What If The Truth Is a Lie? Breaking Free from The Jehovah's Witnesses

What do you think happened?

So I'll ask you, what do you think was there?

SPEAKER_00: What's up, my friend, and welcome to Grit Grace Inspiration.

I'm your host, Kevin Lowe.

Twenty years ago, I awoke from a life-saving surgery only to find that I was left completely blind.

And since that day, I've learned a lot about life, a lot about living, and a lot about myself.

And here on this podcast, I want to share those insights with you.

Because, friend, if you are still searching for your purpose, still trying to understand why, or still left searching for that next right path to take, well, consider this to be your stepping stone to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

What's up, my friend, and welcome to the podcast.

This is episode number 221.

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So, what are we talking about today?

What's going on with today's guest?

Her name, Sally Locks.

We've got a lot going on.

I have got one of the most amazing guests on the podcast today.

Sally is a woman who has had a really crazy life.

She has been through the thick of it all.

She's escaped, though.

She's come out the other side.

And she's here to share it with you today.

Sally, as a child, would be involved in a cult in the Jehovah's Witnesses.

And it would leave a profound impact on her childhood.

You're going to hear all about it.

But what's amazing about Sally's story is that that would not be the end of her story.

No.

You're going to hear her talk about the importance of a butterfly.

The story of a butterfly is truly impactful in Sally's story.

And I'm going to let her share it with you.

I don't want to spoil the surprise.

But what I do want to say is that there's the story of another butterfly that isn't spoken about in our conversation today.

And that's the story of the butterfly that I believe Sally Lotz represents.

Because just like a butterfly that's trapped in its cocoon, constantly fighting, struggling to break free.

That was Sally Lotz as a child.

Trying her might to break free of the constraints of a life that she was put into out of her control.

And yet she did not give up.

She kept fighting.

And soon enough, when the time was right, she would break free.

Now, once you break free, that doesn't mean that it's easy.

No.

Oftentimes it's gonna be even more difficult.

But the time spent in the cocoon, building her strength, it prepared her for what was to come.

And when you're somebody as amazing as Sally Lotts, well, maybe the world is your sky.

And she would fly through the sky like the beautiful butterfly that she is.

Today I get to present her story to you.

I get to introduce you to this absolutely remarkable woman who has a story to share that I hope, that I pray, inspires you.

That if you are constrained by a cocoon in your life, whatever that cocoon may look like, that this will be the inspiration to break free.

To experience what lies on the other side.

When you're no longer constrained to the cocoon.

SPEAKER_02: At first I was excited, not about the Christmas part, but it was like, oh, we're going to church.

But quickly found out, nope, this is not church.

And a bunch of other rules came along with it.

One of which was there's no heaven and there's no hell.

And when you die, you're dead.

You're just buried in the ground until Jehovah comes again and destroys the world with Armageddon, and then you'll be in paradise on earth.

Well, as a seven-year-old, that just didn't seem right to me.

That didn't sit right.

I didn't really have, you know, a Bible background or anything like that, but it was just like that doesn't seem right.

And I was out playing in the park one day by myself, and you know how kids like to jump off the swings, pretending you can fly.

Well, I took a nice big jump and I landed on the ground, and there in front of me was this blue butterfly, and it was dead.

And so I took the opportunity to test God as a seven-year-old.

I said, I was gonna bury the butterfly, and that if God was real, that naturally the butterfly would go to heaven and its little body wouldn't be there anymore.

But if Jehovah was real, then the butterfly would still be there when I went to unbury it.

And so I just covered it, you know, with some bark, and I made a little stick grave marker, and then I counted to 10, and I kind of felt this warmth all over me.

Then I went and unburied it.

And I always ask people, what do you think?

What do you think happened?

So I'll ask you, what do you think was there?

SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm gonna hope to goodness, nothing.

SPEAKER_02: You're right.

There was nothing there.

And so from that point on in my life, as this as a young child, I knew Jehovah was a lie.

And so I had some sort of faith in God, but I I didn't know what it was.

I just knew that Jehovah was a lie.

And that's my story of the blue butterfly.

And as an adult, I found out later that blue butterflies, I grew up in Chicago, pretty much don't happen in Chicago.

So yeah.

SPEAKER_00: That I mean, that's a really powerful story.

Really powerful.

