[SPEAKER_05]: Hey, you're really welcome back to The Preacher Boys podcast today.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm sitting down with one of my favorite people on the planet.
[SPEAKER_05]: Her name is Tia Leving.
[SPEAKER_05]: She is an author.
[SPEAKER_05]: She wrote the book a well-trained wife, which is a New York Times bestseller documenting her escape from Christian patriarchy.
[SPEAKER_05]: We're actually talking today about her new book titled I Belong to Me.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's a survivor's guide to recovery and hope after religious trauma.
[SPEAKER_05]: This was such a fun episode.
[SPEAKER_05]: She's somebody where any time that I hear advice from her every time I get her perspective on something, it is just absolute gold.
[SPEAKER_05]: There was no shortage of that in today's episode.
[SPEAKER_05]: But beyond being super smart and a great author, she's also a good friend and so this episode.
[SPEAKER_05]: felt a little bit more relaxed and some episodes, so I'm seeing that one way for the first time.
[SPEAKER_05]: So we got to kick our shoes off, talk a little bit about Christian fundamentalism, talk about what it's like to talk about these topics in a public setting, like social media, or in documentaries, or books, or podcasts.
[SPEAKER_05]: and what it means to develop a life that's bigger than just some of the things that happened to you in the past and what it means to find out who you are inside.
[SPEAKER_05]: So it's a really good conversation.
[SPEAKER_05]: I definitely encourage you to grab a copy of I belong to me.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's available for pre-order right now and my copy out of if you could see it.
[SPEAKER_05]: is literally covered from front to back with underlines and dog ears and highlights, there is just so much good content in this book.
[SPEAKER_05]: So be sure to grab a copy of it.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's available for preorder right now.
[SPEAKER_05]: And the last thing I'll say about this is this book is not a typical self-help book where T.S.
[SPEAKER_05]: says, here's 10 steps to look just like me.
[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, it's kind of a anti-self-help self-help book where you can figure out what works for you and avoid the people that are telling you they have all the answers, so it's a really great book, definitely check it out, but for now, enjoy my conversation with Tia Lovings.
[SPEAKER_03]: Ain't nobody safe In the Bible, in the Bible, in the head All right, Tia, welcome back to the show for round three
[SPEAKER_05]: I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: One times.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: Two and a half.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't count anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just know who I'm comfortable with and who I've talked to before and friends with.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's all good.
[SPEAKER_05]: I got to start with the question.
[SPEAKER_05]: Everybody wants to know the answer to.
[SPEAKER_05]: Why do you sound like that right now?
[SPEAKER_05]: Why do I sound like this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, oh, yeah, why do I sound like this?
[SPEAKER_01]: I sound like Kathleen Turner because I have a cold and I channel Kathleen Turner get a little worse.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I lean in.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is when I do my voicemail recording.
[SPEAKER_02]: I always do it when I'm a little horse.
[SPEAKER_05]: You're like audiobook re-recording right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: It might be like the anti-fundy baby voice like rubble in me that's like, huh, look what happens when I get sick.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, I gotta ask you this.
[SPEAKER_05]: My real first question is, I saw a clip the other day from Tefi Pessoa, I hope I'm saying her name correctly, but she did like this kind of funny real saying that the center of American pop culture is Salt Lake City now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tradwives are the new egg rolls.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nars Smith is telling us garlic oil.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whitney levitt is on Broadway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Taylor, Frankie Paul, not only has three names, but she's a new Bachelor at.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Valerie and a farm insist their raw milk cause no health issues, even though they stop selling it due to regulatory requirements.
[SPEAKER_00]: Three of the four stories we just talked about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are from Utah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, the center of American pop culture is in Salt Lake City.
[SPEAKER_00]: The secret lives of Mormon wives is the new sex in the city.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, while she put this pencil through my eye, we need to do better.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the 2000s, we could go to the club.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dirty soda was drugs, kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now there's glitter and Stanley Cuffs.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's happening?
[SPEAKER_05]: Secretly, as a Mormon wife, is a new sex in the city, you know, Norris Smith and other trad wives are the new eight girls.
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, when you've wrote your first book, a lot of the vocabulary was not in the mainstream about all these things, like a lot of people prided in here, like the phrase, tradwife on a day-to-day basis, going into this new book.
[SPEAKER_05]: Was it easier to write about the patriarchy, purity culture, religious trauma, fundamentalism, all those other topics when phrases like, tradwife have entered the pop culture for natural and such a big way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Talk about like, timely books and timely work.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I was developing a vocabulary for myself at the same time as the world was.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the phenomenon kept opening.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, everything that we warned people was coming is come, it's here, and so lean in, you know, it's there, the Tradoife Movement, Fundy Baby Voice, Religious Trauma, Deconstruction.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, in my book, I explained how I came about, you know, learning how to name things properly, it's very big part of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, and use the proper language, but also the world-handsome material every freaking day.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, I couldn't have predicted some of this, like Salt Lake City,
[SPEAKER_02]: the pop calls, what?
[SPEAKER_05]: No, that means bad things for our pop culture.
[SPEAKER_05]: What do you feel like the perception people have of these topics is when you encounter that?
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, like, do they go into picking your book and like, oh, I kind of know what this is and they have like this Hollywood-esque version of it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Or do you feel like people have a pretty good grasp?
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, when you're having a conversation like, oh, I understand the background you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_02]: Remarkably, it's like even 50, 50.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm really surprised because I feel like, you know, we talk about this every day.
[SPEAKER_02]: For years, I've been promoting this work for over five to six years now.
[SPEAKER_02]: The book is almost ready to hit its two-year mark.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I feel like I have these conversations all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like there's enough pop culture overlap to where people should know, but I still hear every single day from people like, I had no idea this was happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't believe this is real.
[SPEAKER_02]: Who was ballerina farm?
[SPEAKER_02]: What's a trad wife?
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you mean deconstruction?
[SPEAKER_02]: And like right now we're faced with Armageddon and the war in Iran.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're like, what do you mean in a holy war?
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you mean Christian nationalism?
[SPEAKER_02]: Just this weekend CNN's releasing special on, it's an overview of Christian nationalism and that will be brand new to a lot of audiences and sometimes it just baffles me, but it's true.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well in chapter one of your new book, which hopefully Zoom will let me show here without blurring out.
