Fallen Angels

My mentor, Don Snyder, recently wrote to me about the publishing world. Seems that violent sex is still in high demand. One of his students just published a book about a serial rapist who goes around attacking women with a coke bottle (let your imagination fill in the rest.) This book is the only one of his many students' works to "make it" in the last ten years. So what does that tell us? What it tells me is that the marketplace has not changed….a lot. The law of supply and demand plays out. People want violence, the media provides violence.

Then again, Don wrote the screenplay for "Fallen Angels," a beloved Hallmark Christmas movie. (It will be airing on Hallmark Channel again this year all through the holidays, especially on Xmas Day at 8am and 6pm.) That tells me that decent movies and plays are still in high demand,too. Is it the holidays that actually do bring out the best in us or is there an undercurrent of love that exists there all year round?

Rough sex and violence - some of us have experienced enough of that to last a lifetime- why write about it and pollute the earth even further? We worry about keeping the environment clean and saving the planet. What about the environment of our minds? What about saving each other? If we contribute to the mental pollution of human beings, then, in my opinion, the earth doesn't stand much of a chance.

There I go again, sounding like Tiny Tim from "A Christmas Story" (my favorite holiday movie….next to "Fallen Angel.") I'm not sure my own books, "Losing the Way" and "Walkaway" have enough sex and violence in them to make it in this marketplace but I worry that I'm doing my own share of polluting. I mean, who wants to hear about a young girl corrupted by a cult? But this story bears witness to the truth, my truth, and the truth sets us free, or so said Jesus. Plus, it has a happy ending.

I remember how much The Doctor used to enjoy teaching Christian Family and Sex. He showed us raunchy pornography movies "just to expose us to what the devil was up to." Remember the one with the two lesbians and the German Shepherd? Once when I visited him in his motorcoach he had a folder of obscene photos spread out over his desk. He said he was doing "research." Some research. In my experience, Wierwille was a polluter, not a savior. I don't think there are any saviors out there. We're it, gang. And we get what we're asking for.

A Trip to the Library - Another scene

This is a short interlude between longer scenes in Chapter One but I wanted to let it stand on its own. This was a pivotal point for me in starting to take back my mind from the cult. Thank God for libraries!


Soon after we arrive, I take the kids to the public library. When we return, Joshua runs into the house, almost slipping on the snow, arms full of books.

"Look, Nana," he says. "Trucks!"

Mom leans over and examines each title as Josh holds them up. She smiles and exclaims over his brilliant choices. It is hard to know who is more excited. When I was young, Mom would bring home presents from work, large colorful children's books newly released by her publishing house. I hoarded them like jewels, the cherished signs of my mother's love. They were proof that she thought of me when she was gone, that she thought of me at all. This nurtured a love of books that followed me into adulthood. Once in The Way however, my choices became limited only to Christian literature, focusing primarily on The Bible and the Doctor's writings. Mom's letters to me over the past fifteen years included impassioned lectures against the cult's censorship. Of course, I denied it. Now that I was home and free to read whatever I wanted, it seemed logical that one of my first stops would be to the local library.

"And what did you get?" She turns to me.

I show her the titles. She picks one out and flips through its pages.
"
The Battered Woman. I edited this book, worked with Lenore Walker on it. It was the first book ever published on the subject of wife abuse. I had to really fight and convince my bosses that there was a market for it. Now it's a classic."

"Yeah, well, I thought I should read up on it and figure out what's been happening to me."

Mom looks down then back up at me, her eyes clouded with concern. She lowers her voice. "I suspected that was the case."

Chapter One continues...

A handful of turned-over onionskin pages sit on the table beside a bottle of White-Out and two half-used pencils, one red, one black. When I was young, I used to love to bite into her pristine pencils and chew them until they were riddled with tooth marks. Mom would scold me. "You always put everything into your mouth. Don’t I feed you enough?"

I stare at the papers before me. Mom told me she was working on a memoir. She didn't intend to publish it, she said. She just wanted to leave a record of her memories for her children and grandchildren. Curious, I pick up a page and read.

My mother's relatives regarded me as a strangely cold, unapproachable child. “She acts like a gentile,” they said, and blamed Dad for having chosen to live in a suburb where there were no other Jews.

In truth, I was not affectionate or demonstrative. From infancy, I disliked being touched. Even today, in my old age, I experience a moment's hesitation before I can kiss someone's cheek in greeting. I am much more comfortable being alone than in situations where I am expected to be sociable. The feeling of loneliness, no more frequent now than when I was younger, is seldom a yearning for a particular person who has gone out of my life. It is instead a familiar, throat-tightening ache for the person I wanted to be and never was.


