Speaker 1: I'm so excited to share that we're teaming up with
Speaker 1: Social Goods to launch our new she Pivots merch. You
Speaker 1: probably remember their nineteen seventy three shirts from when Amy
Speaker 1: Schumer wore it on SNL and everywhere else. This is
Speaker 1: a perfect partnership because we are so aligned. Look, I
Speaker 1: come from politics, they come from politics, and now we're
Speaker 1: both in a place that we're trying to change culture
Speaker 1: through conversation. They're doing it through their merch. I'm doing
Speaker 1: it through this podcast. Our She Works Hard for the
Speaker 1: Pivot merch is inspired by the iconic Donna summer hit
Speaker 1: She Works Hard for the Money, and it honors all
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Speaker 1: own success. For every item sold, a donation is made
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Speaker 2: She Pivots.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk
Speaker 1: with women who have dared to pivot out of one
Speaker 1: career and into something new and explore how their personal
Speaker 1: lives impacted these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman,
Speaker 1: today's guest. You might not have heard of, but I
Speaker 1: promise her story will leave you with the renewed sense
Speaker 1: of hope and inspiration. Susie Massey is sharing her story
Speaker 1: with us for the first time ever as a roofing
Speaker 1: professional and instructor. Her journey into the trades industry is
Speaker 1: full of pivots. She grew up in the fundamentalist church,
Speaker 1: the Institute on Basic Life Principles or IBLP, which is
Speaker 1: widely thought of as a cult. You might know it
Speaker 1: for its horrible headlines surrounding the leader's sexual assault scandal,
Speaker 1: or from the show Nineteen Kids in Counting on TLC,
Speaker 1: where the Dugger family has also made headlines for a
Speaker 1: similarly horrible scandal. Her atypical upbringing has created challenges one
Speaker 1: can only imagine. She went from not knowing how to
Speaker 1: read to excelling in a trades career beyond her wildest dreams.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did.
Speaker 3: Susannah Massey is my name. I go by Susie most
Speaker 3: of the time. I am a training instructor for gaf's
Speaker 3: care started with roofing academy for them, but I'm currently
Speaker 3: in care and what we do is bring education in
Speaker 3: roofing commercial roofing systems to contractors who USEJF products.
Speaker 2: So you didn't grow up with the most traditional upbringing.
Speaker 3: Got by a long shot. So I was actually raised
Speaker 3: in a very small rural area, small town rural area
Speaker 3: in Ohio, the second oldest of twelve brothers and sisters.
Speaker 3: And we were raised in a situation that is widely
Speaker 3: known today to be a cult developed by a man
Speaker 3: named Bill Gotthard. He goes way back to the nineteen
Speaker 3: seventies nineteen eighties. If we didn't feel close to God,
Speaker 3: if we didn't feel like our life was going in
Speaker 3: a good direction, that it was our fault. It was
Speaker 3: really just being off in the country in one little
Speaker 3: family kind of farm situation and no interaction as far
Speaker 3: as state school requirements. Paperwork would be filed that we
Speaker 3: were homeschooled. And course this was back before homeschooling was
Speaker 3: very common. One of the key teachings of the cult
Speaker 3: was that women should not be educated really or have jobs,
Speaker 3: or pursue any kind of a career outside of tending
Speaker 3: home and children.
Speaker 4: This is aspect of control, like the men had the control.
Speaker 4: And as a girl, there were some families that like,
Speaker 4: you were not allowed to leave your father's authority until
Speaker 4: you had your husband's authority over tolf of you. So
Speaker 4: I mean I had friends who were stuck in their
Speaker 4: home in their late twenties because they couldn't get out,
Speaker 4: They didn't get married.
Speaker 2: How did your parents end up at the cult?
Speaker 3: Like a lot of people did. It was good intentions
Speaker 3: in the beginning. They felt called to serve in their
Speaker 3: faith and was just one of those situations where isolation
Speaker 3: breeds just bad things and I think that a lot
Speaker 3: of good people get sucked into those kind of movements.
Speaker 3: But it was very legalistic, very harsh, very strict, and
Speaker 3: pretty much the entire focus of the cult was to
Speaker 3: keep women, specifically in a situation that I would say
Speaker 3: is almost just servitude, no opportunity for women in the
Speaker 3: faith at all. So that was my upbringing. I never
Speaker 3: went to school. Both my parents were raised in pretty
Speaker 3: typical situations, I would say, small town situations. They both
Speaker 3: went to school and everything. They did not go to college.
