Part 2, Purity Culture in the #Unification Church with Kale, Coming out.

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the blessed child podcast. This is your host Renee AKA Ren robot. This month I was asked, why do you call the podcast blessed child? I thought that was a really good question. Um, and a really good opportunity to explain you see, when I was growing up, that was the identity I was born into.

Those were the social constructs, uh, blessed child and every aspect of a blessed child, every aspect of that identity was already assigned. And so by calling this podcast blessed child podcast, I feel like I can break out of that assigned identity and tell the truth. Tell, tell the real story of what that given identity in a high demand religious organization, what that really looked like and how it felt.

So by calling this podcast, bless child podcast is a chance to reclaim. Give identity and destroy it. Um, so thank you for asking that question. I always appreciate questions, comments, and feedback, so we can make this podcast more representative and more dynamic. So this is a reminder, if you like are enjoying this podcast, go like share comment, listen, subscribe.

I also have a Patreon. I would appreciate any support that you could show. So this is part two of the interview with. When we speak on a multitude of topics, including purity culture, being queer in a homophobic high demand organization to thought reform labor, trafficking, sexual development, and so much more, of course, trigger warning needed.

Please be safe. When you listen to these episodes. In this episode, I will introduce some supportive research that I found after speaking with kale, the research is awesome. It, I really dug deep and I found that the phenomenon that kale has experienced has happened before in other parallel high demand religious organizations.

And that just tells me we're not alone. This has happened before. We can make community with others who have come before us and laid down the research. We can survive and heal. So some of the researchers I am going to include in the show notes and I will allude to in the episode include Janja Lalich and Carla McLaren.

Also Irving GoffmanRobert J Lifton and Geoffry Wallace. Uh, one of the terms I include is the phenomena of rebellion in teens, the natural phenomena of rebellion and how in a high demand organization, it can be used for radicalization in teens. The next thing I'm gonna bring up is the topic of multifaceted stigma by Janja Laich and McLaren, and how that relates to being queer in the unification church.

I also bring up dramaturgy by Irving Goffman and the three ego identities that must be juggled in a high demand organization in order to survive. These are all the resource, all the resources. I am gonna link in the show notes. I really hope that it ha helps you feel like you've got some solid ground to stand on after listening to this and just know that you're not alone.

If you're experiencing a. This kind of stigmatization in the unification church, you are not alone. The research is compelling and it is comforting. So without further ado, let's get to the episode purity culture in the unification church with kale coming out, NGA sounds, uh, very scary. Like it sounds like with the self-help and the pairing of being run by Mooney's, I mean, it's just, it's a, it's a mind fuck.

Sounds like a psychological experiment that worked very well. Yeah. And I, again, I don't wanna fault, you know, folks that were involved. I don't wanna fault you if you were a second or a third year participant and you were creating these experiences for other people, we were manipulated, you know, it's, it's not your fault that other people came to harm, but we do have to accept accountability together and see where we can heal going forward.

Yeah. Like NGO would definitely say was a cult within a cult. The cause there was like the, the background of the unification church culture. Right. And then there was this self-help culture, and then there was this, this breakthrough change, your life, like change the world, like culture that had its own, you know, loaded language and its own norms that they enforced like, and this like, uh, kidnapping of your emotional cycles like this, these extreme highs and these extreme lows.

Absolutely. And like, um, the vulnerability of like sharing what you're going through, uh, to trauma bond, you to other people in that group. Right. You're doing like for the longest time, I felt like Jeff was like my mentor and we were so close and we had this special relationship and it's like, no, he, he created that dynamic, you know?

And he was the one who got to witness and experienced those highs and lows of like our emotional turmoil, like together. Like force vulnerability. Absolutely. And like, again, I, I wouldn't say that all of it is negative. Like I know that so many of, um, the folks that I was on the program with are still, you know, so close.

I, I haven't spoken with a lot of them in many years, but I still, you know, I hope that they're, you know, dealing and processing and growing still, like, I still have love for them, even though we don't interact anymore. For me, I feel like there was so much like difference, uh, between what I was going through and between what a lot of the people on, on that year of the program were going through.

And I never felt, you know, necessarily shamed for my gender or my sexuality while I was there. But like that culture of trying to keep you in and trying to get you to conform was still present. Um, so you came out of queer and. Did people feel expect for you to get matched and blessed? I D that was separate while you were on NGA.

Weren't were supposed taking intentional time to come to your own, like person come into your own person and like have your own goals in life, and then to add a partner after that was over. So that was in your vision? No, even like the staff too were just trying to get me, you know, in a stable place. Like I, like I said, I had repressed that early childhood experience and then talking to my then girlfriend, um, during my first fundraising condition, she said she was remembering, you know, abuse that an earlier boyfriend had inflicted upon her.

And I was it like unlocked. Something in my brain that reminded me. Oh yeah, you had that weird abusive experience as a child because like that's how I coded it emotionally at was as abuse. So I started talking about that and talking about my relationship. And I think that, especially because of the abuse stuff, people were like, oh, that is so serious.

Like, we don't know what to do with that, but there were still, there were other folks that had been in relationships that they were trying to get to break up out of those relationships in order to like conform to the Moony standards, you know, was it like a, like a back on track type of thing, I guess? Um, like they weren't gonna send me out of house because I was on the program and that would be, you know, kicking me out, um, or admitting that they didn't have the ability to care for people in that kind of state, um, which was kind of what their whole stick was aimed at.

Yeah. I remember the first group leader I told was like, well, I don't think that people are. Choose to be gay. I think he said that to me. He's like, um, but I do think that it's, you know, you should try not to be. I know. Um, and I, I was having like breakdown after breakdown, like panic attacks, like emotional, like liability, like processing this, this junk, um, that he was like, I can't help you.

I need to tell, um, Jeff, the, the leader of the program what's going on because maybe he can help you. You know? And I remember Jeff flying out to me, our fundraising team to have a one on one with me where we addressed what I was going through, both the relationship and unearthing this sexual experience as a child.

And he was saying, you know, if he was abusive, like I don't, I don't think that you're fallen even was something that he said to me, like you're still, you know, whole, which was something that I needed to hear, but it like. The way that it was said was still incorrect, because like I said, like everyone, not everyone, but so many children do have these early formative, like sexual experiences.

And they're not shameful. It's like little kids figuring out what humans do learning. Um, uh, so at that point he was like, you need to break up with this girlfriend and like recommit to like being on the program and being in the church, because one of the prerequisites of being on the program is you're not, you know, you're, you're present, you're not engaging in your phone except for on Sundays when you have phone time for one hour during laundry.

So he was really encouraging me kind of over and over throughout the course of the year to end this relationship. And like, I would, I would try and then I would, you know, Act out and like seek her out again different times. She was like, Hey kale. I think you're in a cult. I think that this is unhealthy, which is so wild too, because like she also was experiencing like indoctrination and her and her faith and like dealing with those ramifications, but enough to see that what I was going through was much more extreme.

And, uh, you know, eventually, you know, the NGO was selling itself as a service program. Right. So they were doing international service trips. And so we, that year we were going to different countries in east Africa. And so like, I really wanted to go on a service trip. That's really what kind of sold me on coming to the full year program, besides like the moving indoctrination stuff, um, was that I wanted to do international service work.

I wanted to like get a degree later on, in like international relations because this idea of wanting to save the world had been instilled in me so early. And so informatively, and so after Africa project, it was like all of my, my, uh, conforming behavior kind of like went to, to hell. Like, I remember even buying like gifts for my girlfriend in Africa.

Like I still have this cause I bought two, I bought one for her and I bought one for myself for while we were living separately. But it was like these two entwined, um, human humanoid figures out of a single piece of wood. And like on our, on our spring break that, uh, happened after our Africa trip. We met for the first time in real life and I gave it to her and like, that's when I had my first kiss was in her car after giving her this weird steps through

Um, and like, I guess all like the, the bullshit from the programing kind of fell away was like, this doesn't feel simple. This doesn't feel wrong. I'm engaging with one partner. I, I want to be with her forever. So I essentially just like, took like the Moony ideas about relationships and just put them on my queer relationship with this person.

And like I said, we had this idea that we were gonna get married to men together and just continue our secret relationship. So I had, you know, really committed to this relationship and like all of the trials through NGA, trying to push me out of it made me recommit harder to wanting to be with this person.

And I even remember using their like breakthrough activities as a way to like commit to my partner oh man. So you were just acting out the extremism, but in your own unique way, um, yeah. What was their situation like exactly. Like what, what you said they were getting indoctrinated, what were they getting indoctrinated with?

Yeah, so my first girlfriend was Muslim. Second generation. Her parents had moved, um, to the central valley of California. I think, I don't think that's where they landed first when they came to this country. But, um, her dad was a doctor and when he came here, he had to, uh, re-enroll in medical school and there were really strong expectations for it to become a doctor and to get this arranged marriage with another, you know, Pakistani person specifically, um, even like talking about marrying someone who was outside of like the ethnic group was even if they were still Muslim was, um, you know, frowned upon, uh, cause like the cultures are different and like how would you then talk to your, um, mother-in-law they don't speak the same language as you, but I think at that time she was in a community college.

Definitely still very, you know, closeted hiding who she was to her family and community. And then, you know, uh, embroiled with me and like that kind of indoctrination that I was putting onto our relationship. She was also engaging in, we were creating together and it kind of became like, um, a toxic dynamic in the early, early years of our relationship.

I wouldn't say it was abusive, but it did become that way. As we, after I left the church, as we like were trying to make it work. Yeah. You were kind of like mirroring the dynamics that you had been modeled without, without realizing it. And I think that is applicable to many people that grow up in extreme, uh, religions.

It's just really interesting that you guys both found each other to kind of be a middle ground, a stepping stone. If you will, but I think that's part of our attraction too, is like, Hey, you're also getting an arranged marriage. That's so weird. yeah. I think it's probably more exotic and weird for her.