I recognize instantly what she is saying. I'd experienced it since I was a small child. Whenever I reached to be picked up, Mom would hold me for a moment then put me down. When I went to kiss her, she would turn away, offering only her cheek. Her shoulders would stiffen if I tried to hug her. At a young age, I learned not to climb up on her lap the way other children did with their mothers. I knew she would only brush me off like a fly. I always thought she hated me.

This is a remarkable revelation. Here in her own words, she acknowledges her basic nature. She doesn't apologize. She's not ashamed. I'm ashamed of everything. I think everything is my fault. Even in The Way, I was always apologizing. Mom hates it when people say they're sorry all the time, like when she came out to rescue us last week and I kept saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. She finally told me to put a lid on it. She said she got the message the first time.

The Doctor once told me that Mom was possessed and not to trust her. He said the Prince of Darkness made her so confident. But I don't think I believe that anymore. Here she's simply stating the facts. She knows herself and her ruthless self-knowledge is liberating to me. It wasn't just me she didn't want to be close to. It was everybody. If she was possessed, then that's how she was born. And after bearing two children, I can't believe people are born with devil spirits.

I hear a noise and the light goes on in the kitchen. Mom stands near the sink and rubs her forehead. I quickly replace the page facedown on the table and stand up.

"Can't sleep?" she says.

"Did I wake you?"

"No, I couldn't sleep either. I usually wake up about this time anyway and fix myself some toast. Then I go back to bed. I heard the water running." She approaches the family room and glances at the vase of roses. "Oh, you found my book, I see."

"Yes, I hope you don't mind that I…"

"It's not all that great. Just something for me to do. Now that I'm retired, I have a lot of time."

"Well, you'll be busy now."

"Yes, I suppose I will. Now look who's here." Mom motions towards the doorway and there is Joshua, rubbing his eyes.

"Mommy," he says. "Thirsty."

WALKAWAY continues...

Here's another installment of Chapter One of WALKAWAY. I'm not sure how much of it I should post at a time as I don't want to split up the scenes. But this next scene is a long one so I'll post the second half next week. Thanks for reading. And thanks again for the encouragement and support. It's nice to know these words are landing on interested ears.


My thirty-three year old brother Owen meets us at the gate and drives us to Connecticut. It's been four years and he looks almost the same as the last time I saw him. His light brown hair is shorter, but he's still slender and pale, living the life of a struggling composer in New York.

I sleep most of the way home, in the back of my mother's Toyota, wedged between the two car seats. I awake to see Mom's church, its white clapboard frame with green shutters aglow under the snowy streetlights, a landmark that says we are close to Mom's house. Last week, just before a February Nor'Easter covered New England in snow, Mom flew out to Oregon to rescue us. Now we're almost home.

We arrive at a little after one in the morning. Mom bustles ahead and turns on the lights in the kitchen, the room nearest the door. I enter with Grace in her carrier. Owen has Josh. Mom is waiting with a long white box in her hands.

"This must be for you. It was sitting here on the table. It's a good thing I don't lock my doors."

I hand the baby to Mom, take the box and open the lid. It's a bouquet of a dozen red roses sent FTD from Portland. Red roses are the Doctor's favorite flowers, a symbol of God's love for us. Mom leans over to smell them.

"They've lost their scent," she says. "At least they're not as bad as those fake flowers they used in that mass Way wedding you were married in. So what does the card say?"

"It says, 'Happy Birthday, Kris. I love you. God loves you. Please come home, Alec.'"

"Well, he's got some nerve after how he's treated you. Some husband he is."

I close the box and place it on the coffee table, saying nothing.


Once the children are settled in bed, I stand near the bedroom window and look outside. Cold air seeps through the glass pane and I pull my nightgown tightly around me. Here in the country, the cloudless sky is ablaze with stars. How different from Portland where it is almost always overcast. My mind turns to Alec for a moment and I wonder what he is doing, where he is now, if he is with Patty, the new believer. I say a prayer for him, for us. Even though I've left him, I can't help praying. It's a reflex as natural as breathing. My mind is calm now, the voice in my head has stopped and I ask for forgiveness. I even speak in tongues because the Doctor taught us that tongues is the prayer God likes best. It is strange to be away from my spiritual family and home in this house alone with my earthly family. In the Way, fellowship with unbelievers is against The Word unless you are trying to convert them.

