Why I got out...

I got out of the cult in 1997-8.

I’d been indoctrinated at age 10, having celebrated my last childhood birthday earlier that year (got a wicked cool Duran Duran vinyl!). I left around age 24, having just had enough living with all the cognitive dissonance required to make my shit homelife excusable.

As an adult ex-member, I like to say that suicidal depression really saved my life. I didn’t want to live through this anymore. I incredibly sought out & found a counselor who accepted a non-insured, broke ass mess that I was. Her amazing life path born into a Hindu family, then indoctrinated by Western imperialist institutions as a child gave her the necessary patience to give me the space to not give up my faith for as long as I needed to cling to it.

Ultimately it was getting some help & support with the clinical Depression symptoms, finding out I was worthy of people’s help & care, learning about my own self-worth for the first time, finding out “wordly” (non-believers) were kinder to me than my faith family knew how to be—all of this over months gave me enough inner strength & courage to fight FOR my life, THIS life I was in—not to wait for some future promised life.

If God truly loved me, then he’d love me to love myself for a freaking change!

And, what I came to discover also over time, if god loved me, he loved me NOW, in this life. This life should matter to god if he bestowed it to me. Not struggle, scrape by, suffer in poverty, in silence, in deprivation & emotional manipulation in this life. A loving parent shouldn’t be so cruel & unfeeling.

The larger cracks in my belief began to not only show but began making me feel better about being alive.

I don’t recall specifics now, but I faded, which meant to quietly stop attending the expected meetings (services) & ministry work. I lived alone in a small, new apartment, scraping by with menial temp work. People weren’t terribly surprised by my “discouragement” as I didn’t hide my depression and difficult family dynamics. But I’m guessing they were surprised when word got around once I sent my letter of a more formal announcement of exiting to my elder group.

I didn’t intend to make my exit formal—I didn’t even know I was officially shutting that door until I’d heard, likely from my believing sister who is still in the faith & kept some contact with me then, a certain elder had asked about how I was doing. That pissed me off! He was the presiding elder of my congregation who I’d turned to in desperation for help with my rageful mother, also in the faith. Like most elders in their non-educated ineptitude, he advised me to “wait on god” and “obey your mother” bullshit. I learned much later the bible has no real help for people being abused by authority figures in bible-based groups! Fuck you with your caring pretense!

I typed out, printed & mailed a letter to mainly give unsolicited advice to the elder body not to worry about or care about me now, rather care enough for the young kids still in the congregation to get the proper help & loving support they need that I needed back then. Give a shit about their futures instead of nosing around for dirt on my life as a now unbeliever. So yeah, I’m sure they figured out I was done!

I’d learned years later that sometimes elder bodies will publicly shun me in absentia, and that might be the case for me, I don’t know. Regardless, I had ended my relationship to my believing, narcissistic mother by that point, barely had connection with my still- believing sister & no one else from my dysfunctional family was in the faith. My faith family relationships had all but dried up by then as well, so I lost it all…but also lost very little. It’s another lifetime now.

I stay aware of ex-cults of all stripes. Of course, the fascination that connected me to a cult-based god worship now connects me to all those who seek out & treasure their freedom of mind & soul. I love to hear how ex-cult members get to reboot their lives as they deserve to live them—on their own terms!

It gives me glimmers of hope for the niece still in her mother’s/my sister’s faith.

I can say after 20+ years since exiting the cult, and for only being in it for 14 years, that it is a quiet, dark cloud that can still follow me sometimes. The psychological impact of Good Girl Christian submission is long-lasting because there are echoes of these manipulations in all facets of life. This is a deeply painful present reality for millions of girls, women, and transgender people around the world. I won’t be fully healed until all vestiges of sexism & religious oppression are eradicated, so I learn to live with those parts of me.

I’ll end it on this note: no amount of struggle, sadness, loss, or grief that I’ve endured in the leaving behind the cultish mind-set & life path could ever outweigh the calm, self-worth, freedom, critical thought, and inner peace & wellbeing I’ve achieved BECAUSE I left. The pains were great, but the gains have always been greater. I wish everyone thinking about exiting a belief system to consider that there is life worth living beyond those constraints. We all deserve a fair chance.

~ Jill