National Park After Dark - Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Cult ft. Michelle Dowd

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

Michelle Dowd was raised within the boundaries of Angeles National Forest inside of a religious cult her grandfather created. She was raised to believe that the end of the world was near and in turn, was taught to forage off the land, navigate by the stars, and survive off the land. After enduring years of abuse she finally escaped. After years of healing and moving forward with her life, she has authored  a book detailing her story. In this episode, we all get the chance to know Michelle as we discuss her book, her past, and where she is at in life today.You can buy Michelle's book here or at your local bookstore.For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!Embrace Pet Insurance: Use our link to sign up for pet insurance today! Microdose Gummies: Use code NPAD to get free shipping and 30% off your first order.Miracle Made: Use our link and code NPAD to save over 40% and get 3 free towels.For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Close your eyes. Focus. Listen to work getting done with Monday.com. Relax. As AI does the manual work, while your teams are aligned on a single source of truth. Feel the sensation of an AI work platform, so flexible and intuitive, it feels like it was built just for you. Notice you're limitless.

Limitless. Now open your eyes. Go to Monday.com. Start for free and finally. Breathe. Girl, winter is so last season. And now spring's got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders. That perfect hang on the patio sundress.

Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope. It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. Hello, hello, everyone. Welcome back to National Park After Dark. We have such a cool episode today. Obviously, we have an unofficial book club going. And here's another one to add to the list. So this is a book that Cassie and I actually read pretty much in sync together when we were on quote unquote vacation in California when we went to Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia. We ripped through the book. It's awesome. And Michelle, who you will be hearing. from very shortly is one of the most interesting and kind people we have had the pleasure of speaking to.

Yes, and we're so excited to tell you about this book. We read books in sync a lot, but we were actually physically reading the book next to each other in California, and it had a lot of references to not what we were seeing, but kind of because we were in California. It was just, it was such a cool book and we're excited. You all are going to, I feel like, go wild over this book and just buy it now. Buy it now. You don't need any information about it. Just do it. Well, okay.

So I will give you a little bit of insight into it. So the episode is going to be a wild one because we're discussing one of the most intense books we have actually read for the podcast and speaking to the woman who lived the experience. Michelle Dowd grew up on a mountain in the Angeles National Forest born into an ultra-religious cult, the field, as members call it, run by her grandfather who believed that his chosen followers must prepare themselves to survive doomsday. Bound by the group's patriarchal rules and literal interpretation of the Bible, Michelle and her siblings lived a life of deprivation, isolated from outsiders, and starved for both love and food.

She was forced to learn the skills necessary to battle hunger, thirst, and cold. She learned to trust animals more than humans, and most importantly, she learned how to survive by foraging for what she needed. And as Michelle got older, she realized that she had the strength to break free. And so she did. With haunting and stark language and illustrations of edible plants and their uses opening each chapter, forager is a fierce and empowering coming-of-age story and a timely meditation on the ways in which harnessing nature's gifts can lead to our freedom. Michelle Dowd is a professor of journalism and contributor to the New York Times, Alpinus, the Los Angeles Book Review, Catapult, Only Sky, and other national publications. She founded an award-winning literary journal, advises student media, teaches poetry and critical thinking in the California state prisons, and has been recognized as a long reads top five for The Thing with Feathers on the Relationship between Environmentalism and Hope. She guides yoga and meditation workshops throughout Southern California, where she hikes the peaks with her four dogs.

And today, she is here with us to discuss her book. Forager, Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult, and Talk About about how she's doing today. Before we get into our interview with Michelle and her book, where she details her life and how she survived a cult out in California, we did want to give a little bit of a trigger warning for people listening because there is some harder details that we do talk about, including domestic and sexual abuse in this episode. So if you're not in a space to hear that, just know that this will be in this episode, but it is a very intriguing conversation that we're excited to get into. Without further ado, I think we have talked.

about her. We, you have a full scope of who she is. But today we have a amazing conversation with her and her journey. Please welcome Michelle Dowd. Thank you so much, Michelle, for coming on the podcast. We are so excited to have you here today. Thank you, Kathy. And hello, Danielle. Hello. We absolutely, I know we were just chatting beforehand, but we absolutely adored your book. And we just know that our audience is going to immediately rush to where their local bookstore, and grab it too after this conversation because we recommend a lot of books and people take our advice, but when we really say like, you guys have to get it, they are on it, tag us everywhere and share in just like the joy of a good book. And yours was so captivating for so many ways. The title alone

is like hooks you right in. So we're going to kind of get right into it if that's okay with you. Absolutely. And if readers want to look at me up on social media or tag me or ask me questions, I'm happy to answer them directly as well. Where can they find you? They can find me on Instagram as Michelle Dowd Z or on Twitter as Michelle Dowd too. Also via email, Michelle at Michelle Dowdow.org. Awesome. I am excited. I've had so many interesting conversations with readers, especially readers who come out of really strange backgrounds, somewhat similar sometimes, or like overlapping, overlapping sometimes. Yeah. Well, your book is so interesting and your life is so interesting and you have put out a story that I imagine attracts a lot of different people from

all over the country, all over the world, whoever's reading it. And for people listening, your book does detail your life growing up within a cult in the state of California. And part of that is you go a lot into depth about your relationship with nature and where you were. Can you tell our audience what part of California you were in and kind of the forest area around there? So a lot of people don't know that the Angeles National Forest goes quite a bit north of Los Angeles and covers 700,000 acres of public land. Back in the 1940s, my grandfather leased what was only 16 acres at the time, but he leased it in an area that was covered by other national forest.

And so we were not surrounded by any other people. We were surrounded by more national forest. And I grew up there starting at the age. So you weren't surrounded by anyone. You just had access to hundreds of acres of forest out there. Correct. Wow. That must have been very interesting. I mean, I grew up kind of in a rural town, but that is very far removed from anything. Now, to be fair, there were other camps out there that we were not allowed to interact with. And we did have a party line on our phone. So we weren't allowed to use the phone as children. But sometimes I would lift up the phone and listen. And there were

other people. I just didn't know where they were and they would be communicating with each other from other camps that were being run. So apparently the government, at least back in those days, was leasing out those national acres sometimes to camp groups. And I think the kids probably came and went. I don't know. I never saw any. Okay. So you just knew that someone was nearby somewhere. Somewhere, yeah. Well, so you mentioned that your grandfather had purchased the property years and years ago. And you, in your book, you outlined that he kind of spearheaded and began this entire cult. So can you tell us a little bit about the background of the organization and then how you found yourself living there? Because you said you weren't born there. You moved there when you were seven.

So just your journey there. Yes. Let me be clear. My grandfather did not purchase it. He had no money. He paid what I believe was $100 a year to lease the camp. And I think it was a hundred year lease. So it was really different time frame and things were very different back in those days. But my grandfather began this organization, or at least the first time that we can see it in newspapers that it was codified as an organization was in 1931. And that was before he married my grandmother. He was a young man. He had come to Los Angeles area from Oklahoma, where he was orphaned.

There are a lot of different stories about how old he was. My grandfather lied about many, many things. He said he was 13, I think, when he was. he came to California, it was more likely he was 17 or 18, but who knows? At some point, he got involved in some religious organizations and he got involved in the Boy Scouts, and he was a boy scout leader. Now, he may have started being a leader around 16. It's hard to know. And at some point when he was probably 20, he did not want to work for the Boy Scouts anymore because he found it too limiting. So some of the original boys that he had in the Boy Scouts, he took with him

and created his own organization. So for decades, the organization was an all-male organization. and it did not have families. It was just boys. And some of those boys grew up into being men, and those men continued to follow him. Some of those original boys followed him all the way until his death in the 1980s and continued to run the organization until they died in as recently as I think 2005. So it's an interesting pact that my grandfather made with these boys. I certainly wasn't around to hear it.

My mother was born in the 1940s as she was his fourth child with my grandmother, and that's the only woman. that we are aware of that he had children with. He ended up with five children, but my mother was his first daughter. And when she started getting older, at some point, they thought, well, I wonder if we should introduce girls to this organization. But she was originally raised with all boys. And it wasn't until she married my father, who was one of my grandfather's boys in the 1960s, in 1960s, I believe. And then later had my sister and then me. Up until then there were no families in the Colts. There were no children. I mean, there were the boys that were being raised. but it was just a very celibate or intended to be celibate organization.

So we were the first, my mother had three daughters before she had a son. And so we were the first children that were introduced as leaders kits into that organization. So your first seven years of life, you were out in, I want to say like civilization, you weren't in this national forest at that time. We did live in civilization. We did not live in normal communities because, well, my parents lived in a little house that was right bordering a dump in El Monte. And we did get the chance to go to public school.

