S23 E21: WCN Presents: [Jubilee] SWW S21 E9-12 Updates
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What Came Next is intended for mature audiences only. Episodes discuss topics that can be triggering, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, animal abuse, suicide, and murder. I am not a therapist, nor am I a doctor. If you're in need of support, please visit somethingwaswrong.com forward slash resources for a list of non-profit organizations that can help.

Opinions expressed by my guests on the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of myself or Broken Cycle Media. Resources and source material are linked in the episode notes. Thank you so much for listening.

Something Was Wrong, Season 21, Episodes 9 through 12, aired in August of 2024 and highlighted Jubilee's abusive experiences as a young, new member of the Bethel Church. After receiving a prophecy from a church leader regarding her so-called destined relationship, she also entered a church-sanctioned marriage that would become highly abusive.

Jubilee then candidly shared about the incredibly difficult process of extricating herself from both the church and her marriage. The Broken Cycle Media team is incredibly grateful that Jubilee was willing to return to share all that's come next for her since her episodes of Something Was Wrong aired, which include several shocking updates and news of the launch of her own new podcast, Healed-ish.

Jubilee, the Broken Cycle Media team is deeply appreciative that you're here with us today to give us some updates because you've got a lot to share. Tell me what it was like sharing on Something Was Wrong. It was so healing for me in the years since I left, which was January 2020. I had shared on

on domestic violence awareness days and had said things here and there. But there was a lot of people who were very much on his side and could not believe that he would ever do something wrong. And I think because he was 10 years older than me, this narrative floated around a little bit that maybe I was just young and fickle and how could I...

break this man's heart. So that was very hard to try to push past that guilt and realize that it would just have to be enough for me to know the truth of what happened.

When I was debating whether or not to do Something Was Wrong, it was exciting to think that my full story could be laid out. And I've been listening to Something Was Wrong for so long, and I just absolutely love it. So when we ended up recording, I just felt so safe. And it was such a wonderful experience.

When it finally came out, the reception was incredible. I'm going to tear up because everybody was just so kind. I received so many DMs from people saying that specifically this culty sector like Bethel and these signs and wonders movements, it's such a specific type of trauma that...

people really connected to my story because they often feel like they can't talk about it because you almost sound crazy when you're talking about these profits and all of those sorts of things. So to have so many people messaging me and telling me their domestic violence stories, it was amazing. And I still get comments today.

It was really cool to feel very taken care of by my community and that people could really see my heart in the situation and that we could connect to each other on that level.

I've learned so much about Bethel since Something Was Wrong has come out. And it's been a very interesting journey. I started posting on YouTube and I feel like a lot of Bethel people found me on there telling me things that they knew about these situations, specifically regarding the prophet, the one who would go up on stage and call people out. There has been a lot developing just in the last...

probably four or five months, he has essentially been called out that he has been getting people's information off of Facebook. For example, he would get up on stage and say, is anybody's last digits of their phone number 2312? And then somebody would stand up and he said, wow, God told me that he must have a word for you. And then he would give them a generic word. There

There was another really crazy circumstance where he had told this woman, does Slaughterhouse Lane mean anything to you? And it didn't mean anything to her. And when people went and researched, they found out that there was a woman in that area with that exact same name who lived on a Slaughterhouse Lane. He had been getting this information and they call it data mining in the prophetic world.

I had some people reach out to me and tell me that they knew that he had been confronted by Bethel about this in 2019. They were basically given a file that had all of these examples. So this is something that Bethel knew he was doing. He denied it and then Bethel silently distanced themselves from him. So they started to take out his books from the bookstore.

And they just never made any sort of announcement. So I ended up making a video talking about this, saying that I had heard from somebody that this had happened, that Bethel knew, and that the community needed to be warned. Because while I don't hold those same beliefs that a lot of these Bethel followers do anymore, I do believe that people deserve to be warned.

I ended up deciding to go through with this wedding because a prophetic word was given. This guy who went on stage and called out my ex and said that God was giving me to him. So once the abuse started...

It really did keep me in that situation for a very long time because I thought that this was 100% God's will for my life. Who knows who could possibly be following a prophetic word based off of what this man said. I ended up finding the Facebook group for the alumni students of Bethel that I was still a part of.

