Victory Garden Sanctuary With Monique Ana

"None of us are safe until all of us are safe." 
-A bold and true statement from this episode’s guest, Monique Ana.

Creating spaces where Survivors can experience different healing modalities is the mission at Victory Garden Sanctuary.  Born and raised in the same Children of God cult, Monique is now putting everything she has into making a safe space where survivors of human trafficking, labor trafficking and cult trafficking can find needed respite, regain connection with their deeper selves, and experience the healing power of nature all in one place. 

www.victorygardensanctuary.org
Heal Your Story ~ Find Your Magick by Monique Ana: https://youtu.be/BFXpSuN-bzs

Transcript

  Hello everybody, this is Butterflies and Bravery Podcasts. I am Jemima and I am here with my lovely host Whisper, and we have a guest today. 

Yay. 

Yay. welcome. Welcome, Monique. 

 We're here.. Very excited to, have our guests Monique we've known each other how long?

It's been like five years or something like that. That since we've been working together and doing projects together. 

Yeah. I would say, did we meet first time in person at the social garden? Yes. 

Yeah, 

 I had known about you cause we've both been here in southern California, so I had heard your name a lot , probably 10 years before we actually met.

Yes.  Some mutual friends and stuff. Do you go to the 

to Ricky's memorial? Yes. We were there both then, both of us were actually there. Me and 

Jemima. Yeah. Oh, okay. Then I met you there. 

Yeah. Oh, that was like a whirlwind, , it was so many people and the emotions were just 

Off.

Yeah. Yeah. And I came in, I stayed for a short time, gave people hugs and pretty much laughed . 

So Yes  we probably hugged  

possibly. 

So both Jemima and I, which is really weird that this happened, both Jemima and I at Ricky's Memorial, we bumped into our childhood crushes, that we hadn't seen for 20 something years, both of. Like the one Oh wow. The ones that we were in love with when we were like 13 and 14. Oh, both of us.

We that's crazy. And so not only did we have the whole memorial and all the emotion about that, and we were seeing all these people and it was actually, it was really powerful to,  have so many of us born in oc cult kids,  gather like that to honor, , the 

the biggest survivor of us all, which is,  Ricky Rodriguez,  , the son of the leaders. The cult leaders is it was a lot. 

 I'm thinking about this now and I think I might have spoken.

Oh, did you? Briefly, yeah. I think, it's all a blur, right? Yes. , but I know that I spoke at something  my little brother just ended himself in April last year.  My youngest baby brother. He got to go to school.

He graduated from college. He had a good job, and so many friends like popular, he was the popular kid. I feel like it was a wake up call to me. First of all the generational trauma. Yeah. And that I thought he was okay. , there's 13 of us.

I'm the oldest, so I grew up changing diapers, putting babies to bed. The same with my little sister under me, like all of us. Yeah. We were moms so I didn't get to take care of my siblings cuz I got carted away at 12. , I don't know my family. Like I'm, and oh, many of us have having 

That's crazy.

Jem and I too, both of us. 12  gone. Yep. 

Yep.

 The short story is I don't know exactly what needs to happen for the future. All I know is that none of us are safe until all of us are safe. And I feel like there's so much damage in the younger crowds that is completely different than ours. And,   as an older sibling that I caused trauma in my younger siblings, yeah.

I 

had some of them come live with me after 

he left my little brother. I didn't really get to know him. But it's, it just feels to me like, Ricky, he needs to be remembered and so do every single one of them. And I just, I don't think that we're out of the woods even close.

Yeah. No. We're not even close to out of the woods. I agree with that. There. 

, the younger siblings, there's a crisis. Yeah. We have each other. They were departmentalized and fracted into these silos. And  , it's totally different trauma. Yes, 

 But at the base of it all actually is disconnection.

Trauma is disconnection. Disconnection from your body, disconnection from your soul, disconnection from your mind. That's 

what trauma from numbing. Yeah. Dissociate, numb to survive. 

Yeah. And that's really what's at the base of all of us is just we were, when they cut our umbilical cords, that was the last time.

That we were connected to our parents really, 

 The story of Abraham and Isaac, for me was a pivotal bible story in my childhood drama. And Berg told our parents like, this is the example, but God isn't going to stop.

Sacrifice. It's happening. And I feel like that is the premise that they lived under and had us under. So you're right, the umbilical cord was cut and we were put in the altar. That was like you were dedicated to this.  I feel like a lot of the work that I've done has been releasing, literally, verbally, like saying I am voiding all of my promises ever made to this jealous god that needs blood.

Yeah. And it was a powerful practice that I did as meditation when I was ready. Of course. Yeah. But yeah it's these circular stories that just keep coming back to the same conclusion. But another layer of it, like a different density  but, that's the beautiful thing though, is that, you're another one of us to have taken our trauma, taking our pain, and turning it into a purpose. 

