I’ve been hesitant to write about how triggering quarantine is, just as I become hesitant to write portions of my book because I feel like I don’t have the right to complain when I have it so much better than many people suffering right now. The way I see it though, is that my story is glitter. I spend a lot of time being stressed out about pollution, and one of the steps I took was that I don’t let my kids use any glitter. I’ve been laughed at a bunch for that because in the grand scheme of things, glitter barely matters. Fine. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t damaging. It’s just not as damaging as a lot of other things. Glitter being harmful to the earth is still 100% valid, just like being angry about being deprived of a sufficient education and social interaction is valid. I’m finally at a point where I am able to acknowledge that events are triggering yet still be able to triage those feelings when a problem bigger than glitter needs my attention.
This pandemic is something none of us have experienced before and I don’t think any of us truly know how to navigate what’s next. It’s scary. But it’s a new version of scary. I’ve thought I was going to die before. Other than two attempts to do so by my own hand, I’ve had a few rough instances at work, and an abusive relationship where I’ve talked my throat out of a knife more than once. None of those times really lasted long enough to scare me though. This is the first time I’ve really been concerned that any one of us could die long before our time. I’m not panicking, but I’m not taking any of this lightly. So many of us have life goals, or a “bucket list” full of things meant for “someday”. But our somedays are being threatened at an increasing rate of speed. So I took a break from sewing masks as fast as I can and finished writing my will. Dreamy Eyes and I had spent a very long time discussing who we would want to raise our girls should the need arise, so that part was much less emotional since I’d already gone through that grief process of choosing other parents for my kids, and now I just needed to type in their names. Honestly, they would make fabulous parents and I spend a lot of my time trying to be as good of a mom as they will have if it ever isn’t me. Thinking about ever parting with my girls is too much to comprehend, so I’m skipping anymore of that for right now. I listed all of the things I want people to do with my body (obviously strip it for parts and science, then dispose of the rest in the cheapest, most eco-friendly way possible). Then I got to the small details. I had to decide who would get my book if I’m not done. Never before today had I thought of what would happen if I wasn’t the one who got to publish my book. That is the thought that keeps me awake at night. I can’t be a better mom when my girls are asleep, but I can write. So I decided to see if I could write a summary of my whole book in one chapter; this chapter.
“ I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” -2 Timothy 4:7
I feel like there is no better way to sum up my entire story in one verse. I didn’t intend to base my story off a verse, but half asleep one night, writing chapters in my head as usual, I suddenly remembered this verse. People from my past say “It’s because of us building your foundation that you still have faith”. I always tell them, my faith is not because of them, it’s in spite of them. No true, loving believer would have done the things to me that were done in that cult. I spent nine years studying Wisdom Booklets- our homeschool curriculum, courtesy of Bill Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute (ATI). Nine years engrossed in lies and hatred, and although I am constantly replacing fiction for fact, I finished my course. I have a document that my parents made in Microsoft Word to show for it. I still struggle with being in a church setting, but I’ve been able to find my way through the oppression of religion and discovered my own way to keep the faith. Yes, I’m imagining the troll from Frozen saying “I take the magic, but I leave the fun”.
My childhood didn’t start out in a cult. Actually, my parents didn’t know what homeschooling was when I was born. My mother had spent her life wanting a child, and once I showed up, the separation anxiety kicked in and she tried to figure out if she would be the bus driver or the room mom; really anything so as not to have to spend a large portion of the day without me.
When my mom was in college she wanted to move out of my grandparents’ house and she went to her childhood pastor for guidance. That pastor and wife told my mother that no matter what, my grandfather was her God-given authority, and abusive alcoholic or not, she belonged under his roof until she was married and under the authority of her husband. That week they invited her to join them at Bill Gothard’s “Basic Seminar”, produced by his organization: The Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP). And that was it. That was the pivotal point in my mother’s life that would shape the course of mine.
