When the World Didn't End with Guinevere Turner

If you’ve seen the epic films American Psycho,  Chasing Amy or Dogma, you’ll probably recognize    our amazing guest, Guinevere Turner. Guinevere has written, starred in, and/or directed 34 films to date! Now Guinevere has written a book, When the World Didn't End. In her book, she details some of her experiences growing up in the Lyman family cult. Join us for a great discussion on Guinevere’s life, her book, finding life after  escape,  and various other culty topics.

The audio isn't stellar as our usual recording program wasn't operable, but I think you'll find the conversation worth listening to. 

Buy her book at
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/651933/when-the-world-didnt-end-by-guinevere-turner/
Or help support your local bookstore by asking them to order it for you

Transcript

    Welcome everybody to Butterflies and Bravery.

Today we have a guest. Very fun, fun, fun guest. Yes. , , her name is Guinevere Turner. She's an American actress, screenwriter and film director. She wrote American Psycho, the Notorious Betty Page and played the lead role of the dominatrix in preaching to the perverted.

And was a story editor and recurring character, Gabby Devoe on Showtime's the L word. And then, yeah, she was also involved in and wrote quite a few other films and she was in chasing Amy and Dogma 

yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Very interesting. So she's got a book. Wow. Holy fuck. She's done a lot of movies. God damn. 2 34 films. Either written, directed, acted or both are all of the above. Wow. Holy freaking cow. That's a lot.

Okay. And she's gay. Nice. Yeah.  A lesbian author. Marvelous.

 . I didn't know when I took the writing class with her. I didn't really know.

Like they said, oh, Guinevere Turner, . I didn't Google her or anything. I knew she had written some stuff, but I had no idea that it was like, like March and big famous stuff.

So I felt very privileged to be able to go to that writing class. She's a lovely person too. so just like real and unassuming.? Yeah. Me and me and Luke are big fans of the L word, like that show. Oh, really? Yeah. So did, do you remember seeing her in there? Yeah. How funny. Huh? That's crazy  So then what we just jump in Why never pick daisies? So she doesn't know anything about that. Picking daisies.

I no, but  I'm certainly very talented at digressing , within a conversation to a whole other interesting thing and having a hard time fending my way back to the original question, , when other people do that, it makes me crazy. So I try I'm trading myself, but there's so much to say and especially when I'm talking to people who know what I'm talking about, we can just dive so deep into stuff that maybe no one else cares about.

But it's just , freeing and interesting to talk to people who, who have a baseline of understanding.  You've been in the discussion groups, everybody's just is what? Yeah, I get, it's a, it can cause a minor hysteria inside really.

. Not having to translate yourself is one of the, one of the more comfortable places to, to be in. It's interesting though because there's such a conflict, 'cause there's this comfort of being able to just say whatever. You want, and , the crowd is gonna understand, you gonna get it completely.

No one's gonna look at you sideways. But then there's also all these sort of landmine of triggers and the possibly, so it's it's a place where you can be so comfortable, but you're also  so much more vulnerable 

 Right. because people might say things that actually get you in a an especially painful place. . I thought it was interesting the first couple discussion groups I went to with a Lalich center, how several people expressed imposter syndrome,  like their cult wasn't culty enough or their trauma was not as bad as so and so's.

And I just found that amazing because you would not have come this far to be sitting here in this group if you didn't feel that you needed it or that it, you could get something from it. And so to be like, do I deserve to be here? I'm like, stop. You deserve to be where you wanna be. It never occurred to me that someone would feel like they weren't culty enough.

Be a cult group. It's true though. That actually happens quite often.  Whispers came up with a great saying about that a long time ago when we got interviewed, when we first started our podcast. And that was that. It's not the Survivor Olympics. Not the Survivor Olympics. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like we all suffered.  Like everybody, we all suffered like you said, or we wouldn't have felt the need to be in a discussion group about our suffering. Yeah. Unless we're real sociopaths who just join discussion groups with barely any connection to them just to hear ourselves talk. But Tammy does a good job of filtering everybody out. Like she puts you through a serious talk to see if you're, if you got those sad culty eyes.

That was funny.

Anyway, we did have a, an imposter infiltrating our ranks before. Not in the Lalich center, but   the born in community from the children of God, where we have some pretty big,  social media groups, mostly. Most of them are through Facebook and stuff, but there's  a pretty strong connectivity.

And there was someone who was our age, who later on we found out, like she watched documentaries or whatever and got completely fascinated and just went in and embroiled herself in the history and the stories and studied it and then showed up and claimed to be an ex,  cult kid.

 Have you ever heard that joke where the guy is sitting at a table in a cafe and , someone walks by and says, oh, does your dog bite? And he says no, my dog doesn't bite. And then he reaches down to pet the dog, and the dog bites him.

And he's I thought you said your dog doesn't bite. And he was like, that's not my dog. And it was like that with her, where  everybody was like, I thought you knew her. No, I thought you knew her. Oh. And  people felt really violated. 'cause obviously she probably wasn't coming from a bad place in the sense that she didn't wanna harm any of you, but she was pretending to be something that she was not to have access to your interactions, just out of curiosity, which is its own kind of .

Morally and ethically corrupt behavior. , how did she get found out? , she actually had a quite the agenda. And she was gathering people's stories. , and then she would make them, her stories and she would retell them for her.

 Because our community is, pretty well connected and we're all over the world. We always try to help each other whenever, oh,, I'm gonna be in Amsterdam for the, two weeks.

Is anybody around that I can crash on their couch kind of a thing. And there's just this trust of a shared background. Yeah, I'm gonna help you out even if I don't know you personally. And so she used that to get free tickets, to go around to places free food,  I think the longer that she got away with it, the more  she believed she was gonna continue getting away with it. And it wasn't until she ended up actually in Australia, believe it or not, where she bounced around a few different  people's houses. And they started comparing notes going, something's off of this. I think the first clue was that she didn't know.

She didn't know our food song. Yeah, the food song. The food song. That'll give you a way the food song is everybody knows the Food song.  From the very beginning concept of the cult back in probably Huntington Beach, somebody wrote a song. Do you know who wrote it?

Was it Aaron? Was it Aaron? I think so. But it was, thank you Jesus, for this food and for ours. So prayer. Help us, Lord, do some good and keep us in n care and bless our loved ones everywhere. Jesus' name we pray. Amen. . Food song. We say Before every meal. Yeah, before every meal.  Long after I was able to get out, I went to go meet my half sisters for the first time , who were not born in the cult, who were never grew up in the cult, . They knew that their father was part of it. They fucking knew this.

They knew the food song, they knew the song. I was there and and my bio dad was like, Hey, should we do the, should we do the the Grace song? And I was like, what are you talking about? And he starts playing it. And all of them sang it. And I thought I was gonna have a heart attack.

It was like so weird. But yeah. So she didn't know that song. And you cannot have grown up in the cult in any way. And not, I love the Shiba. So I just learned this word shibolet a few years ago. This is a shibboleth so in, in the movie, in Gloria's bastards, like he's pretending to be German or he's pretending he's been to be American.

And then, but then he says the number three, and he goes like this. And only Europeans say three like this Americans say three like this. And that's the shibboleth and that's when I learned it. So her Valli was the food song. It's yeah. Busted. Yeah. Yeah. That's such an interesting story. Like what.

Is what is going on in that person's head that they wanna be a part of. It's like the one thing that you all have who are no longer in it, is that you have a shared experience that is support , so she just wants to be in a fucking club that she like, has not earned, and why, of all the cultures and things that, and specificities that you could infiltrate.

Why this? It's I'm so confused by that. Yeah I would say that at first as well with it, but as we started talking  what happened is , those of us who had her in their house, I was one of them, we got together and, we started, exchanging notes. This is not adding up, this is happening.

And eventually it was so alarming we ended up contacting her family and her family was like, yeah, this isn't the first time she's done this at all. And we went on to find out, and , it wasn't just her family who confirmed it was other organizations, , she had done the same thing to a small, like a a Orthodox Jew Jewish community and  claim that 

she was Jewish, and her ancestor had survived the Holocaust taking on that kind of like stuff. , but specifically she targets, groups that are organized around surviving something and then wants to be a part of, wants to inherit that pain and that experience.

Yeah, I think so. It's really specific mental illness, no, yeah. It's almost what's that? It's very weird. How do you say that? I never pronounce it the ma maso syndrome, but reverse, like on yourself moon esn by proxy is when the people keep, make their kids sick to Yeah. For whatever crazy reason.

Yeah. So yeah, it's the, it's like making yourself wanting to have a damaged past, at the court. Is it just that you don't feel very interesting? What? You know what I'm really, I'm just trying to think, unpack, like what would make someone do that? And, but as always, with imposters of various kinds, I wonder how they sleep at night.

