Lifespring Cult

hi rosabelle what's the best thing that's happened in your day so far besides this call well um i bought myself a sneaky bag of lollies and i've been having little nibbles of lollies all day which has been really nice today's episode is about an american human potential group that sort of got out of control and turned into a cult you know one of those sort of self-help groups that suddenly gets out of control okay yeah and i had some memories of some of our friends in new zealand getting involved in a group do you know what i mean when i say human potential and a bit culty i haven't heard that phrase human potential but i know what um program and back home here that you're talking about what's it called do you remember because i forgot i think it's called the landmark forum landmark forum and if i recall a big part of the landmark procedure is you call up people you've wronged and you either confront them or apologize or cut them off or something it all got a bit a bit batshit didn't it yeah but you bring them into the space don't you it's not just a call like i was never invited nobody's ever wronged me enough to care well look if you want to find out about the american version of a human potential group that does truly get out of control keep listening rosabelle and whoever's listening to this podcast here we go i'm david farrier a new zealander accidentally marooned in america and i want to figure out what makes this country tick now if it's one thing america is not short on it's cults we have cults in new zealand but america just seems to do them so much better and by better i mean worse they're more perverse more weird more unsettling more they're just more today i want to cast our eyes back to the past and i'm going to cast our eyes back to the present and i'm going to cast our eyes back to the 70s to a cult called life spring life spring was interesting as it blurred the lines between self-help group which america loves and all out cults life spring has been described as a human potential organization founded in 1974 by three people john hanley robert white and charlene afrimo pretty soon after joining members found out it was incredibly hard to leave as their brains were systematically broken down and dismantled piece by piece before the cult dissolved in the mid 90s it boasted around half a million members not giant but also not too small and as i found out putting this episode together some former members still swear by it so prepare to reach your full potential or have your mental health slowly collapse because this is the life spring episode it's like this it's like this rob do you feel you've met your full human potential as you sit here across from me now if your potential is on a pendulum from 1 to 10 where do you think you're at full human potential probably no um yeah i mean do we ever do we ever reach our potential you can't don't they say that like your brain you can't reach your full potential can access like we're only using a very small percentage of what our brain can actually do yeah um and if you look around america at the moment that feels very deeply obvious yes uh but on the spectrum of like full potential to ignorance is bliss like i do think there is finding balance in there true enough uh to where i don't know that i i need to do more reach my brain's full potential have you ever have you had anyone in your family or have you ever wanted to go to a i guess like a tony robbins or any kind of self-help thing have you ever been dragged into one of those or come close no um i worked with a guy he was my boss that loved that shit and i even then was like this stuff is this is not for me yeah this is not gonna work not for me i hear you yes i feel this week i've reached my lowest potential i've reached my lowest potential i've reached my lowest potential potential i had my first ever car crash um do you really yeah do you not remember what happened so on friday careful the insurance people might be listening sure sure trade carefully friday um you dropped me and a friend off at a roller rink yes and you were driving you almost hit a parked car i you get very close and i was like david david david it's close yes but then you were like i'm a great driver i've never gotten in an accident i do remember that exact line and i said you can't say that you're going to get in an accident now i completely forgot about that conversation as i dropped you off so what happened is and then you got an accident like a day later very so to be very clear that night that night very clearly karma caught up with you huh caught up with me almost immediately so i gotta say it was it was the most minor thing you could imagine yeah but it was adjacent to that near kind of swoop that i had with that other car that you're talking of um which to be clear didn't hit them didn't come close i think i stopped you from doing it i was driving i think there was a show on at the venue that's near our house there was like a lot of like cars like clogged up the road what venue is near um the one um the greek one of those ones oh yeah yeah yeah so it was like a lot of traffic okay and so i was crawling along um i think it was rowena no it wasn't rowena it was avocado heading towards rowena one side packed with traffic so i was really squashed up in there yeah it's a for anyone that doesn't know the streets in that area you can parallel park on one side yes and drive both directions but pillow park and drive and from each side does not fit it's narrow yes very narrow road especially with parked cars exactly so i was driving very slowly maybe 15 20 i don't know i was crawling along 15 20 on a 15 20 mile an hour road so you were driving no no okay so to be clear i was not speeding i was going probably 10 okay what did i tell the insurer i'm worried now i wasn't really because i'm in kilometers in new zealand i'm unfamiliar with miles per hour i get confused anyway i was crawling along yeah the pace of a snail or maybe a slug and i got coyote walking like a like a coyote slowly padding along the ground and as i got to the end of the cars that were parallel parked on my right i just gently swung in because i'm like oh my god there's room finally so i sort of swung in in front of this car just heard that awful sound of metal scraping on metal so i clipped clipped a parked car i clipped a parked car i like to dramatize things is that a crash did i yeah it's not yeah i mean that's an accident it's an accident yeah you you've talked to an insurance company i did yeah that's an incident that's an incident report i i stopped the car um i got out of the car i felt a small moment of panic because the car that i had lightly scraped the side off looked very fancy to me it looked very sporty very cool and i went uh-oh turns out it was just a dodge some sort of dodge it's not the most expensive car in the world they just look kind of cool yeah yeah and i thought what do i do do i run do i get out of here i looked around with the cameras on the houses looking at me oh that's what would have i thought i could get away with this no i um i wrote a note on the car i left my my name my number my um plates i don't know insurance thing left under the thing the story is getting more boring the longer i talk about it my point