52 episodes

Interviews with authors, artists, experts, and story tellers to validate the experience of survivors of Spiritual Abuse, providing practical insights for the recovery journey.

Your host is Katherine Spearing, a Certified Trauma Recovery Coach with nearly a decade of previous experience working in the evangelical church.

This is the affiliate podcast of TearsofEden.org , a nonprofit for community and understanding in the aftermath of Spiritual Abuse.

Find us on Instagram @uncertainpodcast

Uncertain Katherine Spearing

    • Society & Culture

Interviews with authors, artists, experts, and story tellers to validate the experience of survivors of Spiritual Abuse, providing practical insights for the recovery journey.

Your host is Katherine Spearing, a Certified Trauma Recovery Coach with nearly a decade of previous experience working in the evangelical church.

This is the affiliate podcast of TearsofEden.org , a nonprofit for community and understanding in the aftermath of Spiritual Abuse.

Find us on Instagram @uncertainpodcast

    S5:E11 - Escaping Christian Patriarchy with Cait West

    S5:E11 - Escaping Christian Patriarchy with Cait West

    Cait West is a writer and editor based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her work has been published in The Revealer, Religion Dispatches, Fourth Genre, and Hawai`i Pacific Review, among others. As an advocate and a survivor of the Christian patriarchy movement, she serves on the editorial board for Tears of Eden, a nonprofit providing resources for survivors of spiritual abuse.
    In Cait’s memoir Rift, she tells a harrowing story of chaos and control hidden beneath the facade of a happy family. Weaving together lyrical meditations on the geology of the places her family lived with her story of spiritual and emotional manipulation as a stay-at-home daughter, Cait creates a stirring portrait of one young woman’s growing awareness that she is experiencing abuse. With the ground shifting beneath her feet, Cait mustered the courage to break free from all she’d ever known and choose a future of her own making. 
    Uncertain is a podcast of  Tears of Eden, a community and resource for those in the aftermath of Spiritual Abuse. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please take a moment to like, subscribe, or leave a review on your favorite podcasting listening apparatus.
    You can support the podcast by going to TearsofEden.org/support
    To get in touch with us please email tearsofeden.org@gmail.com
    Follow on Instagram @uncertainpodcast

    Transcript is unedited for typos and misspellings:
    I am so excited about today's guest. Kate West has a very special place in my heart. We met over the internet in the very early days of Tears of Eden, in the early days of the podcast Uncertain. She was the first person that I encountered outside of my family who'd Similar to the way that I had, who was talking about it openly in public, online, we have been friends and colleagues ever since then.
    Her book is about that experience of growing up in the Christian patriarchy movement in the stay at home daughter movement. We'll talk a little bit about the dynamics of that. podcast before. So I'm going to link to some of those episodes in the show notes. She's also a member of Tears of Eden's editorial board.
    and is responsible for a lot of the content that is on the Tears of [00:01:00] Yin blog, the website. Super grateful for her. Very grateful for her story. And here is my interview with Kate West.
    katherine: Well, hello, Kate. Hello. How are you? I'm doing all right it is good to see you.
    Cait: You too. And I think we both have sunny days. It seems like you have some sunshine in your room.
    katherine: Yes. It's going to be, it's going to be a relatively warmer weekend. I think like 60s ish. How's weather where you are?
    Cait: Yeah, I think it might get up to 60 today. And I want to, I want to get outside and start. Scraping around in the dirt and get my garden started, but we'll
    katherine: see. Speaking of dirt, your book.
    Cait: What a segue.
    katherine: Your book is called Rift, and you have a metaphor throughout your book about geology. And the earth, you talk a lot about like the earth [00:02:00] and I'm not even going to try to like get into scientific things.
    So talk to me about your book, which is the full title is rifts, a memoir of breaking away from Christian patriarchy. You have been on the podcast a couple of times before, so I'm going to link to some of those episodes in the show notes. But talk to me about the, the theme of this book and that metaphor, that geological earth metaphor that you use here.
    Cait: If you've listened to other interviews, the other interviews, you'll know I grew up similar to you, like, as a stay at home daughter, Christian patriarchy movement, quiverful. And this book is a story of me growing up in that and not understanding the world I was living in until it started going wrong and how I figured out how to leave and my life afterwards.
    And the idea of rifting comes from [00:03:00] this idea in, Well, there's this interesting thing that happens in geology where the earth splits apart and something like continents c

