This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Episode 067 – Spiritual Orgasms with Feet of Clay – Confessions of Cult Sisters

August 31, 2023

R: Hey guys, we’re back. It’s Rachael and Molly, welcome to Cheers to Leaving, I’m Molly, that’s Rachael. Say hello.

M: Everyone look over there, that is Rachael.

R: That beautiful essence of a woman; that beautiful being.

M: That you can’t see.

R: She’s so hot, if you guys didn’t know already. Every time I see you post any Instagram posts I’m just like, Jesus Rachael, stop being so hot.

M: Oh I’m so sorry. Purity culture ruined me, because now, as you guys have stated in some of your podcast episodes, I have swung the other way. The first modelling shit that I went into after purity culture was straight up nude modelling.

S: Excellent.

M: I’ve since come back a little bit; I don’t really do nude modelling anymore, mostly because I’m married and my husband doesn’t like it, but if you want to see what purity culture did, it just made me embrace my body after that. I was like, you know what? Fuck it.

R: Well, we have to introduce our guests. We have some really amazing guests. We have Feet of Clay – Confessions of the Cult Sisters, Sharon and Tracey – our favorite girls in exvangelical deconstruction of the indoctrination of the cults, favorite podcasters.

M: So many things that we do. We’re so excited to have you here! Welcome.

R: Yeah.

S: Thank you.

T: Thank you! We’re very excited to be here as well.

R: Introduce yourselves so that our listeners can recognize your voices.

M: Cheers Tracey.

T: Yes – I’m Tracey.

S: And I’m Sharon.

T: And we are Feet of Clay…

S: Confessions of the Cult Sisters. But now Molly, you said – it’s not just cult sisters!

M: We’ve got cult cousins. It’s confessions of the cult sisters and cult cousins.

S: Excellent.

T: I think we’re just turning that quiver on its head, and I love it.

S: Yeah.

M: I’m here just rebelling from Jesus.

S: Hey Molly, I’ve gotta tell you something funny. When you guys first proposed this and one of your communications was to do a crossover episode, I misheard it and at first I thought you were talking about cross dressing.

M: What?

S: Yeah, I know. I thought, are we supposed to try to dress up to look like you, and you’re going to dress up to look like us?

M: Yes.

S: Then I thought no no, wait, that’s not right. I think I got it.

M: I prefer the double horns. I think that the double horns you guys are wearing are just … great.

S: Right? Tracey, want to explain why we’re into what we’re doing today?

T: What we’re doing today – and if you guys listened to our episode 13 which is the greatest number ever, 13, we did talk about head coverings and we said any time we’re going to be on video, we need to have on our devil horns.

S: Head covering.

T: Head coverings. So we wanted to do a new merch line that had a whole variety of head coverings, but we’re going to start with these and then Sharon, I think you have even other motives for wearing this.

S: Well, I do. I do. But we’ll just say we both – so, Tracey and I have led these really freaky parallel lives, and one of the things that is in parallel is we both really do love to dress up. I mean, we were in drama in high school. Tracey, you win the occupation award though, because you played dress up in a Renaissance fair for work.

M: Yass!

T: Yes I did, I was a beer wench.

R: A beer wench. Love it.

M: That is so hot. I love that for you.

[laughter]

M: I would have just been like, yes mommy.

S: Alright, so we both did Rocky Horror – you know, dress up on the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

M: Yes!

R: That is my favorite Halloween show to watch, every year, is the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It is fantastic. I found out about it in college and I was like, how did I just find out about this.

M: I know. That’s how I felt the first time I saw it.

R: My mom kept it from me, because she knew about it.

S: Of course.

M: Well, we can’t have transvestites dancing, that’s sinful.

R: [singing] T-t-t-t-t-t touch me I wanna feel dirty.

S: It’s a great movie.

R: It’s so good.  Out here in Kansas City we have people who do a live show of it every year on Halloween, they even have a midnight show on the day of Halloween, and they just nail it each time. The first time I saw Rocky Horror Picture Show was actually live, and it was very interactive, it blew my mind and it was the best thing I’d ever seen.  Of course I did take drugs before I saw it so that’s probably why I thought it was the best thing I’d ever seen, but then I did eventually watch the movie and I was like, no, this is amazing.

S: It really is. So, I don’t know if you guys have listened to a couple of episodes, we also have this little contest …

M: Sharon, I need to pause you real quick.

S: What?

M: I’ve listened to every.single.episode. as they have dropped.

T: Oh my god you’re amazing.

M: I listened to Tracey on I was a Teenage Fundamentalist and I was like, uh uh, I am so ready for this. I followed all your social media. Love you guys. Anyway, continue

S: Oh wow, thank you. I’ve been playing catch up with yours. I think I’ve listened to eight episodes so far. I’ve kind of hunt and pecked, but they’re just awesome. I’ve been bingeing this last week, it’s been cool. Anyway, you know we’ve got this bit of a contest going between me and Tracey, right? Who is the most spiritual or whatever.

T: We announced that, and I always say the winners are really the losers, as in anything in evangelicalism, right? So when we’re going through our history going who was the most devoted, the most intense, the most radical. We’ve been awarding each other points for different things. Sharon’s very competitive.

[laughter]

S: I just want to say I’ve got – I see your devil horns, and I’m raising you, girl. I’m raising you. I’ve got the vampire cape. Wait, I’ve got to change my earplugs…I’ve got the dark angel wings…

T: Listeners, she’s just put on some angel wings, but they’re black. Which is appropriate.

R: And they’re behind your head because you know, the angel had the flying orb of death.

M: But wait, there’s more.

T: She’s trying to outdo me listeners; she’s trying to say…

S: I have the flames of hell.

M: Did you stop at a costume store before you came here?

S: And a pitchfork!

[laughter]

R: Now we know what you’re going to be for Halloween because there you go, you’ve got your costume.

S: There it is. Tracey…

T: So she’s waiting for me to award her the point, because you guys, this is our first time being on camera in a podcast. We’ve had – as we were kind of talking before we started – it’s hard to get all the technical stuff right so we’ve just not done the video. We’re going to be on camera!

R: I look terrible on every single video we’ve ever recorded, so don’t even worry your little head. We wing it.

M: I love it. Now I want to dress up for every single recording we’re on. Every single one.

R: No, it’s too much work. I’m tired. I’m so tired.

S: I even want to do it more because – I think it was more directed to me than you Tracey, but we got 1 John 2:18 or whatever thrown at us – they were never of us because they went away from us. The anti-Christs have arisen…

M: You’re embracing it.

S: Yes, so I am proudly saying yes, here I am.

T: Here you are.

M: The anti-Christ.

R: There was a Facebook post where Tracey and I were kind of calling you the antichrist on there, Sharon.

[laughter]

S: Perfect.

R: Oh, it was hilarious. Oh my goodness. Well, let’s get into it. If you haven’t already listened to these hilarious, lovely ladies on Troy and Brian’s I was a Teenage Fundamentalist or on their own show, Feet of Clay – Confessions of the Cult Sisters, I highly recommend you go check those episodes out just because it will give you some reference for who these women are and it will help you follow along with some nuggets that might be thrown into the conversation today – you know, podcast context. Yeah, gosh, it’s hard to know where to start. I’ve been listening to your show since you started. It’s really helped me, because I grew up with Keith Green’s music. When I saw was Keith Green a cult leader, the name of that episode on Troy and Brian’s podcast, I was like, not him.

[laughter]

M: We were messaging them about that too. they were like, our next episode is this, and we all were like –

R: fuck.

M: Well, you were like, not him, and I was like, who the fuck is Keith Green.

[laughter]

S: Oh really!

R: Yah. I mean, he looked familiar, it just wasn’t a huge part of my upbringing.

