14: Christian Patriarchy and the Stay-at-Home Daughter Movement with Cait West

[00:00:00] .

[00:00:30] Hello deconstructionists, this is Maggie, the host of our podcast, where we'll collectively

[00:00:38] share our stories and experiences of leaving high control religion, along with what it's

[00:00:42] been like for us to find new practices that help us feel good and confident in ourselves.

[00:00:48] I hope that hearing these stories reminds you that your deconstruction is valid and most

[00:00:51] of all that you are not alone on this journey.

[00:00:54] You are good, you are loved and you are worthy just as you are.

[00:00:58] Hello deconstructions.

[00:01:01] My guest today is Kate West, who uses she-her pronouns.

[00:01:07] Kate is a writer and editor based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

[00:01:11] She's the author of Rift, a memoir of breaking away from Christian Patriarchy.

[00:01:16] Her work has been published in the revealer, Religion Dispatches, Fourth Johnna, and Hawaii

[00:01:21] Pacific Review among others.

[00:01:23] As an advocate and a survivor of the Christian Patriarchy movement, she serves on the editorial

[00:01:28] board for Tears of Eden, a nonprofit providing resources for survivors of spiritual abuse,

[00:01:34] and co-hosts the Survivors Discuss Podcast.

[00:01:37] So thank you so much for being here, Kate.

[00:01:39] Your book is wonderful, and I'm so excited to have you here to talk all about it.

[00:01:44] Can you give us a little background about how you grew up in church and a little background

[00:01:48] about the State Home Daughter movement and the Quiverful Movement?

[00:01:51] Sure.

[00:01:53] I grew up in a pretty evangelical home.

[00:01:57] I was baptized in a Presbyterian church, and we were reformed Presbyterians, so pretty

[00:02:04] Calvinist in our theology.

[00:02:06] I can see my life as becoming more extreme, our family becoming more extreme over the years

[00:02:13] in our belief system and how we lived.

[00:02:17] So when I was born, we were what I would consider a typical evangelical church, and then

[00:02:23] the older I got, we joined more patriarchal churches.

[00:02:27] I was pulled out of a Christian school when I was five to start homeschooling, and so

[00:02:32] that's when I became more isolated as a kid, and the teachings became more of, that's

[00:02:39] all I heard.

[00:02:40] I didn't have a lot of outside experience or outside voices in my life.

[00:02:46] And over time, my dad got involved in something called the Christian Patriarchy Movement, which

[00:02:52] is exactly what it sounds like.

[00:02:56] It's this belief that God is masculine, and that's why men need to be leaders of every

[00:03:04] realm of life, from families to churches to society, and women are supposed to be the

[00:03:12] help meets the wives and the mothers, not the leaders.

[00:03:17] So that meant for me, I was growing up learning how to be a stay-at-home mom, and being taught

[00:03:24] how to take care of a house, how to cook and clean.

[00:03:28] Also being told that I wouldn't leave the house when I turned 18, I would become what

[00:03:33] we called a stay-at-home daughter, which meant my whole life, I was either under the

[00:03:39] headship of my dad, or under the headship of my future husband.

[00:03:43] So as a stay-at-home daughter, I wasn't allowed to go on dates or go to college, or have

[00:03:48] a job.

[00:03:50] I was supposed to just stay home and wait until my dad helped me find a husband, and that

[00:03:56] didn't work out very well for me, which is why I eventually left in my mid-20s, and that's

[00:04:03] kind of the whole story in a very brief nutshell of my book, which is coming out in April,

[00:04:10] where I tell this story of growing up this way and how I started to figure out how to leave

[00:04:15] and what it was like to be on the other side.

[00:04:20] I hadn't heard a couple of the terms that you use until I read your book stay-at-home daughter

[00:04:26] I had not heard, and the patriarchy movement or the Christian patriarchy movement was like,

[00:04:33] yeah, Christianity is very patriarchal, but just kind of like the way that all churches

[00:04:39] are.

[00:04:40] But it was like all of these teachings that you had were like that to the extreme.

[00:04:45] Right.

[00:04:46] Yeah, and when I left, I thought other churches weren't patriarchal, which I was mistaken

[00:04:51] about that, because when I went to other churches, I was like, oh, there's patriarchal hierarchies

[00:04:56] here too.

