Trad Wife Cults: How Tia Levings Escaped (Pt 1)

I think that I know more than anyone on this entire planet that having the right therapist to talk to can make a life-changing difference.

That's why I think Alma is so cool.

Alma connects you with real therapists who understand your unique experience.

You can use their directory to search for someone who specializes in the areas that matter most to you, whether that's anxiety, relationships, or anything else.

And what stands out to me about Alma is that 97% of people seeing a therapist through Alma say their therapist made them feel seen and heard.

You know I love that.

That level of connection isn't something you can get from scrolling through online advice or following social media.

It's about finding someone who truly understands your journey and is dedicated to helping you make progress.

Better with people, better with Alma.

Visit hello alma.com/slash hardthings to get started and schedule a free consultation today.

That's hello A L M A dot com slash hard things.

I've realized that the smallest parts of my day, waiting for water to boil, take a break between tasks are the perfect moments to learn something new.

That's why I've been turning to masterclass.

It's a simple way to make those in-between moments feel intentional.

I've picked up insights from the world's best, chefs, athletes, writers, entrepreneurs, all in just a few minutes at a time.

One lesson that really made an impact, James clear on habits.

He said, you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.

That completely reframed how I approached my mornings.

Now I've built a routine that actually sticks and works.

What I love is that Masterclass isn't just inspiring, it's practical.

Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash hard things.

That's 15% off at masterclass.com slash hard things.

Masterclass.com slash hard things.

Okay, so pod squad.

My sister and Abby and I have talked for the last couple weeks about how there is no one on the planet

who is more important to talk to in this moment than Tia Levins.

And

there's many reasons why, but right now I think if you're going to listen to this episode, which will be about high control religious groups and women and freedom and the lore of fundamentalism

you might think that you don't care about high control religious groups, but I assure you, they care about you.

And I assure you that we will all be feeling and seeing and experiencing the effects of the power of these groups over the next few years, because they are largely behind what has happened to our country and why we're in this moment right now.

So, this episode is for everyone who wants to understand how we got here.

Including the people who believe it right now.

Like, that's what is so amazing about Tia's work is that it explains it in a way that does not demonize the people who are wrapped up in this, you know?

Yeah.

And I just want to start by saying that Tia, I

understand and have experienced a version of this in my own life that I am still

hear whispers of inside me all the time.

So

I

just

understand.

And for anyone who thinks that a strong

woman cannot

be lured into and experience all of that, we are here to say that is wrong.

That is very, very wrong.

But I just know that your work, Tia, has healed and freed so many people.

And you're also a freaking genius

about understanding our world.

And my heart feels connected to you.

My mind feels connected to you.

My work feels connected to you.

And so I'm just really happy and honored that you're here today with us.

Let me tell the pod squad for anyone who doesn't know who you are.

Tia Levings is the New York Times best-selling author of A Well-Trained Wife, her memoir of escape from Christian patriarchy.

She writes about the realities of Christian fundamentalism, evangelical patriarchy, and religious trauma.

She also appeared on the hit Amazon docu series Shiny Happy People, which was so good.

And I had to breathe my way through, heavy knows, and take breaks and

just, whoa, that really did a number on me.

Based in North Carolina, she is a mom to four incredible adults and likes to travel, hike, paint, and daydream.

Usually I cut cut those parts out of people's intros.

I just want to tell you this because I'm brutal about time, but I felt like that sentence was so important.

Like the fact that you like to travel, hike, paint, and daydream feels like the opposite of what came before, and it makes me really happy.

You can find Tia on social media at Tia Levings Writer, and her second book, The Soul of Healing, which I didn't know about and I feel very excited about already, releases with St.

Martin's Essentials in 2026.

So Tia, thank you for being here with us.

My God, thank you so much.

Yes, that is my anti-fundamentalism, that line in my bio.

So thank you.

That's the essence of it.

This is a surreal moment because I'm a pod squatter and I know you relate to this because I have been talking back to my phone in so many episodes where I'm like, it's religious trauma.

I want to talk to you.

Thank you so much for having me on today.

Thank you for this absolutely surreal experience of hearing you, not just off of the podcast app, but here in my heart today.

This is

so meaningful.

So before we start with your story, are you saying that you listen to me talking about my problems and you think to yourself, this is religious trauma and she doesn't know it?

I say it all the time, particularly to Abby.

But yes, all the time.

We have dialogues.

You just haven't heard them.

You haven't been privy to our conversation.

Oh, wow.

That's fascinating.

Don't you think?

Will you come back and

fix Abby with us?

I know, maybe for sure.

But like, when you said that, I knew in my heart that you were talking to me.

Oh.

I was like, oh, yeah, that's right.

That is kind of a good answer for all of my struggle.

It's just there.

It's like there, like a fingerprint.

