The One Who Chose Holy Disobedience

Sam: 00:00:18

I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work, the Gundagara land and people. I pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

I also want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which you, our listeners, are joining us from today.

I recognize the deep connection that first nations people have to this land, their enduring culture, and their commitment to the preservation and care for their country. This land was never ceded, and it always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

Hey there, and welcome to beyond the Surface, the podcast where we explore the stories of people who have survived religious trauma, left high control occult communities, and are deconstructing their faith.

I'm your host, Sam, and each week I'll talk with individuals who have taken the brave step to start shifting their beliefs to that might have once controlled and defined their lives. Join us as we dig into their experiences, the challenges they've faced, and the insights they've gained.

Whether you're on a similar journey or you're just curious about these powerful stories, you're in the right place. This is beyond the Surface. Welcome. Melissa. Thanks for joining me.

Melissa: 00:01:41

Thank you for having me. We finally connected.

Sam: 00:01:44

I know.

Melissa: 00:01:45

I'm actually.

Sam: 00:01:47

I'm really excited about this episode. And I was thinking before, before I jumped on that, I was like, I actually think you're the first ex SDA I've had on the podcast, which is nice.

So thank you for being my first.

Melissa: 00:02:03

I love that. But, yes, I love, love being the snarling face of ex Adventism, and I just love getting it all out there. So, yes.

Sam: 00:02:15

And I mean, I think people will know you from your Instagram, which has, I think, the single Instagram name I have ever seen. And before we get into your story, I desperately want to know how on earth you came up with it.

Melissa: 00:02:31

I love telling this story. In fact, I should do another video. I haven't done it in a while. So for.

For listeners who are just catching up with us, I am the Glory Hole on Instagram and TikTok. Glory hole spelled W H O L E. And I chose it just because I love plays on words and I just love to be, you know, kind of poking buttons.

But it is my kind of metaphor for Christianity like you, or for religion in general.

But in my case, it had been Christianity, where, you know, you're extending this very, very fragile part of yourself into an unknown something, and you're hoping someone's gonna show You God. Right. And it's gonna be the most transcendent experience of your life. And it could be.

Or somebody could really you up and you would come away maimed and disfigured and crushed for life. And so that's been a lot of our experience with Christianity.

Sam: 00:03:40

Yeah, I mean, I've had a lot of analogies for religion and Christianity. It's by far my favorite. It's so good. The imagery, the like, it's just great. It's just so good.

Melissa: 00:03:54

So for our listeners who don't know the original phrase, you'll have to go Google it.

Sam: 00:03:58

Yes. But maybe doing in an incognito browser might completely up your algorithm.

Melissa: 00:04:05

Definitely not safe for work.

Sam: 00:04:08

No, don't do that at work. Not at all. Or a public browser maybe. Just for the. Yeah, yeah.

Melissa: 00:04:14

Just for the record.

Sam: 00:04:17

Okay. People are already probably noticing the accent difference. So for context, where in the world are you? At the moment?

Melissa: 00:04:25

I am in California.

Sam: 00:04:27

Amazing. And I feel like every, everybody in the US at the moment that I'm recording with, I'm doing the equivalent of a welfare check. So how are you?

Melissa: 00:04:38

Oh my God.

We're, we're all just, you know, whatever that meme is about like Canada feeling like they've been l next to a car with its car alarm going off and the rest of us being like, yeah, well, picture being inside the car, you know, I mean, we just, it's horrible. We, I, we wake up every morning and just literally fear, you know, just, just open ended fear because we don't know what's going to happen next.

And just, you know, my friends with trans kids are like trying to figure out if they can move to Portugal and just, you know, my, we're in California, so of course we have a lot of Mexican American immigrants, you know, so they're going through all this ice. I mean, it's so, so horrible. It just is horrible.

Sam: 00:05:30

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:05:30

And scary. Scary.

Sam: 00:05:32

Yeah.

I, and I feel like I'm asking people, not just checking in, but also because for the Australians listening, like, it is seeping into our borders as well. Like the American influence. We.

I saw a, like a TV ad a couple of weeks ago of the Patriot, the Trumpet Patriots or something, and they're using the Make Australia Great again.

And it's just like, oh, good Lord, we're coming up to an election and one of the two people that will likely be our Prime Minister is referred to as Timu Trump, which is just like, it's less than ideal. Hey, like, I did have someone I recorded with go how can you have the Demutron when we have him already? Oh dear.

Melissa: 00:06:27

But anyway, he's the Dumpster Trump, is what he is. I don't. Oh my God.

Sam: 00:06:32

Yeah. Okay, so other.

Before we derail the conversation into politics completely, I like to start these episodes with a super vague question just to allow the conversation to land and go in whatever direction it does, which is where does your story start?

Melissa: 00:06:55

Oh my goodness. That is a good vague one. I would have to say that. I guess it starts with generation trauma because I. Woohoo it.

I am a fourth generation, I believe, Seventh Day Adventist on Earth X now, but on both sides of my family. So it's, you know, the, the high control religion has been literally buried in our DNA now for God knows how long.

And so to try to figure out where my story starts, it's definitely there somewhere in that long mess of ancestors who decided that this was a wonderful way to live and die. And then my personal story is. So I obviously was born into the church and we can talk, you know, later a little bit about.

For people who don't know what Seventh Day Adventism is, which is most of the world, but I was born into it and raised in it until. And then I left at about 18 or some or so just right after. I didn't, I wasn't quite 18 when I graduated from Adventist High School, but.

And then I just like ran screaming basically from the religion.

And so the rest of my life has been kind of a reckoning of trying to figure, you know, when I, when I left so many years ago, that was three decades ago. Plus there was no such thing as deconstruction. There was no such thing as, you know, we didn't have vocabulary for any of it.

I didn't know anyone who was an ex Adventist.

And so you just kind of thought, oh, leaving equals healing, off I go, you know, and oh, hell no, you know, so you end up acting out all that programming until you actually deconstruct, which I didn't do until really about five years ago. And so it's been a long story.

Sam: 00:08:56

Yeah, okay.

I think some context might be helpful, which is, I feel like the, the very limited understanding of Adventism is you go to church on Saturdays and all of the restrictions around food and coffee and all of that sort of thing, but there is a whole bunch more to it.

So I think it might be helpful in terms of understanding the type of space that you grew up with, with the kind of rules and regulations that you grew up with, in terms of explaining a Little bit about Seventh Day Adventism.

Melissa: 00:09:33

There you go. Okay. Yeah. I will try to keep it short. So for the.

the United states in the mid-: 1800

And so Seventh Day Adventists had a prophet, her name was Ellen White, and she got hit in the head with a rock and she started seeing visions from God. And no one's ever questioned that in the church. But, you know, and so the interesting thing about her.

Well, so many interesting things, but the church does not ordain women. Yeah, it does not ordain women.

Sam: 00:10:20

I was automatically thinking, like the fact that the prophet has. Is a her is. Is a really interesting notion from the get go.