[SPEAKER_05]: close enough people get the jest in in chapter one of your book you say that you're devoted to the anti fundamentalist life and so I thought it would be nice to split this conversation kind of into two parts and I want to spend the first half really talking about what is the fundamentalist life for the people that are learning about this for the first time and I want to spend the second half really talking about
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, what is the anti-fundamentalist life, which is really, I think, the crux of the book.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, first and foremost, your definition of fundamentalism is placing ideas before people.
[SPEAKER_05]: You say it offers an aspirational promise with a formula for achievement.
[SPEAKER_05]: You'll obtain the promise if you follow the steps as purely as possible.
[SPEAKER_05]: If you don't default as yours, not the systems or the other players.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, first and foremost, how are ideas placed over people in fundamentalism?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, you know, that comes up in all kinds of purity, doctrines and purity culture.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reason why I expand that well beyond religion is because fundamentalist attitudes and thinking and binary double-downs of like it has to be this or that or either or or only this way is the true way or the right way or the pure way.
[SPEAKER_02]: really can embed himself in almost anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when you're consuming humanity, you're giving yourself beyond your capabilities, you're sacrificing your children and your relationships and your time and everything of value to you in pursuit of a pure form of some idea, you are now placing that idea over people.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the things that broke me in the first place when I was in the fundamentalist called the religious call was that I knew I couldn't sustain it, I couldn't hold it up, and they were blaming that on me instead of ever looking at what you're standard is unacceptable.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's unsustainable.
[SPEAKER_02]: We cannot hold this up.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when I got down to it and I realized I had to
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I couldn't serve the idea anymore that I needed to break away from them.
[SPEAKER_02]: So in recovery, I found out that applied to all kinds of things.
[SPEAKER_02]: I see people being fundamentalist about leftist politics or soul cycling or purity, wellness culture.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it really does show up anywhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if we haven't divested in the way that we think about everything, we'll bring that with us to whatever we're pursuing.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I'm glad you said that.
[SPEAKER_05]: I have a creator that I followed for a long time, and at some point we'll try him on the show, but he grew up independent for a little Baptist, and he has a really large channel where he kind of talks a lot about like apologetics and dismantling certain things.
[SPEAKER_05]: And he posted a video recently, and he said, please stop saying, you know, Muslim fundamentalists.
[SPEAKER_05]: Please stop saying political fundamentalists.
[SPEAKER_05]: Please stop saying, you know, anyone down the line, he's like, fundamentalists are people who affirm the fundamentals as laid out in 19, what, you know, which,
[SPEAKER_05]: practically is true.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then he said, I understand there's a colloquial usage, but like, this is what the word means.
[SPEAKER_05]: So like, you can't say it.
[SPEAKER_05]: And when I watched it, I was just like, big disagree because things become colloquialisms.
[SPEAKER_05]: I can't believe I said that on the first take.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then ruin it when I'm seeing that I said it in one take.
[SPEAKER_05]: they become colloquialisms for a reason.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like it's because you know it when you see it.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I think anyone who's grown up in fundamentals and sees it in the political system in other religious groups.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so I appreciate that definition.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like what's your take on that?
[SPEAKER_05]: Cause actually had that as a test.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's super funny to me that he's being fundamentalist about the use of the word fundamentalist.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the proper and the only way you can use the word says who, no, it is an actual denomination as we know, independent Baptist fundamentalist Baptist is a thing, it's a denomination, it's a sect, that's maybe capital F fundamentalism, and then there's lower case F where we can be fundamentalist in our attitudes, and any time we're applying fundamentals
[SPEAKER_02]: formula to a process that's going to promise us to a beautiful outcome if we follow it.
[SPEAKER_02]: We are running the risk of that fundamentalism because we're going to serve that formula and divert back to it, you know, return over and over again.
[SPEAKER_02]: When we step off and that's what we're pursuing instead of what makes me a better human is this really serving me is the fruit of this really something I want in my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: and you get a few steps into a path you get some results back, you're allowed to re-evaluate in a normal life, you know, in a healthy, fluid, flexible life, you're allowed to re-evaluate if this is what I really want or not.
[SPEAKER_02]: But in fundamentalism, you're not allowed to re-evaluate that.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to, you know, constantly drill on each step and take the next progression forward.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yeah, a couple of years ago I started jotting down.
[SPEAKER_05]: I was thinking like a good book would be the title would be like the default fundamentalist how like even when you leave the system you find yourself in the next system.
[SPEAKER_05]: What you cover in your book as well because it is it's like you can take the fundamentalist out of fundamentalism but not the fundamentalism out of the fundamentalist you know it's kind of you see it over and over and over and over again.
[SPEAKER_05]: So yeah, so in front of most of me, you have ideas placed over people, but you do that for this aspirational promise, like you mentioned.
[SPEAKER_05]: What is, well, I'll say for you because it can be different depending on what group you're in, what was the aspirational promise that you were holding onto when you were in these systems?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, it's always the beautiful things that we all crave and love.
[SPEAKER_02]: So heaven, love of God, love of other people, safety, happy family, happy marriage, good Christian life, safe life, being on the right side, the right side of history, the right, the way America life, you know, whenever it was.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was always a beautiful thing that I can relate to other people wanting.
[SPEAKER_02]: We all hunger for the same things as human beings.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not a surprise when there's a chaotic environment and then someone swoops in with a promise and sometimes a price tag in a guru and a package deal.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, though, if you just follow this beautiful formula here, you will get this beautiful outcome.
[SPEAKER_02]: And,
[SPEAKER_02]: it speaks to our deepest wounds, you know, our attachments, how we want to be different than our parents, how we, you know, we want to please God and make it into heaven if we're scared of hell.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they made sure to scare us with hell really bad first.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then they said, oh, but you don't have to burn in hell forever.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can go to heaven if you do XYZ.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then they would, you know, undercut that with.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really not about the steps.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's about faith and, you know, blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_02]: You go in circles.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I mean, little me, younger me,
[SPEAKER_02]: wanted the same thing that everybody wants.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there were big, big control systems and well finance systems in place to promise that and beta sin.
[SPEAKER_05]: The formula for this.
[SPEAKER_05]: The formula, and this thing I think is most universal, especially within like, if we're talking Christian fundamentalism and I would ripen the Mormons into that and some people would be like, don't you can't include that's on the same.
