Scientology has gained a notorious reputation since its initial institution, and its reach has extended to every which point around the world. Surviving in Scientology is quite a story to tell because not everyone does—at least not with their sense of self intact. Over the years since she left Scientology, Moira Hutchison has become a mindset cultivator, energy healer, and Tarot consultant, helping the people she meets along the way. Moira shares her story with Jennifer Whitaker in the hopes of empowering you to break through the barriers of the kinds of relationships Scientology establishes with its members, and perhaps other similar relationships you might have in your life.

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Surviving Scientology With Moira Hutchinson

Our guest is Moira Hutchison. Moira is a mindset cultivator, an energy healer, and a tarot consultant. She helps people who are struggling with their motivation and are feeling overwhelmed. Moira’s process helps people recognize and remove their mindset blocks so they feel prosperous and they can serve their purpose in this world without suffering for burnout or self-sabotage. However, that’s not why we’re here. We’ll talk about that a little bit at the end. Moira is here for an entirely different reason because as you know, I’m a trauma specialist and Moira has overcome a significant amount of trauma in her life.

The reason we’re here is to talk about some of Moira’s struggles and challenges in her early life that she has been able to overcome in order to get her here. One of those challenges is when she was eighteen years old. She joined Scientology which is a religious cult. Moira is going to talk to us about her experiences in the Church of Scientology. What it was like to be in it and to get out of it and some of what she dealt with in the aftermath. Moira, thank you so much for being here and it’s an honor to have you and I’m humbled that you’re willing to talk about this experience with me and to help my readers.

Thank you so much, Jennifer. I’m honored to be here too. It’s funny to me to talk about this experience. I’ve had to do so much work as you can imagine and what you do to overcome what I went through. If I share with you where I was to get in there because I was there for two years. What kept me there was it gave me what I was looking for.

It often fills a need. It fills a hole that we don’t have in our lives.

What happened was all my life up until age sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a nurse. Everybody that knew me, I was a problem solver, I was a nurturer, I healed people. People gravitated towards me because I had a good skillset in that area. At the age of seventeen, I had applied to be a nurse at a prestigious nurse training college in Scotland, and I couldn’t do it. They wouldn’t let me have the spot because I’d done some damage to my back. At that point in Scotland, it’s probably the truth to know too still, if you have a weakened spine, they won’t train you. If you have to lift a patient or take somebody’s weight, they don’t want somebody who’s got physical challenges, that’s not going to work out.

Here I am at age seventeen, stuck. I’m stuck, that’s why I help people get unstuck. My family background was that I didn’t have the nurturing relationship where I could go and have a parent that would be a sounding board for me to say, I have no idea, I was completely clueless about, “That didn’t work, what I am going to do now?†One of the suggestions from my dad was that I stayed home and be the mother to my siblings. I’m the oldest of five girls. He invited me to step into this role and I couldn’t do that. I knew that that would have swallowed me up, I had already by that point.

Was there a need for a mother in your family?

Yes. I was brought up by my father. My parents divorced. My mother was in Canada and my father is in Scotland and had sole custody of all five of us.

That resonates with me. I grew up without a mother. My mother passed away when I was young. I didn’t have five siblings and at the same time, I understand the challenges of not having a mother.

Not having a mother and then having a father who had his own stuff going on and was never one that would sit and counsel you or be a sounding board or make suggestions. His whole attitude was, “You’ll figure it out,†which is hard. It was like the ground had been taken away from under my feet.

I’m going to pause you for a second for the sake of our followers. What you’re saying does follow what we know about cults. Not just cults but gangs, like street gangs, what we’re seeing here in the United States with the recruitment into the Neo-Nazi movement. They are recruiting and even how predators groom children into sexual assault and human trafficking and pedophilia. Before the child gets into this situation, what research is showing over and over again is that there is already a disconnect in the relationship between the child and the parent that makes the child susceptible. These groups come in and they offer all these promises and they groom the child to fill the hole that they’re not getting in the parent-child relationship. It’s illustrative that parents are still telling their kids, “Figure it out.†We have the kids with the screen in front of their faces all the time and no parental guidance. They’re figuring it out on their own and screwed up ways. I’m sorry to interrupt and at the same time, it’s a beautiful lesson.

