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She Pivots.
Welcome back to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk with women who have dared to pivot out of one career and into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman, today's guest. You might not have heard of, but I promise her story will leave you with the renewed sense of hope and inspiration. Susie Massey is sharing her story with us for the first time ever as a roofing
professional and instructor. Her journey into the trades industry is full of pivots. She grew up in the fundamentalist church, the Institute on Basic Life Principles or IBLP, which is widely thought of as a cult. You might know it for its horrible headlines surrounding the leader's sexual assault scandal, or from the show Nineteen Kids in Counting on TLC, where the Dugger family has also made headlines for a similarly horrible scandal. Her atypical upbringing has created challenges one
can only imagine. She went from not knowing how to read to excelling in a trades career beyond her wildest dreams. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did.
Susannah Massey is my name. I go by Susie most of the time. I am a training instructor for gaf's care started with roofing academy for them, but I'm currently in care and what we do is bring education in roofing commercial roofing systems to contractors who USEJF products.
So you didn't grow up with the most traditional upbringing.
Got by a long shot. So I was actually raised in a very small rural area, small town rural area in Ohio, the second oldest of twelve brothers and sisters. And we were raised in a situation that is widely known today to be a cult developed by a man named Bill Gotthard. He goes way back to the nineteen seventies nineteen eighties. If we didn't feel close to God, if we didn't feel like our life was going in
a good direction, that it was our fault. It was really just being off in the country in one little family kind of farm situation and no interaction as far as state school requirements. Paperwork would be filed that we were homeschooled. And course this was back before homeschooling was very common. One of the key teachings of the cult was that women should not be educated really or have jobs, or pursue any kind of a career outside of tending home and children.
This is aspect of control, like the men had the control. And as a girl, there were some families that like, you were not allowed to leave your father's authority until you had your husband's authority over tolf of you. So I mean I had friends who were stuck in their home in their late twenties because they couldn't get out, They didn't get married.
How did your parents end up at the cult?
Like a lot of people did. It was good intentions in the beginning. They felt called to serve in their faith and was just one of those situations where isolation breeds just bad things and I think that a lot of good people get sucked into those kind of movements. But it was very legalistic, very harsh, very strict, and pretty much the entire focus of the cult was to keep women, specifically in a situation that I would say is almost just servitude, no opportunity for women in the
faith at all. So that was my upbringing. I never went to school. Both my parents were raised in pretty typical situations, I would say, small town situations. They both went to school and everything. They did not go to college. They went to a religious type seminary institution, and that's kind of where they fell into the more culty kind of situation, but I think that was the genesis of it. The beginning of it was kind of a fundamentalist, far
right system. It got really, really crazy. It is hard for us to understand at this point in time, where there's a camera everywhere, there's a phone everywhere. We didn't have radio, we didn't have any kind of television, we didn't have any access at all to the outside world.
From the time when she was a child, she had virtually no contact with the outside world. Even to this day, Susie's friends tease her that sometimes she seems like she is quote from another planet. The teachings of IBLP are steeped in a repressive sexist viewpoints that kept women away from education, access to information, or freedom.
The whole thing would implode if it wasn't for the teaching of women not being allowed to do anything. Most of what the group taught was centered around keeping women uneducated. And we say like the barefoot and pregnant thing, but that was basically what they believed and what they taught, and they tied it very closely to faith, so that this was God's will for all women. My mother was pregnant and had very small children. All of my life, she struggled with a lot. My mom was very ill
a lot of the time. The teachings of this cult were so horrific that she was not able to have even medical attention. So the home births that were unsupported and no support for her throughout the pregnancies took a
terrible toll on her. I was so curious from the time that I was young, and I don't think I ever really I was never really sold on this whole thing, because I was beginning to see the breakdowns, you know, especially in medical and healthcare, and kids had serious medical situations that needed care, and my mom suffering the way that she did, and there was not the medical support or mental or emotional support for her.
So my parents didn't believe in doctors or medication or shots.
Or anything like that.
And my mom was extremely ill mentally and every other way. My youngest brother was born at home and I was the only person there. I was about sixteen, and he nearly died, And even though he nearly died, my parents still forbade us from reaching out for help.
Later on, my mom began to come out of that situation a lot in her mind after the youngest of my siblings was born, my mom began to finally have a chance at being healthy and was able to leave that system to an extent, and so she was a lot better In the end. We'd lost my mom in twenty sixteen to cancer, but I'm happy to say that there was some restoration of the relationship with her before that happened, so I'm thankful for that. So my older
sister and I cared for the children. So I had babies and infants in my care from the time I was about ten years old on. So it was pretty much just the care of infants and toddlers that was my life.
