Inside the Yellow Deli Cult: Tamara Mathieu on Life in Twelve Tribes (Part 2)

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[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_05] Welcome to season seven of A Little Bit Culty.

[00:02:06] [SPEAKER_01] Welcome back to part two with Tammy Matthew. If you haven't listened to the first one, the second one will make zero sense.

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_05] Okay. So we're dying to hear how you escaped. Is there any other sort of key moments that you want to share with us that kind of led up to you deciding to leave?

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_06] You wanted me to talk about being in Rite Aid?

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_01] The Rite Aid story is my favorite part.

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_06] Oh, really?

[00:02:44] [SPEAKER_01] And the fact that you guys went to Stewart's and got ice cream. That's so funny. Because Stewart's was like, when we went to upstate New York-

[00:02:51] [SPEAKER_06] There's the backdrop for ice cream. Oh, yeah.

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_01] So I know Stewart's well.

[00:02:53] [SPEAKER_06] There's a Stewart's coming to my town and my kids are so excited.

[00:02:58] [SPEAKER_04] It's the best ice cream.

[00:03:00] [SPEAKER_06] They're like giddy.

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_05] And before we get to the Stewart's and the Rite Aid, I just have to say the other thing, like sort of the red flags or like the breaking points that I really resonated with as somebody who also likes to help and contribute is the moment when you move to a new community, you offer to share your midwifery skills because you've done that. Oh, that's right. And you got rebuked for how dare you. What was your punishment? What was the next thing we called it feedback?

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_06] That only our father raises us up. We don't seek our own glory. We don't have like selfish ambition. So the fact that I was the one going and being like, hey, like, I'm wondering if I can be involved in this. That was from my own will. Right. You wait, you wait till our father, AKA one of the other women in the household approach you about it. Then it's not your will.

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_05] That's one of the most hypocritical and glaringly kind of frustrating hypocrisies that I found in your group. Because it's like, you're there to help and be as helpful as you can. But you did.

[00:04:05] [SPEAKER_03] Like you received.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. Yeah. And now you're trying to return the favor and be helpful. And they're like, how prideful, how terrible. Like there were so many moments like that, there was such a glaring hypocrisy within the teachings. Yeah. Did that start to weigh heavy on you? Like trying to wrap your head around all of these almost like counter commands?

[00:04:24] [SPEAKER_06] Oh yeah. Yeah, definitely. The teachings were relentless. Like we were talking about earlier, like the different standards coming out and just the dynamics that go on as your children get older there. It's just so much to keep track of all day long. I'd go to bed every night realizing like, oh, this happened and I didn't discipline so and so for that. And I let them get away with that. And I should have gone and talked to so-and-so about that. And like, just feeling like I was failing. And like, as a mother, that was a huge thing.

[00:04:52] [SPEAKER_06] Because if your child grows up and falls away, that is on you. And as a parent, you were given one job to raise this child, to become a disciple. You were even given the manual how to do it. You have all this support and you can pray and get the grace you need. And you didn't do it. So if your child grows up and leaves, that's on you. And you're going to go to death and be punished for that.

[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_02] And there's no awareness that it might be the manual that's causing these kids to, quote, fall away?

[00:05:20] [SPEAKER_06] No. And there's no awareness that like every child is so different.

[00:05:24] [SPEAKER_02] Right.

[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_06] You can't parent exactly the same every single child.

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_05] It's really hard to have awareness when you're exhausted and overworked and malnourished too. Like the way you talk about the way that the food was withheld.

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_06] And my husband said that we had a very hollow diet. He always described it as hollow. Yeah. You know, it wasn't that we were deprived food or starved. Or if somebody was hungry, it wasn't that you couldn't go to the kitchen covering and be like, I'm really hungry. Like, what can I eat? But, you know, sometimes times were lean, especially in Rutland, and everything was rationed. Certain number of eggs, maybe like two dozen eggs put in a pot of rice for 60 people. Things like that.

[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_06] So the diet was not really rich in a lot of proteins and fats. We ate a lot of beans, rice, vegetables, things like that. I mean, the good perks, we weren't eating all this processed garbage and chemicals. And our children weren't eating all the sugar and stuff like that. But there were definitely holes, holes in the diet. And most of that was just a monetary thing. You know, we didn't have the money for everybody to have a chicken breast on their plate.

[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_06] So you'd have five pounds of chicken breast that you would shred up and then mix into a very large soup or something like that. You know, if things were stretched. Right. So that everybody got a little. A little bit.

