Dawn Smith
Benefitting ManifestWorks
When Dawn Smith was born in 1978, the evangelical fundamentalist group known as The Assembly, started by her father and led by her grandfather, was already in full swing. They were living in communes separated by gender, and given schedules to account for each minute of the day, mostly spent in prayer. Things like dating, television, science, nail polish, piercings, and dancing were all forbidden (wife-training was a thing). Meanwhile, accounts of abuse continued to go unaddressed by a sinister group of leaders hell-bent on maintaining power and control, until the victims started sharing their stories, bringing Dawn closer than ever to the truth. Eventually, Dawn left The Assembly with her sister, husband and new baby, was introduced to things like movies, and television for the first time, and found her footing in a new exciting world. In this episode, you'll hear why Dawn says that “as hard as leaving was, the hardest day of freedom is better than the best day in a cult.”
Wise Words
“That’s the interesting thing about cults is that they’re never all bad. People stay in cults because there’s just enough good in them to keep people in them.”
“We targeted college kids because they are on their own for the first time. They’re vulnerable, they’re lonely, they’re looking for community, they’re out on their own, and they’re open to pretty much anything.”
“There’s these wonderful people who move through the world and check on other people to see if they’re okay. And I experienced those people throughout my childhood. And it was just for a moment because I always told them I was okay, but it was what I needed. It was like a little flashlight shining its little rays in my dark corner and saying, “Hey, this isn’t okay. Are you doing okay? Are you safe?”
“Cults can never change from the inside. It’s based on this lack of accountability and control. It’s a flawed system.”
“So slowly but surely we started giving more and more of our tiny little student paycheck to blockbuster, watching movies we’d never seen and TV shows we’d never seen. I tried on bikinis and then I took the bikinis off and I decided bikinis are not for me, but I made that decision. I decided to try to get a wax, a Brazilian wax, and I was like, wowk those hurt like hell, but I made that decision.”
“I could clap without someone being like that is satanic and you are exhibiting too much joy. I listened to music and started discovering what music I liked. I remember the first time I went to a comedy show, my first live concert was U2 and it was amazing. It was exactly like being in my dad’s house, listening to Bob Dylan. I was like, I couldn’t even process it all because it was just all of these things coming at me, all this amazing music. I was just transformed. We were in the very back row and it was the best thing ever. We went to comedy shows and I realized I absolutely adore comedy. And so it was life changing. What I like to say is as hard as leaving a cult was, the hardest day of freedom is better than the best day in a cult, is really what it comes down to.”
“I was afraid that if someone found out that I had been raised in a cult, I might lose my job. So I never told people I worked with and I really stopped talking about it until Trump became President. And then I felt like I had to talk about it because it felt so very cult like, it felt so much like the assembly with people justifying violence and hate speech and just falling in line behind someone who’s a pathological liar, just like my grandfather.”
“I had to learn how to put up boundaries because I never learned that because you don’t have boundaries in a cult. Everyone tells you how to be, and controls you, and so I had to learn how to say, “this is my family. These are my children. You are not allowed to speak about this or say these kinds of things.”
“I would say, I definitely believe we have a spiritual side to us, and I’m happiest when I embrace that. But I no longer ascribe to a certain belief system. I will definitely call out to a higher power, be thankful for what I have. But I also think that maybe there’s not a God. I don’t know anymore. And I think I really love being in a space where I am comfortable saying I have no idea.”
Links
Dawn’s website: pushbackfilms.com
Facebook: @pushbackfilms
Twitter: @pushbackfilms
Instagram: @pushbackfilms
Charity: manifestworks.org