is my human potential feels deeply low because i had my first american car crash did they call you no one called me that no one's called you call me i called my insurance yeah and log the crash no other insurance company i was scared the owner was going to call me upset barking at me i don't think you needed to call your insurance company yet then you don't need to file that in if i filed it you if they're if they don't come and ask you to fix their car you don't have to file it you can just go pay the repairs and not increase your insurance oh god yeah you're right yeah which is what you would know if you were like i should have just paid for my door yes and not logged it with the insurance yes fuck i'm an idiot but if if this person files the claim against you then i instead of paying for the whole siding to be redone i mean you could offer to just pay for the repair yeah or you can do it through insurance pay your deductible yeah then they increase your insurance straight to the insurance i can't wait to see what it skyrockets up to next it's almost like you should have asked someone oh my god i didn't i didn't think i just sort of i just like the next day i was like i guess i call the i've got insurance yeah so i call it i log it i do my thing when i was in chicago um your pal your parallel parking was a hit and run um i was living in in a lincoln square apartment and i'm pretty I remember it was a halfway house that was across the street. parallel parking i don't recall hitting the car i don't know that i did okay i parked i get out and i see there's a scratch on the car in front of me but nothing on mine but it was like where i would have turned in okay and i like panicked thought i hit them yeah went to leave a note wrote a note went and put in the windshield and there was like a bunch of people that lived in the halfway house yeah hanging out front and they were like what are you doing and i was like i i think i hit this car i'm gonna leave a note and they're like no don't don't do that don't leave that note what are you talking about this car's all fucked up already so you potentially and leaving that note would have made yourself liable for something that you had nothing to do with yes if this person was not sure if i had done it or not yeah okay so i was in this dilemma the limbo i mean i just went into like straight out like do the right thing mode yeah yeah i scraped the car i scraped the car i leave a note i have insurance it'll be fine didn't really think about the side of things of just dealing with it on my own and not increasing my cost well i mean that was my immediate reaction was like oh i did this we're so lame we're so like we're such pathetic goody goodies that the initial reaction but then i did i did realize it looked like it was one of those cars that just gets like left on the street you're slowly decaying for weeks slowly picking up parts and parts and parts and parts and parts and parts and parts and there's like a lot of stuff in the back seat and i think that's why they were like what are you doing this car i don't we don't think you hit this car look at your car look at that car yeah i was just young and was like i thought there was going to be street cameras and like yeah you're on camera someone reporting that i did this and that i was gonna go to jail for this and i was like this i just need to pay my deductible and get it fixed next time i hit a car or next time i hit anything in my car i'm calling you yeah yeah say rob what do i do i do have a body shop i've hit i hit the stairs outside our studio once did you not well they're right there i'm always scared i'm gonna those stairs when i swing in i always do it when i get a new car that's the other thing i'm in a different car you're in a new car and i think i don't know how wide it is it's almost without fail though within you scrape the hell out of it somewhere well so yeah matt who you dropped me and him off at the roller rink and i said i've never crashed i it was like a month into getting my last car he opened his van door into the side of it dented it car before that i hit like a high curb and it just like scraped the whole bottom side yeah new car syndrome and then i'm a new car it gets fucked up my current car i hit those stairs and i'll rope yeah okay there's a bit of background before i get into the doc i want to talk a little bit about the atmosphere that we are playing in with this particular episode there's a thing called the human potential movement okay it arose out of the counterculture of the 1960s formed around a central concept of the extraordinary potential that is in all of us but untapped so is this a religious organization or no it is more like a uh a bit maybe hippie-ish a bit woo-woo a bit new age not about god it's not like not about a higher power it's not like the rajneeshi or it's like meditation or a guru it is a i would say it is adjacent to that world is there a leader no no leader well there are leaders but not like people that swoop in there's not like a central figure not a central which is why people that are into definitions of cults are like technically this isn't a cult because there's not one key thing it's more like a concept that was developed by a bunch of different people at the same time and i would say that like tony robbins kind of fits into this world he's a more modern adjacent version of like there is so much in us and we can do so much more than this lame life that you're currently living yeah yeah so it's called the human potential movement i never heard of it until i started looking into life spring but it's basically looking to increase your happiness creativity fulfillment and then you'll be um happier you'll do better in society society will do better as a whole etc so out of the human potential movement came something called large group awareness training or algat for short and this is um groups of people that come together to do all the things that the human potential movement advocates for so just ascending and how good we are as people but it's more organized there's groups there's weekends and that's where the leaders come up there's people that lead these groups do you know what what type of when you say unlocking potential what are they unlocking specifically i guess it is like how to be a better person and help others is it how to like do math better not math it's more like your level of happiness and awareness and feeling like you are it's weird to talk about because i can't kind of bristle against all this stuff but it's basically it's it's it's it's not to be smarter it's about to be a more aware more well-rounded better person but you know those days where you kind of feel like your world is small and you're kind of like this surely there's more to this life but how do i get it and some people go to religion some people go to drugs but is that through like servicing community is that what are they actually what is the action item we'll get into that okay in the doc a little bit more okay it's making but no i would say overall as someone that definitely isn't an expert in this from what i can tell it's more you as a person it's inherently selfish okay you're not out to like help your fellow man yeah help yourself out to make yourself yeah you're