homeschool debate

Forest For The Trees: J’s Story

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CC image courtesy of Flickr, Jens Schott Knudsen.

HA Note: “J” is a pseudonym. The following is reprinted with permission from J’s blog Teapots and Tesseracts. It was originally published as “Lightbulb Moment: Forest for the Trees” on June 30, 2014 and slightly modified for HA.

Crowded into a packed auditorium at the local bastion for Christian education, the “go to” first choice for homeschool graduates and members of my youth group, I considered where I should sit and rapidly selected the seat next to my brother and his wife. Squeezed in between mom, dad, the oldest brother and the littlest brother, I shrank into my seat to avoid my dad’s snide remarks. I had ducked into a stairwell before the ceremony and lit up a cigarette on a tobacco free campus and could suddenly smell the burning garbage scent on my nice lavender shirt.

Turning red and feeling the anxiety grip my chest, I steeled myself for the shaming remarks encased as jokes directed at me by my father.

A golden child who presented with mom at homeschool conferences (a la Josh Harris), enrolled in a local community college at 15, coached debate my first year after graduating high school, and active in ministry at my church, who answered the altar call to missions abroad at 18, my life had taken a very sharp turn shortly after I stood on the dais at another church with ten other graduates of our homeschool association.

“Now, please, bow your heads with me as we ask for His blessing on these proceedings.”

Accepted to a top ten university at 17 halfway across the country, I was on my way to becoming a biomedical engineer, dreaming of my senior research project, graduate school, becoming a doctor. I continued to be lauded for my intelligence, motivation and godliness for seeking to study medicine so I could serve the Lord in a third world country.

“Father God.”

After admitting I had a boyfriend at 18, after being caught in a lie, when I had just stuttered out the truth to my mother’s glaring and wounded face about who exactly “Michael” was, I was summarily lectured about my moral failings, threatened with permanent separation from God, and eventually thrown out of my house two hours later when I defiantly refused to repent.

“Our Father, thank you for shining your light on these young excellent minds, your servants”

The golden child status was gone, overnight. A cold reversal of the invitation to coach debate, ugly stares and plaintive tear-soaked pleads from members of church I ran into at the grocery store, multiple comparisons by haughty homeschool mothers I saw out and about (who just six months before, and even my entire twelve grades of homeschooling, said they wished their children were like me) of my “lifestyle” to sins like alcoholism and pedophilia, all made it clear the penny had dropped.

“All rise”.

Taking deep breaths, I stood up and  watched yet another brother and sister ascend the dais as we rose to “Pomp and Circumstance” and clapped and called out their names. With fifty-four graduates, they were the largest class in six counties. The brother next to me was in the very first fifteen years ago, and there were only six graduates then.

The commencement speaker was new…the same one for years was a local conservative Republican sheriff who talked about how integrity was a gift from God. This one was a Republican politician, aiming for Congress.

“God will protect you from this day before and cover you in His blessings if you follow in the way He has set in His Holy Word”.

The anxiety rapidly turned to rage and my stomach churned. Abandoned by family, church and homeschool association, my only networks during eighteen very sheltered years, I wanted to scream and cry simultaneously at the speaker for his lies.

“Observe those who have honored God, their fathers and their mothers by making the journey to receiving their high school diploma.”

Three years later after my summary dismissal from home, a phone call turned my world upside down.

Sniffling, my mother, who I had little to no contact with besides three intrusive appearances at a table in my section at area restaurants I served at, and my father, who had completely pretended I didn’t exist (seeing my face caused him “such pain and grief” explained my mother, that I should feel bad for inflicting him with such Job-like woes), passed the phone back and forth to beg me to come home, and hatch a plan to rescue me from an abusive relationship.

Three years with Stephen, and I was an emotionally and mentally unstable survivor of his abuse. My realization that I was no longer allowed to talk to once-close friends or even to know my neighbors had sunk in just the day before.

“Our graduates have gone on to become homemakers, mothers, fathers, missionaries, military service members, scientists, teachers, and many continue the homeschooling tradition with the next generation.”

“We wish God’s blessings on these students as they go forth into the world, using their God given talents to embark on new careers.”

Mandatory church attendance was required, at 21, after my return and I was once again hailed and praised, this time for becoming saved and healed from drug addiction and the homosexual lifestyle.

I had moved out on my own after two years stuck with no car or license due to a DUI in my patriarch’s house, stuffed the memories of a traumatizing rape and Stephen’s abuse, I could only feel the rage and sorrow and shrieking in my nightmares.

“Ladies in the graduating class, I urge you to remember such qualities as modesty, of headship of your father, the Lord, and your future husband as you embark into the world.”

My sister on my left couldn’t cut her hair or wear pants until age ten. We were all beaten viciously by a mentally ill, narcissist patriarch until our tenth birthday. Graduating today, she wanted to be a flight nurse in the Army. A year later I would find out my parents were seeking to marry her to a much older man so my father, in his words, would be rid of her and have some much needed peace and quiet, and room to focus on his hobbies.

Several of the women graduating weren’t old enough to vote, but ecstatically planned quiet weddings and bought white simple sundresses for early fall weddings, just months after graduating.

“Now let us bow our heads and pray for these graduates”.

“This is a Christian nation….look at those who serve His Holy Name”.

I wanted to shriek, so very loudly, at him, because most of what I heard in the ceremony made no sense, was so erasing of my existence. I did everything right until after graduation, and then I voiced my own opinion and everything fell apart.

Run away, I wanted to say, Run away. Grab that diploma and run as fast as you can. Because everything you remembered today will be shown as nothing but lies years from now. You will one day realize how the real world was sold as a carnal zoo filled with sin-flame breathing monsters.

I had made it a cumulative zero steps in five years, right back where I started.

Someone lied somewhere, and seeing how I got erased from my family and communities for several years, I don’t think it was me. I was truthful once about how I felt and lost everything. The gilded words of the charismatic speaker infuriated me.

