'I'veTaken My Life Back'

IT HAS BEEN A DIFFICULT FIVE YEARS OF HEALING SINCE OXENBERG LEFT THE NXIVM CULT IN 2018, BUT SHE'S DISCOVERING JOY AGAIN: 'I'M LEARNING WHO I WANT TO BE' 

- EILEEN FINAN

India Oxenberg was at home in Key West, Fla., one Saturday morning in July when she had the overwhelming urge to dance. She put on the song “Belly Dancer” by Imanbek & BYOR, blasted the driving beat and began twirling, swinging her hips and tossing her hair. And then she made her happy dance public on Instagram, a move that “made me sweat like crazy, but who cares? That’s the mindset I’m building,” she says. “I find myself having moments now where I let myself just enjoy being alive in this body. I feel free.”

Not long ago such unfettered joy would have been unthink able. In 2018 Oxenberg escaped the headline-making NXIVM cult, a group that subjected her to physical and mental abuse—including branding, forced sex and starvation—during the seven years she was in its clutches before her mother, actress Catherine Oxenberg, 62, helped free her, and the two assisted the FBI in bringing down the cult (see sidebar). But India carried the pain long afterward. “Getting out was only the beginning,” she says. “I had no f---ing clue what I was up against. These past five years have been heavy—and scary—but you can’t rush the healing.”

Now 32, India has built a new life in Key West with her husband of three years, chef Patrick D’Ignazio, 32, and has discovered a renewed confidence: “In NXIVM, so much energy was put toward self-hatred. My mind’s not consumed by that anymore, but it’s taken time to feel that I have value.”