Pregnancy

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As a child, I knew I'd give birth at home. I knew home birth was safer than hospital birth - why go to a hospital, full of germs and disease and people, when I could have my baby at home, delivered by my own grandmother who delivered me and my siblings and cousins? I felt quite a lot of pride at having been born at home myself, although it always bothered me a bit that no one knew exactly when I was born (especially once I hit teen years and became interested in astrology. How on earth was I going to make a star chart when all my mother knew was that I'd been born "sometime in the afternoon, between 2 and 6 probably"?)

When I found at I was pregnant at 22, I had a lot of hard decisions to make. Would I get back together with my exboyfriend I'd broken up with the day before, father of my fetus? Would we just date or would we get married? Where would I get money? How on earth was I going to tell my mother? The extra question I had was, where would my baby be born?

I knew I wasn't healthy. I'd been doing drugs with my boyfriend (which was why I left him) and I'd been suffering a particularly bad bout of anorexia. I also knew there was a good chance I was fairly far along in my pregnancy. While my periods had changed, and for the last two months even stopped, I'd assumed it was amorrhea caused by my low weight. I decided to go see a doctor, to at least see how far along I was and whether or not the fetus was healthy.

I tried applying for Medicaid for Pregnancy, but there was a funny hitch in the process: You had to have "proof of pregnancy" and apparently the stick test I'd peed on didn't count. I had to have something signed by an MD saying I was pregnant in order to get the insurance help and food stamps. Fortunately, a wonderful man by the name of Dr. Arkin was running the Peace of Mind Clinic within the local Catholic Charities office at the time. The sole purpose of that clinic was to help girls and women get their proof of pregnancy and to assist them with the Medicaid application process.

I sat in a terrible waiting room - full of posters reminding me that "When a pregnant woman drinks, she never drinks alone" and copies of What to Expect When You're Expecting. I waited in the ripped leather chair while two girls before me went into the ultrasound room. When it was my turn, Dr. Arkin's wife cum ultrasound technician cheerfully told me, "It's been a twin day today. The last two girls were having twins!* Let's see if you are, too!" This was already a dread and fear. My boyfriend's father had been born a twin (although his twin had died sometime in childhood, and he was now an only child.)

I walked into the exam room, full of trepidation. She bustled around and chatted amiably, as I stripped and put on that horrid paper gown. Her husband came in and asked me to scoot down to the edge of the of the exam table. Feet in stirrups, completely alone, and with this bubbly woman going on about the miracle of twins, I bit my bottom lip and waited.

"Oh, look," Dr. Arkin told me, "You're having a boy." I turned my head and wept for joy, relieved to only be carrying one, and already in love with the tiny life in my womb. Wow. I stared, mesmerized by the ultrasound image. There he was - head and body, limbs and even sex organs. There was nothing obviously wrong with him, and somehow he'd survived the first 4 and a half months of my ignorance and negligence. He was *beautiful*. Dr. Arkin let me know that I was 21 weeks pregnant, and that my boy would be due on August 30th, just five days after his father's birthday.

I put my pants back on and collected the ultrasound pictures, including the one where Mrs. Arkin had rather gleefully circled the image of his penis, with a label "It's a boy!" She told me, "The daddies are always proud of these" which threw me a bit. (Are mothers "proud" of the size of their daughters' labia?) We sat down in a conference room down the hall, and Dr. Arkin helped me fill out my Medicaid and Food Stamp application.

"You need to gain weight," he told me, looking at my 5'3" 104 lbs frame. "You need to gain 50 pounds, and you need to do it yesterday." That was my battle for the next four months, trying to put on and keep on enough weight to make sure the fetus' brain developed properly.

I quit smoking pot, and mostly quit smoking cigarettes. (Yeah, I snuck a few here and there, most memorably on my wedding day, early in my third trimester.) I laid off the diet sodas, energy drinks, and diet pills I'd relied on to get me through school, and dropped out of college. I changed everything about my body, from what I put into my body, to how long I kept it there (no bulimia for me, as the electrolyte imbalance that would cause could be extremely damaging to the fetus), to what size I tried to be. I dropped bad habits, bad friends, but regretfully, picked up again the bad relationship I had with my ex-boyfriend. We fought constantly, and he did all he could to punish me. Secretly, I think he was thrilled. What better way to get me back, to trap me for good, than a baby?

I tried to put off the wedding. "Let's wait till he's born and old enough to be our ring-bearer! Then it will be our whole family," I said, knowing in the hidden honest parts of myself that Ronnie was in no way prepared to be a father, and not sure how much I wanted him for a husband. But he pushed. His mother pushed. My family (except my mother) pushed. I caved.

