Surviving-ISH Podcast
"Surviving-ish" is a podcast with a unique and purposeful dual focus. The "Surviving-ish" is our way of creating a space for lightheartedness—it’s about the everyday, petty grievances that are frustrating but also a source of shared, human comedy. These are the moments we survive, like when the laundry pod explodes all over the clothes, your morning coffee isn't quite hot enough, or a passive-aggressive text from a relative ruins your mood.
The core mission behind "Surviving-ish" is to show our audience that while we may have been victims of serious circumstances, that does not mean people have to walk on eggshells around us. We believe in the power of laughter and the importance of finding humor in life's small frustrations. By blending serious topics with these minor, everyday grievances, we aim to normalize the idea that it's okay to joke and laugh, even after enduring significant challenges.
For further inquiries or to share your own story, please reach out to us at survivingabusepodcast@gmail.com. Together, we can create a network of support and healing for survivors.
Surviving-ISH Podcast
Tamara Buchanan: Ill Always be a "Jezebel"
Tamara’s story is nothing short of extraordinary—a tale of survival, resilience, and the ultimate quest for joy beyond the shadows of a dark past. This week, we have the privilege of hearing from Tamara, a brave woman who escaped a cult over 25 years ago, along with her three children. Her journey from the grip of religious indoctrination and domestic violence to a life filled with self-expression and empowerment is a powerful testimony to human strength and the transformative power of therapy, especially EMDR. Tamara’s vibrant spirit and love for bright makeup and colors shine through as she reclaims her identity and finds beauty in everyday moments.
The harsh realities of domestic abuse and religious control underscore Tamara’s harrowing escape from a marriage filled with extreme violence. Her ex-husband’s threats and the church's perpetuation of a culture of silence and victim-blaming created a suffocating environment. It was her young son's heartbreaking declaration of his inability to protect her that catalyzed her decision to leave. This chapter of her life brings to light the critical role of therapy in healing trauma and the broader societal issues of isolation and shunning within cult-like communities. Our conversation dives deep into the impact of these experiences and the steps taken to break free and seek a new beginning.
Empowerment and community are central themes as we explore Tamara’s journey beyond her escape. She shares the triumphs of earning an associate degree and becoming the first female graduate in her religious community, symbolizing her breaking of generational cycles of abuse. Tamara’s reclamation of the stigmatized term "Jezebel" embodies her fight against imposed shame and the power of finding one's voice. Her story is a call to unity and allyship in the battle against patriarchy and marginalization. Join us as we celebrate Tamara's unyielding spirit and the transformative power of speaking authentically.
Welcome to Surviving Podcast. Tamara and I had talked 20 minutes off record. I was like why the hell are we not recording, because it was such a great conversation. But we connected for a bit. We actually came across each other through our mutual friend, who you all know as Barb with the Rebecca Girls a story that we had covered, and so I am so glad you're here, thank you. People ask me on the top of my David, you're a life coach. You, your job is dealing with people's trauma. You podcast and you're talking about trauma, like how are you okay? And I just simply learned how to enjoy the ride. You know, we all have our shit. We all have our things, and I can cry about it and be mad at it, or I can control it and learn to enjoy it, and so that's what I do, and so these conversations inspire me. So when people ask you that, when they're like you're constantly talking about your story, like how are you not depressed? What is your response to that?
Speaker 2:There's more to my story than just my trauma. There is life on the other side of trauma and there is a beautiful journey that's taken place throughout the trauma that has taught me so much about myself, about the world I live in and about other people world I live in and about other people, and I am determined to make sure that others know that the trauma doesn't rule my life. I want people to know that, no matter what they go through, there is another day and we can get through it.
Speaker 1:Yes, I love that, before we get too deep into it give us an introduction.
Speaker 2:I'm Tamara. I've escaped a cult 25 plus years ago now with my three children and moved across the country, started life one day at a time, one step at a time. I am a mom of three beautiful grown children and I have four grandbabies, and one of my best, most thrilling things is that I can look at my grandbabies and my children and know that the abuse stopped with me.
Speaker 1:I love that because generational abuse is real.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is, Especially when you're in a high controlled religion. The boys are raised to abuse, the girls are raised to be submissive. So in order to not only stop the abuse but make sure that it never happens again can be a full-time job and is very exhausting and overwhelming. Again can be a full-time job and is very exhausting and overwhelming, but I'm standing proud and tall today because I was able to do this.
