You're listening to a mom and me a podcast. Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on this woman. She's been doing this work and it's making her younger and younger, and soon she's going to go back to because she's Jesus Christ. And I was just like, I'm out, instantly, instantly.
From Mama May You're listening to no Filter And this is the weirdest episode I've ever brought you.
I'm me a freedman. I should have said that, And the guest today is kind of me. I've never spoken about this before, and I didn't really mean to, I guess because I'm a little bit ashamed. But let me go back a little bit and give you context. A few weeks ago I interviewed Bethany Joy Lentz, who who was in One Tree Hill and that was a big culty TV show. And at the same time she was on this TV show and was famous all over the world, she was in an actual cult, a religious, highly controlling cult,
which took her money, compromised her mental health. There was abuse involved. It was a fascinating story and a harrowing story at times. We'll put a link in the show notes, so if you missed that, you can go listen to it.
But after we finished the interview, I was just doing the outro and the end credits, and I casually mentioned that I accidentally joined a cult one time, and my producer, Nama Brown, this is why she's such an incredible producer, she kind of said, wait, what can we talk about that? Can we keep the mics running? And we did, and
I really didn't want to overshadow. I couldn't overshadow Bethany joy Lens the story because my experience was nothing like hers, and it was a much milder version and her story stands alone. But I didn't want to detract from it anyway. I sat on it for a few weeks and I thought, do I want to put this out there? Do I
not want to put this out there? And I used the same filter that I always use when talking about something personal and for choosing guests for this show, and that is, there's someone out there who's wound is in the shape of your words. And more than that, there's someone out there who hasn't got the wound yet. Not to torture an analogy, but there's someone out there who will get this wound one day and she will look back and think about your words and they will help
soothe her wound. If anyone's still listening, I did decide that I would share that story. So I'm going to play you now the conversation I had with Nie, who is the executive producer of this show and a very trusted, skilled interviewer. Actually, it's weird for me to be on the other side of the microphone, but there we go. So let's do it.
Lay the scene from me. Where were you in your life when you encountered this great question?
So I was in my probably late twenties early thirties. I had one child. I had lost a baby halfway through my second pregnancy, and very soon after that, a few months after that, my marriage to the father of both of those children ended and we separated, and it was a time of I was the editor of Cosmo at the time, so I had this big job, but
I was a single mum for a few years. And then through that time I was seeing a therapist who was a great therapist, and she used kinesiology as part of her you know therapy that like the touch kind of anesiology is kind of like that book The body knows the course, so it's sort of like I'm going to mangle it and forgive me. But it's when you push up on someone's hand and they sort of do things, and it's sort of meant to cut bypass your conscious and sort of go to what is actually true.
So asking she was asking your body questions, yes, brain exactly, and I'd gone to, you know, I'm this very interesting.
I'm so interesting. I'm this weird mix of science and woo woo, like I am vaccinations, science up the wazoo, like, you know, give me the prescription medication. I love all of that. I love an antibiotic. But then there's also a kind of spiritual side of me, which you know, is interested in my intuition and energy and all of those kinds of things. I'm quite sensitive to energy. If I'm around people who are on drugs, I can pick up their energy and I don't like the feeling of it.
So i'd been to a natural path or ostive homopath whatever, who'd use kinesiology before to treat medical things. I can't remember what they were, And again I would never have used that instead of traditional medicine. But I was just sort of open to it, and I'm like, what's the harm, Like,
what's the harm? So I'd encountered kinesiology before, and so I found it helpful in therapy, where sometimes I just found it it would be a bit of a shortcut where you know, sometimes when it's talk therapy, you say something, but it takes you a long time to get to what you actually feel or and so I just found it helpful. So anyway, then there was something going on where I got back together with my husband and we started trying for another baby, and I was struggling and
I just couldn't get pregnant. I was struggling with what's called secondary in fertility, which is when you've had one live birth but then you can't get pregnant again. And I was just feeling so messed up. And so my therapist suggested that I go and see her kinesiology teacher and for like a high level extra sort of you got bumped leering. I got bumped up right, and so I was like, I was really vulnerable because I felt desperate. I felt like my body didn't work. I felt like
I was failing in every way. And so she sent me to this woman who was like really interesting. She just operated like out of a house in her suburb, and she had this quite fancy house, and she had this sort of sidekick and she did this energy clearing and it was like, you know, this is this energy that's been put on you all these years ago, and I'm going to clear it. And part of me was like, are you though, like whether it's a placebo I don't know.
