 Posted Wednesday, November 29, 2006 8:29 AM
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I write this after spending several hours online looking for ex-CS support groups, and not finding any actual groups that meet, I at last landed on this discussion board which has lead me to tears of joy in the painful similarities between everyone else's stories and my own. I realize now that I'm not crazy, and more importantly, not alone!
My mother discovered Christian Science when she was pregnant with me, in 1972, so although an older half-sister, aunt, uncle, and two cousins were later brought into the religion, I was the only one actually born into it. After reading many of the posts here, I can see now how different it is for those of us who have never known another way of thinking as opposed to those who discovered it later - it really does warp your young, developing brain in ways that I'm still not entirely aware of. My mother wrote for the Monitor for many years, both my parents have worked on and off at the church center in Boston. I attended Sunday School, the Wednesday night testimony meetings, and the summer camps. When I was about twelve my mother and I went to visit a CS boarding school I was interested in attending, but soon discovered it was full of disturbed and delinquent kids, so I demurred. I read the lesson "religiously", was never innoculated, and finally went to a doctor at the age of 28 at my friends' insistence to check out a large rash on my neck which turned out to be skin cancer. I had been convinced it was just "irritation" because of something negative in my thought, and assumed if I removed the bad thought the rash would go away. In the end I had to have it removed surgically which left me with a huge scar. It never would have been life threatening, but I certainly kick myself now for having let it fester for two years while pretending it wasn't there.
My exodus from the church began fairly early. Always a flag-waving, "good Christian Scientist", I often alienated my little friends by debating their religious beliefs for hours and trying to convince them not to see doctors anymore. I remember writing "the spiritual revolution is coming" on all the desks at school, and mouthing the Lord's Prayer to myself in the middle of our health class to keep the evil physical concepts from getting into my brain. Looking back now I am deeply ashamed of all of this. They all must have thought I was nuts. Maybe I was. But even in the midst of my fantaticism, I couldn't get around certain facts. Christian Science constantly stresses the unreality of sin, disease, and death. In fact, the unreality of everything, as someone put it, "unpleasant". And yet, we still had to get up every day and deal with the real world, no matter how "unreal" it was. We still had to find solutions to problems, deal with personalities, and heal illnesses. And as far back as I can remember, Christian Science never offered any actual healing. I was sick constantly as a child - nothing serious, but a lot of vomiting and odd behaviors that I now know to be OCD and other anxiety-related disorders that were not well understood in the 70s and 80s. I consider myself extremely lucky to never have been stricken with a serious illness, otherwise I'm sure I wouldn't be here today.
The worst of all of this was my poor misguided mother's attempt at balancing the cold, clinical approach of CS with the normal nurturing instincts of a mother. The two simply do not go together. My entire childhood consisted of constant guilt that I wasn't "knowing the truth" enough, that I wasn't "getting it", and that somehow every bad thing that happened to me was my fault. When I went to my mother for simple comfort, she would simply tell me whatever I was going through wasn't real and to go pray. I see now that my mother is the classic child of an alcoholic, and this religion, with its illusion of control and perfect escape hatch for people who don't know how to be loving and nurturing, was for her the perfect fit, which is why, 35 years later, she is still a firm believer. It gave her the perfect excuse to think her life was perfectly under control when it wasn't, and the perfect reason to be cold, unloving, and unsympathetic to any of my childhood (or adulthood) problems. The egotism of the Christian Scientist is beyond bounds. We think we have it all figured out, that we're better than all other religions because we can actually HEAL like Jesus did (although I've seen zero evidence of this), that we have the power to control everything that happens to us, even down to the weather and random acts of violence. And yet, bad things would happen from time to time, and I never could figure out how to explain this. Once our apartment was broken into, and my mother and I immediately denied it and refused to admit it had happened. But we still had to go out and replace everything that was stolen, and live with the horrible sense of fear and violation that crime brings. We could pretend it didn't happen all we wanted, but it did.