You described it perfectly. The other part of what you said too, is that these groups, these cults, these Neo-Nazis gangs, what have you, the people who recruit are clever.

Cults groom children by filling the hole in those children’s relationships with their parents. CLICK TO TWEET

They know.

They know what language is. You’re saying that when we don’t get what we need from our parents, the other part is as spiritual beings, we all want to belong. We have this tribal mentality. We want to be part of a group that likes or supports us. A group that sees us, nurtures us, and helps us have a voice. If you’re having somebody saying, “Go figure it out by yourself.†It’s like, “What is that? Who am I? Who am I outside of this?†It’s funny because I had been exposed to Scientology probably a year or so prior to me and they recruit people by doing a free personality test.

I was going to ask how they groomed you and how they got you into it.

They fed exactly what I was looking for. Part of it for me was, I remember that personality test and it’s a good test, it was encompassing. It helps you see who you are on an emotional, spiritual, physical level, what your gifts and your attributes are and where your strengths and weaknesses are. I decided to have another one and of course, the first thing that came up was this nurse part, this healer. It was like, “You have such a strong gift. You are good at this. We can help you create the platform to bring your gifts fully and you can save the world. We are going to help you use your gifts to save the world.†I’m in.

Here’s the sounding board conversation I wanted because it did look at where my strengths and weaknesses are and how I could overcome some of the weaknesses and get much more into being the healer that I wanted to be. I was able to keep all of that desire that I’d had as a teenager growing up, then off you go, you need to come in. It was like coming in and being apprenticed. I remember back when I first started, I was doing lots of filing and paperwork. There were some key characters in my initial.

I lived in Edinburgh. This part of the story was in Edinburgh. There were a couple of key nurturing, loving role models in there that kept saying, “Moira, you are amazing. You are such a fast learner. You’re exactly what we need in here.†They nurtured and played on that you’re in the right place at the right time. You’re following your passion. You’re following your purpose. From there, I was chosen to go and train in East Grinstead, which is outside of London. Alongside this, I’m trying to remember the timeline because part of the protocol is when you come into Scientology, you either bring your family in with you or you cut ties with them.

I’ve heard that. That in and of itself is a red flag anywhere. You were to cut ties or you’re not supposed to talk to your family or don’t tell somebody or some harm will come to you, those types of threats or that type of cutting off communication. Even in domestic abuse relationships, often the abuser will manipulate in sneaky ways the more submissive partner into cutting ties with the family. I love that you mentioned that we all have this sense of belonging and that is true because what we do when we don’t have a sense of belonging in our own family, we adapt our behaviors so we can fit in.

Fitting in is not the same thing as belonging. Fitting in comes from our dysfunctional trauma driven behaviors, whereas belonging is more from the heart, from the soul and it’s not the same thing as fitting in. Fitting in is, “What do I have to do to fit in with these people?†Whereas, “Where can I be me and belong to the world?†We have to belong to ourselves first. Oftentimes when we don’t belong to our family, we don’t learn how to belong to ourselves. You’re illustrating perfectly how these groups know what to say, they know what to do.

Time and again when predators have been interviewed, they know exactly what kids that they can target and it sounds like they say all the right things. It’s one thing to see somebody’s gifts because I see your gift as a healer and nurturer, I see that in you. At the same time, to ask you to separate from your family, it’s easy to miss those red flags. When we don’t have belonging with our family, it’s easy to miss that red flag because we finally feel this sense of belonging and sense of nurturing that we’ve never had. It’s not as big of a deal that we’re cut off where we didn’t fit in anyway.

It’s funny because I did cut ties with my family but it was interesting because as I was being guided to do that, you were given three choices, you were either going to bring them in or cut ties or if you had a problem cutting ties they would help you. That was the backup plan, if you didn’t have the capacity to go and say, “I’m leaving,†or “I won’t be staying here anymore.†They didn’t help me. What happened is interesting. There were two instances that underlined that I don’t belong here. The first one was one of my sisters, this is probably a couple of months into being in Scientology and I was still staying at home but coming home late because the hours were long. One of my sisters put her hands up over her eyes and said, “Stop looking at me, it feels like you can see through into my soul.†That didn’t sit well for me.