And I posted my TikTok video of me saying that Bethel knew this and that they weren't going to say anything publicly, but I was going to let them know that they should not follow this prophet. And it did not go very well.

People were so defensive because you have a lot of people who have gotten what they would say, life-changing words from this man. They don't want to hear that that wasn't true. So there was a lot of internal fighting on this Facebook group, people telling me that I was just a disgruntled ex-boyfriend.

Christian or ex-Bethel person and other people who were defending me and saying that they also had heard things, but nobody's talked about it publicly. And then they started to corroborate what I was saying. From then on, it was just full steam ahead. I kept getting messages of people who were actually in these rooms and, you

It finally came to where I ended up receiving text messages from one of the leaders of Bethel, where he was explaining why he wasn't going to warn people. And it was because he said that it would hurt the prophetic movement. That is why he decided to not warn anybody. And he just kind of wanted to wash his hands of it. The guy never denied it.

It really feels like it's just been this domino effect of the last six months of these things really being uncovered. All of that started to come out and those text messages ended up getting published by a Christian podcast. And

they ended up making a statement to the Bethel alumni. So they still didn't warn their entire congregation, but they did warn the alumni students. And they said, yes, we were made aware of what was going on with this prophet. We're not connected with him anymore. But this prophet still has over 200,000 followers on Instagram and tons of people who don't know to this day what he is doing.

Since then, even more journalists have gotten into it. It has been really cool to see everybody come together, whether or not we still believe the same things.

One of the most healing things that has happened for me during this time is I got in touch with Jedediah Hartley. His dad was a prophet in these circles growing up. And I remember he was a very big deal at Bethel. He had even given me a prophetic word at the time. I had been called out and it was very similar. He knew where I lived.

what my passions were. He is trying to reveal the truth about his own dad because his own dad has also been data mining and he's grown up in these circles and he says all of them, but almost all, if not all of these profits are conning people. He knows for a fact that his dad did because he has proof of it. He knows that his dad used to ask for the list of attendees before conferences and

And he would say, can I pray for the list of attendees?

And Jedediah would help his dad get this information when he was a kid because he didn't know what his dad was doing. And as he's gotten older, he's gotten very concrete evidence and Bethel has since distanced themselves from his dad as well. But they also knew about what his dad was doing for years before they distanced themselves. So it really is just a massive coverup. And it's not just with these prophets. I've received tons of other emails

emails telling me that people have worked with other affiliated ministers with Bethel. And the stories that I've heard, I can't say all of them publicly because I want to protect the victims in this situation. But a lot of these big name people, there's a lot of coverups. I truly believe that they all have dirt on each other. And that is why nobody is speaking out against the injustice that's going on.

One of the biggest things that I talked about in my episode was the purity culture aspect that I experienced at Bethel and the amount of shame that I felt for even fooling around, not even going all the way with a boy. And then to find out that a lot of these leaders are living double lives and that they really don't have a moral compass. I feel like I had these people on such a pedestal. You

You kind of try to write it off as they probably believe this stuff themselves. Maybe they're just misguided. But the more I hear and the more I listen, I've heard some truly horrific things. They groom you to be under their umbrella of protection. That is a phrase that they like to use. So hearing that not only did they not protect their members themselves,

But to hear the hypocrisy of it all, it's jarring to realize that the amount of shame and guilt that you feel in these circles, the leaders are not holding themselves to that same standard.

When Something Was Wrong came out, telling my story, really thinking about what had happened to me, I started to think about Ted's ex-girlfriend. I knew that Ted had been dating this girl at church the year before I went there. I'm going to call her Sarah. I had arrived in August of that year.

August or September. And I thought that they had been long broken up before we got together. I actually did go get coffee with her when I first moved there because she was being kind. She seemed fine, but we didn't really hit it off.

When I started dating Ted, he had told me that she was a total psycho and that she was really evil to him when they were together. At one point, he teared up and said, she told me that I was a coward and that I was never going to amount to anything. I don't know that he's a bad guy yet because everybody's speaking so highly of him. I thought, wow, she's awful. Who could say that to such a wonderful man?

So I steered clear of her during my time there.

In our first month of dating, her stuff was in his house. He had told me that they had never lived together, but that she was going through a hard time and that she was on the verge of being homeless. So her stuff was still in his kitchen, boxes and boxes. It made me uncomfortable because I thought that they had broken up five or six months previously. I was curious why it was still there. And he phrased it like, well, I'm such a good guy that I want to help her.