Melissa: 00:10:28

Right. Yeah.

The only other one I know that came out of that same period that had a female, that lasted anyway that became an actual religion was Christian Scientists, I guess a female founder. But I think they treat women maybe better within Christian Science. I don't know.

But so some daddlers, yes, they believe a lot of the sort of, I guess the Jewish rules, you know, of sundown Friday to sundown Saturday is like a holy day and you do nothing but worship God. You cannot. You can't go swimming, you can't go anything. You have to worship God. That's it. No TVs, no.

Well, the way I was raised, we weren't allowed to have any tv, any movies, any rock music, anything with a beat. None of the churches will allow any music with a beat. Drums are from the devil. And then, yes, there's the Adventist health message, which is huge.

Basically vegetarian, but no caffeine, no alcohol, no tobacco. Even spices like mustard and pepper are seen as inflaming the sexual desire and senses. And so you can't have.

Sam: 00:11:47

I did not know that.

Melissa: 00:11:49

Oh my God, it's so ridiculous. And I've always had a question since, because I. I left it. Well, okay, so that part goes back to John Harvey Kellogg, right? Who, you know, the.

Kellogg's cornflakes and all that stuff. He was. The church has been obsessed with regulating sex since its inception, and he was part of it.

He was one of the Seventh Day Adventist founders and he was obsessed with regulating masturbation and everything with his Corn Flakes and a bunch of other weird treatments. And that was part of his is. Nothing could be spicy. Nothing could be because everything. No, no meat. Because it all inflamed sexual desire.

So, you know, just insane. I know Right, right.

Sam: 00:12:37

Well.

Melissa: 00:12:37

And so my question I've always wanted to ask, but I don't really want to talk to any Adventist to get an answer. But so they're, they are aggressive missionaries at this point. The worldwide.

The Adventists have, I think about 22 million worldwide members, which is larger than the Mormons. And it's. I think they have less than a million in the United States now.

So it's mostly from aggressive missionary stuff in developing countries that have a lot of spices.

Sam: 00:13:06

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:13:06

So, like, how are they making the sales pitch? Like, hey, come with us. You can't have any spices. That sounds like fun.

Sam: 00:13:15

Abandon all flavorsome food.

Melissa: 00:13:19

Like, how are they even burning anyone? I don't. Because I'd be like, so no.

Sam: 00:13:24

Hard pass.

Melissa: 00:13:25

Hard. No. Yeah, yeah.

Sam: 00:13:27

But I like sauces and spices and salt and pepper and.

Melissa: 00:13:33

Yes, right, absolutely. So there's, there's all of that and then it's. It's a very, it's. It's a cult. They hate being called that, but it is a cult. It's so high control, that.

And they have all their own schools, they have their own hospitals, they have their own medical school, they have their own publishers, they have their own radio and tv, everything. You can go from cradle to grave with only Adventists. You know, they have their own vegetarian food makers.

So you really can live entirely in the Adventist bubble and not ever have exposure to the real world. And, and a lot of people do.

Sam: 00:14:15

I actually think in Australia they're in. They're very much in a bubble. I think a lot of people don't realize just how high control they are in comparison.

I think, you know, the JWs and the Mormons get, get those taglines and particularly the JWs in Australia because obviously they're door knockers and quite regularly and. But I think in Australia, the most that I've seen is, is actually ironically quite positive.

Like, you'll see like the women's conferences and the retreats and like all of that sort of thing that get marketed as like these really beautiful wholesome events. And, and I just think that people have no idea what is sitting in terms of ideology underneath that. So.

Melissa: 00:15:02

Yeah.

Sam: 00:15:03

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:15:03

And the interesting thing, now that I've been out for so long and I've been talking to people who actually, because I, I left so early that I never did any of the missionary stuff or any of those, you know, conferences or anything, and talking now to people who did do Adventist, those conferences and tent revivals, and they are literally told not to say they're Adventist.

Sam: 00:15:27

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:15:27

Just to say it's like a Bible, Christian, whatever, because they know that people who know are like, whoa, you know.

Sam: 00:15:37

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:15:38

Alarm, fire. Don't go there. It's way too high control, you know, so it's really interesting. They're very deceptive in their outreach, in their community outreach.

Sam: 00:15:46

Absolutely. Yeah. You got to go digging to find where. Where the actual starting point is.

Melissa: 00:15:52

Yeah, right. Yeah.

Sam: 00:15:53

Although ironically, once you see it, you can't unsee it in terms of like, the marketing is, like. Is so obvious once you see it. But I mean, if you. If you are none the wiser, you wouldn't see that it would just.

Melissa: 00:16:06

Right. Yeah, absolutely.

Sam: 00:16:10

Yeah. So what was it like for little Melissa growing up in this environment?

Melissa: 00:16:17

We were, I think, on the. More so there. Of course, as with any religion, there's a spectrum, right. From liberal to very, very, very conservative.

And I would say we were on the pretty, very conservative end. There was a more freakish end that like. Like we were homeschooled. But we did eventually go to school. You know, there's a.

There's another kind of Adventist that is like literally living prepper out in the woods and their children are unvaccinated and, you know, all that crap. But. But we were on the more conservative end, so we. I was allowed to read some literature, but Ellen White had forbid literature.

She said it was a waste of time and. And fired up the imagination in silly ways. And so I was lucky that I got to read some literature and then.

But we had no television, no music, no anything in the home. We weren't allowed to go to movies. There's no dancing. There's. It's. So Adventist schools, they toe this line. Absolutely. So we had no proms.

You're not allowed to have competitive sports. That was also something that Ellen White said was a waste of time. So we had no football, no cheerleaders, no anything.

And it was basically a lot of boredom, frankly. But it just super, super, super high control everything from the way you looked, you know, we had to have hair that looked a certain way.

You know, boys couldn't be too long, girls couldn't be too short. Girls had to look attractive, but we had to be covered and modest. And we couldn't wear, you know, too much makeup.

And it just, you know, it was endless. Endless. The control of everything. And that's my, you know, my biggest memory, I guess, is just having to please every people Pleasing.

Sam: 00:18:23

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:18:23

And being. And being obedient. You had to be absolutely obedient. Don't question.

Don't think, you know, I tried in high school to, like, question on a couple of things, and, boy, you got shut down so fast, and it was so scary that it was just like, okay, whatever, I'll just toe the line until I can run away.

Sam: 00:18:45

Yeah. Questions, I imagine, just wouldn't have seemed worth it in, like.

Melissa: 00:18:50

Yeah, yeah, that's it.

Sam: 00:18:53

What were you taught in terms of. And who was God to you during this period of time?

Melissa: 00:18:59

He was very scary. I. You know, we had more of the Old Testament God than the Jesus love God.

Everybody talked about the Jesus love God, but Ellen White was in love with the very sadistic, you know, you must. You're worthless, and you must lick his toes every day to be worthy to enter the early gates, you know, and.

Sam: 00:19:26

So interesting, because the Old Testament God is really shitty for women. Right. Like, I could understand a male prophet being all about the Old Testament God. A female prophet, not so much.

