My time in Al-Anon pt. 2

The first post is available here.

In Al-Anon meetings we hear the three Cs describing our powerlessness over alcoholism: we didn't cause it, can't cure it, and can't control it. We begin to learn the basic Al-Anon premise of taking our focus off of the alcoholic and keeping the focus on ourselves. Hard as it is to look at our own part in our problems, acceptance of Step One brings relief from impossible responsibilities. We were trying to fix a disease - and someone else's disease at that!

Powerlessness. The first step of Al-Anon, like the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous and a whole host of other 12 step groups, begins with powerlessness. The biggest problem in my life - my husband's drinking - was out of my control. I wanted to cure him. I didn't want to give in to the idea that he must drink forever, and these people seemed to believe their spiritual principles would help him quit and stay sober, and maybe even find this "serenity" they all spoke of.

But Al-Anon said, even though 12 Steps was the best shot at sobriety he had, I couldn't cure him or control him. But he wouldn't go to the meetings. He always had some excuse why he didn't want to go, even if I offered to drive him. For all his talk of not wanting me to leave him, he wasn't making any effort to keep me.

Still, it was time to take my focus off of him and turn it to myself. Like most of the advice I got from Al-Anon, this was double-edged. As a brand new mom in financial straits and poor health, I had a lot of my own stuff to focus on, and being away from Roni and his problems was good for me. But it also invited me to ignore his bad behavior. After all, I shouldn't worry about that mote in his eye till I'd done an exhaustive "moral inventory" of everything I'd ever done wrong in my entire life and confessed it to my sponsor.

Of course, I hadn't caused Roni's alcoholism or his "problem drinking" and Al-Anon was quick to tell me that. Just as quickly, Al-Anon let me know it was important that I look at "my part" in his drinking. Let me say that another way: I can't cause, cure, or control his drinking, but I need to focus on my part of his drinking problem.

They kept telling me alcoholism was a disease. My husband loved that. He would remind me, gleefully ad manipulatively, "You took a vow before GOD to love me in sickness and in health. I have a disease! It's not my fault." But even as I accepted most of what Al-Anon told me unquestioned, it seemed like an imperfect analogy to me.

Maybe some people do have an allergic or addictive response to alcohol. They shouldn't drink. It's just incredibly simple to me. Okay, that's probably over simplisitc. I know I'm not a big fan of people saying the cure for anorexia is to "just eat" but really, that IS what an anorexic must do to recover. The most I could ever swallow the "addiction as disease" model was to think it might be like diabetes. Some people really do just have to abstain from sugar, and some from alcohol.

Still, they stressed, it was a spiritual disease. I should treat him just the same as if he had lung cancer. But having lung cancer doesn't make people violent. Drinking alcohol did for my husband (even worse was when the buzz wore off.)

I tried to get myself in line with Al-Anon principles. I tried to accept my powerlessness, my lack of agency. Later steppers would assure me this would be freeing. Once I turned my life over to God and quit trying to run things myself (which I was obviously no good at, or else why would I have to come to Al-Anon?) everything would be great.

Having a "conscious contact" with a "Higher Power" has nothing to do with stopping drinking. Of course, at the time I was very religious. Nothing drew me closer to God than a desperate attempt to salvage my marriage and to be a good godly wife and mother. I hadn't meant to play the part so soon, but I was damn skippy going to do a good job of it, now that I'd landed the role.

So how could I be the best I knew how, while getting myself out of "denial" and accepting my own powerlessness? A sponsor would guide me on that path.

(More to come soon.) Excerpt from "Paths to Recovery: Al-Anon's Steps, Traditions, and Concepts and use under Fair Use terms.

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My time in Al-Anon pt. 1

I've answered a couple Formspring questions on AA and 12 Step groups recently, and I've talked about why I think they are cults. What I haven't talked about in any depth is my own experience with these groups. This will be a series of posts, mixing in current research and data and my own memories of my two years in Al-Anon. I will try to show why I believe they are a cult, and provide evidence to back up my claim.

Initial Impression

I knew Roni's drinking and drug abuse was a primary cause of our marital strife. I thought if I could just get him to quit drinking, then we could work on everything else. I could hold my marriage together through sheer effort and force of will. I picked up a book on "Seven Keys to Sobriety." Apparently, if I just spent a few hundred dollars on vitamin supplements and kept my husband locked up somewhere for a week, I could detox him through the healing powers of alternative medicine and make him a brand new man. Unfortunately, I didn't have the couple thousand bucks it would have cost to do such a thing, before even looking at the expense of an inpatient addiction recovery center. We were going to have to do this on the cheap.

So I looked at Alcoholics Anonymous. I'd only ever heard good things about the group, and I'd even recommended on a vague sense of their good reputation that a high school boyfriend attend Ala-Teen meetings, to get help coping with his dad's excessive drinking and the violence that went on in their home.

I decided to attend an Al-Anon meeting. I'd heard it was a support group for the family and friends of alcoholics, and I sure needed some support. I had, after all, just gotten married, had a baby, and separated from my husband to go live with my disapproving mother. I had also just undergone unanesthetized surgery at a walk-in clinic to remove a staph infection that was killing me, and I had a broken ankle I couldn't afford to have looked at by a doctor.

I had my mom go with me and the baby, since I couldn't exactly drive with my broken right ankle. We got to the Methodist church and school about a mile down the road and looked for the meeting. It was in one of the classrooms -upstairs. I had brought my son's stroller, because I thought that would make it easy for my mom to keep him placated while I listened, but I hadn't counted on stairs. Two AA guys, meeting in the room next door, were kind enough to hoist the stroller up the stairs while my mom carried my son, and I hobbled up the stairs with my crutches, in a too-large borrowed walking cast.

My first impression was that the people in the meeting were off somehow. I told my mom as we left that they seemed like cult members. Some things stood out as "not quite right" like the part one lady read aloud about "only conference approved Al-Anon literature may be read." I was reading everything I could on addiction and alcoholism, and it seemed weird to limit myself to just one possible course of action. But, the women assured me, there really was no other way my husband would get sober. He needed AA and he needed it now.

Well, it was worth a shot. They themselves advised that I attend six meetings before deciding whether or not Al-Anon was right for me. So, it wasn't like I had to make up my mind right away. I could just check it out for a few more weeks, and I could always leave if I didn't like it, right?

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Faith Healing Fail

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Sorry I Knocked

These videos aren't new. I found them the same week I stumbled across WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com and bought a copy of "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" by Christopher Hitchens. I found them a month after I realized I'd been raised in a cult, and they were profoundly helpful to me. I think just about everything I've done in the past year and a half can be credited to those sources of inspiration and more. I'm awed by the strength and grace of Aayan Hirsi Ali, of Carolyn Jessop, of Astra & Jenna Miscavige. I'm thankful for the four horsemen, for their thinking and analyzing, for the beautiful words and illustration they've crafted. I'm thankful to the Atheist Community of Austin, for being such a positive example of how atheists, with our disparate views, can work together to provide social opportunities for a marginalized minority.

So here they are, the Sorry I Knocked videos that lit the anti-theist fire in my belly.

I gotta say, the Bengal tiger does sound cool. Also, this poor woman has a ton of JW spam in her comments, so show her some love from ATAT, okay?

Hope everything is going well in Internet World. I'll have my very own wifi connection (instead of the neighbor's hacked one) on the 24th so prepare to be tweeted! (@antitheistangie for those of you not already following)

Cheers!

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Your Stories

I don't get hate mail. I can't tell if that means I'm not pushing enough buttons, I am pushing buttons but I'm doing it diplomatically, or I'm just not having that large of an impact. But I've gotten several letters, through email or facebook or twitlonger, that have really moved me. One family is working on financially separating themselves so that they can afford to leave the cult they no longer believe in. A young man asked me how he can help the girl he loves, who belongs to a conservative Christian sect and who loves him but thinks not believing is a sin. People have written about mental illness, eating disorders, and their own dysfunctional families. We have talked of all the most secret and shameful things, actions and motives and beliefs.