I've just held it because you even have an episode called Religious Trauma and I've listened to it multiple times.

And I do that.

I go back and listen to multiple conversations.

And your work has been a light to me through the whole thing.

I mean, Glennon and I, we go back to a similar experience, even in the writing online world.

I remember your early vlogs, and I was an early blogger.

It's part of my freedom story.

So I just have felt a commonality for a really long time.

No vilification for people who are going through a fluid experience.

It's we're at different points in the journey and my life was saved by people who gave me the grace of being allowed to grow.

Yeah, that's good.

Okay, we want to get to your freedom story.

What's the prequel of that?

Can you talk to us about

how you were raised and how it kind of groomed you to become susceptible to the high control group you became a part of?

And then talk to us about that high control group.

Mostly I just want to be quiet and I want you to just talk to us.

Yeah, especially for anyone who's new to my work, it's good to start with kind of the general overview.

And I began my book where I did on purpose.

I think my first 10 years growing up without a predominant religion, my parents took us to church on Christmas and Easter and a few extra Sundays.

I grew up in Michigan where we had a lot of Midwestern type farm work to do.

So if we had work to do on Sundays, we were just as likely to stay home and do that.

But I knew that church was this.

pleasant place where we went to learn about God and just the average Christian experience that people think they have without any examination of the deeper themes.

You just think you're going there for Bible stories and Kool-Aid and friends and these traditions and institutions that become part of our lay.

And then my parents moved when I was 10.

to Jacksonville, Florida, which was total and complete culture shock for me.

I had not been in a large city before.

I had never seen a black person before.

I had never gone into a big classroom.

Like my entire, my one classroom was as big as my school when we moved and this is in 1984 so this is in a time period where a lot of us will resonate with this there was no vocabulary for childhood depression you didn't talk to your kids before you shocked them you just brought them along and i'm as a highly sensitive likely very neurodiverse child i felt every single aspect of this deeply i have an ability to kind of anticipate and see clearly what others might not see because they're busy.

You know, I'm just intuitive that way.

And I've I've always been that way.

So I was flinching from danger that I didn't feel safe, you know, that kind of thing in the transition.

And we moved to Jacksonville in the summer, the last two months of fourth grade.

I mean, it just, when you stack up the situational stresses of the beginning of my story, children can relate to them.

And I think one of the takeaways I hope people get from my story is that we get into these situations through very ordinary and relatable situations.

They are not exotic.

They are not being kidnapped to the jungles to go hang out out with Jim Jones.

This is an average American upbringing where I did average American things and my parents did the most normal thing in the world.

They decided to take us to church to make friends.

And in Jacksonville, that was a mega church.

It was

First Baptist Church, Jacksonville, Florida, was one of the first megachurches in the country.

When I say that, I mean we had thousands of people on the roll.

The church was set up like a stadium.

And they were very specific that they were marketing to families.

They were marketing to to have Christian dominion in the country that they believe Jesus came to save America and set the city like we were going to be a city on a hill.

And they told parents, you know, bring your kids down here and we'll raise them right.

We'll

keep bad outcomes from happening to your children.

So the second thing that's kind of unique about my story that I refuse to diminish is that my parents aren't like these big villains that tried to hurt me and didn't protect me and were part of my root traumas.

I know that's the story for many, many people.

It is not mine.

I had well-meaning parents that got into this so innocently and I think in very relatable ways.

And within a short year, I was going to church six days a week and this became my upbringing.

And my parents and my family and myself until years later thought that I had this great upbringing with a wealthy youth group and we did amazing things and we witnessed for Jesus and we stayed pure.

We didn't have sex before marriage.

We didn't use drugs.

We didn't fraternize with the bad kids at school.

We basically learned how to live in a second parallel America.

We were right out like, I call them like little Russian nesting dolls.

We were in America within America.

And everything that we did taught us how to behave that way and blend in.

And Christian girls grew up to be one thing, was a Christian wife and mother.

And the other thing I talk about a lot is that when you are in a patriarchal environment, they will use what you want for yourself against you.

So I bought into this hook, line, and sinker, because I was a maternal person.

I wanted five children.

I wanted to be a wife.

So that wasn't at odds.

However, I had come from this background where women can do lots of things.

We can roll up our sleeves and work with men.

We can have careers.

We can like having children does not preclude you from having a full life.

But in church, that's not how it was.

So I learned how to split myself and just kind of tuck.

the private part of myself away so that I could be pleasing.

And that really gets us to the catalyst point of the story when I meet my husband and I marry him very quickly, as was encouraged by our church.

So I feel like a monologue.

You were 18, Tia.

I was 18, yes.

You were 18.

And that was a December you met him?

Yeah, we met at a hayride, a Christmas hayride, and we were engaged by the end of the month and we were married within that year.

Yeah.

