Amber Scorah

Amber Scorah is a Canadian-American writer, speaker, and activist.

Amber Scorah
Born
Canada
EducationThe City University of New York, Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies[1]
Notable work
Memoir: Leaving the Witness
Home townVancouver, Canada
Movementpaid parental leave, child care letter grading, ExJW
Websitewww.amberscorah.com

Early life

Scorah grew up as a third-generation Jehovah's Witness in Vancouver, Canada with her parents and sister. She rarely had contact with "worldly people" (non-Jehovah's Witnesses). She forwent a formal education and career, and instead went into the full-time volunteer preaching work immediately after graduating high school. She says, "If the world is ending, why would you go to college?...Why would you get a career?" When she was 19 years old her congregation elders disfellowshipped her for having premarital sex, and she was immediately shunned by her family and friends. While she was disfellowshipped she continued to abstain from associating with "worldly people," except for necessary contact at work or the grocery store. She recalls frequently "losing [her] voice" after long weekends in her apartment with zero human contact. Two years later the elders approved her appeals for reinstatement, at which point her family and friends stopped shunning her. When she was 22 years old she married a Jehovah's Witness elder, then she and her husband moved to China to become missionaries.[2][3][4][5]

Education

As a young adult, Scorah forwent a formal education after high school (see early life above).[2] In 2010 she enrolled in college at CUNY's Brooklyn and Hunter colleges. She took a break in 2015, then resumed her studies in spring 2019. She is currently enrolled in CUNY BA's program for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies. She is concentrating in the Psychology of Religion at Hunter College's program in religion, under the guidance of faculty member Barbara Sproul.[1][6]

ChinesePod and "Dear Amber"

Scorah is a fluent speaker of Mandarin Chinese and has lived in both Taiwan and China, where she became immersed in Chinese culture.[7][4] Between the years 2007 and 2009 she hosted a ChinesePod series called "Dear Amber" where she answered listeners' questions about China and discussed unique aspects of Chinese culture and customs which foreigners may not be aware of. ChinesePod describes Scorah as a "pioneer" for developing this new lesson style.[8]

Child care and parental leave advocacy

In 2015 Scorah's three-month-old son Karl Towndrow died unexpectedly on his first day of daycare in SoHo, New York. The daycare had been operating without a license and was shut down shortly after the incident. A staff member stated that she had noticed Karl kicking in his crib but she was told by a supervisor to ignore it because that's what babies do. He was found unresponsive with "blue lips" a short time later, and pronounced dead at the hospital.[9][10] Scorah had not felt ready to go back to work and leave him at daycare, which made the incident particularly difficult to cope with. She walked into the daycare and witnessed a staff member administering CPR "incorrectly," despite their earlier assurances that the staff was properly trained to administer CPR. She later found out that he had been put to sleep on his side. Since the official cause of death was "undetermined," she does not know if it could have been prevented; however, she regrets that her son had to die alone without his mother. The incident drove her into activism.[11][12]

Letter grading

In a joint press conference with senators Jeffrey D. Klein and Diane Savino, Scorah and her partner Lee Towndrow pushed for the city and state of New York to institute a letter grading system for child care facilities. She feels that a letter grading system could prevent more deaths in the future because parents would have more tools available to assess a given daycare's safety and qualifications.[11]

Scorah authored a "viral"[13] article for The New York Times' Motherlode blog about the incident from her perspective. In it she explained why she thinks mandatory paid parental leave is necessary. She says, "Parental leave reduces infant death, gives us healthier, more well-adjusted adults and helps women stay in the workforce." First lady Michelle Obama was so moved by her story that she sent a letter of condolence to Scorah. Soon thereafter Barack Obama's senior adviser Valerie Jarrett made a push for legislation mandating paid family leave.[12][14] In February 2016 Scorah attended New York City mayor Bill de Blasio's speech where he discussed his policy mandating 6 weeks' paid parental leave for non-union city employees, and pushed for the policy to be made available throughout the state of New York. Scorah called this policy change a "baby step."[15] In August 2016 Scorah delivered petitions to both the Trump and Clinton presidential campaigns pushing for federally mandated paid leave. Both politicians have spoken favorably of the concept. Donald Trump pitched a plan for how he could institute 6 weeks' paid parental leave. Scorah says this is progress but it's not enough.[12][16] In 2017 CNN correspondent Clare Sebastian named Amber as her "hero" for "...her bravery in turning such a tragic event into public and heartfelt campaign."[17] That same year Brooklyn Magazine named her one of their top "100 Influencers in Brooklyn Culture" for her parental leave advocacy.[18]

Coping after the death of a child

In May 2019 she wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times entitled "Surviving the Death of My Son After the Death of My Faith". She says, "Several years after leaving my religion, I felt sure I had encountered all the situations I might possibly need to get used to in my new life. What I had not prepared myself for was death...And then my baby died." She describes the pain of trying to cope without the hope of resurrection, and the awkwardness of accepting condolences from religious people.[19] In June she wrote another article for The New York Times entitled "Having a Child After Losing a Child", where she describes the complex emotions that came with having a second child less than a year after losing her first.[20] The final chapter of her memoir Leaving the Witness recounts the period of time surrounding Karl's death. Reviewer C.E. Morgan says of this chapter, "her description of that loss in terse, blunted prose is deeply moving...Given the enormity of her grief and the wholesale collapse of her previous belief system, the intellectual integrity that Scorah displays is nothing short of a miracle."[13]