Thank you for trusting me with your stories and your secrets. Thank you for giving me the courage to keep writing, when I face something in my past that is dark or ugly or that I still carry shame for. Thank you for always reminding me that I am not completely alone, and that my story is not so different from someone else's. Sometimes I think the cult-indoctrinated sense of elitism makes it harder for me to believe anyone understands what I'm going through. Your letters cut right through that nonsense. Of course you understand. You've been there, too, whether it's the child abuse or the crappy marriage or the part-time job you hated, that first summer kiss, the freedom of a road trip, or how much you need your kids, my life is not out of sync with the rest of humanity anymore. I love you, Anteaters!

(Apparently mushiness is a side-effect of my new meds. It beats yesterday's paranoia though, so I'll take it.)

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God of the Gas Tank

I remember the night I Googled "Carol Balizet" and found cults. I read about the Attleboro sect, and this one strange incident where they ran out of gas and spent three days "laying hands" on the car, praying the Lord would fill their tank. This was at the beginning of my process, and I was still in a lot of denial about how bad my grandma's teachings really were. Then a couple weeks ago, during my first bout of "no internet", I read this in her book "Born in Zion":

There was really no gas at all. The needle was way down past the "E" and even with the great milage the van gets, there was no way we could make it to Lakeland. Bertha closed her eyes and put her hand on the dashboard.

"We're your servants, Lord, and we want to go where you send us, but we can't make it without a miracle. We ask you to meet our need now. In the name of Jesus, let there be gas," she prayed and the needle on the gas gauge jumped up past the quarter-full mark. Glory! Then she put a paper napkin over the gauge so we couldn't see it, and we started out. We drove all the way, singing and laughing, both of us absolutely positive we'd make it to Lakeland without a problem. We did.

The Attleboro followers were no crazier than my grandma, and in fact they were basing most of their lives on her teachings. I just hadn't realized she'd taught "God will fill your gas tank" so explicitly. She also promises that labor will be painless (throughout the book, she refuses to refer to a laboring woman as in "pain"; she prefers the word "discomfort"), that having a homebirth will strengthen your marriage (despite half the people mentioned in the book going through divorces by the time the second and third editions were printed), and that - as long as you are in a "blessable" position - God will give you absolutely everything you need, right down to gas in your tank.

In many ways, fictional god was the most loving parent I had, or thought I had. My mother was extremely detached during my early childhood, and I barely have any memories of her at all prior to moving away from Gig when I was 9. She swears she was around more, but I don't remember it. I remember her being busy writing her dissertation, and I remember standing outside her bedroom, staring at the closed door.

Gig was insane. She was also a lot of fun, and I enjoyed running errands with her and just sort of basking in her presence. She was so charming and disarming, she could insult you and get you to laugh right along with her.* She would hold me in her rocking chair and sing "Peace, Peace" to me when I had nightmares or was upset. Yet I know she didn't love me, or anyone else. She made a deal with God to kill my mother during her labor with my brother (he reneged). Just as my mom watched me struggle to walk with a limp and a cane, so did she. Just as my mother ignored all my emotional, mental health, and physical needs, so did Gig. The difference was that Gig drank her own Koolaid, but my mother didn't; she just served it to us.

No one made sure my teeth had been brushed, or my homework had been done. I could scarcely get the adults to notice me, but they told me that God loved me, that he was always with me, and that he knew me intimately. The illusion of god was more loving than the reality of either of the women raising me. God was supposed to do everything for me that they didn't - care for me, heal me, comfort me, love me. I can't be the only one that held onto God because he was better than the alternatives I'd been given.

A lot of times people make comments about religion being for the poor, but for me religion was for the poor in spirit.** "A broken heart and a contrite spirit, you have yet to deny" I sang in church and "He's got the whole world in his hands". So I believed and I prayed for the things I needed, instead of finding them some other way. I prayed for money, for a boyfriend, for a better car and better job. I prayed for my hip to get better, for my suicidalism to fade, for god to take my freewill away from me, so I wouldn't offend or disappoint him further. And when god failed to do those things for me, I turned the blame inward and sought out - How am I not blessable? What am I doing wrong that is preventing God from moving in my life?

I thought if I just got right with God, I'd have enough gas to make it home.

* Example: Gig told an African-American nurse she worked with during the 60s "Well, they say black is beautiful but you're kind of brown, so I guess you're just pretty."

**There are atheists in foxholes and below the poverty line.

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Speak No Evil

I blamed Gig for the molestation. Even then, I knew that what she had taught me was harmful and left me in a weakened state when a predator came by. She didn't have to kill people immediately, or with her own hands to be guilty of their deaths. She had told me - over and over and over - "Children should respect adults" and "Don't contradict your elders." Unstated but eminently understood was the subtext, "Adults are always right. If you disagree, you're wrong. Don't contradict your elders."

And so when a very old man told me that I should keep things between us, that it was "our little secret", who was I to contradict him? It took me a year to break through that nasty little bit of brainwashing and to tell my mother. I think I already must have been doing some kind of self-thought censoring to handle all the cognitive dissonance inherent in my childhood. I would manage to repress or block out all thoughts of it when it wasn't actually happening, for the better part of each day, right until bed time. Then, I'd be alone in the room my sister and I used to share, until my brother got kicked out and she moved into his room. The room was big and blue and I would be very lonely by myself in a queen's size bed.

After mom had shouted, "Lights out!" down the hall and I had put my book on the end table and turned off the lamp, the thoughts and feelings would all come rushing in. Guilt and shame and a horrible sick pleasure and confusion and betrayal. I knew the act made me feel horrible, but I also knew that adults were never wrong so I felt this was my crime, my sin, my fault it kept happening. My Giggy designed me to be a willing victim, because that was what worked for her. And she didn't care if that made me more vulnerable to everyone else. I see now that what I was doing those last two weeks I stayed up late, debating whether or not to tell my mother, until finally one night I did, was undoing brainwashing. I'm frankly amazed I as able to, in that environment.

To recognize a flaw in Gig was incredible, given the precepts of my reality. She wasn't just my grandmother, parent, or caretaker. She was my god. She was my Jesus. She seemed to have the power to make the sun rise and set, if she wanted to. And she told us - over and over and over - that she was not just accceptable but exceptional. Dr. Lifton (cult expert guy) has 8 criteria of a totalist control group. When I told the truth about Bob Kirby, pedophile old man, I also did serious damage to my grandmother's control over my words and my language. I could disagree with an adult and be right. Since Bob was just my friend's dad down the street, and not a family member like it is for a majority of molestation victims, I never felt betrayed by him. Obviouly he violated me, but he didn't owe me antyhing. No, I felt betrayed by my grandmother who I thought had the power and the direct-line with God to keep us safe but instead had made me more vulnerable.

And here I was thinking the time she killed a boy when I was 14 was the first time I questioned her.

One night, back in that big empty bedroom I broke free enough. I went out to the living room in my nightgown and socks and approached my mother. "Can you come to talk to me?" I told her. She was so upset. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?" She wished that she known so that she could have stopped it, and once I told her it was over. But because I was made to endure mental and physical abuse at the hands of the woman who supposedly loved me more than anyone else in the world, my Giggy, I had no idea it was my right to complain. Adults were always right and I was a piece of shit, right?

From that point on, I talked about it. I talked about it at school with my teachers and the other kids. When we watched the bad touch video in class, I told everyone that it could happen to them and how they should never be alone with an adult if their parents don't know about it, even if they knew the adult. I talked and I talked, and I felt better. It's amazingly simple the healing process for victims of sexual abuse - talk about it. Say and believe that it was not your fault or your doing, and you will get better. That's it! And I became somewhat allergic to secrets. Obviously. I would rather be naked and ugly and broken and real than be clothed in beautiful jewels and lush fabrics and living a lie.

