Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: If you ask me where I'm from, I'll lie to you.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you my parents are missionaries. I'll tell you
Speaker 2: I'm from Boston. I'll tell you I'm from Texas. Those lies.
Speaker 2: People believe I'm better at lying than I am at
Speaker 2: telling the truth, because the lies don't make me nervous.
Speaker 2: It's the truth, the thought of telling it the triggers
Speaker 2: my awkward laugh, in my sweaty palms, makes me not
Speaker 2: want to look you in the eye. I know I
Speaker 2: won't like what I'll see.
Speaker 1: That's Lauren Huff, Austin based writer and author of the
Speaker 1: essay collection Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing. Lauren's is a
Speaker 1: story of courage, transformation, and one woman's will and spirit
Speaker 1: to find a way out, to find a way through,
Speaker 1: to find a path toward the most authentic version of herself.
Speaker 1: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is Family Secrets. The secrets
Speaker 1: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. Tell me about
Speaker 1: the landscape or landscapes of your childhood.
Speaker 2: I grew up everywhere. I mean, there are there are
Speaker 2: places that I think affected me more than others and
Speaker 2: that I remember more than others. I was born in Berlin, Germany,
Speaker 2: and have no really early childhood memories of that. We
Speaker 2: left when I was I think one or two, went
Speaker 2: to Switzerland and then Argentina and Chile, and I don't
Speaker 2: remember those much either. We came back to the States
Speaker 2: for a while to Amrili, Texas, or my grandmother lived,
Speaker 2: and then went to Japan Osaka for a couple of years,
Speaker 2: and then back to Switzerland and Germany and then back
Speaker 2: to Amillo, Texas.
Speaker 1: If you could pinpoint what your first memory was, what
Speaker 1: do you see and sort of how old were you
Speaker 1: when you see it?
Speaker 2: It's funny. I went back to Berlin, and because I
Speaker 2: was born in a commune, the address of the commune
Speaker 2: is on my birth certificate, so I was able to
Speaker 2: find the flat where I was born, and I have
Speaker 2: this very early memory of feeding little birds and sitting
Speaker 2: on those green glass tiles in front of an apartment,
Speaker 2: and the apartment still had those green glass tiles out
Speaker 2: in front of it, So I remember something from when
Speaker 2: I was maybe one and a half years old, But
Speaker 2: that's the only memory I have, as those little birds.
Speaker 1: Was that memory something that you had before you went
Speaker 1: back and then it was confirmed or did it come
Speaker 1: to you when you went back to Berlin as an adult.
Speaker 2: I was always asking where the green tiles were, just
Speaker 2: trying to different memories somewhere, because I have two older
Speaker 2: sisters and I'll ask them, you know, what was the
Speaker 2: house with the goats in it? And they'll tell me
Speaker 2: that it was in Mendoza in Argentina. Or I'll ask
Speaker 2: them what was the house with the avocado tree and
Speaker 2: they'll tell me that was Santiago, or the house with
Speaker 2: the hay on the roof. You know, these things that
Speaker 2: you see as a child that it's not the same
Speaker 2: thing as the adults see. The birds in the green
Speaker 2: titles were one of those questions I was asking, and
Speaker 2: they didn't know where that was.
Speaker 1: Lauren is one of four. She has two older sisters
Speaker 1: and a little brother, Mikey. Together with their parents, they
Speaker 1: are members of a commune, a cult called Children of God.
Speaker 2: It's one of those things where it doesn't seem real now,
Speaker 2: but that was my reality and anything else seems unreal
Speaker 2: that you know. We lived in sometimes small, sometimes very
Speaker 2: large communes, sometimes in campgrounds, with a few other family
Speaker 2: members in other campers. In Stuttgart, we lived on a
Speaker 2: camper for a while and the cornfield that we used
Speaker 2: to run through because it was a lot of adults,
Speaker 2: and I don't really have many memories of the adults.
Speaker 2: I have memories of kids everywhere all the time. And
Speaker 2: when I was a kid, it seemed great. You always
Speaker 2: had someone to play with. They weren't really strict about
Speaker 2: childcare or schooling or anything else. We just played all day,
Speaker 2: which was great for me. I have this picture of
Speaker 2: my parents on my wall that I found a on
Speaker 2: occult website and I framed it because I held a
Speaker 2: lot of anger to them for a lot of my childhood.
Speaker 2: You know, how could you possibly join a cult? But
Speaker 2: no one joins the cult they you know, my fam
Speaker 2: My mother was going to University of Texas and the
Speaker 2: cult was heavily recruiting here, and they came over to
Speaker 2: her and did what they do. Do you want to
Speaker 2: hear a song about Jesus? They find depressed, isolated kids
Speaker 2: and show them unconditional love and a cause and belonging
Speaker 2: and they join. And they're joining a movement. They're joining,
Speaker 2: you know, a community of people who take care of
Speaker 2: one another. By the time you realize what you've done,
Speaker 2: it's way too late. My father was he was trying
Speaker 2: to dodge the draft. He was going to hitchhipe to
Speaker 2: Mexico and he met them outside a library in Dallas.
Speaker 2: And it's the classic don't follow the hippies to the
Speaker 2: second location, because the second location was their commune in Texas.
