Still unsettled, but healing...

I got hooked. I believed in the cause. I wanted to do the work and fight the fight. It wasn’t a religion, but a school with an ethos and code that was very cult-like. The founder is very charismatic. She is brilliant and educated. More so, she can use words to wrap you up so tight in yourself, you don’t know how to get out.

As students and grads, we were educated in the subject. We were also educated on how little anyone else in the field knew about it. Because they weren’t us. We were superior, and if you dared stray, those words...of the founder, and those of us she’d “recruited” to the highest levels (due to our obedience and sycophancy) would be used against you. I saw many people shunned or feel shunned throughout my tenure as a student and an employee. I always felt bad and tried to stick up for people when I could, while always being aware it could be used against me.

And it was. I was shunned when I gave notice for my job. I was erased. It left many confused. But after my initial upset, it left me relieved (with some residual sadness). We were taught to think critically about everything but what was said and taught to us by the school. We were isolated from our peers by constantly being told we were better than them. We were made to believe that everything we needed to know could only be taught by “OFL”- Our Fearless Leader and that as her “kids”, we were so very lucky to be there.

I knew for a long time that things weren’t right. I had heard the term “cult-like” used many times by outsiders and rolled my eyes. It wasn’t until I was gone completely that I realized that features of cults can be present in many places, like schools and workplaces. And that just like cults, people get in to something thinking they’re doing something good. And in some ways, they may be. But, in others, there is damage being done and a light needs to be shined on what else is happening. Good people, like me, can become different versions of themselves without even realizing it and have their personal power co-opted by someone who has managed to convince them that they are needed. They are not. The power lies within each of us as individuals.

I am so glad I got out.

~Lori