My name is Elvira Scandurra. I'm a young Australian woman, and five years ago I left the only world I had ever known — a cult and high-control group I had been part of since birth. At age 15, I was baptised into the "faith" and served in the only roles women are permitted to hold, full-time preaching called "pioneering." Life has kind of always been a little bit of a shamble for me. At 7 I fell out of a two-storey house window and whilst I did not break my neck or back, I suffer ongoing issues from the fall and having a pretty hefty concussion. At 11, I became chronically ill and suffered in the long-term due to nermous genetic conditions. I was pulled rom school and struggled immensly in my teenage years with illness, mental health and abuse.

I grew up believing I would be in my group forever and that I would never face any harm as a result. I believed that where I existed was holy, divine and special. It wasn't a choice I had made consciously; it was simply the shape of my life from birth. My community, my identity and my understanding of what was true and what was good was decided for me. I couldn't imagine existing outside of it.

Being in a cult is disolutioning because your entire world is filled with hypocrisy, fear and contridiction.

My "shelf breaking" as we call it or world fall apart moment was two years before I officially left. I moved out of  home at eighteen. In the aftermath, I began to understand the full weight of what had happened to me, the abuse and mistreatment I had endured, including abuse. I woke up one day with almost a new collection of memories and it would send me on a six-month health spiral, almost costing my life. Without the intervention of medical professionals, I would not be alive today to tell my story. That fact is certain. I don't remember a lot of what happened and maybe that is a good thing.

I had also lived with disability since a young age, following an accident. A surgery I underwent later triggered a chronic illness that had gone unrecognised for years — another layer of my experience that I was only beginning to understand as I rebuilt my life outside the group.

What changed wasn't a single moment of clarity. It was a series of events I could no longer explain away. The framework my cult had given me to understand the world stopped holding. And slowly, painfully, I woke up.

Leaving was the hardest thing I have ever done. And the aftermath — the grief, the disorientation, the loss of community and certainty — was something I was completely unprepared for. I looked for spaces that understood what cult and high-control group survivors go through. I found very little.

So I built Life After The Light. Not as an expert, a professor or a doctor, but as someone who has lived it. A space I wish had existed when I needed it most — for survivors like me, and for the professionals who want to help but aren't always sure how. I need cult survivors to know that even if life is hard, even if systems are opressiove, abusive and everything feels unfair and uncertain that there is always life after the "light". That they deserve their life and they deserve it in safety and understanding. I believe that promotin and standing beside change, both enviromentally, sociaitally and legislatively will lead us towards a safe future for survivors.