We were married during my 7th month of pregnancy, and I felt like a walrus, waddling down the aisle in my sister's borrowed and altered wedding dress, in one inch heels that were absolutely killing my feet.** We said the vows, tied the knot (literally, the priest's sash), and I threw the bouquet. We took pictures with both our wedding ring hands resting on my domed belly, featuring our future child as an unbodied member of the wedding party.

People have this week how I could feel so differently about these two pregnancies, but really they had nothing in common. If anything, my life conditions were exponentially worse for bringing a child into the world back then than they are today. I was poor, unemployed, single, unhappy, and underweight. Yet I knew I wanted him. Also, frankly, I was so far along by the time I learned I was pregnant, optional abortion wasn't really on the table anymore.

I found out I was pregnant back then because for some reason, my weight loss platued and my goal of getting below 100 pounds suddenly seemed impossible. But the real moment of truth came, not when I took the home pregnancy test, but a day before then, when I felt something odd and firm beneath my skin (that'd be my uterus). Within 48 hours of taking the test, I felt the first kicks. Even still, I knew he wasn't a baby *yet* and that there was a good chance he might never become one.

I struggled to stay healthy, while planning a wedding (on an extremely lean budget), fighting with my fiancee, fighting with my mother, and moving three times. I didn't always win that fight, and I spent days and days in the maternity ward emergency room, on IV drips and supplements. My iron levels were low, but the prenatal vitamins with iron in them made me throw up. I was living off pizza, ice cream, and Subway sandwiches, but I couldn't keep weight on to save my life (or my fetus'). A week after my honeymoon, I went into the ER with a fever and a stomach flu, and over the course of that week I lost 10 pounds through vomit and diarrhea. I wondered if either one of us would make it out alive.

At 41 weeks, 2 days, at 6 o'clock in the morning on a Thursday, I started having contractions. We timed them at about eight minutes apart, and waited till the doctor's office was open to give her a call. Once my Medicaid was approved, I was able to start going to regular prenatal visits, and found a fantastic former-nurse OB/GYN and mother to deliver my baby. We'd picked her because she was near the hospital, and we'd picked that hospital (about half an hour away) because it had the best neonatal intensive care unit in the region. Her nurse told me they couldn't make recommendations on whether or not it was time to go to the hospital until they'd examined me, so I woke up my husband and had him ride with me to the doctor. (He had multiple DUIs from before meeting me, and didn't have a license at any point during our relationship, a secret he had me keep from my family.)

[Okay folks, sorry, but I've gotta go make dinner and do those other mommy things. My total labor took 98 hours, so I imagine writing it will take at least a few pages. I'll try to pick this up tomorrow or on Tuesday. Be sure to keep an eye out for my live appearance on CNN this Monday, 3/8/2010 at 10 am EST.]








*Clearly, HIPPA was not her primary concern that day.

** I routinely wear 4" heels without incident. Heck, I used to have a pair of 7" platforms I only wore when going out with a gay friend who was 6'9".

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My Two Faiths

I grew up in a Bible-based faith healing cult led by my grandmother, Carol Balizet, who I know as "Giggy." As I got older and started attending more liberal Christian churches, I struggled to rectify my beliefs in an almighty god with the tenants of grace and atonement and freewill. Today I'd like to take on both my faiths: the name-it-and-claim-it teachings of my childhood, and the liberal Christian beliefs of my teen years.


If I mentioned that we lived in a trailer park, Gig would correct me and say that it was a "mobile home community," but when she was being falsely modest, she would describe herself as "a little old woman living in a trailer park." All words were her domain, and at her discretion.

We were never allowed to admit to being afraid. Gig taught us and her followers that fear was a sin, and that it was an attack from the Devil. "The Bible says in 365 places, 'Fear not,'" she told us. "Are you really going to go against that?" So we learned to talk about fear in different ways. I could admit to being "startled" by something, or "worried" (though even that was treacherous ground, since we were supposed to live our lives in total faith.)

In her book on home birth, Carol Balizet, self-proclaimed spiritual midwife, would never describe the birth mothers as being in "pain." Instead, she would talk about them experiencing "some discomfort." Any woman who's had a baby naturally should recognize that "discomfort" hardly describes the experience of live birth, especially when no epidural or other pain medication is used. Yet Carol promised painless births, and what's more the experience of having your baby at home, under her supervision and with God's endorsement (according to her) would strengthen your marriage, and give the Lord an opportunity to tell you what else he wanted to fix in your life.

Gig despised people who complained - about fear or pain or her terrible spending habits. (No matter how much money came in, she spent just over it.) So much of her teaching was centered on never admitting things were wrong, and on avoiding "negative confessions." I remember being taught that wearing a medical alert bracelet was just inviting demons in to attack you with illness, and that getting a diagnosis from a doctor was some form of witchcraft or sorcery that actually gave you the disease. In her theology, Christians were supposed to be exempt from disease, and it was only in areas where we aren't in alignment with God's will that we could be made ill by demons.

