Tonka Talk Community and Connection
Welcome to Tonka Talk, the podcast that explores community and connection around Lake Minnetonka.
Nestled near the serene shores of Lake Minnetonka in the Twin Cities, our show is your guide to discovering the inspiring stories of individuals and groups who are crafting vibrant, meaningful community and connection in this picturesque setting.
From lakeside gatherings to community events, from stories of local heroes to heartwarming tales of collaboration, we dive into the ways people are coming together to create a strong sense of belonging.
Whether you're a longtime resident, a newcomer to the area, or simply interested in the power of community, Tonka Talk has something for you.
Do you know of someone creating community and connection in a unique or big way? Share it with us. We would love to hear from you.
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Tonka Talk Community and Connection
How My Grandpa Became My Dad: Part 3 Scientology - Life After a Cult
I’d like to invite you on a personal journey - my journey - from the confines of a controlling cult to the warm embrace of a true community.
The rabbit hole goes deeper this week as we navigate the impact of Scientology on family dynamics. With me, you'll get to know a family whose business was closely tied to my grandfather's teachings of the church, and witness how my upbringing was shaped by it.
You'll also get a glimpse into my own unique family dynamic - from the tension stemming from my leaving Scientology, that led to my sister being excluded from our stepdad's funeral, to my mother's unconventional decision to marry her father-in-law.
Well, buckle up, as I take you on this emotional rollercoaster ride through memories of a Disneyland trip, strong familial bonds, alcoholism, and ultimately, self-discovery.
Learn more at https://www.tonkatalk.com where we share more about our Lake Minnetonka community, including upcoming events and our take on local experiences.
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If you have feedback, questions, or suggestions of a future guests creating community and connection, email natalie@tonkatalk.com
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I'm Natalie Webster, and this is Tonka Talk, where we share the ways people create community and connection. In addition to the weekly interviews that we do with people sharing unique ways they create community, on Fridays I'm sharing my own story of going from a controlling cult for 35 years to being embraced by a true community in the Lake Minnetonka area, which is where I work and live today. I've been here about 30 years now. This is part three. In part two, I shared how the murder of John Lennon by Mark David Chapman resulted in my sister and I making our first dedicated steps into taking our first like real, true steps into our Scientology indoctrination. As children we had done a few things really minor prior. This was when it really got serious. This is when John Lennon was shot, when we were eight and ten years old. My personal story has everything to do with why I want to delve into and share stories of human connection and community. For now, back to my story. This is Grandpa Dad, lake Minnetonka safe haven from Scientology. Part three, because Mark David Chapman did go into the church of Scientology across the street from where he worked as a security guard. This was in Waikiki on the island of Oahu, which is where I grew up. This was not long before he flew to New York and murdered John Lennon.
Speaker 1:After that happened, the church of Scientology was once again in the crosshairs of the FBI. Now, in 1980, my mom worked for the church of Scientology as what's called a body router. Let that sink in, body router, you route bodies. Her job was to go out in the evenings when she worked on the streets of Waikiki and recruit people back to the church building to take personality tests, which was a recruitment tool that Scientology used and still uses today. From there, a Scientologist would try to show that person how aspects of their personality were ruining their lives, and only Dianetics and Scientology could fix it. They would then be directed to buy a book, a course or counseling at the church. Now there are universal truths in Scientology that are just that Universal truths In Scientology. You're led to believe that these truths were created by Elrond Hubbard, when, in fact, most of what resonated with me in Scientology is available for free through many sources. Universal truths are universal truths because Scientology stops its parishioners from exploring other sources of truth, practicing other religions. Many don't realize till they leave that they paid a crazy amount of money when they didn't need to. That's a popular question I get is why do people stay or how do they get in Scientology in the first place?