ATI was founded in the ‘80’s by Bill Gothard, but my mother didn’t discover it until a few years into her tactic of pretending to call the school bus to pick me up and take me away if I misbehaved. I thought school was a punishment and homeschool was for the good parents who obeyed God. We had a few homeschool friends, but when we started homeschooling we were going to a church where most kids went to public school. Then they bought a drum set, so we left and headed for a church founded, and pastored by one of ATI’s pilot families. My parents wanted in, and quickly began a Spiritual cleanse of our house in order to meet the requirements for acceptance. Anything that was considered an “appearance of evil” had to go. Women couldn’t have pants, skirts above mid-shin, anything sleeveless, fitted to curves, or necklines that were more than three finger widths below our clavicle. We were allowed two hours of TV a week, and any media involving magic, sensual ideas, foul language, dating, dancing, drinking, it was all banned. I feel Footloose on an emotional level.
ATI insists on a strict diet, which in and of itself was fairly healthy. Outside of wine, I actually follow a more strict diet than ATI had (for the most part), but that is for personal health and environmental choices. We could eat all types of meat, but we couldn’t have meat from a mammal within a 2 hour swing of having dairy. I’m all about a plant based diet, but not when it’s controlled by an organization who wouldn’t continue to provide your school curriculum if any of your family members had poop that floated (medically, this is telling of how much fat is in your diet, and ideally, doctors prefer not floating). This was not merely an honor system part of the application. When I was a teenager and went to one ATI’s “training centers”, the staff would actually check and we would be placed under stricter diets and sugar bans if we failed the inspection.
It’s a lot easier to join a cult than you’d think. Although maybe now that most of you have watched “Tiger King”, you may understand a little bit more about the powerful allure of a desired lifestyle. My mother comes from a long geneology of people who grew up in a world where incest and molestation were something that happened to everyone. When I point out that this isn’t normal behavior she’ll tell me: “You’re just one of the lucky ones who didn’t have it happen as a kid”. When my mother first attended Bill’s “Basic Seminar”, produced by “The Institute in Basic Life Principles” (IBLP), she was presented with the idea that rock music was responsible for all of the trauma she had experienced, and she was promised a way to assure that she would be protected. Bill has a very soft, hypnotic voice. Much like that of the mall Santa in “A Christmas Story”. You’re fed desires as you nod along, being told that all you’ve ever really wanted was a football. I don’t resent my mother for getting sucked into a cult. I am annoyed at how long she stayed after seeing the light, but after a LOT of therapy and longing to fit in somewhere, anywhere, I kind of get it. You just want someone to tell you that things won’t be as bad as the nightmare you’ve grown to know, and you follow the first one to make that promise, no matter the cost.
Being in ATI meant attending a week-long conference in Knoxville, TN each June. (There was also one in San Jose, but anyone who was anyone went to Knoxville). It was a week of lunches catered by Chick-fil-a (yep, cults are big fans of that company), and training sessions from dawn ‘til after dark. They intentionally create an exhaustive schedule because people are more open to receiving the messages when they are too mentally drained to question authority. There was very little time spent on actually training the parents to use the curriculum each year. It was mostly discipline tactics and cult validation. I remember sobbing each year over how exhausted I was, but idolizing my time in Knoxville as the one week a year that I’d be with my friends. On the last day I would always be incredibly depressed, heading home with a notebook full of the addresses of my newest penpals, and sketches I’d secretly drawn during the eternal lectures on how to make Jesus your boyfriend (Nope. That’s not hyperbole). I’d always come home on a Spiritual high, ready to distance myself from the worldly humans, so secularly beneath me.
Heading back home for another year of social isolation quickly dimmed any spiritual flame that had been fueled in Knoxville. Daily life felt purposeless. I’ve always been extremely driven and I love having schedules and goals. Not to brag, but I think I was a pretty easy kid to homeschool. I would become extremely frustrated by the lack of structure that I had compared to my friends who went to school. I longed for normalcy. Maybe it was an attempt to control something instead of dealing with my reality (My therapist says this is my “managers” working, when I thrive on being busy). I set up a little area in my room with a desk and a white board and planned out 180 days of school, and how many things I’d need to do each week to stay on track. I loved learning, and still do, which is convenient when I discover the endless topics I’ve had to relearn as an adult. When I was 12 I read the full set of medical encyclopedias because the Wisdom Booklets and whatever instructions I could sneak a look at in the tampon aisle weren’t cutting it.