Now, now take me back, if you would, to how this all got started with with your mother getting involved with Jehovah's Witnesses and in that whole part of your life, because as you said, you weren't in that from the beginning.

That's not all that you knew.

SPEAKER_02: Right.

Well, my mom had a pretty rocky life.

She had a very wonderful childhood.

Her mom passed away when she was really young, but my mom got pregnant when she was still in high school.

And at that time, that was the 50s, it was the late 50s.

And so she got married, and then she had four more babies.

And that marriage was not a good marriage at all, very abusive.

Then she got divorced, and then she had me.

And she just had a lot of different situations that happened where she was making the really bad choices.

Because after me, my father married her along with basically my four older siblings.

So there was a lot of us under the age of 10, and my dad took them on as his own children and was a great dad.

Then my mom messed that up with an affair, and then our family got all split up all over the place.

My brothers went to live with their dad.

I went to live with my mom and my sister, and my dad was gone.

But my stepfather joined us.

And then my mom got pregnant and had another baby.

And apparently she didn't know what caused that.

But we never ever went to church or anything.

We never talked about anything like that.

I do remember going to church with my cousins at one point.

Eventually, we ended up in Chicago, and our next door neighbors, we lived in an apartment building, and our next door neighbors, we could see into each other's apartments.

It was old, old Chicago brownstone buildings.

And so we made friends with them.

Well, this lady came over and was talking to my mom and quickly preying upon my mom's messed up life and told her about she could see her mother again someday in paradise if only she would learn about Jehovah.

And so that is what convinced my mom to become a Jehovah's Witness.

And she went full bore head-on into it.

Then my stepfather became a Jehovah's Witness too.

And so I had no choice.

But from that point on, life changed drastically for me.

My stepfather was very abusive, and so was my mom.

And you would think joining, you know, a religious organization would be helpful, but because it was a cult, the abuse just got worse.

You know, it started with just one thing, just mental abuse, physical abuse, and then it just spread from there.

Because the feelings were basically you can do what you want if you say you're sorry, and then Jehovah will forgive you.

And there's no there's no outside people to help you.

You're not allowed to go to the police, you're not allowed to report anything.

Everything's done through their elders.

So as a kid, I quickly learned that there was nobody there who was ever gonna stick up for me.

So, you know, that only made me realize how wrong it was and what liars they were.

It only proved my point, you know.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Wow.

Now, for for those of us who are not familiar, explain to me, Jehovah's Witnesses, what what it even really is.

You you you you called it a cult.

So talk to me a little bit about what it even is.

SPEAKER_02: Okay, so Jehovah's Witnesses have been around since the 1800s.

And they are the world's oldest and the world's biggest doomsday cult.

They believe that when the generation that was born in 1914 has passed away, that Jesus is going to return again.

Now, obviously, that generation has pretty much passed away.

So they've changed the rules.

They believe that only 144,000 chosen, they call them the anointed, are going to be going to heaven.

And of course, it's men.

Of course.

And that anyone who follows Jehovah's Ways, who is a baptized Jehovah's Witness and follows all the rules and makes Jehovah happy, will live through Armageddon and live in Paradise Earth.

Armageddon is coming at any time, and I've been hearing that since 1971.

They have a lot of other prophecies and things, but they continually change as they fail.

They change their beliefs and then they flip-flop around a lot.

But that's one of the major things that they believe.

They're ruled, well, I say ruled, but they say managed, by a group of men in New York called the governing body.

And of course, they're also old men who they say God speaks to them directly.

And however, they have so many failed prophecies that they have to keep covering their tracks.

They keep, you know, they keep changing changing things because obviously God got it wrong, right?

They have a lot of rules to follow.

And everything is designed to keep you in fear and to keep you obeying Jehovah.

And I say obey Jehovah because that's their hierarchy.

It's like it's Jehovah.

And you never ever know if you've done enough to get into paradise because you could just do one thing.

You could look at a birthday cake, you could walk into a church accidentally, you know, you could say the wrong thing, you could have a thought, and then that Jehovah no longer loves you.

I think most people know that there's no birthdays, Christmas, basically no holidays.

There's a lot of other things too, like women can't pray in front of men, women have to wear dresses, there's a required number of hours each week of going door to door and doing street work, preaching.

There's an acquired number of hours to attend meetings every week.

But Job's witness was will always tell you, no, that's not true.

