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What is good, my ex-homies? It's your boy Jacob Gooden. We're back for another episode
of the Ex-Homeschoolers Club.
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And, uh, I've got a fun one today. I think it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be a little bit heavier,
I think, maybe, uh, or deeper.
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Maybe that's a better word. But, uh, Liz is back. And, uh, if you don't remember
Liz, she came on and told her
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homeschool experience before. I'm gonna make sure it's linked below. But we had a wonderful time before.
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And now, today, we're gonna talk a little
bit more about, like, religion, the role
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it played in our homeschool education,
and just life, and the role it's played in
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our life, like, moving on from that, and
maybe how things have shifted and changed.
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And so this is just gonna be a very
open and honest and real conversation. And so, you know, just remember, too,
these are things that we believe, and
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everyone's entitled to their beliefs. And so, you know, if you're here
to be nasty, don't do that, okay?
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Be kind. That is, that is what this place
is all about, is letting people express and tell their stories.
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And so, uh, so we're gonna be nice today. Okay, moving on. Liz, welcome back to the
Ex-Homeschoolers Club.
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you. for having me again. Um, I'm so stoked to talk to you because
every time we chat, I feel like even
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from the very first time we ever, we ever
talked, um, we just had, like, very real
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and open, like, and deep conversations
around, like, our experiences. Uh, which is sometimes very rare to
find with people, is, like, that ability
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to just kind of be open and share. So thank you for, for being
someone that I can do that with.
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Oh, thank you. I- it's funny because sometimes while
we're talking, have to remind myself
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that we've never actually met in person. I, I did I- grow up with you in my homeschool group
back in Virginia, because I just get
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that vibe as if I've known you for a long
time and we're just cool with each other.
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You know what's so crazy too? You were one of the first people
when I started the show who reached
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out, who was, like, not somebody I,
I really knew or was acquainted to. And so, like, it … And you were a w- I
wanna say one of the first guests who came
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on who, yeah, I genuinely didn't know. And so, like, you reached
out and, like, that, I
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It gave me so much more confidence to
be like, "Okay, there's, like, a whole world of homeschoolers out here that,
like, I don't know, and I gotta go find
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them." And a lot of them have come now. And so I appreciate you for being, being
the first, uh or one of the first in
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that kind of, like, series of events,
'cause you've given me a lot more confidence to, like, actually pursue and
ask questions of those outside groups.
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Because to your point, it really does feel
like a lot of us are, like, connected.
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And I think it's this shared, like,
I sometimes call it this, like, trauma bond of, like, we've all kind
of been through something similar.
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And so even though, like, each of our
experiences is vastly different, right? Where we grew up, how our parents are,
like, just everything is very different.
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There is something about the homeschool
lifestyle and having experienced it that is just this connecting
point for so many of us that leads
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to so many other connecting points. And so I don't know. It's kinda weird. It's like a magical thing, uh, that
I don't think anyone else really
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understands unless you've lived it. Yeah. let's, let's talk about religion,
and let's talk about the
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role it played in our lives. And I don't know where
we totally wanna start. I usually, for me, I usually start
kind of around, like, when I got saved.
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But, like, I guess, let me ask you this. Like, was religion always a part of your
life and the home and stuff like that?
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And maybe, like, when
or if did you get saved? Like, may- maybe we start there religion, uh, my, my earliest
memories of existence are closely
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tied, I mean, almost impossible
to separate from being Catholic. My parents were super into their faith.
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They, they both were born into Catholic
families, but they sort of had what we call a reversion, um, in their 30s, I
think it was right before I was born,
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where they got-- they, they sort of-- they
went back to going to church regularly.
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They got super into it. Um, they got more involved with
everything, uh, in a very intense way.
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And so my earliest memories, um,
of everything have always been linked to the Catholic Church.
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Like, I remember as a little
girl, um, used to be babysat by nuns at, like, the local convent.
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We always knew the parish priests. Like, I was always at the, um, the
rectory hanging out with priests, nuns,
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everyone surrounding the, the church. I mean, always. There, there was never a time
when it wasn't like that.
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And, uh, honestly, thinking back on my
childhood memories of being Catholic and being involved, uh, constantly on every
level, I, I don't have bad memories.
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I don't. The, um… Th-thankfully, you know, I,
I don't have any-- I don't have a story
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about any abuse or anything horrible that
was done or said to me when I was a child.
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Not at all. Not at all. I have a lot of good memories. And fact, when I, I think back when
I was younger, like before my teenage
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years and, and when I started getting
older, it was, um… back and I miss the sense of, uh, security and belonging.
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Um, we lived our lives by the, the,
the calendar of the Catholic Church, you know, with all the Sundays and the
holy days and, um, the saints and, uh,
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everything that we did, it was, uh, just
Very much a part of our family life. I can't imagine talking about my
family without also mentioning,
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"Oh, and we were Catholic." I mean, it's just, it's
just one and the same. Yeah, it's like, it's like ingra-
it's ingrained in the, the,
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like, existence of the family. I mean, all my memories, uh, a,
a lot of the good memories, uh,
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of holidays, Christmas, Easter,
everything, everything's somehow connected to, uh, being Roman Catholic.
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And Yep. said, an- I don't have any
really bad stuff to, to dwell on Yeah. Time o- of my life.
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Well, let me ask you this
because I, I know that, like, Catholicism is slightly different.
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I grew up evangelical Christian,
and so bounced around between a couple different churches.
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Like you, I, like, it, it
always was a part of my life. Like, Sundays was, like,
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Mm. always getting church ready, you know,
button-up shirt and slacks, you know.
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And then eventually, uh, later in
life it was, like, non-denominational churches where it was a lot chiller.
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Um, and got to wear, like, shorts
and a T-shirt, uh, kind of a thing. But, like, um, yeah.
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Well, growing up in California, we
ended up at a, at a, like… The, the pastor was a surfer, and sometimes he
would show up and he'd still be, like,
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dripping wet, like, having just gotten
out of the, the ocean kind of a deal. So, like, big shifts of, like…
'Cause I, I grew up, a lot of my years
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were in, like, a Southern Baptist
church, and lots of rules ar- around that and, you know, what makes you
a Christian and, and that kind of a
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thing, which we can totally get into. But, you know, Oh, but to your point about, like,
uh, it was so ingrained and,
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like, we were always there. If we weren't there, Mm. Usually a pretty good reason.
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We're out of town,
somebody's sick, you know? Um, that kind of a thing. Um, but I'm curious because, like, I
know for me, like, even though I grew
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up in the church, it wasn't until I
was, mm, high single digits, I wanna say, like, maybe six, seven, eight, that
I, like, accepted Jesus into my heart.
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And that was, like, I w- I went to,
that was at a Billy Graham crusade. Solty the Singing Songbook was playing.
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Uh, if anyone's familiar with
that, um, it's like Barney, but, like, a Bible, um kind of a thing.
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And, uh, yeah. And, and I remember very vividly
that, like, wanting to be like, "I want in the club," so to speak.
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And so, like, went down, prayed
the prayer, did the thing. You know, they give you the tract, they
give you a whole little basket of stuff.
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And then, and then not too long after
that, choosing at church, "Hey, I wanna get baptized," um, and doing that.
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So, like, I wonder, like, is there a
point in your life where maybe it went from, like, "Hey," like, "my family does
this," to, like, "This is now," like,
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"I'm choosing to, to do this as well"? Um, well, when-- in the Catholic
Church, especially if you're born
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into a Catholic family, you're
baptized, uh, when you're a baby, like, usually a few weeks after your,
after your birth, you know, very young.
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And then when you're about, um, six
or seven, you, you have your first confession and your first communion.