Speaker 2: They had a huge ranch outside of Dallas, which was
Speaker 2: where they originally kind of kicked up right around seventy one.
Speaker 1: And so your parents met in the cult itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they met in the cult. They were driving around
Speaker 2: in a double decker bus in England and my father
Speaker 2: was always the carpenter guy who could he still can,
Speaker 2: he can build anything, and he had decked out the
Speaker 2: bus with out a little kitchen and everything he needed
Speaker 2: in it so they could travel around England and their
Speaker 2: minds tell people about Jesus. And someone suggested that they
Speaker 2: should have a mass wedding. It would be super revolutionary man,
Speaker 2: and my dad thought my mom was pretty so he
Speaker 2: asked her and that was said. They're completely ill suited
Speaker 2: to one another. But uh, it lasted long enough for
Speaker 2: them to have the four of us.
Speaker 1: Every cult has a charismatic leader. In the case of
Speaker 1: Children of God, that's a man named David Berg. Berg
Speaker 1: grew up the son of a tent evangelist named Virginia Burg,
Speaker 1: who had become famous during the Great Depression during tent
Speaker 1: Revival meetings. As an adult, he wanted to start his
Speaker 1: own thing and prayed on the hippies who hung out
Speaker 1: on Huntington Beach in California. Berg and his kids would
Speaker 1: sing songs and offer hippies day old doughnuts. You just
Speaker 1: had to come hear about Jesus for a little while.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, it was all peace and love, but
Speaker 1: eventually this changed into an obsession with the end of
Speaker 1: the world. The Antichrist was coming, the apocalypse was near.
Speaker 1: The cult moved to a ranch in Texas, but media
Speaker 1: attention was intense, and David Berg disappeared. He ran the
Speaker 1: cult from a secret hiding place where he drank a
Speaker 1: lot of sherry and made his pronouncements via something he
Speaker 1: called Moe letters. One of these letters laid down the
Speaker 1: law of Love, and Children of God became a sex cult.
Speaker 1: When Lauren is six years old, she and her parents
Speaker 1: leave the cult for a short while and return to
Speaker 1: the States in a bid to save their marriage. When
Speaker 1: their marriage falters the following year, Lauren's dad takes her
Speaker 1: two older sisters back to Germany and they returned to
Speaker 1: cult life. There, the family is split up. Mom takes
Speaker 1: Lauren and her little brother, and the three of them
Speaker 1: eventually also returned to the cult, first in Dallas, and
Speaker 1: then when Lauren's ten, they're off to Osaka, Japan.
Speaker 2: We went from Amory a little to Dallas to rejoin.
Speaker 2: They were doing a push to to find old members
Speaker 2: who had left. I guess their numbers were down, and
Speaker 2: they invited my mother to this meeting in Dallas, and
Speaker 2: we almost immediately moved back into a family home and
Speaker 2: went to Osaka. I mean, I wish I could tell
Speaker 2: you the kids were all right. No, the kids were
Speaker 2: not all right. The kids were I was protected from
Speaker 2: some of it, just because we were in smaller homes
Speaker 2: and not near central leadership where things were a little wilder.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I have I have vague memories of things
Speaker 2: the kids shouldn't have seen and shouldn't have been involved in. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I was sheltered a little bit, even by
Speaker 2: my sisters. I remember my oldest sister waking us up
Speaker 2: and carrying my little brother out of a room because
Speaker 2: the adults were having an orgy and telling us not
Speaker 2: to look. But we'd gone to some huge comment for
Speaker 2: a party and we'd fallen asleep under a table because
Speaker 2: it was going late into the night, and she woke
Speaker 2: up and realized what was going on, and hearded us
Speaker 2: out as there. But it depended on who your parents were,
Speaker 2: depended on what homes you were in, what happened to you.
Speaker 2: My brother and I lived under the assumption for most
Speaker 2: of our lives that our dad just left and chose
Speaker 2: our sisters and not us and didn't want anything to
Speaker 2: do with us, and he never corrected the record. What
Speaker 2: we now know happened is he he left. He went
Speaker 2: to Germany. He was supposed to find a job and
Speaker 2: an apartment, and once he did that, my mom was
Speaker 2: going to come with us, and she sent him divorce
Speaker 2: papers instead and told him to choose to But my
Speaker 2: brother and I recently found out. I found out a
Speaker 2: few years ago. My brother just found out I lived
Speaker 2: in Austin and he lives in New England. He'd come
Speaker 2: down here to pick up a part for his wife,
Speaker 2: and we had a few drinks with my dad, and
Speaker 2: my dad finally told him, and my brother and I
Speaker 2: sat in my living room for the next day just
Speaker 2: kind of looking at each other, going, so, so he wanted us. Yep,
Speaker 2: all right, even at I'm forty seven, he's forty five.
Speaker 2: It's still sort of instantly fixes a lot of things
Speaker 2: that would have been nice to know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is such a complicated idea, The idea like
Speaker 1: that the narrative shifts and the narratives that you and
Speaker 1: your brother had, as you know, this was the story
Speaker 1: ends up not being the story, and it's a better story.
