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Naughty by Nature is a show about finding a god that accepts all of you.
Filmmaker, performer, and former-Evangelical Christian, Treen (Katrina Lillian Sorrentino) is on a mission to find humor and wisdom in all our spiritual journeys, whether we’re being born again or deconstructing from toxic religious relationships.
In this cheeky and subversive series about how to keep the faith, Treen talks with guests about how they processed their religious baggage and carved out a unique spiritual path for themselves.
Oh, and God will be there too, played by a different mystery comedian on every episode.
To join us on this hilarious ride make sure you follow the show, subscribe to our channel here YouTube.com/@nxnpod, and follow along on Instagram @nxnpod for more goodies!
Produced by:
https://www.rainbowcreative.co
https://www.verna.studio
https://www.treentreen.com
Treen: Welcome to the Naughty by Nature podcast. I'm Treen and I'm your reluctant host on this vulnerable ride. This is a show where we confront what the Christian church told us was taboo through storytelling, humor, and a little role playing so that we can be born again on our terms. In each episode, I have invited a different comedian to play God in order to help us re relate and reimagine the big guy upstairs.
So, uh, God, are you ready to kick us off?
GOD: Episode 5, Divorce as Death.
Treen: Seeing that today's topic is gonna be a little heavy. Before we jump into the heavy stuff, have you been watching any good TV lately?
GOD: I'm mainly watching YouTube. I'm more of a Gen Z type god.
Treen: Okay, what are some of your favorite, uh, channels?
GOD: I like watching Sam and Colby, who are paranormal investigators with a little extra, you know, flare on them.
Treen: I have no idea what you just said. Like, none of the words.
GOD: They go into haunted places and are like, Oh my gosh, did you hear that? And that's kind of what I like to watch.
Treen: Oh, so you like to get a little spooked.
GOD: Mm hmm. I like to get scared. Ooh.
Treen: You do sound kind of like a vampire. I'm not gonna lie.
GOD: Okay. Well, maybe I got a vampire god vibe.
Treen: Today, we're here with my amazing friend, Caroline Lee, who is a therapist, a death doula, a photographer and mother to baby Moses. Did I forget anything?
Caroline Lee: Don't think so.
Treen: And I just want to share with everyone that's listening that our friendship was, was really forged through the Camino de Santiago, or as we called it, Camino Divorciado.
We call ourselves the Camino Divorciados, which is not proper Spanish, but it does describe what that was about for us. And our friendship was also forged through Justin Bieber.
Caroline Lee: Amen.
Treen: Anything you wanna, you wanna share before we jump in about our, uh, our divorce walk?
Caroline Lee: Oh, gosh.
Treen: You didn't really like me before we did that.
Caroline Lee: Oh, no. We had, we had a, we had a rough start. You were on a very short leash. I don't mean that in like the kink sort of way.
Treen: Right.
Caroline Lee: I mean that in a, I was side eye, like, is this a person that I want in my life? And then a few days in, I was like, oh, yeah.
Treen: And then we were stuck together for 21 days, walking 10 hours a day, uh, with chafing, uh, bumholes and…
Caroline Lee: Inner thighs and bumholes yea. Oh yeah, things get real 3D out there.
Treen: That's true, you learn things about your body that you've never seen before. I had a blister that was the size of a marshmallow on my pinky.
Caroline Lee: Pinky toe.
Treen: Can you imagine? Just walking, and all of a sudden a marshmallow blister grew on this hand. It's like, what was she doing? I wouldn't put it past me, honestly.
Caroline Lee: I also would not.
Treen: God, have you ever had any, uh, sort of paranormal bodily activities that have occurred? I don't really know what your body is like, I guess.
GOD: I would say my body is more of like a mist.
Treen: Your body is like a mist? Like a steam?
GOD: Yes, I'm just kind of, yeah, if you look off into the distance and you see fog, that's me.
Caroline Lee: Yes. Oh, I'm so excited.
Treen: Well, I should probably move to the Pacific Northwest so I can hang out with you more often.
GOD: Oh, that's where I was conceived.
Caroline Lee: Oh.
Treen: Wow. We should really alert people, like, in Palestine that you were conceived in the Pacific Northwest.
GOD: It's, yeah, the Bible's not right on that one.
Treen: Yeah, I would imagine the Bible has a couple other little, uh, things we can revise but…
GOD: That was just the only one.
Treen: Got it.
Treen: So, Caroline, why, why, why did you get married?
Caroline Lee: Ah, that's a great question. I got married when I was 19 and we, we were talking about this before we hit record, uh, that I grew up in a really big conservative family. I'm the oldest of six kids. I grew up with a lot of responsibilities and I would sort of say like, didn't have a traditional childhood.
Not that, you know, not that we have time to go into all of that, but what it looked like was, uh, growing up in the conservative midwest and purity culture and all of these other words that may or may not be triggering to some people when I say them. But basically, um, it was just so a part of my understanding of the world that the very, like the thing you do is like you, you get married, you meet someone, you fall in love, you get married, you have a family.
To me, it was just like, that's, that's what you do. And, and because I was such a responsible child, um, to me the ripe age of 18 felt like the right, to get engaged. And, you know, I met a really cool person and we connected better than anyone I would ever met in my life. And we had a really incredible friendship and, and I would even, you know, I would say love.
Like I, I think that we really, really, truly loved each other. And I think you and I have talked about even the idea that there is still love there. And, yeah, you know, it's probably too soon to incorporate God into this, but I'm like, you know, once we die, I think we're all gonna be hanging out with each other again, and we're gonna be like, remember this?
Treen: I don't think it's ever too soon to incorporate God. I mean, God is here right now as a mist on this podcast.
