gender roles

One Ticket To The Gray Havens, Please: Marais’s Story

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CC image courtesy of Pixabay, Animus Photograpy.

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Marais” is a pseudonym.

My pseudonym is Marais. I am 17 years old. This is what happened to me when I was 12-14. I was part of a not-very-well-known homeschool group called Regina Coeli that was part of a bigger religious group, which didn’t have a real name but was basically known as Traditional Latin Mass Catholics, FSSP, TLM, Usus Antiquior, etc. I would compare it to Quiverfull in that it wasn’t a homogeneous group or network, but was made of a lot of families over the the US and Canada who believed similar things: basically, that the Latin Mass is the only correct form of the Mass and that Catholics who go to Mass in the vernacular (English; Novus Ordo) aren’t as ‘Catholic.’ There were varying opinions on this: some people thought it was a sin to go to a Novus Ordo, while others thought that Novus Ordo Catholics were just lazy. Unlike some other writers featured on HA, I would describe my experiences with homeschooling as positive. I have a good relationship with my parents. We share a lot of religious and political beliefs, but I know that my values are my own and not just forced on me. I want to homeschool my own children. Sometimes I’m still hurting from my experience in late middle school, but it’s not because I was abused in any way. I was stuck in a confusing situation that I still haven’t fully come to terms with. It took a lot away from me, and I miss how happy I was then.

The first time I watched The Fellowship of the Ring, I was so excited that I went upstairs at 11:30 p.m. and bounced on my bed for ten minutes.

I felt as if I’d been given an invitation into the world of Middle-Earth, where there was plenty of evil, but there was more good, and good won out in the end. And if things didn’t work out perfectly, there was always the Gray Havens.

At fourteen, I was pretty unhappy. I’d found limited fame and fortune in doing spelling bees (typical homeschooler alert!) and built an identity for myself as a Word Nerd. Unfortunately, that identity dissipated when I lost my local spelling bee the year after I had tied for 12th at the National Spelling Bee. I had struggled to make friends ever since preschool (I had been homeschooled starting in kindergarten). Wherever I was with ‘normal kids’, I couldn’t keep up with their conversations. I felt invisible.

(I still struggle to talk at the pace of other people. If anything is distracting me from the conversation, I can’t keep up – it takes me too long to process what the other person has said and think of a response. I’m also still too shy to join a conversation I haven’t been expressly invited into. Like most homeschoolers, I communicate much better with adults than with people my own age. My best friend, besides my sisters, is a 30-year-old mom of four whom I babysit for.)

Regina Coeli Academy, which later became FisherMore Academy and today is Queen of Heaven Academy (more on that later), isn’t very well-known outside the Traditional Catholic homeschool family circles. Its tagline is “Catholic Homeschooling Online”, giving overworked homeschool moms of ten or eleven kids an alternative to sending their older kids to ‘real’ high school. My mom heard of it from a family who had pulled their daughter out of real high school and sent her to this online academy instead. They were only too delighted to spill their horror stories of her experiences at the real school to anyone who would listen. After my parents had a less-than-stellar experience with the staff at the local Catholic high school, they decided to send my sister and me to Regina Coeli.

The kids at Regina Coeli introduced me to the Lord of the Rings, and for that I will be forever grateful.

Once I had watched the movies and read the books, I discovered that the community would completely accept my enthusiasm and even obsession with the books, which my mom found violent and unsettling. In class, people would call me Arwen (my favorite character) if I wanted them to. I could be the girl who had an elf sword.

However, they also introduced me to the Traditional Latin Mass, and that isn’t such a clear-cut issue. It’s hard to explain the extent to which the TLM permeated that school’s culture. In my second year there, Regina Coeli officially changed its name to FisherMore Academy and became a partner and feeder school for FisherMore College, a tiny liberal arts college in Texas whose most important draw for students was the TLM offered DAILY! on its campus. The partnership changed a lot of things. I watched in deep envy as some of my classmates moved to Texas to be near the college and its Mass.

More than anything, I think the partnership strengthened the us-vs-the-world mentality.

The TLM community magazine, aptly named The Remnant, from the verse Zephaniah 3:12: “But I will leave within you the meek and humble. The remnant of Israel will trust in the name of the LORD.” Sadly, we weren’t humble. We were inordinately arrogant and pleased as punch with ourselves for being right when everybody else was wrong. If you couldn’t think of anything to talk about with another Regina Coeli student, bashing the Novus Ordo (Mass in English) was always fair game. My sister’s history teacher referred to the Novus Ordo liturgy as ‘clowns and balloons.” One boy in my religion class said that his family drove three hours each way every Sunday to attend Mass in a cafeteria, simply because it was in Latin.

The Regina Coeli family who’d first told us about the school had moved to a different (TLM, of course) parish, and whenever they talked to us, some part of the conversation revolved around me and my sister complaining about having to go to the Novus Ordo every week, and the other kids in this family telling us about how great their Mass was. On a visit to an out-of-town church, my sister started crying at the end of the Mass, in which the cantor sang a lovely, if modern, song at the end of Communion and everyone clapped. After Mass, I sympathized with her as she sobbed that she felt so bad for the people who had to go to Mass there every week.

I wondered miserably why I wasn’t crying too and berated myself for enjoying the music.

It bears mentioning that unlike most families, my parents never got involved in the Latin vs. English drama. They were content in the Novus Ordo and prayed and waited patiently for my sister and me to be content too.

I attended my first Latin Mass when my sister and I went with that first Regina Coeli family on a Thursday night during Lent. Unfortunately, what I remember best was how bitterly cold it was in the church and how hungry and bored I was. I didn’t understand the Latin (duh), and the Mass seemed to take way too long because of all the extra prayers that the faithless Novus Ordo community had subtracted. The supper in the church basement was potluck style, and TLM families pride themselves on who can get by on the most penitential fare (read: watery, meatless soup) during Lent. After we got home, my sister was ecstatic and couldn’t stop talking about how amazing our night had been. “I wish every night could be like that!” I agreed with hopefully convincing enthusiasm, wondering why I was feeling so let down.

To tell the truth, I hadn’t liked the TLM.

I didn’t want to go back. At the same time, I felt panicked. This was who I was. Everything depended on my going to the Latin Mass: where I would go to college, who my future husband would be, how I would raise my kids. How could I not like something that I had built my life around? I had taken my friends’ glowing descriptions of their Sunday experiences at face value.

Not long after my disappointing evening, the FisherMore scandal broke. In a nutshell, a badly done real estate deal caused the college to lose a lot of money. At the same time, some board members were concerned about a speaker the college had brought to campus, who declared that the Second Vatican Council was invalid. (In the Catholic Church, you can’t just say that a Church Council is ‘invalid’; despite this, my classmates and even a few teachers had been saying the exact same thing all year.) The bishop ended up telling the college that they couldn’t celebrate the Latin Mass anymore, a catastrophe for a school that had built itself around the TLM. My religion teacher went off the deep end, posting crazy things that didn’t make any sense on the course homepage. The college students started a GoFundMe campaign to keep the college open. Though they reached their goal amount, the college closed almost immediately.

For me, I knew the game was up when my parents, who are the most generous people I know, refused to donate to the GoFundMe campaign.

My mom was concerned about the attitudes she’d seen in my sister and me and some of our friends. She had caught on to the toxic disgust toward the Novus Ordo. Actually, it wasn’t too hard for me to ditch the TLM. The hard part was accepting that this whole way of life, which had made me very happy, was over.

“Well, I’ve been afraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you”

I listened to “Landslide” a few months later and blinked back tears. The problem with letting go of the TLM was not the liturgy itself, but the way of life it offered me. It had offered me entrance into a secret club, a Remnant. I could be in the same group as the TLM elite. It offered me a chance to be different, special, separate, counter-cultural. I could go to a TLM college, meet my husband, graduate early because of my transfer credits from FisherMore Academy, and live in a little house in Texas near the kids I’d known from online classes ever since middle school. We’d homeschool our (many) babies together, go to church together, share recipes and go on walks and have cookie swaps and sing-alongs and volunteer together.

It was a picture-perfect life, and it’s hard to just walk away from that.

It’s still hard to keep walking away. I think of the guy who was the closest thing I’ve had to a boyfriend. We emailed each other every day during eighth grade. I think of the girl friends I had. I’ve never been that close to anyone since. I feel like Frodo: I’m glad I came back, but it really, really hurts to think of what I left behind. I wouldn’t be happy if I went back now, but if I had stayed in, I would be happy there now.

How do you pick up the threads of an old life?

How do you go on? 

When your heart had begin to understand;

There is no going back . . . . .

