Podcast: The Revelation Project Podcast Host(s): Monica Guest(s): Tia ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Monica (Host) | 00:00:03 to 00:00:34 Welcome to the Revelation Project podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a Revelation project, and what gets revealed gets healed. You hello, dear listener, and welcome to another episode of The Revelation Project. Today I'm with Tia Levingsgs. Monica (Host) | 00:00:35 to 00:01:02 Tia is an author and thought leader who shines a light on the abuses in Christian fundamentalism and high control religion. She supports survivors of religious trauma. You can find her online at tia Levings's writer. And her memoir, A Well Trained Wife, releases with St. Martin's Press in 2024, which I cannot wait to get it. Monica (Host) | 00:01:02 to 00:01:08 Welcome, Tia. Tia (Guest) | Hi. Thank you so much. Monica (Host) | 00:01:08 to 00:02:06 I'm like, hi. It's so great to finally be with you because I stumbled across your work on Instagram, as one does, and I became obsessed with listening to what you were talking about because while I did not grow up in Christian fundamentalism, I did grow up in what I would call a high control religion. And there are so many similarities. And I recently just got back from actually going to a funeral where I grew up. Of course, my closest family cousins are all deeply I would say I want to say spiritual because they really are very spiritual and their faith kind of is very anchored to the Catholic Church. Monica (Host) | 00:02:07 to 00:03:33 And that was something that I decided for myself, kind of as a teenager that I could no longer kind of be a part of. But the reason I really wanted to bring you on today is because the way that you describe how this type of indoctrination happens through fear, obedience, control, is so I can liken it so much to how I talk about the trance of unworthiness and this micro dosing of messages over time. And I also have done episodes which focus on features of this or different perspectives. And so I feel like the more we can create and normalize conversations about this, the more we can all see these parallels from a number of different points of view. Because I think the overarching system that kind of hides in plain sight, often where these become the branches of that particular I don't even want to use the word tree because it's a natural term and this is an entirely unnatural system, but that is the system of patriarchy. Monica (Host) | 00:03:34 to 00:04:19 And my listeners know that this is not about really anything having to do with men, per se, and men often are the beneficiaries of this hierarchical system. So I wanted to just have you on and really just congratulate you as well on your upcoming book, because how exciting. Yeah, it really is exciting. There's a lot the more I stepped into my ability to share what happened to me and with authenticity was the big work I had to do was being okay with being who I authentically am and let my story be what it is. The more survivors have risen up around me and that strengthens the story. Tia (Guest) | 00:04:19 to 00:04:53 So I do a lot of experience type sharing, like experience, strength and hope. But my position is from the inside out. So I came from such high control, rigid patriarchy that coops our culture, uses our cultural likeness as a vehicle to spread and in ways that when we speak to other survivors we can find commonality. But from the top down, it doesn't look like we're the same. We've been told we're not like other faiths constantly. Tia (Guest) | 00:04:53 to 00:05:15 We're not like them. We're not a cult, we're not like the Mormons, we're not like the Catholics. It's constantly us versus them. But when the survivors start speaking, we have the same experience. And when I was listening to your metaphor about the tree, the one that I envision a lot is more of a scaffolding exoskeleton, like a cage. Tia (Guest) | 00:05:15 to 00:05:44 Patriarchy is a cage and it contains our heart and soul and everything that keeps us, everything that's alive in this power structure. And I do believe that power is the root of it. It's the quest for power which they have chosen. I don't know if it requires it, but they have certainly chosen oppression as their method for control. So the character arc of my life has been stepping into my own power. Tia (Guest) | 00:05:44 to 00:06:06 And that's what I'm excited to share in my book, is how I got in and out of Christian patriarchy. It was a visceral escape that not everyone experiences. My story is extreme in that regard, but the way that I got into it is very common and relatable. And the way I got out of it is very common and relatable. What happened in the middle is my uniqueness story. Tia (Guest) | 00:06:06 to 00:06:30 But the book ends that's. A sisterhood. Yeah. And actually, why don't we start there? Tia is just kind of like understanding the beginning because I think that is a very kind of there are different entry points, but there's this kind of common thread about the beginning. Tia (Guest) | 00:06:31 to 00:07:05 Yeah. So when I tell the high level, nutshell condensed version of my story, I always ask listeners to have a little caveat that my first ten years I grew up on a farm in the woods and I had experiences with the divine and with liberal thought and humanity that are outside of religion. And that core ten year experience has been what I returned to. So if you can hold that off to the side. Because where my story starts for high control purposes is when I was ten. Tia (Guest) | 00:07:05 to 00:07:26 We moved to Florida and joined a Southern Baptist megachurch which was a mainstream evangelical church in America. Very recognizable to anyone familiar with American Christianity. My pastor was the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. We were wealthy and a wealthy, wealthy church. Wealthy congregation, white and powerful. Tia (Guest) | 00:07:26 to 00:07:51 We have eleven city blocks in Jacksonville, Florida. We dominate local politics. We were one of the first churches on TV. It was quite the way to grow up in the late eighty s and early ninety s the familiar traumatic points that listeners might align with purity culture, the teaching that I had one destiny and that was to be a wife and mother. Don't really need education for that reason. Tia (Guest) | 00:07:52 to 00:08:35 Obedience culture just really high control, but also a constant drilling of shame and unworthiness. Shame and unworthiness at the same time. In the timeline of my life, the country was going through a higher call to be political and