Genesis The Podcast
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Genesis The Podcast is hosted by Maria MacMullin, Chief Impact Officer of Genesis Women's Shelter & Support and the Host of the Podcast on Crimes Against Women.
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Genesis The Podcast
Silenced in Eden: From Religious Cult to Personal Freedom - The Story of Jo Lloyd Johnson
What happens when the only community you've ever known becomes your prison? When sacred teachings become weapons of control? Jo Lloyd Johnson takes us on a raw, unflinching journey through the hidden world of religious cults and the long path toward reclaiming personal autonomy.
Growing up in what she eventually recognized as a cult environment, Jo experienced multiple layers of abuse – religious, spiritual, and sexual. Raised within a strict hierarchical structure where men held all power and women were expected to remain silent and submissive, Jo's childhood was shaped by what she calls "the umbrella of authority." Under this system, pastors claimed direct communication with God about their followers' lives, husbands controlled wives, and children had no voice at all.
The damage of purity culture forms a central thread in Jo's story. As she powerfully explains, this toxic ideology taught her that her body was dangerous, that sexuality was shameful, and that women bear responsibility for men's thoughts and actions. For Jo, who experienced sexual assault at age six within the religious commune, these teachings were particularly devastating – leaving her wondering if she was already "tainted" before she could even understand what that meant.
Jo's path to healing began with motherhood, when instinctive protection of her child sparked questions about her indoctrination. The real catalyst came when her husband was offered a position as a pastor – suddenly facing the reality of becoming what she had been "prophesied" to be, Jo realized she wanted something different for herself and her children. This awakening led her to examine her beliefs piece by piece, confront repressed memories, and ultimately forge her own path forward.
Today, Jo channels her experiences into supporting other survivors through Louder Than Silence, an organization providing community and therapy for victims of sexual violence. Her story reminds us that healing isn't about forgetting – it's about transforming anger into constructive action and finding community that celebrates authenticity rather than demanding conformity.
Listen and discover how sometimes, the most spiritual act is finding the courage to question everything you've been taught and create a new story – one where you belong not in a carefully tended garden, but in the wild, beautiful forest of your authentic self.
In today's episode, we meet Jo Lloyd-Johnson, a survivor and the author of Silenced in Eden, a memoir that navigates her personal journey from an abused child to an empowered woman. Today, jo shares her experience of living within the confines of a Christian cult where obedience was expected and purity culture reigned supreme. I'm Maria McMullin, and this is Genesis, the podcast Jo welcome to the podcast, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I'm excited that we connected and that I have the opportunity to talk about these topics that are stigmatized and ignored in society, so I'm really happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you raised so many important issues right off the bat here and you mentioned your book. So your book, silenced in Eden, is a memoir that explores not only what happened to you growing up in a cult and experiencing multiple forms of abuse, but also how you unlock the traumatic memories and forged a way forward. For our listeners who have not yet read your story, can you share what happened to you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so just to give like the bullet points. It's never fun to give bullet points when we're talking about like here's all my traumas. But when I was six years old I was sexually assaulted by a boy inside of a religious commune. You can call it a cult. Took me a long time to call it a cult, was raised in purity culture, had a childhood where mom and dad like what they said went to you weren't really allowed to question, you weren't really allowed to self-explore. Here's the party line. Follow it. Do the things that we tell you to do. Be quiet about it. It was very patriarchal. All the men had all the power and as a woman, my job was to be pleasant and kind and eventually marry and make babies and make sure that I am not sexual at all unless I am married and it's in the bedroom with my husband with the doors closed. In the book I talk about just how my upbringing formed, what I thought I had to be, and then, at 30 years old, really start to figure out who I actually am.
Speaker 1:That is a lot and I thank you for sharing that little bit with us. In the book it goes into extensive detail about your upbringing and many of the things that you mentioned, and much more.
Speaker 2:Obviously, there was sexual abuse when I was six years old. It was interesting when you and I spoke earlier, you had talked about the difference between spiritual abuse and religious abuse and it was interesting how, like when you grow up, what you experience is normalized so you don't actually think of it as abuse, until you pull back and are like, oh, this is not how the rest of the world does things and maybe the way that I did things was unhealthy. But for me, spiritual abuse and religious abuse I didn't actually see them as two separate types of abuse because they were just convoluted the purity culture which can have this level of sexual abuse just in harming the way you view sexuality and shaming being a human, and spiritual abuse and religious abuse. All of it was like this multifaceted web. So it's interesting.
