WEBVTT - No, The Kids Were Not All Right 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:02.759 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:06.280 --> 0:00:08.319 If you ask me where I'm from, I'll lie to you. 0:00:09.000 --> 0:00:11.319 I'll tell you my parents are missionaries. I'll tell you 0:00:11.360 --> 0:00:15.560 I'm from Boston. I'll tell you I'm from Texas. Those lies. 0:00:15.600 --> 0:00:18.520 People believe I'm better at lying than I am at 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:21.000 telling the truth, because the lies don't make me nervous. 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:23.799 It's the truth, the thought of telling it the triggers 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:26.639 my awkward laugh, in my sweaty palms, makes me not 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:28.680 want to look you in the eye. I know I 0:00:28.680 --> 0:00:30.360 won't like what I'll see. 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:35.839 That's Lauren Huff, Austin based writer and author of the 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:41.159 essay collection Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing. Lauren's is a 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:46.040 story of courage, transformation, and one woman's will and spirit 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:49.560 to find a way out, to find a way through, 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:54.800 to find a path toward the most authentic version of herself. 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:10.679 I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is Family Secrets. The secrets 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:13.200 that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:23.759 and the secrets we keep from ourselves. Tell me about 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:27.720 the landscape or landscapes of your childhood. 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:30.920 I grew up everywhere. I mean, there are there are 0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:33.920 places that I think affected me more than others and 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:37.000 that I remember more than others. I was born in Berlin, Germany, 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:41.720 and have no really early childhood memories of that. We 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:45.520 left when I was I think one or two, went 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:50.480 to Switzerland and then Argentina and Chile, and I don't 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:53.639 remember those much either. We came back to the States 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:56.880 for a while to Amrili, Texas, or my grandmother lived, 0:01:57.120 --> 0:02:01.200 and then went to Japan Osaka for a couple of years, 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:05.960 and then back to Switzerland and Germany and then back 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:07.000 to Amillo, Texas. 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:11.800 If you could pinpoint what your first memory was, what 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:13.720 do you see and sort of how old were you 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:15.160 when you see it? 0:02:15.160 --> 0:02:18.960 It's funny. I went back to Berlin, and because I 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:22.320 was born in a commune, the address of the commune 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:24.200 is on my birth certificate, so I was able to 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:27.440 find the flat where I was born, and I have 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:31.720 this very early memory of feeding little birds and sitting 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:34.760 on those green glass tiles in front of an apartment, 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:38.840 and the apartment still had those green glass tiles out 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:42.079 in front of it, So I remember something from when 0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:44.840 I was maybe one and a half years old, But 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:47.720 that's the only memory I have, as those little birds. 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:50.960 Was that memory something that you had before you went 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:52.760 back and then it was confirmed or did it come 0:02:52.800 --> 0:02:54.840 to you when you went back to Berlin as an adult. 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:59.480 I was always asking where the green tiles were, just 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:02.360 trying to different memories somewhere, because I have two older 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:04.480 sisters and I'll ask them, you know, what was the 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:06.000 house with the goats in it? And they'll tell me 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:08.839 that it was in Mendoza in Argentina. Or I'll ask 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:11.200 them what was the house with the avocado tree and 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:13.480 they'll tell me that was Santiago, or the house with 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:15.480 the hay on the roof. You know, these things that 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:18.480 you see as a child that it's not the same 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:21.080 thing as the adults see. The birds in the green 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:23.680 titles were one of those questions I was asking, and 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:24.960 they didn't know where that was. 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:31.160 Lauren is one of four. She has two older sisters 0:03:31.360 --> 0:03:34.960 and a little brother, Mikey. Together with their parents, they 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:40.040 are members of a commune, a cult called Children of God. 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:44.280 It's one of those things where it doesn't seem real now, 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:49.480 but that was my reality and anything else seems unreal 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:53.280 that you know. We lived in sometimes small, sometimes very 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:58.320 large communes, sometimes in campgrounds, with a few other family 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:02.120 members in other campers. In Stuttgart, we lived on a 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:05.640 camper for a while and the cornfield that we used 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:08.560 to run through because it was a lot of adults, 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:11.000 and I don't really have many memories of the adults. 