Latest / All Roads with Jeffery Robinson / The Secret Life of TradWives: Fear, Violence, and Racism ft. Tia Levings

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The Secret Life of TradWives: Fear, Violence, and Racism ft. Tia Levings · All Roads with Jeffery Robinson

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  They were teaching that the Civil War was the War of Northern Aggression, and that slavery was good.
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  Those were overt, opened out in the open in curriculum messaging that we taught our children.
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  Welcome to All Roads with Jeffery Robinson, a podcast about all the different paths that lead
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  people to grapple with the truth, recognize their own place in history, and finally: act.
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  Tom, do you think? Do you think people can change? Absolutely. And we've seen it
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  again and again. Hey, folks, I'm Jeffery Robinson, the founder and chief executive officer of The
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  Who We Are project. All roads that lead to justice begin with the truth. Folks,
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  today our guest is Tia Levings, a writer, a mother, a content creator, and author of the New
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  York Times bestselling memoir A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian
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  Patriarchy. As a former trad wife and Christian fundamentalist, her work shines a spotlight
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  on the facts and reality behind these movements, revealing religious trauma, church
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  sanctioned domestic abuse, high control religions, and other realities of the Christian
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  fundamentalist and patriarchal influences on today's culture. Now her work has reached both
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  young and old audiences because it has been featured in places like Teen Vogue, Salon, The
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  Huffington Post, and Newsweek. She's appeared in the Amazon docu series Shiny Happy People, and she
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  just released a second book, I Belong to Me: A Survivor's Guide to Recovery and Hope After
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  Religious Trauma. She is the mother of five children, and she is here with me today. Tia,
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  everyone at the Who We Are project is thrilled to have you join us today. Thank you very much. Thank
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  you so much. Honored to be here. Well, you know, I gave a little introduction, and there are people
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  who know you and know your work, but there are a lot of people who may not know much about you. Can
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  you introduce yourself a little more? Tell us a little more about you. Yeah. Um, it's always, like,
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  puzzling where to start. Because I'm just here. I'm an everyday American, Gen X. Um. A Well-Trained Wife
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  is the story of how I got into and out of a very high controlled Christian cult. But it is also, um,
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  a girl growing up in mainstream American Christian church. And where that naturally leads.
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  Um, it is a coming of age story in my 30s. Um, and it's defies a lot of odds.
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  Today I educate on the abuses in Christian fundamentalism because I am the living reality
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  check. And I know there are many, many, many of us out there, but they get obscured when the messages
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  of idealism and the spiritual goals of a movement are being the only thing people see the thing
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  that's preached. So I think survivors are extremely important because we're the
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  counterweight to what happens if we live that way. What happens if we make these choices? And so
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  everything in my work tries to center survivors, um, missing narratives. The, um, what happens if
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  I do this outcome? Where did you grow up? Yeah, my childhood was split in half. I think this is
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  really important to my personal ability to survive. Um, I really feel for those who are born
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  into a high control system, I was not I my first ten years was in Upper Michigan. My parents were. I
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  call them kind of lifestyle Christians. We went Christmas, Easter. My mom was more devout than my
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  dad. My dad was a lapsed Catholic. My mom was a devout evangelical. But church didn't rule our
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  lives. We went when we could. If we had to work that Sunday, it wasn't a big deal. We worked and
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  stayed home and never worried for our salvation. The thing that did happen to me in early
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  childhood was I was presented the gospel of Jesus dying on the cross for our sins as a four year
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  old and pressured to pray the prayer of salvation And as a articulate, artistic child, I
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  internalized the murder of Christ was my responsibility. Um, this is not an uncommon story
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  for those with religious trauma, because we we hear these graphic depictions of hell and that
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  Jesus were responsible for the sin of the cross. And, um, you know, a serious child is going to
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  internalize those things. Um, so, you know, that changed my perception of self-worth from that age.
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  But I also had a lot of free space, a lot of artistic, um, influence as a young child.
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  And then my parents moved to Jacksonville, Florida, when I was ten, and everything changed. From
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  Michigan. From Upper Michigan. I tell you, Jeff, I did not I had not ever even seen a Black person
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  in public, in person till I was ten. And then three days after our move, I was enrolled in a school
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  that was predominantly Black and in an inner city and the South. It was massive, catastrophic culture
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  shock. In the 80s when, you know, we were all all Gen-X as a little feral. We didn't have the same
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  kind of things. Parents weren't preparing their kids for major life change. You just did it. And I
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  was bewildered, utterly bewildered. And as was my family, we were trying to find this way. It was an
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  economic decision that drove us to Florida. And what you do in Jacksonville, Florida, you're
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  surrounded by this imagery and these reminders, billboards, everything of if you're anybody in
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  town, you're going to go to First Baptist Church. So it was this giant mega-church in the city. We
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  had 11 city blocks of church property in the inner city. Um, and it was this like little white
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  donut hole of white affluence surrounded by what we know in every city, you know, which is
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  in Jacksonville. It's very segregated on purpose. Um, it was still being held in court in the
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  Supreme Court for their segregation problems. And so the bussing was being forced and they were
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  forcing integration where they could. But that was the hotbed environment that we joined. And within
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  just a few short years, I was going to church six days a week or some church related activity. All
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  of my friends went to that church and that you knew you didn't engage with business outside of
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  that church. You didn't. You didn't really do anything. And in the next ten years, that church
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  became more Christian nationalist and more fundamentalist because simultaneous was the Bill
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  Gothard Institute of Basic Life Principles movement that I talked about in Shiny Happy
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  People, and that was rising in the country as well. So tell people about that a little bit, just
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  briefly. So Bill Gothard. Is, um, geez, he's a Chicago based theologian who started these big
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  conferences that were like Billy Graham's stadium events, and people would come to them from all
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  kinds of churches. It wasn't relegated to a single denomination. They would all come to study the
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  Bible, these basic life principles, these biblical principles for your life. Then they would return
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  to their churches and cannibalize within the churches to recruit for that movement. And that
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  movement was like a little house on the prairie trad esthetic quiver full. I'm going to explain in
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  a minute what quiverfull is. Um, you have as many children as you can back to the land, back to
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  homeschooling movement. And so they were rising. If you can imagine, in the 80s, you know, I'm on at
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  church on Sunday in this very wealthy white church where they're openly preaching segregation.
