This transcrpit has been edited for clarity.

Episode 032 – Season 1: Two-Minute Wrap-Up (yeah, right)

January 10^th, 2024

T: Hi, I’m Tracey.

S: And I’m Sharon. And we are Feet of Clay…

T:  {laughing}

S: What? What?

T: I already screwed up!

[laughter]

S: Oh my god, you’re out of practice, girl. Do it again.

T: I’m so out of practice. Hi, I’m Tracey.

S: And I’m Sharon, and we are Feet of Clay…

T: Confessions of the Cult Sisters!

[laughter]

S: Oh my gosh, wow, wow, Tracey. This has been quite a ride you signed us up for. I’m still amazed we released more than 30 episodes from April through December of 2023. And I want to thank you, my friend, for getting this whole thing started.

T: Oh, I know! 31 episodes to be exact. I think I recall Sharon, you wanted to go every week.

S: No, that was you!

[laughter]

S: You wanted to go every week!

T: I wanted to go every week. Be best! Be best, I think is what we said.

S: That’s right. Always.

T: It is very, very hard to believe. And actually, thank you for jumping in so wholeheartedly with me in this.

S: Well, you know what, I’m rarely accused of being half-hearted.

T: That’s true.

S: And that is actually a problem sometimes! Obsessive – that might be the issue I have.

T: Well, we haven’t been at the recording mic since November!

S: Right.

T: And I haven’t seen you or really talked to you much since Christmas day.

S: Yeah!

T: Wow. So, for listeners who may not know, Sharon and I got to spend Christmas day together with parts of our family, celebrating with them, and also together. How wonderful was that?

S: It was so cool. It was very short though, I’m just gonna say. We really only had a couple of hours together. Hey, you have the picture of the important Christmas gift I gave you.

T: I do have that picture.

S: You want to tell everybody what it was?

T: I do – you actually gave me two very important gifts. One I haven’t posted yet because I’m going to start a series for that, and that is Awkward Bible Stories for Children, and they’re just – I’ve read a couple of them and I can’t wait to start doing a series on them.

S: We gotta do an episode on that!

T: We do! And the other, for those who have been following on our Instagram, Feet of Clay.cult sisters, the Harry Potter complete library! It’s like, this heavy chest.

S: Yep. It is!

T: Every hardback book in the whole series. Not only did she gift it to me, there’s a picture – she’s got a wand waving kind of magic spells at me. I don’t know which ones because I haven’t read the books yet.

S: Yeah, you gotta read those fucking books girl. Just gotta do it.

[laughter]

T: So if you missed some of those pictures, I’ll post some of them again so that people can enjoy the Christmas day we had together.

S: Yeah, yeah. I’ll tell you, one of those pictures, our mutual friend John (I don’t even know if he’s listening to the podcast), but he saw the picture and he chastised me! He said I was molesting the Elf on a Shelf. That would be you.

[laughter]

S: Truth – I only kissed your cheek this time. That’s all I kissed, and there was no groping.

T: There was no groping. For those listeners who didn’t see some of those pictures, I did have an elf hat on, so I guess I was the elf. What I noticed is that you were maybe not groping me, but you were certainly all about noticing my bare shoulder.

S: That’s just the sin in your life still. [laughter] I’m just rooting out your sin.

T: So we’re in the middle of this family gathering, everybody, and all of a sudden Sharon just grabs her phone, she starts recording and she’s like, Tracey’s still stumbling people. I’m like, completely caught off guard – what is she going on about? Then she comes over and yes, my shoulder was bare. I had an off the shoulder tunic thing that – I guess I’ve always been that way. I guess that’s kind of who I am.

S: It is who you are, girl. You gotta show that flesh. Yeah, you do. Well…

T: Too, too funny.

S: Oh man. You know, it’s good to be laughing with you again. I’ve missed this. I’m also gonna say Tracey, that every year that goes by, I just am more and more profoundly thankful for the journey of our parallel lives. There’s no other way to say it, it’s just abso-fucking-lutely fantastic.

T: It really is.

S: And the best thing is it is not over yet, but on the podcasting part of it, we do need to catch our breath just a little bit, hence this short update for our listeners.

T: As you mentioned catching a breath, I thought about – I needed to do a follow up for our listeners on the heels of our holiday podcast that we did, which was episode 30 (not quite the last one).