Speaker 2: It's an absolute tragedy, but it's a better story for
Speaker 2: our the sense of who we are that you know,
Speaker 2: our dad did want us.
Speaker 1: And yet you lived for all those years with that
Speaker 1: other story, which probably you know dies a slow death
Speaker 1: in a way because it was your story for so long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it took me. I found out a few years,
Speaker 2: you know. I recently sort of reconnected with my father
Speaker 2: when I moved down here and he lived here, and
Speaker 2: I've just been angry at him for most of my
Speaker 2: life because he left me, and he told me when
Speaker 2: I moved down here one night on his piktack and
Speaker 2: it shifted everything. But there's also, you know, those regrets
Speaker 2: of really kind of wish someone had told me earlier.
Speaker 2: But he didn't think it was his place. He didn't
Speaker 2: want to take our mother from us too. And we're
Speaker 2: at the age now or it doesn't affect the way
Speaker 2: we feel about our mother. We know here she is,
Speaker 2: We love her a lot. She is who she is.
Speaker 1: Did you wrestle with whether or not to tell your
Speaker 1: brother during those years, or did you feel that it
Speaker 1: was your father's story to tell.
Speaker 2: I thought about it. He's been our dad too for
Speaker 2: a long time, and he's made allusions to you know,
Speaker 2: it's just like this old man and he's probably knows
Speaker 2: he's dying soon and wants to reconnect with me. And
Speaker 2: I guess that's fine. And I wanted to tell him
Speaker 2: so badly, but I didn't think he would hear it.
Speaker 2: Covering from me.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 1: After her parents divorced, Lauren's mother had met a man
Speaker 1: in Texas named Gabe. Gabe was a bartender, not part
Speaker 1: of the Children of God when they met, but he
Speaker 1: ended up joining. Of course, Lauren's mom didn't pitch it
Speaker 1: to him as a cult. That word only came long after.
Speaker 1: At the time, she considered herself to be a missionary
Speaker 1: fighting the good fight, going overseas to teach people about Jesus.
Speaker 1: Gabe was a religious man to begin with, so the
Speaker 1: mission appealed to him and he joined the family on
Speaker 1: their path. But after five years in Osaka, when Lauren
Speaker 1: is fifteen, her mom decides it's time to leave again,
Speaker 1: this time for good. She wakes up to the fact
Speaker 1: that her children aren't getting any sort of real education
Speaker 1: there and she can't protect them from abuse. She also
Speaker 1: wants Lauren's sisters to leave the cult, and knows there's
Speaker 1: a better chance of this happening if she leaves. Two
Speaker 1: Lauren and Mikey go to live with their grandmother in Amarillo.
Speaker 1: Lauren's sisters, however, stay in the cult for a little
Speaker 1: while longer.
Speaker 2: That was hard on my mom too. We didn't know
Speaker 2: if they would ever follow us out. Once you were
Speaker 2: a teenager in the family, you could stay on your own.
Speaker 2: You didn't have to leave with your parents. And part
Speaker 2: of the reason they split people up so thoroughly put
Speaker 2: a lot of kids didn't live with their in the
Speaker 2: same homes with their parents. A lot of us were
Speaker 2: split up, whether our parents were divorced or intact or not.
Speaker 2: And they put kids in schools, not actual schools, they
Speaker 2: were homes that were called schools. And then we'd learn
Speaker 2: about Jesus and Me in time in the anti Christ
Speaker 2: all day. But they split people up. Teenagers would go
Speaker 2: to teen homes. There was no way she could get
Speaker 2: them out. So when we left, she made it her
Speaker 2: mission from that point on to get my sisters out.
Speaker 2: They would come to visit, and she made them get
Speaker 2: their gedes and driver's licenses so that they would have
Speaker 2: something to fall back on should they leave. And yeah,
Speaker 2: it was. It was a full court press. Every time
Speaker 2: they did come to visit. My mom would gather. All right,
Speaker 2: So we don't talk about it about the family. We
Speaker 2: don't talk anything about you know, David Berg. We don't
Speaker 2: discuss any of it. We're really proud of them, we're
Speaker 2: happy they're doing what they're doing, because if we made
Speaker 2: ourselves enemies of the cult, they wouldn't be allowed to
Speaker 2: come visit.
Speaker 1: And to top that off, you're fifteen years old, write
Speaker 1: smack dab in the middle of adolescents, and you have
Speaker 1: no learned social skills of the kind that happen when
Speaker 1: kids are growing up in an environment that isn't a bubble.
Speaker 1: You're being quote unquote homeschooled, which basically it isn't school, right,
Speaker 1: it isn't school at all.
Speaker 2: We signed up for a correspondence courses. Now they did
Speaker 2: it pre internet. They would mail you books and materials.
Speaker 2: I would read through the books for the year in
Speaker 2: the first night, and then we would randomly have to
Speaker 2: pass little tests that they would mail in and you
Speaker 2: would get your grade. But no, my brother and I
Speaker 2: spent most of the day watching TV. My mom was
Speaker 2: cleaning houses. Gabe was off giving one of those how
Speaker 2: to make a million dollars. He joined I think at
Speaker 2: least four pyramid schemes, but he was not going to
Speaker 2: work for a living. It's determined to not. But yeah,
Speaker 2: they were gone during the day, so we would watch
Speaker 2: TV and try to learn how to be human.
