Hello, hello, my lovelies. All right. So this week we actually have a little bit of a switcheroo on this episode because the episode itself has already been recorded. But post-recording it, I just realized some things that I wanted to say to you all before you actually get into the episode itself. This episode is, there's a lot of information in here, a lot of really important information. And I wanted to give you some foundational things before you go into it. So we are going to be talking a lot about Christian nationalism today. And if you are a woman and especially like a woman anywhere in the world, okay, because this is growing in multiple areas, not just in the US. And especially a woman considering divorce, I want you to be educated about this and to understand what's really happening here. I know I didn't before this weekend, I'll talk more about it in the episode, my kind of, you know, finally bringing my head kind of up out of the sand. And it was very illuminating. And I realized, wow, we as women need to understand what this is and how it may impact us. Now, for those of you like me that are like Christian nationalism, I don't really know what that is. I am including a link to an amazing research analysis around Christian nationalism and measuring it. And in it, they used these five statements to help figure out like what percentage of people are in support of this, right? And with each statement, they could say completely agree, mostly agree, mostly disagree, or completely disagree. Now, I want to read those five statements to you because they will really help you understand more clearly what people who are in support of Christian nationalism believe. So the first statement was the US government should declare America a Christian nation. Second was US laws should be based on Christian values. Third, if the US moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore. Fourth, being Christian is an important part of being truly American. And fifth, God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society. Now, for those of us that may not be Christian, this sounds really scary. And for those of you that may be Christian are thinking this sounds great, you really need to go dive into what the people, the main people supporting Christian nationalism, actually define these Christian values as. And you'll you'll see from one of the lawmakers in Oklahoma trying to repeal no fault divorce that it is very different than what you may in your mind think are your Christian values. And in fact, I'm just gonna read a quote right now for you that's kind of gonna drop you right into the middle of what some of the biggest leaders in this movement believe. So I'm gonna quote this politician Doug Mastriano is a prominent figure in the fundamentalist Christian nationalist movement and is called the separation of church and state a myth. Andrew Torba, the CEO of the alt tech platform Gab, supported Mastriano's fellow 2022 bid for office in order to build a grassroots Christian nationalist political movement to help, quote, take back government power for quote, the glory of God. He has argued that, quote, unapologetic Christian nationalism is what will save the United States of America. Torba is also a proponent of the great replacement conspiracy theory, and he has said that, quote, the best way to stop white genocide and white replacement, both of which are demonstrably and undeniably happening, is to get married to a white woman and have a lot of white babies. Yeah. So, y'all, this is not, when we are saying Christian, this is a whole different realm of Christianity. And you'll see I include a podcast episode in one of the links as well, where these two guys go in depth into more of what this act, like kind of dispelling and pulling apart the pieces of Jonathan Beasley and Dudley Rose. Highly recommend listening to that as well. I think you'll find it fascinating. And this is so, like, guys, this is so important to understand because I think a lot of people perhaps voted, in fact, I know they had to have, voted for Trump thinking these were Christian values and not understanding the fascist elements underneath them. And yes, I literally just said that word. I'm gonna explain it more thoroughly in the episode, but we are absolutely seeing elements with this group of beliefs in a natural social hierarchy, in having a dic a dictatorial leader, having centralized autocracy. Uh, we have seen a lot of militarism from people that are strongly within the Christian nationalism movement. So this is so much bigger than I realized, and something that I had really been dismissing before I started researching it. Now, in bringing that right out to the forefront for y'all, why I did this little preview, right? Pre-foundational part to the episode coming is because I really wanted you guys to realize that even though this feels like it is taking over the US right now, only roughly three in 10 Americans actually qualify as Christi Christian nationalism adherents or sympathizers. So in that breakdown, they explained that actually only 10% are actual adherents and 20% are sympathizers compared with the two-thirds of the rest of Americans that would qualify as skeptics at 37% or rejectors at 30%. So even though at the moment it feels like we are in an echo chamber of this, it's so important listening to this episode to realize you are not alone if you do not agree with these ideas. And also just to say if you are seeing this out in the world as well, because on the Wikipedia page, you'll see this is growing in countries not just the US, that it is something we can start divesting our energy from and speaking out about. And why I am not in support of this idea, I mean, there's the Christian nationalism idea, there's so many different facets to it, right? But it is this worldview that America is superior to other country, and that Christians are superior to other people, and that that superiority is divinely established by God, and that the US needs to become a Christian nation. That is the opposite of democracy, y'all. I think that's what gets so confusing when you hear the rhetoric here, because they often talk about loving America, and you know, from what I have learned and seen about America, America, the foundations of our country were built on people escaping religious persecution from a country where the state and the and the religion, the state and the church were one. We came here so that everybody could have rights, everybody could practice religion in the ways they want. This group is not interested in that. They strongly believe that God has called them to make the US into a Christian nation. Now, one of the things that there were two things that after I finished the episode, I was like, y'all need to one, know a little bit more about Christian nationalism, like I just shared, straight out the gate. But first, I wanted you guys to realize before going to the episode that what I saw the most as I learned more about Christian nationalism is that these people are heavily motivated by fear. So over and over and over again, what I saw was that the strongest adherents to Christian nationalism believe they are being attacked by everybody else, believe that the US government is coming after Christians. And isn't it fascinating that when somebody is afraid, what do they do but go out and attack others? So, in listening to this episode and hearing what I'm talking about, I do not want you to go use this episode to create fear back. Okay. This is not for you to now walk around in fear. That will do the exact opposite of what that will be investing more of your energy into this, these systems. And I'm gonna give you a framework for that in the episode. I'll be discussing the drama triangle of being, you know, either a persecutor, a rescuer, or a victim. And ultimately, I really want you guys going into this episode to hold it through the framework that we are gonna be stepping