    • 46 min
    S5: E10 - Signs of a Cult - with Sarah Edmonson

    S5: E10 - Signs of a Cult - with Sarah Edmonson

    We’re talking about how one of the characteristics of a cult is that they often present as a really good thing. A lot of times, they are doing really good things on the surface. If this weren’t the case, people wouldn’t be joining them.
     Additionally, not every cult starts as a cult. Sometimes it starts as on organization with really good intentions to help people. We’ll discuss all of that, in this episode.
    https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_edmondson_how_to_spot_a_cult
    Sarah Edmondson is a Canadian actress who has starred in the CBS series Salvation and more than twelve films for the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime. She is also a well-established voice-over artist for popular series such as Transformers: Cybertron and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. In 2005, when NXIVM, a personal and professional development company, promised to provide the tools and insight Sarah needed to reach her potential, she was intrigued. Over her twelve-year tenure, she went from student to coach and eventually operated her own NXIVM center in Vancouver. Questions kept coming up about the organization’s rules and practices, which came to a head in 2017 when she accepted an invitation from her best friend to join DOS, a “secret sisterhood” within NXIVM.
    In 2019, Sarah published Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, the Cult that Bound My Life, with Kristine Gasbarre. In this tell-all memoir, she shares her story from the moment she takes her first seminar to her harrowing fight to get out. Her full story as a whistleblower is featured in the CBC podcast Uncover: Escaping NXIVM (downloaded over 25 million times) and The Vow, the critically acclaimed HBO documentary series on NXIVM. Now with the launch of “A Little Bit Culty,” Sarah and her co-host/husband Anthony “Nippy” Ames are keeping the conversation going by discussing the healing process with the help of experts and fellow survivors.
    Uncertain is a podcast of  Tears of Eden, a community and resource for those in the aftermath of Spiritual Abuse. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please take a moment to like, subscribe, or leave a review on your favorite podcasting listening apparatus.
    You can support the podcast by going to TearsofEden.org/support
    To get in touch with us please email tearsofeden.org@gmail.com
    Follow on Instagram @uncertainpodcast

    Transcript is unedited for typos and misspellings:
    Katherine: Well, hello, Sarah,
    Sarah: how are you? I'm great. How are you
    Katherine: doing? Okay. Do you know? Okay. It has been gloomy and St. Louis and today the first sign of sunshine and I like went outside to like be in the sun, but it was 30 degrees. And so I didn't stay there very long, but. It's beautiful today. Beautiful to see the sun.
    How are, how's the weather in your area?
    Sarah: I'm in Atlanta. We're in our very brief winter and it's, it's, it's just a couple of weeks, I think. And it really fluctuates on a day to day basis and I have no idea what's in store and I'm just getting used to that as a concept. Yeah.
    Katherine: I just kind of ups and downs.
    Yeah. Yes. I have relatives in the Atlanta area and I hear about the bipolar weather. Of yeah, very [00:02:00] similar to St. Louis fun times. Well, thank you so much for being here and your openness to telling your story here. Really excited to hear from you just about The impact of your experience in NXIVM and then your recovery process.
    You also have your podcast, a little bit culty that I highly recommend to everyone. It's just entertaining. It's good stuff and you learn a lot, but then it's also super entertaining. And so I hope folks will listen to that as well, but you get to interact with a lot of cult survivors through that. And so I w I'm very interested to hear.
    Just patterns and things that you have seen as you have been doing your podcast and working with folks in this, this area. But just to just start us, start us off for folks who may not know who you are or have not seen the vow o

