Butterflies and Bravery

The Beginning of the Beginning

March 19, 2023
Butterflies and Bravery
The Beginning of the Beginning
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, we hear Sara Durham's story, from being born into a cult and raised under the crushing weight of extreme beliefs, through the cult imploding, beginning her healing journey and the work of “undoing”, to the beautiful place she is today. With encouragement, wit, and profound insights, Sara will cheer you on to believe in your own awesomeness too!   

"I'm at a place where I look in the mirror and…I love who stares back at me in the mirror and I don't feel like I'm broken anymore. "  --Sara Durham

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Welcome to Butterflies and Bravery. . Thank you Whisper and Jemima. I am so excited to be here. We're so excited to have you, Sarah. I am breaking new ground and breaking out of a comfort zone, so to speak, with staying behind the shadows. . And speaking my truth now. Joining people like you and Whisper in the campaign to help people who were born and raised in cults and who need that encouragement, who need that empowerment to say, my past does not have to define me.

 Why don't you just start, Sarah, with telling us a little bit about your background.  Just enough to help you understand that was not normal. Yes, so it was not until I was 31 years old. That the beginning of the end  happened, which meant for me that the cult I had been born and raised in was falling apart and imploding under a whole lot of pretty public accusations of financial malfeasance.

Oh wow. Fraud. Nice and protecting a whole lot of pedophiles. Those were just some of the main ones that readily come to mind. I'm sure there were probably 50 other skeletons in the closet . But my initial reaction at age 31, hearing all of this was I'm on team senior Pastor

That was what I was taught to say, to react to, to know, and fast forward just maybe two or three months after this in 2004,

a family member was on the phone with me and asked me the question of Sarah, weren't you sexually abused for several years?  Oh,  that was a rhetorical question. She knew the answer already. . And she said, I happen to be reading a book that's really helping me understand how our church wasn't much different than many others in mainstream Christianity with how they handled you, Sarah, with how they handled me.

They continued to victimize us while they never reported the pedophile or pedophiles. Thereby letting those people continue to perpetrate and continue us to feel ashamed for what we never had control over. And

I cried a whole lot that day. Whispering Jemima. Yeah, I bet. Because that was icing on the cake for me to understand and be able to relate to why the environment I had been raised in was a cult. Yeah. Because you and I  know that not every. Church situation is a cult because it's not, yeah.

There are very healthy and wonderful places to worship in that people feel that their personal faith has been built up and they walk away feeling blessed from that environment. That, however, was not our situation collectively, because there are some parallels, even though I didn't grow up in your environment and you didn't grow up in mine and those parallels being that, first of all it was a very insular community  where there was us versus them kind of mentality. And  we have the truth. Everyone else does not. Yeah. If I could give a correlation with how I was personally raised,  love was defined as fear.

Fear and respect me as an adult in your environment, part of the church. Respect and fear me as your parent, because that's how you show me love.

 And there's also quite a few other parallels as far as how that environment shapes people like you and me who are born and raised in a cult, which is our identities. Were not autonomous.  Our identity centered around the collective identity.  of the cult . We are Borg. You shall be assimilated. Yes,

And there's another parallel that's pretty consistent across many different cults, which is do not question authority.

You only are allowed to say yes until we permit you as leadership, as parents to say no. And until we give you that permission, don't go there. Yeah. There are repercussions to keep you. I think tho the two things  that you've said so far about, about it that , I would say, are probably the top two ways, you know, you're in a cult is one, the us versus them.

We are the only ones, right? Everyone else is wrong. That's a, that's, yes. That's a huge one. And the second one is this. You are only going to think what we tell you to think. , those are the two , like if you're wondering if you're in a cult, , , I got those two issues and you'll know, you'll have your answers.

  That revelation of wait a second,  these aren't my thought. These are what I've been told , to think. For me, whisper. That was realizations that came not all at once. . But they would come up in conversation with someone who I worked with, who wasn't part of the cult, or somebody who I was just becoming friends with in this newfound freedom of becoming friends with somebody not part of the cult.

And. I would say something or other, and they would question the validity of what I had just said, . And those were the kind of situations where I came away with something to think about as to why did I consider that normal and they did not. , perhaps another correlation with cults cult-like environments as well as what I was raised in, was the only boundaries, personal boundaries that were established were whatever would suit the narcissistic leader and that environment that I was in.  Once I was no longer part of that cult entity, Finding out that I did not have very many boundaries at all was a really tough wake up call and something that it took me years to figure out how to be able to say no without screaming it of going from one extreme to the other and how to be able to have a sense of myself to the extent of saying, this is my boundary.