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And then for me, I was f- I'd
say, I wanna say fourteen or fifteen when I was confirmed.
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And confirmation is the moment where
you're supposed to… The chur- it's the church's way of saying, "Okay,
you're an adult now, and you're
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choosing be a part of our church and
to be Catholic and to, participate as a full-fledged grownup," you know.
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it it is sort of like
the, the choosing moment, Right. Has to give it to you, and, you know,
there, there's a whole ceremony where,
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um, now you're, you know, you're a soldier
in Christ, you're, you're fully a member.
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And it's, it's almost
like a second baptism in a Okay. um, metaphorically speaking.
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You're not actually… They don't put water on you. Right. I, I think I was fifteen, and
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by that time, I was really into
my faith, very, very much so. Um, when I was a teenager,
I'd say from the age of
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thir- uh, twelve or thirteen, I
was, um, very deeply into the church and my belief system, and I was
fully on board, soldier for Christ.
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I belonged to the Legion of Mary, which,
um, as I, as I talk about things, f- I'd say for the past decade when I, I'll
meet other Catholics or I'll do research
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online or, or watch videos or… I start
to realize that things that I thought were
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just normal things that Catholics did was
actually pretty seriously fringe Catholic,
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Yeah. Catholicism. Okay. Thought this, "Oh, I'm just Catholic. This is what Catholics
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Right. older, and you realize,
"Whoa, wait a minute. Yeah. Specific type of Catholic," you
know, um, minority in a, in a,
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in a bubble of, of our making. Right. Yeah. 'Cause what is the Legion of, of Mary?
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'Cause I've never heard that before. I, I, I haven't, uh, y- I haven't
looked it up on Wikipedia lately.
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This is going off of what I remember. I believe it was founded in Ireland Okay. Okay.
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of Mary. It's an orgas- organization for, like, um-
The, the laypeople of the Catholic Church,
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so no priests or nuns or things like that. Nor-normies, normal church people. And it was built on this, like,
militar- the Roman military of thing
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where we're, we are legionaries, Mm-hmm. Right. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is, uh, our
general, like our… Like, it's through
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Mary that we're gonna save the world, Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Um, we had weekly meetings
with, like, I mean, rules.
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It was definitely very military. There were officers. I was the minute taker, so every
week I t- you know, I had to
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take the minutes of the meeting. Lots of rosary praying, lots of statues,
very Irish Catholic vibes, you know.
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But connected to that was volunteer work. Okay. if you're in the Legion of Mary,
you have to do at least one
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hour of volunteer work per week. Yeah. And so I joined, I joined
them, I, uh, I must've been 13.
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Okay. And my volunteer work was I would
go to the local nursing homes, and I would read books out loud
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Yeah. which loved, and to this day I love, and
I wish that I could do that somewhere.
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Yeah. I'll get into this a bit later if, if
you want to, but there's some aspects
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of the, the faith and the church that
I miss very much or that I appreciate because I think it instilled in me, uh, a
sense of giving the community, of giving
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to people, volunteer work, um, wanting
to help without expecting in return. Mm-hmm.
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You know, that, that sense of service
that I love about Christianity, Yeah. Anyway, Legion of Mary,
I did that as a teenager.
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I was involved in a bunch of, um, uh,
like our Catholic youth organization at church, and, um, I was very deep into it.
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And as a teenager, this is in the
'90s, I think this is when the Catholic Church in, at least in the
US, started really pushing these big,
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um, what was the word they called it? Like a conference. It was like a weekend. It was basically a weekend Christianity
rave, um, you know, with music
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and talks about saving your, your
virginity and not sleeping around and, Yeah. about becoming a priest or a nun.
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And, like, the, the It's kinda that and they would call people up who wanted
to give their life to Jesus publicly.
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Sort of a bit, I, I think they took
that from American Protestantism and that concept of, um, like choosing,
like being saved or, or, like
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recommitment piece, 'cause like what- Yeah. What you're describing is more like
a product of like, I was in high
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school, my f- my freshman year of
high school was 2010, but like leading up to that, like conferences became
a much bigger part of like my life.
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Like, um, you know, I did a whole series
on the show about I Kissed Dating Goodbye.
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His, uh, Josh Harris, the guy
who wrote that book, his youngers his younger brothers, um, Alex
and Brett, they also wrote a
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book called Do Hard Things. Well, they would do a
conference very similar to that.
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It's a couple days, you go, and
it was all about, like, doing hard things in the name of Christ.
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Uh, my church would put on like a purity
conference every year, and then they would do like a youth in action type
of thing, and so, like, very much like
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along those lines of, like, talking
about what our role as young people was in, like, the mission of Christ.
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And then, of course, there's the
call to action of, like, if you wanna give your life to Christ
or you wanna rededicate yourself,
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there's usually baptism, music, like to all that kind of stuff. that's coming back to
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And so it's really interesting because
then when I watch, like, documentaries like Shiny Happy People, especially
the second season of Shiny Happy
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People, there's kind of this like… watched the Okay, yet. it's really good. Um, it definitely hit a little bit harder.
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I feel like the first season for many of
us, like a lot of people can, can… I, I feel like people who grew up in, um,
uh, IB, IBP, um, I probably butchered
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that, IBLP, not F, um, IBLP, like they
relate to that season, where people who, who didn't grow up in it, to us
it's like very, I don't know, it's
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like learning about Scientology, right? You kind of can view it from an outside
perspective where you go like, "That's
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bad," but like, that wasn't my experience. For me, the second season was a lot
more relatable in the sense of like
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even though I didn't go to the ex-
it, it, because it centers around, uh, youth in action and like conferences.
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It's teen mania kind of a deal, and
it's like the '90s to 2000s and the 2010s, and so it's these conferences
that are taking place, right?
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And, and, and really growing this momentum
of like we're soldiers for Christ. There's like the war cry for
like, you know, committing
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yourself to, to this thing, Yes. It was al- and it was
always framed in w- war Yes.
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Like you, you said Legion of Mary, and I'm
like, that's like a military style thing.
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Yes. well, I, we, we had that,
uh, in the Catholic Church. Honestly, it's pr- it was probably
just the same thing, but we would have
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mass, uh, every day, and they would
slap some Catholic things in there, and Right.
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A bit more structure when it came to that. But when I, what I have seen of, um,
evangelical Protestant conferences
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and stuff like that, or I'll be
watching TV or something on the internet, and they'll always show
clips from, um, churches that use a
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l- a lot of praise and worship music. I'm like, "Yeah." I, I
know that intimately.
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That's, that's, that's,
that is my experience. In fact, that's when I started to learn
that I grew up in a, in a specific
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type of Catholicism, because as an
adult, I'll run into other people and eventually down the road, maybe you learn
that they're also Catholic, you know.
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Or you comment online or you become
friends with people and they talk about what it's like, what it was like for them
to grow Catholic in the United States.
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And I Hmm. Interesting. But there's nothing,
that connects me to them. It almost feels like they're
speaking about a different church.
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Okay. then I will run into someone who used to
be Mormon someone who grew up evangelical
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or Southern Baptist or different
Protestantisms like that in the US, and I have an instant connection and
understand what they're talking about or
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what they went through or the way their
life was with that type of religion. And that's when I start to realize,
okay, I mean, we were Catholic and my,
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my father would probably die if I tried
to point out to him that, "Oh, we're Catholic, but kind of more American
Protestant Catholic than you realize."
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They-- You know, he wouldn't like that. But, um, a-absolutely, have
that connection and that
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shared experiences, you know. I remember someone… I met someone…
I live in Europe now, in France.
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People don't talk about religion. Um, but when I occasionally do touch
on that subject or Europeans will see
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a clip of an American, um, praise and
worshiping, hands in the air, um, to God. To them, they think it's crazy, like
00:19:13
Yeah. from 200 years ago in some obscure
pagan cultish, uh, ceremony. And I'm like, "No, that's
normal," because I did that.
