Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and ManipulationKyle & Kari, Part 1 - Deconstructing The 2x2s
Former members of the Two by Twos Kyle and Kari (the group that our Meagan grew up in) discuss the apocalyptic focus on the religion, personal stories of deconstructing their beliefs, the peculiar structure of the group led by pairs of ministers called "workers", how Kyle and Kari joined and met as kids, how it compared to Meagan's experience, what they did (and didn't) believe growing up, how the pandemic led them to question their beliefs, and how they found their way back to each other after a difficult period of disconnection. Stay tuned next week to learn about the Facebook they created for former members and the devastating news that came to light.
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It iom Lo La Blanc and I'm Megan Elizabeth.
And Today is part one of our two part episode with Kyle and Carry, former members of the two X two s, which is the group that Megan grew up in Whoop wo. Kyle and Curry have a lot to say about recent developments in the group, which we will get into, but in this episode we're going to focus more on the religion in general and their per stories of deconstructing their beliefs. We'll discuss the structure of the group, which has no official church buildings and is primarily led by pairs of ministers called workers.
How Kyle and.
Curry joined and met as kids, and the differences between their experiences and Megan's.
We'll get into what they believed and the beliefs they never discussed, how the pandemic led them both to question their religion in different ways, and how they found their way back to each other after a difficult period of disconnection, and the next week we'll dive into the Facebook group that they started, which was initially just a place for former two y two folks to get some support and the life shattering experience of leaving their religion. But how when people finally had a place to share their stories, it snowballed into some devastating revelations about the group.
Yes, and all that is coming next week, But Megan, I'm curious. So this is the group that you grew up in. This is the religion that you know your family believed in, very much believes in, believes in present tents so corret Yeah, So what are your thoughts on this right now?
I mean, just it's.
An utter chaotic mindset really and just this complete torn down the middle of trying to protect the good part of the church and the good people in the church and the innocent, wholesome ways in which they worship, and also help show what can happen when these beliefs get taken too literally and you start programming generations of people to look to workers as almost godlike figures.
Yeah, this interview really clarified a lot of things for me about the two by twos, which, as we will discuss, don't call themselves the two by twos. No, which kept so many people from being able to share their stories with each other for so long. But it's a very unique structure, and it is uniquely positioned for people to be taken advantage of by the wrong people. Yeah, it's so hard when people you love and people you know are good people subscribe to a belie system that like wouldn't necessarily inherently be harmful if it weren't for the bad people sort of hijacking it.
Yeah, and it's also uniquely positioned for like the most wholesome best times ever in family connections, Like most of my high school friends still keep in contact with my parents. My parents don't have a television. People in the group don't when you call home, there's always company. They're playing games, Jenga, laughing. We always went outside, we always spent time together. We always just had, you know, an avoidance of some problems that families have that I'm sure this group lent itself into avoiding. So there's an upside, certainly, but the way that it lends itself to abuse is really hard to see when you're in it, and really hard to unsee once you see it.
Yeah. Well again, we'll get deeper into that next week, but for this week, we're going to focus on and Kyle and Carey, who are amazing. Megan can speak to that more than me because you actually talk to them.
I'm obsessed with them, and I think just at the broader context of this episode, is leaving any belief system and how do you do it when your spouse and you are at different paces?
And like what does that look like? And I think they're.
Just a perfect example of successfully moving forward together.
Yeah, with a complete upturn life and identity shift and everything and somehow coming back together. It is inspiring. So should we dive in with them?
Let's do it.
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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average twelve month savings of six hundred ninety eight dollars by New Customer survey who saved with Progressive between June twenty twenty one and May twenty twenty two. Potential savings will vary discounts not available in all states and situations. Welcome Kyle and Cai to trust Me. Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for having us, having us.
It's exciting.
Yeah, it's exciting to have you guys, especially because Kyle is wearing a trust Me.
Shirt right now.
We're fans.
Kyle says, he gets asked about it wherever he goes, So conversation starter.
Just FYI for people out there, it's true.
Yeah, I like to spread the good word.
Thank you, Yeah, thank you. Speaking of the good word, the good word.
Yes, Yeah, let's talk about the gospel of the two by twos. Let's give people a little broad explanation of what it is.
Yeah, tell us a little bit about who and what are the two by twos.
Yeah.
So the two by twos are an exclusivist group. They're a worldwide religion, and they're very very secretive, so they don't have anything published, they don't have websites, they don't like track finances or membership. There's been around since the late eighteen nineties, and they are a religion that doesn't take a name for themselves, so those inside the religion don't recognize any official or formal name for themselves. They call themselves the Way or the Truth or the Friends. Yeah, the friends and workers side of the group. They've been known as the Two by.
Twos for probably the past one hundred years or so.
They originally came from like Ireland, and they're called the two by Twos because they send their preachers in pairs.
Who boy too like I think most they think that that is a reference to Noah and the animals.
Can you clarify, Yeah, that is not a reference to Noah's ark. It's a reference to how they send their ministers out in pairs. They do that because they believe that Jesus established that in Matthew ten. So they believe in apostolic succession, which means that you can trace them back to the ministry that Jesus established in Matthew ten, and they believe that you can basically trace them all the way from that, so that they are the one true religion that Jesus established.
I was taught growing up this was from Jesus. No one started it. So there's no church buildings, there's no official name.
We meet in homes. We are Jesus's humble servants.
They don't acknowledge like a founder, even though there is one in Kyle, and tell you a little more about that.
Yeah, yeah, who is it?
They don't call themselves two by two at all. The two by two is sort of a name that people outside them call them. So it's actually easy to identify somebody who's left because they use that term, and nobody on the inside would use that term. They would just say the truth in the way and stuff like that.
Yeah, it's really not fair to call your religion the truth.
You can be trying to talk to somebody.
About it and like, well, the truth is lying to you. But that, oh my god, you know it's hard.
Tell us a little bit about the structure of the group, like what does it actually mean that people are going out two by two? Because I think a common frame of reference might be like Mormon missionaries who go out in pairs, right, but that's only for two years of their lives and they still, you know, like have a home that they sleep during that period. So yeah, can you just sort of set up what the structure is.
Yeah, So the main things about the church are they do not have an official church building. They meet in homes and then for every Sunday afternoon, they host gospel meetings, which is for a bigger crowd where the minister's pre and it's usually done in like a rented hall or a library or school. We even met in funeral homes sometimes. That's kind of a point that they're very proud of, is that they don't have an official church building and they meet in homes every Sunday morning and Wednesday evening, so you're basically meeting together three times a week most weeks. They believe in like a literal, fiery, eternal hell. The ministry. Do you want to talk about that?
The ministry? The only kind of comparison would be the Mormon Church, but it's for life, so it's not compelled in any way. People who want to become we call them workers. The ministers will probably use those terms interchangeably, workers and ministers. The workers is what they're called inside, and most people offer themselves up to be workers for life, and they're celibate. They don't have a home, they don't have really anything except for about it one or two suitcases worth of stuff for their life, and they travel around in pairs. One pair will be over an area they call a field, which might be a couple towns next to each other, and they'll hold some of their mission type meetings, or they call them gospel meetings. It's sort of they're proselytizing, I guess. They usually in a public hall or whatever, like we just mentioned. And then every year or so, depending on where you are in the US, it's every year they'll switch it up and switch up the pairs. And maybe one will stay and the other will go, or they'll both go and they'll switch up, and so every year you'll have a different pair of ministers in your area.
And because they're homeless, they live in the homes of church members, which, as we'll see later, is a problem.
Right.
Are the workers Are they all men? Or are there women as well?
Men and women? Okay, but same sex pairs.
Got it, got it? Got it?
And the male workers have more power. They're the ones making a hierarchy.