High-control groups

Scorah began speaking out publicly about her life as a Jehovah's Witness in 2013 in her article Leaving the Witness: A Preacher Finds Freedom To Think In Totalitarian China published by The Believer magazine. In it she speaks about her restrictive childhood and disfellowshipment as a teenager, her life as an illegal missionary in China (see persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in China), her gradual change of belief, and her eventual apostasy trial and shunning.[4] In 2019 she expounded on this story in her memoir Leaving the Witness.[5] The Daily Show's Trevor Noah told her, "You truly believed in a way that I find admirable...you left America and moved to China to preach...where its illegal to do that...What's really beautiful, though, is when you start witnessing the change. Because you go out to be a missionary to these people out there to tell them about being a Jehovah's Witness, and in a strange way its almost like they start converting you."[21] ExJW activist Lloyd Evans expresses how the book is "fascinating" even to former Jehovah's Witnesses because, "Jehovah's Witnesses still think of China as 'the frontier'...everything is done under-cover...you're lifting lid on this very kind of unknown element of Witness life, even to Witnesses."[22] Scorah has attracted the attention of former members of other high-control groups, such as Dr. John Dehlin of Mormon Stories Podcast. He interviewed Scorah and mused on the similarities between the two groups, especially "surrounding the struggle to form a new identity after leaving."[23] Amber did multiple speaking engagements in 2019 about high-control groups, including a TEDx Talk entitled What Cults Tell Us About Ourselves.[24]

List of works
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Books
  • Scorah, Amber (2019). Leaving the Witness: Exiting Religion And Finding A Life. Viking Press. ISBN 9780735222540.

Podcasts

Articles and essays

Talks and panels

Media appearances and interviews
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

References
  1. "CUNY EVENTS: BOOK TALK WITH AMBER SCORAH – LEAVING THE WITNESS". The City University of New York.
  2. Martin, Rachel (2019-06-05). 'Leaving The Witness': The End Of The World As She Knew It, Upon Losing Her Religion. Morning Edition. NPR.
  3. Scorah, Amber (11 September 2019). 'Book Talk' with CUNY BA Student Amber Scorah (Speech). Moderated by Mohamad Bazzi. Elebash Recital Hall, The Graduate Center.
  4. Scorah, Amber (2013-02-01). "Leaving the Witness: A PREACHER FINDS FREEDOM TO THINK IN TOTALITARIAN CHINA". The Believer Magazine.
  5. Scorah, Amber (2019). Leaving the Witness: Exiting A Religion And Finding A Life. Viking. ISBN 9780735222540.
  6. "CUNY BA Student Amber Scorah Publishes Memoir". 2019-06-14. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
  7. https://www.amberscorah.com/about
  8. "CHINESEPOD'S FOUNDING STORY". Chinese Pod. 10 October 2019. Retrieved 12 November 2019.
  9. Southall, Ashley (2015-07-14). "Infant at Unlicensed Day Care Is Taken to a Hospital and Dies". The New York Times: 17.
  10. Yee, Vivian (2015-07-15). "Unlicensed SoHo Day Care Is Shut After Death of Infant Boy". The New York Times: 23.
  11. Gartland, Michael; Harfenist, Ethan (2015-11-05). "Parents, pols push for daycare letter ratings after baby's death". New York Post.
  12. Scorah, Amber (2015-11-15). "A Baby Dies at Day Care, and a Mother Asks Why She Had to Leave Him So Soon". The New York Times. Motherlode. Retrieved 2019-11-13.
  13. Morgan, C. E. (1 July 2019), When Leaving a Religion Is Like Abandoning a Cult, The New York Times, Many readers know Scorah through her viral article in The New York Times about the death of her son on his first day of day care.
  14. Kim, Eun Kyung (2015-11-19). "How Amber Scorah, whose baby died in daycare, is turning heartbreak into a crusade". Today. Retrieved 2019-11-14.
  15. DURKIN, ERIN (2016-02-03). "Parents of baby who died in SoHo daycare will attend Mayor de Blasio's speech to support paid parental leave". New York Daily News. Retrieved 2019-11-15.
  16. Sebastian, Clare (2017-03-08). "The fight for paid family leave". CNN.
  17. "CNN correspondents and anchors reveal their heroes". CNN. 2017-03-31. Retrieved 2019-11-14.
  18. Rinn, Natalie (13 March 2017). "Brooklyn 100 Influencer: Amber Scorah, Activist for Paid Parental Leave". Brooklyn Magazine.
  19. Scorah, Amber (2019-05-31). "Surviving the Death of My Son After the Death of My Faith". The New York Times.
  20. Scorah, Amber (2019-06-04). "Having a Child After Losing a Child".
  21. Noah, Trevor (4 June 2019). "Amber Scorah". The Daily Show. Episode 3266. Comedy Central.
  22. Evans, Lloyd (4 June 2019). "A conversation with Amber Scorah (exJW author of "Leaving the Witness")". The John Cedars Channel.
  23. Dehlin, John (2019-06-14). AMBER SCORAH – LEAVING THE WITNESS: EXITING RELIGION AND FINDING A LIFE (Podcast). Mormon Stories.
  24. Scorah, Amber (2019-10-22). What Cults Tell Us About Ourselves. TEDx Talks.
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