#13: Flor Edwards is an author and lives in Los Angeles, California. By age twelve, Flor had lived in 24 different locations across three continents. Always on the move to escape the Antichrist and in preparation for the Apocalypse in 1993, her nomadic childhood prompted her to pen her memoir Apocalypse Child: A Life in End Times. In her debut memoir, Flor movingly describes her early life growing up with her family and 11 siblings as a member of The Children of God, a controversial religious movement that many describe as an apocalyptic cult. Join Ashley and Flor as they sit down to discuss her childhood, and most importantly, her recovery!
#13: Flor Edwards is an author and lives in Los Angeles, California. By age twelve, Flor had lived in 24 different locations across three continents. Always on the move to escape the Antichrist and in preparation for the Apocalypse in 1993, her nomadic childhood prompted her to pen her memoir Apocalypse Child: A Life in End Times. In her debut memoir, Flor movingly describes her early life growing up with her family and 11 siblings as a member of The Children of God, a controversial religious movement that many describe as an apocalyptic cult. Join Ashley and Flor as they sit down to discuss her childhood, and most importantly, her recovery!
Connect with Flor:Website: https://floredwards.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/floredwardsauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/florcedwards
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/floredwardsauthor/
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Show Notes:
3:13 - Flor’s childhood and describing life inside the cult and some of the beliefs
6:27 - The cult’s founder, Father David
7:44 - Discussing some of the aftermath from the cult lifestyle
14:25 - Re-integrating back into society
21:13 - Talking about the Apocalypse that never happened while living in the cult
24:30 - Talking about her education
25:52 - Substance abuse, the desire to "numb out” and her suicide attempt
29:15 - The power of recognizing potential, and speaking about writing
36:13 - Working her recovery, and writing about her suicide attempt
41:14 - Noticing the differences between the worlds they grew up in and the world now
49:12 - The fascination with the mind in correlation with growing up in a world where she was taught what to think and feel
53:32 - Speaking about her experience being her identity
1:00:00 - The power of “agency” (to be your own person)
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Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame and I am your host. This is episode 13, lucky number 13. We have Miss Flor Edwards today. Flor Edwards is an author. She lives in Los Angeles, California. By age 12, Flor had lived in 24 different locations across three continents, always on the move to escape the anti-Christ in preparation for the apocalypse in 1993. Her nomadic childhood prompted her to pen her memoir Apocalypse Child: A Life in End Times. In her debut memoir, Flor movingly describes her early life growing up with her family and 11 siblings as a member of the Children of God, a controversial religious movement that many describe as an apocalyptic cult.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Please, please, please stick around for this amazing interview with Flor, gives us a beautiful look into reintegration into society after such an experience and it's a journey that we don't often hear. So, I am really, really excited to have you guys listen to Flor. Feel free to Google her and you will see all sorts of interviews including Dr. Oz and her various interviews on radios, other Podcasts, and television. And, check out her book Apocalypse Child: A Life in End Times, which can be purchased on Amazon. All right guys, you're in for a good one. Episode 13, you know what's next. Let's do this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, Flor, I want to welcome you to the podcast booth. So, we've been talking about your story and growing up in a cult, and you have this amazing book talking about it, and you were in Children of God.
Flor Edwards:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You know, I do want to get into, you know, tell people about where, what that was and what happened in your life, but I do want to get into how you recovered from that childhood and I think that's something that isn't talked about as much. People want that shock and awe of the cult piece, but the healing piece to me is the fascinating part. So, I'm really about that. So, can you... I mean, you've talked about this a million times so can you give us a little bit of background on Children of God and what happened there?
Flor Edwards:
Yeah. Well, not that we started talking it's almost like I want to start-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You want to start in the middle? Okay.
Flor Edwards:
... and go backwards a little bit.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Let's go backwards.
Flor Edwards:
It's hard for me to just go all the way back.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
All the way, yeah.
Flor Edwards:
Especially if this is what we're going to talk about.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Let's start where you want to start.
Flor Edwards:
We can start with, yeah, my family moved out to California.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
From?
Flor Edwards:
From Chicago. So, we were in Chicago and my family moved out to California, and I at some point realized that I had grown up in a cult and it was very shocking for me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you know that word?
Flor Edwards:
So, when I was little they would actually practice, drill us, with questions like, "Did you grow up in," they used the word sect, and they would tell us how to answer because we would often be questioned. Or, we would be prepared to be questioned because certain homes would have raids, so you know there was-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But, was it illegal? I mean, I read it in your book that you guys would do these drills in case the homes were raided, but for what?
Flor Edwards:
So, there was some practices that went on. There was some very free sexual beliefs. There was instances of child abuse, whether it was physical punishment, or again, instances of sexual abuse. That happened more towards the 1970s. When the 80s came around and a lot of the children started to be born and it became more of a children rearing bootcamp is what I called it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Flor Edwards:
But, yeah, there were still instances because the leader had these very kind of experimental beliefs and that's a whole nother topic, it takes a lot just to explain what this man was trying to do. I just actually wrote a whole paper on it in one of my classes, because it's in some ways really fascinating. He was trying to break free of a lot paradigms that he found to be very restricting. He was a religious man, his name was David Grant Berg. So, in my book Apocalypse Child I refer to him as Father David because he sort of thought he was kind of running this army. He called all this followers his family, so it was a very community based group. People dropped everything to follow him. A big part of his allure was his radical beliefs and those had to do with sex, with love, with child rearing, with education, he thought also... he was very against capitalism. He thought the west was very evil and they were doomed, and he also believed the world was ending.
Flor Edwards:
So, a big part of just our practical day to day life was based on this idea that we had no future. So, we-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, 1993.
Flor Edwards:
1993 was the date the world was supposed to end. I was born in 1981, so I grew up childhood never knowing that I would be an adult.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Which is really fascinating, what that... There are these conversations people have like, "What if you were to die tomorrow?" Or, "IF your life were to end in a much short span of time, what would you do with that time? How would you think about things?" And, you actually grew up in scenario where it's, okay, you only have your childhood, what are you going to do with it? What's the mindset? What's interesting about Father David what you talk about in Apocalypse Child was his parents were, I think, his father-
Flor Edwards:
Evang.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They were Evangelist and he rebelled against them.
Flor Edwards:
So, he actually came from a long time of Evangelist so it was sort of like dating back at least 100 years.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, okay. Wow.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah. Coincidentally, it was also like this pattern of ostracization where they would rebel, which I think is common. I don't think everyone just wants to go along with the status quo. Somehow he sort of came from this long lineage of religious people, but also people-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Rebels.
Flor Edwards:
Kind of like religious rebels, exactly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, but they would each like indoctrinate the next generation, but then rebel against it.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, it think so. Kind of, and yeah I found this out all through research. I didn't know much about this man growing up. I never saw him. I never knew what he looked like.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But, you knew he was your leader.
Flor Edwards:
He wasn't just leader, he was like God to us. We weren't allowed to speak against him. We weren't allowed to say anything, it was considered blasphemous, but yet we never knew-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Who he was.
