December 12, 2024 • 62 mins
One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz joins Chelsea to discuss what it was like to fall prey to a religious cult, to be taken for every penny she had, and finally find small moments of joy after escaping their grasp. Then: A child of powerful members of a *certain religious organization* works to accept that she may have lost her parents forever.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi Catherine, Hi Chelsea.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
How are you?
Speaker 3 (00:02):
Readings from Whistler, Canada, my new home for the next
three weeks.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
I'm so pleased for you. You're always happier when you're chilly. Yes,
I am. I needed a real fucking break this year,
real break.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I needed to take my own advice, read my own book,
and then reread Letting Go.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
I need lots of help, so I am now decompressing.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
Amazing is your new book? Is it like a little
bit advice based as well or more personal?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
St It's pretty much how to be optimistic in the dark,
how to inject yourself with positivity and optimism.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
And I have lost.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
My way with positivity and optimism, so I really need
to reread it.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
It does happen sometimes where you like need a little
bit of a reset.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
My schedule for the last two months has just been
was just insane. Why and the travel and the shows,
and then the my house never being done, and then
the podcasts. You know, we're kind I've been running her ragon.
They decide to it's your fault. They decide to do
construction when I'm recording. You know, I'm gone fifty days
a fucking month. It feels like, and then the one
day they're doing stuff is when I'm home.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
So it has just.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Been Yeah, nobody seems to understand how to manage a schedule,
including myself.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Just twenty different groups all pulling you in different.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Directs, right right, right.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I mean, I'm grateful for the work, but it's hard
to be grateful when you're so fucking tired, and then
you start pitching, and then you start getting negative and
all of that stuff, and then you go RecA I
am recharging as we speak. I'm plugged into a recharger.
It's in my butt, by the way, speaking of recharging.
My two last shows of the year in America, well
until further notice, because I don't know that I'm going
(01:35):
to be touring next year. So I have a show
in New Orleans on December twenty eighth, and on December
twenty ninth, I'm in Atlanta, Georgia, So get your tickets
at Chelseahandler dot com. You can also find out where
I'll be doing live book events next year, for I'll
have What She's Having, which comes out February twenty fifth.
That's on my website too, where I'll be signing books,
(01:56):
talking taking pictures all of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Awesome.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Yeah, And just to clarify, since we promised we would
last week, that's where you can get your signed copies
of the book. And you can also get them at
books a million in Barns and Noble.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Right, yes, yes, I signed lots of books for books
a million of Barnes and Noble. So many books. My
back went out. I aalira happy there are boxes.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
The day of Thanksgiving, my sister was cooking a turkey
in the kitchen, even though I can't tell her she
can't cook and why does she keep trying? And I
sat there for five hours and signed books and I
made like a dent in the I was like, oh,
I didn't realize how many books.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Ten thousand books.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I didn't realize that that's just almost it's almost a bond.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
With my lifestyle. Who are we introducing.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
We are introducing Bethany Joy Lens.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
This was a good interview and a great book. Okay,
So our guest today is an actress, singer, songwriter and
co host of the One Tree Hill Rewatch podcast drama Queens.
Her new memoir, Dinner for Vampires is out now. Please
welcome Bethany Joy Lens Hi NOI.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Hi, oh hello, Hi, How are you great?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
How are you girls?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I'm just so happy you're cult free?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Me too, Mama.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Oh my god, that book. Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I have never really ever been interested in colts, So
I don't I haven't watched all of these shows that
everyone has watched in all of these docuseries or whatever
they are, and I've never really read about a cult.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
This is my first reading about a cult.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Really, yeah, and it was pretty stunning. I guess I
want to ask you now that you're out of it
for how many years have you been out of it? Five?
Speaker 5 (03:41):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
No, longer about thirteen?
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Oh wow, twelve thirteen?
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah? Oh okay, So now you have some real perspective.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, okay, Yeah, that's I think that's what made it
okay for me to write the book without feeling like
I was going to fall apart every day, because there's
I have a certain measure of objectivity about it now,
I think.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Wow, okay, So I'm curious to see before we get
into all the details or whatever we decide to talk about,
what do you think now when you think about why
you were susceptible in the first place to being commandeered
in that way and falling into that.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
What do you think it was.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
I think it was a longing for attachment, which is
a pretty human need. I think it's the same thing
that draws anyone into any kind of abusive situation, whether
it's a workplace environment that you just can't seem to leave,
or a toxic relationship, or staying in a family environment,
a biological family environment that's just super toxic and abusive.
(04:37):
There's this sense of a need for attachment that we
all have. And I was twenty years old. It's so
different now, having so much mileage in my life that
I feel like my radar is so much better. But
back then I was twenty, It's like, what did I know.
I was taught to respect authority. I was taught to
(04:58):
believe your elders and believe people who seem like they
have your best interests at heart. And I wanted a family.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, yeah, you wanted a family. That's true.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Like I could see that, and you can see that
in the book because there were so many hints, like
even the first time you met Less, the cult leader,
when you met him, you were grossed out, like itcked
out by him initially right, and then so like, there
were so many instances that you write about in the
book from the beginning of meeting this like kind of
(05:30):
seemingly harmless group of people and all being kind of
involved in religion and Christianity and wanting to spend time
together in your own kind of like prayer group or
spirituality group or however you know we can frame it.
There were all these little signs along the way, but
you always kind of convinced yourself that it wasn't your
(05:51):
place to judge them or have an opinion about them,
and instead convinced yourself it was the right thing to
do to stick with.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Isn't that amazing? Like the testament to the fact that
we all have this innate guttural knowledge like compass, where
we know, you know something's off, and we talk ourselves
out of things, into or out of things all the time,
even from a young age. I mean, I write about
in the book how my mom and dad when they
(06:21):
would be arguing. There were so many moments I'd walk
into the room or they would leave a room that
they had been arguing behind a closed door, and I'd
be like, what's wrong? And I was just met with
like everything's fine, No, nothing's wrong, And as a kid,
you just start to think, oh, I guess I guess
it's me, Like maybe I'm crazy. I guess I'm the
one that thinks everybody is being tense and there's nothing wrong.
(06:42):
So you really start to doubt your own gut and
your own instinct. And you do that enough, then people
can come in and take advantage of you if they
recognize that trait in you.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yeah, I think that's going to be interesting to a
lot of callers and a lot of mothers listening to
this conversation, because you basically got swept up in this
group of people and started to believe they were your
real family, as they convinced you that they were really
the only people that cared about you and that understood
you right. And any time your father or your mother
(07:12):
came on the scene, who were both concerned because they
could see something was a little bit off, they were
met with silence or kind of like you know, they
were ignored or dismissed as not even really having a
valid place in your life anymore. And this went on
from when you were on One Tree Hill, which you
were filming for how many seasons. Were you on their
(07:33):
seven We did nine seasons, which was even doubt about
ten years. So ten years on that show, and the
whole time you were in this cult, the whole time
flying back and forth to Idaho from North Carolina, right
was North Carolina a.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Whole Yeah, from North Carolin. We were in Wilmington. Wilmington,
North Carolina, which is like one of the small, super
small beachy town that has no direct flights to the
West coast at all. I have to always take double flights.
It was exhausting. It was like eight to twelve hour
travel days every time.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
And there was nothing glamorous about it at all. Like
when you described the house in Idaho the big house
in Idaho, because you met these people in La first, right,
and then they had this other house in Idaho, which
was already there was a lot of not normal behavior
around that, like it was someone else's house that they
kind of commandeered. And then all of you guys, kind
of all these vagabonds for lack of a better word,
(08:27):
people who were a little bit lost, kind of like yourself,
would move into this house and kind of created this family.
And then over the course of the time you were there,
they basically embezzled over two million dollars from.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
You, right, Yes, that is true.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
And you got married and had a baby within the cults.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
I'm just so glad that you're free. I'm so happy
for you. That is incredible.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
That's all that matters, right, is that you're out of
that situation.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yes, and I look at it bizarrely. I mean, I
know it might sound kind of strange, but I do
look at it as a blessing. I mean, I think
we all deal with crazy shit in our lives and
when one way or another, if it's not one thing,
it's something else. Mine falls under a category that in
our culture right now is deemed really strange and weird
(09:17):
and crazy. But my aim with this book is to
show how what a slow burn it is, and how
even though the narcissistic abuse was in a group format,
for what I experienced, the top notes are all the
same in any kind of abusive relationship across the board.
And that's what I want people to take away, that, like,
you don't have to have been in a cult in
(09:37):
order to deeply relate to the sense of being gas
lit and love bombed and coerced and taken advantage of
and yes, to your point, thank god, I'm out, Like
I'm so happy that I'm out, But I'm really I'm
grateful that I went through it because now I feel
like I've got something in my life that I can
(09:58):
help other people with.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
So are you coming into with being on this book
tour and now going public with this story because a
lot of people, your cast members were also They all
kind of suspected that you were involved with something that
wasn't really on the up and up, and you had
some close friends on the cast and some friends that
you missed an opportunity at that time to develop relationships
with because you were in such a kind of controlling environment.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
So are people asking you?
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Are there women and young women and men asking you
questions about whether or not they're in an abusive or
narcissistic dynamic?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Now I do get some of those. I get more
of people who say they know someone who's in an
abusive dynamic and they don't know what to do and
they don't know how to help them, And.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
What do you say to that?
Speaker 2 (10:44):
It's hard. It's hard, you, guys, because the very nature
of it is your identity, your whole construct of your
identity becomes tied up in the approval or the attachment
that you have with this person or these people. So
for some to say to you, hey, I think you're
in an abusive relationship, Hey I think you're in a cult,
(11:07):
or anything to that end is not just It's not
just information that you can objectively sit back and say,
let me take a look at this and see if
that's true. Your heart and soul and identity are already
bound up in it. So how could anybody say something
to you that's going to make you The stakes are
so high, you know. And I know for me at
that time, nobody could have said anything, and they tried.
(11:29):
There were people that tried. Nobody could have said anything
to me that would have convinced me of a different
reality than the one I was living in in my mind.
And so long winded answer to your question, what I
try and advise people is be a friend. If you
can manage to maintain a friendship of honesty, where the
(11:55):
person trusts you and values you. You know, there's a little
bit of pushback, but not too much. Don't give them
too much pushback because then they might just cut you
out of their life. If you become this sort of
like suppressive person or whatever the version of that.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Is, which also I just sorry, I want to interrupt you,
because that's the very important thing you say in the book.
Is the first sign that you are in something that
is not cool or you're being coerced is when anyone
who's not part of that group becomes someone you're not.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Allowed to talk to. Right, Like I forget the word.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
They use in scientology, like suppressive personality, but like anyone
who doesn't agree with that, if you're not allowed to
talk to certain people because they don't subscribe to your
religion or your spirituality, then that is a big red
flag anyone who tries to cut you off from other people.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
And what you're saying is it's so accurate. And also
think about it doesn't necessarily come out from the abuser
as the words you're not allowed. In my case, it
came out as much more condescending, much more like it's
masked as kindness in a way, like that person is
(13:05):
not maybe not safe for you, guard your heart, look
out for yourself, look out for them too. You don't
want to be talking to them about spiritual concepts that
they can't understand. That's going to set up a representation
of Christ for them. That's too confusing. So keep you
know the language. You really have to pay attention not
(13:26):
just to what someone is saying, but what they're doing.
And if the byproduct of what's being said is isolation,
that's you have to pay attention to that, because it's
not going to come out as obvious. If the person
is a real narcissist, if they're good at their job,
if they're controlling you, it's going to come out much
(13:46):
more veiled.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Do you think that Christianity, like your childhood Christianity, had
any factor in this?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Sure? Oh yeah, it was massive. I mean, as for
anyone out there who has not read Dinner for Vampires.
I grew up in a charismatic evangelical church, non denominational,
not super political or anything. It wasn't extreme in that
way it was it was just very loose, like there
was no when it's non denominational, there's no system or
(14:17):
structure that you have that the pastor has accountability to.