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:14.840 I have memories of kids everywhere all the time. And 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:16.799 when I was a kid, it seemed great. You always 0:04:16.839 --> 0:04:21.200 had someone to play with. They weren't really strict about 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:24.560 childcare or schooling or anything else. We just played all day, 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:28.400 which was great for me. I have this picture of 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:33.159 my parents on my wall that I found a on 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:38.960 occult website and I framed it because I held a 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:41.120 lot of anger to them for a lot of my childhood. 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:44.560 You know, how could you possibly join a cult? But 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:47.720 no one joins the cult they you know, my fam 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:50.919 My mother was going to University of Texas and the 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:54.280 cult was heavily recruiting here, and they came over to 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:56.520 her and did what they do. Do you want to 0:04:56.560 --> 0:05:00.719 hear a song about Jesus? They find depressed, isolated kids 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:05.400 and show them unconditional love and a cause and belonging 0:05:05.600 --> 0:05:09.120 and they join. And they're joining a movement. They're joining, 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:11.680 you know, a community of people who take care of 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:14.320 one another. By the time you realize what you've done, 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:17.920 it's way too late. My father was he was trying 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:19.800 to dodge the draft. He was going to hitchhipe to 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:24.520 Mexico and he met them outside a library in Dallas. 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.080 And it's the classic don't follow the hippies to the 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:30.880 second location, because the second location was their commune in Texas. 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:33.920 They had a huge ranch outside of Dallas, which was 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:38.520 where they originally kind of kicked up right around seventy one. 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:41.800 And so your parents met in the cult itself. 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:44.839 Yeah, they met in the cult. They were driving around 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:48.599 in a double decker bus in England and my father 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:51.680 was always the carpenter guy who could he still can, 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:54.160 he can build anything, and he had decked out the 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:57.479 bus with out a little kitchen and everything he needed 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:00.240 in it so they could travel around England and their 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:03.600 minds tell people about Jesus. And someone suggested that they 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:07.560 should have a mass wedding. It would be super revolutionary man, 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:10.719 and my dad thought my mom was pretty so he 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:15.040 asked her and that was said. They're completely ill suited 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:18.560 to one another. But uh, it lasted long enough for 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:20.920 them to have the four of us. 0:06:23.240 --> 0:06:26.040 Every cult has a charismatic leader. In the case of 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:30.320 Children of God, that's a man named David Berg. Berg 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:34.160 grew up the son of a tent evangelist named Virginia Burg, 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:37.520 who had become famous during the Great Depression during tent 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:41.440 Revival meetings. As an adult, he wanted to start his 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:44.120 own thing and prayed on the hippies who hung out 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:48.400 on Huntington Beach in California. Berg and his kids would 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:51.839 sing songs and offer hippies day old doughnuts. You just 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:54.080 had to come hear about Jesus for a little while. 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:58.200 In the beginning, it was all peace and love, but 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:01.279 eventually this changed into an obsession with the end of 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:05.600 the world. The Antichrist was coming, the apocalypse was near. 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:09.440 The cult moved to a ranch in Texas, but media 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:13.560 attention was intense, and David Berg disappeared. He ran the 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:16.400 cult from a secret hiding place where he drank a 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:19.920 lot of sherry and made his pronouncements via something he 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:23.960 called Moe letters. One of these letters laid down the 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:28.040 law of Love, and Children of God became a sex cult. 