When Something Was Wrong came out, she ended up friending me on Facebook. And I was a little surprised by that, but I decided to accept it. She had never reached out or anything. We had been friends on Facebook for a couple months.

She did end up liking a post with me and my now husband, and she said that she was so happy for me. So I knew that she thought kindly of me, and I thought maybe she would be interested in having a conversation. I read this book called Why Does He Do That? And one thing that the author talks about is how abusive men will often talk very badly of their ex-partners because they don't want you to trust them.

Going back and assessing all of this after something was wrong and really thinking about this story of Sarah and how he said she was so crazy, I started to wonder if it was all a lie. I started to wonder, did he do something to her? After a glass of wine, I decided that I was going to message her and just asked if she would be willing to talk to me about her relationship with Ted, if she would ever be open to that.

And she immediately responded and said, yes, I would love to talk.

Through DMs, I ended up finding out a lot about Ted. I obviously knew that he wasn't safe and that he was abusive, but I didn't know to what degree I had been deceived. I knew I had been deceived by the prophet, but not necessarily by Ted. What I learned from Sarah is that they had actually been dating up until we got together.

I started dating Ted in January. In December, they were still fully dating. And she was already starting to feel kind of insecure because she said that whenever I entered a room, he would ditch her to come and talk to me. She started to feel like he was obsessed with me and that maybe he was following me around, which if you go back and listen to my story, there was a time where I was on the phone with my mom and he over-listened to the entire conversation.

and then helped me find a place to live. So was he stalking me? I don't know, but he was always around me, she said.

It makes sense now why her stuff was in his house. They had not broken up six months before. It was still a very fresh thing. So that was a lie that he had told me. She said that in December, right before we got together, they were sitting on the couch and all of a sudden he attacked her. She said that this dark look came over his eyes and she had never seen him in that way before.

He tried to sexually assault her and he ended up ripping her shirt. She ended up running to the bathroom to hide from him until he calmed down. She ended up going to church leadership and she told them what he had done because she was terrified.

They ended up not believing her. They sided with him. And because they thought she was no longer reliable, they ended up demoting her in the ministry. She had been a pretty big part of the ministry. They ended up stopping inviting her to help out with the conferences. And she really felt like the rug was pulled out from under her. And then immediately after that is when he got with me in January.

It's crazy to think that that happened right before we got together. And I was 20 years old and he was 30 years old and he had these very fresh sexual assault allegations against him. Nobody warned me or told me to be careful around him. And in fact, they ended up helping throw us our engagement party together.

It definitely put the entire situation that I went through with Ted in a new light. It's another layer of healing to think the life that I thought I lived, it actually wasn't like that. It's not that I just married a Christian guy and he ended up having anger problems. This is a lot more sinister and it goes even further.

She continued to tell me that apparently he was also frequenting strip clubs the entire time that we were living in Pennsylvania, which if you guys remember, he was so big on his purity. He had told me that he was a virgin when we first got together and he

He held that above me once we were married. He would call me a whore and just be very disgusting to me and make me feel really bad about my life choices. Before I met him and said, "If we ever got divorced, you would just be a whore and sleep around."

That was such a deep hurt for me because I really thought that he was better than me. She told me that he was addicted to pornography and that he was frequenting these strip clubs multiple times a week. He even had a favorite dancer that he would go and see.

Looking back on our engagement, there were so many times when we were long distance for the summer where he would drop off the face of the planet. And now I fully believe that he was frequenting these strip clubs while we were together and that he was living this double life. I really think it continued throughout the time that we were married because there would be times where he was a substitute teacher and he would say he was going to work and he

I would look on the class portal and see that he hadn't taken a substitute job that day. And when I confronted him, he admitted, okay, yeah, I did get dressed up at eight in the morning and I just left. And I would say, well, where were you? Oh, I just went to the movies.

Looking back, I see that he had these very flexible jobs. He was an Uber driver and doing the substitute teaching. And also his family was paying for a lot of our lives. He was really taking advantage of them financially. I don't know how much he was ever really driving for Uber.

I don't know how much he was actually substitute teaching or if he was just getting money from his parents. And if he was cheating on me at these strip clubs, I don't know what he was doing.