Turning to my brother on my right, I whispered: “I don’t remember my graduation ceremony being this creepy. Or yours, for that matter.”

Thrown out of the house six years before me for rebellion, to bounce aimlessly between London and Pittsburgh with his absentee birth father, I could see his jaw set and eyes glare. He felt the same way I did.

Slightly tilting his head towards me he whispered back:

“Perhaps you couldn’t see the forest for the trees.”

Statement By HARO On WORLD Magazine’s “Homeschool Debate”

HA Editorial Team20 Comments

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August 22, 2014 Statement by the Board of Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out:

We are grateful to both WORLD Magazine and Daniel James Devine for the opportunity to be interviewed for their recent “Homeschool debate” article. Abuse and neglect in homeschooling are serious and pressing issues that need to be addressed for both the sake of children and alumni as well as the health of the homeschooling movement in general. There has been a severe lack of coverage of abuse and neglect in homeschooling by Christian news sources. We commend WORLD and Mr. Devine for shedding some light on these situations.

We do, however, grieve the statements made by HSLDA and their attorneys in the article. Mr. Devine wrote that, “Both Smith and Darren Jones, a staff attorney at [HSLDA], agreed that abuse and neglect cases do exist within some homeschooling families, but argue their number is small. HSLDA staffers call them ‘fake homeschoolers.’” This rhetoric is unacceptable. By calling these homeschoolers “fake,” it allows HSLDA to distance themselves from these uncomfortable situations rather than confront the issue. Additionally, HSLDA’s choice to refer to both current victims and now-survivors of abuse and neglect as “fake homeschoolers” erases the heartbreaking, lived experiences of many children and alumni. Such erasure should not be welcome in the homeschooling movement, and we know that HSLDA is capable of a better response.

Mr. Devine also wrote that, “Jones, the HSLDA attorney, said he recognizes some in the Homeschoolers Anonymous community didn’t have a great experience growing up. ‘I feel terrible for them.’” While we appreciate the offer of sympathy, we must point out that not once has Mr. Jones or anyone at HSLDA even attempted to reach out to any of us on the HARO board or the Homeschoolers Anonymous community at large. Quite the opposite, in fact. Until very recently, HSLDA has either ignored us or blocked us from their social media pages. We would welcome a dialogue with HSLDA, but at this point the ball is firmly in their court.

For example, it has been over a year since we launched our #HSLDAMustAct campaign, asking HSLDA to launch a public awareness campaign to educate their members about recognizing and addressing child abuse. HSLDA has never responded to that campaign nor have they reached out to us concerning it. We are glad that HSLDA has added a page to their website with basic info about child abuse. Yet this action still falls far short of the type of public awareness and community education campaign for which we advocate.

As another example, HSLDA attorney Scott Somerville is still on record referring to a convicted child abuser, Michael Gravelle, as a “hero.” While we want to believe that HSLDA does not condone Mr. Gravelle’s behavior, the lack of a public retraction and apology is glaringly absent and deeply concerning to HARO. Many homeschooling parents and families look to HSLDA for guidance. HSLDA’s silence on this issue is frankly alarming.

Until HSLDA begins to take these issues more seriously, apologizes for Mr. Somerville’s comment and referring to abused and neglected homeschool children and alumni as “fake homeschoolers,” and makes a good-faith effort to reach out to HARO, all we can do is continue to hope. We hope for and welcome a conversation about how we can together make homeschooling better for future generations.

We also hope that more Christians news sources will follow WORLD Magazine’s lead in addressing child abuse and neglect within homeschooling communities. These problems are more than “a few bad apples spoiling the bushel,” and it is paramount that homeschooling communities, religious organizations, and individual Christians invested in the health and safety of all children rise to the occasion and do the hard work of protecting those in harm’s way.

Finally, it has come to our attention that Heather Doney, whose story was featured prominently in WORLD’s article, believes she was misquoted by Mr. Devine. We respectfully call on WORLD and Mr. Devine to do their due diligence in re-examining the accuracy of her quotations and responding to Ms. Doney’s concerns in a prompt manner.

Life With A Gay Husband: Rachel’s Story

HA Editorial Team7 Comments

Life With A Gay Husband: Rachel’s Story

"I realized there was no way to fix this. He couldn't be who he was with me, and it wasn't fair to either of us to stay together."
“I realized there was no way to fix this. He couldn’t be who he was with me, and it wasn’t fair to either of us to stay together.”

I grew up as the oldest of ten children. My parents were a part of ATI and the Quiverfull movement. My father was very controlling and my mother was neglectful and withdrew herself. We had to ask my father to go anywhere. He would say to clean something or weed the garden first and then he would say no many times.

I was the “second mom” the one who listened to what my dad said and took care of the house, the other kids, stayed home as a highschooler to cook dinner while the younger kids got to play sports. I had a really good guy friend who was the oldest of ten children himself and also played the violin. We used to write to each other all the time until the letters just stopped. This guy, Jacob, would give me butterflies and make my hands sweaty and I would dream of being with him. My mom came to me and said that we were the oldest kids, so a relationship would just not work. I was confused what she meant. But, I continued to “wait” for him.

Then, at the age of 19, I went to EXCEL, which I paid for by babysitting. There, I sought God each day and somehow ended up with the exact opposite beliefs as I was taught. There, I cut my long hair, stopped wearing skirts all the time, stopped arguing with everyone, decided I needed to go to college to become a nurse and I decided I was done with waiting for Jacob. I came home and signed up to start classes. I also looked for a job, which I got in a deli.

My parents were supportive until I actually started classes and then it was, “Rachel, come home and watch the kids,” and, “Rachel, come and take the kids to their games.”  I, being a girl who did give everything to god and believing I had to obey my dad, would, but this jeopardized my grades. Here I am, a girl who has no understanding of any of my classes (all I knew how to do was read really well and basic math; I didn’t even know how to write a paper), looks very strange in mostly skirts, and thinking about sex all the time.