[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_05] Mm-hmm. And I think if somebody were just to hear a little bit about your day-to-day life, and myself included, I'd be like, get the fuck out of there. Like, just leave. Like, don't put up with this shit. I'm also a princess. There's no way I could. I mean, and I do a lot of housework, but there's no way I could do that. But I don't think people understand. And I don't think I would have either had I not gone through my NXIVM experience of like how isolated you were, how much you'd already sacrificed and sort of like what it would

[00:07:19] [SPEAKER_05] mean if you failed and you just left like to the outsiders and like you're trying to prove yourself and trying to like prove that you could do it. And this was your commitment. And like, you really did accept that like any confrontation you were having or any doubt was your own struggle or your own thing to work through, which I think is so much of what kept you there for so long. But what was the fine? I know there's lots of things in there and your book's just fascinating and people can pick it up. But tell us about the final moment.

[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_06] The final moment, we were in Florida. So one of the things that the community will do if they realize like a family's not doing well and they might be thinking of leaving is to move them somewhere else. And we'd lived in Cambridge for 11 years, which is very unusual. My in-laws lived there. My own grandmother joined the community in 2008. My web had spread out and things had gotten a lot more complicated. So I never thought that my husband was discontent there.

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_06] He was a leader and never in a million years. I did not think that he was ever going to leave. And I just did not have it in me to do it on my own. I did not have that confidence. It didn't even occur to me like, hey, if I just left, chances are he'd be coming after me or he'd be leaving too. He wouldn't just be like, all right, we'll see you later. But I didn't have that confidence because I thought that he was really content there and liked his life there.

[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_06] So it wasn't until our older son, Emmett, was a teenager and it was becoming pretty clear that he was not sold on the life there. His peers, a lot of them were being baptized and he just, he wasn't going to do it. With baptism came privileges. And he knew like some of his friends just got baptized so that he can drive the tractor, things like that, or operate certain machinery that you weren't allowed to do if you weren't baptized.

[00:09:13] [SPEAKER_06] But Emmett was never a pretender. So he was in trouble a lot. He was considered an out of line child. And it just became really clear that he was not going to tow the line. And I knew that if my husband got sent away with him, I knew that I wouldn't be able to go. Like a lot of times what happens when there's a rebellious teenager who's at risk of defiling the other teenagers in the group is that the father and that teenager will be sent away. It's like a discipline.

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_06] But the purpose is that the father would go out and win his son's heart. The community would arrange for them to have a place to live, maybe some odd jobs, or maybe they would supplement them with some money. And that happened all the time. And these women would just stay with the rest of their children while their husband was gone. I knew I could never, ever do that. It was always in the back of my mind. If Andre and Emmett get sent away, we're all going. That's going to be it.

[00:10:08] [SPEAKER_06] And it just never got to that place of happening because my husband finally got to the place where I think he started to see a lot of the inner workings, especially because he was a leader and involved in the industry. And I think he saw a lot of the behind the scenes that went on with the leaders and hypocrisy and double standards and things like that. And he had built up a huge industry, the Common Sense Soap and Body Care. And it floated a lot of communities, not just Cambridge.

[00:10:38] [SPEAKER_06] It was a multimillion dollar business. We had like a whole private label thing going on with big companies like Acure and Savannah Bee and Caswell Massey, like all these big names we would do private label for. And we supported some of the really, really poor communities like in Argentina and Brazil and sending money to all these places. And he really felt responsible. There weren't a lot of people in the community that had like his education and background and things like that.

[00:11:07] [SPEAKER_06] And I know he thought, well, if we leave, this is all going to fall apart. And then all these people's livelihoods, you know, so he kind of waited and a couple people moved to Cambridge that were capable of running the industry. And then I think he felt he could let his guard down a little bit, how his faith was on the rocks. And once that kind of got wind, our family was sent to Arcadia, Florida.

[00:11:35] [SPEAKER_06] We were going to go down and we were going to really tiny community, like five people, which we were coming from a community of like 60, 70 people. And so to go down there to this little five people, and it was like amazing at first. I remember thinking, I can do this here. You know, like I'm cooking dinner for 12 people. Like, this is amazing. We're going to beaches every weekend. It's just beautiful. The kids were happier.

[00:12:03] [SPEAKER_06] But salvation found us there too. You know, soon enough, we were being pulled into meetings because I'd picked up a Nancy Drew book for my daughter off of like free side of the road yard sale. And that was found. And I lawlessly bought my daughter's normal bathing suits because I'm like, we're going to be in Florida. I didn't want to be on the beach and our like handmade stuff that just made us look very bizarre. And so my mom had given me some money.

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_06] And so I'd got them normal swimsuits and those got found out. And then I bought my children like these Greek yogurts, but they had cane sugar in them. And like any little thing like that, people were coming to have meetings with us.