Speaker 1: Lauren's grandmother was, in Lauren's words, Amarillo's soul liberal. She's
Speaker 1: unusual in other ways as well. Even though outside of
Speaker 1: family members aren't supposed to visit the commune. Lauren's grandmother
Speaker 1: manages to do just that. She sits through sermons and
Speaker 1: listens to them preach at her. She sings along with
Speaker 1: all the songs she helps in the kitchen, anything to
Speaker 1: keep her daughter and her grandchildren close.
Speaker 2: I didn't see it at the time, but I know
Speaker 2: now it was calculated that the only way she was
Speaker 2: going to maintain contact with her daughters if she remained,
Speaker 2: you know, super friendly to the cult. And you know
Speaker 2: I can't join myself, but I really support everything you
Speaker 2: guys are doing. And this is terrisa. Take it now,
Speaker 2: let's sing another song about Jesus.
Speaker 1: Well, in a way, your mom replicated that a little
Speaker 1: bit when your sisters would come to visit.
Speaker 2: She did. She learned from the best. May like kurrn Of,
Speaker 2: there was a little bit subversive. She was always sending
Speaker 2: me books, just whatever paperback she had laying around the house.
Speaker 2: Clearly there would be a Danielle Steele, and there are
Speaker 2: a Jackie Collins, arn't a copy of White Fang. But
Speaker 2: then there would be a copy of The Handmaid's Tale.
Speaker 2: And my mother would would let me keep the books,
Speaker 2: which I would have to hide them under my mattress.
Speaker 2: I got caught with them, I would be in trouble,
Speaker 2: but most families didn't, didn't give their kids books. I
Speaker 2: don't know many kids who did have access to books,
Speaker 2: but I did because my grandmother made sure of it.
Speaker 1: Lauren's grandmother is providing a robust education for her, giving
Speaker 1: her access to all sorts of reading material. And then,
Speaker 1: when Lauren's in her senior year of high school, she
Speaker 1: actually goes to high school, person her world widens. Suddenly
Speaker 1: she's part of a whole new social landscape. Things aren't
Speaker 1: going terrifically for her. Socially, she hasn't exactly had much experience,
Speaker 1: but she's figuring it out. One day during her senior year,
Speaker 1: she comes across a newspaper obituary for David Berg. She's
Speaker 1: shocked to learn he's died, and she rips out the clipping,
Speaker 1: folds it up, and stuffs it into her jeans pocket.
Speaker 1: She hoards it away for later, knowing she needs to
Speaker 1: study it, read it carefully, and look at the photograph
Speaker 1: of a man she'd never seen before, but who impacted
Speaker 1: her family's life so much. She shows the clipping to
Speaker 1: Mikey and to her mom, both of whom encourage her
Speaker 1: to never tell anyone she'd been part of a cult.
Speaker 1: Her mother warns her to never speak of it again.
Speaker 2: It took me a really long time to let that
Speaker 2: idea go because it sunk in and we were told
Speaker 2: and when we were little kids, we lied to my
Speaker 2: grandmother about where we were and what we were doing.
Speaker 2: We lied to my cousins, we lied to everybody who
Speaker 2: was not in the family. We were just Christian missionaries,
Speaker 2: definitely not affiliated with those people anymore. We always changed
Speaker 2: our names in the cult, and we always have to
Speaker 2: practice when we would come back to visit to use
Speaker 2: our legal names that people knew us by it, because
Speaker 2: you know, you can't call your sister esther when that's
Speaker 2: not her name, anything that could raise a question. We
Speaker 2: were paranoid about it, and we were taught to be
Speaker 2: paranoid about it. I understand where my mother was coming from,
Speaker 2: and I understand her fears about it, but at the
Speaker 2: same time, it created this this secret that was so
Speaker 2: isolating because there was a huge part of my life
Speaker 2: that I thought I could never tell anyone, and I
Speaker 2: believed her and I believed you know. The little experience
Speaker 2: I had with with people knowing about the cult is
Speaker 2: that you know, they look at you strange, and they
Speaker 2: look at you funny, and you know, they take people's
Speaker 2: kids away, and there were homes rated where you know,
Speaker 2: children were taken into foster care. But it seemed like
Speaker 2: this huge secret that I had to keep, and I
Speaker 2: didn't even know where. I didn't know how to explain
Speaker 2: it to myself, much less how to explain it to
Speaker 2: another person.
Speaker 1: And the cult wasn't the only secret Lauren was keeping.
Speaker 1: There was another kind of secret, the secret of her
Speaker 1: very self.
Speaker 2: I know I wasn't interested in men or boys, but
Speaker 2: I liked hanging out with them, and for the most part,
Speaker 2: I got really lucky with guys. Like my high school
Speaker 2: boyfriend was a rodeo cowboy and just a really sweet guy,
Speaker 2: and I would go out to his ranch and ride horses,
Speaker 2: and sometimes he would grind on me and try to
Speaker 2: fill me up, but he was a good Christian boy
Speaker 2: and that's as far as it went. So that was
Speaker 2: just something I had to put up with in order
Speaker 2: to ride horses or have a boyfriend and be normal
Speaker 2: like everybody else. I assumed everybody was the same way
Speaker 2: about men. It didn't occur to me that there were
Speaker 2: girls who enjoyed having sex with boys. I was in
Speaker 2: my thirties before I realized that there are girls who
Speaker 2: enjoy giving blowjobs. I just, why would you? It didn't
Speaker 2: occur to me, but I didn't realize I was listen.