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  That was a very common thing on a Sunday sermon to hear that kind of a messaging. And then all
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  around us was this rising tide of ever large families that were saying, this isn't conservative
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  enough, you need to take your children out of school. You need to eat a purity, whole foods based
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  diet. You need to stop vaccinating your kids. It was the exact same movement we have today, except
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  it was in a seed development. And so when I talk about the trad movement and Christian nationalism
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  and where we are today with that, I know in my bones that is not anything new. It was the
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  maturation of a movement that was started back when they started single issue voting. Oftentimes,
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  I see discussions go the wrong way because people are using words and
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  everybody thinks they mean they. Know they don't mean. But they don't, right. And so you very
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  intentionally I heard you say Christian cult, not Christian religion. Would you tell us what you
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  mean by Christian cult? Yeah. Well, our understanding of what makes a cult and forms a
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  cult meets the cult criteria has changed in the past couple of decades. We have amazing
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  researchers out there identifying the hallmarks of a cult. But more foundationally, I lived the
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  reality of an America within an America and a church within a church, and hidden realities that
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  were hiding in plain sight. So I often call my experience a cult without walls, because it's an
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  ideological cult that doesn't constrain itself to a single location with a single leader. I grew up
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  understanding a cult with Jim Jones with Kool-Aid, and that is not the world that we're living in
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  anymore. We have. We have different news feeds. We have other ways of of containing our mind and our
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  social spheres and the things that we live in. So, um, also, I have to interchange my terms quite a
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  bit because they are changing the definition of what it means to be a Christian in America. Uh,
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  they changed the definition of what it means to be in a cult or in a group, or simply make a
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  choice for your family. And so sometimes I will call it an evangelical patriarchy, a Christian
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  patriarchy fundamentalist called Christian nationalism. They are synonyms for the moment that
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  we're in. And that's why I appreciate conversations like this, so we can broaden it a
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  little and help people understand how and to relate to it in their world, though the words that
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  they hear in their vernacular. I wanted to ask you about Christian fundamentalist, evangelical
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  fundamentalist. Are those talking about the same issues that you've just summarized? Yeah. This day
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  they didn't used to be. There's an actual fundamentalist Denomination, and that's not what
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  I'm talking about. I talk about fundamentalism as a mindset. The most simple way I know to explain
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  it is anytime you put ideological purity over people. So when your purity is more important than
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  the people who are upholding that, you are now serving an ideology instead of humanity, and it
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  will break you. It will break cultures, it will break societies. But fundamentalism itself can be
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  in anything. It can be in the way you eat, the way you live, the soul cycle, the, you know, whatever,
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  whatever you're participating in. If you so serve it to where your humanity no longer matters, and
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  the humanity of the other people serving it no longer matter, then you have misplaced that
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  priority. And you're in fundamentalist thinking, which is often very black and white, very binary,
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  very polarized, and we double down against one another, the fundamentalist followers and those
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  who are outside. Could you talk about the difference between high control religion and
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  mainstream religion. I can. So religion is man's way to God. It's the way we try to interpret
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  the bigger questions of the universe. Um, high control authoritarian models are not that. It is
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  an external structure that tells you what to believe, how to believe, and how you will carve
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  your lifestyle in order to exemplify those beliefs. So authoritarianism is a very good
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  synonym. Hi control is a little more broad and more familiar to the lay population. So
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  do you see a connection between the kind of tenets of high control
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  religion and authoritarian government? Yes, it's by design. So when you are in an
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  authoritative high control environment and you need to guarantee an outcome and a product result,
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  you have to start with people and from childhood. So this is where indoctrination begins to
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  directly oppose child development, child development, healthy child development as we
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  understand it, results in an autonomous adult with agency. Authoritarians don't want that. They want
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  an indoctrinated, predictable result. They need an armed forces and they need breeders, and they need
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  people who are going to believe they're exemplifying patriarchy and authoritarianism in
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  their own homes. So you have to start from very early childhood and shut down differentiation,
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  shut down any kind of knowledge of themselves, any agency they may feel. To choose. You need to start
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  grooming the predictable outcome, like externally, so that they look alike, sound alike, talk alike, uh,
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  are educated to the same level. Um, yeah, I do. I think that that is how you achieve an
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  authoritarian system, and it takes a generation or two to get there. And I have heard you point out a
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  couple of examples of current politicians that you think come from or have been influenced by
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  this kind of of thinking, who would they be? Mike Johnson's a great example.
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  Mike Johnson's from the IBLP. The Bill Gothard movement that I described earlier. Um, all of the
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  Christian fundamentalists that are in the Republican Party that are, um, holding up this
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  authoritarian fascism. Um, they are doing so from a religious ideology behind it. They are. That is
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  what informs their worldview. You've told us that hi control religion and fundamental, uh,
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  fundamentalist Christian theology are kind of different ways to describe the same thing.
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  What's the connection between that and racism? I think this is definitely my opinion,
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  but it's an informed opinion. I think that the connection between racism and high control
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  religion is that fundamentalism allows them to put a God stamp on racist hate. I think it has
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  been there since the foundation in the beginning. in one capacity or another. I think we've had some
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  bright spots and we've had some changes, but ultimately there's this throughline of racial
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  disparity, and I think their version and their interpretation of God, um, allows them to
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  religiously put a rubber stamp on it. Um, an example I just shared recently of how this gets
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  embedded at a very base level is Jesus loves the little children. All the children of the world, red
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  and yellow, Black and white. But he looks like us. Yeah. And so when we have white Jesus in America
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  that they're the same. And, you know, I, I, uh, I guess I
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  was fortunate, uh, my parents were very, very religious. They were, uh, converts
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  to the Catholic faith. And in their bedroom was this huge picture of Jesus, but he was black. Ah, I
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  am so glad for you. And that was you know, that was something that especially as I was going to
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  Catholic schools and seeing white Jesus everywhere. I would, you know, be looking and like,
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  well, there's another picture at home, so I'm not so sure. Right. And and of course,
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  that it's a whole nother story, but, uh, if God looks like us, then that means
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  that that we're, we're the best. That we are the we are the. We're. Supremes. Yeah. We're supreme. It is
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  not a coincidence that a generation plus, like maybe five generations at this point, are raised
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  with white Jesus. And we are in white Christian nationalism in 2026. Yeah, that's not coincidental.
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  I have also heard the term trad wife. Tell me about that.
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  Yeah. It's another. All of these. Phrases are going to are going to have dual definitions. Um, and that
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  is an intentional technique on the organizers behind the system. Um, so trad wife at essence is
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  short for traditional wife and mother. That sounds very harmless. Um, it sounds a little old timey and
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  cozy and homey. And that's why it's very important to distinguish it as not being a trad wife. It's
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  not the same thing as a stay at home mom, because you are upholding, again, an ideology of a
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  vertical power structure where men are in charge and women are subservient and children are
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  underneath. The trad wife movement in America right now is a social influencing movement, which
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  is more of the aspirational marketing that the ideology itself uses. So it will
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  lure it, lures women into look at this cozy life. You can bake bread and be with your babies, and
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  it's all very gorgeous and soothing. And it's to a market that is, we're struck by chaos, we're struck
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  by confusion, and we're not sure what to do. And so here comes this homey marketing message. And so
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  they are selling it. It's a full time job for them. They are not not working, but they're working in
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  the endeavor of the family to serve the ideology, to recruit new people towards this traditional
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  movement, which again, I just flipped the words again. We could call it Christian patriarchy or
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  fundamentalism more traditional. They are synonyms. In the same vein. As I look at some of what you're
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  describing and, and and try and understand what I'm seeing. There is a part of it
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  that's, that's almost like, uh, your life will be better, you will make more money, you will be
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  you will be able to homeschool your kids because this, uh, this is going to bring you
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  wealth kind of in this world, as I guess, as well as in the next. It's both. And there's a fear based
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  driver behind it. Um, but this is my compassion towards people who choose fundamentalist ways and
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  also on myself who fell for it. Um, even though I was living in a world that offered me, technically
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  other options, I wasn't open to them. Um, why? Because fundamentalism, patriarchy, this cozy,
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  traditional imagery speaks right into our core wounds cozy home, maternal nurturing. I
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  happen to want to be a wife and mother, so it felt like I was choosing in alignment. And then there's
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  that prosperity gospel aspect of it. Not only will you stay out of hell, but you will get to go to
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  heaven. And you can be, you know, blessed on earth. If you choose this, you are you are in the right
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  way if you choose this. Um, those promises never manifested. Um, in fact, the flip side was my
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  reality. So that's why I do this work as exposing. Not really. You mentioned this term
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  quiverfull. Yeah. In the middle of this explanation. And now my mind is like, what the hell
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  is that? Quiver full. It's based on a verse in the Bible that equates children to weapons of war. So
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  it's happy as the man who has his quiver full of them. The idea is that if you're going to go to
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  war and you you're familiar with the culture war they have been self proclaiming for 50 years. They
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  think they're going to war. They need to have as many soldiers as possible. And this again, is where
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  the race issue becomes an issue on the platform. Because they knew. I remember hearing in the 80s
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  at church on Sunday that by the mid 2020s, we would be at a statistical place where white
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  majority would no longer be in place. And so you needed to not only have soldiers for God in a
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  culture war, you needed to have white voters maintain the majority. And what how could they do
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  that? And so population is the quiver full movement. It's have as many babies as possible and
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  leave your family size decisions up to God. Which means every time you have sex, you know you're
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  taking the chance of having a baby. So you're going to have large families. Now, as much as I
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  have heard about this movement, I have not heard a whole lot of discussion about
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  connections to race. I know, and connections to what sounds to me like replacement
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  theory. like they're going to replace us as the majority. So we've got to do something about that.
