On Feeling Betrayed, Validated, and Brave

And since your history of silence

Won’t do you any good,

Did you think it would?

Let your words be anything but empty

Why don’t you tell them the truth?

Say what you want to say

And let the words fall out

Honestly 

I want to see you be brave

Show me how big your brave is

--Sara Bareilles, "Brave"

Watching the Grammys was a last-minute decision. We'd kissed the kids goodnight but knew our congested sinuses wouldn't let us sleep yet. So we turned on the TV and I'm so glad we did!

I had never heard of Sara Bareilles--no, I really don't keep up with popular music--but I recognized Carole King right away. I sat absolutely enthralled with their amazing duet performance, only to be surpassed by their comments of mutual admiration afterward. Somehow the three minutes of interaction between those women affected me deeply. I have watched the segment again and again and replayed it in my head countless times.

Carole King's words, her music, the emotions she shared with Sara and all of us in the audience, along with Sara's passion and her song, felt like a gift with miraculous powers to repair some damage done to my heart long ago. I feel like a more complete person than I was before hearing them sing. The rest of the show was fun and amazing in its own way, but that one piece represented to me the magic of Art: sharing a gift with enriching powers of its own.

Perhaps "Brave" struck me the way it did because the last week has been so emotionally turbulent. Not in a bad way, but still...

Last week a shocking new series of revelations appeared on the Internet, exposing Bill Gothard, our cult leader of days long past, for the pathological fraud he was (and is). Reading the story as it dribbles out in serial form has been surreal. With each installment, I can picture my bedroom in Oak Brook, picture window facing Gothard's office across the driveway.

I learned while working on Gothard's staff that he was not what he appeared to be. Not what many of his followers took him for. Not who my parents thought he was. While we his brainwashed army of second-generation devotees mentally flogged ourselves for every potential breach of the cult protocol, Gothard did not adhere to his own "non-optional, universal life principles".

My husband and I each slipped away from IBLP quietly. I was sent away by Gothard in the summer of '99, Chris left on his own six months later. From that point, we set about freeing ourselves from the legalism and reprogramming our poisoned minds. We weren't aware of the poison at first, though. We were still nostalgic about our years at the Institute. It was where our relationship began, after all. We'd go back to visit friends occasionally, or just drive around the grounds reliving the good memories. Over time the locations lost their pull on us. We had dreams--sometimes nightmares--about going back to work there.

Judging Gothard's teaching by its "fruit", we concluded that many of his ideas were downright toxic. It was hard to speak out, though. So many of our friends, family members, and even new acquaintances were Gothard supporters, or had been exposed to his seminars in their youth and didn't see anything dangerous in them. We just sounded "bitter", the strongest pejorative in Gothardom.

When we felt safe we could sometimes talk about how "inconsistent" Gothard was in practice. Even this made some uncomfortable. People feel defensive when you question the authenticity of someone they trust, or trusted once upon a time. The more distance we put between ourselves and the past, the more clearly we could see that Gothard was just another manipulative cult leader. Sadly for us, he was a slick fellow who convinced our parents he had the answers.

I started this blog partly as a safe place to question the Gothard narrative and to recount my experiences and the "bad fruit" it produced. I tried to maintain an even, journalistic tone, even as I personally came to regard William Gothard as a fucking asshole, a sham and a predator hiding under a guise of exceptional holiness.

Reading the firsthand account of Gothard's former secretary over the last week, and watching others come out to corroborate her story, has been tremendously validating to me. While her tale might not seem all that offensive on the surface, it is damning when read in light of Gothard's own teaching and strict standards for others. He made generous allowances for himself, while tolerating nothing less than perfection and submission from his subordinates. He patently violated his own rules, which he marketed as the very wisdom of God. Nothing I have ever said about my former employer was as harsh as he deserves.

An IBLP seminar in Atlanta

As satisfying as it feels to be validated and to watch Gothard's house of cards collapse, it is exquisitely painful at the same time. I rejoice to see his empire fall, much as a former prisoner would applaud the demolition of the walls of his captivity. And yet, that empire was built of my blood, sweat, and tears. Thousands of us can point to pieces of our selves that we sacrificed to advance that sick man's vision. We lost much of irreplaceable value.

