welcome my name is natasha sherman and i am your host my guest today is floor edwards she is the author of apocalypse child a life in times a memoir for the first thirteen years of her life for grew up in the children of god also known as the family the group's nomadic existence was based on the belief that as god's chosen people they would be saved in the impending apocalypse that would env rest of the world in one thousand nine hundred ninety three floor would be twelve years old at that time well come floor thank you so much for having so i just want to say that i loved your book  it and that there wasn't anything apocalyptic that happened in it but you just drew me into your world and and that's a tough thing to do because i just kept looking forward to getting back into your world so i really appreciate i invite anybody who likes a good read and can kind of live in somebody else's shoes for a while so your mom and dad joined children of god when they were in their twenty's or yeah in the early went and they met in the children of god and so from what i understand you know i was kind of the appeal was living a more meaningful life living a spiritual life and yet what's interesting to me is that david or father david the leader of this  cult they never met him and you never did either that's correct and your whole lives were devoted to his teachings so the thing i first want to touch on you were born in america by that age what i was born  though you were born in sweden and then because your mother was swedish my mom missed it and then we moved to mexico when i was six months california when i was one and then we moved to thailand memes or so basically continents already right wow so basically you know at four up until then you're not remembering much so most of your early childhood memories are probably living in thailand yeah most of my memories are so i guess one of the biggest things for me is that you know there's a whole inquiry about why we choose to follow somebody and that's the unanswerable question because i think everybody does it for different reasons my big unanswerable question is why do you need someone to tell you how to live your life and then giving over your decision making process i guess the biggest thing for me though is why would you choose to follow someone who's telling you that it's all going to be over at the age of you are going to be twelve and yet he told everybody have more kids procreate bring them into this world to die and yes i always like to people that nobody joins all i actually in the process that to research and it really hit me as something that i believe in i began to understand as i did research and as i wrote this book is that they didn't know what they were joining with the wind i think that was the real art about coming out and the children grew up it's it's almost like we have a hard time we should blame the as a lot of one father david wasn't telling them and that came later and then the idea to it and make all these children in the end of the world that again with them they just they just bought absolutely agree that a people pray do not go into thinking they're joining a cult or wanting to join a cult and i think there is something that evolves and happens and it occurs like they don't know in a sense what they're fully getting into and it's almost like stockholm syndrome and so you start buying in a little at a time and then all of a sudden you're you've bought into all of yes and you describe it so well you know the fact is we all have our own belief systems and what are you going to teach your children your belief systems and so again it's not with malicious intent but there's this quote that somebody published on one of my facebook pages long time ago and it said five minutes after your birth they decide your name nationality religion and sect and you spend the rest of your life defending something you didn't even choose when you saw the rest of the girl's life undoing what you know so clearly and clearly the were good things about it but here you are at a very young age you think it's your job to save the world you think the world is coming to an end you're going to die at five years old you realize ok i got seven years the left and at one point you say you used to pray for a shot to the heart so it would be quick and easy so you wouldn't suffer and there's this line you write i realize now that terror was home to me pretty soon i wouldn't know how to function without the drama of trepidation so how did that shape who you are today that's a really good question i think in some ways make sense wow yes yes yes in a strange way the other thing is so you know the end didn't come and again you know like any cult and it occurs to me like father david devolved and kept morphing so at first education wasn't good but then all of a sudden you should be educated because if legally  people came and asked you if you were in school you could say yes we're being homeschooled and we're missionaries then there was the whole sexuality issue and some cults you know and again it depends whose experience it is because i saw someone being interviewed from the children of god different families whatever and she was devastated that she was encouraged to have sex and as a very young young girl and that feeling like she couldn't say no and then but then again you look back at the sixty's you know it was the sexual revolution so yes have sex you know with anybody you want and and then father david didn't encourage monogamy he encouraged sharing and then so it's all kind of woven in there and but then he has women going out and suggests that they use their bodies to kind of bring them men into the fold and there's even this expression hookers for jesus or  what was that fishing where flirty yeah and you know again you go it's so easy to see how you go up to here and then all of a sudden it's cross  yeah yes i always tell people and i somehow think it's important to let people know that i did not experience sexual that is i experienced other types of these for sure psychological well even some is a core but there were a lot of and as i after i became more aware of how much sexual abuse it go on and for a long time i wasn't sure these stories were true i would hear about you lived in these huge combinations of families and the thing is that any parent was allowed to discipline you in whatever way they chose and sometimes it was brutal and for me again that's hard to understand but as you said your parents were out on the road getting trained and you were left