S: Right.

T: I don’t know about you, but there was a day – I think it was actually the 23^rd, going into the holiday activities I was about to have, and I ended up having to heed our own advice; literally replaying stuff we said…

S: Wait, what do you mean?

T: Well, I kinda had a meltdown.

S: Oh no, really?

T: I found myself literally going into my bedroom, I threw myself on my bed, and I just sobbed.

S: Oh my god!

T: I was getting ready – it’s been a really busy season at work, trying to plan all these travel plans to get all the family together. There was a disappointment over who was not going to be there, and I just started crying.

S: Oh my gosh.

T: I was like, whoa, whoa, we just did an episode on this, Tracey.

[laughter]

T: I started replaying our episode back in my own head. I said, you know, there’s been a lot of holidays that you’ve had and just started really kind of centring myself back to what we had shared with everybody, of every holiday is going to be different, and I took time – look how far you guys have come. Our family has come. Look how much we’ve had to be able to get together, and the healing that has taken place, and so I kind of took in a deep breath and said you know, this holiday is going to be what this holiday is going to be, and I am going to concentrate on all of the gratitude that I have, to be together with the ones that can make it. It really did turn the corner.

S: Wow.

T: The truth is, I guess just wanting to share that – we’re still in this healing journey.

S: Yeah.

T: When you have a big family like we do – hey, admittedly there are much bigger families out there, but just the logistical energy that it takes to get everything together, and the emotional challenges – it can be a lot, and at that moment in time it was a lot for me, and I had to recenter myself. Sharon, you must feel it, because you’ve been so busy.

S: Yeah, no I do, but I just want to go back and say that I think there’s something very important about letting ourselves cry. Letting ourselves even just weep, from the whatever-those-feelings are. Whether it’s pain, or fear, or grief, or regret, or disappointment – our bodies feel it. Our nervous system feels it, even when our brain doesn’t recognize it. There’s something about completing the whole stress response cycle, and if we short-change it, then we don’t let that emotion move through us and be able to complete. I think if you had just tried to pull yourself up from your bootstraps and talk yourself out of it, without crying, I don’t think it would have been as healthy for you. So I’m really sorry my friend, that the stress and all these things building up – I do know how that feels, and it can really suck – I’m glad though, that you were able to come through it and find the joy. I’m proud of you.

T: Well, thank you. I think I had celebrations with different parts of my family up until what I call Epiphany, January 6, and I think it’s one of our better whole holiday seasons, but it wasn’t how I thought it was going to go from the beginning. So that’s a lesson in there also. But I just wanted to remind listeners also, we are still in this healing journey. Yes I have more perspective, I have more tools, but the reality is we have a family that is still dealing with some stuff, and some of that stuff I helped participate in and create, so sometimes that’s just hard. You’re right,  just being able to cry that out and then continue on the healing journey is very cathartic.

S: It is.

T: So thank you for those words, Sharon.

S: You’re welcome. And I want to say especially to our male listeners, because even apart from all the fundamental and Evangelical, culty, mind-control bullshit that all of us were subjected to and participated in, and how that has us denying the humanity, the essence of who we really are – on top of that, at least for our American listeners, you’ve got this whole weird masculinity idea. What was that saying – real men don’t cry. It’s not true.

T: Mmhmm.

S: To me, real men, real women do cry, and by that I mean real meaning. Being true to yourself. Being able to be authentic and let yourself feel it. I don’t know – I think you gotta cry at least a few times a year, in my opinion. So…

T: [laughing].

S: Alright, I got us off track there didn’t I.

T: No, no!

S: This is supposed to be a short little thing where we’re just telling people what we’re doing, Tracey!

T: It’s just supposed to be a short little thing but I wanted to follow up of hey, this is stuff that we’re still going through. One of the main reasons that we’re doing this podcast – it’s to call out those portions of the journey we know others are also going through. We’re still in it with you, y’all.

S: We are. And of course, that brings us to what we could be calling our Season 2. Tracey, sometimes I really still do find myself wrestling with the why. Why do we keep doing this? What is it that we have to say that is so important that people should take an hour out of their life to listen to?

T: Which is such a good question. I know from the very beginning we said, you know what, we’re gonna say what we need to say, and when we’re done, we’ll be done.

