Pints With Aquinas - Women Struggle with P*rn Too w/ Rachael Killackey

Episode Date: May 6, 2023

Show Sponors: https://hallow.com/matt https://everythingcatholic.com Rachael's New Book: https://www.avemariapress.com/products/love-in-recovery Other Links: https://www.magdalaministries.org https://shop.chastity.com/products/uncompromising-purity https://www.amazon.com/Believe-Love-Personal-Retreat-Teaching/dp/1928832288  https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748  

We need a smoke machine. Rachel, it's so nice to have you back. Yeah, it's good to be here. It's been like two years. Yeah. Deja vu. It's wild to me. My assistant told me the other day that we've had 70 guests over the last year. Really? How many weeks are in a year? I don't know.

52. 52. Yes, I do know. So that's a lot of guests. Do you remember signing my wall? I did. Yeah. There's a lot more signatures there now. Do I get to sign the wall twice? I don't think so.

Maybe we should have start people being like parentheses times two. Yeah. Just Rachel Clacky squared. It is so lovely to have you on the show and I'm so grateful for all the work that you're doing. And yeah, really. Thank you. So for those who are new to you and your work, can you sort of sum it up?

Not just your story, which we can get to, but just the work you're involved in right now, how it started, how it's taken off. I keep getting Patreon emails saying about book studies you all are doing. Oh yeah, because you're a patron. Thank you for being a patron. Yeah, so I am the founder and executive director of Magdala Ministries. I just went full time in January, so it was a part-time effort for almost two years. And then I went full time. Yeah. So we are an organization that serves women struggling with sexual addiction and compulsion. So we serve over a thousand women in over 35 countries now, which is incredible. Yeah. We just calculated all our countries last night and we made like

a really cool map. I had no idea that we were reaching that far. So praise God for that. When you say you're serving a thousand women or over a thousand women, how do you determine who is within your orbit? Those are participants in our small groups. So we have virtual small groups for women 18 and up, and then we partner with college campuses to help them facilitate small groups on their campus. So typically that's through a college campus ministry or Newman Center or something, and they will assign someone to run a group.

So that's actually, we would love to grow that effort because we started as a college group at Ave Maria. So I guess that's, yeah, that's how we began. And then I kind of let that work. I led a small group my senior year at Ave and I let that work kind of lay dormant for a while and went on to get my masters and then worked in diocesan ministry. And then I got in touch with you and you kind of gave

me a kick in the pants off a cliff. And then I- Did I? Yes, you did. I don't remember kicking any pants. No, you told me, I remember like on the phone call you said, you have a week to decide basically, like don't give yourself too long to think about doing something. Like give yourself a week. And I was like a week, decide basically, like don't give yourself too long to think about doing something, like give yourself a week. And I was like a week, but that was actually perfect because I think I had hesitated for too long and I had just kind of sat on it. What was it that was making you hesitate? I think I just didn't believe that like a vocation could come out of something shameful for me.

You know, even with my own healing in the story and whatnot. Because I was in a place of really amazing long-term sobriety at that point when I talked to you. And I just received a lot of spiritual, emotional, mental healing from all of it. And I just didn't think God was didn't think God was like that good, which happens to me a lot. You know, I'm like, oh, he's good, but he's not that good. But yeah, he just, he's built like an entire mission out of it.

It's like the dearest thing to my heart next to my, my family and my community. So I love it. We are a bunch of choleric women. Like our entire leadership team is all choleric, bold, opinionated women. And I love it. So we have a great time. A bunch of chiefs. women. Like our entire leadership team is all choleric, bold, opinionated women. And I love it. So we have a great time. A bunch of chiefs.

Yes. Cause it started out as a, correct me if I'm wrong, maybe a video small group. Yeah. So how has it evolved? We started with Marco Polo and then that wasn't working. So we went to zoom meetings and Google meet or whatever video chat platform people wanted to use. And we developed a curriculum that's like 17 sessions long for women.

I had written an initial version in college because there was literally nothing online to use for my small group. So I wrote something like in the back of my Moral Theo class when I wasn't paying attention, I was just like writing a nine, 10 session curriculum that we used. And then two members of my team at the time,

my co-founder, Mary Jo, she like really spearheaded developing the curriculum into something so much more robust and strong and prayerful. And so we print that and we use that now, which is, yeah, amazing. That was kind of surreal when that came out. So were you shocked at the amount of people who are flooding into these groups or were you like, of course they have nothing else? Half and half. I think I'm shocked that like God wouldn't trust that to us, but I'm also, I'm not shocked because it's been so in the woodworks for so long for women that I'm not surprised at

all. But yeah, no, you're good. Seventeen week course. That's really long. So, well, 17're good. 17 week course. That's really long. Well, 17 session. So it usually takes about 10 months because they meet twice a month. Wow. Do you find that people stick around or are you finding a lot of people get enthusiastic and drop off?

We have a lot of women drop off. We also have a lot of like, typically what happens is they get involved and then, and we've had some leaders drop off as well, or like not lead with a lot of like typically what happens is they get involved and then and we've had some leaders Drop off as well or like not lead with a lot of strength I myself have failed several of my small groups in leadership like it it happens but um We have a lot of women who inquire about joining a group and try to get signed up and then they just don't follow through And then six months later, they'll come back or a year later. They'll come back and they'll say

Okay, like now i ready, now I'm ready. And so sometimes it just, it takes time and we just have to be gentle with them. But those are usually the women that I pray for the most as the ones who have inquired but haven't followed through quite yet. Cause they need, they need a kick in the pants. Yes.

Well, I know that we're going to have many lovely women who are going to want to get some help. How do they take the first step? And you know, I often say that the anonymity that gave us internet porn addiction can also be used against pornography because a man or a woman might not want to stand up and say, I need help. But they can find a website and they can kind of like lurk around until they're ready to make some kind of commitment.

But yet even for many people putting in their email address or connecting face to face with somebody even online is daunting. So how do you, I don't know, bridge that gap as it were? Yeah, I mean, women can go to our website first. It's magdalaministries.org and everything is on there. Our blog content, our podcasts, and the inquiry form to join a small group. So some women do already say in their inquiry form,

they're like, I'm not ready. They don't put their full names. They don't give their phone number. It's optional. We do have to have an email. That's necessary, but they can say like, I'm not ready to show my face yet. And we started requiring in our participant agreement form,

you either have to have your microphone on and your camera off, or vice versa, if you want camera on and your voice off if you're not ready to talk. Why was that important? Some women would just join a group and then be part of the small group chat and then not show up to meetings. And we found that was kind of harmful to the progress of other participants because you would have women who were being vulnerable and showing up to meetings and you had women who weren't.

So they were like behind and it just created an unhealthy emotional dynamic for both the women who weren't participating and the women who were actively. So we just require that you show up in some way, shape or form. You can not let us know your last name, you can turn your camera off,

but we just need to hear your voice and know that you're there. But we also have like pretty strict confidentiality agreements and we have a zero tolerance policy on breaking confidentiality, which I think helps people feel confident that we're going to protect them in that way. How's the conversation in the church shifted? I mean, you're part of changing this conversation right now, but just over the last couple of years or maybe even prior to you starting Magdala when you were getting help and offering help privately,

have you noticed a shift? I guess culturally, but also within the church as it pertains to helping women? Yeah, I have a lot of hope about this actually. It's been really cool to see. Because when I was growing up, there was nothing and everything was men. Yeah. What was that like? Who did you go to? Like, where did you go to get advice? Uh, I didn't. That's part of why Magdala exists. I didn't have anyone. I told my best friend when I was a senior and she really just extended love to me, but she wasn't in a place where we could be accountability partners or anything, because she just didn't have much personal knowledge of

what was going on and couldn't relate. But yeah, I didn't really talk to anyone, which is part of the problem. So I think I would have recovered faster if I had had someone to talk to. But all talks, all content, everything was geared towards men. And I think for women too, even like websites where all of the photos are of men, that's really hard. Like if somebody's like, well, you can go to such and such ministry or such and such site and it'll work for you too.

If I logged on while actively addicted and saw all men, I was like, no, this isn't for me. They don't understand like my heart. They don't understand like the added shame that comes into play when you're a woman. So, but the shift, yeah, even since the beginning Magdala has been significant, but I think who's driving it is, yes, women speaking up, of which I am just one of many, but also seminarians, these young priests, like there's something about it that I'm so encouraged by the seminarians who reach out to us

because they are ready. I have meetings or some of them are patrons or they just email me and they're like, I want to be a priest who addresses this from the pulpit for, is it pulpit in your Catholic? Oh, sweet, I was like. For men and for women and I want to be a priest who can minister. To the heart of women's suffering.

In a healthy way, in a way that's not threatening. So it's been encouraging to see that. I think our priests and our seminarians are leading the charge, especially the young ones. I just love them. I'm kind of obsessed with priests and seminarians. I just think they're beautiful. So they're ready from what

I've been able to tell. And I think that's what will actually change this. It's like, yes, parents forming their children, but like our priests, because, yeah, they're the ministers of the sacraments. So it's where the real healing is. I've noticed and have been noticing for a while now, this shift in, you might call it just culture, about men speaking up against porn from a non-religious perspective. When you live in see like Jordan Peterson occasionally saying something that's quite helpful about why men shouldn't be watching porn.

And I'm sure there's a ton of other people who are, I don't know of any mainstream male podcaster that's fully promoting it, which is kind of really different to what it would have been like back in the 80s and 90s, I think. Yeah. And a lot of them are very critical of it. So in secular culture, are there women speaking out about it or are you only seeing that in the church?

Um, I'm only seeing it in the church. Maybe I'm not plugging into the secular world enough. I know Fight the New Drug has always been pretty, um, cognizant of both men and women, so I've always appreciated that from them, but I haven't plugged into the sexual women. That'd be interesting to see. I bet that's the new wave. You're gonna have prominent female podcasters

and personalities talking about this. I would love that. Like, did you see this Blac Chyna girl? Is that her name? Yeah, yeah, she was on Tucker. Oh, I didn't watch that. But I mean, she was obviously on OnlyFans and things like this and praise God. She's's yeah, sounds like she's really wanted. I think she's a beautiful role model. Obviously, in the past, she was a terrible role model. Yeah.

Because of her own pain and her own stupidity. But the fact that she's trying to undo that and she's on a platform, I think is going to give so many women just the courage to like not go in for like butt jobs, facelifts, boob jobs, all that stuff. But I bet you're going to start seeing women that'll be the next thing who are like, I was addicted to pornography and here's how it ruined me. I hope so. Exciting. I really hope so. I was excited to see that interview because when I'm always like, I haven't not seen it.

Oh, I was just excited about leaving only fans because when we're helping women leave only fans, they are really scared of not ever being able to make a career somewhere else, especially the ones who have revealed their identity on their only fans. I was talking with a girl who's 20 recently who had just revealed like her identity on her only fans and she pulled in like 20,000 a month. And she was, yeah, extremely worried about, like, how am I gonna make an income? And she just, she told me, and this broke my heart. She said, like, I can't see myself doing anything else.

I don't know how I'm worthy of doing anything else. And I was like, oh, and you're 20, you're 20. And if she has the courage to look inside of herself and acknowledge that, imagine how many thousands don't have that courage and they're just doubling down because they don't see an off ramp. That's shocking to me. It shouldn't be, but I'm an old man now.

So it's shocking to me that so many young women are on OnlyFans and not just like women who are perhaps living kind of depraved lifestyles apart from it. But to talk to that, like it's surprising to me that you've got women reaching out to you who are on OnlyFans. And not just consumers of pornography, but people who are. Yeah, for some women, an addiction escalates

into production, like their personal addiction escalates into porn production. Or they get involved in porn production or OnlyFans. And then they, yeah. And then they have an addiction themselves. They can be kind of like co-aggravating in really interesting ways. It's something that we weren't anticipating getting into because none of the leadership team have any sort of testimony

with producing pornography. So, but it quickly became like apparent that we would need to kind of open our doors to that side of things as well. But yeah, this girl went to a Newman Guide Catholic University and was producing things from her dorm. So I just, I've been shocked by the depravity, like just in spaces that you would never expect, the brokenness and just,

I've been stunned by like how beautiful women are, even the ones who are really experiencing a lot of brokenness and depravity. But I've also been shocked of like, wow, like Satan has a deep, deep, deep foothold in places that I, yeah, I never would have seen him or anticipated him. But yeah, I mean, producing porn from a Newman guide, Catholic, like a very good Newman guide, Catholic school from a dorm. Yeah. Like a very good Newman Guide Catholic school from a dorm. Yeah. But I suppose women aren't reaching out to you to get free of OnlyFans necessarily. I mean, it's probably both, right?

Because I presume all people who are reaching out to you are people who want to be free from pornography themselves. Typically, yeah. If I get connected to somebody who's trying to leave porn production, a few women have reached out to us personally because they don't want to be doing it anymore. And usually they're hesitant. They're like, I don't know if you help with this, but like this is all I can find. But I've actually been, and I'm usually the one who speaks to these women just because,

I don't know, I just felt a deep call to like begin those conversations from within our organization. But typically it's family members that will reach out on their behalf and they ask they're like would you be willing to intervene and So I reach out to the woman I ask if we could have a conversation and then I just kind of go from there So usually that first conversation is just listening and just hearing like who are you? You know, what do you like to do? What are your hobbies and then what do you like about this job? What are you finding fulfilling in it? What do you hate?