We were very careful not to go out in public during school hours so that people wouldn’t question why I wasn’t in school. All of the homeschool families I knew were terrified of child protection services (CPS). Homeschooling was, and is (even pre-pandemic) legal, but in many states it’s required that children still test at state standards, which would mean that the parents were no longer 100% in control of their child’s education. Looking back, many of my friends and I wish that the state had been involved. Homeschooling can be beneficial in the right situation, or a pandemic, but having to meet state standards would have meant that we wouldn’t have had to piece together our parents’ evaluations of us in order to make something look enough like grades to satisfy the appeals department of colleges. Some of my friends even had to hire professionals to go through their lifetime of ATI material in order to see if they could find a way to present transcripts that would at least equal some high school. We would go to the state capitol fairly often in order to protest bills that would mandate standard testing for homeschoolers. Each time before heading up there, you could count on a phone-chain of moms advising each other not to wear their denim jumpers (every ATI mom’s go-to) because we don’t want to look like a cult. I’m pretty sure that the House figured it out anyway.
“Homeschool Heather” was created when I was a teenager and we left the all ATI church after my father had a fight with the pastor (I thought he’d thrown a chair at the pastor, but my mother fact-checked me. The chair wasn’t thrown at that pastor). We found a new church that seemed to have their beliefs right on point with those of my father. Even with a mix of public, private, and homeschooled kids there, I was the most extreme. The other girls made a comic strip about “Homeschool Heather” that I hear lasted several months. I never saw the comic, but they eventually told me about it once I convinced them that I wasn’t Amish.
ATI does not encourage students to pursue a college education, although they did create their own college (not accredited) in order to get degrees into the hands of those who wanted them. Before ATI had its own college, they partnered with a Bible college in the South that had agreed to accept IBLP seminar attendance as credits. I remember being excited at the time that it happened because I’d be one step closer to checking off the boxes of a normal life experience. ATI has “training centers” scattered throughout the country where “young people”, usually 17-late 20’s, are sent to serve in their ministry of “choice”. There is a search and rescue training center that I longed to go to, seeing as I was already an EMT, but rescuing is for males only. They told me I could sign up for the female equivalent: CNA training, but I got out of that the best way I knew how: “God wasn’t calling me to that field”. I’d always wanted to be the storyteller on the traveling team for the Childrens’ Institute, which was the kids’ version of of IBLP’s seminars. Spending a semester in Oklahoma City (OKC) seemed like the best way to get myself on the traveling team and to earn some college credits at the same time, so at 17, I headed to “the most lenient of the training centers”.
The first week wasn’t bad. There was a large group of us with a pretty even mix of male and female, and everyone was pretty excited to get to know each other while we were trained on the CF! mission. The girls’ rooms were all on the 8th floor and the boys on the 3rd. They put the girls’ floor higher so that the boys would never have the excuse to pass that floor on the stairs or elevator. Only the maintenance guy was allowed and he had to be escorted by two women. We each had one roommate assigned to us who was meant to “strengthen our dependence on God”, meaning that they put people together who would most likely not get along. They put me, the fundamental Baptist with a strict Calvinist. If you’re not familiar with the doctrine; these two oppose each other. I spent most of that week in the common areas on the 1st floor with the first rebel I could find. He had zip-off cargo pants which meant that he came ready to push the boundaries of the rules. Bill does warn that if you put a large group together, the rebels will find each other immediately. Everything else seemed pretty on point for what I’d known about ATI, and I was having a great time, outside of being with my pre-destined roommate. Cargo Pants was leaving after a week, but since I was the coolest girl he’d ever met in a cult, we arranged a time and rendezvoused in the stairwell on the 2nd floor for a quick full-hug (none of that half-hug bullshit that you get to experience when you’re betrothed). I was left with the core CF! Team and the “OKC Training Center Family”, who lived in the building and lurked in dark corners to assure that no one experienced any worldly joy. In order to save money on tuition we were able to earn our keep by doing chores. This seemed like a decent deal until I learned that there weren’t set hours or limits. The Family could come get you at any time, day or night, and you had to complete the assigned chore or pay the full tuition. There was no way my family could have afforded that, they spent more than they had in order to send me there in the first place. The only loophole was that The Family couldn’t pull you for chores if you were in the dining room -eating. Every day there were two seating times for each meal. In order to get away from The Family I ate six times a day, and had the biggest helpings that I was allowed. I gained 50 pounds in those 3 months. There was a small snack room where we could buy candy and iced frappuccinos, but as a punishment for my gluttony, The Family closed down the room for two weeks. No one was allowed to have snacks because of me, and The Family made sure everyone knew it.