[00:04:58] But the way I grew up, it was taking the Old Testament very literally, and so stories

[00:05:03] of Abraham finding a wife for his son Isaac.

[00:05:07] Those were the stories that created our narrative of what courtship should be like, of

[00:05:12] what marriage should be like.

[00:05:15] And so in some ways, I think the patriarchy movement just said it all out loud.

[00:05:20] Whereas someone who might be complimentary or more evangelical might not say those things

[00:05:27] quite as explicitly, but they still believe the core belief.

[00:05:31] They still have the core belief that women are just submit to men.

[00:05:36] They just might not have it quite to the extreme that we lived it.

[00:05:40] Yeah.

[00:05:42] What are some ways that the patriarchy played out for you and your life, for your family

[00:05:47] or your schooling?

[00:05:48] Yeah.

[00:05:49] What did it actually look like?

[00:05:52] So in school, our homeschooling curriculum was very Bible based.

[00:05:58] We had to learn only from a godly worldview, which included this patriarchal mindset.

[00:06:06] So anything I was taught was not going to challenge this idea that my role as a girl

[00:06:13] and eventually as a woman would be to be a submissive daughter and then a submissive

[00:06:19] wife.

[00:06:20] So everything I was taught led to that belief system, and we only interacted with people

[00:06:28] who lived the same way.

[00:06:29] So all my friends were in the same movement.

[00:06:33] All of our dads agreed about this.

[00:06:36] So there wasn't a lot of ways to challenge it or even see alternatives.

[00:06:41] The only alternative I saw was extended family and I didn't see them very often.

[00:06:45] So I just grew up thinking that this was the right way because I was told that it was,

[00:06:51] and that's what God wanted.

[00:06:53] So that's what I believed.

[00:06:54] Yeah, because neither of your parents actually grew up in hardcore evangelical churches.

[00:07:00] Right?

[00:07:01] No, my dad grew up Lutheran and became a Catholic for a short time before he became an

[00:07:06] evangelical and my mom grew up Southern Baptist.

[00:07:12] Somebody said, and I don't remember who it was, but somebody was middle of the road Catholics

[00:07:18] often become the most hardcore Protestants later in life.

[00:07:24] I don't remember who it was, but I was like, oh, that's so interesting.

[00:07:27] That is interesting.

[00:07:28] I guess this is anecdotal evidence of that.

[00:07:31] Okay.

[00:07:32] So something that was really intriguing to me about your story is this whole homeschooling

[00:07:36] piece of it.

[00:07:37] And you said here and you talk about in your book how you learned how to be a homemaker

[00:07:43] basically.

[00:07:44] You did a lot of learning how to sew and how to clean and how to cook.

[00:07:47] I'm a public school teacher, so I feel very strongly about homeschooling education and

[00:07:52] you know, all kids deserve a good and an actual education.

[00:07:57] And so I think that homeschooling can be doesn't have to be but can be very dangerous.

[00:08:03] And so can you talk about what that was like for you?

[00:08:07] Yeah, I grew up in the 90s.

[00:08:10] So that was the real start of evangelical homeschooling.

[00:08:16] And I know that the demographics of that have changed since the pandemic.

[00:08:20] But at the time it was very Christian.

[00:08:23] Everything was all the curriculum was written from a Christian perspective.

[00:08:27] It was also very white.

[00:08:29] And so nowadays I think now that a lot of parents are choosing homeschooling, they don't understand

[00:08:36] the context of where some of this curriculum might be coming from because they're just

[00:08:41] coming into it new.

[00:08:43] And yeah, I agree that homeschooling can be a good option for some parents but in my experience

[00:08:49] it can also be, it can lead to a lot of neglect and it can give people who are abusive

[00:08:56] more freedom to abuse their children because homeschoolers don't have the same regulations

[00:09:04] that public schools do in most states.

[00:09:07] So because of that, it's much trickier for children to get what they need.

[00:09:12] Mm-hmm.

[00:09:13] Yeah, I'm thinking about my role as a teacher like I'm a mandated reporter so if I see something

[00:09:18] that's happening at home, you know there's all these adults in the building that have

[00:09:23] eyes on these kids and are required by law to report things that are unsafe.

[00:09:27] And if you're at home all the time with your parents and one or both of them are abusive

[00:09:35] nobody's there to catch that like you don't have any other eyes on you which I'm sure

[00:09:41] would feel so scary.