Forgive me for quoting the movie instead of the book, but I feel that nothing better expresses my feelings about this. Frodo had the Gray Havens to go to when he came home and it wasn’t home anymore. I am so envious. I know that this will never be fixed. It’s going to hurt for the rest of my life: whenever I hear Gregorian chant, whenever I see a priest ad orientem, whenever I think about that musty old church basement that was awful and uncomfortable but also really beautiful, because I belonged.

Don’t expect me to let go. One ticket to the Gray Havens, please.

Sexism And Homeschooling: A Call For Stories

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CC image courtesy of Pixabay, Animus Photograpy.

By Shade Ardent, HA Editorial Team.

‘A woman’s place is in the home’

‘We were created to be his helpmeet.’

‘You will stay at home under my authority until I hand you over to your husband.’

‘You need to be more submissive.’

‘There’s no need for college.’

‘Courtship not dating is what’s right for you.’

‘Promise me your heart and your purity.’

‘Don’t be immodest.’

Did you hear things like this when you were homeschooled? If so, you were probably assigned female at birth.

To be homeschooled and read as female (even if you are trans or non-binary) is to enter into an alternate universe. I know my brother did not have the same experience that I did, and that we are not the only siblings to have this disconnect in our stories. While everyone’s homeschooling situation is unique, there are certain aspects of a type of homeschooling that run common among those of us who are not read as male.

We were less-than, considered weaker, easier to fool, stumbling blocks. We were fit only to be a wife and a mother. Patriarchy and sexism ruled our environments, but we survived it.

Homeschoolers Anonymous is doing a series on sexism and homeschooling. We would like to hear your stories of how sexism and patriarchy affected you.

We will begin posting submissions on April 10, and will continue throughout the month of April.

If you are interested in participating in this series, please email us at HA.EdTeam@gmail.com.

We take privacy seriously and will happily make your submission anonymous at your request.

Policy: We accept autobiographical stories with a minimum age of 13. Stories belong to the people they happened to.

HA Note: Because patriarchy harms everyone, we will be accepting stories from all genders. We will not, however, accept stories that try to claim ‘reverse sexism’.

Leaving Before You are Ready: AJ’s Story

HA Editorial Team3 Comments
Editorial note: Shade Ardent blogs at I am Phoenix. This story is reprinted with permission.

How easy is it to leave a cult? For me personally, the answer is “not very.”

I pay close attention to the stories of those who have left a religious cult. I admit I am a little envious of the females who made their escape from their family’s cult by marrying a man who whisked them away from it all. I wish I had that ticket available back then. It wasn’t available to me because I was terrified of men. I was especially afraid of Christian men because of the religious Christian monster my father was. And I was also scared of the so called secular, worldly men because linking up with them meant my life would be cursed with demons attacking me, and my family would cut me off. Also, there was that unspoken threat circulating in the underground Christin dating advice columns and pastor’s sermons where the non Christian man is guaranteed to cheat on you and leave you. If he doesn’t first rob a bank, then become a mass murderer. Because, gasp, that’s what people do who don’t fear God.

So I knew from  a young age that my escape was not going to be through a man. There would be no prince on a stallion. My sisters didn’t escape with the help of a man or marriage, either. They were about as gun shy of men as I was.

So how did we get out? Well, we couldn’t just leave. It seems so easy, right? Just walk out of the door.

But if we moved out of the house, God would allow Satan to attack us, destroying our physical health, mental health, finances, future career, and future relationships and marriage.

That would happen if we left the house without our father’s permission. The only way he would give us permission to leave was if we married a good Christian man he approved of. A man who our father would transfer us to, so we could be under that man’s authority. We wouldn’t be safe unless we were under a Christian man’s authority. Also, if we left unwed to an approved man, our father said he wouldn’t be able to pray a hedge of protection around us. He said his prayer alone wouldn’t be enough to keep Satan from destroying us while we were out in the world.

There was no safe way to leave. Going into a courtship with a man approved by my father was far too frightening a concept for us sisters to want to entertain. We saw how our Christian father abused our mother, and we weren’t going to be tricked into an exit from our father’s home just to relive it again with a patriarchal man that he chose. No, that was far too great a risk.

And we couldn’t just walk out the door and move into our own apartments. With all those threats and judgments from God? No, doing so would be equivalent to admitting you had a death wish. I would never have thought to leave on my own. Unless I really hated myself and wanted my life as I knew it to end.

It was easier for my brothers to leave.

They were Patriarchs in the making, and were far better equipped than women to make it out alone in the world without risking God’s wrath. My older brother got out after he graduated from college, accepted a good job, and had the financial where with all to go. Incidentally, he timed his departure so that he got married right when he left my parents’ house, but he could have left with or without getting married if he wanted to. My brothers were privileged simply because of their gender. They didn’t have nearly as much oppression or nearly as many rules as my sisters did.

So, this is how my older sisters escaped. My father hadn’t made any matches for them, and they were waiting and getting old. My father did approve of a courtship for my oldest sister L with a Christian man who worked with my father. My sister L did not find him in any way attractive and declined him. That I know of, she didn’t get courtship offers after that. So when L was about 25, my second oldest sister Thalia (aged 24) staged an intervention and secretly got an apartment out of town, where she all but dragged my mild mannered, easy going oldest sister along to. They left quickly and secretly, before my father found out. L didn’t want to go initially, but with Thalia pushing and planning, they made a hasty departure. There was a big blow up when they left, much threatening and cursing of their futures.

All manner of ill will was wished on them, Bible verses were hurled, their characters questioned.

They were called harlots who were practicing the sin of rebellion, which was likened to witchcraft. At this point, my sisters were so naïve and innocent about matters of life, that calling them harlots was just silly. Their harlotry consisted of wearing gel in their hair instead of leaving it natural. That, and going to a university where… non Christian men sullied my sisters simply by walking past them on campus. As if. My younger sister and I were given threatening sermonettes on the dangers of following their wicked footsteps.

When I was about 24, my 21 year old sister Christy staged an intervention. She secretly put a security down on an apartment out of town and rented a U-Haul. The same day, she broke the plans to me and told me I had a few hours to decide if I wanted out or not. She told me I had to make up my mind quickly. Back then I didn’t even know we were living in a cult. I had no outside worldly experience to compare my life to. My 18 year old brother was going along with us. At the last minute I said, “OK.” But I was dragging my feet. I was scared and not ready to go.

I had just graduated college, and had my bachelors degree in elementary education and my teaching certificate. I was too scared to go on interviews, so I lived on a substitute teacher’s salary. This wasn’t enough to pay the rent, even splitting it three ways. My younger sister had just graduated as well and had her bachelors degree and was hired as a nurse days before she even got her diploma. She was strong in her decision to go. I wasn’t as confident.

As an aside, it is quite a shocker that we had gone to college at all. But my sisters and I had discussed how we didn’t want to end up like our mother, uneducated except for a high school diploma, trapped and abused by our father. Since we didn’t trust any man to get us out or have our backs, our ticket was an education, career and independent single gal living.

If it wasn’t for my older sister Thalia paving the way and helping each of us work out the FAFSA and various scholarships and loans, we wouldn’t have had the know how or balls to go against my father and try to extend our education.

All of my siblings and I took part and sometime full time jobs and went to college around our work schedules. I certainly would never had gone to college without Thalia’s example and encouragement. My parents would not help financially based on moral grounds, and kept trying to discourage us from going. According to my father, college was evil and worldly, and all of us had better be prepared to reap the consequences of going through demonic attack as punishment from God for disobeying and going. My siblings laughed this off, but I was terrified. I woke up every day and fell asleep each night worrying when my judgment would hit.

So I entered the real world with reluctance and fear. I had a secret boyfriend at the time, and was able to see him much more often, which was nice.

But I’ll be honest with you. If my younger sister hadn’t staged that intervention, I wouldn’t have left. If I hadn’t gone with my younger sister and brother, I would have been the only one left at home other than my parents and trust me, I was incredibly uncomfortable with that. So I went with my siblings, even though everything inside me was screaming that I wasn’t ready. Home was bad, yes, but it was all I knew. And even more importantly, I knew what would happen if I left as a single female, unmarried to a man who could protect me from the evils of the world. I knew I would be slaughtered. According to cult rules, God would punish me by sending demons to destroy my physical health, career, finances, relationships, happiness and mental health.  

Again, my siblings laughed all of this off. I wish I could have had their thick skin and sensibilities. For some reason, I was terrified of the consequences and they weren’t. However, I think that had to do with the fact that I took spiritual matters far more seriously than my siblings did. And the main reason for that, although I didn’t recognize it at the time, was because I sensed how much my father hated and shunned me, and wanted to do everything possible to get his approval. Since religion was his life, I figured that my following his spiritual rules to the T would be an excellent way to gain his approval. Sadly, though, the more I tried, the more he pushed me away.

