Today’s guest is Justine Renson, author of Leaving The Light — and loving it: how I woke up, wisened up and walked away from the cult of my birth. Justine talks about her memoir of what it was like growing up in a cult, what was the catalyst for her to leave it, and the issues she struggled with during and since she left the group called, The Light, over 16 years ago. Justine also talks about her life today, about her commitment to women’s empowerment, and how she wants to help other women who feel trapped or stuck in their lives. She says that she wants women to know that even when they are sure that they have no other options, that there is always a choice and that we are never alone, even if it feels that way. This is Justine’s story….
Mentioned in this episode:
- Justine’s Facebook page
- I am a Free Woman’s Facebook page
- Justine’s Instagram
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And if you prefer to read, here’s the transcript!
Kathy: So,Justine, you’ve had many titles in your life, you’re an intuitive coach, energy healer, guest speaker for former or personal trainer, a fitness and yoga instructor. You do body work and it just, the list goes on and on. And you recently published your memoir Leaving the Light and loving it: How I woke up, wisened up and walked away from the cult of my birth. The book says it took 12 years to give birth to it. Can you explain why it took so long and why you decided to write it?
Justine: Sure. I’ll just say why I decided to write. It was, um, about four years after I left the cult, I had done some internal work and started to really realize, um, how the Cult had affected me and how I started to learn about how some people are really, really, really messed up even after they leave cults. And I knew that there were women who were still in the cult and men who were still in the cult that I left who were unhappy. So basically I wrote it to help other cult members really, I think, and people who had left. But we’re struggling, um, and I also, that was my first idea and then I also really wanted to a reverse the conditioning and the teaching that I had had, which was to stay silent and stay secret, uh, to be modest, to be discreet and especially as a woman to not have a voice.
Justine: And so by me coming out with a memoir that also, uh, was a bit of an exposé of this cu lt and that it did have some abuse of aspects. It was completely like, you know, what’s the word? It was completely reversing the conditioning. It was like fighting back. It was like fighting back against the forces that had been trying to make me some, some way. Um, so it was kind of an act of courage and an act of my own recovery. Like, yes, I have a voice, I can face all of you because there was a lot of fear there. Um, but I, I knew that that was healthy for me to counteract the, the fear and step out and speak out in spite of whether anybody read the book or not.
Kathy: So it was a healing process for you to write the book. You get it out there and show that you did have a voice in the, you couldn’t be silent anymore.
Justine: Well, you know why it took so long for the healing went on after I started the book too. So what was that? Um, well, I immediately engaged in some 12 step recovery work, a 12 step recovery programs and I am one kind of led to another. And I ended up going through, uh, you know, writing and, you know, excavating all kinds of fears and things inside me and sharing them with other people who really supported me. So, you know, I did, I don’t know if I need to go into all the programs, but there was one that really helped me with that. So that was really great because I, I, someone told me to start with psychotherapy, but I didn’t really have that much, any money to spend on it and I found that the people in the recovery group seem to understand me just as well. Um, so I didn’t do a lot of therapy right away, but I did do, I did do therapy for over 10 years, a little bit later. So yes. And then there was mind body therapy, not just a traditional talk therapy that really helped me to get into two, just finding myself and finding my voice, getting empowered. I had a lot of fear, almost like paranoid fear when I first left the Light. And for your listeners, the Light is the name of the a cult that I was in.
Kathy: Were you born into the group? The Light?
Justine: Yes, that’s why I said the cult of my birth. I put that in the subtitle so that people would understand that I wasn’t a coach joiner. I was when I was a fetus, I was in this cult.
Kathy: I see. And how long back does your family belong to it?
