Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mother Mea podcast. Mama Mea acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
Speaker 1: is recorded on. Hey there, Before we start today's episode,
Speaker 1: I just want to say that you are going to
Speaker 1: be hearing from some wonderful Mama Mea voices over the
Speaker 1: next few weeks as I work on another project. Hollywayin
Speaker 1: wright Claire Stevens, a Nama Brown, who is the executive
Speaker 1: producer of this show, are all going to be sitting
Speaker 1: in my chair for a few weeks and doing the
Speaker 1: same wonderful interviews that you know and love from no filter.
Speaker 1: There are some great conversations coming your way about red
Speaker 1: and green flags in relationships, sex and porn, addiction, escaping
Speaker 1: from a religious cult, narcissism, sobriety, and more. You'll be
Speaker 1: hearing from me soon.
Speaker 2: Enjoy. Instead of being a stay at home wife or mother,
Speaker 2: you were a stay at home daughter and practicing to
Speaker 2: be that wife and mother one day. So girls like
Speaker 2: me and we stayed home after we turned eighteen. We
Speaker 2: were supposed to serve our fathers and learn how to
Speaker 2: take care of him, kind of like a wife would.
Speaker 2: I was trying to learn how to be that kind
Speaker 2: of submissive woman by practicing with my dad, which is
Speaker 2: really fucked up in my opinion.
Speaker 3: For Momma Mia, this is no filter. I'm naima Brown
Speaker 3: sitting in for mea Friedman. For most of us, turning
Speaker 3: eighteen is a milestone that marks the beginning of our
Speaker 3: adult lives. That's when we go off to UNI, or
Speaker 3: move into a shared house with our friends, get our
Speaker 3: first real jobs, go on a gap year traveling around
Speaker 3: the world. But for Kate West, turning eighteen didn't mean
Speaker 3: any of those things because she was raised in an
Speaker 3: extreme religious community that considered her to be what they
Speaker 3: called a stay at home daughter. And that's just what
Speaker 3: it sounds like. Kate was expected to stay at home
Speaker 3: well into her adult hood until her dad, who was
Speaker 3: a courtship expert and practiced what's referred to as father
Speaker 3: led dating, had found her a suitable husband. Some stay
Speaker 3: at home daughters in this movement never leave home and
Speaker 3: serve their fathers into their fifties or sixties. But the
Speaker 3: thing is, Kate didn't even know that she had the
Speaker 3: legal right to move out of home at eighteen. Kate
Speaker 3: didn't know a lot of things she'd been homeschooled her
Speaker 3: whole life and taught, as you'll hear in this conversation,
Speaker 3: some very questionable things, things like Martin Luther King was
Speaker 3: a bad guy, and that slavery wasn't really all that bad.
Speaker 3: But she wasn't taught how to drive, or how to
Speaker 3: get a job or manage her own finances. And that's
Speaker 3: because she wasn't being prepared for adulthood or independence. She
Speaker 3: was being prepared for domestic servitude to an arranged husband
Speaker 3: and to the kids they might have, and to their church. Today,
Speaker 3: Kate refers to the movement she was raised in as
Speaker 3: a cult, and the story of how she came to
Speaker 3: feel that way is one of unlearning a lot of
Speaker 3: really toxic and trostic things, of seeking help, and a
Speaker 3: slow process of healing and making sense of what she'd
Speaker 3: lived through, which was a lot. A note to you,
Speaker 3: our listeners that Kate understandably hit some very rough patches
Speaker 3: with her mental health, including suicidal thoughts, which we do
Speaker 3: touch on a bit in this conversation, so do listen mindfully.
Speaker 3: I start this conversation by asking Kate to explain to
Speaker 3: us just how massive and influential the Christian patriarchal movement
Speaker 3: in America is here's Kate.
Speaker 2: I really need to get like a giant whiteboard and
Speaker 2: map out all the different branches of how this works, but.
Speaker 3: That would be helpful.
Speaker 2: It's very complex because it's not like a what we
Speaker 2: often think of as cult as one leader and then
Speaker 2: the people who follow that leader. Inside of Christian patriarchy,
Speaker 2: the fathers of each family are kind of like the
Speaker 2: cult leader of that family, and then they have church
Speaker 2: leaders that guide them in that work. But as a movement,
Speaker 2: it spread through small publications at first, and when I
Speaker 2: was a kid, there was a lot of audio tapes
Speaker 2: being circulated and sermon tapes and magazines. My father got
Speaker 2: a magazine called Patriarch Magazine and it really existed and
Speaker 2: you can still find copies. I found a few copies
Speaker 2: on eBay teaching men how to be patriarchs, and so
Speaker 2: in that sense, it was a grassroots movement. So that's
Speaker 2: just an aspect of how this has spread to be
Speaker 2: into the mainstream under this perception that it's fringe, but
Speaker 2: really it's very popular, and I saw it spread a
Speaker 2: lot through the homeschooling community. So eighties and nineties in
Speaker 2: the US homeschooling became more legal and accepted, and the
Speaker 2: only people who were doing it really were mostly religious families,
Speaker 2: and so homeschooling was a way of spreading these ideas
Speaker 2: through the Christian homeschooling. Tell me a.
Speaker 3: Little bit about your parents and where where they intersected
Speaker 3: with this ideology. Were they raised within what you would
Speaker 3: call Christian patriarchal systems as well?
Speaker 2: No, I think you know, they grew up in more
Speaker 2: the broader understanding of patriarchy. I think our society is
Speaker 2: built on patriarchy. And my mother grew up in the
Speaker 2: Southern Baptist Church, which wouldn't fall under this movement that
Speaker 2: I would call it, but it does have that patriarchal
Speaker 2: underlying idea of this is what women should do. It's
Speaker 2: just not as it's not as explicit or fundamentalist as
Speaker 2: the way I grew up. So my mom grew up Baptist.
Speaker 2: My dad grew up kind of Lutheran. He became Catholic
Speaker 2: for a short time until he became born again by
Speaker 2: an evangelism team right after he married my mom. And
Speaker 2: so right after they got married they fell into Presbyterianism
Speaker 2: and became more and more fundamentalist. As time went on.
Speaker 3: What was the denomination I suppose that guided most of
Speaker 3: your life and the decisions around child rearing and you
Speaker 3: know what your life would look like.
Speaker 2: So early on, it was the Presbyterian Church of America,
Speaker 2: So the PCA, which surprises a lot of people because
Speaker 2: people think that Presbyterians aren't fundamentalists, but there is a
Speaker 2: branch of Presbyterians who are. And my family is very reformed,
Speaker 2: very calvinistic, built that belief system that God foreordained everything
Speaker 2: and you're either predestined for heaven or hell. So that
Speaker 2: was my early childhood. As I became a teenager, we
Speaker 2: joined a new Orthodox Presbyterian church in Colorado, and that
Speaker 2: denomination is very similar to the PCA. But our pastor
Speaker 2: was very much a leader in both homeschooling movement and
Speaker 2: the Christian patriarchy movement.
Speaker 3: The Christian patriarchy movement, the Christian patriarchy in general, really
Speaker 3: ruled your life from the moment you were born. You
Speaker 3: were raised in a very strict religious family. I want
Speaker 3: to talk about what that looked like as a child.
Speaker 3: Tell me about the area where you grew up and
Speaker 3: how integrated I suppose into your neighborhood into your community
Speaker 3: you felt as a family and as an individual.