M: My dad was just born again when Keith Green was getting big so he listened to all his music and we grew up in a very similar – very similar stuff was going around in that time that our community was doing, so it was just really interesting – his music had a big influence on our evangelical upbringing. He was someone my dad looked up to; we knew who he was; we knew what he looked like; we knew about the plane crash. My dad was like a Keith Green groupie, a little bit. That was my exposure to it, so it was really interesting hearing about two people who are my parent’s age who were very close to this icon, saw the inside of it, went through their deconstruction and came out on the other side. To me, that is so healing. I’m like, thank God there are people in my parents’ generation who are able to see the bullshit.

S: It took us a long time. It took a long time.

M: How long?

T: It did. I have to ask, Rachael, so have you heard since any songs?

R: I mean, I didn’t go looking for it so I guess I’d have to say no. There’s so many things that I guess I missed out on. His name sounds familiar, that’s about it.

T: So my kids – equally we’re so excited to be here because you guys could be my kids’ age, right, so if my kids were to do a podcast it would be cheers to leaving! Sometimes I’m like oh my god, were you guys in my living room, were you in my family, and one of the funny stories that’s come up recently is when I tried to do devotionals with my kids – because of course I home schooled – I would bring out the big boom box and put some music on, and their favorite was So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt where it’s like manna from heaven; manna burgers; filet of manna; manna cuddy;

T & S: Bamanna bread!

T: And so that really stuck with them, so now if my kids are out in public they’ll be like let me play this song for you, and people are like, that’s a crazy song. So if you only have to listen to one song Rachael, go listen to Bamanna bread.

S: So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt.

R: So I did just pull up a song and the title struck me – we sang this song in church all the time It was the O Lord You’re Beautiful. My church sang it constantly. So I guess I do know Keith Green’s songs.

S: Molly, you said you guys sang Keith Green’s songs in worship in your house churches, right?

M: Oh yeah. I know how to play Keith Green songs on the guitar. That’s how I learned guitar, it was Keith Green songs. So yeah, it was wild – that’s why I was like ah, not him.

S: We’ll go back to that in just a minute but also that same episode – no, it was in your hot takes episode. You were talking about how annoying it is when Christians repurpose secular songs and re-write the lyrics and how cheesy it is.

M: I hate it so much.

S: And what you said is you’d really like someone to do WAP.

M: Yeah.

R: Oh my god, someone please do WAP.

S: Well, I don’t have a video for you, but I do have an audio.

R: Someone did it?

S: Here we go.

[INSERT SHARON’S RENDITION OF WAP HERE}

{Tracey laughing]

R: No. That’s incredible.

M: Who did that?

R: Also you’re going to want to send that audio to me, because our sound guy is going to be like, no I’m not playing it from there. Any time I do that he’s like Rachael, send me the actual audio.  

S: I’ll send you the file and the lyrics.

M: Where did you find that?

T: That’s Sharon’s voice.

S: I made it up.

T: Sharon wrote it, Sharon recorded it and Sharon is playing it here. Of course I would have loved her to do it live, but …

S: I’m not doing that.

R: You know what, I will take the recording. That was incredible Sharon, I think you have a future in the music industry.

M: In Christian rap.

T: You’re giving her another damn point though, what the hell?

M: You’d be really popular amongst exvangelicals; you’d be like the weird owl of exvangelicals.

S: Oh there you go, the granny thing.

[laughter]

R: I can see your whole career. That’s incredible.

S: So there you go. Somebody did WAP. But let’s get back to the Keith Green worship music.

[laughter]

R: Enough about WAP.

M: I wish I had our songbook. My parents had boxes of songbooks because at one point our church was quite large, and then at one point there was multiple branches of our church, so we just made a bunch of songbooks. It was a collection of songs that my dad really liked and he would add to it all the time but there was a section that was mostly all Keith Green. So we would play a bunch of acoustic guitars and sit in a circle and sing Keith Green songs.

S: Kum by yah. Yeah.

T: Well you know, we’re children of the Jesus People movement – I say teenagers right, and there was some really good music born out of that generation. The political unrest, the coffee houses that were springing up, and Sharon and I find ourselves repurposing Keith’s music a lot, because he was singing about his journey at that time, so sometimes some of the stuff that he’s singing is relevant – even today I just quoted it to someone in our old alumni site because they were like, I can’t believe you’ve walked away, of all people Tracey, and I said you know, it’s kind of like that Keith Green song, I ran to the end of the highway – of fundamentalism.

S: Mmm.

R: I love that.

M: Repurposing it.

T: Hardcore. And I saw that it was not true. And of course, Keith Green sings that he ran to the end of the highway and found truth, and it’s like well, I kind of did too. I ran to the end of the highway and everything I had believed and held true was disintegrating before my eyes. So there’s definitely some good songs – he has good melodies, and you’ve gotta get rid of some of those lyrics.

S: You know what’s interesting; I was reflecting on that, thinking of the worship songs, because would sit around – first in California, we’d sit around on the floor in the living room, all of us just packed in, and then when we moved to Texas in what we called the ranch house – that big log house with this HIDEOUS bright red carpet – I mean, hideous carpet!

T: It was a sign of the times.

S: Oh my god, but we’d all sit around and Keith would play guitar. He didn’t do piano during our bible studies and worship because it would just be too loud, so he played guitar. I was thinking back on some of the songs, and I was recognizing that for me, whether it was Keith’s songs or later in my journey, Hillsong and Matt Redman – all these other ones – the songs that made me so emotionally moved; you know, brought you to that real intensity of transcendency, emotional connection, whatever…

M: Or what Tracey would call a spiritual orgasm?

{laughter]

S: Or that! Yes!

[laughter]

S: We’ll go down that road in just one second, but for me, I recognized it was the ones that talked the most about how horrible I am in contrast to God’s love for me. It’s like those were the ones I gravitated to, and that whole message of you’re just like – even Amazing Grace, that old hymn, it’s like, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, and it’s this whole focus on you as an individual, you’re basically just a piece of shit. That’s really what you are. The one, my eyes are dry, my faith is old, my heart is hard, my prayers are cold – it’s just self-loathing, self-recrimination. Anyway I find it interesting that those are the ones that set me up for higher ecstasy because it was shoving me down into the depths I thought I deserved.

T: It’s the kink side of the spiritual orgasm.

[laughter]

M: Tracey’s like, I’m gonna bring it back around.

S: Bondage man, bondage!

R: It’s like Christian emo.

S: Yeah!

T: But we were – both of us were children of alcoholic families and I think a lot of the people that would come to the commune that we would later find out we all brought a lot of trauma with us, and religion was the answer for a lot of our trauma. In contrast, you live in this environment and you’re not feeling worthy and you’re not feeling loved, and then you have this religion that says well you aren’t but God’s going to love you anyway. That was a real hook for a lot of us, and the history bears out how terrible it has ended up being for so many.

R: Yeah, I think it’s a real hook for a lot of people, which is interesting because as we’re out of it – at least for me, we’re all now on journeys of self-love. But like, self-love was sinful. It was like, only God can love you and you can love other people but you’re not allowed to love yourself. I think that’s interesting, because what we really needed was to love ourselves the way we are, instead of hearing that some daddy in the sky loves us how we are, but it puts that whole – if you came from families of alcoholics you probably didn’t get the correct attachment you needed from your caregiver, so you were looking for that in daddy god, so that was suppose to heal your heart and mend you, but in reality it just kind of left you more fucked up. But it’s a good catch. It’s a good marketing scheme.

T: It is. You create this problem and then you’re the one to solve that, and I think your generation – our children’s generation – are the one that paid the ultimate price for that, because we took that into our parenting.