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:32.080 When Lauren is six years old, she and her parents 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:34.800 leave the cult for a short while and return to 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:38.400 the States in a bid to save their marriage. When 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:41.960 their marriage falters the following year, Lauren's dad takes her 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:45.040 two older sisters back to Germany and they returned to 0:07:45.080 --> 0:07:49.680 cult life. There, the family is split up. Mom takes 0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:52.000 Lauren and her little brother, and the three of them 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:55.840 eventually also returned to the cult, first in Dallas, and 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:59.160 then when Lauren's ten, they're off to Osaka, Japan. 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:03.880 We went from Amory a little to Dallas to rejoin. 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:07.679 They were doing a push to to find old members 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:11.160 who had left. I guess their numbers were down, and 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:14.320 they invited my mother to this meeting in Dallas, and 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:18.600 we almost immediately moved back into a family home and 0:08:19.160 --> 0:08:21.920 went to Osaka. I mean, I wish I could tell 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:23.760 you the kids were all right. No, the kids were 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:27.560 not all right. The kids were I was protected from 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:31.120 some of it, just because we were in smaller homes 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:36.920 and not near central leadership where things were a little wilder. 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:42.199 But yeah, I have I have vague memories of things 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:46.040 the kids shouldn't have seen and shouldn't have been involved in. Yeah, 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:48.760 I mean I was sheltered a little bit, even by 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:52.600 my sisters. I remember my oldest sister waking us up 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:55.199 and carrying my little brother out of a room because 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:59.040 the adults were having an orgy and telling us not 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:03.080 to look. But we'd gone to some huge comment for 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:05.200 a party and we'd fallen asleep under a table because 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:07.839 it was going late into the night, and she woke 0:09:07.920 --> 0:09:10.080 up and realized what was going on, and hearded us 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:14.240 out as there. But it depended on who your parents were, 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:17.320 depended on what homes you were in, what happened to you. 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:22.000 My brother and I lived under the assumption for most 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:25.280 of our lives that our dad just left and chose 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:29.040 our sisters and not us and didn't want anything to 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:33.559 do with us, and he never corrected the record. What 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:36.959 we now know happened is he he left. He went 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:39.199 to Germany. He was supposed to find a job and 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:42.400 an apartment, and once he did that, my mom was 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:45.280 going to come with us, and she sent him divorce 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:49.080 papers instead and told him to choose to But my 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:52.520 brother and I recently found out. I found out a 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:56.240 few years ago. My brother just found out I lived 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:59.000 in Austin and he lives in New England. He'd come 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:01.160 down here to pick up a part for his wife, 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:03.840 and we had a few drinks with my dad, and 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:07.800 my dad finally told him, and my brother and I 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:11.160 sat in my living room for the next day just 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:15.560 kind of looking at each other, going, so, so he wanted us. Yep, 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:23.000 all right, even at I'm forty seven, he's forty five. 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:27.280 It's still sort of instantly fixes a lot of things 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:29.640 that would have been nice to know. 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:34.080 Yeah, which is such a complicated idea, The idea like 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:39.480 that the narrative shifts and the narratives that you and 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:42.760 your brother had, as you know, this was the story 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:46.240 ends up not being the story, and it's a better story. 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:50.559 It's an absolute tragedy, but it's a better story for 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:53.360 our the sense of who we are that you know, 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:55.560 our dad did want us. 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:58.200 And yet you lived for all those years with that 0:10:58.320 --> 0:11:02.920 other story, which probably you know dies a slow death 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:06.280 in a way because it was your story for so long. 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:10.680 Yeah, it's it took me. I found out a few years, 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:13.480 you know. I recently sort of reconnected with my father 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:16.160 when I moved down here and he lived here, and 0:11:16.240 --> 0:11:18.360 I've just been angry at him for most of my 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:21.839 life because he left me, and he told me when 0:11:21.880 --> 0:11:24.240 I moved down here one night on his piktack and 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:30.640 it shifted everything. But there's also, you know, those regrets 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:34.160 of really kind of wish someone had told me earlier. 