I have OCD and saying it isn't going to make me crazier. It's going to allow me to treat it. My son has a speech delay. Saying that isn't a "negative confession" that's going to keep him mute for life. It was the first necessary step in getting him the past three years of comprehensive, free, speech therapy he's had. My husband was an alcoholic. Recognizing that and admitting it to myself helped me get the hell away from him. Living life on reality's terms works so much better. It is okay to say, "Houston, we have a problem." How else can anything ever get fixed or healed or better?
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Today's Lois McMaster Bujold quote (go read her books already!) is from "Mirror Dance".

He felt very strange. His fury at the violation of his privacy was fading, to be replaced by a light-heartedness that astonished him. He was greatly relieved, to be unburdned of his secrets. His dread was shrunken, as if giving it away had literally diminished it. I swear if I tell four more people, I'll be altogether free.



*That kid does look a little children of the corn, don't ya think?

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Gift Horse House

My grandmother bought me a mobile home when I was 19 - a $20,000 gift to me and my cousin. She paid to have the old carpeting and linoleum gutted, and for Van, one of her followers who'd recently moved with his wife to Florida to be near Giggy, to do all the labor. It sounds generous as hell, right? I mean, at the time I thought I owed her everything. The only reason I was able to afford moving out of my mom's house at the time was because she owned the building, and my cousin and I just had to pay lot rent. ($280 a month, or $140 each. I miss that rent.)

The catch? The trailer was across the street from hers, next door to my aunt Sally*. On a block with only five trailers, we were hedged in by elderly, nosy, intrusive relatives. I think she must have done it because she realized she was losing us. There were so many times, I see now, when I started to drift away and, like a cat mauling a lizard, she dragged me back.

Jason* and I had both attended public high school, and he had spent a few years living with his estranged dad who didn't follow our family's brand of reckless self-endangerment as his faith. (But the guy was an alcoholic who had three kids from three different women, all born within 4 months of each other, so it's not like I'm singing his praises or anything. He just wasn't our brand of crazy.) We were both sexually active by that age, and partook of weed and alcohol as opportunity allowed.

We tried to have this totally free young-adult lifestyle, but we were hampered by overbearing religious women on both sides. After some misadventures in cocaine use and my cousin bailing on me mid-month one day to go live with his future-ex-wife, Gig sold the trailer and I moved back in with my mother. I didn't move out again until I lived with my future-ex-husband, who I escaped by moving back in with my mother yet again, until one day she kicked me and my 2-year-old out with no notice for lacking sufficient "gratitude" for her allowing us to cover all the diaper, food, and other non-mortgage payment bills (and to use my car whenever she wanted, since she didn't own one at the time.)

Neither Jason nor I had a decent shot at a real childhood or a real young adulthood. Giggy met her need to constantly manipulate, micromanage, and control our lives - while giving us the illusion of freedom and selfless generosity. Since she had given us this generous home to live in, we owed her whatever she decided we needed to pay that day. Jason got sucked back into being her personal voodoo doll to move all her own pain, self-loathing, and depression onto, and I got sucked back into working for the cult and supporting her aims. I started the cult's (now gone) blog, in fact, as my very first foray into online writing.

I've never lived with anyone who wasn't actively attempting to manipulate or control me, or to tell me how I was allowed to feel and think. The only reason I have that luxury now is because I live alone (with a 4-year-old, but the "pwease??" manipulations of his age have no totalist power over me.) The closest I came before to freedom was in that trailer: sure the person who's name was on the deed wanted something from me; sure I was being blatantly manipulated - but only by the woman across the street, not by anyone inside my own four walls.

Maybe that's why I have a hard time accepting compliments or gifts. I feel there's bound to be an invoice someday, and I don't want to owe anyone anything of worth that could be used to manipulate or control me.

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From Bujold's "Komarr"

At a moment like this, she could really wonder why solitary confinement was considered such a severe punishment. Why, nobody could get at you.



* Names changed cause they didn't start a cult, so they get that courtesy.

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Merciless Ministries

This is the first post in what is going to be a very long series. My reader Sean the Blogonaut sent me to check out Mercy Ministries website. There MM claims that they provide "hope and healing for to generations of desperate young women who are seeking freedom from life-controlling problems such as: drug and alcohol addictions, depression, eating disorders, unplanned pregnancy, physical and sexual abuse, and self-harm.

Our free-of-charge biblically-based program serves a diverse population of young women from various socio-economic backgrounds, aged 13-28. Many of the girls, who come to Mercy for help, are facing a combination of debilitating circumstances and have been in various treatment facilities with unsuccessful long-term results. We are committed to providing the young women we serve with the most excellent program services that allow them to recognize their self-worth and prepare them to reach their full potential. Our non-conventional approach to healing allows young women to permanently stop destructive cycles and prepares them to take hope out into their communities."

As the resident crazy person at ATAT, let me please appraise of you of the various data points.

1. There is no quick and easy lifetime cure for addiction, eating disorders, depression, abuse, or self-harm. (There is a legal and safe solution to unplanned pregnancy, but you'd never guess it from their site.)
2. A "non-conventional" approach can be thought of like alternative medicine: "Not proven to work or proven not to work.*"
3. There is no one-sits-fits-all treatment protocol that effectively addresses the needs of abuse survivors, drug addicts, and bulimics.

It would be awfully nice if there were quick cures for those problems. Looking at this list, it looks like they're targeting girls like me for their program. I'm an abuse survivor of every category of abuse there is (mental, sexual, physical, spiritual/religious). My pregnancy with my son was most assuredly unplanned (although his eventual birth was delightfully anticipated by the end). I've suffered from eating disorder symptoms (everything from thinking "I'm fat" to extremely unhealthy behaviors: starving, over-exercising, abusing diet pills, abusing laxatives, throwing up - you name it. If it's gross and unhealthy, but effective at weight loss, I tried it.) I used to self-harm, but thankfully haven't done it in years and years now, and as a teenager I abused a lot of drugs.

Most people recover from these conditions, or regain control of their lives, within the context of their support community - friends, family, internet groups - rather than without any of these supportive elements, in a 6-month inpatient rehabilitation center. Therapy, support, time, emotional tools, and education on better coping skills (better stress management, healthy emotional releases, etc.) help people get better. It takes time and work, and there are slip ups. Secular programs don't promise to "permanently stop destructive cycles."

So, what is the program like? Can we get details on the treatment protocols and maybe information like - how many doctors/therapists are on staff? what are the counseling credentials? how many graduates return to destructive behaviors, or don't feel "cured" after 6 months in the program? what community resources are offered to these girls and women? does physical or sexual abuse occur on the premises, and what steps have been taken to prevent such a thing? These are important questions that you would imagine a girl or her parents might want to.

Well, a lot of this information isn't available directly on the website - it's on the application form. Okay, well how do I get one of those? First I had to give my name, email, address, and phone number. (I used 1122 Boogie Boogie Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94101 as my fake mailing address, and I use the phone number I had as a little kid, with a San Fran area code. What - doesn't everyone have made up data for online forms?)

MM requires people to provide personal information before they can get a link to the application form. (That's just weird, right?) Unlike a lot of youth residential facilities, Mercy Ministries is not used as an alternative to jail sentence for juvenile offenders, and they claim "No applicant can be sent to MM against her will or will enter the program without showing a sincere desire to change." I wonder how this applies to the girls who were there for unplanned pregnancy. I guarantee you, a desire for change (sincere or otherwise) is not really necessary. That baby's gonna come out eventually.

Or how about someone with depression? It's hard to desire anything when suffering from clinical depression. And while I believe the vast majority of people with eating disorders would like recovery, there is a lot of fear that recovery will just mean weight gain (and not the associated better coping skills and body acceptance that make weight gain an acceptable fate.) My initial gut suspicion, based on the repeated language about girls being properly willing to change (ex. "Applicants to MM should have a desire for help in a Christian atmosphere and should be willing to apply the principles of a biblical counseling program."), is that this group is preparing to blame their failure rate on the attitudes of their residents/patients, rather than on their "non-conventional approach."