And what do they say? A lot of them like to be seen. They feel seen. God. Yeah. This is all of us, isn't it? I mean, this is like the desire to be famous. This is makeup.

This is like wanting my face on a billboard. This is wanting YouTube clicks. Like we are just so desperate to be seen and wanted. Oh, yeah. Accept it, you know? Yeah. It runs so deep. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think working in any sort of like sexual brokenness sphere, you really understand like, oh, but for the grace of God, there go I. Right. Like I'm sitting in front of myself. There's not two different categories, right? The broken and those of us who aren't. Oh gosh, no. Especially in conversations with these women, I'm just so moved to like, wow, God is really, really merciful and somehow plucked me out when he did.

And the same thing is coming for this woman. I just don't know when it is. And what do you say to the woman who's shown her face on OnlyFans, who's revealed her identity? Like what kind of consolation do you give her? Because she has made a tragic decision that is and could affect her life terribly. And you can't pretend that she hasn't made that decision. So what do you say? I'm not good at this yet. I wish I was. I'm kind of learning as I go. And I'm trying to get myself and then all of our team kind of like trauma certified to make sure that we're navigating these conversations really well. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I say anything consoling. I just try to be a friend and a sister. But isn't it true? Like, I think that's right. Like when I'm hurting and I share, I finally have the courage to open up and share with a friend. I really don't

need advice. I just, I just need him to look at me and not hate me. Yeah. Not leave. Yeah. Or just to tell me he'll be with me, walk with me, something like that. So sometimes like advice is overrated anyway. They just need to be seen. Yeah. And accepted. Yeah. Cause that's exactly what they're not getting. They think they're getting that, but they're not getting it. And that's for every woman in our community. I've just found over and over, I put this pressure on myself to be at the helm, be the leader, be the face of just all of this pressure.

And then when I actually sit in front of the Lord and ask what he wants, he's just like, no, just be a friend. Just be a sister, just walk with them, be a mother. Yes. These women need family. They don't need, they don't need a leader or a G for even a seven point plan right now. It's helpful as they might be. They just need to be loved. And, um, I'm not good at that yet, but I'm trying. We're all trying. Yeah. Lord make up where we lack. So you said you had like a 17 part kind of course thing.

So why not just have repent and pray and be done with it? Speak to that. Because it doesn't work. I don't know. I, we have some women who I've spoken with in our community who have had like really profound one time spiritual experiences and then they're free. Yeah. And that's great. But it's not in any way, shape. It's the absolute minority. Yeah.

And I think, um, I think people need accompaniment in every area of their life. Like I think we all need to be accompanied and I think sexual addiction is no different. I think accompaniment is what causes conversion. I think it's what actually, you know, brings about healing or real friendship, real mentorship. So our curriculum is just a way to guide our leaders towards accompanying women through sexual sin and addiction. And I just, I think there is repent and pray included in that because of, yeah, this is a sin, but it just, yeah, it doesn't work for the longterm and we need to help them build actual sustainable habits and intimacy with Christ.

And so often those one-time spiritual experiences that we think free us don't, and then we feel like it was nothing and we don't know how to interpret it and that was part of my story. So it's, but it doesn't change the power of that one experience just, but if somebody's walking along with us and going,

oh, nope, I did that too. Or that happened to you, it's okay. It just, it makes it so much more real and so much more sustainable in the longterm. Yeah, I think it was Bob Shoots who talked about, you got the roots, the trunk and the fruit and all need to be mature. And often we're just looking at the ugly fruit that showed up and we run to confession to quickly lop it off.

So we look good again, feel good again. We're not actually dealing with the immaturity of the root, which comes from not being kind of grounded. Yeah. How is that true in your life and those that you work with? Um, because I think this is why, because when we just said something that's going to shock some people, we say like, prayer and repentance isn't enough. It is enough, but you just have to understand what repentance and prayer mean.

I think too often people who are engaged in a cycle of shameful behaviours think that, well, prayer works like a, basically like a vending machine where I give you a rosary every day and then you give me this back in return. And sometimes it can even be a substitute for real intimacy with the Lord. And so repentance may only remain on that fruit level, you know, so it's not that we're not saying prayer and repentance aren't enough. It's just that it's got to it's got to be real repentance and real prayer and like real prayer is going to involve me encountering a God who's not ashamed of me, isn't scandalized by me, who sees my entire history.

I think often when people fault the pornography, they're fixated on this like 12 minute thing that happened and they look at it in isolation to their entire life and how like they saw porn when they were five and then someone handed it to them. And they're, you know, like they are the perpetrator, but they're also the victim. And I think obviously our Lord sees that kind of holistic picture when we're just so fixated on the way we've screwed up.

Yeah. I have like 17 thoughts. Let's go. Number one. Yeah. This is three cups of coffee deep. Early flight. Really early mention a really early flight. Really early flight in three cups of coffee. You hit that kind of tired that coffee can't cure. You just get jittery. Your brain's like, no, this isn't affecting your brain, just your body.

I was looking at Tommy during the flight, like just, it's just bug eyed. And I was like, I'm not going to be able to do this. I'm not going to be able to do this. What was your question? Rephrase your question. Yeah. So fruit maturity, purity, and how like prayer and repentance is enough. I'm not going to be able to do this. What was your question? Rephrase your question. Yeah, so fruit maturity, purity, and how like prayer and repentance is enough, but like prayer means something more than I give you this, you give me that. It's about intimacy with the Lord who sees us who, yeah, the whole life, right?

The whole life that we don't take into account, we're often just so hateful of ourselves. Yeah. It's so funny. I know in my own life, when I've experienced those tender words of our Lord to the depths of my heart, I'm quickly, I quickly write it off. Like, oh, that's just me saying that to myself, because that's what I want to hear. Yeah, it's easy to do. Until my friend and mentor, Dr. Bob Shoots, is like, I don't think this is what you want

to hear, because I know how you talk to yourself and it's not like that actually. Oh wow. Have you ever talked to J. Stringer? Do you know J. Stringer? Yeah, unwanted, which I think anyone dealing with sexual brokenness, AKA all of us, should read unwanted.

But he talks about, bless you, by the way, that was a good sneeze. Thanks. Yeah, no problem. Delay, you were saying something important. Appreciate it. He talks about becoming addicted to a solution for our addiction.

And I think if I've seen anything like most blatantly in doing ministry in this space, it is like women come, and I understand because I have been there, they come desperate. They're like, this is it. You're going to be the thing that fixes me. And it's like, well, no, like we can't, we can't do that. Everybody wants a silver bullet, you know? And I think prayer can be treated like a silver bullet because we know that yes, like one day God will wipe every tear from our eyes. But is that today? I don't know. I can't promise you that. I just know that eventually He will entirely.

And I think I said this in one of our conversations, but just that one of my favorite quotes, one of my favorite books is Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. And one of my favorite quotes is at the end where he just really kind of hits home the entire theme of the book and says, like, how can we speak to God face to face till we have faces? And is just trying to illustrate this point of the mask has to fall off. You have to be vulnerable. You have to wear literally your own self hatred, your self disgust and everything about you. That just makes you feel so unworthy and so unseen. You have to wear that in front of them in front of him. And only then can he turn that around and say,

no, actually you're loved, you're beautiful. And I've redeemed you, you're mine. But sometimes hearing that is a years long process. I have women in our community who have been, I won struggling for over 50 years, 50 years with a hidden addiction. So yeah, it's a long process. You know, I have women, um, yeah, who just have lost hope, but hopefully when they come to us,

if we can't fix them, quote unquote, at least we can offer like a cup of water on their walk in the desert and be like, you're going to make it, man. We're all going to make it. We're with you. Like, you know, um, so I just think I have found women are so, and I think men too have found women are so, and I think men too, like we're so afraid of the real reason for our shit, shit. We're afraid of, I think we can attribute too much to our woundedness, we can get too locked in it,

we can get too locked in our trauma and never like never receive healing, but I think we can also really, really ignore it, you know, and we can't accept like the reality of what it actually did to us. And so a lot of women come to us thinking their problem is just sexual compulsion. Like it's my addiction to porn,

it's my addiction to masturbation, it's my addiction to fantasy, it's my account on OnlyFans, like this is my problem. And oftentimes it's like, no, you were abandoned by your father, can we like sit with you in that? You know, or you were abused by your boyfriend for two years, we like sit with you in that? You know? Or you were abused by your boyfriend for two years. Can we sit with you? And sometimes it's like much smaller things that add up. You know? It's like you were bullied by your peers

in middle school. Can we talk about that? Can we be with you? Can we refer you to therapists who may be able to like really really dive into that with you? So I don't know. I think... Ah, that's so good. Yeah. I love that. We often downplay what we've experienced because it's not as traumatic as really dive into that with you. So I don't know. I think so good. Yeah. I love that. We often downplay what we've experienced because it's not as traumatic as somebody else's or not seemingly as traumatic. Yeah.

But a lot of the trauma comes through our interpretation of the event, whether it's objectively less grave or not. Yeah. And I think one way I, I've been thinking about this lately is like, I'll think of myself as a child experiencing that. Cause it's like, as an adult, if someone said that to me, or someone bullied me, then like, I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Well, in many respects, but okay, but like, you were eight, but you were 12, like, have some compassion on that poor eight year old boy who had

no say in this. And this was imposed upon you. Like, that's not fair. Like, that's not right. Like, um, but I do think very often think very often we're unwilling to look at our own self because, well, I think for a couple of reasons, we don't want to be the victim, especially when we live in a culture that seems to celebrate victimhood. It's like the victim Olympics. And so it's like we're so turned off by that. And rightly so in many respects, that owning anything that happened to us and seeing what it caused, we're kind of reluctant to do that because our story is far less intense or severe or bad.

Do you feel like men especially, I feel like men especially do that. Yeah. I think, I think men perhaps suffer a lot from, from a feeling of like suppressing, yeah, emotional experience, or just trauma in general. I don't know. They're thinking they can handle it on their own. I feel like women do reach out. I don't know if I'm wrong about that. When you talk with women, do you see much resistance? I mean, I suppose they're in a place where they're asking for help.

Yeah. I mean, I see some, I think it all depends. Some women respond to their trauma by becoming like I am the conqueror, like I'm stronger than this. And some women do fall into complete and total victimhood. You know, they have two opposite reactions. We talk a lot about just like women's, women's reactions in general to their sexual brokenness or their trauma is like they either become obsessive about sexuality or suppressive and both extremes are really unhealthy. I know I fell to the suppressive side where I was like, this is something dangerous,

this is scary. I went through a two year period of like, I can only join religious life because a marriage cannot be healthy. It cannot be good. I cannot experience that with a person in a holy way. It's impossible for me. So I know I fell to that camp and then,

but there's like an obsessive camp of like, I'm gonna be promiscuous. I'm going to control the men in my life sexually. I'm going to manipulate. I can get anyone I want. And yeah, there's just, there's a lot of different reactions, but those are the two biggest ones that we find. And we do try to bring them into like expression, which is what we call the middle of like a healthy expression according to your state in life of like not denying your sexuality, but not identifying entirely with it. You know, because I mean, you know, this is like, it's not about the porn. No, it's not about the alcohol. It's, it's not about the eating disorder in

many cases. Like, yeah, I was sitting somewhere once they were recently and someone was sort of sharing their story with alcohol and opioids. And I think this man's been sober for years now. And there's just like a depth and a gentleness to him that I'm pretty sure he would agree wouldn't be there unless he went through this journey. And I often, when I meet people after talks

and the husband will come up or the wife will come up and they'll say like, I've been in recovery for this many years I'm doing the 12 steps. Like there's like a depth that I'm sure has been scraped out of them and carved in the way that felt like it was killing them. But what you're left with is this like gentler, more person, more willing to surrender, you know, live in that state of surrender. They become much more interesting people.

I agree. I agree. I think I was just talking with a friend in Tampa. I'm friends with his wife and then they had us over for dinner and he's starting to accompany men on a college campus through addiction and kind of mentor them and cause he's recovered himself. And yeah, he was just sharing his story. He just started beautifully and eloquently sharing his story. And I was just sitting there like, wow, just stunned. But it was the same thing, just struck by just the depth and also just his apparent intimacy with Christ. It was so amazing and just so inspiring to listen to of like, wow, am I listening to the Lord like that? And how do I get to a place where I can?