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  Yeah. Why is that not discussed more? You know, when I watched your documentary
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  and I watched your scale of the tipping point up the hill, and you were saying words like
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  reconstruction was working. And I had this very sobering calm in my body of
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  all along. They were planning all along, they were fighting. So I think they're very good. And when I
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  say they, I mean white supremacist Christian nationalists behind the Christian patriarchy
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  movement are very good at knowing when to be quiet and work below the scenes and strategize. So
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  they were meeting every Sunday in churches and planning this. They were teaching that the Civil
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  War was the War of Northern Aggression and that slavery was good. Those were overt, open out in the
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  open in curriculum messaging that we taught our children. We heard around us all the time and all
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  along we thought collectively as Americans. Oh, reconstruction is working or. Oh. Civil rights are
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  gaining ground. We were having these big fights. Even in Jacksonville, there's not a civil rights,
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  um, equal rights amendment in our in our city government. And so the the city was fighting
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  and the church was quietly biding their time. So when we near these tipping points, I think it's
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  really important to remember that that is not a collective increase of awareness down here. At the
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  bottom level, you have very patient racists, very patient, antiquated, scared people
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  who are worried that they are no longer going to be relevant. And it is that fear that they
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  constantly carry and that is constantly stoked. I mean, these environments are so fear based, and the
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  control is fear based that eventually we hit those tipping points and they pop, but it's not
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  like it came out of nowhere or that it ever really went away. And I know that you know that in
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  your work too. You have mentioned the concept of fear several times. What role does
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  fear have to play in the systems that you're talking about? I take it right back to little four
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  year old me. Um hmm. So fear is the whole capsule
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  when they're when you're constantly afraid that your choices are going to land you in an eternal
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  lake of fire, literal lake of fire. Um, if you don't do this to your children or teach them this way,
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  they will burn in a literal lake of fire. Um, in my story, one of my children dies in infancy, and the
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  pastors were telling me, we can't promise your daughters in heaven she could be burning in a
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  lake of fire. And that. Said this. They said that to me. That was part of my conversion at that point
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  into a different faith group. Not leaving, really, but just narrowing. Um, yes. This is this is why
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  I do this work is because it's hiding in plain sight. And sometimes it just needs someone to, like,
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  say, hey, did you hear what they said? Do you know what that really means? Um, they're mortified and
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  they're terrified, and they're constantly reminded that they should be terrified. We are in this
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  administration right now in this situation for those same fear based messages. And I know that
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  Trump voters voted for Trump because they were afraid of what would happen if they didn't. So I
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  pay a lot of attention to fear, because when you're making decisions from wounded places and
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  you're making decisions from fearful places, you're going to repeat history. You're going to
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  keep making the same mistakes over and over again, because you don't have the courage to learn from
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  what happened. And if I have any vision for America, it's that we will learn from what
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  happened and move forward. What do you think made you
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  open or vulnerable to the messages of the kind of religious structure that you're talking
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  about? Um, that's a great question. What made me open to it? Fear was part of it. But
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  before underline And remember I said I think my early childhood helped me survive it. I did have a
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  strong inner voice of who I am that formed underneath that. There wasn't such a heavy
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  religious presence in my early childhood, and I did have loving parents that allowed my artistic
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  mind to develop and grow. I also don't remember learning how to read. I was always highly literate.
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  I think having that counter voice was always a war inside of me. So when I was choosing those
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  things, it wasn't so much because they were attractive, it was because I was afraid of what
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  would happen if I didn't. But I did want other things I did. It made sense to me that if God was
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  real, God was big, expansive, loving to all people. It equality makes sense to me in every sense of
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  the word. My parents are entrepreneurs and my mom is hardworking. She rolls her sleeves up. There's
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  no gender. There's no, um, division of labor according to genitalia in my origin family. We
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  don't do that. Men do this, women do that. That doesn't exist. You just. You get the job done, right?
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  You know, so that's that formed me and that that has informed my survivorship. Um, and at any time
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  in my story. And I know this because I laid it out in a timeline in a book. Now I can see where I
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  either it wasn't a choice, it wasn't a real choice. I was forced to coerced, or it was a foreclosed
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  choice, or I was leaning toward it or complying with it because I was terrified of what would
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  happen if I didn't. What did it look like to unlearn
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  the things that you had learned so specifically and so powerfully
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  over a long period of time? I would say I'm still on learning. I think this is a daily confrontation.
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  Um, I am constantly not knowing what I didn't know and and having to hold it first and see, okay,
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  did you know it was that way, or had you heard that perspective before? Um, a lot of my core
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  beliefs were a little easier to unlearn because there they were structural. There are books that
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  directly, um, address some of the doctrines. And the theology, for example, was very articulate of
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  different aspects of faith, for example. But getting into psychological beliefs or bias,
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  personal bias and opinion, um, constantly challenging and unlearning, constantly having my
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  brought my worldview broadened um, by will. You know, I want to be a flexible person who's open
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  minded and curious and don't always follow the information given, but I consider it. I can
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  weigh it. I can compare it against evidence and testimony and research. Um, and so I call that as
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  good as I can do at the moment. And I hope I always keep learning. I we sometimes call this
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  deconstruction in my corner of the internet. And, um, there is a push by faith leaders to put a cap
• 26:10
  on deconstruction. You get to a certain point and then you reconstruct. And I do not ascribe to that
• 26:15
  at all. I think I will be deconstructing for the rest of my life, and I feel absolutely no need to
• 26:20
  erect another external structure to tell me what to believe and how to think. Yeah, please don't
• 26:25
  stop deconstructing. Right? I have heard you speak
• 26:32
  in other places, and one of the things that you said that struck me was that much of what you're
• 26:38
  talking about is about a promise and a formula to get there. Would you talk to
• 26:45
  me about that? That really struck me. When I, when I, when I heard you, you say that. And I thought I
• 26:50
  want to get into that. For me, that's the definition of fundamentalism. And it's a danger
• 26:56
  for me, it's a red flag. Anytime there's a here's the promise of what we can give you, here's what
• 27:01
  this lifestyle looks like. If you choose it, here's the things you need to do in order to achieve it.