Flor Edwards:
... who he was really. When I started writing my book I started to do a lot of research on him.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. So, you've lived in a ridiculous amount of places.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They moved you all over and I wonder is your relationship... In order to have a nomadic lifestyle you have to be more or less willing to give up a lot of stuff. It's hard to carry a lot of stuff with you. Having reintegrated into society now, do you have weird relationship or struggles with things as representations of safety, or stability, or not, or you can't handle them?
Flor Edwards:
I think honestly the opposite, a little part of me is still detached from material things.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Flor Edwards:
I wish I was a little more kind of like materialistic and wanting things to identify with, but I have my basic needs and I'm good with that. Yeah, I mean, growing up, yeah, we had like nothing. I had two pairs of shorts or skirts, or whatever it was we wore in tropical countries. I had like two sets of clothes and that was really it aside from a toothbrush. So, yeah, we lived within very little means. And, yeah, we were on the escape from the anti-Christ, so the leader was always trying to figure out this one world leader that was going to rise to power so that's we were constantly moving, and we were also kind of on the run, again I found this out later.
Flor Edwards:
When I was little, it was kind of exciting and it was, as unbelievable as it sounds, we were taught to believe that we were running from the anti-Christ, the bad guys, whatever story was relayed to us. But, we were a little bit on the run from the law, not directly but maybe indirectly. So, I think the constant moving kept is difficult to find. Sometimes, in certain countries they would get raided but for the most part we would evade officials, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And, you have 11 siblings?
Flor Edwards:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I'm the fourth oldest of 12.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Of 12.
Flor Edwards:
So, there's 12 of us all together, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow. Because, they didn't believe in birth control?
Flor Edwards:
Yeah. And, they believed the world was ending so they were trying to have as many kids sort of as any army for the end time which was going to be coming soon.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, what was the army supposed to do if the world was ending? Save people?
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, so I think that actually was one of the biggest things I had to heal from as a child was this idea that I was... even now I struggle as an adult, like when things happen... I'm even going through this thing right now where I'm like, I assume everything's my fault, but I think that's what we do as humans, especially as woman.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes.
Flor Edwards:
We want to think that everything's our fault. Recently, I've just come to the realization that there's certain things that are completely out of my control. But, as a child... the way the child's brain form, you know, the things that are indoctrinated for a young child, they're ingrained almost permanently. So, for us, it was this narrative that was told to us that we were responsible to save the entire world, that we didn't even know about because we lived within these walls, like we didn't even see the outside world.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, you guys were totally closed off and in foreign countries.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, but we were told that we were... this idea that we were the chosen, we were the special ones, we were the ones who were going to lead people. Only the people who were saved were the ones who were going to go to heaven and everyone else can go to hell. So, that was one part of my realization of this idea that I'm not responsible for the things that I thought I was responsible for as a child.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Is there a feeling of, like when you feel like a martyr or is there a feeling of power, or feeling of responsibility in a positive way, like when you were a kid? Or, was it just-
Flor Edwards:
I don't know. I think it was a lot of fear. It was more fear than anything, because I think they had to just keep on sort of regulating us. So, even though the story that was being told to us sounded very heroic, we were going to be these heroes basically.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, that's what it sounds like.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah. Totally. They would make cartoon pictures for us that made it look like we were these heroes, but the day to day life of that was a lot of fear, and a lot of control, and a lot of keeping us contained so that we didn't step out of line so that we didn't arouse suspicions that no one inside the group would start to get curious about what was going on outside. So, I would say it was more fear than excitement.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, you talk about, in Apocalypse Child, you talk about a moment where you're in Thailand and you are seeing a pregnant woman who is clearly being beaten by her husband, or tells you, and that you realize in that moment that she's neither good nor bad, that you and she are the same.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, I think she say she was not lost and she wasn't bad.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's right.
Flor Edwards:
Because, we were taught that everyone outside of the group, they were either evil or they were lost. So, we either had to save them or else we had to sort of, you know, they were going to hell. And, I just had this encounter with this woman where I just realized she was just another person. So, that memory really stood out in my mind.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like, were these like cracks in the story, like different cracks in the story of what was being...
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, that narrative that was being told to us. I mean, starting a fairly young age, I did start to have questions for sure but we weren't allowed to question, we definitely weren't allowed to voice them. So, anything I did think about I would just sort of keep inside. Thankfully, I did have sisters that sometime we would talk, but never would we talk about leaving. We would just more... sometimes we would laugh about things or we would find light of situations and that was sort of our coping mechanism. But, yeah, we weren't allowed to question anything.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, and you're an identical twin which really excites me because I have twin boys and interesting how it's a curious experiment of two people going into the same situation and coming out, and how does each person deal with it differently, heal differently. I'm curious about, you know, we talk about, on this podcast, we talk narratives all the time because we're all in some sort of sect belief system, right?
Flor Edwards:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, like yours happened to be very nomadic, very against the grain so to speak, so that's why it's more shocking. But, we all have belief systems and narratives that go on, and fear based ideas, and I'm responsible for this, and it really guides us. What do you think about the, like, reintegrating into society? Were there some big realizations that you had about how people tell themselves stories, or how people believe things, or how people... children come to believe things? Did you have any big realizations coming back in?
Flor Edwards:
I always have big realizations, even now. I mean, that's why I continue to educate myself because it's the only way that I think I can cope with this crazy world that we live in. And, I think it's not my experience, I mean my experience was very different, but all it did it was heighten something that's already there, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. That's what I mean, there's something... even though it's different, there's some similarities to it.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah. I mean, the truth is Father David was trying to escape something and that's what I like to focus on is how these people were able to buy into this belief system if they weren't also trying to escape something. And, then for us, I guess the traumatic part was kind of being dumped into this world, but also having this very heightened awareness because aside from all the heroic end of the world narratives that we were being told, we were also being told things about how evil the world is, and it is very evil. I mean, I'm even still figuring out stuff as an adult, you know, that-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, me too.
Flor Edwards:
You meet people and you're like, "Oh my God, I really didn't know that evil does exist in this form."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. And, so does it ever kind of mess with your mind like, "Was some of it real?"
Flor Edwards:
Oh, constantly, yeah. That's why I do want to write another book that's more picking apart what this thing was. Yeah, there's definitely... I think there's truth to everything and I mean even, like I said, in my classes I just taking, even this idea of sexual liberation, this isn't a new idea. This is something that's been going on for 100s of years if not more and, you know, this idea of repression, you know, and then the separation of religion from the body, this is not a new concept that Father David thought of. I would say that I was just a massive social experiment gone wrong.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah.
Flor Edwards:
In some ways it's really sad and we can all sit around and have a pity party over it, and I do. I've had a lot... I've definitely gone through a lot over it, but in the end I also have to get up and live this life that I never knew I would have, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. You didn't expect it. When you have your pity parties, who are the guests?
Flor Edwards:
Just me, myself, and I.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Just you, yeah. What-
Flor Edwards:
No, I talk to people, I mean-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What are the things that you think like, "I lost time," or what are some of the...
Flor Edwards:
It depends. Lately, it's just been this, I mean, I know it sounds weird but I've been having age anxiety and I realize it's because I've hit an age where I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I really didn't know I was going to live to be getting close to 40," that's crazy. In my 20s, it was like, "Oh, cool." I was going through-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I'm winning the lottery, like I'm... bonus time.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, I got all these years and then... When we were little, too, we never had contact with old people. We never had that archetype of a old... I mean, I'm just talking the physical features.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, elderly.