 

 Tell us a little bit about that your Yeah. Conversation and what it's called and all that, and then what 

are you doing? The organization is called Victory Garden Sanctuary, and there is like a triple  in the name. The first one is like just Victory Garden is a huge thing.

It's a movement that happened during the war in the United States, and it was really the Allies in England as well. Okay. , the patriotic act is plant food or your own food. That's what you can do to support your nation during this war. 

I didn't know that. Like I've worked with you and with this organization for a while now. I didn't know that actually , I didn't know that actually came from a historical piece of, ah, a piece of history. Oh, that's crazy. Okay. 

The most patriotic thing that you could do during the war and Okay. For me, I feel like we're also in a food crisis.

Yeah. And it can be solved by getting reconnected to source food instead of processed food.  For me, my healing had a lot of it has involved digging in the dirt seeds, growing flowers and, veggies. And it's actually been a part of my healing process, putting attention around like.

It's all stuff from our childhood, right? 

We lost. We lost you again. Sorry. 

 This is what happens when you're up in the mountains,



I've, a couple times in my life I've gone to some, like retreats or a place where you're completely disconnected, no phones, no anything.  It feels powerful in a lot of ways because you forget how dependent you are , like that's always in the back of your mind, right?

You're backup I can call anybody, I can connect to anybody,. But  when you're not there anymore, when you can't connect to somebody now you don't, when you're cut off from all of that, like you're you really actually feel yourself so much stronger.

That was always my experience. I'm like, this is me and I'm on my own. . You just connect to that like almost subconsciously. And so it's really cool. . 

Yeah what you were saying whisper is really part of what we're doing here because when you disconnect from the wire and you go into a nature setting, you're literally connecting with what it was to be human before this technology.

Yeah. And I have had some incredible experiences personally, and I'm sure both of you have as well being out in the camping and like you're saying, , there's something really important. And what I think of it as it's a baseline frequency because our emotions are literally a vibration. ,  our brain is a broadcast station and, I got to go to therapy very early on and I got some diagnoses and I'm not gonna say that I agree with them, but , I researched them. Yeah. Because I wanted to understand, and what I came away with is that based on the chemicals that we have flowing through our system, we will be able to stay on frequencies or not.

So when you come out into nature, you can find your baseline frequency by removing, like releasing memories or an emotion or something. And then you make space for this baseline that, some people call it the human resonance, because it's the frequency that's coming from the center of the planet and all of the fiery center.

And , when you're not being bombarded, it can help really create a deep reset in the nervous system. 

 Even something just as simple as going outside, taking off your shoes and planting your bare feet.  into the ground, into the grass, into the sand, into the ocean.

It's powerful. , you really feel it when you're listening for it and you're feeling for it, even just that, it's an incredible experience. So I can imagine that what you're doing is really powerful. 

 What we're doing is creating a space , for people to have that experience within themself.

For themself.  There are tools, there are methods that you can use to teach the mind how to tell the body, to let go, tell the body, to produce these chemicals, tell the body, these are the neuro pathways that I want to develop, like in the concept of neuroplasticity is that, no matter what age we are, when we're alive, we have electrical neurons that communicate and we can teach our mind through continued, like a mantra phrase, can rewire.

it'll create new electrical circuits. Every time that you say it on purpose, it creates this new path in the brain. And that's neuroplasticity because we have the ability through our intention to create new patterns for ourselves. So what you're saying about barefoot on the ground? Victory Garden for me is about like the food crisis.

And I believe that addressing our own diet is critical for healing. And each of us have a different diet need. And in order to know what that is, you have to be listening to your body.  I am allergic to certain foods when I eat them. I can feel my body swell and ache. So knowing that I shouldn't eat those foods, if I don't eat them, then. , it alleviates the potential for like depression, right? Because my body doesn't hurt. That's the idea with Victory Garden.  When I was 12 years old and left my parents I was in Japan. I don't know what it is about Japan, but so many of us had never had asthma.

And we show up in Japan, and within days for me I had only been in Japan three days when I had my first severe asthma attack. And I fought asthma for the entire like six, seven years that I lived there. And I'm not just talking about, I had a little problem breathing. My nails turned blue.

 I saw myself in the mirror multiple times passing out, ending up on the floor with the bon bloody head.  and I came very close to dying, had out-of-body experiences because we weren't allowed to have medicine  and God was punishing me and my parents through my illness. So both of my parents basically shunned me because I was a weak link because of this asthma. , most of the time it happened at night when everybody was asleep and I was fighting for my life  you know how  when you're running as hard as you can and you stop that feeling in your lungs where your lungs have to slow down?

Yeah. My lungs in order to get air in and out. I was breathing like that for 24 to 48 hours, and it would stop when my body was so exhausted that I'd finally fall asleep, but it was severe and I had exorcisms where 20 people in the home would put their hands on me pushing weight, speaking in tongues and rebuking, right?