off that triangle and moving into a completely different space of being creators. And this is where we do not fight fire with fire, you know? This makes you think of the when they go low, we go high. We do not go low. And in not fighting fire with fire, this is about becoming water. This is about stepping out of the game entirely and creating a different world, which I really feel like is what I have been so focused on has been the heart and soul of my work over the last, my personal work and my personal life over the past five years. Like stepping away from a world of Mormonism and divorce is the most horrible thing ever. And, you know, single momming is awful and you won't thrive and you'll struggle, and moving into a space where I genuinely get to create my reality. So important. That's one of the biggest visions I want you to have while we're going through this. Also, the second piece that really meant a lot to me coming out of the episode that I realized I needed to emphasize was that yes, it's called Christian nationalism. But after hearing Drew Strait, I'll mention him in the episode, he has this incredible presentation he does for Christians on how to be, you know, speaking out against this. Hearing him and hearing kind of his pain that as a Christian, he is also, you know, at times people are thinking that he is part of this problem. Him explaining that that is not the case, I want to emphasize again that this is only 30% of Americans. Unfortunately, because the president that just got elected is so advised by and a part of this, it can feel like we are now in this echo chamber. But there are many, many Christians who do not agree with these views. That podcast that I mentioned is amazing for just hearing somebody who I believe is at the heart of Christianity, in my view of it, the the teachings of Jesus, they are not Christian nationalism. The teachings of Jesus are about your neighbor being your own. It's about loving others, it's about making space for the disenfranchised, the people who don't look like you. And he'll talk passionately about that in that presentation, about the importance of if you are a Christian and you don't hold these views, speaking out, being like, no, that's not, that's not what true Christianity actually is. And I have to agree, because having grown up Mormon, I'm, I would not say I'm religious anymore, but having grown up seeing the life of Jesus, you know, this was the man who was hanging out with the prostitutes and the tax collectors, like he was heavily invested in the people who were unlike him, in loving everybody, in seeking out the poor and the needy. And I, you know, when I really look at why this movement is happening, it's because there is just a lot of fear. If you'll read multiple articles on this as well, these people thinking that there is this moral decay happening in the US that they need to come after. And to do that, what they are blinded to is that in coming after it, they are taking away individuals' rights to live their lives as they want to, in forcing people, taking away the right to have no fault divorce. They are forcing people to stay in marriages because they believe marriage is morally the best thing when that denies an individual's right to leave potentially a marriage that could be really bad for them. So I want you to hold all of this close while you go into this episode. Most of all, I want you to stay in your body. I want you to be breathing, and I want you to be grounding into that piece of being a creator that I am asking you, I'm teaching you in this episode how to divest, but we're not just divesting and pulling away. We are then investing that energy that we take back for ourselves into what we want most. And not only will I be talking about it through the framework of this bigger macrocosm of this movement that I see happening, but also how that can mirror some of the similar things that may be happening in your relationships at home. All right, y'all. Let's do this. Welcome to the Stay or Go podcast, where we're changing the dialogue around divorce so that no woman ever stays in her marriage out of fear. Get ready to dispel myths, learn life-changing tools, and build a solid foundation in yourself from which to make your decision. And now your host, me, Britta Joe. Well, hello, everybody. Oof. As always, we have got a banger of an episode today. Even though I am a little bit under the weather, uh, this episode has been forming over the last few days, and I just need it to come out today. I need it to be shared. A lot of the stuff I'm going to be talking about has been weighing really heavy on my heart, on my mind this weekend. And I find it's so important when I am in that space to find ways to educate, move that energy, and then also transmute it and put it back out into the world in ways that feel good to me and that hopefully support you guys as well. So if you're wondering what we're talking about, we are going to discuss politics today. Before you jump off, let me just say I hear you in wanting to, you know, tuck your head beneath the sand and not even go near any of this. And to be honest, that's really where I have been since the election. I just needed to kind of completely step back, really not hear what was happening. And then this week, when, or you know, in the past few weeks, when all the executive orders started coming through and people I know were being affected by them, I realized, okay, I need to be a voice on the opposite side. I've just been learning so much about the machine that is creating and stoking so much of this fear. I'm specifically, you know, I don't, these are words that I want all of you to go Google and look up. I'm actually going to be attaching a ton of articles that I read in my research as well in the show notes. But y'all, words like the new apostolic reformation, Christian Dominionism, Christian nationalism, these are forces that are absolutely coming to power in the U.S., um, in power, have been coming to power, and for which we can no longer just want to look away from and assume that their reach, their agendas are not going to impact us personally. And specifically why I'm focusing on this today with all of you is because thanks to one of my women in our community this last week, she posted about a bill in Oklahoma to repeal no fault divorce. And that was where the rabbit hole started for me. Was of course, I went and Googled it, I started reading it. As I started reading it, I was like, oh my God, how is someone allowed to speak in this way about things that seem very inappropriate in my world to make it seem like everybody agrees with these Christian ideas and therefore it should be legalized in this way. And where that led me was down into a really pretty deep dive around Christian nationalism. And boy, do I want you all to be very, very aware of this because in the years to come, we are going to need to know what is happening. And, you know, the heart and soul of this episode is really a call to be divesting our energy from these toxic systems that are coming to play. And especially what I see is these same patterns that are happening and starting to play out on the, you know, big world or US stage are actually very, very mirrored in many of your own marriages. So I found a gem of a video in my perusings down this winding path. It is a ring video captured of a conservative media host and commentator named Steven Crowder. I have no idea who this guy is, but as you'll read in the article, he has quite a few followers for sure. And in this video, oh my God, y'all, I just, as I was watching it, I was like, I cannot wait for my women to see this because I think it's gonna just, for many of you, it's gonna feel so validating to be like, fuck, this is exactly what it's like. You basically see this man, Steven Crowder, narcissistically abusing mentally, verbally his wife, who is like eight months pregnant. I'm just like, oh my God. And