But I didn’t let myself see that. I just kept trying all the more to be spiritual. I got baptized, taught Sunday School, tithed, fasted for weeks on carrots, cornflakes and water, wore hideously modest prairie dresses and culottes, went to Bible College, went on a mission trip overseas, wanted to become a missionary, didn’t look sideways at men, read my Bible and prayed regularly. Meanwhile, my sisters left the house in modest attire and changed into tight jeans and tanks in their car, dated wild men, read romance novels, said “Shut up” and “Oh my God,” looked at magazines in the grocery store checkout, pierced their ears and wore clip-ons over top to hide the holes from my father, bought bathing suits and went to the beach (covert trips, of course). Most of my siblings were dancing on the edge of hell, and were just laughing all the way.

My siblings would occasionally talk about how horrible it was growing up.

They would whisper that we had grown up in a cult, and that our father was a sociopath.

They worried he would work himself up into some massive Biblical dither one day, shoot our mother, shoot himself, and then that would be the end of them. We used to check in our mom to make sure she was OK after most of us left. Our father kept loaded rifles on his bedroom wall, and often fell into unpredictable tirades of anger where he got violent. So my siblings worried. I was in a religious stupor myself back then, and told my siblings he was innocent, that he would never hurt our mom, and they were just being dramatic. Again, I didn’t have the foggiest idea of what we grew up in, as I had no experience in a world other than the family home and cult. Yes, I did go to college full time and worked, but I was too afraid of people to talk to them, so it’s like I was just a ghost passing through. I studied, took tests, drove, came, and left without communicating with other people, so it was like I actually wasn’t even doing these things or really in the world. I was technically, slightly “in the world” but without human interaction out there, it pretty much doesn’t qualify as being out.

Even after the intervention, when we moved out, I was in the world but very hesitant to break out of the mold and drop my normal customs and habits. It took quite a long time.

Fast forward a decade. I was living in extreme stress every day worrying about God’s judgment for every little thing I did. And trust me, after ten years, I had started being worldly. It’s like I had one foot back in the cult, since I believed 100% everything I was taught back then. And I had one foot in the world, living the life of a heathen while wracking up punishment and guilt left and right.

That’s the danger of leaving before you are ready. That was the danger in my leaving my family and the cult before I was ready. That was the downside to accepting the intervention my sister staged when I was scared to go. That was the danger of leaving the cult physically, without first leaving mentally and emotionally.

That was the danger of living in the word without shedding the cult mentality. I gave myself permission to try to live a “normal” life like normal people did, but I couldn’t get rid of all the nagging cult fears and threats of punishment for trying to be normal.

Maybe I would have been safer never leaving the cult in the first place. Maybe I would have been safer at home with my parents in the cult, safe from God’s judgment because I was carefully obeying all rules?

Maybe that would have been safer than living a double standard, free on the outside but still in bondage to the cult fears inside?

I can’t even begin to explore what would have happened if I had stayed in my parents’ house instead of leaving with my siblings during the intervention. I think it would have been an incredibly dark experience. I do know that once I started living on my own, I began to experience happiness. I did forget the horrors of the cult. I think I can honestly say that I was happy on my own. Especially when I was geographically far away from my family. I certainly didn’t have any flashbacks, anxiety or any physical manifestations of PTSD for at least a decade. I was pretty much oblivious and happy go lucky. I was always on the move though, never sat still or rested. Never stayed in any one location too long, or with anyone too long. I was antsy. I didn’t ever want to get trapped by any person or situation. I was always running, always busy. I didn’t stop to reflect or look inside. I just thrived on looking outside of myself, and shut my emotions and feelings up tightly. I was my five senses exploring the world, and nothing else.

I do recognize the danger of living in the duality I was immersed in for the decade of time I was out free in the world, living it up, but terrified on the inside.

Like I mentioned, I always felt fear and threats lurking over my shoulder, poised and ready to get me for the huge amount of sins I was piling up every day. I was just waiting for all hell to break loose. I was just waiting for my punishment to begin. Biting my nails hoping that maybe I could squeak by for another day, another month, maybe even another year before disaster hit me.

And then it hit. I was 33 and a half. The PTSD knocked me blindside, and everything fell apart. My health fell apart, even though I struggled for a year to keep myself together. I had to eventually give up my teaching career. Well, I put in for a year’s leave of absence, but my health wouldn’t allow me to go back after that year was up. I had to give up my apartment, my boyfriend left me, acquaintances disappeared, and I didn’t really have friends… the only thing I had left was my family. I had literally forgotten how strange and cruel they were. Time has a way of clouding those things over. So I crawled home, happy to have a family to go stay with.

I was naive. Too trusting. Too gullible. I give too much credit ahead of time. I actually thought I would go home to open arms. They were closed. But I didn’t find that out right away. It was a very slow process of me finding this out.

When I went home, I was so ashamed of my life of sin, that I…. wait for it, wait for it, oh, darn it. Yes, you guessed it. I weep to share this sad revelation.

I went back into the cult.

There. I said it. I double dipped.

Oh, horrors!

That’s what happen when you leave before you are ready. The chances of falling back into the fold are just that much higher.

And I felt so guilty. I fell into it headlong.

To the point that I was back in the Bible, back in the land of religious fear, eating up all the devotionals that said illness was punishment from God, that illness was a gift from God, that I was supposed to praise God for the beautiful gift of character edification that came in the form of illness. I ate it all up.

I even let waver my fiercely held promise that I would protect myself by never getting married to a man. I let myself believe for the first time that perhaps a Christian man would be safe after all. Because what had I ever really known about being safe, right? Here I thought I would the safest out on my own in the world far away from my family, far away from religion, and without a man. I really thought that was my safest bet. But here that plan didn’t pan out. Being alone out in the world unmarried, living a non-Christian life only ended up with me getting PTSD, ME/CFS and severe adrenal burnout.

So I had to re-evaluate my perception of what “safe” really looked like. I had been broken. I had to try a new route. God was a fierce punisher, and the single life alone in the world without Him and a man who served Him was a dangerous life after all. I had learned the hard way that it would be safest after all to do the Christian thing, the right thing, and get married to a good Christian man.

If I did this, perhaps God would ease up his punishment on me and perhaps He would even let me regain my health!

So I over-rode my fear of Christian men and married one. I introduced him to my family (oh horrors!) and I introduced him to Christianity and the cult. I thought I was doing the “right” thing. I was getting back on track. The backslidden AJ rallies and returns to her Christian roots, praise God Almighty, and all God’s people say, Amen.

Right. I married K. He actually wasn’t a Christian when I initially met him. It was I who led him to the Lord. Out of compulsion and duty, not out of a desire. I didn’t trust a Cristian any farther than I could throw one, but at the same time I feared what would happen to myself and him if we didn’t punch our tickets and do our bare minimum as Christians. I felt safer around K knowing that he was brand new to the faith and hadn’t been brainwashed by any sub cults or extremist thinking. He was a good man, and kind, when I met him. I imagined it could stay that way. I figured that as long as I was there to guide the ship and help shape the direction of his newly forming beliefs, he would remain the kind and jolly fellow he always was.

I was wrong.

As soon as K put on the coat of Christianity, he became a monster.

A living and breathing certified, Bible thumping, Christian monster. And that’s when my eyes opened and I didn’t want to go on living or breathing any more. The life vest of Christianity that I had reached for in my hour of need was now no longer a life vest, it was a pile of rocks that drug me to the bottom of the lake and wouldn’t let me up for air. I endured it for a couple years, until one day I woke up and realized that I want nothing more to do with being a Christian.

It’s been about two years now that I’ve left Christianity. I’m still digging myself out of the pit and separating from my family and a few situations and people still involved in the cult. I’m happier now, and K is happier.

On looking back, a part of me thinks that if I had stayed in the cult at my parents house instead of leaving during the intervention, I would have not only obeyed the cult rules, but I would have felt safer, I wouldn’t have feared severe punishment from God every waking minute of my life for years on end, and I wouldn’t have fallen apart with severe PTSD. I could possibly have avoided my health falling apart. Just think!

From this perspective, I wish I would have stayed at the homestead after graduating college and lived a safe life where I could just breath. It is too difficult balancing one world with another, with one foot in one world and one foot in the next. But at the same time, if I had stayed on the homestead in my parents under cult rules, I may have just shriveled up and died inside. Or I may have reached some kind of internal conflict that forced me to examine my beliefs and wake up. After which I would have solidly renounced the cult and made a clean break by leaving the belief system 100% and physically removing myself far from the cult and my family.

A solid, clean break is the ticket. The best way to leave involves breaking away emotionally and intellectually, as well as physically and geographically.