Speaker 3: They went to a religious type seminary institution, and that's
Speaker 3: kind of where they fell into the more culty kind
Speaker 3: of situation, but I think that was the genesis of it.
Speaker 3: The beginning of it was kind of a fundamentalist, far
Speaker 3: right system. It got really, really crazy. It is hard
Speaker 3: for us to understand at this point in time, where
Speaker 3: there's a camera everywhere, there's a phone everywhere. We didn't
Speaker 3: have radio, we didn't have any kind of television, we
Speaker 3: didn't have any access at all to the outside world.
Speaker 1: From the time when she was a child, she had
Speaker 1: virtually no contact with the outside world. Even to this day,
Speaker 1: Susie's friends tease her that sometimes she seems like she
Speaker 1: is quote from another planet. The teachings of IBLP are
Speaker 1: steeped in a repressive sexist viewpoints that kept women away
Speaker 1: from education, access to information, or freedom.
Speaker 3: The whole thing would implode if it wasn't for the
Speaker 3: teaching of women not being allowed to do anything. Most
Speaker 3: of what the group taught was centered around keeping women uneducated.
Speaker 3: And we say like the barefoot and pregnant thing, but
Speaker 3: that was basically what they believed and what they taught,
Speaker 3: and they tied it very closely to faith, so that
Speaker 3: this was God's will for all women. My mother was
Speaker 3: pregnant and had very small children. All of my life,
Speaker 3: she struggled with a lot. My mom was very ill
Speaker 3: a lot of the time. The teachings of this cult
Speaker 3: were so horrific that she was not able to have
Speaker 3: even medical attention. So the home births that were unsupported
Speaker 3: and no support for her throughout the pregnancies took a
Speaker 3: terrible toll on her. I was so curious from the
Speaker 3: time that I was young, and I don't think I
Speaker 3: ever really I was never really sold on this whole thing,
Speaker 3: because I was beginning to see the breakdowns, you know,
Speaker 3: especially in medical and healthcare, and kids had serious medical
Speaker 3: situations that needed care, and my mom suffering the way
Speaker 3: that she did, and there was not the medical support
Speaker 3: or mental or emotional support for her.
Speaker 5: So my parents didn't believe in doctors or medication or shots.
Speaker 3: Or anything like that.
Speaker 5: And my mom was extremely ill mentally and every other way.
Speaker 5: My youngest brother was born at home and I was
Speaker 5: the only person there. I was about sixteen, and he
Speaker 5: nearly died, And even though he nearly died, my parents
Speaker 5: still forbade us from reaching out for help.
Speaker 3: Later on, my mom began to come out of that
Speaker 3: situation a lot in her mind after the youngest of
Speaker 3: my siblings was born, my mom began to finally have
Speaker 3: a chance at being healthy and was able to leave
Speaker 3: that system to an extent, and so she was a
Speaker 3: lot better In the end. We'd lost my mom in
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen to cancer, but I'm happy to say that
Speaker 3: there was some restoration of the relationship with her before
Speaker 3: that happened, so I'm thankful for that. So my older
Speaker 3: sister and I cared for the children. So I had
Speaker 3: babies and infants in my care from the time I
Speaker 3: was about ten years old on. So it was pretty
Speaker 3: much just the care of infants and toddlers that was
Speaker 3: my life.
Speaker 1: The church forced demanding and unrealistic expectations on the women
Speaker 1: and girls, from taking care of the kids, to dressing conservatively,
Speaker 1: to a lack of education, to stricter punishments. The girls
Speaker 1: were much more oppressed than the boys.
Speaker 3: There was just not the focus on the boys on
Speaker 3: how they dressed every minute of their day, being committed
Speaker 3: to care of the home and the kids. Just they
Speaker 3: were kind of the wild boys.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 3: They got to go and they would fish, they would
Speaker 3: kind of go around. But for the women, for the girls,
Speaker 3: we were not to even go outside of the house
Speaker 3: if the boys had a friend over or something like that,
Speaker 3: or as they got older, they had a couple of
Speaker 3: neighbor kids that would come around. But the world was
Speaker 3: watched more off limits for girls and women in that system.
