Sorcha Porter-Homes, Breaking Silence on Sexual Abuse at Calvary Chapel | Ep 74 | Moral Combat

In episode 74 of the Moral Combat Podcast, Sorcha Porter-Homes courageously recounts her harrowing journey of enduring sexual abuse within the Calvary Chapel youth group, where leaders not only failed to protect her but blamed her for dressing immodestly. She shares vivid memories from a youth mission trip to San Francisco’s Tenderloin district and the damaging purity culture that treated girls as mere “gifts” for their future husbands, shaming their bodies and clothing choices. Despite the abuse happening just feet away from oblivious adult leaders, Sorcha received no support until college when she revealed her trauma to her parents, who were devastated. Therapy helped her understand that the abuse wasn’t her fault. Moving to Portland marked the beginning of her and her husband’s simultaneous and independent deconstruction of their faith. Expelled from Moody Bible Institute for wearing pants, Sorcha had a liberating moment in 2018, fully rejecting the church’s oppressive teachings. She and her husband sold everything to travel the world and deconstruct their limiting beliefs. Sorcha, now an agnostic ethnically Jewish intuitive witch, finds healing through therapy, medication, and spiritual practices like gardening. She has rebuilt her life, running businesses focused on financial freedom and advocating for others to listen to their inner voice. Her story underscores the persistence of abuse and toxicity despite adhering to Christian doctrines, offering a message of resilience, self-discovery, and profound transformation.

Sorcha Porter-Homes:
https://www.instagram.com/sorchaandmattsgrandadventure
https://sorchahomes.com/

Moral Combat, hosted by siblings Nathan and Zach Blaustone, is a heartfelt exploration of life's complexities, with a primary focus on healing from religious trauma. Step into their world as they navigate the realms of music production, confront the lingering echoes of religious trauma, and embrace laughter as a universal healer. With each episode, Nathan and Zach weave together their unique perspectives, seasoned with dynamic personalities that make every discussion an engaging adventure. From unraveling the complexities of personal growth to fostering open communication, healing the scars of religious indoctrination, and embracing the unfiltered authenticity of siblinghood, Moral Combat is your passport to thought-provoking conversations, heartfelt insights, and the pure joy of shared moments. Join us in the combat for morality, one conversation at a time.

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what's up moral combat fans yeah yeah yeah what is up our moral combat fans do we have fans i think we got three or four maybe four no we actually i don't know if they you know for our podcast i don't really know if you can have fans yeah we have listeners they're like friends yeah friends close close companions on this journey of what we like to call religious trauma religious trauma that's what we talk about here zachary why do we talk about religious trauma on this podcast we talk about religious trauma because we come from a hyper evangelical family and we're raised in the church with a father as a pastor yeah christian evangelical church indeed uh radical people yes um and not radical as in like cool radical no radical parents what's funny is that i do think our parents are pretty rad yeah that's what makes this so painful sometimes uh is having rad radical christian parents rad rad anyways this isn't about them this is about the uh trauma that can uh come from being raised from birth or just being like brought into a church and you get radicalized there's so many different religions out there that radicalize people zachary and i have been out of this christian evangelical faith for many many years me a lot longer than him but you like i don't know last seven eight years something like that i mean openly yeah yeah i think we all mentally choose it at some point drew um we've talked a lot about our own personal trauma in this cast so if you want to go back you could watch like 60 episodes going deep and diving deep into that but that's why we are not here wait said that backwards that's not why we're here today no we're not here for it we're here for one of the greatest things that our podcast has finally evolved to and that's that we have started to build a community um of individuals and people that have been so willing and vulnerably coming on our podcast to share their stories yes some of those people have been directly connected to our own childhoods and the churches we were raised in that being calvary fucking chapel oh yes oh yes indeed and so um we have a social guest with us today we've been so excited so excited and they reached out to us on their own and said just wonderful things what we're doing and now they're here with us um squeezing in for this week um yeah last minute the most last minute interview we've never had a guest be this willing to jump in and do this and so let's get into it yep we'd like to give a very very warm welcome to sorsha porter homes yeah hi what up i'm really excited to have you yeah it's been a long-ass time it's been a long time yeah like you're both taller years even in these chairs from the computer you can tell it's like you've grew i can tell yeah i know i was um i felt like a baby back then and i still feel like a baby sometimes nice i've grown up a lot since our childhoods but like you say that that we look taller now um that's our fucking dog in the background just going nuts the moment we started recording absolutely um all right i understand yeah three corgis how cute three corgis if i'm being honest it's too many corgis but here we are it sounds therapeutic to be honest it sounds like a love love fest it definitely is one of our main requirements for being on our podcast is that you pick up all three of your corgis into the shop we can do that we can do that at the end they're honestly like i can hear all of them right outside the door right now they would all be like putting their list they they're upset they're not in here with me it feels safe because our dog my dog at more is a very big distraction sometimes to our podcast so oh yeah we're in good company there's a couple podcasts where we'll have him in here with us and he'll just be walking underneath the table and it's so nerve-wracking because we have so many cameras balancing everywhere yeah we don't let them inside we don't let them in the studio not anymore all right so one of the first things that you said was that we look taller now which means what is your memory like how far like when was the last time that you saw me and zack i guess so the last like memory i have of seeing you in person outside of your sister and brother-in-law's wedding where i was a server oh my god i haven't thought about that right now wow so i was a server at your sister's wedding and then um i think but i think before that the last time i saw you guys was at the mission trip that calvary petaluma and your church did together in san francisco in the tenderloin tenderloin we talk about that one we've talked about that trip a lot yeah yeah so i read that was that's the last like in-person memory i have of you guys and i remember because the day we had to go into union square and hang out me another couple of people from youth group and zack and someone else i think i don't i don't we'll not name them but someone else from your youth group all went into like the high-end department stores and tried all the designer clothes that's the last i remember that i remember that yeah how fun it was really fun it was really fun we had a great time was i there too you were what where were you you were with one of your other friends you were too cool so that was that we talked about that one you know trip whatever i was checked out right i was forced to go i'm pretty sure i was forced to go so you were 17 at this time was that really were this was years after you've already been like middle finger to the church yeah but i was still at the parents house but i remember that i didn't want to go there and i was like how'd you go there you and um i was too cool you're a good buddy at the time yeah you guys were checked out we were checked out yeah we were like smoking weed we were bad um great memory thanks for triggering us from the start this is going well that's what i'm here for but yeah that's that is my last memory of seeing you guys in person yeah so then we were uh our parents church which is no longer named this but it was Calvary Chapel Healdsburg so then you were like from Calvary Chapel Petaluma which is where our dad was like a worship leader a high school pastor and then started his own church from Calvary Petaluma all from the same county but you don't live here anymore right where are you now no i'm in Portland Oregon i'm in the weirdest place in America and i love it oh i love i love Portland i've only been a couple times but uh yeah we moved here like 10 years ago are like is there a lot of protesting going on at the colleges in Portland there definitely is there's an encampment at most of the universities um and it's it's really it's interesting Portland's like a very like activist central centered town which is one of the things i love about it is like people get involved and they give a shit um but like i'm that's like downtown and Portland i live on the east side on the other side of the river um which is just kind of like it's a lot chiller here it's like it's mostly like stoners and people who garden on my side of town like that's what that's what this site is it's great our type of people that's hard yeah that sounds wonderful um yeah that's like the weird thing about cities right is there can be shit happening and you can be like one block over and be like i wouldn't yeah yeah during during the George Floyd protests like my husband's grandparents called us really nervous because the George Floyd protests were intense here and they were like are you okay and i'm like we're like 40 minutes from there like we're good it would have to cross a river and go down some freeways it would be a while yeah and that's like the problem with media right is they make these things they make these protests that are amazing and for good reason did they come out as being violent and horrible and everyone's and the some people that live in other places feel so like scared and you're like first off this is a good thing it's the police causing violence okay yeah yeah for sure for sure well yeah so hello there from Portland Oregon that's amazing i um you actually so you let's just let's jump into it i guess like one of my you're here you come from the same Calvary Chapel vicious religious trauma background and um i know you have a story to share that's probably why you're here but like you got out of the county when did you you know like we know a lot of people have left this county that we know really well as as in a way to escape you know some of where this trauma has been embedded and so when did you actually move out of the county so my husband and i moved to Portland in March of 2014 that's been a decade now we moved we got married in December December 22nd of 2013 and we moved March of 2014 um at that time it was largely just like cost of living in beautiful Sonoma County was not feasible for 22 year old baby Sorsha and Matt and then we moved to Portland and our rent was like a