Five phases of the Midwestern snowstorm

Preteen boy exhausted by snow shoveling

We get a decent amount of snow every year in Kansas City, but it’s not like Minnesota or Buffalo. They get ice dams on their roofs and will still go out for a brewski with eight inches of snow on the ground. Three inches here, and we are SHUTTING THINGS DOWN. 

There’s a pretty predictable pattern for snow storms in the middle of the Midwest, and I’ll outline it here for educational purposes, should you happen to be moving here or visiting in January or February. (We’re a lovely place to visit, but why in the world would you come here in January or February?! That’s stupid. We wonder why we live her during this time.)

Phase 1: The Hype

This happens four to seven days in advance of the snow storm. Meteorologists start reporting on some disturbance in Fiji that may or may not collide with an arctic super jet stream in Canada’s Yukon territory, settling right over Kansas City to dump a life-altering amount of snow, or maybe nothing. 

Seasoned Midwesterners will say things like, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” This is in response to the concerns of other Midwesterners uttered in places like on the elevator or at the store check-out, such as, “Looks like the weather could get nasty next week,” or “Are you tired of the snow yet?”

Meteorologists will frequently reference their new data saying that the storm is now looking like it will be pretty intense. But it could still shift south. Or north. Or enough cows could fart at once to heat the atmosphere to the point nothing happens. But you still need to be WEATHER AWARE. 

TV reporters get sent out to do stories about how many people are buying shovels and rock salt at the locally owned hardware stores. (It’s always the locally owned ones because the corporate giants won’t let anyone except the PR lady at their Houston headquarters talk to the media. And she does not know the first thing about shovel demand in the Midwest.)

Phase 2: The Panic Prep

The more intense the hype, the more food staples people feel it necessary to buy. God help you if you go to a grocery store after work the night before a big snow storm is predicted to move in. You will circle the parking lot to find a space. There will be a Hunger Games-esque competition to get a cart. Many of the things you came for will be out of stock. They will still have corned beef, kale, and the weird breads made out of cauliflower stems or whatever. They almost certainly will be out of milk, bread, eggs, toilet paper and frozen pizzas. Because the panic buyers before you got them first. They are ready to be snowed in for weeks, even though in my lifetime that has literally never happened. 

As mentioned above, the shovels will get all bought up. Like somehow this is everyone’s first Midwestern winter and they have never before had to buy a shovel. We have two snow shovels so my husband and I can shovel at the same time and get the job done faster, or if one breaks. (Trust me, it happens, and you won’t catch me unprepared.) They are plastic and wearing down from years of hefty use, but I sure as heck don’t have to buy new ones right before a snow storm strikes like a neophyte.  

Phase 3: It’s Happening

This is probably the calmest part of the whole thing. Just watching the snow fall. And waiting on the call/text saying whether school will be canceled. Except now they don’t do that. Kids have to do virtual learning instead. (Thanks, COVID!) So not only do you have to stay home from work due to your kids being out of school, you get to be their teacher, too! This is especially fun when you’re trying to work from home, too. Trying to make an important call? Welp, too bad because your second grader’s video conference software isn’t working and they’re about to lose it. That email you were going to send will just have to wait until after you help your sixth grader with math, the mechanics of which your brain long ago removed in favor of Dashboard Confessional song lyrics.  

People will post in town social media groups, “How are the roads?” when any human with eyes can see the roads aren’t good, Joanne. People who own trucks and SUVs will think they are invincible and try to drive anyway, and then you see their vehicles littered in ditches afterward. They will be publicly shamed with the adage, “Four-wheel drive doesn’t mean four-wheel stop!”

When they have finished their online school work, your children will beg to go play in the snow, despite being in the middle of an active blizzard warning. And despite you still trying to answer emails. 

Phase 4: The Aftermath

There are two kinds of shovelers: those who go out in the middle of the snow storm so there will be less to do later, and those who go out after it stops. I am the latter because I can’t stand futility. Shoveling just to watch it get covered up again is not my style. So what if I have to do a little heavy lifting later? I work out; it’s cool. If you ever plan on leaving your house again, you have to shovel the driveway. You also (as so many of my neighbors seem to forget is required by city ordinance and so I don’t have to walk my kids through the streets to get to the school bus stop) have to shovel your sidewalks. 

