(00:00:01.789):
When my husband began having violent dreams about stabbing me in my sleep,

(00:00:05.932):
my pastor's wife gave me this advice.

(00:00:08.694):
If you can't stay committed to the man, stay committed to the marriage.

(00:00:12.636):
So I stayed for another 22 years.

(00:00:15.238):
Every time things got bad,

(00:00:16.499):
I would remember her words and think about how much divorce was frowned upon

(00:00:19.721):
in Christian circles and just keep sucking it up for the sake of

(00:00:22.883):
the marriage commitment.

(00:00:24.605):
I finally got out after years of hell on earth.

(00:00:27.330):
I still have my faith,

(00:00:28.551):
but it's a faith that allows for me to be and feel safe above the appearance of

(00:00:32.235):
a committed marriage.

(00:00:34.237):
Hi, I'm Zawn Villines and this is the Liberating Motherhood Podcast.

(00:00:38.382):
Today we're going to be talking about evangelical Christianity as a political force,

(00:00:43.287):
its connection to patriarchy,

(00:00:44.869):
to politics, and to the widespread normalization of abuse and exploitation of women.

(00:00:50.561):
Before we get started,

(00:00:51.501):
as always,

(00:00:52.102):
I'd like to ask you to leave a positive review on your favorite podcast platform and

(00:00:55.844):
to heart react if you are listening on Substack.

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This work is entirely free and a quick review helps make it worthwhile to continue doing.

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If you really love this work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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and help me fund scholarships for people who cannot afford access.

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Subscribe at zawn.substack.com slash subscribe.

(00:01:36.790):
You can find all of the books I mentioned on the podcast at

(00:01:39.171):
the Liberating Motherhood bookshop page,

(00:01:41.431):
which also hosts tons of book recommendations and reading lists.

(00:01:44.955):
Visit the page at bookshop.org slash shop slash Liberating Motherhood.

(00:01:50.457):
And just a quick note about purchasing books.

(00:01:53.318):
Pre-orders are often the most important determinant of a book's immediate success.

(00:01:57.439):
They're how books land on bestseller lists

(00:01:59.120):
and how often booksellers decide how many copies to buy.

(00:02:01.901):
So if you want to support feminist scholarship,

(00:02:04.542):
the very most helpful thing you can do is pre-order feminist books.

(00:02:09.004):
I hope you'll pre-order the book we're talking about today, No One Loves an Angry Woman.

(00:02:13.845):
I'm here with the book's author and a returning podcast guest, Gemma Hartley.

(00:02:18.726):
Gemma Hartley is a freelance journalist and author of Fed Up,

(00:02:22.027):
Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward.

(00:02:24.968):
Her new book, No One Loves an Angry Woman, will be released September 22nd.

(00:02:30.190):
Her amazing Substack of the same name highlights the toll emotional,

(00:02:33.751):
cognitive, and physical labor exact on women's lives.

(00:02:37.072):
She has a second substack, Creative Commitment, to support current and aspiring writers.

(00:02:42.499):
She received her BA in English writing from the University of Nevada,

(00:02:45.522):
Reno, where she is recognized as a distinguished alumnus.

(00:02:49.766):
Her work has been featured in outlets including Harper's Bazaar,

(00:02:52.488):
Women's Health,

(00:02:53.109):
Glamour,

(00:02:53.609):
The Washington Post, CNBC,

(00:02:55.471):
Red Book, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Teen Vogue, and The Huffington Post.

(00:02:59.895):
She lives with her husband and three children in Reno, Nevada.

(00:03:03.138):
Hi, Gemma.

(00:03:03.658):
Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

(00:03:05.199):
It's wonderful to have you back.

(00:03:07.301):
Yeah, it's wonderful to be back.

(00:03:08.602):
Thank you, Zawn.

(00:03:09.807):
Of course.

(00:03:10.848):
So I'm so excited about your new book.

(00:03:12.529):
It's awesome.

(00:03:14.250):
Tell listeners about it.

(00:03:15.531):
What is it about?

(00:03:16.752):
Why did you decide to write it?

(00:03:18.513):
And what do you hope readers take away from it?

(00:03:22.196):
Yeah.

(00:03:22.616):
So this book is really about the ways that Christian patriarchy weaves its way

(00:03:28.881):
into our culture at large.

(00:03:31.923):
I grew up in a non-denominal sect of evangelicalism.

(00:03:37.867):
And I thought when I deconstructed that all of that sort

(00:03:42.529):
of like social conditioning would start to fall away.

(00:03:45.170):
And then I realized how widespread it was in our culture at large.

(00:03:50.071):
And it kind of brought me into the feminist space where I write today.

(00:03:54.633):
And the way that this started,

(00:03:56.914):
I actually wrote the title essay to this book, No One Loves an Angry Woman.

(00:04:03.616):
It must've been back in 2019.

(00:04:05.989):
It was right after my first book had published and I wrote it thinking

(00:04:11.851):
that I would never show it to anyone because it was the first time

(00:04:16.993):
that I had like really written about my sexual assault,

(00:04:23.575):
first time that I had really Brought it up in any real way outside of therapy.

(00:04:28.350):
And it was sort of a way for me to process that.

(00:04:31.371):
And what came up in that essay was so much of the hurt and pain that came

(00:04:40.016):
from my evangelical upbringing,

(00:04:42.457):
the shame that I held on to, the fact that I felt the need to keep it hidden.

(00:04:46.820):
For over a decade, I didn't tell anyone.

(00:04:50.882):
And that was because I had been told that that What had happened

(00:04:54.583):
to me had made me broken and unworthy and unlovable.

(00:04:59.244):
And so I felt like I needed to keep it secret because of that.

(00:05:04.245):
And now I feel like it's really important to write this book and

(00:05:09.206):
to challenge those narratives because it was not my shame

(00:05:14.367):
and it never should have been.

(00:05:17.007):
That's beautiful.

(00:05:17.807):
And I love that.

(00:05:19.067):
And I think the thing that I like about your book is that I think a lot of us think

(00:05:25.048):
that if we do not endorse problematic religious beliefs,

(00:05:28.690):
then like, okay, we're good.

(00:05:30.510):
That's not affecting us.

(00:05:31.671):
It's not influencing us.

(00:05:33.812):
But the reality is that if you are raised in it,

(00:05:36.113):
it gets in very, very deep in terms of your social conditioning.

(00:05:40.474):
And even if you're not raised in it, it is part of our larger culture.