I still do admire those folks who were able to know firmly what they wanted the first time they left, the folks who didn’t have to come back for round two to relive the nightmare. I admire some of my siblings who weren’t so entrapped and who left more easily than I did. But every one’s journey is different.

I double dipped, but that’s OK. The first time only my body left. The second time, my body, heart and mind broke away. I had to experience the horror twice to know what I wanted and didn’t want. I know now. And I’m finally free.

No Longer Wanted: Natalie’s Story

HA Editorial Team20 Comments

My parents meant well. They wanted the best for me. They were excited to find the perfect formula to raise a perfect daughter.

And somewhere along the line they stopped wanting the best for me and started needing me to be what they decided was best.

And when I wasn’t that picture they no longer wanted me. That’s the best way I can describe it.

I think like many people raised in the world of homeschoolers, I’ve had the gut feeling that it’d be inappropriate to share my story. Our 11th commandment was to never speak ill of our family or lifestyle. There was always a push to hide what we were doing and never cast any negative light on the angelic conditions of homeschoolers and our perfect families. I’ve only told a few people what happened with our relationship.

 

When I was five we moved to acreage in the middle of nowhere. We listened to programs that told us music with a beat was scientifically proven to kill your brain cells. We didn’t have cable because all the shows would make us worldly. We stocked up for Y2K. We supported groups like HSLDA that told us the evil government would take away our children if we didn’t fight with them by paying membership fees. We obsessively absorbed the wisdom of the Pearl’s.

My experiences with the outside world were limited to church activities and the library, but even this was enough to make me question if my parents were really raising me correctly. My parents couldn’t keep up with all the books that I read. I’d borrow big piles and hide the ones that wouldn’t pass inspection in the middle.

My parents told me that people who didn’t homeschool their kids didn’t really love them. That people who dated didn’t value their future spouse and would get divorced.

Purity and gender roles were everything.

My mother obviously wouldn’t work outside the home, even when my dad lost his job multiple times and money was tight. Respect was the most important thing to my dad. We were all to submit to him without question, to the point that we couldn’t ask something that ended with a question mark. We had to direct conversation as respectful statements that he could choose to respond to if he wanted.

My mom couldn’t explain anything past simple math and my dad would get frustrated at me when I didn’t immediately understand it. I faked the majority of my math work past 2nd grade. Science was a similar story. My parents made it clear that I only needed it because the state required I learn it. It wasn’t vital for a woman’s education. What was vital was understanding that my goal in life was to be a wife and mother. I needed to sew, cook, clean, and learn to be the best wife and mother. All of my life was focused on that aim and that meant everything was focused on getting married.

I’m still sorting my education into the facts and what was just an elaborate attempt to shape my worldview. The “mistakes” that my parents made were probably the only way my brain developed in the shape that it did. They regret letting me have part time jobs, taking classes with other Christian homeschoolers, and not monitoring me close enough. My friends were all very intellectual. They pushed me to excel when my parents didn’t necessarily care. I started to question their mandates. I didn’t want to solely be a stay at home daughter. I wanted to figure out what I believed for myself. I wanted to understand my father’s beliefs. He wouldn’t explain them to me. He said my questions were disrespectful and I should just accept that he knew what was best. My role was to serve his family until I got married and then I would serve my husband’s family.

I wanted to go on a mission’s trip after I graduated. They grudgingly agreed, assuming I wouldn’t be able to raise the funds. I worked all summer and then my brother told them that it wasn’t appropriate to let me leave their guidance. They postponed my trip for 6 months. They canceled it again. Then my dad borrowed $2000 from my account without asking. When I sheepishly mentioned it he said he needed it to pay bills for our family and was offended I had brought it up. Months later I saw that he had paid it back. Eventually I convinced them that I should go on a mission’s trip for 3 months with our church. My reasoning was that I should serve others some before I got married.

College wasn’t ever a choice for me.

Going into debt was sinful. My parents couldn’t afford to send me even if they approved of the choice. I knew I wasn’t educated enough in math and science to get a scholarship.

My sister had the perfect long distance courtship. They only wrote letters for months. They didn’t hold hands till they were engaged. They didn’t kiss till they were married. My dad gave an hour long sermon at her wedding and he cried from happiness. She was everything they wanted in a daughter. Since it all worked out so well for them, my parents insisted that it was the perfect method. When I didn’t act like her I was a disappointment. They had been (untrained) marriage counselors for years. They’d insist on telling me all the intimate details of people’s marriages. Sometimes they were my friend’s parents. When I didn’t want to hear it I was disrespectful. When I didn’t want to read another book about submission I was rebellious. When I didn’t want to watch another marriage DVD series I was selfish and disobedient. All the scenarios ended with the wife realizing that if she just respected her husband more he would love her and things would be fine.

When I got tired of my life only being focused on marriage, I asked them if I could focus more on pursuing God.

They told me the only way I could pursue God was to pursue marriage.

Single people were selfish. Pursuing independence was sinful. Living outside the protection of my spiritual authority was unthinkable. My dad told me whatever I was doing, I should think of what he would want me to do and then do that. If I didn’t I was sinning against him and God.

When I got back from my missions trip I wanted to move out and for some reason they complied. A couple months later it was a different story. I had a full time job, and I wanted to buy a car. It was a battle. I wanted to pay for my own car insurance, and they finally lost it. They gave me an ultimatum: quit my job, move back home, stop pursuing my selfish independent lifestyle and I could remain their daughter. They couldn’t bear to see me living in sin any longer.

My father told me that God would always forgive him if he strayed, but he was a human so he couldn’t promise that he would always forgive me and take me back.

I couldn’t agree to their terms. They told me the choices I was making would make me a horrible wife and would ruin my marriage and children. My dad wouldn’t bless my marriage. My mom started crying and told me that she shouldn’t have had such high expectations for me. Maybe if she had lower expectations for me this wouldn’t be so hard. I was 18 and on my own. A couple months later I tried to reconcile with them, and my dad clarified that we didn’t have a relationship unless I could come back to the biblical model. I couldn’t.

Six months later my dad shared that he still felt the same however cutting off relationship meant he was giving us responsibility for me and he couldn’t do that as he was still responsible for all my sinful choices. He said he was sorry if I was hurt by the things he said, but they were true. He said we needed to have a relationship again so he could show me how to be better.

It’s been a couple years since then. Things are still rocky between us. It took me over a year to come out of the depression that our broken relationship caused. I was suicidal and cried continuously.

They were my entire world.

The hardest part is that I was close to my family. I didn’t think they were capable of disowning me. They were all I had ever known, and I was relatively happy with my brainwashed life. I didn’t know how to function without them. I had to learn to support myself on my own. I had to figure out who I was without my family. I had to deal with my parents turning my whole family against me.

Since then I’ve found out that members of my family helped and supported an elder that molested his adopted daughter for years. They protected him because he was the head of his household and knew best. Now when stories surface of incest and abuse I don’t question them.

Of course this happens, we were all taught to blindly obey.

I still have to fight the guilt when they say I ruined our relationship. I still hear that I should just be like my older sister and things would be better. I still hear that I’m not what they want. I still deal with them poisoning my relationships. Counseling and time helps. But it’s still complicated and it still hurts.

Someone’s Shot of Whiskey

HA Editorial Team8 Comments

CC image courtesy of Flickr, Intangible Arts.

Editorial note: The following is reprinted with permission from Kit’s blog, Dauntless in Denver. It was originally published on January 26, 2016.

It’s funny, isn’t it, when we hear something we’ve never heard before, and yet immediately, it strikes a chord, and we go, “Yes! That’s IT!” I just had one such experience. I was out shopping today with my friend, Rowena, and we stopped in at Maurice’s, as we always must, when we’re shopping near one. I saw a shirt that said, “I’d rather be someone’s shot of whiskey than everyone’s cup of tea.” As soon as I saw it, I knew I needed it. That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking the last couple years, as I work on becoming more myself. Of not being afraid anymore. Of dying my hair, and piercing my ears, and wearing my black lipstick, etc., etc.

I remember many, many times when I looked in the mirror, and had no idea who it was staring back at me.

I knew who it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be me. But it wasn’t. I never really matched the part that I played for so long. And after a while, I completely lost who I actually was. As a kid, I was a rather fearless, adventurous tomboy. I often thought about joining the Navy, like my dad had. I was inquisitive, liked to figure out ideas by way of arguing (I deconstruct an idea, and then build it back up- much like an engineer takes apart a clock to understand how it ticks), and I was usually allowed. But after my family joined ATI, that all stopped. I was expected to be the meek and quiet, obedient lady. I was expected to have long hair, dress “modestly” (read…”baggy” and “frumpy”), wear no makeup, accept everything I was told as truth, stay at home until I married, have a dozen children and homeschool them all. That never appealed to me. And yet, it was supposed to. So I told myself it did.

