What happens when devotion turns into oppression? Join us for a gripping episode of Beyond the Surface as we sit down with Ruth from snowy Connecticut, who bravely recounts her harrowing experiences growing up in a militant Catholic institution. Separated from her parents and subjected to the institution's extreme religious and political ideologies, Ruth's story is a powerful testament to the devastating effects of institutionalised abuse and religious indoctrination. Through her vivid recounting of physical, emotional, and psychological torment, we gain a deeper understanding of the traumatic impact of growing up in such a cult-like environment.

Who Is Ruth?

Ruth Reymundo Mandel has been in training and implementation since 1995. Her career began as a middle school teacher in post revolutionary Nicaragua. As a teacher in a developing, post war country she became dedicated to issues surrounding social justice and violence. She later transitioned to higher education and worked at the Bryman School and at The Art Institute of Phoenix as an Assistant Director of Admissions. Her responsibilities included vetting prospective students and identifying barriers to enrolment and to matriculation.

After taking a break to raise her three children, she began working as a trainer and technical support for a national professional line nutritional company and an international professional line herbal company which trained medical professionals in alternative therapies.

In her role she trained doctors and medical professionals in clinical application and was an ongoing support for successful implementation through patient outcomes. She developed systems for practice management, patient support, managed, created and promoted cyclical education events for clinical success. She developed training strategies to respond to a variety of real time field challenges.

Ruth also worked as a professional business coach specialising in systems and practice management. Her dedication to understanding root challenges, institutional, structural and personal impediments which keep people from applying their skills and knowledge in a targeted and successful way helped many of her clients increase their business success.

Aside from her professional accomplishments Ruth is a published poet, an artist, writer and a public speaker. Drawing on her childhood experiences growing up in an abusive, religious institution and as a survivor she is a fierce advocate for those who have experienced institutional abuse. She is dedicated to helping survivors and allies understand their behavioral coping mechanisms, arising out of trauma and mitigating societal and personal judgments surrounding common human responses to violence.

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• To find out more about Ruth's work - https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/
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00:18 - Sam (Host)

I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work the Gundagaa land and people. I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I also want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which you, our listeners, are joining us from today. I recognise the deep connection that First Nations people have to this land, their enduring culture and their commitment to the preservation and care for their country. This land was never ceded and it always was and always will be Aboriginal land. Hey there and welcome to Beyond the Surface, the podcast where we explore the stories of people who have survived religious trauma, left high control or cult communities and are deconstructing their faith. I'm your host, sam, and each week I'll talk with individuals who have taken the brave step to start shifting their beliefs that might have once controlled and defined their lives. Join us as we dig into their experiences, the challenges they've faced and the insights they've gained. Whether you're on a similar journey or you're just curious about these powerful stories, you're in the right place.

01:36

This is Beyond the Surface. Welcome, ruth. Thanks for joining me. Absolutely, I'm happy to join you Now. Where in the world are you joining us from? Just to give people context.

01:47 - Ruth (Guest)

Oh well, I'm joining you from snowy New England, from Connecticut, which is on the northeastern part of the United States, and pretty soon here I'll be headed in your direction. We're going to Melbourne for our annual conference, the conference that we give every year there, so I'll be headed to sunny Australia.

02:09 - Sam (Host)

I'm not sure anybody in Melbourne would ever say that would ever call Melbourne as sunny it's all about perspective. Yes In. In comparison, melbourne will probably be very sunny and warm um, and yet probably still very rainy also, right?

02:31 - Ruth (Guest)

it tends to be?

02:32 - Sam (Host)

is the? Is Connecticut part of the Bible Belt or is that kind of oh?

02:39 - Ruth (Guest)

no, it's considered New England, it's in the northeast. You know, the Bible Belt tends to be below what we call the Mason-Dixon line here in the United States, which is the line between the south and the north, the historical line, and I've lived in both. Right, they all have different flavors, different cultural flavors, you know.

03:01 - Sam (Host)

So yeah, Okay, and so where does your story start?