Speaker 2: Well, when I was five, I went to a Christian
Speaker 2: private school for a few months before my dad learned
Speaker 2: about homeschooling and decided to pull me out and start
Speaker 2: homeschooling with me. My two older siblings still went to
Speaker 2: a Christian school, but I was the one that they
Speaker 2: were going to practice homeschooling on before they switched all
Speaker 2: the way over. And I remember that contrast of the
Speaker 2: first few months being in a classroom with other kids
Speaker 2: my age, and then being kept at home learning by
Speaker 2: myself with my mother and waiting for all those other
Speaker 2: kids to get home off the school bus so that
Speaker 2: I could see them when they got home. So I
Speaker 2: had this quiet you know. My mom was a very
Speaker 2: good early education teacher. She wasn't trained, but she was
Speaker 2: very invested in me learning how to read and gave
Speaker 2: me a lot of books. So that was really great,
Speaker 2: and I really looked forward to having other kids around
Speaker 2: so that I could play after school. But then when
Speaker 2: I turned ten years old, we moved to Colorado into
Speaker 2: the mountains, became more isolated. Now my family was completely homeschooling,
Speaker 2: no outside school. We joined that very patriarchal church, and
Speaker 2: my life became smaller and smaller, so the only people
Speaker 2: I interacted with were inside of that world. And it
Speaker 2: also just felt that way to me. It felt like
Speaker 2: my life was becoming smaller and smaller at the same
Speaker 2: time that I was being told I was created for
Speaker 2: these great things, that I was going to be part
Speaker 2: of this great movement to bring you know, godliness to
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 3: Tell me a little bit about who comprised your family,
Speaker 3: who you were growing up around, and just a bit
Speaker 3: about their personalities and how they were interacting with this ideology.
Speaker 3: Because your sister was quite rebellious in some ways, wasn't she.
Speaker 2: Yes, my older sister. Some people have described her as feisty,
Speaker 2: which I agree with, and I try to portray that
Speaker 2: in the book of Remembering Her, my older sister, she's
Speaker 2: about nine years older than me. Remembering her pushing back
Speaker 2: on some of these rules and boundaries that were being
Speaker 2: set on us that were they were very new, Like
Speaker 2: I remember when certain rules were unstated, and she always
Speaker 2: pushed back a little bit. But I also watched her
Speaker 2: being punished a lot and being confined to her room
Speaker 2: or not allowed to see her friends. She was allowed
Speaker 2: to work for a while, and then my dad decided
Speaker 2: no more working and no more dating, and it was
Speaker 2: hard to watch her become quieter and quieter, and it
Speaker 2: felt like her light was dimming as these rules became
Speaker 2: more restricted. And so, yeah, I always looked up to
Speaker 2: her as that person who had that spirit, you know,
Speaker 2: and looking back, it's really heartbreaking to see what this
Speaker 2: did to her. And my older brother, he's six years
Speaker 2: older than me. I was always told he was the
Speaker 2: rebellious one, and when he was seventeen he escaped our
Speaker 2: family life because there was abuse happening. And he joined
Speaker 2: the army when he was seventeen and got out and
Speaker 2: rejected all of it. And so in some ways I'm
Speaker 2: jealous of him being able to do that and getting
Speaker 2: out so early. And then there was me. I was
Speaker 2: watching those my two older siblings get in trouble and
Speaker 2: learning don't disobey or you're going to get harsh consequences.
Speaker 2: So I was always well behaved and trusted by my
Speaker 2: father because I wanted to please him and make sure
Speaker 2: I didn't get in trouble.
Speaker 3: Your life was governed by a lot of rules. I
Speaker 3: want to kind of go through a few of those
Speaker 3: and learn a little bit more about how you lived them.
Speaker 3: Talk to me about modesty.
Speaker 2: So modesty, I think is very typical across purity culture
Speaker 2: of any kind, as you might know, like in the
Speaker 2: US during the eighties, was the purity culture movement or
Speaker 2: like this trend of purity rings and purity balls.
Speaker 3: Can tell us what purity culture is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this idea that girls, well especially girls need
Speaker 2: to stay pure before marriage and keep themselves sexually pure,
Speaker 2: and boys have a sexual drive that they can't help,
Speaker 2: and so women are the break system to make sure
Speaker 2: they don't sin before they get married. And a lot
Speaker 2: of the time it involves an abstinence pledge of I'm
Speaker 2: at staining from sex before where you get married. And
Speaker 2: in the eighties and nineties it was a lot about
Speaker 2: you know, teenagers and young people and dating and making
Speaker 2: that choice for themselves. In the world I grew up in,
Speaker 2: I took it a step further to be enforced by
Speaker 2: fathers and to go even beyond sexual purity to emotional purity.
Speaker 2: So you had to not sin with your feelings either,
Speaker 2: So you had to not give affection to anyone until
Speaker 2: you were betrothed to get married, and so that's all
Speaker 2: part of modesty and covering up your body and not
Speaker 2: being not being too sexy, but not being too ugly either,
Speaker 2: because you want to make sure you get married to
Speaker 2: continue this whole world.
Speaker 3: Talk to me about just that idea of the rule
Speaker 3: of being good.
Speaker 2: This is something I still struggle with. I think because
Speaker 2: I grew up this way. My brain was formed around
Speaker 2: this idea of everything's black and white. There's good people
Speaker 2: and bad people, and you can be either good or
Speaker 2: bad and there's no gray area. And you know, you
Speaker 2: grow up with this idea that there's eternal hell waiting
Speaker 2: for you if you're not one of the good people.
Speaker 2: And so I was terrified my whole childhood of not
Speaker 2: being one of the chosen ones. And so I tried
Speaker 2: really hard to be good and it never seemed to
Speaker 2: be enough. But that fit in with the theology too,
Speaker 2: of this idea that you are depraved from birth and
Speaker 2: you don't deserve God's love and you have to continue
Speaker 2: repenting and asking forgiveness for your entire life. That was
Speaker 2: really difficult as a young kid because I didn't want
Speaker 2: to lose my family. I didn't want to go to
Speaker 2: hell without them. I didn't want to suffer, and I
Speaker 2: developed OCD through this just obsessing about praying and how
Speaker 2: to communion correctly and how to do all these things right.
Speaker 2: And that's where my OCD issues started with the religious stuff.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's an extraordinary amount of self monitoring that's
Speaker 3: instilled in you, isn't it. Kate, tell me about this
Speaker 3: idea about being a witness.
Speaker 2: So to be a witness means to shine a light
Speaker 2: into the world and show people who aren't in the
Speaker 2: church what it's like to be God's children and to
Speaker 2: share the gospel with them so that they will join
Speaker 2: you in God's kingdom. And so for me as a woman,
Speaker 2: that mates mostly meant being modest, obeying, being submissive, and
Speaker 2: showing up as this quiet, meek girl in the world
Speaker 2: to show the contrast between me and so called secular
Speaker 2: girls and how they were dressing and acting, and so
Speaker 2: just my behavior was supposed to be a witnes to
Speaker 2: other people.
