not even a thing anymore. The dudes quit fucking doing it like it's done . Nobody's technically in it anymore.

If they are, they're just making their own shit up because, yeah. Keon been dead for a long time. We're not pulling, encyclopedias, britanica, remember those days? That was where we got our information from. Oh yeah.   The correlation for me between, like the q and on and the misinformation that you can get anywhere now online and And cults is that we're special. That's the whole,  that's the hook. Yep. , everybody that joined a cult, even though technically Yes.

It's a righteous thing,  you wanted to be the best, Christian, you could be, or you wanted to be the most dedicated or whatever, but still, the pull, the draw was, I'm special. I'm more than somebody else. , I know more. I am more and  that's a very similar thing.

That's why people like hook onto,  quite easily,  to conspiracy theories because they're like, I've got the secret insight , Or to even religion in general. Yeah. I I know plenty of people who think, my church is the best and my pastor's the best. Well, Obviously that's why you're there.

I mean, Right. Yeah. . I mean, I know people that drive two hours.  to go to church and two hours to come back because they think this guy knows the truth. Yeah, half the church split off six months ago because  and there was all these accusations, but I don't believe them. No. Cause he's got the word, he always just tells us, we can choose.

I'm like yeah, that's what he says. But yeah, I was literally having this conversation with somebody the other day. I was like, Yeah, you can choose, but tell me right now, it's anybody that's chosen not to do what he suggests. Are they in any positions of power? Oh no. Yeah, of course not.

Because you can't actually choose. They're just saying you can choose, but you don't really actually have the choice. That's, I was trying to explain to her. That's what bounded choice is. Bonded choice is all about. Yep. You're not really being given the choice. You're verbally being said. You have the choice.

. That doesn't mean that's the actual facts though. . Oh, for sure. , it's another version of coercion. We actually ended up having this conversation yesterday too. Because when you come to deal with human trafficking everybody wants to know what does it look like and what can we do?

And we're sitting there  and almost everything that comes out of the law enforcement officers, mouths there is there's not much we can do. You can call in, you can get an anonymous tip, blah, blah, blah. But it's so difficult to prosecute whatever, on and on.

But I can't remember now which city, at Lisa was telling us, right? They're talking about switching the laws to where the coercion is what.  is the umbrella. . Because a lot comes up under coercion and when you break it all down, that's the crime.

That's the crime is you are forcing someone to do something, whether it's through manipulation or lying or whatever it is, you're forcing someone to do something that they're not choosing to do. That's the crime. And domestic violence is gonna fall under that. Human trafficking is gonna fall under that.

Labor trafficking is gonna fall under that. And obviously  Cult and Extreme Religions are gonna, fall under that too.    , if there's one nagging thing  that follows us  around our whole lives is like, how, why, how could other human beings do this to other human beings? And , it was actually a TikTok and this woman,  she's in, the health field. She started as a paramedic and now she does counseling or something. And she told this story about one of the most profound things that anybody has ever said to her in her life  she was a paramedic in Vegas of all places, which that's gotta be gnarly.

And apparently it was. So there was one very particular scene that was really bad. And there were children involved  that, that didn't make it. And they have to first take the people that have a chance to live, right? They have to take that trip and then they have to come back for the people that.

Didn't make it. And a lot of times they have to wait on the detectives to finish, running the crime scene. So she came back and she was, standing around and she came up next to the detective and , they're both standing there looking at, the aftermath of this horrible crime.

And she said to him, I just don't understand how anybody could do this, to these kids, how anybody could do this to children. And he turned her and said, The day that you can answer that question is the day you become one of them. And I was just, I think I played that. I think I probably played thedo like five times cuz I was, it just, I don't know why, what it is.

Sometimes when something said a certain way, it's yes, I had that concept in my head technically, but it was. It was put in such a profound way of, basically, I'm never gonna get the answer to that question because Yeah. We don't have that concept and we never are going to Yeah. I think it answers why we can't get an apology to it's the same thing.

Yes. It's same thing. It's why we can't get our parents to sincerely and completely apologized to us. All, all, a lot of us get as excuses, yeah. I didn't know. I'm sorry I wasn't, yeah, we get that. We already get that. But why can't you just be sorry? Why can't you just be like, I am so fucking sorry.

Yeah. But yeah, you're right. That's.

That's why there's just so few of them that, even admit that something was going wrong. Yes. Most of them play the I didn't know card. Yeah. Or they'll, I didn't know that was happening. They'll like it started as something good. It's weird though, because I was talking to my husband about it the other day when it started.

They weren't even allowed to have sex outside of marriage. They weren't allowed to hold hands. It was so fucking strict. And then I'm it's the, I swear the power just went to his head and he's I can have whatever the fuck I want. I'm just gonna start saying all this weird, stupid shit and see if people bite on it and everybody bid on it.

