|
Post by arietty on May 7, 2010 19:42:52 GMT -5
Sierra ~ this post reminded me of an incident when we first started home churching at Dale and Laura's house. Angel was about 12 years old. Due to our homeschooling and all the sheltering, she was quite innocent with regards to boys and sexuality. So at the home church, she was playing outside along with all the other kids ~ thinking nothing about the mixing of boys and girls ~ just having a good time. Well ~ apparently, the home church men noticed Angel's spring dress ~ it was sort of an Easter-style dress, colorful, cool ~ and sleeveless ~ and these men mentioned to their sons that they should stay away from Angel to avoid being tempted to lust. The boys then took it upon themselves to explain to Angel that she was dressed immodestly. If an adult male had talked that way about my 12 year old I would have ripped his head off. That is disgusting, making sexual comments about a child! I would have told him he was a PERVERT. Totally, utterly inappropriate.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on May 7, 2010 19:36:06 GMT -5
I can't believe they offered you money to break off your relationship!
You describe it so well. Yes we can be great deep thinkers as long as we are thinking the right stuff. And yet surely the ability to think and life experience must lead more than a few people to re-examine their own cherished ideologies, to at least round them out as you say.
Nowadays I love the well rounded! When I hear the partisan rantings of either the left or right I get the heebie jeebies. Fine, have a political view but real thinking involves hearing and understanding that which doesn't come naturally to your own beliefs. That is the REAL adventure in thinking, not just learning and parroting one belief system. I have read a few blogs from rebelutionaries and the ones that have an intellectual bent don't seem to have an real originality. I could write the blog posts myself, just give me the topic, lol. I don't see an wrestling with issues, just parroting of the party line.
Your parents.. it makes me sad for them that they were so narrow minded. They sacrificed what could have been a wonderful relationship with their daughter to their own pettiness and control issues. It's a terrible thing to value human beings based on how similar to us they manage to be.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on May 7, 2010 19:12:49 GMT -5
Shelly this was so illuminating for me! This paragraph:
What is so interesting is that you did have friends who called you and wanted to go shopping, invited you to scrapbooking etc.. but you pulled away from them in favor of the sisterhood you sought with Cecelia. I see this theme in my life long past, and thanks to some posts on this forum (I think KR described it at one point) I can now explain it to myself. That desire for an intense, deeply fulfilling/dependent relationship which drives people to turn away from what was healthy friendships, relationships, churches and seek out what is an unhealthy (some would say codepedant) model. I SO longed for that intense fellowship.. and I remember that even then a little voice in my mind would sometimes point out that this is how people get into cults. I valued the zealous, deep and meaningful and dismissed the superficial, never mind that the superficial were all real people with real lives that could have offered real friendships not based on how well I mirrored them. It is interesting how in QF and homeschooling/homechurching circles you get this living in each others pockets lifestyle with a few families. I always envied the families that had this kind of relationship but looking back now I see that actually it is kind of weird and very non-inclusive. And yes I remember some spectacular blow outs with these families where something went wrong and it was like the worst church split in the world.
Today I have normal, functional friendships with no dependence element. That need has completely left me thanks to better life circumstances, growing up, being able to define it and name it as unhealthy. I don't want that kind of intense relationship with a church either, where it becomes your whole life.. I remember how we used to think that churches that didn't take over your whole life were "dead". "People just show up on Sunday, that is NOT church". Well yeah.. and they probably have normal, functional friendships and also exist in the world as healthy human beings rather than being only inward focused on one group.
So. Thanks for your post. It certainly captures that need many of us had.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 29, 2010 18:56:34 GMT -5
I just don't see how condemning Michelle Duggar is helping her girls or her. I'm under no illusions that NLQ or any other forum will change Michelle's mind about how she raises her daughters. I do hope however that a QF mom reading this, or any mom of many who has bought into ATI/VF or whatever's promotion of what a godly family looks like might read these ideas, and the experiences of daughters who lived it, and question it for their own family. That is why this is useful discussion. Many of us are fairly unformed in our ideas of how our family will function when we have only 3 or 4 little kids at home. The voice we hear speaking the loudest and the most compellingly is the shiny voice, the one we see on tv or arrives on the cover of a christian magazine. I do think reading that there may be another side to these families, another experience unvoiced on the part of the part of the children can be very helpful, a kind of Proceed with Caution as people look around for a christian way to be a family.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 29, 2010 18:07:33 GMT -5
And to explain a little Meganl.. Sierra has been one of those daughters. When your whole life has been subsumed by your parent's ideology, an ideology for which they are praised and for which you have suffered deeply tv shows and people that promote this form of parenting as an example of family values are very painful. It makes you mad when you know just how much bullshit it is on a very personal level, and how when stuck in the midst of it you are not allowed to say how horrible it is to you because, well, that's SIN. And ingratitude and all kinds of other awful things your parents have been training you to never ever be.