The application must be filled out by the girl applying - "in your own handwriting" is underlined, which does make me wonder if they are discriminating against those with physical handicaps. I was an assistant in an office for a while, and one of the men I worked with had Parkinson's disease. Writing anything by hand was an extreme struggle for him, and the result was often illegible to anyone else. (I had no idea how to deal with this at the time, as the person required to type up his chicken scratch. I didn't want to be rude or inconsiderate of his disability, so I just guessed what he'd written, and typed that.)

So first you have to turn on the application, including a recent head-to-toe photograph, insurance information, and medical records. Then, "You will be required to listen to two teaching assignments on our website. You will receive this web link when you call in for further instructions. You must submit a summary of each teaching and what these messages mean to you before your phone interview can be scheduled. Please be sure to follow all the instructions on the letter provided with the link." Finally, you'll have an hour-long intake phone interview, during which they require you to "be alone and free to speak". So, more instructions are coming, but you have to jump through multiple hoops to get it.

I am a firm believer in freedom of information. Obviously. I mean, I'm writing an embarrassingly honest tell-all book about my family (to the great consternation of several of them). I think information should be free, with obvious exceptions. You shouldn't have to go through several steps of revealing personal data (including medical records, which are extremely personal and should always remain personal under HIPPA law) just to find out what the program actually consists of. The real purpose of such a hoop-jump arrangement is to withhold information until someone has "earned" it. (Think Scientology and the secret OT III teachings - which are now public record, thanks to court cases.)

Someone who invests a lot of effort into getting "accepted" into the program, is more likely to ignore their own instincts once they arrive, and to do their best to follow group norms. Which, you know, cult leaders love. Many youth residential facilities operate and behave as cults; from what I've seen in the past day of snooping around, Mercy Ministries is one of them.

I found this great list of mind control tactics at Cultwatch.com. Individually, each of these elements may be harmful; combined they are mind control.

• Deception
• Exclusivism
• Fear and Intimidation
• Love Bombing
• Information Control
• Reporting Structure
• Loaded Language
• Time Control
• Relationship Control
• Personal Identity Replacement

Okay, so let's take this list and apply it to Mercy Ministries.

1. Deception - Mercy Ministries claims to be a free-of-charge program, but further digging within the application revealed, "I, ____ (print name), have read the above medical information and am aware of the required deposits... I also understand that the total of all medical expenses.. are my responsibility to pay in full."
   
   Okay, so it's free but it's still my responsibility to pay in full. (Kind of like Jesus' "free" gift, huh?) Mercy Ministries Survivors in Australia report that their Centrelink (Social Security) checks were submitted directly to MM, with only 5% going to the recipient. Charity Navigator reports Mercy Ministries in Nashville, TN has over $7.7 million in net assets, and took in $6.8 million in 2007 alone.
   
   
2. Exclusivism - Since MM's home page stated that they're able to "permanently stop destructive cycles" of girls who have had no success in other (real) programs, I think we can assume there's a bit of exclusivity. This article Sean scanned in from the Perth Voice ought to make this a bit clearer. Also, in the interviews below you'll hear MM graduates describe being told, "No one else can help you. Only we can help you."
   
   
3. Fear and Intimidation - Since they use exorcisms to treat eating disorders, drug addiction, (pregnancy?), and mental illness, I'm just going to leap to the conclusion that people living there feel fear and intimidation. I'm basing this on the fact that exorcisms are scary as shit, and because it's how I felt when I was sent to a religious cult for drug problems as a teenager.
   
   
4. Love Bombing - Here's an article from a former Hillsong parishioner on the "love bombing" practice. Hillsong and Mercy Ministries are "partners" which Sean explains in this post here. Love bombing is simply making a new initiate or potential member feel overwhelmed with love and positive attention. Once they've come to rely or depend on this support and "love" it is yanked away, and withheld selectively as a means of gaining control over the "love bombed" person.
   
   
5. Information Control - I think the application process has shown us that information about MM is very much controlled. Former residents verify that they were only able to see psychiatrists and doctors while in the company of MM staff (who were Bible students, not real therapists or doctors or anything like that).
   

I'll cover the remaining cult characteristics of Mercy Ministries tomorrow or later in the week.

For incredibly extensive coverage information, I recommend you do some follow up reading on Sean the Bloganaut's post here on Atheist Nexus. It's linkalicious.

You can also go to Mercy Survivors, which doesn't appear to have been updated recently, but has good information and links to the blogs of individual survivors.

Deconverts.com has a set of MM survivor story videos, and the history of the MM's false DMCA "take down" order.

Sign this petition to stop child abuse in residential facilities in the US. (Sign it even if you don't live in the US. More names is good, and I don't believe there are any legal requirements that a person must be a US citizen in order to sign a letter being sent to US congress members. The petition does not make any claims that signees are US citizens, or registered voters.) Thanks.





* This quote is from this video beat poem by Tim Minchin, which is awesome and totally worth listening to.

**Yes, I intentionally linked to the application as many times as possible. I don't like the idea that people have to give personal information (even if it's fake like mine) just to find out that this "free" program requires girls to cover "total expenses".

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Ex-Cult Network

It's in its infancy, and needs a lot of work, help, and love, but here's the Ex-Cult Network, a social community for survivors of cults, and the families of active cult members.

What it needs is a whole lot more people throwing ideas at it, because I'm sort of stuck. And busy. And I've never launched a social network before, so advice would be appreciated, too!

Most important of all, it needs members to serve. Please let any cult survivors that you think would benefit from a community focused on critical thinking, social emotional skills, and getting beyond the betrayal of a cult know about this group. It's also available at http://tinyurl.com/excult

Cheers!




p.s. I hate to ask, but my computer's memory is maxing out and I need some RAM. My Firefox keeps crashing on me mid-post! If anyone would like to make a donation, I'd sure appreciate it.

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Cults on TV

I don't know if I should thank Scientology or Mitt Romney, but America is paying more attention to cults these days. MSNBC is airing a three-part series on cults. You can watch the first video of the Manson Family documentary here.

What I'm actually excited about, though, is the treatment of cults in popular TV shows. Last season Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" had an episode in a cult. While I think they got the cult leader wrong, they got the followers right, and I think the writers made a conscious effort to portray them as misguided rather than stupid or evil.

Last week "Bones" had an episode dealing with the Amish. I'm not saying that the Amish are a cult, but they are an isolationist religious sect. My friend Ananda was raised Mennonite (the "modern Amish") and then, suddenly, her mom moved them to Florida to work for my grandmother's cult and live in her trailer park. While a lot of cult members started buying up mobile homes for a couple years there, by no means were they the majority. The majority were drunks and teenagers and potheads and white trash and old retirees. It's a trailer park. So Ananda went from Amish to completely out of control rebellious teen. The culture shock was way too much, and I have to wonder if that's the case for all kids going through Rumspringa.



The best done and most exciting was last night's episode of "Lie to Me". I won't give it away, but I do strongly recommend my readers watch this episode. It deals with issues of kids on cult compounds, home schooling, battered women, and that weird creepy charisma that makes a cult leader's charm.



I'll go write up a non-video post next, but I just wanted to be pleased for a moment that the world is paying attention, and even starting to get it right. People join at their lowest, thinking it's a family or a community or a better way of life, not knowing it's a cult. And then they feel trapped. We have to help them get out. We can't make victims solely responsible for reporting crimes, abuse, and neglect.

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Turning Points

I've spent a lot of time wondering about my grandmother's cult in the past two years. Questions like, Why didn't more people speak out against what she was doing? and How did the world dodge the bullet by her cult staying small and eventually collapsing? And I think I have some answers. I'm convinced that my freshman year of high school was the most crucial year for the cult's eventual future. Several things happened that year.