Speaker 1:And I know that most people only listen to my podcast. I do save the videos for some future projects and I do create little tick talks from it. But before we get into the deep, dark, heavy shed, I want to say that I love your makeup, I love your style and you talk with your hands, and so I've seen some blue nails flashing around. I see the nose ring. Once you left, the cult, this organization, this quote, unquote church, whatever title we want to put to it. Once you left, I'm sure there was a process of you finding yourself, and so are the bright makeups and the bright colors, which I love and they're stunning on you. But is that a part of expressing yourself from something that you did not get to do when you probably maybe wanted to or didn't even know you wanted to like? How did that play into your life?
Speaker 2:I'm from South Florida, so the bright colors just go along with me. But the first thing I did when I left and moved here to Michigan I started therapy pretty much right away and I went to a female empowering therapist and she told me that before I came back for my next visit I had to go get my nails and my toes done. And she asked for the week I want it done. And when I came back the next week she looked at me and we were going over in therapy. I did it and she looked at me and she was like do you know why I had to do this? And I said I don't have a clue. And my church voice still.
Speaker 2:She said because when you are a female, when you first wake up in the morning, you don't look at yourself in the mirror first.
Speaker 2:The first thing is the extension of yourself and that's your hands. When you see your hands done, pretty bright colors and all ready to go, it instantly puts a thought process in place for the day that oh, these are pretty. And even if you don't feel pretty on the inside and you don't feel like you look pretty on the outside, you're always going to look at your hands and say that's pretty. So since then and it's been 25 years there's never been a week that my fingers and toes aren't done, because she's absolutely right. The first thought I say in the morning was that's so pretty. But yeah, now I do it just because of thrills. And when someone says you can't do that because you're too old, I was come back tomorrow and watch it be done. I go get the glitter and I go get the makeup and I say there is no age to having fun makeup, and I say there is no age to having fun what I say as a true compliment.
Speaker 1:But when we were first logging in and I actually got to see you because I've just seen you really through pictures when so when I actually got to see you on zoom, I immediately went to Tanya Tucker and I love, love Tanya Tucker. She is a powerhouse, she is a strong-willed woman. She gets shit done. And then, as I started talking to you, I was like she is one of those. She's one of those women that just knows how to get stuff done. Like I love the hair, I love the makeup, I love the style, I love the nails.
Speaker 2:It is very Tanya tucker vibes for me my red hair is the tiktok filter trend right now. I went out and got red and put it in and I was like it's nice.
Speaker 1:I'm usually bleach blonde, but this is a tiktok trend start wherever you want there, but tell us what trauma means to you, when it started for you and what it consisted of.
Speaker 2:Because I was raised in an apostolic Pentecostal church, which is a high-controlled religion. I don't even refer to it usually as a church. My church was a cult. I was in Michigan, sitting in psychology class at about 27, 28 years old when I realized that what had happened to me all those years was illegal, not only wrong. I was 28 years old Because when you're raised in it from birth and it's everyday life, you don't know what's right or wrong.
Speaker 2:You only know what you're told is right or wrong and if everybody is approving it, you're just a little girl. You don't know that what happened to you, starting at the age of four, was wrong and illegal, to the point that when I left the high control church, I left because of domestic violence. That's how unprepared for the world I was. I didn't even say that what my father had done to me was illegal and wrong. I only knew what my husband was doing to me was wrong and I was away from the church for two years, sitting in a psychology class, and when my professor was talking about sexual abuse being illegal, I had a complete meltdown in the classroom. Oh my God, it was like an epiphany. I can't believe. I didn't know this, but you don't know what you don't know.
Speaker 2:I didn't have newspapers, we weren't allowed to have friends outside the church. There was no computers, no telephones, no radios, no anything to get that information to me. So how do you get information to a high-controlled religion when nobody in that religion is outside the four walls of that church and you only associate with everybody inside that religion? You're not going to get to the little girls and the little boys even through school, because they remove them from class. Because if you're going to talk about sex education you have to send permission slips home.
Speaker 2:We were exempt. Current affairs we were exempt. We got a letter from our minister. I could read a book, but then that book had to be approved by my father and the pastor before we could read the book for book reports. So I was reading books by Louis May Alcott from the time I was six years old, because those are the kind of books I was allowed to read and do a book report on. So if you have no outside information, you're not allowed to go to the police. So if you have no outside information, you're not allowed to go to the police. Nobody was allowed to go to DHS Department of Human Services for.