(00:05:45.056):
And so it sort of permeates your consciousness in all kinds of weird ways.

(00:05:50.018):
I have this idea...

(00:05:52.185):
That I call like patriarchy's rules,

(00:05:54.727):
which are these hidden rules that we all obey

(00:05:57.709):
without ever being explicitly taught them.

(00:05:59.650):
And I think that your book kind of nods at a similar set of rules that we get

(00:06:06.255):
from Christian patriarchy.

(00:06:07.956):
And I wonder if you might talk a bit about those ideas and how they make its way

(00:06:13.160):
into individual brains, but also sort of our collective consciousness.

(00:06:19.596):
Yeah, that's really interesting because I think when you talk about like

(00:06:24.738):
the invisible rules of patriarchy,

(00:06:27.099):
they are the explicit rules of Christian patriarchy.

(00:06:30.980):
Like we say the quiet part out loud to women.

(00:06:35.782):
You know,

(00:06:36.162):
like when you were reading aloud that vignette at the beginning,

(00:06:41.444):
it's like she was told explicitly, stay with your abuser.

(00:06:45.910):
And that is something that I heard over and over again throughout my upbringing.

(00:06:51.113):
I would go to Christian camps and when I was older to women's conferences.

(00:06:57.756):
And I will tell you every time without fail,

(00:07:00.457):
there would be a woman on stage who had been abused in horrific,

(00:07:05.437):
And she was held up as an example.

(00:07:07.858):
She was held up as a leader,

(00:07:09.499):
as the person that women should follow,

(00:07:11.660):
because she was glorifying God by not leaving her terrible marriage.

(00:07:20.385):
And so, you know,

(00:07:21.446):
the things that were taught in patriarchy, like,

(00:07:25.028):
you know,

(00:07:25.488):
when you think about rape culture and the question of what was she wearing?

(00:07:30.695):
That's just the flip side of purity culture,

(00:07:33.696):
where modesty is held up above all others,

(00:07:39.238):
where we are supposed to protect our bodies from the lust of men.

(00:07:45):
We're told really explicitly,

(00:07:47.140):
rather than just being slut-shamed on the other side,

(00:07:50.541):
we're told explicitly, it's your responsibility to stop men from abusing you.

(00:07:56.277):
And we're taught that over and over again from a very young age,

(00:08:00.339):
that it's our behavior,

(00:08:02.640):
our emotional labor,

(00:08:03.760):
our physical labor,

(00:08:04.821):
the way that we dress, everything that we do influences what happens to us.

(00:08:11.703):
And if something bad happens to us,

(00:08:13.844):
well, that's your fault because you didn't do things the right way.

(00:08:17.946):
You didn't follow the explicit patriarchal rules that have been set forward for you.

(00:08:23.911):
I think that really helps to clarify why we see so much child abuse and rape

(00:08:28.994):
in these right-wing churches,

(00:08:31.255):
and especially in the non-denominational sorts of churches that you were raised in.

(00:08:36.037):
It's not his fault.

(00:08:37.238):
It's whoever caused him to do it, even if that person is a young child.

(00:08:42.100):
So I want to talk to you a little bit about the connection

(00:08:44.121):
between evangelical Christian religion and rape.

(00:08:48.970):
I'm sure you see them too.

(00:08:50.151):
I constantly see these memes suggesting that a man's job in marriage is to have

(00:08:53.672):
a paid job,

(00:08:54.893):
something he would need whether or not he was married,

(00:08:56.954):
and a woman's job is to offer him sex on demand.

(00:09:00.395):
There's no reciprocal duty for him to give her good sex,

(00:09:03.296):
and not raping your wife is not included in the Christian definition of protector

(00:09:08.058):
and provider.

(00:09:09.519):
Can you talk about how this attitude...

(00:09:12.712):
Normalizes the idea that sex is a commodity and it's a commodity that women owe men

(00:09:17.194):
and what the wider cultural effects are.

(00:09:20.835):
Yeah.

(00:09:21.495):
And this one is a really, like,

(00:09:23.116):
this is probably one of the deepest and hardest ones for me to reckon with

(00:09:28.958):
in my past because,

(00:09:30.939):
you know,

(00:09:31.539):
I write in the book about my own marriage and relationship and kind of overcoming,

(00:09:37.901):
but not even overcoming, like,

(00:09:40.563):
Trying to move through not only like the blatant sexual trauma,

(00:09:45.785):
but the sexual trauma that I like created and kind of like cultivated

(00:09:51.668):
within my marriage because of the messages that I was given and because of

(00:09:55.690):
the messages that my husband was given growing up there.

(00:10:00.832):
Is like really explicitly an early messaging to young girls.

(00:10:06.597):
And I'm talking like, you know, 12 years old, sometimes younger than that.

(00:10:11.621):
Where you are starting to get ready for marriage.

(00:10:16.285):
Like it starts to happen at a disgustingly young age.

(00:10:22.630):
And you are taught that your body...

(00:10:26.652):
Is for your husband, that it is an object for him to use.

(00:10:31.014):
And they start to use really objectifying language.

(00:10:35.336):
They will say,

(00:10:36.877):
you know,

(00:10:37.297):
when we're talking about purity culture,

(00:10:39.638):
one of the things that came up really often was,

(00:10:42.359):
well, don't you want to give your husband something pure, meaning your body?

(00:10:47.922):
And they would say,

(00:10:49.223):
you know,

(00:10:49.763):
if you have sex or on the flip side,

(00:10:52.524):
if you're raped, um, You're like a dirty pair of shoes.

(00:10:57.107):
Imagine giving someone a nice, clean, white pair of shoes.

(00:11:00.930):
Now, what if someone had worn them around and they got all scuffed and dirty and

(00:11:06.155):
then you gave that as a gift to someone?

(00:11:08.737):
They wouldn't like that gift, right?

(00:11:11.039):
They would say,

(00:11:12.400):
what if you had a lollipop that had been used and dropped in the dirt and

(00:11:16.664):
then you gave that to someone?

(00:11:17.885):
What if you chewed a piece of gum?

(00:11:21.034):
And tried to give it to someone.

(00:11:22.394):
And so these were the metaphors that I learned growing up about my body.

(00:11:28.536):
And so this is really important,

(00:11:30.897):
I think,

(00:11:31.297):
within marriage too,

(00:11:33.018):
because if,

(00:11:34.618):
you know,

(00:11:35.378):
let's say that nothing had happened,

(00:11:38.499):
I had gotten to the altar,

(00:11:40.260):
I had, you know, the pure body that they were talking about.

