Creative Alchemy

Writing About the Cult Next Door with Tamara Mathieu

We all want to belong. As I’ve said previously on this show, we are wired to look for connection and community. That very natural human need is what led today’s guest, Tamara Mathieu, into the Twelve Tribes. Fourteen years later, Tamara and her husband realized they needed to leave what had become a controlling, high-demand situation. One that Tamara would end up writing a book about and telling the truth about her experience. In the introduction, I talk about how personally satisfying for me to hear a cult-related story from someone who had got involved with her partner and then survived the cult with that person and then got out with him as well. And they’re still married now! I don’t know how many partnerships or marriages could survive that kind of journey. Tamara Mathieu joined the Twelve Tribes religious cult in 2000, with her husband and young son. In her memoir, All Who Believed, she tells her story in depth from how she became drawn to the group, what the next fourteen years were like, and finally how her family left in 2014 as a family of six. Writing became a way for her to heal and share her experience in order to educate others about this insidious group. Tamara lives in Vermont, works with adults with disabilities, and now has three grandchildren. Learn more about Tamara Mathieu at TamaraMathieu.com This episode of Creative Alchemy is supported by the audiobook version of my award-winning, Amazon best-selling memoir, Cult, A Love Story. Readers call the book ‘compelling’ ‘gritty’ ‘intimate’ and ‘not boring’ – which is what an author loves to hear. I narrated the audiobook and if you have a Spotify premium subscription you can listen to the audiobook for free as part of that subscription at alexandraamor.com/spotify. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Searching for answers after the Columbine school shooting On being introduced to the simple lives of those in the Twelve Tribes Discovering that the reality was very different than the initial impression of the group Connecting online with others after the Twelve Tribes experience and beginning to write about it Finding freedom in telling the truth about the experience Working on a follow-up memoir about the experience after leaving the Twelve Tribes Resources mentioned in this episode Tamara Mathieu’s book, All Who Believed Tamara on TikTok Transcript of the interview with Tamara Mathieu Alexandra: Tamara Matthew, welcome to Creative Alchemy. Tamara: Hi, thank you for having me. Alexandra: My pleasure. Tell us a little bit about yourself and about your background in the Twelve Tribes. Tamara: I live in Swanton, Vermont. I am a mother of four children. I now have three granddaughters as well. I grew up in Vermont, and I met my husband in 1995. We were both UVM students, University of Vermont, and around let’s see, it must have been 1998. I found out that I was pregnant, and so our lives just took a very different turn. We were still in college and everything, and now we have a baby on the way. And I took that responsibility very seriously that I was going to be a mother. We bought a house, we planned a wedding, and I really started to consider being a mother. What kind of mother was I going to be? I wanted to be a good mother. I really wanted a secure and stable family for my child. You know, all those things. Once my baby was born, I remember an event that really just is in my mind, as one of those moments that I feel like I started searching for something more was when the Columbine shooting happened. My baby Emmett was only five weeks old, and I was very affected by that event. Now that I would potentially be sending my child to school in a few years, and that was so scary. And I thought, am I going to be able to do that? Am I going to feel safe? Is this going to get worse? Is this kind of thing going to be happening more and more? It just was very unsettling, very scary, and I really started at that point to just desire just something safe, something different, something secure, just something wholesome for my child. I was a stay-at-home mom at the time, and I had mom friends, and we had play group. I had a good support in that way, but still, the majority of my day of my time was just me alone in our home with my baby. That was just awfully lonely considering that I was 22 years old and I went from college student. We lived in an apartment with like seven of our friends. There was always something going on, and just carefree and fun. And then all of a sudden, I had this drastic, drastic life change. And I think it’s often in those times where anybody could be susceptible to the message of a group such as the Twelve Tribes, because it was kind of in this state of mind that I met the Twelve Tribes. I was so drawn to their simple life of being together. From the outside, the appeal was so strong. I just saw families living together, working together, mothers helping each other out-a really simple and wholesome lifestyle that I felt like I would not, in and of myself, be able to provide for my child. Like, how am I going to have this simple farm lifestyle? We lived in Burlington, Vermont. My husband was a software engineer. Everything in our lives was kind of driving us to a certain lifestyle, which would have been probably most young women’s dream. We probably would have ended up fairly wealthy with my husband getting into that field in the late ’90s. It was a really upcoming field. He already had a really good job. We were homeowners at 22 years old; that’s unheard of. It was in that place that I was lonely and just looking for something more. I will back up a little bit. My husband’s aunt, his mother’s sister, joined the Twelve Tribes way back in its beginnings in Island Pond, Vermont, in 1981. He grew up always knowing about the group. His family lived in Benson, Vermont. He’d been up to Island Pond to visit his relatives, and so I was introduced to the group through him, meeting his relatives. What really stood out to me, I’d met some people in the community prior to our wedding, but the day of our wedding, he had relatives that came up. Twelve Tribes don’t go into churches, and they don’t go to ceremonies such as weddings, so they came to the reception afterwards, and they just pitched in. We didn’t have fancy caterers or anything like that. It was just all hands on deck. And so they just saw that there was a need, and they pitched in and they started replenishing food at our buffet and making sure everybody had water. And they stayed afterwards, and they cleaned our entire reception hall. We were expecting to have to go back and do that basically ourselves. And we show up, and there they are, and they’re cleaning. I was really affected. It’s like, wow, this is amazing. These people are so wonderful. They don’t even know me, and their work. It was a really hot day, and one of them had a baby in a front carrier. And then the next day, a whole bunch of Twelve Tribes members came over to my in-laws’ house. There’s a community in Rutland, Vermont, which is nearby, and a bunch of people from there came over. I was just surrounded by probably four to five different Twelve Tribes families, and I just spent hours asking them questions and talking to them. There were a couple of other young women that also had babies, and I just remember being envious of them. They’re all going home to this wonderful life together. And the next day, I had to just go back to Burlington to our lonely house. And my husband was going back to work. We had a three month old baby. He had just started a job at a new company, so we weren’t going on a honeymoon. It was just like okay, I just met this amazing group of people. I want to find out more. I want to get to know them more. So I started visiting any chance I could get. I went with my mother and father-in-law to Hyannis, Massachusetts, for a whole week. My husband didn’t go, but you know he felt fine sending me and our baby with his parents to visit the Twelve Tribes. No harm was going to come out of that. But the more time I spent there, it was harder and harder for me to go home. I started reading all of their literature. And my mother-in-law would get that they have like a monthly newsletter for the group. It’s called the Intertribal News, and every single Twelve Tribes community around the world each month submits like just a little synopsis. Here’s what’s going on in our clan this month. Because she was good friends with a lot of the people in the Rutland location, she became privy to they would let her take and read these newsletters. She would give them to me, and I’d be so excited to read it, and my husband was not excited at first. About the thought of the Twelve Tribes. He was happy with our life, and he was raised Christian, and he really wanted me to be a Christian. This is another aspect of it. He wanted me to go to church with his family, and I was never drawn to religion at all. I had all these questions; it never made sense to me, and I felt like, well if if there was something that was the truth, and God wanted me to believe that, then, like surely I would have some type of internal response when I did finally find what I was looking for, and I felt like that’s what had happened. I never went to church and had that sense of like, oh my god, I can’t wait. Next Sunday, you know that was a great sermon. It was amazing. Can’t wait to go back. Maybe we can get together with some people. I’ve been to different churches with friends or family. I did go to my husband’s to his family’s church with him one time, and I never felt anything. But it was so different with the Twelve Tribes. It became an obsession. It was like all I could think about. I wanted to be there more and more, and I could only see all the beautiful things. I think my family and friends were all pretty concerned, and didn’t understand what was going on. But the more I talked to them, or showed them different things, I think most of them eventually became supportive and maybe thought of it as a harmless group. Sort of like the Amish or something, but with cars and phones, and they probably didn’t really understand. But because I was so excited about it most of my family and friends outwardly eventually supported it. There was one time initially that some of my relatives on my dad’s side tried to get in touch with some deprogrammers, but they’re so ridiculously expensive. It was going to be thousands and thousands of dollars, and my family just doesn’t have that kind of money. I remember just reassuring everybody like this isn’t a cult, this isn’t dangerous. I’m going to be raising Emmett with families, and we’re all living together and taking care of each other, and it’s the way that we’re supposed to live. It was really romanticized in my eyes at that time, so it took about a year and a half, and then my husband was on board, and we joined the 12 Tribes in August of 2000. Alexandra: How long were you involved? Tamara: 14 years. Alexandra: You started to doubt and eventually left the community. How did that happen? Tamara: The life is very very controlling. You can’t even imagine it unless you’ve been in it. Every aspect of your life is controlled, and your children, especially. Our older two were teenagers, and that’s a really tough time in the Twelve Tribes. There’s zero autonomy, there’s zero independence, there’s zero ability for them to have any kind of dreams or aspirations. They’re so streamlined. This is the only way that you can think and believe and behave and dress and eat and talk and everything. And undoubtedly, so many of them start to resist that. When that happens, the blame is put on the parents. Obviously, it’s because we failed because we were not able to pass on the faith that we were supposed to, and if we had only cried out our father would have given us the grace. And there must be something stubborn or selfish or rebellious in us, and that’s the reason. Like our heart was not turned to our children. So it’s the biggest shame for a parent if your teenagers don’t just fall into line and go through their bar or bat mitzvah and be baptized, and then just be completely obedient. We were told that after the age of 11 or 12, there should be no more conflict. Conflict should be done. You should have a compliant and obedient and surrendered youth. And if you don’t, it’s because you failed as a parent. So there’s just so much pressure. And then if your child leaves the Twelve Tribes, they might as well be dead. They’re going to go to the lake of fire. You’re going to suffer in death for your failure, and it’s the biggest shame that a parent could face. So you have this just weight of guilt on you all the time. We’re encouraged to really crack down on them for all these like normal things that teenagers want to do. So that was becoming really difficult. My husband was a leader. He ascended into leadership fairly quickly. After we joined, he became a fairly young leader. So by the time we left, he was responsible for our main industry in Cambridge, New York, which was the big soap shop, Common Sense Farm, and he was what you know they call community coordinator. He was in charge of that location, so he was privy to a lot more behind the scenes stuff than I was. He’d go to the different leaders’ meetings and things like that, and I think he was just becoming disillusioned with just seeing some of the behind-the-scenes things that went on with different leaders, and the hypocrisy and the power struggles and those kinds of things. But he felt very responsible because he was in charge of this very lucrative industry that not only supported Cambridge, not only supported our community, but they were able to help some of our South American communities, like Brazil and Argentina. They’re pretty poor down there, and so money was being sent to those communities that they depended on, or money was being sent all over. But then some word got around our family’s not doing well, so they did send some people that he felt could take over that industry, and then they sent our family to Florida, which is kind of like one of those tactics where family’s not doing good; they’re afraid we might leave. Like, well, let’s send you somewhere totally different, fresh new star. But we were like, okay, we’ll do that. So, we did go down to Florida, and we lived there for about six weeks, and then we heard they were going to ship us back up to Rutland. The community we moved to had five people, where we were used to a community of like 80 people, and so for the first time ever, we had more freedom than we’d ever experienced in our family before. We were actually doing things that we enjoyed with our children. It was just so nice to be out of that scrutiny of so many people constantly judging you for everything you’re doing. But it was still happening. There was a community in Fort Myers, and people would be sent down to have meetings with us. It was like it was just getting exhausting, and we finally were just said, “That’s it, we’re done.” Alexandra: Good for you. At what point did you start to think about writing a book about your experience? Tamara: Not too long after leaving, I got in touch with other ex-members through Facebook groups and things like that, and I started writing out. We’d talk about something, and I’d be like, oh yeah, I had that same experience, and I’d write down this little story. And at one point, I just had pages and pages of these little stories, things that stuck out to me, things that had really affected me. It was just really therapeutic to get all that stuff down on paper. I’d be writing, and then it would jog my memory, and like, oh yeah, I remember when that happened. And then a friend of mine published a memoir, one of my best friends, and it was about her childhood growing up here in Swanton, Vermont. It was very well written and there were chapters of us as little girls, and I just remember reading through it, and it was wonderful. It was like I didn’t want to put it down, and because everybody has a story, right? So I was like, okay, look what she did with her seemingly normal upbringing in a small Vermont town. Maybe I could do this also. Maybe people would enjoy reading about my years in the Twelve Tribes. I already had quite a bit of stuff written at that point. So I just started to add on to my stories; add detail, started putting things in order. I just really started to think could I turn this into a memoir? Could I come up with the resource that I wished had been available when I was 22 years old and just meeting this group? But it was in an age where the internet was around, but it wasn’t like it is today. You just type in something. I didn’t really have a way of connecting with people who had left at that point, which there were fewer of then anyway. So I thought, well, maybe this could help people. Maybe I could get my story out there. That’s one of the main things people ask me: how did you get sucked into a cult? You seem like a normal person. I was like, yeah, normal people get sucked into cults. It’s not just like fanatical religious zealots, or you know what I mean. I was no different. I was probably the last person that somebody might be like, “Oh yeah, I bet she’s gonna go off and join a cult someday.” So I wanted to have that out there. Like how do people get drawn into groups like this? I thought it’d be good for family members to really know my story and to really know what my day to day life had been like all those years. That’s how that’s how it came about. Alexandra: Had you written much before? Was it something that you did other than the little stories that you were writing? Tamara: When I was younger, I loved writing. I used to think I’m going to write a book when I was really young. I remember I won a writing contest my senior year of high school, and I don’t even remember what I wrote about now, but I won this writing contest. The prize was a Barnes and Noble gift certificate. I went and I bought The Handmaid’s Tale, of all things. I did always enjoy writing. Alexandra: Were there any sort of internal hurdles that you needed to clear when you were thinking about turning this into a book? I know for me, there was a bit of feeling of not tattling exactly, but telling my side of the story was a little bit dangerous. Tamara: I did experience that to some extent, and so many people asked me, like, “Are you going to get backlash from the group?” A couple people have written books about the Twelve Tribes. A couple men had written a few years before I published my book, but there wasn’t anything by a woman. So I was a little nervous. And there are still relatives of my husband’s that are still in this group. My own grandmother was actually in this group, and she passed away in 2019. I wouldn’t have probably published the book if she’d still been there, because I was still able to maintain a relationship with her. She joined in 2008, after I had my fourth child. There’s a lot of different webs in my story. I do remember when I submitted my manuscript, it was accepted. It was going through the editing process, and then they sent it back to me, and they were like, “Okay, this is your final chance. You can go through it one more time and make any changes you want, and then that’s it.” I remember texting my friend and being like, “I don’t know that I can do this. I don’t know that I can look at this one more time. I’m terrified.” She was like, “No, no, no. You can do it. But I did have a little bit of of fear of what what would happen. Would people in the group retaliate in any way shape or form or be outspoken against my family or anything like that I I did have those fears Alexandra: Did any of that come true? Tamara: I even had book signings like in Cambridge and in Rutland. That was a little nerve wracking. It’s open to the public. Is anybody going to come in? But nope. I don’t know if they didn’t know about it. I didn’t receive any type of negativity personally from the group. There had to have been. I know people in the group know of my book because I’m in touch. I had a mother contact me whose son had joined one of the communities in Vermont, and she mailed him my book. And then she emailed me one day, and she said, “I just had to email him another copy of your book because somebody else in the household asked to borrow his.” I’m thinking, like, oh my god! Picture my book circulating. I’m sure just it wasn’t for everybody. Maybe certain leaders would read it so that they know what’s being said out there or whatever. But I just thought that was kind of funny. Alexandra: That is funny. That’s great. We should say your book is called All Who Believed. I just wanted to mention that. You mentioned that it was therapeutic to write some of the stories that you were writing. Can you expand on that a little bit and tell us what it was about writing that helped you? Tamara: I would just go into this other mode when I was writing. I’ve said the book almost wrote itself. I would sit down to work on a chapter, and it was before I knew it, two hours had gone, and I’d written thousands of words. Once I got into the story, it just all came out. I wasn’t having to make anything up. It was just remembering. It was just getting it all out there, and it was freeing. I’d feel a weight had been lifted off. Like, all right, I got that down. That’s documented. I can move on from that and go on to the next. Alexandra: You’ve made me realize. So, in high demand situations or cults, there’s the tension of pretending that everything’s okay. Pretending that we’re not noticing the hypocrisy, or if we feel like pushing back against things, there’s the tension of holding that back not protesting. The tension of following the rules. What I’m hearing from what you’re saying is that there’s a freedom in finally being able to just say that stuff. Tamara: We’re always told to doubt ourselves. We were never to doubt the teachings or doubt the authority of the leaders. If we had an attitude or a hard time with something, it was because of our own resistance and our own lack of faith. And deep down, it was because of our own flesh and our own selfishness, and we just didn’t want to surrender and serve and be saved. We were resisting salvation, so there could never be a problem that was legitimate or validated. Was always like, what are you lacking in your life that you’re not able to just receive this direction or this correction or this new revelation of something we were supposed to wear or not wear, or eat or not eat, or there was just constant rules and changes. It’s like anything could come down the pipeline. We were told sometimes our father only tells us to do something just to test our willingness to obey, and then once he sees our heart to obey, then we might have more revelation of the why, or maybe he’ll be like, “Nope, you don’t need to do that.” That was just a test because our father is going to remove the wheat from the tares. But the wheat and the tares grow up together. We wanted to be the wheat. Whenever we heard a new direction, like they were the ones questioning and contradicting, and but we wanted to be the ones that just said yes to whatever our father. Which we know was the leader was telling Alexandra: I relate to a lot of that. That’s for sure. That demand for perfection and anything that’s a problem is your fault. Not anybody else’s fault. One of the things that I keep coming back to is this idea that when I wrote my book, I learned a lot about the group that I was involved with. So, in other words, by having to explain it to other people, there were things that occurred to me that I could see. I could see, the cult leader did that thing, so that six months later she could do this other thing. I saw it like a chessboard almost. Was there anything that you learned or were able to observe newly when you started writing your book? Tamara: Well, I did talk to a lot of people. I had a lot of conversations with other people that had left, and even people who’d left long ago, and people that were there in the beginning, and the Twelve Tribes tells their own version of events of how you know they started out in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and this is what it was like, and this is what happened. But then I got the other side from other people of different things that happened that we weren’t told about, and learning different things that other families went through, especially leading families that I would have looked at as like, oh, well, they’re the perfect family. They don’t really have too many bad things going on. But then afterwards, you talk to them. It’s like everybody was going through the same thing. We were all suffering under the same oppression. We just didn’t have that freedom to talk to each other about it. We did have to encourage each other in faith. And if a woman comes to you complaining about her husband you don’t enter into that complaint. You encourage her to be a submissive wife, and that’s where her grace is. That’s you know that’s how she’s going to be redeemed. We don’t enter into that fellowship of complaint. So then to have that freedom to talk to somebody and just be like, oh my god! Do you remember this person? Oh my god, I hated that person. That person was so yeah, me too. Meetings in them were terrible, and to have those, it was so freeing and amazing to just get that validation. Alexandra: Were there any particular parts of yourself that you felt like were healed? Any catharsis that came from writing your book? Tamara: Just like I said, just being able to speak my truth. Also I did end up writing some letters to people there who I was really intimidated by when I was there, and who were hard in different ways on my family or me. It was so freeing to be this is how I feel about you. You don’t have any power over me anymore, and this is how you made me feel living with you. To just be able to say that, and oh, I’m not going to get dragged into a meeting tomorrow and get cut off and get told how disrespectful I am. I can just say what I need to say now and there’s not going to be a repercussion in some big public repentance afterwards. Alexandra: Have your children read your book? Tamara: I think that they have all read parts of it. I don’t know that any of them have sat down cover to cover. Because they’re in it so much I had them read different parts. I’m putting this out there about you. Are you okay with this? My older children did come to a couple of my book signings, and my older son Emmett, he’s 27 now. He was 15 when we left, so he was there the longest, and he has done podcasts. We just did an interview together the other week. He’s very vocal. He loves to share and talk about his experience. My older daughter, she’s just two years younger than him. She went to my book signings, but she wasn’t going to be like, oh yeah, I was raised there, and field questions like that. She’s not so much open about her experience as he is. And then my younger ones, they were six and nine when we left, so it’s like they’ve had the most normal childhoods out of my four children. They remember things, but we did leave young enough that they were still able to enjoy some age-appropriate things like playing with toys and having birthday parties and having Easter egg hunts. Just kind of little children things that my older ones missed out on. Alexandra: At the moment, in addition to writing your book, you share information about the Twelve Tribes on TikTok and about being a cult survivor and all those kinds of things. I’m guessing you find that creative. Tamara: Absolutely. Alexandra: Is there anything else you do in terms of creative expression that’s helpful for you? Tamara: I’ve written another book. Alexandra: Oh my goodness. Okay. Tamara: I actually just submitted it to my publisher last week. Alexandra: Nice. Tamara: I’m hoping that maybe in about a year from now, my next book will be available. It is a continuation from my first book. It picks up when we left, and it really focuses on those first six months after we left the Twelve Tribes. This book is not written in a linear fashion, so I have different flashbacks because I couldn’t fit 14 years in one book. So there’s a lot of stories that didn’t make it into my first book. So this book goes back and forth. We’re leaving, what’s happening, and then a flashback story. And then back to where we are in our process of getting reestablished out here, and then a flashback. I add in a lot of commentary of things that I’ve learned over the years. Just leaving a cult knowing we’ve helped a lot of people leave the Twelve Tribes, also. Now I have a better idea of what people need, and what it’s like, and what children go through. I’ve been able to write about how do you help people that are leaving high control groups like this? What can you expect? These aren’t going to be the same people that you knew before the group or while they were in the group, and like their worlds are upside down. So I put a little bit of that in as well. Alexandra: I love hearing that. That’s so great. I imagine that your perspective is different, of course. It’s almost like looking at it through a different lens. The same but different. What a great opportunity. That’s amazing. Tamara: That’s been my latest creative endeavor that I’ve been working on for a while now. Alexandra: As we’re starting to wrap up, is there anything else that you’d like to share that we haven’t talked about? Tamara: Yeah, people will ask me what’s your takeaway, or what do you want to tell people? For me it always just goes back to what is true freedom. I don’t take any day for granted anymore. I still take pleasure out of just the small freedoms. I have to make choices but I realize true freedom is literally just having the ability to change your mind about something. I might feel really strongly about something, but then I come across different information or talk to someone, and then I can change my mind and think different. Or I might like a certain hairstyle or way to dress, but you know what? If I get bored with that, and next week I want to wear something different, do you have the freedom to change your mind? If there’s an area where you don’t have, no, I not allowed, or I’m going to get in trouble, or I’m going to get like that’s really not true freedom. In a high control group you don’t have the freedom to change your mind or to formulate your own opinions about anything. Alexandra: So true. Absolutely. Well, thank you for sharing that. Please tell us where we can find out more about you. Give us your TikTok handle. Is that what they call it? I’m not on TikTok. Tamara: Okay, so it is author dot Tamara Matthew or that you know that little at at author dot and then Tamara Matthew all one word. That is my TikTok. Alexandra: I’ll put link links in the show notes to that. Tamara: I have a website. tamaramathieu.com. Alexandra: Okay, great. Tamara: I am on Instagram, but I’m really bad at keeping up with Instagram. I’m TamaraMathieu4, and then I do have an author page on Facebook, Tamara Matthew author on Facebook. Alexandra: I’ll put links in the show notes to those things. Thank you so much for being with me here today, Tamara. I really appreciate it. It’s been good to connect with you. Thank you. Tamara: Yeah, this has been great. Thank you so much. Alexandra: All right, take care. Click here to grab your complimentary copy of the Creative Alchemy journaling handbook. The post Writing About the Cult Next Door with Tamara Mathieu appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