However, they like to lie about what they believe, and they practice shunning or disfellowshipping as they call it.

And you can be disfellowshipped for any reason that the elders see fit.

For example, I met a woman who was being sexually abused by her uncle, and she went to the elders.

She was questioned by the elders, she was 14.

She was questioned by the elders, and then they punished her because she came to them without having two witnesses.

That's required.

You have to have two witnesses to report somebody.

So they publicly from the pulpit, they publicly what they call reproved her and told people, don't talk to her.

However, the uncle was brought in and talked to, and they pretty much told him, you know, hey, we understand what happened.

Did you ask Jehovah for forgiveness?

And he said, Oh yeah.

And so he was sent right back out.

No punishment because he didn't break a rule, according to them.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: That's why it's a cult.

There's a lot of there's a lot of rules that are cultish behavior, following the one leader, just fellowshipping and shunning.

And their whole system is built on being the exact opposite of Christianity.

They do not want to have anything to do with the Christian community, even though they call themselves Christians.

They believe that the Satan himself is ruling Christendom, and that that is why they don't have buildings called churches, they call them kingdom halls.

That is why they don't go to services, they go to meetings, they don't do communion.

There's a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Wow, wow, wow, wow.

Now, something that I'm curious about is the story that you shared at the beginning about the butterfly.

SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00: How long had you guys been in this world when that happened?

SPEAKER_02: That was probably, let me think.

My mom started to study, and it was the summertime, and that was about fall.

So I'm going to say like six months.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Really quick.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because that's the indoctrination process.

They don't want you to think about it too long.

They want to start pulling you away from family, friends.

They start love bombing you.

And immediately they tell you your friends are going to tell you that we're a cult or that we're a lie.

You can't listen to them.

It's better if you just don't associate with them.

So they start pulling you away.

So it's it was rather quick.

SPEAKER_00: So here's what I'm I'm curious about is here you are just a child, and you're you're in this, your mother is in it, which naturally, as a child, you would think you would follow along, you know, with your mom.

But you have this thing inside of you that led to this moment with the butterfly.

And you proved that Jehovah wasn't real.

But you're still a child, you're still living at home.

Correct.

So how does that impact the rest of your childhood?

SPEAKER_02: The rest of my childhood, wow, yeah, I was scared all the time.

I also tried to stay invisible a lot and I learned to be quiet.

Because one, at school, people would ask me, you know, to come to parties if I made friends, right?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: But I wasn't really allowed to have friends outside of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

But you can't help that at school, you know, kids are friendly.

So I I tried not to associate or talk to the other kids.

I kind of stayed shy by myself because if I got asked, I would have to explain it.

And I thought it was stupid.

So that that was a problem for me.

And then just, you know, I had I figured out ways to never have to talk at the door.

People thought I was really shy, so I just, you know, I went along with it.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: But I was also frightened because I was told all the time that demons were going to attack me.

You know, like I literally couldn't have certain toys because I was told you bring that into the house, a demon's gonna get you while you're sleeping.

You watch that movie, a demon's gonna get you.

So there was a lot of fear too, because I also am a child, you know, and you're supposed to be able to trust the adults in your life.

And those things frightened me.

And there was a fear too that, you know, Armageddon could come.

I mean, I didn't really, I didn't believe in Jehovah, but I it's ingrained in my head 24-7, right?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: And just on top of that, being in an abusive home, you know, it kind of was all piled on top of me.

So I tell people I was very quiet and invisible most of my childhood.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Now, what I'm also kind of curious though, is how did you get out?

Because I would imagine it's not something easily to just say, uh, peace out, I'm out of here.

SPEAKER_02: No.

Yeah.

So there's there's one thing that really saved me, and that was because I didn't believe I never got baptized.

And I was pushing the age where I should have been a baptized member, which is about 15, 16.

Now it's about nine, eight, or nine.

They want you baptized.

SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02: A baptized member is basically an adult.

I would become a sister.

I could be reprimanded, I could be punished, I could be disfellowshipped, I could be shunned.

So I just, you know, I never did it.

The point came where I was, I think I was about 15, probably turning 16, and I had a boyfriend who was not a Jehovah's Witness.

I only saw him at school.

We didn't have cell phones, we didn't talk on the phone, you know, we passed notes and like held hands in the hallway and had secret rendezvous at the library, you know.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Big time.