At 12 I refused to attend Sunday School anymore; at 20 I stopped going to church and stopped reading the lesson. But it would be years before I would dare take a pill or seek proper help - I remember having to call in sick to work three days out of every month due to agonizing menstrual cramps; I finally broke down and took an Aleve and haven't felt a cramp since. Finally in my late twenties, being removed from my family for several years, and after a series of events (unstoppable panic attacks, and the skin cancer episode), it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn't so much as thought about CS in years, although I still called myself one out of habit. I stopped doing that, and finally came to believe what I believe now - which is that there is no God, no law of Harmony in the universe, no reason for everything. There's just life. This belief has given me enormous freedom, because the pressure is finally off - when bad things happen, it's not my fault - I didn't bring it on myself, nor do I have any ability to make things happen or not happen. They just do. And that's life. For the first time I no longer have episodes of suicidal thought, because I no longer believe in any kind of afterlife, and recognize this is all I get so I'd better make the best of it!
In the midst of all this, though, I couldn't bring myself to tell my mother that I no longer believed. I feared deep down that this would be the end of our relationship, and yesterday this fear came true. I had never challenged her about anything my entire life, and this being her most dearly held belief, I knew would be almost impossible to disagree with and yet continue to be in her life. She has been struggling with various physical and emotional ailments for years (including various anxiety disorders that have plagued the women of our family for generations), never receiving any relief, but always convinced "this time I've got it, this time I'm really getting it, I never really understood CS before but now I do," etc etc etc. Recently I had a number of unfortunate incidents happen in my life, and so as one does, I reached out to her for help. Although it was her habit to just deny my problems and tell me to pray, there was a brief moment where she was actually a normal, nurturing mother (I discovered later this was during a short time when she rejected CS) and so in my mid-30s I had been fooled into believing I could actually go to her for comfort in times of trial. However, she decided to turn back to her old denial-ways, and offended me by telling me I was being "attacked" and that these things were happening to me because I wasn't knowing the truth. Basically, that I brought them on myself. I was forced to tell her I simply didn't believe in things like that any more. She got incredibly defensive, started yelling at me that I was calling her a liar, and I left the conversation. Yesterday after several days of lack of contact she sent me an e-mail requesting I cancel a trip to see her for Christmas (she lives in another country - something people who like to isolate do) because I am so toxic that she feels for her health and well being she can't be around me right now, and that I need help. At this point I realized my mother had done what she always had done - chosen this crazy, irrational religion over her own child. I now know that it is very unlikely I will ever speak to her again or have her in my life in any way. She has succumbed to this thing and I don't see her coming back at this point.
The sadness is overwhelming. I also fear that she may die from this mysterious ailment she's had for years and never sought treatment for, and that if she does die and we are estranged, that I will have to live with this. I consider my mother a victim - a victim of her own terrible, non-nurturing and chaotic childhood, and a victim of the "find yourself" 70s in which CS flourished. She just found the religion that perfectly suited her personality - the illusion of control, the isolation, the endless study and contemplation, the lack of actual human action, the pushing away of loved ones, the inability to nurture or offer comfort or solace. This is my mother. But there is still hope for me. Sound familiar to anyone?
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Posted Wednesday, November 29, 2006 3:58 PM
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| Welcome to the forums! I'm glad you found us, as I know the frustration of dealing with the pain alone. My story is different from yours in many ways , but it still caused a lot of emotional damage that I had to work through. I found communicating with other former CSists to be very helpful, and I hope that we on the forums can be helpful to you. My heart goes out to you. Linda
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Posted Wednesday, November 29, 2006 6:19 PM
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Dear Anon,
Your story does sound very famliar to me. But, unfortunately, that doesn't lessen the pain you must be feeling. One thing I can say to you that may help a bit is that the tough stuff you are going through is, indeed, real. It's not an illusion. It's not something that you can unsee somehow and are meant to demonstrate the unreality of. It's something you must face and walk through. It sounds to me like you already know that intellectually, but perhaps it helps to have someone else confirm it anyways. I have a feeling that your mom won't do that for you.
I could go on and on here telling you the similarities between your story and mine, but that wouldn't do either of us much good and I think you deserve to have someone who will give you something good to hold onto for a change. . . . am I right on that?