the arc kind of overlaps. So through the Reagan years and into the Bush years, into the war and to the national Christian nationalism that was rising, that was happening on a national scale at the same time as it was in my church. I got married at 819 to the man that I thought God brought me. Tia (Guest) | 00:08:35 to 00:09:04 I didn't know him for very long, wasn't expected to know him for very long. My job was to not have sex before I got married, so my job was to get married quickly and we weren't really compatible, but we didn't spend any time trying to be compatible or investigating that. And who I was marrying was somebody who had very little control of his emotions. He did struggle with mental illness and a personality disorder and I would not find that out until after I was his wife. And I was in a culture where death was preferable to divorce. Tia (Guest) | 00:09:04 to 00:09:35 Like, you just cannot get divorced under any circumstances. So there was domestic abuse from the beginning and I didn't have language for it or an outlet. I had to learn how to support him and to make myself less abusable so that we could stay together for life. He was a theology buff and loved to study God's Word. So he felt drawn to Reformed theology, which was also rising in evangelicism in the mid to late 90s, early two thousand s. Tia (Guest) | 00:09:35 to 00:10:32 And so we moved from the Southern Baptist Church to a Reformed Baptist Church to a Presbyterian PCA to a Reformed Covenant Reformed Presbyterian Church, which is a separate denomination headed by a man named Doug Wilson in Idaho. That was a high control cult, like formal Covenant membership, formal excommunication and full shunning when you leave, which I was fully excommunicated and formally shunned. And it was a spanking cult of its life discipline, just not something that many people talk about. But I'm going to because it's the extreme conclusion of obedience culture in these circles. And then after I was excommunicated my ex husband he was my husband at the time we weren't divorced yet, flipped a mental switch and went into more darkness than I can fathom a human being going into. Tia (Guest) | 00:10:32 to 00:11:05 And eight months later we escaped at midnight after being held hostage, I took my kids and ran and ended up in Florida, ended up in hiding for a year about an eight year legal battle and trauma healing. Trauma recovery began shortly thereafter. So I spent about ten years in trauma therapy, coming back to myself, coming back into my strength and power, and started to write the book in 2016, after the 2016 election. And here we are. That's where we are today. Monica (Host) | 00:11:05 to 00:12:27 And here we are. I hear stories from women, extraordinary stories of darkness, abuse, subjugation, violence. And I often share about my own story, my own dark night of the soul, and how many times I feel like I had to face these shadow aspects of myself and my fears and almost get to this point. Where I had to choose between the truth that I needed to stand in in order to look myself in the mirror every every day or death. And I say that because it really does feel that way. Monica (Host) | 00:12:27 to 00:14:22 And yet you literally experienced not only the threat of kind of or the experience, the spiritual experience of kind of the ego annihilation, or what we would call a spiritual death, where we don't know when we're facing it that we're actually not going to die. But you also experienced the true threat, where literally your life was also at stake. And I think, my God, to experience the process of the reclamation of all of those parts of yourself that were so I'm just going to call it violated is like, to me such an incredible I'm like getting this image of a rubber band that is like stretched to the point of breaking and maybe even broke at points. But in the end, it's like it became this tension that then is launching this energetic spirit of healing and reclamation and revelation really revealing all of these ways that we can recover from this type of abuse. And if we so choose become the Balm and the Sav like our stories literally become the Elixir and the Alchemy. Monica (Host) | 00:14:22 to 00:15:01 For other people to then listen to embody and find their own story within it and find their own courage to do what needs to be done for their own lives. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. There was a deep, deep, deep spiritual process that was happening in that eight months that I was in the house between being excommunicated and when I left, and I was in a personal cry. I guess it started before that because the reason why I was excommunicated my formal excommunication was because I had gone to the library to study world religion and discovered female saints, and I wrote about them. Tia (Guest) | 00:15:01 to 00:15:28 And I was not supposed to write outside of my husband's name, and I was not supposed to speak for my family. And I was sure as hell not supposed to write about female saints and women that men venerated such as the Mother of God. Theotochos like, I was writing about Mary, but it got me in a lot of trouble. But the thing that drove me to go to the library in the first place and research these world religions was this desperation. And you touched on it when you said death of the ego. Tia (Guest) | 00:15:28 to 00:15:50 And I hit a place in my despair and suicidal ideation, which was my only way out. A divorce was not an option. So I was at a place in that way where I was fantasizing his death and I was fantasizing my own. And I had this confrontation with God. And I said anyone could do what I do. Tia (Guest) | 00:15:50 to 00:16:17 Anyone could be here. There's absolutely no reason why me, my personal, unique self, needs to be in this role, because everything that makes me me is not welcome. And what is the point in having a faith in a God that doesn't care to know my name and doesn't care to value what I bring to the table? I need to know that women have worth in God or I am leaving God. It was, like, kind of beyond the marriage relationship at that point. Tia (Guest) | 00:16:17 to 00:16:32 It was very I do see the rubber band snapping. It snapped. And I sat my ass on the ground, and I was like, I refuse to believe in you if you don't believe in me. And I went to the library and I got like, how do other people approach God? How do other faiths do this? Tia (Guest) | 00:16:32 to 00:17:25 Because I had no idea. And it became an undoing because to bring it back to parts work, I didn't discover ifs or parts work until about maybe two years ago. And it's given