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In Reply to: Reframing Family-think: I did not "join" the family! posted by jo on December 08, 2003 at 12:16:07:
I can't say that I agree with you. We may habe been recruited, but we also joined. And we could have left at any time -- I'm speaking broadly here, there are many exceptions.
The military actively recruits, but the individual also has to decide to join.
If we highlight the 'recruiting' it implies that we were passive characters, with little or no control over our actions.
What about all the people who were recruited, but didn't join? What about all the people who were recruited, joined, and then left as things got progressively more bizarre?
If we were recruited and joined as teenagers, fine -- maybe initially we did not know what we were getting into. But if we stayed through watershed events as the Davidito book, FFing, Mene series, Victor camps and God knows all the other stuff, then we have to take responsiblity for staying when we KNEW -- from the publications if nothing else, what was going on.
To say that we were recruited implies that everyone still in the group can get off on that excuse as well. Maria was recruited by Berg, she's not responsible.
I recently read a book by Parker Palmer entitled "The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring." One section is titled "The Healing Power of Failure." I found a few excerpts to be relevant to this discussion. He is talking about a story where an angel has failed at a mission.
"Failure is a key to our growth. . . .Failure is life's ballast. . . . It is not failure alone that brings the angel down and moves him towards compassion. It is his willingness to confront, acknowledge, and explore his failure. He could have ignored it altogether. He could have glanced at it and tried to palm it off on someone else,-- on those ungrateful people or on that cruel God. But the angel claims the failure as his own and allows it to hollow out his heart. . . . Learning from failure is not a cool and calculated act, . It tears at the heart and opens us against our will."
"The paradox is that failure may turn to growth. . . . Seldom will we be willing to lose and fail on purpose, confident that our loss will be translated into gain. But even if we do not live this way intentionally, the paradox will happen in our lives. The only question is whether we will recognize and receive the transformation when it comes."
I feel that many of us were victims, but we also need to take varying degrees of responsibility for the harm we caused others, either directly or indirectly. That, in my mind, is the road to healing and growth. To 'confront, acknowledge, and explore' our failure.
Then I think of the SGA's. How does it sound to them if we say we were 'recruited' into the cult and therefore are not really accountable for the horrors that they suffered? Does this help their healing? Not really.
Thousands of children were sexually, physically, and emotionally abused in The Family. Individuals with faces and names did that. Are they not responsible and accountable because they were 'recruited'?
I feel the road to long term healing, both personal and corporate, comes with confronting, acknowledging, and exploring our failures. And paradoxically, if we take that route, it often helps others heal.
I have found that in my interactions with SGAs, when I am painfully honest and forthcoming about my personal failures in the group, acknowledging that I participated in their oppression, they experience a degree of healing as well. It validates that what they experienced was utterly and horribly wrong. Some of them have even encouraged me not to beat up on myself so much!
So I can't buy into the 'recruitment' theory. I joined, others did not. I stayed, others did not. I have to take responsibility for that. Those were choices I made.
