The world has become increasingly divided, and more and more of us find ourselves navigating relationships with people whose views don’t align with our own. This mini-series explores the challenges, humor, and humanity of finding common ground—or learning to live with our differences.

In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers navigate conflicting beliefs within their own families.

Part 1: A son struggles to preserve his relationship with his mother as her devotion to a cult pushes them further apart.

This story is appearing anonymously on our podcast to protect the identity of the storyteller and their family.

Part 2: Lexa Graham’s mother has always held alternative beliefs that clash with Lexa’s deep trust in science and evidence.

Lexa Graham is an award winning scientist, educator, and comedian who specializes in science centered comedy, humour workshops for professionals, and speaking about the science of success for university students. An expert at mixing science and comedy into a fun and educational cocktail, Lexa is the creator of DNAtured Journal, a satirical academic journal on student life and science, and Dirty Science, a monthly Science Comedy show. Lexa is also a popular host, performer, and panelist for all kinds of events due to her personable nature, quick wit, and broad scientific knowledge.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

I'm 28 years old when I finally land back home in Toronto. I'd been living abroad in Taiwan for seven years and I'd gotten really used to tropical weather and all these bike‑friendly streets where I could just go off and listen to music and just wander around the city. But here in Toronto, the cold cuts through me immediately. The air is dense and the sky is that familiar November Toronto sky.

This isn't where I'm supposed to be right now. I'm actually supposed to be in Australia. See, I bought a plane ticket. I got a job. I had everything sorted to reboot my life. But as soon as I got a call a couple weeks ago from my aunt saying that things at home are just not going well, I knew I had to come home. I had a job to do.

My aunt warned me that my mom, she was staying up till 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning every night, locked into something that none of us could really understand. And my dad, an engineer and the most rational person I know, he had reached the edge of his patience. He's talking about leaving.

I already know what I'm going to walk into as I carry this heavy suitcase behind me and into the front door. As soon as I open it, I hear the music, that soft, melodic humming coming through the walls, and then the chanting, those wailing voices all swelling in their devotion. The same ethereal background music mixed with these voices of peace and love and humanity.

My mom's voice is humming there. Can't really hear it, but it's there. I slowly walk up the stairs and I hear the phony, that preachy, irritating voice of her master. I take a deep breath and my chest feels tight as I keep walking up, getting ready to open the door.

I don't really remember a time before this was a part of my life. My mom, she found her master when I was about 10 years old. She joined with all of her family friends. But, unlike some of them who just kind of got bored after a couple months, my mom never left the group.

At first, it just feels weird. It's kind of annoying. It's another thing that she wants me to do all the time, a thing I have to half‑lie about and nod along when she asks, like, “How did you feel after hearing that chant?” Or, “How did you feel after this energy transmission or this divine teaching?” Over time, it just becomes clear that this isn't just going to go away. It's becoming a really big part of her.

And it's not like this is anything evil, you know? My mom, she's a really loving and kind person. She just really wants to heal others and find some healing for herself. But it just feels off. Nothing's adding up. Every claim that she shares just feels like a huge stretch of logic. And at the same time, it's always shared with me with this mix of earnestness and strange desperation. It just feels cringey.

Eventually, she starts going off on retreats, disappearing for weeks at a time. And while she's there, I hear about how she's not really eating a lot. She's not sleeping a lot. She's sitting in deep meditation and chanting for hours into the night.

Now, they don't ask her for money, but they do ask her to buy his books, thousands of dollars of books, which helps put these books on the bestseller list. His framed image is put up on our mantle. Our walls become covered in his teachings.

But her master just doesn't sell these books. He actually primarily sells healing. The way that they frame the world is that, if anything bad has happened to you, say, you get diagnosed with a sickness or you're going through divorce, or you're depressed, it's usually because sometimes, several lifetimes ago, you did something wrong, like you poisoned a well or you hurt someone who didn't deserve it. Either way, this is something that you did in a past life. And to fix it, you need an expensive several‑thousand dollar karma cleanse.