Did you fall in love with him or did you even know what that was?

Or were you told that he was the right one for you?

Because God doesn't speak to women or girls in the teachings of your church right god doesn't speak to women this is very convenient so god only speaks to the men so the men tell you what god has said correct correct yeah there was no talk of chemistry or compatibility none of that was very important what was very important is that you stay a virgin until you're married that you marry who shows up and says they want you so that's what would happen our church had weddings every friday and every saturday and the only thing that would change are the color of the flowers and they were turning out these weddings to hurry up and get us married so because they did not want us to have sex before we were married.

Both of our pastors had had two-week engagements.

So the saying was, you have the rest of your life to figure it out.

So don't worry about it.

If you're not feeling love, love is a duty, love is a job, love is a decision.

And I would have told you then that I loved him.

I'm sure I told people that I love him, but I know now I was in love with love.

And I didn't really know what love was supposed to feel like.

I had been in this performative environment for about nine years at that point.

And what love was was acceptance for your obedience.

That's when you were loved.

It was very conditional.

And I did not know how to recognize that.

So I ended up with somebody who I was trying to kind of retrofit onto my dreams.

Like, okay, he says he's God's will for my life.

I'm not supposed to argue with that because a man said it.

And I can do this.

We had this song that we used to sing, little is much if God is in it.

And so I felt like, with enough red-headed determination, I can fix this.

I can make this great.

and I will save him and I will help him be happy again.

He had so many problems immediately, but I knew, I knew through my hard work and effort, I could make us great.

Can I ask one question before there's this little period of time where you're growing up and you're in the church thing, but you have this minute where you're like,

I'm not sure.

Like you're running around with that one girl who is a lot of fun and is not from the church.

Then something happens with a boy and you immediately come back to the church can you talk about that because that was fascinating to me as far as like

what we're told education what leads you back when you start to stray like that seemed to solidify it for you that's like oh i'm done venturing out it really did and i'm glad you picked up on that this is something i've had to learn in recovery since releasing the book and this is a great example of how writing your story can help you externalize it.

And so that you can start to see what's actually the pattern of injury.

I wrote that whole book, sent it to editors and sold it without realizing that the veracity of that sexual assault when I was 13 had been the actual catalyst that put me back in the fear box.

I was hanging out with my friend and feeling like myself.

And we were doing things that my church said wasn't okay, but that my body felt safe in.

And while I was doing these things, I experienced this assault.

And I blew kind of past it in the writing.

I would have said it's not the big catalyst in my life.

But then readers would be like, I want to talk about that.

That's the moment where you really got in line and started obeying.

And I was like, that's absolutely correct.

That is, that has set me up for, it taught me this lesson that when you, it's a twisted lesson.

I had to unpack it.

When you feel good and you're not obeying the rules, you're in danger.

And the reverse is true.

When you feel good, you're safe, even if there's danger.

If you feel good, you're safe.

And so I had to reframe that in recovery.

And in fact, it was the lessons from the church.

Had anyone in your life been teaching about consent and about that boys are capable of bad behavior and they don't get access to you, you would have had the language to say, I'm safe over here.

I'm not safe with him because he is a perpetrator.

Let me tell you.

But instead, you were like, it's my fault.

I was out of line.

Therefore,

to be safe, I have to go back to this place.

Yes.

And you know what?

You know what comes next.

You've read the book.

So if I had had the language of consent,

just that, my life would have been so different.

That would have saved so much.

I have enough fight and spirit in myself to take information and run with it.

That's the first thing they did: deny me information because that would have reinforced my willpower.

So, our dogs, Honey and Hattie, are sweet, spoiled, and insanely picky when it comes to food.

We've tried all kinds of brands over the years.

Some would get a sniff and then completely ignored, others maybe once and never again.

But Ollie, it's a total game changer.

Ollie delivers clean, fresh meals made with human-grade ingredients.

No fillers, no preservatives, just real food.

And the flavors?

Things like fresh beef with sweet potatoes or fresh turkey with blueberries.

I've caught myself thinking, this dog eats better than I do.

Dogs deserve the best, and that means fresh, healthy food.

Head to ollie.com slash hardthings, tell them all about your dog, and use code hardthings to get 60% off your welcome kit when you subscribe today.

Plus, they offer a happiness guarantee on the first box.

So if you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back.

That's ollie.com slash hardthings and enter code hardthings to get 60%

off your first box.

What does the future hold for business?

Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 answers.

Bull market, bear market.

Rates will rise or fall.

Inflation, up or down.

Can someone please invent a crystal ball?

Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite, the number one AI cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, HR into one fluid platform.

With one unified business management suite, there's one source of truth, giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions.

With real-time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data.

When you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards and more time on what's next.

Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities.

I highly recommend it.

Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com slash hard things.

The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash hard things.