Speaker 3: I remember working as a teenager and hearing a song
Speaker 3: on the radio that was a country song, and when
Speaker 3: I got home, I sat down and played it on
Speaker 3: a piano that was there in the house, and I
Speaker 3: got in trouble because it wasn't a hymn or a
Speaker 3: church song, and really not on men or boys at all.
Speaker 3: It was all the women and girls.
Speaker 1: You'll notice that despite the strict and suppressive teachings of
Speaker 1: the cult, Susie was still forced to work outside the
Speaker 1: home as well as take care of the kids.
Speaker 3: It's just ironic. It is hypocrisy upon hypocrisy. So women
Speaker 3: aren't allowed to really be educated or work, or if
Speaker 3: they do, they're certainly not fulfilling God's wishes for them.
Speaker 3: But it's built on such poverty that women have to work.
Speaker 3: It's a catch twenty two. There's no winning in that system,
Speaker 3: not for anyone. But we all began to work very
Speaker 3: young and then support and help support our younger siblings.
Speaker 3: A lot of us had younger siblings live with us,
Speaker 3: and we're supporting them as we were mid to late
Speaker 3: teens ourselves, So it was really children raising children all
Speaker 3: the way through.
Speaker 1: She felt a deep responsibility toward raising her siblings, especially
Speaker 1: considering the conditions. Because her father did not have a
Speaker 1: traditional job and her mother was forced to stay home
Speaker 1: to take care of their twelve children, it was difficult
Speaker 1: to keep food on the table or provide the basicness necessities.
Speaker 3: So my siblings and I, especially the older ones, we
Speaker 3: can remember being hungry. You know. There was times we
Speaker 3: didn't have enough of anything. And again it's hard to
Speaker 3: get your mind around. Now they're safeguards in place, but
Speaker 3: when you're so off grid, nobody knows. So there's not
Speaker 3: a doctor or a school nurse or anybody that's going
Speaker 3: to flag that.
Speaker 2: Being so off the grid.
Speaker 1: Some of her siblings did not even have documentation that
Speaker 1: they were born. That meant the government didn't even know
Speaker 1: some of them existed.
Speaker 3: As time went on and we my parents became more
Speaker 3: isolated and the system became more pathological, No home birth
Speaker 3: would be a part of that, and no social securities
Speaker 3: or anything like that so the situation began to improve
Speaker 3: as I got quite a bit older, and the older
Speaker 3: siblings of us began to work out side the home
Speaker 3: and help support our younger siblings. But the poverty, I've
Speaker 3: had to do a lot of just self work around
Speaker 3: that scarcity mentality and learning to function where you're not
Speaker 3: afraid all the time of that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So how did you get out or learn to read?
Speaker 3: There was paperwork fo that we were being homeschooled. That
Speaker 3: was not the case, so education was definitely very low
Speaker 3: on the list of priorities. I couldn't understand hardly anything,
Speaker 3: and I've since found out that I'm dyslexic as well,
Speaker 3: but I was really struggling to understand something. One time
Speaker 3: at a little grocery store. The clerk told me, she
Speaker 3: said she could tell that I was having a hard
Speaker 3: time reading, and I was at the age where I
Speaker 3: should have been reading. Yeah about how old were you?
Speaker 3: About fourteen fifteen? And she said, you know, you can
Speaker 3: get hooked on phonics at a library. So I didn't
Speaker 3: know what that was, but she helped me write it
Speaker 3: down on the receipt and was able to get a
Speaker 3: hold of the hooked on phonics that she had told
Speaker 3: me about, and began to really learn to read. And
Speaker 3: that was the point where the world began to open
Speaker 3: up to me. So I was learning to read better.
Speaker 3: And even when I could read, there were so many
Speaker 3: things that are just out there in the world that
Speaker 3: I didn't understand. Road signs, common things in any job.
Speaker 3: They were just completely foreign, foreign to me. So I
Speaker 3: could read a little bit, but it was really that
Speaker 3: catalyst of learning to read well that began to change
Speaker 3: my world. In that belief system, you're risking your salvation
Speaker 3: if you buck that system. And it's absurd now because
Speaker 3: I'm a student of all faiths and all religions, and
Speaker 3: I have friends that are dear to me across all beliefs.
