More about "Walkaway"

The way my mind works is this: I call someone on the phone. Nobody answers. It's my fault. Maybe it's my Jewish genes but guilt runs very deep in my veins. Omnipotent guilt in which I think I'm responsible for just about anything that happens in the world. The cult loved this. I was as easy to manipulate as a marionette. Things have gotten better since I left but I still have to stand guard against recalcitrant brain cells.

So when I post something like the first scene of a new book and almost nobody says anything, my insecurities spike and I wonder if I shouldn't just chuck myself into the fireplace. My husband tells me this is an extreme reaction, especially when there's no fire burning. In "Walkaway", I've been told the character is too weak and no one will like her (i.e. me). That's the problems with memoirs - her is me - you can't get away from yourself.

I'm happy to say that I'm through with memoirs and the narcissistic self-loathing that goes along with them. I'll have more fun with fiction because if no one answers the phone, I won't blame myself and think about throwing myself anywhere. Life is short. Why make it shorter? I'm working on something called "constructive hedonism," commonly known as "having fun." Not something that comes naturally to me. But fiction is fun, memoir is not. So there you go.

I'm still going to try to get "Walkaway" published though. I still think there are people out there, like yourselves maybe, who will relate to the confusion, fear and exhilaration that accompanies leaving a cult. My writing teacher once told me that the reason we write is to "relieve the world of some of its loneliness." If my writing helps one (preferably more but I'll go with one) person feel less lonely, then I have succeeded. Someone has answered the phone. Because writing is often like calling out into the void. When no one answers, you wonder what you did wrong. If someone does respond, even if it's to say "shut up and go back to sleep," at least you know you reached someone. You know you're not alone.

On Procrastination

I'm starting a new book. I think I already told you about it. A story for my father-in-law about his childhood mentor. It's a study in making up history since I don't know a lot about him or the mentor. I can only imagine what their lives were like.

Sitting on the couch in my library, I'm finding ways to avoid writing. I hear my husband, rattling around in his studio. I imagine him painting, dancing back and forth in front of a new canvas. Sometimes, he is afraid to commit color to a surface, afraid that he might fail, just as I am afraid I might fail to find the words to write. I'm afraid my imagination will fail me. Do I have it in me to create?

The door to his studio just opened and closed. Now I imagine him outside, ranging around his old Model A truck, contemplating how he'll restore it this Spring. Ah, Spring! How does anyone do anything on such a beautiful day? He's coming up the stairs now to the main house. Perhaps he'll join me in my game of procrastination. Perhaps he'll save me from it.

No, I hear a brush drop. I imagine him picking it up, grabbing his palette. He has resumed work.

It is time for me to do the same. Writing is hard because it is alone work. And being alone is perhaps the hardest thing of all. Will anything save me from being alone with myself?

Today our daughter left for a new apartment closer to school. She says she fears being alone, not for her safety but for sanity. She just broke up with another boyfriend, an unsatisfactory relationship - not abusive, just second-rate. One in which she couldn't fully be herself. She's opted for making it on her own to being in a mediocre relationship.

I know there are books out these days about settling for a "good enough" relationship. You don't have to be single and hold out for the "right one" forever, they say. I'm not sure I agree with this. Holding out for the "right one" is holding out for the one who enhances your Self. It's not enough to just not be alone. One must be at peace with one's aloneness before joining up with another soul. My husband and I didn't choose each other to escape the loneliness but rather to share it, until our mutual emptiness united us both.

I think the fear of aloneness is the root of procrastination. Some might say it's fear of failure but at the root of the fear of failure is the fear of rejection and the root of the fear of rejection is the fear of being all alone in the world.

My husband just walked in. I ask him how it's going and he says "good. How about for you?" I say "good" in hopes that it will be. He can't live my life for me, no matter how close we are. It's up to me to handle my aloneness. I don't HAVE to write but I'd like to. So, up again old heart. Fill the void with imagination. In the end, that's all I can truly call my own.

What They've Got That I Haven't Got

Well, I'm starting to get really excited. The wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-you can't-sleep-so-you-write-in-your-blog kind of excited. A lifetime dream is about to come true. It's not the horse in the backyard that I've always wished for or that trip to Venice we had planned for this February. We had to cancel that so I could pursue this. I'm about to embark on an MFA program in professional writing.

Now what on earth is that, one might ask? And why would that be a dream of a lifetime? Simple. It's what I was always discouraged to do. And here, at the ripe old age of 52, I'm still rebelling against my writer parents. They were against education in the arts. "You either have talent or you don't and if you have it, you use it."

To them, one didn't waste time in graduate school learning to do something you already know how to do. They were old school, boxcar-riding, depression babies. They neither had the money or the time to indulge in MFA programs. (Actually, they weren't hobos riding in boxcars but I thought that sounded good.)