ATI (the fundamentalist cult my family was in for 9 years) basically taught us that we were supposed to be everyone’s cup of tea. That with a bright smile, navy and white clothes, and the right attitude, we could win over anyone. Bill Gothard (the cult’s founder and leader) loved to tell all of us “apprenticeship students” stories of ATI students boarding planes in their navy and white with a good smile, and being randomly upgraded to first class. About ATI students who worked so hard for an employer, they were given a high paying job that normally required a college degree, without having a college degree. He loved to talk about the very rare exceptions to the rule, and tell us that, with the right attitude and dress and actions, everyone would love us, respect us, and the world would be open to us as we made money and gained the ear of heads of state.It took me years to realize what a complete joke that was. So I tried, so hard, to be everyone’s cup of tea. To gain everyone’s respect and admiration. I failed miserably, of course. I was labeled a rebel and a temptress at my fundamentalist church. Apparently, mothers actually warned their sons about me. Funny thing was, I really wasn’t that interested in guys in general until I was in my twenties. But no matter how hard I tried, I never really fit into their little mold of who I should be. As much as I often functioned as an ISTJ, I was still an INTJ. As much as I tried to function as a neurotypical, I was still Autistic (though I didn’t get my diagnosis until the age of 32). As much as I tried to content myself with not going to college and with the idea of being a stay-at-home homeschool mom to goodness knows how many kids, it never worked. It just wasn’t who I was.

But who I was, was bad.

And to be concealed and denied and buried and crucified as much as possible.

And so I forgot. For a very long time, I completely lost sight of who I was. After I got out of ATI, bits and pieces came back. My INTJ was eventually coaxed out of hiding. I started to wear makeup and clothes that, while still extremely modest by most standards, would be considered scandalous by ATI standards. I listened to secular music (GASP). I lived alone. I got a college degree, and then a graduate degree. I even started teaching college. When I finally read the Divergent trilogy and was reminded of who I was, I immediately started changing how I dressed and did my makeup. I got contacts, later, I got a much edgier haircut and even dyed it black and purple. I got more ear piercings, and planned a nose piercing and tattoos (which have yet to be gotten). As I looked in the mirror, more and more, I saw myself looking back at me. I was coming out of hiding. Sure, some people may look at my hair and makeup and piercings and clothes (which seriously, are still super modest by most standards), and make judgments about my character, based on that. Some may decide they don’t like me. And some may look at my departure from Christianity and decide I simply wanted to live my own life my way, and not by God’s rules. That I wanted to live my life governed by the “pleasures of this world.” They can judge all they like. It’s not true, not by a long shot. There’s way more to it than that.

But it’s okay if some people judge. It’s okay if people decide they don’t like me anymore. Or decide that I make them sad, or anything else. At the end of the day, I really would rather be someone’s shot of whiskey than everyone’s cup of tea. Because at least if I’m someone’s shot of whiskey, I’m being myself.

I’m not watering myself down and forcing myself into a mold, and wearing a mask.

I’m not playing a part. I’m being, well, me. Does it hurt to be rejected? Yeah, sometimes. But in the long run, I’ll be far more satisfied with my life, and far more at peace, if I’m open and honest. If I quit playing a part. At the end of the day, I can respect who I am. And I have the support of my parents, who know pretty much everything there is to know. While they may not agree with me on everything, they do absolutely respect me, support me, and they’re okay with where I am in life. I have many others, too.

People who have known me for a long time have witnessed this transformation. Some have been surprised, some haven’t. Most recognize I’m much more at peace with myself than I ever was before. And I am. I’m done being everyone’s cup of tea. I’m going to be myself. Sure, it takes courage, but hey. That’s what life is all about. Being brave, and not letting fear rule your life. Could I really call myself “Dauntless” if I was letting my fear of others rule my life? Nope. So I’m going to be brave and be myself. Otherwise, life is just a really sad exercise in jumping through hoops, toeing the line, and making sure all the “I’s” are dotted and all the “T’s” crossed. And that’s just a shame.

The “Real Men” of Evangelical Christianity

HA Editorial Team4 Comments

CC image courtesy of Flickr, Jeremy Brooks.

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog, Love, Joy, Feminism. It was originally published on November 18, 2015.

I’ve run across a number of memes about what “real men” do. The most frequent seems to be that real men “protect” women rather than abusing them. This meme has bugged me because I’d rather have a man’s respect than his protection. On a whim, I went to google, typed in “real men,” and started scrolling through images. I found quite a number of these “real men” memes that were Christian-themed (most were probably created by evangelicals), and found myself cringing on a variety of levels.

If you’re like me, your social media feeds are probably filled with discussions of ISIS and refugees and epic battles between conservative friends and progressive friends. So today, let me offer you a break, such as it is. Let’s look at some of the “real men” memes I found, and I’ll take this opportunity to discuss some of the problematic aspects in evangelicals’ approach to male-female relationships. Let’s get started!

And why do men need to lead women anywhere, pray tell? I think this is the biggest problem I have with Christian “real man” memes—they all focus on male leadership. They don’t treat women as people. Instead, women become objects to be protected, or cared for, or led here or there. What about “real men listen to women”? What about “real men respect women’s ability to make up their own minds”? I could have stopped at “real men respect women,” but in Christian meme world that actually means “real men don’t have sex with women before they marry them,” not “real men listen to women and accept their decisions about their bodies and lives.”

The problem with this meme is related to the problem with all of the memes about fathers and daughters. Men are supposed to be overly protective of their daughters, and controlling of their daughters, and possessive of their daughters—or so the memes suggest. It’s as though their daughters are objects to be locked up or put on a shelf for looking at only. When was the last time you saw a meme where a father said he wanted his daughter’s suiters to treat her with respect and let her make her own decisions and choices? That’s right, never.

And so here this meme is, suggesting that a “real man” should treat his wife or girlfriend the way he would would want another man to treat his daughter. Given the way we talk about fathers and daughters in our society, this is extremely infantilizing. Respect for women as people disappears, swallowed up by a respect for women that is defined by their relationship to men.

I appreciate the assertion that woman was created from man’s side “to be equal,” but nothing in the rest of the meme reflects this focus on equality. Instead there’s a focus on women’s tears, because we all know women are delicate flowers who cry at the drop of a hat. And then there is a focus on women being created under man’s arm, “to be protected.” Well guess what? A protector/protected relationship is not equality. Why not “a real man gives women the tools they need to protect themselves”? After all, if a woman must rely on a man for protection, who will protect her from that man?

Let’s talk about the stereotype of women crying easily for a moment. One thing I’ve noticed is that sometimes women cry when they want to be heard but aren’t being listened to. Sometimes women cry to get the attention of a man in their life because saying “this matters to me, please listen and take me seriously” isn’t enough. As a general rule, men don’t tend to take women as seriously as they do other men. But when tears come—then they listen. Then they realize shit, this is serious, she really means this!

I’m not saying that all women do this (they don’t) or that this is what is happening every time a woman cries (it isn’t). What I’m saying is that I’ve noticed a pattern where men refuse to pay attention to what a woman is saying until she cries, and then all of a sudden they realize it’s important. But no, this meme can’t be imposed upon to include any realization of this pattern. It’s all “be careful when you make a woman cry because God counts her tears” rather than “a real man listens to a woman and doesn’t drive her to tears by refusing to take her concerns seriously.”

Again with the protectors rhetoric—and again I say, why not equip women to protect themselves? If a woman must always have a protector, she is vulnerable to abuse by that protector. If a woman is equipped to protect herself, she will not have to depend on a fallible male to protect her. Seeing women as beings that need protection gets in the way of seeing women as equals. Instead we are weaker vessels that need male protection—and, presumably, male leadership, because we apparently aren’t capable of looking after ourselves.

Note too the use of the phrase “our women.” In this context, it denotes ownership.

Christian memes about “real men” often repeat traditional societal assumptions about male/female relationships, such as the assumption that a man will pay for a woman’s dinner on a date. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t recall seeing that in the Bible, so it’s worth noting that they’re pulling things from cultural norms that date back to the Victorian Era and treating them as a sort of gospel truth. Either way, the wording in this meme—”pay for you,” rather than the less confusing “pay for your food” or “provide for you”—is creepy.

While praying for a woman doesn’t have the same problematic aspects as the “protector” rhetoric, I’m curious about what rhetoric is to be engaged in these prayers. There’s a difference between “please help Wendy today as she undergoes her performance review at work” and “please help Wendy see that, as a woman, she needs to submit to my leadership” or “please make Wendy realize that she shouldn’t have stood up to me today.” There’s an assumption in these memes that prayer is always good, and a lack of understanding that there are certain sorts of prayer that can make a situation worse.

