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When history buff Eric Roper buys an old house in Minneapolis, he wants to know everything he can about the people who lived there before him. But one couple become his obsession, and as he pieces together their lives through genealogy records and old recordings, he realizes they're showing him a side of his city he never knew existed. This is Ghost of a Chance from the Minnesota Star Tribune. Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.

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Lemonada the subtitle of this memoir captivated me as soon as I came across it. Dinner with Vampires Life on a Cult TV show while Also in an Actual Cult alright, you've got my attention. It's the story of actress and singer songwriter Bethany Joy Lenz, and it is as delightful as the title promises. Lenz, who goes by her middle name Joy, when not on stage, has lived quite a life. She's best known for her nine year run on the early 2000s WB Teen Classic TV show One Tree Hill, where she played Hayley James. Her on screen life was pretty dramatic on the show, including spoiler alert, a teenage marriage, a musical tour, a couple of children and an obsessive stalker nanny. And as it turns out, her off screen life was pretty dramatic too as she became entrenched with a religious group called the Big House Family for nearly a decade. She ultimately moved into to their compound where she married the leader's son, lost millions of dollars on her TV income to the cult's machinations, and even had to fight for custody of her own daughter when she finally extricated herself from the group. Cults are very in right now, so it's no surprise that this dishy memoir became an instant New York Times bestseller and was called a must read by Time and People magazines. Lenz is a good writer and she's also really funny with great insight and powers of observation. The book gives you a front row seat to what it takes to make it in Hollywood and how a seemingly normal person can get sucked into a controlling religious cult. Memoirs read by the author are always a treat and this one is especially good. Lenz has a warm, expressive voice that makes her a natural narrator. She's also an immensely talented singer. There are a few lovely moments where she breaks into song, and as a special bonus treat for One Tree Hill fans, her former castmates Chad Michael Murray, James Lafferty, Tyler Hilton and Paul Johansson pop up for exclusive audio cameos. Today we'll be sharing the prologue and Chapter one with you, which takes us through Lenz's childhood and teen upbringing in two very different communities, the theater and film world and the evangelical Christian world as she moved from Florida to Texas to New York. Those two worlds existed side by side somehow, until she got cast in a tawdry and godless project, a soap opera. The Horror.

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Prologue I don't want to do this anymore. Maybe we need to separate for a while. He was facing me when I said it, standing across the hotel room. He went quiet, tense. I hadn't said the word divorce, but it was close enough. His chest was moving in shallow breaths. He blinked a few times. And what about Rosie? He said. Who does she go with? Rosie? Resting on the bed between us, she wrestled, still in her car seat, alongside the suitcases we needed to pack for our flight back home to Idaho in a few hours. There she lay, 11 months of life and already full of turmoil. Her evenings were peppered with the sound of her parents, bitter arguments, slamming doors, mom crying in closets. On top of this, it took her six months to latch onto my nipple properly because she was born with a tongue tie, so her introduction to nourishment was a mother weeping from pain, usually screaming into a pillow so she wouldn't be disturbed as I pushed through, bleeding into the milk. Yes, there were plenty of walks in the sunshine, naps on our chest, holding her father's thumbs as he cooed over her, and blue raspberries on her tummy. That was her favorite. He could always make her laugh by doing that. She would gaze up at us, but we were the ones who were amazed at every little thing she did. There were good times, but more often we lived in a world of chaos. I spoke quietly. Well, I mean, I'm nursing her, so. He shook his head and let out a quick breath, then picked up a sweatshirt, balled it up, and threw it toward me with a growl. It was only a sweatshirt. Before that it was only a toy, only a book, only a cell phone, only potted plants, only a vintage rolling metal laundry basket colliding with a wall, ricocheting to the floor and scaring our tough five pound Yorkshire terrier so badly he shit himself right where he stood. He had only injured his hand punching holes in several of our walls and doors. A sweatshirt was really nothing. My husband's father had encouraged his three sons from a young age to take out their aggression against women on the drywall and the furniture, and he set the example