It Was All About Submission (And Not the Fun Kind)

It was all about control. What was sexually perverted according to the Children of God cult? Whisper reads some passages from Lauren Hough's New York Times Bestseller, Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing. Some very candid conversations about sex, bonded choice, and why maybe some of us are just now figuring out our sexuality ensue. 

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Transcript

welcome to Butterflies and Bravery. We're very excited to have you join us. Jemima and I, we were talking earlier that, this month, March, it's Women's history month.

And we were talking about how interesting it would be to talk a little bit in this episode  about what women's history for us. Cause  growing up in children of God cult. 

History for women was not a good one.

, I don't know if you do this now that, you're out and, , you can think for yourself and, , you're allowed to have opinions and stuff. I don't know if you sometimes take certain, questions or attitudes or even, Former beliefs that you had  and go, when did I start thinking that?

When did I start believing that, and  one of the things that I do always think about is when did I start believing that, Not believing, but buying into the whole woman was made for the man and the man, it has the final say according to God and all that stuff. 

I don't think that there was ever a time where I thought anything was different. I think it was just like, as I started getting older, I just started seeing, I just started having more and more realizations about, okay what I think or what I want just really doesn't matter. It just really doesn't count at all.

And then there were other things that are so subtle that  they wouldn't even have to be spoken. They were just so subtle that it  created a general atmosphere, like

how women were never drivers. It's not like there was a rule that said women can't drive. That was not in the charter or whatever, but the women were not allowed to drive. It's there wasn't a no, but there was  not a yes. We're not saying no, but we're saying you can't do it.

That's that's how the approach was. And it's like those little things 

slowly. You just grow up as that being so natural or not natural, but just normal that you don't even really question it, I definitely do think that it was really when we went to the  TC Thailand, the Thai TC, the  training center. . Which was just an institutionalized commune. I think that's really when I was made so painfully aware of your, you're going to dress how we tell you're going to wear what we tell you.

You're going to act how we tell you're going to behave. Justin. What was that publication they sent out? I'm forgetting the, I'm blinking on it right now. The one about how women, how young women should behave. Like that etiquette thing. Do you remember?

Not exactly but I remember it came out. Yeah, and  One thing I definitely do remember and it's funny. I was reminded of it again when I was looking through lauren's book but how  they did this big push on how we're supposed to walk and how we're supposed to sit and we had to walk around in circles with the books on our head You Do you remember that?

Yes. . Yes, I do. 

  I was 15 right before  I went to the TC to the Thai training center. I, Was living in the home or commune. We call them homes where big John was there. So big John was a a cult uncle, an uncle in the cult who was a musician. He was often on kids cause he was very fun, but he was always very fun and loud and always in trouble.

But one of the things about him was that he was six foot six. And like somewhere between 250 and 300 pounds , just big. Like he was  big, scary big,  and he also was very loud,  he just, he had this huge personality, but I would always go and beg off.

And beg for his shirts. I would always ask to let me have his shirts because I could wear them like a dress and they would all hide my boobs, which was a big deal that I hate them, right? I was always trying to hide my boobs because they were so big and these shirts would help you do that  and we were living there and it was fine And we were doing things like we placed, Kickball, and I just remember for half a second there I was pretty happy.

I was having a lot of fun. That was actually the, that was when I was living with Miko too. Miko was in that same place.  Because I was dressing like I wanted to dress, which was, a little bit more tomboyish. I just I was in that stage. Like I wanted to rough and tumble. And then I think probably because there were already like the leadership knew that the school thing was coming down, the, that we were going to be going to The training center, all of a sudden everything that I wore was wrong.

They're like, you're not allowed to wear pants anymore. You're not allowed to wear these boys shirts. You have to wear girls clothes. And I was like, I had a big fight. Like not fight, but I was just so upset. And I was like, no, I don't like skirts. I don't like dresses. And they took all my clothes and then went and bought me new ones.

Lots of flowers. Lots and lots of flowers.

, it's really funny because now, I do like dresses and I do dressing more along the femme side, as you would say. But at the time, as a teenager, I was like, I didn't want to have any of that. I just wanted to run around and be me. What about you?

, you definitely went through a tomboy phase, right? Oh yeah, for sure. Even when I was a kid, like way younger, always, even to look back in pictures, , I had boys clothes on and stuff until they made forced me to wear this fucking ugly stripes and weird stuff that I just absolutely hated.