Speaker 1:I was raised in it as a child till. My experience is a little different, but, being introduced to certain teachings in Scientology, there were things that did resonate for me and, interestingly, in the what's it been like over a decade now since I left Scientology, I've been exposed to a lot more universal truths and different sources of information and it's interesting to kind of connect those Dots of no wonder this resonated with me. It's kind of like saying, being in Scientology and you're told this is an example. This is not what happens, but it's. This is an example of how it goes. You learn about gravity and and Elron Hubbard discovered gravity, and this is just the coolest thing ever because you experience gravity, gravity, you can see it. The more you learn about it, you understand it, you feel a little bit more in control of gravity, because now you can use it as a tool. Now Elron Hubbard did not create gravity, gravity is, gravity is gravity. For me, again, it's what I would call, like this, universal truth. It just is. That is an example of kind of how this happens, because again, there are things in Scientology that can be put to good use, that can, that can help people, but there's this whole other side of it that Does the exact opposite or uses these universal truths to control and harm people. And again, and after growing up and being in Scientology for 35 years and being out now for a little over a decade, that's how I kind of see it and and understand it, and that's that's basically how I answer that question, which I do get often why do people stay? That's not the only reason they stay. I would say that's kind of what gets them in. Is you do one thing it's like the gateway drug is learning a few communication skills and they're helpful, and you go oh okay, what else can Scientology do for me? And again, it just kind of goes on from there.
Speaker 1:But back to 1980 it's 1980 my mom was an attractive 28 year old at the time. She had been a high school senior when she became pregnant with me. Six months later she was a stunning 18 year old Barbie like bride, soon to become a first-time mother at 28. She was five years into her second marriage to an incredibly talented wood carving artist who happened to be a Paraplegic. She met him when she was making a living as an exotic dancer after leaving my biological dad, who was never in Scientology. Brian was a good stepdad and he was a fascinating human. He helped my mom walk away from a life that was not healthy in multiple ways, helped her get custody of my sister and I and brought her and us into his family, as well as Scientology, where my mom eventually became a staff member. She would work with Brian in their wood carving shop during the day, and evenings and weekends she would go down to Waikiki and work at the church and take us with her.
Speaker 1:Now my mom was amazing at getting groups of Mostly men often in the military, because it was Waikiki and Oahu To follow her from the busy streets of Waikiki into the Church of Scientology of Hawaii for personality death. As a 10 year old I did not like it. I didn't like the way the men looked at my mom or the comments they often made. Again, my sister and I were around so we would see this happen. My sister Lana and I had heard, had heard my mom's pitch to take a personality test so many times when she would go out to the street to try and recruit people in. Sometimes we would follow her, but we had to keep our distance so it didn't look like that. We were with her, and, and so we'd heard this pitch so many times. So when we would draw these pictures and Go across the street to go see Mark, who come to find out was Mark David Chapman, we would sell them to him to make money for candy. I had talked about this in part 2. Now, telling our you know, quote friend, the security guard, to take a personality test seemed like a natural thing to do on occasion. I'd seen my mom do it so many times.
Speaker 1:Now I Cannot say with certainty that as a 10 year old, I may have inadvertently Body routed if you will that's the term Scientology uses Mark David Chapman into the Church of Scientology, but the possibility crossed my mind a few times Later in life, based on these conversations that we had, which weren't intense conversations about Scientology. Remember we were 8 and 10. We were just trying to hustle these drawings to make some money, to get some candy. That was our whole hustle going on at that time. Now, here's the thing, though Mark David Chapman did go into the Church of Scientology, the and this was obviously before he went to New York and shot John Lennon not long before is how I understand it. Now, when Chapman did go into the church, the staff member said he was ranting that the place was a cult. He was like telling them that this is a cult, this is a cult. I think it was weeks after that again that he flew to New York and shot John Lennon, and this was in December of 1980.
Speaker 1:Sometime after that the FBI and investigators were looking into any connection to the church of Scientology in Hawaii. I don't know if somebody said, hey, I've seen these kids walking back and forth from the church, or if there was video back then that in their investigation they turned up, or someone ratted on us that that's what we were doing, which was nothing. We weren't doing anything wrong. We were eight and 10 making these pictures, just selling them. We had no idea and again, he hadn't done what he went on to do. Yet my sister and I we worked hard at these drawings. I gotta say it was something we really liked doing and we were really motivated to get the candy Really had a sweet tooth. Ironically, right now I'm actually trying to detox from sugar, which I've done a few times because I cannot moderate sugar. I will tell you and I guess it says a lot, that I was hustling drawings at 10 to make money to get more candy.