Speaker 3: But at the time you believe it, So it's a
Speaker 3: very insidious I guess it's the best word because it
Speaker 3: puts the punishment inside of your mind.
Speaker 2: But Susie fought that mental battle slowly, convinced more and
Speaker 2: more every day that this wasn't the way for her
Speaker 2: or her siblings to be living.
Speaker 3: I was always curious and a little bit of a rebel,
Speaker 3: and I just didn't sit with me. I believe that
Speaker 3: if there was a God that made me. Then he
Speaker 3: had a great, big world out there and he would
Speaker 3: want me to know about it. I think for myself,
Speaker 3: I was such a questioner and I was the person
Speaker 3: I was so curious about what was out there, and
Speaker 3: I wanted to read well more than anything. I wanted
Speaker 3: that education piece. And I didn't know it at the time,
Speaker 3: but that would be the thing that opened all the
Speaker 3: doors for me. For me, the breaking point was when
Speaker 3: I left that completely.
Speaker 5: The mindset was when my little brother nearly died, like,
Speaker 5: this is not something I'm willing to participate in anymore.
Speaker 5: But leaving as far as as the rest of the
Speaker 5: family getting out of it, it was gradual. It kind
Speaker 5: of imploded gradually, and again the lifesaver was education. Was
Speaker 5: the younger kids finally getting to go to school. That's
Speaker 5: what changed everything.
Speaker 3: And we could all see how awful the situation was.
Speaker 3: And then having to really stand up and say, no,
Speaker 3: they want to go to school, We're going to let
Speaker 3: them go. That was the point where I think my
Speaker 3: mind and my spirit began to kind of earnmore from
Speaker 3: that and believe that there was some hope out there
Speaker 3: for me too, not just them. In my mid to
Speaker 3: late teens, I began to say, this is about enough.
Speaker 3: I was able to go back into that and approach
Speaker 3: my parents and just I told them we're done with
Speaker 3: this now. And my younger siblings, I wanted them to
Speaker 3: be able to go to school because they wanted to
Speaker 3: go to school. And one of my younger siblings had asked,
Speaker 3: would it be okay if I would go to school?
Speaker 3: Of course the answer came back from on high no,
Speaker 3: you're not going to go to school. And that for
Speaker 3: me was just like, oh, no, we're done. That was
Speaker 3: really for me when it all began, so balls came down.
Speaker 3: Was that again the education piece.
Speaker 2: That sounds like a huge, heavy conversation to have had
Speaker 2: with your parents. Did you go into that conversation ready
Speaker 2: to have it or it just kind of came about.
Speaker 3: No, I was going to war. At that point. I
Speaker 3: was done because I had seen how bad and how
Speaker 3: unhealthy the situation was, and it was a bad, bad situation,
Speaker 3: and I could see just the hopelessness in it that
Speaker 3: these younger siblings. When I saw that little spark, that
Speaker 3: little piece of hope, like I want something else? Can
Speaker 3: I please go to school? I really want to go
Speaker 3: and just that no, you're not going. So when I
Speaker 3: went to have that conversation, my older siblings went with me.
Speaker 3: They backed me up. They said, again, this is not working.
Speaker 3: Whatever the faith or whatever the component is here, it's
Speaker 3: a fail and it's created a lot of misery and heartache.
Speaker 3: And these are kids that are asking, can I want
Speaker 3: to go to school? So we're going to back them
Speaker 3: and we're going to make sure that they have that opportunity.
Speaker 1: And so they left. They took with them what little
Speaker 1: knowledge they had and found jobs and began to build
Speaker 1: a new life. But it was far from easy. This
Speaker 1: was just the beginning of a long road of healing
Speaker 1: past traumas, navigating the outside world, and learning the new
Speaker 1: and unlearning the old.
Speaker 3: I was in my car some of the time. My
Speaker 3: sister and I had a little apartment. My brothers rented
Speaker 3: a little place. My first job was at food service
Speaker 3: ice cream, and I remember trying to understand. I had
Speaker 3: no idea what a credit card was, how it worked.
Speaker 3: I'd never seen one. I didn't understand learning to try
Speaker 3: to handle money, make change. And then it took me
Speaker 3: about a year to understand that credit cards and cash
Speaker 3: money and like lottery cards are different things.