Yeah. A demonn who was the asphyxiated.  It's only been in the past few years actually, that I've really understood the reason that the trauma that I experienced as a child was manifesting in my body. Physically, , as a breathing problem in the middle of the night.

because the stuff that happened in the middle of the night. And I would try to breathe as quiet as I could so that it seemed like I was asleep. . And I would pretend like I was asleep.  That realization.  literally just came to me in the past week,

Oh, wow. I was the victor. Yeah. I was I changed my name in the group to victory. Oh, you did? Okay. Yeah, because I needed to get the victory right. , like God was punishing me, so I needed to get the victory. So I called myself Victory .  When you think about just how fucking bizarre that is.

Like you had asthma and it's all you needed was a fucking inhaler. And instead of they giving you an exorcism, 

yeah, my mom actually had a connection to a real doctor and every now and then for a certain time, she had the ability to get these pills and I think that there was some type of like super hard steroid.

And then she also got inhalers every now and then. It was rare, but she tried a few times cuz I think she realized how sick I was. But this was in the height of the combo homes and it was all about the matriarchy taking over and, dominating. My mom was, leader of the home and this woman came in and she just, you know, babe status, , the whole point is humiliate someone and break them.

and then see if you can put them back up on an altar after you've put them back together. So I got a lot of that too there. And that was, part of okay, I gotta get serious about this and get the victory. I went to the H C s and obviously, I wanted to be on the dance team and I wanted to be in the videos like all of us did.

. And within weeks they put me in the Victor program, . So I was Vicky Victor . Oh my God. So we went to the h c s one time as the detention kids. They sat us in the front and they had some of the older teens put a skid on about Vicki Victor getting the victory. And I'm sitting in the front row with 300 people behind me and everyone's laughing.

Yeah.  And I had such bad asthma there at Victorville, and one of the leaders had my inhaler in his medicine cabinet and I was just awake in the middle of the night fighting for my life. So I would walk up the stairs to his room, crawl on the floor, open the medicine cabinet, get the inhaler that he had that was mine, take it out into the hall, use it, and then put it back.

Oh my God.  I had to calm my breathing down enough and walking up the stairs just made it worse. So it took me like 20, 30 minutes to walk up the stairs, like two sets of stairs. . But I did it . I think about it now and I hear mission impossible, Tom cruise dun,

Cause I'm crawling on the fucking floor. I hear them  okay. He's snoring again. Keep going. 

Oh my God. Yeah. 

So that, that's the triple entendre of the name for the nonprofit. The first version of what we were doing was gonna be like tiny home living, communities where we can grow food gardens and and I still see a vision for that especially as we age.

I think that we're gonna wanna create circular communities where resources can be shared and blah, blah blah. So that was the first iteration of it , I have what I consider a process that was the 25 years of therapy and self-healing and all these things that I had done.

So creating that kind of as a model for a program and delivering it. . , to people as a service. And that is the piece that is still here right now. For a minute it was gonna be a safe home and I had a safe home that was open and ready and I was communicating with other nonprofits that needed beds in San Diego.

And basically nobody responded to me. I was like, I've got, six beds up here. I can take people and start, doing safe home. And I had a few ladies come through in 2020 and 2021. Yeah. I realized, okay, I need a program that gives the opportunity for people to come in and have a small condensed experience as opposed to being the safe home that people are like going out to work and then coming back.

, I wanted to focus on developing this treatment model, which, I've seen that it's not rocket science, it's that you need to focus on body, mind, and soul in healing. When I first left the group, I had a. A therapist tell me very quickly that I needed to get into therapy.

Actually, she was a nurse. And she was like, wait a second, pause your story. You need to get into therapy as soon as you possibly can. So yeah, I put that on my list. I was like, therapy. So I left in 1995 and I think I started therapy in 1997. Oh, nice. 1998 at the very latest, cuz I started going to university and they offered discounted therapy.

Therapy cuz there were therapists who, psychologists who had graduated but needed hours. I had a really great golden opportunity and I worked with this same woman, . I worked with her for a good three years in my mid to late twenties. And she really helped me develop a connection, a foundational connection and really gave me.

the life purpose of creating a space where other people can go through the same thing. Wow. Because I know that I if I hadn't done that much therapy I would be in a way worse position than I'm in right now.  Yeah. And I know that a lot of people don't like the idea of therapy.

, , because there's a lot of triggers in it. And it's hard work. It's not fun. But I can confidently say that there are a lot of things that people can do that wouldn't necessarily be considered therapy, which could be a great start, like becoming a paint.  or taking a dance class or learning guitar or , learn how to do, difficult hikes or whatever.