From Experience to Stories to Stage with Dennis Hawkins-Bogle

Here’s what I was reminded of during this conversation with writer and playwright Dennis Hawkins-Bogle. No one’s going to hand you the opportunity to tell the truth of your experience and tell your story. There is no validation and acknowledgement fairy who’s going to come along and anoint you with her magic wand. If telling your story matters enough to you – if you feel the pull to tell the truth about your experience, whatever it is – you are going to have to be the one that makes it happen. And here’s the good news: it is within your power to do so. In the introduction, I talk about my experience of watching Dennis perform his play, The Blue Taffeta Party Dress, and how I was struck by his ease and comfort on the stage, and both the joy and poignance I experienced while watching it. I also mention my new blog series, #MemoirMonday. Each Monday I’ll post a short article with a tip or some advice about writing your best memoir. Memoir is one of my very favourite literary forms and I believe everyone has a story to tell. I want to empower writers like you to tell their stories and tell them well so that readers have a good experience as well. You can find all the Memoir Monday posts listed on this page. Dennis Hawkins-Bogle is a writer, performance artists, and culture worker living and working on the unceded traditional territory of the Ligwilda’xw people in Campbell River. After 30 years working in public education administration, which took Dennis to live and work in Lower Post, the most northerly community in BC, and Grise Fiord, the most northerly community in Canada, Dennis now devotes his time to creative pursuits. Dennis’ involvement in community theatre began in Williams Lake, where he played Ricky Roma in Glen Garry Glen Ross and won best supporting actor at the Interior Zone Theatre Festival. He has been involved with Rivercity Players in Campbell River as an actor, director, producer and board member. Dennis is a writer and storyteller, most notably for Where is Grise Fiord? Tales from the High Arctic, and the Blue Taffeta Party Dress and Other Stories. Dennis won the Readers’ Choice Award and North Island Pride Community Champion Award for The Blue Taffeta Party Dress. Dennis has also organised reading and writing events for local and visiting authors in Quesnel and Campbell River. Dennis is published in the Caitlin Press anthology, Queer Country Crossroads. Connect with Dennis on his Facebook page. This episode of Creative Alchemy is supported by the audiobook version of my award-winning, Amazon best-selling memoir, Cult, A Love Story. Readers call the book ‘compelling’ ‘gritty’ ‘intimate’ and ‘not boring’ – which is what an author loves to hear. I narrated the audiobook and if you have a Spotify premium subscription you can listen to the audiobook for free as part of that subscription at alexandraamor.com/spotify. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes On teaching at the northernmost school in Canada Growing up in small town British Columbia and feeling like an outsider Recognizing that being oneself can open us up to social ridicule Turning a collection of short stories into a one person play Breaking free from internalized stigma and shame via artistic expression Working with a director to stage a one person performance How writing and performing can bring new layers of understanding to an experience Telling stories that involve other people and being respectful while also telling the truth Writing prose vs. writing for the stage Memorizing 8,800 words to be performed The importance of getting our stories on paper Finding the courage to tell our stories Resources Hollyhock Retreat Centre on Cortes Island, BC Murray Hill, drag performer, actor and comedian Transcript of the Interview with Dennis Hawkins-Bogle Alexandra: Dennis Hawkins-Bogle, welcome to Creative Alchemy. Dennis: Thank you very much, Alexandra. It’s nice to be with you today. Alexandra: Good to see you. Tell us a little bit about your background and who you are. Dennis: I am a retired public educator in British Columbia. I worked for 33 years, primarily in education administration, school principal. A couple of interesting notes about my educational career is I was at one time the principal of the most northerly school in British Columbia, in Lower Post. A little two-room kindergarten to grade four school called Denatia School. That was my very first principalship. I was also the principal of the most northerly school in Canada, at Grice Fjord Nunavut Umingmak School. Umingmak means muskox. Another interesting thing about my educational career is that I was my last principalship for seven years. I was the principal of the high school that I graduated from in Quesnel, and that really was an amazing opportunity to close a circle, because I grew up in Quesnel. I was born and raised in Quesnel. I came of age in Quesnel in the the 60s and 70s. I reflect a lot on my upbringing in Quesnel about the socialization process and how in the 60s and 70s boys were socialized to to be one way, and of course girls another way. For those of us that didn’t quite fit that mold, there was an incredible amount of dissonance and distress, trying to figure out ourselves and trying to figure out where we we fit in. Quesnel is a lumber town in the middle of the province was a great place to grow up, but the distress that comes with being an outsider, being gay, and growing up in this kind of small conservative environment, and I think it’s probably the same in any environment, even if you’re in a not so conservative environment. I think the socialization process is pretty intense on people to comply and to fit in. When you can’t fit in, then there is all this distress. So after I finally graduated from high school and moved away, I was able to go to university, and I was able to come out of the closet, and I was able to embrace the person that I am. Embrace who I am, challenge the distress, replace some of those negative images with some positive thoughts and imagery. So that is who I am. Alexandra: I have a follow up question. When you returned to Quesnel at the end of your career, was that deliberate? Was it a choice on your part, or were you transferred there coincidentally? Dennis: No, it was a choice on my part. I had left. I had finished my three year tenure in Nunavut, and I owned a small house in Wells, which is just outside of Quesnel, and so that’s where I went. I didn’t have a job to go to. And then there was a principalship in the Quesnel School District, and I thought I’m about halfway through my career. I’ve got another 15 to 20 years of my career. I think I can do it in my hometown, and so I purposefully applied for the principalship and got that, and then transferred to another school, and then transferred to another school, and then finally transferred to the high school where I finished my career. It was a purposeful move back to Quesnel. Alexandra: We’re here today mostly to talk about The Blue Taffeta Party Dress. So talk to us about the origins of that. Dennis: My mother came home one day, and she was thrifting, and there’s six kids in the family, so thrifting was a great thing to do. And my mother came home; she was thrifting, and she bought a bunch of stuff for us kids to play with. And she brought this beautiful blue party dress, and. I remember her bringing it home, and I remember myself and my sisters, who I was closest to in age, being fascinated by this party dress. I remember wanting to wear it, and then I remember wearing it and putting it on and twirling. I remember the real joy that came from that. The internal comfort and joy of twirling around in that dress because it was layered crinoline and it was a party dress. And so when I would spin, it would flare out around me. I remember that dress. But the other thing, Alexandra, that I remember that is really poignant is I remember knowing that I’m doing something that a girl does. I know that I am putting myself out there for social ridicule. Had anyone, whether it be my sister, my mother, my brother, my father, whoever saw me do this, I knew that I was potentially opening myself up to social ridicule by someone saying, “You’re doing a girl thing, or why are you acting like a girl?” I was very much aware of that. I was probably only about eight or nine years old, and that awareness of being different and treading on thin ice socially, I was very aware of it as a child. Alexandra: When did you start writing the short stories that highlighted the things you went through growing up? Dennis: Well, the blue taffeta party dress story. I wrote that about 15 years ago, and I wasn’t in a particularly prolific writing period. I was still working as a school principal. I didn’t have a lot of time, but I because that story was so poignant in my life. I wrote it over a weekend, and then I just edited it over a course of time. So that one was written about 15 years ago, and then it just sat. It just sat in my portfolio. And then once I retired, my husband Stephen and I, we went to Cortes Island, and we did a program there called Yoga Ritual and Meditation, and I did a ton of writing in my spare time out there. All these stories were just coming to me, and I just spent all my spare time writing. We came home to Campbell River. Summer ended. He went back to work, and I just sat down and wrote story after story after story. I probably wrote about 70 stories in a two-year period after coming back from Hollyhock. Then some of the stories I realized this makes a great trajectory. If I compiled all these stories together, it creates one story, and that’s and and so the very first story in that collection of stories is the blue taffeta party dress. Alexandra: Did you publish them anywhere at that point? Dennis: No, I haven’t published. I’ve only published one story of that collection, Alexandra: Did you show them to anyone else at that time? Dennis: I showed them to my husband Stephen. I showed them to one friend who would come over. I’ve always written stories. Then I would when I’m gathering with my friends, I would say, “Hey, would anyone like a little story time?” And I’d read a story or two because I always had a few little stories on the go. So during this time I shared them with a couple of friends, and that was it until I approached River City Theater in Campbell River to produce the actual present the stories. Then I really had to bring them and show them to someone who I really didn’t know who was going to help me with this project. Alexandra: Okay, so tell us about that. When did you get the idea to maybe turn them into this one person show that you do? Dennis: So, when I was working in Grice Fiord, I didn’t have a lot of things to do with my spare time, so I kept a journal and I journaled the weather, where the where the light was at that particular time of year. Comings and goings. Who was in town? What sort of things were happening? What was going on in the community. I kept this journal, and then I strung together a bunch of stories from my time in Grice Fiord, and I presented them to River City Theater, and I said, “This is a this these stories could be a play.” I performed them in Grice Fjord or I performed them in Campbell River. I performed them in a number of other locations. It was sort of like a I hate to say a travelogue story because the stories were so unique and and just my perspective on some of the things that I witnessed. For example, the annual migration of the whales, seeing the whales coming by, and the community so exuberant and so joyful watching these whales come by, and I could hear these whales singing. I’d never heard whales before, and there were thousands of them. They just kept swimming by and swimming by and swimming by because they’re on their annual migration. And after about 10 or 15 minutes of watching the whales swim by, I realized what was happening. I realized that this was an opportunity, or not an opportunity, but the lifestyle was to harvest whale. The boats came out, and the guns came out, and the hunters came out, and the shots were fired, and everyone on the beach was exuberant and happy, and it’s so full of excitement because the whales were coming by and they were going to get harvest some of them. They harvested 13, and they pulled them up onto the beach with four wheelers. So, I presented this collection of stories, and my director Heather Gordon Murphy, she said to me one day, she said, “Well, that was a great story. You know that Grice Fiord. Those collection of stories were very good,” she said, “But there is something more in there, and I want you to think about that. I’m not sure what it is, but that you’ve got another story in you, and I want you to think about that.” For me, that was just the impetus to that was just the reinforcement that I needed to dig a little deeper into my own personal story, and start to write those stories. And like I say, I came back from Hollyhock. I had so many stories, and I pulled out about 25 of them, and I sat with Heather and I said these 25 stories go together really well. Working with Heather over a course of about a year, we narrowed it down to 19 stories, and that’s the that’s the play that I do. Alexandra: Wow! For the listeners, what would you say would be the theme of the play, The Blue Taffeta Party Dress. Dennis: The theme would be it’s a coming of age story. It’s challenging our internal ideas about who we are, because when I growing up in Quesnel in the in the 70s, I experienced a lot of name calling, a lot of taunts, and and a lot of you know aggression and some violence. Because homosexuality was illegal, it was it was also in the DSM one, the Manual of Mental Illness, and so there was great social stigma attached. And what I did, unbeknownst to myself, is I internalized that disdain about gay people. I internalized it, and then it became a reflection of how I saw myself. And so then I am later in life looking back at that and thinking, I really have to correct this misinformation because it was embedded in me. It was a really a part of how I saw myself, and so I had to crack that open and really challenge the misinformation and the disinformation and replace it with facts and lived experience. And with a very supportive community around me, I was able to do that. Alexandra: That’s so beautifully said! A lot of my guests and a lot of our listeners are cult survivors, and I think they’re really going to be able to relate to that idea of internalized disdain because that’s something that cult leaders. embed in their followers as a way to control them and that kind of thing. Thank you for being so transparent about that. Dennis: You’re welcome. I definitely see the parallels there between what you just described. Alexandra: So you started working with Heather. And what did that relationship look like? You took the stories from 25 to 19. What was that process like? Dennis: Well, it was a fairly simple process because I realized these two stories that I wanted to tell one after the other were exactly the same. The themes were the same. The themes were dealing with a situation where I was quite concerned about the social backlash that would come not if I got caught, but if someone were to say something, and so there were two stories that were identical to that. So it was very easy just to take one out because it followed the themes. The 25 stories made the play too long, so I realized I had to cull some back. I had to take some back. One of the one of the struggles as a writer is, but it’s a real joy for me, is streamline it, take words out, cut it back, get that word out, get that word out. This is superfluous. You don’t need this. You don’t need that. I just love taking things out in the editing process. So, taking some stories out actually really made the story much more succinct and much more on point. Alexandra: When it’s a performance like that, you’re right. I think it does need to be much more concise than you might have in the written word. Dennis: Absolutely. Alexandra: One of the things we talked about when I met you on the night that you performed it, when I saw it, was the staging stuff that you had to go through that you worked on with Heather. Can you tell us a little bit about that as well? Dennis: Heather Gordon Murphy directed and she staged this play. Heather and I have done two plays together, and Heather pays attention to the directing and the staging, and she leaves the writing to me. It’s difficult sometimes when you’re in a creative collaboration with someone. I don’t correct her direction or her staging, and she doesn’t correct my writing. Now, when I say that, that’s absolutely not true because we do banter back and forth about the staging and the writing and everything. But she respects the fact that I’m the writer and these are my words, and I respect that she’s my director and she’s my stage manager, and we have those two two jobs or two roles to fulfill when we bring this play to the stage. Heather’s just lovely to work with. We see things in a very similar eye. She really pushes me along a lot in my acting. I can remember when she said to me one day, she says, “I want you to raise that music stand. Just bring that music stand up about seven or eight inches.” Well, how difficult can it be to raise a music stand? I thought, well, that’s pretty straightforward. So I went and raised the music stand, and she said, “Oh no, no.” She says, “I’m going to show you how to raise the music stand.” That whole lesson about being purposeful and where your hands are and where your eyes are and how you take the time to raise that music stand so that the audience can see how purposeful the movement is, instead of sort of, well, I can easily lift that, or I can easily do that. She really helped me see the way you would do movement for the stage, which I didn’t have a lot of experience with. Alexandra: One of the things I’m really interested in is when people are involved in creative projects, what those projects teach us. So we might be telling a story that we think we already know, but very often something can come out of us that we didn’t realize. Did you have any moments like that either while you were writing or while you were preparing this set of stories for the stage. Dennis: That’s such a great question because I had thought that I had finished this project, and lo and behold, so much more has been coming to the surface. I had always thought to myself, this project is not about kissing and telling. It’s not about blaming. It’s just about sharing my experience. I realized in many ways I presented almost a too sanitized version because I realized oh there’s a few more brutal things that took place that are really important and really worth telling, and those things didn’t surface until well into the project. I always relived them. They were always part of my makeup. They were always part of who I was, but they then started to come up to the surface. I could hear that little voice in the back of my head, you need to include this piece in there. This is an important piece, so the whole process just continued to evolve. It continued to crack open once I started writing the stories. Alexandra: Was there any part of you that was resistant when you felt that sort of feeling? Dennis: There was because I mentioned about kiss and tell, because I never wanted to kiss and tell, but I wanted to tell some stories that involved other people. So I had to take a really good look at a couple of those stories and ask myself, why am I really wanting to tell this story? Because it involves another person. How can I tell the story so that it shows my respect for that other person. It shows my care and my tenderness for that other person. It’s almost like telling someone else’s story a little bit, but I mean it was my story as well, and this involved a few people from my hometown. I really wanted to be careful that I told the story in a respectful way that didn’t breach some kind of ethical standard or some kind of moral standard, because I didn’t want to put anyone else into jeopardy. I want to tell the story from my point of view, but the other characters in the story, if we can call them the other characters in the story, I didn’t want them to to be able to identify themselves, or I didn’t want them to feel like they were being treated unfairly, so it was a tricky situation. But you change the change things up a little bit, change names, change perhaps locations, change circumstances, but tell the same story. Alexandra: You anticipated my next question. I was going to ask how you handled that. That’s great. In terms of challenges from turning it into a series of short stories to a play, what were the challenges that you experienced? We’ve already talked about the emotional ones. Were there technical ones or practical ones, anything that that you found was challenging for you? Dennis: Yeah, when I write, I often hear my own voice, and I often hear my voice delivering my writing as I’m writing it. I often imagine that I’m delivering it on a stage to someone, and that’s my writing process. So while I write, I’m performing in my mind. That’s super helpful for me. It gets a bit tricky because writing for a piece of literature and performing are two different things. So I had to take a look at my short stories, and then ask for each one of those short stories. I had to ask myself: Is it written for the stage? What do I need to do to change this so that it’s written for the stage? What I found out was a lot of the transitions while I’m on the stage could be a lot harder because I could act the transitions out, and I could emphasize where I wanted to put emphasis, I could use my voice to create different mood. The written word was one thing, and then performing it was another thing too. Alexandra: And you’ve said this wasn’t your first take at performing something; you had performed before. Is that a fairly comfortable place for you to be on the stage? Dennis: Ah, yes, it is. I do like it. In high school, I loved theater. I loved acting, and I loved being on the stage. As a school principal, I really relished in those roles where I had an opportunity to stand in front of the school and deliver a message or instill values around what our school meant. I really enjoyed being in front of the crowd and delivering those kinds of messages, speeches, or what or whatnot. I’m never nervous around that. I always look forward to it. I don’t know what it is. I guess I really enjoy the energy of that. I get super nervous now when I’m officially doing a play. I don’t quite get so nervous if I know that I have to make a speech in front of a group of people, I can prepare my speech. But when I actually have to have words memorized and I’m performing, I get really nervous. Good nervous energy, I think, helps me. But I’ve always enjoyed theater, and I’ve always enjoyed acting and performing. Alexandra: It was so great when I saw you perform that night, and you seem like such a natural. And the thing that really blew my socks off was that, and I guess this goes along with performing, but you just had the whole thing memorized. 60 minutes of a solo performance, and you’re talking essentially the entire time. How long did it take you to build up to have that memorized? Dennis: Well, I will tell you, it’s 8800 words. It probably took me about four months to memorize it. Now it took me a long time to write it, so that writing process and the editing process was super helpful because those words then become just sort of embedded in me. Very shortly after writing a story and working with it a little bit, I knew the flow of where this story was going, how the action might have been rising, and what the resolution was was. When I started to memorize, actually word for word, I already knew the structure of the story, and I already knew the trajectory of the story. I knew where the story was going and how it was going to end, and so then it just became memorizing those lines. What I do is I read the lines into a recorder, and then I wear my earbuds and I go for bike rides and I listen and I listen and I listen, and then I stop quickly, and I say, “I need to edit this story. It doesn’t quite sound right. I need to take out this little chunk and maybe move it over here.” The whole memorization process also is an editing process. It’s really interesting when I did the story with Heather, we edited The Blue Taffeta Party Dress right up until opening night. I kept changing things and changing things and changing just a word here or there. I’m like, oh, this word doesn’t quite work, but this word works much better. I’m doing that show on Wednesday in Penticton, and I haven’t done the show for about three weeks. I did it in the living room the other day, and I only made one mistake. So it was wow, super happy. I’m rehearsing every day now until my show on Wednesday, and then I have a show again in Cumberland on September 25th. I’ll just keep it fresh from now until then. Alexandra: Oh, that’s beautiful. It was actually somebody who gave a TED talk say that she did the same thing, recorded it so that she could listen back to it, and then memorize it that way. That’s amazing. Who do you perform the play for, generally? Dennis: I perform this play, I would say generally, my audience is allies of the queer community and members of the queer community. I get so many people, so many people have come up to me after being an audience member and saying, “Wow, you just told my story. I’m not gay. I’m not queer, but I dealt with this growing up.” I understand how we internalize messages that we hear about ourselves. I lived that struggle of unraveling the onion and getting at the core of myself. So when people ask me who I wanted, I really want young queer kids to come and see this show, because right now trans kids-I just can’t imagine what it would be like to be a young trans person in our society with the the rhetoric and the the language that people are using when they talk about transgender people, you can’t help but hear that. If you’re a transgender person, you have to either have some heavy armor on to deflect it, or it’s going to get into you, the way it did when I was a child when I heard all the homophobia. I have a lot of gay men come to my shows as well. They can relate to a lot of the stories that I share. I’ve done this show in three high schools in Campbell River. I just modified it slightly. I just took out a couple of stories that I didn’t think were appropriate for the high school audience. When I’m asked, I tell people this is a good show for kids 16 and over. It’s not because there’s any particular language. It’s just because the concepts are fairly sophisticated. I’m talking about the socialization process. I’m talking about internalizing homophobia. I’m talking about collective psyches, and I’m talking about going on a healing journey and how you how I accessed that. It’s not a children’s story. It’s a good story for youth as long as they have a bit of maturity about them. Alexandra: And the upcoming shows, where are they being performed, and to what kind of an audience? Are they in schools as well? Dennis: No, the next the show on Wednesday is actually going to be in Penticton as part of the Ryga Festival. Now the Ryga Festival is in Summerland, but because of the fires in Summerland this summer, they’ve really had to pivot. I just give the Ryga Festival Trista just huge kudos because they weren’t able to host the festival this year. It’s supposed to be a three-day festival all in one town, and people buy your weekend pass, and there’s lots of different art to see. There’s music, and there’s theater, and there’s readings, and there’s dance, and there’s just a whole range of art, like a little community festival. And of course, that can’t happen this year because of the fires in Summerland. So they’ve had to pivot. So I’m being hosted at the Elks Club in Penticton on Wednesday, September 16th at 7o’clock. And the other amazing thing that the people at the Ryga Festival have done is they’ve made their shows that they’re offering free of charge to people. Somehow they were able to offer these free of charge. So I’m hoping that this would entice some people to come, knowing that they don’t have to pay for it. I’m hoping that I get a real cross section of people at my show. I love getting a cross section of people. I love it when I see youth in my show. I love it when I see allies, men and women allies coming to my show and hearing my story. I love it when I see other queer people, gay and lesbian men and women coming to my show, that’s part of my community. So that really inspires me and gives me a lot of comfort when I see my community show up for me. I’m hoping that there’s a real diverse people in the audience on Wednesday. The next show I’m doing is on September 25th. I’m doing it at the Weird Church in Cumberland, and I’m being hosted by the Queer Center of the Comox Valley. This show is a fundraiser for the Queer Center of Comox Valley. The Queer Center of Comox Valley is raising funds so that. They can provide a physical location to be a resource center in the Comox Valley. Comox Valley is just down the highway from where I live in Campbell River, and the show at the Weird Church. The tickets you can get online at I think it’s queercomoxvalley.ca, and you can go online and get tickets. Unfortunately, they’re doing it as a fundraiser, so they’re not making it free like they are in Kelowna or Penticton. Alexandra: One of the things I’m really struck by in your story, Dennis is the healing that comes from this kind of work. Any time we take a chance and tell our own story, it can seem personal. But what I’m hearing is that the ripples go out more than we probably can even expect initially. You’re talking about them going out to the ally community and to trans kids and reaching out. Did you mention that there was a grandparent that came up to you when you had given your performance once? Dennis: It was a cousin. It was a cousin in Powell River. She had seen the poster around Powell River, and she recognized my name. And she’s a cousin. She’s considerably older than I am, so as cousins, we didn’t know each other very well. We knew of each other more than we knew each other. I certainly knew her parents because I knew them as my aunt and uncle. But she was considerably older than me. She knew my brother, older brother, growing up. I’m in Powell River in this beautiful venue, this beautiful community hall, and it’s packed. And I’m delivering my stories, and I see this beautiful woman in the front row. She’s in the front row, and she’s staring at me and smiling. And she has a beautiful wrinkled face and all of this gray hair. And during the intermission, I go outside and I go into the back, and I’m rubbing my neck just to release some tension off my neck. I see this woman approach me, and she’s rubbing her neck as well. I say to her, “Oh, it looks like we both have sore necks.” And we kind of laugh a little bit about that. And then she comes up to me and she says, “I think you and I are cousins.” I said, “On my mom’s side or my dad’s?” She said, “On on your dad’s side and my mum’s side.” She told me her mum’s name, and we just gave each other a huge hug. It was just so warm and loving, and it was so nice to see my cousin there to watch my show. Her and I have been writing back and forth now, sharing family stories. I’m hoping to get back to Powell River soon so I can see her again because she’s just lovely and it’s so nice to connect with my cousin that way. Alexandra: Oh, that’s such a nice bit of connection. So as we start to wrap up, I just wondered if you had any other thoughts or anything you’d like to share about your experience of creating this play from these short stories. Any creative lessons or anything that you’ve learned or reflected on? Dennis: I’ve had a number of people approach me and say, “Oh, I would love to do that. I have a story to tell.” I said to both of these people, I said, “Well, the first thing you need to do is you need to write your stories down. You need to get your stories on paper.” I’ve always thought of myself as a writer. I’ve enjoyed writing. I’ve always been writing short stories. I wrote The Blue Taffeta Party Dress about 15 years ago. I have other stories that I’ve written 15 years ago, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, and I just keep them in my portfolio. I’ve always thought of myself as a writer. Now I’m starting to see myself as not only as a writer but a performer. I’m also seeing myself as an agent of change, which is like a culture worker, which is like a promoter. I’m promoting myself, and I’m speaking to organizations like the Comox Valley Queer Center, for example, and I’m saying his is a really important story that the community needs to hear. It’s not just because it’s my story, but I think this is an important story that young kids need to hear, older folks need to hear. As queer people, our voice has often been marginalized. We have never always been given the full range of opportunities to share our stories. Things are certainly getting better, but we need to tell our stories. Queer people, wherever people are on the gender or the sexuality spectrum, we need to tell our stories. Everyone needs to know what it was like for us. We need to know what it was like for our neighbors. We need to know what it’s like for each other, so that we can celebrate in this collective humanity. Because if we don’t celebrate the diversity in our community, then people become invisible. That’s the last thing I want is that young people, especially, go through these teen years or adolescence or young adult years feeling like they’re invisible and feeling like they don’t have a community. Sometimes I feel like I’m a culture worker, like I’m getting the message out there, and I’m sharing with people that we do have a community and we do have a voice, and we need to be collective in sharing our stories and sharing our voice. Alexandra: That’s so true. And two things I want that makes me think of one is it takes courage, right, to step out and do that. The other thing I’m reminded of is, do you know who Murray Hill is? He’s a transgender man, artist, an actor, and performer in New York City. I know him because he was on the HBO show Somebody Somewhere, and just a delightful guy. He has this lovely expression that he says all the time: “If you don’t see yourself represented, represent yourself.” Dennis: I love that. Alexandra: Isn’t that great? Dennis: Yes, it is. Otherwise, you’re invisible. Alexandra: Exactly. And I’m going to sound a little political, but the big companies that own television stations and that make movies and all that stuff… the change isn’t necessarily going to come from the top. Dennis: Right. Alexandra: It feels like it has to come from individuals like us, like you, telling your truth and saying what’s important, and the change comes from the bottom up. Dennis: Oh absolutely! I mean, Stonewall was a riot. Let’s not forget that. It started with the entire spectrum of the community walking out onto the street and saying, “No, you’re not going to do this to us, and we’re going to fight back.” We’re not achieving equality and basic human rights because of their largess. We’re achieving them because of our fight. Alexandra: Yes. Oh, so well said. Thank you, Dennis. Well, this has been a delight. I don’t think the Blue Taffeta Party Dress has a website or anything, does it? Dennis: I’m sort of promoting myself here and there where I can. I don’t have a website. Alexandra: I think the shows will be over by the time this comes out, but I’ll put some links to whatever I can find so that people can learn more about the show. Dennis: That would be great. Would you be able to put a link? Because I’m open to people contacting me if someone wants to have a conversation. So if there’s a way that you can include my email or my way to contact me, I’m okay with that too. Alexandra: Okay, great. I will do that for sure with your permission. All right. Well, thank you, Dennis, so much again. This has been great. Dennis: Well, it was my pleasure. Thank you very much, Alexandra. Alexandra: All right. Take care. Click here to grab your complimentary copy of the Creative Alchemy journaling handbook. The post From Experience to Stories to Stage with Dennis Hawkins-Bogle appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