M: Yeah, I was going to say it’s all just a response to trauma right, so what’s so interesting and what’s been so healing about your podcast is hearing people my parents age talk about how they got into it, and why they got into it, and why it was important to them to be in this community and environment, following these rules and teachings – it makes sense. And I think that’s helpful to me to be like, okay, I can see this perspective now. I’ve now heard the stories from a different perspective. You know how you say you can’t really tell your kids anything, but they can hear it from another adult –

[laughter]

M: To make it a little bit better, that’s basically what this has been for me. It’s another adult saying hey, I’ve been where they were when they raised you and I was that parent too and I’m telling you right now, it was not okay, and I regret some of the things that I did, and I don’t like how I approached certain things, and I understand why you’re in pain. That is the most validating experience, so cheers to you guys. Everyone needs to go listen to your podcast if you were raised by evangelical parents, because it’s really healing to hear that perspective.

R: Are you guys technically in the Baby Boomer generation?

S: We just had this debate.

R: I can look it up, but did you guys come to any conclusion?

M: They’re like in the last two years of Baby Boomers.

R: I kind of remember your ages; I know you said it on your podcast but I don’t remember.

S: I’m going to be 62 in two days, when we’re recording this.

M: You’re my parents age then.

R: You said your parents were Gen X at one time, so they’re not that old.

M: I think my mom might be a Gen X-er because she’s 59 and my dad’s 61.

T: Yah. If she’s 59, because I’m 60 and depending on what stats you pull, I’m at the very tail end of the boomers, or in the other group. So depending on how it serves me, I claim not being a boomer – or being a boomer if it serves me.

R: That’s fair. The boomer generation is rough.

[laughter]

M: It’s a big generation so there’s sub-cultures.

T: Yes. There’s definitely sub-cultures.

R: Well, I think we’re on the tail end of Millennials. We’re the younger Millennials. Because I think there’s Millennials in their 40s now, and they’re the oldest ones.

S: What years were you gals born?

R: 92.

M: 94.

S: Wow.

T: You guys are younger than my kids.

S: You’re younger than all my kids.

T: Well not ALL my kids because we had so many, but…

R: We had so many kids, it’s hard to keep track of.

M: So many babies. Oh my god, they were just like, walking out of you at one point.

T: So true story, my one was – I went the day – of course, I had home births, because you have home church, home school, and home births.

M: Hey now, don’t be hating on the home births.

S: She gets the point on that one. I was in a hospital every time.

T: Yeah, I hate hospitals, so….

M: Me too.

T: So I had gone to the midwife and she’s like, no, you’re far far – anyway, that night the water breaks, and 15 minutes later that baby is born.

R: Oh my god.

S: What number was that?

T: We were not ready.

R: Did they split you in half? 15 minutes?

M: You got a baby!

S: Don’t say the name but which one was that Tracey?

T: I try to keep their names out.

S: Yeah, no name, but which number?

T: Oh, 4.

S: Okay, I know.

R: So if you had them all pretty close, I feel like that happens. Labor gets real sort.

M: Yeah, your v-jay-jay gets real …

T: I know, I think of the 19 kids and counting and I can’t even physiologically comprehend that, honestly.

R: Didn’t she have like, two or three sets of twins? So she didn’t individual give birth to 19 kids.

S: Okay wait, now that is a point of debate.

T: For this question, I am willing to take whatever the judges of Cheers to Leaving say, because this is a debate.

M: Is this really a debate? Okay.

S: This is truly a debate.

T: It’s for the point. It’s for our competitive game.

S: It’s for our game.

R: I love that you guys have a point system between the two of you.

S: Paul, if you’re listening, you’re the man who has to keep track of all this. We’ve got an old friend from Last Days who’s also deconstructed and he’s volunteered to help us with it. Okay. So, we both have five kids. However, I had twins.

M: You had sex five times?

S: Only four. Only four, because I had twins. But okay, so that’s the thing. I had twins so she went through five pregnancies; I went through four pregnancies; I just think giving birth to twins is more monumental than another single pregnancy, so I think I win on the child bearing.

R: Did you have a C-section?

T: I think that nine months, because I was still nursing another baby while I was pregnant, so I had to go through another nine months, so in totality I spent more time pregnant and nursing – because it was elongated – so I think I win.

S: Well, maybe you win lactation.

M: No no, so, health care provider coming in.

T: Ohh.

M: Natural health care provider. I’m a massage therapist.

R: She’s not a doctor.

M: I’m not a doctor.

R: She approached that like she was a doctor.

M: I’m not.

R: Alright, doctor’s in the house.

M: I provide a version of healthcare. A genre of healthcare.

R: She is somewhat in the healthcare system.

M: Yes. They’re equally hard.

T: Are we tying?

R: I feel like that’s a cop out.

[laughter]

R: As far a competition says, you’re all winners!

M: You’re both strong amazing women, you’ve both done things I’ve never done.

R: I will say they’re both very different things.

M: And they’re both traumatizing and hard.

R: Yeah. Twin births and carrying twins – did you have a C-section, Sharon?

S: No. I had the longest 15 minutes of my entire life…

R: Waiting for the other one to come out?

S: Well, there are things they didn’t tell you. Like, okay – think about this. The uterus is contracting to get the baby out, right? So you get one baby out. Now your uterus is kind of floppy. It’s like a little stretched out, and maybe the baby has turned a little bit, so what do they do? You’ve got the doctor sticking – feels like she’s sticking her arm up to her elbow inside me.

M: That’s very gay.

S: To find the head and then there’s two nurses, there’s one on either side of me with their elbows on my abdomen, and they’re shoving and shoving to kind of push this baby out.

R: Kind of makes sense though.

S: Yeah – nobody ever told me that’s what would happen if you were doing a vaginal birth with twins.

M: You know, they really need to get better at birth education.

R: They just don’t talk to you about stuff. They don’t tell you what to expect, and I feel like they probably do that to some extent for liability reasons, but they need to  – if it’s something you’ve never been in this situation before and they’ve been in this situation thousands of times like, you need to know to help you better prepare.

S: Maybe it’s better now. That’s like, 35 years ago.

M: It’s not.

R: You might have been like, oh my god, is something wrong?

M: The maternal death rate is like 14% in certain areas of the US. It’s really high. That’s higher than most developing countries.

R: Yeah, it’s not great.

T: Wow.

R: It might be different now, though.

M: I don’t know. 

R: I think a lot of things have come a long way now, even from where they were ten years ago. Birthing, babies and pregnancy is completely different now even when I gave birth ten and a half years ago.

M: Most of my clients end up getting induced and C-sections now. They’re not having natural births.

R: That was a thing ten years ago. I think it’s a liability thing – you just have to advocate for yourself in the healthcare system.

T: And it’s hard when you’re a young mother, trying to advocate for yourself.

R: Yeah, when you’re 19.

M: And imagine trying to do this being a fundamentalist Christian who hasn’t gotten any level of sex education, or education around your anatomy.

R: You don’t even know how you got pregnant.

M: Right. You don’t even know how you got pregnant for real. He just stuck it in, and soaked for a little bit, and pulled out, and wheezed.

[laughter]

R: Honestly though, that kind of was my experience.

S: Oh my god.

M: Ohh, cringey. But you guys were these young moms, newly married, super super young, having babies, not knowing shit about fuck that came to your bodies and having these scary, traumatizing experiences and then you’re like – I don’t know, did you guys struggle with post partum depression and things like that, and then you were just like, spiritually bypass yourself?

T: That’s a good question and I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that, so Sharon?

[laughter]

R: Tracey’s like, I’m gonna pass.

S: No one’s ever asked me that. I don’t think I struggled with postpartum depression.

T: Would you have recognized it?