Flor Edwards:
Elderly person with the wrinkly skin.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They did not...
Flor Edwards:
They didn't exist in my world, because we were all...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Knew-
Flor Edwards:
All the adults were in their 20s and 30s and then Father David was this big giant lion.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Gosh, that's something I would've never thought about. Yeah.
Flor Edwards:
I literally just realized this a few months ago because my last grandparent died and I didn't know her, so I wasn't sad. I was just like, "Oh, okay. My grandmother in Sweden is now gone." And, it did also make me realize like, "Oh, okay. So, it's my parents and then it's me," you know, because they always say when your parents are gone you have this whole... and I'm not there yet, but. And, then I was like, "Oh, every," I mean, most everyone, not everyone, even if it's not your grandparents you have these old people and I think it puts age into perspective. We never had that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How interesting.
Flor Edwards:
I would maybe, like out on the streets in Thailand, maybe see but it was a very... almost like a cinematic experience and these people, I mean, I don't know if you've been to southeast Asia or a third world country but like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Everybody looks older?
Flor Edwards:
No, but the scenes that you see in the slums, they look exactly like you would imagine. So, it wasn't like I was up close with these people, it was like a scene from a movie with like an old person squatting by a river or like a slum. It was very distant. It was very far away. So, I think back to my pity party, it's kind of like where did the time go? And, how am I going to make the most of it at this point? I think when you're younger you're just kind of like a little more carefree. And, I finally hit the age where time is extremely precious and every day just feels like it's going, going, going.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Going so fast, yeah. That's interesting that the time factor was a big piece because none of know, like we have an expectation, I think at least in America, we have an expectation that we're going to live, I don't know, between 70 and 80.
Flor Edwards:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Something in that range.
Flor Edwards:
Life expectation, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, your relative life expectancy. So, what do you do with time or how does it feel if you're told you have a different amount of time? And, apparently that makes a big difference.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, and I think... one time someone asked me, and this again was as I started to get older and I was doing other things, we weren't allowed to think about the future and we weren't allowed to make plans for the future. And, I think that's quite... that will affect a person, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Flor Edwards:
So, even... sounds weird, but I have a hard time making plans.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, that's... yeah.
Flor Edwards:
Like, it's hard for me to like, okay, this... I mean, I live my life and I figure out what I need to do, but when people have these long terms plans I'm like, "How do they do it?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. It's something we do without thinking. I mean, it would literally never occur to me not-
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, you're taught that way as a child.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes. It's interesting that we teach about time based on those things, and that time is actually a really important part of whatever society you grow up in because it's really-
Flor Edwards:
But, it's also an illusion.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Flor Edwards:
I mean, a big part of healing part of yoga for me was learning to live in the moment and whatever that meant, I mean, I don't know if you do yoga but connecting with the breath and then just be... healing can only happen in the present moment, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Right.
Flor Edwards:
I mean, because the past and the future are both just in the mind, so to actually being your mind into the present moment and to live fully in the body, that was healing for me and that's how I started to just be okay with who I was.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, you come back at 14 to California from...
Flor Edwards:
Chicago.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
From Chicago, and when did you come back to America?
Flor Edwards:
I was 12 years old, so leading up to '93, the predicted sequence of events that was supposed to happen according to Father David and according to the bible, which I talk about in Apocalypse Child, were not happening. It wasn't something we talked about. I was kind of getting closer to like a teenager so I was not so much worried about death and I wasn't having these really kind of morbid thoughts, but I was becoming a teenager. My body was changing, I started to also think about this idea that soon I was going to be possibly forced to have sex with people that I didn't want to. So, my priorities sort of shifted and as it got closer to '93 the leader has his revelation from God to move everyone back to the west, because he had moved all this followers out of the west because he believed the west, Europe, and North America would be the first ones to be demolished in the apocalypse.
Flor Edwards:
But, as that didn't come true, he was like, "Okay, not we all need to move back to the west." So, my family we were going to either move to the states where my dad's from or to Sweden where my mom's from, and just by a luck of the draw... literally, they would make decisions by throwing sticks and opening books and stuff, we moved to Chicago. So, we were in Chicago for two years and that's when the leader died. That's when the cult started to disintegrate and then... I have family out here in California, so my family eventually drove out to California.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, what happened when... Was it, sorry this is the only thing I've experienced, Y2K, what happened when it-
Flor Edwards:
Oh, Y2K.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... like, when it didn't happen. I don't know if you remember Y2K when we were just like, "It's all going to fall apart!"
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, I remember that. I think ever year there's an end of the world.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, and you're like waiting... so, like in '93, you know, when January 1st, 1994... were you like, "What is happening?"
Flor Edwards:
It was anticlimactic, again, because I don't know if you know much about the bible, in the revelation there's a seven year period that's supposed to happen.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Got it, okay.
Flor Edwards:
So, '93... it wasn't really '93, it was '86. I was like five, so I mean, that date was in mind but as the... what is it called? Like, the last seven years basically.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, okay.
Flor Edwards:
Because that wasn't coming to pass, it was also kind of slowly being pushed back. So, '93 wasn't like the big moment. What we were really waiting for was a person, and Father David was constantly trying to predict who the anti-Christ was. So, he would like... his political jargon was, I mean, just... he would go off about Russian leaders and American presidents, and Middle Eastern leaders and he would just pray and have these prophecies, and trying to find who was this one world leader that was going to come to power. And, yeah, none of them really quite fit his predictions, so.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, that was there the dissonance came. Were you like, "Yeah, this isn't going to happen."
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, I don't know if it was conscience or if it was just like, here we are. I mean, I know everyone always wants like a much better story, maybe one day I'll start making one up.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, no.
Flor Edwards:
So, we all went in the bunker and we sat and we waited.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, exactly. And, then I realized... yeah, exactly.
Flor Edwards:
But, no. It-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I have some ideas about who the anti-Christ might be.
Flor Edwards:
Really?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know. [Christiana's 00:24:28] like, "Don't say that." So, you go back to high school. Did you have any education?
Flor Edwards:
Mm-mm (negative). No.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you learn to read?
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, I learned to read very young. My mom taught me to read, I was like four. But, we could only read the leader's propaganda or the bible, so that was all... I never read fairy tales or children's books, narratives. And, we learned math, very basic math. I went to high school for a little bit but that was disaster and I just... I was pretty much drunk or high.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But, that was when you reintegrated?
Flor Edwards:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). That's when I was starting to reintegrate, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. So, when you started to reintegrate and you had this total opposite experience, how did they pick a grade for you? Did you test?
Flor Edwards:
Oh, no. I was 15.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, so they just put you in age wise?
Flor Edwards:
I think, yeah, I just went into as a freshman. My dad put us into a homeschooling program, I went there for like a year or two and then we went to high school. And, yeah, I was set to graduate a year early but I just... there was this one class, I think it was an art class, that I didn't take. So, I got all the credits for high school I just missed by like a unit. So, my dad put us straight into college and in college we did test in. So, we went to community college and surprising just did really well in all our classes. So, English, math, history, all those classes, I just did really well and then I ended up getting into Berkeley having absolutely no education as a child.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's amazing. That's amazing. A lot of our listeners struggle with substance abuse and relate to the desire to numb out. You talk about that, about wanting to numb out and using drugs and alcohol, and even suicide attempt.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Can you tell us a little but about what was going on then and what started that?