I had run the cult office over the summer (while carrying on a dramatic and maudlin relationship with a boy in the trailer park), but when I went back to school she hired on various "friends". These were followers who had sold everything that had - houses and farms in Ohio and Montana - to come live in the same trailer park my grandmother did. Looking back, I see that year of people moving here as a potential beginning to a "true cult" compound.

Giggy had hosted a Healing in Zion seminar in the clubhouse of the trailer park, and people had flown or driven in from all over the country to hear her speak. I supervised their 40 children over that three day weekend (largely by assigning the older sisters to watch their younger siblings, which they did at home) and even put together a little song and dance with the kids, set to the hymn my grandmother used to rock me to sleep with, "Peace, peace".

Then I started high school, at a school for the performing arts. I made friends with Wicaans and lesbians, and I started to hope that some of Gig's exclusivity claims weren't true. I didn't want my friends to burn in hell forever! Then Harrison died, and the news made the national press. A few of the cult experts my mom and I have talked to this past year point to Harrison's death as one of the first major blows to Gig's credibility. And while she may not think she was involved now, in her dementia, the facts on the matter are clear. Gig was present when Harrison was stung - he actually fell in a yellow jackets nest in the backyard of her friend's trailer, which helped the new main office of the cult .

My mom told me yesterday she spoke with my unfriending aunt Z. Back when Harrison died (and later when Samuel and Jeremiah died), Aunt Z still had the same last name as my grandmother, and so friends and coworkers would ask, "Are you related to Carol?" So while she distanced herself - always - from Gig's practices and beliefs, she is still the one most willing to blame Gig's actions on mental illness. (I don't doubt for one minute that my grandmother was mentally ill. I've thought that since the first time I read the DSM-IV description for OCD, when I was diagnosed myself. But mental illness doesn't excuse killing children.

My grandmother was a pro-life baby killer. I don't think the press from that story warned away potential future converts. I do think it gave my grandmother pause. She never seemed to reconsider her views for the remaining years the cult was active, but she was also less bold in her pronouncements and her recruiting after that. She didn't want to garner negative press anymore.

Throughout her life, my grandmother has been in Redbook, Reader's Digest, and Time Magazine. She was on Jeopardy and three other game shows. Her near-death experience of driving into a canal in her fiance's car at 19 made national press, and her African-American rescuer even appeared on one of the game shows with her. (I don't remember the name of the program, but one person would answer questions to win prizes for another person, so my smart and witty grandmother stood in the spotlight, and won a washer/dryer and other fabulous prizes for the man she told us all her descendants owe our lives to. It's a shame she never told us his name, but I have the feeling she doesn't know it.)

He dove into the water to get her, after three white construction workers wouldn't - three workers who had seen her fall into the water, whose truck she had been trying to avoid when she went around them and off the bridge. (This was before there were guard rails on bridges, on the tiny blue highways in the center of Florida.) He was a trucker, and he dove into the water to save her. He swam down to her car, and wrenched open the door. But the pressure of the water pouring in was so great, that he couldn't keep it open, and the door closed on his right hand, across pinky, ring, and middle fingers. He struggled to get free, and eventually wrenched his hand away so he could swim up for air, leaving his fingers behind.

He swum to the surface, yelled for his son who was still in the truck to throw him a tire iron, and then dove down once again to save her. And as glad as I am that I'm here, and that my son is here, and that I'm alive, I wonder if the world would have been a better place if he'd left her there, as callously as the white men who contributed to her fall.




Today's image comes from MilebyMile.com, a highway website. Now imagine that little metal railing is gone, and you'll understand how she drove straight off the road, while attempting to go around a parked truck in the right lane, on an unlit road at night. There was no breakdown lane to speak of - just water.

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My Second Cult

The things that used to confuse me so much are so easy to understand and even easier to mock. Questions like, what about the kittens who died in the worldwide flood? and Why on earth would the Israelites build a cow statue to worship, when it would be so obviously not a real god, since they had made it themselves? Since they'd just seen him curse Egypt with ten spectacular curses - plagues and swarms of frogs! - then part the Red Sea at Moses' prayer and then close it over Pharaoh and his army, saving the Jews once again. And we're supposed to believe that after Moses being up a mountain for a couple days or weeks, they decided to abandon completely this evident, obviously existing and communicating and powerful god, who by the way fed them daily with manna falling from heaven, to build a cow out of their gold jewelry to worship instead?


In the Twelve Step program, people are encouraged to define their own god. Members will say things like, "This pen could be your god if it means something for you, and helps you stay sober." Which sounds great, till you actually read the steps. Steps 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 11, and 12 are the "give me" list. You just can't in a remotely rationalized way ask a pen to remove your defects of character, or seek to have conscious contact with a pen. (Okay, so there are a few possibilities with the close contact but, yuck.) Of course, one of my main objections to the 12 Step programs is that these steps all relieve the person of responsibility. Combined with the disease model of addiction (you drink too much because you have a disease, like cancer), this allows the alcoholic/addict/gambler/whatever to confess their "sins", be absolved by the group, ask "the god of their understanding" to restore them sanity, care for their lives and their wills, remove their defects of character, to have contact with them, to tell them what to do (knowledge of his will), to give them the power to function, and to provide them with a "spiritual awakening". Notice that nowhere is "God" (pen, doorknob, whatever) actually asked to help the person stay SOBER.

Have I mentioned yet that AA is a cult? I was in Al-Anon for two years, from the week I moved out of my marriage home with my six-week-old little man, through the six months I tried to get my husband in AA and sober and into marriage counseling, and after that through the painfully adolescent experience of living in my mother's house, while attempting to date and have sex and be mother to my own child. (The laundry room people, that's how unwillingly my mom was to let her adult, divorced, obviously sexually active (ahem, child) daughter with her exclusive boyfriend and a condom. Who honestly has laundry room as their first choice location?) Al-Anon is the program for spouses, parents, and children of alcoholics (who the group sincerely hopes are AA members).

Like most people are when they join a cult, I was at an extreme low point in my life. I had just failed at marriage. I had just realized how bad my husband's substance abuse problem really was. (Nothing quite like waking up to pump breast milk at 4 in the morning and finding your husband and a stranger snorting lines off the kitchen counter to make you reevaluate your marriage vows.) I also had a broken ankle, a severe bout with flesh-eating bacteria (ooh, giant purple ghastly belly scars are sexy!), a mother-in-law who attempted to kidnap my son at 10 weeks old, a baby who cried out in pain every night from 6:00 to 9:00 pm., and I had to return to my mother's house, like a dog with my tail between my legs, or like the prodigal daughter, who had squandered her meager inheritance too soon.

That first meeting, my mom went with me. Which was good, since the meeting was on the second floor of a Christian school attached to a church, and I had a broken ankle (and no cast, people, no cast. Or pain killers.) and a baby in a stroller. There was a lot of weekly things - reading all the steps and the welcome message, etc. that I realize now were a subtle form of indoctrination. We read it over and over and over - every single week. Then of course, the whole point of any Twelve Step program is to "work the Steps".


My first sponsor was an English grad student at the university my mom had gone to and taught at, and that I'd attended for one semester before learning I was pregnant. She didn't seem to find it necessary to tell me that she had schizophrenia, however. It ended when she had a break one night, in the parking lot of another meeting. She still came to the group and we were still friends, but I didn't want to take her counsel or advice or pour out my darkest secrets to her. Thes econd woman I asked to be my sponsor seemed to have things much more together. Her husband was "in recovery" and attended AA, and led an AA/Al-Anon couples meeting with her. She lived across the street from the church my mom and I were attending and ran a successful massage therapy business. Her jewelry suggested a hippie attitude, but her shoes indicated she was successful. She was also a bitch who clearly had no respect for me. I figured that out pretty quickly and was able to back off from our arrangement. The third and final sponsor I had was very nice, very busy, and because her teenage daughter had taken the class at the Y, we soon entered into a financial relationship. We talked a few times, but once I learned that her husband and she had married young, divorced, she'd married and divorced someone else, and was now REMARRIED to her 13-year-old daughter's father, I realized I didn't want to take her advice either.