I did go to public school for kindergarten first and second grade, which was very influential. I realized I didn't answer that early question. So all four of us, my siblings and I, were all born within five years of each other. And we were all born near El Monte, California, which is a suburb of L.A. It's in L.A. County. And then when we had no more money and we had nowhere to live and we were living in a camper, We lost the house. We were living in a camper. The camper burned up. And then my grandfather, who was my mother's father, said, oh, yeah, we have this camp that we have least that we sometimes take the boys to.

Why don't you go live up there? So when we first got there, there was just a mess hall and there was an outhouse. And we just moved into army bunks. We all just slept in one room with army bunks. And sometimes the boys would come up there on spiritual retreat. And so boys would come and go. And we were the only ones who lived there full time. Did you know what you were moving into when you first went up there or was just kind of like, hey, we're going up into the woods to live at your grandfather's camp for a bit? Well, we were very nomadic anyway. The organization that my grandfather ran took these trips all summer where we would sleep in tents and we would go to Mexico and we would be in all the different states except for Hawaii and Alaska. But we would go to states and proselytize and we would hand out like tracks or booklets and the boys

would play a band, it would put on a play. And so I was used to already being all over the place, not knowing what state I was in, not knowing that there was a lot. I didn't know. And I feel like when we moved up there, it was just, I didn't know if we'd be there for a few nights. There was just, nobody talked about the future other than the second coming. So what we were raised with was that the world was about to end. So it didn't really matter where we were because the trumpet was about to sound. I mean, I'll be. clear. I do not believe this, but this is what I believed at the time as a child. This is what you're raised with. I was raised to believe that Jesus would come back at any time

and most of the believers were going to be brought up to heaven, but some of us who were trained to run the army of God would be left behind for a thousand years of terror. And so my understanding is that I was being raised as a soldier in the army of God to stay back and have to survive the apocalypse and hopefully turn a few more people to God before God annihilated everything. So there would be this intermarried, like, I don't know what they called it. Like this, they called it the reign of terror. But the reign of terror would be this period of time, which is a thousand years. And my grandfather said he would live to be 500 years.

So I don't know. I guess maybe I thought that as long as I could survive, I would continue to live until, I don't know, the trumpet sounded again or something. It was very unclear to me, the rules, except for that. it was very, very important to know how to survive on nothing. It's so interesting hearing you say this because that sounds to me just not being raised that way. That sounds like a terrifying way to grow up to think that the apocalypse is coming all the time. And you mentioned that you had to learn how to survive. And your book details so much of that.

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Can you tell us about the survival skills that you were required to learn because of these thoughts? So I love that you say to be terrified. I feel like I was always terrified. And lately, my daughter, for example, I always tell me, you have PTSD. Like there I is as normal as I have like quote become in terms of my ability to integrate into wider society. There is still this sort of like I'm on call almost. I've had difficult time ever sleeping or doing those kind of things. But I was raised truly sleep deprived with the intent, kind of like they do in the military.

I mean, my father was drafted. And so he did use military tactics on us. But we were raised to go without food, to go without water, to go without sleep, and to be always ready at the command of a whistle. And my father would blow a whistle. And we would have to jump up and start running or start jumproping or hide or, you know. And so we were raised with this really extreme training. And I was always terrified.

And if I didn't know where some of the boys were in the organization or where my parents were in my uncles or whatever, I just thought they had been taken up to heaven and that the apocalypse that already started and now I was supposed to be in this army and maybe I wasn't prepared. We were supposed to wear the armor of God, which I know other, you know, interpretations of the Judeo-Christian religious tenets also believe sometimes, but you're going to wear the helmet of salvation or you have the sword of truth, that you have the breastplate of righteousness. And so we were like taught to put these on a mannequin and then to picture ourselves wearing all this armor. Wow.

That is so much like, it's just a lot to absorb. Even from somewhat, you know, an outsider's perspective, because you're just going back to something you briefly mentioned when you were answering a previous question about how you did have, like, because you went to public schools for very influential periods of time, you know, kindergarten through first or second grade, that's kind of when my earliest memories start poking through. You know, if I recall, I'm like, yeah, like I remember the sleeping bad I had during nap time in kindergarten. Like, that's one of my earliest memories. So during this time, that you were in public schools to now transitioning into this completely different lifestyle, kind of isolated from the public and other school-age children and all that. And yet you're getting told all of these things that you either don't understand or you're completely in the dark about. I'm trying to formulate this question because you just threw so much at me. Because I'm like, I as a child, like Cassie said, you must be so terrified.

What point in time did you start realizing, like based off of maybe earlier experiences you had and what you were going through. Like, am I different from what's happening to other kids in the world? Like, am I not being raised in the same way that my previous peers were? Like, do you have a moment of realization? Or is it just kind of a slow realization over the years? Both and. And you phrased that very well.

I realize it's a lot. And I do not think I covered it all in the book because it would have just been a history book of the organization had I been able to just, like, go through like, the rules and the end. sections of time. But what happened prior to us going to the mountains is I was already being raised in a really unusual environment. My mother went. She was in charge of teaching people and coaching and doing things for her father right after she would give birth. So she didn't breastfeed any of her kids. She would basically hand us over at one day old or two day old to the community. And we were

raised communally. And so it was really a handful of different caregivers, maybe 20 different people I have met since the book came out. Some of my early caregivers who were maybe 12 at the time, you know, and they were like, oh, yes, I remember, you know, I took care of you more and you were five days old or, you know, things like that. So that's really interesting. But when I went to public school, we were taught that the school was for outsiders. And I think at the time, my grandfather really didn't know what to do with young children. Like, I just think it was for me childcare. I think that they thought that if they taught us not to truly listen to the teachers, that we wouldn't get, I guess, what word would he have used?

We wouldn't have been unduly influenced by worldly standards. However, we clearly did begin to get influenced by the outside world. And so that was shut down. So, for example, my younger brother never went to school. It was clear that we had to be taken out of that environment because we were being influenced. So yes, I do remember, even though I was taught not to respect my teachers, I was taught just to be quiet. I do remember other children and I felt like we weren't allowed to talk to them. And I felt, you know, like a very insecure and very uncomfortable child.

But I also was an observer and I'd been an observer since before I can even remember. Like my first memories are always a hiding. I was always hiding under desks or I was an eavesdropper. I still am probably, you know, to some degree. I mean, like in the sense of I like to go to cafes and listen to other people's conversations, that kind of eavesdropper, not the kind of who plants, you know, like surveillance device. Yeah, not the scary kind. Right. I don't record people without telling them, stuff like that.

But when I was a young child, I would try to find out what my mom was doing because she often wasn't around us. And so if I could find out where she was, I would hide and listen to what she was doing. And I did the same thing with other children. And I definitely was told that we were born into the aristocracy that our grandfather was God's prophet. And as his blood, we were called to live a different life than other people. And so our job was to save them not to be one of them. And we needed to always keep ourselves separate. So I think that part I was always aware of.

Once we moved to the mountain, we really didn't have any semblance of a normal childhood. We didn't do the things that we had at least done prior. And I was talking to my younger sister just yesterday, in fact. And she said, I feel like we weren't even really raised together. We were just like always trying to survive. We were like wherever, you know, we happened to be. We were looking out for ourselves. It was really difficult to bond with each other because there was scared.

And I think that was part of it, too, is that my grandfather kept us always like an edge. Right. And I do think that is not a particularly uncommon training when you want people to be unduly obedient. And that's what we were taught to be is to obey at command and to not ask questions. And so my father had this story from the army and he would make us do this. You have to move this huge, huge pile of rocks spend all day in the hot sun doing it. And then after you move all the rocks, you're told to move them all back to the exact same location, you just moved them from. And when you say why, then you're told it's not your job to question you just do. And so you can learn

that you are not allowed to ask questions. That's a tough way to learn a lesson is that way. And I was just going to say with that you detail in your book a lot of that too about different things that you were required to do. And one thing that really stuck out to me and you start every chapter with you talk about plants that you were required to learn and how to live off of those. And you talk about how to survive in the desert, finding plants that you can get water from. And you talk about learning to navigate through the stars. And those are certainly things that you don't learn in regular public school, which I thought was really, you look at it today and it's like those must be very cool skills to have now in retrospect.

But when you were learning all of these things, was there a moment where you're like, hey, this is not what I normally would learn and other kids were learning in school. now I'm learning all of this. I don't, I think everything felt unusual to me from my earliest memory. I don't think I thought it was a cool skill at all until maybe the writing of this book. It was kind of a niche skill. Like, I mean, I think I have a line in the book that says something like. I know a lot of unnecessary information.

And that's what it, like it felt like as I was in my 20s or my 30s, like I would be, like I would know random things that would maybe impress people. They'd be like, whoa, how do you know that? And then I'd just be really self-conscious, be like, oh, yeah, I felt really awkward about it because it felt like my son was in Boy Scouts and some of it came in handy then. And he'd be like, oh, that's so cool. You know that. But it also doesn't belong in contemporary society to the extent that, like, there's not really, I think it is an amazing skill. And it's something that I now am proud of.