Flor Edwards:
Yeah. I can't even remember a first time that I like did something, whether it was drink alcohol or take a drug. It was just sort of I moved to California, and yeah, around 15, 16 maybe, I started to hang out with the crowd that was doing all the bad stuff. So, I started drinking, started smoking pot, did a few other things, but I never, thankfully, didn't get hooked on speed or any of that, the white which I... I'm not into that stuff. I would go to parties, I would take hallucinogens, but I think the day to day high school was really rough socially. And, my sister and I, my twin sister Tamar who I talk about in my book, we just needed to numb. We wanted to kind of forget where we are, what we were doing, it was right after I realized I had grown up in a cult.
Flor Edwards:
I don't even think I could cope with it. I don't think I would've gotten through that period without numbing out, to be honest.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. And, that's actually something we talk about a lot which is that alcohol and drugs are the solution and then they become the problem, right?
Flor Edwards:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, they're originally the solution and help us.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, they're kind of like... I think we take them either to feel deeply or to not feel at all. And, then it's kind of... For me, the real healing, like I talked briefly about I don't know if we were on the air yet, but yoga to be honest.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, so you... you started... When did you stop your substance abuse?
Flor Edwards:
Abuse, probably when I started going to college. And, I think again my attention shifted. I have my own ideas on all that. My ways of getting over things... I don't believe in stopping thing... like stopping, if you're addicted to something the substance is not the problem, and I think that's a big... I mean, I'm not counselor, I'm not like... Don't take my advice medically, but I did have my own addiction to something and I had to figure out psychologically what that was. What was I avoiding and what was I numbing? That was a much deeper much longer process than if I was actually one day able to be like, "Oh, let's stop this."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Flor Edwards:
Thankfully the things I was doing were things like alcohol and I even also had, I don't talk about this at all, but I had a eating disorder body image. So, for me it was about figuring out what I was trying to escape and coming to terms with that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What were you trying to escape?
Flor Edwards:
Honestly, when I really deep into it I began to realize I was escaping my potential. And, I was never taught that I could be anything growing up. I was never asked what I wanted to be growing up, and to all of a sudden be faced with this entire life ahead of me as a teenager, and regardless of how difficult or how weird my background was, I knew that I had inside of me a lot of potential. Because, regardless of what your external circumstances are I think deep inside we're all the same, and I just had a really vivid awareness of it and I was terrified of it. I did know I wanted to write, for sure, like just pen to paper to me felt really natural. I like people a lot. I liked talk to people. I noticed also I had this sort of like, almost like a gift when I would talk to people.
Flor Edwards:
This wasn't when I was teenager, but as I started to integrate more into the world I had a way being able to even speak publicly. So, I think my abuse was my fear. It was my way of just not having to face to certain things, now I mean do also the hard work. And, honestly the real kind of abandoning of my addiction came when I started writing my book. I could no longer indulge in that. I mean, writing is extremely healing. You can't not face what it is you need to face when you write. So, I always say, "You can't lie to someone, you can lie to yourself, but you can't lie to a blank page." You can't sit and put words on the page that aren't true.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's really interesting. So, you felt like writing your story specifically?
Flor Edwards:
I think coming to terms with the demons in my mind, honestly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Writing what was in your mind?
Flor Edwards:
Well, yeah. Well, my mind was my limitation, you know? That's what you learn in yoga is the body... well, the body has it's limitations too, but the mind is really what's going to take you to those deep, dark places. Our bodies our so resilient.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's very true.
Flor Edwards:
They are. I mean, I study this, again, it's not formal training so I'm not in any way some kind of doctor able to prescribe things, but it was like a self study. So, when you write, especially when you... Once I chose to write out my narrative, it was like there was no avoiding anything, it was all out in the open, but I also wanted to do something. So, it was that cathartic act of kind of crating something into something else. I don't if you've heard this one before, but there's no creation or destruction, there's only transformation. You can't create or destroy energy, you can only transform it.
Flor Edwards:
So, I think when we're addicted we're trying to destroy something, but you're not going to be able to change that into a creation. You're going to have to transform it into something. So, I think that was sort of what I realized. I couldn't run away from it. I couldn't get over it by running away from it. I was going to have to turn it into something productive.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes.
Flor Edwards:
And, that was my book.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I love that. I love that. And, Tamar, did she go through something similar?
Flor Edwards:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, we actually both started yoga together.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You did, and how old were you when you did that?
Flor Edwards:
We started when we were 19. Yeah, so almost 20 years ago. We both had... we both loved it. We both had similar but also different reactions to it, and yeah, I think it was healing for both us, for sure.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How did... you guys decided to take a class one day, or how did that come about?
Flor Edwards:
We took a class in college. It was just like a really ancient practice yoga, and then we started reading books. And, I think again, it was... I started practicing by myself, and then I started going to studios, that's actually when I met Patrice. And, then other teachers would tell us, "Oh, you should become teachers." So, we actually stopped going to college, we did not go to Berkeley, I don't want to talk about it, it's in my book, but instead we pursued yoga and that was great.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Really?
Flor Edwards:
Yeah. It was a great time in my life. I traveled, I did a lot of teaching. So, that was about 10 years.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow. So, you guys... I mean, you felt that it was important to follow that?
Flor Edwards:
It was, yeah. It was like a lifestyle, and yeah. It was about more than just physical health. It was like physical, spiritual, mental, emotional health and I, again, I did a lot of reading so it wasn't just like going in and practicing something. It was, again, understanding I think from talking about addiction, it's like the desires of your soul. I think our souls are hungry for something. Again, this is how Father David started this whole thing, these people were hungry or something. They wouldn't have done what they did if there wasn't a deep dissatisfaction and that's what I'm more interested in knowing other than like the sensational like, "Oh my God, how did these people do this?"
Flor Edwards:
So, I guess as a person, just me as a human being, I needed to understand what this thing was that I grew up in, but also where I was now and to me it was the same. It was the soul's yearning, you know? And, yoga, anything that's kind of a little more ancient, I think, because we live in such a disconnected world. We're completely cut off from our true nature, and I'm able to reconnect. Like, when I studied I took a Native American literature class, any time of connection I think is healing. I think connection to nature, connection to, healthy connection, to another person, a connection to yourself. So, I think that's where spiritual, mental, psychological, emotional healing come in.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it's interesting because you're talking so much about... your recovery is so similar, if not precisely the same, as what it takes to get sober where basically you are yearning for... you have a, we call it a void, an unmet need, there's something that you're not getting basically and you have to numb out in order to deal with that and of course that's a self destructive path which leads you to be incredibly miserable by virtue of all the things that come with it. And, then getting sober, it's about putting down the substance, the anesthesia-
Flor Edwards:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), and feeling that emptiness.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Flor Edwards:
That you filled up with whatever it was that was, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Filled up with all this stuff, yeah. Filled up with... and, then a lot of the time what we do in treatment, we'd have people write, this is why I was interested, we have people do their timeline or write their narrative, their life story and put pen to paper that way and figure out kind of where are they starting, like what are my beliefs? Because I don't think we know. Until you do start doing that writing and that work, I'm not sure we know what our beliefs are because we just act them out on a daily basis, and then finding a spiritual, soul fulfilling path, or activity, or something that allows us to not have that void and continue, and also community.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah. And connection, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, and connection. Connection in the community. I mean, isolation is as damaging as drugs and alcohol.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, totally. Yeah, I think also like... I guess the question comes like where is this void coming from? Why do we even have it in the first place? And, that's a question probably can't even answer whether it's something that happened when you were a child, whether it's genetic. But, I think there is also a factor of like we live in this very disconnected and over stimulated world. For me, I just have to shut off. I don't do a lot of practice of anything, but because I did it for so long I do have these little, like just little techniques that I whether it's connecting with my breath... I don't meditate religiously but I have to shut off the world or else I would go absolutely insane. I would not be able to handle it. I think it can be extremely overwhelming, but I think that's a reason why a lot of people want to numb out, you know? Especially if you're... and, I talk about this is the chapter where I do attempt suicide.