The other instance was my father told me to stop smiling all the time, “What’s wrong with you? You’re happy all the time. Stop smiling. Nobody’s that happy all the time.†To go back into Scientology and be further reminded, “These aren’t your people you need to be in with us.†It made it easier to say, “I’m leaving.†I did. Years after I had that conversation with my father, he realized he said that when he saw me walking down the street after saying, “I’m gone.†He thought he’d never see me again, which of course he did because I came out two years later. In those two years, nobody knew where I was in my family because I did travel.

I know that Scientology is a cult and some other people’s experiences in Scientology, like the celebrity, Leah Remini has a little documentary. Jenna Miscavige, who was David Miscavige’s niece, wrote a book called Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape. He took over after L Ron Hubbard died. Her book was huge. They both report a lot of abuse, even physical abuse and fist fighting and things like that when people step out of line or tried to escape or anything like that. I’m curious if you’re willing to share some of your experiences in the two years that you were in. Did you experience any of that level of abuse while you were in there?

Not any fist fighting, but definitely I did. The ultimate one for the highest level of punishment is called the RPF, it’s the Rehabilitation Project Force and for that, it is like being in jail where you don’t get your meals with other people, you are not allowed to look anyone in the eye. You have to have eyes down. You have to run everywhere. The ones that I saw when I was in LA. They all wore clothing that looked like prisoners would wear.

You said you have to run everywhere.

Yes. Not run fast but you had to be in a hurry. That one was more in England, somebody had always had to run. You do menial tasks and you’re talked to as if you’re nothing like a piece of crud. I’ve done a number of circuits through the rehabilitation processes. I never did get put onto the RPF, but I knew that’s where I was going to be headed had they got me back when I finally did escape. It’s their protocol. It’s getting your ethics put right. Is there something wrong with you if you try to escape something that’s supportive and so much into saving the world?

How long were you in before you started to get the sense that something was horribly wrong, something was off?

I would say it was after I came back from the States because I did enjoy my time in the States. I was in Los Angeles for seven months for training and that was a lot of fun. I made friends. The dynamic of it was different than what it was in England. In England, I probably triggered a few people because when I came back, I was highly educated. That was part of my training. I was always a bit of an overachiever. I was completely trained on how to run an entire organization. You can imagine I come back with this training and there are a few people that I would potentially be higher trained then. In order to keep me in my place they have this thing, Leah Remini talks about this, about the KRs, the Knowledge Reports. If you see somebody doing something wrong or speaking badly, threatening to leave, having an affair or something like that, it’s your duty to write it up. Put it in writing and give it to an ethics officer.

Jenna mentioned that in her book too.

I’m not surprised because that was a big thing. What happens is you get this dossier being farmed on you and it doesn’t come out until the final straw, you do something that you get caught at and then when you have, you sit down and have this interview, they open up the file and it’s like, “On such and such a date, you did this.†They read them to you.

I also got the impression that if you are the person who turns in a Knowledge Report on somebody else, then you get a little accolade of some sort. There’s a reward to keep you, for lack of a better term, tattle tailing.

Being a spy.

Snitches get stitches, people. Come on.

It’s interesting because there was a mindset there. You asked me about how long before I started to question. One of the things that made me start to question was when people did leave. I was witness to a number of people leaving. Even before I left to go to England, there were three young men that were all about the same age as me. We all started about the same time and one night they disappeared. They decided that they couldn’t handle it anymore and they ran. The thing about when people did that, the people who were left, there would always be this little murmur and this rumor, “I always knew there was something wrong with them. I always knew that person was suppressive.†We’re called suppressive.

Can you explain to our readers what suppressive means? They might not know that term.