"Mommy," Josh says. His arms extend towards me and I kiss him on the forehead, the eyebrows and cheek. Then I tuck the old wool army blanket under his chin, covering the scratchy fringe with a worn sheet.

"It's okay, Josh," I whisper. "Go to sleep. We're home now."

Unable to wind down, I walk back into the family room and turn on a small light in the corner. The box of flowers sits unopened on the coffee table. I gather the roses in my arms and go into the kitchen in search of a large enough vase. Mom's bedroom is in the next room so I must be very quiet. I find a tall glass pitcher, run the water and arrange the flowers. The Doctor once gave me a rose after we'd had sex. Alec thought it was the nicest thing, so loving. He never suspected. Then he found out and everything fell apart.

The Beginning of my New Book - WALKAWAY

Many leave of their own accord because they become disillusioned,
fed up or burnt out, or they realize the cult was not what it said it was. …
Cult members who leave in this way are known as walkaways.
Margaret Thaler Singer, Ph.D.


I celebrate my twenty-ninth birthday by fleeing from my husband and a fundamentalist cult I joined when I was fourteen. My mother and I and my two kids barely make the jet from Portland, Oregon to New York, afraid that someone will follow us. But no one does. We crowd into the fifteenth row, in the last available seats, and we seem to be safe.

The plane lands at JFK at close to eleven'o'clock at night. Two-year-old Joshua is just starting to wind down, having whined and thrashed since Chicago, tormenting not only his grandmother but all the passengers within earshot. Grace, on the other hand, at one month, slept peacefully the whole trip, crying only when she needed my breast.

The stewardess kindly allows us to leave first. We're that family on the plane whom everyone stares at, daggers in their eyes, for keeping them up for the last three hours of a transcontinental flight. No one offers a hand, not a single expression of compassion. It's not like in The Way where believers would be tripping over each other to help. The Doctor always said the world is like this - cold, indifferent and hard, just like the devil. I pass a row of adolescents dressed in green and white soccer jerseys and one of the boys says, "Cute kid, but try some Ritalin next time."

Mom exits first, pushing the stroller filled with a baby satchel, purses and toys. She maneuvers through the hatch and leads us into the tunnel towards the terminal. I'm carrying both sleeping children, Joshua who has finally dozed, and Grace in her Snuggly. My arms feel like sledge hammers but I don't want to wake up the kids by calling for help.

I straggle behind when suddenly, Mom stops and turns around. She seems tiny compared to the other passengers who have started to deplane. Her dyed black hair is mussed and flattened on one side from pressing it against the window.

"Where are you?" She says with a hint of irritation. Guilt rips through me. See how bad you are, some voice in my head says. You're bad for upsetting her. Bad for leaving your marriage, bad for leaving the believers, bad for being alive. The Doctor always said that if we left The Way, we might as well be dead. "The only way you leave is feet first," he would say.

I train my eyes on Mom. The avalanche of thoughts keeps coming and I'm in free fall. When she sees me, she circles back. She looks angry now, deep hellish circles etched beneath her eyes. Bad. Bad. The voice gets louder. She stops in front of me, empties the stroller and takes Josh. His head is lolling back and forth and Grace is beginning to fuss. We're stopped in the middle of the aisle and New Yorkers are starting to stream by at an alarming rate. A bottleneck is forming behind us.

"Come on!"

"Move it."

"What's the problem?" a man shouts from the crowd.

"YOU'RE the problem," Mom yells. She grabs the stroller and starts towards the terminal without me. I take a step back, holding Grace's head to my chest and someone bumps into me hard from behind.

"Watch where you're going," he says.

I move over as far as I can and hug the wall. The strangers rush past me. I'm rocking Grace against my shoulder, praying God will show mercy and get us through this alive. There's no sign of Mom or Josh. The sounds around me are deafening, feet pounding against the hollow floor, voices echoing off the aluminum frame, the roar of air in the tunnel. My heart is pounding hard. I close my eyes. Bad. Please God, help us.

"What are you doing?"

I open my eyes and Mom is staring at me, a quizzical look on her face. Josh is strapped in the stroller, calmly drinking from a bottle filled with apple juice.

"Nothing," I say.

"Well, come on then. We have to get home."

Predators Prey

V.P. Weirwille was a predator. I never fully realized the impact of this until the other day when I received an e-mail from a former member of The Way whose friend had obviously been a victim of "the Doctor's" sexual abuse.

She had been a vivacious and totally committed believer. She sincerely followed VP's teachings and was a shining example to her brothers and sisters. She worshipped "The Doctor", lit up in his presence and enthusiastically obeyed everything he said.