Like, he was just so in tune with the Holy Spirit, I think because he had to listen to the voice of God, of like, is this gonna dictate how I feel about myself or is the voice of God going to dictate that? And he had to become very, very in tune with it. It was beautiful, so. How do you and those you work with in the leadership aspect of your ministry,

how do you work at taking yourself off the pedestal work with in the leadership aspect of your ministry, how do you work at taking yourself off the pedestal you undoubtedly keep putting yourself on? You know, like anyone, like myself, anybody who's got any kind of platform that's trying to help, undoubtedly puts themselves up and then has like imposter syndrome and feels like, if there's any kind of slip or setback,

then they've destroyed everything because they were pretty sure they were venerable material. You know, like, how do you deal with that? I feel like the Lord always sends like really well-timed moments for that. I'm a really prideful, selfish person. So I think he always like, he always knows when I've taken it a step too far and he's like, here, here's a moment of humility. I think this is maybe this is a simplistic explanation, but something about like being on a team,

like functioning as a team, I think helps keep that in check. I'm like, I know that while I've had the opportunity to promote our organization more, I know who the backbone is. It's Mary Jo, it's Shelby, it's Annie. Like it's the three women who are doing the background work a lot of the time, especially Mary Jo

She was my co-founder like just killing it So I'd when I get to sit with them, we actually just all got to meet in person for the first time a few weekends ago I had met a couple of them in person But one of them I had never I'd literally never seen her in person and I'd worked with her for two years But the four of us got to go on retreat together and I was just so Humble it's sitting in their presence because again, they said, yeah, they're all bold, intelligent, cleric, deep women.

And I just, I think that keeps me humble, just being around them and being like, why am I the director? I don't know. I guess the Lord said so. And so that's where we are today. I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. Maybe the board will fire me. That's fine. So, you know, yeah, well, hopefully not. Well, if they were a pints with a coin is bingo card,

which Thursday's working on, um, there's gotta be it. We gotta, I keep bringing up things like over the course of seven interviews. It's hard to come up with? Yeah, Brett Cooper, for example. Oh, I gotta add that. I've only like tuned into like two episodes recently. And this is all you hear? But both I've heard Brett Cooper. Well, one thing I like to talk about is like, this will come full circle, Friedrich Nietzsche's like idea of resentment, which is the French word for resentment.

And it's used to mean when you despise a seemingly unattainable good, precisely because you believe yourself impotent to attain it. And my gosh, I mean, he actually applied this to Christ and Christians and so I wouldn't go with it. Yeah. Oh, no. But it's just so I look at that like men are men are like this. I'm like this. It's like, I shy away from anything I think I'll fail at. Yeah. And in certain instances, I'll like demonize the good I feel myself impotent to attain.

I hope I don't do that as much as I used to. But I think you sometimes like, you'll see this maybe online, you know, someone pick, post a photo of themselves working out. Like, okay, maybe that does come from an insecure place where they need you to tell them how great they are, but maybe it doesn't, but maybe what's interesting isn't so much the person posting the picture, but the reaction of people who say things like, I just think it's more important to be like concerned with your

family and not to be obsessed with like that kind of thing, that kind of language. Like sometimes hidden in that is just like resentment, right? And I think like this is true if we're immersed in any particular sin. The woman who's committed or has paid somebody to kill their child in the act of abortion can either admit they've done something wrong or not. Not admitting you're wrong and then aligning yourself with a group of people who celebrate this bold feminist act that you've now committed say. That's a much more appealing group to join. And then when you're in that group, you're probably demonizing the people who have repented and who then do stand up at rallies and say, I regret my abortion.

Okay. So all of this is just to say like, we are all so desperate for an off ramp or if not an off ramp, like someone to throw a rope ladder out of a helicopter to pull us out of the swamp we're pretending to enjoy being in. Yeah. I think saying off of social media is like, probably. I remember you saying you got off that. That was good for you. I have not been on social media in like four or five years, but in Magdala as a whole is not. But I think- That's really impressive. That's impressive. You know, like Dave Ramsey back in the day, like refused to, you couldn't buy his course

with a credit card because he was like against credit cards. I was like, and so good for you for doing that. So Magdala ministries is not on social media. Even though you know, you could reach more people if you were, but could we like, this is, this is something I'm interested in is like, I in is like I don't think women need just content and I think I have like really, really like strong opinions on social media. Break it down. That's a point of long form. Yeah.

I want to hear all of them. Well, okay. I don't think women need content. We produce content because I think it can be a gateway. But I think if we were on social media, women would just follow us on Instagram and they would say, I can just look at the quotes that Magdala posts every day and be fine.

And I would rather just pull out any buffer between us and them, between them joining our community for real. And I think a podcast is a good way to spread the movement and spread the conversation in the wider church. Like we have a lot of priests, seminarians, lay ministry leaders, parents who listen to the podcast just for their own education. But I, yeah, I just don't think women need content. And I think we settle for it. I just, women in social media, I think it's just like such a destructive thing. It's so destructive. and I just refuse to be part of that destruction.

Why is it destructive? I, well, uh-oh. I think influencer culture specifically is destructive. I think it produces communal narcissism. Communal, what does that mean? So communal narcissism is a form of narcissism that is specifically tied to, um, volunteering ministry or like the, I am necessary kind of complex. So communal narcissism is a form of narcissism that is specifically tied to volunteering, ministry, or the I am necessary kind of complex.

I just think, I think women are trusting people who have zero authority on the things they're speaking about. They trust them more than the mother church itself. Yeah, and the saints. And they find the saints boring because their living room isn't as pretty as this influencer's. You know, it's just like, do you know what I mean? Like, it just feels I do.

I feel like I know what you mean. I think I mean, I'm always trying to grasp at it. I think I've kind of come to the point like I deleted Twitter recently. Nice. Keep talking about it. So people think I'm a good person. Yeah, it's working. You know, people understand now. But but I also, um, but I, you know, I also understand like, okay, just because something is not for me, it, it, I'm not saying it's not for

someone else. Like I'm not saying it's wrong to be on Twitter. I'm just thrilled. I'm not on it. And I see more pitfalls than benefits. Yeah. I think what you do in eliminating social media, as opposed to being like super based, like that's just such a cool thing to do.

social media as opposed to being like super based like that's just such a cool thing to do. You probably like immediately form a relationship with the woman reaching out to you in a much more profound way than her scrolling through your Instagram feed. It's like, it's one thing to have like 10,000 people following you. It's another thing to say we're working with a thousand people from all these countries and those people are bought in and they there's a level of trust there and a personal relationship that just isn't present in social media. Yeah and I think they can turn to projecting too. Like I think if we were on social media and I do think this is part of like taking yourself off the pedestal is like a lot of people know what Magdala is without knowing my name and I love that without knowing any of the leadership team's names. Because I am dispensable.

It's like Cardinal Newman's, have you ever seen like the prayer like, like the still he knows what he is about prayer? I don't remember it but I recall it. I have a place in God's counsels and God's world that no one else has. That can be true but like part of the prayer is also, if God wants to remove me, he can remove me, basically.

And still he knows what he is about. I mean, just, I wanna pause a moment and say, what a beautiful act of God that you and your friends have started this apostolate. You're working with, you said a thousand women? Over a thousand, yeah. Over a thousand women, and you're able to do that without social media.

That's really cool. That's partly due to people like you, And you're able to do that without social media. That's really cool. That's partly due to people like you, though, willing to promote us. So I do have to admit that. And that's hard for me because I think the platforms that I specifically take issue with, I don't take issue with YouTube, but like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Yeah, TikTok I think is terrible. But, um, but I think, and maybe it's not even, Oh, you have Shaben's mysteries of Christianity. It's a great book. I can't find, I cannot find a copy. You can have it. You want it? Are you serious? Yeah, I'm not going to read it.

Let's be honest. I can't find a copy for it. Ignore a lot of my underlinings. No. Yeah. You know it's funny about that I was doing it this is one of the advantages people of living in Steubenville is like Scott Hans like hey you want to do a book study sure so we were meeting weekly to do this book study oh my gosh and who's the fellow who translated love and responsibility and John Paul the second theology the body folks don't use my professor right so he's in the small group so are you

kidding being like sex is good though, isn't it? Because the church doesn't demonize it, does it? I was saying things like that and everyone was blown away. No, but what was funny is like Volkstein, right? He's like, he's reading something that stuck out to him. And I'm like, well, I can't find that. He's like, oh, sorry, I'm reading in the German. Of course you are.

Yeah. Of course. Yeah, he's such a good professor. He's so beautiful. Such a good man. Wow. I, I couldn't find a copy for less than 175 bucks. So this is sure. Well, thank you. I'm honored. Yeah. All right. Where were we? We were talking about social media. You said it was hard for you to acknowledge that people have come to you through. Well, yeah, I mean, not hard. I'm grateful. But I think maybe more than social media itself, I take issue with Christian influencer culture. Yeah. Because it makes me icky. Yeah.

But I don't want to judge them either, because maybe it's necessary. Like, I don't know. Well, not necessary. It's obviously not necessary. I'm going to sound like a jerk this whole discussion. No, let's do it. Let's try it. I mean, what we're trying to do is we're trying to grasp at something that we all feel and maybe we're gonna fail to grasp it effectively

and then people can torture us in the comment section. That's okay, but. Yeah. Well, would you call yourself an influencer? That's like- I wouldn't, but only because I'm a different generation. Yeah. And I also think your platform, you host other people.

And I think that does change things. It's long form discussion based and people are coming for these guests. Yeah. You host other people and you have seen evangelical fruit of what you're doing. Right. Like conversion. Right. Sorry. I know. Yeah. No, you're right. Like, I don't know if it's like I don't understand the new generation. Like Thursday and my son understand the new generation. Like Thursday and my son are the same generation.

And I have the same- What generation is that? Gen Z? Yeah, I'm early Z and your oldest is late Z. What year were you born? 99. Okay. So I'm early Z and then his oldest is late Z.

Probably the last Z. I think your second is definitely Jen Alpha. I didn't even know there was a Jen Alpha. We just have a lot of discussions in my family about when does this begin? Because my husband's a millennial and he says I'm not. My point is just that I have the same communication difficulties with Thursday as I do with Liam. Because we think differently, we say things differently and I know they probably get each other way more than I get either of them. Why am I saying this?

Here's why. Because maybe people who are quote unquote influences on Instagram are like using a language that I don't understand and they've got the best of intentions and it is drawing people into something. But I'd say if I was a woman, which I'm not and can't be, but if I was and I was a new mum, I'll tell you where I would stay clear from. And that's really gorgeous young Catholic women showing you how clean their kitchen is constantly. Yep.

Oh my gosh, I'd kill myself. And telling you how to be a mother. Yes. It pisses me off. Oh my gosh. Yeah, because I think. But again, I don't like it's not that I don't want to come off as judgmental. Because, you know, but I don't want to come off as judgmental because yeah

But I don't want to be that like because maybe they are Serving some beautiful purpose where they're teaching people who were never shown how to be a beautiful Catholic wife Yeah, I think there's a potential for it to be kind of cataclysmic Oh for sure feels icky and I think some people do it really well I'm trying to think of an example of somebody who does it very very well No, I think, yeah, I take issue with, there's like a lot of influencers around my age and I have a daughter. How old are you?

I have one child. I'm 25. Am I allowed to ask that? I'm sorry. No, I'm 25. Yeah. I asked Roxy when she was on the show. She was like, you will never know.

Cool. Next question. Yeah. Maybe we can she was like, you will never know. I'm like, cool, next question. Yeah, maybe we can edit that out. I don't know unless people, I don't know if people are gonna like hate that I'm, whatever, I'm 25. That's their issue. So yeah, I have one baby and then I see a lot of influencers with one or two kids

like telling me how to parent. And it's like, you don't know how this ends yet. And what I find disturbing is like just the cycle of self-affirmation of like if they get, like there is no taking of criticism, which is kind of like a narcissistic tendency, right? It's like they cannot be criticized. Like I've had run-ins with influencers before, like personal run-ins. And perhaps I offered criticism uncharitably. That is a possibility that wouldn't have been my intention,

but oh, you're good. Every time he touches cameras, they zap him. Oh, I'm sorry. He's got like a weird superpower that we can't talk about. You're a spider man. But Greg Kibbs is gonna be very impressed by that. I'm sorry, my brain is like so all over the place. That's all right.

This is great. We're doing Greg. This is another thing I love about long form discussions is we just chat for fun, and then we take out the clips that are interesting and release them. So there's no pressure. Look at that. Like we talked long enough, something's going to be really great. It's already been great. Oh, thank you.

Yeah. No. Okay. So like you're saying like you encountered some quote on. So what is an influencer? What does that mean? I think, well, I think that's vague too. But you just used the phrase. So what is a woman? Yeah. What is an influencer? I think somebody who is influential on social media and trying to be and has some brand they're developing and growing. Yeah. And there's usually a line of makeup that's being promoted. Always. Well, and that's another

thing is I feel like there's a self-affirmation circle of like, if I'm criticized, then, and when I've had those run ins before, they treat criticism like you're criticizing God himself, which I think is really frightening. Like they over-spiritualize the criticism where it's like, yeah, I had one person literally like accuse me of being like the voice of the devil. And I was like, wow, OK, well, I had one person literally like accuse me of being like the voice of the devil. And I was like, wow, okay. I didn't know I didn't know I had that kind of power.

Yeah, I know. The next time I called like a friend of mine who I told about that interaction, she was like, Oh, I don't take calls from the voice of the devil. Sorry. But yeah, I just think there's like a self affirmation circle. Maybe that's a response to the to the sort of unfiltered criticism that people do receive on social media. Yeah, that's a good point.