Fitting in is not the same as truly belonging. CLICK TO TWEET

There are two terms that get talked about here. One is PTS, which means potential trouble source. That can be somebody who’s close to somebody who’s suppressive. A suppressive person is somebody who their way of saying things or thinking about things is not in alignment with their teachings. It’s bad. It’s a label that says you are not for the highest good of healing or saving this world or in alignment with the doctrines of what they’re doing. You are forbidden. If you are labeled a suppressive person, you are forbidden to talk or interact with anybody who still inside the church.

When somebody would leave and be given this label, there would always be people saying, “I always knew that. I always knew there was something funny about that person. They were a potential trouble source. They’re PTS.†A pivotal one that happened was a husband and wife. They were an amazing, nurturing, loving, older couple, and then they left. I thought, “I didn’t see it. I didn’t feel it.†I saw them as being healing, nurturing, loving. It became harder and harder for me to agree with the opinion of other people around me. That went on for a fair period of time because I had nobody to speak to. Isn’t that funny? That is how it was in my own family, here I am having this opinion or having this need and having nowhere to express that or explore it or have a sounding board.

It’s also illustrative of how these patterns repeat in our lives in different ways if we become aware of them and you start to see them. It doesn’t always play out in the same way when these patterns show up in our lives. Thank you for pointing that out. It’s also illustrative of how labels can be harmful because a suppressive person sounds almost like this pseudo-excommunication. You give somebody this label and it gives everybody free rein to pick on them and abuse them. There are other situations in life where people get certain labels like geek or nerd, which opens you up to be picked on.

I like what you said about the excommunication because that is what it is. When you are labeled suppressive, you are excommunicated. That’s the other part for me when I came out. It probably took two years to integrate back into real life. The other part of it in Scientology is that they have a language of their own. They use words that we use but they have different definitions. The dictionary is a couple of inches thick and that was part of the training. You had to understand their philosophies and their way or their way of defining certain words. When you came out, it was difficult to have a proper conversation. Also, you have this dismissive, derogatory somewhat viewpoint of the rest of the world. In Scientology, everybody else who’s outside are called wogs. They’re the unenlightened.

Like the muggles only different.

Yes, exactly. You can imagine coming into that after having been immersed fully for two years into the bubble that Scientology creates and then you’re out. You can’t go backward. You can’t rely on any friendship that you had in there. You have to try and support yourself and get a job.

Moira, how did you get out? You even said, “When I escaped.†Getting out and escaping, they bring up two different scenarios in my mind. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got out of Scientology and what that experience was like?

I had to leave twice. Remember, I said you had nobody to speak to. I was sent on a mission from East Grinstead, which is outside to London to Plymouth. That’s where I met someone. He wasn’t a full staff member. He was a part-time person. He had a life outside. He was easier to talk to because he didn’t have as high a level of indoctrination as I carried. He became my ally and somebody that I could speak to about these thoughts. He helped me escape from there. It’s funny, here’s me being the responsible person, I knew I had to leave because I was in trouble. I sat and wrote up all the different cases I was working on and who was doing what and who was at what stage in their treatment or their course. I wrote to all. He was waiting for me at the fire escape door because I had to run. Three officers had come to take me back to the RPF, the Rehabilitation Project Force.

That’s the prison-like scenario. You were that close.

Instead of running at that point, I went upstairs to my office and I sat and wrote three or four pages of all this because I felt compassionate about all the people that I was helping. Once I was finished, I ran down the fire escape and into this guy’s car and we took off. We went and we stayed out of his house until 2:00 in the morning because we knew that they would know it was him that had helped me and they would come knocking at his door, which they did. The neighbors said that they had knocked at the door and sat on the doorstep for hours.

I heard similar stories on Leah Remini’s show and in Jenna’s book, where it’s almost like they have a leg up on what we consider, in the civilian world, private investigators. They’re highly trained at tracking people.

That was the first part, but I wasn’t free at that point. What happened was, I don’t know what time it was in the morning, somebody would walk into his house and walk into the bedroom, threw my clothes at me and said, “Get up. I’m not letting you do this.†They escorted me out this house and into her car. She lived outside of Plymouth. She took me out to her house and was saying, “I need to save you from yourself. If somebody was doing this, you would do the same thing,†which I don’t think I would have. She was on the phone getting instructions and directions on what to do next.

