Welcome to Indocination, a weekly conversation series about protecting yourself from systems of control.

I'm your host, Rachel Bernstein.

Megan spent 10 years in Chicago's off-loop DIY theater scene as an actor, playwright, and costume designer and choreographer.

Her work was reviewed well and critiqued as thoroughly captivating and heartbreakingly sincere.

Today, Megan performs as a dancer and student of circus and aerial arts. She's a fierce advocate for

survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, particularly those in the LGBTQ community and in

performing arts. She wanted to tell her story on the podcast in order for it to help others know

what to watch out for and because she's seen how creative fields

and specifically the performing arts are structured in a way at times that can make people

particularly vulnerable to tolerating controlling and, unfortunately, abusive behavior.

Here's Megan now.

Thank you. behavior. Here's Megan now. Hello, everyone. I'm so happy actually to be able to speak with Megan today and to be able to have you introduced me to something that occurred, but also be able to really

kind of validate this idea that control and abuse of power can happen, again, in so many

different situations, that people kind of envision certain kind of cultic groups or certain kinds

of relationships and that that's where it happens, but that it can happen anywhere.

Sometimes when people ask me sort of the definition of an unhealthy relationship or a cult,

I will sometimes say that it doesn't have to do with the philosophy or the theology or even the

history of that relationship, but the nature of the relationship between somebody in charge

or somebody there who takes a position of being in charge and the other people who are kind of

turns out to be at their mercy. And so, or under their influence. So if you can

start by introducing yourself and then we'll start telling your story together. Okay. My name's Megan.

I was an actress for a little over 10 years.

...