Writing to Reckon with a Cult Experience with Gerette Buglion

When we leave a high demand group, there is a reckoning that needs to happen. As survivors, we need to come to terms with so many things; among them, why we were drawn into the group in the first place and how we were affected by that situation. We need to deal with feelings that might include grief and loss and trauma and guilt. There’s so much to unpack! My guest today, Gerette Buglion, understands this intimately. She herself is a cult survivor. And she hosts a writing program called Writing to Reckon which is specifically for cult survivors. In the introduction, I talk about the phenomenon of scapegoating that happens in cults. In the interview, Gerette mentions her own experience of being labelled a ‘loser’ by the leader of the cult she was involved in and I reflect on my personal experience with similar treatment of myself and others in the cult I belonged to. I also talk about how complicated it is to unpack these traumatic experiences that happen to us in cults. Gerette Buglion wants to live in a world where cult leaders, narcissistic abusers, and unethical, manipulative techniques are spotted, called out, and silenced, creating more opportunities for nourishing relationships to flourish. She is the author of two books: her memoir, An Everyday Cult, and the Writing to Reckon Journal – for Survivors of Spiritual, Religious, and Cultic Abuse. Her work as educator and consultant centers on liberation from coercive control and supporting the integrative power of writing for survivors of cultic relationships through Writing to ReckonTM programs and Reclaiming Autonomy Through the Written Word – a bi-annual writing symposium for survivors. She is Co-founder and Executive Director for the nonprofit Living Cult Free. You can learn more about Gerette Buglion at GeretteBuglion.com This episode of Creative Alchemy is supported by the audiobook version of my award-winning, Amazon best-selling memoir, Cult, A Love Story. Readers call the book ‘compelling’ ‘gritty’ ‘intimate’ and ‘not boring’ – which is what an author loves to hear. I narrated the audiobook and if you have a Spotify premium subscription you can listen to the audiobook for free as part of that subscription at alexandraamor.com/spotify. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Getting involved in a cult that taught dream analysis How the appearance of autonomy is often woven into cults On the interpersonal neurobiology work of Dr. Dan Siegel Creating a “coherent narrative out of traumatic or confusing experiences” Using writing as a way to reckon with a cult experience Resources mentioned in this episode Gerette Buglion’s book An Everyday Cult Dr. Dan Siegel Writing to Reckon classes Daniel Kenneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow The Living Cult Free project Living Cult Free also has a podcast Reclaiming Autonomy Through the Written Word symposium Dr. Laura Anderson and her book When Religion Hurts Robin Boyle Lazier Hoyt Richards and the HBO documentary Bring Me The Beauties Transcript of the Interview with Gerette Buglion Alexandra: Gerette Buglion, welcome to Creative Alchemy. Gerette: I am so glad to be here. What a pleasure! Alexandra: It’s great to see you. Tell us a little bit about your background and about the cult that you were involved with. Gerette: I was born into a large family and grew up in a, I would say, a normally dysfunctional family. Nothing, you know, dramatic there, and I grew up in New York State of the United States, and when I was in my 30s, I got involved with a group that was centered on working with dreams. I had been interested in dreams, and I had a couple colleagues. I taught in a Waldorf school, so I had kind of a spiritually oriented bent much of my adult life, and a couple of my colleagues were doing this work, and so I got excited, and I got involved. At first, it was really lovely. I learned a lot. It was an opportunity for inner growth. And then over the years, I was involved for 18 years altogether. My daughter was born six months before I started. I had been interested in starting working with this teacher. I call him Doug in my book. I had been interested in working with Doug actually before before my daughter was born, but I put that off a bit because I felt it wasn’t good to start something new when I was you know preparing to welcome a child into the world, my first child. There was a lot of anticipation in working with him too. But the first five years, I think, was fairly light involvement, and then that grew gradually over the years, as I became more and more, as the work we called it, became more and more a central focus in my life, and as my children grew. I bought a business based on my ex teacher’s advice. Of course, he had no training in business consultation, nor did he have a marriage and family counseling license, but I also did couples work with him. My husband was also in the same group. He was involved for 16 years, and he left actually while doing his training to become a licensed clinical mental health counselor. That was part of his waking up to the fact that this was not a cool thing to be doing, because some of his professors started pushing him a bit. He had a few experiences with Doug that were really questionable and made him think again, and so he left, and then that gave me an opportunity to go even deeper. So my last two years in the cult were actually the most intense for me, and even the few years before that had been kind of growing in intensity. Do you want me to just share briefly how I left? There was a crisis in the organization, and that crisis was that six of the head teachers left on the very same day. That was like this earthquake, it was a massive, massive rupture. I had this question, this burning question of like, why would they all leave on the same day? Because so much of what this group was about in terms of personal growth was that we got to make choices based on what was being revealed to us through our individual dreams. So it was one thing for one teacher to say, “Hey, I’m I’m done”. That would be a hard thing, but totally acceptable. And in fact, that’s something that would happen. People would come to a place that they’re like I’m done, but then they would often come back. That actually is something that I did a couple of times. So we had this appearance of autonomy and choice being stitched into this organization, but it was really a ruse. And so, when all six of the top teachers left on the same day, there was a major, you know, WTF. What is really going on here? That led me to have an experience in a final meeting that we had with those teachers. One of them, literally in the last five minutes of our meeting, shared things, shared how she was being verbally beaten down by our teacher, and so that’s what created the cognitive dissonance in me. It’s like, wait a minute, this man that I’ve put on a pedestal is doing that to this beloved person who I know, who’s an artist and a poet and a deeply sensitive person. It was really that cognitive dissonance that made the opening, that was the crack, that really allowed me to free myself. I had a very sudden snapping. I call it my snapping out of the cult, and my husband was really waiting for me. He had recognized that if he started pushing me in those two years to come out, that I would have left him. And I would have, because I was so completely indoctrinated at that point. So he really held the space for me, welcomed me back, as did many of my friends who had watched me kind of disappear for 18 years into this group. Alexandra: You mentioned your book there, which is called An Everyday Cult. Once this happened and you decided to leave, how did you use writing to help you with that part of the journey? Gerette: I love that question because writing is a huge part of my life. As I mentioned, I had good friends who really welcomed me back with open arms. One of them handed me an eight CD pack of Dr. Dan Siegel’s interpersonal neurobiology. Have you ever heard of Dr. Siegel? Oh gosh, I cannot recommend his work highly enough because it was deeply important for me. Because there are many things he focuses on, as I said, interpersonal neurobiologists. He’s a psychologist who has a neurological understanding and also a deeply relational understanding of the human experience. I listened to one of those CDs probably a dozen times, and the one that I listened to again and again, and this was in 2014 is when I left the group. The one I listened to focused on what Dr. Siegel calls the importance of creating a “coherent narrative out of traumatic or confusing experiences”. That was like gongs going off for me. I have always been an educator. I was a teacher of elementary students, and also did parent education. And I had even, as I was a special educator, so I had an orientation towards brain development and healthy human development. So hearing Dr. Siegel’s work was very impactful for me, and so the coherent narrative became like this. It’s hard to describe it, Alexandra. It almost was like a guiding impulse in my psyche. I felt like one of those homing pigeons. Wherever I was able to to actually speak to people in a safe space, that was part of creating a coherent narrative. I had also been a journaler my whole life, and there was an aberration of journaling that took place in the group, where we had to write about our pathology is what we called it, and the deep delving of how how broken we were, and how the guidance of our teacher was setting us free. So that was part of what was actually required. When I started writing for myself, there was this powerful reclamation of my own voice, because in the cult, I was one of the members of the group that was always the loser. I was one of the ones that was just never going to get it. There were others who would go up the ladder pretty quickly in understanding, and I might take a few steps forward, but then there’d be a slide back. That was my trajectory was a pretty rocky one. So to actually recognize that there was something of value, not only for myself, but also even for one or two other people, the writing just became this pathway, this doorway to finding, refinding my own voice and what I thought, how I think, what matters to me. Alexandra: So this idea of coherent narrative-you said that was kind of a homing beacon for you. Were you writing to find that coherent narrative? Is that the right way to describe it? Gerette: There was, and continues to be a continual kind of opening that takes place. The written word is leading me to deeper and richer, more nuanced, and more relational richer, actually, understanding of not only myself but also of the world. So, yeah, I think that the writing just kept opening, kept, and continues to open these these doors. Does that answer your question? Alexandra: It does. I’m just not understanding the connection between Dr. Siegel’s work and writing. Gerette: The coherent narrative is where it actually intersects with therapy, with healing through therapy. So, when I was immersed in the cult, I believed that I understood who I was and what was most important, and how I could learn and grow, and what my role was in the world. But that was my cult identity that had actually been formed by my ex teacher. He harnessed my dreams, and harvested various images and experiences from my dreams to get me to believe that I was someone who was other than who I was. I believed, like I said, I was a loser. I was someone who was so damaged and so filled with pride, that was part of my cult identity persona. So that pride was something that he would continually berate me for. That I needed to become a humble servant of the animus in dream language. To have the experience of recognizing how detrimental that was, and how opposed to my true self Doug’s narrative was, leaves me with a well, then, who the heck am I? The coherent narrative is an opportunity to tug at those strings and bring those questions and hold them long enough to discover what words might actually emerge, and the words that emerged … some of them were very confused. There’s no question. I mean, you’ve written a book too, you know. Like there are, there were swaths of my writing that when I was editing, I would go back into and say, “What the heck is that? But that, that, that writing process was part of finding the coherence. Alexandra: Got it. That’s yeah. I get it now. Thank you. Gerette: Thanks for the question. Alexandra: When did it occur to you that you might want to write a book about this experience? Gerette: I was about five years out of the cult, and I was sitting with a new friend and colleague, who was a writing coach. We were actually in a business group together, and just having a coffee chat, and she like just implored me to write. I was like, I don’t know. I was really uncertain at first. We actually started a process together where she assured me that she would be able to support me in that process. She also had had her own experience of cultic involvement, so that being seen in that way was very important for me, and that was a big part of what helped me to realize the value of writing. When I first started writing, I’m a diehard educator, so I wanted to write something that was going to help people. So I was writing. I was actually with her when we were talking about genre and stuff, and to realize that I was starting to write a self-help book, and I was like, “Oh no, that’s not what I want to be doing.” Because the cult that I was in was part of the self help movement, self help world. I worked for a couple years on it in that way, and I was struggling to find my voice because I could feel like even in terms of what tense to use and how to form these questions and responses. One day, I was sitting with a fellow cult survivor, I call him a cult buddy. So I was sitting with him, kind of angsting about it, and he looked at me and he’s like, “Gerrette, what if you just wrote your story?” Again, that was just like gongs, and then that was the turning for me. Then it was relatively easy, because then it wasn’t like I was trying to convince anybody of anything, or show that I was smart or had something of value. It’s like, oh, actually, this is what happened to me. And as far as that coherent narrative goes, that’s where things really started to crystallize because I saw the different phases of the cultic involvement that I had experienced. Of course, my experience was going in as an adult, rather than someone who was born in, and so to reckon with those choices that I had made as an educated, caring woman in my small community here. There was a lot of reckoning to do there, and what emerged was a deeper and richer understanding of the forces of indoctrination and the mechanisms of control, and of course that combined with I was very fortunate to find a good therapist within a year of leaving, and that helped me dramatically. I was also able to kind of weave that work into my book as well. Alexandra: You’ve touched on something that’s always really fascinating for me. When I wrote my book, I learned a lot about the cult. I started writing it eight years after, and the way that I say it is by having to sort of go up to 30,000 feet and explain it to people so that they would understand, I learned a lot about what was going on with the manipulation by the cult leader. Was there anything that came out of your writing your book that was like that? Gerette: Oh, absolutely! Yeah, understanding dreams as something that is so deeply personal, and how a dream, they’re ours, you know. We have them at night. They come to us. They don’t belong to anybody. But how a dream could be manipulated. That mechanism of the twisting of meaning, which is something that I see living in the United States, I see that in a deeply disturbing way in the in the current administration. I was actually writing my book during the first term of his administration, and Alexandra, I actually had the naive belief at that time that, oh, this is so great! People will see on such a big scale how narrative can be twisted. We get to recognize this. We get to see it. We get to wake up to it, and we get to say no to it. I wrote one of my early blog posts was “Thank you, Donald.” Well, that was my own naivete, obviously, and yet there’s something there. There’s something about the recognition of how something of value, something of integrity, can be turned against us individually, and can be turned against us on a societal level. So there’s definitely a profound, I would say, interweaving today of what I have come to terms with in my own lived experience, and how that manifests today in the wider societal authoritarianism that is ravaging our dear planet. Alexandra: What challenges did you experience writing this book? You’ve talked about one already about how you had a little bit of trouble finding your voice. Was there anything else you encountered that was challenging? Gerette: One thing that just pops up when you ask that question is the publishing process. I worked with a hybrid publisher. It was very thrilling and empowering for me to be accepted by this small hybrid press that doesn’t publish everything. They decide what they want to publish, and so it was affirming. It was really empowering to have them choose my pitch, and bigan to work with them. There was a point in that process close to the end where we’re finalizing things like book cover and design, and those final details, the blurbs on the front and back, and all of that kind of stuff, and there was something really wrong with the art that was used for. It was actually the photography of the art that I had. I actually had someone design the art for it. When I brought that to the attention of the publisher, they pushed back, or this one person in particular pushed back really hard, and started bullying me, and really like it was actually a recreation of the kinds of language that I experienced in the cult, and that was deeply destabilizing. It took me a little while to realize what was going on. It also was an opportunity for me to see it. Name it, and say actually, it’s not going to happen that way. We are going to rephotograph the artwork because the color and the quality is terrible in what you’re proposing to use. It’s not right. I held my own, and that process was actually really affirming. So that’s an example of a major challenge that ended up positive. There’s, I mean, there’s the process of promoting the book. I’d say that is oh, isn’t that fun? That’s a challenge. I discovered that I actually really love doing readings, but scheduling the readings and the organizational stuff I find challenging. Those are a few things that come to mind, anyway. I’m sure that there’s definitely more. Alexandra: Those are some great examples. What advice can you offer to those who are thinking about writing a book about a cult experience or a traumatic experience, about where they can begin, because you work with writers. Where do you recommend someone start? Gerette: It’s so individual, isn’t it? Because we all have our unique triggers, and we all have our unique openings. I think learning enough about oneself is most important. I highly recommend finding a good therapist, someone who really understands coercive control. I know people who have been in therapy for years and years, but they don’t know the coercive control piece. And I feel like there’s still some arrested development where in a cultic environment, our development gets stopped. So having a therapist who really understands trauma and really understands the mechanisms of coercion can be incredibly helpful. As a starting place, I would definitely recommend that. The other piece that is really big for me is understanding how cultic trauma is ultimately relational trauma, and so finding environments where there can be some relational healing is also very important. I didn’t know when I started Writing to Reckon, the classes and workshops that I offer, I didn’t know that that’s what I was offering.But over the years that has become more and more clear to me that what takes place in a small group where there is an understanding that everyone there has experienced some version of coercion or manipulation, or cultic abuse, or religious trauma. There’s enough of a container that people get to find their own words and dare to share them with each other, and through that process, there is just this incredibly life affirming, like if I can use the word soul, soul growing experience in the personality. The whole being of the person gets to heal when you’re seen by people who get it, people who you don’t have to explain yourself to. There’s there’s an understanding there. It’s an incredibly beautiful experience that I have the privilege of experiencing every Friday in the Writing to Reckon class, and then whenever I do workshops. I’m not saying that you have to come to a Writing to Reckon class, although of course anybody is welcome to. It’s more finding the places where you can exercise that atrophied muscle of being in relationship with others. We’re a social species. We need each other to grow, to be the most human we can be. We need each other. We can’t do it in isolation. Alexandra: You mentioned your Writing to Reckon classes. What does reckoning mean to you and to your students? Gerette: I love that question. Reckoning is an opportunity to get really honest with what is, what happened, what exists in the moment, and in a certain way, to hit the pause button on all the ideas that our brain, or the internet, or all of the books that we read, or our therapist, even or our family and friends, or even our most trusted ones. It’s like putting a pause on all of that noise and just saying, “Okay, I see this moment. This moment.” What I’m talking about here, Alexandra, is that we work with a writing prompt, and that prompt. I mean, you don’t have to work with prompt. There’s no requirements at all. But we come together around a certain concept. For example, I’m a nerdy educator, and it might be. So I’ve got all these people. I love the work of Daniel Kenneman, the book Thinking Fast and Slow. I love the work of Robert Chaldini, influence. Robert J. Lifton is my hero, who I came close to meeting, but unfortunately didn’t. So, I might take a little snippet of one of their concepts, and then bring it into something that’s happening in the world today that reminds me of the cultic experience. It’s like there’s a little nugget that we kind of plonk in front of us for a moment, and then we see where that takes us. The opportunity of just trusting the words that come, and then having the next opportunity of sharing those words and hearing ourselves speak them out loud by reading our writing, reading what we. Even the next step of actually hearing others who just heard our writing offer their feedback about what they loved, that’s what reckoning is. It’s like we’re taking a lived experience, exploring it, and also getting some feedback on it. There is a kind of alchemy, actually, that happens in that experience that just allows us to become more autonomous through that process. I watch people become better writers through this really simple process. I watch people grow and integrate, and their voices strengthen. And you’ve experienced this too, I’m sure. Like it’s just an exquisite experience, Alexandra: Something that comes up a lot on this podcast about creating and using creativity as a part of the healing process after a cult experience is how powerful telling the truth is. It sounds like reckoning in your definition is really telling the truth. That is built in there as well, and people have the experience of telling their own truth and finding their voice in that, and then getting positive feedback about it from others. Gerette: Absolutely, absolutely. It’s just that this is what happened. There’s something about the reckoning process that encourages us to strip away all those narratives of justification that we may have built in to just allow ourselves to kind of sleep at night. When we strip away those justifications or the narratives that other people had told us, or their explanations, or whatever, not only do we get to sleep better at night, we actually get to stand up a little taller, because we know who we are in an unfiltered way, and it’s amazing. Alexandra: Oh, that’s so lovely. Another part of your work is the Living Cult Free project. Tell us about that. Gerette: Oh, great! Living Cult Free is a nonprofit dedicated to exactly that, to cult-free living, and specifically in finding supporting individuals through education and empowering them to autonomous living in whatever ways. We’re a small nonprofit and we have big hopes and are working towards really growing more and more. One of the ways that we’re growing right now is actually through our partnership with a project that I started in September of 2024, which is offering a writing symposium. The writing symposiums bring speakers, all of whom are survivors and authors and writers in a variety of ways, meaning memoir writers, screenwriting, even graphic novelists come. So there’s a wide variety of of writing. Creative expression through the written word in all of its manifestations. Living Cult Free has a scholarship fund, and so people get to attend the the symposium, the writing symposium. The name of that symposium is “Reclaiming Autonomy Through the Written Word for survivors of spiritual, religious, and cultic abuse”. Because of this beautiful partnership with Living Cult Free, we’re able to offer scholarships for those who would otherwise be unable to attend. Scholarships have also been given to attend other educational resources so people can apply to receive a scholarship. It’s a beautiful organization that is dedicated to growing slowly and organically, because of the dangers inherent in creating an organization. You laugh. Do you know anything about that? Alexandra: Maybe something. Yeah. Gerette: Exactly. We’ve been through a lot since the organization began back in 2020, but we feel there’s a wonderful board of directors. People can look at the Living Cult Free website and sign up to be on the newsletter. What I should say is that that newsletter is twice a year. If people are interested in a more substantial newsletter, I do send out a weekly newsletter that is educationally oriented. So my nerdy educator self gets to play every week, and for me that’s one of the ways that I get to keep growing. I know that I went on three different tangents there, but I hope that’s all okay. I hope it made sense. Alexandra: Tell us where we can find more about Living Cult Free. Gerette: Living Cult Free can be found at livingcultfree.org. Alexandra: Perfect. And then the symposium. Tell us more about that. Gerette: Reclaiming Autonomy Through the Written Word. We actually have one that’s coming up really soon. October 3 is the next one. The symposiums happen twice a year, and this symposium is featuring three different speakers. One is Dr. Laura Anderson, who is the founder of the Center for Trauma and Recovery Resolution, and she’s also the author of When Religion Hurts. Do you know that book? Alexandra: That rings a bell with me. Gerette: It’s a wonderful book. She is just an absolute fount of passion and education for survivors of coercion, especially those who have experienced religious trauma. I’m thrilled to have Dr. Laura Anderson speaking. I also have Robin Boyle Lazier, who is a legal scholar who just wrote a book on the title is “Taken No More: Protect Your Children Against Traffickers and Cults”, and she has worked for many years with ICSA, the International Cultic Studies Association, and she’s on the board of ICSA. Robin has been a colleague for a number of years, and I am thrilled beyond measure to have her as a speaker. Also, and the third speaker is Hoyt Richards, who is a one of the founding board members of Living Cult Free, and he is also a featured in an HBO documentary that just came out. I don’t know if you can get that documentary in Canada yet. I know a Canadian friend who found it somewhere, but it’s called “Bring Me the Beauties”. It’s a really interesting three-part docu-series. And it’s actually just-I don’t know what it is right now-but a couple weeks ago, it was rated as HBO’s top documentary. It features his story, and Hoyt, what’s unique about him is that while he was immersed in a new agey spiritual cult, he was also a rising star in the modeling industry. He became one of the very first male supermodels. That was happening while he was in the cult. It’s a very interesting story, and the real story is the human story of what has taken place since he left, how he has healed with his family, and how he is growing individually. So, to have Hoyt be a speaker, he is also a screenwriter, and has written a number of films, so he will be speaking more from the screenwriting perspective. So I’m thrilled to have him at the symposium as well. Alexandra: Is there a website for the symposium? Gerette: You would just go to my website, which is gerretbuglion.com, and click on symposium, and all the information is there. Alexandra: Okay, perfect. That’s a great segue into you telling us where we can find out more about you and your work. Gerette: Well, that’s the spot, gerettebuglion.com.You can contact me, sign up for my newsletter. I am always happy to do what I call a 20 minute chat. You can schedule that any time because I’m always happy to not only just connect with fellow survivors, but also see if I can offer resources for people in whatever way that might be a good fit. Then also to see if any of my services, the writing support that I offer, might be a good fit or not. I want to also mention that the symposium, I really try to keep it affordable for people, and it’s $39 for this three hour symposium that’s very rich in content. Like I mentioned, people can apply for scholarship funds too, and I do pay my speakers. That’s part of why that’s part of why I charge for it because and that’s really important to me because I value the time. So many of us were abused through volunteerism in our various cultic experiences. So I do pay my speakers as well as possible. Alexandra: Oh, that’s amazing! Well, thank you, Gerette. I’m going to put links in the show notes to all those things so that people can find them going forward. Thank you so much for being with me. This has been a really rich conversation. I’ve really enjoyed it. Gerette: Yes, it’s been my pleasure. Absolutely, thank you so much. Alexandra: You’re so welcome. Take care. Bye Click here to grab your complimentary copy of the Creative Alchemy journaling handbook. The post Writing to Reckon with a Cult Experience with Gerette Buglion appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

