Part 1
‘Dear Elizabeth, New Jersey community, this is a long awaited episode from an excommunicated, shunned, 2nd gen youth leader. Just listen to the episode.
Thank you Hakja and Misook for bravely coming on and telling your stories. We dig deeper into the concepts of self-love and how intrinsically tied it is to the framework of love we grew up with. We also speak on dating in the uc, dating after the UC and unhealthy mentalities we are unraveling. this is a part 1 of a 2 part series.’
SUMMARY OF PODCAST
1. Intro: Child Bullying, first love, purity culture. 2. How do we first relate to others. Disney on par with UC, other-focused, wait for the guy and fall in love and get married easily. Wait for a soul mate – sign from God. Set people up for marriage trafficking. 7. When things go wrong you start to question it. 9. Learning you can’t control anyone except yourself. 11. Dating church guys – two black holes – Need so much love. 14. Parents were avoiders – if something needed fixing we were told to pray about it or do a condition. Takes away blame, no accountability, no healthy relationships. 17. not learning conflict resolution. Threatening stability is a control tactic. 20. Tearing people down seen as an act of love since it was done to us. Expectation to become perfect. We were so judgmental and mean. 22 Protect us from our own shortcomings and insecurities. 25. Misook dancing with a partner – lead and follow. Not just reacting to the other person. Dancing seen as bad in the church. 27. Relationship with yourself through the body. Control of body through dance. 29. We were taught to ignore our bodies. 32. Leaving the cult shakes your sense of reality. You don’t know the danger you’re in until you’re out. 33. Every relationship teaches you something. Consent, fairy tale mentality. 34. Hakja – because of my name they told me I had to do important things for the church. 35. You’re the bad guy as soon as you leave the church and they forget you. 36. Hakja was youth pastor in Elizabeth Community for two years, not paid, running the youth group in all her free time until they kicked her out. 38.death threats. Because she wanted to start an ilshim program. The parents got mad when she was thinking of the kids. 43. Hakja was looking after the kids (and parents) and someone else took the credit. 45. labor trafficking. Ren made 25k on her mission year, GPA makes a million a year. 46. Hakja was running a free daycare, parents would dump their 5 year old kids while Hakja was 16. 40 kids. 50 toxic community. Spiritual bypassing. 58. Loosing everything when the community rejected her. 1.00 trauma lives in the body. Shaking when speaking about trauma. 1.02 bullying and abuse is framed as love and overcoming fallen nature.
Part 2 – What it Takes to Leave
‘Thank you Hakja and Misook for bravely coming on and telling your stories. In this episode we cover second generation experience within cultic control, cultic abuse, marriage trafficking, conflict-resolution, recovering from a global sex cult, and learning how to distinguish what is healthy vs. unhealthy after leaving an extremist organization like the moonies. When a survivor tells their story, let them know they have been heard. Connecting with others is an important step in deconstruction and healing. For more on the Unification church follow the hashtag #exmoonie and #queerexmoonie. Visit Cult Info Since 1979 – Video Resources (icsahome.com) for more information by cult survivors. For questions or comments on the episode email reneethomasart@yahoo.com’
SUMMARY OF PODCAST
1. Disassociation and dis-regulation as an anxiety response to global events of war. 2. celebrate little things – This podcast put on ICSA site as a resource for UC support. 5. Summary of Hakja’s story. 8. Being judgmental when people leave. 12 like Encanto, the house is breaking. 14. loss, grief and trauma is held in your chest. Dating guys in the church. No skills for relationships and breaking up. Matching process 23. Purity confessions for matching. They keep that and it’s blackmail material. Nobody has a right to your sexual history. No support when you divulge that information. 25. access to vulnerabilities as Cultic control. 26. Victims of sexual assault are seen as fallen instead of needing support. 28. People who want you to suffer in order to grow. 29. Need to get angry now because people made you feel small. 31.turning anger inwards into sadness. 33. Anger is the energy to build boundaries. 36. Growing up being told to be an object is conditioning for the future. 37. Heard about chung pyung and decided never to go. Hakja – spent a lot of time in hospital so had to do the work to fix her own body. So much negative energy towards my body so I started thanking my body and loving it. 43. Which makes it worse that, the church community dropped off 40 kids with Hakja for youth club when she was a 16-17 year old. 44. Not talk about power dynamics, if anything goes wrong it’s your own fault. 46. Any negative thoughts were your own problem. ‘negative’ is a thought-stopping cliche. You’re not allowed to think negative thoughts so you just jump to trying to fix it. Instead of express or explore it. 48. Black and white thinking is so dangerous because you demonise people. Healthy v unhealthy instead of good v bad. 51. Pressure as children to not make mistakes. 52. Lack of black and white means you have to have critical thinking and then not cut people down and judge them. Church members can be so judgmental because they only know good or bad. 55. Importance of communication in relationships. 60. Hakja – I know the DP and I ran workshops and I know it’s not true. 61. Having kids in the church is often what makes people leave as they realize they don’t want this for their kids. 62. It takes time to reparent yourself.
ItsOKtoleave 