I've got a very special episode to share with you today, and it's part of a series we're releasing called Something to Normalize. One of the reasons I've always loved the Wolf Parable is because it normalizes being human and having difficult emotions. These podcast episodes feature my partner Ginny, talking with her friend and previous guest of the show, Brandy Lust.
In these unguarded conversations, they'll be sharing their lives and perspectives as women, alongside insights from experts, researchers, and writers on topics that are hard to talk about. We tend to keep these things to ourselves, though, and when we do, it can breed a sense of being the only one, feelings of shame, or evidence we're somehow doing life wrong.
Brandy and Ginny hope that by giving voice to experiences, feelings, and thoughts we often keep to ourselves, we can create a community with less shame and a deeper sense of belonging. I am so happy to share their voices with you. I think you'll find these episodes a wonderfully nourishing and supportive addition to the regular scheduled one you feed podcast episodes you are used to hearing here and now I'm proud to present to you something to normalize.
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, friends, Welcome, Brandy, Welcome, Jinny.
Welcome to all of us wherever we are in the world.
And then the two of us here sitting and just being with one another. Welcome to something to normalize. My name is Ginny Gay, and I am a certified mindfulness teacher, and I help others come into presence, learn how to be with whatever's arising, to ground themselves in this presence and as a result, and as a result of that practice, to experience less shame, less fear, and more joy and more ease and more well being.
And I am Andy Lust and I'm a speaker, facilitator, and trainer who focuses on helping organizations to create safe spaces so that folks can share their truth and that truth can make change in their communities.
Yes, and we have got some powerful truth to share today. It's largely based out of an experience you've had in your truth. And so, Brady, what are we normalizing today?
We are normalizing the experience that folks may have in the wake of abuse of power and connecting with their own truth in the aftermath of that, which can be so disorienting and purposefully disorienting because of the systems and the folks who permit and also act out that abuse in their communities.
Yeah, yeah, and maybe we should before diving into your experience, which I'm so grateful that you would like a share today, what are some examples of abuse of power? Where might we find ourselves experiencing that in life?
For example, I think abuse of power occurs any time that a person uses their own privilege without considering the impacts to those that they are serving, or communicating with or collaborating with, and they do that with the intention to gain something.
As an aside. Do you think that intention is like a conscious intention or may it be also like below the line of consciousness?
I think it very oftentimes is below the line of consciousness. I think most people want to do good in the world and believe that they are doing good. And that's why one of the things that I say when I talk about this as a facilitator and speaker is that unacknowledged power is.
The root of abuse.
So we have to always be aware of the places where we hold power and how that might be impacting the folks around us, because those folks aren't always going to feel safe to share with us real feedback. And there's actually some really interesting research from Tasha Yerrich that talks about the fact that as we gain more power, we have less self awareness. And I think that's a major influencing factor in these situations.
When you just said.
That as a gain more power, we have less self awareness, that lands like, yeah, exactly, And isn't that an important dynamite to be aware of, right so to kind of not only see where that might exist outside of us, but also where do we have power that we might have some blind spots around and then with the intention of bringing some mindfulness to how we operate in the spaces where we have power. Right, absolutely, we're going to
explore that today. I mean, you have a lot of expertise on this, both learned and also I mean unfortunately, like through your life experience. You want to dive into that life experience a bit.
I do.
And before we navigate into those deep dark waters, I want to acknowledge that this is a really challenging topic for some folks. And so if it's feeling unsafe for you right now to hear about abuse of power, and particularly in the context of predatory behavior and grooming. Then I would just encourage you to take care of yourself if you're planning to listen, and if that feels unsafe for any reason, maybe this is one that you want
to skip. Yeah, I'm glad you named that, but we hope you stay with us because I feel that this will be an opportunity for folks to experience a sense of resonance if they've ever had something like this happen in really a sense of community, and that's why we
want to bring this topic to the table. In the aftermath of having shared my own story in a variety of platforms already, I'll just say that I have been contacted by multiple women who have had similar situations, and really consistently the feedback has been thank you for sharing this experience, because it's so easy to have our self trust dismantled in the wake of abusive power, particularly when we then use our voice and folks aren't supportive of us in our communities.
Exactly.
Yeah, there's truth and power in knowing you're not alone.
Absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah. So this most recent incident of this is not the first incident of this that you've experienced in your life, which is hard to think about because I know how painful the things that you've shared, you know with me have been. So where do you want to start?
I think I want to begin by, as you were saying, naming that this is not my first rodeo.
It's taken me a while to get to the.
