Your Past Does Not Control Your Future

The post that I wrote last week, about what it was like to be raised in the cult known as the World Wide Church of God was my most popular post to date. It got a lot of views, comments, shares, and private messages. I truly did not realise that so many other people shared similar stories and similar histories.

I want to write another post, an epilogue of sorts to clear up some things. I don’t want anyone reading about it to think that I had just left ‘the church’ recently.  No, I left 30 years ago and I have been cleaning up the mess ever since.

I left “the church” in my mind as child or young teenager. I knew that it wasn’t for me and it wasn’t how I intended to live my life for long… I did not know how I planned to live it, but it was going to be different than what I lived now. Actually I did know how I wanted to live, I wanted to be happy, and I wanted to raise children in a happy home. It didn’t take spending much time with them to realise the people of the World Wide Church of God were not happy people. They were mostly broken people, sad people, and people searching for some connection.

I started the processes of leaving gradually, as to not cause a ton of drama that I wasn’t prepared to deal with, but it was a done deal by my very early 20’s.

My original thought was that if I just hide the past, don’t talk about it and cut off all people from my childhood still associated with ‘the church’, everything would be ok. That plan worked really well, at least on the surface! I busied myself with raising a family and trying to build a happy life for my kids. When thoughts or feelings of the past showed up, they just got shoved back down, preferably under a pile of cookies. I was lucky in the fact that I never used drugs or alcohol to stifle the feelings. Cookies were an acceptable vice.

I am not one who likes to dwell on the past, nor do I like to blame all of my problems on my childhood. I am now a grown ass adult and it is up to me to get my shit and my life together. Childhood trauma gives us some reasons for why we are the way we are, but how we live our adult life is up to us. This philosophy also is really good in theory. This is assuming that you have dealt with it and let it go, and didn’t just stuff everything into the dark recesses of the soul and not think about them ever again. Like a hoarder. Hoarding these feelings and memories will always come back to haunt you at some point. Always! (Or it just may show up as hoarding plain and simple)

So while I thought I had dealt with things by hiding them, avoiding them and pretending that I had my shit together, I was still struggling with some emotional issues. Emotional issues like unresolved anger that I turned inward because I didn’t know how to deal with it. This inward anger turned into depression, that I also liked to keep hidden and not talk about.

I had some control freak issues… I needed to feel in control of every aspect of my life and I hate feeling controlled by others. I do not like being told what to do, but I am not always confident to do things on my own. I second guess myself a lot.

As I wrote about here, I just never felt ‘good enough’. All these things were always playing on and on inside my head.

But on the outside I was doing all I could to keep up the impression that I had it together. I struggled with keeping my weight at an acceptable level. I was an obsessive clean freak in my house, I micromanaged holidays and events and would get quite upset if my plans didn’t work out. I didn’t take criticism well, and would lay awake at night thinking about what I might have said of done to make someone upset with me. I was certainly doing a great job at keeping up my façade and keeping my life looking together or so I thought.

About 8 or 10 years ago I started realising I wasn’t doing such a good job. I started looking at all of the things I was dealing with and realised it was time to let go, and time to start doing the work to make some changes in myself. I started to get healthier, eating a really clean diet and not filling my body with crap helped a lot. But I still felt like I was getting sicker and sicker. I started looking for ways to be positive, healthy and  happy, but there was still some negative thoughts and feelings I could not shake.  I still did not want to talk about my childhood though….. nope. Let’s just keep that hidden. I don’t want to talk about it, and I will eat more cookies to keep those thoughts and feelings weighted down, well buried. I just was not connecting all the dots.

About 15 years ago I was diagnosed with Hashimoto thyroiditis, (which is actually an autoimmune illness that affects the thyroid). The Dr told me it was no big deal.  This was before I had Google.  I was rediagnosed about 3 years ago…. and I Googled the hell out of this illness. I did learn all about autoimmunity and how the body attacks itself.

I also firmly believe in a mind/body/spirit connection. When anyone of those 3 is in distress it affects the others.  The thyroid gland is in the throat and it affects every single function in the body. So it was no wonder I was feeling crappy. If you follow alternative health at all you know that that thyroid is in located in the throat chakra. The throat chakra is blocked when we are not able to speak up, when we are not speaking our truth, and not saying what we mean. This has always been my struggle, so as I started reading and learning this, I was not at all surprised that a chronic illness had decided to settle in my throat.