Had you ever done anything like that before, like to that degree.
Well, I guess I had. I don't go to I've never been to a fortune tell her a tarre card, So in that way, I don't do any of that. But in terms of energy, I think because I can feel energy in me, I'm open to the idea of having it cleared. And because in my therapy sometimes she would sort of clear energy. We hold other people's stuff, right, like, we all know what that's like. So I believed in that.
But then this sort of went to a bit of another level where it was like this thing happened in seventeen and it sounds so embarrassing to even say, because like how awkward, Like that was obviously just crazy, and then you have to pay all this money and one time her credit card facilities weren't working, so you had to pay cash, and it was like.
It doesn't actually sound crazy to me, though, okay, good, I mean it feels it's the intersection of the vulnerability that you've described because of where you were in your life, but also a lot of those as you say that, that kind of mix of science and wu wu, sometimes the science doesn't have what you need in that moment.
Yeah. I guess what I needed was hope, and I needed to feel like I was doing something like I was. You can't prescribe hope to you, yeah, exactly, and I wasn't. I liked the idea that maybe, like how could it hurt? Like it could only help. But I was desperate. I was vulnerable, and I was desperate. And there's a particular kind of crazed mental state of infertility that you just
aren't entirely rational, or I certainly I wasn't. And so then I decided that I was going to do this kinesiology course that this woman took, and so it was a weekend sort of workshop and I went to do it, and as part of it, she then was a medium and spoke. This just sounds so weird, but she kind of went into this trance and spoke Saint Jude or there was some spirit that came through her, and I don't know. And then there were just so many kind of little red flags, like you could pay to do
the course for someone else. So there were people there who'd been there multiple times, they'd done it for them, and now they were doing it for their son or their mother or their partner who maybe didn't believe, but they believed that this energy clearing course or this kinesiology course, yeah, I just got. And then this group would meet every so often, and I remember when bird flu went around, we all went and paid and she did this sort of energy clearing so that we wouldn't get SARS. It's
pre COVID. And it just became because I was trying, and I don't know if I was actually pregnant by this stage. It then became well, I've been doing it. If I stop doing it, what if I lose this pregnancy?
Magical thinking?
Magical thinking. And I've got a friend who would also experience infertility. And she had some kind of crystal that someone had given her and she attached it to her arm, and she then became very superstitious, and she had to wear this crystal for her entire pregnancy because it does become this magical thinking, right.
And it's not worth fucking with the idea. You might be wrong, but it's what's the value? Yeah, and changing course if suddenly you feel like you're heading in the direction you want to be.
On, yeah, exactly, And so that everything that good happens you credit to this thing that you're doing, and everything that bad happens, it's maybe because you're not doing it enough.
Can I ask how much that can? You might remember exactly how much? But was it costly?
Yeah? I reckon it was a couple of thousand dollars.
And my other question is did she know who you were that you you know, were a high level, very successful executive woman who had a bit of influence. And I ask this because you look at something like scientology, right and how they need They've got their minions, their legions, but they need their Tom Cruisers.
Yeah, so was it.
This idea that you had them the tom Cruise of the kinesiology.
We never spoke about it, so if that was the case, she obviously I didn't hide what I did. It was pre social media kind of pre internet almost, so you know, I probably didn't have the same level of profile then that I did now, but she knew who I was, and I think that that came to bear when I started to pull away. I think that they recognized that
she recognized that there was some danger. So it was in this like church hall, and everyone would bring a plate and it was like you had to say these kind of prayers and stuff, and you know, I knew that, Like my husband was like, but he didn't want to. It wasn't costing us like a huge amount of money at this stage, and I was so desperate and he felt so inadequate to help me with these feelings that I had around main fertility and the baby that i'd lost.