03:06 - Ruth (Guest)

well, you know, with all of us, our stories start with the choices of our parents yes that they chose for us and, really, in all reality, my story starts with the choices of my parents. I was born and grew up in a Catholic institution that was affiliated with the Dominican order and was a very militant Catholic organization that wanted to bring about Catholic political realities. They wanted the government to reflect the values and morals of the institutional Catholic church, and they worked very hard to make that a political reality. When they started, though, they had converted in mass from being a bunch of hippies in California, which is where I was born, in Northern California, near San Francisco, and somewhat of my birth story was used in their conversion story, which is a lot of pressure on a kid just to let parents know that the Catholic institution that I grew up in, you know, in all reality, was a cult and, opportunistically, the people who are in that original group of people saw that the Catholic Church would give them a form of legitimacy, saw that the Catholic Church would give them a form of legitimacy and that they could make a living, they could make money off of being affiliated with the Catholic Church and picking up one of their causes, and the cause that they picked up was to try to ban abortion and contraception in the United States again using somewhat of my birth story and they worked towards those ends, both religiously, politically and financially, and eventually became a really influential institution in the politics of the United States of America but also, unfortunately as well, other political spheres around the world. Because of who they became affiliated with, because of who they fundraised with, because of my father, because they were problematic. They didn't follow the same strict religious views that they were teaching in that institution.

06:04

My father's family is Hispanic and Latino, so they had some other traditions that weren't as pure sort of very pure, you know, the sort of American flavor of rigid. Yeah, you know, they practiced traditional practices that were frowned upon and looked down upon as being not acceptable to that very rigid form of Catholicism. So I never really met actually my father's family and didn't even know he was my father. I had no knowledge of my father, no knowledge of my father, but we were separated from our parents and we were put into dormitory style rooms. We were fed institutionally, we lived off of donations from churches and corporations that wanted to do good in the world, so they would donate to these Catholic organizations, donate money, donate food, donate clothing, and we existed really on the margins of society but still being very legitimatized, still getting money from different people, and it was a very violent atmosphere.

07:25

There was a lot of violence and a lot of sort of typically institutional behaviors and there was a lot of children. So for every one adult there was probably five to six children in the community. So there was a lot of care of children and so we slept in dormitories, we slept separate from our parents. We were not allowed to call them mom. I was not allowed to call my mother mom. I had to call her by her first name and the whole idea was that everybody was your parents and that the institution was your parents. If it was a Catholic institution, if it was a religious institution, that it had the authority by God to control you, to tell you what to do, to tell you what to believe, to extract your labor as a child. So we worked a lot in both the print shop that they had, which is one of the ways that they made money. We worked to care for the children, we worked to cook, we worked to clean, we worked on the farm. We were literal laborers.

08:36 - Sam (Host)

I mean, just tiny slaves really. Yeah, how old were you at this point, while you were there?

08:44 - Ruth (Guest)

Well, I was born there there, so I didn't know anything different, and they converted around the time that I was born. Within the first six months that I was born, you know, I did have. I had older siblings who I thought were my full siblings, some of whom had experienced different realities, like my oldest sister, who's 11 years older than me, had experienced being with my mom as a kid, just with their parent. And then she moved into the, to the more hippie version of of this community and she experienced that. And then she experienced the transition from being a hippie community to being a Catholic community. You know, she told me something really interesting one day. She said, ruth, I was never hit until they became Catholic. And I couldn't believe that because my reality was very different. I have a lot of physical injuries and even disability still from the level of physical violence that was perpetrated against the children. So that was just a really interesting piece of information. I was a little bit jealous about, to be honest, honest with you. I was like rub it in.

10:05 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, absolutely Did that affect your relationship with your siblings when you were younger, because they did know something different.

10:13 - Ruth (Guest)

Well, actually I don't think it was the fact of knowing something different that affected the quality of the relationship with my siblings. It was that there was a lot of intentional behaviors meant to really separate our family ties and de-identify us from our family members, including, you know, my father, who I didn't know was my father and extended family. And even as siblings we would be punished if we showed preferences to be with each other. If my sister tried to protect me, for example, she would have been and was targeted for violence as well as for public shaming and demeaning. So nobody was supposed to show any type of preference towards their biological family members. You were supposed to just forget that you were related and you were family and you were supposed to accept that everybody was your family and any adult in that institution was in charge of you and that they could do whatever they wanted to you.

11:33 - Sam (Host)

Essentially, and so I know a little a little bit about Catholicism because I went to a Catholic school growing up. But often we associate things like you know extreme poverty and self-sacrifice and you know extreme humility and you know those sorts of things. Was that the kind of things that you were surrounded by?