Speaker 2: I had feelings. There was the Freedom ninety video that
Speaker 2: George Michael won and eventually start sitting against the wall
Speaker 2: smoking a cigarette. I definitely had feelings about it, but
Speaker 2: I didn't recognize those as homosexual feelings or that I
Speaker 2: was gay. I couldn't possibly be, because they I had
Speaker 2: always been a tomboy growing up, and they had always
Speaker 2: had me praying against this homosexual spirit. And to admit
Speaker 2: that I might be gay, they would be to admit
Speaker 2: that they were right about me, and I couldn't. I
Speaker 2: couldn't do it. I went into the Air Force right
Speaker 2: after high school, and I realized it then pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: But it's not something that, oh, here's a moment where
Speaker 2: I suddenly understand I'm the lesbian. I'd always known. I
Speaker 2: just didn't say it out loud, even to myself. I
Speaker 2: told my older sister first. When I was in the
Speaker 2: Air Force. I went out to visit her in Rhode Island.
Speaker 2: I was deeply depressed and really not sure what to
Speaker 2: do about it or anything else, and I needed to
Speaker 2: tell someone. And she had just left the family. She
Speaker 2: and her husband had her into a little apartment in
Speaker 2: Rhode Island with their two little kids at the time,
Speaker 2: and we were hanging out in her kitchen. We're painting
Speaker 2: it and peeling wallpaper, and you know, I was trying
Speaker 2: to help her with as much as I could while
Speaker 2: I was there, and I just sort of blurred it
Speaker 2: out of what if I'm a lesbian? And she started
Speaker 2: cackling because she was right. I mean, the sister reaction
Speaker 2: you get is, yeah, she was right, and so she
Speaker 2: was thrilled with that because she's been right about me
Speaker 2: all along, and it sort of softened it. She claims
Speaker 2: she didn't tell my mother, but I'm pretty sure she did.
Speaker 2: She's got a big balance. I could not have told her.
Speaker 2: But the one joy more than being right is telling
Speaker 2: on each other.
Speaker 1: So and I'm imagining that, realizing like that anyone within
Speaker 1: children of God, that would have been just kind of
Speaker 1: a massive, you know, like an unacceptable thing.
Speaker 2: But gad, Yeah, I mean, Berg was your typical douchebag
Speaker 2: founder prophet whenever of the children of God. So male
Speaker 2: homosexuality was completely outlawed. Female homosexual lady was allowed as
Speaker 2: long as you were doing it for the benefit of men.
Speaker 2: So you could have sex was a woman if you
Speaker 2: are an adult or whatever you considered old enough to
Speaker 2: have sex that year, but it had to be with
Speaker 2: a man.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. When Lauren joins the US military,
Speaker 1: she has to tread even more carefully when it comes
Speaker 1: to telling people about herself. Simple questions like where are
Speaker 1: you from can lead down rabbit holes. If she starts
Speaker 1: reeling off all the places she lived as a child,
Speaker 1: that might be a flag. So she doesn't. She finds
Speaker 1: the simplest things to say that will placate people, vague
Speaker 1: answers that don't reveal much. This shields her and protects her,
Speaker 1: but it also isolates her. It means she's not going
Speaker 1: to be known, she's not going to be seen, she's
Speaker 1: not going to be under stood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a strange thing to live most of your
Speaker 2: life desperately trying to not be interesting. It was mostly shame.
Speaker 2: But you don't want to spark anyone's interest. You don't
Speaker 2: want to give them an answer that would lead to
Speaker 2: a follow up questurn So you say, and my parents
Speaker 2: were weird hippies. We're missionaries for a while, and that doesn't,
Speaker 2: from my experience, doesn't lead to many follow up questions.
Speaker 2: They'll say, oh, lots of astrology. Yeah, I can tell
Speaker 2: you anything about being a pisces, and then everybody likes
Speaker 2: to discuss astrology, so you're good. But I was lying
Speaker 2: about everything to everyone and biomission sure, but also I
Speaker 2: didn't know how to make friends anyway. But I didn't
Speaker 2: know what to talk to them about, because you know,
Speaker 2: part of making a friend is, you know, figuring out
Speaker 2: what your shared history is. If you ever met someone
Speaker 2: from the same hometown, you know you have something to
Speaker 2: talk about you. It's those initial things. So I tried
Speaker 2: to find other things. I became a baseball fan so
Speaker 2: that I could talk about the Red Sox and then
Speaker 2: people wouldn't ask me about anything else. I would get
Speaker 2: really into music so that I could talk about music,
Speaker 2: and I could detour any conversation about my past and
Speaker 2: just bring up something silly. They would ask why my parents,
Speaker 2: and I'd say, my mom washpy, oh, yeah, she saw
Speaker 2: Janis Joplin live, and then we could talk about Janis
Speaker 2: Joplin anything to derail a conversation from why I don't
Speaker 2: know any pop culture references. I also lived under this
Speaker 2: suption that a lot of people knew a lot more
Speaker 2: than I did, that they'd learned all these things in
Speaker 2: school that I didn't. And it turns out I think
Speaker 2: I learned picked up most of it by reading, but
Speaker 2: that was still really self conscious about not knowing about
Speaker 2: a TV show from the eighties.