[SPEAKER_05]: I talked with seven day events, I've talked to Mormons, and it's like, changed the name of the church you read, and like we all have the same exact experience.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_05]: What was the formula and like what are some of those key things were like, X plus this equals Y when it comes to the fundamentalist life?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it's really important what you just said that changed the name of the church and it's the same because it's the practical, the man of the station where we see the formula enacted.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we were all doing the same things.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were living set apart.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were, you know, being devout with our faith and reading our bibles and congregating.
[SPEAKER_02]: singing songs and giving 10% of our income.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, living these lives set apart from the rest of America, we were evangelizing and furthering our faith.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were denying ourselves worldly entertainment and attractions and luxuries.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were in service of the system.
[SPEAKER_02]: We wanted to make sure we were pointing in all ways back to God, back to
[SPEAKER_02]: our church, our faith, our, you know, righteous living.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you get into patriarchal systems, where you have very strict gender roles and, you know, delineated responsibilities, so for on the mother end, like where I was, this translates to really practical things.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're staying at home, you're cooking all the meals, you're making the budget structure, you know, homeschooling, home birthing, home all the things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the busy work piles up up up up up up the formula
[SPEAKER_02]: And the more cerebral aspects of why you're fundamentalists no longer even have room in the day because you're so busy with the work that you've created for yourself in order to serve this goal.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everything points back to that goal.
[SPEAKER_05]: The last section of your definition you talk about how if you can or don't follow those steps correctly.
[SPEAKER_05]: it's you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like it's not the system.
[SPEAKER_05]: You're not set up to fail.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like it is on you.
[SPEAKER_05]: How have you seen people blamed when clearly the system should be to blame?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they're heartbreaking stories because they're the outcomes, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: They're the kids who were produced by a generation of parents who didn't attach.
[SPEAKER_02]: They instead disappointed.
[SPEAKER_02]: They
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a generation of marriages that are broken because those roles don't serve families and don't allow people to Bend and move and grow with one another instead you're stuck to these rigid ideals Maybe with someone you don't even know very well or that you were very compatible with in the first place
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're not allowed to get divorced, you know, death is better than divorce.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you're serving an ideal like that, like I was, your life is literally online.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you fail in your child falls away, you know, now it's you were a bad parent, not the things we told you to do broke your child.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they don't ever want to accept that systemic responsibility.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, I mean, we find it in every single survivor story, a personal failing, a shame that becomes internalized and embedded.
[SPEAKER_02]: I failed, I couldn't hold it up.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like a real step of deconstruction to say, okay, but why did I think that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Who's telling me that this was on my shoulders?
[SPEAKER_02]: Was there any evidence available that this wasn't a great way to live?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because in 2026, we actually have a ton of evidence.
[SPEAKER_02]: when we have testimony, we have research, we have history, but they don't let that in the doors.
[SPEAKER_02]: We all are very familiar with being exiled from these complications every time you step a toe out.
[SPEAKER_02]: So then you don't get the counter narrative of, well here I tried that and here's how it worked for me.
[SPEAKER_05]: One of the things interesting is like, there's right now two things happening.
[SPEAKER_05]: flooding out of churches that are like, you know, I've seen that this doesn't work and it's certainly, you know, almost killed me, you know, getting through this, all of these rings of things that they want me to do, leading to a goal that was kind of like you said lost in the business.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like, if you really sat down and go like, well, why are you doing 16 different ministries?
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like, you know what, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_05]: I haven't I slept in, you know, months.
[SPEAKER_05]: What
[SPEAKER_05]: And while you're seeing the people that are leaving it, you're also seeing people that are drawn to it in big ways.
[SPEAKER_05]: In unique ways, they're not necessarily drawn to the theology so much as the lifestyle or the aesthetic, you know, you talk about in your book, people are so drawn to the tradwives where it's this kind of fetishization of motherhood, staying at home to raise your kids, things like that.
[SPEAKER_05]: What's the appeal?
[SPEAKER_05]: What's the draw that you're seeing capture people?
[SPEAKER_05]: I think this goes back to the, it provides it everybody once.
[SPEAKER_05]: But what do you think people are wanting that's drawing them to these influencers and groups?
[SPEAKER_02]: I really feel like we see the mirror of this and recovery because psychological health is such a big part of what it means to recover and to address the wounds of the trauma.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you take another step backwards to how that trauma developed, you get into
[SPEAKER_02]: pretty quickly and the things that we carry with us for the rest of our lives.
[SPEAKER_02]: So like in my ex-husband's case, he loved high control religion because it gave him an external structure for authority and that's all he knew from infancy was external structure.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he had no internal structure, he needed that.
[SPEAKER_02]: in order to feel stable.
[SPEAKER_02]: For me, it was like purpose, and I needed to have a way to make my dreams come true in my home and my children.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to be very maternal anyway, because I am, and I wanted to be loved and blessed of God and safe.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a big fear of abandonment and rapture trauma, but they embedded into me as a very young child.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, the idea that I could
[SPEAKER_02]: be different for my children was very appealing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to give them the safe home where they weren't afraid of a thief in the night, you know, kind of a thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think it's that's the two-sided of the coin, you know, it's psychological wound that was psychological healing and when we were on the other side of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's when we'll start to understand why this was attractive to us or why that was appealing and it is individual because we come from, you know,
[SPEAKER_05]: I didn't expect to ask this, it's not my notes, but I'm curious because I was just listening to a podcast where they were talking about Shiala Buff.
[SPEAKER_05]: And one of the things that I think, as we see young men drawn to, you know, high control religious groups, is it gives them an outlet to be shame-free and expressing some of these
[SPEAKER_05]: allegations and things against them like Russell Brand have done the pivot into Christianity.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm curious as someone who grew up as a woman within fundamentalism.
[SPEAKER_05]: When you're seeing people like Russell Brand, Shia LeBuff, all of a sudden claiming Jesus and crying about kissing the feet of Jesus and interviews,
[SPEAKER_05]: with the trail of women behind them that they've harmed.
[SPEAKER_05]: What do you think fundamentalism is offering them that makes them kind of go through this playbook of like the Jesus conversion story made away through?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think always that it's desperate belonging, desperate forgiveness and redemption, they're looking for, not so much like a predatory feel.
[SPEAKER_02]: I heard somebody recently say, well, they're just looking for a new group to prey upon.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's a lot more basic than that at the point of the grab.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, oh, here's an avenue where I can be forgiven and accepted, and there's space for me to breathe as a human being, because they wounded people in the first place from their own woundedness.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, hurt people will hurt people, you know, we've all heard that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, they haven't didn't do the work.
