Scarred book review - HERE!
Fair to say that I was born a performer! At dinner parties, I loved gathering all the children together and putting on a play or some kind of show. I was usually the pied piper of the kids, organizing everyone and getting them involved, which in retrospect was probably a sign of things to come.
I started pursuing acting more seriously in high school and eventually built a professional career in film, television, and voiceover. But when I look at where I am now as an author and podcaster, I can see that the through line has always been storytelling and working with people.
Those instincts have crossed mediums and contexts over the years. I loved performing and connecting with people through acting on stage and on camera, including in indie films and Hallmark movies. I also loved being a camp counselor, a leader, and a role model. Later, during my years in NXIVM, I became a presenter at “intro nights” for what I genuinely believed at the time was a world-changing personal development curriculum. Obviously, I see that chapter very differently now, but presenting, facilitating, teaching, communicating ideas, and connecting with a room were all skills I developed along the way.
.jpg "Sarah Edmondson")
My career has taken some turns I never could have predicted. Leaving NXIVM, becoming a whistleblower, and speaking publicly about what happened changed the trajectory of my life. That eventually led to my first book, Scarred, then the CBC podcast Uncover: Escaping NXIVM, HBO’s The Vow, and later A Little Bit Culty, the podcast I run with my charming and handsome husband and co-host, Nippy Ames.
So while I never could have predicted this exact career, I can absolutely see the breadcrumbs. Performing, storytelling, gathering people together, helping others, and trying to communicate something meaningful have been there from the beginning.
Can you share some of the things you love best about your career as an actor and voiceover artist? And a bit about your podcast?
I’ve always loved acting. I love stepping into another character, sometimes from the inside out and sometimes from the outside in. I love creating the inner world, figuring out the wardrobe, understanding how the character moves and relates to other people, and then watching all of those pieces come together. It’s such a fascinating collaboration.
Voiceover is a different kind of collaboration, depending on whether I’m in a studio with a group of other actors or working solo. But either way, I love creating a character and helping a story come to life.
Both acting and voiceover have also given me a creative community, and that sense of belonging has always been very important to me. In hindsight, that’s telling, because that same desire for belonging and community was also part of what led me into NXIVM. Obviously, the two things are very different, but I’ve learned a lot about how powerful, and how human, that need for deep connection can be.
.jpg "Sarah Edmondson, Nippy Ames, podcast")
As for the podcast, A Little Bit Culty grew out of everything Nippy and I went through after leaving NXIVM. We started it during the pandemic, and what began as a conversation about our own journey became much bigger. We talk to survivors, experts, journalists, whistleblowers, advocates, therapists, and people who have been inside all kinds of high-control environments.
One of the most meaningful parts for me has been speaking with other survivors and especially whistleblowers. There is something incredibly cathartic about hearing someone else’s story and helping them feel less alone. In the process, I feel less alone too.
And what a treat that we don’t only get to speak with survivors. We’ve also had the opportunity to talk with extraordinary experts, therapists, researchers, and world-renowned thought leaders. It’s been an absolute delight to learn from them and bring those conversations to our listeners.
.jpg "Sarah Edmondson, NXIVM")
I like to say that we cover everything from red flags to recovery. It’s not just about identifying a cult after the fact. It’s about understanding coercive control, manipulation, abuse of power, and the places where devotion can slide into dysfunction. Just as importantly, it’s about what happens afterward. How do you rebuild your self-trust? How do you move forward? How do you take accountability for choices you made without drowning in shame? I take a golden nugget of wisdom from every guest and carry those learnings with me as I continue on my own healing journey.
Why did you decide to write your first book, Scarred? What is one thing you hope most readers take away from reading it?
I wrote Scarred because I wanted to tell the story in my own words and try to make sense of something that, from the outside, can seem impossible to understand. I also wanted to understand it all for myself.
One of the reactions people often have to cult stories is, “How could anyone fall for that?” I wanted people to understand that coercive control doesn’t happen all at once. Nobody walks through a door marked CULT. It happens incrementally. There is usually something genuinely appealing at the beginning, and then the boundaries shift little by little.
.jpg "Sarah Edmondson, Branded")
If there’s one thing I hope readers take away, it’s greater compassion and less judgment. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with that person?” I hope we can start asking, “What happened, and what made this particular message or community compelling to that person?” Or, “What was going on in their life that made them vulnerable to recruitment?”