This is where I start and stop. And you're welcome to be part of my world as long as you respect what's important to me. Yeah. Because that shows that you respect and you want to. Become parallel with me. You wanna go on my life's journey with me, because that's also important to you, and I'll respect and validate those same things with you.

. That was a long learning journey. And I'm glad that I did it. . Because one of the biggest emotions that comes out of me at this point is such gratitude. Such thankfulness. And I put it first in the context of saying my life fell apart and I'm thankful it did Yay

because had that not occurred, had not every single thing that I knew about life just come to an abrupt, screeching halt. be able to be me at this point. . And for a lot of people  they choose to leave and they find out what those repercussions look like,  quite often being ostracized from their friends and their family.

Yes. That in itself has gotta be really tough to deal with. However, I think the universe, God, whatever you wanna call him or her, , gave me the perfect gift of not having a choice whether I stayed or left. Because it imploded and there wasn't any or anything to go back to. Oh, wow.  Is that like, Do you mean like on a personal level or the cult imploded?

There's no longer a cult. The cult does not exist in the Pennsylvania area that it once existed in, unfortunately it is still going. Oh, okay. However, that's in another state further away from me, and I do still have family members who are part of it. Which makes it tough, however, , those are their choices, and I have simply made different choices in respect to what will not further toxicity or unhealthy relationships.

For me personally, no. And that concept is different for everyone. I respect anybody else's choice in that regard.

 I'm at a place where I look in the mirror and say, you are awesome girlfriend. . Nice. I love who stares back at me in the mirror and I don't feel like I'm broken anymore. I don't have that feeling that I grew up with, not even knowing what to do with it, because there were no options then.

But that feeling of

what do I have to do? Where do I have to go? What do I have to say to finally feel like I belong? And perhaps not feeling like I ever belonged is one thing that saved me.  Because even after I acknowledged to other people, like my family member and to a few close friends that. Yes, I had been sexually abused for a number of years, and yes, I was further victimized by people inside the church who were aware of it and their motivation was one of self-preservation  that really hurt to be able to acknowledge all of those pieces because at the end of the day where there should have been a heart inside me, there was a pretty big hole right there.

 And I had to do a lot of undoing in therapy. And when I speak of undoing, I'm referencing what it takes to.

 be open and vulnerable to just how many negative coping skills you picked up over the years. Whether that is alcohol, that's drugs for some that is working incessantly and staying one step ahead of the pain. For others, it's any number of negative coping skills. And that took a couple of years to whittle away step by step at all of those negative copings ways that I  used to protect myself.

 I was no different than a lot of other people who have been sexually abused or physically abused. I had been both. Yeah. Where. I believe my therapist used the phrase overachiever and then underachiever, oh, I was gonna prove to the world and myself that I was important. Finally. Hey, I'm gonna burn the candle at both ends and in between.

Cuz I am going to volunteer at the church like nobody's business. I'm going to work at my job and yes, I'm gonna be the most able, important person there.  And yes, for a number of years I worked for a company with a lot of other church members  our main impetus was to support a lot of the financial efforts at the church, particularly with the senior pastor and.

While that was some pretty good training grounds, so to speak, in that work culture, to, to really prepare me for a lot of different things that would come my way later in life. The overachiever and underachiever cycle that I kept going for quite a few years, that was just me not knowing. How to find myself in the midst of all of this chaos and instead trying to get validation from other people trying to get validation by nailing yet another deadline,  receiving something else, so that I could finally prove most of all to myself that I was necessary.

I was important. And it wasn't until years later where  I'm sitting in front of the intake therapist at a therapy center specializing in adults who were sexually abused, bad respect for them, and my story is spilling out of me and. This therapist is trying her best to keep her poker face, but  she stopped me at one point and she said, hold on, Sarah, I have to tell you this.

She said, most people who come to this therapy center are presenting with one trauma or another, or they're going through their second divorce and they feel like, yes, they've already dealt with the sexual abuse that happened as a child, but it's still causing a lot of splinters in other areas of their such as their marriage.

And she said, you on the other hand, have got layer upon layer of trauma. And the other phenomenon that's very unique to you, Sarah, is that when people come to therapy,  it's our goal as a therapist to help them return back to a time in their lives when we felt safe, they felt secure. They felt that this is a stable environment I need to be in, and I feel good in this space in my life.