Like, oh, you're a white person. You're getting merge. Like what's up with that. Yeah. Its kinda, you guys had a very unique middle ground to, and like I'm sure in my little exiting Moony brain, I was like, I'm doing good things. I'm an inter interracial relationship. This is what they want from me. I'm branding.

Yeah. I have the olive branch I'm yeah. Trying. And I think in some ways, and I know that other people that I've spoken to who are queer that grew up church have felt similarly, but they're like maybe church felt similarly, like maybe I can make both these things work. Maybe I can do both. And like that's for you to figure out, um, for yourself, you know, I will say that the church will continue to be an inhospitable place for you.

They will not. Let go of those biases and those things one day, one woman for life, it's such a passive, aggressive, homophobic, ideal that like they say in so much loaded language. Yeah. Even if, um, you know, your community loves you and they understand, and they accept gay people that, that, that backing track of Reverend moon calling us dirty dun eating dogs is always going to be there because I, I remember the first time I heard that and I was like six years old and I imprinted on that, you know, I just, it just stuck, stuck with me and it has stayed with me my entire life.

Oh man. Um, so like that's something, you know, you gotta, you know, go through. Um, and I will say, like I said, most of my friends in the, oh no, you're cutting it. Um, okay. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Can you say that one more time? Yeah, I was gonna say like, Most of my, my relationships, like with folks in the church, they were accepting of me still, even though they were still, you know, involved and still gonna get the arranged marriage and still wanting to be active members, they were able to at some point be like, I see that that's not for kale but yeah, they, they're not gonna let you get a blessing and stay in the church.

You know, it's just never gonna happen. Like the leadership isn't gonna just change their entire doctrine on a case by case basis. And that's not to say that you can't do what many other formerly religious people do, which is kind of pick and choose their own spirituality in full disclosure. I am completely an atheist.

Like I don't believe, I don't want to believe in any kind of God or higher power that allows the world to be like this. Um, and requires people to, you know, worship and love him, even though he hasn't done anything for them. For me also the idea of like a spiritual world or a heaven or a hell, like negates the reality that we need to change our material conditions here in this world.

Like the suffering of people here matters. Now, I don't care if they get eternal war reward somewhere else, you know? Cause I don't know if that's that's real or not. It becomes much more imperative to liberate people and to have these conversations and change the world today. You know, if you really wanna be realistic, um, about their crazy, you know, it's now heaven on earth.

This is the tunnel book era, like, okay, so change the world. Where is your action? What are you doing? Oh, you're just continuing to like enumerate the moon. Family's wealth like oh, good for you. That's not changing the world. Um, think, I think you're always gonna have some sense of cognitive dissonance. If you are.

Queer and prescribing to a religion whose Messiah is openly homophobic and misogynistic. It's like, there's always gonna be some level of dissonance and in authenticity, and that's not gonna be healthy for you as a human. It's not gonna be beneficial. Does that make, is that, does that track mm-hmm yeah.

And it, yeah. Yeah. Eventually, um, you know, on NGA, I don't even think this was related to me talking to my partner, but I, during a fundraising condition after the Africa trip. So I was, I didn't feel that engaged in the program anymore. I'm not sure if this was before or after I'd already had sex, but I, you know, I, I had broken my phone and I only had an iPod that had wifi.

To communicate and to keep track of time and my group leader, um, I don't know if, if she was told to do this or if she just decided that she was going to do this, but she, she confiscated my iPod and she was like, you have to, you know, just do your fundraising run and meet up with us, you know, at this designated time.

Um, and I was like, fuck this, you haven't earned the right to, to lead me. You, you know, like that's not how this relationship works. And I, I think I understood that implicitly kind of like from other experiences I had with leaders in the church and leaders, you know, in my outside life was that, um, you know, leaders don't lead through iron fist rule it's through cooperation and encouragement and discussion.

Um, and so I was like, no, and I, I left the van. Um, she had like pulled over into some, uh, marina in Montey to talk about this. And, um, I just got outta the van and I walked away and, um, I was just really angry. So I think I was gonna come back in five minutes and, you know, be like, okay, let's go on my fundraising, run now, whatever.

Um, but she, she freaked out and she thought I was running away. So she called the church leader. She left the parking lot, so I could not find her. And I, I dunno what was happening behind the scenes. I was just hanging out at this marina, like processing my emotions, angry about the church, angry about like this interaction that I had had with this person.

Again, I was, I wasn't thinking about leaving. Um, even though we were in California and I, both my parents and my girlfriend lived in California, but, um, that's certainly what the leadership thought they were like, oh, Hale is gonna go and seek out their partner. They're gonna leave the program and run away.

Um, so at that time, Jeff, the leader of the program contacted my parents and told them about this relationship. And eventually they came, the, the team came back and found me at the marina. Cause I hadn't gone anywhere. I was just lying on a bench in the sunshine, um, silently, you know, rebelling . And again, I think after that fundraising condition, I had to have a long conversation with Jeff about how, what I did was wrong and how like, you know, if I was gonna stay on the program, they weren't gonna kick me out.

I had to fulfill all these conditions and um, the summer program was coming up and I had done summer program as a team. And so I felt very strongly too about like, you know, making a good experience for whoever was gonna come on the summer program. So I was like, okay, I can deal with that. And like, I started to recognize, you know, other people didn't have the emotional maturity to deal with the kind of issues that I was going through.

Like both processing what I thought was sexual assault, um, queerness and like being so clearly ostracized and alienated from this group of people. And then, so we set all these conditions that I had to fulfill in order to stay and to do the summer program. And then, um, eventually came around. They, they didn't even like think of a role for me to do the defacto role.

I ended up doing was like food coordination. So I did all the shopping, um, the food planning, um, and those kind of things for both the NGA full full-time staff, which was 30 people. And then the summer program, which I think was an additional 40 people. So like 70 people, I was cooking and planning meals for, um, under the direction of Jeff's wife.

So Tony, who was a wonderful influential person in, you know, my formulation of how to care for others, to be honest. And, um, so we had all these conditions for me to do during the summer program. I, I was still, you know, silently rebelling because there was no longer the intense. Kind of supervision than we had had previously during the year.

I think I was mostly, you know, reading books, again, talking to my girlfriend. Um, I think we had started having sex at that point. So we were like talking dirty. Well, I was like alone in the sister's room um, and so the summer program happens and it's nice and lovely and I'm having a fine time. It's less restrictive.

And I'm like, oh, I, I feel like I'm really actually like doing something here. I feel like I'm helping people. Maybe I wanna keep doing this. Um, and so the question always is, oh, are you gonna do a staff year? Are you gonna do a second or a third year? And so I was like, I I'd like to try. And so again, they sent all these conditions for me to fulfill and I, I felt like I, I completed them.

I no longer was talking to my girlfriend, you know, all the time, just when I had a spare moment here and there. And at the end of the year, Jeff like sits me down, um, outside the house, which was then in Washington. And, um, you know, he's already tearful and he's like, you know, I love you so much. And I see that you've grown so much, but I, I can't have you here.

Um, especially in a staff capacity because of your lifestyle. And like, that was the first time I'd been hit with the lifestyle. Um, denigration. Uh, and I, wow. I was just so broken. Cause I had, you know, sunk all my hopes into this. I had no other goals for my life at that point. Um, And how could I, you know, cause I was dealing intensely with this trauma and like being in this program, but okay.

So wait, were you, were you fundraising and cooking and organizing the food and the schedule and all that? Or. no, at that time we did a, a fundraising condition before the program. Okay. Participants also had to pay a stipend to come and they also did fundraising on their teams. Okay. They were like five teams, but you were like the official, like they would call that like the mother figure in, in that pretty much.

Yeah. And like you were cooking for, did you, did you say like 30. Like fif 50 people, 80 people, depending on how many, if the entire group was there or not. Um, so to was teaching me how to care for, from 30, well, from 10 to 70 people. Holy shit. So at a center. So you're being labor trafficked, like that's slavery still.

And they're using like, instilling this sense of shame that you have to prove yourself because you know, these are the conditions. That's the way I see it is that you were, you were still labor trafficked and effectively like busy, probably from morning to night doing these things to prove yourself. And then even at the end of that, they just crushed you.

And it was like, okay, well you did your best. And we used you for the summer, but you're. We don't agree with your lifestyle. Yes. And like I said, we had had this deep emotional connection because I was processing all of this pain with Jeff because like, I don't know how many, you know, one on one conversations other people had with him, but over the course of that year, I must have had at least ten one on one intensely emotional conversations with him, not to mention again, more weirdly non-consensual touch with hugging and like shoulder touches and that kinda thing.

And then just, this is like one of the only emotionally safe adults, like since your, what you I've ever had. Yeah. Yeah. Like, cuz even your mom, like I still hear her screaming. No, when I think of how you viewed sexuality and so Jeff really met you at a vulnerable place and then really ex I'm sorry, but you were exploited mm-hmm and then, and exploited with love too.

Like he was always, you know, showing, showing signs that he was accepting and loving and that he cared about what I was going through. Um, and had been, you know, since I was this, when I first joined the program at 16 on the summer program, it wasn't just that, that one year it was like, you know, there were other prior experiences that I had with him that primed me for that kind of exploitation, um, and, and expectation that he was going to, you know, like also, um, give me this opportunity to continue.

Um, and they couldn't have, they couldn't have gotten you into such a vulnerable state without making you feel ashamed and broken and flawed in some way. Yeah. And I think people that didn't have as severe trauma had a harder time getting to that like emotional place that NGA was chasing. So people that had like a much more healthy family life or weren't, you know, dating and like going through that necessarily.

Didn't have as hard of a time. Um, in my year, especially I think most of our, our participants were fairly churchy. Like I was, it was just like me and faith were the most non churchy people. And I don't know if, you know, the listeners have listened to faith story and you know, how she was in and out of the church for many years following that initial program.

But like the two of us being the most non churchy people, um, is kind of like wild. Yeah, faith is great. She's been on this podcast. If you wanna rewind, go back to, uh, purity culture with faith then, and also check her out on falling out. There's an interview with her. She's also on YouTube. So it's, mm-hmm absolutely go check her out.