I think I'm dating this super religious man who waited until he was 30 years old to be with me. And he was constantly telling me how much he loved me and how I was this gift from God. I could not fathom a world where a man who waited until he was 30 would randomly cheat on me. Looking back, I just really did not know this man at all.

I don't know what his morals were. I don't know if he was ever truly a Christian or if it was just to manipulate people.

When she told me that, I decided that I was going to document this on TikTok. So I decided that I was going to do a Did I Marry a Psychopath series because I was reeling and I thought it might be therapeutic to talk about this online. So I ended up doing a 40-something part series where I just went through a lot of the story that I talk about on Something Was Wrong and then some other extra details as well.

It was healing to unpack that online because I had gotten to a place where I had been in therapy and I had worked through everything that had happened. I had shared on something was wrong. I thought that was my crazy life with Ted and we got divorced because of a Walt Disney World burger. Like that's what I really thought my life story was. So to hear this, I started to realize, oh no,

know he was a predator. I really didn't know him at all. So to walk through and like tell the full story, it was super healing because I found a lot of new people through that series and built up this community of people who really had my back and they were validating me that this is insane.

I think one of the hardest things for me to really process was that I was so directly affected by a church cover-up. That's why I'm also so passionate now about talking about these cover-ups because there are so many things that would not have happened. I would not have married him had I known that that prophet was conning people, which there was already chatter of that in that year, apparently. I...

I 100% would have not dated him if I knew that there were these allegations against him. I would have protected myself to know that there were so many people conspiring to keep this under wraps and...

that this system did not protect me or Sarah. My heart broke for Sarah. I couldn't stop crying about how horrible that must have been for her to be attacked. And then he leaves you for this young girl and he love bombs her. And two months later, they're engaged and everybody is celebrating it. The people who you reported your assault to are celebrating this union. I cannot even imagine how painful that was for her.

It has only bolstered my mission to want to help raise awareness about cover-ups because they happen all the time. I get comments sometimes where people are like, not my church. And I'm not going to sit here and say that there's no church that is above board. There certainly can be. But I do think it's almost impossible to know what is going on behind the scenes because if something's being covered up, you wouldn't know about it.

While I was sharing all of this on social media, I ended up going to therapy. I'm processing with my therapist layer upon layer of anger. I think that was the biggest thing I was feeling. I was just mad. How dare they not protect me? I got out of therapy. I made my way to Target and I got a message from this woman named Daisy.

And it said that she had a lot to tell me if I was interested in talking. And here is a backstory. Ted lived in this very small town. And while he was there, he got really involved in this church. And there was this one specific family. I will call them the Johnsons. They were a huge part of Ted's life.

The dad was the pastor. I had met with him many times. There were two women in this family and Daisy was one of them. Their husbands were in our wedding. So these were Ted's best friends.

I had spent a lot of time with her throughout the years, and she was married to this guy named Chris. Chris had ended up passing away from cancer around 2021 or 2022. His battle with cancer that was happening towards the end of my marriage with Ted. Then the other brother, who was the best man, also passed away from cancer.

That was so horrific for this family. They've lost two of these men in their family. And then on top of that, the pastor, so the Johnson dad, he ended up passing away from COVID in 2020. So this poor family has lost all of the men in their life within the span of one to two years.

So when Daisy reached out to me and I saw her message, I was curious what she was going to say. I had seen around the time that Something Was Wrong came out that she had been watching some of my stories and that she had been watching some of my TikToks. I was really taken aback by that because

because I didn't know if she was still friends with him and I didn't want to be spied on because when we got divorced, I wanted to make sure that my personal safety was okay. So I had ended up unfriending anybody who I only knew through Ted.

And these people I only knew through him. And on some level, I guess I did want her to know the truth about her friend because I had no idea if he had told them the truth about why we got divorced. And now I'm getting this message from Daisy, who I haven't spoken to in over four to five years.

I ended up giving her my phone number and she called me there in that parking lot. And we talked on the phone for an hour or two. It was a long conversation. And the things that she told me, another layer of realizing that I really did not know this man. When we got divorced, Ted ended up going back to his home state. And he told everybody that I was an insane narcissist who abused him.

which was actually shocking to me when she told me that. When I was thinking about getting divorced and we were going through our separation, which only lasted a couple months, he had gone to our friends in Atlanta and told them the truth. He had said, I strangled her. This is what I did. I really hope she takes me back. And he was telling them about all these steps that he was doing to join an abuser program. It seemed like he was taking full responsibility.