    • 49 min
    S5:E9 - The Role of Anger in Healing & Empowerment with Dr. Laura Anderson (Most Loved)

    S5:E9 - The Role of Anger in Healing & Empowerment with Dr. Laura Anderson (Most Loved)

    One of our Most Loved episodes from Season Three, exploring common misguided perspectives of anger and how befriending our anger can help us heal.
    Dr. Laura Anderson is the cofounder of the Religious Trauma Institute, and founder of Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery she’s a licensed therapist, and professor of psychology. Instagram//Facebook: @drlauraeanderson
    Support Groups https://www.tearsofeden.org/support-groups
    Podcast Collaboration Form https://www.tearsofeden.org/form
    Listen to Trauma and Pop Culture: https://www.katherinespearing.com/trauma-and-pop-culture
    Uncertain is a podcast of  Tears of Eden, a community and resource for those in the aftermath of Spiritual Abuse. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please take a moment to like, subscribe, or leave a review on your favorite podcasting listening apparatus. You can support the podcast by going to TearsofEden.org/support
    To get in touch with us please email tearsofeden.org@gmail.com
    Follow on Instagram @uncertainpodcast
    Get more info on Pop Culture and Trauma podcast on Instagram @katherinespearing

    • 42 min
    S5:E8 - Stuff Christians Say -with Ashley Love Richards and Fallon Morey

    S5:E8 - Stuff Christians Say -with Ashley Love Richards and Fallon Morey

    This episode is with Ashley Love Richards and Fallon Morey, cohosts of TSFU the Podcast
    Katherine and Fallon play a game with Ashley asking her Christian Clichés to see if she knows what they mean. We also discuss the perspectives Catholics and protestants have of one another, the origin of Alcoholics Anonymous (spoiler, it’s Christian), and whether or not AA is a cult. This conversation is comical and fun—and borderline irreverent.
    Shoot Christians Say YouTube Video is the video we watch in this episode! 
    Katherine was interviewed in The New F Word Episode with TSFU. 
    Uncertain is a podcast of  Tears of Eden, a community and resource for those in the aftermath of Spiritual Abuse. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please take a moment to like, subscribe, or leave a review on your favorite podcasting listening apparatus.
    You can support the podcast by going to TearsofEden.org/support
    To get in touch with us please email tearsofeden.org@gmail.com
    Follow on Instagram @uncertainpodcast

    Transcript is unedited for typos and misspellings
    Katherine: [00:00:00] I actually, hi, Fallon. Hi. These are my two friends that I just met through. That's a f****d up podcast, and we had a blast hanging out and, and, and interview doing an interview. I had a blast hanging out with them and doing an interview with them.
    And so we decided to do this episode. Fallon grew up similar to me in
    evangelicalism and Ashley did not. So we're going to play a game called Stuff Christians Say, where Fallon and I are going to introduce Christian sayings to Ashley and ask her what she thinks they mean. And this is a like Not a pass fail like no, like there's, there are no stakes here other than testing your Christian, your Christian knowledge before I, I'm going to play a video, a little video to, to get us warmed up, but before I do that.
    Ashley and Fallon. I would love to hear what brings you here today. Ashley, go
    Ashley: first. What's up, Kathryn? [00:01:00] Hey! Super excited to be here. So yeah, I have a podcast called that's so fucked up and it's about Colts and murder and other generally fucked up stuff.
    Although I would say I primarily focus on Colts and coercive groups and I can high control groups. Obviously that's more where your podcast and your stories fit into. I saw Jesus camp 17 years ago when it came out in 2006. I saw a bunch of evangelical children being brainwashed at a camp to Take abortion out of the you know, take abortion rights away because a third of their fucking friends could have been there that night and they weren't.
    And then I saw it 17 years later, like right after our abortion rights got taken away. And I was like, hold on, this is a long game. And then I saw shiny, happy [00:02:00] people and I've been obsessed with high control, coercive Christianity ever since. So I'm very excited to have met you through me and Fallon doing a segment called the new f word.
    The f word was fundamentalism fundamentalism and Actually, it's really funny or it's actually really fun the episode that Catherine was on was called the new f word the C and F and E words Which sound like they're going to be really bad, but it was Christianity, nationalism, fundamentalism, and evangelicalism.
    So, you know, really, I had a lot of fun. I thought that was fun.
    Katherine: That was one of my funnest, my funnest or most fun. I don't know. Funnest, funnest episodes that I've ever, ever interviewed on. I had a great time with y'all.
    Ashley: I wanted to make sure that we knew what the fuck we were talking about before we started [00:03:00] talking about it, because as you said, I have, I am not religious, I did not grow up with any religion, I have a Patreon segment where I learn about the Bible, it's called Ash Learns the Bible, because I knew about that one story, I think Solomon, where they try to cut the baby in half, and I was like, That is fucked up.
    Is there other shit like that? Because I want to hear about it. So, basically, I guess