If you are a man who owns a snowblower, you will magnanimously blow snow from your neighbors’ sidewalks and driveways. This will make you feel good inside, but also it is satisfying because the snowblower is basically a winter power washer. And we know how you love those. 

Then, you wait. You gaze out the window longingly for the plow to come. This is your key to freedom. You hear tell that the highways are in OK shape. But you can’t get to them because your neighborhood is non-traversable. Sometimes the plow will come within 12 hours. Sometimes it will be days. (Aren’t you glad you bought all that bread and toilet paper?) Once it comes, people on social media will compare how well their jurisdiction is plowed in comparison to other jurisdictions. The other one is always better. Someone swears they saw a plow go down the street with their blade not touching the road just so they can trick the public works GPS plow tracking systems. 

Your trash doesn’t get picked up because they’ve pulled the sanitation workers to drive the plows. Guidance from the city is to keep it at the curb, and hopefully they’ll come by tomorrow. They won’t. Your frozen solid meat fats will just be taunting the raccoons for another week. 

The kids are still out of school because the neighborhoods aren’t plowed and the buses can’t get through. They want to play in the snow. All. The. Time. It takes 20 minutes to prepare them for this. They insist you go out with them. One will want to go inside well before the other one. You will be exhausted, but they will still demand hot chocolate. 

Phase 5: Return to Normal

The sun will start to shine on a day that’s pushing 37 degrees, and the melt will begin. Fools will go to the carwash to get the salt off their cars, but you know better. You know this is the messiest time. All the melty, salty snow is flying up from puddles everywhere.

School has resumed, but you still have to walk your kids to the bus in the slushy street because your inconsiderate and law-breaking neighbors didn’t shovel the sidewalks. But all is mostly right with the world. 

And then, the meteorologist sees a disturbance over American Samoa.  

 

The problem with women's pain

Warning: This post is going to talk about cooters and what lies beyond them.

OK, if you’re still reading:

I saw a tweet last week from a male emergency medicine doctor in his residency. He asked, in a way that seemed kind of shocked, if women really don’t get any kind of pain relief or anesthetic when an IUD (intra-uterine device) is inserted for birth control. Like he was today years old when he realized women’s pain - and so many other women’s health issues - has been completely discounted by the medical establishment for millennia. I commend him for questioning this.

If, like me, you have ever had an IUD shoved up your nethers (because most family planning falls on women), you will not be surprised that his tweet received over 2,500 responses. Most were from women who were happy he asked but indignant about the needless pain they went through. One very, very unwise male anesthesiologist decided to wade into the fray stating most women tolerate the procedure just fine, and there’s just a confirmation bias because we only hear whining from the women who can’t take it. If they don’t say anything, having a device shoved up through their undilated cervix and into their unsuspecting uterus must’ve just been like a lovely sway in a hammock on a summer’s day for them. 

My cervical dramas

I never complained about my IUD pain publicly. I didn’t get one of those doctor’s office surveys afterward. But I can tell you I was on my knees in the hospital parking garage after it was inserted weeping in pain. I was told in advance it would be fine, and I could go back to work afterward. Instead I was calling my husband because I didn’t know if I could drive home with the blinding pain. When I finally got home, I quickly discovered ibuprofen was no match for this foreign object in my womb, one I was told “may cause some mild cramping.” I found the oxycodone I’d had left over from when I was in a car crash and bruised my sternum and ribs like five years prior, and it was what got me through the next 24 hours. Most of the women in those tweets had experiences just like mine. 

According to the Washington Post, “Research also shows that physicians and other providers underestimate women’s pain during IUD insertions. In a study of 200 women, most of whom had given birth, the women reported an average maximum pain score of nearly 65 on a scale of 0 to 100.

The providers, however, rated the women’s pain at about 35.”

I have been told by many physicians and even dentists that I have a high pain tolerance. Like most women, I wonder if that’s just because I grin and bear it. Maybe I feel just as much pain as anyone else, but I keep my mouth shut because who is someone like me to tell the very educated doctor they may be doing something wrong because it hurts? I even tried to stay quiet while I gave birth unmedicated (not really by choice, btw) because I didn’t want to be seen as one of those hysterical, screaming women.      

At least with the IUD, it was a procedure I asked for (albeit without full knowledge of the pain it would entail). Something very different happened when I was 19 years old. I had to get on the birth control pill to take the drug Accutane for cystic acne. It apparently causes really bad birth defects, and despite the fact I was a virgin with a capital V, the dermatologist still insisted I get on the pill. 