She took me to a bus station where I was met by somebody else. When I was being met, they were crossing my arms, holding my arms and escorting me forcibly and saying, “Don’t make a scene. Do this.†I was escorted onto the bus. The bus went from Plymouth to London. It’s funny because in my head, I’m thinking, “I have to get away.†I was determined that I was going to run away but not cause a scene. The London station was big and I thought, “I’m going to run.†When the bus got into London, there were two more people there who I recognize. I knew who they were and they’re like, “Moira, we’re here to make sure you get on that train.â€

They get me on the train. There’s a little piece that I need to interject here. The person who is escorting in Plymouth handed me a bag of change and she said, “I’d emptied this change off your desk.†She gave that to me. I needed to tell you that because there’s a point to that. She gets me on the train so I only have one person escorting me, but she was sitting with her legs stuck so that I couldn’t get out the train. I thought there’s one last stop and I need to get out. I started talking to her. I have no idea what I said. I knew I’m being sentenced to the RPF. Nobody’s going to let me talk or tell them what had gone on or why I was doing what I was doing.

I want to say something here quick before you go on because I love that you said what you said. Whenever it comes to the fight-or-flight response, the survival response, there is another one. It’s not just rest and digest and fight-or-flight in our nervous system, there’s this tend-and-befriend and it’s almost a negotiation for our life. That is something that’s held against people in the court system. Why did you say what you said? Why did you tell the guy who raped you that he loved you? Why did you say all these things to him? Why did you say, “I love you so much and I’ll do whatever you want.†It’s a negotiation for your own life.

I love that you point that out because your body was going into this, “Fight or flight might not work. The freeze response isn’t going to help me here. I certainly can’t rest and digest, let’s try to tend-and-befriend and negotiate for my own survival.†It doesn’t happen to everybody but whenever we are in survival that’s something that humans can do and it’s below our conscious awareness. I love that you said, “I don’t remember what I said,†because if it were in your conscious awareness and you planned it and you knew what you were doing, you would remember what you said. This was part of your physiology for your survival. As a trauma specialist, I like to point these things out to help people understand from real-life scenarios.

Whatever I said could never have been held against me or if they tried to. She didn’t say anything. She put her feet down. As she put her feet down, the train was at East Croydon train station and the doors were about to shut and leave and I vaulted out of the seat and onto the platform and it took off. That’s why I say, “I jumped off a train to get away.†As soon as I did that, there was this sense of serenity. I will always remember that part of my feet hitting the platform and doing a reset and feeling like things went into slow motion because now I’ve done this. I’m in a train station I’ve never been in before. I had that backup change and that was it.

I had the ticket stub in my hand too to give to the conductor. I crossed over the platform because I wanted to go back to London. That was funny too because I get on the train and East Croydon to London is not far. As I got into London, I still got this train stub and I thought, “What am I going to say to that conductor because this says East Grinstead on it? How is he you going to let me off because that’s not what my ticket is?†I’m trying to figure out something to say. He looked at me and he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, “It’s okay. I knew you were in trouble and I’m glad you’re safe.†People have often said that was one of my angels.

That’s what I’m thinking, angels show up in the most unexpected points in time in our life. They’re not always ethereal beings with wings like we imagine. They’re real people.

At this point, I want to go back to Plymouth because the only person I know outside of Scientology at this moment is this guy that helped me run. That’s where my stuff was, few belongings but that’s where it was, it was in his house. It turned out I had enough money in that change bag to buy a train ticket from London to Plymouth. It’s funny because I don’t know my way around. I know where the organization is. I know where Scientology is. I don’t know my way around any city. That was funny because on the train, I was sitting with the table in between. I don’t know if people over here know about these British trains where there are two seats facing and then a table in the middle.

I was in an empty carriage and this off-duty soldier came and said, “Can I stay with you?†I thought it was weird but, sure. It was because he didn’t want to journey on his own and he had a six-pack of beer and he gave me a beer and we talked. I don’t know what we talked about but then when we got to the train station in Plymouth, he asked me where I was going and I knew the address but I had no idea how to get there and he said, “No problem. That’s close to where I’m going.†He walked me back to where I needed to go.