    • 58 min
    S5:E7 - Church Cults, Trauma, and Humor - with Shanny Payton

    S5:E7 - Church Cults, Trauma, and Humor - with Shanny Payton

    Shannon Payton (https://shannypantsshow.com/), known as Shanny Pants by many, is a content creator and podcaster living in Rocklin, California. Although Shannon has a successful career as a Realtor, she has equally enjoyed her hobby of sharing her humor through Instagram with friends and family. In 2020 her video about making school lunches went viral, it opened a whole new world for her. She now has many viral videos and hundreds of thousands of social media followers.
    Her podcast, The ShannyPants Show is currently in its second season. In her interview style podcast, Shannon shares her struggles of growing up in a cult, battles through years of infertility that ended in a hysterectomy and finally her journey to parenthood through foster care and adoption.
    She enjoys sharing the struggles of life in a humorous way as part of her self-prescribed therapy and through this, has connected with her fans. Her podcast topics include a wide range of subjects which in one way or another relate to something she has been through.
    Shannon has been a guest on The Kelly Clarkson show and has appeared on local TV show GoodDay Sacramento multiple times. Shannon is currently writing a memoir and is looking forward to giving her followers a deeper look into her life. When Shannon is asked where she gets all of her ideas for her humorous videos she sarcastically states, “I’m married and have kids, that’s all the inspiration I need for some crazy content”. IG: @therealshannypants @shannypantsshowpodcast
    Uncertain is a podcast of  Tears of Eden, a community and resource for those in the aftermath of Spiritual Abuse. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please take a moment to like, subscribe, or leave a review on your favorite podcasting listening apparatus.
    You can support the podcast by going to TearsofEden.org/support
    To get in touch with us please email tearsofeden.org@gmail.com
    Follow on Instagram @uncertainpodcast

    Transcript is unedited for typos and misspellings
     [00:00:00] I'm Katherine Spearing, and this is Uncertain. Do you ever get to a point where everything is just too much and you just need to take a break? That is kind of how I've been feeling the past few weeks.
    Around trauma recovery. And abuse dynamics and sometimes it just gets to be a lot and I just need to take a break. So I had to do that over the weekend a little bit. And this episode, I wanted to put this episode out because, uh, the guest today, Shani Payton is just a super funny human being and is comedian her content on social media is.
    So funny and keeps me laughing all day long and I thought that this episode was going to be like this really funny episode because we recorded it. I think back in like December and I listened to it and I was like, Oh, it's not as funny as I thought it was going to be, but there is some laughter. Fear not.
     [00:01:00] Shani Payton is a comedian and has hundreds of thousands of followers. So, so, so, so funny, but she has a darker origin story. She grew up in a church cult, and she has been on her own journey of recovery and healing, and humor plays a role in our healing process, and we do get to that at the end, but we also just talked about the dynamics of control and the impact that it has on us, it's just a really great conversation, and I really like Shani a lot.
    I'm going to link to her website in the show notes so you can follow her on all the things. She also hosts the Shani Pants show, which is a podcast. I was recently on the Shani Pants show, I will link to that episode of my conversation with Shani Payton, also in the show notes.
    Thanks so much for being here, and if you're having one of those weeks where you just need to take a break, then you know what? [00:02:00] You should. Take a break. Go for a little walk. Have a sip of water. And if you can take a break. for a couple days, sure, just do it. If you can. I highly recommend it. It's good to do that.
    All of the abuse and trauma it'll still be here when you g