Flor Edwards:
That was a very difficult chapter to write and I was like, "How do I approach this? I read other writers who had written about attempts-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What do you mean approach it?
Flor Edwards:
How do I approach it as a writer, because it happened and then you choose as a writer how you're going to approach it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like how to frame it or how to talk... like, it's painful to talk-
Flor Edwards:
How to write about. No, how to write... I mean, I should've brought the book with me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I have it.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, I could read a quick little excerpt.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's on my...
Flor Edwards:
So, this, again, it's when I gave a little narrative about the decision to commit, or to attempt suicide and yeah it started with this numbing. I think I say something like, I'll start here actually. I won't read the whole thing but I'll read a few passages.
Flor Edwards:
I started to play a game with myself in which I attempted to see how much I could drink and still maintain my sanity. Even when the world around me started to spin and I slipped in and out of blackness, there was a center inside of me that said, "Don't lose it. You got this. Don't let anyone know how far you've gone." I hid my belligerence, I masked my intoxication, I developed a sense of self control and it was my new found identity. It made me feel proud, it made me feel invincible. Since I had control over nothing else in my life, at least I could control my wild drinking.
Flor Edwards:
So, then I talk a little bit about how I would basically go and have these drunken rages with these friends, and then one day I get into a fight with this girl and I just decided this is too much for me. So, I decide that I'm going to take something. So, I find a bottle of asprin and then here's the part where I talk about when I say, "How do I approach this?" How do I really talk about this because I'm not just going to recount what happened, so this is how I approach it.
Flor Edwards:
There's a euphoria that accompanies the ultimate choice, which is death. There are color and light. There's acceptance. People who want to die are not in that moment depressed, they are very much alive, maybe too alive. They're physical senses are heightened. There is so much beauty, in say, the color of a traffic light, the sound of a lawn mower in the early afternoon, or a song that comes on the radio at the perfect time. Such beauty fills you with equal parts dread and euphoria so that there is no difference between the two. It's pure feeling, pure sound, energy, light, vibration. There is no judgment. That's what wanting to die feels like. It's indefinable. It's beautiful. Some even say it's art.
Flor Edwards:
So, I think what I mean by that is the idea of empathy and that people who go to those dark places, they might actually be the people that feel very deeply and that's why they have to numb. So, I think that's how I wanted to approach it, to let people know it's not... when people choose to want to do that, it's not because they're sad, or depressed, or bad. Maybe they're actually the really sensitive people who are just feeling everything around them. So, that's what I wanted to highlight in that chapter.
Peter Loeb:
Hi, I'm Peter Loeb, CEO and co-founder of Lionrock Recovery. We're proud to sponsor The Courage to Change, and I hope you find that it's an inspiration. I was inspired to start Lionrock after my sister lost her own struggle with drugs and alcohol back in 2010. Because we provide care online by live video, Lionrock clients can get help from the privacy of home. We offer flexible schedules that fit our client's busy lives, and of course we're licenses and accredited, and we accept most private health insurance. You can find out more about us at Lionrockrecovery.com or call us for a free consultation, no commitment at 800-258-6550. Thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I think that's 100% accurate that they are... it's too much, it becomes too much and are unable to deal with... this is the best, they've waiting out and they feel that this is the better solution, the final solution. Do you see a, having grown up in a world that had a lot less stimulation, do you see a difference between what that was like for you and behaviors that created in children today?
Flor Edwards:
I don't know. I mean, I was talking to my sister, one thing that we noticed is that we're really physically healthy because we were not allowed to eat junk food, we grew up on no sugar, vegetables, fish, soy protein, basically rice. And, we were talking to each other, my sister, she's like, "Do you notice that everyone gets allergies?" She's like, "I never get allergies." We don't get sick. Anyways, again, I'm not a medical doctor so I have no idea.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, that's really interesting.
Flor Edwards:
But, it's like, yeah isolation and being cut off from the world may affected me in one way, but also it may have affected me in a good way. But, yeah, I wasn't allowed to watch anything, I wasn't allowed to watch TV or take in any form of media. So, in some ways, I never... when people talk about certain TV shows or certain things that I feel like I should have a reference point for, I still just simply do not and I'll never adjust to that. But, yeah, in some ways I think also that sensitivity to stimulation, which I think what happened is I think this world is over stimulating for anyone, but to be almost incubated from it and not allowed to experience it as a child when you're forming just gives me a much higher sensitivity to it. So, that's why I have to do the things that just give me a moment to sort of shut off the world and find that place within me that's always there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, you see those of us who've grown up in this society as having a much higher threshold for the stimuli?
Flor Edwards:
Maybe. I don't know. That's a good question, but at least they're used to it. I don't know. I don't know, maybe.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's a, again, it's a social experiment like, what happens when you do this? And, how do people... I just wonder about that. You were talking about the void, what people are really struggling with ultimately, which is again, coming back to the substances or whatever the outside thing is that we're focused on is what's filling the void, that feeling. And, when we take that away we're dealing with the pain of slowing down and being.
Flor Edwards:
Slowing down, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And, being in our bodies.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, I don't like the term withdrawal because that sounds negative. I think negative connotations of anything...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's a bummer.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm going to tell you, it is a bummer.
Flor Edwards:
I don't like it. It's almost, again, it's speaking from a perspective... I come at it from like, to me meaning of language is extremely important. So, certain words just carry negative connotations with them and I'm sure you would know this, but I'm guessing in recovery, the recovery genre or whatever you want to call it, there's certain things that we talk about and it's almost like, why are we calling it withdrawal? It's not withdrawal, it's awareness. You're becoming aware of something that's there. It's not, again, about that substance. It's whatever it was that you were trying to fulfill.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, I think with the withdrawal piece there typically is a physical experience.
Flor Edwards:
Actual physical, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And, I think we call it withdrawal being negative because in my experience you're vomiting, crapping your pants, your skin's on fire, your eyes are watering uncontrollably so it feels like a very negative experience as far as experiences go. I'm going to put that in the negative category, but I do... and, the other thing is we talked about the bonding, the community, the connection.