third of the cost and our pay was 50 higher and we're like why did we not do this sooner wow yeah so that was when we left and that's like it was a big factor i think in like my deconstruction because i moved from where we grew up like with all of the familiar people and surroundings and organizations right and then i moved to this city where like i think we have like the largest queer populace per capita in the us and so there's just like i got exposure to all these different types of people when previously it was like very white very christian and i started meeting like muslims and like taoists and buddhists and people with this really diverse range of experience and they were all good humans and i started to be like maybe there's something to this like maybe and i was like i just couldn't picture a world where these people who are doing all this good and being so kind and wonderful to me and my husband just like new in town would ever go to hell and that's sort of like what sparked things because we were still like going to church pretty regularly when we left we like tried to find a church when we moved here for like a year um until i started having crippling panic attacks every time i walked in the door of a church i was like why is this happening and uh yeah but that's like portland really opened our eyes in like a really big way to the idea that like there wasn't just one way to be a good human and that and that eye-opening experience sort of like was the first big domino to fall like there were other things looking back i can identify as like little chips away at at the like the shell of brainwashing and stuff the shell of brainwashing that you know is around you until you start to like look around and like look outside your experience but the the like the first big domino if i was definitely moving here and like making friends and i was like oh like there is more than one way to be a good human there's more than one religion that can be fulfilling um and then i was like do i even believe in my religion is that just because i was there all of the time you know and and so on but um yeah so that's wow yeah that separation i feel like separating yourself from the area is such a big part of deconstructing i'm always really surprised on people who have like stayed in the area and fully deconstruct but most people that deconstruct get out at some point and then come back and be like this place is different than the other place yeah like the power of power of diversity yeah right it's like just being just just like a met like emerging yourself in a diverse area like you said that's not white and christian is like you're forced to make friends that might not be that and then then you're like wow these are friendly people yeah what do you know yeah it was really striking to make friends who just liked me for me and not me for the religion that i was tied to i think that was the big one is it made me recognize like yeah all my previous friendships were like people who became friends through church and that was like our only real right tie to one another yeah that's dropping a bomb right there that's huge seriously just like just the correlations you would make in church just because jesus is in between you two that now we're best friends whereas you meet other people and it's like i actually like you for you and not just because you're a christian and saying vice versa yeah it's it was just like it's very earth shattering right like you go from like this lived experience that has been the same for much of your life and then we moved here and like we loved it and it just like continued to get better but it also just continued to like the the very poorly laid brick wall that was built around me like slowly started crumbling and it was so so it was also like kind of scary because i was married and a lot of our you know you know how you get married in the church because that's what you do and so i was like it's like is my husband gonna be cool with this and we started talking about it and he was simultaneously deconstructing at the same time as me and we were both like just not talking to each other about it for a little while wow i remember like we i can like vividly remember the moment that like we both mutually decided we didn't like or told each other that we didn't believe in any of this anymore we pulled up to a stoplight at the corner of leason and 82nd avenue which if you live in portland you know where that is and i we were we were planning we were on our way to church and i was having like a like this rising panic attack you know because cptsd and i looked over and my and my husband looked at me he's like you okay and i was like i don't think i believe any of this anymore and he was like oh thank god i don't either i've just been waiting for you to talk to me about it and i was like on the way to church on the way to church like this was the conversation and we just looked at each other and i was like you want to go to brunch instead and he was like yeah and so that's what we did and we never went again that does that sounds so sweet wow and then i imagine right because you just said the acronym cptsd which stands for complex post-traumatic stress disorder which on this podcast we say join us yeah you're in good company but like you didn't know what that was right on that drive like did yeah so this was ten years ago ish ten to nine years ago then that the your your and your husband deconstructed together so we were here for about a year and a half so it was about eight and a half years ago yeah okay i see yeah before that before that conversation happened yeah it's been a minute yeah that's that's long enough to like because you know these radical beliefs are like addictions right and you're like you're like attached to them so much so that attachment is so traumatic so there's like enough time that you've had since you left the church to where you are would you say that you're like so far removed from it that yeah i guess what am i trying to ask that like so we've had guests on here where it's been like four years or five years um and like for me i you know started deconstructing or i didn't really start deconstructing fully until like five years ago but i've been out of the church since i was like 16 ish and long enough now to where it feels like in my memory like it's like damn this was my childhood my childhood was there like my teenager years and we've had some guests where they didn't deconstruct until their 40s yeah and that you know it's like a big you know when you have children and you like live all throughout your 30s like kind of reinforcing and being the leaders that we were traumatized by right and then you come out of it it's kind of a different experience and so um yeah yeah no it definitely is i mean we'll probably get into this more but like i was very entrenched in the church like i so my family like we we started church when i was like six at petaluma valley baptist and then we moved to calvary chapel when i got into junior high because they had better like teen programs basically hmm and um especially petaluma yeah petaluma had a great the big youth group big church they were always known as the cool youth group yeah yeah and and so my parents were like well we're gonna go where there's like better kids programs that's what our kids need right now and so they went there and that was like the formative years of my childhood and the most trauma for sure yeah it got significantly more traumatic at that point they're like we we should do this for our kids and it was done done done done yeah it was uh you know i i uh i think that there's a lot of good intention people with really poor planning and no protections in place for kids is really what it came down to um we'll clip we'll clip that that's going to be the title of our podcast i guess my one of my main questions i like to start your story right because you have this story um is why i know you found our podcast i know that we have a history and so there's a lot that we can connect on on the structure of coward chapel the way it was the way the toxic masculinity seeped into all of our lives and how that was embedded in the religion itself and how christianity is like its own thing and the coward chapel set like its own part of that right like in its own way but why why did you want to like why are you here why would you want to come do this on our podcast like what i know you found us and then you had this feeling of probably wanting to come on and you originally i remember the email you sent and we can talk about that but we can talk about it totally but like so what what got you here like why do you want to be here doing this so um actually so it was julia's episode that like brought me to the pod um i listened to like because uh her husband shared it and we are um social media friend acquaintance wow really cool and he's like a modern pastor yeah yeah and so he shared it and i was like oh my gosh so cool because i i was one of the people that julia sent the survey to when she did her study oh wow in high school yeah and so i was really interested i was like oh my gosh i remember when she sent this survey out and i was like so excited to participate in it i thought it was so cool what she was she was looking into yeah and um yeah and and then i saw your podcast and i remembered you guys and the last time we had talked and mostly i initially reached out because i was like i need to apologize for to nathan because i was an asshole to him the last time that i saw him um for i mean you didn't remember which is great i was very relieved to hear that but like i was so entrenched in the church and so intense on like and zealous for christianity um that i like would spam people with like doom and gloom fire and brimstone like youtube videos about how they were going to hell and i sent one to you and i remember that was like the last interaction that i had remembered with you and then i saw your podcast i was like oh my god i need to say sorry to this person so bad and so that's why i originally reached out but um the reason i'm here is because i was repeatedly molested and sexually abused by boys in my youth group at calvary chapel petaluma and i went to leaders multiple times over the course of a four-year period asking for help and no one helped me and so my hope is that in talking about my experience and sharing that that i can protect someone else's kid yeah that's that's why i'm here it takes so much strength just to even even come on and say that so thank you yeah and that's that's a fucking amazing reason to be on our podcast and so i have a lot of gratitude i am so thankful that you are willing to wanted to do this and our hope is that in this this process of being coming on a show like this because trusting the process that we have found for zach and i that talking publicly like this and then sharing it to our platform is a such a healing thing in and of itself it kind of is cathartic right it's something that normally these are the stories we talk about with our therapists and that's you know or maybe our loved ones who we trust and so but yeah exactly what you said that's why we have really vulnerably shared our own story is to really hope that maybe somebody would watch this it's it's this is medicine here and so thank you for being part of our medicine circle um you are forever family and but you were family before so i just we just wouldn't have known that until you reached out and so there's a lot