GOD: You are absolutely correct. After we die, we turn everyone's on good terms and it's all good vibes and we're happy.
Caroline Lee: That's really nice. Yeah, so I'm like, why can't we be like that right now too? But anyway. Jumping a few, jumping a few, uh, therapy sessions really.
Treen: It's so interesting that you were 18. I mean, I felt young at 25 getting engaged. Like now at 35, looking back, I was like, wow, I was a, I was a baby. You and I have both talked so much about relationships and dating and learning about love. And I feel like I'm just now at the point that I'm able to conceptualize commitment and what that commitment uh, requires. So to think of me at 25 making that commitment, it's like, wow, similar to you, I, even though I wasn't raised under purity culture, uh, at age 25, I thought it was just what women do.
Caroline Lee: And, and how, how was that?
Treen: Well, we're going to unpack that, uh, throughout the rest of this episode. That is why we're here.
Treen: How would you describe divorce? Specifically, as it pertains to Christianity, to someone who knows nothing about it.
Caroline Lee: Well, if I was talking to an alien and I was saying, let me explain what Christian divorce is. I would say, these people, these beings, they believe that when they die, they can either go to a good place or a bad place.
And this thing that people do, like, it's like they're together and they promise that they're gonna be together forever, and then, they're not. There's a moment where they realize that they're not going to do that anymore and when they do that it's like they're now living in the bad place forever.
They're like choosing the bad place. They're, they're choosing to like separate themselves, not just from each other, but from everyone you know, that knows and loves them. It's incredibly, uh, psychologically damaging. It's like your whole identity is this thing and how could you possibly do this other thing?
And what's wrong with you and what's real now and who are you and, and what part, you know, like what flaw can we even trust you? Like if you. If you order something for lunch, can we even trust that that's true? Because you said that you would do this thing forever. And now every single day, when we look at you, we know that you lied.
Treen: Right. So it's something that your whole character is being put into question. I feel like you had it even so much more severe than me because of your upbringing. I was like a Christian for like a couple of years, put my toe in, and then I was like, Whoa, this is really intense. I got to like back this train up. Like this is a lot. Um, but even for myself, I would say if I was talking to an alien, I would put a big like warning light on this. I’d proceed with caution. This is something that is a contract that has a lot of energy associated with it. It has a lot of expectations associated with it. And you're not only signing up for something that you're going to be responsible to with another person, but you're going to be responsible to everybody else's emotions and expectations and conceptions of you.
Caroline Lee: Projections.
Treen: Projections of you. And if you let them down, then you're going to be punished, basically.
Caroline Lee: Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't know about you, but when I got a divorce, I mean, there's, there's so much here, right? Cause I was married for 14 years and looking at my life since I got a divorce, the friendships that I lost, and I use air quotes cause there's, there's definite like grief there and for some more than others, but the friends that are not in my life anymore, more by their choosing than mine are the Christian ones.
It's like there's this unspoken agreement that, Oh, we just actually don't, we don't do friendship with people who are divorced. It's like, oh, they're, it's like a, it's like a sinner kind of thing. And they would say, I mean, like if anybody listened to this, they'd be like, oh, that's not, oh, that's not true. But I actually relate a little bit because so many of my friends got divorced while I was still married and I know what it felt like. Like when I got divorced, I immediately wrote apology notes to a few friends who I had kind of distanced myself from. When they had gotten divorces and I said, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I am just now understanding that getting divorced is actually really hard and it's a really difficult decision and it's not like you just woke up one day and went, you know what? I'm done. I'm not going to do that thing that I said that I was going to do. I'm out. I'm done. Fuck all of you. Like I don't care. That's not what divorce actually is. So to, to like distance myself from them was a lot about judgment. And I think that people distance themselves from people who are getting divorces because it also invites them to look at their own relationships…
Treen: Oh for sure.
Caroline Lee: and say like what's working and what's not working and it's way easier to just be like Oh, no, we're only going to hang out with people who are not who are not engaging with that as a possibility.
Treen: I mean that happens, that happens in all aspects of life. It's like whenever anyone changes in a dynamic, even if someone is just trying to get healthier, like, like other people are like, you know, are you sure you're going to do that? Because that invites them to also look at their relationship with any of those things.
I just want to give a second for God to comment on all of the above. Um, do you see what humans have done here?
Caroline Lee: I'm getting my coffee for this one.
GOD: Buckle up. I would say, there's a lot of Christians out there who do it wrong. They're not doing what a real Christian would do, which would be to accept, to be open minded, to be listening to those people. So yeah, I would just say those people are, have a contorted view on what, what is the right thing to do. Because I feel like that's what Christians want to do, or people, religious people. I'm not the most educated lord.
Caroline Lee: Not the most educated lord. I really hear that. The religion, the religion of it. There's this like, this like dogmatic like grasping of no this is how it looks and this is how it has to look. The thing that I, that I, uh, really feel as I, as I observe and also now, as you said before, I'm a therapist, so I'm constantly studying relationships, listening to the inner workings of relationships. And the thing that I see within a lot of Christian marriages, again, this is going to sound very judgmental, so please understand that I, I'm not a complete asshole, and I will judge myself just as, just as severely.
Treen: We're gonna do that in this episode.
Caroline Lee: Great, great. One of the things that I, that I just observe is like, a lot of the Christian marriages that are celebrated, I'm, so many air quotes here, are the ones where, it's just like well, we're just doing we're just not signing the paperwork to get a divorce but we're still we're just doing life together, but we actually like hate each other. There's like contempt. There's no there's no mutual respect there's no…
Treen: Aliveness in the relationship.