me a new language for understanding the ways I kind of reached in time and saved myself. Because when I was in that place and I was in utter despair and ready to bolt from everything, I had this seed of worthiness planted in me that said, it kind of rose up like a mighty anger that I am more than this and I am worth more than this and you cannot do this to me. And so I probably, in truth, participated in the darkness to some extent because that's where the real resistance set in. Tia (Guest) | 00:17:25 to 00:17:52 I was no longer really content to stay that way. I knew I wanted to live. I didn't know how I was going to live, but I knew I deserved to live. And that subtle shift of deserving to live is what fueled everything the escape, the ongoing recovery, all the way through to the reason why I speak today. I know that my story is my power. Tia (Guest) | 00:17:53 to 00:18:18 I lived it for a reason. And that reason is to help other people break free from their own bondage and stories. Like, they need to understand what's going on behind closed doors. And I'm somebody who can tell them. Tia, I want to get curious about something that you said, which is you said this seed of worthiness had kind of rose up in you as this mighty anger. Monica (Host) | 00:18:18 to 00:18:32 And you used the words, and I participated in the darkness. Help me understand what you mean by that. I participated in the darkness. Yeah. Even as I said it, I was like, I'm going to have to unpack that a little. Tia (Guest) | 00:18:32 to 00:18:38 I think it was the first time in at least a decade that I presented any kind of conflict. Tia (Guest) | 00:18:40 to 00:18:56 It was a conflict ridden time. My husband was seeing demons in the walls. He was driven by addiction that I didn't understand. He badly needed mental health services. And we were denied that because everything in our tradition told us this was spiritual warfare. Tia (Guest) | 00:18:56 to 00:19:12 We weren't allowed to use medication. It was very hard for us to step away from that. And I had gone along with it, complied and been fully suppressed for ten years. But when that seed was planted, I started my career. I started charging. Tia (Guest) | 00:19:12 to 00:19:38 Like I had a blogging business and a well trafficked website at that time. 60, 60 to 80,000 hits a day on this living, deliberately homesteading website. And that burgeoned into a business where I was able to make my own money for the first time. And I was becoming more assertive in ways that resisted it. It participated in the darkness because it created resistance. Tia (Guest) | 00:19:38 to 00:19:56 It was not content to allow a battle began. It was not content to let the darkness swallow us. And I would refuse to allow it. So because there was this contrast of me rising up against the darkness, that's what I mean when I say I participated in it, is that I started to battle. Yeah, okay. Monica (Host) | 00:19:56 to 00:21:04 I love that because there's kind of a lot of, I will just call it taboo around the darkness. And yet as you start kind of venturing into the divine feminine or the sacred feminine, you actually become really familiar with kind of this dark void as the creation place, as the necessary place, where our intolerance actually becomes our ally, and where more and more it becomes this agitating. And this is where this seed, I find, becomes such a powerful metaphor. Because the agitation is kind of the breaking open of that seed. And it's like I see that seed as the divine spark within us that knows our own enoughness, that knows our own worthiness. Monica (Host) | 00:21:04 to 00:21:59 And that if that seed hasn't been completely trampled and who knows why some of those seeds don't completely become annihilated over time. But I have heard stories where it's just never too late. Where women in their eighty s and even ninety s, that seed finally breaks open, that that seed is within all of us. And so I love that that kind of came up. And also I want to revisit something that you said earlier because it really kind of makes me curious that first ten years of your life when you were on the farm, because that's also where I picture you. Monica (Host) | 00:21:59 to 00:22:31 You said I knew about the divine then, but of course not from a biblical or a church perspective. I'm making up more from a natural world. And I was wondering if you could say more about that and also about what was it that caused your parents or your family to then join a church? Was there, like, a catalyst for that? Yeah, so my family was more, like, culturally religious. Tia (Guest) | 00:22:32 to 00:22:59 My father was raised Catholic, but they weren't really practicing by the time he was an adult. And he met my mom, who was, I don't know, some Church of Christ or Church of God or some Protestant brand in the Midwest. And she was serious about her faith, but it was in a some of this might have been the 80s culture, which was just, by definition, a little feral in the 80s. They were hardworking farm people. They were working on their businesses. Tia (Guest) | 00:22:59 to 00:23:31 We went to church sometimes. It was definitely part of our lives, but it was not in any kind of consumptive way. There were strains of it here and there because I was exposed to hell teachings when I was four or five that I deeply internalized hell trauma, and I got saved, quote got saved in Sunday school when I was five. So it was there, it was present, but on an average Sunday, it was just as likely to get taken out for breakfast for eggs Benedict as I was for Sunday school. It was like could go either way. Tia (Guest) | 00:23:33 to 00:23:53 Yeah. I knew which ones I liked, but my mom sang in the choir. Music was always really important to her leadership, and being involved and having that as, like, part of our lives was important. So the thing that's true also, of my childhood, so that's 80 acres that I grew up on, and it was more than my parents could handle. They were young parents. Tia (Guest) | 00:23:53 to 00:24:10 They got in a little over their heads. They had two little girls. And I have always been free spirited and wandering. I have a lot of exploration I do, around my tendency to wander because my therapist suggests I like the welcome home. That's why I wander, which I'm still unpacking. Tia (Guest) | 00:24:10 to 00:24:48 But it's true that I spent a lot of my childhood wandering, and I would go off, disappear in the woods, explore the fields, very, very young child, three, four years old, out in the swamp, search parties, finding me, kind of a thing. And I don't think my parents were