The one negative criticism of my grandmother that I read while still working for the cult was "The Zion Birth Heresy" written by a Christian homebirth advocate named Jill Barrett. I remember how offended I was, and how hurt. Then I read the same article, years later, at the dissolution of my faith. It's long and it centers primarily on how Carol Balizet's teachings are heretical (which I've come to believe mostly means "Not what MY church believes.") Here are some of the best parts, which I think pretty accurately describe the religious tenants I grew up with.

Like [Kenneth] Copeland, she teaches that our words have inherent spiritual power. Not only everything in heaven and on earth, but even God Himself is a slave to our words. Our positive confessions force God to move in our favor, and our negative confessions render Him powerless to help us. Balizet is constantly praising the power of God, but the god who emerges from her book is all but powerless-- hemmed in on every side by faithless Christians, the wrong kinds of prayers, sin, and most of all, Satan.

Pretty much. Words were.. vital. "There is power and death in the tongue," my grandmother used to tell us*. I think one of the reasons words were so important was becase there were something she excelled it. Perfect grammar was considered practically a cardinal virtue for us, and my grandmother was an effective writer and speaker. She sounded good, especially if you didn't think too much about what she was saying.

Balizet's deity is not sovereign. He is only in control of what Christians forcibly wrest from Satan and his minions. Limits are "imposed [on him] by our unbelief or by our failure to ask" (97). He is also limited by our sin (32). He does as much in childbirth as "He is allowed to do" (156). His will and power "are ESTABLISHED [sic] by our prayer" (102). "God is honorable never to breach the sovereignty of a human will" (43). Indeed, Balizet's "God" wants to bless us. It is "not His will" for us to suffer complications, problems, and pain (130). But the sin in our lives just won't let him take our pain and problems from us. Everywhere there is sin, which Balizet calls "leaven," Satan has a "ground" and "legal right" (38) to make bad things happen to us.

If we do not take control of a situation--if we do not move by "our choice" from "the flesh realm into the realm of the spirit" (151) and onto "miracle territory" (32)--then Satan has control by default. God hopes that Balizet and other spirit-filled warriors will take sovereignty from Satan, but at no time is He Himself sovereign over anything or anybody. Christian will and faith duke it out with demons, and "God" sits in the stands cheering for the Christians... Balizet does not worship an Almighty God. Satan is almighty in Balizet's theology, unless she decides to be almighty instead.

Would it be wrong to say ROFL? Of course, Barrett has it right. It's amazing how clearly she saw my grandmother for what she was - a shyster, conwoman, and dangerous as hell, when nobody in my family could. (Also? I'm mildly perturbed that "conman" is a word and "conwoman" triggers my spell check.)

Here's where I'd have to say Barrett gets it wrong (or at least, earns a new problem if she's right.) In response to my grandmother's heretical teachings, Jill writes,

No one resists His will (Rom. 9:19). His plans cannot be thwarted (Job 42:2). He does whatever He pleases (Ps. 115:3). Ho one can stay His hand (Dan. 4:35) or turn back His outstretched hand (Isa. 14:27). His mercy does not depend on any will or work of man (Rom. 9:16)... Satan had to ask God's permission to hurt Job, for God had a hedge of protection around Job (Job 1:10-12; 2:6). Satan had to ask Jesus's permission to sift Peter like wheat (Luke 22:31). Without God's say-so, Satan can do nothing!"

Okay, well than I guess that's her answer to the problem of pain: God allows it. After all, if Satan can do nothing without God's say so (which I recognize is not a universally held Christian belief), then God is ultimately responsible for anything Satan does or tempts a human to do. Either God is not omnipotent and that's why bad thing happen (my grandmother's teachings) or else God *is* omnipotent (Jill's) and he's a dick. (Why won't god heal amputees? Because he doesn't give a shit about you! But don't worry - he's all-powerful.)

There are two ways to pray, Balizet says: "You can stand on earth and pray up to heaven, asking God to do something. Or, you can take your rightful position in heaven and pray DOWN TO EARTH [sic], commanding things to happen" (163).
Born in Zion is full of folks deciding what God's will ought to be (invariably what is easiest and most pleasurable for them) and "commanding" it to happen as if they were God Himself. Why prostrate yourself before a mysterious and majestic God? Why yield; why trust? Enthrone yourself in "God"'s place and "God" will yield to you!

Well, yes and no. Yes, Gig most certainly did command God and demons to do what she wanted, but it was never what was easiest or most pleasurable for the people around her! People lost their kids because they had faith in a majestic God, not because they were so cocky they thought God would do what they wanted. Gig may have been a raging narcissist, but most of her followers were meek sheep.

But the Bible says: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?" (Rom. 11:33-35).