there i just want to say that i think the reason why i don't remember you sending me that fire and brimstone video is because i was getting an insane amount of hate in my life at that time and so one of the best ways that i dealt with that hate was suppressing every form of it down as deep as it could go and then i dealt with it later in life and so and it came bubbling up in angry drunken ways for many years and um and so i just commend you on reaching out at all to say that because it made me feel so connected to you because i have no hatred at all in my body for really anybody um because i've learned i was the same way you all throughout junior high you know bringing my bible to school and telling people like if they don't give their life to christ they're gonna burn in hell and so that kind of comes with being a cabaret chapel christian zealot is you were doing the lord's work and um you know makes a lot of sense but um now here you are yeah and um yeah this is the real church okay it's church of satan which uh in many real in the many religions satan is good okay so my tarot deck to my right exactly yeah no i have another one coming in the mail soon yeah there's actually a lot of beautiful uh illustrations of what satan actually has been over history and it's not as evil as the church makes it seem but no and i think that like and we could just get so lost in this right like it all all of it matters everything in the universe is part of it and we're part of it and everything is god and so this conversation is god every plant is god and so um i feel the power of your story already and so sexual trauma yeah big huge topic that we've talked about in our podcast we both suffer from it in our own ways but here you are you um and just your experience being born in this world as i'm sure in the church you were forced to be told you are a woman and so we know that experience we've learned so much by other guests and just in our own healing and oh educational i don't know growing up to learn these things is that women had a very different experience than men in the church yeah um yeah we did um so equally as terrible however you want to get into it let's do it yeah so i was like and yet what what i need to preface this with is that like in the similar way to you suppressing all of your trauma i have huge like i had huge amounts of disassociation associated with my trauma which is really common um especially for kids who experience sexual abuse um which is the thing i learned in therapy later um all these cool cool nude conditions that i learned about um as i got older uh but yeah basically um we all grew up in purity culture which i know you've talked about on the pot a lot um and from a from the female perspective of things we're very much told that our sexuality was meant to be a gift to our future husband and i remember literally it was actually one of julia's siblings giving this presentation i remember literally um them giving a presentation about how we were gifts to be unwrapped by our husband and that every time we like kissed someone or held their hand or dressed immodestly which i got in trouble for dressing immodestly all the time um they had like a sweatshirt on a hook in the youth group room that they would literally like hand me when i walked in the door oh my god yeah you don't remember that like i i don't remember her it's her like you know that i mean i remember that of course i remember that like yeah i like i was i have i have vivid memories sorry to interrupt you i have vivid memories of every camp we would go to they would make you wear a sweatshirt where i was like all the other girls no i wouldn't i don't want to say all the other girls but they would choose a couple and you would always be the one chosen to like put on a sweatshirt or cover something up yep always forever always my my whole childhood part of that was because like i was just like an early bloomer and i had boobs and they didn't want you you young men to stumble because you saw my boobs because women women aren't supposed to have those until you're married and uh yeah so i was always like being reprimanded for not dressing appropriately i was always i was constantly getting messaging that i was both too much and not enough all the time and so it was super painful and it really manifested later in life in like professional pursuits because there was like a lot of like when you hear that repetitive messaging all the time as a kid that you are both too much and not enough you like both want to suppress the things about yourself that make you like you and that make you stand out and you also feel like you're never good enough so it creates this really unhealthy feedback loop that i had to work through a lot and still work through in therapy but it also makes you feel like you can't get help from authority because you're worried you'll be in trouble all the time and so for me when um i was molested by other boys in the youth group and i like have really i have a couple of incidents that are really vivid some that are pretty fuzzy but like i think the biggest thing that stands out to me is like that messaging creates this very unsafe environment for kids is like being told as a girl that you are inherently bad because of something that's totally outside of your control like i have no control of how my body developed at that point yeah like i didn't i was a teenager like i was going through puberty like what the fuck how how am i supposed to like what am i supposed to do this is just how pants fit me and shirts fit me like yeah um and so and like the rooms i was pulled out of and the learning opportunities i was taken away from because of my body was just like a huge amount of like shame messaging that i received repetitively throughout childhood and so and that was from the leaders of the youth group that came from that came from zach vestes that came from josh jarrett that came from and i'm going to name them all by the way that came from paul chic steve maline i mean there's like there's a lot of and they're all men and what i would watch i would remember literally watching them whisper in the ear of like a female youth leader and point to me and then i knew i was getting like a sweatshirt or a baggy t-shirt to wear for the day and so so first off that and like let's not even think about how they were looking at me in that way to put a shirt on me but um but on top of that like when these boys who are a youth group who have not been taught about consent because they're only taught abstinence have not been taught about what a healthy sexual interaction looks like when i'm like this very insecure girl looking for security from someone and this boy expresses interest in me and we like go around the back of the church and he goes to kiss me and then do things further than that and i say no and they don't stop and and then i would come back and like try and tell a youth leader about it and be like this felt wrong like this was bad this happened to me and i would be and they would just be like well if you would dress more modestly that wouldn't have happened to you oh wow damn dude like and now that i'm older and i'm like i was actively telling adults in a designated reporter position that i was being sexually abused and i was being told it was my fault and so i know i went to at least four people before i stopped just trying to tell people and whatever like mental blocks to protect my psyche kicked in kicked in but like i just i want to like really speak to the environments that most of our youth groups were because i want parents out there or people questioning or maybe if you're questioning and you have kids in youth group to take a really hard look at how your kids youth group is set up to protect your kids because if you think about it think about the rooms we were in and like Nathan you're you're a dad so think about those these rooms we were in as kids they were large open halls with like at least a Calvary Chapel Petaluma like 60 kids in them and maybe like eight adults with four to five entrances and exits in and out with no security on those entrances and exits and dark parking lots and bushes and trees and stuff surrounding the building with limited lighting and no fucking security and if these and most of these leaders were not background checked most of them were not trauma trained most of them were not like taught how to recognize the signs of abuse in children but they were in charge of so many of us and our parents just dropped us off and thought that we were safe and so when i got into a situation where i you know sneak out a door because no one's paying attention with this boy who i think likes me and wants to like say nice things to me or give me like i don't know i'm 12 or 13 i don't know what because i've also only been taught abstinence so i didn't really know what to expect and then i get pinned against the wall with this 200 pound wrestler's arm across my neck just not able to get away and then i come back inside and i come back inside like obviously traumatized yeah and no one believes you yeah and it's like this should never have happened in a children where adults are in an environment where adults are in charge of children this shouldn't be allowed to happen you if a school if that ever happened at a school think about the outrage that would ensue think about the protocols for safety in in grammar schools and junior highs and stuff like you can't go onto a school campus if you're not like a parent or someone who has been reported as someone allowed to pick up a child like why was it why was it that we were so ill supervised and and poorly taken care of that i was able to be sexually abused multiple times 40 feet from an adult who is supposed to be taking care of me yeah it's super and even be the one asking for help to the right people and having them make you the problem yeah i was constantly that was a repeated thing was like well you just you're asking for it literally people saying that like let's pray and repent that was a big one too is i would be like hey this guy did this to me and i don't feel like i didn't want it and now i'm worried that i'm gonna be an unwrapped present for my husband and they'd be like well you have to repent because you're sure it was too low cut so you tempted him literally those were the conversations i was having at like yeah you're saying it yeah well that's exactly what it is exactly what it was yeah i'm um so sorry that you had to go through that i also just love you like name making like saying the names of because these people are still in leadership yeah they're still running the same churches god so many of them have daughters uh new new kids that are now taking the spots that we were in but yeah this is real sexual trauma sexual abuse in the calvary chapel church here in sonoma county um that to this day has been swept under the rug right and still not acknowledged as being what it is right which is like all the things you're talking about the awareness of what sexual abuse and children are how does abuse look what does psychological trauma look like what do you do when a 13 year old girl comes to you and says this just happened right like one of the points that you made about how none of these leaders or adults are you know trained on these aspects of child psychology or child care most of them are like you know like in our experience it would be like oh this person got off heroin two years ago gave their life to christ and now they're a