Like a good conspiracy theory or religion, it helps to have some truth on your side. Some of the program and literature suggestions were helpful. I started writing a "gratitude list" - in the midst of that really hard time - and just jotting down all the things I was grateful for: food, a roof even if my mother's, Medicaid for my son, etc. Because I have OCD (and a diagnosis - finally), I've read up a lot on cognitive processing, and meta-cognition and how you can steer your thoughts. OCD is like having ruts in your neural pathways, so that thoughts can get stuck in an obsessive cycle, rather than progressing onto the next thought, and then the one after that. Finding ways to change negative self-talk ("I'm fat, I'm ugly, nobody loves me" to "My body is healthy and I am worth liking" for example) really does help. But the people who were supposed to be helping me were crazy, mean, and foolish. I left because the central part of the Twelve Step program - the sponsor, the person who indoctrinates you and leads you into the cult like a Big Sister in a sorority - was such epic FAIL. Because the program didn't have any standards for mental health or personality or compassion aptitude for who could be a sponsor, it's a really bad idea. If there had been someone more appealing to me at the meeting close enough to my house that my mom would watch my son that one hour a week (another reason I liked going), I might be one of those crazy women who still goes twenty years after her alcoholic husband has died of cirrhosis.

(Is it wrong to hope my ex-in-laws have a handsome life insurance policy on my ex, and that it becomes viable soon, and that then I can sue them for the $6,000+ I'm owed in back child support? Never mind., I don't actually care if it's right or wrong. I'm cool with that little mental fantasy. As a Christian I used to pray my husband would get run over by a city bus, so I could collect money, since I knew he'd never provide for his son any other way.)

All that ramble was to say, what makes the Twelve Step members who design a god of their own understanding, any different from Israelites building a golden calf? Nothing. Which tells me that the Israelites hadn't actually seen any miracles either. If something good happens, even just you learning how to change your own attitude through cognitive therapy techniques, you credit it to god. If something bad happens, it's because you're diseased. Just like religion.

Here's an incredibly thorough site dedicated to outing Alcoholics Anonymous as the cult that it is. OrangePapers.org. This page lays out the AA scores on the Cult Test (100 traits that define a cult). This site is a really great cult info resource in general, but especially for "spiritual" behavior modification programs, like teen boot camps and Twelve Step groups. It's also a really model of how someone could lay out a similar site for, oh I don't know, Mormons? $cientology? The Amish? I'm sure you kids will have fun. Go check it out and let me know what you think.

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Rough Draft

Hi Aunt Z,

Let me start off by saying that I love you and your family as well. You covered a lot of different ground in your email. As I see it, you brought up
1) Your perception of me as "wounded" and in pain
2) Me calling Gig a cult leader and holding her responsible for dead babies
3) Atheism and anti-theism
4) The history between Gig and Asshat (I'm not using my ex husband's real name)
5) How I raise my son
6) Peter and the prodigal son idea
7) The role of mental health

Let me get the shorter responses out of the way. I'm sorry Asshat stole from Gig. He stole from everyone, even cashing in Little Man's change jar when he was a month old to buy drugs. He had serious substance abuse problems and was not a nice person. Last year I had to file a restraining order, after he threatened to kidnap my son and kill me. How I raise my son, in a single parent home and outside of a church, is not up for discussion. I haven't provided any insights or suggestions on what I think would be best for your children, and you will do the same for me.

Lumping together points 1, 3, and 6: I'm touched by your concern I suppose, but I'm not in pain and I'm not blogging because I'm "wounded". Atheism has been a huge positive in my life, and is the second greatest thing to happen to me (after Little Man, of course). I did not become an atheist because I'm angry with God or with Gig, or in reaction to any of the aspects of religion I decry on my blog. If you'd like to talk about it, there are three scenarios I can work with.

1. If you have questions, I'll do my best to answer them. A lot of people don't have a clear understanding of what "atheist" means, but it just describes the fact that I don't believe that any gods exist. It doesn't say anything about my outlook or my values, which in many respects are the same as yours.
2. You and I can exchange books and talk about the issues that way. I'll read a Christian apologist book of your choosing, if you'll read something I choose on atheism in exchange.
3. We can agree to never directly converse with each other on the issue of god, religion, and religious education/indoctrination of children.

Now that I've set those issues aside, let me get to what I think was your main purpose in writing me. Gig was a cult leader. I know that this is hard to hear and painful to discover, but it's factually true. Just google "Carol Balizet" and "cult" and you'll be amazed at what you find, and not just on my blog. The International Cultic Studies Association, Apologetics Index, Childrens Healthcare is a Legal Duty, Concerned Christian Growth Ministries, and the Rick Ross Institute (all groups specializing in cults) recognize Gig as a cult leader and Home in Zion Ministries as a cult. (Which sort of answers your question of why I kept working for her even as an adult. Brainwashing takes time to reverse and I was still very much under her spell at that time.)

You didn't live with her during those years, so you may not be aware how crazy and controlling she really was. I don't know if you've read her books anytime in the last twenty years, but my mom and I have. She knows that Gig is a cult leader, too, and she's still a committed Christian. The atheism and the recognition of Gig as a cult leader aren't at all related. (In fact, Rick Ross Institute, CCGM, and Apologetics Index are all Christian cult-watch organizations).

I'm sorry if this wounds you or causes you pain. That's not my intention. It's just a fact, and in part because I did work for her and promote her crazed ideas for so long, I want to make amends to the world. I want to debunk the dangerous lies she told. Children have died, Z. And, sorry, but the facts say they *would* have lived if they'd gotten medical care. I know Gig always said each death she spoke of was unavoidable, but I've read about them now in news articles and cult watch websites. She brainwashed people into putting "faith" above all else, and told them it was blasphemous to respond "in the sight realm" to actual physical problems people were having, and that it was a sin to go to a doctor. In the end, when she was the one in pain, she did go to a doctor. By that point six children had already died as a direct result of her books and her dogma.

I don't know if you remember the story of Harrison Johnson, the little boy who was stung by all those yellow jackets and died from medical neglect in the HIZM office, but I used to babysit him. Gig was with his family that day, and advised them not to get medical care. He would be 16 now, if his parents had never read Gig's books. She killed him. It's taken me 14 years to get to the point where I can recognize that for what really happened.

Regarding the role of mental health in Gig's decisions and actions. I was diagnosed with OCD at 21 and have received multiple additional diagnoses since then. I've long suspected Gig had mental health problems, probably OCD and certainly NPD. However, a high-functioning adult with mental illness is not excused for bad behavior. I have mental health issues myself, and I can be sympathetic to the additional challenges that come with living like this. But I am responsible for my actions and words, just as as she was. If someone is found not guilty of a crime like murder by reason of insanity, we don't convict them of murder but we still do lock them up for the safety of others, in an institution rather than a jail. You can believe whatever you believe, but we have rules on how crazy you're allowed to *behave*.

You seemed to suggest that by simply being an atheist and talking about it on my blog, I am doing more harm than Gig, who directly contributed to the deaths of several children. I don't see how you possibly could make this statement "gently". The sweetest words won't hide the fact that you worship a god you think will send me and my friends to hell, simply for not believing he exists, and that you think he is the source of love, comfort, and morality, and that I'm depriving my son in some way by not teaching him about this deity. Do you really want to have this conversation with me? We can, but you almost certainly won't like what I have to say.

I'm more than willing to talk about Gig's effect on the world with you - or not. I do recommend you talk to my mom about it. She has a lot of insights about Gig over the decades, and was a lot more involved in Gig's personal satellite during the baby ministry days. She's also read a lot on abusive churches and Bible-based cults, written by Christians, on how to make sure the group you belong to is healthy and not heretical. Since I think you're more likely to respect what she has to say, both because she's a Christian and because she's your sister not your niece, I think you should probably talk to her. I know you don't like this, but I'm not making it up.