Speaker 3: Did you ever feel jealousy, envy, curiosity, interest about those
Speaker 3: secular girls that were your age or you know, or
Speaker 3: even the way that young girls will look up to
Speaker 3: teenage girls and get kind of excited about what that
Speaker 3: might look like when it's your turn, or did you
Speaker 3: look at them through the lens that you'd been taught
Speaker 3: your whole life with a bit of scorn or a
Speaker 3: bit of you know, judgmental righteousness, or a bit of both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think a bit of both. I think I
Speaker 2: had these conflicting emotions of desire for following my feelings
Speaker 2: and enjoying things like music. I remember seeing a Spice
Speaker 2: Girl's poster in a neighbor's house and I was like,
Speaker 2: who are they? And they look really exciting, but also
Speaker 2: something about them is really dangerous, it seems like, and
Speaker 2: so it's very intriguing, But I had never heard a
Speaker 2: Spice Girl's song. At the same time, I was really
Speaker 2: good at following the rules, and I would try to
Speaker 2: like in state that on other neighbor kids. So when
Speaker 2: Halloween came along, I was very much preaching to the
Speaker 2: other kids that this was Satan's holiday and that's why
Speaker 2: I didn't go trigg or treating, and I pretty much
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure all the kids hated me for being
Speaker 2: such a stuck up little girl, But really, what I
Speaker 2: was trying to do was fit into any kind of
Speaker 2: belonging that I could have because I wasn't really allowed
Speaker 2: to belong with the other kids.
Speaker 3: So I imagine that your family didn't hand candy out
Speaker 3: on Halloween.
Speaker 2: No, we were. We were told to hide in the
Speaker 2: basement and turn off the lights.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that must been scary. Yeah, what did
Speaker 3: you think was happening out in the streets.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love Halloween, now it's I get a
Speaker 2: little nervous when people come to my door and ask
Speaker 2: for candy, But I'm trying to get over my instinctual
Speaker 2: fear of it. It's just kids in costumes.
Speaker 3: You just throw it at them and run right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: talk to me a little bit about why homeschooling is
Speaker 3: so important to this movement and what you were learning
Speaker 3: and what you weren't learning.
Speaker 2: The Christian homeschooling world frames it like it is protection
Speaker 2: and keeping children safe from harms like drugs and you know,
Speaker 2: early sex and STDs and learning about evolution. But really
Speaker 2: it's what's happening is indoctrination. There's no access to outside information,
Speaker 2: so there's no nothing to contrast what you're learning with.
Speaker 2: And also I didn't have any access to things like
Speaker 2: mandatory reporters or support for any kind of special needs
Speaker 2: that kids would have in the homeschooling world that didn't exist,
Speaker 2: and so that was a way to control kids. And
Speaker 2: I learned a lot of things through the lens of
Speaker 2: Christian patriarchy, but also white supremacy. They would never have
Speaker 2: come out and said we're racist, but we learned that
Speaker 2: the Southern Army, the Confederate Army, was the oppressed side
Speaker 2: of the Civil War, and that slavery wasn't as bad
Speaker 2: as you think. So those kinds of ideas were common.
Speaker 2: I grew up thinking that Martin Luther King Junior was
Speaker 2: a bad person until I got out and went to college,
Speaker 2: and so I didn't have any other I had no
Speaker 2: way of checking what I was being told.
Speaker 3: I want to read a passage from your book that
Speaker 3: really struck me. There were many things I had yet
Speaker 3: to learn, how to use a tampon, how sex works,
Speaker 3: how to set up my own email account. I never
Speaker 3: heard the F word. I didn't know what kind of
Speaker 3: music I really loved to listen to, or if I
Speaker 3: actually wanted to get married and have children. I had
Speaker 3: no idea what I was supposed to do with the
Speaker 3: knowledge I had and didn't have. Kate, that must have
Speaker 3: been a bewildering state of mind to exist in. Did
Speaker 3: you share those thoughts.
Speaker 2: With anybody, No, definitely not. I think I learned early
Speaker 2: on that questioning things or talking back to my dad
Speaker 2: and his rules was not going to end well. And
Speaker 2: so I did have a journal off and on throughout
Speaker 2: my childhood, and so I would write some of those
Speaker 2: questions there. But if I did something wrong in my perspective,
Speaker 2: like if I wrote about a crush I was having,
Speaker 2: I would go back and erase it all because I
Speaker 2: was told that's not okay to have feelings right, that
Speaker 2: emotional purity thing. So I was always self policing and
Speaker 2: trying to keep it internal, which is very unhealthy. I
Speaker 2: think that's why I struggled so much with mental health,
Speaker 2: because I didn't have any of those outlets.
Speaker 3: And your mother tell me a little bit about her
Speaker 3: in your book. She seems to have very an instinct
Speaker 3: for nurturing, an instinct for care, to be acting at
Speaker 3: from a place of love for you inasmuch as she could.
Speaker 3: But she also didn't seem like someone you could go
Speaker 3: to with these big questions or these big doubts.
Speaker 2: I don't think I had the language for this, But
Speaker 2: I witnessed how my mother submitted to my father and
Speaker 2: that no matter what happened when he wasn't around, it
Speaker 2: would get back to him. And she was told to
Speaker 2: do that. It wasn't something that maybe she had clear
Speaker 2: choice about. So when we understand the coercive control, I
Speaker 2: think she had choice, and I think she made some
Speaker 2: wrong choices. But also she was in this system that
Speaker 2: made it really difficult for her to be that outlet
Speaker 2: for us as kids, And so I knew that if
Speaker 2: I told her something, it would get back to my dad.
Speaker 3: You didn't have a safe person or a person that
Speaker 3: you knew would hold your secrets or honor your vulnerability.
Speaker 2: No. Yeah, And that's why I think I'm obsessed about
Speaker 2: praying to God, because I was hoping God might be
Speaker 2: forgiving hopefully.
Speaker 3: After this short break. What exactly is a stay at
Speaker 3: home daughter and what did that mean for Kate stay
Speaker 3: with us. Tell me a little bit about the idea
Speaker 3: of a stay at home daughter and when it dawned
Speaker 3: on you that you were one?
Speaker 2: So Vision four mean that idea really popular. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure if they created it, because I'm sure there were
Speaker 2: stay at home daughters probably in Bill Gothard's World. But
Speaker 2: the idea was, if women are only to be wives
Speaker 2: and mothers, why would we send girls to college if
Speaker 2: it's not going to help them with anything, and if
Speaker 2: they're just going to get influenced by the world or
Speaker 2: possibly assaulted on campus outside of the protection of their fathers.
Speaker 2: And so that's where the term stay at home daughter
Speaker 2: became more popular. Instead of being a stay at home
Speaker 2: wife or mother, you were a stay at home daughter
Speaker 2: and practicing to be that wife and mother one day.
Speaker 2: So girls like me, we stayed home after we turned eighteen.
Speaker 2: We were supposed to serve our fathers and learn how
Speaker 2: to take care of him, kind of like a wife would,
Speaker 2: but I mean like hopefully in most cases without the
Speaker 2: actual wife part. So I would make my dad coffee,
Speaker 2: I would iron his clothes, I would help him with
Speaker 2: his business. I was trying to learn how to be
Speaker 2: that kind of submissive woman by practicing with my dad,
Speaker 2: which is really fucked up in my opinion. And I
Speaker 2: stayed in that stay home daughter role until I was
Speaker 2: twenty five because years of indoctrination and isolation. I didn't
Speaker 2: know I had other options. I didn't have any resources
Speaker 2: at all. And so it took me a long time
Speaker 2: to realize that I was being trapped and to actually
Speaker 2: figure out how to leave. But during that time, there
Speaker 2: was a lot of other state home daughters I was
Speaker 2: friends with, and it became this feeling of countercultural. We're
Speaker 2: changing the world. One day, we're going to get married
Speaker 2: and start the new generation. But that marriage never really
Speaker 2: came to be for me, and so it gave me
Speaker 2: more time to think about what I was really doing
Speaker 2: with my life.
