In this episode of Cults, Culture & Coercion, I had the pleasure of speaking with Irene of Irene’s Entropy. Irene is a mechanical engineer turned musician, storyteller, pilot, and entrepreneur. Raised in a strict Mormon household where she underwent the experience of a recruitment mission, she left in her early 20s. She began documenting the honest rebuild of her identity as Irene’s Entropy.Her work blends songs, narrative, and a recurring symbol, a red door, through which she “walks” whenever she’s ready to learn and change. She calls her audience Door Walkers, and even launched Door Walker Coffee, a liberating nod to the Mormons’ coffee prohibition. Her ongoing experience as an ex-Mormon informs her work today, and Irene’s most vivid description of undue influence comes from her time as a missionary. She explains that the Missionary Training Center (MTC) is where scripts are drilled and identity is re-molded. Irene felt a strong need to reinvent herself after feeling the Mormon church had superimposed an identity onto her. After an intense reevaluation period, Irene decided to walk through the red door. Challenging herself to a new field of study, she pursued an engineering degree and worked up to an aerospace career to prove she could. Other critical personal changes followed.

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