Melissa: 00:19:40

Right.

I know it is really bizarre, but I mean, I think, you know, now people, wise people, not cult minds, are looking back at her and realizing that she had a traumatic brain injury, obviously.

And she had most likely what this thing called Geschwin syndrome, which she displays every single thing of it, and part of it is kind of like no humor. She was very dour, very. You know, she just had no. No joy. Like, no one was allowed to have joy.

That was an affront to her, and it was an affront to God. You were just supposed to be, you know, wear your hair shirt and just go be, you know, repentant all the time. And.

And hypergraphia is another one of the things. Like, she wrote all these books that were highly plagiarized, but, you know, she just wrote continuously all the time.

And then abnormal sexuality or what they would call. And I know there's a serial killer that I was studying who also had this from a head injury syndrome, and he was. He. He was just having sex.

He was, like, masturbating on the street like, 700 times a day, you know, type of thing. And he was. Oh, he was just a horrifying guy. But. And she had. So he had hyposexuality from the brain injury, and she had.

Or he had hyper and she had hypo.

Sam: 00:21:05

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:21:06

So she was anti sex. It was all bad. It was terrible. You know, and so it's very interesting, you know, I mean, the woman had a brain injury and. And.

And was really not quite so functional in just average life skills or life. And the fact that she was allowed to run a religion is really quite remarkable.

Sam: 00:21:29

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I feel like that quickly derailed who God was for you. You were describing.

Melissa: 00:21:38

I know, I'm so, no, no, I.

Sam: 00:21:39

Do that all the time. I'm the type, I sort of ask a question and then I forget what question I ask. So it's fine.

Melissa: 00:21:45

Well, God was so for me, in indistinguishable from Ellen White, you know, and so she really ran our view of who he was with her stupid tales of Lucifer being thrown out of heaven and stuff. And so I don't have a vision of him from that time in my life that didn't involve her like breathing down our neck kind of.

Sam: 00:22:12

Yeah. And so, I mean, and I asked this question particularly for people who were born into whatever faith of origin they were.

Was God and the faith something that was personal for you or was it just your families?

Melissa: 00:22:29

You know, my sister and I talk about this all the time because she left Adventism shortly after I did also. And neither of us feel like we ever actually believed any of it.

We just didn't have another alternative and we knew we were trapped until we were adults and so we just pulled, played along. But I don't, it certainly was never personal.

Like I did not actually have a relationship with Jesus and didn't ever, you know, I didn't ever do the altar calls or anything like that. Like God wasn't speaking to me in the pew. I was just sitting there counting the minutes till I could leave.

And I, so I don't, I don't think I believed any of the theology either.

I, I, I, it's hard to tell from this distance, but I, I, you know, all the religion classes and worships and everything that we were, I kind of, I was a performance Adventist, you know, like I, I was there to do all the public prayers and the singing and the whatever just because I like to perform. But I didn't really care about the content.

Sam: 00:23:45

Yeah, I mean, looking back and knowing who you are as a person, what do you think stopped you from going from performative to personal? Like, especially as a teenager and as a kid where you don't know any different, but something was almost stopping you from being consumed by it.

Melissa: 00:24:06

The public library books.

Sam: 00:24:12

I love that answer.

Melissa: 00:24:16

You know, and it's really, really quite true.

You know, when I, I, in early high school or maybe 8th grade, 7th, 8th grade, I could bike to the public library and my mother is not a reader like my dad is. He's always has like multiple libraries in every house and he, that all dad did was sit in a chair when he was home and read.

But he was rarely home and he didn't really have much to do with our managing of our behavior. My mom I guess saw absolutely no threat in the public library because I don't know how many times she'd ever been in one, but it wasn't frequent.

And so I was allowed to go to the public library and I knew better than to bring anything home.

So I started with magazines and I just started reading all the magazines because you could get through them in an hour or two and you didn't have to bring them home.

So I started reading Vogue and like Andy, Andy Warhol had this Interview magazine back when I was a teenager that was just like Grace Jones and like oh my God, it was just blowing my mind. And I was like, wow, there is a whole fun world out there that I don't get access to. I'm not going to fuck that up.

I'm going to make it to 18 and I'm going to get out there.

Sam: 00:25:31

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:25:32

So I think from then on it just seeing that all these people were doing such fun and interesting things that we were denied was one thing, but also they didn't seem to need a high control system. They were free. And that was such a revelation.

Sam: 00:25:48

Yeah. So what happened at 18?

Melissa: 00:25:52

At 18 I. So we were supposed to be funneled right into the Adventist college system.

And the Adventist high schools made, made it back then, I don't know what it's like now, but they made it almost impossible for you to apply to anything that wasn't an Adventist college.

And they all dovetailed very intentionally where the colleges would only take the standard entrance exam called the ACT, American College Test or something. But no real colleges took that. They all took the sat, the standard achievement test. And so Adventist high schools would only give you the act.

And of course there was no such thing as online back then. You had these paper tests where you were filling in the bubbles and you had to like arrange for the tests.

And the SAT was always administered on Saturdays, regular public schools. So we, we couldn't go to go find an SAT to take. So we were stuck with the act, so we really could not apply to. So. So I got around.

Yeah, very sneaky and just nasty, you know, that's just ridiculous.

But somehow a couple of other students and I figured out a way and to this day, because it was so terrifying for us, I can't remember how we did it, but somehow we arranged for a special proctor to come. I can picture the inside of the Room, but I have no idea where we were.

And we took the sat and so then I could apply to other colleges, but then my parents wouldn't let me go. And so we compromised by sending me for a gap year between high school and college to the Austrian Adventist School.

And I was like, okay, if I can get halfway across the world, and supposedly the Europeans are a little more relaxed, I'll be good for a year. I didn't make it a year because we got in trouble for drinking and climbing out windows and things.

And so I left before the year was up so that I didn't get kicked out. But by the time I was close to getting kicked out at Bogenhofen, I had gotten into Barnard and Columbia, which was, you know, basically Ivy League.

And so somehow that was okay with my parents. I think my dad pressured my mom on that score. And so then I was allowed to go to non Adventist college.

And I was like, you're never going to see me darken a church door ever again.

Sam: 00:28:34

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Melissa: 00:28:36

Sorry, that was a very long winded. But there were a bunch of stutter steps out the door. Yeah.

Sam: 00:28:43

And I mean, you kind of alluded to it earlier, which was that typically when we don't have language for what we went through, we tend to repeat the same cycles over and over and over again. And so, I mean, coming from that very high control space, going into a very big university with a huge diversity of people, I imagine.

What was that like for you? Because I imagine it could have been very overwhelming.

Melissa: 00:29:13

It was crazy. I mean, I, because of course I wanted to play catch up so much.

You know, I'd never seen Charlie's Angels, I'd never seen Sesame Street, I, you know, and all the, I'd never read the Catcher in the Rye and you know, so. And I was with all these kids who'd gone to like prep schools, like major prep schools, and boy, oh boy, have they gotten a good education.