Speaker 1:Medicaid for food stamps. It wasn't allowed Everybody. Then the realization kicked in of what I was raised in we're only as good as our leaders. So if our leaders are saying you deserve this, shut up and listen to me. That's what you do.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and you have to understand that women weren't allowed to work outside the home. We were taught not to look at a man straight in the eyes. We were taught as females to lower our heads and not give direct eye contact ever to authority.
Speaker 1:I want the picture to be painted.
Speaker 2:How recent is that you're referring to?
Speaker 2:What they do tell people is when we have company, and when it was just us the church people or the people who were regulars then he would teach how he wanted to teach and say what he wanted to say. So he was a very cautious and filtered man and very calculating and, as a matter of fact, last week I went through YouTube and his picture came up my old pastor and they've started uploading his sermons on YouTube. I haven't listened to him in 25 plus years and I was like, ok, I have to do this, I have to do this. And when I turned that sermon on thinking about me sitting in the pew as a little girl versus me now as a strong, independent female that can critically think which, by the way, I had to teach myself how to do that, because they take that from you I was shocked at how my head kept shaking going. I can't believe this is what is being taught, this is what's being said, this is how these things are just completely over and over again happening, because it's never stopped, it's still going on.
Speaker 1:And what is so interesting, because it's the lack of the better word. But looking back on it, is there that part of you that is like how did I ever believe this shit? And then that other part of you is I know exactly why and how I believe this.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's like, how did I stay that long? And the other part of me is like how do I not stay? I was not marketable. I'd never worked outside the home. I had three little babies and one was deathly ill, born with an IgG immune deficiency, subclass two and four. So we got IV infusions every six weeks. What was I going to do? Where was I going to go? I didn't have anything to even work at Walgreens or work at Walmart or work at CVS. I had no skills whatsoever.
Speaker 1:And this was all part of their master plan, right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely, all part of their master plan right? That's how? Absolutely absolutely, because if they can control the women, they can control everything.
Speaker 1:And isn't it funny how, if they can control women, they can control everything.
Speaker 2:However, in their eyes, women are less than it's insane, but I'm going to tell you, behind every cult leader is a woman that's poking him on. The women of our churches today are the most zealot, the most obnoxious, the mean, cruel and full of hatred, and they push their agendas. In almost every church I've ever been, if you tell me where the clique of the women are, I'm going to tell you that's the theme of that church, and I've not been wrong yet.
Speaker 1:Would you mind giving us an idea of the types of trauma that you and children and other women in your same situation have went through and are to this day as we're airing this or recording this?
Speaker 2:podcast. I know for a fact that my sexual abuse started at four years old. When it started. That's my first memory and I've often said children were remembering making snowmen and playing in the ocean and building sandcastles. My first memory was being sexually abused by my father. And not only me, but there was 20 other girls in the church I was raised in that also were sexually abused. Now I'm one of the few that actually walked away from it. Most have decided to forgive and forget. Let it go under the blood, not this girl. Then there was domestic violence. The church grooms you to be in an abusive relationship. The domestic violence was horrific. My children were. He tried to kill my babies. He booby-trapped the house with guns that the SWAT team had to come in and disarmed. The reason why I finally left was because my four-year-old son came up to me and handed me the keys and looked at me and said Mama, I can't protect you anymore. That snapped something in me.
Speaker 1:He was four.
Speaker 2:He was four.
Speaker 1:So when he should be having memories of the beach and the sand and everything that you just said that you did not get Right, you then realize that now my children are not either.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and that's what made me pack my babies and walk away. I'm not sure what gave me the strength to do it, but the abuse was horrific. He proceeded to tell a judge that he was allowed to rape me because I was his property. And the judge looked at him and said you do not have counsel. I have to advise you to stop because you're incriminating yourself. He said I can't incriminate myself, I have God on my side. The only person I had in the courtroom supporting me was a victim rights person and a person from the domestic violence shelter, so one sat on one side of me and the other one sat on the other side of me and I just sat there, shaking from head to toe, knowing that he has raped me before and it's not going to stop. He told the judge this piece of paper will not keep her protected. She's my property and that's what the men in that church believe. That's how they're taught.