youth pastor like a youth facilitator at a at a camp right and they and so it would be really and we saw a lot of that because we were pastor's kids and so we would see like weird shit behind the curtain and you know until we were older until i was older i'd be like yo dude this is weird i didn't even clock it as weird until much later because you're so blinded with the idea that the church is all good and all knowing and anyone involved in the church is all good and all knowing and all their words are all good and all knowing and so you'd see someone yeah just got out of prison for being for being a not even a meth addict an actual drug dealer and all these crazy things but that was my past before i got saved i got saved in prison and so now they're good people and then you hear terrible terrible things that they do to people uh in the future and you're like well why did we think this wouldn't happen so then yeah and so then you're like 13 14 these things have happened and then you told us in the beginning of our podcast that you and your husband didn't like leave the church until you moved out of the county which means that you lived with this trauma was this trauma brought up to your family was this something you brought up to your parents or was it like hidden in that way so it was hidden from them and i wish that it hadn't been because i actually think they would have done something because when i was so i were after a couple of years of like going through that and then also trying to get help from my leaders who felt more approachable than my parents because when i would go to the leader and say hey this has happened it would be like well you did something wrong so then i was of course not going to go to my parents if this leader was going to tell me i was doing something wrong just think of how mad my mom and dad would be yeah and so i just like repressed it and so the rest of my high school experience and then early into college um it was repressed and then when i went to and i guess this is also really common in sexual trauma instance when i went to college and went through like a big life change of like moving into a dorm and like experiencing living on my own i started to have like horrible night terrors where i would remember a lot of what was happening or like have a dream version of it and then because my mental health was so was suffering so much um i told my parents and they were like they're of course devastated no no parent wants to hear that that happened to their kid in a place they thought they were safe and so my dad was like who was it and i was like you're gonna go to jail i'm not gonna tell you but my dad was like fully ready to kill someone good that's yeah that's called that's called love yeah yeah no he was he was super properly pissed and my my mom had um my mom had a really rough upbringing and and so she was like okay we're gonna get you into therapy and we're gonna get you help that you need so i got help and i got um i got therapy at that point and that was really good um that was a christian therapist it was a christian therapist but they were licensed they were like okay okay they always like to make that point it was a christian therapist but they were properly licensed and and and agreed that this was not my fault they were not um of the same camp that the leaders were in um i'm just gonna like clear so i can see yeah we have we have Kleenex here in studio if i could transfer them to you i think i have some in my office somewhere but that's okay um tears are much tears are accepted here it's called purging it's a beautiful thing it's uh it's cathartic it's good i i knew i would probably cry but it like i just think it's too important to talk about this stuff to like let that stop from sharing um but yeah so it wasn't until i was like 19 that i told my parents um so yeah i went through all of that like pretty silently and alone for most of my junior high high school experience um but like i just repressed it you know i was the president of the jesus club um i ended up getting a job with jews for jesus um i worked as an intern with them so i'm jewish uh on my father's side and my dad and uh our family is really involved was really involved with jews for jesus um and i got involved with jews for jesus my junior year of high school and i would like spend my summers doing missionary campaigns in like new york and san francisco with them and then um i was on track to become a jews for jesus missionary um that was the plan they helped me get into moody bible institute and go to seminary in chicago um and while in seminary in chicago my husband and i started dating and there was just like it was like and i dated a lot of guys in the past i had a lot of there's a lot of unhealthy relationships that followed all that sexual trauma yeah that's what i was going to ask you yeah like but keep keep talking but i do have a question about that too yeah so there's a lot of unhealthy relationships that follow that sexual trauma but by now i'm like 20 21 and i've met my husband well i've reconnected with my husband we actually met at youth group many years prior um he and he was just a very quiet like introverted boy um but like i'm gonna marry you someday but yeah anyways uh so we started dating when i was at moody bible institute and that's that was looking back one of those experiences that was like oh that was chipping away at the facade that was got expelled from moody bible institute for wearing pants to chapel too many times and yeah it's always closed for me the clothes really just like dude your clothes man it was inappropriate and they wouldn't they didn't moody bible institute was more about like it was more about i think rule following than it was clothes and i've always um i don't know i don't know if you find this a theme in your life but i have a serious authority problem and so if someone's like you can't do this you can't do this and i'm like well why not i don't see a good reason why i can't wear pants to chapel this is ridiculous yeah and so i wore them in protest and then they were like you're not allowed to come back next year um wow damn i mean it was all of the chapels that i did wear pants to so it was a blatant disregard for the rules but it did feel stupid um it was very good for me though i'm glad i didn't say a moody bible institute but anyway so then i got expelled from moody bible institute and i moved to like israel and i left um israel in the middle of my mission trip because all hindsight i was having like a trauma response to proselytizing to jews in israel screaming at me because i was like this is not right they don't want this message why are we sharing it um and i was just like i want to be with my boyfriend i want to go home and so i went home and they all thought that i was like a failure running home to a boy who now i'm married to for a decade so i feel like i made the right call yeah right yeah it was like but it was just like a lot of it was just like listening to my inner voice and like i don't i didn't know what it meant at the time but at the point where i started following my inner voice the things that i actually wanted started to happen that was the original question sorry yeah i i don't know that that was amazing i think you just gave us like a kind of a snapshot of your teenage into young adult life right and then you and your husband were married and then you guys moved you know like nine years ago and here we are and um i know the last nine years have probably been packed with or eight and a half or whatever been packed with a lot of healing which i want to get to at some point um and like the fact that you just you know that your dad's israeli you moved to israel right our parents have been to israel many times they take the church to israel every other year except right now right because of um and so i think like christianity and its connection to all the conflict going on now is significant right and we have seen that's been a huge conflict just with more zach and the parents than me because i'm like we don't talk okay so that's just the way it goes um but um and so you have like a direct connection to like this this really interests right it's in our country we see the connection to israel and war and religion and like how these things intertwine and um but just yeah go for it oh i was just saying the last time i was in israel was during the last conflict in gaza so it's interesting that the last time i was there it was not the level that it's at now but i just remember sitting on the rooftop of my apartment building in in tel Aviv and with my two friends who had just gotten out of the idf and we were yeah we were super drunk and we were counting missiles as they went over the apartment building 24 one night wow yeah that's that's i guess i just have to ask like how do you feel about that now like where are you at with that now oh um so i'm not a zionist there's a lot of people who conflate uh being jewish with being zionist um and so i think nanya who's a monster um i i definitely i think i probably have a deeper understanding of what has led it to here then what like largely the media has portrayed but ultimately i see it as genocide and i think it's wrong and i'm heart broken for all of the families in gaza i'm heartbroken for my friends who are in israel having to serve in a war they don't believe in and i'm um i would really like to see reform in israel and um i believe israel is currently an apartheid because i lived there and that's what it was so say it as it is i love it yeah well you have healed to be to come from your from to come from your background like genetically your bloodline to the christian church calvary chapel's impact on israel you going and being a jew for jesus the hearing you say that is god damn you've had a full circle right of just what an experience i mean i think a lot of this experience teaches you to just say fuck it and say the things that you know are true because like the alternative is horrible suffering and mental language and to listen to that inner voice that that inner voice inner voice throughout all of your upbringing in the church you're told to reject that inner voice because the self is so hated on in that you listen to jesus pray to jesus but your inner voice deny yourself so you start to deconstruct and you're like this inner voice is telling me that you are bad yeah so i'm gonna believe it and there's also part of that healing right that's like like for me and i'm not gonna put this on anybody else but i see the correlation with a lot of healing in life not just with religion but that we hate our pasts we hate our past selves because we see ourselves being like culprits in that same bullshit or that same genocidal way of thinking without but like you have to go through that self-hatred to realize that like the only way you heal from that is to love even that person right into like yeah oh that's a really hard thing to get to like getting to that place i've only recently like probably in the last year or two gotten to there me too my mine has been literally in like the last two years so i'm right there with you you're talking about loving your younger self like love like learning how to truly love yourself all of it yeah all of yourself it's difficult to get off addiction to get off alcohol like abuse to get to heal from sexual abuse of your past the trauma maybe the trauma you inflicted on other people right part of that is you have to love all of yourself to