why I kind of want you all, so if you're if you're listening to the podcast, I really want you to stop and I want you to go. It's gonna be the first link in the show notes. Really go watch it first and foremost. Because I want most of all for you all to have an actual emotional connection and reaction to what we're talking about, to realize when I talk about Christian nationalism, it can feel like, oh, that's some big word that you don't know, and so this doesn't involve you. No, this episode is to clearly, clearly drive home to all of you that Christian nationalism absolutely is headed towards and planning on directly affecting your life in a myriad of ways as a woman. And knowledge is power. And I deeply want to empower those of us that are going to be affected by this through this idea that I have, right? Of divesting, meaning we are removing our energy from places where we are not respected, we are not appreciated, we are not treated with mutuality. And in removing the investment of our energies there, we can then reinvest our energy into the places that actually are going to become the safeguards, the um, I think of it as like, you know, these places out in the wilderness that we're going to be creating that are going to be communities. In many ways, I think so much of my own community with the women that I have in there, that this is going to matter so much over the coming years, having places that are finding ways to keep channels open, to keep resources available to us as women as we go through the next four years and the years post that. Okay, so hopefully you have paused and actually watched that video that I have listed in the show notes because encapsulated in that video, right? This is just a very small two people in their marriage experience, right? But that really for me epitomizes if you blow it up in scale, what the Christian nationalism movement is about, which is this idea of Controlling and having dominion over other people through this framework of, you know, he talks about her needing to be a worthy wife, needing to be more disciplined. Did you hear that word multiple times? I was like, oh my God, that's so triggering. And one of the resources that I would love for so many of you to also listen to is this presentation a man did. His name is Drew Strait, and he wrote a book called Strange Worship. And in this presentation, it is focused on how to challenge the Christian nationalism movement and build peace in an age of extremism. And why I loved his perspective so much is because as I was going down this rabbit hole, it's easy for your brain to start thinking, like, oh, the problem is, you know, Christianity. That's the issue. And of course, coming from a background of Mormonism, having my own trauma from what I now realize is Christian extremism. Mormonism is definitely a sect of Christian extremism. It was kind of easy for my brain to start like lumping all of them together and like, oh, Christianity is the problem. But hearing this man speak, I just realized, oh my God, no, this is not what the majority of Christians I believe really believe. Those who actually believe in the teachings of Jesus, believe in other people being their neighbors, regardless of race, gender orientation. And he nails in so many ways, explaining what is happening with this movement and provides really beautiful ways for faith communities to start pushing back, right? To start challenging what's being shared. But what I want you guys to understand is we've got these different things happening in the US. The words that I've heard are like New Apostolic Reformation, the Seven Mountain Mandate. Highly recommend, once again, Googling all of these because the agendas of these movements absolutely directly affect us as women. I want, before we dive in, I am going to talk a little bit more about how I am seeing these political examples of this toxic investment that we have right now in these ideas. I want to explain what I mean by toxic systems and relationships. So for me personally, when I am talking about a toxic system, I am talking about a system that is based on power over dynamics. And typically, that is what we as humans, you know, history, past, have used to control others. We use dynamics that are based on fear. These are very one-sided, dynamics that benefit only those who hold the power. Often you'll see that they are non-consensual, they can be very manipulative, oppressive, and fear-based. So that's what I am labeling as toxic systems or relationships versus you kind of have heard this word used on the podcast before by me, versus systems that work on a view of mutuality, which mutuality is where we've got two individuals coming to the table, respecting each other's personal ideas, personal views, and working together through like the shared reciprocity piece. Now, that's why it's so beautiful watching all of this happening like up on the upper political stage, because that's a macrocosm, but we can also take things happening there and bring them back down into the microcosm. So as I'm talking about these things happening on the world stage, you can also be thinking, how is that going to potentially directly affect me in my marriage? And I do want to say that even though this episode, I am going to be emphasizing some political things in the episode, it is not just about politics because this episode at the heart of it is most about where we choose to invest our energy as women, as individuals, and as members of society. And I was so disheartened at the end of Drew Strait's presentation. He shared, he said this beautiful quote where he said, To meet this moment, we need truth tellers, peacemakers, and peace builders, and we need hope makers. And then he quotes Willie Jennings with this quote: Hope is a discipline. It is not a sentiment. So this weekend, as I've been learning more about these ideas, as at times I have felt deeply discouraged, as I have seen the pain that's being created by what I consider are these very one-sided, oppressive, fear-based techniques happening right now in the US, in our politics, by the, by the government, by those in power at the moment. This is exactly what I needed to hear, right? That coming back to being a truth teller, being a peacemaker and a peace builder, that although, yes, I am talking about these forces, ultimately what I'm calling you back to most is the power that you have as an individual in yourself. And that is what I am most excited about is creating these beautiful communities and infrastructures on the ground that no matter how much in the upper government realms there may be things that I don't agree with, that there is still the power of the individual. There is still the power that each one of us have in choosing where we invest our energy. And this same concept absolutely applies to you, all of you, in the process of considering divorce in your relationships. And the question I want you to be thinking of throughout this whole episode is who truly deserves your investment of time, energy, and life force. Now, many of you may not have heard of the word divestment before. This word really kind of came into consciousness for me right after the election. I felt like some key, I can't even remember now who the women were. I think it might have been Glenn and Doyle on her podcast. We're putting forward this idea of this choice that we have to withdraw the emotional, mental, and physical resources that are our right from the systems and people and institutions that do not serve our well-being. And this was like a very interesting shift. I was really fascinated seeing, you know, as I started reading more, as I started understanding more about this Christian nationalism movement and seeing how when Trump got elected in 2018, there was a lot of protests and all of us speaking out, and that with this election, it's been very different. And I think that's because a lot of us feel very discouraged or