[00:09:42] I know one thing that you talk about is homeschooling red flags like warning signs of neglect and

[00:09:48] abuse for children being homeschooled.

[00:09:50] Could you talk a little about that and what those warning signs are?

[00:09:54] Yeah, I think it's when the parents are sheltering their children so much that they don't

[00:10:00] have access to anybody outside the home.

[00:10:04] It's really tricky to see I think from the outside unless you're paying attention.

[00:10:09] You know if I went to the grocery store as a kid nobody would have thought that's a neglected

[00:10:14] child, right?

[00:10:16] Because I personally I was fed well.

[00:10:19] You know I had a home to live in.

[00:10:22] My experience was more of the emotional abuse, the psychological abuse so that didn't appear

[00:10:28] but there are children who do experience physical abuse in these situations.

[00:10:35] So yeah I just don't know how many people will be able to tell unless they're doctors

[00:10:43] people who can see them but a lot of times in these groups children don't even go to the

[00:10:48] doctor.

[00:10:49] I know a lot of kids who don't have birth certificates so it's just really difficult.

[00:10:55] I think if you see a family closed off and the children are so quiet and obedient that

[00:11:05] can be a red flag which sounds weird but when children are so repressed that they don't

[00:11:11] ever misbehave, that's a sign that they're being disciplined at home in a harsh way.

[00:11:17] I know when I was growing up there was this one family in our church they would, they had

[00:11:23] these two little kids and they were perfectly behaved during the sermon.

[00:11:27] They were tiny kids, you know not mostly people would put those ages in nursery but we

[00:11:31] didn't have a nursery.

[00:11:33] And so the mother during the week would have them sit down and listen to sermons on tape

[00:11:41] recordings of sermons and then she would spank them if they got off the chair.

[00:11:46] And so they would have to do that you know all week for an hour or so at a time.

[00:11:50] Wow.

[00:11:51] And that's physical abuse and that's why they were so well behaved in public is because

[00:11:58] they were being harmed at home.

[00:12:00] So sometimes the red flag is overly obedient children who don't have an individual presenting

[00:12:08] self if that makes sense.

[00:12:28] I think one of the biggest aspects of the theology I learned as a child was the Calvinism

[00:12:34] aspect which taught that everyone is born a sinner and deserves hell.

[00:12:42] And that God decides who gets to go to heaven.

[00:12:46] This idea of predestination that you don't have any control over your future, I grew up

[00:12:51] with a really deep fear of hell and eternal punishment and feeling helpless you know like

[00:12:59] what if God doesn't love me.

[00:13:01] And that was a struggle especially as I became a teenager and I think wanting to figure

[00:13:07] out what my life would be like and starting to have doubts about whether God was real

[00:13:11] and if he was real he probably hated me and you know those kinds of feelings as a teenager.

[00:13:19] And another big aspect was the purity culture part of all of this which taught that your

[00:13:26] body needs to be kept pure until you're married and for girls you're responsible

[00:13:33] for protecting boys from thinking lustful thoughts about you.

[00:13:39] So as a constant self policing of what I was wearing and my facial expressions and my

[00:13:45] tone of voice just constantly trying to appease this culture of needing to be the quiet

[00:13:53] girl and not tempting and not provocative whatever that meant you know.

[00:13:59] And so that made me feel disembodied and I just so seated a lot as a kid and even as

[00:14:07] an adult and I think it really fractured my own sense of self you know because I was

[00:14:16] caught up in this world where I didn't fit and I couldn't be perfect but I had to be.

[00:14:24] And so the best way to survive that is to conform and for me that part of that was

[00:14:31] dissociating so that I didn't feel you know the painful parts of it.

[00:14:36] I think in your book you say like I didn't have the language for depression yet or any

[00:14:45] of the mental health vocabulary that might be helpful to start to label some of the

[00:14:50] things that you were experiencing.

[00:14:52] When did you start to realize what it was that you were feeling?

[00:14:57] That's a tricky question because I can look back and recognize moments where I felt

[00:15:07] something was wrong but I didn't have language for that obviously I was a child you know

[00:15:13] and so the older I got the more dissonance I felt around that and not having any information

[00:15:20] to back up what I was feeling.