get to a place of feeling safe enough to love others fully yeah right and to have to be that light and to shine um and that is a goddamn process yeah it really is it totally is absolutely you talked about dissociation and i want to like just um emphasize you know a lot of the reason why you're here right is that your story is hopefully a avenue for parents or even other kids to be like oh my god my experience matters i need to like or whatever or maybe to keep from these experiences happening but i too have suffered from disassociation and i was never perceived as somebody that was quiet i was always very loud very obnoxious and always in your face about what i you know my way or the high deck and but deep down inside there was a lot of experiences i had to from my childhood that led to other experiences in college right that were like traumatic sexual experiences to where i was incapable and i was just talking to my wife this morning about this to try to prep for our podcast because i was talking to her about some of my experiences and like and i was in some of my like high school and college experiences was like incapable of saying no to people in some ways that led to more trauma that i dealt with later in life and you were talking about like these sexual abuse experiences that you had as a kid in the church like 12 13 years old and 14 looking for help in the church right the only people that you knew to go to and they're not offering you any support and they're causing shame this is your fault it's your fault this happened to you and so the way out of survival it sounds like right what happens is you then when something else happens in life you know like which tend to happen like we almost found ourselves in more dangerous situations because that's kind of all we knew so it was like this is what love is like this is how it goes and then you like were incapable i was incapable of saying no to certain people and something would happen and so in high school and college did you experience that too where you were like having experiences where you would disassociate later in life not not later in life that i actively remember but the the idea of not being able to say no and setting being able to set boundaries did follow me throughout um college in my my younger adult years um and i i've like analyzed that a lot and i think for me it came down to part of that denial of self messaging that we receive is like if i'm going to continue to deny myself that part of that involves ignoring your intuition and your inner voice right so when you get into a situation that's dangerous you are literally not equipped with the basic tools of humanhood because you've been suppressing them for so long to wrecking to like be able to give yourself the ability to say no and so while i definitely put myself in dangerous situations i just ended up not being in dangerous situations with dangerous people like there are definitely times where i would like you know run off with some dude that i just met to go hook up and i totally could have been killed in hindsight in the way that i did it because i didn't tell anyone where i was going i didn't like have someone tracking me on their phone or anything like any of the things i would recommend to a friend now like when my friends who are single are dating we have like a we have like a protocol is like they'll be like okay we'll send you know share your location with me and text me the addresses of where you're going and what time you think you'll be leaving because that's just what you do with people you care about and those were not things i was practicing or things that i was taught to practice and so like while i didn't end up in really dangerous sexual situations in college i mean i ended up in shitty ones where it was not a fun time because i didn't know anything i didn't end up receiving further trauma later from it it was all isolated to my formative years at least that i remember yeah it did it did manifest in the form of having really terrible boundaries as a in my professional life because things that were like morally wrong with employers i didn't know how to say no to because i was so much about servant work and denying yourself yeah yeah yeah no yeah okay yeah exactly yeah you're speaking my language i really relate i relate to the this idea of boundaries boundaries one of the ways that i resolved like when i kicked back against the church one of the ways i felt like at 17 18 19 20 21 like those like the first real five years that i was breaking free it was like anything that the church told me was a sin right this idea of denying myself or whatever like i was like no this is my body i get to like it was all about experience if i haven't experienced it yet then how am i supposed to know for me it's bad or good and there's a lot of bad shit you can do in life that's really not good for you yeah and i would be like i have to do that because they told me everything was bad and how am i supposed to know and i would put myself in like you know not like there was some dangerous things but same idea lack of boundaries and then something would happen and i would be like filled with shame and guilt the same shame and guilt that was like embedded in me even ever all of my childhood and but i was my own youth pastor i was my own bad you know like facilitator at a camp you know like for many years it was like now look what you've done nathan repent for your you know what you've done to yourself and i would just beat myself up and beat myself up you know the culture gets embedded in you it's it's it does until you officially start to deconstruct right until you actually start the process of being honest with yourself and hopefully having a professional like work through it or whatever have friends or somebody that can relate professional yeah when did you start getting this help like when did you when did you really start the deconstruction and start to learn these things so the like a lot of it came around so i was i think that would we moved in 2014 that would have been around 2015-16 is when i started to really deconstruct and then like a lot more around 2018 um i think 2018 is when i was really like the shackles are off like this was wrong this was an entire like i am i am not a slave to this experience and like this is something that happened to me but i don't need to be a victim and that's like when i really started to like go to therapy talk about it with the therapist work through it explore what my understanding of my own faith and upbringing was um and at that point like what was really interesting is like when i when you like threw off the shackles of christianity or whatever how many other things opened up to me so that year like 2018 um was probably like the big year and my husband and i decided that like look we have one life there's like nothing is guaranteed we've been through all this shit we've worked our asses off doing this thing that the church told us to do you know get a job be a good servant be a good neighbor be a good spouse you know um ties participate in these things and none of it's really served us so why don't we figure out what we want to do so we sold our house and everything we owned and uh started traveling the world full time and that was probably like that was like foldy's construction mode is like if i'm not going to limit myself to these things what else can i do like where what what limiting beliefs are have been put upon me that i can deconstruct and so we just tried all of them at once i don't know if that was the right way to do it but it was really good and so that was further like further down the rabbit hole of like diversity and experience traveling the world going to other countries seeing how other like christian evangelicalism isn't like unique to america but it is really really prevalent here in a way that it isn't in other places um and so it was really interesting to get that experience like you know how you've talked in the pod about like people that you know who grew up christian and had like a nice childhood without right significant religious trauma which sounds impossible to me but yeah totally but yeah so i think that that was probably 20 like 2018 is when it was like all right let's blow it all up and see what happens so what's your what's your spirituality now you've deconstructed do you have any spirituality like yeah um kind of i i guess i'm like an agnostic ethnically jewish intuitive witch that's just your linkedin right there i'd have to make a separate linkedin for that that brand yeah yeah hard to fit that in with what i do for work yeah i want to get into more of the witch part but um did you say i want to hear you right you said that you and your husband like went through other religions and wanted to see if you believed in those two or so he didn't i did like i looked into like buddhism i looked into judaism i'm still looking into judaism i guess just like trying to learn well judaism is beautiful because i'm learning more about all religions in a different way from a feminism divine femininity standpoint i'm reading this book and i just finished a chapter on actual like like uh like familial ancient jewish practices and like the connection to planet earth and how god is a mother like god is a woman like i was just like there's so much i was just like oh my god this is like i had no idea and so yeah judaism is way better than christianity i don't know why dad left it i feel like it was better deal like i really wish i would have been raised like i don't know if i would have appreciated it the way that i do now but i wish i would have been raised more jewish like we were raised with jewish culture like we celebrated the holidays i went to my grandparents house for shabbos like at least once a month like i speak some hebrew i speak i speak a decent amount of hebrew like i can read hebrew um like and part of that was seminary right but um but yeah no i so i'm i guess i've explored judaism i've explored buddhism i've explored like witchcraft which really isn't a religion it's more of like a practice um it's not viewed like you can be a religious witch and be like wiccan which is a religion but you can also just like think crystals and sage are fun and be which they are and they matter and they work when you're traveling the cosmos let me tell you yeah and witchcraft is beautiful same with like voodoo and everything that we were raised to think is demonic and hateful when it's actually a lot of it actually if if not all of it is focused on love for the most part and yeah giving more love to the world and gaining more love and isn't it interesting how they twisted it like how we were told that it was this terrible thing and then when you like actually experience it you're like i don't see why we were so upset about this yeah yeah it's i mean i think the main they do that because colonialism is a powerful fucking thing that's been around forever and colonialism is happening right now and so that's why once again for our listeners juda judaism is not zionism okay thank you um and but i was like i wanted to make the point that i when i first left the church you know and i was like kicked out and living on my own one of the first classes i took at the junior college before i transferred to the university for nursing school was world religions tough class and the reason why i wanted to take it was because i was on a search like when i left christianity i was like i couldn't just leave religion i was like