intentionally not supervising us, but they were busy, and they also were not supervising us. I mean, it's true. It's hard for me to say it and accept it because it was also just so much of our family culture that I knew to be in by the time the light was on. Yeah, I think a lot of us share that, actually. Tia (Guest) | 00:24:48 to 00:24:58 Yeah, I think it's a time period that we're just not familiar with anymore. We would never do it now, but it was definitely true for a lot of Gen Xers. Sure. We're wanderers. Yeah. Tia (Guest) | 00:24:58 to 00:25:28 So there's this feral aspect of it that I'm so deeply thankful for, because that time to walk and explore and wonder and wander on my own has been formative and it's been the comfort of my life. It's where I turn to still today when I need to get real with myself and hear myself think. But I had very profound experience on that acreage. There was a grove of birch and aspen trees. And you're from the Midwest, so you must be familiar with how they turn gold. Tia (Guest) | 00:25:28 to 00:25:40 It's not like any other fall tree. And they also are connected underground by a micro. I can't say it right, microchrosial network. I know I botched that word. Somebody's going to get it right. Tia (Guest) | 00:25:40 to 00:26:05 But basically they're intertwined and there's one organism underground. And I've done a lot of research into these trees. They also can be hospitable welcoming to beings that come into their mist. They can also detect threats and they share and communicate that information if this is friend or foe in their root network. And I always get chills when I tell this story. Tia (Guest) | 00:26:05 to 00:26:48 So I was about seven years old and I was about four pastures away from the house, which is like half a mile, maybe three quarters of a mile and a far for a seven year old to be out in the woods alone. But there's this circular grove of aspen trees, and it's in September, and I wandered to the center of it and I looked up and there a crown. This is the crown of golden leaves with bright blue sky and white piercing sunshine comes through and it illumines me. And I am filled with God. This is God. Tia (Guest) | 00:26:48 to 00:27:26 And she is beautiful. Like, I knew she was beautiful and I had never heard anything really about gender or we didn't talk about that in the hadn't heard anything like that. I just knew what I experienced. And church buildings never felt sacred my whole growing up, the woods and that experience are where I experienced the sacred divine. And so it's been kind of a North Star for me my whole life because I've always compared with something I'm feeling in a corporate setting, which is another expression of the divine, I think. Tia (Guest) | 00:27:26 to 00:27:37 Corporate good and corporate evil. It's our collective. That is where the power is. How does it compare to that moment in the tree? That's how I kind of identify friend or foe. Tia (Guest) | 00:27:38 to 00:27:57 I felt welcomed and embraced by those trees. And I do think if we want to stick with the metaphor, I think that seed in childhood is what sat in the darkness until the day that I left. Wow. I love that you shared that story, Tia. It's so beautiful, I can picture it. Monica (Host) | 00:27:57 to 00:28:26 I have chills too, just being bathed or filled with that light. And I love that you said, and she is beautiful. And what I heard in that was you also experience sing like and she is beautiful like you. Oh, my God. Because I talked about this the other day in my last episode. Monica (Host) | 00:28:27 to 00:28:43 I think so many women, we underestimate the death by a thousand tiny paper cuts. That is, he his him. He his him. He his him. He his him our whole lives. Tia (Guest) | 00:28:43 to 00:29:08 Yes. We hear it everywhere. And so when the experience of her and she and hers is embodied, is known, is experienced, that is a revelation for us as girls. It absolutely is. Yeah. Tia (Guest) | 00:29:08 to 00:29:26 That was around the same time I threw a very large fit in school because my teacher was trying to tell me that he was the genderless new pronoun that we had to use. If it wasn't known what the gender was, we defaulted to he genderless in grammar genderless. Tia (Guest) | 00:29:28 to 00:29:45 And I was so outraged at that. I was a toady looking little kid. I had crooked teeth. Broken teeth from a bad fall when I was a baby and had this wild hair and these crazy freckles. And I'm standing up in class and I'm like, that's not fair. Tia (Guest) | 00:29:47 to 00:30:13 We can't assume it's a boy. Yes, we can't assume it's a boy. I kept saying, I'm resonating with your paper cuts because that was a big one. Well, yeah. And I'm resonating with that little girl because I declare that every woman who has become that sacred rebel was once that sacred little girl that stood up and said, that's not fair. Tia (Guest) | 00:30:14 to 00:30:33 Yeah. And I think it's so interesting because what we were fighting for. Was our visibility, our worthiness. We were like, we are worthy. And there is that also. Monica (Host) | 00:30:33 to 00:30:58 It's kind of that seed that gets like, I think of like a vault, right? Like a seed vault that so many girls have to put that worthiness seed in. They have to find the seed vault and put it in there until they can come back to water it later. But first we have to survive. Yeah. Tia (Guest) | 00:30:59 to 00:31:56 And they do not patriarchy does not make it easy for a girl to survive. Yeah. So thank you. I'm so glad that we went back to that time because it's when the spirit of Tia was most alive, before she kind of had to cross over. And I often talk about this very, very dangerous bridge between the eternal child into maidenhood and how maidenhood actually is like the deep, dark, dangerous forest that rarely do we come out on the other side. Monica (Host) | 00:31:56 to 00:32:14 We actually often get trapped there in what I call wounded maiden. And we never fully bloom into this full archetype of mother. And when I say mother, of course. I don't mean the biological mother. I mean the woman who becomes fully actualized. Monica (Host) | 00:32:14 to 00:33:05 The woman who comes into her full bloom and knows her own enoughness, knows her own sufficiency. And I often say that in knowing our own sufficiency and knowing our own worthiness and knowing our own enoughness means that we can also speak that's enough to the men. And I've learned that from indigenous cultures that that's actually one of our roles as women is to say that's enough to the men. And the reason that we do that is because