Netsuite.com slash hard things.

I'll be honest.

Instacart has become one of those things that I really rely on way more than I ever expected.

Life is busy.

Between all the work and family and just trying to keep up with the day-to-day, getting to the store isn't always realistic.

With delivery through Instacart, I can shop my favorite stores right from my phone.

Whether I'm out of coffee, which happens all the time, or need to restock on snacks or forgot that one freaking dinner ingredient happens to all of us, it's all just a few taps away.

And sometimes it shows up in under 30 minutes, which still blows my mind.

Instacart brings convenience, quality, and ease right to your door.

So you can focus on what matters most.

Download the Instacart app and use code hardthingspod20 to get $20 off your first order of $80 or more.

That's code hardthingspod20 to get $20 off your first order of $80 or more.

Offers valid for a limited time, excludes restaurants, additional terms apply.

Talk to us about about the marriage.

This is a place where you've been with me on my journey, Glennon.

It doesn't feel like love.

It doesn't feel like union.

You have to work at it.

You have to work at it.

So the marriage was work.

It was non-stop vigilance, fear, working to accommodate and protect the environment so that we could keep the peace.

I thought I was being a good helpmeet.

So I interpreted all of my manipulation that I was learning to do of my environment and of my children and all of that.

I thought I was being a good support to a very erratic man.

So my young husband, which we should not forget that he was young, he was 23 years old when he married me at 19.

And that's a young man who

might look like today's incel.

you know that's the young man you meet online who loves theology loves to argue loves to study god's word and learn how to be more holy and really is craving external structures in order to regulate what they cannot regulate inside.

That is who Alan is.

Can you say that again?

People who are looking for external structures to

regulate their inner selves.

They are so disorganized inside.

They need external forces to tell them how to behave, tell them how to live, tell them where they're safe, who they're safe with, what they can do in order to earn favor, where their eternal security lies.

All of this will come from outside of you.

That is the big lesson that I take away from high control religion is that it's a consistent numbing of your inner wisdom and it is a constant validation of external wisdom, which keeps changing and narrowing and becoming more extreme as you go.

So they don't start with the final result.

You know, like they didn't tell me when I was a little girl, if you marry this man, you're going to get spanked.

They didn't say that.

They said girls should be submissive wives and honor their husbands.

And that's in the Bible.

And that's what God says with no, no awareness of how that manifests in families, what actually is being said in these theological books by these pastors, how it works when you put that kind of load on a mentally ill man.

None of it was discussed.

So my marriage was a constant effort in trying to make a happy life.

I mean, I'm a high capacity person.

In 14 years, I had nine pregnancies, five live births, and four surviving children.

That alone, you know, you can do the math of the heartbreak that would come on a normal day.

And he wasn't stable through majority of it.

So I had to be the stable one while also homeschooling and growing our food and getting involved in the wellness movement at that time.

The trad movement today is the same trad movement before.

We just didn't have social media.

So that's what it looked like until it broke.

Okay.

And for the person who's listening who doesn't know what, talk to us about what your particular sect was,

what your religion was.

And then would you talk to us about how that was set up, like the umbrella of it all, the umbrellas?

And then I just want people to understand what the teachings were and then what that manifested in your daily life as.

Yeah, I think that's really important.

So, the evangelical church that I went to, my pastor was the president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

So, if you're familiar with evangelical Christianity, that comes with all the mainstream Veggie Tales, Lifeway Christian bookstores, True Love Weights movements, CCM, all the like mainstream Christian living was part of my upbringing.

When the time I get married and we're not supposed to use birth control, we're supposed to, they were kind of light sell on the quiverful stuff in mainstream church.

Quiverful refers to a verse in the Bible says, happy is the man who has his quiver full of arrows as children are like arrows unto.

weapons of war.

So you want to have as many of them as possible.

And this was kind of a light sell at church.

But then when I got married and was quickly pregnant, I had my first miscarriage three months into the marriage, and then I was pregnant again at six months.

I really had a volatile situation on my hands and I needed wisdom.

I needed guidance.

I needed to learn how to be a good wife.

So I did the thing that they told us to do, which is based on Titus II, let the older women be teachers to the younger.

and how to be keepers of the home, to love their husbands.

So I went to a mother who had 10 children and I said, would you please teach me how to be a good mom?

I knew how to take care of infants but i didn't know how to make the baby cooperate to keep the household smooth so i went to this professional mother unbeknownst to me did not know we had these um

i called them special christians in our church because they were a little extra devout they were willing to have lots of kids wear prairie clothes be hyper modest they homeschooled before it was a movement it was still very fringe and i just noticed they're a little like extra they got a lot of respect in our church because they were willing to step out of society a little more than the rest of us.

And they were tolerated.

Tia, would these be like the, these would be like the Michelle Duggars.

Yes, very church, right?