And it's so funny because  as a kid, you don't look at your clothes and you go this is girls and this is boys, at least not for me. I was like, I want to wear this because it. hides my boobs, which I was having a hard time with. And I, and I want to wear these pants because I can run around.

I can play. I can, I don't have to worry about, I don't know. It just was boys clothes are so much more convenient when you're a kid. It's just more convenient. That's nothing to do with whether like it's feminine or masculine. It's just more convenient. But When you have brain rot, you don't see it that way.

And from the beginning, because earlier, early on in the, some of the first letters, some of the first missives that Berg was putting out was all about, revolutionary women and don't shave your armpits. Like everything all unnatural and women need to, be Dressed like women.

And so I think when us kids were coming around, we're just like, no, we want to wear pants and play. They were like, no this isn't revolutionary.

I think the first time  I remember choosing my own clothes is when we went to Russia. Yeah. A lot of the stuff we got was provisioned, so you never really got to choose anyways, but occasionally we get to buy things and I went on strike. I did not wear a dress or a skirt for 25 years till I was like 45 or.

Maybe 45 or so. I started wearing them again,  I only wore my wedding dress. That was the only dress that I had worn in public since like ever, the nineties. Yeah. Like I was on a massive anti dress strike. Now I love dresses. But it's so funny because you're straight as they come.

Like you're straight. Like what? Not really. Yeah. I'm not that straight. I'm definitely bi. I'm possibly gay.

I've really been trying to analyze it. Yeah. Yeah. And so maybe this is weird, but this is how I'm trying to think about it. So when you think about visualizing sex in your mind, right? What are you visualizing yourself as? Are you visualizing yourself as the female with the male there?

Or are you visualizing yourself as the male with the female there? And in my mind, whenever I visualize, I'm always visualizing myself as the male with the female there. I'm never visualizing myself as being the one But the male, is on top of or whatever I think never ever, I visualize myself as the woman.

With the woman there's not a man in law. But like in my mind, ,  and then I kind of thinking I don't know, sometimes I think that means I'm gay It would make sense that, that would be because I'm more of like you're you've always been more of the girly feminine.

I've always been more of the rah, let's go type of, I got muscles and look at my biceps and like not the girliest girl, definitely not the girliest girl. Like I barely even have girl's shoes. I almost always have 10 shoes. Yeah. No, everybody always thinks i'm gay like i'm thinking back in my life like fucking women hit on me all the time and I was always like Honey, why are they doing this?

Like what's going on? Why where are these women always hitting on me? I'm, like, oh probably because I didn't realize but I was probably checking them out without realizing that I was checking them out yeah And I was probably looking at him like, Hey baby. And I probably just didn't realize it because the cult set almost set our minds to be anti, same sex.

Yeah, for sure. So it's almost like even if you were gay or are gay, maybe you just don't know it yet because it's taken so long to get that deep programming out of layers and layers and layers. Yeah. No, for sure. We interviewed we interviewed Rose who, when she was finally able to get out she'd left with four kids and a husband, same as me, 

it's coercive control. This is your choice. You don't have any other choices. Yeah. Exactly. And. I always used to say, also remember when I met Tim, I always used to say, I'm either going to marry him or I'm going to go gay. That's what I always said that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

 I think it just was one of those things that for me got squashed so early on. Because I was starting to voice it. And I told you I was going to travel.  , I'm having all these sex dreams about girls. Please pray for me. Because I was so scared. I was so scared.

I thought, that's the devil. No. Satan just penetrating behind me. No, because literally , so I was looking it up earlier. , there was a discussion about oh not. Like the cult was and rapidly anti male homosexual, but whereas it wasn't like that women were allowed to be by, so they didn't have as much like discrimination or whatever, which is so not true because listen, this is literally quote, when a girl has never had a normal desire for a man, I begin to wonder if it's a spiritual thing.

It's not normal or natural. Therefore, lesbianism is a perversion. Like just straight up. They're like, no, lesbianism is a perversion. , I remember having that conversation about it cause of course the first letter was women in love, which was way early on,

but it was just much more about. It was just much more about how women are just so much softer and  women are just much more affectionate. And so it's just natural that, two women come together. And besides God never really said anything against it, particularly, but relationships and marriages and all of that, it's woman  with man, that's the only rule,  When that's your base, as soon as it comes in, it's like, for one thing, you never see, you never saw any gay relationships whatsoever.