Throat Chakra

Now…those who do know me in real life, know I tend to often speak in a very blunt form. I often say things in a way that people can assume that I am very blunt and outspoken. I can certainly be… except around anything involving my past.

I finally feel like I am ready to start being more vocal. I may have unleashed a dragon and I want to shout from the rooftops about the damage that these cults, who prey on the weak and the vulnerable, are doing to people. Especially the little people, who do not get a choice or a say.

I want to tell everyone to listen to what their soul is telling them, through the messages that their body is giving them.

I am now able to take those little voices in my head, that still may say “you are not good enough”  and I am able to shut them down. I tell those voices to shut the fuck up now. They were instilled by people who did not have my best interests at heart  They were put there to control me, and they do not serve any purpose in my life and I won’t let them control me anymore.

Believe me… my head has a lot of positive self talk, and a lot of positive affirmations happening right now.

There are things that I suppose will always be a part of me. But I try to use them for good.

I still tend to be a perfectionist, I am still a bit of a control freak, and I will never be part of organizations, churches, clubs, or anything that looks cultish at all. If it involves attending rallies, meetups, or groups of like minded people….you probably will not find me there.

I really don’t like being told what to do or how to do it, especially when what I am doing isn’t necessarily the wrong way. I will say my husband has the patience of a saint, even though most of the time I am not honest with him about my hopes, dreams or what is going on in my head.

But I can laugh about a lot of this now. I do have a pretty dark and sarcastic sense of humour. Although I still have nothing good the say about ‘ the church’ or my step-father.

But I want to say it again…this change does not happen over night. It is a process, and coming clean for me is the final step in MY very long process.  If you are working through something similar, you may not be as stubborn as me, and your process may be quicker. But you still need to do the work, acknowledge and feel all the icky and ugly feels. You will need to then accept your truth and your past as a part of you. Just not thinking about it will not change it.  Your past won’t go away just because you want it to.

There are lots of resource books available on every topic of healing. There are therapists and life coaches. I had actually ‘won’ a 3 month session with a life coach and I just finished up with Jessamine, who I fully admit gave me a safe place to work through some of the really deeply buried baggage. There is so much information available at your fingertips with the internet, that whenever you are ready, the help is there.

It is part of your story, but that does not mean that your past has to control you.

You can not change the past….but you have all the power in the world to change your present and your future.

What it's Like To Be Raised In A Cult - My Life in The World Wide Church of God

For all intent and purposes I was raised in a cult. If you ever want to know why I am the way I am, it is because I was raised in a cult. The biggest embarrassment of my childhood is that I was raised in a cult. There I said it….almost out loud.

My life started off pretty normal..

Christmas 1969

I was baptised as a baby into the Lutheran faith, but I do not really remember ever going to church much. My dad died when I was 5.  My mom, who was obviously lost and searching for something decided to join a new ‘ church’. I was 5 and I do not remember it affecting me much at the time, but after a while life just got weird in my 6 year old head.

6 years old

I will probably need to back up and try and explain this new church.

I won’t go into tons of detail, but you can read about it here.  ” The Church” as they liked to call themselves, because you know, they were the only true church out there, * please sense the sarcasm* was actually called The Worldwide Church of God and this was around 1973. This church was established in the 1930’s  under the leadership of the self proclaimed apostle and prophet, Herbert W. Armstrong.  Most of the doctrines were later found to not even be biblical. As an adult,  I have ZERO interest in religion of any sort, and I do not even own a bible, so I have no intention of fact checking any doctrine.

I was not surprised to read years later that this church was actually considered and listed as a cult. You can read more links here, here, here and here. There is  also a DVD about it as well.

Throughout my childhood and more so my teenage years, I was horribly embarrassed by my family. I was embarrassed that my family belonged to this church. I was embarrassed to be part of this church. I was embarrassed by the people who went to this church. Even as a child and later a teenager at church events, I would look around and think in my head ‘ what the actual fuck’. ‘This is fucking bullshit’. Shhhh….. those thoughts alone would have me cast into the lake of fire. But to keep peace I smiled and tried to behave myself. Thank goodness prophets were not mind readers.

