my UN testimony

[NZexCK]

I was born into the Lords Recovery in New Zealand and grew up in it during the 90’s/2000’s. I won’t say which city as I still wish to remain anonymous for now and NZ is a very small place. I’m sure some people will still figure out who I am anyway and if you do, I ask that you respect my wish to remain anonymous.

First of all I will say that I don’t mean any disrespect to the average community saint. I genuinely believe that the majority of them are lovely people with good intentions at heart. However I think they have been rather misguided in their beliefs and practices and like everyone at some stage during their lives, encounter periods of vulnerability that leave one susceptible to being taken advantage of. Whether this be childhood trauma of their own, a relationship breakdown, illness or moving to a new place. At the end of the day what humans want is a sense of belonging, community, and sometimes the comfort that comes with believing that just maybe this religion/person/product/formula is the answer to all of life’s questions who’s answers you’ve been searching for. I can empathise with the feeling of relief that could come from resigning all of life’s hard tasks over to someone or something that tells you that they know better than you, that they have found the magic formula. Especially if life has beaten you down again and again. I imagine that this must have been the case for many of the parents of us church kids. The LR probably even looked like a haven to raise a family in for some.

As a church kid, I do have many great memories but they are all from times when zero spirituality was required. The times before and after meetings, the weekend sleepovers with my friends, the allotted free time during trainings and summer school. On the flip side from a pretty young age (my guess is somewhere between 5-10) many things didn’t sit right with me. To borrow their own term, there was no sense of peace (cringe face). I think there is something to be said for children being the best bull**** detectors. Children aren’t able to fully articulate how they feel. They don’t understand the world yet, why adults are the way they are, why they feel the way they feel. They are innocent and dependant. Children rely on a feeling. Maybe you can call it a gut instinct or intuition. All they know is whether or not they feel peaceful about something, someone or a situation. I distinctly remember feeling a pit in my stomach whenever I heard Witness Lee’s name spoken in a certain tone or with a certain reverence, even the frequency with which it seemed to pop up. Also whenever “degraded christianity” was referred to week after week, when WWJD bracelets were criticised, when people having the desire to help save the environment/animals was criticised, I could go on all day. There sure was a lot of criticising going on at each and every meeting in my eyes as a child.

My gut instinct slowly grew quieter and quieter as each year went by, as i was taught not to trust it, to deny the self, to slowly stamp it out. I just didn’t see the vision I guess, I just didn’t know how to exercise my spirit correctly, I just didn’t know the “truth” yet. I entirely believed that one day everything would click for me and fall into place if I just kept going, just followed the formula we were given. I was after all being constantly reminded of how lucky and fortunate I was, we had been handed this great and exclusive truth that no other christians had. Some things just didn’t add up for me though. My extended family in degraded christianity seemed to be better christians than me (and many of those in the recovery), they had better personal relationships with God than I did despite being degraded not having access to the real truth unlike me. The christians I attended school with seemed like decent people. Even the non christians seemed like decent people.

A couple of specific events stand out to me from my adolescence. First, my bible study teacher at a private christian school maintaining direct eye contact with me for an uncomfortably long time whilst describing how to identify a cult (we were learning about JW’s). Secondly, attending church with my cousin for the first time and having my mind blown because I had already heard everything the pastor was saying before and I thought that these christians were degraded and weren’t supposed to know this exclusive stuff. Perhaps the biggest red flag of all, why did I swear that there was absolutely no freaking way that I would ever get married in a meeting hall? Just kidding. Anyway, there were lots of red flags but I still pretty much believed that it would all click/fall into place for me one day. I was well into my 20’s and believed the recovery would be an integral part of my life forever, even though I slowed my attendance once I got my first job at 15, and then only met once every few months after I got married.

And then I became a mother in 2016. I had one year off from work and was able to focus my energy on learning how to be a mum and how to care for a baby. A new level of anxiety and a strong (at times irrational) urge to protect my baby kicked in from the get go, no doubt fuelled by sleep deprivation, raging hormones and feeling utterly underprepared. Suddenly I was faced with the responsibility of taking care of another human being. I had to consider things that I had never considered before. How did I want to raise my child? What kind of life did I want for them? Towards the end of that first year once the hardest months were over, the biggest hurdles crossed, and we were settled into a comfortable routine, one thing became extremely clear to me. There was absolutely no way that I would raise my child in the Lords Recovery, yet I hardly knew why. 