, and any type of if it ever was on the TV screen or coming in some movie, like definitely that's gross. God's against it.  All that kind of stuff. So  you didn't even know what it looked like.  How would you even know how it felt? Then on top of that the direction they were always pushing us towards getting married, mated, and so if you're not allowed to marry or be with, in a relationship with someone what more is there?, why bother you can go and have cuddle time or sex with them and be like, okay, maybe this is okay. But then what you can't be in a relationship with them.

Okay. And especially  for us, as teenagers,  right away, immediately they were separating anybody that had any kind of inkling towards each other,  .  I remember this crazy fucking thing that happened to me when I was like 12.

Yeah. There was another girl in the home and she was basically, saying that she was gay and that she liked girls and. She had had some sort of little secret relationship with somebody and then they broke up and she was trying to decide who wants to have a relationship with and then she's like, , first, I'm gonna go down the stairs or whatever.

And the first person I see, and so it was me, it was the first person.  That's a great, are you're the first, you're the first, you're the first person I saw. And that's, what I told for my, and that's the sign. We should like have sex. So I'm like, okay.

So we were like giving each other oral and this auntie comes down   maybe we're in a bedroom. I can't remember probably in a bedroom, but.

Yeah, and she bursts this and she burst it and she's Oh my God. Oh my God. What are you guys doing? Oh my God. We were like, what? Y'all are always telling us to have sex. What's wrong. And it was like a massive freak out thing. I have had, and obviously not been straight my whole life.

No, it was just the, cause the one time we talked about it and you were like, yeah, no, I'm, but it was obviously like working things out in your mind. Like I said healing back the layers. I never even thought about. for a long time. I never even thought about the possibility or whatever.

And then it's only been the past like year or two that I started actually thinking like, okay, I need to actually start thinking about this part of my life. Yeah. Because think about it when we've come out of the past that we have, and when you have had so much Abuse and so much trauma in your history.

And you're like, just trying to work that out, like just trying to work through the trauma of everything that happened, there's not space for okay, but which sex am I like, which gender am I attracted to? Which way do I swing?  We were never allowed to develop naturally or normally in any way.

 It's like when you plant a tree crooked, it's just crooked that way, oh For instance, when you plant a tree straight.

Plant a straight tree. Plant a tree straight. By a tree. Yeah, like when I went to Texas that time and I and I was pulling out those old true comics, those old comic books and looking throughout the pictures and I just remembered I would just draw these women over and over and over again, and just always thinking about them.

In my mind, I was trying to convince myself that it's because I wanted to look like them when in actuality I wanted them, which is interesting. You look back at these things and you're like, that's what that was. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember reading, cause I think

Lauren

Lauren wrote it in a pretty, Put it quite well,  . So I'm talking about Lauren Hough, who wrote leaving isn't the hardest thing, New York times, bestseller , it's essays about her life and leaving the cult and being the military and Lauren is gay.

She was. I guess circumstantially and for whatever happened to her necessarily it She knew right away or early on that  something isn't the way that it's meant to be. And so she said I was 12 the first time Gabe, her stepdad decided to name the problem. I had a homosexual spirit.

I wasn't yet possessed by the demon. Thank God. But possession could happen anytime. If I wasn't careful,

I was in the family. I watched the same shitty movie. Everyone else watched our movie night and listened to the same family tapes we all listened to. I simply wasn't sufficiently. My preferred look was homeschooled boy, which is to say polo shirts button to the top and tuck neatly into my shorts or pants.

The only thing I ever did with my hair was scrape it into a ponytail. And for a while I got away with it. Then we moved to this massive commune up in the mountains, north of Osaka, Japan. Yeah. I was grouped with the preteens. And surrounded by appropriately feminine girls with appropriate interests, mannerisms, and style.

And I stood out as that tall girl, the tomboy. And I tried. I really fucking did.

What I'm saying is whether or not I actively did anything wrong that time or any other time didn't fucking matter. Once the Shepherds agreed I was a problem, I was a problem. Reading assignments on how a godly woman should look and act. Increasingly harsh warnings to stop acting like a bull in a china shop.

A moose, a tomboy, a man. Be ladylike. This masculine spirit, this homosexual spirit, this evil you have to fight it, will help you, of course, with public shaming, isolation, and occasionally, by beating the shit out of you. That's how they approached it, so anyways, it was just Yeah the thing that I think confuses some people, even younger called babies who were born into the family, into the children of God, it confuses them a little bit because there's that very famous letter, the girl who wouldn't

and

homosexuality was not allowed, but there was at the time someone who was a leader in the group 

and they decided to make an exception for her because they wanted her to be in leadership.