out to make yourself better at life just be more actualized be more actualized in who you are and what your potential is when whether that turns into making more money or being happier or being more open-minded or feeling like you're ascending some kind of fucking bridge to total freedom like scientology has right is that kind of a vibe and within these different large group awareness training sessions they use things like meditation biofeedback jargon self-hypnosis relaxation techniques breathing visualization yoga there's a whole bunch of shit say biofeedback biofeedback you're like plugging into like a bit of a woomoo machine like you'll grab a rod and it will give you like a reading of like that sort of shit okay like the e-media and scientology yeah mostly bullshit so large group awareness training first one kind of appeared um in the 60s uh it was called the leadership dynamics institute sounds kind of culty right i'll sort of boringly culty it was a private uh for-profit company it was owned by a guy called william penn patrick again all that shit personal development self-improvement and then life spring came out of leadership dynamics institute was founded in 74 by three people it was the most controversial of all of these kind of groups what region is this coming out of really good question let's have a look assuming this is an american organization american so one of the founders of life spring john hanley um he was working at the time for holiday magic which was a multi-level marketing scheme at the time cults and multi-level marketing seemed to have some crossover so much crossover so much crossover um so while he was working for holiday magic um he took a course at the leadership dynamics institute and from there he developed life spring at his maximum i had 400 000 members uh started in the 70s defunct by the 90s and i talked with a woman who was a child when her mother joined and so this is kind of like life spring through the perspective of a child at the time which is pretty trippy and the story is really weird it includes a relative uh of albert einstein so here we go chapter one latchkey kids yeah it's been a lot of a lot of things i didn't realize until i was an adult and it actually just started really coming together over the past couple months last year flightless bird got an email from jennifer who lives in california it was one of those emails that was straight to the point instantly intriguing my mother joined life spring when i was around 10 years old 38 years later we just spoke for the first time in 10 years we went back and forth over email and a few weeks ago we had a call my name is jennifer i live in martinez california so bay area she tells me her life almost completely revolves around her dogs and her partner things are stable and she's happy but recently she's been thinking a lot about her childhood mainly about her mother because one of my most amazing memories with my mom is that she would always massage my head um and so we'd go out i'd get tired i'd put my head in her lap she would massage my head and i have that memory over and over and over again that's that was it and I was always on like I was I always had to be touching her. Jennifer holds so many good memories from when she was a kid but she also remembers what happened next. So I'm 48 now so it was around when I was eight years old um my parents got divorced when I was three and my sister was five so we moved with my mom from New York to California because I had an aunt here my dad stayed in New York and so it was my mom with a three-year-old and a five-year-old and then when I think I was around eight is when she joined Lifespring. In the 80s Lifespring was at its peak a self-help program that promised to help its members reach their full potential. It had three levels that you were meant to advance through all for a fee of course. We thought that she was like out with her boyfriend like that's what we I think that that's where my heart was at. I think that's where my heart was at. I think that's where she's always at work or she's with her boyfriend she you know she just wasn't home so she was never really there um and we didn't really know we didn't know anything about Lifespring because we were so young. Jennifer describes her and her sister as being latchkey kids. They lived in this little apartment across the street from a park a block away from their school so on some level it was a dream suburban childhood. On the other hand Jennifer just really wanted her mom around. And then she started doing things like she would come home and she would just leave us a note saying I can't talk to you for a week just like on a piece of paper which was weird. This was all thanks to advice from Lifespring. And then she was spending a lot of weekends away we had a lot of weekends with friends um some cousins in the area like we were constantly spending weekends with other people. Things got worse when her mom did get a boyfriend not an excuse this time but a real one and he happened to be another Lifespring member. My aunt started realizing that we were constantly having them come over and they started looking into it and they heard my mom talk about Lifespring and that's when they put everything together. Jennifer was still in touch with her dad but not often not often enough for him to get a hint of what was going on. Because they had a bad marriage and bad divorce we didn't have we we had we had a lot of things going on. Jennifer was still in touch with you know regular annual visits with him but we didn't talk on the phone very often. So my dad had no idea um that any of that was going on because we didn't tell him anything was going on. With her dad unaware of how things were going at home Jennifer's aunt had to step in. He would come over because my mom was missing and she would find me hiding on in the wall next to my mom's bed. It was pretty much just my aunt who's saw her absenteeism brought my grandparents in um cool yeah yeah and they and it was about two years in when they decided to try doing a deprogramming. Oh wow so they they basically saw that your mom was kind of off with this other group and thought they would like try and step in to really get her out. Yeah to first like the goal was to get her out um and away from her boyfriend and if that didn't work get us out. Chapter two the rescue attempt. Her grandparents and aunt found a cult deprogrammer a good one. They initially found I believe her name is Evelyn Einstein. She's a famous deprogrammer and I think they said that she's a relative of Albert Einstein. She actually has a fascinating story. Not to get sidetracked but Jennifer's right. Turns out Evelyn Einstein was adopted by Albert Einstein's son. She worked a few different jobs in animal control as a police officer and as a deprogrammer and one day Albert Einstein's adopted granddaughter turned up at Jennifer's house to try and convince her mother to leave LifeSpring. My grandparents came it was they had a barbecue. I remember being in the hallway when everything was happening. So everything was happening. I remember being in the hallway when everything seemed to be going smoothly with the intervention like bringing first in the dinner we're gonna have dinner we're gonna talk about things