And, and I wanted to hide my weird, weird, weird background and I didn't want anybody to know. And so it was very.

But it was, it was the, I mean, it truly, they were the best years of my life that, particularly that first year, because it was freedom, you know, and all the, all, you know, I took lesbian literature and I took Death in Modern Fiction and I took, you know, just, I took Buddhism from Uma Thurman's dad. And you know, I just like, you know, it was just fabulous and mind blowing and, and I joined the theater.

You know, I just, I got to like, just Explode. And so I had to kind of, I always say I had to triage of what I was going to catch up on.

Like all everybody else had done like their serious hard drugs in high school and most of them had already had a friend that died. So nobody was doing hard drugs by the time we got to college, really. Um, so. And I was like, do I learn to smoke pot? How the hell do you use a bong?

And I was like, don't need to do that, you know? Yeah, just like I never learned to play cards. I was like, I don't want to learn how to, I hate games. So why would I learn to play cards, you know?

Sam: 00:30:49

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:30:50

But I, I tried to catch up, really. Everybody was into the Grateful Dead and, you know, so I tried to catch up on music and movies and certainly literature and stuff.

So that was remarkable. And if I could have stayed in that environment, it would have been amazing.

But I only had a couple of years and then my mother decided to pull some power struggle and she pulled me out of school and so I lost my place in the university and all that. And I refused, I absolutely refused to give in to her.

So I disappeared into the bowels of New York City and spent a rough while of three months, four months, five months, something like that. And I ended up moving in with a. I decided to be an actor.

And so the first guy that I co starred with, who was like almost 12, 14 years older than I was, I moved in with him within like two weeks because I didn't have anywhere else to go. I was literally a destitute. And so my mother caved and let me go back to Barnard.

But by then I was living with this 30 year old guy and I was a, I was a townie, I was a commuter, I'd lost a semester of school. So from then on I would just basically, you know, check the boxes to make sure I could graduate.

But that joyful period of like being on campus and being part of the student life was gone. And then from then on, literally from that moment, I was not even 20. I was 20, I think, when I, when that happened.

And from then on I, I just went bounce from much older controlling man to much older controlling man, like serial relationships. Until four years ago, three years ago, four years ago.

And I did have a brief window when I married someone and had kids and he was not a much older controlling guy. But that didn't last because I went back to the older controlling guy thing.

Sam: 00:33:01

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:33:02

And I never realized until I started deconstructing like oh, this was what I was bred to do.

Sam: 00:33:10

Good old patterns. Yeah. Oh, my.

Melissa: 00:33:15

I mean, tell me how that happens.

Sam: 00:33:17

Yeah, absolutely. Like, and we see it.

I see it time and time again, of particularly people who leave fundamentalist spaces and they just fall into another type of control or fundamentalism, because it's all our nervous system sees as safe and comfortable. And even though it's not, it's that, like, dissonance between what we think is safe because it's just all we know and what is actually safe.

And it's just.

Melissa: 00:33:45

That's it.

Sam: 00:33:46

There's that quote that says our nervous system will choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven. And it's like, that's why we repeat those cycles. It's all our nervousness.

Melissa: 00:33:57

Amazing. That's amazing that I'm gonna remember that phrase because it's really, really true. Yeah, it's really true.

And my sister was asking me recently, she was like, are you ever gonna date again? And I was like, a crush on this, like, you know, famous guy. I don't know him. I was just like, ah, if you come calling, I would.

And she's like, no, no. He's exactly your pattern. Like, would you stop it? Like, no. Okay. You can't date. No. You can't even crush on famous people appropriately.

You're not healed.

Sam: 00:34:31

Sister rules. I mean, okay, as you're talking about that beginning of university period, I'm kind of just thinking.

My brain just went to, like, you've had no personality for your whole life. You are now just starting to find who the heck you even are. What do you like? What do I not like?

The things that we do when we're, like, 12 and 13, you know, you're doing in your early 20s. And, I mean, Mum obviously had a situation where she. I, like, let's just call it a situation.

What, like, what impact did your choices as like, a young 20s, early 20s, what did that have on your relationship with your parents? Because I suspect you were just going in the complete opposite direction to what they had raised, quote, unquote, raised you to do and to be right.

Melissa: 00:35:32

Right.

You know, it's very fascinating to me, and I still don't quite understand, like, what, literally, once the school struggles were over, that was the end of any attempt to control us. It was really interesting. Like, I. I have.

Have had a continuous relationship with my parents since then, and they have never pressured me to come back to the church. I've never. Every once in a while, one of my grandfathers would send me steps to Christ or Some stupid Eleanor White book, but. But nobody really.

I feel really fortunate that way because that's not the usual in high control religions. I've heard of people being shunned and people having to go, no contact and just all this crap.

I was interested to see what would happen when we all had children and they didn't pressure us to raise the children in the church either. They kind of offered to pay for Adventist school, or when we would go visit, they would say, are you guys coming to church?

And we'd all be like, no, we're going out to McDonald's, but. And they literally. They've been supportive of.

You know, I've had two divorces and other unsavory connections, and my parents have never, you know, never shamed me for it or. They've always been supportive. So I've been really fortunate. And I don't know.

I'm sure they cry and pray behind closed doors about their horrible heretic children. They must, you know, how could they not? How could that religion not make them feel guilty that their children are not.

I mean, it has to just be the worst pressure for them, but they haven't passed it on to us for whatever lovely reason.

Sam: 00:37:29

Yeah, I mean, that is. It is such a, like an almost like an odd reaction, to be honest.

Melissa: 00:37:37

Super odd. Super odd. And I know my mom's parents were quite hands offish. They were, they were like, you know, just let your kids do what they're going to do.

Like they told her. Just like when I was living with my boyfriend, my parents wouldn't let him come over and spend the night, you know, even though we were 25 and 35.

And my grandmother was like, that's ridiculous. They're living together. They can sleep in the same room when they visit, you know, so they were very practical. But my dad's parents were not.

They were. They had their heads so far up the Adventist ass that it was just like.

So I don't know where my parents found the grace to still love us and not pressure us. Really.

Sam: 00:38:23

Yeah, I can. I mean, my therapist brain is like, pinging, going like.

I can only imagine the cognitive dissonance that they're sitting with that they're trying to read, like, to like, hold and not fall into as a trap because obviously that would just, like, want to wrestle. But I mean, great, great for you guys as kids, obviously, and grandkids, like, because. Yeah.

So many people lose that family connection and relationship because of shifting beliefs.

Melissa: 00:38:59

Yeah. And I was very afraid of that, but it just, it didn't happen. And now that they are very old, they've. They're getting more sappy religious, right?

They're like, my mom always wants to pray over everything, you know, and so everybody has to stop and pray over something. And, you know, it's like, whatever. But she prays, and the rest of us just sit there, you know, so it's not. Again, it's not pressure, really.

It's just she's facing not. You know, she's facing departing the earth fairly soon, and so she's needing to shore up her beliefs. So. Okay, yeah, yeah.