Justine: Um, well as far back as my grandparents. And that really dates back to when the vote was burst because it’s actually a 20th century cult. um, if you could almost call it a new age religion, but it had some features that are also very patriarchal and not very new age-y today, but it’s a 20th century cult and my grandparents were, um, were at the inner circle of it really. They, uh, they were some of the first people who, um, learned of it in, in New York when it came over from London. And did they raise it? They, they already had little children, but you know, their children got changed from being Christian to being a light in the Light. And so my parents were like six and nine years old when um, their parents found out about it or something like that.
Kathy: I mean, I never had heard of it before. Can you share in a nutshell what is the Light? What they believe in?
Justine: Sure. And the reason you haven’t heard of it is because they on purpose do not want to be found online. And they say that they don’t just want, you know, bodies or blind followers, they want people who think so they’re, they’re kind of an intellectual based cult. Um, they, um, they have created a whole story, a whole myth around the founders of it. Who are these British people, British people saying that those people after this incarnation and reincarnation after this, they moved on to become the three words of this earth. Um, so basically we were, we were learning that the English people that started this religion, like channeled it, and we’re now in charge of this planet. Um, it’s a, it’s a very clever, a religion that, um, and sort of philosophical teaching that combined not only Christianity, but Judaism, native American legends, ancient Egyptian mythology, Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism, um, uses a
Justine: uses, a book called the Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan who was a Presbyterian minister in the 1600s. And it makes him into almost like a God and has interpretations of all the things he wrote. And saying that they had channeled that from the [inaudible] where he is. So they took all these various things and a lot of it is really beautiful teaching, you know, some real great kernels from these great religions and they owned it as their own, the premises that all the parallel teachings of this earth where once all part of the light, uh, and are all like, um, that all the great teachers were, were people who were like great ascended masters and channeled that into their physical body. And then that was the birth of these religions. So in other words that the Light predated this earth and actually has the, has the key or is the source of all the world’s great religions. So they had their own interpretation where the route, that doesn’t tell you why it was abusive, but that tells you what the philosophy was.
Kathy: Right. Well, tell us about what was it like growing up with the Light?
Justine: Um, growing up with the Light, there was a, there were very, it was a little bit of a dichotomy, which is confusing I think for a child because there were things that were really nice and really sweet.
Justine: And um, you know, like tea parties with my English grandmother, trips to watchhill, Rhode Island, Ocean beach for the summer for, you know, a week in the summer and lots of fun with my family and learning to ride a bike. I mean, I had a very healthy white privileged, you know, Westchester County, New York background and the one hand and we had a lot of fun. Um, the light has its own version of Christmas is denies Christmas and says that that’s a ring down of the original holiday, which they call offerings day, which they say, you know, actually predates this earth. And so that has like a, yule log ceremony, which is very beautiful with a prayer and, you know, we celebrated our own version of Christmas and that was always a very joyful and exciting time for me. And they said it was not commercialized like Christmas and this and that.
Justine: Um, so that was one of the nice parts, the dark, the darker side of had to do with us being spanked from babyhood. Uh, so we were punished very, very early. Um, I can, I don’t even remember my first spanking or when I was first, you know, slapped for touching something and that just went on and on and it was all in couched in that we are doing this to help you, you know. Um, after, after I was like, I was never like, thrown across the room in fury. It was always a controlled thing. I was a bad girl. I was walked into the bedroom, I was, you know, put over my parent’s lap and hit with a, a, um, usually it was a plastic shoe horn, which really stung, but, you know, they were, they were, uh, careful not to leave bruises. And then I had to say thank you after every spanking cause they taught me because they loved me and then I was given a candy to choose from a specific little package.
Justine: So it was all in the guise of, you know, he who, he, who he loveth he chasteneth I was being chastened and because I was a bad girl. So I took that on very early that I was a bad girl and I learned to hide, to try to avoid the Fang things that I wanted to do and I learned that the childhood version of the law of Karma that they taught us, which was do good, get good, do bad, get bad. And what that meant was that if anything bad happened to me, it’s actually because I was bad. anything bad happened to me is because I was bad. I’m including in past lives and that’s what I grew up learning. So there was really this sector of all of my sins from past live. We’re going to one by one come forth on me so that I could pay off the Karma and suffer for my mistakes.