disheartened and understanding instead that I think what may be happening is that power has not gone away. We are not alone. It's that that power is being retracted from letting our eyeballs, our hearts, our minds be influenced by these people and instead divesting that away and placing it where we want it. So some examples of divestment would be, like I was just saying, you're moving your attention away from the political outrage cycles that can end up leaving you drained. So when I was researching, I specifically was not, you know, just looking up news outlets or I really don't watch the news either, but intentionally looking for commentary that is fact-based, that is giving me real data instead of just the sound bites and the stuff that creates activation in my body and overwhelms me. Another example of divestment would be, and this is one of the biggest ones that I'm highlighting in this episode, y'all, is recognizing when your marriage or any relationship, this can also be applied to friendships. I'm also thinking like work relationships. I have a client right now that also has noticed the same energy that she has in her marriage, in her work relationship. But recognizing when your marriage or any other relationship has become a sinking investment with no return for you. And why this is so groundbreaking, I think, or why, as I say that, some of you may feel some like, ooh, I don't know, in your bodies is because patriarchal systems have conditioned us as women to believe that our energy is infinite and meant for the service of others. So when I speak about you leaving your marriage in terms of leaving a sinking investment that you're not getting a return out of, that is not terms that you guys have probably ever heard used around your marriage. Because when we are raised in the patriarchal system, we don't even question if we are actually getting a return. We don't even stop to go, marriage is an investment for me as well. And am I getting what I need? Am I also being able to thrive and have the life that I deserve? And we tend to, when we talk about our energy being infinite, we tend to give, give, give, give, give, believing that if we continue to give at some point, we will receive. And hopefully, a part of this episode is educating you around being more strategic, not just sitting around hoping and continuing to pour yourself into systems and relationships that are actually toxic for you, because our energy and attention, especially, oh my God, you know, our energy and attention as women are really valuable resources. We have the divine feminine, right? This power that we have in us, you know, even if we don't call it feminine, it's that gorgeous yin energy, the receiving, the dropping in, the being grounded, the being able to hold space for others. That is something that many of us are able to do just naturally. And that is not something that just gets to be allocated to whomever yells the loudest or whomever tells us that they love us the most. I want you to be allocating that resource of your time, your energy, your love wisely. Now, I do want to share because these are some examples, especially uh the one my client brought up about the bill in Oklahoma. I really want to dive into these with y'all because it can, you know, if you're like me and you're not staying aware of what's happening, you're not seeing maybe that much change in your everyday life. And you could think that the moves on the big macro scale of the US's stage aren't actually affecting you. And I will just say, by the way, that for those of you, because I know I have a lot of listeners in other countries, I strongly encourage you still to, because I I really believe, and I'm gonna, I'm absolutely going to use this word now that I've learned more, the Christian nationalism movement is fascism. It absolutely is. So to define fascism for y'all, because I myself did not actually understand what that word means. Fascism is a far right, authoritarian, and ultra nationalistic political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. Y'all, in so many ways, I as I'm reading this, I'm like, fuck, check, check, check. This is exactly what the Christian nationalism movement is wanting. And when some of these examples I'm going to give you, so as we go in, let's just jump right in. You know, it's forcible suppression of opposition. Trump, in these last two weeks, in all of the moves he's made for government employees, 100% that has been to drive out any government employees that are in opposition to his motives and bring in his own people, believe in a natural social hierarchy. The Christian nationalism movement is very white-centric. If you go read or hear what they are saying, it believes that the US was a Christian nation in its founding, that white culture or white history is being suppressed and erased. And through that, right, can you hear how much fear there is created in that? They are then dehumanizing other people. So Trump's executive orders around immigrants. If you go read the wording on those, you can see very clearly that this is an all-out technique of dehumanizing people and making an us versus them scenario. And then also when it talks about subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, this is where I want to drop in to this bill in Oklahoma. So if you go read, I'll have it linked below. Highly recommend going and reading this article, which the article is written by a pro. You can tell it's it's pro in favor of the bill. But the man who put forward the bill in it, you can hear the way he is talking, and you hear like they'll often talk about moral decay. They dehumanize people on the other side by calling, you know, the far left's march through our institutions to destroy the moral foundations. They often talk about the United States being a Christian civilization that has long had these beliefs. And the heart and soul of the bill, he says, is to restore the sanctity of marriage. But when you dig into the details of the bill, you realize this is a classic example of legisl legislatures controlling women's lives rather than addressing the real social problems, which for me, right, as someone who boots on the ground sees what is happening in marriages that are in the moment of considering divorce, forcing people to stay married isn't gonna do shit. I just want to say that loud and proud. This legislature basically saying that what's most important is restoring the sanctity of marriage by forcing people to stay in it, provides no actual solutions for the real issues that have led people to considering leaving the marriage in the first place. Just forcing people to stay isn't going to fix that. And I really think that I've said on the podcast before, when we look at the numbers, women overwhelmingly, usually 60% of divorces are initiated by women. Therefore, bills going against no-fault divorce are in direct attack of women. Now, in this bill, it was very interesting, it's got like eight different sections, but one of the sections that I found fascinating was the section called the Covenant Marriage Act. And this marriage act would allow for couples in Oklahoma to opt into a quote, covenant marriage based on the traditional understanding of marriage as a binding legal contract with meaningful vows to one another. Covenant marriages would only be able to be dissolved in cases of abuse, adultery, or abandonment. And couples who opt into a covenant marriage would be eligible for a $2,500 tax credit. Y'all, if this is not right, fascism, right? The using of the government to prop up and support certain ideals at the suppression of individual interests, I don't know what else is. I mean, even so far as to go that tax credits would be given as incentives to get people to enter into these marriages that are much harder to get out of. And I just have to say, right, in the case of abuse, adultery, or abandonment, y'all, it is gonna be a shit show trying to prove that