Jinger Duggar Vuolo: Disentangling Faith from Fear

it places all these burdens on you and you start to think oh no what am I what is God gonna do if I don't do this and he he had an answer for that right away as soon as you made the vow he said now don't don't forget to pay these vows to God because if you don't if you don't do this then God's out to get you basically I had these like little fears as a child already and then whenever you place on top of that um God is out to get you it became so focused on me so I'd wake up in the morning or if I was going to bed at night I'd be terrified in fear thinking have I done what's right did I forget any of the principles did I forget what I'm supposed to do did I oh no I made this battle to God now I need to wake up right now it's 11 50. I gotta wake up and read my Bible for five minutes pray for five minutes otherwise maybe God's Gonna smite me dead so you start to feel this fear and this anxiety within because the teachings produce that I could be killed in a car accident because maybe I had this feeling I was supposed to stay home and read my Bible for two hours and I went out to play with my siblings instead so there was a lot of fear that I had to work through and it wasn't until really I came out of these teachings that I saw where it stemmed from it's hard to say like was it a cult because I know that there it would have to be left up to the experts to like examine that and see but there were elements of it that were cult-like for sure it hasn't been the case for me thankfully but for some kids when they leave it's like their families are just not wanting to talk to them or they'll have like this certain level of like cutting them off because maybe they're not they're going to be a bad influence on their family or whatever she's gone down for you because you know she knows [Music] hi I'm Ian Bialik and welcome to my breakdown this is the place we break things down so you don't have to and I'm flying solo today always missing Jonathan when he's not here um and this is a really really really fun one to break down um Ginger Volo you may know her as Ginger Duggar Volo has written a book called becoming free indeed and um that's Ginger with a j from the age of 9 to 27. she appeared on several reality shows 19 Kids and Counting is the one that many people know her from and also counting on she's an author um this book is really really awesome and I'm so excited to talk to her about it um she also has written a children's book you can shine so bright she lives in Los Angeles now with her husband and their two daughters and I am very excited to get into the breakdown with Ginger Ginger thank you so much for being here welcome thank you so much for having me um so as I told you off camera in our little debriefing I have never seen you on television and I knew I knew your family's last name just because I would hear about it um you know part of the reason might be I have kids who are 17 and 14. and we're not really a TV family and I very famously have never watched a reality show like I've seen things here and there but you know with all due respect it's just like it's not my jam like I like Lord of the Rings and I like um documentaries and I'm very interested in like World War II history so it just like wasn't in my kind of wheelhouse but I I knew you existed but um when Valerie mentioned your book I was very very intrigued um and really appreciate you being here and as I shared with you also um you know I'm I'm a person of faith and you're a person of faith and our faith may be different but in our case they also share there an Old Testament and so a lot of our a lot of the the things that you believe while you know you may have a different way that you practice them um there's a lot that I really um enjoyed about the basis of sort of your faith and and how you came to it also as I've spoken about here um you know I um I I have a lot of family who are very religious like very religious and so when I was reading your book and I was learning about a lot of the way that you grew up and a lot of the the restrictions and the guidelines you know those are things that are very familiar to me my mother was raised Orthodox she was raised very religious and I have a lot of family that are even more religious than the way my mother was raised and a smaller portion of my family really does not watch television or engage in pop culture um you know many many parts of the Orthodox Jewish Community um you know many have restrictions even against wearing bright colors you know there's there's parts of my family and large parts of the Jewish community that that really just wear black white and gray and it's a it's a decision based on you know an interpretation of modesty so there was a lot that I really understood you know about the way that you were raised in addition you know for those of us who follow you know traditional Judaism I mean we have restrictions indeed about clothing about food about decorum you know modesty is a very large umbrella um so while I think a lot of people may have been interested in your family or might even be interested in your book kind of for you know a little bit Sensational reasons like ooh let's let's hear about all the crazy things these people do um there also is a really interesting you know kind of basis to the foundation of a lot of the boundaries and restrictions kind of has a connotation but um I wonder if you can talk a little bit just kind of before we get into a little more of your history about kind of what you understood was positive you know about the way that you were raised yeah you know um it is interesting I think like it's neat hearing some of your perspective on your life as well I think so many of us whether you're raised in the setting that I was raised in or not we have this common um scene that we'll see within like our families or our communities where you have there's such sweet memories that I have I really would say overall like I had a very happy childhood my parents sought to pour into us and um we had a lot of fun together I remember long bike rides on Saturdays where we would line up in a straight road try to stay as far off of the street as possible uh and you have like this trail of like 10 kids behind my dad my mom would drive the van the 15 passenger van with this long flatbed trailer on the back that way as we got tired we could throw our bikes on and then that we would hop in the van and she'd have snacks for us but I remember those sweet fun memories together as a family my parents said their kids were their hobby so they would always seek to like pour into us have fun take us along on little projects they were doing since my dad was in real estate he would like we get to go see houses all the time which I love to this day I will sit down on Zillow for fun and look at homes like it's just a hobby because those were the fond memories of childhood that I had so there was so much sweet and my parents sought to make it a happy hope um and I think whenever you look at the bigger picture of everything the sad part was for me that like you could see man inwardly I was wrestling with a lot of short anxiety and fears but whenever you think about like the thankfully for my story I had you know there were there were difficult times for sure and pain that I experienced that the world didn't see um but I can think back to all of these years of fond memories and um for those of for those of our listeners or or viewers or just for me to have a refresher how many siblings are there so I'm one of 19 Kids I'm I'm number six in the family so I'm a little bit further I'd say I'm in the older top half we don't know there are like three sections right are there are there any twins two sets of twins okay well bless your mother number two and three and numbers um 10 and 11 I believe are the twins wow um and you know I I have members of my family that have I mean I think the most might might be closer to a dozen um certain members of you know my extended Hasidic family um you know the the reason that that a lot of Jews um choose to have a lot of children um well first there's the issue of a lot of a lot of religious people don't believe in birth control like that's a thing um the there are this might be TMI there are um there are ways that women are taught in traditional Judaism to learn their ovulation cycle um there's a lot of uh boundaries and restrictions around the menstrual cycle for for orthodox women right um in any event a lot of women can and do work within those bounds to avoid getting pregnant or try to avoid getting pregnant while also not violating you know some of the rules that we have around menstruation and not having intercourse during that time um yeah because you know if you think about it kind of historically and I hope this provides a little framework for people you know a lot of the the culture that that the Bible describes you know was a very different time when people were expected to have lots of children to help work many children often died you know depending on when it was in history it was a guarantee you know that that you would be able to to have a functioning Farm or a functioning business and so you know for a lot of people that was a way of life and for my family in particular you know my my um my family you know was rebuilding after the Holocaust and there are many many branches and many communities specifically of Eastern European Jews who really believe that it's like an edict from God to replace you know the the Six Million as it were and the approximately one million you know children who were killed during the Holocaust so like it's a heavy burden but um you know I I can't say that um it's not really for me to say like oh those women are miserable and I I I do know as a woman who has had two children it's incredibly physically taxing and it's incredibly exhausting and when you have a large family you also then have child care I mean it's and I don't even think of it like using your kids like that's how families used to work and for a lot of history that's how it was so I wonder if you can speak a little bit about you know kind of what it what it felt like to be part of I mean you kind of were your own little you know community of siblings it is interesting I think um growing up in such a large family it it was there were so many sweet aspects of that so even right