Disentangling Religion from Personal Spirituality with Kimber Young

Kimber Young can trace her Mormon family lineage directly back to Brigham Young, the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The Mormon church, she points out, was her whole life and her whole family was involved. And yet, somehow, Kimber was able to begin questioning the church doctrine and dogma while also retaining a sense of her own spirituality, which was so important to her. For anyone who’s ever left a high demand situation, you know that this is an extremely difficult needle to thread. It is one I was particularly interested to talk to her about. In the introduction I talk about my experience with how challenging it is to question a group or religion that we’ve become bonded to (or, in Kimber’s case, were born into), partly because this questioning is so threatening to our identity. Who are we without the group? It takes courage to ask that kind of question and the other questions that arise when we’re challenging our beliefs. Kimber Young is an artist, writer, and creator of Something for Sundays, a weekly Substack newsletter and a monthly illustrated zine exploring religion, spirituality, meaning, and the big questions of being human. After growing up in a religious tradition and spending years questioning and reconstructing her beliefs, Kimber became fascinated by the ways people across cultures make meaning, practice spirituality, and understand the world around them. Her work is an invitation to stay curious, and build a spiritual life outside of the box. Learn more about Kimber Young at SomethingForSundays.Substack.com This episode of Creative Alchemy is supported by the audiobook version of my award-winning, Amazon best-selling memoir, Cult, A Love Story. Readers call the book ‘compelling’ ‘gritty’ ‘intimate’ and ‘not boring’ – which is what an author loves to hear. I narrated the audiobook and if you have a Spotify premium subscription you can listen to the audiobook for free as part of that subscription at alexandraamor.com/spotify. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Growing up in the Mormon church Some of the benefits of belonging to a tightly knit religious or spiritual organization How and when Kimber’s questioning of the church began Navigating asking questions of a high-demand religion without giving up God How questioning a religion or spiritual group can threaten the parts of ourselves that we like Processing and disentangling through writing How posting writing publicly opened up conversations with family and friends Dealing with pushback about public posts Exploring other religions to see what might fit How audacity is more important for artists than talent Becoming comfortable with the mysteries of life and not knowing the answers How writing can help us to learn to think critically Resources mentioned in this episode Kimber’s Substack, Something for Sundays Kimber’s post Done, Not Perfect East of Eden by John Steinbeck The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steve Hassan We don’t discuss it during the interview, but one of my favourite books about someone wrestling with the Mormon religion is Leaving the Saints by Martha Beck Transcript of the interview with Kimber Young Alexandra: Kimber Young, welcome to Creative Alchemy. Kimber: Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to be here. Alexandra: I’m so glad that you agreed to come and talk to me. Give us a little bit about your background as we begin. Kimber: I was actually born in Oregon, but mostly raised in Utah, and I grew up as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is the official name, but colloquially known as Mormons. My background really is about that because it just informed every aspect of my life, and I come from Latter Day Saint descent on both sides. My great great great great uncle is Brigham Young, who brought all the people over to Utah, so it’s very ingrained into our family culture and identity, and my identity as well. And when I think about my upbringing, it really is a lot Mormonism. Alexandra: I was just reading a post. I had a few minutes to kill before we started, and I was reading a post that you wrote recently on Substack, and you were talking about how devoted you really were. Like you were all in; it was everything to you. And we’re going to talk about what your recent exploration is in that direction of asking questions. Tell us what that looked like for you being all in. Kimber: That’s a great question. I’m trying to think of some good examples, but I would say a big example is I served a mission for the church. If you don’t know what that is, it’s just going out. You get assigned a place and a language. You don’t get to choose, and you just spend for girls, it’s 18 months. For men, it’s two years of your life. Just the sole focus is teaching about Mormonism and trying to convert people to Mormonism. I was a pretty effective missionary. I feel like I’ve always loved people, and I love talking to people. I was called to serve in New York City, speaking Mandarin Chinese. So, I am fluent in Mandarin, and I ended up minoring in it in college. And it’s a really big passion of mine. I was in it my whole life, but that was a part where it just consumed my whole identity, and I think back of other examples of me being devoted, and I think about meeting people who weren’t members and not knowing how to interact with them, unless it was in a teaching setting. It was so easy for me to be nice to someone and talk to them, and because I had something to share, but when it came to just regular conversation or not having this pressure. I would just always have this pressure of I need to share the gospel with them. I need to help them understand what they’re missing. I remember one of my best friends who she assisted me a little bit on my journey, my faith journey. But she has never been Mormon. Didn’t know anything about Mormons, and when I met her, I remember being like, “Oh no, I’m goint to have to invite her to church.” It was just this feeling of like, and I did. I invited her to church within a few weeks of knowing her, and I think it was a really big part of my life. I helped a lot of people get baptized and join the church, and yeah, it’s interesting having conversations with those people now. Alexandra: It makes sense if you were raised that way, and as you say, both sides of your family going way way back, that totally makes sense. Kimber: Yeah, and all of our important family conversations at home, extended family, was always centered around church. That was like how we connected and how we could think deeply about things. And if we weren’t talking about church or gospel related stuff, it didn’t feel as important, and so that was really a big conversation topic in our home. I think part of the reason why I still continue to be really interested in religion. Alexandra: I get it. The cult that I was in, I had that same feeling. I hadn’t thought about that in years, but when we were together, we could talk about the deep topics, and that felt so important. Kimber: It’s a cool feeling like you’re all on the same team, and you all have values and goals. And in Utah, I mean, it’s super integrated into the culture, and so it wasn’t just my family; it was very reinforced by my neighbors and the people in church every week. I was praised for doing things that, looking back, I’m like we’re a little bit intense. I would go up and bear my testimony about not wearing a bikini and how that was so important to not wear a bikini, and I’d speak that to the whole congregation. And then afterwards they’re like, “Wow, you’re so amazing.” I would talk about how I would tell people, you know, in Sunday school that I didn’t date boys who watched rated R movies, and everyone would praise me for that, and so it was a way of like I felt always in the right. And I think that’s kind of a damaging mentality to grow up with, as I’ve learned, to feel always that you know the answers to everything, and you get to teach everyone else. And I think even within Mormonism, I tried to be the very, very, very best example of that. Alexandra: When did your questioning begin, or your exploration? Kimber: I was thinking about this. There’s there’s a few points that stand out to me. One, I continued to study Mandarin Chinese in college, and I had an opportunity to go to a study abroad in China. I was pretty pretty much the only religious person, let alone Mormon person. I was with a cohort of students that were around my same age, like early 20s, and we all went out and lived in China for two months during a summer, and it was then that I kind of started realizing. I was just so far removed everything. I couldn’t go to church. There was no church. You weren’t allowed to talk about the gospel out there. I got this paper they sent me. The church sent me that’s like you cannot proselyte because that will get you in trouble with the Chinese government, and so just all these things were stripped away. I couldn’t proselyte, and I couldn’t really talk about my religion, and I also couldn’t attend or or practice in the way I was used to. And on top of that, I was surrounded by all these people who were never Mormon and didn’t really know what it was. And I feel like that was a time I started to doubt some stuff, and I started to really think about things. I would just try to shut it away, try to shut it away. But I think that was the first time that I really started seriously thinking about things a little bit more. The other thing that comes to mind is getting married. I got married when I was 25, which is pretty old for a Mormon. Everyone’s usually getting married at like 20 or 21. In Mormon theology, in order to get to heaven, like the highest level of heaven, you have to be married, and so that was so consuming in my mind. Once I got married, it kind of felt like I’d done everything I needed to do, and I was 25, and so I’d checked off all the boxes. I’m like, great. I get to go to heaven now. Suddenly I had all this mental space to think about other things, and I think my my partner feels the same way. Once we got married, and we moved away immediately from Utah, we moved to Texas actually, and then it kind of gave me some space, similar to China. It gave me space to start thinking about things, and that’s when the questioning began. Alexandra: Is your partner Mormon too? Kimber: Yeah, he is. Alexandra: One of the things in your explanation that you talk about, we’re going to refer to your Substack quite a bit because that’s how I learned a lot about you. On the about page, you talk about navigating a high demand religion, which you would describe Mormonism as, and then but without giving up God. So tell us a little bit. That’s a big question. Tell us a little bit about why these two things are important to you. Asking these questions, but also not giving up God. Kimber: When I first started questioning the truth claims of the Mormon Church…I guess for listeners who don’t know, Mormonism is very much founded on these certain truth claims that the LDA, the Latter Day Saint Church, is the only true church on the face of the earth. That’s one. Two is Joseph Smith was is the founder of the church in 1830 was called by God to be a prophet, and there’s a lot that goes into that. And then also the Book of Mormon is the word of God, and the Bible is the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. So, which is like you can only know if it’s translated correctly by if the church tells you it’s translated correctly. I started questioning these truth claims and looking into the history. I’m a huge researcher, and so I started researching a ton, and I still haven’t stopped. There’s so much to learn. I think I’ve been on Substack about three years, which is when I started writing about this. What was really scary to me about even being able to question the church was I was really afraid of losing the parts of myself that I really loved, and that was the spiritual side of things. I loved having conversations about the meaning of life, and I loved thinking about how God could work in my life, and that my life had purpose, and that there was that I wasn’t solely in charge of. I don’t know how to describe it, but I wasn’t just left alone in this world. I had a benevolent being that cared for me, andand so it was really hard for me to start even questioning because I was scared of losing that special relationship I had with God. I think a lot of people in my situation feel that way. They’re like, well, I see all these people who question Mormonism, and then they have no religion at all, and don’t do anything, and that’s not a bad thing. But it was just something that I’m like I was scared of losing it all, I guess. When I started writing, I really tried to focus on on God and tried to focus on this relationship with God and feeling like I belong to God and and I’m going to figure this out with God and then all this other stuff, I’m going to sort through it I guess it’s important to me because I used to think that the church, the Mormon Church, and God were synonymous, Alexandra: Right? Kimber: And now I’ve separated the two, and it’s a very clear distinction to me now. But I think for people who read my Substack who are Mormon or in a high demand religion, I want to be approachable for them in a way that’s like, look, if you have these beliefs you care about, you get to keep them. Your relationship with God doesn’t need to be contingent on a belief in an institution. So, anyway, that’s my answer to that. Alexandra: That’s awesome, and that’s so clear. It is possible to pull those two things apart, and my experience is it can be painful and confusing, and really puzzling and it will really challenge a lot of our beliefs, of course. But it is possible. I can see that in your writing that that’s what you’re doing. Kimber: I think I was scared of the word deconstruction for a long time because I didn’t want everything to just fall, and so I used the word disentangling for that reason. I’m disentangling Jesus out of this, or I’m disentangling God out of this. There’s goodness here that I want to keep. And it is really hard, like you said, to separate what you’ve been taught about who God is and what God cares about, and what you you feel to be more true as you like expand your worldview. Alexandra: Yes, what’s important to you? What feels good to you, to the individual, to hang on to. How has writing helped you to do this? Kimber: I would say it’s helped me quite a bit. I think a lot of my processing happened through writing, and then I would clean it up a little bit and make it more palatable and less angry, I guess, and more empathetic, and I would post it. I think what really helped me was connecting with other people who are going through the same thing, and even having people in my life who weren’t going through the same thing, being able to read it and realize it’s something I’m taking seriously. I think in Mormonism there’s a lot of phobias around people leaving, and there’s things that leadership says about well, they are choosing the easy way, or they just want to drink coffee, or they want to wear cute clothes, and it’s like, oh, they’re so worldly. I think that for me, writing began as a way of like, hey, if you want to know what I’m actually thinking, you can go and read this. I posted it on my personal Instagram and Facebook, and and my family started reading it, and I think it opened up a lot of conversations with family members, and I think it provided the space for people to be to realize like, I don’t know, they they could see that I want people to see this is not an easy thing. It is a really hard thing to leave this mindset and framework, and also like leave a religion that I really loved and devoted my life to. It helps me internally process what was happening, and I also think it helped me find support in my life because if people want to know, they could just go read. Alexandra: Right. When they have done that, what’s the response been like? Kimber: The response overall, I would say, is positive. I think I actually wrote about this a little bit a few weeks ago. I wrote a piece called Disentangling Jesus, and it was an essay. And I was just talking about how I’m having to leave behind my certainty to follow God and some of my family members saw as me leaving the church at that time. I was still attending and everything. I almost accidentally said I was leaving, and so people thought that by me saying I’m leaving my certainty, they thought I was leaving my worship. I think that became kind of a scary thing for people in my life. I think specifically, one family member, I actually did write about this later too, but one family member like sent me like super long texts about how I’m deceived by the devil and stuff like that. It’s classic, but you know it was validating to get it. I’m like, oh yay. It feels like a big deal. So when everyone is like cool, you’re like oh man, it’s a big deal. So then when my family member kind of like fought for me, I was like okay, I feel now. But she was like, God lost one of His most valiant soldiers, and all this stuff, and I get it. It brings so much pain for people. I would say at the beginning, I think it was a little bit more polarizing, but now people are more used to it. I also took some of my family members off my mailing list because I think it was causing them distress. So I’m like, this isn’t for you. You don’t need to read that every week. Alexandra: I’m curious when you go back to Utah to see your family, which I’m assuming you do. Do you go to church? Do you have those conversations at the dinner table? Kimber: So we just actually moved back to Utah like a few months ago. I’m in Utah currently. We were living in Asia for about a year, and then just moved back. And there have been some conversations. I don’t go to church normally, but I’ve been exploring different kinds of churches because I think there is something in me that misses the routine and stability that came with being part of a faith community, and so I’ve been going to a lot of different churches. I’ve been to Baptist and non-denominational and Unitarian Universalist, and I can’t remember all of them. Orthodox and Catholic and Episcopal and yeah, so many. I’ve learned so much and it’s really fun and Methodist and whatever. I’ve learned so much from it and it’s been really fun. But as far as being here, we haven’t really been going to to the LDS Church. Sometimes, if my family is wanting to go, or there’s a special event, then we’ll go with them. I think overall, it’s helped us have better conversations around things like that, where they don’t really try to persuade anymore, and I also don’t get so reactive about things. Alexandra: That’s such an interesting position to be in because you’ve really announced, via your Substack, where you stand, and what you’re exploring and what you’re questioning. So your family is aware. I just find that really fascinating. Kimber: It’s interesting because when I think back to my childhood, it’s like yes, we were super devout, and my parents did this thing that I think really was good. I don’t really know why, but for this certain year, we all started going to different churches every week. We would go in addition to the Mormon Church. Mormon Church was three hours, and then we would go to another church, and it was like another hour or two. So it was like five hours of church. But all my siblings and I, we all loved it. We loved seeing how different people were. I think my parents do have a sort of openness because they are curious. They’ve modeled this curiosity towards other faith traditions. Even though my parents are very devout and strong in their own beliefs and and practices, I do think there’s a certain level of of acceptance and openness and that, and it hasn’t been like that from the beginning, but has turned into that. Alexandra: That’s really cool of them, and that you didn’t lose them because of this. Kimber: I know. I think people have different experiences, and right now in Mormonism, there’s a lot of people leaving, and so it’s becoming way more common for families to learn how to navigate it in healthy ways, and I think that’s really positive. But I had an aunt and uncle who left when I was a teenager, and their experience was totally different in my larger family. I think they’ve been great at being able to support me, and sharing like, yeah, that’s it’s really hard. Like we get it. It’s just been kind of a funny dynamic of being with them and being like, wait, like what side am I on? It’s almost like there’s a divide in my family. Like am I on the believing or not believing? And I feel like I’m somewhere in the middle, but it’s just interesting to. I don’t know. It just totally changed how I view my family as well. It’s interesting. Alexandra: What you said about exploring other religions, I love that too. When I left the high demand group that I was in, it was actually a therapist who recommended I do that because I was experiencing a lot of loss and grief around not having a faith community or a spiritual community, and so yeah, did a similar thing. I went to Anglican Church and Unitarian Church and United Church, and tried all different kinds of stuff. It was a really good experience, like yours. I really, really enjoyed it, and what lovely people I met, and and then I think, just to talk about myself for two seconds, the caveat I had in the end, I realized that any time spirituality becomes institutionalized, like any time there becomes this group think, I guess you might call it, about what God is or what spirituality is, it put me off. In the end, I just couldn’t be a part of any sort of religion. But it was really fun exploring for sure. Kimber: I think for me, it’s helped me be okay with the weirdness of Mormonism. I always kind of felt the shame, like, oh wow, being a Mormon is so weird. There’s always weird things, like rituals and doctrines and whatever. And then I go to like another, like a Catholic mass, and I’m like, why? Wow, there’s kind of some weird stuff there too, and I don’t even know all the ins and outs. Eeven like some of these more chill. I guess I don’t know if you want to say chill, but like like Unitarian Universalists that are more like accepting, and I go there. They have some weird stuff too. So for me, it’s been very validating and helps me feel okay, like we’re all kind of weird. I think it’s because, like you said, we’re trying to capture this feeling and this essence, and trying to make it into an organization, and that’s really gets messy. And yeah, when humans are involved, it just gets more complicated because humans are complicated. Alexandra: Absolutely. And you’re so right. If you didn’t know anything about Catholicism and you observed a mass, I mean, you’d just think it was the wackiest thing. And yet, as you were saying that, it feels like simply because it’s been around for so long, it’s just become normal,. Mormonism hasn’t been around that long, so perhaps that’s why it feels a little kookier. Kimber: I think about that a lot. Where I’m like, okay, Mormonism is only, however, like what, 200 years old, maybe a little less. And then I think about that like I don’t know, just in thousands of years from now, how are we going to? But also, Mormon is like we’re so close to the founding story because it only happened in 1830, right? So it’s like we have documents. We have people’s affidavits and testimonies and whatever court, whatever. There’s so much to Mormon history, but I’m able to read all these primary sources, and that’s just something that we don’t have when it comes to Christianity or Judaism. We have these traditions that have been passed down from years and years and years, but we’re not engaging with the source material. I think about that with Mormonism as like, this is how all religion started, and now it’s just become more normalized, or is this like a special case? I don’t know. Alexandra: It’s such a good question. I think I think we’ve hit on something there. I wanted to ask: your Substack is called Something on Sundays, correct? Kimber: Something for Sundays. Alexandra: Something for Sundays. Thank you. Is there something about that format that really works for you in terms of the writing that you’re doing? What I mean by that is you could have chosen to write a book or to host a podcast, or so. What is it about Substack that works for you? Kimber: I think overall, what I really have liked about being on Substack is I’ve always written a blog since I was like 12. I just have always been writing something. My Substack used to be called Kimber Was Here, and I was compiling all of my writings, like poems and past blog posts. I’ve kind of just been in different spaces on the internet, and I’m like, okay, I’m just going to put them all together on this substack. Then I started writing more regularly about some of the traveling and everything that we’re doing, and then when all this questioning started happening, it just became a natural outlet for me. I majored in English, so I’ve just really liked writing. I chose the name Something for Sundays because Sundays was a very special day to me all growing up. It was always filled. I always knew what I was going to be doing on Sunday, and I had a very specific routine of going to church and coming home and taking a three-hour nap and then eating family dinner. Then when I started to distance myself from the church, I found like you were describing a loss and a grief around Sundays. Like what am I going to do this Sunday, or what am I going to go to a different church, am I just going to lay in bed? Am I going to listen to a sermon or online? There’s so many different things you do. So I started to write Something for Sundays as kind of a thing of being like, okay, this is something for my Sunday, and it’s something for your Sunday if you’re in the same position as me. It’s kind of turned into something special. Every week I give little recommendations; something to read, something to watch, something to try, something to make. I’ll choose a few each week, and so that gives people something to do on Sunday. With Substack. I also have been really enjoying doing more illustration, and so I create illustrated essays. I do them like I try to do it once a month. They take a little bit more time, so it just depends. I started illustrating some of my experiences, and I started exploring different ways of communicating what I was going through, and also just what I’ve been thinking about. I think Substack has a platform that can hold all of that, which I like. Alexandra: I was reading your post from yesterday. We’re recording this on a Monday, and it was about a sidewalk chalk event that you had done with your sister, which was really cool. The post is called “Done, not perfect.” You talk about how completing things and how doing them is more important than making them perfect. And I really encourage people to read it because it was really deep and thoughtful about what it means to be perfect versus good. You talk about that and refer to East of Eden, which you say is one of your favorite books. The thing that really resonated with me was how easy it can be to not try to do something because we think it has to be perfect. I just wanted to bring that up and point it out because I think when people are new to writing, they can stop themselves because they think it’s not going to be good enough, it’s not going to be perfect, and that kind of thing. One of the things I like about blogs and places like Substack is that it feels like there’s less expectation to be perfect. Would you agree? Kimber: Yeah, for sure. I think because of the frequency of it, if you choose to write weekly or monthly, like there’s definitely times where I’ve been like, this is done, not perfect. Just send it out there. I think kind of what you’re saying, like feeling not good enough to start or not good enough to to put it out there. One of my favorite books is East of Eden, like you mentioned. Another favorite book is The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Have you done that? It’s just amazing. I did it last year, and she talks about audacity is what brings an artist to the center stage faster, or even more so than talent. It’s all about audacity, and that has just really resonated with me in all areas of my life. When I was reading that book, I applied to Harvard Divinity School, and I did all these things. I had all this audacity of I’m just going to try it. I’m going to paint. I’m going to do this and that. I’m going to write, and I think there’s all these things I did and I tried that I would not have tried if I was so caught up in it has to be perfect. Something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is I think I just try to intellectualize everything. I’m intellectualizing like okay I want to paint an oil I want to get into oil painting for example and then so I’m going to watch a bunch of tutorials and I’m going to sign up for a really expensive class. I’m going to research all the materials to buy, and then I’m going to buy them, and then I’m going to buy better ones. It’s like I keep procrastinating the actual doing of it, and I feel like that’s totally how it can be with writing too. I started buying writing courses and started buying like books and all this stuff, and then I kind of stopped writing as frequently because I started feeling like, wait, I’m not doing all these things that they’re suggesting, and I’m not having a perfect writing routine. I think there’s value in those kind of books, like teaching you how to write or teach you how to be creative, but I think when you use that as a form of procrastination from starting the actual thing is when, at least for me, I start to get really anxious. It’s like all this pent up potential with no outlet, and so that’s what I have to think about. I think with writing, like you’re saying, it is a really cool way to process. Same with drawing, like process and just make visual and make real what’s happening internally. I definitely feel it’s important to just just do it, just go for it. Alexandra: Exactly, and we can’t get better until we do. So if we prevent ourselves from doing the thing, then we won’t ever improve. Kimber: I fall into that a lot. I don’t know your whole experience with the cult you were a part of, but at least in Mormonism, there’s a very high focus on perfection, and it’s like they are constantly telling you like you will never be perfect, but you have to try. I get that. But then, if you’re hearing that, and that’s the core message every single week for 20 years, it just gets in you, and it manifests itself in the culture a lot. Plastic surgery is like the highest per capita in Utah. Alexandra: Oh wow! Kimber: Yeah, so it’s like that’s just an example. GLP one, plastic surgery, all these cosmetic things. I think it’s a reflection of this belief system because everyone is yeah. Anyway, we can go into Utah culture, but I do think it’s an internal thing for sure, like perfectionism. Alexandra: My experience with the cult I was in was there was an expectation of perfection, but the goalposts were always moved, so you could never actually get there, and any fault that occurred was always with the person, the individual. Kimber: Totally. Have you ever read “Combating Cult Mind Control” by Steve Hassan. He talked about that, about how that’s like a common thing that cults will do is like make it be your fault, and I’ve been thinking about that a lot. What’s the use of that? The use of that is they create a problem, and then they also create the solution, right? And that’s like a common marketing tactic. I think about I see all these billboards everywhere of plastic surgery and it’s like you know it’s like they create a problem like oh my nose isn’t like this turned up thing you know and then it’s it makes me feel like oh maybe I need to get a nose job because I have the solution as well. I think I think a lot of high demand religions work in that in that same framework Alexandra: Yes. I think that’s a classic manoeuvre for sure. I had this question that I had sent you in advance about what you’ve learned about yourself and your beliefs. We’ve talked about that a little bit with this exploration that you’ve been on. Is there anything else you can think of that really come to light for you? Kimber: I think the biggest thing I’ve learned about myself, my beliefs. The biggest thing I’ve learned about myself is that I can show up for something again and again, week after week, for a few years, and I can be really consistent. I think that’s something that I’ve learned about myself. I didn’t know I was really capable of that. I’m really proud of of being able to show up for myself and show up for the people who read Something for Sundays, and I think as far as beliefs go, I think I’ve come to really value uncertainty in the sense of, I really value the mystery of life, which was definitely not the case before. I think when I was really in Mormonism, like really fully in it, I felt better than everyone because I knew everything about the inner workings of the world and the universe. Now I’ve really become more comfortable with this mystery and being curious. I think I really value people who are curious as well, and kind of what you were talking about when you were saying that you went to the different faith traditions and ultimately decide that wasn’t for you. I think that I get that because whenever I’ve gone somewhere and they say something like so definitive, it instantly is like a red flag for me. Where I’m like, wait a second. How do they know that? What are they basing it on? I’ve really learned how to think critically, and I think writing has helped me with that. That process of if I’m going to write something, and you can kind of see it if you read my really early things. I’m a little bit more preachy, which is just how I was back then, and I’ve definitely through the years have become a lot more like less willing to just be like, well, this is what I believe, and this is why it’s right. It’’s been yeah, it’s been interesting. Alexandra: That’s so cool. We are just about out of time, so as we start to wrap up, is there anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share with our listeners? Kimber: I think one other thing is recently I started doing a zine, so it’s like a mini magazine, and it has illustrations and writing in it, and that’s been a fun new way, a new creative pursuit that I’ve done. That’s kind of brought Something for Sundays into a physical subscription form. I did that one because I didn’t want to turn on paid subscriptions on Substack, but I was getting to the point where it was taking a lot of time, and so I was trying to think of a new way to maybe supplement some of my time with money and and so I started this this zine. It’s been really fun and exciting. I send it out to people all over all over the country and actually internationally as well. So that’s something I think is my creative pursuit recently. That is fun. I think along those lines, I would want people to know that you don’t need to box yourself into one thing. If you are creative in one way, you can be creative in another way too. Like if you really like singing and playing music, that doesn’t mean you’re not going to enjoy painting. You don’t have to be good at it. You can just try it, and you might be surprised that that can actually assist in your music. That’s just an example of I think as you use your creativity, it benefits other areas of your life as well. Alexandra: Well said. Yeah, that’s amazing. All right. Please tell us where we can find out more about you and your writing. Kimber: My Substack is Somethingforsundays.substack.com, and I’m also on Instagram, Something for Sundays, and my mail club is something for Sundays club. So it’s all something for Sundays related. If anyone is interested in the zine, something for Sundays club is where you can learn more about that. Those are my main three places that I update. Alexandra: Awesome. I’ll put links in the show notes to those three things. Kimber: Thank you so much. Alexandra: Well, thank you, Kimber. This has been a delight. It’s been so nice talking to you. Kimber: Nice talking to you too. Thank you for having me. Click here to grab your complimentary copy of the Creative Alchemy journaling handbook. The post Disentangling Religion from Personal Spirituality with Kimber Young appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