It was very confusing. I remember being young and it was just, it was super confusing and she wanted to have sex with this other woman.  And she just couldn't bring herself to have sex with her.

And. So Berg wrote this whole letter, this whole missive called The Girl Who Wouldn't and raked this poor woman over the coals. It was

insane. And I, they used to assign me to read that letter quite often. Did you get assigned it too? At least once. Yeah. Yeah. I think I got assigned like probably at least two or three times because what it really was all about. Was it had nothing to do with the actual act itself. It had to do with you need to do as you're told.

That was the whole point.  It would have literally had been the same. It would have been the same exact letter, the same exact mo letter, , the same exact punishment, correction, all of that. If it was a man that she was refusing to have sex with, I think she probably felt like this is.

, this is definitely not in my wheelhouse,  and Berg was pissed off that she wasn't surrendering. And that's what that whole letter was about, it was nothing about whether oh yeah, lesbian relationships are allowed. Because of that letter.

No. The leader in that case exceptions were being made back in the day, but that ended up going away pretty quick too. That went away pretty quick. And . In 1996 was when the charter came out, and that's when they finally put it into writing.

. This is what the charter says about it. Female homosexual relationships are not permitted. You will notice that this is worded differently from the male homosexual rule, and the offense is warranting excommunication. The Bible specifically prohibits male with male sexual activity. , but there are no passages forbidding such activity between women.

This rule was meant to reflect that difference as we do not entirely prohibit. all female with female sexual activity, unlike the rule regarding males. As Berg said, it's fairly natural for some females to be affectionate and loving towards each other. It would therefore be acceptable. Listen to what's acceptable.

This is crazy. It would therefore be acceptable for two sisters to hold hands or be arm in arm or have their arms around each other, kiss, caress, or hug each other closely. Even sexually.

How do you hug sexually? Oh my gosh. What? Whereas any sexual overtures between two men is prohibited. Of course, such female with female cuddling, you don't even say sex, you say female with female cuddling, would mean to be conducted in the non public areas of the home. Although such cuddling is prohibited, Affection between women would be permitted in an actual lesbian relationship in which the two partners were involved to the exclusion of others is prohibited.

The definition of homosexual is relating to or having a sexual orientation to persons of the same sex. As dad has said, Berg has said, it is not natural for women to only desire sex with other women. And such female homosexual relationships would not be considered as natural and as such, not permitted.

That was the most clarified in words that they ever got about it.  Even when I first read it when I was still in the cult and I was like So what are you talking about then? Oh, we're allowed to like hug and kiss and not get in trouble.

Like I don't

Like it was just very Yeah, it was pretty vague in it. And it was more like we don't want you to do it, but because the Bible doesn't specifically say you can't do it, we can't, we won't make it a hard and a fast rule that you get excommunicated. But it's,

it's, it goes back to bonded choice, isn't it? Yes. That's what it is because it's like you can have those Thoughts or feelings. And you can act, you can do that. You can, cuddle, female cuddling with another woman. Anything further than that is a perversion and you don't want to be perverted.

Do you?  Even even Lauren was saying in her book,   there was something going on with girls and she knew that she didn't like boys and she knew that she was not the typical feminine that, all revolutionary women were supposed to be.

She even said, though, she was like, , she would do all kinds of things  to prove that she wasn't a lesbian, I'm definitely not a lesbian because, that's what would get you in trouble or, and,  out of favor, I just think it is interesting though that

there's probably just so many of us who are coming out and

, I wouldn't say it's the last thing on the list. If you're just trying to survive, and you've got all these other things on your plate and there's so much, it's really hard to like deeply examine. What's going on.

Especially with something like sexuality. Cause it's not a massive all encompassing part of, at least not most people's general everyday life.  And when you're growing up and you don't have. You're not allowed to ask yourself, do I like this? Do I want this?

You're not allowed to ask that. You're told you want this, you like that. And especially because everything was submission. Submit. We were essentially taught that if women were just more submissive, there wouldn't be such a thing as rape

they even had given us specific directions that if you do get raped, go along with it. Don't try to defend yourself. Just pretend you're enjoying it because you probably are. And you just show them God's love. And then, you're.  12, 13, 14 years old. And then they put out , this whole story book about heaven's girl, that's supposed to be, at the time, it was fairly exciting to have  those, because , it was an actual story which we just really never had other than life with grandpa stories, but it was , like a novel.

