Developing Memoir Writing Skills with Christi Christiaens

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Christi Christiaens belonged to an immortality cult for 30 years. Her book, Wager on Forever, explores how she was drawn into the cult, how the trio of cult leaders applied the usual strategies to keep their followers on the hook, and how Christi was ultimately able to leave the group. Unfortunately, in order to do this, she had to leave her adult son behind. He’s still involved with the cult as of this recording.

Based on what she shares in this interview, the writing process was healing for Christi, and you’ll hear her talk about why that was and what it looked like for her. It’s not an easy thing to do, to write about a traumatic experience, especially one that was 30 years in the making and I am so impressed with Christi’s drive and determination to tell her story.

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.

Show Notes

• Joining an immortality cult in the late 1980s
• Thinking about leaving the cult for 7 years
• Leaving the cult and starting to write about it
• Writing to release emotional suppression
• Joining a writing group for support, encouragement and feedback
• Learning about the art of writing a memoir
• Reading other memoirs and learning that we are not alone
• How the way out is through
• Learning more about an experience by writing about it
• Strategies for holding a reader’s interest in a memoir

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• Christi’s book, Wager on Forever
• Grammarly to assist with grammar and spelling
• Brenda Smit James, writing coach

Transcript of the interview with Christi Christiaens

Alexandra: Christi Christiaens, welcome to Creative Alchemy.

Christi: Thank you. Thank you, Alexandra. I feel very grateful, actually, that I have this opportunity to express how important writing was for me in the recovery of, uh, after the cult, after leaving the cult.

Alexandra: Yes. Awesome. Oh, good. I’m so glad you’re here to talk about that.

Give us a little bit of your background and a little bit about yourself.

Christi: Well, for as long as I can remember, I was a seeker. I was never really restful. I had a restless in me. I was always looking for something more. I thought I was missing out.

I thought there was much more to experience as what I experienced. That was already when I grew up at home. I didn’t feel I belonged. I was always looking somewhere else.

I was born in Belgium. I was the oldest of five children. And as I said, in my home, I wasn’t totally at home.

I was a restless seeker. And, and a little bit, I had a, a rebellion side in me, too, I have to admit. So then I, I married and I had four children. I have four children myself. And that didn’t stop me looking for adventures. I was always looking for the next adventure. We moved from Belgium to Spain to go…

That was in the ’70s. It was in at that time to go back to the land and to be self-sufficient and all that. So, with my family, we did that. And then when we came back, so we came back to Belgium. We were there for eight years, and then we came back. A few years after we came back, I had this friend that asked me if I wanted to go to Germany with her because something…

She came back from America, and she had met three people there that were, to her, absolutely amazing, and they were on a European tour. And she begged me to go with her, so I did. And that’s when it happened.

Alexandra: Tell us what you found when you went to that weekend in Germany.

Christi: So, so first, I was kinda nervous, didn’t know what to expect, and she was kinda mysterious about it.

Yeah, these people, they talk about physical immortality. What? Physical immortality? Not dying? Yes, yes, but please hear them out. You’ll see. You can see for yourself.

And yes, so I was very taken in with them. They had a big impact on me. Everything they, they said, they expressed. And I was already looking.

I was already looking for something. So I was a perfect candidate to get sucked into a cult.

Alexandra: You mentioned it was about immortality.

What were the highlights of what they taught or what they believed?

Christi: So the highlights was that, so they say death is not inevitable. So they say, “Oh, the whole world thinks that death is inevitable, but we say it’s not.

We say that the body has the capacity in, deep into the cells, to keep regenerating. To live forever and keep regenerating and keep getting better and better.”

So that was their hook. And, uh, that sounded fantastic to me. What? We can keep regenerating? Wow. And, and then they, they promoted, you know, to be fully alive, to express ourselves, to be open.

And all that appealed to me at that time. And by the end of the weekend, I was in.

Alexandra: Wow. Yeah.

Christi: Already. Just in three, well, the Friday night, Saturday, Sunday.

Alexandra: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and as you say, you, you know, you were looking. So you were-

Christi: And I was looking … yeah I was searching, yeah.

Alexandra: Yeah, yeah.

Christi: Searching for more meaning. At that time, I was in my early 40s, so a little bit midlife crisis. Uh, seeking for something different.

Alexandra: There were three leaders, right?

Christi: Three people.

Alexandra: And about how big was the group at the weekend, would you say?

Christi: Well, at the weekend, of course, so that was in Munich, and, uh, there, there were people that organized for them in, in Munich.