[00:12:46] [SPEAKER_05] And it's very anti-sugar.

[00:12:48] [SPEAKER_06] So it's like, even in this little place, there were still people coming from the Fort Myers community down to have meetings with us about these little ways that we were not being obedient to our standards. And we were basically ruining our children and giving into their flesh. And so then we kind of caught wind that they were thinking of moving us back up north, back to the Rutland community. And I think that was the last straw for my husband.

[00:13:14] [SPEAKER_06] I think he just couldn't imagine going back up north into this whole region of communities. And he wasn't going to be looked at anymore as like this top leader. He'd been taken down a notch because our family wasn't doing great. So he asked me if I would call my mom and see if we could stay there for a little bit. And I did. And we just kind of set a date like, OK, we're going to leave.

[00:13:43] [SPEAKER_06] And I remember I made dinner the night before eggplant Parmesan or something. And meanwhile, I knew my family was off in our rooms packing. And I wrote a letter to the people there. And we got up at like four o'clock in the morning and packed up the van and drove off.

[00:14:02] [SPEAKER_02] Wow.

[00:14:03] [SPEAKER_06] Wow.

[00:14:04] [SPEAKER_05] Can you tell us the Rite Aid story?

[00:14:06] [SPEAKER_06] OK. Yeah. So this was in Cambridge. It was just getting towards the end where I was just, I just felt like I could not do this anymore. But I was just grappling with everyday life. And I don't remember the exact reason. I think I'd gone to Rite Aid. I think one of my children had a cold and we needed some cough drops or it was something little like that. And I went in and got the cough drops and I'm walking past an aisle and I noticed Hershey's Kisses on clearance or something.

[00:14:36] [SPEAKER_06] And we weren't allowed to have chocolate. That was a no-no. But suddenly I was like, really wanted Hershey's Kisses. And I picked up a bag, you know, I was going to buy it. But then all of a sudden I had this fear of, because the Rite Aid is right smack in the middle of Cambridge. There's a household right down the road. And I'm like, what if somebody walks in and sees me buying this bag of Hershey's Kisses?

[00:15:03] [SPEAKER_06] And so I started looking out the window to the parking lot to see if there were any other 12 Tribes cars out there. And I'm kind of like in the aisle, like peering out. And I just caught myself. I'm like, what am I doing? I'm 37 years old and I'm here in Rite Aid with this contraband bag of Hershey's Kisses, trying to make sure that nobody sees me.

[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_06] But like, I just, the reality of how absolutely ridiculous that was, that that's even a thought in my mind. It just struck me.

[00:15:36] [SPEAKER_05] It's such a moment. I hope that's a movie moment right there.

[00:15:40] [SPEAKER_01] Well, I think those little awarenesses add up.

[00:15:44] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. Yes. It's not the moment that causes you to leave, but it plants a little seed and then makes it easier.

[00:15:50] [SPEAKER_01] Just what am I doing to myself?

[00:15:52] [SPEAKER_05] What am I doing to myself?

[00:15:53] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah, I just started realizing that I had a quote unquote guilty conscience for all this stuff that wasn't bad.

[00:15:59] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:16:00] [SPEAKER_06] I could have been brought into a meeting over that. If somebody had walked in and saw me, there could have been a meeting about that. Yep. And that's ridiculous.

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[00:20:53] [SPEAKER_05] Were they upfront about no chocolate?

[00:20:55] [SPEAKER_06] I think they would have been had I thought to ask that question. And, you know, it might have come up. Like, I know they used a lot of carob in place. And so it definitely could have come up, like, if we were having brownies. And one of the women, I don't think that would have been hidden. I could see one of the women being like, hey, we have this alternative to chocolate. We don't feel like chocolate is healthy. It's full of sugars and all this stuff. But carob, we use carob instead. And carob is healthy. And it's actually full of calcium and good for your teeth.

[00:21:25] [SPEAKER_06] And yeah, I don't think something like that would have necessarily have been hidden. Like, I knew about coffee. I knew they didn't drink coffee. They drank mate instead, which was like a Brazilian green tea. And it also gave the community down in Brazil an industry to help support themselves distributing mate. Sidebar, is that company still, like when we buy Yerba Mate, is that supporting the 12 tribes?

[00:21:47] [SPEAKER_05] If it's the Mate Factor, Mate. That's the most famous one, right? The yellow and kind of green one, if I'm thinking about it.

[00:21:53] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah, they do have a yellow and green box. Yeah. I mean, there's an Ocean State job lot in my town. And there's Mate Factor tea bags in there. So my daughter took a picture and was like, oh my God, I can't believe that this is here.

