Leaving The Village

Have you seen the Amazon Prime docuseries Shiny Happy People? Were you shocked to hear the wholesome, American Duggar family was involved in a cult? A cult full of abuse, sex, and religious trauma. A cult that claimed to educate children and planned to use them to take over the world.Have you wished you could sit down with an IBLP survivor and hear more of the story? Join hosts Jessica Goforth and Alexis Grey on Leaving the Village, a podcast by IBLP survivors centering their lived experiences and shining a light on all the hidden torment and harm they endured growing up in the cult shown on the groundbreaking docuseries. We have exclusive interviews with cast members where we laugh and cry and go behind the scenes with them as we discuss our shared experiences. If watching the documentary left you wanting more, check out Leaving The Village on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Jess and Kit return eager to talk all things IBLP with the new docuseries from Olivia Crist for Amazon Prime, called Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets, dropping June 2nd. With fresh insights and boiling over anticipation, they sit down to discuss their reactions to the trailer and kick off the new season of Leaving The Village.

The trailer for Shiny Happy People on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Tw1rAMzPf70

The docuseries on Amazon Prime: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0B8TR94MK/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r

Can it be real? Did ATI really just finally... die?? Jess and Kit react to breaking news that the cult they grew up in and survived has officially shut down. Something they couldn't have imagined not that long ago.

Visit http://atii.org to read the full statement.

Coming to you a little frazzled and a bit the worse for wear, Jess and Kit return with some hilarious late night girl talk, opening up about carving out their own lives post ATI, finding identity, and learning to cuss and swear with the best of them. ;) This episode is marked explicit but its all in good fun.

Picking up in Chapter 32 Jess and Kit continue their way through Margaret Attwood's Handmaid's Tale.

Jess and Kit talk power differentials and the key role of HOPE in the toxic cocktail required for authoritarian control to work while continuing through chapters 30 and 31 of Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale.

Leaving the Village is growing! We are excited to bring you along with us and introduce you to someone we hope you enjoy as much as we do. 

We are back with fresh new episodes of our Handmaid's Tale book club, getting into chapters 27 through 29. 

Kicking off Season 3 with all the feels, Jess and Kit talk their latest life challenges, tell the story of meeting for they first time in early January, their impulsive decision to get matching tattoos, the meaning behind their tattoo, and announce tons of new content, interviews, and parts of their own story... all to come in this new year. New Year, fresh beginnings! 

Mentioned in this episode:

Author Heather Heath - aka: @backsliddenharlot on TikTok and her new book Lovingly Abused, available on www.HeatherGraceHeath.com or wherever you get your books. 

Jess and Kit react to the Josh Duggar trial verdict.

Grab a drink and hang out with Jess and Kit as they talk the Josh Duggar trial. WARNING: Triggers may abound in this episode and it includes explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. 

Welcome back to our Handmaid’s Tale book club. Today Jess and Kit move into chapters 24 - 26. Topics of trauma bonds and the isolation that is inevitable in cult life come up as we move deeper into Margaret Atwood’s famous dystopian novel.

This is episode covers chapter 18 though 21 of Margaret Atwood's poignant book, The Handmaid's Tale. 

In this episode, Jess interviews Kit and her husband, Andy, as they talk candidly about how they met, what it was like revealing Kit’s background, and how they were able to forge a relationship as Kit’s was shedding her purity culture upbringing.

*Some content may be inappropriate for younger listeners.

In this section Jess and Kit tackle the difficult chapters 14-17 of Margaret Atwood’s book The Handmaid’s Tale. This part covers “the ceremony” so keep in mind the content warning: topics include sexual assault, rape, and religious abuse. Please use your discretion when listening and be aware that some topics may be inappropriate for children.

In this super candid 4th of July episode, Jess and Kit grab their mics to answer some listener questions and then dish about everything from their mutual obsession with Gilmore Girls, books and shows they are into lately, and on to how Kit's move is coming along. 

