00:04:17.380I'm so in the thick of it with little kids.
00:04:20.200I've got a six, a four, and a one that my grandma days seem real far away.
00:04:26.280Well, and I let me commend you to be able to write and create anything else other than human beings at this point in your life is incredible.
00:04:35.040Thank you. Thank you. And some days it feels impossible. And so I, yes, I appreciate, I appreciate all of those words. I really, really do.
00:04:44.780I want to, I want to go back to a little bit of what you were saying, just so our audience understands better. When you say high control, what does that mean?
00:04:54.780that is a broad term that we were using in the there's a segment online that considers ourselves
00:05:02.500ex-evangelical that we are deconstructing our faith and high control religion is a phrase that
00:05:08.240we use to describe the kind of traditions that we come from that are not as clear as denominational
00:05:14.620lines so when we have somebody from a baptist background relating to something that the
00:05:19.200fundamentalist lds church espouses those are two groups that don't think the other is a real
00:05:24.520Christian, but we actually have the same experiences. And so when you're looking at a
00:05:30.200power dynamic in religion that is high control in every way, it's a power structure that's usually
00:05:36.020top down. There's an authoritarianism there. There's an understood subjugation of women.
00:05:41.680And the life choices that you make will be controlled and determined by your religious0.87
00:05:46.860belief. And so are you religious today? What would you consider yourself now?
00:05:57.180I call myself spiritually private today. That is a very careful answer because I grew up in
00:06:03.780a tradition that, number one, embraces asking people deeply personal questions about their
00:06:10.380core beliefs. That's what evangelism is, that it's hard, is that you're going to approach
00:06:15.200strangers and ask them about their eternity and their deepest faith. Also, because I have
00:06:21.240a fundamentalist background, I resist putting myself into any kind of binary or box. I love
00:06:26.940binaries and boxes. They make me feel safe. That's what fundamentalism does. It takes chaos and
00:06:32.660creates order. So it's very important to me in recovery to avoid putting myself into that kind
00:06:38.020of space. And also faith is very fluid and it grows and evolves as we grow and evolve. And I
00:06:43.920want to allow some room for that. So saying that I'm spiritually private sends a message also that
00:06:51.040we get to respect this autonomy in one another. And it provides me that safety.
00:06:58.300Yeah, I love that answer. And I ask because I get so many messages from Christian women who say
00:07:06.640they so often feel attacked by mainstream media. And they're like, I'm just this regular Christian
00:07:13.120lady that like, you know, I'm Episcopal, I'm Lutheran, I go to the church, but we don't see
00:07:18.700enough of me in the world. So thank you for having different kinds of opinions on when we're not
00:07:26.560attacking each other. And I'm like, well, that would be, it would be a lovely world if we could
00:07:31.200all just have these conversations without attacking each other. And I try to be really
00:07:35.860open about my own faith. I was raised Catholic light. So, you know, since we went to church for
00:07:44.500midnight mass and sometimes Easter, and that's about it. And then I went to all girls Catholic
00:07:50.940school in high school, which was a shock to the system, but it was because I was a 13 year old
00:07:56.500juvenile delinquent in middle school. And we had to do things like pray for our unborn babies and
00:08:03.600all of the babies that may be aborted in the world, which was shocking to me. And now I'm
00:08:08.560fairly agnostic and I'm very open about that. But I love the idea of being spiritual and I love the
00:08:14.400idea of faith. I just fucking hate the patriarchy. And that is what I rub up against with mostly0.99
00:08:21.980every religion, major religion on the planet. I wrote a whole book called If Nuns Ruled the World.0.81
00:08:27.060I love Catholic nuns. I think many of them are badass feminists. But the patriarchy, they get me every time, every time. And so that's where I am. And I just like I like to put it all out there so that listeners never think I'm trying to push anything on anyone. I'm like, this is me. This is what I think. Now let's talk about this.1.00
00:09:06.280And one of the problems is that the faith-based groups have not done a good job of cleaning
00:09:11.320their house, and they have been taken over by extremists.