He kind of yeah, Luckily it didn't get to the point where he had to intervene, But I don't know how I would have felt if he had of, because to me, I'd always been very superstitious. Fully enough, I went through a whole thing of touching wood like I would carry not at this time, but earlier in my life, I would carry like a stick with me in the car everywhere because I'd need to touch wood all the time to prevent bad things happening.
And superstition in my experience, because I'm a bit saying it's hand in hand with anxiety.
Ah yeah, right, because it.
Didn't you find, I mean something of it. What if I forget my stick for that day and I.
Didn't know I had anxiety, then yeah, I didn't have a name for it.
It was a substitute for what you've learned about yourself.
Since that's very true. That's very true. And so I just know exactly the minute that it all came away from me where I started going more regularly to these group sessions. And I remember this one. It was on a weekend and I was talking to and my therapist's kids were there, and I was talking to this woman in the lunch break and she was saying how the kind of the leader. And this woman was quite charismatic, and there was all the stuff around her. She was old,
like she was I shouldn't say that old. She looked that much older than me now, but like she would have been in her late sixties.
So gravitas experience, yeah, yeah, yeah, and she had this sort of offsider who kind of you know, there was all this Oh, she was kind of like a big deal, and she was just like this small she just looks up grandma, but she spoke and then she channeled this JUDEO.
I can't even remember who it was anymore anyway. So I was talking to this person at lunch and she'd sort of been around this for many years, and she said, oh, yeah, the woman whose name I can't even remember. Actually I can, but I won't say it. This woman she's been doing this work and it's making her younger because all the work she's doing, she's getting younger and younger, and soon she's going to go back to because she's Jesus Christ. And I was just like, I'm out, okay.
So my eyebrows just hit this and again.
And mine did too, and I was like, it just popped a bubble for me, and I just went, okay, I'm out instantly, instantly, moment. And this woman was very earnest, and it's like, this person is actually Jesus Christ, and she's doing this processing work and all the time she's doing it on herself, and she's getting younger and younger, and haven't you noticed that she's looking younger and younger. And the end result of this is that she's going to be come Jesus Christ. And I just went, okay, bye,
and I left. I literally left. I didn't even go back after night that moment. In that moment, I left. And then what happened was that I talked to my therapist, and again, this was all such a breach now that I look back, and she was a great therapist, but you know, I think she was in a cult, so I think that she didn't know what she was doing.
But she said something to me when I told her that I wasn't going anymore, and she was kind of pressure me to go, and it was like, oh, if you need this extra level of cleansing, it's going to
be like ten thousand dollars. And I also just knew, like, that's just not a thing that I'm going to do now talking about how the World family used this special thing and they paid all this money to rehabilitate Camilla in the eyes of the world, and that's why we all love Camilla anyway, it all there were things that kind of made sense but were all so completely preposterous, so just enough to you go, oh, it does seem weird that we all like Camilla now did that happen.
So this like just plausible credibility, just to wedge into your logical mind just enough to get their foot in the door and ask for some money. And I was pregnant at the time, and I remember she said to me something and I said, I'm just not going to do it anymore. And she said something to me about I can't remember her words, but I said to her,
that feels like a threat. I feel really uncomfortable you saying that, because it was kind of implying that maybe my pregnancy wouldn't hold if I didn't keep going back. And she said, oh, no, I don't mean for it to be that. And then she called me back and she said, I spoke to Blah blah and said that you weren't going to be coming anymore. And she said to make it very clear that it wasn't a threat and that so this message was passed back to me.
I think she got nervous. And back to your point about did she know who I was, I think she got nervous. And you know, I left that therapist and I've not spoken to her. This was many many years ago, now, like twenty years ago. The pregnancy did turn out. My beautiful daughter's eighteen, and I've gone looking for these people, like searched online because I've wondered just what's hacked here?
Or is there something that you want to go Do you feel you have unfinished business with them in some way? No, like, does a part of you want to ask this therapist in some ways? Were you almost admitting that what you offer doesn't work in a sense, because if she was interesting, yeah, like what was the function for her?