I feel like if I was like on such a big rift that was so clearly a lie, it would be hard for me to just have a regular kind of demeanor. 'cause I would feel so anxious about getting caught that I wouldn't be able to be cool. I wouldn't be able to enjoy my grift, basically. Oh my, yeah, no, for sure.

Stressed night and day. Me too she was not healthy mentally, unfortunately. . And she ended up, she ended up taking her life, so it's Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah.  There was that element of it that was , like you were saying, like it wasn't  she was coming out and doing it  to harm someone outright as much as it was, , whether, needing a sense of belonging, not feeling like you,  could fit in, and so , there was probably very likely, at least from my interaction with her, there was a disconnect. I think she really, truly, fully believed the story she told herself. And   authenticity is a big thing for me.

, like most of us, we have this huge bullshit detector. . And she really did come across as authentic and I don't think she would've gotten around, as many of us as she did and gotten away with as much as she did if she didn't come across as authentic., . If you want a group where you feel, have a sense of belonging, why not just join a cult? Like why try to get in the cult survivor?  Obviously like y'all are much safer and will probably be the least likely people to cause harm.

Yeah. But are therefore also  easier to manipulate because you want to believe and you're training yourself to trust again. It's really insidious. It's really fascinating. There's a documentary about a woman  I think it's just called The Imposter who pretended to be a nine 11 survivor.

Oh. And, but took that and created a foundation and raised a bunch of money. Like she did good things with it. But then eventually she got busted again. How do you sleep at night? Because we, because for this country,  anything written, nine 11 is like overly cranked up emotional.

And then so to find out that someone faked it, Ooh, people must have hated her. Yeah.  It is interesting 'cause it's literally the exact opposite of what we were talk, just talking about a few minutes ago of the imposter syndrome or the, oh I'm probably didn't suffer enough to belong to this group.

 It's the opposite of that.  You actually , make up a backstory that you. Belong . Like you've suffered enough to belong to this group it's a different kind of imposter syndrome where you're just compelled to be an imposter in whatever group you can sneak your way into, ,  our deepest survival mechanism  is finding a place to belong. Finding our tribe. Yeah. It makes sense that those are, that you can see some pretty desperate, behavior around  that thought, that need, yeah. It's funny 'cause  in my twenties, I tried to go to survivors of sexual abuse support group. Yeah. Could not even walk through that door. , I think I just wasn't ready, but I literally stood out in the hall so nervous. I thought I was gonna puke him and I just went home.

But I think it's also because I felt like my story was so specific and complicated, and in order to understand it, I was gonna have to talk for half an hour before anyone could even understand what I was talking about. But I just felt like I'm not gonna find anyone in this room who knows what I'm talking about.

Yeah. It's just gonna be weird and alienating. , I'm just saying that because when I first got into a discussion group,   like six months ago or something, when I first started coming to the group, I was  blown away. Makes me quiet and thinking about it, I was just like, wow, my people.

That, and that feels really, that feels particularly shitty and evil to, to invade that space.  The first one that I went to, there was a woman who's also in the group. We've resolved their issues now, but she, is someone who's been like borderline harassing me for years. And I didn't realize it was her until I had already been there and talked  because I didn't know what she looked like.

And that was like a whole fuck, there's no such thing as a safe space. But we worked it out. That was real disappointment to me because I was like, how would she have any idea know that I was here? And I'm like, okay. It's just, we're a small community in some ways. If, we're, we should, I'm likely to be in the same space in many ways with different people who have had similar experiences.

But I was also just so thrilled that there's a group that's just for those of us who are raised in it. 'cause when I first started looking and listening , to Janja talk, 'cause I have such a mistrust of the, just the cult healing industry just feels like it has all these edges that are just as corrupt and are particularly evil because it's such a vulnerable population who is literal to think for themselves.

So being coercive to some people like us just seems like, come on, give us a break.  When I first, started engaging with them and then got in touch with Yana and Tammy and then I saw there was a general group I was like, I do not wanna be in a group with people who voluntarily joined cults as adults.

What about you fools? I just had all this hate and hostility. And then I was like, but don't they understand? Those are our parents. Like we have a lot of issues with people who voluntarily joined cults. We did not. And in some ways we are opposite kinds of people. And I got over myself 'cause I'm like, come on, everybody needs compassion and there are things that we have in common, even if we didn't choose to be there at all.

Yeah. But I was really happy when it was gonna be just us. 'cause we have our own separate little pockets of anger to deal with that we understand. Yeah, absolutely. And also we don't feel guilty, you know what I mean? , in a way that I've seen a lot of people who've gotten sucked into cults and then gotten a, they feel stupid.

Like they have a whole , layer of self-hate that is not our brand of self-hate. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I think as well, 'cause I'm with you on that. I do still have a very hard time , with any kind of like mixed group. And I think part of the issue though too is like you said, there are parents and  we have issues with them.

 And so being in a sort of a healing space or a, a communication space with the first generation, it's forcing you. Into a place of healing and issues that you might not be ready for yet, that you have not sorted out.  And that can make it difficult and confusing instead of being able to not have that, forced, exposure.

Yeah. And then that way you can deal with the issues that you wanna deal with on your time without being like, hello. Also, you need to think about, . I've been making this joke joke, not joke as I've been, talking about the book and doing all the things, conversations which is, can I really call myself a survivor if I begged to stay?

Because , my father was never in the family. My mother left and my mother left without expecting them to send me. She told me that when they did send me I'd never thought I'd see you again. Yay. But when they told me that my mother left, I was like, fake sad because I didn't really know her.

I never was in the same place as her. She was in no way  a mother, like emotional significance to me. So I was sad, but I was like, the frog died. Do you know what I mean? Not like deep primal abandonment. Sad until they told me that I had to go too. And I was raised, totally insular, totally outside world is evil, no, exposure to  regular daily life. And so I begged to stay, and then they said let's send you to somewhere else to someone more powerful. And I begged that person to stay. And , they sent me to my mother. So I'm like, am I a cult survivor? I begged to stay. , I highly doubt I would've stayed like that.

I would've , become a teenager and Not wanted to live with all those limitations and craziness. Yeah. But I didn't escape. People always say, listen, when you escape the cult. Oh, I'm like, I didn't escape. I was kicked out. I was kicked out kicking and screaming. Yeah. Yeah. Me too.

Yeah, it's, we're survivors.   We're survivors in the way that, domestic violence survivors are survivors, there's probably every single one of them at some point, begged their. The person that was abusing them to, to stay, to love them, to, yeah. 'cause it's the only, especially if it's the only life, that's more fear than almost anything else. You're being kicked out of your family, essentially. You're being kicked outta your family. , I was like more being kicked outta my country, like just completely  I was about to like  dive headfirst into a culture that I didn't understand, but I knew I was gonna stand out in because I didn't understand really basic stuff. And that I was raised to believe was not only evil but contagious. That if you engage with it too much, you could become a world person and then you would be your no soul and blah, blah, blah.

And so that took me a minute to make friends. ' , or listened to music on the radio because I was afraid it was poisoning me. So yeah. So I know obviously I am a survivor. It is just, I just, I wouldn't say you escape the cult if they picture some like sexy kid throw her a duffle bag over her shoulder undercover of night.

No. I was like please don't make me go. Yeah,

yeah. , I think even in our community, there's been. So many discussions around that, because there's some, second gens that like escaped in a, even in a sort of dramatic way. Like I have a close friend who, she was, I think 16 and grabbed her brother at 15 and then split and ended up living on the streets of London.

, they have an escape story, and then you have, you have people like us who,  I had kids in the cult, we were in an environment where we didn't have that kind of choice, but immediately I was trapped in a way that I didn't know, that there was any other option to be.

 A lot of back and forth  happens where, both groups want the other to understand them, you need to understand I was trying to keep my kids safe 'cause I didn't even know how to drive, and that was the only choice I had.

And I had no money and no education and no, yeah, exactly like you were saying I that'd be asking me to choose exile and possibly losing my children as opposed to getting out and having to live on the streets. And that's a really tough really tough, situation too, I'm just thinking of Melinda Casabian, who was, she was one of the women who followed Manson. And she was there on the night of the murders , she was a, like a lookout. And   very soon after the murders, when she escaped, the only way she could was to leave her two-year-old behind.

And it was so hard for me not to judge her when I was learning that. And eventually she got the kid back. But it took a while. , but it says so much about, it's just my own baggage. I'm just like, how dare you? 'cause it just my own abandonment in a golf issues.  But it also underlined how desperate she was.

Do you know what I mean? I don't have kids, but I imagine them leaving a two year old behind is really hard. Yeah. And  you are in like crazy survival mode.  In her case she later said, , it was like I, if I didn't get out, I felt like we were both gonna die.