Justine: The things that was unpleasant and onerous and made me try so hard to be good and so hard to be perfect, even though I couldn’t be. I didn’t want to be spanked. I found it shaming, um, and I didn’t want to be a bad girl, you know, uh, so that, that infiltrated me at an early age. They also taught about evil Ones during your dreams that nightmares were real, that evil ones were really bothering you, and that little kids had to turn and face the evil one and it was very unpleasant. We seemed to have a lot of nightmares and you know, that creeped us out. It really did not just me was creepy.
Kathy: Right? Being these beings, these monsters were real. That it sounds very, very scary.
Justine: Yeah. Yeah. They taught us like if we had a dream of like our mother, but with a bad fake, uh, they taught us about fakes and you know how to spot a fake. I don’t have those kind of dreams anymore, but I sure had them when I was a kid and it, and even in adult Kathy, so it’s like they taught me to have that unpleasant dream and to not be able to trust, to not feel safe. Even with the adults in your life.
Kathy: I can’t imagine being a little girl growing up. How scary would just to go to bed, what you’re going to be dreaming about that night.
Justine: Yeah. Sometimes it was in some kids really couldn’t sleep, but you know. Yeah. That that’s kind of unpleasantness and darkness just stays with you. It kind of goes around with you and it put me under their power that I really needed to do whatever they said or I would be the one that would be punished and um, you know, different things about that. If I was like too fringy or too rebellious, I would end up losing the light. And that was the biggest fear that they wanted to instill in us was that if, if we left the Light, which we had been so privileged to be born in, um, that there, that the effects would be devastating. That we would everlastingly perish in our own to deceiving, which I quoted that in the intro I think because that was from John Bunyan’s book and we were told that that applied to us if we left the Light. And that means nights, not just physically but like on the astral plane where you went to sleep or after your death a certain things would happen, you know, certain kinds of punishments and stuff which we believed. I mean, now I can just talk about this intellectually, but I actually believe this stuff I really, really did. I was totally brainwashed.
Kathy: Well, you’re a kid. You’re going to believe your parents and what they teach you. I can’t imagine what it’s like you’re telling your kids that if you don’t behave or if you leave the Light, you’re going to perish not just in this life or other lives. So there’s no getting out of it.
Justine: Yeah, I don’t. My parents didn’t tell us all the unclos and things are themselves. They started with a lot of Nice things mostly, but those three things they did teach us because they wanted us to be able to handle our dreams. Well, you know, and not be swept away by the evil ones I guess. But a lot of the other things, we gradually learned them as we started to go to the teenage meetings and then the adult meeting and we heard lectures, the whole, you know, intellectual program of homeschooling and you know, teaching and everything. And then you start gradually, you know, learn about the, these darker aspects.
Kathy: I see. You also talked about that as parents, parents got orders on how to discipline their children from, I guess a superior in your group or in the light group and I wasn’t quite sure or understood why one person got to, you know, say how your parents were going to discipline your kids. Could you explain that a little bit?
Justine: Yeah, that’s a good question because that’s the kind of power that a cult leader actually has. That doesn’t make sense to someone who’s never been in a cult. Like why would this one gentlemen be able to tell all these intelligent, educated adults how to raise their kid and that they had to spank them or that they had to, you know, make their boys cut their hair or whatever it was. This is the power that the cult leader had over us and the one who instilled, if you do not do this, you will be punished. You will be a bad person. You will be ostracized. You do also didn’t want your kids to look bad in front of everybody else because then that also showed that you weren’t disciplining them properly. So there was a lot of ego and peer pressure, but overall I really feel that the, um, the man who was in charge of the light, and it’s not just a person, there’s one person at the head and everybody had to seek counsel from them and listen to what they said.