There's so many things that are part of self-care that are just as important as sitting down on a couch or, any of the other things that are just so triggering to do that's  the goal in what we're doing is, yes, we do the hard work, but we also have this beautiful space that can be explored with hiking and there's a bunch of spots that somebody could find to sit down and do their own journaling or meditate or whatever.

And then we're focusing on We're focusing on healthy meals and, eventually wanna have cooking classes. So that's the whole like victory garden concept of, a social garden space. Yeah, 

, when I was working with you a few years ago with Victory Garden,  the focus was for survivors of human trafficking and stuff, right?

Yeah. 

Now you've shifted it more towards  cult kids 

born and, yeah. Yeah.  The manipulation, the trauma of a human trafficking survivor is that of a cult member, a thousand percent.

So I don't see a difference. I feel like the scenario could play out differently. Like it could be a pimp who's just, you know, one, but that was Berg, right? Yeah. And then he created this Pyramid Ponzi scheme around himself that just, fluttered out into many waves and, we're still dealing with the repercussions.

It is still human trafficking. Yeah. And this event that we have coming up is focused on. Trauma informed care. Okay. As an example, the nurse that spoke to me when I first left the group and told me, you need to get your butt into therapy, I would say that was the definition of trauma informed care.

Because she imparted a piece of information to me I was able to take it and really formed a lot of my life around that. So this is about teaching professionals, advocates, therapists, people that interface with survivors, whether they are just being rescued or whether they are in therapy. 

 What you do now, , it's like a  a retreat center, right?

 Like up in the mountains? 

Yeah. We've done events at multiple locations, but right now the idea is to come to the land and. Have a quiet experience where you can connect with nature and, there'll be different types of events that are going on.

 This one ,  the theme is trauma informed care and how trauma is stored in the body and how to release it.  I think we have right now maybe five or six modalities, healing modalities. Okay. Some of them are connected to like Meridian Chi energy modalities.

And then others are light therapy. So there's a hypnogogic machine. Basically you lay down in it and it simulates a psychedelic experience. And then, oh really? I'm still learning a little bit more about all this, but she also has a mat that, it has like a vibration, acoustic vibration. So while you're, doing the light therapy, you also have it being shook outta your body at the same time.

 That would be considered like release work. All of the modalities kind of work on this idea of the way the breath works, where  you learn to release and then you inhale.  You're releasing things and then you're replacing it with new storylines and new positive energy is the woowoo term for it.

 . Using the way that we breathe as  the first meditation  when you breathe in, focus on the feelings of gratitude, and then when you hold your breath, focus on, expanding, grounding, and then when you release, let go of anger, let go of grief, let go of jealousy.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Intentionally creating that space. So this is a fundraiser that's upcoming  even though it was a Christian apocalyptic Christian cult, What I've learned about esoterics there was a massive amount of magic and occult uh, symbology that he was rolling into everything that we did.

Yeah.  and a 

and a cult. 

Cult . And a cult. Cult. Yes. I call it  Christian Communist, apocalyptic aoc cult. Cult, like the, so to  

and isolationist cult 

too. 100%.  That's part of the process is that isolation. 

Some of these coping tools that I'm talking about can feel similar to some of the things that we did as children. , if that makes sense. .  the process of prayer. At first you praise and then , you ask and then,  wrap it up in a bow . But that model of thinking is something that can really be powerful if you apply it.

If you can, not everybody can, and that's okay if you can't. But the point is to try to show as many modalities as possible so that people can say, Ooh, I really like that. I'll continue that when I get back into my real life. I really liked that, that I'm not ready or I don't like it, or whatever it is.

Cause , there's so many things that are available right now that are not talk therapy that really could help people move forward and be able to do that releasing without it feeling yucky or triggering. So yeah, 

That's incredible. That's great. So the upcoming event you have  when is it happening?

What's the dates? April 28th through 30th. Okay.  We have a few different ways of people are interested in participating. If someone's a therapist we have a form to send to just make sure that this event is right for them. We have volunteer opportunities as far as, people that would like to come and see the land and kind of just get a feel for it.

.  This event is focused on like  advocates and therapists, people that are actively working. A lot of it is focused on human trafficking. I always say human trafficking and cults.  I do feel like the pattern, the blueprint is the same.

So a lot of this is going to be talking about, how to work with a victim who needs to have different types of healing, and what are some other things that you can do as a therapist to help facilitate their healing. And maybe there's a way to collaborate with a few therapists so that you really create a program that addresses the person from all parts of the personality, body, mind, and soul.

You gotta look at that trinity of personality. And , I feel like the times that I. Was taking care of my body, doing exercise and eating good. And when I was meditating or painting and reading a self-help book at the same time I was going to talk therapy or at the same time I was doing acupuncture or I was doing light therapy or, Meridian therapies.

, that's when I had really deep epiphanies in healing and was able to do deep releasing and then make space for happiness and joy instead of just the overarching fear that we were raised in the fear, shame and the guilt.  that frequency was hammered into our nervous systems and it's in our bones.