[00:22:06] [SPEAKER_05] Why do all these cults have this tea business? Like Yogi Tea from 3HO or Kundalini?

[00:22:14] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah.

[00:22:14] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah.

[00:22:15] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah, maybe there's like a really good moneymaker on that.

[00:22:18] [SPEAKER_05] Good moneymaker. So you had these moments. You leave the next morning. Did they try to get you back? Did anyone try to bring you back? Or did they let you go?

[00:22:26] [SPEAKER_06] No, nobody tried.

[00:22:27] [SPEAKER_05] Wow. Wow. Nobody reached out? No.

[00:22:32] [SPEAKER_06] We're still there. And my grandmother was still there.

[00:22:34] [SPEAKER_05] What happened there?

[00:22:35] [SPEAKER_06] We weren't cut off from talking to them, especially my grandmother. She wouldn't have had that. I called her and told her that we were leaving and let her know that if she wanted to leave, we would always take care of her. And she chose to stay. And she passed away, still living in the 12 tribes in 2019. My in-laws left a year and a half later. And the reason that they left was that my younger daughter was nine at the time we left. She loved dancing and she'd be with like the teenage girls and bake and sew.

[00:23:04] [SPEAKER_06] And she was just kind of like a really upbeat, happy child. And so we left and she went to school right away. And she did fine. She made friends, but she really missed her grandparents. She'd lived with her grandparents her whole life. I actually gave birth to her in my in-laws bedroom because mine was too small at the time. So a school vacation was coming up February break. And she asked, can I go visit Saba and Safda?

[00:23:32] [SPEAKER_06] That's Hebrew grandmother, grandfather for my break. And I was totally for it. I thought, yeah, that's fine. You know, I was even going to, I had fabric left. I was going to make her some pants. So she had appropriate, I wasn't going to like send her in jeans. And I was fine with that. I called my in-laws and I said, Dara would really love to come for a visit during school break. Can you guys look into that? Maybe we could meet halfway. I totally don't mind if she comes and spends a few days. And time went by, time went by, time went by. Every day, Dara would come home from school.

[00:24:01] [SPEAKER_06] Did Saba and Safda say I could come? Like she was so excited. She was practicing our dances that we used to do in our kitchen because she just couldn't wait to go back and dance with her old friends from the community. So finally, one day we got the answer and the answer was no. And my in-laws had been brought into a meeting where they were told that it was judged that they'd never truly given up their sovereignty. My father-in-law always maintained quite a bit of independence. They still owned their house and they collected rent.

[00:24:29] [SPEAKER_06] He kind of always had his own money and his own goodies. He'd have like a goodie basket in his room with bread and different things in it. He would take my children on trips if he had to go somewhere and get them Burger King. Like he just, he still marched to the beat of his own drum a little bit. And I guess up until that point, nobody really thought to hold him too accountable. But then once his worldly granddaughter wanted to come for a visit, then that was the judgment.

[00:24:55] [SPEAKER_06] And they said that it would give her a bad conscience if she came to spend time with her grandparents and that they were not truly submitted. And he said enough with this and they left the next day. Wow. Good for him. Yay. Yeah. Like he was not going to be told that his 10-year-old granddaughter can't come visit him.

[00:25:15] [SPEAKER_01] They don't do much to help themselves.

[00:25:17] [SPEAKER_06] Uh-uh. No. And I wrote, I was furious. I wrote to one of the leaders and I was, I'd been gone at that point for a few years. So I had nothing to lose. I was like, who do you guys think you are? Who's making these decisions? How are you representing God to my 10-year-old daughter? Who's wanting to go back and wanting to spend time there? How do you think now she views? Because we had to tell her that you're not allowed to go there. Like, yeah, I just, at that point, did they write you back?

[00:25:47] [SPEAKER_06] Yes. Yep. I still have all the letters. It was just a lot of like, we can't always understand our father's ways. Oh, right.

[00:25:56] [SPEAKER_02] Lord works in mysterious ways.

[00:25:58] [SPEAKER_06] I wish your father-in-law well, but I feel like he settled for something less because like, instead of eternal life and that glory, you know, he chose his worldly family. So he settled for something less.

[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_02] Arrogance.

[00:26:10] [SPEAKER_06] Yes, exactly. How are they doing and how's your family and your kids? How's everyone doing now? Everybody now is doing well. My in-laws live just down the road from us, a couple miles down the road. It was a harder transition for my mother-in-law because she was a teacher in the community and she really loved her role there, teaching her group. She'd often have a group of young teenage girls and they always loved her. And she was not like a really strict rule follower there.