Speaker 1:So we started on the bridge to total freedom, as it's called in Scientology. This was after things blew up with the whole Mark David Chapman thing, because my family got in trouble. My mom was questioned I think she was questioned by the FBI is what she told us later and in large part, too, what's our connection with Mark David Chapman, like what's happening here and we were temporarily banned for a while from the church, which was fantastic for a while, but we did end up going back. My mom wanted to go back, and the only way we could go back my mom would be allowed to go back would be if my sister and I started on the bridge to total freedom, which is a series of steps that you do in Scientology, that you pay for different courses, different counseling and whatnot. We were intertwining ourselves with an organization that would one day take my own child from me, try to attempt to take my firstborn, my daughter, from me more than one time, and we're gonna talk about that more in a later episode, cause this was not before. This was at the time. Right now our focus is how my grandpa would become my dad, but we'll talk more about what happened with my daughter later Now.
Speaker 1:Fast forward a few years. I'm about 12 years old. This is after you know we'd gotten back into the good graces with the church. After the whole Mark David Chapman thing, we weren't really going to the church as much and I didn't quite understand why, but in hindsight it makes more sense now why we weren't going as much. It was about this time, too, where music and books was my escape from life. I had my Walkman on with my cassette tape, my headphones on and my nose in a book pretty much all the time. It was normal to find me perched on a sofa in the living room, which also served as my bed, if there wasn't a bedroom open in the house we were living at, if it were even a house At that time, like I said, we had just moved in with my grandparents, so it was my grandpa and grandma's house, my stepdad's parents house.
Speaker 1:We moved in with my mom because my mom and my stepdad had split and we're going to be getting a divorce, which was a massive bummer for us as kids, because not only did we love Brian. It was the most stability that we'd known for a couple of years, even despite the fact that two homes earlier we were living in an industrial warehouse with my mom and Brian, and I don't mean one that was converted into a chic condo, I mean a metal roll-up door into an open warehouse with our house stuff in it. It was a few doors down from my stepdad's wood carving shop which made it easier for our mom to keep an eye on us as she would work at the wood carving shop and then evenings and weekends, you know, she'd go to Waikiki early when she was still working for the church. When we moved in with my grandpa she was no longer working for the church. My step dad at the time, brian, was.
Speaker 1:He was such an amazing artist. He passed away not that long ago. Truly incredible artist. He was known in Hawaii as simply as the woodcarver. He the drawings that he could do. And again remember he was a paraplegic and he got into a car accident. It was a drunk driving accident in his early 20s and it paralyzed him. But drawing, sculpting, finding ways to use his hands which were they were, they would be curled up, but what he could do was amazing. His attitude and his sense of humor is what I remember most about him and I think it's what we loved most about him.
Speaker 1:So my mom had just moved us into our grandparents' house.
Speaker 1:Our parents are my step dad, brian.
Speaker 1:I didn't really understand why they were getting a divorce. We didn't really get into that this my family dynamic. Well, it's probably not uncommon in families. So there's just some things you just don't talk about and we didn't talk about it. It was kind of just we were told that this was what would be happening. And that's about when we started spending less time at the church in Hawaii, which honestly, I was happy about. That. I wasn't missing it. What was not missing from our lives were endless discussions and lectures around Scientology.
Speaker 1:My grandpa was a patriarch of the family. He was also the most experienced Scientologist in the family, being the only one to have made it to the coveted Operating Thayton Level Three. This is when you start the confidential levels in Scientology and the vast number of Scientologists don't make it up that far. Today it goes up to eight. Operating Thayton Level Eight is the highest you can go in Scientology. In my Scientology career I made it to Operating Thayton Level Four. Now, at this point in Scientology on your journey to total freedom, as they call it.