And that is why tears rolled down my face this week as I stood in my kitchen spreading cheese on lasagna noodles, listening to "Brave" and the rest of Sara Bareilles' album The Blessed Unrest. They were tears to memorialize the things I was encouraged to "yield" in favor of Gothard's ideal, for God's sake. These things died before drawing breath, miscarriages I never knew in an adolescence I never had: my first date, holding hands, a boyfriend, my first curious kiss in a quiet corner, even talking to male peers without feeling queasy, pulling on an old pair of jeans, experimenting with makeup, realizing I was a free adult in the eyes of the law, choosing a college major, getting a degree, a high school graduation for that matter, a prom dress, high school pictures, a wedding dance with my dad, my favorite artists in concert, feeling sexy as I became a woman, feeling the sun on my legs, getting tan lines before stretch marks, years when I could have been earning money or college credits...

And the pain of steeling myself to believe in "God's will"! Against my emotions. Against what my body was sensing. Of giving myself fortifying speeches in the corner every time I felt my heart would come out of my chest, reminding myself that my heart was deceitful and wicked and not to be trusted. The times I cried myself to sleep, or pounded out my frustration on the piano in the dining room because the rest of Christendom wouldn't see "the truth".

My friends and I made these sacrifices and others to serve our God by working for his "servant" Bill Gothard. Now, I want Gothard's empire to collapse, for the good of humanity. I am more than willing to help bring it down. At the same time, I recognize that each brick I tear out represents a child's education, a man's career, an abused child, a couple's budding relationship, all burned on the IBLP altar in the belief that God would be pleased.

But Bill was a fraud and his empire was built on lies. And we are all breaking the silence. So after I cried over my lasagna, I danced in my kitchen. Because bravery is a beautiful thing.

Who & What?

I thought 2013 would be about speaking up, about using my voice.

I did not expect to spend so much of it navigating a treacherous swamp of emotion, learning to exhale the panic as I searched in the dark for firmer footing. Turns out my voice wasn't very strong yet. This blog, and books, and friends, and therapy, have all helped me to process huge tracts of my past. I've grieved some losses, defused some old anger, let go of some expectations I'd always had of myself. I've opened some closets and exposed some dark corners to the light; I've tried to speak the truth always.

Now as a new year unfolds, I can stand on that firmer footing in daylight and look ahead.  It is as if I am picking up my trail again where I lost it a year ago. The skeletons are out of the closet, maybe the ghosts can rest now that their tales have been told. And I wonder, if the past can now be merely what was, what is now? I no longer feel like the girl-woman I was. But if I'm no longer she, who am I?

In many ways, it is a relief to be out of the "angry" phase. But now I am faced with the unsettling question of desire. If I am finally free to pursue what I like, unbound from ancient taboos as well as the expectations put on me by the culture I grew up in, the question becomes, "What do I want?"

I grew up feeling so far removed from "average" or "ordinary that I actually looked down on it. We were called to excellence, urged to be outstanding! For most of my life, I planned on being a world-changer. Some day when I was ready, God would unveil the special work he'd been preparing for me for. It took a long time to dawn on that me I may just be "me". Not special. Not elite in some mysterious spiritual realm. Just...ordinary. And that it's okay.

Are you saying I'm not actually some modern Queen Esther? I'm not God's secret weapon to advance his "Kingdom" and do battle with evil in the twenty-first century? I'm not special? Not more special than the lady who bags our groceries, nope. So I could just be a woman in the heart of the America's heartland who shops for groceries, takes kids to school, stays up too late with her husband, reads, writes, and waits for her crocuses to come up? Yep. Just a normal human being. Wow. I never imagined I'd be one of them. I thought I had to make my life count, prepare myself for something great. This is...quite an adjustment.

Somewhere in the middle of writing this blog post, I watched the German film "Wings of Desire", about an angel who, after an eternity of observing what has become the city of Berlin (in sepia tones), chooses at last to experience mortal life (shown in full-color) with all its myriad sensations and range of emotion. I felt I could relate to both Damiel's feeling of being an outsider and his decision to transition, his choice to live as a common human being.

