The beauty I create is downstream from this story. Start here if you want to understand the work.
In every other version of my life I would have gone to art school on a full scholarship. This is the story of why I didn't.
As a teenager, they took my pencils. Not figuratively – All writing or drawing utensils were physically removed from my possession and only returned under supervision for approved purposes. My response was to make sculptures out of the tin foil that my food was delivered in until they stopped allowing me access to tin foil. What followed was 18 years of seeking my artistic oxygen from cracks in windows that didn’t involve a pencil or a paintbrush until a door was unlocked inside of me.
By 16 I was reading Nietzsche and Tao Te Ching for fun, studying/practicing art obsessively from various cultures and periods, and already making waves. When a good friend came out as gay and was receiving death threats from other high schoolers, I told my psychology teacher about the situation and began forming a student-led tolerance and diversity club. His classroom became a protected area for students to eat lunch in with inclusive themed murals. I painted the first one… Other students followed suit and the wall got filled. This club is still active today. I was also the girl that started up a community candle-lit open mic poetry reading at our local library. My art teacher at this point, informed me that I was on track for a full scholarship to any art school of my choosing. My 16 year old dreams were waffling between the decision to pursue a career in art therapy or as a high school art teacher. My goal: to use my talent to heal and to ignite a passion for creating in others. I already knew that making things wasn’t optional for human well-being, but essential. Like breathing.
It was in this year that my parents joined a cult called IBLP led by Bill Gothard. Modesty culture. Patriarchy oriented. A victim-blaming belief system disguised as helping families heal and receive “countless blessings.” Their rules filled many actual published books and governed everything from hemline length to the precise curl of a woman’s hair. This cult is driven by fear of a god that can read your thoughts and punish you with disease or death of a loved one. When I vehemently resisted this philosophy (and I did so in every form I could think to) my parents became convinced that I was a troubled youth and bound for hell. What was disguised as a family road trip across the country to tour Route 66 turned into something I didn’t understand until it was too late. My family vacation ended at IBLP’s Indianapolis Training Center. I have vivid memories of the day they put me into a locked room and I was left with only a couple of my belongings. From there my memory is in shards that have taken me years to piece together.
What followed was 15.5 weeks in a room called "Character Suite." I became an "LIT" aka Leader In Training. This was their term for making "prisoner" sound palatable to parents. Two leaders were assigned to me and at least one had to remain present at all times. I was not allowed to leave the room. Food was delivered. My days were filled with propaganda VHS tapes, workbooks, and mandatory Bible chapter memorization. A pen was permitted strictly for filling out workbooks. Doodling on the page was banned.
So I made sculptures out of the tin foil my food came in. They stopped allowing me tin foil. One of my leaders had empathy for me and slipped me a book of construction paper. I made a rainbow paper chain art installation that covered the entire ceiling. It was removed. She was punished.
There are parts of those years my brain chose not to keep. My therapist helped me understand that I spent time in what they called the prayer room — what other survivors have described as solitary confinement. Barred windows. Mirrors removed from the bathroom. Words carved into the walls in hidden places by kids who came before me. I remember just enough.
For the first year and a half I remained an LIT. Not allowed to walk anywhere alone. Not allowed to speak without first asking my leader's permission. Every word I said required approval before it left my mouth.
I won't pretend the brainwashing didn't work. I've done enough work with myself to say that without shame — and to have some understanding for the sixteen year old version of me that it happened to. I became one of their most vibrant success stories. They put me on a stage in Knoxville, Tennessee in front of approximately 15,000 people to give my testimony. The voice they had spent months teaching to suppress and control — asking permission before every single word — was then handed a microphone and used as a marketing tool for the very institution that took it from me. If I could go back knowing what I know now, that stage would have been my opportunity to burn the whole thing down.
When writing utensils were finally returned to my possession, I was asked to surrender my art entirely as a sacrifice to God — told that art had become too central to my identity and that I was being called to release it. Releasing your rights, your identity, your self — that's core to their teaching. At this point, even my Bible illustrations frightened them. I had a tendency to choose controversial scenes. I kept making things they couldn't predict or control and it was therefore too radical to be allowed. It was at this point I began feeling guilty if I so much as drew a spiral or squiggle in the corner of a page for fear of punishment from them, or worse, from God.