This is known as situational vulnerability, and I’ve learned that none of us is completely immune to influence or to having our trust leveraged. Understanding these dynamics makes us much better at recognizing the red flags of manipulation and much better at helping people find their way out.
How did the writing process work for you? Did you schedule a time every day, work madly when inspiration hit, or something else?
The writing process for Scarred was honestly very rushed. I was pregnant and then had a newborn, and the publisher wanted to get the book out around the time of Keith Raniere’s sentencing, so there was a real time constraint. I did not love that part of the process.
I was working around acting and motherhood, and I have a very vivid memory of writing with a newborn strapped to me while I bounced on one of those big exercise balls to keep my baby asleep. It was stressful, to say the least.
The actual writing process was very collaborative. A lot of it involved me talking things through with my co-writer, Kristine Gasbarre, who would then shape those conversations into prose. She would send pages back to me, I would make changes, and then she would refine them further and make the writing more literary. It became a real back-and-forth between us.
I do wish we’d had more time. But I am also glad the book captured exactly where I was at that moment in my understanding of what had happened to me. I’ve learned so much since then about coercion, cults, and high-control dynamics, but Scarred is a snapshot of my life and my understanding at that particular point in time. It’s the full story of how I got in and out of one of the most notorious cults of our time, and I am tremendously proud of it.
Earlier this year you released your second book, A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion, co-written with your husband, Nippy Ames. Can you share what inspired this next book and what it offers readers?
The book really grew out of the podcast and everything we’ve learned since leaving NXIVM. When we first got out, there was so much we didn’t understand yet. Over the years, we’ve had hundreds of conversations with survivors, experts, therapists, journalists, researchers, and others who study coercive control. Again and again, we started seeing the same patterns show up in very different environments.
In addition to the practical tools we cover, a theme I keep coming back to is self-trust. So much of coercive control involves teaching you to override your own instincts and outsource your authority to somebody else. Recovery, for me, has involved learning to listen to those signals again while also giving myself grace for the things I didn’t see at the time.
Even if someone has never been in a full-blown cult, I think everyone can relate to moments when they were not quite true to themselves, or overrode a gut feeling in order to be liked, belong, or not rock the boat. As a recovering people pleaser, I am currently beating the drum for personal autonomy and authenticity. I hope our work inspires others to stay on course, trust themselves, and learn to find their self-worth internally.
At this juncture, I can’t see myself writing another book, but I did say that after Scarred too, so who knows! I feel like writing a book is a bit like having a baby. You forget how hard it is, and years later a seed is planted and you decide to do it again.
Can you share a bit about your journey that brought you to your current career? Looking back, can you see any early signs that this would be your future?
Fair to say that I was born a performer! At dinner parties, I loved gathering all the children together and putting on a play or some kind of show. I was usually the pied piper of the kids, organizing everyone and getting them involved, which in retrospect was probably a sign of things to come.
I started pursuing acting more seriously in high school and eventually built a professional career in film, television, and voiceover. But when I look at where I am now as an author and podcaster, I can see that the through line has always been storytelling and working with people.
Those instincts have crossed mediums and contexts over the years. I loved performing and connecting with people through acting on stage and on camera, including in indie films and Hallmark movies. I also loved being a camp counselor, a leader, and a role model. Later, during my years in NXIVM, I became a presenter at “intro nights” for what I genuinely believed at the time was a world-changing personal development curriculum. Obviously, I see that chapter very differently now, but presenting, facilitating, teaching, communicating ideas, and connecting with a room were all skills I developed along the way.
.jpg "Sarah Edmondson")
My career has taken some turns I never could have predicted. Leaving NXIVM, becoming a whistleblower, and speaking publicly about what happened changed the trajectory of my life. That eventually led to my first book, Scarred, then the CBC podcast Uncover: Escaping NXIVM, HBO’s The Vow, and later A Little Bit Culty, the podcast I run with my charming and handsome husband and co-host, Nippy Ames.
Can you share some of the things you love best about your career as an actor and voiceover artist? And a bit about your podcast?
I’ve always loved acting. I love stepping into another character, sometimes from the inside out and sometimes from the outside in. I love creating the inner world, figuring out the wardrobe, understanding how the character moves and relates to other people, and then watching all of those pieces come together. It’s such a fascinating collaboration.