And when I was writing the book, I really wanted to look at the way that it rooted me in a particular place. But also that gave me a sense of sustenance that I do feel deeply connected to the earth. and I always have, and I do see that there's value in it. But I spent most of my life denying that I even knew those things because it really is not a fun party game. It's just, it's not something that most people that I grew up within in college university, you know, grad school that they found particularly, or at least I believed it, maybe I was incorrect, but I believed it was an embarrassing skill to have because it was just, I didn't know pop culture. I didn't, I literally didn't know the states. I did not know the presidents. I didn't know the things the other

kids knew. I knew this really weird stuff. And by the time I was in my 20s, it just, there was a really noticeable difference between my skill set and everybody else I met. Well, it must be difficult when you say when people would ask you, how do you know this? The reason you know it is so complex. And it also brings me to another question that I had for you because a lot of this stuff did happen as a child. And you've put out your book now. What made you decide to finally tell your story in the version of a book? That's a great question. I have. hadn't intended to tell it in that particular way. When I was 25, I wrote a version. It was different, but I wrote a version of this book. I wanted to publish it as fiction. And at that point, I was

already a professor. I've already had three of my four kids. I was really a grown up. Like, I feel like I was grown up by the time I was 14. You know, I had like moved quickly through the world. And I had the opportunity to publish the book. And I had a contract that I did not find because they were like, if this is true, we need to publish it as nonfiction. At the time, felt like I'd be betraying my family and I could not allow that information to get out there. And so I pulled it back and then I told myself, look, you're a mom now, you're a teacher, you need to put your energies into this. And I literally didn't write anything for the public for two decades.

I like nothing. I just shut it all in a closet and just like put it behind me. Didn't talk about where I come from. I had married an older leader from the Colt when I was very young. And so I did that while I was still in college. I didn't have other relationships. And he knew where I came from. He knew my parents better than I knew them.

He knew my grandfather. You know, so I didn't have to explain things to him. And I just didn't talk about it. And my kids didn't know. And I just moved into a different world and tried my best to not look at my past. And then a lot of things happened. But my mom got terminally ill. And she had pulmonary fibrosis.

And she was put on hospice. And during her hospice time, which was supposed to be short, it lasted two and a half years. but we did not know it was going to last that long. I started asking her questions, and I wrote a piece for Modern Love for the New York Times, and I did not know what would get published. I had a friend who was a former student, and she challenged me. She said, here you are teaching all these wonderful skills about writing. You should submit something.

And she challenged me to do it. At the time, I was also challenging my students to collect rejection slips to get comfortable with rejection. Okay. So I did the assignment myself by, you know, submitting something to, some place I clearly wasn't going to get accepted. And I literally just wrote, sat down and wrote the essay. And the essay is really about a relationship that I had had that I was embarrassed about. And I thought about the ways that I've taught students, especially like people in prison to be comfortable with their fear and to write toward their shame, not away from it and all that. So I wrote this essay

that wasn't really about where I came from. But in the process of uncovering the shame about being with this guy, I told a little bit about why I thought that I was probably drawn to people who were a little unstable. And in the process of doing that, the essay got published very, very quickly because it didn't really need any editing. It got put into the paper within like a week of me writing it. It was so quick. And then it got shared by over 100,000 journalists. And like, it just like blew up. And so agents started contacting me. And they said, oh, yeah, this is really cool essay. You're a good writer. But also that story about where you come from. That's interesting. Do you have a book? And I said, no, no, no, I don't have anything. I don't really know anything about that. And one agent was particularly

assertive with me and she kept pushing me and she said, I bet you do have a book in you. I think you have a book in you. So when you're ready, you know, here I am. So COVID hit right then. And so I signed with her. I was like, fine, I'll write this book. And my mom was sick. COVID hit. I was teaching online full time. And I told her I would do the proposal with her. She sold the proposal within a week. And we got, I got an advance and I got a contract. And my contract was for nine months. So I had nine months to write a book. And I had already outlined that I wanted to do it, this particular plant structure. And I wrote the whole thing in four months in the early mornings of COVID by candlelight by hand. So I just put myself back. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I looked back and it

wasn't that long ago. It was in 2020. I started it. I finished in 2021. And I literally just got up early in the morning before anyone else was awake, before I did any of my school work and wrote it by hand every single morning, seven days a week. And I really just tried to channel the girl that I and not write it from the analytical standpoint, but just write it from the point of being there and to invite the reader into the experience. Because one of the problems I've always had to explain this experience is that it's really hard not to try to figure out

what the adults were thinking or like what. I mean, I don't know to this day some of the answers to these questions even when I asked my mom. My father said, I don't remember anything about you being kids. My father's still alive, by the way. But he's like, I don't know anything about you being babies. I said, oh yeah, because mom took care of us. He said, no, mom didn't take care of you.

We were just busy, you know? we didn't like, you know, and so it was really hard to get answers. And I said, okay, well, then I'm going to frame the structure of the book from not just the point of memory, but also from the point of the notes that I had. And I was taking notes during my childhood. And then also framing it from the time that we did spend on the mountain. And so that seemed to me like an entry point and an exit point and a container that I could use as a vehicle to bring a reader along on this, what I think is an interesting journey. So that's how it came to be. It's an interesting journey and it's no, we're not the only person who thinks that.

As far as your writing process, just kind of the glimpse you gave us into that, it's particularly impressive to me just like, because I have always loved writing. I mean, I'm no means a professional writer, but drawing from such a personal experience and one in which that you just said, you had kind of closeted for decades, you know, just didn't even. really want to unpack it, delve into it, look at it hard. And here you are, you know, in the mornings between you, before you start your life with your family and your children, you're digging into some of the most difficult memories, I'm sure, you know, repressed, difficult emotionally. How did that impact you day to day? How was that process? I'm just so curious.

Well, to put this in context, COVID was a really strange time for all of us and all of us, you know, were sequestered in one way or another. So I always. already felt like there was this sort of fog around my life that I didn't think the world was ending, but I felt like a lot of people felt that there was, at least the world was ending as we know it, right? So we were all living this really different existence. I've been teaching college since I was 21 years old. And I've never had the college shut down my entire teaching career. And here we were, we were on spring break, you know, in March and we just never went back. And so I was really in a really different headspace anyway. And at this point, my kids were grown.

And I only had one living with me at the time because the others had just, my older daughters had just gotten married in 2019. And they were living close by, but we were all in our own bubbles. So they were not with me. And I think had my children all been in the home, it would have been really, really difficult for me to enter that space. But my youngest was, you know, at that age as a late teenager where she was staying up really late at night and sleeping in most of the day. So she wasn't awake, you know. Right. Right.

Of course. And so I was, you know, getting up as she was going to bed, basically. And it really did have a lot of quiet. And that, I think, was helpful. And I did write it cover to cover in four months. The only thing that we added after that was the epilogue, which my editor wanted me to add. And nothing really was taken away. So it was certainly, you know, fact checked.

And the publishers did all sorts of suggested edits. But we really didn't change. We didn't take out any, like anything more than a sentence. Like, you know, it was just like, it was really as I wrote it. And I think the reason I was able to do that, to be fair, though, is because I have been teaching writing. And so I understand structure. And I also understand that I was editing. So when I was writing by hand, when I would put it into the computer, I would do editing at that point. So it was written entirely longhand, but it was edited by me before I turned it in to my editor. So I did turn it into her four months later. But like in the evenings, I would do some editing. And then my rule was when I went to the, page the next day. I would not look at what I'd written the day before and it would not look at the computer. I would not have the internet. I would just do it. But then, yeah, when I was inserting into the computer, I would check and make sure that I had gotten my facts straight. And I went up to the mountain during COVID when nobody was there. Well, I mean, somebody was there, but there were no camps there.

