Taboo

What’s Left of a Real Cool Chick

For many of us raised in fundamentalist religion, the first thing we learn is not who we are, but what we are forbidden to want. An essay for PRIDE Month.

I did not know what danger was, anymore than a fish knows water. But as a child I seemed to sense it in between what seemed normal. It smelled like taboo. Like the burnt edge of toast covered in cinnamon and sugar. I had a taste for it. Like a moth to the flame, only the absence of light was what drew me. I was compulsively drawn to anything shadow; I sensed it. I had to touch it. I noticed how studiously the adults around me ignored it, how they looked straight ahead while my eyes sought out corners. I was irresistibly drawn to the unsaid, the unseen, the unnoticed.

But this is not about danger unless you sense it in the taboo. Maybe I chased danger because I sensed it in myself. Not that I was dangerous, but that I wanted what was taboo. So taboo I couldn’t see it.

✨

Lipstick. We were forbidden to wear it. No makeup. No nail polish. Not even perfume was allowed in the church in which I grew up. I like it wet red, as red as blood, or a purple smear; I like it thick enough to eat. Candy.

So why, every time I put it on thick like that do I scrub it off me? I am more of a t-shirt and jeans kind of girl; if anything, a light touch of reddish gloss is the most I can tolerate on my own lips, but god, lipstick on another woman? I want to follow her to hell.

But that is the seed. Like a demon. She must be a whore, a Jezebel, Spiked heels on her penetrate the ground beneath me, the ground I was made to fear.

I remember in girlhood the church friend who whispered to me hoarsely; “tickle my chest and I’ll tickle yours.”

I remember spending the night at her house and my fascination to see her mother wearing lipstick, smoking a cigarette. Against our religion.

I turned away from the tickle even as I craved just one drag from that cigarette.

It was rumored the woman was mental.

Years later I heard that her psychiatrist had told the family to keep her away from church if they wanted to save her.

Cards, dancing, whiskey. All things forbidden.

My libido.

✨

At dusk the three of us headed for the camper shell in the backyard. Once there, Mindy opened her purse, showed me a tube of lipstick, then snapped it shut. A crumpled pack of Marlboro reds lay on the kitchenette table.

The subject was boys. It was always boys. In the Truth they were hard to come by. The attractive professing boys always went for the girls with boobs who broke the dress codes — their hair curled or bangs cut, their dresses shorter than ours. We couldn’t even wear clear nail polish.

I confessed to Mindy and Terri. All three of us professing girls. A worldly boy at school liked me. Arnie Chase.

When Mindy pulled out a bottle and poured me half a glass, something like reverence came over me. First lipstick and cigarettes, now whiskey. I wondered where she got it. In the Truth, alcohol was forbidden. Any one of these things was a fast track to hell.

I didn’t hesitate. I lifted the glass, threw my head back, and drank. The burn as it went down was familiar somehow. The whiskey an old friend I hadn’t known was missing.

The Fritos I’d been eating began dropping to the floor in slow motion. I tried to catch them, laughing. There was a neighbor boy. And then nothing.

I blacked out.

Morning. Terri coaxing me to drink black coffee. Other than the Fritos, brief and incongruent flashes of red panties and a strange boy, I remembered nothing. But the burn, and the way it instantly freed me, stayed with me. And where the hell had the sex crazed girl the whiskey unleashed come from?

It was my first drink.

✨

I was a girl mom. I was bad at it. I had no self care let alone care for others.

But I loved those babies of mine as hard as an unloved unseen girl can love, with a fierce fire that still burns.

I was a lost mom girl whose water broke at McDonald’s with the first baby girl. It took 18 more hours for her to swim her way to the light.

She was a limp girl fish rushed to ICU, me, a child, unconscious on the table. Another day before they let me touch her, peach fuzz skin to my hungry finger that said daughter, skin that said back mama.

The second girl swam up beneath my ribs, kicked hard and convinced me early, her movements a story I knew, another girl, I was sure, and her name was given.

Her father a man boy who pummeled me the night before she was born. Who said no girl I’m having a son. Nineteen by then, I was a crone in a paper doll body.