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Yeah. Being young, a teenager, and
praying to God in that way and feeling like I had that connection.
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Yeah. Yeah. I think-- real. It was real to me at the moment. Yeah. it's so interesting because I feel
like, like especially, yeah, evangelical
00:19:42
Christianity, there's this v- there's
this heavy push for like You have to go and tell, like, the story.
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You have to be, like, on mission. The, the idea is Mm. Conversion, right? You want people to convert to, to that.
00:19:56
And so what, you know, uh, it's very
interesting, and what you're describing sounds very similar to that too.
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And so, like, there is this, like,
performative piece to it where it's like worship, yeah, is like,
it's a very outward thing, right?
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It's like it always has to be expressed
that this is a part of, like, who I am as a person is this significant role.
00:20:18
lectured, we were lectured and told
constantly, "People need to know that you are Catholic, that you are a Christian
religious person just by looking at you.
00:20:28
Right. should be able to Right. Like, you should not be
incognito in the world. Right.
00:20:35
a neon sign that says,
"Christian," and, "I have rules and, and I'm better than you."
00:20:40
You Yeah. even, even when it came to things like,
um, on Ash Wednesday, I don't know
00:20:45
if you know the Catholic practice, Mm-hmm. The day before Lent. No, the first day of Lent, we go to
church and there's a special ceremony
00:20:53
where they put the ashes on our forehead,
supposedly in the shape of a cross. Usually it ends up being
just a huge smudge.
00:20:59
Yeah. it was this thing, especially among the,
the kids, the teenagers, and the, the
00:21:05
homeschool group, judging the people
who would wipe it off afterwards and go the rest of the day it gone versus
the people who would wear it proudly
00:21:16
and be a witness for, for Christ Yeah. having your ashes on your forehead. Yeah.
00:21:23
Who, who wore the religious jewelry? Yeah. Right. the jean skirt that was too short?
00:21:29
Yeah. like y- you're, you're really reminding me
of, like, there was that, yeah, like you
00:21:34
were, like we've been talking about, that
big push of, like, be very outward with,
00:21:38
you know, who you are and, and stuff. And we, so I used to be, I used to
be part of a Christian mime troupe.
00:21:44
So, you know, we'd do… Yeah, so imagine the,
imagine a mime, right? We're stuck in the boxes.
00:21:49
We, you know, whatever. You know, we do what we did. We knew how to do the
normal mime stuff, right?
00:21:54
You know, and, and, but then we would
also do sketches to Christian songs. So most people are familiar with, like,
00:22:01
okay. Everything by Lifehouse, uh, as, like, a
Christian sketch of, like, kind of, uh,
00:22:07
u- it's usually a woman being tempted
by, like, all of these things of the world, and beaten down over and over, and
then Jesus stepping in and shouldering
00:22:16
that and, you know, delivering her
from, from the evil of the world, right? So i- stuff like that, we would tell these
stories through, through songs And that
00:22:26
was, I would say, probably the most out
there with my Christianity I ever got. Um, aside from, like, I also served on,
like, worship teams and stuff like that,
00:22:34
but that was usually inside of the church. The mime troupe was something
that was, like, very external.
00:22:39
Yeah. Oh, but it was interesting because,
like, I mean, when you're a mime, you don't ever have to say anything.
00:22:44
You just do it through your actions. But as I got older and I left the mime
troupe, and I started, especially in high
00:22:51
school, um, I was never one to be very,
like, forward with, like… I was not gonna walk up to somebody in the mall and
be like, you know, "Are you a Christian?
00:22:59
Do you wanna talk about Christianity? Do you mind…" You know, like,
I was never that type of person.
00:23:04
that. Uh, I've always been the type of person to
be like, "Let me get to know somebody,
00:23:08
and, you know, learn about their life a
little bit and ask questions," and the, and the type-- Become friends, become
friendly, and then it ultimately leads to
00:23:17
some kind of conversation around, like,
belief systems or, you know, whatever. And so, like, to me, that was always
the smarter way, the better way to
00:23:26
do it because, like, you know, a
stranger walking up to you is always off-putting to some degree, right?
00:23:33
Of like, nobody wants to reveal their
deepest, darkest secrets to a stranger. They would they would rather talk
about those things with their friends.
00:23:40
And so, um, so yeah. So I think to, to the point that we've
been talking about of, like, the very
00:23:45
outward expression, my very outward
expression was always just kind of a, like, I'm gonna exist, and then
when people enter into my circle,
00:23:55
then it's my opportunity to, like,
evangelize to them in a lot of ways. a teenager, what really ramped up my,
um, wanting to fully participate in the
00:24:08
outward showing of my faith was, uh…
Well, my sister was in a monastery, so she joined when I was, uh, 13.
00:24:20
So I was at home being homeschooled. I had a sister in the monastery, and
I was very, very committed to my faith
00:24:31
at that time, and an extreme version. I-- Looking back now, I realize
it was extreme, you know, for a, a
00:24:36
teenage girl to, to be like this. Uh, because I would tell people, "Oh,
well, I wanna be a nun. I wanna be
00:24:43
a nun and a missionary nun if, if
possible, if I could put-- do those two things together," you know.
00:24:48
Yeah. bring people to Christ. And so I was wearing, you
know, cross necklaces. I was wearing my rosary,
00:24:57
Mm-hmm. attached to me as if I were a nun or a Okay. All right. very serious about dressing modestly,
'cause that was pushed very strongly,
00:25:10
um, in our… Not at, not at our church. My church CYO Catholic, my, like, my, uh,
the youth group I belonged to at church
00:25:19
had, uh, kids who went to public school. And it was more, I would say, generically
Catholic, not, not so, not so crazy.
00:25:28
But the homeschool group obviously, um,
you know, pushed that very, very strongly.
00:25:33
And my… I don't remember…
Here's the funny thing. I don't remember my mother ever
directly telling me anything about
00:25:42
dressing modestly, but I got that
from the other homeschool moms. Yeah. and of course the literature I
would be exposed to, you know,
00:25:51
Right. That we would consume. So Uh, I was that teenage girl
wearing her rosary, wearing, um,
00:26:00
you know, ankle-length jean skirts. Um, I didn't wear shorts uh,
I was 19 or 20 years old.
00:26:12
And I don't even remember. At some point, I didn't even swim. I d- I avoided wearing, um,
00:26:22
Yeah. um, modest enough. Mm-hmm. But the other part of that was I
thought that I was ugly and disgusting.
00:26:33
Like, that my body Right. Was gross and, um, something
that I was ashamed of. I was ashamed of my
00:26:43
Right. Now is that-- do you think
that that's tied to the purity culture aspect of like…
00:26:49
Absolutely, 100%. ' cause yeah. 'Cause I, I felt very similar, like even
as a, as a guy, and this is in no way to
00:26:56
say like guys have it worse than girls. It's just that idea of like feeling
ashamed of your body or like just its
00:27:03
natural being, like I think permeates
to all of purity culture to some degree for some people of just that like
00:27:10
mm-hmm. I don't wanna show off, I don't
wanna like cause somebody to stumble, I don't wanna whatever.
00:27:15
And then like you were saying,
like that idea of like feeling less than, ugly, whatever it is, is like
c- weirdly baked into some kind of
00:27:26
form of religion in a lot of senses. Yeah. A- and I think it was, it was compounded
00:27:35
Right. you are much more isolated than a
kid who goes to a, a regular school. Uh, you can't get around
00:27:46
Right. and, um, you're more insulated
into one type of thinking. Yeah. You're not exposed to, to, to differences.