Yeah, there's a hierarchy where like the overseers are always men, and they hold more power.
They make all of the decisions.
Basically, so the younger brother workers and sister workers are always in subjection to the older men.
And we should say that an overseer will use that term a lot today too. An overseer is one of the senior brother workers over kind of a larger area, so maybe over two or three states something like that, and.
They divide them geographically.
Yeah, okay, my Mormon references, that's like the stake president and then you got the missionaries. But there's a bishop in between, which you guys don't have.
But there's some crossover though for sure. Yeah yeah, yeah.
And again like they don't acknowledge leadership as leadership, but it is definitely the overseers kind of approving everything over a certain area, and it would be the workers who would make the decisions as to who has a meeting in their home, who goes to that meeting, like who's assigned to which meeting, who might be allowed to take part or not take part depending on certain.
Rules, meaning participate in the meetings themselves. Yeah. So God, when you're when two y two's are usually when they're young, they what we call profess, which is they stand up and make a public sort of declaration during one of the meetings that they're going to be in this group, they're going to be part of it, they forever, right. They'll do it while they're singing one of the church hymns. The ministers will say, whoever wants to, you know, stand up and be whatever you can stand up, and then from that point on they can participate in the meetings by speaking something during a testimony time and praying publicly. And then a little bit later on, maybe in their teens or twenty is still often get baptized, which means that from that point on they can take communion. We don't call it communion, we call it the emblems.
But I'm going to say we a lot, but yeah, And professing is usually between ages like six to twelve. Most of the membership comes from people born in the group, so it would be around ages six to twelve that you would like make your choice to serve God forever.
I was going to make a few clarifications.
Okay, So number one, gospel meetings, Right, Sometimes you have a worker who's a little too zealous, and so you don't just get Sunday afternoon gospel meetings. For example, I had a worker in middle school who had Friday night gospel me O, and we also had Thursday or Tuesday night gospel meetings. So gospel meetings are technically for outsiders, but we had ours a lot of times in a nursing home, so very sorrowful message, already very sorrowful, singing, very like you know, eight people, most of them elderly, came meet us at a nursing home where we'll give you the good word that you're probably going to help.
Not popular.
What's in it for someone who's not in the group.
That's a great question. They rarely join.
Yeah, they don't offer like a lot.
No.
Interestingly, I don't think they often feel a need to because especially where we've been on the West Coast, there's a lot of people. There'll be several hundred people in a field, so a gospel meeting will have sometimes a couple hundred people who are already in there. So they don't feel a real need to spread the words. They would say that's what they do.
And not very secretive.
So I think there is a little bit of paranoia of being discovered, especially by like the government.
They're not registered as a church.
Oh really, because it's all kind of yeah, under the table.
Because my hope is that this podcast is listened to by people who were in the two by twos or are in the two by twos and can relate see y'all's experience or my experience. So different fields have different amounts of people. So sometimes we would go to like San Diego for vacation and we'd go to a gospel meeting and I'd be like, there's like fifteen cute boys here, and like this is dope. I love gospel meeting.
You know, y'all, let's do this.
I just wanted to shout out anybody who was in a little bit of more rural situation where the gospel meetings were not hundreds of people, they were much smaller.
Yeah, yours sounds really sad.
Yeah, yeah, there's probably about pre COVID estimates were about seventy five thousand members worldwide. In the Pacific Northwest, I would say, is one of the most densely populated areas, which is where we both grew up. So our conventions and gospel meetings were fairly large compared to other parts of the country.
I think who is making these estimates, Like if there isn't a clear hierarchy your organization, like, how is it all being assessed?
Well, the only written information really is worker lists, So if you can estimate that per one to two hundred people, there's a worker or two workers. You can kind of guess based on worker lists overtime what the general population is. I think that's kind of how the population come sure, right, and in the nineteen eighties it's estimated that there were double the numbers. That was like the peak membership time, which is when we were growing up, and it's definitely declined since then. And then because of what we do, which we'll talk about later, we've definitely noticed a decline in membership as well, right since COVID and with recent events.
It's super worldwide, even though it meets at homes. So for example, we've gone to like Germany before and been in a tiny village and my parents are like, where's the meeting, And we'll be sent an address of a home and you'll just like walk into somebody's house and sit down, and then you're treated like family because you're in this.
I mean, like that part sounds nice. There's a lot of parts that are very people wherever you go.
Yeah, you know, I remember when I was a kid and we would go like I would travel with my parents sometimes or like going a cruise or whatever, and if I ever met a Mormon person, it would be like, oh, people were everywhere. You know, I had Mormon radar, a really good Mormon radar. I could tell just by looking at people.
That's part of the lore.
Of it, isn't it Like it's spirit. I can tell our spirits the same, and it's.
Like, hmmm, no, we're kind of just weird in the same.
Yeah, exactly, have a very specific way of dressing and looking. If you recognize another one in the store, it's definitely because of the spirit.
Yeah, definitely. Shall I get into your stories? Yeah, tell us how you both joined?
Okay, Well, I was born and raised in IT, fourth generation, so all of my grandparents were professed and several of my great grandparents on both sides of the family. My family kind of was royalty, Like I had a great aunt who was a minister, and my grandparents were very well known. They had a meeting in their home, and they were also kind of a hub for workers, just the place where workers would go stay a lot.
And get their mail.
And they really trusted my grandparents, so they would open up and talk to my grandparents. So so, yeah, I was born and raised in IT and Kyle. I grew up next door to Kyle's cousin and they also went to meetings, which was very unusual I think to have your next door neighbor also be professing.
That just kind of happened.
Wow, I'm crazy.
So I met Kyle when I was like two, when he was five or wow.
And in the.
Two by twos, that's very highly discouraged that you date or marry outside of meetings and outsider.
We would call them an outsider exactly.
Worldly.
Yeah, so we were. I was very zealous, like I took the Bible very literally. I believed everything that I was taught and told about the Bible and in meetings.
I feel like I kind.
Of followed all the steps that you're supposed to follow at the ages that you are supposed to follow them, Like I profess when I was ten, and I was baptized when I was sixteen, and married when I was twenty two, and then you know, if you don't go in the work, kind of the understanding is that you'll get married and have babies for Jesus. So that's what I did. That's kind of my background. There's some rules that we didn't really cover, like how women, especially for women, like how women are supposed to look and dress, and oh, I was very zealous about those rules.
Do we want to go into that.
Yes, please walk us through the luck.
So women are expected to always wear skirts and dresses, at least to meeting. My family was a little more open minded in the sense that I was allowed to wear pants outside of meetings, like to.
School or just around.
I never cut my hair until I was probably in my late teens early twenties, and even then never above shoulder length. I never wore makeup or jewelry until I left meetings three years ago.
I didn't even know how to wear makeup at all.
You have described back in the like hairpoof is the hairpoof thing.
There's a hairpoof?
Did you have this a hairpoof?
Yeah, so it was.
Big in the nineties, but I feel like it's still some people still do the hair poof.
It might still be there's the hair is supposed for women, especially older married women, is supposed to be worn on top of the head. That's sort of a head covering. But yeah, it's one translation of the head covering versus so in the US it's always been for women, it's been buns, and you know they have hairstyles to go with it.
Right, Very victims.
And then there were some other arbitrary rules, like people weren't supposed to have TVs. A lot of people did. They just kept them hidden in cupboards. It was really looked down upon to go to movie theaters or go dancing?
Is that where you want to be when Jesus comes back to the earth?
Was right?
Everyone heard that everybody.
Always so I want to go go.
To movie theater, But what if Jesus finds you there when he gets back?
Hell? Is like real.
The more I think about it, the more I'm like, was this like a apocalyptic thing?
Because it was.
