Speaker 1: I always knew it was an extreme religious order because
Speaker 1: it was a place where you could really give yourself completely.
Speaker 1: That was part of the attraction and part of the culdishness.
Speaker 1: I suppose.
Speaker 2: From a cocoa punch and iHeartMedia. This is the turning
Speaker 2: the sisters who left.
Speaker 1: I was a senior in high school and I saw
Speaker 1: a cover of Time magazine and there was this face
Speaker 1: of this wrinkled nun with a white veil with blue stripes,
Speaker 1: and she's had these eyes. And I read about this
Speaker 1: not in Calcutta, who was doing these fantastic things with
Speaker 1: taking in dying people and caring for them.
Speaker 2: I heard about Mother Teresa growing up. I knew about
Speaker 2: her work with the poor, her Nobel Peace Prize, her sainthood,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know who she was, her personality, her toughness,
Speaker 2: her resilience, her inner suffering. After talking to the women
Speaker 2: who worked alongside her, I feel like I'm starting.
Speaker 3: To When I saw her, something struck me. There was
Speaker 3: something about her. There was a force, a power, a presence.
Speaker 3: She would look right into your soul, into the depths
Speaker 3: of your soul.
Speaker 2: I'm also learning what it was actually like to be
Speaker 2: in her fiercely private religious order, one that sees suffering
Speaker 2: is the path to Jesus. For some of the women
Speaker 2: who left, this life was not what they'd imagined. The
Speaker 2: order was wired that you had very little time to think.
Speaker 4: You're only getting input from one soulce you osco lighted
Speaker 4: from everyone else. That's what I mean by Brian washing the.
Speaker 3: Voice of God for you. That's all they keep saying.
Speaker 3: Under your valve obedience right, no matter what it is,
Speaker 3: and they use God as the weapon.
Speaker 4: I wanted to go home, and I'm a little bit
Speaker 4: surprised looking back that I didn't just go and I
Speaker 4: regret that now. But I must have been controlled from
Speaker 4: the inside of it.
Speaker 1: You could not have a friend. This was specifically prohibited
Speaker 1: if you got too close to somebody. It was really
Speaker 1: you were playing with fire.
Speaker 2: If you make a lifelong vow, what does it mean
Speaker 2: to break it?
Speaker 1: By this time, she was quite old, and she came
Speaker 1: and she found me, and she brought me to her room,
Speaker 1: and she says, what is this mother hears about you?
Speaker 1: And at a certain point she says, mother could believe
Speaker 1: this about anyone, but she cannot believe it about you.
Speaker 2: America Lance. And this is the Turning The Sisters who left.
Speaker 2: A new podcast from ro Cocoa Punch and iHeartMedia. Listen
Speaker 2: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts.