What happens when your entire worldview is built on fear? When every decision about what to wear, what to listen to, and even how to pray is dictated by others? Tonya knows this reality intimately, having grown up in a doomsday cult in Southern Alberta that prepared its members for an apocalypse that never came.

From the tender age of five, she was taught that everyone outside her religious community – her teachers, classmates, and friends – would perish when the end times arrived. She describes sitting in classrooms, looking around at peers she cared about, knowing they were all "marked for death" according to her family's beliefs. As a naturally sensitive and spiritually gifted child, this burden was particularly heavy, creating a profound disconnect between her innate connection to the natural world and the windowless buildings where she was told God resided.

The restrictions were particularly severe for women and girls. Tonya reveals how women weren't permitted to pray if men were present in the house, and if they needed to pray alone, they had to cover their heads with cloth to symbolize submission to male authority. At sixteen, the church attempted to arrange her marriage to someone she barely knew – after just one chaperoned date and a year of exchanging letters, she was expected to commit her life to this stranger.

When Tonya made the courageous decision to leave at eighteen, she lost nearly everything – her community, her identity, and most painfully, her family. Five of her six siblings remain in the cult, and she's had no contact with them for thirty years. The cult teaches that those who leave are "dead," effectively erasing their existence from the community's collective memory.

Despite these profound losses, Tonya has rebuilt her life on her own terms, reconnecting with the spiritual gifts she was forced to suppress as a child. Now a healer, ghost hunter, and author of the children's book "Whispers from the Farm," she helps others – particularly sensitive children – embrace their unique perceptions of the world without fear or shame.

Her story is a powerful testament to resilience and authenticity. As Tonya puts it: "Don't be scared to be weird. Just be authentically yourself... The right people will find you." For anyone struggling to break free from controlling relationships or ideologies, her journey offers both hope and a roadmap to reclaiming your true self.

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Kimia Nejat of Kimia Nejat Realty
 

Marc Zirka - Strategy Up 

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