Like it was Jesus was always about to come back. And I'd be like, oh, I'm stressed about pollution, and people would be like, why Jesus is about to come back? Like it doesn't matter, and it's kind of a doomsday thing. Yeah.
You always feel like you have one at one foot on the edge of hell, and that Jesus literally could return at any moment. And I had scrupulosity OCD also, So that's a terrifying thing. And I didn't know what that was, of course, but I could not miss a day without praying, sometimes obsessively praying and reading my Bible, because I thought if I miss or if God is calling me to go pray and I don't do it and then I get in a car crash and die or something bad happens to me and I die without God, then I'm going to hell right right? You know?
So that was Yeah, that was rough.
A lot of people like, don't celebrate Christmas or have Christmas trees.
Because Jesus, it's rude to Jesus.
Ah, You're supposed to celebrate Jesus's birth three hundreds. Yeah, that's not his real birthday. It's a commercial holiday. And just to speak to your points, Like.
My parents are were.
Are pretty liberal, but like we did not have a TV hidden in our cupboard, We did not celebrate Christmas. And they really kept me away from pants for a while long ass time. Like I would roll my skirts up really sure I would bring I would have friends meet me at school and bring a pair of pants for me sometimes. But like I didn't get my first pair of jeans. They were Jinkos jeans from good Zooks perfect until I was in eighth grade and my mom cried and it was a really really really hard thing. But I had like i'd gotten kicked out of my private school and was going to a public school. And I was like, I am not walking in to a public school with a.
Jean skirt on my first day.
Mid year, and I'm getting these pair of Jinko jeans that honestly looked cool as shit, So.
I would love to see them.
If you have a picture, I will try to bring it back.
So I was thirty I was thirty three when I left meetings, and I owned two pairs of jeans.
Everything else was.
Skirts interest because if you're real scrupulous, if you're really really holy, you'll play sports and skirts hike.
And skirts will do that. Yes, So I mean if sister workers go hiking or something, though, the.
Worst skirts, that's that's crazy.
Underneath there's like a very big okay, black like shoes. Yeah, like like those black leggings with a skirt over it, and you're like, just wear the leggings.
I was going to ask about sports, because it's if TV's off limits and holidays are off limits, you're kind of it's like almost sounding a little bit like Jovah's Witnesses and my you know, my best friend was just very similar from doing sports as a kid.
But sports were allowed.
Not its.
Sometimes it wasn't.
Well. The tricky part is practice is often on Wednesday evening or Sunday morning, and nothing can take precedence over meeting. So if you are in a sport, like because there was a time that like I wanted to play soccer, for example, and the practices were Wednesday night and Sunday morning, so it's just like not a good idea to do that, right, and that and that's going to vary by family too, Like some families are much more kind of strict and conservative than other families.
I mean, that's true, I think probably of all bigger or somewhat big religions. It's true of Mormonism, some families were very very strict and some were not. And some families kicked out their children for being gay, and some families were welcoming, you know.
Yeah, And you can like kind of cherry pick and which ones you're really abiding.
By, you know, right, right, right.
That's an important point to know is acting on LGBTQ was definitely a big no no, and people could be excommunicated for being LGBTQ.
And if you're excommunicated, you are by their doctrine. And some people will say that's not true, but it was true essentially down to hell. So it's you know, having an overseer in charge of your soul is very scary.
Yeah, yeah, sounds like it. Kyle.
You also grew up in do we say the church?
What do you guys? How do you guys refer to it?
Meetings? Meetings, meetings?
Okay, yeah, so yeah, that's what we would say, is we grew up going to meetings where we grew up professing. That's the terminology we kind of use for people. I always say that if you walk into somebody's house and you see a picture of their family, you'll know which were which because the parents will be like, well, this is my son, this is my daughter, and this is my son who's not professing, something like that, Like you're introduced that way. You're professing first before you're anything else. Yeah. I grew up professing as well. My family. One set of grandparents professed, and I think their parents may have, and the other set of grandparents one one brought the other to meeting in college and and yeah they Yeah, we just grew up going to I didn't know anything else until the last few years. We just I just grew up going to meetings. Like I say, we knew Carriy. I knew Carrey from the time we were little, and it was kind of our whole world. I grew up in an area that had a lot of kids about my age, so I didn't even have unprofessing friends really just it was kind of my whole world. I went to school and I did stuff. My family was somewhat conservative at least maybe doctrinally or whatever, but not not too conservative. I played sports when I was younger, but I quit on my own when I got older because I knew. I just knew that no one had to say anything to me. I just knew that if it came in conflict with meetings, which we had a meeting in our home, we had once day meeting in our home, if there was ever a conflict, I just didn't want to force my parents to make that decision. So I just quit on my own. Oh, and that was kind of That's how it was. That's kind of how it was for me, Like hobbies, whys and things like that. Like I just knew that there was a certain you could You could be yourself to a point and then you stop, and then you're a professing person. That's the main thing that matters.
Yeah, And even with like making friends at school, it's kind of that way, like you have to remember that before being a friend, you have to be an example. So it's really difficult to have quote unquote worldly friends. It's just easier to have friends who are professor.
Right, you're told you you may be the only Bible anyone ever reads. We've heard that at convention a few times.
Oh no, that is there's a lot of pressure and they're all going to help. Oh so you're just a math class like trying to learn fractions and.
You're like, everybody's going to hell. Everybody's going to hell. It's crazy.
Do people have to be an example to them?
Yeah?
Do do people?
Do any of you feel responsible for like saving people at school or like absolutely yeah.
Yeah yeah. But at the same time, you don't preach, so you wouldn't like go up to someone and say, hey, I found Jesus do you want to hear about it or come to my meetings? But if somebody started asking you questions, then it would be like very exciting and you would invite them to come to a meeting, which rarely happened.
One time in my entire life actually.
The same strangely quick, they usually don't come back either.
I brought a million people to meeting because I was like, you're coming to my sleepover on Saturday night and that's where we go Sunday morning.
And I will hate you if you don't do it.
So yeah, yeah, you know, was it just kind of like the culture that you were in or was your faith really strong?
Like how deep in were you emotionally? Spiritually?
Very in?
There was no. I don't think I even questioned the at least consciously. Looking back, I did, but I don't think I consciously even questioned any part of it until probably my twenties. It was very very real to me. Now if you it's kind of funny because if you'd have asked me back then, like are you the only ones going to heaven? I would have said, well, no, of course not, and I would give some answer. But I knew that for me, I had to keep doing that, so I was very scrupulous too, in just different ways. There's less demands on males as they grow up. We don't have to dress a certain way or anything. We just have to be you know, it's expected to be presented to look like your classmates, right, well, I mean, you know, no tattoo's ear rings.
Whatever, And that long hair was short hair. Yeah, you have to have short hair.
Yeah your male Yeah. And I actually had a minister tell me one time, we shouldn't have facial.
Hair, but but some of them do now, like some ministers have facial hair.
Yeah, that's that's happening now. But yeah, I was a real, real true believer, and it did, like even in through college, I would think about it in terms of, you know, if I met a friend, it's like, well, is this a good friend to have? Is this a good Can I be an example to them? And are they a good influence on me? That that calculation just always running in your head one hundred percent of the time.
Wow, yeah, which makes you very like hyper alert all the time.
I had really awful anxiety growing up, and I was very zealous as well. Like I said earlier, I took everything very literally. It's just so normalized, like we were the normal ones. Everybody else was kind of scary, evil worldly aliens. Like that's how it always felt, and it's preached that were this world isn't our home. We're passing through the next world. The next life is our home, which makes you feel like you don't fit in and you don't belong pretty much, or at least.
That's how I felt, and you shouldn't.
Yeah, And they want you to be separate.
