Speaker 1: You're listening to a mom and me a podcast. Mama
Speaker 1: Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that
Speaker 1: this podcast is recorded on this woman. She's been doing
Speaker 1: this work and it's making her younger and younger, and
Speaker 1: soon she's going to go back to because she's Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: And I was just like, I'm out, instantly, instantly.
Speaker 2: From Mama May You're listening to no Filter And this
Speaker 2: is the weirdest episode I've ever brought you.
Speaker 1: I'm me a freedman. I should have said that, And
Speaker 1: the guest today is kind of me. I've never spoken
Speaker 1: about this before, and I didn't really mean to, I
Speaker 1: guess because I'm a little bit ashamed. But let me
Speaker 1: go back a little bit and give you context. A
Speaker 1: few weeks ago I interviewed Bethany Joy Lentz, who who
Speaker 1: was in One Tree Hill and that was a big
Speaker 1: culty TV show. And at the same time she was
Speaker 1: on this TV show and was famous all over the world,
Speaker 1: she was in an actual cult, a religious, highly controlling cult,
Speaker 1: which took her money, compromised her mental health. There was
Speaker 1: abuse involved. It was a fascinating story and a harrowing
Speaker 1: story at times. We'll put a link in the show notes,
Speaker 1: so if you missed that, you can go listen to it.
Speaker 1: But after we finished the interview, I was just doing
Speaker 1: the outro and the end credits, and I casually mentioned
Speaker 1: that I accidentally joined a cult one time, and my producer,
Speaker 1: Nama Brown, this is why she's such an incredible producer,
Speaker 1: she kind of said, wait, what can we talk about that?
Speaker 1: Can we keep the mics running? And we did, and
Speaker 1: I really didn't want to overshadow. I couldn't overshadow Bethany
Speaker 1: joy Lens the story because my experience was nothing like hers,
Speaker 1: and it was a much milder version and her story
Speaker 1: stands alone. But I didn't want to detract from it anyway.
Speaker 1: I sat on it for a few weeks and I thought,
Speaker 1: do I want to put this out there? Do I
Speaker 1: not want to put this out there? And I used
Speaker 1: the same filter that I always use when talking about
Speaker 1: something personal and for choosing guests for this show, and
Speaker 1: that is, there's someone out there who's wound is in
Speaker 1: the shape of your words. And more than that, there's
Speaker 1: someone out there who hasn't got the wound yet. Not
Speaker 1: to torture an analogy, but there's someone out there who
Speaker 1: will get this wound one day and she will look
Speaker 1: back and think about your words and they will help
Speaker 1: soothe her wound. If anyone's still listening, I did decide
Speaker 1: that I would share that story. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: play you now the conversation I had with Nie, who
Speaker 1: is the executive producer of this show and a very trusted,
Speaker 1: skilled interviewer. Actually, it's weird for me to be on
Speaker 1: the other side of the microphone, but there we go.
Speaker 1: So let's do it.
Speaker 3: Lay the scene from me. Where were you in your
Speaker 3: life when you encountered this great question?
Speaker 1: So I was in my probably late twenties early thirties.
Speaker 1: I had one child. I had lost a baby halfway
Speaker 1: through my second pregnancy, and very soon after that, a
Speaker 1: few months after that, my marriage to the father of
Speaker 1: both of those children ended and we separated, and it
Speaker 1: was a time of I was the editor of Cosmo
Speaker 1: at the time, so I had this big job, but
Speaker 1: I was a single mum for a few years. And
Speaker 1: then through that time I was seeing a therapist who
Speaker 1: was a great therapist, and she used kinesiology as part
Speaker 1: of her you know therapy that like the touch kind
Speaker 1: of anesiology is kind of like that book The body
Speaker 1: knows the course, so it's sort of like I'm going
Speaker 1: to mangle it and forgive me. But it's when you
Speaker 1: push up on someone's hand and they sort of do things,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of meant to cut bypass your conscious
Speaker 1: and sort of go to what is actually true.