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:37.640 But he didn't think it was his place. He didn't 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:40.640 want to take our mother from us too. And we're 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:42.760 at the age now or it doesn't affect the way 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:44.920 we feel about our mother. We know here she is, 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:47.400 We love her a lot. She is who she is. 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:51.840 Did you wrestle with whether or not to tell your 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:53.880 brother during those years, or did you feel that it 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:55.600 was your father's story to tell. 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:01.880 I thought about it. He's been our dad too for 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:06.280 a long time, and he's made allusions to you know, 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:09.000 it's just like this old man and he's probably knows 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:12.000 he's dying soon and wants to reconnect with me. And 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:14.840 I guess that's fine. And I wanted to tell him 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:18.200 so badly, but I didn't think he would hear it. 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:18.960 Covering from me. 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:37.880 We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:42.520 After her parents divorced, Lauren's mother had met a man 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:45.880 in Texas named Gabe. Gabe was a bartender, not part 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:47.960 of the Children of God when they met, but he 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:51.240 ended up joining. Of course, Lauren's mom didn't pitch it 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:54.640 to him as a cult. That word only came long after. 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:58.359 At the time, she considered herself to be a missionary 0:12:58.679 --> 0:13:02.559 fighting the good fight, going overseas to teach people about Jesus. 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:05.760 Gabe was a religious man to begin with, so the 0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:08.600 mission appealed to him and he joined the family on 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:13.800 their path. But after five years in Osaka, when Lauren 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:17.040 is fifteen, her mom decides it's time to leave again, 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:20.560 this time for good. She wakes up to the fact 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:23.160 that her children aren't getting any sort of real education 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:27.200 there and she can't protect them from abuse. She also 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:30.240 wants Lauren's sisters to leave the cult, and knows there's 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:33.480 a better chance of this happening if she leaves. Two 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:36.719 Lauren and Mikey go to live with their grandmother in Amarillo. 0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:40.160 Lauren's sisters, however, stay in the cult for a little 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:40.720 while longer. 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:45.400 That was hard on my mom too. We didn't know 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:48.480 if they would ever follow us out. Once you were 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:51.640 a teenager in the family, you could stay on your own. 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:55.120 You didn't have to leave with your parents. And part 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:59.600 of the reason they split people up so thoroughly put 0:13:59.600 --> 0:14:01.200 a lot of kids didn't live with their in the 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:03.719 same homes with their parents. A lot of us were 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:07.400 split up, whether our parents were divorced or intact or not. 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:11.400 And they put kids in schools, not actual schools, they 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:13.439 were homes that were called schools. And then we'd learn 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:16.360 about Jesus and Me in time in the anti Christ 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:19.600 all day. But they split people up. Teenagers would go 0:14:19.640 --> 0:14:21.880 to teen homes. There was no way she could get 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:25.200 them out. So when we left, she made it her 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:29.360 mission from that point on to get my sisters out. 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:32.040 They would come to visit, and she made them get 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:34.560 their gedes and driver's licenses so that they would have 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:39.960 something to fall back on should they leave. And yeah, 0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:41.720 it was. It was a full court press. Every time 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:45.080 they did come to visit. My mom would gather. All right, 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:47.600 So we don't talk about it about the family. We 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:51.680 don't talk anything about you know, David Berg. We don't 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:54.320 discuss any of it. We're really proud of them, we're 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:57.280 happy they're doing what they're doing, because if we made 0:14:57.320 --> 0:14:59.320 ourselves enemies of the cult, they wouldn't be allowed to 0:14:59.360 --> 0:14:59.800 come visit. 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:04.120 And to top that off, you're fifteen years old, write 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:08.280 smack dab in the middle of adolescents, and you have 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:14.800 no learned social skills of the kind that happen when 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:19.840 kids are growing up in an environment that isn't a bubble. 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:25.040 You're being quote unquote homeschooled, which basically it isn't school, right, 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:26.320 it isn't school at all. 0:15:27.000 --> 0:15:30.280 We signed up for a correspondence courses. Now they did 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:33.920 it pre internet. They would mail you books and materials. 