PART TWO OF TWO | Trigger warnings: Emotional abuse, suicidal ideation
In part one of this two-part conversation, Morgan sits down with Lindsay Lion Lord — neurodivergent, legally blind art witch and recent MFA graduate — to trace the arc of a life shaped by an evangelical upbringing that dimmed her light, an abusive psychological cult she escaped at 19, and the shunning that followed. They dig into why cult dynamics are closer to everyday life than most of us want to admit, and what it really takes to stop doing the work of the people who hurt you.
But the story doesn't end there — and in a lot of ways, that's what makes this episode. Lindsay traces what came next: moving to Wichita, working at Starbucks, marrying young and fast as a way to escape a stalker ex, flunking out of art school in the middle of debilitating panic attacks she had no framework to understand, and eventually, at 25, waking up and walking away from a marriage, a faith community, and an entire identity — all at once. She was shunned a second time, this time by the Wichita Christian community she'd grown up around, where people told her to her face she was going to hell for getting divorced. And somewhere in the middle of all of that unraveling, she found witches — specifically, feminist, queer, politically radical witches — and felt, for the first time, like she'd found a language for who she had always been.
Lindsay and Morgan dig into why cult dynamics are far less exceptional than we'd like to believe, what it looks like when evangelical culture and dysfunctional family systems use the same tools — shame, self-policing, isolation, and the severing of personal intuition — to maintain control, and why staying quiet only ever protects the people who caused the harm. They talk about Lindsay's fiber art practice and why textiles — quilts especially — feel like the most honest material she could be working with: objects of protection and comfort that invite people in, even when the subject matter is grief and trauma. And they get into what it actually means to be a legally blind visual artist, including how Charles Bonnet syndrome has Lindsay hallucinating 24/7, how she photographs her 12-foot quilts on her phone to see what her eyes can no longer take in, and why she's grateful — genuinely — that she followed her intuition into fiber arts before she ever knew she was losing her sight.
This is a conversation about what it costs to keep choosing yourself when every system around you has been designed to make you doubt that you're worth it — and what it looks like, slowly and imperfectly, to do it anyway.
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