Justine: And He, um, this man’s name was Morris Kate’s, he was in charge of it when I was born. Um, he was an extremely powerful person with a very deep voice and a lot of presence. Um, he looked rather like a sumo wrestler. He was very stockey. Um, looked like he could throw you on the ground. And apparently he did like knock teenage boys heads against the wall when nobody was, you know, when they were in a private room, he’s scared really, you know. what out of, um, and then he could speak softly and carry a big stick and he had these piercing blue eyes and he was extremely smart and he could read people’s bullshit. I mean, he was extremely smart. Um, and he wrote these lectures but mostly when he stood up in front of the group of 100 people or so he was ad libbing and he was just speaking and he really had people under his belt. when he died and another person took over at that person wasn’t as powerful and quite a few more people, not a lot, but a few people left and there was a lot of um, sort of unrest privately.
Justine: But why my parents listened was because of Maury and my father even said that he was loyal to more, even after Joe took over, like there was a certain, there was a bond that he also seemed to form with people.
Kathy: Sounds like you carried a lot of respect with his presence.
Justine: He did. And the teaching itself was also very, very smartly crafted to draw people in to hook people in. There was inspiration in it, there was hope in it. It was a new age philosophy that really worked for a lot of people. And they would basically, you know, in 12 step recovery they say you turn your will and your life over to the care of a higher power. Well in the Light, people turn their will and their life over to the direction, you know, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a giving over like, you know, and we were taught to put the light first and all else will follow. But the light calling up and getting counsel asking before you did something, if you were told, this is how we’ve be raised children, you did it. That was putting the light first in daily life.
Kathy: That’s a lot of responsibility for one person. Overall bunch of families. Yeah. Can you tell us what is a know-not?
Justine: no, I know people are really serious about this stuff. A know-not Is any person who’s not in the light.
Kathy: It’s like in Harry Potter, the muggles .
Justine: If any person is not in the light. And um, there was uh, there was sort of two categories of know-nots, you know, when I was in the light there, the know-nots who do no have the light away from here during sleep. And there the more decent know-nots, you know, there are people like you, you’re a nice person and you’re trying to do good things in the world. You would be like a, a decent know-not that is possibly a prospect for speaking to about the light. And then there were the, there were the other know-nots that, you know, were never going to listen. And they were in ignorance, uh, during their sleeping hours because we were talking about that many more people knew about the light on the astral plane where we go during sleep. Uh, but then the, there were these other people that were, you know, more than bad people that didn’t, didn’t know, didn’t want to see, would eventually come around maybe in eventually in some future life. But yeah, those are the know-nots, basically the entire world.
Justine: So I was separated from the entire world. Yeah. It seems funny now, but it really put a wall up between me and the entire world except for these 200 people or whatever that we’re in this
Kathy: Growing up, Did you go to public school?
Justine: Yes, I did.
Kathy: So that must have been hard to not be able to talk about it to your friends, to the other know-not kids.
Justine: Yeah, it was, I was so used to it that I didn’t perceive it as hard. Yeah. Um, it was a very gradual, you know, as a little kid I was very open and innocent. I remember my mother saying something about in the car when she picked me up and two other kids in my kindergarten class and it was, you know, around December I, we got in the backseat and I said something like, Oh, this is so fun, you know, we have, you know, three ways of celebrating, you know, so and so celebrates Christmas. You celebrate Hanukkah and I celebrate offering day. And I just thought, I didn’t know that it was a secret then and I was just learning about diversity, you know, and my mother thought it was cute, cute and funny, but you know, as I got a little bit older I found out that actually the rest of the world doesn’t know about this.