Every two weeks we would get to go on a trip to Wal-mart. We would pile into the giant van, with the rule that females may only sit next to other females, unless they sat next to their brother. You would think we would have all just sat in the same spots, but no, every time we went somewhere, we had to do a new seat algorithm. I loved our trips to Wal-mart, where I’d get to shop with my two friends and pretend that we were going to buy printed tees that would draw attention away from our countenance. On one of the trips a leader found tampons in my cart that I’d hidden under a sweater. I didn’t get to buy them, and when we got back I was locked in my room for a “Heart Check” with bread, water, my Bible, and a leader outside my door to make sure I didn’t sneak out when I was supposed to be thinking about why I would self-sabotage my undefiled marriage bed with a cotton ball on a string. Since I was no longer considered a virgin, I also lost my privilege of vacuuming the 3rd floor. After all, you know how those menstruating temptresses can get with a vacuum.
Every morning in the public schools they sing their State song: “Oklahoma!”. I bought myself a heart check for knowing all the lyrics from such a worldly musical prior to my first day.
After enduring three months of full immersion into cult life so that I could fulfill my dream of being the storyteller, I was told on the last day by The Family that I would never be on the traveling team, because the storyteller is symbolic of a pastor, and as the spiritual leader of the group, the role would never be filled by a woman.
I came home devastated, with a lice infestation, and one skirt that barely buttoned. I went back to my job at the local hospital and slowly integrated myself into the world of EMS. I owe much of my cult overcoming to the people who walked me through my Kimmy Schmidt realizations, often during 911 calls. One night we responded when PD called us for a “man down” on the side of the road. The man was lethargic, and as I tried to talk to him, the police told me “Looks like he had too much Wild Turkey”. It wasn’t until I was giving a confident report to the hospital on the effects of tryptophan that my partner handed me the empty bottle of bourbon and insisted on reviewing that chart.
Even with my love of EMS and some contraband textbooks from my fellow candy stripers I wasn’t ready to walk away from the cult life just yet. I wanted to be a missionary, but I was a woman so I’d have to marry one. The best way to get your MRS. degree is to go where the Preacher Boys are: Bible college. I’d been out to Hyles Anderson for youth conferences and the annual “Pastor’s School”, which was a 3 day conference open to anyone. They had cute enough guys out there, so I convinced my parents that God was calling me to enroll. Not all classes are open to both males and females, as I found out when I tried to major in Missions. But the boys weren’t allowed to major in Marriage and Motherhood, so...got ‘em? My friend at the time (who created and later told me about the comic) also enrolled and we requested to be roommates so that we wouldn’t get stuck with someone super holy. In order to pay tuition I would have to get a job out there. I thought that things couldn’t be going better than they were when I found the Ambulance corp. next door to campus! When the admissions staff asked my plans for work I told them I’d applied as an EMT. They told me that EMT was not one of the approved jobs for female students. The college had a partnership with a few companies and women could choose from secretarial work, childcare staff, or telemarketer. The men had different and more options, including EMT. I tried to appeal my request but I was denied because even if I only worked with a female partner, I’d still have to wear pants for a uniform, and that was against their policy for a female to wear pants, ever.
Dropping out a month before my friend and I were about to start was one of the most difficult choices I’ve ever had to make. Until then I had a comfortable balance of my two worlds; the future preacher’s wife in me was safe, and kept my family happy, and the EMT in me knew there was potential in the forbidden. I rescinded my application and fought my way out of gaslit phone conversations with the administration. I told my friend, and then she withdrew about a week later. Her parents were pissed at me. Our Pastor was pissed. I got cornered by the visiting pastor’s wife who had been told that my friend and I had withdrawn. She told me that I was throwing away all of my blessings and opening my heart to satan by choosing a man’s job over my Godly design as a wife. I got several phone calls from the school blaming me for any ill that may come upon my friend, who would never have backslid if not for my rejection of God’s will and new “feminist ideals” (read: employment equality). I would be guilty for any blessings I may have stolen from her. Between the vociferous disappointment of the congregation and later learning of the cover-up of sexual assaults, I walked away from all of it and started medic school.