I mean, he knew my he knew my situation.

I said, I can't do anything about this.

If you want to hang out with me, this is what it is.

At the same time, my stepfather, he's a pedophile.

And he'd been abusing my older sister for years.

And a lot of other things.

He was physically and emotionally abusive.

And we had told my mom many, many times about.

The things he was doing.

And my mom would go to the elders.

And remember, there's no witnesses.

SPEAKER_00: Yep.

SPEAKER_02: My mom would go to the elders and they would say, Just go home, leave it with Jehovah.

Don't call the police because they'll take your kids away.

And my mom was alienated from her family, from her friends, from anybody who would have, like, that's a lie, you know, would have stepped up and helped.

So about this time, somebody finds out that I had a boyfriend.

My mom drags me into the elders where I am questioned by them, a 16-year-old girl, me and three old men in a closed room.

And they asked me sexually explicit questions.

Some of the things I had no idea what they were talking about.

And then I just, you know, I left there kind of like in a daze and in a fog.

And I'm thinking, I'm getting in trouble for holding hands.

And for 10 years, my stepfather has been abusing our family and probably sexually molesting other young women and men in our congregations because we moved a lot and nobody's doing anything about it.

I'm literally holding hands in a hallway, and this is what happens.

And I said, I am done.

And my mom asked me, you know, so what are you going to choose?

Are you going to choose Jehovah or the boy?

And I went, Well, I'm choosing the boy, mom.

And her face just dropped.

And so I had to stay in the house for about it was about three weeks.

And nobody would talk to me.

Nobody would talk to me at the Kingdom Hall.

I had one of my Jehovah's Witness friends come up to me and call me a liar.

And I stayed for three weeks because I was going to go live with my dad.

And I had to wait for him.

He was at sea.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

SPEAKER_02: And I'd never lived with my dad before.

I'd spent probably one week every other year with him.

I didn't really know him.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: And I'm pretty much scared of men because all the men in my life, except for my brothers, were terrible.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: So that was a very traumatic situation.

It turned out okay, but that whole time period was just, you know, I was on edge.

Thankfully, I didn't I had someplace to go.

Otherwise, I would have been out on the street.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Now, when you moved with your dad, did you move far away from where you were living?

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

At this time we lived near San Francisco and my dad lived in San Diego.

So I, in the middle of my senior year of high school, I moved to San Diego.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

Wow.

So much for a teenager.

SPEAKER_02: I know.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

I mean.

Wow, wow, wow, wow.

So at that point, then, where does life take you at that point?

SPEAKER_02: Well, it took me on a journey because, you know, my dad didn't know anything about that life.

He didn't know anything about it.

And I wasn't going to tell him because, you know, it was like I was a victim and I was nervous and I was embarrassed and I was scared.

And I thought, you know, I'd done something.

And so I tried my best.

You know, I finished my school year.

I tried to, you know, get jobs and go to college.

But it, I just, I couldn't find a place.

There was like, you know, big gaps in my life that were just big open wounds.

And, you know, back then you didn't go get therapy.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Back then there was no internet.

I couldn't go online and, you know, go talk to anybody.

I did have a job where I worked in a department store and I met some nice, I met a couple of my coworkers were Christian.

And that was my first experience with Christians.

They invited me to go to this big church.

It was like a college church.

And I was like, okay, but I was really, really nervous to go because my whole indoctrination had been church is evil, church is evil.

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

SPEAKER_02: And even though I had that butterfly story stuck in my head and I remembered it, it's still a battle.

So I went.

And I just started learning some things.

And I actually got a real Bible instead of the Jehovah's Witness Bible, which is changed and altered, and just, you know, started reading it.

But that showed me about the real God, but I was still pretty broken.

And fast forward, I got married when I was when I turned 20.

We'll skip all that part.

I got married when I was 20 to a man who was 10 years older than me, who was a Southern Baptist.

And I thought, you know, that's what I need.

I need a good man to take care of me.

He's an engineer, you know.

That was something that had been ingrained in my brain as a child.

And that turned out not to be so good.

I had three children before I was 27.

I had my three sons, which I'm thankful for them in 100%.

But around that time, after my third one, he was about three, I started having severe panic attacks and in such a way that I couldn't leave the house.

And people kept telling me, you know, I'm depressed or this or that.