himself, right in front of the woman. If needed, Les would coach so she can see how passionate you are about her and see how controlled you are to not harm her in spite of the fact that she makes you so angry. And boy, did I make my husband angry. Everything I did, said, thought, my very existence. It seemed he was especially angry with me lately. Faced with moving back to Los Angeles, where we'd first met and where we'd spent these past few days, looking at places to live and meeting new acting managers. Since marrying, I'd split my time between our family's home base in Idaho and the Wilmington, North Carolina, set of the hit TV series One Tree Hill, where for nine years I had starred as Haley James Scott. The millions I made supported not only us, but the extended family's various endeavors, including a motel, a restaurant, and most importantly, a ministry. Now that the show was over, I would have to go back to auditioning, which didn't happen in Idaho, and the idea of leaving the family was abhorrent to him. That afternoon in our West Hollywood hotel, he had been yelling at me for about an hour, which was standard. I was exhausted. I had been exhausted for years. The therapist I had begun seeing around this time encouraged me to create some boundaries to help navigate these emotional storms. Start with something simple, she advised. Violence, for example. Physical violence around you is not acceptable. Ever. After that session, I told him this. If you throw something across the room again, I'm going to immediately remove myself and Rosie from that situation and we can try talking again the next day. He didn't like it. I believe his exact words were, I don't agree to that. In the split second after he threw the sweatshirt, I had to make a choice to enforce my boundary or not. I considered letting it slide and waiting until he threw something really heavy. I didn't want to make things worse. I could just let it go for now and we could talk about it later. I wanted to find a way to live separately for a few months anyway. Go to counseling together, try and start over. Just get away from his family and their overbearingness for a little while. This thought tripped me up. Thinking of them not just as overbearing, but as his family rather than our family. It was a strange and surprising feeling. Actually more surprising than the thought itself was how right it felt. But I didn't have time to consider what that meant. I could bring all this up, plus the separation idea, another time, if I just stayed. Don't do it now, Joy. It was only a sweatshirt. Just then, I looked down at my daughter's face for the first time since the fight began, and I felt everything inside me shift. Her eyes were different. They were always deep and bright, like little stars had landed in them. People frequently commented, laughingly that they felt she was staring into their soul. In that moment, though, her big wonderful chocolate eyes suddenly looked hopeless, almost dead. I realized she had just sat in the room for an hour while the air filled with her father's venom as it poured over us. Isn't that what kills plants in fifth grade science experiments? Isolating them in a room and yelling at them. I picked up Rosie and held her to my chest. She was limp and looked so deeply sad. Maybe I was projecting. Maybe it was all in my imagination. Maybe God was present like I'd known him to be so many times before and was somehow allowing me to see myself from a bird's eye view. Whatever it was, my body went cold. And then it went very, very hot. I had carried her for nine months. I had read the books on parenthood. I had delivered her myself after a 20 hour labor, reaching down and pulling my daughter out of myself in the final moment. I nursed her multiple times a day through the pain of her inability to latch. I got up in the night with her and then went to work at 5am with her. I prayed for her, fed her, changed her, took her to her doctor's appointments, spoke positive things over her daily. I did all the things that mothers do. I think in that moment though, seeing her light go out, knowing why, and knowing I was the only one who could do anything about it. That was the moment I actually became a mother. And that stupid sweatshirt became the heaviest thing he ever threw. I began to gather my things. I told you if you threw another thing, I was going to leave with her for the night. I stated it pragmatically, holding a thread of hope that he might apologize. I didn't even notice him move. He was just suddenly there over me, leaning in as I sat on the bed, his arms blocking me on either side, his breath hot in my face. If you leave, he spat, I will get a lawyer and I will take her from you. I will fight for custody and I'll win. I will take her away from you. My heart was a kick drum. He was so confident. The girl he knew wouldn't leave, the girl he knew would stay. Because in spite of the endless struggle and depression, she hadn't left. The girl he knew was committed to making the marriage work. She was