Speaker 3: So asking she was asking your body questions, yes, brain exactly,
Speaker 3: and I'd gone to, you know, I'm this very interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm so interesting. I'm this weird mix of science and
Speaker 1: woo woo, like I am vaccinations, science up the wazoo, like,
Speaker 1: you know, give me the prescription medication. I love all
Speaker 1: of that. I love an antibiotic. But then there's also
Speaker 1: a kind of spiritual side of me, which you know,
Speaker 1: is interested in my intuition and energy and all of
Speaker 1: those kinds of things. I'm quite sensitive to energy. If
Speaker 1: I'm around people who are on drugs, I can pick
Speaker 1: up their energy and I don't like the feeling of it.
Speaker 1: So i'd been to a natural path or ostive homopath whatever,
Speaker 1: who'd use kinesiology before to treat medical things. I can't
Speaker 1: remember what they were, And again I would never have
Speaker 1: used that instead of traditional medicine. But I was just
Speaker 1: sort of open to it, and I'm like, what's the harm, Like,
Speaker 1: what's the harm? So I'd encountered kinesiology before, and so
Speaker 1: I found it helpful in therapy, where sometimes I just
Speaker 1: found it it would be a bit of a shortcut
Speaker 1: where you know, sometimes when it's talk therapy, you say something,
Speaker 1: but it takes you a long time to get to
Speaker 1: what you actually feel or and so I just found
Speaker 1: it helpful. So anyway, then there was something going on
Speaker 1: where I got back together with my husband and we
Speaker 1: started trying for another baby, and I was struggling and
Speaker 1: I just couldn't get pregnant. I was struggling with what's
Speaker 1: called secondary in fertility, which is when you've had one
Speaker 1: live birth but then you can't get pregnant again. And
Speaker 1: I was just feeling so messed up. And so my
Speaker 1: therapist suggested that I go and see her kinesiology teacher
Speaker 1: and for like a high level extra sort of you
Speaker 1: got bumped leering. I got bumped up right, and so
Speaker 1: I was like, I was really vulnerable because I felt desperate.
Speaker 1: I felt like my body didn't work. I felt like
Speaker 1: I was failing in every way. And so she sent
Speaker 1: me to this woman who was like really interesting. She
Speaker 1: just operated like out of a house in her suburb,
Speaker 1: and she had this quite fancy house, and she had
Speaker 1: this sort of sidekick and she did this energy clearing
Speaker 1: and it was like, you know, this is this energy
Speaker 1: that's been put on you all these years ago, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to clear it. And part of me was like,
Speaker 1: are you though, like whether it's a placebo I don't know.
Speaker 3: Had you ever done anything like that before, like to
Speaker 3: that degree.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess I had. I don't go to I've
Speaker 1: never been to a fortune tell her a tarre card,
Speaker 1: So in that way, I don't do any of that.
Speaker 1: But in terms of energy, I think because I can
Speaker 1: feel energy in me, I'm open to the idea of
Speaker 1: having it cleared. And because in my therapy sometimes she
Speaker 1: would sort of clear energy. We hold other people's stuff, right, like,
Speaker 1: we all know what that's like. So I believed in that.
Speaker 1: But then this sort of went to a bit of
Speaker 1: another level where it was like this thing happened in
Speaker 1: seventeen and it sounds so embarrassing to even say, because
Speaker 1: like how awkward, Like that was obviously just crazy, and
Speaker 1: then you have to pay all this money and one
Speaker 1: time her credit card facilities weren't working, so you had
Speaker 1: to pay cash, and it was like.
Speaker 3: It doesn't actually sound crazy to me, though, okay, good,
Speaker 3: I mean it feels it's the intersection of the vulnerability
Speaker 3: that you've described because of where you were in your life,
Speaker 3: but also a lot of those as you say that,
Speaker 3: that kind of mix of science and wu wu, sometimes
Speaker 3: the science doesn't have what you need in that moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess what I needed was hope, and I
Speaker 1: needed to feel like I was doing something like I was.
Speaker 1: You can't prescribe hope to you, yeah, exactly, and I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I liked the idea that maybe, like how could it hurt?