Speaker 2:Currently I'm still was like this multifaceted web, so it's interesting. Like currently I'm still picking apart each piece of this web and figuring out like, oh, I was spiritually abused because I was prophesied over and told like this is how I'm supposed to live my life. And I was religiously abused because I was told that I had to follow all the rules of a religion or, you know, you'll be spanked because spare the rod, spoil the child. So now parents are allowed to just beat their kids because the Bible says so. So it is interesting to look at now what I thought was normal growing up and now what I'm seeing is unhealthy and still trying to kind of unravel what is healthy, and that's still something I'm like literally figuring out. How do you have a healthy relationship when you've never been shown a healthy relationship?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's another really interesting point. And you got married when you were 22, right, yes, I was 22.
Speaker 2:I was in a school of ministry, as they call them. Sometimes they call them a church internship. Pretty much, I went right from high school to working at a church which was very manipulative, very controlling and borderlined on a cult. So it wasn't just like 22,. Young and naive, it was 22, and inside of an indo indoctrinated, controlling environment.
Speaker 1:You really hadn't been off the compound. You were born there, you were raised there, you were educated there and that is where you met your husband.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my story is kind of interesting in I've experienced two cults. My grandparents started a cult in like the 70s and 80s and that ran until the mid 90s when my grandfather died. And then when that fell apart, my parents were distraught and raised me with the same teachings as the cult, but I was going to kind of regular Christian churches and then in high school I found a church that was very similar to the cult and had the same kind of background of beliefs, and so then I went right back into like holy cult crazy. In high school like I ran a campus club where I was the Jesus freak who was trying to save souls instead of just like enjoying being a high school student and learning about math. Instead I was praying at school on campus for people as they walked into class. So yeah, I was definitely fully in cult, brain, indoctrinated, had not come out of the fog of it all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds like it was very immersive. Now, religion specifically what you describe in the book as being Christian in a discipleship movement that was central to your upbringing, and the church you attended was started by your grandfather, as you said. What were the tenets of this movement and how did they influence you as a child and a young woman?
Speaker 2:Yes. So the discipleship movement also called like the shepherding movement. Currently there's a new wave of it called undercover. I believe it's John Bevere who's kind of spearheading that one. But it's this idea, that kind of like the Catholic Church has the Pope and the Pope is like God's direct voice. He can tell us what God is saying.
Speaker 2:For today, with the Undercover discipleship movement, the idea was that God wants you to be discipled by, like a specific person and be discipling a specific person, and that you, as the person discipling someone, would have like a direct line to God for information for them.
Speaker 2:So it's this like hierarchical structure where a pastor has a direct line to God for anybody at his church. It's similar to the I don't know if you've heard of that Christian umbrella of authority where they have, like, the pastor is the first tier, then it's the husband, then it's the wife, under the wife are the children. In other words, whomever is above you has a level of control over you. And so you can imagine that if you have somebody who wants you to do something, that that level of power may not be great for them to have. If you have somebody who's maybe not mentally stable or healthy or has a church. They really want to grow and want numbers that they may misuse this idea that they have a direct line to God and are able to tell you how to live your life, because God's going to tell them what he wants you to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the further down you are on that hierarchy, the less power you actually have. So in your case, at that time you were a child, and so you had these layers of power and influence above you that were controlling pretty much your every move. So this, I guess, fits the criteria of a cult in some ways, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think it's pretty clear that the church that my grandfather started turned into a cult because we were all living on the same property. He would tell people where they should live. I've heard stories of him telling people who they should marry. At one point they all shared money, so you literally would write your paycheck to the church and then the church would give you what money you are allotted for that month. So, yes, it was clearly under the definition of a cult.
Speaker 2:The cult that I found, or the church I guess that I found in high school, is a little more of a gray area in that it depends on how you define a cult. But I had experienced inside that church people being told you are supposed to marry so-and-so. I know God told me so. Or I was told by a pastor's wife that I was supposed to go to school for interior design and she was like no, god told me this is what you're supposed to do with your life. In the book I get into when my husband and I were told to postpone our wedding because he was supposed to go into ministry and us deciding to get married and take a year off so that we could afford living on our own Because at the time we both lived with our mommies and daddies, seeing how mature I was when I got married.
Speaker 2:But when we were wanting to take a year to be able to be financially stable, he was told by the pastor that God had told him he's supposed to do ministry, and so my husband postponed our wedding so that he could do what God said, which was really just the pastor needing my husband to do the work that he was needing him to do right.