One of the hardest parts of leaving Christian Science for me was walking away from my mom. Because it was so difficult, I made the situation worse than it needed to be because my emotions got so stirred up as I went through the process. Does it feel sort of as if someone has turned the light on for you, but she is still living in the dark and you are afraid to leave her there, but at the same time you are afraid to get pulled back into the shadow yourself if you take the wrong step? That's the way I felt.
Christian Science was everything to my mom. It sounds like your mom is the same way. The good news is that it is no longer everything to you (or to me, or to a lot of other people).
Personally, I found myself -- after years away from Christian Science -- turning back to God. But not back to Christian Science. Nothing else but Jesus Christ brought the peace in my life that I needed. One thing my mom did teach me that I believe was right is that only God can heal us within. But, you do not seem as if you believe that at this time. That's fine. Only you know what works for you right now.
The good news I can offer you today is that this site will give you lots of information and lots of different viewpoints from those who have been in a similar spot to the one you find yourself in now. Doesn't that help with the alone-feeling you probably have at this moment? It helped me tons! Just a word of caution though -- please remember that each of us is at a different place in our lives. Some are still Christian Scientists and some have been away from it a very long time and have replaced CS with new beliefs (some good some not so good), while others have just left and are still struggling to find a soft place to land. So, remember to do plenty of sifting to find what helps you. Be asurred that you can learn from both the good and the bad. And, you probably will help others as well!
Another word of good news I can bring is that you are taking steps in the right direction. You are moving forward, not backward, and you are also able to let go of those struggles to always be perfect so that you can be well enough for. . . . . . .well, I'm not sure what we WERE trying to be well enough for now that I look back . . . but anyways, imagine all the new energy you can have now that so much time isn't spent wrestling with yourself all the time!
A final thought is that your mom is not you. She is your mom. A separate person from you. Let your separateness be ok with you. Love the parts of her that you can while you can. (Both of my parents died before I could completely resolve our relationships). But at the same time, love yourself enough to realize that you need to break the thread of Christian Science and unwind yourself from its hold as best you can. Lean on those who can guide you through those knotted tangles that you need more than your own two hands to undo (such as friends, doctors, Christianway, etc.), and don't feel guilty about it. Someday, you will return the favor, I'm sure! You deserve to be free and your mom would be nothing but blessed by seeing you in your freedom-glory from CS during her lifetime! Even if she doesn't acknowledge the blessing of your newly shining self, it will rest upon her, I believe.
I know that it will bless you, and you have already blessed me -- just by sharing today!
Grace
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Posted Thursday, November 30, 2006 5:55 AM
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Thanks, Grace and Linda, so much for your replies. I am struck by the love and support on this board. As so many people have mentioned, I don't remember ever feeling love in the CS church - no love, no fellowship, no comraderie, nothing; none of the normal traits of a religious institution. To me CS churches were a cold, depressing place.
Has anybody had my experience of attending dying churches in the 70s and 80s? The word depressing doesn't even begin to explain it. Although I admit the Mother Church in Boston was usually pretty hopping, when we moved to NYC in '82 my mother and I sprinted from church to church all over the city looking for one that felt good, and never finding it. I remember these huge mausoleums built in the 1880s and 90s, built for thousands but now reduced to just a handful of people all huddled up front, and mostly little old ladies. We called these churches "white elephants". The ones near Central Park would usually have homeless people wandering in and causing a disturbance, with everyone in the congregation just praying they would go away rather than escorting them out (this, to me, is the classic CS response to a human problem that requires simple human action to fix). I was almost always the only child in the Sunday School, or if there were other children, they were usually visiting relatives dragged their against their will who, again, were pretty much only there to cause a disturbance until the session was over and they could leave. I remember the way the church people would look at me as I headed to Sunday School - like I was new blood, so desperately needed. Not to get too dramatic, but they were like vampires.
