Something Was Wrong - S21 Ep12: (4/4) [Jubilee] Dead Raiser

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

*Content Warning: strangulation, physical violence, emotional abuse, financial abuse, domestic violence, suicidal ideation, self-harm, sexual abuse, religious trauma, cultic abuse, and homophobia. *Sources:A Look at the Megachurch That Calls Redding Home: Bethel Church. (2019, June 20). The LAist. https://laist.com/shows/airtalk/a-look-at-the-megachurch-that-calls-redding-home-bethel-churchBethel Church. (2019, December 20). Resurrection Prayer for Olive Heiligenthal. https://www.bethel.com/news/olive-heiligenthalBill Johnson: Creative Miracles At Bethel - Part 1. (2011, January 11). [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=shared&v=2PzttaVImCYBolz, S. (2014). GOD KNOWS YOUR NAME: Translating God (Prophetic Moments) [Video]. https://youtu.be/i3O3nEbniQw?si=PL9SrHby1nCJ4sQXJubilee Dawn. (2023, January 15). If You Are Googling If Your Partner’s Actions Are Normal [Video]. TikTok. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNsaa6Am/Jubilee Dawn. (2023, January 15). Rating Cringy Posts I Made When I was in a Cult [Video]. TikTok. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNs5vetK/Jubilee Dawn. (2014, March 31). Rating My Instagram Posts From When I was in a Cult [Video]. TikTok. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNsaLBT7/Bancroft, Lundy. (2003). Why Does He Do That? : Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. New York: Berkley Books. https://lundybancroft.com/ Wilson, D. (2008). Finger of God [Video]. https://wpfilm.com/media/finger-of-god/*Resources:National Domestic Violence Hotline https://www.thehotline.org/ For a list of related non-profit organizations, please visit: http://www.somethingwaswrong.com/resourcesFollow Something Was Wrong:Website: somethingwaswrong.com IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcastTikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast Follow Tiffany Reese:Website: tiffanyreese.me IG: instagram.com/lookieboo [e-mail] The SWW theme Song is U Think U, by Glad Rags. The S21 cover art is by the Amazing Sara Stewart.  

If you're serious about growing this new year, what you put into your mind actually matters. And as someone who lives and breathes careers and self-development, even I get overwhelmed trying to do it all. Between work, life, and trying to better yourself, self-care can start to feel like just another thing on the to-do list. But investing in yourself doesn't have to be complicated. And with Audible, it isn't. It's time to take care of you. And who better to help than the top voices in well-being all in one place. With Audible's Well-Being Collection, you can level up your career, finances, relationships,

sleep, parenting, or mindset. Whether you want motivation, clarity, or practical advice, there is something there to support you every step of the way. I listen while I commute, clean, work, or just when I need a little bit of downtime. You'll hear from best-selling authors Brene Brown and Jay Shetty, Chef Jamie Oliver, finance expert Rachel Rogers and popular parenting guides like Raising Good Humans. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a 30-day trial at outable.com. Membership is 1495 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

There's more to imagine when you listen. Something was wrong is intended for mature audiences as it discusses topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, rape and murder. Content warnings for each episode and confidential resources for survivors can be found in the episode notes. Some survivor names have been changed for anonymity purposes. pseudonyms are given to minors in these stories for their privacy and protection. Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own and does not necessarily reflect the views of myself, broken cycle media, or wondering.

The podcast and any linked materials should not be construed at. medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. Thank you so much for listening. You think you know me, you don't know me well. I lived in Atlanta from 2017 until the very end of 2019. Things were honestly kind of good in Atlanta. I was still sick, but I did feel like our marriage was starting to get a little bit better. I ended up being a background actor and a stand-in and did some work as a production assistant for

like Netflix shows and for Marvel. I got to be a background person on The Avengers and it was all very fun. It was a very cool time of my life. I ended up becoming a nanny for a celebrity couple who was filming there for a show. It brought me so much light during that time. While I was going through this really horrible time, I was really bonding with this family. I adored them. I loved them.

We became very close in a short period of time. It was just awesome, to be honest. I really started to try to heal myself and my fibromyalgia. So I started reading a lot of self-help books, doing yoga, meditating, and those things did start to help. Despite everything that was going on, I was happy with myself and my life. I think that the fights were less and he was feeling more fulfilled. I was just trying to do anything to maintain my life because at that point, I was starting to like my life.

I was starting to like the way that things were going and we were happy sometimes. We were really irresponsible financially. Like we were going to Disney all the time. We became pass holders and we would go down there every like three months and have these lavish vacations. We could afford them, but we weren't. saving anything. We weren't being smart. We were just constantly on vacation. And I didn't want to start over. We were still living on the high of, wow, this is so cool that we're a part of this.

And we would work together sometimes. Like we used to be on court shows together as audience members, like paternity court and stuff. And we had a lot of fun. So it's hard to be sad in such fun atmospheres. But we would fight. I did start to go through a period where we would be really good for like a couple months, which would never happen in Texas. Then there would be like a blow-up fight where he would do something abusive. He would call me names, chase my car. When we came home, it was like 30 degrees and he would run to the apartment and lock me out. I would not have the car keys, not have the apartment keys, and I'm just like walking around the complex until he agrees to let me back in. So it was this very hot and cold bursts of abusive incidents.