now we just have two kids we have a five-year-old and a two-year-old two little girls they're so much fun um but at the same time like I can see how even those mandates in scripture about be fruitful and multiply replenish the Earth you know so I could go off of that and say okay therefore I have to have as many kids as possible which is I think the teaching where a lot of people will have differences on that and opinions about what scripture is actually saying um but whenever I think you can see a breakdown within the community at least that I was raised in I'll just speak to that where I think it was mandated that you couldn't use any form of birth control even if it was like you said like planning just counting natural Family Planning right which you're just keeping track of stuff some would even refuse that and say that's that is um pushing away the arm of God in what he has commanded for us and and so we need to receive children as a blessing even if I just had a baby um and so you get into this cycle of having as many kids as possible right and the the thing that I see as the challenge was within that community that's not the only issue there were other things where they would say don't go into debt at all so you have families who are they're trying to make it right they're trying to figure out how am I going to support my family how am I going to have even a home for my kids if I'm not able to go into debt right and get a mortgage so you had them living in these tiny homes um and of course the dad's working but maybe if you had older daughters they're not allowed to work so no one's really allowed to move outside of the home until you're married or there's there are different dynamics that I saw as harmful and often the women were the ones who would take the brunt of it um and they would be in this place of difficulty and trying to function and make it um as it was just it becomes more of a burden and you don't like within my family I could say I loved I loved being a part of a big family there I think my parents were able to manage a lot of that pretty well and at the same time like I would look at other families around maybe who were not as fortunate maybe their circumstances didn't fall into place as well financially and there was um there was more challenges there were more challenges there for sure for the women and I saw that as very damaging and I think that whenever you welcome a kid you want to be excited for that child to come into your family you want to be joy-filled and sadly some of those moms would be sick at their stomach the entire pregnancy on bed rest for many months of the pregnancy and at the same time they have nine kids over here who need to be cared for so um I'm sure you've seen much oh yeah like Within These communities yeah even within the Jewish Community there are there are these things where it's like yes children are a blessing we don't want to reject that because that is in scripture and it is true but so are many other things so if all of this is a blessing do we need to have as many of it as possible that's the question so Christians have disagreed on this for many many years and ages it's gone back um to Biblical times where you've seen there have been disagreements on this so yeah [Music] my 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brought to you by ritual they say giving birth is the equivalent to running a marathon what about being pregnant and building a company from scratch while taking on the multivitamin aisle that's the story of rituals founder cat Schneider who started ritual because she couldn't find a prenatal she could trust it's been super easy and painless to incorporate ritual products into my daily routine and I especially love that they're vegan friendly rituals essential for women prenatal is a prenatal multivitamin made traceable with vegan bioavailable and clinically studied key nutrients for before and during pregnancy it has 350 milligrams of vegan sustainably sourced omega-3 DHA to support babies brain development during pregnancy and is non-GMO project verified gluten and major allergen free and vegan rituals delayed release capsules are designed to dissolve later in the small intestine an ideal place to absorb nutrients their Citrus or mint Essence capsules are designed to be gentle on the stomach so you can take them when you want with or without food why settle for a multivitamin you're not 100 sure about ritual was built on trust so you know it's the real deal rituals offering our listeners 10 off during your first three months visit ritual.com breakdown to start ritual or add essential for women prenatal to your subscription today thank you the thing that that is interesting that I found kind of throughout your book is that the Jewish tradition kind of follows the traditions of the rabbis from that time and what happened was after you know after the Romans and after you know Jesus's death and we had Christianity starting up um what happened was there was a group of rabbis who basically kind of kept a lot of these Traditions alive and kind of wrote down and they wrote down over the next you know I mean their disciples wrote it down and you know kind of over the next several hundred years we start having this like code of behavior and for Jews we call it and it's the it's the set of laws that kind of tell us all the details right so that it's not so much open to interpretation it's like here's what we're generally agreeing on and like you know when you talked about like oh there's nowhere that says to wear a skirt like so for Jews there is a place that says you should not show the space between you know basically your knees and above you shouldn't see a separation right like we have right we got it down to a science and like you know part of it was like when the temple was destroyed which was our main place of worship you kind of had people just like scattered everywhere right and our most of our main rabbis were killed by the Romans and you know but what happened is you had these like books that kind of like people kept track of like what you're supposed to do and things like be fruitful and multiply you know there's there's books written just interpreting what does that mean and where does the health of the mother you know weigh into that a lot of the discussions about abortion and things like that come from us going back to thousands of years of writing of like what's the health of the mother and what does that mean for the family and I'm not saying we interpret it perfectly no religious system is perfect but I wonder if you can talk a little bit about you know your family followed a particular guy and his kind of community that basically said we have the interpretation right right can you can you talk about who who he was and sort of you know how you understood how that interpretation was kind of your you know your rabbinic interpretation for lack of a better phrase yes so is it is interesting how I remember Bill Gothard being this in my mind he was like the person that we all wanted to be like he was the man who I believed like I never would have said for for us as um believing that God's word is sufficient I would never would have said I needed somebody to interpret it for me that's not in in my understanding of what I believed it wasn't true but for some reason Bill Gothard was also in my mind like maybe he's a prophet sent from God to share these teachings that we would never be able to find out anywhere else so I kind of viewed him as such and really held him in high esteem and so Bill Gothard came on the scene in the 60s and 70s he was um it was in the middle of the sexual Revolution so a lot of parents were kind of freaking out like our kids are gonna wrap get wrapped up in sex drugs and rock and roll look at us now look at us so it is crazy because they were looking at this saying like what are we gonna do like how are we going to keep our kids from all of this how can we guarantee that they're going to um not leave our Christian values so Bill Gothard came on the scene in that time with this Basic Youth conflict seminar and he would fill up massive stadiums full of people people from all different even faiths were like bussing people in to these stadiums saying we're going to bring our youth here and you can teach them these principles these seven basic life principles that will guarantee their success in life so that's that's already our first problem right when someone says I've got the one answer right the key right that's where my ears kind of like oh right and that's so right because we are we we want in some sense it seems so comfortable to like have someone who will give us the answer like okay what's the recipe I want to follow it to a T and I'm guaranteed the success who doesn't want that right so I can see the appeal of it now as a parent of even a two and five-year-old I'm like it is crazy to think about my kids growing up and having opinions and how do I point them at me as a believer in Jesus I want to point them to my faith in in the Lord and I want them to have a relationship with God like I have loved but at the same time I see that these external things are not what's going to keep them from um like keep them from these dangers that I would see you know like I want them to love God but I think what happened was book author came on the scene with this list and it was a guarantee just do these external things in your good so a lot of families got wrapped up in that from all different backgrounds like I said you'd have some who were kind of dabble in it like we're gonna pick a few things he says and see if it works and then you had others who took it to the extreme of like we're going to use Bill gothard's curriculum for all of our schooling which was a problem um because some of them were poorly educated because of it because they were like we're going to do math from numbers which you I'm sure maybe read numbers I don't know the Old Testament numbers but they're like let's add up the let's add up these um families and how much how many do you get yeah for those of you uh not certain so like a lot of the math in the Old Testament is a census it's a lot of um the keeping track of Who's Who and it's because the the Old Testament was a it was you know considered like a not just a spiritual book and a historical book but it was like a logistical book of like literally like