• 27:06
  That system, almost without fail, doesn't allow for user error. It's if something goes wrong,
• 27:13
  it's your fault. It's never the system's fault. The system is not to be questioned. You did something
• 27:18
  wrong on the formula. And if you make a new adjustment, or you follow a new leader, or you buy
• 27:23
  this new supplement or this new teacher, you will then end up back on track for this glorified
• 27:29
  result. And one of the things that excites me about where we are as a human civilization right
• 27:35
  now is this is the very first time in all of humanity that the consumer reports for. What it's
• 27:41
  like to be a Christian is right next to the promises. So while they're pushing this and
• 27:46
  they're preaching this, we have a survivors movement that now has tons of books, tons of
• 27:51
  representatives and speakers. We have first person voices that are saying, actually, what they're
• 27:56
  saying is lying. It never manifests that way. Here are the very real dangers that have happened in
• 28:01
  my family as a result, and you should have enough information to choose against it and make a real
• 28:06
  choice. So I, I am excited about where we are now Because. Because we have that contrast and the
• 28:11
  power of the internet and projects like this that say, hey, we're we're near another tipping point.
• 28:16
  What can we do to actually bump it over the edge? Well, it's interesting that you say that your
• 28:21
  voice and other voices that are giving the full picture can have an impact, because
• 28:28
  if you think back to 2020, when George Floyd was killed, there are many people that say, oh my God,
• 28:35
  you know, that was such a major, major event. And it was it was such a major, major event.
• 28:41
  But what was major about it? What was new about it was not that the police choked a Black man to
• 28:48
  death, because that's just another Tuesday. Somebody held up a camera and recorded it, and
• 28:55
  then America had to look at it. And so the thing that you're doing is the same thing. It's holding
• 29:00
  up a mirror, if you will, to say, this is what it really looks like. And now there's a, there
• 29:07
  is a debate, for lack of a better term, about, okay, what's actually going on here? And people in these
• 29:14
  movements will have to explain. And when they start having to explain, that's when s*it falls
• 29:20
  apart. Don't you love it? Because they can't. They just can't. They just can't. Yeah. When did
• 29:27
  you first start thinking about, like, getting married and what that might look like? Oh, I.
• 29:34
  No one has ever asked me that question. Um, I grew up wanting five children. I knew that I don't know
• 29:41
  where that came from. I, and I actually was pregnant nine times in that ten year span. I had
• 29:46
  five live births and four surviving children. So, um, that little nutshell right there shows you the
• 29:52
  dreams don't always manifest the way that you hope. Um, but I assumed I needed a husband to have
• 29:58
  those five. Children as a little child. And, um, you know, it's princess culture. So in it's Christian
• 30:05
  princess culture. So someday my prince will come. And I was taught you need a savior for everything.
• 30:11
  You need an external savior. Um, if you're in danger, you need the hero that's going to come
• 30:15
  rescue you. Um. And I actively defy that message now of. No. What can we do to save ourselves? Um,
• 30:22
  but that isn't how I was raised. How I was raised was to depend on external salvation, and, um. And
• 30:28
  the prince was supposed to just be as promised. Um, didn't in the, in the evangelical
• 30:35
  90s culture, purity culture they didn't spend any time talking about. Are you compatible? Do you have
• 30:41
  chemistry? Do you really know one another? The whole message was, don't have sex until you get
• 30:45
  married. Marry the person who says that God says you're going to marry, which will come through a
• 30:49
  male voice. And, um, and so it's unfolded that way. I, I married who said
• 30:56
  God told him we were supposed to get married about a month. We were engaged a month after we
• 31:02
  met. So wait. A minute. The man that you married said to you, God has revealed to me
• 31:09
  that you should be my wife. And you were. You were at that point in a in a situation where you you
• 31:15
  said, okay, that's what I've been expecting for someone to come and tell me that. And now this man
• 31:20
  is coming to tell me that. Yeah. He said, God told me I'm going to marry you, Tia. And we had just met
• 31:26
  a few weeks before. Um, we didn't really know each other very well. Um, in another month we were
• 31:31
  engaged and within that year we were married and we already had violence. We already had issues. But
• 31:37
  that culture. You're not allowed to get divorced after you get married, and you're not allowed to
• 31:42
  question what a man says, like his word is his authority, and women are to submit to that. So
• 31:47
  everything in my conditioning, it's why a well-trained wife doesn't open with the marriage
• 31:53
  for. It. Says. Groom. It says groomed because I was shaped into that decision. And early drafts when I
• 31:59
  started with the wedding, the editors asked, why did you marry this person? And that turned out to
• 32:05
  be a very complex answer. I had to really retrace every step that that formed me into a person who,
• 32:11
  at 19, would give so much of my agency away and just accept that this is who it is. I retrofitted
• 32:18
  every dream onto his face, wasn't really attracted to him, didn't he? Wasn't really my type. Not who I
• 32:23
  imagined being with. But God said it and he said it. And there's so much support around us from our
• 32:29
  church family that it would work. Because when you have God in your relationship, it will always work.
• 32:36
  You described violence, or you just said that violence was a part of this relationship even
• 32:41
  before you were married? That's correct. Um, what were you
• 32:48
  trained to understand about that violence? Was it unusual? Was it, uh.
• 32:54
  Unique? It was. The violence was unexpected. I hadn't been mistreated by the men in my family
• 33:00
  before that. Um, I didn't logically connect that anything I had done
• 33:07
  had earned such a consequence or so much anger. Um, he was very easily
• 33:14
  angered into rage. Um. And I couldn't always put my finger on what set him off. Um, so I learned to
• 33:20
  tiptoe around it, but it would catch me up by surprise, and then he would be so repentant. And
• 33:25
  this was into a culture where it's your job as a woman to help a man feel forgiven when he
• 33:31
  apologizes. And that's the rare occasion that you get an apology. But he was a devout person. He was
• 33:37
  trying to be better. I think he has had longstanding personality disorders. We know this
• 33:43
  in hindsight that he had, um, he has a disorganized mental condition. Um, I didn't know that then.
• 33:50
  I just knew him dealing with a young man who has a lot of increasing responsibility on his
• 33:54
  shoulders. And it's my job to help him be a better man. So I always took the blame for his rage
• 34:01
  and the ways that he acted out. And I also knew not to describe that to people. You have to be
• 34:06
  responsible for his reputation. So the only person who really picked up on an incompatibility was a
• 34:13
  marital counselor or premarital counselor that we saw who advised us. He said, you're not compatible,
• 34:18
  you should not get married. And that only resulted in more violence for me, that that whole situation
• 34:22
  was another abuse episode. Um, but I did think this is a problem in our relationship that God will
• 34:28
  help us heal and that it's over hummable. And then you get married and you're stuck. There's no
• 34:33
  divorce. There's no way out. So it's the bed you made and you're going to lie in it. So other
• 34:40
  women that were in this community know no support or discussions with them about this
• 34:47
  kind of violence, or about the things going on in your relationship. This is why the Amazon
• 34:52
  documentary is called Shiny Happy People because you shine it up, you smile on Sunday, you fit in. If
• 34:58
  you look at the evangelical churches today, even their very homogenous and and uniform, the women
• 35:05
  all dress alike. Even so much as trad wife dresses showing up in target, like there's a demand for
• 35:10
  this feminine esthetic with the barrel curls and the ruffles and the baby clothes and and the baby
• 35:16
  voices. And so you're conforming and performing and you know that, um, less attractive stuff
• 35:23
  doesn't get discussed. We don't talk about dirty laundry or it's very polite. This happens with the
• 35:29
  race aspect as well. It's very polite. And so you're in service to what doesn't make other
• 35:34
  people uncomfortable. You've talked about. The
• 35:40
  level of abuse in these Christian nationalist circles.