Flor Edwards:
Connection, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
See, when I was using, my connection was to that substance. I took away the connection with people because people were unsafe and unpredictable and I wasn't in control of the people are me, and I knew that and life had shown me that very clearly. But, I could be... I knew exactly what vodka, heroin, cocaine, was going to do every time, more or less.
Flor Edwards:
Oh, interesting.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Even when it was bad. I knew at least, even if it's bad, I knew what it was.
Flor Edwards:
It was predictable, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, for me, I had a relationship with my substances. So, when you took those away from me, I was losing the only connection that I had during that period of time.
Flor Edwards:
Interesting.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And, so it felt like I was divorcing something.
Flor Edwards:
Interesting.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It felt like I was losing a life partner, I was losing this... I was losing a cane that I needed to walk.
Flor Edwards:
Interesting.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It was an appendage. So, for me, that void... what started as the desire to numb out, the desire to cope, became a deep relationship.
Flor Edwards:
A connection almost, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah, because that's what I was looking for and so I created that with that, with something. And, eventually that connection was taking me all the way down to the bottom. So, eventually the solution to all my problems became my biggest problem. So, when I got rid of that, when I stepped away from that, there was a lot of emotional baggage and pain to deal with there and there was definitely a lot of physical from removing them. But, then I dealt with exactly what you were talking about which is this empty vessel that I had been filling with chemicals for so long that, I mean, to be honest with you I don't even... I'm actually going through some, you know, doing some more recovery stuff and I'm back in this place where I'm experiencing some of the things that I experienced when I first got sober.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And, I'm like, "I don't know what I'm feeling." Like, I'm having these conversations I remember getting sober and being like, "Well, how do you feel when you do this?" Or whatever it was, and I seriously couldn't connect. I couldn't even connect with my body. So, I actually did a lot of yoga for a long time and that's how I know Patrice. I got really, really into Bikram Yoga.
Flor Edwards:
That's what I taught.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, for me, Bikram Yoga, and I'll say this is the one thing I've ever experienced on the planet, unfortunately it's 90 minutes and it requires a lot of showering so it's hard to fit it into my life these days, but Bikram Yoga did something for me that no other yoga practice has done. It forced me to not think about anything but what we were going to do next and how to get the hell out of that room, and eventually I learned to love that but it's so hot that my brain can't function. For me, as someone who needed a break and needs a break from my brain, it was the only break I've ever gotten that was healthy and completely shut it off that wasn't making grocery lists.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, I can Ashtanga and still be making grocery lists, I don't care how how out of breath I am. But, you're in the Bikram Yoga class, forget it. There is nothing other than your sheer survival for 90 minutes that you are thinking about, even when you get really good you're only thinking about the pose because it's so intense. I almost... that was my experience with it. It gave me that relief from my head, and I was... I need relief from my head. I need it to slow down, so those are the things that I've practiced, but you're right in that I had to do the writing first. That was a big piece of it too was slowing down but also reshaping the narrative.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, it's funny as you were saying all that I was thinking another thing that I would kind of realize on my healing journey was... because, I was always fascinated with the mind. I think because I grew up in this environment where basically my mind was taken from me, which is the... It's funny, this sounds weird, but I would almost not be jealous, but when I would hear stories of other abuse I would be like, "Well, at least you had this and that," to have your mind taken from you... it's like the only real thing we have as humans, is this power to make decisions or have a will of something, whether or not you can actually execute that will.
Flor Edwards:
So, I'm interested in psychological abuse, and I've said this before in interviews, but psychological abuse is something... we talk about emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, even financial abuse, but psychological abuse it's something that's saved for thriller and movies because it's... I call it the invisible disability. Again, I also had that same reaction to being forced into a situation where I was so in the moment that I could not think of anything else and I think, I'm not to something here, I think a big... One reason why we might get into things like addictive substances is because we're unsatisfied inside.
Flor Edwards:
Back when we were hunter and gatherers, as human beings we had this survival mode to us. We had to live in a place where we weren't able to... we couldn't think about things because we were just doing things, we were much more instinctual. But, our minds want very difficult things to handle, and if we don't give it hat we're going to go into these cycles of substance abuse. So, I think one thing I learned was how magnificent the mind is.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yes.
Flor Edwards:
But, we often, again, with stimuli and just shutting if off or, you know, being connected to the TV, or being connected to social media, or ever being connected to toxic relationships, again, I'm preaching to the choir, we just find attachments for the mind when really what the mind wants to be doing is very, very difficult thing that where we can't think, where you're in... You now that zone they talk about? The zone?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Flor Edwards:
And, that's what I did when I wrote. It was such a difficult thing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Got into the zone, yeah.
Flor Edwards:
I got into the zone that I literally... it was in the moments when I was there it was just like everything was completely out into the peripherally and I was just in that zone. I think that as humans we live for that and most of us don't ever get there. We might work, but do we really work where out souls, mind, body, everything working together? And, yoga helps. Yoga's like, "Here, we're going to give you that tool. We're going to put you in your body. We're going to shut that chattering, the monkey mind. Shut it off so you can do something that's very difficult, so you can get in touch with all your emotions." But, that need to do something else, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. It's an interesting journey. And, you lived, you were saying you've lived a whole adult life since this childhood. It's actually been more years out of it than you were in it, right?
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, now it has been. Yeah, just passed that mark.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you struggle with the identity of... I'll just, for where I'm thinking of, where I'm coming from is, you know, I have this whole... I, like you, had a very interesting first childhood, and trauma, and drug abuse, and all this stuff, there's a lot that went on there. I talk about it a lot. I'm sober 13 years so on and so forth, but I'm now out of it longer than I was in it so I actually have a whole other set of things about my personality like I'm not just a former alcoholic drug addict. I actually went to school and went to UCLA and studied political science. I've done all these other things, right, but that's the thing that defines us. Do you ever struggle with, in your situation you have written a book about it and it's more exotic than just being a drunk, do you ever go like, "Okay, enough with this as my identity?"
Flor Edwards:
All the time. It's hard because, you know, I have... So, I wrote this book. It took me 12 years to write it. I started it when I was 23. And, then I wrote it and honestly the best part was writing it and also discovering things. In some ways, I was a self taught writer.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
In many ways.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, I never learned it traditionally, but I did know there was something there. I also just came to terms with the fact that here I am, I have language, I have memories, what am I going to do it? So, the writing of it, again, was very cathartic, it was very healing. And, then I got into the publishing event and that was a whole nother journey and a lot of different things. And, then once it came out, there has been a lot of media interest and I've done a lot of things since last March.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What's the biggest thing you've done?
Flor Edwards:
I was on Dr. Oz. I've been covered by a bunch of... yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That'll do it.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, I've been covered by a bunch of different outlets from Fox News to Nightline to more tabloid-y stuff like Daily Mail TV, and then just small stuff. I like small stuff better too. I like this because it's an angle. What I don't like doing is just sitting down and recanting my life because it's I've already done it, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, because that's why you wrote the book.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, exactly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, not why but that's what the book offers.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, there are some times when I want to just say, "I wrote it in my book. Go look it up," you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Yeah.
Flor Edwards:
But, again, I think the cure for that is going to be to write another book, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it.
Flor Edwards:
Because, then there's going to be a new conversation and, yeah, I'll be more mature. Literally, some of the stuff I wrote-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, because you started when you were 23.