Then Ben entered my life.

A friend of mine told me of a homeschool debate site. I decided to join and decided to have a “gender neutral” name of “His child.” There was a guy there who wanted someone to do a bible study with him. I knew instantly that he was suicidal and I had to do it. So, I led a bible study and he eventually started asking me questions about myself.

We talked for an entire year before he decided to come to WA state to work at a camp and meet me. His parents tried to prevent him, since they ran a camp themselves, but then they found out the reason was there was a girl there and they excitedly let him go. He got me a job there as a store manager. I worked it out with my deli manager so that I could do it for the summer, but my father put his foot down and refused to let me do it. I had told him about Ben several months before which made him pretty upset. He unplugged the internet many times so I couldn’t talk to him.

I obeyed my father and did not go to camp. I picked him up at the airport with my parents and a very talkative me. But he was lost for words. The poor guy was so nervous and just grunted all the time. My father and I dropped him off at camp and my dad said, “Oh, you should exchange numbers.”  We hadn’t even talked to each other on the phone at this point. We started to have phone calls during which I talked a lot and he said nothing.

I saw him again during that summer when he had a weekend break. He played with my siblings and this is when I knew that I would marry him. He had already told me I was the girl for him before I met him. I thought he was smoking hot and very excited that a guy this attractive would be interested in me. I was sad to see him go home on the final meeting when we dropped him off at the airport.

My father, realizing that I liked this guy, put a lot of pressure on me to get him to ask permission to court me. So, I did and Ben called up my dad and asked his permission to court. I got in front of our church and announced with my father that I was courting, which in my group of people meant we were getting married. We continued talking on the phone (which was awkward for us cause he barely talked) and mostly talking online.

Six months later, he flew to see me again. We were ready to hold hands and cuddle which freaked out my parents. My father gave him 50 questions to answer by hand and said we could not talk until it was finished. I was supposed to go and work at his family’s camp as a cook for that summer. This was his reaction to that. Instead, I threw myself into working 80 hours a week. Eventually, he finished the questions over that summer. I decided I should do nursing down in Mississippi because I could take a test and get into the program. (I struggled a lot with school because my father was constantly trying to get me to come home and babysit my siblings or take them to practice and I was balancing working full time and taking classes for which I had zero knowledge, so my grades weren’t that good). Extra bonus was that I was two hours away from him.

Our plan was that I would stay there six months and we would get married and I would go to nursing school on the same campus as his seminary. We spent a few hours together in person every other weekend or so.

Finally, it came to the wedding.

Our first kiss was at the wedding alter. Bad idea… I had no idea how awkward that would be and how it just felt…wrong, like it was meant to be shared in private. Then of course, to go further, my husband was incredibly scared and nervous. I thought the bride was supposed to be the nervous one!

It puzzled me why he seemed never to want to have sex. I thought this would be a phase, but it wasn’t. This went on for years — in fact, our entire marriage.

I had always heard that men liked a woman’s body, that it turned them on. I tried that.

It didn’t work.

We talked about this and both came to the conclusion that it was cause he was a lifeguard for years and was just used to seeing almost naked bodies. He always seemed depressed about everything. He would withdraw and not talk to me or even seem to want to be around me. This would frustrate me but I was busy with work and school. I just gave him space and hoped he would show interest in me. I worked hard to try to please him and to try to motivate him. But, he always seemed unhappy, no matter what we tried.

I put my energy in trying to become pregnant. (Believe me, that took a lot of work!). We had our child and I — doing what every other mother I knew did — stayed home with him. Our problems became stronger since now I had nothing to distract me, no school or work. We were trying to become missionaries. He got ordained and we were in the application process. I was highly involved at our church.

He seemed to withdraw yet again, like he didn’t want to do it.

I had been talking to my best friend who had just come out to me. She described how she felt — in a marriage with a man — being gay herself. I asked a lot of questions and realized she sounded exactly like my husband! I approached him and asked him if he was attracted to men. He said he was but tried not to think about it.

Everything made sense!

He was repressing who he was, which was causing the depression and the withdrawing. This is why nothing seemed to work or motivate him. We continued on, wondering what we should do next. He had already been having issues with god for years but also tried to ignore that as well. I began to question the bible as well. If it is wrong about homosexuality, what else is wrong with it?

I realized it was incredibly cruel to expect a homosexual person to either be single or to be in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex. I know what that is like. This led to a spiraling amount of questions which I could not find answers to. I guess this was important to me being able to leave the marriage — and then divorce.

A couple months later, I realized there was no way to fix this. He couldn’t be who he was with me, and it wasn’t fair to either of us to stay together. So, the next six months, we made plans to separate and help each other be financially stable.

We are still friends, share custody of our son and live about a mile and a half apart.

From Hell to Heroin to Here: Jezebel’s Story

HA Editorial Team9 Comments

selfinjury

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

Trigger warnings: child sexual abuse, self-injury.

I’m not really sure how to describe my childhood.  Blacks and whites don’t really exist in my world, so it’s difficult to say that it was ‘good’ or ‘bad.’  I feel like we put labels like that on things to simplify them.

Unfortunately, nothing is simple.

My earliest memories are very fragmented – my memory isn’t that great to begin with, and PTSD combined with years of drug abuse have further eroded the recesses of my mind.  I remember starting first grade.  My parents decided to send me to a ‘cottage school’ where I would go to school two days a week and be homeschooled the other three.  I knew my friends from the neighborhood went to something called ‘public school,’ but from what I overheard my parents talking about, I was pretty sure that public school was bad.  That didn’t make sense to me, because my friends were really nice and their parents seemed nice too.  I was curious about public school, but at such a young age, I didn’t pay too much attention to the differences between myself and the other kids.

Around this same time (when I was seven) my father started to molest me.  To this day, I don’t talk about it too much.