. And we have to. Adjust our frequency and that broadcast channel in our brain. And , we can do that regulation with breathing. Something as simple as breathing. Yeah. So this event in April is for therapist and then later in the fall we're looking at late September, early October.

I wanna  have a core crew of therapists and then open that to survivors that would like to come and try multiple modalities and see if there's something that they wanna take back into their life and continue as a therapy. Wow. So that will be for survivors and the people that will come to that.

We want people who have done work before.  And understand the deep dive. . That can be talk therapy.  Eventually you gotta do that part, I think . 

 I know you mentioned nonprofit, but you are an official 5 0 1   Yes.

Organization so any of the like when for fundraising and any, anything like that. That's all. 

Tax deduction. Yeah.  Okay. Super. Good to know.

 Let's create modes of generating abundance  to fund these events. And that's a continuing theme and I feel like I've made a lot of progress on that front as well.  I had a career in pharmaceutical sales selling vaccines um, for like 17 years.

Started inbound calls and then, worked my way up and had to walk away from it. Yeah, for moral reasons. But in that time I was able to go to school and I focused on business. So business analysis and management was what I did. So I feel like that piece of creating a business model and also supporting women in business the best way for me to do that is to create this retreat program that would allow .

Survivor leaders who have their own businesses to be able to come.  and have a networking experience. We also have a cool side too, like the social garden was . . We got the disco ball and the stereo, the 

fire dancers. I have the fire 

dancers, , the fire dancers, the acro yoga, like a mini, mini micro fest kind of experience.

So I guess I feel like, out in the middle of nowhere where there is no cell service, you can work super hard releasing all kinds of stuff during the day and then shake it out with a disco ball staring at the stars listening to some really cool electronic  . That 

sounds well, there's, that sounds amazing.

Yeah. So we wanna have fun too, because I really feel like, laughter it's so important , to be able to find that bubbling joy. Yes.  And that's really a key to healing is being able to crack up and laugh and we dance it out. . . 

Because that's the reparenting, that's the inner child that, needs love, that needs to be able to laugh.

Cuz we never had that,  it's so great  the things that you're doing the two main purposes that you're doing with this project and with your organization is, are the two biggest needs for survivors of human trafficking and of cults.

Like I started to say human trafficking includes labor trafficking, sex trafficking Yes. And cult trafficking. To me that's what it is now. Yes. And the two things on the top of every survivor's list is mental health support and  job support. Yeah. Getting work done.

Because we were just talking about this morning, Jamima and I, to grow, go from a place of incredible trauma,  especially if you've been institutionalized in any way, and then to have to swap over to a straight up nine to five under some asshole boss or, crappy  conditions.

That's traumatizing in itself.  How do you find healing doing that? So to be able to create spaces and be able to create opportunities for survivors to, build their own businesses or having that developmental space to,  ease into a world of, fast pace, areas. It's such a huge need and it's incredible and great that you're connecting those two in your work. It's really good. 

When I was working in corporate America, all I wanted to do was to  climb the ladder and to get to a place where I had a sales team.

That was my goal. So I was going to school ,  and I really believed that girl power was gonna change corporate America  I'll just skip to the end cuz this is a boring story, but basically my back physically broke in the middle.

I had shooting pains that I thought were like kidney infection and it was just, oh my god, horn muscles from, I went from the best shape of my life to sitting at a desk and working 12 to 15 hours a day for a month and a half to two months. , I broke my back and that's when I realized, okay, I gotta figure out something else.

This will kill me.  That was when I realized I needed to start doing other things and, No industry is easy to break into anybody that is saying, oh, you can just become your own boss. It's not that easy. . And the system is not set up for entrepreneurs. They only want a few at the top of their pyramid Ponzi scheme.

They want little workers just like the kids who got to sit at a desk and repeat the answers that they had to memorize and go home and then write about it and bring it back. They're indoctrinating us for just being worker bees. Yep. There's a lot of things that berg, he knew and he was taking advantage of so much philosophical truth , that he plagiarized.

, when I went to college, I was like, okay, this is why he didn't want us to go to school. Cuz we would've realized how much fucking shit he plagiarized. . 

Yeah. And how much bullshit he was spouting out on the side.  

 Totally. And twists and turns. I journaled for probably 25 years. Like I started when I was probably 22, 23. And  I took all my journals and tried to put them into an order and make it into a story and build around it. I think every single one of us should be telling our story in this capacity.

Every one of us has a chapter that , if it stood together, would be so much fucking testimony proving, the truth.  I was like, okay, I'm still a few years away from having a draft here. But I realized,  my journaling process is done, so I wrote a little book.

It's less than 80 pages. It's like a two hour read. I put it on Audible and it's available for print as well.  I'm getting ready to put the audible on YouTube and I can send you a link to the yeah, to the book. We'll put 

it on, we'll put it on our website.