Speaker 3: And I do want to get to that. But you
Speaker 3: were sixteen and still very much under the thumb of
Speaker 3: your father and the strictures that have been guiding your
Speaker 3: life up to this point, and you decide to officially
Speaker 3: join the church. Can you explain what that means? Given
Speaker 3: obviously you were a member of this church guided every
Speaker 3: element of your life, but what did it mean to
Speaker 3: officially join.
Speaker 2: And the Presbyterian world, you're baptized as a baby, and
Speaker 2: you become part of the Covenant, and then when you
Speaker 2: become old enough to make vowels to the church, then
Speaker 2: you become what they call a communicant member. So at
Speaker 2: that point you're allowed to take communion, but you have
Speaker 2: to take these four vowels at the front of the
Speaker 2: church in public in order to do that. But I
Speaker 2: was kind of a late bloomer. I most of my
Speaker 2: friends had already joined the church earlier. I was dragging
Speaker 2: my feet because I had always had these doubts about
Speaker 2: me being chosen. It wasn't really much about the religion
Speaker 2: more as I was afraid that I wasn't loved by God,
Speaker 2: and so that must mean I wasn't if I was
Speaker 2: even having that thought. So it became this very OCD
Speaker 2: feeling about faith. So I push it off for as
Speaker 2: long as I could.
Speaker 3: And it was around this time that you did develop OCD.
Speaker 3: What did that look like for you? How did that
Speaker 3: manifest for you?
Speaker 2: It revolved a lot around anxiety and fear of if
Speaker 2: I'm not chosen by God, or if God doesn't love me.
Speaker 2: The instant I die, I'm going to hell and there's
Speaker 2: no second chance, right, So obsessing about safety, not leaving
Speaker 2: the house, making sure I had my seatbelt on, being
Speaker 2: terrified of going in an airplane, so just wanting to
Speaker 2: stay in my room all the time and praying constantly
Speaker 2: for God to forgive me. And so it just became
Speaker 2: like that repetitive ritual part of OCD, but it was
Speaker 2: very religious. Now I understand there's a term called scrupulosity,
Speaker 2: which is what I was experiencing. It's kind of like
Speaker 2: an ethical or religious OCD where you're obsessing about making
Speaker 2: the right choices and being a good person.
Speaker 3: Our father eventually became recognized as a courtship expert. Tell
Speaker 3: me what that means.
Speaker 2: So in creation patriarchy, we don't date because that would
Speaker 2: be practice for divorce because you're not being modest, you're
Speaker 2: not having pure feelings. And instead we practiced courtship. And
Speaker 2: my dad he brought this version of courtship to our
Speaker 2: church that was created by a man named John Thompson.
Speaker 2: He wrote this pamphlet called Pathway to Christian Marriage. Still around.
Speaker 2: You can still get it on the internet, so I'm
Speaker 2: sure people are still following it. And it was very strict.
Speaker 2: It had a lot of questions for fathers to moderate
Speaker 2: between the young man and the young woman. Always straight couple.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that needs to be said, but
Speaker 2: never anything but that. And there was never alone time.
Speaker 2: You always had to have a chaperone. No feelings. You
Speaker 2: weren't allowed to talk about a lot of things anything
Speaker 2: that would build an affectionate bond was off limits. So
Speaker 2: it was very much talking about theology and really basic
Speaker 2: small talk, so not really getting to know the other person.
Speaker 2: And you would do this for a few months, and
Speaker 2: then your father would decide if you were allowed to
Speaker 2: get married or betrothed. So then once you said that,
Speaker 2: then you were allowed to get betrothed to each other,
Speaker 2: but the woman. It was like this feeling of property
Speaker 2: because when you got betrothed, you had to sign a
Speaker 2: covenant that you were going to marry this man in
Speaker 2: like a vow, and then once you got married, your
Speaker 2: father would transfer his so called headship over to your husband,
Speaker 2: which really was more about property rights instead of any
Speaker 2: kind of protection.
Speaker 3: An exchange of goods. Yeah, you also referred to this
Speaker 3: sometimes as father led dating.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You observed your sister, your older sister, Alison, experience what
Speaker 3: you could describe as an arranged marriage. Is that scary
Speaker 3: to watch that happen to her?
Speaker 2: I think it taught me a lot of what could
Speaker 2: happen in this world. It was really difficult because I
Speaker 2: didn't understand how coercive control works. I was believing everything
Speaker 2: I was being told At the same time, I watched
Speaker 2: my sister get married to someone that I could tell
Speaker 2: she didn't really like that much. He was just like
Speaker 2: my dad. He wasn't very nice to me or my
Speaker 2: younger brother. We just fell off about him. And I
Speaker 2: remember my sister crying on her wedding day and it
Speaker 2: was really hard to watch.
Speaker 3: Could do you mind if I ask if she's still
Speaker 3: married to that man?
Speaker 2: No? So this was a long you know, it's been
Speaker 2: a while. She had five kids. She did the same
Speaker 2: thing that did. She homeschooled them, She did all followed
Speaker 2: all the rules, and her husband was still abusive. And
Speaker 2: I'm so proud of her because she got out. She
Speaker 2: got all of her kids out, and she has a
Speaker 2: full custody of her children and they have just like
Speaker 2: just watching them go from that abusive home to being
Speaker 2: liberated has is just breathtaking to me because they went
Speaker 2: through really hard time.
Speaker 3: So you did stay home after you turned eighteen when
Speaker 3: most of your peers would be going off to college
Speaker 3: and getting jobs. You were waiting for your husband. You
Speaker 3: right that you didn't even know that you had the
Speaker 3: legal right to leave home at eighteen. How does somebody
Speaker 3: living in the modern world, you know, television and the
Speaker 3: Internet stay I suppose that that distant from what we
Speaker 3: would consider just the basics.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot of factors to that. There's
Speaker 2: the isolation, there's the indoctrination, the limit of information. There
Speaker 2: was the fact that when the Internet came out, we
Speaker 2: didn't have access to that unschaperoned, right or unguarded. So
Speaker 2: I didn't have access to internet by myself, even when
Speaker 2: I was eighteen, and I didn't have a driver's license
Speaker 2: at that point, I didn't have access to my birth
Speaker 2: certificate or Social Security card. A lot of stay at
Speaker 2: home daughters never get that, or sometimes their parents never
Speaker 2: got them a birth certificate because they don't believe in government.
Speaker 2: So I was one of the lucky ones that I
Speaker 2: have some documents, but a lot of times you have nothing, and.
Speaker 3: You almost don't exist in the eyes of the government
Speaker 3: or the state, so you don't even consider what rights
Speaker 3: right that government might give you right.
Speaker 2: So you don't know as a kid growing up that
Speaker 2: you have those rights because you're told what your family
Speaker 2: believes as if that's you know, hard and fast truth
Speaker 2: for everybody. And then the government's perspective is you're an
Speaker 2: adult living choosing to live with your parents past eighteen,
Speaker 2: which does happen, right, I mean, there's lots of college
Speaker 2: kids who still live with their parents. It's not impossible.
Speaker 2: But what they're not seeing is that kids who grew
Speaker 2: up in this kind of world, they don't understand that
Speaker 2: they can leave. So it's more of a coerced entrapment
Speaker 2: instead of I'm choosing to live with my parents.