[00:15:22] It wasn't until I was you know my early 20s that I finally had a computer that I could

[00:15:29] access privately and could go on the internet and look up stuff.

[00:15:34] And I was trying to figure out what was happening to me because I was struggling with my relationship

[00:15:40] with my dad and he was very controlling and I looked up, I was typing in my questions

[00:15:46] and found an article about what abuse is and it just floored me because I was reading

[00:15:53] this and feeling like oh that's what my life is like.

[00:15:57] And I didn't understand what that word abuse was before then so that gave me the language

[00:16:03] to say oh this is wrong, this is harmful when I had been told it was love so that was

[00:16:11] quite the pivot for me to go from believing what I was being told to saying I have a mind of my own

[00:16:19] and I can tell that this is wrong now and now I have the language to validate that.

[00:16:27] Yeah well I'm thinking about how they told you it was love but really it was abuse

[00:16:33] and that's really like God's love for us is the model that we have right but if we look at

[00:16:40] this conditional nature of God's love that's really abusive too and if people are modeling

[00:16:46] that you're going to end up in these really patriarchal and abusive situations but

[00:16:53] that's the model of love. Is this really abusive right form of love?

[00:16:58] Yeah and it's not really love at all when you're controlling people and limiting their

[00:17:03] information and access to the outside world that's not love, that's over protection

[00:17:09] and in my case abuse you know so that word was a lie in that context and that was hard to

[00:17:17] reckon with but that's what gave me freedom to leave.

[00:17:22] Yeah so how did you maybe this is in your book and I haven't gotten there yet but how did

[00:17:27] you get the computer like that's huge like all of a sudden having access to information is

[00:17:32] is a huge thing so how did that happen? Yeah I mean it didn't happen in anything from

[00:17:39] in a dramatic way. I was in my 20s you know I had earned the trust of my father I was very obedient.

[00:17:48] I was totally on board with like I mean outwardly I was totally on board with the stay-at-home

[00:17:53] daughter thing and I think that it just made sense for my parents to trust me to have a computer.

[00:18:02] I bought it myself with money I made from teaching piano lessons and for a while I didn't go on the

[00:18:09] internet and look up things because I was very good at self-policing which is why I think I was

[00:18:14] trusted so much because I was so scrupulous. I talk about you know that religious OCD aspect of

[00:18:21] this lifestyle and I wouldn't have even looked it up but then when stuff kind of like went to

[00:18:28] shit and like hit the fan I was like I need help you know and I just felt desperate and that

[00:18:35] was just one way for me to look for help. So it just happened to be there it wasn't like I

[00:18:40] went to get the computer to get the information. I had it so that I could write because I liked

[00:18:46] to write so I would write poetry and things like that on the computer so it was a tool eventually

[00:18:51] you know to give me access to that information. When you say like I was starting to look things up

[00:18:59] when shit hit the fan like what were those things that made it when did it start to like explode

[00:19:04] for you? When when did the rift start to happen? So I had this first courtship and it was a very

[00:19:12] long courtship. I was following all the rules and my father ended it because he said it wasn't the

[00:19:18] right person for me and at that point I had thought he was going to be the person I was going to marry

[00:19:24] so I had some feelings and you know my heart was broken but then my father told me that that was wrong

[00:19:33] that I had to repent of my feelings and that hit me in a way that I can't be sorry for my emotions

[00:19:42] and so that was like the first part of me changing and it was years before I left. So between that point

[00:19:49] and five years later I went through a lot of depression, I struggled with just day-to-day life

[00:19:57] and I started thinking about other options my older brother had left home when he was 17 and

[00:20:04] I thought maybe I could go live with him and then I met somebody else and we became best friends

[00:20:14] and we wanted to have a relationship and my dad said yes for about a week and then he changed his mind

[00:20:21] and we continued to have a secret relationship after that so that relationship is what sparked a lot

[00:20:29] of the conflict with my dad because I would get I was starting to get in trouble which I had never

[00:20:35] done before because I was such an obedient child and so this relationship was a catalyst for me

[00:20:41] to start using my voice and that was you know hugely forbidden thing was to contradict my father so

[00:20:51] so doing that was in his eyes rebellious and he started to you know I would consider verbal abuse,

[00:21:00] emotional abuse watching me you know controlling every move I made limiting my access to people