• 35:49
  Do you think that has a connection to people's reaction to
• 35:55
  authoritarian government behavior. I do I think that this is a
• 36:02
  provocative statement I'm about to make, but I think 100% of the households that are practicing
• 36:08
  this lifestyle have abuse and neglect baked into them. It is part of how they achieve these
• 36:15
  goals. What differs is their awareness of what they call abuse, what they would consider neglect.
• 36:22
  And that's where the work is helping them understand the impact of their choices, especially
• 36:27
  in their children, um, helping them identify their generational wounds and the way they were raised
• 36:33
  and that, no, you did not turn out okay. That what you turned out as is someone who would choose
• 36:39
  this in the case of parenting, you turned out to be a person who thinks it's okay to hurt children,
• 36:46
  to harm children. And they know, I know they have it justified. They are harming their children to a
• 36:50
  good end to save them from hell or to, you know, they have it justified. But that's the work is the
• 36:55
  awareness. So I think that you don't you don't have authoritarianism without that kind of
• 37:01
  structure in place. And that's why it's so important that we do our psychological work to
• 37:06
  really do what the Bible says is know them by their fruit, be able to hold that. That didn't turn
• 37:12
  out the way you thought. And that's not all your fault, but it is. You are directly responsible for
• 37:18
  what's happening in your household. I'm just listening to you say that and thinking about, uh,
• 37:24
  the whole MAGA movement of Make America Great Again. Meaning we're going back
• 37:31
  to something where it was great. And to this day, I still can't figure out exactly when that
• 37:38
  time was. Depending on who you're talking about, may have been great for white males, but, uh,
• 37:44
  there's a whole lot of other people besides that one demographic group, and it wasn't so great for
• 37:49
  them. No, it was never great for everyone. And I want an America where it's great for at least as
• 37:54
  many of us as possible. Yeah. Um, no, we. That's right. Back to the same thing. It's coming back to fear
• 38:00
  and threat. And, um, they want it when it was good for them. When they had it good, they didn't have
• 38:05
  to share. Yeah, I. Heard you talk with someone else
• 38:11
  and make a comparison to people in the United States who
• 38:18
  look at, for example, uh, cultures in Pakistan or
• 38:24
  Afghanistan and say, you know, look at what's happening in this Muslim culture and how women
• 38:31
  have to cover themselves and they have no rights. And and they have they don't have this and they
• 38:36
  don't have that. And I thought I heard you say to someone, yeah, I'm familiar with that or
• 38:43
  words to that effect. And I wasn't. And I don't think many Americans are making a connection
• 38:49
  between well, Wait a minute. It can't be that extreme. And it can. And it can.
• 38:55
  So the Well-Trained Wife had 13 drafts, and the first six of them were titled The American Burka.
• 39:01
  This refers to a moment in my story during the Iraq War, where I had this moment of clarity, where
• 39:08
  the Christians around me were so outraged that we were at war. They were so outraged at how the
• 39:13
  Afghanistan women were being treated and covered, and the stories were coming out of trafficking
• 39:18
  and abuse, and their faces were hidden. And and I realized the denim
• 39:25
  jumper is the American burka. Denim jumpers were very popular in the 90s. It was like the
• 39:30
  homeschooling unspoken uniform. And that is how you hide when you're told to cover your entire
• 39:36
  body. Hide, doctor every, every truth. Shine up the the imagery. Men are in
• 39:43
  charge. They're the only part of the population with agency. And violence will ensue if you if you
• 39:48
  defy these rules. It's fundamentalism. It's just a different religious group that's claiming it.
• 39:55
  Was their kind of either spoken explicitly or implicitly. Was there like a concept
• 40:02
  of an ideal woman? Mhm. Proverbs 31 and the Proverbs 31 woman is not a real
• 40:09
  person. She never. Was. Wow. She's a conglomeration of traits that a mother wrote to a son and said,
• 40:15
  look for this in a wife. But they have created this nameless, faceless Proverbs 31 woman that is
• 40:22
  the Christian ideal for everyone to achieve. This gets really dark, really fast, because women really
• 40:27
  take that message to heart. And when they try to achieve something that multitudes of women
• 40:33
  exemplified in one way or another, they are now exploiting themselves and breaking themselves to
• 40:38
  achieve something that's completely unattainable. Um, this is where a lot of self-abuse and shame
• 40:43
  come into the picture. Because you can never be enough. You can never submit enough. You can never
• 40:49
  achieve the standard. It's impossible. And the goalpost just moves farther and farther out at
• 40:55
  the closer that you get. So you just have to try harder and pray more. Yes. You can pray yourself
• 41:01
  right out of existence. Can you talk to me some about the role of
• 41:07
  money in these relationships? We can talk about money, how women don't
• 41:14
  have any, and. We can talk about. The voluntary poverty that comes along with the mindset. We can
• 41:21
  talk about the fact that the trad life is choosing poverty because you're choosing a single
• 41:27
  income in a two income world. So voluntary poverty and choosing to be a trad wife. Talk about. Talk.
• 41:33
  Yeah. So I have a series of videos on my social media where I it started out as parenting,
• 41:39
  ordinary parenting things that my Gothard funded mentors said I could skip to have a quiver full,
• 41:44
  And these were things that most of us who are familiar with parenting research or psychology
• 41:51
  understand that a child needs for a healthy upbringing. These are also things that the quiver
• 41:56
  full tread movement says you just don't have to do, because it would interfere with your ability
• 42:01
  to have or provide for those children. So just don't do them. So they are pediatrician visits.
• 42:06
  They are playdates. They are clothes, separate bedrooms, education for girls, college educations. I
• 42:12
  mean, the list is I think I have about 50 things on that list. They're saying. Don't do that. Don't
• 42:16
  do them toys. You don't need toys, you don't need clothes. You don't need you don't. You can hand me
• 42:21
  down or hand stitch like they it's endlessly in pursuit of the Proverbs 31 woman to afford this
• 42:28
  lifestyle that you have believed God has told you to do for your family. And so it is an intentional
• 42:34
  neglect and abuse that's baked into the system. Um, they have an open practice of parental
• 42:40
  fixation. So you would assume they need help to raise these children. They do. They raise their
• 42:44
  older daughters and they foreclose on their daughters futures and teenage years in order to
• 42:50
  take care of their siblings. And so you hear these stories of parented eldest daughters and middle
• 42:55
  daughters. It's not just the oldest, but that they they're burnt out on mothering because they've
• 43:00
  been mothering since they were five. And that is intentional. So this this money aspect is
• 43:06
  constant. You never rarely, I will say you rarely make enough money to afford a quiverfull brood.
• 43:13
  Um, the men are the ones with the agency and access to it. I didn't have a checking account. I
• 43:18
  didn't have access to money. I had to report on what I'd spent. Um, my mileage was tracked. Um, I
• 43:25
  wasn't allowed to vote either, so that was. It's all very commensurate. You're not a full citizen.