Point where I was able to speak truth to power in a way that instigated any kind of real change. And so to add a bit of hope to this conversation. At the beginning, there was change that came out of this situation for me, but it took a lot of practice to get there. I have experienced some form of abuse that I have reported since age twelve, and in the intervening years I have made attempts to report these abuses to folks who had the authority to make change
over half a dozen times. So it's taken me this long to get to the point where I began to recognize the fact that I had to stop trying to stop the person who was perpetrating the abuse instead shift my gaze and my time and resources energy toward how can I make change in this system so that these folks who are perpetrating abuse are not able to continue to perpetrate, and then hopefully that folks in the future who are reporting are going to have better experiences than
I had in the circumstance and every other that I've ever faced in my life. With that foundation, I can share a little bit about what happened to me if this feels like the right time.
Yeah, yeah.
I had been working with a spiritual teacher for the last eight and a half years. I'm a mindfulness practitioner, and I had wanted to find a supportive person who was able to help to guide me through that process, particularly in the aftermath of my grandma's death, who had been a spiritual teacher to me, and then her death had impacted me in such a way that it made it feel meaningful to try to continue on that journey
with someone new. So I met my teacher through a church that I was a member of at the time, and the first couple of times that we met it was at the church through spiritual direction, and he is trained in a path called Diamond approach, and that approach is really very mindfulness based and very embodiment based, and it felt like a good fit at the time, and I felt that I could trust this person, and so I began meeting with him one on one in his home seven years ago or so at that point in
our relationship, and after the pandemic, we started meeting in person again. And I came to his home after receiving a text that he was running from another appointment, and I felt a little disoriented from the moment that I arrived. There was just something about the urgency of his text or something that alerted me to the feeling that this was different than other meanings that I had had with him.
And we were walking up the stairs to his office, so he was behind me, and I asked him how he was doing without facing him, and his response was bad. So I turned around, and as I was looking at his eyes, I felt that there was something different happening there, like a look in his eyes that I had never really seen before, and it seemed a little unhinged is maybe the word that I would use. So as I was looking at him and I said, what's going on, he turned around and said, I was hoping this session
could be for me. This did not feel aligned with the type of relationship that we'd had in the past. I came to these sessions very much in a vulnerable place, and that vulnerabil he started before I ever walked foot in the door, and it was very disorienting to hear him say that, and immediately I wanted to escape, but he was standing behind me. It felt like there really
wasn't an option but to keep going. And we walked into his office, and by this point I was feeling this intense shaking throughout my body, almost like I had been hit by a bolt of lightning in the top of my head.
And we sat down and.
He proceeded to use the session for him. In the course of the hour that I was there, which was the amount of time that we had scheduled, he shared with me that he had been fired from his ministerial role that morning because he'd had an affair with a married woman, which is outside of the scope of the ethics of his role, and he all also shared with
me sexually explicit details of their relationship together. He also asked me to facilitate embodiment work for him, which included him kind of closing his eyes and going into his gut and sharing some really personal information about how he viewed hisself as a sexual being. And it was terrifying. As soon as I could, as soon as it felt appropriate for me to leave, we said goodbye, and I think this moment's really hard for me to recall because it was very much at odds with how I was
feeling internally. But he said I love you to me, and I replied back to him, and I gave him a big hug, and then when I laughed, I just got in my car and thought, like, what just happened to me? And I really didn't have any context of understanding for what I'd been through beyond the fact that it was very scary, it felt wildly inappropriate, and my relationship with this person felt changed in a way that was very definitive and completely unexpected.
Yeah, you know, from there.
I would say I was able, through supportive relationships, to identify what had happened. And there's a key moment that I want to share, which is that I was speaking with someone who had experience with somatic work and someone that I trusted to hold space for me. We were talking through this incident and I had gotten to the point in the story where I shared that he'd revealed this sexually explicit content to me, and she said, well, that's the breach.
And I said, I.
Understand that that is the worst part of this, but why does it feel so bad? Why does it feel so devastating? And she said, I want to drop a word and see how it lands for you. And she said the word predatory. And it was a really strange combination of relief at having something that fit and also this knowing around it that was almost unbelievable at the same time. And so then she said, I'm going to drop another word for you. And the word that she
dropped was grooming. And since that time, I've spent a lot of energy and resource really working to understand what that word means and how we can identify patterns of abuse before it becomes sexual assault or coercion or something even worse than what I did experience. And that's been very helpful for me and being able to stand in my own truth and have language for what happened.
Yeah, and you called me not too long after that conversation. Yeah, I remember exactly where I was, Like, I can remember everything about my experience of that conversation, and the way I remember it is when you described what happened, immediate inner alarm bells went off for me too, like the minute this really inappropriate sexual content, well really the minute that you shared like that, he said, I was hoping this session could be for me, you know, like you
in the moment that had this inner knowing of like uh oh, like something's not right. And then again with the material that he went on to share further, alarm bells went off, and you then said, you know, in a friend of mine mentioned a word to me, And the way I remember it is that you said the word as I have said the word, which was predatory.