Sam: 00:39:33

But so what were those few decades, like, you sort of said that you went from, like, unhealthy relationship to another, repeating those same dynamics.

But what was it like for you, being raised with this very specific, rigid worldview about the world repeating those cycles before you hit the point of going, oh, like, maybe this is what happens. Like, maybe this is what's happening.

Melissa: 00:40:01

Right. You know, when I first did it, I kind of fetishized, like, I. I loved, or I thought I loved.

I was always looking for kind of degrading sex, degrading relationships, which came with the controlling and the domineering men. And I was interpreting it as kind of tongue in cheek, like, oh, look at me.

I'm so free of all of that stupid Adventist female imagery that I can just be bad, you know, And I went with that for way too long. And. And sex had to be bad, of course, because. Yeah, hello. But I made it seem like it was cool. Bad.

Sam: 00:40:49

Kinky bad.

Melissa: 00:40:50

Right? Kinky bad, yeah. Oh, we're just. We're so healed. And.

Sam: 00:40:57

Not that those kinks mean you are not healed, just for the record.

Melissa: 00:41:00

Right, right, exactly.

Sam: 00:41:01

Just in this situation.

Melissa: 00:41:04

That's true. Exactly.

Sam: 00:41:07

But.

Melissa: 00:41:09

And so. And I. I started to just recognize little pieces of it where I noticed that I. I had to. I never broke up a relationship cleanly.

I always very messily, very badly, shamefully started the next relationship before I'd actually exited this one and learned after I had done that three or four times that I was unable to tell men no. I wasn't able to, like, you know, face them and be like, I don't want to be in this relationship. I don't like it. It's not good for me.

I just had to fall in love with someone else and then be like, ah, I'm in love with someone else. Sorry, I'm out. And, you know, this is a terrible way to treat people. But I didn't. I didn't know how to do it.

I Did not know how to stand up for myself and end something just because I wanted to end it. I needed to have another reason. Yeah, because I. I had no boundaries. I had no, no self determination, so.

Sam: 00:42:23

Well, you had also grown up in an environment that didn't foster choice or autonomy or agency, particularly as a woman. So how would you know? It's like if you've never ridden a bike and then I put a bike in front of you, how you expected to know what on earth to do.

And that's a super simplistic example because, you know, you could probably work it out.

But in relationships it's far more hard and far more difficult than that because I am imagining that perhaps, you know, it's really hard to stand up for yourself when perhaps you don't even know who self is during that period of time.

Melissa: 00:43:00

Yeah, that's it. And I didn't.

I was always kind of copying the identity of the man that I was with, you know, trying to do all his hobbies and support all his everything's. And you know, just, I.

I didn't know who I was and I didn't think I had a right to be who I was or to ask them to honor me or my interests or my, you know, I just, I didn't have any of those skills.

Sam: 00:43:27

Yeah. When did things shift and change for you?

Melissa: 00:43:34

In my mid, early 40s was when I started my final. A relationship with an older, very domineering man. And it was. He. Well, you're a therapist, you know. Okay, so he had cluster B.

He was a veritable psychopath. And. But of course I did not know any of this because he was the most charming, amazing, fabulous person. Everyone loved him, including me.

And so I fell really fast and hard and then ended up basically. I mean, by the end of it, I was referring to myself as his service animal.

You know, I literally was his secretary, his sex slave, his everything, you know, and it was a really bad relationship. He was never physically abusive with me, but every other kind of abuse you can imagine. I.

Sam: 00:44:43

It doesn't even sound like a relationship. It sounds like ownership.

Melissa: 00:44:46

It was. It. It was basically. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And he was allowed to do whatever he wanted, disappear for weeks, months, whatever, and I.

I could do nothing. He was violently jealous and you know, just. Just everything. Everything that you can think of. And it got just so bad and I.

I didn't know how to get out of it. I did not know how. I had tried a couple of times. I'd broken up with him a couple times.

And he always, you know, then became magically good again, or else I didn't. I couldn't get out. And so I was really trapped. And then just magically I got kicked out of the housing that we were sharing, he and I.

And I was like, I could fight this or I could just use this as my reason to get the. Out of Dodge. And I ended up having to move quite a far away away, which was, you know, a struggle for me and my kids, but it was the best thing ever.

And so I. I was able to. It was still very hard to, as you can imagine, extricate myself. Because he didn't let go. Yeah.

And then eventually he got kicked out of that housing also. And so he didn't have anywhere else to move, so he had to move many states away. And that was what eventually did it. And so.

So that was really the beginning. And right around that time when I had started to realize, like, I need to get out of this relationship. This is so horribly unhealthy.

But I was still felt trapped. There was about a year there where I discovered the online deconstruction community.

I discovered the online narcissistic abuse support, and I was just like, oh, my gosh. Wow. And I started really with the narcissistic abuse support and started like tracking all of his behaviors and symptoms or everything.

And then I was like, that actually, like, a lot of that is done by the church too. And so then I started in the deconstruction community, and it just started it all just like layers of an onion, you know, every.

It just started peeling.

Sam: 00:47:05

Yeah. I remember when I first read Dr. Romani's book, it's not you.

And I remember thinking, oh, the, like, the comparison and the very fine line between religious abuse and narcissistic abuse is so, so close. They're almost like two sides of the same coin. Like, just replace the language and the setting and it's almost a carbon copy. It's wild.

And that's what these systems are typically built upon.

What I mean, what was that like, to start piecing that together in terms of, like, not necessarily from a cognitive point of view, but, like, what did it feel like for you to start piecing that together?

Melissa: 00:47:55

It was devastating. It was really devastating because I realized how stunted I was.

You know, I was 50 years old or nearly at that point, I guess, or, I don't know, right around, and I realized how much I had missed out on in life by never being able to be my own person, always doing this follow the man thing. And I realized how much my children had missed out on it, on me, and on life, because I had not been able to be present often because I was man ing.

And so it was a lot of grief. I think the first overwhelming, you know, like, things roll through you in these. These big watershed moments.

And I think it was a lot of grief and a lot of journaling. And I'm not sure how I started to see the bright side, because for a while it was just dark. It was just dark. I. And.

But you know, what did help was starting the glory hole and I started just talking about the church.

Sam: 00:49:06

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:49:06

And pretty soon I started realizing how many other people had.

And so finding that community was really, I think, the turning point of not just Adventists, but other people who'd been through high control religion and being like, okay, you know, I'm not alone. I wasn't a horrible person for having gone through this and. And not knowing. I mean, a lot of people do, and. Yeah. I don't know.

Did I answer the question?

Sam: 00:49:29

Yeah, no, absolutely. It's. I.

I mean, that's part of one of the reasons why I started the pot this podcast was because that concept of we're not alone is so powerful for us, particularly when we might have had a longer journey to get to that point of realization. It allows us to also go, oh, that wasn't solely my fault. Right. Like, that's the systemic abuse that I grew up in.