And she pours everything into this. The inheritance she received from her family, the money my grandfather worked for his entire life saving up to give to his kids, for the most part, it just gets funneled into this organization that's thriving off of people who just need some healing and connection in life.

My dad sees it for exactly what it is. It's a scam. But the words don't reach her. His frustration just pushes her further in. But he believes that she'll listen to me and my brother. See, we don't argue as much. We don't push back as much and we get along. She trusts us. So, therefore, I can be there for her.

If there's one thing I’ve always believed, that's, if your family needs you, you just need to show up. So I'm here in the middle of the city, in the middle of the winter, burning through my savings, but I'm determined that I'm going to fix this once and for all.

I spend months researching, speaking to all the different people in her life, her old friends who used to be in the group, finally getting connected to higher up members of the group who left and trying to get an idea of what I can do to end the situation, to get her out of it.

One of the ex‑members gives me some advice. First, she tells me to understand that anyone who stays in this organization for as long as my mom did, they're doing it for a reason. There's something in their day‑to‑day life that's really just keeping them there.

And, second, they're always going to need something from her. That's the one thing that I can always give that they can't give. It's the fact that they're always going to need something back, money, more time, more help.

So, for me, what I can offer her is just to not need anything at all and to simply just enjoy her for who she is.

And then she gives me some advice on how I can start to deal with the situation. Her advice is, “Just get her away. Take her away from this place for a while.” Away from arguments and disagreements with my dad or away from the community just calling and showing up and emailing her every day trying to get something out of her.

So I come up with a plan. We're going to go to California for a month, just the two of us. We're going to explore and travel, spend time together, get away from all of this mess here in Toronto.

And I take her to all these places that might open up something new in her, like Buddhist temples, silent retreats, alternative healing spaces, places that hold that same language of spirituality but without that hierarchy and that blind devotion in my mom's organization. At first it feels like it's working, like, she seems curious, she's open to new things. But every time she gets close to kind of being open or having a new idea, I can feel it pull back a little bit.

But to be honest, I'm actually enjoying myself too. After months of being cooped up in Scarborough, I'm actually really excited to be out here in California and doing some of my favorite activities with my mom. Most notably is biking.

Now, see, my mom when she was young, she used to be super active. She told me about biking around the city, all around Scarborough all the time. So with me and her biking across California, I feel like this is a part of her that's starting to come back.

We're biking through Ojai, all the way up the hill to this beautiful sunset spot named on Google Maps. It's called the “Pink Moment.” And then we keep going down the coast until we're in Santa Barbara. We're biking up and up to get to a viewpoint, to the top of the city, to this monastery where we can see a view of the whole place. I can feel her energy coming back.

And we're going up and higher through traffic, and all of a sudden I hear her call out. She's behind me. I look back and she's fallen. She shattered her elbow.

I take her to the hospital to get it fixed, then after that things just start to regress. She turns back to her teachings. She tells herself that the master's energy healing will recover her. This is a test of faith and she needs to come out of this stronger.

By the time we get home, it's kind of like the trip didn't really happen. I'm doing everything I can, but I'm feeling like I'm letting everyone down. So I take a deep breath and I dust myself off. Okay, I just need to figure out what I need to do next.

I don't really realize how much of myself I'm losing in all of this. Every conversation I have with my friends, it always begins with them asking me, “How's your mom doing?” Every decision I make revolves around what I can do to pull her out of this, push her past the point where she finally sees what this organization is.

My body slowly starts to change. I'm gaining weight and I'm smoking more. I just feel exhausted all the time. But I tell myself that I'm fine. This is temporary. Once I get through to her, I can focus on myself again.

My friends start telling me gently that I should talk to somebody, and I ignore them, you know. But then the months and the months pass, and then, eventually, I admit to myself I really need to talk to somebody.

I ask my friend for his therapist's number and he gives it to me. Two weeks later, I'm sitting across from a therapist. I'm on her soft blue couch, looking at my steaming orange pekoe tea sitting on her table. I'm always asking for it, but I rarely drink it.

The room smells like incense, in a way that feels comforting. It reminds me of my mom, in a way that feels nice.

I tell her all the same things I've been telling myself for months, the plan, how close I am, and how I just need her to see it, just to come to that realization and then we can finally move on.