Like people are like, hey, your hair looks stupid. Or like, why is your nose so big? People say things like that because they're awful. Because they just can't. But it's like all of our unfiltered thoughts, something you would never say to somebody after you heard them speak at a conference. You would never go up and say like, that was good,

but you seemed really anxious. No one would never say that. But like YouTube comment sections and Instagram comment sections, I'm sure, are filled with that kind of language, which I think just makes you. I don't know. It could. Yeah, it just could have been a bad moment. Like, yeah, that's a good point. I think. Yeah.

Where was my brain? I think there's a self-affirmation of like, I can affirm, like because the platform is based on self-affirmation. And so like, you know, here's all the things I'm doing right. And then when somebody criticizes you, you're like, oh, here's all the things I'm doing right. So you can pull yourself out of it. Yeah. Yeah. We often attribute the voice of reasonable criticism to Satan. Like not today's Satan. Yeah. No, you just have a flat tire. Yeah. Sometimes you accidentally got decaf. Like, yeah, it's your fault. Yeah. It's your fault. What's that saying? Like everything happens for a reason. And sometimes that reason is you're an idiot and make bad decisions. It's usually my problems. It's me. Yeah. I think there's,

there's a conflation of spirituality. I'm all about people promoting, like here's what it is to be a Catholic woman, because I think a lot of women and men are lacking mentorship. So I think there are women in the church who do that really beautifully. Like I have women that I look up to in the church

who have a public life. There's just so many pitfalls, maybe that's it. Yeah. There's just so many pitfalls. And the women I look up to tend to not promote their personal lives on social media. Like I love Abigail Fafale for instance. Love that woman. Love her.

Yeah. Big fan. She endorsed my book and I cried. I was like, ah! But- What did you do when I endorsed your book? I didn't cry. Gosh. That's okay. I'm sorry.

Yeah. You're the voice of Satan. Continue. Yeah. Yeah. How beautiful. I mean, what a lovely thing. Because you've got someone here, Abigail Fafale, who you respect. Yeah. And not only is she endorsing a book you wrote, but she's endorsing a book that is like you sharing your story.

Yeah. So it's like I followed her work for a while. So it was it was lovely. Yeah. Or I think I think your wife does a beautiful job of. Sharing very vulnerably and very personally without without like being irreverent towards the sacredness of your life, like your your family's life and like what should remain behind doors in your family. I don't know. It's just such a new zone to navigate.

Yeah, because it's like you want to say things that you mean. But then to somebody, it's like, well, that's being too. You shouldn't share that much. It's like, OK, so I shouldn't share all that I mean, but just some. And then it's like you're being fake. It's like, OK, well, I can't do that. Yeah. So it's just this hard. And it probably feels like the more personal anecdotes you give, the more people feel like they have a claim to you

and they feel like, you know, they know you. And it's like, that's not it's not always true. You know, it's like a false knowing. Yeah. I think it's a weird thing. I can't imagine like navigating what you navigate. I think it's amazing. But yeah. Do you have women who, um, like, you know, who've also made the choice to just shut down social media? Yeah, absolutely. It's just, it's just a lot of hot wind. I mean, one of the things people were saying when I quit Twitter was like,

but like at least just stay on there and promote the things that you're doing, which you're doing a lot of good. And deleting it was the best decision ever. And like, I realized it was doing nothing, nothing. I thought it was doing a lot. And I deleted it and nothing changed. That's kind of the heart of, I guess, my problem.

And I'm sorry if I sound, I probably sound really like uncharitable and I am still forming what I think about all this. But and also like my views of social media are not Magdala's views. Like if we found out it was more fruitful to have social media, I would probably hop on it. I just have not seen evidence of that. Yeah, I think it's changed evangelization potentially for the worst because I think we don't know how to have like uncomfortable in-person conversations. I think we don't

know how to like be content sometimes with the ordinary sphere around us of like, okay, I need to love my family and I need to love my friends and I need to evangelize within my community and that's enough for God and he can do something with that. And often far more effective. Yeah. And I think sometimes we get so attached to the idea of an online presence that we forsake those around us, even sometimes our own families.

Yeah, I don't know how effective social media, quote unquote, evangelization is. And again, I'm talking about the meta platforms. I'm not necessarily talking about YouTube, because I think YouTube has the potential to be very catechetical. So I don't know. I just I don't think it actually does what people think it does.

And it's kind of like I'm going to make it since you're afraid that you're coming off too strong. Let me say something way stronger. Sometimes wonder if like Instagram has a similar effect of pornography. Like somebody watches pornography and they begin by going like, OK, this is not real. And it's evil and all that. But it's not real. It's fantasy. Like, this isn how our lives look, you know, but like that lie actually goes way deeper than you thought it did. And so you cut off as much of that lie as you thought was there. And then you interact with your spouse and you see your

marriage and you find yourself disappointed. And then you realize it went, it's there. It's a way actually you didn't know you thought you knew it was just fantasy, just fantasy. But you realize it went, it's there. It's a way actually you didn't know. You thought you knew it was just fantasy, just fantasy. But you realize now that, okay, I've bought into this lie way more than I thought I did. Okay, so the Instagram is kind of like that for maybe women, I don't know, whereas like you see these women with their beautiful houses and their beautiful children and their beautiful everything.

And you say, okay, this isn't real life. Like I know this isn't real life. But I don't know if you do know it. I think you kind of think it is real life. Yeah, you feel pressure. And you say, okay, this isn't real life. Like I know this isn't real life, but I don't know if you do know it. I think you kind of think it is real life. And then you hate yourself because your life doesn't look like that. Which is why I actually do appreciate, I don't know how I went down this rabbit hole,

but I was like on Drew Barrymore's Instagram account the other day. I don't know how that happened. Well, it happened. It happened and there it is. But she was like posting photos of herself and it was like no makeup. And I think that's kind of beautiful. Yeah. Can you imagine the kind of criticism these folks must get? They have to look a certain way. And so I always feel

like, ah, that's beautiful. You kind of giving women the freedom to look like a human being. Yeah. I don't think that happens enough. And to look their age. Yeah, true. I think that's, I am always encouraged when I hear of people being like that. I think what tends to bother me too is acting, like you're an expert on every facet of life, right? I think, and yeah, again, maybe this is my problem with influencer culture now. I don't know shit about a lot of life, right?

Like we out here trying, especially things like marriage and motherhood, I've been married for two years. I've been a mother, right, technically since I got pregnant with my daughter, but I don't know how to be a mother. I don't know how to be married. I'm being taught and I think there's times to share like the young wisdom that we're being taught.

You know, I think there's a time for that. But these women who are out here on these platforms, number one, sharing very, very personal things on a daily, weekly, whatever basis that perhaps their husband said to them or something they received in prayer. It's like, again, there's a time for that. But if that's constant,

if that's what garners your follows, like that's really- You're just kind of bleeding on camera and that did well. So you just keep. Keep going. Yeah. And I, I think a lot of women will act like, I don't know if men do this on social media. I'm more fascinated by like the women on social media question, but specifically like Instagram, TikTok, like there's, there's just this, this push of like, accept my opinion, opinion on everything. And then, I think that's the thing that's really important. Like, I think that's the thing that's really important. Like, I think that's the thing that's really important. specifically like Instagram, TikTok, like there's just this push of like,

accept my opinion on everything. And then from healthy eating to fitness to motherhood to prayer, and it just, it becomes like all encompassing. And so you literally ask people to follow you, like follow me, like come imitate my life and look at me, which is like the only life we're supposed to be imitating is Christ. So the only life we're supposed to follow is Christ. So I think it is like, it is kind of insidious when you look at it that way. I don't, and I say nothing about the intentions of these women. I'm sure they're extremely well-intentioned and probably way more powerful and holy than me. So I probably should shut up.

No, but no, what you're saying is obvious to anybody who's a thinking human being, I'm sure. I would hope so. I mean, who's out there going like, bull crap, there are no pitfalls to social media. Social media is the best. Yeah. There is no, there is no temptation to narcissism when you're posting filtered photos of yourself. But I think a lot of people think they're like more exempt of that temptation. Like more people think they're exempt of that temptation than like,

it's actually real. Am I saying that correctly? Who's exempt, the people following or the people asking to be followed? People asking to be followed. I think a lot of people would say like, oh, I deal with the temptation just fine. And it's like, that's not, that's right. I remember I asked Christopher West when I was starting to speak a lot more and had books coming out and I was like, how do you deal with like, and he, and he said something like, oh no, like just accept that it has screwed you up.

There's no way it can't. And now deal with that as opposed to no, I think I'm doing great. Yeah. I remember asking you something similar in one of our first conversations. I was starting Magdala and I said, I was like, how do you, how do you not get prideful? And you're like, oh, you do like do it prideful. Like don't think that your pride will inhibit God's work in you. You know, like, yeah, like do it prideful. Like, don't think that your pride will inhibit God's work in you. You know, like, yeah, like, do it prideful is what you say. Yeah, do it prideful and let God correct your pride. Yeah, I'm always a big fan of that.

If something's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. Yeah. And then let the Lord figure it out for you. Yeah. What is a piece of advice that you have found helpful to women struggling with pornography that is maybe not something people would expect. Quit Instagram, but then what? I think tracking your cycles huge. Kelsey Scoke is really good at talking about this. And I'm I forget to talk about it a lot, but understanding your cycle.

That's really cool. That's something like, I've never done, never had to do, don't have one. It's a lovely life. But yeah, oftentimes your sexual temptations are tied to your hormones and around ovulation it will be a lot more difficult. So we recommend women track their cycle. And again, Kelsey Skokin in her book on compromising purity. I see. She has a lot of great information on that. I, I. Is that with Jason Everett?

That's yeah, he published it. Okay. She was with Everett Fritz. On compromising beauty. Do you want to throw in that? Yeah. The script, she whip she. Yeah, super good.

Kelsey's on our board. She's amazing. Awesome. Yeah. That's really cool. Okay. Yeah. That's like a practical thing. Something I really

love to focus on is the restoration of women's imagination because I think I feel like I've talked to you about this before maybe, but there is a study that was conducted by two female psychologists on women's reaction to pornography and men's reaction to pornography and what they attributed their arousal to. And men attributed... I think this was like 2012, so it is a little bit dated, but I still think the information stands. The men attributed their arousal to the attractiveness

of the figures in the video, right, the actors. And then the women attributed their arousal to their ability to imagine themselves as someone in the video, whether male or female, or female or whatever. So there is this intermediary of the imagination that women bring into sexual addiction that I think is. Yeah, I think it kind of puts you in a double bind. It's like even when you are done with pornography or masturbation,

women struggle heavily with fantasy and men do too. But I think most women struggle with sexual fantasy when they're trying to recover, and that can just trigger them over and over. It's just intense. So how do they do that? How do they rehabilitate their imagination? Well, yeah, I think this is like,

the helpful advice piece is just consuming beauty, consuming good things. I found so much healing when I just started to read good literature. Like things that caused me to see the good in my imagination and to create mental pictures that were true, good and beautiful. Like C.S. Lewis is huge for me because of his ability

to facilitate beauty in the imagination. Like till we have faces or the great divorce or Chesterton. Like, I mean, he has a ton of stuff as well. Or Jane Austen was huge. Just like just this beautiful works that just help your imagination come back to life in a way that's healthy. just help your imagination come back to life in a way that's healthy. And then you find yourself slowly letting go of the fantasy life and heading into like a very,

you know, beautifully creative world that God intended for you. So it's like John senior, you know, like his, just this whole thing of like, just wonder and just creating wonder. Pornography just crushes wonder, just absolutely crushes it. So anything you can do to recreate that. My husband loves to stargaze. He loves stargazing. It's so beautiful. And oftentimes he's like, do you want to go look

at the stars? And you know, I'm kind of over the stars. Okay. Yeah. But he never is. He never is. And I just love that about him. I've loved that for a long time. Like I think. pornography crushes wonder. Yeah, he's so good at like standing and just looking at whatever's in front of him and just wondering. And I'm still healing my wonder. I really am. So I think that's maybe like total roundabout way of just saying like anything that creates wonder. So to that point, you know, hey, sometimes you meet a random person on the street and you're not terribly interested in them, even though you probably should be, but whatever, they're just a body in your way to the ATM or something.

But like when you get to know somebody, then it's fabulous. I said to my bride the other day, I don't know if this is oversharing, but I said, like, I just love your heart. Like my wife has this, like, I don't think she'd mind me saying, like, she has this kind of like, everything's fine. I've got this, we've got this like kind of, I'm going to kick ass and take names kind of mentality. I think a lot of this, she would admit like comes from maybe this, some woundedness

that she's working through. But like when my wife like shares her lovely little heart with me and then she gets awkward about it because she feels naked. I'm like, oh my gosh, I love this Kevin Fred so much. You know, I love it. Don't hide it. I want more of it. Yeah. Like if the house is on fire, bring back the kick ass and take names.

But right now, what's the point? The point is that like pornography flattens the human being to the warm body in front of the ATM. Right. It's just like, it's no one, it's just an object. And, uh, you can't be that interested in an object. Um, but like the soul is eternal. And so that's why I like the way to continue to fall in love with your husband or your wife is to get to know them beyond their defenses, um, who they actually are, the wonder and the mystery that they are. Yeah.