Okay, Jill, then on what grounds do you deem that God is good? If he's such a mystery, and his ways aren't our ways, how do you know he's any good? (Hint: Might does not make right.)

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of *Born in Zion* is the subjective revelation--what Balizet calls a "word from the Lord," a prophecy, or a Rhema. I counted 34 claims in Born in Zion that people heard directly from God. Virtually none of these claims are verified except by another "Spirit-baptized" person agreeing with them. "God almost always confirms things in this way" [by believers agreeing together], says Balizet (88). In another instance, Balizet says that one Rhema must be valid because God would not allow it to be "brought forth" otherwise

Well, why do you think God does allow false prophecy to be brought forth? If you say "free will," then you're in agreement with my grandmother when she says God never violates the sovereignty of free will (which he totally does in the Bible, multiple times.) I have to admit, thinking that God was "good" helped me to continue believing what my grandmother taught - that God would give you what you needed, as long as you had faith in him and tried to be obedient to his word.

Now that the canon of Scripture is closed, God is not giving new, special revelation. The Word of God is the *whole* counsel of God and contains all that we need (1 Tim. 3:15-17). If God was still manifesting Himself as a little voice in our heads, the Bible would become only supplementary to what we are hearing directly from Him. The Old Holy Word given to someone else eons ago, is trumped by the New Holy Word which is specifically for you in your present situation.

Sorry, Jill, but this is just bunk. Nowhere in the Bible does God say, "Put together this book for me." (Likewise, while the Bible warns us about false prophets, it doesn't say anything about how to tell who is false and who is "really" of God.)

Balizet also claims that God told her: "It is never my will to move those I love away from Life and Light and Love. It is My will to heal, to restore and to perfect. . ." (45). Whoever said this, it certainly was not the God of the Bible. Tell this balderdash to Paul, who gloried in his infirmities (2 Cor. 12:7-10). Tell it to Jeremiah the author of Lamentations. Tell it to all the saints who have been martyred for the cross: that none of their pain and suffering was ever God's will for their lives, but that their lack of faith left them at the mercy of Satan.

Right, so, your rebuttal to my grandmother's God of the Big Promises is to say that it is His will for people to suffer? Wow. I guess it's "honest" at least.

If it is dangerous to have a so-called midwife attending you in childbirth who believes that Satan is controlling your birth unless she takes control, and who believes that at any moment God could tell her to walk out on you, it is more dangerous still to have a birth attendant who believes that reality is whatever she decides it is.

It wasn't really safe to have a mother-figure who believed reality was whatever she decided, either. But people rarely seem to think about that aspect. After the births, I was still there, being exposed to her insanity day after day after day, and no one stopped it.

If Balizet is your "childbirth minister" and you suffer a complication of childbirth, she will deny it and rebuke Satan, whom she thinks is trying to manipulate her senses into believing that you are having a problem (80). She will also "rebuke the spirit of child-death" (93) if your baby is born not breathing--she has waited nearly half an hour for a newborn to begin breathing (153).

This was also the response I got for being rebellious, being bisexual, being in pain, being in terrible pain, being suicidal - She and my mother would absolutely refuse to acknowledge that there was pain going on, that our family had serious problems, and that God really wasn't meeting all of our needs.

Since Balizet worships a god who never wants anything unpleasant to happen to Christians, nothing bad *does* happen to Christians as long as they remain in the "spirit realm." But if they confess, or even secretly fear, that what they are seeing in the "sight realm" (14, 80) is real, then Satan has been empowered to make it really, really real (79)

Yes, this is how she gets to still claim her God is good (which, I suppose, isn't a necessary quality in a god for Jill Barrett.) And of course, it isn't true. My good friend and Anteater, Larry C. is writing his own memoirs now about his Zion Birth experience, and the permanent brain damage his son was left with as a result of my grandmother's medical negligence and refusal to admit that the birth was going horribly wrong.

As if all this weren't bad enough, Balizet believes that to receive any medical care whatsoever is a sin. It is yielding to the "world system" (167) and to the "arm of flesh." (84). Furthermore, taking any drug for any reason is sorcery according to Balizet (171)... Balizet believes that getting a Caesarean Section is a particularly abominable sin. All women who have had Caesareans have "the same spirit," the "spirit of Caesar," who is one and the same with "the Strong Man, the Satanic high prince over the organization and sphere of humanism" because they have "rendered their babies unto Caesar" rather than to God (48). In other words, women with Caesarean scars are idol-worshipers who are demon possessed.

The interesting thing to point out here is that Carol Balizet had 4 Caesareans with her last 4 out of 5 daughters. In fact, when she was carrying my youngest aunt, my grandmother was diagnosed with uterine cancer, and was advised to have an abortion. She tells the story that everyone but her father Papa told her to have it, but that she refused. At 7 months pregnant, my grandmother had an emergency C-section and hysterectomy. Aunt Kelly* spent her first three months of life in an incubator. My fierce love of my youngest aunt played a major role in my extreme pro-life views as a child and teen.

