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• W Was I in a Cult? Was I in a Cult? remote 7 days ago You are here

  A Single-Family Cult: "Beyond The Front Door"

  Every cult calls itself a family. Audrey's actually was one.    For Audrey, there was no guru, no religious doctrine, and the only members were her ten other siblings. And the leader? Her parents, particularly her mother. But from the outside, they looked pretty "normal": a big family living in an ordinary Idaho subdivision, houses close together, neighbors on all sides.    Except not one of them was ever allowed to have a friend.    And eventually, they weren't allowed to have interactions with anyone outside the family. As the isolation tightened, Audrey got older and increasingly aware that the outside world looked nothing like the one she'd been taught to fear.  At 18, she finally made it to community college, where little tastes of independence began to crack open everything she'd been raised to believe. And eventually, one small act of defiance would force her to make an enormous choice: follow her parents rules, or lose her family. 

  When Audrey finally left in 2020, she thought the separation from her siblings would be temporary. Six years later, nine of them are still living in the family home, cut off from their big sister.

  So now Audrey has stopped waiting.

  She's taking matters into her own hands, finding increasingly creative, and at times risky, ways to remind her siblings that she's still out there... that there is life beyond the front door. 

   

  A big, messy, beautiful world they've barely been allowed to see. And when they're ready to walk into it, their big sis will be there, waiting with open arms.

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