catch up you know your parents are in town um and then oh here's these people coming over because we're gonna have an intervention uh and so from what my aunt recently told me my grandfather he at one point just got very frustrated and had to leave because it had already been about four hours and it was not it was not going anywhere. Her mom was in too deep. And if you're like me at this point you're going what was so bad about LifeSpring again? What was it doing? And I think this old news report is a good indication of what it was about. Up front tonight LifeSpring one of the most controversial self-improvement groups in the U.S. A self-improvement group attempts to encourage people to create more value and less stress in their lives by claiming that people can find within themselves the resources to help them cope with the world. This story went out on October 30th 1980 for Eyewitness News. Driven by the complex pressures of modern life over the last decade hundreds of thousands of American young people began searching for easy answers. For mind-altering drugs the addiction of the next generation became mind-altering organizations the cults. Over the last five years especially America has suffered an epidemic of sudden personality changes. The appeal of most of these organizations is to mainstream middle-class young people and the outward effects range from the dramatic change in their personality to the dramatic as in the case of the Hare Krishnas to more subtle as in the case of the Moonies. There is however still another category of mind-altering organization members wear no robes and never panhandle at airports they may be in the military or law enforcement or government in short most seem the guy or girl next door and yet all these people have submitted to a technique experts tell us is akin to brainwashing a semi-psychological program a mind game that helps some but apparently hurts others this is Lifespring. Towards the end of the report Eyewitness News starts talking to the families of Lifespring victims. Gail died from an asthma attack because the cult refused to intervene during a self-help session. Do you think that uh Lifespring contributed to the death of your daughter? Just the same as if they'd have put a gun in her temple and pulled the trigger that's the way I feel about it. How could you still think that? I couldn't stand there and watch a person gasp and beg and not do anything for them I couldn't even if I hated a person I couldn't stand there and watch them die. Other members suffered various meltdowns the relentless pressure of the Lifespring course too much to bear. I mean these Lifespring sessions were really intense yelling screaming some former members have spoken of being made to strip in front of the group face questions about their sexuality and sex life and be shamed for their bodies and beliefs. Do you hold Lifespring responsible for your wife's death? Absolutely no doubt in my mind they caused it. Stuff like that is why everyone was so worried about her mum. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Support for Flightless Bird comes from Helix. 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She had no problem saying she was in Lifespring at that point, but she would not and still does not see that. There was anything wrong with basically abandoning her kids and not being able to speak to her kids. You know, just, just with me, it was hard because she was like my, she was my entire world. Yeah. Like entire world. So I think for everybody, a lot of it was seeing the impact it had on me. That's when they really started to see that something was wrong. And so to see me, basically, I would read in the closet all day, just hiding away because I was scared of everything that wasn't her. So they saw that and that's what really hit them. Despite having Einstein's relative involved, there was no getting rid of Lifespring. Things escalated. The courts had to get involved because, well, you can't just abandon your kids to go take part in a cult all day long. The intervention didn't work. My aunt, my grandfather had four daughters. So one of them got custody of us. And I do remember the court because I remember my mom bringing the principal of my elementary school, bringing the neighbors. I was having to go to court to see, you know, if my aunt had become our guardian. My mom created the narrative to herself and anybody who would listen that her sister. Kidnapped us. It was always these. My sister kidnapped my kids and my parents had something to do with it. So I want nothing to do with my parents. I want nothing to do with my sisters. She would call my aunt at all hours, leaving really just ranting messages on her answering machine. Accusing her of kidnapping us. She still feels that way. She feels as though her. She has, she talks to every sister now, except for the one who got garden, who got custody of us. Jennifer's grateful. Her aunt got custody. She had a caregiver again. It was after my 10th birthday. Cause I remember my 10th birthday party. So probably in between 10 and 11, she got custody of us when I was entering seventh grade. Did you see much of your mom after that? Or did you see her after that? Or did she kind of vanish from your sight? We would see her weekly for probably a good year. I would, I said, we saw her weekly and we do therapy, not with her, but she got married to the man. She was dating who she met in Lifespring shortly after my aunt got custody of us and we hated him. So her, she made that choice. That's where it pretty much became. You chose Lifespring and Simon over. At this point, and I'm curious to kind of pick your brain on this from a more objective point of view with all the knowledge that you have now, what the fuck was your mom doing? What was she doing in there? You know, I can sort of imagine what is she learning new things? Is she, what, what the hell is like, what is she up to? Do we know? It was almost like she was going to classes to become a stronger, more independent person. She was almost off to like a therapy, kind of like a group that would help her get strong. Yes. This big group of people. They would. All support each other and bring each other up. And, you know, you're going to, you're going to, we're going to teach you how to take control of your life. It was, it's almost weird. Like the words, like control and character and all, like picking yourself up and all of these things they did to her with the control. So it was very obvious separate from family and friends. Like you isolate the person you build. You build a community for them. They want to stay. She isolated herself from her family. Chapter three, present day. I think back to that first email I got from Jennifer. My mother joined last spring when I was 10, 38 years later, we just spoke for the first time. That conversation had been a long time coming. What's your relationship like with your mother now? So we didn't talk for a long time. She would call me on my birthday. She would leave me voicemails. I ended up blocking her number for a long time. She would like find me on Facebook. So I ended up blocking her there too. I just was avoiding her. In short, Jennifer had made her own life separate from her mother. She found love, love that was reciprocated. I have an amazing family. I wasn't, nothing was missing. So I haven't needed her. I haven't needed her. Still, mother and daughter have lived a 30-minute drive away from each other their entire lives. Jennifer says back on her 34th birthday, she saw her mom in the street. She promptly turned around and ducked around a corner, avoiding her. Her mom had married that Lifespring member. And while the cult had disintegrated, their allegiance to the Lifespring brand remained. 