Windshield wipers flapping on the junk car I drove through the rain, my getaway, the street sign colors a blur in my brain, even the dog who we called Whiskey urged me on and away.

It took me months more but we got away in the end.

That time.

I was a girl mom an invisible teen. I held my babies against the brutal wind that always always blew behind me, against the night and the rain and a hundred years of the women who bore me.

I was a mom girl in a dark whirl.

I was a girl.

✨

I was thirty and famous now. “Denver’s First Lady of Rock and Roll.”

I’d come far.

Two kids.

Acquired husband.

A house. Fenced-in backyard. Two cars in the garage.

A dog and a rabbit.

The funny little religious girl I was grew up to be a radio DJ and music director. Radio was taboo in the cult I was born and raised in. But there I was—on the air. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. I majored in all three.

Then it turned.

“If you think you have a problem, call 1-800-Cocaine.” I read it live. Flipped the mic off. Dialed.

Did I have a problem?

I told them how I split in half and watched my body go to the drug dealer without me.

How I withdrew money all weekend until the mortgage check bounced.

How I thought someone was following me.

How I crawled on the floor, searching for crumbs.

“You qualify,” they said.

Then the hotline rang. It was my boss. “See me in my office after your shift.”

I was about to lose more than my job.

The first thing they did was empty my bag. The only thing they gave me back was a comb.

Then they led me to a room full of strangers. Gave me a chair.

Eight of us, sitting in that circle. Later, I’d be sure we were a kind of soul pod.

That we’d made a pact in the passage before birth to meet at this exact moment in time, at the crossroads.

But first, I sized them up. I was still a real cool chick—terminally unique, rock and roll to the bone.

I didn’t know yet: I was in rehab and on my way to what was left of her.

They sent me home with nothing but a meeting list and a God bag.

✨

The kids didn’t understand. When asked to describe my addiction, they drew a picture of a door.

I never forgot that.

It took me years to learn that they needed that door.

I wish I could have kept it closed for them.

---

Livestream recording. WOMEN ARE TALKING: Two Women. One Cult.

Had a great time meeting Meliesa Tigard of Purple Door Journeys for the first time live on Substack!

We were both born and raised in the same high control religious sect - so though we never met — we already kind of knew each other. Sort of like siblings do.

This WOMEN ARE TALKING convo with fellow ex-2x2 cult survivor Meliesa Tigard is wide-ranging and not limited to the particular high-control religious group we were both born and raised in.

We talked about how our backgrounds inform the way we read culture, politics, religion, gender, power, and belonging—and why deconstructing not only religious beliefs, but all forms of conditioning, matters in today’s world.

Check out Meliesa’s newsletter and my High Control Groups Resource page in the navigation bar at There’s Nothing Wrong With You (And There Never Was)

Watch full video here:

Women Are Talking: Kelly Thompson & Meliesa Tigard in convo

If these pieces spoke to you, a paid subscription helps support writing like this and makes gatherings and livestreams like Women Are Talking possible.

The first Women Are Talking zoom salon will be Tuesday June 30 at 5:00 PM Mountain Time.

The most important thing anyone ever said to me was,

“I believe you.”

Here, we believe you.

Women Are Talking

Last Tuesday of every month

5:00 PM Mountain Time

First Salon

June 30, 2026

Cost

Free for all subscribers.

Format

This isn’t a workshop, panel discussion, coaching session, or networking event.

It’s a conversation.

Participation

You’ll have an opportunity to introduce yourself if you’d like.

If you write a newsletter or have a creative project, you’re welcome to mention it.

Participation is always optional.

Listening is participation too.

Zoom Link

The Zoom link will be emailed on June 29.

If you don’t see it, please check your Spam, Promotions, or Updates folders.

To ensure future emails arrive in your inbox, add Kelly Thompson / There’s Nothing Wrong With You (And There Never Was) to your contacts.

We’re approaching 100 paid subscribers. That milestone opens doors — more support for Women Are Talking and The W(hole), and a stronger signal to publishers that this work, and the memoir behind it, has an audience. If you’ve found value here and have been considering a paid subscription, this is the moment.

Summer Special