Balizet's superstition about who the Caesarean Section is named for does not overrule the testimony of Christ. Jesus Himself said that sick people have need of a doctor (Matt. 9:12), and women with placental problems and pelvic abnormalities are not sinning by seeing a gynecologist and having Caesarean surgery. "Woe unto them who call evil good, and good evil!" (Isa. 5:20).

You mean like calling the Bible good? Or how about that God of yours who allows Satan to do harm and who wants sickness and suffering to be part of people's lives?

Balizet is not completely true to her own beliefs in attending births, and I am grateful for that. She resorts to the "arm of flesh" and uses a bulb syringe to suction out a baby's airways after birth (66), instead of casting out the Mucus Demon or some other such foolishness.

Yes, I wish the Attleboro cult had been more aware of this before their "Zion baby" Joshua died of asphyxiation.

Should God need to audibly tell us to give physical assistance to someone who is physically suffering or in danger, when we have agreed to help that person? What is the difference between dismissing the needy with "be warmed and be filled" (James 2:16) and telling a woman having a baby that she isn't really hurting, isn't really bleeding, isn't really at risk--and that she should examine her life carefully for sin that might be keeping God from intervening in her birth? What a Job's comforter Balizet turns out to be! How uncharitable her charity!

Yes, my grandmother was callous and cruel. She was and is a monster (though now with Alzheimers, and in a nursing home.) Yet, Christian readers and Anteaters, who was the one who harmed Job the most - God or his friends? If you believe God is real, why does he let my grandmother get away with multiple deaths, and why does he allow so many women all over the globe to die in childbirth?

* Oddly enough, we had a cat named Jessie Bell (Jezebel). I've never understood why that was okay, and since I'm not talking to my mom anymore, I don't think I'm going to find out the answer anytime soon.

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Why I Write

Google knows about my blog. My entire "omg that wuzza cult?" fall from grace into anti-theism began with a Google search of my grandmother's name. Now when you Google her, page three of the results leads you to my blog.

A man who knew my grandmother back in the 1980s, when the baby ministry was just getting off the ground, contacted me yesterday. My Giggy delivered his son two years before I was born and two years before she wrote her woman-and-child-hating homebirth manifesto. His son needed an emergency cesarean but my grandmother taught that having a c-section (like she did - four times) is in actuality witchcraft and sorcery (as all surgery was to her) and that your baby delivered in this fashion would be "offered unto Caesar" and the devil, not you and the Lord. (Caesar was considered an evil spirit of, essentially, humanism.)

My grandmother and the two other burnt-out nurses who ran the baby ministry in the early days talked on and on at baby meetings they held for pregnant couples, telling them how dangerous hospitals were. My grandmother had a filing cabinet filled with newspaper clippings of medical malpractice. One story I remember vividly is of a man who had the wrong leg amputated at a hospital just a few miles away. Of course, like creationists, psychics, and "prayer warriors", my grandmother focused on the exception rather than the rule. I honestly thought as a child that going to a hospital was akin to a death sentence, so terribly inept were these doctors. In that light, it made perfect sense to trust God (who loved us, promised to heal us and provide for us, and was certainly not incompetent) over doctors (who secretly worshiped demons, when they weren't killing their patients through malpractice). (Yes, I was an early deather.)

For a moment, put yourself in this man's shoes: In a time of struggle, and no real self-confidence, his pastor and this nurse were both telling him the same things - that God would always heal, that birth was natural and "not a medical emergency", that we had been promised provision, and that doctors were evil. Other people were having Gig at their births and she had probably already attended several dozen before his. Home birth and midwifery were on the cultural rise (as they still are - unfortunately) and within the context of his life and beliefs, it wasn't crazy for him to believe what my grandmother said. He blamed an early foundation in Christian fundamentalism for laying the fertile ground for her ideas to take root.

My grandmother didn't take his wife to the hospital; there was no c-section. He son was born gray and pale, and didn't suck to nurse for two days. He's 28 now, just a couple years older than I am, and living in a group home. He'll never be an independent adult - and my grandmother did that to him. I didn't get a chance to ask last night, although I meant to, if he and his wife were the ones who took my grandmother to court for practicing medicine without a license and damaging their child, or if that's yet another life she negatively impacted.

This is why I run this blog, and this is why I'm writing my book. To a religious historian a hundred years from now, the children (and adults) she harmed may be no more than a statistic. To me, each one is a story and a child and a life. Oh, to have a time machine right now. If I could just go back to 1980 and kill her or cure her or stop her - before Baby Number 15 died; before this boy's life and his mother's life were put at risk, and he suffered permanent disability as a result; before Harrison's parents had been brainwashed into believing that prayer was the best possible treatment for his several hundred yellow jacket stings; before Roland Robidoux ever got a copy of one of her books. Before she'd written the books.