But what is like to be an ordinary person?? How do I want to live?

That deep-rooted sense of destiny can be difficult to silence. Don't swear, it says. This is the Internet. What you post could cost you somewhere down the road. Don't expose your self. Be ladylike. Cover up. Don't use your powers of sarcasm; they always got you in trouble. Post nice things, like recipes. Well, screw that voice. I have been a good girl long enough.

I can use strong language. Online? At home? Online, but not in person? In person, but not online? With friends but not family? With family but not friends? In front of anyone and everyone? What if you want to run for office some day?! Sigh. You don't get it, do you?

I can be sexy. You mean for your husband, right? What about at home with your kids? Well, don't you think my girls need a good sexy role model? But in public you'll be nothing other than the wholesome domestic wife-and-mother, right? No pin-up pictures, please! No promises, old voice in my head. It's time to try on some other roles and see if anything else fits.

I can post what I think, even if it's risky. I can disagree with people who want to be certain that God will damn me to hell. But typing that just made you hyperventilate in a doctor's waiting room. Yes, even so. And I can delete the comments that trigger mini-panic attacks, comments from perfect strangers about how I "sicken" them!

I have reached this point by telling the truth--in my own head and out loud. So I'll keep doing that. Honesty and curiosity are part of who I am and I want to hang on to those. I am fiercely loyal in my deepest relationships and this year I am also swearing allegiance to myself. I can become my own champion. And, without abandoning my family, I want to pursue what makes me happy. It will probably involve some trial and error. Some facets of my self have been dormant so long I'd forgotten they were there at all. I want to uncover and develop them. I want to try new things and expand my comfort zone.

Life is too short to waste on what other people tell me will make me happy, or will keep me from being unhappy. It's time to choose for myself. Even it means making some mistakes or falling on my face a few times.

Because that's how normal people grow.

Library Shelf: Trauma and Recovery

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
by Dr. Judith L. Herman

This comprehensive work examines the causes, symptoms, and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and the related condition Complex PTSD. I started reading it over Christmas break and ended up with twelve pages of handwritten notes! Here I will highlight some excerpts that meant so much to me that I find myself bringing them with me to other texts.

This paragraph encapsulates the mental gymnastics that harm an abused child's developing brain:

She must find a way to develop a sense of basic trust and safety with caretakers who are untrustworthy or unsafe.... She will go to any lengths to construct an explanation for her fate that absolves her parents of all blame and responsibility. (p. 101)

Turns out all those psychological contortions serve a useful purpose, even if they have to be repaired later:

Double think and a double self are ingenious childhood adaptations to a familial climate of coercive control, but they are worse than useless in a climate of freedom and adult responsibility. (p. 114)

I gained a lot of hope from Herman's analysis and experience, but the most cheerful part was reading this:

Survivors of childhood abuse are far more likely to be victimized or to harm themselves than to victimize other people. 

...Contrary to the popular notion of a "generational cycle of abuse", however, the great majority of survivors neither abuse nor neglect their children.  (pp. 113-114, emphasis added)

From the time I got married, I was so afraid of repeating some kind of "cycle"--a concept the IBLP cult strongly promoted and mainstream culture continues to accept. My dear husband used to reassure me that I would not become [someone from my abusive past], but it helped to read this again. And again.

Hearing this from an expert did me so much good:

Since mourning is so difficult, resistance to mourning is probably the most common cause of stagnation in the second stage of recovery. Resistance to mourning can take on numerous disguises. Most frequently it appears as a fantasy of magical resolution through revenge, forgiveness, or compensation.

…Some survivors attempt to bypass their outrage altogether through a fantasy of forgiveness…. The survivor imagines that she can transcend her rage and erase the impact of the trauma through a willed, defiant act of love. But it is not possible to exorcise the trauma, through either hatred or love. Like revenge, the fantasy of forgiveness often becomes a cruel torture, because it remains out of reach for most ordinary human beings…. True forgiveness cannot be granted until the perpetrator has sought and earned it through confession, repentance, and restitution.