I'm not sure.
I mean, your memory can be a slippery thing, but like that's how I remember it. I remember saying that word almost simultaneously, like a knowing like yeah, yeah, that's what comes to me too. And grooming And as you're talking, I'm remembering an instance that feels similar to me, which I'll be happy to share, but I don't want to interrupt your story at this point to do that, but I just want to share that, like there was a confirmation when you shared with me what you were going through.
I had inner alarm bells that went off too, and they were just in rhythm with yours, you know, they were absolutely there. And I was so grateful that you felt safe to call and share that with me.
And I felt like I needed to call and we talked about this. You had asked me if I felt that it might be supportive to work with you, and I had said.
Yes, yes, Okay. That's a good thing to mention at this point is that I had also come in not too long ago and said, like, I feel like the work you're doing with this embodied somatic mindfulness work, I'd really like to dive in. And so yes, I had also been meeting with him for probably a few months at this point, I would say, And so I didn't know him as well as you, but I certainly did
know him, and I knew about that work. And the other interesting thing is, you know, i'd become a certified mindfulness teacher, and so I had recently, somewhat recently just taken that seat, the teacher's seat, and had really learned in a new way how sacred that teacher student relationship felt, and was like I had a deep knowing that that was sacred, and that honoring the role of teacher and student and maintaining that safe space in those roles felt
like to me the most important thing in the world as a teacher, like I couldn't imagine as a teacher asking my student to do work for me. So that also kind of made I guess our friendship a good place, in a safe place for you to lean into.
Yeah, And in some ways it made it confusing, Oh tell me more, because I felt a little responsible for OH recommending Yes. I felt this person would be someone who might be supportive for you. And also, it was so soon after this happened that I was still really in discernment about what happened. It took me a minute to feel like I should share this with you.
I went from should I share this with you? To I have to share this with you.
But I had to make that cognitive shift because I think that speaks to the authority that can be in the student teacher relationship. And I think that teachers who engage in this kind of behavior depend upon that questioning and depend upon that authority to know that. It's less likely that people will speak up when they've cross bound because it feels like a betrayal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm really glad you named that. That makes a lot of sense, and I'm really glad that you leaned into our friendship at that moment. So what happens next?
I discerned, I would say, pretty quickly within a week or so, that I wanted to do whatever I could
to keep people safe from this person. So I ended up reaching out to the Diamond Approach, the church that I had met this person, and then shortly thereafter I met with the church, I was encouraged to also meet with the denomination that he was ordained within, and that started a very long process of me filing a complaint with two organizations and then working with this third organization of the church where I met him to try to keep people safe.
And I realized.
Pretty quickly that because he was so integrated in so many different communities, that it would require a pretty radical action from me to ensure that the folks who needed
this information were able to have it. After I met with the head minister, and after I had met with the denomination and realized that really I felt most responsible for warning the folks that were closest to him, I ended up sending my complaint to forty or so people who were part of Diamond Approach and then also part of the church, and the minister and I were already in conversation around how he wanted to present this information to the community, and I think that my sending that
report instigated his response to come more quickly. He ended up getting some questions, of course, from parishioners who wanted to know what the situation was about. Within twenty four hours, he sent an email to the congregation and I don't remember the title, but it was, oh, I'm sorry.
I do remember the title.
It was a word from Glenn, and the content of the email is quite long, and most of it was about thanksgiving and being grateful and praise of God for the goodness in the world, and tact. Right onto the very end of it was two quite short paragraphs about the fact that someone had reported an incident to them and had been encouraged to report it to the Methodist office, and that I was under pastoral care, and that was
sort of the summary of the situation. What he and I had spoken about before this was that I wanted him to share any information that I gave him in any way that he deemed appropriate to keep other people safe. And that was something I had to submit in writing for his lawyer in order for him to feel comfortable to do that, and my response to his communication to the church was that it was insufficient and inappropriate because
the title did not reflect the content. The content of the email was deeply at odds with the message that it contained, and you know, it was buried in the end of a long email, and I wasn't sure if people would see it. So I asked him if he would be willing to meet with me about this, and then I didn't hear anything back from him beyond him sharing that he wanted to get more information from the denomination first and hear how they were going to handle this.
I didn't hear anything back from him for a long time. It was actually three months.
I know you and I were in some conversation around what was going on as you received the email and use you were communicating with him and in communication with the Diamond Approach leadership. Did you have people that you were waiting in those waters of discernment with to get clear on what action you wanted to take If you wanted to take action each.
Step of the way I did.