I did begin to notice that he was not feeling as fulfilled as I was. I think he didn't really know how to market himself or he wasn't as good with people in a way. So opportunities were coming to me and he was getting really jealous. He was the one who wanted to be a production assistant, but I had made a friend on a set and that friend came up to me one day and said that he, had something to do the next day and asked if I could cover for him and be a PA for a Netflix show. And in my head, I'm thinking, okay, I'll do this production assistant thing and then maybe I'll meet people on network and I can get TED a job as a production assistant. Because that's kind of how the whole business works as you have to network with people. But he took that really

personally. He didn't like that I was getting opportunities that he wanted. There ended up being a time where I became a stand-in for a pilot for a couple weeks, which essentially like a stand-in is you just stand there before the actors come on and they set up the lights. And you're kind of the same height and hair color as the actor. So I was going to be the stand-in for one of the actresses on the show. This was a very big deal. I was excited to be a step up from a background actor. Whenever good things were happening in my life, that's kind of when abuse tended to ramp up with Ted. I don't know if it's trauma or just the passage of time, but I really don't remember what a lot of these fights were about. I was laying in bed and we had been arguing and I would say, can we please

go to bed? Can we please just talk about this in the morning? He would always say, no, we're not allowed to let the sun go down on our anger. He's quoting the Bible at me and I'm thinking, well, we're not going to solve anything right now. We're both exhausted. Tensions are high. Can we please talk about this in the morning and he would be ripping the blankets off of me, not allowing me to go to sleep. This was something that he would commonly do was try to not let me sleep because whenever I got bad sleep, my pain flares would always be worse with my fibromyalgia. It's almost like a direct way that he was trying to abuse me. There was even one time when he tried to throw my sleeping pills down the drain so that I wouldn't be able to sleep for an entire month. That was one thing that he would do.

but during this time, I said, you know, can we please go to bed? He said no, and he ended up strangling me for the first time. I was in shock that he had done that. And immediately he is crying and he's on the floor and he's saying, I'm such a bad person, please forgive me. I'm going to turn myself into the cops. It becomes this very warped thing of you're on the floor with them, you're holding them, you're telling them, no, you're not a bad person,

all while you're the one who was just strangled. And that's kind of always how it was, is after these abusive incidents, I had to convince him that he wasn't such a bad guy. The next day, I went to work. I still had to work after that happened. I had made a friend on that set, and we were setting up the cameras.

We were supposed to be looking at each other during this scene, so we're sitting on the couch, and the whole crew is setting up the cameras. And I'm friends with a lot of the crew, so I'm so embarrassed that I'm emotional, but I was looking at my friend and I just couldn't stop crying because it really hit me. I'm probably going to get divorced or I'm going to die is what I was feeling at the time. And I had no idea what I was going to do if I was going to forgive him for strangling me

or if I was going to end up getting divorced. I told her that he choked me, which feels less severe. Only afterwards did I learn the true language for what it's called. Like choking is you choke on food. strangling is someone putting their hands around your throat. After work, I ended up sitting him down and I told him, if you ever do that again, or if you're ever abusive at all again, I'm going to get divorced and I'm going to leave you.

He was like, of course, of course, I'll never do this again, I promise. Obviously, that wasn't true. Abusive incidents still happened. There would be times where I would try to leave the house and he'd like rip the keys out of my hands and the keys would cut me. I remembered thinking, if you didn't leave when he strangled you, you can't leave when he accidentally cuts your finger. If you didn't leave when he strangled you, you can't leave when he sprains your finger when he grabs it. It felt like I couldn't leave for anything less than what

he had done before, which obviously I know now is not correct. I distinctly remember I was sitting on the couch crying. He was like, you're so pathetic. Look at you crying about things that happened years ago. My life is so sad. I'm such a victim. And then he started making fun of other family members who had been assaulted. Was he standing over you? Yes.

I stood up. I pushed him. That was the only time I ever did anything physical in our marriage. He grabbed me and he body slammed me on the floor. I had a horrible bruise on my hip. Like I couldn't even walk. I was in so much pain. For the rest of our marriage, he had told me, if we ever got divorced, I would tell everyone that you're abusive to.

I appreciate your honesty. That's another tactic, that baiting and backing somebody into a corner. And then when they are trying to literally get away using that, it had to have made you feel very trapped. trying to remain in a relationship with someone using those mechanisms. Yeah. That incident kept me married probably for another year because I did feel emotionally blackmailed. He was telling me that he was going to smear my name, that he was just going to go and tell lies about me and misrepresent the situation and our relationship.

So I felt extremely trapped. And I started to think like, well, who's going to believe me? A lot of people have to understand I was in this cult. And to me, if I left Ted, it would be divorcing my religion as well. Because my religion is what told me that I had to marry him. My religion gave a prophecy saying that this was God's will. I was only able to leave because I had to realize that it was all wrong. That was a huge leap to make.

I had to leave everything behind and that was just a lot to do until I finally hit that breaking point. When Chris Watts killed his children and his wife, Ted was laying in bed next to me. He was asleep and I was scrolling on my phone and I'm reading the story and I started crying and I just thought this might happen to me. It was the first time that I really thought that maybe he was going to end up killing me. I was reading what her family and friends would say, like, we never thought that Chris Watts would do this. We never thought that he would ever be so violent or abusive. And I remember thinking to myself, if Ted killed me, there are so many signs that I am ignoring. Maybe I am going to die.

I felt like I had to stay with him, though, because I was still so attached to this prophecy. I was so brainwashed by this cult thinking that this is. what God wanted for me. I was raised my entire life to believe that divorce was so wrong. Christians aren't supposed to get divorced. Things would start to get really dark for me. I would be laying in bed at night and thinking to myself that I wanted to die. I really felt like I was losing my mind. Like there would be times when he would be yelling at me and cussing at me. These are sad moments. I'm not proud of them, you know, but I'd be on the floor and I would like start pulling out my hair because I was in such a dark place.

I thought I was disgusting and unlovable, and I was stuck in this marriage, and I would think to myself, I think that my life is either going to end by Ted killing me or it's going to end by suicide. Eventually, I made a promise to myself that if it ever got so bad that I thought that I was going to hurt myself, that I would get divorced. Thank God I made that promise to myself. Things did continue to get worse. I remember it was strange.