because we already know when they say abuse, they don't take into account emotional or verbal abuse. And if you read the document on that video I showed you guys at the beginning with Steven Crowder, that is shown so clearly down in the article where you can see the minimization, the him playing the victim, him making it seem like the way he treated her wasn't abusive. Because we still, as many of you know in the US, as many of you have programmed into you, seem to believe that unless somebody actually hits you physically, it's not abuse. Now the other piece in this bill, actually, I just gotta add this part in. I just saw it on my notes. So this is the other thing. The covenant marriages would require mandatory counseling and have to prove serious fault for divorce, which I just have to say, this is another attempt to trap women in unhealthy marriages. Because, as so many of you know, often when you are at the point of considering divorce, marriage counseling can actually be more destabilizing and destructive for your mental health. I also have to say, this whole idea of covenant marriages just sounds to me like such a way to trap young girls, right? These women who get married in their young, early 20s, me included, right? I got married when I was 19. And back then, I believed divorce is never an option. That is literally what I got married on. I absolutely probably would have been one of these covenant marriages if this was a law that actually got passed back then. And I would have been fucked 12 years later when I woke up to my patriarchal programming and realized this is not a fit for me. I have married someone I only knew for three months. Oh my God. So the other part of the bill is this section that prohibits the no-fault divorce. And let me just read to you what this actually means. So it says this bill would end no-fault divorce in Oklahoma by removing, quote, incompatibility as a justification for divorce, leaving, so these are the only things that you could get divorced for: abandonment, gross neglect, extreme cruelty, habitual drunkenness, insanity for a period of five years, adultery, unknown pregnancy, and fraudulent contracts as the available justifications. Like, what the fuck, y'all? Are we going back to the 1800s? You can only divorce your husband if there's been insanity for a period of five years. Like what? And get this. It also establishes that the at-fault parent must pay restitution to the victims of divorce. That is the children, in the form of a trust fund that they get access to when they turn 18. Like, what on earth? This okay, so I have an article, a couple articles actually, that I'm also linking in the show notes below that are going to dig into this, and I highly recommend them. There's an article from a divorce coach discussing what a shit show it will be if we get rid of no fault divorce. And she provides lots of great data around how much actually no fault divorce helped massively. Yes, when no fault divorce was passed, we did see an increase in divorces, but as she describes it, it was a backlog of divorces and then it leveled back out. But what it did reduce was the exorbitant amount of fees that people were having to pay to attorneys to get divorced. Because if you have to prove that your spouse, how am I gonna prove gross negligence? How am I gonna prove extreme cruelty? If this was the case now, I would not have been able to get divorced because it would have drained me dry, money-wise, trying to prove that I deserved to leave because I didn't have any of these things, right? I was just deeply unhappy and didn't want to be married anymore. So there's the article from the divorce coach, and then there's also an article that goes into the depth of how Christian nationalism actually affects women. Guys, go read this. We all, I want all of us to be educated on what is happening in our nation. Thinking of that quote that's like, I will not go quietly. No, we are not going back. We as women are not going to just let our rights slide away. Because, as it talks about in this article, also, Christian nationalism is huge. They want to repeal women's rights to vote, and they deeply believe that women's places are in the home. I mean, they have even gone so far as to say that a woman, either she Needs to be ruled by her husband, but if she's not married, then she needs to be ruled by her parents. Y'all, right? Also, she even mentioned in that article that they want women to not be able to get divorced until they've had the baby in the first video that I showed you guys. That woman was eight months pregnant. She technically, with some of these laws, wouldn't have been able to even file for divorce until after she'd had the children. This is so bad for women, especially because women experience higher rates of domestic abuse in situations like this, where divorce is on the table, where there are children involved. And what we saw with no fault divorce was those rates went down. If we take it away, there's a huge chance that those rates will go up. And that directly affects us as women and our sisters. Now, how do we make sense of all of this? Yes, I'm taking you into some of the big things that feel out of our control. Okay. I want to bring it now down into the microcosm, into a really amazing tool that I've shared with some of you through my 90-minute sessions. I'm sharing it now on the podcast. Okay, so I'm linking it below. There is this amazing article by Lynn Forrest called The Three Faces of Victim, an overview of the victim triangle. And actually, what she's doing is she's introducing the drama triangle, which was created by psychiatrist Steven Carpman. And in her article, the three different spots on this triangle are called rescuer, persecutor, and victim. I've also heard them called savior, villain, and victim. So if you look up the drama triangle, you will see a visual of this. And it's so helpful to see it that way. So I want to break down each of these different points of the triangle for you and realizing that when it comes to the drama triangle, each one of these spots is a lose. Each one of these spots is a no-go. And most of us spend our lives circling between these three different roles. And she'll give lots of good examples in the article. I mean, you guys have got such a plethora of resources through this episode today, where you can, you don't have to go search, you can just educate yourselves through this. So in this drama triangle, everybody kind of has a starting point where they start on the triangle. So I'll use myself as an example. My starting point on the triangle is often in the role of rescuer. Okay. And this is when you are being someone that promises to fix everything. Okay. You can also think of this, you know, often people who will fit this role. This is the government, right? Promising to fix everything. You can see religion doing this at times. Maybe your husband has done this at times. People who are like, I've got you, we're gonna fix it. Now, on the other side of the triangle, across from that, you have the persecutor or the villain. And this is who we perceive as, I guess, persecutors. So the thing that defines them the most is unlike the rescuer that goes through the world wanting to fix things for everybody else, persecutors view the world antagonistically. Best example, here it is. So in Mormonism, raised definitely with this idea that we were the chosen people and Babylon was the rest of the world. And so we needed to be very aware and very careful of interacting with other people who weren't Mormon. And we needed to save those other people by preaching the gospel to them. And you'll see what's happened. This is a lot of the Christian nationalism. They absolutely have moved into this persecutor role. They believe that Christianity and white people are being attacked. And in response, they are trying to take over the government. And they are turning, right, through all of the propaganda, people