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:36.920 I would read through the books for the year in 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:41.200 the first night, and then we would randomly have to 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:44.320 pass little tests that they would mail in and you 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:46.840 would get your grade. But no, my brother and I 0:15:46.840 --> 0:15:48.720 spent most of the day watching TV. My mom was 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:54.440 cleaning houses. Gabe was off giving one of those how 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:57.560 to make a million dollars. He joined I think at 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:04.280 least four pyramid schemes, but he was not going to 0:16:04.320 --> 0:16:07.400 work for a living. It's determined to not. But yeah, 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:08.840 they were gone during the day, so we would watch 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:12.360 TV and try to learn how to be human. 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:22.200 Lauren's grandmother was, in Lauren's words, Amarillo's soul liberal. She's 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:26.280 unusual in other ways as well. Even though outside of 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:30.280 family members aren't supposed to visit the commune. Lauren's grandmother 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:34.200 manages to do just that. She sits through sermons and 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:37.120 listens to them preach at her. She sings along with 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:40.720 all the songs she helps in the kitchen, anything to 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:42.880 keep her daughter and her grandchildren close. 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:46.680 I didn't see it at the time, but I know 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:48.720 now it was calculated that the only way she was 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:52.280 going to maintain contact with her daughters if she remained, 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:55.480 you know, super friendly to the cult. And you know 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:58.760 I can't join myself, but I really support everything you 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:01.320 guys are doing. And this is terrisa. Take it now, 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:03.400 let's sing another song about Jesus. 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:07.080 Well, in a way, your mom replicated that a little 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:09.720 bit when your sisters would come to visit. 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:12.800 She did. She learned from the best. May like kurrn Of, 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:15.080 there was a little bit subversive. She was always sending 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:18.320 me books, just whatever paperback she had laying around the house. 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:20.199 Clearly there would be a Danielle Steele, and there are 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:24.320 a Jackie Collins, arn't a copy of White Fang. But 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:26.879 then there would be a copy of The Handmaid's Tale. 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:30.520 And my mother would would let me keep the books, 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:34.199 which I would have to hide them under my mattress. 0:17:34.400 --> 0:17:35.959 I got caught with them, I would be in trouble, 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:40.600 but most families didn't, didn't give their kids books. I 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:43.040 don't know many kids who did have access to books, 0:17:43.040 --> 0:17:45.520 but I did because my grandmother made sure of it. 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:51.520 Lauren's grandmother is providing a robust education for her, giving 0:17:51.560 --> 0:17:55.600 her access to all sorts of reading material. And then, 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:57.879 when Lauren's in her senior year of high school, she 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:03.160 actually goes to high school, person her world widens. Suddenly 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:07.240 she's part of a whole new social landscape. Things aren't 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:11.639 going terrifically for her. Socially, she hasn't exactly had much experience, 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:17.120 but she's figuring it out. One day during her senior year, 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:22.440 she comes across a newspaper obituary for David Berg. She's 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:26.040 shocked to learn he's died, and she rips out the clipping, 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:28.760 folds it up, and stuffs it into her jeans pocket. 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:32.760 She hoards it away for later, knowing she needs to 0:18:32.840 --> 0:18:36.399 study it, read it carefully, and look at the photograph 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:39.639 of a man she'd never seen before, but who impacted 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:43.639 her family's life so much. She shows the clipping to 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:47.040 Mikey and to her mom, both of whom encourage her 0:18:47.359 --> 0:18:50.240 to never tell anyone she'd been part of a cult. 0:18:50.920 --> 0:18:53.879 Her mother warns her to never speak of it again. 0:18:57.440 --> 0:19:00.159 It took me a really long time to let that 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:03.399 idea go because it sunk in and we were told 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:05.600 and when we were little kids, we lied to my 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:07.560 grandmother about where we were and what we were doing. 