I'm like, yeah, no, I'm not depressed.

But yeah, it turns out I was.

So I started, you know, getting counseling and doing the work.

And, you know, that was when I first started opening up about, oh, I grew up in a cult.

Oh, I had an abusive home.

Oh, my current husband is abusive.

Oh, you know, all these things started lining up, and I started to connect the dots and become a better person and want different things.

And my ex-husband, who was starting to believe in uh you've heard of, is it the Bill Gothard?

Is that his name?

SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.

SPEAKER_00: It's the kiss.

SPEAKER_02: You know who the Duggers are?

The 19 kids.

Okay, so they belong to a cult.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

SPEAKER_02: And it's it's it's on uh Amazon Prime right now.

Well, looking back now, I see that that's where he was going.

He was believing he was starting to follow that leader, and he was starting to tell me I needed to have more kids, and I was under his umbrella, and Christmas was gonna be gone.

And I was like, nope, no, nope, I'm not doing this.

So that was a divorce.

But I kept working on myself.

That's where I started writing, actually.

That's when I started to write.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

No, yeah.

First and foremost, I just want to say, like, congratulations to you for the fact that you saw where that was leading and you said no.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

Yeah.

That was like big red flags.

I was like, and I just like I would get physically sick.

I'm like, yeah, this isn't right.

Nope, I'm not doing it.

SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.

I mean, that is just oh, that that's just that's scary.

That that's just all the all the feels, but at the same point, I'm like, way to go.

Because you realized it and was like, no, no, I'm not going there.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: And that's easier said than done when you're married with children and you know, all of that.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.

Because I had three sons, three little boys.

And it's like I didn't want to get a divorce, you know, but you know, I didn't have any I had skills, but I hadn't worked.

I was the mom, you know.

I was the I was the literally the Kool-Aid mom.

Everybody came to my house to play because I was the only mom home.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: At this time.

And I love that.

I loved that my kids could come home and I was there and that all the other kids, you know, had a place to go and it was, you know, safe and that I could help at school and whatever.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.

So so talk to me kind of where you were leading into was getting started in writing.

How did that come about?

SPEAKER_02: Part of that happened because, well, two things.

I forgot in the middle there.

My dad, my dad passed away when I was about 25.

So I didn't get much time with my dad.

So one of the things they told me to do was to write a letter to my dad because he didn't know any of this stuff.

I was like, okay.

So I did that, and that was very cathartic and helped me see a lot of things that I had kind of glossed over.

Then I had to write a letter to my stepfather.

And that was a hard one because we talk about forgiveness, but it doesn't mean that you have to forget.

So I had to do the forgiving part and then move on.

I didn't forget because that's what I wrote about in my book, which we'll get to, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

SPEAKER_02: So I started writing that way, but I've always been a writer.

As a little girl, I wrote plays and I would write stories, but Jehovah does not like it if you are not directing all your efforts to him.

So my stories either had to be about Jehovah or not at all.

So I said, not at all.

So it kind of rekindled that I started writing, you know, some poems, little short little blurbs in a book, and I just kept them to myself.

I didn't share them with anybody until about 10 years later, when I met this wonderful woman where I worked who was a writer, and she really encouraged me.

She said, I don't know why you're not writing.

You're so creative.

I was working on accounting, by the way.

SPEAKER_01: Okay.

SPEAKER_02: You're so creative.

She goes, You have such a positive.

This is how she talks.

You have a positive aura around you.

You're just such a beautiful person and you're so kind.

And I can tell you have things to say and you make people laugh.

And I said, Oh, okay.

If you, I mean, I really valued her opinion.

And I don't think if her and I had never met and if she had never said that to me, I probably would still be scribbling in a notebook and not doing anything with it and being visible because that is my true passion.

Yeah.

Um, it's what drives me now to do everything I do.

SPEAKER_00: Well and well, real quick before you continue, okay.

I don't know if you were a different person back then from who you are today, but I would venture to say the same exact thing about you.

SPEAKER_02: I think I'm the same because if you go back and you read my report cards, I may have been shy and quiet.

All my teachers said that I was a joy and a delight to have in class.

I kind of, you know, I was never trouble.

SPEAKER_00: So I guess there's that.

Because I mean, I mean, honest to goodness, I mean, I know we're getting a little sidetracked here, but that's okay.