And they also had a group. They were also coaches and leaders, and they had a group of people. So they invited everybody that they knew, and then there were also people from other countries, from England, from the Netherlands, from Austria, so, uh, people from all over. That was also something that attracted me.

You know, it was really an interesting bunch of people. And in that room were about 250 to 300 people that they got together to come and listen to them.

Alexandra: Mm-hmm. Wow. Okay.

Christi: Yeah.

Alexandra: As things unfolded how did they say that you could achieve immortality?

Christi: Mainly by… immortality was a cellular connection. So that was what they promoted, so it was mainly to be with them. Ah, right. When you were connected with them, that was the way to achieve it.

You could not do it somewhere on your own in your own country somewhere. You had to be with them, and you had to meet with them, so they had meetings twice a week.

Alexandra: Did your husband get involved too at the same time?

Christi: No. He was not. He, he went with us to Germany that time. That was the first time that he went to something with me, because mostly he was, you know, “She’s into one of her crazy adventures.” Uh, but, but no, he didn’t buy it.

Alexandra: Okay. All right.

Christi: He did not buy it, so that was the beginning of a lot of, uh, con- uh, contrast between us, a lot of conflict.

Alexandra: We’re going to fast-forward then. How long were you involved with the group?

Christi: I moved to America in 2000. So, but for 10 years, that was 1990 that I met them in, uh, ’89 I think, in ’89, something like that. But then I couldn’t move immediately because my children were still too young, and I wasn’t gonna bring them all with me and all that.

So I stayed for 10 years in Belgium, but I was always traveling because they traveled all over the world to do what they did in Munich to look for people.

I traveled almost everywhere, especially in Europe and also in America, for 10 years. And then after 10 years, I moved here. I moved from Belgium to Phoenix to be permanently involved with the group, because in Phoenix, Arizona is where their, um, their center was.

Alexandra: Your children and your husband, they stayed in Belgium?

Christi: Well, it’s a little bit more complicated. My oldest son, I came just 10 years, I came every year to America because every year in the summer they gave a big, uh, event that people came from all over the world. And I took my oldest son, uh, with me once, and he was also interested in them. And he moved here a year later, before me.

So he was already here, and then the other, uh, three children, they stayed in Belgium with my husband, with their father. Yeah.

Alexandra: And your marriage eventually fell apart, correct?

Christi: Yes.

Alexandra: Yeah.

Christi: Eventually, uh, it’s, it’s a bit a complicated story, but I don’t think we have to go into…

All these details are in my book, so.

Alexandra: When did you decide to leave, and what was the catalyst for that?

Christi: Uh, leaving the cult you mean?

Alexandra: Yeah.

Christi: First I have to say that for seven years before I left, I had in my mind the idea of leaving. I was playing with it. But I just, I couldn’t.

I was so into it and so brainwashed and afraid to leave.

And also because my son was there, and I felt responsible because I brought him there. And so for seven years I was playing with this idea to leave, and I just couldn’t do it. I learned about somebody while I was in the cult, and we got together with this man.

He was maybe the biggest catalyst for me to leave, and some other people that were also just left or about to leave. But he was definitely the, the biggest catalyst that opened my eyes, and he left before me.

I saw what happened to him when, when he was out.

He changed. He became more happy, more free, and I saw that. Oh, wow. And then he never, uh, tried to convince me to leave or to, in, in those few months that, that he had left, because he knew I was still totally involved. But just the way he was was enough. It was amazing, the difference in him. Wow. Okay.

Alexandra: What year was it that you actually left?

Christi: 2019.

Alexandra: When did it occur to you that you wanted to tell this story, write this book?

Christi: Well, at first when I just left, of course, it was very hard because I left all my friends from 30 years, because all together it was 30 years.

All the people I knew, all my friends, and my son. That was the hardest because he was still there and i- still is. So I… And little by little I started to realize all the things I did be able to leave the cult, like leave everything behind in Belgium. And, and I just did that because it was encouraged, uh, by them, and, and I was totally in.

So it was, it was very tough, and I wanted to express myself.

Because I felt that I was, had been suppressed all the time I was there, and I wanted to find my own voice. I wanted to discover, because I had to discover it, what was I say, what am I gonna say about this, everything, what happened? And I intuitively wrote that down, not yet with the purpose to write a book, but yet I wanted to express it to the world.