• Transcript

Finding Healing in Gender Transition with Comedy with Patti Savard

Vancouver Island comedian Patti Savard also happens to be a transgender woman. She brings the subject of gender transition into her comedy. So the biggest question I had for her was, how do we laugh at something that is often perceived as being a very serious subject? I think you’ll appreciate her answer. In the introduction, I mention the unique early morning writing practice that Patti talks about during the interview. And I touch on how this conversation made clear to me how important it is for all of us to allow our creative expression to be what it wants to be. We don’t need to fit ourselves into a predetermined type of creativity. By its very nature, creativity is freedom and expresses itself in infinite ways. We do ourselves a favour when we allow that expression to take any form it wishes. Patti Savard is a Canadian comedian and comedy cabaret performer based in the Comox Valley, British Columbia. Blending stand-up, storytelling, theatrics, and song, Patti creates bold, heartfelt performances that explore identity, belonging, and the strange hilarity of being human. Her one-woman comedy cabaret, Life in Transition, combines razor-sharp wit with disarming honesty as Patti shares stories of living authentically in spaces one wouldn’t expect acceptance of a transwoman. Patti has performed at the Vancouver Just For Laughs Festival and was selected to present Life in Transition at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival, where the show has been nominated for the Sir Billy Connolly Spirit of Glasgow Award. Her work resonates with audiences through humour, vulnerability, and a joyful celebration of authenticity. You can learn more about Patti at her Instagram: pattisavard18 This episode of Creative Alchemy is supported by the audiobook version of my award-winning, Amazon best-selling memoir, Cult, A Love Story. Readers call the book ‘compelling’ ‘gritty’ ‘intimate’ and ‘not boring’ – which is what an author loves to hear. I narrated the audiobook and if you have a Spotify premium subscription you can listen to the audiobook for free as part of that subscription at alexandraamor.com/spotify. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Performing stand-up for the very first time with three days notice Using comedy as a way to seek acceptance Developing a joke writing practice Receiving mentoring around comedy craft Getting honest feedback from a live audience How comedy is about connection with the audience On writing jokes about the potentially serious subject of gender transition Changing minds and hearts through comedy How working through comedic material to make it authentic brings healing Using dreams as a springboard for creative expression How ‘weird’ is a beautiful expression of humanity Finding healing in helping others Resources mentioned in this episode Iconic Canadian tv show, Corner Gas Syd Bosel, comedian Eddie Murphy’s stand-up comedy film, Delirious Transcript of the interview with Patti Savard Alexandra: Patti Savard, welcome to Creative Alchemy. Patti: Thank you for having me. Alexandra: It’s so good to see you. Tell a little bit about who you are and a bit about your background. Patti: All righty. I am a comedian from the Comox Valley up in Courtenay. I’ve been doing it for going on five years now. I’ve performed in Toronto’s Massey Hall. I’ve performed in Just for Laughs, Vancouver. This year, I performed in Glasgow, Scotland, at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival, and I was nominated for the Sir Billy Connolly Award, which was kind of cool. I absolutely love that man’s comedy. What a fantastic storyteller! So, to have a nomination associated to that guy’s name really feels good. Other than that, I am a carpenter. I run my own business because I’m a Canadian comedian, and five years at this game. I don’t know how to tip the scales, but I don’t want to be a starving artist. And since I have skills, I am happy to use them. I’m a parent also, and I also have to make sure that I’m taking care of their financial obligations that fall on me. Alexandra: I hear you about the starving artist part. I don’t have the answer to how you can tip the scales either. I don’t know about that. Patti: It’ll come all things in time. I don’t know, or I don’t know. I keep doing goofy stuff at work too, so at least I’m not getting lost in the process. I bought a a Kool Aid Man costume, and if you go on my Instagram, you’ll see a video of me running through a wall wearing that suit as I’m doing demolition, which I have written off on my taxes as a business expense because it’s for comedy purposes and for business purposes, it’s my demolition suit now. Alexandra: Exactly. Oh, that’s great. I wonder if you could write that off twice. Wouldn’t that be good? Patti: I think that’s illegal, but um, but okay. Alexandra: I saw you first when you gave a comedy show coordinated through a group that I belong to called Island Queers and Allies Who Care, and that was my first exposure to your work. And one of the things that really struck me was that you talk about your transition in comedy, and so I’m just wondering how that started. Let’s start at the beginning. Tell us about when you felt comfortable to start doing that. Patti: Sounds good. I actually started performing stand-up comedy right after transition, relatively immediately. It was a way of trying to see in front of a large group of people how I would be received as a human, but also, I think the entire process is very funny. I was born in 1983, and so the the concept of transitioning from one gender to another is ludicrous in terms of all the beliefs that I was taught and everything, and so I think the whole act of it is brilliantly funny. I thought using comedy as a way of trying to force people to receive me was very effective, and it worked out. Yeah, so it it all started right at that moment. Actually, as COVID came to an end, it was the very first event to happen in the Comox Valley. Right at that moment when we were allowed to have, I think up to 100 people in a space or something like that. Somebody organized an open mic comedy night, and I went and did it. And it was packed. There were literally exactly 100 people there, and I got really great laughs, and I became addicted. Alexandra: Had you always been a fan of comedy up to that point? Patti: Definitely, but not so much of a follower. I’d actually never been to a comedy show before. Alexandra: You’re kidding! Oh my god! Wow! Where did you begin? How did you start writing jokes and that kind of stuff? Patti: Well, that week, I guess. In comedy, there’s the rule of threes, which is you know there’s certain jokes that you tell them like series of three things together, and usually works out if it’s a good joke. I was working at a brewery in Comox. That’s another story on its own. I was having a bad day, and I just kind of joked around to myself because I was working by myself to try to make my day lifted, and I was like, “That’s kind of funny. Maybe I should write it down, because maybe if I’m having a bad day, I could just look at these stupid things I’ve written, and just cheer myself up.” About an hour later, an older gentleman was walking past the brew house on the sidewalk and to my open garage door that I had there, and I started just goofing around with the guy, and he was like, “You’re so funny. You should be on Corner Gas.” Which, as a Canadian, is a very strange reference. It’s very directly Canadian. But again, it was like, “Oh, you think I’m funny too?” And then my ex wife, well, we were married at the time. She came into the brew house another hour beyond that, and she said, “Hey, did you hear that? There’s an open mic comedy night happening at the other brewery in Courtney.” She told me that because being like, “Hey, that means we can have events now too,” but I took it as I should go perform at that. So I wrote down everything that I thought was funny, and then three days later, I was up on the stage. Alexandra: Really, holy cow! And you said you got lots of laughs, so it was received well. Patti: It was, yeah. I mean, considering I only had a few days to write the jokes, they went okay. But like I said, the whole transition process is funny. So those jokes were up in the old vault. I just had to pull them out. Alexandra: It was stuff that you had been thinking of that was absurd for a while. It sounds like. Patti: Yeah, because I think life is a joke. Everything is a joke, and and and if you just have to see it. Alexandra: I want to talk about courage then. Being creative can require a lot of courage, and it’s something that people can avoid at times because it feels like maybe it requires too much of them, too much courage, too much exposure, that kind of thing. Did you feel like it required courage from you to do this, or did you just take the leap? Patti: No, because you know, like telling my mom that I was trans and my dad, and like, oh yeah, my stepdad, just like my all my family, that was so hard, and so after once that was done, I was just like, I can do anything. Got it. Alexandra: Everything pales in comparison to that. It sounds like. Patti: Mind you. If you threw me in the middle of the ocean, without a boat, I’d probably be losing it. Alexandra: Do you have a practice? So that first show was really put together quickly. Did you develop a practice after that of writing jokes? Patti: Yes, I did. Fortunately, some of the other comedians were new to the Comox Valley and looking to start a comedy scene here. And since I had that brewery space, not the one that we did the open mic at, but the one that I was working in. I said, “You know, we could run a regular occurring open mic to try to get more people out and and start a bit of a scene here.” We started doing that – a monthly open mic, and then eventually a monthly showcase. And so for me, it gave me a reason to write because you know, once a month, I got to get up on the mic, and it’s the same people, so I can’t just say the same jokes every time, which is also a trap. I don’t want to say that that’s a good idea for new comedians. I think the best thing to do is write your best five minutes, and that means perform that same five minutes over and over and over again, so that you can crack the code on making it really funny. But it also is a good idea to write some different stuff here and there. And so I kind of did that. I wrote a few different five-minute sets. About a year later, there was a comedy competition in Vancouver, and I decided to enter it. And then one of my good friends, Syd Bosel, who is a local comedian here, she’s kicking it. But in the comedy scene right now, she’s on CBC Debaters. She’s super good. She was just like, hey, why don’t you send me what you think is your best seven minutes, and I will go over it. Then we’ll go over it together, and we’ll work it down to what your best five is, because she wants to get more into comedy mentoring. I could totally use the mentorship, and so she showed me a few techniques that I’ve taken with me to this day in terms of writing, and yeah, I’m grateful for that. Absolutely. Alexandra: Sometimes I hear about comedians talk about working out stuff on stage. I heard Tig Notaro say that just recently. She figures out what she’s doing and what’s funny while she’s on stage. It sounds to me like you maybe do a bit more preparation beforehand. Is that true? Patti: Yes, that is true. I am definitely a relatively scripted performer. A lot of us are, and the key or craft behind being a scripted person is to make it look like it’s not scripted. That being said, if you learn your stuff really well, that also allows you to sit in the zone, which is basically what Tig is referring to, where you just are in that full zone of comfort, and you just allow to come to you what comes. If I get up there without a book on the stage, so I don’t look at my. We often throw a book out there, especially if it’s an open mic or something like that, where you’re working out new stuff, just to make sure you hit your beats. You don’t read your full word for word. You just name the joke. You write the joke, then you name it, so you can see the name. So, if you ever find a book on the streets and it’s just random statements that make no sense from one to the other, and they’re a little bit inappropriate, it’s probably a comedian stage book. I tend to be a little bit more on the scripted side, but the more that I’ve gotten to know my material, the less scripted I’m becoming. If that makes any sense, because I already know the jokes and I know what I want to say next. But sometimes in the moment, because of an interaction with somebody in the audience, for instance, it makes me say something different, and then that makes me want to change the direction, and then I say something else instead, and I will fall back into the jokes. I’m sure Tig does it too. I mean, there’s no way that she’s entirely unscripted. What she’s referring to is when you go up on stage and you already have written the things in your head, and you just go you pull it from your head. But that’s a long way of saying that. Alexandra: Was this something you could ever imagine yourself doing when you were younger? Patti: Yes, actually, I remember when I was a little kid. Firstly, when I was a kid, I knew that I always wanted to be a girl, like from the age of four, basically. But I believed that to be impossible, and that it was actually that belief system or that thought that I had was potentially a mental illness, and so if I did not allow myself to indulge in it, then I would not become mentally ill. I remember watching Eddie Murphy’s Delirious and just finding it so funny, and just just being jealous of him doing that. I almost pictured myself almost the opposite of being like an Arnold Schwarzenegger muscular kind of person up on stage and making jokes about it being like you wouldn’t expect somebody that to be funny because they just look so big and brash and all that kind of stuff, which is I suppose a touch ironic. If that’s actually ironic, no, I don’t really know what ironic actually is. It doesn’t matter. Schwarzenegger is funny, actually, brilliantly funny. But so, but anyhow, that that that was, yeah, I did think about it, but I was like, never. I’ll never do that. Never in a million years. Alexandra: It sounds like you admired the artists that were doing it at the time. Patti: Oh gosh, yes. Eddie Murphy was one of my favorites, and then Robin Williams, later like Sarah Silverman, and Mitch Hedberg eventually became my favorite of the favorites. Now these days, John Mulaney. But truthfully, I don’t really watch much stand-up. If I’m not performing on stage with you, I probably haven’t seen your material. I just don’t watch things in general. Alexandra: How did you learn? So you did that very first open mic night three days out, after you had the idea, and then what? Did you watch instructional videos on YouTube or read books? Patti: Well, practice, write a joke, practice the joke, go up on stage and do the joke. Take the honest feedback from the audience. Go home, work, rework what didn’t work. Take it back to the stage. Take the honest feedback, and do that until the joke murders. Alexandra: Wow. Okay, I’m just reflecting on being a novelist and someone who writes books, I never really have to expose myself to that kind of immediate feedback from people. That takes courage, I think. Patti: We thrive on it. That is what the art form is. Every once in a while, you get a gift from the universe. You get a joke where you write this, you perform it, and it just crushes, and you never have to change the words. That’s like a a gem. I actually have a joke that I wrote three years ago that always did pretty well, but I I knew it needed something different, and actually, just last week, I reworked the joke entirely, and all of a sudden, now it’s doing what I want it to do, and that’s three years. Alexandra: Wow! I didn’t realize one could do that. That’s really extraordinary. Patti: Well, it’s really about the audience connection, and so that’s I think why we write this way is because comedy is very subjective. What is funny to you might not be funny to everybody else, and so if a joke falls apart, it’s usually lacking in about in three things: clarity, contrast, or shit. What’s the other? It’s 3c’s. It makes it easier to remember, but it’s not working for me right now. Clarity, contrast, and compression. If you’re too wordy, sometimes you know somebody goes on a bit, right? So usually one of those things is what makes a joke land. If it’s tight in all those three areas and context, there’s a fourth C, but I don’t know whatever C’s. Just we’ll just throw C words at it. Alexandra: We’ve talked about feedback, and one of the things I wanted to ask you was what the reception has been like from people about you joking about what can be quite a serious subject: transitioning from one gender to the other. What’s that been like? Patti: Well, therein lies the beauty of comedy, and that and one of the C’s contrast. What beautiful contrast it is, right? It is a very touching, emotionally very personal subject, and so it gets the audience’s attention because not a lot of people are very familiar with it. These days, it seems like most families have somebody in that or who’s trans; that could be a cousin or whatever. Maybe not in your household, but it’s becoming more common now. Not because we are changing in that respect, but because we’re feeling more safe to come out, and so our very degrees of transness are now rising to the surface. That being said, it gets the audience’s attention. It does cut. The hard part for me is when it’s not working. If I have an audience that’s tightening up, and if I can’t shake them I just stand up there and I basically tell really personal things to people, and they give me nothing back. And that, well, as a comedian, you get used to it because everybody bombs. Alexandra: Yes, yes, of course. I think of the performance that I saw that I mentioned earlier. I would consider that audience to be kind of warm. They were all involved with or aware of the organization that was organizing it, and that it was queer focused. In that performance, you talked about performing in bars in Taber, Alberta. That must require another set of skills. Patti: Yes, and I think my first year into comedy, I probably would have cried after performing in places like that. Because I approached it like well, it was last summer that I was in in rural Alberta, Red Deer, Taber, a bunch of places, but you know rural, on the more conservative side of Canada. My strategy going in, well, I have what a lot of well, there’s a term referred to as passing privilege that that we use. Where I mean, those who can’t see me, I don’t know if this is a visual podcast or just audio, but if they can’t see me, my voice might give me away a bit, but not necessarily. And so, I have strengthened my non-trans subject matter material. When I get up on the stage, I just get up and I get them to like me as a comedian first. And the longer I can go without having to touch on the subject, the more trust I get with the audience, and then I cut their legs off. And so I then I out myself as trans, and then I have to pick up the pieces again. 99% of the time it works out, and it’s because you like me already. So if you don’t like me now, there’s something up with you. And this is something I’m starting to now strengthen a little bit. Now is when I out myself at this point, if the audience still tightens up on me, as long as the material was working before I outed myself. Then I can start crowd working them, and just being like, “Oh, you look really uncomfortable. How are you feeling right now?” And then lean on the other audience members who are laughing, and try to pull their laughter towards that person, so hopefully they can crack loose. It’s interesting. It pulls some interesting energies out of the room, but you know, comedy’s all about discomfort and then cracking it. Alexandra: You’re making me realize, and I had just had no idea how many skills are required really in what you’re doing. There’s the courage of getting on stage, which for some people like me would be virtually impossible. And then you’re talking about there’s so many other skills that you’re having to use, and I imagine those have gradually built up over time. Patti: Yeah, with the performance skills, definitely. But a lot of those are life skills too. Just like navigating this world as a human being. I feel like I give credit to whatever it is that you do in life, whenever you take on your next endeavor, because something else that you’ve already done will give you a skill that you didn’t realize was associated to that craft. Thinking about everything that you do in life, pull all those things together, and I think it helps and it goes a long way. Comedy’s not easy. Drag queens get so many tips. I think comedians need to get tips too. We have to figure out how to do that. Alexandra: It’s not fair. That’s very true. Do you feel that comedy is healing? Patti: 100% for me, and absolutely for sometimes audiences that I’ve gotten to perform to, which is really neat. Alexandra: Has anyone ever approached you after a show and said that you’ve changed their mind about things. Patti: That exact statement which you just said. Yes, I was in Salmon Arm, British Columbia, and there was a couple in the front row. They were definitely on the redneck side. You know, but I really joked around with them a lot, and I mean, my dad is such a redneck, you know. So I get rednecks. There’s definitely a tan on my neck too. At the end of the show, the woman came up to me and she said, “I gotta say, I’ve had a lot of negative experiences with trans people, and you changed my mind today. The way that you brought up your material was just so approachable to the subject.” I think I’m using better English than she did. She was a very confrontational human. I imagine everybody in the world that you encounter seems to be a mirror of yourself to some degree. So, I imagine if she had negative encounters with trans people, it’s probably the way she approached it in the first place, and vice versa with the people that she was encountering. That kind of thing happens often, and it’s my favorite part, especially in the rural parts of the country. Usually, I get discussions that are just so raw and real, or somebody asking me questions. I had a grandmother come up to me afterward, and I was so worried about doing this show in the first place because it was a bar, and I’m like, okay, I’m gonna do a few dirty jokes tonight. But there was a table of very old women that were clearly out for a nice night, and I did a few off color jokes about anatomy and things, and I was like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I did that.” At the end of the show, one of them came up to me, and she was just like, “Well, firstly we loved your show.” And I’m like, “Yes, you did. You guys laughed a lot.” And she’s just like, “But you know, I have a grandchild who’s trans, and I’ve been afraid to ask a lot of questions. And so just the stuff that you said like really made me feel more comfortable about how to approach things.” I love that a lot. Alexandra: It feels like soft diplomacy almost, doesn’t it? Patti: I like that term. Alexandra: That’s great. Oh, and good for her. Getting back to the subject of courage; good for her for having an open mind and for acknowledging her grandchild and wanting to know more. Patti: Yes, and this is another fascinating thing too-a beautiful thing, really-is one of the main reasons why I tour the rural aspects of the country. Firstly, I have the privilege, so I can kind of go undercover until I decide to out myself. But, I believe that there’s more love out there than the news wants you to know. And so far, I see nothing but this come forward. I definitely have the odd encounter, which isn’t awesome, but that’s few and far between, and the majority of people are like opening their minds, and their hearts, really. So it is nice. Alexandra: We touched on healing. Do you feel like there are specific things about your experience or your feelings that have been healed by working on this craft of comedy? Patti: Absolutely, yeah. I was reviewing some of my older stand up videos just to study notes and things, and I noticed my hyper feminization when I first started this four years ago. The amount of hyperfeminization of my voice, the mannerisms a bit too. I kind of had to, like over the past few years for myself, accept that some masculine parts within me are actually part of me and don’t need to be shoved back under the rug, which is kind of like like a teeter-totter game of basically that’s what I was doing. When I lived 30 something years of suppressing everything feminine, and then as soon as I let it rise, that masculine side fell all the way down, and I kind of had to scale it off and accept all parts of myself. I believe we all have a bit of masculine and feminine energy. I’ve got way more feminine energy than I do masculine energy, but it needed to be allowed too. That was a big part of my healing journey that came through with this. Talking about it on stage about these really personal aspects of myself, and then having to rework the material one so that I could believe in it, because in order to believe in it, I had to feel it, which is what actors do with their craft too. I had to truly feel it and own it, and that process itself brought the healing. Alexandra: That visualization of the teeter totter is so great. What I pictured as you were talking about it was sort of the extreme swings, and that what I think what you’re pointing to is that gradually they come into balance. They’re not tipping so much one side or the other. Patti: Absolutely. I think that general state of weak equilibrium of what my normal is is kind of what that what that means, absolutely. Alexandra: I can really understand how tricky that would be when you’ve spent however many decades pushing that feminine part of yourself away. It would take some time and some doing to find that balance. Patti: No doubt. I think you know, for those first couple of years after transition, I really had to let her shine. So I think he had to stay under the rug. I think he did it okay. But then I started having dreams-a lot of dreams-with masculine energy around fire, like just like a lot of visualizations, and with this power, and I wanted to have the fire power that they could have. Dreams are so metaphorical, and my dreams were actually a big part of what showed me that too. Is just that suppression of self was the limitation on finding that kind of power. I part of my writing process is I write down my dreams in the morning. They’re fascinating, and it puts me in creative writing mode. After I finish writing them, I’m already in the creative spirit, and then I can start. Hopefully, jokes are what come next. Sometimes they’re not, but when they are, it’s great. And so yeah, that dream state part. I forgot what the question was, but I think I answered it. Alexandra: Yes, you did. Thank you. On that note of writing practice, do you do that every morning? Write down your dreams. Patti: I do. I wake up much earlier than I need to before work, and I write down my dreams. It takes usually about 20 minutes or so, and then right after that, whatever the finishing thought was after writing out the dreams is usually what I carry forward. Then I go into just free writing, just write whatever comes to mind, or sometimes there’ll be a joke that I was working on yesterday, and then I’ll be like, “Oh, okay, let’s write on that now.” A writer-I forget her name-but she said that when you’re in the zone, when you’re writing, stop yourself like before you’re done. So right when you’re still in the gist of it and you want to keep going, but it’s been a good amount of time, just deliberately stop, and it kind of keeps that thread active for next time. And so I’ve started trying to adapt that a little bit. Alexandra: Nice, and that works for you. Patti: It seems to. I mean, I’m consistently getting new material or or writing strengthening notes on other stuff, and it seems to help out a lot. I mean, there are just those moments too where you’re out doing something, and I’m like, oh, I’ve got to write this down. Most comedians are that way. If something just happens, we’ll drop what we’re doing. Like in the middle of a conversation, I’ll be like, I’m really sorry, but I have to write this down. Alexandra: I’ve seen musicians refer to that as well, and carry little notebooks around with little snippets of ideas. I keep ideas in my phone sometimes too, and that helps. Patti: Me too. I use a phone also. Alexandra: I think I’ve heard Elizabeth Gilbert talk about that, finishing before the thread is finished, and then picking it up the next day. But I don’t think she’s the only person who’s said that. Patti: I don’t remember. I didn’t write the person’s name down, but maybe it was her. I don’t know. Alexandra: As we’re coming toward the end of our conversation here: Is there anything that surprised you about this career and the comedy that you offer to the world? Patti: Good question. I think the thing that surprised me is how small the comedy community is here in Canada. I found that to be rather interesting. I mean, it’s growing a lot, especially since COVID and and there’s a lot of people getting into stand-up now, but that was definitely one aspect. Just how connecting it can be due to that too.. I’ve got friends across the country, just because we share this instinct to get in our car and drive three hours to perform 15 minutes. Sometimes even less. I don’t really know what else. I suppose just how much it’s connected to my life itself. Actually, here’s one: the types of friends that I’m making. I feel like comedians are misfits. We’re all just a group of people put together. I play a lot of sports. Or you’re a computer guy who sits at a desk. We would not be friends if it wasn’t for this, but our brains all have this weird thing. We look at the world in a bizarre way. That it was a surprising thing is the more you talk to comedians we seem to have brains that function in a just an interesting way. A different way of looking at the world. I mean the fact that we’re trying to find the joke in everything means that you can go super dark, or you can go really light, or you can go really goofy, or there’s so many different aspects of it. Those things are definitely a bit surprising. That’s a question I’m gonna have to sit on a lot more though too. What else has surprised me? But I don’t know. That doesn’t help with this interview. Alexandra: That’s great. Thank you. What has the response been from the trans community to your comedy, if any? Patti: I run a monthly show in Nanaimo called “Bring Out Your Weird”, and it’s a comedy cabaret variety show I did at the Vault Cafe on the last Thursday of the month. And the premise of that show is: if you are weird, consider yourself weird, have a weird performance, showcase yourself. Weird is just a beautiful expression of humanity, and I think being trans naturally falls into that. I was asked to join Comox Valley Pride, which I did a few years ago. Being a trans spokesperson, I guess, so to speak, I’ve done a lot of performing within my community, and so I’ve been asked to show leadership in ways. I no longer am on the board because it was just too much work, and I am so not political. But I still perform in functions like, for instance, just coming up this weekend is Comox Valley Pride, and so I’m going to be doing performing at a couple things there. I would like to think that I’m helping mentor some of the younger trans kids and folks who are finding themselves. The QSA in the Comox Valley. That’s the Queer Straight Alliance. They asked me to speak a couple times at their functions to the kids, as well as they do a Pride prom, which is oh my god, such a beautiful thing. It’s once a year. After COVID, there was no prom because the prom committees all just stopped doing it, and so the QSA said, “Hey, why don’t we organize it? It’ll be for everybody, but it’ll be organized by the queer kids.” Naturally, the queer kids thought to throw a party first. Just saying. But every year I do trivia with them. I usually just make up some dumb game, and I do it at their intermission at the halfway point. It is so fabulous getting to be there as an adult, as somebody who’s openly trans and out there, watching these kids who are feeling free to express themselves at a school type function. For me it helped. That helps heal my own trauma, that trauma of not being able to express myself back in those ages. It’s just so amazing to get to watch them do it, and I literally heal every time I’m there. It’s great. I’d say I’m playing my part in my community, doing my best to. But we’re healing each other. Alexandra: Oh, that’s a lovely way to say it. That’s amazing, beautiful. As we come toward the end of this interview, is there anything you wanted you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on yet? Patti: Oh, what haven’t we touched on? I mentioned that I’ve got a monthly show in Nanaimo. And I don’t know. People just follow comedy and comedians. We need the support. We need lots of it. You can follow my social media stuff. I’m PattiSavard18 at Instagram. That’s my social media. I don’t post a lot of videos because I’m currently working on my comedy album, and so I’m just kind of holding the material back until I do that. But I do a lot of self-promotion on there. I do post a lot of video content from the Bring Out Your Weird show because on that one I do a lot of ridiculous things. I’m not just a stand up, and the beauty of this show that Bring Out Your Weird is a concept is that I get to do whatever I want. So this week’s show, for instance, I will be singing Alanis Morissette’s Ironic, but I’ve rewritten the words to make the song actually ironic, just for fun. I do a lot of dumb, silly antics that are just ridiculous, just because I can. I think for whatever people, everybody is a creative person, and I think I want everybody to realize they’re a creative person. So yeah, that’s something I really want to say. If I’m just getting to know somebody, if I go to a pride function or something, and I’m having a conversation with, I hate small talk. I hate small talk. So I’ll just say, “What do you do creatively? And then sometimes they’ll say, “I’m not creative.” I’ll say, “Yes, you are. What is it that you’ve done that’s creative in the past?” They often have to rack their brain, but they’ll come up with something like, “Oh, I used to write poetry.” I’ll ask, “Oh, what made you stop?” actually had that exact conversation with somebody, and then I saw her six months later, and I was just like, “Hey, so what are you doing creatively?” And she’s like, “I’m writing poetry.” I’m like, yay! Alexandra: Well done, wow, that’s awesome. I totally agree. Everybody is creative, and that’s one of the reasons this podcast exists. Patti: Amazing. Alexandra: Thank you for reminding us about that. This has been lovely. I will put links in the show notes to your Instagram, and is there a link I could put in for the Bring Out Your Weird Show? Patti: That is in the top notes of my Instagram. There’s always a link there to the current show. And that one’s monthly, so I don’t know when this will be aired, but so I’m not sure if it’ll be aired before that show or not. Alexandra: Okay, I’ll make sure there’s a link to your Instagram in the show notes. Patti: Wonderful. Alexandra: Thank you, Patti. It’s been lovely talking to you. Patti: It’s been so lovely talking to you as well. Thank you so much for having me. Alexandra: You’re so welcome. All right. Take care. Patti: You too. Click here to grab your complimentary copy of the Creative Alchemy journaling handbook. The post Finding Healing in Gender Transition with Comedy with Patti Savard appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

