Tag Archives: fear

My Journey into Disbelief

I was born into this world doctrine free. My father was an agnostic lover of physics, and while my mother was raised Pentecostal Christian, she neither practiced the religion nor incorporated religion into our home. However, when my father started working on military projects which kept him away from home for sometimes weeks, my mother became open prey for a cult recruiter who so infused herself into my mother’s life that at three years old, I was forced into the extremist Christianity written about in my memoir, “Cult Child”.

As a child and into adulthood there was a constant war going on inside of me. This conflicted feeling existed naturally in me, both while living in the cult and transitioning into mainstream society as a teenager. My instinct was telling me that this Christian belief system was not authentic, but fear of a place called Hell held me inside of the belief system well into my early twenties.

While attending college in the early 90’s, I read “The Witching Hour” by Anne Rice. This book ignited something in me. There were traits in Ms. Rice’s characters which felt familiar to me; traits such as hypersensitivity and the ability to feel what others were feeling; seeing into people, and there were memories of my childhood which surfaced after reading the book. Because the cult sequestered me so far away from society, my hunger for knowledge delved me deeper into supernatural subjects.

I wavered for a while, still gripped at times by the fear of not believing in God and being sent to live with the demons in hell. I also found that I turned to Christianity when things didn’t go right in my life hoping that if I just believed more, things would change for me. When that did not happen, I explored deeper into paganism, pulling out pieces of my European historical roots. It was during this time I felt I was starting to put my fragmented existence back together.

Paganism led me to Santeria, a short study of Voodoo, Satanism and Shamanism. I curiously peeked into Mormonism and what the Muslims believed. I explored mainly for knowledge, thirsting to know all of the different paths which existed; paths I never was allowed to discover on my own. I delved into my Cherokee history and my connection to nature and the planet. I stuck my toes into Yogi and Osho, checked out the Buddha and jumped on the awakening and oneness trains. Yet, something interesting was happening to me.

I was definitely awakening. I was waking up to myself. Thirty years after being taken into a cult and losing all of my identity through an indoctrination which restricted my critical thinking, I regained my mind, deprogrammed myself and realized that I actually did not need a belief system which involved group think. In fact, to be who I am, I did not need a belief system at all.

So who am I? I am a non-believer who doesn’t worship anything or anyone. I journeyed deeply into disbelief, and what I found there was my free and clear mind. What I found inside of disbelieving was a knowing that empathy is inside of my DNA, not my belief system. For me, there is no reason to wonder where I came from or where I am going, but instead to be present inside of what I am doing right now, being mindful to the needs of others and defining my own boundaries of self love. In this space is a peace that no belief system has ever brought me.

When a Child Is Trained For Death

On October 7th, the world was supposed to end again, as it has been for centuries, since Christianity unleashed its torrent of mind control on humanity.

When this story hit the internet, there was a lot of laughter and mocking towards it. I agree. It is ridiculous. However, I find the concept of Heaven and Hell to be ridiculous period. With the state of the planet as it is in now, humans have already created a scenario much worse than the hell they use to fear control children into compliance. Yet, there’s another aspect of this story that I wonder if you have thought of.

I was a child in an end-times cult. I will tell you this. There was no fun or joking in being a child preparing to die either for Christ, the end of the world or both. I believed that I would die. From the age of three, into my teenage years, it was a given that the world would end, and I, along with all of my family and friends, would endure a painful combustion. It is a rigid circle of mind fuckery from which a child cannot escape. There may be rituals involved, such as drills to teach the children how to behave and pray when the end arrives or even an invasion of some kind where they will be killed.

This is part of how soldiers train for war. They train to die. Why are we allowing this to be done to children? Teaching a child that the world might or will essentially end and that their death might be painful, but it’s all for God, is child abuse.  Add in the Rapture and the hope inside of the child that maybe they’ll get swept up in that, maybe it’ll happen before the end of the world or maybe it’ll happen all at once. The unknown is just as fearfully mind bending.

When will people stop allowing children to be mind-controlled, trained for death and abused under the guise of religious freedom?

“When a child is trained for death they will always see the world through eyes of fear.” Vennie Kocsis, author, “Cult Child“

Because Humans Represent The Possibility Of Loss

When I was a little girl of one and two years old, I existed inside of a perspective attached to my sister’s hip. She is four years older than me. It seems I was always either hiding behind her hip or holding onto a part of her belt loop or dress so I could feel safety. Staying beside her, I had a constant guide who would always know what to do next. My father was gone a lot because he worked as a military contractor. My mother was busy giving over her time being slowly love bombed into a destructive cult.

So, my older sister was my anchor, and my older brother was our body guard. My sister took on a mothering role, and my brother, a protector role, available to whip some ass if any other kids in the poorer neighborhood we moved into, messed with us.

Then, in the blink of an eye, our lives were turned upside down, and we were all ripped from each other when my mother decided to take us to one of the most brutal of all the compounds owned by Sam Fife’s Move of God cult. As a three year old child, I went from the safety of my sister’s love and my brother’s protection to never seeing my brother, and not being allowed to speak to my sister or my mother. Overnight I went from safety, to terror. abuse, isolation and fear.