(00:11:45.262):
Well, as soon as I have sex on my wedding night, then I am worthless to anyone else.

(00:11:50.738):
And so, you know,

(00:11:53.419):
I am a commodity to be used and worthless to anyone other than that initial user.

(00:12:02.622):
And that is the messaging that, you know, purity culture gave young girls.

(00:12:08.263):
And it was, it's really damaging.

(00:12:11.424):
And I still have so much rage about being taught that about my body.

(00:12:19.687):
Um, And then,

(00:12:21.610):
you know,

(00:12:21.910):
I want to get to your part about like sex being a commodity within marriage

(00:12:27.171):
that is not reciprocal.

(00:12:30.192):
We were obviously never taught anything about female pleasure.

(00:12:36.193):
We were definitely taught that it was a duty.

(00:12:38.193):
I remember going to one Christian conference where I was advised to put a date on

(00:12:45.234):
the calendar once or twice a week where you had to look.

(00:12:51.249):
And no, you're going to have sex with your husband on that date if he was so kind as

(00:12:56.333):
to give you a choice.

(00:12:58.555):
And you need to start to cultivate looking forward to it with joy.

(00:13:02.538):
Try to make it a pleasant experience for yourself because you're not going

(00:13:07.601):
to be able to expect anyone else to take your needs into consideration.

(00:13:11.785):
And it's such a Damaging way to think about sex and pleasure.

(00:13:20.201):
And there were so many like very weak attempts to say like, oh,

(00:13:25.245):
you know,

(00:13:25.505):
let's look at Song of Solomon and,

(00:13:27.467):
you know,

(00:13:27.767):
look at how sex is supposed to be this beautiful,

(00:13:30.570):
wonderful thing between man and wife.

(00:13:33.753):
Um, But it kind of gets lost behind all of that other messaging.

(00:13:37.958):
You can't really hear that you're like,

(00:13:41.361):
you know,

(00:13:41.701):
this beloved child of God and that you're like this dirty,

(00:13:45.184):
worthless object and be able to put those two things together and make them work

(00:13:50.329):
within your theology.

(00:13:53.872):
Yeah.

(00:13:54.632):
So, okay.

(00:13:55.493):
So one of the things that I was thinking about while you were talking

(00:13:57.795):
about all these metaphors that we give women and I did not grow up evangelical,

(00:14:02.941):
but I occasionally attended those events with friends.

(00:14:05.923):
So I guess I got kind of like a light evangelism for my friends.

(00:14:10.366):
And, you know, I got the same thing of like, you're a used shoe, you're a dirty boot.

(00:14:15.550):
And there's always this focus on women as dirty and as a source of contamination.

(00:14:22.848):
And I don't think that's an accident because we have that widespread cultural view

(00:14:29.193):
of like women's bodies is like kind of gross and weird and shameful.

(00:14:33.536):
And we use that shame to,

(00:14:35.317):
for example,

(00:14:36.638):
you know,

(00:14:36.898):
we expect women to expect their husbands to be grossed out by their periods

(00:14:41.661):
and grossed out by pregnancy and grossed out by childbirth.

(00:14:45.184):
And then because we think them being grossed out is reasonable and Women are

(00:14:49.345):
then not allowed to ask for anything.

(00:14:50.846):
Well, you can't really expect him to be supportive during birth because it's so disgusting.

(00:14:55.567):
And I don't know,

(00:14:56.768):
it does feel like to me there's a through line between that purity shaming

(00:15:02.390):
and this idea of women is just kind of gross.

(00:15:04.250):
What do you think?

(00:15:06.171):
Yeah, I think that's very true.

(00:15:07.732):
I grew up in a household where I couldn't say the word period.

(00:15:10.452):
I couldn't say I need a box of tampons in front of my father

(00:15:13.874):
because he would be visibly disgusted.

(00:15:18.621):
And it was like, oh yeah, you're dirty, you're shameful.

(00:15:22.643):
You need to hide what's happening to your body.

(00:15:26.064):
And it's so pervasive.

(00:15:29.326):
And I think there is also this connection to women being the ones who need

(00:15:34.228):
to clean up the dirt,

(00:15:36.829):
not only of themselves,

(00:15:38.290):
like not only presenting yourself in this feminine presentation,

(00:15:43.392):
but But I think like, oh, well, women are the ones who are dirty.

(00:15:46.721):
They are the ones who need to clean things up.

(00:15:49.602):
And I find that to be a real interconnection of the way that we treat women in

(00:15:58.047):
the domestic sphere and within the sexual sphere as well.

(00:16:05.652):
Yeah, that's a really interesting point.

(00:16:07.332):
I'm going to have to ruminate on that one for a while.

(00:16:09.854):
I think you're right, but I haven't made that connection before.

(00:16:12.876):
I like it though.

(00:16:14.653):
Alright,

(00:16:15.253):
so last night I was scrolling Facebook against my own better judgment and a friend

(00:16:20.317):
of mine posted a picture of her child on her first day of high school.

(00:16:23.120):
Like, nice sweet kid, nice good friend, just good solid people.

(00:16:27.343):
And the first comment was from a man criticizing this child for wearing inappropriate clothing.

(00:16:34.308):
And like, I just wanted him dead.

(00:16:35.849):
I'm like, why do you think you get to criticize this kid?

(00:16:40.381):
No one else said anything to him,

(00:16:41.822):
though, because this is how normalized that behavior has come.

(00:16:44.683):
Like, of course you're allowed to criticize someone's 14-year-old's appearance.

(00:16:48.885):
But seeing it made me think of your essay, The Pedophile That Lives in My Head.

(00:16:55.808):
And in this essay,

(00:16:57.069):
you talk about the impulse to judge girls for what they are wearing,

(00:17:00.871):
even when you know how harmful it is to do so.

(00:17:03.652):
And it's so striking to me because You know,

(00:17:07.391):
you and I are both not in that evangelical world and we're supposed

(00:17:10.512):
to be good feminists who have grown beyond that.

(00:17:13.653):
But our conditioning gets in really deeply and it remains there even

(00:17:18.154):
when we don't want it there.

(00:17:20.394):
And sometimes it comes out as an opinion that we can't really justify,

(00:17:23.515):
but that we really cling to.

(00:17:26.236):
Can you talk about these impulses and also like how we can fight them or even know

(00:17:30.097):
that they exist?