Justine: And I remember feeling shame because in one of our classes and the teacher asked us, what did, what did you get for a holiday gifts? And this was a, you know, pretty much of an upper middle class type neighborhood. Not everybody, but we were getting very modest gifts because that was what the light caught, you know, and what you’re supposed to say, your favorite gift, you know, other people had like a new bicycle or a, my favorite gift was like OK, a book, you know, um, or a pair of gloves. I don’t know, I just felt embarrassed or ashamed. I started to notice the difference, um, with that, that I wasn’t the same. Yeah. And then I did. My mother was more lenient than some Light parents, you know, she, she let me have girlfriends who were not in the light and she let me talk to them or try to ask them about the light if I wanted to or even have sleepovers with them. Uh, I don’t think that all the parents were as open as that, but she was. And maybe it’s because she wasn’t born in it herself, you know, she was six, she’d had friends before she ever heard about the light.
Kathy: So what was the catalyst for you to finally leave the light?
Justine: that broke the camel’s back?
Kathy: Yeah. What was the straw that broke the camel’s back for you?
Justine: I think it really was. It was what I wrote about in the very first chapter of that, the first vignette that I have in, in my memoir, which I called the turning point. It was, it had to do with
Justine: the attempted beating of my 17 year old son. If I had, didn’t have children, I might still be there, Kathy. It was, it had to do with the way my children were being treated and the way I couldn’t stand up and stop it, um, and the way we had been told to raise them, which was really backfiring. And both of my kids had gotten involved with drugs and alcohol and cutting class. And my son actually left the light. He decided to leave the light, which was pot. I don’t think he was in heavy drugs at that time, but the light considered that for verboten and any kid that was found to be smoking pot was really in deep trouble and so my son left. I mean his, his genius leaving at the age of 17 supposedly so he could smoke weed was like the hugest catalyst for me cause I left two years later myself and everything just fell apart at that point.
Justine: Everything just crumbled. The light could not control my son. They didn’t even have any solutions to his problems and I got to see that my common sense was actually working better than the light and I was like I was getting. I was really, really disillusioned and horrified and torn apart actually by my, my husband trying to beat this boy on this particular day which has, had he had not hit him or spanked him in any way for years because my son was so big and it was past that point. But Joe Denton, the guy in charge at that time that you know to go and beat him because he shouldn’t be eavesdropping. It’s a whole story. But what it was was it was, it was the bottom, it was a desperate moment for me. If anybody has ever been in a situation where somebody is abusing somebody else, somebody as being physically violent with somebody else, violence is erupting in your home and you’re not used to that. It can be an extremely desperate moment and a helpless moment because I didn’t have the power. I did not have the power to step into that other room and stop it now. I sure hope. I would hope I wouldn’t get into a frozen trance. But then I was again brainwashed that you don’t stop something like that. I didn’t know how to do it. I had no, I didn’t have a voice. I didn’t have enough of a voice. And that horrified me too that I couldn’t, uh, that I was powerless to stop this.
Kathy: So your elder son left the light and you followed two years later.
Justine: That’s right.
Kathy: The rest of your family, your other son still in the light?
Justine: Um, well, my daughter, who used to be my son, she’s a trans woman. She left with me. She was just waiting for her opportunity to get the hell out of there. Um, so when I left she said, first of all, I left the, I left the house and separated from my husband and then two weeks later I left the light. So my daughter was with me every inch of the way. She didn’t want to live with husband. She wanted to live with me the minute I said I’m not going back to meetings anymore. She was like, great, you know, neither of am I. And she didn’t even make a phone call. She was, she knew the light was wrong and was just waiting for her chance. She was not old enough to leave on her own. She was 16 and so, but my ex husband is still there. He did not leave with all that he stayed. And um, he remarried to a woman in the light and my mom was still in it. She died after years after I left. Um,
Kathy: I remember you talking about how you were nervous or worried or concerned about your mom and what she was gonna. Think about you leaving. You didn’t want to let her down.
Justine: That’s right.
Kathy: Did you eventually tell her that you had left? Was she aware of it?