who lived where and how many tribes were there like it was a lot of that kind of math also some people lived to 900 years and like right so let's subtract like how many years before they die right so some some a couple families did that and then you had others who would actually have a legit education which my parents were very very good about giving us actual school to do even though we were homeschooled so um you have within this setting those who would pick and choose but if you were actually in these teachings Bill Gothard would say that you need to follow all of his teachings to a T and if your life started to fall apart or maybe your kids started to not turn out he would be like pause and go back to these principles and let's see which one you violated so talk to me a little bit about um him because you know people who have the ability to draw people to them are often very intelligent I mean I'm just guessing I don't I don't know him like I wouldn't know him if he walked up to me on the street did he live near where you lived or it's just like people knew about him and you went to places no so because the seminars were so prevalent in this pocket of time I I think that a lot of families got involved in it I know my family was involved before my parents started having kids oh God so um that was part of the reason why you know maybe they had so many okay because of these teachings so okay so I think a lot of people were drawn to Bill Gothard in those early days because he really had he had promised to have the key right but he wasn't even living near us which was interesting because he was in Oakbrook Illinois that's kind of where he was but people would go to his is conferences or they would go to his seminars at that time I guess in the early days it was the seminar that he would promote in Knoxville he would fill up these massive Arenas full of thousands of people and they would hear these teachings and once you hear it it was interesting how he got people into the teachings I think he has this this personality of like I just want to help your family I just want to you know give you these answers that God's given me from his word and it seems very plausible seems right but um at the seminar he would have people make vows to God to keep these teachings that he had just taught them but he would like take a verse of the Bible and he would say you know whatever it was like if you vowed to read your Bible for five minutes every day because we're supposed to you know like God's word in our heart let's make a vow before God raise your hand all across the stadium let's make this vow to God that you're going to read your Bible or pray for five minutes every day which as a Christian you're like oh okay that sounds good let's do that and then he keeps going down this whole thing but what that does is it places all these burdens on you and you start to think oh no what am I what is God gonna do if I don't do this and he he had an answer for that right away as soon as you made the vow he said don't don't forget to pay these vows to God because if you don't if you don't do this then God's out to get you basically yeah so yeah so I I kind of want to and I I wanna I wanna interrupt you there because I want you to talk about what that did to you and I think what's really neat about your book is that you don't talk about what's right for everybody you don't talk about what anybody should do or shouldn't do like you're really really careful with your words and um and I I really appreciate that but what you describe is that and and and I can't say this is true of all of your siblings right because we don't know what we know is that for you this started a train of thought that began it kind of began to feel scary I mean the the line of thinking that you went down which is not unusual I would say you know when you're getting this kind of information um but can you talk a little bit kind of about where your young mind went with this kind of you know Dogma which is kind of what it is right I think that for each person in this community I've talked to a lot who have come out of it you'll have different people with with temperaments that maybe can handle it better um but for me I I feel like and from the start I was always I had these like little fears as a child already and then whenever you place on top of that um God is out to get you even as even as you are walking like very carefully or seeking to do what you're supposed to do I was a very like compliant child I was never one to push the boundaries so I I wanted to do what was right but even in that with these teachings what what happened was it became so focused on me so I'd wake up in the morning or if I was going to bed at night I'd be terrified in fear thinking have I done what's right did I forget any of the principles did I forget what I'm supposed to do did I oh no I made this vow to God now I need to wake up right now it's it's 11 50. I gotta wake up and read my Bible for five minutes pray for five minutes otherwise maybe God's Gonna smite me dead so you start to feel this fear and this anxiety within because the teachings produce that and so I wouldn't say that for every single person in that setting it was the exact same but the longer you're in it unknowingly even you're slowly slipping into this mindset of like okay like I'm trying to appease God at every turn instead of as I would see now as someone who loves loves um the Lord I'm in this place of delight and relationship where it's not a burden something and it's not like if I don't read my Bible today that God is up there like okay now I'm gonna like have you um be in a car accident because you didn't read your Bible no there's a delight and a love for God that changes everything it's like I want to read the Bible so I'm I'm reading it because I love God not out of fear and realizing there's like a relationship change of God as father not looking at me like I'm out to get you at every turn and you know what you describe I mean first of all sounds you know really scary um because you know what you talk about is kind of that it started touching like kind of every part of your life meaning it touched your like your fears about what you should eat or you know how you should look or literally like what you should wear and how you should wear it and the thing that's really interesting to me is that when your thoughts come under attack like that it must feel really terrifying and you went to your mom a lot and it sounded like your mom you know was very loving and very you know caring around it um and I thought it was very interesting some of the things that she kind of helped you arrange around your eating you know which had become disordered um yeah and and for you it was kind of like you I know what what struck me and please you know correct me if I'm wrong it seemed like you couldn't escape from God meaning in ways that didn't feel loving and supportive yeah it is interesting because I think Within These teachings he would teach about fasting which is something that we do see in the Bible yes but it's I do it many times a year happy to text you when we do it it actually is it actually is like a it's a fine thing to do right it's a spiritual practice but we do it very specifically yes but not as like I'm gonna wake up in whatever I feel today is what I need to do because if we live by our feelings then it life becomes very disordered because it's like especially when I'm pregnant right when I was pregnant with my kids goodness if I would have had that perspective when I was pregnant my emotions are up and down I'm like extra emotional crying over here but um it's like part of it was I think when I would wake up in the morning I'd think am I supposed to fast today and I was already struggling with my eating like not wanting to eat enough not eating things that were gonna sustain me and so I had opened up to my mom about that after struggling for a while and my mom had an eating disorder that she had shared publicly about this but she had had an eating disorder as a young teen and so I knew that I could go to her and I wouldn't face judgment my mom has always been so kind so I went to her and shared that and she really helped me to like work through that and then I heard this thing about fasting so I was like oh no maybe I'm supposed to be like fasting once a week because Bill Gothard talked about that and like how you can you know like have a closer open line of communication with God if you do this or whatever my parents were like no like no way because they knew my struggles with that so they said don't do that so I was grateful for that but at the same time like you said it it affected everything so if I was gonna go out the door to go shopping with my sisters or if I was gonna go to broom ball to play the sport with my siblings I would like be fearful because I was like I'm gonna what if I go I could be killed in a car accident because maybe I had this feeling I was supposed to stay home and read my Bible for two hours and I went out to play with my siblings instead so there was a lot of fear that I had to work through um and it wasn't until really I came out of these teachings that I saw where it stemmed from [Music] Miami Alex breakdown is supported by better help we've all had times where we felt uncertain about where we were going in life myself included sometimes we're faced with tough choices and the path forward isn't always clear whether you're dealing with decisions around career relationships or really anything therapy can help you stay connected to what you really want while you navigate life so that you can move forward with confidence and excitement trusting yourself to make decisions that align with your values is like anything the more you practice the easier it gets if you're thinking of starting therapy we cannot recommend it highly enough my experience with 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reported improved hair growth after taking neutrophil women's hair growth supplement for six months take the first step to visibly thicker healthier hair for a limited time neutrophils offering our listeners ten dollars off your first month subscription and free shipping when you go to neutrifold.com and enter the promo code break find out why over 4 000 Healthcare professionals recommend neutriful for healthier hair neutrophone.com spelled n-u-t-r-a-f-o-l.com