[00:26:38] [SPEAKER_06] And she really tried to cultivate good relationships with them and they trusted her. And it was hard for her to leave her little niche there. And my children, Emmett now, he's 26 and him and his fiance are expecting baby number three.

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_03] Wow.

[00:26:53] [SPEAKER_06] So I have two granddaughters and third on the way. Like he's built his own house. He runs his own carpentry business. My older daughter is in her second year of dental hygiene school. And my younger daughter is starting in the same program, dental hygiene next fall. And then my youngest, he's still in high school. He's 17. He plays baseball. Um, yeah, so.

[00:27:15] [SPEAKER_02] That's awesome.

[00:27:16] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah.

[00:27:17] [SPEAKER_02] That's great.

[00:27:18] [SPEAKER_06] How was life for them adjusting? It was really hard for my older two because they were 13 and 15 and they're just raised there being fearful of the world, you know, like the world is just full of evil and selfish people. So it was hard for them. My younger ones, they started first and fourth grade right away and acclimated. Children are just amazingly resilient. And the younger ones just acclimated very quickly.

[00:27:47] [SPEAKER_06] But I could see my daughter trying to get caught up, trying to like look up a Katy Perry song because some girls at school were singing this song that she'd never heard of. So she's like, what is this song? You know, and just trying to get caught up with the culture and feel like she could fit in. And I homeschooled my older two for a couple of years. And that was, you know, it was her. They weren't making friends and getting to know people. They did get jobs. My daughter worked, there was a farm next door and she worked there.

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_06] And then they both did eventually dabble in high school towards the end, like 11th and 12th grade. And it was like questionable experiences as you can imagine. And then my daughter, she would have graduated 2020. I felt like she was finally like things were normalizing for her. She was making friends. It was her senior year. And then it was COVID. I just, oh, like this poor girl, you know, so she couldn't start. She got accepted at Castleton for nursing and then couldn't go.

[00:28:43] [SPEAKER_06] It had to be all online. And she was like, I hate this. So she took a couple years off, but then discovered the dental hygiene. And now she's really doing well with that. But yeah, there were just a lot of roadblocks for my older ones initially.

[00:28:58] [SPEAKER_05] And how about you and Andre? Did you feel like, and by the way, we kind of skimmed over this, but for our listeners, his family was from 12th Tribe, but it was you who brought him into it. And then he got really into it and got this leadership position. But you were on the same page when you left.

[00:29:12] [SPEAKER_06] Yes.

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_05] Were you healing at the same time? Are you guys doing okay? Tell us about your post cult life.

[00:29:18] [SPEAKER_06] I feel like he was more able to just put it all behind him and want to just like start over and pick up where we left off 14 years before. And I was not, you know, things would come up and I know he'd be frustrated. Like, why do we always have to talk about the community? You know, and like, it took, you know, it was very hard those first few years. He's acclimating to me suddenly having my own life. He knew exactly what I was doing every moment of my life for all those years.

[00:29:47] [SPEAKER_06] And I ended up going back to school and I ended up getting a job and we moved back to my area. I still had friends in the area. I got my own phone. Like, suddenly I was becoming this independent entity again. That was a big adjustment. Yeah.

[00:30:03] [SPEAKER_05] How did you navigate the rigid template of those roles post-leaving?

[00:30:07] [SPEAKER_06] It was hard. It was hard. I don't think that either of us realized how much of that was so ingrained in us. I remember sometimes saying, like, we're not in the community anymore. Yeah, that's what I'm imagining.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_05] Like, you're not the head of the household. We are the heads together.

[00:30:26] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah. Things like that. And we'd function fine like that before going into the community. So, yeah, that was definitely an adjustment. We all had therapy of some sort, all of my children, both of us. So, we did get help in that sense. And I'm just grateful. I had really supportive friends that helped a lot. And over the years, we've helped a lot of people leave.

[00:30:54] [SPEAKER_05] Wonderful. Did they reach out to you or how do you know? Because they knew that you were.

[00:30:59] [SPEAKER_06] Yep. We've had people come up and stay with us. We've helped just however we can.

[00:31:04] [SPEAKER_02] I imagine that's going to get more and more.

[00:31:06] [SPEAKER_06] There was a time, yeah, where it really seemed to pick up. Now, you know, we've been gone for 10 years. So, most of the people that we lived with and were close with, they're all already gone. Like, I can only think of a couple families that I had lived with for a long time and felt close to that are still there. So, there's been a huge exodus. Huge exodus. Why? I think just a lot of people become disillusioned.

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_06] And once your children hit those teenage years, it's like...