Speaker 1:This is where you learn about the Galactic Overlord Xenu and that, per Elwin Hubbard, we have the trapped spirits of off-world populations. Some call them aliens attached to us and that's what causes us to do dumb things and through Scientology and these upper levels in Scientology they were confidential. If you ask a Scientologist, even one who's done these levels, if Xenu is real, they'll walk away. They will not have a conversation with you about it, because we're told that just the knowledge of this incident, of what the Galactic Overlord Xenu did to control there was like a problem with population that if anyone had that knowledge and they weren't prepared to use Elwin Hubbard's techniques to address what happened, that they could get pneumonia and die. To this day I don't know of one person that has ever gotten pneumonia and die. South Park did a very accurate episode about this and I don't think anyone got pneumonia and died. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think so. So, anyways, but you get it back. Then it's like he was the only one who'd gotten to these levels and these people were really respected and revered.
Speaker 1:Who would do these Operating Thayton Levels which cost a ton of money. So, simply put, my grandpa was like our family's cult leader this is he shared his knowledge, or at least his interpretation of Scientology, with all of us. He was like the source of it, which, interestingly, is technically against Scientology rules. The way he positioned himself as the source of the knowledge. He credited Elrond Harbour. But the way he spoke about and shared things is what is in Scientology they would call verbal data, meaning you would give information about Scientology without showing the actual writing by Elrond Harbour to back up that. What you're saying is, in fact, what Elrond Harbour said Lots of verbal data going on over the years.
Speaker 1:At this time, most of the family also worked for him at the family business. The employees of the company were family, regardless of not sharing a bloodline. They'd come over often for a night of food, endless alcohol and lectures on life by my grandpa, and again, he was the source from which the family could be connected to Scientology. He had a beef with the local church of Scientology and no longer went there and didn't want his family members going there either, which is why at that time we kind of stopped going for a little while, though he didn't speak fondly of the local church of Scientology in Hawaii. He regularly talked about Elrond Harbour and Scientology itself.
Speaker 1:There were times when his musings on life did resonate with me, even at a young age. But it was difficult to have to sit at the table for a long period of time after dinner was done, listening to him go on and on, sometimes talking in circles and repeating himself depending on how many drinks he had had by then, into the wee hours of the night. We weren't allowed to leave the table till he excused us and keep in mind we're kids, we're tweens, young teens at this point and this could go on for hours. A few times when he returned home late at night from a bar, out with other family and my mom, he would wake us up for a table slide discussion about how hard he works, how right he is about the local church of Scientology being out of line, or how he needed to learn to walk more softly in the house which I'll give him that His room was downstairs, and at that time I'm sure we did walk like elephants. To this day I'm a soft, quiet walker because of this. It was so indoctrinated and do us to not walk like an elephant, which, honestly, is probably a good thing. My mom would sit beside him and just swoon. I think it was a combination of intoxication and blind admiration at the same time, because remember he was in our family the person who had made it the furthest in Scientology. You know, I remember once that my mom actually passed out sitting up and my grandpa just smiled and said he knew she was still listening, still listening, he knew she was still listening, even though she had passed out, was sitting there just nodding off, cause again they had come back from the bar and we're continuing to drink.
Speaker 1:You know, little sidebar, the alcoholism in my family is something that was never talked about. I started drinking when I was, I think, maybe 13 or so. I'll probably talk more about that later. Children in Scientology are not seen as children. You are spiritual beings with small bodies, so you're not really looked at in the same way. The thought in my family at that time was that if we drank with them, we wouldn't with our friends, which didn't completely work out. But more on that craziness later. Today I don't drink. I actually gave up alcohol seven years ago and it was one of the smartest things I ever did for myself. So we had a very unhealthy relationship with alcohol in our household, and the fact that my grandpa was an alcoholic is something that to this day, will not be acknowledged by that side of the family. Now I gotta tell you, though, these lectures at the time did make me wish I could drink alcohol like the other adults who were present and be seen as an active participant, but it would kind of numb the night's homegrown TED talk that went on way too long. To this day.