promo code break that's neutralfold.com promo code break [Music] you know there's there's something that um that I started becoming curious about really kind of in our culture I think around the time that people started learning about Islam and you know there was a lot of erroneous and and and really you know racist things that people believed about Islam because of a lot of things going on in our culture and I think it started at least in my knowledge you know around 9 11. um you know there was a lot of discussion that started happening about you know religious belief and how far we will go right and and I'm not comparing your situation God forbid you know to a situation where you believe for example that you should die for God you know because there are people you know who take it to that level but I started becoming interested especially because I I was becoming more religious myself um I started becoming interested in what I called religious mental insanity and that was just like my term for it meaning I would meet people or interact with people or hear about people in the news and I was like I don't believe that this person was born you know wanting to necessarily live that kind of life but something happens on our journey and with who we meet and what culture we're raised in and whatever and this you know in the years since that um it's something that has been talked about kind of with more structure and I'm not trying to pathologize you I'm not trying to be like I have a diagnosis for you but um there is a thing called like religious obsessive compulsive disorder that is now studied in the literature and what it is it's it's a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder which like you know is a full spectrum meaning like some people wash their hands all the time or like have to check the oven 86 times whatever um but for a lot of people who were raised in very specific religious communities there's like this exactly what you're describing like I'm just looking at you know a list from Center for anxiety disorders you know compulsive praying which can include restarting the prayer like if you get it wrong and I do this even with prayer like if I don't have like a full you know like fluidity to my prayer like I'll be like oh I gotta start again it doesn't count I gotta do it like that um reading or studying excessively right questioning your motives like because of God's role in it um you know constantly seeking forgiveness or you know believing that there are things that you have to do to guarantee safety and that's like literally the definition of OCD is that people have these compulsive behaviors that they believe will guarantee them safety and and freedom from like the obsessions and so it's kind of interesting because you know what you describe sounds a lot like your brain latched onto something you know and it became like you know this kind of focus for you do you think that really continued until you met and started dating your now husband like did this sort of in one way or another continue I think it did because it was interesting I had I would kind of look at other people outside of our circles and think okay maybe they're walking with God maybe they're not because you'd kind of see differences like if the women were pants in their family I was like okay well I know they're not obeying every rule as they're supposed to even if they come to conferences they would wear skirts conferences you know and I was like well how are you actually get a guarantee success for your family so I really wholeheartedly believe that stuff until it was really I believe whenever my brother-in-law came in the picture then he kind of came on see started talking to my sister that kind of like challenged my thinking and how I read the Bible but it wasn't until my now has then Jeremy came on the scene where he he approached the Bible differently right and I really appreciated seeing how he handled the Bible because it wasn't like he was going to just pick out a verse make it say wherever he wanted to he wanted to see what did the Bible actually say what was what was the context of this when was it written and who was it written to and these things are all important questions that we have to understand when we're reading the word of God which I had never really taken into consideration so I was like oh I hear a message on like modesty that was like picking random verses and like trying to apply it to today or something on dating where you're not allowed to date you need to do courtship well in that case if we woke back to Biblical times it should all be arranged marriages really correct which we did not believe in right so you have all these pick and choose which just it doesn't end up in the right place because what we see is yes in biblical times these things may have been mandated for Israel or they may have been in this specific time period but with even as a Believer now as I view the Bible with the New Covenant I would say as a Christian I say there's this New Covenant when Christ came onto the scene where I can see that he fulfilled a lot of those things and so as a Believer I'll view the Old Testament some of those teachings as like okay that was for Israel in that time and so you have these differences that Jeremy when he came on the scene he knew nothing about my the teaching I was raised in he did not know who Bill Gothard was so he went to this conference and was kind of like this is interesting everybody kind of like talks the same looks the same has the exact same secondary and third like condition uh convictions on things that I've never heard of so how is this possible so can you before we kind of get more to that sort of you know new way that not only you started thinking but also living and seems like is you know suiting you really nicely um and also you know the family that you're growing um do you do you consider that you were part of a cult like is that how you talk about it I say now that it was very you could have very cult like stuff within it um I it's hard to say like was it a cult because I know that there it would have to be left up to the experts to like exam in that and see right but there were elements of it that were cult-like for sure and um I think even for some kids when they leave it hasn't been the case for me thankfully but for some kids when they leave it's like their families are just not wanting to talk to them or they'll have like this certain level of like cutting them off because maybe they're not they're going to be a bad influence on their family or whatever right but um it's hard to say like for me like as an individual I would leave that up to experts to look at it and see what elements may have been called yeah well and I guess the reason I'm asking is not just because I want like a sound bite of you being like I was in a cult um but I'm I'm curious how you kind of frame it for yourself and you talk about this in the book um in a a really I mean I was honestly really surprised because I I knew nothing really about you except you know your last name like your family name and you really like you go hard on really taking apart what no longer worked for you about that and why yeah and I'm curious like you know did you feel like this was an act of Bravery to kind of like break it down like that because you could have also been like here's the new way I like to live but it's like there's it's very academic in terms of like you you go like you go deep and You Go Hard by step yes with the teachings and and yeah it's interesting kind of crazy you know what's interesting about that when I first thought about like should I write a book it took me years to get to that place because for one I was working I wanted to work through first myself for those years um on disentangling what I would say now like taking apart the truth from the air myself before I came to the place of like talking about it publicly um and what why I wanted to write this book was to help those in the community who may still be there or to help those who have been harmed by it and leave any sort of Christianity altogether because they're like now that I have this view in mind I can't see God as anything but somebody who's always out to get me they can't see God as a loving heavenly father and that was what drove me to write this book and that's why it is so detailed and like this is how this teaching of authority is wrong because I do see I do believe as a believer in Jesus as a Christian that there's a difference of like there is an authority structure right like I'm supposed to obey the government I'm supposed to pay my taxes I'm supposed to do these things that the Bible commands but I can see how Bill Gothard would come in and he would twist stuff to make it so harmful to where you're so confused about who God is so I wanted to take it apart piece by piece walking through that way if there's someone who's still in this or even outside of Bill gothard's teaching set that aside there are enough teachers who will try to place burdens on you that you can't carry and we're not meant to carry and so that's why it is so technical I'd say like I wanted to get into it for those who can't identify with the pain that has caused them for all these years here's a hard question that honestly I don't know if I would know how to answer if I were you so you know you can do your best but I won't be offended if you're like I don't know how to answer that what's really neat is that you know you kept journals and so you actually have like this tangible evidence of like what your thought process was like you know really down to a t like really really specific and I would imagine that must be so trippy to like be able to look back at like this person that you were you know yeah and um this is something you know I I wonder about um in general but I've never really gotten to ask someone were you lying then like when you look back do you think like I was lying to myself or do you believe that you were just in a state where you like that was true but now it's not yeah I think that that was my reality because part of it well to an extent right like anybody can hide anything in their journals of like oh I'm fine and I'm not but for me I think of course I I had a journal stolen from my bedroom I couldn't believe it but with that yeah so with that like I'm of course I'm not I'm not writing