Speaker 1: Like it could only help. But I was desperate. I
Speaker 1: was vulnerable, and I was desperate. And there's a particular
Speaker 1: kind of crazed mental state of infertility that you just
Speaker 1: aren't entirely rational, or I certainly I wasn't. And so
Speaker 1: then I decided that I was going to do this
Speaker 1: kinesiology course that this woman took, and so it was
Speaker 1: a weekend sort of workshop and I went to do it,
Speaker 1: and as part of it, she then was a medium
Speaker 1: and spoke. This just sounds so weird, but she kind
Speaker 1: of went into this trance and spoke Saint Jude or
Speaker 1: there was some spirit that came through her, and I
Speaker 1: don't know. And then there were just so many kind
Speaker 1: of little red flags, like you could pay to do
Speaker 1: the course for someone else. So there were people there
Speaker 1: who'd been there multiple times, they'd done it for them,
Speaker 1: and now they were doing it for their son or
Speaker 1: their mother or their partner who maybe didn't believe, but
Speaker 1: they believed that this energy clearing course or this kinesiology course, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just got. And then this group would meet every
Speaker 1: so often, and I remember when bird flu went around,
Speaker 1: we all went and paid and she did this sort
Speaker 1: of energy clearing so that we wouldn't get SARS. It's
Speaker 1: pre COVID. And it just became because I was trying,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if I was actually pregnant by
Speaker 1: this stage. It then became well, I've been doing it.
Speaker 1: If I stop doing it, what if I lose this pregnancy?
Speaker 3: Magical thinking?
Speaker 1: Magical thinking. And I've got a friend who would also
Speaker 1: experience infertility. And she had some kind of crystal that
Speaker 1: someone had given her and she attached it to her arm,
Speaker 1: and she then became very superstitious, and she had to
Speaker 1: wear this crystal for her entire pregnancy because it does
Speaker 1: become this magical thinking, right.
Speaker 3: And it's not worth fucking with the idea. You might
Speaker 3: be wrong, but it's what's the value? Yeah, and changing
Speaker 3: course if suddenly you feel like you're heading in the
Speaker 3: direction you want to be.
Speaker 1: On, yeah, exactly, And so that everything that good happens
Speaker 1: you credit to this thing that you're doing, and everything
Speaker 1: that bad happens, it's maybe because you're not doing it enough.
Speaker 3: Can I ask how much that can? You might remember
Speaker 3: exactly how much? But was it costly?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I reckon it was a couple of thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: And my other question is did she know who you
Speaker 3: were that you you know, were a high level, very
Speaker 3: successful executive woman who had a bit of influence. And
Speaker 3: I ask this because you look at something like scientology,
Speaker 3: right and how they need They've got their minions, their legions,
Speaker 3: but they need their Tom Cruisers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so was it.
Speaker 3: This idea that you had them the tom Cruise of
Speaker 3: the kinesiology.
Speaker 1: We never spoke about it, so if that was the case,
Speaker 1: she obviously I didn't hide what I did. It was
Speaker 1: pre social media kind of pre internet almost, so you know,
Speaker 1: I probably didn't have the same level of profile then
Speaker 1: that I did now, but she knew who I was,
Speaker 1: and I think that that came to bear when I
Speaker 1: started to pull away. I think that they recognized that
Speaker 1: she recognized that there was some danger. So it was
Speaker 1: in this like church hall, and everyone would bring a
Speaker 1: plate and it was like you had to say these
Speaker 1: kind of prayers and stuff, and you know, I knew that,
Speaker 1: Like my husband was like, but he didn't want to.
Speaker 1: It wasn't costing us like a huge amount of money
Speaker 1: at this stage, and I was so desperate and he
Speaker 1: felt so inadequate to help me with these feelings that
Speaker 1: I had around main fertility and the baby that i'd lost.
Speaker 1: He kind of yeah, Luckily it didn't get to the
Speaker 1: point where he had to intervene, But I don't know
Speaker 1: how I would have felt if he had of, because
Speaker 1: to me, I'd always been very superstitious. Fully enough, I
Speaker 1: went through a whole thing of touching wood like I
Speaker 1: would carry not at this time, but earlier in my life,
Speaker 1: I would carry like a stick with me in the
Speaker 1: car everywhere because I'd need to touch wood all the time
Speaker 1: to prevent bad things happening.
Speaker 3: And superstition in my experience, because I'm a bit saying
Speaker 3: it's hand in hand with anxiety.
Speaker 1: Ah yeah, right, because it.
Speaker 3: Didn't you find, I mean something of it. What if
Speaker 3: I forget my stick for that day and I.
Speaker 1: Didn't know I had anxiety, then yeah, I didn't have
Speaker 1: a name for it.