• 43:31
  Which is, I think, also very important to why this movement exists. I heard
• 43:39
  you once make a comment that there is a reason why trade wives all look
• 43:46
  the same. Or words to that effect. And so. And I was wondering because I was like, I want to hear more
• 43:52
  about that. Can you tell me what you were thinking about when you said that? Yeah. Trad wives all look
• 43:57
  the same because uniformity is required in a cult. You cannot have any individuality. So you might
• 44:03
  have a different color ruffled dress, but you're going to be wearing a ruffled dress, for example.
• 44:08
  Do you think there's a connection there to the the white supremacy that you've talked about that
• 44:14
  seeps into these groups? I don't think it's connected. I think it's the core. I think it's the
• 44:18
  seed at the heart of the core, I think. I think that white supremacy and the fear of that
• 44:24
  demographic and that power exchange is traceable back to the very origins of what they
• 44:31
  what Christian nationalists envision for America. They don't envision women on top. They don't
• 44:36
  envision black men on top. Black women? Absolutely not. Um, they have a very threatened, fragile system
• 44:43
  in place at any time. The ground has been gained for equality. They find ways to bring it back.
• 44:50
  Something else that came up for me in your documentary was the resurgence of the statues. And
• 44:55
  when the statues were placed. Yes. And I it suddenly I was like, how long does it take to make
• 45:00
  those. Especially with that day's technology. How long did they have to be drawing and designing
• 45:05
  and manufacturing those in order to place them at that place in time? It was. I haven't gotten to do
• 45:11
  the research on it yet, but I was like, that's a great, tangible example of how this stays in the
• 45:16
  undercurrent. It it never really goes away. And I think it's really important to note that the
• 45:21
  Christian nationalist movement that we have in place, the red state press that we have today is
• 45:26
  the southern states. Mhm. They are one and the same. And we don't like to always use the same language
• 45:32
  for that. They can soft sell it through tokenism or um, representation to a point.
• 45:39
  For instance, the triad wives are allowed to be influencers, but they'll never be leaders. Um, it's
• 45:45
  similar in other spheres. Um, they will they will put out front and center who they need eventually
• 45:51
  to be a scapegoat. We just saw this in the administration with a bunch of women fired. Yeah, I
• 45:55
  didn't like those women, but they were the first to go for a reason. They were only there for a
• 46:00
  reason. So they're just tools of the same system. And I do believe that this is core wounding that
• 46:06
  we have never addressed and we have never healed from. And we're seeing a new manifestation of it. I
• 46:11
  think, uh, this discussion can can be triggering
• 46:18
  for all kinds of people in all kinds of ways. And this next statement that I
• 46:24
  read from you, uh, was one where, you know, every now and then you see something and
• 46:31
  you have to get up and take a minute. Right. And it was. It was because of its clarity.
• 46:38
  I think the statement was today it hit me when he hit
• 46:45
  me and blood was shaking in my brain. Maybe there wasn't any savior
• 46:52
  coming. Maybe it was up to me to save me. And I'm wondering if you
• 46:59
  could talk about that moment. I can. It's the biggest twist in A
• 47:06
  well-trained wife. It is the moment when I decided, um, I wasn't going to die in service to this and
• 47:13
  I wasn't going to risk my children. Um, I wasn't going to raise the next generation of boys who
• 47:18
  would grow up to be abusers. And I wasn't going to let my daughter grow up thinking it's okay to
• 47:23
  stay with an abuser. It was the moment when I finally shed any
• 47:29
  care for what happens next, or who finds out, or who's disappointed in me. We are getting out of
• 47:36
  here now. Um, it was almost spiritual to me. I mean, I really I'm
• 47:43
  careful ascribing any kind of external wisdom from it, because I really think I, I was smacked
• 47:49
  awake and I saw and I don't really need a supernatural being to tell me to go at that point.
• 47:56
  Right? It has happened. Um, this is the plainest example I have of their promises
• 48:03
  don't manifest in what they claim it will. And when you're left holding the bag, there's no one
• 48:08
  looking. You're in a room by yourself. You are the only other adult in that room for your children.
• 48:13
  And now it's your fault that you're here. And the abuse was not my fault. But the presence, my
• 48:19
  presence in that abuse absolutely was. I don't feel I have the ground to to quibble with
• 48:26
  you on word choice as you're describing your experience. Um, Fault. Faults not.
• 48:33
  Is. Fault is like the. I feel like that's not quite the right word. Uh. And I've heard you
• 48:40
  say before, there's like. And also. Yes, you know, and it's like there was a reason, as
• 48:47
  I see it, that you were there. And also you need to get the hell. Out of it. Yes. And when I explain it
• 48:52
  to you that way, I was entering that moment. That's how I understood it at that moment was my
• 48:57
  personal responsibility and agency to get off the floor and get your kids. You have to leave later.
• 49:04
  I get to extrapolate why I was really there. How free was I really to go? What bondage can look
• 49:11
  like when the with the straps are invisible? Um, you know, those are higher recovery insights that
• 49:17
  come later when you're in the moment when it's life or death. And this is why the book is called
• 49:22
  My Escape from Christian Patriarchy, because I narrowly escaped a four hour hostage situation
• 49:27
  with my children, I almost died. I might not be here if it weren't for that moment. But when we
• 49:34
  calm things down and we smooth them out. And that took 15 years easy. And to some extent I still
• 49:39
  live with little nuances and discoveries. Yeah, um, of course not. Fault is not helpful. Blame
• 49:46
  is so far spread. And we. There are so many people who played a role in this and systems that played
• 49:52
  a role in it. And it's one of the benefits of having written the book, because when you take a
• 49:56
  scene like that and you put it in black and white on a page, you have to acknowledge the other
• 50:02
  people involved, the systems involved, the timeline, the other characters who owed you protection and
• 50:07
  didn't grant it. Um, there's a lot that comes into place. And so that's where you get the freedom to
• 50:12
  realize this wasn't all my doing. Um, I can hold a system accountable. I can
• 50:19
  expose a system for what it's doing to people like me. This is not isolated to me. Um, so, yeah,
• 50:25
  there's a lot baked into a word, and I'm really glad you pointed that out. Thank you for watching
• 50:29
  our film. And you've mentioned that you saw it. And the theater portion of that was filmed in 2018 on
• 50:36
  Juneteenth. And in it there was a discussion about a tipping point. When you reach a point where you
• 50:42
  can roll forward towards something positive or roll back to something perhaps worse than you've
• 50:49
  even been experiencing. And I'm wondering, you may have already told us about it, but if there have
• 50:56
  been either if there has been either a moment or a series of moments that were
• 51:02
  tipping points for you to get to seated, being seated in this chair right now as
• 51:09
  opposed to somewhere else that you might have been had those tipping points not happen. Maybe
• 51:14
  you described one of them already. I did the first, that tipping point. My escape was a tipping point
• 51:19
  that helped me get out and survive. But the tipping point that landed me in a chair like this
• 51:24
  was in 2015, with that election cycle with the choice of that president, because I knew like,
• 51:31
  there's there's a collective story where we have the women waking up at 3 a.m. knowing what's
• 51:36
  coming. And that happened again with the previous election. Um, but I knew that day that was not just
• 51:43
  a political choice that was going to come with everything that was coming with white supremacy,
• 51:48
  that was coming with more violence, with the patriarchy, with the oppression, with the baked in
• 51:53
  abuse and neglect. And I suddenly, like, really put two and two together of the only person who
• 52:00
  can really tell someone what it's like to live that way is someone who's lived through it. Yeah.