Taking Ownership of Your Story with Hanna Etu

Every human appreciates knowing they are not alone. When we have an experience – perhaps one of being in a cult or being an addict or being a single mother – we all want to know we are not alone in that experience. Two of the most powerful and reassuring words in the English language are “me too”. My guest today, Hanna Etu, works with neurodivergent and mad writers, supporting them to tell their stories so that others may find comfort in knowing they’re not alone. In the introduction, I talk about how I connected with Hanna’s work shepherding books, particularly memoirs, into the world. And how my memoir, Cult, A Love Story, came into being because of an unmet need I had to read someone’s personal story of being in a cult. Hanna Etu helps mad and neurodivergent writers establish a regular writing practice so they can finish their memoirs without losing the heart of their story. She has a book coaching certification in memoir and nonfiction from Author Accelerator. Her degrees in Creative Writing and English as well as a professional background in traditional book publishing give her unique insight into the craft, production, and marketing aspects of the writing/publishing processes. Hanna’s work-in-progress is a memoir about the loss of her brother to suicide and her personal history with mental illness. Hanna offers one-on-one coaching for writers struggling to finish their books, is gathering interest for a group program, as well as hosting free, monthly co-writing sessions for Substack subscribers. Learn more about Hanna at hannaetu.com This episode of Creative Alchemy is supported by the audiobook version of my award-winning, Amazon best-selling memoir, Cult, A Love Story. Readers call the book ‘compelling’ ‘gritty’ ‘intimate’ and ‘not boring’ – which is what an author loves to hear. I narrated the audiobook and if you have a Spotify premium subscription you can listen to the audiobook for free as part of that subscription at alexandraamor.com/spotify. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show notes Working as a book coach with neurodivergent and ‘mad’ writers Taking ownership of a personal story by writing about it On supporting writers who have challenges with organization Getting to the central idea of what your book stands for Using specific tools to ensure the storytelling in a memoir is captivating Building small habits that support a writing practice How a first draft is often powerful for different reasons than we think Dealing with the challenges of writing about a very emotional subject Resources mentioned in this episode Hanna’s Substack piece about beginnings Madwomen in the Attic David Sedaris Mary Karr’s memoir Lit Jenny Lawson Transcript of the interview with Hanna Etu Alexandra: Hannah Etu, thank you for coming to Creative Alchemy and welcome. Hanna: Thank you so much for having me. Alexandra: Please tell us a little bit first about your background. Hanna: I am originally from Buffalo, New York. I have an English creative writing and German degree from Canisius University. I have an editorial background. I worked in publishing for a few years for a publishing company in Buffalo, and then when they were bought out by a bigger company, then I went elsewhere. Now I am a certified book coach. I was certified by Author Accelerator in nonfiction and memoir. So now I am helping memoir writers, particularly neurodivergent and mad memoir writers, finish their books. Alexandra: Tell us what mad means, because I was new to that term when we started emailing. Hanna: Sure. Mad in this context is in reference to the Mad movement, so the mental health justice movement. People who may have had adverse mental health experiences, or people who have been negatively affected by the mental health system that may have been involuntarily institutionalized or involuntarily medicated, things like that. That’s typically what the MAD moniker refers to. It’s comes from the ‘mad woman in the attic’ idea, from Jane Eyre. That’s kind of where that whole thing comes from. It’s reclaiming an older term, basically. Alexandra: Got it. What’s the reason that you chose to work with writers who are neurodivergent and part of the Mad community. Hanna: There’s a whole combination of reasons. I am a lead organizer and regional literacy director for a grassroots feminist mental health literacy organization called Mad Women in the Attic. We advocate for people in the mental health system. And lately, our biggest work has been writing workshops because we’ve been able to connect with people all around the country. It used to be more localized to Western New York, and now we’re doing work with people all around the world. Actually, we’ve had people in Canada, we’ve had people in Europe, all over the place. So we’ve been able to help people write their books, which has been really exciting. So that that is part of the mission. The other part of it is that I’m also neurodivergent. I wasn’t diagnosed with anything until I was an adult with anxiety and general depression. And I tend to believe that I have other neurodivergences, but I’m just too high functioning to get a diagnosis. Nobody, none of my practitioners seem terribly interested in diagnosing me because I get through the day. The other the other reason is that both my brothers suffer from mental health issues, and my older brother died by suicide in 2018. So it’s a very personal issue, and I really want to connect with people who have had similar experiences to me or similar experiences to the people that I’ve worked with. It’s about a shared experience and validating people and advocating for themselves. It’s all about working through our difficulties and finding common bonds. Alexandra: Maybe give us a few examples of how you think writing memoir specifically fulfills those that goal, or helps people to heal and to connect and that kind of thing. Hanna: So with memoir, I think people find it cathartic to write their stories to talk about their traumatic experiences. I think it can be painful. I know personally it can be hard to write about difficult experiences, but I think people find it also find it empowering. In a way they’re taking ownership of their story and their writing. They’re taking ownership of the narrative, where the narrative has previously been written for them where they may have been in a place where somebody was making the decisions for them and telling a different story about who they are, and they’re now able to reclaim that. So I think that’s a big part of why a lot of people choose to write memoir. Alexandra: I think that’s so true. I was talking to somebody else the other day, and we phrased it in a slightly different way, but I think we were aiming at the same thing. Sometimes it’s the first time that someone can tell the truth about their experience, and more specifically, their own truth about their experience. And so that’s exactly what you’re talking about. That we get to take ownership of the narrative. Hanna: Yeah, exactly. Alexandra: You mentioned that it’s a difficult experience, which it is. What are some of the challenges or hurdles that you that your writers encounter when they begin this path? Hanna: There are the difficulties of writing about a traumatic experience and re-experiencing that and having to go through that again. There’s also the kind of experience, the kind of writing difficulties that neurodivergent writers have in general. I’ve noticed a lot of these writers have difficulties with organization, and this isn’t like I can’t say that this is typical to everyone. Like everybody has their own individual experience, but I have noticed that many writers have expressed that they have a hard time keeping organized, keeping the writing organized, keeping a structure, keeping a regular practice-that’s something that a lot of the writers in this community struggle with. I think a lot of writers, going back to the organization, they also have a hard time building a structure around their narrative because memoir is such a broad topic. Figuring out where to start, where to end, when to know what is the end, and and often these aren’t positive experiences. These aren’t usually positive experiences, and they’re trying to end. I mean, you try to end the book on as positive a note as you can, and I think a lot of people have a hard time knowing when is it done? Is it done yesterday? Is it done a couple years ago? Like when? What period of time am I covering? And what is my mission? What is the objective? So there’s a lot of different issues that they deal with. Alexandra: That’s such a good point about wrapping up a book because when it’s a memoir, it’s about your life and your life isn’t over yet as you’re writing. So this may be an unfair question: Are there any tips that you have for finding a good place to end a memoir? Hanna: It’s funny because I’ve been wanting to write a Substack post about this and want to dig into some of my favorite memoirs. I think I would recommend reading a lot of memoir, especially by writers that you admire and writers who are writing in a similar subject matter, but particularly memoir writers, of course. I think seeing kind of comparing those. I did this with beginnings. I did a Substack post on beginnings. Now, of course, I’ll have to be held to that. But I kind of analyze. I was like, this is really good because they get right into the action. They don’t give us extra exposition. They make us care. Right off the bat. Now I want to kind of do the same thing for endings. How did they make us feel like we bookended this book with the end of the person’s arc. There has to be some kind of development. Like obviously your character development, you’re not a fictional character. Like you’re going to develop as to who you are now, so you’re not making anything up if you’re a good writer. But in terms of any other techniques that I would recommend, I’m also liking the idea of writing several versions, and it might feel tedious to write multiple endings, but to force yourself to try different, try them on, and see how they fit. I think it’s important to focus on where you are as a person, where you’re trying to show us that you’ve gotten by the end of the book, and that’s really where we should sit by the end of a memoir. Alexandra: Nice, yes, and very much like fiction, the main character who is us, that’s writing the memoir, is going to go through some sort of arc. I guess it’s a matter of finding the closure place for that arc Hanna: Yeah. Even if it’s not necessarily the happiest ending. Like the writing itself is a reflection for the writer. The writing itself is a reflection on that experience. So, I think even in the process of writing it, you’re finding new things about yourself and about that experience. So, it’s a hard thing to to think about at the beginning, but it is something important to think about at the beginning of the process and at the end of the process of writing your first draft. Alexandra: Right. A bit of a north star, I guess, to point to you know to write toward if you’ve thought about where you want it to end up, And then for organization is such a good point. I use a piece of software called Scrivener, which is really helpful for organization because on the left hand side of the screen, what you see is a list of all the chapters that you’ve written, or you can break it into scenes or whatever you want. What other sorts of organization tips do you have for your writers? Hanna: That sounds great. I think I should try it. In my book coaching certification, we were trained on Jenny Nash’s blueprint for a book, and so that has been my north star in terms of organization. I’m working on adapting my own version because I want to add some elements specific to neurodivergent writers. I use the blueprint in my coaching process, but I also use some what’s the word I’m looking for? I use some surveying to figure out what every individual writer’s style is, what their schedule is, what their needs are, because I think that that’s just as important as knowing what their book is about if we’re going to work together. But getting off topic, the blueprint is basically it’s a set of questions, and eventually you get to an outline, and you’re talking about you’re digging into the deeper questions about why you’re writing the book, and what your book really stands for. What you’re trying to say? It’s interesting because I don’t know if everyone really sits down and thinks about that when they’re going to write a memoir. What am I really trying to say with this? Am I just trying to write my story? Which is okay if you just want to write your book and you just want to self-publish it, which is fine, which is great. If you’re looking to try to get it to a trade audience, you want there to be some central objective. The blueprint prepares you for the mindset of preparing your book for the literary marketplace. With the memoir blueprint there’s an impact outline, where you go through and you break down each scene and what happens in each scene and how it’s connected to the one before, and basically you’re justifying to yourself and to your coach if you’re doing it with a coach why each scene is where it is. Which is very tedious, but it’s really enlightening too. Alexandra: That sounds great because it’s so important that every scene, every chapter serves a purpose. It serves the narrative in some way. When we’re telling a personal story, I know this from personal experience, we can kind of get out there and get lost in the weeds a bit, and think that every detail is important, and every bit of the timeline matters, and every little event that happened is important to include in the story. So that this really speaks to me as a way to narrow our focus and really make sure that yeah that we stay focused on what what matters. Hanna: Exactly. Alexandra: That sounds like a great tool. So you use that tool with your clients to help them to do that. Hanna: Yes. I’m working on adding elements specifically for neurodivergent writers because it is a lot of work upfront. Some coaches will do it in segments. Some coaches will send it to the writer all at once. I’m also thinking about the ways in which I can customize each coaching process for the writer, because everybody works in different ways, and especially neurodivergent writers are wired differently. And some people they can say, “Okay, I’ll write an hour a week.” But some people it’s like you write in a two-hour burst, and then you don’t write for another two months. So that’s something that we always have to keep in mind, and as as as a coach for people who with with differently wired brains. Alexandra: Exactly. And you did talk about time as part of what a writer has to organize. I don’t know if this is a fair question either, but do you have any tips for people to help them to organize their time? Everybody is so individual with what works for them in terms of writing, as you just said. Some people write in bursts. Some people are like to write every day, just a tiny little bit if they can. What are your thoughts on that sort of organization? Hanna: In terms of writing practice, or in terms of planning the timeline of the book? Alexandra: In terms of writing practice. Getting your bum in your chair. Hanna: I like setting a particular goal. During the pandemic when I could write all the time, I set a goal of 30 minutes a day. Just set a timer, stopped at 30 minutes, whether or not I wanted to keep writing. So then I knew what I was going to write the next day when I sat down. I’m really into the idea of setting a regular time for it, whether it’s once a month, once a week, a little bit a day. I’m very much into building small habits. I really like that. I know it doesn’t always work for people. My other tip, which is less related to time, but I’ve been really into body doubling for writers and hopping on Zoom with other writers, and writing for like an hour and a half. So that’s something I’ve been doing as well. I have one once a month, and now I know I’m going to work on my book once a month. Alexandra: Nice, and so it’s a group of writers in a Zoom room, and and you’re just you’re all with your heads down writing. Okay, so it’s like accountability. You have to show up. It’s like a meeting. Hanna: Exactly. Alexandra: Nice. Hanna: That’s my my new favorite way of of maintaining a practice is if you have a body doubling group whether once a week, every other week, twice a week or whatever that really gets your butt in the chair because you know other people are going to be there. Alexandra: That’s amazing. That’s a great idea. Do you find sometimes with clients who are writing a memoir that one of the things they’re looking for is permission to tell their story? Hanna: Yes, almost all the time. And especially with mad writers, because they’re dealing with a lot of stigma. I hear them saying so often, “Is anybody going to care about this? Is anybody going to read this?” And these writers are brilliant, they write the most brilliant stories. I’m sitting here thinking, this has to be in the world. You have to publish this. What do you mean? Would anyone care? I care. You’ve got to publish this for me. I feel like a lot of people come to me and they’re like, is this even worth? Is this even worth writing? Will anybody be interested in it? I think that’s a very valid fear to have in the memoir writing space now because of how competitive the genre is and how saturated we can be with memoir. The more popular memoirs tend to be people who are either established memoir writers or celebrities, famous people, along those lines, historically relevant people. But I never want to discourage somebody from writing their story. I’m going to tell them what I think they’re writing, and if I think they’re on the right track. But I’m not going to sugarcoat that feedback on the writing, but I think people will care, especially in these stories of people who have been stigmatized. I think that there’s not enough of those stories out there, and I think people would really appreciate to have more of that in the world. Just to feel seen, people who are not brave enough to tell their stories or talk about how they’re feeling and the differences that they’re noticing about themselves, to see somebody else feels the way that they do, like that is so important. Alexandra: I absolutely agree. To have an experience reflected back to a person is just so valuable. So incredible and so brave on the part of the writer. I want to bring this up because I had never seen this quote from Terry Pratchett. You posted it on Instagram a little while ago that I love so much. The quote is: “The first draft is you telling yourself the story.” Why did that quote resonate with you, and what do you think it says? Hanna: I really like that because I think that writers underestimate the power of the first draft. I think that we tend to think, okay, first draft, give it a little edit, or maybe overestimate is the better term for it, but write the first draft, give it a little copy edit. It’s good to go. But the first draft is so powerful for a different reason. It’’s important because it tells us exactly how, in terms of memoir writers, but also for fiction writers, how we see the story, how in our original voice, how we picture it. What so many writers get wrong is that the writing becomes stronger through revision and revision and revision. I think if more writers knew how much revision their books would really need, they probably wouldn’t have started writing their books in the first place. I think that’s why that quote really resonated with me because I think that the first draft is so important and so personal that it’s very much for the writer, for you to process your story and and to just tell it, just get everything out unfiltered. Especially with a memoir when you could be writing about people that you may eventually not want to write about anymore, or people that need to be concealed in some way for the purposes of privacy. It’s always better to write everything raw, unfiltered, and then go back and pare it down, edit it down, so that it’s appropriate for publishing. So the first draft is always something that I think really is meant for the writer, whereas a second draft is where you start going. All right, let’s talk to a developmental editor or a beta reader. I think we have to spend more time with our first draft. Alexandra: I love all that. My experience has been the same; that it’s so true and often you know I mean there’s so much in there it’s so rich we don’t know what we think sometimes until we’ve written it down. Or we don’t know the impact that an experience has had until we get quiet and write it down. I know for me, with my memoir, I learned stuff about the cult that I was in by trying to explain it to the reader. So that’s a slightly different topic than a first draft, but it did happen in the first draft where I would realize the cult leader did this so that six months later she could do this other thing over here. I didn’t see it at the time when I was in the group, but trying to explain it enabled me to see what had happened. I imagine that’s true for anybody who’s writing down an experience that they’ve had. Hanna: I think with the benefit of hindsight, we start to reflect on people’s motives and what people were thinking, or when we write about past experiences with what we know now about those people and start to put the puzzle pieces together, and it’s very interesting what you find, but you won’t necessarily find it unless you write it down. That’s just the way the human brain works. Alexandra: One of the things you mentioned at the top of the show was that you are sadly a survivor of suicide. You lost a brother to that, and when we were emailing back and forth, you mentioned that you hadn’t written your memoir about that yet. I think it might be valuable for our listeners to hear about your thoughts about that potential book and the issues that you’re facing finding time to write. You’ve addressed that a little bit already with the the Zoom group. You called it body doubling. I’d never heard that before. Tell us a little bit about your thoughts about what you’ve encountered thinking about writing that book. Hanna: I’ve written about 30,000 words. I wrote a lot during the pandemic. I was writing, as I said, I think I got to like a 30 minute a day writing practice, and I was in one of the writing workshops. I was trying to have something to read and share every week. So that really pushed me. The people pleaser in me really pushed me to to have something to write. You get to a certain point where – I think it was two or three years after I lost my brother that I started writing about it, and that was still very raw, and I think I got to a point where I realized that there was still a lot of healing that I needed to do. I don’t think that’s why I stepped back from writing it. I definitely stepped back from writing it because I was working on my book coaching business, and I have a lot of other hobbies and activities that I do, and I have just a lot of going on in my life at the time, and so I stopped making the time for it. But I definitely hit a wall creatively with it at a certain point where I hadn’t done the deep thinking that you’re supposed to do when you sit down. I had just written. I had just been writing. I wrote everything that happened from the day that my brother died, to his funeral, and through that. I wrote all of the events that went from there to there, and then started digging into my mental health history, and digging into his mental health history, and my family’s history with mental health. I began realizing I had just all these moving parts, and I had no idea where everything should go, where the timeline should be. I had just taken all the rules that I so preach to writers, and just broken all of them. I’ve recently gotten back into it with the co-writing with the body doubling, which has been so valuable, and I’ve gone back and I started doing the blueprint, which I’ve started before, but I’ve gone back into it. That has been so valuable because it’s doing what we talked about with the first draft, where you’re just writing things out and you’re writing things out, and I started writing again. Why am I writing this book? Because I just feel called to it, like losing losing someone to suicide, especially someone who was. I was 25. He was 27 at the time. Their life is so short, and he was so creative, so artistic. He was a filmmaker. He was also a writer, an artist. He painted. He made clay figures and different clay things. He’s a sculptor. I think that I wanted my my original mission with it was like there was so much left unfinished in his life where he was supposed to reach a certain point. He was supposed to, I don’t know, become a famous filmmaker or he was supposed to go on to direct a movie, whatever. I had this vision of what I thought his life should become, and now I’m going to write a book to tell everybody else about this person because I want him to live on in the ways that I remember him. Which of course is also another layered part of it, in that my memory of him isn’t everyone else’s memory of him, isn’t how he remembered himself. And there are things that you learn after the fact. It’s been very complicated to write about and figure out exactly what I’m doing. But I actually was writing about it yesterday; just free writing and trying to figure out why I’m doing this, why I’m doing this, what is the point, what does my book stand for, because it has to stand for something. I started to really have more epiphanies than I had had in a while, so I’m very excited. It’s making me more motivated to get writing and have a better structure, a beginning, middle, and an end. I can talk about this forever. Alexandra: This is great. Thank you for your vulnerability. I really appreciate it. Hanna: I think for a while, I was stuck because I also didn’t know how it was going to end. I didn’t know what the ending would be, and I thought the ending should be me in a place where I have dealt with my grief, or I have overcome my grief, or moved forward with it. And that’s not really how grief works. But I couldn’t figure out what version of me am I stopping this book at? For so many years after my brother died, I was in a relationship that was very toxic, and so I was not the best version of myself. And now that that is no longer part of my life, I’m finally realizing that I’m a more skilled person. It actually has allowed me to grieve more, and that’s been incredibly helpful, and really brought me to a place where I can say I feel like I’m starting to see the resolution. I’m starting to see the ending, which is a really good feeling. So those are the challenges that I’ve been having around it, but it is getting better. Alexandra: Thank you so much for all of that. You brought up so many important points. I think, or special points, one of them being that it does feel sometimes like books have a gestation period, and sometimes we can’t force it, just like giving birth. You can’t make it happen necessarily, and having patience with ourselves as things are going on, and the book feels like it’s just kind of sitting there, that can be a challenge in and of itself. Hanna: Yes,I think I needed to wait and see what the book was going to be because I was still living it, which so many of us are. Alexandra: Absolutely. And you bring up the point about grief too, and how it’s not linear at all, and the importance of taking care of yourself, both just as a human being, but also as a writer. I just think it’s so important to put a pin in that and notice that we can’t ignore those things., especially when we’re writing about something so close to our hearts. Hanna: Yes. Alexandra: We wish you all the best with that book. Please let me know when it comes out, and I’ll make a mention of it for sure. Hanna: Wonderful, thank you. Yeah, I will. Alexandra: As we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you, what are some of your favorite memoirs? Hanna: I got into memoir by reading David Sedaris, so I love everything by David Sedaris. But in terms of really deep, like I love Mary Carr Lit is one of my absolute favorites. Just one of those where I felt like I could just soak up every page. I love everything she writes. I like Sloane Crosley, who wrote recently a book called Grief Is for People. It was about losing her best friend by suicide in the last few years. I really liked that, and I tend to really connect with humour writers who write about mental health. Jenny Lawson, her name is escaping me now. It’ll come to me later. Alexandra: Jenny Lawson. I haven’t read any of her books, but I’ve seen people mention them, and her titles alone are hilarious. I’m trying to think of one now. I’ll link to them in the show notes, but yeah, they’re very funny. Hanna: I think I’ve read every book she’s written. She recently did a book, How To Be Okay When Everything Is Not Okay, and it was a little less memoir, but more about staying creative when times are tough, and that really that was a really good book. She got really serious when she needed to, but also very silly when the occasion warranted it. Alexandra: Oh, that’s great. All right. Tell us, Hannah, where we can find out more about you and your work. Hanna: You can find me at hannetu.com. That’s Hanna with no H on the end, and you can find me on Substack. You can find me on Instagram, Hannah Etu Book Coach, or on Facebook, Hannah Etu Book Coach. Alexandra: Great. Okay. I’m going to link to all those things, but also specifically to your series on beginnings in Substack because you mentioned that because I think that would be really helpful for people. Hanna: I’ll make sure it’s up there if it’s not. So I know I wrote it. We’ll have to make sure it’s on the substack. Alexandra: Okay. Great. All right. Well, thank you again so much for being with me here today. I really appreciate it. Hanna: You’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Alexandra: My pleasure. Click here to grab your complimentary copy of the Creative Alchemy journaling handbook. The post Taking Ownership of Your Story with Hanna Etu appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

