When I Left the Cult I Was Raised In, I Learned What a Family Could Be

I come from a family that values rocks. We collected them, categorized them, called them by their geologic names. We owned lapidary slabs and tools. Our family was like the rock: solid, heavy, held by gravity and by the Field.

Bloom where you are planted. Don’t stray from the pack. The stone which the builders refused is become the cornerstone.

At the Field, I was sandwiched between two biological sisters, close enough in age that there were no hand-me-downs between us. We all wore the same clothes, ate the same food, and competed for the same resources, until each of us clawed our way out of poverty and the quiet cycle of disposability into which we were born.

Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe
Forward into battle, see his banner go.

God ordained our dominion over the fish and fowl, over all the beasts that walk the earth—including our primal selves, cast out of Eden long ago. We were at constant war against our flesh: managing our weight through daily weigh-ins; resisting cold, heat, fatigue; valiantly overcoming the desire for affection, comfort, and security.

At chapel, we displayed a mannequin, which we dressed in layers of military garb.

Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil.

We ceremoniously placed the helmet of salvation on the wooden head, the breastplate of righteousness on the planked trunk, the sword of the spirit into the rigid fingers of one hand, the shield of faith to quench the fiery darts of the wicked in the other. In this we wrestled not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers of the darkness of the world; against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Hell’s foundations quiver at the shout of praise
Brothers, lift your voices, loud your anthems raise

We girded ourselves with Truth, to withstand the temptations of pleasure. No one defiled their bodies with tobacco, liquor, or other harmful substances. We had white-glove tests and timed endurance runs, hiked in the snow and rain with loaded backpacks, tackled family KP and Police Call at the command of a whistle.

Let this faith of mine be tried, for the Lord is on my side
I am ready, I am ready, I am ready—you can pass the cross to me

The first rule: Don’t call it a cult. The second rule: Don’t leave. The third rule: Don’t identify the cult by name. The fourth rule: Never tell anyone where you come from.

*

My family of origin created the Field from a desiccated basin of river rocks.

Women at the Field watch each other like hawks, distant and circling, anticipating the faintest movement. Our women keep their hearts stashed in dark corners. If you catch a glimpse of love and dare to speak of it, we close a door, disguised as a smile—because there is no truth beauty cannot hide.

The first rule: Don’t call it a cult. The second rule: Don’t leave.

My mother says the Amish are too liberal. She defends this position by pointing to their policy of permissiveness: Apparently, they allow their youth to sow wild seeds of rebellion, turning a blind eye when they drive cars or taste liquor or lose their virginity, so they will know what they are giving up when they join their faith community as adults, not yearn for what they never had.

“It doesn’t matter what they tell those kids,” she argues. “When you do stuff like that, it never leaves you.”

My mother was born to and raised by the Field’s founder, who never let her, or any of his flock, do stuff like that. She and my father stayed with him while she birthed and raised us, so I never did stuff like that, either. At least, not until long after I was married with children.

When I decided to leave the world I knew and move into a college dorm at seventeen, the adult women from the Field sat in a circle and offered injunctions. Around the circle, each woman took a turn telling me I was making a mistake and what the consequences would be. If I left the Field, I would shame my family. I wouldn’t be let back onto the property. If I made my bed, I would have to lay in it. I would be a bad influence on young girls still there, proof that pride goeth before a fall. The women wore flowered dresses, and I felt lost in their foliage.

My biological sister, one year older than me, was part of the circle. “Who do you think you are?” she asked. “Do you think you can keep from sinning without our support? Do you think you are so strong you can lead a godly life without this group? Who do you think you are?”

Around the circle, each woman told me I was making a mistake. If I left the Field, I would shame my family. 

We were taught that God spared those who were humble; that he could turn off his wrath, as he had when he spared Nineveh. In the absence of God, there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth. As a child, when I couldn’t find my siblings or caregivers, I was certain the trumpet had sounded—Jesus had come back to claim his true believers—and I had been left behind, too sinful to hear the call.

When I left the Field, I couldn’t find my footing. When I left, I wanted to become a pillar of salt, but I didn’t know how to stay put. When I left, I couldn’t stop dreaming of flying. For years, I couldn’t feel the ground beneath me, couldn’t stop running. I couldn’t sit still long enough to eat a meal, watch a movie, or fall asleep in anyone’s lap.

When I left, I found that it’s possible to drown in both intimacy and anonymity. Not missing anyone was the closest I could imagine to freedom.

None of us, not even my biological sisters, can spend time with each other now without hyperventilating. When we do, we remind each other of something we've worked tirelessly to forget. We resist getting sucked back into that vortex.

In my dreams of the Field, I am always lost.

*

To fund a spiritual retreat for the Field’s members, my mother gave nature talks in the mountains north of the Field, eventually propelling us into a syncline they called the Devil’s Punchbowl. The canyon and its surrounding rock formations along the San Andreas Fault covered over a thousand acres of recently purchased public land. The basin itself is three hundred feet deep at the vista point. After particularly harsh winters, when the hollow rock bowls were filled with the snow’s run-off, my sisters and I would compete with each other by jumping off the highest rock we could, plunging into the depths below.