Yeah. But yeah. What happy cult things can we talk about?

So we, can you tell me this is something I could Google, but I would rather just ask you when the children of God started, is it also born out of a sixties revolution kind of vibe? Yeah. So the generation, so you're like, like me, like the generations there are only three generations, right?

The people who joined the people, or maybe four, right? 'cause you guys are a lot younger than I'm, no, we're all 50. I don't think so. Yeah, we're all 50 here. I'm Oh, I'm 55. Yeah. It's not a lot younger. So you're It's the same. It's the, I'm just thinking about reckoning, basically.

And like, when are these groups, especially the ones like Children of Goddess people, everybody knows about it   many, famous people have, written about it, who ] , grew up in it.  I'm just always thinking about reckoning.  When is finally someone gonna, bust them open and say, you can't keep doing this and how, yeah, good question. In particularly with the children, God,  we've run into a lot of issues because , their, the crimes are so dubious , and a lot of them, Probably most of them were committed outside of the us. , nobody knew anyone's legal name ever, so we wouldn't even be able to name, our abusers and the leaders always stayed in hiding , the very top leaders.

 We have a couple organizations of second gens that are fighting to try to get the leader prosecuted. But Karen Zerbe isn't, most of us think that she's,  not even in the US at this time. So it's like, how do you get her extradited to, to, oh so nobody, you can't even find her to get people to, yeah. So it's, and then once you do, it's like, how do bur David Berg was wanted by Interpol, but he's dead. So it's like how do you build a case on that? And we've, through the years, obviously the F B I, the c I A, like the children got, have been investigated over and over, but at the end of the day, most of them have just thrown up their hands and said I don't know what to say.

Especially 'cause  the US has such awful what do you call it? Statute of limitations on things as well. Although somebody was telling me, oh, my lawyer my lawyer for my publisher because the family I grew up in is embroiled in a big, complicated lawsuit. And they, their lawyer got in touch with me and asked me if I would testify.

I was like, no thanks. But she was telling me that actually in California and in a couple states, the statute of limitations specifically for child sexual abuse has been extended. And so a lot of things are happening and have been happening in the last couple years. Yeah. 'cause of that. Yeah., I know they've opened up civil cases,  there's no there's no limits on that anymore.

I have, I've been thinking about it a lot because I have a connection to the, one of the editors at the op-ed of the New York Times and, people are paying attention to me more because I have a book out right now. In an op-ed, you really have to make a strong case for something.

I just wanted to use it as a platform to talk about. The cult obsession and the documentaries in media around it and who it's helping. And that wasn't strong enough for the New York Times for the op-ed, but I really wanted the op-ed because it's just, people read that all the time.

And so I've been formulating and I actually talked to Yna about this. I was like, what do we like, like the Inconvenient Truth was a call to action. The documentary that Al Gore made about the environment, it was a call to action. And what we need survivors, we need a call to action, but we also we need to articulate what it is we need.

And Yani was saying, it starts with, changing coercion laws, right? Yep. That's so that things that are now murky are still a crime. And particularly this thing that happens a lot where people are like they're over 18. I can't tell them what to do, even if they're being manipulated, brainwashed, coerced in some sort of high demand situation.

, if there was something that we could change that would actually have an effect on, children of God living for generations, for example and Scientology being the sort of most clever and giant beast. Yeah. Like what would that look like?

I feel like if we, as a population, we meaning survivors and our allies could articulate it. It could happen. Yeah. Yeah. It could it's something that I could write about and I could talk about in a really concrete way, but I'm not a lawyer and I don't know enough about the laws.

Yeah. I'm just curious what you all think of that. Like in terms of what you would like to see change what you think, what, like where does the F b I just look? What does children of God people slip through their fingers. Yeah. And can that be fixed? It sounds to me like just, they've just been really good  for generations at obscuring their identities and moving around and just making, just being slippery eagles.

Yeah. Which is mostly illegal. Yeah. Yeah. But you can't get 'em. If you can't get 'em, you can't get 'em. Yeah. I'm very passionate about this. , I don't think I've stopped talking about this. Almost like the whole last, like six months. The coercion laws is big.

But That's a bit more long term. I think that's gonna take a lot of work and a lot of rally. It needs to be done a thousand percent. I'm behind that. Personally, I think something that can be done right away is that every single kid that was born in a cult and raised the way that we were fit the UN and US definition of human trafficking, we were trafficked.

And if we could, as a society or as a, or whether it's the law enforcement, whether it's the United States, governments can say children born in a cult fall under definition of human trafficking. And, you've got labor trafficking, you've got sex trafficking, you've got organ trafficking, you have cult trafficking.

It would open up some avenues for resources for so many of us  we've got a lot of similar very similar challenges that we face as  victims of human trafficking, sex trafficking that have been 'cause they are too controlled, kept away from society. They end up, when they finally get out there, like they don't have money.

They don't know how to open a bank account..  I'm a director of communication and engagement for a nonprofit anti-trafficking organization. And like right now,  I'm working with two different groups To add our names to a network where they've just got lists and lists and lists of all these groups, and all these organizations that offer services that offer help and support to victims of human trafficking.

 The first one I, when I met with her, I just I actually started crying because I was just like, it breaks my heart. 'cause these are all things that like so many of people in our, my community would've been able to take advantage of if we would just be acknowledged as that's the category that we fit into, so yeah. Interesting. I'm passionate about that. In a way too, outside of actual services and support, it's a kind of legitimizing of it and in a way that it it like helps people understand it. 'cause it feels like now people don't understand it and don't realize how common it is and don't realize how many of us there are and don't realize that another, a new generation is, it's happening too.

Like it's not gone and it's not a problem, it's going away. But if it was, what if it came under, it got into the human trafficking conversation, I could see how it would, people would be able to stop like getting their popcorn and watching documentaries about us and actually think no, this is fucked up.

I think we were in, yeah. I was talking with Asia home, who's, she's got a whole thing going on in Canada, and we were talking about how people  feel so free to say, , I'm obsessed with cults. And she was like, it's like someone saying they're obsessed with human trafficking.

People don't understand you're obsessed with cult. What does that mean? Ooh, child abuse. Tell me more. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Fuck. No, for sure. For sure. That's, yeah, that's exactly my thinking as well. It gives people an understanding of just how deeply embedded our experience was  , and what it took to come out of what we were in.

I just, I think it gives that language to people who don't understand, who aren't coming from an understanding of being in a cult and  being trapped in that way, and it feels like the awareness of, and empathy toward the trafficking in general has radically changed.

I remember the first time I read something about human trafficking, that was like maybe in my twenties, in my thirties, I think. And my first thought was, how could you not know? How could you get sucked into this? Just like all the things that a lay person would think.

And obviously I've learned a lot about it since then.  But that's also, I think one thing that we're all fighting against, which is the judgment. And then for us, we're like, wait, you can't even don't judge people, but you can't even judge us. Yeah, it was, but still, I don't know why somehow how, like we're not like real people to people.

What is that? Is it be, maybe it's because they think people think that we're not, there's not that many of us, or I don't know, there's just people think that all other sorts of victims and survivors are real people but we're just like fascinations. I don't know. I'm just, I'm constantly thinking about this and word shopping and trying to find intelligent ways to talk about it to non cult related people so that they shake up their own expectations.

And I was talking recently at an event in LA and I just said, who is this word for this word? Cult Cults. Certainly don't call themselves cults. Know that. I, it took me a long time to call what I grew up in a cult, and still when I'm speaking publicly, I feel. It feels reductive and Yeah, mean-spirited.

And I'm playing to the other side, which is maybe just still the cult kid that's in me, that it feels like protective of their identity. I understand, I they check all the boxes. Like I get it. It, they really are a cult. And I really did grow up in a cult, but I still feel uncomfortable when I'm, when I say the word and I hear the people I grew up with hear me say it.

Do you know what I mean? They're probably like, what the fuck? And what is this word? We never called ourselves a cult. How does it, how did the word cult come up when you were still in children of God? And did they find ways to, to address it or just that word was never said.

Oh, it was, I don't really, I don't really remember ever hearing that word. I maybe because for that period of time I went into that, like when all the grades were happening. Yeah. You did the media. Yeah. All that media bullshit. And I didn't we just always called ourselves a sect.

Yeah, that's what religious, they would faked. They would talk about it as they would say they try to call us that, but we're not, absolutely not that we're a new religious org organization. Non-denominational. Yeah. And Christian, blah, blah blah or whatever, yeah. We're sect. They put actually even a lot of attention and time and money into having some, scholars write a couple of books on us come in and study us and write a couple of books to, validate that we  were not a cult, which I mean their  work I don't think would stand up against anyone.