Speaker 3: It was a substitute for what you've learned about yourself.
Speaker 1: Since that's very true. That's very true. And so I
Speaker 1: just know exactly the minute that it all came away
Speaker 1: from me where I started going more regularly to these
Speaker 1: group sessions. And I remember this one. It was on
Speaker 1: a weekend and I was talking to and my therapist's
Speaker 1: kids were there, and I was talking to this woman
Speaker 1: in the lunch break and she was saying how the
Speaker 1: kind of the leader. And this woman was quite charismatic,
Speaker 1: and there was all the stuff around her. She was old,
Speaker 1: like she was I shouldn't say that old. She looked
Speaker 1: that much older than me now, but like she would
Speaker 1: have been in her late sixties.
Speaker 4: So gravitas experience, yeah, yeah, yeah, and she had this
Speaker 4: sort of offsider who kind of you know, there was
Speaker 4: all this Oh, she was kind of like a big deal,
Speaker 4: and she was just like this small she just looks
Speaker 4: up grandma, but she spoke and then she channeled this JUDEO.
Speaker 1: I can't even remember who it was anymore anyway. So
Speaker 1: I was talking to this person at lunch and she'd
Speaker 1: sort of been around this for many years, and she said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the woman whose name I can't even remember. Actually I can,
Speaker 1: but I won't say it. This woman she's been doing
Speaker 1: this work and it's making her younger because all the
Speaker 1: work she's doing, she's getting younger and younger, and soon
Speaker 1: she's going to go back to because she's Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: And I was just like, I'm out, okay.
Speaker 3: So my eyebrows just hit this and again.
Speaker 1: And mine did too, and I was like, it just
Speaker 1: popped a bubble for me, and I just went, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm out instantly, instantly, moment. And this woman was very earnest,
Speaker 1: and it's like, this person is actually Jesus Christ, and
Speaker 1: she's doing this processing work and all the time she's
Speaker 1: doing it on herself, and she's getting younger and younger,
Speaker 1: and haven't you noticed that she's looking younger and younger.
Speaker 1: And the end result of this is that she's going
Speaker 1: to be come Jesus Christ. And I just went, okay, bye,
Speaker 1: and I left. I literally left. I didn't even go
Speaker 1: back after night that moment. In that moment, I left.
Speaker 1: And then what happened was that I talked to my therapist,
Speaker 1: and again, this was all such a breach now that
Speaker 1: I look back, and she was a great therapist, but
Speaker 1: you know, I think she was in a cult, so
Speaker 1: I think that she didn't know what she was doing.
Speaker 1: But she said something to me when I told her
Speaker 1: that I wasn't going anymore, and she was kind of
Speaker 1: pressure me to go, and it was like, oh, if
Speaker 1: you need this extra level of cleansing, it's going to
Speaker 1: be like ten thousand dollars. And I also just knew, like,
Speaker 1: that's just not a thing that I'm going to do
Speaker 1: now talking about how the World family used this special
Speaker 1: thing and they paid all this money to rehabilitate Camilla
Speaker 1: in the eyes of the world, and that's why we
Speaker 1: all love Camilla anyway, it all there were things that
Speaker 1: kind of made sense but were all so completely preposterous,
Speaker 1: so just enough to you go, oh, it does seem
Speaker 1: weird that we all like Camilla now did that happen.
Speaker 1: So this like just plausible credibility, just to wedge into
Speaker 1: your logical mind just enough to get their foot in
Speaker 1: the door and ask for some money. And I was
Speaker 1: pregnant at the time, and I remember she said to
Speaker 1: me something and I said, I'm just not going to
Speaker 1: do it anymore. And she said something to me about
Speaker 1: I can't remember her words, but I said to her,
Speaker 1: that feels like a threat. I feel really uncomfortable you
Speaker 1: saying that, because it was kind of implying that maybe
Speaker 1: my pregnancy wouldn't hold if I didn't keep going back.
Speaker 1: And she said, oh, no, I don't mean for it
Speaker 1: to be that. And then she called me back and
Speaker 1: she said, I spoke to Blah blah and said that
Speaker 1: you weren't going to be coming anymore. And she said
Speaker 1: to make it very clear that it wasn't a threat
Speaker 1: and that so this message was passed back to me.