Exactly like the Michelle Duggars because Michelle Duggards.

And Michelle Duggar was your group, right?

Same group, different church.

Yeah.

And I didn't know about her until 2003.

So on the timeline here, we're 1996.

And so the IBOP, which is Bill Gothard's Institute of Basic Life Principles, this is what was covered in Shiny Happy People, would hold these large conferences, like stadium events, like Billy Billy Graham stadium events, and people would come from all different walks and different denominations to study the Bible.

And so they didn't think that they were belonging to any kind of single group, they were just being extra-biblical.

Similar later would come the promise keepers, and that's another similar movement.

And then they go back into their churches and they recruit from within.

So I didn't know I was playing into a greater narrative.

When I asked her for help, she was also looking at me and saying, Here's a needy young mom.

I'll bring her under my wing.

And I became an IBLP mentee without ever having attached myself to a conference.

I never paid any money to the IBLP.

I didn't know that I was joining that kind of mindset.

I just thought I was asking an older woman for advice.

And she took me seriously.

We had meetings at her house, sometimes one-on-one, sometimes as a group with younger women.

And she taught me how to run a quiverful, how to give up birth control, how to submit to my husband, how to discipline my children, skip the doctor, skip educating educating my daughter, how to parentify my daughter so that I, because I needed a little helper, all of those kinds of things came through her instruction.

Okay, so let's stop there.

My understanding is that the way that there's corporal punishment is an extremely important part of disciplining not only children, but wives.

So can you talk to us about that?

Yeah, that's a really important key piece of this entire thing.

So when I looked out and saw this woman with 10 children and these families that were being so respected in our church, the reason why is because their little darling ducklings would follow in a very perfect line right behind them.

And everyone wondered, how do you get your children to be so behaved?

And, you know, these are working moms, people who are struggling.

They're like, I can hardly keep up with two.

I don't know how you take care of eight.

That how you do it turned out to be through high control spanking.

So there's a material out there called To Train Up Your Child by Michael Pearl, and it teaches a system called blanket training.

I cannot believe this stuff is still in print, still on for sale on Amazon, but unless more of us don't talk about it, you know, it's going to continue.

Blanket training teaches you to take an infant and you put it on a blanket and you switch it with a, with a rod of correction anytime that it starts to move off the blanket.

So you start teaching the child pain will ensue if you do not do what I say.

And this is at four months old.

At four months old, as soon as they start to be mobile, it's not something I could do to my babies.

I was too like that root system that I spent some time setting up, that's that root tia who has this wild streak in her and this identity would come through and say, I'm not spanking my infants, but they did.

They did spank their income infants.

They did it at church in front of people.

They were not afraid of being held responsible for this.

And she gave me instructions on how to pick my switch and what kind it should be and where to do it.

And they coach you on how to do this.

The idea is that if you switch your children well enough now when they're little, they won't misbehave when they're older.

And they don't tell you the reason why they won't misbehave when they're older is because you will have broken them.

That's right.

They will have nothing to fight you with when they're older.

But it's also they won't have desire if they learn young enough that the second they have agency or desire or want to leave the blanket,

that they will be punished.

Yeah.

If your body, when you're tiny, is trained with that kind of conditioning, you will not leave the blanket when you're older.

You won't.

And it manifests in many ways.

Like you won't think for yourself.

You won't defy and push your own will at the table.

You won't eat what you want, do what you want, think what you want.

You're completely shut down.

What this actually turns to, I mean, if we listen to survivors, we have lots of evidence of how this actually manifests in families.

We don't have to wonder what it's like or listen to just psychologists.

We can listen to survivors.

And what we hear of is rooms full of spankings that, you know, hours long, hundreds of switches.

It does go into years because the offenses that you're getting spanked for, they extend.

You looked at me wrong.

I think you have sin in your heart.

I read your journal.

Those are all things that children have been switched excessively for.

And then if you notice, take a real careful read of all of these parenting materials, there is no age limit on it.

So again, let's turn to survivors, older daughters being spanked in their teenage years, daughters being turned over their father's knee.

women being spanked.

And this was my big secret for a long time.

When my husband started spanking me, I thought there wasn't another humiliation I could have possibly suffered that was greater.

I submitted to it to protect my pregnancy and my will was completely broken.

And for a long time, I thought, I'll never say that out loud.

I will never let anyone know that this happens.

The reverse turned true.

And I'm not, I'm not sorry for a second that I tell about it, but because I hear me too.

And as soon as I heard my first me too, I was like, all right, let's burn it down.

Let's go.

Because no one's going to believe they're spanking their wives unless they listen to the wives.

The wives have to come out and say that.

And so, yeah, it's

that's the sum picture up to the umbrella of authority.

You mentioned that the Bill Gothard authority model, the patriarchal authority model that's still being used across the board in Doug Wilson, he's out in Idaho.