And the system that I was raised in that just got its sneaky little claws into me at the most developmentally malleable age. And that's why I am the way that I am.

Melissa: 00:50:11

Right, yes. Yeah.

Sam: 00:50:13

It just allows us to not feel alone, but also to realize, oh, it. I wasn't completely up all along.

Melissa: 00:50:21

Right, right, exactly. And that, that whole. I hate the whole, you know, like, you were doing the best you could because that seems somehow like a cop out and whatever.

But we were doing the best that we could. Like, we were given zero skills. In fact, we were told that what our feelings and our intuition was wrong and bad, and it came from the devil. So what?

How are we supposed to become normal human beings?

Sam: 00:50:45

Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa: 00:50:47

And no critical thinking.

Sam: 00:50:49

Yeah. What was it like to find who you were? I mean, we've sort of had that thread throughout in terms of you hadn't know, you.

You were just whoever you needed to be to stay performative in the church. A little sliver of finding yourself, but then just being the chameleon of whoever you were dating at the time. So what was it like to find you.

Melissa: 00:51:12

Well, I think that's an ongoing process.

Honestly, it's, it has been because it only has been a few years and so I'm still kind of trying things out in terms of I tend to be a bit of a hero permit. And so I've been doing this all by myself here with my cat.

And you know, I think I need to like start getting into more communities other than the online community to kind of see what, what I gravitate toward, because I don't know.

But it has been fun to reconnect with parts of myself that I know I have shunned forever, you know, and to, to find like I, in the beginning when I was saying, like, I'm kind of the snarling face of public ex adventism, you know, and I think everyone who's known me over my life would be like, you know, watch out for Missy when she gets pissed off, you know, because I like, I would take it and take it and take it and take it and then I would just explode and it would just be like, you know, and learning that that anger was not evil and awful and it was a horrible thing that I did to other people when I just couldn't handle it anymore.

The anger is a good emotion and can be used like just owning that one part of me, my original self, and being able to like just snarl at these people who say the stupidest fucking things and, and, and know that I'm actually doing it from a sense of justice and from a sense of defending victims or trying to knock cult out of someone's head.

And that has been so, it's just, it's getting those little pieces, those little pieces of me that I either always shamed or felt bad about or didn't know what to do with. So I, I, I'm really excited because I think that's just going to keep going, you know.

Sam: 00:53:29

I think one of the most beautiful things for me when working with people, particularly women who have left either a cult or a high control religion, is being able to, to reclaim anger. Because particularly for women, although socialized as women growing up, you are not allowed to be angry.

And yet anger is one of the most needed emotions in our emotional landscape. And I typically will say, like, anger is sacred. We need it, we can't not have it.

But speaking of seeing your anger play out and your snarliness, because I did want to touch on this and this seems like a perfect time, which is you respond to the comments and I just think that this is the greatest thing because I, my Wife is always telling me, stop reading the comments. They're just not a fun place to be. And they're not, because people are assholes a lot of the time, particularly when religion is. Is concerned.

Except we. I go onto my Instagram and I go, oh, she's not just responding, she's doing a whole ass video on the comments. And I love everything about it. But.

And I'm curious for two reasons why you do it and how on earth you don't go insane doing it.

Melissa: 00:54:54

Well, you know, it's. I have to go in cycles.

Sam: 00:54:57

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:54:58

Because it does. It takes so much energy out of you. And so sometimes I just can't even deal for days.

And then like today I posted four or five of them because people kept saying the stupidest fucking shit. And I was just like, oh my God. You know, and so. But I, I actually have to give big kudos to.

I don't know if you follow Daniela Mastin Yak, the knitting cult lady.

Sam: 00:55:23

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:55:24

And I had been answering comments off and on before that, but oh my God, that woman can lay people out flat. And it just cracks me up. And I love it.

And I have always been, you know, people, like I said, people have said that I have an anger thing, but also that I'm just like sarcastic and, and harsh and, and, and people have criticized me for that all my life. And. And so this is just my one little window to like, let myself do it toward people who fucking deserve it. You know?

And so I'm not doing it toward my family members anymore or whoever didn't maybe deserve it. So I really actually enjoy it at this point. It is hard to go into the comments. I get a ton of extremely cruel comments about my looks. Yeah.

Particularly. Which always interests me. It's just like, why do you go? Why do you do that? But, but it, it is so fascinating to me.

You do develop a thick skin, you know, and you just. When I see stuff like that now, I'm just like, oh, wow, I guess you need attention today. And so then I often won't give those people attention.

I'll give it to the other people who. But it's become kind of a hobby.

Sam: 00:56:50

It's a hobby. I appreciate. I love it.

Melissa: 00:56:56

I get, I get these very sweet messages from people being like, take care of your. I hope you're taking care of yourself. Like, I'm so sorry you're dealing with all this. And most of the time I just, I love it.

Sometimes I see somebody's comment and I'm.

Sam: 00:57:11

Like, oh, yeah, I Mean, like, there are somewhere I see it and I'm like, that's the hill you want to die on. Like, really, like, of all of the things, it's just, it's bizarre, especially the people who are commenting on.

I mean, if people don't follow you, you do a lot of videos in terms of, like, the connection between SDA and child sexual abuse. And so, like, how, how people feel that they can be negative and, like, idiotic on those posts is baffling to me.

Melissa: 00:57:48

It's. Yeah, it's really shocking. And, and every time it shocks me and I'm like, really? This is your response? Like, today I just did.

Like, it took two hours. I posted about this absolutely horrific case in Brazil.

Sam: 00:58:04

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:58:04

And I was like, I'm gonna just watch and see when I get the first Adventist in my comments saying, it's everywhere. You just hate the church. And it took less than two hours. And sure enough, this woman comes roaring in thinking she's really got something.

You just hate the church. You'll find anything to say. And she was like, it. Sexual abuse is everywhere, including you. And I was like, what?

But they will literally just say anything so that they can keep that cognitive dissonance at bay and not have to admit that they might need to look at their church.

Sam: 00:58:48

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:58:49

And it's. It's amazing.

Sam: 00:58:52

Yeah. I feel like the, the argument that sexual abuse is everywhere is a really. Argument. Like, if that's.

If that's what we're going with, that's a very, very weak and crappy argument. Yep.

Melissa: 00:59:07

Yep. Oh, totally. And another favorite one, because Adventists hate Catholics for some reason. Ellen White said that Catholics were the.

Were going to be 666, whatever, the mark of the Beast. And so Adventists hate Catholics. Catholics don't know that Adventists exist, but Adventists think they do and that they're.

There's a big rivalry going, and so that's one of their favorite ones. Everybody comes into the comments, well, what about the Catholics? And it's like, what about them?

Sam: 00:59:33

Yeah.

Melissa: 00:59:34

So if we point over there, does that mean that it's suddenly magically healed over here? Like, what about the Catholics?

Sam: 00:59:41

Yeah, yeah. The what about ism is just crap. Like, it's like, we can talk about all of them. Like we, you know.

Melissa: 00:59:48

Right.