the women know intuitively when enough is enough, when there's enough shelter, when there's enough food, when there's enough material comforts, when there's enough discipline. So we know that there's enough. Monica (Host) | 00:33:05 to 00:34:02 And we can't know that if we're suspended in Wounded Maiden or we're trapped in the dark forest and we kind of like Sarah Durham Wilson, one of my teachers talks about it as kind of like dying on the vine. And this is when we become patriarchalized. We internalize these systems of patriarchy, and then we raise our children to kind of follow along these same guidelines. And so I wanted to really now kind of transition into what I call this training ground for the trance of unworthiness, because every time I look at your work, Tia, I see that you have actually become an expert in this. And I could literally take your work and literally just put the trance throughout it. Monica (Host) | 00:34:02 to 00:35:01 You can call it the training ground for being a fundee right, of a fundamentalist Christian, but it's so interconnected because the results are the same. An inability to value our needs as women, severe performance anxiety, a deep fear of perfection or sorry, of imperfection paralysis in saying no, self subjugation and assumed gender inequality, and living in a constant trauma response. Yeah, it is the same. And that is like the drum I beat, because we don't all come from high control fundamentalism. But I don't know a woman who can't relate to that list because of what's happened to our culture. Tia (Guest) | 00:35:01 to 00:35:27 It's in everything, and fundamentalism can be in anything. But our culture is so patriarchal, systemically patriarchal, that we can all relate to just the struggle women face to identify what they want for dinner and express that opinion or learn how to say no. This is familiar. This is familiar. It really is. Monica (Host) | 00:35:28 to 00:36:00 So what I also really found fascinating in your work is that you address it from a number of different angles, but where it becomes kind of really powerfully perceived is when you look at it through the lens of politics. Monica (Host) | 00:36:02 to 00:36:43 And we can sit here and look at all of the ways that it's trained us, and especially women, to conform to this obedience, what I call performing. But it's so internalized, we don't even know we're performing anymore. Pretty pleasing and polite. Pretty pleasing and polite. And in your in fundamentalist culture, there have been many movies that have talked about this in in Mormonism. Monica (Host) | 00:36:43 to 00:36:48 It's called keeping sweet, right, is what I think it's called. Monica (Host) | 00:36:50 to 00:37:10 But again, we've all got a version of this, and we don't have to have grown up religious in order to have had it seep into kind of the ground soil of the water we drink. And so I want to get curious and kind of also because for my listener. Monica (Host) | 00:37:12 to 00:38:07 You will be fascinated by finding out more about Tia's personal story. And it's so juicy and it's so provocative and it's so compelling and it's so powerful and it's so inspirational and all of that. I want to be like, go, don't walk, run and get her book when you can, when it's out. Because what she really is doing is taking you to the precipice of what we're about to talk about next, which is kind of really what happens in a world where and this is where I want to get curious with you, because we can sit here and think like, oh, this is just this little sect of people. It doesn't impact me. Monica (Host) | 00:38:08 to 00:39:02 But I want to raise my hand and say that what I've learned through Tia is that Christian fundamentalist impacts all fundamentalism is impacting all of us right now in a major way through policy, reform, all kinds of things that we need to get really awakened about because there is kind of an ever present danger here. If we kind of miss the point that I think Tia then begins to make. And I don't know, Tia, if you went into this part in your book, but I'm pretty clear that that is a big part of it. That really what we are facing in the near future. Here is what I will say. Monica (Host) | 00:39:02 to 00:39:29 Priya Assal, who I interviewed about what's happening in Iran, said, at least in Iran, we know the beast. We see the beast. We don't see it here. It is still hiding in plain sight, where for her, Iran is like, that's just the beast not hiding it's here. It's sleeping with us. Monica (Host) | 00:39:29 to 00:40:00 So this is where I'd love to open and kind of guide this conversation, if you're willing. Yeah, it's interesting because the book's title has changed. It's a well trained wife now, but for years it wasn't The American Burqa. And that's because I used to say the denim jumper is The American Burqa. And I said that in response to the Christians around me trying to say that the fundamentalism that we lived in was not the same as what we were fighting in Iran and Iraq. Tia (Guest) | 00:40:00 to 00:40:21 And I could see the parallels, like I was living that same silent treatment. The title american Burqa didn't age well. Our conversation around what it means to be Muslim has changed. So that's why we changed the title, because it means something entirely different now. And that's a 21, 25 year old saying for me. Tia (Guest) | 00:40:21 to 00:40:38 So it definitely outgrew it. But the fundamentalism is the same. The difference is that here we're busy saying not all Christians, not all men. That's just the way I grew up. She's trying to paint with too broad a brush. Tia (Guest) | 00:40:38 to 00:41:13 And we have this rejection of seeing each other as common sisters and how these things have infiltrated and overlapped, and it is so dangerous. At the beginning of the interview, when I talked about how the politics had been strategic, and it mirrors my timeline. That's a key and critical point. Back in the early 80s, very high, very strategic, evangelical conservatives banded together in a power grab, and they did it in a strategic way. And they have their followers meet in the same building every Sunday. Tia (Guest) | 00:41:13 to 00:41:44 They knew they could go through the churches. These are men like Jerry Falwell and Tim Lehe and God, Ronald Reagan. And the biggie. The biggies from the 80s coalesced around the issue of abortion, trying to get us, trying to get this single issue voting system through co opted by groups like Bill Gothard's IDLP, which is in every denomination, goes all the way up to the Trump White House. Mark Meadows is affiliated with the IDLP. Tia (Guest) | 