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In Reply to: Re: Reframing Family-think posted by exer on December 08, 2003 at 16:12:59:
When I am posting regarding "recruited" versus "joined" I am speaking from a healing and a therapeutic perspective as I see it. This is not about telling anyone else how they should see things. I had not considered the recruited thing vs. joined until it came up in conversation and I had a discussion about it. It made perfect sense to me. I did not join a sex-cult that believed in pedophilia, I did not experience being in the family when the combos, etc happened. But I can understand how some were still in even when it went completely against their grain. I have never advocated shirking personal responsibility in the sense that if there was someone you or I or anybody of any "G" hurt while in the family, DIRECTLY, then it is therapeutic to take responsibility without justification. In order to be able to do that, the person taking responsibility will most likely have to have support and therapeutic intervention to deal with the whole damage wreaked by the Family experience to them personally. I don't see it as healing to say to an SG that, for example, when one of my kids was taken to another country at a very early age, and was ripped away from me screaming, that I was a " stupid" or "negligent" mother who cared more about the family than about my own children. Nothing could be further from the truth. If I said that I was stupid, ignorant, didn't care enough, I would validate the hurt feelings the SG's have which are NOT what most FGs ever felt! That is simply NOT THE TRUTH. I think most all of us had huge helpings of humiliation and condemnation and confession and being dealt with, abused, assaulted, etc. in the family. I don't consider it denial or pride or ignorance to say where does the blame game end? What does it accomplish really to be so torn about who is to blame amongst EXERS who ALL came out of the same pit? (With varying experiences, but still the same pit.) Every human being(with rare exception) has an internal something that says this feels/is wrong. IN the family we were taught that these feelings or conscience was evil and of the devil when it interfered with weird and destructive family doctrines. Regarding Maria, she was always at the top with special privileges and with a direct relation to Berg where she saw the real deal. She was a big part of it from the get go. She knew the opportunistic nature of Berg from the beginning and fit right in. This is because with some FG or any G for that matter there is, in a minority, a sociopathic nature. Just as there are people who were true pedophiles in the family, and others (the majority) that abhored the idea. I would like to hear from ANY fg that consider themselves to have been hippy that sought out the sex-crazed family to join. When I was a teen in the late sixties and early 70's, there were NO "hippies" that I knew that approved of pedophilia. Or beating kids. Perhaps what will help more is for people to forget what they feel they should write, and write what actually was going on when they joined. Not what seems to be politically correct. What were they thinking, feeling,hearing? What was the presentation of the Family at that time? Where were they at in their lives at the time? Dialogue like this could build bridges and healing, imo. For any that want to try it out.