Yeah, even though you're going to school in the world and you're going to work in the world, they want.
You to be separate and to be proud of the fact that you're different in that you're separate.
Right, You're in the world, but you're not of the world.
Which is a verse in the Bible. Yeah.
So the Amish people are completely wrong. They've taken themselves out of the world. And I'm like, please just let us do that so we can look like we're like eighteen hundred dollars in private, you know what I mean, Like I always want it. I wanted us to just go live on a farm somewhere like the Amish people, because I didn't like doing to school or going out and looking different. But something you just said reminded me we're passing through this life. Let's talk about the funerals. What is happening there.
Yeah.
I had no idea that that wasn't like a normal thing, right.
Yeah, I didn't know until we started so many funerals.
Growing up opens funerals from the time you are born.
Yes, and the funerals weren't necessarily about the people who died. They were they were gospel meetings.
M And the way you've kind of described it before is just because the population in the group is so old.
Is that also how you conceive of that?
Yeah?
Yeah, and also you travel for them out of older people. Yeah, it's like, if let's compare.
It to like Young Life.
If Young Life is having a dance two hours away and Tulsa and you live in Oklahoma, everybody's going to go to the dance, and Young Life that's our funeral.
Oh really, And like you travel for everybody.
Everybody goes because it's like this huge cultural touchstone of like this life means nothing.
This is like a funeral is the best place to to preach.
Well, you're celebrating that they've moved on to heaven. Yeah, there's like a pot luck after. It's a big social gathering.
Oh my gosh, I didn't realize that.
It's very macob.
It's been very hard for me to find like traction and actual life or to give a shit at all. About what I do and on this life, because it was just so drilled into my head, like it doesn't matter, it's it's fleeting, like our one of our homes, Like life has leading, cleating, cleating, it doesn't matter at all, don't care about it, whatever.
Something like that.
You should never.
So it's people you don't even know. You're like, oh, there's a funeral, guys.
Let's all I meant times because we have conventions. Conventions are like in your state, a bigger gatherings, like a bigger gospel meeting.
Everybody in the state will go.
You can sometimes go to out of state conventions and so you know everybody.
It's like a bigger sense of family.
And I go, oh, my goodness, the old lady that makes the pink frosted cookies for convention died right right.
And one of the favorite pastimes of two by Two's is genealogy, not like in the Mormon Church, not like literal genealogy you can say, but like figuring out how everybody is related to everybody. So if, for example, somebody died and I'm just like this little kid, and I'm like, who's.
Funeral are we going to?
Like?
Who is this old person. I don't know.
They all look the same to me, especially if they're like old ladies. Oh you know, it's so and So's you know, cousins, aunt and just like everybody. Like when you meet somebody that you haven't ever met before at a convention, the first thing you do is try to figure out who you.
Know and how you're related and if you're related.
Which is kind of dangerous if you're dating to like you're almost breath inside, you gotta find out first.
Yeah, right, yeah, are many people related?
It sounds seems very I used.
To Yeah, totally. I mean for the last four generations. We'll get into when this was started. I guess it was almost four or five generations ago. I mean, nobody's really joining.
Wow, well, I can't believe you guys found partners that we're not.
Really.
It's really funny because we both did DNA tests a while ago for like our family history stuff that I liked, that's one of my hobbies, and I was actually nervous, like waiting for the results.
I was like, please don't let us be related, Please don't let us be.
And you weren't, but we aren't.
OK.
She's like, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
I also want to like note something that was kind of part of a big part of the culture for me as a female, and this is important later on when we start talking about recent events.
I think that it's important to.
Note that there's a culture of girls dating and marrying people a lot older than them. So when I was a teenager, I dated a couple of different guys who are six to seven years older than me, you know, who are fully adults. And I think that's important to to like acknowledge that it wasn't something that was discouraged. It was maybe even encouraged that as long as the person is professing, it's a good thing. If you're dating somebody professing and who's you know, solid in the truth and there So there are a lot of age gaps, which is I didn't realize growing up that that wasn't normal either, or that was kind of weird sometimes.
Or just getting married super young to somebody your own age also really yes.
Getting yeah, marriage to be young because you can't have sex before marriage. So you know, Mormons, a lot of people do get married very young.
Yeah, yeah, very similar.
Yeah, a lot of a lot of interesting similarities. And then of course a lot of very big differences.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's weird how similar it is to Mormonism and how also how Mormonism just sounds so much more fun.
But anyway, I progress.
Okay, Mormons do community really well, yes, that's true.
You don't have hell I don't know. It just sounds better.
And you get to see your families in heaven.
Yeah really yeah, but not if you aren't in the celestial kingdom.
So you're a good Mormon.
Yeah yeah, yeah, if you get married in the temple and you do everything right, which I did not, then yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, how did y'all get this crack.
In your belief system? How did you start to deconstruct.
Yeah, I think you started that process before me.
It's really hard when when couples, one starts going first, and sometimes, as we're seeing right now, one goes and the other doesn't. And how do you rectify that because the one still in completely thinks that the one out has gone completely bonkers, and the one out thinks the one and is brainwashed.
So anyway, it can be terrifying.
Yeah.
Yeah, we did it at the same time, but not kind of at the same rate, and we were just not really together. The whole time, and it was it was tough. So for me, it's one of those things, like I say, where you kind of looking back, I can sort of post date some things from a long time ago. But I heard a Mormon term that I really like, I've I've co opted from listening to Mormon the conversion stories, which is the broken shelf. I think a Mormon person one time said that, you know, if you have any doubts, or you have any things you don't understand, just put them on a shelf. And so people who've left the Mormon church ex Mormons will use the term broken shelf for the shelf breaking, like one extra thing got put up there and they just couldn't the shelf couldn't handle anymore and it broke, and that's what caused them to leave. And so for me, I think, I think there was probably a lot of things up there, but for me, it was was COVID. When COVID came, it was something that we were really concerned about. We both have health issues and so to our kids, and we were really concerned about it. And there was a lot of there was a lot of sort of maybe COVID denial, conspiracy theorists stuff kind of in the group and kind of just in the zeitgeist among them. And and I don't I don't hold that against anybody for you know, their beliefs or political things or how you felt about COVID or whatever. But there was kind of a there was. It was very disjointed as far as addressing it. And you know, we meet in homes in little rooms and we all sing and it's it's little people and then pass emblems around and all partake of them, drink from one cup, you know, share a piece of bread. So it's like there's it was just a great peatrish for for COVID, right, And so we stayed away for a while. We left and and we stayed away for a long time, and and there was a lot of kind of dissension among people and even among the ministry. Even there were some times where we called into meetings, they had some call in numbers and we even't heard some kind of conspiracy theorist type stuff from the platform. And it really started affecting me that that these kind of chosen called of God people were saying some kind of crazy stuff.
And yeah, it was more important, I think to be in meeting where you could be saved than it was to protect your family, right.
Yeah, So for me, it was a couple It was kind of that, a lot of that, and then sort of realizing that maybe some of this stuff wasn't really led by God per se, adding that to the shelf and realizing I got a lot of stuff up on that shelf, and I processed it very slowly. I think carry went through really quickly. She'll probably tell you I was very very slow with it, and it was very painful and do not recommend, but the constructing is hard. Yeah, But for me, there was there was one point where you know you're with it. Your Sunday morning meeting is kind of the same all the time. It's the same little group of people. And there was one point where the disagreement about whether or not you should mask during a pandemic was so big that they actually split the meeting into two homes. There was a masked meeting and an unmasked meeting, and there was.
One masked meeting and all of the other meetings were unmasked meetings, right.
