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ToniHi All:
My friend wrote the following essay. It only touches on "our issues," but I think he did a good job over all. Much rings true for me (raised in a group) and my now-grown children (born and partially raised), with much family still involved. Keep learning! You can integrate and have successful lifes!
FYI: Article "Adult Children of Cult Members"
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tmfree.blogspot.com]
toni
Hi Toni
That is a knockout article. In fact, after talking with a friend whose also a 2nd Gen, and also a psychologist, I'd come to the conclusion that my "betrayal trauma" idea does not fit. She specialises in PTSD. She says that trauma has to be pretty sudden. Growing up in a bubble, and then finding out it's not as it seems, doesn't qualify.
I've run through these 24 "challenges". I like the way he lists both strengths and weaknesses that they give rise to. All of them resonate. I can see some that I've transcended, some that I struggle with still, and yet others that have been the (positive) pillars of my life.
Thank you for that.
It reminds me too of one of my favourite books, Bernard Glassman Roshi's Instructions to the Cook. It's a contemporary interpretation of a 1200-year-old Buddhist text, a text which is at the same time the literal instruction of a Zen abbot to the cook of the monastery, and at the same time a metaphor for living.
Basically, it says that the task of life is to take all of the ingredients given to you—ALL of them, throwing out none, and without pining for ingredients that you don't have—and to make them into as sumptious a meal as possible, for as many people as possible.
I can see many, many benefits that come from the way that I was raised, no matter how mis-guided much of it now seems. Good things have flowed not because the Subud ideology is good, but because nourishing food can found growing in smelly manure. (I think here of the Buddhist symbol of the lotus, growing in the stagnant pond.)
My current path really is to make that sumptious feast. And I have to say that for myself, so far, much is integrated, and much is successful. But I still find this inbuilt fearfulness, and inbuilt anger, and worry: and I'm on the hunt to track it down, and turn it into something good.
Thanks for the lead.
:-)