...Fortunately, the survivor does not need to wait for [a perpetrator’s contrition]. Her healing depends on the discovery of restorative love in her own life; it does not require that this love be extended to the perpetrator. Once the survivor has mourned the traumatic event, she may be surprised to discover how uninteresting the perpetrator has become to her…

Mourning is the only way to give due honor to loss; there is no adequate compensation.  (pp. 189-190, emphasis added)

Grieving was not a process I learned about as a kid. We never really grieved losses, because we were always looking forward to getting everything back better at an unspecified time in the future.  Our goal was to be able to say like Job in the Bible: "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away... blessed be His Name." We "yielded our rights" to things both tangible and intangible so that we wouldn't be upset if we weren't allowed to keep them.

In the film "The Bells of St. Mary's", the doctor asks Bing Crosby's character, "Don't you people more or less go where you're told, without question?"

Bing, as the priest Father O'Malley, replies, "Yes, we're supposed to have the stamina to take it."

As a young adult, that was the kind of stamina I expected of myself. Job lost everything, but refused to despair and got twice as much of everything at the end of the story. He even got new children! All loss was merely temporary deprivation, and would be made right eventually in a perfect afterlife.

When I first learned about grief in the context of managing life transitions, it was the very beginning of my healing and recovery. (Thank you, George Hires, for insisting I should attend that workshop in the Philippines. I had no idea how much it would mean!) The notion of acknowledging the emotional pain of loss was new and life-changing. I find myself returning to that concept again and again as life moves forward.

Finally, this paragraph from a chapter on recovery well describes the challenge of adjusting to life under "normal" parameters, even while learning what those parameters are:

Survivors whose personality has been shaped in the traumatic environment often feel at this stage of recovery as though they are refugees entering a new country…. Michael Stone, drawing on his work with incest survivors, describes the immensity of this adaptive task: “Re-education is often indicated, pertaining to what is typical, average, wholesome, and ‘normal’ in the intimate life of ordinary people.”  (p. 196)

I so appreciate Judith Herman's work putting all this information together in one place. Even though her book is twenty years old now, the first chapters are great for putting the study of "shell-shock", "hysteria", and domestic abuse into a sociological human rights perspective. She makes some some sadly fascinating observations about Freud's early work with victims of sexual abuse, showing how he later chose "the path of least resistance" in adopting a philosophy that shamed victims and denied the truth of their own accounts.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has survived trauma or abuse of any kind, or who loves someone who has! Depending on what stage of recovery you are at, it may not be a quick or easy read, but I found the effort quite rewarding.

Recovering from Trauma: Moving Forward!

It has been nearly a year since my therapist first used "post-traumatic reaction" to describe my overwhelming stress/anxiety symptoms. Last February I looked forward and knew climbing out of that awful place would take time and a lot of work. And it has. 

But I've made it to 2014, and it's starting to feel really good. 

I quit the college class that was the last straw for my nervous system, and, with my therapist's help, got a refund from the school. But I completed the biology course, breathing through the horrid panic attacks, chewing gum so hard and so long that my jaw ached for days, sipping Snapple through the lectures to keep myself grounded. I learned to do some yoga, and walked, and took my colored pencils with me to the park. 

I worked on building positive social relationships and minimized the unhealthy ones. I participated in a wonderful book club. I made new friends and had lunch dates with old friends, even when driving across town gave me panic attacks, even when my muscles would contract so tightly it was painful. I was always fine once I got there. Recovery itself often seemed an unwelcome extension of the trauma of the past. Why is it necessary to go through so much to be shed of what you never asked for in the first place?

Instead of taking more classes over the summer, I rested up. PTSD can complicate the simplest tasks, so I was careful to take on only the most manageable of projects. I had fun with my kids, enjoyed the outdoors, gave my daughter some cooking lessons. I read several memoirs (all by women), and half a dozen stories by Margaret Atwood. We skipped our big summer vacation and took a few shorter trips instead. Each success at meeting a goal helped restore my confidence a little more.

I kept writing, and reading, and talking to my therapist about the things too vulnerable, too wordless, to express here. Because what you get here has been processed. It seems there is always more raw material, though. If it bleeds when I touch it, it goes to my counselor, not here! 