Telling Our Truth in Writing with Bella Mahaya Carter

Bella Mahaya Carter is an experienced writer and writing teacher. In this episode she shares how she used the support of an editor to meet that small, 1000 words per month goal as a way to break the enormous task of writing a memoir into small, achievable steps. In the introduction, inspired by this interview, I talk about thinking outside the box when we are looking for support for our creative projects. And I talk about a subject very close to my heart; the idea that writing and journaling can sometimes be the first time a cult survivor, or survivor of other trauma, tells the truth about their experience. And how powerful that can be. This episode of Creative Alchemy is supported by the Creative Alchemy journaling handbook. This free ebook guides cult and other trauma survivors into the healthy and healing practice of journaling. With a gentle hand and relying on her decades of writing experience, cult survivor Alexandra Amor encourages readers to develop a journaling practice as part of their healing path. Click here to get your complimentary copy. Bella Mahaya Carter is the award-winning author of three books including Where Do You Hang Your Hammock: Finding Peace of Mind While You Write, Publish, and Promote Your Book, a guide for writers. She is currently completing Ripe: A Memoir of the Lives We Carry, which explores intergenerational trauma, creativity, motherhood, and the stories we inherit—and choose to transform. Her writing has appeared in dozens of literary journals, and her last two books have received five book awards. Bella is the founder of Write Where You Are writing circles and has been teaching and coaching writers for more than twenty years. Her mission is to help writers explore what they’re carrying so they can write and live with greater truth, agency, and freedom. Learn more about Bella at BellaMahayaCarter.com You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes: Beginning as a dancer and moving into filmmaking and then writing Discovering Shakespeare in college and falling in love with the musicality of his writing Starting to write a book about family secrets several decades ago Writing about what we inherit from family and what we choose to carry forward Finding the question at the heart of a memoir Learning to write in micro and flash non-fiction Using a monthly editorial deadline to support getting a book written What a story teaches us as we write it How it’s never too late to begin Using journaling to access the wise parts of ourselves How ‘no’ can often just mean ‘not yet’ Why being seen and recognized is an inside job Why we can begin a creative project before you feel ready Find the thing that will help you get out of your own way Resources Mentioned in this Episode Bella’s writing circles, Write Where You Are Bella’s Substack, Flying Lessons for Writers Creative Alchemy journaling handbook Transcript of Interview Alexandra: Bella Mahaya Carter, welcome to Creative Alchemy. Bella: Thank you. It’s great to be here. Alexandra: Great to have you here. Give us a little bit about your background, Bella. Maybe your education and your writing background. Bella: Okay, I’ll start with my education. My post-secondary school education started at the Juilliard School. I was a dancer, and I had a back injury and had to stop dancing, and went to college at Scripps College in Claremont, California, which is a small liberal arts college for women. After that, I actually went to film school at USC, the School of Cinematic Arts, and I got a master of fine arts degree in filmmaking with an emphasis in screenwriting. I taught in the screenwriting department as a teaching assistant. 10 years went by, and I did a lot of writing, and then I went back to school for another master’s degree in spiritual psychology, and that really changed my life. That work, so that’s my educational. I went to the University of Santa Monica in Santa Monica, so that’s my educational background. My writing background is-I really didn’t know I was a writer until when I went to Scripps College. Well, I didn’t even know I was a writer then. I was a dancer, and I wasn’t a great reader. I think I had some maybe dyslexia or some kind of neurodivergency, so I wasn’t a reader as a kid, which just makes me so sad even now to this day. But I discovered Shakespeare in college, and I thought how could somebody write plays in poetry, and I just loved it. I used to listen to the old records while reading my Pelican Shakespeare in the library for hours. I could lose myself just listening to the language and the poetry, and I knew that I loved it. And then I took another class with that same teacher on contemporary women writers, and just loved it, loved it, loved it. I didn’t know I was a writer yet. I went to film school because I thought, well, my background is dance, and now I’m interested in literature. And I thought, well, maybe combining dance and literature, I could find my way through through movie making. And I was in Los Angeles, but what I discovered in film school, I was one of maybe five women in the program. It was very it was a very male dominated environment, and I thought also I don’t really like Hollywood that much. So around that time, I stumbled into a creative writing workshop, and I remember that the teacher he was teaching a UCLA extension class. His name was Jack Grapes, and he wrote this incredible poem about menstruation. And he read it, and I thought to myself, any man who could write about menstruation in that way is someone I think I would like to study with. And I studied with Jack for five years, and that was just the beginning of many many years of writing. Haven’t stopped writing since. Alexandra: Nice. Oh, that’s great. And you’re the author of several books, including a memoir called Raw about. Oh, my mind is going blank. Anxiety. Bella: Yeah, my three books are right behind me. Secrets of My Sex, is a collection of poems, and there’s Raw, My Journey from Anxiety to Joy. And there’s Where Do you Hang Your Hammock? Finding peace of mind while you write, publish, and promote your book. Alexandra: Right, and we’re going to come back to your writing classes and that kind of thing in just a minute. But I want to start with the project you’ve been working on for the last couple of years, so tell us about that. Bella: You mean my whole life? Alexandra: Yes, yes, exactly. Tell us about that project. Start wherever you want. Bella: My current project is called Ripe: A Memoir of the Lives We Carry, and I kind of officially started writing it over 35 years ago, and but really there were whispers of family secrets and the rupture that had happened in our family. My mom was a great researcher, and she always would whisper the family, some of the family stories to me. Not all of them, the rest of them took me years to learn. But this seed was always planted. My grandfather was a poet and a journalist, so I think it was kind of in my blood. But I wrote this 500-page mess of a manuscript 35 years ago. Didn’t know what to do with it, so I put it away in my file cabinet. And at around that time, I was also thinking about becoming a mother. And really, what the book is about, it’s a memoir about what we inherit and what we choose to carry forward. I think the question that is at the heart of the memoir for me was, how do I create life without surrendering my own or perpetuating inherited pain? And though I didn’t have the writing skills or the maturity, or the experience, and many other things to to write that that project in my 30s. I discovered about four years ago that I was revisiting that project. I had discovered the 100 word story format, fell in love with concise forms and real and started mining two manuscripts. I had one was a manuscript about my high risk pregnancy, the other was a manuscript about the ancestor story, and I just started plucking from those manuscripts. And then after about two years of doing that, I thought I’m going to ask my publisher at She Writes Press, if she thinks this is a viable way to approach a memoir. Because it was in micro and flash stories, so the stories could be anywhere from 50 words to 1000 words. And when I showed it to her, she loved it. She said, “I think this is the future of memoir because we have shorter attention spans. I think that this hybrid form is going to be very, very popular.” So that was in May of 2024, and I’m almost done. Out of the 200 stories, I think I have about eight left to write. Alexandra: And it sounds like you had a plan, if you know how many stories are left. What’s that based on? Bella: Well, actually, I just figured that out today. Alexandra: Oh, okay. Bella: I had a rough idea of what material I needed to cover at the end, and I am at the beginning of every month. So at the end of every month, I send my editor at least a minimum of 1000 words, and then I start fresh on the next journey, the next chapter series of chapters. At the beginning of the month, I’m always like, I’m never going to make my deadline. I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but because what happens is I dig into archives. I have family, archives. Last month, I read 32 letters written by my great-grandmother in 1961, and I had to create one composite letter conveying her experience, like a literary piece, rather than just using her letters. This month, the end of the story is my experience with the repair of the family, and so I actually read yesterday my journal from when I was in Italy in 1994 with my mother, meeting the family and discovering my great-great-grandfather’s diary and other primary source materials. So it wasn’t until this morning, after I read my journal from that trip, and then I was writing in my journal that the structure for the things that I want to cover emerged. And so just today I realized, oh, I have about eight more stories left. Alexandra: Amazing. So, for our listeners, we should explain this is such a unique project in my mind because you have all this archival material. Tell our listeners a little bit about your great-grandmother’s letters. Bella: What happened was in 1918, my great grandfather, who was a doctor, he lived in New Haven, Connecticut. He got the family servant pregnant, and performed an illegal abortion on her, and was arrested, jumped bail, and left like he went to New York and disappeared because he was fugitive. And then various things happened. His wife divorced him, this was an Italian Catholic family, so divorce was pretty much unheard of and shameful, and people whispered. And after the divorce was granted my grandfather, whose custody had been awarded to my great-grandmother, and very soon after he kidnapped his son, returned to Italy because he was from Italy, and when the authorities and when the authorities caught up with him in Italy. He escaped to Argentina, where he raised his son. They stayed there for 10 years, on the lam, they were hiding from the law, and it just goes on and on. I thought I was writing the story of the rupture that occurred in our family, but as I started reading letters from my mother, my grandmother, my grandmother’s brother, my great grandfather. Though nobody spoke about what went on, everybody felt the need to write their version of it for posterity. What I’ve learned over the last maybe eight months is that I’m writing a story not only of rupture, but of repair, because only half the story is the rupture. The other half the story is how the family found its way back together Alexandra: Wow! You mentioned there that one of themes of the book is whether or not we carry trauma forward. Bella: Well, this is why you know I had originally in my 30s written two books. One was a family story. One was my pregnancy story, and it was really an exploration of you know trying to like how do I maintain my identity as a person, as a creative artist, and then also be a mom. I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t see that model well. I shouldn’t say I didn’t see it modeled. I did see it modeled, but I was really worried about it. I was like, “How am I going to do that? And how am I going to not pass on the pain that I felt, even though I couldn’t really at that time articulate what the pain was. I just knew it was painful to be alive, and do I really want my child to experience that? It wasn’t until a few years ago that when I started plucking stories from both manuscripts that I realized, oh wow, this should be a braided narrative. These two books, and I had written like I was a very inexperienced writer, so the manuscripts were a mess. They were kitchen sinks. They had some overlapping stories and stuff. So I just realized, oh, I could braid these two narratives, like because they’re commenting on each other. One is the story of being afraid to get pregnant, and then finally deciding to get pregnant, and then realizing, and for three years I couldn’t get pregnant, and then finally getting pregnant and having the doctor call it a geriatric pregnancy because I was 36. Then so much of it was about claiming agency over my own life and my own experience because four months, five months into the pregnancy, I just felt like I was like a lamb being led to the slaughter. I felt like I had no choice about how things were done, and I thought, you know what? I want to have a natural childbirth. I don’t want I don’t want this. And but unfortunately, my insurance company said you have a pre-existing condition, pregnancy. You can’t do that, but I did do it. I did do it, and I practiced throughout the pregnancy, having some agency over that experience while I was flashing back to the ancestral story as it was unfolding. Alexandra: Amazing, and so tell us a little bit about the challenges you’ve encountered, and I think you’ve touched on this already. You tried writing the book 35 years ago. That was maybe one challenge. What have the others been? Bella: Oh, there have been so many challenges. I think the biggest challenge was me, because I just always felt like I wasn’t good enough. And one component of the book that I haven’t mentioned is the repercussions that my great-grandmother’s experience had on my parents’ lives, or had on these succeeding generations. My grandmother also had a very turbulent relationship. My mother was molested by her father when she was a child. My mother married a man who was abusive. There were just ripples of this problem that went all the way down through the generations up until my generation. Part of what I learned as a small child, who was beaten sometimes, was I’m bad, and I think I learned very early on to to be an excellent people pleaser, and to not really listen to myself so much as to just pay attention, to read the room, figure out what you need to do, to so that the shit doesn’t hit the fan. I think that kind of spilled into my writing with questions like, “Who do you think you are? What makes you think you can be a writer?” I think that was the hardest thing, and the reason why I said my U.S.M. education in spiritual psychology was the most profound for me was, I mean, it was all profound, but that was particularly profound. I entered that at the age of 40 something, early 40s, thinking that I had failed, that my life was a failure because I had five manuscripts in my file cabinet that hadn’t gone anywhere. I just thought, wow! Like, if I don’t, I’m not sure what I. I remember when I had to stop dancing, and my identity was so tied up with being a dancer. It was like, well, if I’m not a dancer, who am I? And it took me some years, and then I glommed onto this idea that I’m a writer. But I think what I learned in that program is that we are not what we do. We are spiritual beings having a human experience, and there’s no such thing as failure. There are only opportunities for growth. Alexandra: Oh, nicely said. I imagine that feelings come up as you’re reading this archival material that you’ve got. Is there some processing that goes on? Bella: Absolutely. It’s funny because just today I had a little moment with my husband, a little moment of conflict as I mentioned something about the pain. His immediate response was, oh, but there was lots of love too, and I said no, no, no, you don’t understand. We have to make space for the pain. We have to allow it. We have to acknowledge the pain. Part of the interesting thing about the story is that it wasn’t spoken. No one talked about it. It wasn’t acknowledged. The pain, the harm that was done was not acknowledged, so it’s not like I want to harp on the pain because it was a ton of creativity and love and music and joy, but to not acknowledge the pain perpetuates it. Alexandra: Have you specifically ever bumped into things like has it brought up big feelings for you? Bella: I have all sorts of ways of dealing with big feelings. I mean, I work in my journal, and I I hesitate to say I work in my journal. I would rather say I listen in my journal, and the force that I listen to that I call my wise self. When I show up there, I get guidance from a source that is greater than me. That is not the little complaining, worried person that I can be. It’s an eternal presence that resides within us all. I believe. I also move. I’m still a dancer, even though I don’t dance in that way. I like to move. I like to put on music. I like to move my body and let my body. I just listen with my body, and then I’ll just move. I’ll try to move energy and release stuff that’s in my body that I can feel in my body. And I practice yoga, and I do Reiki, and I do massages. Like I have a you know practices that I engage in regularly to help move them. Alexandra: Nice. And so going back to this, the wise self that you talk to in your journal, can you take us through what that looks like? What do you do to access that part of yourself? Bella: I just sit down with my journal. I just show up, and then I just start complaining, and then eventually the wise self shows up. It doesn’t take long, and then the wise self will start speaking in the second person. I’ve been complaining in the first person, and the wise person will say, “Bella, you just relax, slow down. It’s okay. Like give yourself a break. You don’t have to be perfect. Look at what you’ve been dealing with. You’ve been traveling with your mother in Italy, and she can be very challenging sometimes. And you know, I’m sure you’re just as challenging to her. You know, just like chill.” I’ll realize, oh yeah, I’m reminded. And then, and if I have questions, I’ll ask questions. For a long time, I did left-handed writing because I was forced to slow down when I wrote with my left hand, non-dominant handwriting, because that way I was forced to slow down and listen. But I ask a lot of questions and I just try to listen and it’s just there always for all of us. But I think most of us don’t know that it’s there. We don’t know that we can access this wisdom within, and that it is there, and it does guide us, and it doesn’t care about the things that we think are such big deals in our lives. I didn’t get what I wanted. It’s something much larger. And knowing that’s there just means that I’m kind of okay no matter what. Alexandra: I love that. While writing this big project, this family history interwoven with your pregnancy: Have you ever had any moments where you hit the wall, didn’t know where to go or what to do next? Bella: Yeah, I mean, when I wrote the pregnancy book? Oh my gosh, I was so naive. I can remember I actually sent it out to some agents, just the pregnancy book, and I mean, it was a first draft. It wasn’t even a first draft. I remember it got returned to me, and it would sit on my step, and I would walk in my gate, and I would be like, “I hope nobody sees this. I hope nobody knows that I’m a failed writer.” I felt so much shame around it, but I didn’t have any idea that there were certain prerequisites that I had to fulfill in order to complete a project of this scope. And so I thought I was failing, failing, failing, but in fact, when I read, I actually have it right here on my desk. This was my journal from when I was in Italy. It says summer 1994. I had made a paper collage over it, and as I was reading yesterday, the paper just was it’s so old it was just peeling off. So I just had to peel it all off and took pictures of it. It wasn’t, “No, you’re not good enough.” It was, “Not yet”, right? Not yet. And it’s and the number of not yets. Like I didn’t know they were not yets. I just thought it was no, no, no. You suck. You’re not good enough. Why are you trying? I didn’t know that. I mean, I knew I was on my path, but I kind of hoped that I could gain some recognition or be seen. What I realized is being seen and getting recognition, it’s an inside job, because you never know where your writing is going to go. And there’s like I don’t know a million books, more than a million books published every day in America. My joy right now is working on this project, and I almost don’t want it to end because I know what comes next. I know then it’s okay, publishing decisions and marketing and all that publicity, and I’m loving the writing so much. I’m loving the discovery, and I’m also feeling like I got to be with my mom in Rome in 1948, and my grandmother in 1950. I feel like I’m knowing parts of my ancestors that I never knew before, and so I feel just so rich. That’s the reason. I mean, that’s substantial. I don’t think anything that could happen after I’m done writing this could be as profound as that. That’s the gift. Alexandra: I was just going to say, that is such a gift. That’s amazing. One of the things that I really admire about you because we’re. For the listeners, we’re in a mastermind group together, and we have been for six or seven years, maybe now at this point. Is that how you have held this project so lightly? It seems to me, and have let it evolve as it wanted to. I guess one of the things that I saw was you mentioned writing in the micro and flash fiction, and I at the time I thought Bella: It’s nonfiction. Alexandra: Sorry nonfiction. You started to learn about that format, and then and then realized that was the direction that you wanted to take for the book. And this question might be a little bit vague: Can you talk about the balance between having a clear vision for a project and also letting it evolve if it wants to. Bella: Here’s what I’ve learned about. I love this question, by the way. Here’s what I’ve learned: is that you must begin before you feel ready. Alexandra: Ah, yes. Bella: Every month for the last two, well, maybe the whole time I’ve been working with my editor, which is since 2024. No, 2022. So it’s been four years I’ve been working on this with her. Every time at the beginning of a new month, when I go back to my archives and I’m like, I have a general idea where, like just today, I didn’t know. I didn’t have the outline. I didn’t have a clear outline to the end of the ancestral story. I wrote the pregnancy story some time ago. I’ve been working on the ancestral story, and then when it’s done, I’ll weave them. But what I’ve learned is that the thing about the creative process is that you just have to have faith that even though you don’t know where you’re going or you just have a hazy glimmer of where you might be going, you have to do it anyway. You have to just start. I always think of that great E. L. Doctorow quote: “writing a novel is like driving on a mountain road at night. You can only see as far as your headlights illuminate.” Same thing with writing. You just look at what’s right in front of you. What’s the next thing that you need to do? For me yesterday, I wasn’t sure what the next thing was. I was like, oh, the next thing is read your journal from Italy in 1994, and then I did that, and I was like, oh my god! And then it was like, what’s the next thing? I got to write about this in my journal. I didn’t know this morning when I wrote in my journal that the outline for the rest of the ancestral story would emerge, I had no idea. So I never know, really. Even when I work with outlines, like for Raw, My Journey from Anxiety to Joy, I remember when I first started that project, my editor wanted me to outline it, and I thought, okay, I was pretty clear. Raw is divided into three sections: body, mind, and spirit. I pretty much knew the body story and I knew the mind story. But what I didn’t know was that I hadn’t yet lived the spirit story. That spiritual stuff was going to come and hit the fan while I was working, so I fudged it in the outline, and I did the best I could. And then, as I was writing, actually in the middle of that project, we had five family deaths in three years, and I was the executor of my mom’s estate, and it was contentious. I developed an anxiety disorder, and I was scared to leave my house. I really didn’t know that I had kind of been suffering with the low-grade anxiety for most of my life until it exploded and became a full-on disorder that made me dysfunctional. In that time, I also had some mystical experiences that showed me who I really am and what really matters. Once I lived through that, I completely revised my outline for the last section of the book. People say, are you a plotter or a panster? Do you plot an outline or do you just fly by the seat of your pants? And I would say that I do both. I really love structure, but I also like to wander, and I think both for me, my writing is served both by wandering and also figuring out what the structure is. And usually, after a while, the structure just emerges, like it did this morning when I was working in my journal. Alexandra: So well said, and I love that. Begin almost before you’re ready. Bella: Just begin before you’re ready. Alexandra: Yes, exactly. Bella: And just have faith. Just trust the process. I tell this to my students all the time. Whatever the big trick is to get out of your own way, so that what wants to come through you is free to come through you. That’s the trick, and to not worry so much about what it is because eventually it will announce itself. This project announced itself two years ago when I realized, huh, I’ve been pulling stories from both of these manuscripts. I wonder if I could combine these these two manuscripts and make a one one manuscript instead of like two horribly long kitchen sink manuscripts that meander in every which direction. What if I just plucked and chiseled and polished each story presented it that way? It’s a mosaic, and it’s beautiful because each story stands on its own and has its own narrative. But then it’s also part of a larger story. Alexandra: I think this project is such a good example of the right time and place. 35 years ago, obviously, you weren’t the writer that you are now, and you hadn’t learned all the things that you’ve learned now at this point in your life. I think it’s so great that we can come back to these things. If it’s not the right time now, then it’ll be the right time later. Bella: Maybe or maybe not. I’m just reading this book by Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew. I don’t know if you know her. She’s a wonderful writer. It’s called. It’s something about. I meant to bring it with me and have it here for the interview, but because I knew I knew it was going to come up because I’ve been reading it. It’s on my mind. She says that it’s valuable to write even if you don’t want to publish. So even if I hadn’t picked up this manuscript, working on it the way I did for a decade, I worked on it for a decade in my 30s. That changed me. That grew me. So even if we don’t publish our work, it doesn’t make the writing any less valuable. Alexandra: I totally agree. Yes, because as you say, and I believe this too, it’s what’s happening to us as we’re writing it that actually matters. The end result is a nice cherry on top, but what really matters is what happens to us. Bella: At the end of the day, the writing writes us. That’s true of dance too. When I dance, the dancing is dancing me. Alexandra: Nice. Oh, that’s lovely. So that’s a great segue. You are a writing teacher, and you’ve been doing that for a while. What have you noticed about the healing that takes place with your students when they write? Bella: Okay, well, first let’s just break that up into two pieces. Maybe the first piece is I thought you were going to ask me what do you notice in your students because you’re a writing teacher. What do you notice in your students, just in a more general way? Because we’ll get to the healing. That’s part B of the question. Part A of the question is the first thing that I notice is that most people don’t recognize their own gifts, and most people engaged in a creative endeavor that involves vulnerability and self-expression, or that involves self-expression which necessitates vulnerability, they need to feel safe. They need to understand that it’s a sacred process, and they need to be held and supported and loved. Period. That’s the first thing. In terms of growth as a writer, anytime anybody wants critical feedback, they can receive that, but only if they ask for it. And there’s all kinds. There’s many ways to learn. I personally don’t think that heavy criticism is the best way to teach people how to learn how to write. I think people need to feel free and unencumbered and celebrated. So when that happens, I’m segueing to part B. When that happens, people realize that all the things that they thought they couldn’t say, they can say. And when that happens, people are starting to connect with the divine eternal wisdom that they have inside of themselves, and that is healing because that divine eternal wisdom knows a lot more than we do, and that’s what I mean when I say get out of your own. I help people get out of their own way. Alexandra: What are some ways that you do that? Bella: I do that by setting ground rules, such as when someone’s done reading, I’m going to ask the group, “What did you appreciate about what you heard?” You’re only allowed to say what you appreciated. You’re not allowed to make suggestions for improvement. You’re not allowed to say parts that were confusing. You’re not allowed to make any helpful comments. You’re only allowed to say what you appreciated about what you heard. They’re small groups, anywhere from six to eight people in a group, and then usually every person in the group gets a chance to say what they appreciated, and that creates trust in the group. It’s not like oh that person didn’t speak. No, it’s like everybody says what they appreciated, and you can always find something to appreciate, even from the most beginning writer. There’s always something to appreciate, so I cultivate in my students an ear for listening for what they appreciate. Then I ask the writer, “Do you have any questions? And then the writer can say, “Oh, you know, did it make sense when I did X, Y, and Z, or was it confusing when I spoke about this, or do you have any suggestions for improving the language?” Alot of times people just say no, I’m good, and that’s fine, and they learn from each other, they learn from the conversations, and it’s a powerful environment. It’s called Write Where You Are, and I’ve been teaching for over 20 years and have helped hundreds of writers, and many of them have gone on to publish books and become authors and healers and leaders in their communities. I will say this about that work. One time I was having a conversation with this writer. I think this was before I became a writing teacher and coach. I thought I had to wait till I had a book published before I could teach writing. Which now that I look back, I didn’t need to do that. I could have still taught writing. I waited longer than I needed to, but this woman said to me, I’ll never forget. She said, “You, madam, are a natural born coach”. I remember thinking, “Huh”, and that was years before I became one. I think the reason is I see, I do see the sort of divine spark in everybody that I work with, and unlike writing, which was a the skill, the craft of writing took me my whole life to to to practice and learn. I do have a God given gift, or I don’t know if you want to use the word God, but I do have a gift that comes to me from the universe that just I understand what people need. Maybe it’s because I did live in that household that was violent and difficult, and in order to stay alive, I had to be really perceptive about what was going on. So, I’m sensitive and intuitive, and I can tell what each person needs, and what each person needs is different from what another person needs, and I just tune into that. This is the reason why I don’t write in my writing circles myself. I know the Amherst method says you’ve got to show your students you’re one of them, you’re just like them, you’re a writer too. But I find that my writer self is too insecure. I can’t focus on my writer. I can’t show up as my writer self and then also do this thing with where I tune into people and guide them. To me, those are just two different lives. So I don’t write with my students. I focus all my attention on their growth and upliftment. Alexandra: I love the point you brought up there that writing is an opportunity to tell the truth. I’m sure you encounter that sometimes it’s the first time a person has told the truth about an experience that they’ve had. Bella: Yeah, and many people have been ghosted. Many people-is that the right word? Ghosted. I feel like that. I’m wondering if that’s the right word. Well, it doesn’t matter. Many people show up having no idea, even what their truth is. Alexandra: Yes. Even just writing in a journal is an opportunity to tell the truth. Bella: And an opportunity to tell the truth and to connect with the small quiet voice within, which is the voice of wisdom, and many people once they come to the circles, they stay. They stay for a long time. There’s one every eight weeks. I have a student who’s been with me for 10 years. I have students who’ve been with me three years, five years. I think people are hungry for the freedom of a of a small supportive community that can hold space for them while they explore whatever it is they need to explore on the page. Alexandra: I’m just having a huge epiphany right now while we’re talking about how writing is sometimes the first time a person will slow down enough, and tell the truth, even if it’s just to themselves about an experience that they’ve had. And how valuable that’s been in my life and in others’ lives that I’ve seen, and what a gift that you are able to support people to do that. Bella: Yeah, lovely. I feel like actually the gift was given to me, and I think the best kind of gifts are the ones that energetically keep moving. Alexandra: Yes, nicely said. Speaking of your writing circles, tell us where we can find out more about you and your work. Bella: My website is bellamahaya carter.com, and it has my writing there, my publications, my writing circles, coaching information. It’s all there. I also write a monthly Substack newsletter called Flying Lessons for Writers, and I try each month to write something that I feel very connected to that I think will inspire other writers to fly both on the page and in their lives, because I am interested very much in writing. I love writing and I love the craft of writing and I love to help people become better writers and I’m constantly trying myself to become a better writer and I’m equally fascinated in becoming as large and authentic a human being as possible, and I’m equally interested in facilitating that process in others through the medium of writing. Alexandra: Great, awesome. I will put links to all those things in the show notes so people can find you and your work. This has been a real pleasure, Bella. Is there anything else you wanted to share before we wrap up? Bella: Ah, let’s see. Gosh, this time went fast. I don’t think so. I guess I just want to say thank you for having me on your show. I’m excited to watch all of your interviews. Alexandra: Well, thank you so much. I appreciate that. All right. Well, take care, and I will see you soon. Bella: All right. Take care. Click here to grab your complimentary copy of the Creative Alchemy journaling handbook. The post Telling Our Truth in Writing with Bella Mahaya Carter appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