They kind of can say whatever they want and maybe
there's elders in the church, but it's not part of
like if you're Presbyterian, you're part of the presbytery, and
there's this like long overarching community of leaders and people
who've been holding on to hundreds of years of theology
and things like that. So there's this like accountability that
(14:40):
comes with a lot of denominations. So non denominational is
what I grew up in, which also made me a
lot more comfortable to be in an environment where some
guy comes in says whatever he wants and I'm like, well,
you're a pastor, so I guess I can believe you too,
with no accountability. But I do think that I mean,
it's actually I feel like it's kind of a miracle
(15:02):
that I still have managed to have a relationship with
God and with christ. I really hesitate to use the
word Christian because of what it means, especially in this
country right now, but that relationship is still exists for me,
but in a much more authentic way because I think
what I was taught, I know what I was taught
(15:23):
when I was young was very much Here are the
things you need to do. Here are the rules you
need to follow in order to have the kind of
life that God wants you to have. In order to
get the life that you want to get, God to
give you the life that you want. You just need
to follow all these rules and then you'll be happy.
(15:43):
Turns out that's not so true. Turns out bad things
happen to people who are following all the rules too.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
No, I would have been so jypped. I would have
felt so jypped.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
You were bleeding God's life and then God did that,
Like I would be so fucking pissed.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Because in the beginning of.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
The book, like when you're kind of not on the
fence about joining this group of people because they kind
of wind and dined you, so to speak. You talk
about a moment where you're asking you're silently sitting there alone,
trying to feel God's presence and giving you guidance and
what to do. And in that moment you talk about
feeling it and that was this signal that you needed
(16:22):
to actually get more involved or I think it was.
Was it to get more involved in the group, where
maybe it was to give up a job. No, No,
it was to get more involved in the group.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Right, which moment are you talking about? I'm trying to
I might have missed something. You said.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
There's two moments. I'll tell you about your own book.
Let me tell.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
You, there's one moment where you're at the beginning of
becoming very involved with this group of people at the beginning,
and you were like waiting to hear God's voice, and
God's like, I'm here with you, you know, kind of
like almost a confirmation of maybe you were hesitant or wavering.
So tell us about that moment when you felt God's
(16:57):
energy in that moment.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yes, okay, this is one of my favorite moments in life.
And I really didn't tell very many I mean maybe
like three people in my life. I've ever told about
this before I wrote this book because I know it
kind of sounds crazy. So anyway, I well it's all
out there now.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
It's not as crazy as you call.
Speaker 5 (17:19):
So.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, I'm nineteen years old, I'm living in New York.
I'm happy. I've got a great life, i got a
great job. There's really no problem. And I'm sitting in
this cafe on a rainy Tuesday or whatever, and I
look out and I'm thinking to myself, huh, you know what,
you know, it would be weird if all this Christianity stuff,
(17:42):
like all this Jesus stuff that I grew up with,
if that was all just made up in somebody's imagination
and a bunch of people believe it and it's just
not true. And then I was like, oh, well, I
mean it's working for me, like my life is happy,
I'm doing well, like I guess I'll find out when
I die, and really just kind of moved on from it.
I didn't think much more beyond that, and I write
(18:05):
about it more in detail in the book of Really
What It felt like. But I felt like it was
like I was in a slow motion movie, like every
molecule in my body just went to the perfect temperature.
Everything got really still and quiet, and I felt the
physical presence of a body sit next to me in
this booth that I was in at this empty cafe,
(18:27):
and obviously there was no one there. And I heard
a voice, like an audible voice, very close to my ear,
and it said, never doubt that.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
I am real.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
And then it went away, and I remember, like immediately,
you know, tears in my eyes, and I was like
desperately trying to remember the sound of the voice, and
it just was gone, like everything was just gone instantly.
And I was confused by it for years because I
thought of all the time I've all the times in
my life I've been in pain and anguish in my knees, like, God,
(19:00):
where are you? Give me a sign? Tell me something?
What should I do? What choice should I make? How
do I feel better from this or that? Nothing? And
I would feel like radio silence. Why in the world
would God have bothered to come and let me know
that I was I was seen, not just like some
random universal feel like this thing that loves me, whatever
(19:25):
love means, and that sort of like vast context, but
like a very intentional personal joy. I see you, I
hear you, I love you. I'm real. Why would you
bother doing that in a moment that was completely insignificant
where there was nothing at stake? And I didn't realize
until all those years later, when I was in exactly
the moment that you were talking about, Chelsea saying I
(19:47):
was fucking pissed. I was jypped. I was like, I
just devoted my whole life to you. I did all
the right things, and this is what I get. Fuck you?
And I really like, I literally just said that to God,
fuck you, fuck you, I hate you. I'm so mad
at you. How dare you? And it was like there
was this big, cosmic sigh of relief, like thank you,
(20:08):
thank you for finally being honest with me and stopping
all of this pretending to be somebody that you're not.
Can you just be real? And it all just dropped
in and I felt like, oh my god, that's why,
because I would have just abandoned God. I would have
just walked away and said this God stuff is total
(20:28):
nonsense and I don't want to have anything to do
with it ever again. But I couldn't because I knew
too much. Because I had one moment that I just
could not explain when I was nineteen, and that's what
kind of kept me in a space where I could
still move forward with an authentic version of my fate
and abandon all the rest of the garbage.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Oh God, just this, It's just.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
People are going to eat this book up because of
this first hand account of just what you went through
and all of the like levels of pervasiveness that they
had in your life. You had so many opportunities in
your field, acting, singing, all of these opportunities that you had,
and many of them you didn't pursue because of these
(21:15):
cults and those cult leaders or the cult leader the
main one less and they prohibited you from They wanted
your money, but they didn't want you to be too
exposed to other people that may have an influence on
you and call out the fact that this was not
on the up and up.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah, that was one of the craziest things to me.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
You think that these people who are motivated by like
using you would want you to take more opportunities. But
I think you're right. It's like keeping you away from
people who might convince you like, hey, there's a bigger
world out there.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah. And I had been out on my own for
so long, and like, I think they had to do
more work with me because I had so much unusual
backlog of life experience for someone my age of being independent,
being on my own, being in all these different experiences
and connecting deeply with groups of people and then fragmenting
(22:08):
off and then getting involved in another group of people
because that's what theater is. That's what you do for
you know, your two months, your non stop with the
same people, and every job you do, it's like that.
So I think they think he and the Pam character
the sort of mother of the group. I think they
knew in some way that they were going to have
(22:30):
to really work hard at convincing me how important it
was to be a part of a family and make
that my priority over work. And also I don't think
Les wanted the group to really grow because I think
he was kind of lazy and there's just so much
work involved with so many.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
People drolling people.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah, you know, that's got to be exhausting. So I
think he just didn't want me to make too much
money because if I'm out there in the world making
too much money and converting too many people to be
a part of our little family, then the liability goes up.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
So yeah, but those people are all on power trips,
you know what I mean. They want the power, They
love the power, they love the control. So I don't
even know if you can mitigate your desire for power
when you're that much of a narcissist. But maybe because
of you know, you bring up some legal aspects and
you know, like you can't you're not technically accult unless
you're like influencing or damaging more than seventies people's lives
(23:31):
or something.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
I think you give us, Yeah, some stats at the end.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
In the state of Idaho, how does it work having
a child with someone that you're now separated from in
such a big.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Way, Like, yeah, there are some unique challenges with that.
It's something that I spent some real time considering how
much I wanted to say about that in the book,
because the truth is that they do still have a relationship,
and so I don't want to I just don't want
to interfere with that. And I don't know him anymore
really really, so I can't say much about him.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
And so when you were able, when you did leave finally,
were you scared for your safety?
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Definitely the first because you were.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Living in the same state and you had your own
house and they were trying to bully you and intimidate you.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Oh yeah, awful. I was scared because as I started
to accept the fact that this was a cult, a
high demand group. I mean, it took me a minute,
like I really didn't want to admit that that's what
I had been involved in. But once I started to
admit that, then I was like, oh my god, I
(24:40):
know what cults are.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
Like.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I used to study scientology when I was in high
school because I was fascinated by it irony. I didn't
remember doing a paper on it once and there, and
I was always kind of interested in the idea of
a cult and how somebody could get sucked into that
careful what you uh? What you what you was for
for studies, I don't know anyway. I knew what the
(25:04):
patterns looked like in a lot of these other groups,
and I really felt this sense of maybe I don't
know how deep this rabbit hole goes with this group,
Like maybe I've only been shown what I've been shown,
and there's so much more under the surface that I've
never been a part of. I was living in North
Carolina for nine months out of the year. There could
have been all kinds of things going on that I
(25:25):
didn't know about. And the buzzword of toxic masculinity could
never have been more true in an environment like this.
I mean these the sense of machismo and how important
it was for the men in the group to feel
like warriors. They had to be warring against something at
(25:47):
all times, including the women in their life, if there
was nothing else for them to fight against. So since
I knew that their identity was wrapped up in needing
to feel like they were fighting something, I knew they
were going to come out after me. Because I was
now the thing that they all needed to fight against.
And it's I was really scared, I think for about
a year until I saw enough consistent creepy, weird behavior,
(26:13):
but nothing overly aggressive. It's not like the people. It's
not like it was certainly wasn't like scientology where people
get stalked in their home and they're you know, being
threatened in things.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
And when you when you started like allowing them, like
to be a co signer on your account, when you
opened up like a joint bank account with the leader
of this cult and you're basically signing your earnings away
to him.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
What was with his son? So that was with the
my husband at the time, because he so his I
mean less it's kind of brilliant about not or oh
god that just yes, I didn't still good in my mouth.
He's he's very savvy about how to keep his name
(26:57):
off of things, how to get people to give him
what he wants, about having to put his name on it.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
I mean so yeah, So that joint bank account was
with your ex husband who was his son? Yes, okay,
So did you ever tell anyone in your real life
that you did that or did you keep that a secret?
Speaker 2 (27:14):
I mean, my business manager, my former business manager who
I was transferring the funds away from.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
And what did they say to you?
Speaker 2 (27:22):
We're like, Joe, I think this is a mistake, Like
I really, these people are not qualified to take care
of your money. They don't have the experience. Come a
little worried about you. But they weren't my close friends.
They were right people that I had hired, So what
else would I expect them to do? Like they I
(27:43):
think he even went on a limb out on a
limb saying that much so and I felt it too.
I'm just having this visceral memory of being in his
office in New York too. I remember feeling it and
feeling like he was right, and also knowing the day
(28:03):
to day verbal and mental abuse that I was living
in and how much relief I was going to get
by moving this money because I just wouldn't be berated
every day anymore about that.
Speaker 6 (28:17):
The pressure would be off of letting them control. You're exactly, yeah,
I could. I could just let them handle it. And
it was like, fine, if this will make you stop
yelling at me every day, if this will make us
stop fighting, then yes, go ahead. You be in charge
of the money. You be in charge of the money, honey,
and I will go to work.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Because you don't talk about that a lot in the book,
like there's obviously the control happening, but it didn't.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
I didn't get the impression that.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
You were being yelled at or berated on a daily basis.
With your ex you kind of you talk about that,
but with Less and Pam and Kurt and all those guys,
it seemed much more manipulative rather than on the face
rage or yeah right.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
So, yeah, I may not have been clear just now.
What I meant was that the day to day that
I was living with in my marriage, of the constant conflict.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Controlling reading your scripts, being not allowing you to do
scenes with men, not allowing you to rehearse with men,
go out to dinner with any of your cast members,
that were then right.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Yeah, and everything I wore, not even on the show,
but in real life too, just every aspect of my
life was under a microscope and controlled. And money was
one of the one of the biggest topics that we
would fight about all the time. And I was just like, yeah,
I wanted to spend three hundred and fifty dollars at
J Crew. It's not a big deal. Why is this
(29:41):
a two hour conversation? And it became so much of
that that I was like, there are so many other
things that were fighting about all the time. If the
money will alleviate a lot of this stress, then go
ahead and be in charge of the money.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
So when you get out of a cult and you
realize that they have drained your bank account, you had
two hundred and twenty thousand dollars I think left at
the end, and you realize there was two million missing.
So that's one set of problems. You have a child,
that's another issue. How does one move on? Like what
(30:17):
kind of therapy did you go into when you left
this cult?
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Multiple? Multiple, And even therapy was hard because I had
just spent ten years in an environment where I was
quote unquote going to therapy every week with my church leader,
my group leader, both of them actually last and Pam
couples therapy, individual therapy, group therapy in the basement like
(30:48):
it was all and so even being able to trust
a therapist walking into an office and not like it
was real work to a let myself to trust someone
that was a total stranger based on maybe a friend's
reference or a diploma on the wall that was that
(31:11):
was its own journey, and I did go through a
few different therapists before I found somebody that I really
just felt in my gut, and they probably all were trustworthy,
but I finally did find someone that I really connected with.