Speaker 1:Right, not necessarily that your husband needed to or wanted to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was best for our future and what we needed at the time either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly Now, from what I can remember in the book. If I remember this correctly, shortly after you were told to postpone your wedding, you were both removed from the church.
Speaker 2:Yes. So we were in purity culture which told us that sex was only for once. You're married and like a hard line of you have to say the vows in front of the church, sign on the dotted line and now you're allowed to be a sexual being and have sex After we postponed the wedding. We did not wait and the church was told about that. They kind of like interrogated us to ask if we had had sex before our wedding day, and when they found out that we had, that was when my husband was let go.
Speaker 1:That's so devastating and so humiliating in so many ways, because this ripped you apart from the only community that you had known for your entire life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when that happened it was like six days before our wedding. So we weren't really set up because it was like, hey, your wedding is next week, Now you have no income because he was working at the church I had a separate job, but our income was cut in half was working at the church, I had a separate job, but our income was cut in half. Also, we were being shamed. So, yes, the community the only community that we had as a married, soon-to-be-married couple, felt uncomfortable being around because they weren't told what had happened. We were told by the pastors not to tell anyone why we were being let go. So it immediately started our marriage in this shamed, shunned state, which, you can imagine, didn't really help us succeed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at least not in that environment. But in the long run it was probably for the best right it made it for a very bumpy road. Yeah, absolutely so. Let's dive into the different aspect of this whole situation, and that's the patriarchal aspect of the church. Can you help us understand the patriarchal model of this form of Christianity and how it impacted your life experience?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, as I said, with the umbrellas right, the husband is over the wife, so it's not a partnership really.
Speaker 2:The husband always has the trump card. I can put my foot down. I remember my dad using it as, like I know better because Eve sinned, so I'm less likely to be wrong, or something. In the book I use the example of Adam and Eve as patriarchy.
Speaker 2:In the story of Adam and Eve that I was raised on, god creates everything, everything's good. He creates stars, sky, night, the land, animals. And then God's like I want someone for me, I want something that is in my image. So God is lonely and wants companionship. So he makes Adam a man and God's happy. He's like this is good. But then Adam is lonely and Adam asked God for a companion for himself. And so then God makes Eve. And in this rendition of Adam and Eve you can see how Adam was made for God. But Eve is just a second thought for Adam's needs. And that was really how it felt as a woman in this Christianity. I felt like my job was to make a man happy. I was here on earth for men, be their companion, be in their image for them. And Adam, he has this really cool ability to be next to God, but I am like a second-class citizen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sounds like a very convenient retelling of a story that we've all heard some version of, because in that telling it actually fits the patriarchal model.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in the last couple years I've heard a really beautiful version of the story of Adam and Eve. Apparently this is more closely aligned to the Jewish language, like what the language would have actually been. So in this story it's the same, where God makes the earth and the stars and then God wants a companion, so he makes humanity. And in this version Adam is not male or female, adam is both. Adam is intersex, adam is all humanity in one being, and this individual is lonely. So God decides to split this one whole person in half, two equal parts, and that is how we got male and female.
Speaker 1:I hadn't heard that particular version before, but that's very beautiful and I appreciate you providing that context. If you have a link for where we can find that, I'd love to drop that in our show notes. On a different note, your memoir also addresses purity culture. What is that and how is it harmful?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So purity culture. If you were born in the 90s, you definitely know what it was, or at least had a taste of it. The purity pledges were going around high schools and colleges. It was this concept pushed to get back to shaming sex, a backlash to the free love movement in the 70s and purity culture taught me specifically that, as a woman, if you show off any of your body, then you are the temptress, tempting man, and whatever impure thoughts he has, or therefore impure actions he does, are your fault.
Speaker 2:Purity culture was this very main focus on getting to your wedding day as a virgin. It had this concept that if you had sex with anyone else, you now are less than that. Somehow having sex changes who you are because you're not a virgin and virginity is somehow this prize that you're giving your husband. I vividly remember pastors from the pulpit talking about, like, if you can't give your husband your virginity, then what are you giving him? As if my body somehow changed once I enjoy it one time. Now it's totally a different thing. For me specifically, having been sexually assaulted at six years old was really hard to sit in purity culture because I was like well, does that mean I'm already tainted? If the idea is, if I'm touched by a man and I was touched when I was a kid does that mean I'm already ruined?
