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In Reply to: Moving On posted by Jules on December 12, 2002 at 00:14:17:
Jules, reading what you wrote just knocked me over. To hear this kind of pain coming from someone born into the family is very difficult for all of us.
In 1984, I was kicked out of India by the government but my husband wasn't. He kept my two oldest children and I moved to Thailand and never saw them again. In 1994 and 1995 these two teenagers came to me in the US long after I left the F. John came at age 14 as a result of being kicked out of the family in 94, and Sapphire followed him from Switzerland at age 19 in 1995.
It took years for me and Sapphire to connect because it took years for me to be able to bear what she had been through. But one night, years after she came to us, I was finally able to bear it and I cried and cried and cried and cried. The full weight of all the misery our decisions had caused her was finally able to sit with me and I was finally able to handle it. And once I did, she got very close to me.
She still doesn't come over frequently, but I think it's more because she knows she's moving soon to the other side of the country and she doesn't want to get too close because she doesn't want the goodbyes to be as hard as last time when she was 8. But the emotional distance between us is all gone.
Even now when she comes over, this deep pain just grips my heart when I look at her and I am flooded with emotions - guilt, sadness, anger, but mostly just this sense of ineffable, enormous loss that she never experienced any childhood. It happens every single time I see her and I frequently cry the entire time she's here. She's 26 now, by the way.
Her father left the cult in 1997 and came to live in the U.S. We're in Georgia, he moved to Vermont to be near his brother. Until just last month she hated him with a perfect hatred and he was so indignant. But all she remembers is how he allowed her to be molested when she was VERY young by an Indian, he never took her to a doctor for her psoriasis, he frequently had sex not three feet from where she was supposed to be "taking a nap" right in broad daylight, and lied to her that I had walked out of her life and never tried to communicate with her. He cannot and will not acknowledge that these things hurt her and I know it is because it is simply too painful. He can't go there yet. He can't face the fact that he wasted 26 years of his life and destroyed his child. He's just in denial.
And until he begs her forgiveness, Sapphire will hate him, although I have to say she appears to be softening towards him in spite of the fact that he shows no remorse. Maybe she's just realized that hating him so much is wearing her out, I don't know.
But I guess I want you and others to know how hard it was for me to be willing to bear her pain and see it and accept the truth of it. I hope and pray that your parents come to that place where they beg your forgiveness and are able to face what they refuse to face now. I am so sorry you have been so hurt. I wish I could comfort you. Much love, Kathy