You were part of that community, of course, and I ended up also forming a community that would go through
actively go through this process with me. So in the three months between when I gave him the feedback and when we actually met, because it was actually three months in that window, I was meeting with my therapist and I ended up going on a trip to the beach that instigated me actually taking a break from this situation, which she encouraged and said, listen, if you're feeling okay right now, like capitalize on that feeling and then you'll
move forward when you're ready. And what instigated the change back to me re engaging and really forcing this person to continue in the process with me was that I was attending an event and it was completely unrelated to the church. It was completely unrelated to Diamond Approach. I was just there really scouting out speakers for an organization that I'm a part of. And I saw a group member at this event, a Diamond Approach group member, and this was a person who had received a copy of
the complaint. And I saw them see me like look quickly and then look away, So I knew that they knew who I was. And I was with a professional colleague who's also a friend, and I had to very quickly say to her, like, something strange is about to happen.
Here's a very quick gist of this situation.
And I'm going to stand here and wait for this person to walk by again because I need to say something to them.
And he did walk by again, and.
I got in their eyeline and said, hey, you know, I know you. And at first he, you know, seemed a little confused, and so I named where I knew him from and he said something along the lines of oh, yeah, it's really bad that that had to end.
And I said, was it? I was the reason that it ended.
And you say that it ended, like what ended the.
Diamond Approach group that we were in.
Okay, Yeah, So the Diamond Approach group was through the church and so it had to end because the minister had put it to an end. And this person was sharing that they were unhappy with the ending of the group, okay, and I said it ended because of me, And he said, oh, you were that person, and I said, yeah, I sent my complaint to you and no one reached out and
that was very hurtful. And then he proceeded to, in a very uncomfortable lay, share that he had kept contact with this teacher, that he was still supporting this teacher and it was deeply uncomfortable for him. I think so often folks don't know what to say when someone approaches them with an uncomfortable situation. And he revealed a lot to me in that conversation that maybe he, upon further reflection,
wouldn't have revealed. But when we walked out of the building, my friend and I after this interaction had occurred, first of all, I was absolutely devastated. I mean again, my whole body was shaking. I was very upset, and I just said, I cannot disappear. I cannot make myself smaller and insignificant because these people prefer that I didn't exist.
Is that part of why you were Like, I'm going to stand here and when this person walks by again, they will see me.
Absolutely that was the thought behind it. I thought, I'm not invisible.
Yeah, you can't pretend I'm not here, Like, you have to acknowledge your part in this, because you did not reach out when this happened. And even further, once I learned in the conversation that they were still supportive of this teacher, like they had aligned themselves with the perpetrator as opposed to the victim. Even knowing the specific details, of what had happened to me. It did two things
that conversation. One of them is that it dropped me back into a full blown trauma response that lasted forty eight hours, where I was just back at ground zero. It was like it happened yesterday. And the second thing that it did was reignited my passion for making sure that I didn't lose integrity. And by integrity I mean wholeness, like a feeling of being a whole person. That I
didn't lose integrity in this process. For me, what that meant in this moment was that I needed to be seen, I needed to be heard, and that became really paramount to me moving forward.
Is that feeling of no, I'm a human.
You cannot pretend that I am not here and that I do not exist and just move on as if nothing has happened. Yeah, so that's when to go back
to your question about community. I did have these supportive discernment partners that sometimes arose, you know, just this person who happened to be there when this interaction happened, but then also friends who were able to hear what I was saying and just listen so much like I needed people to listen to me, because when you're feeling unheard, like you kind of have to keep saying things over and over again because you're just trying to get that
feeling of like someone understands me. So that support was incredibly helpful for my own mental health insanity.
And then when I.
Decided to re engage the process, I did reach back out to that minister, and that was the front that mattered most out of the three, because this is the community where this teacher gathered students, so many people knew him. He'd been there for twenty four years, and I felt that folks really needed to know because I knew that they were going to want to still feel like he
was a safe person. And when I sent the email to the minister, and this is probably about at least two months past, when I had requested the initial meeting to provide feedback on the email that he sent to the community, and his response was, well, I'm still waiting
on the denomination to figure out what's happening there. So I copied and pasted his email to me and sent it to the denomination and said, I'm not sure why this person feels like they need to know where you are in the process for me to provide feedback to him on his own process, but he seems to need that, so can you please send him whatever it is that he needs to move forward. Hours later, I got an email back from him saying he'd prayed on it and agreed to meet with me.
Magical, amazing, magical God's Talking Grace interview and within hours because yeah, yeah, And when he agreed to meet with me, I did this thing that I had tried to do in the past and it had never really worked.