Here again we see the repetition of traditional patriarchal gender norms—men are supposed to open doors and pay for their dates’ food. Note also the last line, where men are presented as guides. Why does a woman need a guide, exactly? It is true that relationship partners influence each other—as do individuals in other relationships—but I’m uncomfortable with the one-way nature of the phrase as used here and the centering of the idea of guiding, which suspects that one party must lead and the other will naturally follow. Women aren’t treated as independent entities who chose their own direction in these memes.

I could go on, but the memes have started to become repetitive. The same focus on protection and opening doors marches from meme to meme. In each meme, a focus on respect—true respect, not simple sexual abstinence—is glaringly absent. And this isn’t only an evangelical thing—secular memes about “real men” also tend to focus on protection and lack any mention of respect. And that, quite frankly, is tragically sad.

But let’s not leave off on a downer! Let me leave you with this:

Note: This is all without even getting into what “real men” means. What’s the alternative, “fake men”? Speaking of “real men” also ties into ideas of masculinity. Why not focus on how “people” should treat each other—i.e. with compassion, respect, understanding—rater than what “real men” should or should not do? 

A Creeping Sense of Distance: Nastia’s Story

HA Editorial Team9 Comments

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Nastia” is a pseudonym.

I knew from a very young age what I wanted to do with my life. “I want to be on obstetrician,” I would tell anyone who would listen. At three years old, it was baffling to me that at least half the adults I met had no idea what that was. “It’s a doctor who delivers babies!” I would tell them, “Like Daddy!” The profession runs in my family. My grandfather and great-grandfather were both OB/GYNs, and my great-grandmother was a midwife. And yet, I have never felt pressured by others to take up the “family business.” It is purely my decision to pursue this path.

I had a rather unusual upbringing in this way. I come from a conservative evangelical family, but my parents are well-educated and open-minded, and they wanted nothing more than for me to be happy and successful.

While for many, “homeschooling” has an emphasis on the “home,” my parents put the emphasis on “school.”

That I was going to college was not up for debate; every step we took was made with the goal of stretching my mind, teaching me how to reason, preparing me for a lifetime of learning and a professional career. At the same time, they pushed me to pursue my own passions and dreams. I had a say in my own curriculum and was allowed to explore any subject I found interesting. While this may sound like an undisciplined teaching style, it kept me at least two grades ahead of my age in every subject and taught me to be self-motivated and proactive about my education.

That mindset was the best thing that I could have learned in preparation for higher education. At age sixteen, I entered community college through an early-entrance program in my state. This program allows students to complete their junior and senior years of high school through the college for free. My parents were hugely relieved that I would be able to earn my high school diploma and get real transcripts before applying to university.

I loved college. My transition was the easiest it could possibly have been. I excelled in my classes and quickly accumulated a diverse and quirky group of friends. Sure, college was a lot of work. I was taking twenty-one credits every quarter in order to finish all the pre-med requirements and earn an Associate’s Degree in Chemistry. There were ups and downs, sleepless nights, and failed experiments. But I had expected that, and my time management skills, self-discipline, and eagerness to learn benefited me enormously. Through diligence, the entire endeavor was highly successful. My confidence and enthusiasm soared.

But I soon found that going to school wasn’t the hardest part.

That came when I had to deal with the backlash of my (and my parents’) academic choices from a variety of different people.

The first came from my aunt, with whom I’ve never gotten along. A vehement socialist (and incidentally, a community college English teacher), she is viciously anti-homeschool, and it was clear from the beginning that she wanted me to fail in college to prove a point to my parents. When it was obvious that I was succeeding, she tried to tear me down emotionally, telling me that I was going to get sick because I was working too hard, that I had a mental disorder causing me to be a workaholic, and that success in school wasn’t worth my time because there was no way I could be successful in the real world.

That hurt, but as my relationship with her had always been a bit antagonistic, I turned it into a motivating factor. My goal became proving her wrong.

The pushback I received from homeschooled families in my church was much less motivating and much more painful. This didn’t really start until I applied and was accepted into a highly-ranked university, directly into the competitive Bio-engineering program.

In the view of many mothers especially, that was the point where I sold out, where I gave up my soul.

Going to community college, where I was living at home and going to school in a smaller, more job-like environment was acceptable. Entering university, where I would be in a co-ed dormitory with non-Christian students and exposing my mind to science and philosophy, was the equivalent of surrendering the battle for my soul. And it was difficult and depressing to deal with that because I was and still am very much a Christian.

The strange thing about it was that the criticism was never overt – it was a vague sum of micro-agressions, a creeping feeling of distance and disapproval that built up over time and poisoned my (albeit not-close) friendships with many homeschoolers in my church. I have a hard time pointing to clear examples, because the gradual alienation was caused by attitudes more than words or actions. I’m not even sure why I felt so hurt by it; I had never felt like I was a part of the “Christian Homeschool Culture.” My closest friends were actually homeschooled kids I met through music, not through my church. I never went to co-ops or conventions, never used A Beka or Bob Jones; I was always an outsider looking in on a culture that was as foreign to me as was the culture of public school. All the same, I had never felt so isolated as I did when I went to university.

I guess I had expected those I had always considered “my people” to be more accepting of me, even proud of me. That was the myth I had told myself growing up – that the homeschooling families in my church were “my people,” even though I was always outside their cliques, and that the reason I was always ahead of them academically was because I was simply smarter or my parents were better teachers. I was naïve; I thought we had similar lifestyles and values. And now here I was, succeeding in the world, spreading my light in the darkness. Isn’t that what those same families had taught me in Sunday School? That I didn’t even have to necessarily talk about Christ all the time – I just had to let my actions speak for themselves? I thought my honest and hard-won success, my healthy friendships, and my clean lifestyle made me a godly example. Instead, I was dismissed. People didn’t talk to me, or would abruptly end conversations when they heard what university I was at or what I was studying.

Previously-friendly parents would look at me critically and tell me things like, “Well, that’s not what God has in store for my daughter.”

That I was in STEM made it even worse, it seemed.

My parents were not immune to this stigma, and I think one of the most telling instances was when my mother was asked to speak at a monthly “Homeschool Moms’ Night,” when the subject of discussion was “Homeschooling Through High School and What Comes Next.” It was run by a sweet lady who has a very different homeschooling approach than my family does. Still, she wanted to showcase the range of options available to parents of younger kids.

Each of five women gave a speech, and then other moms were told to strike up a conversation with whoever seemed to match their own philosophy. Out of forty people, my mom had one person who wanted to talk to her, a woman from Hong Kong who didn’t like the state of American schools and was relieved that homeschooling could provide a more rigorous and comprehensive path. The other moms completely ignored her. I remember the rejection in her voice as she recounted the story to me. These were people she considered friends, but they completely dismissed her when she spoke passionately about helping her children make the most of their talents and aspirations.

After this, a small piece of a baffling puzzle fell into place for me.

Maybe my mother’s goal was not shared by others the way I had always assumed. Maybe the reason that nearly all the homeschooled girls my age were not going to college was something more than the fact that they just weren’t “ready” or weren’t “book-smart people.” Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that the few who were pursuing higher education were going to community colleges or the tiny local Christian university aligned with our denomination; nobody was going to a secular university or anywhere out of state. It wasn’t an isolated instance that a girl decided to take up babysitting instead of going to college – it was widespread. It became normal to see friends drop out of college before taking a single class, or decide to live at home rather than stay in the dormitory; “she’s scared,” was always the chuckled explanation. It was commonplace to hear about another girl whose main goal of going to a barely-accredited Christian school was to find a husband and become a homeschooling mother.

This is an institutional problem, I realized.

It is still not clear to me whether parents are actively discouraging college for their daughters in particular, or whether the daughters are internalizing the idea that education would corrupt their hearts and minds and distract them from their duty of being wives and mothers. It had never occurred to me that this type of pressuring was occurring, as this is not the mindset of the majority of (non-homeschooling) people in my church. It is certainly not the doctrine that my well-educated and highly-rational pastor holds to. Yet, as I learn more about fundamentalism and about the situations of particular families, I am starting to put the pieces together. Talking with my mom now, there’s a reason that I was never put into co-ops and never used typical homeschooling resources. She realized what this sect was about long ago and tried to shield me from it.

For this reason – strangely – going to university broadened my perspective in yet another way; by putting me firmly on the outside, it gave me a clearer picture of the culture that surrounded me growing up, and an appreciation for how masterfully my parents handled my education. I will be eternally grateful for the unique opportunity they created for me and the generous support they constantly offered (and still offer) in continuing my education.