Or if I had to go back farther in time to stop her, had to go all the way back so that she was never born, I'd take my own retroactive annihiliation and nonexistence, if it kept messages like hers and like the others she parroted (stole from, shamelessly) away from loving and well-meaning people who would never intentionally put their families at risk. Sadly, I don't have a time machine. All I have is my story and my voice.

As Carol Balizet's granddaughter, as the one-time chief acolyte and head cheerleader of Home in Zion Ministries, at the once-future healer/prophet/leader of the group, I can tell the story of each of these children better. I can bring more focus, and I can get people to start talking about these issues - about cults and cult leaders, and about faith and faith healing. Hopefully, together with your help, I can start a national dialogue on the issue of childrens' rights vs. parents' rights, and we can stop acting like the denomination of your parents should determine what constitutes as abuse or neglect for you. This is our Sharia law - religious exemptions that infringe on the human rights of American citizens. For all my US readers who (like me) are getting really annoyed with UK's Labor party for courting the Muslim vote with Sharia-pandering, here's the "beam" in our own eye. (And here's a petition you can sign to help change that. And here's another.)

I think when people read stories of children who die of medical neglect, they imagine the parents as unfeeling or cruel. I want to write this story because I need to explain how fundamentalism can warp a person, and how people can do the worst actions from the most motives. I want to preach the gospel of critical thinking, so that people can protect themselves from the people like my grandmother - cunning, charming, confident, and crazy - who are out there, waiting to prey on their next victim.

Thank you to everyone who's contacted me, either through a comment or an email or a phone call. It really means a lot to me, and I'm glad of anyway that my blog is helping people to process their own backgrounds. That's kind of what I look at secular humanism as being all about - people helping people be better people. You help me. Thanks.

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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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I loathe lukewarm fence-sitting whiners

Since discovering that my grandmother was a cult leader, in a late-night Google session just over a year ago, I've been emailing site owners on any home birth or private blog that promotes her book, asking them to stop. A few people did so immediately; several were impossible to contact. (Some of these are early geocities pages, with old aol email addresses, but they're still out there being all toxic on the internet, like the KKK's site or GodHatesFags.com.)

But some women just don't want to offend anyone. Here's the email I sent out.

I am the granddaughter of Carol Balizet, author of two of the books you recommend on your [redacted] site. I wanted to alert you that several people have died as a result of following her extremist teachings (some during child birth, and some later on.) The reliance on faith she recommends in her books is nonsensical, requiring birth attendants and laboring mothers to ignore physical symptoms of birth complications and instead merely pray and take no steps to protect the life of the mother or the child.

Carol Balizet was a hypocrite in the end, getting a hip replacement surgery after telling her followers for years to abstain from all medical care. She has been classified as a cult leader by multiple cult experts. I've provided a set of links at the end of this email with further information about Carol, her former ministry, and just a few of the deaths that have resulted from her teachings.

I have written to you previously, to ask you to please remove your endorsement of her teachings.

I am begging you - please remove her books from your list of recommendations. "Born in Zion" in particular led to death of two young boys (one who died from medical ignorance immediately after his birth, and one who was slowly starved to death) in a group which came to be known as "the Attleboro Sect".

If you have further questions or concerns, I would be happy to answer them. Please feel free to contact me. My primary concern is with halting her message wherever I find it. I understand and respect a woman's desire to have her child in whichever way seems safest and most comfortable for her. But the advice given in "Born in Zion" is considered heretical by the majority of Christians, is medically dangerous, and has proven to be deadly. Please, please, please - take her name down. Don't recommend these books any longer, or else the blood of future children is on your hands, too.

With regards,
Angela Jackson

Further information:
http://www.rickross.com/reference/zion/zion2.html
http://www.neirr.org/AttleboroHistoryNew.htm
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/b17.html
http://www.birthjunkie.com/testimony2.html
http://www.ccgm.org.au/articles/Articles/ARTICLE-0007.htm
http://www.ccgm.org.au/articles/articles/ARTICLE-0005.htm

If you would like more resources beyond these (including the several books on child death, child abuse, and heretical teachings that she appears in) I would be more than happy to provide them.

I'll give her tremendous credit for replying within the hour. I don't think I can give her reply much credit though.

Thanks for contacting me with your concerns. Yes, you wrote to me previously, and I answered you at some length. I told you that I’d consider modifying the statement, and I will, but in the process of thinking through exactly how to word it, your request was pushed to the back burner. (I am a very busy homeschooling mother of eight who is heavily involved with our church, my children’s ballet company, and a national writer’s group.)