I wished I could either crawl under a rock and hide.  Or maybe crawl out from under the rock that these people chose to live under. I couldn’t decide which. Actually speaking about rocks, a funny story was that ‘the church’ claimed that at some point…their dates kept changing..all 144,000 of God’s chosen people would be flown off to a place of safety, which happened to be a place called Petra. Petra is actually a tourist destination, but they were convinced that this city made of rock, was protection for the great plagues that God would bestow on all the sinners. OMG, it was imperative that you fully follow every law set forth from the pulpit, to ensure your seat on the ‘wings of a great eagle’ to the place of safety known as Petra.  I am sorry… I just can’t make this shit up.

Throughout my childhood I was angry.  Part of belonging to ‘the church’ meant that you must  disassociate yourself from non believers. In my case this was all of my paternal family. I had just lost my dad and now I lost my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins and was only allowed to see them on a very limited basis. I didn’t understand why this was happening and I carried this anger inside for many years. I am happy to say that by my late teen years and early 20’s after leaving the church I was able to have a great relationship with my grandparents. They are both past on now, but I also have a wonderful relationship with the only surviving link to my dad….my Aunt Ilean.

A rare visit with our Gramma

Anger was not an emotion that we were allowed to express. By my early tween years my mom had remarried, and while I am not sure about all church households, ours was run with the same strict rules that were preached from the pulpit.  Breaking rules or expressing anger was usually met with disipline. Rule with an iron fist, spare the rod and spoil the child, is what was preached. Personally, I think it was just residual anger issues on my step dads part, but I am no therapist.  A clue to the makings of a good cult is keeping people subservient …. and obviously my parents were well indoctrinated.

I am still friends with several people who I grew up with in ‘the church’. They also eventually left and now share my skewed up view on religion. They were also the bad ones, the rebels, the ones who pushed the rules. Most of us do have a killer sense of humour, and several are alcoholics. HAHA! Just kidding!  They are not real alcoholics, but we certainly joke about it, because even just in writing this, I am feeling the need for a drink.  If nothing else kids of the WWCof G around the world have probably kept a lot of therapists on fantastic vacations for years.

Growing up in “the church”, with all of the weird rules and crazy doctrines,  certainly did not earn us any popularity in school, but everyone knows that true Christians will be persecuted, so we learned to maneuver in ‘the world’ as best we could.

We also learned to pack a bag, because we were going on a guilt trip….Oh my Lord the guilt trips, either the guilt in our head for calling out ‘fucking bullshit’ silently, or the guilt trip we were sent on for breaking a rule. This is where I learned to be a people pleaser, and to do things I didn’t always agree with to avoid guilt trips or the dreaded lecture. I learned to stay quiet, stay small and fly under the radar not making waves.  I suppose what does not kill us makes us stronger…. along with bitter, angry, spiteful and alcoholics. Did I mention kids of the WWCof G drink a lot?  ( back to the therapist I go…)

I am only speaking for myself for a lot of this story, because like I said, I am not sure how other church families operated. Mine was pretty strict. Because my parents didn’t want to be called out for having children who didn’t follow the rules. They certainly did not want to be called out publicly during a sermon for some infraction…. somehow this would bump them down on the list for their seat on the great eagle I suppose. Keeping people fearful was the cornerstone of this and every cult.

Some might be thinking…. why didn’t you just disobey. Break the rules, tell your parents what you thought.  Well… it was complicated. As a member of ‘the church’, if you disobeyed, didn’t follow the letter of the law, questioned anything or showed any sort of disloyalty to ‘the church’ then you would be held to the ultimate shame of being disfellowshipped. Once you were disfellowshipped you were destined for the lake of fire with all of the other sinners. This was the ultimate way that they were able to control their members. Our household was run the same way and our life was fear based. Should you disobey or question anything, then you would be cast out on the streets as the ultimate punishment. Left homeless with no family. Your life would forever be a living hell, until death, when you went to the lake of fire.  Now I don’t know if it came down to it, if they would have actually thrown me out, but I really didn’t want to find out. As it was… at least I had a roof over my head. So I just bided my time and developed trust issues….only half joking!