Another angel.

Quickly after that, in the mail, I got a declaration of being a suppressive person. That was it. They never did try to get me back. There is someone who tried years later in Edinburgh when I was there, somebody that knew me tried. It’s funny, I tell that story about how I was strong-armed and escorted. There is no way anybody could do that to me now. Jennifer, you must know this, it’s almost like a baby fawn learning to walk. Coming out of something like that, I didn’t even trust myself for walking or looking at somebody or asking or speaking who I was or what I needed or who I wanted.

I was about to ask about what your experience was after you got out. We all have the movie in our heads where you got out of the train. Somebody walked you back to where your things were and then the credits start rolling. The movie’s over and that’s not necessarily the happily ever after. What was the spillover effect that you had because I would imagine there was a lot to overcome once you got out?

There was a lot to overcome. I had no skill set. I had to make up different experiences because I wasn’t about to say, “I have this two-year gap on my resume because I was in a cult.†I worked as a temp doing clerical work and bookkeeping and work my way up. I was turning 21 when this happened and by the age of 24, I was an office manager. That gives you an idea of how fast, how driven and how much I pushed learning on the go. Something I want to share with your readers and with you is there is a huge trauma that happened probably three months after I came out. I came out and this was in July or August.

When you are labeled suppressive, it’s basically like excommunication. CLICK TO TWEET

I got unbelievably sick at the end of September, October. By that point, all I was doing was cleaning work because I didn’t have any temp jobs. I was being an industrial cleaner. I started getting sick, so sick that one morning I couldn’t get out of bed. I had to wait until my friend came back home from lunchtime to help me get out of bed. He called the doctor and I was rushed to hospital in an ambulance because they didn’t quite know what was going on. It evolved. I became bedridden. I had to have a catheter fitted. I have drips. What had happened was I had peritonitis. In the run up to the diagnosis and I was bedridden.

Can you tell our readers what peritonitis is?

It’s an abscess of the peritoneal sac and that’s the sac that holds all of your inner organs, your intestines. I had a miscarriage when I was in Scientology. Once I had the miscarriage, I didn’t go for any further treatment because there was a doctor that just said, “There’s no baby there. Off you go.†Being in Scientology, they don’t give you time off or sick leave or anything of that. It continued.

Even getting pregnant in Scientology could have made you a suppressive person as I understand. Is that correct?

It can. I was married. When you’re married, that’s you okay, but they will take your child because they’re schooling them to be the future of Scientology. I don’t know what would’ve happened had I had the baby and continued like that. In the beginning, you’re married and things like that happened. In that, you can imagine here’s me still in this fear-based mindset a lot and I remember thinking, “This is it. I’m going to die and they were right.†That’s the whole part of it is that they say you will not survive if you leave. Some people will talk about that. That’s why they stay there is because they’re too scared of what would happen if they left. That was my fear was I screwed up. I’ve created this for myself because I left behind while I should’ve stayed in.

It’s illustrative of that core belief system, deep down, even though it’s below the radar of your conscious mind, how that core belief system bleeds into every aspect of our life. It can vary for a lot of people and often it will get you down to the point that you’re horribly sick, almost definitely sometimes. Peritonitis is not something to snuff at. That can lead to systemic sepsis. To help the readers understand a little bit more about the peritoneum, that’s the reason as you’re running or you’re walking around your organs don’t get all mixed up, like vegetables in a bowl or something. That’s why your stomach stays where your stomach stays and why your liver stays where your liver stays. It is anchored by the peritoneum. It’s part of the fascial system, inflammation in that or an abscess, that is life-threatening.