S: We’ll be done. And you know one other thing, Tracey, I recognize that there are more than a dozen great podcasts out there that are in this same space, dealing with – oh my gosh, all the fall out of fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, and the culty culty cult shit in the high control religious stuff. In fact, some of these podcasts are so good that we’re doing a bit of ad-swapping with some of them.

T: Mmhmm. And one of the things that’s really struck me, as I’m following the IHOP KC and the Mike Bickle stuff is, how much of the same model that we lived they’re actually going through right now. That’s been some of the heavy stuff that’s been in this sphere during the holiday season as we follow some people that are living that right now. It goes back to why are we in this space also? I think back to when we both left Last Days and we’ve gone into a little bit of detail, we haven’t gone into it all, but when I’m reading through some of these posts by these precious brothers and sisters who are going through all of this stuff at IHOP KC, I so resonate with what they are going through. I remember how when we tried to bring to the forefront a misbehaving leader, the play-by-play of the leadership in place at that time is almost the exact of what they’re experiencing.

S: I know. My god.

T: I just remember how confused I was, how depressed, how heartbroken…

S: And alone! How alone we felt, right? And how long it took us to re-enter normal society. Of course Tracey, for us, that was way before the internet existed, so the isolation was even more so, right?

[laughter]

T: Cos we’re old!

[laughter]

S: I mean, yeah, yeah, okay we’re old.

T: But that is actually what they do have that we didn’t have, and what is so very cool about all of these podcasts – which we’re bringing it back down to. Okay, so we’re another voice out there in the midst of all of this, but these support spaces, these stories that are being told by other people – how important that is when people are going through things, to know that they’re not alone.

S: Right.

T: I guess the sad part is it’s because this culty shit has been going on for so long. I mean, for us – it’s over 30 years ago. I think I quit counting it 30 years ago…

S: No, it’s longer than that Tracey, it’s 40 years ago.

T: Uggghh see, I quit counting at 30.

[laughter]

S: Oh man.

T: Which shows you just how long this stuff has been happening, and we are just one of many – too many stories that are out there.

S: Yep. Alright, Season 2, right? We’re here saying yes we’re going to do a Season 2.

T: Yes, I absolutely think we have more stories to go into more detail about. I know for me – one of the things we get requested from some of our listeners is our divorces. I think we promised that in our purity culture series, we said we were going to go into more detail, and that’s been coming up a lot. I think it’s time to dive into that. We haven’t really gone into some of the details – we’ve talked about cracks in our faith and what made us deconstruct, so that’s something we need to go into greater detail, and of course, we have not at all finished the expose on Youth With A Mission, or YWAM, and I know there are several of our listeners really waiting for that.

S: Yep.

T: I think even with this IHOP KC it is even more – I guess it just really shows me how damaging that model of Youth With A Mission has been, and how many people copied that model. I don’t think I was fully aware of how insidious and how far-reaching that model has been.

S: It’s like, all these different piles of steaming shit that pretty much look the same, they just have different colored sprinkles on top. Which flavor is this? Is this YWAM, is this IHOP, is this Last Days, is this IBLP?

T: Team Mania?

S: Right, Team Mania – all of that. I do just want to say as far as YWAM goes, I would really like it to be known as Youth Who Are Manipulated, because that is the hardcore truth of it. Alright, from our vantage point, as we’ve painfully recalled, so many decades we are down the road we are in this journey, we’ve seen, we’ve felt, and we’ve learned a lot of things. For me Tracey, it’s important – I don’t want to just tell the what of our stories – who, what, when, where, what exactly happened. But to me, I think our niche is to be really deeply personal. To be deeply vulnerable in the hope that we can help those out there who are at any point in their own journey. Some may be just beginning to question, or they’re really struggling, or they’re just slogging through the muck of it all, or maybe they’re out on the other side and they’re kind of feeling – I don’t know, a little numb or dizzy and still trying to figure out exactly what happened. We actually do have a few folks who listen who are still in that fundamental or Evangelical mindset. I think they’re praying for us.

T: [laughing]

S: Oh well. Tracey, we’ve got a list of quite a number of folks that we really want to talk to that have really important stories to share. These aren’t necessarily high profile names. These are people who were some of the rank and file of these various organizations and just manipulative, abusive systems. But the personal stories they have, I think, will really bring healing to many more. So our style, our emphasis, isn’t so much detailed, investigative reporting but I’m gonna tell you – I’m so grateful for those various podcasts out there that are doing that.