But what I had to just comment is you are though, like literally, as you talk, you can hear the smile in your voice.

You literally are like a ray of sunshine.

SPEAKER_02: You sound like my report cards.

I think that is what that part of me is what kept me going all of those years.

That I had something around me.

I had the positive, I had the sunshine, and that's what just kept me going.

I I I want to share one little thing before I forget because I just popped into my head, and it might be important to somebody.

When my mom told me the first time we were going to go to church, I was really excited, and I imagined a huge stained glass window and pews and little gloves on my hands.

I'm a writer, I can't help it.

And we got there, and it was this building that was made out of, I forgot what you call those bricks, but they're like the con big concrete bricks and no windows, and there was a there was bars on the doors, and inside was one big room with folding chairs, and that was it.

And there was a there was a stand for the the man to talk to us from.

Fast forward to what I consider my first church that I found in California.

I walked in and I just looked, said this is my home because big, ginormous stained glass window was the whole side of the building.

It was lit up from above with skylights and just these big pews.

And I said, okay, I think this was that vision I had when I was a kid.

And I know a church is not that, I know a church is not the building, but that's what made me stay there and meet those people and become friends with those people and really grow, grow more.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that is absolutely gorgeous.

Well, you know what we're gonna do?

We're gonna consider you from this point forward our own little stained glass window.

SPEAKER_02: Okay.

I'll take it.

SPEAKER_00: It's so stained glass window.

As we continue, so you have this lady who tells you you need to start writing.

So what happens?

SPEAKER_02: I started writing.

I decided I was gonna write for children.

And because I had wonderful times with my kids making up stories, we could just do it like, you know, in a flash.

I started just going to classes and going to workshops and finding friends who were writers.

And I wrote, I had three picture books published, but I forgot how that happened.

But I think it was my ex-husband, my ex-husband number two, who we don't need to talk about.

But um we're gonna skip him.

He gets nothing.

Okay.

Um he told me, Oh, you should write your biography about growing up in the Jehovah's Witnesses.

And I said, Nah, nobody cares about that.

And I don't want to write a biography, you know.

I'm I'm old, who cares?

You know.

So uh I was uh I was at a conference with a bunch of my writer friends, some agents and some editors, and we were having dinner.

And my friend told me, hey, you should tell her about your life with your mom.

They were talking about moms, and they were all trying to outbeat each other with their terrible mom stories.

And I'm like, well, okay, I got I got one for you.

My mom kicked me out of the house, she's in a cult, and she lives with me right now.

And they're all looked at me.

They're like, Why aren't you writing this?

And I had, you know, the blanks.

They're like, I don't know how to write it, I don't know what to write.

And she just said, just write it.

Uh I went to a couple more conferences, still didn't write it, but I went to one where there was about writing your life but making it fiction.

And after the third person got up and explained what she had written or he had written, and I was in tears because their stories were just like just hit so hard.

I go out in the hallway, and remember the boyfriend I had in high school?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: His cousin was standing in the hallway.

I never met her before, but they had the same last name, and it's a very long Italian name.

And I said, Hey, do you know Greg?

And she said, Yeah, that's my cousin.

So this was a conference that was a global conference.

People from all over the world were there.

There was probably 2,000 people there.

And I run into her in the hallway.

So I decided that day to write my book.

And it's called The Truth is a Lie.

And I wrote it as young adult fiction, and it's based on my life growing up in the cult, but I added some other people's stories, kind of melted things, some things together.

But all in all, it's it's my story.

And I wanted to write it that way for awareness so people could understand truly the depths that this is a cult and truly what's going on.

Also, to be that voice to somebody who needs to hear that voice and to say, hey, you know what?

I can get out of this, or hey, my friend is in that.

I need to talk to her and see what's really happening in her or his home.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Wow, wow, wow, wow.

So when when did you publish that book?

SPEAKER_02: That came out May 1st, 2023.

SPEAKER_00: How how did it feel when you finally published it?

SPEAKER_02: It felt really good.

It had a long history to get published because I was agented and out on submission, which means publishers like Scholastic and Penguin, the big publishing companies, are looking at it and trying to decide if they want to buy it.

When my agent dropped me and I was no longer on submission.

And at the time I had, well, I chose her, I had three agents who wanted my book, but I chose her.