 They were coming out in these piece by piece. So I just remember, I think I was just 13. Yeah. Tops 13. . I was 14. Yeah. I was dying for each episode. I remember  because I was . It was in the end time , and I do remember that because even before the magazines came out, there were all those letters, all those missives from Berg, all about his visions of heaven girl, heaven's girl, and who they were supposed to be and how it's, Like this was supposed to be what we wanted for ourselves.

We were meant to be heaven's girl. The girls were meant to be heaven's girl and heaven's girl was going to eventually, be the witness  the second witness  with Davidito and, I was just like that was the direction. , and,

In there they have this scene where she's  literally like gang raped by a bunch of these soldiers and

She begged them to let go of her arms and legs so she could wrap her arms and legs around them as They raped her. 13! 13 years old.

There's your role model.

I was telling Tim about that, about how they had that gang rape scene with the military and how they were, all that. And he was like, what the fuck? That was your kid's books. I'm like, yeah, that was like the story. That was our, who were supposed to be emulating. And just the warped messaging of you.

Do not have any body autonomy whatsoever. That body belongs to everyone else, not to you.

And some people survived by fighting it, fighting as hard as they could and getting constantly in trouble and disciplined and beat and really rough life. Or you become compliant and quiet and just. Except

so that you're not getting beat and shunned and disciplined and So

it's like the Christians on the ice, right? Yeah like they, they wanted us to die. Like that was was these people who are willing to die for their faith and freeze to death. And that was, bedtime stories. Yeah.

I have a picture of me in a heaven's girl outfit. Of course, it's just like a baby crib sheet and a scrap of blue for a choker, like a shoelace around my waist. Can I take a picture? Why was that such an important part of her fucking outfit? Was the fucking choker? I don't, so weird.

Cause they're sexy.  I read something about it about chokers being like Provocative, you know what cuz it's supposed to remind you of being collared or a leash or or just Maybe. I don't know.  For some reason. Her little cross on her little choker.

No heart, right? It was a heart. Oh, was it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a heart. That's right. Yeah. Of course. And her side braid and her little toga. It's toga night. There's this one really good quality picture cause it, like all those publications have been long, gone, gone where, I don't know but somebody got a really fairly decent quality scan of that front picture of Heaven's Girl of, where she's looking over her shoulder like that, like giving you the flirty look, the look of love eyes.

The bedroom eyes. And I was like, imagine  taking that and putting it on a t shirt.

Oh my goodness. That'd be so funny. With an X on it, maybe.

We are not godly women. That's the one. Jesus Christ.

Yeah. Ungodly women.



What got me thinking about this was just because There was that conversation being had of oh gay women in the cult didn't have it as bad as the gay men because they were allowed to be by, which is a complete false that we were not allowed to be by. I think it just goes back again to that sort of that, like that measuring, who had it worse, who had it better, who was it, who what? It really it just depended on where you were, I didn't suffer in the same way that, that Lauren did. I didn't suffer because I kept it inside.

I was like they told me that this isn't right. So obviously my emotions and my feelings are wrong. So I need to, fix myself. I'm the problem. I need to fix myself. Whereas. Lauren's experience with, was more like, hell no, she, she wanted to live that out loud a little bit more, , because that's who she was.

, it would be much harder for her to go along, You know in the same way that it would have been for me to comply with being all feminine and blah blah Because that's like a little bit more towards my natural inclinations. Anyways, whereas for her it's absolutely not so she Went through all the stuff and had all the suffering and obviously, like the beating the exorcisms and all that stuff and

, the tiniest bit of allowance, as they said, where hold hands, be arm in arm, have your arms around each other, caress or hug each other closely, like that was their quote unquote exceptions, but yet the constant messaging was, It's a perversion. It's a perversion. If you are attracted to, or want to be with the same sex, it's a perversion.

And

obviously specifically it was much

more harsh for men because. Of the Bible that supposedly  they had a foundation to base that off of,  I guess I feel bad for a lot of us too, because  we  spent so much of our time once we got out and we had choices  the first question  that we had to explore was, do I even want to have sex, let alone who I'm going to have sex with, so

that's why I think it's very valid. For people who have been raised in such terribly closeted environments,

it might be something that's much farther down, their healing

to be able to discover that, wait wait a second, I is not straight. It's just not the first thing on your list, generally. Honestly, I think my husband knew I was gay before I did.