It isn’t that I have no regard for what you’ve told me, but I loathe knee-jerk or hysterical reactions of any sort—either for or against a cause. I’ll definitely read the links you’ve provided and think some more on the subject

[Redacted]

Maybe it's different if you haven't read every story, and followed it all the way from tragic death announcement, back through the history of the family, of where things went wrong - following the story through the legal battle, and wondering who I hated the most in all of this, Gig for teaching dangerous nonsense, or the fools who unquestioningly believed her. (Worst. run-on. sentence. EVER.) I just can't put this "on the back burner" myself. What's more, I don't see how she can think that there could be some sort of fence-sitting middle ground between "teachings that kill people" and "NOT teachings that kill people". (Fallacy of the middle ground? Law of non-contradiction? I don't know. I'm tired and annoyed.)

Certainly I reject the notion of an absolute black and white world, but some things are binary. Either you believe in a god(s) or you're an atheist (sorry whiners! There is no "I neither believe nor disbelieve." As soon as you don't believe, you're one of us. Mwahahahhaha!) Either Hitler was a monster or you're screwed in the head. Either Obama was born in the US or he wasn't - (none of this "Gee, there are still questions" you lying scum GOP congressmen). (Obama was born here.) (It's sad I have to take a whole other parenthetical just to clearly state something that every retarded second grader should know.) (Sorry if I offended my retarded second grade readers, but kudos to you for exploring your atheist side at such a young age!)

Ahem. Sometimes I avoid the most difficult topics with lots of asides and stupid jokes. Something about humor being a defense mechanism. I don't know, I was really bad at counseling as a kid. Mostly I just played with the cool colored water toys that every school guidance counselor seems to have. (I finally asked one counselor if they all ordered them from a catalog. She said yes.)

My mom told me earlier today she had to stop and just reflect after she wrote the sentence, "Most of the deaths my mother caused were due to this book, which is actually the mildest but which had the widest distribution." I don't know how many of my readers out there can non-fictionally start a sentence with "Most of the deaths my grandmother caused" or "Most of the children my grandmother killed". It's rather odd that I can. You might think I'd be used to it by now, but I'm not sure that I ever will be. What would it be like to be Hitler's child, and to live on long enough to hate everything he'd stood for? I can imagine it, at least.

I compared Gig to Hitler in my own head for the first time in fifth grade, long before I'd ever heard of Godwin's Law. Heck, I wasn't even thinking of it in terms of death. I'm not sure any children had died yet at that point. I just remember sitting in the back of the classroom during social studies, watching a black-and-white video of a short, stiff man talking to a crowd of thousands. I remember my teacher saying the word "charisma" at some point, and thinking, "Oh that's what it's called."

How the hell can you be wishy-washy on Hitler? Or my grandmother? Both are monsters, but one is still alive. I won't be sorry when she goes, and yet I'm sure I'll cry. How can you love someone that you know has killed so many?



(Life cheers me up when I find binary "That's what she said!" comic strips for my blog.)

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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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Long Ass Rant: Homebirth and Quiverfull

For all that I'd just as soon leave the home birth itself out of the discussion, there's no getting around it. In the past year and a half I've come to see my grandmother as a cult leader. What I would like to forget is that she was a homebirth cult leader, and so I think I should clarify my position (as it stands today) here. First, yes - birth is a "miracle". It's also a) gross and b) common. It's a miracle that happens all day every day, and is really only significant to the people involved and their loved ones. (Sorry, I think my kid's special too, but let's not use the word "miracle" lightly, shall we?)

I had these concepts figured out at an early age, because I had such a high exposure to birth - much more than most people. I have to think that the average person really only attends so many births in their life - their own, their children, possibly grandchildren or the children of a very close friend or sibling. I saw strangers give birth, women who I hadn't met till they were already in the active stages of their labor. Birth feels exceptional, because it is really freaking cool to see a new person (or kitten or puppy) come out into the world for the first time ever. But babies somewhere have been born in the time I've been writing this post. (And the time between writing this and posting it. And between when I posted it and you read it.) So I think de-mythologyzing birth might be helpful.



Pregnancy is a medical condition. Stop going on about your "wonderfully made" natural body, okay? God didn't knit your womb together and it might have problems (especially if the other women in your family did).

Obviously a certain level of infant mortality at home and in hospitals is going to happen, especially in cases where a woman chose not to abort a fetus showing signs of developmental problems (which is, and should be, her right) or the child is born preterm (between 24 and 34 weeks gestation). But is home birth just as safe as hospital birth? Well, in large part that can be measured by how closely the homebirth resembles a hospital birth. If the mother receives proper prenatal, ultrasounds, tests for protein in the urine, rh-negative blood type, and every other thing imaginable that they can get from a little blood and urine.