A Christmas present for Little Man would be grand, as long as it's not a Bible or something like it. I'll get your children religiously neutral toys in a similar respect of your right to educate and instruct your children as you see fit. I'm glad to hear you're getting treatment plan for Lil C and testing for Lil J. I only wish I'd had access to health care and mental health care as a child. Because of Gig and her beliefs, I didn't.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is what I'm thinking of sending. But on the other hand, I remember that I don't even really like her. Yes, she's my aunt and I love her in that obligatory family reflex way. But in 2006 when I was living in my car and asked her for money for diapers, she referred me to the homeless shelter for help. (She married rich, so it's not like she couldn't have spared a pack of Pampers.) She used to make sarcastic comments about me as a teenager that really enhanced some of my insecurities and certainly made my eating disorder worse. When I was a kid, in a cult, at that time being sexually abused by a neighbor, she would pinch my bottom and tickle me, after I'd scream for her to stop. And she'd laugh. (So did my favorite aunt. It's taken me a long while to realize that I'm not overly sensitive - they were just jerks.) I don't actually want to spend time with her or talk with her individually. We're not that close and I don't respect her opinion that much. Really, I just want her to recognize that her mom ran a cult, or just leave me alone about it. I don't want family guilt when this book comes out. If she never speaks to me again because of this, either because I'm an atheist or because I called a spade a freaking spade, it's not actually going to bother me.

So maybe I cut it down to simply the groups that called HIZM a cult and the recommendation to call my mom. Maybe I just pull myself out of it. Or send her an email that says, "You're a moron who believes a man lived in a freaking fish belly!" Probably not that last one.

I called my best girlfriend in the world last night to vent about all this. She's a hippie spiritual Jesus type, and dating a Satanist. She's gotten over my disbelief now, which is fantastic. I love this girl because she came up with the perfect solution to cheer me up.

"Chica, we gotta get together and stir shit up. Let's go to a bar and get in a chick brawl!" Just the thought of hitting somebody and pulling someone's hair made me perk right up. :)




The image for today's post is of the Jonestown mass suicide, which is probably what most people think of when they hear the word "cult".

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I <3 Atheism

I just found this in the Update at the end of my grandmother's death-dealing book Born in Zion (the positive reviews on Amazon horrify me). It's a passage about the process of changing deeply held beliefs, which is a kind of funny thing to stumble across, in the writ of my old beliefs, all things considered. She quotes from Charles Colson's "Against the Night" (an unlikely source for me to agree with). He wrote

"People don't pick a vision (or make a decision) piece-meal, as they might pick a bouquet of flowers in a garden. They come to such convictions (or decisions) within the framework of a braoder set of... asumptions and ideals - more like accetping a story, with all of its internal rules and consistencies

And just as beliefs are not selected one at a time (what might be called the salad-bar theory of decision-making), longheld beliefs do not fall one at a time. In the absence of a deeper conversion of perspective... minds are rarely changed on single policy matters, no matter how persuasive our arguments."

Yeah, that rings true. I dropped belief in emergency faith healing after Harrison died. I dropped belief in faith healing for all non-emergency care as well, after three years walking with a dislocated hip (and a cane - in high school, where canes aren't exactly cool.) I dropped theism/deism in May 2008. It was a gradual stripping away of the deeper core of my mythology. But she uses this passage to "support" her insane lifestyle recommendations and stances on homebirth, prayer, and the roles of women in families. She wrote

"People usually won't decide to have a baby at home, trusting God alone, unless they have a framework - a braod base upon which their life rests - of trust in God for everything else. If they're trusting in banks for provision, in doctors for healing, in pastors for insight from God, in newspapers for their daily word, in psychology for an understanding of the principles of life, in drugs for health, in science for their beliefs about the nature of matter and the foundation of the universe, in the government for the answers to our social problems, in the "experts" for wisdom and truth, then these people are probably not ready for home birth."

Can you see why I fight so hard against blind faith and religious belief? I know the dark and desperate places faith leads to. Faith leads to death, and war, and children being starved, and abusive exorcisms, and fatal home births. True faith, of the kind my grandmother advocated in the vile paragraph above, led to the death of two young boys, life imprisonment for their father, and a slow and painful death by cancer of their cult leader, who worshiped my grandmother. She was a cult leader's cult leader. And she accounts for 1/8 of my genetic make up. We share a serotonin imbalance, and she spent all my life telling me that I was just like her. It's rather horrifying, on the days when my medicine doesn't seem to be working so well.

She quotes Charles Colson once again.

"Plato argued that this deeper conversion of perspective was almost like an awakening - like remembering something you forgot a long time ago. It is the realization: 'That fits! That is the way things should be.' It is a sense of recognition. Something responds not only in your head but in the deeper layers of your being."

He could be describing the emotional release, the pure joy I felt at deconversion. Yes, I feel betrayal from my family for lying to me for all these years. I feel annoyed with myself for not asking more question, more deeply, and more often. And yet, becoming an atheist is one of the best two things that has ever happened to me (the other being the birth and life of my son.) I love being an atheist. Being an atheist gives me such a sense of joy and purpose and peace, all the things that religion promised and instead stole from me.

How could I be joyous, "knowing" my gay and lesbian and non-Christian friends would all be tortured forever in hell? How could I have purpose if my life was mapped out for me, and there was no option but to serve one of two masters, either God or the Devil? How could I be at peace, when I was in near constant pain, hating myself for being a wretched, wicked sinner?

Now that I know there is no God (know with enough certainty for all practical purposes - there is simply no evidence), I finally feel that I can exert some control over my life. If I am sick, I can take medicine to get better, or at least reduce my symptoms. If I am hurting, I can talk to someone - I can listen to the experts, and I can find some solace. If I have needs, I can confess them with no shame. I am an ape - an ape who is responsible for my own actions and decisions, but an ape nonetheless. My failure to live up to the sinless example of Jesus makes perfect sense. My desire to touch and be touched, to love and be loved, to screw and be screwed, is not the product of a "fallen" soul. It's the delightful side effect of reproductive evolution! And now thanks to science and medicine, those experts I always heard decried, I can have that benefit - without having more children.

Religion is the single thing that did the most harm in my life, and I believe it's also the single thing that's done the most harm in the history of our species. It certainly hasn't been good for our planet, or our governments, or our mentally ill. It's not just that religion teaches people they are evil, and that their neighbors are evil, (and worse yet, that their children are evil); religion makes good people do bad things for bad reasons.

I want to live my life based on good reasons. Don't you?

* Sorry for the excessive self-referential linking to prior ATAT posts. I'm trying to figure out how to organize all this mental diarrhea into a book.

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Bad Dreams and HIZM

I have frequent nightmares of starting my own cult. Ideas for different cult audiences and niche markets occur to me quite often. In part, I'm sure, it's simply because I spend so much of time reading and thinking about cults. Cults are on my mind. A cult made my mind. Let's not forget the other part of this - besides just being a topic I'm interested in, it's what I was originally brought up to become. I was trained to cast out demons, heal the sick, bind the strongman, remind God of promises He'd made and hold Him to them. More subtly, I was taught that, while I was utterly wretched and sinful and deserving of hell and death my own self, at least I was better than everybody else. My grandmother couldn't see a person, at the store or on TV, without finding some fault - "His eyes are too close together" or "Did you hear how many times she said "um" while talking? She said it 14 times. You know, people will judge you by how well you speak."

I know how to manipulate people. I know how easy it is to get sheep to follow you. That's really the most astonishing part about cults to me - that the leader has to do so little to get people to throw their lives away. Gig was too lazy to really concentrating on fundraising, but people sent her a tenth of their income anyway, unasked. We never lived on a compound or wore funny clothes. Her followers were spread out across the rural United States and Australia. It was a shadow cult, operating in the background, influencing hundreds of little churches and thousands of individual believers. And these believers would call the phone number on the back of her books, and reach me.