trying to be a godly submissive wife. She knew she was selfish and just needed more healing, needed to surrender more. She knew deep down how much he'd sacrificed for her, how patient he was with her brokenness. The girl he knew needed him. I knew that girl too I'd been living in her skin for 10 years, believing she was the real me. But where was the girl I used to be before? Before the downward spiral into normalizing abuse and handing over my autonomy not just to him, but to our family. No to his family. No to a I wasn't quite ready to admit it. I was even more reluctant to use that word than divorce, the word my estranged parents and former friends and co workers had been using for years, the word that further isolated me from them. But that, I increasingly suspected, was true. He stood up, still glowering at me, and then walked into the bathroom, slammed the door, and turned on the shower. I was lucky that he bet on me being paralyzed with fear, but I knew my window of time was short. I quickly scooped up Rosie in her car seat, grabbed my suitcase, and hurried to the rental car. Instead of driving to the airport, I let him take the flight without us while Rosie and I crashed with a few old friends for the next week. Via text, he pleaded, then doubled down on, scolding me for my insubordination, my selfishness, my heartlessness, again standard. And then he went cold. His messages became almost robotic, which only pushed me further away. After a week with those old friends and phone calls with my therapist and parents, I was reminded of that other girl I used to be before I was reminded I still was her, and I finally reached a place where I could say it. I was in a cult. And now I had to get out. Part 1 Chapter 1 My First Recollection of the American Christian culture crock pot I was baked in was about 1985. Me, age 4, sitting in the middle of the backseat bench in my parents Black Harvester Scout, where my tan string bean legs stuck to the vinyl as I endured the 17 hour drive from South Florida to Central Texas with the metal seat belt heavy on my little waist. Booster seats were a thing of the future. I pulled repeatedly on the cord that stuck out of the spine of my favorite doll, Melody. Melody was the Christian version of Teddy Ruxpin or Cabbage Patch Kids. She had one song, Pull the String, and she'd sing Hosanna. Hosanna shouted to God with the voice of triumph. Clap your hands, all you people. Shouted to God with a voice of praise. She was born out of the booming business catering to the charismatic evangelical movement that sprung up in the United states in the 1980s. Christian rock music, cartoon bibles, kitschy cross, jewelry and dolls who praised the Lord. My folks had come out of the Jesus Revolution hippie era and we're now in the Thick of this new movement, having met at and graduated from one of the country's big charismatic bible colleges. The story goes that my dad came out of the gym after losing a pickup game of basketball and saw my mom in the bursters line to register for a class. So he jumped into his 64 Mustang and rushed back to his dorm to grab the only cash he had, $5, so he could join her in line and have an excuse to talk. Mom, in her below the knee skirt, smiled at dad behind her. He might have had a haircut to adhere to the conservative campus code, but he was still a hippie at heart. Dad saw her Bambi ish face and said, you look like you have stars in your eyes. And I was born in Florida. Three years later we lived in the house of my dad's off the boat Australian grandfather in Coconut Creek with orange trees and pompano beach in the backyard. The heat was unrelenting, but the ocean was my playground. Dad had graduated with a teaching degree, but there weren't any open positions nearby, so he picked up work where he could find it. Painting houses, mowing lawns, reluctantly taking a risky job as a prison guard. Mom painted designs on white baby onesies and sold them for cash. Eventually, they took a job as house parents in a home for troubled teen girls. It was free room and board, and better yet, they saw it as a ministry opportunity. And that lasted about a year until one of the girls threatened to cook me. Mom had us out of there within a week and they became determined to upgrade our life. Dad had been sending resumes all over the country and scored a job as a high school teacher at a prestigious Christian school in Texas. And mom was hired as the new secretary for the president of the biggest Christian music label in the country. So dad sold the Mustang and picked up the more family friendly Scout. We packed up and headed out for Dallas, where there was also unrelenting heat, but no ocean. Early on, I dreamt often of the swaying citrus groves and palm trees we'd left behind. I felt safe there under the humid haze. To this day, I'd rather be hot than cold, and the smell of salt and oranges gives me an immense amount of comfort. But life moves on, and so had we. A tiny apartment on the outskirts of the city became home. I had a free ride