00:41:44 to 00:42:07 This silent infrastructure has influenced culture and been content to take the long game. So they knew in the 80s this was going to take a while. They had to first coalesce this whole big voting base around the pro life movement. They had to create the pro life movement. They had to swap their position because they used to support pro choice. Tia (Guest) | 00:42:07 to 00:42:43 So they had to flip it, and then they had to coalesce it and they had to streamline it, and then they had to add these wars and get us to where we are today. And the reason why I rose up in 2016 when I was like, I can't sit on my story. I have to share it, because I was in those congregations where we're sharing strategy on how to take away religious freedom, how to institute dominion theology. Dominion theology is the theology that teaches that Christians have a biblical mandate from God to take over the world. They will do that by protecting their own religious freedom in our government. Tia (Guest) | 00:42:43 to 00:43:19 And once they have it, they will take away religious freedom for everyone else. We see that happening right now because Christians are enjoying freedoms in schools that atheists don't enjoy and other faiths do not enjoy. You cannot have a Muslim on a football field start praying to Allah the way you can have a Christian meal and be applauded for scripture on his face. We do have this Christian bias as a result. But the saying that I come back to time and time again is that the evangelical patriarchs, this group of fundamentalists that we're talking about, they want to run America the way they run their homes. Tia (Guest) | 00:43:19 to 00:43:37 And I can't stress that hard enough. You have to look at the way they run their homes. You have to look at the way they run their families. When a TV show like the Duggars is put on TV as a lifestyle example, it's important to remember the Duggars themselves didn't watch TV. They don't have TVs in their homes. Tia (Guest) | 00:43:37 to 00:43:53 Fundamentalists. Don't watch American culture. They put that out there as evangelism so that we would all buy into this beautiful lifestyle and want it for ourselves. And once we buy into that household lifestyle. We're instituting high control tactics with our Children, with our families. Tia (Guest) | 00:43:53 to 00:44:45 We're shutting down our critical thought, we're shutting down our feelings, we're shutting down our intuition and we're buying into the patriarchy scheme. So Now You Have, like, within a matter of maybe ten years, you have this very ardent following of people who are convinced that this is a Moral Outcry and they will buy under these ridiculous Policies that we're seeing passed in states so Rapidly. Things are happening So rapidly right now in these restrictive States, but the groundwork has been laid for a Long time, and they have a groundswell of organic support behind them because of household institutions. Sunday, every Sunday congregating and having this drill, drill drilled indoctrination and all the media indoctrination constant. So, I mean, I bring it back down to the Granular household level because that's Where We can all relate. Tia (Guest) | 00:44:45 to 00:44:52 But that is also the Canary that shows us what Our Life is going to be like should they have Total control of our country. Tia (Guest) | 00:44:55 to 00:45:03 I know. We need a breath. Yeah. Because I have so many things kind of arising In Me. Monica (Host) | 00:45:05 to 00:45:25 Breathing. Breathing. Yeah. Okay. So one of the Things that continues to kind of show up over and over and over Again is patriarchy and all of these different Disguises. Monica (Host) | 00:45:27 to 00:46:50 And I've kind of been kind of hanging Back and watching the Game where it's kind of like you could look at It like you're In The Stadium and You're Watching This Game and You've Got the Red and the Blue, the red shirts and the blue Shirts, and there's always a Winner and a Loser. And yet, whether you win or you lose, it's just changing the color in that moment of the same game. Same Game. And It never occurs to us because I look at the participation of women in this game and what we all stand to lose every time, every time by this Game. And it occurs to me that we can leave the stadium. Tia (Guest) | 00:46:50 to 00:47:06 Yes, we can. We can leave the stadium if we were able to, like, see the game. Yeah, it's a game. Yeah, it's a it's a power game. You said it in the beginning. Monica (Host) | 00:47:06 to 00:47:22 It's the cage. The game is the cage. And all they're doing on the field is making the cave look more attractive. The cage look more attractive. Which cage do you want to live in? Monica (Host) | 00:47:22 to 00:47:35 Right, but we don't realize we can just leave the stadium. Yes. Preach. This is big for me. I call it the tug of war rope. Tia (Guest) | 00:47:35 to 00:48:05 You can elect to set it down and walk away. You don't have to be on either side of the rope. You don't have to be on either side. So let's talk about that for a minute, because I can imagine immediately the mind starts like, well, you have to stand for something, and you have to be let's just unpack that a little bit. Okay, so I Do this in a very physical, visceral way. Tia (Guest) | 00:48:05 to 00:48:40 A couple of couple of things. I took myself out of the news cycle because the parallels of the Trump cycle during his presidency, that narcissistic chaos that continued to define that four year period was to parallel what I had experienced both with my first husband and with pastors, high control pastors. And I recognized that it was activating me on a trauma level. So I have a new rebellion, and I do it in a couple of different ways. One is to step a foot outside and sit back and say, oh, I refuse to engage. Tia (Guest) | 00:48:40 to 00:49:07 You have constant distraction techniques that keep me in a constant trauma response, and I choose not to engage. I have come to look at activation, by the way, as my friend, and it's such helpful information. So we can come back to that later. But for me, it's a big flare of the fire, flare of this is not your business, this is not for you. And then I sit my ass on the ground. Tia (Guest) | 00:49:08 to 00:49:27 So we talk about grounding a lot. I liken myself to my two year old self who needed to sit her ass on the ground when she was overstimulated. So when I'm having sensory overload and I'm feeling overpowered and I don't have any voice and I don't have any say, my two year old part is like, we're out of here. Sit down, sit down. And I used to do that a lot as a