like LGBTQ people, immigrants into the scapegoats. So the persecutor always has somebody else that they're looking at that they are blaming for all the problems. Okay. You'll see this a lot too in the Christian nationalist movement, like blaming women going out into the workforce for family breakdowns. Like if women could just stay home and take care of the kids, we wouldn't have all this problem. Or blaming trans people for what they call the moral collapsing of the US. There's also a lot of like projection and not taking responsibility for their own shit. Which, oh my God, I was talking about all of this with Joe this weekend. I was like, this is so ironic that these people are, they just use so many scary, scary words, like saying that, oh my God, all of the people on the left are pedophiles and sex traffickers. When my personal experience was, guess what? Those people are in religion as well. A thousand percent. My own dad, stories of people that I've known. Yeah. So it makes me think of um this documentary called Relative that I watched, where, you know, we as humans, we love to externalize our problems and get a scapegoat, somebody else that's the problem, when really the issues, what you'll see, are deeply entrenched in our own families often and in our own religions. It's right here. We don't need to be looking outside the house. Now, the third role in the triangle is the victim. And this is God, I think of this as the role that we often slip into, we slip in and out of, maybe we're in very often. This is the role you're in when you believe that you need saving, when you externalize your power and want somebody to come in and fix it for you, somebody to make it all better. Now, when and you know, when we've suppressed both sides, right? When we've suppressed the persecutor, which is typically more of our angry side, or the rescuer, which is more of a caretaker side, and we deny our innate ability to take care of ourselves through our right to have healthy nurturing and to be cared for, and our right to take protective, assertive action, that is also when we are left in the victim state. And I would say, you know, this is someone who does not know how to set their priorities or boundaries and does not nurture or protect themselves. You see that contrast. Now, why is this triangle so important to understand? Because, and I saw this a lot, right, leading up to the election, these ideas that someone is going to come in and save you, right? Being a victim and placing someone in a savior role, which I feel like has happened a lot in the way Trump was seen and the way a lot of people, you know, like, oh, he's gonna come in and just make everything great again. It's really, really dangerous when we get into this mindset because people and systems that we have made rescuers or saviors, when we invest our energy in them, we then are at risk because they can turn from our savior to the villain like that. And I have seen this. So just apparently, Quinn was telling me about someone, some friend of hers on Facebook, who was mentioning that her son, his wife's like pregnant or just had a baby. She just got into a master's program, and he guess what, works for the government remotely. And now they are going to have to leave to move back to Maryland because Trump's executive order says you have to be in the office five days a week. He can't work remotely anymore, or he's going to have to quit his job and stay there. And guess what? These people voted for Trump. Which, as you guys know, if you had gone and listened to that episode I told you guys about a while ago from the podcast Diabolical Lies called The Men Are Not Alright. In that episode, they powerfully make clear why this is, which is that people get caught up in this idea, this person's gonna save me. It's gonna be better for me. And the reality of patriarchy is that most men do not actually benefit from it. Only the wealthiest and most powerful men do, which was so abundantly clear at Trump's inauguration when all those men sitting on the front row, right? Like this seven billionaire inauguration photo that I've seen, all I think there's only like one man that might have not been white, but the rest, all these men with a combined wealth that exceeds that of 170 countries GDP combined. So patriarchy and capitalism do not serve the people. They primarily serve the elite. And this was a perfect on boots on the ground example, right? This man who thought he was voting for something that was gonna help him take care of his family is now potentially losing his job. And I love in that podcast, if you guys have not listened to it, absolutely do. It's linked in the show notes below. I love how they emphasize that really like the only benefit that a lot of men get from patriarchy is the suppression and obedience of women. And y'all, I this part of the other reason I'm doing this episode is to be like, no, I want to be a voice in the world and a resource in the world for saying we are not going back to that. We are not, as women, going to become the punching bags and the dumping grounds when shit starts hitting the fan for patriarchal rage and you know, masculine rage at the way the world is changing. So, takeaway point is we do not want to put our energy out in the space of a savior coming and saving us. We also do not want to be in the space of over-nurturing and caretaking everybody at the expense of ourselves and having no boundaries. And when we're doing neither of those, we slip into the role of a victim. Now, let's dive in to how you can decide what and who actually deserves your energy. Okay. And so much of this comes down to personal responsibility, y'all. If there was a theme that I saw over and over in the Christian nationalism movement, it was this corrupting, I think, of personal responsibility, this idea that Christianity needs to take over the government. I tell you guys, definitely go look that up. The Seven Mountain mandate, that will that will put some things in perspective for you. And that kind of this idea that like people can't trust themselves. We need the quote, the daddy government to come in and tell all of us what to do to keep us morally straight. And when we personally fail to take responsibility for ourselves, we end up on the drama triangle. Okay. And not even the rescuers on that triangle who really pride themselves for being responsible are actually taking responsibility for themselves. They are taking care of everyone else, but have no idea of how to do it for themselves, which I'm raising my hand here, y'all. That is like the heart and soul of codependency. And you see this a lot, right? You can see in the triangle how we see the shadows of like codependency in the rescuer and narcissism in the persecutor. Now, as long as we chase ourselves and others around the triangle, we are going to relegate ourselves to living in reaction. And that is our least powerful space. In order to have a life that is genuinely fulfilling for us, we have to have the awareness first off of where we're at on the triangle. And then with consciousness, be willing to do the work to get off the triangle. Now, I don't remember when he created it, but there was another guy who created a triangle that he calls the empowerment dynamic, which is the answer to the drama triangle, is the empowerment dynamic. So, link below, go check it out. And once I found this other triangle, I was so excited by this spot called the creator. So the creator is this answer to the victim. Instead of being a victim, we can be a creator. And the creator taps into this inner state of passion. When I'm talking on the podcast about your soul calls, about this thing inside of you that won't let you stop. That is what I really believe. That's what I'm talking about. This is this part inside of you that knows your truth, this part that is directed by intention that can focus on a desired outcome and move towards it, can take those