Voiceover is a different kind of collaboration, depending on whether I’m in a studio with a group of other actors or working solo. But either way, I love creating a character and helping a story come to life.
Both acting and voiceover have also given me a creative community, and that sense of belonging has always been very important to me. In hindsight, that’s telling, because that same desire for belonging and community was also part of what led me into NXIVM. Obviously, the two things are very different, but I’ve learned a lot about how powerful, and how human, that need for deep connection can be.
.jpg "Sarah Edmondson, Nippy Ames, podcast")
As for the podcast, A Little Bit Culty grew out of everything Nippy and I went through after leaving NXIVM. We started it during the pandemic, and what began as a conversation about our own journey became much bigger. We talk to survivors, experts, journalists, whistleblowers, advocates, therapists, and people who have been inside all kinds of high-control environments.
One of the most meaningful parts for me has been speaking with other survivors and especially whistleblowers. There is something incredibly cathartic about hearing someone else’s story and helping them feel less alone. In the process, I feel less alone too.
And what a treat that we don’t only get to speak with survivors. We’ve also had the opportunity to talk with extraordinary experts, therapists, researchers, and world-renowned thought leaders. It’s been an absolute delight to learn from them and bring those conversations to our listeners.
.jpg "Sarah Edmondson, NXIVM")
While building your career as an actor, you spent 12 years as part of an organization called NXIVM. What drew you initially, and what was the breaking point that caused you to leave and become a whistleblower?
I joined NXIVM in 2005, when I was 27. What I thought I was joining was a personal and professional development program, at the time called ESP, or Executive Success Programs. I was a seeker. I wanted to grow, I wanted more meaning and purpose in my life, and I was attracted to this community of smart, motivated people who seemed committed to becoming better versions of themselves and making a positive difference in the world.
I joined NXIVM in 2005, when I was 27. What I thought I was joining was a personal and professional development program, at the time called ESP, or Executive Success Programs. I was a seeker. I wanted to grow, I wanted more meaning and purpose in my life, and I was attracted to this community of smart, motivated people who seemed committed to becoming better versions of themselves and making a positive difference in the world.
That’s an important part of the story for me because people don’t knowingly join cults. They join something that appears to offer them something good. Community, purpose, healing, success, belonging, answers. There were things in the early programs that genuinely felt useful to me, which made it much harder to recognize the red flags as the organization slowly and subtly became more controlling.
By 2017, I had gone from being a student to a coach and was running a center in Vancouver. That year, I was invited into DOS, which was presented to me as an invite-only women’s empowerment group, a badass boot camp for women to actualize their goals and go to the next level of their growth with maximum accountability from their “sisters” in a secret sorority.
What happened there, including being branded instead of receiving the tattoo I had originally been promised, and learning that we had been deceived about the true nature of the ceremony and the organization itself, shattered my understanding of what I had been part of. It was a massive betrayal.
Once I started pulling on that thread, I couldn’t unsee what I was seeing. DOS and the branding were the final straw, along with discovering that our leader was not the celibate, monk-like humanitarian he had presented himself to be, but was secretly maintaining sexual relationships with multiple women. There had also been many red flags stacking up over the years. I could no longer rationalize them. I was finally able to see that I was indeed in a cult.
Leaving was one thing. Speaking out was another. Nippy and I, along with a small group of others, made the decision that keeping quiet wasn’t an option. I had been such a passionate recruiter over the years that I felt a deep responsibility to sound the alarm. That ultimately meant going to the press, working with law enforcement, and becoming whistleblowers.
Leaving was one thing. Speaking out was another. Nippy and I, along with a small group of others, made the decision that keeping quiet wasn’t an option. I had been such a passionate recruiter over the years that I felt a deep responsibility to sound the alarm. That ultimately meant going to the press, working with law enforcement, and becoming whistleblowers.
Why did you decide to write your first book, Scarred? What is one thing you hope most readers take away from reading it?
I wrote Scarred because I wanted to tell the story in my own words and try to make sense of something that, from the outside, can seem impossible to understand. I also wanted to understand it all for myself.