This is why people on this forum can take things very personally that other people just look at and maybe roll their eyes a little.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 29, 2010 18:02:02 GMT -5
I do, however, feel unbridled rage at Michelle Duggar, Nancy Campbell, et. al. for deliberately promoting the abuse of female children as 'family values.' Michelle Duggar is not an innocent, in my view, because despite her passive presentation she is a 'leader' in this movement. She is every bit as guilty as Bill Gothard, and I don't have enough epithets for either of them. See, this IMHO is quite true. She is a leader and does bear responsibility for the promotion of use of female children as unpaid work horses and for severely limiting their options in life. She may also be a very nice person, but I am sure her example has resulted in great misery for teenage girls whose moms follow her example of how to run a godly family. It is this great misery and the willing, paid for promotion of such misery as "family values" by Michelle that brings out the vitriol. I do think that use of terms like "brood mare" is unnecessarily degrading of women. Yes I have a lot of kids myself, no I was never a "brood mare" or "breeder" or whatever dehumanizing term I might have been called, I was and am a woman and a mom.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 28, 2010 18:12:06 GMT -5
You know, I really appreciate the point that Jane has made that it's important to know what's out there before you take the leap out of QF. I don't have a lot of time right now, but I was definitely shocked and surprised at much I found out after leaving. I DID think that the whole problem was in my ex. I did think that when I got out of the abusive religion and away from the abusive man, that all would be ok because the world was a good, friendly place. I was NOT prepared for the reaction that I got from the world. I saw myself as something of a heroine for leaving this abusive father. I thought that protecting my children was doing a huge service to society - the very society that would be containing the kids when they grew up. I felt that I was preventing another generation of character disordered individuals from starting families of their own, wreaking havok wherever they touched. This is not the general reaction I got from the world. I was the suspect, must-be-crazy, lady in the shoe with all these kids. Kids who, I might add, were not acting particularly sweet and obedient because of the family upheaval and abuse that they had recently suffered. I just didn't LOOK good to the world anymore. I looked great before - with my hard-working husband and all my kids standing in a well-scrubbed row. Suddenly, I didn't present that image anymore to the world and my reputation suffered as a result. It's very subtle. It's the way "regular" moms look at me when they find out I'm divorced with a bunch of kids. You immediately get the feeling that it's all your fault for some reason. It's the way the teachers at school talk to you. It's the feeling you get at church from all the regular moms and families. I was not expecting that kind of negative energy which I cannot seem to defend against or change. I was used to being held up as an example of good motherhood (sort of like Michele Duggar) even though I knew I didn't deserve it. I knew how bad things were in my house and how the children were suffering. Now everyone is so much happier and actually has a chance of growing up without serious mental illness, but the rest of the world looks on dissapprovingly. They liked it better when I was faking my way through. Jane is right - there is patriarchy and hatred of women everywhere in our society almost. It is embedded in the cultural group-think. It is embedded in my own mind, my earliest teachings. It is embedded in our institutions and social expectations. There is a certain sense in which the QF lifestyle protected me from this un-named force. I am glad that I left it, but I DO wish that I had known more what I would face. Hatred of women is not contained in one man, or one church. It is everywhere and now I am facing it in my daily life. I do wish I had known that. It surprised me to a degree which I cannot even put into words. Tried to snip something here Musicmom but was afraid your other points would get lost in the thread so just quoted the whole thing. I had the same experiences you list here AND I had similar experiences to Sierra. Yes I was suddenly a single mom with a huge family and in the eyes of, well, EVERYONE that is a very bad thing. Drain on society, irresponsible breeding, people don't see a family they see a mob of unruly kids who don't have a MALE to keep 'em in line. So of course all is chaos. This attitude is a product of deep seated misogyny within our culture. I won't say I was totally unprepared for it though, I had known a few single parent families and I knew I was in one swift chop cutting myself off from Respectability by becoming a single female parent of a large amount of children. What I was unprepared for was my exiling from the church which I still thought, right up until about 5 minutes after my marriage broke up, would love me and take care of me. That is the area I was supremely naive about. Like Sierra I found support from the world, non-church people. I remember on more than one occasion women saying to me when hearing of my history, "No one should have to put up with abuse, you did the right thing, thank goodness you are out of that situation." I heard this from women in government departments I had to interact with, women who owned shops I frequented, strangers on public transport I got into conversation with. It was very very striking to me that this was a natural response from non-church women because not once did I hear anything remotely like this from the church, from old friends, from pastors wives, from anyone with a christian agenda. No