40 years later, they're still married. They still think that Lifespring was what brought them. Lifespring brought them together. But recently, they've been together for a long time. But recently, her mom's health has gone downhill. She had a fall. So they connected again. So I went to visit her. And they didn't tell her I was coming. So she just kind of saw me coming into the hospital room. And just like her face just got so bright. And she was so happy. And then she just burst into tears. And then I almost started crying. But I didn't. I felt it coming. But then I was like, no. No. No. It's not happening. And she then, for a solid hour, I didn't even sit down. My aunt sat down. I didn't sit down. And we were sharing a room with another person behind a curtain. So it was a crowded space. And for an hour, she ranted about. She would go talking from one topic to another. And she was always ending it with, the bottom line is. But then never getting to the bottom line. And then she would go to the next topic. But it was very manic. It was like very, just like her eyes were just like. And it was just. Yeah, it sounds manic. Yeah. Yeah, just like one thing after another. After an hour where I just stood and stared at her. It was so weird. It was just very awkward. I felt like I was in just like not. I was not me. It was like I was just present. Like my body was present. Yeah, me too. You were disassociated a bit probably as well, right? Absolutely. And then she goes, the bottom line is I just love you so much. And you coming today is just the greatest gift. And then she said, so how about you? I was like, holy shit. A question. Yeah, a question to you after an hour. And I said, you know, I. I'm like, I can't have a relationship with her. She still can't acknowledge that. if she did anything. She can't take any accountability for the kind of mess that she kind of created in me. She can't take any accountability. I can't have a relationship with her. Her mum's rambling and overall demeanour was a sign of things to come. She got 5150'd in February, hospitalised against her will for a mental health crisis. That's why I'm not talking to her mum for this episode. It's really not possible. She had been hospitalised before because she had a manic episode where she was in, and this is like her husband told my aunt this recently and now it's come to me. They were in Italy and she just started talking like for a straight six hours. She just talked and she would write things out and she would manically yell. And so when they got back to the States, she got hospitalised. And she was diagnosed as bipolar. Right. And when we started talking about this recently and her behaviour, that manicness was already coming out when I saw her at the hospital for that hour. I can't help but think of that news report from the 80s about various Lifespring members and what happened to them. It might be entirely unrelated. It might not. Lifespring's trail of alleged casualties leads. to the Los Angeles area. This is Linda Smith, a graduate of Lifespring's basic training. Days after she completed that training, her family tells us her personality began changing drastically. Inside of two weeks, her behaviour had become so erratic, so bizarre, her family had her committed to a mental institution. Once released from the institution, Linda was under constant psychiatric care. For several months, she lived in a fantasy world filled with dreams of Lifespring. One day, Linda didn't go to work. She died. She just sat on the sofa, listening over and over again to the music they had played during her Lifespring training. Jennifer's been remembering other things too from her childhood. Maybe the stuff was there before the cult. Maybe the cult exasperated it. Whatever the case, Lifespring certainly didn't seem very sensitive to its members' mental health. Nobody saw the side I saw, actually. I saw the manic side of her for years. I saw her and my sister would fight. And she would grab my sister by the arms and dig her nails in, and hold my sister there. So, I saw that violent side that nobody even knew existed. Chapter 4: Making sense of it all Over the last few months, Jennifer has been coming to terms with all of this. She's been thinking back to her childhood some more, when her aunt stepped in. She thinks about what the other adults in her life must have seen at the time, and what they made of it all. People would probably just see it as a single mom struggling. She didn't have a well-paying job. She lived in an apartment. She got child support. Our school was right down the street. We could walk to school. It wasn't. Nobody would notice. Our neighborhood babysitter, the park was across from our house. We were at the park. People didn't. They knew that something was wrong with her, but she was able to hide that she was doing this. Because it's not something that you really can see. We would have no food in the cabinets. I ate mac and cheese, like, still love it, but, like, macaroni and cheese, jello, like, those were the things that I ate constantly. Our milk would be spoiled in the fridge, but people didn't really see that, and I would steal money from her and buy books, so that's all I really ever did. I would steal money, buy books, and read in my closet, and so people didn't see anything wrong with that. Oh, Jenny loves to read. That's a good thing. What were you reading? Do you remember? I was reading. Oh, my God. It was Sweet Valley Twins. All I wanted to read was books about, like, happy families. Like, utopia. Yep. Like, I wanted to be blonde-haired, blue-eyed, living in the suburbs. The American dream. Yeah. Kind of lacking a lot of that stuff. So, I had this. I had the perfect family in my head. I had the perfect family in my head, but knew I was never going to have it. I knew that was never going to happen. Part of me wishes that people had been able to see it, and had been able to help her before she got too deep, because I think if it had been caught earlier on, before she started this relationship with her husband, they could have gotten her out, but once she had him, there was no getting her out. It was done. Having all these conversations recently, we're putting so many pieces together. It's like solving a puzzle of yourself, right? She's a very kind person. She has an amazing heart, an absolutely amazing heart. She was very open, giving. Her weakness is what let life spring in. It's her willingness. It's her willingness to just always take on, take on, take on. It's almost like she was the perfect person to get sucked in. When I think about cults and the type of people they prey on, she is that person. So I don't even blame her for getting into the life spring because it just makes sense. I ask if she ever sees any chance. Her mother will see things through her