12:00 - Ruth (Guest)

Yes, yeah, we were expected to be humble and poor. Yes, yeah, we were expected to be humble and poor, and actually, what that equated to is we were hungry, yeah, and we labored, you know, and it was under the guise of humility, under the guise of simplicity. You know, though, my parents may have wanted to live in a reality where we had no electricity and running water. Yeah, so my parents may have wanted to live in a reality where we, you know, farmed subsistently at times for food, or we got donations from corporations so that we could eat.

12:42

That was not something that I chose as a child, but they were definitely part of the values of the institution I was living in, and you know, it's important to be said, too, that priests were living with us that various priests and religious came and lived with us and and really fully signed off on this and praised it as being a beautiful way of living and look how simple and though there were pieces of it that were that because of neglect were somewhat wonderful, like being in nature learning how to forage, you know, having that time in natural environments that was really life sustaining of violence and non-choice imposed, but with it that was. That was difficult you know, that was difficult.

13:54 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, I mean, you've obviously mentioned physical punishment a couple of times already. Was abuse just a daily occurrence in that institution?

14:08 - Ruth (Guest)

Yeah, you know, violence was pretty routine. You know, really to the point where we thought it was funny.

14:16

I mean, when you're a kid and you know nothing else, you know, and people are breaking plates over kids' heads you know and and people are breaking plates over kids' heads, you know, blessing if they're, if they're messing around or, you know, just casually whacking you. You know you don't think much of it after a while, especially when so many adults and authority figures, including priests and religious people, don't even blink an eye. But there was a lot of other types of violence. There was a lot of violence towards women. The moms in the community had between five and ten children and they didn't always want to, but they felt like they had to in order for them to be godly. So even as a child, I witnessed women weep because they're pregnant again. And you know, as a child I really I thought you know, I'm never going to have a child that I don't really want to have, because what a horrible thing.

15:27

Because we were being treated very abusively, both emotionally and psychologically, but also physically. Not a lot of emphasis on the responsibility of the parents to provide resources for their children. There's a lot of emphasis on the value of having and indoctrinating as many children as you can, as many children as you can, so that they carry on those faith traditions. But the assumption is that there will be no financial assistance, there will be very little emotional assistance or tangible assistance, because people who have that many children and are that impoverished and are that traumatized by violence and demeaning and poverty, they can't actually care in a sustainable way for that many children.

16:41 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, for that many children. Yeah, what were some of the core beliefs or the messages that little Ruth instilled and learned in that environment?

16:54 - Ruth (Guest)

Well, there's some core beliefs that they taught that I actually didn't believe, but you couldn't say no, it wasn't a possibility. I think I would want to break it down based off of the beliefs that they tried to teach me and some of the things I internalized. But then the things that I actually knew were not so but feared. Maybe they were so, were not so but feared, maybe they were. So. You know, and, and one of it was that you know God requires us to suffer, that that life itself is suffering, and that if we love, if we love life too much, if we love being here and experiencing this physical body, if we love to feel comfort, even if we love to feel affection and touch, even just from a parent, just from a parent, that somehow we're endangering ourselves, we're creating this ground. That's not compatible with divine love, and I didn't believe that that was real. I never believed that that was real. But the thing that kept me from really fully internalizing that was that we spent a lot of time in nature, nature without adults, often hours and hours and hours at a time, sometimes alone, which was the safest thing, to be honest with you, was to be alone, because you imagine, when you have kids that are being physically, emotionally and sexually abused, they too adopt those behaviors, thinking that they're normal, right, not of any fault of their own, but because that's what the adults are teaching them. Yeah, so you know, interacting with nature told me that there was something not quite right about what they were telling me. And if I could perceive, if I could see, as a little kid, that inside of me lived this love of life, lived this appreciation for the beauty of others and the beauty of the world around me, that, and I could feel that in my body, that there was something off about what they were saying, that I needed to kill that in me, I needed to destroy that to be holy, I needed to deprive myself, I needed to feel bad. I needed to feel bad, I needed to be in pain, I needed to be isolated from that type of nourishing contact.

20:08

And I really feel like the structure that they set up, institutionalization itself with those beliefs, that you have to train humans into a level of severing from connection to everything that exists around us, from caring, yeah, order for you to make them capable of becoming little autonomous, that you want to do a certain action or you want to teach a certain thing.