from them I heard, "I will pray for reconciliation". Which is one big effing slap in the face when you've used every bit of emotional, physical, financial, spiritual and mental energy to crawl out from under the oppression of an abuser who was destroying you and your family. Oh yeah, we'll pray you go back to that hellhole. I remember thinking many times how weird it was that the world said it was good to leave an abuser and the church said lets work to put you back there. This was all more than 10 years ago (though the negatives from the church continue to this day). One thing I have tried hard to do is to be pro-woman in my interactions ever since. I try and be supportive of women whenever I hear they are leaving a partner, try and affirm single moms whenever I get the chance. I know how just being told, "you are doing a great job, your child is SO <something positive>" really encourages a mom. I have worked hard to be an encourager of woman in all settings. And you can bet I have nothing but GREAT things to say to any mom of many
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 23, 2010 20:43:51 GMT -5
So, it wasn't too bad. They (and I) did take about a year or so in which they all just sort of relaxed like rubber bands released into the air. It was pretty wild there for a while. Wow that's a great picture! Like rubber bands released into the air..yes, that was us for sure. Reading that first sentence it occurs to me that QF needs the brainwashing etc.. not solely because it involves a lot of children but because of the needs of the whole package. I feel like we do just fine now being a big family (8 kids) having jettisoned every single tenant of the lifestyle except the kids themselves. The need for perfect discipline, the homeschooling, the endless examining of everything to see if it was godly enough, the time consuming commitment to frugal and nutritious food, the constant striving to please God.. We exist just fine without all this nonsense. And we have a lot more fun, lol.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 23, 2010 18:53:26 GMT -5
People want to know what their secret is. That's an easy one. The secret is brain-washing, "training" from birth. YES, nailed it. That's the secret. And eventually it burns out the brainwasher as well because it is soooo exhausting to be compelling a herd of children day in and day out to do/believe your will. Yes I've realized that zeal and cultic thinking eventually runs its course. There is a time limit to trying. You have some shut off valve in your brain that eventually says ENOUGH and you can no longer continue striving. This is why some of us have experienced a huge crash in our ability to do stuff, stuff being all the household running, post exiting this lifestyle. What a good point this is. I would never treat my children that way either. I can't imagine their whole lives being based around serving my household and my vision of what life will be. Yes indeed, WHAT is it all about, all the speaking at Ladies Teas and date nights and being up on stage.. it's about the unpaid servitude of the daughters keeping it all running.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 23, 2010 18:27:06 GMT -5
So, Michelle Duggar’s “groupies” will go to see her and have tea time with her in which she will offer them the answers they’ve been so patiently waiting for. She will talk in her baby-like, soft voice, smile, and reassure them that they are on the right path. She will tell them to continue giving up their life to God, to continue to be submissive to their husbands, to practice “J-O-Y” in their home, to buy this or that “Managers of their Household/Home” books, be open to having as many children as the Lord is willing to give you, etc. This is what they’ve been waiting to hear and the reason they came, so all of this will resonate like heavenly music to them because it reassures them that they are indeed on the right path. With a bit more diligence, they are reassured that they too will finally be there - just like Michelle Duggar. They will go home with hearts as light as butterflies energized by being around Michelle Duggar and the fact that they were able to leave their house and all the work and drudgery that goes along with living the patriarchal version/model of a “Godlly home” (which is code for children being slaves to the parents, the wife being the slave to her husband, and the whole kit and kaboodle being messed up from the core out). They will come home to children that have been fighting and bickering, tired and burned out caregivers/babysitters in the form of their daughters, lesson plans, dinner, laundry, and cleaning that haven’t quite been completed yet. BOOM! - the illusion that Michelle Duggar painted at tea time begins to shatter!!! Maicde your whole post was excellent! And this is sooo true.. I used to do it myself. Many women are really yearning to go to these conferences or Above Rubies camps or afternoons listening to Godly Titus 2 teaching. And they feel SO refreshed and encouraged and lets face it a lot of that is because at last they are having a BREAK. Someone is serving them tea for once, lol. I know myself that these events were my only time away from the kids, interacting with other adults without interruptions and chores to do. I just talked to a homeschooling mom who got away for a weekend conference for the first time ever.. she loved it.. when she came back the house was in total chaos, one kid had run away to stay somewhere else, you could not enter the laundry room because of the undone stuff (husband of course did nothing). And she told me she would never ever be able to go away again. It comes down to a complete lack of realism about the lifestyle. It's supposed to work beautifully like on the Duggar show but for many it doesn't. And of course all the books say that if it doesn't work there is a spiritual reason so you better work harder, be more submissive blah blah.. Some people don't have a will to make their kids as robotic as is needed. I've seen that more than once, it just isn't in them to compel their children into obedience that way, maybe they are people who are scared of conflict so they tend to just do it all themselves rather than argue with a 12 year old. Or maybe they are very kind hearted and it never feels right to be on their kids backs all the time. Really you need your kids robotic slaves not to be overwhelmed by the sheer work load.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 22, 2010 21:54:02 GMT -5
