Cults

Cults prey on the weak and emotionally distraught, particularly women. Most cults in some way cut off your connection to family, friends and community. In all cases, they do some form of brainwashing on the subject. If you Google cults in America you get 1.3 million direct hits. I have done this before.

But what hurts the most is the pain left on a parent(s). I witnessed that yesterday at a baby shower my Doe hosted for her daughter. Lets call her Bambi. Bambi always lead a strange life. She reminds her mom every chance she gets how she abandoned her and her siblings after the divorce. Not quite the case. But lets go with it. You see she was brought up in a cult. The one that does not celebrate holidays like Christmas and goes door to door selling a magazine for the towering price of 25 cents.

It's been a hard road for my sister but a well worth road. She is now 16 or 17 years sober and proud of it. She is now remarried and works. She is independent and smart as a whip. She came out of it a in one piece. I continuously remind her of my admiration of her courage and perseverance. Her eldest daughter remained in the cult.

Initially, I could not blame the kid, that's all she knew. She was kept from her mom after the divorce and indoctrinated into a cult that flourishes in shunning out family. Today, she's married with twins on the way, a young mother and educated. But her "cultness" comes to the surface at all the wrong times, like her baby shower. It was the innocence I remember in her that prevented me from blaming her for bad behavior in the past but not now. She is out right rude and disrespectful of her non-cult family. And in some way takes pride in it.

But the pain it causes my sister is not so nice. What is one to do? My Doe Sister is grateful to be part of her life and now her grandchildren's life. It's just hard to watch someone you love get shit on by their own child. Ce la vie, life in a cult.