I don’t know yet, I didn’t know at that time yet how, but I wanted to tell my story from me, to have my perspective on all that. Because all the time I was there, I had the leaders’ perspective.

What were they saying? And now finally I could write down what my experience was, without the fear. The fear was gone because they had no grip on me anymore.

The spell was over. Uh, once I left, done.

Alexandra: Yes.

Christi: Then I started to really enjoy this. I started just to enjoy writing, writing, writing. Not yet the idea of a book, but just releasing all the suppression. And then I had another friend that also left, and she was willing to read it.

And she said, “Wow, this is amazing.” She loved it. She said, “Because I also recognize everything you’re saying there, a lot of things that I was also not aware of.”

That started to encourage me more and more to keep going, so I just kept writing.

Alexandra: I love that.

We need to put a pin in the fact that you just began to tell your story without knowing what you were going to do with it, and that that alone was valuable to you.

Christi: That was very valuable.

Alexandra: When you shared what you had started to write with your friend…

At that point, did you think it would be a book, or did you just want to share it with somebody?

Christi: I just wanted to share it because I got the idea a little bit far in my head. But I thought I couldn’t do that, I thought, because first of all, English was not my first language, and while I was writing for myself or for a few friends, I didn’t care so much. But I thought, “Wow, if this would be a book, then, then it needs to be nice.”

I didn’t know anything about writing a book. I didn’t even know that you had editors and all that. I didn’t know anything. But I discovered Grammarly. It came on my screen, a commercial for Grammarly, and I thought, “Oh, that’s what I need.”

So I bought a membership on Grammarly. And that started to give me… At that time, Grammarly was not as sophisticated as it is today. It just did your spelling and then a little bit on the sentence, kinda removed the pieces of the sentence a little bit. But that helped me. That was fantastic.

You know, you type and boom, boom, all the right spelling came up. Oh, yes. And then I started to think more and more that I could write a good piece. Because I had help. Like, help that was always there.

Alexandra: You and I have known each other for a few years because you came to me with your book asking for some help when it was ready to be published.

You just reminded me how quickly after your experience you started writing about it. And maybe that has something to do with the seven years that you were thinking about leaving. So there was almost a decade there.

Christi: Yes.

Alexandra: I’m just always so impressed by that, about how quickly you wanted to express yourself.

Christi: Yes. Ir was an urge that I had and, and I, I just, uh, followed it. Of course, I have to say that the pieces that I wrote in the beginning. So then my next challenge was then that I had a piece, uh, written, but I, I didn’t know, how was I gonna make a book out of it?

I started to divide it and make some chapters and all that, but… It, it was okay, but I knew that it wasn’t good enough for, for a book. So what I did then was I looked, uh, for a group, a coach. A writing coach, and that worked in small groups. We were with five people, and we met every week.

And that is the best I’ve ever did for both, and for my writing and for my recovery and my healing. It was absolutely amazing.

I still remember that the coach said to me, she said, “Well,” so she read, we could give her something, uh, to read. Uh, “Writing is an art and a skill.” She said, “You have the art, but you don’t have the skill.”

But she said, “That’s a good deal because the skill you can learn.”

Alexandra: Yes.

Christi: So then I started to learn. I bought books myself, and I learned how to write a memoir and, and then I learned from her. She gave little lessons before we started and all that. Once I was working with her and started studying a memoir, then I knew I was gonna bring this to an end. I wanted to have a book in my hands.

In that process, I found your book.

Alexandra: Oh, okay.

Christi: Cult, A Love Story. I cannot tell you how much that book helped me. Just reading that book and be validated.

Knowing I wasn’t alone. wanting to write all this, and there, there was somebody else in the world. And yeah, that helped me a lot, and that also gave me the desire and the courage to keep on writing and to finish the book.

Alexandra: Thank you for that. That’s very nice to hear. I appreciate that.

I know too, people often start out to write a book, and then it gets messy in the middle. We can get kind of lost. We’ve come a certain way, and people just seem to hit a bit of a block. “I don’t know where to go now.”

I imagine the writing group that you were in helped you with a bit of momentum, like keep going.

Christi: yeah. Totally. I could not have done this by myself.

Alexandra: What’s her name? Let’s give her a little shout-out.

Christi: Brenda Smit James. She was amazing. She’s also in Vancouver.

Alexandra: Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten that. I will put a link to her website in the show notes. That’s great. Thank you.

So you kept going, and emotionally, what was the process like for you writing? I’m really interested in that, because I remember, myself, that it was a very emotional thing to do.