To get the prescription, I had to get a pap smear. I would later learn the gynecologist I went to at the time used a very outdated type of pap smear test that resulted in a lot of false positives. It came back as possibly positive for cervical cancer (which if you know anything about HPV, it’s super unlikely to get cervical cancer if you’ve never had sex). So I had to go in for a follow up: A follow-up in which the doctor invited medical students in without my consent while I was splayed open in stirrups so they could all have a look at my cervix through basically a small telescope. Then he took a biopsy of my cervix without asking if I was OK with it - cut a chunk out of it about the size of my fingernail (I saw it floating in the container he put it into) - with no numbing or anything. I screamed. He said it shouldn’t hurt. Then he complained about how much I was bleeding, asked a nurse to put a tampon in me to soak it up and left. I stumbled to the waiting room where my mom was. I cried and told her I felt like I’d been raped. This was my first experience with women’s reproductive health care. 

I never went back to that doctor. 

The hot new thing: studying the majority

Why did doctors think my IUD insertion or a colposcopy wouldn’t hurt? Maybe it’s because we haven’t studied women’s bodies in medicine nearly enough. Did you know women - who comprise 51% of the country’s population - weren’t included in most clinical trials in the United States until 1993?! Heart attacks have different symptoms in women. Hip replacement joints work differently in women. Medications have different levels of effectiveness among the sexes. Women have whole-ass internal organs men don’t that they just assume “shouldn’t hurt.” 

“Failure to study medications and other interventions in a broad sampling of women has contributed to women experiencing adverse effects from medications at twice the rate of men.”  It’s even worse for women of color. 

I won’t event get into my recent visit to the museum of psychiatry in which some of the symptoms listed not so long ago for mental illness in women included “no interest in doing housework.”

Speaking of vaginas …

Another “whoopsie” in terms of not testing things that go in women’s bodies and what effects they might have: a new study just determined pretty much all commercially available tampons contain heavy metals like arsenic and lead. Quoth the news release from U.C. Berkeley on the study: “Tampons are of particular concern as a potential source of exposure to chemicals, including metals, because the skin of the vagina has a higher potential for chemical absorption than skin elsewhere on the body.”

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know that Facebook relentlessly advertised period underwear to me a couple years ago. While I was at first grossed out, all those targeted algorithms eventually wore me down, and I gave those washable, charcoal crotch-lined undies a shot. Turns out they’re amazing, I converted, and I’m no longer pumping arsenic up my baby chute. 

Men, this is about you, too

Men, if this was all too much vagina/cervix/period talk for you to handle, that’s tough. Because women’s health is human health. Women’s reproductive organs are how you got here. It’s how your children got here. It’s what your mother, sisters, wives and friends deal with. If they’re not well, if they’re in pain that’s perfectly preventable, if they’re being told “it shouldn’t hurt,” that’s cause for concern for you, too. And if you want to give your lady a promo code for period underwear discounts, hit me up. 

Escaping the Midwest

I love living in Kansas City, but I probably love it the least in January. You’ll get one or two 60-degree days, but mostly it’s just the kind of cold and dark that makes you want to go to bed early. You can go weeks without seeing the sun as one frigid, blah, gray day runs into the next. The only thing to really break it up is the Chiefs winning all the playoff games. And going to the Super Bowl for the fourth time in five years. But I digress. 

One of the best things you can do in Kansas City in January is leave it. So I did! My husband and I celebrated our 15th anniversary last November, and a friend was getting married on the island of Maui in Hawaii on Jan. 13. We decided we’d combine the two celebrations and stay for a week. The grandparents were gracious enough to watch the kids during this time. 

We picked the BEST WEEK EVER to flee the Midwest. It was a frozen hellscape in our absence. It snowed about six inches the day before we left. The Chiefs game at Arrowhead Stadium was the 4th-coldest in NFL history, starting at -4 degrees (Fahrenheit because America) and dropping to -7. And yes, I still had plenty of friends who went. They strapped hand warmers all over their bodies, stood on cardboard and drank beer until they were all warm and fuzzy, in their brains at least. We had a record low of -16, and I had serious concerns about whether my car would start upon our return to the airport. 

