... does at school.

Yeah.

There's not a lot I have any regrets about.

You know, there's no, to me there's no point, like, looking in the past.

But I do feel like that's my, the one sadness I still carry, that I feel like I was robbed of a childhood and I was robbed of my 20s and just, like, so many rites of passage things.

You know, just having birthday parties and sleepovers.

And when I was at school I could never go on, like, a school camp or go to my formal or yeah, hang out with my friends in the school holidays.

Like that's-

Mm.

Took a photo of it, sent it to my friend in Hobart.

My friend sends it to me in London and she's like, "Is this the cult that you grew up in?" And it was.

And I was like, "I don't know what to do with this information now." [laughs] I was like, "I don't know if I wanna listen to it.

I mean, I've just written my whole story about it.

I don't know that I wanna go and relive all of that." Um, but I did wanna contact the journalist, and so the journalist ended up being Richard Baker, and I emailed him and I was like, "Hey, weird coincidence, you've just put this podcast out, I've just finished my book about my experience." We jumped on a Zoom call and it was one of the nicest, validating, reassuring experiences I think I've ever had-

... or how did you come up with that and kind of what does that mean to you?

I actually did.

How on earth did you do that?

I don't really know.

[laughs] I think it's just, like, one of those things where I got to a really dark place, and I really had to make this decision either that I didn't wanna be here anymore, or I had to at least give it a shot and see if the life that I had imagined for myself, that I'd had a little glimpse of when I'd gone to school, if that really existed.

And so I sort of just started to very clumsily put one foot in front of the other.

I- we'd never accessed medical support, mental health support.

I went to a doctor and got some very poor medical, uh, mental health support.

Um, but, you know, slowly and surely, you know, like, I started to make some friends.

What do you hope people get out of it?

How on earth did you do that?

I don't really know.

[laughs] I think it's just, like, one of those things where I got to a really dark place, and I really had to make this decision either that I didn't wanna be here anymore, or I had to at least give it a shot and see if the life that I had imagined for myself, that I'd had a little glimpse of when I'd gone to school, if that really existed.

And so I sort of just started to very clumsily put one foot in front of the other.

I- we'd never accessed medical support, mental health support.

I went to a doctor and got some very poor medical, uh, mental health support.

Um, but you know, slowly and surely, you know, like, I started to make some friends.

What do you hope people get out of it?

... you learnt really early that that was not the case for you.

Yeah, because I guess, you know, curiosity generally in the cult was seen as questioning the pastors or God or...

You know, questions were not welcome because anything you needed to know was in the Bible.

So if you had a question, you just prayed about it, and if you couldn't figure it out, that was on you.

Like, that was your lack of faith.

So you just had to keep on praying and, and hope that you'd figure it out, or you just forgot about it.

And I'm still a very curious person.

Mm

How did this manifest for you in your post-cult experiences and how did you find a path out of those kinds of relationships?

I definitely have spent the biggest part of the last eight years.

Cause I sort of think like I left the cult when I was 27, but I still stayed married to my ex who also sort of left the cult around the same time, not at exactly the same time, but he left a little bit later.

And then, but when we stayed married for another five years and that was a pretty unhappy marriage.

So I kind of think my life really only began eight years ago.

And so I've spent the biggest part of the last eight years really through trial and error.

And I feel very thankful that I am very connected to the future version of myself, like where I want to be and who I want to be and the vision I have kind of seen for my life and myself.

So I was wondering if you could tell me a bit more about that.

And so learning was this terrifying environment too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And again, like, it wasn't until I was writing my book and I was like, "Man," like, "I'm, I'm not dumb," you know? Like, I'd spent so much of my childhood not just being compared to my brother, but being made to feel like I was just being lazy.

And, and it was just there in my brain.

I, I was just purposely not learning.

And yeah, I read this whole thing.

... weren't you?

What was your relationship like with your parents?

It wasn't great.

One major aspect of the belief system in the cult was that children were to be hit to punish them, to keep them in line, and they backed that up with scripture.

The more you hit a child, essentially, the more you were kinda guaranteeing their place in heaven.

Again, my parents were especially strict, and my mom was very controlling, and I grew up very afraid of my parents.

I talk in my book about how my dad used to go around and shut all the windows in the house, so that the neighbors wouldn't hear me screaming when he hit me.

And I remember thinking like, it always wondered me that the neighbors never heard, but then I was like, but my mom was also in the other room.

Can you tell me about how you met what became your husband?

Can you tell me about how you met what became your husband?

Mm.

I was kind of ready to leave.

I d- decided that my parents were never gonna just let me leave, so I decided to write- A letter and make up a lie that I'd slept with someone, and I thought, like, "If I tell them I've had sex with someone, I'm gonna get kicked out of the cult for at least two years." That was the expulsion, you know, for sinning, and my parents can't argue with that.

So I'd written my parents a letter, but I'd already booked tickets to go to another state for one of the other...

We had, like, multiple church camps scattered across the country.

So I'd already booked my tickets, so I was like, "Okay, I'm just gonna go, and then when I come back, I'm gonna give my parents the letter, and then I'm gonna leave." Unfortunately, there, I- that's where I met my ex, and he seemed kind of cool.

... just the day-to-day.

... at school.

Yeah.

There's not a lot I have any regrets about.

You know, there's no ...

To me, there's no point, like, looking in the past.

But I do feel like that's my, the one sadness I still carry, that I feel like I was robbed of a childhood and I was robbed of my 20s, and just, like, so many rites-of-passage things.

You know, just having birthday parties and sleepovers.

Like that's-