And we weren't even going at the time, but I just thought that, I thought, man, that's that's so crazy that, you know, these are the are supposed to be our community, these are God's people, and they can't even there's so much disagreement with them that they can't even look out for each other. And that really bothered me. And then and I think the disagreement was a bit public, and at one point we had the worker in our field, the older brother worker in our field, sent out an email to everyone that said, basically, we need to not worry so much about this type of thing. Really, what really matters is eternal stuff. We need to have more of an internal perspective on things. This is just a thing, This is just a worldly thing. We don't need to worry about it so much. It's really important to come to meetings. You know, in the middle of a COVID, you know, emergency rooms are full. Everybody's kind of scared of this thing and are the leader of our area is telling us to just get back into meetings. And what actually broke my shelf. If I had to point to one thing, it was in this email. I'll keep this email for the rest of my life because it affected me that much. There was a verse in it from the Old Testament. He dug deep into the Old Testament and found a verse about God bringing the plagues, and he said, you know, God's the one who controls the plagues, and so you know, the implication being, if he wants you to get COVID, you'll just get it.
It's up to us to like protect each other because God is the one who puts the plague on people's houses.
Yeah, And so I think I remember where I was standing at work. I think I was on my lunch break talking to Carry on the phone, and I can't remember if you read it to me. You read it to me over the phone, and my jaw fell open, and I that my shelf broke right there. I was just I was done. I said, we can't go back. And it was probably another six months before I believed it that I was not going back. But I couldn't. I couldn't recover from that because I realized that this is a bunch of confused people, and they're confused in the same way everybody's confused right now. COVID was a confusing time for everybody, and you know, everybody had different feelings about it and what to do about it. And I don't be grudge anybody's individual feelings, but the fact that there was no unity and the only place I didn't feel comfortable taking my family was to one of these meetings. You know, I went to work and I wore a mask, I was around vaccinated people. I go to the store, I go to the bank, I have a mask on. But in these meetings, people are saying, you shouldn't do that because that's bad and the government's trying to keep us from from worshiping God.
A it was the fear that was they were considered to be bad, like we shouldn't be afraid of things.
Well, yeah, people were saying things like, well, we shouldn't live in fear, and it's like, well, but.
The thing is they want to live responsibly, so live in a different kind of fear. And what was happening from where my point of view, which I wasn't going to meetings at this point, but was that if you don't go to those Wednesday and Sunday meetings and hear the message over and over and over and over again, very week after week, you start losing a grip on people, and you start losing exactly the fear over them, which is the only thing keeping them and a lot of the times that is, this is the only right way, this is and you know, this kind of I've already used the term cherry picking, but this very like odd interpretation of the Bible. People started listening to other sermons online that maybe made perhaps a bit more sense or had a little bit more soul and weren't just because a lot of the preaching and the two by twos is nothing at all except everyone else is wrong. Everyone else is wrong, And you're like, yep, okay, but what but what do we believe? What do we do?
Yeah?
So, yeah, I was curious, like in like, how do you conceive of the overseers in that situation, because like in Mormonism, it's very clear like, oh, the prophet is the one who's in touch with God, and then the prophet, you know, has these people under him.
There's a whole like pyramid of you know, there's.
A hierarchy, and we know who's at the top and he's directly getting the message from God. Do you do people believe that the overseers are getting the message from God directly or yeah, a.
Lad baby, Yeah, I mean I think they do. And I think that was part of the kind of the issue there is because different overseers in different areas. So we live in Arizona right now, so we have a different overseer than the one that was the overseer in Washington at the time, and they had completely different ways of handling it. But everyone kind of looks to them for guidance because you assume, you know, God's God's leading them, and even if you don't take the Bible super literally, like maybe I didn't, you still believe, well, these are they're going to do the right thing, you know, they're yeah, spirit led, God led whatever.
But that did create a lot of cognitive dissonance because you see like one overseer saying, we need to take this very seriously, we need to like you know, stay away from meetings for a while and do online ones. That was happening in the Pacific Northwest and in Arizona they were like, we shut down when basically everybody in the country did, and as soon as it was legal to open back up, they were like, let's go, like we're back in meetings, you know, things are going back to normal, And that was like June twenty twenty.
Well, and I also want to mention that there are people among the friends the two x twos died from COVID, but there was so much denial among the group that even even people who knew them or were family to those people just pretended that that wasn't it.
And they wouldn't say why they died.
Right.
There was actually someone I knew fairly well, an acquaintance anyway, who was a little younger than me, but had a kid the same age as one of our kids, and she passed away and her husband was in the ICU, and so we found out that her kid, who was the same age as one of my kids, was living with grandparents because one parent had died and the other one was in the ICU for a long time. And the official story was, well, yeah, she got sick and died. Yeah, we don't really know. And I just the denial of reality was so hard for me to deal with, you know, It's like there's I think being worried about COVID was interpreted as sort of a lack of faith, maybe by a lot of people. And I realized when I read that letter that my faith as I saw it didn't even match the groups. You know, I had faith for things I couldn't see, like I believe in God. I can't see God, but I have faith that He's there. And people in the group, and maybe not all of them, but some of the people, and some very influential people in the group, their faith was not believing the things that they could see, and I couldn't square that anymore. It was just it felt. It really broke me.
And we have chronic illnesses in our family, like kyilas type one diabetes. So when we finally did get COVID, it was even with vaccines on board and packs love it on board, it was still a serious illness for him. And you know, we have a child with asthma, and I have chronic health issues that can be exacerbated by viruses and it can make me flare for months. So this was something that was like really important to us, was protecting our family, and it just didn't seem like our lives were.
Valuable to the church. It's such except that we be in meeting.
It's such twisted religion logic, and so many of them do this where you're like, well, your well being on this earth isn't actually that important. The well being of humans, the well being of the earth, none of this matters because the world's about to end. It's so, it's just so tragic how many people get caught up in that and don't like actually live their life lives and be present and like take care of themselves and take care of their families because of this belief system. That's so it just sucks, man.
And I think it also points out just this really divided line between, like you said, overseers, like on the West Coast, marriage and divorce is can can you guys talk a little bit about the difference between the East Coast and the West Coast.
Yeah.
Yeah, So on the West Coast growing up, we were shot that merit that there are certain circumstances in which.
You can get divorced. It's really heavily discouraged.
But if you do get divorced, you need to stay single for the rest of your life. It doesn't matter how old you are. You cannot get remarried.
Really, if you do get.
Remarried, you cannot take part in the meetings anymore. You can still attend, but you have to sit there and listen and not You're not part. You're not professing, You're not part.
Meanwhile, an eight year old like me is sharing I professed when I was like eight or nine and was so dislike, like I wrote in my Bible, I love the LORB with the be.
So that's so you've.
Gotten a divorce from somebody like obvious or something, and you have to listen to my testimony.
That's just like wildly uh I love the RB.
Yeah uh so, But like in Colorado and Texas is like the line where that changes to the point that like a lot of us growing up were warned to like don't date or marry anyone from Colorado.
Colorado.
There people they're okay with divorce and remarriage, and it's just a complete it's almost like a completely.
Different Oh yeah, you'd go to I'd go to a convention in Colorado and I'd be like, well, or a convention, and I remember, like the conventions are always held in the hottest months of the year, always and no air conditioning tents, like we're dying, We're dying, And like the girls in Texas would sometimes were a little sleepless dress.
Oh that bag.
Oh okay, wow, so it seems really cool to you. Did you issue or like a West Coaster well, the Texas Texas, Yeah, are you kidding?
I was Megan was divorced and remarriage. Okay where you were.
From, absolutely not absolutely okay, interesting no, no, no, those like Missouri, Kansas states are very strict and my.
Didn't I didn't know that it was not okay over there. That's interesting. Oh no, no, yeah, because like I know, and like the East Coast, it's fine.
But it's about possibly not to be is the rumors, so we don't know.