[SPEAKER_02]: They, you know, perpetuated, they became someone's perpetrator.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but they're still human and they still hunger for the same things we all want, which is safety.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it makes sense to me that
[SPEAKER_02]: This gives them a way to feel safe, feel forgiving, feel like they still have some worth in the value, because out in accountability land, you do not have worth in value unless you do the work, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: We lock people like that up, so if you're not willing to be locked up for your crimes,
[SPEAKER_02]: and you were still on a safe and forgiven.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a real obvious on ramp here to religion that we offer, we like here, we'll take your tearful apology and we will welcome you because we, who of us is not sent, you know, we're all, you know.
[SPEAKER_05]: The ground is level of the cross, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: I've never heard that word in a while.
[SPEAKER_05]: That'll preach, huh?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, I'm going to go one step.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't want to detour too far from explaining this to them.
[SPEAKER_05]: It should be a full house, but I want to ask this because this is something that that drives me crazy and you just kind of addressed it.
[SPEAKER_05]: But when it comes to all of the scant, I'll just put a big umbrella turn.
[SPEAKER_05]: Scandals connected to powerful people in general, whether religious or not.
[SPEAKER_05]: people immediately are drawn to these larger than life reasons for why it happened, you know, I think of the Epstein story right now, there's people that are going, well, they were probably doing satanic ceremonies in which they did these things and this affirms this, you know, down the line of things, or when it comes to someone,
[SPEAKER_05]: relocating to a religion.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like, oh, they want to new pull of victims and they're analyzing this and going into this very strategic plan.
[SPEAKER_05]: But what you just said is it's usually a lot more basic and I always go to like, I don't think everyone's, you know, to steal a phrase batting a hundred when it comes to or batting a thousand, whatever the sports analogy is, you know, when it comes to their motives,
[SPEAKER_05]: But I do think that like it's usually not as conspiratorial and complex.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's usually just like powerful people want to maintain that power.
[SPEAKER_05]: People are drawn by money, sex power, if they're in that camp of people.
[SPEAKER_05]: Why do you think people look for the excuse of its demonic warfare, their possessed?
[SPEAKER_05]: It's a big cabal that's running this thing.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, why do you think people are drawn to these conspiracies behind abusive men?
[SPEAKER_02]: some of that's over my pay grade, but what I come back to a lot is that survivors of trauma overthink constantly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we are all hyper vigilant, we are all assuming there's more.
[SPEAKER_02]: This happened to me, I was watching Shrinking last night and no spoiler, I guess.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the characters has a heart scare and they're having this like parting word where she's comforting him and
[SPEAKER_02]: She's like, and I'm going to be there when you wake up, and it's going to be fine.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my nervous system, my traumatized nervous system, was like, oh, I know what they're going to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really going to be her that dies.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're about to rip the rug underneath our feet.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's shrinking.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is not that show.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not going to rip the rug under anybody's feet.
[SPEAKER_02]: But my little nervous system goes to catastrophizing to there must be a boogie man around the corner.
[SPEAKER_02]: This must be more than I'm thinking it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's hard to say this simple truth is actually what it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Donald Trump is actually a narcissist who was wounded and he has taken that out on everyone his entire lifetime and this pattern is very consistent and when we try to over-complicate it we bring in all kinds of stuff that keeps our monkey mind very occupied but at the end of the day no he's this is what happens when you let some unbridled narcissistic in office he will blow up the world you give them bigger toys he'll do the same thing you did with the small toys
[SPEAKER_05]: the catalytic angle to where people with more money, faceless consequences, usually, you know, like there's a lot of layers to that too.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, the other thing I noticed, I just, I'll just kind of hit it over to you and see if what your thoughts are, but like one of the things I noticed too is
[SPEAKER_05]: if we aren't capable of something, we need a reason to explain why someone else could be.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so I think it's easier to say like, it's a, you know, they're worshiping a demon who empowered them to do this thing.
[SPEAKER_05]: Or, or, or, or, or, this is part of a operation, you know, where they were brainwashed and manipulated into doing this.
[SPEAKER_05]: Instead of going, this is a really bad person who had access to a lot of things, you know,
[SPEAKER_05]: Not well, like if you're going like obscene, it's like they emailed about everything like they were not secret They were very brazen, you know, and there were a lot of pastors like the reason they get arrested all the time Is they do lose control very quickly and they just start pursuing whatever is moving, you know But I noticed a lot of times like people try to move the responsibility off the person which which like always front is I'm like yeah, you could blame
[SPEAKER_05]: the devil, or you could blame Pastor Joe that did this, you know, like, except only one of those has an action path.
[SPEAKER_02]: So like when we when we blame the devil, who is such a convenience, scapegoat, we no longer are necessary.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't have to hold the guy accountable.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have an out, like it wasn't the, yeah, the devil made me do it is the classic bypass.
[SPEAKER_05]: We just have to pray he doesn't do it to us, too, which is the most disturbing thing ever.
[SPEAKER_05]: I remember talking to someone one time, and I was talking about a case of a pedophile or predator in the church, and he's like, well, without Jesus, that could be any of us.
[SPEAKER_05]: You know?
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, but by the grace of God, go, I, and I, I don't know my wife, I was like, that's always a lie.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm gonna immediately go on a mental list for me is like, if you say that, if you see that story and go like, that could be me.
[SPEAKER_05]: If I went down the wrong path, that's like, that never passes through my brain when I'm going through your stories.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly, check his heart drive, put him on the list, that's a red flag.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, well, I know, and that's a little off the beaten path, but I think it's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what we can.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: But, you know, we've kind of talked about like what the fundamentalist world and mentality is.
[SPEAKER_05]: But I want to spend, you know, this second half of our conversation really talking about like the anti-fundamentalist life.
[SPEAKER_05]: You also called your book this survivors guide to recovery after religious trauma, which like it was funny we talked
[SPEAKER_05]: off mic a little while ago.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I was seeing like your book is like prescriptive, but also like it's not prescribing you to do anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of like it was a weird line to walk.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's not it's not quite self help.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like.
[SPEAKER_05]: stop getting self help from bad people and also willing to help yourself.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's an interesting book to categorize.
[SPEAKER_05]: But describe like in a couple sentences, like, what is the anti-fundamentalist life?