eyes to offer any kind of apology. I think that's gone. I don't think that, I think that she might be, she's, I think, 80. Yeah. I think that that ship sailed. Even now, to this day, it's still having impacts on my family. And like, it all goes back to that with the guardianship. That blew so much stuff up. Yeah. And it's caused. So much hatred through generations of people. All this makes it even more remarkable that Jennifer has her own family today, and she's really happy she got through it. Still, she thinks about different aspects of her personality and how much of that harkens back to those early childhood years when her mother chose a cult over choosing her. My cousin thinks that I tend to be a people pleaser because. If if I'm if if if I'm doing what you want me to do, you won't leave. So she says, I'm constantly just saying yes, and I'm always agreeing, even if I disagree, because I don't want to cause conflict as I get older, it gets easier. Knowing that I created my own world for myself, that's the other things like I know that I took I took what I needed and have brought it into my relationship, which was. Somebody's presence, just feeling of safety, somebody being there. So, yeah, that was Jennifer flightless bird listener. She wrote in a while ago and just kind of crazy timing that she has just been working through the stuff in the last. You know, four or five months. With her mother and family and trying to figure out what that really weird childhood was like. And while that doc was playing, we were chatting a little bit and I think we both had that same. It is that that central question you had of like, what the fuck was it like? What was she doing all that time? Such meaningless, vague. Yeah. To Jennifer's point at one point was they were just preying on vulnerable people. Essentially. Yeah. And you pay to be there and you. I guess think that you were having breakthroughs in there, or I don't know. I mean, if I was being, I don't know, any kind of self-help thing. I mean, I still have this barrier with therapy of like, how much of this is helpful. What if we find out therapy is considered a cold? So what the hell? I mean, here in L.A., it kind of feels that way sometimes. And to be clear, therapy. No, it is not very helpful, but it's like that mindset of, but when you're you're they. They were doing it because they thought they were improving their lives. They her mom's same way that therapy. Yeah. They were in that mindset of I'm getting something out of this. And to the point where her mom obviously thought cutting off my daughter and not spending time with her as she's a young child is somehow okay. Yeah. I mean, the creepiest part for me is the, like, uh, the trend of people becoming manic and just kind of losing it after. Leaving there and whatever they were doing was so intense that it broke these people. And the word though, there are examples of the life spring of people having to strip in front of the group and like there's certain, actually I, I took some notes. Um, so there's a book called life one or two. Um, it was a former participant. The author Peter Williams describes the basic technique of these marathon training sessions as pressure release, good cop, bad cop, police interrogation style. and like a revival meeting in a church by spending half the time making a person feel bad and then suddenly reversing the feeling through lots and lots of praise the participants experience stress reaction um first and then moving through to like an endorphin high yeah so just like a roller coaster over an eight hour day yeah and and just breaking these people that are searching for answers in community and yeah a self-improvement a prominent critic of life spring ginny thomas um wife of supreme court justice clarence thomas ginny was a congressional aide when she took the course um she was troubled by exercises that involved stripping sexual questions and body shaming um after talking with a cult d programmer she decided she needed to stop participating so yeah and also this was like a trend of the time like 70s 80s 90s this was a big thing um but one thing i did find out which i talked to rosabelle about at the beginning was a thing that a couple of people in new zealand i know got involved with called landmark forum do you know this i've heard of landmark yeah that's what i mean that's the hard thing with some of these is like on paper it doesn't necessarily sound as bad totally which is is kind of my joke about therapy now but but like in that time when this was happening a lot of people thought it was amazing or just thought it was normal or or just something they didn't know about um it just makes me wonder what things now are the equivalent totally that and i think again none of us are saying therapy is that no no no but it's just like that mindset is like these people thought like we think about therapy now yeah you know therapy as a whole is way too broad in general um yeah and has a lot of evidence and i think that's the thing that's behind it yes um but but like are there specific groups now or fads or or things that we will look back on and go holy shit what were we thinking yeah this so landmark forum i thought it was just a new zealand thing because i'd worked with a couple of people that had done it and essentially they were sessions that you'd go and do on a weekend part of it involved you bringing other people into the group um but when i was looking into landmark which spread to new zealand turns out the founders of life spring which we've been talking about this entire episode also worked with um a thing called mind dynamics and that became the basis for landmark education which turned into landmark worldwide also known um best known for the landmark forum which is what my friends did in new zealand so at all my point is it all like landmark sprung out of the shit yeah like it's a very clear line from like this very cultish thing to current landmark today and it is all just like spend this money and it's promising you the world as a result landmark i don't think is stripping people naked yeah um and saying that there's been a bunch of lawsuits within um landmark there was one in 2004 um a lawsuit was filed then accusing the business of causing psychotic episode um and someone who attended a landmark seminar and as a side bit of information third episode second season of six feet under the plan that was based um on that was um based on life spring or parodying life yeah thank you jenna for talk for talking to me for this it's kind of just a crazy thing to think that you went through that as a kid and also amazing you build up your own amazing life out of that feedback if you have feedback if you're a member of landmark or um a life spring flightlessbredchat gmail.com or other calls or other cults they're called you left family members left we'd love to hear from you karen wrote in regarding timeshares my husband works for wyndham and is the general manager of a timeshare property in a beautiful part of arizona we are not timeshare owners and in order to make it worth your money you have to use them strategically and often our previous neighbor were retired owners with platinum status i'm sure my parents have platinum status they were yeah they spent at least two