She wasn’t standing under the shower — she was sitting on the floor, fully clothed, the water soaking her like cold rain. Her hands were pressed to her temples, and in front of her lay a waterproof speaker connected to her phone. But what froze my heart was the voice coming from it.

It wasn’t a friend.
It wasn’t a man on a call.

It was a voice — calm, steady, almost hypnotic — repeating sentences that sounded like commands.

“You feel guilty.”
“You must cleanse yourself.”
“You don’t deserve comfort.”
“You must become smaller, emptier, quieter.”
“You must obey.”

My skin crawled.

She wasn’t relaxing.
She wasn’t meditating.
She was being indoctrinated.

The voice spoke with certainty, like a priest of some cruel religion. And she listened — trembling, nodding, the water beating down on her like punishment.

I wanted to burst into the bathroom, grab her, shake her awake. But I couldn’t move. I was pinned to the spot by the sheer horror of realization:

My daughter-in-law was in the clutches of something dark.
Something psychological.
Something invasive.

Suddenly she whispered — voice barely audible under the water:

“I am unworthy. I am broken. I must be fixed.”

My heart cracked.

I thought she was quiet by nature.
I thought she was just calm, reserved.
But now I understood:
Her silence wasn’t peace — it was suppression.

She finally turned off the water and just sat there, dripping, hugging her knees. The voice from the speaker murmured:

“You will not speak of this. No one must know. Pain is purification.”

That was the moment I couldn’t take it anymore.

I pushed the door open.

She looked up — and I saw terror in her eyes, the terror of someone who’d just been caught escaping a prison she didn’t even realize she was inside.

I said her name softly — and her face collapsed into tears. Not dramatic tears — not cinematic — but the quiet hopeless kind, as if her soul had been eroded over time.

She whispered:

“They told me this would help me be a better wife… a better woman… They told me I need to earn my place.”

They.

Not one person — a group.

I helped her out of the bathroom, wrapped her in a towel, and she sobbed into my shoulder like a child. My mind raced:
Who had gotten inside her head?
Who was filling her with this engineered guilt?
Was it some online group? A so-called “self-improvement” program? A cult disguised as therapy?

When my son came home later, I didn’t attack him, didn’t blame him — I asked him a question instead, one that forced truth to surface:

“How long has she been told that she isn’t good enough?”

He flinched.
His eyes dropped.
And then, like a dam breaking, he confessed:

It began after their engagement.
An “exclusive mentorship group” for young wives — recommended by a woman from his office. A group that “teaches humility and obedience” to women. They pressured her, manipulated her, twisted her.

Those three-hour showers weren’t vanity — they were rituals of self-erasure.

And now?
Now she is in therapy — with a real professional, not a voice in the shadows.

The waterproof speaker is gone.
The “group” is reported.
The number is blocked.
The bathroom is quiet again.

And sometimes, when she showers now, I hear something else from behind the door — something that feels like sunlight breaking through:

She’s singing.

Not loudly.
Not perfectly.
But freely.

And every note tells me the same thing:

The girl who once sat under drowning water is finding her voice again — and this time, no one will silence it.