Yeah. Pornography crushes that. I think my husband is so cool. I love talking to my husband. I'm just getting to know him. And I was saying this to him the other day of just like how little I know, you know, like you look at them, you're like, man, I, there's so much more to learn. Like, and in that cool, um, that they're just like a lifetime to learn about this guy.

I just, I think he's so fascinating. I really, I really enjoy talking to my husband to your point. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. Pneumography crushes wonder. That'd be a good t-shirt if you're looking to sell something. Oh yeah.

Very positive. Copyrighted Magdalen Ministries, not Pentecostal Aquinas. Very positive. That's right, but too late. I'm already putting on Teespring. So let's talk about your book, Love in Recovery. This just came out, it's about to come out. One woman's story of breaking free from shame

and healing from pornography addiction. Before we get into the content of it, a more kind of peripheral, maybe less interesting question is, what was it like writing a book, just in general? I always wanted to be a writer as a kid. Yeah, so that part was cool. We were talking before camera started rolling about like the overall experience,

but I always wanted to write a book. I thought I wanted to be a novelist, like, which I don't know. A lot of little kids want to be novelists. Did you want to be a novelist? No. No? I do now. Oh, this is a dream alone.

Now that I'm old, I do. Oops. Well, I wanted to be a novelist at one point. Um, but, and I took, I even took like creative writing classes when I was homeschooled, um, and like wrote novels in these classes. They taught me how to write, which was really cool. Um, but yeah, it was amazing. It really was like seeing, um, How did you get, like, how did you first decide I need to share my story in a book form? How did that happen?

So, uh, Christie McDonald from Ave Maria Press saw our first episode and she reached out to you and then reached out to me and she was like, I, she invited me to write my story down in book form. She was like, I think this matters and I want to help you bring it to life in a book. Bless her. Um, yes, she's been incredible. Um, and just was so lovely to work with and, and it was just like amazingly critical. to life in a book. Bless her. Yes, she's been incredible. And just was so lovely to work with. And was just like amazingly critical

at like the right points where she's like, nope. But then she was also very critical of my own self criticism, which was lovely. I was just like, no, like say that, do it. Like the moments in the book where I was, I'm like, ah, that's like too much of my own opinion or that's just too much. She's like, no, it's not too much, do it.

Which hearing as a woman, like you're not too much is just such a beautiful thing. You're like, yeah, I'm not too much. So yeah, I liked the process of writing it. Sometimes it felt much drier than I expected. Like I thought it was gonna be just this one huge experience of consolation and it wasn't. It wasn't, but it was really beautiful

to see the fruit of diligence. You know, I have yet to actually hold a physical copy in my hands. So it's better than your first child. Really? Yeah. When it comes, you'll know what I mean. So fantastic. Yeah. I was also pregnant like the entire time I was working on this, but not the entire time. So when I was writing, I felt really, I was very sick during my pregnancy and really exhausted. And yeah, so maybe that was part of the lack of consolation, but it was, it was beautiful.

Do you have people that you trust would be very honest with you? Have they read it and have they said nice things? Yes. That's nice. Yeah. Yeah. No, I actually think having good reviewers like Abigail Favoli or you, like I don't know if you actually read it. I did. You did? Yeah. Yeah. No, I actually think having good reviewers like Abigail Favoli, are you like, I don't know if you actually read it. I did. You did? Yeah. Oh, cool.

Thank you. Yeah. I think I hope you would have told me if it sucked. Yeah. No, it's been a while since I read it. Yeah. I think, um, I hope reviewers would have been honest if they didn't feel like they could put their name on it, you know? Um, but yeah, but family, the sort of, oh no, family have been, they could put their name on it, you know? But yeah, but family. Sorry, what? Oh no, family have been, Tommy's been like really supportive and he would tell me if it was not good.

The three best pieces of advice I got, not that I've written many books, but like the things I try to stick to, it was Sarah Swafford, I don't know if you know her, but she said to me, write drunk at it sober. Oh, yeah. I did that in grad school. Like you can't varnish a boat while you're building it. Like you got to just get it out there and then work on it afterwards. That was good.

Then also, like choosing a time every day to do a little bit. And it was Brandon Vought who said to me, like, just write 500 words a day. Like, don't let it be a sprint. Like, write it over the course of like five months or three months or however long it takes and just write 500 to a thousand words a day and no more. That's what I, yeah, I did that. I did. I hit a certain point where I said I was like, I need to hit a thousand words a day. I could not write drunk and edit sober because I was pregnant.

And just so everyone's clear, I don't mean drunk. I don't mean get hammered. You wake up in the morning. This doesn't even make sense at all. Just to the point of polarity. No, yeah. The process was good. And I do think it. My manuscript came back bleeding red. That's good. For what?

No, what I meant was my editor actually just like carved it up. So then I booked the porn myth that I sent to them. When I say bleeding red, I mean, all of the changes that they had made. That's what I mean. The red kind of underlines its cross. No, I got what you meant. Yeah, mine was too. I didn't know if you thought I was trying to be poetic.

It was bleeding. My heart was, no. No. No, I got you. But it was so good. It was so good. Like, oh, thank God. I was like, I...

I would have been concerned. I'm sure some people are like, the more confident you become as a writer. And there's something to be said about that. You're like, no, no, no, my opinion's better. Even if it's not better, we're going with it. This is what I wanted to writer. And there's something to be said about that. Like, no, no, no, my opinion's better. Even if it's not better, we're going with it. This is what I wanted to say. And there was times, but a lot of it,

I was like, no, please edit the crap out of it, literally. Yeah, I think that was helpful, having an editor that I trusted. But also, even from our first meeting, I knew that she saw what this needed to be. Like we were totally in sync on it. It just, it never felt out of touch. And even moments where she's like,

hey, I'm feeling called to kind of go this direction. I'm like, oh, interesting. I was praying about that and actually felt the same way. It just felt like several decisions we made together were really in sync in a way that was definitely of the Lord which was really cool. But yeah, it was a good process. And do you think, not to generalize how women receive things, but do you think it is

ultimately going to be more compelling and helpful to women to have someone's heart? Like, here's my story. Yeah. As opposed to here's a seven point plan on how to. I hope so. I hope so. I say all the time, like when people ask me to speak, I'm like, well, I'm not a speaker. I just I'm a storyteller. Like, all I have is my story, you know, at the end of the day. So I hope, I hope that's what's helpful to women. I think, you know, even,

it sounds like a platitude, but it is kind of true. Like if you wrote it for one person, like one soul is, is worth the process. And but I did, I did try to write the book that I would have needed. Because I say this at one point, I'm just like, sometimes our first step to freedom is just hearing a story that sounds like our own, you know, of like, oh, but yeah, I'm not by myself. And that person understands me. And okay, and if they're where they are, then maybe I can be there or beyond that too.

And so, yeah, I hope that sharing my story was the best thing I could do. Because I also don't think I could write a or beyond that too. And so yeah, I hope that sharing my story was the best thing I could do because I also don't think I could write a self-help book. I don't think I'm like, I don't have enough experience for that or enough education for that. What was that movie where like, the problem with self-help books is yourself sucks

and that's the problem. What? I forget who said that. That's the problem with self-help books. Yourself is the problem. Yeah, it's true. You don't need you to guide you. It's's the problem with self-help books. Yourself is the problem. Yeah, it's true. You don't need you to guide you. It's the same problem with self-love.

Can't love yourself out of stuff. Now, I'm sure you've probably, I don't know if this is true. Well, you were on my show, so you shared your story there, and you've probably recorded your talks elsewhere. What's it like for you to have your parents read this? Do you feel nervous about that, or maybe you think they won't read this? Like you said, do you feel nervous about that? Or maybe you think they won't read it? They have not read it yet.

My parents are awesome. They're so supportive. So is my mother-in-law. And yeah, all my family has just been amazing and just extended me so much grace and support. I don't know if my family will read it. They actually were kind of waiting for me to give the signal, which I think is super respectful

of them. And I'm still not sure. I'm still not sure if I'm gonna have them do it or not. Cause I would love to share with them, yeah, here's this thing that I worked really hard on. I know they're proud of me, regardless of whether or not they do read it. But there's something to be said about,

I think ever since starting Magdala and recording and speaking and like doing different things and writing this book, like there are times where I meet people and they know that I was addicted to porn before they even like remember my name. And that's difficult, you know, like that's hard. So I would kind of like a space maybe

where that's not a big focal point and not that it would ever become that for my family. But that's I'm considering not having them read the book at least for now until I feel like it would be really great. Not because I'm ashamed of anything I wrote or I think they would be ashamed of me but just because like I kind of just want to just be my family like my family to just be my family and to keep my professional life like a little bit separate. I don't know. It's a thought but we're gonna see. I have friends who have read it though. My co-founder Mary Jo read and endorsed it and she's also a person who would tell me

if it was- Really? You said team of clerics, right? Yes. She's beautiful at like giving me constructive criticism as a friend and as a coworker. She's just so good at it and it's shaped me a lot. So I know she would tell me, but so I have friends who are reading it, but I'll see, I'll see about my family. I don't know if that's weird, but my folks read my book, how to be happy, but I don't think that was a great book. Thank you. I appreciate that. Um,

but I don't think they've read any others and I'm okay with that. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why they want to read a whole book about porn anyway. My parents, cause it wasn't my story. It was, that was the myth thing. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. We'll see what happens with it, but how are you going to get the book out? Am I going to get the book out? I know that's our best job, but you need to get this out. I have this interview. I have another interview next week.

It's like interviews after interviews after interviews. And then conferences, like whenever I go speak somewhere, it take a bunch of books with me and sell them. We sell them through Magdala. Yeah, I don't know. I've never promoted a book before, so I don't totally know how to get it out, but I'm willing to do whatever they ask me to do.

But Avi's really good about connecting me to different opportunities to promote too, which is lovely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. I always like to say when I give someone a book, like let it collect souls, not dust. I think that was from Jose Maria Escobar. I think I stole it from him, but yeah, buy the book, please. Yeah. So everyone watching right now, love in recovery, get it in the description below. And then the joke I give, which is different. You wouldn't want to make this joke with a woman. But my book, I'm always like, buy my book and then give it away to someone.

Like you'd make a great present. You could be like, you look like you need this. Something like that. Just a very awkward. You look like you need more. You look like you need help recovering from porn. About this book. Please don't do that.

That would not be good. That's not how to, that would not go well. At some point it's like, what else can I do? Like there's nothing else to do that I know how to do. I mean, like you write a book, set a podcast, set a website, set a thing. Yeah. Like that'll do. Sometimes it's just like writing it out, right? Like sometimes it's not about growing it any bigger than it already is. It's just remaining faithful and allowing the Lord to bring who he wants to bring.

any bigger than it already is. It's just remaining faithful and allowing the Lord to bring who he wants to bring. Yeah, we do kind of live in like a pretty like exponential growth culture of like everything. Like if something is successful, it should amass more and more numbers over time. And I just That is an American thing. It is pretty American. Like chest and cigars, which we started up the road. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like everyone's like, so when it wins the net, we're going to gonna put the new chest in? I'm like, why is this is enough? How about it stands alone? We just want people in super mills to come

and sit down and have a cigar. Yeah, I, yeah. I think that's an attitude I've had to let go of with the book of like, if 200 people buy it, 200 people buy it, that's it. You know, if 2000 people buy it, then 2000 people buy it. I should promote because my publisher believes in me and they've invested a lot in this work.

And so I should promote for them and I will but you know I think letting go. Whatever you think of Lifeteen. Randy Rouse gave a talk once and he's the CEO of Lifeteen and in the talk he said somebody came up to me and they said do you realize you're only in this many percentage of parishes, percent of parishes. And it was very small or at least smaller than he thought. And he said, when someone said that to him, he just went, ha, praise God. Like, are we meant to be in every parish? Like, I don't think so. Overwhelming. Yeah.

Is everyone meant to read my book? Probably not. Like, praise God. Like, yeah, what you will just let it be what it is. Yeah, I I can I feel like I can accept that. And I think it was beautiful to, there are other parts of my story I had never encountered until I was writing it down. And so I did receive like some more healing from writing it out. And at one point I even went through my journal from high school where I was first writing about struggling and just seeing like, I hadn't done it in years, but even rereading these moments where my heart was just crying out to God

for help and sitting there as like, I'm sitting there pregnant with my daughter, you know, and just really in love with my husband and really enjoying my life and sitting there reading that. And I was like, oh my gosh, I have forgotten like how good God is to me. Like I forgot I needed to be reminded and even that simple reminder of like, um, I did just try to let it just be a A conversation of love between the Lord and I have like wow, look at what you've done. You love me a lot And I don't love you back. Uh, like you And how can I, how can I love you more? Because my gosh, I filled 200 pages with what you've done.

Yeah. It's amazing. So Jason Everett told me this in private and I'm going to make it public for the whole world. Love that. Whether he wants to be or not, wants me to or not. He says that whenever he gets a book back from the publisher, the first thing he does, he opens it up, he holds it, he falls to his knees and he prays nine memoraries.