Speaker 1:Yeah, those are questions we don't have answers for and we shouldn't have to answer those types of questions, right? I mean because it just seems ridiculous that any of that would be a person's fault or in any way make you less of a person, and it is harmful in lots of ways. Can we talk about a few of the ways that it harms especially a young woman's development?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it taught me right away that my body's not safe. If I show a little cleavage and a guy is staring, it's my fault. I mean, I've heard horrible things about like well, she's asking for it. Did you see what she was wearing?
Speaker 2:Purity culture really is rape culture. It is making it the victim's fault for just existing in a female body because, like God forbid, someone is attractive. And it also just shames sex, like I was afraid of sex. I was afraid of pleasure and my own enjoyment because it was told to me that it was like dirty and bad and I should definitely not have it.
Speaker 2:And the purity culture that I was a part of, especially in the church that I found in high school, also had this really weird twist. You see it, if you've ever followed, like Mark Driscoll, once you're married, you're supposed to be this sexual, exciting girl in the bedroom for your husband. So is this idea of like be Mother Mary, be pure, innocent and asexual and then, when you get married, behind closed doors, be a whore? And it's not really possible to go from one state of mind where you're afraid of your body to then all of a sudden turn a switch when you put a ring on a finger and now be completely comfortable in your body and want to explore your body and want to tell your partner what you like, when you're like afraid of liking anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like you don't even have a mind of your own about your own mind or your own body.
Speaker 2:I mean for me specifically. It just led to disassociative disorder, like I just did not live in my body. My body was a place that was never safe and in Christianity I was told, like the body is sinful, the heart is deceitful. So I was just afraid of the vessel that I inhabited.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and back to your point about the story of Adam and Eve. In Genesis the body was created by God. I mean not to get into too much of the theology here, but it seems almost counterintuitive that anything created by God if you believe in that, could be sinful or shameful or evil.
Speaker 2:Right, and God made them naked in the beginning too right.
Speaker 1:There's a lot to dive into that part of the story, but we better move on to the rest of your story, because there's a point in your life, after you become a mother, that you start unpacking your trauma and moving away from religion. How did that evolve for you?
Speaker 2:Becoming a mom, I had these little glimpses of what didn't feel right about my indoctrination. I remember the first time that my child cried and my mom was like, oh, that little sinful nature, oh yeah. And my baby was like five months old and just irritated, not having words, not being able to communicate with anything but moving their body and screaming at you because they no longer like what you're doing. Right, they're just communicating a need. And I remember in that moment having that thought of, no, my baby girl's perfect.
Speaker 2:So I don't think we're born sinful, because I don't see sin. I see needs that are being unmet. And that was like a momentary shift of like wait, that doesn't sit in my gut, this idea that I was created in sin and I'm sinful. So there were multiple things like that. I would have this little check in my brain or in my body. Maybe some of the things I've believed I don't actually believe in my core, but it really wasn't. Until my husband got offered a job as a pastor. That shook down the framework of our religion. When we were in high school I was prophesied over getting into the spiritual abuse.
Speaker 2:I was prophesied over that I was going to be a pastor's wife or a pastor, depending on your theology of if I'm allowed to be a pastor or if I'm just supposed to be a pastor's wife or a pastor, depending on your theology of if I'm allowed to be a pastor or if I'm just supposed to be a pastor's wife. And then my husband and I had sex before marriage. Oh no, we got told we had to redeem ourselves and, being me, I'm the type of person if you give me a goal, I'm going to work my ass off for that goal. And so that's what I did. After we got in trouble and got laid off, I had my eyes fixed on this spiritual goal that somebody told me I was supposed to do, and I think that kind of blinded me and made me not stop when I had those glimpses of things coming up. And then, when my husband was offered a pastorship and I was like, ok, yay, I achieved the goal, I did the thing. This is what God told me I was supposed to do in high school.
Speaker 2:And then I kind of looked around and I was like wait, I don't actually want this. I don't want to be a figurehead where my husband has all the power and I have none and I have to sit quietly in the front row. I don't want to pretend like I have all my shit together when I'm still a mess and just a human trying to get by. I don't want my kids to be pastor's kids. Anybody who's been a pastor kid knows what that all means. And so once we were offered the job, my husband and I ended up turning it down and started looking at, like, what do we actually believe and what do we actually want? And just started to take the bricks from the religion, brick by brick. Like no, do we believe in this? Do we believe that the Bible's infallible and that there's nothing wrong with it? No matter the translation, is this somehow perfect? Maybe language is more complicated than that. Maybe I don't believe this.
Speaker 1:It's taken you literally years and years to unpack all of this trauma and, specifically, to go back and find that repressed memory of what happened to you when you were six years old, because that was not something you were fully consciously aware of for a very long time, right.