to the private school since dad was teaching there. But I found making friends to be a challenge. It wasn't just the solitude of being an only child. I felt the profound disconnect between my life. Riding to school in a truck with busted heat while warming my hands on the cigarette lighter or World's Best dad coffee mug I'd made him in kindergarten and the other kids who arrived at school in Cadillac Escalades and had new Magical Mansion Barbie Dream houses. My social life basically consisted of the Singing Melody doll and our new Cocker Spaniel puppy, so I was extremely relieved to discover that Jesus would be my permanent friend. In our home there were dinnertime prayers, frequent references to the moral guidance offered by Proverbs, Psalms, and the parables, and daily conversations about God. Dad had a new King James Bible that was bound with a leather so thick it belonged on a saddle. He read it with a highlighter and pen nearby, filling every inch of the margin with impeccably written notations. One night at my bedside, dad finished reading to me from First Peter about Jesus taking our sins upon himself, closed that leather Bible on his lap, and said, do you know that God is so perfect that anything not perfect gets destroyed just by being near him? Like a light being switched on in a dark room? And then he flipped the switch on the wall. I ducked my head under the covers, giggling. He smiled. Look around. See any darkness? I peeked out and shook my head. Where did it go? He asked. The light ate it up, I said. That's right, he said, tipping his head back the way he always did when he was pleased. That's what God does for us. So as long as we keep him flipped on, he eats up all the badness. It was simple. I understood it, and eventually I made my parents faith my own. My parents knew jobs didn't last. Over the next eight years, we'd moved to four different cities in Texas. This meant four different elementary schools for me and continued difficulty maintaining friendships to add to that isolation. With each job change and new apartment, the tension between my parents had been growing. Raised voices, icy rooms, and slammed doors. Because of this volatility, constantly changing schools, and undiagnosed adhd, I was a terrible student. Fidgety, always daydreaming, unable to do my homework the way it was supposed to be done. I tried making it fun for myself any way I could, using different colored pens, offering additional answers to multiple choice questions, drawing pictures instead of writing sentences. My teachers were exhausted and frustrated, but luckily for me, both my parents were great nurturers of creativity. They knew I just needed to be in an environment that turned my weaknesses into strengths. When I was seven, mom brought me to a community theater in Arlington, Texas, and I was cast as a munchkin in the wizard of Oz. It was perhaps inevitable that I'd become a performer. My family had a long history with the performing arts. My great grandmother on Mom's side ran off as a teenager to join the circus and eventually wound up in vaudeville. My dad's parents, Doris and George, were also show folk. She was a choir director and a regional stage actress, and he was a regular on Broadway, appearing in the original productions of South Pacific, Wish youh Were Here, and Carousel, and acting as a stage manager for many more. In the attic of her New Jersey home, Grandma Doris had boxes like boxes of playbills from shows they were in, plus original cast records, newspaper clippings, and handwritten notes from Broadway legends like Shirley Booth and Joshua Logan. The scrapbook game in my family is strong. Family lore even has it that one day James Garner and Grandpa George were in an alley smoking a cigarette half past the end of a matinee, and Garner said, everybody's calling me to go out to Hollywood, but I don't know if I could leave the theater. Grandpa George, said, Garner, if you don't get out of this rat hole, I will personally kick your ass. Followed by an apparently convincing argument that led to James Garner packing his bags to try his luck in Hollywood, where his success carried through to his final role in Nicholas Sparks. The Notebook upon further research, it appears James Garner never worked on Broadway as a young man. So either his name got mixed up as the story was passed down or Grandpa George was just full of shit. Which, considering the fact that he shacked up with a dancer from the Jackie Gleason show and left Doris, my 6 year old dad and his 9 year old sister with severe disabilities, probably is the right answer. I barely knew him, but Grandma Doris was a euphony of music and warmth. The times we'd visit her in Jersey, I'd swipe a Werther's butterscotch from the crystal candy dish on the upright piano, pull the string hanging from the upstairs hallway ceiling, climb the rickety stairs and lose myself for hours in her attic. That highest point of the house had a single dusty window and countless saved props and costumes from old shows for me to get