One of the reactions people often have to cult stories is, “How could anyone fall for that?” I wanted people to understand that coercive control doesn’t happen all at once. Nobody walks through a door marked CULT. It happens incrementally. There is usually something genuinely appealing at the beginning, and then the boundaries shift little by little.
.jpg "Sarah Edmondson, Branded")
If there’s one thing I hope readers take away, it’s greater compassion and less judgment. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with that person?” I hope we can start asking, “What happened, and what made this particular message or community compelling to that person?” Or, “What was going on in their life that made them vulnerable to recruitment?”
This is known as situational vulnerability, and I’ve learned that none of us is completely immune to influence or to having our trust leveraged. Understanding these dynamics makes us much better at recognizing the red flags of manipulation and much better at helping people find their way out.
The writing process for Scarred was honestly very rushed. I was pregnant and then had a newborn, and the publisher wanted to get the book out around the time of Keith Raniere’s sentencing, so there was a real time constraint. I did not love that part of the process.
I was working around acting and motherhood, and I have a very vivid memory of writing with a newborn strapped to me while I bounced on one of those big exercise balls to keep my baby asleep. It was stressful, to say the least.
The actual writing process was very collaborative. A lot of it involved me talking things through with my co-writer, Kristine Gasbarre, who would then shape those conversations into prose. She would send pages back to me, I would make changes, and then she would refine them further and make the writing more literary. It became a real back-and-forth between us.
I do wish we’d had more time. But I am also glad the book captured exactly where I was at that moment in my understanding of what had happened to me. I’ve learned so much since then about coercion, cults, and high-control dynamics, but Scarred is a snapshot of my life and my understanding at that particular point in time. It’s the full story of how I got in and out of one of the most notorious cults of our time, and I am tremendously proud of it.
TedTalk
What do you enjoy most about the writing process or what comes easily to you? What feels most like a chore or a struggle?
Writing is funny for me because sometimes it comes very easily, and other times I sit down and feel like I can’t remember any words, any memories, or anything interesting that’s ever happened to me. It’s like, where did my life go? Everything just disappears.But when it flows, it really flows.
Lately, I’ve noticed that a lot of my thoughts come to me while I’m walking, so I’ll dictate them using voice-to-text. I think I’m actually a better talker than I am a writer. Getting the ideas out verbally feels very natural to me, and then I can spend time tweaking and shaping the words once they’re on the page.
My best writing probably happens first thing in the morning, especially when I’m just waking up and still close to my dreams. There’s something about that state where the words and ideas seem to flow more freely. That’s when writing feels the easiest and the least forced. The struggle is when I try to make it happen when it’s just not happening. Then suddenly it feels like I’ve never had a thought in my life.
You shared some deeply personal experiences in this book. How did you deal with the emotions as you were writing? What did you do afterward to help yourself walk away from it?
The emotional process of writing Scarred was actually cathartic in and of itself. Putting the experience into words helped me process what had happened, although I was also in therapy at the time, which was an important part of working through it.
I spent a lot of time in nature, and over the years I’ve found that talking with other people through the podcast has also been incredibly healing. Hearing other survivors and whistleblowers share their experiences reminds me that none of us are processing these things in isolation.
One thing I still do consistently is go for a walk after writing or podcasting about anything traumatic. I need that physical transition. Getting outside, moving my body, or doing yoga helps me come back to myself and leave some of the heaviness behind rather than carrying it into the rest of my day.
Writing is funny for me because sometimes it comes very easily, and other times I sit down and feel like I can’t remember any words, any memories, or anything interesting that’s ever happened to me. It’s like, where did my life go? Everything just disappears.But when it flows, it really flows.
Lately, I’ve noticed that a lot of my thoughts come to me while I’m walking, so I’ll dictate them using voice-to-text. I think I’m actually a better talker than I am a writer. Getting the ideas out verbally feels very natural to me, and then I can spend time tweaking and shaping the words once they’re on the page.
You shared some deeply personal experiences in this book. How did you deal with the emotions as you were writing? What did you do afterward to help yourself walk away from it?
The emotional process of writing Scarred was actually cathartic in and of itself. Putting the experience into words helped me process what had happened, although I was also in therapy at the time, which was an important part of working through it.
I spent a lot of time in nature, and over the years I’ve found that talking with other people through the podcast has also been incredibly healing. Hearing other survivors and whistleblowers share their experiences reminds me that none of us are processing these things in isolation.