Yeah. She said, Sarah, you don't have anything to go back to because you never had a foundation to begin with. Yep. And the third thing she said, which I want anyone and everyone who's ever been through something really tough in their lives, any kind of trauma, I want them to remember this.

 She said she,  tells any new person coming into this therapy center, , you can see any number of things happen to your perpetrator or happen to the person that caused some significant grief in your life.

You can see them in your mind's eye, sitting in the electric chair or getting that lethal needle or being the result of a fatal car accident. Whatever it is that in your mind, if this just happened, I would be able to get closure. , the therapist said no. , that may help you a little tiny bit because let's not lie, let's be honest about, Hey  if that happened, yes, you would feel a little tiny sense of relief, but it will not get you closure.

Yeah. She tapped on her chest pointing to her heart and she said, you're only gonna get closure from inside here. Inside of you. Yeah. Inside of you. Whisper inside of you. Jemima inside of me. And that has stayed with me all these years because she proved right on the three things that I've just repeated to you, especially being able to find.

being able to find closure in and of myself. Yeah.

So fast forward several more years and I found out through some accidental, or I should say divine coincidences, whatever you wanna call them, there was a loophole in the statute of limitations in the state of Pennsylvania, thereby granting me the ability to pursue a criminal case against my main perpetrator.

Wow. Wow. Is right. And. It turned out that there were quite a few additional victims he had perpetrated on. I only knew of, oh through my childhood, I knew of easily four or five others, but there ended up being several more people than that. Wow. And unfortunately those other people who he had victimized, were not at a place that I was, which was, I wanted to move forward with this criminal case. If I have to be the one person there at every single meeting representing these other people, then yes, I'm doing it. I'm there. And another person who was an original church member from.

30 odd years before he felt that it was his responsibility as well to stand up in the face of that one perpetrator and stand for all the people he knew at that point who had been victimized. Wow. Even at That's amazing. I have a lot of respect for him to this day. Yeah, for real. Seriously. That's amazing.

That probably turned, did that help the case? So did you proceed? Yes, did. And it helped. Did, and my perpetrator not only saw, I wanna say two years in jail because unfortunately, Not a lot of people understand this, but I will tell you that depending on when the crimes occurred, the district attorney,  had to charge my perpetrator based on the laws that were on the books at the time these crimes happened.

Oh, gotcha. Okay. That's but you know that that's to hear that he was only getting a very small amount of jail time had he done anything in a more recent time than, I don't know that he would have seen the light of day for a good 20 years. But even with that, when he came out of prison, he simply refused to comply with his probation terms.

So he was thrown back in jail. Yay, Woohoo. . And the family friend who went with me to every single appointment and stayed in touch with the ada, he called me a couple years later and he said, Sarah, I hope you're sitting down because this is a sitting down kind of situation. He said, I want to tell you that your perpetrator is dead.

He died in jail. Oh, did he get shanked, ? I don't know. There was a whole lot of privacy laws in between me and him, so I don't know what he died of or where he was buried. I just know maybe in the toilet. Oh wow Sorry.

wishful thinking, right? ? Yeah. I have no mercy for child abuse. No ma'am. No mercy. I just know that when the sentencing occurred, which is after somebody's been charged, it's a whole separate hearing, right? Yeah. The assistant district attorney asked me more than once that day if I had a victim impact statement to read to the judge and to the court.

. Mm-hmm. . I had tried writing a victim impact statement probably 20 times by then . Anybody who knows me, knows I'm pretty darn good at writing , so why could I not find it in me to write something that would've helped me just close all the doors to a pretty tough situation of

being re-traumatized by going through the criminal court system. Yeah. But maybe about two minutes before the judge would've asked if I had a victim impact statement, I finally tapped on the a d a shoulder and I said, I've got it. I know what I'm gonna say. I walked up in front of that judge. And I said, sir,  I tried three times to get this case in front of you.

And the other two times nothing worked because I suppose those people they didn't know the right questions to ask me to find what the assistant district attorney did, which was that very tiny loophole.

  And I said, by the time that this case happened, I did not feel like I needed it to happen in order to give me closure. Yeah.  I was already going through quite a bit of therapy, which helped close those doors for me.  and yet knowing that I could do something, even a little something that would stop this man from perpetrating even for a short amount of time, is something that I felt I had the responsibility to do.

