Bursting the bubble: Morgan Haley on Leaving the Church

A Little Bit Culty

Sarah Edmondson & Anthony “Nippy” Ames

True Crime, Society & Culture, Education

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2023

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

In the age of social media, many of us are aware that choices are increasingly made for us by algorithms—which is unfortunately not a reference to Vice President Al Gore’s dancing abilities.

But even if we are living in our own little bubbles, it doesn’t quite match the extremities of, let’s say, someone who was raised within a radically nondenominational Christian sect, wherein music, media, beliefs, and friends were all hand selected by a group of men who decided they were pastors and wanted an ironclad grip on their families and followers.

Such was unfortunately the case for Morgan Hayley, now 32-years-old and far from her beginnings in Louisville, Kentucky. The oldest of seven siblings, Hayley managed to escape her marriage and the Church to live her life as an out-and-proud lesbian while still maintaining a real (albeit heavily strained) relationship with some of her family. In doing so, she learned that perhaps her family’s belief that life is about sacrifice and being miserable means you’re doing something right is NOT the most fun way to live life!

Now, it’s safe to say Morgan is making all her decisions for herself as a prominent fitness and yoga instructor, and is much happier for it.

Follow Morgan on Instagram

Visit Morgan’s website

Please note, this series includes details of sexual abuse. Listener discretion is strongly advised. If you, or someone who know, is a survivor of sexual assault, abuse, grooming, child abuse, or human trafficking, RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline offers support at 800.656.HOPE (4673).

Also…

Hear Ye, Hear Ye:

The views and opinions expressed on A Little Bit Culty do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast. Any content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors or authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business individual, anyone or anything. Nobody’s mad at you, just don’t be a culty fuckwad.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The views and opinions expressed by a little bit
0:02.0	culty are those of the hosts, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast.
0:08.3	Any of the fucking maizeball content provided by our guest,
0:12.0	bloggers, sponsors, or authors are of their opinion and are not attended to
0:15.2	malign any religion group club organization, business individual, anyone or anything.
0:19.1	We're not doctors, not psychologists. We're certainly not the AP.
0:22.1	It's associated press for those of you listening at home.
0:24.7	We're two non-experts, we're found ourselves making a little podcast
0:28.1	that people happen like. Okay? Okay.
0:40.8	Hey everybody, Sarah Edmonds in here.
0:43.2	And I'm Anthony Ames, aka Nippie, Sarah's husband, and you're listening to a little bit
0:48.7	culty aka a lbc. A podcast about what happens when devotion goes to the dark side.
0:54.6	We've been there and back again, a little about us.
0:57.3	True Story, we met and fell in love in a cult, and then we woke up and got the hell out of dodge.
1:03.1	And the whole thing was captured in the HBO documentary series The Bow, now in its second season.
1:08.4	I also wrote about our experience in my memoir, SCARD,
1:11.4	the true story of how I escaped next year, the cult that bound my life.
1:15.2	Look at us, couple of married podcasters who just happened to have a weekly date night.
1:19.8	Where we interview experts and advocates and things like cult awareness and mind control.
1:24.0	Oh wait, wait, wait, this does not count toward date night bait.
1:26.8	We gotta schedule that that separate. So there's two days we gotta hang in there?
1:30.4	We do this podcast thing because we learned a lot on our exit ramp out of next year.
	...

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