00:27:56
And so I would get an idea in my
head from something I read or s- something someone told me, um,
and then it would just stay there,
00:28:04
Mm-hmm. And it would influence how I thought about Right. And it wasn't until years later when
I left home and I would start to
00:28:15
talk to more different people and
be exposed to different things and learn more, where y- you start, you
s- you're constantly rethinking things
00:28:25
that you took for granted, beliefs
about yourself, about everything. Like, a- as a, as a homeschooler,
a very religious homeschooler,
00:28:33
an extremely religious person, I
was very, very deeply religious. And then over the years, now I know
that we call it deconstructing,
00:28:44
but I didn't even know that
word until maybe two years ago. I'd never heard Yeah.
00:28:48
Yeah. I'm not in those circles. I just, I didn't realize it was a thing. upon something on YouTube, people
were talking about deconstructing,
00:28:56
and then I'm like, "Oh my God! what I did. It has a name. There's other people who are doing
00:29:04
Yeah. because, yeah. It, it's so funny too because I think New thing is coming up
and you're like, "Oh.
00:29:11
Oh my God, I'm almost 43 and I
didn't realize that about myself?" I think the, the thing about
deconstruction too is like, I, I was
00:29:18
telling somebody, I was like, it's
not a, it's not a negative thing. Like, I think the … There, there
was a period maybe in like 2019 to
00:29:27
w- in the early 2020s when a lot of,
uh, churches started talking about deconstruction, and they started ta- in
a very negative way, and started talking
00:29:36
about how they were like, you know Because 2020 the world shuts
down, so all of a sudden all
00:29:40
these people had time to think. And so a lot of that conversation
I think stemmed from that ability
00:29:47
where people didn't have the
opportunity to go to church anymore. And so especially, you know, and
then a lot of us got depressed, a lot
00:29:54
of us just were struggling, and so
sometimes we wouldn't watch church on Sunday or we wouldn't tune in and
we didn't have the connection to that
00:30:00
church, like the community, right? Of like that was, is such a large part
of a lot of religious life, right?
00:30:09
Is just like at church
or with church friends. It's like an isolating … A
community, right?
00:30:14
And like that's not the physicalness of constantly
going and being around other people
00:30:18
and everyone's doing the same Right. And so when that goes away, all
of a sudden you have all this free
00:30:24
time to start asking questions. And so you start looking at things
maybe from a different lens or whatever.
00:30:29
And so a l- I think a lot of people
were starting to ask the questions of like, "Why do I believe this?
00:30:35
Why," like, "why is this the way it is?" And like all those types of things because
… And they had the chance then to like
00:30:41
read books or listen to other people's
stories or, you know, whatever it was. And so it starts to permeate a little
bit and you start to go like, "Well,
00:30:49
is it okay like if …" Like, like
for me, one of the first things that was a breakdown for me was like,
do I believe that like there was a
00:30:56
worldwide flood and that Noah built an
ark and there was two of every animal? Or do I believe that that is
just a story to teach a lesson?
00:31:05
Okay, does it matter? How does that impact my faith? What, like, Mm. how does that shift things?
00:31:11
And, you know, as you work through that,
okay, well then what's the next thing? You know, how, let's
break down this story.
00:31:15
Is it real? Is it historically accurate? Is it all of these things, right? And so, like, there's, like, levels
to, like, the deconstruction of,
00:31:22
like, it doesn't always have to be
a bad thing because it can just be asking a question of, like, something
that you've believed for a very
00:31:29
long time, like you were saying. Like, believing, like, human being," right? It's like, to finally ask yourself, "Well,
what if I'm not?" That's technically
00:31:38
deconstruction to some degree, right? And, like, Yeah, it's because you were breaking down
that belief system in your head.
00:31:45
And so it's also not inherently a
religious thing, it's just that, like, idea of reconstructing in
your brain what you think about
00:31:52
yourself and how you view the world. Yeah. Yeah. One thing I, I wanted to point out
was, or, or ask you, like, s- a little
00:32:03
bit more about was you mentioned how
it wasn't necessarily your mom or your parents that always put the idea in your
head or, or the teaching in your head
00:32:14
of, like, "This is the way things are,"
whether it's, like, with purity culture.
00:32:17
Sometimes that was, like, a group
mentality that came from the homeschool group or from church, right?
00:32:22
And so Yeah. I've realized in the last year
that's, like, very true for me is, like, there were things that I,
like, very strongly believed that my
00:32:31
parents … Now I tell them and they
go, "I never taught you that." Like, "That's not how I think," right?
00:32:37
"And so where did you get that from?"
And then it's kind of this process of, like, deciphering, like, oh, this came
from Mr. And Mrs. Whoever, or this came
00:32:45
from my friend, you know, so-and-so. Um, and so I'm curious, I guess, like,
around that concept of, like, what, what
00:32:56
have been some of those things that, like,
you're like, you may- maybe you've come to
00:33:00
realize, like, "My parents never taught me
this," or, "They didn't actually believe
00:33:03
this, but I was just in an environment
where it was like that was the norm, so I just bought into that being the thing."
00:33:11
we already touched on it, but
specifically the purity culture. Okay. My parents never talked about it.
00:33:18
didn't have those books. They never mentioned anything
about sex or even, like, my periods
00:33:25
or, like, what would happen to
me as I went through puberty. Uh, nothing. Absolutely nothing.
00:33:31
It was just a great big silence,
and if and when things happened to me, I would have a, the breakdown.
00:33:37
Like, it, it would be this huge thing
in my life that I would have to recover Mm-hmm.
00:33:42
because, um, I was terrified
because I had no idea what was going on or what to expect.
00:33:48
Um, my parents also both assumed
I would just become a nun like my Yeah. That was, that was the Catholic
flavor of my religious homeschooling.
00:33:59
Um, uh, you know, they would s- you know,
it would be assumed, oh, okay, if you did decide to get married to a Catholic
guy and have lots of Catholic babies,
00:34:11
all right, that's, that's a choice. But the plan A is, uh, nun,
monastery, convent, missionary.
00:34:20
Yeah. In fact, I can even Got the, um, "The Baltimore
Catechism." Catholics listening
00:34:31
will know what I'm talking about. It's pre-Vatican II, so it's
a book, um, teaching the faith
00:34:37
it. Got was a picture in it talking about
what you wanted to do when you grow up, and they would be like,
getting married and having a family,
00:34:49
it. better. Right. Like, like a ranking system, yeah. this is, like, the you're more
godly, you're more holy if you
00:35:01
were, go into religious life. So my parents always talked about that,
and my sister went in a monastery.
00:35:08
I openly as a teenager thought, "Well,
I'm gonna be a nun because it's the best thing to be." And plus, uh, I'm
an uggo, so no man would actually
00:35:16
ever want me, so that's my choice. my parents never talked about
dating or, um, saving yourself or
00:35:26
addressing modesty, none of that. is something I 100% got through
osmosis from hanging out with the
00:35:32
other homeschool families and the, the
other moms talking about it, the other moms having the books in the house
'cause I did a lot of, um, babysitting.
00:35:40
Yes. Okay, I would spend hours and hours, days even,
living with the other homeschool families,
00:35:47
not, not at home at, at my house. they had tons of books, and I was a huge
bookworm, and I would just voraciously
00:35:55
work my way through all of their books. And they had all those books, about,
you know, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, and
00:36:02
there was another, there was another one
I think I told you last time we talked.
00:36:05
Um, was about, um, it's like Wild
at Heart, I think is the name, Yes. it's like men are manly men who like
to go camping and live in the American
00:36:16
West, and women are more domestic, and
it, it, it told us what we should be like
00:36:23
using examples from Hollywood movies. Like, I, I look back on it now and
I'm like, "Jesus Christ, like what,
00:36:30
what, what are you even doing? Like, what, what even is Yeah. But, I picked up all of that from other
homeschool families, the other moms.