lost playing dress up and soaking in the echoes of family history. I felt like I could understand more about who I was there and I longed for family connection. The Arlington Community Theater gave me my first taste of really belonging somewhere in the Creative Arts School. There were dozens of rooms for rehearsals, costume making, set design, dance and voice classes, people bustling everywhere and struggling to hear each other over the sound of singing and clacking tap shoes, booming stereos and instrument practices. I was invigorated by the smells of paint, sawdust, aquanet and pond's cold cream, hot lights and pure sweat on the big auditorium stage during the opening night of the wizard of Oz. I was supposed to hand off a prop to Dorothy and spontaneously decided that my character would dislike Toto, so I recoiled from it and held my nose. The dog needed a bath anyway. I heard ripples of laughs and I realized I had an impact on the emotional experience of an entire crowd. A few more times on stage and I realized I could disappear from my problems at home and school and be anyone I wanted to be. On top of that, I was welcomed. My eccentricities, like spontaneous singing, mimicking Lucille Ball and daydreaming, were things that got me in trouble at school, but they were an asset to me in acting. I went on to star in all the usual local theater standards like Annie, Gypsy, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Peter Pan. I was becoming a valuable member of the community, and that was everything to me. At 12, I received a highlighted review in the Dallas Morning News, the first newspaper clipping of my own. Next, I was cast in my first on camera role, the lead actress alongside a giant costumed singing songbook in a Christian movie. Think Barney, the purple Dinosaur, except a blue church hymnal. Salty's Salvation Celebration is absolutely findable online. You're welcome. Soon after that jump from stage to screen, I joined yet another new school, this one dedicated to TV and film, and my first trip to Los Angeles was arranged. Mom and I spent a week in a furnished Hollywood apartment going on every audition we could find. Apparently, I was getting good feedback from casting agents, and when I got to the coveted final round of the Mickey Mouse Club auditions the same year Brittany and Justin were cast, I overheard mom telling dad on the phone she might really have a shot at this. It was very clear to me what I was meant to do with my life. It was clear to Grandma Doris, too. During one of my last trips to see her after she'd been diagnosed with late stage cancer, she gave me some career advice, speaking more to me as a mentor than as a grandmother. It's a hard life to be an actor, she said. While I painted on her eyeshadow, Carole King played in the background on the stereo. Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore? Beside us on the kitchen table laid a short layered wig. We could put that on last. It's hard to be rejected and always be competing, but there's nothing more glorious than being able to tell stories. I can't imagine having done anything else. It brought me so much happiness. She paused for a moment so I could apply her favorite pearly mauve lipstick from a silver tube. It would be so fun to see your face at my door. She pressed her lips together. I have many regrets in life, but I don't regret one second I spent on stage. Then she hugged me close to her warm chest and looked into my eyes. Sing your heart out, kiddo. One day your name will be in lights. I really believe that. But you were so far away. When she died, she left the New Jersey house to dad. Deep down, though, I felt it was also her gift to me, getting me closer to New York City and putting me in proximity to real training and real casting and the real Broadway. We left our life in the south and moved into the two bedroom home where my father grew up. Dad got a job as an adventure coordinator, ropes course director at a mental health center, which basically meant that he was leading group therapy on a grown up playground. Mom got a job selling beige business phones with built in shoulder rests. To whom? I'm not sure, but I was always uncovering boxes of phones in the house with my big teeth, Texas twang, and frosty blonde hair. I checked into the same public school dad went to and made exactly zero friends at the demand of the queen bee who thought being nice and Southern was weird. Using my acting skills, I quickly dropped the accent and adapted to Jersey Girl for a while, until I realized the facade of brown lip liner, flannel shirts and pitiful attempts to smoke cigarettes to impress said queen bee would only carry me so far. I decided after taking an introductory French class, I felt more like a French girl inside, so I changed the spelling of my name to J O I E and surrounded myself with everything that had to do with France magazine, tearouts of Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoch, movies taped to my bedroom walls, Les Mis and Serge Gainborg in my