Caroline Lee: No, no, even in some of the relationships, there's been like tons and tons of cheating or like what some people call like toleamory, which is like you tolerate, you tolerate that someone's cheating.
Treen: Oh, new word!
Caroline Lee: Yeah, toleamory is like when, you know, it's a lot of politicians will do that where it's like there's there's just this acknowledgement that oh well yeah, you got a little side piece over here you got a little this or a little that and you just don't do anything about it and you just keep going and I and I look at that and I'm like I also think that that's missing what it's supposed to be. I think that the real living, breathing relationship is so separate from what, what I would even go so far as to say, like America thinks that marriage is, which is part of the reason why I'm like, ah, like, do people actually even know what they're doing? I don't know. I don’t know if people know what they’re doing.
Treen: It's actually really insane when you pull back the layers, but yeah, I want to get into all that. And first give God a second to, to answer. God, have there ever been any…
GOD: [BURP]
Treen: Oh, I appreciate that. You did say you're not a very, uh, did you say you're not a very educated god?
GOD: Yeah, I just say sometimes I feel stupid, but I'm trying to be smart.
Treen: Not that education has anything to do with like bodily manners and function.
GOD: Its got a tone to it.
Treen: Its got a tone.
GOD: Undertone, if I may.
Treen: God, have you ever had any, uh, any relationships in your life that have gone awry or have you been in any toleamorous situationships?
GOD: I, fortunately, was raised by a mother who made me, made sure that I was a good man for other women, so I…
Treen: Oh! You’re a man.
GOD: Oh sorry, I'm a mist.
Treen: You're a mist man.
GOD: Um, I'm a misty man.
Treen: It's really hard to pin you down. Just the kind I like.
Caroline Lee: Mmm, yeah, I know you Treen.
GOD: Like what am I?
Treen: Well, just if you're harder to get, I will chase you.
GOD: Oh, okay. Well, thank you. Tie me down. But I would say, from my experience, I haven't had many relationships, but if I were to do one, I've always been the one who's been breaking up with the other.
Caroline Lee: You're a dumper.
GOD: I'm a dumper.
Caroline Lee: God, the dumper.
GOD: Yes. I take big dumps, but I have not been dumped on.
Treen: All right. I'm going to just pivot this again.
GOD: Okay.
Treen: That's really good information to know.
GOD: Um yeah, you're welcome. I'm here if you need me.
Treen: Appreciate that. Uh, so Caroline, why and when did you get divorced?
Caroline Lee: Oh my goodness. So many, so many great questions. The short version is, like I said, I was married for 14 years and actually three years in was the first time that my then husband, uh, said that he was leaving. And, you know, that was the first time that I had even considered that the possibility of divorce could ever happen to me. At that point, that was like, we're talking about, that's the worst thing that I could have ever imagined. Like, that was the biggest failure that I could have ever dreamt of for myself. Like, it was there's just nothing that you could have said, Oh, what, what is your worst nightmare? And I would have been like, Oh, well, that's not even on the radar of possibility. So when he said that, I mean, I went into full like physical shock, like my whole body, I would like, even my body's making sounds thinking about it.
Treen: I was going to say, it sounded like a little demon was trying to come up your throat.
Caroline Lee: My, my body's having a psychosomatic response as I'm talking about this. I was like physically ill, like I physically was not well. It was very very traumatic I went so far as he called my parents to say goodbye like it was very serious…
Treen: Three years in? And then he was like No, just never mind?
Caroline Lee: Oh, no, I went into good wife, like, what can I do? And I was thinking about this in the context of this, um, this episode, because I was like, wow, what are some of my experiences that made my marriage, like, very Christian? And I was thinking about this because I called my best friend at the time, who was, um, married I say was because she's now married to a woman having a whole separate separate experience but back in the day she was married to a man and you know she had her kids and was doing her Christian marriage and I called her and said this is what's happening what should I do? And she was like you need to claim your marriage in the name of Jesus out loud like you need to write this is what you need to do. Like you, you cannot let this happen. Like no, it's no you can't and I was like, Okay so I like called a therapist. I was like, I did everything I possibly could. And basically it was like, you, that's not an, like, you can't do that.
Treen: Wow.
Caroline Lee: Which was, I, now I would go back and have so many questions, so many questions for myself. And so many, like, if someone doesn't want to be with you, let them go.
Treen: Yeah.
Caroline Lee: No begging, no turning yourself into a codependent pretzel to try to save it.
Treen: Just let me just wrap my mind around it. This was three years in. And you did all the spells and incantations, and then eleven years later, y'all got divorced. Eleven years of your life.
Caroline Lee: Yeah.
Treen: Okay, I just wanted to…great.
Caroline Lee: Yeah, and, and, when we were getting divorced, I will never forget, my former husband said, You know I tried to leave three years in, right? Like, you know, you know that we, we, we went on for eleven years longer than we needed to. And I was like, yeah.
Treen: Wow. Wow.
Caroline Lee: I was doing the thing I was supposed to do. I was doing, I was doing it. And like the thing was there, it's not like there was anything about our life together that was dangerous. I mean, mentally and psychologically somewhat. Yes. But you know, it's not like we, either one of us was like beating each other or something like, like it wasn't like that kind of dynamic. And we did a lot of work together. We did a lot of travel together. There were a lot of things about our life that was great. So I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, even now I'm not going to be like, Oh, I'm, I'm, you know, the victim here and this is a horrible person. I don't feel that way at all. I don't feel that way at all. There's so many things that I love about my, my old life because as we're talking about it was a death like that me doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, so, so ultimately like, you know, there were so many moments over those 11 years where we would sort of almost dip in and almost do it. I remember when we moved to California and we got a new therapist, the therapist, like five sessions in was like, I'm just going to be honest with you guys. I can't actually tell why, why you're together. And I was like, that is so rude. Why would you say that?