The other victims were not at that same place in their lives, so here I am and I'm the only one who's able to say, I need this person to go behind bars, because he doesn't understand how life altering his decisions to perpetrate were to me and to quite a few other people. Yeah. I also said to the judge a little story that the assistant district attorney had told me.

maybe a month or two before then, which was he was walking on the street outside the court, getting lunch one day and , he heard somebody calling his name and he turned around to face somebody he had sent to jail before. That is quite an awkward situation to be put in because you don't know how that person may or may not react.

That person extended his hand to the assistant district attorney and said, I just wanted to thank you for what you did, because if you had not put me behind bars and mandated that I attend group therapy for sexual abuse perpetrators, I probably would've continued as soon as I was out of jail. Wow.

But because of what you did, you changed my life. Wow. I said, judge, I can only hope that this man, and I pointed to my perpetrator, who was all about five feet away from me, and he wouldn't look me in the eye. I said, I can only hope that in time this man feels that same way. Yep. That's good.  And I walked away.

  For me saying those words to the judge in a un premeditated way is everything that I needed from that whole experience. I needed to know that I helped other people. And  I not only want to help myself with continuing my own healing process from being raised in a born and raised in a coal environment.

I also want to extend that life preserver to anybody else who feels stuck in some type of trauma that they feel is insurmountable. Or either wanna speak to the hearts of people who feel like. They've already healed from this and that in their lives, or it's something that they just don't even wanna talk about anymore.

And yet the elephant is still in the room. If you do not choose to deal with something, whether that is back then when it happened, or when as an adult you finally have the choice to do something about that trauma ,

if you don't do it, then it's still going to show up in every area of your life. Yep. Whether that is your parenting style the career or lack of one. Your marriage, your way that you relate to other people, you're still carrying that unresolved trauma with you until you tell it to stop and you hack that trauma to pieces and say, I am enough now.

 That reminds me of a Brene Brown quote that I really like. Love her. She said If you don't spend a reasonable   amount of time dealing with your emotions, you're gonna have to spend an unreasonable amount of time picking up the pieces. Love you, right?

Yes. Isn't that great? Yeah. I thought that was awesome.  It just sits there and just because it's below the surface and you managed to keep it down Yes. Doesn't mean it's gonna stay that way. And the same thing happened to me too, is I left the call, went on with my life, it wasn't great, but it was manageable.

Of course I was addicted to drugs, but  not minor detail, right? Yeah. Just minor. But everything fell apart. And when everything fell apart, that's when I had to deal with. It's my trauma because I just had a complete nervous breakdown. I couldn't deal with it. I just literally lost my marks to where I was suicidal, homicidal,

where today I'm like, how did I get there? How did I get to a point where I reasoned myself into thinking that the best solution was to kill everybody? . But at that time my brain was so overwhelmed because yes, it's like stuffing it all in the closet. You know when you're a kid and you clean your room and then one day your mom opens the closet and it all falls out.

Yes, . Yeah. That's what will happen. Why can I relate Jemima And my heart goes out to you because I've been there too. And while we can just about it and crack jokes about, Hey, ended up myself in the psych ward and was that eyeopening ? Been there, done that. And if that's what you needed in order to heal, in order to face more of those demons, I applaud you.

I applaud me because yes, I have ended up in the psych ward and I am not afraid to say that because it to me is no different than. If you stubbed your toe and it's sprained, you go to the doctor and you Okay. Get that repaired. Yep. If you're feeling sick and the medicine you're taking isn't helping, then you go to the emergency room.

If you feel like you can't breathe and this is happening and that's happening, it's their job to help you with all of that. Yeah. A psych ward is absolutely no different, so I would hope that in time other people and our culture are, American culture in particular, would not stigmatize people for getting the help that they needed.

I agree. I could not agree more. Yeah. A lot of people are too too ashamed to do that. Yes. And then, Instead of going and getting help, they end up not being able to cope. And then next thing you know they're not here anymore.  And it's sad  Jemima. I just wanna say that I get it because I've been there and what I came away with learning about myself was that I needed more coping skills. I needed to understand that it was okay to feel really hard, tough emotions come up to the surface for the first.

That in and of itself can be very overwhelming. So yeah, very would not recommend taking that kind of an emotional journey on your own without very good qualified help of either a psychologist or a therapist.   I had to understand why did I think that ending it all was going to solve anything.

Yeah, it was coming up in me that made me think that was the best solution. Exactly. And once I had answers to a lot of that, it helped me understand that much more, what my purpose is for being alive today. Why am I looking forward to tomorrow?