00:36:40
remember vividly, um, one of the
moms, we were in a group with of girls and the moms, the mom telling us,
"Oh, well," I didn't even know what
00:36:50
a period was, but she's like, "When
you get your period, your body crying blood because you're not pregnant.
00:37:02
Wow. the natural state, Right. wants you to be pregnant, and when a woman
is not pregnant, her body is sad because
00:37:09
it's not doing what God wants it to do." Oh my God. She said that once. I must Right.
00:37:15
Or 13, it was burnt into my brain. Right. Remember really believing that,
like, for myself, 'cause I'm
00:37:22
like, "Well, I'm gonna be a Mm-hmm. to Christ. I don't need to worry about a baby."
But I remember that even to this day.
00:37:30
Mm-hmm. I mean, Right. or I wasn't a part of. I was just overhearing what was being said
to other kids, and I would absorb that.
00:37:45
There's… It's so weird, those things
that, like, burn in your memory of, like, like, I know I've told this story
countless times now on this show, and
00:37:54
I've just told it countless times to
people of, like, my… The purity culture piece that just has burned itself into
my memory, that has taken probably the
00:38:04
longest, I think, to really fully exit
out of, was that we had, you know, a lot of people use, like, the analogies
of, like, gum for, like, sex when
00:38:13
they're talking about premarital sex. Like, they use, like, they
talk about g- women being gum.
00:38:18
They talk about, like, you know, they t- all these different things. Used up shoes.
00:38:23
Yeah, exactly. So our example was, like, an apple pie,
and so he brings out this apple pie,
00:38:29
and he's like, "It's delicious," right? Apple pie is like, you know,
that's America's favorite, right?
00:38:34
Um, and he's like, "Okay," and he
sticks his finger in it, and he's, you know, and then he's like, "Okay,
well, who still would eat this now
00:38:41
that, like, I've touched it?" And it's
like, most people still would be like, "It's kinda gross," but, like, he,
he's a, you know, he's a clean guy.
00:38:47
He probably washes his hands. Like, no big deal, kind of a deal. And he's like, "Well, that's like
holding hands with a girl," you know?
00:38:53
And then als- and then he, you know, then
he messes the pie up a little bit more
00:38:56
and touches it some more, and people are
starting to kinda be like, "Eh, maybe I'm not quite as interested," right?
00:39:01
And it's, like, entering into,
like, kissing and heavy petting. And then finally, he spits in it and,
like, mixes his spit into, like, all
00:39:08
of the pie, and he's like, "That's
what having premarital sex is like." physically
00:39:13
Yeah, to an apple pie do… Okay. Okay, So yeah, so he's got that apple pie. First, he'll stick his finger, and then
he's, like, using his hands to mix it up.
00:39:20
gosh, then finally, he just hucks a
massive loogie into it and mixes that into everything, and it's like,
"That's what premarital sex is."
00:39:27
Like, "Now who wants to eat this
apple pie?" And it was very much in the context of, like, that
is what, as men, we're doing to
00:39:34
women when we have premarital sex. And, like, I don't know, that just burned
in my mind so strongly that the first time
00:39:41
I had sex, like, literally, I was like,
"I'm tied to this person forever now." Like, I can't … They're ruined.
00:39:47
I … They are stuck with me. Psychologically, you're,
y- that's just where you Yeah.
00:39:52
And so even though, like, I, from a
brain perspective, could tell myself, "I don't believe that," like that's,
that's a bunch of b*llshit, I … There
00:40:02
was this other piece of me that was
like, I just still felt that way. And so it took a lot of that unpacking
to start to be like, "No, I really
00:40:13
don't feel this way around people, and
I really don't feel this way around," you know, like, th- this person's value
is not tied to whether they've had
00:40:21
To their virginity. It's, it's, you know, it's tied
to just who they are as a person,
00:40:25
their character, you know? And, mm-hmm. Yeah. and so that took a really long
time to kind of, like, digest.
00:40:32
But that's not, again, that's not
something that my parents taught me. That's something that a
youth pastor taught me.
00:40:37
And so it's, like, Mm. very one of those, like, weird things that
just got stuck in the brain, and that's
00:40:44
why I still bring it up to this day,
because it's still just so vividly there, even though now I'm at a point where I'm
like, "Yeah, that's a crock of shit."
00:40:52
Um, it very much is, like, this story
that has influenced a lot of, like, how I just view purity culture in
general as this very nasty, negative
00:41:03
thing that really didn't know what
the hell it was talking about. Um, it just was a, a means to an end
for basically telling a bunch of kids,
00:41:11
"Don't have sex." Well, it would've been
easier if you just said, "Don't have sex,"
00:41:15
'cause here's, here's the reasons why. Like, here's what sex r- results
in, you know, and talk about STIs
00:41:22
and talk about, you know, uh, Yeah, here's pregnancy and things like that. they… It was such a push
to, "Don't, don't have sex.
00:41:31
Don't have All right. they utilize all, like, emotional
arguments, psychological
00:41:40
arguments, religious arguments,
everything down the line. But at no point was I ever taught
just the basics of human biology.
00:41:49
Like, if you get a sexually transmitted
disease, or bad things that can happen through sex, or how do you get pregnant
and this is what happens to your body.
00:42:02
N-nothing. Right. Yeah. Just this massive just blank. Yeah. Well, and I think that's where, like, the
religion aspect starts to play into a lot
00:42:11
of, like, the homeschool aspect, right? Because if you're in public school, you're
gonna take some kind of sex ed class.
00:42:16
And that's not to say that that's an
all extensive thing and that, you know, you shouldn't still ask questions and
go to your parents, things like that.
00:42:22
But it's like, at least it gives you that
basic biology of, like, understanding this is kinda what's going on, you know?
00:42:29
And so when you deny that because,
like, your, you know, maybe your parents are religious, and so then they choose
curriculums that are religious or they
00:42:38
just choose to leave certain things
out because they're like, "Oh, they'll naturally figure it out," or, "They'll
ask the right questions," or whatever.
00:42:43
It's like, Yeah. No, just tell us what's
going on so we understand. And, you know, and, and that
way we're, we're not, we're
00:42:53
not gonna be stupid, you know? And so that was definitely… I mean, the
only reason it ever came up in my house
00:42:59
is because I'm from a long line of family
members and things like that in, in my
00:43:03
extended family who they had premarital
sex, have kids outside of wedlock. And so eventually it has to get
brought up at some point because
00:43:11
you're just seeing that happen. It's like it doesn't make any sense that
my cousin is not married and has children.
00:43:16
Like, you know, um, you know,
you're like, "How, how does this align with everything," right?
00:43:19
And so it's of, you know, my parents
were kind of pushed into actually talking about some of these things with
us, um, not of their own, uh, accord.
00:43:27
Um. This is so funny while you were saying it. I don't know if you've ever
watched "Bridgerton." Okay.
00:43:32
that show. Especially in the first season, there's
the major plot point of, um, girls in,
00:43:39
you know, this fantasy "Bridgerton" Mm-hmm. not knowing Right. I watched it and enjoyed the first
season, whatever, it was fun fluff.
00:43:53
And then years later, I meet people
or I'm watching people react to it, and people modern day, like now, are
talking about, "This is so ridiculous.
00:44:00
How could they not know? This is unrealistic. This could never happen."
And I'm like, "Yeah, it can
00:44:07
Yeah. I was basically Penelope
Featherington trying to figure out how exactly do you get pregnant?
00:44:13
Right. it possible if you're not married? Right. was in, you know, the 1990s,
admittedly last century.