Most fundie children are fed the line that college, if not a bastion of eeevil liberal heathen pagan atheist witchcraft-cannibals, is an overwrought scam. Their parents talk as though college is an enormously expensive work permit required for certain jobs - and there are plenty of other jobs that don't carry such a costly prerequisite, right? For me, it took going to college to realize how small my world had been and how little I knew of the opportunities that college itself would offer. It's a catch-22. The Duggars might tell their girls something like: 'If you want a job and need to go to college for it, we'll support you,' but there's no way for the girl to know what those jobs are before she gets there.Yep. My QF friend is absolutely disdainful of college. Her children stop doing any school work in 10nth grade though since they are several years behind in everything it really is below that. I've tried to encourage her to let them go further in education but they always have something they want to do which conveniently requires no education at all.. and I realized talking to them that they actually do not know what options they might have. They do not know that even taking courses in stuff like hair and nutrition at community college, stuff they vaguely express interests in, requires you finish school. College level jobs are stuff people on other planets do. Basically the girls do odd jobs until they get married.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 21, 2010 18:21:59 GMT -5
This brought me to tears and I am still crying as I try to type. Because you are so right ~ and while my heart certainly goes out to the Duggar girls, I can't help but think about all the families who live under the radar and who don't get to enjoy the "blessings" that come national television, with living in a large, comfortable, debt free home, the notoriety. Not of course that these are always to be sought, but these things *do* make life easier in some ways (although I can imagine the pressure to keep up appearances for your WITNESS on camera is DEVASTATING). But for every precious Duggar daughter, there are hundreds, if not thousands, who do all of this without help. Without their luxury lifestyle ~ and it is a Quiverfull version of a luxury lifestyle. Thanks for writing this. YES. I was on a big family private forum some years ago and the poverty was devastating. People were quite honest about their problems and how hard life was. Sometimes a husband would lose is (already low wage) job and the despair was terrible. The Duggar's at least don't have the fear of not eating, of not being able to pay the rent hanging over their heads.. I am sure the pressure on the children in those families is magnified. Sometimes the mom had to go get a job just so they could eat.. and then the older daughters really do need to do everything. A lot of people are trapped and made poorer by this ideology. It's just MATH. You need more money and a bigger house to have a huge family and live in any kind of reasonable way. But you are more afraid of going against God than you are of your family imploding under the strain. Then when you get an abusive husband, or one that doesn't work ("God is calling me to higher things", read that before, lol) and it's a hand to mouth existence.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 21, 2010 18:07:14 GMT -5
I'm still not sure that the problem is with the siblings caring for each other. My older kids LOVE to do things for their pre-school siblings. Because they love them and the little kids are so much fun. Some days I think they just do so many things for them, and I'm really grateful (and I tell them so). But.. here is what they do NOT do: Bath them every day or so. Do pyjamas, teeth and bed every night. Cook their meals every night. Teach them how to read, do math and supervise their education every single day. Drop whatever they are doing every single time a younger child needs them, because they are responsible for that child's needs. Clean the house every day and teach a younger child to clean it as they do so. Take over full care of a baby from 6 months onwards, feeding them at night, changing them, attending to their needs. THAT is the Duggar girls responsibilities. They each have a younger sibling they do all this for EVERY DAY. This is NOT helping out. This being a full time au paire or nanny for a child because your family expects it of you, a position that would pay well in another setting. So please, can we stop talking about "helping out". My kids help out with their younger siblings out of love and fun and my expectations.. and they know full well that if they want to go off to a friend's house that day no one will even blink. They have choices and their helping out with their siblings is not on a chart on the fridge, it's in the organic every day give and take of life. There is no comparison.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 14, 2010 18:56:56 GMT -5
I have known a couple homeschool families that had no birthdays, and no Christmas as well. In both these families it was 100% the father's idea, and he was just a control freak jerk about it. Both of them seemed to get some great pleasure out of NOT having birthdays and sermonizing to anyone who would listen about why his kids were spared this horrible paganism.