  My purpose is being able to speak to the hearts and the minds of people who need the kind of help that from my life experience I have to offer

for somebody who has gone through as much as Whisper and Jemima and me as much as we've gone through. We owe it not just to ourselves to pay it forward. We owe it to a lot of other people who helped us get to where we are. Yep. And I feel very strongly about that. I agree. Yeah. We always say community is the oldest form of healing because it's extremely important.

To find places of acceptance. And I think that's why a lot of people go back to their Celtic situations is because , they feel accepted and they feel like, that's where they belong. Yes. Because they give you that sense of belonging on purpose to Yes. Ring you in, get you feeling good.

 I personally think that's why a lot of people go to church as well, because communities see all your friends, you're going to go to lunch, you're gonna have breakfast, you're gonna have coffee, whatever, chit chat like, but . I feel like that's a lot of the impetus of why people go to church or are a part of a church community, because it's really hard to find community outside of that.

And actually in Russia, like, Our whole group would've splintered off from the children of God. The only reason we stayed is what I was saying, community.

We had hookups. We could go here, we could go there, we could stay in all these different homes while you raised money and you didn't have to pay for it. If you left, you lost all of that. Yep. Sole reason. That's the sole. We sat and talked about it. We talked for hours. Fuck, why don't we all just fucking leave?

We're not following the rules. We're all having sex with outsiders. We're drinking our brains out. We're smoking marijuana. . Why? We just leave . Oh dude, we'll lose everything. We'll lose all our friends. We'll lose all our families. We'll lose all our contacts. We'll have nothing. And so we were like, Nope. Okay so we're gonna stay, but we're just going to, loosely follow the rules.

And that was the beginning of the end.

The beginning of the end. . Yes. That's the story. , what's that silly movie Logan's Run. This is not the end. This is not the beginning. This is the beginning of the end. Do you remember that movie ? They made us watch it. Remember Logan's run? Because they were like, don't be like him and run away from the big community cuz you'll probably die.

Yep.  it's really hard to find community outside of that. You have to seek it out. Like a kayakers community. Yes. Or a book club, or a single mom's club. But how often have you heard of an ex cult kids club? Like, where are you gonna find that? But those are the spaces that we're creating. Yes. speaking to the point specifically of people coming out of cults and then rejoining, let's first look at that from the perspective of somebody who is born and raised in a cult.

And then secondly, somebody who has joined a cult as an adult at whatever stage they are in their lives. So that first point of , somebody born and raised in that environment, coming back into it. It's my experience from not only myself, but what I have heard from other people like ourselves.

They find the world that they know so little about to be a terrifying place, and they. Aren't aware of resources available to them to be able to help them through this really bloody painful process of separating mentally, not just physically from that cult environment. And is it not Jemima and Whisper, one of the easiest things to do, which is go back to what you know is predictable?

Yep, exactly. Even though it's harmful to your psyche, even though Yes, at various times towards my late twenties, yes, I was suicidal because of the environment and yet it is all that I knew. Yes, exactly. And then let's address that second group of people, which is. Those who have joined a cult left and then come back.

Once again, this is anecdotal information simply because I am not trained or qualified professionally in this area. But it's my perception from what I've read and experienced, that people join cults because they find some kind of commonality with these people that they haven't found 

least of all inside themselves. Yep, that's exactly right. Or they're also. Have either faced a significant trauma or currently going through one and they feel some kind of barrier from all of that trauma that they're facing in this group of people. These people help me face my trauma in this particular way, so I belong with them, or these people meet this particular emotional need in me and nobody else has ever done that for me.

I belong with them. And then if they're not a part of that group, there are any member of reasons why group number two comes back to that arena, which is they hear that tape playing in their head of,

 The things that the cult leadership where people around them from the cult have said, this will happen if you are not part of this cult . Yeah. The fear tactic scenario. Another scenario is they have been so inundated with this cult culture that they've lost touch with what reality outside of the cult is, and that may be another reason why they wanna jump right back in.

Because once again, like group one of people born and raised in a cult who end up rejoining group number two rejoins because once again that is a predictable environment. Yeah, absolutely. You know the upsides and they know the consequences of veering to the left or to the right with their decisions.

But this group right here, these people meet my needs. Yeah.  the going back thing is it would, was it cults? On the one hand I can't ever imagine myself doing that. But at the same time like what you're saying, about the connection and the need for community. , it's so close to what we were talking about earlier  that there's no before for us.