weeks a month at the properties where they could stay they loved it i have to clap back at rob that they're shitty condos these were beautiful high-end properties yeah there were there were nice ones there are nice ones in the mix they were nice i mean we didn't always stay at the nice ones some of them were shitty condos i do think i'm a beautiful came in and took over and the wyndham ones are nice you but there was like the timeshare that they owned was also part of another organization and my dad would have this like book with all these codes of like here's the here's the places we can go like go through these cities and see where you want to visit i feel like we need your dad on the couch to quiz him about i'd love that three-hour episode with your dad in his booklet we also ended up in some like cool places like i we wouldn't have gone to pocosa springs colorado otherwise sounds like you were walking back your negative view of the timeshare i still think i mean they're not owners eric wrote in um in regards to anna conkle losing her favorite trading card when i was in second or third grade i took my entire basketball trading card binder to school for show and tell my parents were out of town and my grandma was watching me and she apparently didn't know any better someone stole them from my locker years and years worth of collecting gone i never got into collecting again after that quite a sad story for me similar our our house's basement flooded and i lost a collection of cards and did you yeah do you remember how old you were and that happened no devastating yeah basements seem like in america seem like dicey places to store things i feel like it's always flooding yeah uh yeah it makes sense yeah the basement just it was a finished basement so there's more access to it okay the attic was just a wooden plate in the ceiling yeah right with exposed insulation all right all that shit yeah we wouldn't go up there much um we have a great episode of this podcast called attics and basements if you want to learn more about that lauren said at the end of the pen 15 episode a listener writes that the parents were able to buy alcohol for minors at bars in wisconsin yeah a lot of people gave that was yeah that was amazing to me the uh most contested comment of the episode the episode was that essentially lauren says believe it or not this is true i'm from massachusetts am i saying that right yeah thank god but i've looked into this a lot because my mom was insistent that it was legal for us to drink as long as she was with us it isn't in that state of massachusetts but in wisconsin it's one of the states where it's legal this is from wisconsin's department of revenue website persons under age 21 may possess and consume alcoholic beverages if they're with their parents guardians or spouses of legal drinking age set the discretion of the licensee fucking crazy you're telling me you can have a five-year-old at a bar having a beer if the parents there holy shit yeah that seems wild i'm gonna i'm looking this is i'm looking i'm reading it uh persons under 21 may possess and consume alcohol if they're with their parents at a bar like what the hell is this how we've gotten to the point i mean i would imagine if a parent brought a five-year-old into a bar allowed them to drink give them permission that they would take those kids away yeah surely it becomes a um a health and safety issue for the child yeah i would imagine um but is a 10 year old any better to be boozing up on a cask of wine states allowing underage drinking with parental presence in a private location 29 states permit minors to drink in a private non-selling location with a parent present in consenting alaska colorado connecticut delaware georgia illinois iowa kansas louisiana maine maryland massachusetts minnesota mississippi montana nebraska nevada new jersey new mexico new york ohio oklahoma oregon south carolina texas virginia washington wisconsin and wyoming 10 states allow minors to drink even at a license establishment with parental approval and that includes wisconsin yeah connecticut kansas louisiana massachusetts mississippi nevada ohio texas wisconsin and wyoming so that's incredibly up like that's so weird yeah that's that's like that's bat i'd love to know how many kids are drinking with their parents like is it common is it like a thing of like here sonny have a little tiny bit of my wine you know what's the purpose try a little bit of beer what apparently the rules vary significantly some states require the parent to actually provide the alcohol that's a thank god others just require them to be present what so you have somewhere kids are like paying for their own beer with cash if their parents there uh well i think it is like a bar will not serve the kid even the parent allows but if they bring a flask it's allowed states like california and pennsylvania have no parental exception at all it's illegal regardless of permission yeah good yeah go california so most of these states set no explicit minimum age for the parental exception it applies to anyone under 21 three however there's a few Wisconsin is more restrictive okay the minors have to be at least 18 for this exception - that's a lot more sane in my mind Mississippi also applies only to those at least 18 for beer light wine it's kind of wild yeah and I'm sure not oh I'm sure most parents aren't doing this but the fact is legal just seems amazing to me yeah yeah I mean I'm taking Vinnie off to a bar and like giving him a glass of wine and that's okay you know I'm taking Vinnie off to a bar and like giving him a glass of wine and that's okay yeah I mean I get it a little more yeah I mean I get it a little more yeah I mean I get it a little more when it's like 18 19 20 oh as do I yeah when it's like 18 19 20 oh as do I yeah when it's like 18 19 20 oh as do I yeah it's like it's like a thing of I don't it's like it's like a thing of I don't it's like it's like a thing of I don't know I'm not a parent so it's like a be know I'm not a parent so it's like a be know I'm not a parent so it's like a be responsible yeah if you're or or like if responsible yeah if you're or or like if responsible yeah if you're or or like if you're gonna do it anyways yeah would you gonna do it anyways yeah would you gonna do it anyways yeah would rather you do it with me with some rather you do it with me with some rather you do it with me with some control yes where which yeah kids when control yes where which yeah kids when control yes where which yeah kids when they're 16 17 18 like that's when they they're 16 17 18 like that's when they they're 16 17 18 like that's when they get into drinking but bringing like a 10 get into drinking but bringing like a 10 get into drinking but bringing like a 10 a 10 year old out to the bar I mean I'm a 10 year old out to the bar I mean I'm a 10 year old out to the bar I mean I'm laughing it's it's one of the craziest laughing it's it's one of the craziest laughing it's it's one of the craziest facts that have come out of this podcast facts that have come out of this podcast and I want to know more I want to hear and I want to know more I want to hear and I want to know more I want to hear from any bar owners that have ever dealt from any bar owners that have ever dealt