Treen: And now you're like, wow, an angel. An angel sent from the Lord. An angel sent from the Lord of Mist to come and save me. And for myself as well, it kind of goes back to what you were just talking about, about some of those, uh, Christian marriages that, uh, you look at with your side eye that we're not judging. We're not judging, but we're looking at, I mean, and if we are judging, please judge me as well, because there's, there is a plethora of things to judge about me, but I was living in one of those where it was like, we were great partners. There was a lot of love there still to this day. I say this very confidently, there's still love there for him. And I think we don't talk about that. I think we still don't talk about that enough of like that love doesn't go away. Um, there's still so much respect admiration for him. And also in terms of our partnership, like there are a lot of things that really worked and that I quite honestly, in my dating journey, have been struggling to find. And I do wonder, I'm like, will I ever find like a partner like that again? But ultimately the reason why I'm I left was because I didn't know how to be myself in the confines of the agreement that we had made. So in terms of the contractual agreement that was made in Christianity, I signed up as a less realized version of myself. I signed up to play a role that I honestly, when I continued, you know, evolving and growing, I couldn't consent to that anymore. And yet, even if it wasn't explicit, people were treating me in a way as to, assume that I would perform certain tasks or be certain things. And I was just like, wait, I'm not, I'm not this person. I'm not this woman, like timeout, timeout. And eventually the weight of, you know, expectation, I was saying this before we hit record on this episode, but like, I never changed my last name and people would send me Christmas cards, like made out to my, my former partner's last name. Just totally erasing my name, my choice to keep my name. And that was really challenging for me. So I would say we, we got a divorce ultimately because I didn't know how to be myself in that dynamic. And eventually I got so actually physically sick that I had to really pivot. Looks like we have a little bit of a freezing moment.
GOD: I think part of you went to heaven for a little bit. If you could regather yourself, come back down to earth.
Caroline Lee: You went into your sacred mist. We lost you.
Treen: God, I'm transforming.
GOD: Not yet, you're too early, too early.
Treen: But I want to go to heaven now.
GOD: Well, in, you know, 57 years.
Treen: I want to go to the…Hold on, I'm pretty bad at math.
GOD: That's a fair amount, right?
Caroline Lee: You’re gonna be like 90.
Treen: No, I’ll be like a hundred and three.
Caroline Lee: Great. Wait, really?
Treen: I don't know. I'm not so good at math.
GOD: Life gets crappy after 70 anyway. You kind of want to get out of there.
Treen: God, is there anything that you've like, been stuck in that you've had to get out of that just didn't feel good for your, you know, mind, body, or mind, mist, and soul?
GOD: You two are very experienced, very strong women who have been through the trenches. I'm kind of like a baby who's like looking in like, Ooh, that sounds scary. I don't have much experience with the real relationships. Mine are more fun, like, let's go to the beach! Ooh, coffee! Yay! There's nothing crazy about it.
Treen: Alright, well, have you just, like, gotten into, like, a tight, a tight corner that you got stuck in? Or, like, an elevator? Like, give me something.
GOD: It's hard when you burp and fart a lot you don't attract, you know, the real ones that want to stick around. But, um, trapped in a corner, uh, maybe by my older brother when I was younger who, who would twist my arm behind my back. Ow, ow, stop, stop. And then he wouldn't stop.
Treen: Right.
GOD: That's a corner.
Treen: So how did you navigate that?
GOD: I joined the wrestling team.
Treen: Emotionally.
GOD: Oh, okay. Emotionally team. I was like, how am I going to fight this bigger person? And so I joined the wrestling team and then learned how to defend myself and then he stopped.
Treen: I think there's something we can take from that, metaphorically, but I don't know how to put it together, honestly.
GOD: Okay.
Treen: Do you know what I mean?
GOD: I don't, yeah, I don't know what else to say.
Caroline Lee: This is not a smart God, remember?
GOD: I'm uneducated, I fart, I eat pizza.
Treen: Right. Yeah, I forgot. Um, I'm just gonna keep us moving along.
GOD: The train's rolling.
Caroline Lee: Well my segway, cause you just were touching, yeah, you were touching your eyes and it reminded me of your, your tattoo because you have a tattooed wedding ring. And I just, yeah, can you tell me about that?
Treen: Uh, I have a tattooed wedding ring. It might be the reason, might be the reason why I don't get hit on out in public. You know, now that it's like, we're not social distancing anymore. A lot of people are off the apps, they might see me out, out in the streets and be like, wedding ring and they might be like, staying away from her. You know, it could be that it also could be my aura of complication that could be keeping people away.
GOD: You could wear a glove? Michael Jackson glove in public, huh?
Caroline Lee: God you are so helpful. Wow. That is the answer.
GOD: Men love gloves.
Treen: Men love gloves!?
GOD: I love a good glove. It's like, Oh, what's she up to? She's good with a hammer.
Caroline Lee: The thing that I remember is, um, that I, that I love this, this story and I want to know more about it was that you actually got your tattoo touched up and darkened after your divorce.
Treen: After my divorce. Yeah.
Caroline Lee: A bold move.