I went over to my friend's house. Her mom saw me at Thanksgiving and her mom had gone up to my friend and said, hey, is Jubilee in an abusive marriage? Because I just got a really weird vibe from her husband. People were starting to see that there was something really wrong. I was just very empty. I felt like I couldn't tell anybody in my family because the second that I told them what was going on in my life, I knew that I would have to get divorced. My family would never let me

live through that, would never want that for me. I was also starting to think ahead. Am I going to have kids with this man? Because there is no way that I'm going to traumatize children. This was something that I would think about all the time. Maybe we're just not going to have kids because I would never, ever let this happen in front of a child. I would never let him speak to me like this in front of a child. I was so in the boat of staying married that I was okay with the fact that I was never going to have children despite the fact that I wanted children. A lot of tension was coming from. I was starting to disconnect from Bethel. This was actually a very big point between the two of us. he thought that he was marrying somebody who was going to be in ministry for the rest of their lives,

but I was so turned off of church after what happened to me at Bethel and what happened to me in Pennsylvania. I was very turned off of the prophetic by people casually prophesying and feeling like it was all fake and performative, but I still believed and supported the true prophets. Like the guy that had prophesied over me, I thought he was legit. I really had a lot of faith in him, but in general, it was just not my vibe. And I realized that I had a lot of religious trauma. Ted, he thought that I was rejecting God altogether. What I think is beautiful is that I still love God, and I think God is awesome, but I believe that God is loving.

My perspective of God has just gotten so much more beautiful and bigger. People who are a part of the cult think that I'm lost and I'm going to hell. I'm like, okay, well, I'm sorry that you think that. I know that I feel good with my spirituality. I think Ted was just very concerned for my soul. He thought that I was lost. He wanted to go to church. So we went to Bethel, Atlanta.

There was an offshoot church. It was endorsed by Bethel. We went one time and I was so triggered by it. I hated it. I told him that I didn't want to go. So we ended up going to another church and he took me to an even weirder church. It was so charismatic. Everybody's speaking in tongues and then people are getting up and trying to interpret the tongues and it was just so over the top with the flags. I just couldn't do it. I said, take me to a vanilla church where they preach the Bible and I'll go. But that's not what he was

interested in because I think a lot of these people who are a part of Bethel and these culty churches is they thrive off of like the mysticism of it all. The signs and the wonders, like God is not enough for them. They want a magic trick to happen every Sunday. We just really did not agree on our faith. This is when it really starts to lead into what happened at Bethel with the Wake Up Olive movement. There was this situation at Bethel. I remember I was sitting in my apartment and I started seeing all over my Instagram and all over my Facebook that one of the worship leaders at Bethel, her child, I believe was about three years old and had died in her sleep. The church was supporting everybody praying for this little baby to be raised from the dead.

This took on a life of its own. This hashtag started trending all over Twitter, started trending everywhere, hashtag Wake Up Olive. Even BuzzFeed wrote articles about it. So it says Olive Age 2 passed away unexpectedly on December 14th, 2019. Over the past week, the Bethel Church community, both local and global, has come together at the request of Andrew and Callie to pray for her resurrection. We have done this in accordance with the Bible, the basis for which is modeled by Jesus in the New Testament,

as a church we have been contending for, singing about, and witnessing God's power to save and heal for over 50 years. It is normal for us to ask, trust him, and then glorify his name, regardless of the outcome. At this time, the family has chosen to move towards a memorial service for Olive to help cover funeral and living expenses for the family. Callie and Andrew are incredibly thankful for the prayers and support that the community, has shown, as they and thousands of people have been believing for a miracle, we continue to stand with and support the family through this time of loss. And that was posted December 20th. So they prayed from December 14th to December 20th to raise this two-year-old baby from the dead, essentially. I remember when this was all coming out and seeing it on social media.

and I felt so angry with Bethel, honestly. It's hard to put in a word. I had a lot of compassion for these parents. I don't believe what they believe. Obviously, I don't support Bethel anymore, but at the end of the day, these are people, and their baby died unexpectedly. And I was filled with so much compassion, but also anger.

These parents are grieving. Their baby has died, and they are in denial, and the church is sanctioning this, worship 24-7 thing to raise this baby from the dead. And I felt like they were giving these parents false hope. It felt to me like emotional abuse. I did not feel like it was the parents' fault. I was sitting there thinking, if my two-year-old died and somebody told me if I pray hard enough, maybe my baby will come back to life. I would also be praying 24-7 out of church and demanding everybody else pray too. I would be trying to cling to any hope that my baby

would come back. The fact that the church was supporting this and not giving them like grief counseling. I was thinking, why are y'all not the hands and feet of the church and surrounding these people bringing them casseroles and praying with them and setting them up with therapy? Because that's what they need. What really upset me is people were posting, we're praying that she will wake up in the morgue. And I was thinking to myself, is this really what you guys are hoping? You are hoping that this little two-year-old is going to be in the morgue and wake up cold in a box. It felt so inappropriate to me and predatory. To see BuzzFeed posting articles about it,

I was like, I cannot believe that I am associated with this place. I already felt like I had been deconstructing for a bit. I was not into these signs and wonders. I wasn't into making it an idol anymore. But here I am connected to this church and the world is seeing how inappropriate this is. this is when my marriage really, really started to fall apart because we fought about this so much. I was saying exactly what I'm saying right now because I felt that at the time that this was wrong.

He would scream at me and be like, your lack of faith is why she's not going to be raised from the dead and you should be ashamed of yourself for not having faith that God will do this. God says that all you need is the faith of a mustard seed for anything to happen. We really kept going back and forth about this. He's posting hashtag wake up olive. It's unsettling. All of those words are so the language of the church. It really feels like copy and paste of the language.

How do you know something is a cult? It's the language. It's the speech. It's the regurgitating of phrases that are just said over and over. over again. Bethel talks as if they are like at war. We are in a war with the world or whatever. What I would like to know is, you know, does she really believe what she's posting? Or does she feel like she is to put on this face of someone who really believes that this is possible or else her baby will not be healed? We must declare it. Because Bethel always would say stuff like that. Like you declare it

in Jesus' name that it is. Even if you don't believe it, these people, they almost treat these things like a challenge. We're going to show them what God can do. They might even see this as an opportunity to glorify God because in their grief, their brain has to make it make sense. Why did this happen? Maybe this is all happening so that we can bring praise to God. Maybe she stopped breathing so that she's going to be raised from the dead and this is going to be the greatest testimony that's ever happened in the history of Bethel. You almost convince yourself that everything has to have this grand purpose. I think people who lack empathy, like Ted, are really just in it for these signs and wonders, they start to see it as a challenge or something really cool to swarm on.