[00:21:08] those kinds of things and so I started becoming suicidal at some point because I was desperate and

[00:21:17] I could see no way out and so I knew something had to change because I felt like

[00:21:24] something is wrong and this isn't okay and I need to survive so you know that this one aspect

[00:21:31] of me wanting to give up and then this other part of me saying wait a second you have something to fight

[00:21:36] for we need to figure this out and so that's when I started looking for more information and trying

[00:21:41] to figure out what is going on and what can I do to get out of it yeah so what did this like

[00:21:47] getting out looked like for you what was the process like what did it feel like well it was

[00:21:55] it was very tricky because I was in this other relationship we wanted to get married and

[00:22:00] we decided to move to Michigan which was pretty far away from where we were living and

[00:22:06] I was teaching piano lessons which was the only job I was allowed to have because they didn't have

[00:22:12] a boss that was part of the patriarchal rules is like not having someone over you okay so I could

[00:22:18] teach piano lessons so I amped up how many lessons I taught a week so that I could save money

[00:22:25] and open to bank account and started planning financially which takes time

[00:22:31] and you know just gathering strength and resolve you know took a lot of time so it wasn't like

[00:22:38] I decided to leave and then I just left did your dad know you had a bank account yeah no he knew

[00:22:44] I had a bank account that was okay okay yeah I know some girls who grew up this way who don't have

[00:22:50] their own bank account that's really common so my story is uncommon in that way that I had

[00:22:56] I had some money okay so I was saving money I was trying to figure out what to do with my life

[00:23:04] and yeah it was just a long process falling in love wanting to get married wanting to leave

[00:23:11] this situation it was fair it felt very dramatic but I don't know if people on the outside would have

[00:23:17] seen how that felt because in public my dad didn't talk about this with other people so he went

[00:23:24] along with our engagement publicly even though he told us he didn't approve and so other people

[00:23:31] didn't understand what was really happening so like that abuse side of it happens in your own home

[00:23:36] and then the public side is like everybody's fine which is really difficult to live with so yeah

[00:23:42] so eventually I saved up enough money to get a plane ticket and and I left and it felt very

[00:23:49] anti-climactic at the moment because nothing blew up you know I felt like it had already happened

[00:23:55] it felt like the split with my beliefs had already happened at that point even though I didn't

[00:24:02] understand it yet the leaving was just a result of it it wasn't really the catalyst for it

[00:24:09] did your dad ending the first courtship feel like a bigger like the bigger break than actually leaving

[00:24:16] your house did I don't know I don't know if I can compare the first one I felt so helpless

[00:24:23] you know because I didn't have any I wasn't I didn't have money at that point I didn't have

[00:24:27] anywhere to go the second courtship and the second relationship I knew a lot more

[00:24:34] and I remembered what had happened the first time and I had made a promise to myself to never

[00:24:39] let that happen again so even though I went along with the the roles for a while I knew that I would

[00:24:46] never let myself lose a relationship because of my dad so I was determined I think I had more

[00:24:55] a stronger sense of self at that point to be able to say I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna leave

[00:25:01] maybe this is in your book but what happened with this relationship the second one yeah

[00:25:08] well we both moved to Michigan which is where he's from and we got married and then we both

[00:25:15] went to college we did everything backwards I got I we moved here I got my first real job which

[00:25:23] took a long time to figure out and we both started going to college and we went to college

[00:25:28] together for years to figure out what we wanted to do and it was really difficult we were very poor

[00:25:36] but also we had each other and I had somebody who understood where I came from and knew how hard

[00:25:43] it was gonna be to get through it so I mean that that's kind of a miracle in my opinion because

[00:25:49] a lot of times you leave this and you just lose everything so I had this one person who stuck by me

[00:25:55] yeah yeah yay as you were telling this story I was like I hope this is the person she marries

[00:26:01] yay okay that was very satisfying spoiler alert

[00:26:06] okay so it's so interesting like you walked away it didn't feel that like I don't know like

[00:26:11] that big at the moment but then looking back what was that process like I mean I'm sure there

[00:26:17] was so much processing that you had to do so much processing to do to just like be a healthy person

[00:26:24] on the other side of it but also then to be able to put words to your experience in a book and to

[00:26:29] start telling your story to other people so what did that look like to piece it together afterwards