My husband and I attended numerous local theatrical productions over the last year. We find theater to be so much more intimate than cinema (making it that much more rewarding, but psychologically wearing, at the same time). Each play showed me a little more about myself, sometimes triggering panic attacks in the process. I remember working hard to "ground" myself through several performances that hit painfully close to home, particularly "Other Desert Cities" (about painful family secrets and telling the truth), "Radiating Like a Stone" (about misogyny and women fighting for equality in Kansas), and parts of "How the World Began" (about faith, education, and human resilience, with a terrific scene of a post-traumatic fear response). We both had to ground ourselves hard to make it through the opening scene of "Doubt", even though we'd seen the film and already knew the story. 

When the kids went back to school, all three of them for the first time, and the house was quieter than it had ever been, I pulled out my old journals and started processing pieces of the past, bit by bit. Sometimes the entries there jog memories or questions that turn into blog posts. Sometimes I have to take time off afterward to reorient myself with another activity. I pace myself, stopping if my body reacts, so it's been slow going.

I have learned ever so much about PTSD, and especially Complex PTSD. I don't like it, but at least it doesn't scare me anymore. I feel hopeful again, like the worst is over and I survived it. I never want to go back there, but now I have tools for handling triggers and managing symptoms. I'm getting better at recognizing flashbacks and observing boundaries. And I am less afraid of people--perhaps less afraid than I've ever been. 

(Of course, it's still scary to write boldly and vulnerably like this. What if I have a panic attack tomorrow when I read a comment a stranger's left on one of my posts? Can I be sure my regained hope is not really braggadocio? It feels uncomfortably like giving a "testimony" in church about how you believe God's healed your cancer, and then having to start chemo the next month.)

I saw Disney's Frozen last month. Saw it twice, in fact. Elsa's song "Let It Go" instantly became my theme song for this stage of my life. The lyrics so well describe these months of liberating self-discovery. Here are some of my favorite lines:

The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside
Couldn’t keep it in, heaven knows I tried

Don’t let them in, don’t let them see
Be the good girl you always have to be
Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know
Well, now they know

Let it go, let it go
Can’t hold it back anymore
Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door

It’s funny how some distance
Makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me
Can’t get to me at all

It’s time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through

I’m never going back,
The past is in the past

Chris and I been leaving the past for a long time, but it's been gradual. We have gained momentum now. Our values are becoming clearer. The dynamics of our marriage are evolving. We have dramatically altered our parenting. The adjustments aren't over yet. But we'll get to where we want to be. And discover where that is!

In some ways I feel like a teenager, gazing at a vast array of possibilities, uncertain which path to choose. I just know I want to keep moving forward. After taking last semester off to focus on myself, recovery, and blogging, I'm excited to be dipping my foot into the pool of education again. Getting back into life, not holding back out of fear of being unable to keep commitments.

It is time to try new things again. Meet new people. Explore new places. Now that I understand who I was and why, it's time to find out who I am.

In Which the Pieces Come Together

At some point in my growing up, I realized that my family was dysfunctional. While outsiders saw us as picture-perfect and held us in regard as a model of the ideal Christian family, we knew our Sunday-best was an illusion or at best, just one facet of who and what we were. There were a lot of good times, certainly, but there was also tension. And no matter how much fun we were having, we never let our guard down.

I have spent the last year seriously unpacking what I've carried from my family of origin. In the process, I've gradually learned a new vocabulary describing the ways that dysfunction affected me:

• Panic/Anxiety
• Post-Traumatic Stress 
• Complex PTSD
• Emotional Incest
• Religious Trauma Syndrome
• and now... Developmental Trauma

According to a report on Developmental Trauma Disorder by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk,

When children are unable to achieve a sense of control and stability they become helpless. If they are unable to grasp what is going on and unable do anything about it to change it, they go immediately from (fearful) stimulus to (fight/flight/freeze) response without being able to learn from the experience. Subsequently, when exposed to reminders of a trauma (sensations, physiological states, images, sounds, situations) they tend to behave as if they were traumatized all over again – as a catastrophe. Many problems of traumatized children can be understood as efforts to minimize objective threat and to regulate their emotional distress. Unless caregivers understand the nature of such re-enactments they are liable to label the child as “oppositional”, ‘rebellious”, “unmotivated”, and “antisocial”.