For example, and this is absolutely crazy, but Ted used to wish that he would find a dead person. He was like, I really hope that someday I'm driving down the highway and I see a car accident and someone's dead and I can pray for them and raise them from the dead. Ted had a shirt that said dead razor on it, which was so weird. We used to have this conversation where he would say, I really want to go to a morgue someday and like ask them if I can pray for their dead bodies. And I was like maybe not because that's insensitive. I really felt like I was talking to a brick wall.

He would say, I really want to like crash a funeral and pray for a dead body. He would push back on me and say, so it wouldn't be worth it if they're raising. from the dead. You'd rather let them die than me make people a little uncomfortable. Don't you think that they would be so thankful when their loved one is raised from the dead? What do you say to that? I'm the asshole because I am keeping people from being raised from the dead. Are they claiming that others have been raised from the dead aside from Jesus? Yes, they are. They're claiming that people are raised from the dead all the time and that people don't talk about it. Not necessarily at Bethel

Bethel, but there was a missionary woman who had got me into Bethel in the beginning, Heidi Baker, and they had said, like, oh, Heidi Baker sees people raised from the dead all the time. People would really latch on to this. I remember seeing like some news stories about someone waking up at their funeral, and they're like, oh my gosh, see, people were raised from the dead. I mean, I saw something in the news just the other day, how somebody, they were declared dead, but then they woke up at the morgue, but it was because they weren't actually dead. Someone called it too soon. They would claim that no, they were dead and they got raised from the dead.

And this is proof, but the mainstream media, like everything's a conspiracy. They don't want you to know. If you're serious about growing this new year, what you put into your mind actually matters. And as someone who lives and breathes careers and self-development, even I get overwhelmed trying to do it all. Between work, life, and trying to better yourself, self-care can start to feel like just another thing on the to-do list. But investing in yourself doesn't have to be complicated. And with Audible, it isn't. It's time to take care of you.

And who better to help than the top voices in well-being all in one place? With Audible's Well-Being Collection, you can level up your career, finances, relationships, sleep, parenting, or mindset. Whether you want motivation, clarity, or practical advice, there is something there to support you every step of the way. I listen while I commute, clean, work, or just when I use. a little bit of downtime. You'll hear from best-selling authors Breney Brown and Jay Shetty, chef Jamie Oliver, finance expert Rachel Rogers, and popular parenting guides like Raising Good

Humans. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audio book free when you sign up for a 30-day trial at outtable.com. Membership is 1495 a month after 30 days. Cancel any time. There's more to imagine when you listen. Towards the end of our marriage, these differences really start. to come up. I was starting to finally realize that why is it not okay to be gay? A lot of that came from the fact that I was on set all the time and I was making friends with people who were gay and I was making friends with people who had different beliefs from me and I was realizing they're awesome. I was never outwardly homophobic or anything, but being raised in the church, you do believe that it's a sin. Ted obviously still held those beliefs and the election was going on at the time.

we were voting for like local elections. I think was it Stacey Abrams who was running at the time. I voted for her. This was my first time voting Democrat. I was really changing my beliefs. Thank God we don't have to stay the same. Because it is embarrassing to like look back on the things that I believed. I take responsibility for it, absolutely.

But I also think that we are a product of our environment and what people tell us. I didn't go to college. So this was the first time that I was really shown. somebody with different beliefs than me, and I started to really open my mind. Trump was starting to gain popularity and Ted was about Trump. We would have these conversations where I'm like, please explain how he's godly. Because having been sexually abused as a child, I was mortified. I was really disgusted that he could support him.

I decided that I was going to vote Democrat. This was a huge deal. He was so mad because to him, I was essentially canceling out his vote. We did go vote. He voted red, I voted blue. He was real pissed about that. In the months leading up to when things finally hit its boiling point, I was feeling constantly

afraid. One thing that I had been doing, and I had actually been doing for years, was hiding our kitchen knives because I just had this fear that he would use them against me during an argument. I would often spend time late at night, just Googling, or I would go on red. and I would say, my husband did this and he did that, is that abuse. I think what's really sad about the internet is there's so many good resources on the internet, but at the same time, you're really at the mercy of whoever is responding to you. I remember when I posted that on the Christians

subreddit and they were telling me, yes, it's okay to get divorced. But there was, I think I posted on maybe the marriage one and I started to get responses that were very hateful from men telling me, What did you do to make him mad? Sounds like we're only getting one side of the story. I would cry myself to sleep at night, just reading these responses at people trying to put the abuse back onto me. He strangled me at one point, and they're saying it's very convenient that we can't hear his side.

I just had no sounding board for what I was going through, and it sounds silly to say that I didn't know that I was in an abusive marriage, but it was just so counterbalanced with the good things that he would do for me. he'd get me water, he'd drive me to work. He could be very love bombing and writing me love letters and getting me gifts. It just created so much confusion in my life and in my mind. I really felt like a prisoner in this marriage. It put me in a dark place. I was crying and I started pulling out my hair. I remember he got down on the floor and he took my hands and he said, you need to stop it right now because if you don't, I'm going to call somebody and they're going to come and pick you up and I'm

to have you institutionalized and you're not going to be able to get out because I'm your husband and I can sign you away. I could no longer tell him if I was struggling with anxiety or depression. I couldn't say those things because he would just sign me away. Later, I read books on domestic violence and I realized that that's actually something that happens. I didn't realize that that was an abusive tactic that people say and the power that they have over you. I was feeling really alone. I wasn't sharing anything really with people in my life. I did tell one friend that he had anger problems. And there was another friend who was also in an abusive type marriage, but we were both very Christian and trying to stay married. So I always joked that we were like in this

little sad woman's club trying to make our marriages work. We're both divorced now. That was the only person I really confided in. And I didn't even tell her the extent of it. I just said he can be really mean. It was very isolating being in Atlanta and feeling like our marriage was just completely falling apart. At the same time, I was still working for that Marvel actor who had come to Atlanta. So in December of 2019, they asked me if I would move to L.A. and be their nanny permanently. They had made an official job offer, like sent me how much money they would be giving me, telling me I could use their car. and they were even offering Ted connections to try to get into the film industry.