00:44:20
But, you know, Yeah. And that lasted, that period of my
life, the, the whole connection,
00:44:27
the whole, um, I would say, uh, oh
what's the word, um, in English? Uh, well, I, I didn't know, I
didn't know the basics of sex ed.
00:44:39
I didn't have any with dating. It was just purity culture, and, uh, that
lasted well into my 20s because I went to
00:44:48
a very religious, uh, Catholic university. And so that culture just continued Right.
00:44:59
um, a state college or, or a more sec-
or a secular university, uh, I would have
00:45:04
been exposed to other things quicker, Right. but it just continued, Yeah. just continued into my 20s.
00:45:10
Is it then, like, in kind of that, after
that college experience that you really
00:45:15
start to maybe kinda come out of that? Like, is that when the
bubble starts to burst?
00:45:20
I was 19 the first time I
started to question the, the validity of things I had been
00:45:28
Mm-hmm. Not about, not about
religion in particular, Okay. But specifically about the religious
homeschool culture in the United States
00:45:40
that I had believed and been brought up Right. to study abroad. Mm. Uh, for almost a year, I was in Europe,
um, Central and Eastern Europe, traveling
00:45:55
around, visiting places, and one of my
roommates was, um Uh, Ukrainian, and a lot of, a lot of the people that I studied
with were from Central and Eastern Europe,
00:46:06
and religious people also, Catholics. Very committed Christian people who,
um, uh, practice their faith daily.
00:46:13
You know, it's not like I, I was with
secular people or, or atheists, you know. But just the fact that I was exposed
to people who were also Christian
00:46:24
and religious, but in a different
culture, uh, shook my world because I realized, well, wait a minute.
00:46:37
If I keep to what I was taught, would
have to say that the way they are praying to God or their culture that
they live in, um, is inherently bad or
00:46:51
less than American homeschool culture. But I couldn't that with the idea of a universal
God all of us human beings,
00:47:06
who created different cultures. How can you say, Right. is better than your church where
you pray to God on that different
00:47:19
continent in a different language"? Uh, was the first time I
was exposed to that, really.
00:47:27
And traveling to different countries
and seeing different places and different people outside of my
bubble that I had grown up in,
00:47:37
that is what started me things Okay. Yeah. And then my mother died when I
was 20, right before I was 21.
00:47:48
It, it-- basically, things really started happening
for me in terms, now when I look
00:47:56
back, in terms of deconstructing. When I was 19, 20, 21, and then
it just all went from there, and
00:48:03
it was really connected to my mom
knowing that she was going to be dying pretty soon and preparing
for that, and then her passing away
00:48:17
my relationship with my controlling, um,
uh, extremely religious, father and all my
00:48:27
friends who were, who were part of that,
um, high control type of Catholicism, uh, uh, conservative, um, religion.
00:48:39
And I would say it, it was very slow. It was very slow, and I was never… It, it didn't
involve anger any point
00:48:56
Um, which some people-- I, I, I discovered
as an adult, some people are surprised by
00:49:01
that, especially when I speak to people
who are still very Catholic or very conservative, and I share with them I'm
not that anymore, but I grew up that way.
00:49:09
They assume that I'm angry Yeah. and I hate people who are still religious, Yeah.
00:49:16
and that's not the case at all Yeah. Mm-hmm. for me. Um, the slowly moving away Yeah.
00:49:23
Actually was… had a lot more very deep
sadness and, um, pain more than anger I because I was feeling myself needing to
ask questions and finding out different
00:49:41
think-- and I feel like I kind of um, following where, relate in the loud about this period of my life before,
00:49:55
sense of was more like… grieving process 'cause I was grieving. I felt the old Liz was dying,
00:50:05
Right. that religion where I was because I tried. That's why it took a few years.
00:50:13
It was a process because I would
try to cram myself back into Mm-hmm. to, to where I was
00:50:18
Right. Like, I would try to go to church, or
I would go to a prayer meeting or t-try
00:50:27
to participate in these things with
my friend, people who I thought were my friends and my, my community, and
I would literally, um, not be able to
00:50:34
breathe, and I'd have to run out of the Yeah. Things like that were happening. Yeah.
00:50:40
Um, and I was very quiet about it because
I was still living, um, still living and
00:50:46
going to the very conservative university
and surrounded by religious people practicing their faith, and I figured out
very quickly that if I just didn't say
00:50:56
anything about anything, everyone assumes
that you believe the same as they do. 100%, yes.
00:51:04
all you gotta do is keep your mouth shut,
never share an opinion, just be quiet, and
00:51:09
everyone just assumes you're like them. Yeah. So I lived for, well, a good, I'd say
th-three or four years with r-very
00:51:18
religious people, very Catholic
people, and they had no idea that I was questioning my faith or that I
stopped going to mass every Sunday.
00:51:25
Mm-hmm. Like, I would miss Sundays or, Right. the type of people I was with, religion
and politics were the same thing.
00:51:39
So to them, the fact that I had an
Atlantic Monthly magazine that had articles about Obama that didn't call
him the Antichrist would cause them
00:51:50
to think that I was going through
Some kind of horrific crisis of faith and, and it was somehow connected
to God, and I would go to hell.
00:51:59
Those two things don't really go together,
but that's the culture that I was in.
00:52:03
That's-- and the culture
I grew up in, you know? Um, I wasn't with my father or family
members about not believing in the
00:52:16
Catholic Church anymore until I was… Mm, I was twenty-five. Twenty-five years old.
00:52:26
So it was a good six years into--
It, it was a six-year process to tell people, to tell m- you know, the
people closest, uh, around me, not
00:52:37
even that I was an atheist, not at all. Still believe in God, higher power, still
believe very strongly in morals, ethics.
00:52:45
Um, I can still see the, the good that
I got from the culture I grew up in. still aspects of the Catholic
Church I love, you know?
00:52:56
Um, I watched when the, when the po- I
watch when the popes are elected, and I get emotional and cry like, like a loser
at the, you know, in front of my laptop
00:53:06
watching the live Vatican City coverage. You know, uh, there… And there's a
lot-- My kids go to Catholic school.
00:53:14
Uh, if they would choose later in life
to, to become Catholic or religious or Christian or something, I'd will not
auto- I will not automatically say no.
00:53:24
Like, okay, well, that's their, Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's their journey. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:53:28
Yeah. But mine, th-this has been mine, Yeah. Yeah and, um, at this point, I'm
actually pretty proud of myself for
00:53:39
being able to see and
appreciate the positive. Yeah. Um, when I talk to my sister, I
have long talks with her sometimes.
00:53:50
I'm so thankful to have someone in my
life who knew me as a child, who, who I can bounce memories off of, or, you
know, we can have discussions about
00:53:59
our parents or the way we were raised. And, um, she'll say something, and
it will make me th- talk out, think
00:54:07
out loud about specific situations,
and then we will mutually come to a situation where we're like, "Oh, well,
actually, that was kind of f*cked up."
00:54:17
Yeah. Like what that priest said or did or
what we were taught to believe or the way
00:54:22
Right. It is not, um, godly. Right. way, that's the way it was or
th- and that's the way it is.
00:54:34
Or, you know, I'll meet people like
you who will tell me to, um, When Religion Hurts You, the book that,
00:54:40
I was gonna say, that's a great resource. the, for book club. Um, when that was, when, when I f- You
know, when you said, "Oh, this is the book
00:54:48
we're reading," and we had to get it, I'm
like, "Uh, okay." I, I didn't, I didn't
00:54:53
consider myself to have religious trauma
because I'm like, "Ah, I had a pretty good experience overall with religion
even though I'm not in it anymore." And
00:55:01
then I read the book, and it was ugly
crying revelations like every three Same. Same experience, yeah.