At the time, I didn’t understand what was happening to me.  No one ever taught me about sexual abuse or inappropriate touching, so I thought that what was happening to me was normal.  I hated what was going on, but I understood that it was very important for me to pretend that everything was okay.  From a very young age, I understood the importance of not making waves and protecting my family’s reputation.

As I was growing up, the only sex education I received was from my time with my father.  My mom never talked about sex with me, and since I was homeschooled, I was never given formal sex-ed.  In one sense, I was insanely naïve about sex, but at the same time, I was receiving a sex-education from my father that would prove to be incredibly damaging to my psyche.  The messages he gave me were that I was powerless, worthless, and valuable only as a pleasure receptacle.  It was all very confusing for me.

As young girls, my friends and I used to talk about how we wanted our weddings to be.  We would all daydream about what type of guy we wanted to marry and what type of dress we wanted to wear.  Me, my sister, and our two best friends were planning a quadruple wedding.

When I found out that a father/daughter dance was a part of a traditional wedding, I remember deciding that I didn’t want to get married anymore.  I was willing to do anything to avoid spending time around my father.  The idea of having to dance with him made me sick to my stomach.

My parents continued to homeschool me and my three siblings.  We stopped going to the cottage school and started going to a homeschool co-op (it was pretty much the same thing, just less organized.)  I don’t remember too much from this time period.  I know that I wasn’t particularly happy and that I found solace in drawing.  I was off in my own little world much of the time, and I had quite a few pets that were my best friends.  I didn’t have a lot of friends, and the few I had I didn’t really like; most of the time I preferred to be alone and draw with my dog.

The abuse from my father continued until I was eleven.  I can’t tell you how many people have asked me why he stopped.  Don’t fucking ask me – go ask that pervert.  Maybe he’ll tell you.  I can only assume that I was getting too old for him or that he found someone else he liked better.  I didn’t ask questions about why he stopped, I was just thankful that he did.

I remember the time period after the abuse stopped a lot better than I remember my childhood.  My parents were still together.  I can’t begin to convey how terrible this was for me.  On Sunday’s my family would attend church together (by this time we had started to attend a home church because traditional church was too secular) and my dad would get up and lead worship.  I hated him so much and I didn’t understand why nobody else saw him the way I did.  Everybody I knew acted like he was such a great person – after all, he had a great job, he let my mom be a stay-at-home homeschool mom, and to all appearances he was a loving father.  My mom never noticed him abusing me, but I don’t blame her for this.  I can only attribute it to her own dysfunctional upbringing and the years of emotional abuse she endured with my father.

Even then, as a young teenager, I didn’t have the words to describe what had happened to me.  At thirteen I knew very little about sex, and I knew even less about how to express myself.  I was full of inner turmoil and hurt, and I had no outlet for it.  This is when I found out about cutting.  I was reading a magazine article about Angelina Jolie and the article said that she used to cut herself.  This was the first exposure I had to the concept of cutting and I decided to try it right away.  I got a safety pin and started to scratch my skin.  I couldn’t draw blood with my safety pin, but I liked the pain it caused me.  For the first time in a long time, I felt some release.

Around this same time, I realized that I could achieve a similar level of catharsis through not eating.  I wasn’t entirely aware that what I was doing was considered to be an eating disorder – I just knew that I really enjoyed how it felt when I would starve myself.  I came up with crazy diet plans and arbitrary numbers of how many calories I was allowed to eat in a day.  Occasionally, I would screw up and binge.  I felt horrible about my binges, so I would cut myself to try and feel better.  Somewhere along the lines I figured out that I could make myself vomit.  From that point on, I would starve myself for days, binge, and then make myself throw up.

This sort of behavior went on for quite a few years.  Of course, during this time I did my best to hide my eating disorder and cutting.  To outward appearances, I tried my best to look happy, well adjusted, intelligent, and well educated.  I simply wanted to be perfect.  I was part of a very insular community, so it was fairly easy to hide the symptoms of my problems – after all, everyone was sheltered to the point that they couldn’t recognize the symptoms of emotional disturbances.

In my early teen years, I started participating in competitive speech and debate.  My mom signed me up for NCFCA tournaments, and public speaking and debate took over my life.  I still kept up with my other school work, but the vast majority of my time was spent designing visual aids for expository speeches, researching debate resolutions, and practicing speeches.  I had very little life outside of NCFCA – as has been said by others, the closest thing I had to a graduating class were the people I competed at tournaments with.

During my teen years, I wasn’t allowed to date.  Despite the parental prohibition on relationships, I started talking to a boy I met through NCFCA.  He became my first boyfriend, and he was the first person I felt I could really confide in.  At fifteen, I was looking to him to save me.  I told him things I had never told anyone – I told him about my self-harm problems and my eating disorder.  We commiserated over our teenage angst and unhappy upbringings.  I was never able to trust him enough to talk to him about the abuse I suffered as a child, but this relationship helped me to begin to open up to people.

Of course, the relationship ended badly and dramatically (as most teenaged relationships do.)  Still, the simple experience of being able to confide in someone was profound.  Shortly after this breakup, I was researching something online, and I stumbled across an article on child abuse.  The article talked about sexual abuse and molestation.  For the first time in my life I had words to describe what had happened to me.  Prior to this time, I had heard people talk about molestation, but I always thought that if what happened wasn’t actual rape, that it didn’t constitute abuse.  No one had ever taught me otherwise.

I came unhinged when I read about what molestation actually was.  All the evil I had experienced as a child finally had a name.  Not only that, I felt justified in feeling that the abuse I suffered was wrong.  I spent that whole night crying, cutting, and throwing up.

The next day, I called my best friend.  I told her that when I was little my father had sexually abused me.  It was the first time in my life I had told someone the truth about my childhood.  I was sixteen years old.  My friend told me that she already knew – she could tell by the way I acted and talked about my family.  She knew I was miserable at home, but she didn’t know how to help me.  She was only a teenager herself.