(00:17:32.885):
Yeah, that one,

(00:17:35.487):
it was really strange because it came out of going

(00:17:39.611):
to my son's eighth grade graduation.

(00:17:42.454):
And my mother-in-law made a comment about like, oh, those girls don't look 14.

(00:17:49.665):
Because they were wearing shorter skirts or dresses that are in style for teenagers.

(00:17:57.172):
And they are children.

(00:17:57.992):
They're very clearly children.

(00:17:59.734):
You don't look at a child and not recognize that they're a child.

(00:18:04.297):
And I have this very self-righteous feeling

(00:18:08.501):
that comes up whenever anyone says those things out loud.

(00:18:12.423):
But I recognized that I also had like clocked these same girls.

(00:18:18.344):
And it's because I grew up,

(00:18:21.525):
you know,

(00:18:22.065):
knowing or not knowing, but assuming that like dressing like that is dangerous.

(00:18:27.986):
Dressing like that is supposed to draw this type of attention from men.

(00:18:33.227):
And so the male gaze,

(00:18:35.267):
which is really like,

(00:18:36.288):
I think the pedophilic gaze is like,

(00:18:39.692):
Always kind of like on the lookout for that danger of like,

(00:18:44.275):
oh, they're dressing in a way that is dangerous, but they're not.

(00:18:47.596):
They're not dressing in a way that is dangerous.

(00:18:49.457):
They are children.

(00:18:51.438):
What is dangerous is men who sexualize children.

(00:18:57.022):
And that is so normalized within the church

(00:19:01.304):
because there are literally books written about very kind

(00:19:09.440):
Pedophilic relationships between fathers and daughters.

(00:19:12.481):
There were a lot of like father-daughter dances that happened,

(00:19:15.902):
which kind of still very much freaked me out.

(00:19:18.142):
But another thing was the purity culture and the purity ring ceremony

(00:19:24.204):
that would happen in evangelicalism.

(00:19:26.125):
And I don't write about this in my book because I did not personally go through

(00:19:30.306):
a ceremony,

(00:19:31.786):
but you would get a ring that you would wear on your wedding ring finger

(00:19:36.847):
and your father would give it to you.

(00:19:39.680):
As a symbol that your sexuality belonged to him until he gave it to your husband.

(00:19:48.285):
I know.

(00:19:48.885):
It's so creepy.

(00:19:50.066):
That's horrible.

(00:19:52.647):
And they often have like little wedding ceremonies for the girl and her father.

(00:19:57.150):
You would do it in a church.

(00:19:58.691):
They would do like multiples of them at a time.

(00:20:01.473):
It would be a community event.

(00:20:03.594):
And the girls would go and like walk down the aisle of a church.

(00:20:09.972):
And promise in front of all of these people and their father that they were going

(00:20:14.896):
to remain sexually pure.

(00:20:16.837):
Sometimes you would sign a contract,

(00:20:19.739):
a purity ring contract,

(00:20:20.960):
which I did do,

(00:20:23.903):
not with my dad,

(00:20:24.783):
but like with a group of other girls saying that,

(00:20:28.986):
you know, we're going to stay sexually pure for our husbands and for our fathers.

(00:20:35.831):
And I think,

(00:20:37.172):
you know,

(00:20:37.633):
that Sexualization of children,

(00:20:40.097):
because we're doing this at 12, 13, 14, maybe 15 on the later side.

(00:20:48.082):
It really encourages thinking about young girls as women and sexual beings

(00:20:55.627):
that are capable of making that kind of commitment at that age.

(00:21:03.151):
Yeah, it's, oh God, it's just so dark.

(00:21:07.201):
But I also think about they have these big ceremonies and the whole community comes out.

(00:21:13.606):
And my experience with people who are still in evangelical circles is

(00:21:18.450):
that they do have access to a lot of community.

(00:21:21.112):
And as humans,

(00:21:22.714):
we're communal creatures and that can be very intoxicating even when it's

(00:21:26.597):
a toxic community that inspires a lot of shame.

(00:21:29.679):
So like, sure,

(00:21:30.520):
your community might abandon you if you get divorced and might tell you to stay with

(00:21:34.483):
a husband who rapes you.

(00:21:36.496):
But they'll also show up if you get cancer, if you have postpartum depression.

(00:21:40.538):
Superficially, these churches are just like really nice and supportive.

(00:21:44.420):
And so I think that can make it hard for people to question them.

(00:21:48.222):
They can feel like they're being mean by questioning.

(00:21:51.383):
And they also know that if they question, they may lose their community.

(00:21:54.765):
I'm curious about your own experience of leaving behind this sort of community.

(00:22:00.323):
And I also wonder if you have any thoughts on how we can build a better alternative

(00:22:04.484):
to these sorts of church communities that really do seem to give people a lot

(00:22:08.604):
of what they need.

(00:22:10.785):
Yeah, I think that's very true that they do give this sense of community to people.

(00:22:16.446):
The thing that is really difficult to unsee after being in the church is that

(00:22:21.507):
that community wants to be your only community.

(00:22:24.747):
And they do a lot of work to make sure that That you don't go outside of the church

(00:22:32.489):
for any other sort of community.

(00:22:34.790):
And so what that looked like growing up was being told that,

(00:22:39.551):
you know,

(00:22:40.031):
secular culture, anyone who wasn't a Christian was literally the devil in disguise.

(00:22:46.713):
Like that is Satan trying to lure you away.

(00:22:49.904):
Away from your faith, away from the church.

(00:22:52.685):
And so whenever you met someone who was not a Christian,

(00:22:57.907):
who seemed like a really wonderful,

(00:23:00.108):
supportive person that you could have in your life,

(00:23:02.349):
you automatically suspect that this is a test of your faith and that you need

(00:23:08.511):
to start to separate yourself if you feel any sort of draw

(00:23:12.252):
towards these other communities.

(00:23:14.013):
And so I think that's probably like one of the harder things to Get away from

(00:23:21.839):
until you deconstruct.

(00:23:23.539):
And then once you,

(00:23:25.500):
if you start to question that theology,

(00:23:28.781):
you start to feel your communities start to butt against you

(00:23:33.543):
and act like you are doing something wrong.

(00:23:38.665):
Sometimes they will start to shut you out because they feel like their faith is

(00:23:43.386):
in danger because you are questioning yours.

(00:23:46.948):
And so It's really a lonely and disorienting experience,

(00:23:52.855):
not only because it's difficult to build a new community,

(00:23:56.716):
but because you are really ingrained with this idea that you building

(00:24:02.618):
that community is a result of your faith being challenged or being poor,

(00:24:09.140):
like you are being led astray.