everything so personal I would never write a thing again I don't think I'd speak out loud like I need a safe for my journal that's right so yeah it's interesting so that kind of just kind of shook me a little bit I'm like okay I can't be so raw but um at the same time I would say like in in that season because it was like I had on these lenses that were viewing the world in a certain way and I wholeheartedly believed it all I was like I was probably I don't want to say but am I in my circle maybe I was like the most about like I was so into these teachings so families would come on they would come around us and they didn't do all this stuff if their kids were rebelling I'd immediately say I think in my mind they haven't learned these principles yet have they so I felt like even as like a 13 14 year old girl I had it all mapped out how my life was gonna go how my kids were gonna be raised and I would judge other people like even in my heart I would judge other people for maybe sending their kids to a Christian school or for doing like dressing um in a way that I thought would bring them uh damage because Bill Gothard I don't think I said this yet but Bill Gothard hot that if you follow his principles then your life will be a success but if you don't then your life will be one disaster after another so with that in your mind I would view everyone else around me like okay you can love Jesus I had friends who love Jesus who were outside of her circles but I thought it's a matter of time when your kids are going to Rebel or when your finances are going to go away or when you're going to get cancer and you don't know what you did to cause this so you need to go back to these principles and then you'll have the answer to all of life's problems okay so I have to stop you though because and this is this is not said lightly because I do understand historically and you know while I do not accept Christ as my savior I understand that people have and that's fine right but you know I do know enough about Jesus to know that he was known to be a a person who who welcomed the downtrodden The Stranger he healed the sick like he he was a he was known as like a non-judgmental icon right like let he who is without sin cast the did I Do It cast the first time so and and this is not being like um you were a bad Christian this is just me saying I'm wondering what was sort of the the party line on we are allowed to be judge jury and executioner for other people's ethics when Christ is supposed to be guiding our Behavior like how did you rationalize it as a child growing up in that you have a framework for how you view everything I would have said I come to Jesus not by any works of my own salvation is a gift is how I would have said that as like four-year-old five-year-old I knew that right but practically whenever you start to follow these teachings once you think that you've you view Jesus in a certain way Bill Gothard would say you know it's almost like it's all on you instead of all on Jesus which as a Believer now I'd say it's more it's all on the finished work of Jesus because he died on the cross for my sins right so therefore I am accepted before God because of Christ but in that setting I would have said like okay I can see how this person may maybe they are saved maybe they're gonna you know they they believe in Jesus but maybe they are not they aren't doing enough to keep their kids from falling away maybe they're not doing enough of these rules to satisfy or to appease God and so it almost becomes a totally different religion because you're looking at it in a way of like okay now I'm working my way to God as opposed to this other view that I have now of like it's done it's finished and and I am now a child of God not because of all the stuff to keep myself in a right relationship with God yes because I love God I don't want to sin against him but what is sin what does that mean what does God command me to do and not do well I need to go back to the word of God to see um what he says so yes I would judge other people because I wanted out of almost compassion I don't I don't know how often in my heart it was like I'm just so much better than you right but Pride all Pride will do that so I'm sure there were Seasons where it was like that but it was almost more like man I just don't want your life to fall apart and you don't know why because you that's really what it was it was like Christians would believe that their lives were falling apart because they did not do enough of the principles so then you have to go back and diagnose like Bill Gothard told story after Story of like he told the story of this person who had an eye condition they were starting to like lose their house all these things and it was because they didn't know about a specific principle once they got the principal in place he says oh their life started to fall into place it's like yeah maybe she just got some creams for her eyes and maybe she started to actually handle her finances correctly so it's interesting you start to become fearful and like what am I going to do what am I going to not going to do instead of looking at the person of who God is and seeing who what his character in nature really is I think for a lot of people listening you know of any religious Faith or of none I think can relate to that connection that you just made because you know um meditation has become a larger part of my life and I think a lot of people and you know there's a meditative process to my religious tradition as well it's been there for thousands of years just a lot of people don't kind of talk about it because we're very busy you know making rules and laws about who should live where and what they should eat and how they should dress but what you just said feels a lot closer to the idea of kind of like a unity in the universe where we all believe that there's something good that is not us that guides all sorts of all sorts of things and every religious tradition is going to try and find the best way to get there and along the way there's going to be people who use that to their advantage because we're all human you know like we're all just like doing the best we can trying to make sense of a world that is beyond our understanding and my perspective because I didn't create it like I don't have all of the knowledge of how things work and why children get cancer and you know all these things but like there's certain things I know to be true and while we now know why prayer works right it doesn't work in my opinion because God has ears and God is picking and choosing I'm going to listen to her but not him I don't like how she dressed or she ate pork so she can't have her prayer granted there's a much larger you know kind of picture so I wonder sort of what you'd say your perspective is now like what does it feel like now for you yeah it is interesting because I think as we look at the bigger picture of everything I would look at the my life back then and see it very fear-based very controlled with anxiety looking at God as always out to get me like I said but I see this as yes we are all wanting to figure out why are we here why do we exist what does God have in store for our life if you believe in god um there's that certain reality that I now as a Christian would say I look at life and say Yes I want to honor God why like I have this we all have this desire to want to figure out why we're here and so for me when I look at God's word I say it makes sense now like it makes sense more than ever realizing that I am here for a reason God has designed and created me I I long for a relationship with God whereas before I think it was a certain sense of like I know what is true in a sense like I had this and understanding of truth but it was mixed with so much error to where I felt like man I just never know if I'm pleasing to God and so now I feel like as as a believer in Jesus I see there's a difference there where it's a shift of seeing when I open the Bible now I'm not terrified thinking okay if I woke up late today I'm not reading my Bible today if I go to the gym if I do this then God's looking down waiting to get me he's waiting to kill me in a car accident waiting to give me cancer because I see like even if I get cancer tomorrow I know that God's good and I know that it's not because of me doing something outside of his will that he's just out to get me because I can view God as a loving heavenly father and I can come to the word of God with reading the Psalms where David is in agony he's pouring out his heart before God he's raw he's real he's broken and that is where God meets us he meets us in a Brokenness in our weakness in our pain and we can express that to him we don't have to feel like we're hiding all of this and come to him and say there is nothing I can bring to you to offer that is that will ever gave me favor with God and that was the difference between Bill gothard's teaching he would have all on you you're always fearful there's always something you didn't do and when you come to Jesus you see coming to the word of God is sufficient and you don't have to worry about like oh no I'm not going to be accepted today and there's peace there because I realize for me as a Christian like I'm not I am no longer like living this life of fear so like with my kids I we're sending him to this you know we're choosing different schooling options um and I won't say where are you know privacy but it's like if we're doing different schooling options that I than I would have ever thought I would do but I think it's right because I'm making the best decisions for my kids today as I as I would see that is best for them and it's I'm not like gonna overthink stuff now I wonder if you can talk a little bit because you touched on something and you didn't say the word you kind of talked around it you're you're really kind of threading this really fine needle of perfectionism and you know when you talk about Gothard like it seems like there really was there's like a perfect way to be like these are the things you do and then your life will be successful and to me like I hear perfect you know my mental health my mental health radar is like that's Perfection and not to talk Bible but I love to you know you mentioned David and King David was a flawed leader every leader in the Old Testament King David saw a woman bathing laying on the roof and he sends