But it was so it was so difficult, and even
paying for it was hard because I left with two
hundred and twenty thousand dollars, but it all ended up
(31:32):
going into my divorce and my rent. Within two years
it was gone and I had I was upside down
on my mortgage. We had to do a short sale,
but there was another house that I had to take
on debt for the retirement account got split and half
like there was so much that I couldn't I couldn't
pay rent. There were months when I didn't know how
I was going to pay rent and I had to
(31:53):
call my landlord and be like, can you wup me
till next month? Is this going to be okay?
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Oh God?
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Which is just so crazy, or nine years on a
series and it was really humbling. It was really really hard.
But I feel like I learned so much about joy
in the midst of suffering.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Where did you find that joy? In the midst of suffering.
When were those moments.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Those moments were in They were in the little things.
It was just a day to day. And it's one
of the things where I say my faith has become
the most authentic version of it for me, because rather
than feeling like I was going to achieve some sense
of peace by doing a bunch of things the right way,
(32:39):
I got to just live in a place of abandon
like I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm
not gonna I refuse to allow this to make me
more anxious, more stressed, more like more confined in my life.
I've been confined for the last ten years and probably
(33:00):
the ten before that growing are you joining before that?
Growing up? So I don't want to live confined anymore.
I want to be free. So how do I be
free while I have all of these outside circumstances confining me?
And it was really it was really interesting, the little
moments were looking at the I actually just posted a
(33:22):
poem about this today, a poem that I wrote. When
we were living in Studio City, we had this little apartment.
It was a house. It was like a two bedroom,
little bungalow house on the corner behind the oyster bar,
which was just a total I mean at the parking
lot at two am, Like I remember, I would always
scream up the window. Dane Cook was outside my window
one time at the oyster Bar in the parking lot.
(33:42):
I just knew that voice, and I was opening up
my window, like, go home, home, and there's children sleeping.
But we had They had a dumpster in their parking
lot that they would leave the flap open all the
time and it would hang over into my backyard lovely,
and it used to make me so mad. I would
go out there in the morning with a broomstick and
(34:04):
shove that lit over and like, h my life and
what these people did to me. And little by little
we had a rose bush, and the rose bush started growing,
and eventually it got so big and high that you
couldn't see the dumpster lid when it came over. And
that's how slow it grows. It wasn't an overnight thing.
(34:25):
But I learned moment by moment how to just slow
down and appreciate the things that I do have. I
learned there's nothing that says I'm entitled to a perfect, happy,
golden little life. I get to be happy with where
I am and what I have, and I don't. I'm
not entitled to not suffer that I'm human. Things are
(34:46):
going to happen. Wow. How can I be at piece
when no matter, I mean, when.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Growing over your dumpster?
Speaker 2 (34:55):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
And Dane Cook is no longer in your parking lot?
Thank god. That is a nightmare.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Okay, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna come
back with Bethany Joy Lens. Okay, and we're back. Okay,
Joy Joy, you go by Joy. My middle name is
Joy also, so we know.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
That double Joy.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
So we have a double Joy today. Thank you so
much for sharing that. This book is incredible. Everyone's going
to want to read it. It really is important. I
think every woman should read this, because every every girl,
I mean, I know boys are susceptible too, but obviously
my main concern are women.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, young girls.
Speaker 5 (35:35):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
Well, I think we have a perfect question for you.
We have Mariah on the line, and she'll be joining
us here in a moment, she says, Dear Chelsea, last year,
just a couple of days before my thirtieth birthday, I
got the call I had been expecting for some time
from my mother, who informed me she was quote unquote
parting ways with me. My parents both work for the
(35:56):
Church of Scientology, as well as my siblings. There's an
episode in Leah Remeni's TV show about the Seattle Church
of Scientology which covers a document my father wrote about
how to get money from parishioners. I really can't emphasize
enough how deeply involved my family is. My parents felt
the need to disown me after I left Scientology, but
that's because it's one of the church rules. My mom
(36:18):
had been holding out on disconnecting from me for a while,
but I could see her growing more distant over the
last year, so I did know it was coming. As
I reached out to try and keep a connection alive
with her. She eventually stopped responding, but then at the
end of October she finally called and told me. I'm
still doing a lot of work to recover and deprogram myself,
but I feel so devastated for my mom. I could
(36:38):
hear over the phone that my mom was crying and
reading from a script in front of another person who
was monitoring our call. I hate that the hard life
she had landed her in a cult. She's now been
in for nearly forty five years, and she felt like
she had to cut me off despite us having an
otherwise very good relationship. Of course, I'm also so angry
and hurt that my own family would do.
Speaker 5 (36:58):
This to me.
Speaker 4 (36:59):
I missed my so much, but I don't want to
cross the boundary she's set. But I also want her
to know if she can come to me if she needs.
I'm successful in my own right and I have no
plans on having kids, so I keep a spare bedroom
available just in case my siblings or my mom managed
to escape and need to go somewhere. The holidays are
coming up and we won't spend them together, and I
don't know if I should reach out or if I
should just focus on protecting myself and just move on.
Speaker 5 (37:21):
Do you have any advice?
Speaker 4 (37:22):
Sincerely, Mariah?
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Oh h II, I'm Mariah.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
I'm Mariah.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Hi.
Speaker 5 (37:28):
Nice to meet you, guys.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
It's great to meet you too.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Nice to meet you too. What do you think about that? Joy?
Speaker 2 (37:36):
This breaks my heart. You don't deserve Mariah. You do
not deserve that, and nobody does. That is not okay,
It's not okay. I guess I would say that maintaining
any kind of contact. I guess it's what feels authentic
to you. I don't know that there's a hard and
(37:57):
fast rule. If you have it, then you even a
thread of it to be able to still Happy birthday,
thinking about you, Mom, Love you, Merry Christmas. Dropped off
some flowers for you. I hope you enjoy them, Like
if you had that in you, if you can find
that place, that would be beautiful, and I think that
(38:17):
would be meaningful. But you're not obligated if you can't
if you don't have that capability, like you are not
responsible for saving your mother. So it's I think it's
got to be from what is going to feel for you,
like what you need to do?
Speaker 1 (38:37):
What are you Mariah? What are you doing?
Speaker 5 (38:40):
Like?
Speaker 1 (38:40):
How are you coping?
Speaker 3 (38:42):
What are you doing for yourself to help yourself get
through being excommunicated from your own family?
Speaker 5 (38:49):
Yeah, I see a therapist, but I kind of like
mentally left before this happened. And it was a balance
of like, Okay, how much do I don't I tell
my parents about my life and just being honest and
(39:10):
stuff about everything going on in my life, But it
really is just my mom like that I wonder about
and so I talked to my therapist about this a lot,
and I'm kind of just still dealing with it my
journal and stuff and just still trying to figure out
everything about how to move forward and what I took
(39:36):
from this that's bad and good, you know. So I
don't know if I answered your question good enough, but
I'm just trying to kind of make my way through.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Can I I have a question? And I also want
to tell you, like, because my mom stayed in relationship
with me by not asking too many questions I pushing
too hard. She just kind of like kind of stayed
on the surface, knowing that eventually I was going to
come around. But my dad was different and became estranged.
I did essentially to him what your mom has done
(40:09):
to you, and I, even in my delusion, I never
stopped loving my dad. They lied to me. They tried
to make me believe terrible things about my father that
were not true. And even as I was trying to
like navigate through that, he started sending me letters, handwritten letters.
(40:30):
He started sending me photos of my little brother and
birthday parties and what was happening in life. And they
used to make me really angry. I used to not
want to read them. I didn't want to deal with
the emotions that they brought up, but it it made
a difference for me, like it did when I got out.
I knew he was there. I knew I was going
(40:50):
to have to make one hard phone call, to pick
up the phone and call and say, hey, Dad, I'm
really sorry. It's been six years, but I did it.
And you know that's that's possible. But at the same time,
that's not to say that again, you're not responsible for
her journey, but that just something. But my question, if
it's okay, do you feel comfortable telling us what your
(41:13):
what advice your therapist has given you, because I haven't.
I haven't been put in a position to give advice
much other than like one on one if I see
people and they're asking me. But this is new for me,
so I would love to know what that advice is,
if you're okay with sharing.
Speaker 5 (41:25):
Yeah. Well, first of all, I just finished reading your
book and it's really good, So I think your story
is incredible. Just for the record, and I did get
kind of emotional hearing you talk about your dad because
I listened to the audiobook, which was definitely good with
(41:47):
it hear your voice and get your take on what
you went through. But yeah, that is something that I
exactly talk to my therapist about. Is like, Okay, so
I feel bad that my mom is in this, but
also I was born into it. I didn't have any
choices and she made choices. And am I being you know,
(42:09):
am I being delusional that it's like it was our
relationship actually what I thought it was? And did all
the rules that I was taught growing up actually come
from her place of like I think this is right
versus I'm told to tell you this, you know, and
this is what I've been led to believe. But yeah,
(42:31):
the advice my therapist is given is to just try
to move on and try to accept that I might
never hear from her. She's been in it for longer
than I've been alive, So she has been an ally
of scientology longer than she has been my mother. So
(42:53):
that's something that is like, realistically, yeah, if you're going
to get past that, you have to leave a very
powerful cults, one of the more powerful ones, and like
that's not super realistic. And then there's like my siblings
and my dad, Like my dad is almost sort of
the less type of person to compare it to your
(43:16):
wow situation. Yeah, and so he's a narcissist. He is
really good at getting people to give money to Scientology
done to lots of people what last did to you
in terms of like money management and stuff like that.
So my mom sees their relationship as the greater good.
(43:36):
She's helping the world be better by supporting him. So
she's like the breadwinner. She's kind of been supporting my
dad my whole life while he works for the Church
of Scientology and she works part time for the Church
of Scientology.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
So just to give you.
Speaker 5 (43:52):
Some context of why my dad's not I'm not interested
in being in my life, you know what I mean. So, Yeah,
my therapist and they mostly talk about just kind of
moving on from this and if she ever does reach out,
like just take it from there.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
And also to be able to remind yourself that this
isn't really who your mother is. You know, it's almost
like dealing with an addict where you have to remember
that they're on a drug and that this isn't a
reflection of how she really feels about you. You know
that she was upset during that phone call. You know
that she was being monitored during that phone call. We
all know all of these things that cults do to
(44:34):
their cult members, but to remember that, Like, it's so
sad what you've experienced and what you're still going through,
and I totally I can feel you, you know, but
that's not who your mother really is, and that's not
a reflection.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Of her love for you. Your mother does love you.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
I believe that you know that she loved you because
she was so upset during that phone call, and you
know that that is the drug making her do that,
and as painful as that is, you can't have that
in your life unless she has the gumption to leave
(45:12):
the church at some point, and like you said, she's
been in there for forty five years, that is very unlikely.
So what you do have to do is try to
make peace with the idea that you did have a
family they're not themselves in this current state, that you
did experience tons of love and joy, and take a
(45:34):
lot of pride in the fact that you were able
to remove yourself from a situation that puts you at
odds with your family because you were standing up for
what you know is right. Yeah, and that that wasn't
for you and that is really ballsy and really brave,
and as heartbreaking as it is, that is what is
going to carry you forward to the rest of your
(45:56):
life so that you can pursue a successful life. You
could have a success cessful romantic relationship with whomever you want.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
You can have your.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Own family, and you have to carry on like these
people aren't going to leave scientology because the likelihood is slim,
but it's never You never know.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
It could happen, but you just can't count on it happening.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
And I think you should get up every day and
think about the things that you have in your life
that you're grateful for and write them down, you know,
every morning, write down the ten things that you have
that you are your own, and those things can be
that you had the goodwill and the good sense to
get out of a cult.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
You know, I got myself out of it.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
I'm standing here on my own two feet without any
of them because I had the presence of mind to
do something better for myself. Don't diminish any of the
gains that you made by getting out of that.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
That is great advice. And also think about this as
an opportunity because there are older women who are brilliant
mentors who can step into that role for you and
be a friend and be nobody's ever going to replace
your mother. But I think that as I was just
saying before, you know, there's no sort of like get
(47:10):
out of suffering free card. We all have something that
we encounter that's just like, how am I going to
get through this? What am I going to do? And
there is opportunity in every one of those moments. And
there may be somebody out there who you're going to
encounter that you never would have encountered if this hadn't happened,
(47:30):
and they need you in their life and you need
them in your life, maybe multiple people you don't know.