[00:31:38] [SPEAKER_02] It's hard to keep that.

[00:31:39] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah. Like, almost everybody has children that start leaving. And then I think that really just affects the families. And they really start, you know, especially if they're encouraged to not... Families there. If you stay there and your children leave, it's supposed to be like they're dead to you. You're really not supposed to connect with them. That's a bad business model. Yeah. We were told it was only supposed to be the fathers that connected with fallaway children

[00:32:04] [SPEAKER_06] and only to talk to them about the possibility of bringing them back, of them repenting and coming back was supposed to be like the premise of all interactions.

[00:32:14] [SPEAKER_02] Do you have a pulse on how active they are still internationally?

[00:32:17] [SPEAKER_06] They just opened a cafe in Island Pond, a new yellow deli.

[00:32:21] [SPEAKER_02] Wow.

[00:32:22] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah. No, they're totally still active. Very much so.

[00:32:26] [SPEAKER_05] Even with all the civil suits and lawsuits and allegations of abuse.

[00:32:31] [SPEAKER_06] Yep. There was even a murder. I don't know if you guys read about this. But if you look up 12 tribes murder in Pulaski, Tennessee, one single brother murdered another single brother and like hid him under a tractor. And this just happened last fall, just a few months ago. This happened. Yeah, it was pretty shocking. I think that's a first for the 12 tribes. There's never been a murder.

[00:32:51] [SPEAKER_05] I'm just shocked that with all of the abuse that they're able to still continue and not be...

[00:32:58] [SPEAKER_02] They don't see it that way.

[00:32:59] [SPEAKER_05] I know they don't see it that way, but it is that way. And there's supposed to be a legal system to help children. So it's upsetting to know that they're still so active.

[00:33:11] [SPEAKER_06] Yep. Yep. I agree.

[00:33:17] [SPEAKER_01] For more background on what brought us here, check out Sarah's page turning memoir. It's called Scarred, the true story of how I escaped NXIVM, the cult that bound my life. It's available on Amazon, Audible, and at most bookstores. Highly recommend, of course, because she's my wife. And now a brief message from our Little Bit Cult-y sponsors. Remember, when you support our sponsors, you support our podcast.

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[00:36:35] [SPEAKER_05] What did you bring from cult into your awareness? How did you make that connection?

[00:36:40] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah, that took a while. I did an event last winter with my publisher. We did this holiday craft fair, and she had a table set up, and I was one of the authors that came. And we would both kind of give a little blurb to people that were coming over about what the book was about, and I kept saying community, community. And after a few people, she was like, I'm saying cult, and you're saying community. Do you want me to say community? And I was, do you want me to say community? And I said, oh my gosh.

[00:37:09] [SPEAKER_06] I just, I fall back into that. But no, no, cult is fine. I just, it doesn't slip off my tongue so easy. Because they even had a way to make that sound really, really good. If you were there and someone was like, hey, are you guys a cult? Then you would say, well, do you know that the word cult comes from the word culture? All it means is a different set, a different lifestyle, different set of beliefs, a different way of living.

[00:37:35] [SPEAKER_06] The connotation that cult is bad is a recent thing. It's not a bad thing. It just means that something that's separate and different. And just because you don't understand someone's different lifestyle does not automatically make it a bad thing. Which is true, but it's true, right? So there's all, that's the thing. There's always a little bit of, there's enough truth in everything that it can be made easier to swallow, more palatable to people.

[00:38:02] [SPEAKER_01] We can minimize the accusation.

[00:38:03] [SPEAKER_06] Right. So I remember my husband had left his laptop home one day and I got on it and I don't even know why I did it. I put in a Google search of like, what is a cult or signs that you're in a cult or something like that. And whatever popped up then, this was probably like 2012. I was reading through it. Like every single thing applies to this place I live in. Like, am I in a cult? Like that's when I first started toying with the idea.

[00:38:33] [SPEAKER_06] This is when you were still in it. Uh-huh. Yeah. I was still in it probably a couple of years before we left.

[00:38:38] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. Well, definitely all the different models and checklists that we use, the community ticks off all the boxes. Yeah.

[00:38:47] [SPEAKER_06] Every single one.

[00:38:48] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. Behavior control, information control, thought control, emotion control, all the things.

[00:38:54] [SPEAKER_06] All the things. But that's why in general, they didn't condone that. I wasn't supposed to be on Google looking stuff up.

[00:39:01] [SPEAKER_01] Knowledge is power.

[00:39:02] [SPEAKER_06] I was lawless.

[00:39:03] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. And you wrote a book. What sparked that in your healing journey?