So we just kept fucking doing it. He basically wanted to fuck Maria. And so he was like , obviously I didn't make the Bible fit to my know, my what I want. Unfortunately, that did happen, cause they started out coming out of the Evangelical Baptist.

Which they're pretty uptight about those kind of things. Yes. So it certainly started like that. But I think, was it old church? New church or old wine? New wine, whatever. That old church. New church, Yeah. Is old church. New church. Yeah. Her old wife, new wife or something. . . The one wife.

Old church. New wine.

Wow. Talk about we need a dictionary.   that was like, I think that came out before I was even born. So it did come out way early  it's not that far of a leap, He was like the Mormons do it.

So ,, somebody's reading the Bible in one way or another. And uh, uh, yeah, they found Paul's fucking verse and it's amazing actually.  I don't usually talk about religion because  it's so personal and I have very personal feelings about it. But aside from religion,, aside from, the concept of belief  the misinterpretation.

that you can't deny happens. The misinterpretation of the foundational book that Christianity is based on, The Bible is so ridiculous. The Bible verse that the entire law of love sex with children, That whole belief was based on All things are lawful unto me.  The second half said, But not all things are expedient. Exactly. 

 Obviously now in a,  a non-Christian view, I,  can read that and say he was actually saying that what you're doing, like he said, yes, you can think up any reason for something to be lawful, but that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, essentially. But Berg read the first half of the verse. He's Oh, this is good . We'll put a period right there and we'll just carry on and destroyed 8,000  children's lives. Yeah. For not reading the second half of a verse. Ugh. And then the other unto the pure. All things are pure.

Basically, that's why they were all like, Oh, that wasn't abuse. It was done in love. We loved you. That's why we did it. We're so pure . Do you remember coming out and finding out about NAMBLA? I found out about it on South Park

yes. I was sitting there going that, What the fuck is this? My husband says it's a real thing. And I'm like, What? No it isn't. Yeah. I looked it up and I was like, Oh my God. It is a real thing. ,  for anybody who doesn't know North American Man, boy Love Association is what NAMBLA stands for, but their belief system, their belief structure, whatever the fucking thing that they base their.

Fucked up lives on is that concept that if I'm doing it in love,  it cannot harm somebody.  The thing about it is, that's interesting is if there is anything.

Gets misused, misinterpreted, and misunderstood. It's love. Like  anger is pretty straightforward. If you're angry, this happens, if you're sad, this happens.  In general. But when you love, there's people that think that if they keep the person home locked in their room and never let them outside, that's because they love them that much and they never wanna be away from them for one second of their life.

That's what some people think of is love. Yeah. So when you base morality on love  you actually can't really, when you think about it, you can't really base morality on love.  because it's the most widely  interpreted emotion and word out there.

Yeah there's a lot of people  that can't even say if they  have loved someone. So what are they gonna do then? ? Yeah. Or  I've seen people  that are like, how am I supposed to learn to love myself when I've never had anybody love me

How do I know what it is? How do I know what to do? Yeah. It's true though. It's something you have to learn. Yeah. I think and also learn what it is to you, because I think it's one of those things too that's a little bit different to each person. Yeah. You could do something that, that you think is love to someone else, but to them, it might not be love.

It might be hurting them in a way that you just never thought. Oh. I think a lot of times it's just not thinking  ecologically, not thinking how your actions are gonna affect the other party. Yeah.   Probably compassion is the closest. If you're gonna hook morality on something, compassion is probably the closest moment thing to use.

Because yes, compassion is what keeps us from, I don't know, killing somebody when they're driving us crazy

Yeah. But yeah not love. So when they say God is love. Yeah. That's flawed to begin with. Or are we gonna get angry letters about this ? Yeah. Possibly. But then also it's like, what is God? Yeah. It's all technically open to interpretation.

Yeah. Because it's, until we know.  Yes. Even the Christian, God and Jesus and all of that, there's nobody alive today that has actually seen any of those people. You can think you know what they are or what they mean or all of that, but that doesn't mean you do. No, not at all.

Technically, anything that can't be measured can't be proven exactly what was it 200 30 years ago,   we didn't have a way to measure thunder and that or understand what it was. Now we do. So yeah, there might come another a hundred years that we're gonna be able to, like measure energy or whatever, they're starting to get the plant.

you've seen those right? Where you can listen to the plants and they can actually make  sounds  humanity is always changing and growing and discovering and understanding and there's, yeah, there's so much that we don't understand and we probably never will in our lifetime.

 Just gotta keep an open mind man. What is that thing? I heard somebody say, No, I will not die from my beliefs because what if I'm wrong? . That is a good point. I think you should always keep the, What if I'm wrong?  Possibility. Cuz there's so many people who are just like, Nope, this is the truth and there's no way are ever, I mean, I was that way.