So while that doesn't wipe away the pain, and you
still can hold that pain and process through it as
you need to, there is opportunity and there are really
good things that can come from hardship.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
How did you decide to leave scientology?
Speaker 5 (47:51):
That's it probably, I think anyone who leaves a cult,
there's not like a single moment that they like just
decide I've a light, you know, it's usually a ton
of moments. But for me, I mean the silver lining
of being born into it was that my parents were
(48:13):
quite busy with it and quite neglectful, so I was
sort of left to my own devices most of the time.
I read the Internet. I got an education because I
eventually had to start working like retail jobs to just
like having money for food and stuff. When I was
a teenager, and I was like, well, I want a
(48:35):
better life than what a retail job can give me,
you know. So I went to school and that was
sort of the beginning of the deprogramming. That was how
I kind of learned how to determine if something is
real or not when the claim is made. That is
how I learned how to, Like I got, I got
(48:58):
a science degree, so I learned a lot about how
science works and what is and isn't science. So for me,
that's that was how it went down, because it's scientology
is not really a sort of god type religion. It's
like it's barely a religion.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
It's like more about, oh.
Speaker 5 (49:17):
Yeah, if you do A B and C, this will happen.
But then there's actually no real evidence, no real anything
but claims.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
You're amazing, that's such a great story the progression of.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
That, And how did you tell your parents you were leaving.
Speaker 5 (49:32):
I actually didn't. Someone thought that I was following some
people on Twitter I'm not supposed to follow and they
reported me. So then my dad, because he's like one
of the leaders, he got the report and he called
me and was like, hey, we need to talk. And
uh so my parents scheduled a few meetings with me
(49:55):
to talk about my thoughts and what they wanted me
to do, and I kind I just had to stay
my boundaries over and over again, like yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
You guys can't defy this for me.
Speaker 5 (50:05):
I'm not going to unfollow someone just because you want
me to.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Wow. Oh good for you. Yeah, that's incredible, it really is.
Speaker 5 (50:17):
I'm just gonna let my dog outside of this room
real quick.
Speaker 4 (50:19):
Okay, sure, I'm really glad she has a dog.
Speaker 5 (50:22):
I know.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's one of the things that you're going
to write down that you're grateful for, is your dog
every morning. When we talk about these gratitude like journaling
and gratitude lists, like to all of our listeners, it
could be anything.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
It can be like it can be material things.
Speaker 3 (50:39):
It could be your sofa, it can be your personality,
it can be someone else, it can be your friend.
Like when I'm saying to write down things, like some
people people always ask me, They're like, well, what if
it's materialistic, that's okay. Just write down ten things that
you're grateful for. You know, your sensibility can be one
of the things. Your dog can be another thing. The
house that you're staying in, the apartment that you're renting, whatever,
(51:01):
it is, your job, and I just slowly want you
to get yourself to a place where of acceptance rather
than grief, because of course you're going to feel grief
for a really long time. But if you can get
to a place of acceptance and understanding that this really
has very little to do with you. Unfortunately, however personal
it feels. I know, it's your mother and you're it
(51:23):
must feel like a huge rejection. But when you really
look at it from an outside perspective, these people have
been infected with ideas and thoughts and and you have
the good sense not to have been.
Speaker 5 (51:35):
Yeah. I mean, one of the things that Joy you
talked about in your book was these moments of like, oh,
I didn't feel right about that, But then I was like, well,
I'm being cynical or I'm being you know, a problem
in some way, I'm not having a generous mindset here
(51:56):
and the aftermath of all this has been like realizing
those moments and you're like, wait, I did know, Like
I was smart enough to see this stuff the whole time,
and I just kept telling myself what I needed to
survive because I needed the group that I mean, I
ay went to a scientology school, like very very insulated.
(52:20):
I didn't know anyone else until I happened to get
a job working at a grocery store, you know, so
that was my first exposure to non scientologists.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
So that was your attachment those are that was that.
As I was saying earlier, we were talking about what
made me susceptible was attachment, which is something I've realized recently.
I was always saying it was a need for family.
But I had a great conversation with doctor Romney Derivstula.
I don't know if you know who she is, but
she's a great person to follow for you, dtr Romeny,
(52:52):
and she was she really clarified it was it was attachment.
That's what I was looking for, and that was it
sounds like that was what you're attached was too, And
it's a I think it's a really natural thing for
us to override the things that we feel gutturally because
of a deeply felt, very human neat We all need attachment.
(53:13):
We're built for community, even from like caveman days, like
they are built for community. So that need is really
really valuable and really hard to push away. When your
little red flags are going off, it's like your gut
or your heart, what do you listen to?
Speaker 5 (53:31):
Yeah, I mean, especially when you're like eight, it's like yeah,
or in your case, you were raised Christian and so
now you have this other Christian mindset that is being
double reinforced because you learned about Christianity and childhood.
Speaker 3 (53:47):
Yeah, but I mean think about your situation. You were
born into this, this is all you were ever taught,
and you had sense enough to extricate yourself from it
once you got educated.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
Like that is so brave and bold and baldy, Like you.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
Have a huge, bright future ahead of you, and I
want you to just start to lean into that.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
You can't skip past grief.
Speaker 3 (54:12):
You have to experience the loss, and it's a huge loss.
Speaker 1 (54:16):
But you're not wrong, You're right.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
You know you did the right thing, and you can't
control what your mom's going to do, but you can
go out there and live a life in honor of
your good sense and in honor of what your mother's life.
Speaker 1 (54:31):
Could have been.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
Yeah, that's beautiful.
Speaker 5 (54:34):
I think a lot about what my mom's life could
have been because she joined up with Scientology when she
was like nineteen or twenty or something, and it's such
a vulnerable time in people's lives, and they got her
and she married a guy. And you know, I got
this dog the day after my mom called me and yeah,
(54:59):
I heard you say, Chelsea, it's gonna have a dog. Yeah,
that was exactly what I was like, you know what
I've always wanted to that, let's get on.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
You got that dog.
Speaker 4 (55:10):
And they always know what's your guy's name?
Speaker 2 (55:15):
His name is Poe.
Speaker 5 (55:17):
Yeah, cutie. But yeah, I've been like kind of numb
this last year. I really didn't This timing of this
was actually quite crazy because I didn't process and even
cry about this until last week because I was I
(55:38):
was just so numbed out. You know, it felt like
surreal too, but it just kind of hit me, like,
you know the way that everyone when you realize how
everyone on the outside has seen you this whole time,
and how everyone who you thought like was judging you
for being weird, was like just really concerned and scared
(56:02):
for you, And that almost made me feel more emotional
than anything else, Like whoa. And then also just realizing
my dad, how like my dad is actually and like
as opposed to the story I was told of who
he is. I was told he's like this wonderful person
(56:23):
and everyone looks up to him, and I was told
constantly how lucky I was to have him as a dad.
But meanwhile, like I would get his you know, wrath
at home and stuff like that. So start of processing
all of this as far as like, oh, my reality
is now different, Like I went from one reality and
(56:46):
I'm now in a different one. And it's really just
been like a week And like the day after I
cried about it for the first time was when I
got an email from Captine. So it's quite crazy timing
is that I just got a chill. This was only
a week ago that I like first cried about it. Yeah,
(57:06):
it was a year ago that my mom called me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:10):
The analogy Chelsea that you just gave about addiction, actually
I think is so brilliant because that is so similar
to the behavior of somebody that just checks out because
they it's almost like a disease in your mind. You're
just that's all you know how to do, and that's
what they're seeking attachment in a certain way, and they
don't know how to overcome it. I actually found going
(57:34):
to alan On to be very helpful in my cult
recovery stuff, like I have addiction in my family lineage
that manifested in codependence and all different kinds of things
in my life. But I was really surprised how going
to alan On was was really really helpful because so
much of the behavior is similar.
Speaker 3 (57:56):
So yeah, I think there's a lot of online ex
scientificogy support groups. Oh yeah, I think you should definitely
look and try and find one of those if you want,
I can ask Lea Remenee, she's a good friend of mine,
because I think what you're experiencing is just so unique
that you want other people who have also been through
the same thing specific to scientology, and I think you'll
(58:17):
find a lot of comfort there and a lot of
like mindedness and that will make you feel a little
bit less isolated and alone during this time. So definitely
do that and also keep crying, like that's how you
get this anguish and grief out. So I understand that
you didn't cry for a year and now you are crying,
and you're going to be crying. But it doesn't mean
(58:38):
you're going to be crying all day every day. It
means when you feel it coming on, let it out,
let it move through you, and then you know an
hour later you'll be doing something and you'll find yourself
laughing or having a good time doing something.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
But don't be scared of grieving. It's part of the process.
Speaker 4 (58:53):
And Maria, will you check back in with us in
a few months, Yeah, check.
Speaker 1 (58:57):
Back in with us.
Speaker 3 (58:57):
I'm going to get that info from Leah if she
knows of any like support groups personally, and then yeah,
keep in touch with us, Okay, because you know, I
just want you to remember you're very lovable.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
Thanks. Yeah, you're really awesome.
Speaker 3 (59:10):
You're lovable. So start you're gonna write. Start writing those
ten things down every morning too when you wake up. Okay, Okay, Okay, Mariah.
Speaker 2 (59:18):
Big hugs, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (59:20):
Thank You're amazing.
Speaker 2 (59:21):
Maria, you are amazing.
Speaker 5 (59:23):
You guys too, Thank you so much. And Chelsea like
to be a public figure willing to say anything negative
about scientology is so cool of you.
Speaker 1 (59:34):
Oh, no problem.
Speaker 2 (59:35):
Cool, Thanks guys, Bye bye bye.
Speaker 3 (59:42):
Okay, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna come
back and wrap up with Beth and a joy Lens.
Speaker 1 (59:50):
And we're back. Wow.
Speaker 3 (59:52):
That was a heavy episode, you guys, that was deep.
Thank you for writing this book. This must have been
really hard for you to write, was it?
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
No, it was it was. It felt good. It felt
good to get it out, to be able to it
felt good for me to be able to see it
all out in a straight line, so to speak, like
it wasn't all just floating around in my head and
memories in my body that I couldn't attach. I didn't
know how to attach one memory to the next one,
and there were blanks that I had to fill in
(01:00:21):
by calling former members of the group who had also
gotten out and say what happened? Because I remember this?
But then how did we get from point A to
point D? And the amount of love and support that
we were able to re engage with each other in
this was a really it felt very powerful to me
to be able to write this story and see it
(01:00:43):
put out in a straight line, as I say, And
I really hope that it can be helpful. I mean, yeah,
there were moments, there were a couple of hard days,
but overall, I'm just really glad to be able to
have gotten it out of my body.
Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3 (01:00:56):
Well, it's a powerful move to write a book like this,
and it means you know, I think that is a
perfect way to celebrate the ending of that and commemorate
the fact that you I mean, it's going to help
so many people, I really hope, so people who are
ever come across a situation like that where you can
easily get duped into believing that some random group of
(01:01:18):
people has a better interest in you than your own family,
and they own the people that you know and the
people that you love, and and what happens there. So, yeah,
thank you for your book. And it's called Dinner Vampire.
Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
What is it? Vampire Dinners for a vampire? Sorry I
don't have it right from.
Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
The dinner Dinner for Vampires.
Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
Called Dinner for Vampires by Bethany Joy Lenz.
Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
Okay, Bethany, will let you go. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
That was lovely and really actually just I just want
to tell you hearing you encourage her was really encouraging
for me and inspiring and made me want to be
able to I'm such a problem solver. I'm sort of
like that's my ADHD right, Like I'm always I don't
it's hard for me to listen. I just want to
like solve the problem. So hearing you just hold that
space and then just speak encouragement, encouragement, encouragement is so
(01:02:04):
I was like, I want to be more like that.
So thank you for giving me that today.
Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
I needed that absolutely my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
All right, it was great talking with you both. Thank
you for having me. Thank you, Bye bye bye.
Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
Okay, guys, stand up shows that I have coming up
December twenty eighth, I'm coming in New Orleans right before
New Year's and then I'll be in Atlanta, Georgia on
December twenty ninth.
Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
And those are the rest of my stand up dates
for this year. It's over new Tour New Year.