(00:24:10.941):
And so it's really difficult to trust your instincts because you've been kind

(00:24:15.582):
of conditioned that at your core, You are bad.

(00:24:19.259):
And if you are giving into these impulses to,

(00:24:23.721):
you know,

(00:24:24.161):
look outside of the church,

(00:24:25.742):
to find something new and more expansive,

(00:24:28.723):
that you're being tricked,

(00:24:30.803):
that you're being set up to be made a fool of,

(00:24:33.805):
and that you're going to have to come crawling back to the church one day.

(00:24:37.006):
And that's literally how people in the church see you,

(00:24:40.547):
as someone who has gotten lost,

(00:24:43.268):
and they're just going to hope that you come back someday.

(00:24:47.038):
And that you're going to have to do so humbly because the world has chewed you up

(00:24:50.661):
and spit you out.

(00:24:52.522):
Yeah, there's this whole idea of spiritual warfare.

(00:24:56.945):
The enemy is attacking.

(00:24:58.867):
And it's just such like weird foreign language to me as someone who was not raised that way.

(00:25:03.690):
But I know that it's really powerful language for people who have been indoctrinated

(00:25:08.093):
in those circles.

(00:25:09.975):
I'm curious,

(00:25:11.276):
and you don't have to answer this if you don't want to,

(00:25:13.217):
because it is personal language.

(00:25:14.952):
I'm curious how your evangelical community has reacted to your work

(00:25:18.734):
and your departure, if you even know.

(00:25:22.857):
You know, it's really interesting because the community that I grew up in, I moved away from.

(00:25:30.481):
That community was in Northern California.

(00:25:32.562):
I moved to Reno, Nevada to go to school.

(00:25:36.484):
And a lot of that was, you know, leaving behind that Evangelical community.

(00:25:43.229):
I still went to church.

(00:25:44.249):
I still would go back for my Bible camps and things of that nature.

(00:25:49.774):
But I didn't have that constant community around me.

(00:25:56.399):
I had grown up in a Christian school.

(00:25:58.241):
I went to youth group.

(00:25:59.222):
I went to church.

(00:26:00.683):
I was so enmeshed until my parents moved us to Nevada and But when we got here,

(00:26:08.416):
it was really kind of difficult to break into a new church and feel that same sense

(00:26:15.640):
of acceptance and belonging because all of these people had like known each other

(00:26:19.942):
since they were little.

(00:26:22.343):
And I was kind of the outsider.

(00:26:25.665):
And so I never felt fully at home in a church here.

(00:26:29.927):
And then also I Had started to have some real questions about my faith because of

(00:26:38.352):
the sexual assault I experienced around the same time.

(00:26:42.034):
And so I don't really know how much of my evangelical community feels about it.

(00:26:52.181):
However,

(00:26:53.402):
I will say I know a couple teachers from my old school who have reached out to me

(00:27:00.407):
and apologized.

(00:27:01.900):
For the way that they raised us.

(00:27:05.703):
They have gone through their own deconstruction journeys and,

(00:27:10.786):
you know,

(00:27:11.327):
kind of owned up to the fact that they didn't,

(00:27:15.069):
you know,

(00:27:15.349):
they were doing the best they knew how, the best that they were raised to do.

(00:27:20.293):
And they feel really deep regret for the way that they treated us, especially the girls.

(00:27:28.999):
You know,

(00:27:29.299):
that's what I've heard is,

(00:27:30.620):
you know,

(00:27:31.649):
Women who had deconstructed were coming to me and saying,

(00:27:34.571):
I'm so sorry we did that to you.

(00:27:36.753):
We did not know what we were doing and we're seeing the effects of it now.

(00:27:43.017):
And that's been a really powerful experience for me.

(00:27:45.859):
Yeah, that's amazing that they've done that.

(00:27:47.821):
And it also,

(00:27:48.441):
I think,

(00:27:48.801):
really highlights how particularly women

(00:27:52.064):
in these circumstances can be both perpetrators and victims and You know,

(00:27:57.922):
it's not so easy to slot people into these black and white roles

(00:28:01.224):
because it's just generational trauma replicating itself over and over and

(00:28:06.067):
over again.

(00:28:07.445):
Yeah, it absolutely is.

(00:28:09.229):
And I have a lot of compassion for those women who were,

(00:28:14.312):
you know,

(00:28:14.812):
probably my age or younger when they were teaching me and went through midlife

(00:28:20.836):
and saw the damage that they had wrought and

(00:28:23.258):
had to reckon

(00:28:23.858):
with that.

(00:28:24.358):
Like, that's really difficult to do.

(00:28:26.019):
Yeah.

(00:28:27.833):
As far as the rest of my evangelical community,

(00:28:30.595):
like my peers, most of them have to stay away from me because I'm a danger.

(00:28:38.120):
And those who don't have also deconstructed.

(00:28:40.382):
And I would say that is the vast majority of us.

(00:28:43.524):
I don't think there are more than a very small handful of the people that I grew up

(00:28:49.108):
with that stayed in the church because it was so harmful.

(00:28:53.711):
A friend of mine and I joke that the quickest way To get a militant feminist is

(00:28:59.138):
to raise them in the evangelical church.

(00:29:01.978):
It's totally true.

(00:29:02.939):
I mean, I see that with my own followers.

(00:29:05.739):
There's some downsides because there's a lot of black and white thinking.

(00:29:08.780):
And so there becomes this sort of there's a good feminist and there's

(00:29:11.921):
a bad feminist sort of thing.

(00:29:14.042):
But absolutely.

(00:29:15.202):
And I think that your book really captures a cultural moment of people moving away

(00:29:22.024):
from these churches.

(00:29:22.844):
I think our generation, when we were children,

(00:29:27.226):
I think that's when a lot of the purity pledges and things like that started.

(00:29:31.309):
And now there's such a huge backlash.

(00:29:33.891):
So I'm curious as someone who grew up in it and who has now left it and has written

(00:29:38.055):
a book about it,

(00:29:39.576):
what do you predict is the next act for these kinds of churches and

(00:29:43.479):
for this political movement?

(00:29:45.080):
I mean, I think we're seeing it now.

(00:29:48.863):
Christian nationalism is gripping for its life.

(00:29:53.583):
And I think there are kind of like two feelings that I oscillate between.