And I did talk to a boy that I'd been raised with who now lives there. He's not a boy anymore, obviously, he's man. But he did let me borrow my mom's books and all the things that she had left at the camp. She didn't die until last year in 2022, which was before the book came out, but she hadn't given anything to her children because it never would have occurred to her to give things to us. It was just all belonged at the organization. But she was no longer able to go to the mountain because she had pulmonary fibrosis and she couldn't go to high altitudes. So she had left all of it there. And I did ask her permission to go up there and retrieve it. And I was very fortunate that the guy who had it all said, yes, you may retrieve it. Now, my mom

had already given me permission. So it wasn't like I stole it. I, I didn't. I didn't. don't even know how I would have stolen. I never would have known where to find it. But that was so helpful because I actually had all her handwritten notes from the years that we were there. That must have been a huge resource for you just to have your mom's actual handwriting to read the real experiences that were happening. What was it like when you went up there during had you been there before that time? Had you visit since you left? I had visited. I remember taking one of my women friends hiking in the back way so they didn't know we were there. But it's the first time I spent the night and I spent the night by myself there. And it was really helpful to me to kind of

be back in that space in the early stages of writing. And because of COVID, it just really wasn't a threat to have me there. I'm sure they wouldn't want, they wouldn't have wanted me to be around any of the people in the organization. But being there during COVID was, I paid them for the right and like privilege to stay there. And they didn't really have income coming in at the time, right? Because like nobody was camping, you know? And that's early stages of COVID. So I wanted to be really fair about that. It was probably also a bribe. But I was like, hey, you know, can I pay whatever fees you would normally have for someone to come and stay there? I'm happy to do that. I just really would like to get some of my mom's things. I don't think that I said I was writing a book. But I did tell

my mom that I was. And she was aware of that. I think she thought it was more of a survival book. And she was proud of the work that she had done there. I will also say that my mom didn't keep a diary. So she didn't talk about her feelings. And she didn't talk about like, this is what we did today. But she did take all the notes about the plants themselves. So a lot of what she had learned, she had learned by word of mouth from personal experience. And she was a prolific note taker about those things.

So that was just incredibly useful. And it was also useful while she was still alive to be able to ask her about her memories. And she was open with some of that. And I was also very honored to be with her as she passed and to spend the time with her as she had her last breaths and to do my best to convey that I don't know if forgiveness is the right word, but that I understood that she too was a victim of a very unusual upbringing. I wouldn't say that my mom was able to forgive me, but she was able to have me present. And I brought my puppy to the ending of her life and my mom loved dogs and she didn't have a dog anymore. And I was able to bring my dogs with me. And one of my dogs had puppies during the time my mom was dying and she just loved that I brought the puppies along.

And so that was really a source that we could communicate through the animals. That must have been really comforting and really special too to be able to be there for her during those moments. Yes. And I'm very, very grateful. My sisters were not able to be. And because I was working remotely, I was able to do Zoom calls from the backyard there. And my mom did die at home. And she was still married to my father when she died. And so they were living in the desert and I would be out in the desert doing the best I could to teach my classes and do the things I needed to do. But it was because of COVID that was possible. When you say that, she wasn't able to forgive you. Do you mean because you left? Yes, probably two weeks before she died, she said, I'll never forgive you. And I mean, it hurt at the time to hear that. But it also was maybe healing in a way because sometimes the truth sets you free. Like I didn't feel. crazy. I was like, oh no, my mom has never liked to me. She's like never. And I think that she might have respected me on some level, but she never understood why I had to betray the family and her, like,

that's her words not mine. I do not believe I'd betrayed my family. But for my mom, I could see that it was a betrayal. She had been raised to do what her father wanted her to do and she did it. And she believed she sacrificed her children for it. She did what God wanted her to do. She thought that the world didn't end when they said it was going to end, but it was still about to end, that she was still. living and believing that system that she was raised under. And for her to be okay with me leaving would have negated what she devoted her whole life to. So I also understand that it's not me that she wasn't forgiving. And maybe it was herself, you know, I don't know. But I did feel that even though she couldn't say it, that there was some love there, that she, I mean, she could push me away. She

could have told me that she didn't want me there, right? Like that would have been a very normal thing to do for someone you haven't forgiven, right? Is to say, you're not welcome in my home, but she did welcome me and she was grateful to have me there. And my father was not able to deal with a lot of the emotion of the end of life. And he was grateful. And my little brother showed up at the end too. And that was beautiful to have him there. And then my daughter came. And so we were able to give to her the sort of comfort, especially because she was willing to take the medications that the hospice nurse provided the pain relief so that she could be comfortable at the end. And I was so grateful that she agreed to do that because I think early in her life, she was very, very

opposed to morphine, for example. She refused to take it. But by the end of her life, she agreed that it wasn't, she was afraid of being addicted. She thought it was an evil drug, you know, like a drug. And she couldn't take it to, like, comfort herself. But when she understood that like it, that she wasn't going to get addicted to this, you know, and that this was just going to help her relax. I think that she was able to see it as, you know, the what she had put together,

she had put animals down, you know, that needed to be put down. And so I think that she came to see that like this was a comfort to her the same way she would comfort an animal. And that might sound weird to say, but that for my mom, that was a real value of hers, that we should be kind to animals. And so to be considered an animal herself was not something that she would consider as a negative. Like she would see that as. We both have been vet techs like for a large portion of our career. So we can relate to that fully when you say that. Like we absolutely understand how you show it's like dignity and respect to animals as they are passing. And it's kind of feel. feeling like you would want that yourself for your own. Yes. One of our dogs we had put down probably about three years before this. And my youngest daughter, she was, actually all my children showed up for this.

It was very important. We did it in the backyard and we had, you know, a vet come in. And it was a very, just a wonderful family dog that we just love so much. And he was old and it was the right thing to do. And the youngest, she said, I just think this was so beautiful. I just, that's exactly how I want to die. I want to do it just like that. And whenever her sisters said, oh, that's you.

legal. You're not allowed to do that. And she was like, what? Are you kidding me? We're not allowed to die in the She was just so stuff by that. And I tried to explain to her, but then I also was like, yeah, I think you're right. You know, like I think it's right. Beautiful, beautiful way to die. And I hope that I get to die this way too. But on some level, that is what we were able to give that that level of dignity to my mother as well, that I feel very, very grateful, especially to the hospice nurse who was there with us at the end. She was not one of my mom's regular nurses. She was on call. And she, was just such a beautiful. She cried with us at the end. You know, she was just such a beautiful human being. And I'm just so grateful to all the hospice nurses and all the caregivers that help us through the last days of life. Absolutely. I mean, it takes a special heart to be a nurse, let alone an end of life caregiver. Totally agree. I just wanted to touch on the relationship you have

with your mother just because reading the book, you know, like is someone listening right now? You're showing such kindness and compassion towards your mom. And, you know, without question, I'm going to be there if I can be there and, you know, going through just kind of end of life forgiveness and things like that. But in the book, you know, it's very clear that it was not butterflies and rainbows with your mother growing up, you know, I got the sense of you were always reaching for that and hoping for that from her. But she, you know, every once in a while, you would get a glimmer of she is a mother and had some sort of, you know, she showed compassion in the way that she was able to towards you in some circumstances. But then in other circumstances, you know, you spent a significant period of time in the hospital

with a very serious illness. And it seems that that compassion was not extended to you at that time from her end. So I'm just curious of how that relationship evolved after the time period that you outlined in the book because, you know, the end of the book was decades ago. And now here you are, you know, having these. really intimate moments with your mother towards the end of her life. So just to kind of like fill in the gaps for us a little bit, you know, you don't have to detail too much if you don't want, but just curious. The way that I look at it now is that my mother was also a soldier in the army of God.

She believed that about herself. And she believed she was called to sacrifice her children. So her inability to be with me in the hospital, she was the only family member who did show up at all and I do give her credit for that. But I spent years. I spent my whole life chasing my mother's love. I invited her, like when I had honors at the college I was teaching at, when I got tenure, when I one time I was speaking to a lot of colleges that were all convening and I invited her. She never came not once.

She was very ashamed of what I did. She thought it was very secular. I would try over and over to find a way to have, I would invite her to lunch, to dinner. cook for her. I tried really hard to form a relationship with my mom. And in fact, I think it was the love of my life that I was chasing and probably where I just put a lot of energy that probably did not need to be expended toward that. And my mom wasn't able to give that because I think she had been robbed of it herself. I think she had to give your child away at the beginning of their life. Yes, my mother didn't know us. We weren't given up for adoption. But she was in a sense forced to push herself away

from us. And once she had done that, she couldn't afford to be vulnerable and she couldn't afford to face that. And so I think by the end of her life, I was able to see that she had suffered greatly from that too, that it wasn't only me who had suffered from that. And that's a great gift I had was I was able to raise my children on my belly on my back. I breastfed them all for years. Like I spent a decade breastfeeding and I like, I brought them into the classroom with me. I was able to be fully present. And I have a very strong relationship with my children now. And I think that I could see by the time my mom was dying that I had been able to do something that she had not been able to do. And I felt that on some level, she was a greater victim than I was because I had moved

past it. And then because I was writing the book, I also was thinking about the gifts that I had gotten, like the knowledge of survival that I'd gotten and the plants and edible plants that I'd gotten from my childhood, but I also thought about the gift that I had of resilience. And then also with a really deep knowledge of the hunger I had for connection. And because at 17, I knew that I had this hunger for connection, I was able to spend years developing really intimate relationships, not only with my children, but with friends and with like a chosen family. And because I knew what I lacked, I was able to find what I needed. And I think my mom ultimately did not know how to do that. And she was able to take care of herself

physically for the most part, but it was very difficult for her to have any sort of intimate connections whatsoever. And so I would not, I don't want to suggest that that was easy, but by the time, my mom was in her 70s when she died, so she wasn't like an extraordinarily old woman. She was very strong when she died, but she really resisted death. That's why she was on hospital so long. Her body did not want to give up. Her lungs finally gave up, but, and my mother had never smoked or done anything, but she had this illness. And so she lived much longer than I thought she was going to live. She was in her right mind until the last two hours of her life. Like she did not suffer from brain damage. She was a little bit from her lack of oxygen.

