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In Reply to: Re: Interesting Gen-X article posted by Jo on September 19, 2006 at 00:17:37:
My kids have read some letters I wrote to my parents when I was in TF. "You sounded like Ned Flanders on acid," was their initial impression. It's difficult for them to separate the hippie from the Jesus freak.
My kids have tried to understand my messed up relationship with their father for many years. I was partnered with him when we left COG. We decided to get legally married in the RC church, and my parents decided not to attend my wedding. The kids had a hard time understanding why their maternal grandparents aren't in any pictures from that event and didn't seem to care for their father.
In recent years, they've had trouble understanding why I would marry someone I didn't love and stay with him for 22 years; or even why I would partner and have children as young as I was at the time.
Neither of us were financially prepared to support two children. The poverty thing also affected them, and it's only been recently that they've understood why their parents were so much behind the earning curve as they were growing up. They tend to attribute the poverty to their parents being hippies. I'm still prone to talk about the pitfalls of materialism with my kids and urge them to seek higher principles on which to base their lives. Nevertheless, I always respect their choices.
My kids never experienced TFI directly; the impact on them was from the indirect consequences of having parents who started out in the group. I've started talking to them more about this part of my history because I wanted to answer their question about why I would have children with a man I wasn't in love with at the time. Or why I would be devoutly religious for 20-some years of their lives and then appear to have no religion at all.
Even though my children weren't directly affected by COG brain-washing, I subjected them to a different sort of excessive religio-cultural indoctrination, which was to have them grow up in a devout Catholic family living in a close-knit rural community that was 99.99% Roman Catholic. If I had it to do over again...I wouldn't have been such a religious nut case.
But I made my choices--particularly my decision to make such a strong affiliation with the RC Church--because I wanted to stay married and give my children the benefit of a two-parent family. After my children were young adults on their own, I left my husband and the RC Church. I regret walking away from the RC church, but I sometimes feel guilty about leaving my husband because of the negative impact the break-up on my children. Now they understand that I wasn't happy with their father and accept my decision to make another life, but there were some rough years when I was blamed for everything that went wrong in our family.
They're happy I'm not overtly religious any more. Both my sons believe in God & Jesus, but they aren't affiliated with any church or religious groups and have a strong dislike for evangelical Christians, based on the ones they met in college.
I sent copies of the article to my kids--no comments yet, but I imagine they'll have something funny to say.