So is that, like The Onion talks a lot about the cult apologists that she is encountered throughout her career and how that she believes that there are academics in particular who are, paid by different powerful cults to, to, feed misinformation and deflect. And I think she said that at some point there was a pretty powerful woman in that movement who was just arguing against using the word cult.

And while I just said all that stuff about that word in my own relationship to it, I do think it's incredibly useful, for us and for people who are trying to understand us as a shorthand Yeah. So they were fully putting money and energy into misinformation. Yeah.

Yeah. And they leaned really heavy into the whole oh that was our growing pains, all that horrible stuff that happened. That was our growing pains. And  that concept always just tripped me up because I was like, but that doesn't mean it didn't, like how does that make it all?

We're still then we're fucking lab rats and you figuring out how to make an alternative society. Thank you very much. Yeah. We don't do that. We don't do that to like human beings. Oh. Oh. He raped all those people. Yeah. He was just growing pains. He was 18. What could you like No, we put them like, why is it different?

But, just because it falls under religion and the  manipulation in the ways that it's used unfortunately to cover up a lot of crime. Not, I wonder we do this thing, and that is on that subject. Yeah. Yeah. So I did the podcast let's talk about sex.

And that was really great. She's not one of us, but she's very, I don't know, she just feels like her heart is in the right place. And so I just, I made a post about, with a clip and this man, not a man, I know he wrote. Lyman family wasn't any more of a cult than the cult of capitalism.

The same things that happened to you happen in mainstream churches and at workplaces and in regular schools. The cult of capitalism is threatening our very existence on this planet, the group you grew up in. Were just trying to create some beauty and meaning amidst all this darkness by means of music and meaningful work.

Cult explaining much. Mel himself, the leader, said that he was misunderstood. Just listen to the beautiful album they created with blah, blah, blah, or blah, blah, blah, or blah, blah, blah. Mel was a joker and a minstrel. If you take his words too seriously, you will miss the point. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then he writes, Mel attempted to create a bit of genuine feeling and togetherness where mistakes made and people harmed. Of course. What else would you expect in any gathering of homo sapiens? I don't think it's really fair to lump Mel in with the likes of Manson and Koresh. There was more to him than that.

And, it good 20 minutes of me being like, this is what I'm gonna write back. And then I was like, no. And I'm like, I like really just wanna type. Oh, thank God you're here. And I didn't, I was like, don't engage. Don't engage. But it's that. It's just people make mistakes. I'm like, don't have fucking kids if you wanna make that level of mistake.

Do you know what I mean? Make mistakes that harm you and only you, and don't do that, really. If you must. Yeah, that's, yeah. Anyway, I just really, I'm like, who is this guy? I just saw that my sister actually commented, I hadn't seen this. My sister just wrote, did you read the book?

Oh, no. Oh. And then she said, yes, I actually really loved the book. I have just noticed a difference between Gu Mare's book and her marketing message of the book, because in the book, I'm a child, and in my marketing message, I'm an adult speaking about it Anyway,, I expected more haters than I've gotten, so I'm not really, that, that kind of stuff doesn't really upset me.

And I also, my assistant was like, should we take that down? And I was like, no, I like having that there for other people to see that, that you can read my book and then you can you can see that someone would say people make mistakes. And I'm like, no, that's bigger than just whoops, I broke the vase.

Yeah. It's not a mistake if you keep doing it and it's systemic, part of the culture of where you are, that's not a mistake. That's a fucking lifestyle choice, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's hard not to get mad. I try not to limit it. Yes. But sometimes I just, when that stuff happens I just, I'm just like, you're not paying attention.

I.

 Wow. So what we need to, what we need to start with is adding any kind of person you think, and whisper that the who needs to be added to the, under the roof of human trafficking is all people who've been engaged with cults, or specifically those of us who were born into them.

I think specifically those of us who are Right. Because there's no gray area there, right? No, there isn't. Yeah. You are born into something that you had no choice about. There's no choice and your child. Is there anything comparable to that in our society where people are born into I'm just thinking, like for women who are trafficked, I'm sure, but they don't, there, it doesn't last long enough really for them to then have a child and then that child grows up in a human trafficking thing, because the child changes the game and who knows what happens, yeah. There's not something that's really interesting though. I'm really processing that and. And feeling that the number one thing we need just as a baseline is some kind of legitimacy and context for people. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That I do definitely feel that as well.

I know  they've done something  in Australia because Australia has this what's it called, the redress program where if you suffered child abuse and there's not an entity to charge or sue or arrest  you can apply for this redress program, and they give you, you get a grant.

A pretty sizable chunk of money actually., and like in the last couple months they added children of God as one of the organizations, that fall into that category. So there that's happening in Australia. Obviously in Europe England, Scotland, there's actually been some charges that have been successful in going through, so against children of God in particular.

Yeah. Yeah. That's  individual. It is. They have been individuals, but they have been like the first successful arrests and imprisonment that we've seen that was specifically for being, like child abuse from the children of God. So the United States is a little far behind still on that, as usual and social justice.

And so what's, when you say a sizable amount of money, like what's a ballpark of what people are getting? Do you know, . Life or hundred. Yeah. Or 125 something like you can start a business. Yeah. Yeah. In the six figure, buy a house life if you're smart with your money, that's amazing.

Yeah. I also wonder, I, my mind immediately always just goes to let's tell a story about this. And you know how , often when people win the lottery who didn't grow up with money, they're like, just becomes a complete fucking shit show 'cause they don't know how to manage it or they're just, whatever.

They just spend it all or give it all to their friends or get tricked out of it and it just ruins their life and their relationships. And so now I'm thinking like you are either a victim of some kind of child abuse or you are, grew up in the children of God and are just learning life skills in general about how to be out of, this structure that kind of provides you with all of this stuff.

I just wonder now what the, how these people have fared. Probably it's just starting to happen, right? Yes. Yep. Just. It sounds like you all have such an intense support group that there's probably people all around, whoever's got that money saying okay, let's start with what do you wanna do with your life?

Also don't tell anyone you got this money. Yeah, exactly. Number one, don't tell people it's just gonna bring crazy. As soon as I got a book deal, people were just coming at me, people, can I borrow, my friends? And I'm like, no. Good for you. No, I can't. I actually, I didn't say no.

 Because they figured I had a chunk of change from my book. And they were right. And I'm just a sucker. But anyway, that's really interesting. And I feel like our government is way too cheap to, cheap, just for starters so that, so it wouldn't even get very far.

'cause everyone's like, where is that money? And come from, I'm like, I don't know. Why don't you just fuck, military already and give us some money. Yeah. I know. Something like that wouldn't. , we'd have to change the entire outlook of a lot of things in the United States get that far, but still every kid who's been through the American foster care system, 90% of them would have would need some retribution money.

'cause that system is so in insanely broken and harmful. Yeah, exactly. And I think that would just be like, it would just be like, wow. So we're basically a nation of abused people, from so many different avenues and we're such a big country, but Australia's a big country. Yeah.

Yep. I wasn't aware that Australia had that kind of progressive kind of in motion that was, there was like some kind of hope acknowledgement of harm. Yeah. Yeah. What was that lady that you had come into the writing group? The, what was the book called? Is Rape a Crime? Was that the right yeah.

Yeah. That was really interesting to me, I think because I didn't realize, but like that so many people get away with that. Like it's, what was it? Such a tiny percent of the cases that are brought are actually like, found to be guilty. It's almost stupid. And it's crazy. It's like, why do we have to fight so hard to protect ourselves?

Not just even from kids growing up in college, but just women in general. Yeah. Yeah. That book is pretty incredible. Like the hard to read because it's, because you're like, fuck it is so traumatizing. Nevermind the rape to report it and then watch people not do a fucking thing. What is wrong with us?

Like that. And that's why I think it's such a great title. The title is Rape a Crime? Because it doesn't, no one's acting like it is acting like it's an unfortunate thing that happened. Do you know what I mean? You got into an argument with someone, do you know what I mean? It's crazy and so disturbing.

Yeah. Yeah. But she's great. When I met her and then she told me about her book and then she sent me a book and she was done. I was like, because you see how she is. She's very soft spoken and very sweet and very not a tough guy at all. Obviously internally a very tough guy. And then I looked at her book, 

and I was like, wow, you're not fucking around. It is like black with red letters that say, is rape a crime? And I'm like, I gave it to a few people just 'cause I think it's really great and it's really eye-opening. And they were like my sister was like Leave this lying around at my coffee table and people come home.

I'm like, yeah, own it. Absolutely. Make people ask what,  and Michelle told me that she struggled with this title. If it was a good idea to be but then ultimately she was like, yeah, that is what the book is about. And that if, if people are taking the cover off of it to read it on the subway so people don't ask them about rape.