(00:29:58.508):
Like one is a real sense of hope that they are a dying breed, right?

(00:30:05.175):
Like all of their children are leaving the church,

(00:30:09.419):
are moving against them because they have seen the harm with their own eyes.

(00:30:15.244):
And then The other side of me knows from growing up in this

(00:30:19.571):
that they are incredibly well organized.

(00:30:24.875):
The conservative Christian nationalist movement has been planning what is happening

(00:30:30.498):
in our country right now since the 80s.

(00:30:33.060):
They have been systematically training people to implement Christian nationalism.

(00:30:41.683):
And I think something that I saw a lot in,

(00:30:45.665):
you know,

(00:30:46.165):
like the last election cycles that we've had is this sense that like,

(00:30:51.788):
well, don't they care about democracy?

(00:30:54.950):
Don't they care about goodness, kindness, like all of the teachings of Jesus?

(00:30:59.592):
And I'm like, no, those people left the church.

(00:31:04.194):
I grew up in a family that very, very much wanted

(00:31:10.624):
They want theocracy.

(00:31:12.705):
And I think this is something that we're actually starting to reckon

(00:31:15.707):
with right now is how badly the church has always wanted to be in control.

(00:31:23.690):
And they're finally just like at the point where they're desperate enough to say it out loud.

(00:31:28.513):
We want to impose the death penalty for women who get abortions.

(00:31:33.195):
We want We want everyone to be under the thumb of Christian patriarchy.

(00:31:40.917):
And so, you know,

(00:31:42.517):
I see that as both like a very desperate grab for power and also

(00:31:48.818):
a really dangerous one

(00:31:49.959):
because I don't think people know how well organized it has been for many years.

(00:31:55.340):
Yeah.

(00:31:55.800):
Yeah.

(00:31:56.660):
I think that's so important to emphasize.

(00:31:58.201):
And the other thing that I think is important that we can learn from looking

(00:32:01.181):
at these guys is that Being nice to them,

(00:32:05.584):
making compromises, all of this does not work.

(00:32:09.508):
And what does work is long-term strategy.

(00:32:11.489):
I have said often that I wish the pro-choice movement would learn from

(00:32:16.353):
the anti-choice movement and play the long game and keep demanding

(00:32:20.617):
and keep demanding and keep demanding,

(00:32:22.278):
even when it looks hopeless, because that's what they did.

(00:32:25.120):
And it took them 50 years, but they took back Roe v. Wade.

(00:32:28.083):
Yeah.

(00:32:29.508):
Yeah.

(00:32:30.830):
And we can do the same,

(00:32:32.071):
but we're not going to effectively do the same if we don't come together in

(00:32:36.274):
the same way that they do.

(00:32:37.375):
And I just think that's so critical.

(00:32:40.537):
Yeah.

(00:32:41.058):
And I think it's difficult because what they have is a base who is primed to obey.

(00:32:50.065):
They have a base that will not challenge them,

(00:32:52.827):
even if what they're doing goes against their intuition and

(00:32:57.548):
Because they are not trustworthy.

(00:33:02.252):
At your core, you are not trustworthy.

(00:33:03.973):
You need to put your faith and your trust in a leader.

(00:33:09.516):
And so the hierarchical setup of the church makes it a really right place

(00:33:16.281):
to set up these systems.

(00:33:18.502):
Because what we have on the other side,

(00:33:21.664):
when we're talking about leftist values,

(00:33:25.147):
is that We actually value the opinions of other people.

(00:33:28.834):
We value that there is nuance.

(00:33:31.375):
And the black and white thinking works really well for getting someone in charge,

(00:33:36.839):
having people get behind you on strategy.

(00:33:39.961):
And it's really hard to replicate that in a place where you are going

(00:33:44.503):
to be respecting the humanity of everyone in a movement.

(00:33:48.226):
Yeah, it really, really is.

(00:33:51.045):
I want to talk to you a little bit about anger,

(00:33:53.386):
which is a recurring theme in pretty much all of your work.

(00:33:57.207):
And I think it's so important to continuously talk about women's anger

(00:34:02.328):
and especially how patriarchy stigmatizes it and why that happens.

(00:34:08.129):
You know,

(00:34:08.570):
in your church,

(00:34:10.250):
in your upbringing,

(00:34:11.670):
women are taught that they have to be nice and they have to be submissive

(00:34:14.651):
and they have to be compliant.

(00:34:16.012):
And so anger is, of course, anger.

(00:34:19.460):
But we even see that in secular culture where the snappy comeback a lot of men have

(00:34:25.766):
to feminist discourse is, gee, you sure sound angry.

(00:34:29.509):
And then how do we respond?

(00:34:31.050):
We always say, oh, no, I'm not angry because we feel like we can't be.

(00:34:35.253):
So can we talk a little bit about that dynamic?

(00:34:38.576):
Yeah, absolutely.

(00:34:40.237):
And I think that this is a really important thing for us to reckon with

(00:34:45.201):
because Anger is such an important,

(00:34:49.385):
vital emotion to feel because,

(00:34:53.368):
first of all, repressing any emotions is not the way to go.

(00:34:59.493):
We need the full range of our humanity to be allowed.

(00:35:04.457):
But something that I recognized as I was writing this book was that You know,

(00:35:11.181):
what happens a lot in evangelical culture,

(00:35:15.205):
especially, I think, is that anger is discouraged.

(00:35:18.647):
Anger is discouraged.

(00:35:19.608):
Anger is discouraged.

(00:35:20.889):
And eventually you're going to hit your edge.

(00:35:25.213):
And I think where that happens for women a lot of the times is when they become mothers.

(00:35:30.357):
And so this is how a cycle of abuse gets really,

(00:35:34.160):
you know,

(00:35:34.540):
perpetuated is that,

(00:35:36.101):
you You have these women who are just brimming with anger,

(00:35:41.220):
and suddenly they have these children who,

(00:35:46.064):
even if they love them deeply, they have dominion over their children.

(00:35:52.729):
The way that the hierarchy works is there are children under mothers,

(00:35:56.192):
mothers under fathers, fathers under church leaders, and under God.

(00:36:01.216):
And so they are really the only ones that get the brunt of that anger.

(00:36:08.245):
And so I think when we talk about the culture of child abuse that happens within

(00:36:15.009):
the church,

(00:36:16.410):
a lot of that stems from women and women's anger,

(00:36:20.492):
not just men abusing children,

(00:36:23.894):
but I would say it's very normalized for women to abuse children within

(00:36:29.357):
the evangelical church.