[SPEAKER_05]: When you say that, what do you mean?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So,
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for saying that about the book because it is like a self-help book that I didn't want to be prescriptive with because I'm not a prescriptive person and I believe that self autonomy and self sovereignty is the thing that predator proves your life.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the working subtitles for it was how to predator prove your life and I just can't say it fast enough and well enough and also it wasn't comprehensive enough so it got scrapped but that's the thing when the church hammers that you need them for belonging, you know, they're creating a cycle where you're
[SPEAKER_02]: Content with yourself is the thing that keeps you from ever having to fall for a predator group think again And so it is more of a progressive proactive.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's what you can do in your life to take back because what I say a lot is a trauma took my past I'm not giving it my present in the future too.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the line.
[SPEAKER_02]: I draw so then there has to be steps in there has to be like a
[SPEAKER_02]: a way of being in a way of thinking that keeps me moving forward without falling back into old patterns.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the first half of I belong to me is a lot of basics learning how to name what happened to you, learning how to deal with shock, which you're going to do with shock your whole life.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to go into shock, you're going to have shocking plot twists.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're going to have aftermath periods that need protection.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to struggle to name what happened to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like so the first part is really basic if you're just trying to figure out what the hell happened to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Why am I like this?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why do I keep falling for these patterns?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why do I keep magnetically drawing these bad people to me?
[SPEAKER_02]: The second half of the book is really how to be anti- if any kind of fundamentalism.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's how to protect your real voice, your real being, your curiosity, how to do your grief or how to adequately let go, how to deal with guilt and complicity.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's
[SPEAKER_02]: All the things that are going to repeat in your life, but you want a different way of dealing with them, so you don't fall back into what religion said you had to do, when you're guilty, or complicit, or sad about something, or you're dealing with a story wound, to have a whole chapter in their own story wounds, which there's a lot in there that's not in anyone else's book.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was really hard to categorize it first, because it's not memoir either, even though it's got my own story's
[SPEAKER_05]: One of the emotions when you're leaving a group is anger, and you mention that anger gets a bad rap, and it can be a, I think you, let me super where you set it, is a forward thinking emotion as what you said, which is really great, and it is the thing that gets you to move.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like, I'm getting out of here, and you have clear moments of that in your memoir, where it's like, screw this, I'm out, you know, and it pushes you and propels you forward.
[SPEAKER_05]: At what point do you think that anger at the past experience becomes unhelpful?
[SPEAKER_05]: And I think if I can expand on this a little bit too, I just asked this question to someone from the Sunday of Venice world and I said, most of these buyers.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I said,
[SPEAKER_05]: you know, some people live their whole remaining years, just impure response to what they grew up in.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I think you're still letting your life be controlled by that group.
[SPEAKER_05]: How do you measure out like how much of your life should be reactive to that and dealing with that and being angry at that versus like who am I without that?
[SPEAKER_05]: Who is actually Tia?
[SPEAKER_05]: How do you navigate that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's really, that's like advanced level skills.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're gonna be in recovery for a little while before you deal with that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's a caveat, but it's a great question because I love thinking about anger as forward moving.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I actually pull one of my favorite lessons from scripture, which is to know it by its fruit.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I look at, what is this anger producing?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we even say like light a fire under your butt.
[SPEAKER_02]: If it's helping me get out of danger, it's good anger.
[SPEAKER_02]: If it's helping me heal, if it's helping me investigate
[SPEAKER_02]: helping and producing good fruit than it's good.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if I'm simmering in rage that's then turning into me and it's like I'm not really finding any outlet for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not it's not energizing any kind of change or movement.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's when I'm key into am I really angry because I'm grieving because grief and anger are so parallel.
[SPEAKER_02]: And
[SPEAKER_02]: usually if you're turning it inside it's related to shame.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's like there's a complex little web that's happening right there that I sort through with grief work so that I can learn and let go so that I can be without that anger.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to spend my whole life talking about Christian fundamentalism.
[SPEAKER_02]: I made a promise to myself and my experience that I would give this
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, visibility as much as I had to give it, but I haven't exit ramp.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a plan where I'm going to be not necessarily working on nonfiction.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll be working on things that make me happy and fiction projects that I love, but I also know my fiction's always going to have the lessons of Christian Patreon and it's part of who I am.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like so it informs it without simmering into a spiral.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like a circular way of thinking that keeps me stagnated and focused backwards all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess simply put it's like when it stops being a forward moving thing, it's like sometimes we have to sit, you sometimes you do have to sit in the stillness, but I've tried to put appointments on those things and I talk about that in the book too, I put more atoriums and boundaries around stacked, any kind of stagnancy, if it needs a container okay fine, you can have a container, but you don't get to take over the day, you don't get to shut me down for a month, you don't, you know,
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's, there's more going on there.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a good great time to call the therapist.
[SPEAKER_01]: See what's happening.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I got some flack way back when because I said being a former fundamentalist shouldn't be your entire personality.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I had some people that were like,
[SPEAKER_05]: you're you're being fundamentalist telling people what their person I should be and I was like, you know, yeah, but I I for a minute I was like, they're right.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then I was like, no, I stand on that because I think, you know, if the old cliche example, it's like, it's the people that drink because they know it would piss off the people who told them they couldn't, but they don't like drinking.
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, the people that get attached to, even though they don't like tattoos, and that's not their personality, it's like, it's like, one of the coolest things about leaving an environment where you have no autonomy is to discover what you actually enjoy and love doing.
[SPEAKER_05]: And, finding a way like this show for me is my outlet where I talk about fundamentals.
[SPEAKER_05]: It really doesn't broach into my personal life conversations day-to-day like I don't sit there with my wife all day long and talk about like I remember when You know, they did this like here and there, but for the most parts like this movie we just watched is amazing and this What's wrong is really great and there's this thing I love doing that's not connected to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're simply more than you're more than your experiences and I just I love space to be more and you know the word that you use there was should
[SPEAKER_02]: you shouldn't be this way.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the flag for the devil.
[SPEAKER_02]: I always say the should is the devil.
[SPEAKER_02]: For me, it's a red flag of what's going on here because now you're telling me that there's a right way to be in a wrong way to be.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was formed by Christian fundamentalism, and there isn't anything I can do to really change that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can integrate it and be my whole self going forward, but I'm also not gonna shame or detract from the person who got into that quite innocently, and went well, and was formed in shape.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that was 40 years of my life, 35 years of my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: should sure in an ideal world, I would not have been formed by that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we don't get to choose what happens to us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Only what we do with it.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I am curious about that.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like you were raised from the time you were very little in this mindset, spent 40 years in that.