Speaker 2:I can't tell you how many times I've been told growing up that all men have tempers. It's the woman's job to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to be doing as a godly woman and a good wife to help make sure that those things don't happen. And then the beatings. The young boys don't get spanking, we get beat to where we're bloody and then they pour salt in it. Just the amount of beatings that you get will put any little child into submission, Just because you don't want that anymore. And of course they think spare the rod, you spoil the child. So they're bound and determined to make sure they're not spoiling a child. When I think back of all the times that abuse happened and I tell you that I can't even number the amount of incidences, that's how many there were. And it still happens.
Speaker 1:Did your children go through the abuse as well, or was it always directed toward you, at least in your household?
Speaker 2:There was more than one time I laid my body over my kids and took the beating from my ex-husband because I told him you cannot beat my babies this way. And then he would beat me harder with the strap and I would just lay there and take it because as long as I was laying my body over my babies, they weren't getting it.
Speaker 1:You were okay with it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, my children have memories but luckily I was able to escape early enough to where they're just fate memories and luckily I have really strong children and they've done the EMDR therapy to make sure that they address those extra issues that may be floating around.
Speaker 1:I love EMDR. Emdr was life changing for me.
Speaker 2:We were taught that it was demon possession and that you needed to have the demon prayed out of you, like literally at the altar with somebody shaking you back and forth until the demon was gone. First thing I did when I left was put myself into therapy, and it's probably the only thing that saved me from going down some really dark, addictive type of pathways. Because one thing I learned when you leave a cult, you forever have tendencies to find other things to follow. It's what you've known. It's either another church, another religion, food, alcohol, drugs. The reason why these things become so addictive is because you have been indoctrinated to have that type of personality. They take your critical thinking away. So, without critical thinking and without being able to reason what is actually going on or triggering you, you just go to something to get relief.
Speaker 1:I wasn't a part of the call, but even in society, a woman, a college student, is walking from this dorm to another dorm. She gets attacked and raped. The first question that we are trained to think of is what was she wearing, right, I don't give a damn, but you know what? I was trained to think that way. It took me hours old and my husband put a pillow over my face and raped me.
Speaker 2:How is that my fault? But I'm supposed to ask for forgiveness. And because I wouldn't ask for forgiveness, the church was told that I was banished and I was shunned and I was basically brought to the front of the church and the women of the church were told they were no longer allowed to speak to me, they were no longer allowed to have anything to do with me and they were no longer allowed to have anything to do with my children, while the abuser was brought to the front pew of the church and prayed through.
Speaker 1:When you are shunned, does that mean you and the kids cannot stay at foot back in the church, or do you still have to go there and sit in the back row with your toes between your legs?
Speaker 2:We have to still go and sit in the back pew and until I was willing to go to the altar and ask forgiveness for being an awful wife, that was where I would stay. But when I say shun the women of the church some cooked, some sewed your clothes for you Each woman did their role. So when you're shunned as a female, that means you now are cut off from everything. So there's no clothes for the kids, no extra food, no coats, shoes, nothing. Even my mom had to shun me and that was really eye-opening because I really thought that I was raised in a church that believed that God loved and God's love was unconditional.
Speaker 2:And that year that I stayed I realized how conditional the love was, that I was actually taught we weren't allowed to go to the police for help. It was called going to Egypt, weren't allowed to go to the police for help. It was called going to Egypt for help because they were of the world and I went to the police. So when I went to the police, that was another black mark against me, because now I took the church's information outside the four walls of that church. I didn't know what else to do. Nobody else was protecting me, nobody else was helping me. They watched, they raised me from the time I was a baby and they still didn.
Speaker 1:Church has with you breaking the church laws and then really crossing lines by going to outside resources such as police. How are you still alive? Because I feel like they would have the power to disappear you.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, and there was many times that I knew it was going to happen. I came home with my children from going to the beach right and when I was pulling up, something told me to pause. So I, just when I got that feeling, I called the police. They came in and went through the side windows Because of course by now they knew my story, because I had been calling and there was a gun booby trapped to go off the minute you open the door.
Speaker 1:So that was the booby trapping you were talking about earlier.
Speaker 2:Yes, the door. So that was the baby trapping you were talking about earlier. Yes, Whenever. Whoever would be opening the door first, which chances are would have been one of my children, but it was meant for me. And then the next time it happened, because I didn't have a paper trail.