But but there's no cohesion, there's no rigs and rules because it's not a real because it's just the way of Jesus. It's just brought down from home, so we can't write down any rules, so nobody knows what is happening, and it's just individual overseers all over the world doing crazy stuff and we're all pretending that it is coming from it's one yeah, right.
Yeah, nothing is written down ever, No, there's no written rules or anything. So it's it's strict but not documented. So it does lead to a little bit of that leads to a lot of scrupulosity too. Yeah, it's constantly thinking like, well, where is the edge the edges?
You just have to do your best, which with someone with OCD is like oh absolutely.
Cari.
I was COVID sort of the same. It was sort of the same thing for you, and that's.
What like cracked your.
Definitely sped up the process for me. I started first, I think, with more of a political deconstruction. I was very very conservative, and there was there was something that flipped in me around like twenty sixteen. I think it was like when Flando Castile was killed and I really started to deconstruct like racism and homophobia and sexism and ableism. And I didn't know that I had chronic illness diagnoses at that time, but I was sick a lot, and I was treated differently in our church because of that, because if you're not there in person all the time, you start getting left out of get togethers and kind of fun events that families are doing with their kids. And you know, the invitations for those things are in meeting is when they invite you to those things. So we started getting left out of a lot of things. My family growing up was very not into science and even medicine really, so in my adult years, I as my kids were learning about evolution, I was learning about evolution and.
I was like, oh, this actually makes a lot.
Of sense, Like there's a lot of science about this up, and I started reading everything I get my hands on, especially when we physically stopped going to meetings in March twenty twenty because of COVID. That summer, I was just reading everything I could get my hands on, as far as not just science, but like religion too, and philosophy and belief just anything that I had really never again, there's no written rules, but you're not really supposed to read information about other theologies or religions or belief because you might let the devil creep in. So I was allowing myself to open my mind to other viewpoints and that's really what started my deconstruction, and it really bothered me how the LGBTQ community was treated. I didn't understand why love could just be love and just the physical Being away from meeting that summer, by November twenty twenty, I had deconstructed to the point that I was like, if I go back to meetings, I'm going to just have a full on panic attack there. I had already been having panic attacks on the way to meetings for several years. There were Kyle can attest to this. There were times where we had to turn around and drive home because I couldn't breathe or couldn't see, like my vision would go black. I was having such bad panic attacks, and so I told Kyle at the end of twenty twenty, I was like, I cannot physically go back to meeting. And I had also deconstructed belief at that point as well, and I told Kyle that, which kicked off really difficult six months in our marriage.
It was really hard for him.
I think it felt like a betrayal that I had lost my belief because our whole marriage, that was the foundation of our marriage, not just meetings, but belief in God, like our belief system.
And it didn't feel like a choice to me.
It felt like a realization, like I realized, I just don't believe this anymore. I did at one point in my life, and now the more I've read and the more I've thought about it, it just doesn't feel right for me anymore.
So that's how it happened for me.
And it was another six months I think before Kyle was in the same boat as far as like, yeah, we're not going to be going back, right, But Kyle, you still have a Summer of twenty twenty one, you still have.
Belief, Kyle, correct, like you kind of you guys are falling on a different page on that and working through it.
Yeah kind of. I think I think I'm enjoying not having to know. Yeah, you know, like there's we always hear in the gospel meetings like we know this and we know this, Like it's a point of it shows your faith to know something that you don't really know. You know, our kids, you know, kids kind of mimic things. Our youngest kid really liked one of our workers when we were younger. We had this older sister worker and he really liked her, and he would mimick her and he would he would sit there and read a book and he would stand up and start reading this book and he would start every single sentence with we know something something, you know something something. And I didn't even realize until I saw him do that that It's like, oh, yeah, they say that a lot, don't they. So for me, it's like I think I still sort of believe in a higher power, but I don't. I'm almost at the moment, I'm a bit allergic to saying I know more than that, right, Just Sam, Like I like to just be kind of honest about it where.
I am I love that.
Yeah, there's such a pathological certainty and I can imagine there's a certain freedom and just being like h cary in terms of the way that the political stuff kind of tied into your belief I mean, did you feel like the religion was had elements of racism, sexism, homophobia, and was that like how how far did that kind of extend into the spiritual part of things.
Yes, it's very insidious, but it's it's there for sure. And the group as a whole isn't very politically active, but they are very conservative. It's hard to be liberal or kind of open minded about those things or even call those things out and feel like you fit in with your peer group. And we kind of noticed the more open we were about those things, like on social media or you know, social justice issues or or sharing news articles even that we just were we had less and less friends, and we were invited to things less and less often.
Right, it made people uncomfortable.
Well, there's also this very interesting story that was like we're persecuted against where it's like, no, yes we're not. Those cities give us their banks, their schools. We had gospel meetings everywhere, funeral homes, nursing homes, banks, and people are like, sure, have a great time, Like there you go.
No one think that's why they don't register with the government. Why because they're paranoid of the government.
I exist, right, because.
They think that there's going to be a prejudice. I see, that's interesting. That is interesting. I'm I'm. I think the FLDS have have had a history of that kind of thing as well. I think they just on this best secret.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I would love.
To kind of shift gears and talk about some of the more recent developments.
If you guys are ready, Yeah, let's look about starting the group first and then go into that.
Okay, Yeah, so y'all started through.
I'll go from here because the group was my idea during that like six month period where I was deconstructing not only the two by two beliefs, but just like God, the idea of God was so wrapped up in that for me, especially because I had been so zealous and taken it all very literally, and because that was like such a difficult time in our marriage and in my life, Like questioning everything about your foundation is just walks your world. I considered suicide twice rather than walking away from meetings, and I thought I was ruining my marriage and I thought I would be dragging my children to hell if I left. Like that's how serious and how difficult it was for me. Luckily, I had like some really great support from friends who had left the church years before and a couple of family members, and that got me through that time, because yeah, it was hard for Kyle and I and it was just incredibly lonely and just we'd always been taught that leaving meetings was the easy way out, and it was not easy.
So I was like, what the hell is wrong with me?
Like why is this so so hard?
So I after we had kind of worked through all of that and we'd got you know, I'd started therapy, which was incredibly helpful, highly recommend and we had worked through some things in our marriage and we're in a much better place. I started thinking, like, what if there's like I don't know, fifty other people out there who are going through the same thing, or who are feeling lonely like I did, or struggling like I did, or wanting to even leave meetings but don't have a community to go to like so I brought this idea to Kyle. I was like, what if we started a Facebook So we also went to our friends Mike and Abby and we were like they they left years before we did, like ten years before we did. And I was like, hey, I'm thinking of starting this Facebook group. Would you guys be on board to like start it with us? And they were like, yeah, absolutely, that's a great idea. So we opened this Facebook support group on Facebook and it was January twenty, twenty twenty two. Yes, so it's just like a year and a half ago. Yeah, And I really we really wanted the community to be a place where it didn't matter what belief system you had, what you had left meetings for, you know, whether you were straight or LGBTQ. Plus, I wanted everybody to who had this shared background to be welcome and have a safe space to go.
To because just rejecting really quickly, Karie, like before this, we never talked to each other before this.
If you left, it was like nobody talked about you. You're gone.
You fell off the map.
You fell off the map. Nobody ever asks like why did why did they quit?
Because never the reason is because you lost the spirit and there's no there's a good reason. So I'd never talked to an ex member before really, so this idea was very.
Interesting.
And also just wanted to add that something you said about like leaving meeting is easy. You're told that if you feel freedom after you leave meeting, that's because the devil stopped working on you.
Oh my god, what a mind fuck.
Yeah.