One thing I still do consistently is go for a walk after writing or podcasting about anything traumatic. I need that physical transition. Getting outside, moving my body, or doing yoga helps me come back to myself and leave some of the heaviness behind rather than carrying it into the rest of my day.
Earlier this year you released your second book, A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion, co-written with your husband, Nippy Ames. Can you share what inspired this next book and what it offers readers?
The book really grew out of the podcast and everything we’ve learned since leaving NXIVM. When we first got out, there was so much we didn’t understand yet. Over the years, we’ve had hundreds of conversations with survivors, experts, therapists, journalists, researchers, and others who study coercive control. Again and again, we started seeing the same patterns show up in very different environments.
So the new book is a compilation of a lot of what we’ve learned. It’s part memoir, part guide, and part toolkit. We talk about things like love bombing, gaslighting, manipulation, recruitment hooks, boundary erosion, abuse of power, and the ways our identities can slowly get wrapped up in a group, leader, relationship, or belief system.
But I didn’t want to write a book that just teaches people how to point at something and yell, “Cult!” I’m much more interested in helping people develop discernment and understand the spectrum of coercive behavior. And for somebody who is already realizing, “Oh shit, I’m in something,” we wanted to offer a roadmap for getting out and beginning to rebuild.
Recovery is a huge part of the book. Leaving physically is not necessarily the end. There’s grief, shame, anger, confusion, fractured relationships, and the work of learning to trust yourself again. We wanted the book to offer both information and hope.
Ultimately, we wanted to write the book we wish we’d had before, during, and after our time in NXIVM.
Recovery is a huge part of the book. Leaving physically is not necessarily the end. There’s grief, shame, anger, confusion, fractured relationships, and the work of learning to trust yourself again. We wanted the book to offer both information and hope.
Ultimately, we wanted to write the book we wish we’d had before, during, and after our time in NXIVM.
In closing, is there anything else you’d like to share?
Right now, I’m really excited to have A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion out in the world, and Nippy and I are continuing to have these conversations every week on the podcast.
I hope both resources continue to offer guidance and support to seekers, as a form of protection, and to survivors, as a balm for their trauma. I also hope the book can be helpful to family members who are concerned that a loved one might be caught up in something a little, or a lot, culty. Saying the wrong thing can sometimes push someone deeper into the fold, so we hope to help people navigate that painful terrain and mitigate those ruptures.
Right now, I’m really excited to have A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion out in the world, and Nippy and I are continuing to have these conversations every week on the podcast.
I hope both resources continue to offer guidance and support to seekers, as a form of protection, and to survivors, as a balm for their trauma. I also hope the book can be helpful to family members who are concerned that a loved one might be caught up in something a little, or a lot, culty. Saying the wrong thing can sometimes push someone deeper into the fold, so we hope to help people navigate that painful terrain and mitigate those ruptures.
In addition to the practical tools we cover, a theme I keep coming back to is self-trust. So much of coercive control involves teaching you to override your own instincts and outsource your authority to somebody else. Recovery, for me, has involved learning to listen to those signals again while also giving myself grace for the things I didn’t see at the time.
Even if someone has never been in a full-blown cult, I think everyone can relate to moments when they were not quite true to themselves, or overrode a gut feeling in order to be liked, belong, or not rock the boat. As a recovering people pleaser, I am currently beating the drum for personal autonomy and authenticity. I hope our work inspires others to stay on course, trust themselves, and learn to find their self-worth internally.
At this juncture, I can’t see myself writing another book, but I did say that after Scarred too, so who knows! I feel like writing a book is a bit like having a baby. You forget how hard it is, and years later a seed is planted and you decide to do it again.
Links -
- Website - www.sarahedmondson.com
- Website A Little Bit Culty - www.alittlebitculty.com
- Facebook - www.facebook.com/sarahjedmondson
- Instagram - @sarahedmondson
- Instagram A Little Bit Culty - @alittlebitculty
- LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/sarahedmondson
- Youtube A Little Bit Culty - www.youtube.com/@alittlebitculty
- Youtube Ted Talk - www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa7uN2vo6rc
- Patreon A Little Bit Culty -www.patreon.com/alittlebitculty
- Buy Books (including signed) - https://www.sarahedmondson.com/book
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