Thread by @mcjulie

I'm working on Book 4 & just typed something that made my own emotions go all kablooey, Abby's POV:
"When I think of it now, I’m tempted to tell it differently: to say I left because Father Wisdom was evil, because I wanted to get away from him.

"But that wasn’t the story I told myself at the time. And maybe I couldn’t. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to face the real story yet. It’s really hard to leave a cult you were raised in, but later on it seems ridiculous that it was so hard."

When I typed that last sentence I had a breakdown moment where I couldn't do anything other than sob for a while.

But I'm trying to bring myself out of it, so I'm trying to kick my analytical mind into gear & realizing something about the evangelical faith, me, and my parents.

I was raised in a cult. I left a cult. It took me FOREVER to realize it, and I had to start writing a series about a werewolf girl who left a much more obvious cult in order to clue myself in.

Like, I'm probably not the only fiction writer that sort of thing has happened to. I only had the "oh my God I think I'm bisexual" realization after writing a whole BUNCH of fiction where the protagonists were always bi.

But I think, weirdly, my parents WEREN'T in a cult. Even though we were going to the same churches! And that's at least part of why it took me so long to realize I was raised in a cult. Because --

As this article makes fairly clear, the cultishness of evangelical churches was frequently not coming from the pulpit directly. sojo.net/magazine/june-…

Which means there's a certain "oh my God this is a cult" red flags that just never trigger, because the cult figure ISN'T the guy standing up there preaching at you.

Anyway, I stand by this:
"It’s really hard to leave a cult you were raised in, but later on it seems ridiculous that it was so hard."