[00:39:10] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah, that was just how I was processing things for a while. I would just write down things that I remember, write down stories. It just helped me. You know, things would be rattling around in my memory and I would just get it all down. And before I knew it, I had pages and pages and pages and nothing was in order. It was all random, different things. And then one of my best friends that I mentioned a lot in my book, Michelle, she wrote a memoir of her childhood.

[00:39:37] [SPEAKER_06] And it's really sweet, fun memoir. It's called Bliss in an Isle of Organized Soup Cans. And she mentioned stories that I was in of us growing up and just like her fairly normal childhood. But it was such a great story. And it just made me think, wow, I've written a lot. I could do this. I have a story.

[00:39:59] [SPEAKER_06] And that kind of inspired me to take my little bits of randomness that I'd written throughout the years and start elaborating on them and organizing them. And after a couple more years, I felt like I had something that could maybe do something with. Absolutely.

[00:40:16] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, it's great. I enjoyed it.

[00:40:18] [SPEAKER_05] Very much. Yeah, me too. Thank you. And what strengths have you discovered in yourself through this experience? How has it been self-affirming or what have you come to realize about yourself?

[00:40:29] [SPEAKER_06] That I can handle a lot. There was a time when I was back in school trying to finish my degree, working full time, still had all four children at home. And realizing my life is really chaotic and really stressful, but it is nothing compared to an average day in the 12 tribes. That's so true. I had that realization. I think it's helped me in my compassion towards others.

[00:40:59] [SPEAKER_06] Anytime someone says to me, I'm going to tell you something, but don't judge me. I'm like, really? I don't judge anybody. You know the life choices that I've made.

[00:41:09] [SPEAKER_01] It's a great point.

[00:41:10] [SPEAKER_06] Like anything you've done or are thinking of doing or, you know, you're not going to shock me.

[00:41:14] [SPEAKER_01] It's hard to be judgmental when you've been in a cult.

[00:41:17] [SPEAKER_05] Are you easier on yourself in that way? And when you think back to your 23-year-old self and understand why you made the decisions you made?

[00:41:24] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah. And I think my children, too, understand, which is really important to me because I know they went through a lot there and have a lot of trauma. And more than anything, sorry, this makes me emotional, this part. I get it. I just wanted my children to know that I totally thought I was doing what was best for them. Of course. That I would never intentionally put them in a bad place or, you know, they suffered abuse and I know that it was my fault.

[00:41:52] [SPEAKER_06] But my intention, my thought was that I was giving them this wonderful and amazing life. And I had so much guilt over that and like what they missed out on, especially in my older children. I mentioned that my 17-year-old plays baseball. So his name is Arik and his older brother, Emmett, he's like, I have a hard time going and watching Arik play baseball because it's like he wishes that he had the childhood that Arik has been able to have.

[00:42:22] [SPEAKER_06] And my daughter never got to, she missed out on so much. And yeah, I have a lot of guilt.

[00:42:28] [SPEAKER_01] If they ever want to talk about how overrated going to these baseball games can be, feel free to give them my number and I can talk them off the plank there.

[00:42:37] [SPEAKER_05] We're at the baseball field every day. But when you mentioned that earlier, I did get emotional too, just sort of choking up thinking about had we stayed in NXIVM, we would have missed out on all that. So it's a real, like what happens to the kids in these groups is really so hard to wrap your head around. But I hope you can give yourself some grace in knowing that you really did think that was the best. And you've made the men's best you can and giving them the life that you have now and getting out when you did. You did the right thing when you figured it out.

[00:43:06] [SPEAKER_06] Right. I know you always do the best that you can with the knowledge you have in the moment. Yeah. And I might not even have all my children. If we'd never joined the community, I don't know that we would have had four children. I don't know that we'd have the same, if we did, if they'd be the same, you know what I mean? It's like all those thoughts that it's like, okay, like I wouldn't trade my children for anything. So I'm thankful that I have them all and just, yeah, want them to have a little bit of understanding of why I did what I did.

[00:43:36] [SPEAKER_06] What did they think of your book? I don't know that they've all completely read it. They're very proud of the book. And my daughter came to a couple of my book signings. Emmett did come to one. My husband actually came to a couple. And he kind of helped me out when people had questions about the men's side of things and what it was like being in government and how things like that all worked. But yeah, no, my children, they were really happy that I got my book published.

[00:44:05] [SPEAKER_05] Good. I'm so glad. Okay, let's end on a light note and we'll let you go. Okay. So you've been through a wild ride. Any quirky habits or guilty pleasures that bring you joy post 12 tribes that help you embrace your freedom? Like chocolate and...