Then, one day, everything changed. She announced to her spiritual family that she had to leave, giving no explanation. She and her husband met with VP and she couldn't even look him in the eye. Her light was gone. She gave no reason for her sudden escape - just that she had to go. VP told her to work on her marriage, just as he had told me to do. She left instead, never to be heard of again.

What happened? I can only extrapolate from what was said to me but I think I know. I remember being that intrepid, vivacious believer until The Doctor got his hands on me. Then he twisted my sincerity into slavery and forced me to do things to him I would never do, much less imagine. He locked me in his lockbox and I was helpless to escape.
This woman fled and it's haunted her ever since, ruined her life, I'd say. Now she is a recluse, with no connections to family or friends or her past.

It could all be in my imagination. But I know the signs. And the story awakened my memory to a darker time in my life when I had nowhere to turn. I was one of the fortunate ones. I escaped. Some were not so lucky. The Way is strewn with casualties of women who were prey to Wierwille, Martindale and other "men of God." Some killed themselves, some disappeared. There but for the grace of God, go I.

I was always taught that predators preyed on the weak. But after hearing this story, I realize that's not true. Men like Wierwille prey on the strong - on the most sincere and devoted of followers because these are the most easy to manipulate. We are the most vulnerable because we loved most freely. Yes, we were young and we were naive but that does not mean we were weak. One has to be strong to keep a lockbox, even when it becomes a prison.

This sad story reminded me of the evil of such men as Weirwille. I know of other believers who still don't believe him capable of such abuse. They don't believe him capable of rape or cold-hearted manipulation. VP will always be their "man of God." Let the detractors believe what they will. For myself, I know what I experienced and I know what is true.

Thankfully it is all in the past, but every so often, something happens that reminds me of what I lived through. Of being a victim. Then I must pick myself up out of the despair and anger and remind myself of my strength. I am not weak, I wasn't then either. A beautiful flower is only plucked in its prime. I and other survivors like me need remember that it was our beauty and vulnerability that caused us to be "picked." I am trying to recapture some of that beauty, allowing it to shine with the strength that underlies it.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Hello again! It's been a while. Mainly haven't written because there was nothing to say. I mean I got contacts and last twenty pounds and have been backpedaling into my forties, in complete denial that I am approaching mid-fifties. It’s sobering - this aging business. This summer I've gone to baby showers and family picnics, played badmitten and SET (a mesmerizing card game), cat sit for my daughters' cats and driven back and forth to the airport to pick up my son who just returned from a year away, traveling around the world.

I've watched my mentor venture to Scotland where he can caddy for world-class golfers on the course at St. Andrews and figure out how to write books for the masses. I've fought with him too. He says sex-sex-sex and more sex sells. That's what the publishers want, he says. Now, I respect Don Snyder deeply - he's really the first person who taught me the CRAFT of writing - how to write a scene and know what you're doing. But I draw the line at explicit sex. Don't get me wrong. Sex can be the most beautiful thing around and Don is after HOW to write about it perfectly. I hope he achieves it. If anyone can, he can. But after the sum of all my experiences, I'm not sure I could.

Oh, and I've also finished my sequel to LOSING THE WAY. It's called WALKAWAY: CONFESSIONS OF A LOST DAUGHTER. There's a fair amount of sex in it, too. It's really a story of reconciliation between a daughter and her estranged mother after the daughter leaves a cult with her two young children. It's fraught with sex and heartbreak, custody fights and violence. Sounds like a winner, huh? That's the other thing I've been doing this summer - writing and revising, revising, revising, revising. They say all writing is revising. But as far as sex, I've gone the suggestive route and left out the panting and the groping.

Last thing on my mind, just to bring you up to date was that I truly overdosed on religion. I think after my friend committed suicide and I went to that monastery, I fell off the planet temporarily and lost my bearings. My church got a new minister who's a little too gung-ho for my tastes so I've stopped attending. I'm not meditating or journaling like I used to and amazingly, I'm still alive. I haven't been smitten with the botch of Egypt. I mean as far as I can see it, meditating makes you a better meditator, praying makes you a better prayer and writing makes you a better writer. All the praying in the world won't make me a better writer. I have to work at it. I'm much happier now.