Unfortunately, because at this point, I was 21 and they put off having surgery, they didn’t want to do surgery if they didn’t have to. When they realized what was going on, I had to be rushed into an eleven-hour surgery to save my life. They realized, it’s peritonitis and it’s bad. They told me afterward that they took out my appendix and it was completely rotted from the outside in, which told them how long it had been getting worse and worse. I’m still here. It was the part of my journey. From there, it took me probably a year to get over that. This is why I do the work that I do. That fear, even telling you about that fear, I remember that vividly. We were talking about that pattern of making a decision, wanting to belong, wanting to find your people and then being alone and not having it and it kept happening. That was the third one. I’m alone. In all honesty, that made me connect with my divinity, with my higher self and get access to that. I’ve always been intuitive but that one was the one that made me listen to my guardian angels more.

It sounds like throughout your whole story that your guardian angels or your internal guidance system was speaking to you all along, even something as little as this married couple that left Scientology and you’re like, “I didn’t have that experience. That’s not how I saw them.†There’s something inside of you going, “These were good people, why are you labeling them?†Learning to trust that. You mentioned to me that you are grateful for this experience and that speaks volumes to me about the healing that you’ve gone through. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean by saying that you’re grateful for your experience? I guarantee that some of our readers are going, “What the F does she mean? Why would she be grateful for what she went through?†Can you help people understand how you came to that level of gratitude and what that means to you?

To your point about the inner guidance is seeing that this experience helped me galvanize that connection. I need to. It’s not a passing thing. There has to be the go-to, not the check with somebody else first and then see what your guidance says. No, it’s got to be first and foremost. If you have a yucky feeling about something, chances are it’s right.

Think about your family sometimes.

That’s why I’m saying I’m grateful because all of the things that I help people do, I have my process, I call it the letting go process. It’s five steps to help people get a sense of where they are and start reconnecting with that inner voice and then walking forward and releasing. Sometimes we need to still be in the presence of people who are not as supportive or who don’t get who you are. There are certain things you can do to claim your own space, your energy space and not allow it to be dreamed out of you or sapped by trying to be something that you’re not. That’s a big piece for me. As I’ve grown older, I have come to the realization that I’m here to be me. I’m not here to take on a different persona in order to gain approval or gain acceptance because it’s not true acceptance if it’s based upon something that I’m doing for somebody.

It’s that fitting in versus belonging. The belonging comes from within and it’s such an important life lesson. I like what you were saying about being around people who are not necessarily supportive because if we have that connection inside of ourselves and I don’t believe that we’re ever going to get to a point in life where there isn’t somebody that we encounter. We have no control over whether somebody accepts us or likes us or is going to try to hurt us. We don’t have control over that in any way, shape or form. The only thing we have control over is what we experience inside ourselves and what we choose to do about that. If we have that connection to our inner guidance, it doesn’t matter what other people say about us, it doesn’t matter what other people think about us, it doesn’t matter if they support us, we support ourselves. We can endure whatever comes our way.

That creates the sense of resilience. I’ve come to the realization and I say it all the time, other people’s opinion of us is none of our business. Our opinion of ourselves is the most important.

When we start to make other people’s opinions of our self, our business, then that right there is a huge red flag that we have an external locus of control and we’re not connected with our inner guidance system. Moira, thank you so much for coming and sharing your story. Our readers can find you at TheWellnessUniverse.com. You can look for Moira Hutchinson and she’ll come up. That’s one way to connect with her. We also put a link up on Facebook and how you can connect with Moira. When it comes to working with practitioners, it’s one thing to learn about healing and then to go out and do it or to go through a program where you learn how to be a coach or learn how to be a mentor, it’s another thing to have life experience that backs it up.

Moira, I do have to say for you, you have the life experience to back up the healing that you are sharing with other people. For my readers, Moira is the real deal. She’s not just regurgitating some level of nonsense that she learned from a textbook or some other guru. She’s been through it and she sees things that the average person doesn’t see when it comes to healing. Moira has a library of guided meditations. I will put that up, it’s Insig.ht/wellnessmoira. She’s also got letting go guidance cards at WellnessWithMoira.com. You can find that under products. She is an author. She’s written a couple of books and she’s also contributed to a couple other books. You can find her on the Amazon author page by looking up Moira Hutchinson. I know that you are a mindset cultivator and energy healer and a tarot consultant. Moira, can you tell people how to reach out to you if they want to work with you directly in your mindset cultivation program or anything like that?

