Bethany Joy Lenz to Detail “Spiritual Abuse” Suffered in Cult in Upcoming Memoir

Bethany Joy Lenz is ready to pull back the curtain on a challenging time of her life. 

The One Tree Hill alum revealed that she will be releasing a memoir early next year during which she'll recount her 10 years in a cult. 

"There's a lot to tell," she shared with People in a August 9 interview, adding that her years in the unnamed cult overlapped with her time on the CW drama and involved "spiritual abuse."

"Recovery looks different for everyone, depending on your experience of trauma," Bethany explained, adding that part of her decade-long recovery process has included therapy. "I had to start from a baseline of my personal understanding of God and the experiences I had had. And then there was a lot of going back to who I was before and remembering that, and then acknowledging that there was so much I just didn't know."

But when it came to putting pen to paper, the 42-year-old said it wasn't the writing that was the hard part. 

"I'm a writer at heart, so turning a phrase is easy for me," she explained. "Exploring the memories, and really facing them, can be challenging, but I'm doing it."

Bethany first revealed she'd been involved with a cult last month on Drama Queens, the podcast she hosts alongside fellow OTH alums Sophia Bush and Hilarie Burton. 

"I was in a cult for 10 years," she said during the July 10 episode. "That would be a really valuable experience to write about, and the recovery—you know, 10 years of recovery after that. So there's a lot to tell."

And though she remained tight-lipped on specific details, at the time citing legal reasons, the Pearson actress explained why it's taken so long to tell her story and expressed interest in writing about her experience.

"But the pressure of getting it right," she shared, "and everything having to be exactly real, and all the people that are involved. I think the ADHD has made it really difficult over the years too... I have lots of essays and lots of chapters and things."

But with the announcement of her memoir, it sounds as though she's taken that final step in sharing her story. 

"But to really commit to putting it all together," Bethany shared on the podcast, "I would love to write about my experience."

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