But in Maui - oh glorious Maui - it was between 75 and 80 degrees every day. The humidity (which disappears in a Midwest winter and over-appears in a Midwest summer) was enough so I didn’t have to moisturize anything but not at all oppressive. The air-conditioning at our resort went out just a couple days into our stay due to what we were informed was a “fire in the chiller,” and it was only a little stuffy. Hardly unpleasant. Meanwhile, I scrolled through social media posts of friends back home featuring the newest ice storm and bursting pipes. Then I went back to reading my book on the beach. 

Let’s talk about the beach in Hawaii. My only experience with the Pacific Ocean up to this point was in Southern California. It is COLD there. I remember feeling so betrayed. A beautiful, sunny day in June - I’ll just run right in! And then I immediately turned around squealing when the icy water hit my ankles. But in Maui, the temperature of the water matched the beauty of the day. I was so excited. Until the ocean tried to kill me. 

Cliche as it may be, it turns out I like long walks on the beach. Maybe because it’s such a novelty to a Midwest girl. My husband doesn’t like the feeling of sand on his feet, but I love it! The beach was maybe 100 to 200 feet from our room at the resort. I walked on it alone frequently. Sometimes the waves would rush up higher than expected and soak my shorts, but it was part of the fun. Then I decided I wanted to frolic in the waves. I have the most experience with wave pools at water parks, where it beeps before the waves come on and then you bob up and down, bumping into all the inner tubes full of people with much more body confidence than me, based on their size relative to the size of swimsuits they’re wearing. Then you can lay in bed at night, still feeling that wavy feeling. That’s what I wanted, and this beautiful, uncrowded beach offered it. I tried so hard to frolic, but the ocean was not having it. It would suck me under, drag me on the sandy bottom, then throw me back on shore. Over and over. (Because I was stupid enough to keep trying it over and over.) It went like this in my head: 

1. “This is so fun!”

2. “Oh God, that’s stronger than I thought it would be.”

3. “I’m drowning! I’m drowning!”

4. Thud - back on land.

I saw other people doing it and couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t. I’m a decent swimmer. A woman who was at least my mother’s age or older said, “You have to time it right,” then she ran in with aplomb. But my cornfed brain could not get the timing right. Literally bloody and bruised, I finally gave up. I had sand in every possible orifice. My bikini bottom was like a loaded diaper. More than two weeks after our return, I discovered some grains of sand still in my ear. I will now confine my wave frolicking to much more controlled, amusement park environments. 

I expected lovely beaches in Hawaii. What I did not expect were the abundance of feral chickens. They were EVERYWHERE. In the grocery store and gas station parking lots. In the outdoor shopping malls. Strutting along the side of the highway. We also saw a lot of stray cats, all of whom seemed fat and happy. I expect there’s a correlation there somewhere. 

Other than failing at wave frolicking, the most terrifying thing I did in Maui was drive from the west side of it to the east side. We agreed I would drive the whole time we were there because I freak out way less driving in unfamiliar environments. I’m glad my husband has finally come to terms with this fact. The drive to the Pipiwai Trail in Haleakala National Park involved going across numerous cow grates, stopping to avoid aforementioned cows, and going on one-lane roads that wound along the sides of cliffs that plunged to the sea and ancient volcanic rock hundreds of feet below. My husband kept saying, “Oh God! It’s so far down! Oh God! Oh God!” If I had taken my eyes off the road to look, I probably would have felt the same way and killed us both. And if a car came at you around the bend, there was nowhere you could go. Someone had to back up until there was a semblance of a shoulder. 

All in all, however, it was an amazing, childless vacation. We hadn’t been together without the kids for more than 24 hours for at least five years. I got to see some of my favorites friends from around the country who were there for the wedding. My husband and I went horseback-riding in the mountains. We saw baby humpback whales breaching alongside their mothers. We didn’t have to care for our own children. We visited tropical gardens, and I ate probably the weight of my head in tropical fruit. There were no kids. We slept whenever we wanted. We got massages. My work phone was dead. The kids weren’t with us. 

We were, however, right down the road from where the wildfires struck in August. We saw the devastation and memorials. We encountered numerous Red Cross and FEMA workers. Several of the guests at our resort were housed there because their homes had been destroyed. So many of the surviving businesses had signs up saying, “We are open! Please come in!” We did our part in stimulating their economy, but they still need a lot of help. Here’s a great, legit place you can donate: 

Coming home was sad. The USDA screener at the airport made me throw away the apple I’d gotten at the grocery store as part of their rule that you can’t take Hawaii fruits back to the continental U.S. The apple still had the store’s sticker on it saying it had come from California. I’m still mad about it. 