Speaker 2:You don't go to the police If it's domestic violence, you have to have proof. You've got to show that this is actually what's happening, not my word against your word. And because his word was being backed by 250 people in a church, I had no words. I had nothing, Because the pastor got up and told everybody that they would stand with him because it would be better to lose me than to lose him and the children. So the church was instructed to testify against me. But then he took him out on a boat to the intercoastal and he flipped the boat and my babies were six, four and two. He left the babies in the middle of the intercoastal and he swam to get his boat. Strangers pulled my babies out of the intercoastal waterways in South Florida and after that I said I've got to get in to see a divorce judge. I have to leave, get in to see a divorce judge.
Speaker 1:I have to leave, we are going to wind up dead. So did you accept the fact that you, assuming per your religion, would?
Speaker 2:spend the rest of eternity burning in torment and torture by doing that Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And the day I left, the pastor got up and this is my last service in the church. He got up and said from now on, any sexual abuse, child abuse, domestic violence, abuse, drug and alcohol abuse anything that ends with abuse will be taken care of by the men of this church, and if you go outside of this church to get help, do not walk back in through those doors. I walked up to my mom and dad now, mind you, my dad was an abuser too, but at this point the only thing I'm doing was fighting domestic violence, because I can't even wrap my head around the sexual assault that I received my whole life right. I walked up to my mom and dad and I said I'm not quite sure what God you're trying to get me to love right now, but this is not a God me and my children are going to serve. I picked my babies up and I walked out that church. Nothing could have prepared me for what was on the other side of those walls. It's a freedom.
Speaker 1:It's not free. I can imagine walking out and being like, okay, what do I do now? Do I find the next man to tell me what to do? Do I find the next church bell to what do you do? And to tell?
Speaker 2:me what to do. Do I find the next church bell? What do you do? I didn't have a clue. I didn't know what to do. I was so lost Because you're raised in high-controlled religions to be in this world but not a part of this world. So when I walked through those doors I now was a part of that world that I had been taught my whole life was evil, horrible, awful, and if I did, I was going straight to hell. And it took me years to just figure out that. Wait a minute, I don't have to ask permission to do this. Wait a minute, I can pick up the newspaper and read it anytime I want. You mean to tell me I can turn the radio on and play any music I want on the radio. Blow my mind.
Speaker 1:That you can use your phone and get on Zoom and tell your story to a total stranger Blows my mind.
Speaker 2:Because not only was it not allowed, we knew if we did it we were going to hell, and we believed it, and there is a whole church down there that still believes it. Freedom was wearing open-toe shoes and no pantyhose in South Florida's heat. The liberation came with I don't have to wear pantyhose. I'll never forget the first day that I said I never have to wear these things again. Cut those things up, and now, if I want to, they're sahas, but don't tell nobody.
Speaker 1:Nobody will know Never.
Speaker 2:We weren't allowed to wear open-toed shoes. We weren't allowed to wear red. One of my first things that I did was buy a red dress and I wore that red dress to my divorce. I walked in there with my elbows showing because those weren't allowed. So it was very small things, but it was very empowering things.
Speaker 1:There's a sense of pettiness of the red dress to some of the divorce papers that I love.
Speaker 2:I can never tell you that. I have not always been sassy. Okay, so it just came like the nobody would know what I was doing except him. Like the divorce attorney, she didn't have a clue. The domestic violence they didn't have a clue, but he knew and that's all that mattered.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure I stand with religion any longer. For the longest time I believed in this American structured, organized creation of this quote unquote God Come to find out is the most narcissistic, unloving, uncaring, unforgiving asshole that I've ever heard of in my life, and I do believe that if there is a higher power, it is not that, and so I feel comfortable saying what I just said. I had the realization, luckily pretty early in my adult life, that if hell is filled with people like me, it can't be that bad of a place.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what I say. If I'm going to meet you in hell, I'm going to run there with bells on because I'm going to be with a friend.
Speaker 1:I guess we both answer that in humor. But my question to you is where do you stand with religion now? Is there a God to you? Is there a relationship?