(00:36:31.379):
And I think that is really the product of having to Swallow your anger for so, so long.

(00:36:43.024):
I would also say that anger is a very clarifying emotion.

(00:36:48.946):
When I think about it now, I'm like, oh, when I am angry, that is pointing to injustice.

(00:36:54.927):
That is pointing to something that needs to change.

(00:36:59.568):
You know,

(00:37:00.589):
there's a lot of grief in this book,

(00:37:03.409):
but the anger runs through it because I think There is hope for change.

(00:37:10.831):
Yeah, I mean, that's what I love about your book is that there is hope.

(00:37:15.375):
I think that your story is a hopeful one and one that feels very inspiring to me.

(00:37:21.860):
But also you sharing your story shows that it can be other women's stories too.

(00:37:28.446):
And I just think that's so important to emphasize that I would like

(00:37:32.907):
to hear your thoughts on the way fear of hell,

(00:37:36.648):
damnation, and all of that functions in these circles.

(00:37:40.548):
Because my own experience and observation has been that even when people start

(00:37:46.049):
to deconstruct and start to think something is wrong,

(00:37:50.410):
they still tend to have this worry that,

(00:37:53.411):
well, if I'm wrong about this, I'm going to burn in hell forever.

(00:37:57.811):
So like, I don't know if I can question this.

(00:38:01.614):
Tell me about that.

(00:38:04.517):
Yeah, I think the fear of hell is a very real one for people who have been raised in this.

(00:38:11.724):
Like the idea of eternal torment is taught to you.

(00:38:17.549):
I remember learning about hell when I was four or five And so when you grow up,

(00:38:24.182):
your brain literally being shaped by this idea of eternal torment,

(00:38:28.845):
if you mess up,

(00:38:30.206):
if you make a mistake,

(00:38:31.386):
if you make the wrong choice, is really, really hard to overcome.

(00:38:37.531):
But also there is Is a lot more nuanced to,

(00:38:42.282):
I think, the fear and anxiety that is woven into the church.

(00:38:47.167):
And I would say that it's not just the promise of hell,

(00:38:51.211):
but the promise of God's wrath that keeps a lot of people in this fearful place.

(00:38:59.480):
And I write about that a lot in my book.

(00:39:01.462):
I have Done a lot of work around my anxiety that stemmed directly from this fear

(00:39:10.303):
of God, even more so than a fear of hell.

(00:39:14.625):
Because what you would hear often in the church is that God will test you.

(00:39:21.667):
Or if you start to go astray, God needs to use a strong hand to bring you back.

(00:39:29.489):
So if you are going to Travel outside of the church.

(00:39:33.761):
If you are going to start question things,

(00:39:36.042):
bad things will start to happen because God is just trying to bring you back to

(00:39:40.244):
the church.

(00:39:40.824):
And what we see a lot of the times,

(00:39:43.225):
especially when we are,

(00:39:44.866):
you know,

(00:39:45.406):
talking about people who have been through abuse,

(00:39:48.287):
people who have been through like really big tragedies that they kind of put up

(00:39:52.749):
on stage and say like,

(00:39:54.390):
I came back to God because this horrible thing happened to me.

(00:39:59.211):
What gets, um,

(00:40:00.988):
You know,

(00:40:01.448):
repeated to you is that like,

(00:40:03.429):
if you step outside of this belief system, you're going to pay for it.

(00:40:09.491):
And so, you know,

(00:40:11.252):
deconstructing around the same time that I became a mother,

(00:40:14.873):
I think was especially hard.

(00:40:17.454):
I was suffering with postpartum depression and anxiety,

(00:40:21.655):
and I kept,

(00:40:23.576):
you know,

(00:40:24.862):
Struggling against the idea of God because motherhood like really,

(00:40:29.484):
really set off my deconstruction journey in a way that nothing else had before.

(00:40:35.948):
Not even my sexual assault,

(00:40:37.789):
like having a child going through that process really made me question my faith.

(00:40:45.172):
And the questioning of that faith made me think God is going to take my child

(00:40:50.835):
from me to teach me a lesson.

(00:40:54.713):
And so I think the fear of hell is real and intense,

(00:41:01.917):
but the fear of punishment for me was greater.

(00:41:07.340):
It's so dark,

(00:41:08.220):
but I really,

(00:41:09.141):
the connection between hell and punishment and anxiety and all of that,

(00:41:14.444):
I think that's really something because,

(00:41:18.466):
so I have very young children and I have observed over and over again How easy it is

(00:41:24.158):
for them to become incredibly scared of things and how I have to be really careful

(00:41:29.521):
when I talk to them about the world,

(00:41:30.882):
when I talk to them about racism and war and all of the scary things that are going

(00:41:35.145):
on,

(00:41:35.986):
which to me are way less scary than being tormented forever by a God

(00:41:40.809):
who supposedly loves you.

(00:41:43.231):
And I often think about what would it do to them if I was introducing this idea

(00:41:49.255):
of hell to them at a very young age?

(00:41:50.876):
And I think An anxiety disorder is probably the answer.

(00:41:55.336):
And that can really control a person's behavior in life.

(00:42:00.799):
Yeah.

(00:42:01.359):
And its effects are really long lasting.

(00:42:07.042):
You know, it's not something that like, oh, I'm all better now because I've left the church.

(00:42:11.985):
No, I still struggle with this a lot.

(00:42:15.948):
And it's It's not something that you can easily get over,

(00:42:20.254):
even if you can deconstruct from the idea of being punished by the wrath of God

(00:42:25.997):
or going to hell.

(00:42:27.838):
Your brain still has these patterns that it's going to go to over and over again

(00:42:32.560):
to say something bad's going to happen, something bad's going to happen.

(00:42:36.242):
And that doesn't go away.

(00:42:38.824):
And so it's really like it brings so much damage that you have to wrestle with for

(00:42:45.007):
the rest of your life.

(00:42:46.708):
Yeah.

(00:42:47.497):
Yeah.

(00:42:47.837):
And a related concept,

(00:42:49.558):
I think,

(00:42:49.938):
is the normalization of both guilt and then from chronic guilt,

(00:42:55.199):
shame, and how that makes us very easy to control.

(00:42:59.780):
So I grew up Catholic and we're not so much on the hellfire and all of that stuff,

(00:43:05.521):
but we're big on the guilt.