I still believe in God, though I prefer the Jew's YHWH (or is it JHVH) no vowels and unpronounceable. To me, that's honest. For whatever we call the higher power, we're sure to get it wrong. Still "IT" understands, I'm sure and looks on us poor bumbling mortals as extensions of its immortality and light. I believe that. So hurray for faith in something. I read Christopher Hitchens book GOD IS NOT GREAT about all the reasons that "religion poisons everything." He had some good albeit hackneyed arguments. But a good faith, a solid bedrock of trust in something unseen (not the IRS), something beyond ourselves that is good, that makes me happy. And happiness, I'm coming to learn, is really all we have. To do our work and enjoy the portion we've been given. I think Solomon said something like that. There's the Bible again. Can't get away from it.

Anyway, that was my summer. I'll try to get back on my horse, Blog, and start riding again. How about you? How was your summer? It's good to be back.

My Mother/My New Book

I'm in the midst of marketing my second book. It’s a hard sell in New York these days, or so I'm told. It has nothing to do with vampires or baseball so that makes it a hard sell.
What it is about is leaving a cult, with a mother-daughter story at its core.

My mother and I were never close, not in the traditional sense. Mom was a superb provider, as my father was mostly out of work due to a penchant for scotch. In a time when most daughters had stay-at-home Moms, mine slaved away at a job in Manhattan, editing books and running her own subsidiary of E.P. Dutton. At night, she would come home, cook dinner, run a sewing machine and make me clothes or edit freelance manuscripts. Did I mention that she also wrote and published several novels? She never stopped working. And I never stopped craving her attention.

By the time I joined The Way international, I thought I was over it. I gave up trying to get her to notice me. I didn't understand her sacrifice. I only saw things through my own limited vision of the world - that I was at its center and Mom didn't revolve around me. She revolved around her whole family - keeping food on the table and gas in the car. No wonder she didn't notice that I'd gotten myself hooked up with a cult. As far as she was concerned, it kept me out of trouble and that was good. One less thing she had to worry about.

And still she did worry. When The Way took me out to Kansas and points beyond, she never stopped writing or scraping together a few extra bucks to send me. Twenty-five dollars was a lot thirty years ago and Mom even sponsored me in The Way Corps, though she didn't believe in it. Not a bit. But she believed in me and refused to lose touch. Even when I cursed her and thought her possessed of devil spirits, she didn't give up. Finally, when the time was ripe, she rescued me and her two grandchildren.

I never understood my mother until I had my own children. I never understood the tenacity and grit it took to hang on when your love looked hopeless and you were convinced you had lost the reason you were holding on. Well, I don’t want to give away the plot of my sequel to Losing the Way but suffice it to say, that my relationship with my mother is at the heart of it all. The estrangement, the misunderstanding, the forgiveness, the reconciliation.

Today would have been my mother's eighty-ninth birthday. She died three years ago from complications of Alzheimer's Disease. Were she alive today, I know we would all be celebrating, my children and me, celebrating a life of giving and love. Even though she was not an affectionate person, she was a loving person and I know she loved me. And I loved her, in spite of the years I walked away from her.

Oh, and by the way, that's the name of my new book: Walkaway: Confessions of a Lost Daughter. But don’t hold your breath. It may never see the light of day. Like I said, there are no vampires.

Ready or Not

My book is getting ready to come out soon - at the end of this month. All sorts of feelings here – excitement, anxiety, hope and apprehension. I mean it’s only the story of a part of my life – a particularly difficult period of my life. And I’m hoping it will help someone know that they’re not alone in the struggle to break free from abuse, if that’s what they’re going through.

I wrote "Losing the Way" for three reasons. First, because I had to tell the truth and move past the trauma. I had to bear witness to what had happened, as if by writing about it, I would make it real and begin to heal. Second, my hope was to help someone else who might be going through something similar. Very simple, as long as I keep my eyes on that ball, the healing ball, I won’t freak. Third, I wanted to help other people who know nothing about cults, what it was like to be IN a cult, to feel it in their bones, not just in their head.

The cult stuff, the betrayal of the “secret” opening the “lockbox” used to be a big deal. I was under the impression that if I told the truth, I would be damned. Now THAT’s a cognitive distortion, if there ever was one. Who’s to say who’s going to be damned and who’s not going to be? If telling the truth of one’s own experience is that bad, then I choose to be damned rather than to remain silent. Fortune-teller error – that things will turn out badly and you treat it as an already established fact.

I never set out to write a bestseller. That’s not the point. If I can begin to heal, help someone else and enable other people who know nothing about cults FEEL what the experience is like, then I’ve succeeded brilliantly. That’s my prayer and hope. We’ll see what happens. But it’s like being eight months pregnant with your first child. Ready or not, here she comes!