The church forced demanding and unrealistic expectations on the women and girls, from taking care of the kids, to dressing conservatively, to a lack of education, to stricter punishments. The girls were much more oppressed than the boys.
There was just not the focus on the boys on how they dressed every minute of their day, being committed to care of the home and the kids. Just they were kind of the wild boys.
Man.
They got to go and they would fish, they would kind of go around. But for the women, for the girls, we were not to even go outside of the house if the boys had a friend over or something like that, or as they got older, they had a couple of neighbor kids that would come around. But the world was watched more off limits for girls and women in that system.
I remember working as a teenager and hearing a song on the radio that was a country song, and when I got home, I sat down and played it on a piano that was there in the house, and I got in trouble because it wasn't a hymn or a church song, and really not on men or boys at all. It was all the women and girls.
You'll notice that despite the strict and suppressive teachings of the cult, Susie was still forced to work outside the home as well as take care of the kids.
It's just ironic. It is hypocrisy upon hypocrisy. So women aren't allowed to really be educated or work, or if they do, they're certainly not fulfilling God's wishes for them. But it's built on such poverty that women have to work. It's a catch twenty two. There's no winning in that system, not for anyone. But we all began to work very young and then support and help support our younger siblings.
A lot of us had younger siblings live with us, and we're supporting them as we were mid to late teens ourselves, So it was really children raising children all the way through.
She felt a deep responsibility toward raising her siblings, especially considering the conditions. Because her father did not have a traditional job and her mother was forced to stay home to take care of their twelve children, it was difficult to keep food on the table or provide the basicness necessities.
So my siblings and I, especially the older ones, we can remember being hungry. You know. There was times we didn't have enough of anything. And again it's hard to get your mind around. Now they're safeguards in place, but when you're so off grid, nobody knows. So there's not a doctor or a school nurse or anybody that's going to flag that.
Being so off the grid.
Some of her siblings did not even have documentation that they were born. That meant the government didn't even know some of them existed.
As time went on and we my parents became more isolated and the system became more pathological, No home birth would be a part of that, and no social securities or anything like that so the situation began to improve as I got quite a bit older, and the older siblings of us began to work out side the home
and help support our younger siblings. But the poverty, I've had to do a lot of just self work around that scarcity mentality and learning to function where you're not afraid all the time of that kind of thing.
So how did you get out or learn to read?
There was paperwork fo that we were being homeschooled. That was not the case, so education was definitely very low on the list of priorities. I couldn't understand hardly anything, and I've since found out that I'm dyslexic as well, but I was really struggling to understand something. One time at a little grocery store. The clerk told me, she said she could tell that I was having a hard time reading, and I was at the age where I should have been reading. Yeah about how old were you?
About fourteen fifteen? And she said, you know, you can get hooked on phonics at a library. So I didn't know what that was, but she helped me write it down on the receipt and was able to get a hold of the hooked on phonics that she had told me about, and began to really learn to read. And that was the point where the world began to open up to me. So I was learning to read better. And even when I could read, there were so many things that are just out there in the world that
I didn't understand. Road signs, common things in any job. They were just completely foreign, foreign to me. So I could read a little bit, but it was really that catalyst of learning to read well that began to change my world. In that belief system, you're risking your salvation if you buck that system. And it's absurd now because I'm a student of all faiths and all religions, and I have friends that are dear to me across all beliefs.
But at the time you believe it, So it's a very insidious I guess it's the best word because it puts the punishment inside of your mind.
But Susie fought that mental battle slowly, convinced more and more every day that this wasn't the way for her or her siblings to be living.
I was always curious and a little bit of a rebel, and I just didn't sit with me. I believe that if there was a God that made me. Then he had a great, big world out there and he would want me to know about it. I think for myself, I was such a questioner and I was the person I was so curious about what was out there, and I wanted to read well more than anything. I wanted that education piece. And I didn't know it at the time, but that would be the thing that opened all the
doors for me. For me, the breaking point was when I left that completely.
The mindset was when my little brother nearly died, like, this is not something I'm willing to participate in anymore. But leaving as far as as the rest of the family getting out of it, it was gradual. It kind of imploded gradually, and again the lifesaver was education. Was the younger kids finally getting to go to school. That's what changed everything.
And we could all see how awful the situation was. And then having to really stand up and say, no, they want to go to school, We're going to let them go. That was the point where I think my mind and my spirit began to kind of earnmore from that and believe that there was some hope out there for me too, not just them. In my mid to late teens, I began to say, this is about enough. I was able to go back into that and approach my parents and just I told them we're done with
this now. And my younger siblings, I wanted them to be able to go to school because they wanted to go to school. And one of my younger siblings had asked, would it be okay if I would go to school? Of course the answer came back from on high no, you're not going to go to school. And that for me was just like, oh, no, we're done. That was really for me when it all began, so balls came down. Was that again the education piece.