from any bar owners that have ever dealt with this like have you served a beer to with this like have you served a beer to with this like have you served a beer to a five-year-old for like the spread a five-year-old for like the spread a five-year-old for like the spread chat at gmail.com no judgment I just want chat at gmail.com no judgment I just want chat at gmail.com no judgment I just want to know do you let your kids drink at a to know do you let your kids drink at a to know do you let your kids drink at a bar with you in these places is that okay bar with you in these places is that okay bar with you in these places is that okay I know my parents let me have a beer I know my parents let me have a beer I know my parents let me have a beer with them when I was maybe 16 and I with them when I was maybe 16 and I with them when I was maybe 16 and I think their purpose was to make it not think their purpose was to make it not think their purpose was to make it not cool and just make it normal and not be cool and just make it normal and not be cool and just make it normal and not be something I had to like secretly go off something I had to like secretly go off something I had to like secretly go off and do yeah I'm sort of grateful for but and do yeah I'm sort of grateful for but and do yeah I'm sort of grateful for but it wasn't at a bar you know yeah okay it wasn't at a bar you know yeah okay Calvin is asked to have it well he loves Calvin is asked to have it well he loves Calvin is asked to have it well he loves getting mocktails oh great and sweet getting mocktails oh great and sweet getting mocktails oh great and sweet juice I like a mocktail and I will juice I like a mocktail and I will juice I like a mocktail and I will occasionally get a non-alcoholic beer occasionally get a non-alcoholic beer occasionally get a non-alcoholic beer mm-hmm at dinner uh-huh and he will ask mm-hmm at dinner uh-huh and he will ask mm-hmm at dinner uh-huh and he will ask to try that I will not let him yeah to try that I will not let him yeah to try that I will not let him yeah there's also like trace them like small there's also like trace them like small there's also like trace them like small small amounts of alcohol still and small amounts of alcohol still and small amounts of alcohol still and certain yeah but even that I was like no certain yeah but even that I was like no certain yeah but even that I was like no I don't well I don't need you to start I don't well I don't need you to start I don't well I don't need you to start craving beer don't get like what I craving beer don't get like what I craving beer don't get like what I said he's like this is my favorite drink said he's like this is my favorite drink said he's like this is my favorite drink yeah I'm pretty confident he won't yeah I'm pretty confident he won't yeah I'm pretty confident he won't because I've I have done this with because I've I have done this with because I've I have done this with coffee uh-huh where like he wants to try coffee uh-huh where like he wants to try coffee uh-huh where like he wants to try matcha or coffee and yeah we don't let matcha or coffee and yeah we don't let matcha or coffee and yeah we don't let him have caffeine not yet but we were we him have caffeine not yet but we were we him have caffeine not yet but we were we were backstage at a concert that had were backstage at a concert that had were backstage at a concert that had like a cold brew nitro thing and I was like a cold brew nitro thing and I was like a cold brew nitro thing and I was like all right I'll let you have a sip like all right I'll let you have a sip like all right I'll let you have a sip and he hated so much this bitter and he hated so much this bitter and he hated so much this bitter nightmare yeah it's like a kid who nightmare yeah it's like a kid who nightmare yeah it's like a kid who wants some sugar yeah he's like never wants some sugar yeah he's like never wants some sugar yeah he's like never again so he stopped asking try that with again so he stopped asking try that with again so he stopped asking try that with vodka next yeah vodka next yeah vodka next yeah outrageous very quickly McKinley said outrageous very quickly McKinley said outrageous very quickly McKinley said you're absolutely right the leisurely you're absolutely right the leisurely you're absolutely right the leisurely pace of supper clubs is a huge part of pace of supper clubs is a huge part of pace of supper clubs is a huge part of it I grew up going to them I have such it I grew up going to them I have such it I grew up going to them I have such memories of sitting at the bar with memories of sitting at the bar with memories of sitting at the bar with Shirley temples and ice cream while my Shirley temples and ice cream while my Shirley temples and ice cream while my parents caught up with friends or family parents caught up with friends or family parents caught up with friends or family McKinley was probably drunk the whole McKinley was probably drunk the whole McKinley was probably drunk the whole time as well going on what we're just time as well going on what we're just time as well going on what we're just learned she wasn't Richard says catch learned she wasn't Richard says catch learned she wasn't Richard says catch company episodes I just listened to the company episodes I just listened to the company episodes I just listened to the Goodyear blimp a bit behind anyway about Goodyear blimp a bit behind anyway about Goodyear blimp a bit behind anyway about white dog poo it was a thing here in the white dog poo it was a thing here in the white dog poo it was a thing here in the UK where I'm listening from when I was UK where I'm listening from when I was UK where I'm listening from when I was younger around 10 or 11 my brother dared younger around 10 or 11 my brother dared younger around 10 or 11 my brother dared me to lick a rock so I did I picked it me to lick a rock so I did I picked it me to lick a rock so I did I picked it up look like a rock licked it turns out up look like a rock licked it turns out up look like a rock licked it turns out it wasn't a rock hilarious and with that it wasn't a rock hilarious and with that it wasn't a rock hilarious and with that we reached the end of another flightless we reached the end of another flightless we reached the end of another flightless bird episode if you have any info about bird episode if you have any info about bird episode if you have any info about drinking at bars as a child drinking at bars as a child drinking at bars as a child age between three and ten I'd love to age between three and ten I'd love to age between three and ten I'd love to hear from you if you were a member of hear from you if you were a member of hear from you if you were a member of Lifespring or any other cults or just Lifespring or any other cults or just Lifespring or any other cults or just have any feedback at all flightless have any feedback at all flightless have any feedback at all flightless birdchat at gmail.com we have bonus birdchat at gmail.com we have bonus episode up over on our patreon patreon.com slash flightless bird we have an instagram account like and subscribe thanks for listening see you next week see you next week