Is the book on in Amazon or 

anything? Yeah, but I wanna give it to our people. I don't want anybody to have to spend money on it. So I have it as pdf and then . The audible I'm working on uploading those right now, so I will send you a little packet with that. But basically

it's my journaling process that I've done all the different types of dream journaling, day, journaling, automatic writing, and it gets woowoo. I'm not gonna lie, I was raised in woowoo and I my own internal life in the cult. Was very mystical and spiritual. That was not necessarily coming from them.

I created my own little fantasy worlds and I think protected myself in some ways. . With those things. So you're talking about inner child work for me I felt like I created a way to actually communicate with my inner child from those times through writing. , to me, it became a form of time travel.

Wow. Uh, Now I'm reading my journals from 10 years ago and I'm hearing my inner child, my younger self speak. Wow. wow. And then I, And then I look at like goals that I wrote for myself, and then I'm like, okay, I'm still working on trying to create something that can create space for other people to have their own healing, healing experiences.

And, I just think. The journaling was such an important aspect. Yes. And so I will share that. 

Oh that's fantastic. Yeah. The thing about journaling that sometimes I think , people forget about, or we forget about, is that it's not just about gathering your thoughts and putting onto paper and, finding clarity, but there's an energy release to it too.

You are taking this storm that's inside of you and letting it go. The clouds break and then the rain comes like that. That's what journaling is.  There's something very important in the energetic work of journaling that I think , we sometimes don't , think about, but it is, it's really powerful.



That's fantastic.   After this April event maybe through the summer I'm gonna be doing like a live groups, hopefully, if I can figure out my internet connection . Go through the book with people and get feedback because I have a course that I built.

But it needs work. And the only way that I'm gonna get that is when I get feedback. , I keep sending it to people and they're like, oh, I read it, it's good. And I'm like, give me questions or feedback I just have to keep plugging it and developing it.

But I am gonna do a small group in the next few months, maybe through the summer.  I'll read and then we'll do the exercises together and then come back and talk about it. And just the way that, any online workshop would work. Yeah, that sounds great. .

Cuz I want to eventually have workshops that I do here on the journaling, because that's literally just the first step. The step after that is, delving deeper into modalities and I do ritual , like light candles, sit down and meditate, exercise my body, move my energy.

But more than that, like you were just talking about, if you have a storm inside of you and you get it written on paper and you are writing it for the explicit purpose of releasing Yeah. That might be a piece of paper. Maybe you write another piece of paper that you burn. . And watching the words go up in flames.

it literally changes the frequency. , if you want it to, and I know that sounds super woowoo, but I have seen it change my brain and Yeah. I've seen new parts of my personality, probably my inner child that never got a chance to grow up after two years old, because that's where it got stunted, . Through some type of trauma. So that's part of my personality that I can integrate now by doing what some people would call magic.  For me, and this is important to me because it brings in my bloodline, my ancestors. I know that, my ancestors were from Europe, , before Christianity, there were cultures that practiced where they honored the directions north, south, east, west.

Yeah. And so when I do these things, I'm not just trying to heal my story. I want things to be better for my children. I want things to be better for my siblings.  If I'm calling the corners is what it's called, I'm activating my physical body because my body is my ancestor.

So a hundred, 200, 300, 500, 800 years ago, some version of my ancestor did something similar. Believing in the power of ritual and magic.  It's really that action of saying, okay, I'm gonna connect fully to my body . By doing this action I'm taking my cultural heritage and activating that.

I'm sure we've all seen those memes where it's. Which ancestor ate the poisonous mushroom . Thank you. Right .. Yeah. , our ancestors did so many difficult things for us to be here, but they also had so many wonderful things.  Strength and survivorship and power.

I ritual it is a skit. It's choreography . But by doing that I'm saying, Hey, I have so much power to connect to. We were disconnected from our mothers and our fathers and our grandparents and our uncles and our aunts, and we were given people that we didn't know that were harming us, that we had to call auntie and uncle.

We had no connection to our family. So even though I don't know exactly , am I doing this ritual the way my great-great grandmother.  500 years ago, it doesn't matter. The point is I'm creating theatrics and drama to pour my emotion into  for the result of creating a new version of me the next time I come against a similar situation.

I dunno if that made sense. 

 , I never ever, ever, ever want to say that  there was good that came out of the way that we were raised. But I think that we can take the bad parts and turn it into good for us. And , I think we have the ability to step back because , we were already separated from society.

There's that quality where we have that ability to step back from everything that's going on and see things from , like an overhead projected. View and not be pulled down into, you must do this, that should go this way. And we can see what works for us and what doesn't work for us, and pick those things, . There's an element of freedom that we do have with choosing our future, choosing what we believe, and  choosing what's gonna resonate with us, . Because , there's gonna be some people that just the woo is, the answer to  their cries.