Justine: I told her right away. I told her right away I could see that she was absolutely devastated. I lived in the same town as her or just next door and we were close, you know, we had grown somewhat apart with my kids acting out because I didn’t want her to know what they were doing and you know, so I wasn’t as close to her as I work as I had been, but there was no hiding that I wasn’t in the light. I mean, you know, these were small. This was a small community, you know, so I wasn’t got to hide it from her, but I certainly couldn’t explain it to her. I tried a little bit, um, she understood me not liking the man who was in charge at that time, but I think that people really didn’t understand why I didn’t come back after that guy died and another younger guy took over.
Justine: In fact, the younger guy took over before I left. I just remembered that. You see, it’s so long, I forgot that. They’re like, why are you leaving now? Tom is so much better. But I was like, I am so over this. I’m so out of here. I don’t care who takes over, you know, but I couldn’t say it quite that bluntly to my mom. She couldn’t understand it and I knew she wouldn’t. And she said, I can understand you leaving cliff. Um, he’s kind of cold. Uh, that was, that surprised me that she would say that because she was always incredibly courteous and would never normally say anything like that. But she did. And then she, I think she really went into a pretty dark depression after I left and me and both of my children and she was crazy about her grandchildren. We, we spent a lot of time together. Um, and one by one we just dropped off the face of the earth and she was program that she couldn’t really associate with that because I remember our first Thanksgiving after I left, which was about six months. I remember her saying to me on the phone, it’s too bad you can’t you can’t be with us on Thanksgiving.
Kathy: That’s sad.
Justine: That’s not even a religious holiday. Right, but that was like, no, you do not associate the. The door is shut. It was kind of like the Amish. It was almost like being shunned, not quite but very close. That was very painful for both of us
Justine: and we gradually found our way back to form of relationship. She had this off and on what the light hard line was and decided in her own way that she wanted to have a relationship with her daughter and I had to get over being so afraid of her feelings and her depression and her judgment. Mainly her judgment of me cause I still carried around a lot of shame. The minute I walked out of there, I didn’t just feel so free. Clear and free. Free. Clear and free. The way you think you would, right. Yeah, sure. I had moments of that, but that deeply instilled shame was still running my psyche. I had more shame from having left the light than I had when I was in the light, but that kept me from my mom. That was like a wall between us, you know, and we had, we worked on those things.
Kathy: Did you have a support system for you, like either while you were still in the light and then after you left the light?
Justine: Well, that’s a great question. You know, my support system before I did join 12 step recovery, um, the same year that my son left and it was because he left. It’s something, I’ll just tell you what it is. Most people haven’t heard of it and it was a very amazing support system for me. Even when I hardly went to the meetings, it’s called Nar-Anon. it, a lot of people have heard of Alanon for families and friends of alcoholics. Nar-Anon is a 12 step recovery program for families and friends and loved ones of drug addicts basically. And it’s a much smaller fellowship and it’s also very extremely supportive to people who, um, you know, their families are using illegal drugs, so their loved ones or you know, heroin addicts have
Justine: a lot of talk about shame. There’s a lot of shame there under secrecy and there’s a lot of breaking up the law, so I was told to go there at the Rehab Center and you know, they said your family members are sick and suffering to you need help go to this program, and this was a point where I was realizing that the light had no answers to these problems and I went, so that was really my first, really powerful support system to help me to find a new way of life, a new way, a new kind of a way to pray and have the and have friends and other people had gotten through these situations. It wasn’t about religion, but it was. That actually helped me that it wasn’t about religion is another support system I had. That really helped me even before that happened is that I was a personal trainer if you mentioned, and I was a personal trainer for many years and I had a good number of clients. I went to their homes and we did personal training and their bedrooms or kitchens or their home gym and we had bonds of friendship and I was there for them where they could talk to me confidentially and I would not speak of anything that they told me because they would chat during their workouts or share things with me, you know.
Kathy: Sure.