00:55:09
I- that book is fantastic, yeah, for
anyone listening who hasn't read it, When Religion Hurts You, Dr. Laura Anderson.
00:55:16
Um, that book is, oh my gosh, yeah. It, like, it, it just, it lays it out
in a way that I think, like, it gives
00:55:23
names to those emotions that you're
feeling, and I think that's what is so powerful about it, because it just, for
so long you feel like, or at least for
00:55:33
me, I felt like I was crazy, like I was
alone, like I was like, "Who, who else is ex- no one else is experiencing this.
00:55:39
This is my own Yeah. isolation, my own whatever." And then
to finally have names to it, and then to
00:55:46
have people also read that book, and them
say, "Oh my gosh, I feel the same way."
00:55:52
Even people I know who are still religious
read that and go, "Oh my gosh, I, I know
00:55:58
this, I see this, I experience this." Mm. And then to d- wanna
do something about it.
00:56:04
Like, okay, cool. Now you understand. You're starting to grasp, and you start to
have people who start to, like- understand
00:56:12
this is what, like, I'm experiencing. I'm not alone in this. I actually can talk
about it to other people.
00:56:18
There's words for it, um, in a way
that, like, actually, like, makes sense. And yeah, I just think, I think
that's what's so powerful, and that's
00:56:26
where, like, the ugly crying comes
in, 'cause it's just, like, for the first time, it's like, okay, like,
I feel understood in a lot of ways.
00:56:34
Yeah. Like th- there, there would be
whole chapters where you could put my name Liz in place of the name
of the, the, the girl she's talking
00:56:43
Right. completely accurate. And, and that, to be
honest, that shocked me. I, I wasn't expecting that.
00:56:52
Yeah. because like I said, I, I was
never… I- nothing really extreme Yeah. ever done to me,
00:57:02
Yeah. Uh, to make me be anti-religion
or anti-Catholic, you know. And I have friends, I have friends
who I went to university with,
00:57:12
um, who did go through that. They were sexually abused or, or
they were attacked or horrible things
00:57:18
were done to them, horrible things. Mm-hmm. But that book helped me to realize that
00:57:26
there are those small, those small
things that y- you just get used to, especially as a child you grow up in
that, and you think that's normal.
00:57:35
Yeah. And then it's not until much
later that you realize, "No. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no."
00:57:40
I, I don't know how the Catholic Church
is, but I know in, in Evangelical Christianity, your story, your testimonial
is, like, one of the key components
00:57:53
of, like, you being able to evangelize
to people, is, like, how… Right, so, like, how, how did Jesus save you?
00:58:00
What did he save you from, right? And so a lot of the things that get
pushed out there is, like, the people
00:58:05
who have those, like, crazy drug
stories, the sexual abuse stories. They have the insane stories, and then
it's like, "Jesus came in and, and
00:58:13
filled me and healed me and did all of
these things." Again, it, it's… But, so for someone like me, who, like you,
I don't necessarily have the stories of,
00:58:23
like, I don't feel like I was abused or
I, you know, I didn't experience this, or, like, I don't have a drug problem.
00:58:29
I don't have a drinking problem. I don't have any of that. So to me, my story for
so long was just boring.
00:58:34
I just was like, it's not, they're
never gonna put it on stage. It's never, it doesn't hold water.
00:58:41
Right. And, and to some degree, yeah, my life
is just very boring and normal, and,
00:58:45
like, yeah, it's not really worthy of
a, of a movie, which is totally fine. But Yeah.
00:58:51
but every story has a component to
it that is valuable to somebody, and it's valuable to share.
00:58:58
And so when that shifted in my brain
of, like, no, these, my story is worth telling and it is worth expressing
and, and things like that, it just It,
00:59:10
it kind of made me realize, like, how
much the church, like, puts so much value on this thing and, uh, a value
on, like, persecution happening to you.
00:59:23
Which in reality I was like, no, the
value is, like, in just the story itself. It has nothing to do with
what happens in the story.
00:59:30
It has to do with, like,
people relating to the story. That's what is the valuable piece there.
00:59:36
And I don't totally know where
I was gonna go with this. As I, as I started to ramble, I'm feel-
I'm having my Michael Scott moment of
00:59:41
like, uh, sometimes you start a sentence
and don't know where it's gonna go. Yeah.
00:59:45
but I think this show and, and
talking to people has helped me to realize a lot of that.
00:59:50
Like, my story has value. Your story, Liz, has value. And so, like, somebody listening
will get something out of something
00:59:57
that we said today, and will go, Yeah. "I relate to that. I'm seen, I'm heard."
You know, it's like I, you know…
01:00:03
And, and that alone makes
all this worth it, um, to me. Oh yeah. I mean, I'll forget the, the channel
exists, and I'll go a few months and not
01:00:13
watch any videos, and then the algo- the
almighty algorithm will, will bring up those Shorts, like you've been making
01:00:19
Yeah. like little snippets from videos. Um, and it happened to me a couple
days ago for, um… Was it DL that you
01:00:26
Yes, I just had DL, yeah. It was a Hmm. Of finding out that someone else uh,
the sharing your story and realizing
01:00:38
you're not alone realizing that other
people have had these experiences. Where she's talking about on
the family or y'all were talking
01:00:45
about Adventures in Odyssey. Um, and it was just mind-blowing to me. And I went and I w- had to watch the
whole interview, and then at the end where
01:00:56
she says that all of us have to, uh, I
forget the exact way she put it about like we're, it's okay to, to, to be that
child and to, and to accept that those
01:01:08
things happen to you, uh, and to, and to
love yourself and, and accept that and,
01:01:15
and, uh, uh, again, the w- the words,
the way, the way she said it exactly her, uh, is escaping me at the moment.
01:01:24
But it made me cry. Yeah. I had to pause the video and start
crying because I felt that so deeply.
01:01:30
the things that DL was saying, especially
around that, um, it, it was so interesting
01:01:36
because, like, the explanation of, like,
ex- being able to look at your, your little kid self, and I know that this,
this very, like- It's a therapy thing.
01:01:46
It's, it's what, uh, if you go
to therapy, they'll always talk about healing the inner child.
01:01:51
But it's like, it really is that thing
of being able to look back at that kid who was going through these things, who
was like, didn't always have the words
01:01:58
or the understanding, and so was latching
onto these ideas, and, and be able to look back at that kid and say, "No, it's
okay." Like, "It, it's gonna be okay.
01:02:06
It's okay that you believe this
right now." Like, it's not, you know, it, you know, you're safe,
you're loved, you know, you didn't
01:02:12
know better, you didn't whatever. It just, it, it's, it's healing in a lot
of ways, and I know that that probably
01:02:21
sounds super corny to a lot of people. But it just, it really is the thing
that I think shifts so many people,
01:02:27
is when we start to go back and
heal those traumas that existed, Hmm. Then we can start to really, like,
live life in the present in a, in a
01:02:37
lot of ways because, like, that no
longer is holding us back, right? It's, it, we let the chains fall off.
01:02:44
We, you know, whatever it is, it's
like that's no longer dictating how we exist in the world.
01:02:49
And so, and that's a whole
process in and of itself. You know? Ugh, yeah. Yeah. Like you were saying with deconstruction,
it's, like, been years, and it wasn't even
01:02:58
until two years ago, you know, it's been
a long time of you questioning and asking
01:03:04
these things, and it wasn't even until two
years ago that you feel like you even had,
01:03:06
like, the words to start to put to, like,
oh, this is what I've been experiencing.
