Writing About the Cult Next Door with Tamara Mathieu

We all want to belong. As I’ve said previously on this show, we are wired to look for connection and community. That very natural human need is what led today’s guest, Tamara Mathieu, into the Twelve Tribes. Fourteen years later, Tamara and her husband realized they needed to leave what had become a controlling, high-demand situation. One that Tamara would end up writing a book about and telling the truth about her experience.

In the introduction, I talk about how personally satisfying for me to hear a cult-related story from someone who had got involved with her partner and then survived the cult with that person and then got out with him as well. And they’re still married now! I don’t know how many partnerships or marriages could survive that kind of journey.

Tamara Mathieu joined the Twelve Tribes religious cult in 2000, with her husband and young son. In her memoir, All Who Believed, she tells her story in depth from how she became drawn to the group, what the next fourteen years were like, and finally how her family left in 2014 as a family of six. Writing became a way for her to heal and share her experience in order to educate others about this insidious group.

Tamara lives in Vermont, works with adults with disabilities, and now has three grandchildren.

Learn more about Tamara Mathieu at TamaraMathieu.com

This episode of Creative Alchemy is supported by the audiobook version of my award-winning, Amazon best-selling memoir, Cult, A Love Story.

Readers call the book ‘compelling’ ‘gritty’ ‘intimate’ and ‘not boring’ – which is what an author loves to hear. I narrated the audiobook and if you have a Spotify premium subscription you can listen to the audiobook for free as part of that subscription at alexandraamor.com/spotify.

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.

Show Notes

Searching for answers after the Columbine school shooting

On being introduced to the simple lives of those in the Twelve Tribes

Discovering that the reality was very different than the initial impression of the group