Speaker 4 (01:02:32):
If you'd like advice from Chelsea, shoot us an email
at Dear Chelsea podcast at gmail dot com and be
sure to include your phone number. Dear Chelsea is edited
and engineered by Brad Dickert executive producer Catherine Law and
be sure to check out our merch at Chelseahandler dot
com
Hi Catherine, Hi Chelsea.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
How are you?
Speaker 3 (00:02):
Readings from Whistler, Canada, my new home for the next
three weeks.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
I'm so pleased for you. You're always happier when you're chilly. Yes,
I am. I needed a real fucking break this year,
real break.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I needed to take my own advice, read my own book,
and then reread Letting Go.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
I need lots of help, so I am now decompressing.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
Amazing is your new book? Is it like a little
bit advice based as well or more personal?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
St It's pretty much how to be optimistic in the dark,
how to inject yourself with positivity and optimism.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
And I have lost.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
My way with positivity and optimism, so I really need
to reread it.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
It does happen sometimes where you like need a little
bit of a reset.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
My schedule for the last two months has just been
was just insane. Why and the travel and the shows,
and then the my house never being done, and then
the podcasts. You know, we're kind I've been running her ragon.
They decide to it's your fault. They decide to do
construction when I'm recording. You know, I'm gone fifty days
a fucking month. It feels like, and then the one
day they're doing stuff is when I'm home.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
So it has just.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Been Yeah, nobody seems to understand how to manage a schedule,
including myself.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Just twenty different groups all pulling you in different.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Directs, right right, right.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I mean, I'm grateful for the work, but it's hard
to be grateful when you're so fucking tired, and then
you start pitching, and then you start getting negative and
all of that stuff, and then you go RecA I
am recharging as we speak. I'm plugged into a recharger.
It's in my butt, by the way, speaking of recharging.
My two last shows of the year in America, well
until further notice, because I don't know that I'm going
(01:35):
to be touring next year. So I have a show
in New Orleans on December twenty eighth, and on December
twenty ninth, I'm in Atlanta, Georgia, So get your tickets
at Chelseahandler dot com. You can also find out where
I'll be doing live book events next year, for I'll
have What She's Having, which comes out February twenty fifth.
That's on my website too, where I'll be signing books,
(01:56):
talking taking pictures all of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Awesome.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Yeah, And just to clarify, since we promised we would
last week, that's where you can get your signed copies
of the book. And you can also get them at
books a million in Barns and Noble.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Right, yes, yes, I signed lots of books for books
a million of Barnes and Noble. So many books. My
back went out. I aalira happy there are boxes.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
The day of Thanksgiving, my sister was cooking a turkey
in the kitchen, even though I can't tell her she
can't cook and why does she keep trying? And I
sat there for five hours and signed books and I
made like a dent in the I was like, oh,
I didn't realize how many books.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Ten thousand books.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I didn't realize that that's just almost it's almost a bond.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
With my lifestyle. Who are we introducing.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
We are introducing Bethany Joy Lens.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
This was a good interview and a great book. Okay,
So our guest today is an actress, singer, songwriter and
co host of the One Tree Hill Rewatch podcast drama Queens.
Her new memoir, Dinner for Vampires is out now. Please
welcome Bethany Joy Lens Hi NOI.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Hi, oh hello, Hi, How are you great?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
How are you girls?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I'm just so happy you're cult free?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Me too, Mama.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Oh my god, that book. Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I have never really ever been interested in colts, So
I don't I haven't watched all of these shows that
everyone has watched in all of these docuseries or whatever
they are, and I've never really read about a cult.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
This is my first reading about a cult.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Really, yeah, and it was pretty stunning. I guess I
want to ask you now that you're out of it
for how many years have you been out of it? Five?
Speaker 5 (03:41):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
No, longer about thirteen?
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Oh wow, twelve thirteen?
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah? Oh okay, So now you have some real perspective.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, okay, Yeah, that's I think that's what made it
okay for me to write the book without feeling like
I was going to fall apart every day, because there's
I have a certain measure of objectivity about it now,
I think.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Wow, okay, So I'm curious to see before we get
into all the details or whatever we decide to talk about,
what do you think now when you think about why
you were susceptible in the first place to being commandeered
in that way and falling into that.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
What do you think it was.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
I think it was a longing for attachment, which is
a pretty human need. I think it's the same thing
that draws anyone into any kind of abusive situation, whether
it's a workplace environment that you just can't seem to leave,
or a toxic relationship, or staying in a family environment,
a biological family environment that's just super toxic and abusive.
(04:37):
There's this sense of a need for attachment that we
all have. And I was twenty years old. It's so
different now, having so much mileage in my life that
I feel like my radar is so much better. But
back then I was twenty, It's like, what did I know.
I was taught to respect authority. I was taught to
(04:58):
believe your elders and believe people who seem like they
have your best interests at heart. And I wanted a family.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, yeah, you wanted a family. That's true.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Like I could see that, and you can see that
in the book because there were so many hints, like
even the first time you met Less, the cult leader,
when you met him, you were grossed out, like itcked
out by him initially right, and then so like, there
were so many instances that you write about in the
book from the beginning of meeting this like kind of
(05:30):
seemingly harmless group of people and all being kind of
involved in religion and Christianity and wanting to spend time
together in your own kind of like prayer group or
spirituality group or however you know we can frame it.
There were all these little signs along the way, but
you always kind of convinced yourself that it wasn't your
(05:51):
place to judge them or have an opinion about them,
and instead convinced yourself it was the right thing to
do to stick with.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Isn't that amazing? Like the testament to the fact that
we all have this innate guttural knowledge like compass, where
we know, you know something's off, and we talk ourselves
out of things, into or out of things all the time,
even from a young age. I mean, I write about
in the book how my mom and dad when they
(06:21):
would be arguing. There were so many moments I'd walk
into the room or they would leave a room that
they had been arguing behind a closed door, and I'd
be like, what's wrong? And I was just met with
like everything's fine, No, nothing's wrong, And as a kid,
you just start to think, oh, I guess I guess
it's me, Like maybe I'm crazy. I guess I'm the
one that thinks everybody is being tense and there's nothing wrong.
(06:42):
So you really start to doubt your own gut and
your own instinct. And you do that enough, then people
can come in and take advantage of you if they
recognize that trait in you.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yeah, I think that's going to be interesting to a
lot of callers and a lot of mothers listening to
this conversation, because you basically got swept up in this
group of people and started to believe they were your
real family, as they convinced you that they were really
the only people that cared about you and that understood
you right. And any time your father or your mother
(07:12):
came on the scene, who were both concerned because they
could see something was a little bit off, they were
met with silence or kind of like you know, they
were ignored or dismissed as not even really having a
valid place in your life anymore. And this went on
from when you were on One Tree Hill, which you
were filming for how many seasons. Were you on their
(07:33):
seven We did nine seasons, which was even doubt about
ten years. So ten years on that show, and the
whole time you were in this cult, the whole time
flying back and forth to Idaho from North Carolina, right
was North Carolina a.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Whole Yeah, from North Carolin. We were in Wilmington. Wilmington,
North Carolina, which is like one of the small, super
small beachy town that has no direct flights to the
West coast at all. I have to always take double flights.
It was exhausting. It was like eight to twelve hour
travel days every time.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
And there was nothing glamorous about it at all. Like
when you described the house in Idaho the big house
in Idaho, because you met these people in La first, right,
and then they had this other house in Idaho, which
was already there was a lot of not normal behavior
around that, like it was someone else's house that they
kind of commandeered. And then all of you guys, kind
of all these vagabonds for lack of a better word,
(08:27):
people who were a little bit lost, kind of like yourself,
would move into this house and kind of created this family.
And then over the course of the time you were there,
they basically embezzled over two million dollars from.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
You, right, Yes, that is true.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
And you got married and had a baby within the cults.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
I'm just so glad that you're free. I'm so happy
for you. That is incredible.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
That's all that matters, right, is that you're out of
that situation.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yes, and I look at it bizarrely. I mean, I
know it might sound kind of strange, but I do
look at it as a blessing. I mean, I think
we all deal with crazy shit in our lives and
when one way or another, if it's not one thing,
it's something else. Mine falls under a category that in
our culture right now is deemed really strange and weird
(09:17):
and crazy. But my aim with this book is to
show how what a slow burn it is, and how
even though the narcissistic abuse was in a group format,
for what I experienced, the top notes are all the
same in any kind of abusive relationship across the board.
And that's what I want people to take away, that, like,
you don't have to have been in a cult in
(09:37):
order to deeply relate to the sense of being gas
lit and love bombed and coerced and taken advantage of
and yes, to your point, thank god, I'm out, Like
I'm so happy that I'm out, But I'm really I'm
grateful that I went through it because now I feel
like I've got something in my life that I can
(09:58):
help other people with.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
So are you coming into with being on this book
tour and now going public with this story because a
lot of people, your cast members were also They all
kind of suspected that you were involved with something that
wasn't really on the up and up, and you had
some close friends on the cast and some friends that
you missed an opportunity at that time to develop relationships
with because you were in such a kind of controlling environment.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
So are people asking you?
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Are there women and young women and men asking you
questions about whether or not they're in an abusive or
narcissistic dynamic?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Now I do get some of those. I get more
of people who say they know someone who's in an
abusive dynamic and they don't know what to do and
they don't know how to help them, And.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
What do you say to that?
Speaker 2 (10:44):
It's hard. It's hard, you, guys, because the very nature
of it is your identity, your whole construct of your
identity becomes tied up in the approval or the attachment
that you have with this person or these people. So
for some to say to you, hey, I think you're
in an abusive relationship, Hey I think you're in a cult,
(11:07):
or anything to that end is not just It's not
just information that you can objectively sit back and say,
let me take a look at this and see if
that's true. Your heart and soul and identity are already
bound up in it. So how could anybody say something
to you that's going to make you The stakes are
so high, you know. And I know for me at
that time, nobody could have said anything, and they tried.
(11:29):
There were people that tried. Nobody could have said anything
to me that would have convinced me of a different
reality than the one I was living in in my mind.
And so long winded answer to your question, what I
try and advise people is be a friend. If you
can manage to maintain a friendship of honesty, where the
(11:55):
person trusts you and values you. You know, there's a little
bit of pushback, but not too much. Don't give them
too much pushback because then they might just cut you
out of their life. If you become this sort of
like suppressive person or whatever the version of that.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Is, which also I just sorry, I want to interrupt you,
because that's the very important thing you say in the book.
Is the first sign that you are in something that
is not cool or you're being coerced is when anyone
who's not part of that group becomes someone you're not.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Allowed to talk to. Right, Like I forget the word.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
They use in scientology, like suppressive personality, but like anyone
who doesn't agree with that, if you're not allowed to
talk to certain people because they don't subscribe to your
religion or your spirituality, then that is a big red
flag anyone who tries to cut you off from other people.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
And what you're saying is it's so accurate. And also
think about it doesn't necessarily come out from the abuser
as the words you're not allowed. In my case, it
came out as much more condescending, much more like it's
masked as kindness in a way, like that person is
(13:05):
not maybe not safe for you, guard your heart, look
out for yourself, look out for them too. You don't
want to be talking to them about spiritual concepts that
they can't understand. That's going to set up a representation
of Christ for them. That's too confusing. So keep you
know the language. You really have to pay attention not
(13:26):
just to what someone is saying, but what they're doing.
And if the byproduct of what's being said is isolation,
that's you have to pay attention to that, because it's
not going to come out as obvious. If the person
is a real narcissist, if they're good at their job,
if they're controlling you, it's going to come out much
(13:46):
more veiled.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Do you think that Christianity, like your childhood Christianity, had
any factor in this?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Sure? Oh yeah, it was massive. I mean, as for
anyone out there who has not read Dinner for Vampires.
I grew up in a charismatic evangelical church, non denominational,
not super political or anything. It wasn't extreme in that
way it was it was just very loose, like there
was no when it's non denominational, there's no system or
(14:17):
structure that you have that the pastor has accountability to.
They kind of can say whatever they want and maybe
there's elders in the church, but it's not part of
like if you're Presbyterian, you're part of the presbytery, and
there's this like long overarching community of leaders and people
who've been holding on to hundreds of years of theology
and things like that. So there's this like accountability that
(14:40):
comes with a lot of denominations. So non denominational is
what I grew up in, which also made me a
lot more comfortable to be in an environment where some
guy comes in says whatever he wants and I'm like, well,
you're a pastor, so I guess I can believe you too,
with no accountability. But I do think that I mean,
it's actually I feel like it's kind of a miracle
(15:02):
that I still have managed to have a relationship with
God and with christ. I really hesitate to use the
word Christian because of what it means, especially in this
country right now, but that relationship is still exists for me,
but in a much more authentic way because I think
what I was taught, I know what I was taught
(15:23):
when I was young was very much Here are the
things you need to do. Here are the rules you
need to follow in order to have the kind of
life that God wants you to have. In order to
get the life that you want to get, God to
give you the life that you want. You just need
to follow all these rules and then you'll be happy.