Speaker 1: I think she got nervous. And back to your point
Speaker 1: about did she know who I was, I think she
Speaker 1: got nervous. And you know, I left that therapist and
Speaker 1: I've not spoken to her. This was many many years ago, now,
Speaker 1: like twenty years ago. The pregnancy did turn out. My
Speaker 1: beautiful daughter's eighteen, and I've gone looking for these people,
Speaker 1: like searched online because I've wondered just what's hacked here?
Speaker 3: Or is there something that you want to go Do
Speaker 3: you feel you have unfinished business with them in some way? No, like,
Speaker 3: does a part of you want to ask this therapist
Speaker 3: in some ways? Were you almost admitting that what you
Speaker 3: offer doesn't work in a sense, because if she was interesting, yeah,
Speaker 3: like what was the function for her?
Speaker 1: It was more like calling in the big guns, like
Speaker 1: calling in a specialist, like in a medical analogy.
Speaker 3: Which makes you actually feel quite looked after it.
Speaker 1: But it was completely unethical what she did, like completely unethical,
Speaker 1: and part of me does want to go back and
Speaker 1: say to her, Hey, you were an amazing therapist. You
Speaker 1: helped me through one of the darkest times of my life.
Speaker 1: My marriage had ended. I was deep in grief over
Speaker 1: the loss of this baby. You helped me and my
Speaker 1: husband find our way back to each other. Really, but
Speaker 1: this thing that you did was incredibly unethical. But I
Speaker 1: suspect she's still trapped in it.
Speaker 3: I you know, it's such a tender and I think
Speaker 3: maybe lifelong part of the vulnerability that we've heard when
Speaker 3: we've had these conversations with other women who have been
Speaker 3: through similar experiences where you come out the other side
Speaker 3: of it and you realize you've been harmed, You realize
Speaker 3: you can put language to what that was. You can
Speaker 3: call it a culture, you can call it a high
Speaker 3: demand organization, or what have you. And yet there were
Speaker 3: gifts or there were benefits that you come out the
Speaker 3: other side of it changed by that experience, and not
Speaker 3: all of those changes were negative. If they were all negative,
Speaker 3: they never would have roped you in to begin with.
Speaker 3: It's like that's saying you don't join a cult, you
Speaker 3: join a good thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I don't feel when I look back at
Speaker 1: it now, I feel embarrassed. Why because it's like it's
Speaker 1: embarrassing in the same way that I look back with embarrassment.
Speaker 1: But when I was in an emotionally abusive relationship in
Speaker 1: my very early twenties, I look back and I go,
Speaker 1: who was that person who tolerated that? And who had
Speaker 1: the blinkers on? How did I lose myself so much?
Speaker 1: I have a lot of compassion for who I was
Speaker 1: when I was part of this cult, because I was
Speaker 1: so vulnerable and I was so desperate, and I would
Speaker 1: have stood on one leg in a blizzard and you know,
Speaker 1: recited sandscrit while drinking a cup of gravy upside down
Speaker 1: if it would have let me deliver a healthy baby, like,
Speaker 1: I would have done fucking anything. And so I have compassion.
Speaker 1: But when you see that you've been scammed, and you
Speaker 1: know you and I we've interviewed people on this show
Speaker 1: who've been scammed, and it's kind of like you ignore
Speaker 1: those little voices in your head, and those little voices,
Speaker 1: your intuition is the sum total of every experience you've
Speaker 1: had in your life. That's like your innate wisdom. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think when you ignore that, it's at your peril.
Speaker 3: So embarrassment is the is the ignoring of that inner
Speaker 3: guidance system that was hoisting those red flags and you
Speaker 3: were going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like when you say it out loud, you just go,
Speaker 1: oh my god, like how but.
Speaker 3: I want to And this isn't to make you feel better,
Speaker 3: although I hope it does because I can see.
Speaker 1: That you always do it.
Speaker 3: You know, all of the things you described that were
Speaker 3: your suite of vulnerabilities YEA, combined with your work at
Speaker 3: that time, and I know I keep coming back to that.
Speaker 3: But the reason I do is that we often see
Speaker 3: that the people who fall for scams, who find themselves
Speaker 3: in cults, they are often highly professional, educated, accomplished.
Speaker 1: Successful people.