Speaker 2:The brain is amazing in that it tries to save you and it knows what you can handle. So, yeah, six years old, I did not remember what happened. I had these little hints towards something having happened and in the book I think I use them as like footprints, like a trail. I was like, hmm, where does this lead? And I did have flashbacks when I was 16, which I did not understand what was happening exactly, and it wasn't until after we were offered the pastorship and turned it down and started looking at religion that I was like I feel like there's more to look at for me, not just looking at the beliefs that I've held, that maybe didn't sit in my gut, but it's also looking at these memories that I've pretended like I don't notice in the background, and seeing why they're there and how they've affected me.
Speaker 2:And so, really, I had to start interviewing people from my past to ask them like, hey, I heard something happened back in the property, back in the cult, what happened? And I came to find out that I was not the only victim. There was multiple victims. I'm pretty sure there was two rounds of victims. I believe my perpetrator was a victim and that there were other victims when he was victimized, which is sad and heartbreaking, but it was interesting because for me, I had to become a journalist before writing my book and research my own history.
Speaker 1:That's interesting that you say that I've heard others who've written similar types of books and memoirs say similar things about becoming the investigative journalist of their own story because the way it was written for them was not the way that it happened, and going back to peel away all of these layers or, as you say, take out all of the bricks and start over and really write the story the way that you know that it happened.
Speaker 1:To peel away all of these layers or, as you say, take out all of the bricks and start over and really write the story the way that you know that it happened. It's a very courageous thing that you and many others have done and I hope people will read your book Silence to Needin, because we're glossing over some really major topics here, in particular, the actions that followed when you experienced that sexual abuse, because there was a lot of things that you talked about in the book that happened within your family, including ignoring it. So I encourage people to take a look at the book when they have the opportunity. Religion, of course, especially Christianity, central to its belief system, the idea of forgiveness. In the book you explore the idea of forgiveness and you offer an alternative definition, that is, to let go of resentment. What does that mean to you.
Speaker 2:I feel like anger and remembering can be really powerful motivators, but they can also be really destructive. I had to let myself be angry that my parents didn't do what I thought was necessary for a six-year-old kid to be fully defended. I had to let go of anger that this individual did that to me. I had to sit in my anger and allow it. That was what motivated me to heal and motivated me to change, motivated me to make sure that I was more vigilant as a mother. So I think that there are good things about anger and bitterness, if you want to call it that, and so easily we do the phrase like forgive and forget.
Speaker 2:The anger has a purpose right. The anger can be good. The anger is what causes me to work as an advocate for other victims of sexual violence. But that anger can also turn into self-destruction. I can just burn with anger and hatred and I could spend my time harassing the guy who did that to me, which would not be helpful for me or the world in general. And so that's what I mean when I say release the resentment, the anger that gets so big that it's going to burn you and the whole house down. Maybe release that and calm that, but then leave enough to be a candle for people to see like, hey, this is what happened. I'm going to shine a light on it, I'm going to still talk about it. I'm not going to pretend like it didn't happen, but I'm also not going to sit in the rage to the point of burning everything down.
Speaker 1:What a great metaphor and kind of visual of the good that can come out of sitting with your anger. Thank you for sharing that with us. I'm curious after all of this, do you still identify as a Christian?
Speaker 2:So when I was writing Silenced in Eden, I was still identifying as a Christian for the most part. I was like, okay, progressive, maybe At the end I was looking into like universalism kind of the idea that Christianity is the way I experience spirituality, because that's the framework that I was raised in. After publishing the book and continuing my journey of healing and processing and coming into myself, I don't call myself a Christian anymore. I've gotten to the point where Christianity has harmed me and others enough that I do not want that label to be adhered to my name. I also am teaching my children you can be whatever you want, and if you want that label to be adhered to my name, I also am teaching my children like you can be whatever you want and if you want to go to church with your friend, you can go to church with your friend. Religion can be healing for some and helpful for some, but for me it has done enough harm that I do not want religion in my life.
Speaker 1:I completely respect that and can relate to what you are talking about. There's other things about you that are wonderful, too, beyond your experience, beyond your writing, beyond the work you do as an advocate, because at one point in your life you became a birth doula. How did your life experience lead you to become a birth doula?
