Stella McCormick: Surviving a single family cult

Author Stella McCormick has written a powerful memoir, Deliver Us From Mother: Faith, Fear, and the Family Cult That Broke Me. The story she tells in the book and shares with us on the podcast is one of surviving a single family cult, purity culture, sexual assault and desconstruction.

Stella is more than a survivor. She has thrived. Today she is a sexual assault advocate for the Army where she helps other victims of sexual assault process their experience.

Growing up, Stella McCormick believed her family was different because they were more faithful than everyone else. Homeschooled in a deeply controlling religious environment, she was taught that unquestioning obedience was a virtue, suffering was sanctifying, and the outside world was something to fear. Every rule, punishment, and sacrifice was justified as God’s will.

For years, she accepted it all without question.

Until the questions became impossible to ignore.