Yes, that does make sense  like sometimes when I'm watching these TikToks, and

they're The conservative movement in the United States,  it feels like it's getting more and more extreme. It's really weird

to where there's like this whole, what do they call them? Do they call them? Oh, I'm going to get this wrong. I'm probably wrong about this, but it's something like trade wives. I think they call them where it's like the only thing that you do don't go to don't get a higher education.

You just study. Yeah, I think it is trade wise because that's your trade. You use, the only thing you study is how to be a wife and that's your occupation, which is what we were told. That was our occupation was to be a woman for the man. Yeah.  And you can be a missionary on the side. , you're gonna cook, you're gonna clean, , you're gonna take care of him and you're gonna pop out these babies. I was looking up some old letters way, way back in, I think it was even in the the Texas Soul Clinic days.

Way back then when the young people that had joined and were sticking around started to get married. And so Berg had, was giving them sex classes and it was called revolutionary sex. And do you remember , we used to have to read that? Yeah,  it was his idea of sex. And I was looking at it earlier and.

And he was literally saying if the woman wants to have sex with you, she'll get lubricated. But if she doesn't want to have sex, then you're going to need to use Vaseline.

If she doesn't want to have sex, then you need to wait until she does. It's Oh, you got to learn how to use Vaseline for those times when she doesn't want to have sex. Like, how gross. Oh my God.

Reminds me of, The fucking TC too much.

 When I tried to break us by making us have sex with people that we hated. Yeah. Oh yeah. , when I got in super big trouble that time, remember I was in the other home, , and because I was fooling around.

, , one of the guys there,, and I got in  trouble and got sent back to the training center demoted completely.  That's when those pairing ops were going on and we were all going down,  taking our mattresses down to the rooms on sharing night and everything.

And so they paired me up with this guy who we actually, we didn't have anything for each other, but , he was a very, he was such a kind person. Such a kind person. And, we used to have these fantastic talks. We would just talk a lot. And so when we got paired together, we would go down there and.

He would try to start doing something and it was so awkward and awful. I would start crying and he would feel really bad and be like, it's okay. Let's just, you're not ready for this. And then we would just end up talking all night or at least until we had to leave. And this happened a few times.

We'd go down there, he'd try to start something, I'd start crying, it was like the thing we started, like that was our sharing night, it was just like me crying, and then him having to , try and comfort me, but after a few times he came to me and he broke down in tears. Now he was crying and he's crying and he said to me, he's please can you let me do something to you?

And I was like what? Why? I don't want, like what? And he's crying and he was like, you have no idea. Every time I leave that room. I have to go straight to the shepherds and report what we did. And I get in trouble. I get yelled at every single time that I haven't done something to you because the shepherd said that you have to be broken, basically, you have to yield, you have to submit.

And I was like, Oh my God, like

he was just as much a victim in that situation as I was, yeah. Yep. What do you have to do with that? What do you have to do? It's very stupid. You

know, you just. Band together, ,, and try to make it out somehow, yeah.

But yeah, that was  always the purpose behind it.

It was all about submission. Yep.

And not the kind, the fun kind of submitting Sure was. Nope, not What's that? No. That's a no. Not the fun kind. It was all about control, really. It was all about control. Everything was control. Yeah

it's a wonder we survived and we're of a partially sound mind. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe. At least we're not totally batshit crazy, right? No. There's definitely a few holes though. You can still form sentences.  I can't always. Anybody listening to our podcast knows that I can't always perform sentences. And I'm sure that many of you are like, talking is hard.

Speaking is hard. The path from my brain to my mouth is a long and winding one and there's lots of distractions along the way.

Oh my god, that's so fucking funny I'm, like visualizing this brain this guy on a bicycle  taking a letter down to the mouth

World And by the time the mouth pulled something completely different doesn't have a letter anymore. He's just got a flower. Here we go Oh

my god, that's so funny Oh, that's hilarious. . That's always good to to go is good to find something light and happy for our end of our podcast. So that we don't leave people like, Oh God. Yes, but in that vein of the positive, 

When you've had to fight for your freedom and it's not just given to you it's that much more precious to you. And I feel like that when it comes to my body autonomy my, like my own feminine power, my own woman hood that was so brutally constantly broken down and taken away that now.