Out, and that is I sought allyship to move through the process with me. And one of the people that I reached out to was a woman named Connie, who was a member of the church and one of the only church members who received the complaint that I sent out. And reached back out and said, I am so sorry that this happened to you, and thank you for sharing this and I believe you and what can I do? And I had met with them one other time for dinner,
and then said I kind of need a break. So I reached back out to this person, to Connie, and asked her if she would be willing to attend to the meeting with me and she said that she would, and then I also reached out to my friend law Baker. I'm on a committee with her, and she has experienced as a professional DII expert, and I felt she would just bring another angle and d means diversity, equity and inclusion. Got it, and so I asked her to come along
to the meeting as well. And then as the process continued, I also included my friend to autumn as sort of a record keeper to note everything that happened in the meetings and hold all of us accountable.
So I added those two folks to the meeting.
It took us another at least couple of weeks to actually get it on the calendar, and in the intervening time, what I did was I began collecting all of the information that I had up to this point in the process, including the ways that I had given full opportunities for this minister to share any information that he felt was appropriate, the ways that I had already communicated to him that I didn't feel his response was appropriate, the times that he refused to meet with me, and then also further
information that I had gathered up to that point about what this teacher had been up to in the intervening process, which was a lot of reaching out to parishioners and garnering support and sharing things that felt very out of scope for the fact that he'd just been fired, including sermons that he'd rewritten to reflect what had happened to him, and then sending out to parishioners and taking no responsibility for the impacts that this had had on other people.
It was very narcissistic some of these communications. When we went into the meeting, I had my clipboard, I had my full list of everything that had happened, and we sent that to them five minutes before the meeting, and Law and I sat down in a coffee shop beforehand and did some grounding practices that were really supportive for me and helped me to connect with that part of myself that was strong and powerful. And then you know,
from there things very much changed. We held their feet to the fire, and I said, at some point in the meeting, do you understand and that if you don't act, that you are culpable for any harm that any woman might face at the hands of this teacher.
Do you understand that?
And I just sat in silence and looked at each of them and named them and then they just said yes. They said very little during the meeting. I think that they were taken aback by the preparation that I had done. I think they were taken aback by the authority that I exerted in the situation. And all of that came with just a lot of practice and then knowing that.
This was the presence that.
I needed to bring in order to exert that sense of urgency that the situation required, because there had been such a lack of urgency in the situation. And so a really beautiful moment from this was walking out of that room with these two women and in agreement from this person that he would meet with us again, and having them reflect back to me what they saw.
That witnessing that was really really powerful. Yeah, having that witness and being able to yes, I bet, I bet.
Because in every other scenario I had left those meetings traumatized, and to have had these folks standing with me and saying, you.
Are a fucking badass. How did you do that?
Like there was so much silence, like how did you all that? To sit there and let them sit in this discomfort, and for me to have someone witness me in this incredibly vulnerable moment and reflect back to.
Me how I was.
What a gift I just cannot even begin to describe, because it.
Allowed me to know who I was. Yes, that was the person that I was.
I was also the incredibly terrified, scared person who had been through something horrible, and I was the person who, in the midst of that fear, could go go into that room and hold them accountable, hold them in that space of I have been uncomfortable for the last three months.
It's your turn.
Yes, it's your turn to feel the discomfort of the situation.
Yes, just as a pause.
I had a conversation the other day with a woman who was talking about a conversation she had. In this case, it was also another man, and there were so many moments of uncomfortable silence that she intentionally allowed to exist and not take it upon herself to resolve and make comfortable again by speaking and saying something, but like just letting that hang there and letting the responsibility of you know, the next word or just that moment be held by others than her.
Well, women are trained to make other people feel comfortable.
I feel that I certainly can agree with that.
Yep.
My experience would align. Yep.
And so when you're holding a space that is intentionally uncomfortable, giving folks the opportunity to move out of the seriousness of the moment, but holding them in that moment, yeah, and allowing their authentic response to arise. To me, that's a gift to the other person because they're getting to see themselves and they may not be happy with what they see and experience in that moment, but they have to carry that with them moving forward.
I think that's so powerful, Brady.
It is a gift.
I mean because discomfort perhaps the unfortunate truth of the universe. That discomfort is the ground from which growth change, those things are born, you know. And so if that is to happen, that discomfort also must happen, right, So to remove that discomfort removes that opportunity.
Yeah.
Yeah, these situations have taught me that, yeah, over the last few months, because I think I spent my career creating spaces where people felt really, really safe, supported, and that is also a gift to people, and that's not
always what people need. In these situations where there is a power and balance and we're speaking truth to the need for change, folks, have to feel that discomfort, and that's an experience of common humanity in that moment, because the person bringing the truth to the table did a lot of very very hard work to get there.
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I will say it was my honor to support you as I could and also witness you through this whole process. My heart was continually broken for the pain that you were going through as a result of this, and I was continually in awe of your how shall I say it, The way that you move through discernment and then stood
in your truth at different points. That was some real strength and real bravery that I know is hard fought for through your life, through these other experiences, but it was It was a real honor to get to watch that, because you really inspired me to connect with and respect my own voice in moments when it's unclear to me what's happening inside of me, or maybe it's clear, but I'm somehow dismissing it.