There was always that layer of guilt on my end of, do I have to forgive him because the Bible says to forgive? And if he's truly repenting, then do I owe him forgiveness? That was something that took a lot on my end to get past. So when Daisy is telling me, he said that you were crazy and that you physically abused him and he only acted in self-defense, I was blown away.

I never thought that he would be that brazen or that anybody would ever believe that. But I guess that is what he told his people back home because they weren't connected to anybody. So how would they know? He ended up getting back involved in that church back home. And after Chris passed away, he decided that it was going to be his mission to love bomb Daisy. Ted started going to her house every single day, cooking her meals, doing her laundry,

And he would actually tuck her into bed at night and pray with her every single night. And he kept this up for an entire year. He was committed to this bit of trying to win her over.

You have to imagine she is in the midst of all of this grief and she decided, I'm never going to love anybody as much as I loved Chris, but maybe I could have a life partner. They had been friends for 15 years at this point. And she thought, well, maybe I can just have companionship and maybe that's not so bad. She phrased it that she was just so in the midst of grief that she didn't even feel like she was thinking clearly.

Eventually, she did tell him, okay, let's give it a go. Not that they would be officially in a relationship, but they would just start dating to see if there was anything there. Pretty much immediately, he turned abusive on Daisy, which infuriates me. This poor woman had been going through so much, and then he just proceeded to torment her emotionally.

She describes these things as episodes. They were so distinct that there would be a different light in his eyes and his eyes would go really, really dark and he didn't even seem like himself. And he would start calling her the C word, calling her a whore. The first time he ended up taking this glass lamp that she had and shattering it on the floor.

He would apologize afterward, but he would also be like, "Well, you played a part in this too." Despite the fact that he is the one doing these violent behaviors. They continue to date and things are just getting worse and worse.

It almost felt when she was describing it to me like this was an escalation from when I knew him. I feel like he had gotten even more unhinged in his relationship with Daisy from the way that she was describing it. Then he would love Bomber and say, I'm going to take you to Paris and we got to go to Disneyland and I'm going to take care of you. She was...

mentally so confused on what was going on. So at one point she had decided, okay, let's take a step back from our romantic relationship. They took a step back, but they were still on talking terms because she has known him for a very long time. It was kind of this on and off, will they, won't they situation. Daisy was going to go to South Carolina with her daughter and her granddaughter. They were going to be there on a work trip.

Ted said that he also coincidentally had a trip at the same time in South Carolina. And he said, can I hang out with you while you're there? I personally think he followed her there. I don't think that he just happened to have a South Carolina trip the same weekend, despite the fact that that's what he said. But she agreed. She said, OK, well, if you're going to be there, then I guess so.

They ended up going out to this retail outdoor shopping center. While they're at the shopping center, it's her, her grandchild and Ted. Ted told her, hey, I need to go to the bathroom. So you go into that Starbucks. And when I come in, we'll get a drink and then we'll walk around the shopping center.

She said, okay. She goes into the Starbucks and she is sitting there for the longest time. She says she was just staring at her phone being like, where the heck is he? How long could this have possibly taken for him to be in the bathroom? He finally came through the door and he was so angry. She has no idea why he was mad at all. And he immediately said, let's go in a very aggressive tone.

She was like, wait, but I thought we were going to get a drink because she had been waiting for him. And he ended up blowing up on her very similar to the Disney World Burger incident. He started screaming at her in the middle of the Starbucks, saying that he was going to strand her in this place forever.

It's crazy looking at the similarities of the Disney World burger thing because he was threatening to strand me in a state that I did not live in. And that exact thing is what ended their relationship as well. She's like, okay, let's just go to the car. Let's get out of here. The car seat was in his car. She had her grandchild with her and she felt like, okay, well, I can't just call an Uber. I don't have a car seat. So there

They're walking to the car and right as she's about to touch the handle, he ends up locking it and says, find your own way home. And he is just berating her and not letting her in the car. Some pedestrians start to walk their way. And when he saw that people were starting to come, he ends up unlocking it. So they get in the car and she's in the backseat with her grandchild and he's just

screaming at her and she has no idea why he's mad. She has no idea what's going on. And she said his eyes got really, really dark and he put the rear view mirror face down and said, you're so disgusting. I can't even look at you. She ended up saying, I feel really bad for Jubilee. I was so surprised that she said that, but she said in that moment, she knew that he had been lying. I was not this crazy narcissist who abused him, but that there was something really wrong with him.