He consecrates the book and all those who are ready to the Blessed Virgin Mary. I'm going to do that. I think it's 10. Yes, 10. So that's beautiful. So you do it's nine as like a mini novena, which Mother Teresa recommended. Yeah, the flying novena. Yeah.

So what does it call? And then the 10 in Thanksgiving, the 10th in Thanksgiving. Wow. I love that. And then I think what he's done when I was at his house, he's got like several books, the Blessed Virgin Mary sitting on all the books he's written. Wow. I love that. Such a good at his house, he's got like several books, the Blessed Virgin Mary sitting on all the books he's written. Wow. I love that.

Such a good dude. Yeah, that's so cool. I need to do something like that. That's beautiful. You mentioned earlier, you were talking to somebody who had experienced recovery. Like what does it mean to experience recovery? And like, is recovery ever finished? I guess the cheap answer is no, but like, what do we mean by that?

And oh gosh. Yeah. Do you have second part two of the question is, do you have women experience some degree of healing and and then want to go and share their story? And then how do you either encourage or advise against it? Yeah. So many questions. I think recovery is like a very finicky thing, because I think people define it differently.

I kind of operate from a psychiatrist named Gerald May, thing, because I think people define it differently. I kind of operate from a psychiatrist named Gerald May, who wrote Addiction and Grace, where he just, he kind of defines recovery as like when your compulsion no longer has hold over you, when you can resist a trigger long term, you know, where you are able to, yeah, let's just say a common trigger is when you're lonely, you want to watch pornography. If you experience loneliness several times over and are able to say not only no to pornography, but to choose a healthy way to get out of that trigger, that's you're in recovery, right? Because it's not just about those saying no, it's about like, oh I'm I am recovering something that once belonged to me

Like I'm recovering something holistic and truly human so I think Yeah, I don't I don't have a solid definition of recovery because I think a lot of people define it differently I Think recovery and freedom are two different things sometimes like we say a lot in Magdala that it's not about sobriety, it's about intimacy. You can be sober. And this was part of my story for a while, and sometimes still is. It's just like white knuckling, like, I've done it. The first year I led a small group on Abbe's campus, God bless those women that I was mentoring, because I think I was kind of a hard ass with them

and that just wasn't what they needed. Like my heart was just really not that gentle with them in a lot of ways. And so I just really repent of that where I'm like, Oh Lord, like I hope, I hope that the good that came out of that group was far more than the damage done just from my, my personal leadership. But it's because I was white knuckling. I was like, I am Chastity itself. You know, and it just was like, I wasn't dating anyone. Yeah. I am chastity itself. The pedestal. I'm actually the voice of the devil. No. It's yeah, I think it's just, I wasn't dating anyone. I thought I was going to join religious life.. I just gripped purity because I was so afraid

of Jesus leaving me. I was so afraid of doing something that would cause me to feel far from him again. Hated that. Do you watch The Chosen at all? What's your opinion on The Chosen? I've watched a couple of episodes and I've really liked what I've seen.

Yeah, so Mary Magdalene in season two. Oh, okay, I was gonna say that was the first one. That was the first one, yeah. So I just love her character. I think she just does a beautiful job. Whatever people's opinions on the chosen are. I really love it. But she says something about that. And like the second season, she says like, I'm so afraid of being apart from him ever again. And I was like, yeah, that's it. So I just really white knuckled and just tried to keep the grip on the steering wheel. And

I think when I started dating my husband, well, I went through like a really intense therapy experience of like blessing my sexuality, like looking at the places of trauma finally and like really receiving healing there. And then like realizing like God has blessed my sexuality. It is good. I don't need to be uncomfortable with it. I don't need to be scared of it. I can embrace it fully and Then call it what it is Which is good. And then when I started dating my husband, I mean Yeah, like I think dating somebody you're like, well, I'm not Chastity itself. I yeah Yeah, my desire is not rightly ordered a lot of the time and sometimes it is and sometimes like passion is just like really hard

To control even if it's like really really good a lot of the time. And sometimes it is. And sometimes passion is just really hard to control, even if it's really, really good. So I think those experiences kind of let me become much more gentle. So I think as I grew in intimacy, and as I'm still growing in intimacy, that's when I'm really encountering more and more freedom. When you say intimacy, you mean with the Lord.

But do you mean with your husband? Do you mean with your friends? I think, I mean, the Lord, but yeah, for with my husband, with myself, with community, like just for a long time, sobriety was my focus of like, hold on to that steering wheel. And, and now it's just, it's really not that way. It's more like, how can I be more intimate with the Lord? And how can I be more intimate in my marriage? And how can I be more intimate with the women around me and the people around me? What advice do you give to the woman who hasn't yet told her serious boyfriend that she either has looked at pornography or continues to struggle with it?

Oh, um, yeah, this conversation, yeah, I've had this one a lot of times. And again, I don't think this is something I have one big thing to. I was in confession when I was dating my husband. I was still struggling with lust mentally in a lot of ways. And this was early on in grad school and I was very stressed so sexual fantasy could like enter into my mind as a relief to stress. And I was in confession and with this young priest, he was lovely, Father Joseph on obvious campus. So good. And I was talking

face to face with him about struggling with lust. And he just said, is the man you're dating good? Is he virtuous? I was like, yeah. We had been dating for like two months at this point and he knew my whole history with pornography and knew that I had like even, you know, mentored other women through it and whatnot. I was just extremely supportive and beautiful. But the priest asked like, you know, do you think he wants you to become holy? Do you think he cares about your holiness? I was like, yeah. And he said, do you think he wants to help you?

I was like, yes. He said, then you must tell him today. And there's something about his like entreaty, you know, that I went and called my husband that night. Or yeah, I was like, I have to talk to you about like, I'm so really struggling with this. And my husband just, it was on FaceTime because we were long distance, but he just looked at me and just spoke, he just spoke one phrase that just like really got right to my heart.

And I was like, oh, this is why, this is why this priest invited me to tell you is so that I could receive the face of Christ here. And so I would say to the woman who hasn't told her boyfriend yet, like, maybe you're missing the face of Christ. Maybe you're missing, maybe you're scared. You're holding back because you are scared, you know, of being rejected, but perhaps

you're missing an opportunity to see the Lord, you know. So ask yourself those questions like, is this man virtuous? Is he good? Does he care about your holiness? Do you think he wants to help you? If so, tell him, because it might just be a really deep encounter with Jesus through him. And if you don't tell him, yeah, you might miss out. So, I don't know. That's what I would say. I would imagine on two ends of the spectrum, you have the woman who is just shocked, let's say that her boyfriend looks at pornography. Yeah, like, I thought that was just something that men dirty old men in trench coats

or something. But then like, what's it like for the woman who herself has a history of pornography when her boyfriend also shares it with her? Like what does that do to her in your experience? Is she more likely to be sort of empathetic or is it more crushing or? I actually, I didn't, I actually didn't really experience this in my dating life. I was the one who carried in porn addiction to my dating relationships, chiefly. So I had a couple relationships before my husband, but yeah, I think women, and I would say this

for both men and women, but it's hard to let yourself be hurt when you've also struggled. And you're like, I can't feel betrayed because I've also struggled. It's like, it's okay for both of you to feel betrayed because this is a betrayal. And it's a betrayal of your own dignity. It's a betrayal of just everyone's dignity,

but especially the person that you're in a relationship with. So usually I have to tell women, first it's okay to be hurt. It's okay. And when usually I have to tell women like first, it's okay to be hurt. It's okay. And when hurt becomes resentment, then we're in dangerous territory. But it's okay to be hurt. And I think actually only when you're honest with each other about the hurt, can you see the actual effect on another human being of your sin, you know? And so I think they have to feel that and experience that.

And to reiterate that like hypocrisy isn't living up to your own standards. It's demanding something of somebody else that you don't accept yourself. But you aren't willing to try. I'm sure the answer often is from these women is like, I'm a hypocrite for feeling hurt. It's like, no, of course you're not. I love that. It's okay for both of you to be hurt. Cracked back.

I'm old. I got to keep cracking my back. So if you haven't yet got the app Hello, what are you doing? If you have a smartphone, go and download Hello. But first, go to hello.com slash Matt Fradd. Hello is the number one Catholic prayer and meditation app on the web.

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little sleep stories for them. Hello. H-A-L-L-O-W dot com slash Matt Fred. Click the link in the description below. I want to say thank you to a new sponsor, EverythingCatholic.com. Maybe you like Amazon, but you're tired of giving them money. What if you could give your money to a Catholic company that sold everything Catholic and in so doing not only support that Catholic company, but support Catholic artisans and craftsmen as well. I've got a bunch of stuff that they just sent me. We have a chrism scented beewax candle, which Thursday think smells delightful. We even have chrism lotion cream, that rosary bracelets, they have kids books, they have the what is this?

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Paul asks, what resources are there for now? He hasn't seen the show yet. So we probably we probably answered some of these and that's OK. Like, you can take another swing at them. That's fine. Sure. I'll get to all at them. That's fine. I'm so sweaty. But what resources are there for females looking to overcome porn? Magdala ministries.org.

What can men do, says Paul, to help women overcome pornography and vice versa? I think about this a lot. I'm interested to hear what you have to say about this too. Oh, well, I'll give you my opinion because it's probably very immature and then you can correct it. And that's just to say, like, if I'm in a friendship relationship with a female, like I don't need to know about her showing up with pornography.

And I think it's inappropriate for me to share mine with her. Generally speaking, there might be exceptions, but I think generally speaking, like if you're a woman, go and ask a woman for help. Yeah. Um, I think the only thing I'd say to that is that, uh, sometimes women do feel just more comfortable talking to men, especially men who have been honest about their own struggle. Um, I recently had a young man reach out to me on LinkedIn, which is funny because LinkedIn

is the only like social media I have, but he followed me on LinkedIn and sent me a really beautiful long email about like, for some reason I have like a dozen female friends who have talked to me about this in like the last year or so. What do I do? And I looped our chaplain in because I thought his perspective would be really valuable to as a priest who's hearing these sorts of things a lot. But I did tell him, I was like, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, be a landing zone, whatever that might be called, like a landing strip. That's a helicopter, right? Yeah, landing strip.

But like, make sure they go somewhere else. And I do think it is appropriate sometimes for men to be like, all right, you can receive an initial disclosure. You can receive it with love, but. But then to point them. Yeah, don't keep, yeah. Cause I don't think that's healthy for. For either.

No, and so I said, I recommended to this young man, I was like, yeah, don't become the confidant. Do not become an accountability partner to a woman. Um, I think she needs to seek female accountability, but, and a lot of times it's like, well, they're scared to reach out to other women. I'm like, I get it. But, uh, I've told you the story of the woman who came up to me at Franciscan university. Haven't I?

Haven't I told you that one? Oh, I missed it. He tried to get, I've told you, haven't I? That's what I was doing. I don't know why I was doing that. I don't want to tell you again if I't I told you that one? Oh, I missed it. He tried again. I've told you, haven't I? That's what I was doing. I don't know why I was doing that. I don't want to tell you again if I've already told you.

Maybe you have. I don't know. Was it a big Franciscan conference? They have a big talk on porn? Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. I just love that girl. I felt so much paternal strength.

So, but I think that's a good example of a moment where you were a safe person. Praise God for that. Pointing to confession. Yeah. And then I said, come and tell me after you're gone. Next day, she comes skipping towards me and didn't even recognize it. Partly because it was dark the night before during adoration, but it was so beautiful. So beautiful. Yeah. Can you ask the opposite?

Can we ask the opposite of that? What are things that men do that might trigger women? and what are things that women do that might trigger men? Ooh, that's really good. Trigger specifically. Okay. Yeah, trigger is difficult. Do you, cause do you mean, yeah, it depends what you mean by that. Like in what you share? No, like in, like you were talking about addiction about addiction triggers. Like it's a lot of times for pornography in both sexes, it's loneliness. But are there like things that men and women do to each other in their interactions that trigger each other?

And can we recommend? Yeah, that's that. Yeah. Okay. I like that. I think if we're talking like dating relationships specifically, which maybe we're not because dating is not life. I think when physical-

Not a t-shirt idea. Yeah, date is not life. No, when physical boundaries aren't respected on either side, that's, yeah, massively triggering. I have a lot of hard conversations with, I don't think I'm good at talking to women who aren't addicted to porn, but their boyfriend is. Because usually the question is, I ask him, well, what's he doing to recover? What is he doing to heal? And if the answer is nothing, and I'm like, well, if he's not willing, break up with him. But if he's truly struggling against this and with him. But if he's like truly struggling against us

and seeking accountability, that's a virtuous man. Like, you know, pray, seek counsel from people wiser than I on like how to have healthy boundaries as he recovers. But if you see a trajectory of growth, keep going on that. Cause I don't think it's realistic to like expect that nobody comes to the dating table without baggage. But yeah, I just just I think when physical boundaries aren't respected, I think I know I had to have pretty good boundaries around media,

like Netflix or like what I watched and stuff. And I think even like small things like that, like if you're not respecting that from people of like, I can't watch that show with you, I'm sorry. Like I just, I find it triggering. Um, that can be huge, but, uh, the personal boundaries thing. I think that's really important. Yeah. One of my favorite quotes in the whole world is hell hath no fury, like a woman scorned.