It was more like calling in the big guns, like calling in a specialist, like in a medical analogy.
Which makes you actually feel quite looked after it.
But it was completely unethical what she did, like completely unethical, and part of me does want to go back and say to her, Hey, you were an amazing therapist. You helped me through one of the darkest times of my life. My marriage had ended. I was deep in grief over the loss of this baby. You helped me and my husband find our way back to each other. Really, but this thing that you did was incredibly unethical. But I suspect she's still trapped in it.
I you know, it's such a tender and I think maybe lifelong part of the vulnerability that we've heard when we've had these conversations with other women who have been through similar experiences where you come out the other side of it and you realize you've been harmed, You realize you can put language to what that was. You can call it a culture, you can call it a high
demand organization, or what have you. And yet there were gifts or there were benefits that you come out the other side of it changed by that experience, and not all of those changes were negative. If they were all negative, they never would have roped you in to begin with. It's like that's saying you don't join a cult, you join a good thing.
Yeah, And I don't feel when I look back at it now, I feel embarrassed. Why because it's like it's embarrassing in the same way that I look back with embarrassment. But when I was in an emotionally abusive relationship in my very early twenties, I look back and I go, who was that person who tolerated that? And who had the blinkers on? How did I lose myself so much?
I have a lot of compassion for who I was when I was part of this cult, because I was so vulnerable and I was so desperate, and I would have stood on one leg in a blizzard and you know, recited sandscrit while drinking a cup of gravy upside down if it would have let me deliver a healthy baby, like, I would have done fucking anything. And so I have compassion.
But when you see that you've been scammed, and you know you and I we've interviewed people on this show who've been scammed, and it's kind of like you ignore those little voices in your head, and those little voices, your intuition is the sum total of every experience you've had in your life. That's like your innate wisdom. And yeah, I think when you ignore that, it's at your peril.
So embarrassment is the is the ignoring of that inner guidance system that was hoisting those red flags and you were going.
Yeah, Like when you say it out loud, you just go, oh my god, like how but.
I want to And this isn't to make you feel better, although I hope it does because I can see.
That you always do it.
You know, all of the things you described that were your suite of vulnerabilities YEA, combined with your work at that time, and I know I keep coming back to that. But the reason I do is that we often see that the people who fall for scams, who find themselves in cults, they are often highly professional, educated, accomplished.
Successful people.
And sometimes I wonder if this is a kind of decision fatigue and there's this part of you.
There's a trailer.
Out now for a very I'm gonna say it, don't fire me Saucy Nicole Kidman series where I think she plays this like baby girl, baby girl.
Right, being a CEO means being a collaborator and a nurture. Don't you have to be a woman. Everyone is just waiting for me to buckle under the pressure. Is now a guitar to introduce the interest?
Yeah?
Hey, how'd you get back? Dog? To calm down? I gave it a cookie. You always have cookies on you? Why do you want one?
And I don't know if that's going to have cult undertones. Definitely probably gonna have some bad relationship undertones. But this idea of like when you have so many decisions that you have to make every single day.
Having to heal yourself.
Oh, it's a lot of work, and it's like if you can outsource that, yeah, or give someone else some choices to make for you.
Yes, that's a track that's actually true, true, And I think the other thing is that no one thinks that we all have this idea of the kind of person who would get taken by a scam, the kind of person who would get involved in a bad relationship, the kind of person who would stay with someone who would cheat on them, the kind of person who would stay with someone who physically or emotionally or financially abused them, the kind of person who would hire a male escort.
And what I love so much about this show is having those stereotypes smashed and smashed and smashed and smashed, because what I've learned about that idea of I didn't make this up, but it's so informs the philosophy this show is that out there there's someone with the wound
in the shape of your words. And that's about when we share our stories, someone else goes, oh me too, and maybe it helps them recognize something like when I was in an emotionally abusive relationship, I wish I'd have been able to read someone else's story, and reading about someone who had ADHD is what me to be diagnosed, and all of these things, and when we interviewed the woman who was scammed, Charlotte Cowell's Charlotte Cowells, who was amazing and so brave to say that because she was
a financial writer, and how mortifying for her to have had that happened to her. But one of the things that these people rely on is that it's not how you think it's going to be, and anyone nothing protects you. No, not education, not loved ones, not a fancy university degree. What protects you is hearing other stories.