We did go to public schools, and could interact with others during school hours. But for the most part friends “in the world”, what few friends I had, were limited to school hours.

As kids, we spent quite a bit of time in the library. Since we did not observe Christmas, Easter, Halloween, St Patrick’s Day or anything else that looked like fun, we had to sit out for all related art classes and concert preparations. Can you say segregated and  lonely? All you could do is hope that the weird(er) kid who ate the paint was also sent to the library so you would be the normal one.

Speaking of not celebrating holidays…. have you ever hid in the dark on Halloween not being very quiet when the doorbell rang? I have!  Christmas was certainly a fun time….said no Church kid ever! Those Christmas presents Gramma sent you…. yeah sorry, she knows we are not ‘of the world’. How dare she try and make us sin by wearing those Christmas socks!  Return to sender. It could totally explain the 3 Christmas trees that you find in my house for the whole month of December now and everyone gets lots of socks from Gramma!

We could not go to any birthday parties.. well because it was better to celebrate the day of ones death than the day of their birth. So no birthdays for church kids.

We could not do sports or any extra curricular activities. Why not…? Well, because most of these activities took place on the Sabbath. The Sabbath was sundown Friday to Sundown Saturday.

We did no manual labour on the Sabbath, except minimal cooking. If you had a job that required you to work on the Sabbath, you were commanded to quit. The fact you needed that job was irrelevant.

We couldn’t spend money on the Sabbath… so it was very sinful if you forgot to get fuel before sundown and you needed to fill your car to get to church…seriously people, I am not making this shit up.

Oh and yeah… we went to church on Saturday. There is nothing weird about that at all when you are 12 years old and trying to fit in. If I was lucky enough to have a friend, they usually went to some sort of church, but never on Saturday. Yeah I was a freak even amongst the other freaky religious kids.

We did have activities for children and youth of ‘the church’. Track meets, summer camps, and other supposedly fun things. I avoided them and faked many an illness to get out of them, because well…. it goes back to looking around at all those fresh faced, happy, young people and all I could think was ‘ this is fucking bullshit’.

Lets see…. what else? It was a sin to be rich. Something about it was easier for a poor man to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven. Or something like that… whatever it was, blessed are the poor.

Seriously… there was serious money hangups, if you had any money, you had better get rid of it as quick as possible, preferably through a donation to ‘the church’. One way they kept everyone poor was to use a tithing system. At least 20% of your gross income was paid in tithes and every 3rd year you paid 30%. Once again…. fucking bullshit.

The ministry and higher up people in ‘the church’ were paid from these tithes, and they were paid well. The church pulled in over 200 million dollars a year back in the 70s. The fearless leader Herbert W. owned several mansions along millionaire row in Pasedena, California and was at the center of nurmerous scandals. Herbert W. was also the subject of a 60 Minutes investigative report.

Ministers at a local level lived in nicer houses and wore nicer clothing than members of the congregations because they were obviously in the power positions and need to present themselves well to the world and those they were trying to convert.

Every aspect of our life was managed and monitored by these people in the power positions. Everything from what we could wear to how we wore our hair. Modest clothing always, preferably skirts or dresses and long unadorned hair for the women. While men’s hair must be cut around the ear and could not touch the collar of their button up shirt.

Makeup was also not allowed. Something about vanity and harlots. It was also not advised to tell your daughters they were pretty and all that other vain nonsense. They certainly didn’t want to build self esteem in your children, which meant you were full of yourself and not God. So beat them down and tell them without God they are nothing.

Men ruled the household, and managed the money. Women were to be meek and submissive. Ummmm…. more bullshit.

And sex only in the missionary position….haha, I bet you didn’t expect that did you? I am not sure how many people followed this one. But knowing what I know about a lot of those people, I will suspect a lot of them did. They were not going to risk the lake of fire for carnal yearnings.

Anyway… I could go on and on. But I think if you managed to read all of this, you get the drift of what cult life is like. I am positive that if everyone arrived at church to a jug of kool aid and instructions to drink it and lie down, everyone would have drank it and settled in for a nap, no questions asked.