There's just no before. And that's the biggest divide between people who join a cult and the people who are born and raised it. That's the huge divide that a lot of times people don't understand or can't see. And that's that's something that Jem and I  that's what we wanna shout from the rooftops  you gotta understand there was no before for us, we have no frame of reference.

 We're like rebuilding ourselves from nothing, from scratch. Your actual personalities, your individualism, you're all like, all the things that you're supposed to go through normally as a human being. Right? We didn't have any of that. And then whisper to that point. I felt at times in the very beginning post cult, like the Julia Roberts character in 

Run. Runaway bribe. Yeah. The, yes. What? What eggs do you want? . Exactly that seed. Thank you. Whisper . And I felt like that because one of my friends at that point termed it my adult slash teenage years because I never got to be autonomous. And here I am in my early thirties figuring out do I like this political party or that one?

Do I believe in creationism or evolution or ?  Bikinis or one piece swimsuits, any number of silly things that you can even think of that were not choices before. Oh yeah, absolutely. What kind of music do you like? Oh, yes. No lie.  

I love it.

Oh my God. And honestly, one of the things that I did post cult which might sound really odd to some people, but. I sat there and I watched South Park. I don't know. I was glued to it for a couple of days straight, like binge watching South Park because I knew so little about pop culture . It's a great place to learn because did you know that they actually did you know that they write the episodes each week?

That's why they're so like hip and Yes, and up with the times because they write 'em. Yes. So when the week is over, they start writing the next episode. Did you see the last one about chat? G P T? Yeah. It's written by Oh my God. By Trey Stone and Chat. G p t. It's so funny  they start answering all their girlfriend's texts cuz you know how boys are. Okay.  No.  Ok  one word, 

but it's as funny that they addressed that whole chat G P T thing, and then the kids were using it for their papers. So the teachers started using it to grade the kids' papers.

I have a professor friend who just told me she was doing that . Oh, that's incredible. And I was telling Whisper also, I have not verified this with my own ears, but my husband's quite reliable. Source. The person who created. The AI thing, the reason they did it was to find a cure for cancer. They figured if they kept plugging in things and eventually it would find a cure.

So that was actually why it was created. Isn't that interesting? It is funny, and I don't know if this was something that occurred in the cult you were both raised in, but. , there wasn't any such thing as privacy in the court.

I was raised in  it wasn't a kind of thing where gossip travels very fast. Not like that. But if you were going through something and you were pretty instrumental to the cult leader, Just know that is not gonna stay private. And they will be on top of that, like white on rice? Yep. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Because they have to help you tow the line to continue to be useful to them. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Our call went even further with doing panty checks at night. Make sure we weren't wearing underwear. Yep. Ooh, yep. We were not allowed to sleep with our underwear cuz they thought it caused vaginal fungus or, or yeast infections.

So every night. They'd come and you'd have to lift up your sheet and spread your legs to show 'em that you didn't have panties on. I'm not joking. No, I'm so sorry. . Yeah, there's no privacy. We lived, this wa this wasn't necessarily connected to the cult beliefs structure or anything like that.

But just the mentality of the way they were, we lived for nearly seven years in a large build, what would you call it? Like a large facility that used to be an old old hospital. And so the walls in all of the rooms only went up, like to seven feet tall or whatever it was.

And everything above that was just screened. So you could not have a conversation without everybody hearing , what was going on. And,  of course, like  , we had, everything was scheduled down to such. Now, this was across the cult. Everything was scheduled down to, so close to the last minute that a lot of times, you were having to go to the bathroom or take showers at the same time with  the other people because that's all you had time for, . No, no privacy. And , you were at the whim of whatever, the leaders at, on   day came up with, um in this same place.  One of the leaders,  came up with this , like the anti cockroach program, . Do you remember this  the cockroach thing?

 We were in Thailand, so there's cockroaches everywhere. And when you turn on a light, the cockroach is all like run.  Cuz they're out in the dark and then you turn the light and they all like scatter. 

So they made a new rule. That you couldn't be a cockroach. And so if somebody came into the room and you were naked, you had to just stand there. Stand there. Yeah. And so of  there's all these like teen boys and they, oh my God, they decided to take advantage of that.

 Any single time  that we were in a, in the time of your schedule, when you're changing like coming out of like our, you know, exercise time and we are having to get ready for everyone's changing and showering. They would just come walking through the rooms, whatever they wanted.