She's an amazing advocate for human rights and cult awareness. Love you, faith. Yeah, she's good. Wow. It's a blessing that you, I mean, blessing, that sounds so culty. Uh, I'm glad that you I'm glad that faith was a non-judgmental second gen that heard you coming out. That I feel like that's also blueprint mm-hmm and I'm glad you, you had that positive experience with her.

Because I can imagine, you know, if you, if you come out to the wrong person and immediately they're like, okay, 120 days in ch young to relieve yourself of those evil spirits that are possessing in your sexuality. Um, cuz that's what I heard growing up, like extremely traumatizing. Um, I saw people get said to chomp, I saw them have, you know, be beat three times a day for coming out as queer.

And like that was mm-hmm so what's it. Yeah. Learn it. Just re reinforced the learned helplessness. It's like mm-hmm I think also too, um, coming out to people on NGA, not just, you know, faith, but other, other of the, the women that I was on the program with were also, you know, I don't think they ever assigned, you know, blaming or judgment language to that.

And I thinking back on it, I'm, I'm curious because our relationship didn't change. Like after I came out, like they, they never like, you know, rescinded touching me or including me and things like that. So a lot of my fear. About that kind of rejection. Like my friend unfounded, you're cutting out. I heard that a lot of, but like that in original nature of accepting your friend and understanding, oh, hold on.

The last thing I heard good was your fears of being rejected were unfounded. Okay. Yeah. So even like, um, so I was talking very openly about, especially the, like the, the childhood experience and like the brothers all were like very sweet and like found like came around me to like encourage me to be like, we love you.

And it's just, it's just so interesting that that loving, like, you know, again, to use more church words like unconditional heart and acceptance is there because it's like fundamentally human, but like morphed and exploited and changed by the church culture. Yeah. Um, and like I said, I think that, uh, especially Jeff.

Rejection and like betrayal, like that was the first time I'd ever been really betrayed my life. Um, was that experience with Jeff? Oh man. After all that love like authentically, I felt the love in the church as well. Like I can vouch that we put our whole heart behind loving each other cuz you need, we needed each other.

And it was the only way. Absolutely. The, the ways that you can love is so limited in the church. So of course you're gonna pour everything that you have into the ways that are acceptable and it feels authentic, but it's, it was used against you. and it destroyed you. Yeah. I still feel like even, even the culture where like you recognize other people you grew up with, like, as your brothers and sisters and like that you can't get into like heaven, you can't be happy without them.

Like, if they're lost, you know, I still believe that, like I still have that kind of sense of loyalty and action for my friends. Like if you're in trouble, like I'm here, what are we gonna do? You know? Yeah. Um, and I think that so much of the, the positive things about my, myself, this is like a, a huge source of cognitive dissonance for me.

A lot of the positive things that I identify as strengths also came from church doctrine, came from those formative experiences and I've, I've taken them and I've, you know, created parts of my personality around those things. And like, that's, that goes back to the same thing. Like that question. Who is this serving?

Is this a positive thing for you? Does it help you be a more empathetic and loving human. and like the rest is, you know, unimportant. Like I think it is important for us to talk about like the harms explicitly, but like, if you don't feel like you've had a traumatic experience in the church, recognize that recognize that there are people who are intensely harmed, like even my queer experience of being outed to my parents of, you know, having these, you know, um, kind of conversations trying to get me to conform were harmful, but like compare it again to those folks who went to, and, you know, we don't even know what's happened to them because these stories are only starting to come out.

As of last year, people are only talking about them publicly. As of last year, we don't know what's happened. We don't know who we lost and I don't, I don't wanna lose anybody else. Yeah, no thank you for, for being, for being here and talking. Um, I know I'm probably not asking the right questions because I'm not, this is all new territory for me.

Um, you know, if there's questions that you would like me to ask, please like message me, me on friend robot, and then I can, you know, learn, we can learn together so we can prevent further harm. And I feel like I'm doing a lot of this because of what's called moral injury and. A big part of socialization in the unification church is that we are very much a unit.

And like, I feel like I've abandoned. It feels like you hurt who you grow up with just by leaving the church. And this is like a way to like, redeem that create the language. And that's part of like trauma experience. I don't know if I'm making sense, but absolutely you are. There's a lot of things that overlap and I feel like, you know, going back to pedagogy of the oppressed or even the body keeps scores, these books that are influencing me me right now, one of the most important things is communication and language.

And, um, so we're doing, I just want to say, like, we're not perfect. We are creating resources as we go in real time and you can be part of that too. And yeah, we can grow together and heal our, our traumas and avoid. A more traumatic feature for a lot of people. Hey, everyone, I just wanted to pause and add some information from the book, a voice from inside.

Uh, it was the by Jeffrey Wallace, it was the first place I stumbled upon the term religious trauma syndrome and, um, this term called moral injury as well as betrayal trauma theory. And I think this is relevant to what kale described. Um, they had a, a lot of betrayal and I've had a lot of betrayal. And I think anybody that grows up in a high demand religious organization will have a lot of betrayal.

And that's actually supported by, uh, Robert J Lifton's, uh, losing reality, a, a phenomenon. He calls reactive. There's a reactive psychological phenomenon that occurs in response to thought reform. And what it is is that every human has the aversion to excessive personal control. There is always the reversal for sentiment.

Um, because of this latent resentment that builds when someone is excessively controlled, there is this psychological phenomena that suggests that in an ideologically totalistic organization, such as unification church, it's going to turn people into powder kegs on one hand, religious radical zealots, and on the other outspoken bitter critics.

And then they, they tie that into the betrayal trauma theory, uh, by we now. And I feel like this is something that kale and I are experiencing and a reason that we are on this podcast talking about it is that we feel robbed of a normal childhood and honest information and the opportunity to develop and thrive as autonomous humans.

We have rage and resentment because we dedicated our lives to a false. God. Um, and we're angry about losing our families and our friends. I know I said, I feel like I betrayed my friends and I do, but, but I also feel enormously betrayed by these false narratives that we dedicated our lives for, that I dedicated my life for.

So yeah, like, like I said, a way to claim this back is to create the language and I just wanted to drop these resources, um, because there are studies that show that what we're feeling and experiencing and talking through are normal phenomenons, normal responses to trauma and injury. So yeah, let's get back to the episode.

Yeah, it's interesting. I remember as I was exiting the church, I was like desperately searching online for anyone who identified publicly as either like a queer Moony or L G B T like what have you. And like, it's funny, cuz on, on Tumblr I was searching, you know, Moonies and fans of sailor moon called themselves Moonies.

I do, I couldn't find shit. I was like, God damn it. Sailor moon. I was like, what the fuck are we a joke? Like, does nobody know? Is this just an anime? Is this like an alternate reality? Nobody talks about the Moonies. Ugh. But I did find some people that were, um, you know, talking about it on EMR, a couple, a couple friends, but like it wasn't really, until I joined like ex Moony Facebook groups that I really started to make true friends, um, that were queer and had left the church.

One of, uh, these friends is, um, I dunno how much older they are than me at least. To seven years older than me. But when I was, um, interviewing for grad schools in New York, um, I didn't have anywhere to stay. And they had added me as a friend on Facebook and I, you know, put out like a, anybody, does anyone have a couch or a bed or a floor that I can sleep in, you know, hoping to count on that Moony network.

And they reached out to me and were like, yeah, you can crash on my couch. And, um, at that point they just became like such a good close confided friend. And we piled around, uh, New York together, um, during my grad school days there. And it was, um, you know, so different than any other relationship I'd ever had.

I felt like I didn't have to explain anything at all. And that's kind of the beauty of being, you know, in community with other queer ex Moonies and other Moonies Andies in general that there's less that you have to explain, like even in therapy, I am constantly explaining my therapist only in the last, like two sessions says that he finally understands how insidious senior patient church was and how harmful it was, cuz he had heard of them, you know?

And he has been involved in other kind of like weird culty self-help shit in the past, but it took over like six months of explaining to this man weekly, you know how it's impacted me, how it's impacting the rest of the world, how it's impacting right wing, conservative, abroad, like, and colonialism abroad.

They continue um, And, and even like the gun manufacturing and the human in trafficking, like our parents funded the right wing propaganda machine, like whether or not like it was that much of a proportion compared to the money that was being laundered from Japan, you know? Um, but they were still in like intimately involved in that.

And like, if you've been blessed, I'm sure your money has also gone to the Washington times, whether directly or indirectly. for your time, which is even, you know, which ones, which one's even worse. Mm-hmm , I'm I, I just wanna take a second and applaud that you have an, and, and highlight that you have a natural instinct to find a support center.

Like I wanna bring it back to that, that online group you found with the book, the IMDB group, like you've you have this innate ability to create support systems, and I just wanna applaud you for that because I'm also in a, one of your support groups and you're a master's, you know, you have a master in psychology, so it's, there's something about you that you are, you are so good at connect.

With people and creating resources and creating a support group for you to help like find a healthy way to navigate your reality. And I just wanna applaud your strength because that is something that is very rare. Um, you, you create these stable networks and I'm just, I'm realizing that by listening to your story.

And I think that's super cool. Well, thank you. Um, I would say that I've had a lot of experience doing it and I know what it's like to not have that. Um, and as much as possible, uh, I wanna be that, you know, person for others, I've thought about becoming a therapist myself, but you know, right now I'm doing, uh, um, a little bit more activist work in raising people's consciousness about capitalism.

And also, you know, in my job, I'm a, a psychiatric patient's rights advocate. So my job is to talk to people and to figure out what they're going through and whether or not they want to be receiving treatment in the hospital. If they think that they need to be. and to discuss these things with them. So it's not just that I have this innate ability, it's that over the last, you know, 12 years, I've spent a lot of time doing this.

It's a skill, it's a skill that I've learned. And, you know, even some of it comes from MGA, like that's that vulnerability in that, that reflective listening stuff. That's the first time I learned that right, was on NGA. Like they were, they were giving me these tools even as they were, you know, using, using me and I think that's what a lot of us that graduated from that program have tried to, you know, take from it that we, we use that and use those even church mechanisms to better ourselves.