Speaker 1: It's such an interesting theme on this podcast has come
Speaker 1: up so many times, family secrets and deflection, you know,
Speaker 1: deflecting the curious, shutting down conversations in a really graceful way,
Speaker 1: learning how to do that so that people won't even
Speaker 1: know what hit them and suddenly they're talking about Janis
Speaker 1: Joplin concerts or you know, astrology, and you know, it
Speaker 1: just strikes me that it takes so much psychic energy
Speaker 1: to do that, and yet it becomes sort of second
Speaker 1: nature that this is what you have to do. And
Speaker 1: then like during that period of time when you're in
Speaker 1: the Air Force, there is this whole other layer of
Speaker 1: secrecy because, as you said, you're enlisting and you're becoming
Speaker 1: part of the Air Force kind of coincides with you're
Speaker 1: coming out to yourself, and you're certainly not in an
Speaker 1: environment where you can come out to the people around you,
Speaker 1: and you're square solidly in the don't ask, don't tell
Speaker 1: phase of the US military.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for me, it was that complete isolation because I
Speaker 2: was fighting in my past, but I was also hiding
Speaker 2: who I was. It's you have to know when you
Speaker 2: make a friend, whether or not you can trust who
Speaker 2: they are when they're angry. There's a lot of people
Speaker 2: get turned in by their exes or by you know,
Speaker 2: someone's pissed at you. If you have someone money, if
Speaker 2: you for whatever reason, at any point they could report
Speaker 2: you and that could be the end of your career.
Speaker 2: But I don't think I realized until I was getting
Speaker 2: out how exhausting it was. Just every conversation, every interaction,
Speaker 2: every Monday at the smoke pit, when everybody's talking about
Speaker 2: their weekend, and I have to lie or at least
Speaker 2: change the subject or ask about someone else's I can
Speaker 2: never say where I was, what I was doing, who I.
Speaker 1: Was with, And in fact it became actually dangerous for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like when I was a kid, I don't
Speaker 2: hide it well that I'm a lesbian. I was a
Speaker 2: little tomboy who wanted to play with boys and never
Speaker 2: wanted to wear skirts, and never was interested in doing
Speaker 2: my hair or makeup. And in the Air Force, I
Speaker 2: got a little boulder and cut my hair short. And
Speaker 2: I'm still I'm a butch lesbian and I look like it.
Speaker 2: If I based my wardrobe on my little tony, I
Speaker 2: would still, you know, be accosted in bathrooms because I
Speaker 2: just I'm six feet told, I can't hide that I'm gay.
Speaker 2: So people knew anyway, there were people I told there
Speaker 2: were for the most part. You know, my generation at
Speaker 2: the time, you know, the late nineties were raised on MTV,
Speaker 2: so it was deeply uncool already to be a homophobe
Speaker 2: or to be a bigot, But there were still, you know,
Speaker 2: it just took one wrong person. So as I became
Speaker 2: more comfortable with myself and became more comfortable with the
Speaker 2: other airmen in my building, a few of them knew.
Speaker 2: A few of them asked, and we're fine with it,
Speaker 2: and most people didn't care. But someone did. I started
Speaker 2: getting strange threats left on my car. It started. I
Speaker 2: was stationed in South Carolina, but my unit had gone
Speaker 2: to Egypt for an exercise and my boss gave me
Speaker 2: his rental car when he left, and someone had written
Speaker 2: die Dike on the back of it, and I thought,
Speaker 2: I thought it was someone playing a prank who was
Speaker 2: really bad at pranks, until I got back and there
Speaker 2: were more of them, so it was clearly not a prank. Yeah,
Speaker 2: my car got torched when I was babysitting for that
Speaker 2: same boss. He was sitting his kid. He was gone
Speaker 2: for the weekend, and my car went op smoking them
Speaker 2: all of the night. So it's that all I wanted
Speaker 2: was to love lose South Carolina, and I was about
Speaker 2: to leave. I got orders for Greece, and I was
Speaker 2: I'm excited to go to Greece. And then I think
Speaker 2: it was a couple of weeks before I left, maybe
Speaker 2: a month, my car got torched, and all I could
Speaker 2: think about was, well, shit, what about Greece. They very
Speaker 2: intentionally decided that the easiest way to deal with this
Speaker 2: situation of someone is sending me death threats and torching
Speaker 2: my car. The best resolution for this is to prove
Speaker 2: that I torched my own car because I didn't want
Speaker 2: to go to Greece was the motive they had in mind,
Speaker 2: and made up the death threats even though people had
Speaker 2: seen them, And so they investigated me for about a
Speaker 2: year and then they court martialed me for it and
Speaker 2: I was acquitted. But by then part of the investigation
Speaker 2: was going around to single air on base and asking
Speaker 2: them if they knew Airman Huff was gay and if
Speaker 2: they'd ever seen Airman Huff being her assed. So everybody,
Speaker 2: I'm very stale with gay. I couldn't do my job anymore.