Christi: Oh, yeah.

Alexandra: What was it like for you?

Christi: Yeah. It was very emotional. That’s also where the group was, uh, very help, and I also for a while had a therapist.

Alexandra: Okay.

Christi: So I was in, in therapy for a while, yeah, because emotionally, it was a lot.

Some, especially the writing also before the cult, how I took the decision to do that, how I left everything, how I broke up my, my family and everything, and having to, to write all that and to face all that, it was hard, but it was the best thing to do.

Because I think this is with everything that we face.

The way out is through.

That’s something that I always remember. I read it somewhere or heard it somewhere, and I always remember that, because you can’t run away from it.

Alexandra: No.

Christi: Because it’s in you. So you have to, you don’t have to be stuck in it.

You don’t have to be forever in the misery, but you have to walk through it. So, and that’s what I did, and that’s where also writing the book helped me a lot to do that.

Because also while I was writing, things came up that I forgot even, or, or that I did not know how to express in words.

Sometimes I had to look for words Because those, like all the cult words, you know, they’re not words that you use every day. I had to look some up and, learn about what it really means. Like, you know, coercion and manipulation, gaslighting, you know, all these words.

I didn’t use these words before. I’d heard them, of course, but I didn’t use them. I thought they weren’t pertinent to me.

Alexandra: Right. Yes, yeah.

Christi: But then, so, so and then, uh, expressing all that, expressing those feelings and facing them, it took the sting out of it.

Because I think that is very important in life for me, too.

It’s not that we never want to feel it anymore. Sometimes, I get up some mornings and I feel something from the past, and, and it, it grips me. But then it doesn’t direct my life anymore. It’s, it’s okay, I can feel it.

Christi: And I give myself the permission to feel it, and I know it was the past, and it will subside.

The feeling will subside, and it always does.

But there needs to be the willingness to feel it fully and not to suppress. That’s what I find.

Alexandra: I absolutely agree. Yeah, and you’re so, so right that there’s, there’s a difference between feeling our feelings and wallowing in the misery.

People are sometimes afraid. You know, “If I feel this, I’ll get stuck in it.”

But that never happens. You know, we always move through it.

Christi: Always. Move. Exactly.

Alexandra: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Christi: Exactly.

Alexandra: And one of the things that I really remember, and I think you sort of touched on this just now, but I remember I learned things about the cult by writing about it.

I was a little bit removed and detached I was able to see, oh, our cult leader did this thing so that nine months later she could do this. It was like watching somebody playing chess in slow motion.

Christi: Wow. Yeah.

Alexandra: Did you learn things from writing about the story?

Christi: Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. The way they treated us, for example. I was totally oblivious to that when I was in there. But for example, they had this… Like, someday they came in and the meeting begun, and they were praising us and, and doing all that stuff. And then another day, or even at the end of that same meeting, they were bringing us down.

And that is really a tactic to draw people in again.

Because when you, when you see, oh, I wasn’t good enough, I didn’t do what the leaders want me to do, and then you want to be good again. And there was always this up and down thing.

I didn’t realize that when I was there. And then all the us versus them that they promoted. We were the people. We were going to live forever. We were physically immortal, and the rest of the world was just gonna die, you know.

So, oh, yeah, absolutely. I learned a lot. And also, I studied cults. I was reading books about it and, and studied it.

And that was good. It was so good to study them and then to write about them It, it made me feel that I didn’t go through all that for nothing. That I experienced- Hmm … all this for a reason.

Because I was destined to write this book somehow. Because I also knew from reading your book and then more books after that, how important it is for people to read somebody else’s material, to feel validated, to feel understood. That, that was the most important.

Not to feel alone, not to feel that I’m crazy.

Alexandra: I love what you say that it gives the experience meaning.

Christi: And purpose. Yeah. It was a purpose, a new purpose that I absolutely needed.

Alexandra: Absolutely. Okay, so you continue to write, and then how, how did you know… Like, where did you… So you have a collection of, um, maybe chapters or maybe just stories or vignettes.

What did you start to do to shape it?

Christi: Mainly I made a, a timeline. That, that was a very important step I did somewhere in the middle or so I think. I put all the important, um, happenings and events on that timeline.

And then that’s how I shaped the book. And I also used flashbacks.

So therefore, a timeline is even more important because you have to see that you stay on track and, and that you seamless a little bit, move into flashbacks, but that the reader also immediately understand that you’re going back in time.

Alexandra: Exactly. I just want to interject there.