S: I – well, I don’t know if I would have recognized it. that’s a good question. Each of my children were born in a different situation, so the first one was born there at Last Days Ministries and Melody was there with me, giving birth – the whole thing.

R: Wait, in the same room?

S: She came in the room. It was in the hospital.

T: Sharon found these pictures, and of course there’s this commune mentality, but you can really feel it in her birthing pictures, because half the ladies from the commune are in the waiting room, and then around Sharon at different birthings was another lady, and another lady – it was definitely a group event.

R: Your cycles must have been all synced. They must have all been synced from living together.

S: Might have been.

R: That’s why you were all giving birth at the same…

M: No, no, they were all at the hospital with her.

R: Ohh, I thought you were saying they were all in the waiting room.

[laughter]

R: Okay.

M: Rachael, no! But I knew you were thinking that, because I was watching you – I was like, she doesn’t understand what’s happening. No, these women were there to assist in the birth.

S: But there was one gal who was actually also giving birth.

T: No, just Sharon, with half the commune there.

S: Right, and my first child – so, mine was the second Last Days arranged/facilitated/whatever you want to call it marriage, so my marriage was the second one in the Last Days commune/cult. My first baby was the first Last Days baby after Keith and Melody’s.

R: So you had Midsommar vibes happening.

S: I had the first ministry baby.

M: When you gave birth was it like in the movie Midsommar where all the women are gathered around you and they’re like, breathing with you and moving – ahhh, ahhh, ahhh.

R: Was it Handmaid’s Tale shit where all the Handmaids gather round? That’s what we think of when we think of cults.

S: This was in the 80s.

T: I am going to send you some pictures, because when you look at the pictures, it’s a group event. Sharon’s always been more of a group event person.

S: Okay, it was a group event person.

M: If I ever have a baby, I would like it to be a group event. I have a team of women I would like to be there.

R: You think that, and then you’re there and you’re in pain, and you’re Iike, I swear to God if anyone touches me…

S: Get the fuck away from me.

R: If anyone breathes in my fucking direction I will personally murder you.

[laughter]

S: That’s right. Get the fuck away from me.

M: I will trust you, because you’ve had a baby.

R: You think that. You’re like oh community and support and I love it, and women helping women and then you’re like – no. No. It’s kind of a personal experience honestly. It’s your own journey.

T: What’s worse than that is to have a husband at the time who’s supposed to be playing this role, and they’re completely inadequate.

R: They’re totally like, lost, checked out.

T: And you’re like – no. Just go.

R: Some men are like that. They don’t know.

S: So postpartum depression – I don’t think I did, but I one thing I’ve come to recognize in myself, especially in this last year or so as I’ve kind of delved deeper, and looked at childhood trauma, and ministry trauma, and other adult trauma, is that my default is put my head down and get to work. You just power through. You just do, because nobody else is going to do it, I’m the one who’s gotta do it, I’m the one who’s gotta take care of me, and so not really giving myself a lot of space, necessarily, to feel. The gutted out mentality is kind of how I lived, so did I have any postpartum depression? I don’t really think so, but I don’t know that I would have had the self-awareness enough to notice. Maybe that sound weird.

R: No, that makes sense.

T: I think in the reference of when we talk about Last Days Ministries and people can go pull those episodes – it was a work commune. We worked six days a week, 12 hours a day. The teaching was all about, this is your devotion. Your work is your devotion. I always tell Sharon it was great for children of alcoholics, because in some ways we were already doing that right – you power through school, you power through whatever it is that you’re needing to do, and so powering through work was very easy for us to adopt. Then I think the calling of being able to have as many kids as you’re supposed to have – that’s also your work for Jesus. So if you’re feeling any kind of suffering, that is part of your devotion. It’s a very sick, twisted mentality to live under for so many years. Very sick and twisted. But that was where I was at, was I don’t have a right to my time; I don’t have a right to me; it’s all about what I’m supposed to be, and then when you’re pregnant and nursing and having babies, you’re spent. You’re really spent. But I expected that, and as we’ve been talking to other people from Shiny Happy People, the docuseries, and starting to see a thread among home schoolers of how abusive the mothers were, I recognize that I think a lot of that is exhaustion from child rearing. That’s some of my biggest guilt. I couldn’t have recognized depression, but frustration? Absolutely. I struggled with frustration, and that ability to snap really quickly at the children, and then the guilt that follows that because I knew it wasn’t right, and seeing how prevalent that was from just your body being constantly thrashed and drained.

R: Yeah, I think sometimes anxiety and depression does show up in irritability though, to some extent. When I was anxious, right after I had my daughter, I didn’t recognize it as anxiety and it kind of manifested in this just – I had no rope. My rope was so small that I would just snap, and I would get worked up so fast and so easily. That later came to light that that was just a shit ton of anxiety. I think probably what you’re describing was probably a ton of anxiety; probably depression. What other ways do you have to express that? A lot of time people think of a stereotypical depression of you can’t get out of bed, can’t take care of themselves, can’t take care of the kids, but a lot of times you didn’t have a choice. You had to do those things, so the way that it was coming out was you weren’t a healthy mom for your kids because you were exhausted, you were spent and you were anxious. So – I don’t know.

T: And then guilty on top of that, and you spiral.

R: And the more you do it the more you feel guilty. Spiralling.

S: When I listened to your story Rachael, I think about that whole thing of entering motherhood with your culture and your family and your church heaping fucking condemnation on top of you. First of all, it’s just so sick and twisted and horrible, but then also it pollutes and corrupts and steals from you certain aspects that should be joyful in that, that you missed out on. My heart broke as I heard you talk about that, and I’m really sorry. I’m really sorry you were in that whole fucked up system that can do nothing but judge and condemn, and you just didn’t deserve that at all.

R: Thank you, yeah. It’s something I still struggle with when I think about having another child. I think it would actually be super healing for me to get pregnant again, and have a baby in the way and in the environment that I was always supposed to have. Even after having her, like you said, I was just – there’s so much of her life that I think my brain has blacked out too, just from being such a young mom and being under all this stress and pressure and her dad shit, and everyone else being like, oh well we’re glad you had the baby but you didn’t do it right, so fuck you. It’s like – yeah, there’s so much there that I think I’ve healed as much as I can from it, but I do think if I were to go through that experience again and do it on my terms, and in my environment and in the way that I wanted to, I think it would just be really healing for me. But yeah, it’s not supposed to be like that.

T: No.

S: No it’s not.

R: It’s insane how much they were able to control that. Every single person in my environment – but when you’re in that whole group, you don’t have anyone outside of it. Everyone’s Christian, everyone’s thinking the same things, everyone’s doing the same things, and yet you know, you’re not supposed to get pregnant but you’re also still supposed to have the baby.

T: Yes.

R: But the terms that you have the baby – it’s the woman’s experience anyway, in the world, because you can’t do shit right, no matter what. You’re not supposed to go to work; you are supposed to go to work; but you’re supposed to …

S: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

R: Yep, that whole situation. Yeah, I have a lot of bad feelings from that time, where I feel I should have had a lot of good feelings from that time and they robbed me of that, but I also feel that way about my childhood as well.

T: Yeah.

S: They did.

R: Trauma!