As for improving the cultural environment for college-bound homeschoolers, I’m not entirely sure what needs to be done, nor what one individual can possibly do. I realize that not everyone is cut out for higher education, and respect the right of families to pursue their own homeschooling path. However, the fact that I am an anomaly in my engineering school (because I was homeschooled) and an anomaly in my homeschool cohort (because I am an engineer) is very telling about the dichotomy that has grown between the academic and Christian communities.

It’s not a healthy divide, as the mistrust between the two groups makes understanding and progress extraordinarily difficult.

I’ve also grown to see that despite the opinions of many in the Christian homeschooling community, gender equality has not been achieved.

“Equal but different” is not good enough; there is still much work that needs to be done in providing the same education and career opportunities to women as are provided to men.

This by nature cannot be a policy issue, but a cultural reform. Parents must be honest with themselves when examining their daughters’ goals, and provide the necessary mental and emotional support for whatever path they are drawn to. It’s not logical to assume that a woman’s only contribution should be in the home, nor is it Biblical.

I’m not sure yet what it will take to bridge that chasm between Christians and academia, or the division between girls’ aspirations and their parents’ ideals. I’m not sure yet what it will take to change homeschoolers’ minds about science, higher education, and a woman’s place in both.

However, as a problem-solver by nature, rest assured that I will be trying, and I hope that some of you may join me.

Homeschooled in New Zealand: TheLemur’s Story, Part Two

HA Editorial Team4 Comments

CC image courtesy of Flickr, Chris Preen.

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “TheLemur” is a pseudonym.

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In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

*****

While still quite young, my maternal grandparents health went into decline, and fate decreed mum was the one who had to consistently deal with that, year after year. She cumulatively became vastly more stressed, and thus, I believe, subject to a more emotional application of the already strict ‘rules’ in place. Let me deal with how her preoccupation, super imposed on the extant regime impacted on me – first in what she failed to realize and do (socialization), and secondly in what she did do (authoritarian parenting).

Mum brought wholeheartedly into the homeschool talking point the family alone was the ideal unit of socialization.

Not a base vehicle, mind you, for a broader socialization with the world, but a self-sufficient social ecosystem.

Although Mum was forty when she had me, her first child, she had two mischarges out of three more pregnancies. Such attempts are related to the supposedly ‘Biblical’ role of a woman to have large families and to be ‘keepers at home like it says in Titus 2!’ (a rather wanting interpretation of the context). She was a gender essentialist zealot, appropriating all the ‘Godly’ hang-ups. Women should only wear skirts. Modesty is essential. Dating is wrong. Oral sex is wrong (even in marriage). Women should not be educated like men, and mum wondered out loud sometimes if they should be allowed to vote (curiously in the country that first universalized the franchise). With beliefs like that, it’s no surprise she swallowed the relatively more modest claims of family-centric socialization. I remember overhearing dad say to her at one point, ‘don’t you think the boys should be with people their own age group more?’ Mum definitively responded, ‘NO, because once that happens…[insert all the ‘evils’ of peer pressure]. So it was just my brother and I, 95% of the time. He was four years my junior, which proved the ideal gap for squabbles. We were old enough to be interested in the same things but sufficiently temporally removed to grate on each other’s differing abilities. I often behaved like a bit of a beast toward him, exploiting my greater development to torment him. But when you’re constantly around someone to the exclusion of all others similar to your own age, you view the person like a chronic annoyance. Stripped of positive associations, they become easy to treat poorly. But I was still castigated for not ‘being my brother’s keeper.’ (Fortunately, the older we both got, the better we related to each other).

Although it would be a distortion of the truth to say I saw no friends ever, for the vast majority of the time, I dealt with a rising sense of isolation.

Because I could adequately converse with adults, mum deemed I was on track socially.

The problem, of course, with this little gem of homeschool counter think, is much of our social development comes through interaction with our equals in authority and ability. A child-adult interaction will always incorporate a measure of formalism. You don’t exactly grow as a person respectfully answering Mrs Smith’s generic inquiries about your education. Indeed, it wasn’t until university I made a friend with whom I could openly discuss personal matters.

I remember I became very upset when my parents wanted to drag me up to Auckland to see some show involving aging stars like Diana Rigg read extracts of English literature. My younger brother got to stay the day with a friend who lived down the road. At ten years old, I envied his dumb luck no end. Missing the rare chance of socializing for an ‘educational opportunity’ burnished the event onto my mind. It exemplifies the narrow definition of development some homeschoolers appropriate. The strange thing is you come to defend your peer abstraction; to say otherwise would mean you had succumbed to the great evil of ‘peer dependency’.

In my reality, my social interactions suffered. I feared school children. They were ‘the other’, a horde of confident, yelling, heathens. Mum used to take us for ‘nature walks’ in the local park, which boarded a number of classrooms of the local school. I cannot describe how uncomfortable I felt walking with my mother in my home made clothes under the scrutiny of what felt like a thousand eyes.

Paranoid about being dobbed into the ERO, mum would mutter ‘you are being watched’, which only served to make my feel like the Powers that Be could be making detailed notes on why I should be removed from the family.

That, of course, would be a disaster. She let us know the storm troopers of the state were always ready to snatch away children and herd them together with all the other juvenile fuck-ups.

My parents confessional progression since the American Baptist fiasco had domiciled then within a doctrinal persuasion that stressed grace, rather than law. Unfortunately, the doctrinal fealty to grace did not translate into mum’s everyday attitude. What’s more, the adherents of the sect were few in number. The reprieve of Sunday socialization would not be available to me. A lot of ‘services’ I attended were informal Bible studies that ran for an interminable three hours. There was no youth group, and my parents didn’t believe in them either. We split off from the group after a while and started our own group in a church building near us. When I say ‘group’, I mean my family, and at most, two other families. Mum’s first concern was to inform me I would be sitting still and listening with the family, and I would NOT be allowed to sit with my friend from the other family.

Most weeks, my social life was limited to twenty to thirty minutes after church.

My friend from that time is one of only two homeschoolers I still know today. Every now and then, the other family would take themselves off to a larger homeschooling church for greater social contact. They would have to drive past where our group met in order to do so. I would get to watch my slim social life literally drive away.

I also began to notice how mum sabotaged her relationships within the homeschool network. She acted in a catty way toward the mother of my friend because her parenting style did not exactly conform to mum’s view of the ‘good.’ See, mum would become massively enthused with a particular family or group for a while. They would be held up as the Ideal, Godly Standard. Then she would get bored of deifying them, or they did something to upset her (an easy task); and she would cut ties. The constant grandparents saga also ensured her preoccupation and stress, two traits not conducive to social attractiveness. A homeschooled child is entirely dependent on the network parents foster for social connections. But thanks to the anti-peer ideology, she had no qualms about wrecking her own relationships, and thus breaking off mine.

Created to be His Doormat: Wende Benner’s Story

HA Editorial Team13 Comments

CC image courtesy of Flickr, Ryan Hyde.

By Wende Benner, HA Editorial Team

My lightbulb moment began at the age of sixteen. My family was a part of Bill Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute (ATI) homeschool program. This was the year my father received the call inviting me to live and work at a training center and to also be a part of a brand new training program especially for girls, EXCEL (Excellence in Character, Education, and Leadership). Every ATI teenager knew that receiving a personal invitation to work and participate in an Institute event meant that someone important had seen the light in your eyes and recognized your devotion to God. I was thrilled to be thought worthy to help prepare the newly acquired Ambassador Hotel in Dallas, TX for the first class of EXCEL girls and to also be able to participate in this groundbreaking program.

Once I arrived at the beautiful, historic Ambassador Hotel I worked long, hard hours with little sleep preparing for hundreds of girls to arrive. We were to spend eight weeks learning how to be godly women. Since this was a brand new program, I was unsure of what subjects we would be covering until I received my giant, white binder. Some of the things we were going to learn were the womanly arts of sewing, dressing, hospitality, courtship, and submission. But the most exciting thing to me was the discovery that Elisabeth Elliot would be coming to speak with us. Mrs. Elliot was a bit of a hero of mine. She was a woman who God used through writing and speaking to reach others. And she would be talking to us about how to write, something I dreamed of doing one day. Her sessions with us were scheduled for the second week of EXCEL, and I couldn’t wait.

Our sessions began with learning about God’s design for us as women. God created us to be wives and mothers that raised the next generation for God. Then we moved to all the ways that we could mess up God’s plan for us.

There were so many sins women were prone to falling into it seemed, and just one of them could not only destroy our lives but the lives of our husband and children.

Things such as having expectations from life or loved ones only led us to be contentious and ungrateful. This of course could destroy a family or lead to something even worse- bitterness. Bitterness would give Satan a piece of our soul and was even known to be the cause of certain illnesses (like arthritis) and depression. We finished the week of sessions by concentrating on how wrong priorities could destroy our lives. But first we needed to understand God’s priorities for women were a relationship with him first, then to put the needs of our husband’s second, and the needs of our children came next.