    • 56 min
    S5:E6 - Abuse in the Church: The Role of Sex and Power - with Marie Giffith, PhD

    S5:E6 - Abuse in the Church: The Role of Sex and Power - with Marie Giffith, PhD

    Marie Griffith, PhD, John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. She served for 12 years (2011-2023) as the director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics and the editor of the Center’s journal, Religion & Politics. Her research focuses on American Christianity, including the changing profile of American evangelicals and ongoing conflicts over gender, sexuality, and marriage. Author of several books, including Moral Combat: How Sex Divided America and Fractured American Politics, the book discussed in this episode.

    Uncertain is a podcast of  Tears of Eden, a community and resource for those in the aftermath of Spiritual Abuse. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please take a moment to like, subscribe, or leave a review on your favorite podcasting listening apparatus.
    You can support the podcast by going to TearsofEden.org/support
    To get in touch with us please email tearsofeden.org@gmail.com
    Follow on Instagram @uncertainpodcast

    Transcript is unedited for typos or misspellings
    [00:00:00] I'm Katherine Spearing, and this is Uncertain. Hello. How are you? How are you hanging in there? I hope you're doing okay. I'm doing semi okay. It's been a lot inundation with this very real, very damaging type of abuse. One thing that you may or may not know is folks who have experienced spiritual abuse and folks who have experienced sexual abuse.
    They're very similar to each other. Spiritual abuse and sexual abuse are very, very similar. The impact is very, very similar because it is so, so vulnerable. You are so vulnerable when this happens and it violates our intimacy and it violates our very souls in a way that maybe other abuse doesn't. So if you are traumatized.
    By the abuse that you experienced in a church [00:01:00] or a high control environment or religious environments in your family. There's a reason for that. It makes a lot of sense. It's very, very serious trauma. So one of the things that we discussed in this episode is how the folks who. experience sexual abuse when they go to the religious institution where they experience that abuse and say, Hey, help me, this happened, this was awful, please help me.
    When they get dismissed or falsely accused or sidelined or silenced, that that is sometimes worse than the sexual abuse that they experienced in that institution. This episode is with Marie Griffith. She is the author of Moral Combat, How Sex Divided America and Fractured American Politics. It's an intense book.
    A lot of research went into this book. She's also a scholar [00:02:00] and a professor of religion at Washington University. And one of the things we will also discuss in this episode is how she literally taught a class on abuse in the church in a secular university. What? Crazy, crazy, crazy. Great conversation, lots of mind blowing moments about the connection between sex and sexual abuse and the rampant abuse that is happening in the evangelical church right now.
    Enjoy, or don't enjoy, but take it in for sure. And as always, take care of yourself, get some rest, give yourself some time after this episode to go for a walk, take a sip of water, breathe. You're okay, wherever you are, you are okay, take a deep breath, you are safe, you are here, you are now, you are present, you're going to be okay.[00:03:00]
    Here is my interview with Marie Griffith.
    Katherine: Hi, Catherine. Oh, how are you? How are you? And I have your big book here. This was a lot of work. She took this.
    Marie: And that was like I don't even want to tell you how many years. I mean, it was really sort of 15 years. I did other things as I was doing that,
    Katherine: but yeah. Yeah, just like the amount of research that went into just like one chapter I was like, this was a very large endeavor. But how are you this morning? How are you doing? How is your writing? Is it like a writing sabbatical? Is that kind of what this season is called?
    Marie: Yeah, I'm on, I'm on re

    • 56 min

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