[SPEAKER_05]: What does the process, because I always go back to, if from the time you're told the sky's blue and one plus one is two and all these different things that you learn, you're also being taught like you're going to burn forever and how if you do this thing wrong and there's like all these other layers to this, it's like you are programmed.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like it's inextricable from your hardware, like what is me, where does this end, where do I begin?
[SPEAKER_05]: after 40 years, what was the process for you going like, okay, who is Tia actually?
[SPEAKER_05]: Is it going back in your mind and go in like, if they weren't there, if they hadn't done these things, what would I have been interested?
[SPEAKER_05]: Is it just a process of leaning into the things that give you a little bit of joy in seeing if there's something there?
[SPEAKER_05]: how do you navigate like what's who am I and that conversation leaving?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, science was so helpful with this area because I didn't understand why the difference between someone who had been indoctrinated from early childhood and child development.
[SPEAKER_02]: Where I was noting the difference was I would occasionally meet people who had no religious baggage at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone said, well, I'll meet somebody who is completely not raised in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: triggers over Easter?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what is this person?
[SPEAKER_02]: But what I noticed was they were so, you know, sometimes they have trauma from other sources and they have other experiences.
[SPEAKER_02]: But they also have like a really clear sense of who they are.
[SPEAKER_02]: They make autonomous decisions.
[SPEAKER_02]: or they, like, well, I went to college and I did this because I wanted to and I was like, who even are you?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I wouldn't have never said that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and so in researching that and learning that it's part of my recovery, I really understood that indoctrination replaces early childhood development.
[SPEAKER_02]: And
[SPEAKER_02]: We have an opportunity.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is one of the great things about having an elastic brain.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have an opportunity to kind of pick up where it left off and still develop that stages of development go all the way to our elderly years.
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't want that, you know, indoctrineators don't want that.
[SPEAKER_02]: They want to chart out a predictable result.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they truncate us in childhood, they try to keep us as followers and dependents, and we don't finish that adolescence through adulthood, through older adulthood, phasology.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we can go back and pick it up.
[SPEAKER_02]: So in my case, I had a little bit of early childhood to pull back on.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had some feral parents who kind of left me as supervised for a long time,
[SPEAKER_02]: On Sundays, you know, had traumatic messaging, but I had six days of the week where I was pretty much roaming.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was an imaginative to kid, and I was an early reader.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was kind of born reading.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I had some imagination and scope to return to and to anchor to.
[SPEAKER_02]: Not everyone has that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know people who are born into this don't get that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they have to spend a lot more time kind of being reborn kind of going back to the beginning and imagining and
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot of interior work to tap into, what do I like?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not like, how is this working for me?
[SPEAKER_02]: Do I have the courage to take this baby step?
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's, I don't necessarily recommend doing it on your own, although you can't do it all with a therapist in the beginning.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to,
[SPEAKER_02]: There is some, you know, parallel work there, but it is kind of like going back to little you and repairing little you and finding out who that person could have been and still has the potential to become.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the thing, like you're not doing it because of regret, you're doing it because you want to save your future and become who you always wanted to be, but they told you, you can't be, they saddle you with all this other story that you can't carry, you don't want anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's like this shedding of everything that they did and then there's a rebirth.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the Phoenix.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that that Phoenix may not know who they are, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like that Phoenix.
[SPEAKER_02]: We spent so much time on that, like in the ashes and then the Phoenix rises.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what is the bird?
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the bird's name?
[SPEAKER_02]: What do they like?
[SPEAKER_02]: Where are they going?
[SPEAKER_02]: What do they want from the rest of their life?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we never talk about the few at the Phoenix's future.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's kind of where I hope I belong to me, takes people.
[SPEAKER_05]: do you value the idea of like destiny or like I was like when you think about yourself do you go like I was meant to be this and maybe fundamentals and rob me or do you think it's something where it's like just the idea of like I was meant to be something and there's like a clear endpoint robs me of the experience of like testing like like how do you view
[SPEAKER_05]: my goal on my purpose on this Earth was X, Y, Z, or X, Y, Z.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is such a fun sandbox to play in.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love everything, mystical.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love manifesting, I love spirituality and all kinds of forms.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the idea of destiny is fascinating to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that I understood from a very young age that I would have five children.
[SPEAKER_02]: I understood
[SPEAKER_02]: that I was maternal and that I was literary and then I wanted to write and that I care deeply and I'm deeply empathetic and I want to be, I want to have an impact on people for good.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had no idea, you know, like, I did have five children, but I also had nine pregnancies.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had a baby who died.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, I raised four children.
[SPEAKER_02]: Reality takes what we think were destined for and shades it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, and the end result, I did have five kids.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have
[SPEAKER_02]: But as far as destined to do, I mean, you don't know, I want to play with that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was like, I understood, I got immediately squirming as soon as you said destiny was like, what's that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why are you bothered by that word?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I'm curious, like you have an off ramp from talking about this stuff, and I think,
[SPEAKER_05]: That's something I've started thinking about to, I find like a lot of the people that I really respect who are in a similar place or just like a couple steps ahead in terms of like how long they've been talking about these things or like just contemplating these things even if not in a public way.
[SPEAKER_05]: They have this like.
[SPEAKER_05]: Once I finish saying this thing, I can kind of step out, or once I feel like I've gotten this much out, I can step away and not be known for this.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right now, most people know you as like Tia, the person who escaped the Christian patriarchy.
[SPEAKER_05]: If you're fast forwarding 20 years, what do you want people to say?
[SPEAKER_05]: Tia, the person who blank.
[SPEAKER_05]: What would you like that to be?
[SPEAKER_02]: I have always wanted to be in a word-winning writer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I haven't been nominated for any awards yet, so I haven't won any awards yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: I really do hope that they know me as Tia who escaped to Colton, here's what she did with it, and that there's a whole body of work to show for that, and that there's an active, grandparenting career, and that there's an active, healthy relationship to show for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And goodness left my wake.
[SPEAKER_02]: I really want goodness.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want people to have
[SPEAKER_02]: been improved in some way for having a Tia in their life, it's my goal.
[SPEAKER_02]: So as far as with that practically looks like I try not to obsess or hold that too tightly because we're not in control of so much of this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can write a book but I can't guarantee it's success.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't know how it's going to land and resonate with people.