I think that’s such a clevervstrategy to use or writing technique because unfortunately I see too many memoirs that are just a straight line.

This happened and then that happened- It is, it is. And then this other thing happened- Mm … and then that, and then the end.

For those listening who are interested in writing their own story, when we change things up like that, when we use a, a strategy like putting flashbacks in, that really keeps the reader interested.

It keeps them on their toes. And their brain has to catch up a little bit with what’s happening.

It holds their interest so they keep turning the pages. So well done you for using that. I think that’s great.

Christi: I loved it. It gave, for me also something to really think about and work on.

What I wanted also to say because we were talking about feeling validated and feeling and that people that also come out of cults, that they can relate to us, but it’s not only that. It went beyond that.

I was surprised because I didn’t expect that, like for example some people, there was a lady and her parents were in a cult.

And then they got out when she was a, a child still or so. So she was never in it, but her parents were. And as she said, by reading my book, she understood her parents.

Alexandra: Yes.

Christi: Because first she, she was kind of, kinda angry with them because of that, and she didn’t know why did they do that.

And then she understood and she could be forgiving to her parents. So it’s not only that you write for people that come out of cults, also people that had loved ones that were in cults.

Alexandra: Yes. Oh, so well said. That’s such a valuable point. Thank you so much for bringing that up. The ripples of understanding just keep going outward. That’s awesome.

Alexandra: You began to shape it into a book, and what next? Where did you go from there?

Christi: My coach also wanted to do like a first editing part.

I had somebody else that did the final editing. But she did the first. And chapter by chapter, and then she still wanted me to change quite a bit.

It was tough sometimes. I needed to rewrite. She said, “Oh, you need to rewrite this because it doesn’t this and that.” And but she was so good.

Then each time when I got a chapter back, I was overwhelmed by the changes that I still needed to make. But she was always, “It’s okay. You will get there. You will get there.” Each time I did it, I made all the changes that she asked me chapter by chapter. That, that took a long time, too.

Then when that was done, then it went to another editor to the final. And then there was still not so much anymore, but there was still things that he saw or found that needed to or be clarified more or be changed for some other reason.

Christi: So and then I did that and until it’s, it was all polished.

Alexandra: I imagine that your coach was quite skillful about her recommendations because one thing that’s, um- You know, that can happen to new writers is that they feel completely squashed by feedback, right? They’ve poured your heart into this thing and it feels like it should be enough, and now somebody’s saying, “No, no, it needs to be better.”

Christi: Yeah, I can understand it, absolutely.

Alexandra: How did you cope with that sort of feeling?

Christi: Well, I have to say it was really had a lot to do with her skills. She was so skilled, the way she did it. She was never, I never had the feeling like, “Oh, I can’t do this,” or … But i- it, it’s overwhelming.

Especially it was with the first chapters. But then I got used to it. Then I thought, “Okay, I can do this.” But she had a very loving personality. She came out with understanding and love, and I was just delighted actually to, to work with her and she was right. Everything she said made sense.

I have to say from that original piece that I wrote not much was left of it.

Alexandra: I saw a great quote from Terry Pratchett, who was a UK writer, and he said;

“The first draft is the writer telling themselves the story.”

So really when we’re writing the first thing, we’re just getting it out for ourselves almost. And then that’s why it changes so much because it becomes for other people.

Christi: I heard people saying the first draft is like the vomiting on the page.

Alexandra: Yeah, just get it out. Yeah. Just get it out. Exactly, yes. And that’s not for the public.

Along the way, at any point did your children or your ex-husband read the book?

Christi: Uh, well, my ex-husband, I don’t know if he ever read the book. I, I once talked with him about it. He passed away in the meantime, so yeah.

So I talked with him because we talked on the phone regularly, mostly about the kids and all that. I asked him and he said it was very difficult for him to read the English.

He wasn’t absolutely not used to reading in English, so I don’t think he read it.

But before the book came out, my son that is still in the cult, he read it. I asked him to read it. Because we were connected again, so we were disconnected just after I left, but then he came back and so we are actually really well connected again, which is really great.

But that was kind of in the beginning when we were connecting again. And I gave him the choice. I said, “Look, I would like for you to read, like, when it comes out, it’s not going to be received well in the cult.” Well, that’s normal, right? Uh, and I say, “I would give it to you, and if you want to read it, that would be really great.”