And it's the only deformation said that. I think that you know that there were people who were mid scam, you know they were signing the check so to speak, and heard her story or read her story, and that.
We've had people contact us since that episode came out saying I got a call from Amazon and it wasn't Amazon, it was this scam and had I not listened to your episode, it might have happened to me. And that's why I think it's just so important for women to share well for everyone.
Such a nice point. Do you feel in this moment ever so slightly less ashamed embarrassed even than he did twenty minutes ago? Is there something cathartic even in the telling.
Yes, because I'm actually never Apart from my husband, who saw it happen at the time and we sort of haven't ever really talked about it, he was actually we have a bit, and he was just like, oh, from the second I knew that this was just such crap.
And what he just knew he had to let you run your kind of thing.
He didn't know how to help me, and if this seemed to be helping me, he luckily I got myself out of it and he didn't have to intervene. And I think if I'd have said, hey, I want to transfer ten thousand dollars, he certainly wouldn't have been a conversation gone that far. But while it wasn't impacting on our lives to a really detrimental extent, he was able to just let me go on this journey in the hope that it might make me feel better. But I've never told anyone. I've never told anyone.
So telling us the no Filters.
Filters, if you have maybe had an experience like this, we'd love to hear from you. We'll put a link in our show notes to our email and sending love to everybody out there who's going through anything tricky. Life isn't easy, but you know it's easier when we do it together.
It is. I've one more question for you, though, When was the first time you were able to.
Laugh at it? Well, now I'm laughing at it, I think, I kind of I think now, I think you can't when you're ashamed of something or embarrassed. It's easier to laugh when you're embarrassed. Shame does not allow laughter. And I think you need a lot of perspective and a lot of years to laugh at something. And I think the reason I can laugh about it now is because I did go on to have a healthy baby. And I think perhaps if I hadn't, I might have felt
very differently about this experience. I think I might have. I don't. I can't even imagine how I would have processed this experience or what I would have filed it under.
You know, or you might have stayed, you might have gone back. It would have maybe been a way that they proved something to you about their power. Things get very dangerous.
Correct, And so I was so relieved when, for so many reasons, when she was born, but that i'd cut it off before, because then maybe I would have thought that I have to stay to keep her safe or for my next pregnancy. And yes, I went on to have another baby after that. So the dim mystifying takes time, and I think it's only through as we heard with Joy, it's only through time passing and you're seeing that the things that they made you scared about did not come to pass.
You have to almost accrue data, yes, you have to keep testing a new theory. Yes, and then eventually it just outweighs exactly.
Well, there you go. That wasn't so hard, was it. In fact, it did remind me listening to that back again. Why so many other people do share their stories with me on no filter, Because telling our stories is cathartic, particularly if it's about something that you feel some shame or embarrassment over. They say that the best disinfectant is sunlight, and you know, I'm a little bit more forgiving of myself now I understand exactly how it happened, and I'm
not ashamed. It's just kind of this. I sort of have filed it under this weird thing that happened to me this one time. Anyway, So if you want to listen to the story that nine I talked about earlier about Charlotte Cow's who fell for a financial scam and ended up giving I think it was like fifty five
thousand dollars to a stranger. She pushed through the enormous shame that she felt to share her story so that others might not have to go through what she went through, And we'll put a link to that in the show notes, and we will also link to some more stories from incredible women who actually did get stuck for years in abusive, high control cults, usually religious cults, and they eventually made it out the other side, which just takes so much
courage and strength, women like Tea Leving's and Darsy Erleck. The executive producer of No Filter is Niama Brown. You've probably guessed that she's a bit obsessed with stories about cults and charismatic leaders. I wonder why maybe she will be one one day. No, she's too nice for that.
Audio production and sound design is by Tom Lyon, and I mentioned on a previous episode he grew up with neighbors who were in a cult, and since I said that, one of them has reached out and they're going to catch up there's a happy ending for you.