20:47

But I think that, though the fear of me fully allowing those connections and relationships to be felt in my body which is different than thinking it in your head, the fear that I would be punished by some deity or that I would be punished by my family when I was in nature and I was able to experience everything around me, I was able to say that's not real. There is violence in the world, there is danger in the world. That's a reality of material existence, but for it to be so focused and relentless and in the service of a dogma and an ideology is not something that exists. When you're out, sitting with the trees or watching the water or listening and observing, you realize that there are rules to the world and some of them you definitely cannot bend in this form, but that it's not the type of relentless, focused, demeaning, punishing reality that I was living in.

22:12 - Sam (Host)

I mean, what a wonderful thing for your you know inner wisdom to hold on to and for nature to teach you. I think people don't necessarily really understand the gravity of that concept that suffering is godly and how harmful that does because, like you said, it severs everything that is good in the world and those connections, and not just connection to the world around you but to yourself. What, like, how, how long were you there?

22:45 - Ruth (Guest)

Were you there until 18 or yeah, I left when I was about 17, which is when I went to uni, but I did go to a very Christofascist uni, so there was a. There was sort of a ideological and dogmatic alignment. But when I got to the, to the university, I realized a couple of things. I was like people can't ask me to work for nothing. Yeah, they actually have to pay me. I realized that that sort of overt demeaning, threatening and violence was just not acceptable externally. Maybe that was happening on the backside in people's homes, but from an institutional standpoint, to have that perpetrated against you in an institution is a very different thing. Against you in an institution is a very different thing. I realized that there were people and I knew this before, but we were very isolated people who had different perspectives and that they were really good people and that maybe I didn't know as much about life as I was led to believe and I started to kind of back off on some of the things that I had been taught.

24:11

I had been trained from a very young age that I was supposed to marry at a young age and start producing children, and actually the institution I was in encouraged adult men to come and date teenage girls, and so there was a level of pedophilia that was occurring in this space in a very organized way was occurring in this space in a very organized way, in a way that was covered over with a lot of dogmatic and religious conversation.

24:47

And, unfortunately, since then, in doing some research with my siblings, we've discovered that there was a lot of priests and religious people who came and spent a lot of time with us and other people who are now convicted serial pedophiles. So there was a lot of emphasis on me as a role as a girl. I was made for reproduction. I was made for containing male violence. I was made for sexually satisfying my husband. I was made for free domestic labor and labor for the church and if I did those things, those were the things that I had to do. If I did those things and taught my children the faith, the way that I was taught it, and replicated this and had a lot of children so that we could outbreed the pagans and other religions, then I was fulfilling my God-g given script.

26:01

And if I did those things, then I was risking my eternal soul and damnation. So it's very damaging to be taught as a human being that you're, you're a thing, that your your thing, that your your, your dignity comes from you fulfilling a specific role for other people, and that was very damaging and it it has taken a lot of work to sort of undo that indignity in me which really dehumanizes humans. And you think about how this is taught also to men right, that they're for labor, that they're for they have to produce right, and if they don't, they have no value. Terrible, it's a terrible form of dehumanization. Yeah, so I think those that's one of the things that I probably had to work the hardest to undo at any point while you were there?

27:12 - Sam (Host)

was there an emphasis on a relationship with God, or was it just about conformity?

27:20 - Ruth (Guest)

Well, to them, relationship is conformity. Okay, to them, relationship is conformity, it's complying with the rules, it's complying with the traditions, it's complying with you know the dogma Then you're in a relationship. If you're not conforming, then you're not actually in a relationship. In their mind, with with their deity, yeah, because you're doing all things so you can't be sorry. Yeah, the understanding of connection and relationship is very much about fulfilling a role for a specific purpose, for God or for the institution of the Catholic Church. Very much so that, unless a woman is going to get married or become a religious nun, that she's not doing either one of the things that allow for her to have that connection with God, that she's out of order, she's doing it wrong and God notices and God is going to punish her for eternity.

28:35 - Sam (Host)

How did that impact the way that you viewed God growing up?