So at the time, I was like, wow, this is amazing. This is going to be so big for us. This is everything we've wanted. And now he has these connections. And he can definitely be a production assistant now. I felt like I was riding this high while also going through turmoil in my personal life. What was surprising was Ted's reaction. I thought that he would have been so excited for this.

It's kind of like your big break in a way. You have someone in the industry who's willing to vouch for you and get you on sets. He had the complete opposite reaction. He was not happy about it. He didn't really want to move to L.A. We were already disagreeing politically. And after the Wake Up Olive situation, we just had such clashing beliefs. And it was becoming very apparent.

I'm hanging out with people who are more. liberal and I'm learning a lot of things about the world that I hadn't really thought about before growing up where I did. He was just so afraid that we were going to move to L.A. and I was going to not be a Christian anymore. I was telling him, this is everything that we've wanted. What really is this reason? And his answer is so shocking because he was truly self-aware. He said, I'm afraid that if we move to LA, you are going to thrive and you are not going to need me anymore and that you're going to leave me. I just tried to reassure him, no, that's not going to happen. Like, it's me and you. We're doing this together. But we decided to shelve the conversation just for a couple weeks.

My employers told me that I could take a couple weeks to think about it because it obviously was a very big deal to move all the way from Atlanta to L.A. During that time, we went to Disney World. We decided that I was going to run this half marathon. And this was obviously a huge deal because at one point in our marriage, I had been very chronically ill and could barely walk around the grocery store. I had worked so hard,

I had learned to like run through this pain. And it ended up making me feel better. I trained for a half marathon and I was so proud of it. He was going to watch me run it with my cousin. We had always been really close. And this was something that Ted had resented. but my cousin was completely unaware of this. He thought that they were best friends. He was a part of

our wedding. He just thought that we were going to go and have this great vacation and that he was going to run this half marathon with me. Ted started being kind of aggressive and negative with my cousin, and the entire trip felt so uncomfortable. There was so much tension. We spent one day in the park, and if we wanted to go ride one ride, Ted would be like, no, I don't want to do that. Or we'd say, hey, what if we go and get this snack? No, I want to go get this snack. And it was just so combative and weird. It was awkward for all of us to the point where my cousin pulled me aside and was like,

hey, is there something wrong with Ted? I think he was just trying to mark his territory in a really weird way. We were going to ride this cool new Star Wars ride that was coming out. And we all weren't able to get these express passes, but Ted was. So he literally made us wait in the car for an hour. hour in the hot car while he went and ran in to go ride this ride without us, which was inconvenient because my cousin also had a son, but we wanted him to have fun. So we were like, okay, well, we'll wait for you. That night, we were going to go to bed really early because these Disney races, they start

at five in the morning. We ended up getting into an argument. It was so stupid. I was saying, oh, it was sad that we weren't able to get the express passes for it. And he said, actually, You could have. I just chose not to. I was like, what do you mean? And he said, well, there was an option in the app, actually, where I could have added you guys, but I didn't. He had told us before there wasn't enough passes. You know, I couldn't get you guys on. So when I found out that we could have ridden this ride and we could have all gone together, obviously I was upset. And I was like, that's not okay. When I pressed him like, what is that about? He did not have any sort of answer. And it's, nine o'clock at night, we're arguing about this. Eventually, I say, listen, I have to go to bed. I guess we're just going to go to bed mad. But then this is when he starts throwing back this Christian thing that has always said, don't let the sun go down on your anger. So he's saying, you're not allowed to go to bed until we make up. He's keeping me up really late when he knows that I have this huge race that I've been training for for over a year. I would literally get under the

covers and try to sleep and say like, I am so serious, I have to go to bed. And he would rip the covers off of me and not let me sleep. I ended up feeling afraid of him. I ended up recording him. This is something that I would often do, which this is another red flag. It's not normal if you ever feel like you have to do this. I would take out my voice memo and I would start recording. Just in case he kills me or just in case he really hurts me, I have record of him verbally abusing me threatening me. I have this recording where he said, turn it off. And I said, no, I'm not turning it off. You're scaring me. Eventually, I did turn it off, but he ended up flying off the handle. My cousin was in the other room. And I said, you can't hurt me. My cousin's here. He would protect me.

And he said, I'll beat your cousin up. And he started threatening him. It was an Airbnb that we were staying at. It was a nightmare. Did your cousin overhear any of this? No, he didn't, because he had a son, and so they had on white noise. I ended up going to bed at one in the morning, and I had to wake up at three. So I only got two hours of sleep. I think he was trying to make me not finish it. He knew that I would wake up and do it,

but I think he was trying to make it as much of a miserable experience as he possibly could for me. I did end up going to run the race. It was one of the best races ever up until I ran the marathon a couple years later. Me and my cousin had such a good time. We have so many pictures of it. And Ted, he likes to play The Good Husband. He was texting me during the race, telling me how proud he was of me.

He was being very supportive. And when we crossed the finish line, he was happy at first. He met us at the finish line with my nephew, and he congratulated us. But as the day went on, my cousin and I were talking about the race because we're still on this high of, I can't believe I did this. Ted just started sulking all day. And you could just tell that he was pissed. And I had no idea why he was mad at that point. And we were trying to include him in the conversation, too.

We would say, what's your favorite park, Ted? We would change the subject and talk about things that he wanted to talk about. And he would just give us short answers. And no matter how much we tried to engage him in conversation, he was just having none of it. We obviously spent so much money to come here. My poor cousin had flown out and thought that this was going to be such a great trip. and it was turning very sour, very fast. We decided that we were going to go out to eat at the Yacan Yeti restaurant at Animal Kingdom.