(15:43):
Turns out that's not so true. Turns out bad things
happen to people who are following all the rules too.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
No, I would have been so jypped. I would have
felt so jypped.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
You were bleeding God's life and then God did that,
Like I would be so fucking pissed.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Because in the beginning of.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
The book, like when you're kind of not on the
fence about joining this group of people because they kind
of wind and dined you, so to speak. You talk
about a moment where you're asking you're silently sitting there alone,
trying to feel God's presence and giving you guidance and
what to do. And in that moment you talk about
feeling it and that was this signal that you needed
(16:22):
to actually get more involved or I think it was.
Was it to get more involved in the group, where
maybe it was to give up a job. No, No,
it was to get more involved in the group.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Right, which moment are you talking about? I'm trying to
I might have missed something. You said.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
There's two moments. I'll tell you about your own book.
Let me tell.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
You, there's one moment where you're at the beginning of
becoming very involved with this group of people at the beginning,
and you were like waiting to hear God's voice, and
God's like, I'm here with you, you know, kind of
like almost a confirmation of maybe you were hesitant or wavering.
So tell us about that moment when you felt God's
(16:57):
energy in that moment.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yes, okay, this is one of my favorite moments in life.
And I really didn't tell very many I mean maybe
like three people in my life. I've ever told about
this before I wrote this book because I know it
kind of sounds crazy. So anyway, I well it's all
out there now.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
It's not as crazy as you call.
Speaker 5 (17:19):
So.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, I'm nineteen years old, I'm living in New York.
I'm happy. I've got a great life, i got a
great job. There's really no problem. And I'm sitting in
this cafe on a rainy Tuesday or whatever, and I
look out and I'm thinking to myself, huh, you know what,
you know, it would be weird if all this Christianity stuff,
(17:42):
like all this Jesus stuff that I grew up with,
if that was all just made up in somebody's imagination
and a bunch of people believe it and it's just
not true. And then I was like, oh, well, I
mean it's working for me, like my life is happy,
I'm doing well, like I guess I'll find out when
I die, and really just kind of moved on from it.
I didn't think much more beyond that, and I write
(18:05):
about it more in detail in the book of Really
What It felt like. But I felt like it was
like I was in a slow motion movie, like every
molecule in my body just went to the perfect temperature.
Everything got really still and quiet, and I felt the
physical presence of a body sit next to me in
this booth that I was in at this empty cafe,
(18:27):
and obviously there was no one there. And I heard
a voice, like an audible voice, very close to my ear,
and it said, never doubt that.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
I am real.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
And then it went away, and I remember, like immediately,
you know, tears in my eyes, and I was like
desperately trying to remember the sound of the voice, and
it just was gone, like everything was just gone instantly.
And I was confused by it for years because I
thought of all the time I've all the times in
my life I've been in pain and anguish in my knees, like, God,
(19:00):
where are you? Give me a sign? Tell me something?
What should I do? What choice should I make? How
do I feel better from this or that? Nothing? And
I would feel like radio silence. Why in the world
would God have bothered to come and let me know
that I was I was seen, not just like some
random universal feel like this thing that loves me, whatever
(19:25):
love means, and that sort of like vast context, but
like a very intentional personal joy. I see you, I
hear you, I love you. I'm real. Why would you
bother doing that in a moment that was completely insignificant
where there was nothing at stake? And I didn't realize
until all those years later, when I was in exactly
the moment that you were talking about, Chelsea saying I
(19:47):
was fucking pissed. I was jypped. I was like, I
just devoted my whole life to you. I did all
the right things, and this is what I get. Fuck you?
And I really like, I literally just said that to God,
fuck you, fuck you, I hate you. I'm so mad
at you. How dare you? And it was like there
was this big, cosmic sigh of relief, like thank you,
(20:08):
thank you for finally being honest with me and stopping
all of this pretending to be somebody that you're not.
Can you just be real? And it all just dropped
in and I felt like, oh my god, that's why,
because I would have just abandoned God. I would have
just walked away and said this God stuff is total
(20:28):
nonsense and I don't want to have anything to do
with it ever again. But I couldn't because I knew
too much. Because I had one moment that I just
could not explain when I was nineteen, and that's what
kind of kept me in a space where I could
still move forward with an authentic version of my fate
and abandon all the rest of the garbage.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Oh God, just this, It's just.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
People are going to eat this book up because of
this first hand account of just what you went through
and all of the like levels of pervasiveness that they
had in your life. You had so many opportunities in
your field, acting, singing, all of these opportunities that you had,
and many of them you didn't pursue because of these
(21:15):
cults and those cult leaders or the cult leader the
main one less and they prohibited you from They wanted
your money, but they didn't want you to be too
exposed to other people that may have an influence on
you and call out the fact that this was not
on the up and up.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah, that was one of the craziest things to me.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
You think that these people who are motivated by like
using you would want you to take more opportunities. But
I think you're right. It's like keeping you away from
people who might convince you like, hey, there's a bigger
world out there.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah. And I had been out on my own for
so long, and like, I think they had to do
more work with me because I had so much unusual
backlog of life experience for someone my age of being independent,
being on my own, being in all these different experiences
and connecting deeply with groups of people and then fragmenting
(22:08):
off and then getting involved in another group of people
because that's what theater is. That's what you do for
you know, your two months, your non stop with the
same people, and every job you do, it's like that.
So I think they think he and the Pam character
the sort of mother of the group. I think they
knew in some way that they were going to have
(22:30):
to really work hard at convincing me how important it
was to be a part of a family and make
that my priority over work. And also I don't think
Les wanted the group to really grow because I think
he was kind of lazy and there's just so much
work involved with so many.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
People drolling people.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah, you know, that's got to be exhausting. So I
think he just didn't want me to make too much
money because if I'm out there in the world making
too much money and converting too many people to be
a part of our little family, then the liability goes up.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
So yeah, but those people are all on power trips,
you know what I mean. They want the power, They
love the power, they love the control. So I don't
even know if you can mitigate your desire for power
when you're that much of a narcissist. But maybe because
of you know, you bring up some legal aspects and
you know, like you can't you're not technically accult unless
you're like influencing or damaging more than seventies people's lives
(23:31):
or something.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
I think you give us, Yeah, some stats at the end.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
In the state of Idaho, how does it work having
a child with someone that you're now separated from in
such a big.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Way, Like, yeah, there are some unique challenges with that.
It's something that I spent some real time considering how
much I wanted to say about that in the book,
because the truth is that they do still have a relationship,
and so I don't want to I just don't want
to interfere with that. And I don't know him anymore
really really, so I can't say much about him.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
And so when you were able, when you did leave finally,
were you scared for your safety?
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Definitely the first because you were.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Living in the same state and you had your own
house and they were trying to bully you and intimidate you.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Oh yeah, awful. I was scared because as I started
to accept the fact that this was a cult, a
high demand group. I mean, it took me a minute,
like I really didn't want to admit that that's what
I had been involved in. But once I started to
admit that, then I was like, oh my god, I
(24:40):
know what cults are.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
Like.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I used to study scientology when I was in high
school because I was fascinated by it irony. I didn't
remember doing a paper on it once and there, and
I was always kind of interested in the idea of
a cult and how somebody could get sucked into that
careful what you uh? What you what you was for
for studies, I don't know anyway. I knew what the
(25:04):
patterns looked like in a lot of these other groups,
and I really felt this sense of maybe I don't
know how deep this rabbit hole goes with this group,
Like maybe I've only been shown what I've been shown,
and there's so much more under the surface that I've
never been a part of. I was living in North
Carolina for nine months out of the year. There could
have been all kinds of things going on that I
(25:25):
didn't know about. And the buzzword of toxic masculinity could
never have been more true in an environment like this.
I mean these the sense of machismo and how important
it was for the men in the group to feel
like warriors. They had to be warring against something at
(25:47):
all times, including the women in their life, if there
was nothing else for them to fight against. So since
I knew that their identity was wrapped up in needing
to feel like they were fighting something, I knew they
were going to come out after me. Because I was
now the thing that they all needed to fight against.
And it's I was really scared, I think for about
a year until I saw enough consistent creepy, weird behavior,
(26:13):
but nothing overly aggressive. It's not like the people. It's
not like it was certainly wasn't like scientology where people
get stalked in their home and they're you know, being
threatened in things.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
And when you when you started like allowing them, like
to be a co signer on your account, when you
opened up like a joint bank account with the leader
of this cult and you're basically signing your earnings away
to him.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
What was with his son? So that was with the
my husband at the time, because he so his I
mean less it's kind of brilliant about not or oh
god that just yes, I didn't still good in my mouth.
He's he's very savvy about how to keep his name
(26:57):
off of things, how to get people to give him
what he wants, about having to put his name on it.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
I mean so yeah, So that joint bank account was
with your ex husband who was his son? Yes, okay,
So did you ever tell anyone in your real life
that you did that or did you keep that a secret?
Speaker 2 (27:14):
I mean, my business manager, my former business manager who
I was transferring the funds away from.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
And what did they say to you?
Speaker 2 (27:22):
We're like, Joe, I think this is a mistake, Like
I really, these people are not qualified to take care
of your money. They don't have the experience. Come a
little worried about you. But they weren't my close friends.
They were right people that I had hired, So what
else would I expect them to do? Like they I
(27:43):
think he even went on a limb out on a
limb saying that much so and I felt it too.
I'm just having this visceral memory of being in his
office in New York too. I remember feeling it and
feeling like he was right, and also knowing the day
(28:03):
to day verbal and mental abuse that I was living
in and how much relief I was going to get
by moving this money because I just wouldn't be berated
every day anymore about that.
Speaker 6 (28:17):
The pressure would be off of letting them control. You're exactly, yeah,
I could. I could just let them handle it. And
it was like, fine, if this will make you stop
yelling at me every day, if this will make us
stop fighting, then yes, go ahead. You be in charge
of the money. You be in charge of the money, honey,
and I will go to work.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Because you don't talk about that a lot in the book,
like there's obviously the control happening, but it didn't.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
I didn't get the impression that.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
You were being yelled at or berated on a daily basis.
With your ex you kind of you talk about that,
but with Less and Pam and Kurt and all those guys,
it seemed much more manipulative rather than on the face
rage or yeah right.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
So, yeah, I may not have been clear just now.
What I meant was that the day to day that
I was living with in my marriage, of the constant conflict.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Controlling reading your scripts, being not allowing you to do
scenes with men, not allowing you to rehearse with men,
go out to dinner with any of your cast members,
that were then right.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Yeah, and everything I wore, not even on the show,
but in real life too, just every aspect of my
life was under a microscope and controlled. And money was
one of the one of the biggest topics that we
would fight about all the time. And I was just like, yeah,
I wanted to spend three hundred and fifty dollars at
J Crew. It's not a big deal. Why is this
(29:41):
a two hour conversation? And it became so much of
that that I was like, there are so many other
things that were fighting about all the time. If the
money will alleviate a lot of this stress, then go
ahead and be in charge of the money.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
So when you get out of a cult and you
realize that they have drained your bank account, you had
two hundred and twenty thousand dollars I think left at
the end, and you realize there was two million missing.
So that's one set of problems. You have a child,
that's another issue. How does one move on? Like what
(30:17):
kind of therapy did you go into when you left
this cult?
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Multiple? Multiple, And even therapy was hard because I had
just spent ten years in an environment where I was
quote unquote going to therapy every week with my church leader,
my group leader, both of them actually last and Pam
couples therapy, individual therapy, group therapy in the basement like
(30:48):
it was all and so even being able to trust
a therapist walking into an office and not like it
was real work to a let myself to trust someone
that was a total stranger based on maybe a friend's
reference or a diploma on the wall that was that
(31:11):
was its own journey, and I did go through a
few different therapists before I found somebody that I really
just felt in my gut, and they probably all were trustworthy,
but I finally did find someone that I really connected with.