Flor Edwards:
... like 10 years ago. I don't even know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. That's interesting, yeah.
Flor Edwards:
I still think it's... When I go back and read it, I'm like, "Yeah, this is... Yeah, it's 100% true." Everything I said in there is exactly what I felt, what I knew, and yeah I stand by every single word. But, I'd like to write something a little more mature, maybe a little more analytical, a little bit more let's really talk about how and why as opposed to just what happened, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah, that's what fascinates me. I read it and I was like, I had all these questions about the different aspects and the psychology of it, but that's just, you know, I'm curious about people's stories and really understanding what's behind it. There's a lot of... I actually, I don't know if you're familiar with the seven tribes of Israel. No, 12 tribes of Israel.
Flor Edwards:
Is that a biblical thing?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's 12 tribes of Israel. It's a cult.
Flor Edwards:
Or, is that a show? Oh. I don't know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, and one of my best friend's joined.
Flor Edwards:
Oh, interesting.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And, it was really traumatic.
Flor Edwards:
12 tribes, where are they?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They're everywhere.
Flor Edwards:
Oh, really? Are they big?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think so, yeah. They seem very big.
Flor Edwards:
Interesting.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They have a lot of different locations. It was really traumatic for me. You know, it was so funny, I was saying-
Flor Edwards:
Just to see her get into it?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah.
Flor Edwards:
Really? Interesting.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It was really traumatic to watch it happen to someone.
Flor Edwards:
And, she just got totally brainwashed?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes.
Flor Edwards:
Is she still in it?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Flor Edwards:
Really?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And, I have contact, yeah. She just had identical twin boys. It was really... it was one of the most painful things.
Flor Edwards:
Really?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because, for-
Flor Edwards:
You lost her.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Number one, I lost her and she had a daughter who I felt very responsible for because we went to rehab together. And, we were 17 when we went to rehab together and she got out and she got pregnant by a guy who was not even close to being able to help, so I was very involved in her daughter's life, and I think she was 20 when she had her daughter. So, I saw this group of people entice, for a lack of a better word, her into this situation. And, I'm not even going to say that I think they're bad people. I'm not even... that's not my impression, but she gave up everything she owned, I mean it was very, very similar to what you're talking about. They move around a lot, not quite nomadic, but you know. And, in some ways they're a commune that seems like a-
Flor Edwards:
Community, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, seems like a wonderful thing, right? She was telling me how-
Flor Edwards:
They take care of each other.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. She's-
Flor Edwards:
And, that's how people get stuck and they can't leave. That's what people don't understand-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, well and she's got all the babies now.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, you start having kids, then you're cut off, and you're basically living a whole different life. And, I don't think a lot of the adults could even leave even if they wanted to.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No. So, she has all these children now and the community pays for each other, in some ways it's amazing. You have six other moms to help you raise, so like-
Flor Edwards:
Yeah. Which is, in some ways, how it should be.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally how it should be.
Flor Edwards:
We used to be much more tribal as human species and now we're so isolated.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes. Yes, so isolated.
Flor Edwards:
And, expected to do things all on our own and it's difficult. It's not what we're... how we're conditioned to be.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, not how it... I mean, I think I see that. So, some of it I see as, yeah, that makes a lot of sense, I wish I had that. And, then the stuff where the real brain... like, there's some seriously crazy stuff, crazy in the sense that that's not my reality. So, I had to come to terms with... because, she took her daughter and that was really hard for me. I had to come to terms with this idea that each of our normal is based on a belief system and a society that was created. And, then I came to this point where I was like, "Do I want her to be happy or do I want her to live the way I want her to live?" And, just all the same ideas. They changed their names to biblical names, they only learn through the bible, very similar to what you're talking about.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It was a really interesting kind of psychological experiment for me to question like, am I wrong, or are they wrong, or maybe we're both right. Maybe it's just a different way to live.
Flor Edwards:
There does come a point where you have to just let go. I mean, hard thing for me was understanding that the choices people make are not my responsibility. That was one of the biggest things and also realizing that I couldn't save people. I mean, that's one thing I still carry with me. It might make me seem a little cold sometimes, but it was first all survival thing. If I actually cared for every single person that I wanted to care for I simply would not be here. I would've just completely fallen, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Flor Edwards:
And, then again plus we were taught that we were supposed to be saving everyone.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's a tall order.
Flor Edwards:
I know. So, immediately I knew, okay, I'm not responsible for anyone. And, then again it became understand that power of agency. It's something we talk about, I learned, kind of a more articulate way to talk about it is in rhetoric we talk about agency. As humans, the power to be your own person and everyone has that. Honestly, some of my siblings are really not doing well right now but I come from the same place as them and I made difficult choices. I'm not saying I'm in any way better than you, but you have the same agency. Maybe you reacted to things a little differently, maybe you need more help, I wish I could give you all the help that you need but that would sacrifice my own need for my own survival at this point, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Flor Edwards:
So, I had to learn quite quickly that everyone is responsible for their actions, and we do go... I think when you've been in dark places you do develop compassion for people who have been through those dark places, and I don't know, it's a fine line between understanding but also knowing that you've chosen the life that you're living.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Which can sometimes be a very difficult thing to come face to face with. We're just like, "What do you mean I have chosen this?" There's a whole study around thoughts become things. Your thoughts become things that is, you create your reality that way through your thinking. If that's the case, then we are often creating realities that we think we don't want but because we think about them so much, we create them. So, when I first learned about this, about what it meant to create my own reality because I wanted a different one that I had, I mean, it's so hard to change thoughts that happen automatically. I'm sure you went through that, just things that come to you automatically. You're like, "Okay, I don't want it. That's not..." you know, redirecting.
Flor Edwards:
Well, that's where that whole concept of the monkey mind comes in, where you really are in control of your thoughts but you just have to take time to slow down and become aware of them because the mind is going to take you all over the place. It's going to be this constant chatter. Thoughts will come in and then you can choose whether to acknowledge them or push them aside, but yeah, there are some things that... yeah, I find myself even recently just thinking things where I'm like, "Flor, you shouldn't be thinking that."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Yeah, like, "Get it out! Get it out!" In AA we talk about it as the itty bitty shitty committee.
Flor Edwards:
Sounds about right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, you know, just this constant-
Flor Edwards:
The pity party, the itty bitty pity party.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, the pity party. Yeah, it's just the constant chatter and it's hard, it really is... you know, yes, we do have agency and it's hard to change thoughts that have been ingrained. You are talking about changing thoughts that you have had for 20 years or whatever it is, and trying to re-direct them. I mean, obviously it's successful but, yeah, it's definitely a hard thing to do and takes a lot, like a commitment to wanting to change it. I want to just touch on one last thing. One thing that comes up when you're telling your life story, any of us are telling our life stories, are the people that are in the story, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's their story too. Sometimes when I tell stories about things that went on in my life, I'm telling the story of decisions my parents made that they regret. If I'm telling them publicly, yes it's my reality and my truth, but I'm also exposing them. there's a... each one of us approaches that decision differently. How did you, and do you, approach the decision to include your parent's decisions and what happened and their stories into yours, and has that ever come up or been an issue?