Speaker 2:I tried. When I left and moved up here I didn't know what else to do. So the best place that I felt most at home was inside a church singing the old gospel hymn. But over the years I realized I'm much too liberal. Jezebel usually doesn't sit on a pew of a church. I'm a secular humanist and I am proud of that. So whatever that makes me kind to my fellow man, that makes me compassionate, that makes me empathetic, that makes me go above and beyond for the underdog and to make sure that everybody that knows me knows that they have a safe place Bottom line. And I would have never been able to have said that if I was sitting in the Apostolic Pentecostal Church today. I would be judgmental, I would not be kind, I would not be compassionate and I would not be Christlike. Today I'm more Christ-like now outside of the church than I ever was.
Speaker 2:When I was raised and sitting on a pew. There was never anything wrong until I went to the pastor to get help because he was beating me so bad. Nobody knew anything. I couldn't take it anymore because of the rape and the abuse. So I did what I thought I was supposed to do and go tell my pastor that I was being raped and abused, and that's when all hell broke loose. I was dumbfounded. I had no idea. I thought that we would be counseled or that something would happen, or that something would happen. And when I realized that it was used against me as a weapon, and the next service that I got up, everybody in the church was told exactly what he did and I just sat there, I don't know. I became this little girl like all curled up, like this can't be happening. I didn't know, everybody was going to know, and my pastor went on to say that if you bring it to me, it comes to this pulpit. That's a mistake. That's a mistake I would never have to make again. When I told you I went back and listened to his sermon, I realized that I was scared to death of that man, petrified Because while I was listening to that last week his sermon, I looked at my body language and I was like this. I was curled up in a ball, sitting in a chair with my legs as far as my back brace would let it go, and I was like, oh my God, this man petrifies me. That's why I was not able to ever confront him again. I literally had to feel myself unfold from a curled up position and regain my composure. I was in my own basement in my own house, and that's how much power that man has over people, not just me. That legacy lives on through his kids and his grandkids and I found that generations after generations usually either get a lot looser in their thought process or they dig down and get stronger and get more authoritative.
Speaker 2:The other thing is, in these high controlled religions, if women can't work, who's bringing in the money to the pulpit? Taxes don't get to be paid. Our pastor told us to pay in cash. Nothing has to be listed with the IRS. Who pays for that? My dad was a design engineer for Pratt Whitney and designed the B-1 bomber, the fuel pumps of the B-1 bomber. He was a military engineer. Do you think they were going to suffer? And listen to little old we, me, who brought in zero to the church?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Follow the money. If you want to know what's going on, follow the money.
Speaker 1:Can you tell me where you and your family are now your parents or siblings?
Speaker 2:I'm the oldest of five. The day I left was the last day they spoke with me, and my youngest brother reached out to my daughter three or four years ago, but my brothers and sisters have not even spoken. You have we get to a place?
Speaker 1:in life where we get to create our family, we get to pick and choose who is worthy to be us. And so when you just made that statement of all these siblings, all these parents, no contact I immediately flashed back to the conversation we had before. We hit record of the family that you've now created and how protective you are of them. There's so much beauty in that and I'm so glad that your group of friends has you and I'm so glad that you have them.
Speaker 2:Thank you, so am I. I didn't start talking out and saying stuff until three years ago and I realized that my children don't know what I look like as a baby, or as a five-year-old or a teenager, or the day I graduated from high school, all those pictures were in a book, right. And as they've grown up, I've realized that I've helped teach them to build communities for themselves and to create a community. And I was sitting there about three years ago. The epiphanies were happening.
Speaker 2:Then I had not built me a community, I was still alone. I relied on my children and my grandbabies and I was like they're getting their own lives. But then I was like I'm okay by myself and I'm like who am I trying to fool? So I decided that I would intentionally start making connections, intentional connections with people that I know that are good people. Maybe they've been hurt as well, but they're good people. And that's what I've started doing. In all honesty, thanks for TikTok, because I would have never done it any other way, but I have friends now that I can call and check on me, and it's really awkward because I don't know quite what to do with it, but anytime I get worried I just reach up and grab my Jezebel thing and say you got this girl, you got this, it's okay.
Speaker 1:When you made the comment of sometimes it gets uncomfortable or awkward and I'm not sure what to do. Just enjoy it, because when we get to the place in life where we're able to pick and choose our family, nothing is being done out of obligation anymore. Nothing is being done because it's what we should do. Every time my phone rings now it's because someone chose and wants to call me. Enjoy that.