Attempts were made to groom me for IBLP headquarters. I refused. Something felt off to me. They encouraged me to enter the EQUIP program — to become a leader for incoming LITs. I refused that too. I could not subject another human being to what had been done to me. So they put me in the framing and matting department (where I framed scenes from their publications to be hung in training centers around the world) working in exchange for room and board.
Leaving felt impossible. I had been completely cut off from everyone I had ever known. Outgoing mail was read. Phone calls were monitored with time very limited. No internet access or library other than what they provide. The building was locked and security was tight. The outside world had been reframed as dangerous — a place that would destroy me spiritually if I re-entered it. I was scared of myself. That's a part that is so difficult to explain and most important to understand. They didn't just lock the doors, they made me afraid of what was on the other side of them.
At some point during this time, as a gesture toward lifting the art fast, I was offered what they called a gift — “Art classes!” A woman who had graduated from art school prior to converting to the cult was to teach me. I was so elated about this. Then came intensive one-on-one coaching to prepare me to illustrate Bill Gothard's Character Sketches books. They used me for my human copy machine abilities. They inserted into their custom art curriculum that realism was the only art form that honored God — that any other style was an attempt to compete with the divine, an act of sacrilege. They wanted technical reproduction and nothing more. The experience went on for months and became what I still consider one of the most humiliating scenarios of my lifetime. It was a slow desecration of everything I understood art to be. Eventually I made a decision that the art fast was the better option. I disappointed many people when I quit and I was not sorry. Even a brainwashed version of me knew that this was wrong. I began learning harp as an artistic outlet at some point. I practiced until my fingers bled and then practiced with band-aids. Eventually the callouses on my fingers reflected the callouses in my soul.
They tried to make less of me…
I made more instead.
I returned to my family’s home for half a year or so. I spent that time working at a small local art gallery in Brookings, OR. I had hoped that being near art could help me find it again but it didn’t. My parents told me that the only way for me to have their blessing from this point forward was to go to an Independent Fundamental Baptist Bible college. I ended up at West Coast Baptist College working toward an unaccredited degree that would only be recognized for a career at that particular type of church. I double majored in Music and English. The rules were extreme there but nowhere near as extreme as at ITC so it was a smooth adjustment for me. I went to classes like “Christian Womanhood” and required attendance at chapel every single day with hellfire and brimstone style preachers. Nothing new here. I played harp in the giant megachurch orchestra and for weddings.
At this school, supervised courtship and marriage was highly encouraged. We were taught not to kiss until we say “I do” at the altar or we would disappoint the Lord. I dropped out, married one of the only men there not called to ministry, and followed him to Western Washington. I had two amazing children and they are one of the best things that’s ever happened in my life. Although I had played in my aunt’s dark room as a teenager and loved it, this is when I truly discovered photography. I realized that light is just like paint in a sense and this is a way to paint without being reminded of things I still couldn’t even think about without sobbing. I mastered using my camera in manual mode through youtube tutorials and practicing taking pictures of my beautiful daughter when she was a baby. I already knew composition. That turned into people asking me to photograph their families which turned into people asking me to photograph weddings, and within a couple years my work was featured in several publications and I was booked for the next two years traveling to photograph weddings internationally.
Shortly after my son was born my mother died.
What followed was a domino-effect. Five months of losses back to back that I couldn't have prepared for. It cracked everything open. I felt God had abandoned me in spite of living my life for him in every way I could. I had to let go of my former definition of God in order to find something true. Deconstruction from a cult doesn't happen all at once. The seeds had been there since my daughter was born — but this broke the ground open. I started competing in bodybuilding and discovered for the first time what it felt like to own my own body. Nobody had given me that. I built it myself. It was quite the contrast and a satisfying rebellion from the humility and deflection of praise I was taught. My marriage ended. Eventually the isolation of editing thousands of wedding images alone at a screen started to close in on me. I needed to make things with my hands again. Later I met Todd and that was during a time that I didn’t believe in love nor was I looking for it. Honesty and being on mutual paths of healing and self-betterment brought us together. I ponder the wonders of the universe with deepest gratefulness for bringing him to me.