(00:43:07.362):
And I share that in common with my evangelical friends and comrades is

(00:43:11.863):
that we all feel so guilty and ashamed of ourselves because of how guilty we feel.

(00:43:16.720):
And even once we've abandoned these beliefs, we still feel guilty.

(00:43:20.124):
Guilty that we abandoned them.

(00:43:21.506):
Guilty that we abandoned them too late or too early or not well enough.

(00:43:25.811):
And it really becomes a habit.

(00:43:29.234):
And I'm struck by the fact that guilt is also such a part of the experience of being a mother.

(00:43:35.520):
And how that guilt is weaponized to control us.

(00:43:38.943):
Well, if you have a complaint about your child,

(00:43:41.585):
it's really probably that you're doing something wrong,

(00:43:44.508):
not that something wrong is being done to you by our culture.

(00:43:48.151):
Yeah.

(00:43:51.213):
And, you know,

(00:43:52.774):
I even now look at the essay that I wrote on motherhood in this book,

(00:44:00.681):
and I'd I can see some compassion and also so much guilt still.

(00:44:09.118):
And it's really hard for me to get away from that guilt because so much of

(00:44:15.644):
the theology that I was raised with was about personal responsibility, right?

(00:44:22.431):
That's the dog whistle thing.

(00:44:26.470):
Of the conservative right is like, well, everything has to do with personal responsibility.

(00:44:31.054):
We never want to look at the systems that are harming mothers.

(00:44:34.897):
We want to look at the ways that mothers are,

(00:44:38.100):
you know, harming children or harming themselves or harming the family.

(00:44:42.804):
We're really unwilling to put the blame where it belongs.

(00:44:47.809):
And so we put the blame on ourselves.

(00:44:51.142):
And I still,

(00:44:52.222):
I struggle with this a lot,

(00:44:54.443):
even as a mother to much older children now who are like in middle school

(00:44:59.625):
and high school.

(00:45:02.506):
I have guilt over the way that I raised them when they were younger

(00:45:07.608):
because my faith was still not fully deconstructed and there was,

(00:45:14.070):
you know, damage wrought during that time.

(00:45:19.171):
And I think that's really difficult for me to deal with,

(00:45:24.314):
with the same level of compassion that I would give to other people.

(00:45:29.157):
Yeah, that's hard.

(00:45:30.338):
It's really hard.

(00:45:31.919):
And it goes to show that it's never as simple as just, well, walk away and have better beliefs.

(00:45:38.783):
The beliefs that we're taught when we are little permanently affect the way we do

(00:45:42.866):
and feel everything.

(00:45:44.247):
Yeah.

(00:45:45.888):
Yeah.

(00:45:46.726):
And I think it's really difficult because you can't just like walk away and have this void.

(00:45:53.532):
Like you need something better.

(00:45:56.314):
And so, you know,

(00:45:57.956):
to be really transparent in the book,

(00:46:00.998):
I write about,

(00:46:02.860):
you know,

(00:46:03.240):
hitting my children when they were young,

(00:46:05.702):
because that was how I was raised in the church to discipline a child.

(00:46:11.567):
And I think It's really,

(00:46:14.194):
really difficult for me to talk about now because there came a point where I knew,

(00:46:20.578):
where I found out,

(00:46:22.359):
you know, like the actual science behind it and how damaging it was.

(00:46:26.422):
And I decided that it wasn't something that I wanted to do.

(00:46:29.604):
And I had no other resources.

(00:46:33.267):
I had no way to resource myself in order to stop and to figure out a better way to mothers.

(00:46:41.670):
And I got there eventually, but like, I can't undo that.

(00:46:46.573):
I can't undo what was done.

(00:46:49.275):
And it's very difficult for me to have both like the accountability

(00:46:57.220):
of what those actions did to my children and to also have like compassion for

(00:47:05.345):
the trauma that I was raised in that led to that.

(00:47:09.127):
Yeah.

(00:47:10.343):
Well, it's hard because we have accountability on one side.

(00:47:14.125):
And if you are raised in this world,

(00:47:15.985):
then often accountability ends up looking like self-flagellation

(00:47:19.087):
and permanent shame.

(00:47:20.027):
And then on the other side, we all ultimately have the right to maybe not hate ourselves.

(00:47:27.490):
So the thing that I would say about that is I think that especially our generation

(00:47:33.253):
of mothers feels a lot of pressure to correct everything wrong that was done to us

(00:47:37.975):
and to everyone else.

(00:47:41.087):
And we can't.

(00:47:42.548):
And what I often say is that we get free over many generations.

(00:47:46.271):
And all we can do is to hope to pass something down that's a little better

(00:47:51.034):
than what was given to us.

(00:47:53.436):
You know,

(00:47:53.716):
I had a feminist mother who raised me with feminist values,

(00:47:56.959):
but she often didn't live them.

(00:47:59.140):
She made a lot of mistakes.

(00:48:01.522):
But as a result of her being a little bit better than what she was raised with,

(00:48:05.525):
I get to be better and my kids get to have even better.

(00:48:07.927):
And Your kids definitely have better than you did.

(00:48:10.948):
And that means they'll have the capacity to give better than you could have given.

(00:48:14.351):
Yeah.

(00:48:15.832):
Yeah.

(00:48:16.652):
I think that's really true.

(00:48:17.833):
I think about that a lot.

(00:48:19.834):
You know,

(00:48:20.295):
even knowing the way that I was raised,

(00:48:22.096):
I also know the way that my parents were raised.

(00:48:25.458):
And I know that they did the best that they could,

(00:48:28.640):
even though there was a lot of trauma that happened in that time.

(00:48:31.702):
I think they made an effort.

(00:48:34.304):
Yeah.

(00:48:36.218):
It made a difference.

(00:48:38.019):
And I think it is part of the reason I was able to make my way to where I am now.

(00:48:43.481):
And here you are.

(00:48:44.562):
And you have this great book out that I think is going to change minds and change lives.

(00:48:49.204):
And it's wonderful.

(00:48:50.284):
And you should feel really good about that.

(00:48:52.225):
So thank you so much, Gemma,

(00:48:54.046):
for coming on the podcast and for sending your thoughts out into the world and

(00:48:58.188):
for just being wonderful.

(00:49:00.308):
Thank you so much, Zawn.

(00:49:02.399):
Listeners, Gemma's book will be out September 22nd.

(00:49:05.425):
You can pre-order it anywhere now.

(00:49:07.829):
I'll put it in the Liberating Motherhood bookshop and I will be back with y'all in two weeks.