T: Yes,

S: They are digging in, they’re digging up the dirt, which is fantastic. There are others that are doing intense research, there are others that are interviewing all kinds of high profile, influential people, and those are just wonderful. You and I both listen to so many of them.

T: Yah, and it’s been so helpful for us. Even 40 years on, just the different times when you can see yourself in somebody else’s story. There’s power in that. There’s still healing in that. That whole sense of not being alone – I know when we did it, we really were alone.

S: I just wanna say again, that for me, I really want to be exploring those tender and often still bruised places that reside in almost all of us, as we’re trying to make sense of the crazy shit that was heaped on us, and making peace with the crazy shit we ourselves did.

T: Mmhmm.

S: Yeah. Continuing this healing journey.

T: So in order to do that Sharon, it takes some space and time to do it well.

S: Yeah, it does.

T: You and I, we’ve been talking about taking a break to plan for our next episodes. We will be back – obviously this is not a full, deep episode, even though it’s longer than you and I planned when we started.

[laughter]

S: I told you two minutes, woman. I said let’s do it in two minutes.

T: Two minutes! So when do you think we’ll be back with an official Season 2?

S: Official Season 2 kick off? Well let’s see, we’re only juggling a few things these days – you’ve got your corporate servitude, and I know that means you’ve got some major international business travel that you’ve got to schedule in here, and even more importantly Tracey, your first grandchild is coming soon!

T: Oh my god, it’s still so surreal to me, and it’s just like, so monumental. And you Sharon, are old hat at this already. I do have to tell this one story, because in those dark days leaving Last Days, some of you may have heard – I haven’t gone into great detail, but I was seven months pregnant when we arrived into a city that I’d never lived in, trying to figure out life outside of a commune, and the only friend I had was Sharon. You were already old hat in that you were the mother of two kids, and I often tell my kids and other people that basically Sharon taught me everything I needed to know about mothering.

S: Awww. Well I guess I need to apologize to all of your kids then.

T: No! Let me clarify – we were both in the same mindset, but how to nurse a baby, how you can just continue to be on the go – you definitely gave me the practical advice of being able to be a mother. So here you are, old hat now at being a grandmother, so I’ve still got some things I can learn from you, because you have – what? How many grandkids?

[laughter]

S: We have eight on the ground, as horse breeders would say…

T: Wow.

S: And we have number nine and number ten on their way. But you know, between me and Dave, we’ve got seven kids between us, so it multiples. Yada, yada.

T: Mmmm.

S: I’m rambling on and on, so our two minutes is a joke.

[laughter]

S: I’m thinking that our first episode of Season 2 is probably going to drop in early March, maybe sooner, but no promises. We gotta get our recording schedule nailed down and get to it.

T: Yes. So in the mean time we know that we do have some new listeners. We’ve seen you popping in, and also out to you – we do try to respond to everybody, sometimes we’re slow, but know that one of my morning … almost like journalling, I was always a great journaller, but now I’m an Instagrammer in the morning. It’s almost become like a meditative practice for me. I’m looking at stuff, I’m thinking through, so when we get messages I’m definitely reading them – we’re very touched, we’re very grateful for people who are taking the time to reach out to us to share your stories. Even though we don’t always get back as fast as we would like to, know that it’s super important and we don’t take any of you for granted.

S: Mmhmm.

T: We really appreciate you taking the time to share your stories. So if you are a new listener, there is a lot of time now to catch up on how many episodes Sharon?

S: Thirty one.

T: Thirty one-derful episodes! See what I did there?

[laughter]

S: You’re so smart.

T: I’m so smart! And I’ll be posting some reminders of some of the highlights of some of those episodes, so if you haven’t made your way through, this is a good time to do that. Also, don’t forget to join our discussion with other listeners in our – not a commune, but a community. Our Facebook community page, Confessions of the Cult Sisters Community.

S: Yep. Alright Tracey, well our two minutes is way over. Let’s just say goodbye to everybody shall we?

T: We shall. And we will let you know what our first topic series will be and when we will have the time between juggling new babies to be able to put them out there.

S: That’s right. Alright everybody. Love yourselves, love one another, and we’ll be back before you know it.

T: Bye bye for now.