0:19:07.600 --> 0:19:09.879 We lied to my cousins, we lied to everybody who 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:13.280 was not in the family. We were just Christian missionaries, 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:18.000 definitely not affiliated with those people anymore. We always changed 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:20.359 our names in the cult, and we always have to 0:19:20.400 --> 0:19:22.760 practice when we would come back to visit to use 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:26.480 our legal names that people knew us by it, because 0:19:26.760 --> 0:19:29.920 you know, you can't call your sister esther when that's 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:33.479 not her name, anything that could raise a question. We 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:36.359 were paranoid about it, and we were taught to be 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:40.240 paranoid about it. I understand where my mother was coming from, 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:44.359 and I understand her fears about it, but at the 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:48.919 same time, it created this this secret that was so 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:52.720 isolating because there was a huge part of my life 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:55.480 that I thought I could never tell anyone, and I 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:59.080 believed her and I believed you know. The little experience 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:03.719 I had with with people knowing about the cult is 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:06.480 that you know, they look at you strange, and they 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:10.080 look at you funny, and you know, they take people's 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:14.159 kids away, and there were homes rated where you know, 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:16.919 children were taken into foster care. But it seemed like 0:20:16.920 --> 0:20:21.359 this huge secret that I had to keep, and I 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:24.080 didn't even know where. I didn't know how to explain 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:26.159 it to myself, much less how to explain it to 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:27.199 another person. 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:32.879 And the cult wasn't the only secret Lauren was keeping. 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:36.639 There was another kind of secret, the secret of her 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:37.400 very self. 0:20:38.800 --> 0:20:42.240 I know I wasn't interested in men or boys, but 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:47.119 I liked hanging out with them, and for the most part, 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:49.359 I got really lucky with guys. Like my high school 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:53.760 boyfriend was a rodeo cowboy and just a really sweet guy, 0:20:53.760 --> 0:20:57.240 and I would go out to his ranch and ride horses, 0:20:57.320 --> 0:21:00.520 and sometimes he would grind on me and try to 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:02.600 fill me up, but he was a good Christian boy 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:04.840 and that's as far as it went. So that was 0:21:04.880 --> 0:21:06.680 just something I had to put up with in order 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:09.960 to ride horses or have a boyfriend and be normal 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:14.120 like everybody else. I assumed everybody was the same way 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:16.560 about men. It didn't occur to me that there were 0:21:16.600 --> 0:21:20.000 girls who enjoyed having sex with boys. I was in 0:21:20.040 --> 0:21:22.000 my thirties before I realized that there are girls who 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:28.080 enjoy giving blowjobs. I just, why would you? It didn't 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:32.560 occur to me, but I didn't realize I was listen. 0:21:32.640 --> 0:21:35.840 I had feelings. There was the Freedom ninety video that 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:40.120 George Michael won and eventually start sitting against the wall 0:21:40.160 --> 0:21:42.840 smoking a cigarette. I definitely had feelings about it, but 0:21:42.920 --> 0:21:46.760 I didn't recognize those as homosexual feelings or that I 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:51.080 was gay. I couldn't possibly be, because they I had 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:53.640 always been a tomboy growing up, and they had always 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:58.280 had me praying against this homosexual spirit. And to admit 0:21:58.440 --> 0:22:01.320 that I might be gay, they would be to admit 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:03.919 that they were right about me, and I couldn't. I 0:22:03.920 --> 0:22:06.359 couldn't do it. I went into the Air Force right 0:22:06.400 --> 0:22:11.520 after high school, and I realized it then pretty quickly. 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:14.320 But it's not something that, oh, here's a moment where 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:16.959 I suddenly understand I'm the lesbian. I'd always known. I 0:22:17.080 --> 0:22:21.840 just didn't say it out loud, even to myself. I 0:22:21.920 --> 0:22:24.480 told my older sister first. When I was in the 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:27.320 Air Force. I went out to visit her in Rhode Island. 0:22:28.000 --> 0:22:33.479 I was deeply depressed and really not sure what to 0:22:33.520 --> 0:22:35.439 do about it or anything else, and I needed to 0:22:35.480 --> 0:22:40.119 tell someone. And she had just left the family. She 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:42.080 and her husband had her into a little apartment in 0:22:42.160 --> 0:22:45.119 Rhode Island with their two little kids at the time, 0:22:45.960 --> 0:22:48.480 and we were hanging out in her kitchen. We're painting 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:51.280 it and peeling wallpaper, and you know, I was trying 0:22:51.320 --> 0:22:53.480 to help her with as much as I could while 0:22:53.520 --> 0:22:56.760 I was there, and I just sort of blurred it 0:22:56.800 --> 0:23:00.920 out of what if I'm a lesbian? And she started 0:23:00.960 --> 0:23:07.600 cackling because she was right. I mean, the sister reaction 0:23:07.760 --> 0:23:10.520 you get is, yeah, she was right, and so she 0:23:10.600 --> 0:23:13.639 was thrilled with that because she's been right about me 0:23:13.680 --> 0:23:19.520 all along, and it sort of softened it. She claims 0:23:19.560 --> 0:23:21.720 she didn't tell my mother, but I'm pretty sure she did. 0:23:22.080 --> 0:23:24.040 She's got a big balance. I could not have told her. 0:23:24.240 --> 0:23:27.680 But the one joy more than being right is telling 0:23:27.720 --> 0:23:28.280 on each other. 0:23:28.440 --> 0:23:33.400