CD player, and a steady rotation of berets. This also did not make me new friends. I was lonelier than ever and deeply missed my Texas theater community. Even though mom was driving me into New York City multiple times a week for dance and voice lessons and auditions, it was still an hour and a half commute on a good day and too far to go for social meetup. My parents and I began attending a local church that had a Friday night youth group meeting, a sort of club within the church for tweens and teens. In an effort to keep me socialized, they insisted I attend and that first night changed my life as I knew it. I walked into a large rec room with fluorescent lights and about 15 kids bustling around. I felt so comfortable on stage but so awkward in a crowd. I didn't know how to stand or hold my arms, who to talk to or what to talk about. Then, just as I was about to stuff my face with cheap pizza and find a corner to die in, from across the room I heard a resounding laugh. My vision was lassoed by a dishwater blonde boy with oceanic blue eyes. He came over and introduced himself in a voice too impossibly deep for his age, and the only thought running through my mind was, I'm gonna marry you. His parents were well respected in the church and community. It was a family of two boys, a middle sister and a Weimaraner. They were happy and friendly and the whole of them always looked like they just climbed off bicycles in Nantucket. Quickly, he and I became the very, very best of friends. We talked for hours every night, me taking advantage of the shoulder rest on the beige coil corded phone in our living room. We both loved Jesus and the Dave Matthews Band. We had the same sense of humor and he was the only other person I knew who hated cats. Since I didn't belong to the theater community anymore, I decided he would be where I belonged. I started traveling more for acting jobs and although it took me away from Blue Eyes, I loved it. Mom would fly out with me to LA for weeks at a time to screen test or film a pilot. I'd play Paul Sorvino's daughter or James Franco's sister, or Ben Foster in Gabrielle Union's bff. That last one was a comedy pilot set in the 1970s for CBS that we were all certain would get picked up. But Fox announced its fall lineup first and CBS didn't want to compete with that 70s show. Though my pilots weren't getting picked up, my name was circulating and I was getting invited to fancy mansion parties where I recognized nearly every face I passed. It was exciting being one of the cool kids, considering how awkward I was used to feeling at school. But I never forgot what my dad said about keeping God's light turned on. I was sensitive to the underlying ego and darkness that seemed to accompany these kinds of Hollywood environments where no one blinked if I was offered a drink from the bar and cocaine was passed around on trays. I didn't dare tell my parents these stories, but I confided them to Blue Eyes, a kindred spirit who shared my desire to make God proud. Talking long distance every night was too expensive during those trips, and email wasn't common yet, let alone laptops, so he and I would write letters. We wrote to each other on anything, receipts, old homework. Once he mailed me a letter written on a long strip of wallpaper he'd peeled from behind the bed frame in the hotel where he was vacationing with his in school we passed notes endlessly. I'm surprised the 10th grade Spanish class radiator didn't break down from all the paper we stuffed into it, hiding notes for each other to find. Later in the summers we'd drive his little Volkswagen Jetta out to his family's Jersey lake house. Not actually Nantucket, but lovely nonetheless, sit on the dock with our legs hanging over the lake and plunge into all the big ideas of life. He and his family were a burrow I wanted to hide in while my parents tried to superglue their crumbling marriage. They had split up once when I was younger, but got back together for my sake. The years that followed were a swamp of bitterness and passive aggressive dialogue. The full fledged arguments would happen behind thin walls and closed doors from which my mother would emerge with poorly veiled composure. If I ever asked, what's wrong? Are you guys okay? Her response was always the same, with upturned lips, everything's fine. My mom had not inherited the family's acting gene, and in those attempts to protect me she had inadvertently led me into a loop of questioning my reality, a characteristic that was useful to me as an actress and also useful to anyone who wanted to manipulate me when I needed to escape. Blue Eyes was there to listen and console, but I refused to cry in front of him. There was no way I was ever going to collapse into a heap of tears for him to clean up. Not like his cheerleader girlfriend did. Yes, Blue Eyes was of course the school's star athlete and was on again, off again with the head cheerleader, as if that cliche needed any help from them. There I was, writing songs and poetry for him, weeping nightly