There is something about withholding enjoyment from others that controlling personalities really run with.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 14, 2010 17:47:52 GMT -5
Arietty, having to live in fear and loneliness like that is so sad. I've been thinking about this a lot because of the "is Razing Ruth real" discussion over at Freejinger - is it even possible to tease out which was part of the abuse, and which the religion? Some of the control/isolation techniques are just like any other abusive family situation - isolation, fear of discovery, kids taking responsibility for their parents feelings and spouses taking responsibilities for their spouses feelings... Do you think the combo of your relationship with your husband and the size of your family would have caused the same isolation no matter what? Or do you think if you'd hooked into the secular homeschooler network instead of the religious one, things would have been a lot better? Absolutely. I was already isolated because my husband made making friends very difficult for a million reasons.. and when you are in an abusive relationship you expend a lot of energy keeping things nice, forming relationships, real ones, can be difficult. What QF theology did for me was to gild the cage. Suddenly my isolation was anointed, I was putting my homeschooling commitments first, I was avoiding negative influences.. blah blah.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 13, 2010 21:03:44 GMT -5
I was already isolated when I began the QF journey (with 3 kids). I had managed to connect with a couple church based ventures that I really enjoyed, volunteered at a church book based ministry for instance. I was very very excited about this because it suited me perfectly and I enjoyed it SO much.. but when I began homeschooling we were told, or rather terrorized with, the idea that we could NOT go out during the day with our kids because of the, at the time, grey area legalities of homeschooling. Apparently we were all in terrible danger of having human services take our children away from us at any moment and to be seen in the supermarket with school age children at noon was madness, sheer folly.. this was total nonsense of course. The non-religious homeschool groups laughed at the religious ones for this silliness. But I bought it, I easily bought fear which was not surprising considering fear was pretty much normal for me within my marriage. So I quit the ministry things I was doing and that was the first step into increasingly deep and painful isolation.
Of course even if I had ignored that fear I couldn't keep doing these things with an ever increasing crowd of children.
The isolation is terrible and never addressed. People even ended up isolating themselves from other homeschoolers if there was something about them that was too liberal or what have you.. so you would get folks who stopped coming to the once every two months social events.
The sheer level of work in keeping the house, teaching the children as they get older and more numerous isolates you incredibly. I was completely dependent on having a conversation after church in the 15 minutes before we went home, lol. If I couldn't go to church I would be absolutely distraught because of missing out on this.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 9, 2010 19:03:50 GMT -5
Arietty, here's the thing that baffles me - not just about your story, but about all of these. Over time, you start to feel that something isn't working and you want to fix it, and you're unhappy, so you start looking around for solutions. Of course you can't undo having kids. But you can undo getting married. No matter what subculture you live in, you are still surrounded by the rest of the world and you know, somewhere, that it's an option. Yet over and over again I hear that either huge major-effort overhauls of the entire family seemed more likely to work than getting divorced, or that suicide seemed like a more acceptable option. I've read a ton of stories where women spent weeks or months contemplating death before divorce even occurred to them. How does that happen? To me, that's right up there with believing that being more submissive will make an angry, controlling, abusive man become sweet and gentle - something really manipulative has to happen to make that belief seem plausible. Journey described it well. Really it boils down to this: DIVORCE is failure, SIN and will destroy your children. Death, well that is just God's will. You don't argue with God's will. God's will is always preferable to terrible sin. Add to this years of being told that as a woman the world outside your home is NOT your realm.. and to your life becoming more and more isolated from that world.. and you have women who don't know a thing about the finances, where the money is, how the mortgage is paid and/or hundreds of other practical matters that form a huge and terrifying How-Will-I-Survive terror at the thought of existing outside of this relationship. I remember after my ex was gone I had to do a whole lot of things I'd never done before.. the small one that comes to mind is set up with another internet provider, figure out how to connect the computer, pay for the service.. and my ex called me and demanded to know WHO had done all that for me. He asked that about quite a few things I had done myself with no outside help (who would help me? I had no one.) I never answered though because I was very afraid of him and I was happy to let him believe that mysterious people were on my side and might come to my aid if he attacked me. But it did amaze me that it never entered his head I could do any of these things. It also amazed me how easy they were as it had taken him TWO YEARS to decide on and connect to an ISP when we were married (paying for the one he decided on for many months before figuring out how to use it). You are NO ONE in fundamentalist churches as a divorced woman. Other woman don't want their husband's speaking to you much less helping you with a practical matter. Even if you managed to not fail by being divorced, say if he divorced you AND was a homosexual or serial killer you STILL failed because you married him in the first place. IF he was so horrible that you are allowed to be divorced from him then you were obviously out of God's will when you married him in the first place. It's all one big failure, failure, failure, failure. Since everything is promised to be fantastic after you die who wouldn't prefer that?