I did eventually grow up and leave this cult. Nothing bad happened. No hell on earth, no boils or sores. Actually life got much better. I spent several years not talking to my family because of it. My mother took it rather hard at the time. But the funny thing is, she and my step dad are now divorced and she no longer attends any church that I know of. If she does, she doesn’t talk about.

As an adult over the years, I have done a lot of work on myself to fix some of what ‘the church’ left me with. I and alot of my friends came out of it OK. But it is sad to realise that ‘the church’ really fucked a lot of people up. How many peoples lives were ruined, how many families broken and relationships that were torn apart.

I have never talked about how I was raised, and I try to spend as little time as possible talking about or remembering my childhood. It can be summed up in a couple of words, sad and lonely. I think I am ready to come out of the shitty childhood closet though, tell my story and hopefully help that little girl realise that her childhood wasn’t her fault and she no longer has to be embarrassed by it.

Me at 11

When you know better you do better and I think I have done much better providing happier childhood memories for my own children.

Can I Write and Inspiring or Empowering Post Without Posing in My Underwear? 

As I start 2019,  I realise I have gotten really down by looking at the news and that I need more positive and inspiring in my life.  So as I scroll through my Instagram feed, I see that I follow a lot of women who have found their voice and have positive things to say. The only thing that I find very confusing, as that many of them are posing seductively in their underwear, in front of a mirror, or on their unmade bed. 

Now these posts are not by centerfolds or pin up girls. These are smart, intelligent women, talking about empowering others, confidence and self love. One of them is a birth doula, which I follow because in my past life ( well in my younger years) I was a doula. Apparently she is a sexy half naked birth doula..or that is how “I” see her portraying herself. 

The problem I have is that for years, women used their near naked body to attract men,  now it seems they post their near naked bodies to attract a woman following on social media. But why? Can’t your message get across to people without showing your non perfect booties and boobies? Which is the point of their posts… they have confidence, feel empowered and feel self love even without perfect bodies.  Great… we all know this is possible because it has been drilled into our heads for years. We are more than our body. We are our hearts and our minds…..so why, why, why, are you still using your body on social media? 

Why must you  quote a  100 year old book,  that is not remotely associated with the words naked, lace panties or sexy poses while showing a photo of yourself half naked in lace panties in a sexy pose…I just don’t get it. 

Please tell me all about your self empowerment with a picture of you doing something with confidence and empowerment, beyond selfies on your bed. Then I will take you seriously. Maybe climbing that mountain, chasing your kids, getting that degree or that finished novel that you always say you are writing.

I am really happy you are confident about your non perfect body. Lots of us are…some of us aren’t, but we still manage to carry on with our lives, and doesn’t mean that there is something wrong or lacking with us. 

The majority of us do not need all of the reinforcement from our tribe about ‘how great we look’,  ‘how brave we are’ or ‘ how they wish they had confidence like that’.  If you truly want to help other women find their true self, show us pictures of some real goals that you crushed. Because after all, your whole message is about how an imperfect body is still beautiful, smart and caring. Show me… because all I am seeing is someone who needs to post photos in their underwear for attention. If we are more than our bodies…then show me something more than your body! Or at the very least, your body and your brain doing something empowering.

I have a really hard time taking advice on confidence from someone doing yoga splits in their panties, on their kitchen counter…..because ewww, do you cook on that counter? 

I have a really hard time taking advice on empowerment and goals from someone who maybe moonlighting for a Penthouse spread on the side. Unless posing for Penthouse was your goal…then woohoo, you did it girl. 

Are we as a society still so obsessed by our looks, and our naked bodies that we are now selling empowerment on Instagram with almost naked bodies? It seems totally opposite of what the message is about. I guess it is still true. Sex Sells. and we are really no farther ahead in women’s issues than we were in the 70’s at the start of the women’s movement. 

I do try to be helpful and maybe even inspiring to a younger generation coming up behind me, as well to all of the other women  around me. But sorry girls… I am doing it with perfectly imperfect body fully clothed. And I am also unfollowing everyone who feels that the world needs to see their booty in lace panties while they give me a long lecture on living a life of purpose. Put your clothes on, and go out and live that purposeful life and get your empowerment from life and not thousands of ‘likes’ on your Instagram. 

And disinfect that kitchen counter…..