At 20 years old I entered the first, and only course I’ve ever taken in an actual classroom. That’s when it hit me that I didn’t get to walk away from the world I’d known and be done with it. I had to relearn most of what I’d known to be true. The instructor thought that A&P would be a fairly easy topic until he taught me that there are particles smaller than an atom, and the whole class had to wait for me to catch up with a lifetime of science lessons. I had understanding instructors who didn’t expel me, but knew that I was 100% serious when I wrote “Because God made it that way” as the answers on my tests. I eventually graduated AND got the job that everyone said I would never be able to handle, including my teenage crush who also worked there.
I married my teenage crush when I was 24. We had a dog, fantastic jobs, and were 2 weeks away from moving into a new house. We talked about how perfect things were over dinner at my favorite restaurant, and by the time we got back home he had told me that he wanted to leave. We didn’t talk for two weeks, other than when a patient’s life required it. I knew it was dangerous to be alone, so I showed up at Dreamy Eye’s apartment with a suitcase and asked him to let me stay on his couch until I didn’t want to die anymore. He let me in and made sure I had a constant supply of Netflix and junk food. He’s the one you want by your side if you’re facing the most difficult time of your life (unless you’re in labor. In that case, find anyone else). I think that’s what’s going to make him a fabulous ER doctor. He’s the one you want when your world is crashing and you need to hand over all responsibility to someone else. He’s able to remove all emotion and focus on the practical, which is what I needed more than anything in that moment when emotion was all I could see.
Breaking the news to my family was the worst. My Gramma wanted to “String him up by his balls”, and my father was angry that I would now be an “Adulterous Harlot”. Even though I’d forsaken all others, and I wasn’t the one leaving, it didn’t matter. If I had been married and my first husband had divorced me but not yet died, that met Adulterous Harlot qualifications. Many of the members from the church I’d left called to pray over me and warn me that now more than ever, I’d need to guard my heart. My heart was not the part they should have been focused on guarding. For the first time in my life I was free of relationships and other people deciding what I did with my body. And I loved it.
I was tired of having to stifle who I was because of a partner who was embarrassed by me. I love to hear the stories of people I just met. I have to tell as many people as I can that there are worlds of hidden abuse right next door. A few years ago one of my supervisors* was suspended for sexually harassing every female under 30 except me. Slightly in doubt of my physical worth, I asked him “Why didn’t you ever bother me?”. He responded “I knew you would talk”. He was right, and that was one of the most valuable things anyone has said to me. I. Would. Talk. I always wanted to be the one to tell the stories, I just didn’t know the story would be mine; even though I’ve been writing it since I was seven and discovered diaries. I’ve always been an extrovert, but I’m not great at expressing my thoughts mid-conversation. It makes me visibly shake when I voice my stance against someone (usually a man, but not exclusively) who I once respected. But after living a life of having to remain silent or ask my male authority to present my case for me, the shaking has become a welcomed norm.
It wasn’t until I began turning my book into a reality that I knew I had even more to overcome than just not being in a cult. I thought everything was fine, but as I looked at my story and thought about the blurb on the back cover about the author I could only picture it saying “Heather lives in the Midwest with her twin daughters and her reluctant husband who didn’t believe in this book. She wishes that politicians didn’t mirror the monsters she’d known as a child. She hopes that one day she will fully overcome the realm of emotional and Spiritual oppression she’s faced her entire life, and will be able to provide more answers in her sequel”. Over and over again I keep finding out that those who I saw as protectors are actually the ones holding me back. It shatters me a little bit every time I find out that those I once saw as a refuge now play a large role in the evil that exists around us. I wondered ‘how the hell am I writing a book about overcoming personal oppression while actively in the midst of it?’ And that’s when I knew I had to change my narrative. I’m not writing a book about the past, I’m in the middle of a “choose my own adventure” story and it’s up to me to pick which path the protagonist follows. Would you insist that your best friend borrow my book if I chose the path I knew I could navigate?
*Not at the company where I am currently employed.