00:09:14.920So that's why it's very important we have these conversations.
00:09:17.820the patriarchy is a big, big umbrella term for some very strategic and specific dominionists
00:09:27.620in America. They have an agenda. They share it. They congregate. It's open every single Sunday.
00:09:33.340They talk about this. It's something that happened right under America's nose. And if we don't talk
00:09:39.960about it, we're going to lose our ability to talk about it. So that's my log on the fire to burn
00:09:45.600patriarchy down is that I lived the most extreme version of this and I will tell.
00:09:51.960Yeah. Yeah. And, and you did live the most extreme version of this. I don't want you0.87
00:09:58.480to give away anything from, from your wonderful book, but what did the most extreme version of
00:10:06.300this look like for you without giving away the whole thing?
00:10:11.520Sure. Well, and I do give away a lot online. And I was in Shiny Happy People and a lot came out in that too on Amazon. So the high points are definitely there. In the 90s, through primarily the homeschooling movement, a very conservative brand of Christianity found a foothold.
00:10:31.000I was becoming a young wife and mother at that time.
00:10:33.680So I bought in as a way to be a better wife and mother, solve some problems in my marriage.
00:10:40.520Fundamentalism always offers solutions to these problems.
00:10:45.380They promise to take your chaos and make it glorify God and be orderly and calming to the nervous system.
00:20:11.740This can this this can be a beautiful time for you.
00:20:15.020And like you said, that once you get inside of it, that's when the abuse starts.
00:20:21.120One of the most insidious things about it, though, is that when you pull the lens back even further, you see how it's a world of their own making.
00:20:28.340So the world is a scary place right now, and it makes you want to keep your baby safe.0.73
00:20:33.180But if we take a look at why the world is scary right now, we look, we immediately see moms don't
00:20:38.340have the resources that they need. There's no health care. They took away abortive health care.1.00
00:20:42.260There's no safe, like social security is going away. There's wars fought in different places.
00:20:48.040They're making it that way. So they kind of do, and I say they, the patriarchal leadership,
00:20:53.820they kind of do it in tandem. The message to women is, well, if you want to be safe,
00:20:58.920you got to come home and you need to have more babies. And then they elevate it to a calling1.00
00:21:05.220so that any ambition and frustration that you feel you can then medicate with by reminding
00:21:10.480yourself that this is the highest calling you can have on your life. And they put this religiosity
00:21:15.960onto it. And at the same time, they're making our world less secure, more frightening. And so it0.90
00:21:22.980drives us that way. Their ultimate goal is to get women out of the workforce. They don't want women1.00
00:21:27.360in the workforce. They don't want to share leadership with women. They can't force us home.1.00
00:21:32.400What they have to do is get other women to convince us to come home. And I love home. Like,0.91
00:21:36.920I don't want to say bad things about home. Home is great. But home can be a prison if that's the
00:21:43.100only option that you have in your life. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. And that's what I say when I talk
00:21:52.320about why do I think that trad wife content is dangerous? And I think because it is glorifying0.97
00:22:01.440women giving up their agency and women giving up their power and saying, oh, it's easy for you to
00:22:07.760stay home. So why would you need childcare? Why would you need systemic help? Why would you need0.99
00:22:13.080the government to actually care for women and children? And by making this life look1.00
00:22:19.220so beautiful and easy. That's the bait. That's right. You're absolutely right. But it's to an
00:22:28.180end. They don't just want you to not have childcare and not have options because they're
00:22:33.360meanie butts. They're not just like big bad monster guys that just don't think women deserve0.99
00:22:39.440nice things. They have to eliminate those things because that's part of their world order that they1.00
00:22:44.420have for dominionism. And if you back this up and you look at the religious roots of it,0.63
00:22:48.760it's called the seven mountains mandate. And it's a very specific strategy to take religious
00:22:55.560dominion of America and then the globe. They can't, they can't have any of that stuff in the0.90
00:23:02.500way. They can't, they can't have a socialistic society where people's needs are met because