Speaker 2: Do you remember what that felt like on your side
Speaker 2: when you started to meet people.
Speaker 3: I can only tell you that it's like walking out
Speaker 3: of fog. When you grow up like that, it's a
Speaker 3: process of walking out of that and learning unlearning, you know,
Speaker 3: all this awful messaging, and then learning new things. I
Speaker 3: still have those moments where I'm just the odd duck
Speaker 3: out because it's a very strange upbringing and so much
Speaker 3: of pop culture, so people would be referencing movies and
Speaker 3: songs and groups, and I did not have any idea
Speaker 3: who or what the Beatles were. So it was challenging
Speaker 3: to try to catch up with the people around and
Speaker 3: really learn to navigate a world that I knew nothing about,
Speaker 3: less than nothing. I think it took a while for
Speaker 3: me to begin to think I could have a life
Speaker 3: an education. I had my first child when I was
Speaker 3: nineteen and got married and began that kind of homemaker
Speaker 3: role again. So it was always a thing in the
Speaker 3: back of my mind. I would love to go to college.
Speaker 3: I would love to be able to do these things,
Speaker 3: but they seemed off limits. They seemed out of reach
Speaker 3: for me because I was so far behind the eight ball.
Speaker 1: But Susie was determined. She knew that knowledge, education, and
Speaker 1: reading were essential, so she started night classes to get
Speaker 1: her GED. And I want to note that a GED
Speaker 1: does not start at an elementary level. That means that
Speaker 1: she had to learn the very basics, like what a
Speaker 1: fraction is at the same time as completing algebra or
Speaker 1: learning how to spell, at the same time as taking
Speaker 1: poetry and writing a high coup.
Speaker 3: But I really wanted to learn, and I was able
Speaker 3: to get my GED. I think that is when it
Speaker 3: dawned on me that I could potentially not start over
Speaker 3: but catch up.
Speaker 2: When you had your daughter and you got married, did
Speaker 2: that feel like a way out for you?
Speaker 3: Or did it? Oh?
Speaker 5: It did?
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely. It's a process. It's a long process to
Speaker 3: walk out. And I would say every one of those
Speaker 3: steps was a step out. And yeah, getting married young,
Speaker 3: I got married young, started my family young. Yeah, in
Speaker 3: a lot of ways, it was one more step out
Speaker 3: of that situation. And it's hard when you have your
Speaker 3: own kids and the only thing I knew was what
Speaker 3: I had been raised with. So it's hard to start
Speaker 3: over and you don't realize how many of those beliefs
Speaker 3: are so deep. And my older sister had three at
Speaker 3: the same time that I did, so we were both
Speaker 3: kind of walking out of that childhood belief system and
Speaker 3: trying to establish so, Okay, we're not doing it that way,
Speaker 3: how are we going to do it? And she had
Speaker 3: three little ones right at the same time, so she
Speaker 3: and I walked through a lot of that together.
Speaker 2: Well, what were those conversations, like what did you decide
Speaker 2: to keep, decide to toss? Like the way you were
Speaker 2: making new traditions.
Speaker 3: It was very touch and go. So, like the faith piece,
Speaker 3: I tried really hard to have more of a main
Speaker 3: stream I would say kind of faith at the time.
Speaker 3: It would still try to be involved in like churches,
Speaker 3: but not quite as far off or whatever that was fundamental,
Speaker 3: I guess, but it just it took a while. Those
Speaker 3: were the conversations were more around faith and we don't
Speaker 3: believe this. Obviously, we're not going to raise our kids
Speaker 3: like this, so how are we going to do it? It
Speaker 3: was hard and it was scary. It was scary. As
Speaker 3: my kids got older, the married came to an end,
Speaker 3: and I was looking at a situation where I'm starting
Speaker 3: completely over, completely ground zero, nothing, starting completely over. In
Speaker 3: my late thirties early forties and having adult children and
Speaker 3: looking at being a single mom. I looked at myself
Speaker 3: and said, you can do this. You're capable of doing this.