• 52:04
  And I knew I was a weirdo in the space in that I could write. I had survived my story and had done
• 52:11
  the trauma work in order to tell it without re traumatizing myself every time. And that I sort of
• 52:16
  have a knack at explaining things for people. I could make this familiar to layman's terms, and it
• 52:22
  suddenly became kind of a calling like, you are not going to be silent and what you live through
• 52:27
  actually has applicability out here. So it did tip me. I changed my story from a novel under a
• 52:33
  pseudonym to a memoir that same month. Wow. Did project 2025 have
• 52:40
  an impact on your concern? I'm sorry to get emotional. Project 2025 is what I
• 52:47
  lived. Yeah, it. Is the thing. It is codified. It is by design. It also did not happen overnight. It
• 52:54
  is the thing. So it's not theoretical. It's not scare tactics. They have been working so steadily
• 53:00
  to have players in place, legislators, small committees in PTAs, Moms of
• 53:07
  Liberty. All of this stuff scales up into the big goal, which is to change Washington. And the
• 53:13
  populist president allowed them to change Washington. That cabinet has members, unqualified
• 53:19
  members that were chosen for their religious ideologies, for their white supremacy, for their
• 53:25
  vision for this other kind of America, a theocratic America. Um, 2025 is scary. Project
• 53:32
  2025 is terrifying. How did you walk away from this? How did you get away from this? It's
• 53:39
  one thing to make the decision. I've got to leave, but then you have to execute on that decision. How
• 53:45
  did you do that? Well, I like to think of it as that. I walked away from it by walking into it
• 53:51
  because I'm in it. I'm in this every single day. But I am in it as Tia and I am in it as my healed
• 53:58
  and recovered self and I am. My eyes are open and I'm able to call out what I see. Whereas the
• 54:05
  first time I was pulled in and I was shaped and formed into what they would make me, and I had no
• 54:09
  voice, I had no name. I had no ability to say anything about what I was doing. Um, going back
• 54:16
  into it with deliberateness is reclaiming it is it's saying, absolutely not. I
• 54:23
  can do something about this continuance. I can do something with the search results. I can do
• 54:28
  something with what my neighbor knows and how she's going to vote. I can inform her. I can write
• 54:33
  a bestselling book. That's a that's a pretty ballsy claim for sure. It is. I didn't even get to go
• 54:38
  to college. You know, I am self-taught. So did you ever see yourself writing a book before you sat
• 54:45
  Down? I always wanted to be a writer. That mama of five children wanted to be a writer. But I was
• 54:49
  going to write, um, sci fi. And I'm working on my fiction, which is true religious horror. I thought
• 54:54
  I was going to, um, write fiction, and I never imagined I would write memoir. I was deeply
• 55:00
  private. I still am very deeply private, and I didn't think I would put scenes that I was afraid
• 55:04
  to say out loud to my most intimate loved ones, let alone on a national stage. That was not going
• 55:10
  to happen. There's so much freedom in outing it and going back through those rooms on purpose and
• 55:16
  saying, not today, Satan, like we're here, we're going to speak up. Just they, the those idealists
• 55:21
  are at least going to contend with the fruit of their outcome. The Bible says, know them by their
• 55:27
  fruit, and we shall. I heard that you made the decision that you, uh, when you write a book like
• 55:33
  this, they want, like, an audible version. Uh, and so you made the decision to read it yourself as
• 55:39
  opposed to having somebody else read it. I'm wondering if you could just talk to us about
• 55:45
  number one, why you made that decision. And number two, what kind of an impact did it have?
• 55:51
  Well, and is having. Um, yeah. So it's memoir and memoirs are always just
• 55:58
  better, objectively better when they're written and read by the same person who lived it. I knew
• 56:03
  that there would be nuance and emotion that only I could convey. So it was hard for me to imagine
• 56:08
  someone else even coming close. And I very much wanted to to prove to myself that I could do it
• 56:15
  and tell it in my own voice. And it's because it's a memoir about voice. I needed to say this in my
• 56:20
  own. Self. As I went through it. Some of the hardest work I've ever done, including my childbirth. Which
• 56:26
  were in the water at home. Um, this was some of the hardest, hardest work I did that week, and I had an
• 56:32
  incredible team and a director, a trauma informed team. They were there for me the whole way, and the
• 56:38
  result was that it was liberated from my body. This story no longer has to live inside of me
• 56:44
  because it's in a tangible book. It's also in an audible file, and I was free from having to hold
• 56:51
  it and carry it and protect it. Um. It exists. Something could happen to me and it will still be
• 56:56
  there. And that audible outperforms the hardback 4 to 1. So really it is an anomaly in
• 57:02
  publishing. Audiobooks are doing really great, but not usually that great. Um, and people love that
• 57:08
  audio. I also think that some of the power of the audio is that it's private, and women can listen
• 57:14
  at home without the people around them knowing, whereas my hardback cover is very vibrant and
• 57:19
  attention getting to stand out in a bookstore. The file, the audio file can be more discreet, right?
• 57:25
  And that can be important for all kinds of reasons. It sure can. And I get feedback all the
• 57:30
  time. Some innocent reasons and some very ugly reasons. Right? Some people believe
• 57:38
  that you have to conquer fear in order to do something like you have done. Have
• 57:45
  you conquered fear? No. I've made friends with her. I make friends with fear. I carry fear with me. I
• 57:52
  have fear with me right now. And she's just looking out for me. She wants my survival. She
• 57:57
  wants to protect me. And I think she's right for all the reasons that she's right. She just doesn't
• 58:03
  have the whole picture. And when I can widen the picture and say, what else is true? Who else is
• 58:08
  here with me? Am I truly in danger? What what thing am I trying to accomplish? Is it worth feeling
• 58:14
  some discomfort? One of the things that happens with trauma recovery is your tolerance for
• 58:18
  discomfort. Discomfort increases so you have the bandwidth to sit in something uncomfortable. And
• 58:24
  it's why I think it's so important. America does her work, her psychological work because we have
• 58:29
  no tolerance collectively for sitting with discomfort. We have an opportunity to do better
• 58:35
  and heal, but it's going to take learning how to sit and what doesn't feel good. I got taught at a
• 58:40
  very early age. You better get comfortable feeling uncomfortable because if you don't, then when you
• 58:47
  get that uncomfortable feeling, it will limit you if you get comfortable with it. We can't use a
• 58:53
  better word, but it's like, oh, I'm just scared sh*tless. That's why I feel this way. And then go
• 59:00
  ahead and do what you have to do. Uh, that's not conquering fear, but it is, like you say, living
• 59:06
  with it and. Validate. Alongside. I validate it, and then I dispel its power just by saying, I see you
• 59:12
  that you're here. Thank you for making me scared sh*tless. I'm going to do it anyway. You wrote
• 59:18
  something about Charlie Kirk, and I was very interested, because it
• 59:24
  seemed to me that you gave people, uh, almost like a trigger warning before they read it. And I
• 59:31
  want to read what you wrote. You said. Please don't read this unless you agree
• 59:38
  with the following sentiment. It's possible to be sad about public violence and the tragic
• 59:45
  loss of a human being, and at the same time, exaggerate. Examine patterns of belief and
• 59:51