Sam: 00:59:49

Yeah. Oh, my goodness.

Melissa: 00:59:51

It's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing.

Sam: 00:59:54

I am curious, though, because you do post about a significant amount of heavy, heavy content. And so I am going to be typical therapist and go, how do you look after yourself doing all of that?

Melissa: 01:00:10

It's. It's hard. And again, I kind of tend to go in cycles. Like, I will make a batch of like 10 videos or something when I'm feeling really just fine.

I've got my hat on my lap or whatever, and I'm just. I'm feeling really either just very safe and secure and calm in my body or.

Or conversely, if something just fired me up that I am so angry about that I make, like today. And so I try not to expose myself during moments of vulnerability and just tell myself it'll be there when I need, when I. When I can pick it back up.

And literally just knowing that it's helping other people, you know, like, that's not why I started doing it. I started doing it because I had found out that, excuse me, that a member of my family had been a child predator in the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

So I just started talking about it because I just wanted to just, like, go.

And then when I started hearing from so many people and people contact me several times a week at least, and just say, you know, thank you for talking about this, because I can't, or, you know, I. My best friend from high school unalived herself because of it, or, you know, just whatever it is. And it's just like, wow.

Because I don't personally have that kind of abuse in the church. I don't have to go through it every single time I talk about it like someone who is an actual CSA survivor would.

And so I just feel like it's such a gift that I can try to give and that helps also, just knowing that it is hopefully making somebody else feel very heard and seen and not alone.

Sam: 01:02:06

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm wondering what it was like for you at the point that you realized or had the language and realization that SDA was a cult and what that was like for you, just from like a logical, educated standpoint. But also, holy shit, I was raised in a cult kind of mentality.

Melissa: 01:02:32

You know, it's still. I have to remind myself sometimes I have to be like, no, Melissa, it really is a cult because you are raised in there. They. Because it used to.

I don't know, there used to be some official classification document or something. I can't remember. I don't know. But up until the 80s, maybe there was a list of American cults or whatever, and Adventists were on it.

And then they got taken off of it. And so when I was raised, they were extremely viciously like, we're not a cult. We're not a cult. And they still do that all the time. We're not a cult.

We're not a cult. Big capital letters all the time. And they're very sensitive about it.

And of course, in the 90s, when the whole Branch Davidians Waco thing happened also, then that brought it all back to them all because of course, David Koresh was an Adventist and the Branch Davidians were Adventists.

And so for the longest time since I left, I love to say it's called, because I just love to push the buttons, like, but I didn't actually believe it probably, you know, like, I just knew it was a fun thing to push buttons because I knew how terrified they were to be classified as that. And then again, I think it was really watching Daniela and really starting. I'd never really looked at what defines cults and the bite model or, or.

And you know, all that stuff. And so going down that rabbit hole and being like, it's a cult.

Sam: 01:04:05

Yeah.

Melissa: 01:04:05

With my full chest, I also feel.

Sam: 01:04:09

Like any group that has to vehemently deny all the time that they're not a cult is definitely a cult. Right. Like, if you have to deny it that much, something is going on.

Melissa: 01:04:22

Yeah, right, Absolutely. And I, I think Daniela even did a video about Adventists in particular, and she was like, oh, my God, you guys are just denying, denying, denying.

You're a cult. You even have a prophet, you know?

Sam: 01:04:34

Yeah.

Melissa: 01:04:35

It was just so funny. I was like, yeah, yeah.

Sam: 01:04:39

I mean, how does that statement of like, I was raised in a cult feel at the moment?

Melissa: 01:04:47

It, again, I, I try, I have to convince myself because of course, I still have this big part of me that's like, it wasn't that bad. It wasn't that bad. You weren't being trafficked on the street, Melissa.

And so it's a constant reminder to allow myself to acknowledge that it had its own damage. It didn't have that kind of damage of being trafficked on the street. But it was a cult. You had no choices. It is a cult.

And so I have to really keep reminding myself because there is that really strong knee jerk reaction to minimize, minimize, minimize, minimize, minimize.

Sam: 01:05:30

Yeah. I also think, like, there's probably an aspect of you are talking about some really horrific stuff as well.

And so I imagine that there's probably a part of you going, oh, well, it wasn't that. So of course, like, like minimize and downplay and make it seem smaller.

Melissa: 01:05:47

Yeah, totally, totally. Because a lot of people in the comments, again, those people who are trying to dismiss one of the.

Another favorite thing that they all say is like, well, it's clear that you were hurt. I'm sorry for your pain. And obviously they're not sorry and it's not.

And, and I always write back and to be and say, like, I wasn't hurt, that's why I'm talking about it. And you know, again, I'm. Now then I'm dismissing it. Yes, I was hurt by the church massively, but not in that way, you know, so.

Sam: 01:06:17

Not better or worse, just different. And also I, I always, I say this to my clients all the time, which is like, let's not compare traumas.

As soon as we start to compare, we're going down the wrong path. Like, that's not going to help anybody in this situation. Yeah, yours is yours, theirs is theirs.

Yeah, but, yep, I am, I mean, you are writing a book at the moment, I believe. And so I am wondering what it has been like for you to put that together and to relive some of the stuff that you've been through.

Melissa: 01:06:57

There's kind of two arcs, two structure arcs to the book.

And we've kind of talked about, touched on both of them was my personal arc of leaving the church and then going through this whole, you know, abusive men and then realizing that it was related to the church. And then there was that other arc of escaping the church, thinking I was done.

And then in mid life, like my mid-30s, finding out that this very beloved family member had been a serial child predator in the Adventist church and having to deal with that and then kind of figuring all those out in the end and I, I tracked down the first victim of this family member and I befriended her.

And she's the most amazing person and she, she was very integral in, in helping me start deconstructing and realizing that I didn't need to know her story. I started out needing to know her story and how this person that I'd always looked up to had done this.

And I really, she kept kind of gently nudging me in the direction of look at the church, look at the church, you know, and, and I realized that the church had really done this to all of us, you know, and so that's the, you know, the gist of the book. And so living through all of that while writing it was incredibly hard, obviously. And I, I did it over the space of many, many years.

Like I started it 15 years ago and I, I spaced it out a lot. And now I'm in the editing stage because my manuscript is due to the publisher in July. And so I'm all excited.

So the manuscript is done and now I'm just editing. So that's an easier part. But still the information is, is. Is difficult.

And I know this is probably not a very correct thing to say, I guess, but I found it extremely helpful with the really hard stuff that I had to get down. When I had to get it down on the page initially, I got drunk. Yeah, I just. I was like, okay, tonight's a drunk writing night.

And I would just like mimosa up and then get the really hard stuff out when I was a little numbed, you know, just a bit numbed and then going back and editing it, then sober, as I do most of my writing, I just like to say. But it was, Was, was handleable.

Sam: 01:09:46

Yeah.

Melissa: 01:09:46

But sometimes just getting the really gruesome stuff down, it just, it almost required disassociating and that was my way of dis. Disassociating. Other people would do it in different.