Yeah, Yeah, I think we want to not believe when those feelings arise. Sure, when the terror arises that a situation we felt is safe no longer, it would be easier to disbelieve it. And so it's it's the hard thing sometimes to own and say, wow, no, this really happened to me, and that truth and that knowing and owning it and allowing it to be as big as
it wanted to be. That's a lesson that I gained from this that I will take into every situation thereafter, because without it, I don't know what would have happened to me, Yeah, and moving into what actually happened what was the result of this, My therapist noted that something I've started to do since the conclusion of this situation.
Is clearing things out.
And then I had just said to her, like, I just have this urg to make things beautiful, and I think that in this situation, that's what truth telling is. Like, what I held inside of myself what allowed me to keep moving forward was actually not anger. It was actually not a desire for revenge.
It was the.
Gulf of grief between what I know beloved community to be in my heart and the possibility of it that I've never seen in my lifetime. The gulf between that and how I saw people behaving toward me and the world. That grief and that desire to see that come to fruition, that's what moved me forward, and that's where the beauty
ultimately was in the situation. When we had that meeting with the church, we ultimately followed that up with another meaning a draft of a communication that they wanted to send to the community in response to our conversation, and then another lengthy negotiation about what that communication should include.
We offered very minor changes a couple of sentences, and then wanted a title that reflected the content and the message, and they had problems with words like concerning warning, apology, and just wanted it to say update about this person. And so we came to a compromise on a few of those things. But literally down to the day that this got sent out, we did not know if it was going out. That day, law actually took over communicating because I'm texting them and saying like I'm losing it here.
I cannot go another day in this process, and she said, let me take this from you, and sent a threatening email to them that basically said, we will take this back into our own hands if you do not clearly communicate to us. Do you understand that this is still traumatizing for her? A few minutes later, they said were sending this out it too.
So this was at twelve thirty.
We were still unsure whether this communication was going to go out, and then it did, and what it said to the community was that they apologized to me for what had happened. They apologized to the church and anyone else hurt by It said that they were going to offer a series of training experiences for parishioners and clergy around abuse of power in the church and what to
do in those situations. It said that if folks felt uncomfortable because this person had reached out to them, to let them know.
And it also.
Had a little paragraph that I had written and that they had agreed to include, which was that I had agreed to forego anonymity in solidarity with all people whose voices were not heard because they didn't feel safe or they didn't have the resource to share their experiences. And it felt empowering to have my name listed. I completely
understand the reasons that people need anonymity. I was very privileged in this situation to be speaking to a community where, yes, the email went out to four thousand people, and I can't choose to be a member of this church or not be a member of this church. I can choose to go to a church service or not go to a church service. Those are decisions I get to make, and so opting out is something that I'm able to do,
and I think that as a position of privilege. I think that many people need anonymity because they have to keep being in those situations with folks, and I can tell you. I can't imagine how difficult that would be, because when that email went out to four thousand people, I could have heard a pin drop. Not one of them reached out to me and said thank you or I'm sorry that this happened. I didn't hear from any church member until after I posted this on all of
my social media. I think there were a few people who said were members of the church and were so sorry this.
Happened to you.
Most of the support that I got was from the community outside of this situation, and that would be folks that I know personally who are not church members, folks who know me as a community member, and other spaces. And I was so so grateful to have that support because it was one of the hardest things that I've ever done in my life, and without that, it would have been like it never happened for me. That's how
it would have felt. And having the validation like, yes, this happened to you, you know, thank you for trying to keep people safe, and I'm so sorry that you had to go through this. Like hearing that from people felt supportive isn't even the word. It felt validating. It felt like an acknowledgment of just my human experience.
Yeah, I mean it's impossible to overstate the power of community, and I mean community to just to sort of describe. I mean, the word community can describe a few people you and a couple other people you know, or an army a legion of people. I mean, community is not to be sort of intimidated. You can build a community around yourself with a trusted friend.
Yeah, it's necessary for folks who have been through these types of abuse of power. Without it, it's an entirely alienating experience that can disconnect you from your own sense of self trust. And yes, my story in sharing this with folks in the beginning was that I did receive unsupportive language from even the best of intention to people where it was about me really making sure that I knew what I was doing because this could quote unquote, I mean, no one ever said this to me, but
this is an undertone. This could destroy this man's life, and that's what we value above women's safety, men's reputations. And that pervasive feeling was so consistent and so many conversations that I had as just the undertone of that conversation is well, woll well, what are you doing?
Yeah?