 I think I was probably like 19.  and probably I bought all that teen Camp Brainwashing bullshit. Yeah. I literally, in my head was like, You will never ever dissuade me  I am  believing in living the truth. Because to me it was,   you have to come to a point , where you're willing to acknowledge  that you could possibly be wrong.  So many people just shut you down just block. Oh, you don't think I'm the same way? Block?

I'm like, Dude, I'm just trying to understand,  please give me an explanation. But they don't have one and that's why they block you because they're like, Nope. Okay. You're too much. I can't deal with you. Yeah. Sorry for wanting to know why. I remember a good friend of mine who's a, who's cult baby born in  she's a wee bit older than me.

And I always considered her much more intelligent than me.  She's a brilliant,   very smart woman. And we would have amazing conversations cuz we get, we'd get real intellectual,  she ended up leaving the cult quite a bit longer after I did. And,  I had that conversation with her one time.

I was just I actually would've thought that you would've been out before me before I was able to get my shit together and get out. And she said pretty much exactly that she said because  even if I could admit that I was wrong, , I would then have to admit that I'd wasted my whole life.

And when she said that, I was like, o It's true. Yeah. It's a tough wake up. It's really hard. Yeah. And that's why I, love the title of Lauren's book. Leaving it isn't the hardest thing because it's not Oh, I'm wrong. I can go a different direction. What does that different direction mean?

Holy shit, It usually means a life overhaul,   say, you sink all your investment money into something, I don't know, Bitcoin   or, game stop or whatever. And you are gonna have to admit not only that you were wrong, but you lost all your money, or you're gonna have to start from scratch in some way.

That's a marriage. A lot of people staying for that reason too. It's shit, this means I will have to start over. , And it's actually starting over that I think that more people are scared of than even admitting that they're wrong. I totally agree. Yeah. it is hard. Oh my gosh.

Very hard to admit. It was hard for me., I spent months feeling very angry and very I don't even know what the word is, but I couldn't believe that I had wasted like  27 years of my life. I just felt so angry, first of all, because I felt like it had really been taken from me.

Absolutely. Yeah. But also, I had to accept the fact that, I could have come to my senses earlier about it, I did have thoughts and feelings like when we were in Russia and our teen Nas left, That was the first time that I was really like, Okay, what the fuck is going on?

Because okay, all of these other Sjs were leaving or whatever in Russia, and I was just like, Okay, whatever. A lot of 'em left in Russia, actually. A lot of 'em just up and left the whole Nova Bes column. Just fucking quit and left. Yeah. But then what happened was those two people died in the car accident.

Yep. . Yep. Of course, what happened to all of us fucking freaked the fuck out. If we leave, God's gonna kill us. And that's what they told us too. You see what happened to them and they left. So it was terrifying. Oh my God. It was weird. It was terrifying. How many times did you have to listen to Marcy's?

Oh, way too.  I think I sat through  3 sessions of that, like when I was 15 when I was, Wait, no, it's 16, 18 and then 20 trying to scare the fucking living daylights out of you. Yes, if you leave the cult, you are gonna come back without arms. That was literally the message , pretty much.

Yeah. And it was terrifying. It was so scary. It really was. , confirmation bias is such a powerful thing too. If you are looking for a message to say this, then , you're gonna see that message, but, yeah. I think the first time for me where it really was like, Oh my God,  can it happen to me?  was,    good friend of mine,  we were just like such good friends  I like admired them so much and , I was 15 and they were 16 and they had taken a trip to a western country  to visit relatives and came back and met literally fuck this shit, I'm done, I'm leaving. And they  told the leaders right? And they immediately fucking descended upon them, upon this person. They came to the home that we are in and.

24 hours. They kept them for 24 hours and they did it in this living room area where  everybody could see,  I think I walked past that room  27 times,  that day having to watch them  just berate and yell and shout and cry. I couldn't believe that they lasted as long as they did.

And, afterwards they were telling me, they just kept saying No, there's nothing you can say that's gonna change my mind. And their relative that was in,  this western country,  paid for their way to get back there. And I think that's what I was really   jealous of is they found a way to connect to a relative.

Because that was, to me, the key. That was always the key of how you're gonna get out of here. Yeah. Because unless you could actually literally go and steal something, which in Thailand , it's not gonna work. Unless you could actually go and steal something. You were not getting your own money. No. No way.

 You could together pennies and well bought till you were 80 and would not come up with the amount that they gave us, which was like, what would get like 80 bought a. I don't remember. It was $5, something like that. Yeah, like $5. Yeah. So we could save like for 50 years before we come up, is That would probably be right.

Yeah. But they didn't even actually give it to you. They just said you can spend this much on your personal need. That's right. No, they never even gave it to us. That's true. Do you want a toothbrush or soap, ? The only way I was able to get money to go to Russia was through going out and selling tapes and videos and all of that stupid crap.

