S5: E16 - The Board Interviews Katherine: Celebrating Five Seasons and 110 Episodes Katherine Spearing

New book on Spiritual Abuse available from the founder of Tears of Eden: A Thousand Tiny Paper Cuts: The Subtle, Insidious Nature of Spiritual Abuse and Life on the Other Side

The Final Episode of Season Five (and the final episode of Uncertain) is a very special episode. The Board of Directors of Tears of Eden interviews Katherine Spearing, reflecting on the journey of creating five seasons and 110 episodes. They'll discuss:

What Katherine is most proud of during the past five seasons
How Katherine has navigated carrying stories of abuse and trauma while also being a survivor
What it's like working with a team and building community after experiencing abuse within a community
What it's like to pioneer bringing pivotal conversations into the public eye
How being a woman has impacted Katherine's approach and experience calling out abuse
And More!

Featuring Erin Pickersgill, Nikki G. and Brad Klausman

Looking for a trauma-trained mental health professional to work with? www.traumaresolutionandrecovery.com/meet-our-practitioners

Sign up for Tears of Eden’s newsletter to receive updates on the release of Katherine Spearing’s upcoming book: www.tearsofeden.org/about

Uncertain is a podcast of Tears of Eden, a community and resource for those in the aftermath of Spiritual Abuse. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please take a moment to like, subscribe, or leave a review on your favorite podcasting listening apparatus.

You can support the podcast by going to TearsofEden.org/support

To get in touch with us please email tearsofeden.org@gmail.com

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Transcript is Unedited for Typos and Misspellings

[00:00:00] I'm Katherine Spearing and this is Uncertain. So today's episode is a special one. It's a little bit happy and celebratory, and it's also a little bit sad. This episode is for the foreseeable future the last episode of Uncertain. It is the end of an era, the end of a journey, and also the beginning of one, I hope. Is the fifth season. We're ending the fifth season. There are five seasons of Uncertain. There's also over a hundred episodes. That's a really big deal. I was planning to sort of end the season with the episode from last week with Janai Amon talking about the How to prepare for telling your story publicly in a safe way.

I was really excited about that episode. I was prepared to end on that episode. And then I met with the board of directors for tears of Eden. Yes, we have a [00:01:00] board of directors. We are a nonprofit. All non profits have a board of directors, and I was really thrilled that they suggested, hey, why don't we do like a final celebratory episode in which we, the board, interview you, Katherine, about the journey we're on.

with Uncertain. And I honestly was so in the zone of like, okay, I need to finish the season. I need to wrap it up. I need to get everything out. I need to do the promo and I need to do the recording and I need to do the editing and just kind of full on just work task mode. And so the fact that the board suggested, hey, let's do an episode to sort of commemorate and celebrate.

That was really helpful. I really appreciated it. It meant so much to me and this episode meant a lot to me as well. This whole journey has meant so much to me. I'm going to talk more about it in the episode itself during the interview. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter, the Tears of Eden newsletter, so that you can stay [00:02:00] updated on everything that is continuing to happen with Tears of Eden, including but not limited to a book about spiritual abuse that I am currently writing and will be releasing next year 2025. Thank you all so much for listening. Uh, so before I start crying, I will turn it over to the board of directors of Tears of Eden.

Here is the final episode where the board of directors interviews Katherine Spearing

Erin: Will you like edit things? Oh, definitely. I'll definitely

Katherine: edit it. Yeah. And I'll probably just kind of speak, speak openly, and then decide later if I care.

you're gonna edit

Erin: yourself. I'm definitely

Katherine: going to edit myself. I probably edit myself more than I edit guests, honestly, because they're going to be going to be real about that. I was like, why do I say like so much? I say like so much.

Erin: You like it. You like it. I like to say like, [00:03:00] exactly.

Katherine: So can we have everybody introduce yourselves? Your name, where you're located, your pronouns, and what how you found Tears of Eden, and then what made you want to be on the board of directors aside from me coercing you into it?

Brad: Nicky threatening my life.

Erin: That'll do it.

Nicole: That's because Catherine threatened my life, so I just was passing down the baton. Hey,

Erin: I didn't get threatened. I feel left out.

Brad: Well, don't worry. That means you saved on therapy bills. It's okay. And

Katherine: we are not a cult.

Nicole: No. No. We've had enough of those.

Katherine: Nikki, why

Nicole: don't you go first?

Okay. I am Nikki G, and certified trauma recovery coach, and I specialize in religious trauma, cult recovery, and narc abuse, and I hail from the state of Texas. And [00:04:00] how did I find this safe space that I found that I'm in right now? Well, I met Catherine, maybe about 2021, I think and we connected that way, came on our podcast with myself and another coach.

And We just hit it off. We found that we had a lot of commonality and our hearts were both centered on, obviously, recovering ourselves, but also helping those who have gone through horrendous forms of spiritual abuse and religious trauma. And so, you know, Catherine reached out to me, I think the end of 2021, and said, Hey!

There's a board seat. You want to get on the board? No, she didn't say it that easy, but she was just saying, I would love to have you. I think, you know we hit it off well, and I think we have the same vision. And so I came on board. I remember her. I'm not going to do that now, but I remember her explaining to me how tears of Eden, the actual name came to being, and I just fell in love with that.

[00:05:00] And she didn't have the strong army. And so I said, yes. And I've been on the board since the beginning of 2022. So that's my story and I'm sticking with it

Katherine: and Nikki has been with me through many a trial tears of Eden related. Yeah. And it's gotten me through many things. Very, very grateful, and also runs the support groups or has run the past few support groups that we've done.

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful support group, support person, wonderful human being. Erin, you want to go next?

Erin: Hi everyone so my name is Erin Pickerskill and I'm the, I'm an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Missouri. And my pronouns are she, her I've been a priest for a few years and as I was training to be a priest, I was in England and had some of my own experiences of spiritual abuse and religious trauma.

And as I was. Trying to find out if this thing was even real. [00:06:00] Found myself stomping around the British countryside, walking my dogs and listening to Catherine's voice on the Tia's of Eden podcast on certain and like just praying and wishing and hoping that I could find a community that would understand me and validate my experiences and ended up moving to St.

Louis after that. And so did Catherine. So I asked Catherine if I could take her out for a coffee. And And thank her for all of the validatio...