Hey everyone, I'm gonna pause it there. I'm going to give some research to support why I believe kale has a large skill set on impression management, and it's been researched by Janja Lalichand Carla McLaren as well as supported by Irving Goffman. To first understand we're gonna have to go into Goffman's theory of dramaturgy, which sums up the idea that your ego lives in three dimensions.

It's, it's the saying, the world is your stage and you are the actor on the front stage. You have to, and, and on all stages, you have to manage your impression, your social impression. So on the front stage, it's your performance and socialization with others on the backstage. It's your performance with yourself in terms of social action, interactions and cues.

And then there is offstage and these are your unconscious choices and interactions you make with yourself. And, um, and then we'll go to McLaren and Jaja knowledge. So they built on Goffman's theory. They, they came up with what is known as the triple faceted stigma. So in a religious organization, like the unification church, where homosexuality is not going to be accepted.

Queer people deal with the stigma on the outside. On the front stage, they are stigmatized for being religious fundamentalists and inside cult on the inside on the backstage, queer people are stigmatized for their inability to feel the same uncritical enthusiasm for the wonderfulness of the doctrine.

And then on the inside off stage, it's the internalized stigma of themselves that they're spiritually weak or unclean or dung eating dogs for not being able to quote unquote control their sexuality. So this is the triple faceted stigma and it is completely overwhelming. You have to juggle your ego identity on three different stages.

Constantly. And for the person who chooses to stay in the unification church, you have to develop the skills necessary to maintain psychological stability, knowing full well that you are discreditable within the community. And this is extremely taxing as a queer or non-binary person in the unification church.

You've had to put a lot of effort into becoming a skilled manager of tension and social cues of impression management. You had to be a keen observer of human interactions when you were going to be found out or criticized or judged harshly. Um, you've had to regulate your ego constantly, your ego identity constantly.

And in these multiple situations, it's overwhelming emotionally, intellectually, and socially. It's overwhelming. So you. The queer or gay individual in unification church is going to internalize a demand for purity. And that creates unrealistic expectations, chronic conflict, and an inescapable sense of shame and failure on the off stage.

So this is extremely debilitating and can lead to some serious inner turmoil. The unification church will never embrace homosexuality. And so there's this, yeah, this demand for purity that just drives a wedge further in between all of the ego identities in order to maintain some degree of psychological stability.

The queer individual has to build a super skill of ego identity management, information control, impression management. Um, there's so much work that goes into finding some sense of stability in a homophobic religious organiz. And I just wanted to point this out that this is there's evidence for this.

Please go read the show notes that are attached. If you are debating, leaving, or staying in the unification church, there are so many reasons to leave. And I hope that by kale telling their story, it can identify the abuse and the abusers in the unification church and encourage others to leave. There is life outside of the unification church and it is not brimstone and hell fire.

It is a sense of autonomy and wholeness, and hopefully it's the step for healing, your ego identities and becoming your full self and all of the strength that you've had to flex to maintain some sense, sense of self can relax and you can flourish and thrive in the life that you choose. And to close this thought, I just want to include.

A hopeful bit from Goffman. He said that once the thrice stigmatized individuals have endured ego destruction after leaving a high demand religious or organization, they can build a new ego from scratch. That is ultimately more in line on all three stages and the strength that they've had to juggle to maintain some sense of psychological stability.

It can be liberated and that strength can play. And that's what I got from the study. It was so inspiring and also that's what I get from Kale's life, which is equally as inspiring. So if you are juggling the idea of leaving or staying as a queer individual in unification church, I really hope that this is the compelling bit of information that you've been waiting for.

To leave because you are worth it. Your whole self is waiting. Your whole self is worth it. And, and with that, let's get back into the episode. Uh, and I will say, I don't want to shame or direct this, any like direct this at anyone in particular, um, NGA as it was, is no longer continuing. Um, but they did set up a like nonprofit org to do these trainings, um, both in public schools, as well as, um, provide workshops, the summertime as like a, like a project or like a, even as a business model.

And those parts of NGA may be continuing. And I, I wanna say again, yes, you can use traumatic experiences to heal and to grow beyond that place. Yes, you can do that, but if you are inducing trauma in people through break activities, you are still committing harm. If you do not have the proper psychological training to take peop care of people after you've broken them down emotionally, you are causing them harm.

You are abusing those people for your own. Again, like whatever enjoyment or like vulnerability high, it's not right. And even if you're helping them talk about it and talk about the traumas they've already experienced, that's very different than being like, okay, now we're gonna do a fire break, a fire walk.

We're gonna do an arrow break where we put arrows at our neck and we're gonna walk through it in order to overcome fear. People are harmed by those things. And like, not just like emotionally, but like the seminar that does that one, that one comes from millionaire mind intensive. And they have been sued before from people getting like tracheal damage from those activities.

Yeah. Um, It's not something to do Willy nilly. And I know that y'all think you're trained and that it's safe. And I just want to advise caution, um, when it comes to those kind of things, I think the authority to caution people comes from your master's degree also. Mm-hmm um, yeah, no, the intense harm that I experienced as well.

And the, and, and your personal boots on the ground, experience it to, to make an analogy it's like breaking someone's mind just to warp it in another damaged way. Like, um, like I broke my leg and the doctor had to rebreak it to reset it, but there was always a chance that he, if he wasn't a doctor and knew what he was doing, he could have broken it and reset it in another wrong way.

And I feel like that's, you know, that's what they're doing. They're using these very. Intense psychological practices to, to make your mind putty and plastic, but that's not. Yeah. And it works, but that's not to say they don't set you up for failure in another way, but even if you want it, even if you recognize that everything like going in, what the stakes are, even if you have this knowledge from listening to my experience, it can still like really traumatize you, like, you don't know what's gonna happen.

Um, and one of the adages that they, they say is like, oh, you have to move through it. You have to move through pain. And, um, and it's like, yes, but anger and injury and sadness in regards to those are, you know, Signifiers like is why am I angry about NGA? Because they intensely harmed me and they continue to harm other people, you know?

And it's not just because, you know, I was kicked off the program or not allowed to do a second year, like to recognize that other people got good things outta it. And I recognize that like some of those relationships I'm sure last have lasted 10, 15 years. Um, I just, as they're restarting and they're trying to create something again, I, I am worried about what may happen.

I remember like the conditions, the conditions that were popular in the church are like pushing through selfishness by not eating for three days. Um, pushing through defiance by not talking for 21 days. Um, And these, you would get mad about those. You would have an emotional response to these extreme conditions, uh, that we called spiritual conditions and we would succumb to.

And is, is that something they did on NGA or is that something that I, I experienced those on, um, O LT. Those are some conditions that we would do, I would say they were less mandated and those came more organically from participants. Um, but I would definitely say like, as a team, you would try to set a condition together to like, you know, norm, um, uh,

there's something else I wanted to say about that, but it's, it's. Like, um, normalize, pushing your, your body, waking up at five fundraising at the drop of the hat and then fundraising until like midnight to break $3,000 as a team. Um, normalizing like extreme, I would say so. Yeah, we definitely deprived ourselves from sleep and like planted different, weird, you know, food conditions.

Yeah. Um, I remember one team, this wasn't a team I was on, but they, they made a condition to only eat fast food. Um, so they had fast food for three meals a day. Okay. Uh, and it's just not, not safe for healthy. Um, yeah, but more I was speaking about, you know, these breakthrough activities. Um, one, one that comes to mind is one that actually came from SDF that's incorporated.

That was like a group activity in which you all are given for. Each person is given two books. Okay. Like two semi thick, you know, books and you have to hold these books out. um, from your body in like a tea or a cross, like shape, it probably comes from Christianity to be honest. Um, and altogether you're being timed, it's like a weird condition or like, um, I guess the Northwest culture, um, and their programs had like this adventure spirit type thing with obstacle courses and that kind of thing, but that activity you would do as a group, when you would hold up these, these books until you could no longer lift your arms.

And at that point you had to hand your books to someone on your team to make them carry your weight. Oh my God. So, um, you're trying to hold out as long as possible to avoid putting more weight on these other team members. Um, but eventually, you know, everyone falls and you can't hold, you know, 10 books by yourself.

Um, and I think that the people that really identified with that activity really. Identified the like, oh, I have to carry my brother and sister's burdens. I have to like be strong for the, the folks who can't carry this load, you know? Um, there was that one and there was another one that they did. That was fuck.

I can't remember the name. Can I just, but essentially go ahead. Okay. Wait, just pause. Because that was the, uh, group mentality for fundraising, like, okay. So you have this physical activity to bond you mentally and psychologically, but then the way they, that that would profit them is that that's how you felt about fundraising.

Like, well, if my brothers and sisters can't make $200 day, I'll make $800 today for all of those who can a hundred percent mm-hmm so, so it's still with the capitalistic profit model of human trafficking and, and this is the psychological manipulation we're talking about. It's these fun, little rigorous.

Exercises that seem harmless on the surface, but actually underneath and subconsciously, they're doing a lot of work to break you down and to, and strip you over your identity. Mm-hmm okay. Go back to like, I remember these, this is crazy. I remember these on OT, like trust falls and stuff like that. Oh my God.

The trust falls. Yeah. So it's, it's all like, again, trying to get identified so strongly with the group that you will sacrifice, like things that you would never, you know, in a normal day to day life be called to sacrifice. Yeah. Um, enmesh, just, just complete enme measurement with your, your identity with your group.

Mm-hmm. Um, the other activity I was gonna bring up that was very harmful to me. Um, I don't remember what we called it, but in its early iteration, it was called the gauntlet. Um, and it was that you were on like a hill and you would choose your three closest friends or someone you thought was strong physically.

And two of these people were going to physically hold you down. Um, they were going to do anything physically possible

and goal. Um, so you had close to holding this sign that represented whatever your internal goal for this activity was. Um, and, uh, then you would have another person who was berating you and trying to verbally shut you down to the point where you couldn't move, um, to like replicate. This is what. You know, the fallen world is gonna try to do to keep you from reaching God, essentially.