Picking up in Chapter 7 of Margaret Atwood's book The Handmaid's Tale, Jess and Kit share their observations and what stuck out to them. They talk honestly about motherhood and how its tangled up with fundamentalism and how that effected each of them in different ways. Grab your book and a cup of tea and join this intimate discussion. 

And we are back, taking you inside what passes for "education" inside the Advanced Training Institute. Bill Gothard's homeschooling cult. This time Jess and Kit dive into the linguistics section as well as the "history" section (that oddly turned out to be straight up geography. Scratch that BIBLICAL geography? Yeah...) You can access a free version of this Wisdom Booklet here: https://homeschoolersanonymous.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/wbvol1-compressed.pdf

Moving further into the book The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, Jess and Kit invite you along as they unpack what they are reading. Themes of patriocentric control, ways the characters find to cope, and how Jess and Kit's own experiences with an authoritarian, patriarchal cult dovetails with the story. Grab your copy of The Handmaid's Tale and a cup of tea and join us for the continuation of our Book Club. 

Join Kit as she interviews Jess about her harrowing experience in solitary confinement within the ATI training center "Prayer Room". If you have ever wondered what textbook cult brainwashing looks like, you won't want to miss this episode! 

Kicking off Season Two of Leaving The Village, join Kit and Jess as they discuss the introduction to the classic dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood. They bring their unique perspective as survivors of a patriarchal, authoritarian cult and unpack the ways the novel highlights the logical result of the teachings that we find all too familiar; teachings that are eerily similar to what we were immersed in while apart of Bill Gothard's IBLP/ATI program. Feel free to read along with us and share your thoughts on our social media or with the link below.

Jess and Kit sit down to chat candidly with our dear friend, author Heather Heath, about fan responses to Kit's LIVE interview with Katie Joy of Without A Crystal Ball on YouTube, May 22nd. We share our vetting process and our feelings about the outpouring of concern for us in light of the controversial nature of Katie Joy's platform. Heather sets the record straight and shares her timeless wisdom and the wit we love so much!

Kit's interview on Without A Crystal Ball can be seen here: https://youtu.be/tAKUngtvew8

While people are ultimately responsible for their own actions, Bill Gothard, ATI, and Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar are in very real and practical ways responsible for the abuses Josh Duggar has been allowed to perpetrate, unchecked, for decades. Jess and Kathleen explain why in this timely episode of Leaving the Village.

In this fascinating BONUS episode Kit takes a break from her usual role of co-host as Jess interviews her about her cult training center nightmare experience. Kit will take us behind the scenes of the insular world inside the Indianapolis Training Center.

This time, on Leaving The Village, Jess and Kit take you inside the curriculum of Bill Gothard's ATI program. Special thanks to the website Homeschoolers Anonymous for their open source copies of the Wisdom Booklets we used for this episode.

So, what do you think happens when a couple of cult survivors watch TV? You guessed it: we geek out like crazy over the portrayal of fictionalized cults on our favorite shows. Join us as we completely spoil the "True Crime" episode from Season 3 of "The Rookie". SPOILER ALERT!!

In previous episodes Jess and Kit talked about how in Bill Gothard's cult, IBLP/ATI, one's personality could feel erased. In this episode they take a deeper look into their journey to recover from the mind control that even took their personalities from them.

Modesty culture is everywhere in fundamentalism across the board but how exactly did ATI manage to take it to a whole other place? Jess and Kit talk clothing standards in the world of IBLP/ATI.

What drew parents to enroll in ATI? How did they go from mainline evangelical to an isolationist cult? Jessica's mom shares her journey with ATI and how she came to the reality of what was really happening to their family. Don't miss this candid and intimate interview!

Did Jess and Kit become the good little ATI girls they were expected to be?? Well, not quite....

Fellow IBLP/ATI survivor, and author Heather Heath, joins us to introduce a bit of her story. You can hear her energy and determined sense of self as it propelled her out and into a whole new life. 

This is our opening episode! Here we explain the cult we grew up in and introduce you to the insular world of homeschool extremism.