And you had to just stand there. You just had to stand there and let. Look at you. That was, yeah. So no privacy whatsoever. That is very dehumanizing. Yeah. Sorry. Like I told my husband, imagine how bad a hospital would have to be to be abandoned in Thailand. Thai hospitals are not nice. So for one to be so bad that it's been abandoned we were like literally living in what's that movie hostel?

Yeah. I've shown people the pic, the pictures. Not kidding. People were like,  that looks like a place like that hostel was from. I was like, yeah, kinda looking back, I'm like, I just, I get even thinking about it, I just get shivers and chills every time I see the pictures. I like get sick to my stomach.

Yes. Because the, everything was tiled be, so you can wash the blood down the drains type of thing. It was very not a nice place to live in

. I think that's the other thing too , that is different with the type of trauma that we deal with and that we're trying to heal from, is that there's not like a specific.  incident. It's not oh, I had a car accident and I had to watch, , my mom die.

Which,  obviously that's a horrible trauma, but , that's an isolated incident that you can identify and that you can connect with, , and you can, you know, when we're trying to connect with our trauma and trying to heal through it we don't even know where to start.

It's like, pull a thread and , you're gonna find something. And you've been out of your cult for a while too, right? We've been more than 20 years and I will still react to something and be like why did that freak me out?

And I'll realize shit, some kind of trauma, like that was part of the trauma that I went through. Yes. It's how 20 years later and I'm still like, oh my God, why am I reacting that way? And that's,

It's really discouraging sometimes, because you're like, , feeling like it follows you no matter what. There's always gonna be these moments, be these times when all of a sudden you're like, fuck, that was, that was because of the way that I was raised.

, sorry. It, It can just be discouraging sometimes. . . Do not apologize because you're speaking to my heart right now to whisper and I was even talking to,  someone about that very same concept the other day, because I do recognize how far I've come. Yeah. And yet Whenever I hear a leather belt doubled over and snapped, oh my God. Yep. I know that sound. You're gonna trigger me instantly. . Yep. Same. And whenever I feel cornered in some way without any type of defense. Yeah. Oh I can't help it. The cat claws are going to come out.

Yeah. Yep. And , there has been a time or two whenever I felt, just like you whisper, where I'm saying, I feel like this is gonna follow me the whole rest of my life, and I'm never going to be free of it. Yeah. But one thing you can say to yourself easily in those kind of moments is, what have I already overcome  that felt like I wasn't ever going to get over such and such a thing and I did.

No, this isn't any different. . You're right. And some of those splinters are further down in your skin than others, right? Yeah. My  therapist pointed out to me that I had been in this cult environment from birth to age 31. And on an average with this number of traumas stacked up, it would take twice that amount of time to feel completely divested from all of those things.

Yeah. And part of that sounds a little discouraging cuz you think   two effing years now, but Whisper, you're always evolving. Jemima, you're always changing, so am I. Yep. So whatever triggers are still there for us, all it takes is the very same things that have. Checked us alive to this day, which is a little bit of resiliency.

and just courage. Yeah. Courage to say, I don't know the answers to this yet, but I want to know,  I know that at some point the answer will come even if it isn't right now. I'm sorry. Part of that is just having self-care in mind where you're saying, I need to give myself a whole lot of grace right now because I don't have every single answer.

Yeah. And I'm frustrated and I'm impatient right now.

very true.

Good stuff. Yes it is. I'm grace with ourselves. . It's hard. It's hard to do. I'm easier to talk about. A lot less easy to actually do. ? Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yes. It is important though because the better you take care of yourself when you're younger, the more it'll help you when you're older. Yes, true.

And for me, can't speak for the both of you, but for me, taking care of myself now so much easier because I am autonomous now.  Don't know what I personally need in a given moment, and I can act on those things, whereas I couldn't before. Yeah. Exactly. It's very important, even just the power to be able to say.

No, I am not going to go out and see a movie tonight with so and so because I need to do something for myself. . .  Even having the ability and the power to make choices is something  is beautiful and something I'm so thankful for that I've got now. 

I think the three of us are pretty badass. What do you think? ? Absolutely. . It's hard to accept that . . I'm in a writing class and I have to write an award acceptance speech. Oh my God. . Yeah, I know. I'm terrified. Actually. She gave me a few choices and I said that's the one that scares me the most, so that's the one I'm gonna do.

, why take the easy road there? . You just said a moment ago, that's hard to accept that. Yeah, but listen to what you said next. Being able to write an acceptance, like word acceptance speech is the hardest one for me, and that's what I chose to do. That's bravery, Jah ,  and you got that funny girlfriend.