then what do i believe right i was so angry at god i was angry at my parents but i was like okay so then islam is beautiful love islam judaism is beautiful i love judaism like buddhism totally like daoism took me over and hinduism and i was like i'm going to believe in all religions and i just became like this super like in my head until i realized you know you know maybe you don't have to be searching for like you know it seems to be like a common theme and people that are radicalized is when you come out of a radical group you immediately attach to something else more radical because it feels so safe right because it's like it's so scary to not have something to like have a religion and so i totally i went on a similar path i was just like yeah i had a therapist describe it as like because i was doing that and i had a therapist like block it and she was like you know just because we've removed this giant thorn from you doesn't mean we need to put another one back in and i was like wow you're right it's like that's what it was it's like we walked around with this like big gaping wound of of like be like stabbing us in the heart for our whole lives and then we remove it and you feel like you need to put something back in there but really you just need to heal yeah like you need to have surgery you have open heart surgery you know you need to have bypass and surgery and it's don't just put a band-aid yeah it's hard not to turn everything you do into some sort of religion now at least that's something i struggle with everything i find passionate it has to be i have to be like religiously passionate about it or it's not a value yeah yeah it's like yeah i think that it's it's interesting that that's like a thing that you've both experienced too because i don't know like the hyper perfectionist high performance mentality of like yeah but i think we get you know the messaging you get of like using your talents for the greater good and and for god's glory and um like not wasting gifts and um you know do all and thing do all things unto he who has made you like to glorify him like that messaging gets carried over into other interests in life and there are people did you know there are people who just have interests that they're not obsessed with in unhealthy what we're trying to find them but we just have so much conversations with religious trauma individuals that we're all the same there's people on our podcasts like forest benedict was one on our podcast who literally was like during the podcast there was like a mistake that happened and we were like okay don't worry we'll take that out and he was like or don't and we were like what leave the mistake and like we definitely have already over done it to a certain point with our podcast right because we we want to film in 4k we want to be the cleanest podcast people have ever seen and so when things start to go a little wrong it stresses us the fuck out yeah sometimes because which is always good practice for us to be like wait a minute what are we really doing here yeah like what are we doing here on our podcast like what the point is to have this and that's it yeah and however it happens is how you know what matters but totally i am there's benefits and curses to being a perfectionist for sure yeah well i guess i imagine for you guys because you are pks there's like your life was a very long performance for other people in the church like you constantly must have had to perform i mean i was in worship team and like various places of leadership and i felt that way so i can't imagine how much harder it would have been to be the child of the person leaving leading the church and living in the fishbowl there's definitely like a i don't i don't consider these things like tiered i just think that christians i don't want to blame all christians i'm not i'm trying to do that way less and i'm trying to accept and surrender to this people's choice to find their own beloved but like radical christianity i feel like are victims there's a lot of victimizing that happens as christians so anything when you're you're at a public school and you're like a radical christian you're like you were leader of the christian club at yours i was president of my christian club in junior high and so we like chose to be leaders performative in every area of our life because every time we walked under the world this was the world that we weren't supposed to be in yeah so it was like wow everyone around me is worse than me so i better perform with my teachers with my lead like i was always trying to be the best and it was on it was on a level of extreme for sure in our in my experience of the family but i saw that and the thing that i was jealous of is in our youth group i would see kids come to the youth group and their parents didn't give a fuck about like yeah them and how they lived and i'd be like god that must be so nice yeah like anyways because they would look up to me as being the example right and i'd be like i want to be you because you just you don't even get to like you don't have to try yeah like i have to pretend to pray right now you know like so it was i was performing for the good christians in the church too and that's where it was a level of like definitely yeah intense yeah totally yeah i don't know for sure i know wow um so then hold on i have a question um wait you have a question i have a question no i have a question okay fine i'm gonna take it over take the reins go for it um so you and your husband you guys deconstruct i think you said you're like 23 22 somewhere around that time 2014 that's 15 yeah somewhere around there um what was the response from your friends and family from you leaving your faith i didn't tell my family for a while because we were 1500 miles away my parents moved to colorado um which was very advantageous as a newly deconstructing ex-evangelical christian um that i didn't have to deal with them on a regular basis um and so it wasn't until like the christmas of the following year after that like that corner stoplight conversation matt and i had where i told my mom and i was like my mom was talking about spiritual warfare um and i think she was talking in the context of like something political that was happening this would have been this would have been right before i think the trump elections would have been when this was happening and i i was like commenting on something terrible that had happened and my mom was just like it's spiritual warfare and i looked at her and i was like no that's bullshit mom and first off she was shocked that i cursed and second of all she was like what do you mean i was like i don't believe that she's like you don't believe in spiritual warfare and it's like mom i don't believe in god and she just mouth open and and just kind of like quietly got up and left the room and then i quietly got up and left their house and that was the end of that conversation and so um that was when i told my parents that was how i did it is we were having an argument okay i don't believe in this anymore and then we both left the room and so was they didn't really acknowledge it they were definitely struggling like they they tried to you know invite me more to church when we would come out to visit but again i had the advantage of being physically very far away and having a very healthy community of friends and like chosen family back in portland so it was like i think that would like if anybody who's listening to this is deconstructing like you need to go make friends like it's very hard when you're not in the same building every week once or twice a week doing the same things praying to the same god it's very scary but you need to go out and make friends because if i didn't have the relationships and friendships that i have i don't know how i would have done this um but yeah so that's how they reacted they're not they weren't super stoked about it they didn't really like it but they also didn't like disown me um or anything we just have like very fundamentally different views on what things are okay and what things are not okay and uh i think you've talked about how we you have like a no politics religion policy with your family and that's kind of our we try yeah it's tough yeah that's my rule that's nate for me yeah that's been that way for a few years now and it's just been flawless but yeah that's that's has a different relationship so he's got his own process of that yeah i get myself in trouble a lot yeah i put myself in really really bad circumstances i think because my parents so like my family since you know we're here um my family my parents met in alcoholics anonymous so that's how they came to faith actually um interesting so their faith is very tied to their sobriety they've both been sober um so i'm 32 they've both been sober 36 and 38 years which i'm very proud of them for and that's amazing um but christianity is what they subbed in for yeah that addiction and arguably healthier than all the nose candy my dad was sniffing and all the drinks my mom was drinking and i'm very glad i didn't grow up with active um at people active in their addiction as parents they were sober when they had me but like those people never went away they just got sober and so um in some ways my parents are really like understanding because they're like hey like you know be a lot worse you can be a drug addict but um they also deal with a lot of people who aren't christians on a regular basis my dad owns his own business um and like he doesn't like he doesn't have a christian client requirement or anything so like they interact with the world a lot more i think than like a pastor's family would um yeah so they mostly just were like okay how do we have conversations with you now that we don't talk about like your mission trips with jews for jesus or your what you're getting involved in at church so it's like some awkwardness and finding common ground again but overall it was pretty good um they still try and they would get mad when i wouldn't want to come to church with them when we come to visit um we'd go to visit them in colorado and they're like okay we're all going to church let's go and i'd be like no i remember my mom multiple times getting really upset about that she's like well you're a guest in my home i was like yes i am and if that's gonna be a problem i'll leave and she just wasn't expecting that response so like you know but that's been so for them i think it's just like they would rather have a relationship with me than um like they know that i'm not coming back to it like i've set those boundaries with them yeah um and so they have it's taken several years but we've gone to a place where they understand that and we do have a really solid relationship oh that's good yeah my parents are really cool people no they sound they sound awesome yeah they sound really cool like they're they're cool people they just like they believe in jesus because jesus got them sober and like i can't knock them for that he just you know and yeah dude i just i mean this is another thing me and my wife talk about a lot is um i would never speak ill of anybody's process of how they heal in their life and how they come to find that their beloved right or their god or what they believe in their spirituality and i think the history of aa is really interesting like if you actually learn who started it and like that marriage and like how it all happened is really interesting but the fact that getting sober is its own thing in christianity