But then another one is like the deepest recesses of hell are like reserved for men who play with women's hearts or something like that. So, yes. Yeah. And I think that can go both ways. I think women can push men's physical boundaries. And oftentimes in secular culture, women get a free pass to objectify men. Whereas men, it's like condemned so quickly, but then women ask for objectification, but then they get mad when they get it. But then they get to objectify men and we just don't call it the same thing. So I think both men and women can really hurt each other's boundaries. And the response to men objectifying women isn't, well then women should be objectifying men.

Like that's a really, really stupid idea. Bad response. Okay, I'm stuttering because I want to make sure this person isn't asking to be anonymous, but okay. I'll just say the first name. Erin says, what do you do when you feel like you're at a standstill treading water, but not getting closer to healing freedom, freedom? I mean, on a practical level, like assess what you're doing specifically,

what step have you not taken? You know, I think I've said this before, but like, one of the first questions I tend to ask women when they, you know, when I meet them and they're like, I'm said this before, but like one of the first questions I tend to ask women when they, you know, when I meet them and they're like, I'm struggling with pornography, I'm struggling with masturbation, like what do I do? And I'm like, well, what are you willing to do? You know, how far will you go? And so I think if you're at a standstill, that means you're probably making compromises somewhere.

Where are you compromising? Are you compromising by watching shows that you find triggering that you shouldn't watch, but everybody else is watching it, so it's fine. Have you not tried to give up social media if that's a gateway for you or a trigger for you? Maybe you need to distance from your smartphone for a little bit. Maybe you need to stop drinking.

Like, what extra measures are you not taking? If you're at a standstill, that means that you have not yet tried to conquer an obstacle that's in front of you. So you have to be honest about what that is. Maybe that's a tough answer, but. Yeah, no, but it's a good beginning to an answer. I think it's a very good, like it's tough, but it's good.

Anyway, how do you forgive yourself for getting hooked on porn and masturbation, this woman asks. I think it's a years long process. I don't think I forgave myself in one fell swoop. I don't even think I've fully forgiven myself. I think that's, I think that truly is like a years long process. And I trust like the Lord will reveal those places in my heart when they need to be healed, you know?

And I try not to let that scare me, but I think a meditation that we point to or just a passage in scripture that we point our women to is John 8, 1 through 11 with the woman caught in adultery. And in some translations, it's where are your accusers now? You know, that's what Jesus says to the woman on the ground is where are your accusers now? And I think, yeah, I do this all the time. But I don't think we think about how like we do an injustice to like God's sacrifice of his own son when we don't receive it, you know? And that's

like, I do that to him all the time. I just respond with such ingratitude and such a lack of reception. Have you read I Believe in Love? I was just thinking about that. I was literally about to quote it when you stopped speaking. Okay, because yeah, I read that last line. So the line that struck me and continues to strike me whenever I read it is when he says, I'm not telling you, you believe too much in your own wretchedness. We are far more wretched than we could ever imagine. What I'm telling you is you do not yet believe enough in divine mercy.

Yes, yes. And that the greatest, the greatest, like, injustice or sin towards the Lord's sacrifice is ingratitude. It's like, it's not a lack of recognition of it or like how powerful it is or like not paying enough attention to it. It's ingratitude. It's like I don't either parts of your heart that say I don't need this. And where are your accusers now? Yeah. T-shirt idea. Come on, if you're not making bank, start a clothing line. Honestly, that's beautiful. Yeah. So and what's what to link that into Revelation Chapter 12, verse 10. It says the accuser of our brethren who accused them day and night before the throne of God, referring to Satan. It says that I and I think it's Zechariah too, when it talks about

an accuser coming before the prophet and then the prophets clothed in a white robe. We actually have that in the Magdala curriculum of just like, I mean, it's just another part of scripture where the Lord's essentially saying like, I've made you clean. I've taken your dirt from you. And I've What's that? Let's just keep quoting things back and forth. There's that Hillsong song where it says, like, you're chosen, not forsaken. I am who you say I am. I'm not who I say I am. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. Yeah, I love that song. Okay. Vincent says, do men and women get addicted to porn for different reasons?

Yes. And you've touched on that. And I'd love you to touch on it again. But then I'd also follow up to that is do men and women find freedom from pornography? Yes. Yes. Great question. I love it.

Um, I think we get addicted sometimes for similar reasons. I think for a long time, the way we talked about women's sexuality in the church is that like women were borderline asexual. It's like, men are the problem. You just be the gatekeeper. You tow the line. And then when you get married, be sexually available all the time and love it. You know, it's like, it's very confusing narrative. So I think there was also like, I even saw, I've seen comments on like different podcasts I've recorded or different things

where it's like, well, men's porn is visual, women's is emotional, and that's just simply not true. Again, because women have the intermediary of the imagination, they can be addicted to erotica or written porn more easily than men, I think. Just because that can, even sometimes even more than visual content, it can play into their imagination.

But women are sexually attracted visually too, you know, that doesn't, that's not an exclusively male thing. So sometimes we are addicted for the same reasons and we're all in the human condition. So we get addicted because we're lonely, because we're broken, because we're exposed to content that we find, and attractive. But a lot of times what we get out of porn is different. Men can feel powerful or strong or masculine. There's so much that they can get from engaging in pornography, however counterfeit it is. And then women feel beautiful. and feel seen. Um, I've heard it said recently from John Eldridge that the masculine genus genius, right? Is like strength, uh, for others or strength in the service of others. That's what masculinity does,

you know, at its best. That's what it is. And what's ironic and so sad is that a man goes to pornography to feel that way. Like my strength is being seen, it's being wanted, it's being delighted in. But what's actually happening is I'm using this person like a leech, I'm like sucking her strength for my selfish gain. I wonder if there's something like that

with whatever the female genius is. It's gonna have to do something with like nurturing and mothering, I suppose. But I wonder if there's something similar there where I go, maybe it's to be seen or something that's peculiar to the woman. Yeah. Yeah. And then you get it gets flipped on its head. Yeah. Delighted in. And I think a lot of women bring in in a way that men don't in at least as like in not in the same numbers, like men experience sexual abuse and trauma,

but women arguably are the victims more often than not because they're the weaker ones. So a lot of women get addicted to pornography or masturbation because it is a way to reconcile their abuse and to no longer be the victim. But oddly enough, there's been plenty of psychological studies on this. And J. Stringer is so good about articulating this is that oftentimes you are,

you are just tied to the shame. Like that's what you're trying to convince yourself of that you are shameful. Is it something like that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He said that to me in our interview. I had an interview with him on victory. Yeah. And he said that and I thought he was going one direction and he went another one. I'm like, Oh, I gotta think about that more. Yeah. Can you, can you elucidate that a bit more? Or yeah, I can try. I mean, I think reading him would be the best option, but I think,

um, well he first defines trauma is like, um, and I meant to say this earlier when we're talking about trauma, but that, um, it's the, it's the experience of something I'm going to, you know, butcher his definition, but like it's the experience of something that we cannot comprehend in the lack or in the lack of a presence of an empathetic witness. So we're experiencing something we cannot comprehend and there's nobody there to help us interpret it, right? Which kind of widens our our viewpoint of what might have been traumatic in our life. But he says that like these early formative sexual experiences, and sometimes a sexual experience

isn't what we think it is, you know? It gets tied to trauma, it gets tied to shame. And so we seek out those experiences that tie into that over and over and over, because we both want to release ourselves from the shame, but also because we feel intimately bound to it. It was a formative experience for literally like the physiology of our brain.

So we engage in it over and over because it feels familiar to us. It feels safe in a really distorted way because it's familiar. So I think women carry so much sexual trauma and as do men, but we serve like a, yeah, most of our women carry some sort of significant sexual trauma. And sometimes it's just little traumas that add up over time to become significant. I would say that's more my story is I had little tiny

T traumas that just slowly snowballed into something. I was chatting with a therapist here the other day and he, he, I don't know much about this stuff. I haven't studied trauma or anything like that. So what he said to me struck, struck me. He said that like trauma is when like your body is responding to a threat. That's no longer there. So like you're still in that state of fight or flight, even though the event that you can't seem to recover from happened many, maybe many years ago, months.

That, you know, um, there's an excellent book. My wife's currently reading called The Body Keeps the Score. Yeah, Bessel van der Kolk. It is blessing her socks off. So good, yeah. I read that when I was, yeah, in that intensive season of healing and therapy and was reliving

some of those earlier traumatic experiences and his work was just kind of medicine because it was like, okay, I am experiencing these things in my body because it went through something and it's trying to remind me over and over that it went through something and it hasn't yet received what it needs to heal. So how can I respond to it and give it what it needs to heal? I don't know if I'm actually answering the question that was asked, but- Well, sorry. Yeah. Well, I may have taken us to a field, but it was, how do they get addicted to porn

for different reasons? How do they heal? Yeah. Did we talk about that? I think we answered that. Yeah. Uh, this person who wants to be anonymous says, is there a movement to educate people about the fact that porn is not just pictures, videos, stories can be a slippery slope that take

young girls, possibly boys as well from skimming the mildly inappropriate to seeking out the explicit without realizing until too late what they are getting into. Fan fiction in particular can be a dangerous thing. Yeah. Praise God for his church and his deliverance. She says, Oh yes. Amen.

Um, yeah. Fan fiction was my, was my first exposure to pornography. I don't think there's a movement per se. Uh, in Magdala, we just call it porn because it is. Yeah. Like it just is. So I think the way I would define porn and it's always subpar. Any definition I come up with, I'm never happy with, but it's something like

sexually explicit material or rather material which depicts erotic behavior and is intended to arouse. I think that's probably good. Not bad. Yeah. But like that word material can encompass a wide variety of things. Literature, photos, audio. Yeah, we say I think the definition we use is like sexually implicit or explicit material, whether written, audio or visual.

That is intended to arouse or entertain. We say entertain too, because sometimes it's just being entertained by promiscuous content is a gateway for people. But yeah, I think if you don't just call a spade a spade, like when do you start calling it a spade, I guess? you know, like the slippery slope stuff. I think if it's heavily implied that a sexual act is happening in a book or a TV show or a movie, then it's pornographic. Mason- Well the more pornified our culture becomes, if you want to use the word culture,

the more the goalposts shift. So what we once called hardcore, we now call softcore, and what we now call softcore, what we once called softcore, you might say is Netflix. Or even worse. So it's like we just keep kicking the ball down the road. So porn now only means incest, abusive, rape thing. That's what porn is. But everything else is just stuff adults watch on airplanes next to children because they're awful people. Yeah, that. Yeah, exactly. I was speaking in Delaware a couple months ago and the campus minister introed my talk. I thought his intro was better than my talk. I was like, we should

just let this guy talk the whole time. But he quoted the Supreme Court case. That's like, you know, leaving my mind of like, I know it when I see it, the phrase, I know when I see it. And yes. And he said, uh, he, he spun that where he's like, yes, we used to know porn when we saw it and now we see so much of it that we no longer know it. And I was like, Oh yeah, that's perfect. I wrote it down. I was like, I'm going to steal that from you. Make a t-shirt.

Yeah. Make a t-shirt. Maybe not that one, on a t-shirt, but yes. That's really good. Yeah, I think it's just, it's everywhere. So it's hard to define at this point, but yeah. And I would rather, I would rather err on the side, maybe of calling something pornographic that is into the nair the other way. I kind of decided that a while ago.

Like that. Just, I would rather really scrape the barrel clean. I mean, when I speak to Jason, I haven't read much of John Paul's theology of the body. I've read love and responsibility, which I love, but this idea of bringing the intention of the consumer or viewer and the intention of the artist in unison with the dignity of the human person,

because something can be objectively not pornographic, let's say that's possible, surely Dostoevsky, for example. That's a bust of Dostoevsky. And yet it can be subjectively received as such. And so there's that distinction, I think that needs to be made as well. So yeah, you shouldn't kind of limit yourself to not watching porn.

Like there could be things that legitimately trigger you due to things you've experienced that you wouldn't need to avoid as well. This person says anonymous, please. I lead an accountability group for Catholic women at my university's student parish. Wow. Thank you. I wanted to bring this topic up, but I haven't felt sure about the best way to do so. I have a past with this and I don't want the discussion to only revolve around my journey. Any guidance or tips is greatly appreciated. Thank you for having this conversation.

Having Rachel on Pines changed my life in so many beautiful ways. So please keep this discussion going. Wow. First of all, thank you. You're my hero. Second, send us a little message through Magdala's contact form and I will reach out to you. Just because, yeah, I think being in campus groups is such an intense experience.

So we would love to walk with you through that. Yeah, I think initially like bringing it up and not letting it like revolve around your own experience, that's where you do need something like a curriculum. And that's why we started partnering with college campuses because at first looking at this curriculum, I was like, it's not worthy of being used by anyone. And it's like, well, no, why not try, you know, and people need guidance. And there was not something specifically for women out there. But yeah, I think if I only leaned on the toolkit of

my own experiences, I would be very, very limited in ministry because I think I was spared of a lot of experiences that the women we serve have. And I think I was spared, like for the sake of putting this out there and leading for the time being in our organization. But, and my co-founder and I talk about this all the time of like, why were we spared? You like, why were we spared? You know, why? And because we see so much suffering in the women around us, but, you know,

it's better to just thank the Lord for his protection, I guess. But yeah, I think don't lean on your own story. Start taking it. And even like, you don't have to have like, just female-centric content, but there is Uncompromising Purity by Kelsey Scowick, which is super good.