Having the words to describe my experiences made me feel better about myself, but it didn’t help my immediate situation.  I still lived at home with my parents and my siblings and I didn’t feel safe enough to tell anyone about the abuse.  To make myself feel better, I started self-medicating with prescription pain pills and alcohol.  I started to get drunk off alcohol I stole from my parent’s liquor cabinet and I would get high off of Lortab’s and Percocet’s I found in our medicine cabinet.  My weight continued to fluctuate and my arms were still crisscrossed with cuts.  Because I was fairly isolated, few people took notice of my behavior.

My mom and I started to drift further and further apart – we would fight over the silliest things.  I wanted to listen to secular music, and she preferred that I listen to opera and classical.  I was a political libertarian and she was a staunch republican.  I thought that morality had little place in art, and she believed that the books I read needed to have strict moral messages.  We fought a lot.

On one particular day, mom and I had argued over the Harry Potter books (what homeschool child hasn’t been through a conflict involving these books?)  I ran upstairs to my room in tears.  I wasn’t really depressed about having differing opinions with my mom about Harry Potter – it was simply the metaphorical straw that broke the camel’s back.  The weight of all the secrets I was keeping came crashing down on me and I couldn’t deal with it anymore.  I felt like I had no way out, that my adolescence would never end.  So I did the only thing I could think of – I swallowed a bottle of pills and prayed that it would kill me.

My sister called an ambulance when she came upstairs and found me – I was inconsolable as I told her that I had just swallowed a bottle of pills and I wanted to die.  The ambulance came and carted me off to a mental hospital where I stayed for two weeks.

Ironically, the mental hospital was the only place where I came close to being in a public school.  Because I was in the adolescent ward, we had to attend school while at the hospital.  When I went to science class, I raised my hand and challenged the teacher on her teachings about evolution (that was what I had been taught to do in all my worldview and debate classes.)  I’m pretty sure that the staff took this as further evidence of my mental problems.

After I was released from the hospital, I went through a very rough period.  I finally told my mom about what my father had done to me.  It was an experience that I can only describe as horrific.  My mother believed me, and she had me write a letter to our church elders asking them for help.  I wrote a detailed letter and told these men what my father had done to me.  The church elders responded to my mother and said that both she and I were lying and that we weren’t welcome at that church anymore.  To this day, my father still attends that church and is a very active member.

Amidst all this madness, I attempted to finish my senior year of high school.  It was chaos.  My mom and I cobbled together a transcript that was substantiated by my debate experience, my love of classic British literature, and little else.  I was very intelligent, but no one ever really made me complete my math or science homework.  I would tell my mom that I did my math or science homework, and for the most part, my word was enough assurance that I was getting a well-rounded education.

When I went to take the SAT I hadn’t studied (literally, I think I cracked the study book one time) and I was hungover.  I did very well on the English and reading portion, and I bombed on the math portion.  At this point, I didn’t particularly care about school though, and my home life was so hectic that my mom didn’t have time to care either – she was in the process of dealing with a hellish divorce.

During my senior year I was so busy going to therapy and psych appointments that I never got around to applying to colleges.  Growing up, I had always wanted to go to college, but in the midst of the wreckage of my parent’s divorce, nobody really had time to help me figure out what I wanted to do with my life or where to apply for school.  I got more and more depressed and I started drinking and abusing pain pills even more heavily.

After high school graduation, I was simply drifting through life.  I worked a dead-end restaurant job and spent all my spare time at bars (I had a fake ID that I had stolen from someone.)  The only friends I had were people I knew from work – very few of my NCFCA friends kept in contact with me and I felt a bit ostracized.  Alcohol and pills fixed these feelings though, so I continued to self-medicate.

Eventually I applied to the local community college.  I went there for a semester, and I enjoyed it.  At the time though I was working fulltime at the restaurant, working weekends at a haunted house, and trying to keep up with a fulltime school schedule.  I ran myself ragged – my health started to deteriorate and I ended up in the hospital with meningitis.  I would also periodically have to go to the doctor because I got severe kidney infections.  One day as I was leaving to go to work, I simply collapsed in the garage – my body was wearing out.

While I was going to community college I couldn’t stop drinking.  I would routinely show up to class drunk or high out of my mind.  Alcohol was the only thing that helped me feel less stressed.  After one semester of college, I dropped out.

After dropping out of school my life became a bit of a blur.  I continued to drink myself into a stupor every night because I was severely depressed.  After a while, I got fired from my restaurant job because I routinely came to work drunk.  Within a few weeks of getting fired, I tried coke for the first time and I loved it.  I started routinely doing hard drugs.  My drug use culminated in an addiction to heroin.

To support my drug habit, I started working at a strip club.  I worked as a stripper and a prostitute for several years before I got arrested for trafficking heroin.  My life was a wreck and I had nowhere to go, so I went to rehab.  I had tried going to rehab several times before, so I wasn’t sure that it would work for me, but I was out of options.  I ended up in a year-long program, and it saved my life.

When I was shooting up heroin and stripping, I didn’t care about my life.  I would overdose or get beat up and it didn’t matter to me.  I felt like I was a fuckup and that my life wasn’t worth living.  In rehab I did the hard work of processing everything that had happened with my family, and as awful as it was, I’m a more whole person for all that.

It’s ironic – while I was in rehab, I was processing with a counselor and I told her about how I was brought up – conservative Christian homeschooler.  She was shocked.  She said that my story completely reframed how she thought about homeschooling.  She had always assumed that homeschooling was a good way to safeguard against having your kids become radically screwed up.  I guess I disproved that idea.

Since graduating rehab (most of the kids I competed in NCFCA with graduated college this year – I graduated rehab – ironic, right?) I’ve done my best to live life sober.  I attend 12 step meetings and a big part of my recovery is letting go of my resentments.  I’m still working on letting go of some resentment I have about my upbringing, but I’m slowly coming to terms with it.  In no way do I blame my choices on the way I was raised; I accept complete responsibility for my actions over the last few years.  Still, as people we are the sum of our experiences, and homeschooling was a huge part of my experience.  My upbringing shaped me into who I am today.