Speaker 3: So you eventually moved to Hawaii, and as you've described,
Speaker 3: you know your role at this time, you describe it
Speaker 3: as being a kind of perpetual girl, and that you were,
Speaker 3: you know, even though you were a young adult living
Speaker 3: at home, and you know, as you as you described,
Speaker 3: kind of practicing being a wife by serving your dad.
Speaker 3: Can you walk me through almost like a typical day
Speaker 3: in your life at this time. I really want to
Speaker 3: understand what the contours and the shape of your world was.
Speaker 2: In some ways, waking up in Hawaii is a very
Speaker 2: privileged place to be. But also when I first we
Speaker 2: first moved there, I was eighteen and I didn't have
Speaker 2: a license, like I said, or a car or anything
Speaker 2: like that. So I would wake up my dad would
Speaker 2: be at his new job. I didn't have homeschooling to
Speaker 2: do anymore, and so I spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: by myself reading, feeling sad. I didn't understand why I
Speaker 2: was so depressed if I was following God's way, but
Speaker 2: I was really depressed. And I mean that day to
Speaker 2: day changed over time as I got older. I had
Speaker 2: a courtship that didn't last. I became a pianist for
Speaker 2: the church. My dad eventually let me teach piano lessons,
Speaker 2: and so over time I built some of those skills
Speaker 2: that I needed to leave. But it took a long
Speaker 2: time to get that kind of confidence that I could
Speaker 2: be an adult.
Speaker 3: You mentioned a brief courtship.
Speaker 2: Tell me about will, So, I mean, it feels like
Speaker 2: a movie to me when I look back on it.
Speaker 2: It was like we had started this tiny church in
Speaker 2: Kawai with some other quote unquote like minded people.
Speaker 3: And so this was kind of going back to what
Speaker 3: you had done in Colorado, right where your dad and
Speaker 3: a group of families kind of said, yes, we'll just
Speaker 3: do this ourselves, right, we know what we want. The
Speaker 3: church that we're going to isn't providing that back to
Speaker 3: basics under our own roofs, right, right.
Speaker 2: We eventually got connected with a denomination that funded us.
Speaker 2: But at first it was just a bunch of people
Speaker 2: in our living room. So he showed up to church
Speaker 2: one day and we had a very tiny group of people.
Speaker 2: There were no other people. There were barely anybody my age,
Speaker 2: much less an eligible man that I could marry. And
Speaker 2: I was supposed to get married, so it was like,
Speaker 2: what am I even doing here? But I was told
Speaker 2: God will bring you a husband, right, And so one
Speaker 2: day this man appears. He's got blue eyes and curly
Speaker 2: brown hair, and I'm like, oh, well, God brought me
Speaker 2: the husband. And he was really funny, and I loved
Speaker 2: being around him. He had all this energy, and he
Speaker 2: loved telling stories, and I quickly you really felt drawn
Speaker 2: to him. And he and my brother and I were friends,
Speaker 2: and so this was that was considered okay because there
Speaker 2: was three of us. It was friendship. It wasn't anything else,
Speaker 2: and we hung out a lot until one day he
Speaker 2: asked my father to have a courtship with me. And
Speaker 2: this was a surprise to me because he had never
Speaker 2: mentioned that and he shouldn't have. He was not allowed
Speaker 2: to talk about that with me. So my dad informed
Speaker 2: me that Will wanted to have a court and of
Speaker 2: course I said, yes, I thought this was my way out,
Speaker 2: and we entered into that whole process that I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 3: You did start to have feelings for Will, which your
Speaker 3: dad was not happy about and cautioned you about it.
Speaker 3: And I want to read from your book what he
Speaker 3: said to you as a bit of an admonishment or
Speaker 3: a reminder to you about what your role was here. Right,
Speaker 3: he said, the reason we do courtship is because it's
Speaker 3: supposed to prevent emotional intimacy until a marriage commitment. And
Speaker 3: you don't know yet if he's the one you're going
Speaker 3: to marry. What would you say to his future wife
Speaker 3: if he's not the one for you? So much to
Speaker 3: unpack there. In this courtship model, feelings and emotions were
Speaker 3: never meant to come into play. You weren't even allowed
Speaker 3: to compliment each other.
Speaker 2: Right, That would have been too personal, It would have
Speaker 2: made them like you too much.
Speaker 3: And so a lot of chaperone, a lot of I guess,
Speaker 3: guided conversations or how did you get to know each other?
Speaker 2: So once a week we had the moderated conversation with
Speaker 2: my father. We would talk about theology and how to
Speaker 2: homeschool kids and stuff like that, and then we saw
Speaker 2: each other at church. Those were the two main things
Speaker 2: that we would do. And then occasionally I was allowed
Speaker 2: to go spend time with him if my brother was around.
Speaker 2: My younger brother, so he got the scape he got
Speaker 2: to be a scapegoat of like hanging out with us.
Speaker 3: I patronizing to have your younger brother be considered a
Speaker 3: suitable chaperone or a you know, to have that kind
Speaker 3: of power over you. Your dad did call off that courtship.
Speaker 2: Why, Yeah, we had a very long considering my other
Speaker 2: friends courtships. It was a long courtship because different reasons,
Speaker 2: mostly because he didn't have the job that my dad
Speaker 2: wanted him to have, or a consistent job that my
Speaker 2: dad wanted him to have, and so that was all
Speaker 2: part of this process, was making sure that this new
Speaker 2: man can provide for you, and so that was a
Speaker 2: big issue among some other things. It just my dad
Speaker 2: was like, this is not the right one. And I
Speaker 2: had spent months thinking this is the man I'm going
Speaker 2: to get married to, and I couldn't help feeling affection
Speaker 2: for him because I was imagining that and I was
Speaker 2: spending so much time with him and he was so
Speaker 2: kind to me. Now I know that we didn't know
Speaker 2: each other very well at all. So I was in
Speaker 2: love with this idea of him. But when my dad
Speaker 2: cut it off, it was it felt devastating it And
Speaker 2: I mean I was twenty one and if already feeling
Speaker 2: like I my life was over because this one man
Speaker 2: didn't want to you know, wasn't going to get married
Speaker 2: to me. And now I look back, and I was
Speaker 2: so young and naive, but really it was so heartbreaking
Speaker 2: to know that I might never get to choose who
Speaker 2: I would be with.
Speaker 3: And later you learned that Will was struggling under the
Speaker 3: patriarchal system and framework in a whole different way. Tell
Speaker 3: me a little bit about what you came to learn
Speaker 3: about Will.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I didn't know this at the time, but
Speaker 2: he is gay and he was growing up in the
Speaker 2: same kind of family that I was, where he was
Speaker 2: being oppressed for who he was or for who he is,
Speaker 2: and he was trying to follow the rules too, And
Speaker 2: I think we were both like parallel to each other,
Speaker 2: struggling with this, you know, these confines and never getting
Speaker 2: to know who each other was. And so i'm I know,
Speaker 2: I'm glad we didn't get married. I don't think either
Speaker 2: of us would have been happy in the long term.
Speaker 3: When we come back. What finally convinced Kate to break
Speaker 3: free from her father and her church? And when did
Speaker 3: she realize that she'd been raised in a cult? Stay
Speaker 3: with us? Time went on, this courtship with Will ended.