She listens, and then she leans in to ask me something. “What happens if your mom never leaves?”

I sit there staring at her. I've never thought of this question. I don't know what to say.

She leans forward slightly and looks at me very carefully, “If your freedom is tied to this outcome, you're never going to be free.”

All of a sudden, it just hits me, just a pile of bricks. It's true. If I get her out of this and then, two years later, she's all of a sudden back in, do I have to stop my life again? I'm never actually going to be free.

And all of a sudden, this energy, this hope, this resilience I had to keep pushing and making sure this thing gets finished, it starts getting sucked into this vacuum. And then suddenly, I feel lighter, because I think that hope was a heavy burden. For the first time, I start thinking about what I need to do for myself.

A couple months go by and things aren't much better. My dad, he kind of stays in the basement a lot of the time, or he's just off traveling for work. And my mom's still staying up late in the evening, but we're still getting to hang out and do things together, spend some time, stuff I didn't get to do when I was in Taiwan.

One night, I come back to the place so I can help her with a Costco run. Her hip and her arm, they have been healing kind of weird since that fall we had on our trip, and going to Costco has become more and more difficult for her.

When I get home, I open the door and I hear my mom playing the chanting music again. It's loud and it's filling everything. I can hear her chanting and all of her friends. Suddenly, I just stand there and I just feel this overwhelming energy just fill up my body. I become so anxious that I just feel like I need to scream. Instead, I just walk out of the house, slam the door, jump in the car, and drive.

Before I know it, I arrive at Costco. I'm walking around, kind of just half aware of what I'm doing, getting things on the list. I see a bouquet of flowers. I pick one up and throw it in the car.

I drive back home and I come inside. I enter the kitchen and the music's not playing anymore. My mom's sitting there. I think she knows I was upset and she thinks I want to say something to her. But instead, I just take the flowers out and I put them down in front of her.

I know I can't save her, but I can try to save our relationship. I tell her that when she plays this music, when she's pushing this organization and their beliefs onto me, it makes me ill. It makes me have an anxiety attack and that I can't handle that. I just need that to be away from me for a while.

I ask her, does she have any friends in her group that have lost contact with her family because of this organization? She says yes. I tell her, “I don't want that to be us. I don't want us to lose our relationship ever.” But it's just becoming too hard because of how I react when I engage with her group and her trying to share her ideologies with me.

I tell her that I love her, and if we want to keep things good between us, we just need to keep this part of it out.

Slowly she nods. And then I start telling her about the things that we can spend time on and the things I want to do more with her, like trying out new foods or testing new recipes, going thrift shopping or watching musicals together. And just laughing, you know. She has this really subtle sense of humor that I think a lot of people don't catch on to, but me and my brother do. She's really goofy. There's all these parts of her that I just really enjoy spending time with.

And then she looks at me and she smiles, grabbing the flowers, going to the sink, starting to cut them and prepare them, while I sit down. I pull out my phone and I start scrolling through, looking for something for us to do next.

Part 2

I was a scientist from birth. I've always been obsessed with searching for answers and how everything works. When I was a kid, I even thought that dying would be cool, because I thought that at the end of your life, you got a list of every answer to every question you ever had, like the end credits of a movie.

I was also super into the natural world. I was a bug girl growing up. I love turning over rocks and seeing all of the little shapes scurrying away. And I even had a jar full of cicada skins. You guys know those ones? Yeah, it was a wonder I had any friends at all, honestly.

I remember later on growing up, I was upset because I realized that, unlike in the natural world, in books and movies, not everything was real, like dragons and unicorns, which was very confusing because rhinoceroses, horses, and dinosaurs were real, which was very, very confusing for me. I remember being very upset about it.

And I had so many, so many questions about what was real in the world because I wanted to be able to figure out what was real and what was fake, because I couldn't get bamboozled by Santa again. Do you know what I mean?

So I started asking my parents a whole bunch of questions. And they're not scientists, so they didn't really get a lot of it.

Lexa Graham shares her story at Burdock Music Hall in Toronto, ON in April 2026. Photo by Yianni Tong.