Speaker 3: And that's when I became involved in roofing and the
Speaker 3: commercial roofing side. So a lot of my brothers are roofers,
Speaker 3: aren't involved in the roofing trade. So I began to
Speaker 3: just kind of as a matter of here's the next
Speaker 3: thing I can learn, began to learn the roofing side,
Speaker 3: and it really gave me a place to go from
Speaker 3: zero to one hundred without feeling like I had missed
Speaker 3: out on so much already it was too late for me,
Speaker 3: so I didn't need the college peace to learn at
Speaker 3: the time. I was able to build a life in
Speaker 3: the beginnings of a career learning the trade.
Speaker 2: Do you think there was a part of it that
Speaker 2: appealed to you because it is such a male dominated industry.
Speaker 2: If you're going to say, you know, if I'm going
Speaker 2: to go into anything, like, I'm.
Speaker 1: Already getting rid of that part that says I can't work,
Speaker 1: like if I'm diving in, I'm diving right in.
Speaker 3: Probably maybe on a subconscious level, but there was some
Speaker 3: pretty horrible things that I lived through, and pretty much
Speaker 3: you don't have any fear after that. So the male
Speaker 3: dominated industry, it didn't scare me because I had already
Speaker 3: lived through a lot by that time, and I had
Speaker 3: convinced myself of my own resilience and ability to learn.
Speaker 3: But honestly, for me, everybody that I came in contact with,
Speaker 3: they were mentors and allies. This trade just meets you
Speaker 3: with arms wide open. And then as I got better
Speaker 3: at it, learning the admin side, learning a little bit
Speaker 3: of the HR side, bids, project management, estimating all that stuff,
Speaker 3: and just kind of worked my way up the food chain,
Speaker 3: I guess. So really leaning into it looked like learning
Speaker 3: different technologies, So learning about those, how they went together,
Speaker 3: what made one different from the other one, what made
Speaker 3: one work in one area of the country that didn't
Speaker 3: work in another area of the country. And then the
Speaker 3: other part of it was learning how to then take
Speaker 3: the solutions and the thing that I was learning and
Speaker 3: take it down to a local level to your school
Speaker 3: or your church or your gymnasm or your store or whatever,
Speaker 3: and say here's what we can do, and here's what
Speaker 3: here's some options for you.
Speaker 2: So what does your career look like now.
Speaker 3: So COVID of course through everybody for a loop, and
Speaker 3: that was forced a lot of us to learn new tools.
Speaker 3: I had been pretty much just consulting with different clients,
Speaker 3: and towards the end of cod was approached by GAF
Speaker 3: and they offered me a position with their Roofing Academy,
Speaker 3: which is such a cool organization because what Roofing Academy
Speaker 3: does is teach.
Speaker 1: This was a full circle moment for her from growing
Speaker 1: up with no access to education and not being able
Speaker 1: to read to now sharing her knowledge and teaching others.
Speaker 3: So it's very cool for me because any woman can
Speaker 3: take the education that's offered and take her career as
Speaker 3: far as she wants to go. So came on board
Speaker 3: with JF in April and at the beginning of September
Speaker 3: was actually promoted and started a new position on the
Speaker 3: care side. And what care does is teach roofing contractors.
Speaker 3: So where Roofing Academy teaches brand new baby roofers trade,
Speaker 3: the contractors are people that are already established and we're
Speaker 3: just supporting them and teaching whatever technology that there is
Speaker 3: a need for.
Speaker 2: Can you think of a time when you look back
Speaker 2: and you thought to yourself, yes, I'm really doing it,
Speaker 2: like I bet on myself and I bet correctly.
Speaker 3: I would say I'm kind of experiencing that now because
Speaker 3: I knew I could do it, and there are so
Speaker 3: many of those situations where talk about imposter syndrome, I
Speaker 3: would say, just looking back on the wild ride that
Speaker 3: it's been, especially now where I've got this incredible opportunity
Speaker 3: with GAF, where I'm helping now to teach other people
Speaker 3: and with the help of the wonderful team here helping
Speaker 3: to develop education, which has been the catalyst for me.
Speaker 3: I think now is that time, more than any other time,
Speaker 3: to just say, wow, this has really been something.
Speaker 1: There's no question that Susie's family dynamic is strained after
Speaker 1: years of suppression and mistreatment, but it has only made
Speaker 1: her closer with her siblings.