That sounds like a huge, heavy conversation to have had with your parents. Did you go into that conversation ready to have it or it just kind of came about.
No, I was going to war. At that point. I was done because I had seen how bad and how unhealthy the situation was, and it was a bad, bad situation, and I could see just the hopelessness in it that these younger siblings. When I saw that little spark, that little piece of hope, like I want something else? Can I please go to school? I really want to go and just that no, you're not going. So when I went to have that conversation, my older siblings went with me.
They backed me up. They said, again, this is not working. Whatever the faith or whatever the component is here, it's a fail and it's created a lot of misery and heartache. And these are kids that are asking, can I want to go to school? So we're going to back them and we're going to make sure that they have that opportunity.
And so they left. They took with them what little knowledge they had and found jobs and began to build a new life. But it was far from easy. This was just the beginning of a long road of healing past traumas, navigating the outside world, and learning the new and unlearning the old.
I was in my car some of the time. My sister and I had a little apartment. My brothers rented a little place. My first job was at food service ice cream, and I remember trying to understand. I had no idea what a credit card was, how it worked. I'd never seen one. I didn't understand learning to try to handle money, make change. And then it took me about a year to understand that credit cards and cash money and like lottery cards are different things.
Do you remember what that felt like on your side when you started to meet people.
I can only tell you that it's like walking out of fog. When you grow up like that, it's a process of walking out of that and learning unlearning, you know, all this awful messaging, and then learning new things. I still have those moments where I'm just the odd duck out because it's a very strange upbringing and so much of pop culture, so people would be referencing movies and songs and groups, and I did not have any idea
who or what the Beatles were. So it was challenging to try to catch up with the people around and really learn to navigate a world that I knew nothing about, less than nothing. I think it took a while for me to begin to think I could have a life an education. I had my first child when I was nineteen and got married and began that kind of homemaker role again. So it was always a thing in the back of my mind. I would love to go to college. I would love to be able to do these things,
but they seemed off limits. They seemed out of reach for me because I was so far behind the eight ball.
But Susie was determined. She knew that knowledge, education, and reading were essential, so she started night classes to get her GED. And I want to note that a GED does not start at an elementary level. That means that she had to learn the very basics, like what a fraction is at the same time as completing algebra or learning how to spell, at the same time as taking poetry and writing a high coup.
But I really wanted to learn, and I was able to get my GED. I think that is when it dawned on me that I could potentially not start over but catch up.
When you had your daughter and you got married, did that feel like a way out for you?
Or did it? Oh?
It did?
Oh absolutely. It's a process. It's a long process to walk out. And I would say every one of those steps was a step out. And yeah, getting married young, I got married young, started my family young. Yeah, in a lot of ways, it was one more step out of that situation. And it's hard when you have your own kids and the only thing I knew was what I had been raised with. So it's hard to start over and you don't realize how many of those beliefs
are so deep. And my older sister had three at the same time that I did, so we were both kind of walking out of that childhood belief system and trying to establish so, Okay, we're not doing it that way, how are we going to do it? And she had three little ones right at the same time, so she and I walked through a lot of that together.
Well, what were those conversations, like what did you decide to keep, decide to toss? Like the way you were making new traditions.
It was very touch and go. So, like the faith piece, I tried really hard to have more of a main stream I would say kind of faith at the time. It would still try to be involved in like churches, but not quite as far off or whatever that was fundamental, I guess, but it just it took a while. Those were the conversations were more around faith and we don't believe this. Obviously, we're not going to raise our kids like this, so how are we going to do it? It
was hard and it was scary. It was scary. As my kids got older, the married came to an end, and I was looking at a situation where I'm starting completely over, completely ground zero, nothing, starting completely over. In my late thirties early forties and having adult children and looking at being a single mom. I looked at myself and said, you can do this. You're capable of doing this. And that's when I became involved in roofing and the
commercial roofing side. So a lot of my brothers are roofers, aren't involved in the roofing trade. So I began to just kind of as a matter of here's the next thing I can learn, began to learn the roofing side, and it really gave me a place to go from zero to one hundred without feeling like I had missed out on so much already it was too late for me, so I didn't need the college peace to learn at the time. I was able to build a life in the beginnings of a career learning the trade.
Do you think there was a part of it that appealed to you because it is such a male dominated industry. If you're going to say, you know, if I'm going to go into anything, like, I'm.
Already getting rid of that part that says I can't work, like if I'm diving in, I'm diving right in.