Treen: It's a bold move. I'm a woman of aesthetics. It was looking honestly, like, like I did it to myself one night drunk and I was like, I can't live with that, but no, I mean, a lot of people, one of the first things they ask when they find this, uh, which isn't hard to find and meet me is they're like, Oh, why did you do that now that you're divorced? How do you feel about that? And I always say my former partner, I carry him with me wherever I go. He influenced my thoughts, my ideas, my so much that I am so grateful for and carry with me, and if you get to know me for more than like minutes, I'm going to talk about, you know, I'm, yeah, I'm divorced. I, uh, that was a really impactful time of my life. It was my entire twenties. And this is a relic, a memento, if you will, of that, of that time. So I don't personally have any shame associated with it. Um, it has been funny though. Once I was on a shoot with a bunch of Christian women who were doing humanitarian work. I was the hired photographer and we were in this like 15 pass van, all Christian married women and me, the one Christian, you know, former Christian divorcee. It's silent in the car, and this one woman's trying to make small talk with me. And she's like, Oh, are you married? And I was like, Divorced. And I swear the air in that van was gone. It was like…
Caroline Lee: God, where did the air go?
GOD: Uh, it went out the window into the mist.
Caroline Lee: You sucked it out.
GOD: I ate it. I would just say the Christians you two have been around just seem a little cuckoo. A little cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. They seem a little too judgmental. I feel like they got a lot of skeletons in their closet.
Caroline Lee: Oh, you have no idea. But I love what you said about like you carrying your former partner and I love you like both you and I don't call them our ex and this is the, this is maybe a distinction between the way that you and I hold our divorces and maybe the cultural expectation of what divorce is.
Treen: Yes.
Caroline Lee: Like, you know, people have like divorce parties and stuff. People have like, Oh, thank God you got rid of, like, let me tell you all this stuff I didn't like about that person. And I'm like, no, this is actually devastating. Like this is this is the ending of an entire life that we built together, that we tried, that we believed in.
Treen: Well, I, what I do want to talk about, you know, because this episode is Divorce as Death and you being a death doula and knowing what death is, what I want to talk about first though is the dying process and why coming from fundamental Christian beliefs, why that makes the suffering, I mean, so much more intense, I can't speak to how divorce is like outside of the Christian context, I'm sure it's also grueling, but coming from the Christian context that we were in, why is it so painful?
Caroline Lee: It's difficult to, to say s really why, why the separation of like what makes it difficult because of the Christian part and what just makes it difficult. One of the things that, you know, when I when we talk about like getting the construct like completely wrong, like what is marriage? Oh we have actually no idea what it is and it's painful. It's really when I think about marriage now and knowing what it is, I'm like, Oh, we should not be celebrating in having like giant drinking parties. It should be very, very somber. It should be like these two people are going and entering into something that is kind of like opening themselves up to work.
Treen: To the most intense ayahuasca ceremony of their life.
Caroline Lee: Daily, daily.
Treen: They're like, hey, you want to transform? Let me give you another human who's going to reflect all of your eccentricities, shadows. Go for it.
Caroline Lee: And it's you don't you're not you're not saying and a few days in I'm going to be done or and then I'm going to take a break. You're saying no, I'm doing this and I'm committing to this. And I'm committing to staying, keeping my heart soft towards this person and forgiving. I think that's like the biggest, one of the biggest things in my marriage. There was no forgiveness. It was like this tally of stuff that was like, and then when this happened and in 2008 and in 2012 and like. You can't keep seeing each person new every day and meeting them and getting into like deep work and love and vulnerability and trust with them with that kind of stuff. And so to me, divorce is actually just a willingness to tell the truth in a really painful way. It's a willingness to say, this is actually not alive. And I think that parallel happens in death and dying all the time. People have a really hard time with the acknowledgement that someone is dying. Everyone has a different process. One person might be like, oh, yeah, they're dying, they're dying. It's they're they're dying. It's happening. Another person might be like, Well, can we can we like go to Mexico and try some like trial treatments? Can we try to like fix them save them? Like can we, can we get more time? You have another family member who's like, well, let's just keep them on life support as long as possible. And I think of that, those parallels, when it comes to marriage and relationship, really, it's like, are we actually telling ourselves the truth? Are we actually looking at the viability of this life as a living, breathing thing? Looks like you're, you're feeling that.
Treen: I, well, I wanted to cry in what you just shared, divorce is our willingness to admit this thing that once had so much life is actually dead. This is what I feel like no one could teach me and I don't blame my parents because like they're still, they're all figuring it out for the first time too. Like this is everyone's first time or so we think on this adventure of life and that's why when I say I'm divorced, I'm divorced. I do, pride doesn't even contextualize it. It's like, of course I'm divorced because if I hadn't been divorced and if I hadn't gotten married and if I hadn't made the decisions that I've made, I would not be the woman that I am and have the awareness that I have and the wisdom that I have. And yes, it's been painful. It's been grueling. And yet, that's what you get when you talk to me and you look at me. And I wear, I wear that proudly.
Caroline Lee: Yeah, I do think you know, some people go through divorce and and I don't necessarily relate but they go through it and they're sort of like, oh, thank God, you know that that's over but we did it with a hundred percent assurance of like I'm all in I'm doing this and yes, okay maybe if we really sat there and said like oh there were a few signs there were a few red flags that maybe I was rushing or maybe I didn't quite know what I was doing yeah, sure, of course but we did it and we did it with total, like, this is what I'm believing in. I'm buying into this thing that I'm being told that I'm going to do this thing and it's going to be like this. And we haven't even started talking about sex, but oh my goodness, that's a whole other…
Treen: That is a, that is a deep, deep well and I don't know if we got time on this episode.
Caroline Lee: Esther Perel, one of my favorite therapists and relationship experts talks a lot about how you can stay with the same person for a long time and and have different relationships with them like different almost like not an not an actual divorce but like the version of yourselves is no more and then you have to be you have to say am I willing to meet this new person and and create a whole new relationship with them not saying yeah but it used to be like this or you used to be like this but literally just being like 2.0 here we go. Are you in? I'm in. Great! I want to do the same thing with you. And I think that goes back to the question around when are we able to tell ourselves the truth that the relationship is over and I think if you talk to anyone who has been together for years or even decades if they have a really good strong relationship you could say like how many how many marriages have you guys really had? And I bet they would know what you're talking about.