• Transcript

Art Therapy for Cult Survivors with Natalee Bigger Stockdale

Natalee Bigger Stockdale is a cult survivor and an art therapist. In this episode, Natalee and I talk about the healing power of creative expression for cult survivors, and other survivors of trauma. Among other topics, Natalee points out that when we use visual means of creative expression (painting, drawing, etc.) we bypass the language areas of our brain, which accesses other parts of ourselves that need healing. She also talks about how creative expression is an excellent tool for helping us recover our sense of self after being in a high-demand group. In the introduction, I talk about a recent article that highlights the art therapy being made available to wildfire evacuees in Penticton, British Columbia. This episode of Creative Alchemy is supported by the audiobook version of my award-winning, Amazon best-selling memoir, Cult, A Love Story. Readers call the book ‘compelling’ ‘gritty’ ‘intimate’ and ‘not boring’ – which is what an author loves to hear. I narrated the audiobook and if you have a Spotify premium subscription you can listen to the audiobook for free as part of that subscription at alexandraamor.com/spotify. Natalee Bigger Stockdale holds a bachelor’s degree in studio art and business from the University of Northwestern and a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling and art therapy from Adler Graduate School. She has worked in clinical practice as a Board-Certified Art Therapist (ATR-BC), Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC), and is a Board-Certified Neurofeedback provider (BCN-L). Natalee completed a postgraduate certificate in the Psychology of Coercive Control (PgCert) through Salford Univeristy and has relocated to purse doctoral work with Florida State University in the Art Therapy Practice and Research Program, supporting the recovery journey of victims of exploitative persuasion. Self-portrait by Natalee Bigger Stockdale Connect with Natalee at LinkedIn. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Discovering art therapy after immersion in music and ceramics On meeting her husband who had also been in a cult On Adlerian psychology and its core tenant of belonging How making art reflects how we present ourselves in the world Coming to enjoy recovery work with those from high demand groups Getting involved with a somatic drumming group as a licensed therapist that turned out to be high demand When is it safe to explore art therapy after a high demand experience? How making art bypasses the language centres of the brain How to find an art therapist to work with Suggestions for using art on our own to heal Resources mentioned in this episode Article at the CBC website about art therapy for wildfire evacuees The International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) The Lalich Center on Cults and Coercion The American Art Therapy Association The Canadian Art Therapy Association Julia Cameron and The Artist’s Way Transcript of Interview with Natalee Bigger Stockdale Alexandra: Natalee Bigger Stockdale, welcome to Creative Alchemy. Natalee: Thank you, Alexandra. It’s nice to be here. Alexandra: It’s great to have you here. Tell us a little bit about your background. Natalee: Sure. I know we’ll probably get into the professional part because that’ll be part of art therapy. But for me personally, I grew up in Iowa in the U.S. So Midwestern girl, kind of rural and small town. I always loved art; was really drawn to that. But I was trained in classical music. That was my mom’s dream for me and our family. And it was easy for me. Still worked, but I think the thing that was the easiest and just came out of me naturally as a maybe like a native language, if you will, or native expressive mode was through visual. When I was in high school, I had a really wonderful art teacher, and after I graduated, she told me art was always easy for you, and so that helped me define myself as an artistic person. Although I had all this classical training in music, and that’s what I decided to pursue in college. Even though it’s like a maybe a starving artist degree, I’m lucky that it ended up where I am. I’ve always followed my heart that way, and really value being led. I guess, like by my intrinsic interests. Let’s see what else. I love being outside and out in the forest. That’s always something that’s drawn me back to myself is trying to get near, especially rivers. They just call me. Alexandra: You moved from undergraduate work into a greater interest in art therapy. How did that happen? Natalee: I moved from Iowa up to the Twin Cities for my undergrad degree. I focused mostly on painting and ceramics, and then I spent about seven years in production ceramics. And it is hard work. It’s takes a toll on your body, my body, and there are a lot of different things. You don’t talk a whole lot. It’s a lot of numbers. I did glaze testing for a while, mixing dry chemicals. I did a lot of slip casting for my own work and dry clay mixing, so it was pretty. I don’t know. I guess it was it was fun and playful at sometimes, but it’s also this thing that turns into a job with deadlines and the hustle. And so, along with that, I would say in that realm, a lot of folks are there just for the art and production, not necessarily self-reflection and internal exploration. I was always longing for that and missing that when it wasn’t happening in the production scene, and so I ended up moving. I had a roommate who was trying to get to New York for an art therapy degree, and I had heard about art therapy before. And it lit me up, and I had that intrinsic draw towards it, and I didn’t feel like I could pull off New York, but Minnesota had a one school that offered a master’s degree, and so eventually I was able to become stable enough. Actually, met my husband. Maybe I’ll do a little segue here. He loves telling this story. We both were in high demand groups, and he had never found really any help or anyone who understood that. He had gone to therapy and started unpacking some some of his own stuff, and he had gotten married while he was trying to escape this hiding group, and realized that that relationship wasn’t ever a match. It was more of a like escape route, and so that was dissolving. As he was in therapy trying to figure out the next direction, I guess we ended crossing paths, and I thought he was total trouble. I was afraid of being attracted to someone, and I would say he was the first person that I was genuinely ever attracted to, and which is kind of bonkers, I guess. We end up going on a date. It goes great, super great. Then the and we went to American Craft Council show. So talk about creativity. We’re in creative spaces, looking at aesthetics and beauty and craft. And we go on a second date, and we’re walking around Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, and he all of a sudden changes, and I’m like, what is going on? He just went into a turtle shell, and I think I had asked a question where the timeline wasn’t like clear. You know, you’re like trying to get to know this person you’re like interested in. He turns to me and I could tell he expected rejection, and he goes, “Well, I was part of a cult.” To this day he’ll say that he thought I was going to be like, okay, bye. And I was so relieved when he said that. My eyes got big, and I took a step towards him, and I just said, me too. We’ve been inseparable ever since. Alexandra: Oh wow! I’m getting chills all over when you said that. Natalee: Yeah. So that’s it. He’s a really big gift to me. I think we are to each other. And long story short, up to how I got into grad school. Life finally became stable for both of us in a lot of different ways when we found each other, and I was able to pursue that dream of getting an art therapy degree, and got into private practice, and this is a key point, though, with my specific degree. I was trained in Adlerian psychology, and quick snippet. I guess this is like nothing that I wrote on the paper question, but maybe it’ll be interesting. Adler, Freud, and Young were all contemporaries. Adler is easily forgotten in the history or lineage of psychology because he was actually the president of Freud’s publishing house, and he disagreed with Freud publicly in one of the forums about women being inferior, and that our core drive was of a sexual nature. Freud called a vote, and they voted him out. He was excommunicated, and all of his publishings in Freud’s journal were revoked. And so Adler went away and continued develop to develop what we call individual psychology. It’s its own branch of psychology, and it’s at its core, it’s about belonging. The desire to belong with our fellow human is our core. It determines our behavior of how this is going to help me secure a position with people around me. Whether that’s a tragic strategy to meet that need or a beneficial one is more of the question. And he was really into the creative life force, so that everybody is a unique creative expression. Their personhood, their personality, and anytime we interact with someone different, it’s actually like a whole different painting, if you will, or like a whole different, even hybrid. Like when two different people come together, that’s even a new thing. So for me, it dovetails into art therapy really well because there’s the meta level, but then when it comes down into the materials and working with someone in materials in a clinical way, it’s you’re seeing that person in a projective exercise, and not only in what they create, but how they create it, how they choose to sort through which materials they want to go towards, or how they display confidence in trying something new, or going to a familiar thing, or mixing things, or we call it containment. I hear this almost in my professor’s words: the containment of the materials. Is it all over the room? Are we needing to bring it in for them, and that’s a co-regulating act, or is it hard for them to even make a mark because they’re afraid to take up space or to make a mistake? So different kind of spectrums or directions of movement with that. I did that for about five years. And at Adler, it’s very embodied, I would say, and very relational. So experiential learning is Adlerian. He’s also very pragmatic. I love psychoanalysis, and my friendly folks who practice this invaluable. Thank you for their work. Adler had this idea of brief therapy, that it was to help people get to that strategy, resolve this strategy of how to have their need for belonging met, and if we can help them do that, then we can help them get along in their lives, and we work ourselves out of a job, essentially. So, that being said, Adler Graduate School was a nonprofit, and it was not a research institute, and my classes that I was most intrigued with were these more like assessments how they had taken art making and then applied standardized measurement tools to it, which is really hard. That’s like so abstract. But there’s several people who are in that and gathering data on that and generating kind of these themes. Or I won’t say norms, but ideas that come out of humans when they go through certain things, or when they’re connected in a certain way, or how they display a family, projective exercise of their family on a piece of paper. So that’s what really drew me into my interest in PhD. I was always reaching out to people in my textbooks, seeing if anybody would get back to me, and one did. Except Dr. Nancy Gerber, who I am getting to work with at FSU. She walked me through this process after I was licensed and working with people and really getting to know the field, she said. If you want to get into doctoral work, look for the gap. I fell in love with high demand group recovery work. There’s so little, and clinically speaking, I mean, we’ve got podcasters, we’ve got Netflix, like these are all arts, like valid collective expressions of this theme that’s emerging in the collective awareness. We don’t necessarily have that up to speed in research, scholarly work, therapeutic best practices. I’ll rewind just a second; I got involved with a somatic drumming group as a licensed therapist that sucked me down the trail where I was like, oh, you know what? I’ve been here before in my early 20s. I got involved with a high demand group. I know what this feeling is. I’ve done EEG training. I know what this looks like on a screen. My theta is off the charts right now, and I am dissociating. And they’re telling me that it’s good. No, it’s not good. It’s not. I’m getting ready to either be rewritten according to their agenda, which I don’t know what that is, so I can’t give consent, or I’m just going to float away until like nothing’s left. You can even tell, like, just recalling it. So good intentions bound me up in a similar situation, and I left. I left in time, and I had something that got brought up for me. So I guess the researcher term is like heuristic, like starting from within research. And I had this experience come up for me, where I was like, I’ve been a licensed therapist, and nobody’s ever mentioned cult, high demand group, religious trauma, course of control, interpersonal relational betrayal. All of these terms that are starting to bubble up from people having Reddit conversations and wherever we find our little threads to talk about it, and that’s the gap. I felt like I needed to do something about that, and I’ve been so humbled in my PhD practice. I’m like, okay, everybody comes in thinks that they’re going to change the world. I saw this on a meme yesterday. I was like, that’s it. Now I’m just trying to change the font on my final paper. Like I’m just trying to make the next deadline. That’s it. I mean, those do add up over time. But that’s that’s what my inspiration is, and why I’m checking this out, and really, I guess even more so, trying to find like an even smaller gap, because in dissertation we really I need to get really clear about what’s going to be most valuable. What’s gonna help people know, if I go this direction, it’s going to help me, not harm me with creative expression or writing or singing or any of those things. I’m not a music therapist, and that’s a whole other branch of clinical that I won’t be into. I’m yeah trying to recycle that for myself. Also, we have a lot of, we call it reflexivity in research, where we don’t want to project our. It’s a really hard tension and line to walk, which is I’m led by something that I know, but I can’t let that blind me to other possibilities or other ways of asking questions when I approach people for the data. And so that’s a thing I grapple with. Alexandra: As someone who has had the experience of high demand groups, how have you found art to be healing? Natalee: I love that question. I I think it’s like coming home for me. Visual art for me is simple. It’s clear, and I almost want to use the word pure for me. That might not be the case for everyone. I also am neurodivergent, so I have dyslexia and definitely have a strong spatial bent to me. I think this is really curious. Daphna Moria, she’s a art therapist researcher out of Israel who just published a paper on doing a kind of like a comprehensive overview of one’s own body of artwork, and then how to look at that from a scholarly or like researcher point of view, and unknowingly, when I heard her speak and read her paper, I am like, oh my gosh, I did that about art because I had this whole body of artwork that I had made that I could never explain. If you go through art school, your teachers are always like yakking at you about clarify your voice, clarify what you’re saying, and I’m like, how do I do that? It’s an image, like, and no one can see me. No one’s speaking to the wound that happened, so I don’t know how to articulate this or even in what direction to go. It was purely material exploration at a certain point. But these themes, as I’ve gone back and looked at them, is actually the portfolio that I pulled together to get me into the PhD program, and after doing a software program and really getting plugged into ICSA, I would say here in the U.S. That’s like the you know the thing that we kind of look to. Organization. I started getting language for it, like being able to consciously articulate. Hey, when I was working with broken shards of porcelain, I wasn’t like someone else where I was throwing those pieces away and moving towards a different material. I was determined to use these, even though they’re broken and they’re razor sharp. What’s up with that? But I I projected some part of my identity into these pieces that I had to gather and make something out of. And I still have one hanging up over there. I turned them into little pieces of stained glass where you put the copper tape around them and then solder, and then put a jump ring, and then I made them into mobiles. It was like finding balance with all of these broken pieces. I call them reimagine, and I consider them a self-portrait, because I had the imagination of what it was going to be when it first came out of the mold, but that didn’t work. So I might liken that to like approaching a group and then appealing to that glimmer of belonging, however, that hooks different people. Mine was significance, I think. Having some sort of permanence or like closeness with a group of people who are headed in the same direction. After you leave, it’s almost like I had to give up on that dream. But that’s in essence what I rediscovered with these pieces, and then articulating later in words, is, oh, it’s not the dream that my psyche and soul cast to belong. It’s just how I was trying to get there, and this this dynamic that took advantage of it, So, however that happens, I know enough to know I know very little, and there’s very complicated dynamics with all those things. Alexandra: On that note, when do you think it’s appropriate for a cult survivor or a survivor of other kinds of trauma to begin art therapy? Is there a time when it isn’t safe? You know how they say when people join Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, you’re supposed to stay out of relationships for a year. So, is there a similar rule, so to speak, around when someone could start art therapy? Natalee: That’s a good question. I guess what comes to mind first when you ask that, and I have different things written down, but the first thing that comes to mind is that art therapy was birthed in the in the most destitute, like highest acuity populations. Art therapy was the last resort for people who were beyond help. So, state kept wards and veterans, so like really severe PTSD suffering individuals, and what they know clinically speaking about the art is that the act of making or expressing through image, or play, or different materials, it bypasses the language centers of the brain. Oftentimes when we’re doing cognitive and talk therapy, we’re activating those parts of the brain to try to reprocess, but they can reinvoke the experience of that traumatic happening. So our memories, we can feel them up to 60% of when they when they first occurred to us. That’s an awesome survival tactic to map safety in the world. But when we’re in talk therapy, that can flood someone very quickly. So when we do these projective exercises, it can bypass that part. We might talk about it after. We might do containment with just the materials. We might have put it in a folder at the end of session and saying, “Okay, like we’re closing up now. This will be here for whenever we want to revisit it later.” That person can have a tangible symbol. And I guess there’s neuroscience too. I don’t know how far you want to go down these things, but I find them so interesting because I think it’s almost linked to how I naturally experience the world and ask questions and process. So I’ll tell this one other thing, and then maybe I’ll get back to your question. The part of the brain called the hippocampus is responsible for geographical remembrance and navigation. There is some research that suggests that that’s also similar to how we orient our relationships. So, like our human relationships. So we can use projective exercises, even like with blocks. It doesn’t have to be necessarily art materials, but we can use these blocks to project the experiences for warmth or coldness, distance, closeness. Is this person more emotional with me? Are they more cognitive with me? We start mapping the experience of these people or or ourselves. I’ve told everyone that’s on this board, but I’m trying to pull together a committee for my doctoral research, and I have every person that I have an option of asking. I have them printed off and then on a magnet, and in the center, this egocentric exercise. I’m there in the center, and I’m starting to map who’s who’s my team, and it mirrors it back to me, so that I don’t lose it. Somehow, that’s a a confirming circle or loop for me to be able to interact with objects that way. If I talk through it, it seems to flutter away. So that’s one of those little like neurological hacks. I think that’s really interesting about art. I try to observe that a lot with folks that I sit with in session with spatial orientation of materials of what they’re putting on the paper, even if they’re really like drawn to fibers or like knotting jewelry bracelets. There’s kind of like a bilateral soothing thing to that, like okay, we’re like doing some somatic soothing, and usually that pacing, like we can wind down in the session and get to like one or two, like maybe like big landing places for them of like whoa, I experience betrayal, and then they just go right back into knotting. So it’s not this big overdone, explosive emotion. I guess it’s really taken into the objects. So to your question about the bunny trail, I love bunny trails. They might be my favorite animal. Your question is: Is there a wrong time to start art therapy? I would say, obviously, if the person’s in crisis, like there’s a pretty big spectrum of people coming out of groups, and depending how long they’ve been in the group, what group is if they’re first generation survivor, second generation survivor can be determinants of whether art therapy is maybe an auxiliary support. If we’re in crisis management, I don’t want to be doing bracelet reading with you. I mean, it could be helpful in like an extreme case, but we want to make sure basic needs are met. So that’s part of any clinical assessment, though. With having someone come in and we’re checking, are your basic needs met? Are you experiencing the closest? Do you need medical attention? Sometimes that role is helping those those services get lined up first. I think it’s important to know too that art therapy is an emerging field. At Adler, I was dually credentialed. I didn’t really know this when I got out into the big, big broad world of art therapy, but I was trained as a licensed professional clinical counselor and an art therapist. I see art coming through in pretty much everything I do, especially as like a meta view of I’m a pretty creative person. Even with how I talk to people, so with that being said, there may be certain art therapists that have extra clinical support that they can offer. So that can be kind of a dovetailing service or support. I would look at probably like more stability of the person, and then the fit. Obviously, we want the fit of the person with the therapists to be good, and some art therapists, I’ve been trying to do my due diligence with presenting, but not all. Just like normal therapist world, not all therapists know about this, and in fact, many of them don’t. And even if they know about it, it’s are they willing to learn outside of session? The Lalich Center has a course that therapists can take. Are they willing to check that out? Are they willing to meet you there? This goes for art therapists too, and credentialing is up and coming too. I’m duly credentialed in Minnesota and in Florida, but some some art therapists aren’t, and so that’s just a different consideration to take in mind. And I would say for the person who’s looking for art therapy, or like, is that a potential for me? What do I want out of this? Am I going in with an idea of I’m going to develop skills around art that might be an art class, not an art therapy class or session. With art therapy, you’re going to probably have some really profound digging. It’s our job to itirate and stay pace with you, but it’s also this like we’re not doing our job if we’re not asking hard questions and being there with someone with the with the darker stuff. So yeah, asking what they want out of it. Art therapists are also going to have a treatment plan goal. I think they should. For cult survivors, I think it is really important that they also know an end date. For me, honestly, I sometimes shy away from engaging with my own therapy because I’m like, oh gosh, wherever. I need that because I’m in mental health, caring for other people. But yeah, I think that it is important, especially with payment too. That’s a final thing I would say for people to ask about is upfront, like what is the pay agreement? Do you take insurance? Do you have a sliding scale fee if you’re not in insurance? How many sessions do you think it might take to work through this this specific issue? I’m thinking that type of client probably is I would five to 10 years out of their group. Although, if it’s someone’s way that they process, like it could be straight out of their group that they’re like, I just need a place where someone can witness me expressing this horrible thing, horrible things that happen to me, and be able to contain it with me. Alexandra: Very good points, and I really appreciate you bringing that up because I think it’s so important for people to keep themselves safe when they’re searching. As a cult survivor myself, and you’ve had this experience too, we’re so vulnerable when we’ve just left a high high demand group. The reminder that we can set boundaries around these things. Ask for the pay schedule, like you said, and the end date, and those kinds of things. I think that’s so valuable. And I love that you said too: this is not an art class. It’s therapy; that is right in the name. Just a reminder about that as well. I loved what you said about language; that art circumvents, or I don’t know if that’s the word you use, goes around those language parts of our brain. I had never thought about it that way before. There was just such a light bulb that went on for me when you said that. As a word person, a writer and someone who expresses themselves very much verbally, I can really see the value sometimes in getting out of that kind of habit in a way and expressing myself in a different way, so that was really interesting. On that note, how would a cult survivor or anyone else find an art therapist in their area? Natalee: I would probably point them to American Art Therapy Association’s website. They have a provider directory, and within that, usually most states are having their own chapters nowadays. Minnesota just dissolved, but Florida has one, so you can check out their website. americanarttherapy.org, I believe, and you can search, I believe, by state and check out who’s who’s licensed and certified that way. Alexandra: I’ll put a link to that in the show notes, and then I’ll see if I can find a Canadian equivalent as well. Since I’m in Canada, there must be. Natalee: Yes. I think there is a Canadian Art Therapy Association. I’m pretty sure there is. So, I can try and send that to you as well. Alexandra: Okay, great. I’ll put some links in the show notes. If someone doesn’t have the resources to work with an art therapist one on one, what are some other things that they could do if they feel drawn to art making. Natalee: I think of art therapy really as a spectrum, and I don’t want to say that things outside of the clinical setting are therapy because that’s not therapy. But it’s still this really essential part of their creative self that they may have the safety even just alone to start reflecting in a nonverbal way and starting to capture notes. Not like I would say like visual notes, like like an aggregate of esthetics, if you will, I think these are powerful things that we can reference in constructing or reconstructing identity after we’ve been through identity dissolution or foreclosure. I would say get a sketchbook if that draws you. That might be get water colorings, little setup, put it in your backpack. It might be knitting for some people. Go towards the thing that draws you. Maybe go on a day trip to Michael’s, if you’ve got the budget. Set a funny dollar budget, and what’s one little thing I could acquire to inspire me? In that act, there’s these micro choices And discernment or self connection, where you get to make a choice again, and practicing that choice making, and then having an object at the end to take with you, can be kind of that anchor, if you will, in other environments. I think that’s a what I would say. There’s a really phenomenal author named. I think she’s great but she might have a cult following, so don’t get too culty about it, I guess. But Julia Cameron, She wrote The Artist’s Way, and teaches about writing three pages longhand a day. She’s got a free app. If that’s a way that someone wants to continue like catharsis or like getting the words out, the narrative out. And then the thing I just mentioned; I have to give her credit for that because that’s called what she calls an artist’s date, where you go out with your I think maybe like magical inner child and you something that delights you that you get to return to play. There’s not a goal that you’re trying to accomplish. So just practices that kind of loosen that and then get back into, I’m a human being. Alexandra: That’s such a good reminder about the artist dates. And she says things like even just going to a yarn store, even if you don’t knit, but just seeing the colors and feeling the different textures that she considers to be an artist’s date. Natalee: Yes. Absolutely. And maybe finding other creatives. I was like, yes, I remember that. It’s delicious. Like in a kind of like alive kind of way. Colors and textures, and like being drawn to different things in the store, and wonder. Oh, that’s fun to just even talk about it. Alexandra: I don’t go on enough artist dates. I need to do that more these days. This has been so lovely, Natalie. It’s been so nice talking to you. So you’re doing your doctoral dissertation now, so you’re not necessarily out in the world. Is there anywhere we can go to learn more about you? Natalee: If I have work coming out, I will put it on my LinkedIn profile. So, if there’s folks who want to follow along or friend me or connect or whatever, that’s where I’ll be for a little while. Alexandra: Great. Okay, so I will put a link to that in the show notes as well. And you mentioned ICSA as well, and I wanted to say, for those who don’t know, that’s the International Cultic Studies Association, and I’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. We’re recording this in July 2026. You were you at their conference earlier this month? Natalee: I had two presentations with them this year on art therapy and internalized shame that was with Felicia Rosario and I think people might be able to find recordings of those maybe in their archives if that interests them. Pretty academic, so I fair warning. I think interesting, but just you know, and you can see that body of artwork that I talked about that got me into the PhD work on one of those. Alexandra: Awesome. Okay. Again, thank you, Natalie. It’s been lovely chatting with you. Natale: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Click here to grab your complimentary copy of the Creative Alchemy journaling handbook. The post Art Therapy for Cult Survivors with Natalee Bigger Stockdale appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

Developing Memoir Writing Skills with Christi Christiaens

Christi Christiaens belonged to an immortality cult for 30 years. Her book, Wager on Forever, explores how she was drawn into the cult, how the trio of cult leaders applied the usual strategies to keep their followers on the hook, and how Christi was ultimately able to leave the group. Unfortunately, in order to do this, she had to leave her adult son behind. He’s still involved with the cult as of this recording. Based on what she shares in this interview, the writing process was healing for Christi, and you’ll hear her talk about why that was and what it looked like for her. It’s not an easy thing to do, to write about a traumatic experience, especially one that was 30 years in the making and I am so impressed with Christi’s drive and determination to tell her story.

Writing Out from Under the Shadow of Polygamy with Maggie Rayner

Maggie Rayner is the author of In Polgamy’s Shadow. She grew up in a branch of the Mormon church that was not polygamist, but that does not mean that polygamy didn’t have an effect on her family. As Maggie shares in this interview, among the many other challenges she experienced as a Mormon child, she and one of her sisters had a very close call with being recruited into the polygamous community of Bountiful, BC in the 1960s. They avoided that fate, but couldn’t avoid the other impacts that the church had on their lives. Eventually, as an adult, Maggie was able to write her book and, as you’ll hear, the writing process played a big part in the healing process.

Creative Alchemy episode 1: Writing My Way Out of a Cult with Alexandra Amor

What happens when we use creative expression to help us heal from a traumatic experience like being in a cult? That's what I'm here to explore in Creative Alchemy. In this first episode, I share a bit about my story of joining a cult at the age of 22 in 1989 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. And I talk about how the recovery from that experience included a couple forms of writing, including journaling and eventually sharing about my experience in a memoir.

Pausing and Stepping Into Quiet

Hello explorers, and welcome to episode 68 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today with a little announcement. As you possibly saw in the title of this episode, I’ve called it pausing and stepping into quiet. I’m feeling a really strong urge lately to do just that, to pause things, step into the silence,… The post Pausing and Stepping Into Quiet appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

We Don’t Need To Figure It Out with Stephanie Benedetto

As we discuss so often on Unbroken, there is an intelligence and wisdom that, if we allow it to, can guide our lives to interesting and fulfilling places. As with most of us, it took Stephanie Benedetto some time to really listen to this wisdom and to trust that it would support her. When she… The post We Don’t Need To Figure It Out with Stephanie Benedetto appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

Listening for Guiding Wisdom with Bonnie Jarvis

We all have a built-in GPS, a guidance system that never lies and that always has our best interests at heart. We can call that guidance whatever we want – wisdom, intuition, insight, knowing; the name isn’t as important as learning to listen to it. And, as Bonnie Jarvis points out, figuring out how your… The post Listening for Guiding Wisdom with Bonnie Jarvis appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

3 Tips For Dealing With The Inner Critic

We all have one: an inner critic. That voice inside our heads that is critical of so much that we do. That voice can become debilitating, if we let it. But when we apply what we know about the Three Principles of innate health, we can teach that voice to take a back seat, where… The post 3 Tips For Dealing With The Inner Critic appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

We Are The Peace We Seek with Ellen Friedman

When it comes to our mental well-being and our physical health it can be so easy to look outspide ourselves for answers. Ellen Friedman takes a different approach; she guides her clients inward to connect with the innate wisdom and wellness that is already there. Ellen Friedman guides people home to the sacred space within,… The post We Are The Peace We Seek with Ellen Friedman appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

Stress Relief for Female Entrepreneurs with Clare Downham

We usually think of stress as coming from the circumstances that surround us: busy jobs, busy lives, difficult bosses or clients. But what if stress has another origin? What if it comes from the thinking we have in any given situation? Clare Downham is the dedicated mentor you need on your unique journey to unlock… The post Stress Relief for Female Entrepreneurs with Clare Downham appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

Exploding The Myth That We’re Using Food To Replace Love

Old-paradigm psychology can try to convince us that unwanted habits are caused by a need to feel loved or safe or cared for. It can feel like we’re using food, or other substances, to soothe or comfort ourselves. In this podcast episode we bust this myth and look toward the true origin of unwanted habits.… The post Exploding The Myth That We’re Using Food To Replace Love appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

Thriving Is Effortless with Dominic Scaffidi

As a long-time coach, and before that an HR professional, Dominic Scaffidi points his clients back toward an awareness of their innate wisdom and ability to thrive effortlessly. He reminds us that we are always more than our human minds can grasp. As a Master Certified Coach (MCC) credentialed with the International Coaching Federation (ICF)… The post Thriving Is Effortless with Dominic Scaffidi appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

Why Your Habit Proves You’re In Perfect Working Order

So often we demonize our bad habits. But what if those habits are working to bring us messages about our perfect human design? You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Click the image below to learn about the Unbroken Community and join the… The post Why Your Habit Proves You’re In Perfect Working Order appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.