He ended up putting the rearview mirror back up and he started telling her that she was filled with demons. And at this point, she thinks maybe he is filled with demons because she's very Christian and thinks that maybe this is a demonic attack. And she ended up telling him, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.

He ended up finally taking her back to this place. And that was the end pretty much of their romantic relationship. It was surreal to hear just the amount of torture he put this woman through. I can't even imagine she was going through so much grief. You have to be truly awful to terrorize someone when they are in that season of life.

When she got back, she did end up seeing him a couple more times, not in a romantic way, but she felt like she couldn't just cut it off because they had known each other forever. She felt bad for him and she felt like he has no friends and I can at least maybe try to be friends with him. So she went to his dad's house with Ted while they were there and

Ted ends up having another episode and he starts doing all of this again in front of his dad. He's throwing stuff. He is just going off and she could not believe that he was acting this way in front of his own dad. So she grabs her purse and she says, okay, I'm going to go. And as she's walking out, Ted's dad follows her. And he said, Daisy, I'm so sorry. We don't know what's wrong. He's always been this way.

When she told me that, I got so emotional because looking back on my experience with Ted, it was obviously very traumatic, but I loved his parents so much. I still love them, which is complicated because they should have warned me. They were just so kind to me while I was married to him. And I think that they were hoping that him marrying me would fix him.

I even had another person who is closely in contact with him tell me that he had been in anger management when he was in high school because he's just always been angry and that his entire family knew that this was a problem. Nobody warned me.

Going back to the whole thing of how many cover-ups took place for this to even be possible, that's been like the hardest part to unpack.

I do think that his family is in an abusive relationship with him. I think that they have been on the receiving end of his outburst their entire life. I think that maybe they're scared of him. Can't say for sure because we never know what goes on behind closed doors ever. I would be shocked if Ted had actually experienced any sort of abuse from his parents.

But I think it is sad. His parents really enabled him and I do hold them responsible for enabling him and not protecting me 100%. I also think that they live in a very small town of 300 people and they really don't have resources at all. And they don't use the internet. I don't think that they properly knew how to handle a situation like that.

That has afforded me a little bit of grace for them. But at the end of the day, absolutely, they should have warned me. So many people at multiple points in this story should have stepped in. And that's why the fact that you're stepping up for so many other victims and survivors is really incredible. It is such a testament to you. Where are you now and where is your faith now?

Million dollar question. I have actually decided to stop sharing that online and on podcasts. And the reason being is I started to realize that I would get a lot of these comments from Christians saying, well, these are just disgruntled ex-Christians. They would invalidate abuse that people have been through because if you're not a Christian anymore, then you are not a credible source and we don't believe you.

That has just really enraged me, this idea that people think that you're no longer credible if you don't believe the exact same thing as them. And I started to experience this a lot when I started speaking out against everything that was going on with this prophet. And it was honestly very painful because I was saying, listen, I'm a Christian. And just because I don't believe what Bethel believes anymore doesn't make me any less credible. I think...

Faith is such a personal thing. And the more that I have been on my own journey, I am in the midst of deconstruction. And I know that I may not believe the same thing a year from now. I think that there are some things that are so personal that I would just prefer to keep that to myself, especially for in this season of life. I don't know if I'm going to be that way forever, but that is definitely how I feel for now.

My life has changed so much since leaving Ted. So what life looks like now for me is I am remarried to the most wonderful person. His name's Brandon.

He is just everything to me. It wouldn't have worked with anybody else. Not to say there aren't other Brandons out there, but he is just so special. I was such a mess when I came out of this relationship with Ted. Being with Bran, I started to really unpack how culty Bethel was. And I started to realize how strange my life experiences were. And to...

B was somebody who was fully able to just let me process and be myself. He made it so clear to me that no matter what I ended up believing at the end of the day, he accepted me.