her husband to the front lines because he wanted to lay with her and you know it's something that the you know that the the Old Testament you know it comes to terms with it like Moses was a reluctant leader you know Miriam even Moses sister like we are made of flawed human like humans are flawed yeah and they're all broken we're all I mean it's just like that's just the state of the universe and if I wasn't if I was perfect I wouldn't be me I'd be God and that's not going to happen because that's not how it works right but you know when I think about what you talk about you know with your eating stuff right a lot of disordered eating and I share disordered eating with you um or a history of that a lot of that is about for me perfectionism like there's a I have to my body has to look perfect and if my hips have this you know extra flesh like that's not perfect or like my Skin's not perfect or whatever you know pick a body feature or thing about me and that's not perfect and and I I wonder how you view that now like do you see a shift in sort of your notion of perfectionism can you talk about that oh yeah I'm so glad that you touched on that because that is a huge part of what I what I experienced that perfectionism of feeling like if it's not just for myself it's it's for God if it's not this perfectionism like I feel like I can't even pray to God in my real state of what I'm feeling in my heart because I'm like am I am I praying the right words is he gonna hear me in this way um and then in like relation to other people it's like I always have to carry myself a certain way so I struggle with like social anxiety talking to people in certain settings where I wasn't as comfortable what are they wanting to me to be so I'd almost like adapt myself to their personality because oh no I'm just not like my personality is not good enough so I need to be just like them or I need to say the perfect words in this conversation or I feel like a failure um those things it is interesting how they have shifted and I don't now it's like I realize that because of who I am um now as a Believer like I can see that I am I am made and created to be Ginger I'm not created to be anyone else and I'm here for this season and if I'm just trying to be a carbon copy of everyone around me that's going to be boring that's going to be dull and so yes every day I will have to wake up and remember that I will have to train like my mind in a way like I have to just remind myself like wait stop thinking like you used to think because I used to be so try to feel like I have to be so perfect like I had a friend over to my house the other day and after she left I was like girl I'm so sorry your kid was eating old Cheerios off my floor because I didn't have time to vacuum and I was like she said can I come over and I was like yeah come over and I realized my kids had spilled food everywhere well she came over into my mess and yes I was embarrassed but at the same time there's like this I don't have to be so perfect all the time I don't always have makeup on I'm sometimes my hair is like a mess and I'm like running around and I have people in and out of my house not able to make a meal and I I there's a sense of like I can I want to be I want to not focus so much on these external things and even for others around us like I think social media okay we won't even go into all this but like social media that whole thing has created this this sense of like we have to be so perfect and even with like our personalities even with my my husband my sweet husband like we get along so well we hit it off we have a lot of the same things in common but even with him when we first got married I was like I felt like I was having like in my mind initially I was like I want to be this perfect person for him so that way he always loves me but he realized he's like Ginge I want you to be I want you to be you you don't have to be performing for me to like always have this cheery happy attitude when inside you're sad just tell me you're sad I want to be there and we could do life together in the dirty and the messy and all these things and that changed something for me it took years to work through but there was a shift in my mindset of not performing realizing that I want to be I want to be a loving person I'm not gonna if I'm angry every day that's there's something messed up there right so I want to like work and grow to be more like Christ but in my mind it's not me working it's like God's working these things in me through all the circumstances of life and I realize that this is a slow thing we're working and I want to become a person who's more loving more cries like every day show my kids that but it's not going to be just by me like mustering up the courage to do every single thing to be this perfect person for everyone because that's not real and no one's like that only god is perfect um very well said I have a funny question how has your perception of sex changed because I know like for my I know like you know for for people that I know and you know people who are raised religious like there's a very specific you know set of like rules and how you should think about it and you know in in Judaism even in traditional Judaism like we believe very very deeply in enjoying you know sex and obviously in very specific ways and like you know traditional Judaism would say it should be in a you know a marriage and a monogamous you know whatever loving whatever um but I'm I'm curious just and I'm not asking for like nitty-gritty about your sex life but I'm curious like how your perception of sort of like what you thought the expectations were for a woman like how that changed when you sort of opened up you know into this new way of thinking it is interesting because earlier when you mentioned that about like you know your menstrual period it's like you have a certain time that you're supposed to abstain we would have followed that in gothard's setting um and that would have been something that was taught because Bill Gothard was very quick to go through all of these rules that he thought were prescribed in Scripture given he's a single man never been married never been in relationship so it's kind of weird but um anyhow set all that aside I think that one of the bigger things for me was just realizing that I I kind of just thought I was gonna have as many kids as possible and that was going to be my future and it means you gotta have a lot of sex I know but you know it's interesting that shift of like coming out of that um it actually provides more like there's there's a sweeter sense of like you're not like oh no stay away from me because now I know I don't want to get pregnant right now I just have a two-month-old so there's a certain sense of like I think a gift the gift that marriage is that God has provided and yes I still would say that my view is one that's biblical so I what I am faithful to my husband and I want that to be where I enjoy that gift from God of Sex and so that is something that I still hold to as a Christian question but at the same time I think that that pressure of perfectionism is gone because it yes as a woman I will often like you'll feel like oh man after I have my babies it took me a while to get back down to the normal size of like feeling more fit or feeling whatever like stronger and those things are natural like every woman some more than others will have to like work harder at that to like to feel more normal but for me there was a certain level of like I knew that I wasn't the one who was like keeping Jeremy in this relationship because within the author's teaching he would say you know you need to always be cheerful always be happy always be available and that's just it's crazy because it puts the pressure on you and it says if the man leaves it's all on you yeah and I wonder if you can talk a little about that because especially you know like I've for most of my life heard people say that like religious life is misogynist and like you're being told what to do and like why are you wearing skirts and you know all this stuff because that you know was a lot of my life and there are many places that like you know I like to educate people about all the different kinds of women that are religious like it's not just one kind of woman and we're not all being told what to do and some people prefer wearing skirts and like that's their god-given right too but as you describe kind of this shift I can't help but saying like as a person who also is a feminist meaning it sounds so much more empowering to live this kind of existence as a woman and meaning the way you describe it like I can't say what's right for you know I don't know enough about your family to know like who's still in and who's out but like for you what you're describing is living an authentic Life as a woman where you are the master of your own destiny and get to say even though I'm told I'm supposed to have sex with you because you want it I'm also allowed to say I don't want that right now and it doesn't mean that anything bad's gonna happen yeah that's part of the teaching I think that Bill Gothard would say I'd see the skewed side of like this Authority structure that he would say like God's here your husband is here if you do anything or say anything against him like Hey I I don't want this to like share your opinions it could come back come back bad on you and maybe he won't be faithful maybe he it's all on you as a woman and I see within scripture that I see that there are roles but it doesn't mean that one's better than the other like in our relationship we are we are a unit so I Jeremy and I we're like bouncing things off each other I have these ideas we'll run with that he has this idea he'll run with that like we're we are a team and that's how we view Our Lives now which is such a beautiful thing because then it's no longer like I am this like I'm just I'm here with doing the dishes I'm here like whatever with the kids I do stay at home with our kids but I also have a very late a very busy life um so there we'll have like people come in and you know help us um with the kids so there are there we have this whole balance and Jeremy will take the kids and I'll go do my own thing so we are not like it's not like this structure like okay now you can't leave the house Ginger like it was never it's never been that way Jeremy has actually pushed me to