She was a little slower. But she really maintained her dignity. And I think that she died the way she lived. And the great gift she gave me is my freedom so that I didn't have to follow in her footsteps. And yeah, she excommunicated me. But on the other hand, that really was a gift too. and I can't help but kind of believe that along the way my mother shunning gave me the opportunity to leave. And had she coddled me or like held on, I would have also spent my entire life believing in something that really has, in my opinion, no merit whatsoever. Like there's no good believing the things that she believed. Throughout the book, your mother seems like a really interesting and very complex person because she, I mean, she did nature guide. She was extremely

knowledgeable. And as you said as well, she was a victim, but she was a survivor throughout. It sounds like her entire life. And I think a lot of that, you detail it in your book. A lot is how she was raised and how she was raised that women are supposed to be, which was put on to you when you were living in the cult. And I just wanted to touch on how you were raised and what you were told women were supposed to be as you were growing up. So my grandfather was very misogynist. He's strongly believed that men were made in God's image and women were made to serve men. However, he had a daughter who was the most, and I feel a little disrespectful to my uncle saying this, but she was the most capable and ferocious child that he had. And so he didn't know

what to do with that, you know? And so he ended up raising her very male, just like we were raised very male in terms of very male values. And my mother rose to the occasion. And after his death, she got a school going and she got the school accredited. And she, you know, her brother, her oldest brother was supposed to be the principal of the school. But she's like, I got this. And like, she just came in and took over everything. And so when they left the mountain, she really ran a very academic and productive school until not very long before her death. So my grandfather believed that women should be seen and not heard, that they should cover themselves and they should keep their heads down. And yeah, and my mother is a constant, she was a constant enigma. She broke every single rule

and she was allowed to do it almost, to be honest, like she was a princess. Like she, but she was a very male version of a princess. It's really interesting. My mother had very short hair like a boy's that she had before she got married. So by the time, and her wedding father, she has this really, really short hair. She had the exact same haircut her entire life. She died with that haircut. She was very masculine in the way that she moved in the world with her ability to convey knowledge, the way she dressed, the way like she, she just, I know people who had met her and didn't know necessarily that she was even a woman. Like she was like very masculine version of a woman. But on the other hand, she completely, when my father was around, made him feel like he was the man and

she did teach us the man as the head, a woman's the neck. Never let a man know that you're smarter than he is. Like always make him believe he's smarter than you are. But, always know what's happening. Like, you should always take care of yourself because you can never trust that a man would be able to. So my mom was also where I was going to with her father is that he was, he didn't really call himself a pastor, but he was ahead of the church that he ran, the whole organization and he would speak, but he wasn't particularly a great, he was very charismatic and very

dramatic, but he wasn't educated and he didn't really have a lot of knowledge. And so he started letting his daughter speak in this church. And they never called her a pastor, Reverend, but she gave the church messages. So she would stand at the pulpit and speak. And I was raised with a mother who spoke. And then literally with Bible verses that said women are not allowed to speak in public. And there was so many dichotomies like that that were just like outrageous to me. And when I asked, they just told me that like what, you know, like it was just like a complete shutdown.

Like don't, don't question God's will. You know, and I was like, I don't understand why. But our mother was the only woman who ever started that pulpit. So she was just really just an outlier. And I think, again, her father just, he was in charge of everything and he did everything with his mercurial temper. And for whatever reason, he was not able to deny her anything. So he married his biggest, strongest young leader who's considerably older than her,

but like married, he was the first man who was ever allowed to get married. The rest of them had to be celibate. And he married that man off to his daughter. And then from there on, there was just one weird thing after another that my mom was able to get away with, but none of the other women were able to get away with. So the other women who married into this organization, they would, for example, make these elaborate meals and they had to sew clothes and do a lot of things that my mom didn't want to do. And they would house clean and I was a house cleaner.

But there was my things my mom just wouldn't do. And she, I don't know, I guess, because she didn't have to. She got away with it. But there were times that I didn't want to do something that was required of the women. And my mom would, she couldn't really sometimes say it straight out, right? but she'd be like, well, just don't worry about that. Just don't worry about that. And like, she would allow me not to do something that I was supposed to do as a woman.

And so it was, I definitely got the message that if you were secretive about it and if you could duck and cover and you could disappear, that you could get away with not doing what everyone else is doing. And she definitely taught me to march to the beat of my own drummer, you know, like just by watching her, right? Like that you don't have to live life the way that everyone around you does. And on that note, I think that's how she gave me the gift of leaving because she did. didn't force me to comply with our particular system. Well, you begin to rebel as you get older. And I say rebel, but a lot of the things that you mentioned in your book, you say, and I'm like, that's normal. That's normal teenage things. But for you and your circumstance, it was rebelling. And when you started doing what kind of things you say you started getting away with little things here and there

and you started doing things, what were some of those things that you were kind of rebelling and trying to do on your own that you weren't supposed to be? Well, one that I don't have in the book. And I'll just mention, I'll just throw this little caveat in there. I wrote a screenplay. And it is in the process with producers right now and the director and stuff. So writing the screenplay was really interesting because I was writing new material, because, you know, to put something visually.

And this scene is in there. And this is a true scene. But when I was 11 and Elizabeth was 12, our grandfather told us that we had to get our hair cut because it was time to have short hair. And interestingly, because I know that long hair is big and a lot of culty type communities, but in ours, all the women had really short hair. And you were, you were not supposed to be beautiful. You're supposed to take, you know, take that beauty away. And I had this really long golden hair and I liked my hair. And my sister and I went to go get our hair cut. And my grandfather paid for it,

which is really, because it was like a ceremony almost. And my grandmother took us. He was not there when this happened. But my grandmother took us. He'd given money so that this woman could cut her hair. And my sister got her hair all cut really short. And I said, I just want to trim. I don't want it to be too short and I just got my hair trimmed and the woman put these like kind of little braids. I think she kind of felt like she should do something. And my grandfather blew up. He was like screaming at her and just like getting so angry. But for whatever reason, nobody forced me to my hair. And this to me now is, we found a picture. We had to just do so much searching to find any photos at all. But there's a photo of my sister and I at that age with her with her really short

hair. And it might have been because I was sick that I got away with it. I don't know. But I have really long hair and she has super short hair and I got away with it. And I to this day do not know how because my younger sister got really short hair and they both like there's photos of us and they both have boys haircuts and I have this like long hair. And I don't know how I got away with that. And I don't know why my mom just didn't cut it in the middle of the night. You know, like I don't know why she didn't do that. And I think there was just a part of her that probably respected someone who did her own thing. Like I don't, she never would have said that to me. But I mean, that's not that hard of a thing to do to chop off a girl's hair, right? You can get away with doing that. Yeah, especially as a young,

a young girl, too. Yeah, I couldn't have gotten away. I could not have gotten away from the scissors had somebody forced me to do that. And then I had a, I did not have a boyfriend because we never would have called ourselves that, but there was a boy who liked me for a long time who I ended up, you know, getting in a relationship with. And that was completely forbidden. I had signed an agreement that I wouldn't kiss until the altar of my marriage. So when I had my first kiss at 16, it's not like I was, you know, a little teen kid. I mean, I had been secretary. I had been, actually abused, but it was like the first time that I was willingly participating. So it was the first time I'd been kissed. And even though like I'd been assaulted, but like, it was different. It's very different.

Very different. And so he's a couple years older than me and I still talk to him to this day. And he's very, you know, he always looks, he just gives me a call, checked on on me and checked. He was very happy with the book. And he had not read a book since he was a teenager. And this is the first book he's read since we were teenagers. He didn't go to college or any of that. And so I did fall in love with a boy. I don't think I would have quite understood what was happening maybe, but I did understand that I was hiding the letters we were writing to each other and I got in tons of trouble. He turned in the letters. I felt, of course, betrayed. He has felt probably all these years like that he did this horrible crying against me. I feel that he was the victim of a set of circumstances that were not in his control and he was taught

to believe that. So I, even at the time, I think that I didn't fully blame him. I just kind of felt, I felt betrayed, but I understood the betrayal. And then from the, from the, there, I just didn't recover. You know, I tried to take my life. And I, I just couldn't ever get back with the system after that. Like, I just couldn't. Like, I could not believe any of the things that they had taught me to believe. I didn't want that God anymore. I never yelled at my mom ever. We never had an argument to the day she died. My mom was very clear on the rules of respect. And I, I did that. Like, if I tried to challenge her about something, she would just turn her head or walk away or hang up the phone. And when I later challenged her about some of the sexual abuse that took place

with the boys that lived with us, that they were really men, but they were called boys. They were over 18. She just hung up the phone. She would not talk about it when I was an adult. And so, you know, I had to get it. I had to sort of find out what had happened through other people, like the details of what happened to those boys who were really men and like all that. And it was just awful.

