Today’s episode of Looking Up features Sarah Edmondson, a once struggling actor in Vancouver, who in her late twenties enrolled in a series of self-improvement seminars called ESP (Executive Success Program), aka NXIVM. Sarah worked her way up, becoming a high-level teacher and one of the most high-ranking recruiters for the program. The unraveling of NXIVM and its masked evilness is all documented on HBO’s The Vow and also Starz' Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult, which follows the lives of Sarah and some of the other optimistic young recruits on their journey to becoming seasoned members and into a dark traumatic world of branding women, forced labor, sex trafficking and slavery. But Sarah’s story is much more than that. It’s a story of a woman, mother, wife and a marriage that survives a cult. She tells listeners in this episode a story of resilience, learning and relearning, and moving forward. In most recent news, Keith Raniere, the cult leader of NXIVM, has been sentenced to 120 years in prison, after the gut wrenching experiences and courageous work of whistleblowers like Sarah.

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Guest Details: @sarahedmondson 

Book That Has Changed The Way Sarah Lives Her Life: Untamed by Glennon Doyle and The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

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