steps to get to the place they want, most of all. And this is the heart and soul of coaching, by the way. A creator owns their ability to choose their response to life's circumstances. What makes me as as powerful as I believe I am is the management of my brain and understanding that no matter what happens in the external world, I get to choose what I want to think and I get to feel how I want to feel. Now, as I said in the previous episode, right? That's a process. Getting back the power to think what you want to think and feel what you want to feel. But damn, is it worth it? Because the alternatives are letting yourself be run by your internal programming, which heads up, y'all, as women, our internal programming is meant to fuck us over. The majority of us have been raised in patriarchal governments, in patriarchal religions, in societies that have taught us to think small, to give our energy to everybody else, to not take care of ourselves. This is the core issue, right? As women, is that we have been programmed from birth with operating systems that teach us to be victims, that teach us to be rescuers. Or like my mom, my mom was more of a persecutor role. Teach us to blame everybody else and not take self-responsibility. Moving into a creator space is the opposite of that. It is taking self-responsibility and it is saying, I get to be part of the change. I get to be a truth teller, I get to be a peacemaker, I get to be a hope creator. Now, I want to give you some actual questions that can help you zero in on these areas where you may need to take back your self-responsibility and where you may be noticing you getting stuck in the drama triangle. So, first question: Does this person slash system consistently nourish me or do they drain me? You'll notice this a lot in your body. This is a body response. When you are thinking of a certain person, do you notice your body feeling energized, excited, wanting to be around them, or do you feel the drain? You'll also see this so clearly in that Steven Crowder video with his wife, right? You can see the drain happening in that exact conversation. Next question: Is this relationship one of mutual support? Or am I always the one giving? Now, I want to kind of clarify this one as well, because for a lot of you, you've been in marriages where it was not mutually supportive. And then, as the episode I gave like a couple episodes ago, they turn around and do what feels like a 180, and all of a sudden they're like helping, and it's like, oh, I'm supporting you, I'm supporting you. You have to really once again check in with your body. And I want to caveat by when I say mutual support, you have to know what support actually looks like for you. Looking back, what I thought support was growing up was, you know, somebody providing financially for me, somebody helping out with the kids. I've realized now that is not actually the support that I need. I need the support of a partner who specifically, and obviously this is this is just personal for me, but I need a partner who understands CBTSD. I need a partner who has done his own trauma work. I need a partner who understands the political climate and is on the same page with me about those things. Those are huge sources of support in my life because when I have a partner in those ways, he can then support me in the ways I need. Not just, you know, a partner who's like, well, I bring home money, I pay the mortgage. Yes, that is a form of support, but that is not actually the support that I need most. So notice if your partner is saying, I'm doing all these things, I'm supporting you, but they're not actually delivering in the support that you are needing, that's a red flag. Third, am I staying invested because of fear, guilt, or obligation? Mm, right. Let that one sink in. If I removed my energy from this system or person, what could I build instead? This question at the end just lights me up. Um, and it was a huge reason for me why I ultimately ended up leaving because there was something calling to me deep down inside that there could be something better than what I was experiencing. And five years now, post-divorce, that has truly come to pass. I am so proud of and grateful for where my energy has been invested now. And especially at this moment where I am seeing the need for powerful voices to be speaking out and speaking a different language and voices of community and love and everybody loving everybody and not this social hierarchy that we have. I wouldn't, let me put it this way, I would not have this platform if I hadn't left five years ago. I wouldn't be able to be a voice for the change I want to see in the world if I hadn't removed my energy from that system, right? My marriage, that person, my ex-husband, that was not a fit for me. And instead, I've taken that energy and I've built this life instead. And I really want you guys to catch that vision because if there is anything I think we need more of in the world, it is powerful kick-ass women who are creators, who are stepping into this sphere, who are breaking away from these ideas that are now being pushed to the forefront, right? And who will be able in the years to come to be resources for the women that are inevitably going to need our help. Because if the agenda of the Christian nationalism continues in the way they have outlined it, there will absolutely be more women suffering that will need help, that will need support. And I see each and every one of us that ultimately, you know, and I want to say it this way too: this doesn't necessarily mean you're leaving your marriage, but this does mean you are having conversations with your spouse about your concerns, about the things that you're seeing. And if your spouse cannot hear those things, if they expect you, like he did in that video, right? To be more disciplined, to be more worthy. I mean, in the article, he literally was telling her she needed to give the dogs medicine that she said she was afraid was going to affect her pregnancy negatively. And he was shaming and belittling her into doing that. Y'all, I really want us to catch this vision of liberating ourselves through taking self-responsibility, which is recognizing this is what I need for support. Even if you're giving me all this other support, if if you're not the support I need in the ways I need it, then maybe this just isn't a fit anymore. And it's through this, through the self-responsibility and then the truth telling, being honest about what we need, being honest about where we've overextended, that we ultimately end up transforming our lives. And on the macro scale, we transform the world. Now, I want to give you guys some practical steps for divesting your energy. One of the first ones is limiting your engagement with news cycles and political outrage that are going to sap your strength. You just, we don't need it. Um, I have been since the start of the year doing, I really haven't done this before, but I've been doing a much better job of anytime something crumbs across my feed, especially if I'm on Facebook, people that I'm friends with that are espousing viewpoints that are anti feminist or pro Trump, I'm unfollowing them. Some of them I'm unfriending because I do not need to be having that constant feeling when that when you have it that way, it starts to make your brain think that. You're alone, that everybody is in support of this. And actually, when you look at the percentages, which Drew Strait talks about in that very second link, there actually is not that the percentage of people that are heavily aligned with the Christian national nationalism movement, the most radical parts of it, are actually the smallest. It's like 20%. But they also happen to be some of the loudest voices. They know when they get loud, when they get crazy, it starts to be in an echo chamber and everybody starts to think, oh my God, this is what the majority wants. Now, another practical step for