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

I'm your host, Rachel Bernstein.

Today's guest is Cindy Rudd.

She works as a receptionist and says she is best described as an ordinary person with an extraordinary story.

Eleven years ago, she found herself in a crisis, needing to get herself and her family away from a severely abusive, controlling church.

Though skillful in lies and manipulations, this pastor who was in charge of

the church, ultimately learned he was no match for this mother's love. Please listen and hopefully

be inspired as I was by this mother, Cindy, who was willing to break her own heart to free herself and her

children. Here's Cindy now. So I want to welcome Cindy Rudd to the show today. I'm very excited to be

able to speak with you, to be able to hear from your

perspective, which is because of your own experiences and also as a parent. And you had a lot of

insights that you shared with me via email about so many of the things that get in the way of being able to maintain power,

maintain control, maintain relationships, and be able to be in a person's life who you love

in the way that you would like to be able to be in their life. And you have a very

interesting story of disconnection and mostly reconnection. And so I think being able to talk about

that because that is much more prevalent than I think people realize that

not only is there the danger of getting involved in an organization that can take over your life,

but it can stand right in the way of your life with your loved ones. And then there's a lot of healing that needs to take place and time that feels like it's lost

than you want to make up for.

So I want to have you be able to introduce yourself and then we'll start with your story.

So take it away.

All right. I am Cindy Rudd and I am happy to be here today to tell my story. I was involved with a church, a so-called church for 21 years.

...