At 12 I had had enough of Sunday School and wanted to be in the church with the adults where I could just quietly contemplate and not have to talk about it with anyone. There was a well-meaning but very meddling friend of my mothe'rs who was trying to force me back into SS (she was an SS teacher). I remember feeling like I was being rail roaded, and I didn't like it. I went to her Sunday School class just to appease her, but she could tell I was highly agitated. She asked me what was wrong, and I told her, "I just don't feel like it's God's will that I be here today." She asked me then who's will was it, and I said, "yours." I still look back on this incident as my first real moment of rebellion, and the stone started rolling from there.
Despite our admittedly dire church experiences, my mother, sister and I continued to attend various churches in the NYC area until I left the city at 20. I'm not going to say the people were all horrible and it was all depressing, because of course there were moments of real inspiration and revelation that kept me going. But the fact was, I was human, I was a teenager, and for the most part, I was really bored. I always envied people who got to go to churches with a real pastor who would get up there and pant and sweat and deliver this from the heart sermon he'd been working on all week. I wanted the songs, the excitement, the hugging, the holding of hands. I got this once when a group of us CSers attended the First AME church here in LA. It was strilking to see the affirmation of life that goes on in some other churches. There was just something so cold, so humorless in our churches. And here we were just reading these same passages over and over. Half the time my mother, sister and I would look at each other on the way and say to each other, "let's blow off church today," and go see a movie. I don't know about them, but I sure would feel guilty about it later. And I'd be afraid something bad would happen to me because I hadn't gotten my weekly dose of spiritual truth.
My remembrances of the kind of people who attended CS churches at that time were the following: a number of gay men hiding their sexuality in sexless relationships with women that never seemed to go anywhere; a nice family who's baby had died possibly due to lack of medical treatment (can't confirm that - the whole episode was highly shrouded in secrecy) and who had a son with severe speech and learning disorders that were ignored; a lot of very lost entertainment industry type people who had delusional ideas about demonstrating a career; and of course, lots and lots of little old ladies. At this time it seemed every issue of the Journal or Sentinel had at least one article in it about the importance of church membership and participation; my family and I used to make fun of it. It seemed all three of us were so aware of the inherent problems in the way the church, or The Church, was being run, and yet of the three of us I am the only one who has been able to make a permanent break.
As I write I still have an entire shelf of extremely dirty and dusty CS books and bibles in my bedroom. I have the travel case of the lesson books, complete with blue marking chalk pen and number thingees and a Quarterly probably from the early 80s; the paperback S&H full of markings from the several times I read it from cover to cover in jr. high; all the alternative literature that my family and I read in our "questioning the Mother Church" phase, my beat up brown hymnal with all my favorite hymn numbers written in seven-year-old handwriting inside the front cover; A Century of Christian Science Healing; Christ and Christmas with the spooky drawings that scared me when I was a kid (the one of the cross in shadow I still can't look at ), etc etc. As someone else on this board intoned, why do I keep them? In my recent rift with my mother I contemplated throwing them all in the garbage can outside as a symbolic gesture, yet I can't bring myself to. It seems so hateful. And I don't feel hateful about CS - just sad. I do wish it hadn't been in my life, and I do believe what I thought were its positive results (no drugs, no alcohol, staying out of trouble, etc) were probably more of a result of my good moral character and desire to be a good person than any religious teachings.
I guess I consider this religion so much a part of my personal history (as has been mentioned - many of us have an emotional attachment to it from a lifetime of it's being there) that it's hard to let go of the books, even though I know I'll never crack any of them again. But there is a lot of painful history there, too - my entire family's utter failure at offering one another emotional support, affection, understanding, or comfort (and using the religion's teachings as an excuse); the confusion I endured, the occasional physical suffering, the isolation from my peers (since I never once knew anyone even close to my age who was in CS or had even heard of it - most people always thought I was a Scientologist), the constant hiding and fear of being discovered by school workers, authorities, etc; the daily conflict of what I "knew to be true in science" vs. what my five senses were telling me. All of this I believe now has caused a real disconnect in my personality that I feel can probably only be worked out through therapy.
Anyway, I know there's not much of a point to this post, but these are some thoughts I've had reading other's posts, just wanted to share, see if anyone sees any similarities to their own experience. Thanks again for your loving welcome.
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