When my mother isn’t teaching teenagers to survive in the wilderness, she wears flowered dresses, nylons, and pumps. She summons the Lord’s army, applies for grants to support her late father’s calling, and transitions seamlessly between nepotistic autocracy and feigned subordination. She’s adept at everything I’ve seen her try, except mothering.

She’s the reason my sisters and I take damage like a rock. Hurled from slingshots, piled high, or painted as pets, we make an art of being unbreakable. The gaps in my mother’s ability to nurture and protect us left holes like hungry mouths in our skin.

My mother is adept at everything I’ve seen her try, except mothering.

When I was seven, a caregiver inserted his body into my childhood. My mother said it wasn’t personal. Men have needs. I was just the one who was there. In my family, we don’t talk about the collusion of ideas about sex, violence, and God, but it permeates the air like a virus.

Silence is conspiracy, just as it is consent. The female body can be taught to hate itself.

My biological family is trapped in a mobius strip of their own making; we swirl in an ecosystem of unmet needs, a drama in which we are all collateral damage. Our mother’s unwritten rules move like grooves along the riverbed of our neural pathways.

That didn’t happen.
And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
And if it was, that’s not a big deal.
And if it is, that’s not my fault.
And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.

*

We call the people we come from family. Before we form our own memories, our family fills in the gaps, tells us where we come from, who we are. These origin stories create a powerful narrative.

But stories can be rewritten.

There is a story in which hunger and satiation merge, and family is more than a word; I feel small in this story, but safe, wrapped in good fortune as if in wool. Shared blood isn’t the only way to make a family, I’ve learned. There are rocks, and there is the water that flows around them, softening their edges. There is gravity, and then there is buoyancy.

Bill joined the Field in 1956, a seven-year-old boy who followed my grandfather like a first violin follows a conductor. Although their relationship didn’t survive, Bill came back as an adult and donated his daughters, an apparent apology. Jenna, the oldest, was ten when we collided. We bonded over our love for the night sky, sneaking out to wander the hills, speculating whether the world might not be ending after all.

Jenna left the Field two years after I did, and enrolled in the college I went to. We graduated two years apart. We both married and had children young; became public educators, community yoga teachers, confidantes. Jenna is my children’s godmother. She reminds me that I didn’t choose where I come from. She treats our relationship as fragile, rare. I went to her mother’s seventieth birthday party last week, and the house was full of women who are her family—now they are mine, too.

Shared blood isn’t the only way to make a family, I’ve learned.

At twenty-five, with a freshly-minted MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia, Angela entered our department as a tenure-track assistant professor. I was scheduled for an upcoming writing workshop with Dave Eggers at 826 Valencia in San Francisco. I had funding, and she had a background in community building, so I invited her. She said yes. After the workshop, we walked across the street to Dave’s office to talk about the nature of truth and memory. Then we walked four miles to a restaurant and shared a meal. Strolling through the dark streets to our hotel, strangers asked us if we were sisters. When we got back to our hotel room, I asked her about her marriage. She told me her truth.

Angela lets me borrow books she just finished the night before. She shows me drafts of her stories before she submits them. She gifts me chocolate and bath bombs for my birthday, and cooks for me in her kitchen, laughing raucously, without inhibition.

Early in my career, Vicki—a tall, pregnant bouffant blonde—walked into my community college poetry class. Homegrown on Southern charm and Christian virtue, she dripped sweetness so thick I nearly slipped in it. By the end of the semester, I was holding and burping her newborn so she could focus on her finals.

Years later, when she became a professor herself, Vicki was the first Outsider I took to the physical space surrounding the Field. Afterward, we went for a drink at a local bar. I’m neurotically averse to conflict, so when she began arguing loudly with the bartender, I hid in the bathroom. Eventually, she knocked on the door and said, “Sorry ’bout that. My sister and I have unfinished business, but today’s not the day to finish it. Let’s bounce.” We went to a coffee shop and swapped stories over butter and boysenberry syrup. I asked her if she needed another sister, and she said yes.

I mentor Vicki, and she mothers me with Southern comfort. When I was nervous about an overseas flight, she drove two hours to my house to hand me her husband’s prescription bottle of Klonopin. We hugged tightly, without words, like women drowning.

*

I heard from a mutual friend that my younger sister and her daughter recently visited California, where I live. She didn’t mention they were coming, and they were gone before I knew they were here. This isn’t unusual in our family. Where I come from, there’s a lot we don’t talk about.

Silence can be compliance. It can also be resistance.

Spending an entire childhood preparing for the Apocalypse exacted a price on my ability to trust, particularly in the concept of family. Whenever I hear Christians sing the lyrics, deep and wide, deep and wide, there’s a fountain flowing deep and wide, I still envision the rippling water in the basin of the Devil’s Punchbowl, and the copious, tumbling, transparent waterfalls that flow into it. The stark colors of the sun on the rock formations radiate and swirl and dominate the landscape, so that nothing else has ever been as rich or robust or permeating, and nothing I have encountered since runs that deep.

I still take damage like a rock. But there are rocks, and there is the water that flows around them, softening their edges. My biological family and I are no longer in touch. But my chosen family of sisters have found a way to swim this river sideways with me, skirting the edge of transparency. They know I can’t trust a raft, so they don’t ask me to climb aboard. They climb into the water with me, and we move where the river takes us, because sometimes buoyancy is stronger than gravity.

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