Yeah. And I had to give half of everything that I made to the.  It took me  every day going out, following up all that mean, just crazy fundraising, to get enough to fly to Russia and land there with $300. Yep. I felt the same way. As soon as I went to Russia, They sent me back to Thailand. I was like, No, please, I don't wanna go back. I just begged and begged not to go back. I did not wanna go back to Thailand. I was like, I'm outta here

I'm fucking outta here.  It was so fucking horrible There that's why the minute the charter came out, I was fucking out of there.

I was out, out the fastest I could. I was out. Yeah,  I can't say I wish that had been me because I wouldn't have my kids, but  when the charter came out, that's when I got roped into having to get together my ex and the second. , there's more than one of you that literally doubles,  the money aspect.

Cause it's not just Hey grandma, can you pay for this ticket for one person? It's can you pay for this ticket for my entire fucking family?  Yeah. I'm only here actually because  my stepdad, Paid for  tickets to come back. And Only because your mom kept in touch with him.

Like for example, in our case,  we were not allowed to keep in touch with our relatives.  My mom must have had some sort of exception with my step because he was FF or something like that.

 They made exceptions like that. Oh. Oh.  They must have had some exception cuz she was legally married to him for years and in South America, serving the Lord off in Russia, serving the Lord, whatever.

, I don't think I'd be here right now sitting here. I'd probably be in Africa or dead or something like, Cause I was going to Africa. I was going to Africa. I'm only here because of that. I literally wouldn't be here. Yeah. I had no plans whatsoever to return to America. Zero. It was cause of y2k.

That's the only reason they brought me back too, is cuz they were worried that everybody was gonna die. . No, for real. My mom packed up three months of shit. Gas, water, food. Drove us out to the Oregon coast in a fucking RV where we slept the night and survived and woke up the next morning and went home.

But we were ready.   It still amazes me that an entire fucking. Planet. we're just didn't know how to code things on that level. They're like we don't know what's gonna happen when it flips over , is the clock gonna keep going? That was anyways. Yeah. Why? Okay. Those were. We gotta wrap it up.

 We talked about some good shit. Yeah, I like it. I like it.  I feel like trafficking . And that kind of stuff is definitely things that we need to bring to the table because I don't think a lot of cult children even realize that they were trafficked.

Some of them do. Yeah. But a lot of 'em are still coming to that realization that, Holy shit, I was fucking trafficked. I was labor trafficked, A lot of it was labor trafficking.  It is really important because when you start making those connections, you're gonna have that many more tools to understand what you're going through and also find solutions to it.

Yes.  This is another thing that I hope that I will stand on. You are allowed to say whatever the fuck you want about anybody in this fucking cult because there is not anybody that was innocent.

Nobody was innocent, , And if you were hurt.  No one has any right to say, I'm sorry, you're not allowed to be hurt anymore. I'm sorry. You're not allowed to be hurt by that. No, we can't do that to you. We stop doing this to each other.  Like you were saying earlier  block, because it takes too much effort to sort something out. To work something out, right? Yeah. As obviously as beautiful and as wonderful as our friendship is and there's literally hardly anything that we ever do that hurts the other person on an accident.

But imagine if we were like that's too much effort. I'm not gonna talk to them about it. I wouldn't do that. We would've ended up gone long ago, but Right. We don't need to be afraid of that anymore. Like those are the spaces that we need to heal.  Put in the effort.

Yeah. Talk, work it out. Don't just give up on people. Yeah. Absolutely. Also we just need to definitely put out there that our listening service is open. Our listening service is open. Yes. So we can probably post that calendly in a couple of different places. Yes. And you can  find it on our website and in our Facebook groups.

Yes. But yeah, we're opening more hours. And both myself and Jemima will be a available, if anybody wants to just dump.  overload. Yep. Please. We're happy to listen to you. . And we're, we've got  some other things in the words working on but also October is,  domestic violence awareness month.

I know we're putting out a few feelers, hopefully we'll get a chance to talk to somebody about that, because I think that's another thing that we don't identify enough of. The stuff that happened to us and the stuff that happened to our parents and the stuff that happened to each other is the domestic violence.

And, everybody thinks violence just means hitting and it doesn't No.  Human trafficking and the domestic violence, those are important conversations to have. So yes. For sure. Hopefully, stay tuned. We will have more for you.

 All right. Stay brave.

Our last one was really funny. . Every caterpillar, every butterfly. Oh, they're all just butterflies And caterpillars.

Butterfly. Because we'll always be a caterpillar. There you go. You may look like a caterpillar, but you're a butterfly. Maybe you were once a caterpillar, but now you're a butterfly. Go look in the mirror.

I have body dysphoria. I'm like, I don't, I see as a caterpillar , right? Yes. The world sees a butterfly and you still see the caterpillar.   📍