After a full day of travel, we arrived back in Kansas City. We’d arrived on a lucky day - the temperature had spiked to 30 degrees! My car started. Unfortunately, it had gotten some ice on it in our absence, and I’d left the scraper in a different car. As a Midwesterner, however, I’m prepared for just about any weather situation (except hurricanes). I whipped out a gift card I had for a free Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich. My husband didn’t believe it would work, but I knew better. He was pleasantly surprised by how that sucker scraped the ice right off. (This is the same man who didn’t believe bread bags could turn any shoes into snow boots. I have so much left to teach him.) 

 

Midwest summers: a guide for mountain people

By some care.com miracle, we wound up with an AMAZING nanny for our kids while they’ve been out of school. She was vastly overqualified to watch my children, but she was in Kansas City for her husband’s job this summer and was looking for a summer childcare gig. She is from Utah, which is apparently a land of mountains, no humidity and Mormons. 

It didn’t take long to realize she was a foreigner living in a foreign land, and I realized it was my duty to teacher her the ways of midwestern summers. Some topics we had to cover:

Humidity

A friend of mine once described humidity as “the air giving you a hug.” (She lived in Ohio before moving to Colorado and now misses living in air that can best be described as “moist.”)  I could tell the humidity was new for our nanny when she cut about 10 inches off her hair in her first week here. She has beautiful hair, but I guarantee you she realized it was more beautiful in Utah. Missouri summer means your hair tries to lift off your head and curl in the most unflattering way possible in the unending battle of white women vs. frizz. But hey, she didn’t have to spend any money on lotion or Chapstick while she was here.

Our nanny also lamented that in Utah, it gets plenty hot, but you actually find relief in the shade. She soon realized that here it is just as soupy under the tree as it is in an open field. 

Wildlife

Apparently, Kansas City is a verdant summer paradise compared to Utah. We’ve had much more rain than usual this summer, but the nanny said everything is dry and dead this time of year in her home town. She said she was shocked to see so many squirrels, rabbits and other fauna hopping about all the time. She couldn’t believe our weekly raccoons vs. trash battle (a whole blog for another day). She said they just don’t have any cute, furry, destructive wildlife scampering about in southern Utah in the summer. 

She also got introduced to another less-cute and less-visible Kansas City native: the chigger. She was complaining of really itchy bites all over her feet and ankles, and I had to introduce her to this mite with the name of a racist redneck. I also told her the cure for chigger bites that has long circulated in the community: to put clear nail polish over them because then those little suckers that have established squatters rights under your skin can’t breathe anymore and die. I don’t know if that really works, but it is passed down from generation to generation of midwesterners. (Interestingly, clear nail polish also has been passed down as the cure for runs in pantyhose.) 

She’d also never had to deal with ticks before or the higher amount of mosquitoes. I’m beginning to think we may have gotten the short end of the stick here in Kansas City … but our ovens cook faster down here closer to sea level!

Tornadoes and the warning sirens thereof

At about 10:30 a.m. on the first Wednesday of the month in June, I texted her in a panic. The monthly tornado siren test was due to happen at 11, and I realized she would probably think an air raid was about to go down. We live pretty close to the sirens, and I didn’t want her to think bombs were about to drop on the children. I advised her this siren testing would recur on a monthly basis (unless it’s stormy at 11 a.m. on the first Wednesday, and then emergency management doesn’t want to confuse people into thinking it’s a legit tornado, and they schedule it for the second Wednesday, and I can see how this can get confusing if you’re not used to it). I also told her to go to a basement if a tornado does happen. Her apartment didn’t have one, so we drove home the lowest-interior-area-with-no-windows location.  

She also got a first-hand look at flash flooding. Turn around, don’t drown, mountain friends!

Aldi

The nanny did not have the world’s best discount grocer where she lived in Utah. Friends out west, I am so, so, sorry. They’re expanding like crazy in Kansas City (a new one is opening less than a mile from my house!), and I hope they come to you soon. Then you, too, can enjoy all the savings a quarter-deposit on a grocery cart can buy on tons of delicious foods at prices that will make you mad when you are at regular grocery stores. I hope the Aldi boom follows our sweet nanny back to Utah. 