I can’t say that I liked the process of getting here, but today my life is good; I have a good job, I’m clean and sober, I’m not incarcerated, and I have people that love me when I don’t love myself.

It’s been hell to get here, but it is what it is and I’m okay with that today.

A Tool In Someone Else’s Culture War: Philosophical Perspectives’s Story, Part Two

HA Editorial Team18 Comments

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “PhilosophicalPerspectives” is the author’s chosen pseudonym.

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In this series: Part One — We Need Advocates | Part Two — A Tool In Someone Else’s Culture War

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The stories shared so far on HA are rough.  Whenever another story pops up on my blogroll, I take a deep breath before reading – and sometimes I have to cut myself off.  There’s only so much trauma I can read in a day, especially when so much of it triggers my own.

Part of growing up in the homeschool community in the 80’s and 90’s was living defensively.  Our parents felt like they were culture warriors, and everyone and everything in the world was against them and their choice to homeschool. We, their children, were the proof they offered to the world (and each other) that they weren’t screwing up. Not only was it vital that we act like little adults on all occasions, but we had to be well-spoken, articulate, and ourselves advocates for homeschooling. I remember many conversations with my mother at the age of 8, where I agreed with her disapproval of *that* family whose children just couldn’t sit still and be quiet, or walk through a museum and respectful read all the placards. We, on the other hand, were excellent at it – and this meant that we were “good children”.

We visited well-respected leaders in government and business, we politely and persuasively argued the case for our political agenda, all while going through puberty. We were nowhere near normal, but that’s why we appealed to powerful people. Who has ever heard of a 15 year old who argues persuasively in front of the state legislature, instead of hanging out at the mall with her friends? No one.

Except homeschoolers. We sure churn out a lot of teenage spokespeople.

I always cringe when I hear stories like Sarah Merkle’s, because I was one of the kids who spoke before legislatures and guest-lectured in local high schools. I was a tool in someone else’s culture war. I was remarkable for my non-normalcy, and I was praised for it.

My reality check came later. I don’t know Sarah, but when I was in her shoes, I didn’t actually have my own, well researched, well-formed and nuanced thoughts on gun control or any other topic – I had my parents’ thoughts, or my pastor’s thoughts, or the thoughts of another influential adult who told me what the “good arguments” were on the topic in question. I was smart, so I didn’t just take talking points from my handlers – I accumulated a lot of other people’s ideas, and even a couple of dissenting opinions, and synthesized them all so that I could speak from “my own” perspective. The thing is, it didn’t require me to seriously wrestle with dissent, or the complications of policy ideas, it just required me to adopt, reformulate, and regurgitate what I’d heard. What’s worse – I was never really allowed to ask questions about the assumptions that were passed on to me. It wasn’t until I got to college that I was actually free to think and ponder and explore, intellectually as well as personally.

I didn’t have my own thoughts at 15 – they weren’t allowed. As others have noted here, debate is seen as a vital skill for homeschooled offspring – after all, “God’s Harvard” prides itself on the quality of their moot court team (as well as, apparently, soccer…). Debate is important, not because it teaches kids to think, but because it gives us the skill to package propaganda in a convenient, Bill O’Reilly-friendly segment, and makes us appealing politicians and lawyers, ready to be the next generation of culture warriors.

For all our debating, dissent wasn’t allowed. I remember losing debate rounds because an argument that I made sounded something remotely like it could be related to a philosophical principle advocated by Marx. I’m not kidding.

Wait, let me rephrase. Dissent was fine, within a prescribed sphere.

The following topics were open for discussion:

• Infant vs. Adult Baptism

• Predestination vs. Free Will

• The moral weight of a vote for a republican (compared, of course, to a vote for the constitution party)

• The US Farm Bill.

• The failings of other religions and how to prove Christianity was right

• Whether or not it’s morally acceptable to wear a sleeveless dress on your wedding day (the answer: no)

• And, my favorite — the real reasons for the Civil War (slavery or states’ rights?!)

Anyway, the real point — we’ve been parroting a Republican platform and the great things about homeschooling since we were toddlers. Any negative or critical commentary was marked as “rebellious”, and unacceptable, especially when it was directed at homeschooling itself. The options were, repent, or get out. I carried my parents’ defensiveness about the homeschooling movement with me into college, where I had many conversations that started off, “yes, there are some downsides to homeschooling, but…”

It’s taken me a long time away from the homeschooling movement to detox, and come to terms with the pain it inflicted. After eight years away from the movement, I started realizing that I wasn’t just a disobedient, sinful, and rebellious teen. I began naming the things I suffered, and the perpetrators who inflicted them.

I felt totally alone.

None of my non-homeschooled friends had any categories to begin to understand what I was talking about. I was lucky if they’d ever even heard of Josh Harris, and they’d certainly never had personal interaction with his family. They had no concept of a world where it was acceptable for a father to deny a daughter her driver’s license, because her husband might not want her to have that freedom (a position I heard advocated at a young age, at a homeschool conference in my home state). Any time I began a conversation about my own experiences, I ended up answering the same questions. “Did you, like, have a desk in your living room?” “Did you go to school in your pajamas?” “Did you get to sleep in until 10?” Sometimes, we’d get to the real crap, but they were so shocked by the extremes of the movement that they didn’t believe they were real, or that something so blatantly ridiculous had actually impacted my life. I never got to process the things that really changed me.  I never had space to talk about how the patriarchal narrative that reigns uncontested within the homeschooling movement affected my identity as a woman, or how purity and courtship teachings twisted my view of cross-gender relationships, whether platonic or romantic. Two examples spring to mind.