Treen: In my case I don't know about you, but in my case we were ten years into our relationship and I was severely suffering. So I knew something's not working. I think I was going through this first like death rebirth of like, okay, the person he married that he signed up to be with, she's gone. So you're going to have to, if you want to stay married, you're going to have to like embrace this new human and she has new things she wants to do. And, and, you know, I'm just going to bring sex into this for a second because part of my journey and story is that from the moment I got proposed to my body shut down and we basically lived in a sexless marriage because I see now it was me semantically saying like, hold on red light, something's not right here. It wasn't that he wasn't right. I think it was the, the contract and the construct that I was signing up for. It was like, my body was like, wait, let's just pause. But of course I didn't know how to listen to my body. So I overstepped that and negated it and went forward anyway. And so within our marriage. You know, finally years later when I was, you know, we were both suffering so much from being in a sexless marriage I was like, hey, let's get creative. Maybe we want to, you know, explore. Maybe we want to have a threesome, which was, this was like wild stuff as a former Christian person to be saying, but I was desperate. I was like, if we are going to fix this, we're going to have to get creative here. And we lived in this artist community. We actually lived in this artist house and I've always had a lot of queer friends. And so for me, I kind of like straddled the world between seeing like what my Christian friends would say is okay. And then seeing how like free and like, permissive my queer friends were and I was like, you know, kind of stuck in the middle of both and, and I was like, we're going to have to try something outside of our normal framework in order to survive this. And it was basically from that moment though, that I presented openness as an idea that I was given an ultimatum and it was like monogamy with me or nothing. And that was really tough because I felt as though the new version of me was not accepted by the person that I loved and would never be accepted. So I either had to go back and stay the same or commit to my transformation.
Caroline Lee: And how long did it take you to decide?
Treen: That was March when I had that openness conversation. And then by July we were separated.
Caroline Lee: Wow.
Treen: Pretty quick.
GOD: So he enjoyed not having a sex life? He wanted to stay that?
Treen: He said to me, and I quote, I can just be celibate for the rest of my life.
GOD: Good lord. You gotta get it out.
Treen: I know, even as a mist, even as a mist, I'm sure you have great…
GOD: Oh, I get horny up there, for sure. I let it rain, I rain, that's how I get it out. Sorry, was that a little grotesque? My, my fault.
Treen: No, that sounds very beautiful.
GOD: The Lord's got a spicy side.
Treen: Yeah of course. I mean, sex is part of it. Why would you create us with it if not? If we weren't supposed to use these goodies, why would you give them in the gift bag?
GOD: Goodie, goodie bag, yes.
Treen: That's what I'm saying.
Caroline Lee: I really like God's voice because it sounds like God is smoking a lot of cigarettes.
GOD: Marlboro Reds do, I have had a history of smoking some of those things.
Treen: How does that work with your, your composition? Yeah.
GOD: I usually just come down from the sky aggressively to somebody who's already smoking a cigarette, and then I, the mist grabs it, and I bring it up to the sky, and I smoke where no one sees. So, a skeleton in my closet.
Treen: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, there's all things that we, even God, that God is ashamed of and that we're working through. And You know, this is how I know that I was created in your image.
Caroline Lee: That's a beautiful reflection.
GOD: He should have listened to his wife and explored the adventurous path to keep it alive.
Treen: I mean, definitely, it's been a ride that I've, yeah, that's, that's season two. That's season two.
GOD: I know all about season two.
Treen: God, do you have any questions about the ins and outs of Christian divorce though, now hearing the…
GOD: The one question I wanted to ask, because I'm fascinated by moments. Like, what was the moment you each knew that your marriage was dead, and it was past fixing, and you knew internally, like, oh my gosh, this is, this is no longer alive?
Treen: In times in my life when I've been severely suffering and truly in a posture of prayer, I think people go through this when they go through a breakup. It's like your whole world shifts or when you experience someone you love that's died. It's just your, your relationship to presence changes. So I was in this posture for months, just praying, agonizing over, um, you know, am I going to stay? Am I going to go? And I remember I went on a yoga teacher training because I was desperate. So I, went to this three week thing. A lot of people who were questioning if they were going to stay in their marriages also were on this training. It was very interesting. A lot of women. And um, I turned off my phone for a month and I really committed to, yeah, I committed to the practice and, um, actually by the end of it, I entered into this training thinking that I was going to leave my marriage and I left finding so much more love for him. And I left with a lot of stamina where I was like, okay, I can do this. I can do this. Like there are things that are not working, but I love him so much and love is infinite. And I came back to New York and I remember I was like, I'm ready to give it another shot, basically, and I just have this memory of him, again, because of the conversation that we had had months prior about the openness conversation where I was, I was shut down. I don't know if this was the same day or another day, but we were crying just sort of, you know, really in the space of like, once the, once you let the cat out of the bag, it's really hard to put it back in and you're really honest with your with each other about where the relationship is at. It's so hard to stuff that cat back in. It's like you have to reinvent a new, a new normal in the relationship. And we were struggling to do that. And we had this cry where we were just like, sort of envisioning it. What would it actually be like if we separated? Who would take the dog? What would we do with this dresser? We're like getting really worked up crying and we're like, okay, let's just let's pause this. Let's go on a bike ride. Let's go to our favorite restaurant that we we go to let's go have a date night and just like forget about all this, this is a nightmare. We get on the bikes and we're riding past the Brooklyn Museum and we roll up to our old apartment roll down the street to our favorite date spot and all the windows were boarded up and the restaurant had closed and we both just stood outside of this place looking at these boarded up windows and we, I think we both knew, I knew in that moment, I was like, this is, this is done. This is over.