But on the other hand, like, I just think she could not. If she had addressed that with me, she would have had to admit either that she allowed it or that she didn't know something. I mean, I don't know. I think either one would have been a horrible thing for her to. met or that got a, I mean, you know, I felt that on some level I was being sold to these boys. And I don't really know the answer. My grandfather's dead. My mom's passed. My dad won't talk about it. So I don't know. I don't know if the boys were given because this, it seemed to me that before you

started bleeding, that was how they called it. So before you started bleeding, there was no risk factor to whatever you did to a girl. That's awful. Well, it is, but they really believe that once you started bleeding you couldn't touch a woman anymore. And I started, I got my first period in the hospital. And so I did not get violated after that. I mean, there were guys at the organization who broke me after that, but I was not like raped after I got my period. But I think that they allowed this like they were trying to keep these men celibate. And I think that they were like, you can use this young girl. I think that probably it was totally like, I think my dad knew. And I think that they like not just let it happen but like set it up and that was something it was really hard to

come to terms with but when I read the book I decided that that was probably a lot I didn't want to go into all those details I just wanted to suggest that these things had happened and that it's been verified that they happened and that it's possible that that is what caused my illness that is definitely one of the things that can cause idiopathic basically you know these are illnesses that your body attacks itself, you know, and autoimmune diseases. Oh, wow. I didn't know that that would be a possible cause from that. And I imagine, so no one, no one in your family has ever come forward to acknowledge that this happened to you? Well, there are some, I mean, in terms of what you call by family, if you use capital F family, we were all taught that family is not blood. There have

been people who have verified it and have acknowledged that it happened, who are not my biological relatives, but who knew some of these men. And it's interesting because I was taught to call them boys, but again, they were called boys until they got married. And so they could be called boys until they were 30. I do not believe that anyone ever touched me who was under 18. They were adult men. Yeah. My mother did not deny it. There was a sexual abuse case later, but it was one of the leaders that did things to boys. And that one ended up getting convicted, but that was after I was gone. And I do think that one of the reasons that they turned him in and it was the whole conviction is because he was touching boys and that is a sin by even their standards. Clearly, I don't want that to

happen to any boy, but I also think that it's really unfair that it was not considered an equal crime against girls. Of course. Of course. It shouldn't happen to anyone, especially a child. Right. And the boys who were hurt were children. And I, you know, it's so of course that man deserves to be put to prison, but there were other people who should have also been held accountable. Absolutely. You talk about it in your book, too, that for a long length of time, you were starving yourself. So you weren't going through puberty when you started going through puberty to try and not be a girl and to try and get guys to not look at you and to avoid that. Did anyone in your family ever notice that or say anything? And family, I mean like everyone,

how you said around you, did people notice what you were doing to yourself? So when I was 16, I was in this church meeting. They called Pistorians. And I was shivering. and I had basically a seizure and I passed out. And one of the men and his wife in the organization took me to the hospital in Los Angeles. My parents were not there because they were often not anywhere around. And I was hospitalized for, they didn't call it an eating disorder, but for like, I was sick. And I at that point, I had recovered from surgery and stuff from the autoimmune disease three years earlier. But I was put back in the hospital because I was so thin and incapable of like sustained.

Like I passed out. I was not, you know, capable of taking care of myself. I was put on IVs. I was given food intravenously. But, you know, at that time in the 1980s, the eating disorders were not, I mean, you think about some of those women who died of eating disorders that are celebrities in the 19, late 70s, early 80s. It is not something that was talked about very much.

And it was something that I think that people really just thought that girls were doing to themselves without really understanding the wider context of that. I was told that I needed to eat when I went to college. a year later, I went to a support group that I didn't, I saw a sign that was like on a bulletin board about like if you're making yourself throw up and stuff like that. I did start eating because I couldn't get out of the hospital without doing that. And then I developed bulimia. I didn't know that's what it was called until I went to college. And then I used all that knowledge and the support group whatever to learn about what I was doing to myself and to change my behaviors.

And I like, for example, started just started over from scratch. Like all I ate was non-fat, playing yogurt, like in the dining hall. And then I started adding one food at a time so I could keep it down. I stopped exercising as much. And I started doing the things that they told me to do to get out of that. And I think because I changed my environment, it was probably easier to overcome that that. That it would have been had I been in, I don't know that I could have done that had I stayed at the organization. Right. Like it would have been if I was at the field, I'm sure that I would have been triggered all the time. But I learned to stop hurting myself. And I still struggle. I mean, I haven't been able to ever be on a diet since then. Like I, I just, it's been

something in my life that I, because of the things I learned when I was 17, I have, I mean, I feel like I might be one of the only women in America who could say this, but like, I've never counted a calorie since. Like, I refuse because I felt that it was so dangerous for me. And I could just see myself going back to that. And it's a horrible way to live. And not everybody's in a position to, maybe learn, like, how to, to get the help that they need when they're so young. And I'm very, very grateful that I was given basically, you know, the information I needed, but also someone who said, like, you need to stop taking that kind of control. And I learned how to relinquish control and to learn to pay attention to hunger and to like satiate that. And so there are certainly times I felt

that I was heavy and I had a lot of body dysmorphia. And that was times when I was pregnant, like, were twins that I gained tons of weight because my doctor was like, you need to gain it because you have, you know, you have children. And I was triggered to want to go back to those ways. But I did also understand that to go backwards for me would have been like I just felt like it might never end. Like I might, you know, lose myself. Put yourself back there. Well, I think it's really brave and commendable that you are willing and able to not only write this in your book, but to talk about it on a podcast like this where there's no doubt there are women who have been through something similar, whether sexual abuse, whether it is an eating disorder that are listening and hearing your story

and that you were able to find a way out of it and to have better coping mechanisms for things. And I think that it's really, I think it's really brave and awesome that you're willing to talk about it in such a public platform. Thank you. I haven't really been asked about this. And so I appreciate you asking such insightful questions. And I will add that it has been a long journey and that it's not like I was cured of everything when I was 17. I learned the eating aspect. But of course there were and are many aspects of PTSD that I still exhibit and I can still be triggered and that I've served on panels, for example, about domestic abuse.

And I think that in so many situations, I have found myself back into situations where I allowed, not a purpose, but I allowed, I was in situations where I was hit or beat up or whatever. And I did not know what it meant to protect myself. And so I had to relearn that. You know, so there's just so many ways that we can allow ourselves to be hurt. And I think that the important thing is to remember that we don't deserve it and that there are patterns that were taught to us. And so if we backslide a little or there's something that we are sort of taken off guard to not be ashamed or if we are ashamed to say, I'm ashamed because I was taught to be ashamed, but that does not mean that I did anything wrong. You should be. Right. And so that I can and to learn to talk about things public that I think is a way of, of reducing. the shame because, you know, how much can somebody hurt you if you're willing to tell the truth? I mean, they can say awful things, but you can also be like, well, you know, this is a consequence. I mean, I was in a lot of situations I shouldn't have been in because I didn't have the defense

mechanisms. Like, I didn't know how to protect myself. And the shame shouldn't be for you to be the person to hold. The shame should be against the people who are hurting you and not something that you're feeling. But I do think that as women and or as victims in general, there are certainly men who are in this category I shouldn't gender it. As victims, we are taught to be ashamed. And that is part of how abusers hold power over us. And so when we experience that, yes, we absolutely, quote, shouldn't. But if we deny that we feel that, then sometimes we might not actually get the help we need to be able to learn to be honest with ourselves and then hope they eventually with other people as well. Yeah. And I think talking about it brings back that power of, you know, like I have felt this way and

I have been through this. But I'm going to talk about it because I know I'm not. the only person and I'm going to talk about it because if especially people who are harming other people if they know that other people are going to talk about it, maybe they're going to think twice before they start doing things like that, especially, you know, we say women, women are often victims, but men too, anyone. The more you talk about it, I think the less alone other people feel. Yes. And the less in the dark that it can all be. And I think there's so much that's kept in the are even now when we talk about, I mean, like everything's on the table that we could talk about. I think that we still shame women for not looking the way that we consider the most socially

acceptable ways to look. And we do it to ourselves when we say that we're fat or whatever we, you know, say. And I love that there's this whole movement that, you know, many people, men and women are reclaiming the word fat and they're being fat positive and they're being body positive. And they are like saying, I mean, you can call me that, but I'll call myself that because like there's nothing wrong with that. Like I have about that audience and I love it, you know? And I think that all of that is taking it out of the dark, right? Like it's hard to humiliate somebody for something that they're owning.