And this is one I'd been looking forward to so much. I follow like Disney food blog where they talk about all the good places to eat. And I was just excited to try it out. While we were sitting there and eating, things were going pretty good. I ended up ordering this Kobe beef burger. And my cousin had ordered this teakamasala. but he had been going back and forth between the burger and getting this dish. When the food came out, my cousin started looking at my plate, and he was like, whoa, Juby,

your food looks so good. And I tried it and I was like, it is so good. And he kept dropping hints to try to get a bite of my burger. I asked him, do you want a bite of my burger? And he said yes, obviously. And I ended up taking my knife and fork and I cut him off a piece of the burger. all of a sudden the mood shifted. Ted was so angry. He like sat back, crossed his arms, and was sulking the rest of the dinner. I had no idea what had upset him. We were confused. Was it something that we said? The rest of the dinner was just me and my cousin talking, pretending like this wasn't happening. When the waitress came, Ted was like, thank you so much. This food was amazing. It was the best. He was, he was. He was. He was. He was. He was. He was. He was. He was. He was. He was. He was. He was being so kind and flowery to this waitress. It really upset me, you know, because here he is

treating me and my cousin like trash. My cousin ended up going to the bathroom with my nephew, and I turned to Ted, and I said, so you can be nice to the waitress, but you can't be nice to your wife. I was being a little sassy because I just was so fed up with his behavior the last 48 hours. We ended up getting into it, and he told me that the reason that he was mad was because I gave a bite of my burger to my cousin without offering it to my husband first. That was disrespectful because Ted was the man at the table. Here I am defending myself saying, well, if you wanted a bite of my burger, I would have given it to you. You just didn't say that you wanted a bite of my burger. We're walking down the stairs and out of this restaurant and he completely lost it. And there was a

large crowd of people. Tons and tons of people packed. He starts screaming at me that he He is going to take my credit cards and my ID, and he's going to throw them in the parking lot so that I am going to be stranded and will have no way to get home. Just for clarity, people ask me many times, did he have a drug problem? Did he have a drinking problem?

No, this is all sober behavior. Ted was absolutely losing his mind, screaming at me. There were people staring. Like, it was completely a scene, like a little circle forming, around us. Nobody did anything. My cousin ended up coming out. So at one point, my nephew is watching Ted scream at me and say all of these things. I was kind of like, it's fine. We'll meet up with you in a minute. I ended up walking off because I just wanted to get away. He followed me and he tried to

grab my arm and I said, no, I'll talk to you in a minute. I'm not doing this right now. And I said, You're acting like trash, which is not the nicest thing to say. But for the rest of the day, he kept saying that back to me and wanting me to apologize over and over for saying that he was acting like trash. If you're serious about growing this new year, what you put into your mind actually matters. And as someone who lives and breeds careers and self-development, even I get overwhelmed trying to do it all. Between work, life, and trying to better yourself, self-care can start to start to do it. feel like just another thing on the to-do list. But investing in yourself doesn't have to be complicated. And with Audible, it isn't. It's time to take care of you. And who better to help than the top

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There's more to imagine when you listen. We're at Disney and things were just very bad. We ended up somewhat making up. I was trying to put a band-aid on the situation because my cousin was there. And we only had one day left. Let's get through today. We will address this situation. Tomorrow, when we're back home in Atlanta,

I just remember being at the airport, flying home from that trip and crying, looking outside of the airplane and thinking, I don't know what my life is going to be like now. By him doing that in front of my cousin, it really forced me to be honest with myself. I knew that my cousin was going to maybe tell other family members what happened. This whole facade that Ted was just this perfect prince, it was shattered in a very big way. And I am so thankful, honestly, that that happened in such a public way because it forced me to address it publicly. I'd been trying to address all of these things privately and it was killing me.

The next day, I was back in Atlanta. I woke up and we started talking about all of the things that had happened at the restaurant. I told him, I am so scared to have kids with you someday because you yelled at me and cussed at me in front of my nephew. Would you ever yell at me like that in front of our children? He said, if you deserved it. I said, well, then I'm not having kids with you. As soon as I said that, he lunged at me and he strangled me. I just went limp when that happened.

He got up and he hit me and then he walked away. All of a sudden, he's on the floor and he's crying, saying, oh my gosh, I'm such a bad person. I'm so sorry. I can't believe I did that. Please forgive me. This was his go-to when he would be abusive. He would become the victim himself to try to get me.

to comfort him despite the fact that he was the one perpetrating this violence, I didn't fall for it. And I said, please just leave. I'm scared of you. He didn't want me to call the cops. And he left. In that moment, I was just so aware of how alone I was. I felt like I had no friends and no family to call. The second you tell somebody what you're going through and the second you tell somebody that your husband strangled you, they're not going to let you stay with them. or at least this is what I'm thinking in my head. And I didn't know what I was going to do yet. So I ended up calling the domestic violence hotline. I just Googled it and decided to call them because I knew it was anonymous.

Honestly, that completely saved my life. I remember sitting at my kitchen table so that I could look at the walkway to make sure that he wasn't walking back up to the house. I called this lady and I told her what he had done. She was very calm, very sweet. I said, I don't know if I'm in an abusive marriage. I don't know what's happening. She said, can I walk you through a list of questions? A lot of the questions were like, has he ever put his hands on you? Has he ever withheld money from you financially? At the end of it, she told me that I had said yes

to 11 of the 13 questions. One thing I really appreciated about her is she did not pressure me to do anything at all. She was just a very loving place to hear my concerns. and what I was going through. I remember crying and even defending him, saying, you don't understand. He can be really, really nice sometimes. He can be really, really amazing. And she said, he knows that he has to be

because if he was awful all of the time, you would never stay. And that really hit me to realize maybe all of these good times are just a tactic to keep me here as long as possible. While we were talking about these things, Ted walked up the path, and I could see him through the window, and I told her I had to go and I hung up on her.

I really wish I could tell her thank you. I obviously never got to talk to her again. It was anonymous, and I just wish that she could know that she completely changed my life. She was exactly what I needed in that moment. He ended up coming back in, but I asked him to leave again. I don't remember how long he stayed, but he ended up leaving again, and I decided to call my mom. and I called my best friend. I am so grateful for how they both responded. They both told me that I didn't

need to make any decisions right now, which is exactly what I needed to hear. I was so afraid that I was going to call and they were going to say, you have to get divorced, you can never see him again. And nobody said that. They just said, we need to get you to safety for now. You can come home to Texas and we will decide what we're going to do later. Maybe you guys just won't see each other for a little bit. Maybe you guys can go to counseling. It's what I needed to hear to get me on the plane, to get me to come home.