I had been with Todd for a long time before he knew that I am an artist. That is a shame to me. I tried to tell him some of my story (which was still very difficult for me to acknowledge, myself, or even remember) and that I was incapable of drawing and painting without pain. That I would happily cut off both of my arms if it meant I could make art even with my mouth. Creating felt completely out of reach to me. He was so encouraging and immediately recommended I consider therapy. I felt like it was time. It was in this therapy, August of 2018 that I had a complete breakthrough. Memories previously blocked began unlocking. The biggest win for me was when I finally gave myself permission to be angry about it. Permission to not forgive. I stopped running from my story and acknowledged that it is a part of what makes me strong today. This is what unlocked a new beginning for me with art. I began with a black canvas… I painted roots and from those roots a woman emerged, stretching into the light with life blooming from within her. Todd named her Earth Girl.
Within weeks of this breakthrough in therapy and the beginning of this painting – the artist within me finally awake and freshly gulping oxygen – I suffered from 4 simultaneous strokes. I thought it was just the worst migraine of my life… I didn’t want to wake up Todd. I was lost in my own home with kaleidoscope vision that turned into fractal tunnel vision and I couldn’t remember which direction the kitchen was for an ice pack. I vividly remember reaching into my mind to understand the floorplan of my own home and finding nothing while so confused by the visual fractals and lack of ability to actually see. The next morning Todd took me to the hospital. The shock we both experienced when we were told it was stroke – not one but FOUR, still gives me goosebumps. I honestly thought the doctor was cracking a joke at first. I think I even laughed at the “joke,” but then it occurred to me that doctors don’t crack these kinds of jokes in the emergency room… What was discovered is that I had a heart defect since birth, never diagnosed, believed to have caused the strokes. I had a device called the Amplatzer put into my heart. The amplatzer began eroding my aorta and 10 days later I suffered acute cardiac tamponade. I have a vivid afterlife experience from that day: Golden light with spectral colors that make vision here on earth seem like black and white. The essence of children playing. A meadow full of flowers. My grandmother’s presence. Zero pain, only bliss.
A chest compression from a nurse brought me back with what felt like a lightening bolt and when I realized the gravity of the situation, I fought to stay present and endure the immense pain for my children and for Todd. Surgery without anesthesia or even pain mitigation active yet saved my life. My last words to Todd would have been “Make sure my children know love.” (My children were 5 and 8 years old at the time and I knew if anyone on earth could, he could.) There was another open heart surgery to follow where my aorta got rebuilt, the amplatzer device was removed, and stitches put into my heart to fix damage from the emergency surgery.
I finished Earth Girl (featured on my home page) while in recovery.
The things that tried to break me are now the fuel.
I have never burned brighter.
I do not consider myself a cult or stroke survivor but as a warrior and an overcomer. I am not telling this story to incite sympathy — I am telling it to light a fire.
I came back from all of these culminated experiences with a mission: make more art and help the world make more art. I could have died without producing the things I am meant to make. The cult and ITC would have won. I am the victor now.
One thing I know with complete certainty:
Nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of access to art. Not mental health. Not physical health. Not financial standing. Not gender or sexual preference. Not government. Not religion. Not race.
No authority has the right to take art from you. It is alive inside of us and our art deserves to breathe because it is a basic human right.
This is why I am so much a part of founding Make Your Mark.
It is my answer to the years of my art that was taken from myself and from the world that deserves it. It is the bomb that has been ticking inside of me waiting for the right time. That time is now. This is the opportunity for anyone within my reach to do the same. Take back your art. Nothing shall stand in your way.
It starts here in central Washington — a single drop. But I intend to make tidal waves. My hope is to inspire a global movement of makerspaces, art accessibility, and the reimagining of materials people throw away into affordable art supplies — reaching far beyond these walls. What you are seeing here is only the beginning.
I am what happens when you try to take art away from someone who is born made of it.
