It's super interesting that LSD one-shotted your trauma so effectively. People make such bold claims about how transformative LSD is that it's easy to be dismissive of them, but obviously in your case it did exactly what all the hippies say it does.
Can I ask about how your siblings / other kids in the community turned out? It'd be interesting to see how this affects different people. Does it actually churn out some percentage of god-fearing Christian adults, as it's presumably supposed to do?
I have two younger sisters, who went through a lot, but after I left home at 17 and cut off all contact with my parents, my parents eased up a bit and let them go to public school. They're both limited contact with my dad, and both are pretty mad about our childhood.
I'm not really in contact with anyone from that life (except one! she's in the childhood photo with me and is cool and a hippie photographer), but I think their outcomes don't look that different from non-extremist childhood outcomes. They're either conservatively religious (I think one of the boys in that photo now works in ministry and is employed at a church) or chilled-out religious.
This happened to my ex-wife, except with (Psilocybe) shrooms. We tripped together, she sobbed the entire time, and came out of it with about 10% of the shyness & depression, and 1.5x the self-esteem (note: numbers may have some small margin of error).
I, on the other hand—though, like Aella (& like my ex-wife! boy, she was great), I embraced tripping (as I embrace all drugs) whole-heartedly: we must have tripped on shrooms, LSD, or (a few) more exotic chemicals, for about two to four times a month over ~one year—got pretty much nothin' out of any of it, as far as deep personality changes or personal revelations or the like. It was just fun.
None of my friends feel the same way, though—it seems to be, usually, cited as "transformative" & so on. Maybe I just don't have a soul.*
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*Ex-wife¹ said something to me, once, along the lines of "oh, of course you didn't 'get' anything from it, Kvel—I feel like you must have been exactly the person you are now even as a baby; possibly, before birth & back to the dawn of time too... you're 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴, well, yourself; you don't change, at all, ever—for better or for worse."
I feel like that's pretty true, I guess—though she was kind to say "better": I say EX-wife because "worse" is, probably, the more accurate. I suppose I have a few regrets in life—who has time to count 'em, anyway—but it is only the one selfish, stupid, terrible mistake that still causes me to awaken with twinned runnels of salt-water decorating my face.²
My parents also used GKGW. I think it was recommended as part of the ATI/IBLP homeschooling program that we used.
Much of what you wrote rhymes with my own experiences growing up in that environment. It put a few more things in context for me and it’s nice to not feel as alone.
Have you changed your beliefs about offering comforting platitudes to other victims of trauma since your previous posts about this? Not calling you out as a hypocrite or something like that, just curious as I'd just read your other post before seeing this.
Heavy agree; me and my siblings were raised through a similar curriculum offshoot heavily inspired by GKGW (with much of the gkgw paraphernalia still left around our old house), and so much of the experience, down to the specific wording used, matches up with my memory of the experience. It's so rare to see other people that have come out the other side, and though it feels awful to know other people have gone through the same, it is definitely some level of therapeutic to feel less alone in the experience.
Do you also see it as somewhat understandable/inevitable given the context that your parents were operating in?
For myself, I definitely see how it happened and if anything I pity parent for the experiences that led to it and am glad that it didn’t totally derail my life.
I'm not sure if inevitable is necessarily how I'd describe it, but I'd say my thoughts on are somewhat similar; I can see exactly how they (parents) got there, and can understand that pretty much everything was done out of some misguided "love", because they genuinely believed this was the best thing they could do for us. I don't necessarily pity them, and think it could have been avoided if they had put any amount of thought into the broader context of this type of child-rearing, but I don't see it as malicious so I think I'd agree with the characterization of it being understandable.
My parents used it too. It's really sad now to hear about things like my twin sister and I being malnourished because the GKGW recommended breastfeeding schedule didn't account for twins.
I barely made it through the first half of that article. I have never read anything that made me more angry than that. I never wanted to kick the shit out of anyone more than your father. That is really fascinating though. I always took huge pride in my agency, still do. More than anything. My ability to rebel. But I can now see that, actually, under the right circumstances, that would have been me too. The difference is I would have killed the man years later when you found out, and that wouldn't have been ideal at all. I don't know if it was difficult for you to share that, but fair play to you.
Dude first off, so sorry all that happened. Terrible. But also glad you have found healing.
My midwestern parents also did that curriculum in the mid 90s. We had a leather whacker. They took what I now see as strangely-authoritarian positions towards their kids. Their punishment was capricious and driven by their moods; it taught performance and nothing else. I didn't have it as bad as you but we had hints.