School starts for the kids next week, and our wonderful nanny goes back to Utah this weekend. Our whole family will miss her terribly. But she goes back with a new cultural awareness of Kansas City and its summer climate. She previously spent a couple years in England on her Mormon mission, but I’m sure this will go down in her memory as the most exotic and enjoyable place she has ever lived.  

I like cults

While most white women love murder (mostly just the shows and podcasts about it), I find myself inextricably drawn to cults. (Again, of the shows and podcasts variety. I do not keep joining cults.) Why are they so intriguing? Why do people keep falling for their charismatic-leader, brainwashing junk? What’s with all the polygamy? It’s time to explore my fascination with them. 

I’m not against a good Dateline episode or true crime podcast. I’m not a cop, but I have worked in and around law enforcement for almost two decades, so murder is, sadly, kind of old hat to me. The vast, vast majority of murders are not made-for-TV. They’re usually the same unfortunate story of throwing a gun into poor conflict resolution skills and/or drug deals gone bad. The kinds of homicides that do make it on 48 Hours are much rarer and sexier, usually featuring scorned lovers, big life insurance policies and attractive white women. 

But cults, man. Cults are not a part of my day-to-day life, and I cannot watch and listen to enough stuff about them. Here’s why I think I find them so intriguing: 

My religious upbringing

I was brought up as an evangelical Christian. Not culty. A lot of pot luck dinners, though. (As I have said before, I mostly still consider myself an evangelical Christian, but the term “evangelical” has come to mean such gross political conservatism I scarcely use it anymore.) My politics aside, I learned growing up of all the warnings about false prophets in the Bible, which I guess has always kind of had me on high alert and given me a healthy degree of skepticism for people who claim God told them something very explicit and very weird. Oh, God told you the true believers are all gonna’ ride a comet to a new planet full of virgins on Sept. 27, 2026? Sure, Jan.   

My Dad

To be clear, my dad is not and has never been a cult leader. He did serve on his town’s board of parks and recreation for 10+ years, though. He helped shepherd in a new dog park, not underage wives for a “prophet’s” nephew. He also was the teacher of our high school Sunday school class at church. He taught several lessons on different cults and how to identify and avoid them. He had several books about them at home that I frequently perused. I remember wondering how people could literally drink the Kool-aid of these belief systems? How did a book that was clearly science fiction spawn a whole celebrity-filled religion? Why do women almost always get the short end of the stick in these deals?

Polygamy

Speaking of oppressing women, let’s go with the obviously most fascinating feature of some of these cults: polygamy. I think any married mom can admit there are times a sister wife sounds appealing. Like who doesn’t want a little help pulling out all of the underwear the kids leave in their pants at laundry time or reading all the emails from school? And maybe someone to clap back with you when the husband is being a tool. But like a celibate sister wife because otherwise, just no. I can’t with the “whose bedroom is he going to tonight?” BS. 

According to my highly reliable source of television documentaries, cults with polygamy pretty much always get into oppressing women and sexually assaulting underage girls. There are always the stupid dresses and the stupid hair braids and the gross old man “prophets.” The girls and women are just breeding property who do all the cooking and cleaning while the men are constantly doing construction work. What are they always building? My best guesses are temples for invasive ceremonies, warehouses for homeschool curricula and armories to fend off the feds when they come to rescue the girls and arrest the prophet. 

Charismatic leaders

I realize a lot of cult members were born into them and know nothing else. But then there are the people who are just living their lives and come across the coo-coo teachings of some guy and are like, “Yup, I should leave my family and friends, get a bowl cut, go live off the grid and give all my money to that guy!” How does that happen? It is such an intriguing psychological phenomenon: both the characteristics of the leader and the characteristics of the people who get sucked in by them. 

You know what would make me want to join a cult? Mandatory daily naps, an ever-ready supply of Dippin’ Dots, a kitten room and someone else who makes dinner for your unappreciative children. Maybe these are just part of the benefits package at some Silicon Valley companies. 

I realize cults have destroyed the lives of many people and families. They traffic in shame and aim to quash critical thinking. I just want to wrap my arms around those people who have managed to escape. I want to tell them about the real, amazing grace the loving God offers and enroll them in a community college debate class. And ladies, you don’t have to share your man with anyone else. You can even wear pants.