S: That’s something that has been interesting to me – Tracey’s the one that introduced me to you guys and your podcast, and hearing folks that were raised in it – that is one of the things that – well, maybe Tracey understood it better than I did. I’m slower to uptake sometimes. But the difference in your experiences because you were born into it, you had no choice, versus we joined of our own free will. Fucked up as we were, but we signed up for this, so in some ways coming out of it was easier for us – or maybe not. I don’t know. Maybe because we bought into it so deeply – it doesn’t really matter. The flavors of difficulty and pain and the trauma and the distress – we each have our own. It’s not worth, I don’t think comparing. To say hey, I think somebody else’s experience was harder than mine, that doesn’t invalidate mine. I think sometimes I hear folks who are struggling with their deconstruction, and they didn’t live in a cult, or they didn’t have the super extreme experience. One young lady that I work with right now, she’s in her early 30s, and she didn’t have the super, super extreme, but even just that aspect of the fundamentalism and the purity culture and the evangelical agenda – it fucked with her head. It fucked with her head, and she didn’t have to live in a cult.

R: It will fuck you up.

T: It will.

R: No matter how it was introduced to you, I think everything about purity culture is so harmful to your body. I did listen to your first episode on purity culture and like, yeah – each woman has her own story and experience with it, because it’s just so harmful. Even if you weren’t in a cult it’s so extremely harmful. Even with your postpartum stories and things like that, I still am “friends” (I say in quotations, because they don’t know I’m a heathen) but…

[laughter]

R: People in the house church – I’m still involved in their lives. Not super closely, but when you grow up with people it’s really hard to break those ties, because you do love them a lot.

T: Oh yes.

R: And you still want to be a part of their lives, and so long as you don’t talk about Jesus you’re fine. But I know – my pastor had eight kids. One of them got married, I don’t remember how long ago, but they have just been pushing out babies. Baby after baby after baby. And his wife, who was very young, I think they’ve had three kids. I think they’ve just lost – like, had a pregnancy that didn’t go through. They have been talking to me about her experience postpartum and about how she had thyroid issues, which I did too, postpartum; how they had to take watches with her to make sure she wouldn’t hurt herself and things like that- extreme postpartum depression, but her only job is to continue to have babies. What breaks my heart about this is this is fucking purity culture, and I keep trying to explain this to my mom who is still deep into it, and she’s like well, some people want that Rachael, and I was like, she doesn’t have the education, the knowledge, or the critical thinking skills to know that she doesn’t want this. Her mom literally stood up at her wedding and talking about how fucking pure she had been and how she is so great because of how pure she has been. She doesn’t know what she wants. How could she know what she wants? That’s fine – some women do just want to have babies, but they don’t come from purity culture. It’s completely different. With her postpartum stories I’m like, she probably shouldn’t have any more babies. It is harming her mentally and physically. She has three, good for her, she’s done, but they won’t stop. That thinking – I’m not going to take care of myself, and I’m not going to take care of my body and my mental state and whatever and I’m just going to have babies, because that’s what God wants me to do, that’s what my husband wants me to do – it’s so harmful and it’s affecting her physically now. It does too with sex, right? Women get out of purity culture and they go to have sex and they have all kinds of issues. So yeah – that’s a more serious note, but I’m still seeing it happen and I’m trying to speak out about it, and everyone’s like shut the fuck up, and I’m like, no! This is so harmful. This is awful and she needs to just stop. She needs to stop having babies, get her shit together, go from there. Why aren’t we taking care of women?

S: The thing is, I think that the women who have been raised in this purity culture/subservience of women – this whole idea that women really are less-than. And definitely there’s the double speak of well, you know, he created them male and female but still the woman is the help mate. We’re there to do two things; to facilitate the man and his role to serve God, and to pump out babies. It’s that lock in of what our value and our true purpose is that really fucking imprisons women. I think the question – how would you reach her? We have friends that had – she had at least 11 kids; she had a stroke, her physical health is horrible, but they’re not stopping having kids, because we’re “trusting God”. Fuck, I don’t even want to say it. We’re going to trust God and I’m like, okay, well you put a seat belt on, does that mean you don’t trust God?

R: God gave you a brain.

S: It’s a little ridiculous. But, to be able to, without judgement, knowing that they are probably wrestling within themselves – I really do believe each one of them are, and yet they’re so bought into the belief that this is what they should do – and also remember there’s the indoctrination that if you question it, that just shows your heart is wicked, and you don’t want to be wicked. So it’s this incredibly perfect trap. I think if someone had come to me and just quietly said – without judgement without you should do this, you should do that – like, hey Sharon, so deep inside, in that quiet part of your heart that is just you, is this really what you want? Is this really what you would choose to do if you were free to do what you wished? I think that is a little question that just puts a little crack in it. Of course you’re conditioned to say well, if it’s what I want I need to die to self and I need to serve God.

R: You even have the Christian response.

S: Right.

R: But I think it would put a little tickle in your brain. A seed, or whatever. I was trying not to do Christian lingo.

S: Gently. Because remember, I really do believe that these folks that are entrapped, imprisoned – we were there, and we checked ourselves into the prison. We went into that ourselves, and then you’re trapped in it, and it’s not feeling very good, but what you’ve been told and what you buy into is the reason why it doesn’t feel good is because there’s something wrong with me.

R: Instead of no, your body is trying to tell you there’s something wrong and you have to listen to your body. But you’re trained to be disconnected from your body.

T: Right. Yes. And that’s why these podcasts are so important because more and more of the voices that get out there, if they can be heard and start those cracks – when we were having it the internet wasn’t even up and running.

S: No, it was not.

T: I also lived in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania which is where the Amish and Mennonite live, so the big families were not an anomaly for us. I remember wrestling with the scripture of is this really what God is saying about having as many babies as I’m supposed to have? It was starting to break down physiologically for me, and I saw the burden on the older kids that was happening. Then – and I think I shared this very briefly, I didn’t go into a whole lot – I remember thinking well, what are my ways out? And one of them would have been uterine cancer. If I get uterine cancer, my uterus gets removed, and then it’s done.

R: Oh, shit.

T: Thank God I stepped back from that, in this quiet place, and said I think that’s really – I wouldn’t have said fucked up at the time.

[laughter]

R: But it is.

T: But that’s really messed up that my choice out is to have my uterus removed.

M: What, to get cancer, and then have your uterus removed?

T: Yes! To get cancer – my mom had had a hysterectomy and my sister had had a hysterectomy and there was this thing of there’s always that genetically I might have a hysterectomy before I get to like, 13.

S: Thirteen kids, you mean.

T: Thirteen kids. We had friends there who had 9, 11, 13 – we always say we quit. We went uncle at five.

R: I have six siblings, so there’s seven of us, and my parents. So yeah, there was a lot of kids in my family.

M: Yeah.

T: One of the posts I think that was part of this journey, is I started to put my storyboard up on Instagram. I don’t know Sharon if you even found it, but it was one of those things that I was too afraid to even say the words to myself, but there was a time when we were really struggling financially, I think I was on my fourth pregnancy, and I had those big glasses like Andrea Yates who was the one that killed her children in the bathtub, she had five children, and my sister – who was not a believer, she had her own crazy spiritual journey for a while – would always say, you remind me of Andrea Yates. It just was a dagger to me, because there was that sense of – I feared that. I don’t know if was a demon that came into her, but now I can relate to that exhaustion, that postpartum depression that we were talking about, and whatever voices led her to do that, I was afraid that could happen to me.

R: Well, if you were thinking of the uterine cancer and the death wish type stuff, you were somewhat on your way – not to say you were going to kill your children. You know, that snapping of some sort. You were on your way to snap in whatever way you were going to snap, because of that.

S: You know Tracey, I remember – I was in Richmond, you were up in Lancaster, (did I say that right this time?)

T: Yep, much better.

S: And uh…

R: I’m going to make all of you practise saying Louvall because none of you said it right.

S: [muffled] Lowvall, Lourvall, Looourvall.

[laughter]

R: I hate that word.