One day, I asked my parents, “Hey, why don't animals cry like humans cry?”

And, stumped, they encouraged me to write to TVOkids' Inquiring Minds, which was a show that answered those types of questions. So I wrote to them and, to my dismay, they wrote back that, actually, nobody knows.

I was pissed. Adults didn't know the answer to every single question? What the hell? And it started my journey of trying to ask so many questions to figure out what was real and what was fake. I became a lifelong scientist.

This put me at odds with my mother, who has more alternative science beliefs. She loves crystals. She prefers supplements to Western medicine. And she reads astrology like it's the news.

So growing up, I knew that I was a lot like my sign, Aquarius: independent, aloof, a little bit odd. But as I grew older, my belief in science put me at odds with her, and it led to a lot of fights.

For example, my mom will not drink tap water because of the fluoride. And in Grade 11, I told her, “Well, that's so silly. Obviously, fluorine, the ion, has a full octet of electrons and, therefore, is not dangerous. Duh.”

I also hated hypocrisy. And she was a smoker. Inside. Yes. So I would tell her very rudely that smoking was way more dangerous than drinking tap water. And that pissed her off. So instead of debating me on the science, she would tell me a list of all of my faults instead. It led to a lot of fights, and we basically didn't really talk about science ever again.

Years later, when I was coming home from my university exams, I went up to her room to ask her a question. I saw that one entire wall was full of tinfoil.

“To stop the neighbor's Wi‑Fi,” she said.

I knew that any condescension on my part would lead to a 30‑minute lecture on all of my flaws. So I tried to explain to her that Wi-Fi, the wavelength, is actually so big that it's not dangerous. It can't damage our DNA. It would basically be like trying to cut a cucumber with a pool noodle, right? She didn't appreciate that.

Finally, I pulled out the big guns. “Mom, don't we also have Wi‑Fi?” And I walked away. I don't know if she believed me, but the next time I went up there, there was no tinfoil, and we stopped discussing science.

Ten years later, in April 2021, I was living the dream. I was renting a cheap apartment with all my best friends and the pandemic shutdowns were just ending. Everything was opening up, but I was too tired to enjoy it, which was very odd for me. I also lost my appetite, I felt nauseous all the time, and I started throwing up every day, which was fine. I had experienced what I like to call the pukes before from anxiety. Anyone else? I had the pukes a lot, and I figured this was just kind of pandemic stress, money stress.

But then I started getting huge purple bruises all over my body. At that point, my friends were like, “Doctor now!”

So I went to the doctor and I got a whole bunch of blood tests and a chest x‑ray. It turns out, nothing was wrong. I was totally fine. The tests all came back negative. Which was more evidence for me that it was all in my head.

Over the next few weeks and months, I got worse and worse. My internal monologue, which normally was going a mile a minute, slowed down and quieted and quieted into nothing, which at first I loved. A chronic overthinker, I couldn't overthink if I tried. And as someone suffering from lifelong insomnia, I was falling asleep everywhere. It was kind of awesome. I even told my friends that I kind of like this head‑empty feeling.

But professionally, things were a mess. I am a science and math teacher. I tutor online. And I started to forget how to teach topics that I'd been teaching for years. Most disturbingly of all, I was unable to follow conversations anymore. A student would ask a question, and I saw the beginning of the question disappear in my brain by the time they got to the end of the question. I couldn't functionally do my job and I got fired from a lot of clients.

I really felt like I was losing my mind, but I really didn't have the energy to do anything about it. I also noticed that all of my symptoms got worse the longer I was in the house. But I didn't want to give in to these paranoid thoughts, remembering my mom's tinfoil wall. Sure, the Wi‑Fi router was under my bed, and all of our appliances were old and, sometimes, when the neighbors were cooking downstairs, there'd be a weird smell intermittently. But it couldn't be the house, right?

I even told my landlord about the smell. And he said, “Oh, it's fine. I just got the furnace replaced. There's nothing to worry about.”

But by late August, I was seriously ill. I wasn't able to eat or to sleep for several days, and my heart was pounding out of my chest so quickly that I thought I was going to die.