Justine: And um, they’re like once, twice a week for years with them. We had a bond and those women, none of them were in the light. I guess at the end I had maybe one, one light client, um, but mostly they were not people who were in the light and a lot of them were Jewish. Not all. Um, and really a lot of really lovely women who I feel gave me a strong support system and I did tell them quite a bit more openly than you normally would talk to a client because I was pretty desperate. I tell them that I was in this cult and that I left the cult. I mean, there were some of the first people that I doubted myself and I told him about my divorce, which, you know, was all at the same time as I told you, and you know, just seeing them in their families and their lives and how they raise their kids without spanking and they had healthy, well adjusted kids. All of that was, um, was very helpful to me. I don’t know if I would’ve had the strength to leave without that. Um,
Kathy: so how has it been since you left? You left several years ago. How have you been since then?
Justine: Well, it’s been 16 years. It’ll be 17 in June. Um, and it has been a journey and it has been arrived and I am a really different person than I was then. I believe I can almost hardly remember and sometimes when you ask me questions, I hard to even feel how I used to feel.
Kathy: Has Anything changed?
Justine: Well, uh, one thing I noticed is that I had a lot more money and a lot more creature comforts when I was in the light. Um, I have, I have really had challenges to support myself since the, since the economy went down in 2008, I’ve had a lot of challenges supporting myself, um, which I never had when I was in the light. And I think that there’s not only the, not only the economy, not only the support of being married and having two incomes, but I think that there was also something psychically that I’ve had to work through, which has to do with that deep shame that I feel that I, I’ve had to work through really deep things of like not deserving, not being a part of not belonging. Um, and those deep things can affect your day to day life. Like the fact that you only have a few hundred dollars in the bank and you can’t seem to get a job, you know.
Justine: So it’s, that’s the outer manifestation. And then the inner, you know, it’s that I’ve just kept doing more and more deep work working with different healers. You know, I did, I’ve done not only a bunch of different 12 step recovery programs and had a bunch of different sponsors. I’ve also done, um, energy healing and I learned to be a Reiki practitioner and that a Reiki master in 2005 and, uh, started practicing it immediately on myself and on others. Um, I became really interested in how to access my intuition so I could get my own divine guidance, um, because that always confused me when I was in the light. It’s like they told us to listen to our intuition, but then if I said that I intuitively felt to believe this, but then it didn’t agree with what the guy in charge said that I was told that really wasn’t my intuition.
Justine: That was really my impulse or something else. So I learned that I didn’t know how to trust myself and it was really weird. Um, and I could be talked down by men because of that, especially men, but not only men, um, and I could be wobbly and wavery or get really frustrated or really confused. Um, so all of that, I, I really have focused on that a lot. It’s like how to trust myself, how to listen to my own intuition, what is my own intuition? And the energy healing help with that. I learned another kind of energy healing, uh, in 2016 called accelerated light healing, which has also given me a lot of freedom and I told you that I’m a nomad or I don’t know if I told you, but anyway, I have been and it’s amazing how I can move around different cities and countries with so little fear. I feel that my fear has been dissipated even though I don’t have a lot of money. I move around in the world in a place of trust and asking, you know, communities for help and having a huge, a huge community, communities of people that I can actually ask for help. So that’s another thing I’m belonging in the world. I belong here now. I’m not separate
Kathy: You have a new support system as well, sounds like.
Justine: I’m always getting a new support system. Yeah. now I have a support system from women who podcast.
Kathy: Yeah.
Justine: Um, uh, it’s just an example, through facebook. I’ve made amazing friends. Just last week I was stranded in a, in an airport because I had gotten actually to the wrong airport and that was in France, in Paris. And I was like, you know what, I need a place to stay, I’m going to make a video right here from Charles de Gaulle and tell everybody that I missed my flight and I needed a place to stay in Paris and who can help me. And that wasn’t even on a group that was my entire facebook page, which I have like 5,000 friends, so I don’t know who would see it. And that to me is a lot of trust, but it’s also that I have the humility to say, you know what? I blew it and I don’t have enough money to stay in a hotel. I need a place to stay. who can help me?
