Quote:
Originally Posted by GuestM
This was the biggest issue for me; experiencing growing up being taught that you are not important, that you are only meant as a side attachment for some man (and if single, basically a chaste nun), and there is really only one way you're supposed to be. A strong woman is seen as rebellious and trying to "be a man."
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This made me cry, mostly about how complicit I was in the system. I had a set of "sister skirts" set aside for meetings. I practiced my "prophesying" so I could best come across as a good sister. I looked down on the women who didn't play the game to win and sat there calmly or sullenly. I was not an ally. How do I go about asking forgiveness now?
There was one sister who stood up for me when there was a couple who was trying to set me up (in marriage, I suppose) with a young brother and she stood up and told them to leave me alone. Frighteningly, I was probably brain-washed enough to have just agreed, without her intervention. I also remember one time a leading brother asked the sisters to head to the kitchen and the brothers to stack the chairs and she looked at me with a twinkle in her eye, and said, "let's stack chairs!". I love her dearly for that. I heard she and her husband are no longer with the LCs and are reviled for being a bad influence on the college students. Oooh - a sister stacking chairs. The wickedness of my college days.
When I asked my mother what she most regretted about her time (decades and decades) in the LCs, she surprised me by saying that she regretted the way she let her husband treat her, as "just a sister". Following the LC culture, and reinforced by her husband who wanted to be a "good brother", she shrank away until she barely existed. They made it through (and out) and now happily married (they were married before, in the LCs, but I'm not sure their marriage then was characterized by happiness but more by religious compliance).
I did see a Christian therapist to try to work through some of all this, but he seemed really hesitant to speak out against what I saw as abusive religious practices. Does anyone have recommendations?