And what I needed in those moments was someone to say I hear you, I believe you. I don't know what you want to do about this, and there's no right thing. I'll be with you and whatever you decide to do with this situation.
Those are the words.
Yeah.
And in this situation it was you who identifies as a female and a man who identifies as a male. But I mean, this abuse of power is certainly not tied to any particular gender.
Yeah.
It's like you said, when you have the power of the privilege and are not either what you are aware and are doing it maliciously or are not aware, right, that can happen. I don't want to cut your story short, so let me know what more is important for you to say on this. But I also want to tell you about something that happened to me that might contrast a bit in terms of what it looks like without a community.
I would love to hear that, and I feel complete in my okay, in my retelling, So please.
Okay, and thank you for sharing all of that. So when I was just starting out in corporate America out of college, I was fortunate to have some success pretty early on in the job that I was in, which then led to a couple of promotions, and at the very young age of like my very early twenties, I found myself in a position where I had a lot of responsibility and was the only one in a job that had previously been three to four people strong. So it was just me and then the person I reported
to the head of the department. It was a heat and it was just me and him. So the idea of grooming is in hindsight alive and well here, because this became very quickly a relationship where this person had complete power over me and my career, which at that point in my life was so important to me. It was so important to me for me to be able to like ascend through the ranks of you know, this job, this company, this industry into and higher leadership roles. That
was important to me. And so this person really had a lot of power in my life at that point because his approval and review of my job and recommendation would either block or facilitate my next job, which the role I was in, I should say, was a bit of a eighteen month by nature kind of role, and then would feed into the next leadership position. And this person was a very like friendly, genial kind of guy, jokes around a lot, and so you know, we had
an easy rapport from the get go. And then very quickly that easy report led into a sense of ea in the relationship where you know, comments could be made or even off color jokes could be made by this person, but it was done in like, oh, but you know you and I like we understand it.
Like it's cool.
It's almost like it was a privilege to have this kind of relationship with him where he could be so candid, like like I had somehow, you know, really won the special spot. I was really performing in my job to know that my boss felt was comfortable with me. Well, then it really evolved into incredibly offensive, like sexual in nature jokes, like when I'm starting to be like okay, Like I was not comfortable with it, but I definitely
had no idea how to stop it. And I felt that if I did stop it, I would offend him. And if I offended him, then that was going to be the dagger in my own back.
Like I just felt very trapped.
So then it went on too. Then he started sending me pornographic images and again I did not know.
How to stop it.
I just felt like it was a incumbent upon me, like it was the most important thing to somehow keep this from going any further and not offend. And then you know, the next evolution of that was we were in his office one day and he tried to kiss me, and I was just like, again, oh god, shit, like it's continuing on and I don't know how to stop it. So I just tried to then start avoiding being alone
with him in any way. I couldn't tell anyone because I secretly felt that I had done something to welcome this, like I had somehow sent him the message that this was okay, and I at that age and stage in my life, just did not know how to say no, Like I didn't know how to say stop. So I was alone and isolated, feeling like somehow it was my fault, and also feeling like it was my responsibility to make sure that like I somehow got out of this role into the next job. You know, that I still had
to make that happen. And so fortunately there was a woman who was in a hiring position for the next leadership job that the one I wasn't currently in kind of fed into and I connected strongly professionally on capabilities and strengths, and she basically fought for me and pulled me right out of that job and into the next one working for her. And thank god, because that relationship
with him continued to just devolve. I mean, I was not giving him what he wanted, which was a more than professional relationship, and he just turned completely resembleful and he did want to destroy me. He started talking bad about me to other people. I mean, it was going in the direction I feared, and so she pulled me out of it. Now I didn't tell anybody for the longest time, right Like, I still felt like somehow it
was my fault. And I also felt like this was a person who had power in an organization, and I didn't know that I would be met with people who I don't know didn't want to then run and say,
guess what Jenny's saying about you to him. So I'll never forget that experience, And it's not the only experience, but it was one where the older me can look back and have so much compassion for the younger me and how hard that was and how normal it was to feel all the feelings I fell and without any community, how common it is to feel all of those feelings of like it's my fault, I don't I'm trapped, I don't know how to get out. I can't get out. I have to you know, there's all of these things.
And as a side note, this person went on to them be fired from a job that was like a couple of companies later because he ended up not staying with the company we were at for inappropriate sexual relationships with subordinates. Yeah. I don't take delight in his ruin, and I also take comfort that I wasn't the only one in it. I don't think it was quote my fault, you know.
Yeah, yeah, but I wish.