GOD: What a good sign I gave you to let you know to move on. You're welcome.
Treen: I mean, you were very clear, at the end.
GOD: I shouldn't have asked the question. I knew the answer.
Caroline Lee: Yeah. I think my, my answer, I think also, you know, when you're going in, when you're talking about like a decade plus relationship and a complete life that's intertwined with bank accounts and friendships and, homes that you own together, or whatever else, dogs, kids. There's so many layers to it and it takes a lot of it's not just like a flip switch, you know, I think that happens I'm gonna give one more death analogy and then I'll tell my story but death can be a literal immediate thing you know if you think about like a car accident where it's like, Oh that was immediate and sometimes that can happen in relationship where it's like, oh this person just completely severed trust, you know like cheating or something like that where it's like, oh, well now it's over that happens a lot but I think really relationships are living they're living things and it's complicated and it takes time and so it's a slow a long slow thing to figure out and I think another death parallel is that people always love to say what happened. That's their very favorite question. Even you, God, you wanted to know what happened, and I'll tell you.
GOD: But I understand it's complex. I appreciate you answering.
Treen: Give us the autopsy.
Caroline Lee: I know, exactly. I also, uh, had the, the, the conversation around like here's like four different paths. We could take here's where here's where we are things that you know, we've been unraveling this thing for a long time and it's not working but we love each other and there's so much on the table and there's so many things here and I remember almost like I think there was even a Google doc involved where I had like A B C D like here are some four ideas that I have one of them is like, we take a, we take a break, we take like some time, we go work on ourselves, we like figure out who we are as individuals, and then we come back together, and we do that for like a year, and we stay, we stay monogamous with each other. One of them is that we take some time apart, and we're open, and we see what happens, we do that. So I'm going through this list, um, and I'm like, or, I guess the other one is divorce. And we were at a restaurant, and I remember him just being like, well, the first ones are an option. So I guess it's divorce.
Treen: Wow. So he really knew it was over. You were still struggling to surrender to accepting the idea.
Caroline Lee: Yeah. Telling yourself the truth as a whole…
Treen: It’s a practice.
Caroline Lee: It still took us six months to actually file. We still had six months of, is there anything else we could try? Would you get married again?
Treen: Uh, I want to sign up for committed partnership. That's like an experience I want to have on this life to be I think that there's some things that I will not be able to access alone on this journey of life transformation without that reflection by another human in a loving partnership. But I just think marriage is a hard thing to sign up for again because of everybody else's cultural associations and agreements about what that means and so to me that is something that should not be taken lightly to sign up for because when you agree again to be married you're signing up for everybody else's agreements, expectations, norms. And I think to add that onto the, the complexity of a committed partnership already is just something that I'm not saying I wouldn't do it again because the tax break is nice in this country. I won't lie, but it's kind of playing with fire to me.
Caroline Lee: Yeah. I love, I love the way that you put that. You are not just. just signing up for a thing with one other person where you're saying like, hey, you know, in the dead of winter when the mist has turned to ice and you're like, is God still here? And you can't, you're not sure. And there's bills due and there's like your own shit coming up and you're projecting onto each other and you haven't had sex in two months or whatever. Those are the moments where you're like, okay, you and I, we're in it, we're doing it, we're doing this thing, and it's really hard, but we're doing it, and we love each other, and we're going to keep meeting each other, and these new identities, and these new bodies, because every single day when we wake up with our partner, we are new, we are, that's what, that's it, but I love what you said, that when you say yes to a construct, like a marriage, when you're signing up for something that everyone else around you has their ideas, then you're like, Do I want that put on this little baby relationship that I love so much that I'm actually caring about so much and trying to have this be different and have this be something that is working for me in my life. Pluto is an Aquarius and it might be time to call it something else. I don't care. Like, maybe we could, I don't know, but what do you, what would you, what would you do?
Treen: Let's get some iterations out. God, if you could draft up some new plans for us, that'd be great. Give us some new names maybe we could call it?
GOD: You could call it a fun friendship, a fun, serious friendship. That's exclusive. But I'm, my brain was, I wanted to say that I have learned so much from you two, and I respect you two a lot, and I see you two as like warriors who have like these metal, you have some wounds, you have some scars from war, but you have this armor on you, that you are strong soldiers, and then some of those other people weren't ready for war, and it's kind of like, step up, you know? We got to walk up to the front lines cause we're here. We got our rifles. Where are you at?
Treen: Well, that brings me to my last question, which is, do you feel like you have a stigma on you for being a divorcee? Like how do people react when you tell them you're divorced?
Caroline Lee: Uh, they say, how, how are you old enough to be divorced?
Treen: Right. Fair question.
Caroline Lee: Every single person, like when I'm like, I was married for 14 years and then they just look at me and they're like, were you 12?
Treen: You're like, basically.
Caroline Lee: I think the, the real stigma, which this is another, this is also next season, but is that, um, I chose to have a child as an unwed mother, and that is way more layers than being divorced. I mean, whoo, I am a harlot.
Treen: Harlot in the purest sense of the word, you kind of just did what Mary did though.
Caroline Lee: God, do I remind you of your mother?
GOD: Um, I'm not gonna lie, when you were saying that, I was like, this sounds like my mother.