So I ended up telling him that I was going to go for a little bit. I just needed some space. He decided to let me do that because he was just thankful that I didn't call the cops on him. He dropped me off at the airport, and I ended up kissing him goodbye. He took that as a sign of hope. I think he was hoping that I was going to come back.

But in my heart, I felt like I knew that I was never going to see him again. To me, it was a goodbye. I got on the plane and I came home and I was just a wreck. My parents picked me up at the airport and I just cried in their arms, a baggage claim. They were so good to me. As the days went on, I started to realize how bad he had actually hurt me. I couldn't swallow for more than 10 days without feeling extreme pain every time I swallowed. I feel so lucky to be alive that he didn't kill me because it was much worse than the first time.

During that time, I started to look into domestic violence books and to educate myself. Reading statistics about how indicative it is when a partner puts their hands around your throat and how likely it is that you'll end up murdered by that partner. Those statistics really helped me finally leave. One book I really highly recommend is Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft? When I was reading that book, I didn't have words to any of the things I was going through. I didn't realize the ways that he was subtly being controlling. I didn't realize that he was trying to make sure that I couldn't financially take care of myself.

He wanted to ruin the race for me and these sabotaging things that he was constantly doing. It was a hard time for me. I finally felt free. I finally felt safe. I ended up telling him on the phone that I was going to get a divorce. I think it took me like two weeks to finally communicate that to him that I wasn't coming back. Unfortunately, I had to leave behind a lot of things that I was really excited about. I decided that I wasn't going to be able to move to L.A.

There was no way I was going to be able to swing that as a single person. It already would have been hard with us being married. So I ended up not moving out to be the nanny. I was actually working for another family as well as a nanny at the time. They were so great too. And I had to call them up and tell them that I wasn't coming back, which was horrible because I loved those kids. It makes me so emotional because that family has been so supportive of me.

To this day, they still follow me on everything, and they tell me that they're proud of me for getting out. They understood, and they were very kind and gracious to me. I ended up going back to Atlanta one last time, and I created a safety plan to go and get my stuff. My dad went with me, and me and my dad, we have really dark humor. So the whole time we're there staying at a hotel. We kept joking, this is the worst vacation ever. This vacation sucks. I was very deliberate to not see him again.

Going back to the apartment and getting my stuff, we didn't have much space. I had to fit my entire life in a couple suitcases. So I couldn't take the wedding dress obviously. And I just remember dropping off this dress at Goodwill thinking, this is so sad. I felt like this was all of my hopes and dreams. It was everything I thought I wanted everything the church told me. I should be a married woman, a woman. of God and here I am with shredded dreams and now I'm divorced. That was very hard for me just dropping

it off at a goodwill and I wasn't able to bring back all of my journals because of the weight limit for planes. So I started ripping pages out of my journals and only taking pages that had things written on them. I filed for divorce two days before the country shut down. Had I not been in Atlanta to file because I had to file in person, I would have had to be married to him for so much longer. I did file a police report when I went back to Atlanta so that it would be documented what he did. We were able to get divorced over Zoom because of COVID, which was the most unexpected blessing. We ended up getting divorced in July, and I never had to see his face again, never had to see him or attend court. My dad gave me like an old car that was a

infested with spiders, but I was just so thankful to have a car. He gave me a job working for our family business, which I've been able to build a career out of that since they just really helped me get back on my feet. Coming back, I struggled a lot with PTSD. I was in therapy, and I was so afraid Ted was going to come and kill me. I just held this fear that he was going to come and get me, that he wasn't going to take no for an answer. One of the hardest things that I went through was the backlash of being a young divorced person in this type of culture.

Getting divorced was the worst thing that you could do. It was my biggest fear. I moved back to Texas and I obviously wasn't posting about him. It's very funny to see what people will do to try to get the tea. Once you get divorced, you realize that people will come out of the woodwork

and say like, hey girl, how are you doing? I would get so many of those types of messages. I mostly didn't respond to them. I don't recommend this necessarily, but I ended up meeting my now husband. A few months after this situation happened, very impulsively, I joined Bumble. He was my first and only date on Bumble.

We ended up going out to coffee and we talked for eight or nine hours. He was such a safe place for me. me. I literally cried on our first date about all of this traumatic stuff I had just been through. I was honestly not in a good place, but I just feel so grateful because he is genuinely the biggest feminist and most amazing human being. We've been together for four and a half years now, but when we first got together, I was so sensitive. There was a time where we were like making out. And I ended up having a panic attack and started crying and telling him that I was,

such a whore. And he just held me and told me that I wasn't over and over again. And we did that for like half an hour. I was remembering what Ted had said to me, if we ever got divorce, you would be such a whore. Thankfully, my husband, he has really helped me break through all of these very toxic thoughts that I had gained from the church. What's cool is that I have maintained my relationship with God and I've realized what's God and what's not. And I've been able to maintain that. And, like, a healthy way because he grew up in a church that gave him no religious trauma. So that's been cool. I ended up posting a picture of us six months into our relationship on my Facebook. And I thought that I had unfriended most of the people from the cult. But one woman, 65 or 70 years old, she saw it.

And she ended up messaging me. And she said, did you dare divorce Ted, the most amazing godly man, please tell me that you didn't divorce him and that you didn't give up on marriage. Young people just give up on marriage so easily these days. I spiraled over that message for so long. It's embarrassing how much that hurt me because it was everything that I was afraid that the church was going to think of me. I thought being divorced was the worst thing that you could be. And to have somebody be so ballsy is to send me a message and tell me when I knew the truth. I knew what I had been through and that he had almost killed me. I was very surprised by the amount of people who just went very quiet in my life. It was a year in, I started posting about domestic violence and I didn't

go into very much details at the time, but I said that I had left a domestic violence relationship. I posted it in October for Awareness Month, and I noticed that none of the church friends, none of our mutual friends liked it or showed me any sort of support. Well, I don't want to say none, but very few did. They all probably thought that I was wrong for divorcing him.

