Bethany Joy Lenz is looking back at the “rude awakening” she experienced after leaving a small, ultra-Christian cult in 2012.
During an appearance on the Faith Without Freedom with Patrick Custer podcast, the One Tree Hill alum, 43, recalled how she had a realization about her life after feeling infallible as a member of the group, which was led by a shady pastor in Idaho who controlled her career, life choices and, eventually, her bank account.
“There’s no chance that I’ll fall on my face and look stupid and feel stupid and hurt myself and hurt other people because I’m following all the rules, which is why it was such a rude awakening when I left,” she explained, adding that her time in the cult was “the biggest fall ever.”
Lenz’s departure allowed her to embrace a journey of self-discovery for the first time.
“It’s like if I had been brought up in an environment where everything was laid out for me, I did everything everybody told me to do, I dressed perfectly, I showed up everywhere, I knew all the right things to say,” she told host Patrick Custer. “And I found myself all of a sudden in the middle of my life going, I don’t even know who I am.”
The actress shared that she realized she had lived a facade, explaining, “Everything around me is a set. It’s all paper mache. And how do I just go back to the beginning?”
“I’m going to start out in my car,” she said. “I’ll live in my car. I’m going to show up every day for myself, for the people I know. I’m going to peel off the costume, take off the makeup and just start from scratch and figure out who I am. How do I like my eggs?…What music do I listen to? How do I want to communicate with people? How do I like to be communicated with?”
She continued, “I mean, it was back to bare, bare, bare bones of reconstructing, like, who am I?”
More than a decade after leaving the cult, Lenz has had time to work through her emotions and wants to “live from instinct because that’s the one thing I’ve been missing in my life is living from instinct and trusting that there’s a safety net of love to catch me when I fall on my face, which I will.”
“I know this is a season and I want to approach it with maturity, but I do need to just be free,” she adds.
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Lenz previously revealed during an interview on Good Morning America in October that he left the cult for her daughter Rosie, who shares with the group leader’s son, musician Michael Galeotti.
“I left because of my daughter,” she shared on GMA. “I left because it was time.”
Lenz continued to recall her exact thought process at the time, sharing, “I remember having this thought, I said, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me and why I will allow myself to be treated this way, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to allow this to happen to her. We gotta get out.'”
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