00:23:07.220they need an authoritative power structure in order to meet their goals. So when you have like
00:23:13.020the rise of authoritarianism, suddenly it becomes really important that we protect other people's
00:23:20.560rights to do something that we may not choose for ourselves. Women can still choose to be home with
00:23:25.480your babies, but you should vote in a way that protects someone else's right to have choices1.00
00:23:31.060because they don't have the same life that you have. And one of the things that happens in
00:23:36.780religious fundamentalism is they will take our religious freedom and they will exploit it for
00:23:41.060their own benefit. They want religious freedom only to gain power so that they can then take0.92
00:23:46.480away yours because their future does not have religious freedom. We are all one kind. We are
00:23:51.560all one Christian in their vision. And we know this because we look at the way they live. That's
00:23:56.780the really important thing that makes this not a conspiracy theory or something that's like just
00:24:01.560conjured. We can just look at the way they live. And I do believe deeply because I've lived it that
00:24:07.440the way they run their homes is the way they want to run the country. So if you want to see what
00:24:12.480it's like to be under their headship, you have to listen to the people who live in their homes,
00:24:16.320which means you have to center survivors of religious trauma. They're the ones that are
00:24:20.460going to tell you what it's like to live in that life. And you write so beautifully about what it
00:24:26.780was like to live in that kind of life. Another one of your essays on Substack that I loved was
00:24:33.960the chronic fatigue of the trad wife life. Can I just read a couple of lines of it for our0.95
00:24:41.280listeners who haven't read it yet? This happened every day at 3 p.m. 18 years ago. Because of the
00:24:48.160work I did, it also happened at 3 p.m. every day this week. The fatigue starts at the back of my
00:24:55.160throat, which is also the front of my cervical spine. My cheeks hollow as my mouth waters hot
00:25:01.280with the tang of anxiety. My shoulders droop. The wave of exhaustion progresses over my body
00:25:08.620like the lengthening shadow of late afternoon. You're such a good writer, by the way. That's
00:25:16.120beautiful. But talk to me about that. Talk to me about the chronic fatigue of the Tradwifelite.
00:25:22.440So I spend a lot of time with religious trauma survivors, and we all come away from that life
00:25:28.340with a host of autoimmune symptoms, chronic fatigue, exhaustion, body memory. And you've
00:25:36.280probably heard the phrase, the body keeps the score in relation to trauma. It's also a very
00:25:40.540well-known book. But the body memory of how your system, your nervous system in particular,
00:25:48.060records and reacts to the stresses, it isn't something that leaves you very easily and without
00:25:53.980a lot of treatment. So complex PTSD is what we're wearing. It's what we carry with us. And so in
00:26:00.640that piece, I was reflecting how writing about the child life that week was also calling back in my
00:26:07.520body to what it was like every afternoon when I knew daddy's about to be home. And for me, that
00:26:13.160meant I could be in really big trouble. I could be beaten. I could be spanked. I could be scolded.
00:26:19.700I needed to have everything perfect so here's where the imagery of the trad wife life that you
00:26:25.720might have encountered online comes in because that's showtime when daddy walks in the door
00:26:31.500is showtime you better have all your children behaving there is no like no there's no exhausted
00:26:38.280mother handing off a baby when dad walks in because you finally have your partner at home
00:26:42.840it's the reverse opposite of that every child must be clean well behaved you're going to report on
00:26:47.660your day you're going to serve his needs and all of his creature comforts you're not going to
00:26:53.720inundate him with your problems or what you encountered in the day because that is not what
00:26:58.820is important to him what he needs is to relax after he's had a long hard day at work um so it's
00:27:04.960not like the 50s housewife with the drink in hand although i suppose some secular trad wives might
00:27:09.620be doing that the christian trad wives don't do the drink part um but they do everything else i1.00
00:27:14.780I mean, there could be sexual safety.0.99
00:27:17.220You know, as soon as you walk in the door, it could be whatever it is, whatever he wants.
00:27:21.340And so that takes a panic toll, adrenaline, cortisol.
00:27:28.900The fact there are consequences for behaviors during the day takes a toll.