Oh no, it still says rape on the book. It's really, I don't know. I find it all really fascinating. What people wanna read about, what kind of suffering people wanna read about, you know? Yeah. Reason our suffering is fascinating, but this is wow, nobody wants to hear about all that. You not unless it happens inside of cult. Then you got me like, what the fuck? Yeah. That cult porn. Yeah, cult porn industry. So in terms of books that have been written about Children of God by survivors are there ones that you like or do you not even read them because you're just like I don't need to put myself through that again.

Whisper reads them. I have not yet. I am, I'm not I'm too scared to write. I honestly haven't read any, like any cult memoirs at all. Just because. I think it, I'm not sure how I would feel or do, but ws for, you've read, I know you read Lauren's. Yeah. I read Leaving isn't. Oh yeah. You read that too.

Yeah. You read that. You read. Leaving isn't the hardest thing. Not the whole thing. Just 'cause I got distracted from it, but I read about half of it. What do, how do you feel about that one? That one I actually is one of my more favorite ones because it's not telling the story, it's not telling the cult story.

It's not telling it, it's not the sensational trauma porn, cult porn. It's, this is the reality of what it's like trying to live with trauma in a day to day and trying to survive and feeling like an outsider no matter where you go. So I, yeah I liked it for that reason. I also like her style of humor and all that.

Yeah. I felt immediately jealous of her title. Oh, why didn't I think of that? That's a really good title, yeah. Yours is good too. I love you. I love the title of your book, VIR. Oh, thank you. I was when the world Didn't End. When the World Didn't End. Yeah. I, I. Just do, I didn't have a good title  I would just would make random list and send them to my editor of just things that I didn't even necessarily think were good, just to keep the conversation going.

And she really liked that one. Nice. And I was like, yeah, but I'm like, but could it also be a movie starring Mandy Moore where she was dying of cancer, but then she's not, and so it's like a feel good movie about living life to the fullest. And she was like, I guess you crazy person. Or I was like, oh, it could be like a, pick yourself up get it together girl after a crappy breakup.

Like you can do it. Like the world didn't end just 'cause that stupid man broke up with you or whatever. Yeah. My brain went to those places too. Yeah. Really cheesy. Not cheesy, but so not what I wrote, then they get a nice big surprise. Yeah. Sorry. Oh, expect that.

So he is like, no, , anyone who picks up your book is gonna know what it's about in two seconds. And also, 'cause it's literally the first thing that happens in the first two pages is that the world doesn't end. So if you didn't know, you will know. 'cause that's what's up as I'm waiting for the world to end and then it doesn't.

Yeah. I want Did you have a specific, like end date? Was there like a specific day that everything was gonna happen? Yeah, it's it was January 5th, 1975 the world was going to add in spaceships. Were going to take us to Venus. Oh. How did the leader come up with that date in particular?

Just wanted exactly, literally the first sentence of the book. On January 5th, 1975, the world was going to end. All the world. People were going to be wiped up the face of the earth, but not us because a spaceship was going to come and take us to Venus, where we would live. This seemed completely plausible to my six year old self.

Exciting even. We were going to live on the planet of love.

Oh.

I do not know how he came up with that date. What's interesting is people ask me a lot especially now, what did he believe? What did they believe? And I'm like, I was never fully explained to me 'cause I was just a kid and that was just what was around me. And like things were explained in moments, but also ideology and doctrine seemed to be like slippery.

There wasn't like a Bible or a Bible to interpret. Like he wrote a couple of books. But then also it was like these very, nebulous concepts of living in the moment and, like, where's your soul? And like a lot of astrology, just a lot of shit that it was easy to get wrong because it was not ever really fully defined.

So the end result of that being like, you always felt like you could get in trouble in any second for something you didn't understand, which is , needless to say, a bit of a un unstable way to grow up. Just feeling like they're, like at any point you could be getting it wrong, even though you don't know what the rules are.

Like you're playing a game and you don't know what the rules are. Yeah. It was like that growing up a lot with us too. Never really knew. We, it was loosely defined, I would say, but yeah, it was more just you never really knew what you were gonna get in trouble for. You could possibly get in trouble with this with one adult and another adult wouldn't care, or you just would never really knew pretty much any, anything that was out of the realm of like simple happiness.

You couldn't be sad, you couldn't be too happy. Like you had to basically just have this like almost robotic type of, attitude. Like all your exuberance and joy and praise was only to God. And other than that, like pretty much, there wasn't really any other emotion except for to God, right? Am I wrong about that?

I feel like that's how it was, like the, all our emotions and joy and love and everything was directed to, invisible things and not each other. Like we weren't, whisper and I we were friends for as soon as we met in Thailand. I was 15, she was 14, and instantly we were separated.

Like the second we got to the school and they realized that we hit it off, they were like, whoop, okay. Opposite ends, don't talk, don't sit by each other, nothing. Ali, I didn't have that so much. I, but I did have that if a kid was in trouble. One of the main things is don't talk to them. Don't look at them, don't talk to them.

Not that it would be a permanent, like keeping two kids apart from each other, but at any moment you could be the subject of complete shunning and, not like having no one look you in the eye and everyone, like even kids who didn't have any problem with you or have any even really understood what it was that you did.

Were afraid to engage with you because they could get in trouble, which is just, it's like the loneliest feeling in the world if you grow up with it in this like really tight-knit kind of situation. Where, and where, for me anyway, like relationships with the kids that were my friends, which is most of them, that was my strength.

You know what I mean? That was the thing that like, made me feel like, okay, and safe is this like intense, intensely connected community of kids. And so to turn that on us was always the scariest thing in the world. Do you find yourselves drawn to communal environments?

Not really. They scare me. Like I'm I even get nervous staying in a hotel just because I feel like. To me that's like back in school, we're all in our rooms. We go to this place to eat together. And like even that really doesn't often sit well with me. Something as simple as staying in a hotel can feel institutional to me.

Yeah. All my, all of my nightmares, all of my nightmares always include being in places with just tons and tons of people. And I don't know anyone, I don't recognize anyone. That's always, and that's always my nightmares. And a apparently some, a lot of us have those similar, something similar.

'cause that's what it was. Like you living there, yeah. Because you would be sent to a different community somewhere else and then it would be full of people that you didn't know. But were not encouraged to develop any real bond with. Exactly. Yes. Yes. And if you did start to develop bonds they'd move you like very quickly too.

Yep. Especially in Southeast Asia where we lived. I that's another thing about the children of God is that every different location had wildly different. There's children who lived with their family the whole entire time, whereas to whisper now that's like a completely foreign concept.

'cause we were removed from our families of the age of 12. So it really depended on which country you grew up in, who your parents were, what kind of connections you had or didn't have. Yeah. That kind of a thing, like really affected how you were treated and how you grew up and all of that kind of stuff.

But in, in general. In general, it was definitely like one of his earliest, one of Berg's earliest like Revelations was what he called one wife, which was everyone belongs to each other. All the chil, no one, all the children belong to all of us. No. Parents, have only their children.

And there's the, they use a quote a lot where he was like, God's in the business of breaking up families. That's literally his quote. And they stuck to that one really well. I asked the question about being drawn to communal groups because I found I didn't really see this until, maybe in the last 10 years, but I.

The college that I chose is very, it's small and it's a, and it's slightly isolated. So it the culture of it is, feels culty. Not in a bad way, but in a kind of like a knowable community of people that you see every day. Not like a huge college where you see strangers, like after a year there.

There's no such thing as a stranger on the campus. 'cause that's 'cause it's not a very big school. So even if you didn't know someone well, you could, you knew their face and their name. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In that perspective. Yes, definitely. If there's ever a choice of being in a place, whether it's work, whether it's school, whatever, , the smaller, the better.

Always. And, once you go start getting to know people, there is a comfort of that  sure. Rather than facing new people and strangers every single day. That's really difficult one for me, I was, I, so I have been, I talked in our writing group about this to my, I've been in six different times.

I've been in artist residencies where you go and, some people are there for three weeks, some people are there for six weeks. And it's all different kinds of artists. And if you get in, it's free and you just work in your space all day. And then the only thing they ask is that you have dinner every night together.

And I live for those spaces. But one of the reasons I think that I love it so much is, Because first of all, I'm really comfortable in a dinner with 30 people. That's just how I grew up. So the, but then I'm also like hyper aware of power dynamics and social dynamics.

And watching those things unfold in a group of people is interesting. But the one amazing thing is that power dynamics can't ever take hold for too long because people are coming and going. So as soon as weird dynamics and clicks develop, like somebody leaves and it's this ever shifting organism where power is distributed and re recalibrated on a weekly basis.