1. I remember telling a prominent female homeschooling leader during my senior year of high school how excited I was to go to the prestigious college to which I’d been accepted. She responded with concern, asking me “whether or not I was planning to pursue a career.”  I think I told her that I didn’t really know, but I was looking forward to all the new opportunities to learn.  The next time I saw her, she gave me a graduation present with a note reading, “with prayers that God will reveal his word and will clearly to you that you might joyfully embrace His ways.” For those not adept at reading between homeschooler lines – my pursuit of a secular education, and potentially a career, she was telling me, was at best based on ignorance of the Word of God, and at worst, on disobedience and rebellion.

With a few swift words and a terrible present, she not only undermined my accomplishments, skills, and personality (I was too ‘leaderly’ for a woman), she questioned my obedience to the God I claimed to follow. I’ve noticed that the thoughts that this woman reinforced (they’d been planted much earlier) have haunted me as I’ve applied for fellowships, talked to recruiters, and pursued career paths.  Despite my (objectively) impressive resume, I find myself wrestling with a toxic combination of shame, insecurity, and guilt whenever I pursue or am offered a prestigious position or set an ambitious goal. Mental accusations of pride, selfishness, or narcissism rush to the forefront. I’m just now learning how to fend them off.

2. I recently came across an Instant Message conversation with the guy I sort of dated in high school (culture notes, for the uninitiated – AIM was a primary source of social interaction for many of us.  I say “sort of dated” because the attraction we felt was taboo, and therefore secret).  It was the conversation where we decided that we “had romantic feelings for each other”.  I was 18 at the time. The exchange went something like this:

Me – “I need to pray about what to tell my parents.”

Him – “What kind of commitment do we have to each other?”

Me – “well, we’re not dating… we can’t”

Him – “just because we haven’t verbalized it doesn’t mean we don’t have one.  I think our commitment should be to prayerfully and cautiously court nine months from now, when you go to college.”

Me – “That sounds great.”

Him – “Shall we state our commitment?”

Me – “I commit to begin a relationship with you for the purpose of exploring a deeper commitment, while bathed in prayer”

Him – “I commit to prayerfully begin a relationship for the purpose of exploring the possibility of a more permanent and concrete commitment, to begin approximately nine months from now.  I intend to ask your father’s blessing when we begin the next phase”.

When I found this conversation, I couldn’t help but laugh. Such contractual language was the model we had for beginning a mature, and godly relationship – and it gave us both the warm fuzzies (I’ll spare you the rest of the conversation). All of this, mind you, was undertaken under much secrecy, because our parents would have objected in a million unimaginable ways.  This doesn’t even begin to cover the number of problematic things about that relationship – but it strikes me how deep courtship culture influenced me.  I saw myself as an object to be negotiated for, between me, my “beau” (as my mom always calls them), my father, and God.  I was “progressive” in that I was willing to strike a deal on my own, at least in the short term.  Thus, this dry, non-salacious exchange between people who were legally adults, via computer, across thousands of miles, was considered both the height of “romance” (because of the bargain we struck) and the height of rebellion (because my dad wasn’t at the negotiating table).

To get back to the point. As I look back at experiences like these, which are far less intense than many others shared on this blog, I realize that I have never had a chance to actually dig into the underlying values I imbibed, and process the pain, anger, and embarrassment that I experienced. I need space to write, and to read, and to be reassured I’m not crazy or alone when I tell stories like mine.

That’s why Homeschoolers Anonymous is so important. We’ve been isolated from each other from a long time. We’ve never had anywhere to share our stories with each other and the world. This is a space for recounting the past and healing from the damage it has done. Trust me, we know the good bits of homeschooling, and we know the ways it’s benefitted us – we’ve been talking about it since we could talk.  What we need now is space to voice the bad.

To be continued.

Silence Isn’t Golden: Kierstyn King’s Story

HA Editorial Team5 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Kierstyn’s blog Bridging the Gap. It consists of two separate posts that HA has combined. The first, “The Cult That Changed Everything,” was originally published on March 18, 2013. The second, “Silence Isn’t Golden,” was originally published on March 10, 2013.

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The Cult That Changed Everything

"Maybe, just maybe, I’ll get better at balance, and I’ll be able to embrace all of it and accept the things I’m ashamed of, and help the ones who need it, and live an epic life."
“Maybe, just maybe, I’ll get better at balance, and I’ll be able to embrace all of it and accept the things I’m ashamed of, and help the ones who need it, and live an epic life.”

When I was between the ages of 5 and 7 my parents joined a bible study group through a family in our homeschool group. I guess it was less of a bible study and more of a home-church, because we went to their house for hours every weekend (I can’t remember if it was Saturday or Sunday, probably Sunday). This was not very long into homeschooling, maybe a year or two – my parents, I think, had been pressured by some of the group who had an incredibly spiritual persona that they weren’t godly or spiritual enough *or* homeschooling for the right reasons (but that’s a different discussion entirely). Anyway, My brother and I, we went along to this group with our parents and sat around being really bored, eating weird tasting food, listening to whatever it was we could understand and spending the rest of the time looking at the animals and wondering why it smelled funny at their house (they had a farm, and were into healthy/organic/self-sustaining life and for some reason that has a particular smell).

I don’t remember how long it took before my parents and the other couples at the group were introduced to this program called “Cleansing Stream.” Wanting to be godly and whatever, everyone hopped on board – they “learned” how to study their bible, use a concordance, expel demons (no, I’m not kidding), and we all had to make sacrifices (my brother and I lost many a loved plushie in the name of demon expulsion, and family heirlooms which didn’t matter to *me* as much) to make sure the demons didn’t have any “footholds”. There was a little red book, and any work by the Beveres’ makes me run the other direction. A lot of this now is instinctual, I don’t remember exactly what was taught (besides that demons could inhabit christians if they sinned, and apparently my stuffed tiger) but the ramifications have lasted…well they haven’t stopped.