Joel Webbin has talked about this recently online.

It's a top-down power structure under nice terms at the table.

They like to call it complementarianism.

It means that men and women have different strengths based on their genitals, and that the power is up top.

The man is in charge, the woman serves, the children are the labor force.

And it's meant to protect you.

But then when you say, what are you protecting me from?

It's them.

So it's

doesn't really work.

It's protecting you whether you like it or not.

Yes, exactly.

Is that what it is?

Fundamentalism can be in anything.

The evangelicals do not have a corner on it.

It's just how this particular brand of fundamentalism is manifesting in our government.

Why is it important in in the churches to have a quiverful?

Yeah, dominion.

And this means all the children, to have 10 children, to have 12 children, to have whatever.

Why is that pushed so hard as your goal?

The real reason is political denominance through population.

And this is where the white supremacy comes into play.

They are threatened by their numbers and they need lots of white babies.

So they need us to stay pregnant as much as we can.

You can quickly multiply a congregation.

If 10 adults decide to have 10 children, you now have quite the population, you know?

So that's the idea behind it.

It's that you, you're baby makers.

Also, when you're busy making babies, there's lots of other things you're not doing.

So some of those, some of those pesky problems like female employment and child care and the things that we gripe for in modern society, they just go away because the women are busy at home having babies.

It takes care of itself.

Yeah.

Tia, I want to ask you about what happens when, so you're in this family and in this marriage marriage and in this culture and you are feeling that something is wrong.

Now, what listeners need to understand is that when you're in one of these cultures and you feel that something's wrong, you know what that is.

And that's the devil.

You're taught that your heart is wicked.

You're taught that, you know, if you say my heart hurts, you're taught your heart is wicked.

Don't listen to it.

If you say, I don't understand this, this doesn't make any sense.

I don't think this is right.

You're You're told, do not lean on your own understanding.

God is mysterious.

If your body is hurting or you're yearning or you're desiring something different, you're told that your body is wicked.

So it is a complete and total separation

from all the innate wisdom that

God has given you, right?

It's a complete hijacking of the God in you.

But when you think, why don't you get out?

It's because of that sort of brainwashing.

I mean, Abby knows, this is like, I can't believe this, but I have found journals of my own from this time when I was in a high-control religious group and I was married to my ex-husband.

And I cannot believe what I was saying to myself in those.

I was saying, please, God, help me be quiet.

Please, God, help me be sweet of spirit or gentle in spirit.

Please, God, help me let Craig lead.

Help me let Craig lead.

Help me be like, just, and then I remember, Tia, like, there was this writer back then who used to tell you, I won't say her name, even though I'd love to, but she used to write these books about how particularly you pray for your children so that nothing bad happens to them.

And I remember sitting on this particular morning, sitting on it, I used to try to write down every single bad thing that could ever happen to them because I was told you have to pray this particular way for each of your kids.

And if you don't do it, it'll be your fault.

All of these horrible things were happening.

And I just remember

being in this family where like, honestly, I was the leader in the family.

Like that was what we signed up for.

Right.

Like Craig was like, wait, what the, like,

but then I was shaming him.

to like step up and lead because that's what the church was telling me had to be.

So is that what you called self-subjugation?

I want you to talk to us about how, what is self-subjugation and what is self-gaslighting and how do those things keep you where you were?

That is, there's so much happening in the, what you just shared.

And yeah, that's the, that's the heart of it.

It's how we make ourselves systematically smaller, ever smaller, ever smaller.

And it has taken me years to reclaim that I was trying to be good.

I was trying to do it right.

I would take their advice so deeply to heart and I would do every single thing that they said.

Why?

Because I wanted it to work.

I wanted to be satisfying and happy.

And if they were telling me this was right, I didn't spend any time questioning if it was right.

I said, okay, I love you.

I trust you.

I believe you.

Let me help you.

But I was always the problem.

I was always.

too vocal or too creative or too loud or too opinionated or I would have a have a doubt.

And so then I would take myself to my prayer mat and I would go into my quiet room and I would self-flagellate because it clearly I'm the problem.

It's me.

This is me.

This is the thing.

And I need to beat it out of myself.

And if I could just be, oh my goodness, if I could just be a little smaller, a little sweeter.

And goodness gracious, I mean, back it all up.

I was born with a tooth.

I've had red hair.

We moved to Florida.

I don't tan.

I don't, I've never fit in a day in my life.

So there is no get with it sweet enough.

I can't be the big hair blonde girl that's the kind, the type.

I can't do it.

And I can't pull it off no matter how hard I try.

So, I mean, I was just meant to be me.

And here I was trying to

put myself into this little box and get smaller.

And there was no small enough.

That was the big heartbreak of Christian patriarchy is there is no point where it's enough.