It was at one of these prenatal visits that I found out I'm a carrier for cystic fiborsis (a very not-fun genetic disorder). Because I found out before my son was born, I was able to get my ex-husband's blood tested also, to see what our chances were of having a seriously sick child from Day One. He came back negative, so my son is fine. He might be a carrier like I am - I'll recommend he gets tested before knocking anybody up. The point is, if Little Man had been sick, the prenatal exams would have helped me find out and prepare in advance. In the three days that I waited for the lab results to come back, I learned a lot about CF. If Little Man had been born with that condition, I could have prepared.

Another measure of birth safety is the availability of proper medical equipment. If your midwife doesn't know how to stitch a perinea l tear, you might be SOL. In my personal hierarchy of "awesome" to "deadly" births, I'd rank things thusly:

1. Hospital birth following extensive prenatal care
2. Birthing center birth following extensive prenatal care
3. Hospital birth without extensive prenatal care
4. At-home birth with medically trained professionals*, following extensive prenatal care
5. At-home midwife birth without extensive prenatal care
6. Unassisted childbirth following extensive prenatal care
7. Unassisted childbirth without extensive prenatal care

*One important note - Your doula is not a midwife. She is a cheerleader, not a medical professional. You can have her there if you want her, by all means, but don't stop at a doula.

The safest birth you can have starts one year before the woman is even pregnant, when she's eating right, sleeping right, and not smoking cigarettes. Then she gets pregnant, and is able to provide good nutrition during pregnancy. The woman in her family have fairly uncomplicated pregnancies and labors. She learns she is pregnant often, goes to all of her prenatal exams, and attends birth and parenting classes with her partner. She suffers few of the side effects most pregnant woman experience, from morning sickness to pre-eclampsia, and continues to exercise and eat well (but more). She writes up a birth plan and discusses with her doctor when certain medical interventions may be used, well in advance of her due date. She goes to the hospital during early labor, and spends active labor and delivery there. She is surrounded by trained medical professionals and top-of-the-line life saving equipment. The baby is born, cleaned, examined for health, and given to the new mommy to hold and nurse.

The closest you can get your birth experience to that one, the fewest complications you'll have.

Now, does someone wanna please fix the Wikipedia article on Home Birth? I can't personally stomach it, but the thing is so damn biased. I'm sorry but the freebirthers are no better than the anti-vax crowd, and they need to have a damn bright spotlight shone on them. I say this with several family members who have chosen unassisted homebirth over the years, including within the last decade. I say this with several family members - both mothers and their children - were in mortal danger or at least appeared to be for some time during their labors. Three of the babies were born in meconium (fetal poop), and since they weren't born in a hospital, nothing was done to expel any meconium the babies may have swallowed in the womb. (Meconium is much more likely to be an issue in a pregnancy that extends past 40 weeks gestation. While I'm not a fan of elective cessarians, most women undergoing prenatal care with the supervision of a licensed OB/GYN will not have this particular threat to their babies' health. At a certain point, around 41 weeks usually, the doctor will recommend inducing labor chemically, using Pitocin.)

These were also days-long labors that had a serious toll on the mothers. My own labor with Little Man was 98 hours (4 days) and I can't even put into words how tired I was, and how unable to care for an infant. I really needed the two days after that I got to spend in the hospital, pushing my Magic Button and saying, "I'd like an apple juice and a Percocet, and can someone change my baby's diaper?" I think every mom deserves that (hell, I think it should've been a week but that time is long gone now). When women birth at home, they don't get the same level of aftercare. The most devoted husband in the world can't compare with a round-the-clock staff of nurses and doctors, as well as a nursery to care for the baby between feedings. Out of the desire for a comfortable birth experience, they have what is, in my opinion, a much less comfortable recovery. (Percocet is seriously great stuff if you've just gone through the trauma and the horror that is live birth.)

So in a nutshell, I think hospital births are safer, for mothers and infants. I think if your mother had a rough labor, you should seriously consider (read: DO) giving birth in a hospital. And if your wife, girlfriend, sister starts telling you that her body was "designed for birth" and that labor and delivery are "totally natural" and that she wants to "trust her body" - tell her to get her ass to a hospital. Or at least to some good skeptical resources.

Like these:

From the CDC - Notes on the Indiana Pre and Peri-natal Mortality

Kathryn Joyce wrote a book on the subject of my grandma's kind of people "Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement"

Here's a podcast she did on Brazilian Waxes, Condom Lies, and Quiverfull.

From Newsweek - Extreme Motherhood by Katheryn Joyce.
or you can read a commentary on this article at End Hereditary Religion.

The comments alone make this Feministing post worth checking out.

I highly recomend you read the blog No Longer Qivering (there's no "you" in quivering") especially this post.

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