Speaker 3: And sometimes I wonder if this is a kind of
Speaker 3: decision fatigue and there's this part of you.
Speaker 1: There's a trailer.
Speaker 3: Out now for a very I'm gonna say it, don't
Speaker 3: fire me Saucy Nicole Kidman series where I think she
Speaker 3: plays this like baby girl, baby girl.
Speaker 1: Right, being a CEO means being a collaborator and a nurture.
Speaker 1: Don't you have to be a woman. Everyone is just
Speaker 1: waiting for me to buckle under the pressure. Is now
Speaker 1: a guitar to introduce the interest?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Hey, how'd you get back? Dog? To calm down? I
Speaker 1: gave it a cookie. You always have cookies on you?
Speaker 1: Why do you want one?
Speaker 3: And I don't know if that's going to have cult undertones.
Speaker 3: Definitely probably gonna have some bad relationship undertones. But this
Speaker 3: idea of like when you have so many decisions that
Speaker 3: you have to make every single day.
Speaker 1: Having to heal yourself.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's a lot of work, and it's like if
Speaker 3: you can outsource that, yeah, or give someone else some
Speaker 3: choices to make for you.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's a track that's actually true, true, And I
Speaker 1: think the other thing is that no one thinks that
Speaker 1: we all have this idea of the kind of person
Speaker 1: who would get taken by a scam, the kind of
Speaker 1: person who would get involved in a bad relationship, the
Speaker 1: kind of person who would stay with someone who would
Speaker 1: cheat on them, the kind of person who would stay
Speaker 1: with someone who physically or emotionally or financially abused them,
Speaker 1: the kind of person who would hire a male escort.
Speaker 1: And what I love so much about this show is
Speaker 1: having those stereotypes smashed and smashed and smashed and smashed,
Speaker 1: because what I've learned about that idea of I didn't
Speaker 1: make this up, but it's so informs the philosophy this
Speaker 1: show is that out there there's someone with the wound
Speaker 1: in the shape of your words. And that's about when
Speaker 1: we share our stories, someone else goes, oh me too,
Speaker 1: and maybe it helps them recognize something like when I
Speaker 1: was in an emotionally abusive relationship, I wish I'd have
Speaker 1: been able to read someone else's story, and reading about
Speaker 1: someone who had ADHD is what me to be diagnosed,
Speaker 1: and all of these things, and when we interviewed the
Speaker 1: woman who was scammed, Charlotte Cowell's Charlotte Cowells, who was
Speaker 1: amazing and so brave to say that because she was
Speaker 1: a financial writer, and how mortifying for her to have
Speaker 1: had that happened to her. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that these people rely on is that it's not how
Speaker 1: you think it's going to be, and anyone nothing protects you. No,
Speaker 1: not education, not loved ones, not a fancy university degree.
Speaker 1: What protects you is hearing other stories.
Speaker 3: And it's the only deformation said that. I think that
Speaker 3: you know that there were people who were mid scam,
Speaker 3: you know they were signing the check so to speak,
Speaker 3: and heard her story or read her story, and that.
Speaker 1: We've had people contact us since that episode came out
Speaker 1: saying I got a call from Amazon and it wasn't Amazon,
Speaker 1: it was this scam and had I not listened to
Speaker 1: your episode, it might have happened to me. And that's
Speaker 1: why I think it's just so important for women to
Speaker 1: share well for everyone.
Speaker 3: Such a nice point. Do you feel in this moment
Speaker 3: ever so slightly less ashamed embarrassed even than he did
Speaker 3: twenty minutes ago? Is there something cathartic even in the telling.
Speaker 1: Yes, because I'm actually never Apart from my husband, who
Speaker 1: saw it happen at the time and we sort of
Speaker 1: haven't ever really talked about it, he was actually we
Speaker 1: have a bit, and he was just like, oh, from
Speaker 1: the second I knew that this was just such crap.
Speaker 3: And what he just knew he had to let you
Speaker 3: run your kind of thing.
Speaker 1: He didn't know how to help me, and if this
Speaker 1: seemed to be helping me, he luckily I got myself
Speaker 1: out of it and he didn't have to intervene. And
Speaker 1: I think if I'd have said, hey, I want to
Speaker 1: transfer ten thousand dollars, he certainly wouldn't have been a
Speaker 1: conversation gone that far. But while it wasn't impacting on
Speaker 1: our lives to a really detrimental extent, he was able
Speaker 1: to just let me go on this journey in the
Speaker 1: hope that it might make me feel better. But I've
Speaker 1: never told anyone. I've never told anyone.
