Olivia Plath has a message for trolls who are criticizing her decision to speak out about her childhood.
“It’s so interesting to me that every time I talk about my childhood publicly and it’s not overwhelmingly glowing and positive, these are the comments that I get,” Plath said in a Saturday, April 5, Instagram video.
The Welcome to Plathville star shared a screenshot of comments that read, “Get over your childhood stop crying over it,” and, “Got [sic] over yourself, you had a roof over your head and food. You act like you were abused because you couldn’t listen to a certain type of music. Always the victim.” A third user added, “I mean, seriously don’t you think at some point you need to just move on?!”
Plath wrote, “These comments are from my stories yesterday talking about not discovering ‘secular’ music until I was an adult due to control.”
“The ironic thing is that these people probably started following me because they saw me on a TV show that highlighted a religious highly-controlling family in that environment and what happens to the kids when they grow up? Do they stay? Do they leave? What’s the fallout? What are the ramifications? How does it affect their life as an adult?” Plath said in the video.
She continued, “And if you watched even a snippet of the show, you would see that I was one of those kids that [it] did not work for me. I just wanted to march to the beat of my own drum. I wanted to be my own person. I did not want to conform and become a clone in this highly-controlling religious family or environment.”
Plath noted that her childhood “directly informs” her adult life now.
“It informs what I know and what I don’t know. What I experience, what I didn’t experience. What I am unlearning. Things that I am pursuing in my life now, things that I am not pursuing,” she said. “My childhood directly informs all of that because of what it was like. And it’s also extra audacious to tell me that there was never any abuse when first of all, you didn’t grow up in the home I grew up in.”
She continued, “Second, you want to tell me that there is not a direct correlation to high control religious environments and abuse? I don’t know what to tell you because there was abuse in the home I grew up in. I know that’s such a shocker but those things go hand in hand. It’s hard to find one without the other.”
Plath added that she’s “sure” her trolls “talk about their childhood” and claimed that the “only reason” they don’t want her to discuss her own experience is because it “challenges a narrative that they have.”
“Children are not property to be molded into what you want them to be. They’re born their own person and they get to become their own person,” she said. “And as a parent, your job is to guide them and get them there. It’s not just to put a roof over their head, it’s not just to feed them food. That’s the bare minimum that you do when you have a kid. And if you’re not willing to do that, don’t f***ing have a kid.”
Plath noted that the more push back she receives in regards to her speaking about her experience, the more she feels compelled to talk about it.
“It highlights the disparity of information. It honestly highlights ignorance that a lot of people have surrounding growing up in a cult. And I guess that I just need to share a lot more stories to help bridge that gap,” she said. “What a bummer.”
Plath captioned the post, “Guess I’ve got some more stories to share and unpack 🫡#exfundie #fundamentalism #cult.”
Plath, who was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household with her eight siblings, has been candid about her experience growing up. Plath has since left her childhood religion.
In March, Olivia claimed that she suffered domestic violence and abuse while in her marriage with ex-husband Ethan Plath. Us Weekly reached out to Ethan and TLC for comment at the time.
If you or someone you know are experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential support.
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