That I had had the wherewithal to begin gathering a community of support to help me through that. I think that would have been a difference maker.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I think, like what you had said about communities of support and how different they can look, it is not the right answer for everyone to report, and for some people it's not even a possibility for economic reasons or psychological reasons, or whatever the case may be. I think what we can take from your experience is that, however, we choose to respond in those scenarios, Having someone who can look at us and just say, like, I believe you, I trust you, this happened and it's not okay, like
that is paramount importance. I did get the opportunity to tell this story on another podcast that's already been released.
It's on last podcast.
Everything is Black and White or I'm sorry, everything is not black and white. And I have had a number of women reach out to me and just say something happened. And I'm so grateful to hear another woman talk about the fact that this happened to them. When you're sharing this story and when I'm sharing my story, I hope that that is what people can take away from this.
It's not your fault. What happened was wrong. And then figure out who in your life can be that person for you who will say the things that you need to say, even if you have to tell them to say those things, like the person who loves you the most and would be able to do that, because not everyone is going to be able to do that, And you have to find the people who will the people who will say those things, the people who will support
you no matter what. And then if you want to report if you can report, and that's something you feel inclined to do. Having other people and that process actually makes the change more likely to happen. That's what I experienced in the circumstance having law with me, that outside set of eyes, having Connie who is a member of the church and is saying, here's how.
I feel about this.
Those eyes mattered when you're just one person, like you were talking about you, you know, you were just one person with one other person, Like what a terrifying situation, Like who did you have to talk to? I'm so sorry that happened to you.
Well, thank you. I just think back too, like the community I was in that company. It was a very like patriarchal kind of good old boy networking type place, and the community valued like I don't have any other way to say it than like those that sort of got in that they could like be cool and they
were like, you know, they weren't the like nark. They weren't the like, you know, whistleblower like that would have been the ugh, that's the person like that will be labeled as the black sheep the rest of their career as like the tattle you know, don't let them in your group because they will just ruin it because they just can't be cool with things, you know what I mean?
That was the community, and so like to go against that, I was like.
Well, shit, I mean, not only do I want to continue in my career and into the next position, but like I felt like the entire industry I would be like, but I had a big, like scarlet letter on my chest kind of thing.
Yeah, And I've had conversations with other women who did not publicly share what they had been through for that reason because they felt they wouldn't have been supported within the industry.
Yeah, and their careers would be thwarted.
So I think that's a logical, reasonable fear to have that happens.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's sad and it's unfair and it's infuriating, and it happens, and so yeah, in each of these situations, women are weighing these inevitable consequences against standing in their own truth. And we should not have to make that choice. We should be celebrated for wanting to keep other people and our organizations and our communities safe.
Yes, and we're not.
And those women that I was able to bring alongside me in this experience did celebrate.
That, Yes, and I think you're right, Like, who knows whether or not it would have been wise to like speak out at that time, right, But what would have felt strengthening and healing is to have another person that I could have talked to in the way that you're describing, right, Having that witness and knowing, like in a very real way that I was not alone would have felt incredibly powerful.
So I think one of the hopes that we both have by sharing this episode is to offer that you're not alone message at least like virtually to this community of listeners if you have found yourself in a position as the victim of abuse of power in some way, shape or form, and to encourage you in however it feels possible to you to find someone at least that
you can talk to in this way, right. I mean, I would like to sort of check in with you about that and say, like, what else would you hope this encouragement or the impact of this episode would be on those listening that can relate.
First, I just want to affirm that you know, women who have been through this, there's no right way to move through this. There's no way to move through this. However, you can get through this. That's how you do it, you know, And there are other people out there who have had to walk the path you're walking right now.
All right, So this is actually going to be another two part episode, right, We love those. We love those just taking on one topic for one episode that's apparently not us. So we're going to split this up and do a two parter again. So yeah, today's part one, and then next time we're going.
To be moving from our specific stories and what happened to us to speaking more generally about grooming and predatory behavior as a topic and how this happens and help perpetrators end up being protected and victims voices end up being silenced in order to keep a status quo that's not supportive of everyone's well being. So we'll be talking about how grooming happens. We'll also be talking about learning to trust ourselves and to care for ourselves when we end up in these situations.
Yes, I love that you said that they're at the end.
That is key, And I feel like at this point in my life has been sort of my lifelong work, which is to know my own voice and trust my own voice.
Yes, right, so more.
On that next time. We deeply hope you'll join us for that conversation, and we feel so grateful that you joined us for this one. And I feel like these conversations with you, Brandy, they're just one of the great joys of my life right now.
I love it.
Thank you same, same all right, Thank you everyone. We appreciate you all so much.
Good bye, bye bye.
Sharing and learning about human experiences is what we love. You've heard some of ours, now we'd like to hear some of yours. Head to one feed dot net slash normalize to get in touch with us with comments, experiences of your own, or really anything you like to share. You'll also find all things related to something to normalize right there on the page for you. Most of all, thank you so much for spending your time with us today.
Until next time.