Speaker 1:I sometimes have a difficult time focusing in a meeting. If there's several people and one person is talking, it's something that I'm working on, or I should say, if they're not just that, if they're just talking and it goes on a little too long, it's something I'm working on, I'll get some anxiety and my brain will completely just go someplace else, because that's what I did when it would get uncomfortable. Some of these topics he would talk about were not comfortable, were quite uncomfortable, but no one ever corrected him, no one ever stood up to him, nobody ever would speak back to him. That was just something you would never, ever, ever do. Our cousin from California, who was my grandpa's favorite grandchild, hands down, had come to live with us. She kind of lived with us on and off and we were about the same age, which was fantastic. Absolutely adored her. Another side note she doesn't talk to me today not because she and I had a falling out, but because the church of Scientology will not allow it, even though she is not an active Scientologist wasn't when I was speaking to her even some years ago but because she has. Well, her ex-husband is still a Scientologist and comes down on the family anytime they find out if I have any type of interaction with them.
Speaker 1:In fact, when my stepdad, brian, passed away, I did not go to the funeral in Hawaii. My sister went back and the reason I didn't go is I knew that it would cause a scene. It would be a whole thing and I didn't want it to be about me. I wanted it to be about Brian and celebrating his life. So my sister, lana, goes back and one of the services was at the Church of Scientology in Hawaii and my sister was not allowed in the building. She was in the car during her.
Speaker 1:Our stepdad's funeral. Oh, makes me a little choked up. I need a minute, all right? This is why I don't video this and we're doing it as a podcast. She doesn't go to the funeral. She has to sit in the car. She's not allowed in the building by the church. Why? Because she's my sister and at this time I had been labeled what's called a suppressive person in Scientology because I dared to leave and speak out about what happened and because of this, scientologists are not allowed to interact with me in any way. She had performed, regardless of their connection to me being family or not. So my sister goes all the way there for this funeral. She's not allowed in the building, whatever that is, so that it's just very typical, one of the things that now, going back to when we were kids, I'm getting to the point of how he actually became my dad. You have to kind of excuse my tangents here.
Speaker 1:I'm at home at our, you know where we moved in with my grandpa. I was on the couch, which was pretty much was my bed. There weren't enough bedrooms or bed in the house at the time and I've got my headphones on. I'm reading my book, which is, you know, taking me to my happy place, getting away from what's going on around me, and my mom motions for me to. You know, take down my headphones, put down the book. She had something to tell me we what happened.
Speaker 1:Going back, I feel like I'm more shocked today than I was in that moment. I think I don't think I processed it in that moment. In fact, I know I didn't, and a large part of why I'm sharing it and talking about it now, all of this is it helps me process it. So thank you for listening and working through this with me. I find it to be very therapeutic to talk about it, to answer questions about it. It helps me see what happened from different angles and the more that I can understand it, the more I feel like I can process a lot of the trauma and crazy things that went on. And most interesting to me is how, how, today, how, how, the person that it contributed to me being today. I wish that I could become the person that I am today in a different way, but it happened how it happened.
Speaker 1:So here I am on this couch in Hawaii. I'm about 12 years old. My mom comes up to me and she seems really excited. She has something to share. I'm like, okay, what? And she says that she and my grandpa are getting married.
Speaker 1:Now, remember, we've been living in this house with my grandma, with my grandpa, with my aunt, with my cousin. My stepdad was back at his house. I knew they were getting a divorce. That was bummer. And now my mom's going to marry my grandpa the only person I've known as a grandpa because at that time we weren't seeing my biological dad. I hadn't seen my biological grandparents in. I think it was like nine or 10 years after my parents split, before I actually saw them.
Speaker 1:I did not know how to respond. In that moment I my mind just went right to, I think, the silver lining, which is kind of in my nature to do, and I realized well, at least with this divorce we're not going to lose another family because I hadn't seen my biological grandparents, or even my dad. For you know, nine years, almost a decade at one period, because if my mom's marrying my grandpa, that means my aunt, who I just loved, my cousin, they would all still be in my life. So that's what I held on to. That is what I held on to. And my biggest question was what do we call him? What are we going to call him? Do we call him grandpa? Do we call him dad? Do we call him grandpa, dad? I refer to him a lot today as grandpa dad, but she said we could still call him grandpa and we did. We called him grandpa even during the years that they were married. Now we ended up moving from the house to another house and we lived with my mom, grandpa dad, me, my sister, two aunts.