Speaker 2: They had me working in the gym handing out towels
Speaker 2: because my security clearance was either revoked or suspended until
Speaker 2: the outcome of the investigation. But it was just done.
Speaker 2: I knew I couldn't stay in the Air Force.
Speaker 1: So you left the Air Force and you were honorably discharged.
Speaker 2: You did tell Yeah.
Speaker 1: Over the next decade or so, Lauren continues to live
Speaker 1: her life, always longing for connection. She works a number
Speaker 1: of jobs as a bartender and a self described cable guy,
Speaker 1: for example, all the while hiding the history of her upbringing.
Speaker 1: Her shame keeps her quiet. With the exception of her siblings,
Speaker 1: she has nobody to corroborate her childhood, nobody with whom
Speaker 1: to remember or to face the shame. Sometimes She wonders
Speaker 1: that the cult was even real, if anything is real,
Speaker 1: But then she discovers a website with message boards for
Speaker 1: former cult members, particularly cult babies who grew up in
Speaker 1: Children of God. When Lauren is on one of the
Speaker 1: message boards, she encounters a girl she'd known in Osaka,
Speaker 1: a real girl. In turn, this makes Lauren realize something
Speaker 1: she hasn't ever fully realized before. She's real too. Seeing
Speaker 1: and being seen on this message board makes her realize
Speaker 1: that it all happened and that she exists.
Speaker 2: You know, if the narrative is you can't tell anyone
Speaker 2: because they'll never understand, because they'll reject you, then that secret,
Speaker 2: no matter what it is, becomes shame. It's just how
Speaker 2: that works your mind. If this is something horrific that
Speaker 2: I can never tell anyone, then it's something that's wrong
Speaker 2: with me that I could never tell anyone, And it
Speaker 2: becomes something I did when I didn't control where I
Speaker 2: was born or where I was. But finding the others,
Speaker 2: I stayed up so many nights just talking to them.
Speaker 2: The funniest thing about it, I think is that we
Speaker 2: were having fun. I think what I would imagine of,
Speaker 2: you know, us talking about some of the more horrific
Speaker 2: stuff that happened, and you know, fact checking our memories
Speaker 2: of the abuses and the neglect or any of that is.
Speaker 2: We were having fun and making jokes about three sheets
Speaker 2: of toilet paper because that was a rule, you could
Speaker 2: only use three sheets of toilet paper, and intentionally planting
Speaker 2: those shitty little songs in each other's ears, someone like
Speaker 2: type four lines that everybody yell at them with, ow
Speaker 2: dare you? It was what I'd been missing that whole
Speaker 2: time that everyone else gets where they you know, they
Speaker 2: meet someone who was into the same TV show, or
Speaker 2: everybody remembers, you know, slip and slides. We didn't have
Speaker 2: slip and slides. We had those songs and those videos
Speaker 2: and you know, dance night and bunk beds, and yet
Speaker 2: we were having fun. We still do. And so while
Speaker 2: I don't hang out there as much anymore. They moved
Speaker 2: on to Facebook, but every once in a while, I'll
Speaker 2: still check in with people who remember. I don't know
Speaker 2: where I would be with that if I hadn't found
Speaker 2: that of you know, these are people who who I
Speaker 2: can fact check my own memories with because I don't
Speaker 2: know what's real. Sometimes it seems like a movie I watched.
Speaker 2: It's so different, so bizarre, that it doesn't make sense
Speaker 2: in my current reality.
Speaker 1: But Lauren wants to feel real offline too. The message
Speaker 1: board has been life changing, but she's looking for ways
Speaker 1: to bring that sense of reality into her life in
Speaker 1: real time as she's living it. She thinks back on
Speaker 1: a conversation she once had with Mikey about what they
Speaker 1: wanted to be when they grew up. Mikey had said,
Speaker 1: I want to be a painter, and Lauren had said,
Speaker 1: I want to be a writer. To this, mike Equipped,
Speaker 1: who are we kidding? We'll both end up tending bar.
Speaker 1: Of course, Lauren did end up tending bar, but now
Speaker 1: she's ready to pursue something else, something she's always been
Speaker 1: drawn to do. Her brother feels the same, and they
Speaker 1: both do it. He becomes a painter and she becomes
Speaker 1: a writer.
Speaker 2: I think bartending is great training for writers. Really. You
Speaker 2: get to watch conversations all the time, You get to
Speaker 2: watch how people interact.
Speaker 1: I tell my students a lot of the time. You know,
Speaker 1: if you want to be writer, don't get a job
Speaker 1: in publishing. Go ten bar.
Speaker 2: Truly, Yeah, you're you're the person everyone talks to because
Speaker 2: you have to talk to them. If I go into
Speaker 2: a bar, that's who I talked to, was the bartender.
Speaker 2: They've got great stories. But yeah, the idea I could
Speaker 2: be a writer that came from I would read everything,
Speaker 2: and it never occurred to me that what I was
Speaker 2: writing could be published. That was something other people did.