[00:26:36] yeah I left under the assumption that I could just forget everything and start from scratch

[00:26:43] which is not possible turns out you know you carry your life story with you and I didn't know

[00:26:51] that at the time because I was so happy so I felt so liberated and I felt so excited I could

[00:26:57] go to the store and buy whatever I wanted with the money I earned you know not like I could

[00:27:02] buy a lot but I could choose what to do with it and yeah renting our first apartment and applying

[00:27:08] for college all these things were big milestones that happened in the first year

[00:27:13] that was super excited about and at the same time I started having a lot of panic attacks

[00:27:18] and anxiety and nightmares and all these things that didn't make sense to me because I thought

[00:27:24] like I'm out of the situation why am I feeling like this now but now I understand that was PTSD

[00:27:30] and that was just my body processing it after I got into a safe place you know it felt awful

[00:27:38] but I needed to go through that to get it out of my system and eventually I figured out that

[00:27:45] I need to go to therapy to help process this trauma because you know complex PTSD gets in your

[00:27:51] gets in your body you know in your bones and it's not going to leave until you work with the

[00:27:58] trauma therapist so that's what I recommend when I talk to people is if you can get access to

[00:28:04] someone who does trauma therapy not just talk therapy because it's very much in your body

[00:28:10] so processing that took years you know I'm still in therapy it's not like I've reached some other

[00:28:17] side even though I talk about this other side of the rift but I feel like healing is just an

[00:28:24] ongoing process and I feel so much healthier than I did 10 years ago. Yeah I talk about this

[00:28:32] about deconstruction in general just that like it's not a thing that ends like yeah I feel like

[00:28:38] I'm on the other side of you know my own church experience but it is still very much like a thing

[00:28:45] that you're always processing and coming back to and looking at ways that the things that we were taught

[00:28:52] kind of catch up with us and all these small ways and so it's like it never really ends but

[00:28:57] but that's okay like not in a not in a bad way just in a we always have more things to explore kind

[00:29:04] of way. Yeah and I find that liberating I find that exciting because I lived in such a narrow box

[00:29:10] of this is all you can believe and that's it and now I live in this sense of openness where I'm

[00:29:17] free to learn and grow and change and adapt and that's so much more liberating than feeling stuck

[00:29:24] in a rut. Yeah absolutely. So what kind of things do you believe now like where do you feel like

[00:29:31] you are religious religiously now? Where do you feel like you are in terms of religion? Maybe

[00:29:37] that's a better way. Even after I left I went to church for a long time because I I wanted to be

[00:29:44] able to get rid of what I saw as abusive but keep hold on to a faith because I believe that

[00:29:52] there was a god that wasn't like my father who wasn't didn't have conditional love and so I

[00:30:01] didn't go to church for a long time thinking that it was safer and I remember I picked a Presbyterian

[00:30:07] church and I thought wow like women can wear pants to church here some of the some of the women

[00:30:14] have jobs and it was just like so different from how I grew up but the longer I stayed there the more

[00:30:21] I saw this subtle patriarchy there that was just as harmful. I knew of an abuse situation that the

[00:30:27] church mistandled and they started bringing books by the by the patriarchal leaders from my childhood

[00:30:35] into Sunday school and things like that and I was like I'm I cannot do that again

[00:30:40] but nobody listened to me they didn't believe what I had to say you know I was told I was biased

[00:30:47] because of my family which was just really dismissive because I went through this experience

[00:30:54] I learned something and I want to share it with you but it was just not taken at all so

[00:31:01] eventually left the church and once I got out of the church I felt like some of those beliefs

[00:31:08] just fell away like I didn't have to hold so tightly anymore to something and it it changed over time

[00:31:16] in the past few years and I feel now like I suppose agnostic would be the best label if I have

[00:31:22] to pick one but I just feel so secure and uncertainty which sounds like a contradiction but

[00:31:28] compared to what I grow up with it feels right for right now so that's where I am right now and

[00:31:36] I talk with a lot of people who are both Christians and not Christians and

[00:31:40] I think that we can all learn from each other going forward.