Speaker 3: You're getting older, You're still a stay at home daughter,
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, your mental health is really declining. You
Speaker 3: develop a bit of a drinking habit at this time,
Speaker 3: and then one night you decide you're going to start
Speaker 3: to search for some things on Google. Yeah, what did
Speaker 3: you enter into that search bar that first time?
Speaker 2: Kate? So I finally got a laptop, and I was
Speaker 2: again I had been trained to self police, so I
Speaker 2: never looked anything up on the Internet. I only used
Speaker 2: it to write on Microsoft Word. So I finally was
Speaker 2: like really struggling with my mental health, like you said,
Speaker 2: And I started sneaking to my parents' alcohol and I
Speaker 2: was feeling very suicidal. And the way my dad was
Speaker 2: treating me and talking to me, especially after that courtship,
Speaker 2: it just escalated and I was really struggling, and so
Speaker 2: I don't remember the words I typed there I must
Speaker 2: have typed in how I was feeling or the way
Speaker 2: my dad was treating me. But I came across this
Speaker 2: article about different types of abuse, and I had only
Speaker 2: ever heard that word in reference to physical abuse, which
Speaker 2: I had always, you know, also experienced, but that was
Speaker 2: called discipline, right, So like the language difference, I had
Speaker 2: to learn the vocabulary of what abuse really is. And
Speaker 2: through that I learned about psychological abuse and emotional abuse
Speaker 2: and spiritual abuse, and I could check all the boxes.
Speaker 2: And that was a little terrifying, to be honest, because
Speaker 2: it's hard to grasp this idea that maybe you've been abused.
Speaker 2: Nobody wants to be victimized, and so just having to
Speaker 2: like process that and think that my dad is doing
Speaker 2: these things to me, whether he is intending to or not,
Speaker 2: that's what's happening.
Speaker 3: And that that awareness really broke your world right open,
Speaker 3: didn't it? And you you started to come up with
Speaker 3: a plan. Do you remember what those What was on
Speaker 3: your plan?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It was very basic. It was I think, like,
Speaker 2: get some money.
Speaker 3: I've got it here, I might I might read it
Speaker 3: to you and so you can tell me a little
Speaker 3: bit about it, because it's it's great and it's I mean,
Speaker 3: but it reflects so much of what you were struggling
Speaker 3: and grappling with. So you came up with a with
Speaker 3: a plan, essentially an escape plan. The plan was number one,
Speaker 3: don't tell anyone the plan. Number two save up money
Speaker 3: from teaching piano lessons, as you said, and babysitting. Number
Speaker 3: three by a plane ticket to Philadelphia where your brother
Speaker 3: Kyle lives. Number four, move in with Kyle. And then
Speaker 3: you say, the plan got really hazy after that, Right,
Speaker 3: what were you going to do? Go to college, get
Speaker 3: a job, go on dates, you start a career. What
Speaker 3: did it feel like to put that plan in place?
Speaker 3: I mean that and of itself must have felt transgressive, dangerous, rebellious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I don't think I ever wrote it down
Speaker 2: because my dad for sure would have found it. He
Speaker 2: was known to search all of our rooms and look
Speaker 2: through our journals just to keep tabs on us. So
Speaker 2: it was not something that I put on the talkboard.
Speaker 2: And so this is my plan for escape. It was
Speaker 2: just in my head, like these are the things I
Speaker 2: have to do to get out of this bad situation.
Speaker 2: That's all. It felt like. It was like surviving this situation.
Speaker 2: I just knew I didn't want to be in so
Speaker 2: much pain anymore.
Speaker 3: You were getting closer and closer to trying to figure
Speaker 3: out what it might actually look like to leave, and
Speaker 3: then he met David. At this point, you're twenty four
Speaker 3: years old, still, as we know, living with your parents.
Speaker 3: How did meeting David change the course that you had
Speaker 3: just started to kind of map out for yourself?
Speaker 2: He sparked in me this like for he was a
Speaker 2: good friend of mine from church, and so we hadn't
Speaker 2: thought of each other that way. But over time, as
Speaker 2: things happen, I started feeling really strongly about him, and
Speaker 2: I could sense that maybe he was feeling the same,
Speaker 2: and I was thinking about leaving. Ever since that first courtship,
Speaker 2: I had made this vow to myself that I will
Speaker 2: never let my dad prevent me from having a loving
Speaker 2: relationship again, and so I had just kept the back
Speaker 2: of my head. And then I started feeling these things
Speaker 2: about David, and I wanted to follow my heart and
Speaker 2: not listen to all those authorities telling me how to
Speaker 2: behave and so I just let things happen and stuck
Speaker 2: around for that, and I put all that in the
Speaker 2: book because I wanted to show how complicated leaving is.
Speaker 2: I'm not even sure how that would have worked for
Speaker 2: me to leave. Maybe eventually I would have figured it out,
Speaker 2: but so many state home daughters don't leave unless they
Speaker 2: get married, and so in some ways, having this relationship
Speaker 2: gave me the emotional support I needed to have the
Speaker 2: confidence to leave. And he went through all of that
Speaker 2: with me. He confronted my dad and stood up for
Speaker 2: me and was not okay with the abuse, and that
Speaker 2: gave me courage.
Speaker 3: And what's so interesting about this part of your story
Speaker 3: is that on paper, David came from the church. He
Speaker 3: believed in the same basics, right, the basics were all there,
Speaker 3: and yet your dad disapproved. And it was a bit
Speaker 3: of a battle of wills because you defied your father,
Speaker 3: even just in the sense that you actually fell in
Speaker 3: love with David, and yet you weren't quite ready. It
Speaker 3: took you a while to be able to make a
Speaker 3: decision for yourself, you and David that didn't involve your dad,
Speaker 3: even though you were at that point really locking horns,
Speaker 3: weren't you. What was that last straw for you where
Speaker 3: you just said, I'm going to go make my life
Speaker 3: with David.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think I was of the two
Speaker 2: of us, of me and David, I was the more
Speaker 2: kind of losing my losing my shit a little bit
Speaker 2: and like I'm over all of this. And he grew
Speaker 2: up a pastor's kid. He wanted to do things the
Speaker 2: right way. He didn't want to cause trouble. At the
Speaker 2: same time, I knew he really wanted to protect me,
Speaker 2: So I think he wanted to start trying to do
Speaker 2: this through my dad's way. So he did ask for
Speaker 2: a courtship. My dad said yes, and then a week
Speaker 2: later he changed his mind. And so for me, that
Speaker 2: felt like my dad might do this for the rest
Speaker 2: of my life, just saying yes or no, or never
Speaker 2: letting me get married, because maybe he just wants me
Speaker 2: to live here forever.
Speaker 3: You're a fifty year old stay at home daughter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that literally happened. It does, And so I was
Speaker 2: over it and we ended up secretly meeting up with
Speaker 2: each other. He lived in the same neighborhood as I did,
Speaker 2: and I was just ready to go. I didn't know
Speaker 2: how now that I had this relationship, like, how do
Speaker 2: I make this plan work? And so he had to
Speaker 2: figure out what he wanted to do too. And we
Speaker 2: made a plan together which was a little different than
Speaker 2: my plan, but moving back to Michigan, which is where
Speaker 2: he's originally from. He had some family here that we
Speaker 2: could stay with while we got our feet on the ground,
Speaker 2: and that's what we eventually went with. I moved here
Speaker 2: to Michigan from Hawaii. For me, it was the impulse
Speaker 2: to leave. Was my dad controlling me so much, not
Speaker 2: letting me choose, and I became more outspoken about what
Speaker 2: I wanted, and the reactions my dad gave me really
Speaker 2: told me that I was in an unsafe situation. It
Speaker 2: was no longer a tenable relationship with my dad, and
Speaker 2: he became more and more aggressive. He would tell me
Speaker 2: things like you can think what you want, but you
Speaker 2: can't act on it, and I just started to believe
Speaker 2: that can't be true.