Speaker 1:Multi-generational living in Hawaii is not uncommon. Things are very expensive and it's just more part of the culture both Asian and the Polynesian culture for families to live together. Now what ended up happening? Remember he had a beef with the local church of Scientology so we weren't really going as much. We would go to an occasional event. My mom really still wanted to be trained in Scientology and do more training and do more services and she wanted us to do the same as well. But then that created an issue with my stepdad. He didn't want us going to the local church.
Speaker 1:My mom and my step, my stepdad, grandpa dad, my mom and grandpa dad got married in California. Actually, no, I think they got married in Vegas, but they took our family, my sister, myself, my cousin was there and couple aunts and we went to California and I thought it was fantastic because it was the first time I'd ever left Hawaii and I think I was about maybe 13,. I just turned 13. They went off to Vegas from there and got married just the two of them and, I think, one of their family member. So the trip was really focused on Disneyland and being off island. For the first time in my life I had never seen a billboard, so that's mostly what I remember about that time. In that trip they really made it about having all this fun, which that didn't happen on the regular.
Speaker 1:We didn't really do much as a family. We would get together for meals and there'd be a lot of alcohol and a lot of Scientology, but not so much with the vacationing together and things like that. When you're in Scientology, most of your resources, time and money go to Scientology. So they get married. They were married for a few years. I was able to still have a relationship with, of course, my aunts and all that, and we kept all those same titles. I didn't have to start calling my aunt my sister.
Speaker 1:That was, honestly my biggest concern at that age was how do I explain this to people? You know, when kids get divorced not kids, I'm sorry when parents get divorced, sometimes that's the hard thing for kids. It's like, hey, my parents are divorced, maybe not today, because it's so much more common, right, wrong or indifferent. Imagine your parents are getting divorced you know, possibly sharing that with your peer group as a tween and young teen but your mom's marrying your grandpa, and your friends know who your grandpa is because they've been around you and they've been at your house. It was mortifying, to say the least, and it's a secret that I kept. There weren't many people outside of a few very close friends that knew that my mom married my grandpa. I mean for obvious reasons. I mean, just imagine, put yourself there. It's already that my family's a little odd because they know that we're involved with Scientology and now they know that my mom has married my grandpa. It was just.
Speaker 1:It was a mortifying time in my life and I think now today it was the beginning of me growing incredibly thick skin when it came to who I was or having people know who I am or about me or things. I do get embarrassed, but not about the things that maybe the average person would get embarrassed about, because I think I lived such an extreme in areas of things that are embarrassing and mortifying as kids. So that kind of I think was the beginning of a lot of what I'm gonna share with you as we move forward. I find that people find a lot of it pretty shocking. I didn't even know that it was shocking or odd or weird until I left Scientology and started sharing about these things and again I wanna thank you for listening because this is helping me process it, especially this period where my mom married my grandpa and what came later, what came after that. My grandpa would turn his attention on me and not in a way that I got in trouble for something that I did is a 13 year old that probably almost every 13, 14, 15 year old out there has done. I was punished for it and I was sent out of the state for three months and this really speaks to the kind of figure that he was in our family, that he could dictate this type of banishment and nobody questions it. I'm not gonna share that today because this is going on for a little bit longer, but I wanted to share. I wanted to share more about that tie with what happened with Mark David Chapman and how we got started in our indoctrination in Scientology and I guess this episode really being about how my grandpa became my dad.
Speaker 1:When we chat next week, I'm gonna. You know what? Honestly, I don't know what I'm gonna share. There's a couple of things I have in mind. I would love your feedback. I have no shortage of content and things to share as we move through my life, through Scientology and coming out the other side. So if you have questions, please reach out to me. Natalie at tonkatalkcom. I'd love to hear them. I'm an open book. I will answer them if I'm able to. I wanna thank you for listening. This is part three of my story. Next Friday I'm gonna draw part four. Would love to hear from you, but for now, I'll talk to you later.