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 8, 2010 21:05:22 GMT -5
Whatever it was that was driving me to take good care of the house and obsess over nutritious and home made everything when I was QF.. well that is well and truly gone and a great apathy has settled in its place, LOL. I realize I will never recapture that old drive, it's just GONE. Lots of stuff I just did without thinking is pure drudgery to me now. This has happened to me too, Arietty ~ and I am not sure if it's such a good thing ~ especially with so many kids still at home. It used to be that every little detail of my life was eternally significant ~ that's a very powerful motivator and it is what got me up out of bed all those years when I was so incredibly exhausted and worn out from perpetual childbearing. Having experienced such a noble and worthy calling ~ I find that ordinary reasons for doing what needs done are not nearly motivating enough to get me going. I'm struggling with taking care of the responsibilities I heaped on myself when I had ultimate purpose for doing so ~ Here's something I wrote to my uncle early in our correspondence (I've probably shared this before): If I did not believe in Eternity and that one day I will give an account for my life ~ I wouldn't do all that I do. Why would I? The crap and the creeps of the world have been too close ... I am convinced that without God (capital G) and His word to make sense of it all, and the hope of redemption and the promise of ultimate justice and the indwelling Holy Spirit to enable me to carry on ~ I would give up. It's a scary thought ~ but sometimes, I think this really is happening to me ~ I want to give up ~ and the only reason I haven't is because my kids are all still young and there's nobody except me to take care of them. With the health problems I've been experiencing recently, someone asked me if I have written out a will ~ "just in case." I do have a will, though it hasn't been updated since the divorce, and truthfully, I'm fairly hesitant about taking care of that ~ because I'm a little worried that if I go to the trouble to ensure that the kids will be taken care of and provided for in the event of my death ~ then next time I get hit with a bout of depression and anxiety, the one thing that so far has kept the suicidal thoughts at bay ~ fear of leaving my kids to fend for themselves ~ would no longer be there keeping me from the temptation to make a quick end of my troubles. Yikes, huh? This is why I'm back in counseling ~ and I'm even considering expending a bit of brain power on figuring out a new or modified "Something" to believe in ~ something to keep me going when I am so darned tired and feeling like my life is taking way too long. My encouragement to you Vyckie is that though the apathy about housework and other "womanly arts" has continued on a decade later I am happy and energized as a mom with my kids now. I once longed for community and then reeled from being ejected from the one I found.. but I have a new community now and it is my family. Once the kids started growing up the bonds really strengthened and we are our own strong culture and community now. Having a big family has been a strength that has helped me greatly in having to live outside of having a vision. However when I was where you are right now, a couple years out, kids in adolescence dealing with their immediate past.. well I felt like absolute shit. Being a mom was just more drudgery a lot of the time and of course there was now no vision to spur me on.. just the common sense of needing to take care of all these other people. Here's how I coped, some good and some bad: Drank. Okay that was fun but I got over it in about a year, lol. I don't recommend this to anyone with an addictive personality, I have never been able to get addicted to anything so I am really missing that gene. But it WAS fun, I enjoyed just indulging myself. Found some people to go out with now and then and let loose, though I am not friends with any of them now. It was also a bit of the old missed-my-youth thing, because I really did miss it having married so early. Spent 10 million hours on the internet. I picked up interests I had had 20 years ago and threw myself into online communities that centered on them. That was also a missed-my-youth thing because it pained me so to have let these things go out of my life because they were not Godly or because my husband hated them. This was good for me because I was able to do it for free and at home. I made some great friends that are still my friends today. Read a lot of feminist blogs and listened to a lot of woman centered/lesbian music. This kind of gave me back an identity as a WOMAN, not as an adjunct to a man and not as a vagina shaped connecting piece in God's grand plan for man's dominion over the earth. This has had a lasting and positive effect on my life. Here's a funny thing though--sometimes I wish I was a lesbian (which wouldn't be difficult for me) and I want to slap myself because I realize part of the appeal is being a part of that subculture. Yes the LURE of the subculture is strong and it is really the same intense feelings of appeal as I once felt towards QF life. Noticing this does help keep me in check! [DISCLAIMER: Yes I know there is no one lesbian subculture, please do not derail the thread pointing this out to me.] So that is how I spent the years immediately following my expulsion from my church, dismantling of my belief system and divorce. I admire YOU Vyckie because you are doing something incredibly positive here with NLQ and the book and Take Heart. You are stepping outside of your own problems and making a real difference in the world. This is such a wonderful thing and not something I could have done myself. The level of burnout after years and years of running on adrenaline (that high you will NEVER get back) should not be underestimated. I had anxiety attacks, depression and intense apathy for a long