That is the most beautiful form of love because when I was with Ted, I felt like I couldn't change. I felt like I would be abused if I told him that I was questioning Bethel's teachings and to be with somebody who fully accepted me, no matter what I believed, was really healing for me. And he helped me heal so much from purity culture. We are just married and living our best life.

I don't typically say what I do for work just for safety reasons, but I love my job. And on top of that, I've just been making a lot of content. So I've been posting a lot on TikTok and YouTube. So that has been like a good secondary income as well. It has just been a crazy year. I think my life has just changed so much since Something Was Wrong came out.

And you were recently inspired to create a new podcast too. Can you tell us about Healed-ish? Yes. So Healed-ish is my podcast that I just launched in May. It's something that I had been wanting to do for a very long time. The first four episodes was me just telling my story very similar to Something Was Wrong, but with the updates of Sarah and Daisy.

And then it's just going to be a lot of different stories of people in the church. I do have people who grew up in very culty churches who had hazing in their youth groups. I had on this one girl who donated her kidney to her boyfriend and then he cheated on her immediately after. One girl who was told that she needed to have a sit down meeting with her stalker, who was a lot older than her and was following her to different cities. And

There's another girl who was groomed by her choir teacher. They're not necessarily going to be religious. Some of them are more lighthearted. I'm really excited because one that's going to be coming out soon is actually the story with Jedediah Hartley. So I got him to come on the podcast and he is just such a great person who has a lot of information about these different sectors. So I had him come on and just share what it was like to be raised by a con artist. He

Heal Dish is already out and it is coming out every Tuesday on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube. My goal with Heal Dish is just to give people a platform to share their stories because I know for me, it has been so healing to go on podcasts and talk about these things.

I've healed more talking about it in the last year than I had the four years previously. And there's just something really powerful about people realizing that they are not alone in these very crazy things that happen to them.

My mission moving forward is to protect people from being abused in church settings, to teach people how to speak up for themselves. I think that this system teaches you to almost idolize leadership as if they are untouchable. That can result in these leaders grooming people in their congregation to accept abusive behavior.

So many women are stuck in abusive marriages because they believe that that is what God wants from them.

My goal is to really raise awareness about what domestic violence is, because when I look back at myself when I was 21 or 22, and I was staring at my phone at night and Googling, is it abusive if your husband does this? I really didn't know if it was abusive for him to rip the covers off of me or try to throw away my sleeping medication or to drive 100 miles an hour to scare me.

And even some of the other things that were physical abuse, I wasn't sure if it truly counted because it wasn't happening all the time. As sad as it is, it wasn't even just the church. I had people in my life that when I left Ted and I told them that he had strangled me, they actually said to me, well, are you sure you want to get divorced?

My hope is that people can see themselves in my story or they can hear these warning signs of what an abusive relationship looks like

I think a lot of the time when you see things on the internet or you see them in movies, you think it has to look like bruises or it has to look like one specific thing. That was my reality. I was living with somebody who was a monster a fourth or a half of the time and somebody who was very good to me during other times. I think that it's important for people to see what that really looks like.

There are people out there who are going through exactly what you were going through. I think that that's been the most beautiful part of this past year is just realizing that I'm not alone. And I think a lot of these systems like cover-ups in the church,

culty atmospheres and also just domestic violence in general, these things thrive in the dark. So finding a community is so important. So just know that you are not alone in these things that happen to you. No matter how crazy they are, I thought that me getting married because a prophet told me to was so specific, but I literally just talked to a girl last week who also got married because a prophet told her to.

So no matter what you have been through, there is probably somebody out there who has experienced the same and you are not alone. And finding that is so validating. Where can people find you and support you? My handle is at Jubilee Dawns. So Jubilee Dawn with an S at the end. And that is on TikTok and Instagram. And then also Healdish without the dash, just Healdish on TikTok and Instagram as well.

I think that your voice is so powerful and I am grateful that you share it with the world in so many different facets so people can find you and heal with you. Thank you so much. You have no idea how much that means to me. Talking to you is like a hug. I appreciate you so much and the work that you guys do. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode.

What Came Next is a Broken Cycle Media production co-produced by Amy B. Chesler and Tiffany Reese. If you'd like to help support What Came Next, you can leave us a positive review, support our sponsors, or follow Broken Cycle Media on Instagram at Broken Cycle Media. Check out the episode notes for sources, resources, and to follow our guests. Thank you again for listening.