The first time I heard the story, I knew I was meant to tell it.
The story itself wasn’t all that profound. After spending the greater portion of my childhood in the homeschool organization, The Advanced Training Institute International, or “ATI”, it was fairly obvious that any storyline that began by learning to take instant, unquestioned instructions from authority would end by the protagonist suffering nearly devastating consequences if they failed to submit.
Tale as old as cult.
As he told the story of the dog who loved to chase Frisbees seemingly more than life itself, I realized that the story alone wasn’t what pulled me in. It was the way he would repeat the tagline in order to engage the audience. The inflection in his voice and perfectly timed delivery was able to capture the attention of a room full of hyper children and excite them by the truth that they had the power within to choose to be a better version of themselves.
The story ends by the dog chasing a Frisbee into the road, into the path of a speeding car. Because of the dog’s obedience, he stopped at his authority’s command and lived. We all saw that coming. That story didn’t teach me blind obedience. In fact, it was the beginning of my journey to overcome the person the cult was trying to make me. That story taught me that it was possible to ignite an emotional connection with a stranger in a way that empowers them to strive for more. It’s not always the story, but the way it’s told.
I spent countless hours practicing that, and the dozens of other stories I had heard during ATI’s conferences. Homeschoolers tend to have a limited audience, but my mirror and my dolls thought I was mesmerizing. I thought I would be in ATI forever, and my dream was to be that storyteller for the “Children’s Institute” (CI) on the conferences’ traveling team. My parents were extremely supportive of that dream. They spent money they didn’t have in order to send me to as many conferences as possible, in as many states as possible. When I was 14 I was able to move from student to “teacher” for the CI. One could not be part of the traveling team without having led a small team, and I was finally one step closer to my dream!
I taught for several years, at dozens of CIs, always being assigned the role of Assistant teacher, never Leader, which greatly hindered my shot at rising to my obvious potential (not sarcastic). Most moved to Leader after a few rounds, some skipped right to it. Which was the first warning sign, seeing as boys could lead after standing around shooting hoops while I was busy trying to jump through all of theirs and got nowhere. When I insisted this must be an oversight, I was always told “God told us you need to be an empty vessel before you can lead”. That’s ATI for “Stop speaking up to the boys when you disagree with their rhemas during wisdom search”. (Rhema: An opinion or insight drawn from a less than straightforward source. Wisdom Search: Super intense, required Bible study)
During every conference I made it a point to talk with the storyteller. To ask for advice, learn their habits, and see how I could improve. I was also getting pulled aside by the song leader in order to pray about my flirtatious attitude. It took me years to relate one with the other. At my final conference I asked the storyteller exactly what I had to do to get on the traveling team. He said “they” discover most of the team during apprenticeships at “Character First!” – ATI’s public school version of the Children’s Institute. I had to go.
I spent a semester in Oklahoma at the “most lenient” of the ATI training centers in order to have full immersion into the life that the storyteller would lead. I was locked in my room with a guard outside my door while I read my Bible enough to “tame my spirit”. They told me I was too prideful (spoiler alert: I realized later that’s called “self-worth” and I refused to let it go). I got lice. I gained fifty pounds. I had my tampons confiscated to save my virginity. I got dropped in a lake onto a rock, and lost my phone, only to have the incident blamed on my untamed spirit. Through it all, I fought to tell the stories. In three months of hell, I told one story to a school assembly. One.
Because the storyteller had an emergency and none of the other girls wanted to do it.
At the end of the semester we had to sit with the directors for evaluation to see if they all agreed on the path to which we felt God was calling us. I knew I was born to tell stories. To inspire people to get up and do a task they never thought possible. To push myself with all that I had, in order to pour all of that energy into empowering others to change their own world, despite their surroundings.
And then they crushed me.
I was a girl. Not ONCE in more than half of my lifetime spent on that dream did it occur to me that the storyteller was always a man. It truly never crossed my mind that I had never seen a woman tell a story. The woman always taught and led the songs. The only gender-neutral team member was the piano player. I didn’t play the piano. I didn’t want to teach songs, nor did anyone want to hear me sing. They had seen me jump in and flawlessly take over that assembly at a moment’s notice. They knew how hard I had worked to get there. But none of that mattered.
The storyteller was a representation of a pastor, of a spiritual leader, and women were not capable of filling that role.
On the flight home I sat straight up, so as not to spread my lice to the next person to fill my seat, staring out over the clouds, over the rainbows, whisper-singing my “mission” song as I wept over my shattered dream.
From that moment I knew I needed a bigger dream, one that didn’t require the permission of someone else.
I knew I had to get out. I had to change everything I thought I could envision myself becoming. I had to be the storyteller, and if I couldn’t be theirs, I needed to be my own.
The myth about cults is that you can escape them. You can leave, but the deep-rooted lies within your very being are something to overcome daily, sometimes when you least expect it. You never know when you will learn that all this time you could have been so much more. You are never prepared for the threat of expulsion from class after you genuinely believed the answer on your A&P exam was “Because God made it that way”. You can’t fathom going back but you have no idea where to go next. You can make people intrigued and extremely uncomfortable in the same sentence yet have no social baseline to know when to stop. You cannot escape a cult. But you can overcome it.
Through years of therapy, support, blogging, reading, crying, and fighting, I’ve found the story I was meant to tell. Just as I learned from the moment my dream began, I needed to find the way to tell the story. The story wasn’t about the design of the Frisbees, and mine isn’t about a specific religion. The story wasn’t about the master who threw the Frisbees, just as my story isn’t about my parents embracing what they thought I would love even though it almost killed me.
I’ve overcome anger, heartbreak, bitterness, rage, misogyny, oppression, abuse, social immaturity, inexperience, and lack of education. I could have used any of those gripping obstacles as the power behind my words. But I decided to tell you in the way I was told about the dog who chased Frisbees; knowing that you have the ability to decide your own fate, and that faith does not abound because of cults, but in spite of them.