Probably maybe on a subconscious level, but there was some pretty horrible things that I lived through, and pretty much you don't have any fear after that. So the male dominated industry, it didn't scare me because I had already lived through a lot by that time, and I had convinced myself of my own resilience and ability to learn. But honestly, for me, everybody that I came in contact with, they were mentors and allies. This trade just meets you
with arms wide open. And then as I got better at it, learning the admin side, learning a little bit of the HR side, bids, project management, estimating all that stuff, and just kind of worked my way up the food chain, I guess. So really leaning into it looked like learning different technologies, So learning about those, how they went together, what made one different from the other one, what made one work in one area of the country that didn't
work in another area of the country. And then the other part of it was learning how to then take the solutions and the thing that I was learning and take it down to a local level to your school or your church or your gymnasm or your store or whatever, and say here's what we can do, and here's what here's some options for you.
So what does your career look like now.
So COVID of course through everybody for a loop, and that was forced a lot of us to learn new tools. I had been pretty much just consulting with different clients, and towards the end of cod was approached by GAF and they offered me a position with their Roofing Academy, which is such a cool organization because what Roofing Academy does is teach.
This was a full circle moment for her from growing up with no access to education and not being able to read to now sharing her knowledge and teaching others.
So it's very cool for me because any woman can take the education that's offered and take her career as far as she wants to go. So came on board with JF in April and at the beginning of September was actually promoted and started a new position on the care side. And what care does is teach roofing contractors.
So where Roofing Academy teaches brand new baby roofers trade, the contractors are people that are already established and we're just supporting them and teaching whatever technology that there is a need for.
Can you think of a time when you look back and you thought to yourself, yes, I'm really doing it, like I bet on myself and I bet correctly.
I would say I'm kind of experiencing that now because I knew I could do it, and there are so many of those situations where talk about imposter syndrome, I would say, just looking back on the wild ride that it's been, especially now where I've got this incredible opportunity with GAF, where I'm helping now to teach other people and with the help of the wonderful team here helping to develop education, which has been the catalyst for me.
I think now is that time, more than any other time, to just say, wow, this has really been something.
There's no question that Susie's family dynamic is strained after years of suppression and mistreatment, but it has only made her closer with her siblings.
To this day. I'm very close to my siblings. Our well being was always focused on them, that they were okay, because again they were all younger, and I had raised my siblings, so in a lot of ways they were mine.
Did you have a relationship with your parents at that point? When did you start speaking with them again?
That relationship I don't know how to really describe it, except that it was very pathological. It wasn't a good situation for anybody.
Things didn't start to shift in her relationship with her parents until her younger siblings had been allowed to go to school. As the younger kids began to slowly thrive, she saw a shift in her parents and that relationship began to thaw, ever so slightly.
I think once my parents began to see that this is working, These kids are doing better, they are thriving in this environment, the relationship began to soften them more. With my mom, I would say, because she came around later on down the road. She came around to a point it got better, but it took a while.
Would you say that they got I guess if the opposite of off the grid is on the grid, Like, did they become sort of a little more mainstreamed in society, No.
My parents never did. No, my siblings definitely, but no, my parents never. My mom would come to some school functions that kind of thing, but that was about the extent of it. More so my dad than my mom was still very committed to the particular cult leader and that system of belief. And to question that was you did not question God's man or God's anything. So he was still very rigid that way. Not so much my mom, and she you could have those conversations with her in later years.
What do you want people who are listening to take away from your story.
That they can do it too. There are different things that keep us down, especially as women. Every one of us can tell a story of that time we didn't think we could get out of bed, and just looking down over the edge of the bed and seeing our feet on the floor was an incredible accomplishment for that day. Don't let the expectations of other people define or limit you so in my case, for the longest time, I felt like I was the late comer to the party and I would never get caught up because I didn't
go to college. I didn't go to school, and it was just like on a loop in my head. You didn't this, you didn't that. It felt like the world as I knew it was ending because I had no idea what was going to actually happen. But by God, I'm here now, and here's what I can do. I can learn this trade, I can learn a new skill set. We make our own destiny, and that's the truth.
Thank you so much, Susie for joining us. It's been such a great conversation. Thank you so much.
It's been my pleasure. I really really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you guys.
Susie still works as an instructor for gaf Roofing Academy and has three amazing children. Despite the trials she had faced throughout her life, Susie is a true ray of sunshine. This conversation was so inspiring for me, and I hope for you as well. If you are someone you know is looking for a career in the trades are roofing. They can find gaf Roofing Academy on Instagram at gaf Roofing.
Thank you for listening to this episode of She Pivots, where I talk with women about how their experiences and significant personal events led to their pivot and eventually their success. To learn more about our guests, follow us on Instagram at.
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She Pivots is hosted by me Emily Tish Sussman, produced by Emily eda Veloshik, with sound editing and mixing from Nina Pollock and research and planning from Christine Dickinson and Hannah Cousins.
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