28:39 - Ruth (Guest)

You know I didn't believe that a deity was what they said, and you know my ideas of what is not material, let's just put it that way yeah, what's not materially seen has changed over time, you know, with my own experiences, but, I would have to say, really maintained the same understanding which I feel was gifted to me, not on my merit, but because I came into contact with nature so much that it was an understanding that, yeah, there's rules, just like the Catholic Church says there's rules, but they're not the same type of rules.

29:27

Instead of imposing your relationship on them, that connection and that relationship takes a tremendous amount of respect and deep listening in order for you to really see and understand how things that you can't see, but that you can feel and that you can interact with, relate to you. And I think that that would have been something that would have been hard for me to grasp in words many, many years ago. But at this point, what I know is that, as a material being, I'm in relationship with billions of beings, be it the bacteria in my gut that sustains me, be it the air molecules that I'm touching and all of the bacteria and beings and things that live in that air, that sustain my life, be it the plants that I consume and that provide me with oxygen and other things that I'm completely unaware of, that we're in a relationship with all of these beings that sustain us in this material plane, and that is amazing, yeah, and beautiful, yeah, absolutely. And sometimes painful and sometimes scary yeah, because if you're not in control all the time, and so okay.

31:08 - Sam (Host)

So you're at uni, you're meeting new people, you're hearing new thoughts, opinions, beliefs, seeing other people navigate the world in a really, really different way to how you had been raised and trained. And so what was that like for you? Because I'm imagining that that could be really overwhelming and disorienting.

31:34 - Ruth (Guest)

Well, you know, at the university there was probably a lot more sameness and similarity with the ideology and the dogma that I grew up in, but what I did notice was that a lot of people were saying one thing and doing another thing. And that was consistent in my childhood as well, where, you know, we had to repeat mantras like everything for the children, everything for the children, but in reality that was not real for the children. Everything for the children, but in reality that was not real. So, you know, I saw a lot of people saying one thing, doing another thing. Really, you know, my perspective started to shift much more rapidly when I left university for a couple of years.

32:16

When I left university for a couple of years and I went and I lived and worked in post-revolutionary Nicaragua, and it was a combination of a couple of things. Even though I was working at a Catholic school down there, I had a lot more freedom and I started to explore my own Hispanic and Latina roots from my father's side of the family. And I'm a deeply curious person. I really care about people's experience of the world and the way that they experience not just me and their interaction with me, but the world itself. So I started asking a lot of questions of people who had experienced the violence of their revolution. I wanted to understand their experience of the world, and I knew that there was a lot of religious involvement in propelling that war forward. There was a lot of religious leaders who had been involved in sort of the ramp up to that, and I had a lot of admiration for people who really fought to maintain self-determination.

33:51

I didn't like growing up in an environment where I didn't have any self-determination for anything, including my own bodily safety or reality, and so to me self-determination felt like a really sacred thing that we're each on our own journey, each are learning in our own unique ways, and that that needs to be protected and that we can't cross certain boundaries, even if we respect that we are learning and growing and dynamic beings who are on our own unique physical and spiritual journey, Right. So that really started to to come up a lot more. I and I really admired people like Oscar Romero who I named my eldest son's second name is Romero who defended the dignity of the poor and of workers. Right, I really admired the dedication and the love and the commitment. You know, in an environment where humans were considered to be disposable, where workers were being exploited and there was a lot of war and a lot of violence.

35:35 - Sam (Host)

What was it like for you internally starting to realize all of these things? Because as you speak, I sort of go. You know that's. They're really beautiful things to learn, obviously, but when that's not what you know, was that really disorienting, was it overwhelming, or did it happen quite naturally?

35:57 - Ruth (Guest)

I think it happened slowly, over time, you know, and there were places where I kind of slid back. I got married to somebody who believed pretty heavily in those very rigid dogmas and and I needed to try to be a good Catholic partner and wife and I sort of slid back, even though I really just never felt it in my heart or in my body and just was complying right Because the traditions and the cultural practices are important to people. I, you know, honestly I don't think there was. The place that I probably became the most disorientated was where I really had to face the fact that I am a bisexual woman and that there was a lot of violence towards gay people openly conversion therapy practices where I grew up, and that was more because of the direct conditioning, where I had to witness people essentially being beaten because they were gay, and that fear was deeply embedded in my body. So the fear that was placed in my body by witnessing violence against people who didn't comply with the rules, by witnessing them being abandoned and rendered homeless if they didn't comply with the rules, by witnessing a tremendous amount of violence, had to consistently work through, because it becomes an unconscious and autonomic reaction when it's done so consistently and when it's done so early in someone's life.