And then there's gonna be other people who  , I wanna go and do this garden with you, but the woowoo part isn't for them, so that's  something that, we can call on. That's something that we can tap into about ourselves, that, is really important we have those choices and we have that ability to take what we need and let go of the rest.

Yeah. . I feel because of the trauma that I went through with the asthma and having the out of body experiences, I have had to literally consciously will myself back into my body to breathe and actually had the choice, asked myself, fuck, it hurts. I don't wanna keep doing this. Do we wanna come back?

And I, had conversations in the out-of-body experiences where we were like asking, is this what we wanna do? And what I've come to understand is that,  right now, for most of us, the way that we connect into these altered states of being is through trauma. , and that's not the only way to get there.

. It's a natural part of being human and it's been, destroyed through these traumatic events. And I think that for me taking the time to learn how to go into an altered state of mind purposefully and go to that place where I'm having a conversation with myself. . And actually being able to have a two-way conversation with part of myself and say, Hey, so things are much better now.

Would you like to come back with me to the now and come out of this? . And I can stand on both sides and say, yes, I do. Okay. That's that. Literally . If somebody wanted to learn how to do that, there are modalities that can walk you step by step in a very safe environment through how to have that kind of connection to your past, to send joy and happiness through and bring that inner child that is two years old and frozen in trauma.

. Bring that energy into yourself now and integrate. And what I am finding right now is that I am unfreezing parts of the inside of my body. I can feel, and it's not all the time, but when I do the work I feel more present in my body. I have a larger spectrum of emotion in and able to find more joy and happiness.

The hard work does pay off. 

Yeah, that's fantastic. 

. So that's what I'm doing and I need help. We're, when I say we, it's the imperial , we,, I have a growing team. But I feel like I've had to pound on this drum by myself for some time. Whisper you and the group that we had and the social garden was just such a magical little moment and I don't think we really understood how brief 

it was a really cool time. There were, like eight of us, second generation Yeah. That got together and, really created I would say a good friendship and I felt like there was purpose and moving forward,  like I always stayed away from ex members a lot and, that was my only kind of crew that I created since I've left. . To be honest. Yeah. , it was a good moment in history. 

Yeah. Absolutely. It's something that we hear a lot  from born in child, children of God, kids where they're like, oh, I don't hang around with , other born in kids.

But when you start doing some work , and you start on your healing journey and you're ready to face some of your traumas and you're ready to face some of what happened,, your connections with other born and kids actually become . Important.

And really, I agree.  And it has to be the right people too, I think, sure. Yes. . 

 There's a few groups on Facebook and , it's always a chance that you're gonna hit a minefield where somebody says some stupid song and then for two weeks you've got this earworm. Yeah. That won't shut up . Yeah. Some cult song.

You're like,  , go away. . 

Probably the coolest part of our childhood was the music, I think, and what we did with music. Yeah.  

,  I'm not saying that , the way we were raised was good, but there are some things about the way that we were raised that  we can take and turn into really powerful tools and.

for example,  being raised around music.  That does something for your brain, right? Yep. And the fact that, like they had all of us reading at two years old, that also does something for your brain. All of these born in kids that are coming out, they're all fucking brilliant.

Yeah, , we're like these brilliant traumatized things. . Yes. So you're right. Absolutely. Like having that music around as we are growing up , we have those brain connections that now we can turn around and choose the music we wanna hear and choose the music that we wanna find our healing in.

And that's really important too. . You're mixing all this,  together. That's really great.

. That support system is important. And that's really what I felt at the social garden was all of us were on that same frequency of we've done the work, we're living our lives, we're business women, , we have careers and, we've overcome so much. That's what I call a leader.

to me, absolutely. Somebody who has and I'm not gonna say that I've mastered I'm functional and, go through periods of, extreme lows because of triggers. . I still have to regulate myself out of it with my breathing and releasing and trying to feel gratefulness like I was talking about earlier.

But leadership means, I'm ready to be some type of support for someone else. And so I really want our younger siblings to feel that there's space for their stories to be heard. . And that we are acknowledging, we, I acknowledge to my siblings, I've tried to make reparations and I've tried to connect and I'm not done with that, obviously.

. But just saying, Hey, find your way to learn to love yourself  I do have deep concerns about the future for our younger siblings. Some of them. Yes. . I'm thankful that you guys have created this channel because, it's always so positive and I love how you bring your humor into it because , you're taking us on a rollercoaster of dealing with the down and dirty and then cracking jokes that, make our belly sore the next day,

So that's good 

stuff. . Thank you.. I think because a lot of us are finally coming out of that, survival mode of .

, just trying to keep a roof over our head. Just trying to, be able to feed our kids or whatever. And, coming out of that survivor mode, you're ready to go up to the next level in  Maslow's pyramid of means, and you're like, okay, now it's time , to find that love and find those communities and find that connection.