And I think that's why I love it because it's like there is no danger of hierarchies developing for at least not for long. But you do, I do love, I do love a dinner party, a big ass dinner party. , are there ways, things about yourself , that you see as a direct result of your upbringing?

Not that I don't mean so much as a self judging thing, but things about you that are not just a result of harm but just who you are as a person and  who it made you in terms of how you manage the people in your life. 

Yeah. For me even though it's been challenging in, in a lot of ways, it's been challenging in relationships and in, in the workplace I actually do appreciate , that authenticity that I have. I don't, I cannot lie, I cannot bullshit. I just can't it just, it like, it literally turns my inside inside out if I try to do that.

And so obviously, like a lot of success in the world is from people bullshitting each other. But I like that aspect of me. I would prefer that any day than trying to, be some, be someone I'm not or show off something that I'm not. And is that something that you were raised with that just that, above all else be truthful that you, or is that just because you grew up with so much bullshit that now you're just like, there will be no bullshit in my life, I just gotta keep it simple?

Yeah. Yes. Yeah, that's absolutely it. And because I think even from the beginning I was like that, like my whole thing was always like this, you guys can't possibly really think this, you can't possibly really believe that. And so I was always in trouble and being able to like, meet myself as, oh, those are actually like good qualities of me, not the bad qualities.

I was constantly told that , that was , a marrying of my soul with  who I. Was, and that it was, that part of me was good. That was a big sort of aha thing. The other thing I, I do like too about myself, and I've been told this by many people,  , the way that I think is very outside the box, , I had a professor, , a math professor who one day was like, w whisper.

I wanna set aside a time,  I wanna hear your story because I wanna know how you became you, because I've never had a student like you who thinks so 360, most people think very linearly. , you think like outward like that.

And I do that too. And I think some of it, I'm sure does come from, having to be a survivor, having to think on your feet, having to constantly, like adapt and all of that. But I do like that about myself where I'm always willing to hear another side. I'm always willing to consider.

And I find a lot of solutions that people haven't even thought of because of that. So I think those are a couple things. And then just that the, the kind of mother that I grew into being simply from how not to be, knowing how not to be a parent. I really appreciate.

I, I have a fantastic relationship with my kids now and I really appreciate that. That's, I feel like I would be afraid to be a parent, I just feel like I'm, I got this house of cards is, glued together and it's okay, but I wouldn't, I don't think it would be ready for, I feel like, not that I would be a bad parent, I would be a bad parent, but parent because I would be so incredibly afraid of harm to them that I would just be an annoying parent.

Yeah. Ultimately, maybe given the cause of harm by just being like, don't trust fucking anyone. It's not men fucking ever, I would be like that and that's not healthy. Yeah. I'm not too far off of that. Jem and I both are like this, we're very similar in our, on our parenting w I've always been very honest with them, told them everything about my upbringing and, because I couldn't tell them like, Hey, you guys need to do this.

And then they'd be like why didn't you mom, and then have no answer for them. So I've always been very straightforward with them and honest with them and look, this is my baggage and whatever I might be passing on to, that I wanna work on it and let's work on it together.

It's always been. I've always said that I chose to be , present rather than protective  because that's what I had to grow up with them basically. But yeah, just terrifying. And I went through hell I have horror stories of things I went through trying to be a parent so I'm thankful for them and I'm so glad to have them.

But I, I'm pretty sure that if I was in a situation where, I'd gotten out of the cult and didn't have kids, I would be terrified of having them. For sure. Yeah. Probably the same. We both have kids in the, still a terrified parent, to be honest with you. They're in their twenties. 



Yeah. I would say for. For example, that compartmentalizing is, can be emotionally unhealthy. However, it can also be a superpower because, and I don't know this is entirely healthy, but this is a strength that I have if something happens to me and it is very inconvenient for me to have to react to it and process it, I can turn it off like that.

It's just no hold please. But like for weeks or however long I need to and it's a little scary, but I do like to think of it in this way. Part of surviving these kinds of things that we survived is compartmentalizing just so you can get through the day or whatever.

And so it's just fun to think of it as a superpower, even though it's arguably, it's just a kind of emotional architecture that I just stuck with. But it's nice  to be able to completely not show how you're feeling and not even feel how you're feeling when it's not convenient.

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I can do that sometimes, but sometimes I get really overwhelmed too. I think.

 I had a lot of worldly experiences that I wouldn't have had. Like I traveled to so many different countries. I was all over Europe and Asia, and I don't think I ever probably would've happened if I had grown up. Like the place I live now is where I would've grown up if my mother hadn't left and joined the cult.

And actually now that I live here, I'm like, Ooh, thank God I didn't grow up here because I probably would've been like a drug addict or, like something not too great. Because a lot of the kids around here that kind of were not same age as me, they either went two ways, like Jesus or drugs.

And that's pretty much that's, there's not a lot of other, so I don't really know It's hard to say how I would've grown up or what would've happened. I do wonder about that a lot though. But I feel like a lot of that worldly experience and maybe like mind expansion and language learning and all that kind of stuff that I feel really helped to maybe open up the creative side of my brain.

Although I was pretty creative ever since I was, like, I wrote a poem when I was seven that I just found a little while ago, and I was like, oh, I was writing poems when I was seven. Okay. It's funny to look back and see that too, like that was already there way back then.

I also feel like I feel like I grew into very empathetic and understanding person that I might not have otherwise been, because I feel like I can have compassion for almost anybody else's experiences and difficulties that they share with me. Like I can really feel for them.

And I heard this thing that empathy is, pain, but compassion is healing. Something like that. Like basically you can't. Not, you can't, but it's not healthy just to feel for somebody like empathetically. But compassion makes you wanna try and do something.

Improve their situation. Yeah. Yeah. And help them along, even if it's just with words of encouragement or, simple things like that. I feel like I gained a lot of experience like teaching teenagers and things like that, that I'm, I don't think I probably would've had. And I feel very empathetic towards teenagers.

Yeah. Which I feel like that's lacking a lot in the world. A lot of people are like, oh, you're an adult, you're 14, 15, you are an adult. You don't need, you don't need somebody to be like, oh, it's okay, you can do this. You can't, the parents are so dismissive of their kids at that ages.

They're like, hurry up and get out of my house. Oh, the day you turn 18, you're out. To me, that's such a weird concept. Like, why would a parent even wanna do that? I'm like, please stay with me, baby. Please come back home. Not like I, I'm about now you're 18. That's hard for me to understand too.

And I work with a lot of kids because I work in a kitchen and there's always dishwashers and prep coats and they're always kids. Yeah. And, but I feel like that's kind of part of my mission is to like,. Encourage them. You can be whatever you want. You can go wherever you want. You don't have to stay here.

Because a lot of them grow up feeling really trapped. Yeah. Like we did. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm absolutely so think a lot of kids really grow up feeling trapped by their parents and their teachings and the way that they get raised and their experiences and just not loved. Yeah, exactly.

   There's so many instances I feel where children just do what their parents did.

Yeah. Religion, politically, career, all of that. They just follow the way that their parents showed them instead of actually trying to expand their minds. So I feel like I've had some wide expansion because of the experiences that, that we had, . Yeah. That is, a huge thing that you know, that when you realize when you are in the world as an outsider who's different from everyone else because of how you were raised you felt that.

So then you see it in others and you think much more about what other people need or for me often what a person in distress looks like because I was so perfectly good at looking just fine the compartmentalization, when I was desperately trying to save myself from a horrible, abusive household, myself and my mother.

But still a straight A student, dressed in and coughed and shown up to school. And so that, that's a thing also that I think I took away from it, is that I'm watching, I I am the friend who will say no, but are you really okay? What's really going on with you?

It's like this hypervigilance that we grew up with. Like being so attentive because you just don't wanna be in trouble and you just wanna be on top of whatever. It can translate to intuition and empathy. That while you're there paying hyper attention to everything, you might as well absorb some things that might help people.

And 'cause now everything's not danger. So I'm like, but I still have all of these tentacles that are always like this. It's okay, lemme just see what's up in the world and absorb details and put it into my writing and, turn hypervigilance into a superpower slash realize that maybe there's a way to turn it off there is I just have to be alone.

 . It took me a long time to learn that, that the reason that I was like, cranky and short with people and I didn't even know why and I was just like, Ugh, just everybody needs to get away from me. It's, I'm like, it's, you're just tired of. Having all the tentacles out.

Like you just need to go somewhere, be alone and just be like, okay, tentacles. Like where the door is closed, no one can see me, no one's coming in. Like I can truly relax. And I just I just need to do that for a few hours even. And then I'm like completely rejuvenated. But I used to just think I was a crazy person.

Like, why do I suddenly want to kill everyone? Like most people like live with people and they see them all the time and they hang out all the time. And I'm like, that's normal. And I'm like, first of all, honey, you're not normal and you're never gonna be normal. Second of all, it's a thing, it's a trauma response.