Um, and it was, we did it one at a time. So the entire group would be lined up up this hill, you know, cutting encouragement. Um, but like, uh, the people that held me down were my best friend and the daughter of my mom's spiritual mother, who I'm also still close to. And they were both very strong. And, um, uh, the, the person berating me was one of the, the people I had shared, like the most intimate, like, vulnerabilities about my relationship with, so she was yelling things about me like, oh, um, your partner's not worth this.

Like, you're just gonna like, let her down. It's always gonna be you. It's always your fault. And the, the point was to, you know, force you to fight through those barriers and to get to what you wanted, whether a churchy goal or like. A fundraising goal, you know, but it wasn't about the physical experience that you were going through.

It was about that internal goal and overcoming the physical in order to the, the spiritual or the internal. Um, and it was like, it was like literally like wrestling to people while being shouted down. Um, and I think it took sometimes if the people who were restraining the person weren't strong enough, it would take like maybe five minutes, but sometimes it's went on like half an hour to an hour.

Um, cuz you have two bodies on top of you. You're never gonna, you know, fight through that. And eventually, you know, the, um, the rest of the group would close in and close the, this aisle that they were holding and push you, push you forward up this hill so that you were all doing it together. But like man, the group thing and the, the harm is just.

Why, why did you have to put people in that circumstance to make them, you know, feel like they have to fight to survive or to get to their goal? I, um, I have a, I have a lot to say about this, uh, if, if that's okay. Absolutely. I'm here to listen. Um, it's not supposed to, it was something that we were told to keep secret from people outside of NGA.

So I'm, I'm breaking a social, you know, norm here by talking about it explicitly. Oh, the gauntlet, the, um, the, the, the literal torture that they put you through. Um, this is, this is the persecution condition that Reverend this is, there's so many things that are going on for me right now. First of all, I'll put down moon encouraged.

To encourage second gen to be persecuted deliberately. Mm-hmm . I remember playing these gauntlet games in camp sunrise, actually not with the physical holding, but we would sit in circles and rewrite each other publicly to see how long you could stand persecution. And that was part of the be desensitizing for witnessing and fundraising so that we would be more profitable for moon and the empire that's an integral part of being a unification church member is the prosecution and, and, and berating each other.

But, but the physical aspect adds a physical torture. Like this is torture. And what I know about torture is you torture somebody to such an extent, will there leave their body to feel safe, they'll disassociate. And in that state, they're so vulnerable, you can manipulate them like buddy to do whatever you want, essentially.

And they'll have two ego states. Um, and it, it. Can leave lasting effects for the rest of their life. And, um, yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I, I am so infuriated that this was a practice that was done towards children, like as a normal. And there was like the ultimate, like breakthrough activity that we did altogether.

No, it was like often the entire workshop was like framed around getting people to that point. Um, and I think they also even integrated it into the Northwest summer camp at one point, um, where they just assigned, you know, um, group leaders or older staff members to physically hold down the kids and they were fighting through mud.

Um, I don't know if they had like the, the same kind of internal goal manipulation attached, but it was definitely like you said, to replicate like the suffering and the, the heart, um, to get you toward, um, identifying with, uh, Like Reverend moon and like the things that he went through. Yeah. And I think this is what extends your faith in the church is, is this cognitive dissonance.

Um, and so you're in a state where you're you, your ego is split. This is literally the goal of torture to split your brain into your critical thinking and your emotional state. It's literally the goal of torture to get somebody to do what you want. Um, so you're, you're telling me, and like, I, I can see this reflected in my own experience in the church, but this is like deliberately done.

And how old were you? Uh, the first time I did that experience and I had just turned 18. Okay. My first experience with this sitting in a room in camp sunrise was when I was 13 or 12. I might have been 12. Oh gosh. So like they were implementing these at many different workshops, so it's really crazy. Cuz I was on the east coast.

You were on the west coast, but these same themes are coming up with. Torture of, of people. Um, and then I'm sure they, like, there was a huge emotional up and a down. And then when you were at your down, they probably like, love bomb the crap outta you and told you the divine principle and the ways of tradition and culture, and then that stuck.

And so like your, your, your, your higher thinking brain is stuck in this torture center. And then you're just kind of your identity stripped and you just do whatever. And it takes so long to come back from that. Fortunately for NGA, they weren't plug in specific stuff all the time. Like it was like the backdrop, but like, I, I was able to like disassociate from like the church stuff.

Like at some point I think I, you know, stopped engaging in prayer. Um, and I definitely stopped having internal goals that were like, I'm gonna please God. Um, and for that one, I know that I, I had put like my relationship into that, into that. Torture and to like strive for the relationship through whatever persecution.

So like I used this, these indoctrination tools on myself, they were teaching you to use them on yourself in order to get what you want. Um, and there was like, you know, the side effect was, um, keeping you in the church longer, but there, there are no, you know, ill intent. Like there, there is no accidents in this kind of control.

I just think this is so fascinating. Like I'm real, you're one of the first people to bring up this kind of deliberate torture. Like it's. So we haven't talked about this, but like I'm on the east coast, you're on the west coast. We both experienced this culture in the unification church and it's just, I think it's fascinating cuz I don't think we've even started skimming the surface of the type of psychological warfare.

We were exposed to as children in the church to keep us in the church. And I have another entire rant about how like conditioning and teaching people, these stories from childhood teaches them to parrot it. So if they are scrutinized. Um, you appear to be a zealot, right? If you stress a child and all of a sudden they start speaking Korean to your, you, you're like, oh wow.

They really do believe that like this Korean guy is a Messiah. Yeah. And it's all programmed and intentional. Yeah. Um, yeah. Cause the other religiousness is like, aside from the points, cause like the behavior behavioral conditioned responses, like automatic, you don't have conscious control. I've been listening to the children of God speak and they're like, oh, we were the most successful in, in brainwashing kids to be abused and then, and then defend their abuser.

And I'm like, you guys were very good at it, but there's so many similarities, like honestly, uh, there's something more to exploring how we were complicit in our abuse. And how did we get to that point? And I think. Something we're digging at right now. And it's just so fascinating in a, in a bad way, in a terrible way, but I'm glad we're talking about it, cuz like, like you said, like this is the beginning stages of creating language for understanding this stuff and avoiding and evolving away from this.

So I think there's so much more to explore. Can we take a quick bathroom break? Yes, absolutely. Okay. Hold on.

Sorry. I was checking with my partner oh my gosh. It's okay. Hey, um, so interesting falling out, just dropped a new episode and guess what? Uh, it's for the queer ex Moony community. Hell yeah. Yay. we're all on the same page. I love this. Okay. How are you doing? I know we've been talking for longer than I expected and we haven't even really gotten to all your talking points.

That's okay. Um, I think that, you know, what comes up, comes up and to just deal with what we've been given. . Yeah, I love it. I got a little activated there talking about MGA yeah. Reasonably totally understandable. But you went through there. Um, okay, so let's get back into it. Amazing. While we, we went on so many tangent, I love it.

Sorry. It's all connected. It really is. I mean, the unification church is so sinister in us being active participants in our own self sabotage and in our own indoctrination, we willingly abused ourselves. Mm-hmm and that's like a big, what the fuck for sure. And I also another condition I remember doing for like my relationship and to like make sure that I was doing like the right things for my relationship was like a three day fast.

Yep. Um, I don't know if I told my partner I was doing that, but I did it, um, yeah. Uh, just to go back to kind of the timeline. Um, so I, after I left MGA, I was very depressed. I had, you know, experienced heartbreak and betrayal for the first time. Um, uh, because I had graduated from high school early, all of my church friends that, um, besides my best friend who I was on the program with had either started college, um, or were on their own church program.

Um, and then many of them, because they had just graduated, um, were gone for. Several years doing like a staff year as well. So a lot of my reference group in the church like fell away almost immediately. So I didn't have, you know, other friends, my age, the entire cohort was essentially gone. Um, and I didn't really wanna be super involved.

I was, you know, really getting into this first relationship, uh, cuz we were finally physically in the same state again and I wasn't, you know, being indoctrinated every second of every day. So we were having a lot of free time to connect. Um, I think we celebrated our first anniversary around that time and um, she like really encouraged me into getting a job and starting college.

I had like in the church been like, I don't need to go to college even though I was like a very high achiever academically and I like learning. Um, so. As shitty as that relationship was. I thank her for that, um, influence, uh, and, um, because there was like a dearth of, uh, like group leaders and youth leaders in the church in that, in the area at that time.

Um, and my, my older siblings cohort was back from STF. They asked me a lot to, you know, participate and start doing youth ministry stuff. So I started staffing like middle school workshops. I think I was support staff on a few high school, but it was mostly the middle school stuff. Um, especially cause I had had this like leadership training from NGA, they were like, oh, let's like start to incorporate these activities and things that you've done.

Like what are your ideas? And I, you know, I, I was just trying to be there and be like a positive figure for these kids and to talk openly about like what I had gone through and like. You know what they might be going through. And, um, one of my sister's friends came to me and was like, kale. I don't care what you're doing in your outside life.

I don't care if you have sex. I don't care if you do drugs or drink, I don't care what you do, but do not tell these children what you are doing when you are here. You are a perfect Moonie. She didn't say that, but that was like the implication. And I was just like, no, I'm not gonna lie to people about who I am or what I'm experiencing.

I'm not gonna tell them about how I'm having sex, but will I lie and be like, no, I've never experienced, you know, struggle with the church doctrine. Like how could I say that? And like, remain like a whole person, like in integrated. Um, so I kind of like phased myself out of that slowly. I think it was not even slowly.

It was over the course of like a couple. A couple workshops. So a year maybe, and then like NGA would try to bring me back. And when Jeff was in the area, he would call me and we would have coffee together. And, um, at that point, I guess he had accepted that I wasn't gonna get out of this relationship. And in my relationship with him, I started becoming really focused on making sure that he wasn't treating other queer people that way.