37:51

So the disorientation was more about riding myself to a new reality that I didn't have to live in compliance with. They told me I was the identity that they told me I could have, that I have the ability to tell people who I am am. That's a very scary thing when you've witnessed repeated violence against people who say I'm not the thing that you want me to be, I'm this thing, and so that's more of a very deep nervous system healing that I think I still engage in even now, even now, to this day, and that some things can really rock and trigger. You know when, when I start to get the feeling you know that politics is moving in a direction of more towards my family's values. That's frightening to me.

38:56

Yeah because I understand that it means that somebody like myself, who's a bisexual woman, who's not a Christian, who has different beliefs and different traditions, that I may actually be in danger. And I kind of have to push past some of that to continue on to be really true to myself.

39:21 - Sam (Host)

When did things start to shift for you in terms of, you know, are you still married to the same person?

39:29 - Ruth (Guest)

Now, I think I know that answer, but no, I'm married to a beautiful human who is just truly a co-equal partner and we and to be honest with you, you know the thing that started to shift for me it's kind of funny when I was. When I was a little girl, if you asked me what I wanted to be, I'd say I want to be a dancer. I wanted nothing but to be a dancer. But we didn't do lessons, we were not allowed to take external lessons, so I never took dance lessons and I was born without lateral ligaments in my knees so my knees would just dislocate. So eventually I did get a surgery to fix both my knees.

40:15

But later in life, after the birth of my last child, I was like I need to dance, I need to dance again, and I started I'm getting emotional and I started to dance.

40:31

And when I started to take the dancing that I was taking which was actually belly dancing, and I have a lot of Iberian in me, very, very, very a lot of Hispanic and a lot of Iberian in me I was like this feels like I've done this before. It feels so familiar and it was just such a joyful expression for my body and it helped me to gain a tremendous amount of connection with myself, to care about what my body was experiencing, to be able to really feel the joy of expression, and so it started shifting for me, then me then. At that time I was still married to my ex-partner and he really disliked that. I started to perform because I really enjoyed it and the jealousy and the coercive control really started to pop up around my creative expressions, as if my creative expressions detracted somehow from my care and nurturance and love for him, which is, I think, how a lot of people view women's creative expressions that because we're not focused on them, that somehow they're suffering.

41:59 - Sam (Host)

I think that that's a really good point to sort of go. You know, I think a lot of people think that when there is trauma of any kind but you know, religious based trauma that healing comes through talking and through you know, and talking about your story and and yes, that is, that can be part of healing for some people. But healing can come through something really joyous, like dance, and you know, so I I love that because I think we forget that healing doesn't have to be I. I tend to say that you can find as much healing in laughter as you can in tears and love. I love that dance expression, yeah.

42:43 - Ruth (Guest)

I really do. You know, when I was, when I went to uni, I started putting myself in counseling because I knew there was something very wrong with the way I was raised. But they were Christian counselors, they were Catholic counselors and they really actually, to be quite honest with you, failed. And then later in life I had other counselors. So I did a lot talk therapy. I've done a lot of talk therapy but nothing has helped me more than being able to internalize safety and joy and connection in my body. Yeah, is exactly what they teach. You should starve yourself from that.

43:21

You know, one of the things my mother said to me with my first marriage, after I was married, was, she said don't get too much pleasure out of sex. I was a little bit like, wow, mom, like really just don't enjoy it too much, because if you do, you might like it too much. You might like, you know that sexual contact and therefore you might be, you know, severing yourself from God, as if pleasure and enjoyment on this sphere is somehow severing from our relationship with some divine entity. And, honestly, the things that have been the most healing for me is where I'm really able to be deeply in the experience of enjoyment, safety, connection with my own body, connection with the pleasure of being a human in this form, connection, you know, with my partner, connection with my children, and if you think about it, those are all the things that they took away from us. They took pleasure and enjoyment and safety and connection away from us and they told us someday you'll have those experiences but you won't have them here in this life and if you do, you're selfish and you're in danger of eternal damnation. So they pushed off that real connection in a way into some future reality where we're no longer embodied.