Looking back, the separationist homeschooling didn't beat my spirit. Deep down I knew they were just a bunch of loser adults trying to out-fundie each other. I'm thankful that my own culture wasn't smart or consistent enough to do any real damage to me, but others around me had it worse.
I have four kids now and stay at home with them, they are/will be part of the local schools, and I hope to give them a loving upbringing.
Would read your book when it comes out. Thank you for writing this. It validated the 10 years I spent in my early 20s in an evangelical megachurch in Singapore. Not quite as bad, but I can see how the abusive child-rearing had similar characteristics to what I went through then.
You will be an amazing mom. I hope your quest for finding a great husband and having multiple kids will be successful. We need more weirdos in this world. I'm rooting for you from the sidelines :D
As someone already opposed to traditionalist Christianity, I have to say, the experience you relate here is even worse than my prior prejudices about it. I have to wonder how much of it is rooted in universal human tendencies and how much in the specific evil of the culture of the white South and its diaspora.
And as a generally libertarian person, and a parent who in general wants more latitude for parents to make their own choices, I must also say that parents who try and raise their kids this way should definitely have those kids taken away from them by state force.
This hurt me to read. I understand it was a long time ago, and you’ve healed since (enough to be able to write about it in the tone of this piece), but it still breaks my heart a little and I want to send warm, comforting hugs your way.
It's super interesting that LSD one-shotted your trauma so effectively. People make such bold claims about how transformative LSD is that it's easy to be dismissive of them, but obviously in your case it did exactly what all the hippies say it does.
Can I ask about how your siblings / other kids in the community turned out? It'd be interesting to see how this affects different people. Does it actually churn out some percentage of god-fearing Christian adults, as it's presumably supposed to do?
I have two younger sisters, who went through a lot, but after I left home at 17 and cut off all contact with my parents, my parents eased up a bit and let them go to public school. They're both limited contact with my dad, and both are pretty mad about our childhood.
I'm not really in contact with anyone from that life (except one! she's in the childhood photo with me and is cool and a hippie photographer), but I think their outcomes don't look that different from non-extremist childhood outcomes. They're either conservatively religious (I think one of the boys in that photo now works in ministry and is employed at a church) or chilled-out religious.
Are you the only one that's atheist?
Technically, it was 40-shotted.
This happened to my ex-wife, except with (Psilocybe) shrooms. We tripped together, she sobbed the entire time, and came out of it with about 10% of the shyness & depression, and 1.5x the self-esteem (note: numbers may have some small margin of error).
I, on the other hand—though, like Aella (& like my ex-wife! boy, she was great), I embraced tripping (as I embrace all drugs) whole-heartedly: we must have tripped on shrooms, LSD, or (a few) more exotic chemicals, for about two to four times a month over ~one year—got pretty much nothin' out of any of it, as far as deep personality changes or personal revelations or the like. It was just fun.
None of my friends feel the same way, though—it seems to be, usually, cited as "transformative" & so on. Maybe I just don't have a soul.*
-------------
*Ex-wife¹ said something to me, once, along the lines of "oh, of course you didn't 'get' anything from it, Kvel—I feel like you must have been exactly the person you are now even as a baby; possibly, before birth & back to the dawn of time too... you're 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴, well, yourself; you don't change, at all, ever—for better or for worse."
I feel like that's pretty true, I guess—though she was kind to say "better": I say EX-wife because "worse" is, probably, the more accurate. I suppose I have a few regrets in life—who has time to count 'em, anyway—but it is only the one selfish, stupid, terrible mistake that still causes me to awaken with twinned runnels of salt-water decorating my face.²
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¹ (𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘩, 𝘐 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸, 𝘐 𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘵. 𝘢𝘩, 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦 & 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯. 𝘰𝘳... some 𝘰𝘧 𝘶𝘴 𝘥𝘰.)
² (𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘶𝘱 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘢 𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 & 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘦, 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘴𝘰, 𝘴𝘰 𝘨𝘭𝘢𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘢 𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮? 𝘐𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵. 𝘏𝘢 𝘩𝘢! 𝘐𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘫𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦–)
For what it's worth, I know exactly what you mean. A few moments of blissful wakefulness, until my memory and knowledge boots up.
Thanks for posting that.
This was super interesting to read (and also made me want to go upstairs to give my baby a hug)
Thank you for writing this!
My parents also used GKGW. I think it was recommended as part of the ATI/IBLP homeschooling program that we used.
Much of what you wrote rhymes with my own experiences growing up in that environment. It put a few more things in context for me and it’s nice to not feel as alone.
I'm sorry :( It's rare to find GKGW kids
Have you changed your beliefs about offering comforting platitudes to other victims of trauma since your previous posts about this? Not calling you out as a hypocrite or something like that, just curious as I'd just read your other post before seeing this.