And that's, our start to healing.    In our communities,  it's time to heal., it's time to reconnect with who we are 

 Community is the oldest form of healing. 

.  . And it's not something that is , readily available. That's what our parents . . Yeah. In, In the cult, that's what they saw is that community. 

Yeah.  Anybody that's interested or wants to do it, your, website is called Victory Garden sanctuary.org, right?



That's right. Yeah. Okay. And that's the main website. I don't do a lot of changes on that. I do more the changes on social media. Okay. And ,  those handles should be on the website. 

Okay. Fantastic. Yes. And  we'll put it up on, our website too, so that there Nice.

There's link there.

, I just want to, create an opportunity for other people to come in and I wanna meet people and I'm ready to expand again. So that's what we're doing. Oh, that's so great. So free to hear.

. Jemima where are you physically 

located? I'm in central Idaho, also very rural . Okay. . I live in the middle of the forest. Yay. Yay. It's awesome. I love it. I love to go down to the river in the pond and go hiking. Yes. I can't hike right now, but I will. When I have a bionic knee, I will hike

Yay. Is that coming soon? 

March 29th. 

Oh, that's very soon. 

Yes. Guess I'm very nervous. Woo. I bought a shirt to make me breathe though. Good. . It has a flamingo on it and it says, I flocking love my new knee . 

Aw, that's hilarious. , 

I'm gonna put it on as soon as they'll let me out of a hospital gown, cuz I'm like, this is my bravery shirt, so you must allow it.

That's so cute. 

Yeah. Good luck with that. 

Thank you. 

I'm sure it will. They know what they're doing now with that. Yes. 

And this specific um, hospital has a maco robotic arm assist. So they take a CT scan of your knee and then they put it up against an anatomically correct me, and then the robot just carves out all the bones that aren't supposed to be there.

Wow. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. 

That's crazy. 

So great talking to you, Monique. You're very cool. I think, the whole WOOWOO thing, like I was against everything Woowoo too. When I first left, I was like, I'm not doing anything. Meditation. Yep. No. . Yeah. I did a little bit of I'm gonna explore Wiccan stuff, but I also was like,  I don't wanna worship anything else either. . And I don't want anybody to tell me , you have to do this or you have to do that. I'm like, no I know I have my power and I wanna do it my own way, but I have learned a lot of things from other people.

It's amazing. And that's why we started this podcast. One of the reasons is because we all have such a wealth of experiences and that we've drawn on and that we've survived from. And . Sharing them is so powerful and so amazing. And every single time I talk to somebody Whisper, I think feels the same way.

We learned something new too. And it's a privilege. Definitely an honor to have you on. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for being here. We really appreciate it. 

 I'd be happy to come on anytime.  In the future. 

Yeah, for sure. There's such important  conversations to have and  . You're definitely leading the way on these things. So it's super great. 



Sounds like fun too. . 

It's fun. I think it's fun and I I'm trying to create  a world that I want to grow old in. That's awesome.

That's kinda where I am right now. Like,  what do I want in the next 20 years? I think it's really important for us all to start thinking about those kind of things. And that was an iteration of what, I wanted to do. And I think that it might , come back into the picture in the next few years as like being able to create spaces.

. Again, it could be a trigger for some people, the idea of living in a small tiny house community or something. But then again, it could be fun if it's the right group of people. Yeah. . Very true.  Could 

be really fun.

 A whole nother layer to it. We all had different names, . 

That's what makes it so weird. Yeah. Was all the name changing, and then every time something happened, it was like, oh, gotta change your name. Yeah. Go fast and pray for three days and change your name. And then I'd be like, Cracking the Bible and sticking my finger to try and find a certain name.

Oh, this is what God gave me. What does it mean? Oh, I dunno. I better go look. . 

Yeah.  A big issue about it is  knowing even who we were, or how we met, but it's a disconnect from an identity too. Yeah. You can't even you can't even keep your name.

 The, from the Game of Thrones girl , who has no name, the girl has no name. . That was us. . Yeah. 

The kids that had yeah, yeah.. A whole nother level of security. Yeah.. Multiple identities. , when I was living in that Ws home I was taking care of kids and I got nosy.

She was gone for the day and I went through her bags and she had three passports with, different names, literally. In three countries. It was like, French Canadian and American, all different names. But her passport's, her picture, . 

Yeah. That's crazy. Oh, 

a trip. Yeah. So anyways, that's another talk for another day,

Yeah. Yeah. That's 

a whole nother thing. . 

Thank you so much for talking to us, Monique. Yeah, for sure. We definitely would love to have you back sometime, but okay. As far as for today just telling everybody stay brave and . Always remember that everybody flight was once a Caterpillar

Yes. That's Try it. Thank you 

ladies.   

  

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