Speaker 3: Was there physical violence at that time between with your dad.
Speaker 2: No, there was not physical violence, but he has this
Speaker 2: overwhelming presence and he would bar the door for my room,
Speaker 2: so I would be trapped in my room while he
Speaker 2: yelled at me. And so in that sense, it was physical,
Speaker 2: but not anything that was like what we consider violence.
Speaker 3: Your whole world changed pretty quickly once that ball started
Speaker 3: kind of rolling, didn't it. And you and David get married.
Speaker 3: As you say, you move away, your brother Chris comes
Speaker 3: out as gay as well, all of the children of
Speaker 3: your family start to really cleave away from how you've
Speaker 3: been raised and the systems you'd been raised in. And
Speaker 3: what's so interesting is that it wasn't until you'd kind
Speaker 3: of begun your own life as an adult, married woman
Speaker 3: that a lot of that trauma really started surfacing for you.
Speaker 3: Why do you think that was that It wasn't until later.
Speaker 2: I was very dissociated most of my young adulthood, like
Speaker 2: literally dissociated during times of stress with my father, and
Speaker 2: it didn't feel connected to my body or at home
Speaker 2: in my body. And when I left, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: I didn't have any rules. I didn't have anybody telling
Speaker 2: you what to do. My husband's very much not a
Speaker 2: patriarch case, not like somebody who's going to tell you
Speaker 2: what to do. We were very much a partnership, and
Speaker 2: so I had nobody telling me what to decide on.
Speaker 2: I had to make all these choices for myself, which
Speaker 2: is very overwhelming when you're not used to that. And
Speaker 2: I was in a safe place. I think sometimes when
Speaker 2: you're in a safe place, you can finally feel the
Speaker 2: things that you've had to survive. When you're in survival mode,
Speaker 2: you have adrenaline, you have all these hormones that are
Speaker 2: helping you get through it. And then when you no
Speaker 2: longer have to be in that situation, you can release
Speaker 2: all of that and you feel it all. And that's
Speaker 2: when a lot of the PTSD came right. And so
Speaker 2: of course it's always post traumatic stress. It's not during
Speaker 2: the traumatic stress. So that's what I was experiencing.
Speaker 3: When did the C word cult rise to the surface
Speaker 3: for you? When did that feel like the right word
Speaker 3: to describe what you've grown up in and what you'd experienced.
Speaker 2: Oh, I can't remember exact moment. I just I love
Speaker 2: watching documentaries and it's kind of odd, but watching cult
Speaker 2: documentaries has always calmed me down and made me feel stay,
Speaker 2: which sounds really backwards, but I think it makes sense
Speaker 2: now that I understand that it's so familiar to me
Speaker 2: that it gives me some kind of resolution. Because usually
Speaker 2: a cult documentary starts with the problem and the group,
Speaker 2: and then people leave or it breaks down and there's
Speaker 2: an ending. Watching these documentaries gave me that feeling of
Speaker 2: closure that I might never get with some aspects of
Speaker 2: my life. And I remember watching The Vow, which is
Speaker 2: about Nextium, a very different kind of cult, but the
Speaker 2: way they broke it down and talked about it, it
Speaker 2: started to really click for me. Of these aspects are
Speaker 2: exactly what was happening in my home and in my church,
Speaker 2: but just with the different context. It wasn't the Nexium
Speaker 2: wasn't religious, but my group was. And that's when I
Speaker 2: started understanding the parallels, and that language gave me the
Speaker 2: confidence to use that word. Finally. I think it's a
Speaker 2: very complex. I don't want to simplify things, but it's
Speaker 2: also really empowering to use that word when you were
Speaker 2: in a place that caused so much harm.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, you wrote your dad a letter after you left.
Speaker 3: Talk to me about what you said to him and
Speaker 3: what you tried to express to him and how he responded.
Speaker 2: We had kind of a very surface level relationship when
Speaker 2: I left. I think what happened for him was he
Speaker 2: realized he couldn't control me anymore, and so he kind
Speaker 2: of stepped back a little bit and we could have
Speaker 2: a very basic conversation on the phone, and I did
Speaker 2: see him a couple times, and now that I was married,
Speaker 2: I was under the headshep of another man, So that's
Speaker 2: in his head, that's how that works. When I started
Speaker 2: talking about my story online and sharing just tiny little things,
Speaker 2: and I try to focus it on myself and not
Speaker 2: my dad, but of course anything I said that was
Speaker 2: the truth was going to get him upset. And somehow
Speaker 2: he found me on Twitter and he sent me all
Speaker 2: these text messages in the middle of the night of
Speaker 2: how upset he was and how hurt and why would
Speaker 2: I do this to him? And at that point I
Speaker 2: had learned all this you know language about course of control,
Speaker 2: and I was like, you are guesslighting me, this has
Speaker 2: really happened. And I was feeling like, you don't get
Speaker 2: to disrupt my night's sleep because you're upset about something
Speaker 2: I say. And I worked with a therapist on this letter.
Speaker 2: Instead of texting him back, I just emailed him this letter,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to explain finally how I felt about everything.
Speaker 2: A lot of it I had already said in person
Speaker 2: when before I even left, but I just wanted to
Speaker 2: reinstate like, this is what happened, this is what you did.
Speaker 2: I will take responsibility for all my actions and maybe
Speaker 2: I didn't handle everything while. But if we want to
Speaker 2: continue a relationship, I need you to at least acknowledge
Speaker 2: it happened and take responsibility for what you did. And
Speaker 2: I want to figure out a way to still have
Speaker 2: this relationship. This was about five years ago. Now, I
Speaker 2: know he got the letter, but he never responded.
Speaker 3: What about your mom?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I still have contact with my mom. I'm glad
Speaker 2: that I do. She's always been supportive of me having
Speaker 2: my own life. I think she's gotten stronger in the
Speaker 2: past decade and it's good to see that, and I
Speaker 2: like that we can still talk even though she's still
Speaker 2: with my dad. It just gets it gets complicated.
Speaker 3: What's your relationship with God and religion and spirituality at
Speaker 3: this time in your life.
Speaker 2: This is always the part where I want to joke
Speaker 2: about how I'm starting my own cult, But I'm not
Speaker 2: doing that. You know.
Speaker 3: Look, I think if there was ever a time for
Speaker 3: us to have, you know, an extreme matriarchy movement, it
Speaker 3: might be now, Kate, I.
Speaker 2: Know the playbooks, so I just have to switch the
Speaker 2: pronouns in the week. No, No, I still wanted to
Speaker 2: go to church for a long time. After I left
Speaker 2: my family. It was like a double heartbreak though, because
Speaker 2: I witnessed a lot of abuse in the church, or
Speaker 2: mishandling of abuse, me showing up as an abuse survivor
Speaker 2: and not being accepted that way, and patriarchy steeping in
Speaker 2: and becoming more influential this movement, like the leaders from
Speaker 2: my childhood. We had those books in Sunday School. All
Speaker 2: of a sudden, I was like, what is happening. It's
Speaker 2: happening again, and so I left that church and just
Speaker 2: never went I've tried to other churches, and I just
Speaker 2: have never gone back because being in a church sitting
Speaker 2: really triggers my PTSD and it's just not a good
Speaker 2: place for my body to be right now. Once I
Speaker 2: saw I'm going to church, I was like, oh, I
Speaker 2: could actually feel good during the weekend and not stressed.