...

When trauma emanates from within the family children experience a crisis of loyalty and organize their behavior to survive within their families. Being prevented from articulating what they observe and experience, traumatized children will organize their behavior around keeping the secret, deal with their helplessness with compliance or defiance, and accommodate in any way they can to entrapment in abusive or neglectful situations.

... 

These children... tend to communicate the nature of their traumatic past by repeating it in the form of interpersonal enactments, in their play and in their fantasy lives.

So many of Dr. van der Kolk's observations resonate with me. And in an odd way, I find it reassuring to discover that professionals can accurately describe the ways in which my siblings and I coped with our traumatic upbringing. We were not anomalies; we were not "broken"; we were not "messed up". As children, we responded understandably--even predictably--to unsettling circumstances beyond our control.

Our parents were told by Bill Gothard and Michael Farris and Mary Pride and Doug Phillips, by Raymond Moore and Gregg Harris and even James Dobson, that God had given them (parents) responsibility for their children's education and that by taking our education into their own hands, they could have the loving, God-fearing family they always wanted. Our parents accepted the challenge, choosing to raise us in an environment totally different from any they had known before. In a system totally different from their own experience. In a culture totally different from that of our peers. But in some cases, that system failed dismally.

My ten siblings and I are only a tiny representation of the thousands (millions?) of children who grew up in conservative religious homeschooling homes. Many of those homes were unhealthy, and socially isolated; many were abusive. And many of us are survivors. The symptoms we have dealt with along the way are not signs that we were rebellious or lazy or crazy or influenced by demons--they are simply signs that our young brains reacted normally to the challenges our parents created for us when we were vulnerable and doing the best we could to make sense of the strange and sometimes painful world in which we found ourselves.

Now that I have children trusting me to show them the world, I am finally able to feel empathy for my younger self. I see myself at my children's ages, and grieve the losses that little girl was not able to properly mourn at the time because she had to be strong and she had to be good. That little girl discovered early that it was safer to ally herself with her caregivers--who were bent on pleasing God--than with the rest of her culture--who were displeasing him every day. That little girl learned to cooperate with and even defend the very people who were traumatizing her, even when this only created more cognitive dissonance.

Now I find nurturing my children and tuning in to their specific needs to be healing to me. Observing them, I am better able to recognize my own likes and dislikes and fears, the things that make me feel supported, the things that make feel threatened, the things that make me feel brave.

I have carried a lot with me since leaving the home of my childhood. I felt I had to hang onto it to find out what exactly it was. Now that I am able to label the way I felt as a girl, it is easier to let those feelings go and move on with a better, healthier life.

Beauty in the Heartland

Today I am taking a break from working on serious posts. Today I am savoring the beauty around me: the natural beauty of the heartland, beauty created by those who care in my community, the fun of getting to know a new friend, the comfort of spending time with my husband and best friend, pride in my children as they explore and mature, a relaxing audio book from the library, entertainers that make me laugh, photos that document the beauty I've noticed this month.

This year our usually clear sky has been dotted with clouds far more often than is normal for around here. When I call attention to the gorgeous piles of cotton in the blue overhead, my daughter rolls her eyes, "It's just water vapor, Mom." Exactly! What a treat to see sunlight bouncing off piles of water vapor! 

One morning this week I just had to stop and snap a photo of the bank of clouds lined up low on the western horizon.

Then I headed to the nature center to sit on a bench by the pond, sipping hot coffee, nibbling a fresh pumpkin spice donut, and celebrating the first chilly morning of autumn. I have finally come to appreciate a certain loveliness in the prairie.

And this morning I introduced a new friend to one of my favorite garden places. 

Recently, my family and I have explored two new parks. One has magnificent trees and a creekbed; the other has a pond and a bike trail. Both have playgrounds with merry-go-rounds and both are near our favorite ice cream place.