S: Anyway, I admired you and I thought that you were a much better Christian wife and mother than I was, because remember I had started a little business on the side, and it was growing and we had hired a friend from church to come in and help with the kids a bit so that I could be working in this little business I was growing – out of the house, to begin with. But you were home schooling. I did it for, I think my daughter I did kindergarten and first grade and then with the business, they went to Christian school. And here you were home schooling, having these kids, not working outside the home, and I looked up to you. I thought wow, she is such a better Christian wife and mother and woman than I am. I always felt guilty for that. I did. I felt definitely less than, and I think perhaps because I did have things I was focused on that wasn’t just having babies and home schooling, that maybe that kind of kept me a little bit more sane and a little bit less depressed, perhaps.

M: Like you had an identity outside of being a mother.

S: Yes. I did.

M: It’s almost like that matters.

S: I created an identity outside of just motherhood.

M: Yes, it is a really big deal. I think that women who lose themselves in motherhood are going to lose themselves period, so it’s really important to maintain a sense of identity.

R: Or, like my mom, who now that her kids are grown and out of the house doesn’t know who the fuck she is, outside of being a mother, and now has crossed so many lines and boundaries trying to mother my own daughter. It’s sort of like – you need that. Your kids are around for about 20 years, but life goes on. It doesn’t mean you’re not a mom anymore, it just means that your position has changed.

T: And it’s much healthier modelling for the children.

M: Did you ladies feel like your relationships with your kids improved when you left fundamentalism?

S: Definitely.

T: One hundred percent.

[laughter]

M: Can you tell us a little bit about that process? That has been my biggest question for you when thinking and prepping for this episode was, what was that transition like when it came to parenting your children and just being in their lives, when you were coming out of religion?

S: Tracey, let me go first because I think mine is a little shorter than yours.

[laughter]

T: Because I was deep in, man.

S: You were! And I admired that, I always had so much respect for you. So for me, I always felt like I just wasn’t a good enough Christian. My husband would want – hey, we need to be praying with the kids every morning, we need to do bible studies with them, and I just wasn’t that into it. I still had my own personal faith with Jesus and my time with Jesus, but the imposing it on my kids – it just never felt natural to me, so I was negligent in that. The other thing that happened for me was, as my business grew and it was quite successful and I moved out of the house and at one point I had 100 employees, my marriage was not a healthy happy one. There was a good bit of, I would just say, spiritual/emotional abuse and I did not know how to face it, so I wound up kind of avoiding, by spending more time with my business stuff than not making a priority of being more at home, because I was trying to avoid the pain. I was not deeply involved in the indoctrination of my children. Definitely I was – I mean, we read the bible stories, we prayed, we talked about principles and everything else, but it wasn’t as intense as it otherwise would have been if I had been at home a whole lot. And I have a lot of regrets about that too.

R: Mom guilt is real.

S: Oh yeah, you’re guilty wherever you are. If you’re at work, you’re guilty you’re not with your kids. If you’re with your kids…

R: I understand. It’s awful.

S: It’s guilt. But when I finally – and it coincided, my questioning of my belief system and what I call now the bible box – my questioning of that, and then also I was seeing a therapist and tried to do marriage counselling, that wasn’t really working, but it was a multi-year process of gradually recognizing more and more of how unhealthy, and how I just could not stay in this marriage, and questioning my faith and the validity of the bible, and what does all this mean. When I finally decided that I could not stay in this marriage, which was very painful and took a long time, my two oldest kids who were both in college at that time, pretty much said what took you so long. My middle child was very, just a sweet, tender heart and totally bought into the Jesus thing, and then the twins who were the youngest – I think they were all confused. Because we hadn’t done a lot of fighting. They hadn’t seen conflict in the marriage, because I hid that very well. I think they were blindsided by it, and the conversations with them – especially the middle child who was more sincere in his faith – that was very hard. It was very hard, because their father was continually asking them to pray for me, for God to turn my heart, for me to go back to God, to come back to the family. So the conversations with the younger ones, it was a number of years before those could become more real. Because it also took me another hell, I don’t know – another five or ten years to begin to understand myself. I had spent so many years, decades in total suppression of who I was, and not even in touch with my own emotions, with my own thoughts. That was a process, a multi, multi-year process. I had fewer direct conversations with my children, and I always admired Tracey’s relationship and conversations with hers, she was an inspiration to me in that, with her authenticity. So I’m going to turn it over to you Tracey, because you’re my hero, woman.

T: So, again, the winners are the losers, right? That’s the theme of these games. I could relate to so much of your stories about the home church. My ex and I were pillars in the home church and many people looked up to us for a lot of the reasons Sharon just talked about. Sharon was on the phone with us a lot as we were like, the counsellors, because we had a seemingly stable marriage and I was doing all the home things you could do.

S: To be clear about that, I would call Tracey and Lindsay (oops)

T: He’s out there.

S: I’m sorry. I would call Tracey and say help me, talk to me and my husband because we are struggling in marriage, and they would speak into and try to help us.

T: Yes. I think I was listening to one of your episodes about the home church, and it was not officially the pastor, but the facilitator in that quasi kind of of leadership role where people are looking up to you. I was bought in, intensely and intently. It was really the challenging of my children as they began to come of age. I’ve got a lot of questions for you guys on that, because on the one hand, Sharon and I came from alcoholic families so there was a love deficit, but then our children – even though we fucked up for sure, I think they knew we loved them, and I don’t know what that foundation of being loved helped them to see past some of the other crap that I was not seeing, and they could see it. Especially – my oldest is a female, and she got the worst of witnessing the purity culture and would sometimes just leave in tears, and I was trying to understand what was going on. Since then we’ve had a lot of conversations, and she was able to pick up this misogyny; we had people in our home that all dressed in the same outfits and would sing those songs from the front, and she was devastated by just what she was picking up from these families. I at least was starting to have conversations with her so she could put that into words. I think we haven’t even done our episode on the divorce – we were not allowed to divorce, right, so at one point it’s like, to divorce is to leave God. You have to walk out on God before you can walk out on your marriage.

S: Gonna go to hell, man. Gonna go to hell.

R: That is such a harmful teaching.

T: At this point I’m starting to do a lot more studies. One of my daughters was a figure skater, which was right behind the Barnes and Noble – that’s how old we are, there was actually a bookstore. So I would spend a lot of time there, and I would strip the bookshelves of all the Christian histories and how the bible came to be – I was learning things I had never learned before, and really seeing the challenge on some of the stuff that I believed. So there’s a lot into that, but fast forward to when I decide to start walking away; I of course am intense, so I write a thesis; I write like, a 12 page thesis on why the bible is not the true word of God. That’s why I was surprized when Sharon goes that was the first time people called you the antichrist? People have been calling me the antichrist for a long time. Eventually even my ex said I’d brought the devil into the household. I was driving – I’ll never forget this; we were driving to a family member’s home, three of my five children basically said you know mom, when he comes in – he, being my ex – when he walks into the house we see your whole demeanor change. Your shoulders get tense; the whole way you behave changes – we all hate it. we really want you to leave. My kids were telling me this!

S: So wait, when you said ex, you weren’t yet. This is when you were still married.

T: This is when I was still there. There’s several different touchpoints when you can look back at the cracks, right – so that when we were talking about how do you talk to these people. It didn’t happen overnight; there’s these little things that start the cracks that happen over years and that was a foundational crack for me, just to see what my children were witnessing and seeing.

R: Yeah. Kids are so perceptive with body language.

T: So fast forward, when I walked away they were all relieved and grateful, and not one of them held a belief. In spite of (Sharon) all the home schooling and the devotions and the home church all that stuff – not one of them had their own personal relationship with God, and thought it was all a bunch of hogwash, and ultimately hid stuff because they wanted no part of it.

R: Wow.

M: Tracy, it’s like I could be your kid.

T: I know!