Yeah, so if you struggle after you leave, it's because you really know you should come back, And if you don't struggle, it's because the devil has you. So it doesn't it doesn't really matter what happens. And yeah, I can like what you were just saying. I spent so from the time we went to our last meeting to the time I told somebody that I was out was about a year and a half and in that time I only heard from one professing person. They didn't know if we were in or out. It just didn't matter. And that was a really, really dark time for me as well. I had a lot of the same feelings Carrie had. I feel for anybody who has to, because I'm thankful that I have fairly good mental health, I think, and I didn't for a while. It was a really dark time for me too, and to go through that while Cary's going through it. We weren't good for each other probably for a little bit of that time.
Yeah, we we fed into a lot of each other's triggers.
Yeah, it was. It was a really, really tough time. And when Cary started to suggest to starting the group, I actually didn't even want to it first, because I was like, I am just come out of the worst, darkest place. I didn't I didn't know I could be in a place that dark for that long. I don't want to talk about this anymore. I don't want to be I don't want to dwell on this anymore, you know. But then we you know, we talked about it as we do. You know, we were in much better place, and we started talking about it a lot, and I thought, oh no, I bet we'd get more than fifty people. I bet there's some people out there who really wanted who do who maybe were just like us, haven't talked to anybody in a long time, kind of like you were saying. And yeah, when we started the group, we had people saying who joined the group saying, Wow, I've been out for thirty years and have never talked to anybody about my upbringing and never processed.
You know, my deconstruction like this, and there's no name for it. So some people had never even looked for it on the internet. They don't even know what to look up.
I'm so crazy.
A lot of ex members aren't even aware of the term two by.
Two oh at all.
Wow.
So how did you find people for the group?
Well, we all had some friends on our social media friends lists who we knew had left, and so I started inviting people, and some people didn't want to join, which is fine, and a lot of people did, and then they started inviting their friends and they started inviting and it was just kind of like a chain reaction, like it snowballed, and by the end of March this year, twenty twenty three, we had nine hundred.
Members, is what we were at.
WOW.
Which leads us into a different topic.
So, well, really it does.
I want to get into that topic, but I also just I feel like it would probably be helpful for some of our listeners to hear how the two of you as a couple, like were able to work through that if you could give us just like the spark notes version.
Yeah, we tried couples therapy. Briefly, it was it didn't take I think it like stirred the pot.
It did because we were in such different places that we weren't even speaking the same language, right. Yeah, And in hindsight, it's funny to look back on because.
We actually probably hilarious.
Yeah, it's so funny in hindsight. We were actually in the same place. But that was the problem. We weren't. We were very close. We're good friends first and foremost and always have been. And to be in such a dark, sort of kind of up in the air place where we don't really know where we are in the world, and then to have the other person there too, didn't We didn't have the other one to kind of lean on and go through it. The analogy. I like to use this analogy when I'm kind of describing where we were. It's it's like you know in those old cartoons like Wiley Coyote or whatever. Roadrunner, there's this there's always this scene where they run off the edge of a cliff and then they just keep running, and then there's that moment where they stop and look at the camera, and there's that moment where they have to decide if they're going to fall if they're going to run back or what. And falling is bad because it probably is going to hurt, it's going to be terrible. But running back, you're just running back to whatever you ran from, right, And that's the spot where both of us were for about six months. Probably is just that stop stare at the camera spot of like I don't know what to do and and sort of to me, an indictment of the group that we would come from is that we couldn't go to anybody on the inside. I talked to one person on the inside who was a practicing bleeding two by two the entire time, and the only advice they had for me, and I was in a really dark place. I told them, like, you don't you don't even want to talk to me right now. I'm going to be a bad influence on you. This is terrible. And they were a very caring, kind person and they wanted good for me. And this person said, well, at least get your kids to meeting because their souls are your responsibility. And I didn't need to hear that. Then That's not what I needed.
So I.
Kept in contact with them, but we didn't It was a short time where I was suicidal. Also, Yeah, there wasn't.
We didn't have a lot of friends outside either.
I mean I had a couple of really abby like Mike and Abbey had left ten years before us, and another really good friend who was living with us off and on, and that was kind of it. Yeah, so we were losing our meeting friends. They did not understand what we were going.
Through and weren't really aware, because how are we supposed.
To tell you, Well, we kind of had lost each other through that period because we were deconstructed very differently, it's all of the same.
Yeah, not in ourselves.
Yes, we had also lost ourselves like it that's what it felt like like. It felt like I had to re examine literally every part of my life, including my marriage. I realized that was bisexual during that time too. I had never known that about myself, Like, I had never been given the language for it to be acceptable to even consider an attraction to women, you know, And I just came out like within the past couple of months publicly with that.
But yeah, it was really difficult.
Therapy for me personally was the most helpful thing for my marriage, Like working on myself and rebuilding my own personal foundations some sort of uh, you know, when you lose your belief system, it's like, Okay, what do I believe?
Like what motivates me? What what purpose do I have?
Like? Rebuilding those things for myself personally helped my marriage, and then just really learning about what is unconditional love and what does that mean and what does that look like and applying that to not only myself but also my marriage and those around me, and even family and friends who were professing who felt like us leaving was somehow more painful for them. It was like something we were doing to them, and because they didn't, they don't understand how hard it is, you know, and unconditional love and just kind of learning about that and applying that was most helpful for me during that time and accepting like, you know, I read some books of people written, people wrote who are in mixed faith marriages and realizing, oh, it is possible because the two by twos use a language like if one person professes and the other doesn't, you have a broken home. So these things were integrated in my mind my entire life, like, oh, if you have a different belief system as your partner, it's impossible for your marriage to last like that. I think that's where a lot of our pain was coming from. And we both felt betrayed by the other person because we thought it wasn't like our marriage couldn't last. It didn't seem possible, and that was so scary to both of us that we would kind of either withdraw from each other or lash out at each other. Right, So, just kind of deconstructing all of those beliefs that I had and learning about unconditional love and realizing that it was okay for me to love and accept myself where I was, and it was okay for me to love and accept Kyle where he was, and that was okay that those were different places was really what helped me the most during that time.
You can speak, yeah, and it's the same thing. I mean, we did have, Like we did have a couple friends, Mike and a Me for one, and some other friends on the outside who'd been through it before, and we're telling us the whole time, go slower, go slower, you don't have to fix this right now, just like give yourself.
Careful, the dog a dog under the table, the.
Sorry.
So yeah, I mean we had friends telling us, you know, slow down and be patient with yourself. It'll be fine. You guys are be getting fine. You guys are good friends. You guys will you know? And and I didn't. I wasn't even in a good enough place to be in therapy. I didn't even want to talk to a therapist because I just I didn't want to talk to anybody. I was just in such a terrible place. It took all of my you know, mental fortitude to do my job every day and then just come home and be dysfunctional.
For the kids, Yeah, kids are watching us go through this too.
Poor kids. They'll be in therapy too. But I did start therapy last year for the same reason, because it's like I just needed to talk to somebody that wasn't carry because it's not fair to just keep dumping all of it on her. And because that's what we did.
We were definitely trauma dumping on each other totally.
Yeah, it wasn't healthy, and there's a lot of trauma.
I mean, we're a really good place now though, Like definitely.
Yeah.
I think actually our marriage is better, Like we communicate more about our beliefs than we ever have.
Yeah, So can I say something right? Yeah, So that's that's a funny thing too. We we it's not just a belief, right, it is it's who you are. It's not what you do identity, right, it's your identity. So so you're deconstructing kind of who you are, not just a thing you have, right, but also simultaneously somehow we never talked about it, and it's like, you know, it's so much part of you that you don't actually discuss it. And and when we kind of calm down and got through some of our real, you know, tough parts, we started talking more and more, and then we even started looking back on old conversations like, oh, we didn't even believe the same thing, maybe less of a literal belief than she had.