time. I had to get used to normal living, living from day to day just doing stuff. Stuff that does not get you high because it is not a part of God's Divine Purpose For Eternity. It's a cultic mentality, fundamentalism, you are so deep into pursuing that high of MEANING that you lose all touch with reality. The reality that is filled with just ordinary stuff and things that have to be done and decisions that have no right or wrong way to go, that just ARE. So you are dealing with severe adrenaline burnout and trying to cope in this new, kinda meaningless world. It does get better and I have to say I cherish normal life now. I don't care that I will never get that drive back, reading this forum has helped me define what that was all about and I don't want it back any more. I accept my apathy, I think some of it is my normal nature and some of it is just where I've been dumped after those years of being driven and that's just the way it is now. Anyway.. I am so happy for you that you have a counselor. I always wanted to go to one but never had the money or people to mind the children. I hope you get a lot of it. I'm really writing this long post to you to just say--what is happening to you now is a normal response to leaving it all behind. You're in transition. Transition lasts longer than we want it to but it does pass.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 8, 2010 20:11:29 GMT -5
Oh yes that tension between being the submissive wife and watching your husband make incredibly stupid mistakes. But you can't say anything..
Franky my ex-husband had serious problems with logic, critical thinking, planning, money and even spatial matters. He would try and build things and make them top heavy and they would fall over.. and some under 10 child would explain to him why this happened and he would become enraged..
And yet I was supposed to sit there and compliment and build him up and never correct him even though the failure of whatever he was doing was glaringly obvious. This all contributed to my zombie-ness.. I had to disassociate from everything around me as I couldn't engage emotionally or intellectually without being highly stressed. In the end my only hope was that one day I would be dead and in heaven and none of this would matter so what did it matter if all was a huge disaster today? I wouldn't even remember these disasters when I was in heaven so there was no point engaging with them now!
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 8, 2010 19:44:45 GMT -5
I've been thinking about why these families appealed to us while the many other families we all knew didn't. I think there is really a sell job element here in how the appealing families present as a complete package. They offer something quite distinctive that another family with three kids dressed normally and messing around in the back of the church doesn't. We don't want what we already have which is what all the boring families have, we want something that will fix or save or inspire us in some way.
I think a lot of people also feel culture-less, if you are just boring white protestant blah blah.. and for myself there was a definite appeal to the subculture. I believe this is why many christians get obsessed with Israel, they are looking for a culture to attach themselves to that has more depth than their own modern American middle class blahness. The QF subculture offers the same thing, as do all deep fundamentalist subcultures.
I know I loved to spend time with families like Shelley has described. I was always hoping they would rub off on my husband, that he would see and feel and be inspired by the Godliness of the family dad the way I was inspired by the Godliness of the mom. This of course never ever happened and my husband usually did or said something that made the other perfect family not want to pursue our friendship (like telling some sex joke or losing his temper or dominating the conversation for hours).
I wanted a good marriage and a good family and instead of looking at the normal families I knew I looked towards families that seemed special, I was looking for something markedly better and different than what I had because I was so deeply dissatisfied.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 2, 2010 23:57:51 GMT -5
btw I am sorry if I have hijacked this thread away from the experience of the daughters.
I've been thinking about the families perceived to be successful, the ones that get media attention both within and outside of the movement. In the success families all the children work really really hard. The house is run with timetables. Everything looks clean all the time and the children are always put forward for how cheerful in their work they are, how accomplished the daughters are in sewing and cooking. These are the successes and the burdens on the daughters must terrible.
But.. then you have the failures. Messy, tiny houses. Piles of laundry. Schoolwork in huge disarray. And what happens then.. you get forums like FreeJinger ruthlessly picking apart blog photos of such situations and mocking the failures. Maybe these moms just haven't figured out you are supposed to turn your children into robo-slaves and that's why the place looks like that? Maybe the kids are happier?
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 2, 2010 23:20:21 GMT -5
IT is NEVER talked about in the movement that many women suffer very badly from continual child bearing. They are left exhausted, with chronic fatigue or untreated depression, anemic (and it's so hard to go to the doctor with umpteen kids in tow), recovering for 6 months at a time from each birth.. really if they were not under the QF bondage it would be obvious that taking a few years break before having any more children, getting healthy and well first would be the way to go. I have known plenty of people who waited a few years before having another baby because they weren't physically well.. and yet this is considered SIN.