I could only catch sight of my sister when we were out working in the fields. Or when we were in the dining room, we could have telepathic conversations through sneaking eye contact with each other. She holds the memories of my screams when I was beaten. She saved my life once, putting herself in danger to stop a beating where I had passed out and dissociated when I was somewhere around five years old. My sister and I have a connective strand of trauma survival that is unique only to us. There is a deep wound of abandonment and isolation that these experiences created inside of me.

They had a deeper effect on me because I could not process what was happening to me. I was only three, and at seven and nine, my sister and brother could only see me being abused, see each other being abused and helplessly stand by. It would remain this way for years.

When my family’s love is ripped from me on any level, I am deeply triggered to the emotions of that childhood trauma. When I am left by the way side by a family member, not spoken to or responded to, I feel disregarded and reduced to ashes. I am three again, feeling confused, terrified and abandoned, ripped from the only love I truly trust. I am left inside of the unknown. I trust too little or I trust too much. This creates an end result of me not trusting at all.

When these types of situations arise, it does assist me in moving through them when I am able to connect the emotion I am experiencing to the trauma that the situation is triggering. When I can understand that I’m weeping uncontrollably because I feel the pain of the disregard, in the least I can bring about resolve for myself.

I feel the strong emotional trigger of the isolation and abandonment. The tears I flow are no different than a wound which must seep in order to heal. It’s squeezing the infection out. It is me learning to deal with loss, the exhaustion of it repeating itself and somehow figuring out how to maintain acceptance of it.

Recognizing my triggers can be difficult. I have to piece these fragments together, sift through these thoughts and open my mind to understanding their impact on me. I am fragile, yet I have to continue living in spite of the loss. It takes time to figure this out.

Every time I experience it, I ask myself if I have the strength to deal with loss anymore. Each time I am unsure. I don’t know if I can. Each time, I do regain my strength, yet I feel just a bit more tired inside.

Life moves on and each time I am used or feel abandoned, it leaves pieces of my love ripped from me. It changes me. It molds me differently. I become more silent inside of myself, where acceptance leaves me in a state of constant observation and a feeling of not really wanting to connect with most things human, outside of children who havent learned to be cruel yet.

It makes me feel distant and shut down into myself, to continue accepting this solitary path, away from the victim blaming and the sick minds who can attack us with our own traumas, to be the silent writer in the attic, seen occasionally carrying groceries; isolated from the rest of humanity because humans represent the possibility of loss, and loss has stripped me to bone.

Raped in the Moonlight

I’m in the backseat he’s on top of me. In my mind, I’m screaming no.

But I am sixteen years old and silent.

Groomed by the many hands who have touched me in places non-consenting, I am frozen right here, right now.

It is 1985.

“Just go on a double date with us.” She urges me. “Come on. I don’t wanna go alone!”

My body is already screaming “don’t go”, but I can’t abandon a friend, a habit I’ll carry through life. Something I’ll always pay for in the end when it turns pretend, but here, right now I am willing. I will be there for my friend.

I don’t know him, this date she has pre-arranged. I am stuck sitting in the back seat beside him with my stomach gurgling. He is sandy blonde hair and everything I don’t want touching me, pale skin and pompous sense of southern entitlement.

But she, my friend, has her own agenda. She wants someone along for the ride so she is not alone, and I am quietly wishing I’d stayed home.

I am bitter. I feel used. I don’t know how to refuse until it’s too late.

There’s not much fun to be had in a Tennessee town when the sun goes down, and we head to a back road field, crack open a few beers, smoke dirt weed, and I am praying she doesn’t leave me.

I sense the situation is about to shift to places I will leave my body to avoid the emotional pain of. I am trapped here, fearful and conditioned to comply.

I sit in the back seat of her mother’s station wagon. We have a curfew, and I’m hoping we’ll go back soon. But she starts walking off into the darkness with her love, and I am left with the strange boy hovering over me.

Here is his predictable slide into the back seat.

Feeble attempts to find my voice and say “no”, but I am envisioning death and boys who snap when girls resist and embarrassment that I made a scene, a prude, a drama queen.

I lay listless, head back as he does his business. My eyes become focused on the moon. She is shining clear and bright through the back window. She is almost full, and I call to her in my mind.

“How could this be my life?”

She watches as if I don’t matter. I am abandoned by her silence so I go mindless.

He is saying things he finds sensual, stupid questions boys ask when they’re in their primal, questions that make them feel worth, like my confirmation would relieve any guilt of his theft.

I will carry secrets of violations, fearing for my reputation, a girl so naive I can’t formulate ways to avoid threatening situations.

It will become a pasty mix of shame and self blame, raped beneath the moon, counting grey patches on her surface letting the minutes hazily float by.

He tries to hold my hand on the way back. As if taking from me warrants temporary ownership. No. That piece of chipped heart is buried in the place where the wheels were parked, sunk into the ruts in the country mud.

And I am just an invisible woman in a young girl’s body hoping my star family will find me and help me return to my home, hidden behind the moon.