45:06

And honestly, that was the thing that I never believed, because I could feel both the suffering of other people but I could feel the pleasure of other beings as well. And I remember one time sitting up late at night and there was this beautiful full moon and looking at the way that the land where I lived sort of curved and I I still haven't memorized in my head and just being crying and apologizing and saying I'm so sorry I'm a bad Christian, because I love this land so much, because I can feel the love for it inside my body, yeah, because I feel that this is a relationship that I have and so making that problematic, making it, you know, something that God will punish you for for all of eternity, really severs us from healing. Because we have to feel safety inside our bodies, we have to feel what feels good in order for us to look at somebody and say don't do that, that's not good for me, I don't want that, that doesn't feel good to me. Yeah.

46:34 - Sam (Host)

Okay, whilst, that is a really beautiful transition for what is usually my final question. Whilst, that is a really beautiful transition for what is usually my final question. I am curious about something Were you able to connect with your dad and your father's side of the family?

46:50 - Ruth (Guest)

So all this time, while I was in the community I became a little sleuth. I'd go look through the files in the office trying to find out who my father is right.

46:59

Yeah, quickly dreaming like Daddy Warbucks. You know, someday he's going to come and save me from this horrible place. You know, and unfortunately I found out that my father lived with me the whole time and that he simply did not reveal his paternity, reveal his paternity, and though the community was telling the conversion story, saying that my father left because my mother would not have an abortion with me, that that was a lie and they would say this in front of me and my father was there, and so it really was a deep, deep cruelty to do so. He married another woman and had eight children, seven children with her, but he also abandoned another child before me. So he essentially abandoned me, denied paternity, and still lives in the community with the woman who severely abused me and a man who is a serial pedophile. So I, you know, sadly, sometimes the fantasy of having somebody out there who would save you, just that did not come true for me. I needed, I needed to save myself.

48:24 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, yeah. Were you able to find um some connection in terms of that Hispanic uh heritage that you do have?

48:38 - Ruth (Guest)

So some of my family is, you know, lived in Florida. They were migrant workers, citrus workers have not connected with the Hispanic side of my family, I really don't know them, but I have really felt drawn to the beautiful volcanic island that my great grandparents came from and so I have connected with that island, mostly because the land and the environment really called to me. So I have had connection to some very important places where my family more recently came from and that's been very healing for me. But unfortunately there's no happy ending. I still have relationship and connection with two of my half siblings, my sisters, who I grew up with, and that has been a really challenging and healing thing as well. So but in finding other friends that are like family members in, you know, chosen family, I think probably I've found the most healing.

49:51 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, yeah, chosen family are sometimes the most beautiful parts of family.

49:56 - Ruth (Guest)

So Well, they chose you. They didn't have to. Exactly yeah absolutely okay.

50:03 - Sam (Host)

So I have been finishing these episodes by asking you to give some word of wisdom or a message to somebody who is deep in their religious trauma. They've just left their faith community or they're deconstructing, but they're deep in a lot of the grief and the emotions that come with religion and organized religion.

50:28 - Ruth (Guest)

You know. I would just say that you are worthy of existing exactly how you exist in this world. You don't have anything more than what you are and you get to explore what that means and you have value, just like any other being in this world has value. You would never look at a beautiful tree and say you suck. You wouldn't do that.

50:59

You would be able to say what a beautiful being. And allow that pleasure to come into your body. And I think the other thing is is that if you're safe right now, then I want you really to put your hands on yourself and let that in. You may not be safe in the future, you may be afraid in the future, it doesn't matter. But let in that feeling of safety, let in that feeling of pleasure and nurturance, because that is what fills us up and fuels us for when times are really difficult, for when we feel disconnected, for when we feel frightened.

51:47

And you'll still be able to see the danger, you'll still be able to feel the things that are not good for you, but let that enjoyment and connection really live deeply in your body.

52:02 - Sam (Host)

What a beautiful way to end so. I have nothing else to say but thank you, thank you.

52:11 - Ruth (Guest)

Sam, thank you.

52:16 - Sam (Host)

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Beyond the Surface. I hope you found today's conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did. If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who might benefit from these stories. Stay connected with us on social media for updates and more content. I love connecting with all of you. Remember, no matter where you are in your journey, you're not alone. Until next time, keep exploring, keep questioning and keep moving forward. Take care.