It's something that I treasure so much more and I try really hard and trying really hard to lean into that as much as I can and just, and let that the noise of you're not good enough you're not, you're just not enough, but that sort of and embrace the fact of what I have now, what we have and that's the thing, like every single one of us that I know, Every woman that was born in and come out the other side.

That's something that they're quite definitely empowered in. I think, even. Even if their belief system might be a little bit different or they might even still, maybe they might still, even adhere to some of that, those more stereotypical heterosexual values of what's a man's job, what's a woman's job, all of that.

It's not even that it's just that that being able to choose that. Being able to choose that and being able to voice that and being able to say, this is my happy lane. That's something that we didn't have for so many years that it's definitely something that is important to me and I treasure.

Yes, indeed.

But it was funny cause again  I have been looking through Lauren's book a little bit again and one thing she said that I think was actually  quite interesting. She said when you think about it, like when you take away the, some of the crazy sex stuff and the beliefs around that, and obviously, flirty fishing, the way that the cult.

viewed women was not all that radical, actually. In fact, they adhere quite intensely to a general, like the sort of the larger, evangelical Christian beliefs of women and their role in the world and in the household. And I was like, yeah, you're right. Like for all the whole, we're so radical, they actually weren't all that radical.

Very true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The only radical things was you can have sex with your kids.

Oh my God. There was a bus. Okay. So in Idaho it just reminded me. So in Idaho you can camp anywhere, right? Just park wherever you want. So there was  a bus and a motor home that was camping on a little pull off every day I'd pass to work. And the back of the fucking bus said Aurora Productions.

Eww. Eww. And it was written in those weird, like they used to have. And I was like, oh my god, that's the fucking cult. And then Tim was like they've been known to me in this area. Cause that's where my mom joined. Bus came through here. I was like didn't your mom jump on a bus more than I do?

Oh my lord. Yep, jumped on a bus and joined, just like that. Oh, I thought that was funny. They've been known to be in this area.

. It's very funny, and that's such a Tim thing to say. It was like super, super old. Oh, van or bus that had been turned into a camping thing, all the windows had like white on them and stuff. Just so typically something the fucking cult would do.

Yeah. , we lived in a converted school bus for a while. Yes. I remember so clearly because it was a cop, it was a police officer who had done this. He'd gotten The school bus from whatever, somewhere, and he took two, two trailers and put all the stuff from the trailer into the outfitted the bus with it.

So we had mismatching two of everything. There was two refrigerators, There's two selves, there was like a, there was a pullout couch thing. And then, but then there was also the table that went down, that style of but neither of them matched the designs, all the designs, everything was, it was quite something.

That's funny.  We did have some good times though, cause we were traveling a lot and my brother my brother was a baby, was just, he's 40 now, he was a baby at the time and and my dad screwed the, his swing into the roof of the bus and put him in the swing and gave him headphones.

And then we drive along and the, so the, but the bus would just rock the swing and he loved it so much. That's crazy. And yeah, and we just sit around the table and coloring and everything like that. But the worst thing about that was the cop had left his night. They weren't night sticks at the time.

They were night I would, I don't know what you call it. It was springy. Yeah. So the head of it was like this lead, like super heavy. If you hit somebody with that, you would crack their skull for sure. And then, so the stick part of it was swing, like springy. So you could swing it like boing boing, but it had this huge, long leather strap that was at least two inches wide that was for the handle.

And I guess he had forgotten it in there. And my dad was like, Oh, it comes with a spanking tool. So yeah, he used that to beat on us quite a bit. It's awful and painful. I bet sounds painful.

Yeah. Moral of the story, don't buy a bus from a cop. . I'm kidding. . That's funny. But yes. That is so funny. It's, don't you, it's probably just another name of something though, right? Aurora Productions, or who knows? Maybe maybe somebody who made it soft, aurora is a fairly, common word.

So there's probably more than one Aurora productions, but yeah, if you ever see it, Aurora production, double check, might be a cult, might be a cult.

That's funny. All right. Let's call it a night. Yeah. And thank you for joining us.

 . Remember to check out our. We have fun shirts and other things. There's notebooks and stickers and mugs with skateboards. Yeah. Designs. And yeah, all the proceeds are going towards Butterflies and Bravery's trip to ICSA this year. And also it's. Quite cool stuff.

So yeah, you can find it on our socials in our, I think we have it in our link tree already, . So stay brave and remember that every butterfly was once a caterpillar.

 



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