M: Because all of my siblings have walked away in some version of it. I have two siblings who are still somewhat practising of religion, but for the most part they’ve all walked away, they’ve all transitioned and if they do practise religion it’s very different. I’m like – okay. All of that home schooling, and home church…

R: All the devotionals, what was it – morning worship?

M: Family worship. We had family worship every day from 8am to 8:30 with my dad.

T: It backfired.

R: I think that makes it worse.

M: We were over it.

R: I think you can overdo it for your kids. They go – nah.

M: I think if you give kids more freedom to explore a lot of times they end up staying.

R: Yes.

T: Interesting.

R: When you give them the choice – that’s something my husband and I talk about a lot – he was raised a Christian. My husband is Molly’s cousin. So when you’re raised Christian – he was more like progressive Christian so he does not have near the amount of trauma that I do – which, like good for you. But like, we both discussed this years ago. When you are given the choice to explore things and ask questions and things like that, and then you choose Christianity or whatever, you choose that religion; I think it sticks better. You were given a choice; when it’s shoved down your throat and you’re not given a choice, you were born into it – that’s when I think kids have that reaction. They’re just like, nah, I’m good.

S: Are there any statistics? I geek out on data and stuff like that – are there any statistics on what percentage of fundy raised kids are still in their faith at age 30 versus – I would love to know what the percentage is.

R: I know a shit ton of them.  But I’m in the Midwest, so I feel like – what else do you do.

T: Me too. And in Lancaster County there’s still a lot – they say that our families are real and not anomaly. I do want to make sure I add this part. I walked away, that was in 2006. My kids were in age ranges – they were grateful. I took the majority of the emotional care for them at that point. Very difficult relationship with their dad because he did not leave the belief system, and so I thought we were great. Ten years on, I think we’re great until one of my children starts having this trauma that starts to surface years after. I was baffled because I was like, I’ve left it, I’ve apologized for it, I’ve walked away from it and she was having a lot of – you know, the spanking rituals that happened to her when she was younger – this trauma coming back into her body and make it very difficult for her to have those conversations with me. It definitely put a wedge in our relationship, because I was confused. I was like, I don’t know what else I can do. It was actually coming into your podcast, episode 27. There was a couple of things happening at that time – we have tie ins with Larry Tomczak, you guys can look him up, but he writes one of those awful abuse manuals called God, The Rod, and Your Child’s Bod. His daughter then brings a sexual abuse case against him in 2013. Of course I was already out, didn’t pay much attention to that, so as I started looking that case up and seeing this entire community of your aged children growing up with the trauma that you experienced through that, it was a lightbulb that went off in my head. It was yes, I’ve walked away but I’ve had no understanding of what the developmental years of living in that has been like. When I listened to episode 27 when you guys were on there talking about Michael Pearl and how to train up a child, and that wasn’t the book of choice but it was very similar, I’m like, I’m listening to my daughter here. I feel like this is my daughter telling me things that my daughter can’t tell me because I’m too close to it. It was earth shattering for me, I just want to say. So thank you.

M: Was it good earth shattering? Or were you like, fuck.

T: You guys are giving voice, and I was able to hear from you and then go back and go, I get it. I get things I didn’t get, and I did rob you. I robbed you. Even though I got out, I robbed you of some really crucial years. Thank you.

M: Thank you. That felt really affirming and validating, and I’m tearing up a lot right now. Thank you. This is why we do this. It’s healing; we’re healing together in community, it’s been such an incredible experience to connect with people like you who lived through it from a different perspective and raised your kids in it. So, yeah. I still am working through it. I’m in a new relationship now with someone who has a child, and a lot of my stuff is coming up as I’m watching her. There’s this impulse of like, why are you letting your child just run around and explore? Because we weren’t allowed to do that.

R: Because that’s what children do.

M: In To Train Up A Child there was the blanket training, right? So there was – my parents didn’t do it exactly like that, they had their own version of it, but we couldn’t really leave our area. I don’t remember any parts of my childhood where I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. I was like, very much in line. We were lined up. We had our places we were supposed to be, the things we were supposed to do, and we did them. And we did them without question, and we did them with a good attitude, because if we didn’t we knew what the consequences were, and the consequences were ritualistic beatings that would take place, many times after a period of time from the behavior occurring, so you’d just be waiting knowing I was going to get my ass whipped.

R: I think that more psychologically fucked me up than the actual spankings.

M: It was like, go upstairs and wait for your dad.

R: My parents made me wait an hour one time. And I remember, I put on seven pairs of underwear because I didn’t want it to hurt so bad. And they never came either. That was the thing – I think they forgot about me.

M: Oh no, they came and spanked us. We’d wait.

R: Well they did most of the time, but there was one day where I just sat there in perpetual waiting to get beat, and I was like, where are they.

M: I think the most sadistic part of it was when they would spank you, they wanted you to be an active participant of it.

R: Correct.

M: So you had to count, each parent had their own thing. My dad was like, if you cried you would get ten more whacks.

R: It gets worse.

M: My mom was like, if you scream I’m gonna stop.

R: And then it starts all over again.

M: Yeah, after you get control, it starts again.

R: I need another drink.

M: Yah, it was crazy. When I think of how ritualistic this was, and it was very specific, and they’d be like okay, now give me a hug.

R: Yes.

T: That is so screwed up.

M: I forgive you, give me a hug, tell me that you love me. And we’d have to be like, I love you, thank you.

R: If you watch Shiny Happy People I feel like what our parents did is very much modelled off of that. Even if it wasn’t so strategic we can all relate to it to some extent.

M: It was the same pattern of behavior. it was the teaching.

T: It was the teaching in all of the books of that day.

S: I’m just going to say as a mother who inflicted corporal punishment and psychological trauma on my kids in the name of a loving God, I am so sorry to you guys. That has done more to fuck with your head about what love really is, about what affirmation and safety should be about, and I’m gonna say to any parent out there that thinks that hey, just one little swat is okay – you’ve gotta really rethink this. If you listen to your heart – I know that I never felt totally okay with it. I always had this dissonance inside, and I was grabbing onto hey, I want to do what God wants because that’s going to keep my kids from going to hell, and it’s just such bullshit. And I am so sorry Rachael, and I am so sorry Molly, that you two were subjected to such severe abuse. Yes of your body, but even more of your mind and your spirit, and I’m just so sorry.

T: And we are ready to burn the whole fucking thing down if we can join forces.

S: Tear it down.

R: We ride at dawn, ladies.

M: I really think we should have a book burning ceremony because my mom’s like, I don’t know what to do with these books, we don’t follow this shit anymore…

S: Can I have them? I wanna burn them.

T: And I want – I’ve talked to some people about getting the American Academy of Pediatrics – they need to have a warning. This stuff is not okay to teach young mothers. This is not okay. I think another aspect that’s really important, and I’ve had these conversations, is I grew up with corporal punishment. The Boomers – they grew up with corporal punishment. It was in schools, it was accepted in the norms of society. My father did beat me on a couple of occasions and I think he went way too far. I was blistered and had marks. But he was an alcoholic who was angry and there was something in there that I could categorize as that, and I think stepping back and looking at your generation, this is taught not to be done in anger. This is taught to be very methodical and to be a participant, and to receive the correction of God is way more fucked up.

S: So much worse.

M: I just want to acknowledge that, because I was just going to say I think the psychological damage – when you know okay, my dad is pissed off, I made him very angry…

R: That makes more sense.

M: I was doing this super unsafe thing and this is a kneejerk reaction, or he’s an alcoholic and he’s kind of an asshole and this makes sense.

T: Right.

M: Compared to your dad who is a preacher on Sundays and…

R: And calmly comes in to hit you.