to think for myself to see what kind of hobbies and what kind of things I enjoy which I found out rock climbing is something I enjoy last week yeah I wanted to ask you okay I wanted to ask you right because um I I'm not really a part of as you can tell Pop Culture um to a large part you know the fact that like I don't watch reality TV and you know like I just whatever I'm kind of an old person um but I I am curious you know you grew up in such a specific you know community that that did have so many boundaries around what you can listen to and what you can watch and I totally get that like I have family like they don't listen to modern music like it's totally a thing but I'm curious what you like like I'm gonna ask I'm gonna ask you a couple questions Have you listened to the Beatles The Beatles yes I have do you like The Beatles I do like the Beatles do you only like the Beatles before Sergeant Pepper because that's when they got stoned you know what I I haven't that's part of Pop Culture that I don't know a lot of I don't know too much still because no no but all those years but you've heard the Beatles yes oh yes okay yes have you heard like the Spice Girls I know that name but I haven't heard this book okay I'm sure I've heard him right yeah yeah if you mention names I'm not gonna no names okay but do you tell me a song I'm like God know that song Do you like country music I do listen to a lot of country probably because on occasion you know I feel like it's kind of like this Arkansas thing still and yeah I don't really have a thick accent I wouldn't say but I I used to that Jesus so it's like whenever I'm talking it's so interesting right how I'll fall into it country music is a thing that we have on our our radio in the car all the time you turn on our radio do you like do you like Christian rock like do you like Christian music I do listen to Christian music sometimes I feel like it gets so repetitive with the styles that we need a little change but I love Christian music of course um it's interesting Jonathan who's not here Jonathan I mean there's certain kinds of of Christian music that he loves because of the the message is very powerful and even though we don't believe in Christ like there's there's a real passion to that kind of music so I was curious Have you listened okay Have you listened to like do you know like any Kanye music yes Kanye we listened to tons of Kanye we actually went to one of his Sunday Services what went to one of his the first one of the first Sunday Services he did at um goodness The Forum yeah in La we went over to that one did you like it it blew my mind it was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen because of the way that the the whole choir yeah I saw some footage of it so talented those people are so talented um okay so do you do you like um like like have you seen like classic Disney animated movies like have you seen like my kids are into all of these like what do they like like what do you I mean I still watch animated movies by myself so you're in good company so I'm not the biggest fan of animated movies actually I'm more like you maybe on documentaries I love documentaries I love to like learn you want to learn yeah I'm all about that but I love shows like Seinfeld is one of our guys I love the office Seinfeld all those other that's like all my people that's what my whole family talks like I just love those you love the Jews you love the funny juice what other shows do you like um do you know I was on TV have you ever seen blossom I've never seen it so I did have to look you up I will be honest it's so funny to look you up because what about the Big Bang Theory no that's a really popular show that's what I hear and I saw that whenever I looked you up I saw that you were on that side I played a scientist and also I feel like there's a little resemblance to Kaley Cuoco that's a compliment I could see like if you were like oh that's Kaley Cuoco's like cousin um she was the star you know of The Big Bang Theory too um okay what I'm I mean I want to ask you all the things if you had to choose like a favorite movie like a movie that you just love oh my goodness I can only sit through a movie once and then I'm done with it I'm not a I'm not a person to re-watch unless it is the office so I don't really have I don't really I like I like shorter shows it's just part of me like I don't know why I'm gonna ask a dumb question there's a movie called Exodus gods and Kings and it's um Ridley Scott it's the guy who did this movie called Gladiator but it's all it's like it's Jeremy's favorite okay that's my favorite movie time but wait you have to watch favorites okay but you have to watch Exodus gods and Kings because this is the same director but it's all Moses it's like Moses and Egypt and and I watch it I watch it every Passover okay that's our holiday I think that's what we're gonna watch tonight yeah you have to watch Exodus gods and Kings and it's Christian Bale who's like this really famous actor he plays Moses but it's like kind of like he's like a ragtag Moses he's like Gathering all the like Rebels to like you know try and take on pharaoh and it shows the 10 it shows the ten plagues in like but it's like it's so real and it's so interesting anyway the frogs but they come out of the water it's so cool anyway I highly recommend Exodus gods and Kings we watch it every Passover hey I think you just gave us a good suggestion for tonight you know there's a lot that I didn't really know about your family that it is my producer Valerie's job so tell me about and I know that there's stuff in your family that's very troubling and it must be troubling for you because it's about your family and it must be troubling for you because your families lived publicly and what happens is when people own a part of you they feel like they own all of you so what happened in your family I don't know the details but what I know is that there's there are problems in every family no family is immune from complexity and in many cases mental illness like you know my family has a lot of that and you know who knows like how that manifests but what I wanted you to to see what I wanted to see if you would talk about because I know they're also we found out there's like a docu-series they're making about your family and that must feel really invasive you mentioned that your Journal was stolen you know when you were very young and with all the stuff that's kind of kind of continuing to go on you know a lot of what you advocate for is privacy meaning like protection and I wonder if you can talk a little bit like if you could say to people how it sort of feels to be you with all this stuff going on in your family which is not pleasant it's not pleasant for you or your brother or your parents but I wonder if you could talk to people sort of about like as a human what it feels like to have so much of people thinking they own all parts of you and sort of what you'd like to say you know I know that you and your sisters are part of you know kind of a very unified front in trying to protect the notion of your privacy and I wonder if you could talk about it I know a lot of people might be like I shouldn't feel bad for her like they were on TV but this was not you know your life kind of happened at you yeah and now you get to sort of put it together what would you like to say to people about what they perceive as like the drama or what they get to know about you yeah that's interesting ma'am because I I think I don't talk about like all the time the Privacy side of it I think you probably can identify um even though I did just have to look you up it's only because of mine only because of my shelteredness right but um everybody else knows who you are uh but with that like there's a certain level of when you are in the public eye and I think that people do expect you to share everything with them and so whenever we we had shared little bits of pictures of my oldest and then we just decided a little bit into that before we had our second child to keep her off of TV for one because we're still filming at that time and um and then also just off of social media in general or out of the public eye and that was just a decision that we had made and I think initially you have reactions from people thinking that they're entitled to your kids because they watched you grow up they feel like they're your friend and they know you and so there's this interesting Dynamic of feeling like okay now that we know who you are we want to know who your kids are and we need to see them so don't show them at all don't even show the back of their head if you're not going to show us their face so it's interesting you have very strong opinions on that but on the other side of things whenever whenever you walk through life in a very public way I think that it puts more responsibility on you as a person to see okay this is something that God has placed here for me and maybe it's just a season maybe it's just for the next several months maybe it's for a couple more years um but in this season I need to be faithful with what is placed before me and so for me it you know I thought about like just fading off into like just no one no one's seeing my face again on social media and doing that but then whenever I thought about like this story and sharing my journey out of these teachings I thought it's necessary because of how many people have heard me promote these teachings even as a young girl I want to come back and say this is harmful this is not helpful and hopefully they would come out and find Freedom themselves so that was something that like drove me to keep going and I think now that I've done that it actually has been the biggest encouragement because you see you hear stories from people who've been through way worse stuff um or a setting that was actually a cult and realizing like man I'm so glad that I had the opportunity to speak this into their lives um and you realize like it is worth it in that sense but as far as like the Privacy side of it there are days where it's harder where you feel like man it would be easier to not be in the public eye whenever you're walking through the biggest challenges um publicly and those things I I have to just view um in a bigger picture and say yeah this is hard but I think that perfectionism goes away when you realize that like you said we are all broken