Caroline Lee: Beautiful. Well, yeah, no, so, I mean, and it's, it's like, I love it. Um, my, my partner that, you know, we co-parent and his mom is a divorcee. And I think that means that he comes in not having any, you know, like, anytime I've asked him if he has any feelings about that, he's just like, I love it. I love that it means that you know yourself better. I love that it means that you have, have been through things and know what no more and no deeper about what a relationship is and what it takes and who you are. And so, yeah, I mean, I think if I lived in the Midwest still, if I was still hanging out with a lot of Christians who have their own projections and belief on what marriage is, then maybe, maybe me. No, I feel like I've done my deconstruction. What about you?
Treen: Some people treat me, it's just interesting, like when you say that word, it's so charged again, because marriage is a contract with so many people's expectations. So some people, when I've encountered, they've either said, wow, already you're so young. And then other people, again, it's like the air gets sucked out of the room, right? Where they're like. What did you do wrong? There's a failure energy associated with it or a, a damaged energy sometimes associated with it, a broken energy, like, oh, you couldn't figure out relationships. So I think we need to get over this whole thing about what relationships mean as it ties to your self worth and success and your ability to love, et cetera.
GOD: Et cetera!
Treen: God what do you think?
GOD: You two are more educated than me, remember? It's like, I feel like I've said everything I need to say.
Treen: Right.
GOD: You two have the master's PhD in this shit.
Caroline Lee: I actually just got my master's yesterday.
GOD: Hey!
Caroline Lee: I think Treen's gone.
GOD: Katrina, come back to Earth. Come back to Earth.
Caroline Lee: If you have a, like, going through a divorce right now, how do you love them? How do you check in on them? How do you prepare them for what they're about to go through?
Treen: I just treat them like the most gentle baby child, you know? I'm, and not to demean them, not in a patronizing way, but just like, Ooh, you need just the most love, the most care. Let me be someone who can just hold you. space for you, you know, just space and, uh, let's go do things that are nourishing for you. I think one thing that we didn't really talk on so much of why it is a death is because you will lose so many relationships. And so it's not just like you're losing your partner, you're losing a whole family, you're losing a whole community, you're losing a whole previous identity. And that's why it is a death because you will have to reinvent yourself.
Caroline Lee: Yeah. And I think there, um, on that, the people that you're losing are also having their own grief around it because a relationship is, it's an, it's an identity, it's a being, it's it's own being, and so for every single person that loved you and your former husband together, and for every single person that loved me, and my former husband together, they went through a grief. They went through their own process of loss and recalibrating what life is and what they do on Thursday nights than when we always used to hang out. the ripples affect everyone and I love that you know to just be present and be like, oof. In a world where everything's changing, I'll just check in on you and…
Treen: We didn't even start to talk about the physical things that happened from divorce. Like for six months after my divorce, I had insomnia. I had chronic itching all over my body…
GOD: Yummy!
Treen: I would break out into scabs and that itching, let me just say, didn't go away for five years until a cyst that formed during my divorce ruptured three weeks ago. So I will say it is not casual. Divorce is something that you should proceed with caution, especially if you have a very sensitive body like me, it'll get you. But I think…
GOD: That’s very Christian of you to have fear tactics.
Treen: we survived it.
GOD: Or you'll burn in hell for eternity!
Treen: It's just like, you gotta be this tall to ride this ride. You know, kind of thing.
GOD: Ooh, childhood trauma.
Treen: Yeah.
Caroline Lee: No, that's it. You're right.
Treen: And we were too young. We were too young.
Treen: This conversation could go on for ages throughout all of time, but I I mainly want to cut to the the part where we say, Hey, we've been through some stuff, we've learned a lot. Ultimately we're better people because of it. We didn't go through it, we didn't do it perfectly. Again, I would just want to own that my former partner would have a completely different story than I have and I honor what that perception is of me and all the truth of his, of his perspective. This is just my perspective. Um, and I think we dug into some real things today. Thank you mist god for holding space.
GOD: Thank you for having us learn. And, you know, it just episode five, divorce, Divorce as Death.
Treen: Death. Um, today's guest again was Caroline Lee. Caroline, how can folks work with you? Find you, what do you want to promote today?
Caroline Lee: Oh my, promote. I mean, uh, the best, the best way to connect, uh, these days is probably Instagram. My handle is howcarolinecarolines. Yeah, find me on there. Uh, we can talk about all kinds of things. Divorce, death. Psychedelics. Therapy. I'm here for it.
Treen: it. Love it. Today's omniscient commentator mist was Raven, Daley Raven, can you come on camera?
Raven Daley: Hey guys.
Treen: Oh my gosh. The voice of the, a wee boy.
Raven Daley: I'm a wee little lad who's only had relationships for about six months so take my shit with a grain of salt. Alright? I'm not experienced as these warriors.
Treen: Raven, how can folks follow you, find you, see what you're up to?
Raven Daley: Um, you can find me at the local arcade. We do, I play pinball. And, uh, my Instagram is BibleBoy, B I B L E B 0 Y. That is not a joke.
Treen: That is actually not a joke, I know.
GOD: Yeah that is my actual Instagram handle.
Treen: But it used to be, didn't it used to be like something about ginger?
Raven Daley: It, I mean, it's like gingervitis, but it came, BibleBoy came from when I would go on Xbox Live back in the day and I would be a pastor so, like, people would, like, talk crap, they would swear, and I'd be like, Lord, I lift up Snipeaholic1313 Lord, he doesn't know what he, he didn't mean to call me that slur, you know.
Treen: Wow, so you've been out here in the trenches, too.
Raven Daley: I've been a minister as a ten year old on Xbox Live, so.
Treen: We've all been through some journeys. Well, everyone, that is episode five. Stay tuned for our final episode, but until then, until then, per usual, please stay naughty.
Raven Daley: Or nice.
Treen: Or nice.
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