And I say, “Because you are in there quite a bit, and you have to let me know if there is something in there that you don’t want me to say about you.” And he was very good about it. He said, “Yeah, it’s your story, and you tell your story from your side, and there is nobody that can say anything about that.” That is also later when the book came out, what he said to some of the people that talked to him about it, you know.

It’s her story and, and that’s it. Now, we all have a different story.

Alexandra: Is he still involved?

Christi: Yep.

Alexandra: That surprises me that he would be willing to read it if he’s still in.

Christi: It was amazing, and we talked about it because there are a lot of intense things in there.

And we talked about it afterwards and, and he’s… He, he will say, “Oh,” he say, “If that’s how you experienced it, that’s it.”

Alexandra: That’s so interesting.

Christi: Yeah, he’s amazing.

Alexandra: One of the questions I wanted to ask finally, and I think we’ve sort of already asked this, was whether it helped, whether writing the book, Wager on Forever, um, helped your healing process. I’ve heard you say yes, it really did.

Christi: Oh, it did. Totally. It was the biggest part of the healing process. Also, the therapy. And then as time go by. And the therapy was, and what was also was the books that I read, like your book. And also, I had some contact with people that also left. And that helped a lot, too.

And then I listened to podcasts of other people that left cults and all that helped to validate my experiences, and to get interested in other people. How did other people experience all that?

I was always so thankful for the people that were able to express in public, because I know it can be tough, um, because you never know what reactions you’re going to get.

But the desire can be so great in yourself that you really have to do that. I think that’s the only way you can really do it. When you have the urge to, to do it.

Alexandra: Yes, I agree.

Did you experience any backlash or negative feedback from the cult?

Christi: Yes, I did some.

There was somebody, only one person, that was here beside my son and his wife. There was one other person that I still had a relationship with, which was amazing. But the book did it.

After she read the book. And I understand. It is very confrontive. When you’re still there and you want to still stay there, and, and just the fact that I called them a cult, she could not handle it.

It also confronts you. What am I doing? Is it really what I want to do, or is there something… So she didn’t finish it either.

Alexandra: I can understand that.

Christi: For the rest, I have no contact with this, with the people anymore, and nobody, nobody did, uh, anything like calling me or, or writing, so I didn’t hear.

Alexandra: Second last question here.

Where do you find creative expression in your life now?

Christi: Right now, oh, well, first I have to say that I am, I started to work on the sequel to the book.

The first book ends when I travel to Belgium, and then when I was on the airplane to Belgium.

And now the second book describes… Because I hadn’t been there in 24 years. I hadn’t seen my family in 24 years.

And so the, it starts there. But, um, uh, but a year and a half, so after the time that, uh, my book was published, I got sick, and I got digestive problems, a lot of digestive problems.

And I luckily found a really good practitioner, an alternative practitioner that really is helping me very well. But I have to change a lot of things. I have to change my lifestyle, my food, everything, and a lot of therapies that I have to do. So I stopped writing. Not permanently, but temporarily to take care of my health.

It was more healing emotionally and psychologically, and now I’m healing physically. And there is a lot of creativity in that too.

There is creativity in everything if you look for it and if you be creative, right?

Alexandra: Right. Yeah, that’s well said. Oh, good for you.

And oh, and I did wanna say before we wrap up, so it was an immortality cult that you were in.

Am I correct, two out of the three leaders have passed away?

Christi: Yes. Two out of the three leaders have passed away. One in 2014 and the other one when I already had left in 2021 or ’22, somewhere there.

And since, so there is only one leader over, left, right? Since then they have changed kind of their policies and their, uh, practices a little bit, and are more… They’re still in the area, but they’re more coming out as longevity or life extension, because, I mean, it’s hard to promote physical immortality if two founders died, you know?

Alexandra: Exactly.

Christi: But yet even after they died, we stayed. Isn’t that something?

Alexandra: Yeah, that really speaks to how cults work and how they turn our brains into knots and yeah.

Christi: Exactly.

Alexandra: Perfect example.

Christi, your book is called Wager on Forever. Please tell the listeners where they can find out more about it.

Christi: Well, they can find it on Amazon, which you helped me put there.

Alexandra: Right. Yes.

Christi: It’s in an e-book and then a paperback.

If you type in Wager on Forever, it comes up. It seems that I am the only book whose title is Wager on Forever.

Alexandra: Nice. It makes you easy to find. I will put links in the show notes as well to your book.

Thank you so much for being here with me today. Uh, it’s been lovely chatting with you again. Yeah.

Christi: It was my pleasure.