Sam: 01:09:55

Ways, but yeah, I mean, it's like.

And the reason that I asked the question, particularly of people who write books, is because you are just continually activating your nervous system whilst doing it. And like, even, like you said, the editing process, even though you are not.

It's not the first time you're sitting down writing it, but you're rereading it, you're absorbing it still. And it's just a continuation of activating your nervous system.

Melissa: 01:10:23

It is, yeah. It's big.

I mean, I have to continually, like, I'll go out for a walk or I'll go out for a run and I'll be like stopping and giving myself voice messages and then I'll be like, we're not thinking about this, Melissa. We're not, we're not doing this right now, you know, but yeah, that nervous system activation.

Sam: 01:10:44

Yeah.

But ironically, doing the voice notes is actually probably the better alternative in that situation because you're getting it out of your system rather than trying to just like push through it and keep it absorbed inside. So.

Melissa: 01:10:56

Yeah, but it.

Sam: 01:10:57

Yeah, it's. I, I imagine that it was, it was quite a process to put, to put that together.

Melissa: 01:11:05

It was, it was. And it's continuing. And then thinking about bringing it public is a whole other issue.

So, you know, a lot of panics about that too, and just freak outs and we'll see how it goes.

Sam: 01:11:20

Well, I mean, Quick Plug, what is the book called? Just so that people can be prepared.

Melissa: 01:11:28

th Lake Drive Books in May of: 2025

So, you know, if people are following me on TikTok or Instagram, I'm also on substack and you know, they can find me. And you know, once milestones for the book are hit, I will not stop talking about it.

You know, right now we're working on a cover which is so exciting. Exciting. It makes it so real and you know, so lots of exciting stuff.

Sam: 01:12:08

Yeah, amazing. I love books. They're just like, I'm the. I call myself like a book traver. It's my books are my favorite things. They're the best.

I froth over a good memoir. So it's why I wanted to ask about it. Yeah, I love it. But I really like asking people what spirituality looks like for you now.

Being raised as a person of faith.

Melissa: 01:12:38

Yes, I went through a small phase when I had first left when I was in that exciting time at Barnard and where I was really exploring Buddhism and I, and I liked Zen Buddhism a lot. But I've decided that a system of any sort just does not agree with me. It's just, it's too activating, you know, it really is.

I am fairly hard encrusted in atheism at this point. I don't think anyone could yank me out.

Yeah, try, but so, but I'm open to, you know, I, I tell people or I just posted I guess a video a couple weeks ago about. I dated one of my long term boyfriends was Native American and his spirituality was something I had never experienced before, ever.

And it was, that was really interesting. And I tried to remind. Just be open to it, Melissa. Don't just immediately shut down because it's, you know, spirituality. And, and that was very.

I, you know, I, we had a bunch of weird experiences in the house that we lived in where he was like, well, it's a ghost, it's an old woman and she's doing this and she's doing that and he would have conversations with her in his sleep. And I, you know, it was a constant thing of like be open to this, Melissa. You don't know. You don't know.

You know, so I'm an agnostic atheist at this point. I hope there's something I really would love for there to be. Yeah, something. Yeah, you know, wouldn't that be awesome?

Sam: 01:14:25

Yeah, I, I remember asking someone that question and they said I am open to the mysteries of the world. But I don't need it. And I loved that. I was like, that's. Yes, that's beautiful.

Because, like, it's an openness, it's a curiosity about, you know, connection and divine and mysteries and everything that we just don't know, but we don't rely on it. We don't need it. It's not a necessity. And I was like, oh, I really love that. That's a beautiful way.

Melissa: 01:14:53

Oh, my gosh. Yes. I mean, I would expand on that. That I, I'm open to it and I. But I don't need it. And I don't want it to explain everything.

Yes, I really don't want it to explain everything. Once. Once something's trying to explain everything to you, run away.

Sam: 01:15:09

Yeah, absolutely.

Melissa: 01:15:10

I want it to be a mystery.

Sam: 01:15:12

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I like to finish these episodes with some encouragement for people. And I'm going to tweak it a little bit because you are the first ex sda.

So I want to tweak it, which is that I usually just ask abroad, what would you say to someone who is fresh in their deconstruction?

But I want to tweak it a little bit to what would you say to someone who has just left the SDA church or is deconstructing that belief system specifically?

Melissa: 01:15:42

I love that I, I do recommend that people triage because there's so much to catch up on in the real, real world.

So, you know, make your, literally sit down and make a list of like, what is it important for me to catch up on and what can I just let slide and not even worry about it? And also, so that's, that's with the, that's with the. There are two different levels of triage there, I think.

The one with just catching up on practical, you know, like, how do you cook meat?

Sam: 01:16:13

Yeah.

Melissa: 01:16:14

How do you, you know, how much alcohol can I drink? You know, whatever it is that's important to you or not.

There's that and then there's a whole theological religious triage that you need to do also, which is how did this religion affect me the worst and where do I need to put my effort? Because a lot of people I know who left Adventism or other high control religions were really, really vested in the theology of it.

And it's traumatizing for them to leave it.

And so they really need to go read their Bible again or do whatever it is that they need to do to figure out how they're at peace with leaving that part for me. I didn't need to do the theology part because I never believed it and I don't even know it, honestly.

I don't know what Adventists believe at this point in, in that sense.

But, but for me it was the behavior controls and the purity culture and that kind of stuff that I needed, that I knew I needed the most waste work on. So I, I, I, I think you really have to spend because there is, there are not enough lifetimes to catch up on all of it.

Sam: 01:17:24

Yeah.

Melissa: 01:17:24

And to heal from all of it, really. Sadly. So you, you choose what's the most important to you and the most meaningful or the most damaging and you work on those.

Sam: 01:17:36

Yeah, I love that. I love the term triaging. I think that's really, it's also just a word that I think people understand in terms of like what to do and how to do that.

It makes a lot of sense. So I love that.

Melissa: 01:17:49

I love, it's very clear, like.

Sam: 01:17:51

Yeah, yeah. I also just love words and phrases that like, bring us a picture in our mind.

I think it makes it so much easier for us to conceptualize it and understand it. So I love that.

Melissa: 01:18:02

Yeah.

Sam: 01:18:03

Thank you so much for joining me.

Melissa: 01:18:06

Oh my gosh, thank you so much. So, of course, this has been my first Friday night, so if I were still Adventist, I would be having vespers and reading Ellen White.

So we have just made one small strike back for all ex Adventists.

Sam: 01:18:21

And it's my Saturday, so we're really like hammering.

Melissa: 01:18:25

Really. We are just heretics one and all.

Sam: 01:18:30

Oh, thank you so much.

Melissa: 01:18:31

Well, thank you. Thank you. I would love to come back after you've read my memoir. I'd love to come back and we can dish some more.

Sam: 01:18:37

Absolutely. I love that idea. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of beyond the Surface.

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Until next time, keep exploring, keep questioning and keep moving forward. Take care.