But it was so it was so difficult, and even
paying for it was hard because I left with two
hundred and twenty thousand dollars, but it all ended up
(31:32):
going into my divorce and my rent. Within two years
it was gone and I had I was upside down
on my mortgage. We had to do a short sale,
but there was another house that I had to take
on debt for the retirement account got split and half
like there was so much that I couldn't I couldn't
pay rent. There were months when I didn't know how
I was going to pay rent and I had to
(31:53):
call my landlord and be like, can you wup me
till next month? Is this going to be okay?
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Oh God?
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Which is just so crazy, or nine years on a
series and it was really humbling. It was really really hard.
But I feel like I learned so much about joy
in the midst of suffering.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Where did you find that joy? In the midst of suffering.
When were those moments.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Those moments were in They were in the little things.
It was just a day to day. And it's one
of the things where I say my faith has become
the most authentic version of it for me, because rather
than feeling like I was going to achieve some sense
of peace by doing a bunch of things the right way,
(32:39):
I got to just live in a place of abandon
like I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm
not gonna I refuse to allow this to make me
more anxious, more stressed, more like more confined in my life.
I've been confined for the last ten years and probably
(33:00):
the ten before that growing are you joining before that?
Growing up? So I don't want to live confined anymore.
I want to be free. So how do I be
free while I have all of these outside circumstances confining me?
And it was really it was really interesting, the little
moments were looking at the I actually just posted a
(33:22):
poem about this today, a poem that I wrote. When
we were living in Studio City, we had this little apartment.
It was a house. It was like a two bedroom,
little bungalow house on the corner behind the oyster bar,
which was just a total I mean at the parking
lot at two am, Like I remember, I would always
scream up the window. Dane Cook was outside my window
one time at the oyster Bar in the parking lot.
(33:42):
I just knew that voice, and I was opening up
my window, like, go home, home, and there's children sleeping.
But we had They had a dumpster in their parking
lot that they would leave the flap open all the
time and it would hang over into my backyard lovely,
and it used to make me so mad. I would
go out there in the morning with a broomstick and
(34:04):
shove that lit over and like, h my life and
what these people did to me. And little by little
we had a rose bush, and the rose bush started growing,
and eventually it got so big and high that you
couldn't see the dumpster lid when it came over. And
that's how slow it grows. It wasn't an overnight thing.
(34:25):
But I learned moment by moment how to just slow
down and appreciate the things that I do have. I
learned there's nothing that says I'm entitled to a perfect, happy,
golden little life. I get to be happy with where
I am and what I have, and I don't. I'm
not entitled to not suffer that I'm human. Things are
(34:46):
going to happen. Wow. How can I be at piece
when no matter, I mean, when.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Growing over your dumpster?
Speaker 2 (34:55):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
And Dane Cook is no longer in your parking lot?
Thank god. That is a nightmare.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Okay, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna come
back with Bethany Joy Lens. Okay, and we're back. Okay,
Joy Joy, you go by Joy. My middle name is
Joy also, so we know.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
That double Joy.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
So we have a double Joy today. Thank you so
much for sharing that. This book is incredible. Everyone's going
to want to read it. It really is important. I
think every woman should read this, because every every girl,
I mean, I know boys are susceptible too, but obviously
my main concern are women.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, young girls.
Speaker 5 (35:35):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
Well, I think we have a perfect question for you.
We have Mariah on the line, and she'll be joining
us here in a moment, she says, Dear Chelsea, last year,
just a couple of days before my thirtieth birthday, I
got the call I had been expecting for some time
from my mother, who informed me she was quote unquote
parting ways with me. My parents both work for the
(35:56):
Church of Scientology, as well as my siblings. There's an
episode in Leah Remeni's TV show about the Seattle Church
of Scientology which covers a document my father wrote about
how to get money from parishioners. I really can't emphasize
enough how deeply involved my family is. My parents felt
the need to disown me after I left Scientology, but
that's because it's one of the church rules. My mom
(36:18):
had been holding out on disconnecting from me for a while,
but I could see her growing more distant over the
last year, so I did know it was coming. As
I reached out to try and keep a connection alive
with her. She eventually stopped responding, but then at the
end of October she finally called and told me. I'm
still doing a lot of work to recover and deprogram myself,
but I feel so devastated for my mom. I could
(36:38):
hear over the phone that my mom was crying and
reading from a script in front of another person who
was monitoring our call. I hate that the hard life
she had landed her in a cult. She's now been
in for nearly forty five years, and she felt like
she had to cut me off despite us having an
otherwise very good relationship. Of course, I'm also so angry
and hurt that my own family would do.
Speaker 5 (36:58):
This to me.
Speaker 4 (36:59):
I missed my so much, but I don't want to
cross the boundary she's set. But I also want her
to know if she can come to me if she needs.
I'm successful in my own right and I have no
plans on having kids, so I keep a spare bedroom
available just in case my siblings or my mom managed
to escape and need to go somewhere. The holidays are
coming up and we won't spend them together, and I
don't know if I should reach out or if I
should just focus on protecting myself and just move on.
Speaker 5 (37:21):
Do you have any advice?
Speaker 4 (37:22):
Sincerely, Mariah?
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Oh h II, I'm Mariah.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
I'm Mariah.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Hi.
Speaker 5 (37:28):
Nice to meet you, guys.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
It's great to meet you too.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Nice to meet you too. What do you think about that? Joy?
Speaker 2 (37:36):
This breaks my heart. You don't deserve Mariah. You do
not deserve that, and nobody does. That is not okay,
It's not okay. I guess I would say that maintaining
any kind of contact. I guess it's what feels authentic
to you. I don't know that there's a hard and
(37:57):
fast rule. If you have it, then you even a
thread of it to be able to still Happy birthday,
thinking about you, Mom, Love you, Merry Christmas. Dropped off
some flowers for you. I hope you enjoy them, Like
if you had that in you, if you can find
that place, that would be beautiful, and I think that
(38:17):
would be meaningful. But you're not obligated if you can't
if you don't have that capability, like you are not
responsible for saving your mother. So it's I think it's
got to be from what is going to feel for you,
like what you need to do?
Speaker 1 (38:37):
What are you Mariah? What are you doing?
Speaker 5 (38:40):
Like?
Speaker 1 (38:40):
How are you coping?
Speaker 3 (38:42):
What are you doing for yourself to help yourself get
through being excommunicated from your own family?
Speaker 5 (38:49):
Yeah, I see a therapist, but I kind of like
mentally left before this happened. And it was a balance
of like, Okay, how much do I don't I tell
my parents about my life and just being honest and
(39:10):
stuff about everything going on in my life, But it
really is just my mom like that I wonder about
and so I talked to my therapist about this a lot,
and I'm kind of just still dealing with it my
journal and stuff and just still trying to figure out
everything about how to move forward and what I took
(39:36):
from this that's bad and good, you know. So I
don't know if I answered your question good enough, but
I'm just trying to kind of make my way through.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Can I I have a question? And I also want
to tell you, like, because my mom stayed in relationship
with me by not asking too many questions I pushing
too hard. She just kind of like kind of stayed
on the surface, knowing that eventually I was going to
come around. But my dad was different and became estranged.
I did essentially to him what your mom has done
(40:09):
to you, and I, even in my delusion, I never
stopped loving my dad. They lied to me. They tried
to make me believe terrible things about my father that
were not true. And even as I was trying to
like navigate through that, he started sending me letters, handwritten letters.
(40:30):
He started sending me photos of my little brother and
birthday parties and what was happening in life. And they
used to make me really angry. I used to not
want to read them. I didn't want to deal with
the emotions that they brought up, but it it made
a difference for me, like it did when I got out.
I knew he was there. I knew I was going
(40:50):
to have to make one hard phone call, to pick
up the phone and call and say, hey, Dad, I'm
really sorry. It's been six years, but I did it.
And you know that's that's possible. But at the same time,
that's not to say that again, you're not responsible for
her journey, but that just something. But my question, if
it's okay, do you feel comfortable telling us what your
(41:13):
what advice your therapist has given you, because I haven't.
I haven't been put in a position to give advice
much other than like one on one if I see
people and they're asking me. But this is new for me,
so I would love to know what that advice is,
if you're okay with sharing.
Speaker 5 (41:25):
Yeah. Well, first of all, I just finished reading your
book and it's really good, So I think your story
is incredible. Just for the record, and I did get
kind of emotional hearing you talk about your dad because
I listened to the audiobook, which was definitely good with
(41:47):
it hear your voice and get your take on what
you went through. But yeah, that is something that I
exactly talk to my therapist about. Is like, Okay, so
I feel bad that my mom is in this, but
also I was born into it. I didn't have any
choices and she made choices. And am I being you know,
(42:09):
am I being delusional that it's like it was our
relationship actually what I thought it was? And did all
the rules that I was taught growing up actually come
from her place of like I think this is right
versus I'm told to tell you this, you know, and
this is what I've been led to believe. But yeah,
(42:31):
the advice my therapist is given is to just try
to move on and try to accept that I might
never hear from her. She's been in it for longer
than I've been alive, So she has been an ally
of scientology longer than she has been my mother. So
(42:53):
that's something that is like, realistically, yeah, if you're going
to get past that, you have to leave a very
powerful cults, one of the more powerful ones, and like
that's not super realistic. And then there's like my siblings
and my dad, Like my dad is almost sort of
the less type of person to compare it to your
(43:16):
wow situation. Yeah, and so he's a narcissist. He is
really good at getting people to give money to Scientology
done to lots of people what last did to you
in terms of like money management and stuff like that.
So my mom sees their relationship as the greater good.
(43:36):
She's helping the world be better by supporting him. So
she's like the breadwinner. She's kind of been supporting my
dad my whole life while he works for the Church
of Scientology and she works part time for the Church
of Scientology.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
So just to give you.
Speaker 5 (43:52):
Some context of why my dad's not I'm not interested
in being in my life, you know what I mean. So, Yeah,
my therapist and they mostly talk about just kind of
moving on from this and if she ever does reach out,
like just take it from there.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
And also to be able to remind yourself that this
isn't really who your mother is. You know, it's almost
like dealing with an addict where you have to remember
that they're on a drug and that this isn't a
reflection of how she really feels about you. You know
that she was upset during that phone call. You know
that she was being monitored during that phone call. We
all know all of these things that cults do to
(44:34):
their cult members, but to remember that, Like, it's so
sad what you've experienced and what you're still going through,
and I totally I can feel you, you know, but
that's not who your mother really is, and that's not
a reflection.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Of her love for you. Your mother does love you.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
I believe that you know that she loved you because
she was so upset during that phone call, and you
know that that is the drug making her do that,
and as painful as that is, you can't have that
in your life unless she has the gumption to leave
(45:12):
the church at some point, and like you said, she's
been in there for forty five years, that is very unlikely.
So what you do have to do is try to
make peace with the idea that you did have a
family they're not themselves in this current state, that you
did experience tons of love and joy, and take a
(45:34):
lot of pride in the fact that you were able
to remove yourself from a situation that puts you at
odds with your family because you were standing up for
what you know is right. Yeah, and that that wasn't
for you and that is really ballsy and really brave,
and as heartbreaking as it is, that is what is
going to carry you forward to the rest of your
(45:56):
life so that you can pursue a successful life. You
could have a success cessful romantic relationship with whomever you want.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
You can have your.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Own family, and you have to carry on like these
people aren't going to leave scientology because the likelihood is slim,
but it's never You never know.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
It could happen, but you just can't count on it happening.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
And I think you should get up every day and
think about the things that you have in your life
that you're grateful for and write them down, you know,
every morning, write down the ten things that you have
that you are your own, and those things can be
that you had the goodwill and the good sense to
get out of a cult.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
You know, I got myself out of it.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
I'm standing here on my own two feet without any
of them because I had the presence of mind to
do something better for myself. Don't diminish any of the
gains that you made by getting out of that.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
That is great advice. And also think about this as
an opportunity because there are older women who are brilliant
mentors who can step into that role for you and
be a friend and be nobody's ever going to replace
your mother. But I think that as I was just
saying before, you know, there's no sort of like get
(47:10):
out of suffering free card. We all have something that
we encounter that's just like, how am I going to
get through this? What am I going to do? And
there is opportunity in every one of those moments. And
there may be somebody out there who you're going to
encounter that you never would have encountered if this hadn't happened,
(47:30):
and they need you in their life and you need
them in your life, maybe multiple people you don't know.
