his is honor your true story. I’m Antonia Nelson. And today I have the pleasure of speaking with Sharon T. Sharon is a season results driven program director highly regarded for her 11 plus years have worked with nonprofits and NGOs, working with the vulnerable populations and the social issues at grassroots level. Sharon also has been on the Kenosha County Board and today she’s going to talk about what it was like growing up in a household of cult extremists. So welcome, Sharon.

0:45
I Antonia How are you today?

0:48
Doing I’m so glad you’re here. And I wanted to kind of preface your introduction here is that I’ve known you for over 20 years and pretty well, you know, I mean, and I had no idea any of this was going on.

1:06
Yeah, the Khalif as you know, you hide it. You are the number one thing on the planet but you have to hide it and not let anybody know. That’s kind of the the beliefs behind it because then you hide everything that’s wrong with it, and we do it under the guise of this is the best way. Just bullshit so.

1:31
So how old were you when you had an inkling about this? How old were you?

1:38
You know, I was born into my family. There was three cults that they were a part of. So I was born into it. So I thought it was just kind of how everybody grew up. And this is how life was and I don’t think I really, like grasped what I was a part of are what I grew up in until it was probably mid mid adult hood. Yeah, otherwise I just thought this is how life is and this is normal. And I’ll have to say when I said the word normalize to my therapist, that kind of opened the floodgates. That was a good clue for her that Okay, so what are we normalizing just to be able to live

2:22
Yeah, I’m wondering is, you know, as a kid growing up, you know, especially when you get to the school level, like did you Was there any like things that you realize, like, well, we don’t do that or I don’t believe that or any of that growing up.

2:43
There was there was a lot of things that my parents said, these are things we do and these are things that we don’t do. And I didn’t realize that it was all connected to the cult beliefs. I just thought oh, it’s our family rules. This is how our family lives and this is what we do. And don’t do so like some of the don’t dues would be drinking. I mean, this is kind of the craziness of it. You know, you don’t drink. You don’t do any drugs, of course, but you know, you can eat an unlimited amount of candy virus. I mean, there’s really no no rhyme or reason to, like we would never go to the doctor but we went to the dentist every six months. They were just adamant that my parents were that we’d go to the dentist every six months. But if we could go our entire life without seeing a doctor done a good job. There was just such craziness to it and I did realize his child that I didn’t quite speak the same language and I didn’t have quite the same freedoms as my other classmates did. So I noticed even in hindsight that I was kind of gravitating toward the other kids who also were in cults as they were growing up as well. And I just thought oh, they’re just religious and that’s why we get along but it was the fact that it was all of a similar cult behaviors.

4:01
So your cult radar kind of thing, right? Like I am. Yeah, like he I think when you’ve had gone through something that your system has like a radar, we can pick it out when it’s when you’re in the proximity of it again. So what were the other kids what was the sign like? Oh, they’re like me kind of thing. What was the signal to you? Oh,

4:24
I think it was probably more subconscious because it was the kids who just didn’t quite fit in with everybody else. They had maybe a little bit odd behaviors, there’s things they could not do. And so I’m thinking specifically about my one girlfriend who was a Seventh Day Adventist. So that and then there was one that was a Jehovah’s Witness. And so both of us have very strict beliefs. And so like, there’s my