I didn't even think about that . I was just like that terrifies me, so I should probably do it. . Yes.

 Truthfully, healing from being born and raised in Nicole is one of the hardest things that I've ever done in my life. . And one of the things that I will be forever thankful for that I did. I chose more difficult journey rather than trying to numb all of that pain.

I wanna be around the whispers and the jemimas in this world because I can not only relate to where  you've been. But I can more so relate to what inspires you and what keeps you going. And you are the kind of tribe that I want to be in. These are my people because I can't handle being around perfect people

I cannot, and not because I feel deficient in any way, but because I wanna be around people who have been through crap and said, okay, I'm gonna get up tomorrow and I'm gonna have a better day tomorrow. Yeah. That is what is real to me. Yeah, for sure. That is why it's so important to me to.  advocacy to create a safe space for other people  who don't know which end is up after human trafficking, after years of sexual abuse, physical abuse, spiritual abuse, et cetera.

 those traumas do not have to stay with you. They don't have to become part of you. Those are all choices that you have control over. I am also an advocate.

for those people who need that life preserver,  they need that encouragement to be able to take that next step in their healing process, whatever that is.  

And it's very possible that I will also be attending ICS a's conference. Yay. Yay, . Go to some girl time if we end up getting it. Absolutely. Hello. Yeah. That'll be so fun. Yeah we're hoping to it'd be really great to have see if we can figure out how to have some sort of like panel or something to, to talk about Born in Kids.

Like , to get people to understand and know the difference would be really great. So we're working towards that.  I think Debbie, Debbie seems like an amazing woman.  Debbie Schriver. She's a rockstar in my book. Yeah. Yeah. She amazing. Me too.  for sure. Since we were talking about ICSA, I'm gonna do my little plug here for us . Whisper and I are trying to go to the International Cultic Studies Association Conference in June in Kentucky, and we have a GoFundMe. And yay. We've been working on doing some diamond art, which if you don't know what it is, you can go to Jemima's Facebook page and you'll see it.

we could probably put a couple photos on our website too, but  so I've been working on diamond art coasters and bookmarks and stickers and I have some full panel wall hangings and all of that kind of stuff. Wow. Yeah. So for people that donate to our GoFundMe for whatever amounts will give you different prizes and motivators.

We have bookmarks and coasters and all kinds of different stuff. So anybody wants to be a part of that   we'll put our GoFundMe on the in the blurb of this podcast  how about one where both of you speak about the importance of why this particular conference is something you feel you need to attend? Yes. That's a good, that's a really good idea. I love that because I know what I'm attending it, which is I need to be around people like yourselves to be able to get further enmeshed in the advocacy piece of what's important to me.

Yeah. And I know you two are steps ahead of me, quite a few in that particular arena. And you going to I C S A is something that is paramount. Yeah. It's something you guys have to do. Yeah, I agree. We need the. We need it. , we have to further our mission and also to give the second generation more of a voice.

Give the born and kids more of a voice because we're not the same. Absolutely. Speak of the joint. We are not the same .   I believe is something really important for the two of you to do as well as me, is we need more resources to be able to give other people who are gonna come behind us.

Yes. Other people who have come out recently or not from being born and raised. Yeah. And there aren't that many resources. So the ones that we are aware of and the people who do help, like Lalich Center and I C S A. , different groups like that, they.  different resources that it's so good to be able to tell other people, Hey, here's a lifeline I can throw out to you.

That'll be able to take you to your next step. Yes, totally. And meeting those various people at I C S A is very critical to what the three of us are engaged in. Yes.

Oh, and we also have our second foreign and a cult discussion group  I will be joining that one. Yay.  I just had my interview with Laish Center with Tammy in particular, and Oh, nice. I'm looking forward to it. Oh, it's, you're gonna love it.  It's awesome. It's such a beautiful place. And talk about fighting community oh my God. It's amazing to sit there with all people that you're like, oh my God, you hit me. It's not a conversation around the water cooler, that's for sure.

no. Been there, tried that and had people look at me like I had four heads. Yep, me too. Exactly.  You wanna ride us out or you want me to ? I can write us out. . I love that so much, everyone, for joining us. Thank you, Sarah. You are just a gem, a star. Stay brave and remember that every butterfly was once a caterpillar. I love that analogy. And thank you both for inviting me to the podcast.