Flor Edwards:
I think the first thing was to understand what had happened. So, when I started to think about my childhood it led to doing research on the Children of God and cults in generally, and then understanding why these people joined it... Once I understood what happened, it was very hard for me hold a whole lot of animosity towards them. But, when it came to writing about it, I never asked permission from anymore. I mean, once the book was going to come out I did sort of... I think I let my parents... I did let my mom read it. My mom read it, my dad just doesn't really read much, but I let them know like, "Hey, if there's anything you have trouble with let me know and this is the last chance to change it." And, my mom absolutely loved the book.
Flor Edwards:
I think in some ways she understood, because she never knew... I mean, they knew what happened. Now, they acknowledge that it was a cult, but to read it from my perspective as a child and to see all those memories I think was in some ways healing for her. One of my intentions when I wrote this book, I mean there were a lot of different things that you have to think about when you write a book, but one of the things was I'm not telling anyone else this story. So, regardless of what people might take from it, it's not like an expose. It's not like me trying to be the voice for all these people, although in some ways maybe I am because I did tell the story. But, I had to really tell my experience of what happened and stay true to that, and that was my intention behind it, so.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do your parents have any... it sounds like they are okay with the decision they made or they've come to terms with it, what...
Flor Edwards:
I think over time they began to acknowledge more and more what had happened and when they started to see certain outcomes of some of their children, you know, it's made them realize. Honestly, the way I look at it they've also had their own fair bit of suffering that in some ways was like the consequence of how they choice to raise us. And, again, that's their life and it's hard. Again, if I let myself sink into too much empathy I'm going to be a mess, so I can feel things and I can understand but I think you also have to at some point understand that everyone chose their life. As I'm getting older, I'm also... I'm going through certain experiences where I've come to understand there are things that happened that feel out of your control at the time, or there might be people that come into your life that prey on you.
Flor Edwards:
So, it's giving me more compassion that, again, this control thing, that I think coming from an environment where I simply had no control to becoming a young adult and trying so hard to control things, and now I'm coming to a place where I'm realizing that I have no control over many things. So, just learning to deal with that and what does that mean? I think dropping a lot of my ideas of perfectionism, I think I come with... I think a lot, especially women do that. I want to be good at everything I do and I want to do so much, but I'm starting to realize what I might be sacrificing for that.
Flor Edwards:
Or, maybe even sabotaging certain relationships or potential relationships because I'm so focused on being this or being, you know, doing things perfectly or doing things that seem impossible. So, yeah, it's all a process I think. Healing, recovery, all of it is a process and it's something... this is what most people don't know, they think recovery... it's something you do and then you're done, but it's an every day thing, every single day.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Every, every single day. You have to be... you get the opportunity to make a new decision and whether it's your negative thinking, it's the decision for empathy, how far you go-
Flor Edwards:
Or, to drink a certain green drink instead of another drink.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, exactly.
Flor Edwards:
Or, to eat something healthy instead of something that's not healthy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
In al anon, which is for family, and friends, and loved ones about spouses of alcoholics, it's talk about detaching with love and that sounds like a lot of the stuff you were talking about with your family and is loving someone without hurting yourself through the interactions.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah. I had to learn those boundaries quite early on.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Flor Edwards:
Again, this is not something I talk too much, maybe one day I'll write about it, but I had to learn how to stand in one place and see what was happening, and to have... I mean, again, I think you have empathy which is a human thing but you can't let yourself get overly involved as much as it does it. I mean, if I was able to help every single person I possibly wanted to, I would do it but I simply don't have the time, the resources, you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Flor Edwards:
So, again, it's that whole I always say, "Put your mask on before you help," even the child. Save yourself, then save the child.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, because you can't help anybody if you're not well.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it's a huge thing and if you overdo it then you'll, you know, everybody's sick, everybody's, you know, totally defeated.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah. And, I think, yeah, I do yoga very moderately now but I still do it and I do think that your own wellness and your own recovery is your gift to everyone else.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes.
Flor Edwards:
It's not selfish.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No.
Flor Edwards:
If it is then it's in a good way, but it really is true. I've known that too, the better off I am, and I'm feeling, and I'm doing, I'm better for everyone else around me. Lately, I've just been extremely stressed so that's just a whole different story, but yeah, taking that time which again we don't always have, that end up multiplying.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. That's the part I struggle with which is finding, like literally finding the hours, but that's you know, modern motherhood where you're just, you know, expected to work like you don't have kids and expected to mom like you don't have a job.
Flor Edwards:
To do everything, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Luckily, I have an amazing support team.
Flor Edwards:
That's nice.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm in now way a victim at any level here, but it is. It's really... I'm also in school, it's just... it's crazy. It's crazy, it's really... I want to be good everything I do too.
Flor Edwards:
The pressure.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, the pressure can make you crack, for sure.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, thank you so much for sharing your story and I'm really glad that we got to talk about the healing portion of it in a little bit of a different angle on this, because I think that's really helpful. And, I think even though your experience was so different from many of ours that the feelings were actually very similar to many people just who felt isolated, who felt disconnected, who felt like they came from another world, and a lot of people can relate to that. So, the recovery and the yoga, and having something, you know, a lot of the time we talk about pray, meditate, different... write this, write that where these ideas of things to recover, whereas with yoga, what I love about using it as a recovery tool is that it's really straightforward, like you go to a yoga class. Whereas somebody, like I was like, "Well, I don't know how to meditate. What do I just sit here and think about nothing?"
Flor Edwards:
Well, there's a rule, feeling down move around, feeling great meditate. So, if you're-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I didn't know this rule.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, if you're feeling like lethargic, if you're feeling gross, exercise. And, then once you're... you don't meditate until you... the whole yoga-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's so interesting.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, the whole yoga, the physical part of yoga because yoga is multi-layered, but the whole point of the physicality is to get yourself in state where you can meditate. But, if you're feeling like crap you simply can't meditate. Your mind will not settle down to meditate.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's really cool. I found the only way-
Flor Edwards:
So, it's okay to go for a walk or a job, or whatever it is.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. The only way I was able to meditate was through, like or find anything spiritual, my first experience with that was in yoga. That was the only way because I was moving and it felt spiritual and everybody else seemed to be very spiritual, and there were a lot of bells and ancient sounds going on so I was like, "This has to be what spirituality feels like," and I'm hot so I feel spiritual. So, I mean, that was my first ability to tap into anything and then it's grown and changed since then, but I love that as a tool because I do think it's a really helpful tool in all of our recovery. So, I just want to let people know your book Apocalypse Child, it can be found, by Flor Edwards, can be found on Amazon... where else can they find it? Is that the best place to buy it?
Flor Edwards:
Amazon's probably the best. I know it's at some book stores, but not all of them. Also, IndieBound, Barnes and Noble websites.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay, yeah, so go online, purchase Apocalypse Child. Flor also did the audio book for it. She read the whole thing herself painstakingly, so please go check that out. And, they can follow you on Instagram?
Flor Edwards:
On Instagram it's Flor Edwards Author.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Awesome.
Flor Edwards:
Yeah, Twitter, I think I'm Flor C. Edwards, and Facebook Flor Edwards Author as well.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Cool. Awesome. Well, go check it out.
Flor Edwards:
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
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