M: And they bring in like, a PVC pipe, those plumbing tools and they would whisk through the air and leave these big red welts.

R: Or even a kitchen tool, where they come in and they’re like, this is the thing we hit you with.

M: They used to brag to their friends.

R: We keep it right up here, and I’m going to pull it out any time.

M: They would brag to their friends how they had broken multiple spoons on us.

R: Yep. I got one broken on me too.

M: It was a party story they would share. It was weird.

T: It’s so weird.

R: It is significantly weirder than your parent being upset and hitting you because honestly to me, that makes more sense. My mom was really pissed off at me one time and I was older. She was in the kitchen cleaning something and I mouthed off to her, and she turns around and slaps me across the face with a wet washcloth. But that is not traumatizing to me. That makes more sense.

S: It’s the dissociation. That’s the thing. What it is, is it’s completely stripping context and humanity out of it. it’s like it’s a clinical procedure. It has nothing to do with relationship; it has nothing to do with human connection; it’s this clinical, I’m going to inflict something on you and you’re going to thank me for it, and it is fucked up beyond belief. There’s an interesting thing for me – my career kind of pivoted into the animal behavioral world; you know, behavioral science.

R: I love your pictures of horses, I’m so jealous.

M: I was actually going to say I really want to come and visit you and just spend time with your horses. I’m a horse girl.

S: Any time!

R: Can I come and visit you and we just ride horses constantly? I used to have my own horse.

S: Come down. You are totally welcome.

M: I went on a little weekend getaway two weeks ago on a horse farm; they have over 60 horses boarded there. They were so friendly, they come trotting up to the fence…

R: Horses are therapy.

M: Yeah, I would pet them and they would rub their faces on me. They were so cute.

R: Okay. Sorry Sharon.

S: It’s totally fine.

R: We love horses.

S: One thing I’ve noticed is that the whole – this is a little side trail – but the whole idea of let’s let the babies cry it out, they need to learn to sleep on their own. I’m like, you know, if you had a mother dog whose puppies were in another room yelping and screaming, and she wasn’t frantic to get to them, you’d say she wasn’t a very good mother. Same thing with a horse with its baby. We have stripped the humanity, the good animal instinct – we spent some time in Costa Rica, and we’d watch the monkeys. The monkeys have babies on their backs. They’re being held by the mom and they never put them down. If we think of us – you guys talk about let’s be in our bodies, because are physical beings. We have a body with a nervous system and everything that is designed or evolved or whatever you want to call it, to be here in this world – but we are in a very artificial world. One of the things we do in behavioral science is we look at – there’s a whole speciality of ethology, which is studying a species in its native environment apart from the influences of men. How that species actually behaves is very different than when they’re in an artificial, contained environment. A baby – if you’re out on the Serengeti and the baby is left off in another hut and it’s screaming and crying – I mean, what are you doing but attracting predators? Our brains, our bodies were evolved to stay connected and to be responding to one another’s emotions and emotional signals. So that whole idea of just let the baby cry it out; I’m just like, that makes no sense in terms of human connection. It’s a clinical, weird set up for our current society and convenience and whatever, but it’s just weird. So I want to fast forward that to this idea of how we interact with one another as humans. If someone’s behavior is a problem then expressing our emotions about IS what is normal, is what is natural. It helps us understand how we feel and how the other person  feels and to talk about it, and that is the exact opposite of this clinical, disciplined, show no anger because that’s sin – it’s so fucked up and it’s so far away from what is healthy. And okay. Done ranting.

T: No it’s instinctual.  You’re made in fundamentalism to suppress your human loving instincts, and I think as mother, to know that my kids will always struggle with certain traumas because that was robbed from them during key developmental years is a difficult, difficult thing to own, to face, to verbalize and then to try to extend hope to recover from that. It’s very tough.

R: I can imagine.

M: It is really powerful to hear the other side perspective of it, and to hear how you also – Tracey, when you were saying that your child had these traumas coming back up and it was difficult for you to be able to talk about it, until you heard our episode where we discussed it. That just gives me a lot of hope for folks. My parents are so in denial that they did any of this. They don’t think they did it.

T: So much so, that I screen shotted – because I’m still a Boomer, so I’m still learning technology and I’m like, how do I get this clip off this podcast, so I screen shotted it and sent it to my ex and I said it’s really hard for you to hear I think, from your own kids – please listen. Please show some curiosity and go out there and listen to what their peers are saying that they had to go through. He didn’t answer me so I don’t know if he ever did that. But I continue to do that because it’s much easier for me to hear your stories than my own daughter’s stories, for clear reasons. So when you guys were being so articulate and going through some of the emotions that you had to turn off. I don’t know if your parents could listen to other people’s stories out there because it is enlightening – it’s very, very enlightening. And it’s hard. I think in that episode you talked about the compassion exercise which I was pretty impressed by that you would be able to say hey, they were kind of kids having kids and brought trauma in. I don’t think any of us woke up in the morning to try to traumatize our children. We were trying to break some cycles, we just had some really bad training manuals that should be burned, outlawed and carry warnings.

M: Yeah. I think that – I love that there are more people now talking about this. I follow a couple of people on Instagram who have started talking about Michael W Pearl’s work and how their parenting style were influenced, and it has been helpful to hear even other people with my stories. It feels validating, and also I tend to gaslight myself a little bit. I didn’t go through that much. It wasn’t that bad. That’s always something that shows up. My parents were doing the best they could, it wasn’t that bad. And then you hear someone talking about it and you go shit, that’s the same user manual my parents used; it was that bad. So yeah, people do need to keep talking about it, and I’m happy that we have this beautiful platform on which to have these conversations and bring awareness.

T: The twist that’s very weird for me is, for me to face that as a mother has taken a lot of – I’ve cried a lot of tears about that. You talk about this whole forgiveness platform; I’ve had to be able to look at myself in the mirror, look at my history, be gentle with myself for knowing what I’ve done and deal with the fact that I can’t undo it, and a lot of the people stuck in fundamentalism who are supposed to have the corner market on forgiveness and grace, can’t do it. You won’t face it. I get very frustrated with my generation. Yes it’s hard. It’s hard to see this at your hands, but you need to do it. you need to look at it, and you need to hear their stories.

S: And I just want to say again, we are so proud of and grateful to you two for what you are doing for yourselves; what you’re doing for others, and what you’ve done for us. Thank you very, very much.

M: Well, on that note, thank you for joining us for this amazing conversation. But listeners, fear not, there is a part two. You’re going to need to head over to Tracey and Sharon’s Feet of Clay Confessions of the Cult Sisters. Head over to their page.

R: Yes, and thank you everyone, our listeners, for joining in on this episode. It was definitely weighty, and …

M: And hilarious.

R: And hilarious. And also thought provoking, and I hope healing, as you hear – if you’re our age, as you’re hearing people that are our parents’ age saying they’re sorry and validating our experiences. I think that is so beautiful, and you do not have to stop listening to Tracey and Sharon, because you can go over to their podcast and hear more about them and their stories and their journey. We hope you do, because they’ve got to say and they’ve got great things to say. And they have a lot of episodes on purity culture, which is also healing. So as we conclude, will you guys just tell people where they can find you on social media.

M: And where they can listen to this next episode.

R: Yes.

T: We are Feet of Clay Confessions of the Cult Sisters, available on all podcast platforms, but because it is such a mouthful and it’s not always enough characters allowed on all social platforms, it’s lots of combinations. If you go over to Instagram to Feet of Clay.cultsisters, you will see a link tree and it will take you to everything else that we have in the social media realm, because you know we boomers love social media.

R: Alright, sounds good. Thank you.

M: On that note we’ll see you over on their podcast next.

R: Yep, listen to part two of our conversation on Feet of Clay. Bye.