You're never submissive enough, sweet enough, calm enough, obedient enough.

There will always be more.

And that's why a metaphor, my metaphor for it is a vacuum, not a box so much, because the air squeezes out and you get smaller and smaller as the air squeezes out and you can't breathe and you can't be, and there's no space for you.

This is the thing.

And we're taught to do it to ourselves, which is so convenient for them.

They get to go lead the world.

Meanwhile, we're over here trying to figure out how to help them go be free.

I wish somebody was spending that much time helping me be free, like doing all the labor so that I could be free.

No, that's not, it's so upside down.

And so this is what I think of when I see women perpetuating the patriarchy woman to woman.

They're the man, this is very complicated too in deconstruction is you don't always see a man teaching women how to forcefully obey.

You'll see women.

coercing the way we're taught to manipulate from down here below the head and the neck level, coercing other women to get into the box.

Come here.

This is what Tradwife content does.

It's lulling you.

Just come in here.

You don't need those rights.

Don't worry about child care.

It's just too hard out there.

Come over here and make your cheesecrackers with me from scratch.

That's, if we don't even stop to question it, that's what's happening.

And at this point in my story, I was Calvinist by then.

So if you're familiar with Calvinist doctrine, it's all based on how worm-like you are.

You are a worm.

You are disgusting.

You are so gross that Jesus had to come save you, but you are so disgusting, you're not even worth saving.

And that's after he saves you.

You're still nasty so the self-hate the self-loathing i mean i remember coming out of that into recovery and being told i needed to have a healthy self-esteem that one of the problems was that i had no self-worth and i just looked at my therapist like she had five heads like having a self-worth is sin number one yes and number two how in the hell would i have ever had a self-worth when everything around me for 30 years is telling me that you are disgusting you are you are gross and jesus had to shed blood for you and it still wasn't enough

It's the beginning of a new school year, and also the classroom sniffles and sneezes that go along with it.

From home to school and back, stock up with Kleenex ultra-soft tissues.

Start the school year off the right way by preparing for the messes that come with it.

You don't want to be caught without a tissue on hand to help.

Kleenex ultra-soft tissues are soft and absorbent to stand up against runny noses, to keep you and your family clean and comforted as the school year starts.

This back to school season, make sure to get the classroom essential that teachers and students can rely on.

For whatever happens next, grab Kleenex.

Whether you are working remotely or in office, many of us require collaborating with team members on projects, tasks, and outcomes.

Monday.com is one of our sponsors and a platform that our team at Treat Media has actually used to coordinate our workflow.

It is a platform that helps you from planning to execution, thinks ahead to deadlines, assign owners and actions, and allows you to see progress as a team.

It actually helps us get some work done.

There is a lot of AI out there, but not a lot actually moves the needle.

Monday.com's Sidekick is different.

It can actually build workflows, spot risks, update the team.

You just say what you need, and you can consider it done.

Sidekick in Monday.com saves so much time.

Using our Sidekick integration, helps to update deadlines, brief teammates, reassign tasks, and it even helps us spot risks before they actually become problems.

Stop managing the busy work.

Let Monday Sidekick handle it so you can focus on the real work.

Try Monday Sidekick, AI, you'll love to use on Monday.com.

First of all, two things.

If you're thinking that this is just about Jesus and you're cool because you don't do this Jesus shit, no, this is at the heart of every fundamentalist group.

That's right.

So think about wellness culture.

I think about all of my friends, which I'm included in this, of like, I'm just so terrible.

Like, why am I still hungering for this thing?

Why can I not do enough yoga and running and whatever?

Why am I at my core bad?

Like every cult, every high control group has this thing at its core, which is like you are bad and you cannot save yourself.

And so you need us to save you.

And so you will always feel like shit at your core.

This is just the Jesus version of it, right?

So tell us how

for me,

the thing is that

if you listened to yourself,

your kids would be unsafe.

Like, and I don't know how that became so ingrained in me, but I do remember learning about the infidelity in my marriage and a woman coming up to me in the hallway of my kids' Christian school and saying, I've heard what happened.

I know it's hard, but you know what we do.

We just stay.

If you leave, you will also leave.

Literally, her words to me were, if you leave, you will also leave God's umbrella of protection.

Okay.

I have to say something.

And it was an older woman, and she was revered in the church.

And I was freaking so confused.

So please say it, whatever you want to say.

I mean,

just to honor what just happened, I want to delineate and say this little box over here.

True Jesus' words do not oppress women.

True Jesus' words are kind and liberating to women.

What's happened in the Jesus tradition and the Christianity and the absolute blaspheme of his teaching is what we are talking about today.

The advice that is given to mothers that harms their own children is how we perpetuate patriarchy ourselves.

