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In Reply to: Re: interesting post on Moving On posted by Jules on September 09, 2004 at 18:13:54:
Namaste. You are an incredibly wise wommon.
Your final paragraph hits on something I was trying to get at in my original response to Banshee. Exfam is a space where it should be safe for FGs to work on their recovery from an FG perspective. It's OK for us to be clueless (to a point) as long as there's a commitment to moving on--as WE define our own experience of moving on.
I've been pondering this generational thing from a more global perspective since Banshee's post. Yes, there are very definitely FG & SG perspectives based in Family cult experience. But beyond that, there are generational divisions that are true to historical cohorts. The Family may have been an incredibly abusive and bizaare environment, but it was also situation within a larger social environment that defined generational differences--despite the fiction that Family members were "separate and apart" from worldy Systemites.
My own adult children (Aaron & Jeremiah, aka, Jay) were not raised in TF. I doubt they would characterize themselves as abused, even though I feel a fair amount of guilt about the ignorant, dumbass things I did raising them. Regardless, I believe they would find a more common perspective with Family-raised SGs than with me or with anyone else of my generation. The world they grew up in was radically different than the world I grew up in. The world they grew up in was the same world that Family-raised SGs grew up in, even though it differed on a micro level. There is a generational cohort bond that is shared at a macro level. If you grew up in the US, Ronnie Reagan was The Man.
I think it is a fairly common experience to look at the follies & failures of the previous generation and shake your head in wonderment and dismay--until you reach a certain age. Now that I am entering middle-to-early-old-age, I have a much different perspective on the failings of my parents and their generation than I had during my youth and early adulthood. For one thing, I am painfully aware of how my own generation hasn't done a whole lot better--and probably has done worse--in advancing the rights of children and the humane treatment other vulnerable groups. Whether we lived as Family or Systemites, Boomers don't have alot to brag about. Our parents, at the very least, survived the Great Depression and defeated Hitler. The worst our parents (your grandparents) gave us in the way of religious extremism was--? Maybe the Jehovah Witnesses or various pentecostals? It took the Boomers to bring about Krishnas, COGs, Moonies, Jonestown, Waco, and UFO suicide cults. (Some people attribute this generational religious eccentricity to the alignment of Uranus & Neptune in the 1950s.)
Something I learned from working with kids who were abused during their early childhood is that they usually grew up to be "normal" adolescents. They did all the normal developmental stuff that other (non-abused) teens did, but with a certain edge or perverse twist. I think this is true at every stage of development (even advanced aging) for people who grew up abused. A lot of stuff we go through is really very normal, but there is always a distinct edge to how we go through developmental changes.
It is not my intention to normalize abuse or the criminal aspects of life in the Family. I just think there are some aspects of human experience that are bigger than the microcosm in which we are raised, and I would put generational differences in that category.