01:03:11
Exactly, yeah. Uh, and a lot of that time I thought
I was completely alone because
01:03:17
the, um, being raised in such, uh, Yeah. And having every aspect of my life,
um, connected to religion, like the
01:03:29
curriculum you mentioned earlier. I mean, every subject, it didn't matter
what it was, it was tied to the Catholic
01:03:34
Church somehow, to, to Jesus and
history and, and, uh, blah, blah, blah. Um, and then to, you know, to feel like
that you're waking up from that or you're,
01:03:50
you're trying to find your way through
that, uh, to, to where you are, to try to understand yourself and to try to
understand what the world is like, and
01:04:02
feeling the guilt of doing or saying
things or believing things that you were taught were wrong and sins, that's hard,
01:04:16
Yeah and it's very isolating. extremely isolating. And so the power when you, you
find other people who are actually
01:04:25
through this similar thing that
you are, if not the same thing, who, who-- or have been through it,
01:04:31
Right. I, that's the… feelings in the whole world. It's like, uh, when, when I discover
a new video on your channel and listen
01:04:44
to someone talk, I feel like a little
kid again who just made a best friend. Like I-- It's, it's the feeling where
I wanna go, "Mommy, mommy, mommy, I
01:04:52
have a new friend," or, "Oh my gosh,
you can't believe what they just said." My hu- I wanna share it with
my husband or, anyone in my life, but
01:05:00
the thing is, they don't understand
because they didn't live through that. They, they want to…
01:05:06
They, they're happy for me because
they love me and, you know, they, they, they see the joy it brings me or
the help, they, they don't understand
01:05:14
it because they didn't live it. Yeah. I think that's been the biggest part about
doing this show, has been the fact that
01:05:21
it's like, yeah, for a lot of us, our
spouses or our partners, they don't, they didn't live it, so they have, you know,
their own things that they went through.
01:05:30
And so, yeah, they can't always relate. Um, but it is interesting to find those
people that it's like, "Oh my gosh,"
01:05:37
like, "I feel seen," like you were saying. "I feel heard." You know, "I relate
to that." And, and I love the analogy
01:05:43
of, like, wanting to run home and
be like, "Mom, I just, I just found my new best friend." You know,
it's like that's, that's very true.
01:05:48
I get off the phone with people
and I go, "Oh my gosh," like, "I just met somebody that I, I want
in my life for a very long time."
01:05:55
You know? And, and I think that's what's really
cool about the f- the, the people who
01:06:00
come on and wanna share their stories,
and even the, there's been a few people who haven't wanted to share their stories
but just have talked privately with me.
01:06:07
And, and, like, there is definitely a,
a shift happening where all these people are, are wanting to tell their story and
find those people, because a lot of us,
01:06:16
even if, like you said earlier, we grew up
in a homeschool community that, you know,
01:06:21
we weren't necessarily isolated in the
sense of, like, we didn't not have people,
01:06:25
but there is an isolation that just
naturally comes with the homeschool world. And, like, so finally, I think people
are waking up and being like, "Oh, I'm
01:06:34
really not alone in all of the weirdness
that happened with my homeschool life." There is a billion of us.
01:06:42
And it's just a matter of us all
finding each other and connecting. each other. Yeah.
01:06:47
So, oh my gosh. Liz, is there anything else? I, we, this has been a great conversation.
01:06:53
I, I love where we've been able to go and,
and talking about where we are now even,
01:06:58
and, and stuff, but is there anything else
you wanna touch on before I let you go?
01:07:03
honestly, n- uh, no. Although I do wanna say, before we
started recording, I shared with you
01:07:09
that I was really nervous about o- on
religion specifically because, uh, I was fine in our first interview with talking
about, you know, my general homeschool
01:07:19
background and what I lived through. But talking about the subject of being
raised so religious and then being
01:07:28
religious anymore, because I'm not. I don't even know if I mentioned that. I don't go to church.
01:07:34
Um, I would not consider myself
a specific faith, but if somebody pushed me, I would say I'm culturally
Catholic, culturally Christian.
01:07:43
Yeah. Um, but my kids, my kids
don't know these things. My kids don't know what a rosary is.
01:07:51
They've never been to a, a mass. You know, they, they go to-- Well, they
go to a Catholic church, so I mean, a
01:07:56
Catholic school, so they get a few little
things, but nowhere near the level. I mean, like night and day compared to
the, the religious household I grew up in.
01:08:09
Um, anyways, I was nervous about talking
about it and how people would view it or
01:08:16
um, I would bring negativity or something. I have to say, at the end of this
conversation, I feel really good.
01:08:25
I feel, I f- I feel good about it. That's good. That's I'm glad, I'm glad we talked.
01:08:29
I don't, I don't feel like it was, uh,
dark or, or negative or anything like Yeah.
01:08:35
I think that's what I strive for with
the show is I, I want people to feel free to come on and talk about their
experience, and that's, that's again why
01:08:46
the tagline of the show is, like, the
good, the bad, and the ugly is, like, because it's hard, because there will
be people who listen and go, "Well,
01:08:56
you know, religion didn't hurt you,
people hurt you," or, you know, or, "You just don't understand," or whatever.
01:09:01
That's just gonna happen. That's just … People will think that. But the reality is, and, and, you know,
everyone is entitled to their beliefs.
01:09:09
Everyone is entitled to, you know,
to, to think the things that they think, and, and that's okay, and,
and we can have open dialogue about
01:09:18
those things, and I think that
that's, like, the beauty of this show. And, like, so, you know, when people
come on, you know, I sometimes get
01:09:26
feedback of people who are like, "I
wish you would highlight more positive things." And that's like, but sometimes
we are highlighting positive things,
01:09:32
but you're maybe not hearing it from
the context of it being a positive thing because, you know- We've moved
on from it, or we've, you know,
01:09:42
it, it's not that a lot of us look Like you said, you didn't, you're not
looking back at religion and angry at it.
01:09:48
You know, you weren't
angry as you deconstructed. You just were, like, questioning things.
01:09:53
It's very different than a lot of people,
and I don't think that that's a negative.
01:09:56
That's a positive. That, that's Liz growing into
being who Liz is today, you know?
01:10:00
And that's something that I think
everyone should strive for, is continuing to grow as a person.
01:10:04
And so again, thank you for coming on. Thank you for being willing to share. I'm glad that even though you were
nervous, uh, we got through it.
01:10:13
Um, It's good. It's yeah. I feel great right Yeah. And to the audience, I do wanna
recommend a couple of books.
01:10:19
Like Liz, Liz mentioned earlier,
When Religion Hurts You, great book. Definitely, like, was
eye-opening for myself.
01:10:26
We, we read it k- um, kinda together
for book club, which I don't know when this episode is totally coming
out, but the Ex-Homeschooler Book
01:10:34
Club is, like, making a comeback. Next book on the list is
Homeschooled by Stefan Merrill Block.
01:10:40
And so depending on when this comes
out, uh, we may have already read it, we may be in the middle of
reading it, but it is a great read.
01:10:45
Um, and it, down the line it is
something that I wanna incorporate more into the homeschool, into what we're
doing here on the show, is book club
01:10:53
and having conversations around it. And so, um, so there's that. And then the other book I would
recommend is The Body Keeps the Score.
01:11:00
It's a little bit of an older
book, it's definitely a heavier book, um, but it is about trauma,
and it talks about, like, how your
01:11:06
body stores those types of things. And so, uh, again, just, like, another
couple resources to check out if
01:11:13
you're a book lover like Liz and I. Um, Yeah. So with that, I'm gonna let you go, Liz.
01:11:20
Thank you again for coming on the show. I really appreciate you. And, uh, to the audience, love you guys.
01:11:26
Do all of the internet things
that you know how to do. Like the video, comment, subscribe, share
it with a friend, all of the things.
01:11:33
And until we see you next time, peace.