into the neck of my aging cocker spaniel and waiting patiently for him to realize he loved me back. I thought maybe my singing would win him over and joined the church's worship team, a Christianese term for onstage band. Or maybe acting success would impress him. That year I had booked a few national commercials, a Stephen King movie called Thinner. I was brought in as Monica Kina's understudy for the Devil's Advocate because she had a schedule conflict, and I walked to set with the extremely kind and tall Keanu Reeves, only to have Monica arrive after rehearsal, which gutted me. And later I landed a small role on the daytime soap opera Guiding Light as the teenage clone yes, clone of beloved character Reva Shane. But apparently none of that competed with turning cartwheels on the sideline of a football game. Then one Saturday morning, I was blow drying my hair before going to Blue Eyes house to rent a movie and hang out. When my dad asked me to come into the living room, mom was on a chair crying. They told me they were getting a divorce. Mom proceeded to explain, confess, apologize, rationalize. After 10 minutes, I said, can I go finish blow drying my hair? They looked at each other and let me go. Later, while browsing the French film section in Blockbuster Video, I told Blue Eyes casually, so my parents are getting a divorce. And when the words left my mouth, my face went hot. My throat started to burn. The tears sprung up in my eyes. I'm sure he didn't know what to do any more than I did. He was just a dumb teenager like me. He said, ah, Jay, I'm sorry to hear that. You okay? I wasn't okay at all, but I said yes, still terrified for him to think of me as high maintenance. I also refused to cry when I was kicked off the worship team a few weeks later, news my mom had to break to me while driving home from church. Apparently the pastors decided it's too confusing for you to be leading worship on stage while you're on a soap opera. Confusing? What's confusing about it? Because soaps are tawdry, which makes the church look like they endorse that kind of behavior. Mom was fuming, and I felt my own shame and anger well up. Do they understand what acting is? I'm just telling a story, and my character isn't even doing any of that stuff. It's not just that your dad and I divorcing. They just think it's complicated for the congregation. I was quiet. It's fine, she said. They were lucky to have you idiots. While I did appreciate my mother's loyalty and fierce protection, whether in this instance or defending me against bullying stage moms who felt I was a threat to their daughters, or demanding the conservative middle school English teacher accept my research paper on Broadway, which was first denied as too secular a topic, her overbearingness worked against me, too. After dad officially moved out and promptly remarried during my senior year, mom and I had no buffer. One night we were having one of our routine shouting matches. We didn't curse good Christians didn't curse. I never said I hate you, though I felt it often. But that night she had been chasing me around the house into the bathroom. Even. I said, fuck. She slapped me. I screamed in her face, leave me alone. Then I grabbed the keys and ran out to my car, an Eddie Bauer Edition Ford Bronco that I still wish I had even with its busted air conditioning. She was on my heels, but I managed to get in and lock all the doors. With wild eyes. She banged on the window and tried the handle. Then she stood in front of the car, crossing her arms and looking at me like, ha. Gotcha. She's so stupid, I thought. Sit on the hood of the car if you don't want me to drive away. I pretended to put the Bronco in reverse but didn't actually shift gears. I looked behind me like I was going to back up, and she predictably ran to the back of the car to try and block me from that side. As soon as she moved, I peeled out. I decided then to get the hell away from her as soon as I could, and apparently she felt the same. Mom met someone from California online. After six months, they decided to get married when I graduated, and not a second later, the week of my commencement ceremony, he flew out to help her pack. This is unbelievable, she muttered at him on the day they loaded boxes into the moving truck the day after my graduation. She was looking at me, sitting in the middle of the living room sketching a dress using the design software that came with our new Apple computer, courtesy of the money from my sinful Guiding Light gig. I was trying to keep my mind off Blue Eyes, whom I'd said a brief goodbye to at his graduation party by slathering my lips in Bath and Body Works, Wild berry flavored lip balm, and finally getting up the courage to quickly kiss him. It was barely more than a peck, but I knew it'd likely be the last time we saw each other that summer, as he was traveling with his family and then headed to a Midwestern college. So I had to take the chance. He smiled and said thank you before we were swept back up in the frenzy of yearbook