Speaker 2:I love that work as a birth doula I actually have the pleasure of. A friend of mine is due in August and I'll be her doula, so I'm really excited. I started because I'm one of four daughters and I was the first kid to have my own baby. So when my little sister got pregnant, I was the first sister who got pregnant. I was the only one of us sisters who had ever had a baby and she ended up asking me to be in the room with her and at first it was like, oh, just come by and support me a little. My husband's there. I don't really need you, Because when you're a first time mom, you really don't understand what you're getting into. First time mom, you really don't understand what you're getting into Exactly.
Speaker 2:Her labor was not easy. It turned into a very long labor in which she was like you are not allowed to leave me, Stay here and help. And I was awake with her for a day and a half and helping. Let's try this movement here. I'll support you here. Here, let me rub your back here had no training other than I had lived through it myself and I'm a very supportive, aware person. And after my niece was born, the nurses, my brother-in-law and my sister were all like you should do that. You're really good at that, and so it was kind of like it just fell in my lap. Yeah, that was kind of exhilarating and kind of great. So once I had my third daughter, I went ahead and like was certified and went through all the training.
Speaker 2:I love doing it In reality, like part of who I am as a human being, is somebody who wants to support and create community, and I want to experience the hard shit with you. I don't do surface stuff, sure, you want to go look at a concert or look at art or watch a movie, great. But you want to talk to me about hard stuff, I'm here for it. Or you need support through something crazy, I'm all in.
Speaker 1:You sound like an amazing friend to have, because not so many people will stand by you when things are really, really difficult. People are fortunate to have you as their birth doula or their friend or family member, and I'm really grateful to know you. Let's talk about how you're helping survivors through the organization Louder Than Silence.
Speaker 2:So Louder Than Silence. I actually found them after I had fully decided like Christianity is not for me and Christianity, as you had said, was my only community. That was all I had, so it was extremely lonely. I was also processing being a victim of sexual violence and sitting in that for like the first time of my life. So Louder Than Silence is a nonprofit based in Austin, texas, pretty close to you guys, that provides services to victims of sexual violence. Our two big things is building community. What I needed at the time was community and our other thing is we pay for EMDR therapy. So we run 12-week peer support groups, which is now one of the main things that I do. We actually have one starting this month and then another one starting in August and you just sit in a room with people who have experienced what you've experienced and we talk through how that's affected your life. Be very helpful knowing that, the way you have learned to cope with it so-and-so over here has also coped with it that way.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm not crazy, because we've all done it, and so right now that's what I do. I run those programs. I don't live in Austin Texas, so I just do the virtual things. We also have in-person events, and right now we are having a fundraising campaign to try to get our waitlist for EMDR completely cleared.
Speaker 2:We've cleared half of our waitlist, so if you have money burning in your pocket and want to help out survivors, visit louderthansilenceorg. We are changing lives. They changed my life, they paid for my EMDR and this is just my way of paying it forward. Plus, every day in the community is also healing me. It is now my community and my safe place and, as you said, if you want a friend like me, just join. Join louder than silence, because I'm there.
Speaker 1:I want a friend like you. I'm so glad that we've had the opportunity to meet and talk about your story and about your memoir, and it sounds like you have established the community that you always needed and always wanted, and it's really beautiful to see everything that you have become. Would you close out our conversation with reading a passage from your book?
Speaker 2:I love this passage. I also am a painter, so I actually have a painting that is specifically around this passage, where it's talking about my brain being a garden and then turning into just like wild, beautiful wildflowers.
Speaker 1:I would love to see that painting and we'll drop it in our social posts with this episode, if you would, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I will definitely do that. Religion is a garden. It will tell you where you fit. Roses go here, lilies go there. You may be this tall, you may be this color. Everything out of place will be plucked out. It has its beauty but needs constant tending. The problem was I belonged in the forest. I am wild and free. I am a stream, not a stone fountain. I am unpaved. I am now ready to be what I have always been. I am done toiling, I'm done conforming. I will miss the garden. I will not miss what it required of me. If you found yourself banished from the garden or leaving by choice, know you are welcome in the forest. May you flourish here, may you grow taller and your. Thank you so much for talking with me today, of course.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me. Genesis Women's Shelter and Support exists to give women in abusive situations a way out. We are committed to our mission of providing safety, shelter and support for women and children who have experienced domestic violence, and to raise awareness regarding its cause, prevalence and impact. Join us in creating a societal shift on how people think about domestic violence. You can learn more at GenesisShelterorg and when you follow us on social media on Facebook and Instagram at Genesis Women's Shelter, and on X at Genesis Shelter. The Genesis Helpline is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, by call or text at 214-946-HELP 214-946-4357.