I somehow, in a haze, drove to my parents' house, got inside, laid down on their living room floor, and had a mental breakdown. I was so confused from lack of sleep that I was having trouble determining what was real and what was like my dream state. And just like with dinosaurs and dragons, I needed my parents to tell me what was real. I was basically teetering on the edge of psychosis and I was determined to logic my way out of it. Typical Aquarius.

Also, the thought of dying or losing my mind was so scary that all of my other fears went away. Isn't that nice? So all of my fears of my mom completely went away. I was actually able to tell her how her temper affected me growing up.

Now a more calm and healed version of herself, she was so apologetic. She apologized so much and suggested some supplements to me, which I refused.

After a few hours on the floor, I did feel better, but I still stayed at my parents' house for a couple days. And by the end of that week, I felt all the way back to normal. So I went back into my apartment where I slowly got worse again.

I thought, “Hmm, maybe it really is the house.” But I had three roommates who were fine, which represented to me three data points that I was wrong and it was all in my head.

Since it was September and my work had started again, I really, really needed to be on my game. So I decided that since I wasn't really able to eat or keep things down, I probably had a couple of vitamin deficiencies, so I went to pick up some vitamins.

In the vitamin store, there were shelves full of supplements. I saw one that advertised that it was for fatigue and stress. Sure, I said. But it was cheap enough that I picked it up, just maybe to prove one more time that my mom was wrong.

I took it later that day and, hours later, I was shocked. I actually did feel better. But I chalked it up to the placebo effect, of course. I pretty much figured I just wanted to be better so badly that I've tricked myself into being better. That must be it. Because, surely, my mother can't be right about supplements.

I knocked off a whole bunch of chores that I'd been putting off for weeks. And it made me wonder, is the placebo effect that strong? Or was my mom actually right about supplements? I had to figure out the mechanism.

So I started reading about the science and history of plant‑based medicines called ethnobotany. I learned that, historically, a lot of indigenous populations had studied medicinal plants and that they made these chemical compounds that could actually affect how animals behaved. Probably, you guys have tried some coffee, tea. So I figured that they were real.

And while some do seem to be snake oil, I learned that the particular supplement that I picked up was historically used for altitude sickness. It had all the same symptoms that I had. I was throwing up. I had a headache. I was tired all the time. And I was always nauseous. But I didn't live on a mountain, so how was it working?

And I was still wary of supplements, right? I knew that some of it was snake oil. I knew that some of the science papers were biased. I knew that this wasn't my area of expertise. And there's a lot of lack of regulation, so I only took them really on and off.

Then in December, things were getting worse again. The smell in my apartment had gotten worse and worse the colder it got. I was watching TV when I smelled the intermittent basement smell again. It had gotten stronger and kind of smelled like sewage mixed with breakfast. And I decided, you know what? Maybe my landlord will listen this time, so I texted him.

This time, he did take it seriously. He called Enbridge. An hour later, he was at my door visibly shaken. It turns out that my neighbors downstairs had moved out nine months ago, exactly when my symptoms started. When they moved out, they had moved a very old gas stove and the gas had been leaking into the vent into my room, which was kind of cool for me, because I realized the supplement worked because I, too, was starved of oxygen for so long.

I was thrilled to have an answer, and I started recovering. Although it took a long time, I sued my landlord, and I won. Yes. Not enough money. And while my recovery took over a year, I do finally have my life back now.

What this experience taught me is that evidence, facts, and numbers are great foundations, but not everything is easily quantified or measured. While skepticism is healthy and mechanisms of action are important, many things are more complicated than high school science classes. I also learned that listening with an open mind, even when disagreeing, can help repair fraught relationships and build connections that help everyone learn and understand.

My illness helped repair my relationship with my mother, allowing us a deeper understanding and respect of one another. And while I don't tinfoil my walls, my mom and I do respectfully talk about science, supplements, and astrology. And every time I travel, she packs three crystals in my luggage that she says will prevent the plane from crashing. She calls them the Boeing crystals. And I got to say, every single time, they have worked. I don't know the mechanism, but maybe I don't have to.

Thank you so much.