00:27:35.560So the exhaustion is something that stays in your body and can mask and cause other physical symptoms, you know, that are somebody may go to the doctor and say,
00:27:44.780I'm having this physical symptom and not ever trace it back to the traumatic
00:28:14.500I mean, I remember that that well, that yes, I and, you know, the body also desperately wants to forget about it because otherwise we wouldn't keep having babies.
00:28:27.460But I mean, now I have to say, honestly, now that I've hit 14 months with what will absolutely be my last child because we got my husband snipped.
00:28:39.020And I use that language because I'm like, it's like I just took him to the vet and I just snipped it.
00:32:13.840With no minimums, no monthly fees, and 100 free trades,
00:32:17.260T.D. Easy Trade taps into that instinct because you are made to trade and T.D. Easy Trade is made to help.
00:32:24.660How much can you tell us about how you personally escaped from this life?
00:32:31.020Yeah, this this part is shared in depth in other places.
00:32:36.300But I mean, the the high points of it are that I've gotten excommunicated because I wrote about Mary and the mother of Jesus.
00:32:46.400um and i wasn't supposed to be writing in my own name i wasn't supposed to be writing at all i had
00:32:51.800a very well trafficked lifestyle blog at the time um when blogging was brand new there wasn't a
00:32:57.080thing called an algorithm yet there you know it was it was a free-for-all and um my blog was called
00:33:02.920living deliberately and it got thousands of hits a day and so it was you know doing well and um
00:33:08.640that drove the elders pretty crazy so i got i was excommunicated without the external power
00:33:17.080structure of elders and a pastor and church you know that was um keeping us in line my husband
00:33:25.320who was very mentally ill also not coping very well as a patriarch because there's a whole
00:33:30.840whole line of dialogue to have about this with how the men suffer in patriarchy um especially
00:33:37.880if they aren't the alpha male you know the one on top so he wasn't doing well and he couldn't cope
00:33:43.380with um that lack of external um control and several months passed and things got
00:33:52.100as close to hell on earth as it can get um and then there was a midnight um hostage situation
00:33:59.860four hours of being held hostage and um a tiny little window where i was there was a magical
00:34:06.260opening in the universe and a voice in my heart that said, run. And so I grabbed my kids out of
00:34:11.420their bed and we ran. It's fucking brave is, is, is what it is. And I, I wanted to ask that0.97
00:34:19.320because I do think that there are a lot of women who are in a similar situation that you were in
00:34:27.840who, who do feel hopeless, who are like, I can't leave. There's not a way out. I don't,
00:34:33.200I don't see the path out. And I'm sure that you've encountered this with all of the work
00:34:39.700that you've done with survivors. But just hearing that someone else did it is sometimes enough to
00:34:46.200start making your own way. Have you experienced that with other women that you've worked with?
00:34:51.420Yeah. My whole hope with writing my story was that I would help one woman who was in her kitchen.
00:34:58.460I have this like kind of image where she picks a book up at Walmart or a target, like someplace she shops anyway, because she probably doesn't get to go to a bookstore. And she picks it up and throws it in her cart and she gets to read it. And something I say gives her enough of a model for how it can happen and how you can recover, because you have to kind of believe that there's something better out there for you when you're that desperate.
00:35:23.560I knew I was on the verge of becoming another murder-suicide story on the cover of People
00:35:53.560And that has happened. I've heard from those women as a result of my work online. So I know I didn't need the book coming out for that to happen. But that is the hope for outcome. That's why I went for a traditional publishing route. I want a wide distribution for my story.0.59
00:36:07.800I have a highly relevant story because the tradition I come from is what's rising to power in America right now. And it is very important that the average, average Christian that we started talking about at the beginning of this interview understands what's happening.
00:36:26.000Like this vote, if you vote for Donald Trump this election, it may be the last vote you ever cast because authoritative government systems do not allow, they're not pro-democracy.
00:36:38.240And they floated head of household voting at the last RNC.