And so. And proud of. Yeah. Right. Exactly. And you have done clearly a lot of re-learning and rewiring and kind of just whether it is regarding, you know, just relearning things that you were explicitly taught about just basic educational things or re-learning your relationship with food, re-learning just different aspects and you've done,

you've done a lot of work clearly. And throughout the book, you've had a really, obviously your relationship with nature is significant. And a lot of our listeners and us personally have whether, whatever we've gone through, we've felt healing in nature. And I'm just curious if your relationship with nature played any sort of pivotal role in your healing journey. Absolutely. nature, I believe, is healing for all of us. But I think that for me, and that's one of the reasons I chose to structure the book,

the way that I did, is I truly believe that had I not towards the end of the time that I spent at the field and on the mountain, if I had not understood nature as a way of getting sustenance, for example, I mean, there was a period of time I would not eat food that was in our home, even when we had government surplus that was giving, like the government would dump off cans of peanuts and caro syrup and cocktail food cocktail and just like things that were just sort of dumped on our property. There was a time where I was only feeding myself off the land and it felt to me that I was booing myself for what I needed to do to make a transition. And so it felt to me that if I was eating their food, that I was still caught in their way of thinking. And so I separated myself. And if I hadn't known how to eat off the land, I'm sure there's other ways I could have gotten out. But for me at the time,

It was so empowering to say, I can get what I need from the earth. I don't need you. And that was such a gift. Now, also, throughout most of all of our human development as, you know, homo sapiens, we have lived with nature. We are not separate from nature now because we've dominated it. But that is very recent. I mean, even if you look at the last 10,000 years of agriculture and all the things going on, there were hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years before that that we lived integrated with nature.

and we were all foragers, like all of us come from foraging. And so when we find ourselves back inside of that, that is in our DNA. Like it is, we all know somewhere in our, I mean, obviously we have to learn the particular skills for the plants that are available to our regions, but the eating off of the land is what we come from. That's what we all come from. And we did not domesticate and create agriculture until really recent in human development.

And we didn't create the ownership of like property and all that until very recent in human development. And so for me, recognizing that nature is the source of our sustenance and then also recognizing that even if you're living in a city, like looking at a sunset, looking at a tree, like this has been documented and well studied that it absolutely elevates not only your mood, but it elevates your health. The people heal quicker if they can see a tree, for example, outside of their hospital window than if they're facing a wall. And that if you walk on the earth, there's a whole tradition called grounding. And I do walk their foot on the earth every single day. I still do that. I always do that.

I'm willing to hike barefoot. That is something that I feel very comfortable with. I don't advocate that for people who don't have experience because I know that you can get hurt. But I think that there's a lot of evidence too that suggests that just putting our feet on the earth, like it is healing to us. You know? And so if you're going through a time of your life, you need not, I mean, yes, spiritual healing, maybe, but physical healing as well, that the earth is a place where we can find that. I am barefoot literally all the time. and I always joke with my partner because he walks barefoot.

If he walks barefoot, his feet always hurt and mine are like fully calloused because I'm barefoot all the time because I connect with nature as well and kind of that way. And I haven't done long hikes barefoot, but I definitely do like shorter hikes without shoes on. And you just feel like you're more, you're like more one with the earth when you're out in the wild like that, I think. Absolutely. Have you done any barefoot running? I don't run. So there's a whole tradition. I mean, and Nike even like made these shoes, these Nike frees like to give some sort of support for people who want to run barefoot but aren't willing to take, you know, the risk. And obviously you'd need a safe place to do this.

But I was doing some barefoot running for a while. So I studied it. And, you know, it's one. Your feet are we, we take away the health of our feet so much because of the way we constrict them. And those of us who have been raised to wear high heels, that's also very damaging to our feet. I hate high heels. Yeah. But, you know, in certain professions.

It is, it is, I want to say like mandatory almost, you know. It's like it is a book that is required. And so I did spend years wearing high heels. And now, I mean, I just, I won't do that anymore. But I did. But barefoot running can be amazing. I do barefoot hiking because I am very callous. Yes.

And so like once you get really callous, like yes, you might get like a pricker in there, but you're just like, there's like a pricker in my foot. Like you pull it out. It's like, oh, something touched me. Just a random question. But do you ever get paddicures or like let people. a scrape your feet. I do. I do now. And it's, it's, it's a wonderful, like in a wonderful luxury that I never experienced until recently. I see, I still don't let people, I don't like it, because I've let

people, like scrape this calluses off my feet before. And I feel like my feet are so sensitive after. I'm like, okay, you can paint my toenails and like, give me lotion, but do not, do not take away my calluses. That makes perfect sense. And it's really interesting the way that it's, it's taught that we shouldn't have calluses. Like, I mean, they're going to always offer, but yes. Delicate feet that are supposed to be good. And I'm like, don't want my strong feet. But yes, if you put it that way, there have been times they want to use the chemical

calice remover. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't want. You can, like, take off the dirt. But like, not, yeah, not the actual callous. Yeah, it's like, I need these hearty feet. Yeah. I'm very proud of my hearty feet.

Me too. Me too. I'm sure yours are better than mine if you're running because I do not run. But I'm working on my feet are good. I thought one thing that I thought was really fun in your book, too, was that Danielle and I were talking about it because we read your book while we were on our California trip. We were seeing the plants that you were talking about. So we would be like, hold on. Wait a second. It's this. And we'd like go back when we got home because we had your book where we were staying and we'd like reread it and be like, here it is. This is what she was talking about. And so I thought that that was a really like your book is full of a lot of head. heavy content, but that part of it in particular was kind of like a lighter fun aspect of your entire book. Yes, I'm super glad we're covering it because I definitely don't want readers to come away with. And even the heavy context, like even that, I tried not to put a lot of detail into so that nobody had to relive their own trauma, that it was suggested, but that, you know,

was not gone in depth. But the plants are, they are, you know, and our editors and the publishers I want to be very clear that we are not saying that people without training can just use this advice, but it is accurate to the best that, you know, not only of my memory, but I, you know, for me, I can go out and do those things because I have grown up with it and I know what I'm doing. So I still, and what a wonderful thing it was law is writing to go back and pick those plants and to try them again and to go back and not just on the mountain, but in other regions in Southern California. And I do hike in Angeles National Forest, not necessarily on that property, but like, and I, And I have been foraging and it is, I've done so much with elderberries.

And, you know, there's just certain plants that are really easy to share with other people because people trust them. And elderberries happens to be one that a lot of people use during COVID. But nettles are something that grows in like just regular suburban yards. And they're just a weed. And I was, I just met somebody the other day at a bookstore who came up to me and said something. And he said, I grew up on nettles.

Nobody else I know grew up on nettles. He said, we cook them. We eat it like in salads. Like, you know, like, and we would drink. the tea and I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we had a wonderful, like, you know, sort of like, why do people not know this? And he said, I show people that they have netted, like right where they are. And so that has been something that even though I didn't do it when I was younger, now I will say, here's how you can tell, like to people who I know or who are really open to learning these things,

I will teach them the difference between any plants that could look remotely similar. But there are some plants, like you're not going to accidentally eat something. I shouldn't say this categorically because I'm sure someone can make a mistake. But if you, know what to look for. There are certain plants that you are unlikely to confuse with anything else in our particular region. But how fun that you guys got to see some of that. Yeah, we did. We were walking around. I think, Daniel, were we in Yosemite. We were, I think we were in Yosemite and Kings Canyon, or were two different spots where we saw plants and we're like, hold on a second. We didn't have service or anything to like double check it. And then we got back and we're like,

oh, here it is. And I remember, Danielle, you went through like, it was the snow. Oh, did you see a snow plant? They're so beautiful. Yeah. It's so distinctive. Yes. And that's why I like, and of course before reading, I would have just been like, oh, that's pretty and walked away, you know, but I was like, God, that it rings a bell.

And yeah, sure sure can be. We went back and it just, it's awesome just to be able to even just the brief overviews you give, you know, to be able to identify. There's power in that. Being able to identify something, even though I didn't exactly. remember the description and like what the use for that plant was, but I could identify it, you know, with some level of confidence and being able to be self-sufficient in the wild, the way that you are is powerful, you know, being able to make your own way and survive.

