The Turning: The Sisters Who Left · iHeartPodcasts and Rococo Punch

S1: Ep 10 - Out There

July 20, 2021·46 min·3 clips

Notes from an MC priest revealed that in her final months, Mother Teresa walked the halls of the motherhouse saying 'no one loves Mother in her own house.'

Leaving did not feel clean. Kelly Dunham came out of the convent ashamed, broke, and stuck with a resume that made regular American work hard to reach. She felt rejected in a way that was practical and spiritual at once, as if Jesus had pulled back from the life she had given him. Employers wanted explanations. She was only in her early twenties, but every application carried almost four years of missing job history. A cartoon helped. In a composition notebook, she changed a joke about being in a cult so it pointed at the convent instead. The joke gave her a handle on an isolation she could not explain to people who had never lived inside religious life. At first, she was embarrassed that she had left. Later, the harder secret was that she had joined at all. She knew no ex-nuns until she found the Conference for Catholic Lesbians. Suddenly her private story had a roomful of company. Dunham was stunned by how many lesbian ex-nuns were there, and by how normal the fellowship could feel. They prayed the rosary. They went to pool parties. Old devotion and new freedom sat side by side, awkward and sweet. For Colette Livermore, leaving the MCs meant going home to Australia while Mother Teresa kept sending letters and little cards asking her to return.

As heard by us

A humane look at leaving religious life and rebuilding afterward.

The episode stays close to the shame, doubt, and practical strain that can follow leaving religious life. It works best in the small, specific moments: being asked why they left, feeling shut out, and trying to account for a near four-year gap in employment while entering the…

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a hard, humane story about leaving the convent.

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