So now that they've both left this world and moved onto that great graduate program in the sky, I've found the courage to pursue this dream of my lifetime - to become a fulltime writer. They were fulltime writers and strongly discouraged me from following in their footsteps. Like good parents, they were trying to spare their child from a life of misery. And like a child who wants what she can't have, I've held onto this dream with a vengeance.

It's not that I don't like working in the prison and being a social worker. I've managed to write a book, a few books actually, while doing so. And articles and poems and screenplays. So, what's the big draw to the MFA? "What have they got that I haven't got?"

In the "Wizard of Oz", when the wizard is distributing the rewards, he prefaces each speech to the four seekers with "but they have one thing you haven't got." To the scarecrow, he says it's a diploma. I suppose I'm looking for the diploma, the piece of paper which will allow me to eventually write for a living from home, perhaps teach, and graduate from the prison. But it's more than that.

Someone once said that MFA programs don't teach you how to write but they provide courage. In that respect, I'm more like the lion than the scarecrow. It's not the brain I need, not the diploma but fortitude. That's the one thing I didn't get from my parents - an alcoholic father and an unhappy mother. Perhaps that's the one thing they couldn't give.

In the end, I suppose courage is the one thing I can only give myself - permission to act in the face of fear. But let's be honest, that little ticket stub called a diploma won't hurt either. It stands out on a resume and says "she can write" or at least "she can fulfill the requirements of a degree program." In the end, my parents will probably prove to be right. Nothing takes the place of action. And for now, this MFA is the action I'm taking.

On why I changed the heading AGAIN

As I said before, blogs are organic things. As I evolve, so it evolves. We seem to be in some kind of growth spurt.

Last month I fractured my right ankle in two places. I have been, for all intents and purposes, a cripple, confined to three rooms - the library, where I sleep, eat, work and play; the bathroom and the kitchen (sometimes). I haven't climbed the steep stairs of our one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old house to my bedroom in over a month. My husband has patiently assisted me in almost everything.

I've had a lot of time to think. I've thought about cults and trauma. I've thought about cults and recovery. I've thought about the past and the future. I've thought about the purpose of this blog. I have decided that I would rather explore reality, in all its breathtaking complexity than just focus on cults and my past all the time.

Therefore, I think the most fitting new title to this blog is "Surviving Reality." Corny, I know and it sounds like a support group for people who have been on Reality TV shows. But I'm talking about Life, uncut and uncensored. Reality - Spiritual, physical, psychological, emotional, sexual and so on. The key here, of course, lies in knowing what reality is. Not always easy.

Shortly after I left the cult, I asked a a warm-hearted psychiatrist if I was crazy. He assured me I was not but he did say I was "suffering from reality." I'd like to dedicate these posts to "Survivors of Reality," which, we all know can be pretty brutal....and beautiful. I'd love to know how other people find their ways in this crazy world - how they survive and thrive. That's what I think we're all really after, anyway, isn't it?

Knowing me, I'll probably change the heading again. Until then, keep on surviving.....and thriving.

Why Don't You Just Get Over It?

“It’s been twenty years, why don’t you just get over it? Stop dwelling on the past. Get on with your life.”

These are common sentiments of people who do not understand trauma. They are also common expressions used by perpetrators of the abuse. These words minimize the impact of trauma.

Trauma is a subjective thing. Why two soldiers go to war and witness the same atrocity and one comes back psychologically unscathed and the other riddled with PTSD, no one knows. But we do know that once a person has been traumatized, it is not just something they “get over,” as though it were a common cold.

Researchers have discovered that trauma is experienced first in most primitive part of the brain, called the amgdala. That is our “monkey brain” at the core of the cerebral cortex. It is the non-verbal part of the brain. Terror is experienced but unprocessed.

This is where therapy and support groups come in. Why do support groups for victims of rape, domestic violence and war have such power? Because in these safe places, people are allowed to verbalize the horror of what they experienced. In other words, the trauma is expressed but not relived. The power of expression is that the speaker now has control over what before was out of his/her control.

The point is not to relive the trauma but to excise the pain of the past abuse through expression. That is why I have written my book. For me, it was a very painful but healing, if not cathartic, process.

Through the process of writing, I came to understand what I had not understood before. I came to accept responsibility for choices I had made. And I came to forgive myself for things I believed were my fault but were not – such as the abuse.

Expression is an extremely powerful tool in healing from trauma. Judith Herman, in her book Trauma and Recovery speaks of “bearing witness” to the pain one has experienced. We all know about witnessing. We know about telling the story of the death and resurrection of our Lord.

My story is a witness to the death and resurrection I have experienced - both to the trauma I suffered at the hands of “believers” and to the power of understanding ears and hearts to heal. That’s how I have moved on. (And I have moved on.) But I couldn’t have done it alone.