Catherine Coldstream

speaker

329 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 24 Jul

Catherine Coldstream’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Fresh Air · A former nun on why she ran away from her 'Cloistered' life · 24 Jul 2026 podcast

Of course, it's a dramatic moment in the book.

In reality, I think that there were other things that were far more shocking.

I think that the fact that somebody cracked out and beat me, yeah, of course, it's horrible.

But basically, I felt that the psychological sort of psychological cruelty was much more difficult to cope with.

Because this was something that lasted 10 minutes when I was dragged out of bed and beaten.

And nobody knew that we were alone again, you know, behind closed doors in an infirmary cell.

And, you know, I wasn't disabled by it.

I mean, I wasn't sort of, you know, I could still function afterwards.

I was just a bit bruised and a bit sore and a bit shocked.

But basically, psychological sort of...

Cruelty, I suppose, for want of a better word, is something much harder to deal with when you're very isolated and you've got nobody to talk to about it.

Well, I think there was a sort of withholding of human warmth and affection and compassion.

There was also lots of deliberate little humiliations that certain people might in authority administer to younger sisters in order to, quote unquote, keep them humble or break their spirit.

This was a very traditional thing in monasticism that you would be made to feel small, that you'd be made to feel unloved or rejected.

And it was all part of sort of character formation.

It sounds stark just saying it in the cold light of day, but it was like that.

And you felt terribly lonely and terribly crushed by some of these sort of things.

Well, I think the night I ran away, I'd obviously reached breaking point.

But I didn't break.

Actually, I think I ran away to forestall breaking point.

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