What Cults Tell Us About Ourselves | Amber Scorah Scorah | TEDxPaloAltoSalon

Amber Scorah is author of the memoir Leaving the Witness. Growing up in the Jehovah’s Witness faith, Scorah moved to mainland China to become an underground missionary. In China, she came to question these beliefs and left the religion. Shunned by family and friends as an apostate, Scorah was alone in Shanghai and thrown into a world she had only known from the periphery, with no education or support system. After growing up in the Jehovah’s Witness faith, Amber learned Mandarin Chinese and moved to Mainland China to become an underground missionary. In China, encountering a new culture and making friends outside the faith for the first time, Amber came to question the beliefs she had been taught from childhood and ended up leaving the religion. Amber later moved to New York City, where she began a new life. Several years later, her three-month old son died on his first day in childcare. After this tragedy, Amber became a parental leave advocate.