These sessions made it clear to us God’s only purpose for women was marriage and children (as many children as possible).

If we had any other desires or dreams we were sinning.

Of course these weren’t exactly new ideas for someone who had been in ATI for a while, but hearing these things everyday with verses to back them up started to take a toll. From the time we got up at 5:30 in the morning till we went to bed at 9:30 we only studied verses instructing women on how to be godly wives and mothers. That with the added knowledge that my parents had never once disagreed with anything said through Gothard or ATI began to make me feel as if my future was already decided for me, and it was a future that had never really been a part of my dreams or even what I felt had been God’s calling for my life. It was a future where my desires and thoughts were never to be considered, a future where subservience not partnership was required.

I felt trapped.

And then I felt shame and guilt. I felt I was so selfish to have other dreams and to not want what God’s design and purpose for me.

The point of this first week of sessions was to help us understand the purpose of EXCEL and what we were there to learn. Now, we were going to begin “practical” training to help us meet these goals. And we were all excited that Elisabeth Elliot would be the one to start this part of our training. Learning about writing and ministry from one of the most respected Christian women of our time was something I knew would be useful. It was something that could even help me reach the goals and dreams I felt God had given me.

Mrs. Elliot first informed us that she only taught under the authority of the Institute leaders and of her husband, Lars. In fact, Lars stood to the side or in the back of the room every session to show her submission to authority. Then she spoke about loneliness and suffering. She told us that just as Jesus had suffered and died, we were called to suffering and to die “little deaths” by sacrificing ourselves for others. This was especially true in marriage she told us; we are “married but alone”. “It is the mercy of God that gives us the chance to die”, and for women this chance comes through marriage.

The picture of marriage Mrs. Elliot painted was one of loneliness and loss-a place where women were created “gloriously unequal” to men.

In fact, she informed us that equality was a political construct, but women were created to be “lesser than” men in order to symbolize the mystery of Christ and the church. The only way to be “truly womanly” was to “surrender” to Christ and our husbands. With that final pronouncement Mrs. Elliot handed out a page of helpful hints on writing and asked if we had any questions about her talks.

A few girls asked questions about specific situations in their homes. How does submission look when parents are quite possibly being abusive or even asking one to do something wrong? With each question Mrs. Elliot seemed to become more and more impatient. She reiterated the fact that God called us to submit and surrender. There were no exceptions. I became increasingly uneasy. Then, a very brave girl raised her hand and asked a question that is burned into my memory. In an almost challenging tone she said, “Mrs. Elliot, are you saying that God made women to be doormats?”
There was silence for a few moments. You could tell everyone was waiting to hear how she would respond to the confrontation.

Mrs. Elliot then replied, “Well, I have always said since God made me to be a doormat, I will be the best doormat I can be.”

I didn’t hear anything else that happened that night. I was too stunned. Never had I heard my role in life put that plainly. This world I was growing up in believed women were created to be doormats. Something within me rose up in protest.

I was not created to be a doormat, to be walked over, ignored, abused, and used.

My life was meant for much more than this. I knew in that moment their whole paradigm of how the world interacted and related was fundamentally flawed. Everything from now on must be questioned for truth.

It has been a long journey of unraveling the lies and truth since that moment. In many ways I have needed to tear everything down and rebuild my beliefs and views of life over again. But, every moment of hard work has been worth the freedom of knowing it is acceptable for me to be my own person, to have my own thoughts and desires, and to know I do not have to sacrifice my whole self in order to love my family.

*****

“A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.” ~John Steinbeck, East of Eden

We’ve called these stories, “light-bulb moments”. They are stories of awakening….spiritual, emotional, and deeply personal. We were, every one of us, to some extent or another, asleep, in the dark, and complacent. Then, something happened to wake us up, turn on the light, stir our souls. Some incongruency that didn’t fit our boxes. We discovered a world far bigger and better than we’d imagined. People that were multi-dimensional and complex. Thoughts and feelings within us we didn’t know were there before or maybe we did and they scared us. We got angry, we grieved, we ranted to each other about how we were lied to, how we were sometimes complicit in our own darkness, choosing what was safe over what was true. Some of us walked a harder road than others, but we all walked them. We all, in one way or another, realized the world was open to us, in full color, and that, contrary to what we had been told, it was very good. And there are now no limits to anything. These are our stories. Glimpses into our awakenings. I’m sure we’ll have many more before we walk our last path.- Darcy Anne, HA Editorial Team

My Life as an Unmarried Woman Among Fundamentalists: Katia’s Story

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

CC image courtesy of Flickr, Ryan Hyde.

Scripture talks about the great sower sowing the seed of the word of God.

When I look at my journey away from fundamentalism, I see that same sower preparing the soil of my heart in preparation for that “lightbulb” event that set me free from fundamentalism.

The great sower began preparing the soil of my heart before I was born.

On Mom’s side, I am descended from Anabaptists, Quakers, and other free thinkers. Mom grew up in a Grace Brethren church that encouraged its members to study the Bible, and when she became an adult, she did. The more she studied scripture, the less she wanted to go to church.

On Dad’s side, most of the fathers were either absent, sick, or died young. Both his maternal grandparents were illegitimate, a fact his mother concealed. Eight years after her death, I learned the truth, and it helped set me free from the purity culture.

How could I breathe fire on fornication when I would not have been born had it not been for fornication?

In addition, the story of how my paternal grandmother’s paternal grandmother basically died of a broken heart after the father of her baby paid a fine and fled seized my heart and has not let go.

Mom and Dad were engaged the day Jim Jones murdered* hundreds of his followers in Guyana. In processing the tragedy, Mom noticed how Jim Jones’ followers had blindly followed him and decided that it was dangerous to blindly follow religious authority. Partially as a result, I grew up knowing that it was okay to question religious authority.

As I grew up, I began dislike religious authority aside from the knowledge that it was okay to question them. The pastors I knew were heartless, arrogant, lazy, fake, and distant. They only seemed to care for us if they wanted something. Dad is a genius with his hands, and the only time any of the “men” in the churches he attended took any notice of him was to get him to do something.

Growing up, my family never fit in church and the homeschool community because Dad is not a leader and was not involved with my brothers and I spiritually or educationally. I desperately wanted to fit in, to belong. Besides, the outside world scared me.

According to everything I heard and saw from the religious community, the only way for a woman to do that was to be a wife and mother.

And being a wife and mother would protect me from that scary world.

The year I turned 18, my older brother left the GARBC Baptist church my family was part of, and I followed him to his new church. Then Mom left the GARBC Baptist church, and Dad refused to attend without her. Several weeks later, a series of circumstances forced older brother to work on Sundays. Without a driver’s license, I had no way to attend church.

Even when I did get my driver’s license nearly a year later, I refused to attend church because I did not think organized religion was Biblical and I was hurting from previous bad church experiences. For three years, I refused to attend church.

In those three years, without me realizing it, an amazing thing happened.

My walk with Christ became something I wanted to do, vs something I was expected to do. My faith grew far more in those three years than the 18 before them.

A desire to be part of a community drove me back to church.

In the years that followed, I had one bad church experience after another.

In addition, I was struggling to find a career and live the unexpected life of autism, singleness and childlessness. During that time, without me realizing it, God was releasing fundamentalism’s grip on me.

Finally, in 2010, I asked God in desperation to either give me a husband or make me content to be single.

God gave me contentment to be single and much more. Via J Lee Grady’s books 10 Lies the Church Tells Women and 25 Tough Questions About Women and the Church I was introduced to the egalitarian truth along with some blogs God put into my path. Because of God’s careful preparation of my heart, it was truth I joyfully received.

Yet I was not fully convinced.

Every year, I read through my one year Bible. At the beginning of 2011, I decided to write down every reference I could find regarding women to see what the Bible really said about women. On July 29, 2011, I read Rom 11:29: “For the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable”. The verse hit me like a rock between the eyes. I had seen how some women had the gifts of teaching and leadership while some men did not.

That verse showed me that God would never give a woman gifts and callings he did not expect her to use.

I felt like a bird set free.

I was every bit as valuable to God as a single, childless woman as a married with children woman!

I had a voice in the church and could be a church leader! It was okay to be assertive and independent!

Later in 2011 I said my final goodbye to organized religion. I could not find it in scripture and could not endure feeling like a freak and misfit in church because of being single, childless, and autistic.

Today Christ and women’s equality are my top passions in life. I still suffer from the scars of fundamentalism, but they are nothing compared to what family members and others are suffering from it.

Despite the struggles, I have much to be grateful for.

One of those blessings is being set free from fundamentalism.

*Contrary to popular belief, most of those who died at Jonestown were murdered and did not deliberately commit suicide.