My parents “left” or dropped out of the cult when they realized that the whole demon-inhabiting-christian-thing wasn’t actually biblical, but they never exited. They learned how to interpret the bible (according to the cult) and this is what became harmful. I was too young to understand anything happening at the bible study (that, or the memory is just blacked out), but the price that came with the things they learned there and after cost a lot:

Somehow god had turned from a loving being to an angry, vindictive, bastard who sent bad things to people for the fun of it, to “test” them, and “try them by fire” and somehow you knew you were loved by how miserable your life was and how much you suffered. The years following the cult were packed with much “love” from this deity.

We became increasingly isolated, we were drilled on the family beliefs, we had unassisted home-births (two of which resulted in stillborn babies – that *could* have been prevented by cesareans), we were constantly told that suffering was a good thing, that we should expect to suffer, even that not suffering was a bad thing (so anyone who good things were happening to? doomed. Anyone happy? obviously not loved by god). I was so scared to leave (and get married)because I thought for sure that after living through my own version of hell, the cycle would start all over again with my husband and our inevitable family.

We never had friends that lasted for more than a year or two – when I was finally able to make my own friends (on the internet!) I built myself a group of people I could trust, most whom I’m still friends with. The friends my parents “made” usually end up having a falling out over some doctrinal issue. We were kicked out of churches and widely hated (or so it felt) by anyone my parents disagreed with.

It grew worse as I aged, in ways I don’t yet have words for. I went from believing and being told that I could hear from god, to being told that he spoke to me through my parents (from my parents – it was convenient and self serving). I was less because I was a woman, my god-ordained-job at home was to be a caretaker to my siblings; I was brutally reminded of that pregnancy after pregnancy, child after child. I was told that my god-ordained-job as a woman, when I was married, was solely to reproduce and homeschool and give my husband sex when he wanted it (because otherwise, he’d find it somewhere else don’t ya know?). Not only that, but I had to let god plan how many kids we’d have, because “he wouldn’t give us more than we could handle” – don’t dare interfere with any kind of protection because that would be getting in the way of god’s will and that would be sinning.

I was a little self-conscious (I resisted as long as I could), but not of my own volition. My mom freaked out about facial imperfections – I have hereditary upper lip hair, my acne was worse than hers at my age, my teeth weren’t straight (supposedly, we could pray my teeth straight. true story), I didn’t wear makeup, I wore clothes a size too big so I’d “grow into them” (with a large family, you do that sometimes) even though I stopped growing when I was 15. The modesty culture was rampant, though admittedly my parents had little to do with this themselves.

Image and appearance were everything: we had (had) to look perfect and perfectly happy on the outside to everyone. We had to be good examples and witnesses, we could never complain, or have a less than perfect moment whenever we left home – if we did, there would be consequences. I can’t tell you how many times people have come up and commented to me about how perfect my family is and how “I bet you help out a lot, huh?” and I just had to stand there and smile politely, and nod, and say “yes, I don’t mind” (or a better variation) even though everything within me was screaming “no! everything is NOT okay! my family is NOT perfect!”  There was no room for human moments or authenticity (which is why I treasure them so).

We had to attract people (those poor, ignorant sinners) to our lifestyle, so we had to seem perfect. I have a great smile.

The version of christianity/god I knew, “loved”, and served was egotistical, demeaning, self righteous, superficial, and fear based (much of christianity I’ve seen so far is fear based, don’t you dare say love!). If my parents didn’t like someone, they’d rip them to shreds as soon as they were out of earshot, if I was less than perfect I’d get dragged out of bed and made to sit through several hours of Kierstyn-is-evil-thus-saith-the-lord lecturing until I would finally give up and act how they wanted (usually it was for minor infractions, like not hearing or understanding something correctly – sometimes it was for *gasp* wanting a life) I never knew when this line would be drawn or what the boundaries were.

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Silence Isn’t Golden

I’m tired of watching abuse. It happened to me, it happens around me – it’s the reason I can’t run away and escape from my past. The reason I can’t forget, the reason with every core of my being I become so angry that I lose words and start to breakdown.

In 2005, 2006, and 2007 I was a blogger, an NCFCA-er, a Rebelution moderator, a Regenerate Our Culture board member, a Student Project campaigner, and a TeenPact Alumni – if you recognize any of those (*except NCFCA outside region 8 prelims, I didn’t get far), then my name, Kierstyn Paulino (or variations thereof) will ring bells. I contributed to the amount of hurt I and many others who grew up in this radical/evangelical/conservative/christian subculture endured and continue to endure. I’m sorry for that, and ashamed. A large reason I don’t write about it here, and am vague at best is because I’m so ashamed of my past and who I used to be. I didn’t know any better, I was 15 and growing up in a spiritually, psychologically, and emotionally abusive environment. I was trying to do the “right” thing, to be a good girl, to be approved of, and I was. I was looked up to, and even World Magazine noticed. I succeeded for a while, before it all fell apart.

I am not that person anymore. I’ve spent the last 4 years of adulthood learning things most people learn in their late teen years, trying to heal and reach a sense of normalcy, trying to discover who I am because I lived a charade my whole life just to survive, grieving for everything I’ve lost, putting the pieces of myself back together with my best friend who’s been beside me this whole time. I have grown and evolved. I’m not whole, or healed, or perfect, or awesome, or anything. I’m still remarkably borked, but my past keeps casting a shadow and I’m so tired of being quiet, scared, and ashamed. It happened, it was wrong and abusive on so many levels, and I can help it stop.

I am a geek, artist, actress/filmmaker, and activist. I am a paladin, a champion, a defender of the defenseless. I am strong, determined, defiant. I am a protector, a safe place, a warrior, a sister. I am done being silent. I will fight to help the scores of us who are coming out of the woodwork to right the (unintended) wrongs and heal the fellow broken souls. Maybe that will help me heal too.

I doubt that I’ll ever be able to be completely normal, to live a life without the pain and reminders – because my past is a part of me, and it’s the reason that I rage at injustice, and it’s the reason I’m so strong. But maybe, just maybe, I’ll get better at balance, and I’ll be able to embrace all of it and accept the things I’m ashamed of, and help the ones who need it, and live an epic life.

Right now, I just need to cry.