In 2005, Sarah Edmondson was a young actress getting her start in Vancouver and hungry for purpose. When NXIVM, a personal and professional development company, promised to provide the tools and insight to reach her potential and make an impact, Sarah was intrigued. She would go on to become one of the cult's most faithful (and effective) devotees. Over her twelve-year tenure, Sarah enrolled over 2,000 people and operated her own NXIVM center in Vancouver.
Of course, things were not what they seemed. As Sarah progressed up NXIVM's "Stripe Path," questions kept coming up about the organization's rules and practices. Why did the organization prevent members from asking questions? Why did those who did ask questions promptly leave or disappear? These questions came to a head in 2017 when Sarah accepted an invitation from her best friend, Lauren Salzman, to join DOS, a "secret sisterhood" within NXIVM and headed to the headquarters in Albany for the initiation ceremony. Thanks to Sarah's fearlessness as she put her life on the line, that ceremony would mark the beginning of the end of NXIVM.
In this tell-all memoir, complete with personal photographs, Sarah shares her true story from the moment she takes her first NXIVM seminar, revealing in-depth details of her time as a member, including what happened on that fateful night in Albany, and her harrowing fight to get out, help others, and heal. This is also a true story about abuses of power, the role female friendships play in cults, and how sometimes the search to be "better" can override everything else.
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" Fascinating topic, but the book was somewhat mundanely written. I never got a true sense of why Sarah stayed in the cult despite glaring red flags even early on. I got that she thought the group would "change the world" - but how? This is never convincingly delineated. As for her "personal growth" - this seems limited early on to her stopping bugging her boyfriend to come to bed with her at the same time. How is this worth thousands of dollars? A good therapist likely could have worked out that issue for a lot less financial and emotional commitment. "
— Ian, 11/24/2019