[00:31:44] I love that feeling secure and uncertainty is a really beautiful way to put that and

[00:31:50] I that resonates with me quite a bit too it's like I don't I don't know and that's a really nice

[00:31:56] place to be after coming out of any kind of church experience that tells you this is the right way

[00:32:03] to believe, to be able to say I'm not sure and that's okay. Yeah it feels really good. Yeah

[00:32:08] I'm thinking about your younger self in the home that you grew up in and you now looking back at

[00:32:15] that younger self what would you tell her about well what would you tell her I'll leave it at that

[00:32:20] and you can take it wherever you want. I would tell her that her feelings matter, her ideas matter,

[00:32:28] her dreams matter and I would tell her that she doesn't belong to anybody and that she only

[00:32:35] belongs to herself and that includes her body and her thoughts and her life choices.

[00:32:44] I wasn't given any of that and so even I think about it now in the context of today with

[00:32:52] reproduction rights and how women are being treated in hospitals not getting access to good health

[00:33:00] care. I really connect with that problem because I know what that feels like to have zero agency

[00:33:09] and not even knowing that I had the ability to consent or not consent to something. So I'm really

[00:33:16] passionate about that and I would really want her to know that she would never have to obey somebody

[00:33:22] or give her body to somebody unless she wanted to. So I really wish she knew that because I probably

[00:33:29] would have gotten out a lot sooner. Yeah but she does now. Yeah and also like when you don't know

[00:33:36] like you stay in it because that's the safest thing. Your body was protecting you still.

[00:33:41] No you're right. My therapist tells me that all the time of showing compassion to my younger self,

[00:33:47] she did the best she could with what she had and trying to stay safe. Yeah I say that a lot

[00:33:54] in my own therapy too. I wish I'd known how stupid that I didn't see it and I didn't grow up

[00:34:02] and I grew up in like well my parents were very loving and are out of the church now. So like

[00:34:09] I'm in a very unique position in that but my church was much less like explicitly harmful but still

[00:34:18] like Calvinist views and so like on the outside it seems fine but when you actually look at the

[00:34:22] beliefs they're just as harmful they just don't. It doesn't come with like quite as much

[00:34:29] like explicit control and I always think like how did I not see it like if I'd known

[00:34:35] and could have gotten out so much sooner but yeah we did the best we could you know. Yeah exactly.

[00:34:50] How has it been to write your story and how has that helped your healing process

[00:34:57] like what what has that been like for you? Yeah I mean I like I said I wanted to get away from

[00:35:04] everything I wanted to just move on and then I also wanted to go to school to study fiction writing

[00:35:11] but I found that my own story kept surfacing you know in my various writing practices and my writing

[00:35:20] classes and it started to realize I need to get this story out of my system like it's just

[00:35:28] simmering and it's going to drive me nuts you know so that's how it started is just like needing to

[00:35:33] get it out and write down each little memory and eventually became part of my college thesis was

[00:35:42] writing these stories and then realizing like I want to share this with other people like

[00:35:49] it's more than just me I know so many other people who are going through this

[00:35:53] or who are still stuck so I wanted to be able to create something that I could share

[00:36:00] and also make something make art out of something that was painful you know and I think for creative

[00:36:06] people like it's you just can't help it sometimes if just taking your experience and putting it into

[00:36:13] your art and so that's what I did and I'm really glad that I started doing that because the more

[00:36:19] I talk about it the more people I find who do connect and I feel less alone so it's not you know

[00:36:25] it's just like this mutual connection with people by telling our stories and so I love that and

[00:36:32] I feel like a better person because of it I feel like we can make change because we're talking

[00:36:37] about this and I really hope that we can end Christian patriarchy yes either other ways that you

[00:36:46] work with people and connect with people in addition to your book and can you talk a little more

[00:36:51] about that yeah I volunteer for a nonprofit called Tears of Eden and we work with spiritual

[00:36:59] abuse survivors from evangelicalism so I'm on the editorial board I help people tell their stories

[00:37:07] or I do interviews written interviews on our blog and help create content for survivors so that they can

[00:37:16] either tell their story or hear other people's stories and that's you know that really

[00:37:22] goes well with what I like to do is as a writer so I love doing that but the organization is

[00:37:28] broader than that we have we have virtual support groups and a podcast called Uncertain

[00:37:35] and all sorts of resources like that for survivors so if you go to Tears of Eden.org you can find

[00:37:42] all of those and then I also have a new-ish podcast called Survivors Discuss where me and my cohosts

[00:37:51] Sherry and Claire we we interview survivors or experts and we talk about things as a panel discussion

[00:37:57] on topics like complex PTSD or we just recorded an episode about folks on the family and authoritarian

[00:38:05] parenting so like those kinds of topics where we want to platform survivors and give more

[00:38:12] awareness to these issues because I think more and more people are gonna be needing them.