The easiest way is to connect with me on my website. There’s avenues to connect with me and my email address is [email protected]. Connecting through my website or on Facebook is the usual way that people connect with me.

Moira, thank you so much because there are many children who are susceptible, I don’t think everybody’s going to be susceptible to finding themselves in an organized cult like Scientology. However, what you have pointed out is the same type of susceptibility and the same type of disconnect that allows kids to be susceptible to online predators. I live in Ohio here in the United States and the level of kids who are sucked into human trafficking and addiction. We are almost ground zero here in Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania area for the opioid crisis in the United States, a lot of overdoses.

The people who are grooming our kids into human trafficking are doing what you said, they’re filling a gap, and they’re saying the right things. Even with tweeners and teens, 11, 12, 13, 14, even when they get the red flags, they overlook the red flags because they don’t have that connection with their parents. Something in that nurturing relationship between the child and the parent that’s not there and what happens is that a lot of kids know that if they say something and they’re like, “This weird, creepy guy reached out to me on Instagram and I don’t know what to do. He sent me a dick pic, dad, what do I do?†The kid is going to get yelled at because it’s common in this country for the parents to yell at the kids and say, “What were you doing on Instagram?†Shaming the kids for wanting to be part of the group.

When we shame our children for wanting to be part of the group and doing what all their friends are doing, they’re exactly what you said, they’re never going to turn to their parents. They’re not going to trust the parent to reach out whenever they get that creepy feeling. I hope this raises awareness about parenting and how we can start to heal some of those rifts that exist in that parent-child relationship and this is illustrative. A lot of times in the grooming, sometimes there is months of somebody gets into a cult. There could be months that go by before you start to realize any major red flags or before the red flags start to sink in because we talk ourselves out of them and we overlook them.

We say, “I’m making things up. I’m imagining that.â€

Thank you so much for sharing your story and help bring this level of awareness because this is going to help people. Moira, do you have any final tips or bits of wisdom to leave with our readers?

Always trust that inner voice. Trust what you’ve got going in. Pause before you say yes to somebody’s offer or somebody asking you to do something. It is always there.

Thank you so much, Moira. It’s been a pleasure to have you on the show.

Thank you, Jennifer.

For all of our followers, please visit JenniferWhitacre.com. You can go to JenniferWhitacre.com/podcast and that’s where you can watch the video. This will also be put up on Facebook. You can watch the video on Facebook on Jennifer Whitacre’s page, which is @YesAndJW. You can find it on JenniferWhitacre.com. Please subscribe. There are several back episodes on there with equally valuable information. Subscribe and share this because this information that Moira has shared with us has the potential to raise awareness that can save lives. Moira, thank you for being here. For all of our followers, I will see you all next episode on Yes, And.

Thank you so much, Jennifer.

Thank you.

Important Links:

• Moira Hutchison
• Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape
• TheWellnessUniverse.com
• Facebook â€“ Moira Hutchison
• Insig.ht/wellnessmoira
• WellnessWithMoira.com
• Amazon â€“ Moira Hutchison author page
• [email protected]
• @YesAndJW â€“ Facebook

About Moira Hutchison

Moira Hutchison is a Mindset Cultivator, Energy Healer and Tarot Consultant. Moira helps people who are struggling with motivation and feeling overwhelmed. Her process helps her clients recognize and remove mindset blocks that keep them from feeling prosperous so they can serve their purpose in this world without suffering from burnout or self-sabotage.

Moira joins us to share her experience inside a cult. Moira left home at age 18 to join Scientology, a religious cult, thinking it would give her a sense of self and belonging. She stayed for almost two years, trapped in a critical and controlling environment. After a lifetime of giving away her personal power, Moira came to the realization that she had her own inner wisdom. Trusting herself was key to figuring out who she really is and what she wanted out of life.

Moira is now blessed to see her early adult experiences as an amazing gift. She has developed the ability to see beyond the “problems†that arise in life to the deeper meaning, and she helps her clients do the same.

Abusive Relationships Cult Recruitment Cults manipulation Scientology Surviving In Scientology