00:36:42.780I am not, I was not allowed to vote when I was in this world.0.97
00:36:46.520There was no, there was no voting for women.0.99
00:36:49.400So, and listening, listening to that and really understanding that's the stake.
00:36:53.960It's not like, well, do you like this candidate or not?
00:37:03.800When was the first time you got to vote?
00:37:06.880Well, I voted as a young woman before we had that kind of teaching in our home.
00:37:14.940So it was the Clinton, which one was it?
00:37:18.340Clinton Gore with, I voted in that election, Al Gore, but I didn't get to vote for him,
00:37:23.680of course i was that was my secret but then i wasn't because we were in something called
00:37:30.500federalist marriage which is another brand of fundamentalism um from doug wilson out in moscow0.94
00:37:36.000idaho um and the women in that tradition only vote when they need the popular vote which they're
00:37:43.100trying to do away with so it's you know it'll it's a big complicated issue he would know he
00:37:50.700said i could vote if i would vote the way he voted you can't have a wife that will vote differently
00:37:54.940than her husband that's the big theological argument for it but really it's to eliminate
00:38:00.360women voters it's a go back to the times before suffrage so um he knew he would know that i was
00:38:06.980lying i couldn't vote for pat robertson i couldn't do it and so i was not allowed to vote yeah yeah
00:38:15.400Yeah. I mean, it's just the chapter before Handmaid's Tale started, just that one chapter before Atwood started writing. That's really what it feels like.
00:38:26.820I got chills when you talked about that woman who might be walking through Walmart and might see your book and then secretly put it in her shopping cart.
00:38:36.320I know that we have some traditional wives who listen to this show and who listen to this show, you know, very, there are some who listen to this show just so they can get angry with me.
00:38:49.700But I know that there are some who listen to this show and appreciate a lot of the messages that they get here.
00:38:56.880What do you want to tell those women who are still stuck in this world?
00:39:02.540hmm i think about this because i i have to think about like well what would have reached me
00:39:09.160um and what did reach me ultimately was that um knowing that the world out here is not anything
00:39:16.740like what they told me it would be i am not alone i've never been alone like a community of people
00:39:23.120rose up around me to help me um and i and they didn't pressure me with their ideologies like i
00:39:29.700had come from a religious background where I was told what to think and believe from my earliest
00:39:34.120childhood days. Out here, I was allowed to think for myself and that at the pace that I needed.
00:39:40.320So leaving is not necessarily a wholesale change of your mind on everything. It's about being safe
00:39:45.820and learning to have your autonomy respected and in turn respect others' autonomy.
00:39:53.540The big thing that drove me out was my children. I did not want to raise the next generation of
00:39:58.780patriarchs and I did not want to raise girls who thought it was okay to accept abuse. And I
00:40:05.700recognized my power as a mother was to break a cycle and that it could stop with me. And it did
00:40:11.500stop with me. My family line, my children are happy, healthy adults, and they're not fundamentalists
00:40:17.720today because their mom left. And I know that there's a stigma when you're in that world of
00:40:23.280being the one who leaves. You didn't break your marriage. You didn't break your belief system.
00:40:30.100It was already broken. What you're saying is this stops with me and we're going to do it
00:40:35.480differently out here. So yeah, I think I said something in shiny, heavy people that a lot of
00:40:43.200people resonated with and it's that the universe will catch you. And it's true. It's true. I've
00:40:49.200been supported every single step of the way. That is all that we have for today. I am in awe
00:40:56.560of Tia and everything that she has done and everything that she is doing. She is a force
00:41:04.420of a woman and a human in the world. You can pre-order her book now, A Well-Trained Wife,0.99
00:41:12.480My Escape from Christian Patriarchy. It comes out in August, but if you need more Tia immediately,
00:41:20.480she is very online, and her work is incredible. You can find her on the Instagram,
00:41:27.980at Tia Levings Writer. Her website is tialevings.com, and her substack is called The Anti-Fundamentalist.
00:41:38.880Thank you for being here with us today. Go have a great one. Do something nice for yourself. You deserve it.
00:42:08.880I want to date with Rawls, Carty says.