Yeah, I was very literal, whereas you were kind of like, well, maybe some of these Bible stories are like analogies, like.
Carrie, were you like dinosaur bones were hidden to trick us? Were you like in that camp?
Some families are like that.
I I was.
I was always raised that dinosaurs were around at the same time. They must have been around at the same time as humans.
Got you, And I wasn't. I was totally fine with science like that. That duplicity lived in my mind, just fine.
It was not even which was another thing that was different that we never realized. We didn't talk about talk about that.
Because we just because we all know we're going to the same meetings hearing the same thing, So we didn't actually talk about what we really believed. And I think we were maybe a little bit scared too, because you're afraid that the other one is going to be a little different, and you can't be unequally yoked of course, so it's not just kind of yeah, yeah, so, and that might have sort of played into why we deconstructed so differently and wildly, because it's like you're deconstructing who you are, and also you might realize that you're not even where you thought you were and in relation to the other person.
I just want to say to the point that we never talked the fact that we never talked about that in our marriage is very strange because we analyze and discuss things for hours like that rationalities, and it just goes to show like the teachings that that we had integrated that if you marry someone professing, you'll be fine and you'll have the same belief system.
It was.
It was so ingrained in us that it never occurred to us to discuss, hey do you think this or do you view this differently? That it just we just there were so many built in assumptions that like, well, you're professing and I'm professing so well.
Also weird that we never talked about like we as the general public, never talked about God.
Or Jesus like we talked about the workers.
Yes, this worker is here, this worker is there, this workers here like it was never like Jesus is really working in my heart today.
We don't talk. We don't talk about it.
Don't say like God bless you when someone sneezever't.
Know no, no, so you don't talk about God or Jesus because we don't really know the workers.
No, And it's considered so private and personal that you, yeah, it's not like really up for a group discussion unless you're in meeting.
That's the place where you do, even though it's your entire life, like everything you do is through the filter, everything you are is filtered through being professing. But yet you don't ever talk about it in a way like you don't discuss theology. That's just not a thing you do. You know, someone asked me what my doctrine was one time, and I'm like, we don't have a doctrine. We just read the Bible.
You know.
Someone asked me once like if my church believed in the Trinity, and I was like, what does that mean?
There knowledge? None?
Wow, they do not. Yeah, that's I actually do preach against the Trinity.
Oh wow, of course that's so interesting.
And that does I think kind of tie into the next part that we're going to talk about. Because you're so taught, it sounds like to not think about your own faith, your own beliefs, like your own how you feel about anything individually at all.
It's just trust.
Yeah, and these aren't.
These aren't just like people who are uneducated. There's like doctors, lawyers, engineers, people doing like very very smart people who question everything.
You know.
We're I think it comes from is like for me, a private personal relationship with God was very emphasized and encouraged. But the idea was like if you talk about it with someone else and they have a slightly different viewpoint, it might make you start to doubt in question. And I think it's scared, Like Kyle said this, like it scares people to kind of disagree.
Yeah, well we you and I had conversations looking back now we're remembering old conversations where I would say, oh, I watched this video on YouTube. It was a debate between you know, Christopher Hitchins and some Christian and she was so mad about it, and I didn't didn't bother me. It didn't bother my faith at all. I was like, that was kind of interesting. That's said these things, and she's like, what are you doing?
You thought it was like contagious almost like you'd get these looks.
Yeah, outside of it, which.
Made me feel terrible too, because yeah, it made me feel terrible because I don't want to hurt somebody else's faith. And I still feel that way.
Like so then you just wouldn't talk about it after that, right, And.
I still feel that way. I really don't want to ever. I haven't talked that to that many people about leaving. Honestly, I don't want to hurt other people's faith. I think there's sort of a feeling out there, like maybe us in particular, but Ex's you know, are those crazy worldly people are trying to like care away a belief and ruin the two by twos and it's like, that is not true. I would never do that to somebody. First of all, because I've been through a deconstruction and it was terrible. Yeah, but also because it's just not my business. I want you to do what makes you happy, you know. And so we even I think that might be part of why we don't talk, didn't talk about it that much. It's because we were a little afraid to maybe tip somebody into an area where they weren't uncomfortable somebody being each other.
Oh well, yeah, it's like clarify, we're very open with our story. Obviously, we're here sharing it. If people like want to ask us questions, We've always invited that, but they don't. Like people don't want to ask why.
Did those on the inside.
Yeah, then however, you start this Facebook group and suddenly all of these disparate islands of belief and struggle with deconstruction are now connected and talking. So that includes part one with Kyle and carry instead of our usual question because we know Megan's answer.
Instead of our normal outro where you ask me if I would join the group or not, because we note the answer to that, we are going to read the letter that came out a couple of months ago that caused this House of Cards to kind of start falling. I've asked Lola to read it because I'll probably get too emotional. But this regards one of the overseers. After his death, they sent a letter to the elders, and this is what it said.
Our dear friends, it is with a very heavy heart we shared the following difficult information, but we feel it is imperative that we do so. We trust you will understand and be in agreement. We have come to the tragic conclusion that Dean Brewer had another side to his life that none of us accept victims, ever witnessed or suspected. It has come to the surface in recent months, and more so in recent weeks, that Dean was a sexual predator. We never respect or defend such totally inappropriate behavior among us. There's a very united consensus among us that the only thing to do is be transparent with all of you, for obvious reasons. Though this is very difficult. We are very sorry for the hurt this will bring to the hearts of many. Thankfully, he is no longer in a position to hurt anyone. Some things have come to light from Dean's own records. Dean had his own Best Western Hotel preferred customer account, and spend a considerable amount of time and money in motels, as we all know. When he died last June, it was in a motel in Government Camp, Oregon, a place that he frequented. The receipts often included two guests. Victims have come forward and there was very confirming and incriminating evidence found on his computer and phone. His actions include rape and abuse of underage victims. He totally abused his authority as an overseer in order to control, manipulate, and threaten his victims. We are strongly recommending our staff look at the Ministry Safe Program and possibly other venues that help understand, recognize, and prevent such problems. Overwhelmingly, our greatest concern in all of this is the victims, known and unknown. We do hope and pray this message somehow reaches the ears of every unknown victim. If there are more, we are strongly recommending our staff look at the Ministry Safe Program and possibly other venues that help understand, recognize, and prevent such problems.
Unfortunately, the Ministry Safe Program has been around for a while. It didn't seem to help too much, and a lot of people did know about Dean and didn't report him.
And then the next paragraphs talk about how it says that they didn't know that this was happening wrong, but that is now.
In dispute, like heavily in dispute, right, Yeah, yeah.
It ends with keep close to God, dear friends, there is an immense capacity in the hand of God to help us. Thank you for all the prayers. We know this will generate. Sincerely your brother and then his name. So this is sort of where it all starts.
Yeah, next week is when we'll dig into it. So thank you for listening. Thank you so much for sharing. Curry and Kyle. Please, if you know anyone and the two y two's, send us to them. We just want to spread awareness and keep everything grounded in facts and reality. And I think that they're still room for a home based way of meeting to continue. So I just hope everybody gets their head out of the sand, works together and we'd love to help in any way we can.
So can't wait to see you again next week.
And as always, remember to follow your gut, watch out for rida flags.
And an ever ever trust me. Thank you Bye.
Trust Me is produced by Kirsten Woodward, Gabby Rapp and Steve Delamater.
With special thanks to Stacy Para and our.
Theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me Podcast, Twitter at trust Me Cult Pod, or on TikTok at trust Me Cult Podcast.
I'm ooh La Lola on Instagram and Ola Lola on Twitter.
And I am Megan Elizabeth eleven on Instagram and Babraham.
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