[SPEAKER_02]: So my job is to show up and be have that inner integrity of this is who I am.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is who I hope to become.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what I hope someone is.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's their takeaway of an experience with me.
[SPEAKER_02]: and try to stay true to that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it helps me now online.
[SPEAKER_02]: It helps me, you know, in fractious situations.
[SPEAKER_02]: It helps me make decisions and priorities.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then time has a funny way of passing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I never, I don't stay too married to concrete anything anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got to stay flexible in this world.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, that's where you're wrong.
[SPEAKER_05]: You can be in control of how things are going to be.
[SPEAKER_05]: And if you follow all the steps correctly, you know.
[SPEAKER_05]: Um, no, so yeah, I appreciate the clarity because that's what what I was wondering is like it's not something where you fast forward 20 years and you go like I don't want people to talk about the fact that I came from this or that it's it's more it's that plus the music of a million other things that I'm also done that are connected.
[SPEAKER_02]: a well-trained wife changed my life it's gonna continue to change my life you know it's been option for TV it's gonna it's just had its paperback release um there's a third book that's already sold called how to leave anything that's its working title right now i'm sure i will be talking that's not gonna come out probably till twenty twenty eight so you know i'm still locked in for a little bit longer
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll be talking about these three books.
[SPEAKER_02]: The fiction that I'm working on deals with the liberty baby swapping crisis.
[SPEAKER_02]: They have where they're trading adoptions for scholarships.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I'm going after true religious horror.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I know that scandal.
[SPEAKER_02]: Listen to liberty last.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know anything about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It will light you up, um, yeah, there's no- I'm moving up already.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know if I want to light light mice.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I find out certain things, I'm like, do I want to add this to the list of things that I- So that to that point, we don't need to make- This is my fiction.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, I don't need to make for a wrap.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's already here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just need to tell the real stories.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I will be telling, you know, my story forever, and I'm grateful for my story.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't look at it as, um,
[SPEAKER_02]: as a tragedy, it's a triumphant story, and we all can find ourselves in overwhelming situations that threaten us, that threaten everything that we are about, and we can rise from it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's harder, you know, it's easy for me to say that, what's the amount of privilege I've had in the time period I live in and all that, but it also wasn't easy.
[SPEAKER_02]: It also defined my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, all of these things
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, I'll step back from how you want to be remembered, so you don't feel like you're utilizing your love.
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to look at 120 year plan.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got a long time.
[SPEAKER_05]: What's yours?
[SPEAKER_05]: Do you want your funeral?
[SPEAKER_05]: I really want to dive in.
[SPEAKER_05]: No, so stepping back, I think this is a great place to kind of spend our last moments together.
[SPEAKER_05]: I feel like I'm stuck on death, the sounding state, so I don't know why.
[SPEAKER_02]: You also have a puppy in your eyes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do.
[SPEAKER_05]: You haven't introduced them?
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_05]: Hi, Collie.
[SPEAKER_05]: You need to say something.
[SPEAKER_05]: I guess, I know she's go to the bathroom and so I'm picking her up so she's distracted from that.
[SPEAKER_05]: She just looked at me with those eyes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, I'm going to ask you in about five minutes.
[SPEAKER_05]: My question, I think we can circle around is,
[SPEAKER_05]: right now we are in a period where and I was just joking like do I want to know another domino that's falling you know do I want to have another piece of the puzzle that's really disturbing in this current time where there's so many things happening in politics other aspects of society that feel super familiar to as traumatized high control religion survivor selves you know you say eloquently in your book we know why the crazy shit's happening
[SPEAKER_05]: same and regulated when there are you know so many things were like we know we're not crazy like we know it is what it is We know that there's bad dudes running and doing bad things.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, it's not some people have they purchased like I don't read the news You know because it's triggering like well, that's probably not great
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, what would you even say to that realm?
[SPEAKER_02]: I say that's a great area where fundamentalism shows the thing you're thinking because it doesn't have to be, and I say this is a hypothetical person that's like disengaged.
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can stay and be an informed American and not make that the dominant part of your day.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can be grounded and take care of your nervous system and step out and take a risk where it's manageable.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's where having boundaries that are positive and empowering and flexible allow you to do what you can do instead of focusing all the time on what you can't do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I found a lot of recovery speak to be disempowering, restrictive, locked down, and didn't really get me growing and trying and inspiring.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was wounded now and I would forever be broken and I didn't have anything to offer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, fuck that.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no way I'm going to accept that for my whole life.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is not going to be tea's life story.
[SPEAKER_02]: They broke her so then she died.
[SPEAKER_02]: Bull.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, we're going to do something.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that does look like a little bit of everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks like being more.
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks like having categories and compartments and always checking in with yourself and seeing how you're managing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because how I manage it on Monday might not be how I manage it on Thursday.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I need to take a sleep in break, or I need to take a walk and get some fresh air or take a day off, you know, and not talk to anybody, but it needs to have a limit on it because I'm not ever, again, putting my head in the sand and disengaging while other people who are nefarious run the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not going to happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the things that allowed us to continue to be hurt and childhood is that survivors were silenced and exiled and no one ever heard of them again.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't change that abusers are still in control, but I can change how visible and vocal this survivor is.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I do that, I open the door for other survivors to do the same thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that is what's different in 2026 is that there's a field of survivors and we have blogs and substacks and YouTube's and we're on specials and we're on documentaries and we're making our mark because we can and we have the power and ability to do it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yeah, it's like it's you talk about in the book like your whole childhood is like being told not to have a voice and then your adulthood is like finding your voice and it's like just doing the opposite and and yeah, it's one of those things where, you know,
[SPEAKER_05]: the fact that things are crazy is exactly why I need to talk about it, you know, and it's it's this, but it's this funny thing where it's like you, yeah, you can't change, I don't want to say that actually because I don't want to say that that's true.
[SPEAKER_05]: You can't necessarily change the fact that there are bad people.
[SPEAKER_05]: I was going to say you can't change the fact that bad people are doing bad things.
[SPEAKER_05]: You absolutely can change that if you're pulling some of the right
[SPEAKER_05]: If they are there, it's like at least put up a fight and at least raise your voice and get loud about it to where it's not easy.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I think in these environments, they're used to it being easy because no one's talking about it.