Speaker 2: I don't know why I didn't put those two things together.
Speaker 2: I just didn't. I don't know if it's because I
Speaker 2: didn't think much about what it was going to be
Speaker 2: when I grew up. I don't know if it's because
Speaker 2: I didn't truly understand that I would grow up, although
Speaker 2: I don't know who does. But it was in one
Speaker 2: of those cul baby groups a trend of mine. Taylor
Speaker 2: Stevens sent me a book that she had written, and
Speaker 2: she said she was going to try to get it published,
Speaker 2: and I thought that sounded ridiculous, but I was happy
Speaker 2: to read it for her, and I did, and I
Speaker 2: gave her a couple crappy notes. I didn't know what
Speaker 2: I was doing. And then her book was in bookstores.
Speaker 2: I was like, great, we can do this how And
Speaker 2: I guess the importance of seeing a role model do it.
Speaker 2: But I also didn't know. I tried to write thrillers
Speaker 2: for a while. I'm terrible at them. I just couldn't
Speaker 2: write one. There all sounded exactly like whoever I read last.
Speaker 2: I just couldn't sound like me at all. But there
Speaker 2: were all these stories that I kept writing, and I
Speaker 2: kept just posting them in call baby forums for other members,
Speaker 2: but I was too terrified to do it publicly. Until
Speaker 2: I think I didn't really have a choice if I
Speaker 2: was either going to write this or I was going
Speaker 2: to give up on the idea of being a writer.
Speaker 1: For a while, Lauren struggled with how to tell her story. First,
Speaker 1: she wrote a manuscript that was more of a tell
Speaker 1: all about children of God, because that's what she thought
Speaker 1: people wanted to hear. That book didn't sell, but then
Speaker 1: she wrote a quirky, powerful essay about being the cable guy,
Speaker 1: and that essay went viral, giving her another chance to
Speaker 1: tell her story her way.
Speaker 2: I think writing for me people will ask you if
Speaker 2: it's therapy, and I don't think it is. I think
Speaker 2: it's the opposite of it. But rewriting and writing over
Speaker 2: and over, I think you cut down to what's actually
Speaker 2: important and what story you want to tell, and I
Speaker 2: was lucky that I got to do the story that
Speaker 2: I wanted to tell, which is that I don't think
Speaker 2: we're all that different. I don't think we all have
Speaker 2: these secrets that we think are horrific and can never
Speaker 2: be shared. And the second do you share them, someone goes, oh,
Speaker 2: me too, And it happens every time. I think it's
Speaker 2: the clearest indication for me that I did okay with
Speaker 2: the book is that my siblings were understandably pretty nervous
Speaker 2: about me writing it. And when I hit the best
Speaker 2: seller list, my brother's wife went around telling all the
Speaker 2: neighbors because she's Italian from Norse Providence, and the neighbors
Speaker 2: have to know is that her sister in law is
Speaker 2: the best seller New York Time is the bestseller. My
Speaker 2: brother was like, oh man, they're not going to let
Speaker 2: her kid come over and play. They're not gonna let
Speaker 2: kids go over to her house. And he was terrified
Speaker 2: about it. And she started rattling off every neighbor's dirt
Speaker 2: through the old neighborhood, yelling and I won't do the
Speaker 2: accident and the yelling, but shouting about that guy down
Speaker 2: there is alcoholic, that guy down there has been to prison.
Speaker 2: She's like, so you're a grow up in it. Nobody cares, James,
Speaker 2: because nobody cares.
Speaker 1: Here's Lauren reading one last passage from leaving. Isn't the
Speaker 1: hardest thing?
Speaker 2: For years, I kept the secret even if I wanted
Speaker 2: to someone. There's no handbook to announce that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: I thought sometimes, back when I thought of it at all,
Speaker 2: that I should make a poster like the ones we
Speaker 2: used to hand out, maybe a picture of me on
Speaker 2: the front, like a lost kid poster. My name is
Speaker 2: Lauren and I was in the family. It's a cult. Nope,
Speaker 2: not that one. No kool aid, just an old guy.
Speaker 2: As i'd attack to God. But what can I really
Speaker 2: tell you to explain my life. I know it's fascinating
Speaker 2: because it's so different, but it's so fucking different, and
Speaker 2: no matter what I say, it'll still be foreign to you.
Speaker 2: I can't tell you what it feels like to live
Speaker 2: in a constant state of alert unless you've lived it.
Speaker 2: We watch horror movies because they're fun. There's tension, the
Speaker 2: dark room, the building music, the ominous threat. Then release
Speaker 2: A cat jumps out of the cupboard. There's no one
Speaker 2: behind the shower, curtain, but in a cult, just like
Speaker 2: any abusive relationship, there's no release. It's constant threat. This
Speaker 2: sort of prolonged terror leaves a mark. But the problem
Speaker 2: with any sort of fucked up childhood, just like any
Speaker 2: abusive relationship, show, you can't talk about it because it's
Speaker 2: a secret.
Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zacur is
Speaker 1: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 1: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 1: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 1: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 1: find me on Instagram at Danny Rider. And if you'd
Speaker 1: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 1: check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.