And your book is about survival in so many different ways. And it's just like we've covered, there's a lot of heaviness. But you're right. You suggest it. It doesn't go into depth. And it doesn't need to. because it's implied. And the reader understands without having to know all the nitty-gritty details. And we both really appreciated that because we got the full picture without like sobbing

for 45 minutes and having to put it down and be like, okay, like now I can, I process that and I can continue. It was just you did a really beautiful job of telling a really difficult story. And I think that we both agree and we've talked many times about it that a lot of people are going to get a lot from this. And we are really excited to share it with everyone. So thank you so much for coming on and spending so much time with us and going over things that were in the book and some things that weren't and things that maybe we can look forward to seeing from you in the future, which is really exciting. Thank you. And I would add just one thing is that wherever you are as a listener, just getting to know the plants in your region is very empowering. And it's just like how when you get to know a person

and you develop a relationship with that person, you light up when you see them because you understand them in some way. And that's what it's like to know plants. And whether you are in our region or any region, just knowing like the five plants that you see most frequently on your walk, whether or not you ever choose to eat them, you can have a relationship with the earth in a different way by seeing the plants. And that is one gift I am incredibly grateful for that I am happy to be able to share through talking about the book and providing illustrations that Susan Brand did for us. And just to help people remember that there are still wild plants growing everywhere. And they are not things that we plant. You don't have to plant a garden to be able to eat from the earth. I recently on some of my,

there's a hike that I do like pretty frequently that's near my house just because it's close and it's easy and it's beautiful. And they have ramps that are along the trail, which are like these, you probably know what they are, but they're like the little onions. They're like little underground onions. And I like to forage like a couple of them. And sustainably, of course, I'm not like ripping up the whole thing. But just like occasionally I'll come back and put it on like a sandwich or something. And at the end, I'm like, wow, I was really connected today with nature. So I love that you say how much of an impact it can have because it certainly, it certainly has for me personally. So when you say that, I can relate to it a lot. That's wonderful. One last thing that I did

have a question about because now that you have this book published and you have put out all this information, has anyone from the field and from growing up, have they commented on the book and their thoughts about it? Yes, very much. Every single bookstore that I have gone to to do readings or any public event that we've advertised, former members of the field have shown up. Some of them older than I am who, like I said, were my caregivers. But some of them, the children of some of the leaders I knew, and they might be 10 or 20 years younger than I am, and they told me their stories. Some of them have heard of me, but they didn't know me. Just such powerful connections with people who come from the organization. Now, that being said, the people who are still there, and it is a

wildly different organization, which I say at the beginning, I do not think that they are treating anybody harshly anymore. And I do not think that there's any sexual abuse. I mean, they have Social Security numbers now and they have like real jobs. My sister does run the school there. She took over for our mother. And so the organization itself is not happy with me for talking about this. And nobody who's in the organization will acknowledge any part of it. The people who left who are called quitters, they have absolutely validated my stories by sharing very similar stories. And so, yes. And I understand why the people inside just don't want to acknowledge the history of where they come from. I think that's very common of lots of people, including our country, right?

Like, there's just a lot of people who don't want to admit to that because then they think you can't love whatever, you know, exists if you take responsibility for something that happened prior. And I think it's a very important thing for us to talk about personally that, you know, that's why I wrote the book so that we can all come to terms with our paths in our own way. They're hard conversations that need to be had. And it's nice that you've been able to connect. I mean, of course, I'm not shocked at all when.

you say that the organization isn't happy because you have highlighted things that do not paint them in a good light for good reason, for a valid reason. But I imagine that it's really nice to meet these people that it sounds like you didn't know who can come forward and be like, you're not alone. I went through this too. I was there. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yes, there was some little bit younger young women who met me at a reading in Portland. And they asked me very specifically, is this our uncle and this one scene. And thank goodness it was a good depiction. of one of the characters. And I said, yes.

Like, how did you know that? Because I changed the name. And they said, you know, because that's how he used to talk to us. He used that same language. And so what was so great for me was to think, oh, I represented a character so authentically that these girls who were babies or not even born when I left were able to recognize. And that just felt very validating too. And they said, well, he was the only warm, you know, person in our childhood.

And I were really, we didn't, they didn't know that he had lived at our house. you know, because it had been a long time ago. And just to think that they had that connection to of somebody who was raised there who still was kind. And that hadn't been their experience with everybody, but there was somebody that they recognized. And so there was a lot of that kind of connection where I thought, wow, these people are not coming because they're my friends. They're coming because it spoke to them for their own reasons. And I think that that is really healing part of their conversations with each other. And they started developing little reading groups and, you know, not just those particular.

women, but a lot of people have come to me and said that they got together with people that are for former members from their time period. And it really has helped them talk about the trauma that they experienced. Because a lot of this trauma that everyone has experienced with them, none of this was allowed to be talked about when you were there. Were they ever afraid when you were like when you were in the hospital or when you were outside? I mean, you lived with your grandmother in the book for a while and you were kind of out in public for a while. Were they ever afraid that you were going to go to anyone and explain what was happening to you? Well, we were taught very directly not to talk to authorities and to directly lie. I mean, we were literally, like,

I was given a script as far as to not say things. And so even when I was in a situation where the psychiatrist who I talk about in the book, you know, knows there's things going on in my background. I lied about the things that were really particularly harsh because I didn't want people to get in trouble. So I'm sure they were afraid of it, but they also really, really, really, prepared us to hide things. And one of, I mean, here's another, someone at a bookstore, my age, I hadn't seen since I was a teenager. He had left and he was looking around. He truly thought they could somehow be listening to us. Like he would still so paranoid about it because we had been taught, we're never allowed to speak of these things. And so that's what they do.

They put a lot of fear and we were all children and they just tell you can't talk about it. And there's just so many people. My brother, he hadn't read a book since he was a teenager. He got this book from Amazon. I had talked to. him before I wrote it, but I just didn't know how if it would trigger a lot for him. And he read it in one night and he drove to my house, a few hours to my house. He came to my book opening. He did all that. And he said, this is what happened to me. And he started telling me about, for example, our dad punching him in the face and doing things like walking his room. And there's things I didn't even know. And it has just really been good for our relationship to be able to talk about things we literally have never talked about.

During COVID, I talked to my younger sister and she told me the scene again, like, where she had been beat up by our father. And like, she was beat up super bad. And I at the last edit, toned it down a little bit. But she, she and I had never spoken of that since that day that I write about until COVID. And it's just, it's amazing that you could just hide those things. And you just, you get out and you move a different direction and you all agree to never speak of it. I mean, you don't literally agree. You just don't ever speak of it again. You just know, not to. It sounds like this book. has not only been a part of your healing journey, but that it has actually opened the doors for people in your life to heal as well. Absolutely. And I am so, I think I'd hoped that would happen, but I am really pleasantly, I want to say surprise, because you just don't know. And it's just been such a gift to, because it's, it feels very exposing. And there's a lot of triggers in me that feel like I have gone against my family. But on the other hand, it has been so healing. my family that I'm just really grateful that somewhere along the line I found the courage to move

forward with the project. It was really brave of you to come forward and we're thankful that you wrote the book. We're thankful we got to read the book and we're so happy that you've joined us today. This has been such an amazing conversation and I feel like we've, I had all these like back questions after I read the book. I'm like, wait, I need to know how she's doing now and wanted to know everything. So it's so great to get to talk to you in real life. And for everyone who's listening, where can they find your book? Well, we always encourage you to support local bookstores, but it is also available on Amazon. The paperback's not going to be out for a while, but it is slated now to come out. But you can get any bookstore. There's a lot of independent bookstores that are, I believe most are selling it. I've been

getting pictures from all over the country. But yes, if you choose to buy it online, it's available at Barnes & Noble at Amazon, and we are just happy to have you join the conversation. And at libraries as well. Perfect. And like you said in the beginning, you love hearing from everyone. So whoever gets picks up Michelle's book, please don't just tag us. I mean, we want to see it too. But tag Michelle. And obviously, we hope you enjoy as much as we did. And thank you again, Michelle, for being with us. And congratulations on your book because it really, it's amazing. It was, it was a great read. It really was. Thank you, Danielle. Thank you, Cassie. Thank you for really my most fun conversation yet. This is the been fantastic. You are wonderful hosts. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Perfect. All right. Well, we will let you go. Thank you again. And we hope to talk to you in the future. Bye. Well, thank you everyone for tuning in and enjoying that conversation with us. You heard it from Michelle. Go grab her book. It is great. Highly recommend it. Adding it to our list on our website so you can see it there as well. But we'll see you all next time. In the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch

you're back. Bye everyone. Bye. Thank you so much for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale or story suggestion, send us an email at Stories at npaddpodcast.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NPAD podcast. Join our outsiders-only community on Patreon or Apple subscriptions to listen ad-free, unlock monthly bonus episodes and exclusive content. And remember, when you support our sponsors, are supporting our show. For our exclusive discount codes and source information from today's

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