those two are two different things right and so when they come together i love how you made that connection that like it especially the cavern chapel and especially the evangelical like radicalism is an addiction that's what radicalism is right and so it's really easy for that we see a lot of addicts get sober and then immediately give their testimony on the pulpit and then are like leaders or youth pastors or something because they're like zealots they're just like i will read this bible every day and i will like you know because it's like they have that addictive gene they've come yeah come from that you know so it's like and then people in the church are like yeah this will be an easy employee thank you you're gonna work really hard yeah for cheap real cheap real cheap and uh and yeah a lot of child labor but most real addicts um know the fucking darkness in the pits of those places in life so there's a lot of space a lot of space it's been very interesting to watch my parents hold that dichotomy simultaneously like it's interesting to see that it was interesting to see them process that and like live their faith the way that they felt it was meant to be lived but also be like my like we're really close to my non-christian family my my grandparents are jewish my um cousins and aunts and uncles are jewish and like we get together like at least once a quarter with the whole family pretty much and nobody nobody has an argument about jesus usually so like i think they've just been doing it for a long time and so they're disappointed that i didn't want to stay with it but also they're like we were they were already practicing a life of living in harmony with family who didn't have the same beliefs with them so i think that in that way it's been a lot easier for me um yeah and and you also come from a background of insane immense shame from leadership roles right and so you have a lot of space i imagine in your healing to be like yo i have space you don't have to be okay with me like perfectly i still love you because let's just find some middle ground of love and we can move from that you know that's like what we're that's what we are building with our parents and i feel like i have created a little middle ground it's a tiny tiny tiny but it's there let's just build from that you know and go from there for us the the biggest like i think positive joining force has been the birth of my niece and nephew yeah what is it about those innocent beautiful children that come out and family are like we should just bond over this cute little thing it's i don't know uh it's it's it's really cool i've loved watching like my sis my i have three sisters i've loved watching them like my one of my my sister become a mom and my other sisters be aunties and like seeing my parents be grandparents has been really really rad um i don't know it's just like it's very kids are kids are great kids have this immense ability to heal and they don't even know it yeah it's because they're little gods i think that like there's there's a lot of research that shows there's like this like when you're born like babies and toddlers they don't have any sort of grasp of anything really so they're just receiving and receiving and receiving most children unless there's unfortunate like genetic like faulty things that happen through birth or whatever like have nothing but light and love right like most children will be really upset if you kill an ant or destroy a bug right and that doesn't start to develop until you're like a little bit older and so there's just that you cannot deny that innocence and there's glory in that like little pocket so that's beautiful i had the same experience with my son one of the things that brought me and my parents back together and to have any any form of a relationship at all was that traumatic experience of being like rushed into fatherhood and it was not an easy process reconnecting with my parents and it's you know in some ways it still isn't but like he was this sort of like bridge that was like you and i will not agree but we have to figure this out because there's this beautiful little two-year-old that needs our family to figure this shit out and he deserves it yeah and the four of us fucking figured it out you know and it was like wow this is what support feels like it was like limited support but it was still like you know a really beautiful thing so we'll keep going here a little bit longer because i'm really curious when you started to get into your like real healing journey i heard you talk about a therapist so do you you have a current therapist now that you are actively um talking to or seeing yes yeah i am current therapist i'm on i'm on medication i'm fully uh full i fully bought it into mental health care good good for you and go for it no go ahead no you go ahead i was just uh how often do you see your therapist this is like a therapist you've seen for a long time or so this most recent one is actually new because my health insurance changed um but every other week yeah i know it's a bummer but um yeah every other week we have a therapist you're on on meds um we don't have to talk about the meds i mean i don't have anything to hide i'm just because we we and zach talk about we were on we've been on meds we came off meds now we are big believers in plant medicine and zach uses plant medicine on a more like you know um religious more more like a prescribed way i do plant medicine and more of a retreat and send me through the cosmos so i can see myself as god type of way we're big big believers in psychedelic therapy big big believers in therapy therapy big big believers in music therapy art therapy this is therapy for us all the therapy exercise like so i'm just like uh eating all of it like there's so many things i do in my life now that are like part of my medicine bundle that help to keep me soft and help me feel like spiritual right and to re-invite spirituality into my life and yeah i'm just curious what you're doing and how are you doing what are you doing now in your life that is you know spiritually healing for you um i this might so there's a few things i have like so obviously therapy um i was diagnosed with cptsd um but also panic and anxiety disorder so um which might be something that is genetic it might be a result of trauma um but basically the chemicals in my brain don't balance out naturally on their own so i'm on a mood stabilizer which was amazing to get on i remember after like a week of being on it having something trigger me that would normally have sent me into a tailspin and it didn't i was like whoa this is what normal people feel like um and then just like things that i do i love uh i love gardening that is like a really therapeutic practice for me um like we i have uh i don't know if you can see it but i have like all my little seeds over there yeah you're a good company here i love gardening so i love gardening i love growing i love growing food particularly there's something very satisfying about growing your own produce and harvesting it i love i love like cooking um and i do pottery and weaving as like regular like therapeutic practices i guess um but i think the like biggest thing for me that's really been the most healing has been running my own business um what is that with the business oh i so i i have like three um so i have a short-term rental management company um i have a real estate company um and i have a like we just started matt and i just started an online technical course that we are working on to teach like our goal is to teach people how to utilize real estate to realize financial freedom we both work for ourselves we don't go to we don't clock into an employer anymore we don't google that's why i could do this last minute because my time is my own um and i don't have to worry about getting time off work or working around a schedule because i make the schedule congratulations that's amazing thanks and so that's that's mostly like that is the gist of everything that i'm involved in is around teaching people how to realize financial independence through real estate um because that's what's helped us become financially independent and free and in going through the process of building a business there's you have to have a lot of confidence and you have to be able to listen to your inner voice and so that journey has been really therapeutic because particularly in my industry in the real estate industry and particularly real estate investment is very heterosis white male dominant and um some of them are great like my husband heterosis white male amazing human biggest sweetheart in the whole world i mean he looks terrifying if you look at him because he's like six foot three and has like a big old beard and he's like a lumberjack but he is the kindest sweetest man he like believes so much in me and my dreams and is so supportive um but most of the rooms i walk into are like a lot of bros and so being able to like negotiate like i a lot of my job is like negotiating and trusting my gut on negotiations and standing up for other people's financial best interest and in doing that i've realized a lot of healing because it's like when someone treats you poorly in a way particularly men as a woman who grew up in the church i would like i used to like cower and now i like i can i can punch back um and that's been really really empowering and then getting past the place where i could punch back but to get to a place where not only i was able to i guess defend myself but but also just like lead the conversation to the point where there is no argument or fight um to to have it have it be go from the place where you as a business owner start to like you learn how to like negotiate and wheel and deal and you're having arguments and you're working out how to put deals together and and make money to where you get to a place that you are like a strategist and like projecting and forecasting the life that you want that's been the most healing thing is like i regularly we have this thing called magic mondays where in the morning every monday matt and i just take three hours and we have no agenda and we like use that time to like dream that's like what magic mondays are for so we just sort of like follow our bliss to whatever it inspires us to do so sometimes matt will like work on this video game that he's developing or i will like make some pottery and it will like generate this it'll make me remember remember this person that i met the other week that i wanted to find on social media and connect with and so the practice of of being good and making my own income and believing in my ability to do that has probably been the most healing of anything so sorry um that's incredible yeah it sounds amazing big fan i barely hear the microphone punch if y'all ever want to learn about how to make money with real estate that's like my jam well it's yeah it's funny we have a mean megan my wife we and evan's with us every other week my son and then we rent out a small little property to a really good friend of ours and she is getting her real estate license and so i i'm gonna hook her up with you i want to be like dude i just had somebody on the podcast that could definitely help you get your foot in the door and like get this going yeah absolutely i would love to that's really cool i love helping women get into this that is like a big passion that i have my my podcast um is like focused around teaching women and queer people how to get into real estate investment