I returned to work on a part time basis and began my journey of deconstruction. This forum was one of the first things I found and I spent weeks and months pouring over just about every thread. It was at this time I happened to stumble upon the early talks of starting a facebook group for ex LC members and I jumped at the chance to join. This eventually split off into a separate group specifically for ex church kids (for reasons reflected in this forum as of late). These facebook groups have been a tremendous help to me throughout the last several years of my deconstruction. I remember when I first joined these groups being quite bewildered by how dramatic these other church kids in the US seemed to be. What? You see a therapist? Wow, I’m glad the NZ experience wasn’t as bad as that. Three years on and I have deconstructed enough to understand how they feel. It has been a rather long and slow but necessary process. There were years of unhealed wounds to work through that I had simply stuck a bandaid on and left to fester. Now I have to rip them off and let them heal.

I am still making connections with how growing up in the LR is affecting me today. Imagine your entire would view forming as a child through the very specific lense that is the LR. The scaffolding of your entire makeup based upon the foundation that is the LR. Just about every connection that your developing brain made done so with the distinct twisted connection of the LR. And then waking up one day and discovering all of the lies, hypocrisy, deception, power play and manipulation that the LR is really about. I had spent my entire life thinking that these adults knew what was best for me, had my best interests at heart and had trusted them. I believed that there must have been something wrong with me, only to realise at age 25 that maybe my gut instinct had been right all along and they were the ones that were wrong.



This first year of deconstruction had a bigger impact on me than I realised at the time. Imagine losing just about everything that makes up your identity/world view and having to start rebuilding from scratch. After one year of returning to work I made the sudden decision to resign. At the time I just felt like I was burning out and put it down to being unable to cope with the work/mum life balance. Two years (and another baby) after leaving my job and I’ve begun to make more connections. In my job I was a young woman working in a very hierarchical (and somewhat patriarchal) environment. I was required on a daily basis to work along side and communicate with many senior medical officers, mostly white or asian males over 50 (who does that resemble?). I began to find myself struggling with constant anxiety having to be in close proximity to them. I would pretty much shut down if required to communicate with them. Talking to them took an extreme amount of energy and effort. I developed anxiety over picking up the phone at work and this lead to anxiety in taking/making phone calls in my own personal life. I had to ask my husband to call and make appointments for me. My personal phone was always on do not disturb. I realise now that this has stemmed from spending meeting after meeting, conference after conference, week after week, year after year of my entire life taking to heart the words of some older, male figure with perceived spiritual authority. They taught me how to ignore my intuition, deny myself and repress my critical thought. I was taught that my voice, and opinions were insignificant and didn’t matter. They told me how I should dress, behave, talk, choose a career, marry, raise children, and basically how I should live my entire life as if they knew what was good for me better than I knew what was good for myself. In fact they only cared for what was good for their own best interests. Maintaining their position of power and spiritual authority. Maintaining the numbers. Maintaining the whole organisation. Maintaining the legacy of Witness Lee.



I know that my experience is not what everyone else experiences. Some people have had much worse experiences than I did and I’m sure some will feel that they have had an overall pleasant experience with the LR and don’t understand what all the fuss is about (much like I did 3+ years ago). Each experience is unique to each individual who is on their own journey at their own pace. I am grateful to be able to be in this position of privilege to even be able to think about my healing from the LR. I am so lucky to have my husband (a fellow ex CK) who has been a constant source of support and strength in my deconstruction and was brought up to have more emotional intelligence than I will ever be blessed with. 



It has been my observation that the CK’s in the generation above me had it much worse. So much so that many wouldn’t even step into a place like this forum to begin with. The LR certainly noticed their mistake and toned it down a notch for those in my age group. I was still damaged, but not damaged to the point of being unable to recover. From what I hear the LR has recognised that their handling of church kids was wrong and have been working on changing their antics. Regardless of this, for me the localities will always be branches of the same tree with the same roots. They will continue to bear rotten church kid fruit for as long as they associate themselves exclusively to the teachings of Witness Lee and LSM. I’m happy to be proven wrong but this is why I still choose not to raise my children in the LR.

I would like to end by saying that I am so grateful for this forum and spaces like the facebook pages. They have enabled me to find my voice again in my own time which is so important in the process of healing and taking back the power. I am so grateful to have found communities of people who’s experiences resonate with me, more than it ever happened whilst I was in the LR.