kid. Tia (Guest) | 00:49:27 to 00:49:57 I used to go dead weight and I used to sit down so I could regroup and hear myself and feel myself. And somewhere in life I stopped doing that and I started playing the role and I felt forced to compelled to participate. But my biggest rebellion now is just to sit down. If I just even need a minute, I will sit down. If I wasn't in a chair right now, I would probably be sitting on the floor just to make sure I stay grounded through this conversation because there's just so many things coming at us all of the time. Tia (Guest) | 00:49:57 to 00:50:25 And I personally ran the highest risk of becoming a female patriarch. The females that propagate the patriarchy are the ones who've succumbed to the cage, and I was hairlined close to that. I did become that to some extent for my children through certain years. And I did have to learn how to step away from it and disengage and value my motherhood first and foremost. So I guess my body probably has a memory of how to do that. Tia (Guest) | 00:50:25 to 00:50:56 There's like a neuropathway that I can follow and I can say, this is not my business and I choose not to participate. There's a scene in Dead Poet Society, a movie from the 80s, where he's doing the poetry exercise, and they're marching around a courtyard and they're screaming things, and he's urging them to be individuals. And then there's one guy who's standing off and he's refusing to participate and he exemplifies the whole point of the exercise. We don't have to engage. And sometimes that's our best rebellion. Tia (Guest) | 00:50:56 to 00:51:14 That's our strongest rebellion. I think when it comes to terms of patriarchal control, it is the most powerful weapon we have. We can scream, we can yell, we can vocalize, we can do all of that. Choosing not to play their game is the ultimate weapon. Right. Monica (Host) | 00:51:14 to 00:51:51 Because I can hear now, well, if women's voices aren't part of policy and we need to fight to sit at every table and blah, blah, blah, and there's other things that we can be doing. Yeah, exactly. And it's like my point a lot of times, too, is that they're going to do what they're going to do anyway, because it's all just a game. It's a game of control, and women never win in it, no matter what. Exactly. Monica (Host) | 00:51:51 to 00:52:15 No matter what. And so it's like, when are we going to see and actually come together in Sisterhood to exert the power we have always had? Which is not power over. Right. It's not power over. Monica (Host) | 00:52:15 to 00:52:32 It's a different kind of power. And it is the power of enoughness. It is the power of that's enough. We will not play your game anymore. I see it as a lateral embrace, but also as a barrier, as a line. Tia (Guest) | 00:52:34 to 00:53:11 It isn't a power structure, it isn't a hierarchy. It's round. It's round and it's resourceful, and it's an endless well of well being where all is deeply well. I see women formulating this circle right. Together, and it's really I see it happening. Monica (Host) | 00:53:11 to 00:54:00 I see it starting to happen. I do. So I wonder, Tia, we have a few minutes left here, and I want to make sure that I feel like we've opened this place for kind of more exploration and discovery and maybe even cries of outrage. Right. But I wonder, what might you offer in the last few minutes of our conversation to my listener who might be confused by what we're saying and or maybe places to point her or him? Tia (Guest) | 00:54:01 to 00:54:48 Yeah. So I like to bring it down to some practical steps and to also give a curiosity driven method for connection. When something feels maybe you're feeling like an inkling of familiarity in your body, like something I have said is resonating, but you're not even close to language for it, and something in your childhood or your background feels like it could have been part of the strategic patriarchy, but you don't even know where to start. I always point to survivors, listen to people who've actually experienced the thing and see where you feel familiar with them. We have so much system evangelism around us all the time, telling us what's the truth and what's right and what is the best way of doing something. Tia (Guest) | 00:54:49 to 00:55:19 Giving my attention more to the people who've experienced that and asking who benefited from it has been more powerful. Exactly. What do you feel knowing what's coming up in your body and valuing that over anybody's touted agenda. There's this line in The Handmaid's Tale where it says, commander, the good commander. He's saying, the good commander is hysterical. Tia (Guest) | 00:55:19 to 00:55:45 He's saying, Gilead doesn't care about bread. The bread was a means to an end. There's all these ways of keeping women busy, and I have this real where I talk about quiverful mindset and why quiverful patriarchs want to keep you constantly pregnant and having babies? It was when I learned how to ask those questions and say, well, who's benefiting from that? I don't need to have endless babies, but who's benefiting from me always being pregnant? Tia (Guest) | 00:55:45 to 00:56:10 I'm so busy I can't do anything else? Who's benefiting from me being so busy I can't do anything else? Who's benefiting from me never setting a limit or never saying no, or always being in the kitchen or being too tired to pick up my head from the pillow or feeling annihilated in the house? There is someone benefiting from it, and it's not me, and it's sure as hell not my children. Sure as hell not my children. Tia (Guest) | 00:56:10 to 00:56:38 Asking those questions exactly wearing me out to the point of death was not benefiting my baby. And those questions are what helped me take tiny assertions and make tiny steps towards hearing my own truth, understanding what I felt in my body, finding other survivors that have said, you know what? I tried it that way, and it didn't work the way they said. It didn't actually work for my family. That actually led to therapy bills, not success. Tia (Guest) | 00:56:39 to 00:57:04 I can't talk to my child anymore because the damage that I've caused between us, those kinds of questions are what helped me pull back the veil and say, the system is broken and I don't need to be participating in anymore. So to the listener, that's like hearing those little things, those little buzzings come up in their body. Oh, my God, where do I go next? I think you go inside next. You listen first and identify. Tia (Guest) | 00:57:04 to 00:57:31 Try to name the feeling that you're having and just listen. It's okay not to know what to say