I know women who have led small groups based on that. Be Restored by Dr. Bob Schuetz. It's a good resource as well, or Be Healed. Unwanted by Jace Stringer. Addiction and Grace by Gerald May. Dopamine Nation by Anna Lemke. There's so many good works, or even Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.

Amazing work on trauma. So I think taking in all of this content and educating yourself, there's going to be things to lead off of. But I think she in all of this content and educating yourself, like there's going to be things to lead off of. But I think she's leading accountability groups. This is what I understand. Maybe is the accountability group for like sexual impurity or purity. She said, I've wanted to bring this topic up, but it's like, oh, maybe she means she wants to bring her own story up. Because why would you bring up a topic to an accountability group? It's about I do know

some groups that like really beat around the bush. Yeah, I've talked to a few women actually in that situation. That might be true. Maybe I'm not even answering your question. You just have to have the courage to be the brave one. I mean, I did this recently. We meet as men, the group of us that meet frequently. And sometimes the conversation just ends up being like just funny talk, banter, catching up having a coffee, which is fine. But not why I'm getting up and leaving my family at this hour in the morning.

So just the other day I just like went right for it. And I shared something that's like really bothering me that I'm wrestling with. And, um, sometimes you just have to do that and just let the chips fall where they may. And I think if you do it with just like gentleness and humility, what I found was everybody just started sharing. So you just kind of need that one brave person like me to say something. Agreed. Yeah. All right. This person who asks to be anonymous, but is a female, says, sometimes

it can be hard for me to feel like I'm allowed to enjoy any physical pleasure because of a past addiction to porn, masturbation, or that any feeling of attraction is sinful because previously those feelings were associated with sinful actions. Yeah. God bless you, you beautiful person. Yes. She says, could you speak into that healing, how to best address this and how to trust that entering into healthy relationship, appropriate signs of affection, like holding hands or a simple quick kiss, are healthy and okay. And that feeling attracted to that person is also healthy and okay. Thank you.

Lovely. Such a lovely question. Yeah, that's beautiful. She asked it. Yeah. My therapist who I've, yeah, I just really loved and who really helped me heal story. And healing looks like taking that and smoothing it out again, just slowly. And it is kind of just slowly over time, smoothing it out. And I just, I still encounter places in myself

all the time of like, oh, that's suppression, you know? Especially like as a married woman, I encountered that a lot. I'm just like, oh, that's fear. That's a fear response. Or like, that's an anxious response instead of like one of receptivity and love. And because I'm still in the lifelong process of smoothing this painting out, you know, until I'm with the Lord in heaven. I think again, like we have

to reorient our minds from, it's not about sobriety, it's about intimacy. And intimacy and control cannot take up the same space. That's something my husband says a lot to me, is that like, as long as we have like a controlling outlook on our sexuality, we cannot experience intimacy. And I think, yeah, I can feel like physical pleasure is only associated with this over here, attraction is only associated with this over here. And if I'm in this place, at least I'm safe. But like freedom is encountering affection again, it's encountering pleasure again.

And yeah, perhaps even just making mistakes. Like seriously, and nobody enters into marriage or religious life or whatever vocation. Like nobody enters in with perfect chastity. Nobody does. I, either you've been incredibly scrupulous and damaged yourself that way, or you've been a flagrant or somewhere in between, you know? And so, yeah, I just think having the bravery even just like for one day to like re-encounter it and just see, like just smooth one corner out.

I think if you try to smooth out the whole thing in one fell swoop, it's not going to, it's not going to go. But you do have to push into those uncomfortable experiences of like, okay, this is inciting shame in me, why? And you have to ask the question, why? Why is this inciting shame in me? Why am I feeling ashamed because I'm just holding my hands

or holding hands with my boyfriend right now? Like what is the cause here? You just have to really press into those uncomfortable moments. And you have to be with somebody who's willing to have those conversations with you And you have to pray about them So I think I've been deeply moved by like my husband's receptivity to like having conversations about that

Like, you know, why am I hesitant or why am I ashamed right now? Like what's happening? Because the Lord does not want us to feel shame in our sexuality. So I think Yeah, I don't know if I'm like I think her question is too beautiful for me to like really give a concrete answer to. You just have to press in. I just love that you brought it up because it's such a, it's a question that's so obviously needs to be asked. It's everybody who's experienced any degree of sexual sin and has sexual desire tie with shame in any degree has to experience when they then enter a Yeah, and I think the lie

The lie from the enemy right is that like this is all sexual desire is meant for this is all it is capable of and we Kind of end up agreeing with him when we don't try for anything different like we end up agreeing when we just like Avoid actual intimacy or actual affection, like out of shame. Like we end up actually just roundabout agreeing with him of like, yeah, this is all this can potentially be, you know. So we have a question here which you might disagree with and feel free to say why. And maybe you don't. I'm just skimming it. Greg says on a more serious. He says, it seems to me the bigger addiction for women is the temptation to seduction, by which I mean using themselves to lure men into lives of self debasement.

The vast majority of OnlyFans creators are young women essentially exploiting lust for profit. It's a massive problem, way bigger than female porn addiction, he says. I would invite this person to come work for me and see the numbers internally, but I think I think he makes a fair point though. I think on the outside. Yes, it does look like that. I Think we need to avoid superlatives when we're talking about sexual brokenness Like I think our culture is so broken in so many different ways that we shouldn't say this is a way bigger problem Or this is a bigger problem

And also since when did the church only care about one problem, right? Like since when did we leave behind like this quote unquote smaller problems for one bigger problem. That's right. I think when we're talking about women of faith too, right? Like the numbers are smaller on OnlyFans or in seduction is definitely, yeah, it's definitely an issue. But I would not, I would not in any way shape or form say it's bigger. When we're talking about like women who are trying to live their life in Christ, I think sexual addiction is a bigger problem than seduction.

But again, I want to avoid using superlatives because both of those things are broken and we should be answering both of those things with love. I like that. Yeah, it's like we can be worried about a lot of different things. Imagine if I said, you know, we need to really help people break free of porn. And someone says, well, how can you talk about that when we have like blatant sexual trafficking taking place in the city? Or like abortion is still a thing.

Devote your energies to that. Yeah, we're not all invited to devote our energies to one thing. Yeah. And what is Kristen? Kristen Hawkins from Students for Life says all the time. She's like, you know, the American Heart Association doesn't try to end cancer. You know, like, we can have a mission that, like, I would love. I see.

I live in Tampa, right, which is apparently one of the stripper capitals of the United States. Okay. I would love to go in and rescue every single stripper I possibly could. I would love to do that. Is that my mission as of right now? No. My mission is to speak to women experiencing sexual addiction and promiscuity.

So I think, yeah, I get his point. I think I struggle with questions like that because it's like, I'm trying to do a thing and hopefully I'm trying to do a thing the Lord has asked me to do, but also hopefully helping'm trying to do a thing the Lord has asked me to do but also hopefully helping women bring to light their sexual trauma shame and addiction pulls them away from seduction.

Right. You know like now you're free of porn go and start an early fans page. Right. Yeah. Hopefully it's kind of all sourced in one thing. So we're on the same team. I like that. Uh, RJ MTK says, what are some of the statistics for women using porn such as average age of exposure? What percentage of women have an addiction or attachment to it?

And has the number gone up in recent years? Even if you don't have those at your fingertips, like what does general? So average age of exposure is 11 for women, nine for men. Um, I've had women in our organization exposed as young as 4. That's the youngest I've heard. But then I was exposed at 13. So it's just kind of a massive range, but I know exposure for women is 11. Coven and I's has done a really good job of keeping up with statistics.

And so it's Fight the New Drug. And I would refer to Fight the New Drug particularly for statistics on women because they seem to do like equal men and women kind of studies. But they released one recently, I think, that said that 60% of women admit to engaging in a sexual, like an unwanted sexual behavior compulsion at least once a month, if not more frequently.

So that's a lot of women. 78% of Christian women have said they've accessed pornography intentionally. And then I think it was something like 64% say on a regular basis, they have accessed intentionally. So there are some who've just been exposed, maybe once or twice, and then it was never a thing for them. But then there's a really big percentage of women that have accessed it intentionally at least one time. One in three porn addicts are women.

That's a statistic that was released in 2017, I believe. So I think the numbers probably only climbed. One priest I was speaking with, he's a fraternity priest in New Jersey, and he was talking about how in the confessional, like the numbers have just grown in the past decade. He was like, it used to be mostly men, and then maybe once or twice a month,

I'd hear a woman confess it, and now the numbers are even. So he said it's just like really exponentially grown. So yeah, I think knowing statistics are good, but I think it's obvious that like, we're all in this together. It's a fight for both men and women. So I think statistics hopefully will reveal that more and more over time.

We're interested in doing some studies even within our own organization hopefully we'll reveal that more and more over time. pornography. So it's something like 70% are addicted to pornography and then 90% are addicted to masturbation. So there's a small percentage of women who are only addicted to pornography, which is my story, but then there's a higher percentage of women that are only addicted to masturbation. So that's an interesting statistic that I wouldn't have necessarily thought was the case until doing this work. But

Kelsey Scoke talks about that too. So yeah, those are some stats that I know off the top of my head. Final question. How should mothers talk to their young children, their young daughters about pornography? Maybe before they're exposed and then if they're exposed? Yeah. How would you like mothers to address their daughters? I think about this a lot because I have a little girl now. So I pray for the day when I have to have this conversation with her.

And my mom did a really good job educating me on sexuality as a whole. She really put her heart into it. So I'm very grateful. We didn't have many conversations about porn at all. But I think in that regard, like just getting in front of it, like my daughter will know that I struggled and I mean, cause it's my job,

but also because I will tell her, like also because I will, I will tell her, like, I will say, like, I understand what it feels like to be attracted to this. So if you, if you it's and it's not about, like, if you are exposed to be when, when you are exposed to something that intrigues you and makes you uncomfortable at the same time, I am here. And I want to talk to you about that. And I understand. And you will not be punished.

I think that's a big thing is like, I thought I would be punished. You know, my parents never said that and never ever portrayed that message to me. I thought I would be punished. So I think we do have to explicitly say like, you will not be punished for approaching me with this struggle.

We may put some things in place to help you. We definitely will actually, but that's not punishment, that's to help you. So I think, yeah. And Jay Stringer, again, I keep on quoting him, but he said, not to have, we were recording a podcast together, and maybe he was quoting somebody else, but he said not to have one 60 minute conversation

with your kids about sexuality, but to have 61 minute conversations. And he also said to become your children's Google. So become a place where like they feel comfortable asking any question, never condemn a question is too awkward, they will read your body language. And yeah, I hope mothers can learn. And I have a lot of mothers reach out to me,

but I hope they can learn to engage with this topic, even if they haven't struggled with it, in a way that yeah, makes their daughters feel seen. Um, I think before it's happened saying when this happens, come to me and just acknowledging that it will and preparing them for that moment. And then when it happens, um, extending the hand of love, telling them like, thank you for telling me, holy cow. Um, yeah, I love my daughter so much. Yeah, I'm gonna kiss that little fat faces

I know I love my if they ever yeah, we're exposed to this and told me I would just Love them. Please God. I mean we're afraid right and we get angry cuz we're afraid and so I understand Yeah, the reaction for many parents is just like to freak out. But yeah, yeah, we can't treat But the reaction from any parents is just like to freak out about. Yeah. Yeah. We can't treat, um, can't treat them like they understand what they're doing fully as an adult would. Yeah. Especially when all these companies are targeting them with it. Yeah. Um, I had a friend of me, mine say to me, uh, that she realized at one point, God is bigger than pornography. And again, these are one of these things you say something and you go, of course I get it.

But, you know, you get things at different levels. And she had this like tremendous crippling fear about if her husband looked at porn or if her child got exposed to porn. And then in one day she just realized like, God is just so much bigger than this. It's all okay. Yeah. All is well. So true. So true. Well, you're a good woman and I'm glad you're doing what you're doing. And I'm so grateful to Magdala and all the beautiful people who work with you and all the lovely girls who who are you're serving. And it's just delightful. Thank you. God is good to us.

Yeah. And thanks for your book that you've put out. We're going to put links below everybody to the website and the book and the other things we've discussed. So you get a promo code too. So that'll be fun. Yeah. Discount promo code. Yes. I'll do another big plug when I get that. The promo code will be on screen right now.

It's promo code. Whatever is Matt, can you go like this? This one, this way or this way? No, for the, for this camera. Oh, like that? Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Promo code, whatever it says right there. Ready? And I'm gonna throw it up in the air.

Just to see how good your editing skills are. Ready, set. Whew. Thank you. If I pull that off, excellently. Yeah. I'm excited. Thanks a lot, Thursday.

Thank you, Rachel. Thank you, Matt. You're welcome.