They would tell me their story - how far along their pregnancy was, how many children they already had, what complications they were worried about. I treated it like any other customer service job, smiling while I talked to them on the phone, and then taking their order for additional books, workbooks, and teaching tapes. Sometimes I prayed with them right there at my desk, and then a few weeks later they would send us money. Gig lacked organization and drive, and except for me, she was terrible at picking personnel. She routinely hired thieves, whether it was Pastor Steve Bell of Christ Church who stole her books and continues to print her things in violation of copyright (hey asshat - I'm talking to you!) or Van and Nicole (hey you - I *never* liked you and it was totally inappropriate to try to crash family parties), who paid their private rent and car notes out of the Ministry checking account. Gig didn't want to have to think about the money, to know about the money. She just wanted to know that it would be there when she ran her debit card.

I spent nearly every weekend as a middle school student working at my grandma's. My mom or sister would drop me off Friday afternoon and I'd stay till Sunday, swimming at the pool, balancing the bank accounts, and updating up the newsletter mailing list to include every possible person who might donate their tithe to the Ministry. I built the original Home in Zion Ministries web page (now down) with painstakingly hand-coded html, before the days of CSS and rich text editors. I'd never had any training in web design, and had to teach myself as I went along. I also taught myself the inner workings of Microsoft Access, although now I wish I could clear out that space in my head for something useful.

In truth, looking back on things, I alone kept that Ministry running for about two years, until I was old enough to start MacDonald's at 14. For the next decade, I would work part-time or an as-needed basis for the cult, while earning my primary income somewhere else. It definitely creates an illusion of greater job stability than is strictly accurate. As a centerless, selfless teen and young adult, I tried out a number of jobs and careers. Through high school, I never stayed at a job for more than six months, and most for only three. But I had HIZM to put on my application each time, showing that I'd been steadily working at the same place since the start of 1998, which meant I could selectively leave out 20 or 30 of my past jobs, without any gaps in my employment history. (It's also a job history that makes me look older, since most 12-year-olds aren't putting in 20 hour weeks on top of school.)

In a sense I feel much worse, much guiltier, for those simple office tasks, that I've reproduced for secular employers repeatedly since then. I copied, I filed, I faxed. I talked to customers on the phone and filled out purchase order forms and managed a database. I mean, none of that is inherently wrong, right? But I've come to believe that my grandmother's words are toxic, and I worry about how many people I infected. When I read about Samuel Roubidoux, and realize his parents were at that same weekend convention as Harrison's parents, and that I probably met his mother and father, I wonder if my hands placed the book into the box, sealed it, and labeled it. Did I personally send the poisonous words that would eventually lead to a child being starved to death?

From all I could see at the time, what I was doing was simply office work. From all I can see now, I was the number lieutenant for a madwoman's army. If I had been less competent, would the Ministry have folded sooner? If I had been less driven, would fewer books have gone out into the world? I forgive myself for not knowing better, but I still feel responsibility. Maybe that's why I have to write this book now, debnking my grandmother, shedding light on the fringes of Christian faith, and absolving some of my own guilt for my part in it. I was raised to be a cult leader, and the paranoid part of me stays ever-vigelent. I worry that I'll lose just a small sliver of sanity, but it will be the thing that makes the difference, tips the scales, and leads me to be the most ruthless cult leader the world has ever known. (Yes, grandiose thinking is an aspect of narcissism.)

I try to fight this stuff. I know that these fears of my own self, this distrust of my mind and my body, is left over from the decades of Fallen Man belief. And yet - at two in the morning, when I can't sleep, the idea suddenly occurs to me, "The best way to start a cult - start a cult survivors group and invite them all away for a long, intensive, brain-washing weekend!"

And then I worry that I'm evil.

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Intervention and Parents Rights

I've been listening to old episodes of the Non-Prophets Radio podcast. (If you're not listening yet, it's your own fault. I've linked and embedded tons of Atheist Experience videos. Okay, okay, I forgive you. Go subscribe to the feed now and let us never speak of this unpleasantness again.)

The issue of intervention keeps coming up. When does the government, or we the people, or the US, intervene in how a family raises its children or how another nation treats its citizens? One of the four hosts, Shilling, (no longer on - I told you, these were archives) essentially takes a non-interventionist stance the majority of the time. He suggests the long-range approach of educating a culture, and essentially waiting things out for self-correction. He cites the decrease in racism and homophobia in younger generations as an example of this working in practice. And I have to say I agree with him up to that point.

Because I think the long-range plan is important and I do think it will work. I think history in a large sense shows that, our culture at least, is getting progressively more liberal and egalitarian. Neato. Swell. But in the meantime, if we use only the non-interventionist long-range approach, kids aren't getting vaccinated. Unassisted childbirth is killing mothers and babies.* Honor killings are happening in the United States. Parents treat their kids with unproven "natural" remedies rather than with FDA approved medicines. A little boy gets named Adolf Hitler (and his sister is named Aryan Nation.)

When are we gonna stop talking about parents rights and start talking about kids rights? I think part of the problem with the debate is that we act as if the two interested parties were the parents and the government. And of course, we object to the idea of a government raising its children - that falls under the domain of parenting. But the real nature of the issue is between the rights of the parents and the rights of the children. The government acts as attorney on behalf of the child, not as a direct antagonist to the parent. I get that now.

I was raised to fear HRS, so when they came to do an investigation, I lied. When my friend's mother told my mom I wanted to live with them, my mom told me she was playing arm chair psychologist, and that it was a common problem among psych students. That it didn't mean anything (like trying to get hit by a car when I was six didn't mean anything; or saying I needed therapy or I was gonna kill myself at 14 didn't mean anything; or saying that I had an eating disorder and that I was going to die if I didn't get help at 25 didn't mean anything).

I have to intervene for the kids right now. Fuck the long-range-only plan. Well-meaning high-minded secular and moderate religious people who were trying not to step on anyone's toes or interfere with anyone's parental rights let me get beaten, brainwashed, and Bible-fed. I didn't get to form my own personality and identity as a human. I was raised in a cult, like being a borg or a clone. I'm having to figure this shit out (who I am, what I value, what my own personality is) now and I'm 26 and I have a 4-year-old kid. It's kind of terrifying sometimes to realize how little I know and how far behind I am. I got cheated out of a childhood and it's seriously affecting my adulthood. And now I find out there's no afterlife, so this is the only shot I'm ever gonna get.

We can't sit by and let other kids have their psyches destroyed. I can't really express enough just how crazy I am and how uncomfortable the inside of my brain is. I have a really high IQ. (I don't remember the number; it was over ten years ago. I was in Mensa but we quit paying dues.) If I'd been raised in a healthy home, I'd probably be a doctor or a lawyer or a civil rights activist or married. Not unemployed and semi-agoraphobic. This isn't a pity party. I'm good at getting through shit - I have a lot of practice. (And hey, unemployment checks are the bomb. I consider that my salary for writing on my book.)

It's just that I can't not care. I can't pretend kids aren't dying from medical negligence homicide (AKA "prayer"). I know there's this huge Quiverfull generation coming up now, and a lot of those kids are growing up in abusive homes; they're learning misogyny and rigid gender roles; and they're not getting a proper education. Let's stop that. Let's stop the people who do that. I don't want go so far as making people get a license to have a kid. I get why we can't do that (examples: majority Christian licensing board = no atheists getting baby licenses; eugenics). But we have to get these religious exemption laws off the books. We have to stop acting like it's okay for people to pray, when we know that prayer prevents positive action. We need to recognize and vocalize that faith is not a virtue. Faith is a vice.





* Both those stories are in Australia. The homebirth movement in Australia is largely due to my grandmother (and here)and Nancy Campbell. (On Nancy's Facebook she asks for money for a broken arm; yet she rolls with faith healers.)

** I have no idea what language the image captions are in. But it translates to: kids have a right to food, clean water, an education, passport or national identity (refugees), family, I think happiness?, exercise/entertainment, and to be clean; and a right to not be amputated, armed, enslaved, or abused. I think it speaks across culture and language - don't you?

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