It's a learned behavior and it's manageable. Just that I wish that more people had explained things like this to me when I was younger and I really wish that there were more there was more mental health that's specific to people who've had our experiences because there's a lot of stuff that the right therapist could, could've told me when I was in my early twenties.

I would've saved me a lot of fucking heartache and confusion and ultimately sort of self-hatred and self-harm, if someone explained anything to me I don't know C P T S D and hypervigilance and, all of these things I just had no language for. And so I just thought, I didn't think it was a result of how I grew up.

I thought it was just the shitty, crazy person that I was, not connecting those dots. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't even realize, I didn't even realize I'd been abused until somebody was like, you've been abused. I was like, wait, what? I didn't, it didn't even cross my mind because they always told us, this is love, this is not abuse, blah, blah, blah.

So when you grow up with that whole thing, like you don't even question it or think about this probably something else, especially when you're not taught to think critically. But I totally agree with you. If I had seen a therapist when I left, my life probably would've turned out very differently.

I spent like 20 years just like drugs, alcohol barely scraping by and surviving. Like I ended up in the mental hospital. And like all kinds of crazy things that could have been avoided. Even if somebody had just told me, you matter, you can have an opinion. Like all those things, I just didn't even occur to me like I had a right as a human being.

I didn't even think of that. It really makes me, it genuinely makes me want to stop doing what I do, go to school, become some kind of therapist because I bring naturally all of this information and knowledge and lived experience to the conversation because I feel like, Sure my writing in my movies can like influence people's lives and change things for the good in all these little ways, but that can literally be saving people's lives or at least saving them a couple decades of misery, and confusion and possibly death because they just can't, there's no one in the world to reconcile their experience.

It is really there's just, I, my, my therapy journey was I just kept finding therapists and then having to start from square one and, it's a long story, it's a really long story with complicated dynamics. And then I would just get frustrated because they would just be like we need to repair your relationship with your mother.

And I'm like, Have you not been listening? I grew up in a culture where that didn't matter. That is not the root problem here. Stop being so one size fits all with me. The hardest thing about my life is not my relationship with my mother. It doesn't hurt that much. She's just a woman I know who did some shitty things, but I don't extra mom hate her.

I just, she also did a lot of adults in my life. They were all shitty, and so I just, but if someone who had really heard me and was trained with this stuff had talked to me at that age I would've stayed and I would've gotten, I would've gotten on my healing path more quickly.

I don't know. Can we just ask Yana, could she just have a, six week intensive with all, with everybody who knows everything and then we all come out like not really trained, not officially medically trained, but as a community of people who feel like we can peer therapy each other, that's a real thing, right?

That's what the discussion doing. But I feel like I wonder if when people who are really fresh out of whatever the situation is and when they come to the knowledge center, which is what I think a lot of people seem to finally be really drawn to it. She, I, Janni can't talk to every single person and she's a sociologist, not a therapist.

I don't know. We gotta start an army. That's what I'm saying. We gotta start an army of people who know what's what this is. Even just doing the writing workshop with you guys was I was like, I really like this. I feel like we're really helping each other and like we have this commonality that is like, to be together in this way and to talk about stuff is very it's just very healing and it feels productive, and it feels so not just anyone could do it. Yeah. Should I quit my day job? I don't have my day job.

We have a little listening service thing with parent and I that we do. We're, we're not trained therapists, but we are trained trauma-informed coaches. So we have to undergone some trauma-informed classes and training and stuff like that. 'cause a lot of times people just need somebody to listen to them, yeah. A lot of people can come up with their own solutions if they're just led, or even just, they just need to talk it out. Talking with somebody saying, somebody that understands that's not gonna be like, oh yeah, I probably would've tried to kill myself too. Yeah. Or tell more about the.

Yeah exactly. Oh, let me hear about the abuse you suffered. No, why? This one therapist , it was the tip of the iceberg, whatever it was. I said to her, she just went, and I was like, she can't handle the rest of this. I don't need to, I don't need to be managing her feelings right now.

She's just so traumatized by hearing that, like some of the lighter te terrible things that happened to me. That's the other thing is like that, not everyone has heard of these stories, and so they're like, they're also having feelings. They're traumatized by your trauma. And I'm like, okay, I don't need to be traumatizing people.

My trauma, I'm the one in this conversation. Yeah that's what happened to me the first time I went to therapy. Like they, they did the psych eval on me and put me in with the therapist and I started telling my story and six sessions went by and all I had done is talk and talk. And she's just oh my God.

Oh my God. That was it. Nothing. And she's I'm supposed to be doing all these things with you and I haven't done anything because all I can do is listen to your story. Oh my God, I know what happened. And then if you just feel like you're some kind of a case study or a lab rat or something like that instead of a human that needs compassion and understanding, and then you find out about, about like the lady that , murdered the lady that was having an affair with her husband and then went and became a therapist, there's also therapists like that, which is very scary, right? They're just humans and which also means some of them are shitty humans and, aren't necessarily, these kind of safe spaces that we need them to be. That's the other thing, we all have trust issues, obviously.

And so that's the other thing is I was like, I don't fucking know you. Like why do, why am I paying you? You seem the one, like the one who's being entertained or you should be paying me. Yeah. And also I'm not helping me to just tell it to someone who's fascinated by it.

It helps me to talk about people who are nodding their heads Uhhuh, and that would be me as a therapist. Yep. I hear that. I not only now I can say, not only is that similar to my experience, but I know many people for whom that is true because of these groups that we're in.

And that's, it's so simple that hearing that and feeling like you're part of a community just makes you feel better. It's such a simple human thing, but we've just been, for me, I've just been like the weirdo who is, pretty much closeted about how I grew up because people are just too into it in a way that's not helpful to my life.

 And now I'm a boster child.

I was like, I'm ready. Come at me with tell me more about your weird ass style. Then I'm like, I wrote a whole book about it. That is all I have to say about it. Now I wanna talk about change. Now I wanna talk about how we actually prevent this from continuing  on the subject of the cult documentaries  I watch them all.

Some days, you're just not in the mood and you just need to like, get far away from the subject. But I watch them all when I can handle it emotionally,  and then you watch the obsession and the fetishization of them and I'm, asking like, who are these for?

And then several people in our discussion groups have said that they saw, for example, , wild, wild country. And that's what made them realize that they were in a cult. And I think Emily said a similar thing, that she saw something else and realized that she was in a cult. And I'm like, so they are actually helping people, but like a really small population considering how many people are just making more popcorn to watch the next episode.

But I'm like, I can't even get mad now because if I know that it's actually helping people, even if it's a small amount of people that are the people that I'm talking about and are concerned with, and then it's a good thing. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.  My doctor that did my knee surgery.

He said the same thing. He said, him and his wife, they grew up, I can't remember if it was Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, but one of those , very strict,  largely accepted cults. And he said that's how they realized his wife started watching documentaries and started being like I think we're in a cult.

And they were like, oh my God, we're in a cult. And that's how they, that's how they figured out. So I felt the same way. Keep telling your story, keep doing it. Get out somebody, yeah. Help somebody. And then I guess we just have to live with the fact that other people are just gonna be entertained by it.

Like whatever. We're helping people. And ultimately I think that the more people like us talk about our experience in a way that's real and aren't exploited by some kinds of documentaries, the more non cult related people will start to humanize it and it will become more familiar as a thing that's all around us.

And as I like to point out, , why are cults documentaries? Why do they come under the heading of true crime? And it's because it's, because, they make the documentaries about the cults that get caught doing crimes. But a cult in itself is not a crime, which is not to say that I'm a cult apologist by any stretch, but it just points out that people are not understanding us.

To be in a cult is not a crime. Our crimes almost always committed and all of the things that you and I, the three of us know from all the people we know. And yes, almost always, but it doesn't, it's not it's just not the same. , I don't know what to be mad about yet, but I'm figuring it out.

I thought I knew what I was mad about and then I was like, oh, it's helping people. Okay. I can't be mad about that, but something's not right. I just haven't been able to articulate it. , I just don't want our suffering to be entertainment. And I guess I just have to get over it.

Do you guys watch true crime? Like outside of any sort of cult sphere? Do you watch true crime docs? I do. I actually I just started doing it recently, I never did before. And then when I was having my knee surgery, I was running out of things to watch and I watched the Dahmer, I watched the Dahmer show, and then I was like, okay, now I wanna know the real story.

Then I saw that the Dahmer tapes, and I was like, oh, okay, what about Ted Bundy? And then I was like, oh, what about this guy? So honestly, I've only just now started doing that, and  I'm sure it'll pass. Usually these things will pass with me pretty quick. But I get fascinated by people's, like the, complicated crazy crimes that people commit within families for various reasons and the unsolved ness of it, and just how crazy people, humans can be to each other.