I felt like these people were truly my friends, even if we didn't believe the same things anymore. The fact that they weren't there for me was very painful. I've been posting on TikTok since 2021. I started posting just for fun. I actually originally started because I got a breast reduction and I made like a before and after video. And then I decided to start speaking out about the domestic violence that I had gone through

and the experiences that I had with Bethel. It has just been so amazing to see the response from people who've been through similar things and who can really connect. I think that it's so easy to suffer in silence when you don't realize that it's happening to so many other people. And I thought that my situation with Ted was so specific. I thought that nobody was going through the exact things that I was going through. But to hear that these tactics are actually so textbook. So being able to share on TikTok has been so healing for me.

Reading Instagram posts that I made when I was 18 and a part of a cult, starting off strong, with begging for money. I went on two mission trips with this cult, and I was always asking people to fund my mission trips. And this is actually a screenshot of a Facebook post posted to Instagram. I'm going to give it a four out of ten. Next up here is some creative, prophetic artwork. And we went to somebody's house, and we drew a bunch of stuff all over their walls. And I loved it. I said, so fun, your lives will be powered by God's unconditional love. Do you get it? It's powered. I'm going to give it a five out of ten. This next one is a Facebook post where I say,

anybody want a prophetic word? Might take a while to write, but I'd love to give y'all a word. So you'd be surprised I had a lot of comments on here. I was just giving out prophetic words like they're candy, okay? And mine weren't very good. I'm just going to be real. They were not that creative.

So I'm going to give this entire cringy pose a two out of time. Lastly, we have this picture of me for my second year graduation, meeting the leader of this organization, we called him Papa Bill. I'm not going to think too hard about that. But what I will say is I wish I had a picture of the crazier day that was before this. Let me see if I can find it. But they literally knighted us with swords. We kneeled.

They knighted us to go into the world and spread the good news. So I'm going to give this picture three out of ten. And lastly, we have a prayer schedule that I was very excited about. And I ended up going to this thing where we got locked into the church overnight so that we could go and touch the walls and pray for the walls and intercede for the physical building of the church. At around four in the morning, when I'm just sitting in silence praying for walls, I was like, actually, I'm tired. And I'm not feeling this at all, but I felt really holy while I was doing it. Quick reminder that if you're Googling, if your partner's actions are normal, they're probably not. I used to Google while my ex-husband was sleeping if it was normal for him to lunge at me but not actually hit me or to take my keys or to lock me out of the apartment.

Spoiler alert, it was not normal and it ended up escalating until I finally left after a life-threatening assault three years ago today. Flash forward to now, I just got married to the most wonderful person on New Year's Eve. He is kind, supportive, supports my independence, and has really helped me heal my religious trauma. We love to see it. But I just wanted to hop on here to say that if you're Googling your partner's actions on if they are normal, they probably are not. And that alone is a huge red flag and you deserve better. There has been like levels of feeling nervous posting because I still do have some layers of PTSD from the whole situation. I want to be able to use my voice to be able to share what domestic violence can look like because I think a lot of people truly don't know.

Actually, some of Ted's friends have been following me on TikTok. I have been posting more and more and they've been liking all of my posts about the divorce. That's been crazy. For years, I felt very, very alone, but it's nice to see that even if it's years later, that there is some level of support that is coming from those areas. I'm an ATP now, so I go to physical therapist offices and help with wheelchair evaluations for custom wheelchairs. And just the other day, the receptionist was like, oh my gosh, I saw your TikTok. She asked me what the cult was that I was a part of. I told her Bethel and her face fell.

She was like, wait, I have friends at Bethel. She was like, wait, I love Bethel music. And I was like, yeah, their music's good. You know, it got kind of awkward. One thing I did want to say is it's genuinely never too late to say the right thing or do the right thing. Just last week, I ended up getting a message from somebody from the cult in Pennsylvania. I think he's still a part of it.

But we had been friends at the time. And he sent me a long message on Facebook. Facebook saying how proud of me he was that I had been posting about what I'd been through with Ted. And he said, I wish I had said something sooner. I've read your post for years and I've never said anything. I was being cowardly. But I just wanted you to know that I've been supporting your posts and that I'm very proud of you and I'm thankful that you were able to escape that situation. And it meant a lot to me. I found your podcast and I listened to like. like all of it very quickly.

I was like, I wonder if I should submit. I was shocked when you reached out. I was so excited to be able to tell my story. Hearing about other cults that have been on the podcast and people who have been in toxic relationships, it has been so comforting to just know. We're not alone in these crazy things that happen. Like, no matter how isolating these situations can make you feel,

you really are not alone. There's tons of people who are experiencing these very crazy. Something was wrong. stories themselves. I can't thank you enough again for all of your time and your willingness. Purpose is so important in life and I'm just so thankful to people like the woman that you spoke with that holds space for people and be there and in that moment you really can support a survivor and change their whole life. That one response that you offer somebody that one moment of compassion can mean everything to someone. I would

just encourage people to remember that when you're met with the option of supporting survivors or criticizing them, the opportunity you have to be there and show up for someone can truly have a lifelong impact. Jubilee, I just think you're amazing. The whole team loves you. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I've felt so heard throughout the whole thing. I really appreciate you and the team and everybody who has a hand in this podcast. Next time, on something was wrong. Our relationship was quite normal and healthy at first, but it was when he got comfortable and when he gained my trust,

that things went south. On our second date, he mentioned to me that he had gone to jail, and at first I thought he was joking, just because of the way he so nonchalantly said it to me, I kind of laughed and he said, no, really, I was in jail for a DUI as a kid. I hit another car and served six months. She had disclosed to me how he had been acting when he was very drunk and that he was being

really, really mean to her, which was interesting to hear for me because part of me thought he doesn't act like that at all I've never seen that side of him. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe, friends. Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production, created and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow Something Was Wrong on Instagram at Something Was Wrong podcast. Our theme song was composed by Gladrags. Check out their album, Wonder Under. Thank you so much.

Time it.