So while that doesn't wipe away the pain, and you
still can hold that pain and process through it as
you need to, there is opportunity and there are really
good things that can come from hardship.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
How did you decide to leave scientology?
Speaker 5 (47:51):
That's it probably, I think anyone who leaves a cult,
there's not like a single moment that they like just
decide I've a light, you know, it's usually a ton
of moments. But for me, I mean the silver lining
of being born into it was that my parents were
(48:13):
quite busy with it and quite neglectful, so I was
sort of left to my own devices most of the time.
I read the Internet. I got an education because I
eventually had to start working like retail jobs to just
like having money for food and stuff. When I was
a teenager, and I was like, well, I want a
(48:35):
better life than what a retail job can give me,
you know. So I went to school and that was
sort of the beginning of the deprogramming. That was how
I kind of learned how to determine if something is
real or not when the claim is made. That is
how I learned how to, Like I got, I got
(48:58):
a science degree, so I learned a lot about how
science works and what is and isn't science. So for me,
that's that was how it went down, because it's scientology
is not really a sort of god type religion. It's
like it's barely a religion.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
It's like more about, oh.
Speaker 5 (49:17):
Yeah, if you do A B and C, this will happen.
But then there's actually no real evidence, no real anything
but claims.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
You're amazing, that's such a great story the progression of.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
That, And how did you tell your parents you were leaving.
Speaker 5 (49:32):
I actually didn't. Someone thought that I was following some
people on Twitter I'm not supposed to follow and they
reported me. So then my dad, because he's like one
of the leaders, he got the report and he called
me and was like, hey, we need to talk. And
uh so my parents scheduled a few meetings with me
(49:55):
to talk about my thoughts and what they wanted me
to do, and I kind I just had to stay
my boundaries over and over again, like yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
You guys can't defy this for me.
Speaker 5 (50:05):
I'm not going to unfollow someone just because you want
me to.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Wow. Oh good for you. Yeah, that's incredible, it really is.
Speaker 5 (50:17):
I'm just gonna let my dog outside of this room
real quick.
Speaker 4 (50:19):
Okay, sure, I'm really glad she has a dog.
Speaker 5 (50:22):
I know.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's one of the things that you're going
to write down that you're grateful for, is your dog
every morning. When we talk about these gratitude like journaling
and gratitude lists, like to all of our listeners, it
could be anything.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
It can be like it can be material things.
Speaker 3 (50:39):
It could be your sofa, it can be your personality,
it can be someone else, it can be your friend.
Like when I'm saying to write down things, like some
people people always ask me, They're like, well, what if
it's materialistic, that's okay. Just write down ten things that
you're grateful for. You know, your sensibility can be one
of the things. Your dog can be another thing. The
house that you're staying in, the apartment that you're renting, whatever,
(51:01):
it is, your job, and I just slowly want you
to get yourself to a place where of acceptance rather
than grief, because of course you're going to feel grief
for a really long time. But if you can get
to a place of acceptance and understanding that this really
has very little to do with you. Unfortunately, however personal
it feels. I know, it's your mother and you're it
(51:23):
must feel like a huge rejection. But when you really
look at it from an outside perspective, these people have
been infected with ideas and thoughts and and you have
the good sense not to have been.
Speaker 5 (51:35):
Yeah. I mean, one of the things that Joy you
talked about in your book was these moments of like, oh,
I didn't feel right about that, But then I was like, well,
I'm being cynical or I'm being you know, a problem
in some way, I'm not having a generous mindset here
(51:56):
and the aftermath of all this has been like realizing
those moments and you're like, wait, I did know, Like
I was smart enough to see this stuff the whole time,
and I just kept telling myself what I needed to
survive because I needed the group that I mean, I
ay went to a scientology school, like very very insulated.
(52:20):
I didn't know anyone else until I happened to get
a job working at a grocery store, you know, so
that was my first exposure to non scientologists.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
So that was your attachment those are that was that.
As I was saying earlier, we were talking about what
made me susceptible was attachment, which is something I've realized recently.
I was always saying it was a need for family.
But I had a great conversation with doctor Romney Derivstula.
I don't know if you know who she is, but
she's a great person to follow for you, dtr Romeny,
(52:52):
and she was she really clarified it was it was attachment.
That's what I was looking for, and that was it
sounds like that was what you're attached was too, And
it's a I think it's a really natural thing for
us to override the things that we feel gutturally because
of a deeply felt, very human neat We all need attachment.
(53:13):
We're built for community, even from like caveman days, like
they are built for community. So that need is really
really valuable and really hard to push away. When your
little red flags are going off, it's like your gut
or your heart, what do you listen to?
Speaker 5 (53:31):
Yeah, I mean, especially when you're like eight, it's like yeah,
or in your case, you were raised Christian and so
now you have this other Christian mindset that is being
double reinforced because you learned about Christianity and childhood.
Speaker 3 (53:47):
Yeah, but I mean think about your situation. You were
born into this, this is all you were ever taught,
and you had sense enough to extricate yourself from it
once you got educated.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
Like that is so brave and bold and baldy, Like you.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
Have a huge, bright future ahead of you, and I
want you to just start to lean into that.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
You can't skip past grief.
Speaker 3 (54:12):
You have to experience the loss, and it's a huge loss.
Speaker 1 (54:16):
But you're not wrong, You're right.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
You know you did the right thing, and you can't
control what your mom's going to do, but you can
go out there and live a life in honor of
your good sense and in honor of what your mother's life.
Speaker 1 (54:31):
Could have been.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
Yeah, that's beautiful.
Speaker 5 (54:34):
I think a lot about what my mom's life could
have been because she joined up with Scientology when she
was like nineteen or twenty or something, and it's such
a vulnerable time in people's lives, and they got her
and she married a guy. And you know, I got
this dog the day after my mom called me and yeah,
(54:59):
I heard you say, Chelsea, it's gonna have a dog. Yeah,
that was exactly what I was like, you know what
I've always wanted to that, let's get on.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
You got that dog.
Speaker 4 (55:10):
And they always know what's your guy's name?
Speaker 2 (55:15):
His name is Poe.
Speaker 5 (55:17):
Yeah, cutie. But yeah, I've been like kind of numb
this last year. I really didn't This timing of this
was actually quite crazy because I didn't process and even
cry about this until last week because I was I
(55:38):
was just so numbed out. You know, it felt like
surreal too, but it just kind of hit me, like,
you know the way that everyone when you realize how
everyone on the outside has seen you this whole time,
and how everyone who you thought like was judging you
for being weird, was like just really concerned and scared
(56:02):
for you, And that almost made me feel more emotional
than anything else, Like whoa. And then also just realizing
my dad, how like my dad is actually and like
as opposed to the story I was told of who
he is. I was told he's like this wonderful person
(56:23):
and everyone looks up to him, and I was told
constantly how lucky I was to have him as a dad.
But meanwhile, like I would get his you know, wrath
at home and stuff like that. So start of processing
all of this as far as like, oh, my reality
is now different, Like I went from one reality and
(56:46):
I'm now in a different one. And it's really just
been like a week And like the day after I
cried about it for the first time was when I
got an email from Captine. So it's quite crazy timing
is that I just got a chill. This was only
a week ago that I like first cried about it. Yeah,
(57:06):
it was a year ago that my mom called me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:10):
The analogy Chelsea that you just gave about addiction, actually
I think is so brilliant because that is so similar
to the behavior of somebody that just checks out because
they it's almost like a disease in your mind. You're
just that's all you know how to do, and that's
what they're seeking attachment in a certain way, and they
don't know how to overcome it. I actually found going
(57:34):
to alan On to be very helpful in my cult
recovery stuff, like I have addiction in my family lineage
that manifested in codependence and all different kinds of things
in my life. But I was really surprised how going
to alan On was was really really helpful because so
much of the behavior is similar.
Speaker 3 (57:56):
So yeah, I think there's a lot of online ex
scientificogy support groups. Oh yeah, I think you should definitely
look and try and find one of those if you want,
I can ask Lea Remenee, she's a good friend of mine,
because I think what you're experiencing is just so unique
that you want other people who have also been through
the same thing specific to scientology, and I think you'll
(58:17):
find a lot of comfort there and a lot of
like mindedness and that will make you feel a little
bit less isolated and alone during this time. So definitely
do that and also keep crying, like that's how you
get this anguish and grief out. So I understand that
you didn't cry for a year and now you are crying,
and you're going to be crying. But it doesn't mean
(58:38):
you're going to be crying all day every day. It
means when you feel it coming on, let it out,
let it move through you, and then you know an
hour later you'll be doing something and you'll find yourself
laughing or having a good time doing something.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
But don't be scared of grieving. It's part of the process.
Speaker 4 (58:53):
And Maria, will you check back in with us in
a few months, Yeah, check.
Speaker 1 (58:57):
Back in with us.
Speaker 3 (58:57):
I'm going to get that info from Leah if she
knows of any like support groups personally, and then yeah,
keep in touch with us, Okay, because you know, I
just want you to remember you're very lovable.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
Thanks. Yeah, you're really awesome.
Speaker 3 (59:10):
You're lovable. So start you're gonna write. Start writing those
ten things down every morning too when you wake up. Okay, Okay, Okay, Mariah.
Speaker 2 (59:18):
Big hugs, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (59:20):
Thank You're amazing.
Speaker 2 (59:21):
Maria, you are amazing.
Speaker 5 (59:23):
You guys too, Thank you so much. And Chelsea like
to be a public figure willing to say anything negative
about scientology is so cool of you.
Speaker 1 (59:34):
Oh, no problem.
Speaker 2 (59:35):
Cool, Thanks guys, Bye bye bye.
Speaker 3 (59:42):
Okay, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna come
back and wrap up with Beth and a joy Lens.
Speaker 1 (59:50):
And we're back. Wow.
Speaker 3 (59:52):
That was a heavy episode, you guys, that was deep.
Thank you for writing this book. This must have been
really hard for you to write, was it?
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
No, it was it was. It felt good. It felt
good to get it out, to be able to it
felt good for me to be able to see it
all out in a straight line, so to speak, like
it wasn't all just floating around in my head and
memories in my body that I couldn't attach. I didn't
know how to attach one memory to the next one,
and there were blanks that I had to fill in
(01:00:21):
by calling former members of the group who had also
gotten out and say what happened? Because I remember this?
But then how did we get from point A to
point D? And the amount of love and support that
we were able to re engage with each other in
this was a really it felt very powerful to me
to be able to write this story and see it
(01:00:43):
put out in a straight line, as I say, And
I really hope that it can be helpful. I mean, yeah,
there were moments, there were a couple of hard days,
but overall, I'm just really glad to be able to
have gotten it out of my body.
Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3 (01:00:56):
Well, it's a powerful move to write a book like this,
and it means you know, I think that is a
perfect way to celebrate the ending of that and commemorate
the fact that you I mean, it's going to help
so many people, I really hope, so people who are
ever come across a situation like that where you can
easily get duped into believing that some random group of
(01:01:18):
people has a better interest in you than your own family,
and they own the people that you know and the
people that you love, and and what happens there. So, yeah,
thank you for your book. And it's called Dinner Vampire.
Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
What is it? Vampire Dinners for a vampire? Sorry I
don't have it right from.
Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
The dinner Dinner for Vampires.
Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
Called Dinner for Vampires by Bethany Joy Lenz.
Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
Okay, Bethany, will let you go. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
That was lovely and really actually just I just want
to tell you hearing you encourage her was really encouraging
for me and inspiring and made me want to be
able to I'm such a problem solver. I'm sort of
like that's my ADHD right, Like I'm always I don't
it's hard for me to listen. I just want to
like solve the problem. So hearing you just hold that
space and then just speak encouragement, encouragement, encouragement is so
(01:02:04):
I was like, I want to be more like that.
So thank you for giving me that today.
Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
I needed that absolutely my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
All right, it was great talking with you both. Thank
you for having me. Thank you, Bye bye bye.
Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
Okay, guys, stand up shows that I have coming up
December twenty eighth, I'm coming in New Orleans right before
New Year's and then I'll be in Atlanta, Georgia on
December twenty ninth.
Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
And those are the rest of my stand up dates
for this year. It's over new Tour New Year.
Speaker 4 (01:02:32):
If you'd like advice from Chelsea, shoot us an email
at Dear Chelsea podcast at gmail dot com and be
sure to include your phone number. Dear Chelsea is edited
and engineered by Brad Dickert executive producer Catherine Law and
be sure to check out our merch at Chelseahandler dot
com
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