right now. Just listen. So I had held up the card that Tia and I chose, which, coincidentally, was the same card I chose the other day before another interview. But the other card that had fallen out as I was kind of just shuffling and putting them back was this one, and I thought it was interesting. Monica (Host) | 00:57:31 to 00:57:44 It's releasing allegiances. And look at it. I see you oracle buzzing. There's bees, right? Like, you cannot make this shit up. Monica (Host) | 00:57:45 to 00:58:10 You cannot make this up. And so for my listener again, I'm showing her a card with a woman who is naked. She has bees all over her, wrapped around herself, and it says releasing allegiances. Because here's the thing a lot of people try to figure out whose side is Monica on? Yeah, I am all the time. Monica (Host) | 00:58:10 to 00:58:18 Are you red? Are you, like, are you Republic? Are you Democrat? Are you independent? It's so fascinating to me. Tia (Guest) | 00:58:18 to 00:58:26 Yeah. And I keep just being like I'm going to go back to what I said before. It's a game. It's a game. It's a game. Monica (Host) | 00:58:26 to 00:58:37 And women never win. That's not the game we're playing. Right. We're going to play a different game. Tia (Guest) | 00:58:39 to 00:58:44 Yeah. We abstain. We choose not to participate in patriarchy. Period. Yes. Monica (Host) | 00:58:45 to 00:58:53 Period. Period. And that's going to get a lot of there's going to get a lot of buzzing. There's going to be a lot of buzzing. Yes. Monica (Host) | 00:58:54 to 00:59:15 Right. Because all the alarm bells go off because of our training ground about but we have to but women, but feminism, but advancement not in that game. Yeah, exactly. What I also love, that card has her sitting her ass on the ground. Yeah, she is sitting her ass on the ground. Tia (Guest) | 00:59:15 to 00:59:30 Yes. Feel that buzzing and let it be. It's like on her skin. It's a skin level buzzing. This will touch every part of you when you've been raised in patriarchy, it will touch every part of you. Monica (Host) | 00:59:30 to 00:59:49 And this one is saying, what do you feel? And here's the duality. It's the apple or the orange. And she's I don't know if this is the moon or the earth, but she's looking at it and I say, she's got patriarchy around her neck. That's the tie. Monica (Host) | 00:59:50 to 01:00:03 I say, right in this card, this other card. And I'll put these cards, though, that. Pisses patriarchy off, right. They cannot handle it when a woman it's loose, right? It's loosened. Monica (Host) | 01:00:03 to 01:00:42 The tie is loosened. Because I think what she's saying is, what does this world need, this world of duality need from me as I feel, as I drop into my feeling. And that's all we can know as women, is based on that is based on the reconnection to what we feel. And actually, it's the opposite of everything we were taught about our feelings being frivolous and unreliable. That is the place to return to. Monica (Host) | 01:00:42 to 01:00:58 There is a lot there, and there is a lot of wisdom there, and our bodies are trying to show us the way. Yeah. It's also I caught it right at the end. Interesting. She's juggling fruit because that's how you know if a system is working or not and if it's for you or not. Tia (Guest) | 01:00:58 to 01:01:18 You look at the fruit that's by their own words, Christianity and patriarchy tells you the Bible says you will know them by their fruit. That's using biblical wisdom to say, okay, let me see what you produce. And she's juggling it and she's looking away, and she's like, I don't know, I just caught it right at the end. That's fascinating. I say it all the time. Tia (Guest) | 01:01:18 to 01:01:23 Look at the fruit. Look at the fruit. Look at the fruit. My gosh. Yeah. Monica (Host) | 01:01:23 to 01:01:30 Okay, so my final question, is there anything that I haven't asked that you. Wish I had question wise. Tia (Guest) | 01:01:33 to 01:02:01 No. I'm grateful that you didn't ask me anything about my current faith or current faith tradition. I do tell people I'm spiritually private now because I want to encourage women to own their own personal path. And I do get that question all the time. People want to know where I stand with Christianity and Jesus, and having a firm, rigid answer for that question was what got me into fundamentalism in the first place. Tia (Guest) | 01:02:01 to 01:02:35 I very much wanted to be right and say the right thing and align with the right people. So I'm glad that I just brought it up. But the point is, I would encourage each woman to own their own place in the journey and not feel like they have to fit within a box, because that is participating in cage culture. And I just am grateful for this opportunity to expand the conversation a little. A lot of times these conversations spend a lot of time into what happened to me and drawing a contrast between what happened to me and everyone else. Tia (Guest) | 01:02:35 to 01:03:05 And this space allowed us to open that to a wider commonality. And I appreciate that so much. Yeah. I feel like I could talk to you forever and there's so much more that I want to ask, of course, but that just gives me an opportunity to invite you to come on again. Yes, my books preorders will be available in the fall, so we're still a ways out because summer 24 is still a way out. Tia (Guest) | 01:03:05 to 01:03:26 So I would love to come back anytime when there's more to talk about. The Amazon documentary will have aired by that time. I'm in the Amazon expose of the Institute of Basic Life Principles coming out this summer, so a follow up follow up podcast would be fun. There'll always be more to talk about. It sure would be. Monica (Host) | 01:03:26 to 01:03:38 Oh, my gosh. Well, you are such a pleasure. You're such an inspiration. The minute I met you, I was like, oh, my gosh, I just love you. I love you. Monica (Host) | 01:03:38 to 01:03:44 I love following you. Magnet, right? That day felt like oh, my God. Thank you, universe. Yeah, it was amazing. Monica (Host) | 01:03:45 to 01:04:20 And I really encourage my listener to really go and follow Tia on Instagram. Tia loving's writer. And of course, I will put all of Tia's links in the show notes as well as the imagery for the two cards, really, that chose us today. And until next time, more To Be Revealed we hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointhevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list or leave us a review on itunes. Monica (Host) | 01:04:20 to 01:04:25 We thank you for your generous listening, and as always, more To Be revealed.