Your story has haunted me from the moment I read it weeks ago.  First, you ought to have a hug. *HUG*  I have been thinking a lot about you since reading your post. I have posted some of my story here in various posts.  Im not a CSer but I married one.  My husband's mother sounds like a miniature version of your mother. Like you, my experiences have turned me right off from any kind of organized religion. Religious zeal will never make its way into my life. To me, one form is very like another. 

CS takes it to yet another level, though, with the torturing and the killing.  I know those terms will put a lot of people off but I came here a few years ago because of a "killing". Telling your kids to "Know the Truth" and then sitting by and watching them limp around on broken legs and ankles is, in fact, torture.  Its torture not only because of allowing the pain to continue, but because of telling the child the pain is not there. Transferring "fault" to the child for having the pain. *sigh*  Its just horrible!!!!  To say they didnt MEAN it as torture is not a good enough excuse...just as labeling it CS is not an excuse either.  We can all recognize pain when we see it, and just denying its reality is not an excuse. Its incredible how a religion can pull a veil over the eyes of a parent. A veil so heavy that the parent can watch their own child suffer and not act to stop it.

Then the killing...that is perpetrated by most CS'sts,  who stretch the truth and/or outright lie...when they talk about healings.  Perhaps they do it to exalt themselves in the eyes of their peers, or to be accepted as a good CSer by the rest of the congregation. Then, of course there is just the plain ignorant. Was it in a recent Sentinel that I read about someone who had a healing when their heart stopped beating for 4 days, they prayed and prayed and it started right up again?  Who but a CSer is going to read that and believe it happened?   Each time these things are done the "lie of healing" is perpetuated. That encourages the very sick CSer to feel that the healing just has to come...because everyone else is getting them. The killing is also done by the practitioners and the teachers who tell their seriously ill patients not to go to the hospital when the patient asks, when the patient has been sick and getting sicker week after week after week, month after month..no healing...but no you dont need to go to the hospital.   I know a CSer who died of gangrene, under the care of a TEACHER.  Who dies of gangrene these days?  Oh yeah, CSers.

Mark, my heart goes out to you.  What you have been through is just horrible, outrageous, especially since so much of your agony was at the hands of your mother, or denied by your mother. I hope you can overcome the damage that has been done to you and find some kind of peace in your life, and more importantly and place for "Mark" to feel safe and loved. I know you must be strong of mind and body to have endured and to have broken away.  Huzzah!

And..please.. write that book!

Square Peg

Nice to hear from you. You sound REALLY busy on the other site!

Thanks for the information about the ski areas; the Crystal Lake Ski Area you describe sounds like the place where I skied. I had a lot of fun there except for the ankle injury.

I don't have individual passwords, but you can request yours as follows:

Click on "Login" as if you do have your password, then click on "Request Your Password" in the lower right area of the screen that opens up (it's in the section that says "Login Options."