  behavior. If you can't hold two truths, you're not ready for this and you are
• 59:58
  very welcome to come back later. Why did you give that introduction and what
• 1:00:05
  did you say after that introduction? Well, the reason I gave that introduction is because I knew
• 1:00:11
  how vitriolic the discourse around Kirk was, and I'm very aware of our different information
• 1:00:16
  streams. I know that one half of America only saw adoring images of Kirk, and have
• 1:00:23
  a very different take on him. The other half of America only saw his abuse, which is plentiful. His
• 1:00:30
  positions are very, very problematic. But if you've only ever seen a glossed up version, you don't
• 1:00:36
  know if that's even true or real. And I also knew that that camp that's only seen the shined up,
• 1:00:42
  glossed up version of Charlie Kirk is binary thinking. They're binary thinking, they're rigid,
• 1:00:48
  they're fundamentalist in nature. They cannot hold two truths, so they can't have a nuanced
• 1:00:52
  conversation about the fact that this person was both. He was charismatic on college campuses, and
• 1:00:59
  he said deeply problematic and harmful and abusive things that dehumanized people. And they
• 1:01:05
  aren't ready for that. So they aren't ready for what comes later in my piece, which is an
• 1:01:09
  explanation of why evangelicals are venerating him and what are they benefiting from in having
• 1:01:15
  another martyred savior, and what do they really want with who? A mission of like Charlie Kirk on
• 1:01:20
  college campuses, recruiting a new generation of soldiers and breeders for their movement. There's
• 1:01:27
  people behind Kirk. We know that if you don't fully understand how he died or why he died, or if
• 1:01:32
  he died, you know that there were people behind him and they have a motive. And in order to even
• 1:01:38
  explore that, you have to be willing to say, okay, what else is true? Looking back on your lived
• 1:01:44
  experience, who do you think is most vulnerable to these messages right now? The messages of white
• 1:01:49
  supremacy and Christian nationalism. Who's most vulnerable to those? The teenagers. I think the
• 1:01:56
  most vulnerable population in America right now are all under 18. Their education system is being
• 1:02:02
  experimented with and defiled. There's no standards. It's being agenda'd constantly. The social
• 1:02:08
  media presence is being driving them into these pipelines and driving them into these corners. Um,
• 1:02:14
  and we don't have a lot of like, legacy media type transparency where you can go and get let me
• 1:02:20
  check with a trusted source. Right. You know, we're fighting for trust. We're fighting for gravity.
• 1:02:25
  We're suppressed by major tech companies. There is the whole tech angle of this, which we haven't
• 1:02:30
  even touched on, that also is embedded with these ideologies, and they have powerful tools at their
• 1:02:35
  disposal. But kids are being marketed to and it's with this same technique, but it's amped up, you
• 1:02:41
  know, with technology and money. There may be people who watch this or listen to it, and
• 1:02:47
  they may feel like, you know, I've got a loved one right now that really needs to unlearn
• 1:02:54
  some things that they've learned or to to see something clearly that they're seeing through a
• 1:03:00
  haze. Um, what would you say to them about encouragement,
• 1:03:07
  advice on the things that may be necessary to change their path.
• 1:03:14
  I spend a lot of time talking to family members who have loved ones that are in a cult, or they're
• 1:03:20
  visibly being drawn into an extreme ideology, and I always center dignity and
• 1:03:27
  compassion and communication. Do everything you can to keep the communication lines open.
• 1:03:34
  Listen to the things that they care about. Identify what they're afraid about because you're
• 1:03:38
  coming back to fear. You're coming back to core wound. Um. Conduct yourself as a person of
• 1:03:44
  integrity and offer them an alternative. Be the difference that they want to believe, isn't there.
• 1:03:50
  You know, like when the entire Democratic Party is being vilified, be an example of the kind of
• 1:03:55
  Democrat that doesn't fit the definition. Be intelligent. Be balanced. Be someone who listens. Um,
• 1:04:01
  it's hard to argue with those things. And you can't call us a Democrat if I'm listening to you
• 1:04:05
  intelligently, you know? Um, I do believe everyone has their journey. And so they may still go
• 1:04:12
  down the pipeline. That's possible. They'll also come back. I believe we are on the cusp of a major,
• 1:04:19
  major cult crack as MAGA wakes up as the children of the trad wife movement
• 1:04:25
  age and find out, oh, I was too abused, systematically. Abused by my family, and it was
• 1:04:31
  validated by the internet. That reckoning is coming for us. And this time there's a safety net
• 1:04:37
  of books, resources, survivor advocates. There's things that exist that weren't there 15 years ago,
• 1:04:43
  and I'm so grateful for that. But it means that we have to have a steadiness to our steps as we
• 1:04:49
  prepare for what's coming. Not every MAGA voter is going to change and crack, but a lot of them will.
• 1:04:54
  Some of them will. And we have our work to do to be willing to accept that, because we have a lot
• 1:04:59
  of anger on the anti-Trump side of wanting to hold them accountable. Wanting them
• 1:05:06
  to admit their complicity immediately. And those are not immediate steps in a cold crack. There's a
• 1:05:11
  lot of gentle work that has to come first, and it is uncomfortable. And if we cannot sit with that
• 1:05:16
  discomfort to allow them to wake up slowly sometimes, um, we aren't ready for what comes
• 1:05:23
  later when it's time to rebuild and move forward. What change do you want to see in your lifetime? I
• 1:05:29
  want to see America become a pro-topian country, and I picked the word pro-topian. To my knowledge, I've
• 1:05:35
  coined it. I don't know, I've never heard it before, but it's not utopia perfect. And it's not
• 1:05:39
  dystopian, where we've really been studying for the past two decades. Even in our entertainment.
• 1:05:44
  It's a society that learns from the mistakes of the past, that envisions, with their moral
• 1:05:50
  imagination, a better way forward. And I think collectively we can do that. I think each person
• 1:05:55
  brings their strength to the table. We will create something that's beyond our imagination. What
• 1:06:01
  you've just said is essentially the mission statement of The Who We Are Project. So I hope you
• 1:06:06
  see that in your lifetime as well. Yeah. Is there a legacy that you want to leave
• 1:06:13
  behind? Another question no one's ever asked me. I think my children are my best legacy.
• 1:06:20
  I'm fiercely proud of the people that they are. Um, they are the best of. I certainly had to
• 1:06:26
  give to the world. Um. And my books are like legacy products.
• 1:06:33
  Um, that any any voice matters. There's no voice too small. You have something to
• 1:06:39
  contribute. Um, don't get caught up into how many people hear it, you know. Keep it human. Human to
• 1:06:46
  human connection. I do think we all matter. And our voices have something to say. If people
• 1:06:54
  want to know more about you and your journey and they want to follow your work. Where can they find
• 1:07:00
  you? I'm everywhere online. At TiaLevingsWriter for all the platforms, all the social
• 1:07:06
  platforms. Tia Levings.Substack.com is where I actively deconstruct in real time, and
• 1:07:14
  I'm going to keep writing. So my books are available anywhere you buy books or borrow them
• 1:07:17
  from the library. And I read my own audio for both A Well-Trained Wife and I Belong to Me. Tia, thank
• 1:07:24
  you very much. Folks will put all those places in the show notes so you'll be able to figure it out.
• 1:07:30
  It has been a pleasure to have this conversation with you, and please keep doing what you're doing.
• 1:07:36
  Thank you.