people who are we are all imperfect God is the only one who is perfect Jesus is um my delight and my joy so I'm I'm running there for my satisfaction and if somebody hates me or they hate what my outfit looks like yeah I might I think whenever I go to post on social media that is something that I think about like sometimes I'll be off of social media for a few weeks and they're immediately like you have marriage problems your kid has your kid has a medical condition they thought Evie had Down syndrome because I wouldn't show her face my kid had Down syndrome that is so funny isn't it crazy you just jump to conclusions because you don't understand why they're why we're giving privacy to our children or why we may not want to be on social media and so some of that can produce in you where you feel like is it worth it is and you're overthinking every post you're overthinking how you look you're overthinking what caption use what word you use because it's going to be attacked and so ultimately I have to set that aside and say well if I choose to be on social media I want to just be who I am share this even if it's raw um I want to share this and if people hate it they hate it because I'm not going to be able to be who they want me to be even if I do what's just perfect it's not good enough I I also have I have one more hard-hitting question and then I have just a couple fun things and then I'll let you go I promise I'm just really enjoying talking to you um how do you feel towards your parents now like do you feel like like they you know should have done something different do you have compassion for them you know obviously with like what's gone on like with the stuff with your brother like I have such compassion for parents who are dealing with all these things like how do you feel towards your parents yeah with my parents I I love them so very much and I see how I think I said at the beginning I saw how parents got wrapped up in these teachings in the start because it was it was a good thing in their mind like you're promising your kids guarantees for Success financially physically spiritually all these things of course it sounds good so I can see how even now as a parent like it if I didn't know anything about these teachings that I heard I could be like oh what is that you know it sounds kind of good let's help our kids to be good upstanding citizens who are um they love God let's do that you know like I I see how plausible it is um and so I don't have any um any like ill you know like I don't think they had ill intentions like when they step into these teachings I think they were genuinely um thought that this is biblical and this is how we're gonna love our kids best and so me as a parent like I can look at them and say they did an amazing job of pouring into us kids being there for us it's just sad that Bill Gothard I would put it back on Bill Gothard because of him being the one who captured so many families in these teachings um but yeah that's that's just how I I'm able to like I view it that way and I love my parents so very much um I wanted to ask you a little bit about living in LA because in the book you you talk about you know you and your husband kind of forged a different path and um you know there was initially your parents were concerned which I totally get you know about you even you know being pursued by him because he was um not from your family's kind of set of teachings and um you know you you've settled into what sounds like a a very um happy and much less pressured you know kind of Christian you know sort of community but one of the really cute things is like you know I grew up in Los Angeles so um I'm used to all sorts of different people you know different shapes sizes colors socioeconomic backgrounds but you know when you talk about coming to La it's kind of funny because like I can tell you come from not only a place where they're not necessarily a lot of diversity um right you also grew up where like you kind of had your own I mean you were each other's school and you were each other's social group you know you had this whole family so what's it been like coming to Los Angeles where like there's like I kind of felt like you're like look there's like tattooed Christians and like there's black people and Latino people and some of that I knew it's interesting someone I knew because I traveled like we traveled a lot because of the show we traveled the world so we were not totally isolated like I remember going to Israel and I was like oh wow like they don't all talk like Seinfeld sorry so great the Jewish Community actually like they had so much in common with my family so I was like wow this is it's interesting so we did travel the world we saw I'm not your first Jew you've ever met I thought that might be fun that's so funny yeah too bad sorry so um anyhow with all that though it has been it has been so good and so healthy we love being in LA and I think that part of that is like regardless of where I am um it's it's so cool to see like the different cultural um backgrounds that are here and represented in LA and being able to raise our girls here is so much fun it's so fun and also let's just say the food scene is next I was gonna say there's so much good food oh we we love trying new Cuisines so that's like our favorite thing we don't want to eat at the same restaurant twice unless it's like Dave's Hot Chicken the Nashville hot chicken is ridiculously good so we'll do that but other than that it's like nah we just we we always have to try some new ethnic food that's really fun um I'd like you to talk because I know you you um you had a book that you wrote kind of before tell us what books people can can look to this is not the only book you've written so talk about what books you'd like people to check out of yours yeah so the Hope behold is another book it just talks about how it's more of a nice story of how I met Jeremy um we actually wrote that book together it's called hope behold and then um the other one you can shine so bright is just a fun kid's book and so our girls love it they love to like all the bright colors and the illustrations it's just so fun talking about how you can shine so bright in this world and then the book that we've been talking about today is becoming free indeed my story of disentangling Faith from Fear yes and that's the story of coming out of build author's teaching um really such a pleasure to speak to you I think you're really um I think you're really Brave you know to to dismantle so much and to show how you built it back up um into um the life that you're living now I really respect you a lot and thank you so much for talking thank you so much Maya [Music] I really enjoyed speaking to Ginger and um I was very impressed with how articulate she is about some really really complicated things that I think she's still working through but one of the really neat things that I didn't get to talk to her about that I thought I would end with is um you know I think she's I don't want to say come under criticism but I think people have asked like oh you're deconstructing your faith and you know you're breaking it down and I think she's gotten some criticism for that but the way that she describes it is she describes it as disentangling and she has this story about one of her brothers got um like putty you know like that like Silly Putty or whatever kind of putty stuck in his hair and it took her mom literally an entire day to get this putty out she had to like keep adding like like oil to it and heating it up to like you know to take it out of her brother's hair and she said it was that process that most feels like what this book is and and what she's doing um and you know I think what what really strikes me is that she was part of such a a cloistered and protected community and then by being put on television even though like oh it made it so big and it made it so public it was kind of just another version of a life of being observed and restricted and um you know I I'm really comforted by a lot of what she writes about in terms of her life with her husband and how far she had to step out of her comfort zone to even think about religion differently and life and that disentangling is really really interesting for me as a reader um to learn about so I highly recommend her book and um you know I also think a really really interesting kind of cautionary tale when we see people especially reality TV stars where people on social media like we still think that we know them you know to a certain extent but there's a whole person in there that was having a whole process that whole time that America was watching her um and and we still watch people I know it because I talk to all of you on social media at Bialik breakdown I also talk to you there um and yeah I think it's just a really really healthy reminder for me um of as much as we think we know there's still a lot going on that we don't and that to some extent that still needs to be protected even in a culture that loves loves to dig into the details of people's life so um I really enjoyed talking to her and from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have we'll see you next time break down she's gonna break it down for you she's got a neuroscience PhD or two one fiction and now she's gonna break down it's a breakdown she's gonna break it down [Music]

Channel: Mayim Bialik

Views: 52,988

Keywords: mayim bialik, big bang theory, amy farrah fowler, mayim, celebrity news

Id: kISY3z6vg9M

Length: 89min 58sec (5398 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 15 2023

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[u/bluewhale3030]

I gotta say...is it really considered deconstructing if she just moved from one patriarchal, bigoted version of Christianity to another? I acknowledge that she no longer believes in many aspects of IBLP, and that is a step, but I have yet to see her actually deconstruct in any meaningful way. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. On another note I sympathize with her severe anxiety and have to wonder about how much of that is encouraged by controlling religions to keep their followers in the fold. I think it makes people with mental illness or prone to mental illness so much more vulnerable to cult tactics and makes me angry at how much people are taken advantage of, especially marginalized people and children.