Speaker 2: I don't call myself a Christian anymore, but I do
Speaker 2: work with a lot of people who do, because I
Speaker 2: work with a nonprofit that helps spiritual abuse survivors, and
Speaker 2: so I want to be sensitive to that. I'm never
Speaker 2: going to tell someone they have to heal a certain way,
Speaker 2: whether with religion or not. But for me, it's not
Speaker 2: a part of my life anymore.
Speaker 3: I want to ask you about that kind of you know,
Speaker 3: I suppose it's almost like a sliding doors alternate reality
Speaker 3: kind of kind of experience, where you know, you write
Speaker 3: about the very real danger and violence that exists within
Speaker 3: this movement. We've interviewed other women who've lived under religious
Speaker 3: patriarchy who did end up marrying into that system and
Speaker 3: suffered serious abuse. Do you ever wonder what it might
Speaker 3: have looked like for you if you had let your
Speaker 3: dad choose your husband, if you had let him guide
Speaker 3: the rest of your adult life and maintain that kind
Speaker 3: of control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have thought about this a lot, and I
Speaker 2: know so many State Home daughters, and I've seen so
Speaker 2: many ways they've lived out their lives. Some of them
Speaker 2: have never gotten married, some of them get married and
Speaker 2: then divorced. Some of them are married and still in
Speaker 2: the movement. Some are married and left the movement. It's
Speaker 2: just been a lot of different ways that this has
Speaker 2: diverged for us. A lot of us have deconstructed the
Speaker 2: whole patriarchy movement. I would say probably a majority of us,
Speaker 2: and a lot of abuse has happened, and that is
Speaker 2: really hard to stomach because our parents set us up
Speaker 2: for that, and we didn't ask for that. Nobody does.
Speaker 2: And it's hard to see my friends who've been in
Speaker 2: those marriages and knowing that that happened to them. There's
Speaker 2: no words, really, I do feel like I escaped some
Speaker 2: of the worst parts of what could have happened. There's
Speaker 2: never a way to compare trauma, but I do feel
Speaker 2: I don't know what the word is. I feel grateful
Speaker 2: for where I am today.
Speaker 3: You write something so poignant, which is that it had
Speaker 3: been a decade at least at the time of writing
Speaker 3: your book, it had been a decade since you'd left,
Speaker 3: but you sometimes feel like you're still leaving.
Speaker 2: When I first left, I really wanted to wipe the
Speaker 2: slate clean and never tell anybody ever what my family
Speaker 2: had been like, and just pretend like I had dropped
Speaker 2: on the earth and could just pretend like I've always
Speaker 2: had a job and always knew what I was going
Speaker 2: on around me. But with PTSD and struggling with all that,
Speaker 2: I realized pretty quickly that you can't just get what happened,
Speaker 2: and you can't move on without dealing with the trauma.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's difficult. Nobody wants to do that,
Speaker 2: but it's important to get to a safe place where
Speaker 2: you can go back and reprocess some of those things
Speaker 2: so that you aren't constantly in that nervous system disregulation
Speaker 2: that I was in. Is possible, I think, well, what
Speaker 2: I really.
Speaker 3: Want to ask you about in these last minutes. You know,
Speaker 3: we're living through a very high stakes time for women
Speaker 3: in America at the moment the time of this conversation,
Speaker 3: right now, we are only a weaken to the results
Speaker 3: of of you as election and Trump being re elected,
Speaker 3: and I want to know what you feel. I suppose
Speaker 3: not just about the election results, but there are quite
Speaker 3: a lot of white Christian, patriarchal, white nationalist men in
Speaker 3: government in the country that you're living in who would
Speaker 3: say that the childhood you grew up with and in
Speaker 3: is right and good and in fact should be the
Speaker 3: law of the land. How does that not trigger your
Speaker 3: PTSD and your trauma response?
Speaker 2: I mean? Or does it does? Definitely does? I mean
Speaker 2: in the sense that it's such a reminder and it's
Speaker 2: it brings up that feeling of what it's like to
Speaker 2: feel closed off from other people and to feel oppressed
Speaker 2: and struggle to have decision making power. That feeling of helplessness.
Speaker 2: That's what's triggering for me, is like, are we going
Speaker 2: to go back to that place? But I'm also in
Speaker 2: a different place now and I do have more power
Speaker 2: than I did then, and that's why I'm speaking up
Speaker 2: so much and doing what I can to educate people
Speaker 2: about what this really looks like. On the ground, I'm
Speaker 2: trying to stay grounded in myself and have my support
Speaker 2: system and using what extra energy I have to help
Speaker 2: with the problem. And that gives me freedom even itself.
Speaker 2: I have freedom inside of myself, and then I have
Speaker 2: the power to use my voice, and I don't think
Speaker 2: anyone can ever take that away from me again.
Speaker 3: Please don't stop using your voice and telling stories and
Speaker 3: sharing your wisdom. We need you now more than ever. Kate,
Speaker 3: we really do. Thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 3: Wow, big story, right. I don't think stories like Kate's
Speaker 3: could have come at a better time. Really. You can
Speaker 3: probably tell by my accent that I'm American. And what's
Speaker 3: wild to me about Kate's story is that she and
Speaker 3: I are around the same age, grew up in the
Speaker 3: same country. But we may as well be from different planets.
Speaker 3: And that's the thing about these high demand organizations or
Speaker 3: these extreme religious groups. They're so isolating, which we know
Speaker 3: is kind of cult one oh one right outside influence
Speaker 3: and information is the biggest threat to their power. When
Speaker 3: I asked Kate if she ever thought about the women
Speaker 3: from these Christian patriarchal movements who don't find their way
Speaker 3: out until things get even more violent and even more dangerous,
Speaker 3: I was thinking particularly about another woman that Mia interviewed
Speaker 3: on this program called Tia Loving's. Tia and Kate are
Speaker 3: survivors of the same groups and ideas, but Tia did
Speaker 3: marry someone who subscribed to that really violent form of
Speaker 3: male dominance, and she came very close to not making
Speaker 3: it out alive. I'll be sure to link to her
Speaker 3: story in the show notes for you. I'll also link
Speaker 3: to our conversation with Megan Agnew. She's a journalist who
Speaker 3: spent the day with a woman named Hannah Nielman. You
Speaker 3: might have heard of her. She's kind of considered to
Speaker 3: be the queen of the tradwives and is kind of
Speaker 3: selling some of the ideas and frameworks that Kate escaped from.
Speaker 3: But in this really soft and fashioning and instant way.
Speaker 3: There's a lot more to Kate's story and experience, including
Speaker 3: her fertility journey and more about exactly how her church operated.
Speaker 3: It's all in her wildly well written memoir Rift, which
Speaker 3: you can also find a link to in our show notes.
Speaker 3: Mia Friedman is the host and creator of No Filter.
Speaker 3: The executive producer of No Filter is me Naima Brown,
Speaker 3: and you can find me on Instagram and pitch me
Speaker 3: your stories anytime. We get so many great tips from
Speaker 3: our listeners, so please do reach out. Audio production and
Speaker 3: sound design is by Jacob Brown. Thank you for listening.