[SPEAKER_05]: And like you said, I love the fact that now when there is a scandal in a church, it doesn't just disappear because they move someone.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like,
[SPEAKER_05]: so and so on her Facebook is going nuts on this and then there's a podcast episode and people are I'm deeming it to somebody who's got a big blog and they're gonna talk about it and it's like you know there's this story just this last week and it's like literally everybody in the country has some corner on this just boom this is happening at this church right here so
[SPEAKER_05]: kid the guy gets arrested who good stuff his dad is resigning their schools being examined to see if they violate their accreditation you know it's like it's so much happened because a lot of people decided to be a little squeaky you know and like talk about it.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I think that's a really, really cool thing.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm going to ask, this is kind of like the closing questions.
[SPEAKER_05]: I've weird closing questions, but I want to know your answer, so it can be weird.
[SPEAKER_05]: And we can always talk again and have a nice climax to one of these, but...
[SPEAKER_05]: One of the things that I've thought about a lot recently is it can be scary when you are leaving these environments where there were tons of boundaries to know what boundaries truly were protective and helpful.
[SPEAKER_05]: Because not everything in these environments is bad, obviously.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like some things that are really good that they kept you from.
[SPEAKER_05]: There's also
[SPEAKER_05]: boundaries that were there to keep you contained.
[SPEAKER_05]: So it's like there were some that were for protection, some that were for containment.
[SPEAKER_05]: There are people who leave these environments and are like, I'm going to try everything and do everything they said I can do and it's like, well, if you do that, some of those things actually might hurt you.
[SPEAKER_05]: And the world is not a safe, wonderful place and the church is a bad scary place.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, there's bad people everywhere.
[SPEAKER_05]: What's your way of analyzing a boundary that's been on you to say that actually was helpful?
[SPEAKER_05]: And I don't need to do this to know that this is not going to work out.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, versus like, let me push that boundary and see where it takes me.
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, it's the old analogy in front of me.
[SPEAKER_05]: I was like, I don't need to try meth to know meth is bad.
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, it's up, but it's like, what are some of those things?
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just thinking of, I don't need to smell the trash to know that it stinks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now I heard that one all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: um yeah so this is very interior I get right into my belly and I pretty much always will have an instant belly reaction to something I either feel open to it or close to it and that's my cards that's you know I need to ask the question if I'm feeling closed why are you feeling closed what what are your friends gonna happen
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I'll have a dialogue about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if I'm not, if I'm feeling really open and curious, why are you feeling so curious about that?
[SPEAKER_02]: And like doing a little interior conversation about anything will help reveal if this is a road you should go down or not.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes I still make those mistakes.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'm too trusting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm always, always rooting for the good to win.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so sometimes I've had to recalibate my boundaries for who I let in, who I share private information with, who gets too close.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, that's a learning process.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's human life, but not beating myself up for that too much I'm not ever what they said I was.
[SPEAKER_02]: They thought I would like go wayward and be crazy I'm not a wayward crazy person.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm actually quite measuring call and like to feel safe and so if I'm Leading with what feels good in my body that I'm okay
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no reason, you know, I need reason to not do it or and also what might be my color and cup of tea might not be someone else's.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, to each their own to some extent as long as it's safe for everyone who's all biting.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's kind of a great summary of your book is like teach their own.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I guess it must be a chapter in there.
[SPEAKER_05]: But yeah, it's figuring out what, oh my lord, it's figuring out.
[SPEAKER_05]: smooch is all the time.
[SPEAKER_05]: Figuring out what is for you, figuring out which but these processes, which what therapy speak isn't helpful for you, you know what mindset, because like just playing stuff like you mentioned where people say like, oh you are this category, you know, like you're a victim, you're a survivor, you're a former fundamentalist, you're whatever the label is, and it's like, do I want to put that?
[SPEAKER_05]: no more on myself like I am that, you know, and put myself in that box of whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_05]: And for some people, it is helpful to identify and say like, that is what it is.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's a truth of what happened.
[SPEAKER_05]: And for other people, it's like, I don't want to label myself something that I deem more victorious in that or more, you know, positive in that, and that helps me, you know, make decisions accordingly and feel the way I want to feel during the day.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's also not an end all be all you're little label that you use today might not be the one you want tomorrow, and that's okay, and I really hope that people take what they want and leave the rest Maybe they'll come back to it later, maybe they won't, maybe maybe something I said is helpful, maybe it's not It's I belong to me and you belong to you and I'm just going to talk about what it was like to do this really hard thing
[SPEAKER_02]: When I share what it was like for me, I opened space for others to make to do the same thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that autonomy is messy and sometimes has like us coloring outside the lines and making mistakes here and there, but that's the human experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the ultimate to really bring it around.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the ultimate anti-findeminalist flex because there's nothing that will you know take us out of the human experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no formula that can replace the human experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what we're here for.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a quest on and be who you were always supposed to be.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's such a great spot to close.
[SPEAKER_05]: I was going to ask a follow-up to lead to a close, but you just kind of drop the mic on that one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't have you what.
[SPEAKER_05]: No, I think that was the same.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, thank you so much for doing this.
[SPEAKER_05]: I know it's, yeah, like I said, this is our second and a half conversation on the podcast.
[SPEAKER_05]: I know we've had some off mic and I always appreciate your perspective and your book.
[SPEAKER_05]: And like I said, I think the biggest barrier for people when they see a book like this is gonna be, is this a self-help 10 steps to be,
[SPEAKER_05]: this like Tia, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like, it's like, here's my Tia loving's method to, you know, oh my god, and it really is like, if you're listening to this and you're going like, I don't want to get like the J-shedification of, even if it's a mentalism, it's not that.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like it very much is,
[SPEAKER_05]: who are you and what are the way the things to avoid that that are going to restrict you from figuring that out and it's a really it's a really really good book and I really encourage you guys to grab a copy of I belong to me which should be out around the time of this episode if not for pre-order than than to actually order.
[SPEAKER_05]: But yeah, thank you so much for doing this and for writing this I think it's going to help a lot of people.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you so much for having me.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's great.
[SPEAKER_05]: You've been listening to the Prejabois podcast hosted by Eric Squizinski.
[SPEAKER_05]: The intro music, Bible Belt, was performed by Lou Ridley.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, come on, come on.
[SPEAKER_04]: We are gathered here today.
[SPEAKER_04]: To praise the holy fire, to fill the glory of His name.
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyone can worship here so long as you act straight, pay your ties and follow rules, even the ones God didn't make.