Kathy: Hmm.
Justine: That’s who I’ve become now. And I did get a great place to stay in Paris the next night.
Kathy: Good.
Justine: You know, it’s, I mean I do it because I do it more and more because it has been working and working, so I keep expanding it to support system.
Kathy: That’s great. Since you published your book, have you gotten any feedback from perhaps maybe others who are experiencing or have experienced a similar thing?
Justine: No, not yet, Kathy and I would really love to, um, I feel that I’m just at the beginning of my expansion as a global speaker for women and a stand for women’s freedom and I say women because that’s who and what I am and I feel that the, the process and the journey and the struggles are a bit different for men, but of course I’m available and have helped many men who’ve had many struggles and I’m hoping that by being a guest on podcasts in addition to eventually having my own podcast, that I can reach thousands of women all over the world because I know that this, you know, this is a platform and I would like for women to be able to come to me. I almost went to speak in India, haven’t done it yet. I don’t really have the financial resources, but it was another way to reach thousands of women worldwide. And I, it’s also the hardest thing for someone who’s in a cult to even listen to anybody like me or pick up a book like mine or be even like, be on facebook with anybody likes me. There’s this huge wall, um, so it hasn’t happened yet, but I know it will.
Kathy: Well perhaps just coming across the book, coming across hearing you speak. I think sometimes the message does get through just the fact that, you know, the title of your book you got out of and you survived. So I think that message in itself can be very, very helpful.
Justine: Yes. And of course other people have said that it really is, that it really made a deep impression on them. They weren’t cult members per se, but other people have said, you know, I have a lot of parallels and you gave it touched me deeply and gave me insight on my own background. I’m not saying that I haven’t helped people already with it. I know that I have, but as far as people coming to me and saying, you know what, I’m going to cult or I left a cult or fundamentalist religion, uh, no one has actually come forth and said that yet. And that doesn’t mean that they haven’t read the book either. And I mean, I didn’t come forth and write to the woman who wrote the book that helped me so much until many years later I contacted her, but it sure helped me.
Kathy: Is there anything else, Justine, that you’d like to share that we haven’t talked about that you really would like listeners to know?
Justine: That’s a great question, Kathy. I want women to know that even when you are sure that you have no choice, that there is always a choice, you are never absolutely stuck or absolutely trapped and that you are never alone, no matter how you feel, you’re never alone from humans. And there are also other forces that can help you. But it’s, it’s that idea that you, you always have a choice and you can choose to think something different than you thought before. Also, that you always have a voice, no matter how impossible it seems to open your mouth or write something, you always have a voice. And those, those are some really big lessons for me that I’m still pushing through. My boundaries or my edges. Um, but that’s one of the big things. Yeah. And I, I want my podcast to be called, I am a free woman, which is also the name of my blog. I am a free woman and my facebook page and I want to remember that I already am free and I want women to remember that they already are free.
Kathy: Thank you Justine. I’m glad you brought that up. How can people get Ahold of you? So you have any questions?
Justine: Um, they can go to my blog and I am a free woman. Um, they can also find me on facebook by looking for that. And also you could just find my name. I don’t hide my name. J U S T I n e Re n s o n on facebook. I’m also on twitter. Justine Renson. And my book on Amazon. You could look for my name and come up. It’s my only book so far. Leaving the Light and Loving it How I Woke up, Wisened up and Walked Away From the Secret Cult of my Birth.
Kathy: Terrific. Justine, thank you so much for, uh, sharing the insights of what you experienced, your book and how people can be inspired by you and what you’ve experienced. Thank you so much.
Justine: I would love for people to message me if I, if I can be of any service, I would love it. Thank you so much, Kathy. I really appreciate this opportunity. I’m thrilled.
Kathy: Thank you. Justine.