The first thing it does is make you complicit in their system so that you will feel ashamed and you will feel guilt if you take a step out because now not only are you concerned and worried for what will happen, but you're part of it.

This happened because you chose it.

This is what you did.

And that.

guilty

woman voice, you know, that shames you and keeps you in line is what happens way before the men get you.

You know, like the Gilead men are not first-line defense.

They're way up in the offices.

It's this women that censor other women and don't encourage you to be the parent that you need to be.

And I think that this is part of my story so passionately because while I didn't have any self-worth, I did think my children were worthy.

I did think that they were vulnerable and needed me.

And I was the only person who was home with them most of the time.

So if anybody was going to keep them safe, it had to be me.

That ultimately became the conflict I couldn't solve.

Yeah, that's so amazing that it's always

what happened to me a few weeks after that moment with that mother.

But I walked into that school.

It was a Christian school that was very rigid.

And

I walked in and saw Tish.

She was in kindergarten and she was in line.

All I remember is that she was in line.

She was in a little line.

She was in one of the ducklings in a line behind a teacher that I knew was very rigid.

And there was something something about seeing her in that line.

I'm getting chills thinking about it.

I grabbed her.

I grabbed her.

I went to the principal's office.

I said, get the older one, who's always in there in here anyway, because he's always getting in trouble.

He's always asking you, are you sure God's a he?

And then I get the call and then he tells the teacher, my mom does yoga and have tattoos.

I'm back in the office.

Anyway.

I grabbed him, grabbed Tish, grabbed Emma, who was tiny, tiny, and we walked out.

And I actually remember, it was a dark school.

Like everything was very dark.

There There wasn't a lot of light in there.

And I remember opening the door and my little ones following behind, and it was just brightness.

Like, I don't know what we did next, and we just brightness, just like freedom from that place.

And when you said

that Jesus's words are freeing,

I, you know, I think a lot about all the people who have

excused

hurting their children.

I don't, I'm just here to say, like, it's not okay.

It is absolutely never okay to hit a child.

There is no excuse.

There is no teaching.

It is not okay.

And it should stop everywhere.

Card stop.

Hard stop.

Card stop.

They always say, spare the rod, spoil the child.

Spare the rod, spoil the child.

This is what we, this is the scripture.

And every time I hear the rod, I think of what the rod would have been back then, which which would have been a shepherd with his rod gently guiding.

The rod was not used to hit the sheep.

The rod was used to gently make a path so that

the sheep moved in a certain way because the energetic use of that rod was loving guidance.

Yes.

always

hijacked.

It's the rod of guidance turns into hitting children and women.

That's, there's like this tiny element of truth in it that then is just taken and used to oppress instead of free.

But that's the trick, right?

There's always a little teeny truth in it.

That's the trick of every cherry-picked scripture that there is.

They take that little element and they malform it.

They're counting on your lack of education and ability to question.

and that you're just going to swallow it.

I liken the rod to a guardrail, a guardrail that's meant to make you feel safe.

You could jump it if you need to, but it's there to tell you where the line is so that you'll feel safe and comforted.

One of my very first reels when I first started speaking out about this online was to share that it wasn't the wolves in sheep's clothing that I had to watch out for.

It wasn't the even the other sheep so much.

It was the shepherds.

It was the, it was all, it's been the leadership that I needed to question the hardest because that's where the rot is.

It's up high.

It's in the power seeking, the power lining.

That's why they're using their oppression on on the ones down here.

And I don't want to be suspicious of my fellow sheep.

And I also don't,

the wolves never manifest as real scary, you know, as you know, wolf pack.

It's like, they're the good.

These are our people.

And we're like here in this moment with our fellow Americans.

And I just will not get in line in an us versus them braveheart war.

forget that that's not that's not what's going to happen here that's right

i want to stop here because we're going to start again.

We're going to start another episode.

Thank God.

Because I think it's fascinating and beautiful that it was the women who groomed you and kept you there, but it was also women who helped free you.

That's right.

So when we come back, I want to hear your freedom story.

And then I also want to talk about the trad wives of it all and what this all looks like right now and what we're going to see coming.

And what I want to hear about is the, when you're talking about how this fundamentalism, whatever it is, does not attract bad people.

It attracts good people who are so afraid and are so desperate for an answer to keep them safe from chaos and a formula to provide an alternative to the world out there that is so scary and so hard,

which

see election results.

Yes, all of that.

We have a lot to do next time.

Yeah, I do want to talk about how you recovered from the shame of it all.

Yes.

That's what I'm here to listen to.

I'm glad we have more to see you back here, Pod Sponge.

Bye.

If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things.

First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things?

Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode.

To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner or click on follow.

This is the most important thing for the pod.

While you're there, if you'd be willing to give us a five-star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful.

We appreciate you very much.

We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wombach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey.

Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and this show is produced by Lauren Lograsso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.