So I hung around and, you know, continued to let this abusive, weird dynamic persist. Wow. Um, because I didn't want other people to go through with what I had gone through. You know, we haven't really explored this relationship, but with Jeff, but I mean, how old was he? Oh, he was, um, in his forties at least fifties.

And you were, how old, when you met him? Uh, when I met him, I was 16. Okay. You know, and he had multiple close relationships, primarily with young girls, um, through these programs. I don't know if the young men who were on the programs can speak to this, but I, I have heard people say that he was definitely closer to the girls than the boys.

And you're saying it's a cult within a cult. And, and if I know anything about cults is that the, the older men or older people in general, like to prey on the young and have these force access relationships. And it's a thing with power, even if it's, it's just odd. And I'm sorry that you felt like you had to hang around to protect other people like you from him.

Like that's, that goes in hand in hand with moral injury, but also you didn't have the language to understand what was going on. that you were being groomed by this older person to have forced vulnerability. He had forced access to you and your deep dark secrets, and I'm sure it gave him a high, why would he seek you out to have coffee?

You know, mm-hmm I mean, and maybe, and maybe it overlaps with genuine care and friendship and, and that, I mean, he would, he would build me up all the time and say, you know, I, I don't have this kind of connection with other people. Like, again, I don't know if he was saying that to other people. Yeah. But it was, I think also, probably because of the parentification I experienced with my mom as a child, it was kind of mirroring that as well.

Um, Jeff has his own, you know, mental stuff that he's gone through. I think he has, um, I don't wanna use this phrase because it's from like the medical model of mental illness, but he has UN UN unmedicated bipolar disorder. Um, and so he, he will go through phases of like withdrawal and withdraw and, um, Withdrawal, sorry.

And, uh, removing himself, like from community, doing things that are, are manic. Um, what have you, and I think he was also using me to like, as a mini therapist for his own problems as well. And this was all, this is all very well hidden with the dynamics of the church with yes, older men and the youth having close knit relationships focused and centered around the guys of youth ministry and almost always conducted in a one-on-one setting where there are no, you know, other people to intervene.

It's it's, um, it's not healthy. um, I think, you know, one of the biggest things I've had to understand is boundaries and mm-hmm, coming out of the cult. And I feel like those type of situations don't set you up to understand healthy boundaries between, well, we called them aunts and uncles. So even that, even what we called each other was setting us up for attaching these familiar relationships to people who have not invested in us, who are not deeply invested in seeing us succeed and our safety mm-hmm and just using us.

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of us were use parentification, but for multiple. Not just your parents. I feel like a lot of us mm-hmm the second gen. I mean the first gen unification members had a very skewed view of second gen blessed children as like the saviors of humankind. We were often subjugated to being emotional dumpsters, as well as the savior.

It's like such a weird paradox. And even in moons like speeches, he would say, oh, if you are failing and your child sees that speaking of a child, like someone in between the ages of like three and 10, your child will correct you and say, why aren't you doing more for the church in the Providence? Yeah.

Which, yeah. Which, um, I read about in a book, what was it? Jeffrey Wallace wrote is wrote this book about being, uh, physically and mentally out. And he talked about this phenomenal where children will see their parents leave the church and actually scold them for like, um, a sense of belonging within the, the church.

Okay. We're just gonna pause it there. So, like I said, this is a information from a voice from inside a book by Jeffrey Wallace. They are a person who is stuck in the Jehovah's witness organization to maintain their familial ties, as you know, uh, Jehovah's witness, uh, practices shunning. So if they come out of the UN out of the church, they will lose their family.

So I have great respect for Jeffrey Wallace for being a minority influence, um, and maintaining their ego identities in order to influence the Jehovah's witness organization from the inside out. I recommend their book for anybody who finds themself in a similar position in order to maintain familial ties in the unification church.

It's a great book on Amazon. So what I was referring to is. Jeffrey Wallace's idea, um, that he supports in the book. There is this normal, psychological development that occurs in teenage years, which is the time of rebellion. I think anybody that's been a teenager can remember a time of rebellion teenagers, naturally challenged famili, familial, and cultural norms, and begin establishing nuance based on their personal perspectives and those of their peers while teenage rebellion usually does prune away teenagers from high demand, religious organizations, many teenage children of unification church members, um, will experience the process of radicalization that natural rebellious phenomenon can actually lead to radicalization.

How do you ask, uh, let me tell you, so basically. Uh, first gen parents will have moderated the divine principle and the application of their ideology and to the child. It will display as a degree of deviance from the rhetoric to which they have been subjugated their whole life. Um, so, you know, the parents are, they have done their seven year course.

They have been thoroughly human trafficked and they might display some bit of exhaustion and that can seem like deviance. And so the teenager that is viewing the first gen parent or the second gen parent as exhausted, might frame that as hypocrisy and turn inwards into the idealism of theology and that, that.

That energy is propelled by the normal psychology of rebellion. So this is how we see children in the unification church, turn into radicals who do three years on MFT to be labor trafficked and turn away from their parents and turn more into the cult. Um, I just wanted to put that in because it is a real thing that we have seen happen and it's, um, something to dig into and understand.

I think having research to understand these things helps us better digest the phenomenal. So that's the bit from. Jeffrey Wallace, a voice from inside. Let's go back to the podcast. Yeah. You know, at some point like the, for me, at least when I was exiting, like, you know, when I'd physically and mentally out, like I was out from, as soon as I got out of Africa and I was, you know, meeting my girlfriend the first time.

That's when I was really starting to leave. Yeah. Um, but physically I didn't leave until that experience with that older sister, that older, um, youth minister happened as well as that experience with the aunt who conducted the education affairs, coming to my mom and essentially shaming her for my queerness.

Then I was like, I'm fucking done. Like these people talk about acceptance. And like, they want people to bring up their issues and they provide absolutely no emotional support. Absolutely no counseling, absolutely no drug intervention or counseling. Like my mom had been struggling at that point, like raising my siblings for like.

10 years. And she was bringing these concerns, especially about the drug use, to like the leadership in the church and saying, I need help. And what did they do? They stigmatized our family. They were like, oh, the woods, the woods family are like bad. They're bad influence rather than helping us and giving us resources.

I've talked about this with my partner, uh, recently. And at one point when my siblings were in elementary school, when I was in kindergarten, they were pulled from class to do family therapy at the expense of the state. So something severe was happening, even when they were children showing up as like difference, you know, as learning difficulties, as social difficulties and the state recognized that there were problems and they were trying to help.

But my mom didn't like those interventions and she put us back into homeschool following that and like, That's no surprise. Like that's what the church trained her to do. And then they did not provide any resources at all. And that's kind of when I realized, like they're talking about acceptance and tolerance and healing, and there is absolutely no follow through, this is just hypocrisy.

Like how can you say you believe in unconditional love when every single bit of love that I've experienced in this church has been conditional. I can firsthand vouch for the prosecution, your family faced in the bay area. When I visited, uh, I was told as a visitor to stay away from you guys. Oh. And I went to your house.

Anyway. Some something I identified with was, you know, that were different. And I loved that about, I kind of loved finding the prosecuted families. hanging out with them. Absolutely. They were the most similar to us. yeah. And I think in a cult dynamic, everybody is secretly prosecuted, but like, I can vouch that you guys were openly, like I was told, you know, your sister, oh, especially your brother, like bad influence.

Yeah. So we partied, I feel for them so much. And like, I know that they've gone through their own, you know, paths to get to where they are. I won't comment on their experiences, but for me, when I started, you know, doing church stuff, they were like, you're the last hope you gotta like turn around the course of your family.

It's on you now. Well, the bear is super judge. I can tell you that, cuz they exiled me from ever coming back to the church there. Like, like publicly shamed. They're like Renee Martinez can never come back to one heart camp. Um but yeah, they're awful there. Holy shit. Okay. So this lady, I don't, I don't know if you got into it, this lady persecuted you, she came to your mom who was already struggling, who has already had this sense, this false sense of security and community within the church.

Um, this is who she, she picked to help her, even when the state was there for resources, she, she was like, no, fuck that. I'm going to go to the church. I don't know if it was this person directly, but, um, she was definitely a representative of like the church education, like arm. and I know that there are like, especially in the bay area, there are maybe like, well, if you get back and you look at like, um, the church witnessing structure, like NY Durst, I don't know if she's still alive, but she still lives in the bay area.

Her children live in the bay area. They're involved in the principal academy, which is the, the Moony run school that, um, operates as a non-denominational private school. There are so many church members who teach at the school. You know, one of my friend's moms is the, the principal or was the principal for many years.

And this person was more of like running camps. I'm sure that you came into contact with her. She pseudo adopted a couple older second gen. Yeah. That's the person who came to my mom and was like, um, kale, you know, people wanna marry kale, but kale doesn't wanna get married by the Moonies. Woo. And like, as soon as people disappeared, you never heard from them again, like even, um, with the passing of someone who was.

Very involved in our local community and, and lived close to me. She completed suicide earlier this year. I'm not gonna say her name because she kept her personal life separate from the church as an adult. I was even reluctant to, you know, like reach out to the other people that she was friends with to talk about like her passing, like what the church's impact on, on that was because I was afraid to even like reach out to them, both for fear in the church.

And also like that authority structures I don't want to, I don't know, you know, break that , I, it, it sounds silly, like speaking out loud right now, but like, I know that that's where that reluctance comes from. Um, because they just, you know, disappear over time or we disappeared I disappeared. Yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, I disappeared.

We, we disappeared and our stories deserve to be told as we want them to be told. Um, But can you, and I wanna say before we move on there, um, if you know me and you wanna talk about these things, if you have known me at any point and you don't recognize who I am anymore, please reach out to me. Um, I'm on Facebook and I'm on Instagram and, um, Renee can also make my information available.

Yeah. I try not to use social media because of the negative impact. It has, you know, on my mental health, but I still keep those accounts open in case someone wants to contact me. If you know me, my phone number is the same as it was when I was 13 years old. So you can still get into contact with me if you have old information.