Speaker 3: So telling us the no Filters.
Speaker 1: Filters, if you have maybe had an experience like this,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you. We'll put a link
Speaker 1: in our show notes to our email and sending love
Speaker 1: to everybody out there who's going through anything tricky. Life
Speaker 1: isn't easy, but you know it's easier when we do
Speaker 1: it together.
Speaker 3: It is. I've one more question for you, though, When
Speaker 3: was the first time you were able to.
Speaker 1: Laugh at it? Well, now I'm laughing at it, I think,
Speaker 1: I kind of I think now, I think you can't
Speaker 1: when you're ashamed of something or embarrassed. It's easier to
Speaker 1: laugh when you're embarrassed. Shame does not allow laughter. And
Speaker 1: I think you need a lot of perspective and a
Speaker 1: lot of years to laugh at something. And I think
Speaker 1: the reason I can laugh about it now is because
Speaker 1: I did go on to have a healthy baby. And
Speaker 1: I think perhaps if I hadn't, I might have felt
Speaker 1: very differently about this experience. I think I might have.
Speaker 1: I don't. I can't even imagine how I would have
Speaker 1: processed this experience or what I would have filed it under.
Speaker 3: You know, or you might have stayed, you might have
Speaker 3: gone back. It would have maybe been a way that
Speaker 3: they proved something to you about their power. Things get
Speaker 3: very dangerous.
Speaker 1: Correct, And so I was so relieved when, for so
Speaker 1: many reasons, when she was born, but that i'd cut
Speaker 1: it off before, because then maybe I would have thought
Speaker 1: that I have to stay to keep her safe or
Speaker 1: for my next pregnancy. And yes, I went on to
Speaker 1: have another baby after that. So the dim mystifying takes time,
Speaker 1: and I think it's only through as we heard with Joy,
Speaker 1: it's only through time passing and you're seeing that the
Speaker 1: things that they made you scared about did not come
Speaker 1: to pass.
Speaker 3: You have to almost accrue data, yes, you have to
Speaker 3: keep testing a new theory. Yes, and then eventually it
Speaker 3: just outweighs exactly.
Speaker 1: Well, there you go. That wasn't so hard, was it.
Speaker 1: In fact, it did remind me listening to that back again.
Speaker 1: Why so many other people do share their stories with
Speaker 1: me on no filter, Because telling our stories is cathartic,
Speaker 1: particularly if it's about something that you feel some shame
Speaker 1: or embarrassment over. They say that the best disinfectant is sunlight,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm a little bit more forgiving of
Speaker 1: myself now I understand exactly how it happened, and I'm
Speaker 1: not ashamed. It's just kind of this. I sort of
Speaker 1: have filed it under this weird thing that happened to
Speaker 1: me this one time. Anyway, So if you want to
Speaker 1: listen to the story that nine I talked about earlier
Speaker 1: about Charlotte Cow's who fell for a financial scam and
Speaker 1: ended up giving I think it was like fifty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to a stranger. She pushed through the enormous
Speaker 1: shame that she felt to share her story so that
Speaker 1: others might not have to go through what she went through,
Speaker 1: And we'll put a link to that in the show notes,
Speaker 1: and we will also link to some more stories from
Speaker 1: incredible women who actually did get stuck for years in abusive,
Speaker 1: high control cults, usually religious cults, and they eventually made
Speaker 1: it out the other side, which just takes so much
Speaker 1: courage and strength, women like Tea Leving's and Darsy Erleck.
Speaker 1: The executive producer of No Filter is Niama Brown. You've
Speaker 1: probably guessed that she's a bit obsessed with stories about
Speaker 1: cults and charismatic leaders. I wonder why maybe she will
Speaker 1: be one one day. No, she's too nice for that.
Speaker 1: Audio production and sound design is by Tom Lyon, and
Speaker 1: I mentioned on a previous episode he grew up with
Speaker 1: neighbors who were in a cult, and since I said that,
Speaker 1: one of them has reached out and they're going to
Speaker 1: catch up there's a happy ending for you.