As to what to do after you release the slaves.. lower your standards as much as possible and try and have FUN first. Leave the dishes and have a movie night with the kids. Put the fun first, they absolutely need this once you are out of this lifestyle.
Whatever it was that was driving me to take good care of the house and obsess over nutritious and home made everything when I was QF.. well that is well and truly gone and a great apathy has settled in its place, LOL. I realize I will never recapture that old drive, it's just GONE. Lots of stuff I just did without thinking is pure drudgery to me now.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 2, 2010 18:24:24 GMT -5
The ship was not YWAM, it was part of another ministry. I'm sure AR gets handed out by many people though as it is free and colorful. I have no idea if the ship espoused the anti-feminist stance of AR but I doubt it. There were also Chick tracts lying around, people just bring these things in and leave them (I used to leave AR in church foyers too).
As to YWAM I have known so many people seriously abused by them. Heard the same stories from people who attended completely different DTS's , people who didn't know each other. Horrible spiritual abuse went on under the shepherding teachings they were immersed in years ago (I have no idea what they teach now). I had two women friends who went to DTS and were told they had a "spirit of lust" and had to wear blanket like garments the whole time and be prayed over and have demons cast out. One was married and her husband was with her, one was single and had a breakdown after her time in YWAM. Again, these things happened at different DTS's and these people didn't know each other so the "a few bad apples" excuse I've heard YWAM believers use just doesn't wash with me.
I think the whole organization is WEIRD. Get hundreds of young people to save and beg money so they can go to a DTS (Disciple Training School, a short term intensive course that uses brainwashing techniques) and then save and beg some more so they can be sent overseas to do.. what? Exactly why do other countries need a bunch of 20 year olds indoctrinated in evangelism techniques? So they can convert people who can then save and beg so that they can go to their own DTS? It reminds me of Amway, I was often wondering if it was more about all that money generated into courses and not about anything real, the way Amway is about the sign up money and not about the soap.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Apr 2, 2010 18:06:11 GMT -5
Thanks Kiery for this great post Reading it I was thinking about how hard this life can be on adult women.. and then we go and place it on the backs of our young girls. While it's true that in a family crisis it IS good for everyone to pull together and for the older children to take over chores the problem is in a lot of QF families the "family crisis" is normal life. Maybe it felt like a crisis the first time it happened, a few months of mom chronically ill or depressed, or of a difficult pregnancy, or chicken pox laying low half the kids or finances so difficult mom has to work or run herself into the ground with a home business or.. but soon this level of crisis becomes normal life and and the pressure on the kids taking over parenting chores and roles is never ending. I just visited my QF friend recently and her life is in extreme crisis. The same crisis it has been in for the 20 years I have known her. Financial, horrible husband, sick all the time.. these days you can add teenagers to the crisis, teenagers who got sick to death of living in their parents generated crisis and and are now generating their own (and "not working properly" i.e. being slaves). And as you say so well, meanwhile these families are admired by many because everything looks so in control, children so helpful.. and of course no one dares say that life is really really hard.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on Mar 20, 2010 22:22:44 GMT -5
jwr I wonder if anyone managed to sustain the jesus people god is love stuff.
Some of it I guess is life untested, the naivety and unseen (to the young person) luxury of a life where you get summer vacations to sing around campfires and where you can be deeply concerned for issues without your own mortgage, job, marriage, children taking center stage.
However I do think there are ways of getting back to that simple faith, that devotion to goodness that was so crushed by your, ably described, timeline of the rise of fear and power as central tenants of American Christianity. I believe we (or at least, I) have to step outside of Christian culture to do it. A choice to do good and experience good outside of the programs that make up the church today, to build relationships with those already in your life. To strip away the christian culture and the regulations and the obsessing with end times and all the control needs that go into it (because you have to control the current culture so that it goes well for you and your nation when God holds you to account). To live simply and not expect to always be seen doing so. I personally feel like I am on a somewhat aimless path back to the campfire idealism and simplicity. It is somewhat aimless because no fears are cracking the whip to make me plunge headlong into anything. But I do find lovely spirituality in being mindful of the people in my life, the beauty around me, the freedom to make little choices in my interactions to offer goodness.
Anyway, thanks for the flashback tour. There's a mauve-y pink color that when I see it still reminds me of Dave Hunt's The Seduction of Christianity, eek.
|
|