[00:38:16] Yeah absolutely if listeners want to connect with you more where can they find you how can they

[00:38:23] reach out how can they get your book on April 30th when it comes out.

[00:38:28] Yeah you can find me I'm on social media at Kate West writes and then my website is KateWest.com

[00:38:36] and I spell my first name C-A-I-T and you can find all the info about the book on my websites

[00:38:44] you can order it from anywhere online booksellers and deep booksellers

[00:38:49] you can ask for at your library and my website also has some resources linked as well if you want

[00:38:55] to get some more resources and a contact page if you want to send me an email so yeah that's

[00:39:01] probably the hub that you can go to is my website. Awesome I love that you do so much activism for

[00:39:07] for people for other survivors and using your own experience to help others I'm sure that

[00:39:13] that's well I know that that's helpful for other people and I'm sure that that's helpful for yourself too

[00:39:18] if you're like you're you know using your own experience to do good in the world and to help

[00:39:24] other people that are in similar places to where you were. I like to end with some kind of encouragement

[00:39:29] for listeners so could you offer encouragement to maybe somebody who's also coming out of

[00:39:35] Christian patriarchy or maybe somebody who's still in it but trying to find their way out and

[00:39:40] yeah what would you say to them? I would say there's so many things I could say um but

[00:39:48] your story matters and I say that when matters a lot but I really want to emphasize like your

[00:39:54] life story has value, yourself has value and you get to tell the story of your life.

[00:40:02] I used that metaphor a lot because for me leaving felt like I could take back the pen and

[00:40:08] tell my own story whereas before I was told for me and so I would encourage everybody whether you're

[00:40:15] in a fundamentalist group like Christian patriarchy or you've just left or you're just trying to figure

[00:40:23] out what you want to do with your life telling your story is a really good way to figure out who you are

[00:40:28] and what you want to do what you want to talk about and you don't even have to share that publicly

[00:40:35] you could just write it down and some people like to just write their story down and then burn it

[00:40:39] because it feels cathartic you know but just the act of telling your story and giving words to it

[00:40:46] is really healing so that would be my word of encouragement is to give yourself the validation

[00:40:54] that your story matters. I love that are there ways as a writer are there ways that you

[00:41:00] that you like to tell people to start like if people are like oh I'm not a writer I can't I don't

[00:41:05] know how to do that what are some ways that people can get started just even just for themselves.

[00:41:11] Yeah I think you know there's no one right way to write a lot of times people struggle with

[00:41:17] just typing or writing so I say do audio you know voice memos on your phone or something like

[00:41:24] that and just tell the story and then have it transcribed it's still writing you're still telling

[00:41:29] your story so you can be creative with it and some people are more visual artists you know you

[00:41:34] could tell your story in a visual way just art in general can be a way to practice that creativity

[00:41:41] in that sense of self. Awesome well thank you so much for being here Kate it was so nice to chat

[00:41:48] with you into hear your story and I'll link all of your website and social media and where people

[00:41:53] can find your book in the show notes so people can read that and yeah thank you so much for sharing

[00:41:59] your story with the world thank you so much for having me.

[00:42:04] Thanks for listening to another episode of Hello Deconstructionists. If you enjoyed this

[00:42:08] episode or any others please like follow or subscribe to the podcast and if you feel like it leave

[00:42:14] us a review so other people know what this show is all about. If you have any questions, comments,

[00:42:18] reports of your own experience you'd like to share on the podcast you can email me at hello.deconz

[00:42:24] gmail.com and as always you can find me over on Instagram at hello underscore deconstructionists

[00:42:30] where together we are building community post evangelicalism. Huge thank you to Amy Azara

[00:42:35] for writing their theme song for this podcast and when the sweet little bot inevitably gets stuck in

[00:42:40] your head I hope it reminds you of this wonderful community that's here with you. Thanks to all our

[00:42:46] guests for sharing these parts of their stories with us and of course to you for listening. See you

[00:42:51] next time.

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