Speaker 2:Something I need to be reminded because it's not easy.
Speaker 1:We spoke a lot about your kids and you left 25 years ago and was your oldest four.
Speaker 2:The oldest six, oh so six and four, yeah.
Speaker 1:So where are you all now?
Speaker 2:I have one son is a hot spotter for the dnr. He's a wild firefighter wow he was a structural fireman and decided that he needed more excitement in his life and decided that being a wildfire fighter is what he would do. Then my youngest son is a machinist for one of the big three auto makers in the Detroit area and he's a single dad, and my daughter is a single mom and she also works for one of the auto factory workers.
Speaker 1:So they're doing fantastic.
Speaker 2:Oh, and I have to tell you, I went to college when I first moved up here and I couldn't finish. And I went back last year and I am an associate degree graduate. It took me 19 years to face that demon.
Speaker 1:Look at you, man. I did it, Woman Damn. I love that so much.
Speaker 2:I am the first female with a college degree out of the Apostolic Pentecostal Church.
Speaker 1:Wow, Maybe somebody in this church or someone that knows somebody affiliated with any organization like this could hear this story and be like I got to do something.
Speaker 2:And that is the whole reason that drives me. I do my TikToks not for anybody else. I do them as a living legacy, because there may be one little girl sneaking in the room listening to TikTok. And if my TikTok comes across her screen and she knows she's not supposed to be listening to it because she belongs to a high controlled religion, it may give her the seed she needs to make the adjustment I have one more question.
Speaker 1:And then to the real fun question. But would you change what happened to you?
Speaker 2:I wish it didn't happen to me. I wish that the memories and the nightmares and the night terrors were just something that I could ignore and do away with. But I realized if I would have stayed, my daughter would have been raped, my granddaughter would have been raped, my sons would have been beaten bloody and would have become abusers themselves. So not only did I stop the cycle, it no longer exists in our generational tree. So for that I would lay down my life, knowing that my children were free of abuse Because it's not a matter of oh, maybe they wouldn't my father would have sexually raped my daughter and my sons, guaranteed.
Speaker 1:People want to say there's a choice.
Speaker 2:No, Pedophiles do not wake up miraculously healed. They just wait for their next victim. My mom is part of the reason why I was abused. She was a participant and every time it happened she knew. So if they would do that to their own daughter, what would they do to my children? We cannot do it alone. We must stand together. We must become allies. We must stand up and fight against patriarchy. We must fight against abuse. We must fight against those who don't want minorities to be heard or to be seen. That doesn't take just you fighting alone. You must have allies and we must be stronger together.
Speaker 1:So, as we're coming to an end, before we started recording, we had a conversation about the word Jezebel and we had connected on a couple of songs that we listened to, that we know that we, like that uses that term and what that term means and the stigmas behind that term. And what is so important is when certain communities reclaim that word right. Remember back when 80s and 90s, when the word queer was a bad word and the gay community my community, like we, own the word queer, like to me, this is going to be one of those words, which is the word Jezebel.
Speaker 1:But, I would love for you to tell us the Jezebel story that you have in connection to that word, because I that's my favorite.
Speaker 2:Three years ago I had a sibling reached out to my daughter, had not spoken to her probably her whole life, but was wanting to make a connection, and asked her if I had finally put the abuse that happened to me under the blood and I've left it alone. Have I forgiven my abusers? And if I haven't, basically I have the Jezebel spirit because I won't leave it alone. And when my daughter was retelling me the story, I looked at her. I said I have been shamed, I have been shunned, I have been called that name to be made fun of in front of 200 people of a church. I will be damn if I run from that name any longer. I will become Jezebel. It's what we're all called. If you do anything wrong and you're part of a church, it's oh, don't get the Jezebel spirit. Oh, don't be a Jezebel. Oh, you can't be a Jezebel Bitch. Yes, I can, yes, I will.
Speaker 2:There's nothing to be shamed about a woman who stands up for what she believes in, for protecting her country. And so she killed men of God, so-called men of God. She was protecting her kingdom. She was a queen, and every sense of the word. She was not afraid of somebody who so called himself a man of God. She still said what needed to be said, and that is what we need to do today. Anyone could be a Jezebel. All we have to do is find our voice and start speaking our truth and be authentic and own it, and I will never let the handle go. I'm forever a Jezebel.
