Leaving It All Behind: How I Found My Voice After 35 Years

Margaret grew up in Moral Rearmament, a community that demanded total surrender. Here is how she finally started over.

Margaret was born into a unique world in a Swiss hotel, where the primary goal was to quiet one's own dreams in favor of serving God's will. She spent decades traveling globally, acting in plays, and living in strict community settings from Papua New Guinea to Washington, D.C. This conversation explores the weight of that upbringing and the quiet erosion of personal identity that happens when you are taught to put a collective mission above your own desires.

At thirty-five, Margaret made the difficult choice of leaving a community that felt like family, packing her life into a blue Plymouth to find out who she was outside of the group. We discuss the slow process of reclaiming her voice and how she navigated the transition to a life of her own making.

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0:00 Born into a global mission
0:35 The turning point on a bike ride
2:18 Who is Margaret in 2026?
4:58 The origins of a dedicated network
11:29 Navigating the outside world
22:51 Seeking control in a rigid life
31:44 A medical crisis and a breaking point
47:05 Finding joy in the aftermath

ABOUT MARGARET
Margaret Eastman Smith is the author of A Spectacular Inheritance: What I Kept and What I Left Behind. She is the Director of the Program on Trauma Healing and Community Resilience for the Institute of World Affairs, a Washington, DC-based NGO, and served on the faculty of American University's Program on International Peace and Conflict Resolution for nearly two decades. Her academic work focuses on the role of history and memory in divided societies, as well as grassroots approaches to peacebuilding.

Website: www.margareteastmansmith.com

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