signings and congratulations, and then he acted like nothing happened. Joy, can you get off your computer and help me? I'm moving across the country here. No thanks, I said coolly. California tried to calm her down. He was always trying to calm her down. Just let her do her thing. If she wants to be disrespectful, she's graduated. She's an adult now. That's her choice. Is that what I was an adult. Thank you for your time at our education factory. Now please throw this hat in the air and go run your own life. I looked around at our empty house. Dad's house, Doris's house. I squeezed the worn brown carpet under my toes. Well, you need to be out by Wednesday for the new owners, she said, heading to the truck with a box that had a beige phone cord hanging out of the bottom. And you'd better get started because I won't be here to clean up after you. It was time for me to find a new place to belong. I had already been thinking of moving to Manhattan, hoping to finally fulfill the destiny Grandma Doris envisioned for me, and that decision was solidified when I got a call from my manager saying Guiding Light wanted to bring me on as a series regular. So at just 18 years old, and after a trip to Paris during which I was frustratingly not seduced by a debonair bohemian as I'd been promised by years of injustice French cinema, I moved into a tiny Union Square apartment. I didn't know anyone, but I quickly began to make friends among the Guiding Light cast and other actors I'd routinely encounter on auditions. I also made friends in the city's music scene. I'd expanded my songwriting beyond ballads for Blue Eyes and put together a local band. We gigged around town, playing legendary spots like CBGB and the Bitter End. I booked a made for TV movie playing Mary Tyler Moore's daughter and got into a regular circuit of auditioning for Broadway. I was building a real life in New York, but where I developed my deepest friendships was in church. An acquaintance introduced me to a small church that met in the apartment of a gentle natured pastoral couple from South Africa. The Bible studies we had were similar to others I participated in throughout my life intimate, casual, filled with curiosity. Uniquely, our South African pastors actually encouraged us to visit other churches on occasion to diversify our spiritual diet. I started to frequent Redeemer Presbyterian, pastored by Rev. Dr. Timothy Keller, whose 2023 New York Times obituary described him as a pioneering evangelist who was widely respected for his intellect and engaging thoughtfully in contemporary culture. I didn't personally consider him an evangelist, which to me was a tan salesman with a Southern accent on my tv asking for money. Tim was a theologian and insisted on reason as the entry point for faith, which I loved because it reminded me of the way my dad would challenge me to think. Tim and his wife, Kathy, had started the Upper east side Church in 1989, and eventually the congregation would number several thousand New Yorkers from all walks of life. There I met an auburn haired Brit named Camille, who is also an actress. We had run into each other in enough casting rooms that once I saw her at Redeemer, it sealed our bond. Having grown up Catholic, she had become curious about all the other options, and since I was inquisitive too, we had no shortage of conversation. Camille was the first actor friend I didn't feel competitive with. I just wanted to see her win. So when she told me a few months into our friendship that she was moving to Los Angeles to try for more work, I was sad, but also supportive. I never imagined leaving New York City, especially having discovered such enriching communities in my spiritual and professional lives. I loved living there. I loved the creative pulp that seemed to rush into my blood every time I stepped outside. The feeling of everyone piled on top of each other in each other's way, holding each other up and spurring each other on. I felt fearless there, and most importantly, I felt like I was a part of something. Things were even looking more promising with Blue Eyes. One weekend he came to visit, and after a long day of sightseeing and sexual tension, he finally stopped me by a street lamp near Lincoln center, leaned over and kissed me. I was sure this would be the key that unlocked all the love we'd been holding back. Everything would follow now. Marriage, house, kids. Perfect life, forever together. But once he returned to school, we found ourselves back where we always were. So predictably, I settled back into waiting for him to come around. When my Guiding Light contract expired, I decided not to renew. I wanted to take the next step in my career. Staying in Manhattan for another year, I got tantalizingly close on dozens of big studio movies, but never quite landed the job. It was rejection after rejection, but I was determined to make my dream happen. So when my bank account started running dangerously low, I did what my parents had always done when the money was tight, hit the road.