with other adults who did whatever they did and not even having a huge experience of being a nuclear family it occurs to me that you longed for that just to have your family and i also got that in the end as you say you know it would be easy to look for somebody to blame and one wants to do that but your parents again were in their own world of believing and they had kind of separated from the rest of their family and you're living inside of a community where you're all being taught the same thing and it starts to seep in do your parents talk about this particular journey openly or if it's something that is hard for them in the be gained it was very difficult something we didn't really talk about we i was the one along and sisters to bring to my parents attention that paint a circumstance that says on anyone i would have so much he spends that i would go into our coal and i would never come out of it so for me it was just it was a personal decision to make to instead of ir that you briefed and all of a sudden you know you're left to your own devices and your parents have been operating not in the western world they've just kind of been they're not holding down regular jobs they're out there preaching subsisting inside of large groups of people and now suddenly you know what do you do so your parents chose to come back to america and i think that's where i want to go next your story so you come back and i love you said i've never seen so many white people in my life so all of a sudden here you are back in your quote home country and you're a stranger in a strange land  american and my own country i was completely lost i mean probably warlocks you know the stories that you read about you know make friends or you know it was it was a completely different world that i was only sheltered from and i was warned again it you know what's going on why weren't against it yeah and so you went to school and typically we all have alienating experiences at school at different ages but when you already feel like an alien and then people treat you like an alien and there are some cruel episodes you know of you you wrote this note to befriend this girl she never spoke to you again and you're a twin and you know some girl calls you the gutter twins and so it's like the sense of being from another planet and move and at some point you say  that you picked out so you picked up this magazine seventeen magazine and it was a questionnaire and this was like from what i gather a pivotal moment in your life and the question there it was did you grow up in a cult so you answer this of the other thing is while you're looking is that you discover that so you you know you're living feeling like an alien then you discover that you've been raised in a cult and then a cult so tell me some of the questions so the question is how did you grow up in a secluded environment were you under the influence of a charismatic leader where you coerced to recruit members to your  were you prohibited from leaving the premises unless you were recruiting members and where he taught that the world outside was a place and you feel guilty for want to leave wow those were the five questions and i answered every single time and that moment that they always say it was kind of everything can't clear and clear at the same time because now at least i knew what had happened but at the same time i fell think about so at that point you did some of the things that one would expect that you do you become rebellious and at some point you actually tried to  you know it was it was a young sort of really russian attempt at suicide but i really get it that i was you know going to take my life and i think there was this proximity to that was so i didn't care so much i was actually watching feeling rejected and quite frankly not knowing how it's been you know the world and then also just feeling very kind of close to death like i had thought about it all my life it wasn't the deal you know i was prepared for it  yeah it was his adopted son so it wasn't biological son but he did let us kids were taught to sort of honor him it was our war model he was supposed to be the heir to father david's throne if he ever died you know it's funny because i thought so much about again you know you kind of you go to school you you suddenly start to discover aspects of who you are and start to feel your own self worth  the thing i guess i because nothing's really black and white and i love what you said at some point about maybe jesus didn't want a religion  know it's the interpreters that you mistrust and i thought wow that's pretty brilliant but in the end there were good things and there were not so good things and what is it that probably was the most difficult to overcome gosh you could but you know that she is the time when i was younger was one thing as i get older is and i think most recently i think it's like you know i just i wasn't taught to i know that sounds kind of harsh in your not but yeah i think just we were taught to think about the future or value or selves and as people you know we were sort of just numbers and  not really seeing we weren't seeing as as as people yeah you know but again we also have to overcome something but this is much more compelling because it was the water use wind in the air you breathe but i like that when you start out the book by saying looking back i can say with certainty that beyond at the madness yet amid the chaos it was a magical childhood the only thing certain about childhood is that it begins with magic and i think that's very powerful to be able to say that having come through a lot of things that didn't feel so magical we're almost out of time and i would li you to read and eggs or that we talked about from the book because i thought it was pretty profound and significant so i would love to hear ok this comes towards the end when i'm sort of  scenery and the illusion in american dream yeah that's very powerful so we're kind of we're at the end of our time and you know there's so much more i could ask in the whole inquiry of you know worthy inquiry for each of us because each of us buys into something that was given to us rather than originated from us so i invite people to read your book it's compelling interesting and it raises a lot of questions as well as it's a great story so thank you so much for doing the interview good luck with the book and i'm looking forward to your next one and hopefully there will be a next one thank you so much thank you for having you my name is natasha sherman thank you for joining us