Um, let's talk about the weird shit we went through. Love that. Thank you, kale for making yourself available to our, you know, our small, I don't say we have a big audience because like, what we talk about is so niche, but it's so important and just having anybody feel safe enough and comfortable enough to reach out.

I think that's, that's so valuable. Absolutely. As a resource. Yeah. If I could just speak about gender briefly. Um, I think for a long time, because I feel, um, You know, very positively toward femininity and I don't reject, you know, femininity and like even the socialization that I, I went through as a woman and as a girl, like I still identify strongly with those things.

For me, it came down to, I started doing queer organizing and queer event building and graduate school. And I found myself really wanting to hear stories from trans people and to like lift up, especially marginalized voices, like, because I had even just a little bit of money that was given to me by the university first stend payments.

Um, and I would really seek out those, those narratives and those people were like asking, you know, if you didn'nced transphobia, like even if you're not trans confront it, like we can't let this culture continue. And so I started intern like looking internally, um, As well as having, you know, psychology has been incredibly harmful to queer and trans people, as well as people of color over the last, you know, 200 years.

Like so many of the things that came out of psychology were intended to control, especially runaway slaves. Like they created mental conditions to assign to them, um, in order to pathologize and. Explain away these deviances, which were, you know, the soul seeking freedom from control and enslavement. And that goes for the way that they criminalize and pathologize, homosexuality and transness as well.

And even now in the DSM, it's still gender dysphoria. You have to receive a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, which is distress related to an incongruence between your internal gender and the gender that you were assigned at birth or your presentation. Um, again, causing distress and my entire life, I had, you know, some distress that would come up like around my chest or around the way that I was dressing.

And I had to wear, you know, skirts at church for NGA or that kind of thing. But I, I do like feminine things. I like the color of pink. I like brightness. I like. Being playful. And those were things that I always like fell into in femininity. And I didn't, you know, feel like I had to examine my gender until I was like, if I keep saying that, like these gender roles, this socialization is harmful.

Why am I still holding onto these things? It's time for me to look inward. Like, am I encourage everybody? You know, if you're CIS or trans or non-binary, you do still have to examine your gender roles, you still have to examine where those things come from and if they serve you or not. And like, as you, I, as I examined them, those things fell away.

Like the need to like reject masculinity because masculinity toxic isn't true. Like wholesome masculinities that are, you know, Ingrained. And like, for me, even like the distinction for masculinity and femininity is like unnecessary, like human characteristics for me are the things I truly identify with like nurturing and like loving and building people up and being playful and fun and non shaming.

Those are all things that, you know, come back to my gender as well. And my expression of gender, um, Over the last two years, I, um, there were times that I'd cut my hair in the past or dressed more masculine or punk. Um, but for the first time I was like, what, what, what, what am I attracted to if I have nothing, you know, shaping my preconceptions.

Um, I wore makeup like every day. Um, from the time I left NGA all through grad school. And, um, once I was like, confronting these ideas about transness and like, what gender is, I was like, I don't really need to engage in those things every day. They can be fun and they can make me feel good. But if they're not intentional, what am I doing here?

I'm just consuming things. I'm consuming makeup for the sake of being socially accepted. Um, so I, I currently have, uh, uh, a Mohawk , um, it's pretty short. um, and I'm mostly wearing, um, like very baggy, like men's clothes, but I still play with like pattern and like women's pants and like, cuz there was a much more diversity of color there to like enjoy.

Um, and for a long time, even before I was like, yes I'm non-binary yes. I'm trans. I was trying to get people to refer to me in non-gendered ways. I worked for my dad, um, as a limo driver for many years and it would always make me so angry that he would, you know, gender the driver. When he was explaining the process to customers on the phone, he would gender the driver as a man.

I'd be like you have had, besides me multiple other women work for you. So when you talk about people that you don't know the gender, they are, you need to say they them, because that is what the, uh, um, English language has for a non-gendered pronoun like, oh, who sweater is this? You know, it's theirs. You don't know whose it is.

Um, they will pick it up from the lost and, and found like that's a natural way that we refer without gender to people. Um, and then I, I had changed my pronouns, you know, following these ideas about gender, um, to include they them and asking people to start using they them. Uh, but no one had been using them for me at all until, uh, my current partner, you know, made a concerted effort to only refer to me as they them, because everyone else would only use SheHer for me and like that as well as like these other experiences and changing my appearance recently have given me so much gender euphoria.

Like we talk a lot time about dysphoria about this distress, but not about like the liberatory, like freedom that letting go of those conceptions, like lets you step into, um, It's all intentional. It's all fun. And it's all beautiful and, and sexy. And it's also really enjoyable to like, to be bisexual and to be non-binary because like, then anyone's attraction to you is queer.

Like I get to like clown on straight men who say they're attracted to me, like, haha, you're gay now, bro. Woo. Um, Ooh. Um, and that's the thing. It's just like, all of it is fun and liberating and that's why I keep coming back to this point about being a gender diverse or like expansive child. Cause we're all like that.

As small children, they've done studies with babies infants like three months old, seeing which colors children prefer. And from three months old, all babies identify pink as a preferential color. We don't know why they just do, but as soon as like one years old, they start to have ingrained socialized preferences.

Relating to how they think that they need to be based on these, the gender they are assigned. Like, why are we limiting our children like this? Why are we teaching boys that they can't play with dolls? Because what does play with dolls do normative? Like for our development, like playing with dolls, teaches us how to be nurturing, how to care for another person.

And that's a human quality that all of us need. Not just little girls. Yes. I love that. I I'm sorry. It sounds like you're. Um, first of all, I, I wanna say thank you for giving us those breaking down that cycle of liberation. Um, it sounds like I wanna go back to pedagogy of their press. I wanna go back to that dynamic of like a oppressed and oppressor and that spectrum, and it's like, they both exist on.

There's there's paradoxes cuz you can't have one without the other and just like gender, like right, right now we're raised with man and woman and then, and then trans is the bridge in between the, with the spread, not just trans, but all, all types of sexuality is like the bridge in between. And um, like you can keep oppressing sexuality if you don't let people question.

Like if you don't let people express and play, you can keep, um, yeah. Oppressing people. And I like, I mean, a lot of homophobia and transphobia is rooted in misogyny. It's that? How could you give up your status as a man and want to embrace, um, these things that we have deemed lesser because they're associated with women and like to be a feminist is like to recognize that, you know, like men and women are equal and like men and women can do any of the same things.

Like we all have those abilities and we shouldn't be. You know, grouping people and forcing them into doing those things based on their gender. And we can't come out of that, um, dynamic without talking about it and also acknowledging it and then, oh yeah. And recognizing where the power, the power lies.

Yeah. And like, again, who has agency over this? Like, yes, these are all socially conditioned beliefs, but you can change your mind. You can do anything , you don't have to subscribe to those beliefs anymore. You can stop engaging in those thoughts and you can choose to do things differently. You can play and you can enjoy the patterns of life and the reality as it is.

I love that. I, I love that you could talk us through that process for you and mm-hmm, the rewards of embracing, you know, going cause like, you know, for people that are in the church, listening now who identify as queer, but are too scared. Or too locked in the cycle of shame to admit it. Um, this is a huge, a huge thing that you're talking about maybe for the first time people are seeing what it's like to be visible and accept these things.

And mm-hmm, , I wanna talk about how that's helped your brain. Um, how do you feel different now about your sexuality and your identity than you did when you were a teenager? Oh my gosh. Um, I, I don't even feel like the same person anymore, to be honest, like just a complete, you know, transformation, um, uh, in the trans community, we have a saying that like before, you know, you're trans you're, you're, what's called an egg and there are different experiences that like crack the shell of your egg to let, um, you start to emerge.

Um, but yeah, I like, I would say that the end of my first relationship, the one that had become toxic. um, she ended up going to med school and there was like, I mentioned our previous podcast episode, this experience where I was at a party. Um, and I didn't know anyone, uh, and I got really drunk and this person took advantage of me.

Um, she blamed me for what happened. Um, she said I had cheated on her and I, I was throwing away our relationship. And so I, I had begun to like berate myself and blame myself for all these things that had happened in a relationship. And I, you know, cut myself down to nothing and then just, um, started to rebuild from there.

We were still together, but broken up and I. I moved to the Caribbean to live with her, um, while she was going to med school and she didn't have time for me cause she was studying. So I spent a lot of time alone. Like who are you when no one's there. And I want you to even imagine if God isn't there because I know that the church programs you to think, oh, you're never alone, but I want you to think about who you would be without any, any socialization.

What things do you like? What things do you dislike? What do you like to do? And that can come to gender or that cannot come to gender. A lot of people will discover that they don't have a gender, their, a gender. Um, like I identify as non-binary but like some days that's both, some days that's neither, sometimes that's, you know, something completely outside of that.

Um, yeah. Can you repeat the question again when I am sorry? Oh, okay. So basically you are becoming visible for people who don't have a role model of coming out of the church. And basically I just, I want to highlight the good things about coming out as much as we're talking about how traumatizing and how difficult it is to, to come out and accept yourself.

Like, what are the rewards like? We're talking about the risks, but is it worth it? Like if your younger self, you know, was, was seeing you, if was able to talk to yourself today, what, what would you tell them? I mean, I, I think I would be actually really proud. Like, look what we've done. Like, look what we, where we are like, could you have ever imagined that we would have this life where we feel like so deeply happy and you know, in community with other people.

And like, even when other people. You know, you, you might come into conflict with them and they might, you know, betray your trust. Again. You still believe and trust that, you know, you can form these deep relationships. You can express yourself and people are gonna accept you. Whether or not they're the people that are in the church with you or not.

You know, there are people out there that are the same as you. You're not alone in this. And like, I wish that I had someone who would have, you know, told me that like, no matter what you're going through, like, I love you. And I'm excited to see who you become and who you create yourself to be, because we can't change the circumstances or birth.