Speaker 3: To this day. I'm very close to my siblings. Our
Speaker 3: well being was always focused on them, that they were okay,
Speaker 3: because again they were all younger, and I had raised
Speaker 3: my siblings, so in a lot of ways they were mine.
Speaker 1: Did you have a relationship with your parents at that point?
Speaker 1: When did you start speaking with them again?
Speaker 3: That relationship I don't know how to really describe it,
Speaker 3: except that it was very pathological. It wasn't a good
Speaker 3: situation for anybody.
Speaker 1: Things didn't start to shift in her relationship with her
Speaker 1: parents until her younger siblings had been allowed to go
Speaker 1: to school. As the younger kids began to slowly thrive,
Speaker 1: she saw a shift in her parents and that relationship
Speaker 1: began to thaw, ever so slightly.
Speaker 3: I think once my parents began to see that this
Speaker 3: is working, These kids are doing better, they are thriving
Speaker 3: in this environment, the relationship began to soften them more.
Speaker 3: With my mom, I would say, because she came around
Speaker 3: later on down the road. She came around to a
Speaker 3: point it got better, but it took a while.
Speaker 2: Would you say that they got I guess if the
Speaker 2: opposite of off the grid is on the grid, Like,
Speaker 2: did they become sort of a little more mainstreamed in society, No.
Speaker 3: My parents never did. No, my siblings definitely, but no,
Speaker 3: my parents never. My mom would come to some school
Speaker 3: functions that kind of thing, but that was about the
Speaker 3: extent of it. More so my dad than my mom
Speaker 3: was still very committed to the particular cult leader and
Speaker 3: that system of belief. And to question that was you
Speaker 3: did not question God's man or God's anything. So he
Speaker 3: was still very rigid that way. Not so much my mom,
Speaker 3: and she you could have those conversations with her in
Speaker 3: later years.
Speaker 2: What do you want people who are listening to take
Speaker 2: away from your story.
Speaker 3: That they can do it too. There are different things
Speaker 3: that keep us down, especially as women. Every one of
Speaker 3: us can tell a story of that time we didn't
Speaker 3: think we could get out of bed, and just looking
Speaker 3: down over the edge of the bed and seeing our
Speaker 3: feet on the floor was an incredible accomplishment for that day.
Speaker 3: Don't let the expectations of other people define or limit
Speaker 3: you so in my case, for the longest time, I
Speaker 3: felt like I was the late comer to the party
Speaker 3: and I would never get caught up because I didn't
Speaker 3: go to college. I didn't go to school, and it
Speaker 3: was just like on a loop in my head. You
Speaker 3: didn't this, you didn't that. It felt like the world
Speaker 3: as I knew it was ending because I had no
Speaker 3: idea what was going to actually happen. But by God,
Speaker 3: I'm here now, and here's what I can do. I
Speaker 3: can learn this trade, I can learn a new skill set.
Speaker 3: We make our own destiny, and that's the truth.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Susie for joining us. It's been
Speaker 2: such a great conversation. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: It's been my pleasure. I really really appreciate the opportunity
Speaker 3: to talk to you guys.
Speaker 1: Susie still works as an instructor for gaf Roofing Academy
Speaker 1: and has three amazing children. Despite the trials she had
Speaker 1: faced throughout her life, Susie is a true ray of sunshine.
Speaker 1: This conversation was so inspiring for me, and I hope
Speaker 1: for you as well. If you are someone you know
Speaker 1: is looking for a career in the trades are roofing.
Speaker 1: They can find gaf Roofing Academy on Instagram at gaf Roofing.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to this episode of She Pivots,
Speaker 1: where I talk with women about how their experiences and
Speaker 1: significant personal events led to their pivot and eventually their success.
Speaker 1: To learn more about our guests, follow us on Instagram at.
Speaker 2: She Pivots the podcast.
Speaker 1: Leave a rating and comment if you enjoyed this episode
Speaker 1: to help others learn about it. A special thank you
Speaker 1: to our partner Marie Clair and the team that made
Speaker 1: this episode possible.
Speaker 2: Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1: She Pivots is hosted by me Emily Tish Sussman, produced
Speaker 1: by Emily eda Veloshik, with sound editing and mixing from
Speaker 1: Nina Pollock and research and planning from Christine Dickinson and
Speaker 1: Hannah Cousins.
Speaker 3: I endorse Te Pivots