And then I went back to try and find an agent, and I had a hundred and twenty-five no's for this book because COVID hit and nobody wanted my story.

It was too dark.

So I decided that my this book just couldn't die.

I had too much invested, and it's too much of a story.

God moved so many things in my life that I knew that He didn't want me to just let it sit on a shelf.

So I just I independently did it.

So when it came out, I was kind of like, oh, finally.

I was kind of tired.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: But what's what I'm really enjoying more of is hearing people who read it and what they're telling me.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: That's more of where I'm getting, you know, like, you know, I did the right thing.

This is right, I did the right thing.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Wow, wow, wow.

Yeah.

Now you mentioned something earlier, and it tied in perfectly with a question I wanted to ask, but it made me even more compelled to ask it.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00: Was what happened with your relationship with your mother as time went by, as you grew older, as well as your siblings?

And you mentioned that all of a sudden you said something about your mom was living with you.

And so I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we gotta hear what we're doing.

SPEAKER_02: I knew, I know.

There's so many, so many facets.

Well, because I wasn't a Jehovah's Witness baptized as a Jehovah's Witness, my family was still allowed to talk to me.

However, we don't have a relationship like normal siblings.

I'm kind of like an afterthought, like, oh, we need something.

Let's ask her.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_02: So I have seven, I have six siblings.

And at this time, my mom, I was married and I had a house with three bedrooms and a sp and a spare room.

And my mom, who has not worked her entire life, had no place to go because she's broke.

And so I said, I have a room.

I was thinking I will do the Christian thing and take care of my parent because I'm a Christian and that's what I should do.

I should, you know, I should love.

Rules were no Jehovah's Witnesses could have meetings or anything in the house.

I didn't want any of that in my house.

And she was, okay.

My siblings did not help at all.

As in monetary.

So that that kind of upset me because I have siblings who were Jehovah's Witnesses.

Then when I got divorced, we ended up renting a house together where I had some more roommates, and my mom was with me still.

And at that time, I was in therapy again, and I was really realizing that probably not a good idea to have my mom living with me because she hadn't changed.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: She had never acknowledged anything that she'd done.

She never acknowledged that she was a horrible person, horrible parent.

And so I just had to call my brother one day and say, hey, she can't live here anymore.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Now none of them talk really talk to me at all because they know about the book.

And I'm considered an apostate, which means I'm preaching lies about Jehovah.

So they only randomly text me when they need money for her, which is I don't have.

So I don't do it.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: But I'm not going to anyway.

SPEAKER_00: Of course.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Yeah.

That's that's tough.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's tough.

It's tough.

SPEAKER_00: How has that relationship, this this really just terrible relationship that that happened between your family, your mother, your your siblings, how did that impact the way that you were became a mother to your sons?

SPEAKER_02: For me, I wanted my kids to grow up and be able.

My philosophy was I don't care what you do when you're an adult for a job or whatever, I don't care if you go to college, I want you to be happy.

Whatever you choose.

I'm not going to decide for you.

But I also wanted them to have family bonds and to celebrate, you know, holidays, birthdays.

And I didn't go crazy.

You know, like I wasn't the like, I'm gonna overcompensate by buying you five million presents.

You know, it was, you know, it's realistic.

So consequently, my children are all super smart.

One's an engineer, one's in the restaurant industry, another one is a statistician for the school district.

He was a physics teacher.

They joined the military, they're super close with each other.

They've all lived together at various points in their lives.

Right now, two of them live like a mile apart from each other.

Which for me I love because I don't have any relationships like that.

I don't have sibling relationships.

Yeah.

Um, I don't have relationship with my mom.

Of course, I lost my dad when I was young, so I don't have that.

But my kids are super close to me.

They take care of their mom.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: I love that so much, so much.

Now, we talked about writing, but you also became a writing coach, helping others tell their story.

Talk to me about that.

SPEAKER_02: That I love because I've run across a lot of people who tell me, well, as soon as they find out I'm a writer, oh, I want to write a book.

Or I started a book or I did this.

And I'm always like, well, what happened to it?

They're like, oh, I don't know.

You know, I just came up with this wild hair one day after I getting yelled at by my boss for being called a failure.

I decided to quit my job and become a writing coach.

SPEAKER_00: Well, that works.

SPEAKER_02: It works.

I said, this isn't my passion.