Heavy agree; me and my siblings were raised through a similar curriculum offshoot heavily inspired by GKGW (with much of the gkgw paraphernalia still left around our old house), and so much of the experience, down to the specific wording used, matches up with my memory of the experience. It's so rare to see other people that have come out the other side, and though it feels awful to know other people have gone through the same, it is definitely some level of therapeutic to feel less alone in the experience.
How do you view your experience in retrospect?
Do you also see it as somewhat understandable/inevitable given the context that your parents were operating in?
For myself, I definitely see how it happened and if anything I pity parent for the experiences that led to it and am glad that it didn’t totally derail my life.
I'm not sure if inevitable is necessarily how I'd describe it, but I'd say my thoughts on are somewhat similar; I can see exactly how they (parents) got there, and can understand that pretty much everything was done out of some misguided "love", because they genuinely believed this was the best thing they could do for us. I don't necessarily pity them, and think it could have been avoided if they had put any amount of thought into the broader context of this type of child-rearing, but I don't see it as malicious so I think I'd agree with the characterization of it being understandable.
My parents used it too. It's really sad now to hear about things like my twin sister and I being malnourished because the GKGW recommended breastfeeding schedule didn't account for twins.
For fuck's sake, I'm sorry that happened to you.
Fascinating. Your attitude toward this is a real accomplishment. I'm happy you made it through.
I wanna say something and I'm not sure what. I'm not sure you need my empathy, but you have it anyway.
You're a model for human resilience and that really is something to celebrate
I barely made it through the first half of that article. I have never read anything that made me more angry than that. I never wanted to kick the shit out of anyone more than your father. That is really fascinating though. I always took huge pride in my agency, still do. More than anything. My ability to rebel. But I can now see that, actually, under the right circumstances, that would have been me too. The difference is I would have killed the man years later when you found out, and that wouldn't have been ideal at all. I don't know if it was difficult for you to share that, but fair play to you.
David, you and I had the same reaction. “I would have killed the man years later.”
The very last words his ears would have ever heard would have been “twelve times”.
There is simply no excuse or amount of rationalizing that an adult can use for treating a child like what the OP described here.
Ironically, the kind of righteous anger that might make one braid a whip and go into the holy place being desecrated and flip some tables.
Dude first off, so sorry all that happened. Terrible. But also glad you have found healing.
My midwestern parents also did that curriculum in the mid 90s. We had a leather whacker. They took what I now see as strangely-authoritarian positions towards their kids. Their punishment was capricious and driven by their moods; it taught performance and nothing else. I didn't have it as bad as you but we had hints.
Looking back, the separationist homeschooling didn't beat my spirit. Deep down I knew they were just a bunch of loser adults trying to out-fundie each other. I'm thankful that my own culture wasn't smart or consistent enough to do any real damage to me, but others around me had it worse.
I have four kids now and stay at home with them, they are/will be part of the local schools, and I hope to give them a loving upbringing.
Holy shit what a story. Keep up the writing!
Would read your book when it comes out. Thank you for writing this. It validated the 10 years I spent in my early 20s in an evangelical megachurch in Singapore. Not quite as bad, but I can see how the abusive child-rearing had similar characteristics to what I went through then.
You will be an amazing mom. I hope your quest for finding a great husband and having multiple kids will be successful. We need more weirdos in this world. I'm rooting for you from the sidelines :D
i think you should kill your parents
Killing is going a bit far. They did produce Aella, after all. I think twelve lashes would be appropriate, though, for the dad.
How about your siblings?
How did they fare vis-a-vis trauma and their future life?
curious about this as well
from being on twitter and such i know that she's cool with at least one sister and she seemed similar to aella in openness etc
Wow. Thank you for sharing this.
As someone already opposed to traditionalist Christianity, I have to say, the experience you relate here is even worse than my prior prejudices about it. I have to wonder how much of it is rooted in universal human tendencies and how much in the specific evil of the culture of the white South and its diaspora.
And as a generally libertarian person, and a parent who in general wants more latitude for parents to make their own choices, I must also say that parents who try and raise their kids this way should definitely have those kids taken away from them by state force.
This hurt me to read. I understand it was a long time ago, and you’ve healed since (enough to be able to write about it in the tone of this piece), but it still breaks my heart a little and I want to send warm, comforting hugs your way.
You expressed my sentiment better than I could have.
I knew you were strong and weird, but this. You’re amazing and I’m happy our paths crossed.
I don’t think I have the right words to say, only a giant massive hug. ♥️