divesting your energy is setting boundaries with people who do not reciprocate your emotional investment. Another one is mentally reframing divorce. So, you know, this is what this podcast is all about. I want so badly to change the dialogue around divorce to help you instead of seeing it as a failure, but recognizing that it can be a reallocating of your energy to a more aligned life. And you have a right to do that. The final one is to start small. So divestment does not have to be drastic. You do not have to go tell your husband tomorrow that you are wanting to leave your marriage. Instead, I want you to start reclaiming small portions of your time and energy for yourself. This was really where I started in my journey. I can remember for the two and a half years before I got divorced when I was working with my therapist. I think I went back to school. Like I went back and took a class at a community college at one point. I thought I might go back and get a career in physical therapy. I started volunteering at a physical therapy office. I just started speaking aloud, like I'm not happy. This isn't working. Maybe I need to do this. I went and took a pottery class. I did small things to start reopening myself to a life that could be mine, asking myself, what do I actually like? What do I actually want? Now, one of the biggest keys to helping you move off the triangle is understanding that when we believe painful stories about who we are, you know, stories like, I only matter based off of, you know, what I can do for others. I struggle with this a lot, right? When my kids are upset with me, I tend to get really depressed. That a hundred percent comes from the like, if other people aren't happy with me, I can't be happy with myself. Or on the flip side, with the more persecutor style, right? When we have other people are trying to hurt me, other people are coming after me, which is why in this episode, yes, I'm talking a lot about the Christian nationalism movement, but not in a way to hopefully scare you all or, you know, but in a way to empower you of like, yes, we need to be very aware of what's happening. And you are creators. You can take care of yourselves, you can learn the skills to be there for yourself emotionally, physically, to support yourself. But when we believe these painful stories, those create the painful feelings that then drive our actions that create this self-perpetuating cycle of what we believe becoming what's true, which, as you guys know in my recent episodes, our thoughts create our reality. So we want to be actively catching the stories that we have about ourselves that create negative emotions, that create the fear. That was one of the things I noticed the most in the Christian nationalism movement is how much it is fueled by fear, how much it is fueled by there is not enough, or other people are taking something from me, or they're the bad guys. We've got to watch out for them. And I was just like, yeah, that's tale as old as time. That's how people through millennia have been motivated to do atrocious acts towards other humans by dehumanizing those humans and then making them think that somehow they're taking something from them. So always be remembering that there are two versions, right? Not even two versions, there's, you know, a multitude of different versions of the story that you can tell about your life. And here's a like huge key piece. Remember that often when you move out of the role of a rescuer, when you move out of codependency, you will often be seen as the persecutor. You will often be because the people who have been benefiting from you not having any boundaries do not like it when you start to take care of yourself. And it is so important in that moment to realize they have their story and you have yours. And they do not have to match for you to be happy. Whew. All right, y'all. That was a deep dive episode, hopefully, for a lot of you, into the importance of understanding what's happening right now with the Christian nationalism movement, how it impacts you as a woman, how it's going to potentially impact the future of no fault divorce, understanding, right? I'm just kind of recapping before I finish out this episode, understanding where you are at on the drama triangle, paying attention and having awareness on that so that you can actively and intentionally move back into self-responsibility and becoming a creator. And that this act of stepping back into creatorship is how we make a difference. Sometimes seeing all of this on the big national stage feels overwhelming. It can feel discouraging. And so hopefully, not only have I educated you about what's happening on the bigger scene, but giving you actual ways to take that down into the microcosm of your own life, your own marriage, and start making the changes that need to happen there for you to be in a space to really have what I believe you deserve, which is your personal freedom and fulfillment as a woman. And that taking back that requires divesting your energy and that you have the right to do that. Your energy is a precious resource. I believe it is, call it God, source, universe. I believe it is God given to you, which is, you know, pretty radical in these times, I think, to be saying that women deserve to. And it may become more radical in the future to say that women get to make their own choices, that the individual can trust themselves, that we need to have government that protects individual rights and not just these bigger movements. Ooh. All right, y'all. Like I said, big list of resources. Please go check them out. Please educate yourselves. Find sources that you trust, find resources that are fact-checking, that are presenting data that is not just sound bites and is not just meant to stir up drama. Also, just want to say once again, so proud of the community, so delighted with everything we've been doing there. Oh my goodness. Yes, I just remembered that was something I wanted to talk about at the end of this episode. We have our first guest coming in this month to the community. This has been a dream of mine for a while to not only be doing the community, but to get to collaborate with other amazing women that are changing the world. Um, so we are gonna be having Alison Alexander. She's an incredible breathwork facilitator that I'd worked with previously. I reached out to her and she is gonna be coming into the community and doing a breathwork workshop for just the women in the community. So if you've been considering joining now, would be an amazing time because you'll be able to catch our first workshop with a guest. I'm so excited. As well, she is gonna be doing a podcast episode with me. So you guys will also get to hear from her on the podcast. She has an incredible story. Um, she actually just recently got divorced. And as we were talking about the potential episode and what we wanted to talk about, I was blown away at her story. I'm really, really excited to share it with you all. So, some amazing things happening in the community and soon to come on the podcast. Thank you all for listening and being part of the change. I hope that my podcast is a source of right, divesting from those places that don't feed you and this podcast being a place where it does feed you, investing in places that feel reciprocal, that give to you, that where you actually receive what you're needing from those spaces. If you are enjoying the podcast, I would love for you to go rate it and to share with others to help get this message out to more women who are going to need it. I really see in the coming years that we're going to need to just really be there for each other, feel like we have got each other's backs no matter what is going on on the national macro, you know, scene. We will ultimately have women, powerful women that know us, that love us, that uh can support us in the ways we need most. And that's really special. All right, y'all. Till next week.