No one chooses to be born, but you do get to decide what you get to do with this, this wild life. The church is there and sure you can, you know, take good things from it, but don't let them limit you. Um, don't let yourself be hidden away in a closet for, for your entire life. Like. You have so much more to offer than that.

And you are, you are valuable even be besides what you can offer others. Your existence is importance. You are, you get to decide what you do with it. And even if other people that you're in contact with right now are saying that they're gonna reject you. The rest of us are here that have exited and we're waiting with open arms.

I love it. I, I love it. It's such a real place. I love that you address the fear that you it's like jumping off a cliff, like leaving the church feels like committing social, suicide, spiritual, suicide, um, your faith with God, like. It's painful. You're you're essentially being born. Like, it feels like you're dying.

If you're doing everything that they told you not to do, there's this one sentence in pedagogy of, um, the act of like finding humanity is the pain of birth or something. Exactly. Exactly. It's like living through your rebirth is painful. It's not this beautiful, like it's literally painful, like the, the image of a Phoenix rising.

And so you're burning in ashes. And I remember being a believer of moon and having my deep faith. And there was this little part of me that was like, maybe leaving is the greatest act of faith. Maybe that's where I'll find my God. And within finding faith outside religion is one of my most powerful human experiences.

Like I don't believe in God. Right. But I have intense faith in people and the, the power that we have collectively to transform our world and to transform the way that we treat each other. Like I don't, I know that there are other people that will act intentionally against that, but I believe in the power of people to connect and to change.

I love that. Ooh, that's good. That's not to say, you know, keep working on your parents and trying to force them to accept you. If they're not in that place right now, your safety is the most important. Yeah. If you are not in a place where you are safe to come out to your parents, because you are dependent on them for financial resources, for housing, for medical care, keep yourself safe, survive so that you can thrive another day.

Make the groundwork start getting a job, make your finances separate from your parents so that you don't have to be beholden to them. Even if you do love and wanna be around them, you wanna have the agency and the power to determine how those interactions go. Right? We talk about resources, go with the basic hierarchy of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

You need to, if you're gonna escape an abusive situation, you need to secure your foundation of your, your needs to make an exit. So yeah. Make an exit plan, right? Is that what we're saying? absolutely. Yeah. Have a bug out bag. Yeah. And I mean, this applies to cults. This applies to abusive situations. Um, this applies to toxic environments, even toxic workplaces start making, you know, first you have to acknowledge that you're not happy or you're not safe, um, or the conditions need to change and then start planning.

And that seems overwhelming, but it, it happens so quickly. Once you start making your baby steps, you'll find that like, you don't have to put up with so much, like what you have to endure is lessened even by just the act of having a plan of knowing, oh, I know this friend has a mom who has a brother that's.

Whether they're in the church or outta the church, that person might be more accepting, you know, start to map out and test, you know, what people's opinions of like queerness are of, of current issues. How deep in the church are these people? Like, do your parents ultimately love and support you or is your, is your family structure also abuse that make your plan?

The battleship was it, this is bringing up so many things and I, we could keep going on, but I'll, I'll try to wrap it up. Cause I know you're on vacation and kale. No worries. This is important. It is so important. Yeah, you can. Poke the bear kind of with, uh, hypotheticals, like at the dinner table, it can bring up what would happen if this, or find similar stories in pop culture and say, what do you guys think about that, that you identify with without, you know, revealing your yourself, right.

Start, start seeing what's safe to come out. Yeah. Yeah. And people do change. Like my parents were very, very negative starting out and they did tell me like, oh, you're possessed. Like you're being influenced by evil spirits. this is why you trans. Yeah. Um, but like when full night club shooting happened, I remember my dad was incredibly emotional and moved like the Castro in San Francisco when that was happening.

And so I came home and he came, you know, woke me up and he's like, there was a shooting in a gay bar in Florida. I'm glad you're okay. Um, And even, you know, he's talked to me about like how, how sad it is when he thinks that people can't upset, like, um, accept like trans people, like even coming from the church and like still being, you know, in the church, he can recognize and say those things, but I know not all of our, you know, especially trans siblings have had that experience with their families.

So many of them are at risk of being snatched by their parents and forced, just chunk young again, um, through an arranged marriage in a yeah. Yeah, no, always keep yourself safe. The danger is a hundred percent real. Like I wanna say the, the abuse and the like. The unification church is, is a destructive cult and they have done so much harm.

And if you have anxiety about coming out, there's a, there's a reason I want you to trust your gut and scope everything out, cuz like you literally can be sent Tochu young and married against your will. You can be broken down like the gauntlet game. You can be made to do things that you would never do in a hundred years in your right mind.

So I mean like the threat of the church and, and coming out is it's real for a lot of people. Like we can't speak to every situation, homophobic and transphobic from the doctrine. It is always going to reject you. It will not accept and incorporate queer people. Yeah. I'm sorry. Like again, you can come to your own decisions about that, but as a community, the queer and trans X moon.

Strongly that, you know, it's unsafe for us. It's not a safe place and it's not a safe place for kids like queerer and yeah, you, you were cutting out a little bit, but it, it sounds like you you' saying that, um, yeah, you acknowledge that it wasn't and will never be a safe place for queer trans people and kids.

So yeah. So yeah, start familiarize. And like, even for straight people, that, that shit is still harmful. Like yes. That internalized transphobia, that and homophobia that we all have that is still harmful oh, absolutely. It controls our sexualities. If you're straight. I mean, we've talked about this at length and the purity cultures that, that in enforcing these gender roles really restricts, uh, play and sexual development, as well as, um, perform like it makes you performative in the bedroom.

And, uh, mm-hmm that you don't understand consent. You don't understand consent mentality. You don't understand personal boundaries, autonomy. I mean, there's so many destructive things for CIS people in the church too. It's it's destructive for everybody that the theology is just toxic to the core mm-hmm and, and this month is prime month.

So we're highlighting how it affects queerness. And, but that's not to limit it. It's still destructive all the way around like a hundred, 110% destructive theology mm-hmm and you can go back to the other episodes to hear that. Cause I think it's so interesting and we really are just skimming the top.

Like we there's so much more to talk about. I wish I was more qualified, but I mean, this is a start. this is it. Yeah. You're learning as you go. Like that's the most important thing. And yeah, I have some training in qualitative research, as we've talked about wanting me to help code the podcast. Like you're doing all the right things and the fact that you, you come from our group, like it's never gonna be an outside researcher putting their, you know, viewpoint on the church.

No, we know these things, we know how people are trained to be in this. And we even know the benefits, you know? So I, I commend you for what you're doing and. You know, I, I wanna be involved as possible and help, you know, other people get out of this. Yeah. And, and this is a long term. I mean, this is long term because like, I think we were all exposed to chronic traumatic events.

And, and during that time, like we said, that it disengages your brokers area and you can't formulate language. Um, so a lot of the things we're revisiting, we don't have words for yet, but I really like beg people to believe that what we're saying. I, it just, I can't even, I can't even begin to articulate the, the amount of human suffering that took place in the church, even with what we're talking about here, it doesn't even begin to, to uncover the dynamics of like forced suffering as our parents are aging.

We're losing this knowledge. We're losing the ability to formulate and talk about directly what happened to us and like witnessing each other and, you know, saying, yeah, I experienced that too. Like changes it, it makes it so that it's not as all encompassing takes you out of that. Learned helplessness, just the active observation, I think.

And validation exactly is so extremely powerful to break these cycles, um, and empower each other. Yeah. It's shout out to everyone who's listening and thank you for witnessing me and you know, the pain that I've gone through. Um, I hope that, you know, we can use it to, to transform and change this world, change this church, change the way that we, we relate to each other.

Mmm Ugh. Thank you, kale for giving us the insight to escape. The trap of inescapable shock and coming out of the unification church is not only a, like a second gen survivor of Celtic abuse, but also as a. Proud queer non-binary human being that understands the importance of play and questioning and embracing your sexuality, I think.

Yeah, I think we covered a lot. And if there's anything you would like to revisit or take out, just message me and I really look forward to releasing this for people to digest and to build on. Yeah. Thank you, kale for taking time outta your vacation. Um, is there anything else you would like to touch on before we end?

No, just, um, great love and support to anyone out there listening as well as those, um, that we've lost. There's so many that we've lost, that, that we consciously and unconsciously know about. Um, . Yeah, I talked about this type of grieving and it's a grief. It's a, there's this, this deep hollow grief, I think, um, from leaving the church and then finding out our friends are our, our acquaintances or our fellow second gen, our dying congen are dying and losing their lives to this trauma that we've all experienced.

Um, I think, I think every second gen I know knows somebody who, um, yeah, committed suicide or is just lost in mental illness and, um, mm-hmm, just making the language, I think is the type of way of honoring their suffering and just validating that they're not alone and we're not alone. And yeah, just making space for that I think is important.

So, absolutely. Yeah. Right. And love and solidarity to all. Okay. Everyone that concludes this podcast with kale, purity, culture and unification church coming out. I hope these stories and this information has given you. The tools to heal and recover from growing up in the unification church and knowing that you are absolutely not alone, we do our best in telling these stories, not only to empower the survivors, but to empower the victims who are still enduring the abuse.

If you'd like to tell your story, reach out to me and we will set something up, please remember to like share comment, subscribe, rate, um, or even visit the Patreon for this podcast. I would greatly appreciate any feedback, uh, from the listeners out there. It's. Um, really encouraging for me to know that you are getting something from our work of passion.

We put a lot into putting these stories out and these conversations are not easy to have. So please reach out to kale at kale woods on Instagram, I have their information in the show notes, reach out to them and let them know that their story has been heard and their words have been received. As for this show.

I have no idea what's next. Um, you can leave a message and give me some direction if you feel so moved. And, um, yeah, I feel like this was jampacked with a lot of good information. Um, I hope it helps you in your road to recovery and understanding, take care of your mental health and we'll talk again .#blessed #blessedchild #unificationchurch #purityculture #moonie #exmoonie #2ndgeneration #sunmyungmoon #truefather #hakjahanmoon #cult #cultrecover #queerexmoonie