And so when I'm working with people, is it doesn't have to be a traumatic story like I have.

There's a lot of people who are, for instance, coaches and they had something happen in their life and they want to explain it and they want to share it with their clients and work with their clients.

Or there's people who in the middle of the night had a, you know, oh, I had this great idea for a book.

You know, it's a romance novel, but they don't know what to do with it.

So that's what I'm doing.

I'm just coaching them through the process.

It's a 30-day process, which is pretty fast.

But I say if you've been sitting on your book for six years, what's 30 days, right?

SPEAKER_00: So, so whoa, whoa, whoa.

So you're saying that you help them write a book in 30 days?

SPEAKER_02: Yep, it's called Write Your Book in 30 Days, No Experience Required.

I've written four books in 30 days.

It takes a commitment, but I also do hourly, but that's I think if you have a book to write, it's in its time that we can do it in 30 days.

So altogether it's a six-week process.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Well, that's pretty exciting.

Now, where where can people go to learn more about that?

SPEAKER_02: My website, which is my name, which is super easy, it's sally lots.com.

And I do free, I call them coffee chats, so you can schedule a time and we can just chat, and I'll you can tell me about your project and I can tell you, you know, a few things.

I don't use templates or formulas or anything with people.

I'm literally a VIP coach holding your hand through the process from start to end, so that you're not just trying to connect the dots and come up with something.

I'm there to work with you.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's amazing.

Has there been anybody who without you know sharing their detailed story, but somebody who's really left an impact and made you realize, hey, you know what?

I'm doing what I should be doing.

SPEAKER_02: I just started this in January, but I have had a couple of clients.

One, she was been writing her book for six years and keeps putting it away.

So I worked with her when she finally got it done.

And she is already getting a book deal.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

SPEAKER_02: Um, because her book is that good.

SPEAKER_00: Yes, wow.

SPEAKER_02: Um, the other, the other young lady, we're doing a little bit of a slower process.

She's not doing the 30 days, she's doing the hours here and there.

She's had a lot of trauma in her background, and I am happy to see her giving back, having turned it around and helping other women in similar situations.

So I'm I'm happy to see that.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: I'm at that it's that her words, her life is gonna be have an impact on somebody else and help them out of a tough spot.

And I have a lot of people who come to my free, I have a free online, uh, I call it paper trail.

If you go to my website, you'll see that.

It's just a free co-working space where everybody comes and they share their ideas and what they're working on and they ask questions.

And I've had quite a few women, which seems to be what I'm attracting, is women who've had serious struggles in their early life and been able to turn it around.

And they want to, they want to be the voice for somebody else who is in that same situation.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: But that, you know, I work with men too, but that just, you know, that just happens to be who's been attracted to me lately.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

I love it.

I love it.

Now, your book, is that also found at your website?

SPEAKER_02: You can get it on my website.

It has a link to Amazon, but I also have a link if you want to buy an autographed copy.

I sign it and I send it to you.

SPEAKER_01: Woohoo!

SPEAKER_02: Woohoo!

SPEAKER_01: We love it.

We love it.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's you go through my website, there's a link to Amazon.

It's on Kindle as well, so you can get the Kindle version.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, amazing, amazing.

Yeah.

Well, listen, Sally, I want to just sincerely thank you for for sharing your story.

Uh, just this real honest look at life.

You know, none of us can control, you know, a lot of times what necessarily is gonna happen tomorrow, but we can have influence and we can choose how we want it to go from there.

And when I listen to your story, I look at you as this woman who, as just a child, there was something inside of you that knew there was more out there, that there's more beyond what your family is telling you, that the world is telling you you knew that there was more because the butterfly was gone.

And I listened to you, and I think to myself, what a ray of hope you are to anybody, no matter what their situation is, is that they can get through it just like you did.

And I just want to thank you for for being so open and honest today to share that with me and my audience.

SPEAKER_02: Well, you're quite welcome.

I'm glad we got connected and I could be on here.

This was a great experience.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, well, thank you so much.

And for you listening today, my hope is that you have taken something away from this interview, just as I have.

And that, you know, you can take something said, something mentioned, and put it into action in your own life.

And if nothing else, please be sure to check out today's show notes where I will leave a link to Sally's website where you can check out all that this amazing woman has going on.

And with that said, my name is Kevinow, and get out there and take home the day.