I can't lie, I'm also really fascinated by it, but I think it hurts me and upsets me more than it hurts and upsets the average person. I genuinely feel sick or scared, or, I feel a lot when I watch these things. So I think that in that regard I don't have as high of a tolerance for it. I have to rebuild myself and then watch again because it's, I get like physically like upset.

But it sounds like actually you didn't you're a tougher guy than I am. Jemima. I don't know about that, but  I think, I'm trying to understand why people do these things, what makes a person like want to rape somebody or kill somebody or hurt kids?

Like why, what are the thought process that they go through? What happens to them in their lives that cause these things,  these are the kind of things that I'm trying to  understand. And also  why we didn't turn out to be serial killers. From watching some of these things like one of the guys that was a serial killer, he was  sodomized by his father and tied up in a barn and all this crazy stuff.

And then you're like, dude,  I should be a serial killer.  My husband should be a silly, like, why aren't we, why did that not happen to us? And I think that's the kind of a thing is I'm trying to figure out what it takes to make people do these things and what kind of a person does these things.

And then I also feel like it brings awareness too because like when I left, I was so naive. I didn't know what to watch out for or what was sincere or what wasn't or how to tell because we were  not taught to think critically at all in any way. So I think for me too it's trying to figure out  how to protect myself and how to protect my loved ones from people like that, from people that would prey on other people .

And also trusting my gut, if I feel bad when I see somebody or can hear somebody bad, just don't even question. Is it, isn't it, could it be, could it not? No. If my gut tells me it's bad. Just period. Because I really feel like we can feel those things. Even looking at the pictures of these people on television I get a bad feeling when I see their picture without even knowing who they were, what they did.

I can just see it in the picture. And so now it is helping me learn to trust myself and my instincts. And also  how many small town, innocent, upstanding citizens are. Not that at all. They're terrible, horrible people. And everybody's just oh no, but he's such a great guy. He couldn't have done that.

No. Yeah. That's a thing too that maybe I think is not healthy for me. I'm  working on my trust issues, but I'm like, no. I'm like, the most innocuous looking person that you see every day is actually the serial killer. It's gonna abduct your children. I'm just like, no, most people are good.

But I'm also like, I get that question a lot from people who read my book. They say, how are you? So okay. Which is where I started talking about compartmentalization. I'm like, I'm not, I'm really not. I'm better. I'm working on it.  And no one who knows me well would describe me as okay.

 It took me 30 years to write about this, to write this book because I'm so not okay.

So I don't, you guys I'm sure must get that too once people hear your story, like how you, okay. It's almost like an accusation like I guess you are okay. 'cause you're not like prying or drooling or clawing at the wallpaper. And I'm like I'm sorry. Like it, yeah. It makes it interesting what a lot the general public, what the idea they have of someone who's traumatized is, is that's the first thing.

. Which is not the case at all, right? That you can't function in some way or that you can't pass. As a nont traumatized person, we're very good at passing as nont traumatized people. That's our whole, that's a survival skill. That was the shtick.

That was the shtick, yeah. Yep. Like we were talking about this with Yna too. What we lack in coping skills we make up for and masking skills  we can just put on the face and go do whatever pretty much, no matter what's going on. Totally do that too. I was extremely distraught the other day, but I still went to work and acted like everything was completely fine, even though it was just really completely not 

it's okay. I can just go to work. Deal with this later, like you said, just put up that wall and go do what you gotta do. And then, a week or two later, okay, fine, now I have time and I'll be able with that. And in some ways, having a thing or a person or a place that is going to force you to do that is a kind of relief, yeah. If I go to this place, I know myself, I'm just gonna pull it together. 'cause that's who I am if I have to go through this thing. And that's also it's weird that it's almost like an, it can be an emotional crutch. Wow. I think you're really busy for the next few days and really not deal with this, yeah. There's no time to fall apart. I'm busy. Yep. Yeah.  I realized I was addicted to stress 

I like the stressful environment.  I enjoy that environment. And I don't know that it's a healthy thing, but No, but it's like you don't have to deal with anything if the moment is constantly urgent.

That's right. Exactly. All you gotta deal with is that. Yeah, . I think  it's one reason why I love working on films. 'cause when you're working on a film as an actor or as a director as anything really, it's so all consuming. It's exhausting. And you're doing it for 12 to 18 hours a day, and then all your job is just to rest.

So you can go back and do it the next day. And it just means that the world stands still because you just shut up the world and this is the only thing that's happened to you. And it's very knowable. And I'm like, this is also like a little bit of an emotional crutch. I just am like, oh, can't deal with anything super busy.

Totally all consumed by something out outside of me, yeah. Which is funny, but I love it, but I might love it because I'm, because it's a big mask. Yep, exactly. You've done some pretty cool movies too. Yeah. Where I get paid to wear a mask. Being an actor is, compartmentalizing if nothing else and wearing a mask.

Yeah, I also just really love, I love the culture of production, which is also, again, a little culty, insular, small amount of people see them every day, have drama dynamics, power dynamics. Although at least in production, there is a clear hierarchy and it's everybody came knowing where they fit into it.

And also, I'm usually an actor and they treat us like babies. Which is to say that they protect us from any drama and we're like the talent. So it's also like in the hierarchy of all that, if you're an actor, you're pretty high up, even though also secretly, everyone thinks you're a big baby, but people who are carrying heavy shit and, getting dirty and you're just like, oh no, can you fix my hair right here?

That's funny. Oh, anyway. Anything else we wanna talk about before I go? 

I guess just probably just where people can get your book, it's out already, correct? Yes. The book is called When the World Didn't End. You can get it from Barnes and Noble, you can get it from Penguin Random House, the publisher. But I highly recommend to everyone to find your local independent bookstore and buy it there.

And if they don't have it, ask them for it. 'cause what I've also learned being the creep that I am, who goes to every independent bookstore I walk by and say, Hey, do you have when the world gonna end? Instead, if you ask for it, they'll order it. And if you ask for it and they, or only order two copies and those sold, they'll order more.

So Feder would just be my personal army all over, only in the us. If you're in the uk, you can get it from Amazon uk, but other than that, it's not available elsewhere. Okay. But yeah, go to independent bookstores. Also, they're just the coolest places and I love them and I. Yeah, it's out there and it, and if you see a spine of a book with just my little child culty  eyeball on it there's, that's me.

I love that they put my eyeball on the spine. So if this is on your bookshelf, I'm just gonna be staring at you. But I didn't wanna use this photo of me. I don't know for various reasons, but a friend that I grew up with, who's one of us, she was like, oh, come on, you are the perfect culty kid in this photo.

Just own it.

Oh my God, that's funny. Yeah. I was like, if she's gonna say that, then I'm like, okay, I'm not, if someone I grow up with doesn't think it's exploitive. 'cause it's too culty. Cult too, like on the nose. I don't know, because I just looked haunted. I was, but I thought, is it pandering?

What do you think? No, I love it. I think it's amazing. It's a really good, yeah. And it's the reality too. It's not Exactly, yeah. It really is me going. Yeah, exactly. And I'm looking up at the camera because what's actually happening in this photo is they sent me to visit my mom for a week. She was at San Francisco at the time, at their compound there.

And I didn't know her. And the day before this photo was taken, , I flew alone from la, she came to the airport Picked me up and she walked right by me. Like I recognized her, but she didn't recognize me. And so I was like, oh my God, my own mother doesn't recognize me. And then she we went, to the compound there.

And then that picture was taken the next day. And I think what I see when I look at the space is me being like, who are you? And when do I get to go home? Yeah. Yeah. And on that beautiful note, sorry, I really am I hope any listener understands I'm a, I am a relatively lighthearted person, considering that I could be a lot of darker things, right?

Yep. And I, remind myself of that. And I have people to compare myself to that I grew up with who did not do so well. And so I have to just be thankful for that. 'cause I, I can go dark fast, but I can recover pretty quickly too, because I'm like, yay, I have a life. I have a life that is is real.

And I have friends in genuine relationships, and I'm functional enough to write a book and have a career. And, that I, this is a huge part of who I am, but it doesn't define who I am. I think that was always a goal for me, which is maybe why I didn't talk about it for so long. I go, have a bunch of other identities and be like, oh, pss out people.

So many people in my life, high school and beyond. 'cause I just really never talked about it. Are like, what? They had no idea. I think they think I made.

All guys, thank you so much for having me. I hope this isn't too epically long for your podcast listeners. No, it's wonderful. . Thank you so much. 



We thank you. And until next time, remember that every butterfly was once a caterpillar, so stay brave and remember your wings.