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In Reply to: Re: Deconstructing our lives posted by Hmmm on August 01, 2003 at 20:42:44:
I don't think she ever tithed to The Family when we were living together. I met her in the summer of 1979. After the summer, she went back into The Family, and came back pregnant with her second child around the end of that same year. She and the kids moved in with me around the end of 1980. I know I have a Christmas video of us all living together (with my roommate and his girlfriend) in a small house.
I do remember in detail the conversation we had. She told me that she had decided to leave The Family. I was aware that The Family was a cult, and I was kind of surprised, and didn't know what kind of form her leaving would take. I wondered if a bunch of figures with hoods and robes would circle the house with torches and start chanting. Seriously, I was all of about 21 years old at the time. The bulk of my life experience came from watching TV.
She told me that she would just stop sending in her tithe and report each month, and they would stop sending her the mailings, and she would be out.
I was surprised that this was all there was to leaving a cult. And, at that time I actually believed that's all it involved. 23 years later, I know that the psychological side of it can take a lifetime.