because those aren't rooms where we have like the rooms where those topics are brought up are not rooms that we are um feel very welcoming and so i was like well if i'm not gonna feel welcome in the room i'm gonna make the room and so that yeah that's cool dude that's a mic drop right there dude fuck yeah that's cool i feel like the same people that like tower the real estate realm are also like the same types of people that tower the calvary chapel if not evangelical christianity realm as well uh you mean white cis males white cis males white cis females too but also like in the same context as like the female leaders in the church were under like a male leader yeah i think that's that's just world culture i mean it's like capitalism that that's just i mean and but um i i have recently connected over the last two years so much with my divine femininity which um this last retreat i went on my divine femininity has really helped start like i realize this is like what's helping really heal and my masculinity and coddle my masculinity um and i do believe god is a woman and so i think that like everything mother nature mother ganja grandmother um so much of my own healing has been like trusting that i can be soft with myself as if like i like become my own mother and hold my really toxic masculine teenager in there and be like it's okay you can you can cry with me right and i think that like we are on we are in the era of where the divine femininity is seeping through the cracks it's always been there it's been femininity that has ran the fucking planet who cleaned jesus's body it wasn't the men it was the women no right who's been in the kitchen who's been burying the bodies who's been holding the sick children who's been like capable of like being with a painful situation and sitting in that painful situation women have and so um thank you for like being who you are because um i'm learning my place as a white cis male i don't fully identify as like a straight man anymore but um i really do feel that femininity in me and i think that femininity is in all of us and i think that scares a lot of toxic masculinity and so more women like you and to fill these places and spaces um i'm i don't want to do it i'm done i don't want to i don't want to be any sort of like this is it for us so that's amazing good for you um and also i really connected with you on gardening i have found especially when it comes to spirituality right um there's something about being able to have a seed for like many years and this potential for life and then with the right conditions it not only produces like every little seed looks the same when it breaks that soil and that alone is its own process of coddling and speaking niceness to it and and then all of a sudden that little thing that looks all the same does change into its own form and then produces this life that we can cut throw into the kitchen cook and then eat and be like i did this but really the seed did everything like i didn't really i just got to watch this yeah you provided the conditions and it's like also what's magical is it's the shit it's the compost like it's literally shit that feeds that gives the energy so it's like there's just so much of how our own suffering symbolism yeah symbolism right like the the suffering and the pain that we've gone through as people in the church and everybody that goes through is the blessing to get you to the next part of your life so the shit matters because without the shit there wouldn't be life thereafter and so i think there's a lot that you get from gardening i'm a big believer in that especially from us suffering from religious trauma which you garden too we just don't talk about what you garden too much on this podcast i love gardening it's my favorite fun things i garden the fun things yes that's yeah hasn't been so successful recently but they're tough things to garden yeah but that's that's what's worth it yeah totally okay definitely been healing and plant medicine i have also participated in um i think we were texting on 420 that's when i texted you yep yep and we both live in very cannabis friendly happy places yeah so cannabis is definitely being grown and we are very supportive of the canvas community mother ganja is sticky though and so one of the things we talked about in our cast is like with religious trauma and for our experience you know not having much coddling motherly love at all through the church or anything like that cannabis really did become sort of the motherly love in my life and coddled a lot of my anxiety and panic um and so it's been a battle and a blessing at the same time of learning how to have balance with these things right and like all of that and so um but wow um this has been fucking awesome yeah it's been amazing um anything on the top of your head right now that like from your story or from what we've been talking about like anything that you would just be like you know i want to add this i think i just want to add because i know what comments are coming right like i know who comments on your podcast and things that are said i've i've read them i've responded to some of them i just want to say i just want to say this if there's anybody who has literally walked the walk and talked the talk i very literally spent my entire life and childhood dedicating my life to the lord i went to seminary i was a missionary i probably have done more legitimate evangelizing than most of the pastors at the pulpits that we sat beneath in church i read i can read hebrew and greek i studied at one of the top bible colleges in the world moody bible institute is one of the oldest and most well-respected fundamentalist institutions in the world and you have to qualify to get in there like it's a free university so they only let in people who are exceptionally jesusy so like anyone listening to this who's like uh it's bullshit like i literally did all the right things and at the end of the day the thing that prevailed was that like my inner voice told me it was wrong and i got out and if you're like here denying that or thinking that oh i had a bad childhood or i didn't have the right support or like any of us didn't have like that we don't know what we're talking about i just like when people come with that attitude like i just want to be like i just want to say like i did all the things like i'm not i'm not sitting here as some fallen angel that fell from grace i did literally everything that you're supposed to do and i was still molested and i was still abused and i was still taken advantage of and i was still not taken seriously because this movement of calvary chapel is fucking toxic and it is a cult and the men in charge of it well however well-intentioned or brainwashed they are themselves are culpable and we need to hold them responsible like if you have a kid at calvary chapel petaluma go ask zach best needs what their safety protocols are for their junior high and high school students if you are someone who like suffered abuse under that banner and like you it wasn't your fault and um i would really love to see these orgs lose their not-for-profit status because they're not doing their mandated reporting that they're supposed to be doing to protect kids and innocent people who they are saying they're shepherding and um i would like it all to burn to the ground the end hell yeah love all of that you're speaking our language baby sorry no that was that was a bomb though i was just gonna like just build up keep going keep going we're just gonna clip that we're gonna make it short of that one go for it um put it out there i'm ready for them like no no yeah i'm exactly say that too zach knows i've told him about this i have received no zach has a lot of people that i think not just in your situation but people that he's making enemies but we're not here to call that out as something that i don't even want to i don't want to name drop it's so hard not to name drop sometimes but there's certain people that have told us well uh too close to family there's certain family that like we're trying not to name drop but there's people in our lives that have told us that we're making christian enemies and it's like that that's not a really good look on the christian we have people so so close to us that have said things to us where it's like we would love to name drop certain things but we're just in an odd situation of protecting not only mostly it's like my son's 13 and he has a youtube account and sees our shorts and so it's like and he like has connections to our parents and he considers himself a christian and so there's this like intertwining of just like family with us that are like where we do name drop we name drop all the time but we name drop with our guests like what you're just saying right like we are right there behind you being like and there's like we've had recent calvary chapel people on that we didn't know the names they were dropping because they're from like tennessee yeah the head head honchos calvary chapel pastors at tennessee with these mega churches and we were just like and we're gonna have a guest on in june who's like or july who's like dude i'm going to drop every fucking name in calvary chapel you remember just like yeah let's do it and so but um uh i really appreciate you doing that because um we just stand behind you 100 100 and if you're in the comments uh you heard here folks before we finish this beautiful podcast this wonderful full of gratitude full of light trauma healing and toughness that we've gone through um zachary yes um go for it yeah to all the other people that might be deconstructing right now um do you have any advice maybe something simple maybe something complicated it doesn't really matter but any advice you could give them to help them deconstruct because it is a complicated and tough process if your inner voice is telling you something listen to her she speaks truth um oh that was perfect that was perfect put that in the book that's that's perfect um well thank you so much sorsha for doing this um for being so vulnerable this was great for me too thank you oh i love that absolutely thank you i'm so happy it was but your story specifically um all of our stories are really they're so hard to kind of share right to get to this point and so you being on our podcast and joining us for this means zach are perceived as hetero white cis males right this is how we are perceived in our podcast and so thank you for trusting our space to share such um serious sexual trauma of your childhood you make me feel safer and my experiences being you know a boy at these times going through experiences and being told certain things um i really respect you and i am i'm so happy for where you are in life your businesses your gardening you and your husband's wonderful marriage that the fact that you guys deconstructed together is a rarity and a blessing yeah we got real lucky there yeah and um so thanks again and um can't wait to get this podcast out in a few weeks yeah um but thanks for having me yeah it's been wonderful seeing your face again yeah likewise likewise um anyways thank you everybody thanks for joining the podcast has been episode 74 um which is a very powerful number in the universe that comes up in my life every time it's like 74 is everywhere um and so i feel like it's a really significant podcast episode for you to be on it makes a lot of sense and so um love you love everybody love you zach yeah love you man and until next time bye everybody bye bye