[00:44:19] [SPEAKER_06] Scanning radio stations in the car. Oh. I just, I can't, I can't give that up. And my kids are all like, you can install your Bluetooth in your playlist and you, but I'm just like, no, I love just being able to scan the stations. I like that. I love it. I'm not going to give that up. Reading books. You know, like I've just always have books going, you know, just love reading. I took up running again. Good. Just things that I can choose.

[00:44:48] [SPEAKER_06] Even when college got really hard, I remember walking to an exam that was like, I had studied my butt off. It was a hard class. And as I was walking to take my exam, I was repeating to myself, I'm choosing to do this. I'm choosing to do this. I'm choosing, like, I don't have, I could walk away from this exam right now. This is my choice. It was so important to me to know, like, yeah, there was a lot of pressure. I had a lot going on, but everything that was happening in my world was within my control and was my choice.

[00:45:16] [SPEAKER_06] Nobody was telling me this is what you have to do right now.

[00:45:20] [SPEAKER_05] Amazing. Well, is there anything that we didn't ask you that you want to say or anything that you want people to know from your book or your lived experience?

[00:45:27] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah, I just like to encourage people to try to make as well-informed decisions as you can. And that was part of the reason that I wrote the book, because there wasn't a lot out there when I joined to look on the flip side or find people that have left. So I really made a decision to join only based on what I saw and what the people there were telling me. So just do your homework and get as much information as you can about these big life choices.

[00:45:57] [SPEAKER_05] Great advice. Yes. That might be the soundbite for this episode. Do your research.

[00:46:03] [SPEAKER_04] Do your research.

[00:46:04] [SPEAKER_05] And where there's smoke, there is fire. Right. Right? Yes, exactly. Where there is lawsuits, there is probably something.

[00:46:10] [SPEAKER_01] Where there's tribes.

[00:46:12] [SPEAKER_06] And probably, like, would you say don't support the Yellow Delis? Somebody asked me that at one of my book signings. And having been there and knowing that at one point in time, the only needs money that came to the women and children were from the tip jar at the cafe. And we would have to roll up the change and get a few dollars and try to be able to go to the Salvation Army and find shoes for a child whose shoes were too small.

[00:46:37] [SPEAKER_06] It was like, so that's hard because there's still a lot of innocent women and children there. And they need to be taken care of and have their needs met. So, I mean, I just, I told the person, like, that's up to you and how you feel about your supporting the group. But, you know, it's also the innocent people that are still there. And so that's a tough one.

[00:47:03] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:47:04] [SPEAKER_05] That's really good advice. Something for everyone to figure out for themselves. And I don't know what I would do. Yeah. Perhaps drop off a copy of my memoir and your memoir.

[00:47:12] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, drop a copy.

[00:47:13] [SPEAKER_06] I mean, my own daughter brought her boyfriend to the Yellow Deli in Island Pond because he'd never seen a 12 tribes community. Of course, being around our family, he hears about it all the time. And they'd gone hiking out to Lake Willoughby. And so on their way back through, she's like, hey, let's go to the Yellow Deli. Oh, my God. And they went in and had lunch. She saw her old teacher.

[00:47:33] [SPEAKER_05] Wow. Kind of want to go now. Drop off some literature. Not right now. Thank you so much for your time, Tammy. You're welcome. This has been so enjoyable. Loved your book. Thank you. And I know our listeners will love it also.

[00:47:46] [SPEAKER_06] Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.

[00:47:52] [SPEAKER_05] Do you like what you hear on A Little Bit Culty? Then please do give us a rating, a review, and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Or even better, share this episode with someone who you think needs to hear it. Maybe they're in a cult. Maybe they're a little bit susceptible. Just share the love. Thanks. Well, that's the end of part two with Tammy. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

[00:48:18] [SPEAKER_05] Twelve Tribes isn't as high profile as some of the other cults we cover, and we've learned so much from your story.

[00:48:23] [SPEAKER_01] We know recovering from religious abuse is a long, difficult process, and we hope you and your family continue to heal. And as always, we encourage any listeners who feel trapped in a high-control environment to check out the show's resource page.

[00:48:35] [SPEAKER_05] If you'd like to learn more about Twelve Tribes and Tammy's story, make sure you pick up a copy of her memoir, All Who Believed. Thanks for listening, everyone. See you next time, and maybe we won't have lunch at the Yellow Deli. Or if you go, just drop off some cult recovery resources and no more Yerba Mate.

[00:48:51] [SPEAKER_01] That's good news. I never liked Yerba Mate.

[00:48:55] [SPEAKER_04] See you next time.

[00:48:56] [SPEAKER_05] See you next time.